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On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.

First, the spoiler-free pitch for one editor’s midnight movie pick — something weird and wonderful from any age of film that deserves our memorializing.

Then, the spoiler-filled aftermath as experienced by the unwitting editor attacked by this week’s recommendation.

The Pitch: A Very Sapphic Second Coming

Given the choice to watch Jesus fight a pack of lesbian vampires or an honest-to-God homophobe, I will almost always choose the lesbian vampires. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to see an intolerant bigot get roundhouse-kicked by the Prince of Peace; in fact, that image is particularly tempting ahead of Easter weekend during an election year.

But as an ex-Catholic school girl born of the “Twilight” generation, my unquenchable thirst for horny vampires supersedes my taste for virtue signaling most of the time.

Marton Scorsese's Jesus film teased in excerpt from early screenplay drafts. The draft teases a modern setting with biblical imagery, influenced by Pasolini's neorealist style. Early screenplay drafts show a focus on stark contrasts, dark visuals, and modern reinterpretations of religious iconography.

Details of Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese’s upcoming Jesus movie have now been revealed courtesy of a excerpt from Father Antonio Spadaro’s new book. Spadaro has been working as Scorsese's consultant on the project, with the last chapter, "Screenplay for a Possible Film on Jesus," revealing that the movie began as an idea to “make a film about Christ in the modern world, in modern clothes.” However, it sounds like things may have changed during the process of writing.

The text from an early draft of the screenplay (via Variety) can be seen below, and while this isn’t the script that Martin Scorsese will be working from,...

As Martin Scorsese continues developing his long-announced Jesus film, a first look at the planned project emerges thanks to an excerpt from his consultant's book.

Per Variety, Scorsese's consultant on the Jesus movie, Father Antonio Spadaro, published the draft and a series of conversations he had with Scorsese in his new book, Dialoghi sulla fede (Dialogues on Faith), in his native Italy. The last chapter from the book, titled "Screenplay for a Possible Film on Jesus," is a 20-page text Scorsese gave Father Spadaro permission to publish. While the text is an early draft and not the actual screenplay Scorsese will work from for the movie, it offers insight into the director's motivations and approach to the film. “When the idea of making cinema started to become concrete, I had in mind to make a film about Christ in the modern world, in modern clothes, shot in 16mm and...

It’s been inferred since last year that Martin Scorsese’s forthcoming Jesus film would take an aslant approach to the greatest story ever told. Put simply and enigmatically by the man himself: “I don’t know what it’s going to be, exactly. I don’t know what you’d call it. It wouldn’t be a straight narrative. But there would be staged scenes. And I’d be in it.”

After furthers confirmations and intimations of what the film, an adaptation of Shūsaku Endō’s A Life of Jesus, will constitute, Father Antonio Spadaro––with whom Scorsese conversed for a series of interviews that form the recently published Italian book Dialoghi sulla fede (Dialogues on Faith)––has given Variety a close view of its intentions. Per Scorsese’s hopes to remove negative onuses from religion, Spadaro said the feature seeks “to recover this original experience that he had of the fully embodied,...

Acclaimed director Martin Scorsese is bringing his talents to Fox Nation, the streaming service of Fox News Channel.

The Killers of the Flower Moon director will host, narrate and executive produce for an eight-episode docudrama called Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints.

The series will debut on Nov. 16 and run through May 2025. Each episode will focus on a singular saint, including Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, John the Baptist, Thomas Becket, Mary Magdalene, Moses the Black, Sebastian and Maximillian Kolbe, “examining these extraordinary figures and their extreme acts of kindness, selflessness and sacrifice,” per Fox.

The series was created by Matti Leshem and developed by Scorsese for Lionsgate Alternative Television and was written by Kent Jones and directed by Elizabeth Chomko. Other executive producers include Julie Yorn, Rick Yorn, Christopher Donnelly, Yoshi Stone and Craig Piligian.

“I’ve lived with the stories of the saints for most of my life,...

While Martin Scorsese aims to kick off production on his Jesus film this year, Terrence Malick is going on year five of editing his, marking one of the only films to wrap production pre-pandemic that still has yet to be released. As so happens every year before the Cannes Film Festival announces its lineup, rumors have swirled that the director’s Biblical epic The Way of the Wind (formerly known as The Last Planet) may see a premiere in 2024. We will, unfortunately, have to wait another year, but in the meantime we have exclusive new details on the highly anticipated project.

