White Noise, review: Netflix cash plus DeLillo plot equals a very strange film indeed

grossed an impressive $11.3 million at the North American box office this year.Instead, the country’s selection committee went with “Last Film Show,” a coming-of-age drama that was compared to “Cinema Paradiso” after its premiere at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. In the vein of Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” and James Gray’s “Armageddon Time,” it is a semi-autobiographical work based on moments from its director’s childhood.The decision was reminiscent of the choice in 2013 to send “The Good Road” to the Oscars over “The Lunchbox,” which had been considered an all-but-certain nominee if it had been chosen.India has sent 54 films to the Oscars dating back to 1957, landing three nominations with no wins.

The People’s Choice Award from the just wrapped 2022 Toronto International Film Festival has gone to Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans.  First Runner Up is Canada’s own Sarah Polley’s Women Talking. And Second Runner Up was Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. The Documentary Award went to Black Ice, and the Midnight Madness winner was Weird: The Al Yankovich Story             .

Lewis Milestone’s 1930 classic, All Quiet On The Western Front was based on the 1928 novel by Erich Maria Remarque and became the first adaptation of a book to win the Oscar for Best Picture, as well as the first Best Picture Oscar winner to also take Best Director. It has hardly been touched by filmmakers since then save for a TV Movie remake by director Delbert Mann in 1979 that starred Richard Thomas. Now that has changed, and in a significant way , as the book has finally been taken on by Germany with director Edward Berger’s (Patrick Melrose, Your Honor) adaptation (co-written with Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell) that finally shows us the perspective from the German side. It has already been selected as the German entry for the 95th Academy Awards Best International Film race, and just had its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival today.

Deadline first reported the sale and said it was for $30 million, but the individual told TheWrap that it could even be north of that figure.The film, which reunites the team from Payne’s “Sideways,” screened on Sunday at TIFF in which all major streamers and studios attended.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic No director has done more to deconstruct the myth of the suburban American family than Steven Spielberg. Dissertations have been written and documentaries made on the subject. And now, at the spry young age of 75, Spielberg himself weighs in on where his preoccupations come from in “The Fabelmans,” a personal account of his upbringing that feels like listening to two and a half hours’ worth of well-polished cocktail-party anecdotes, only better, since he’s gone to the trouble of staging them all for our benefit. Spielberg’s a born storyteller, and these are arguably his most precious stories. From the first movie he saw (“The Greatest Show on Earth”) to memories of meeting filmmaker John Ford on the Paramount lot, this endearing, broadly appealing account of how Spielberg was smitten by the medium — and why the prodigy nearly abandoned picture-making before his career even started — holds the keys to so much of the master’s filmography. More similar to Woody Allen’s autobiographical “Radio Days” than it is to European art films such as “The 400 Blows” and “Amistad” (the more highbrow models other directors typically point to when re-creating their childhoods), “The Fabelmans” invites audiences into the home and headspace of the world’s most beloved living director, an oddly sanitized zone where even the trauma — which includes anti-Semitism, financial disadvantage and divorce — seems to go better with fresh-buttered popcorn.

Clayton Davis “Glass Onion: A Knives Out” from writer and director Rian Johnson is another uproarious take on the whodunit series that outdoes its predecessor in nearly every way. Turning in killer performances, Janelle Monae and Edward Norton lead an invigorating ensemble that makes this awards observer hope Netflix will put every available dollar behind making this its leading awards contender for 2022.  Daniel Craig reprises the role of Benoit Blanc, throwing himself into the funniest performance seen this year. It’s impossible to explain what the film is about without spoiling it, so we won’t do that. What we will do is tell you that the award for SAG ensemble is going to be a cutthroat race with “Glass Onion” in the mix alongside “Women Talking” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” 

Jenelle Riley Deputy Awards, Features Editor It was near impossible not to fall in love with Kenny Payne from the moment he appeared on Season 4 of “Cobra Kai,” the wildly popular Netflix series set in the universe of “The Karate Kid” movies. On his first day at a new school, he is caught dancing exuberantly as the school bus picks him up — and instantly becomes the target of Anthony LaRusso, the son of Ralph Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso. And it’s a testament to actor Dallas Dupree Young that as Kenny changed in Season 4 to the point where he turns the tables on his bully, that audiences are still rooting for him. The 15-year-old Young never intended on becoming an actor — his father is Eric Young Sr., a former Major League Baseball player and current first base coach for the Atlanta Braves, and Young thought he would follow in his father’s footsteps. But he went to an open call on a whim and ended up being advanced to a showcase in Los Angeles, where he met his manager. He was soon booking roles in shows like “The Good Place” and “Mixed-ish,” and even working with Steven Spielberg in the film “Ready Player One.” Says Young, “It did fall into my lap, but I felt a love and a passion for the craft instantly.”

