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Accepting an award at the American Liver Foundation’s annual fundraising gala for his work in health equity in New York on Monday night, R&b icon Al B! Sure, also known as Albert Brown, made his first public appearance since making explosive statements calling for an investigation into the death of his and Sean “Diddy” Combs’ ex-partner, Kim Porter.

“Being a trailblazer isn’t about the fame or fortune,” Brown said with determination to the crowd gathered in midtown Manhattan as he accepted the Transplant Trailblazer Award. “It’s about walking a path uncertain filled with hope and conviction, knowing that the work that y’all do will make a difference to those who come after us. Health, to me, is the new wealth.”

Bown has been recovering since a cross-section of illnesses put him on a ventilator for 38 days and then in a coma for several months in...

The entertainment industry and fans all across the world are mourning the sudden passing of Hollywood legend Maggie Smith, who had a phenomenal career spanning over seven decades and delivered beloved performances in celebrated film and television franchises, including Harry Potter and Downton Abbey, as well as acclaimed roles in hits like Othello, Death on the Nile, Hook, and Sister Act.

The recipient of numerous prestigious accolades such as two Academy Awards, three Golden Globes, and five BAFTA Awards, Smith was one of the silver screen and theater's most prolific performers and continued finding success and adoration up until her death at 89 on September 27, 2024. While many audiences may recognize the late seasoned star for her brilliant portrayals of both Professor Minerva McGonagall in the enchanting Harry Potter films and Violet Crawley in the acclaimed period drama Downton Abbey, some may be surprised to discover that Smith didn't find her most iconic roles satisfying.

British stage and screen actress Maggie Smith, the “Downton Abbey” and “Harry Potter” star who numbers two Oscars, three Emmys and countless stage awards to her credit, died Friday in London. She was 89.

“It is with great sadness we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith,” her sons Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin said in a statement. “She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27th September. An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful staff at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital for their care and unstinting kindness during her final days.”

In her late 70s, Smith drew an entirely new legion of fans thanks to her starring role in...

Dame Maggie Smith, the British actress who starred in Harry Potter films, the wildly popular Downton Abbey series and scores of other movies, TV shows, West End and Broadway productions in a career that brought two Oscars, five BAFTAs, four Emmys and a Tony Award, died today. She was 89.

Smith’s death was confirmed by her sons Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin. In a statement shared with UK media, they said: “She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning, Friday 27th September. An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.”

Smith was one of the finest British screen and stage stars of her generation and will be remembered for her performances in iconic films and TV shows, including Harry Potter and Downton Abbey. Her...

Spain’s film & TV giant The Mediapro Studio is joining forces with Catalan pubcaster 3Cat and its online platform to co-produce “El Mal” (“Quiet”), a thriller series based on a true story, on a serial killer prowling the streets of locked-down Barcelona in March-April 2020.

Presented April 8 at MipTV, the eight-part series will topline two Goya Awards-winning actor David Verdaguer and double Goya nominee actress Ángela Cervantes.

The series is set to premiere initially on 3Cat while The Mediapro Studio Distribution owns the worldwide commercial rights.

Created and lead written by Lluís Alcarazo – creator of Oriol Paulo’s crime thriller “Night and Day” and doc feature “Special Case “Quiet” – tells the story of an investigation to uncover the identity of a serial killer who chooses their victims from among the most vulnerable members of the society: the homeless.

The plot unfolds at the end of April 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 lockdown.

Top Spanish Titles brought to market at MipTV:

“Dating in Barcelona,” (Filmax)

Produced by Filmax’s Arca, Catalan public broadcaster 3Cat and Prime Video in Spain, a first season of “Dating in Barcelona” bowed last year in Spain to big ratings, both on its first-window debut on 3Cat and on Prime Video, where it became one of the streaming service’s most-watched debuts. A modern take on romance and sex in an online age, “Dating in Barcelona” also reflects a swing in TV towards a lighter, more episodic fare, whether in crime thrillers or other categories. Each episode features two dates which, as Variety has observed, play off each other. Powered in creative terms by Pau Freixas, behind iconic series from “Red Band Society” To “I Know Who You Are” And “Todos Mienten,” All Produced By Filmax, “Dating In Barcelona” features a top-tier cast, this time round in Season...

