Vietnam Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Naman Ramachandran Singapore’s Momo Film Co has unveiled a six-film slate that includes projects from recent prize-winners at Cannes and Locarno. Momo is one of five outfits selected at the 2024 Berlinale Co-Production Market‘s company matching program. Fresh off two wins at Locarno 2023 for Nelson Yeo’s debut feature “Dreaming & Dying,” Momo is continuing its relationship with the Singaporean filmmaker for his sophomore feature “The Drought,” a dark comedy-horror film set in the time of a drought.

Fresh off a Super Bowl win, Travis Kelce is on his way to Hollywood.Or, at least, to Austin, Texas.The Kansas City Chiefs tight end, and famous boyfriend of pop star Taylor Swift, will make his executive-producing debut with the new indie “My Dead Friend Zoe,” which will have its world premiere at the South by Southwest fest in early March.The dramedy, directed by Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, stars Sonequa Martin-Green, Natalie Morales, Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman, and is about a veteran reuniting with her Vietnam-vet dad — while having conversations with her deceased best friend.Interestingly, the film was financed with the help of green energy tax credits through President Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. According to Variety, it’s the first film to do so.“Hollywood is risky, right? On a scale of one to 10, Hollywood, it is a 9.5.

The Dandy Warhols have shared their latest single, ‘I’d Like to Help You With Your Problem’, which features Slash on guitar. Check it out below.The song is set to be included on the band’s upcoming 12th studio album ‘Rockmaker’, which comes out on March 15 via Sunset Blvd.

Bob Edwards, a Peabody-winning National Radio Hall of Famer who anchored NPR’s Morning Edition for nearly a quarter-century before moving to satellite radio, died Saturday. He was 76. National Public Radio announced his death but did not provide details.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent The CGI animated sequel to “Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness,” the hit adventure film based on the Dark Horse comics which sold around the world, has lured buyers ahead of the European Film Market. Titled “Chickenhare and the Very Very (Very) Old Groundhog,” the movie is budgeted at $23 million (a large budget by European production standards) and brings back the creative team behind the first film.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor World sales agency Square Eyes has boarded Vietnamese drama “Cu Li Never Cries,” which has its world premiere in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival. Variety debuts the trailer below. The film is directed by Phạm Ngọc Lân, who wrote the screenplay with Nghiêm Quỳnh Trang.

Star Wars, but had to pass on the opportunity.During an appearance on Wednesday’s (January 17) edition of The Tonight Show, the two-time Oscar winner recalled how she was approached to play the iconic sci-fi character, which would later become a breakthrough role for the late Carrie Fisher.Foster had to turn down the part, however, due scheduling conflicts with the original Freaky Friday film.“I was [offered the role], but I had a conflict,” she told host Jimmy Fallon. “I was doing a Disney movie, and I just didn’t want to pull out of the Disney movie because I was already under contract, so I didn’t do it.

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group has preemptively acquired rights to The Women, a new book from #1 New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah, which is up for publication by St. Martin’s Press in February.

Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers is set in the last weeks of 1970 and, if attention is paid, you’ll see Da’Vine Joy Randolph pay homage to Isabel Sanford, particularly how the tv legend wore her hair when she played Louise “Weezy” Jefferson in the classic TV comedy The Jeffersons.

Attorney Leon Wildes, who stood next to John Lennon and Yoko Ono in court, in public and on TV during the early 1970s as the famous couple successfully fought unrelenting deportation attempts by the Nixon Administration, died Monday, January 8, at New York’s Lenox Hill Hospital. He was 90.

John Lennon from being deported from the US in the 1970s, had died aged 90.Wildes died last Monday (January 8) at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, his family said. He had fallen ill after suffering a series of strokes.His name became known in the music world in 1972 when he took on the case of helping Lennon and Yoko Ono to extend their visas.In a statement, his son Michael Wildes said: “Dad felt he effectively lived the American Dream for a kid from Olyphant, PA and spent his life facilitating the same experience for scores more.

Robert Downey Jr. has defended the ‘blackface’ that his character uses in the 2008 film Tropic Thunder, saying it “railed against tropes that were not right”. The 2008 comedy film was directed by Ben Stiller and stars Downey Jr alongside Jack Black, Jay Baruchel and Brandon T.

