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Patricia White, the long-time company manager of Woodie King, Jr.’s New Federal Theatre and a well-known figure in New York City’s Black Theatre community, died August 10 after a brief illness. She had been hospitalized and released for physical therapy to the University Rehab Facility in the

Bronx, NY., where she died. She was 77.

“Pat,” as she was widely called, was well-known throughout the theater community as a director, mentor, producer, backstage coordinator, grant writer, box office manager and administrator. Her comprehensive understanding of the theatrical process helped shape countless productions and careers.

Born in Brooklyn in 1948 to Martin White, a Naval Officer, and Adelle Randolph White, White was seven when her father died and the family moved to Louisiana and Mississippi, eventually returning to New York. She went on to City University of New York, where she earned a B.A. in French Literature and was deeply enamored with French writers and philosophers,...

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Paramount+ is ready with an entertainment-packed January next year. The upcoming month will see the premiere of some of the best Paramount+ original movies including Star Trek: Section 31 and the streaming release of the medical mystery drama series Watson. Just like every month, Paramount+ is ready to overload you with great content. So, we’re here to tell you about the 5 best movies and TV shows coming to Paramount+ in January 2025.

Murder Company (January 1) Credit – Maverick Films

Murder Company is a war action drama film directed by Shane Dax Taylor from a screenplay by Jesse Mittelstadt. The 2024 film is set in the midst of the D-Day invasion and it follows a group of US soldiers who are tasked with smuggling a member of the French resistance to kill a high value Nazi target. Murder Company stars Kelsey Grammer,...

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Matlock is a mystery legal comedy-drama series created by Jennie Snyder Urman. Based on the 1980s iconic series of the same name created by Dean Hargrove, the CBS series follows the story of Madeline “Matty” Matlock, a brilliant lawyer who decides to rejoin the workforce in her 70s. She begins working in a prestigious law firm alongside a few highly competitive lawyers but soon we discover that Madeline is hiding some secrets that her colleagues don’t know. Matlock stars the always-brilliant Kathy Bates in the titular role with Jason Ritter, Skye P. Marshall, Leah Lewis, David Del Rio, Nicole de Boer, and Eme Ikwuakor starring in supporting roles. So, if you loved the interesting storyline, thrilling courtroom scenes, and compelling characters in the Matlock reboot series here are some similar shows you should check out next.

Suits...

Exclusive: Zana Gankhuyag and Joseph Carlson are star in Historical Film, an indie comedy flick marking the debut of director Will Bryan.

The film also features Gregg Turkington, Emily Uribe and Kene Holliday among others.

The story follows a Mongolian-American college student who, in order to save his student visa, gets roped into participating in a recreation of the manhunt of John Wilkes Booth while making a zero-budget film about the assassin’s last days.

It’s set in and around historic sites in Richmond, Virginia, and made with the participation of members of the Mongolian community including Gankhuyag Natsag, the country’s Cultural Envoy to the U.S. Shooting wrapped last year with scoring have taken place and post-production in the final stages.

Monat Productions and One-Room Schoolhouse Films are producing. Bryan is the co-writer and director and Katharine Bradley...

The Kathy Bates-led reboot of "Matlock" may not hit TV screens for a while longer, but in the meantime, fans of the much-loved legal drama can still catch old episodes of the original run, well, pretty much everywhere. For cable-watchers, the show airs reruns in syndication, while home media junkies can get a DVD box set and those who prefer to stream can catch all nine seasons on Prime Video or PlutoTV.

"Matlock" aired for nine years, moving from NBC to ABC partway through its run and switching up its cast list throughout. Though several actors played more than one character throughout the series' run, only a handful appeared in more than 30 episodes of the series, most of them as Ben Matlock's legal associates. Of the main cast, Andy Griffith, Clarence Gilyard Jr., David Froman, and Richard Newton have all since passed away. Several remaining cast members continue...

CBS has given the greenlight to Matlock, a reboot of the classic legal drama that originally starred Andy Griffith. The new version of the show will star Kathy Bates as a gender-swapped incarnation of the attorney, taking on the lead role of Madeline Matlock. As Griffith's Ben Matlock had done in the original show, the reboot will similarly see Madeline using her unmatched brilliance to get the upper hand in her cases. After getting its pilot order in February, it's now been announced (per TVLine) that CBS has given the new Matlock an official series order. A first look image has also been revealed of Bates as Madeline Matlock, shown above.

