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    ‘The Vigil’ Review: What Could Go Wrong Watching Over the Dead?

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘The Vigil’ Review: What Could Go Wrong Watching Over the Dead?Money pulls in a night watcher, but a malicious spirit gets into his head in this feature debut from Keith Thomas.Dave Davis as Yakov in “The Vigil.”Credit…IFC MidnightFeb. 25, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETThe VigilDirected by Keith ThomasHorror, Mystery, ThrillerPG-131h 29mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.It is Jewish tradition to have someone watch over the dead until they are buried. That person is called a shomer. Yakov (Dave Davis), a young Jewish man who has left behind a strictly Jewish-observant life, is pulled into last-minute night-watch shomer duty. He’s reluctant but could desperately use the $400 that he is promised. What could go wrong with just a few hours spent next to a dead body, anyway?So much. Keith Thomas’s slim but effective “The Vigil” milks terror from a minimalistic setup, relying on the shapes we make out with squinted eyes in the shadows. Yakov’s shift comes with ample warning: The shomer before him dropped out for mysterious reasons. Then there’s the widow, Mrs. Litvak (the late Lynn Cohen, in one of her final roles), who pleads with Yakov, upon his arrival, “to leave now.” Thomas is clever to leave Yakov just vulnerable enough to stay.[embedded content]Also feeding on Yakov’s vulnerability is a Mazzik, a malicious spirit of Jewish folklore, looking for a new host. It manipulates a painful memory from Yakov’s past. He wonders whether he’s imagining things because of a side effect of medication he most likely takes to cope with trauma from his past.Thomas’s missteps occur when he strays from his simple formula. The minuscule flinch of the dead body is far more spine-tingling than the cacophonous chaos that later ensues. The unique premise marries Old World traditions and Holocaust history with present-day Hasidic Brooklyn, but the addition of technological elements is hit or miss. The Mazzik overriding Yakov’s smartphone communication is clever, but the film could have done without Yakov killing time during the vigil by Googling, “How to talk to women.” (period included).The VigilRated PG-13 for the things that go bump in the night. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    ‘My Darling Supermarket’ Review: Cosmic Tales From the Checkout Lane

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘My Darling Supermarket’ Review: Cosmic Tales From the Checkout LaneThe director Tali Yankelevich applies an experimental flair to her documentary about supermarket workers in Brazil.A scene from the documentary “My Darling Supermarket.”Credit…Cinema TropicalFeb. 25, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETSomewhere in São Paulo, Brazil, there’s a supermarket that looks awfully familiar. It has white fluorescent lights and endless shopping lanes. Every day, there’s bread to bake and meat to grind. It’s the kind of store you might find anywhere in the world. Yet, by the end of the slight but intriguingly strange documentary “My Darling Supermarket,” it might as well be on Mars.“Just ordinary people doing their jobs — would anyone want to watch that?” chuckles a manager.The director Tali Yankelevich tackles this challenge to mixed results, moving spryly between interviews with employees and observational footage, captured with experimental flair, of the store’s many rote operations.[embedded content]There’s a forklift operator who spends his free time building cities on a cellphone game; a custodian with some decent pipes; a flirty bread maker interested in quantum physics. A standout character is an ebullient baker with dreams of Tokyo, who sometimes wanders the aisles in full anime cosplay.Yankelevich occasionally glimpses deeper truths from her subjects, but it’s easy to wonder what such unfocused portraits communicate beyond the obvious fact that grocery-store workers are humans with personalities, too! Meanwhile, potentially interesting, distinguishing details about Brazilian culture are muted by the director’s commitment to abstraction.Better late than never, the film’s spiritual thrust becomes clear by the third act. The stark symmetry of the shelved merchandise and the eerily dissonant score assumes an otherworldly, ritualistic power when our subjects begin musing on faith and the nature of existence. The cinematographer Gustavo Almeida’s camera glides around the store like a satellite drifting through the interdimensional cosmos. For a spell, I was reminded of what supermarkets felt like as a child: vast alien playgrounds.My Darling SupermarketNot Rated. In Portuguese, with subtitles Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. Watch on Film Forum’s virtual cinema.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    ‘The Father’ Review: A Capricious Mind

