Tag: Entertainment-Variety

The 29th Sonoma Intl. Film Festival wrapped March 29 with Spanish film “Maspalomas” winning the Grand Jury Award for best narrative feature. In a statement, the jury noted that directors Aitor Arregi and Jose Mari Goenaga’s film was “an authentic and rare depiction of an elder man confronting personal and physical crisis at the onset of the COVID pandemic” in this “nuanced and moving queer drama.”

Over five days, SIFF presented 104 films from 37 countries, mixed with filmmaker talks, panels (with guests including Barry Jenkins and Lulu Wang) and culinary pop-ups in the picturesque Northern California town. Filmmaker and artist Julian Schnabel was on hand to accept the Sonoma Intl. Film Festival Visionary Artist Award with a screening of his film “In the Hand of Dante,” with special guest Tom Waits.

“This year’s record-breaking attendance and ticket sales underscore the extraordinary appetite for bold, international cinema and immersive cultural experiences here in Sonoma,” said SIFF artistic director Carl Spence. “With packed screenings, dynamic filmmaker engagement, and a festival atmosphere unlike any other, SIFF 2026 has truly been a landmark community celebration of film, food, wine, and fun.”

Filmmaker and artist Julian Schnabel was on hand to accept the Sonoma Intl. Film Festival Visionary Artist Award with a screening of his film “In the Hand of Dante,” with special guest Tom Waits.

Other festival winners include the Special Jury Prize in Directing to Marie-Elsa Sgualdo for “Silent Rebellion” (Switzerland). The jury cited the film’s “unflinching portrayal of a virtuous teen in WWII era Europe.”

The Grand Jury Award for documentary feature prize went to “State of Firsts,” from U.S. helmer Chase Joynt.

“This year, the jury wants to recognize a film that represents what authentic truth looks like among the squalor of our politics,” said the jury in a statement. “The award-winning film is a nuanced portrait of leadership and responsibility that also provides a clear and honest account of the challenges and apparent harms that come from seeking to change the world. The language of change is complex, and sometimes it’s as simple as using the right name. The jury is honored to platform a story that showcases the wholeness of a person in an industry and society so quick to tokenize”

SIFF also screened 47 short films in its official selection, which competed for three awards.

“A Very Normal Seeming Man,” directed by Al Pattanashetty (U.S.), won the Grand Jury Award: Live Action Short, while “Voices From the Abyss,” directed by Irving Serrano and Victor Rejon (Mexico) earned the Documentary Short honors. “Two Black Boys in Paradise,” directed by Baz Sells (U.K.) took the Animated Short prize.

The festival opened with Maude Apatow’s Toronto Intl. Film Festival hit “Poetic License,” while the Centerpiece Film, Steven Soderbergh’s Ian McKellen-starrer “The Christophers,” won the Stolman Audience Award for Best Film. The A3 Audience Award for Best Documentary went to “Jane Elliott Against the World,” directed by Judd Ehrlich (U.S.).

Other awards include:

Special Mention for Cultural, Environmental and Community Impact: “Abalone Stories: Loss, Connection, Renewal,” from Cynthia Abbott (U.S.)

Special Jury Mention for Directing: “Domingo Familiar,” directed by Gerardo del Razo (Mexico)

Donald Glover, who stars in “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” as Yoshi, “campaigned for the role,” according to his co-star Jack Black.

Black, who reprises his voice role as Bowser in Universal Pictures’ animated sequel, told ExtraTV, “It’s kind of a cool thing. We got lucky that we got Brie [Larson], who crushes it and loves the Nintendo universe. And also Donald, who campaigned for the role. He told his agent, ‘Call [Illumination CEO] Chris Meledandri. Tell him I really want to be Yoshi, I’d love to be in the new “Super Mario Bros.”‘ Because he loves it, and he loves that universe.”

Glover said he felt “a little timid” when first taking on the role, telling ExtraTV, “I was like, ‘OK, how am I gonna do this? These guys did such a great job on the first one.’” He added, “And that’s a hard thing to do. It’s a very iconic movie and character. I always believe in the idea of under-promising, over-delivering, and was like, ‘I’ll just study really hard, and hopefully I’ll be beloved like them.’”

