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TaleFlick, the online story discovery platform launched by “White Noise” producer Uri Singer and former Netflix executive George Berry, is opening its doors to poets in a move it says is driven by a desire to welcome submissions that “capture the essence, history, and vibrant traditions of Saudi Arabian culture.”

Storytelling in the Arab world is traditionally tied to oral history and poetry. The stated goal of opening TaleFlick – which provides writers with a chance to showcase their work to producers and studios – is to build a bridge between Saudi poems and Hollywood.

“Poetry is the heartbeat of Saudi Arabian culture, resonating deeply with its people and heritage,” Singer – who is TaleFlick’s CEO – said in a statement to Variety. “By embracing poems, we aim to honor and elevate this beautiful art form, providing a platform to transform these stories into powerful visual narratives,” he added.

TaleFlick’s expansion from...

Exclusive: Indie filmmakers Courtney Stephens and Michael Almereyda are teaming to direct a new documentary about controversial scientist John C. Lilly, Deadline has learned.

Funded by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the project will look at the countercultural figure’s work as the inventor of the isolation tank, as well as his pioneering studies of dolphin intelligence and support of psychedelics as a positive means for expanding consciousness. The storytelling will be supported by interviews with Lilly’s contemporaries and colleagues, as well as extensive archival records.

Stephens was drawn to Lilly, having grown up near Marine World in the Bay Area, where the scientist worked with trained dolphins and computers in the early 1980s, hoping to teach the animals an Esperanto-like language that would allow for interspecies communication. Apple donated equipment to the lab, which was visited by figures ranging from Ram Dass to Olivia Newton John.

A veteran producer and sales agent once told me that, for a billion dollars, anyone could buy their way into the Oscar race for Best Picture. In recent months, that prediction proved altogether generous.

While not a Best Picture contender, Andrea Riseborough’s performance in “To Leslie” demonstrated the potential of DIY campaigning to chart a surprising path into a major Oscar category. Controversial or not, and despite all the potential campaign violations it raised, Riseborough’s Best Actress nomination got the attention of other established actors who work on low-budget movies with limited resources. As one veteran awards consultant told me this week, “People are now going to say, ‘Where’s my Andrea Riseborough campaign?’”

The answer to that question requires some meticulous number-crunching as well as ample chutzpah. The Oscar race is often a Trojan horse for cinema that would go otherwise unrecognized by the U.S. industry,...

Producer Uri Singer’s Passage Pictures is developing a series called “Enjoy Your Stay,” which the producer says will be based on true events surrounding AirBnB’s crisis response team and its attempts to deal with the aftermath of a crime. A former AirBnB security team member has joined the production as an anonymous source and consultant for the series, Passage Pictures says. The way that AirBnB handles incidents like rapes and shootings and its reported use of a shadowy safety crew has been the subject of several investigations by media outlets.

“We believe this project is an important contemporary story that needs to be told, to show both the victims’ and the crisis team employees’ stories,” Singer says.

Former Wall Street Journal reporter Will Connors is penning the series. This will be Connors’ first venture into screenwriting, after spending more than a decade covering corruption, business, politics, and sports for the Journal,...

Two months after the debut of musical rom-com “Marry Me,” starring Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson and Maluma, Bobby Crosby is getting another one of his Keenspot graphic novels adapted for the big screen. Israeli producer Uri Singer has secured the film and television rights to “Dreamless,” a Keenspot graphic novel by Crosby illustrated by Sarah Ellerton.

“Dreamless,” which was first a Keenspot webcomic in 2009 before being collected into a graphic novel, has been read by more than four million people worldwide. It is a romance about a girl from America and a boy from Japan, born on the same day in 1923. Since birth, they have somehow mind-swapped in their sleep, experiencing each other’s lives instead of dreaming. Then, their relationship is tested during World War II in young adulthood. The project is currently out to talent.

“I love ‘Dreamless,’ ” Singer told Variety. “We look forward to bringing this beautiful...

Jez Butterworth will adapt Don DeLillo’s “The Silence” for the screen, Variety has learned. Producer Uri Singer, who is also producing and helped put together Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of another DeLillo novel, “White Noise,” has secured the rights to the book, which was published in 2020.

“The Silence” unfolds at a dinner party in Manhattan during Super Bowl Sunday in the year 2022. The diners include a retired physics professor, her husband and her former student. They are waiting for a couple, who is set to join them after flying in from Paris. To share more might risk ruining the post-modern twists and turns.

Vincent Sieber (“The Chronicles of Narnia” at Netflix) of Midnight Road will produce alongside Singer.

Butterworth is one of the most acclaimed playwrights working today. He has written such award-winning plays as “Jerusalem,” “The River,” “Mojo” and “The Ferryman.” He won the Olivier Award for best...

