In Oscar Contender ‘The Flagmakers,’ Immigrants And The Native Born Stitch Together Old Glory

Country artist Zach Bryan is ticked off at Live Nation’s Ticketmaster division.

From Bergen to Malta, Liverpool, New York and Halifax: Norwegian merchant seamen Alfred (Kristoffer Joner) and Sigbjorn (Pal Sverre Hagen) sometimes seem to be competing for screen time with datelines in Gunnar Vikene’s epic War Sailor, Norway’s Oscar submission. Sprawling, packed with anecdote and surging from one dramatic peak to the next, War Sailor sets out to tell the stories of the ordinary but unsung heroes who helped defeat Germany in 1945. It has the best of intentions.

Philip Yung delivers an ambitious decade-spanning true crime thriller with Where The Wind Blows, Hong Kong’s entry for the International Feature Oscar. Previously known as Theory of Ambitions, it’s a technically impressive feat with an equally impressive cast lead by Aaron Kwok and Tony Leung Chiu-wai. Fast-paced and dense with detail, it challenges the audience to keep up with its complex story of two cops rising up the ranks in Hong Kong in the 1960s and beyond.

Kim Simmonds, leader of the last post-Beatles wave of British blues bands with Savoy Brown, has died at the age of 75, the band announced.

Kim Simmonds, leader of the last post-Beatles wave of British blues bands with Savoy Brown, has died at the age of 75, the band announced.

Tory peer Michelle Mone’s businessman husband could be facing a lengthy jail sentence if found guilty of fraud charges in Spain. Billionaire Doug Barrowman has been charged with crimes including corporate tax evasion.

Talent agent Brian Wittenstein is launching a new company, Prototype Talent Agency, which he is starting with many of his existing clients, including Italia Ricci (Designated Survivor, The Imperfects), WWE’s “The American Nightmare” Cody Rhodes (Arrow, Go-Big Show) and Piper Curda (Legacies, American Pie Presents: Girls’ Rules).

EXCLUSIVE: UTA has signed Nkechi Okoro Carroll and her production company, Rock My Soul Productions, for representation in all areas.

If you happened to grow up in a particular section of Brooklyn in the ‘70s and played a game called Hot Peas and Butter with neighborhood kids, you might still have the welts to show for it.

DEALSIndie label repping digital rights agency Merlin has signed a new agreement with Styngr, a B2B platform specialising in licensing music to video games and the metaverse. ”We are excited to count Merlin as one of our global music partners.

In August 1938 an American visitor appeared in a Polish village outside Warsaw, bearing an object of considerable novelty to the townspeople: a 16mm motion picture camera. David Kurtz filmed for not much more than 180 seconds, his shutter opening onto village life in Nasieslk, home to a Jewish population numbering several thousand people.

When protests broke out in Iran in 2009 over the fraudulent presidential election, one of the country’s leading artists stood up against the regime and its violent repression of demonstrators. Vocalist Mohammad Reza Shajarian recorded a song with lyrics addressed to government militias attacking people in the streets: “Lay down your guns. Come, sit down, talk, hear. Perhaps the light of humanity will get through to your heart.” 

“I had never heard of this guy, and I would be the kind of person who would know about the most prolific serial killer in the U.S.,” The Good Nurse director Tobias Lindholm said of the real-life Charles Cullen, played by Eddie Redmayne in the Netflix film.  

EXCLUSIVE: Signature Entertainment has made one of its highest-profile acquisitions to date with UK & Irish rights to Elegance Bratton’s well-received military drama The Inspection from A24.

From separating families at the border to promises to build a massive wall between the US and Mexico, the Trump administration took an aggressively hostile approach towards immigrants. 

Higher Ground, the production company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama, has established an enviable track record with Oscar voters, earning a Best Documentary Feature nomination last year with Crip Camp, and a win in 2020 for American Factory. It’s back in the Oscar race this year with Descendant, a Netflix documentary directed by Margaret Brown. 

Multiple Oscar winner Alejandro González Iñárritu has returned to his Mexican roots with Netflix’s Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths. While there are some personal elements in the film, it is not an autobiography, rather what he prefers to call an “autofiction.”

The Night Manager producer The Ink Factory is forging a TV version of John Le Carré’’s A Most Wanted Man almost a decade after making a feature film version, with Snabba Cash writer Oskar Söderlund attached as showrunner.