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘The Father’ Review: A Capricious MindAnthony Hopkins gives a scalding performance as a man stricken by dementia in this clever drama.Anthony Hopkins in “The Father.”Credit…Sean Gleason/Sony Pictures ClassicsFeb. 25, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETThe FatherNYT Critic’s PickDirected by Florian ZellerDramaPG-131h 37mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.At once stupendously effective and profoundly upsetting, “The Father” might be the first movie about dementia to give me actual chills. On its face a simple, uncomfortably familiar story about the heartbreaking mental decline of a beloved parent, this first feature from the French novelist and playwright Florian Zeller plays with perspective so cleverly that maintaining any kind of emotional distance is impossible.The result is a picture that peers into corners many of us might prefer to leave unexplored. When we first meet Anthony (Anthony Hopkins), a hale octogenarian ensconced in an upscale London flat, we’re primed to expect the kind of genteel entertainment Hopkins has long made his own. But Zeller, adapting (with Christopher Hampton) his acclaimed stage play, has nothing so cozy in mind; and when Anthony’s middle-aged daughter, Anne (Olivia Colman), arrives to tell him she’s moving to Paris to pursue a new relationship, his reaction escalates from bafflement to outright distress.[embedded content]Anne is concerned. Anthony has just scared away his most recent caregiver after accusing her of theft, and a new one must be found. After Anne leaves, he hears a noise in the flat and discovers a strange man (Mark Gatiss) reading a newspaper. The man claims to be Anne’s husband, Paul, but isn’t Anne divorced? And why is the man saying Anthony is their guest? Confused and upset, Anthony is relieved to hear Anne return — only now she’s played by Olivia Williams and neither we nor Anthony recognize her. Later still, Rufus Sewell appears as a very different, much angrier Paul, one who will nudge the movie’s tone toward something more complicated and infinitely more dark.Combining mystery and psychodrama, “The Father” is a majestic depiction of things falling away: People, surroundings and time itself are becoming ever more slippery. As if to enforce order on days that keep eluding him, Anthony clings obsessively to his watch. Morning turns to twilight in the space of a single breakfast exchange; conversation ceases whenever his second daughter, Lucy, is mentioned. And while the audience will be able to piece together the plot’s timeline, Zeller’s relentlessly subjective approach places us slap-bang in the middle of Anthony’s distorted memories. It’s a brutal, terrifyingly simple technique, backed by a production design that manipulates the details of his surroundings just enough to make us question where — and when — we are.Whether as Lear or Lecter, Hopkins has never been an especially physical actor — most of the magic happens above the neck — but here he pushes his capacity for small, telling gestures and stillness to distressing limits. For Anthony, senility doesn’t creep, it pounces, and he responds by freezing until it retreats. When it doesn’t, his disorientation manifests in ways that require Hopkins to swerve, sometimes on a dime, from mischievous to enraged and from charming to laceratingly cruel. It’s an astonishing, devilish performance, one that turns a meeting with Anthony’s new caregiver (a terrific Imogen Poots) into a master class of manipulation.There is love in “The Father” — most of it radiating from Colman’s wonderfully warm presence — but there’s no sugarcoating: Compassionate yet unsparing, the movie is more likely to give you nightmares than warm fuzzies.“Do you intend to go on ruining your daughter’s life?” Sewell’s Paul hisses to Anthony at one point, his resentment hanging thickly in the air. Sewell’s screen time is limited, but crucial, his wounded performance revealing a marriage fraying from the strain of Anthony’s condition. That stress results in a couple of scenes that venture shockingly close to horror, and maybe that’s appropriate. In a recent interview, Hopkins confessed to becoming momentarily overwhelmed during filming by a reminder of his own mortality. He probably won’t be the only person to have that response.The FatherRated PG-13 for distressing language and themes. Running time: Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    ‘Un Film Dramatique’ Review: Students Record the Paris Suburbs

