‘Coo-Coo 043’ Set as Opening Film of Taiwan’s Golden Horse Festival

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Veteran film, theater and opera director Julie Taymor has been set as the president of the competition jury at next month’s Tokyo International Film Festival. Taymor (“The Lion King”) will head a small group that selects the winners from the 15 competition titles that unspool in Tokyo between Oct. 24 and Nov. 2, 2022. The other four members of the jury will be announced later. Taymor is the second woman to head the jury in as many years and follows Isabelle Huppert in 2021. There was no competition in 2020 due to COVID. And in 2019, the jury was headed by China’s Zhang Ziyi.

Kobe Bryant was set to film a cameo in the Saved by the Bell revival on Peacock, days before losing his life in January 2020, alongside his teenaged daughter and seven other passengers.Josie Totah and Alycia Pascual-Peña revealed in an episode of Dare We Say that the late basketball legend was scheduled to film the pilot episode. “A wild tidbit that I don’t think a lot of people know, or it’s not important at all because obviously, we are the least of importance when it comes to this legend and his daughter’s passing, but we were actually supposed to film with Kobe two days after he died,” Totah said.According to Pascual-Peña, the energy on set “shifted greatly” when they had to film the pilot without Kobe. “I remember learning that he had passed through one of our best friends Anjelika Washington,” Pascual-Peña says.

Macro, the Oscar-winning film studio founded by Charles D. King, is getting into business with Amazon. Under the new deal, Amazon Studios has first look on feature film projects from the Judas and the Black Messiah producer, which intends to develop, package and produce for Prime Video. The  OTT service has a footprint in 240 countries around the globe.

Blake Shelton may be adding an unexpected guest to his tour.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Jack Neo, who is by far Singapore’s most commercially successful filmmaker, has begun production on “King of Musang King,” a comedy that he envisages being ready for release at Chinese New Year in January. The narrative gives prominent position to durians, the smelly Southeast Asian fruit that most people either love or hate. Neo (“Money No Enough,” the “Ah Boys to Men” franchise) will co-star, direct and produce through his J Team Productions. The film will be presented by J Team, mm2 Entertainment and Cathay Cineplexes. The story revolves around a man (played by Mark Lee), his abandoned Malaysian wife (played by Yeo Yann Yann), and childhood friend Mao Shan (played by Jack Neo).

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Family comedy “Table For Six” has set an opening day local record for a comedy film in Hong Kong, to the relief of producers who were forced to digest a releasing delay of six months. The Sunny Chan-directed film opened Wednesday in Hong Kong and Macau at 61 theatres, playing a total of 608 sessions. That gave it an accumulated box office of HK$1,986,701 ($255,000). “Table for Six,” which chronicles a family’s holiday gathering where food, love, friendship, jealousy and relationships are on the menu, had originally been planned as a dish to be served at Chinese New Year, in February. And producers had assembled a cast of major Hong Kong and regional talents, including Dayo Wong, Stephy Tang, Louise Cheung, Ivana Wong, Lin Min-Chen and Chan Charm Man.

K.J. Yossman Lorton Entertainment, who are currently working on highly anticipated Disney+ documentary “Wagatha Christie,” have set a new unscripted series titled “Horsepower” at Amazon, Variety can exclusively reveal. A four-part documentary series which is set to launch on Prime Video U.K. and Ireland from Sept. 23, “Horsepower” gives viewers a rare glimpse into the world of horce racing via its two protagonists, leading trainer Andrew Balding and his principal jockey Oisin Murphy as they compete over a nine month period culminating in the horse racing world’s most prestigious annual event: Royal Ascot. Audiences will get unprecedented behind the scenes access as they follow Balding (brother of sports host Clare Balding) and Murphy from fall 2020 to summer 2021, watching them train at Balding’s Hampshire stables and competing in events across the country. All seems lost, however, when Murphy tests positive for cocaine: will he be banned from the sport he loves or will he be able to re-build his once promising career?

A global takeover is much easier when people can understand what you're talking about. Central Cee is the West London rapper with a viral hit in "Doja," a Song You Need when it dropped back in July, and naturally, his raps rely a lot on slang from his homeland of the United Kingdom.

Joe Otterson TV Reporter Taylor Sheridan’s upcoming CIA drama series “Lioness” at Paramount+ has added three new actors to its cast, Variety has learned exclusively. James Jordan, LaMonica Garrett, and Dave Annable have all joined the show. All three have previously worked with Sheridan — Jordan and Annable on the hit Paramount Network series “Yellowstone” and Garrett in the “Yellowstone” prequel series “1883.” Jordan also appeared in “1883” as well as Sheridan’s Paramount+ series “Mayor of Kingstown” and in his features “Wind River” and “Those Who Wish Me Dead.” The three join previously announced cast members Zoe Saldaña and Laysla De Oliveira.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Art-house title “Return to Dust” was a surprise weekend winner, topping the mainland China box office in its ninth weekend of release. The astonishing feat occurred on an otherwise depressed weekend in which China’s cinema box office dipped to a three-month low. This reflected the summer season winding to an end and anti-COVID measures once again forcing major Chinese cities into retreat. Data from consultancy Artisan Gateway showed “Return” grossing $5.3 million (RMB36.2 million) between Friday and Sunday. Those three days accounted for nearly half of the $12.7 million (RMB87.4 million) cumulative total it has earned since release on July 8, 2022.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” the photographer Nan Goldin tells a woeful, revealing, and in its way rather funny anecdote about how in the 1980s, when she first gathered up her photographs — casually transgressive images of her and her friends, who were often drag queens and addicts, along with shots of the assorted other people and situations she experienced as part of the hummingly squalid East Village New York subculture — and tried to shop them around to galleries and museums, they were roundly rejected, because the arbiters of taste, who were inevitably men, favored photographs that were black-and-white and composed in elegant meticulous ways. Goldin’s photographs were in garish verité color, set in environments that were so scruffy (messy bohemian apartments, ordinary people just lolling around) that it looked, to the gallery mavens, like there was no visual organization to them, no art.

