Director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire immersed himself in New York and the world of paramedics--spending nearly a year in the back of ambulances as part of extensive first-hand research--so that he could create a similarly immersive experience for the viewers of his film, Asphalt City (Vertical/Roadside Attractions), which goes wide with its U.S. release today (3/29). The film bowed at last year’s Cannes Film Festival under the title Black Flies , adapted from Shannon Burke’s 2008 novel of the same... Read More 

Following the success of " Wonka " and the " Dune" movies, Warner Bros. is staying in the Timothée Chalamet business. The star signed a first look deal with the studio to collaborate on future projects as an actor and producer, Warner Bros. said Tuesday. This doesn't mean that Chalamet can only make movies with Warner Bros., just that the studio is entitled to right of first refusal. The terms of the deal were not released, but it is a "multi-year" agreement. Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group... Read More 

NEW YORK (AP) -- Martin Scorsese has already said he's working on a film about Jesus, and now he's making a project about saints. Scorsese will host, narrate and produce an eight-part docudrama called "Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints" for the streaming service Fox Nation, it announced Wednesday. The series will follow the lives of eight men and women who have been beatfied, including Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene and Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan friar who volunteered to... Read More 

NEW YORK (AP) -- Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley play women brought together by letters in the new film "Wicked Little Letters" but their preferred means of communication is WhatsApp. With their husbands, they have a group chat with an unprintable name, inspired by the some of the foul language of their film. What do they write to each other? "There's lots of 'I f——— love you. I'm going to snog your face when I see you," says Colman. "With a long 'uuuuuuu,'" adds Buckley. "We're wordsmiths," says Colman... Read More 

NEW YORK (AP) -- Steve Martin has long marveled at the many phases of his life. There's his youth as a Disneyland performer, surrounded by vaudeville performers and magicians. A decade as a stand-up before the sudden onset of stadium-sized popularity. An abrupt shift to movies. Later, a new chapter as a banjo player, a father and, a comedy act, once again, with Martin Short. It's such a confounding string of chapters that Martin has typically only approached his life piecemeal or schizophrenically. He titled an... Read More 

Diarra Kilpatrick recalls writing for NBC's Debra Messing procedural "The Mysteries of Laura" when she got feedback from the network over wanting to have Messing's character, a homicide detective with the NYPD, out on a date. "The network was like, 'Do people hate her? There are still criminals at large." And I remember thinking, 'What? She has to have something for her," Kilpatrick said recently over Zoom. A date is now at the center of a new comedic mystery series Kilpatrick created,... Read More 

Joana Vicente is stepping down as the CEO of the Sundance Institute, the nonprofit behind the annual Sundance Film Festival, after two and a half years. "She has been a true advocate for independent storytellers, and I know she will continue to positively impact this community," said Sundance Institute Board Chair Ebs Burnough in a statement released Friday. Vicente oversaw some of the Sundance Institute's most challenging years during the pandemic, when the festival went virtual and later came... Read More 

NEW YORK (AP) -- If content creators and corporate executives made TikTok videos about the platform's possible U.S. demise, disco diva Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" could supply the soundtrack. Sure, businesses that built strategies around TikTok and promote products there would prefer not to seek eyeballs on another app. Smaller firms and solo entrepreneurs are bound to feel more pain in the event of a breakup. But if the popular video-sharing service remains under Chinese ownership and Congress bans it,... Read More 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The young voices in the messages left for North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis were laughing, but the words were ominous. "OK, listen, if you ban TikTok I will find you and shoot you," one said, giggling and talking over other young voices in the background. "I'll shoot you and find you and cut you into pieces." Another threatened to kill Tillis, and then take their own life. Tillis's office says it has received around 1,000 calls about TikTok since the House passed legislation this month that would... Read More 

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by Elon Musk's X Corp. against the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate, which has documented the increase in hate speech on the site since it was acquired by the Tesla owner. X, formerly known as Twitter, had argued the center's researchers violated the site's terms of service by improperly compiling public tweets, and that its subsequent reports on the rise of hate speech cost X millions of dollars when advertisers fled. On Monday, U.S... Read More 

SAN FRANCISCO -- An unfathomable tragedy deepened last Wednesday (3/20) with the death of three-month-old baby Cauê Ramos Pinto de Oliveira from injuries sustained four days earlier when struck at a bus stop in San Francisco by a sports utility vehicle going at a high rate of speed. Also waiting at the bus stop and killed were the infant’s two-year-old brother Joaquim and their parents--Diego Cardoso de Oliveira, 40, a creative director at Apple, and Matilde Ramos Pinto, 38, an executive producer at RSA Films... Read More 

The Oscar -nominated documentary " Food, Inc " helped change the way many consumers think about the systems behind the things we eat. But in the 16 years since it came out, new problems have arisen and old problems got worse, magnified in part by shortages during the pandemic. They're given a spotlight in a sequel, " Food, Inc 2," arriving in theaters and on digital in April. The filmmakers are going one step further, too: The activist media company Participant, and producers River Road and... Read More 

NEW YORK -- Anomaly has hired Jeff Stamp as managing partner and chief creative officer at its New York office. Stamp joins Anomaly from TikTok, where he held the position of head of brand and creative. Prior to this he served as the VP of creative at Peloton. During his tenure on the brand side for both tech giants, Stamp restructured the in-house creative models, helped architect the brands’ evolving positioning strategies, optimized design principles, managed partner agency relations, and led the... Read More 

