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    Cannes Film Festival Is Delayed Until July Because of Pandemic

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCannes Film Festival Is Delayed Until July Because of PandemicThe 2021 edition of the event, which was canceled last year, is now set to take place two months later than planned.The scene in Cannes the last time the festival was held, in 2019.Credit…Alberto Pizzoli/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJan. 27, 2021Updated 4:29 p.m. ETThe Cannes Film Festival, one of the movie world’s most renowned events, has been postponed, showing the continuing impact of the coronavirus pandemic.The festival was meant to run May 11-22, but has now been rescheduled to July 6-17, the organizers said in a statement on Wednesday. “As announced last autumn, the Festival de Cannes reserved the right to change its dates depending on how the global health situation developed,” the statement said.The decision had been expected. Last month, Aïda Belloulid, the festival’s spokeswoman, told The New York Times that the event might be shifted because of the pandemic, as cases were then surging across Europe. Whatever date the festival took place, she said, it will be “a ‘classic’ Cannes,” including stars on the Croisette.Since then, the situation has only gotten more complicated in Europe. Case numbers are flattening in some countries, but deaths have surged and restrictions on daily life have been extended.In France, there is a nationwide 6 p.m. curfew and cultural venues including movie theaters are shut with no reopening date in sight. Daily Covid-19 cases and deaths appear to be stabilizing, but more than 22,000 new cases were announced on Tuesday, with 612 deaths.Some 74,000 people in the country have died of Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic.The French government is rolling out vaccines, but its drive has been hit by production delays and a growing row between AstraZeneca, the European Union and Britain over scarce supplies. There is also widespread skepticism of vaccines in the country.It is the second year Cannes has been affected. Last year, the customary May festival was canceled. It had been set to include the premieres of Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch” and Pixar’s “Soul” with a jury led by Spike Lee. (The Anderson movie has not debuted yet; “Soul” was released on Disney+ in December.) In the end, Cannes was only able to hold a “special” edition in October featuring a handful of films and little of the usual red-carpet glamour. The event received next to no media attention.Movie fans had hoped some major festivals could be staged this spring, especially given vaccine rollouts. But Cannes is only one of several major cultural events in Europe that have now been postponed or canceled, showing that the pandemic’s effects on cultural life will be felt throughout the year. In December, the Berlin Film Festival, scheduled to start Feb. 11, was postponed, and organizers said they wouldn’t stage public screenings until June.Last week, the Glastonbury festival, Britain’s largest pop music event, scheduled for June, was canceled. The same day, Art Basel announced that its flagship trade fair in Switzerland would be postponed until September, providing a major blow to the international art trade.Cannes will have to wait and see if the new July dates are possible. “If the festival takes place, it means the global health situation allows it, and people will be able to travel again,” Belloulid, the festival’s spokeswoman, said in an email. “The industry, the film teams, the journalists, they all want to come,” she added.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Kristen Stewart Looks Exactly Like Princess Diana in First Look at New Movie 'Spencer'

    Neon

    The former ‘Twilight’ actress stuns in the first sneak peek of her role as the late Lady Di in the upcoming drama movie about the tragic British royal member.

    Jan 28, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Fans of Kristen Stewart and Princess Diana were left stunned on Wednesday (27Jan21) when the first image of the actress as the tragic royal in Spencer hit the Internet.
    The “Twilight” star was cast as Lady Di in 2019, but filming on revered screenwriter Steven Knight’s “Spencer”, which focuses on a Christmas weekend in the early 1990s when Diana decided her marriage to Prince Charles was over, has only just started, due to COVID-related delays – and no one expected the actress to look exactly like the princess.
    Opening up about the daunting task of playing one of the world’s most beloved women, Kristen says, “Spencer is a dive inside an emotional imagining of who Diana was at a pivotal turning point in her life. It is a physical assertion of the sum of her parts, which starts with her given name – Spencer. It is a harrowing effort for her to return to herself, as Diana strives to hold on to what the name Spencer means to her.”

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    Stewart’s portrayal comes after Emma Corrin appeared as Diana in “The Crown”.
    Spencer, which will also feature Timothy Spall and Sally Hawkins, is scheduled to open in theatres later this year (21), ahead of the 25th anniversary of Diana’s death in 2022.
    The movie is among the first U.K. film productions to shoot on mainland Europe post-Brexit. The project is currently shooting in Germany.
    Kristen Stewart previously admitted she felt “intimidated” as she was doing everything she could to master Princess Diana’s accent for the upcoming movie. “It’s so, so distinct and particular,” she explained. “I’m working on it now and already have my dialect coach.”
    She also made sure she did a thorough research for the role. “I’ve gotten through two and a half biographies, and I’m finishing all the material before I actually go make the movie,” she revealed. “It’s one of the saddest stories to exist ever, and I don’t want to just play Diana – I want to know her implicitly.”

