Tag: Entertainment-Variety

“Wisecrack,” an innovative true-crime podcast revolving around comedian Edd Hedges, won the top prize of podcast of the year Tuesday night in Brooklyn at the sixth annual The Ambies awards ceremony honoring excellence in audio content.

The iHeartPodcasts series, hosted by experienced documentary and true crime journalist Jodi Tovay, looks at the bizarre confluence of events that engulfed Hedges after he returned to his hometown to perform at a charity event. Per iHeart’s description of “Wisecrack,” “What starts as a heartwarming homecoming quickly spirals into a chilling true crime tale of a downward spiral and a town shaken by murder.” “Wisecrack” also won additional trophies for nonfiction screenwriting, society and culture podcast and for production and sound design.

ESPN veteran Pablo Torre was dubbed podcaster of the year for Meadowlark Media’s “Pablo Torre Finds Out” at the awards administered by The Podcast Academy. The ceremony, hosted by comedian Wyatt Cenac, was held at the Arlo Williamsburg venue as part of the On the Air festival celebrating audio storytelling.

LISTEN: “Daily Variety,” “Awards Circuit,” “Strictly Business” and other Variety podcasts

Here is a full list of this year’s The Ambies winners:

Vanguard Podcaster of the Year
Pablo Torre

Podcast of The Year
Wisecrack
Tenderfoot TV , iHeartPodcasts

Best Ad Read
Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend
SiriusXM

Best Branded Podcast
Sesame Street: Cookie Monster Mysteries
Audible Studios,Sesame Workshop

Best Business Podcast
The Indicator from Planet Money
NPR

Best Comedy Podcast
Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend
SiriusXM, Team Coco

Best DIY Podcast
Redacted History
Dr. Andre White, Airwave

Best Documentary Podcast
The Con: Kaitlyn’s Baby
CBC, BBC World Service

Best Emerging Podcast
How Is This Better?
COURIER Newsroom

Best Entertainment Podcast
Twenty Thousand Hertz
Defacto Sound

Best Fiction Podcast
Red for Revolution
Meta Mana Media

Best History Podcast
Our Ancestors Were Messy
Coco Hill Productions

Best Indie Podcast
Our Ancestors Were Messy
Coco Hill Productions

Best Indie Podcast Host or Hosts
Jamie Feldman and Rachel Webster
Debt Heads
Captain and the Fox

Best Interview Podcast
Death, Sex & Money
Slate

Best Knowledge, Science or Tech Podcast
Radiolab
New York Public Radio

Best News & Politics
Reveal
Reveal and PRX

Best Original Score and Music Supervision
Marcus Bagala and Sam Ewing
DC High Volume: Batman
DC Comics, Realm

Best Performance in Audio Fiction
Maulik Pancholy, Murray Bartlett, Poorna Jagannathan, Karan Soni, Anna Camp, Adam Pally, Margo Martindale, Richard Kind, Conrad Ricamora, Iqbal Theba, Julian Shapiro-Barnum, Padma Lakshmi, et al.
Murder at the Patel Motel
Broadway Video, Audible

Best Personal Growth / Spirituality Podcast
Wild Card with Rachel Martin
NPR

Best Podcast for Kids
Terrestrials
WNYC Studios

Best Podcast Host or Hosts
Rachel Martin
Wild Card with Rachel Martin
NPR

Best Production and Sound Design
Alex Vespestad, Steven Perez, and Cooper Skinner
Wisecrack
Tenderfoot TV , iHeartPodcasts

Best Reporting
Robyn Semien
Question Everything
Placement Theory

Best Scriptwriting, Fiction
Jana Naomi Smith
Red for Revolution
Meta Mana Media

Best Scriptwriting, Non-Fiction
Charles Forbes and Edd Hedges
Wisecrack
Tenderfoot TV , iHeartPodcasts

Best Society and Culture Podcast
Wisecrack
Tenderfoot TV , iHeartPodcasts

Best Spanish Language Narrative Podcast – Fiction or Nonfiction
No Me Provoquen
Sonoro

Best Sports Podcast
Pablo Torre Finds Out
Meadowlark Media

Best True Crime Podcast
Sea of Lies
Produced by What’s the Story Sounds for CBC

Best Use of Video in a Podcast
Tales Unrolled
Sonoro

Best Wellness or Relationships Podcast
Embodied
WUNC

Podcast Advertiser Innovator Award
Charlie’s Place
Atlas Obscura, Rococo Punch, Visit Myrtle Beach, Pushkin

(Pictured: Pablo Torre and Wyatt Cenac)

“RRR” director S.S. Rajamouli has unveiled what is being billed as India’s most advanced motion capture facility, unveiling the A&M MoCap Lab at Hyderabad’s Annapurna Studios.

