LOS ANGELES Each episode of the four-part drama series Adolescence (Netflix) was shot in a single continuous take. Paradoxically over the full course of the show, these one-take episodes collectively deliver multiple profound takes and perspectives on a tragedy as we experience the emotional fallout on varied fronts after a 13-year-old boy repeatedly stabs a girl and Read More 

CANNES, France (AP) There’s no sufficient way of explaining what it’s like to be around Spike Lee, but his new film, “Highest 2 Lowest” comes pretty close. The main character, played by Denzel Washington, is a Knicks fan who won’t tolerate Celtics green in his house. A framed jersey of Jalen Brunson hangs in his Brooklyn apartment. There Read More 

CANNES, France (AP) Denzel Washington sandwiched a whirlwind trip to the Cannes Film Festival, in between Broadway performances, for the premiere of Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest” on Monday — and was rewarded with a surprise: an honorary Palme d’Or. Cannes had flipped around some of its scheduling to accommodate Washington’s speedy France trip, which came on his Read More 

CANNES, France (AP) Wes Anderson isn’t driving the bus. Laurent is. That’s the name of the driver who’s bringing Anderson, and his bus, to the Cannes Film Festival. As they drive from his home in Paris to the South of France, Anderson explains by phone: “I don’t drive the bus. You have to have, like, four years of Read More 

CANNES, France (AP) It took nearly until the end of the festival, but the Cannes Film Festival has its first outright sensation. Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” premiered Wednesday night to the kind of rapturous response that Cannes is fabled for. The film, starring Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning, marked Trier’s follow-up to his lauded 2021 film Read More 

CANNES, France (AP) Last year, the Cannes Film Festival produced three best actress nominees at the Oscars. This year’s edition may have just supplied another. In Lynne Ramsay’s “Die, My Love,” Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson play a married couple with a newborn who move into an old country house. In Ramsay’s messy and moving marital psychodrama, Lawrence Read More 

CANNES, France (AP) Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, “Eleanor the Great,” stars June Squibb as a 94-year-old woman who, out of grief and loneliness, does a terrible thing. After her best friend (Rita Zohar) dies, Eleanor (Squibb) moves to New York and, after accidentally joining the wrong meeting at the Jewish Community Center, adopts her friend’s story of Holocaust Read More 

CANNES, France (AP) Kristen Stewart has been talking about directing as long as she’s been acting. Not many people encouraged it. “I spoke to other actors when I was really little because I was always like: ‘I want to direct movies!'” Stewart recalls. “I was fully set down by several people who were like, ‘Why?’ and ‘No.’ It’s Read More 

CANNES, France (AP) Harris Dickinson is sitting on a rooftop terrace in Cannes, trying to find all the movie tattoos on his body. There’s a little one for 2001’s “Donnie Darko,” but there’s a much larger one on his arm for “Kes,” Ken Loach’s seminal British social realism drama from 1969. “I’m sure there’s a few more on Read More 

CANNES, France (AP) When Richard Linklater first started thinking about making a film about the French New Wave, he figured he’d show it all everywhere except one place. “I thought: They’ll hate that an American director did this,” Linklater said Sunday. “We’ll show this film all over the world, but never in France.” But Linklater nevertheless unveiled “Nouvelle Read More 

LOS ANGELES (AP) The spirit of Indiana Jones is baked into the essence of the new movie “Fountain of Youth.” This lighthearted, globe-trotting heist from Guy Ritchie, debuting on AppleTV+ on Friday, stars Natalie Portman and John Krasinski as estranged siblings attempting to piece together historical facts in hopes of finding the mythical spring. The quest takes them Read More 

LOS ANGELES (AP) Hollywood’s actors’ union filed an unfair labor practice charge against Llama Productions on Monday, alleging the company replaced actors’ work by using artificial intelligence to generate Darth Vader’s voice in Fortnite without notice. The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists said Llama Productions, a subsidiary of gaming giant Epic Games, “failed and Read More 

LOS ANGELES In national voting completed on Wednesday (5/21), SAG-AFTRA members approved the new, three-year 2025 SAG-AFTRA Commercials Contract and the 2025 SAG-AFTRA Audio Commercials Contract by a vote of 96.90% to 3.10%. The three-year deal with the Joint Policy Committee, LLC, negotiating on behalf of major national advertisers and advertising agencies, nets SAG-AFTRA members $218.4 million Read More 

CANNES, France (AP) Cannes is a short trip from Bono’s seaside villa in Eze-sur-Mer. He bought it with The Edge in 1993, and considers himself grateful to a coastline that, he says, gave him a “delayed adolescence.” “I can tell you I’ve slept on beaches close to here,” Bono says with a grin. “I’ve woken up in the Read More 