As predicted, Lois Smith won the Tony Award for Featured Actress in a Play for her moving turn in Matthew Lopez’s “The Inheritance.” Not only is this the veteran actress’ first career Tony win, but Smith has just become the oldest Tony winning actor in history. Talk about a victory being worth the wait!

Lois Smith is 90 years of age, having been born on November 3, 1930. This makes her two years older than the previous record holder for oldest Tony winning performer. That would be Cicely Tyson, who won a Tony for playing Carrie Watts in the 2018 revival of “The Trip To Bountiful” at age 88. That was Tyson’s only Tony nomination and win of her career, despite appearing in nine Broadway plays. Ironically, Smith also portrayed Carrie in a 2005 Off-Broadway revival of “Bountiful.” She won the Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Obie, and Outer Critics Circle Awards for that performance.

Producers Adam Mirels and Robbie Mirels of 141 Entertainment, the team behind Ana Lily Amirpour’s hotly anticipated “Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon,” which plays Sunday in competition at the Venice Film Festival, have signed an option to remake director-writer Sameh Zoabi’s 2018 Venice Horizons Award entry “Tel Aviv on Fire.” The adaptation will be set on the border between the Sonora region of Mexico and a small Arizona town.

Zoabi’s original film nabbed the best actor award in Venice Horizons and went on to receive a host of international kudos. The film uses comedy to explore the absurdity of everyday life under a militarized border force. The remake will utilize these themes and the universal romantic-comedy at its core.

141 Entertainment will attach a Spanish-speaking writer and director to adapt the work to its new U.S. border setting. Zoabi will remain involved creatively and will also serve...

Uri Singer has obtained the rights “Invitation to a Beheading,” a surrealist and politically charged work by Vladimir Nabokov, the author of “Lolita.”

Singer has been carving out a niche for himself by developing literary classics into potential films. He recently obtained the rights to Kurt Vonnegut’s “Hocus Pocus” and Don DeLillo’s “The Silence.” He is also producing another DeLillo adaptation “White Noise,” which is currently filming with Noah Baumbach directing Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig. Singer is also producing “The King of Oil,” set at Universal, with John Krasinski’s Sunday Night, with Matt Damon attached to play the lead role based on the book “The King of Oil” by Daniel Amman, adapted by Joe Shrapnel and Anne Waterhouse.

“Invitation to a Beheading” embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world. In an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by...

Uri Singer has obtained the rights to “Hocus Pocus” by legendary author Kurt Vonnegut. He is developing the 1990 novel as either a film or a limited series.

Singer is currently producing a film adaptation of another literary giant, Don DeLillo’s “White Noise,” which Noah Baumbach is directing for Netflix with Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig attached to star. He is also producing “The King of Oil” with John Krasinski’s Sunday Night with Matt Damon attached to play the lead role. That film has been set up at Universal.

“Hocus Pocus” follows a college professor named Eugene who gets fired after having several of his witticisms surreptitiously recorded by the daughter of a popular conservative commentator. Eugene then becomes a teacher at a nearby overcrowded prison. After a massive prison break, Eugene’s former college is occupied by escapees from the prison, who take the staff hostage. Eventually, the...

Exclusive: Uri Singer has secured the rights to The Silence, the latest novel by prolific author Don DeLillo. Singer is currently producing a film adaptation to DeLillo’s highly-regarded 1985 novel White Noise, which Noah Baumbach is directing for Netflix and Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig are attached to star.

Released in October 2020, The Silence tells the story of Super Bowl Sunday in the year 2022. Five people, dinner, an apartment on the east side of Manhattan. The retired physics professor, her husband, and her former student wait for the couple who will join them from what becomes a dramatic flight from Paris. The conversation ranges from a survey telescope in North-central Chile to a favorite brand of bourbon, to Einstein’s 1912 Manuscript on the Special Theory of Relativity.

“I believe obtaining high-quality IP, is the foundation for a good film or TV series, said Singer. “Don DeLillo is a pillar of American literature,...

New Indie

Michael Almereyda has tackled science (as a topic of either biopics or dramas) in a fascinating way in “Experimenter” and “Marjorie Prime,” and now he’s bringing that same energy to the inventor-biopic with “Tesla” (Shout Factory/IFC), a bold and audacious look at the life of Nikola Tesla. Ethan Hawke, in the title role, is evenly matched by Eve Hewson’s Anne Morgan, and they both nail Almereyda’s unique tone, which throws in anachronisms and green-screens to tell the story of someone who stretched the notions of what his peers imagined could be possible.

Also available: Madison Iseman plays a young girl with mental-health issues who can’t convince anyone she’s witnessed a crime in “Fear of Rain” (Lionsgate); 2012 indie “Watching TV with the Red Chinese” (Mvd Visual), co-starring Constance Wu and Gillian Jacobs, makes its U.S. DVD debut; Sienna Miller and Diego Luna...

Kiersey Clemons will star in 141 Entertainment’s “Susie Searches,” a darkly comic thriller from Sophie Kargman.

“Susie Searches” centers on Susie (Clemons), an awkward college student who seizes the opportunity to bolster her popularity and her under-the-radar true-crime podcast by solving the disappearance of a classmate. Her investigation reveals that the truth and Susie aren’t at all what they seem to be.

Kargman will direct from a script by William Day Frank — the feature is based on a short film that the two previously made. Clemons will also serve as an executive producer on the project. Production on the film is set to start in London early next year.

“I’m so excited to be working with Sophie Kargman on such a dark and witty film,” said Clemons in a statement. “I fell in love with the heart and peculiarity of Susie right away. Stories like this, starring...

It’s a tough time to be a journalist.

Digital upstarts are faltering and newspapers are running on fumes. The freelance market for glossy magazines has dried up along with their ad sales. That’s left many top reporters looking for a way to support their work.

Enter the Vespucci Group. Founded by producers Daniel Turcan and Johnny Galvin, the three-year-old production company and incubator is helping to fill that gap by getting in on buzzy stories and penetrating investigative reports from their inception. In return for supporting journalists’ projects, the company gets the rights to develop their finished work as podcasts, television shows, streaming series or feature films.

“It’s a harmonious relationship,” says Galvin. “It’s no secret that journalism is under threat and reporters are underfunded. The core of our company is the relationships we have established with about 150 working journalists around the world.”

Since it was...

John Williams is great and all, but there aren’t a ton of his iconic film scores that I might actually want to listen to while working out. For that, you need to turn to the rock stars, the guys who perform to 20,000 screaming people one night and then collaborate with David Fincher the next. They make the kind of scores that raise the eyebrows of writers at Pitchfork and inspire bedroom hipsters to go out and see an indie film that might otherwise never get an audience.

Trent Reznor

The Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor burst out onto the film score scene when he composed the icy, digitized beats for David Fincher’s “The Social Network” in 2010. He and his collaborator Atticus Ross won the Oscar that year, and he’s since had a wave of creativity on other Fincher films like “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and “Gone Girl.

If you want to be bored breathless by how Serbian inventor Nicola Tesla (1856-1943) figured into the feud between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse over direct and alternating currents, try 2019’s The Current War. It’s biopic trolling at its dullest. Or you may want to consider Tesla, which is both a corrective and a mesmerizing showcase for Ethan Hawke, playing the futurist who harnessed AC to light the eventual spark for our contemporary wireless world. Google searches, a Macbook and a cellphone make anachronistic cameos as Tesla mixes it...

The longtime rivalry between brilliant and eccentric inventors Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison remains one of history’s fiercest, with their developments of AC and DC currents, respectively, sparking a bitter feud that rocked the late 19th century. Their complex head-to-head is now the subject of director Michael Almereyda’s latest film “Tesla,” which stars Ethan Hawke in the title role opposite Kyle MacLachlan as Edison. The film also unpacks other wild aspects of Tesla’s life, both personal and professional. Ahead of the film’s release from IFC on August 21, and in celebration of Tesla’s 164th birthday on July 10, a new trailer for the film has dropped. Check it out below.

Written by Almereyda, who won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize for the film at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, “Tesla” also stars Eve Hewson, Jim Gaffigan, Hannah Gross, Josh Hamilton, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach. Here’s the official synopsis: “Brilliant,...

Producers of Matthew Lopez’ two-part Broadway-bound Olivier Award winning The Inheritance announced the cast today, with five actors reprising their performances from the acclaimed London staging.

Making the transition from the West End will be Andrew Burnap, John Benjamin Hickey, Paul Hilton, Samuel H. Levine, and Kyle Soller. Soller won the 2019 Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Play.

Producers Tom Kirdahy, Sonia Friedman Productions, and Hunter Arnold made the casting announcement for the production of Matthew Lopez’ two-part play. Stephen Daldry will direct, as he did in London, as does scenic and costume designer Bob Crowley.

The Broadway cast for the play will feature Jordan Barbour, Jonathan Burke, Andrew Burnap, Darryl Gene Daughtry Jr., Dylan Frederick, Kyle Harris, John Benjamin Hickey, Paul Hilton, Samuel H. Levine, Carson McCalley, Lois Smith, Kyle Soller, and Arturo Luis Soria. The company will also include understudies Mark H. Dold,...

Anne Hathaway and Tim Robbins are set to co-star opposite Mark Ruffalo in Participant’s untitled legal drama focused on the scandal revolving around the DuPont chemical company.

Bill Camp, Victor Garber, Mare Winningham, William Jackson Harper, and Bill Pullman round out the cast.

“Carol” helmer Todd Haynes is directing the movie from a script by Matthew Carnahan and Mario Correa.

Ruffalo will also produce the pic, with Killer Films’ Pamela Koffler and Christine Vachon. Participant Media’s Jeff Skoll and Jonathan King will executive produce, alongside Michael Sledd. Robert Bilott, the defense attorney who took on an environmental suit against DuPont, will serve as a consultant on the film, with Participant’s Robert Kessel overseeing development and production on behalf of the company. Production of the film will commence next week in Cincinnati.

Inspired by a true story, the untitled pic centers around Bilott, played by Ruffalo, whose environmental...

Sundance filmmakers should prepare for a streaming reality without buffering. Sales agents are telling their clients that Amazon Video Direct is not expected to offer its Film Festival Stars program at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Open to official selections at major festivals, the two-year-old Ffs offered cash bonuses and preferential royalty rates for filmmakers to self-distribute their films on Amazon Prime.

According to multiple sources, Amazon has put Ffs on hiatus as the company takes a hard look at its future. Distribution partners, sales agents, and the festival itself has not heard from Amazon Video Direct in months, most telling IndieWire they would be “shocked” if the Ffs deal returned for Sundance.

When “streaming platform” entered the filmmaker vocabulary just a few years ago, it sounded like an indie godsend — a way to ensure that virtually any film could find an audience, if not a buyer. However, the...

Lois Smith has joined the cast of Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch,” Variety has learned.

It continues a late-career resurgence for the 88-year-old stage and screen actress. Smith was nominated for a Gotham and Independent Spirit Award for her work in last year’s “Marjorie Prime,” a role that garnered her some of the best reviews of her career. She also appeared in the Oscar-nominated “Lady Bird.”

Smith will play an unspecified supporting role and joins an ensemble that includes Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Benicio del Toro, Jeffrey Wright, and her “Lady Bird” co-star Timothee Chalamet. Filming is reportedly already underway.

“The French Dispatch” is set in Paris during the 1950s and follows a group of journalists at an American newspaper bureau. Anderson will write and direct the movie, which is his first live-action film since 2014’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” Scott Rudin will produce the movie.

Allison Janney has won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female, the first televised award of the day. Other nominees included Holly Hunter (“The Big Sick”), Laurie Metcalf (“Lady Bird”), Lois Smith (“Marjorie Prime”), and Taliah Lennice Webster (“Good Time”). It’s Janney’s first win and third nomination at the Spirit Awards; she has dominated awards season over the last few months, with wins at the Golden Globes and SAG Awards. She’s considered the category frontrunner at tomorrow’s Academy Awards.

Today’s first prize, Best Cinematography, went to Sayombhu Mukdeeprom for his work on “Call Me by Your Name” and was announced before the telecast began. “I, Tonya” is also up for Best Editing (Tatiana S. Riegel) and Best Female Lead (Margot Robbie).

This year’s ceremony once again took place live on the beach in Santa Monica, with Nick Kroll and John Mulaney hosting the broadcast for IFC.

There's a such a fascinating and tragic history behind the life of electricity pioneer and inventor Nikola Tesla. I've been fascinated with this guy since I first learned about him sometime during my teen years. It seems crazy that there hasn't been a proper film made about this man, but it seems like that's all going to change with the biopic Tesla.

According to THR, Ethan Hawke is set to take on the role of Tesla and I think he's a solid choice. Tesla has previously been played by Nicholas Hoult (The Current War) and David Bowie (The Prestige).

The film will be written directed by Michael Almereyda, who previously worked with Hawke on the films Hamlet and Cymbeline. He also worked on the 2017 sci-fi film Marjorie Prime.

The film is sais to "chronicle the life and times of the famed Serbia-born inventor, including his creation of the AC motor...

Few things are more sublime than finding back-to-back features that hit some specific thematic sweet spot. Drive-in theaters may not be the popular viewing spot they once were, but with the overwhelming accessibility we now have, one can program their own personal double bill. Today, we’ve run through the gamut of 2017 films to select the finest pairings and tried to sway from the most obvious (i.e. a combination of Dunkirk, Darkest Hour and The Finest Hour). Check out list the below, and we’d love to hear your own picks, which can be left in the comments.

Lady Bird and Princess Cyd

On paper, too easy a pairing: coming-of-age stories that are too intelligent to propose that this, here, is the end of a journey; characters (titular characters, no less) whose impulsiveness, close-mindedness, and selfishness are, of course, part of what makes them so empathetic; portraits in miniature...

Susan Sarandon is no stranger to television.

In fact, the longtime actress starred in several TV films early in her career. But outside of a handful of notable recurring roles, Sarandon, who won a Best Actress Oscar in 1995 for Dead Man Walking, had never starred on a series until 2017, when she portrayed Bette Davis in Ryan Murphy’s new FX anthology series, Feud, which launched with Bette and Joan. It seemed like a role that Sarandon was destined to play, with her likeness often having been compared to that of Davis.