Actor Géza Röhrig, who stars as Jesus in the film, recently stopped by a university in the Northeast for a conversation on his career. During the chat he confirmed the film is targeting a 2025 Cannes debut. Wind will not exactly focus on Jesus and Peter (as played by Matthias Schoenaerts...

If you were hoping to find out by Easter Sunday when (or at least if) The Chosen Season 4 will start airing or streaming somewhere, expect to get a lump of coal in your Easter basket.

As series EP Dallas Jenkins recently revealed in a YouTube video (above), a non-theatrical release for Season 4 has encountered a “delay longer than we anticipated and hoped for,” due to unspecified “legal matters that are hopefully being resolved.”

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IMAX Entertainment President, Megan Colligan is stepping down per a note just dropped to staff from Imax CEO Rich Gelfond.

It was first announced that the former Paramount Pictures Global Marketing and Distribution Boss was joining Imax in October 2019, taking over for departing CEO, Imax Entertainment and Senior EVP Imax Corp., Greg Foster.

Colligan was prized as a key hire given her working relationships with filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Michael Bay, and J.J. Abrams to name a few. She was key behind the scenes in getting exhibition re-opened during the pandemic with proper Covid safety initiatives, and was instrumental in the Imax release of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, the first tentpole to reopen theaters.

Other highlights from Colligan while she was at Imax included stunting Imax auditoriums with special cinema fare during dry tentpole periods, read the Imax Live program. These were music experiences like Halsey’s August 2021 If I Can’t Have Love,...

The 2023 Louder Than Life festival is absolutely stacked, with a just-announced lineup that includes Foo Fighters, Green Day, Tool, Pantera, Avenged Sevenfold, Queens of the Stone Age, Weezer, Turnstile, Limp Bizkit, Rancid, and more. The four-day fest takes place September 21st-24th at the Highland Festival Grounds At Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville.

Four-day and single-day passes to Louder Than Life are available now via the festival’s website. If the passes sell out, fans can also purchase them via StubHub, where orders are 100% guaranteed through StubHub’s FanProtect program.

Foo Fighters will headline on Thursday night (September 21st), topping a bill that includes Weezer, Rancid, 311, Coheed and Cambria, Royal Blood, Code Orange, White Reaper, L7, Deafheaven, Nothing But Thieves, Sueco, Movements, The Bronx, nothing,nowhere., Mannequin Pussy, and more.

Friday (September 22nd) will find Tool in the top slot, along with sets by Godsmack, Limp Bizkit, Megadeth, Corey Taylor,...

Between Show Me a Hero, The Deuce, Judas and the Black Messiah and The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, Dominique Fishback could have an Oscar nomination and a small pile of Emmy nods on her resumé. She does not.

But Fishback’s stretch as one of entertainment’s most reliable and overlooked actresses should reach a turning point with Amazon’s Swarm, an indescribable new seven-parter from Janine Nabers and, in his first show since Atlanta, Donald Glover. Holding down nearly every second of the horror-comedy/road-trip hybrid, Fishback is scintillating, giving a performance that had me rewatching laugh-out-loud or heartbreaking beats — and probably demands a full series rewatch to see how each piece of new or expectation-flipping information informs each acting decision.

It’s a performance of deliriously bizarre choices anchoring a show of deliriously bizarre choices, and I wish I could be as confidently effusive about Swarm as I am about its star.

Everything Everywhere All at Once cleaned up at the 38th annual Film Independent Spirit Awards, winning seven awards, including best feature.

Stars Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan each collected another award to add to their hauls, taking home best lead performance and best supporting performance, respectively, while Stephanie Hsu won best breakthrough performance. The film’s writer-directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, won the Spirit Award for best director and best screenplay, and Paul Rogers won for his editing work.

Heading into the show, Everything Everywhere All at Once led the film nominations with eight nods, winning every category in which it was nominated. Jamie Lee Curtis also was nominated but lost to her Eeao co-star Quan for best supporting performance.

On the TV side, The Bear was named best new scripted series, with Ayo Edebiri taking home the award for best supporting performance in a new scripted series.

The winter box office continues to have some breadth as MGM’s Creed III, the feature directorial debut of Michael B. Jordan, eyes a potential franchise-high opening for the Rocky spinoff about Apollo Creed’s son with a $38M-$40M bow at 4,007 theaters.

Related Story ‘Magazine Dreams’ Jonathan Majors On Transforming To Play A Troubled Bodybuilder, Joining Marvel Universe & Getting Punched Really Hard By Michael B. