Alexander Payne Recommends 5 Films For Alamo Drafthouse’s ‘Guest Selects’ Series [Exclusive]

In case you were wondering, there was no beef between Paul Giamatti and Alexander Payne. The actor and filmmaker collaborated on 2004’s “Sideways,” an art-house breakout that earned over $100 million worldwide and five Oscar nominations including Best Picture (Payne and Jim Taylor won for Adapted Screenplay).

Recently, it was announced that Best Buy was cutting out DVDs and Blu-rays from its physical stores. Gone are the days of wandering the aisles and searching for a cool movie to buy.

Alexander Payne, director of The Holdovers, said he gets pushback for the kinds of films that he makes but he plans to persevere and hopes there will be more space for “human” stories in theaters.

Valerie Wu Intern The Northwest Film Forum has announced Mirta Desir as the awardee of its fourth annual Lynn Shelton “Of a Certain Age” grant. Desir, a Haitian American, is producing her first narrative feature film “Angie.” She will receive an unrestricted award of $25,000 to support the making of her film, which she describes as a “love letter to Latin American artists and Haitians’ oral history — a marriage of human drama and the power of Voudou.” For Desir, the grant was “an amazing source of support for women filmmakers.” “‘Angie’ is a story that I am compelled to tell.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor It could have been easy for Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s role in “The Holdovers” to be yet another stereotypical trope for Black women that Hollywood has lazily thrown out throughout history. If that had been the case, the actress tells Variety that would have passed. “When I meet with these studio execs and they ask ‘What is it you would like to do next?’ she says.

Texas congressman Joaquin Castro has taken to X to slam Warner Bros Discovery for axing the $70M Coyote vs. Acme for a reported $30M tax writeoff. That said, as we first reported, the studio is changing course this week and screening the film for potential buyers, i.e. Amazon Prime (a leading contender), Apple and Netflix. This pivot by studio brass was made after a weekend in which the studio’s phone rang off the hook by the creative community over the cancelling of the finished film, as well as an outcry by the pic’s composer Steven Price among others online.

Jason Alexander is weighing in on the possibility of a Seinfeld reunion that Jerry Seinfeld teased last month. However, it seems that the actor who played George Costanza during the nine-year run of the sitcom is unaware of any revival actually happening.

As you probably have heard by now, writer Tom Perrota, the author of 1998’s novel “Election,” which was adapted into a very successful feature film by filmmaker Alexander Payne, has written the sequel, 2022’s book “Tracy Flick Can’t Win.” And some years back, it was announced that Payne and Reese Witherspoon would reunite to adapt that book into a movie. READ MORE: ‘The Holdovers’ Review: Alexander Payne & Paul Giamatti Reunite For A ’70s Nostalgia Dramedy [Telluride] Some thought it would be Payne’s next movie.

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment Writer The Merc With a Mouth can speak again.

Sophia Sun Intern American-Taiwanese actor and director Peter Ho (“Wind and Cloud”) is at the 2023 Taiwan Creative Content Fest with in-development film project “Appetite for Desire.” The completed picture is intended to be a 120 minute film that tells the story of clout-chasing YouTubers Yong Cheng and Gao Wei who are introduced to a mysterious dish called Kappa meat by their high school classmate. The magic Kappa meat gives them temporary superpower which allows them to create more extreme video contents. However, as Yong Cheng and Gao Wei become more and more reliant on it, a darker secret about it is being revealed.

Savina Petkova Hollywood might have ground to a halt in recent months during the recent labor strikes, with the role of artificial intelligence in the moviemaking business a key stumbling block between studio bosses and both the writers and actors guilds. But two-time Academy Award winner Alexander Payne (“Sideways”) quipped at the Thessaloniki Film Festival this week that when it comes to AI, he’s all for it. “If AI could write a script for me, I would be so happy,” Payne joked.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, to two parents of Greek heritage, two-time Oscar winner Alexander Payne was awarded Greek citizenship last year around the time he was working on his latest feature, The Holdovers. 

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Richard Linklater’s action comedy “Hit Man” is set to open the Marrakech International Film Festival, which has announced its lineup of more than 70 films mixing known titles and fresh fare. The fest is forging ahead with its 20th edition, which will run Nov.

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media Analyst Jewish streaming service ChaiFlicks has greenlit its first original series, a half-hour unscripted showcase for kosher-food cuisine around the U.S. Premiering Nov. 16, “Schmoozing and Cruising” touches down everywhere from Brooklyn to Los Angeles for a mouthful of BBQ, pizza and donuts across six tasty episodes.

Will Tizard Contributor Czech punk rocker visual artist Marta Kovarova says it was becoming a mother that made her realize she had to do something radical to fight climate change. So, five years ago, she embarked on making “The World According to My Dad,” which won the Czech Joy student jury prize at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival on Saturday. “When my children were born, environmental grief fell upon me,” she says.

An interesting detail about the Broadway revival of Funny Girl, starring replacement actress Lea Michele, was buried into a new report about Taylor Swift‘s concert movie.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Australia’s Rialto and the U.K’s Vertigo Releasing have joined forces to launch Galaxy Pictures, a new film distribution company in Australia and New Zealand. The company will focus on “broad-appeal, star-driven commercial pictures that cater to consumers attuned to an increasingly digital landscape.” The two companies have already been cooperating for the past three years and handle 120 titles.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Paul McCartney and Gaumont have assembled an all-star creative crew for “High in the Clouds,” the long-awaited feature adaptation of McCartney’s children’s adventure novel. Boasting six original songs by McCartney, the family adventure movie, which is budgeted at €28 million, will be directed by Toby Genkel (“The Amazing Maurice”), scored by Michael Giacchino (“Coco,” “Inside Out”) and penned by Jon Croker (“Paddington 2”), with Patrick Hanenberger (“The Croods,” “The Lego Movie 2”) tapped as production designer. McCartney will voice one of the main characters.

Regarding movie runtimes, Alexander Payne apparently likes short and lean and “sharklike” in their efficiency. IndieWire reports that the director of “The Holdovers” had some choice words about inflated runtimes of recent film releases at the Middleburg Film Festival last weekend.

K.J. Yossman “Candyman” star Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and “The Prince of Persia’s” Gemma Arterton find themselves battling a mysterious assassin in the first trailer for Disney+ U.K. original series “Culprits,” which drops in the U.K.