Oscar winners Emma Stone and Penelope Cruz were among the stars who honored emerging directors during a brunch event at the 2024 Palm Springs International Film Festival.
18.12.2023 - 18:29 / variety.com
Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Actor and producer Benjamin Bratt has joined the Oscar hopeful documentary short “Wings of Dust” as executive producer. The “Poker Face” star boards the project with his brother Peter Bratt and Alpita Patel, all under their production banner 5 Stick Films. “Wings of Dust” took the 2023 gold medal at the Student Academy Awards, telling the story of a Peruvian indigenous journalist who risks his life to protect the natural resources of ancestral lands.
The film was directed by Italian-born Giorgio Ghiotto, who just completed journalism school at NYU. “Giorgio has a keen sensibility about emotional truth. The film left me truly devastated and ultimately inspired to help bring attention to what is largely a global issue,” Bratt told Variety.
The subject of “Wings of Dust” is Vidal Merma, a journalist seeking to combat a new threat from multinational mining companies. Both Ghiotto and Merma were on hand to accept the Student Academy Award this year. Ghiotto, who is passionate about telling stories focusing on human rights and environmental justice, produced the project with Eliza Mitnick.
The star has a personal attachment to the project, as his mother is from Peru (and his grandmother hailed from a region close to where the film unfolds). Bratt and his brother were children of the American Indian Occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969. 5 Stick Films, which produced the Peabody award-winning and Emmy-nominated documentary “Dolores,” is dedicated to telling and amplifying Indigenous and other BIPOC narratives.
Oscar winners Emma Stone and Penelope Cruz were among the stars who honored emerging directors during a brunch event at the 2024 Palm Springs International Film Festival.
Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor There’s a new senior player in TV’s true-crime industry. Paul Ryan has been named executive producer of NBC News‘ “Dateline,’ reporting to Liz Cole, who became the long-running newsmagazine’s senior executive producer last year. Both elevations come after David Corvo, the NBC News executive who had long overseen the series, moved to tackle consulting duties.
Paula Abdul has accused American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance executive producer Nigel Lythgoe of repeatedly sexually assaulting her while she was a judge on both shows. According to court documents obtained by TM
British actor Tom Wilkinson, who won a Bafta for his work in The Full Monty and was Oscar-nominated for Michael Clayton and In The Bedroom, has died at 75 on Saturday. No cause was given.
passed away on Wednesday, December 8 at the age of 65. The news of his death was announced via an update on his Instagram page.
Manchester United's reported target Benjamin Sesko is believed to be open to a move to the Premier League in January, according to reports.
American Symphony, the Obamas-executive produced documentary about Grammy-winning musician Jon Batiste, scored a remarkable hat trick today as the Oscar shortlists were revealed, but a couple of documentary icons were left on the bench.
You can’t escape her. You can only hope to contain her.
December is the most popular month for charitable giving by Americans – accounting for about a third of all donations made per year. Call it the spirit of the holidays, repeated viewings of A Christmas Carol, or a rush to get in tax-deductible gifts before the calendar year runs out.
One of the favorites to make the Oscar documentary feature shortlist this year takes viewers to a remote area of Estonia, within the healing space of the smoke sauna. It is an ancient tradition in that part of the world, a way of “connecting family and friends to cleanse body and soul inside a place of peace and contemplation.”
Fresh off its fall festival circuit run, including its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival, “The Promised Land” will finally arrive in US theaters next February. That’s plenty of time for audiences to catch up with the historical drama before it might vie for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film in March.
EXCLUSIVE: On the opening day of Oscar shortlist voting, Hulu announced it has acquired one of the contenders for short documentary recognition – Relighting Candles: The Tim Sullivan Story, executive produced by Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone.
Amy Adams has booked her next TV role!
In a clip from the documentary, Little Richard: I Am Everything, we hear the young entertainer singing an early version of what would become his signature tune, “Tutti Frutti.” But surprise! The original lyrics were different than the ones we know today: “Tutti frutti, good booty/Tutti frutti, good booty!”
With awards season around the corner, it’s time for countries to select the Best International Feature Film for the Oscars. Bhutan’s pick? Pawo Choyning Dorji‘s “The Monk And The Gun,” which had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival earlier this year.
Cillian Murphy has paid tribute to his Peaky Blinders co-star Benjamin Zephaniah, who died on Thursday (December 7), aged 65.The pair appeared together in the BBC period crime drama, with Murphy playing protagonist Tommy Shelby and Zephaniah as Jeremiah “Jimmy” Jesus, a Jamaican-born street preacher and friend of Shelby’s.“Benjamin was a truly gifted and beautiful human being – a generational poet, writer, musician and activist. A proud Brummie and a Peaky Blinder,” said Murphy in a statement, (via Deadline).
EXCLUSIVE: Samantha Bee is joining director Nazrin Choudhary and producer Sara McFarlane as Executive Producer on the film campaign for the Oscar-qualifying short film Red, White and Blue.
Masters of the Air, a new series set for Apple TV+ from executive producers Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman.The limited series comes to the streamer next year and stars Austin Butler, Callum Turner, Anthony Boyle, Nate Mann, Rafferty Law, Academy Award-nominee Barry Keoghan, Josiah Cross, Branden Cook and Ncuti Gatwa.Apple TV+ will release the first two episodes of its nine-episode season on Friday, January 26, followed by one new episode every Friday through March 15, 2024.Based on Donald L. Miller’s book of the same name, and scripted by John Orloff, “Masters of the Air” follows the men of the 100th Bomb Group (the “Bloody Hundredth”) as they conduct perilous bombing raids over Nazi Germany and grapple with the frigid conditions, lack of oxygen and sheer terror of combat conducted at 25,000 feet in the air. Portraying the psychological and emotional price paid by these young men as they helped destroy the horror of Hitler’s Third Reich, is at the heart of “Masters of the Air.” Some were shot down and captured; some were wounded or killed. And some were lucky enough to make it home. Regardless of individual fate, a toll was exacted on them all.Ranging in location from the bucolic fields and villages of southeast England, to the harsh deprivations of a German prisoner-of-war camp, and depicting a unique and crucial time in world history, Masters of the Air is said to be enormous in both scale and scope.
Benjamin Zephaniah, a famed and celebrated poet and actor in works including Peaky Blinders, has tragically passed away at the age of 65.
Cillian Murphy has paid tribute to Peaky Blinders co-star Benjamin Zephaniah, who passed away this morning aged 65.