Indie News

Whenever I ran into Bradley Cooper on the “A Star Is Born” promo trail — a cocktail party in Toronto, the premiere in Los Angeles, the American Cinematheque tribute, the AFI Awards, the Oscar nominee lunch — he was eager to talk about his movie. But between the rapturous response to the backstage musical update back in the early fall (final Metascore: 88) and earning eight Oscar nominations last month, the excited buzz around the picture peaked and waned.

Many an early frontrunner faces that risk over a long Oscar campaign. And Warner Bros., which always puts box-office performance ahead of awards, refused to foreground the film’s depiction of addiction to lend gravitas to their commercial entertainment. In any case, Cooper isn’t gathering as much credit as he deserves for diving off a high board and executing “A Star Is Born” so well.

This big-budget glossy studio picture with major movie

“Veep” is finally coming to an end. The Emmy-winning HBO comedy’s final season debuts March 31, capping a historic run in its impact on the TV industry and timely commentary on politics. But even though Season 7 is only seven episodes long — down from its typical 10 — what matters is that the series is going out on its own terms.

“It’s the right ending for America,” showrunner, director, and executive producer David Mandel said during the series’ TCA panel Friday afternoon. “I think everyone will be pleasantly surprised, hopefully in a very funny way.”

“I’m not going to say that Selina evolves, except to say she’s truer to herself,” Louis-Dreyfus said via satellite about her character’s ultimate ending. “She’s truer to herself than she can possibly be by the time this season ends. I’m not sure evolution is her game. I would also add is that

Anyone who expected “Big Mouth” to offer up a familiar, mushy Valentine’s Day special either has never seen an episode before or is about to be extremely disappointed. Either way, the double episode “My Furry Valentine” picks right up where the show’s fabulous Season 2 left off, giving a pretty good overview of what this animated treasure can do with the freedom it’s earned.

At the risk of recapping the entire premise of this love-themed two-parter, it’s fair to say that each of the show’s core beloved characters gets a helpful refresh in their respective anxieties. Nick (Nick Kroll) is still trying to get out of the shadow of being a late bloomer. Jessi (Jessi Klein) is still adjusting to life with mom and her new partner. And Jay (Jason Mantzoukas) is still trying to figure out the best way to pleasure inanimate objects.

Aside from

Marshall Curry’s Oscar-nominated short film “A Night at the Garden” brings viewers inside a 1939 Nazi rally held in New York City, and now distributor Field of Vision is set to disrupt Fox News with footage of the rally. Field of Vision will debut a television spot for “A Night at the Garden” during the Monday, February 11 airing of “Hannity.”

“A Night at the Garden” assembles archival footage to show viewers what a Nazi rally in America really looked like in 1939. The event depicted took place at Madison Square Garden and was attended by 22,000 Americans. The short runs seven minutes and features a speech from Fritz Julius Kuhn, the leader of the pro-Nazi organization German American Bund. The rally’s 80th anniversary occurs February 20.

“I hope that by showing the ‘Hannity’ audience how manipulative leaders in the past have attacked the press, scapegoated minorities, made light of violence against protesters,

Post-apocalyptic dramas have become such a staple of modern storytelling that they often take the backdrop for granted, as if audiences know the way the world ends so well that it requires little elaboration. Casey Affleck’s bleak “Light of My Life” — in which he directed, wrote, and stars — falls into this loose category of talky, character-based survival dramas that may as well exist in a single expanded universe.

To be fair, Affleck has conceived an original scenario, and he’s placed it against a gorgeous, lyrical backdrop. “Light of My Life” delivers a lush variation on familiar elements, and wends its way to a tense final showdown that makes the wandering trajectory worthwhile. The movie unfolds in the wake of a disease that has wiped most of the women on Earth, while Affleck’s unnamed father defends his young daughter (astonishing newcomer Anna Pniowsky) from a man’s world.

After debuting at last month’s Sundance Film Festival, Dan Reed’s controversial Michael Jackson documentary, “Leaving Neverland,” has set its domestic broadcast debut date. HBO will premiere the two-part documentary series over the course of two nights, each broken into two-hour sections: the first part will air on Sunday, March 3 at 8Pm, followed by the second part on Monday, March 4 at 8Pm. The documentary will also be available on HBO Now, HBO Go, HBO On Demand, and partners’ streaming platforms.