Yet, portraying the Hollywood legend -- an opportunity she’d been offered time and time before -- wasn’t something Sarandon was keen to do, especially when the scripts she read were nothing more than “bitchy one-liners.” “It’s not enough to think Bette Davis is cool,” the actress told Et earlier this year. “What do you do with her then? It’s really...

When it comes to collecting recent accolades like Windsor International Film Festival’s lifetime achievement award, Lois Smith, who made her film debut in 1955’s East of Eden opposite James Dean and has had notable roles in Twisterand on True Blood, says it’s mostly a matter of longevity. “Those words,” she tells Et, referring to lifetime achievement, “are a little alarming.” But all the recent fuss, as she describes it, comes as the longtime actress is earning the best reviews of her career for Marjorie Prime, a sci-fi film directed by Michael Almereyda based on the Pulitzer Prize-nominated play by Jordan Harrison.

“It’s not why one does the work, but it’s nice when it happens,” Smith says ever-so-diplomatically as she’s perched on a sofa in the lobby of the Thompson Hotel, just outside the Loop neighborhood of downtown Chicago.

Marjorie Prime, which was released in August after premiering at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival...

Eight shows a week, Beanie Feldstein takes the stage at the Shubert Theatre in New York City to perform in the revival of Hello, Dolly! Wearing a pastel pink bodice adorned with frilly violet lace, a bustling striped skirt and a mop of curls atop her head, the 24-year-old belts out a rousing rendition of “Motherhood” as shop girl Minnie Fay. "I stand for motherhood, America and a hot lunch for orphans / Take off your hat, sir, while your country's flag is passing," she sings alongside her co-star, Bette Midler.

It's quite a Broadway debut, one that Feldstein, who spent her formative summers at the prestigious acting camp Stagedoor Manor and her high school years obsessing over musical theater with best friend (and Dear Evan Hansen star) Ben Platt, could only have dreamed of. Being cast in the company of a legend of screen and stage in an award-winning production -- Midler won a Tony for Hello, Dolly...

Hasan Minhaj found himself at a crossroads in 2017. The Daily Showcorrespondent had to choose between doing what was easy and safe and doing what was hard, but exciting. Lucky for us, he chose the latter path. “I just ended up saying, 'Hey, burn the boats, we're gonna turn left when everybody's turning right,’” Minhaj tells Et.

The results of that left turn were Minhaj’s boldly disparaging speech at the 2017 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and his critically acclaimed Netflix special, Homecoming King, which examines the comedian’s life from a very intimate and personal viewpoint.

When Minhaj was approached about hosting the this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which was mired in controversy following the election of Donald Trump, he said that his reaction was far different from other comedians who were asked to perform. “This was a hot potato gig; nobody wanted to touch it,” he recalls. In fact, Samantha Bee, host of [link...

“When I started to write this film, I set out to make a movie that would be my favorite movie that I’d never seen,” said Jordan Peele when accepting his Best Screenplay Gotham Award for Get Out from the legendary Lois Smith (nominated for Best Actress for Marjorie Prime) and The Florida Project‘s Brooklynn Prince. “I didn’t know that it would ever actually get made.” Peele returned to the stage later in the night when the breakout horror film also picked up the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award and Audience Award. “It’s so important that we support these voices from the outside, […]...

For much of the 2017 Gotham Independent Spirit Awards ceremony, it seemed like nothing could topple “Get Out.” Then came “Call Me By Your Name,” which landed Best Feature after “Get Out” triumphed in three major categories, proving that not only are both movies serious contenders for the best movies of the year, but we also have an unpredictable awards race.

That said: Anyone who uses the Gothams as a crystal ball for predicting the Oscar race is looking in the wrong place. Hosted by Ifp, the swanky New York shindig celebrates movies and television made with an “economy of means,” with a series of small committees to select the nominees and winners for each category. That’s a world away from the Oscar voting process, which involves thousands of members, multiple branches, and no limits on budgets.

Read More:Gotham Awards 2017: Complete Winners List

Nevertheless, in recent years the...

And we’re off to the races! The Independent Filmmaker Project (Ifp) officially kicked off the 2017-18 awards season with this evening’s 27th Annual Gotham Awards, which took place at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City and were hosted by John Cameron Mitchell.

Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” proved to be the night’s biggest winner, with three wins, including Best Screenplay, the Audience Award, and Breakthrough Director. Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me by Your Name” proved victorious in the Best Feature category, winning out against a stacked list of competitors. Earlier in the night, star Timothee Chalamet won the Breakthrough Actor award for his star-making turn in the romance.

The ceremony’s nomination list was studded with some of the year’s most beloved indies, including “Get Out,” “Call Me by Your Name,” Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird,” Kogonada’s “Columbus,” and Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project.

This story about Lois Smith first appeared in the Race Begins issue of TheWrap’s Oscar magazine. This fall, Hollywood’s Egyptian Theater played a double feature that represented bookends in the film career of underrated acting treasure Lois Smith. The first film was her feature debut, “East of Eden,” the James Dean classic directed by Elia Kazan. The second was one of her latest, “Marjorie Prime,” an intriguing and chilly sci-fi drama from Michael Almereyda. Marjorie is a role Smith can’t seem to get rid of — she workshopped the Jordan Harrison play before it premiered Off Broadway and became a Pulitzer.

The always-idiosyncratic Film Independent Spirit Awards juries are not in the awards-season business. While other entities may take pride in how their selections mirror Oscar nominations down the line, the Spirits have a different agenda. It gives credit where it thinks it’s due, and raises awareness for many low-budget independent titles. If that happens to help your Oscar game, so much the better.

Read More: Save the Dates: Here’s the 2017-2018 Awards Calendar

No need to worry about Spirit top dogs “Call Me By Your Name” (six nods, Sony Pictures Classics), “Get Out” (five nods, Blumhouse/Universal), and “Lady Bird” (four nods, A24) which are well on their way to Oscar recognition and dominated the Indie Spirit field with multiple nominations including the crucial Best Feature.

A24 blazed with an astounding 17 nominations over eight features: “Lady Bird” and “Good Time” took four including Feature, “The Florida Project” and...

The always-idiosyncratic Film Independent Spirit Awards juries are not in the awards-season business. While other entities may take pride in how their selections mirror Oscar nominations down the line, the Spirits have a different agenda. It gives credit where it thinks it’s due, and raises awareness for many low-budget independent titles. If that happens to help your Oscar game, so much the better.

Read More: Save the Dates: Here’s the 2017-2018 Awards Calendar

No need to worry about Spirit top dogs “Call Me By Your Name” (six nods, Sony Pictures Classics), “Get Out” (five nods, Blumhouse/Universal), and “Lady Bird” (four nods, A24) which are well on their way to Oscar recognition and dominated the Indie Spirit field with multiple nominations including the crucial Best Feature.

A24 blazed with an astounding 17 nominations over eight features: “Lady Bird” and “Good Time” took four including Feature, “The Florida Project” and...

Call Me by Your Name, Get Out and Lady Bird all had great showings at the 2018 Independent Spirit Award nominations!

The nominees were announced on Tuesday morning, with the Armie Hammer-ledCall Me by Your Name leading the pack with six nominations, followed closely by Jordan Peele's critically acclaimed, genre-bending thriller Get Out with five, and Lady Bird, with four.

All three films are competing for Best Picture, along with The Florida Project and The Rider. The Independent Spirit Awards are sometimes seen as a tea leaf for how the Academy Awards will sway -- the Best Picture winner of this show has gone on to also earn the distinction at the Oscars for five out of the last six years.

Peele earned a nod in the Best Director category, and the film's lead, Daniel Kaluuya is up for Best Male Lead, along with James Franco, who is nominated for The Disaster Artist. In the Best Female...

The nominations for the 33rd Independent Spirit Awards are in, and “Get Out,” “Call Me by Your Name,” “Lady Bird,” “Good Time,” and more have dominated this year’s slate.

Read More: 2018 Oscar Predictions

Over the last several years, the Indie Spirits have become both a champion of underdog indies (see Molly Shannon winning Best Supporting Female last year for “Other People”) and a key indicator in which films and performances could end up with the Oscar (Casey Affleck and “Moonlight” for Best Picture last year). John Mulaney and Nick Kroll will return to host the 33rd Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday, March 3.

The full nominations list is below.

Best Feature

“Call Me by Your Name”

“The Florida Project”

“Get Out”

“Lady Bird”

“The Rider”

Best Director

Jonas Carpignano, “A Ciambra”

Luca Guadagnino, “Call Me by Your Name”

Jordan Peele, “Get Out”

Sean Baker, “The Florida Project”

Benny and Josh Safdie,...

As awards season takes over Hollywood, keep up with all the ins, outs, and big accolades with our bi-weekly Awards Roundup column.

-The 29th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (Psiff) will present Timothée Chalamet with the Rising Star Award – Actor at its annual Film Awards Gala for his performance in “Call Me by Your Name.” The Film Awards Gala, hosted by Mary Hart, will be held Tuesday, January 2 at the Palm Springs Convention Center. The Festival runs January 4 – 15, 2018. Past recipients of the Rising Star Award include Ruth Negga, Alicia Vikander, Jennifer Lawrence, Scarlett Johansson, Anna Kendrick, Dakota Fanning, Terrence Howard, and Adam Beach.

“Timothée Chalamet gives a stirring performance as Elio, a 17-year-old on the brink of passion and self-discovery. It’s an intimate and erotic performance that transports the audience to another time and place and stays with us long after we’ve left the theater,” said Festival...

