SXSW ‘Fully Respects’ Artists Boycotting Festival Due to U.S. Army Sponsorship: ‘We Are Witnessing Unspeakable Tragedies’ and ‘Repressive Regimes’

“Malcolm in the Middle” star Frankie Muniz has finally revealed why he was missing for two entire episodes of the dysfunctional-family Fox sitcom.Muniz, 38 — who’s currently a contestant on the reality show “I’m A Celebrity Australia” — told his fellow campers why he left “Malcolm in the Middle” for several weeks during its long run, according to News.com.au.“There were two episodes I’m not in. I walked off that set,” he said of his time on the show, which aired from 2000 to 2006.Muniz explained he couldn’t take the tensions caused by “certain people” on the set — although he did not name names.“Everyone was so afraid to stand up when certain people were controlling or rude or disrespectful,” he said.

Activist Disney investor Blackwells Capital is suing the media giant over what it sees as an inappropriately cozy relationship with another shareholder, ValueAct Capital.

Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. The sun is higher, the days are longer and festival season is upon us. As always, the packed slate of multi-stage music events scheduled throughout the spring and summer kicks off with Coachella, which will return to the famed Empire Polo Grounds on April 12th and again for Weekend 2 on April 19th.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival is set to celebrate the centennial of Columbia Pictures with a retrospective featuring classic titles spawned by the Hollywood studio between the dawn of sound and the late 1950s. The Locarno retro, titled “The Lady With the Torch –– The Centenary of Columbia Pictures,” is being curated by Ehsan Khoshbakht, co-director of Italy’s Il Cinema Ritrovato festival, which is dedicated to cinematic treasures of the past and organized in partnership with Switzerland’s Cinémathèque Suisse.

Joey King is getting some of the best reviews of her career for her work in the new Hulu limited series We Were the Lucky Ones.

Melissa Gilbert had a ready answer when asked why fans of Little House on the Prairie always seem to burst into tears whenever they see her in person.

It’s been less than two months since the end of the 2024 edition, but this morning the Sundance Institute revealed the dates for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. This year’s event will run from Thursday, January 23 through Sunday, February 2nd.

Alex Garland‘s latest film, Civil War,  from A24 and featuring a star-studded cast including Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Jesse Plemons, and Nick Offerman, aims to hold a mirror up to a society spiraling out amongst civil war. In a time when flipping through the news or scrolling through social media can feel like peering into dystopia, Garland wants to crystallize these anxieties into a narrative form, offering a prophetic vision of America’s future. However, despite its ambitious premise and high-caliber cast, the movie stands as a muddled reflection, ultimately rendering its cautionary tale less impactful than intended.

The real story begins long before you know it in Desert Road, a very smart, trippy chiller that plays with the conventions of survival horror and takes them in a wholly unexpected and, ultimately, really quite moving direction. Making her directorial debut, Shannon Triplett shows a sophisticated grasp of genre dynamics, with a bold use of space — a stretch of the Mojave Desert doubling for Death Valley — that proves more and more gripping as the film’s mysteries unfold. At which point, its boundaries begin to blur, slipping between horror and sci-fi in a way that recalls a hypnotic blend of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s The Endless and Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Two-time Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi has been fully cleared by an Iranian court of allegations of plagiarism pertaining to his film “A Hero” that launched from the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Farhadi’s former student Azadeh Masihzadeh had accused the filmmaker of stealing the idea for “A Hero” from a documentary she made during a filmmaking workshop held by Farhadi in 2014 in Tehran.

SXSW has issued a statement about artists and bands pulling out of the festival in support of Palestine.Artists such as NewDad, Cardinals, Enola Gay and others have recently dropped out of the festival due to the event’s association with the US army and weapons companies amid the Israel-Gaza conflict.Yesterday, Texas governor Greg Abbott took to X (formerly Twitter) to write: “Bands pull out of SXSW over U.S. Army Sponsorship. Bye.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and SXSW on Tuesday traded jabs on social media in response to a group of as many as 60 bands who have pulled out of Austin-based festival to protest its sponsor ties to the U.S. Army, as well as its inclusion of defense contractors taking part in some of the fest’s conference programs.