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘Un Film Dramatique’ Review: Students Record the Paris SuburbsThis documentary gives middle school children a chance to show their experiences.Mohammed Samassa, left, and Fatimata Sarr in the documentary “Un Film Dramatique.”Credit…Cinema GuildFeb. 25, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETA Dramatic FilmDirected by Eric BaudelaireDocumentary1h 54mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.In the documentary “Un Film Dramatique,” the artist Éric Baudelaire fulfills a commission to make a dedicated artwork for Dora Maar, a newly constructed middle school in the Saint-Denis suburb of Paris. For the project, Baudelaire filmed 21 students across four years, and he encouraged them to take up the camera themselves. The finished film demonstrates the liveliness and generosity that can come from civic-minded art.The movie passes by in informal episodes. The filmmakers set up games and debates, encouraging classmates to discuss what they think the movie will be about. The students consider what it means to be the subjects and creators of a documentary, and in turn, they reckon with how their school fits into the world around them.[embedded content]These adolescents are working class, often the children of immigrants, and they scoff at the rough reputation that Saint-Denis carries in Paris. With cameras in their hands, they build their own records about what life is like in the suburbs. They dance, they sing, they offer house tours. Each child is confident, curious and collaborative.The movie has a patchwork quality that comes from jumping in and out of different people’s vantage points. Some scenes are riveting, as when the French-Romanian student Gabriel-David debates his French-Ivorian classmate, Guy-Yanis, over what it means to have a country of origin if you’ve never lived there. But just as many sequences are banal — kids filming themselves watching TV as if they were streaming on Instagram Live.It’s the cumulative effect of seeing the world through the eyes of these children that makes this movie so deeply joyful. This is a heartening project, a philosophical excavation of a school that abounds with playful optimism.Un Film DramatiqueNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Podcasting Is Booming. Will Hollywood Help or Hurt Its Future?

