Indie News

Alejandro Landes’ Colombian survival thriller Monos was presented with the best film award of the Official Competition at the BFI London Film Festival tonight (October 12).

The film is Colombia’s entry for the best international film at the Oscars, and has already won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury award at Sundance. Picturehouse acquired UK rights from Le Pacte for a release later this month.

Wash Westmoreland, the Official Competition jury president, said: “Monos is a stunning cinematic achievement; marrying dynamic visuals, faultless performances and groundbreaking storytelling. It’s a masterpiece!

Editor’s Note: American playwright and stage director Josh Ravetch is perhaps best known for co-creating and directing Carrie Fisher’s one-woman show “Wishful Drinking.” However, he directed the late Robert Forster, who died Friday night in Los Angeles at age 78, in his play “Chasing Mem’ries: A Different Kind of Musical” in 2017. Below, Ravetch remembers working with the actor, with whom he maintained a close relationship up until Forster’s death.

If you look him up on IMDb, he has 187 acting credits.

You may know him as Max Cherry from Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown.” I first knew him as a child in the 1970s series, “Banyon.”

But his greatest role isn’t listed on IMDb. He was first and foremost a remarkable father to his four children. Their profound love for him is impressive testimony to what kind of dad he was. He spent the last decade setting them up,

If there’s any entertainment to be wrought from the quote-unquote “fallout” of Martin Scorsese‘s comments on comic book movies, it’s in watching people be very, very careful in how they respond. While Marvel stalwarts like Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, and James Gunn have all weighed in on Scorsese’s interview – offering their personal variations on, “Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man” – the latest person to share their thoughts is noted comic book lover Kevin Smith.

Continue reading Kevin Smith Responds To Martin Scorsese: “Who Is Jesus If Not A Superhero?” at The Playlist.

Nobody, least of all the director himself, is going to look back on the work of Pedro Almodóvar and think, man, it’s too bad he didn’t make more movies in Hollywood. Since the 1970s, Almodóvar has crafted his unique brand of cinema and served as an important entry point into Spanish cinema for many generations of moviegoers. In fact, he’s reached the point in his career where any new film doubles as a retrospective, which is how Almodóvar came to discuss the one Hollywood feature he might’ve directed with Vulture critic Bilge Ebiri.

Continue reading Pedro Almodovar Was Tempted To Make A More “Animalistic” Version Of ‘Brokeback Mountain’ at The Playlist.

Earlier this month, the Academy announced that 93 countries submitted films for its International Feature Film category at the 92nd Academy Awards. Ten of these came from Africa, a new record for the continent.

It remains to be seen whether any of these titles will be shortlisted in order to make the final list of five nominees. Of the 10 films, Senegal’s “Atlantics,” Mati Diop’s 2019 Cannes Grand Prix winner acquired by Netflix, probably has the strongest chance.

The last time a film representing an African country won this category was South Africa’s “Tsotsi,” by Gavin Hood, at the 78th Oscars in 2006. It’s one of just three wins from African countries, which also include Algeria’s “Z” by Costa-Gavras in 1969 and the Ivory Coast’s “Black and White in Color” (“La Victoire en chantant”) by Jean-Jacques Annaud in 1976.

In 2018, eight submissions included African first-timers Mozambique (“The Train of Salt

It is no surprise how many people are expressing grief at the death of Robert Forster from brain cancer at age 78. It was far too soon. He’s actually on screen now, in Vince Gilligan’s “El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie,” which hit both theaters and Netflix this weekend.

Anyone who met Forster knows what a kindly man he was, often handing out elegant silver letter openers to set visitors and new acquaintances; he gave me my second at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, where he was promoting the intimate family drama “What They Had.” He steals the movie and provides its emotional center as the tough but vulnerable patriarch doggedly hanging onto his wife (Blythe Danner) as she slips into Alzheimer’s.

Bryan Cranston described his “Alligator,” “Breaking Bad,” and “El Camino” costar Forster as a “lovely man and a consummate actor,” he tweeted. “I never

Two submissions for the 2020 Best International Feature Film Academy Awards got a nice boost today at the BFI London Film Festival, which named all the prize winners for its 63rd edition.

Alejandro Landes’ “Monos,” which is Colombia’s Oscar pick and is currently in theaters via distributor Neon, scooped up BFI London’s Best Film Award. When the film world-premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, Landes won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for his striking, “Lord of the Flies”-esque vision of a band of gun-toting kids gone deliriously insane in the wilderness.

