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    Drew Barrymore Calls Decision to Put Movie Making on Back Burner 'A No Brainer'

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    While she wants to focus on being a mother to her two daughters, the ‘Drew Barrymore Show’ host does admit that her hit Netflix series, ‘Santa Clarita Diet’, really saved her.

    Mar 11, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Drew Barrymore is following best pal Cameron Diaz’s lead and stepping away from film cameras. The actress-turned-talk show host admits she has no interest in making another film right now, because it would take her away from the job she loves best – mum.
    “I don’t want to be on a film set right now, but that could change when my kids are older,” she told Andy Cohen on his Sirius XM show. “I stopped doing these [films] when my kids were born, because I’ve done it since I was in diapers – 11 months old is when I started.”
    “And it was a no brainer to me to put making movies on a back burner so that I could be present and raise my kids myself,” the 46-year-old actress continued explaining the reason behind her reluctance. “I didn’t want to be on a film set asking the nanny how the kids were. I was like, ‘That is not my journey.’ ”
    Drew admits not being a film actress has allowed her to do other things. “When you step away from it, it’s a lot less scary… I’ve started brands, I was able to write a book…,” she added, explaining her hit Netflix show, “Santa Clarita Diet”, came along at the perfect moment.

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    “I was so knee deep into mothering my kids, I was like, ‘I don’t know who I am any more’,” she said. “I think I went way too far the opposite direction.”
    She added, “And if I can’t remember that I’m an individual with a skill set, I might die. So then I got to play this woman who gets to eat people and it was exactly how I felt. And it was just perfect and it was comedy and it was delicious and it was fun and it was irreverent and I couldn’t have loved it more. And it really saved me.”
    [embedded content]
    “The Drew Barrymore Show” host was married to art consultant Will Kopelman from 2012 to 2016. Together, the two share two daughters, 8-year-old Olive and 6-year-old Frankie.

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    A 'Blade Runner' Version of Manhattan