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyPodcasting Is Booming. Will Hollywood Help or Hurt Its Future?A frothy adaptation market is just one sign of the rapid evolution of the industry. But some worry that big money will stifle the D.I.Y. spirit that has driven much of its success.Once seen as a marginal forum for comedy, tech talk and public radio programming, podcasting is one of the hottest corners in media, with Hollywood hungry for TV and film adaptations.Credit…Hudson ChristieFeb. 25, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETIn November, production began in Los Angeles on a new series with the trappings of a potential hit.“Unwanted” is a buddy action comedy told with a wink, part “Beverly Hills Cop” homage and part Seth Rogen-esque genre sendup. It stars Lamorne Morris (“Woke” and “New Girl”) and Billy Magnussen (“Game Night”) as slackers who stumble on criminal intrigue in between bong hits, and its script is stocked with gross-out humor. (Sample line: “When I told you I dropped my phone in the toilet, that wasn’t the whole story.”)But “Unwanted” is not the latest Netflix comedy; it’s a podcast — or at least is starting out that way. The show’s first two episodes were released this week by QCode Media, a two-year-old company whose podcasts, with big names and high production values, are all but audio pitches for film and television. In July, for example, QCode introduced “Dirty Diana,” an erotic drama starring Demi Moore; by September, Amazon made a deal to turn it into a TV series.A frothy adaptation market in Hollywood is just one sign of the rapid evolution of podcasting. Though the format dates to the early 2000s — it is named after the iPod — podcasting has had an expansive growth spurt the last few years. Since 2018, the number of available shows has more than tripled, to around two million. Spotify, Amazon, SiriusXM, iHeartMedia and other major streaming and traditional media companies have poured about $2 billion into the industry, both chasing and fueling its growth. Celebrities, even former presidents like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, are piling in, looking at on-demand audio as a key brand-building channel.Once seen as a marginal forum for comedy, tech talk and public radio programming, podcasting is one of the hottest corners in media. Yet its formats and business practices are still developing, leading producers, executives and talent to view the medium as akin to television circa 1949: lucrative and uncharted territory with plenty of room for experimentation and flag-planting.“It’s a new frontier, and we love it,” said Morris, who is also a creator and executive producer of “Unwanted.”But along with the optimism come worries that big money may stifle the D.I.Y. spirit vital to podcasting’s identity. Indie podcasters, used to an open and decentralized distribution system, fear being marginalized if the tech giants push through pay walls and exclusive deals. And as podcasting becomes big business, there is unease that the diversity of voices in our earbuds — never a strong suit of the industry — could be put at risk too.Nick Quah, who writes the Hot Pod newsletter, said that corporate interests tend to run contrary to what has always made podcasting interesting: the idea that anyone, anywhere, can bubble up and find an audience.“As we move forward and more of these platforms assume a stronger gatekeeping position,” Quah said, “there’s a strong possibility for new voices to get pushed out of the space. That’s a real concern.”Lamorne Morris, left, and Kyle Shevrin, are the creators of the buddy action comedy podcast “Unwanted.”Credit…Daniel Dorsa for The New York TimesCracking the Code of the Podcast AdaptationFor the average listener, the most noticeable change in podcasting’s immediate future may simply be higher-quality shows.The influx of money — from tech platforms, advertisers and Hollywood — has attracted talent and driven spending on production resources. Podcasting executives say they are now flooded with pitches for new shows, often from A-list writers, directors and performers.“What you’re seeing now is this incredible flowering of creativity,” said Lydia Polgreen, a former HuffPost and New York Times editor who is now managing director of Gimlet Media, a Spotify-owned studio.For Hollywood, the podcasting space has become a farm team for intellectual property — where story lines can be tested out and promising material scooped up relatively cheaply. And with the movie business dominated by remakes, superhero franchises and other tent-pole mega-productions, the freedom podcasting provides is also refreshing, said Rob Herting, a former agent at the Creative Artists Agency who founded QCode.“I had gotten tired of the repurposing of old intellectual property,” Herting said. “I kind of yearn for original stories. This felt like such a great outlet for those, a place where you can go to be bold, experiment and move quickly.”QCode launched in early 2019 with “Blackout,” starring Rami Malek as a radio D.J. in a small New England town when the national power grid mysteriously goes dark. The company now has a portfolio of 11 series, including “Hank the Cow Dog,” a children’s show with Matthew McConaughey, and “Carrier,” a thriller starring Cynthia Erivo that showcases another feature of many of the best podcasts: intense, consuming sound design. QCode plans 15 new podcasts in 2021.Modest budgets and quick turnaround time enable more risk-taking. Most of QCode’s shows cost in the low to mid six figures to make, Herting said — orders of magnitude less than a film or TV project — and an eight-episode podcast can be taped in just a week or two. A comparable TV season, Morris said, could take two months to shoot.“Unwanted” is the studio’s first comedy, and Morris, who had a part in “Carrier,” said he was unsure whether it would work. For one thing, taping during the pandemic meant working remotely; using audio gear shipped to them at home, actors communicated via Zoom.But Morris said that his worries evaporated the first day on the virtual set. His character, Ben, is introduced pleading for an extension on his student loan, before he is revealed to be calling from a strip club. In the background, the comedian Ron Funches announces the dancers like a lascivious carnival barker: “Put your hands together for the beautiful … Desssstiny!”“I heard the raw playback and I was dying laughing,” Morris recalled. “You forget how immersive audio can be until you sit down and just plug in,” he added. “It really takes you there.”A successful adaptation into film or television can generate $1 million or more for podcast creators, far exceeding what most shows can collect from advertising. (The entire ad market for podcasts was estimated to be less than $1 billion last year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.)But as the audience for podcasts grows — at last 104 million Americans listen each month, according to a survey last year by Edison Research and Triton Digital — TV and film properties are increasingly being adapted into audio shows as well.“It really is a two-way street,” said Josh Lindgren, a podcast agent at C.A.A. “It’s not just that Hollywood is coming to gobble up all the podcast I.P. and turn it into TV shows.”Warner Bros. is creating podcasts for Spotify based on DC Comics characters; Marvel is bringing a slate of podcasts, including a scripted series, “Marvel’s Wastelanders,” to SiriusXM. And Ben Silverman, the TV producer behind the American version of “The Office,” whose company Propagate Content made an oral history of that show for Spotify, has struck a new deal with SiriusXM that will establish a new franchise of entertainment oral history podcasts.“There are no rules anymore,” Silverman said. “If you are a creative person, you can go anywhere.”Walled Gardens and the Future of IndiesEmily Cross channeled her inner Seinfeld with “What I’m Looking At,” a podcast where she spends 20 to 30 minutes just talking about what she’s looking at.Credit…Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesHollywood deals have taken podcasting far from its shoestring origins. But the growth story has been building for years.The first mainstream hit arrived in 2014 with “Serial,” an investigative look at the murder of a teenage girl that was made by veteran public-radio journalists. The show — and the media attention it received — demonstrated the format’s storytelling and marketing potential.New stars were minted. Leon Neyfakh was a Slate staff writer in 2017 when he hosted the first season of “Slow Burn,” a meticulous examination of the Watergate scandal.As a writer, Neyfakh said, he was dispirited to find that long feature stories, which had taken months of work, would yield just a few minutes of “average engaged time” from readers. But “Slow Burn” fans would spend hours with the show, listening through to the end of episodes that lasted 30, 40 minutes or more.“People are just willing to give you more of their attention in podcasting than they are in print,” Neyfakh said.Epix turned the Watergate season of “Slow Burn” into a TV documentary and an anthology series starring Julia Roberts and Sean Penn is heading to Starz.Along with high-minded journalism came a flood of comedian-led talk shows, pop-culture gabfests, sex and self-help shows, and every niche dive imaginable. In 2017, Emily Cross, an indie-rock musician, was joking with a friend about the glut of podcasts when she hit on a “Seinfeld”-inspired idea.“What if I just did a podcast about nothing? A podcast about just what I’m looking at,” Cross recalled. “I was like: Actually, I really like that idea. So I just started doing it.”For 20 to 30 minutes each week, “What I’m Looking At” features Cross calmly describing random objects — her shoes, an apple, a box of toothpicks — in soothing detail, like a combination Zen relaxation ritual and conceptual art project. She earns no money from it directly (she has supporters on Patreon), but has built a small community of followers who email her comments after every episode.Shows like “Slow Burn” and “What I’m Looking At” exemplify the power and charm of podcasting — an intimate, technologically simple medium that can help forge a connection with an audience over any topic, weighty or whimsical.That power, and the lure of greater advertising dollars, has begun to draw big investment. In 2018, iHeartMedia, the broadcast radio giant, paid $55 million for Stuff Media, the studio behind hits like “Stuff You Should Know.” Last year, SiriusXM acquired Stitcher, a popular app and distributor, for at least $265 million. And in late December, Amazon agreed to buy Wondery (“Dr. Death,” “Dirty John”) at a price estimated at more than $300 million.Over the last two years, Spotify has paid more than $800 million for a series of podcasting companies, like Gimlet, the Ringer and Anchor. Spotify has also struck content deals with the Obamas, Kim Kardashian West, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the comedian Joe Rogan, whose no-holds-barred talk — including with guests like Alex Jones — has made him podcasting’s closest thing to Howard Stern.Spending has amped up competition among platforms, many of which have begun to protect their investments by keeping content inside so-called walled gardens, accessible only to subscribers. Spotify, which keeps some shows within its walls, has made it clear that it views podcasts as a way to attract new customers to its service. This month, Spotify said that a quarter of its 345 million customers listen to podcasts.“There is no question that podcasting is helping drive more people to Spotify than ever before,” said Dawn Ostroff, the company’s chief content and advertising business officer. “That’s really our goal at this point.”Consumers have grown accustomed to content arms races among streaming services like Netflix and Disney+. But in podcasting, it has led to fears of corporate Balkanization of what has long been a platform-neutral medium, in which anything but the most high-profile shows could effectively be suppressed.For now, there are signs of experimentation in the distribution model — or at least a hesitancy by platforms to wall off too much of their content. When “The Michelle Obama Podcast” came out in July, for example, it was only on Spotify, but within two months it was widely available, including on Spotify’s archrival, Apple.SiriusXM, which owns Pandora and Stitcher, has developed a hybrid approach to take advantage of the offerings on each of those three brands. The company circulates free podcast versions of some of its subscriber-only radio shows, like Kevin Hart’s “Comedy Gold Minds,” to Pandora and Stitcher, in part as marketing for SiriusXM’s paid service.