CNN Philippines to Close Down, With 300 Job Losses

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers for “Central,” the fifth episode of “Expats,” now streaming on Prime Video. Lulu Wang’s “Expats” steps into feature-length territory for this week’s episode, which focuses on the working class women by diving into the lives of the help, Essie (Ruby Ruiz) and Puri (Amelyn Pardenilla).

Naman Ramachandran The Philippines’ Quezon City Film Commission (QCFC) is teaming with European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs (EAVE) to launch the first EAVE marketing masterclasses, which aims to bolster the region’s burgeoning film industry and its active participation in the global market. The initiative will select 30 Filipino and Asian producers and film industry professionals who wish to advance their careers and enhance their professional experiences.

Apple TV+ series traces the modern French fashion world through the eyes of acclaimed haute couture designers Christian Dior (Ben Mendelsohn) and Coco Chanel (Juliette Binoche) amid Nazi-occupied Paris and how each of them, and their compatriots, dealt with that adversity with different shadings of complicity.Created by Todd Kessler (“Bloodline”), “The New Look” co-stars John Malkovich as Lucien Lelong, Dior’s first boss; Maisie Williams as Dior’s French-resistance fighter sister, Catherine; Claes Bang as Nazi operator Spatz, with whom Chanel consorts; Emily Mortimer as Chanel’s sketchy friend Elsa Lombardi; and Glenn Close as powerful Harper’s Bazaar Editor-in-Chief Carmel Snow. Mendelsohn, Binoche and Malkovich spoke to The Post about their characters’ motivations.When we first meet Dior, he’s happy working for Lelong and somewhat ambiguous about the Nazis, designing ball gowns for officers’ wives but refusing to meet with any of them in person. But when Catherine is taken prisoner by the Nazis — and sent to Ravensbrück, a deadly work camp — Dior’s attitude toward the war changes.Mendelsohn: “[Getting Catherine back] becomes his absolute raison d’etre from that point on.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief U.S-Asian sales company EST N8 has picked up the international rights for “30 Minutes,” a Korean sci-fi thriller film that is currently in production. The story revolves around a middle-aged man trapped in a time loop, repeatedly reliving the Christmas Eve of his murder.

EXCLUSIVE: New Line Cinema and Hello Sunshine have teamed on an acquisition of the Curtis Sittenfeld novel Romantic Comedy. 

Downton Abbey will reportedly make a return to TV screens, eight years and two movies since its last series.The beloved period drama aired its final episode on Christmas Day 2015, and was then followed by two movie spin-offs in 2019 and 2022.The show, which was previously filmed at the lavish Highclere Castle in Hampshire, followed the aristocratic Crawley family, and their servants, throughout the societal changes and world events of the 1910s and 20s.The final episode saw Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) finally tie the knot with Bertie (Harry Hadden-Patton), after she had been rather unlucky in love across the previous six seasons. Revealing the news of the show's upcoming return, a source told the Daily Mail: "Filming has been going on for a few weeks now, it is all very, very secret.There are people working on it who have never seen secrecy like it.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Robert Downey Jr. made headlines earlier this month when he revealed that he first met his “Oppenheimer” director Christopher Nolan back in the early 2000s in order to nab the role of Scarecrow in the director’s 2005 superhero tentpole “Batman Begins.” Downey said Nolan wasn’t too interested in casting him, which Nolan fully admitted in a recent interview with the actor for The New York Times. “I 100% knew you weren’t the guy [for Scarecrow],” said Nolan, who eventually cast his “Oppenheimer” leading man Cillian Murphy as the Batman villain.

Prince Harry jetted back to the UK to see his father, King Charles, after it was announced that he had been diagnosed with cancer, however, according to reports, Harry refused to be in the same room as Queen Camilla during his visit.

Tina Fey has recruited her some of her famous friends for a new commercial!