In addition to Glover and Black, the film’s star-studded cast includes Chris Pratt as Mario, Charlie Day as Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach, Brie Larson as Princess Rosalina, Issa Rae as Honey Queen, Glen Powell as Fox McCloud, Benny Safdie as Bowser Jr., Keegan-Michael Key as Toad and Luis Guzmán as Wart.

“The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” is directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, and will be released in theaters on April 1 from Universal, Illumination and Nintendo.

James Blake has asked for his name to be removed from the production credits of Kanye West’s track “This One Here,” featured on the artist now known as Ye’s new-ish album “Bully.”

Blake says his “original version” of the track, which was recorded several years ago, “is completely different in spirit.”

In a post on Vault, the direct-to-fan streaming platform that Blake joined after parting ways with his longtime label Universal, he wrote, “The way I pitched his vocals and constructed the track from his freestyle is partiaully there, majorly peppered with other newer vocal takes etc…. Happy for the fans but I’ve asked to be taken off the producer credits for now as I don’t want to take credit for other people’s work and this version isn’t what I created with Ye.

“It’s not personal!” he added. “I just hit a point where [I] don’t want to be credited on music where I can’t affect the end result.”

Like most of West’s releases over the past decade, “Bully” has gone through multiple different iterations before it was officially released. The two artists have collaborated several times over the years, but not recently.

Both the request and the comment, which were first reported by Complex, are consistent with comments Blake has made in past interviews with Variety. While he celebrated West playing an unreleased collaboration between the two at an afterparty in London in 2022, he declined to comment when asked by Variety about their friendship a year later, after West had made multiple antisemitic comments.

“We haven’t seen each other for a little while,” he said, before adding with a sigh, “I think it’s probably a no-comment from me… and I say that with sadness.” He said in the same interview that he’s asked for his name to be removed from songs that he felt had evolved so far beyond his original contributions that he didn’t deserve or want credit, although he did not give examples.

At the time of this article’s publication, Blake’s credit remained on the song on major streaming services.

“Trying Times,” Blake’s new album — his first since leaving Universal and going fully independent — debuted at No. 3 on the U.K. charts earlier this month. Over the past few years Blake, disillusioned with the traditional music business, has taken control of virtually every aspect of his professional career, joining forces with the independent label Good Boy and direct-to-fan platforms like Vault and B-side ticketing.

“Happy Death Day” star Jessica Rothe is happy to relive another day as Tree Gelbman in the franchise’s third installment.

Rothe, who starred in the 2017 film “Happy Death Day” and its 2019 sequel, “Happy Death Day 2U,” recently revealed that writer and director Christopher Landon “has the whole third one figured out” while discussing the future of the “Groundhog Day”-style horror-comedy franchise.

“I think that is the power of zeitgeist. I think the more we ask, and the more we put it into the universe, it will happen,” she told ScreenRant. “Because the truth is, Chris Landon, our brilliant, fearless writer/director, he has the whole third one figured out.”

In “Happy Death Day,” Rothe plays a college student named Tree, who is murdered on her birthday, only to wake up at the beginning of the day. As the nightmarish day keeps repeating itself and ending in her death every time, she has to uncover her killer’s identity in order to stop the cycle. The sequel incorporates sci-fi elements, as Tree finds herself in a parallel universe as a result of her friend’s time-travel experiments.

Rothe added, “I think at this point, it’s just logistics, and all I’ll say to you and the fans is, whether it’s next year or when I’m 65, pulling a Jamie Lee Curtis coming back for ‘Halloween,’ I will be there to finish Tree’s story. So, it’s just a matter of when they get all their ducks in a row.”

Rothe also stated she’d be game for a crossover event amongst all of Landon’s films, saying, “I’m sure he also has his version of the MCU, but the ‘ChrisCU’ with ‘Freaky,’ ‘Happy Death Day,’ ‘We Have a Ghost’ and ‘Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse,’ they all could totally live in the same universe. That’s the crossover that I need right now in my life.”

“Project Hail Mary” easily topped the box office for the second consecutive weekend, bringing in a heavenly $54.5 million. There have been hits in 2026 such as “Scream 7” and “Hoppers,” but “Project Hail Mary” is shaping up to be the year’s first true blockbuster, having already earned $164.3 million domestically.

