One year after tying the knot, Britney Spears and Sam Asghari have faced a few hiccups in their marriage — but they aren’t giving up on their love.
08.06.2023 - 12:41 / variety.com
Jessica Kiang A locked-off camera can convey many things — watchfulness, stealthiness, clinical remove or elegant restraint — but seldom is it as evocatively accusatory as in Alireza Khatami and Ali Asgari’s “Terrestrial Verses.” Here, its use over a series of stationary vignettes, bookended by dramatic images of urban collapse, becomes an increasingly inspired choice even as the themes start to repeat and the resonances with the ongoing Women Life Freedom movement in Iran become more apparent. Putting the viewer in the uncomfortable position of interviewer/interrogator in nine encounters between everyday Iranians and some manner of authority figure, this is punchy first-person filmmaking, from the point of view of the last person you want to be.
Some of the stories are mildly comedic in tone, especially early on. In the first of cinematographer Adib Sobhani’s crisp, boxed-in 4:3 compositions, we are introduced to a father (Bahram Ark) being chastised for not choosing a sufficiently Islamic name for his newborn son. The scene then switches to a little girl (Arghavan Sabani) barely tolerating a cajoling, hectoring saleswoman’s patter as she’s fitted for her school uniform: a child-sized abaya and veil, which swallows up her Mickey Mouse T-shirt and sparkly pink headphones. All she really wants to do is dance along to the pop music playing in her ears. The subjects gets progressively older from scene to scene: In the next, a teenage girl (Sarvin Zabetian) is interrogated by her school principal, who believes the girl was seen riding to school on a motorbike with a boy. Their meeting ends with a twist, as the girl turns the tables on the older woman in a satisfyingly satirical manner. Not many of the stories deliver
One year after tying the knot, Britney Spears and Sam Asghari have faced a few hiccups in their marriage — but they aren’t giving up on their love.
Facing adulthood is never easy.
Paramount+ crime-thriller Bargain, Prime Video’s absurdist comedy I’m a Virgo and Greek infertility dramedy Babython were among the awards series winners at last week’s Seriencamp in Germany.
Two Scots journalists held in a detention centre “like an open sewer” have begged the international community to rescue 101 refugees, including children, still there.
Christopher Vourlias Iranian filmmaker Dornaz Hajiha took home the top prize Saturday at the Transilvania Film Festival, as the jury awarded the first-time director with the Transilvania Trophy for “Like a Fish on the Moon,” a moving family drama about two parents coping with the emotional fallout when their young son suddenly stops talking. In the jury’s citation, Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco highlighted “the originality of its premise, the power of its performances, and the intelligence with which it explored very difficult subject matter,” describing “Like a Fish on the Moon” as “a film that resonated long after it ended.” Hajiha was visibly moved as she took the stage to accept the award, which was presented to her by Transilvania Lifetime Achievement Award winner Geoffrey Rush moments after the Australian actor delivered an impassioned and at times whimsical tribute to the power of cinema.
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A former gym disciple "was so hammered" he admitted "if I did it, I did it" after going on a alcohol-fuelled racist rampage where he threatened to shoot and stab a pub regular and rape the mothers and girlfriends of police.
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Sunday,” by Uzbekistan-based director Shokir Kholikov, was Thursday named best film in the Asian New Talent section of the 25th Shanghai International Film Festival. The Asian New Talent Awards are called Golden Goblet Awards, but are separate from the festival’s official competition section, and favor new and emerging talent. The main competition jury will hand out its Golden Goblets on Sunday. The best director prize in the Asian New Talent section was shared by two helmers: China’s Luo Dong won for “May.” So too did Kazakhstan’s Aisultan Seit for “Qash.” Luo previously attended the Shanghai festival’s project market ten years ago and has since completed one other film.
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The International Olympic Committee said on Thursday that Swiss-based, Chinese-owned Infront Sports & Media would handle broadcast right sales in much of Asia for the next series of Summer and Winter games. The deal covers 22 territories including Afghanistan, Brunei, Cambodia, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam – but not China, Japan or South Korea, and runs 2026-2032. That means it will cover the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics and the Los Angeles 2028 and Brisbane 2032 Summer games. The 2030 Winter Olympics, which have yet to be allocated a host, and all Youth Olympic Games during this period will also be covered.
