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Warning: This article contains discussion of sexual assault

Warning: Major spoilers for The Winter King season 1 episode 2 below!

The Winter King episode 2 features a shocking Avalon raid that rivals the brutality of Game of Thrones' Red Wedding. It is unexpected and makes for a tough watch. The massacre at Avalon is particularly shocking because it comes early in the series and there is little build-up to it. The peacefulness of Avalon is shattered by the sheer brutality of the attack. The Winter King also delivers its own version of Ned Stark's shock death from Game of Thrones. King Uther's early demise mirrors Ned Stark's unexpected execution in the first season of Game of Thrones.

The Avalon raid in The Winter King episode 2 gives the show its own version of Game of Thrones' Red Wedding. Few shows hit the zeitgeist in the way that Game of Thrones did. Based on...

From the moment that Thomas Salvador’s The Mountain opens on robotic engineer Pierre (Salvador) standing in his modern Paris apartment sipping a morning espresso, we understand him to be a man unmoored. At work, as his attention trails off in the midst of a presentation, he seems every bit as lost as the stray deer that he later notices roaming the empty streets of a mountainside town. Throughout the film, Pierre will often stare off into the distance, as if looking for something—but good luck figuring out what that actually is.

The Mountain tracks Pierre’s day-to-day life of self-isolation with dry precision after he travels into the Alps for his work and decides to turn his back on his life in the city for good. But whatever motivation underpins his decision is as nebulous as the clouds over the mountains, as Salvador frustratingly never offers a concrete...

How to describe Pedro Pascal’s Joel in HBO’s new zombie survival series The Last of Us? Taciturn, perhaps. Grizzled. Gruff, even. Yeah, but he’s got a good heart, too. If that sounds familiar, it’s because the loveable antihero is one of Hollywood’s most enduring tropes. “Men want to be him, women want to be with him” – so the sleazy old James Bond proverb goes. The antihero can often be found draining a shot alone at a bar, but the alcohol never affects him, such is his hardened experience as a drinker. He can, if needs be, knock out an aggressor with a powerful haymaker, but only if he really must. The allure of the reluctant warrior, weary but ever-reliable in a crisis, goes back decades, but has rarely been played so competently as by Pascal. Perhaps the greatest endorsement of his charm is his selection...

Brookwood, Alabama — Tom Morello is used to playing arenas, and now that Rage Against the Machine has stirred back to life as a touring unit, he’s spent the last few months rocking out in front of supersized crowds with a full stage show and plenty of bells and whistles. It’s all business as usual for him, but yesterday, Morello found himself in a very different environment, playing for a very different crowd, for a cause that was very close to his heart. He was there to show support...

Dierks Bentley focuses on the positive and keeps a little pep in his step with the upbeat new single “Gold,” which will appear on the singer’s upcoming 10th album. No date or title have been announced for the project, which is projected to arrive early in 2023.

“Gold” is as bright as its namesake precious metal, a jangling country-rock tune that’s big on 12-string guitar and slide licks. “It ain’t a smooth-ride life, it’s a winding road,” Bentley sings in the chorus, which cranks up the energy...

The Cannes official competition lineup didn’t exactly see a surge in the number of female filmmakers represented. Enter Quinzaine, a.k.a. Director’s Fortnight, the beloved sidebar of the festival this year kicking off May 18. The lineup of titles includes 11 films directed by women, including Mia Hansen-Løve’s “One Fine Morning,” a romance starring Léa Seydoux and Melvil Poupaud; the new film from “Disorder” director Alice Winocour, “Paris Memories”; the feature directing debut of actor Charlotte Le Bon, “Falcon Lake”; and more.

This year’s lineup also includes new works from genre filmmakers: Alex Garland’s “Men,” releasing stateside May 20 from A24, will premiere as a Special Screening of the festival. Plus, there’s British director Mark Jenkin’s anticipated experimental horror film “Enys Men.” Paul Mescal stars in the psychological thriller “God’s Creatures,” directed by Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer, who directed the 2015 Venice hit “The Fits.

Following the main lineup, Quinzaine des Réalisateurs aka Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival has unveiled their 2022 slate. Featuring the already-announced opening film, Scarlet, from Martin Eden director Pietro Marcello, the lineup also includes Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning, Alice Winocour’s Paris Memories, Mark Jenkin’s Bait follow-up Enys Men, Anna Rose Holmer & Saela Davis’ God’s Creatures, João Pedro Rodrigues’ Will-o’-the-Wisp, Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica, and Alex Garland’s Men, which will arrive in the U.S. soon after its Cannes premiere.

