Elizabeth Chan Releases Her 12th Original Christmas Album, Extending a Queenly Record

Filmmaker James Gray’s “Armageddon Time” opens in limited release this weekend, Friday, October 28. A soulful, melancholy drama about family, friendship, loss, privilege, and more, it’s also a movie, like many of Gray’s films about class and America, and how its 1980s-set Ronald Regan-era echoes back to where we are today.

EXCLUSIVE: We hear that the Nobody director Ilya Naishuller is set to direct Idris Elba and John Cena in the Peter Safran-produced movie Heads of State at Amazon.

EXCLUSIVE: In the wake of Dwayne Johnson notching the highest opening of his solo star career with this weekend’s Black Adam at $67M, his holiday movie, currently titled Red One, is ramping up with additional castings: Deadline has learned that Nick Kroll, Kristofer Hivju, Wesley Kimmel and Mary Elizabeth Ellis are joining.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions nabbed “Somewhere in Queens,” a heartfelt comedy from writer-director Ray Romano. Romano, who stars in the movie as a working-class dad, also directed, co-wrote and produced “Somewhere in Queens” in his feature filmmaking debut. The film will be released theatrically by Roadside Attractions in 2023.  “I am so excited to know that Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions will be bringing this movie to theaters everywhere,” Romano said. “I lived with every facet of this production for years, as a director, co-writer, actor and producer. It’s such a personal story for me, and it’s inspiring to see these two companies step up because they believe in the movie as much as I do.”

Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions have picked up Ray Romano’s feature directorial debut Somewhere in Queens, which previously had a world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. The three-time Emmy winner also co-wrote, stars and produced the film. Roadside plans to give Somewhere in Queens a theatrical release next year. The pic currently stands at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

KARA will be reuniting to release a new album titled ‘Move Again’ next month.On October 18 at Midnight KST, the members of KARA released the first poster for their upcoming return with their 15th-anniversary album ‘Move Again’. Featuring the five members’ silhouettes, the new image also confirms its November 29 release date.At the time of writing, KARA and DSP Media have yet to share the release’s exact format and tracklist.A post shared by 니콜 ニコル (@nicole__jung)The upcoming record will be the act’s first in over seven years, following May 2015’s ‘In Love’.

EXCLUSIVE: Imax has inked a deal with Wanda Films, China’s largest exhibitor, to install six Imax systems in new multiplexes across top Chinese markets including Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. Wanda will also relocate and upgrade three of its existing Imax systems to forthcoming locations.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Cargo Film & Releasing has acquired domestic and international rights to director Violet Du Feng’s feature documentary “Hidden Letters.” The film had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival and its European premiere at the BFI London Film Festival. It won Best Documentary and the Audience Award at the Austin Asian American Film Festival. Cargo will premiere the film theatrically starting in New York and Los Angeles on Dec. 9. “Hidden Letters” follows two millennial Chinese women connected by their passion for Nushu, a secret female-only language that for centuries has allowed women to communicate privately without men understanding their correspondence.

Backstreet’s back, alright!

Thania Garcia Queen has shared a previously unreleased song titled “Face It Alone,” featuring unearthed Freddie Mercury vocals. The single, recorded during sessions for “The Miracle,” will be included in the 1989 album’s collector’s edition due on Nov. 18. News of the track started trickling out earlier this June when founding members Brian May and Roger Taylor announced its release in an interview following their performance at Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee concert. “We did find a little gem from Freddie, that we’d kind of forgotten about and it was — It’s wonderful,” Taylor told BBC Radio 2. “It was kind of hiding in plain sight,” May added. “We looked at it many times and thought, oh no, we can’t really rescue that. But in fact, we went in there again and our wonderful engineering team went, ‘OK, we can do this and this.’ It’s like kind of stitching bits together. But it’s beautiful, it’s touching.”

