South Korean actor Song Jae-lim dies aged 39

Star of Korean dramas Moon Embracing the Sun and Queen Woo was found dead at his home in Seoul

Song Jae-lim, a South Korean actor known for his roles in dramas Moon Embracing the Sun and Queen Woo, was found dead at his home in Seoul. He was 39.

Officials at Seoul’s Seongdong district police station didn’t immediately comment on the cause of death.

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Mattel apologises after Wicked movie dolls mistakenly link to porn website on packaging

Toy company advises parents to ‘discard the product packaging or obscure the link’ on Glinda and Elphaba dolls

The toy company Mattel says it is taking “immediate action” after mistakenly printing a pornographic website address on the packaging for dolls released to tie in with the upcoming Wicked film.

Over the weekend, individuals began sharing photos online of the dolls’ packaging, which showed a link to wicked.com, instead of wickedmovie.com. The address was printed on boxes for Glinda and Elphaba dolls, the main characters in Wicked, played in the film adaptation by Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo respectively.

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Elwood Edwards, voice of AOL ‘You’ve got mail’ greeting, dies aged 74

Edwards taped message that became catchphrase and served as title of 1998 film starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan

Elwood Edwards, who voiced AOL’s “You’ve got mail” greeting, has died, aged 74.

Edwards died on Tuesday at his home in New Bern, North Carolina, his daughter Heather said. The cause was complications from a stroke late last year, she added.

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Turkish film festival scrapped over Daniel Craig gay drama censorship

Mubi cancels four-day event in protest as local government blocks screening of Luca Guadagnino-directed movie Queer

Organisers of an Istanbul film festival announced its cancellation on Thursday to protest against a local authority ban on the screening of Queer, a drama starring Daniel Craig.

The arthouse film streaming platform Mubi said it was cancelling the entire four-day festival just hours before it was set to open in Kadikoy, on the Asian side of Istanbul.

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Winner of Paul Mescal lookalike contest in Dublin receives €20 ‘or three pints’

Competition to resemble Normal People star is markedly lower-stakes than chaotic Timothée Chalamet event in New York last month

Two weeks ago, a mobbed competition to find a Timothée Chalamet lookalike in New York led to one arrest, a $500 fine for an “unpermitted costume contest” and a surprise appearance by the real-life Chalamet, fuelling further chaos.

But a similar event in Dublin on Thursday, this time to find a doppelganger for Paul Mescal, the star of Normal People and the upcoming Gladiator II, unfolded rather more sedately.

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Shetland man’s bond with otter becomes subject of award-winning film

Documentary about Billy Mail’s connection with orphaned pup Molly airs on National Geographic next week

National Geographic will be streaming a new documentary about an unlikely bond between a man and an otter in Shetland.

Billy Mail met Molly, a starving pup, in 2021 when he saw her jumping off a pontoon into the sea near his Shetland home. Mail wanted to see how close he could get to her before she fled. But it turned out that Molly had no intention of running away.

Billy and Molly: An Otter Love Story will be available from 14 November on Disney+, and will air on 15 November on National Geographic

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Barry Keoghan hits out at ‘disgusting’ online trolls using his son against him

Saltburn actor tells Louis Theroux podcast about his difficult childhood and decision to keep his child offline

Oscar nominee Barry Keoghan has hit back at “disgusting” online trolls who he claimed use his relationship with his son as “ammunition” against him.

The 32-year-old Irish actor, who is dating US singer-songwriter Sabrina Carpenter, has a two-year-old son, Brando, with his former partner.

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Pedro Almodóvar and Jacques Audiard lead European Film Awards nominations

Emilia Peréz and The Room Next Door are both up for honours in prizes regarded as Oscars bellwethers

A genre-bending musical about a trans cartel boss and a Spanish veteran director’s English-language debut lead the nominations for this year’s European Film Awards, with Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Peréz and Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door both up for honours in four categories.

The French and Spanish auteurs gained nominations for best film, best director and best screenwriter, the European Film Academy announced on Tuesday ahead of this year’s ceremony in the Swiss lakeside city of Lucerne on 7 December.

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Netflix adapts Pedro Páramo, the great Mexican novel that inspired Márquez

New film of Juan Rulfo’s revered novel, considered founding text of magic realism, is first film adaptation in half a century

“I came to Comala because I was told that my father lived here, a certain Pedro Páramo.”

Many Mexicans know the first sentence of Juan Rulfo’s revered novel, Pedro Páramo, by heart. This week they will hear it on Netflix, with the release of the first film adaptation in almost 50 years of the text that inspired Gabriel García Márquez to write One Hundred Years of Solitude.

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Korean cinema in ‘precarious period’ due to Netflix, says Jang Joon-hwan

Director of Save the Green Planet, which is getting US remake, says film industry suffering amid rise of streaming

When Parasite became the first non-English language film in Oscars history to win best picture in 2019, it marked a breakthrough moment for Korean cinema.

But the surge of interest that followed the director Bong Joon-ho’s international success has not translated into a thriving local film industry, according to another of its leading lights.