The facility is a joint venture between Akkineni Nagarjuna‘s Annapurna Studios and “Baahubali” producer Shobu Yarlagadda‘s Mihira Visual Labs, with Hollywood’s Animatrik Film Design – whose credits include “Avengers: Endgame,” “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “RRR” – serving as the technology partner. During the unveiling, Rajamouli shared the first glimpse of the lab and confirmed that key sequences of “Varanasi,” which stars Mahesh Babu, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Prithviraj Sukumaran were captured there.

For Rajamouli, the facility closes a long-standing gap in Indian filmmaking infrastructure. “India has always had some of the world’s best technicians contributing to major global productions, but what we lacked was an advanced facility right here at home,” he said. “When I look back at some of my previous films like ‘Baahubali’ and ‘Eega,’ I reminisce how I could have made them even better if I had access to motion capture technology back then in India. With the introduction of A&M’s motion capture technology, that gap has finally been bridged. We utilized this facility in the making of crucial sequences in ‘Varanasi,’ and the results were simply fantastic.”

Nagarjuna framed the launch as a milestone for Indian cinema at large. “For decades, Indian filmmakers have aspired to tell large-scale stories that match global standards, but access to high-end technology was often a limitation,” he said. “With A&M, filmmakers can now bring everything from epic adventures to intricate science fiction dramas to life right here in Hyderabad.”

Yarlagadda, whose Mihira Visual Labs co-developed the facility, described it as part of a broader infrastructure-building effort. “For Indian cinema to truly compete on a global stage, it is essential to create advanced technology ecosystems within the country,” he said. “Seeing a filmmaker like S.S. Rajamouli utilize our A&M MoCap facility for ‘Varanasi’ reinforces our belief that the future of Indian storytelling will be driven by innovation built at home.”

Brett Ineson, president and CTO of Animatrik Film Design, added: “We’re incredibly proud to see Animatrik’s motion capture technology powering this landmark facility at Annapurna Studios. Annapurna has long been a beacon of cinematic excellence, and partnering with them and Mihira Visual Labs to bring world-class performance capture capabilities to India is truly exciting. This collaboration represents a significant step in enabling filmmakers and creators to tell more immersive, emotionally rich stories with the highest global standards.”

The lab features a 60-by-40-by-30-foot capture volume equipped with Vicon Valkyrie VK26 cameras offering sub-millimeter optical tracking precision and real-time data streaming via Vicon Live. The setup integrates Unreal Engine for live virtual production previsualization and includes Stereo Head-Mounted Camera units for high-resolution facial performance capture. Notably, the facility is modular and expandable, allowing it to be disassembled and reassembled on location as productions require.

C.V. Rao, CTO of Annapurna Studios, emphasized the facility’s utility as a pre-production tool. “Directors and cinematographers can experiment with camera blocking, lens choices, camera movements, and frame rates in a dynamic virtual environment, allowing critical creative decisions to be finalized during the motion capture stage, prior to principal photography,” he said, adding that the approach is designed to minimize costly trial-and-error during live shoots.

The launch comes as Annapurna Studios marks its 50th anniversary. The studio said it intends to open the facility to Indian and international filmmakers, game developers, and animation studios seeking a production partner in Asia. It is also not the first time Rajamouli has partnered with Annapurna on a technological milestone – he previously launched India’s first Dolby cinema processing facility at the same studio.

President Trump touted his economic achievements and attacked immigrants and Democrats in a divisive State of the Union address on Tuesday.

Trump also criticized the Supreme Court, which struck down his emergency tariffs last week, and repeatedly castigated the Democratic side of the aisle for not applauding him.

“These people are crazy,” he said. “Democrats are destroying our country, but we’ve stopped it in the nick of time.”