“Project Hail Mary” only dropped 32% from its debut weekend, signaling the film will have staying power. Its impressive results are welcome news for Amazon MGM, which is investing heavily in theatrical movies by committing to releasing roughly a dozen films in cinemas annually. The move comes after Amazon MGM has often struggled to define its moviemaking ambitions, first focusing on indie productions, then pivoting to streaming premieres before more recently opting to back populist fare geared for the big screen.

“Project Hail Mary” also confirms Ryan Gosling‘s box office bona fides. The Oscar-nominated “Barbie” and “La La Land” star is front-and-center in the movie as a school teacher on a desperate mission to save the planet. The film rises or falls on Gosling’s lead performance and he’s being rewarded with one of the biggest hits of his career, as well as some early awards chatter. Then there’s Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who recovered from being fired from “Solo: A Star Wars Story” to deliver a crowd-pleaser that shows they can handle live-action space epics quite nicely, thank you very much. To say nothing of Andy Weir, the writer behind “Project Hail Mary” and “The Martian,” whose books have now inspired box office winners. His next novel is almost certain to spark a bidding war for the movie rights.

The weekend’s only major new release, “They Will Kill You,” was D.O.A., earning an anemic $5 million domestically from 2,778 locations for a third place finish. The Warner Bros. and New Line release only cost $20 million to produce, but it’s still a dreadful result because studios have to split ticket sales with theater owners. Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy helped put “Project Hail Mary” in motion when they ran MGM. Having left the studio to lead Warner Bros., they enjoyed a red hot year at the box office, with the likes of “Sinners,” “A Minecraft Movie” and “Weapons” scoring commercially. But 2026 is off to a rough start for De Luca and Abdy. “They Will Kill You” arrives just a few weeks after “The Bride,” the studio’s $90 million steampunk reimagining of “The Bride of Frankenstein,” bombed, earning a disastrous $23.2 million globally.

“They Will Kill You” stars Zazie Beetz as a housekeeper hired to clean a high-rise apartment with a history of mysterious disappearances. Patricia Arquette, Heather Graham, Tom Felton and Myha’la co-star in the film, which was directed by Kirill Sokolov, who also wrote the screenplay with Alex Litvak. Nocturna Pictures, the genre label backed by David Ellison’s Skydance and “It” filmmakers Andy and Barbara Muschietti, produced the picture. Ellison has a deal in place to buy Warner Bros. and merge it with Paramount, which he bought last year. “They Will Kill You” isn’t the only recent horror film to struggle. “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come” cratered in its second weekend of release, earning $4 million to push the Searchlight Pictures production to a measly $16.3 million domestically.

Disney and Pixar’s “Hoppers,” captured second place, taking in another $12.2 million. Through its first four weeks of release, the family film is projected to gross $138.6 million in North America and $297.6 million worldwide. “Dhurandhar 2: The Revenge,” a Bollywood thriller, came in fourth with $4.7 million, pushing its domestic total to a muscular $22.8 million and nearly outpacing “They Will Kill You” despite the fact that it was showing on almost 2,000 fewer screens.

Rounding out the Friday top five was “Reminders of Him.” “Reminders of Him” came in fifth with $4.7 million domestically, bringing its gross to $41.1 million. Universal produced the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s romantic novel to the tune of $25 million.

In limited release, Focus Features premiered “The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist,” a look at the risks and potential of artificial intelligence from the teams behind “Navalny” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” in 786 locations where it grossed $650,000. Neon also debuted “Alpha,” a body horror film from “Titane’s” Julia Ducournau that grossed just over $121,000 from 218 screens.

Universal also brought back 2001’s “The Mummy Returns.” The adventure film grossed $600,000 from 1,300 venues, bringing its total to $202.7 million. The studio is rebooting the franchise and bringing back original stars Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz for a new sequel.

“Project Hail Mary” should soon have company in the blockbuster club. Next weekend brings “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” Universal and Illumination’s latest collaboration with Nintendo, which is expected to be one of 2026’s biggest hits. For exhibitors, it will extend a strong start to the year, with ticket sales already up more than 25%.

