April 29, 2018

Time’s Up Celebrates a Culture Changing Through ‘Dialogues, Not Monologues’ at First New York City Event — Tribeca

Time’s Up didn’t waste a minute during its inaugural New York City event, presenting a full day’s worth of events on Saturday at the Tribeca Film Festival. The organization, started earlier this year in the wake of allegations against multiple powerful men in the entertainment industry and formed with the hope to finally eradicate sexual harassment in Hollywood and beyond, took over the festival’s downtown hub on the penultimate day of the annual New York fest with a packed slate of conversations and panels involving women from all walks of life.

The program included dozens of participants hitting the main stage, including activists, filmmakers, storytellers, journalists, lawyers, and actresses. Though still in its early stages, the movement has been vocal in its stance that the organization should be focused on the future and healing wounds, not just rehashing the problems it so vehemently wants to eradicate.

A pair of Time’s Up’s most visible members, actresses Julianne Moore and Jurnee Smollett-Bell, helped kick off the event with a shared speech covering a brief history of the organization’s first few months in existence. As Smollett-Bell explained, the members of Time’s Up are looking forward to continuing to craft “tangible solutions” to the problems the org was created to combat, a concept bolstered by the “collective muscle” that the group has already gathered.

“I believe in dialogues, not monologues,” actress, filmmaker, and Time’s Up member Amber Tamblyn explained during the second half of the day, but it was a theme that had carried throughout the event long before it was spoken.

Evolving Initiatives

Tarana Burke, the founder of the #MeToo movement and an longtime activist, was on hand for a pair of panels, and offered up a sage message of the path to come. “What has to happen now is the work,” she said. “Everybody has a part in this, everybody has a lane, everybody has something they can contribute.”

Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival

While the group’s biggest initiative — the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund — has been a key component of the group since its inception, the organization has already spawned a number of related groups to aid women in other industries. Those include Time’s Up Advertising (for the ad industry), Time’s Up Press (for journalists), and Time’s Up Venture (which focuses on women in tech, and has already announced a series of ambitious aims, including doubling the number of female partners in venture technology over the course of the next decade).

Time’s Up is also actively pursuing smaller-scale plans that are decidedly grassroots, including the Plus One Initiative, which was created to connect women in the entertainment industry across all professional levels. Introduced by Desiree Gruber, the founder and CEO of Full Picture, the idea behind Plus One was inspired by, in her words, the simple desire to “get more women in the room where it happens.” The ask behind the plan, known in Time’s Up parlance as +1/x3, is simple: bring one more woman with you to a professional event, then introduce them to three other women she should know.

Women eager to participate in the plan don’t even need be that rigid about it, and Gruber emphasized the importance of practicing its methodology with “quick hits throughout the day,” by simply bringing more women into the professional fold. See a woman who is struggling? Ask them if they need help. Know a woman who would benefit from a quick intro? Do it. Have your own professional questions? Ask another woman.

As Gruber explained, the effects are satisfying and immediate, and can directly result in more women picking up “confidence and a confidant.”

And the Legal Defense Fund hasn’t been slacking. In introducing a panel filled with some of the legal minds behind the fund, Time’s Up member Marisa Tomei announced that the fund, designed to assist survivors of sexual harassment or retaliation across all industries, has already raised $21M in funding and helped more than 2,500 individuals since its inception earlier this year. Not too shabby.

A Changing Culture

Moore and Smollett-Bell’s opening remarks pointed to another recurring theme of the day: how much Time’s Up is focused on inclusion and intersectionality among its membership. Beyond the known star power onstage, Time’s Up Day also included speeches and panels with women pushing for justice in industries outside of Hollywood, including farm workers, restaurant employees, and representatives from the hotel union.

As Moore said, “every woman has a story to tell,” but that doesn’t discount the contributions that people who don’t identify as women can make to pushing towards the kind of equality and safety that the organization is championing. United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women Phumzile Mlambo-Ngucka explained in her own rousing speech, “everyone benefits in a gender-equal society.”

Such a push toward equality has also begun to be more recognized in entertainment culture, and the various participating panelists spoke that shift, including a group of actresses assembled to discuss “Reclaiming the Narrative,” including Lupita Nyong’o, Cynthia Erivo, Mira Sorvino, and Tamblyn.

Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival

Nyong’o was particularly effusive about how she’s been able to use her rising status in the industry (one Oscar, so far) to flip the script on the stories being told. “Part of changing the narrative is changing the perspective,” she said, a sentiment she continues to put into action through her projects, many of them centered on African stories, including upcoming adaptations of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s book “Americanah” and Trevor Noah’s memoir “Born a Crime.”

