Category: Entertainment

Ed Sheeran addressed the controversy surrounding Macklemore’s removal from his Loop Tour on Saturday night, speaking from the stage at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field during his first concert since the rapper was dropped from the trek.

“Before I play some songs tonight, I hope it’s okay if I say a few words about this last week,” Sheeran said at the top of Saturday’s show. “I’m used to my music being criticized, and I’m always happy to take that because I’m lucky. A lot of you like my stuff, and to be honest, I’m surprised. I’m not surprised that I’ve even done it. You know, it’s normal. But this week, the criticism was about something much more important, and I’ve had to take and make difficult decisions, and I am making mistakes, and I’m so, so sorry.”

Sheeran continued: “I don’t want to disappoint fans, and I’ve never wanted to be an activist musician, but this has put me in the middle of an important and passionate argument about freedom of speech and the most complex political issue on the planet. My concerts have always been a safe space for everyone, and that matters hugely to me. Honoring my commitment to my fans is also completely essential to who I am, and that is why I’m here tonight on my own and continuing my current tour.”

Saturday’s concert marked Sheeran’s first performance since a tumultuous week for the U.S. leg of his Loop Tour, which saw Macklemore removed from the remaining dates following the rapper’s onstage remarks in support of Palestinians during Sheeran’s Sept. 4 and 5 shows at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

During his MetLife performances, Macklemore spoke about the war in Gaza and the West Bank and told the stadium crowd, “Free Palestine.” His set also included “Hind’s Hall,” his 2024 protest song supporting Palestinians. The remarks drew criticism from some Jewish and pro-Israel organizations, including the Israeli-American Council, which called for Macklemore to be removed from the tour.

Messina Touring Group, the promoter behind the U.S. leg of the Loop Tour, subsequently announced that Macklemore would no longer appear on the remaining dates. The company said venues had informed the promoter that they would not allow concerts featuring Macklemore to proceed, a situation it said could have resulted in cancellations affecting hundreds of thousands of ticket holders.

While Sheeran addressed the decision in a statement earlier this week, stressing that Macklemore’s removal was made by the promoter and venues rather than by him, he again acknowledged that he is “deeply worried about the idea that venues pre-approve content for performance.” “This happens in so many places that I perform around the world, but it should never happen in the free world,” he said.

At the time of his initial statement, Sheeran said he was “appalled by the conflict between Israel and Palestine,” describing the suffering caused by the war as a “human tragedy,” while explaining that he has generally sought to keep his concerts focused on “unity, joy, escapism, love” rather than his own political views. On Saturday, he restated these feelings, though also speaking more explicitly about where he stands on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“I have tried in my career not to be a political commentator of any kind, because I want my music and shows to be about unity, not division,” he said. “But this is a humanitarian issue, and I cannot hide how I feel about it anymore. What happened in Israel and at the Nome Museum Festival on Oct. 7 was horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain. What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic and unjustifiable, and disproportionate. Our hearts can be broken by the scale of devastation and loss of civilians’ lives, children’s lives and the systemic injustice we’re seeing unfold in the West Bank cannot be overlooked.”

He continued, “I am already speaking to people across the spectrum to work out how to make a contribution that helps victims of these terrible times, and listening and learning because I do not know enough.”

After Macklemore was dropped, he responded to his removal in a statement, saying that he and Sheeran had held “difficult conversations” in the aftermath of the MetLife shows. While expressing respect for Sheeran personally, the rapper challenged the singer’s preference for remaining publicly neutral and said he did not regret using the tour stage to speak in support of Palestinians. Macklemore has since said he will donate $1 million to Palestinian relief organizations.

The fallout quickly spread beyond Macklemore. Singer-songwriter Aaron Rowe and Danish band Lukas Graham, who had been expected to support Sheeran on upcoming North American dates, both withdrew from the tour. Finneas, who was scheduled to join Sheeran for a run of South American dates later this year, also pulled out, while Irish folk group Beoga — longtime collaborators who had been performing as part of Sheeran’s live show — exited as well. All four cited Macklemore’s removal in announcing their decisions.

The Philadelphia date nevertheless proceeded as scheduled Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field, kicking off the next stretch of Sheeran’s U.S. stadium run.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, Portugal’s preeminent Queer Lisboa – International Queer Film Festival kicked off Friday with a vast program showcasing the latest in LGBTQ cinema, from established filmmakers to new voices, and a look back at the underground counterculture and revolutionary works of activist filmmakers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Lisbon’s oldest film festival, Queer Lisboa launched in 1997 at the Cinemateca Portuguesa as the Lisbon Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, opening with the 1950 short film “Un chant d’amour,” the only film ever directed by French novelist and playwright Jean Genet, whose works included “Querelle de Brest,” famously adapted by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

The festival’s origins at the Portuguese Cinematheque is one of the factors that has distinguished it from other queer festivals across Europe, Queer Lisboa artistic director João Ferreira tells Variety.

“From the very beginning, I would say that the festival was not envisioned as a kind of niche or festival only for the LGBTQ community because of the institutional support that it already had from day one. So I think it’s a very particular case for a queer festival in Europe. It was certainly not the case with some festivals that started more or less at the same time, like Madrid or Paris.

“The audience was from the very beginning, a very broad audience and an audience interested in film, a cinephile audience,” Ferreira adds. “But of course, also because in the first three years it was organized by the Portuguese chapter of ILGA [the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association], it also had this very important community aspect to it.”

The festival’s perception of queer cinema has never been based merely on narrative, Ferreira notes. “It was much broader than that. We were interested in a queer gaze at the world. We were interested in a camp aesthetic. So we were looking for very different kinds of films that could fit in this idea.” It was a view that shaped what the festival ultimately became, he adds. “Then the festival was called the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, but the idea was already queer at the time, the way we looked at film.”

With a total of 94 feature, documentary and short films, the 30th edition of Queer Lisboa takes place at its regular venues, the Cinemateca Portuguesa and Cinema São Jorge, running Sept. 18-26.

Boasting a strong lineup that includes some of the year’s top LGBTQ titles, the festival opens with the Portuguese premiere of Rami Malek-starrer “The Man I Love” from Ira Sachs, whose previous films, “Passages” and “Peter Hujar’s Day,” likewise screened in Lisbon. Leah Nelson’s acclaimed animated drama “Tangles” closes the event.

With nearly a dozen sections, including five competition categories and six non-competitive sidebars, the festival offers a broad showcase. New this year is Queer Family, dedicated to kids and their families, with a focus on culturally enriching independent films that explore themes of inclusion and identity. Two Brazilian features make up the program, Allan Deberton’s Berlinale award-winner “Gugu’s World” and Priscilla Kellen’s animated “Papaya.”

It’s been a long-standing goal to attract younger audiences, says Ana David, programmer and director at Queer Lisboa.

The new section is aimed directly at families and the festival has already received positive feedback from interested parents.

“We’ll see if it’s the kids bringing their parents, or if it’s the parents bringing their kids. It’s important for us to work with young audiences who will also become the adult audiences of the festival in the future,” David says. The new section also provides the opportunity for parents and their children to have an intergenerational experience and to even talk about things after the screening, she adds.

The festival has already sold a large amount of tickets for the Queer Family screenings. “We think it’s going to work out really well,” David says.

With the increasing growth and appeal of LGBTQ cinema, Queer Lisboa has sought to find a balance between popular mainstream works, new discoveries and the more radical experimental films that have long defined queer cinema.

“We want this spectrum, the big films and very small films,” says Ferreira. “It’s part of our joy as programmers to discover these smaller and more independent, sometimes more DIY filmmakers and filmmaking, and we try to put all that in the program. It is challenging.”

While it’s much easier now to acquire films than it was 30 years ago, it’s become more difficult to filter through the huge amount of available titles and curate the 90-plus films that the festival presents, Ferreira adds.

Offering a rare treat for its 30th anniversary is an expanded Retrospectives section with 19 titles, including such works as the Wachowskis’ 1996 debut film “Bound”; Sally Potter’s “Orlando” (1992), Lisa Cholodenko’s “High Art” (1998), Patrice Chéreau’s “The Wounded Man” (1983), Kim Longinotto and Jano Williams’ British doc “Shinjuku Boys” (1995) and, from West Germany, Frank Ripploh’s 1980 classic “Taxi to the Toilet” (“Taxi zum Klo”).

This year’s showcase is especially interesting as Queer Lisboa is hitting 30 at the same time BFI Flare in London turns 40 and San Francisco’s Frameline turns 50, David notes. Those festivals, along with Paris’ Chéries-Chéris, “served as inspirations for the birth of Queer Lisboa.”

“It speaks to the longevity of queer cinema, but also the festivals that have for a long time now been promoting and expanding on the knowledge and appreciation of queer cinema,” David notes.

For Queer Lisboa, it was an opportunity to look back at early films that are rare exhibitions in Portugal even if they’re already considered canon films within queer cinema. “We wanted to offer some classic titles that people know and can engage with the retrospective, but then also offer something new for them to learn about and that can expand on their knowledge,” David adds.

An important element of that is to present the films in restored or digitized versions.

It’s the first time that “Orlando” screens at the Cinemateca Portuguesa, David points out. “And they actually have a 35mm print, so it’s amazing that we can offer an excuse for this film to be shown.”

“And to take it out of the closet,” Ferreira quips.

