News

Chile’s Fabula and Spain’s Alea Media have unveiled they are allying on development of “A Long Petal of the Sea,” based on a 2019 novel by Isabel Allende.

Alea Media founder Aitor Gabilondo will serve as showrunner on the series which is scheduled to go into production by the end of 2025.

The new title joins two of the biggest powerhouses of premium scripted drama in the Spanish-speaking world and powerful IP in a swing for broad audiences worldwide.

Founded by Pablo and Juan de Dios Larrain, Academy Award winners for “A Fantastic Woman,” Fabula’s production credits take in movies “Jackie,” “Spencer” and “Maria,” all directed by Pablo Larraín.

Headed by Aitor Gabilondo, Alea Media is behind HBO Spanish smash hit “Patria” and Mediaset España’s “Wrong Side of the Tracks,” whose latest third season topped Netflix global non-English TV series charts earlier this year.

“A Long Petal of...

Two years ago, after it bowed in cinema theaters in Spain, Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s feature debut “Lullaby” was described by Pedro Almodóvar as “undoubtedly the best Spanish debut for years.” So the big question at a set visit last October was what she would make of her first TV series “Querer.” That set visit gave some inkling.

Now the full answer is out, as the premium mini series, selected out of competition at San Sebastián, screened to the press in the entirety of its 212 minutes on Thursday night.

That total screening is understandable. “Querer” begins with Miren, the wife in a seemingly perfect marriage in outward appearance, goes to a police station to accuse her husband over 30 years of sexual assault. This and following episodes records the divergent impact of her decision on her elder son Aitor, loyal to his father and his demeanour, and his younger brother Jon,...

San Sebastian — From when it began to incorporate Spanish TV series in its Official Selection – think 2017’s “The Plague” or 2020’s double whammy of “Patria” and “Riot Police” – San Sebastián has used its first Saturday to debate TV issues.

This time round, a panel highlighted crime series, featuring Movistar Plus+’s Susana Herreras, Laura Sarmiento, showrunner of Netflix hit “Intimacy” and lead writer on “Burning Body,” and Elías León Siminiani, co-creator of the 2017 docuseries “El caso Asunta (Operación Nenúfar)” which inspired the 2024 Netflix fiction series, “El Caso Asunta.”

Six takes on the panel discussion:

Spanish Crime Series Boom

The panel was entitled in Spanish “The Spanish Crime Series Boom.” That seems an understatement. According to Variety research, through Sept. 13 this year, seven Spanish titles hit No. 1 on Netflix’s Global Non-English TV series charts, occupying the top-charting position for a total 15 of the period’s total 35 weeks. That’s a...

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...

In a milestone move, Sony Pictures Television has unveiled “La Academia,” its first Spanish-language scripted series filmed in Spain for Prime Video and 3Cat.

“La Academia” is produced for Sony by Brutal Media, commissioned out of Sony Pictures Television’s international production group. Spt is distributing the series worldwide.

A scripted young adult drama series which Spt describes as being set in the high-pressure, high-drama world of elite youth soccer and its rising stars, ‘La Academia’ takes place at the Spanish training centre of the Apolo F.C., one of the best professional soccer clubs in the world.

There boys and girls from different social backgrounds fight for a shared dream which will inevitably create fiction between them: to make the first team and become the world’s next top players.

The young cast is led by new Spanish talent such as Ton Vieira, Marc Soler (“Upa Next”), Mia Sala-Patau...

In a coup for the Madrid-based sales agency, Latido Films has cliched a two picture deal with David Pérez Sañudo whose debut feature, “Ane,” repped by Latido, swept three Spanish Academy Goya Awards in 2021.

Latido will take world sales rights on both titles. The move comes as Spanish sales companies battle to retain top-flight talent, increasingly in the crosshairs of international counterparts.

With Pérez Sañudo, Latido gets one of Spain’s most exciting young directors, particularly for a skill now held at high value in and outside the U.S.: His ability to channel genre and sub-genre, often in individual scenes, injecting them with a larger sense of narrative.

Latido handled world sales rights on movies on another director with that sensitivity to sub-genre, Rodrigo Sorogoyen, from May God Save Us” (2016) to “The Realm” (2018) and “The Beasts” (2022) which trounced multiple Cannes winners to win best foreign film at France’s Cesars last year.

Atresmedia TV’s “Dreams of Freedom,” Rtve’s “Detective Touré” and Mediterráneo’s “Fentanyl: A Deadly Epidemic,” feature in Spain Content Goldmine: In Demand Like Never Before, a showcase of new and upcoming Spanish series unspooling Jan. 23 on the first day of Content Americas.