Netflix’s Cannes acquisition “Atlantics,” which made history at the French film festival when director Mati Diop became the first woman of African descent with a film screening in Competition, won the BFI London’s Sutherland Award for First Feature. Diop’s film is Senegal’s submission to the Academy Awards, and will debut in

Here’s to using your celebrity to tell meaningful stories. Back in August, it was announced that Gal Gadot had joined a Showtime limited series about Hedy Lamarr, the famous actress and inventor whose work with radio-controlled torpedos was decades ahead of its time. Yesterday, Deadline announced Gadot has partnered with husband Jaron Varsano to produce and star in “Irena Sendler,” a film about the wartime heroics of the late Polish social worker.

Continue reading Gal Gadot Will Produce And Star As Polish Holocaust Hero In ‘Irena Sendler’ at The Playlist.

Visionary graphic artist Philip Gips, the designer behind many of your favorite movie posters, died earlier this month on October 3 at the age of 88. His most iconic designs include the unforgettable one-sheets for “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Alien,” which portend the terror awaiting audiences without giving too much away, and he worked steadily beginning in 1968 all the way through the late 1980s.

Gips also memorably created the striking poster for 1976’s Academy Award-winning media satire “Network.” According to a recent obituary in The New York Times, “While designing a poster for ‘Network’ … Mr. Gips suggested that the unhinged news anchorman at the center of the story, Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch), be pictured strung up on a television antenna, as if he were being crucified.”

“The tagline was supposed to be ‘The Greatest Story Ever Sold,’” Michael Gips said in a phone interview with the Nyt. “But it was

As much as critics like to give directors credit for every creative decision that happens on set, we also love an excellent director controversy, too. There are plenty of directors who may or may not have performed uncredited work on a film – think Howard Hawks on “The Thing From Another World,” Kurt Russell on “Tombstone,” or Paul Thomas Anderson on “Prairie Home Companion” – and the confusion surrounding these directing credits become part of the legend.

Continue reading Alex Garland’s “Pretty Crude Experience” On ‘Dredd’ Left Him With No Interest In A Sequel at The Playlist.

[Editor’s Note: The following article contains spoilers for “El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie,” including the ending.]

Vince Gilligan didn’t want to change the ending of “Breaking Bad.” No one did. Not really. Even those who wanted to see more stories with Walter White and Jesse Pinkman had to respect how their stories wrapped up in the award-winning crime saga. Walter dies, as was his destiny. Jesse lives, as he deserved. Rare is it to find such a fitting yet fulfilling ending to a long-running, highly respected drama series, and rarer still for just about everyone to agree that the show nailed its series finale. Both factors make the prospect of adding to it daunting, to say the least.

So Gilligan didn’t. Yes, in his sequel film “El Camino,” the writer-director chooses to share more of what happens after those iconic final shots of “Breaking Bad,” but it’s purely Jesse’s journey and that journey is largely internal.

The latest series to add to the upcoming Apple TV+’s growing streaming slate is the limited series “Truth Be Told.” Premiering on Friday, December 6, the series stars Octavia Spencer as a true-crime podcaster opposite Aaron Paul as a convicted murderer. The series is created by Nichelle Tramble Spellman, a producer and writer on “The Good Wife,” and also stars Lizzy Caplan, Elizabeth Perkins, Michael Beach, Mekhi Phifer, Tracie Thoms, Haneefah Wood, and Ron Cephas Jones.

In the first trailer, below, all of the actors appear to be having fun with this lurid tale of a possibly wrongful imprisonment, and the many aftershocks thereafter. Here’s the synopsis from Apple TV+: “When new evidence compels podcaster Poppy Parnell (Spencer) to reopen the murder case that made her a national sensation, she comes face to face with Warren Cave (Paul), the man she may have mistakenly helped to put behind bars.

Over the past few years, Netflix has developed a reputation for being, ah, slightly less than transparent with its viewer data. Typically, the only time the streaming giant will share information about its titles is when a movie breaks through in a big way. That seems to be the case with “Murder Mystery,” the cozy international thriller that reunited Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston.

Continue reading Netflix Is Within Spitz-ing Distance Of A ‘Murder Mystery’ Sequel at The Playlist.

In the early 1980s, Francis Ford Coppola was one of the biggest names in filmmaking. After box office and awards success with two “Godfather” films, he had also gone to hell and back making “Apocalypse Now,” betting his vineyard and personal fortune on the biggest arthouse war movie ever made, and somehow ended up winning big. He would never make another film, “Cotton Club” included, without having final cut.

