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Have you ever wondered about all the mysteries that lie beneath the surface of Arrakis, only to be drawn in by a secret hint that eluded the sharpest-eyed readers? You’re not alone! Millions of Dune fans may have missed a subtle yet fascinating fact about the blue sandworm piss before it was unveiled on Joe Rogan’s podcast last month.

The secret came out in an intense discussion with the famous mycologist, Paul Stamets, who was a close friend of Frank Herbert, the mastermind behind Dune. Many of the events in Dune: Part Two are surprising to people who have not read Herbert’s intimidating novel Dune. Certain revelations in the films would have been extremely difficult to predict in the absence of prior knowledge of the plot.

Zendaya in Dune 2

And if you are a fan of the iconic sci-fi classic Dune, you will not want to miss...

Exclusive: To commemorate Earth Day, the filmmakers and Executive Producer, Laura Dern of Common Ground are excited to announce Common Ground: Earth Day 2024, a nationwide screening event aimed at amplifying support for regenerative agriculture on Earth Day, Monday, April 22, 2024. Check out a teaser above.

Partnering with industry leader AMC Theatres, event-based distributor Area 23a, and other national exhibitors, the filmmakers bring Common Ground: Earth Day 2024 to a minimum of 75 screens across major markets, including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Miami, Detroit, Minneapolis, and more.

On this year’s Earth Day, theaters will showcase a special version of the film for one day only, spreading the message of regenerative models of agriculture. This never-before-seen version of the documentary includes pre-recorded Q&a sessions featuring the filmmakers co-stars of the film and along with new scenes.

Directed and produced by Joshua Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell and distributed by...

"We're burning the library... A library of different ways to rise to the challenge of living." What a chilling statement. There's an IMAX movie playing in theaters this year called Fungi: Web of Life, or Fungi: The Web of Life. We're just catching up with this now even though it has already been showing at IMAX theaters everywhere. Much of life on Earth is connected by a vast, hidden network that we are only just beginning to understand. Out of sight, between the world of plants and animals, another world exists -- the kingdom of fungi. From the ancient Tasmanian Tarkine Rainforest to the mystical wilds of China's Yunnan Province, come search for solutions to some of our planet's biggest challenges. Narrated by Björk, who "speaks the story with inimitable magic and sensitivity." This isn't the only doc on fungi - there have been a few others recently including Fantastic Fungi...

This story is part of The Hollywood Reporter’s 2023 Sustainability Issue (click here to read more).

We’re currently living in a golden age of panic-inducing eco-documentaries gushing facts and statistics at us about how humans are killing the planet. These didactic films are vital for grounding us in the sobering truths of climate change and spurring activism across generations. But it’s easy to feel wrung out from the constant finger-wagging, too. Unquestionably, it’s more challenging for filmmakers to transmit environmentalist messages via tone, mood or imagery alone — but for viewers, the rewards can be spectacular.

The documentaries in this list showcase the grand scale of Earth, but they’re also able to demonstrate the refinement of our microcosmic communities. Some focus on explorers who either conflict or harmonize with their subjects; others are dialogue-free meditations on life itself. We’re witnesses to tragedy and celebration, spirituality and terror.

Director Marion Neumann not only pays tribute to the magic of mushrooms but claims they could save humanity from the coming climate apocalypse

At once earthy and magical, fungi not only link us to the origins of life itself but also open doors to alternate realms of consciousness. In Marion Neumann’s loose-limbed documentary, just the latest in a string of films that opine on its enigma, the mushroom can even save the world.

Compared with the surreal time-lapse photography of Louie Schwartzberg’s Fantastic Fungi (2019) or the rustic charm of Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw’s The Truffle Hunters (2020), Neumann’s approach is more free-wheeling and eccentric. Interviews with a wide host of fungi lovers – who include scientists, culinary specialists and devoted enthusiasts – delve into the generative power of mushrooms with vigour and optimism. Considering that the cultivation of fungal cultures has allowed us to ease our physical ailments...

(Welcome to SlashClips, a series where we bring you exclusive clips from hot new Digital, Blu-ray, and theatrical releases you won't see anywhere else!)