The title’s no hype. Since “Money Heist” became Netflix’s first true-blue global non-English blockbuster in 2018, Spain has consistently seen its top shows and movies rank high in global streamer charts, or sell worldwide, such as The Mediapro Studio’s “The Head.”

In 2022, in Europe, most fiction titles commissioned by global streamers were produced in Spain (34) and the U.K. (32), according to the European Audiovisual Observatory.

In 2023, film and TV titles from Spain have ranked No. 1 on Netflix’s global non-English Top 10 charts for more weeks – 13 – than those from any other country in the world, apart from South Korea. This month, after dropping on Netflix on Jan.

Too Hot to Handle is back and steamier than ever. The fifth season of the hit Netflix series returns on July 14. This time around, the cast of 10 singles believe they’ve signed up for a reality dating show called Love Overboard. They “think they’re sailing off for a party tour of the Caribbean,” notes the trailer (via YouTube). But once they arrive on the yacht, they discover the harsh truth.

If you’ve seen the other seasons, you know the drill. The Too Hot to Handle Season 5 cast will have to avoid all physical intimacy with each other, from kissing to sex, if they hope to go home with the $200,000 cash prize. But if anyone cheats, the prize money shrinks. They’ll be supervised by Lana, the cone-shaped robot who will monitor their behavior throughout the competition and encourage them to build connections that aren’t just based on...

Ita O’Brien, the pioneering Intimacy Coordinator who has worked on the likes of Normal People, I May Destroy You and Sex Education, has founded what is being called the “world’s first degree in intimacy practice.”

O’Brien’s Intimacy on Set outfit has joined with the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts on the two-year course, which will teach best practice in the fast-growing world of intimacy co-ordination and help build and support professionals in the increasingly crucial role. The formal nature of the training recognizes recent developments in the industry, for a role that was barely heard of a decade ago.

O’Brien, who has led the charge to improve intimacy co-ordination on TV and film sets, said: “Intimacy practice is a young profession, and whilst awareness of its existence has grown considerably in the last few years, deep understanding of good practice is missing.

“To ensure we develop...

The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.Women in Love.“British erotica” has long been considered an oxymoron, and this distinction is not entirely unfounded. While European auteurs like Jean-Luc Godard, Tinto Brass, Walerian Borowczyk, and Luis Buñuel were treating copulation as a springboard to philosophical ruminations, the British were paying to see Barbara Windsor’s bra popping off during an outdoor aerobics session in Carry On Camping (1969). Is this assessment fair? Well…yes and no. While many films point to a nation of buttoned-up prudes and furtive voyeurs, a deeper inspection reveals a colorful mosaic of sexual mores and shifting social values as film became an established part of life.Part of the challenge of defining British erotica lies with the difficulty of defining erotica itself. There’s enormous variability in the human response, and where some prefer explicit material,...

The battle for success on the new drama series scene is the battle for talent, led by screenwriters. Following, portraits of Spanish TV scribes or creators, sometimes writing teams, who’ve made an impact, or look set to do so:

Fran Araujo

2022 was Araujo’s year. He co-wrote Berlin Competition’s “One Night, One Day” and “Rapa,” Movistar+’s biggest 2022 bow. “Offworld,” a collective series he coordinated, was a Variety’s International TV Show of the Year. An iconoclast – “if I do the same thing, I get bored,” he says – who tears up the rule book.

Aina Clotet

Best known for acting, winning at Malaga for “The Wild Ones,” but a driving force as co-creator, director and star behind “This Is Not Sweden” a €1.5 million grant recipient and groundbreaking Spain-Scandinavia-Germany co-pro, turning on a couple who think they’ve found a model lifestyle. But “there are no guarantees,” says Clotet.

With Txintxua’s series “Intimacy” shooting to No. 1 on Netflix’s global non-English charts this summer and 17 Basque films of ever greater renown participating at the San Sebastian Festival, led by Mikel Gurrea’s feature debut “Suro” and Fernando Franco’s “The Rite of Spring,” the region’s film and TV industry has flashed signs of real growth and international recognition.

Further advances are expected next year with the launch of up-to-70 tax credits in Bizkaia.

Leading Basque production company Irusoin backed “Suro” and is producing Disney+’s most notable TV project in Spain, “Balenciaga.” “It makes perfect sense; Disney wanted to make it here because the character and the story originate from the region,” says Irusoin producer Xabi Berzosa who has observed an already crowded market with three to four shoots happening simultaneously, including The Mediapro Studio’s “Pelotaris.”

“We’ve had problems finding crew as they’re all caught up in movies,...

Packing its first full-on onsite edition since the pandemic, Spain’s San Sebastian Festival has never been busier or bigger. 10 Takes on what is shaping up as a vibrant edition:

Playing Off Powerful Market Forces

Nine of Netflix’s 20 Top 10 non-English-language films and TV series are sourced from Spain or Latin America. Platforms are battling to tie down talent.

