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SXSW’s inaugural London edition opens next month (2-7 June) with a diverse lineup of tech, music, and film events mounted across dozens of venues in the bustling Shoreditch area of East London.

The festival’s centerpiece film is Amazon’s crime-comedy Deep Cover, starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, Nick Mohammed, and Sean Bean. Mike Flanagan’s Tom Hiddleston starrer The Life of Chuck has been set as the closing film. In between, the festival will deliver a robust programme of international titles like Love & Rage: Munroe Bergdorf, a documentary feature on the British trans activist, and the Eminem-produced Stan from Steve Leckart. Idris Elba, Efe Cakarel, Deepak Chopra, Katherine Ryan, Wyclef Jean, Tems, Jenn Nkiru, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Joe Wicks are also among the names set for the event.

The film programme has been curated by Anna Bogutskaya, who serves as Head of Screen at SXSW London.

Exclusive: The inaugural SXSW London Screen Festival’s Centrepiece Headliner will be the world premiere of Amazon’s crime-comedy Deep Cover, starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Orlando Bloom, Nick Mohammed and Sean Bean.

Directed by Tom Kingsley, the film will see Bryce Dallas Howard as Kat, an improv comedy teacher beginning to question if she’s missed her shot at success. When an undercover cop (Sean Bean) offers her the role of a lifetime, she recruits two of her students (Orlando Bloom and Nick Mohammed) to infiltrate London’s gangland by impersonating dangerous criminals.

Also starring are Paddy Considine, Sonoya Mizuno, and Ian McShane.

Writers are Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow, Ben Ashenden and Alexander Owen. Producers are Colin Trevorrow, Walter F. Parkes, and Laurie MacDonald.

The premiere will take place on Wednesday 4 June, the midpoint of the overall festival, which runs from June 2-7 in London’s Shoreditch district. Mike Flanagan...

Idris Elba, Deepak Chopra, Katherine Ryan, Wyclef Jean, Tems, Jenn Nkiru, Jean-Michel Jarre and Joe Wicks are among the speakers set for the first edition of South by Southwest London this summer.

“Attendees will hear from industry leaders at the cutting edge of what is new and future facing alongside some of the world’s biggest talent from across music, film, tech and culture at the inaugural festival in Shoreditch,” said SXSW organizers in a statement. “SXSW London will include everything that attendees have come to expect from SXSW including talks, music and screen, alongside a focus on new themes, including visual arts and fashion.”

The conference program is set to present ideas about the intersection of tech, creativity, arts and business. Additional speakers include: Alex Hirschi, Founder and Creator of Supercar Blondie; Ben Lamm, Co-Founder and CEO of Colossal Biosciences; Callum McGinley, Founder and Creator of The notwoways & Afterparty Studios...

US filmmaker Ava DuVernay will receive the honorary Film & Beyond Award at the 30th edition of Geneva International Film Festival (Giff).

DuVernay will accept her award in-person at the event, where she will participate in a talk about her career.

The festival, which runs from November 1-10, 2024, is also playing a programme of DuVernay’s work.

Having worked extensively as a publicist in Hollywood, DuVernay directed her first feature This Is The Life, a documentary about the alternative hip hop MCs who came through the Good Life Cafe in Los Angeles, in 2008.

After her fiction feature debut I Will Follow...

Christine and the Queens delivered an electrifying take on an Edith Piaf classic during the opening ceremony of the Paralympics in Paris on Thursday.

There was some social media outrage when Chris — one of France’s chief musical exports — wasn’t included in either the opening or closing ceremonies of the Paris Olympics, but the singer was instead being saved for the Paralympics, where they brought an expertly choreographed and over-the-top performance.

As the sun set at the Place de la Concorde, Chris arrived in a red car (naturally) and...

As debate continues to rage around whether a scene featuring drag queens in the Paris 2024 Olympics opening ceremony was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, speculation is now mounting over details of the closing ceremony on August 11.

Artistic director Thomas Jolly – who has received death threats amid claims the scene was an insult to Christianity, even though he insists it was inspired by Greek mythology and not the Bible – is also responsible for the closing ceremony and has been pushing on with its preparation against the backdrop of the furore.

French sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra told radio news network FranceInfo that she had “absolute confidence” that Jolly and his team would “dazzle the world” once again.

Unlike the logistically ambitious opening ceremony which ran along a four-mile stretch of the River Seine under pouring rain, the closing will take place in the 80,000-capacity, Stade de France stadium, which...

