Speaking at the virtual edition of the CTAM Press Tour on Friday, series co-creator Brett Goldstein explained that the origins of the show came from conversations with fellow co-creator and co-writer Will Bridges. “We wanted to write about relationships and modern relationships,” Goldstein said. “We came up with this concept of the soulmate test. And it felt like the more we talked about it, that there’s an infinite number of stories because every single person has their own view of what love is and what love means....

The “Spencer” star, who is nominated for Best Actress at the 2022 Oscars, set out to fully embody Princess Diana’s bulimia and actually make herself throw up while in character. “I’ll fucking do anything,” Stewart told Vanity Fair as part of their annual Hollywood Issue. “I wanted to make sure that was not glossed over.” Director Pablo Larraín filmed Stewart as she struggled to vomit; it seems like the take was kept in the final film....

While Lee acknowledges there are “a lot of loopholes” with the Academy’s new inclusion rules, he adds “their heart is in the right place. I will say that.” What Lee really wants to do is “sit down with somebody from the Academy” so that he can address the real battlefield at hand, which for the director is “the rarefied air of the gatekeepers.” “These are the people, individuals who decide what we’re making and what we’re not making, who’s going to write it, who’s going to direct it, who’s going to produce it, who’s a star in this,” Lee said....

News of the first deals broke on December 16, the day after Sundance revealed its full slate of 72 features. That’s when Bleecker Street announced it has acquired North American rights to Nikole Beckwith’s “Together Together” and Magnolia Pictures revealed it has nabbed Rodney Ascher’s Midnight section pick “A Glitch in the Matrix.” While those two movies come from established filmmakers, over half of the festival lineup comes from first-time feature directors....

From the slate, we’ve selected 18 of the films we’re most excited to see at this year’s Sundance, from first-time filmmakers to perennial favorites, narratives to documentaries, and hell, even a series or two (turns out, the lines between “film” and “TV” are thinner than ever before). Given the depth of this year’s lineup, consider this guide simply a suggestion, and feel free to plunge deeper into a selection of films that unveils intriguing new options at every turn....

The films, which premiered in 1998 and 1995 respectively, are the first titles announced for the upcoming festival. Both received their world premieres at Sundance — “SLAM” premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section and won the Grand Jury Prize, while “The Doom Generation” premiered in the festival’s Premieres section. Both screenings will take place as part of the festival’s From the Collection section, which is dedicated to rescreening notable titles that previously played at Sundance....

Their year kicks off next week with the Sundance Ignite x Adobe Filmmakers Lab, which runs July 26-30 on the online Sundance Collab platform. There, they’ll focus on advancing their projects and deepening their character development skills. “These artists are at the forefront of a rising generation of independent creatives, at a time when the world is reimagining ways to tell stories and reach audiences,” said Toby Brooks, senior manager of the program....

The psychological thriller, set to begin shooting in January, stars Sweeney as Cecilia, a devout Christian who is offered a role at an illustrious Italian convent. Her warm welcome to the picture-perfect Italian countryside is soon interrupted as it becomes clear that the convent harbors dark and horrifying secrets. Additional producers include David Bernad, who worked with Sweeney on Season 1 of “The White Lotus,” and Teddy Schwarzman and Michael Heimler for Black Bear....

Iran has been engulfed in protests for the past several months, beginning when a 22-year-old woman named Mahsa Amini was killed by police for not adhering to strict rules that require women to cover their heads at all times. Several other protestors have been executed in the subsequent months, including Mohsen Shekari, a 23-year-old man accused of blocking a street while protesting. Alidoosti had used her personal Instagram account (which has since been deleted but once had over 8 million followers) to express solidarity with the protesters....

To mark the partnership, George Stevens’ newly restored 1956 epic “Giant” will premiere at the TCM Classic Film Festival April 22 at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. Steven Spielberg, legendary filmmaker and Film Foundation board member, is set to join executive director Margaret Bodde and George Stevens Jr. prior to the screening as part of a discussion about the legacy of “Giant,” moderated by TCM host Ben Mankiewicz....

IndieWire’s review from critic Mike McCahill criticizes Nolan’s latest as a “humorless disappointment” in which the director “is more caught up in his own machinations than ever before.” The Wrap critic Nicholas Barber was similarly let down by “Tenet,” calling it a “head-scratching James Bond homage.” Barber adds, “There is enjoyably puzzling fun to be had along the way, but ‘Tenet’ may have you pleading for an aspirin and a long lie-down....