This year, eight movies from Spain and Latin America play in competition alone at San Sebastian, the most important film event in the Spanish-speaking world. The fest’s main sidebar is its New Directors strand. San Sebastian’s focus on the Spanish-speaking world and new talent now aligns with powerful market forces. That fact plays out over the 2022 edition.

San Sebastian’s New Creative Investors’ Conference

CAA Media Finance is teaming with San Sebastian to organize the festival’s first Creative Investors’ Conference, running Sept. 19-20. Attendees take in international film...

A new month has arrived, which means a fresh batch of movies and TV shows streaming on Netflix. While many are no doubt still making their way through “Stranger Things” Season 4, June brings the arrival of a new season of another beloved Netflix series: “The Umbrella Academy.” The third season of the semi-superhero show premieres June 22 and finds the gang stranded in a timeline where the Umbrella Academy does not exist, while battling not only a rival team but also plenty of timeline-altering shenanigans.

In terms of new Netflix original films, June 17 sees the debut of “Spiderhead,” a psychological thriller starring Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller and Jurnee Smollett and directed by “Top Gun: Maverick” filmmaker Joseph Kosinski.

June will also see the debut of the new Adam Sandler-fronted basketball inspirational drama film “Hustle” on June 8, while a litany of comedy specials from the likes of Pete Davidson and Amy Schumer...

Just one month after debuting a fan favorite genre hit in the form of Stranger Things season 4, Netflix is once again coming out with the big guns for its list of new releases for June 2022.

The Umbrella Academy season 3 is set to be released June 22 and it will be a busy one for the Hargreeves family of crime fighters. After averting a 1963 nuclear apocalypse in season 2, the gang returns to the present only to find there’s a new team called the Sparrows living in their house. Based on the trailer for season 3, hilarity and many superpowers punches thrown will ensue.

Read more TV The Umbrella Academy Officially Introduces The Sparrow Academy By Alec Bojalad TV The Umbrella Academy Season 3: What To Expect By Michael Ahr

Other Netflix TV original series of note this month include the vampire love story First Kill (June 10) the Melissa McCarthy comedy God’s Favorite Idiot...

Turning on the waterworks and ripping open her blouse to cap a performance of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “The Respectful Prostitute,” aspiring actress Stella (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) concludes her audition for France’s most prestigious theatre school with a question from the jury. As he puffs a cigarette and speaks the first lines of dialogue written expressly for this film, an inscrutable juror looks to the ingénue and asks, “Do you think an actress needs to be an exhibitionist?”

In that opening, we find the fulcrum for Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s “Forever Young.” Asking the same question to the audience and to herself — with the Stella character a clear analogue for the director — Bruni Tedeschi dances around a definitive answer, turning out an autobiographical portrait that somehow leaves you knowing less about the subject at hand, and a study of actors, warts and all, that offers little insight into the artistic process.

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi’s “Forever Young” is a fictionalised account of her time at Les Amandiers, a prestigious acting school in Nanterre on the outskirts of Paris. As well as drawing on her own memories of student-dom in the mid-1980s, she and her co-writers, Noémie Nvovsky and Agnes De Sacy, interviewed other people who studied alongside her, and so their tragedy-tinged comedy drama, which is in Competition at Cannes, should have all the unruly specificity of real life.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t. It’s always watchable, and it has a distinctively grainy, intimate look, but the vague, generic characters and incidents are the kind of thing you might scribble on the back of an envelope without having done any research at all. If you’ve ever seen a film about performing arts students – the sort of people who are going to live forever and who are going to learn...

The Shallow Grave and Intimacy actor on driving at 15 in New Zealand, her parents’ disco dancing and starting an Abba fan club in her shed

I grew up in Lower Hutt in Greater Wellington. Lower Hutt is considered a bit of a national joke in New Zealand. It’s extremely suburban, not particularly picturesque and has a big river, but no real beaches. Apparently, my high school has a drug problem. I didn’t realise when I was there.

The streamer has also launched two reality TV projects.

Netflix Spain has unveiled a slate of seven new film and TV projects, including a romantic feature directed by Marçal Fores.

A Través De Mi Ventana (which translates as ‘Through My Window’) is an adaptation of Venezuelan author Ariana Godoy’s novel of the same name.

The novel was written via online story creation website Wattpad, which has previously been home to adaptations including Netflix hit The Kissing Booth and the successful After series.

The story centres on a young woman who is madly in love with her mysterious neighbour and...

Netflix has announced a crop of upcoming projects in Spain, including three new drama series, two original films, and a pair of reality shows.

