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Just minutes before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was set to get underway in April 2023, New York Post Editor-in-Chief Keith Poole and star columnist Miranda Devine were on a mission to find an extra seat. Inside the Washington Hilton hotel, the pair had a very special guest that they needed to accommodate and their table was oversubscribed. After some musical chairs among staffers, Vivek Ramaswamy spent much of the evening talking with Poole, a Brit feted as a “boy wonder” in Murdoch circles.

Poole, who like all Murdoch editors has a direct line to “the boss,” had already created waves in his handling of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential announcement. “Been There, Don That” was the headline that was tucked away on page 26 of the Nov. 22, 2022 edition of the Post. But it was the teaser at the bottom of the front page that went viral. “Florida man makes announcement.”

Soon, Poole would be in a pickle.

This month’s Hong Kong International Film Festival will showcase over 190 films from 62 countries and regions, including five world premieres, and 64 Asian premieres.

Running 12 days (March 28 – April 8), the festival will open with the Asian premiere of local director Ray Yeung’s “All Shall Be Well,” which won the Teddy Award at the recent Berlin festival.

The closing film is the Asian premiere of “All the Long Nights,” directed by Miyake Sho and starring Matsumura Hokuto and Kamishiraishi Mone, which also premiered in Berlin. Variety’s review of “Nights” called it “gently luminous.”

Chinese-language films selected for the Firebird competition include: “Borrowed Time,” “Brief History of a Family,” “Carefree Days,” Fresh off Markham,” “A Journey in Spring,” “Snow in Midsummer,” “Some Rain Must Fall” and “A Song Sung Blue.”

Foreign films for the Firebird competition’s other section include: “Arcadia,” “Arni,” “Ivo,” “Pepe,” “Sons,” “Sujo,” “The Tenants” and “Who Do I Belong to.

French actor turned director Xavier Legrand’s superbly performed first feature, Custody, was the kind of debut that budding filmmakers can only dream about. After premiering in Venice in 2017, where it won the Silver Lion, it went on to scoop up a slew of other prizes that culminated with four César Awards in France, including best picture.

In such instances, there’s always a risk of a sophomore slump, though that’s not really the term to apply to Legrand’s second movie, The Successor (Le Successeur), a bleak and tormented psychological thriller that made its world premiere in competition at San Sebastian. Let’s call it a case of swinging for the fences and hitting a foul ball that lands somewhere far off in the upper tiers, so much does this ambitious and well-made but extremely flawed film miss its mark.

Adapted by Legrand and Dominick Parenteau-Lebeuf from Alexandre Postel’s 2015 novel,...

In “The Successor” — a provocative psychological thriller with a lot more actual psychology than the genre typically offers — Paris-based fashion designer Ellias Barnès (Marc-André Grondin) stands on the precipice of a breakthrough in his career. He’s poised to take his place as creative director of the fashion house Orsino, following the death of its eponymous founder. If this were a tale of corporate ambition (à la “Succession”), or perhaps a Roman palace intrigue, here is the moment that Ellias would assume the throne. But instead of feeling victorious, he clutches his chest. The anxiety is almost too much. And then the police arrive.

It’s taken more than a decade, but Ellias has done everything he can to distance himself from his biological father. As such, there’s an ironic perversity to the news he gets right after his stunning solo show for Orsino: His dad, Jean-Jacques, is dead,...

”I adore his cinema,” said festival director José Luis Rebordinos of Hayao Miyazaki. ”He is in my list of all-time favourite directors.”

The 71st edition of the San Sebastián Film Festival opened September 22 with the Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki’s latest feature: The Boy And The Heron. The film screened in the official section out of competition at the Spanish festival, which has registered a 10% increase in industry professionals in its growing market activities.

At the ceremony, conducted mainly in Spanish and Basque, festival director José Luis Rebordinos paid homage to Miyazaki, recipient of one of the two Donostia...