The new Matlock is described as a "reimagining" of the original series, meaning that Ben Matlock and other characters from the first show won't be referenced in the new version. Along with Bates, other stars set for the...

Clarence Gilyard, a veteran actor who had notable roles in Die Hard, Matlock and Walker, Texas Ranger who would later become a theater professor and author, has died. He was 66.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas College of Fine Arts, where Gilyard taught, announced his death on Monday afternoon, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He had been suffering from a long illness. No further details were released.

In a rich and varied career that spanned five decades, Gilyard achieved success in film, television and on stage. For film fans, he is perhaps best known for playing Theo, Hans Gruber’s cocky computer hacker in 1988’s Die Hard. In the 1990s, Gilyard was a familiar face on primetime television, first for playing private investigator Conrad McMasters on the legal drama Matlock and then, in a career-defining role, as Ranger James Trivette in the long-running series Walker, Texas Ranger.

Prolific director, writer and producer Craig Zobel is continuing his relationship with HBO, extending his overall deal for an additional three years. He previously signed a two-year overall deal in January 2020.

Zobel most recently directed all seven episodes of the critically acclaimed HBO limited series Mare of Easttown, starring Kate Winslet, Julianne Nicholson, Jean Smart, Evan Peters, and Guy Pearce. Zobel received an Emmy nomination for directing the series, which went on to win a total of four Emmy awards.

On the film side, Zobel wrote, directed, and produced Great World of Sound which earned him Breakthrough Director honors at the Gotham Awards and Independent Spirit Awards nominations for Best First Feature and Best Supporting Actor for Kene Holiday. His film Compliance won a Special Jury Prize at the Locarno Film Festival, a Critics Choice Award nomination and an Independent Spirit Award of Best Supporting Actress for Ann Dowd. He also directed Z For Zachariah,...

Concord, Nh - The Rad Girls prove that women can be out of control without beating each other senseless. The trio of Ramona Ca$h, Munchie and Darling Clementine are in the midst of their third season of mayhem on MavTV. How could I refuse a chance to talk women who figured out how to give themselves bikini waxes using a car bumper?

Ouch. The trio called the Party Favors hotline from various parts of the Southwest including the lonely highway from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Munchie swore they were just in a convenience store that seemed a location from The House of a 1,000 Corpses. Please excuse me if I attribute a quote to the wrong member since the conversation moved fast and furious.

The outrageous series wasn’t always on MavTV. Clementine explained, “We had a really fun run on Fuse. We got a lot of fans. They were like,...

I didn't think The Office could top Amy Ryan. But then I found out that Greg Daniels & Co. decided to cast Linda Purl as Mrs. Beasley, Pam's mom. I know what you're thinking: "Huh? You're putting Linda Purl in the same league as Amy Ryan? Who is Linda Purl anyway?" Even EW's very own Ausiello referred to Purl as "a relatively unknown actress." Now, I'd like to take the opportunity to rile up my fellow Matlock fans and say: For shame! Unknown? Purl spent countless hours accompanying me on sick days, causing me to develop an unhealthy obsession with the show. I even flirted with the idea of becoming a lawyer thanks to Matlock, before I realized the job was more about paperwork and less about banjo-playing (bummer). And Purl? Why, she was just a peach. In fact, Purl was the third best thing about the show, right behind Andy Griffith and Kene Holliday,...

UPDATED 5:21 p.m. PT Nov. 27, 2007

Film Independent's 2008 Spirit Awards took on an international accent as nominees were announced Tuesday. Best feature noms went to the French-language "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" and the Pakistan-set "A Mighty Heart", while the starring duo of Tony Leung and Tang Wei of the Shanghai drama "Lust, Caution" both figure in the top acting categories.

But Americana also ruled as "I'm Not There", Todd Haynes' kaleidoscope deconstruction of the work of Bob Dylan, led the field. With four nominations, including best feature, director and supporting noms for Cate Blanchett and Marcus Carl Franklin, it also was named the inaugural winner of the Robert Altman Award, recognizing Haynes, casting director Laura Rosenthal and the ensemble cast.