The series are:

Intimacy (Intimidad), which has been created by Verónica Fernández and Laura Sarmiento, directed by Jorge Torregrossa, Ben Gutteridge, Marta Font, Koldo Almandoz and stars Itziar Ituño, Patricia López Arnaiz, Verónica Echegui, Ana Wagener and Emma Suárez. The show follows four women who are forced to walk the thin line that separates public life from private life after sexual video of a politician with a promising future is released.

Baruca is a six-part action series created by Victor Sierra and Xosé Morais, directed by Óscar Pedraza, and starring Alberto Ammann and Luis Callejo. It is set in the psychiatric prison Monte Baruca on December 24, when a group of armed men surround the complex and cut of all communication with the outside world.

At one of its increasingly regular presentations, on Thursday Netflix Spain unveiled seven new projects including “If Only,” a Spanish adaptation of the Netflix Turkish original canceled before shooting by Turkish authorities.

Where once Netflix would host its presentations early in the year and announce its ambitions for the next 12 months, the platform’s original Spanish programming pipeline has grown to an extent that Thursday’s showcase only covers the next few months and hinted at plenty more to come in late 2021.

In both level and volume of production, the day’s announcements confirm Netflix as one of if not the, foremost investors in original Spanish series and movies, at the same as its talent pool is expanding to include ever more of the principal producers in Spain. New Netflix originals are now being produced by now-regular partners Nostromo, producers of “The Minions of Midas”; “Élite” producers Zeta Studios; “Money Heist...

Netflix has unveiled a new slate for Spain, including three dramas, a couple of original features, and some non-scripted formats, among them a new docu-reality show focused on Instagram star Georgina Rodríguez.

Among the new shows are Intimidad, a drama series from Verónica Fernández and Laura Sarmiento which stars Itziar Ituno, Patricia López Arnaiz, Verónica Echegui, Ana Wagener, and Emma Suárez and follows four women caught up in a sex scandal with deep political implications; Baruca from Victor Sierra and  Xosé Morais, an action drama set in prison under siege; and Si lo hubiera sabido (If Only), a drama created by the Turkish screenwriter ...

Netflix has unveiled a new slate for Spain, including three dramas, a couple of original features, and some non-scripted formats, among them a new docu-reality show focused on Instagram star Georgina Rodríguez.

Among the new shows are Intimidad, a drama series from Verónica Fernández and Laura Sarmiento which stars Itziar Ituno, Patricia López Arnaiz, Verónica Echegui, Ana Wagener, and Emma Suárez and follows four women caught up in a sex scandal with deep political implications; Baruca from Victor Sierra and  Xosé Morais, an action drama set in prison under siege; and Si lo hubiera sabido (If Only), a drama created by the Turkish screenwriter ...

Australia now has its first ever set of intimacy guidelines for stage and screen, a result of 18 months of industry consultation by a dedicated committee of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (Meaa).

The guidelines, freely available on the Meaa website, aim to establish new processes for work involving nudity, intimacy, simulated sexual activity and sexual violence, so that actors are best prepared and supported.

They cover off on best practice for situations spanning the entire filmmaking process from casting and auditions through to post-production and marketing.

Screen Producers Australia (Spa), the Australian Directors’ Guild (Adg), the Casting Guild of Australia (Cga) and the Meaa National Stunt Committee have each endorsed the document. All were part of the consultation process, alongside individual actors, fight directors, theatre directors, stunt co-ordinators, intimacy co-ordinators, intimacy directors and the Australian Writers’ Guild (Awg).

The guidelines follow on from a series of workshops and seminars...

Directors U.K., the professional association of U.K. screen directors with more than 7,000 members, has published “Intimacy in the Time of Covid-19,” containing guidelines toward shooting sex scenes during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The suggestions offered in the new guidance, that assumes that a production has already complied with Covid-19 health and safety practices, lay out a plan of action for directors that begins with working with the script, and continues with preparation, rehearsals and shooting.

At the script stage, the guidance suggests that the director, writer and producer review the scenes together and decide if the intimate act needs to be shown, or in a series format, if the intimacy can be delayed. “The build up to an intimate scene can sometimes be more exciting than the scene itself,” the guidance states. “Emotional intimacy can be as engaging as physical intimacy.”

At the preparation stage the guidance recommends...

The Asian Film Festival, directed by Antonio Termenini, presents a selection of the best of Asian research and independent cinema, with particular attention to debuts and young directors of the rich Newcomers section.

The seventeenth edition of the Asian Film Festival presents 27 feature films and 3 short films from 10 East Asian countries and will take place, from July 30 to August 5, at Casa del Cinema, Villa Borghese Park, Rome.