Christopher Vourlias A passionate friendship spanning a turbulent decade marked by two unlikely uprisings forms the emotional heart of “Between Revolutions,” Romanian filmmaker Vlad Petri’s powerful hybrid documentary that plays this week at the Transilvania Film Festival. Using extensive archival footage, Petri’s sophomore feature depicts the intense bond forged between two young women studying medicine in Bucharest in the 1970s. When political turmoil begins to sweep across Iran, their lives are drawn apart, as the Iranian-born Zahra is forced to return home, leaving her Romanian friend Maria behind. Over the next decade, the two women maintain their connection through a series of letters, chronicling their struggles as women fighting for a voice while their respective countries move in divergent directions.
37-count indictment for mishandling classified documents, falsely claiming in a heated CNN interview with Dana Bash that Trump had the right to handle the documents “however he wants.” “If he wants to store material in a box in a bathroom, in a box on the stage, he can do that,” the representative from Ohio said.The indictment, filed by Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith, accuses Trump of violating the Espionage Act by holding on to classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago compound that included sensitive information on the United States’ nuclear stockpile and potential vulnerabilities to foreign attacks, among other national security topics. The indictment also cites audio recordings of Trump sharing documents on a plan to attack Iran with people within his circle who did not have clearance to see them and acknowledging that he was not allowed to show them such files.
Charna Flam When readers and audiences hear Hello Sunshine has acquired a best-selling book, it’s likely the production company’s president of film and TV, Lauren Neustadter, has spearheaded the deal. Before joining Reese Witherspoon’s production company in 2017, Neustadter spent over a decade working in film as an executive at such companies as Miramax and 20th Century Fox, eventually transitioning to TV and serving as a Fox network exec. Once she landed at Hello Sunshine — and before she developed a slew of book-inspired series, including “Big Little Lies,” “Little Fires Everywhere” and “Truth Be Told” — she had an early book-to-screen adaptation, “Americanized,” that made it to the final stages of thenetwork development pilot cycle.
“Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth” is officially due to drop in 2024. The highly anticipated addition to the role-playing franchise will arrive for the PS5, notably on “two discs.” (What that detail means is still unclear, but a logical assumption would be that the game is just that big.)The major announcement was the last of many revelations at the Summer Game Fest 2023 big games showcase on Thursday, held at the YouTube Theater in Los Angeles to highlight upcoming releases gamers can look forward to in the near future.
WWE fans are mourning a legend.
pic.twitter.com/Cr6CC9pXSOThe Iron Sheik got his start as a Greco-Roman wrestler, competing for Iran at the1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. He later served as an assistant coach for Team USA at the 1972 Games in Munich. He made his WWF debut in 1979 and won the WWF World Heavyweight Championship in 1983, becoming the only Iranian wrestler ever to do so.His legendary rivalry with Hulk Hogan helped make Hogan one of the great pro wrestling heroes of the 1980s, and his tag team pairing with Nikolai Volkoff won the WWF Tag Team Championship at the inaugural WrestleMania event in 1985.In 2005, The Iron Sheik was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
may have actively moved to conceal evidence that Trump knowingly took classified documents despite his unfounded claim that he “declassified” them. Trump’s lawyers met Monday with Justice Department officials, in an attempt to keep him from being indicted.When the case became public, it soon also came out that President Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence both had also taken a much smaller number of classified documents, however in both cases the matter was voluntarily disclosed and the officials cooperated fully with investigators.
reported that federal prosecutors now have a recording from a 2021 meeting, in which Trump explicitly acknowledges that he kept a classified document about a potential attack on Iran. This would fly in the face of Trump’s repeated claim that he declassified everything he had (sometimes just with his mind), and counts as an admission of a crime.Farah Griffin has been pretty vocal in her doubts about Trump facing real consequences by way of prison time, but on Thursday morning, she changed course.“I always kind of thought the documents investigation was over, since we found out Pence had documents, current President Biden does.
report on Wednesday that federal prosecutors now have a recording from a 2021 meeting, in which Trump explicitly acknowledges that he kept a classified document about a potential attack on Iran. This, of course, would fly in the face of Trump’s repeated claim that he declassified everything he had (sometimes just with his mind).“I think if this audio tape exists, this is not a question of if there are going to be charges,” Weissman said.
The Karlovy Vary Film Festival has unveiled the official selection for its upcoming 57th edition. The lineup comprises 31 films across three sections and a host of world and international premieres. Scroll down for the full list.
A behind-closed-doors trial is being held in Tehran for an Iranian journalist on charges resulting from her coverage of Mahsa Amini, whose 2022 death in custody by Iran’s morality police sparked months of protest.