If Vladimir Putin was watching the Academy Awards on Sunday night from his dacha on the Black Sea, his mood may have been blackened by the Best Documentary Feature category. As Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast had predicted, the Oscar went to , Mstyslav Chernov’s harrowing film about the early days of Russia’s brutal siege of the Ukrainian port city. 

Kneecap and Sprints are the latest artists to announce their withdrawal from this year’s South By Southwest Festival in solidarity with Palestine.The Irish artists join the likes of Lambrini Girls, Scowl, Gel, Okay Shalom and Squirrelflower in pulling out of performing at the festival due to the event’s association with the US army and weapons companies amid the Israel-Palestine conflict.The annual music, culture and arts showcase takes place in Austin, Texas from March 12-14.Belfast hip-hop trio Kneecap shared in a statement yesterday (March 10) that their decision to not perform was made “in solidarity with the people of Palestine”.They also highlighted the “unacceptable deep links” the festival had to the US army – which is a “super sponsor” of the event – and defence contractor RTX Corporation, which has supplied weapons to Israel.The group added that the US military and other platformed weapons companies who are “at this very moment are enabling a genocide and famine against a trapped population”.The band continued that their decision would have a “significant financial impact” on them, but that it wasn’t “an iota of hardship when compared with the unimaginable suffering being inflicted every minute of every day on the people of Gaza”.A post shared by KNEECAP (@kneecap32)Kneecap also cited the platforming of collins Aerospace and BAE Systems as a reason for their boycott, adding that collectively with RTX, the companies were selling the weapons that have “murdered 31,000 Palestinians, over 21,000 of them women and children”.Sprints made their own statement this morning (March 11) in which they announced their withdrawal, writing: “In solidarity with the Palestinian people and as a stand against the US Army

The Smile headlined the third night of the BBC 6 Music Festival last night (March 9), alongside the London Contemporary Orchestra – check out the video below. The COVID-formed, loose experimental band, comprised of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, alongside Sons Of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, played a lengthy set at Manchester’s O2 Victoria Warehouse, the main body of which saw them joined by the classical orchestra.

Lambrini Girls have become the latest artist to boycott this year’s South By Southwest Festival, saying they “can’t affiliate ourselves whatsoever” with the event.The Brighton punk band have joined the likes of Scowl, Gel, Okay Shalom and Squirrelflower in pulling out of performing at the festival, which takes place in Austin, Texas from March 12-14.Artists have taken issue with the event’s sponsorship ties to the US Army, amid the current Israel-Palestine crisis. Some have also pointed to the festival’s ties to the defence contractor RTX Corporation, which has supplied weapons to Israel.“We are pulling out of SXSW tomorrow,” the band wrote in a statement posted to social media.

CMAT was joined on stage by John Grant in Manchester last night (March 8) for a version of their collaborative song ‘Where Are Your Kids Tonight?’ – check it out below. The performance came as part of BBC’s 6 Music Festival, which is currently taking place across Greater Manchester this weekend. CMAT was playing the O2 Victoria Warehouse, in the slot immediately before headliner Gossip.

Larry David’s upcoming tour sounds pretty, pretty, pretty good.The “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star is embarking on a two-show ‘A Conversation with Larry David’ mini-tour ahead of his seminal HBO series’ finale on April 7.At both gigs, he’ll discuss “Curb’s” final season, “Seinfeld,” his comedy career and more with a mystery moderator.First, the “disgruntled” curmudgeon will drop into Washington, D.C.’s The Anthem on Friday, March 29. After that, the former “SNL” scribe is slated to bring his irascible brand of funny to Boston, MA’s MGM Music Hall at Fenway on Monday, April 1.“Just so you know, I’ve recently had plastic surgery on my face and the doctor, who everyone raved about, totally botched it, leaving me devoid of all expression,” David joked in a press release.

EXCLUSIVE: Sundance documentary Never Look Away, the directorial debut of actress Lucy Lawless (Xena: Warrior Princess), has been sold by XYZ to Greenwich Entertainment for all rights in North America, and to Kaleidoscope for all rights in UK.

During the 2024 State of the Union address, you might notice that there is a group of women wearing white. Here’s why!