The project centers on “two men who recount their experiences of being sexually abused by Michael Jackson.” After the project was added to the festival lineup, the Estate of Michael Jackson released a statement that read, in part, “This is yet another lurid production in an outrageous and pathetic attempt to exploit and cash in on Michael Jackson. … This so-called ‘documentary’ is just another rehash of dated and discredited allegations.

To the millions of people that paid money to go see “A Star is Born” and bawled their eyes out, and praised the film for months after, I got news for you – Sean Penn is a much bigger fan of the film than you are. Honestly, Sean Penn is probably a bigger fan of “A Star is Born” than anyone is a fan of anything in the history of the world.

Continue reading Sean Penn Writes A Letter To ‘A Star Is Born’ That Will Melt Your Cold Heart & Make You Believe In True Love at The Playlist.

If you follow the awards season, it’s quite clear that the best films and TV series aren’t always the ones that win the awards. And this Oscar season is no different. While people are quick to criticize “Black Panther” for getting a Best Picture nomination, there’s also the opposite problem of work like “Leave No Trace,” “The Rider,” and “You Were Never Really Here” getting zero recognition, even though those films received some of the best reviews of the year.

Continue reading Alfonso Cuarón Calls Oscar Campaigning “Vicious” & Takes Away From The Joy Of Being Nominated at The Playlist.

Rock documentaries generally skew towards humanizing musical icons and paint portraits of overcoming personal adversity. That’s just the kind of way they lean, complete with a rise and fall and redemption arcs. But the soulful and affecting “David Crosby: Remember My Name” is special nonetheless, managing to break through those tropes as it chronicles a similar architecture of ups and downs, successes and tragedies. Directed by A.J. Eaton, with the help of producer Cameron Crowe, who acts as Crosby’s interlocutor throughout, it’s almost impossible to not be taken by this brutally honest and emotionally vulnerable film about a famous musical icon, who’s also just a man who’s beginning to contemplate his last act in life.

Continue reading ‘David Crosby: Remember My Name’ Is A Soulful & Intimate Portrait Of Regret [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

Heimat Is a Space in TimeThe Berlinale, one of the world’s biggest and most important film festivals, is at the beginning of a major transition. Its director of the last 19 years, Dieter Kosslick, will retire after this 69th edition, and is to be replaced by Carlo Chatrian, who has impressively stewarded the Locarno Festival for the last six editions with its reputation as a bastion of challenging art cinema paired with comprehensive retrospectives. For an outside visitor who has attended the Berlinale only ten years of Kosslick’s tenure, the festival is a sprawling event prioritizing abundance over quality, centered around a once-essential competition that only erratically curates a substantial amount of the year’s biggest or most important art films. This main competition is the unstable keystone of an immense program with numerous subsections and many wonderful things scattered hither and thither that have struggled to uphold the festival's reputation.

One of the bigger stories of 2018 was the pay gap between female and male performers in Hollywood. And the story that seemed to sum the whole issue up quite well was a report about Netflix’s “The Crown,” which revealed that co-stars Matt Smith and Claire Foy were paid differently, even though Foy was the Emmy-winning lead. Well, according to Netflix executive Ted Sarandos, that situation not only was rectified but led to sweeping changes at the streaming service.

Continue reading Netflix Exec Says ‘The Crown’ Pay Disparity Controversy Led To Company-Wide Changes at The Playlist.

Lost in the flurry of stories about Liam Neeson’s most recent controversial comments is the fact that his most recent film “Cold Pursuit” opens today in North America. And honestly, there’s enough about the film, on its own, to merit conversation, without the aide (or detriment) of Neeson’s words. One of those conversations could be about director Hans Petter Moland, who is the latest European filmmaker to remake his own film in a new English-language adaptation.

Continue reading ‘Cold Pursuit’ Filmmaker Knows Liam Neeson Is Not Racist But Is Just “Extremely Honest” at The Playlist.

It’s the reunion you’ve been waiting for. An actor at the top of his game, teaming up with a director that launched him into superstardom. Get out the bottles of champagne because it’s time to celebrate! Okay, enough of that. We just wanted to make it seem like a huge deal that Aaron Taylor-Johnson was teaming up with director Matthew Vaughn for the new ‘Kingsman’ prequel film.

Continue reading Aaron Taylor-Johnson Reteams With ‘Kick-Ass’ Filmmaker Matthew Vaughn For ‘Kingsman’ Prequel at The Playlist.

