‘Kennedy’ Director Anurag Kashyap & ‘In Flames’ Team Talk South Asian Unity, Using Cinema To Push Back Against Hate

It’s been 25 years since Choclair told us he likes “chillin’, ‘Monday Night Raw’ watching” on Rascalz’ legendary hit “Northern Touch”. And while a lot’s changed — smartphones, global warming, an impending AI apocalypse — some things remain exactly the same. 

If you’re a fan of “Mayans M.C.,” you’re well aware of the work of actor JD Pardo. As EZ Reyes, the lead in ‘Mayans,’ Pardo has imbued his character with complicated emotions, so many different layers, and a charisma that has made this series one of the best on TV.

Debra Messing is recalling her time on Will & Grace and spilling the tea on behind-the-scenes happenings. The star of the sitcom revealed during a Paley Center panel in L.A. that the former NBC president wanted her to “have big boobs.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Debra Messing revealed during “The Magic of Will & Grace” panel at The Paley Center for Media that she was instructed to “have big boobs” during her first costume fitting for the NBC sitcom (via People magazine). The Emmy winner pushed back on the suggestion, only to be told that it was coming straight from the top network executive. “The very first fitting, they had the chicken cutlets to make me bigger,” Messing said. “I just wasn’t a fan of like the whole idea of it. I was like, ‘You know what? I don’t need that.’ And they’re like, ‘Well, it’s the president of the network [saying this].’ And I said, ‘If he wants it, then he needs to come here and tell me to my face.'”

Teenagers are idiots. Can we just all agree on this? When an adult comes across an embalmed hand that is somehow haunted and can contact spirits, they’d likely get rid of it in no time.

Dalbeattie Star have unveiled their coaching staff for next season.

Netflix’s “Never Have I Ever” is all set for a final lap.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief NBCUniversal (NBCU) and JioCinema, Viacom18’s streaming service, have entered into a multi-year partnership bringing thousands of hours of NBCU films and TV series to India. Content is sourced from the Universal Television, UCP, Universal International Studios, Universal Television Alternative Studio, Sky Studios, DreamWorks Animation, Universal Pictures, Focus Features and Bravo brands. NBCU’s programming will live in a Peacock branded hub starting next month on JioCinema’s newly announced “JioCinema Premium” SVOD tier. While JioCinema has been making an audience impact with free-of-charge screenings of the ongoing IPL cricket tournament, the first content announced on the subscription tier hailed from another recent deal with Warner Bros Discovery.

Peter King, the makeup artist behind Ursula’s look in The Little Mermaid, is pushing back on the backlash he has gotten.

From the Palme d’Or for “Parasite” to a stint on the following jury to a Best Actor prize all of his own with last year’s “Broker,” Song Kang-ho has become a recent fixture at Cannes. This year he made a late-break for Croisette with “Cobweb,” a slight-but-entertaining film about the movies from director Kim Jee-woon.

Uday Shetty is an angry man, consumed by his desire to kill the man who killed his son. Actually, Shetty has an appetite for killing in general that shocks even his fellow police officers, whose own methods are unnervingly direct. They all appreciate the efficiency of simply tipping criminals, or those who fail to pay protection money, into the river – it saves time – but only Uday Shetty rhapsodizes about the wonderful moment when you see a victim die and the light in his eyes turns off, as if you had flicked a switch. Only Uday Shetty goes to shake down an uncooperatively honest politician and ends up massacring his entire family. “No witnesses!” Shetty says abruptly, when the chief accuses him of being a monster. No witnesses indeed.

A spokesperson for Target Corporation confirmed that in some of its locations in semi-rural areas of Georgia, South Carolina and Arkansas have moved Pride merchandise from the front of the stores to backroom areas or deeper into the stores after confrontations and backlash from shoppers.