And yet the story of making the original “Cotton Club” was one of the director under tremendous pressure and losing sight of his movie by making edits that compromised his original vision.

“It was a long production of a lot of warfare going on on the set, you’ve gone through a cut, a director is pretty exhausted by the time the movie is coming out,” said Coppola when he was guest on IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast. “And very well

For some, horror is a departure. For the rest of us, fear is an around-the-clock event. That’s why it’s exciting to see a movie like Adam Egypt Mortimer‘s “Daniel Isn’t Real” secure a December release date. Not only isn’t it good to see this buzzy title finally secure a release date, but there’s also always room in our hearts for a little holiday counter-programming. Who doesn’t want to watch a movie about a violent imaginary friend when you’re smack dab in the middle of disastrous holiday travel with your family?

Continue reading ‘Daniel Isn’t Real’ Trailer: Beware, Beware, Your Imaginary Friend at The Playlist.

78-year-old Robert Forster died this past Friday in Los Angeles after a brief battle with brain cancer. The calmly charismatic actor left behind a wealth of credits, including his latest, “El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie,” which was just released on Netflix. He received an Academy Award nomination in 1998 for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown.” His other credits include “Medium Cool,” “The Descendants,” “Mulholland Drive,” the latest season of “Twin Peaks,” the TV series “Nakia” and “Banyon,” and many more.

Below, IndieWire has rounded up testimonies from members of the entertainment community who’ve spoken out in tribute to the actor via Twitter.

I’m saddened today by the news that Robert Forster has passed away. A lovely man and a consummate actor. I met him on the movie Alligator (pic) 40 years ago, and then again on Bb. I never forgot how kind

Bob Weinstein is back, without his brother. The former Weinstein Co. co-chairman has formed a new production company that will focus on family films, comedies, and upscale adult thrillers. Unlike TWC, this company won’t be a distributor; instead, it will focus on producing up to three movies annually.

This puts Bob Weinstein in an unusual late-career position: Not only is he in business for the first time without Harvey Weinstein, he’s also in the role of seller. While he holds the title of executive producer on hundreds of films and TV shows, he earned all of them while being a distributor who acquired scripts for production as well as finished films as the co-head of Miramax Films and The Weinstein Company, and chairman of Dimension Films.

As a full producer, he has three credits: the Ben Affleck action film “Reindeer Games” in 2000, and Guillermo del Toro’s “Mimic

Academy Award nominee, red-carpet fashion slayer, and, now, literary savant Timothée Chalamet currently rules “The King,” director/co-writer David Michôd’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “Henry” plays.

Starring in the film as a wayward prince who suddenly finds himself heading the throne after his father’s death, Chalamet recently sat down with IndieWire’s Eric Kohn in an interview to discuss the making of the film, which takes from Shakespeare’s “Henry IV, Part 1,” “Henry IV, Part 2,” and “Henry V.” Naturally, the bookish actor (who next appears in Greta Gerwig’s Louisa May Alcott adaptation “Little Women”) knows his Shakespeare, and if he had to pick a favorite, it’s “Hamlet.” And he explains it with an eloquence that would send any English major back to the books.

“You can make the case that all of Shakespeare’s plays lay the groundwork for the narratives we see to this day,

As far back as I can remember, Robert Forster was a source of comfort. It wasn’t just that Forster was a great actor; he was an ageless wonder, a performer whose quiet competence and weathered good looks reinforced the idea that it’s never too late in life to make a difference with your career. For those, like myself, who sometimes struggle with the uncertainty of aging, there was Forster, making middle-age look like the best thing that could ever happen to a man.

Continue reading Robert Forster, Star of ‘Jackie Brown’ and ‘What They Had,’ Dies At Age 78 at The Playlist.

Another day, another auteur picks his or her side in the streaming wars. This week it was Alfonso Cuarón, the Netflix golden boy who switched allegiances after “Roma” and signed an exclusive TV deal with Apple. It was for a lot of money, and he joins a growing list of big streaming deals that include J.J. Abrams at Warner Media, Phoebe Waller-Bridge at Amazon, Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes at Netflix, and…

Sorry, just couldn’t type that paragraph one more time. Filmmakers who strike big deals with deep-pocketed disrupters that are dead set on scooping the best talent out from under each other — it’s become so familiar that it threatens to become a trope. And with less than a month before the launches of Apple TV+ and Disney+, stoking the fires around all this empire building starts to obscure something more important.

For streamers, the checks they cut