The afternoon screenings will be in the comfort of the Deluxe Room, the evening ones in the Ettore Scola Open Air Theater, to enjoy the films in serenity and in the cool of the park.

8 feature films from the Philippines will celebrate 100 years of Filipino cinema with the best of the most recent productions.The closing evening also will feature the Filipino “Kalel, 15” by Jun Lana, the story of a difficult adolescence in the Manila slums. Saturday 1 August will be Korean Day – a...

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment

Directed by Academy Award® winner Steven Spielberg, and starring an outstanding cast including; Academy Award® winner Tom Hanks (Forest Gump, Cast Away, Saving Private Ryan) as James Donovan, and BAFTA© winner Mark Rylance (The Other Boleyn Girl, Intimacy, Angels and Insects) as Rudolf Abel, Bridge Of Spies a dramatic thriller set against the backdrop of the Cold War.

The film tells the story of Brooklyn based lawyer James Donovan (Tom Hanks), as he is first recruited by the CIA to defend an arrested Soviet spy, Rudolf Abel in court, and then thrown head on into the centre of the conflict when they send him to Germany and task him with the near impossible mission of negotiating the release of a captured American U-2 pilot. However Donovan risks the anger of the agency and the Us Government when he decides to stake Abel’s return to...

In the war of scene-stealing antagonists this year, Oscar Isaac's Nathan (Ex Machina) > Tom Hardy's Fitzgerald (The Revenant). We love both actors here at Tfe and loved them before the rest of the web did (brag brag) but when it comes down to awards season you have to make tough choices.

That's just a handy way of saying Oscar and I go our separate ways more often than not in the acting categories but now both lists are available for your (hopeful) entertainment...

Best Supporting Actor

On the subject of category placement antagonists are often tricky. They definitely move the plot -- neither The Revenant or Ex Machina can function without these devious men, but often you can see either argument for lead or supporting. While Ex Machina arguably has three leads being such a chamber drama I occasionally relax the soapbox for performances that straddle the divide.

Gaspar Noé’s bid to shock us into submission with 3D sex is let down by two-dimensional performances

“I want to film that which cinema has rarely allowed itself, either for commercial or legal reasons,” says Gaspar Noé, writer/director of cause celebre Cannes favourites Seul Contre Tous, Irréversible and Enter the Void. For his fourth feature, Noé sets out “to film the organic dimension of being in love”, free from “the ridiculous division that dictates no normal film can contain overly erotic scenes”. Thus we have a Last Tango in Paris-tinged tale of amour fou in which a disconsolate young American in Paris drifts from the responsibilities of fatherhood back into memories of lost love, Noé taking us on a lurid three-way tour of appendages and orifices, physical and psychological.

This of course is nothing new. Since the post-Deep Throat days of Nagisa Oshima’s Ai No Corrida...

At some point, Tom Hanks appointed himself the official chronicler of America in the late '50s and early '60s, with occasional digressions to earlier eras in case of world wars. I am perfectly fine with that, and I particularly like it when he and Steven Spielberg collaborate on these things. I am especially fond of "Catch Me If You Can," and while I expected something more on the "Munich"/"Saving Private Ryan" end of the scale, I was pleased to see that "Spies" is not a thriller so much as an ode to both American diplomacy and the tradition of moral movie fathers along the lines of Atticus Finch. In fact, there's a good deal of "To Kill A Mockingbird" in the script credited to Matt Charman and Joel & Ethan Coen. Tom Hanks plays James B. Donovan, an insurance lawyer who is asked to do his patriotic duty...

British cinema (and to a certain extent, British pop-culture as a whole) has always had a strange relationship with screen portrayals of sex and sexuality. In the mid-1950’s, Britain’s film censorship board the BBFC passed a documentary about a naturist camp uncut, suitable for mainstream cinema release, leading to a wave of exploitation filmmakers using naturist camp settings in order to display as much nudity as possible onscreen. During this period, the BBFC’s guidelines clearly dictated that “breasts and buttocks, but not genitalia” were allowed to be displayed, as long as the naturist camp setting was clearly clarified to the audience- a guideline that unwittingly opened the floodgates to multiple films from opportunistic producers.

Despite the plethora of films showing the human body (almost) as nature intended, elsewhere British cinema was still offering archaic views of sexuality- the Carry On franchise, that begun in 1958 and still has...

The Big Bang Theory needs to solve its Emily problem, and do it fast...

This review contains spoilers.

8.17 The Colonisation Application

The Big Bang Theory has always done an admirable job introducing new characters, to the point where it’s hard to even remember a time when the central group was one of five rather than the seven-piece (plus, periodically, Stuart) it is now. That said, I think we all know that something isn’t quite working with Emily and, even worse, the show doesn’t seem all that bothered with fixing the issue.