Trump is facing the lowest approval ratings of his term, around 40%, with nearly 60% expressing disapproval. The White House has tried to move on from setbacks like the months-long Epstein controversy and pivot attention to affordability.

“A short while ago, we were a dead country,” Trump said. “Now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world. The hottest.”

Trump also promoted his record of stopping illegal immigration and accused Somali immigrants of defrauding the government. At one point, he told the Democratic members of Congress that they should be “ashamed” for refusing to stand when he said that the government’s first duty “is to protect American citizens, not illegal immigrants.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Somali immigrant from Minneapolis, shouted back at him: “You should be ashamed.”

Trump said the Supreme Court’s tariff ruling was “very unfortunate” and “disappointing.” Four justices of the court — John Roberts, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — sat impassively with their hands folded while Trump rebuked the ruling.

David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance, was among those in the audience, appearing as a guest of Sen. Lindsey Graham. The government is reviewing Netflix’s deal to acquire Warner Bros., while Paramount is angling to break up the deal with a competing bid.

Trump also took several minutes of the speech to honor the U.S. men’s hockey team, which won gold at the Winter Olympics on Sunday, and to talk up the 2028 games in Los Angeles.

“We’re going to do a good job in Los Angeles,” he said. “Los Angeles is going to be safe, just like Washington, D.C., is now one of the safest cities in the country.”

Neve Campbell recently told CBS Mornings that she “didn’t think I could live with myself” if she accepted the offer return for “Scream 6.”

“When I made that decision, I just didn’t think I could live with myself walking on set,” Campbell said. “I just didn’t feel right. I just knew that my value to this franchise was bigger than what had been offered. For me, I needed to make that choice.”

She added, “When I said goodbye to it, I thought that was it. I knew that there was a good chance that would be it.”

Campbell explained that although it was tough knowing that the “Scream 6” production team was “having their first day of shooting and I wasn’t there,” she ultimately knew she made the “right” decision to bow out of the film.

She added, “And when I spoke out about it, it wasn’t really to sort of rally everybody. It was really just my truth at the time, and the fact the people got behind me, I got lovely support, and that was nice. And I do feel that other people need to make those choices.”

Campbell, the longtime face of the “Scream” franchise, told Variety in 2022 that she would not be returning for the sixth installment because she felt “the offer that was presented to me did not equate to the value I have brought to the franchise.”

“Sadly, I won’t be making the next ‘Scream’ film,” Campbell said in a statement to Variety. “As a woman I have had to work extremely hard in my career to establish my value, especially when it comes to ‘Scream.’ I felt the offer that was presented to me did not equate to the value I have brought to the franchise. It’s been a very difficult decision to move on. To all my ‘Scream’ fans, I love you. You’ve always been so incredibly supportive to me. I’m forever grateful to you and to what this franchise has given me over the past 25 years.”

Campbell will return for “Scream 7” after her salary dispute, joining fellow original cast members David Arquette, Matthew Lillard and Courteney Cox. Kevin Williamson, who wrote the first “Scream,” serves as director.

Cardi B, Don Lemon and SZA joined Michelle Obama and Kendrick Lamar as NAACP Image Award winners on night 2 of the virtual pre-show.

Cardi B won three Image Awards on Tuesday night, including outstanding female artist and outstanding album for her latest record “Am I the Drama?” Her track “ErrTime” won the prize for outstanding hip-hop/rap song. Before the ceremony, Cardi B had won just one Image Award, for serving as judge and executive producer of “Rhythm & Flow.”

Veteran journalist Don Lemon won two trophies for his eponymous talk show, “The Don Lemon Show”; Lemon’s news and talk series and Obama’s podcast “IMO,” which the former first lady co-hosts with her brother Craig Robinson, won four of the five awards presented for that medium.

Lamar, who was also a big winner on the first night of the three-part virtual ceremony, hosted by Angel “ThatChickAngel” Laketa Moore and Khleo Thomas. On Tuesday, Lamar also won prizes in two more categories — named outstanding male artist and sharing the music video/visual album award with SZA for their Grammy-winning hit song “Luther.”

Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” won its first awards out of a massive 18 nominations, collecting the prizes for outstanding soundtrack and original score. The period vampire thriller is the most-nominated project at this year’s Image Awards, which will air live on Saturday, Feb. 28, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on BET and CBS. Deon Cole returns to host the show, broadcast from the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. The recently-wrapped Peacock series “Bel-Air” led the TV categories with seven nominations. The nominees for Entertainer of the Year, the show’s signature category, include Cynthia Erivo, Doechii, Lamar, Michael B. Jordan and Teyana Taylor.

Special honorees for this year’s NAACP Image Awards week include Viola Davis, who will be presented with the Chairman’s Award; Colman Domingo, the President’s Award honoree; A$AP Rocky, to be presented with the Vanguard Award for fashion; and Rev. Dr. Jamal-Harrison Bryant, who will receive the prestigious Mildred Bond Roxborough Social Justice Impact Award.

Watch the virtual pre-show in the video above. The full list of winners from night two can be found below:

Outstanding Music Video/Visual Album

“luther” – Kendrick Lamar & SZA (pgLang under exclusive license to Interscope Records)

Outstanding New Artist

Monaleo – “Who Did the Body?” (Columbia Records)

Outstanding Female Artist

Cardi B (Atlantic Records)

Outstanding Male Artist

Kendrick Lamar (pgLang under exclusive license to Interscope Records)

Outstanding Hip-Hop/Rap Song

“ErrTime” – Cardi B (Atlantic Records)

Outstanding Soundtrack/Compilation Album

“Sinners (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)” (Proximity Media LLC, under exclusive license to Masterworks, a label of Sony Music Entertainment)

Outstanding International Song

“Is It” – Tyla (Epic Records)

Outstanding Jazz Album

“We Insist! 2025” – Terri Lyne Carrington & Christie Dashiell (Candid Records)

Outstanding Gospel/Christian Song

“Do it Again” – Kirk Franklin (Fo Yo Soul Recordings/Tribl Records)

Outstanding Gospel/Christian Album

“Tasha” – Tasha Cobbs Leonard (Motown Gospel)

Outstanding Duo, Group or Collaboration (Traditional)

803Fresh feat. Fantasia – “Boots on the Ground Remix” (Snake Eyez Music Group/Artist Partner Group)

Outstanding Duo, Group or Collaboration (Contemporary)

Chris Brown feat. Bryson Tiller & Usher – “It Depends (Remix)” (RCA Records/Chris Brown Entertainment)

Outstanding Original Score for TV/Film

“Sinners (Original Motion Picture Score)” (Proximity Media LLC, under exclusive license to Sony Classical, a label of Sony Music Entertainment)

Outstanding Album

“Am I The Drama?” – Cardi B (Atlantic Records)

Outstanding Podcast – Scripted/Limited Series/Short Form

“Interesting Things with JC” (Jim Connors LLC)

Outstanding Podcast – News and Information

“The Don Lemon Show” (Lemon Media Network)

Outstanding Podcast – Lifestyle/Self-Help

“IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson” (Higher Ground)

Outstanding Podcast – Arts, Sports and Entertainment

“IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson” (Higher Ground)

Outstanding Podcast – Society and Culture

“The Don Lemon Show” (Lemon Media Network)

Monday, February 23

The 57th NAACP Image Awards week kicked off Monday with former first lady Michelle Obama and rapper Kendrick Lamar winning two of the early prizes.

Obama’s latest book, “The Look” — which explored her style evolution from her time in the White House to life afterwards — won the award for outstanding literary work biography/autobiography. Meanwhile, Lamar’s electrifying Super Bowl halftime performance was named outstanding short-form series or special – reality/nonfiction/documentary. Both Obama and Lamar are repeat winners at the Image Awards: she won in the same category in 2019 for her memoir “Becoming,” while he has nine trophies from the NAACP, including two for his 2025 anthem “Not Like Us.”

The awards were announced during the first edition of a three-night virtual event, where winners will be revealed in the majority of the Image Awards’ more than 90 categories (across film, television and streaming, music, literature and podcasts). The pre-show ceremony, hosted by Angel “ThatChickAngel” Laketa Moore and Khleo Thomas, aired exclusively on YouTube and NAACP+ and focused primarily on the literary categories, as well as two digital content creator prizes. For the first time, the NAACP Image Awards got into gaming, with Berlin Edmond Jr., aka Berleezy, winning the top prize.