See the lineup below.

Scarlet by Pietro Marcello – Opening Film

1976 by Manuela Martelli

The Water by Elena López Riera

The Dam by Ali Cherri

The Super 8 Years by Annie Ernaux & David Ernaux-Briot

Ashkal by Youssef Chebbi

The Five Devils by Léa Mysius

De Humani Corporis Fabrica by Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor

Continental Drift (South) by Lionel Baier

Enys...

Directors’ Fortnight, the sidebar running alongside the Cannes Film Festival, has unveiled a strong lineup for its 54th edition, which will be the last one for outgoing artistic director Paolo Moretti.

The sidebar has landed a pair of movies from A24, Alex Garland’s horror film “Men” with Jessie Buckley which will play in the Special Screening section, and “God’s Creatures,” a psychological thriller directed by Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer, the filmmaking duo who made their feature debut with the Sundance film “The Fits.” Set in an Irish fishing village, “God’s Creatures” stars Aisling Franciosi, Emily Watson and Paul Mescal. Other elevated genre films on the roster include British helmer Mark Jenkin’s anticipated “Enys Men.”

Directors’ Fortnight will showcase films by 11 female directors and eight feature debuts. By comparison, Cannes Film Festival’s competition currently has only three films helmed by women.

Several French female helmers who...

Alex Garland’s “Men,” Mia Hansen-Love’s “One Fine Morning” and Alice Winocour’s “Paris Memories” are among the films that will screen in the independent Directors Fortnight section at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, Directors Fortnight organizers announced at a press conference in Paris on Tuesday.

Garland, the director of “Ex Machina,” will be making his Cannes debut with “Men,” while Hansen-Love will be returning to a different section of the festival where she was in the main competition a year ago with “Bergman Island.”

Other films include Owen Kline’s “Funny Pages,” produced by the Safdie brothers. Of the 23 films announced on Tuesday, 11 have female directors.

Previously, Directors Fortnight announced that Pietro Marcello’s “L’envol” (“Scarlett”) would serve as the opening screening in the section.

Directors Fortnight is an independent section that runs concurrent with the main Cannes Film Festival. It was launched in 1969 on the heels of the...

Cannes Directors’ Fortnight has unveiled its line-up for 2022. Scroll down to see the full list.

The selection include Alex Garland’s Cannes debut Men, the Jessie Buckley-starring movie from the surreal sci-fi master. The film will play as a Special Screening in Cannes before A24 releases in the U.S. in May.

Opening the selection will be Pietro Marcello’s Scarlet, and closing will be The Green Perfume by Nicolas Pariser.

Prominent French director Mia Hansen-Løve is back with One Fine Morning, starring Lea Seydoux, and Proxima filmmaker Alice Winocour will show her new pic Paris Memories.

Also on the list is the Paul Mescal and Emily Watson starring God’s Creatures (a second A24 title), and Mark Jenkin’s follow-up to his indie UK breakout Bait, the 1970s-set horror Enys Men.

Kelly Reichardt will receive this year’s Director’s Fortnight’s honorary Carrosse d’Or honor and will...

This Machine, the production company founded by veteran documentary director and producer R.J. Cutler, has bolstered its development and production team with four new hires.

Cutler, the Emmy Award-winning director behind docus including “The September Issue,” “Belushi” and most recently with “Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry,” launched This Machine in 2020 with an investment from Los Angeles-based Industrial Media.

Cutler has named Sally Rosen Phillips as vice president, creative; Qadriyyah Shamsid-Deen as director, creative; Jim Czarnecki, senior vice president, production, and Ian Egos, vice president. The four new hires bring This Machine’s employee headcount to 20. Rosen Phillips, Shamsid-Deen, Czarnecki and Egos join senior executives Elise Pearlstein, Trevor Smith, Margaret Yen and Katie Doering.

“I’m thrilled to welcome Sally, Qadriyyah, Jim and Ian — four truly creative and passionate individuals — to our rapidly growing team at This Machine,” says Cutler, who served as a producer on Chris Hegedus and...

Pedro Pascal had no problems with how Game of Thrones ended—well for his character, at least. Pedro, who played Oberyn Martell in season four of the HBO epic, died in spectacular fashion when his face was, quite literally, smashed like a watermelon at the hands of The Mountain. The scene, which is often ranked as one of the top three deaths in Game of Thrones history, is a badge of honor for Pedro—and also makes him wonder what's left to accomplish in his career. "Makes me feel like a boss, if I'm actually up there and if I'm in the top three, I mean then like everything after is a bit futile," he told Esquire. "It's like, what am I doing? Why...