Tisa Farrow, a former actor born, like sister Mia Farrow, to show business parents Maureen O’Sullivan and John Farrow, died unexpectedly Wednesday morning. She was 72.

Jonathan Majors.Bernice King, the youngest child of the civil rights activist, shared a post on X/Twitter honouring her late mother, Coretta Scott King. The post included a portrait of her mother, as well as a link to her 2017 HuffPost article about her mother.The 60-year-old wrote: “My mother wasn’t a prop.

Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese were “scared” of her on the set of Taxi Driver.During a recent appearance on the US chat show Jimmy Kimmel Live, to promote the new season of True Detective, the two-time Oscar-winning actor reflected on her experiences from being a child actor, including her landmark role in Scorsese’s 1976 film.In Taxi Driver, Foster played the role of a child sex worker named Iris alongside De Niro, who starred as a lonely Vietnam veteran with mental health issues.“I was 12. And they had to say things like, you know, Can you pull his fly down?’ And it was a little awkward,” Foster recalled.Foster noted how, because she had been on more film sets than Scorsese and De Niro at that point in time, her elder colleagues were somewhat intimidated when having to interact with her.“Yeah, they were a little scared, Scorsese especially, who kept giggling every time he talked to me.

A couple avoided NHS waiting lists by getting a dental appointment 5,900 miles away in Thailand. Jamaica Kelly, 23, decided to tie in an appointment at the dentist during her five-month backpacking stint with her boyfriend, Sam Austen, 23.

In what producers are calling a “provocative and zeitgeisty” new musical, The Ghost of John McCain, with a book by Scott Elmegreen and score by Drew Fornarola, will get an invitation-only industry reading in New York this week.

Last week, I had another very occasional lunch with a friend who was a power in indie film when that meant something. We worked through the usual stuff—aches and pains, dead colleagues, favorite restaurants closed. Then came that increasingly difficult movie question: “Seen anything you liked?”

actor has been slated to star in a new film called With Love. The action film will be made for Universal Pictures, and is set to be directed by Jonathan Eusebio and produced by David Leitch and Kelly McCormick via 87North (Bullet Train and The Fall Guy).No plot has been given about the film, but Deadline reports it will be an original script written by Josh Stoddard and Matthew Murray.It will be Quan’s first feature lead since his appearance in the critically-acclaimed Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Stuart Miller Da’Vine Joy Randolph had grown weary of scripts that offered her shallow or one-dimensional characters. “I’ve felt like I had to fight for fully realized characters with complexities or even start writing or producing myself,” she says. Then she was sent David Hemingson’s script for “The Holdovers,” for the role of Mary Lamb, who works in the cafeteria of a prep school for the wealthy, soldiering on even as she mourns the death of her sonin Vietnam. “I was so overjoyed to read this character, someone who was really struggling, but also trying to persevere in spite of her situation,” says Randolph, who was nominated for a Tony Award in 2012 for her performance in “Ghost: The Musical.” She has since appeared in everything from “Dolemite Is My Name,” “High Fidelity” and “Only Murders in the Building” to “The United States vs.

John Lennon – saying that he doesn’t see it as “my proudest moment”.An icon of the Belfast punk scene, Terri Hooley reminisced about some of the biggest moments of his life in a new interview with The Guardian, including his tumultuous encounter with The Beatles legend.In the discussion – done to help promote new biography Terri Hooley: Seventy-Five Revolutions by Stuart Bailie – the music industry veteran recalled how the encounter took place around 1970.Introduced to Lennon in London by friends of Oz Magazine, the musician mistook Hooley as a supporter of the IRA in his pre-pacifist days and offered to supply him with weapons. The mistake led to Hooley throwing a punch at the former Beatle – a move he now says he isn’t proud of.“He was stoned so it wasn’t my proudest moment,” he told the outlet, adding: “When I met Cynthia [Lennon’s first wife] and told her, she said, ‘You should have hit him harder!’”The response to the misunderstanding came from Hooley’s upbringing in Belfast’s troubled times and strong political outlook; which also led to him confronting Bob Dylan about his refusal to stop paying taxes to protest the Vietnam war.Hooley’s importance in the industry comes from his role in putting Belfast on the map for music – launching various counterculture magazines and pirate radio stations during times of conflict.