In 2020, director Hsin-Chien Huang won the NewImages Festival’s top prize for “Bodyless,” a dreamlike exploration of his own childhood growing up under Taiwanese martial law. That year’s jury was led by French music producer and composer Jean-Michel Jarre – and sometime over the course of the festival the two men hit it off.

This year, the fast friends will return as creative partners and co-directors of “The Eye and I,” a visual and musical collaboration screening in NewImages’ competition and born of the festival’s wider goal to develop the immersive ecosystem in part by encouraging such outcomes.

“Our mission is to connect people,” says festival director Michele Ziegler. “We’re always looking to expand our circle and build our community – and we hope more and more people will join.”

Indeed, a bout of jury duty has proven to be a powerful motivator, as Jarre is hardly the first creative to make the leap.

Cannes is entering the multiverse.

For its 77th edition this May, the austere Cannes Film Festival is launching a new competition section devoted to immersive storytelling.

The inaugural edition of the Immersive Competition will feature eight works that use virtual reality, augmented reality and other cutting-edge technologies to “transcend conventional storytelling and transport audiences to other worlds, narratives and eras,” the festival said. The section will be a competition one, with an international jury of experts from the film and immersive art worlds awarding a prize for the Best Immersive Work. In addition, Cannes will screen a curated selection of non-competitive immersive works.

The new competition “aims to spotlight the next generation of international artists who are redefining storytelling and inventing new narrative-driven experiences that move beyond the traditional two-dimensional cinema screen,” Cannes organizers said. The section is being organized with support from French national film board, the Cnc. French...

Avant-garde composer-performer Laurie Anderson, R&b icon Gladys Knight, groundbreaking rap group N.W.A, disco queen Donna Summer and country legend Tammy Wynette are among this year’s Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award honorees, the academy announced today.

Also included on the list: gospel vocal group The Clark Sisters and, in the non-performing categories, Peter Asher, the longtime, prolific producer of such artists as Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor; hip hop pioneer DJ Kool Herc; and entertainment attorney Joel Katz. Those three will receive Trustee Awards.

Technical Grammy Award honorees are Tom Kobayashi and Tom Scott, while “Refugee,” written by K’naan, Steve McEwan, and Gerald Eaton (a.k.a. Jarvis Church), is being honored with the Best Song For Social Change Award.

“The Academy is honored to pay tribute to this year’s Special Merit Award recipients — a remarkable group of creators and industry professionals whose impact resonates with generations worldwide,...

I’ve been listening to Armin van Buuren for around 20 years. Every Thursday evening tuning into his A State of Trance radio show – smashing out the latest in Trance and Progressive every single week. Armin has risen to become one of the world’s most well-known DJ’s, every year features very highly (usually in the top 5) in DJ Mag’s poll.

Armin’s tour schedule is gruelling, travelling the world to the biggest festivals and largest events and bringing joy to hundreds of thousands of revellers at every single one. It’s fair to say I’m a die-hard fan, I’ve seen him in London numerous times and my first international trip to Amsterdam to attend his ‘This is Me: Feel Again’ event. The event was originally scheduled to take place in 2020 but with the rise of Covid the event had to keep being pushed back but it...

The best feature prize went to ’Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person’.

Canadian director and screenwriter Ariane Louis-Seize won the Reflet d’Or for best feature prize for Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person as this year’s Geneva International Film Festival (Giff) drew to a close this weekend (Saturday November 11).

Louis-Seize took home the prize for her film about a female vampire too sensitive to kill who meets a lonely man which carries a cash prize of Chf 10,000, 75% of which goes to the director and 25% to the rights holder who registered the film in the Festival selection. The cash...

The best feature prize went to ’Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person’.

Canadian director and screenwriter Ariane Louis-Seize won the Reflet d’Or for best feature prize for Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person as this year’s Geneva International Film Festival (Giff) drew to a close this weekend (Saturday November 11).

Louis-Seize took home the prize for her film about a female vampire too sensitive to kill who meets a lonely man which carries a cash prize of Chf 10,000, 75% of which goes to the director and 25% to the rights holder who registered the film in the Festival selection. The cash...

The festival and its Geneva Digital Market take place from November 3-11 in Switzerland.

International festival favourites, a fresh take on the international series competition and the world debut of an installation by Jean-Michel Jarre, exemplify the Geneva International Film Festival’s mission to investigate and celebrate audiovisual content in all its guises.