EXCLUSIVE: Gabriel LaBelle (The Fabelmans), Conor Sherry (The Terminal List) and Mika Abdalla (Sex Appeal) will lead the cast of coming-of-age comedy The Snack Shack, which Adam Carter Rehmeier (Dinner in America) wrote and is directing for the collective emerging filmmakers label of MRC Film and T-Street.

Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” will close out the 2022 AFI Fest, the American Film Institute announced Tuesday. “The Fabelmans,” which has been touted as Spielberg’s most personal film to date, stars Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Seth Rogen, Gabriel LaBelle and Judd Hirsch in a story inspired by Spielberg’s own childhood. The film follows the formative years of a young man as he discovers a shattering family secret, causing him to use movies as a means to help him see the truth about others and himself. The ensemble cast for “The Fabelmans” includes Jeannie Berlin, Julia Butters, Robin Bartlett and Keeley Karsten, with music by John Williams. Janusz Kaminski serves as cinematographer, and the film is edited by Michael Kahn and Sarah Broshar. Production design is helmed by Rick Carter, and the costume design is overseen by Mark Bridges.

The 49th Telluride Film Festival opens Friday in a much-awaited edition that is set to feature world premieres of Searchlight’s Oscar hopeful Empire of Light from director Sam Mendes, starring Olivia Coleman and Colin Firth; Women Talking from director Sarah Polley, starring Rooney Mara and Frances McDormand in the ensemble; Sebastian Lelio’s The Wonder, starring Florence Pugh; and Sony/Netflix’s sizzling new version of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover with Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell; among other films.

Man, the 20th century really thought it was something, didn’t it? Thankfully, in the middle of the 1980s, just when Western (read: American) culture was fully losing the run of itself in a frenzy of gum-snapping consumerism and prescription narcotics, Don DeLillo‘s “White Noise” appeared — you might almost say manifested — as a mischievous, mindbending 326-page reminder to the century that it wasn’t, in fact, all that.

The BFI London Film Festival has unveiled its full list of titles, with the program comprised of 164 features and 23 world premieres across film and TV.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Don DeLillo’s debut novel, “Americana,” is set to be adapted 51 years after it was first published. “White Noise” producer Uri Singer (“Tesla,” “The King of Oil”) has bought the rights to the 1971 novel, continuing his streak of adapting a string of DeLillo works that have been deemed “unadaptable.” “Americana” tells the story of David Bell, an out-of-touch television executive who sets off on a road trip with his female colleague, Sullivan, to make an avant-garde film. The book explores the intricacies of corporate culture and examines how we create realities, whether they are true or not.

Venice Film Festival on Wednesday.  The model, 41, made sure to show off her endless pins in the hot pink number with very daring thigh-high splits and a chiffon cape.  She wowed the crowds as she walked the red carpet at the historic Palazzo del Cinema on the Lungomare Marconi.

Venice Film Festival got off to a quieter start on Wednesday night with the premiere of “White Noise.” Noah Baumbach’s Netflix-backed adaptation of the Don DeLillo novel starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig was met with a tepid 150-second standing ovation, a short smattering of applause on the Lido.“White Noise,” which is set in the ‘80s, features an array of Easter Eggs for movies of the era from “Back to the Future” to “E.T.” Some of these references might have gone over the head of the Venice crowd. The film, which was met with mixed reviews, is a twisty, talky family drama about the despair of a married couple (played by Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig) facing their own mortality.

Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig are stepping out to support their new movie.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic As a filmmaker, Noah Baumbach has always been a dyed-in-the-wool dramatic realist, talky coastal neurotic division. He hasn’t always been as good at it as he is today; “The Squid and The Whale” (2005), the divorce drama that established his reputation and is held in supremely high regard by many cinephiles, isn’t half the movie that “Marriage Story” is. The latter film was Baumbach’s culminating achievement after 25 years as a writer-director, and it brought his strengths to a new pitch of mastery: his ability to nail the dynamics of troubled relationships in all their frayed layers, his extraordinary skill with actors, and the nimble levity of his dialogue, which emerges from the human comedy as surely it did in the great films of Woody Allen and Paul Mazursky.

Noah Baumbach passed through the Lido Wednesday afternoon where he broke down the origins of his Venice Film Festival opener White Noise, starring Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, and Don Cheadle.

Netflix is giving fans a first look at their fall movie slate!