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Writing a screenplay or creating a television series is hard work. Throughout the process, you encounter one storytelling hurdle after another, and even though you know better, every time you clear that hurdle, you believe you're home free. You're not. And once you finish that first draft, you get to head over the hurdle-laden track that is rewriting.

Sometimes, every single aspect of this process is loaded with challenges. You inexplicably find yourself struggling to find the right character names and place names. Everything right down to coming up with the right title of the show or movie itself is a bear. When this becomes a problem at a studio or network level, you get marketing departments involved, which leads to brainstorming sessions that provide an overabundance of unusable titles.

If German playwright Peter Weiss had his way, the whole world would know his 1963 Brechtian masterpiece as "The Persecution and...

Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson turned the Hollywood Bowl into a haven for Americana and country on Friday night, as the two legends brought the Outlaw Music Festival back to the storied venue for the second year in a row.

Dylan went on just as dusk settled, and the stage lit up like a noir rodeo, revealing Dylan’s signature piano. He and his band — dressed in black like outlaw undertakers — opened with a swaggering “Things Have Changed.”

The stage setup was simple: An image of a peaceful mountain lake backdrop that resembled a fancy water bottle label, blending well with the surrounding Hollywood Hills, and a crowd full of cowboy hats and rhinestones.

Opening for Dylan and Nelson Friday night were bluegrass stars Sierra Hull and Billy Strings, while upcoming Outlaw Fest 2025 tour stops will rotate in acts like Sheryl Crow, Wilco, Lucinda Williams, and Nathaniel Rateliff. Outlaw lineups...

Last December, Nick Carpenter had an existential experience onstage. He was standing with the band Dawes, screaming along as they performed their signature song, 2009’s “When My Time Comes.” The moment made Carpenter, who sings and writes songs under the name Medium Build, think about his deepest fears and goals as an artist — namely, about coming to terms with the level of popularity you’ve been gifted rather than constantly worrying about it.

“There’s a huge fear of: If I stopped working, will it all go away?” says Carpenter,...

Daniel Franzese is best known for his role as Damian in the movie Mean Girls and now he’s starring in the stage musical Blood/Love in L.A.

Blood/Love, billed as a vampire rock popera, is currently in its final week of performances at Los Angeles’ The Crimson theatre. Get tickets now!

We caught up with Daniel to learn more about him. Check out his 10 Fun Facts below:

Most people know I’m Italian and while working on my dual citizenship I found out that my dad became an American Citizen when he was 6yo and I am also part Chinese. So, no matter how you spin it I’m a noodle fan. Another fun pasta fact My Uncle Luigi Franzese invented Penne ala Vodka. You can look it up. So, Olive Garden owes me Residuals. My very first paid acting gig I was an actor/director in...

Over the past week or so, Apple Music has slowly unveiled the titles included in its list of the “100 best albums.” Today, the top 10 albums were revealed, with Miss Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill claiming the No. 1 spot. Rounding out the top five are Michael Jackson’s Thriller; The Beatles’ Abbey Road; Prince’s Purple Rain; and Frank Ocean’s Blonde.

The top 10 also includes Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life; Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city (Deluxe Version); Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black; Nirvana’s Nevermind; and Beyoncé’s Lemonade.

In all honestly, it’s a pretty safe top 10, especially considering the drama that unfolded when Apple unveiled picks 11-20 and slotted Adele’s 21 at No. 15 and Taylor Swift’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version) at No. 18 — ahead of albums like Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds,...

Following amapiano beats with your body is like watching a streetcorner shell game, or playing tennis with a rogue ball launcher — more surprising, sexy, and fun than standard 4/4 club bangers. South Africa’s signature groove for roughly a decade, the Soweto-bred slowed-down house music hybrid swiftly went pan-African because Afrobeat-niks, in Nigeria and elsewhere, know rhythm-magic when they hear it. With the long-awaited debut by 22-year old Johannesburg native Tyla Laura Seethal, the music is poised to globalize like never before. Bring it on.

Straight out of the gate (see...

The Oldenburg Film Festival has picked two iconoclast filmmakers to honor for its 30th anniversary edition: French actor/director Isild Le Besco and Canadian producer Jen Gatien. Both women have carved out unique paths in independent cinema, defying conventions and expectations.

Le Besco has worked in front of the camera since she was eight, and by her early 20s was already a face of French auteur cinema, with two César nominations — for her performances in Benoît Jacquot’s Sade (2000) and Cédric Kahn’s Roberto Succo (2001) and a best actress honor in Venice for Jacquot’s L’Intouchable (2006).

Her directorial debut, 2004’s Demi-Tarif (Half-Price), the story of three young siblings, Romeo (Kolia Litscher), Launa (Lila Salet), and the youngest, Leo (Cindy David), left on their own in a rundown Paris apartment, was an unmediated look into the world of childhood and drew praise from the likes of Mia Hansen-Løve, whose review,...

Glenda Jackson, whose illustrious career spanned from classic feature films like Sunday Bloody Sunday, Women in Love and A Touch of Class to a political career at the British Parliament, passed peacefully this morning at her home in London. She was 87 years old. Jackson has been said to have been battling an illness recently. Although she had transitioned from movies to civil service, the actress will appear in one last film project as she just wrapped her scenes opposite Sir Michael Caine in a movie titled The Great Escaper.