The London Korean film festival takes place at BFI Southbank, Ciné Lumière and Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) 1-13 November. Echoes In Time: Korean Films of The Golden Age and New Cinema is at BFI Southbank until 31 December

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Avengers stars assemble to endorse Kamala Harris – by brainstorming an election catchphrase

Actors Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Chris Evans, Danai Gurira and Paul Bettany appear in video, released days before the US election

The cast of Marvel’s Avengers movies have come out in support of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris less than a week before the US election.

In a video posted first on Vanity Fair on Thursday evening, actors Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Don Cheadle, Chris Evans, Danai Gurira and Paul Bettany playfully riffed on their respective characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe while encouraging viewers to vote for Harris.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger endorses Kamala Harris: ‘I will always be an American before I am a Republican’

The former Republican governor said that he was backing the Democrat because a Trump victory would mean ‘four more years of bullshit’

The former Republican governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced that he is backing Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in next week’s election.

In a long post on X, Schwarzenegger, 77, said that while he doesn’t “really do endorsements” … “hate[s] politics” and doesn’t “trust most politicians”, he felt compelled to formally endorse Harris and her pick for vice president Tim Walz.

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Experiencing intense emotions with others makes people feel more connected, study finds

Participants bonded more after watching films that sparked intense emotions

Whether it is laughing at a classic comedy or watching a horror film from behind a cushion, movies can generate myriad feelings. Now researchers say experiencing intense emotions alongside others makes people feel more connected – provided you can see them.

It has long been known that experiencing emotional events together can strengthen bonds between people, with a previous study finding that watching emotional films with another person makes people feel more connected.

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Colin Farrell’s Dublin marathon run raises €774,000 for charity

Actor ran last part of course pushing friend Emma Fogarty who has genetic condition known as butterfly skin

Colin Farrell has raised €774,000 (£644,000) for a charity supporting people with a rare skin condition by running the Dublin marathon while pushing one of the oldest survivors of the disease in Ireland around part of the course in her wheelchair.

The actor, who was born in the Irish capital, raised the money for Debra Ireland, an organisation that supports people with the incurable genetic condition epidermolysis bullosa (EB), or “butterfly skin”, which causes people to have very fragile and blistering skin.

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Robert Downey Jr: ‘I will sue all future executives who make AI replicas of me’

The actor who will be returning to the MCU as Doctor Doom said he believed Marvel would ‘never’ recreate him on screen without his permission

Robert Downey Jr has said he will instruct his lawyers to sue future executives who attempt to create digital replicas of him using AI.

Speaking on the On With Kara Swisher podcast, he said: “I would like to here state that I intend to sue all future executives just on spec.”

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Gérard Depardieu sexual assault trial postponed after actor’s no-show

Paris trial rescheduled for March 2025 after 75-year-old actor fails to appear in court, pleading ill health

The trial of Gérard Depardieu on sexual assault charges was postponed until next year after the actor failed to appear in court on Monday, saying he was unwell.

His lawyer Jérémie Assous had said the 75-year-old was “extremely affected” by ill health and that he had asked for the proceedings to be delayed until he could attend in person.

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Paddington Bear given official UK passport by Home Office

Government issues official document to Peruvian-born character, listing him as ‘Bear’ under its observations

He has been one of the UK’s favourite and most prominent refugees for two-thirds of a century. Now Paddington Bear – official name Paddington Brown – has been granted a British passport.

The co-producer of the latest Paddington film said the Home Office had issued the document to the fictional Peruvian-born character – listing for completeness the official observation that he is, in fact, a bear.

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Alexander Rodnyansky: Oscar-nominated producer sentenced to jail in Russia in absentia

The Ukrainian film producer behind Leviathan and Loveless was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison after speaking out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

A Moscow court has sentenced Oscar-nominated film producer Alexander Rodnyansky to eight-and-a-half years jail in absentia on Monday for spreading “fake” information about the Russian army.

Rodnyansky, 63, was born in Kyiv but spent most of his career in Russia, producing dozens of TV series and movies there including the Oscar-nominated crime drama Leviathan. He has been an outspoken critic of the Kremlin’s offensive since it sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, repeatedly denouncing the invasion on social media.

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K-pop, K-movies, a Nobel prize … and now K-poetry: book of wise words adds to Korea’s cultural glory

After Han Kang’s Nobel award and South Korean cinema hits, Penguin publishes new English edition of maxims by Lee Seong-bok in wake of US success

A collection of wise maxims written by a 72-year old poet, calmly setting out illuminating advice to other poets, is the latest and perhaps most unlikely book to benefit from a surge in demand for South Korean literature.

“Kick against words like you would kick back on a swing. You’ve got to feel as if the soles of your feet are touching the sky,” suggests Lee Seong-bok in his hit title Indeterminate Inflorescence.

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Undercover film exposing UK far-right activists pulled from London festival

Film festival organisers make ‘heartbreaking’ decision not to show Undercover: Exposing the Far Right amid concerns over staff welfare

A documentary that lifts the lid on a “race science” network of far-right activists in Britain and its links to a rich American funder of eugenics research has been pulled from the London Film Festival (LFF) at the last minute due to safety concerns.

The organisers have taken the “heartbreaking decision” to cancel the planned screening of the “exceptional” Undercover: Exposing the Far Right this weekend due to fears about the welfare of audiences, staff and security working in the festival venues.

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