Jimmy Kimmel to host Oscars for fourth time

‘I always dreamed of hosting the Oscars exactly four times,’ said the late-night show, who hosted the Academy Awards in 2017, 2018 and 2023

Jimmy Kimmel is returning as host of the Academy Awards for the second straight year and fourth time overall, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced Wednesday.

Broadcaster ABC is turning again to its late-night host a year after bringing Kimmel back for a 2023 ceremony that drew 18.7 million viewers, the most since 2020’s pre-pandemic broadcast but still the third worst ever recorded. In the wake of Will Smith’s slap of Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars, Kimmel led a cautious ceremony that helped stabilize the Academy Awards after years of turmoil.

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Édith Piaf’s voice re-created using AI so she can narrate own biopic

In-development film comes after controversy around the re-creation of late stars’ voices, such as Anthony Bourdain

Sixty years after her death, Édith Piaf’s voice will be re-created using AI to narrate her biopic.

As reported by Variety, Warner Music Group (WMG) has partnered with the Piaf estate to produce the feature-length film Edith. Artificial intelligence has been trained to replicate Piaf’s voice by feeding it hundreds of voice clips, with WMG promising the resultant re-creation will “further enhance the authenticity and emotional impact of her story”.

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Michel Ciment, veteran French film critic, dies aged 85

The longtime chief of Positif film magazine started working there in 1968, and was a passionate advocate of cinema until his death

Michel Ciment, the celebrated French film critic and longtime editor of Positif magazine, has died aged 85. The magazine reported the news on social media, describing him as Positif’s “master architect” after a 60-year career.

Born in Paris in 1938, Ciment fell in love with cinema as a student, and joined Positif in 1968, becoming editorial director in 1973; he said he admired Positif over Cahiers du Cinéma because the magazine was “left wing” and influenced by surrealism. Ciment published a string of books about prominent film directors, including Kazan by Kazan (1973), Conversations with Losey (1979) and Stanley Kubrick (1980).

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Netflix’s movie Hurricane Season stirs debate over violent depiction of Mexico

Based on the prize-winning book by Fernanda Melchor, film depicts brutality stemming from ‘war on drugs’ that began in 2006

A group of children find a body in the river: the village witch, her throat slit, writhing with snakes.

The opening scene of Hurricane Season, a new Netflix movie based on Mexican novelist Fernanda Melchor’s book, plunges the viewer straight into a tropical, lawless, superstitious version of rural Veracruz, Melchor’s home state.

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Tributes paid to ‘wonderful’ drama teacher Anna Scher, who has died at 78

Kathy Burke and Daniel Kaluuya among alumni of her London school, credited with making stars of often working-class students

Tributes have been paid to Anna Scher, an influential drama teacher who taught actors including Kathy Burke, Daniel Kaluuya and Adam Deacon, after the announcement of her death on Sunday, aged 78.

Scher, who had taught children in north London to act for more than 50 years, has been credited with creating numerous stars, and was known for championing people from a working-class background. The Anna Scher Theatre (AST), which started as a drama club in January 1968, has a long list of well-known alumni, including Pauline Quirke, Linda Robson, Martin Kemp, Natalie Cassidy, Patsy Palmer, Sid Owen, Jake Wood, Reggie Yates and Brooke Kinsella.

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Contract for Hollywood actors includes $40m yearly in streaming bonuses

Union leaders on Friday shared details of three-year contract, on AI, wage increases and end to racist hair and makeup practices

Streaming services like Netflix will pay actors bonuses amounting to roughly $40m per year as part of the tentative labor agreement reached between the SAG-AFTRA actors union and major Hollywood studios, union leaders said on Friday after their board backed the deal.

The proposed three-year contract, which the union said was valued at more than $1bn over three years, was endorsed by 86% of SAG-AFTRA’s national board.

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Ukrainian film-makers ‘looking for right angle’ as military drone operators

Cinematographer Yaroslav Pilunskiy and film editor Ivan Bannikov are part of drone unit fighting Russians in Donetsk

Sometimes, if the situation allows on Ukraine’s brutal eastern frontline, Yaroslav Pilunskiy will fly his drone to “a place I know where the Russians are constantly shelling over a lake, against a beautiful sunset.”

Moscow’s expenditure on the munitions represents a movie budget that Pilunskiy, 51, could only dream about in his former life as one of Ukraine’s most respected cinematographers. “When the command staff ask what I’m doing, I say: ‘When else will I be able to film these pyrotechnics?’”

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Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson: I was asked to run for US president by multiple political parties

Actor and former wrestler says unnamed parties approached him ‘one after the other’ in 2022 after a poll revealed 46% of Americans would support his presidential run

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has revealed that multiple political parties approached him last year to see if he would run for US president, after a poll revealed 46% of Americans would support his campaign.

Appearing as the first guest on Trevor Noah’s new Spotify podcast What Now?, the actor and former WWE wrestler said a 2021 poll of 30,000 American adults led to “the parties” contacting him to ask if he was interested in running at the end of 2022.

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Robert De Niro’s production company ordered to pay $1.3m to ex-assistant

Canal Productions liable in gender discrimination suit filed by Graham Chase Robinson, while De Niro found not personally liable

Robert De Niro’s production company was found liable on Thursday by a jury for gender discrimination and retaliation, and ordered to pay $1.3m to the Hollywood star’s former assistant.

The 80-year-old actor and director was not found personally liable by the jury in New York after a two-week trial.

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Hollywood actors’ union reaches tentative deal with studios to end strike

Sag-Aftra union hails agreement of ‘extraordinary scope’ with Hollywood producers, bringing to a close historic work stoppage

Hollywood actors are set to end their nearly four-month strike, the Sag-Aftra union announced on Wednesday, bringing to a close a historic work stoppage that had brought the film and television industry to a standstill for months.