Festivals And Markets

The 2024 BFI London Film Festival has announced its dates, with the biggest film festival in the U.K. set to be held Oct. 9-20. The late-in-the-year slot has traditionally given the event the opportunity to program some of the most notable films from the summer festivals while also showcasing some of the biggest titles from the U.K. In 2023, the Lff opened with the European premiere of “Saltburn,” and included screenings of “Maestro,” “The Holdovers,” “Poor Things” and “Priscilla,” but also featured the world premieres of “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget,” and “The Book of Clarence.”

Submissions of the U.K. and Irish shorts and features are still open for the 2024 festival. The final date for entry is May 24.

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Busan’s Asian Contents and Film Market (Acfm) has appointed Ellen Y. D. Kim as director. Her four-year term commences March 8. She previously held several positions within...

Ellen Y. D. Kim has been appointed director of the Asian Contents & Film Market (Acfm), the industry platform of Busan International Film Festival (Biff).

Kim begins her four-year term on Friday (March 8) and joins from Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (Bifan), where she has spent eight years as programme director.

The move comes eight months after the resignation of Oh Seok Geun, who stepped down as Acfm director in June 2023 as one of a string of high-level departures from Biff last year.

The appointment also marks Kim’s return to the leading festival and industry platform in South Korea having...

Actor, writer and director Aml Ameen is plotting a sequel to festive film Boxing Day, as well as thriller project Night And Day, here are the details.

While Britain has produced a number of films that grew into festive favourites like Scrooge, Love, Actually and Arthur Christmas, there are a number of festive films that flew under the radar, like Eddie Izzard’s Lost Christmas.

One such film is Boxing Day, which was released in 2019. Notable as being the first British Christmas film with an almost entirely black cast. It came from actor and writer Aml Ameen, who directed the film and co-wrote the script with Bruce Purnell.

He also starred as Melvin Mackenzie, a successful author who returns home to confront his chaotic family and his past. Aja Naomi King played Lisa, a Hollywood casting director who accompanies Ameen’s Melvin home to face Georgia, his chart-topping pop-star ex,...

Exclusive: Aml Ameen, who portrays Dr.Martin Luther King in Rustin, reveals that he’s in talks with Film4 and the BFI to direct and star in the sequel to holiday romance Boxing Day, his feature directorial debut — and he has a second film, a crime saga called Night and Day that he wants to make soon.

That’s not all, because the L.A.-based Brit is in London prepping to play a “transformative” lead role in an as-yet-unannounced film.

The hush-hush part in the secret film requires him to “shut down my entire life because” of the life-changing nature of the character he’ll be playing.

While Ameen’s shooting that film, he’ll pop up as a lawyer alongside Jeff Daniels in the six-part Netflix drama A Man in Full, an the adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s novel written by David E. Kelley and directed by Regina King,...

South Korean sales agency Finecut has secured international sales rights to Hong Sangsoo’s A Traveler’s Needs, which stars Isabelle Huppert and is set to premiere in Competition at the Berlinale.

It marks the third collaboration between French actress Huppert and Korean filmmaker Hong after In Another Country, which played in Competition at Cannes 2012, and Claire’s Camera, which was shown in the Special Screenings section of Cannes in 2017.

Announcing its selection for the Berlinale today, artistic director Carlo Chatrian described the film as a “light but piercing take on human relationships”.

It follows a woman, played by Huppert,...

South Korean actor Lee Sun-kyun, best known for his role in the Oscar-winning film “Parasite,” has died in an apparent suicide, South Korean police told NBC News on December 27. He was 48.

Lee’s body was discovered December 27 by authorities in his car parked on a street in northern Seoul. Police were searching for Lee after his family reported him missing, per NBC News. A cause of death hasn’t officially been ruled upon, but Lee reportedly left a message similar to a suicide note before his disappearance, and a charcoal briquette, commonly used in South Korea to induce suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, was discovered in the passenger seat.

In the U.S., Lee was best known for his work in Bong Joon-Ho’s 2019 class satire “Parasite.” In the film, Lee plays Park Dong-ik, a wealthy man whose family is unknowingly the target of a poorer family’s schemes for employment.