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    Sundance Film Festival Forges Ahead, Led With 'Warrior Spirit'

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixTabitha Jackson became director of the Sundance Film Festival early last year.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexWith ‘Warrior Spirit,’ a New Leader Pushes Sundance ForwardSince taking over as the film festival’s director, Tabitha Jackson has had to figure out how to hold a cinema showcase during a pandemic. Her virtual solution starts Thursday.Tabitha Jackson became director of the Sundance Film Festival early last year.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyJan. 27, 2021Updated 2:28 p.m. ETShortly after Donald J. Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, Tabitha Jackson, then the director of the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program, was hosting the annual opening reception for documentary filmmakers at the festival in Park City, Utah. The British Ms. Jackson, who is mixed race and gay, took the stage, knowing many in the audience were unsettled by what had happened and what was ahead.She struggled to find the words to convey what people were feeling. Instead, in a reverse Samson moment, she asked the filmmaker Sandi Dubowski (“Trembling Before G-d”) to start chopping off her dreadlocks, which she had been growing for 20 years. The crowd went wild.“It was a release of energy,” she said in a recent interview. “A nonverbal expression of something needing to change around me leading this program and around us as a community. A little warrior spirit and also a slight howl, since we didn’t know what was going to come.”Ms. Jackson, 50, now finds herself as a leader in another moment of wider uncertainty. She took over as the director of the Sundance Film Festival in February, right before the pandemic truly took hold in the United States, and has spent the past year pivoting over and over again in order to get ready for the 37th edition of the independent cinema showcase.Set to begin Thursday in a mostly virtual setting (in-person screenings will happen in some art-house theaters in 28 cities with lower virus numbers like Atlanta, Houston and Memphis), Sundance 2021 is a lofty experiment. It will allow those who have never been able to share in the snowy ski-town extravaganza — because of either cost or the remote location — to experience it for the first time. With screening times set for each film, and live question-and-answer sessions to follow, Ms. Jackson and her team are trying to recreate the unique energy of Sundance, which has been the premier destination of American independent film for close to four decades.“It was initially depressing when we realized we couldn’t put on the festival in the way we had before,” Ms. Jackson said. “But as we began to plan, it became liberating when we thought, ‘Well, what can we do this year that we couldn’t do before?’”Ms. Jackson received roars of approval when she asked the filmmaker Sandi Dubowski to cut off her dreadlocks at the 2017 festival, when she led Sundance’s documentary program.Credit…Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for Sundance Film FestivalThe decision to not hold the festival in Utah was made in June. But the organization had to change direction yet again in December when rising coronavirus numbers in California prompted the cancellation of a large number of drive-in screenings that had been set for the Rose Bowl.“It’s been a roller-coaster ride, but the rails that are keeping us stable and secure are our purpose around independent filmmaking,” Ms. Jackson said. “We know why we are doing this.”Ms. Jackson joined Sundance in 2013, after spending more than 20 years in London working for the BBC and Channel 4 and producing works like Nick Cave’s “20,000 Days on Earth,” a quasi-documentary that purported to show a singular day in the indie musician’s life, one filled with invented events filmed at fictitious locations.Those who know her often describe Ms. Jackson as curious, open and possessed of a quick wit. She is also committed to helping filmmakers.“She could actually host one of the top late-night talk shows, she’s that funny and witty,” said Diane Weyermann, chief content officer at Participant and a former director of the Sundance documentary program. This year, Participant will debut two films at Sundance: the documentary “My Name Is Pauli Murray” about a nonbinary Black lawyer, activist and poet who influenced both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall, and “Judas and the Black Messiah,” the Warner Bros. film that chronicles the story of Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party.The documentarian Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”) is bringing three films to the festival with his Concordia Studio. He said Ms. Jackson was bringing welcome change to an institution that had not evolved much over the decades.