Guy Lodge Film Critic It’s 11 years since Anurag Kashyap’s electrifying five-hour crime opus “Gangs of Wasseypur” jolted Cannes audiences, triggering renewed global interest in Indian genre cinema and vaulting Kashyap to auteur status with several subsequent films granted A-list festival premiere status — even if none quite matched his breakout feature for ambition or execution. Following a run of lower-profile potboilers in a range of genres that saw him through the pandemic era, Kashyap’s elaborately conceived, brashly violent policier “Kennedy” aims to return him to the art-pulp elite, starting with an obliging premiere slot in Cannes’ Midnight section. The result is a declarative but somewhat disappointing return to underworld territory. Enlivened by some propulsive action, a hip-hop-inflected song score and a combative streak of anti-institutional protest — in a COVID-era context that proves one of the script’s more interesting specifics — “Kennedy” is ultimately weighed down by hit-or-miss performances and convoluted plotting that isn’t always ahead of its own twists. Internationally, the film is likely too lurid for crossover arthouse interest, though it would be a good fit for major streaming platforms.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Hong Sang-soo’s latest film “In Our Day,” which will premiere on closing night of Cannes’ Directors Fortnight, has been acquired by Cinema Guild for North America. Cinema Guild will release the film in theaters following its North American festival premiere later this year. “In Our Day” stars Kim Minhee as Sangwon, an actress who has recently returned to South Korea and is temporarily staying with her friend, Jungsoo (Song Sunmi), and her cat, Us. Elsewhere in the city, the aging poet Uiju (Ki Joobong) lives alone, his cat having recently passed away. On this ordinary day, each of them has a visitor: Sangwon is visited by her cousin, Jisoo (Park Miso) and Uiju, by a young actor,Jaewon (Ha Seongguk). Each of them wants to learn about a career in the arts, but they alsohave bigger questions.

Chinese director Wei Shujun has just premiered his third film, neo-noir thriller Only The River Flows, in Cannes Un Certain Regard to positive reviews. 

Naman Ramachandran Canadian-Indian-American actor Sunny Leone is making her Cannes debut with Anurag Kashyap’s “Kennedy.” Presumed dead for years, Kennedy (Rahul Bhat) is an insomniac former cop who continues to work for a corrupt system while seeking redemption. Leone plays a pivotal character named Charlie. “She’s a little bit of a complex character and she hides behind some of her motions. And one of the things she hides behind the most is this laugh. And I believe she’s a woman who’s caught in two different worlds – one is the one that she wants to live in and one is the one she has been deliberately caught up in. I really enjoyed playing this character. And I think she is someone who’s trying her very best to be as strong as possible at every moment of the day,” Leone told Variety.

Naman Ramachandran After a successful launch at SXSW earlier this year, the South Asian House initiative, which aims to highlight, recognize and appreciate South Asians in film and television, is set to debut at the Tribeca Festival, New York, on June 16. Brainchild of producers, curators and programmers Rohi Mirza Pandya (Box Office Guru Media and Desipina), Monika Samtani (Ms. Media and The Fem Word), Jitin Hingorani (Jingo Media and DFW South Asian Film Festival) and Kirtana Banskota (Banskota Productions and Nepal America Film Society), the event will showcase programming focused on the funding, creation and distribution of South Asian stories for a global audience. The day will consist of two panel discussions focused on content creation in the diaspora and the Indian film industry and will be part of the AT&T Untold Stories Lounge at Spring Studios.

Asian buyers are ultra-cautious as theatrical markets are still in recovery following the pandemic, but bright spots include animation and re-releases of classic titles, said a group of leading European sales agents at the Cannes Marche’s Spotlight Asia panel today. 

Hong Sang-soo shows no signs of slowing down, does he? After two feature films a year for the past two years, the South Korean director will do it again in 2023, with his 30th film, “In Our Day,” ready to close the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival on May 25. Hong’s latest comes after “In Water” premiered at the Berlinale in February to universal acclaim.

Gregg Goldstein “I never really wanted to be a cinematographer,” says Sean Price Williams, who has nevertheless shot nearly 60 indie features, some 50 shorts and seven series since 1999. “I didn’t even know what that job was. I’ve always wanted to direct, but didn’t have the means to make a movie.” At age 45, the widely respected lensman is finally getting around to his solo feature directorial debut, “The Sweet East,” pictured above, premiering in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. The Match Factory is repping sales. Why the wait? “I wasn’t putting it off,” he says. “I just didn’t think anybody would ever give me money to do it.” Through his longtime collaborator and “Sweet” producer Alex Ross Perry’s agency connections, they enlisted stars like Jacob Elordi and Talia Ryder to secure financing. His adventure comedy follows a South Carolina high school senior (Ryder) who breaks away from a class trip to start her own journey. “She guides us through different scenarios that illustrate idealogues in contemporary America,” he says. “They’re representations of current beliefs and situations.” The lineup includes Elordi as a Robert Pattinson-type star trying his hand at an indie film and Simon Rex as a white supremacist college professor.