Selected directors include Stephan Komandarev, Dzintars Dreibergs, Laetitia Dosch.

Stephen Komandarev, Dzintars Dreibergs and Laetitia Dosch are among the 18 directors whose projects have been selected for the 13th edition of the Les Arcs Coproductions Village.

The projects will compete for the €6,000 ArteKino International Prize.

Scroll down for the full list of projects

Bulgarian director Komandarev participates with Made In EU, a co-production between Bulgaria’s Argo Film and Germany’s 42Film. Komandarev has directed 10 previous features, including Directions, which debuted in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2017.

Dreibergs attends with Escape Net, produced by Latvia’s Kultfilma. Dreibergs’ previous titles include Blizzard Of Souls,...

Veteran Australian director Rolf De Heer (“Ten Canoes”) is shooting a new film titled “The Mountain,” for which Italy’s Fandango Sales is launching sales at the online AFM.

“The Mountain” (pictured above in a first-look image) tells the story of a central character named BlackWoman, who is abandoned in a cage in the middle of the desert. Following her escape from the cage, “she walks through pestilence and persecution, from desert to mountain to city, to find … more captivity,” reads the film’s synopsis.

“BlackWoman walks and walks, past ruins and dunes until she finds boots, and skeletons and skulls, a wrecked world where few survive and your newly gained boots can get stolen at the point of a gun.”

“Those responsible are reluctant to release their privilege, and BlackWoman, escaping once more, must find solace in her beginnings,” it adds. The film stars Mwajemi Hussein, Deepthi Sharma, and Darsan Sharma.

High-profile talent on both sides of the camera punctuate the four feature films, three television dramas, and one virtual reality project that will share in more than $6.5 million of production funding from Screen Australia.

Recipients include two projects from Lingo Pictures: a second season of Upright with Tim Minchin, and an adaptation of Markus Zusak’s best-selling novel The Messenger for the ABC. Funding has also been announced for Rolf de Heer’s The Mountain, and Gracie Otto’s feature film directorial debut Seriously Red, executive produced by Rose Byrne, now in post.

The feature films projects are rounded out by Goran Stolevski’s Of An Age, and Spencer and Lloyd Harvey’s Photo Booth.

Screen Australia’s head of content Sally Caplan said it was heartening to see there was no shortage of strong ideas during another challenging year.

“We are proud to announce this impressive slate from...

From September 2 to 5, Electric Shadows organizes its first festival at De Cinema in Antwerp, Belgium. After a successful online event about Taiwanese film in April, this time it’s the cinema screen that forms the playground for singular Asian films.

Sensual and smart. The Electric Shadows festival welcomes Asian cinema that makes you reflect and roam. The festival opens on Thursday September 2nd with “Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains” and closes on Sunday September 5th with Tsai Ming-liang’s “Days”. Between the first fiction film by the young maker Xiaogang Gu and the most recent film by a modern master, Electric Shadows offers a trajectory of discovery and rediscovery.

Following up on April’s online event ‘Voices of Youth. Unseen Taiwanese films of the 1960s’ there is a tribute to the unjustly forgotten Richard Chen, a contemporary of Mou Tun-fei. This follow-up program now revolves around his restored short films...

Haugesund’s New Nordic Films industry event will present 17 upcoming features.

Haugesund’s New Nordic Films industry event will present 17 upcoming features in its annual works in progress showcase.

The most high-profile film to show first footage will be Erik Poppe’s The Emigrants, produced by Sf Studios and the latest adaptation of the famed Vilhelm Moberg novels about a Swedish family that moves to America in the 1850s. The cast includes Lisa Carlehed, Gustaf Skarsgård, Tove Lo and Sofia Helin.

Further projects include Sagres, a Sweden-Finland-Belgium co-production sold by Totem Films. The debut feature from Stockholm-based Lovisa Siren...

Dierks Bentley has recruited singers Hardy and Breland for a laid-back ode to blowing off steam. Their collaboration, titled “Beers on Me,” follows Bentley’s 20th country radio Number One “Gone” and is his second new release after 2018’s full-length The Mountain.

Bentley and Hardy began working on the song while on a writers’ retreat in Colorado, then Breland contributed his portion later. Set to an easygoing tempo, “Beers on Me” has the feel of a barroom singalong where the likeminded company and generosity of friends can make the week’s troubles melt away.