Watch the virtual pre-show ceremony in the video above. The full list of winners from night one can be found here:

Outstanding Literary Work – Biography/Autobiography

“The Look” – Michelle Obama (Crown)

Outstanding Literary Work – Non-Fiction

“A More Perfect Party: The Night Shirley Chisholm & Diahann Carroll Reshaped Politics” – Juanita Tolliver (Legacy Lit/Hachette Book Group)

Outstanding Literary Work – Instructional

“Who Better Than You?” – Will Packer (Penguin Random House)

Outstanding Literary Work – Journalism

“On Borrowed Time” – Anissa Durham (Online)

Outstanding Literary Work – Debut Author

Charles B. Fancher – “Red Clay” (Blackstone Publishing)

Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction

“Death of the Author” – Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow)

Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry

“The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems” – Patricia Smith (Scribner)

Outstanding Literary Work – Children

“Yvonne Clark and Her Engineering Spark” – Allen R. Wells; Illustrated by DeAndra Hodge (Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers/Macmillan)

Outstanding Literary Work – Youth/Teens

“Nic Blake and the Remarkables: The Book of Anansi” – Angie Thomas (HarperCollins/Clarion Books)

Outstanding Literary Work – Graphic Novel

“Parable of the Talents: A Graphic Novel Adaptation” – Octavia E. Butler, adapted by Damien Duffy, illustrated by John Jennings and David Brame (Abrams ComicArts)

Outstanding Short-Form Series or Special – Reality/Nonfiction/Documentary

“The Apple Music Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show Starring Kendrick Lamar” (FOX)

Outstanding Digital Content Creator – Gaming/Tech

Berlin Edmond Jr. (@Berleezy)

Outstanding Digital Content Creator – Fitness/Wellness/Food

Keith Lee (@keith_lee125)

From the trifecta of prizes “Happy Birthday” earned during its Tribeca world premiere in 2025 to the multiple audience awards and other kudos it collected on the international festival circuit, plus, its selection as Egypt’s Oscar submission, the poignant drama is surely one of the best and most awarded foreign features still seeking U.S. distribution. Helmed and co-written by Sarah Goher, the first-ever Egyptian chosen as one of Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch, it illuminates disparities of wealth and class in contemporary Cairo through the affecting story of a resourceful 8-year-old maid whose devoted friendship with the daughter of the household she works for is frowned upon by her employers.

Goher, a screenwriter and producer making her feature debut, proves herself to be a director-writer of uncommon sensitivity. She draws a performance of astonishing depth from Doha Ramadan as Toha, the illiterate but street-smart young domestic who doesn’t yet understand her position in Egypt’s complex social hierarchy.

Smart, capable and quick-witted, Toha’s current joy comes from her relationship with Nelly (Khadija Ahmed), the spoiled granddaughter of her employer (Hanan Youssef), a tetchy, elderly diabetic. Toha helps to hide Nelly’s bed-wetting from her soon-to-be divorced mother Laila (Nelly Karim) and covers for her when she’s late or binging on ice cream. Meanwhile, Nelly enjoys having a friend of a similar age right in her own home and ignores her grandmother’s snide comments about Toha being a potential source of lice.

Now that Nelly’s father has left, financial worries cause the women to prepare to leave their modern home in an affluent gated community. Nelly’s ninth birthday celebration looks to be a casualty of the situation until Toha comes up with a clever plan to get Nelly the party of her dreams. But as the day progresses, Toha, who has no idea of when she was born and has never heard of birthday wishes, finds herself learning some hard lessons that leave the audience quietly devastated.

Goher’s carefully calibrated visuals in partnership with Seif El Din Khaled’s intimate cinematography perfectly establish the painful paradox of money and class. In the film’s opening moments, the two young girls in their pajamas and wildly curly hair play happily in a pink tent on the early morning of Nelly’s birthday. Sure, one has slightly darker skin and the other more delicate features, but they seem like equals. Then, after the adults come into the frame and Toha dresses in shapeless clothes and a headscarf, their social position and economic circumstances become much clearer. Nelly goes to school while Toha fetches and carries for the “Madames.”

Despite her menial work, Toha feels lucky. She hates the subsistence fishing that she would have to do if she lived with her family. Although she might not have her own bedroom at Nelly’s house, merely a couch in a living room, at least she has drawers in which to store her things, many of them Nelly’s castoffs. In contrast, at her mother’s ramshackle house the kids sleep where they can and must share all their clothes. No wonder, in her innocence, Toha tells Laila that she hopes she can stay with Laila and Nelly forever.

(Over)-confident in her ability to make things happen, Toha isn’t conscious of the class-prejudice her mismatched designer cast-offs and headscarf incite at the fancy boutique where she accompanies Laila. But the social boundaries she encounters there are also present in her employer’s household as well as at its very gates.

Unbeknownst to Toha, her employer arranges for Toha’s sister (Jomana Ibrahim) to pick her up so that she can’t participate in Nelly’s party, even though Toha believes that Nelly wants her there. As the sisters leave the complex, the gate guard insists on rummaging through the bags of food and clothing Laila has given them, even calling the house to make sure they had the right to take them. Fatme feels humiliated, but Toha is too busy plotting how to return from her rundown village near the Nile.

Ever enterprising, Toha does eventually make her way back to the party, but there, the ultimate dawning of her place outside of Nelly’s circle is heartbreaking. The sheer joy Goher has captured Ramadan experiencing earlier is replaced by confusion, pain and tears. Goher and her charismatic young star understand how to use cinema as a powerful empathy generator. 

Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds are such terrific actors that a lot of us would follow them anywhere. But in the wee drama “Midwinter Break,” these two pour their skills into playing a couple of fuddy-duddies — a homepsun Northern Irish married couple, Stella and Gerry, who have reached their early seventies and are so set in their dainty, placid ways that they’ve become like two old pieces of cozy matching furniture. They sit, they read, they have a drink, they have a meal, they exchange comforting pleasantries…and then another day is behind them. And another, much the same, lies ahead.

The whole design of the movie is to take these two out of their comfort zone, to dip beneath the stodgy surface contentment of their well-worn habits and touch the explosive emotions that the couple — or, at least, one of them — has been covering up.

At Christmastime, they’re at home, Gerry seated in the living room nursing an evening cocktail, when Stella asks if she can still tempt him; we wonder if she means something erotic, and when he turns her down, we really wonder. (Is the threadbare dimension of their marriage that the fire has gone out in the bedroom?) But no, she’s just talking about going to church. Stella and Gerry exist in a state that looks halfway between retirement heaven and a coma. The two have a son, who is grown, who they don’t see very much. They are also exiles: residents of Glasgow, Scotland, even though the film presents them as Irish to the core. There’s a reason they left their homeland behind.    

In the middle of the night, Stella gets up and goes over to the computer, acting on a sudden inspiration. A bit later, after exchanging Christmas presents, she hands Gerry an envelope with a surprise gift inside: two plane tickets to Amsterdam, where she has arranged for them to have a four-day getaway. She wants to shake up their routine. But as soon as they arrive in that elegant Dutch city of bridges and hidden corners, it’s clear that it’s going to take more than a change of locale to do it.

The movie opens with a jarring flashback. We see the young Stella (Julie Lamberton), very pregnant, being rushed to a hospital after some kind of accident (she has blood on her arm). A cataclysm took place, but we’re not sure what, and our first thought is: Did she lose the baby? Is their son not their actual son?

As Stella and Gerry settle into their Amsterdam vacation, having breakfast at the hotel, visiting a fabled art museum, always lubricating the day with a pint, a glass of wine, a tumbler of Scotch (Gerry brings a bottle along with him in case he needs a quick refill), we register the depth of their connection. (In the bedroom, it turns out, the fire is still alive.) These two fit into each other’s lives as snugly as nesting dolls, to the point that they may have no surprises left, nothing new to discover.

Except that they do. Stella wants to visit a women’s housing facility that’s also a stately convent: a Catholic retreat nestled right in the middle of Amsterdam. A devout Catholic herself, she’s intensely interested in the women who live there. She tells Gerry, who has always been a secular man, that she wants to find a way to be more devout in her own life. And the reason for that is that she wants…more. More than what the two of them already have. This leaves Gerry flabbergasted. What’s the “more” that she could be talking about? He has no concept of it. He thinks their lives are perfect.

It all connects, of course, to that opening flashback. But what happened there is not, perhaps, what we suspect. Was it a miracle? Stella thinks it was. But the real point may not be about what did or didn’t happen. It’s about how two people in a marriage this close could be so cut from the same cloth and, at the same time, so different. Not because there’s some deep dark secret, but because people are…different. Gerry, we can see, drinks too much (he’s the definition of a happy “functional” alcoholic), and Stella has a problem with that, but the real problem isn’t the drinking. It’s the void Gerry is covering up. And Stella now wants to fill her own void with faith.

The director, Polly Findlay, presents all of this in a fluid and fastidious prestige-teleplay-of-the-week way. Adapting a 2017 novel by Bernard MacLaverty (the script is by MacLaverty and Nick Payne), she creates a generous space for her actors, who turn what might have been a rather staid movie — and still, at times, is — into a meticulous duet.

Manville has often played characters of magnetic will (just think of her domineering snob of a sister in “Phantom Thread,” her lusciously obnoxious tippling receptionist in “Another Year”), but in “Midwinter Break” she throws us for a while because her Stella, at first, seems the picture of dowdy devotion. But it turns out that she’s devoted to something deeper, a mystery she can no longer repress. Manville, in a nifty feat of acting, lets that unruly spirit poke through, even as she persists in trying to keep a polite lid on it. She shows us the spirituality of an ordinary woman. And Hinds, dolefully bearded, makes Gerry as comfy and trusting as an old sheepdog: a genuinely benevolent man, yet one who is starting to drown in his quiet complacency. “Midwinter Break” does nothing earth-shattering (it remains wee), but the movie touchingly colors in how it might be possible for two people to know each other too well and also not well enough.

Samuel L. Jackson‘s long-gestating “Tulsa King” spinoff is finally moving forward — but with a new title and setting. Paramount+ announced Tuesday that “Frisco King” — formerly titled “NOLA King” — will start production next month in Ft. Worth, Texas.

“Tulsa King” creator Taylor Sheridan is now set to write all eight episodes of “Frisco King” Season 1, which comes from Paramount Television Studios and 101 Studios. News that Sheridan would write all of “Frisco King” comes seven months after Variety first broke the news that original “NOLA King” showrunner Dave Erickson had exited the spinoff.

“We are honored to have Taylor Sheridan write the first season of ‘Frisco King’ and bring to life Samuel L. Jackson’s iconic character,” said Paramount Television Studios prexy Matt Thunell. “Having him pen all episodes of the season with his singular voice will be a treat for fans of ‘Tulsa King’ and audiences around the world.”

Back when it was called “NOLA King,” the spinoff was to have been set in New Orleans. But with the title change also comes a setting change: “Frisco King” will mostly be set in Frisco, Texas. (According to insiders, the show will still briefly visit New Orleans, but the bulk of the story now takes place in Frisco.)

Jackson was introduced to “Tulsa King” viewers in Season 3 as Russell Lee Washington Jr., “who, after befriending Dwight Manfredi (Sylvester Stallone) during a ten-year stint in federal prison, is sent to Tulsa by New York’s Renzetti crime family to take Dwight out once and for all.” Instead, per the original logline, he’s “inspired by what Dwight created in Tulsa and impressed with the possibilities of second chances.”

Said Paramount+ head of originals Jane Wiseman: “Taylor Sheridan continues to build worlds that attract some of the most iconic talent working today, and ‘Frisco King’ is no exception. Having Samuel L. Jackson step into this universe is a testament to the scale and ambition of the storytelling Taylor is crafting. We’re thrilled to expand this storyline with such a powerhouse creative team and cast on Paramount+.”

Production was previously announced to begin in early 2026; now, the word is cameras will start rolling late March in Fort Worth.

Sheridan, Stallone and Jackson are all EPs on “Frisco King.” David C. Glasser, Ron Burkle, David Hutkin, Bob Yari, Christina Alexandra Voros, Michael Friedman, LaTanya Richardson Jackson and Keith Cox also executive produce.

Paramount+ noted that “Tulsa King” hit Nielsen’s top 10 streaming originals chart for eleven consecutive weeks in Fall 2025.

Jackson’s recent TV output includes the Apple TV limited series “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey,” the Marvel-Disney+ show “Secret Invasion,” and Peacock’s “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist.” He also previously voiced the title character in the animated series “Afro Samurai.”