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraCredit…John Taggart for The New York TimesAm I in Manhattan? Or Another Sequel to ‘Blade Runner’?Flickering screens, whizzing helicopters and repurposed patches of pavement have transformed the scene.Credit…John Taggart for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyMarch 11, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETIf you have been drinking too much while looking at pictures of real life (or at least Instagram life), if you spend more time talking to machines than living creatures, if you’ve been wondering if you’re alive, if you have an itch you can’t scratch, if you think you have a condition called accelerating decrepitude, if you live in a building of empty apartments, there may be a movie that speaks to you, and that movie came out almost 40 years ago. It’s called “Blade Runner.”Since its 1982 debut, “Blade Runner,” set in a phosphorescent, futuristic Los Angeles and directed by Ridley Scott, has tempted fans to see it as coming to life, well, everywhere. The film’s motifs — gorgeously derelict prewar high-rises, the aesthetic influence of Asia’s megacities, massive LED screens — have become visual shorthand for The Future: Down and Out (but Dark and Sexy) Version.Purists insist that it is a Los Angeles movie, but posts tagged #bladerunner linked to places as disparate as Istanbul, Tijuana, Milan, Nairobi and Detroit typically appear on Instagram every 10 minutes or so.Few of those places resemble the movie as much as still mostly locked-down Manhattan, where a starker, lonelier, more class-riven update of the film’s retro-noir mood has taken hold. The filmmakers behind “Blade Runner” originally found inspiration in New York, and that was before the city incarnated its post-apocalyptic setting in which “anyone with the wherewithal has presumably gone away,” as Janet Maslin wrote in 1982. “Only the dregs remain.”A jumbo flashing billboard that was once the CNN logo, near Columbus Circle in Manhattan late in February.Credit…John Taggart for The New York TimesAdrian Benepe, the former New York City Parks Commissioner and current head of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, sees “creeping Blade Runner syndrome” everywhere, from the clogged skies over Manhattan to the subways, which he rides to work every day from his home on the Upper West Side.“They’re empty,” Mr. Benepe said. “I’ve been alone many times at rush hour. It’s eerie as hell.” He also finds the movie prescient in its depiction of a world saturated by intrusive, omnipresent advertising.“Places in New York that used to not have advertising now have ads,” he said. “You can’t get away from it. It’s in the subways, it’s on the streets, it’s on barges. You never stop being assailed.”Giant screens are nothing new, of course. But New York’s streetscape had been permeated as never before with twitchy, adhesively catchy LEDs, a trend that has only accelerated during the pandemic, with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announcing last summer the addition of 9,000 screens broadcasting “Covid-relevant safety information.”Herald Square, now with a neo-noir flair.Credit…John Taggart for The New York Times“There is advertising everywhere, and it’s a bit of sensory overload,” said Ben Kallos, a City Council member who represents Manhattan’s East Side. Mr. Kallos said LinkNYC, the network of 1,800 sidewalk kiosks around the city providing free Wi-Fi as well as block after block of eye-level digital content, “is pushing the boundary” when it comes to “the amount of advertising people are willing to take.”That said, for all its complexity and clutter, New York’s visual environment is carefully calibrated by zoning codes and the desire of advertisers not to trigger associations with images such as the “Blade Runner” signature motif of a geisha’s face beaming down from a hovering blimp, let alone the monolithic Big Brother figure in Apple’s infamous “1984” commercial (also directed by Mr. Scott).Slip-ups happen, however. Last summer, during protests over the killing of George Floyd, marchers who had gathered near Columbus Circle were shocked to see messages from a billboard overhead sternly telling them to go home and “Don’t be a criminal.”“They were telling people that this isn’t what George Floyd would want, things like that,” said Frederick Joseph, a marketing and communications specialist who is also the author of the recently published New York Times best seller “The Black Friend.”Mr. Joseph was marching beneath the 32-foot-high digital sign — the only such billboard facing Central Park — and was shocked to see the messages accompanied by the face of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, along with a misleading Twitter handle. (The Moinian Group, a real estate developer that owns the billboard, did not answer several calls.)“There was a countdown basically saying how much time before you were past curfew,” Mr. Joseph added. “And when it got to like 10 minutes before, people started running. It felt like something out of ‘The Hunger Games,’ or ‘Blade Runner.’”Not all of the resemblances to the movie are nightmarish. The retro-noir look “Blade Runner” is credited with has inspired copycats, including Anthony Bourdain, who before his death planned to open a “Blade Runner”-inspired “Asian night market” on the West Side of Manhattan, and Raf Simons, whose 2018 men’s wear show on a steamy, neon-lit night under the Williamsburg Bridge featured models in monklike cocoon coats carrying clear plastic umbrellas.Indeed, one of the subversive triumphs of “Blade Runner” is making techno-fascist dystopia seductive.“It’s supposed to be terrible, but of course it’s mesmerizing,” said James Sanders, the author of “Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies.” Mr. Sanders said that “Blade Runner” originally spoke to a “terror that white middle-class culture was going to be overrun by foreigners.”A helmeted man in bike and other vehicles, whizzing down 32nd Street.Credit…John Taggart for The New York TimesSome parts of Midtown are incontestably gloomy, such as along Lexington Avenue in the 40s, where mannequins seem to outnumber humans, space-helmeted bicyclists swerve around heaps of garbage, and like a jellyfish glowing undersea, any gleam of life only underscores the vacuum.”Just a half-mile south, though, in Manhattan’s Koreatown, the feel is warmer, if slightly edgy, as restaurants have transformed 32nd Street into a vogue-ish outdoor bazaar where you may not feel comfortable unless you’re wearing a neoprene cocoon coat with nozzles for the attachment of heating tubes. It’s not just the diners slurping seolleongtang inside plywood shacks, the cosmetic treatments on offer up glowing stairwells, or the puddles at the diners’ feet (which, although not runoff from acid rain as in “Blade Runner,” may be something worse from nearby Midtown).Scott Geres is the general manager of the Edison Hotel, a Jazz Age showpiece that opened in 1931, when Thomas Edison himself turned on the 26-story building’s lights. Pixelated models’ faces projected from Times Square flood many of its 810 rooms, including the Presidential Suite, where Aaron Judge, the New York Yankees right fielder, spent the 2018 season.Is that the Jolly Green Giant or something more sinister?Credit…John Taggart for The New York TimesFor the last year, Mr. Geres has been one of the few people at the Edison.“For the first month I didn’t leave the building,” said Mr. Geres, 48, who walks up to 25,000 steps a day checking for pipe leaks and fire hazards. “There used to be 5,000 people in this building on a Saturday night. Now it’s just me and one other person on my team.”Mr. Geres said his job is to keep the Edison’s lights flickering behind the plywood shielding windows on the Rum Bar and street-side restaurants. The 700-room Paramount hotel, across West 47th Street, however, is “dark dark,” he said, like so many buildings in Midtown.“Dark dark” is of course the psychic state of much of New York these days, and of Rick Deckard’s mind. In “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” the 1968 novel by Philip K. Dick on which “Blade Runner” is based, Mr. Deckard is tormented by empty apartments — “sometimes he heard them when he was supposed to be asleep.”Childless, communicating via “vidphone,” and drinking himself into oblivion (with Vangelis’s blissfully narcotic score playing in the background, who wouldn’t?), Mr. Deckard spends his time when not hunting fugitive robots — whose vivacity is a rebuke to his own shrunken soul — looking at pictures from before times, specifically, snapshots of possibly imaginary family members.It’s an on-the-nose image of loneliness and lassitude for those “living in the screen bunker,” as the pop psychologist Rob Henderson has called pandemic life. Meanwhile, outside the bunker, intimations of creeping disorder conjure the city of the 1970s, one of the main inspirations for “Blade Runner.”“Places in New York that used to not have advertising now have ads,” said Adrian Benepe, the former New York City Parks commissioner. “You can’t get away from it. It’s in the subways, it’s on the streets, it’s on barges. You never stop being assailed.”Credit…John Taggart for The New York Times“I was spending a lot of time in New York,” Mr. Scott has said of the movie’s filming. “The city back then seemed to be dismantling itself. It was marginally out of control.”At that time, Mr. Scott frequently found himself flying directly to Midtown via a helicopter service from Kennedy Airport that would land atop the former Pan-American (now MetLife) Building straddling Park Avenue. Not long afterward, following a grisly accident, the helicopter service was discontinued.Mr. Benepe sees helicopters as another way “Blade Runner”speaks to the moment.“In ‘Blade Runner’ you have this overhead traffic constantly circling overhead,” he said. “Well, now the ultrawealthy, not only are they no longer in mass transit with us, they’re not even on the roadways. They’re flying in from the Hamptons.”He pointed out that the helicopter charter service Blade recently announced a daily commuter run, set to begin this month, shuttling passengers to Manhattan from Westchester.“Blade Runner”’s class critique is not subtle. A sex worker hunted by Mr. Deckard tries to kill him with his tie. The movie’s arch-villain, the head of an evil biotech corporation, lives at the pinnacle of a Pharaonic temple, and apparently he’s the only character in the movie whose apartment gets sunlight.That home, towering above the city, is as spacious and warm as the other interiors are dismal and claustrophobic. Though, in one of the ways “Blade Runner” seems dated, compared with Pharaonic apartments in Manhattan nowadays, its proportions are not extravagant.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Disney+ Removes 'Dumbo', 'Peter Pan' and More From Kids Profiles Due to Racist Message

    Walt Disney Pictures

    While kids under 7 are restricted to watch those moviews, regular accounts will still able to stream those titles with a content advisory message being presented ahead of the feature.

    Mar 11, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Disney+ has pulled out some animated movie classics from its Kids Profiles due to negative depictions. A new report suggests that kids are now unable to access some titles including “Dumbo”, “Peter Pan”, “The Aristocats” and “Swiss Family Robinson”.
    “Titles with a content advisory notice related to negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures have been excluded,” Disney+ confirms on its online help center. While kids under 7 are restricted to watch those moviews, regular accounts will still able to stream those titles with a content advisory message being presented ahead of the feature.
    “These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now,” the advisories read. “Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.”

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    In Disney+’s Stories Matter webpage, the company mentioned about Jim Crow, the leader of the group. He shares the name of laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. In ‘The Song of the Roustabouts,’ faceless Black workers toil away to offensive lyrics like ‘When we get our pay, we throw our money all away,’ ” the site explains.
    As for “The Aristocats”, Disney+ explained that it was pulled from Kids Profile because “the cat is depicted as a racist caricature of East Asian peoples with exaggerated stereotypical traits such as slanted eyes and buck teeth.” “Peter Pan”, meanwhile, is considered giving negative message because “the film portrays Native people in a stereotypical manner that reflects neither the diversity of Native peoples nor their authentic cultural traditions.” The movie also saw Peter and the Lost Boys doing “a form of mockery and appropriation of Native peoples’ culture and imagery.”
    The site also notes that “Swiss Family Robinson” features “a stereotypical foreign menace.” The pirates, who had h top knot hairstyles, queues, robes and overdone facial make-up and jewelry, also “speak in an indecipherable language, presenting a singular and racist representation of Asian and Middle Eastern peoples.”

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    Amitabh Bachchan to Receive FIAF Award From Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese

    WENN

    The Indian movie icon is announced as the latest recipient of the annual International Federation of Film Archives awards, following in the footsteps of Nolan and Scorsese.

    Mar 11, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Amitabh Bachchan is to receive the Film Archive Award from Christopher Nolan and Martin Scorsese.
    The beloved Indian actor will be presented with the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF)’s annual award at a virtual ceremony on 19 March (21).
    Scorsese was the first-ever winner of the FIAF Award in 2001 while Nolan received the gong in 2017 thanks to his film archival efforts.

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    “FIAF has very been active in India and South Asia, thanks to its close collaboration with Film Heritage Foundation, since 2015,” FIAF president Frederic Maire said in a statement. “By presenting our prestigious FIAF Award to Amitabh Bachchan, we want to show the world how rich and diverse, but also how fragile, this unique film heritage is, and we want to publicly thank Bachchan for his role as a high-profile advocate for the rescue of this heritage, in India and beyond.”
    Scorsese praised Bachchan’s “advocacy for preserving India’s film legacy,” calling it “exceptional” while Nolan added, “As a past recipient of the FIAF Award, I know how imperative it is that representatives of the film industry around the world come together to ensure that we preserve our film heritage… He has played an essential role in putting the cause of film preservation on the map in India and the subcontinent.”
    The Award reveal came after the Indian movie icon underwent surgery. “My gratitude and love for the concern and the wishes…,” he later thanked his fans for their outpouring love and support.

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    Jared Leto Struggled to Recover From 'Dark Place' He Fell Into When Filming 'The Little Things'

    Warner Bros. Pictures

    The former ‘Suicide Squad’ actor claims he needed ‘a break’ after ‘spending time in a dark place’ to play a murderer in his new movie with Denzel Washington.

    Mar 11, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Jared Leto struggled to get relief from the “dark place” he had to go to for “The Little Things”.
    The Oscar-winning actor stars opposite Denzel Washington in the film, which tells the story of Leto’s Albert Sparma, who is being investigated by Denzel’s Joe ‘Deke’ Deacon. But getting into the right mindset to play a killer took its toll on Leto.
    “You’re spending time in a dark place, and the materials, the research can start to creep into your dreams at some point,” he told Entertainment Tonight. “For anybody, that’s, like, binge-watched Making a Murderer, at a certain point you need a break. You need to turn on Tiger King or something.”

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    But while there were some difficulties in taking on the role, Leto was determined not to let the opportunity of working with Washington pass him by.
    “I don’t know what it is about him in particular that I keyed into as a young actor, but I always wanted to see what he was going to do next,” he added. “He’s always great. He always surprises you. He’s one of the few actors that has really had that consistency, and he really puts his full body and heart and soul into every performance that he does. So, just the Denzel of it all was enough reward for me.”
    Jared Leto was last seen on the big screen in 2018’s “The Outsider”. He will next be seen reprising his role as Joker in “Zack Snyder’s Justice League”. His other new projects include true-story movie “House of Gucci” and Marvel superhero adaptation “Morbius”.