Isaac Lee’s Exile Content Studio and Diego Enrique Osorno, whose “1994” must rate as one of the best series produced by Netflix in Mexico, have moved into production in Spain on “Montaña,” the first feature-length documentary to emerge from an Exile-Osorno first look deal announced in 2020.

Starting its shoot earlier this year in Chiapas, the southern-most state in Mexico, “Montaña” relates a current and historical mission by an indigenous movement, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ezln), to build alliances in Europe.

The Ezln invited Osorno and ace Uruguayan cinematographer Maria Secco to join a delegation on a Nordic ship, La Montaña, as it made what Exile describes quite correctly as a highly symbolic voyage from the so-called New World to the Old.

After 52 days at sea, during which they shot hundreds of hours of footage, Osorno, Secco and an Exile production team are now continuing production in Spain.

“Montaña...

Dierks Bentley’s collaborative performance with Larkin Poe and the War and Treaty at the 2021 ACM Awards was too good to be a one-off.

“It’d be kind of hard to suck with that band onstage with you,” he told Rolling Stone during tour rehearsals this spring. “I was like the carpet in Big Lebowski: just trying to tie the room together. We got done playing that and I was like, ‘We have to do something else,’ because it was too much fun.”

The country star reconvened the two...

Jeff Goldblum joins the absurd world of Search Party in a recurring role for the HBO Max series’ fifth season.

From creators Sarah-Violet Bliss, Charles Rogers and Michael Showalter, Search Party stars Alia Shawkat, John Reynolds, John Early and Meredith Hagner. The first three seasons followed best friends Dory (Shawkat), Drew (Reynolds), Elliott (Early) and Portia (Hagner) through a messy private investigation, semi-accidental murder, absurd cover-up and sensational trial. In Season 4, Dory was held prisoner by her psychotic stalker (Cole Escola), forcing Drew, Elliott and Portia to again become a search party – but this time for Dory.

The Emmy-nominated actor will recur in Season 5 as Tunnel Quinn, a charismatic tech billionaire who enters a very public business partnership with Dory on the other side of her near death experience. Dory folds her old friends Portia, Elliott and Drew into the venture as they embark on an altruistic but terrifying journey.

Many “Ted Lasso” fans are surprised the first time they learn that Hannah Waddingham is a “Game of Thrones” veteran, and not just any “Game of Thrones” veteran. Waddingham starred in the series as Unella, one of the Septa of the Faith of the Seven, who served under the cult leader-ish High Sparrow (Jonathan Pryce). Unella tortures Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) and famously shouts “shame” during Cersei’s walk of atonement to the Red Keep. Once Cersei regains her power, she turns the tables on Unella and imprisons her. The last viewers saw of Unella, she was being tortured by Cersei and left in the brutal hands of The Mountain.

“She was meant to be raped by The Mountain, and I think they’d had so many complaints about the rape of Sansa that they chose not to go with it,” Waddingham revealed in a recent interview with Collider.

Waddingham...

In 2010, Dierks Bentley recorded “Pride (In the Name of Love)” for his bluegrass album Up on the Ridge. Bentley revisited the song on Sunday night’s ACM Awards, teaming up with the War and Treaty to perform U2’s 1984 anthem at Nashville’s epicenter of bluegrass, the Station Inn. “I first came to this bar when I was 19 years old looking for something and I found it in the music here and I found it in the bluegrass community,” Bentley said, before paying tribute to Jt Gray, the owner of...

Two of the most distinctive voices in filmmaking are teaming for a new project. American director Rick Alverson and Argentine director Lisandro Alonso will co-direct the Brazilian production The God Beside My Bed. “It will be a film about an American cultural irrelevance that Americans are incapable of seeing, lost in their romantic hall of mirrors, set in Amazonia,” says Alverson, who has shared his admiration for Alonso’s work.

“Lisandro Alonso, and Carlos Reygadas to some degree, for those contemporary filmmakers, it’s all about contention with time — the temporal, and your relationship to the thing — and how the audience changes,” Alverson told Seventh Row in 2015. “I’m really irritated by passive viewing, but I don’t think it’s the audience’s fault. I think they’re conditioned to be passive viewers, because what they see in media does everything for them. It does all of the thinking,...

Mexican virtual lab offers Usd 30,000 in cash prizes.

Spanish multiple Cannes award winner Olivier Laxe and Argentina’s Lisandro Alonso are among participants in the expanded third Mexican project lab Catapulta set to run as an entirely virtual event from March 24-27.

Scroll to bottom to see all lab participants

Laxe, whose Fire Will Come won the Cannes Un Certain Regard jury prize in 2019 and followed a 2016 Critics’ Week grand prize for Mimosas and the 2010 Fipresci award for Directors’ Fortnight selection You Are All Captains, takes part in the new development programme.

His project After (France) follows a man and...

Mexican virtual lab offers Usd 30,000 in cash prizes.

Spanish multiple Cannes award winner Olivier Laxe, US auteur Rick Alverson and Argentina’s Lisandro Alonso are among participants in the expanded third Mexican project lab Catapulta set to run as an entirely virtual event from March 24-27.

Scroll to bottom to see all lab participants

Laxe, whose Fire Will Come won the Cannes Un Certain Regard jury prize in 2019 and followed a 2016 Critics’ Week grand prize for Mimosas and the 2010 Fipresci award for Directors’ Fortnight selection You Are All Captains, takes part in the new development programme.

His project After (France...

In today’s TV news roundup, Apple TV Plus unveils the trailer for its original thriller “Losing Alice,” and HBO Max sets the premiere date for Wolfgang Puck’s culinary series “The Event.”

Dates

Starz announced that “Men in Kilts: A Roadtrip with Sam and Graham,” an eight-episode docuseries developed by “Outlander” stars Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish, will premiere Feb. 14. The original series is presented as a fun-filled buddy travelogue through Scotland’s terrain, taking viewers on a journey through the country’s rich heritage and traditions. Watch a trailer below.

Nickelodeon set Feb. 12 as the premiere date for its long-anticipated second season debut of “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” Subtitled “Curse of the Shadows” and featuring all-new members of the Midnight Society, the six-episode season will follow the kids as they tell terrifying tales about a curse cast over their seaside town and the villainous Shadowman. The beloved horror anthology series,...

Actor Tye Sheridan is wearing a different hat with his new media-tech startup — which he claims will let indie filmmakers deliver blockbuster-level VFX on a fraction of the budget.

Sheridan (above right) co-founded Wonder Dynamics with visual-effects artist Nikola Todorovic (above left). Over the last four years, the duo have been quietly experimenting with using artificial intelligence and machine learning to create interactive video applications. Now Wonder Dynamics is gearing up to introduce a new AI production tool that they promise will let independent artists produce dazzling VFX and CGI animations for far less than is required today.

“It breaks down the barriers to achieving your wildest vision,” Sheridan told Variety. “A lot of times people dream up this story but it’s not possible to make because it would cost $200 million. AI can democratize VFX.”

Sheridan, who starred in Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One,” and Todorovic have lined...

There are guys in country music who struggle to be funny, and then there’s Dierks Bentley. In his new video for “Gone,” the singer earns easygoing, natural laughs by gamely casting himself as doomed TV characters. He’s a Game of Thrones knight incinerated by a dragon, a MacGyver hero who snips the wrong time-bomb wire, and a Fabio pitchman blinded by perfume. He even does his best Dwight Schrute in an homage to The Office.

The clip also puts Bentley in his element: onstage with his band at his Nashville honky-tonk Whiskey Row.

The latest actor to portray KFC founder Colonel Sanders is none other than Mario Lopez. But rather than a commercial, Lopez will star in a Lifetime movie called “A Recipe For Seduction” that mixes the Colonel’s secret herbs and spices with romance.

And yes, “A Recipe For Seduction” is a definitely real movie that exists, and there’s even a trailer to prove it. The 15-minute bite-sized film will debut on Lifetime on Sunday, December 13 at 12 p.m. Et/Pt.

Lopez plays Colonel Harland Sanders in the film, who has a steamy (and savory?) love affair with a young heiress who must choose between her young chef with a dream of fried chicken glory and a wealthy, duplicitous suitor handpicked by her mother.

“He has a secret recipe that’s going to change the world,” Lopez’s love interest says in the trailer. “We all have our secrets.”

“A...

Dierks Bentley was the musical guest on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday, giving the television debut performance of his heartbroken latest single “Gone.”

Bentley released “Gone,” his new music under his own name since 2018’s full-length album The Mountain, in October. Written by Nicolle Galyon, Ben Johnson, and Niko Moon, the song explores an all-consuming heartbreak that’s left its narrator unable to do anything besides “sitting on the couch watching TV all day long.” The solemn mood is driven home by David Garcia’s production, which...

Dierks Bentley ghosts his boss, friends, and family as he tries to forget the lover who left him in the new song “Gone.” It’s the first new music from the county singer since his 2018 album The Mountain.

Written by Nicolle Galyon, Ben Johnson, and the solo artist Niko Moon, “Gone” finds Bentley living the hermit life, holed up on the couch watching TV and wondering what went wrong with his romance. Clothes are on the floor, dishes are in the sink, and his truck is full of gas, undriven...

Tom Cruise, who is popularly known for performing high octane action sequences was recently spotted filming an action sequence on a moving train.

The actor has reportedly resumed shooting for his upcoming project 'Mission: Impossible 7' in Norway and his new action scene seems to have gone viral on the internet.

Recently, we saw a stunt video of Tom Cruise riding a bike and taking off a high ramp which made netizens go crazy, and now, the star is back as he can be seen casually sitting on top of a fast-moving train and waving at his excited fans.

If you are wondering where Christopher McQuarrie is... pic.twitter.com/BdMf2hgtOJ

— Cinephilia & Beyond (@LAFAMILIAFilm) October 4, 2020

In another video, Tom Cruise can be seen standing on the rooftop of a train along with director Christopher McQuarrie and some crew members.

An onlooker shared the video of Tom Cruise...

Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson is officially a father of two! The actor, 31, and his wife Kelsey Henson, 30, welcomed a baby boy over the weekend. The new mom announced the happy news in an Instagram post on Sunday, Sept. 27. "Our beautiful baby boy made his grand entrance into the world at 11:19 Am on September 26th 2020 after a short and intense six hours," she wrote on the social network. "3530 grams and 52 cm. The birth was the most powerful, life changing, empowering thing I've ever done in my entire life. We are all doing well and settling in at home as three!" Björnsson, who played "The Mountain" on Game of Thrones, detailed the birth in a...

Su Hung-en’s documentary portrait of his grandfather depicts the man as a rock: solid and unmoving while the world beneath him changes. Filming his grandfather as he goes about his daily life, Su combines the story of Teymu Teylong with archive footage of Taiwan’s political climate, showing the world which Teymu has inhabited, yet is also detached from.

“The Mountain” is screening at Taiwan Film Festival Edinburgh

Born under Japanese rule, our story starts in 1930. Teymu grew up speaking Japanese and also worked for a Japanese family. But, with the emergence of war, the family, and the Japanese by-and-large left. Becoming a hunter and farmer, he was noted for his skills and married, but as his family grew, so did his need for more money, and so he left his family to become a sailor. Returning as a construction worker, he now oversees his farm as a widower,...

Upcoming titles include ‘The River’, directed by Ghassan Salhab.

Producer Tania El Khoury, who runs Beirut-based Khamsin Films, has revealed the ambitions for her new French production company, Les films de l’Altaï, during Sarajevo’s CineLink platform.

The company, founded earlier this year, has been established partly in response to the dire economic situation in Lebanon.

“All the producers and filmmakers in Lebanon are confronting the economic crisis,” said El Khoury. “The banks are not giving people money. I am lucky that I am based in France. For example [on Lebanese film] The River, I can pay for things from France to people working on the film.

Beneath the veneer of his country-rock stylings, the early work of Steve Earle is shot through with moving descriptions of working-class life. His stirring debut album from 1986, Guitar Town, is haunted by characters hopelessly mired in small-town and rural America, barely scraping by in landscapes that are as bleak spiritually as they are impoverished. On the title track, Earle writes about his own life, with a deft nod to Hank Williams: “Nothin’ ever happened ‘round my hometown/And I ain’t the kind to just hang around/But I heard...

Quarantined viewers tuned into Saturday’s all-day, virtual ScreenCraft Screenwriting Summit were treated to a special surprise in the evening when filmmaker and TV titan J.J. Abrams crashed the party as the surprise special guest. He arrived just after his fellow “Star Wars” scribe Tony Gilroy (“Rogue One” and the upcoming Cassian Andor series) finished his conversation about the craft of screenwriting.

Abrams’ Q&a touched on a range of topics, from the origins of 2015’s “The Force Awakens” to scaling “the mountain,” as he called it, of writing a screenplay, and to the Golden Age of television happening now. It’s an era Abrams helped to launch with his ABC mystery series “Lost.” “I know my role in that. I’m not talking as if I had nothing to do with this,” he said.

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Oberyn Martell, the almost killer of The Mountain, was too popular to spend so little time on screen in season four of the HBO hit series Game of Thrones. Pedro Pascal fully embraced Oberyn for everything he was, politically savvy, smooth and romantic, and a skilled fighter. When he sits and offers to be champion for Tyrion Lannister it is perhaps one of the greatest scenes of the season (right up there with his battle against The Mountain himself).

Related: Game Of Thrones: 10 House Baratheon Memes That Will Have You Cry-Laughing

But Oberyn was always about more than vengeance for his sister Elia and love for his paramour Ellaria. He was younger brother of Doran, ruler of the kingdom of Dorne, the most independent of the Seven Kingdoms. His family could have easily played politics with his hand in marriage.

Nineties country music nostalgia has reached its peak with the announcement that Hot Country Knights, a faux band fronted by a costumed Dierks Bentley, has signed a record deal with Universal Music Group’s Nashville division.

Bentley, who also releases his solo albums through Umg Nashville, started playing one-off gigs with the group in 2015 and masquerades as Douglas “Doug” Douglason, a showboating, ill-tempered former adult film actor who longs for the days when Joe Diffie ruled the country charts. Joining Bentley are members of his live band, each with his...

“Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” is a proverb whose simple existence proves the fact impressionable souls will do so without fail. This monthly column (with a special year-end retrospective today) focuses on the film industry’s willingness to capitalize on this truth, releasing one-sheets to serve as not representations of what audiences are to expect, but as propaganda to fill seats. Oftentimes they fail miserably.

So many posters proved their greatness this year by being bold enough to make interesting choices where composition is concerned. I’m still talking about mid-tier studios (very few of the below twenty-five are advertising movies produced by Hollywood with a capital-h), but even those independent establishments leaning towards artistry above celebrity wasn’t always a guarantee. That they’re using reflections, extreme close-ups, overlapped objects, and uniquely cut windows turning negative space positive is a testament to a willingness of putting craft above commerce.

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

Before we get to our weekly streaming picks, check out our annual feature: Where to Stream the Best Films of 2019.

Atlantics (Mati Diop)

Somewhere along the stretch of Senegalese coastline where Mati Diop’s feature-length directorial debut Atlantics takes place, a futuristic tower stands tall and spectral above the ocean–a sinister crossbreed between a stalagmite and a lighthouse, its lights thrusting red and warm blobs into the night. It’s a fictional place in a story of magical, mysterious elements–a love story that crisscrosses between social commentaries and ghastly apparitions, addressing the global migrant crisis through a language of disquieting and stunning reveries. – Leo G.

Sônia Braga with Anne-Katrin Titze on her role in Bacurau: "She's a person that takes care of the community." Photo: Rachel Allen

Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles' Bacurau, shot by Pedro Sotero, had its world première at the Cannes Film Film Festival where it won the jury prize (shared with Ladj Ly's Les Misérables) and is a highlight of the New York Film Festival.

On the afternoon following the Us première at Alice Tully Hall, the directors of Bacurau and Sônia Braga, (who stars alongside Udo Kier (Rick Alverson's The Mountain) and Barbara Colen) joined me for a conversation. The Paris Theatre in New York, where Bruno Barreto's Dona Flor And Her Two Husbands and Aquarius had their premières, has a special place in Sônia Braga's heart.

Bacurau co-director Juliano Dornelles was the production designer on Kleber Mendonça Filho's Aquarius and Neighboring Sounds Photo: Anne-Katrin...

In today’s film news roundup, Kino Lorber has started a VOD platform, Tony Todd is starring in a horror-comedy, the Red Nation International Film Festival sets its lineup and ballet dancer Kirsten Bloom Allen starts a production company. VOD Distribution Arthouse distribution specialist Kino Lorber is launching VOD platform Kino Now with more than 600 new releases, classics and international films. Kino Now, announced Monday, will offer exclusive early access to new theatrical releases, festival hits and exclusive titles not available on other streaming platforms or not yet available on home video.

The platform will also include special “bundle” offerings of selected hard-to-find titles as well as collections from renowned filmmakers including international TV series such as “Deutschland 83” and “Bad Banks”; documentary series including Joseph Campbell’s “The Power of Myth”; auteur collections built around Jean-Luc Godard, Lina Wertmüller and Fritz Lang; and pioneers of cinema restorations of the...

Exclusive: U.S. art house distributor Kino Lorber is launching film and TV VOD streaming platform Kino Now, we can reveal. The service, which includes options to rent and buy, currently hosts 600 titles from the company’s catalog and includes early access to new releases. The number of titles is set to double by the end of the year.

Kino Lorber, which will unveil the platform at a stateside event this evening, tells us the service will be annually refreshed with more than 50 new theatrical releases from Kino Lorber’s first-run and repertory divisions and more than 500 yearly additional titles as “festival direct” exclusives and indie art house digital premieres.

Movies will be generally available around 30-90 days after their theatrical release but some will also get day-and-date releases. Most titles will be $9.99 or less. New releases and certain films that are considered premium will be $14.99 or $19.99 if they are day-and-date releases.

Rick Alverson on Jeff Goldblum with Tye Sheridan in The Mountain: "He is using the boy as a refractive mechanism to validate himself, to show his worth."

In the final instalment of my in-depth conversation with Rick Alverson on The Mountain, he reveals that he is a fan of the films of Robert Bresson, Catherine Breillat, Michael Haneke, Bruno Dumont (Bernard Pruvost in Li'l Quinquin), and Claire Denis, and why Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker and John Cassavetes' A Woman Under The Influence are "huge" for him. He names Udo Kier as Frederick being the body of The Mountain, Jeff Goldblum's Dr. Fiennes the mind, and Denis Lavant the spirit, with Tye Sheridan's Andy as the son, and credits Frederick Wiseman's Titicut Follies as an influence for one of the numbers in the film.

Rick Alverson on The Mountain: "Essentially, the film is separated into mind, body and spirit.

It seems that actor Jeff Goldblum might be taking a page or two from fellow, perplexed Marvel Cinematic Universe star Gwyneth Paltrow.

In a red-carpet interview taken over the weekend at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, Goldblum appeared to be totally nonplused about the recent breakup between Walt Disney Studios, Marvel, and Sony over the Spider-Man franchise. Goldblum was on hand at the event to promote his new Disney+ show “The World According to Jeff Goldblum,” in which he turns ordinary objects on their head. He also has an upcoming voiceover appearance in the Disney+ series “What If…?” which imagines an McU where certain real-life historical events didn’t go as planned. Watch his hilarious bizarre interview below.

Best trailer to come out of #D23Expo last night is Jeff Goldblum’s incredulous response to the #Spiderman drama he hadn’t heard about yet. pic.twitter.com/5Zd0MR7ZPX...

Above: Chinese poster for Spirited Away; artist: Zao Dao.The most popular poster to date on my Movie Poster of the Day Instagram, by a dragon’s length, with more than double the amount of likes of its closest contender, was this gorgeous Chinese poster (and its color variant which you can see here) for Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001), which apparently just got a Chinese theatrical release eighteen years after it was made. The posters were painted by the young Chinese comic book artist Zao Dao who you can, and should, read more about here.I was happy to see Renato Casaro’s prop poster for Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood’s film-within-the-film Kill Me Now Ringo, Said the Gringo—which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago—make such an impression, as well as another of my favorite Casaros painted forty years earlier, for Screamers, a.k.

With several name actors, good reviews, and top theaters, Sundance-premiere drama “Luce” led multiple new releases this weekend. Also showing promise are “The Babadook” director Jennifer Kent’s second feature, “The Nightingale,” at two initial theaters, while at one New York location “Jay Myself” scored as yet another strong documentary. And summer breakout “The Farewell” continued its strong expansion, adding over $2.4 million to its already impressive figures.

Opening

Luce (Neon) – Metacritic: 73; Festivals include: Sundance, Tribeca 2019

$132,916 in 5 theaters; PTA (per theater average): $26,583

This kind of narrative indie doesn’t have an easy pass to success these days. With Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer, and Tim Roth adding to its appeal, the story of parents who face disturbing news about their adopted Eritean son opened in top New York/Los Angeles theaters. Audiences reportedly showed multiple-demographic appeal, critical for any upcoming expansion that seeks a crossover audience.

What comes next: It...

Time to take a detour from the big noisy summer blockbusters and take a trip with an actual person. Well, sort of, since the main character in this film has a different name than the actual famous (or in some circles infamous) medical inventor. But it’s really more of a biography told from an unknown character’s perspective. It’s somewhat like this year’s Best Picture Oscar winner The Green Book. The more renown subject there was celebrated classical pianist Dr. Donald Shirley, but we get to learn about him via the more prominent (leading role) of his driver Tony “Lip” Vallelonga. Now they used the actual names. The new film is just a few years before Green, and a lot of time is spent cruising in a classic auto. However, the doctor of The Mountain doesn’t use his skills to bring joy and happiness. Far, far from it.