This episode marks only the third or fourth time we’ve seen Emily in this entire season, and unfortunately, it's when she’s around that the glaring problems with her development (or lack thereof) are highlighted the most.

Although Raj works well as the single friend in the middle of a group which is pairing off...

The Big Bang Theory deals with the absurdity of grief in an episode that edges towards being distasteful but never crosses the line...

This review contains spoilers.

8.16 The Intimacy Acceleration

No matter what, it would have felt in bad taste to have a ‘normal’ episode of The Big Bang Theory follow last week’s sudden death of Mrs. Wolowitz. We may have gotten Howard and the group’s reaction to her passing at the end of the previous episode, but it was kept until the final few moments, and this was the show’s chance to explore it a little further.

Sitcoms are often the best format with which to deal with the absurdity of grief. They’re about extremes of emotion, whether that’s laughter or tragedy, and so The Big Bang Theory’s decision to have Howard and Bernadette focused on the matter at hand, but keep the...

Recently, CBS released the new,official synopsis/spoilers for their upcoming "The Big Bang Theory" episode 16 of season 8. The episode is entitled, " The Intimacy Acceleration," and it turns out that we're going to see some very interesting events take place as Penny and Sheldon participate in a love experiment, and more! In the new, 16th episode press release: When the gang hears about an experiment designed to make participants fall in love, Sheldon and Penny are going to put it to the test. Press release number 2: As a joke, Sheldon and Penny are will try an experiment designed to make participants fall in love. Also, Leonard, Amy, Raj and Emily are going to spend the evening trying to escape a room with a "zombie." And, after returning from Mrs. Wolowitz' funeral, Bernadette and Howard will run into trouble at the airport. Guest stars feature: Stephanie Escajeda (Cindy), Molly Morgan...

Three-time Academy Award winner Steven Spielberg has begun principal photography on an untitled Cold War spy thriller starring two-time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks (“Forrest Gump,” “Philadelphia”).

The production, which also stars Tony Award winner Mark Rylance (“Intimacy,” “The Other Boleyn Girl”), Academy Award nominee Amy Ryan (“Gone Baby Gone,” “Win Win”) and Academy Award nominee Alan Alda (“M*A*S*H,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors”), will shoot on location in New York and Berlin.

Production in New York was possible due to support from state and local film agencies, and in Berlin, through the support of several film funds.

The film is the true story of James Donovan, an attorney who finds himself thrust into the center of the Cold War when the CIA sends him on the near-impossible mission to negotiate the release of a captured American U-2 pilot.

20th Century Fox is co-financing the film with DreamWorks in association with Participant Media,...

Dreamworks Pictures announced this morning that director Steven Spielberg has official started production on his currently Untitled Cold War Spy Thriller, with Tom Hanks set to star alongside more impressive casting additions. Come inside to learn more!

Check out the press release for this upcoming historical film (based on a true story), and why you should probably start getting interested already:

Three-time Academy Award® winner Steven Spielberg has begun principal photography on an untitled Cold War spy thriller starring two-time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks (“Forrest Gump,” “Philadelphia”). The production, which also stars Tony® Award winner Mark Rylance (“Intimacy,” “The Other Boleyn Girl”), Academy Award nominee Amy Ryan (“Gone Baby Gone,” “Win Win”) and Academy Award nominee Alan Alda (“M*A*S*H,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors”), will shoot on location in New York and Berlin.

Production in New York was possible due to support from state and local film agencies,...

[Press Release] Burbank, Calif. (October 6, 2014) – Three-time Academy Award® winner Steven Spielberg has begun principal photography on an untitled Cold War spy thriller starring two-time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks (“Forrest Gump,” “Philadelphia”). The production, which also stars Tony® Award winner Mark Rylance (“Intimacy,” “The Other Boleyn Girl”), Academy Award nominee Amy Ryan (“Gone Baby Gone,” “Win Win”) and Academy Award nominee Alan Alda (“M*A*S*H,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors”), will shoot on location in New York and Berlin. Production in New York was possible due to support from state and local film agencies, and in Berlin, through the support of several film funds. The film is the true story of James Donovan, an attorney who finds himself thrust into the center of the Cold...

Sequel to local box office hit Red Dog wins Screen Australia backing alongside a thriller starring Kerry Fox.

Government agency Screen Australia is to back Blue Dog, the second in a planned trilogy that began with Red Dog, which grossed $21m on its 2011 release to become the country’s fourth biggest independently-financed local film in the territory.

Termed an “origin film”, rather than a prequel, Blue Dog will see director Kriv Stenders return for the sequel, which will be written by Saniel Taplitz and produced by Nelson Woss. Cast have yet to be attached.