At the 40th edition of Switzerland’s Fribourg International Film Festival, socially and politically engaged cinema remains at the heart of the lineup. Among the titles in international competition is “Honeymoon,” Ukrainian filmmaker Zhanna Ozirna’s chamber drama about a newly married couple trapped in their apartment as Russian forces close in on the Kyiv region at the start of the 2022 invasion.

Ozirna’s debut feature, which is having its Swiss premiere at FIFF, takes an intimate approach to a subject that has often been documented through frontline footage and reporting. Instead of depicting combat directly, she keeps the harsh realities of war largely offscreen, turning her attention to what happens inside a relationship when fear and the instinct to survive take over every aspect of daily life.

The project grew out of testimonies Ozirna encountered in the early days of the war. Friends had endured weeks in hiding and one story in particular stayed with her of a family forced to crawl across their apartment floor to avoid being seen from outside.

“That image stayed with me,” Ozirna says. “To crawl for days just to stay alive felt like something that goes against basic human dignity.”

Rather than build the film around a family’s experience, she drew from multiple accounts, shaping them into the story of a single couple. “I wanted to keep it minimal,” she says. “For me, the war was more of a frame, the real subject was the relationship. I was interested in how people behave when they lose their sense of safety and dignity, and how relationships change in that kind of situation.”

That approach also shaped the film’s ethical framework. In Ukraine, Ozirna notes, there is an ongoing debate about how to portray a war that is still unfolding. She was determined not to exploit trauma, and one early decision was to avoid casting actors who had lived under occupation themselves.

“We spoke with some very strong actors who had gone through it,” she says. “But they told us it would be re-traumatizing. So we understood very clearly that we could not ask that of them.”

Her refusal to show Russian soldiers onscreen was equally deliberate. Their presence is conveyed entirely through sound, be it their footsteps, distant blasts, the constant sense of threat. While partly a practical decision for a production with a limited budget, it was also a conceptual one.

“I didn’t want to show the enemy in a simplified way, and I also didn’t want to humanize that violence in a way that felt false to me,” she says. “So they remain like a ghost, something always near, something you fear, something that can return at any moment.”

As the film continues to screen internationally, Ozirna is acutely aware of the gap between those living through the war and audiences encountering it from afar. Though global attention has shifted, daily life in Ukraine remains defined by uncertainty. “People abroad live their lives and that’s normal,” she says. “But for us, it’s different. Sometimes I can’t plan even a few days ahead.”

For Ozirna, fiction offers a way to bridge that gap, allowing audiences to focus on the human cost of war in its most intimate form. “There are many documentaries showing what is happening,” she says. “But fiction can explore something else by looking at intimacy, relationships, and how people really feel.”

For director Leon Le, the problem isn’t a lack of stories about Vietnam, instead it’s how they’ve been told. “Vietnamese stories have been told through a very dated, very disrespectful, ignorant lens,” he says.

His sophomore film, “Ky Nam Inn,” in competition in the features section of the Fribourg International Film Festival, returns to 1980s Saigon, following a translator, a war widow and her young son in the years after reunification.

For Le, the film is less about plot than what comes after conflict. “It’s not just a love story between a man and a woman,” he says. “It’s reconciliation between the winner and the loser, between the North and the South,” he adds. “What are we going to do now, after the war has ended, after the foreigners have left, and we have to live with each other again?”

That idea runs through the film’s structure. The central character works as a translator, adapting French classic “The Little Prince” into Vietnamese. “Once we settled on ‘The Little Prince,’ everything started clicking,” Le says. “Khang’s journey started echoing what the Little Prince is going through.” The choice also reflects the peeling back of historical layers. “We can play into the aftermath of not only what the American war left behind, but also colonization and what the French left behind.”

To build the visual identity of the film, Le, who left Vietnam at 13, draws on his own memories, still intact decades later. “I still recall a very particular afternoon when the sun was all pink, and kids were flying kites,” he says. “I can immediately transport back to that moment.” “I don’t think it’s a conscious thing,” he adds. “I just feel like that’s how it’s supposed to be.”