In this edition:

House of DarknessThe Amusement ParkGratitude RevealedRiotsville, USAThe BengaliHouse Of Darkness

First up, Saban Films has provided us with an exclusive clip from "House of Darkness," the new thriller starring Justin Long coming off his major success with last weekend's #1 movie "Barbarian." Written and directed by the acclaimed Neil Labute, the gothic horror-mystery-comedy co-stars Kate Bosworth, Gia Crovatin, and Lucy Walters. It is now available in theaters, on digital, and on demand.

Here is the official synopsis:

Justin Long and Kate Bosworth star in this seductive thriller from director Neil Labute ("The Wicker Man"). Driving home to her secluded estate after meeting at a local bar, a player out to score thinks his beautiful, mysterious date will be another casual hook-up. While getting acquainted,...

(Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they've been watching, why it's worth checking out, and where you can stream it.)

The Movie: "Fantastic Fungi"

Where You Can Stream It: Netflix

The Pitch: You know how "Star Trek: Discovery" season 1 was based around the concept of faster-than-light travel via the power of space mushrooms? Well if you didn't, you do now. I fell off "Star Trek: Discovery" after a couple of seasons due to our present-day curse of Too Much Content, but I loved that idea of science fiction being based around something so humble and down-to-earth...

The post The Daily Stream: Fantastic Fungi is the Netflix Film That Says 'Look Down' appeared first on /Film.

There’s pure silence in the air until Noa Kalos stretches her hand into the video’s frame and clamps a white wire onto a bowling ball-sized cluster of oyster mushrooms. Pink and fleshy with pronounced gills, they look like they were plucked from a desert garden on Mars — and they sound even more otherworldly. A deep cacophony of bleeps and bloops ensues, and I can only imagine this is what one hears while playing Mario Kart on ketamine.

Kalos is a bespectacled, heavily bearded person living in rural North Carolina.

“Aware: Glimpses Of Consciousness” will have its U.S. Theatrical Release Starting In Los Angeles On Friday, September 24 (Laemmle Theaters) And New York On Friday, October 8 (Cinema Village).

Directors Frauke Sandig and Eric Black follow scientists delving into the greatest of mysteries, having to confront the ‘Big Questions’. It presents some of the world’s most brilliant researchers approaching consciousness – each from radically different perspectives, including Roland Griffiths, the renowned Johns Hopkins University psychedelics researcher, plant biologist Monica Gagliano, Christof Koch, Chief Scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and the famed Tibetan Buddhist monks, Matthieu Ricard and Mingyur Rinpoche.

The film opens as a science film but emerges well beyond the explicable, ultimately leading one on a voyage upon the ocean of consciousness, a contemplative, sensual, cinematographic meditation. The networks of consciousness are reflected in ‘grand’ imagery revealing the vast interconnectedness of Nature – from the smallest organisms, to...

Documentary filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg, who released the Brie Larson-narrated documentary Fantastic Fungi in 2019, has announced a virtual event dedicated to the complexity and multitude of medical uses within the fungi kingdom.

Dubbed the Fantastic Fungi Global Summit, the event will be hosted from October 15th through 17th and will feature speakers like alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra, renowned mycologist Paul Stamets, celebrity chef Rick Bayless, and author Michael Pollan.

“We’re in the midst of a full cultural ‘shroom boom’ and the Fantastic Fungi Summit is at the forefront of the movement,...

The team behind a new documentary full of incredible footage of the secret life of mushrooms explain how fungi could help us stave off future pandemics

Watching the anemone stinkhorn sprout from the soil is a wondrous – and terrifying – thing. Emerging from a pod that looks like a truffle, the mushroom unfurls half a dozen arms, all a throbbing scarlet, like a collection of tongues. Each of these is forked and, across their stems, a series of black sticky lumps pop up like rotting barbecue. It’s supposed to smell something awful too.

The uncanny blooming of the Aseroe rubra is one of many transfixing moments in Fantastic Fungi, a crowdfunded US documentary made by Louie Schwartzberg, an affable old hippie and pioneer of time-lapse photography. It stars Paul Stamets, a trailblazer in the popularisation of mycology, the study of fungi, and bursts with footage revealing the secret life of mushrooms.

“Fantastic Fungi,” a captivating and revealing new nature documentary from Moving Art, makes the case that the very essence of the world, humanity, of life and death, can be reduced to mushrooms. Cinematographer Louie Schwartzberg directs the docu, which is narrated by Brie Larson.

Released in late 2019, the documentary available on Apple TV and Prime Video, received a surprising second life when the coronavirus pandemic forced cinemas to shut down, the filmmakers pivoted to virtual cinema and introduced the film to a new audience.

Below, filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg and distributor Kirt Eftekhar (Area 23a) discuss how they found a new way to distribute a film during a pandemic.

The film has gotten this second life because of the pandemic, can you talk a little bit about how that happened?

Louie Schwartzberg: We were going strong in the fall as the number one doc in theaters. We had a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Canada and the U.S. are in different worlds when it comes to Covid-19. The northern neighbor is good to go for most theaters (with safety measures in play). And with that, the country went its own way this weekend with two wide releases.

“The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run” took top spot for all theaters in both countries, grossing around $910,000 in 300 theaters. The Russell Crowe-starring thriller “Unhinged” was #2 with about $580,000 on 284 screens. “Peninsula,” the Korean “Train to Busan” sequel, made $119,000 in 45 theaters. This opens in 115 U.S. theaters this Friday.

In 2015, “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water” opened to $55 million ion North America, and Canada generally earns about 10 percent of the two-country total. If the new SpongeBob” opened in North America in a world without Covid, we might factor in a falloff of interest in the franchise over five years; a reasonable guess might be a...

Chicago – While the days tick away during this shut-in period, both the Music Box Theatre and the Gene Siskel Film Center recently announced that they will offer online at-home screenings of current and past art films to enjoy.

Music Box Theatre Presents Bacurau

Bacurau

Photo credit: MusicBoxTheatre.com

The Music Box Theatre will get 50% of the proceeds from any download in this partnership with KinoMarquee, powered by Kinonow.

Scheduled: Now until the theater re-opens or changes the film.

Description: The winner of the Jury Prize at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, “Bacurau” is from Portugal, and is set in the title village in Brazil. They mourn the loss of their matriarch, Carmelita, who lived to be 94. Days later, its inhabitants (among them Sônia Braga) notice that their village has literally vanished from online maps and a UFO-shaped drone is seen flying overhead.

There are forces that want to expel them from their homes,...

In today’s film news roundup, “Phoenix, Oregon” is being offered at a discount, Fantastic Fungi Day​ is set for March 26, and the opening of Methodfest has been shifted to May.

Release Strategy

Dark comedy “Phoenix, Oregon” will launch Friday simultaneously in theaters that are still open and at home for a “matinee” discount price of $6.50.

Producers will share all revenue on a 50/50 basis with the group of theaters where “Phoenix, Oregon” would have been shown. The theatrical-at-home option will be available in the U.S. and Canada.

“Phoenix, Oregon” centers on a graphic novelist and a chef who seize an unlikely opportunity to reinvent their lives by quitting their service industry jobs to restore an old bowling alley and serve the “world’s greatest pizza.” The cast includes James Le Gros, Jesse Borrego, Lisa Edelstein, Reynaldo Gallegos, Diedrich Bader and Kevin Corrigan. “Phoenix, Oregon” is being released by Aspiration Entertainment...

"What is the best way to love yourself?" There's nothing better that nature itself to help us venture down a path to betterment. Dosed is a documentary drama about the power of psychedelic mushrooms. After years of prescription medications failed her, a suicidal woman, Adrianne, turns to underground healers to try and overcome her depression and opioid addiction with illegal psychedelic meds like magic mushrooms and iboga. "Adrianne's first dose of psilocybin mushrooms catapulted her into an unexpected world of healing where plant medicines are redefining our understanding of mental health and addiction." There have been a few other docs like this recently, including one about kratom, and plenty about marijuana, attempting to teach us the truth about these entirely natural, organic healing methods. This also seems like it would make a great double feature with the Fantastic Fungi doc about the wonderful world of mushrooms. Give it a try.

Golden Globes weekend is the time for thriving awards titles to pull audiences as they expand their runs. The standout among recent openers is Christmas Day release “1917” (Universal), with a rare second-weekend increase. “Uncut Gems” (A24) continues to stun as a wide release success. And “Parasite” (Neon) keeps accruing more high numbers, even before it enters the winners’ circle.

Not reporting numbers was Oscar-shortlisted Israel documentary “Advocate” (Film Movement). Don’t expect more new specialty titles until until February, as some older titles move to parallel home viewing after their 90-day exclusive window expires.

