Laurie Anderson to Lead Conversation With Joan Baez at Hamptons Film Festival (EXCLUSIVE)

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has landed a “historic” tentative agreement with UPS to avert a major labor strike.

The Venice Film Festival revealed the lineup for its 80th edition Tuesday morning, and its Official Competition featured works by five women filmmakers, including Ava DuVernay, who makes history as the first African American woman in selection.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music The Faroe Islands seem a very unlikely place to hold a music festival. A string of rocky islands located in the North Atlantic between Scotland, Norway and Iceland, it has a population of around 56,000 people and, as any tour guide will tell you, approximately three times as many sheep. The weather and the terrain are wild and unpredictable — last week, as the Northern Hemisphere roasted, it ranged from clear and sunny to cold with driving rain, with temperatures between 50 and 65 degrees Fahrenheit. The country has a strong music tradition but just a handful of venues and one record label — Tutl (“total”), which, true to its name, releases local music in basically every genre, from classical to hip-hop to death metal, and whose office also holds the Faroes’ one surviving record store.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Whether it’s a soundtrack, a score or a song placement, there are countless wrong ways to do music for film and so few ways to make it feel right. There’s very little leeway, which is why it can be so challenging for even the most successful hitmakers to make the transition to film music — especially with a major film event like “Barbie.” With albums and songs by Amy Winehouse, Adele, Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney, Bruno Mars and many others under his belt, seven-time Grammy-winning producer Mark Ronson is one of the most successful pop songwriter-producers working today, yet his work on the soundtrack to Greta Gerwig’s summer blockbuster “Barbie” film — for which he co-wrote and co-produced five songs, cowrote the score with longtime collaborator Andrew Wyatt, and served as an executive music producer — was a new experience.

Marie Amachoukeli’s Ama Gloria has won the Best International Film Prize at the 40th edition of the Jerusalem Film Festival, running from July 13 to July 26.

EXCLUSIVE: AMC’s Interview with the Vampire Season 2 has paused production due to the actors strike, despite the fact it is filmed outside the U.S. with a majority international cast.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Syd Barrett was the guiding light of the original Pink Floyd — the band’s singer, primary songwriter and guitarist from their first day until their psychedelia-defining 1967 debut album, “Piper at the Gates of Dawn.” His sparkling, childlike melodies and lyrics have cast a huge influence over rock and pop music ever since — David Bowie cited him as a pivotal influence, and it shows — and entire genres of music, particularly the neo-psychedelic waves of the early ‘80s in the U.S. and U.K., bear his fingerprints. Yet he was also one of rock’s first “acid casualties” — people who took too many drugs, or at least the wrong ones, and were never the same afterward. His bandmates and friends say one day, he was just gone: The distinctive sparkle in his eye and spring in his step had disappeared. He became uncommunicative and withdrawn; he’d go onstage and just stand there, strumming one chord or doing nothing while the other bandmembers would struggle to hold things together. He’d bring the band a song and continually change it as they tried to follow him — this remarkable documentary takes its title from one such song, so titled because they could never get it if he kept changing it.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music From Marcel Duchamp to punk rock, the art world has struggled to find ways to present rebellious forms of art in a museum-like context, and hip-hop is certainly no exception. There have been many rap-related exhibits over the past couple of decades, from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to the Museum of Modern Art, some good, some less so. Exhibits around single artists have been more successful — “David Bowie Is,” “Rolling Stones Exhibitionism” and even the full museum dedicated to Bob Dylan — yet it’s hard to imagine one more fully realized, or thorough, than the 40,000 square foot “The Book of Hov,” Roc Nation’s homage to its founder, Jay-Z, which opens at the Brooklyn Museum on Friday, not far from the now-famous Marcy Projects where the man grew up.

There is growing angst about the potential impact of the confirmed SAG strike on upcoming A-list festivals such as Venice and Toronto, but the industrial action is already having a tangible effect on festivals around the world with the Galway Film Fleadh in Ireland having to pull a Q&A tonight with actor Matthew Modine.