“Our goal for audiences and international participants alike is to reinforce the interaction with content and the cinematographic experience for film, series and also digital creation,” says artistic director Anais Emery, who is overseeing her third edition. “I hope the audience will get curious about this diversity of audiovisual offerings.

Jean-Michel Jarre previously announced as honorary awardee.

Geneva International Film Festival (Giff) has unveiled the juries for its 2023 edition, which runs from November 3-12.

Swiss director Stephanie Chuat heads up the jury for the international feature competition, alongside production manager Gabriel Grosclaude, videographer Anna Joos, programmer Timon Musy and Sofia Pasotti.

The international series competition jury is Justine Langlois, Damien Molineaux and Mathieu Roux. The trio are Giff attendees who were selected via a social media callout in the summer.

Curators Nora Nahid Khan and Giovanna Fossati, and journalist Keith Stuart make up the Future is Sensible competition jury; with Xr professionals Gaelle Mourre,...

Three festival-goers will choose the winner of the international series competition.

Switzerland’s Geneva International Film Festival (Giff) has unveiled the programme for its 29th edition, with festival hits including Polite Society and The Sweet East, and a new format for its international series competition.

The festival includes 110 works, of which 53 are films, 27 are series, 28 are immersive experiences and two are installations.

Scroll down for the feature and series competition titles

Giff includes four competition sections: international feature, international series, international immersive and the convergent competition – the latter section featuring projects from all three formats.

All 12 titles in the international...

German media giant Bertelsmann closed out 2022 on a high, with overall revenue hitting $21.9 billion (20.2 billion euro), the highest in the company’s history. But the group, which controls European TV conglomerate Rtl Group and production subsidiary Fremantle, music division BMG and leading publisher Penguin Random House, saw its profits more than cut in half to $1.14 billion (1.05 billion euro) compared to 2021 as Bertelsmann invests heavily to juice the creative and streaming sides of its businesses.

That M&a strategy is most evident at Fremantle, where revenue jumped 22 percent year-on-year to $2.49 billion (2.3 billion euro), helped by the acquisitions of a 70 percent stake in leading Italian TV producer Lux Vide (Devils, Medici) and 51 percent of the Irish group Element Pictures (Normal People, The Favourite). Bertelsmann chairman and CEO Thomas Rabe has set Fremantle a revenue target of $3.25 billion (3 billion euro) by 2025.

BMG, which acquired the German music label Telamo last year, continues to gobble up music rights,...

The 34th Producers Guild of America Awards took place on Saturday, February 25 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. The biggest award of the night, the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures, has historically been considered a strong prognosticator for the Best Picture Oscar each year. It’s the only major precursor that uses a ranked choice voting system like the Academy Awards. Scroll down for the 2023 PGA Awards winners list in three film and 10 TV categories.

The guild and the academy have only disagreed 10 times over the past three decades, with last year’s champ “Coda” claiming both prizes. This year, seven of the guild’s nominees also reaped Oscar bids: “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Elvis,” “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” “The Fabelmans,” “Tár,” and “Top Gun: Maverick.” The other two PGA nominees, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery...

The Producers Guild of America have announced the nominees for the PGA Innovation Award ahead of the 34th Annual PGA Awards, set to take place on Feb. 25. The PGA Innovation Award recognizes the production of a noteworthy, impactful new media program that significantly elevates the audience’s viewing experience.

The nominees, in alphabetical order, are Dance Monsters (Lime Pictures), Experience Yosemite (CityLights), Ghostbusters VR Academy (Hologate), LeMusk – A Cinematic Sensory Experience (Intel Corporation), Lustration (New Canvas), On the Morning You Wake (To the End of the World) (Astrea), Oxymore by Jean-Michel Jarre (Vrroom), PerfectoVerse (Watch and Play), Stay Alive, My Son (Ume Studios), Stranger Things Immersive Watch Party (Sawhorse Productions) and Verizon Pepsi Halftime Ultra Pass (R/Ga).

The PGA will honor the winning program as a whole, rather than the individual producers. As such, the producers of these programs are not required to go through the awards eligibility determination process.

Moby released a new album, Ambient 23, on Sunday. Earlier in the month, the musician announced the LP, explaining that the 16-track set is inspired by his early ambient heroes, including Martyn Ware, Brian Eno, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Will Sergeant.

“It’s a bit different than some of my more recent Ambient records because it’s almost exclusively made with weird old drum machines and old synths,” he added.

On its release day marking a new year, Moby provided a bit more background on the two-and-a-half-hour-long album. It was “Made to help anxiety (my own,...

Celebrated French electronic artist Jean-Michel Jarre has enlisted Brian Eno’s help for a reworking of his Oxymore song, “Epica.”

“Epica Extension” boasts a bustling breakbeat as the drums drive ahead over an array of pulsing synths and a lead loop that sounds like it’s coming from some uncanny choral singer. In fact, “Epica Extension” carries a lot of the same propulsive energy as the original track, which Jarre wasn’t exactly expecting when he reached out to Eno.

“When I started ‘Epica,’ I immediately thought that Brian Eno...

“He’s all broken/ Fallen from the stars…” laments Redcar, also known as Christine and the Queens. In this new presentation, the artist now using he/him pronouns is a “suited, demented, broken-down man”. Much of Redcar Les Adorables Étoiles finds him yowling (mostly in French) into a dark maze of lost and looping grooves, his questing vocals echoing over the unyielding crunch of Eighties synths and the occasional agonised electric guitar. Imagine the Eurythmics and Jean-Michel Jarre hooking up to jam through on an operatic jazz odyssey in an underground car park somewhere beneath a rain-drenched Paris at 2am, and you’re about there.

To understand the pain and disorientation Redcar is expressing, you need the back story. In a tearful interview with The Guardian last week, the 34-year-old French artist born Heloise Letissier spoke of the sudden loss of his mother, Martine, to a heart infection in 2019. He...

It’s a sunny afternoon in Paris, and I’m sitting in the famous circular Maison de la Radio, headquarters of Radio France, looking out over the Seine and across to the Eiffel Tower in the company of Jean-Michel Jarre. The pioneer of electronic music, who rose to international fame in 1976 with his album Oxygéne, is wearing lightly tinted glasses, a black T-shirt and skinny jeans. He looks at least two decades younger than his 74 years.

Twenty-eight when he made the cult independent release that became a classic, Jarre has come a long way since then. Oxygéne was recorded on a synthesiser that “looked like a telephone exchange”, a primitive Korg drum machine modified with Sellotape, and an old Mellotron that had only a few working keys. Almost five decades and 80 million album sales later, we’re having lunch after listening to his 22nd studio record, Oxymore, in 360-degree spatial audio.

The Locarno Film Festival will celebrate U.S. musician, performance artist and filmmaker Laurie Anderson with its lifetime achievement award dedicated to creative pioneers.

The prominent Swiss fest dedicated to international indie cinema will be feting Anderson with its Vision Award Ticinomoda, and screening her two feature-length films, “Heart of a Dog” (2015) which is dedicated to Lou Reed, and the restored 4K version of “Home of the Brave” (1986).

Anderson will be given the award on Aug. 10 during a ceremony on Locarno’s Piazza Grande that will be followed by an onstage conversation on Aug. 11.

Locarno in a statement praised Anderson as “an artist who has made inventiveness and experimentation the hallmarks of her career,” underlining that she’s been a leading figure in the U.S. avant-garde since the 1970s.

“Anderson has spent five decades exploring the potential of multimedia and innovative technology in the arts, through collaborations with William S. Burroughs,...

“Please, please buy the noisiest toy for my child,” said no parent ever — unless, of course, that musically-inclined tot is destined to be the next Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Mozart or anyone in between. Some of the best music gifts for kids don’t have to come in the form of bright plastic instruments or (worse) a singing baby shark toy with no off button. Whether you’re shopping for pint-sized producers or elementary-aged audiophiles, there are plenty of cool toys for the youngest music lovers in your life.

Here,...

Tencent Music Entertainment Group acquired an undisclosed minority stake in LA-based Wave and the two have inked a strategic partnership to catapult the interactive virtual entertainment company into China.

The agreement calls for Tme, China’s leading online music platform, to air Wave experiences on all its platforms, including Qq Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music and WeSing, the companies announced Thursday.

The partners will develop virtual concert content for Tme Live, a performance brand launched in March that integrates offline and online events. They will collaborate on content, promotion and distribution of interactive concert experiences to China’s music fans.

Five-year-old Wave specializes in using cutting-edge broadcast technology and real-time gaming graphics to transform artists into their own digital avatars, livestreamed for fans to enjoy and interact with virtually.

To date, Wave has hosted more than 50 events for pop stars, DJs and artists from The Weeknd and John Legend to Tinashe,...