“You need something all the time!” Mara snaps at Jo. “It gets difficult.” It’s a little comment, but one that’s been at least 10 years in the making. After more than a decade of intense — and intensely unbalanced — friendship in which the burden of emotional responsibility has only ever belonged to her, Mara (Tallie Medel) finds that her patience is starting to wear thin. Jo (Norma Kuhling) has just flaked out on dinner plans for the a zillionth time, and then shown up at Mara’s door at 12:40 A.M. in a fever about some other thing; she’s in another one of her panics about being fired from another one of her jobs.

Jo’s trouble goes a bit deeper than the average millennial’s post-adolescent slump, but Mara doesn’t really care about the reasons anymore. She’s getting her shit together. Not in a “strut

Each of this year’s five contenders for the Oscar Best Documentary (Short Subject) packs a timely issue at its heart: immigration, women’s health, health care, racism, and the spread of fascist ideology. Most of them find a personal edge for their stories, too, rooting out heroes and villains in the pursuit of both truth and a good story.

Curiously, in a mostly well-made group of would-be winners, it’s the nominee that is the least outwardly personal that is the most successful, because its content doesn’t chronicle the story of just one person or group, instead offering a chilling indictment of an entire country at one pivotal moment in history. In a field of urgent films, it’s the oldest story that packs the biggest punch, if only because it comes with such a necessary warning: keep telling these stories, or nothing will ever change.

Here’s

Back before James Cameron was known as the filmmaker that only makes movies that are the biggest films ever, he was a sci-fi filmmaker attempting to create a big-budget blockbuster about a cruise ship sinking a hundred years ago. At the time, Cameron probably didn’t think he’d be on the precipice of film history, but he was. And a great deal of that success with “Titanic” came down the perfect casting, launching Leonardo DiCaprio into superstar status.

Continue reading James Cameron Explains Why He Passed On Matthew McConaughey For The Lead In ‘Titanic’ at The Playlist.

For André Holland, there is much riding on the success of the Netflix sports drama “High Flying Bird,” which made its world premiere at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival and lands on Netflix today. The movie features an intriguing pairing behind the camera, with a script by “Moonlight” Oscar winner Tarell Alvin McCraney directed by Steven Soderbergh, but it also marks Holland’s first executive producer credit through his newly-minted Harper Road Films production shingle — as well as his first leading role in a movie. But Holland’s just getting started and has big plans for the future.

“High Flying Bird,” which follows a sports agent’s controversial business pitch to a rookie basketball player, is the first project on Holland’s 13-year-long resume that he shepherded along from the start. He first brought the idea to Soderbergh after the pair worked together on the filmmaker’s Cinemax series “The Knick.

However reductive it might be to frame “By the Grace of God” as a French riff on “Spotlight,” that’s exactly what writer-director Fran?ois Ozon was hoping to make when he decided to make a film about the ongoing trial of Lyon-based Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who stands accused of covering up the fact that a charismatic priest in his dioceses has been sexually abusing children for more than 30 years. More to the point, that’s also exactly what Bernard Preynat’s victims asked Ozon to make for them.

Not a documentary exposé, as the filmmaker once intended, because that would do little more than reiterate the facts these brave men have already worked so hard to disseminate through the media. And certainly not a psychosexual thriller in the vein of Ozon’s previous work, as it’s easy to imagine how this story might not be well-suited for someone whose

Casey Affleck says his new directorial effort “Light of My Life” is not a response to past claims of sexual harassment against him. Affleck wrote, directed, and stars in the movie, which is having its world premiere in the Panorama section at the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival. The apocalyptic relationship drama centers around a father and his young daughter living in isolation as humanity draws to an end. Per the synopsis, the film is set in a “society without women where gender roles have to be renegotiated.”

“It’s not. I wrote this movie and made this movie before all of those things became part of the conversation,” Affleck said at the film’s Berlin press conference about the film being a response to his personal history. “I hope people keep their minds open and be responsible and measured in their reactions. And people can talk for themselves. It’s not something I can control.

Yesterday marked the beginning of the Berlin Film Festival. For the next two-ish weeks, Berlin is the place to go to find some of the world’s best cinema, and a fair amount of stars looking to grab distribution for their latest projects. Casey Affleck is there to promote his latest film, “Light of My Life,” in which he wrote, directed, and starred in. And in a new interview with Deadline, the Oscar winner discusses his filmmaking influences for his post-apocalyptic father-daughter film, as well as debuting a brand-new clip.

Continue reading Casey Affleck Debuts First Clip From ‘Light Of My Life’ & Discusses His Major Cinematic Influences at The Playlist.