Time’s Up member and actress Sienna Miller was also on hand to introduce a panel of some of Hollywood’s most unique female filmmakers currently working today, and she noted that such a panel spoke to the desire for more “honest, inclusive, and representative stories” to be told. The group included directors Haifaa Al-Mansour, Kimberly Reed, Jennifer Fox, and producer Lisa Cortes, who all spoke about their newest projects and the rapidly changing nature of the industry at large.

And while the tone of that panel was mostly positive, its participants also acknowledged that change wasn’t going to be easy, and would continue to require many people to ask for more from those in positions of power. As Cortes wryly said of a common excuse when it comes to hiring more diverse talent, “The argument that ‘I don’t know anybody’ is bullshit.”

Mostly, though, the event was set on galvanizing the importance and power of a movement still in its infancy, one that will only continue to work with the active and loud participation of many. Mlambo-Ngucka put it succinctly at the end of her talk, telling a room full of eager participants: “We have to end this and we have to end this together.”

Learn more about Time’s Up at its official website.

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Source: IndieWire film

April 26, 2018

Eric Liedtke & Karlie Kloss: Create the World You Want to Live In Featured Session at SXSW 2018 [Video]

At SXSW 2018, supermodel and entrepreneur Karlie Kloss and adidas Head of Global Brands Eric Liedtke, sat down with NPR’s Guy Raz for a conversation on creating change.

Onstage, Kloss and Liedtke share their stories, their inspirations, and their visions. Although their work is seemingly worlds apart on a surface level, Kloss and Liedtke both exude a visible passion for improving the world and solving issues they care about.

Kloss didn’t enter the tech industry with the intention of creating a non-profit to address the gender disparity. She instead entered tech as the by-product of her curiosity.

“I wanted to understand what code was and all of the ways that technology was transforming the world around me.”- Kloss

While learning code she recognized the cultural issue in the tech industry and launched the nonprofit, Koding with Klossy, that empowers girls to learn to code and become leaders in tech.

Liedtke’s story is slightly different. A lifelong ocean conservancy advocate and avid water-sports fan, Liedtke used his executive position at adidas to launch a large-scale sustainability-focused campaign. He explains that as a company it is essential to ask, “what is one of the most important things we can do and make a difference in?” With Liedtke’s vision as a guide, adidas chose to address the waste and massive scale consumption of single-use plastics.

“Right now there is about 270 million tons of plastic in the oceans… a huge dump truck of single-use plastics goes into the oceans every minute.” – Liedtke

To curb the production and use of single-use plastics, adidas eliminated plastics in their retail stores, global campuses, and products – and from what Leidtke describes, that’s only the beginning.

The session ends on an optimistic note encouraging the audience to take action, pursue what they are passionate about, and create change with only one thing in mind: “Don’t let perfect get in the way of better.”

Whether you are driving change as the CMO of one of the world’s largest brands, developing a non-profit and using your platform to educate, or making more thoughtful decisions as a consumer, action of any scale is essential because the cost of inaction, as Kloss and Liedtke describe, is severe.

Watch the video above for the full Featured Session. Browse more 2018 Keynotes, Featured Sessions, Red Carpets, and Q&A’s on our YouTube Channel.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and SXSW News for the latest SXSW coverage and 2019 updates.

Watch Now

Photo by Nicola Gell/Getty Images

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Source: SxSW Film

April 25, 2018

A SIGMA Factory Tour – cinema5D Exclusive

<b>During my latest visit to Japan I was lucky enough to be the first journalist who was allowed to independently film at SIGMA’s Art and cinema zoom</b> …
Source: CW’s Flipboard Feed

April 24, 2018

The Last O.G. Episodic World Premiere Q&A with Tracy Morgan at SXSW 2018 [Video]

The Last O.G., an American comedy television series created by Jordan Peele and John Carcieri, premiered at the 2018 SXSW Film Festival in the Episodic screening section. Following the screening, Variety’s Ramin Setoodeh moderated an extended Q&A with Jorma Taccone, Tracy Morgan, and Tiffany Haddish.

In The Last O.G., Tracy Morgan plays an ex-con released after a 15-year prison stint, who is shocked to see just how much the world has changed including his old Brooklyn neighborhood. The neighborhood has undergone gentrification, and his ex-girlfriend, played by Tiffany Haddish, is married to a white man whom she’s been raising the twin sons he never knew existed. With no money and no connection to his kids, he falls back on what he learned in prison while adjusting to society. Jorma Taccone directed the pilot episode.

“The show that we are doing has levels to it,” said Taccone at the SXSW premiere. “Comedy is going in a lot of different directions, now especially; it’s not just comedy, there’s drama, there’s some heartfelt stuff. I really hope that people want to see Tracy [Morgan] in this new kind of mode because there are just different things he’s trying to bring to his performance.”

Watch coverage from the red carpet and Q&A moderated by Variety’s Ramin Setoodeh with Jorma Taccone, Tracy Morgan, and Tiffany Haddish. The Last O.G. airs on TBS on Tuesdays at 9:30pm/8:30c.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and SXSW News for the latest SXSW coverage and 2019 updates.