The immersive VR piece “Bodyless,” director Hsin-Chien Huang’s dreamlike exploration of his own childhood growing up under Taiwanese martial law, took home top honors at Paris’ NewImages Festival on Friday evening. Along with its newly minted Masque d’Or for best VR work, the 25-minute piece walked away with €6,000 in prize money.

Led by French music producer and composer Jean-Michel Jarre, this year’s jury – which also included directors Julie Bertuccelli, Jérémy Clapin and Alice Diop alongside actor Vimala Pons – honored two films with a second place tie, offering the special jury prize to both Ainslee Robson’s exploration of Ethiopian-American identity “Ferenj: A Graphic Memoir in VR,” and Fabito Rychter and Amir Admoni’s wryly surrealist “Gravity VR.”

Jarre’s jury also awarded Marie Blondiaux and Charles Ayats’ interactive project “Moa – My Own Assistant,” which was adapted from a novel by French writer Alain Damasio, and...

Running Sept. 23-27, this year’s NewImages Festival will work on two different fronts, offering locals a physical rendezvous space at Paris’ Forum des Images, while opening its full program to international attendees participating online.

Giving NewImages’ third edition a true hybrid flair, the 16 VR projects playing in competition and the 12 out-of-competition works can be experienced in person via reservation, and through the festival’s digital arm, @VRChat, a virtual room created by Xr platform VRrOOm.

On the industry side, NewImages three-day program will launch with an opening keynote from MIT’s D. Fox Harrell, and then span a number of professional workshops and panels, while the festival’s Xr financing market will host eight pitching sessions divided by theme.

Blending both physical and digital elements, the festival’s opening performance, “Flame,” will put live performers Alejandro Mendia and Samantha Alcon onto stage optimized for the virtual world – a show...

Antonio Banderas, Edgar Wright, Jean Michel Jarre, Chance the Rapper and even the Italian prime minister were among the people paying to legendary film composer Ennio Morricone early Monday, who died following complications from a fall. He was 91.

Over seven decades, Morricone contributed to over 520 scores including, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” “The Hateful Eight,” “Cinema Paradiso” and “Once Upon a Time in the West.” Morricone won the Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score Academy Award in 2016 for “The Hateful Eight.”

Director Edgar Wright led the tributes on social media saying, “Where to even begin with iconic composer Ennio Morricone? He could make an average movie into a must-see, a good movie into art, and a great movie into legend. He hasn’t been off my stereo my entire life. What a legacy of work he leaves behind. Rip.”

Where to even begin with iconic composer Ennio Morricone?...

Jean-Michel Jarre thought livestreamed concerts were missing something. So he added virtual drugs.

The French electronic music pioneer and former Cisac president has been one of the biggest champions of virtual-reality concerts — a concept that’s seeing a noticeable bump as coronavirus continues to stall the comeback of live music. Now that regular iPhone-camera livestreams are mainstream, many artists are looking for ways to go beyond the living room concerts that defined the first few months of quarantine, and higher-tech shows (whether headset-bound virtual-reality experiences or more casual video-game-like shows) appear particularly attractive.

Name me some electronic musicians, composers. If, like me, you came up with Kraftwerk or Jean-Michel Jarre, you, too, may hang your head in shame. Yes, even if you then added as afterthought, Mike Oldfield or Laurie Anderson. Because noticing the one in four performers who happens to have made it in this field and is a woman is really not good enough. Especially when, it turns out, there are good reasons why electronic music is often the safest space in which women may express themselves.

Except I did not know that until I watched Sisters With Transistors. This is a documentary, directed by Lisa Rovner, that takes us on a journey through the world of electronic music and the women pioneers in this field.

So “just” a film about women making music? No. Don’t get me wrong, the structure of the film, pulling together old newsreel and extracts from popular TV.

Gorillaz will offer a behind-the-scenes look at the making of their two most recent albums in a new documentary, Reject False Icons, set to screen in theaters one night only, December 16th.

The film was directed by Denholm Hewlett and spans the three-year period during which Gorillaz recorded and released 2017’s Humanz and its 2018 follow-up, The Now Now. It also follows the band on their world tour, which was bookended by their Demon Dayz festivals in the U.K. and U.S.

Reject False Icons will primarily center around Gorillaz’s human masterminds,...

“My favorite keyboard of all time will always be the Minimoog,” Rick Wakeman says in an extended version of a scene that will appear in Electronic Voyager, an upcoming doc on the life of legendary synth inventor Robert Moog. “I couldn’t live without one.”