It will follow the early events leading up to Red Dog’s discovery on the road to Dampier and his ultimate rise from ordinary dog to Australian legend.

Produced by Woss Group Film Productions, domestic and international sales will be handled by both Roadshow Films and new player Good Dog Enterprises. Executive producers are Su Armstrong, Joel Pearlman and [link...

Few things gave greater pleasure last year than the reemergence of Emma Thompson on the film scene, shoe chucking, Annie-scripting, Mary Poppins writing, and all. I'm not sure who or what convinced Emma that it was time to reclaim her place in the cinema but I thank them profusely and ever so much.

While she didn't receive the expected Oscar nomination for Saving Mr Banks, despite carrying it on her very capable film-elevating shoulders, her next project looks super promising so we hope it picks up interest in the Cannes market.

If all goes according to plan she'll play one half of a married couple who defy Nazis in Alone in Berlin. The true story is based on the book "Alone in Berlin" by Hans Fallada. The plot premise goes like so...

Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear. At the house on 55 Jablonski Strasse, its various occupants...

Famed French stage and film director Patrice Chéreau (Intimacy, Gabrielle, Those Who Loved Me Can Take the Train) passed away last October. Now Queen Margot, Chéreau's most commercially successful film, gets a 4K restoration treatment on its 20th anniversary and comes back to theaters, thanks to Cohen Film Collection. This timely release is a rare opportunity to experience what many consider as the most radical redefining act in the period costume drama genre ever, in 4K digital glory. Queen Margot 4K Director's Cut receives a theatrical run here in New York, May 9 - 15 at Film Forum. Based on Alexandre Dumas's novel, Queen Margot tells a bloody chapter in French history when a war between Catholics and Protestants was raging. The main players in...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

As Lars Von Trier's controversial and explicit sex odyssey opens in cinemas this weekend, we ask actors what they think about being asked to perform in increasingly graphic sex scenes

The script, Christophe Paou says, was even more sexually explicit, so the French actor knew what he was getting himself into when he signed up for Alain Guiraudie's film, Stranger By the Lake. Paou plays Michel, a handsome and charismatic man – with an extremely sinister side – who meets Franck, a younger man, at a cruising spot. Stranger By the Lake is one of two sexually-explicit films released this weekend, the other being Lars von Trier's much-hyped Nymphomaniac, in which Charlotte Gainsbourg plays Joe, a sex addict. Both films use body doubles for the genital close-ups and the explicit scenes.

Nymphomaniac's producer Louise Vesth said: "We shot the actors pretending to have sex and then had the body doubles,...

Hanif Kureishi's muse has long been transgression: dazzling early success was followed by a sex-and-drugs phase, family falling-out and a lacerating novel about marital breakdown. Now, with The Last Word, has he finally pinned down who he really is?

The first time I met Hanif Kureishi it was the mid-80s, and we talked about writing fiction for Faber and Faber whose list I was directing. Kureishi came into my office like a rock star and I remember thinking that he did not seem in need of a career move. He was already riding high on the international success of his screenplay, My Beautiful Laundrette.

In fact, Kureishi was cannily pondering his next step. He was on the lookout for a means of self-expression that might sustain a way of life and over which he could have some control. Movies, he said, were chancy, a gold-rush business. There was...

Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan confront the state of their sagging marriage in this Hanif Kureishi-penned drama. But how depressed is it supposed to make us?

It should in theory be possible to make a movie about a couple who make a sentimental journey to Paris to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary, only to discover over 48 unforgettable hours that they are entirely content with each other. That isn't what happens in Le Week-End, written by Hanif Kureishi and directed by Roger Michell. Lindsay Duncan and Jim Broadbent play Meg and Nick, two married almost-retirees who, in the autumn of their lives, have decided to award themselves a Eurostar trip to the world's most romantic city. As the action continues, the audience is likely to have the same relationship with the film as the main characters have with each other: sometimes exasperated, sometimes bored, often affectionate. It's funny in a hangdog way: lugubrious and downbeat,...

News.

Opera and theatre director, filmmaker, and actor Patrice Chéreau has passed away at the age of 68. From David Hudson's Daily:

"In 2001, Chéreau’s Intimacy won the Berlinale’s Golden Bear and the prestigious Prix Louis Delluc, and two years later, he won a Silver Bear for Best Director for Son frère. At Cannes, he won the Jury Prize in 1994 for La reine Margot (Queen Margo, with Isabelle Adjani), then a César for Best Director in 1998 for Ceux qui m’aiment prendront le train (Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, with Pascal Greggory, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Charles Berling, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and on and on)."