Also presented will be a newly restored version of João Paulo Ferreira’s 1976 subversive queer musical comedy “Fatucha Superstar,” inspired by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

Made in the wake of the revolution that swept away Portugal’s authoritarian dictatorship, the film blasphemously ridicules in ultimate kitsch fashion one of the main pillars of the former regime, the apparition of Our Lady of Fátima and the Christian symbolism that surrounded it.

Along with Óscar Alves, João Paulo Ferreira was part of the rebellious and independent gay filmmaking movement that produced the first queer films in post-revolution Portugal. Together they founded the film collective Cineground and screened their Super 8 films in Lisbon’s queer bars and night clubs in the 1970s.

Among the returning talents and exciting discoveries this year are Portuguese filmmaker André Godinho and the world premiere of his debut feature “Nothing Left,” described as a Portuguese queer version of “Punishment Park”; and German artist duo Benjamin Ramírez Pérez and Stefan Ramírez Pérez with the world premiere of “Life Is About Losing Everything,” their hybrid doc on the life and work of Canadian poet Lynn Crosbie, likewise a first feature. Both films unspool in the Queer Art Competition, which showcases experimental, boundary-busting works that “explore the limits of cinematic languages, genres, and narratives.”

Other highlights include Swiss-French feature “Summer Drift,” by Céline Carridroit and Aline Suter, and the European premiere of “Public Access,” David Shadrack Smith’s look at the people who transformed New York City TV into a groundbreaking space for self-expression during the 1970s and 80s.

This year’s diverse lineup includes special screenings of Pedro Almodóvar’s “Bitter Christmas” and Jane Schoenbrun’s “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” while the fest’s non-competitive Panorama sidebar presents such recent international festival hits as “Jim Queen“; “Maspalomas;” “Outerlands“; and “Prosecution.”

Competing in this year’s Queer Lisboa feature film competition are:

“Black Burns Fast,” by Sandulela Asanda (South Africa)

“On the Road,” by David Pablos (Mexico)

“Strange River,” by Jaume Claret Muxart’s (Spain, Germany)

“La Gradiva,” by Marine Atlan (France, Italy)

“Iván & Hadoum,” by Ian de la Rosa (Spain, Germany, Belgium)

“Julian,” by Cato Kusters (Belgium, The Netherlands)

“London,” by Victor Di Marco and Márcio Picoli (Brazil)

“Raging,” by Ryan Machado (Philippines)

The entire Queer Lisboa program can be explored here.

“Ninjago Legends: Duskfall” is premiering in Korea this weekend ahead of a worldwide release on Lego’s YouTube channel.

The anime-style shorts feature some of “Ninjago’s” most beloved characters as they encounter new challenges and new battles while bringing back some familiar voices from the original show as well as “Ninjago Dragons Rising.”

The series of three interconnected shorts, each three-minutes long, premiered Friday at a “Ninjago Legends” Duskfall” fan event at the Park Mall Yongsan in Seoul. The shorts will be released on the Lego Group’s YouTube channel on Saturday, Sept. 19.

The three shorts are titled “The End Begins,” directed by David Cazeaux and Charles Lefebvre, “Terminus,” directed again by Cazeaux and Lefebvre, and “Epilogue,” directed by Cazeaux, Lefebvre and Hugo Cierzniak.

Andrew Francis reprises his role as Cole alongside Kelly Metzger as Nya and Vincent Tong as Kai. Also returning to the franchise are Brian Drummond as Diviner and Runt, Adrian Petriw as Scott and Sabrina Pitre (the voice of Sora in “Dragons Rising”) as a reporter.

In a trailer for the shorts series, it opens with a female voice saying “Kai, if you make it out of this, promise me you’ll walk away.” It then cuts to plenty of action before Kai, in his red ninja outfit, says: “Save the Elementals, I’m coming.”

The female voice then says: “We’re not fighting demons or monsters anymore, they call us warriors. Protectors. Ninja.”

Created to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the “Ninjago” franchise, the shorts offer fans who’ve grown up the show an opportunity to watch the characters in a new way, with many hoping the anime-style shorts will be expanded into a full series. Ninja, watch this space.

Check out the trailer below:

World-premiering in San Sebastián main competition, Javier Ruiz Caldera’s time-warping drama ‘5 More Minutes’ (‘5 Minutos Más’) suggests one way an on-the rocks relationship may come closer together again: by plunging them into the makings of a global apocalypse.

Writer-star Berto Romero (“The Other Side”) and Belen Cuesta (“The Endless Trench”) play a couple who are trying to repair their frayed marriage, retreating to an idyllic vacation home in Spain’s exquisite Girona countryside. There they are handed the keys by Carlos, a property manager, played by the ever-popular Javier Cámara (“Talk to Her”) in a rare, less simpático role. Not long after he hands over the keys, time jumps back five minutes.

As time continues to jump back for them, again and again, they grow increasingly paranoid. Catalonia has always looked to France for inspiration. This is a film which melds the great French and Catalan tradition of questioning the civilized manners of the bourgeoisie, rcast in a thouroughly modern genre blender, part excriciating comedy, part min-bending sci-fi, and part a shockingly violent thriller, driven by the logic of nightmares.

A potential breakout, “5 More Minutes” is produced by Movistar Plus, El Terrat, part of The Mediapro Studio, and Ikiru Films. Filmax handles domestic distribution in Spain and internatonal sales.

Ruiz Caldera and Romero both spoke to Variety in the run-up to San Sebastian’s world premiere.

What was it about this project that compelled you to take it on, particularly after your previous film?

Ruiz Caldera: I always want my next film to differ from the previous one and present a new challenge. Berto Romero’s script offered that, combining the genres I love most: fantasy, thriller and irresistible humor. I immediately wanted to make it.

The choice of music framing the film is striking. What informed the decision to open and close with Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams,” and what did you hope that musical motif would evoke?

Ruiz Caldera: Finding the right song was difficult. We wanted something hypnotic and mysterious that signaled this wasn’t simply a comedy. Then “In Dreams” clicked. Many will remember it from David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” and I hope that association adds an intriguing layer.

The performances feel remarkably spontaneous despite the film’s highly choreographed structure. How much latitude did you allow the actors to improvise, particularly Belén Cuesta, whose role is especially dialogue-heavy?

Ruiz Caldera: We rehearsed extensively and improvised during preparation, but the actual takes were highly choreographed. The film consists of five-minute takes, so everything had to be timed precisely. Making it look spontaneous was the goal, and Javier Cámara, Belén Cuesta and Berto Romero made that possible.

The film navigates an unusually delicate tonal terrain between black comedy, suspense and the fantastic. How did you calibrate those elements without allowing one to undermine the others?

Ruiz Caldera: Humor helps release tension before catching the audience off guard again. Given the characters’ extreme situation, black humor also feels natural—a way of protecting themselves from anxiety and fear.

The setting in Girona plays a significant atmospheric role. What drew you to this particular location, and how did its familiarity and natural beauty inform the film’s darker impulses?

Ruiz Caldera: It was shot in a beautiful valley in Girona, Catalonia, at a friend’s house I’ve known since childhood. It’s a paradise – an ideal setting for a nightmare.

The decision to construct the film around precisely five-minute takes presents a formidable formal and technical challenge. What motivated this constraint, and how did you coordinate the cinematography, production design, costume, sound, visual effects and production teams to sustain identical conditions across every sequence?

Every sequence shot had to last exactly five minutes, no more or less. We wanted audiences to genuinely feel the weight of those five minutes without relying on editing. After months of testing, every sequence was filmed at exactly 6:35 p.m., with identical light. Close coordination between cinematography, art, costume, sound, visual effects and production made the technical feat possible.

How has the involvement of Movistar Plus, a producer with El Terrat and Ikiru, helped to empower “5 More Minutes” in production terms. And how should it help its distribution potential in Spain?

Romero: I have worked with Movistar Plus on several productions over the years and have built a strong relationship of trust with their creative and production teams. The same is true of El Terrat, with whom I have worked in film and television for more than two decades. Together with Ikiru Films, they have supported the project from the beginning and given us complete creative freedom.

For distribution in Spain, having Filmax on board gives us great confidence. Their experience, knowledge of the market, and ability to connect films with audiences are a major advantage. Together with the support of Movistar Plus, El Terrat and Ikiru Films, we have a strong foundation to give ‘5 More Minutes’ visibility and reach a broad audience.

“5 More Minutes” blends sci-fi, survival thriller and excruciating (in the best sense) comedy. What attracts you to genre mixes?

I have always been drawn to stories that blend genres. Life itself is a good example: it can move from comedy to horror, thriller or drama in a matter of seconds. To me, that feels natural.

I like to follow the story I want to tell and let the genres emerge organically. I come from stand-up comedy and television, where I have worked for 30 years, so my way of seeing the world is naturally influenced by humor. At the same time, I have always loved genre stories, especially horror, thrillers, science fiction and fantasy.

I think my writing is a mix of everything I enjoy, filtered through my own view of life. With ‘5 More Minutes,’ I never set out to make a comedy. But in the end, humor, much like life in ‘Jurassic Park,’ found a way.

A considerable number of top Spanish directors – Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Alberto Rodríguez – use genre. Is there something about Spain or Spanish cinema which explain this predilection in auteurs?

I don’t feel qualified to speak for other writers or define a characteristic of Spanish cinema. For me, it is simply a personal preference as a storyteller. I find it fascinating to use genre conventions, subvert them and take audiences somewhere they don’t expect. I think this fascination with genre is more international than uniquely Spanish, though that may just be my own bias. In my case, it is a purely instinctive and irrational impulse when I write.