2023 has taken many beloved actors from us and, in a shocking development, one more name has been added to the list to close out the year. Lee Sun-kyun, the actor best known to Western audiences for playing the role of wealthy family patriarch Dong Ik in director Bong Joon-ho's hit film "Parasite," sadly passed away Wednesday morning in Seoul (local time). The circumstances of the tragedy are complicated by a nationwide crackdown on illicit drug use in South Korea, which has led to allegations and investigations involving several high-profile public figures, including Lee. According to the New York Times, the death is being treated as a suicide. He was only 48 years old.

Although he rose to prominence internationally for starring in the Best Picture-winning film in 2019, Lee had built up a strong and successful career in both television and film throughout the years leading up to his breakthrough performance.

A few years ago, actor Lee Sun-kyun had a major role in a film that made history: director Bong Joon-ho’s dark comedy thriller Parasite, which racked up multiple Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film. It was the first non-English-language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. But now Lee’s life has come to a tragic early end. South Korea’s emergency office has confirmed that Lee has passed away at the age of 48, and it’s suspected that he committed suicide.

As Deadline notes, since October Lee had been “under investigation after drug use allegations amid an ongoing crackdown on illegal drugs by the South Korean government. Local news service Yonhap reported that Lee had been questioned multiple times by authorities, including for 19 hours this past weekend. The actor had said he was tricked into taking drugs.” Lee...

The South Korean star was facing an investigating into alleged drug use.

South Korean actor Lee Sun-kyun, star of Oscar-winning film Parasite, has died aged 48.

Lee was found dead in car at a park in central Seoul on Wednesday morning, according to news agency Yonhap and the Associated Press. Police had been searching for the actor after his family reported that he had left home after writing what appeared to be a suicide note.

He had been under investigation by the police since October over allegations over illegal drug use. Lee himself had reportedly brought details to authorities, claiming he...

Nia DaCosta's upcoming MCU film, The Marvels, is a significant milestone in her career and marks a "before and after" moment. DaCosta has experienced mistreatment and conflicts on previous projects, facing issues related to her gender, age, and race. Although given the opportunity to choose her crew for The Marvels, she acknowledges that it is ultimately a Kevin Feige production and understands that her own vision will take a backseat to the larger MCU universe.

So far, filmmaker Nia DaCosta has had a short, but highly praised, time in the world of cinema. MCU outing The Marvels is her first step into blockbuster superhero movies, and ultimately offfered the director a very different experience when working on the film. And there was one element particular that brought her a lot of satisfaction.

DaCosta began her career as a director in 2009 with the short film The Black Girl Dies Last,...

Johnny Marr has announced that he’ll be releasing a best-of compilation album, Spirit Power: The Best of Johnny Marr, on November 3rd via BMG. The album will feature some of Marr’s favorite recent songs, as well as two brand new tunes, including the album’s lead single, “Somewhere.” Stream it below.

Personally curated by Marr, Spirit Power will celebrate his past decade of output, focusing on highlights from the string of solo albums he released between 2013 and 2022. Joining those tracks are previously-released singles “Armatopia” and “The Priest,” as well as a 2015 cover of Depeche Mode’s “I Feel You.” For the deluxe 2xCD version of the album, fans will also get to hear a handful of previously-unheard demos and rarities. As for the two brand new songs — “The Answer” and the single “Somewhere” — they were both produced by Marr with his co-producer, James Doviak.

Arriving with a cheerful,...

Hollywood has had a very spotty record in telling the complete truths of some of our great musical geniuses. 1946’s Night And Day, an attempted, but really fictionalized, biopic on the life of Cole Porter with Cary Grant, totally ignored his real life homosexuality as well as sham marriage. That is just one example. The latest in the genre, Maestro having its World Premiere tonight at the Venice Film Festival, does not attempt to be a biopic at all on the great Leonard Bernstein, but instead puts its key focus on the relationship and 25 year marriage of Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein, a star in her own right on the Broadway stage. All of it is presented including bringing up their three children – Jamie, Alexander, Nina – as well as Bernstein’s own bisexuality and attraction to younger men, not a secret to his wife.