In the film, Moog’s daughter, Michelle Moog-Koussa, retraces the footstep of her father from his birthplace in Queens, New York, to his eventual home of Asheville, North Carolina. Along the way, she meets with various prominent musicians who have used Moog synths in their work,...

On Saturday, February 2nd, a made-up DJ played to more than 10 million made-up characters in a made-up world. And the real-life music industry gasped in unison.

The fictional DJ has a name: Marshmello. No one truly knows his identity, thanks to his white bucket helmet with an unambiguous painted smile and crisscross eyes — although increasingly voluminous online scuttlebutt suggests the man under the plastic cranium is Chris Comstock, a 26-year-old producer hailing from Philadelphia.

The point, though, is that Marshmello could be anyone. He’s an entirely fictional creation, a...

Music copyright is shaping up to be a hot topic this year, despite being both historically overlooked and historically extremely confusing. While the actual workings of royalties and licensing policies are still as convoluted as ever, attention on them — and their dysfunctions — has ramped up thanks to the Music Modernization Act’s passage in the U.S. Congress and a controversial copyright policy overhaul in Europe that could dramatically change user-generated content platforms like YouTube.

The International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (a.k.a. Confédération Internationale des Sociétés d’Auteurs et Compositeurs,...

Ariana Grande will make a surprise appearance at the Coachella music festival on Friday night, Variety has learned.

The performance will occur on the same day the pop star released her newest single, “No Tears Left to Cry” (read Variety‘s review here). The song was inspired by the May 2017 bombing at a Grande concert in Manchester, England that left 23 people dead, including the bomber.

Headlining Friday’s weekend two lineup is The Weeknd, whose latest album “My Dear Melancholy,” was released earlier this month. The Weeknd and Grande previously collaborated on the hit single “Love Me Harder,” which Grande released in 2014 as part of her album, “My Everything.”

The pair have since made multiple joint appearances to duet on the sultry track, including a performance on “Saturday Night Live” and a viral live acoustic rendition posted to Grande’s YouTube page that has garnered more than 17 million views.

Carpenter Brut,...

Like a candy-colored Jack Kirby acid trip, Thor: Ragnorak bounces all over the Nine Realms – taking its hammer-wielding hero from Asgard to Earth and some truly mind-blowing places in between. Yes, the latest adventure from the comic-book blockbuster factory ticks all the customary Marvel boxes. It's a spirited adventure punctuated by heady bursts of CGI spectacle. It's got just enough fan-service cameos to delight knowing viewers. And there's at least one arguably gratuitous shirtless shot of its handsome hero (not that anyone is complaining).

But the movie (which hits...

Anticipation for 2017’s major festivals is at an all time high, with Coachella‘s lineup serving as the holy grail of the entire season. We’ve already heard some rumors about the alleged headliners, while DJ Khaled inadvertently spilled the beans on his slot at the festival. Now we have another enticing update to ponder with a list that attempts to predict the entire lineup.

A website called TravelGrom has consistently made predictions about Coachella lineups in the past with a high degree of accuracy compared to the average rumor, and they’ve just offered up their projections for 2017. While the information is just conjecture at this point, TravelGrom predicted last year’s lineup with 64% accuracy. If that figure holds true again, over half of the list will wind up on the official lineup.

The alleged lineup includes a diverse array of styles, with representation from Edm, Rock, Rap, Pop and everything in between.

Exclusive: Copenhagen’s festival, in new autumn dates, will show a record 226 features kicking off with Doctor Strange.

Copenhagen’s Cph Pix festival, now in its new autumn dates, has revealed a record 226 feature films in its lineup.

The 14-day festival (Oct 27 - Nov 9), which now also includes kids and family festival Buster, will show 46 features for young people in its daytime programmes and 180 films for teenagers and adults in the evenings.

As previously reported, the eighth edition of festival will open with a gala premiere of Marvel’s Doctor Strange (Mads Mikkelsen will attend).

There will be four main awards at Pix: the New Talent Grand Pix for a debut feature (with $11,200 (€10,000)); the Politiken Audience Award that comes with Danish distribution support, and the Nordisk Film Fond prizes for best children’s feature and best children’s short.

Terence Davies [pictured] will be given a full retrospective as well as showing his latest film A Quiet Passion and participating...

