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Around Tinsel Town
>> SAG Awards 2023
The 29th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony took place on February 26, 2023. Here are some key highlights from the ceremony:
> Here’s the full list of winners
> ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ breaks record for wins
> Brendan Fraser wins best actor for ‘The Whale’
> Ke Huy Quan becomes first Asian male to win film acting SAG
> Michelle Yeoh becomes first Asian woman to win a leading film acting award
>>Berlinale 2023
> The 73rd Berlin Film Festival came to a close on February 26, 2023, with the French Documentary ‘On the Adamant’winning the Golden Bear and Spain’s Sofia Otero bagging the gender neutral acting prize.
The festival, which ranks alongside Cannes and Venice as one of Europe's top cinema showcases, also marked the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and highlighted anti-government protests in Iran with new feature films and documentaries. There were 19 films from around the world vying for this year's Golden Bear, which was awarded at a gala ceremony by a jury led by Stewart.
>> Cannes Film Festival
> Swedish director Ruben Östlund, two-time winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, has been named jury president for this year’s competition.
“I am happy, proud, and humbled to be trusted with the honour of Jury president for this year’s Competition at the Festival de Cannes,” said Östlund.
>>HCA Film Awards 2023: S.S. Rajamouli’s ‘RRR’ wins five trophies
Filmmaker S.S. Rajamouli‘s Telugu blockbuster ‘RRR’ has lifted five trophies at the 2023 Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) Film Awards, including best international film, best action film, and the honorary HCA Spotlight Award.
At the award ceremony, organised by Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and held at Beverly Wilshire in Los Angeles on Friday night, the film also took home the award for best stunts, while its Oscar-nominated track ‘Naatu Naatu’ won the best original song trophy.
Bollywood
Bhushan Kumar announces ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3’ with Kartik Aaryan and Anees Bazmee
Ranbir Kapoor not working on Sourav Ganguly’s biopic, reveals he is doing Kishore Kumar’s biopic instead
Vishal Bhardwaj to make series debut with ‘The Sittaford Mystery’ adaptation
Amitabh Bachchan to headline Ribhu Dasgupta’s courtroom thriller ‘Section 84’
Kapil Sharma is beset by hardships as a food delivery rider in ‘Zwigato’ trailer
Sushmita Sen says she underwent angioplasty after suffering heart attack
Rajkummar Rao, Bhumi Pednekar’s ‘Bheed’ is on the 2020 migrant crisis
Saiyami Kher to essay a para athlete in R Balki’s ‘Ghoomer’
Farhad Samji, Disney+ Hotstar to collaborate on comedy show ‘Pop Kaun’
Sonali Bendre, Jaideep Ahlawat to return for second season of ‘The Broken News’
Farhan Akhtar cancels Australia concerts due to ‘unforeseen circumstances’
‘SRI,’ Rajkummar Rao’s biopic on Srikanth Bolla, to hit screens on September 15
Sonakshi Sinha joins the cast of ‘Bade Miyan Chote Miyan’
Hollywood
Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow have ‘Friends’ reunion at Courteney Cox’s Walk of Fame ceremony
Michael B. Jordan honoured with star on Hollywood Walk of Fame
‘Deadpool’ actor Karan Soni tapped to voice Spider-Man India in ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’
‘Naatu Naatu’ from ‘RRR’ to be performed at the Oscars 2023 ceremony
‘The Idol’ team retaliates with video after Rolling Stone accuses Sam Levinson’s film to be ‘Torture Porn’
Deepika Padukone, Riz Ahmed to present awards at Oscars 2023
The Greyhounds are back in ‘Ted Lasso’ season 3 trailer
Will Smith makes award show appearance a year after Oscars slap-gate
Warner Bros. Discovery sues Paramount over ‘South Park’ deal
Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally join ‘The Umbrella Academy’ season four
Walter Mirisch, former Academy President and ‘West Side Story’ producer, passes away at 101
Sigourney Weaver joins Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy in Apple’s ‘The Gorge’
Wagner Moura replaces Michael Mando in Apple TV+ series ‘Sinking Spring’
First look of Priyanka Chopra, Richard Madden, and Stanley Tucci from ‘Citadel’ unveiled
Apple announces ‘Monster Factory’, a docu-series on aspiring professional wrestlers
Three ‘Rust’ crew members sue Alec Baldwin after he pleads not guilty in court
Apple announces docu-series ‘Real Madrid: Until The End’
Kristen Bell stars in new comedy series
Regional Cinema
Rajinikanth to team up with ‘Jai Bhim’ TJ Gnanavel for ‘Thalaivar 170’
Mammootty, Roby Varghese Raj’s film is titled ‘Kannur Squad’
Allu Arjun to headline Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s next film
Udhayanidhi Stalin’s ‘Kannai Nambathey’ trailer promises a gripping suspense thriller
Silambarasan TR looks fiery as a crime lord in ‘Pathu Thala’ teaser
Gautham Karthik-starrer ‘August 16, 1947’ gets release date
Telugu adaptation of ‘Dead Pixels’ announced by BBC Studios and Disney+ Hotstar
It’s a wrap for Venkat Prabhu-Naga Chaitanya’s ‘Custody’
Anushka-Naveen Polishetty film is titled ‘Miss Shetty Mr Polishetty’
Nivin Pauly-Rajeev Ravi’s ‘Thuramukham’ gets a new release date
Travelling film festival on gender diversity comes to Bengaluru
New in streaming
Coming to Netflix in March: Rana Daggubati and Venkatesh’s Rana Naidu, season two of Sex/Life, Netflix’s first global live-streaming event Chris Rock: Selective Outrage, and more.
Coming to Netflix in 2023: Raj & DK’s Guns and Gulaabs, Sidharth Malhotra-starrer Mission Majnu, Anushka Sharma’s sports drama Chakda ‘Xpress, and more
K-Dramas coming to Netflix in 2023: Part 2 of the revenge drama The Glory, the time-slip romance A Time Called You, romance drama Doona!, and more
Korean films coming to Netflix in 2023: Yeon Sang-ho’s JUNG_E, biopic film The Match, crime action film Believer 2, and more
New on Amazon Prime Video: Musical-drama series Daisy Jones and the Six, historical and satirical black comedy-drama The Great, and more
Coming to Apple TV Plus: Comedy-drama Ted Lasso, Reese Witherspoon and Kacey Musgraves’ My Kind of Country, Vincent Cassel and Eva Green’s thriller series Liaison, and more
Essential reading
1) The British looted us, the Mughals gave us so much, says Naseeruddin Shah
>> Naseeruddin Shah confesses that he is angered by the incumbent government’s frenzy to revise India’s past
2) Vidya Balan is scripting her way out of getting typecast in Bollywood
>> In a conversation with Faye D’Souza, the actor speaks about breaking the mould and traces her journey
3) Venkatesh is glad Rana Daggubati convinced him to do ‘Rana Naidu’
>> Collaborating for the first time, the uncle-nephew duo say ‘Rana Naidu’ is darker than the original, ‘Ray Donovan’
4) Actor Simran retraces to Bollywood and completes 25 years in Tamil cinema
>> The actortalks about the importance of family and how women characters are written these days
5) Yami Gautam wants to maintain the trust the audience has started to develop in her
>> The actor talks about her recent release ‘Lost’, working with veteran actor Pankaj Kapur, and more
6) Santhosh Narayanan on his ‘Sounds of the South’ tour and the magic of live music
>> The music composer also hints that he has been working on a film that is by far the biggest to come out of India
7) ‘Class’ shows that when it comes to depicting crazy rich Indians, our imagination fails us
>> Creators have an easier time depicting realistic accounts of the lives of the poor and the lower middle class
8) The charm of coexistence: how animals act as a metaphor for social decay
>> A look at the films in the fray that remind us of animistic interventions in popular cinema.
9) How Indian novels and movies have spotlighted stark climate realities with more nuance than the West
>> Climate realities in contemporary works serve as a vehicle for imagining a world beyond devastation
10) Venkatesh Maha, an acting aspirant, an accidental director
>> Ahead of the Telugu anthology ‘Anger Tales’, Venkatesh Maha opens up on his acting tryst
11) Towards transparency in OTT regulation
>> Consumer awareness and transparency in grievance redressal will further strengthen India’s OTT regime
12) Bonnie Garmus believes chemistry and cooking are inextricably attached to each other
>> The author talks about adapting her bestselling debut novel to the screen
13) South Indian band Agam’s Carnatic-progressive rock and their love for Chennai
>> Carnatic-progressive rock band Agam speaks on their love for the city and staying true to the sub-genre
What to watch
1) ‘Gulmohar’ is a family drama that looks good but doesn’t always feel right
2) Naseeruddin Shah lords over ‘Taj: Divided by Blood’, a weary epic
3) Grogu and Mando’s quest continues with old pals and new missions in the third season of ‘The Mandalorian’
4) Kunchacko Boban, Rajisha Vijayan’s thriller, ‘Pakalum Pathiravum’, is felled by mediocre filmmaking
5) Christoph Waltz is sublimely scary in ‘The Consultant’ an uneven workspace thriller
6) ‘This Is Not a Film’ is Jafar Panahi’s timeless protest against authoritarianism and censorship
7) ‘Missing’ has higher stakes, more thrilling twists, and a complex plot that makes this a superior film to ‘Searching’
8) ‘Pranaya Vilasam’ juggles time frames to shape up a pleasant take on lost love and understanding in relationships
9) Fifth season of ‘Drive to Survive’ has a lacklustre narration with glaring blindspots
10) ‘Divorce’ is a sensitive take on what happens when a spouse turns into a stranger
11) ‘Marlowe’, Liam Neeson’s 100th film, is an uninspiring thriller that never takes off