Week Two

1917 (Universal)

$590,000 in 11 theaters (no change); PTA: $53,636; Cumulative: $2,280,000

What an impressive way to lead into a wide expansion, let alone the heart of awards season! Sam Mendes’ film is clearly an audience favorite. In the same 11 theaters in seven cities as last week, its gross actually went up 2%, against the usual second weekend fall off.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today that 344 feature films are eligible for the 2019 Academy Awards.

To be eligible for the consideration, the films must open in a commercial motion picture theater in Los Angeles County by Dec. 31, and begin a minimum run of seven consecutive days. Academy rules also state that a feature-length motion picture must have a running time of more than 40 minutes and must have been exhibited theatrically on 35mm or 70mm film, or in a qualifying digital format.

Nominations for the 92nd Academy Awards will be announced on Monday, Jan. 13, 2020. The ceremony takes place on Sunday, Feb. 9, airing live from Hollywood on ABC.

“Abominable”

“Ad Astra”

“Adam”

“The Addams Family”

“The Aeronauts”

“After the Wedding”

“The Aftermath”

“Aga”

“Aladdin”

“Alita: Battle Angel”

“Always Be My Maybe”

“The Amazing Johnathan”

“American Factory”

“American Woman”

“Angel Has Fallen”

“The Angry Birds Movie 2”

“Anna”

“Annabelle Comes Home...

Two years ago, the Academy documentary branch had to grapple with a record 170 documentary feature submissions for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. This year, it’s not so bad: only 159 were entered. The short list of 15 will be announced, along with eight others, on December 16.

All year, branch members have been getting lists of secure online screeners available to watch on the Academy website, increasing in volume, with more to come. Each voter is assigned a list of about 22-23 films to screen, so they all get covered. But it’s a burden to see them all, so the ones with the most attention move to the top of the much-watch list.

Give the advantage to box-office hits that were made available earlier in the year such as Neon’s “The Biggest Little Farm” and “Apollo 11,” as well as high-profile titles from HBO (“Diego Maradona” and “The Apollo”), Netflix,...

Two years ago, the Academy documentary branch had to grapple with a record 170 documentary feature submissions for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. This year, it’s not so bad: only 159 were entered. The short list of 15 will be announced, along with eight others, on December 16.

All year, branch members have been getting lists of secure online screeners available to watch on the Academy website, increasing in volume, with more to come. Each voter is assigned a list of about 22-23 films to screen, so they all get covered. But it’s a burden to see them all, so the ones with the most attention move to the top of the much-watch list.

Give the advantage to box-office hits that were made available earlier in the year such as Neon’s “The Biggest Little Farm” and “Apollo 11,” as well as high-profile titles from HBO (“Diego Maradona” and “The Apollo”), Netflix,...

A total of 159 documentary features have qualified in the Oscars’ Best Documentary Feature category, the Academy announced on Tuesday.

Last year, 166 documentaries qualified. In 2017, a record 170 made the cut.

All of the films are now available to members of the Documentary Branch to stream on the Academy’s secure members website. The films have been placed there over the last six months, with 23 added to the site in June, 24 in July, 26 in August, 19 in September and 62 in October and only five in November.

Also Read: 'Maiden' Star Tracy Edwards Kept Her Story 'Messy' to Serve the Next Generation of Women Athletes (Video)

Each member is randomly assigned 20% of the films as mandatory viewing but is free to see any additional films beyond those that are assigned. A preliminary round of voting will produce a 15-film shortlist, with a second-round narrowing those 15 to the five nominees.

This year is...

"Under every footstep you take... and that's all over the world." Moving Art has unveiled an official trailer for a documentary called Fantastic Fungi, which is indeed a movie about fungi - mushrooms and other fascinating underground networkers in the fungi kingdom. This doc film is described as "a consciousness-shifting film that takes us on an immersive journey through time and scale into the magical earth beneath our feet, an underground network that can heal and save our planet." Featuring scientists and mycologists like Paul Stamets, authors Michael Pollan, Eugenia Bone, Andrew Weil, and others, the film shows us "the beauty, intelligence and solutions the fungi kingdom" may provide humanity - the potential to save our planet. Which does indeed sound fascinating. It's "directed by the pioneer of time-lapse photography", Louie Schwartzberg, and it has plenty of stunning growth time-lapse shots. With narration by Brie Larson. Here's the official trailer...