Les McCann, acclaimed jazz pianist and vocalist whose greatest commercial success came with the 1969 song “Compared to What”, from his album Swiss Movement, criticizing the Vietnam War, has died. His longtime manager Alan Abrahams confirmed to multiple media outlets that McCann died Friday at a hospital in Los Angeles where he had been admitted with pneumonia. He was 88.

Jaden Thompson Tom Smothers, one half of the Smothers Brothers musical comedy duo, died on Dec. 26 in Santa Rosa, Calif. due to cancer.

said in a statement that Tom was “not only an extraordinary comedic talent, who, together with his brother Dick, became the most enduring comedy duo in history, entertaining the world for over six decades — but was a true champion for freedom of speech, harnessing the power of comedy to push boundaries and our political consciousness.”“Tom was a true pioneer who changed the face of television and transformed our culture with The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, whichsatirized politics, combated racism, protested the Vietnam War, and led the way for ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ‘The Daily Show,’ today’s network late night shows,and so much more,” Gunderson, who has helped preserve and showcase the Smothers Brothers career and legacy, continued.“We were proud to bring Tom and Dick out of retirement and reunite them on stage in 2019 to celebrate their legendary careers, and we are honored to preserve Tom’s remarkable work and legacy here at the National Comedy Center for generations to come.”A private memorial service for family and friends is set to take place sometime in 2024. Dick and his wife, Marie, have requested memorial donations honoring Tom to be made to the National Comedy Center.Tom is survived by his children, Bo and Riley Rose Smothers, grandson Phoenix, Marcy Carriker Smothers, sister-in-law Marie Smothers, and several nephews and a niece.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Oscar voters tend to be big-screen enthusiasts. But the reality is that not every awards contender will be seen in the cinema — and that’s especially true during the holiday season, when all the family commitments, shopping and big meals can turn even a movie theater evangelist like Christopher Nolan into a couch potato. The allure of a theater’s dim, cool ambience and sharing the experience with strangers is what many filmmakers envision for their creations.

Alexander Payne’s 3x Golden Globe nominated, 8x Critics Choice nominated dramedy The Holdovers will stream on Peacock on Friday, Dec. 29.

EXCLUSIVE: Canadian comedy Run the Burbs has been picked up by Hulu for its second window in the U.S.

TikTok’s ‘Add To Music App’ is set to roll out to users in 19 more countries worldwide following its launch last month.Last month, TikTok announced a new feature that allows users to directly save sounds from the app to their streaming platform of choice.Users in the US and UK can already utilise the feature now, which allows fans to save music they’ve discovered to Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music.The social media platform has now announced plans for it to be available in the following countries: Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Ireland, Sweden, Thailand, Malaysia, UAE, Argentina, Colombia, The Netherlands, Turkey, South Africa, Vietnam and the Philippines.“Add To Music App has been designed to help music fans capture songs that they love on TikTok in the moment of discovery, and to easily save the song to their preferred music streaming service to enjoy whenever they like,” read a statement from the video sharing platform.The feature can be used by tapping on a sound which is listed below a user’s name, then hitting ‘Add to music app’, where you can choose your preferred streaming platform.

Squid Game The Challenge winner Mai Whelan claims she has yet to receive the $4.56 million first prize - 10 months after filming the Netflix show. The 55 year old won over viewers of the game show with her dramatic story of how she escaped the communist regime in her homeland of Vietnam after the fall of Saigon - as well as her cunning streak that saw her beat 455 other players to scoop the jackpot. In the final of the programme, which was inspired by Netflix’s smash-hit dystopian Korean series Squid Game, she beat 27 year old scuba instructor Phill Cain after multiple rounds of rock, paper, scissors.

Naman Ramachandran “Sunday,” which has its world premiere at the Singapore International Film Festival, marks the feature directorial debut of Sean Ng. Ng previously directed a few shorts and his producing credits include feature documentary “André and His Olive Tree” (2020), which was Taiwan’s highest-grossing documentary that year. “Sunday” was developed at TorinoFilmLab.