Jackson’s agent Lionel Larner released an official statement according to Variety. In the statement, Larner declares, ”Glenda Jackson, two-time Academy Award-winning actress and politician, died peacefully at her home in Blackheath, London this morning after a brief illness with her family at her side. She recently completed filming The Great Escaper in which she co-starred with Michael Caine.”

In addition to films,...

“To sing is to pray twice,” said St Augustine. It’s a haunting line – perhaps celebrating the miracle of human hope over any expectation of divine attention– that Tracey Thorn quotes with aching resonance on Fuse, Everything But the Girl’s first album in 24 years. It’s an album that makes a church of its elegant electronica: all vaulting arcs of yearning melody and glimmers of stained glass that dance upwards, to the familiar urban spire of Thorn’s beautiful, hangdog voice.

“I’ve always been an atheist,” Thorn wrote in a column published in the third month of the pandemic. But, taking her daily walks around a London graveyard, she found her questions and her internal dialogue with her mother (who’d been dead for a decade) beginning to feel “a bit like prayers. How long, oh lord, how long?” Perhaps it’s strange to say, but Ebtg have...

Would you believe us if we said a hologram sponsored by the government of Ontario was one of the best things we saw on the second full day of SXSW 2023? There were plenty of flesh-and-blood performances that knocked our socks off, too, as the festival hit its stride with artists big and small from across genres and decades packing the venues that make Austin one of the greatest music cities in the world. Here are our top picks from Wednesday, March 15.

U.S. Girls Make an Appearance Via Hologram U.

In early 2021, things started to fall apart for Pheelz. That February, he released his debut EP, Hear Me Out, following nearly two decades of producing some of Afrobeats’ greatest hits. The EP was relatively successful, racking up millions of streams all around, but the process cost Pheelz a lot of money, leaving a huge dent in his finances.

Then, his girlfriend ended their five-year relationship, and his best friend of 15 years sent him a text one night, abruptly declaring their friendship over (for reasons Pheelz declines to expand on). “It...

We’re catching the super talented Susan Kelechi Watson at an interesting moment. She plays Beth Pearson on the network television phenomenon This Is Us, which just finished its fifth season and announced that the sixth will be its last. On this episode, she talks about what makes a performance “leave the screen,” learning the power of minimalism from watching Sade, how sometimes being a little lost “in the wilderness” is an important part of her process, why she started building her post-This Is Us career many seasons ago, and much much more! Back To One can be found wherever you […]

The post Back to One, Episode 157: Susan Kelechi Watson first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

We’re catching the super talented Susan Kelechi Watson at an interesting moment. She plays Beth Pearson on the network television phenomenon This Is Us, which just finished its fifth season and announced that the sixth will be its last. On this episode, she talks about what makes a performance “leave the screen,” learning the power of minimalism from watching Sade, how sometimes being a little lost “in the wilderness” is an important part of her process, why she started building her post-This Is Us career many seasons ago, and much much more! Back To One can be found wherever you […]

The post Back to One, Episode 157: Susan Kelechi Watson first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In the early 1990s, Stuart Matthewman, the writer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist known for his work in Sade, heard a remarkable demo: a ballad that stretched out over nearly seven minutes, making room for daredevil falsetto and a bass line as elegant as a spiral staircase, building to a description of a sexual liaison so ecstatic that it lasts for days and eventually brings police to the door.

“A guy from the record company said, ‘It’s from a new artist, would you meet him?'” Matthewman recalls. “I was like,...

Disney is developing a new live-action fairytale princess movie called Sade. The movie will center on an African princess and it's being produced by Rick Famuyiwa, who is best known for directing the film Dope.

The studio picked up the film from a pitch by Ola Shokunbi and Lindsey Reed Palmer, who will co-write the screenplay. The story centers around a young African girl named Sade "whose kingdom is threatened by a mysterious evil force and accepts her newly discovered magical powers to protect her people, with the help of the kingdom’s prince."

Yep, that's as Disney as a Disney princess story can get. There's no director attached yet, but I'm sure that they'll find the right person to tackle the challenge of helming the movie.

I assume the success of Marvel's Black Panther helped pave the way for this movie to get made.

Source: Variety...

Benoit Jacquot started his career as Marguerite Duras' assistant director in the 70s and went on to direct many films with strong female characters. In doing so, he catapulted the careers of many actresses into leading ladies of French cinema, among them Judith Godreche (Ridicule), Virginie Ledoyen (The Beach, 8 Women), Isild Le Besco (Sade, A tout de suite), Sandrine Kiberlain (Seventh Heaven, Apres Vous) . Lately, he has been keeping himself busy with two films out right now: 3 Hearts opening night film for this year's Rendez-vous with French Cinema and his Diary of Chambermaid shown in competition at this year's Berlinale, continuing the international success of Marie Antoinette-intrigue Farewell My Queen (starring Léa Seydoux, Diane Kruger and Ledoyen) a couple years back. Jacquot...

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