“We love our three-barrel attack,” said Scott Greenstein, SiriusXM’s president and chief content officer.A Diversity Downside?Lory Martinez, whose Studio Ochenta makes “Mija,” said starting her own company may have been the only way to get her shows — and her multilingual, multicultural approach — to market.Credit…Carolina Arantes for The New York TimesLory Martinez, a Colombian-American podcaster, keeps her grandfather’s press card at her desk in Paris.He was a newspaper reporter in Colombia who covered the country’s Indigenous communities, and saw his role as bringing those people’s stories and perspectives to the entire nation. His approach inspired the mission of Martinez’s company, Studio Ochenta: “Raising voices across cultures.”Ochenta began a year and a half ago with “Mija,” a short-form podcast about the life of an immigrant daughter from Queens — modeled after Martinez herself — that was released in English, Spanish and French. It reached No. 1 on iTunes’s fiction podcast charts in 13 countries, and its third season, about an Egyptian Muslim character in Britain and the United States, will be released in April in English, Spanish and Arabic.“There is now more of a space for voices than you would traditionally hear, and they are appearing in podcasting,” Martinez said. “They’re not only making podcasts, they are starting companies. That’s what’s so exciting about this time.”But Martinez said that starting her own company may have been the only way to get her shows — and her multilingual, multicultural approach — to market.“I don’t think ‘Mija’ would have been made if I pitched it elsewhere,” Martinez said.Increasing corporatization, and the incentive for platforms to favor the shows they own, has intensified concerns that podcasts from underrepresented groups could enjoy less promotion, find fewer listeners and collect less advertising revenue — a vicious cycle that would repeat many of the failings of the old media model.For all the rah-rah talk of podcasts as a democratized medium, building diversity has been a slow undertaking. In 2008, for example, 73 percent of monthly listeners in the United States were white. In those days, “the average podcast you listened to was two white dudes talking about internet routers, and the audience reflected that,” said Tom Webster of Edison Research.Last year, Edison and Triton found that white listeners’ slice of the pie had narrowed to 63 percent, nearly mirroring the 60 percent of Americans who identify as white in census data. But the representation behind the microphone still lags.Juleyka Lantigua-Williams, a former journalist at NPR and The Atlantic who founded a production company focused on work by people of color, said that media and tech companies should look at diversity as a business imperative, given the country’s shifting demographics and the devoted audiences that companies like Studio Ochenta are building.“In the rush to secure the players that look like sure bets,” Lantigua-Williams said, “they are overlooking the creators who are really growing audiences that are going to stay with them five, 10 years down the line.”Yet some podcasters have found success navigating the corporate world from within. Spotify’s “Dope Labs” features two young Black women, Titi Shodiya and Zakiya Whatley — both working scientists with Ph.D.s — who came to podcasting via a Spotify-sponsored accelerator program, Sound Up, that aims to bring talent from underrepresented groups into the medium.“Dope Labs” mingles hard-nosed science and pop culture, with episodes on coronavirus vaccinations, racism in science and the history of Afrofuturism. The show has more than 100,000 followers — a midlevel hit.“People have this stereotypical box of what a scientist looks like, what they sound like and what they care about,” Shodiya said. “And we say, no. We don’t only care about these things. We’re really into fashion. We’re really into music. We’re really into food. We like to break the mold.”Sound Up awarded Shodiya and Whatley $10,000 and offered them training in basics like interviewing and using recording equipment. They were free to take their show anywhere, and Shodiya said they pitched it to other companies, which asked for changes the women did not want to make. They stuck with Spotify.“Spotify seemed to get it,” Shodiya said. “They really appreciate our voices and what we bring to the platform.”Opportunities for CreativityFor a star like Morris, the question of access to media is less of an issue. But even for him, podcasts offer a rare opportunity — to test a new idea, quickly and cheaply.“When you’re a creative person, you need an outlet,” Morris said. “You can’t always say, ‘Let’s go and make a $50 million movie.’ But you can sit down, record, say your idea out loud.”For now, many podcasters say, the money spent by platforms, media companies and advertisers has helped enable experimentation in the format and a sharpening of storytelling techniques.Early fiction hits like Gimlet’s “Homecoming,” from 2016, about a therapist working with returning soldiers, demonstrated some of the potential for innovation, with crosscut scenes and varying audio treatment of voices to indicate different environments — a high-tech take on techniques first heard in 1930s radio dramas. (“Homecoming” became a TV series on Amazon starring Roberts and then Janelle Monáe.)More recently, shows like Audible’s “When You Finish Saving the World,” a five-hour drama by Jesse Eisenberg, have tinkered further with narration and storytelling in long-form audio.“Unwanted,” Morris said, could very well be a film or television project. (A spokeswoman for QCode said no negotiations to adapt it have taken place yet.) The story, he said, was just one of “millions” of ideas that he and Kyle Shevrin, his co-creator and writing partner, have bandied about, and podcasting allowed it to become a reality.“It’s a proof of concept,” Morris said, “to say to the industry: This works, this is fun, this is something that can be done.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    'Spider-Man 3' Newly-Unveiled Title Leaves Fans in Disbelief