While the Spirit Awards focus on American independent film, a film can qualify if at least one U.S. citizen or permanent resident is credited in two or more of the categories of writer, director or producer, which opened the door for this year's globetrotting noms.

In addition to "I'm Not There", "Diving Bell", a film told from the point of view of a stroke victim, and "Mighty Heart", the dramatization of the search for kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl, the other contenders in the best feature category are "Juno", a comedy about an unintended pregnancy, and "Paranoid Park", the account of a teen who accidentally kills a man.

Four of the best film nominees saw their helmsman nominated for best director: Haynes ("I'm Not There"), Jason Reitman ("Juno"), Julian Schnabel ("Butterfly") and Gus Van Sant ("Paranoid"). But instead of Michael Winterbottom for "Mighty Heart", the fifth slot went to Tamara Jenkins -- who also was nominated for best screenplay -- for the family drama "The Savages".

"There wasn't a dominant genre or even a film. It was a mix of emerging filmmakers and veteran filmmakers like Gus Van Sant and Todd Haynes. I felt like it was a wide spectrum of talent in all areas," FIND exec director Dawn Hudson said at the ceremonies that Lisa Kudrow and Zach Braff hosted at the Sofitel Hotel in Los Angeles.

"You want all these films to gain some momentum," she added. "There's such a glut of films this season that you hope that this will shine a spotlight on these lower-budgeted films that are so deserving."

The best actress contenders are Angelina Jolie for portraying Mariane Pearl in "Mighty Heart"; Sienna Miller, seen as a soap actress facing off with a journalist in "Interview"; Ellen Page, who appears as the pregnant teen in "Juno"; Parker Posey, who finds herself embarking on an affair in "Broken English"; and Tang, who becomes entangled in love and espionage in "Lust".

Nominated as best actor are Pedro Castaneda, who plays an undocumented farm worker "August Evening"; Don Cheadle, who stars as a radio host in "Talk to Me"; Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose character struggles with an ailing father in "Savages"; Frank Langella, who appears as the older half of a May-December relationship in "Starting Out in the Evening"; and Leung, who plays a spy in "Lust".

Still, several performances that have excited critics failed to make the cut: Among the missing were Ryan Gosling ("Lars and the Real Girl"), Laura Linney ("Savages"), Nicole Kidman ("Margot at the Wedding"), Keri Russell ("Waitress") and John Cusak ("Grace Is Gone").

Along with Blanchett, who seems to channel Dylan in "Not There", the nominees for best supporting female are Anna Kendrick ("Rocket Science"), Jennifer Jason Leigh ("Margot"), Tamara Podemski ("Four Sheets to the Wind") and Marisa Tomei ("Before the Devil Knows You're Dead").

Best supporting male nominee Franklin plays a young musician who calls himself Woody Guthrie in "Not There". In the nominees circle, he joins Chiwetel Ejiofor ("Talk to Me"), Kene Holliday ("Great World of Sound"), Irfan Khan ("The Namesake") and Steve Zahn ("Rescue Dawn").

Screenplay nominees are Ronald Harwood ("Butterfly"), Jenkins ("Savages"), Fred Parnes & Andrew Wagner ("Starting Out"), the late Adrienne Shelly ("Waitress") and Mike White ("Year of the Dog").

In the adjoining category of best first screenplay, the nominees are Jeffrey Blitz ("Rocket Science"), Zoe Cassavetes ("Broken English"), Diablo Cody ("Juno"), Kelly Masterson ("Devil") and John Orloff ("Mighty Heart").

The Spirits also recognize films made for less than $500,000 with its John Cassavetes Award.

UPDATED 6:36 p.m. PT Nov. 27

Film Independent's 2008 Spirit Awards took on an international accent as nominees were announced Tuesday.

Best feature noms went to the French-language "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" and the Pakistan-set "A Mighty Heart", while the starring duo of Tony Leung and Tang Wei of the Shanghai drama "Lust, Caution" both figure in the top acting categories.