Better than ever, now in its seventh year, the spectacular program with its filmmaking guests and a committed community of dedicated and intellectually alive filmgoers invigorates the mind and activist tendencies already in play.

Take for instance, University of Arizona Professor Noam Chomsky, one of the most influential public intellectuals in the world, speaking with Regents’ Professor Toni Massaro about social justice and the environment. Here he is, in person, being honored as every word he speaks is treated as a jewel. Considered the founder of modern linguistics, Chomsky has written more than 100 books, his most recent being Requiem for the American Dream: The 10 Principles of Concentration of Wealth & Power. An ardent free speech advocate, Chomsky has published and lectured widely on U.S. foreign policy, Mideast politics, terrorism, democratic society and war. Chomsky, who joined the UA faculty this fall, is a laureate professor in the Department of...

If you’ve seen “Under the Skin” and “Jackie,” there’s a good chance that Mica Levi has quickly become one of your favorite composers. The English musician, formerly of Micachu and the Shapes, has built an impressive resume and won acclaim over the last few years: “Jackie,” landed her an Oscar nomination, whereas “Under the Skin” earned her an award from Lafca. Levi also composed the score for an animated short film called “Delete Beach,” and one song has made its way online.

Read More:‘Jackie’ Live Score: Experience Mica Levi’s Powerhouse Score With A 35-Piece Orchestra — Exclusive

According to Boomkat, which has the entire soundtrack available for purchase, “Delete Beach” is “set in a near future where carbon-based energy is outlawed and supposes a paradoxical scenario, one where fossil fuels — the ostensible accelerator of humanity’s progress and decline — become energy for the toil against state oppression and enforced inequality.

An eightysomething woman with dementia lives with a ghost-like hologram of her late husband in this affecting meditation on memory and mortality

Marjorie Prime is an affecting and audacious chamber piece: a futurist meditation on memory, mortality and the self. There is a certain sci-fi strangeness that doesn’t preclude an audience being moved, and the continuous thread of Mica Levi’s orchestral score maintains a heightened sense of awareness and even exaltation.

Michael Almereyda directs his own adaptation of a play by Jordan Harrison, and 87-year-old Lois Smith gives a tremendous performance in the lead, having originally played the part in the theatre. You can only imagine the tumultuous curtain call Smith must have received every night, and my slight reservation is that the authentic physical presence of actors on stage might have made this drama’s themes even more effective.

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“I probably have never been as excited about a new play as I was when I read that,” veteran actress Lois Smith said of Marjorie Prime, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Jordan Harrison play on which Michael Almareyda’s film of the same name is based. Breaking out at Sundance, where the indie auteur won the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, the film stars Smith as Marjorie, an elderly woman who has a holographic version of her younger husband (Jonn Hamm) created to keep her…...

As 2017 winds down, like most cinephiles, we’re looking to get our hands on the titles that may have slipped under the radar or simply gone unseen. With the proliferation of streaming options, it’s thankfully easier than ever to play catch-up, and to assist with the process, we’re bringing you a rundown of the best titles of the year available to watch.

Curated from the Best Films of 2017 So Far list we published for the first half of the year, it also includes films we’ve enjoyed the past few months and some we’ve recently caught up on. This is far from a be-all, end-all year-end feature (that will come at the end of the year), but rather something that will hopefully be a helpful tool for readers to have a chance to seek out notable, perhaps underseen, titles from the year.

Note that we’re going by U.

Fans of fantastic film who happen to live in or around Italy know where to head from October 31st to November 5th as Science + Fiction descends once more on Trieste. The festival’s 2017 edition opens with the Italian premiere of Michael Almereyda’s Marjorie Prime, a sci-fi drama that ponders technology’s role in our day-to-day lives as it probes questions of love, memory and loss. Opening on Halloween, the organizers see fit to include an affectionate nod to John Carpenter’s autumnal classic before kicking off a jam-packed five days in which shorts, feature films, international guests and science are celebrated and discussed. Feature film highlights undoubtedly include festival favorites like Joe Lynch’s work floor ‘battle royale’ Mayhem, Miike Takashi’s samurai epic, Blade of the Immortal,...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

The Gotham Awards aren’t exactly Oscar prognosticators, but a nomination builds early momentum for the long haul ahead; being left out at this stage is not good. Jordan Peele’s box-office hit “Get Out,” which led the field with four nominations (read full nominations list here), affirmed its status as a serious player. So did three hot fall festival contenders that received three nominations each: Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird” (A24) and Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me by Your Name” (Sony Pictures Classics), both upcoming, and Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project” (A24), which is now in limited release.

Read More:2017 Gotham Awards Nominations: ‘Get Out’ Leads Pack, ‘Lady Bird’ and ‘Call Me by Your Name’ Also Break Out

Dee Rees’ “Mudbound” landed a special jury prize for ensemble performance. That’s significant, because while the Netflix Sundance pickup played well at festivals, its large and superb cast, much like Best Picture winner “Spotlight,...

The Gotham Awards aren’t exactly Oscar prognosticators, but a nomination builds early momentum for the long haul ahead; being left out at this stage is not good. Jordan Peele’s box-office hit “Get Out,” which led the field with four nominations (read full nominations list here), affirmed its status as a serious player. So did three hot fall festival contenders that received three nominations each: Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird” (A24) and Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me by Your Name” (Sony Pictures Classics), both upcoming, and Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project” (A24), which is now in limited release.

Read More:2017 Gotham Awards Nominations: ‘Get Out’ Leads Pack, ‘Lady Bird’ and ‘Call Me by Your Name’ Also Break Out

Dee Rees’ “Mudbound” landed a special jury prize for ensemble performance. That’s significant, because while the Netflix Sundance pickup played well at festivals, its large and superb cast, much like Best Picture winner “Spotlight,...

Despite the insanity of announcing year-end award nominations with still well over two months to go in 2017, we have to give it to the annual Ifp Gotham Awards for being more on-point than most trophy ceremonies this season.

They’ve now unveiled the nominations for their 27th edition and leading the pack is Jordan Peele’s social thriller Get Out. Also among the stellar group of Best Feature nominations are Call Me by Your Name, The Florida Project, I, Tonya, and Good Time.

Check out the full list of nominations below, including Columbus, Ex Libris, Rat Film, Lady Bird, Marjorie Prime, and more of the best films of the year. If The Academy takes just a few notes from this group come next year, we’ll be mightily pleased.

Best Feature

Call Me by Your Name

The Florida Project

Get Out

Good Time

I, Tonya

Best Documentary

Ex Libris – The...

Consider awards season officially started. The Independent Filmmaker Project (Ifp), the nation’s premier member organization of independent storytellers, has announced the nominees for its 27th Annual Ifp Gotham Awards. For 2017, ten competitive awards will be presented to independent features and series.

This year’s nominees are lead by Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” which pulled in four nominations (including Best Feature, Breakthrough Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor), but the breakout debut is trailed by four other hot contenders, each with three nominations to their name. Those include Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird,” Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me by Your Name,” Kogonada’s “Columbus,” and Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project.”

The Gothams also heaped nomination glory on other films that are expected to contend this season, including Craig Gillespie’ “I, Tonya,” the Safdie brothers’ “Good Time,” and Dee Rees’ “Mudbound,” which will be receiving a special ensemble awards.

Ten months into the year, it’s hard out here for an Oscar contender. Being worthy of remembering, or being watched by Academy members, demands a warm film-festival reception, rave reviews, effective marketing and distribution, strong theater attendance, and word of mouth. Check out this curated (alphabetical) selection of long-shot performers who are worthy of Oscar consideration, but may see their movies get lost in the intense competitive awards shuffle.

1. Bryan Cranston

Category: Best Actor

Awards: Nominated for Best Actor by SAG and the Oscars for “Trumbo,” Cranston won three Best Actor in a Drama Emmys for playing Walter White in “Breaking Bad” and won SAG Best Actor in TV movie as Lbj in “All the Way.”

Last Hit: “Why Him?” ($60 million domestic)

Title: “Last Flag Flying” (Amazon Studios)

Bottom Line: This layered New York Film Festival opener stars Cranston in one of his signature large, colorful, entertaining performances as Sal,...

Ten months into the year, it’s hard out here for an Oscar contender. Being worthy of remembering, or being watched by Academy members, demands a warm film-festival reception, rave reviews, effective marketing and distribution, strong theater attendance, and word of mouth. Check out this curated (alphabetical) selection of long-shot performers who are worthy of Oscar consideration, but may see their movies get lost in the intense competitive awards shuffle.

1. Bryan Cranston

Category: Best Actor

Awards: Nominated for Best Actor by SAG and the Oscars for “Trumbo,” Cranston won three Best Actor in a Drama Emmys for playing Walter White in “Breaking Bad” and won SAG Best Actor in TV movie as Lbj in “All the Way.”

Last Hit: “Why Him?” ($60 million domestic)

Title: “Last Flag Flying” (Amazon Studios)

Bottom Line: This layered New York Film Festival opener stars Cranston in one of his signature large, colorful, entertaining performances as Sal,...

Playwrights Horizons announced today that stage and screen star Jesse Tyler Ferguson 'Modern Family,' Fully Committed, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee has joined the cast of Log Cabin, the world premiere of a new play by Pulitzer Prize finalist Jordan Harrison Marjorie Prime, Maple and Vine, Doris to Darlene at Playwrights 'Orange Is the New Black'.