    Marvel Studios

    Many refuse to believe that the title announced by Marvel is real, after Tom Holland, Zendaya and Jacob Batalon trolled fans with several hilarious fake titles.

    Feb 25, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Has Marvel finally given away the title of the third Spider-Man movie? Through a new sneak peek released by Sony Pictures Entertainment, the studio has announced that the upcoming film is called “Spider-Man: No Way Home”, but many seem to doubt the truth of it.
    After teasing fans with fake hilarious titles of “Spider-Man 3”, Marvel unleashed a video on Wednesday, February 24 in which Tom Holland, Zendaya Coleman and Jacob Batalon complain about being fooled by director Jon Watts about the previous titles they shared.
    The trio then walk past a white board on which the crew appear to write all possible subtitles for the movie, which all include the word “home.” While the likes of “Can’t Find Home”, “Stay at Home” and “Work From Home” are crossed, “No Way Home” appears to be the chosen one and re-written in the middle of the board.
    In the caption of the video posted on YouTube and Instagram, it is claimed, “This, we can confirm. #SpiderManNoWayHome only in movie theaters this Christmas.”

      See also…

    [embedded content]
    Still, considering the way they unveiled the title and the previous fake titles, fans think this could also be a joke. “I FEEL LIKE YALL LYING,” one fan commented below the video with loudly crying face emojis. “i have trust issues now,” another similarly shared. A third one wondered, “is this still a joke i’m unsure.” Someone else enthused, “I dont know what to believe anymore.”
    If this is any assurance, the movie’s official Instagram and Twitter accounts have made some adjustment, with “Spider-Man: No Way Home” now being written on the profile. IMBD also lists the movie with its newly-unveiled title.
    While many were focused on the title, some other fans noticed a possible “WandaVision” reference in the sneak peek. The white board has key diagrams, including multiple hexagons, which led many to believe that it’s a reference to Wanda’s (Elizabeth Olsen) “Hex bubble.” “Hex bubble” itself is the sitcom-based reality she’s created in “WandaVision”.
    “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is slated to open in theaters across the nation on December 21.