But Americana also ruled as "I'm Not There", Todd Haynes' kaleidoscope deconstruction of the work of Bob Dylan, led the field. With four nominations, including best feature, director and supporting noms for Cate Blanchett and Marcus Carl Franklin, it also was named the inaugural winner of the Robert Altman Award, recognizing Haynes, casting director Laura Rosenthal and the ensemble cast.

While the Spirit Awards focus on American independent film, a film can qualify if at least one U.S. citizen or permanent resident is credited in two or more of the categories of writer, director or producer, which opened the door for this year's globetrotting noms.

In addition to "I'm Not There", "Diving Bell", a film told from the point of view of a stroke victim, and "Mighty Heart", the dramatization of the search for kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl, the other contenders in the best feature category are "Juno", a comedy about an unintended pregnancy, and "Paranoid Park", the account of a teen who accidentally kills a man.

Four of the best film nominees saw their helmsman nominated for best director: Haynes ("I'm Not There"), Jason Reitman ("Juno"), Julian Schnabel ("Butterfly") and Gus Van Sant ("Paranoid"). But instead of Michael Winterbottom for "Mighty Heart", the fifth slot went to Tamara Jenkins -- who also was nominated for best screenplay -- for the family drama "The Savages".

"There wasn't a dominant genre or even a film. It was a mix of emerging filmmakers and veteran filmmakers like Gus Van Sant and Todd Haynes. I felt like it was a wide spectrum of talent in all areas," FIND exec director Dawn Hudson said at the ceremonies that Lisa Kudrow and Zach Braff hosted at the Sofitel Hotel in Los Angeles.

"You want all these films to gain some momentum," she added. "There's such a glut of films this season that you hope that this will shine a spotlight on these lower-budgeted films that are so deserving."

The best actress contenders are Angelina Jolie for portraying Mariane Pearl in "Mighty Heart"; Sienna Miller, seen as a soap actress facing off with a journalist in "Interview"; Ellen Page, who appears as the pregnant teen in "Juno"; Parker Posey, who finds herself embarking on an affair in "Broken English"; and Tang, who becomes entangled in love and espionage in "Lust".

Nominated as best actor are Pedro Castaneda, who plays an undocumented farm worker "August Evening"; Don Cheadle, who stars as a radio host in "Talk to Me"; Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose character struggles with an ailing father in "Savages"; Frank Langella, who appears as the older half of a May-December relationship in "Starting Out in the Evening"; and Leung, who plays a spy in "Lust".

Still, several performances that have excited critics failed to make the cut: Among the missing were Ryan Gosling ("Lars and the Real Girl"), Laura Linney ("Savages"), Nicole Kidman ("Margot at the Wedding"), Keri Russell ("Waitress") and John Cusack ("Grace is Gone").

Along with Blanchett, who channels Dylan in "Not There", the nominees for best supporting female are Anna Kendrick ("Rocket Science"), Jennifer Jason Leigh ("Margot"), Tamara Podemski ("Four Sheets to the Wind") and Marisa Tomei ("Before the Devil Knows You're Dead").

Best supporting male nominee Franklin plays a young musician who calls himself Woody Guthrie in "Not There". In the nominees circle, he joins Chiwetel Ejiofor ("Talk to Me"), Kene Holliday ("Great World of Sound"), Irfan Khan ("The Namesake") and Steve Zahn ("Rescue Dawn").

Screenplay nominees are Ronald Harwood ("Butterfly"), Jenkins ("Savages"), Fred Parnes & Andrew Wagner ("Starting Out"), the late Adrienne Shelly ("Waitress") and Mike White ("Year of the Dog").

In the adjoining category of best first screenplay, the nominees are Jeffrey Blitz ("Rocket Science"), Zoe Cassavetes ("Broken English"), Diablo Cody ("Juno"), Kelly Masterson ("Devil") and John Orloff ("Mighty Heart").

The Spirits also recognize films made for less than $500,000 with its John Cassavetes Award.

NEW YORK -- After departing from tradition to embrace studio pictures with its nominations last year, the Gotham Awards on Monday returned to its roots, tapping only indie and specialty films for its annual kudos.

In doing so, it tried another walk down the line between awards-season relevance and indie bona fides.

The Gothams, which are run by the industry group IFP, handed out best feature noms to the New York-centric (Noah Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding and Killer Films/Weinstein Co.'s I'm Not There) and the specialty divisions (Fox Searchlight's The Namesake and Paramount Vantage's Into the Wild).