EXCLUSIVE: The timely documentary The Sentence of Michael Thompson will be reaching a big audience soon, courtesy of MSNBC and XTR’s streaming service Documentary+.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Chinese filmmaker, Bi Gan, best-known for his single-take feature “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” has seen his “A Short Story” picked up by Kino Lorber for distribution in North America. A fairy tale that follows the relationship between man and cat, the film had its world premiere in competition at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival and now has its North American premiere in the Currents section of the New York Film Festival. Kino Lorber plans to qualify “A Short Story” for the 96th Academy Awards, showing it theatrically nationwide in early 2023 in tandem with a theatrical re-release of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” “Kino Lorber rarely acquires short films, but Bi Gan has packed more cinematic delight into the fifteen minutes of ‘A Short Story’ than many feature length films deliver in two hours,” said Kino Lorber SVP Wendy Lidell. The deal was brokered by Les Films du Losange.

Paris Hilton is speaking up about being sexually assaulted while attending Provo Canyon School.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Hong Kong multi-hyphenate Peter Chan Ho-sun is far too intellectual to call himself an “arms dealer,” as Sony Pictures has in casting itself as an unattached supplier to streaming platforms. But politeness and Bob Dylan references aside, Chan’s new company, Changin’ Pictures, aims to become a major independent purveyor of premium Asian TV content for the streamers. The company is using this week’s Busan International Film Festival as its launchpad and will unveil the first five series of its 20-title pan-Asian slate.  Chan’s thesis is that global audiences are hungry for Asian content but have not been able to access it easily under legacy film and TV distribution systems. With streaming making everything accessible everywhere, and audiences no longer balking at subtitles, quality Asian drama can and will travel.

King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort have completed their first public engagement together since Queen Elizabeth II's death. Charles, 73, and Camilla, 74, headed to Dunfermline in Fife on 3 October to attend an official council meeting at the City Chambers, to formally mark the former town's new status as the eighth city of Scotland. The Queen Consort wore a dark green coat with a white blouse, paired with black leather boots and matching gloves.

Mariah Carey has maintained she never called herself the "Queen of Christmas". The superstar is known around the world for her hit song All I Want for Christmas Is You as well as for her obsession with the festive season. But in an interview for Variety, Mariah maintained that she didn't give herself the title.

Nick Cannon has welcomed his 10th child. Nick Cannon, 41, took to Instagram Friday to share that he and Brittany Bell have welcomed their third child together, son Rise Messiah Cannon. Another Blessing!!!" Cannon began his lengthy caption.            View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by NICK CANNON (@nickcannon) "As my journey on this planet becomes more and more remarkable and unfathomable, all I can do is thank God and continue to ask the Most High to order my steps.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Brandi Carlile’s IMAX livecast Wednesday evening couldn’t have been better timed in the calendar year, coming just a few days after the equinox. A nationwide live simulcast on IMAX screens pretty much demands a universal start time of 6 p.m. PT/9 ET,  a time frame that, in the last week of September, means a 90-minute show being shot outdoors on a ridge overlooking L.A. will start sunny and end with a dark sky and the basin at its twinkliest. Cinematographers everywhere couldn’t have asked the movie gods for a more compliant dusk than the one Carlile and her band and filmmaking team got. She’s having her own magic hour, of course … definitely not to be confused with a twilight, in her case. The Carlile album that came out just about a year ago, “In These Silent Days,” carried on its Grammy-winning predecessor’s success in further establishing her as America’s troubadour du jour in the classic singer-songwriter vein. Now she’s celebrating that anniversary with a deluxe edition that includes a separate, all-new rendering of the album, titled “In the Canyon Haze,” featuring re-arrangements meant to invoke the spirit of early ‘70s Laurel Canyon folk-rock just as blatantly as the altered title suggests. There’s something almost ironically contrary about marrying the new record’s intimacy to giant screens — Lookout Mountain meets “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman”? — but with a little bit of help, maybe, from the spirits of the hippie holler, it worked.