Noah Baumbach passed through the Lido Wednesday afternoon where he broke down the origins of his Venice Film Festival opener White Noise, starring Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, and Don Cheadle.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The delayed 46th edition of the Hong Kong International Film Festival wrapped Wednesday with the award of 13 prizes for its young filmmaker, documentary and shorts competitions. Hailed by the jury as “one of this year’s most distinguished films both creatively and artistically,” Qiu Jiongjiong’s “A New Old Play” was named best film for the Young Cinema Competition (Chinese Language). “A New Old Play” is a tale of a family of Sichuan Opera artists living through a tumultuous era. It also collected the FIPRESCI Prize, with the jury commending the film for “its masterful approach and inventive visual style.”  In the global category, Palestinian director Maha Haj’s “Mediterranean Fever” was chosen as the Firebird Award winner for being “an all-rounded gem that is at once a thriller, social comedy, and odd couple bromance.” 

Addie Morfoot Contributor Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” Steve James’ “A Compassionate Spy” and Evgeny Afineevsky’s “Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom” are among 11 documentaries making their world premieres at the Venice Film Festival this year, with Poitras’ competition title vying for a Golden Lion — a rare feat for a doc at a major international film festival. The growing number of high-profile non-fiction films in and out of competition at Venice suggests that major European film festivals have finally accepted documentaries as viable, cinematic art.While docs at the Toronto International Film Festival and major U.S. fests, including Sundance, Telluride and South by Southwest, have long been the belles of the ball, the most prominent international festivals, including Venice, Cannes and Berlin, have been slow to embrace non-fiction content, especially in competition.  

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief More than 600 buyers from companies in 30 countries are expected to be in Seoul, South Korea from Wednesday for the in-person return of the Broadcast WorldWide convention, better known as BCWW. Although BCWW bills itself as Asia’s largest broadcasting content market, given the strength of the Korean wave, much of the focus will be on Korean content and the business of working with Korean companies. Registered buyers and potential partners include Amazon Prime, Warner Bros. Discovery, NBCUniversal, PCCW the Hong Kong-based owner of Viu, and China’s iQiyi, all of which have already become purveyors of K-programming. “For the past 22 years, BCWW has served as a foundation for K-content to garner the global attention it is getting today,” said Cho Hyun-rae, president of the government-backed Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA). He added that he expects KOCCA and BCWW to “provide continuous support for K-content.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Michelle Yeoh will receive the Toronto International Film Festival’s inaugural Share Her Journey Groundbreaker Award. The TIFF Share Her Journey Groundbreaker Award recognizes a woman who is a leader in the film industry and has made a positive impact for women throughout their career. The award, sponsored by Bulgari, will be presented at an in-person gala fundraiser on Sunday, Sept. 11 at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel. “Michelle Yeoh is the definition of groundbreaking,” said Cameron Bailey, TIFF CEO. “Her screen work has spanned continents, genres and decades. This year she delivered a performance in ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ that shows her limitless abilities.”

actress Ivory Aquino isn't giving up on the DC Comics hero. Following a  article that revealed Warner Bros.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Batgirl” actor Ivory Aquino is speaking out about Warner Bros.’ decision to indefinitely shelve the DC film. In an emotional letter addressed to Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslov, Aquino — who played the best friend of Barbara Gordon (a.k.a. Batgirl) — pleaded for the studio executive to rethink the alleged plan to permanently destroy the movie’s footage. “As one of many who poured our hearts into the making of this movie, I ask that this measure be reconsidered,” Aquino wrote Wednesday night on Twitter. “As much as I’ve tried my best to be strong these past few weeks, I’d find myself crying, for lack of a better term, from grief, and tonight was one of those nights.”

Arden Cho rocks a bold blue suit for the premiere of her new Netflix series, Partner Track, in Los Angeles on Tuesday night (August 23).

movie, but she had a message for fans who are sad about her character's absence. The upcoming Paramount+ movie reunites the majority of the original series cast, minus key alumni such as Cho and Dylan O'Brien. Cho, who headlines Netflix's new workplace series , confirmed in an interview earlier this summer that her decision not to appear in the movie was due to significant pay disparity with a few of her co-stars.Nonetheless, Cho expressed her gratitude to the fans for their support and love for her character, Kira.