King Charles kept his meeting with Prince Harry short due to the need for “calm”, a royal expert has claimed. After Buckingham Palace announced on Monday 5 February that the monarch, 75, had been diagnosed with cancer, Prince Harry, 39, jetted from his home in California to London to meet with his father. The meeting took place on Tuesday 6 February at Clarence House, the King’s official residence, though it’s unclear how long the pair spent together.

Robert Downey Jr. is winning big!

Christopher Nolan had a Shakespearian moment when he came to The Late Show. In a reverse of Marc Antony, he came to praise Robert Downey Jr., his Oppenheimer star, not to bury him.

After nine years in business, CNN Philippines will discontinue its news and production operations on all media platforms effective January 31. The news organization, which is a franchise holder of the CNN International brand and operated by Nine Media Corp, began airing under a brand and content licensing deal with Turner Broadcasting System Asia Pacific in 2015. It cited years of financial issues as the reason for the closure.

San Francisco’s Jeffrey’s Toys, the city’s oldest toy store and the inspiration for the Toy Story franchise, is permanently closing.

Drew Barrymore got a little teary-eyed on Thursday’s episode of her eponymous talk show.The “Never Been Kissed” star, 48, gathered her old co-stars from her 1994 Western flick “Bad Girls” for a reunion, which included Mary Stuart Masterson, Andie MacDowell and Dermot Mulroney.Barrymore thanked the “Scream VI” actor, 60, for helping her through a few rough times as they shot the movie when she was a teenager.“You were so good to me, I really was like a lost 17-year-old,” Barrymore said.“I was having so much fun, but I didn’t know how to take care of myself and you took such good care of me. You were so kind to me.”“I was really wild, guys,” she jokes to her audience.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Three Japanese films enjoying their world premieres, along with festival favorites “City of Wind” and “Solids by the Seashore,” are set to appear in the 13-title competition section of the Osaka Asian Film Festival in March. The event will be held March 1-10 at venues including ABC Hall, Cine Libre Umeda, T-Joy Umeda and the Nakanoshima Museum of Art. The opening and closing films will be announced in early February. The 19th edition of the festival, which will eventually contain 55 feature and short films, is set to also include three special programs – a “Thai Cinema Kaleidoscope,” “Taiwan: Movies on the Move,” and “Special Focus on Hong Kong” – as well as its regular Spotlight Section on underrated Asian films and the Indie Forum of more challenging and innovative works. The competition titles are: “City of Wind,” by Mongolia’s Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir; “Fire on Water,” by Malaysia’s Sun-J Perumal; “Hyphen,” by The Philippines Joy Arnaldo; “The Lyricist Wannabe,” by Hong Kong’s Norris Wong; “The Missing,” by The Philippines’ Carl Joseph E.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Sofia Vergara is taking on her most dramatic role yet in Netflix’s “Griselda,” in which she plays infamous Colombian drug lord Griselda Blanco. The show marks a rare opportunity for Vergara to flex her dramatic acting muscles as her career has largely been defined by comedy projects, from playing Gloria Pritchett on ABC’s “Modern Family” (which ran for 11 seasons and garnered Vergara four Emmy nominations) to films like 2015’s “Hot Pursuit” with Reese Witherspoon. “I’m always looking for characters because there’s not much that I can play with this stupid accent,” Vergara recently told the Los Angeles Times, poking fun at herself.

UPDATE: The layoffs of more than 20% of the Los Angeles Times newsroom elicited sharp criticism from the guild, saying that it was handled in a “brutal and inhumane way.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The CinemAsia Film Festival in Amsterdam has unveiled titles from seven different Asian countries for its competition section. The festival will play at the Studio/K, Rialto De Pijp and Rialto VU venues March 5-10, 2024. The event will close with the out-of-competition screening of “Gaga,” a drama about indigenous communities in Taiwan, directed by Laha Mebow. “Gaga” documents the challenges faced by a commune after the death of a respected tribal elder who, while alive, had held things together.

Philippines president Fernando “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. faced criticism from his constituents over the weekend for using the state-funded presidential helicopter to fly over the traffic jam caused by a Coldplay concert Friday night (January 19) in order to attend the show himself.