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    Michael B. Jordan Officially Confirms Double Duty as Director and Lead Star for 'Creed 3'

    MGM

    The ‘Black Panther’ actor confirms rumors that he will step behind the lens for the upcoming third ‘Creed’ movie while also reprising his role as the titular fighter.

    Mar 11, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Michael B. Jordan is ready for fight night after getting the official OK to direct the third “Creed” movie.
    Jordan, who starred in the first two films in the “Rocky” spin-off franchise, will be stepping back into the ring as moviemaker – a big reveal initially flipped to the media by his co-star, Tessa Thompson.
    The film, which is scheduled to hit cinema screens at the end of 2022, will be Jordan’s first as director.

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    “Michael’s vision for Creed III is incredibly exciting and will undoubtedly be an important contribution to the cannon of this storied franchise,” MGM’s Film Group chairman and president Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy write in a joint statement, obtained by Deadline. “We are thrilled to bring his directorial debut, and share this next chapter in the Creed story, to theaters next year.”
    “Directing has always been an aspiration, but the timing had to be right,” the “Creed” star adds. “Creed III is that moment – a time in my life where I’ve grown more sure of who I am, holding agency in my own story, maturing personally, growing professionally, and learning from the Greats like Ryan Coogler, most recently Denzel Washington, and other top tier directors I respect. All of which sets the table for this moment.”
    “This franchise and in particular the themes of Creed III are deeply personal to me. I look forward to sharing the next chapter of Adonis Creed’s story with the awesome responsibility of being its director and namesake.”

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    Producers Guild Nominations Boost ‘Chicago 7’ and ‘Nomadland’

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonOscar Nomination PredictionsOscars Dos and Don’tsOscars DiversityDirectors Guild NominationsBAFTA NominationsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe ProjectionistProducers Guild Nominations Boost ‘Chicago 7’ and ‘Nomadland’But some contenders were snubbed. The road to a best-picture Oscar nomination nearly always goes through this group, which may doom “Da 5 Bloods.”“The Trial of the Chicago 7,” featuring Jeremy Strong, center left, and Sacha Baron Cohen, was among the films included on the producers’ list.Credit…Nico Tavernise/Netflix, via Associated PressPublished More

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    ‘Markie in Milwaukee’ Review: Acknowledging Painful Transitions

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Markie in Milwaukee’ Review: Acknowledging Painful TransitionsThis documentary presents a portrait of a transgender woman’s life, her faith as an Evangelical Christian and her strained relationship with her family.Markie, as seen in “Markie in Milwaukee.”Credit…Icarus FilmsMarch 10, 2021, 5:08 p.m. ETMarkie In MilwaukeeDirected by Matt KliegmanDocumentary1h 32mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.When the documentary “Markie in Milwaukee” begins, Markie Wenzel, a middle-aged transgender woman, is in the process of eradicating the records of her own existence. When we meet her, nearly a decade ago, she’s beginning the process of “detransitioning,” which in her case meant legally changing her name, discarding her hormone treatments and wearing men’s clothes in public.Markie came out in 2006 at the age of 46, and her wife, her children and her church painfully rejected her. Shortly thereafter, she met the director Matt Kliegman, who was flying through the Milwaukee airport where Markie works. Kliegman struck up a friendship with her when she was newly open about her gender, and he began to film her. His movie is the result of about 10 years spent documenting Markie’s life, her faith as an Evangelical Christian and her strained relationship with her family.[embedded content]Whether transitioning or detransitioning, Markie invites the filmmakers into her life with tremulous vulnerability. The documentary plainly lays out the impasses she is facing. As a woman, Markie is more fully realized but utterly alone. If she lives as a man, she is self-denying, but her community no longer holds her at a distance.Markie is generous with the camera, and her candor lends the film power. She grants access to her personal archives, sharing tapes from her former life as a pastor and photos of her once-secret makeup tests. The film doesn’t waste her openness or her willingness to use the documentary as a kind of therapeutic space.But if Markie is undeniably compelling as a subject, the film doesn’t quite match her bravery and her willingness to explore uncharted territory. There are plenty of fly-on-the-wall observations, but little play or introspection besides what Markie is able to offer.Markie in MilwaukeeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More