If you grew up during the 1980s and the 1990s like myself, you gotta check out this video created by Smash TV called Megaplex. It’s the ultimate audio and visual nostalgia trip: a mashup of over 80 movies, fake trailers, and more edited together with some retro music from the era. This thing is absolutely ridiculous in the greatest of ways and it made me miss the good ol’ days. Here’s the note that came along with the video:

Megaplex is the most insane double feature the world has ever seen. With a running time of 80 minutes and thousands of cuts from more than 80 movies, Smash TV has spent the past year and a half cramming the most entertainment possible into every second. It's dense enough to pressurize these diamonds in the rough into gleaming treasures.Megaplex is the long awaited followup to the critically acclaimed Skinemax, much more fully realized,...

It’s a big day for Armin Van Buuren fans today, as the trance legend has two big announcements for us.

The first comes in the form of the expected but still very pleasing Armin Only Embrace world tour, which is set to get underway in 2016. Dates and stops haven’t been announced just yet, but as you can see in the video above, the more people use the hashtag #Aoembrace, the more Armin will reveal. According to the official press release, every 5,000 uses of the hashtag will unlock a new clue, so start Tweeting!

In the second piece of Armin news, the producer has announced that pre-orders are now available for the highly anticipated A State of Trance Year Mix, which will drop on December 18th. Boasting some of trance music’s heaviest hitters, like Cosmic Gate, Andrew Rayel, Above & Beyond, Markus Schulz and more, the release is sure to be a big one,...

While the end of summer saw 2015’s festival season coming to a close, music lovers can rejoice that next year’s season is already on the horizon, as the first news of 2016’s headlining acts begin to surface. With less than a half a year to go, Coachella is one of the first festivals on the radar, and we’ve already got a few confirmed names to go off of.

Nile Rodgers made waves in the Edm scene in 2013, teaming up with legendary house duo Daft Punk on their hit single “Get Lucky,” contributing his characteristic funky guitar riffs to the memorable song. But Rodgers has a long history as an iconic dance music producer, with roots tracing back to the explosion of disco, notably his work with the group Chic.

Chic released a slew of disco hits in the 70’s, including “Everybody Dance” and “Le Freak,” establishing themselves as dance music legends.

Paul Weedon chats to Brian Limond, aka Limmy, about comedy, gallows humour, and new book, Daft Wee Stories. Strong swearing ahead...

Warning: the following contains frequent strong swearing and content some readers may find er, offensive.

With a cult following that would make even the most mainstream of comedians jealous, Brian Limond, better known to his legion of fans as Limmy, has spent the past decade and a half building a reputation as one of the strangest, most bafflingly brilliant comedians currently working. With the release of his new book, Daft Wee Stories, we sat down for a lengthy chat with Glesga’s favourite son.

“I love saying terrible things,” Limmy exclaims with a wry smile. “Things that I think are terrible and I’ve gotten in to trouble in the past – just hearing it come out of my mouth or seeing it typed and seeing it out there – something...

It’s not common for an artist’s PR team to make it a point to tell their fan base the exact gig where they’re planning to debut a collaboration, but then again, this is no common collaboration. The worlds of two monumental artists – Armin Van Buuren and Jean-Michel Jarre – have collided to yield this track, and they’ve made it clear that they don’t want any of their fans to miss it.

And for what it’s worth, “Stardust” is a pretty big deal. No name in trance carries quite the weight as that of Van Buuren, as he stands out as the only artist to receive the DJ Mag #1 honor five separate years. Jarre himself is counted among early European electronic music pioneers like Giorgio Moroder, having contributed immensely to the propagation of the movement throughout the continent. However they executed it, the track will make...

Gesaffelstein, an anomaly to some, a genius to many, has unceremoniously begun a mysterious countdown on his website. As the timer rapidly ticks away, there are 62 days remaining at the time of writing. This schedules the unknown event for September, and fans have wasted no time speculating as to what will happen when it the timer hits zero.

After announcing his Coachella performance to be his “last live set,” many were only just coming to realize the brilliance of the acclaimed French producer, Mike Lévy. Since then, he has been keeping busy, collaborating with the legendary Jean-Michel Jarre and providing the score to Diane Kruger’s Disorder, but Lévy has yet to release any solo work under Gesaffelstein.

Shrouded in mystique, critics the world over have called Gesaffelstein’s live shows following Aleph to be one of the most precise executions in dance music history- and they wouldn’t be wrong.

The electronic don Jean-Michel Jarre has been making a much awaited return to the scene as of late. After collaborating with Gesaffelstein for his first release in eight years, Jarre teamed up with the ubiquitous M83 for another graceful production titled, “Glory.” It’s a brilliant tune, seamlessly melding both Jarre and M83’s style in a hazy recollection of 80’s glory. Now, Steve Angello has tried his hand at reworking the track, and I must say… wow.