The Last O.G. – Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

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Source: SxSW Film

April 23, 2018

This Is Us Cast Panel with Executive Producer Dan Fogelman at SXSW 2018 [Video]

“There is hope and optimism there…that there is a happy ending potentially for the show and for the world.” – Dan Fogelman

In the critically-acclaimed NBC drama, This Is Us, everyone has a family and every family has a story. The series chronicles the Pearson family across three decades: from Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore) as young parents in the 1980s to their 37-year-old kids Kevin (Justin Hartley), Kate (Chrissy Metz), and Randall (Sterling K. Brown) searching for love and fulfillment in the present day. In the This Is Us Cast Panel, creator and executive producer Dan Fogelman as well as cast members Ventimiglia, Moore, and Hartley take an inside look at the Emmy Award-winning drama.

“One of the greatest things about the experience we all have on this show is the conversation that gets started because of these very simple, attainable stories.” – Milo Ventimiglia

During the session moderated by Glamour‘s Jessica Radloff, she asked the panelists a series of questions related to fan encounters, in addition to sharing a funny story about her mother, who happens to be a huge This Is Us fan, and got the lucky opportunity to meet Hartley and Brown. Prior to the Featured Session, fans joined the cast and producers at the world premiere screening of the This Is Us season 2 finale episode as part of the SXSW Film Festival.

Before going to the audience for questions, Radloff posed on last question asking, “What have you guys learned on this journey and what has this show done for you as a person?” Fogelman thoughtfully responds with, “For me, I am one of those people who cannot get off CNN right now and watch everything that is going on in this country, just generally and globally how divided everybody is. I am constantly just going, what on earth is going on right now? How are we all collectively here regardless of what side of the line we sit on? And I look at the show, not just that it exists…the popularity of the show and the fact that people across all spectrums of life are attaching to this show that is open-hearted and optimistic, romantic, and inclusive; it gives me hope a little bit,” said Fogelman.

Watch the video above for the full This Is Us Featured Session. Browse more 2018 Keynotes, Featured Sessions, Red Carpets, and Q&A’s on our YouTube Channel.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and SXSW News for the latest SXSW coverage and 2019 updates.

This Is Us – Photo by Steve Rogers Photography/Getty Images

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Source: SxSW Film

April 22, 2018

‘A Quiet Place’ Again Rules the Box Office and ‘Super Troopers 2’ Makes an Impressive Return

This weekend, it took just $22 million to be #1 at the box office. In its third weekend, “A Quiet Place” led a closely matched group in the top four spots, bringing in about 16 percent more business than the same time last year. And this was supposed to be a calm before the storm that is next weekend’s “Avengers: Age of Infinity.” No one wants to position a top film ahead of that juggernaut.

Instead, we saw three wider releases take a chance at reaching targeted audiences. “I Feel Pretty” with Amy Schumer did the best of the three with a little over $16 million, with “Super Troopers 2” close behind. “Traffik” lagged behind with under $4 million in close to 1,000 theaters.

Jonny Cournoyer

Of note for these individual titles:

“A Quiet Place” returned to #1. More significantly, and nearly unheard of for a wide-release horror film, it fell only 33 percent its third weekend. John Krasinski’s $17 million-budgeted film is already at $132 million; suddenly, $200 million seems possible. It’s grossed more than $20 million more than “Get Out” last year at this point in its run.

Jordan Peele’s phenomenal film opened to about two thirds as much, then held better (down 15 and 26 percent its second and third weekends). “A Quiet Place” should best the $176 million domestic gross for “Get Out.” With stronger foreign interest, a worldwide total of over $300 million is likely.

“Rampage” proved the opening appeal of superstar Dwayne Johnson. Its second-weekend, 41 percent fall is the best for any of his films in the last six years, except for the holiday-boosted “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.” That’s good news for the big-budget title (just over $100 million), which is doing much better overseas. Led by China, and with Japan, Germany, and France still to open, it could end up somewhere between $450 million-$500 million, about 20 percent of that domestic. Johnson’s involvement boosted this above other recent high-end action films; even without a spectacular opening, it shows what the human element of a proven star can do to enhance an otherwise by-the-numbers release.

“I Feel Pretty” gets credit for grossing more than predictions, which were closer to $10 million. After “Blockers,” this is the second R-rated, female-centered comedy in recent weeks. The more-expensive “Pretty” ($32 million) will need a strong hold to get into profit. That’s possible, based on its appeal to women and as “Avengers”counterprogramming; it could end up with a strong multiple and earn more than $50 million, but it will need foreign results. “Game Night” opened close to the same gross and is nearing $70 million, four times opening weekend.