“Ky Nam Inn” leans into specificity, whether from the arrangement of objects in a room to the gestures of its characters, details the director says have stood out to international audiences. For Le, however, that attention is simply a natural part of the process. “That’s just basic storytelling,” he notes.

That attention to lived experience is central to how he approaches storytelling. “Who am I making this movie for?” Le ponders. “It has to be for the Vietnamese audience first.” Trying to explain cultural details for Western viewers, he adds, often distorts them. “Nobody would ever say, ‘Vietnamese people have this saying,’” he explains. “You don’t present your life like that. You don’t explain your culture to yourself.”

He also points to a broader issue. “There’s not enough stories about Vietnam for audiences to differentiate between what’s real and what’s just a version of it,” Le says. “Whatever you put out there, people are going to think it’s real.” That, he says, raises the stakes. “There’s a responsibility when you tell the story of a group of people that’s not mainstream.”

Screening in Fribourg, a festival long dedicated to global cinema beyond the Western mainstream, offers a different kind of resonance for Le. “We’re not alone,” the director says. “There are people who want to hear our voices.”

But that recognition isn’t what drives him. “With my first film and this film, I made no money whatsoever, no salary, not a single dime,” he says. “There’s no reason for me to do any of this if it’s not from love.”

Rob and Michele Singer Reiner were remembered Saturday night during this year’s Human Rights Campaign gala dinner in Los Angeles.

Kelley Robinson, president of the LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, recognized the late couple’s work in the fight to legalize same-sex marriage. “When Prop 8 passed in 2008, Rob and Michele stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a real-life league of queer Avengers,” Robinson said. “I’m talking about Chad Griffin and Christina Schocky, Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, Jeff Zarrillo and Paul Katami, Justin Mikita and Adam Umhoefer, who’s here tonight.

“And from that moment when they locked arms, they decided to launch the American Foundation for Equal Rights and that legal team took the fight all the way to the Supreme Court and won for our rights and for our lives,” she continued. “Rob and Michele were and are superheroes. They showed us what real allyship is. They were courage embodied and most importantly, they never stopped giving a damn – not for themselves or for self-image but for the good of all of us.”

Rob and Michele were found stabbed to death in their Brentwood home on Dec. 14. Their son Nick Reiner was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder in their deaths. He pleaded not guilty on Feb. 23, and is being held without bail. He is facing two counts of murder with an enhancement that could carry the death penalty or life without parole if he is convicted.

At the start of the HRC program, gala chairman Todd Hawkins dedicated the night to the Reiners. “They helped make it possible for LGBTQ+ people to marry the person they love,” he said, adding, “I remember looking out from this very stage last year. Rob and Michele were right there cheering us on with everything that they had. We may have lost them in the physical sense, but we have never lost their spirit, their fire, their fight, their energy, their friendship, their influence and their everlasting impact. So tonight, we dedicate this evening to them. We remember them, we honor them.”

Lisa Kudrow and RuPaul presented writer, director and producer Michael Patrick King with the Visibility Award.

The television impresario, a mastermind behind “Sex and the City,” “And Just Like That,” “The Comeback,” and “2 Broke Girls,” among many other projects, talked about not coming out as gay until he was 36. “To be clear I was never confused who I was. I knew who I was from a very young age,” King said.

He described a photo of him taken when he was three years old. “This toddler, me, is looking straight into the camera wearing my mother’s sheer summer curtains wrapped around me as a gown…and one with a veil over my head,” King said. “And I am holding a bouquet of plastic flowers that I took from the vase on the top of the TV…On the back of this photo in my mother’s handwriting, it says, ‘Michael being the bride. 3 years old. Favorite outfit.’ And yeah, my mother was shocked when I told her I was gay 33 years later.”

King wondered aloud why it took him as long as it did for him to come out. “Every single thing I learned about how society hated gay people, maybe,” he said. “And even in a family as filled with as much love as mine, the societal shame got in and told me not to be vocal, not to be meek. All those years, I was letting society hold me back from becoming who I was meant to be.”

See photos from the Human Rights Campaign gala below.

“SNL U.K.’s” Weekend Update returned in the show’s second week with one-liners about U.S. and Iran’s mixed messages about a deal to end the war, the death of the owner of OnlyFans and more.

Paddy Young kicked off the show with a zinger about Trump and Iran communicating very different things about a potential deal to end the current conflict.

“While Trump has been insisting that Iran wants a deal so badly, an Iranian military spokesperson has said, quote, ‘Our first and last word from the very first day has been, is and will remain: Someone like us will never come to terms with someone like you. Not now and not ever,’” Young said, adding: “Oh my God, just kiss already!”

Later on in the segment, the death of OnlyFans owner Leonid Radvinsky came up. “So gentlemen, when you’re visiting the site this week, lower your penises to half mast,” Young joked. “Beautiful funeral, by the way. Wasn’t a dry tissue in the house.”

Young and co-anchor Ania Magliano then debuted a new bit titled “hand-in-hand,” where they delivered some good news amidst all the bad. “And now, it seems like the whole world is at war. Russia and Ukraine, the Middle East, Chappell Roan and that tiny girl,” Magliano said. “War. We could just making jokes about it. But first, we just want to check: Are you OK?”

“This is hand-in-hand with Anya and Pad,” Young said. “We’re here to tell you that it’s going to be OK,” Magliano added, as Young finished her sentence: “Because we’ve got each other.”

“World War III. Sounds scary, huh? But we’ve already had two,” Magliano continued. “And don’t they say good things come in threes?”

Carrying on the topic, Magliano pointed out that “if London gets bombed, house prices will drop.”

“And so will house numbers,” she added. “We’ll all get to live across the two houses that are left. Like in ‘Friends’!”

Shinya’s Tsukamoto’s “Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?” is headed to Japanese cinemas.

The film rounds out the Japanese director’s informal trilogy of 20th-century war films, coming after “Fires on the Plain” – which landed in the main competition at the 71st Venice International Film Festival – and “Shadow of Fire.” The project gestated for seven years before reaching the screen.

Rodney Hicks takes the title role. The actor is known for his involvement with Broadway’s “Rent” from its opening to its closing night run, and for his turn as Uncle Charlie in the Netflix series “Forever.” Triple award-winner Geoffrey Rush – who has taken home Oscar, Emmy and Tony honors over his career – plays VA physician Dr. Daniels, a role that follows celebrated credits including “Shine,” “The King’s Speech” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series. Tatyana Ali, familiar to audiences from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and the Emmy-winning “Abbott Elementary,” plays Nelson’s wife Linda. The film also marks the screen debut of Mark Merphy, who portrays Nelson as a young man in flashback. Filming took place across the U.S., Thailand, Vietnam and Japan.

The film is rooted in the real-life account of Allen Nelson, an African American veteran of the Vietnam War who, after returning from combat, went on to give more than 1,200 lectures throughout Japan bearing witness to his wartime experiences. Nelson, who is buried in Japan, spoke candidly about his inner torment as someone who had taken lives during the conflict — the psychological terrain that Tsukamoto has described as “the wounds of those who perpetrated war.”

The film traces Nelson’s journey from a poverty-stricken childhood in New York through his decision to enlist in the Marines at 18, seeing in military service a path out of discrimination and hardship. After a stint at Camp Hansen in Okinawa, he was dispatched to the Vietnam front lines in 1966. He came home five years later plagued by sleeplessness, hair-trigger fear responses and fractured family ties that ultimately left him living on the streets. Dr. Daniels eventually intervenes in an effort to pull him back from the edge.

Tsukamoto has said he first came across the original nonfiction book while immersed in research for “Fires on the Plain,” and that it never left him. He described the filmmaking process as a seven-year tug of war between wanting to tell the story and being overwhelmed by its darkness. “In today’s world, where conflicts are raging in various places, I’ve come to feel this reality more acutely than ever,” Tsukamoto said.

The film is produced and distributed in Japan by Kinoshita Group and Kino Films, the company behind the local release of “Conclave” and the upcoming Japanese rollout of the Michael Jackson biopic “Michael” in June.

Tsukamoto’s body of work stretches back decades, taking in the internationally celebrated body-horror film “Tetsuo: The Iron Man” (1989) and the samurai drama “Killing” (2018), which also competed in Venice’s main section. The Japan release announcement was timed to coincide with National Vietnam War Veterans Day on March 29.