“I like that it’s no longer just a festival for the few — the few people who could go, the few people who could get tickets,” he said. “It’s a brave new world, and she’s being brave.”When she took over the documentary program, Ms. Jackson recognized that she did not want the genre to become “the preserve of the elite,” open only to those who could spend years raising money and making films.Sly Stone in the opening-night film, “Summer of Soul (… Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” a documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival.Credit…Mass Distraction MediaIn 2015, Ms. Jackson conducted a question-and-answer session with the first-time filmmaker Nanfu Wang in front of a slew of investors. Ms. Wang was looking for funds to complete her film “Hooligan Sparrow,” which follows activists protesting the case of six elementary-school girls who were sexually abused by their principal in China. Ms. Wang had been forced to film surreptitiously and smuggle the footage out of the country in order to complete the movie.Normally, filmmakers have a producer on hand to address the financial needs of their project, but since Ms. Wang didn’t have one, Ms. Jackson led the Q. and A. in order to introduce her to the proper financiers. The discussion led to her receiving the funds she needed to finish the work. Ms. Wang will debut her fourth feature documentary, “In the Same Breath,” which tracks the spread of Covid-19 from Wuhan, China, to the United States, at this year’s festival.“Tabitha speaks like a philosopher,” Ms. Wang said. “I felt like she saw me, not only because I was making this film about the Chinese human rights activists, but she cared as much about my background and how I became who I am today.”That ethos to try to give voice to those not always permitted to participate is personal to Ms. Jackson. A mixed-race girl adopted by white parents who later divorced, Ms. Jackson was raised in a village in rural England and learned to move between groups.“I’ve come to enjoy inhabiting the edge of things, the in-between space,” she said upon receiving an industry award in 2018. “What began as a survival mechanism is now my most comfortable place.”The programming of this year’s truncated seven-day festival illustrates those in-between places. With 72 features, down from the usual 120, Sundance will highlight movies from a diverse group of creators: 50 percent are female directors, 51 percent are filmmakers of color, 15 percent are directors who identify as L.G.B.T.Q., and 4 percent are nonbinary.“Passing,” starring Ruth Negga, left, and Tessa Thompson, is one of the more anticipated films that will debut at Sundance.Credit…Eduard GrauThe opening-night film comes from Ahmir Thompson, the Roots drummer known as Questlove. Titled “Summer of Soul (… Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” it is a documentary that tracks the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, an event held to celebrate African-American music that happened the same summer as Woodstock.“Twenty minutes after Tabitha saw the film, she said not only do we want the film, we want it for the opening night and we want it for the U.S. competition,” a producer, Jon Kamen, said. “Usually, you don’t know right away. Usually, it’s all a little wishy-washy.”Ms. Jackson said she and her team, led by the director of programming, Kim Yutani, had to re-pitch the festival to many creators who were wary that the virtual environment wouldn’t be a great way to debut their work. One person they didn’t have to convince was the producer Nina Yang Bongiovi, who with her partner Forest Whitaker has had movies in competition at Sundance five out of the last seven years.They will be there this year with “Passing,” from the actress-turned-first-time-director Rebecca Hall. The film, set in 1920 and starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga, tracks the story of two African-American women who can “pass” as white.“When I looked at the screen and saw Tabitha and Kim — two inclusive, diverse women — telling me and my team that our film is loved and embraced and to please come be a part of this, that meant a lot,” Ms. Yang Bongiovi said of the Zoom call when the film was accepted.“I like that it’s no longer just a festival for the few,” one filmmaker said of Ms. Jackson’s leadership.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesDespite the challenges of the past year, there have been some benefits. Ms. Jackson has been able to quarantine for most of the time in Connecticut with the documentary filmmaker Kirsten Johnson (“Dick Johnson Is Dead”), whom she married last year at Sundance, on the first day of the festival. They recently bought a home with the filmmaker Ira Sachs and the artist Boris Torres, who co-parent Ms. Johnson’s 9-year old twins.That has given Ms. Johnson a ringside seat to Ms. Jackson’s process.“What’s interesting about Tabitha is she has so many perspectives given where she comes from and what her life is,” Ms. Johnson said. “She is endlessly curious about the permutations of racism around the world and the ways we struggle with identity. I think there is a real sense of how do we keep pushing for this new landscape and not be blinded by simple solutions.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Chris Hemsworth and Taika Waititi Kick Off 'Thor: Love and Thunder' Filming With Traditional Ritual