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    Sacha Baron Cohen Rules Out Third 'Borat' Movie Because It's 'Too Dangerous'

    Amazon Studios

    The ‘Trial of the Chicago 7’ actor has no plan to make a follow-up to ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’ because filming the prank scenes has become ‘too dangerous.’

    Feb 25, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Sacha Baron Cohen has ruled out the possibility of reprising his role as Borat for a third film, insisting he’s done with “dangerous” disguise movies.
    The comedian debuted his Kazakhstani alter-ego in “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” in 2006 before releasing the sequel “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” last year (20). However, there won’t be another follow-up film in the franchise, as he told Entertainment Tonight that shooting the movies has become “too dangerous.”

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    “For Borat, there were a couple of times I had to put on a bulletproof vest to go and shoot a scene, and you don’t want to do that too many times in your life,” he explained. “I was pretty lucky to get out this time, so no, I’m not doing it again. I’m going to stay with the scripted stuff.”
    Cohen’s “Trial of the Chicago 7” co-star Eddie Redmayne then chimed in to ask how he managed to sleep before shooting such a dangerous scene – such as when Borat attended a far-right, anti-lockdown rally – to which the actor replied that he “doesn’t.”
    “The night before something like that – that rally – you’re trying to go through everything that can go wrong,” he said. “In a normal scene like what we’re doing, we’re trying to make sure, ‘How do I make sure my performance is real? Have I done my research? How do I make sure the accent’s perfect?’ In this one you’re going, ‘OK, if a bunch of guys with guns come from that side of the stage, have I got a way to get out? What happens if someone shoots me? What if a bunch of people start shooting me?’ ”

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    Charlize Theron Keen to Make Lesbian 'Die Hard' Movie

    WENN

    The ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ actress says she would jump at the chance of revamping the classic Bruce Willis action movie by playing a lesbian lead character.

    Feb 25, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Charlize Theron wants to give “Die Hard” a femme fatale twist.
    The actress, who has proved herself as an action star in films like “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “The Old Guard”, is up for revamping the Bruce Willis classic with her as a lesbian lead.
    She made the pitch in response to one fan who tweeted, “Lesbian Christmas rom coms are all well and good but what I REALLY want is a Die Hard where Charlize Theron goes on a rampage to save her wife.”
    Theron retweeted the note and added, “Where do I sign?”
    She has referred to the Twitter exchange in a new Vanity Fair interview, stating, “It’s a great idea. That’s why I replied on Twitter, because I just thought it was kind of brilliant. I was like, ‘This person needs to start pitching. That’s a great idea’, and the fact it would be two women, I was like, ‘Yeah, sign me on.’ ”

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    During the magazine interview, the actress also reflected on the events of the past year. She’s hopeful the “pain and suffering” of 2020 would help people realise that “we can’t keep going on this way.”
    Asked what has made her the angriest and what gave her hope from the past year, she replied, “It’s hard to try to quantify what, amongst the horrible events that we’ve had in this last year, are the worst.”
    “They are all pretty f**king sh**ty. Dealing with a virus and the amount of human loss that we’ve had – that’s pretty f**king s**tty. The pain and the suffering that I have seen my friends of colour go through during this period… I mean, I’m hoping it’s an awakening.”
    And referring to the riots at the Capitol in January, Charlize commented that it was “all pretty f**king sad.”
    “The only thing that makes me feel like I can think of the glass as half full, instead of half empty, is that I’m hoping that out of a lot of this really deep, deep, deep pain and suffering, we will come to realise that we can’t keep going this way,” she sighed.

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