It is a...

Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett first met at the Robin Hood Foundation gala in New York City, where she had performed a version of Nat King Cole’s “Orange Colored Sky.” Bennett asked Gaga to sing a duet with him on his next album 2011’s Duets II, which was timed to his 85th birthday. Their performance of “The Lady Is a Tramp” would be the first collaboration between the two and the beginning of an enduring friendship that lasted throughout Bennett’s final years.

On Monday, Gaga posted a moving tribute to Bennett, who died July 21 at 96. “I will miss my friend forever,” she writes. I will miss singing with him, recording with him, talking with him, being on stage together.”

Related: Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2023: Photo Gallery & Obituaries

“With Tony, I got to live my life in a time warp. Tony & I had this magical power,” her caption continued.

’The Light’ is one of a slate of features to receive backing from German regional fund Film-und Medienstiftung Nrw.

The Light, Tom Tykwer’s first film for the cinema since his 2016 German-us comedy A Hologram For The King is one of 10 feature film projects allocated almost €6m in production support by the Düsseldorf-based regional fund Film-und Medienstiftung Nrw.

Tykwer’s original screenplay for The Light (Das Licht) centres on a troubled family who take on a Syrian immigrant as a housekeeper. When she successfully shakes up the lives of the family she then confronts them with the dark fate of her own.

Haley Bennett (Cyrano, Swallow, The Girl On The Train) is set to lead Night and Day, Justine Waddell’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel, to be directed by BAFTA nominee Tina Gharavi (I Am Nasrine, Cleopatra: African Queens). WestEnd Films has boarded the the German-Irish-u.K. co-production and is introducing the project to buyers in Cannes.

Set in an era when glass ceilings were made of concrete, Bennett will play Katharine Hilbery — one woman who insisted on reaching for the stars. Based on what has been called Woolf’s funniest novel, Night and Day is described as an “unromantic comedy” about a passionate astronomer who does everything she can to avoid romantic love and marriage. Contemporary in tone, the story of Katharine’s bold challenge to the Edwardian patriarchy is set against the backdrop of the suffragette movement and advances in science and technology, at the turn of the 20th century.

It looks like the play’s the (stranger) thing!

London’s Phoenix Theatre is planning to turn things Upside Down when it debuts “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” a prequel theatrical experience tied to the runaway Netflix hit. The fifth and final season of the series begins production this May, and the new play will be up “later this year.”

The author is Kate Trefry, a staff writer, story editor, and co-executive producer on the series, credited as writer on three teleplays, one from the second, third, and fourth seasons. The prequel play is based on a story from Trefry and “Stranger Things” creators Matt and Ross Duffer, as well as Jack Thorne. Thorne is the writer behind Netflix’s hit “Enola Holmes,” but, more relevant to this endeavor, he is the author of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” the two-part theatrical experience/license to print money with productions in London,...

Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo’s latest film, “In Water,” has been bought by Cinema Guild for North American distribution on the heels of its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.

The film played in the Encounters section and is expected to have its North American premiere at a festival later this year. Cinema Guild will be releasing “In Water” theatrically, despite a below-standard run time of just 61-minutes.

Described by Cinema Guild as Hong’s “most overtly experimental work to date,” “In Water” follows Seongmo (Shin Seokho), a young man who recently gave up acting and has decided to make a film with his own money. He and his two friends venture to the rocky shores of a large island to shoot the movie together. His former classmate, Sangguk (Ha Seongguk), will operate the camera and Namhee (Kim Seungyun) will act in it. The only problem is that Seongmo...

Harry Connick Jr. has already heard enough people ask him, “Cole Porter, who’s that?” He even says a younger person mistook Porter for Nat King Cole (No, Porter did not write “The Christmas Song”). Fortunately, this won’t stop younger audiences from enjoying Harry Connick Jr: A Celebration of Cole Porter at the Nederlander Theatre on Broadway.

Connick’s residency runs from through December 29th, with a 25-piece orchestra and rolling stage sets. This is the jazz musician’s third concert on Broadway, and perhaps the most extravagant, showcasing all of his talents: singing,...