Matt Reeves confirmed that Robert Pattinson is in “almost every scene” of “The Batman,” drawing comparisons to Jack Nicholson’s private investigator role in “Chinatown,” during an Entertainment Weekly cover story. Writer-director Reeves confirmed that while Pattinson’s character-study take on the Dark Knight is “not the usual way these movies are done,” “The Batman” is proudly an “emo” film, despite its PG-13 rating. “It’s a very Hitchcockian kind of point of view where you are wedded to his experience,” Reeves continued, adding that the story follows a “younger Batman who was beyond his origins but was imperfect....

With that unique attribute in mind, IndieWire has assembled the best new series on TV in 2021 — not limited series, not one-and-done specials, and not “six-hour movies” (looking at you, Marvel). These are the new shows that you can look forward to watching season after season, for years to come (and if their respective networks have yet to renew them, now’s the time to demand they get cracking). We’ve got nothing against short-term treats like “Mare of Easttown” and “Maid,” but there’s something special about TV shows that earn a long-term commitment....

Showtime is billing “The Comey Rule” as “an immersive, behind-the-headlines account of the historically turbulent events surrounding the 2016 presidential election and its aftermath, which divided a nation.” The miniseries’ official synopsis adds: “Rather than a biopic of one man, the series tells the story of two powerful figures, Comey and Trump, whose strikingly different personalities, ethics and loyalties put them on a collision course.” Jeff Daniels is leading “The Comey Rule” in the title role, but it’s Brendan Gleeson’s transformation into Donald Trump that will certainly bring a lot of buzz to the miniseries’ release in September....

Now audiences will have the chance to rediscover the film, when NYC”s Film Forum begins a repertory run of a newly struck print ‚supervised by Coppola himself— January 14. That gave IndieWire the opportunity to speak via Zoom with the film’s supervising editor and sound mixer, Walter Murch. Murch worked on some of the most significant films of the 1970s, including “American Graffiti,” “The Godfather,” and “Apocalypse Now,” for which he coined the job title “sound designer....

That doesn’t stop star Marin Ireland from doing her damndest to pull it all together, as her performance alone teases a more effective film, one in which the shaky bridge between its religious-tinged trauma and very human grief transforms into something with real power. Even when the film gives itself over to gross-out gags and hints at an overall mythology that never emerges, Ireland holds steady, turning in a spine-tingling performance that delivers the emotional weight the rest of the film so strangely lacks....

When Lawson Deming and an assembled crew returned to Quixote Studios in Los Angeles to film the show’s latest round of exploding objects, they arrived to find there was still proof of their last visit, lodged in a spot high above them. “When we walked onto the stage, we hadn’t been there in two years. We still saw bits of debris embedded in the ceiling from the last time we’d been there....

Despite those changes (and in the midst of tumult inside the world of the show and the one of the people watching it), “The Good Fight” comes back for Season 5 on Paramount+ with a renewed sense of purpose, as focused as it’s ever been. It’s not surprising that a show with a response rate to Current Events as quick as “The Good Fight” would have the best approach to how to address the significant timeline markers of the last year-plus....

Here’s the official synopsis from Netfix: “A pair of interwoven stories set in the present and past, ‘The Last Letter from Your Lover’ follows Ellie Haworth (Felicity Jones), an ambitious journalist who discovers a trove of secret love letters from 1965 and becomes determined to solve the mystery of the forbidden affair at their center. As she uncovers the story behind Jennifer Stirling (Shailene Woodley), the wife of a wealthy industrialist, and Anthony O’Hare (Callum Turner) the financial journalist assigned to cover him, a love story of Ellie’s own begins to unfold with the assistance of an earnest and endearing archivist (Nabhaan Rizwan) who helps her track down more letters....

While it’s true that Don Draper (née Dick Whitman) was a human disappearing act with a flair for reinvention and a surplus of the god-like confidence required to pull off a mid-air heist, it’s hard to imagine a less satisfying or plausible conclusion to one of the century’s most unpredictable shows. Of course, it’s possible that such unpredictability is the very thing that inspired certain fans to entertain such ridiculous theories; the further the final season moved away from convention, the more some people twisted the evidence into an understandable explanation — like a sleeping brain trying to organize a mess of neuronal soup into the narrative of a dream....