    Marvel Studios/Jasin Boland

    The God of Thunder depicter shares on his Instagram page pictures of him and the movie director joining native Australians for a Welcome to Country ceremony.

    Jan 27, 2021
    AceShowbiz – The production on “Thor: Love and Thunder” has officially begun. Marking the beginning of the principal photography, lead actor Chris Hemsworth and director Taika Waititi took part in a traditional ceremony on Monday, January 25.
    The Australian hunk made use of his Instagram page to give a look at indigenous land acknowledgment ceremony called Welcome to Country ceremony. He posted pictures of him and the filmmaker posing with native Australian dancers. The God of Thunder depicter dressed casually in a white sleevles top and black shorts, while Waititi opted for a formal look in a navy suit.
    “A beautiful start to our shoot today with a Welcome to Country ceremony from the Gamay dancers of the Gadigal and Bidiagal Nation and performance and karakia by Maori dancers from Te Aranganui,” Hemsworth described the ceremony in the caption. “Indigenous Australians may be just as proud of this country…”
    He continued, “…but many see January 26th as a date signifying the beginning of dispossession, disease epidemics, frontier violence, destruction of culture, exploitation, abuse, separation of families and subjection to policies of extreme social control. Let’s begin the healing and stand together in unity and support with our First Nations people with solidarity and compassion. Let’s find a date where all Australians can celebrate this beautiful country together.”

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    Prior to the filming, several cast members including Tessa Thompson, Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan and Sean Gunn already arrived in the country and isolated themselves. The movie will also bring back Natalie Portman as Jane Foster, who will be taking up the mantle as Thor, and feature Christian Bale as the villaino, Gorr the God Butcher.
    Meanwhile, Matt Damon recently confirmed that he and his family will be staying in Australia for the next few months, sparking a speculation that he’s joining the movie in an undisclosed role. “I’m so excited that my family and I will be able to call Australia home for the next few months,” he said in a statement to local press earlier this month, as quoted by CNET.
    “Thor: Love and Thunder” is slated for a May 6, 2022 release in the United States.

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    'Raya and the Last Dragon' First Official Trailer Gives the Spotlight to Awkwafina's Inferior Dragon

    [embedded content]

    Being Raya’s last hope in her quest to save the world, the elusive Sisu admits that she’s, unlike what’s expected of her, is not as good as her dragon peers.

    Jan 27, 2021
    AceShowbiz – Disney has dropped the first official full trailer of “Raya and the Last Dragon” ahead of its spring release. A new original title from the studio, which previously made hit animated films like “Frozen (2013)” and “Moana”, the upcoming movie is heavily influenced by South Asian culture.
    The movie and trailer follows Raya, who encounters a con baby, Little Noi, while going undercover. Discovering the tiny con artist’s formidable acrobatic and martial arts skills, she recruits the tot for her quest to find the last dragon, along with Tong and Boun, in hopes to save the world.
    But when Raya finally finds Sisu, the elusive dragon quickly breaks the title character’s expectation as she admits that she’s an unfit one among her kind. “I’m gonna be real with you. I’m not, like, the best dragon,” Sisu, voiced by Awkwafina, says. “Have you ever done like a group project but there’s like that one kid who didn’t pitch in as much but still ends up with the same grade?”
    That’s the least of Raya’s problem though, as her nemesis Namaari is also after the dragon. “You and the dragon are coming with me,” Namaari declares. Raya refuses to give up the dragon without a fight, saying, “My sword here says we’re not.”

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    Elsewhere in the trailer, Sisu shows her powers despite her claims that she’s inferior. She also proves to be wise with her words. “The world’s broken. We can’t trust anyone,” Raya confides to the dragon, who replies, “Maybe the world is broken because you don’t trust anyone. You just have to take the first step.”
    Sisu later has a scene-stealer moment when she admires her human form. “I just shape-changed. Look how close my butt to my head! It’s gonna make digestion so much faster,” she hilariously says toward the end of the video.
    According to the official synopsis, “Raya and the Last Dragon” takes us on an exciting, epic journey to the fantasy world of Kumandra, where humans and dragons lived together long ago in harmony. But when an evil force threatened the land, the dragons sacrificed themselves to save humanity. Now, 500 years later, that same evil has returned and it’s up to a lone warrior, Raya, to track down the legendary last dragon to restore the fractured land and its divided people. However, along her journey, she’ll learn that it’ll take more than a dragon to save the world-it’s going to take trust and teamwork as well.
    The movie features an outstanding voice cast, including Kelly Marie Tran as the voice of the intrepid warrior Raya, Gemma Chan as Raya’s nemesis Namaari, Daniel Dae Kim as Raya’s visionary father Benja, Sandra Oh as Namaari’s powerful mother Virana, Benedict Wong as Tong, a formidable giant, Izaac Wang as Boun, a 10-year-old entrepreneur, Thalia Tran as the mischievous toddler Little Noi, Alan Tudyk as Tuk Tuk, Raya’s best friend and trusty steed, Lucille Soong as Dang Hu, the leader of the land of Talon, Patti Harrison as the chief of the Tail land, and Ross Butler as chief of the Spine land.
    The film won’t feature a musical performance, but there will be music influenced by Southeast Asia, which is the cultural inspiration for “Raya”. The flick will arrive simultaneously in theaters and on Disney+ with Premier Access on March 5.

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