Angello has transformed the ballad into a bursting progressive house anthem, upping the tempo and adding churning percussion to make the track speak volumes. He’s left the heart of the original intact, capitalizing on the full synths provided by Jean-Michel Jarre and accentuating M83’s provided vocals. It sounds like this track was meant for a Steve Angello remix, and I won’t be the least bit surprised to hear this...

By Darren Allison

Following the break-up of Emerson, Lake and Palmer at the end of the 1970s, Keith Emerson ventured into the world of film soundtrack composition with his score for Italian director Dario Aregento’s horror film Inferno in 1980. This, in turn, led to Emerson being commissioned to compose and perform the music for the Sylvester Stallone film Nighthawks in 1981. From here a succession of film scores were to follow for directors in Italy, Japan and the United States. At the Movies gathers together Emerson’s music for seven movies including Nighthawks, Best Revenge, Inferno, La Chiesa (The Church), "Muderock, Harmagedon and Godzilla Final Wars.

Disc One (Us Movies) contains 2 full soundtracks. Firstly, there is Nighthawks (1981) an enjoyable cop thriller from Sylvester Stallone. The movie co-starred Billy Dee Williams as Stallone’s partner, Lindsey Wagner (of TVs Bionic Woman fame) as the love interest and Rutger Hauer as terrorist Heymar Reinhardt.

Artist: Andrea Remondini Album: Non Sequitur Production: Andrea Remondini People can often be inspired to pursue life goals after being influenced by renowned pioneers, but once they begin on their own journey, their unique decisions and personalities can often lead them to take progressive strides in their careers and passions. Such is the case with the classically influenced Italian artist, Andrea Remondini, whose newly-released full-length debut album, ‘Non Sequitur,’ is now available. The instrumental synth-pop artist, who hails from Verona, drew from the early works of such musicians and composers as Mike Oldfield and Jean-Michel Jarre to creative abstract, yet equally powerful, sounds on his first record. The artist, who [ Read More ]

The post Andrea Remondini Non Sequitur Album Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Film-makers Stephen Frears, Béla Tarr, Costa-Gavras, and veteran theatre director Peter Brook are among 50 leading figures of the European creative community to sign a declaration “For a New Deal for Culture in Europe.”

Less than two months before the elections for the new European Parliament on May 25 and the appointment of a new European Commission, the declaration’s authors said they were “convinced that the digital revolution is an opportunity for culture. Just as culture is an opportunity for the digital economy, ‘fueled’ as it is by the ‘works of the mind’.”

“If we want our cultural policies to be modernized, one of the main issues is that all cultural works providers, in particular the Internet multinationals, be integrated into the economy of creation. It is an important goal to achieve in order to ensure equity between all cultural works providers. And it is a challenge for our future,”

The declaration, whose first signatories...

Even if the exodus is phoney, it does not look good. It speaks of a rudderless government and an indecisive president

Gérard Depardieu has become Vladimir Putin's latest recruit. Jean Michel Jarre is cosying up to Downing Street. Brigitte Bardot is about to don her sapogi over the treatment accorded to Baby and Nepal, which happen to be two elephants. She should first have a look at what passes for animal welfare in Russian zoos. It matters not that the totemic measure of François Hollande's election campaign, the 75% tax on millionaires, has already been struck down by a court – the rich and famous appear to be heading for the door anyway. It is still appearance, rather than reality – the numbers leaving for Belgium doubled, from 63 in 2011 to 126 last year, but at that rate it would take a long time to add a significant number to the 200,000 French residents...

Russian president's intervention in actor's tax row is yet another embarrassing blow for François Hollande

It was the sort of below-the-belt blow François Hollande could have done without. Still reeling from a series of political thumps at home and abroad, the French president received his first bloody nose of 2013 courtesy of a right hook from Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Thursday.

The Kremlin's announcement that Putin had signed official papers granting Russian citizenship to French national hero Gérard "Gégé" Depardieu hit home. It also turned what had seemed a somewhat comic hissy fit between the actor and his government into an international spat.

Hollande should have seen it coming. Ever since Depardieu, 64, entered the political ring to spar with his country's leadership over taxes weeks ago, this was a punch waiting to be landed.

Enraged at having his decision to leave France for fiscal exile in neighbouring Belgium described by...