Sag-Aftra and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) reached a tentative agreement on Wednesday, ending film and television actors’ longest strike roughly a month after writers signed their new contract. The deal came after parties had resumed talks last week following stalled negotiations in early October.

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Cary Grant biopic boosts interest in star’s harsh early life in Bristol

New series, Archie, screened in English hometown of Hollywood legend many think of as being wholly American

He is better known as a debonaire habitué of sun-splashed Californian beauty spots and glamorous New York nightclubs, but a flurry of screenings and special events this month will focus attention on a sometimes overlooked aspect of Cary Grant’s life – his very modest roots in Bristol, England.

A preview of a biopic of Grant called Archie – with Jason Isaacs taking on the tough task of playing one of the most famous of all film stars – is being screened in Bristol ahead of its showing on ITVX, and a new guided walk through Grant’s former haunts in the West Country city is being launched.

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Scarlett Johansson takes legal action against use of image for AI

The actor’s likeness was used in an online advertisement without her permission

Scarlett Johansson has taken legal action against an AI app that used her name and likeness in an AI-generated advertisement without her permission.

The 22-second ad, posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, by an image generating app called Lisa AI: 90’s Yearbook & Avatar, used real footage of Johansson to generate a fake image and dialogue for her.

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Tributes pour in for ‘comedic genius’ Matthew Perry, dead at 54

Justin Trudeau and Adele among public figures to speak fondly of actor best known as Chandler Bing in Friends

World leaders and Hollywood stars have hailed the “comedic genius” of Friends star Matthew Perry after the actor’s death at 54.

The American-Canadian star, best known for playing Chandler Bing in the sitcom Friends, was found dead in an apparent drowning at his Los Angeles home on Saturday.

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UK cinemagoers hail return of intermissions as films hit three-hour mark

Vue cinemas add an interval to Scorsese’s bladderbusting 206-minute Killers of the Flower Moon

We have all felt it: that numbness in the back and legs, a full bladder, or desperately avoiding checking your watch to see how long is left of the film.

But the experience seems to be happening more and more for cinemagoers, who say the growing trend for long movies is putting them off going altogether.

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‘They have this ferocious loyalty’: Trudie Styler on the people of Naples

Her new documentary, Posso Entrare? An Ode to Naples, explores the lives of residents in mafia-ridden backstreets

If people think of Trudie Styler and her association with Italy, they are most likely to conjure up an image of the wine-making estate she owns with her husband, Sting, in Tuscany.

Few people would know her as a woman raised on a council estate in the English Midlands who wandered through the labyrinthine, mafia-ridden backstreets of Naples for her latest documentary, Posso Entrare? An Ode to Naples, which draws on the lives of a host of city residents.

The documentary starts in the evocative Sanità district, where Styler meets Antonio Loffredo, a priest transforming the lives of young people who might otherwise have fallen prey to the Camorra mafia organisation, and where she visits multigenerational families living in case bassi – ground-floor homes that usually have just one room – and a door opening on to the street that provides the only source of air and light.

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Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson wax statue to be redone after star criticises its white skin

Musée Grévin says it is ‘improving’ wax figure of Fast and Furious star after it attracted widespread ridicule on social media

A wax museum in Paris that was criticised for “whitewashing” a statue of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson says it will give the waxwork a do-over.

The Musée Grévin, which is modelled on London’s Madame Tussauds, unveiled the wax figure of the professional wrestler turned actor last week, but it swiftly attracted widespread ridicule on social media, as well as from the Fast and Furious star himself.

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Swift v Scorsese: Eras Tour beats Killers of the Flower Moon at US box office

Taylor Swift’s concert movie, now the biggest of all time, continues to dominate US box office despite release of Martin Scorsese’s anticipated crime drama

In a movie match-up almost as unlikely as Barbie and Oppenheimer, Martin Scorsese took on Taylor Swift in cinemas over the weekend. And while the US box office belonged for a second time to Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon got off to a strong start in Apple Studios’ first major theatrical gambit.

After a record-breaking opening weekend in North America of $92.8m, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour took in an estimated $31m over the weekend from 3,855 locations, according to AMC Theaters. In an unconventional deal, the theater chain is distributing Swift’s concert film, and playing it only Thursdays through Sundays.

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Emily Blunt apologises for describing restaurant worker as ‘enormous’

Oppenheimer star says she is ‘appalled’ by her remarks in 2012 interview with Jonathan Ross

Emily Blunt has apologised for referring to a restaurant worker as “enormous” on a chatshow that aired 11 years ago.

In a resurfaced clip from an episode of the Jonathan Ross Show first broadcast on ITV in September 2012, the star of the summer blockbuster Oppenheimer said a waitress who served her at a Chili’s restaurant in Louisiana was “enormous”.

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Gwyneth Paltrow hits out at ‘nepo baby’ judgment of celebrities’ children

Actor says she hopes her children will ‘feel free to pursue exactly what they want to do’

Gwyneth Paltrow has hit out at the term “nepo baby”, calling it an “ugly moniker” and saying children of famous people should not be judged negatively.

Short for nepotism baby, the term refers to the children of celebrities who have succeeded in careers similar to those of their parents.

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Burt Young, Oscar-nominated Rocky actor, dies aged 83

Best known as Rocky Balboa’s friend Paulie Pennino, Young mainly played Italian-Americans in hundreds of roles spanning film and television

Burt Young, the veteran character actor best known and Oscar-nominated for his role as Rocky Balboa’s best friend, Paulie, in the Rocky films, has died aged 83.

Young passed away on 8 October in Los Angeles, his daughter, Anne Morea Steingieser, told the New York Times on Wednesday. No cause of death was given.

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