EXCLUSIVE: Magnolia Pictures has acquired worldwide rights to Joan Baez I Am A Noise, the feature documentary about the iconic folk singer directed by Miri Navasky, Maeve O’Boyle, and Karen O’Connor.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Raedio, the “audio everywhere” division of Issa Rae’s Hoorae Media, has announced a multi-year deal with Def Jam Recordings. The partnership will give Raedio the opportunity to sign, market, and distribute signed artists through Def Jam’s network, according to the announcement. It includes publishing, music supervision, music library, podcasts, digital content and events divisions. Raedio’s “symbiotic pipeline to Hoorae Media’s ecosystem of film, television production and talent management divisions provides a unique all-in-one infrastructure paving the way for a new, disruptive approach to music label models,” the announcement states.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Ozzy Osbourne has pulled out of the Power Trip festival — the all-hard-rock festival featuring Metallica, Guns N’ Roses,  AC/DC, Tool and Iron Maiden, organized by Coachella founders Goldenvoice — for health reasons, the 74-year-old singer announced on Monday. The festival is scheduled to take place Oct. 6-8 in Coachella’s home base of the Empire Polo Grounds in Indio, Calif. “As painful as this is, I’ve had to make the decision to bow out of performing on Power Trip in October,” Osbourne, who has suffered from a number of health ailments in recent years, wrote on Monday. “My original plan was to return to the stage in the summer of 2024, and when the offer to do this show came in, I optimistically moved forward. Unfortunately, my body is telling me that I’m just not ready yet and I am much too proud to have the first show that I do in nearly five years be half-assed.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Over the past weekend, the Weeknd broke London Stadium’s record for highest attendance with his two-night stand at the venue on Friday and Saturday, which drew 160,000 people to his “After Hours Til Dawn Tour.” The tour also holds the record for highest single-night attendance for any show at the stadium with 80,000 fans. According to promoter Live Nation, the tour has already sold more than 2 million tickets for its European and forthcoming South America and Mexico dates — and 200,000 for both England and France. The sold-out 2022 North American leg of the stadium tour grossed more than $148 million dollars. The global tour has now grossed over $350 million dollars to date.

EXCLUSIVE: LA’s Micheaux Film Festival (July 10-16) is to honor director Steven Caple Jr. (Creed II) and actress Yvette Nicole Brown (Community).

Netflix and Constantin Film are expanding their business relationship.

With a mixed critical reception and low numbers at the box office, James Mangold‘s new entry in the “Indiana Jones” franchise is officially a disappointment. But that’s not entirely Mangold’s fault.

Kate Garraway opened up on how she was overcome with emotion following her last conversation with Fiona Phillips. TV presenter Fiona, 62, this week revealed she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease last year after suffering from brain fog and anxiety - which had left her feeling a ‘shadow of herself’.The former GMTV star at first thought the symptoms she was experiencing were down to the menopause - but further tests discovered that she was suffering from the heartbreaking condition.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent For his third edition at the helm, Locarno Film Festival artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro has assembled a wide spectrum of films that “do not resemble each other in terms of tone or form” while reflecting “the world in all its expressions and manifestations,” he tells Variety. This boundless range is best exemplified by the fact that starkly surrealist Filipino arthouse star Lav Díaz’s latest work, “Essential Truths of the Lake,” will be vying for the fest’s Golden Leopard alongside fare that, at least on paper, appears much lighter. This includes U.S. director Bob Byington’s indie comedy “Lousy Carter” and Estonian helmer Rainer Sarnet’s “The Invisible Flight,” which Nazzaro says  “mixes Kung Fu, hard rock and the Orthodox Church.”

Helen Flanagan has shared an important conversation she found herself having with her daughter at home after asking her: "Do you look like mamma?" The former Coronation Street star is a doting mum to her three children - Matilda, eight, Delilah, five, and two-year-old Charlie.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Sony Pictures Television has announced a new division focusing on music development, headed by Palash Ahmed, who worked as a music producer before joining the company in 2017. The move is intended to leverage the company’s ties to Sony Music Group and the larger music industry. In this role, Ahmed will be collaborating on music-related projects across SPT’s production groups (U.S. scripted, international production, nonfiction and kids divisions).  SPT Chairman Ravi Ahuja made the announcement in an internal note to staff, obtained by Variety.