But notably, it gave the most noms to an ultra-indie, Craig Zobel's music-world satire Great World of Sound. In addition to best feature, the movie also landed breakthrough director and breakthrough actor spots. (Zobel shared the former with Lee Isaac Chung, Stephane Gauger, Julia Loktev and David Von Ancken; Kene Holliday was nominated for the latter along with Emile Hirsch, Ellen Page, Jess Weixler and Luisa Williams.)

The nomination slate returns the Gothams to a path some say it had abandoned last year, when it nominated two studio films, Warners' The Departed and Sony's Marie Antoinette, for best feature.

By any measure, the size of the nominated movies this year were much smaller. Last year, the top three grossers on the best feature ballot earned a collective $154 million. Of this year's three best feature noms that have been released so far, the take has been just $18 million. (With $18,000, World was responsible for roughly 0.1% of that.)

As the first awards ceremony of the season, the Gothams have tried to position themselves as an awards program that can set the agenda for the coming months while also including movies that won't get recognition from other quarters. The balance hasn't always been easy.

The choices announced Monday divided players in the biz -- based largely, it seemed, on whether those players had nominated films. While many said it reflected the proper ethos of inclusion, others say it represented an overcorrection.

"It seems like they got such a backlash from last year that they went too far the other way," said an executive at one studio.

Supporters of the choices, however, said the Gothams are upholding primary values. "There isn't a mission exactly, but there is a spirit and a deeply felt philosophy," ThinkFilm U.S. chief Mark Urman said. "The Gothams specifically have to pay some attention to the achievements that others won't pay attention to."

In a sense, the Gothams are in a no-win situation: When they choose higher-profile movies that could help establish them as a bigger player, they're criticized for losing their way; when they don't, they're criticized for being provincial.

• The Great World of Sound is a charming portrait of the sleazy underbelly of the music industry. Martin and Clarence (played by actors Patrick Healy and Kene Holliday) are hired as first time record producers and sent out on the road to find the next big name in music. What they don’t know is that they are hucksters, scamming musicians for down payments on an illusory album. The film’s director, Craig Zobel, and his team posted real audition notices in North Carolina and Georgia papers in order to get documentary footage of musicians in the throes of desire for that big break. The auditions were filmed with secret cameras as the actors led on the musicians with false promises. The result is beautiful, yet heartbreaking, scenes of people giving the gift of song not knowing the cruel truth. Luckily, most of the real life musicians filmed by Mr.

...

• It took a gestation period of sorts for Magnolia Pictures to pick up the North American rights - but after Sundance and the recently wrapped up South by Southwest Film Festival, Craig Zobel's The Great World of Sound will now be shown in movie theatres sprinkled a little everywhere. Written by George Smith and Zobel, this follows two Southerners who unwittingly become part of a record industry scam operation. The feature combines narrative filmmaking with lead actors Patrick Healy and Kene Holliday and documentary-style "auditions" from aspiring performers unaware at the time that they were part of a film.The first-time feature director got some mentoring from one of my favorite directors around in David Gordon Green. Richard A. Wright and Melissa Palmer also produced. THR reports that indie film fans can expect an early fall release. Next question. Who will buy Dgg’s Snow Angels? ...

...

NEW YORK -- Magnolia Pictures nabbed North American rights to Craig Zobel's satirical black comedy Great World of Sound, an entry in this week's South by Southwest Film Festival.

Sound, which had its premiere in January at the Sundance Film Festival, follows two Southerners who unwittingly become part of a record industry scam operation. The feature combines narrative filmmaking with lead actors Patrick Healy and Kene Holliday and documentary-style "auditions" from aspiring performers unaware at the time that they were part of a film.

"Magnolia is one of the most progressive, exciting companies out there," said Zobel, a first-time feature director. "They were at the top of the wish list in my hopes of getting distribution."

Magnolia's Mark Cuban said: "Having performers come to a constructed set in response to classified ads was a brilliant choice on Craig's part," said Cuban, who co-owns Magnolia with Todd Wagner. Magnolia plans an early fall release.

The film is a GWS Media and Plum Pictures presentation.