LOS ANGELES -- British director Tim McNaughton has signed with Arts & Sciences for commercial representation in the U.S. and U.K. His filmmaking sensibilities, while often comic, are not confined to humor in their expression, with a rich visual execution that makes his work stand out. McNaughton’s approach can be seen in the entertaining 2023 Morrisons’ Christmas commercial featuring a chorus of oven gloves singing the ‘80s hit “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” by Starship; his viral, award-winning turn for... Read More 

LOS ANGELES -- Production studio ArtClass Content has added Daniel Russell for directorial representation spanning commercials, branded content and music videos. ArtClass becomes his first career production company roost for commercials. Russell’s collaborations include a who’s who of music’s most notable personalities, including Missy Elliot, Justin Timberlake, SZA, Cardi B, Khalid, Ty Dolla $ign, Saweetie, and Normani. Early in his career, Virginia-born Russell became the protége of stalwart music video... Read More 

VENICE, Calif. -- Production house slim has added two directors to its roster--reuniting with Thomas Garber, and bringing aboard Leonardo Dalessandri for his first U.S. representation. Garber first signed with slim in 2013 and now returns after a stint at Caviar. In the U.S. Garber has directed for the likes of Jeep, Dodge, AT&T, Lincoln, Disney, Corona, Mercedes Benz, Audi and Nissan. He started working as an editor and that experience still shows strongly in his work today. Garber directs his spots with an... Read More 

NEW YORK -- Production company RadicalMedia has brought Rebecca Niles aboard its management team as executive producer for commercial production. Niles brings a unique blend of creativity, strategic vision, and operational expertise to RadicalMedia. Niles--who has a proven track record of fostering talent and delivering exceptional results--most recently served as the managing director of ArtClass. During her tenure at ArtClass, Niles spearheaded remarkable growth, taking the company from its infancy as an... Read More 

When we talk about "movie magic," the first thing that comes to mind is often something like the bikes achieving liftoff in "E.T." But it applies no less to Alice Rohrwacher's wondrous "La Chimera," a grubbily transcendent folk tale of a film that finds its enchantment buried in the ground. "Were you dreaming?" a train conductor asks the sleeping Arthur (Josh O'Connor), a distant, temperamental Brit in Italy with little more to his name than the rumpled cream-colored linen suit he wears. The... Read More 

"The Beautiful Game," a new movie starring Bill Nighy and Micheal Ward, is about a real international soccer tournament called the Homeless World Cup. Don't go in expecting documentary realness or grit, however. This is a movie-movie (debuting on Netflix on Friday, tidily constructed to leave audiences feeling inspired and uplifted. Mind you, this isn't a bad thing – verité authenticity has its place but so do well constructed, glossy fantasies that still evoke authentic emotion and get at some... Read More 

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Golden Globes and CBS have reached a five-year deal to broadcast the annual award show and stream it live on Paramount+, it was announced Monday. The new agreement, which begins with January's telecast, gives the Globes a new broadcast home following years of turmoil. The Globes had long resided at NBC before scandal enveloped the organization behind the awards, leading NBC to give them up. CBS stepped in to air the 81st Golden Globes in January, and was rewarded with a ratings boost. The... Read More 

NEW YORK (AP) -- Ghost busting is still a good business. "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire" collected $45.2 million in ticket sales over the weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday, handing Sony Pictures the studio's first No. 1 film since last summer. The opening weekend for "Frozen Empire," in 4,345 theaters, was nearly exactly the same as the $44 million launch for "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" in 2021. "Afterlife" rebooted the franchise with a sequel built around the descendants (Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard,... Read More 

The 2024 Live in Levi’s® campaign from TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles opens with this film that captures the energy and joy of dance as a powerful medium of expression and optimistic advancement. Levi’s new seasonal range of tops, jeans, and more are brought to life in the spot titled “The Floor Is Yours,” within which dance represents the positive impact of taking action. Directed by Omar Jones of production company Riff Raff and choreographed by Sherrie Silver, the film depicts a group of friends... Read More 

This spot introduces us to a woman who is notified that her job interview went well and that she is being offered a trial run which can lead to permanent employment. The only potentially undermining stumbling block is that the commute is long and she has no car. Her predicament is not uncommon in France, according to Cléa Martinet, VP sustainability at Renault Group, who shares, “Mobility plays an essential role in obtaining, keeping a job or getting trained. This is a source of inequality:... Read More 

While opioid dispensing rates in the U.S. are slowly ticking down, they remain elevated compared with rates in other countries. The U.S. makes up only 4.4% of the world’s population, but it consumes over 80% of the world’s opioids. Luckily, consumers today have more options than ever before for powerful, nonaddictive pain relief as they navigate their unique positions on the overall pain spectrum, including but not limited to OTC medications, physical therapy, medication and chiropractic care... Read More 

In celebration of the recent Global Recycling Day (3/18), Barilla and renowned tidying expert and bestselling author Marie Kondo are looking to inspire sustainable living with the creative and inventive reuse of pasta boxes, empowering individuals to make a positive impact on the environment, as a sign of love for the planet. Recent research has highlighted the significant environmental footprint associated with transportation, particularly in the fashion industry. Transportation alone... Read More 

Finnish gaming giant Supercell has unveiled a global campaign to mark 10 years of its mobile game Boom Beach. The push, called “#Boomiversary,” was developed in partnership with Waste Creative and in-house production studio This Thing of Ours. A 60-second animated film showcases a miniature diorama, with a Boom Beach scene brought to life on a one-meter cake. At first glance, the cake looks like a memento of 10 years of player achievements. However, as the sky burns red and the beach becomes a... Read More 

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