CANNES, France (AP) Before this week, the dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi hadn’t attended the premiere of one of his films in more than 15 years. Panahi, one of the leading international directors, was banned from traveling out of Iran in 2009 for attending the funeral of a student killed in the Green Movement protests, a judgment later Read More 

CANNES, France (AP) Akinola Davies Jr. and his brother Wale were both toddlers when their father died. Many years later, they began thinking about an idea for movie: What if they had gotten to spend a day with him? In “My Father’s Shadow,” which is playing in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section, the Davies brothers Read More 

NEW YORK The Ryan Barkan Best in Show Award at the 12th AMP Awards for Music & Sound went to duotone audio group for its music supervision work on “Reproductive Refrain,” the campaign film for Forward Midwifery, the sexual and reproductive telehealth services provider. The provocative two-minute spot created by agency Tall Poppy, which features the classic Read More 

LONDON At the 63rd D&AD Awards ceremony this evening (5/22) in London, 668 Pencils were bestowed–including three Black Pencils, the competition’s highest accolade reserved only for truly groundbreaking work. Earning Black Pencils were: –Designing Paris 2024 by W Conran Design won in Graphic Design Judges from the Graphic Design category said that the campaign is a Read More 

NEW YORK Jonathan Schwartz, a New York advertising and film production executive who served as managing director of Washington Square Films (WSF), passed away peacefully on May 17, surrounded by family and loved ones. He was 58. Raised in Chappaqua, NY, and a longtime resident of Fairfield, CT, Schwartz is survived by his wife, Mara, their twins, Read More 

NEW YORK & LOS ANGELES Moxie Pictures has signed award-winning director Najeeb Tarazi for U.S. representation. Based in Los Angeles, Tarazi–who’s recognized for his exceptional ability to blend innovative techniques with compelling humanist storytelling–had most recently been directing independently prior to joining Moxie. Earlier he had been repped in the U.S. market by production company SixTwentySix. Tarazi is a Harvard Read More 

NEW YORK The Field Museum and Leo Chicago, with contributing agencies Publicis North America, Aisle Rocket, and PXP Studios, took home the Grand Effie Award for their campaign “Blood Appétit” at the 2025 Effie Awards U.S. Gala, held Thursday (5/22) in New York City. To combat the seasonal dip in attendance caused by harsh Chicago winters, the Read More 

NEW YORK FCB New York and The New York Times Magazine are once again among the top firms in the ADC Global Creative Rankings for 2025, based on point totals for wins at last week’s ADC 104th Annual Awards ceremony during Creative Week in New York. FCB New York is ADC Global Agency of the Year for Read More 

LOS ANGELES Los York has signed award-winning designer and creative director Jeff Lam. He was previously creative director at TBWAChiatDay in Los Angeles where he led high-profile campaigns for Gatorade and Levi’s. He helmed the relaunch of the iconic “Is It In You?” campaign, and his latest work for Gatorade features Kendrick Lamar–the first musician in the Read More 

LOS ANGELES (AP) Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is getting a bit of a god complex. It’s not exactly his fault after defying death and completing impossible missions time and time again. But in “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” out Friday, there’s a breathlessness to the naive trust from his growing band of disciples, including the U.S. president Read More 

NEW YORK (AP) The six-legged alien Stitch from “Lilo & Stitch” doesn’t choose to be bad. He’s just genetically programed that way. Kind of like the way Disney is apparently programmed these days to strip mine its old animated stories to make poor live-action remakes. So here comes the sweet but utterly unnecessary “Lilo & Stitch” of 2025, Read More 

LOS ANGELES (AP) Agathe is celibate by choice. The 30-something hero of filmmaker Laura Piani’s feature debut “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life,” played by the luminous Camille Rutherford, hasn’t so much been ruined by Austen as she has been made acutely aware of her own limitations in both romance and literature. Neither she nor anyone else is good Read More 

NEW YORK (AP) Some bio documentaries are carried mostly by the reflective, archival footage that send you back to the subject’s heyday. But in Matt Wolf’s “Pee-wee as Himself” — as wonderful as much of the archival stuff is — nothing is more compelling than when Paul Reubens is simply himself. Before his death from cancer in 2023, Read More 

NEW YORK (AP) Rapper Kid Cudi testified Thursday that Sean “Diddy” Combs broke into his Hollywood Hills home in 2011 after finding out he was dating Combs’ ex-girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, and that he was sure Combs was behind the firebombing of his car weeks later. Speaking at Combs’ federal sex trafficking trial in Manhattan, Cudi said Read More 

NEW YORK The Tribeca Festival has unveiled its 2025 jury lineup responsible for selecting this year’s top projects across film, games, and audio storytelling sections. The panel will award honors across 15 competition categories at the festival, taking place June 4 –15 in New York City. This year’s jury brings together a prolific collection of creative forces–from Read More 

---