Via Variety, Bong Joon-ho hinted publicly that he's not too happy with The Weinstein Company and the cuts Snowpiercer has had to undergo for its North American release. Jonathan Rosenbaum has found a new (internet) home: follow him to jonathanrosenbaum.net.

Finds.

For the Vancouver International Film Festival,...

Film, opera and stage director known for La Reine Margot and his Ring cycle at Bayreuth in 1976

Unusually for a director, Patrice Chéreau, who has died of lung cancer aged 68, had more or less equally prestigious careers in the theatre, cinema and opera. Although he was internationally known from films such as La Reine Margot (1994) and his groundbreaking production of Richard Wagner's Ring cycle at Bayreuth (1976), he was renowned in his native France mostly for his "must-see" stage productions, especially during his long stints as co-director of the Théâtre National Populaire (1971-77) and the Théâtre des Amandiers (1982-90).

At these two subsidised theatres, in Villeurbanne, near Lyons, and Nanterre, in western Paris, respectively, Chéreau was able to introduce modern plays and bring a freshness to bear on the classics, particularly Marivaux, whose La Dispute he directed to acclaim at the Tnp in three different versions in the 1970s. At the Amandiers,...

Witty, urbane and indefatigable to the last, Chéreau was one of the great directors of the past 40 years, a man whose creative integrity was his professional hallmark

The last time I met the French director Patrice Chéreau, who died on Monday at the age of 68, he had already been diagnosed with cancer. It was in Berlin last April; he looked tired and his hair was thinning. But he refused to stint, either on rehearsals for a production of Elektra at the Aix-en-Provence festival on which he was engaged, or on his mentoring of the young Polish director Michał Borczuch for a programme run by the Rolex Mentors Initiative.

At the end of the week in Berlin, he attended a dinner for eight people, where he was the centre of attention. He was witty and nostalgic – reminiscing about trips he made to the seaside with his parents as a boy – and full of life and plans.

The visionary French director, whose Bayreuth Ring cycle left an indelible mark on modern opera, has died of lung cancer

Patrice Chéreau, the acclaimed French stage and screen director, has died of lung cancer at the age of 68.

The director is perhaps best known for his films, but was widely credited as a theatrical visionary. He arguably changed the face of modern opera with his legendary production of Richard Wagner's Ring cycle at the Bayreuth festival.

Staged over four years from 1976, Chéreau's epic production – set against the industrial revolution – marked the opera's centenary. On its final performance in 1980, the show received a 45-minute ovation.

Appointed as artistic director of the Théâtre de Sartrouville in north Paris at the age of 22, Chéreau went on to become of France's great cultural figures. Several of his productions played at the Avignon festival, with his 1988 Hamlet headlining the festival from the Cour d'honneur.

Cannes – Groundbreaking French director Patrice Chereau, acclaimed for his work on both stage and screen, died Monday night after a battle with lung cancer. He was 68. He is perhaps best known in the U.S. for the Oscar-nominated Queen Margot, starring Isabel Adjani and Daniel Auteuil, which took home the jury prize at Cannes and a handful of Cesar Awards in 1994. He made ten films over his long career, including the English-language Intimacy, which took the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2001; Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, which earned

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Patrice Chéreau dead at 68: French director best known for ‘Queen Margot,’ gay-related dramas (photo: Patrice Chéreau; Isabelle Adjani in ‘Queen Margot’) Screenwriter, sometime actor, and stage, opera, and film director Patrice Chéreau, whose clinically cool — some might say sterile — films were arthouse favorites in some quarters, has died of lung cancer in Paris. Chéreau was 68. Born on November 2, 1944, in Lézigné, in France’s Maine-et-Loire department, and raised in Paris, Patrice Chéreau began directing plays in his late teens. In the mid-’60s, he became the director of a theater in Sartrouville, northwest of Paris, where he staged plays with a strong left-wing bent. Later on he moved to Milan’s Piccolo Teatro, and in the ’80s became the director of the Théâtre des Amandiers in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre. His 1976 staging of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth was considered revolutionary. Patrice Chéreau...

Patrice Chereau, the French director of La Reine Margot whose talents spanned opera, film and theatre, has died in Paris following a battle with lung cancer. He was 68.

Chereau directed 10 films during a distinguished career that included Intimacy, Son Frere and Those Who Love Me Can Take The Train.

Of all his films, the one that will perhaps be remembered most vividly is 1994’s La Reine Margot, the 16th century historical potboiler based on the Alexandre Dumas novel and that starred Isabel Adjani, Vincent Perez and Daniel Auteuil.

His crowning achievement in opera was his 1976 staging of Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Bayreuth opera festival.

Elisabeth Tanner, co-director of the Artmedia agency that represented Chereau, confirmed his death and told Afp: “He had an extraordinary vitality right until the end.”...