“Super Troopers 2” is a sequel to the 2000 cult success from the Broken Lizard comedy troupe. The first film opened wide to $9.8 million adjusted, ultimately reaching $29 million; this bested that number at $14.7 million, thanks to longtime male fans. (Ticket sales were 75 percent ages 25-49, and 64 percent male). On-the-ground, multi-city marketing by Broken Lizard also helped the film double initial expectations. At a $13 million budget, this looks like a winning bet for Fox Searchlight and its second (after “Isle of Dogs” also gets there) over-$30 million performer this year. That’s great timing for a unit primed to survive in the new Disney environment post-merger.

“Traffik” with Omar Epps and Paula Patton as a vacationing couple fighting off bikers made $3.875 million on a $4 million production budget. Still, it was the sole opener to rise Saturday from Friday and Lionsgate can make sure this has a post-theatrical afterlife.

Other decent holds were seen by “Ready Player One,” “Blockers,” and of course “Black Panther.” The first two fell about 35 percent, while “Panther” in its 10th weekend dropped only 20 percent.

Spielberg’s pricey video-world film is up to $126 million, with $150 domestic possible — more than three times its opening. It did more than 75 percent of its business outside North America, and should end up a very good $600 million or so worldwide. “Panther” will be affected by the new Marvel film, but still looks on track to reach $700 million domestic (it’s now $681 million). The next question: Will “Avengers: Age of Infinity” be its equal?

The Top Ten

1. A Quiet Place (Paramount) Week 3; Last weekend #2

$22,000,000 (-33%) in 3,808 theaters (+219); PTA (per theater average): $5,777; Cumulative: $132,359,000

2. Rampage (Warner Bros.) Week 2; Last weekend #1

$21,000,000 (-41%) in 4,115 theaters (+14); PTA: $5,103; Cumulative: $66,600,000

3. I Feel Pretty (STX) NEW – Cinemascore: B+; Metacritic: 47; Est. budget: $32 million

$16,220,000 in 3,440 theaters; PTA: $4,715; Cumulative: $16,220,000

4. Super Troopers 2 (20th Century Fox) NEW – Cinemascore: B+; Metacritic: 41; Est. budget: $13 million

$14,700,000 in 2,038 theaters; PTA: $7,213; Cumulative: $14,700,000

5. Truth or Dare (Universal) Week 2; Last weekend #3

$7,910,000 (-58%) in 3,068 theaters (+39); PTA: $2,578; Cumulative: $30,287,000

6. Ready Player One (Warner Bros.) Week 4; Last weekend #4

$7,500,000 (-35%) in 3,028 theaters (-453); PTA: $2,338; Cumulative: $126,181,000

7. Blockers (Universal) Week 3; Last weekend #5

$6,985,000 (-35%) in 3,134 theaters (-284); PTA: $2,229; Cumulative: $48,254,000

8. Black Panther (Disney) Week 10; Last weekend #6

$4,642,000 (-20%) in 1,930 theaters (-250); PTA: $2,405; Cumulative: $681,084,000

9. Traffik (Lionsgate) NEW – Cinemascore: NA; Metacritic: 39; Est. budget: $4 million

$3,875,000 in 1,046 theaters; PTA: $3,705; Cumulative: $3,875,000

10. Isle of Dogs (Fox Searchlight) Week 5; Last weekend #7

$3,400,000 (-38%) in 1,947 theaters (+8); PTA: $1,746; Cumulative: $24,360,000

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Source: IndieWire film

April 22, 2018

Dwayne Johnson Won’t Take You to Prom, but He Will Rent Out an Entire Theater So You Can See ‘Rampage’ — Watch

A high-school student asked Dwayne Johnson to prom, and you’ll never guess what happened next: He said no! It’s okay, though, because the only reason he politely declined was because he’ll be filming “Jungle Cruise” when the end-of-year dance takes place. In lieu of wearing a tux and getting one Katie Kelzenberg a corsage, The Rock was kind enough to rent out an entire theater so that she and her friends could see “Rampage” — and he announced it over the school’s intercom system. Watch below.

Kelzenberg invited Johnson to prom via a clever tweet, which prompted an Instagram response from the eight-time WWE Champion. “I was so impressed by this young lady’s charm and confidence to even ask me (ladies always get shy in front of me) that I had to do something special,” he writes. “I decided to rent out an entire theater (capacity 232 seats) in her town so Katie and her closest 232 friends and family can enjoy a special screening of RAMPAGE.”

“I also taped a special morning message surprising Katie and her high school that will play across the school’s intercom system… literally…RIGHT NOW, Katie should be turning red hearing me surprise her in front of her entire school,” Johnson continues. It’s true:

@TheRock PROM?! pic.twitter.com/VyHhrpVQYe

— katie k (@katiekelzenberg) April 15, 2018

Source: IndieWire film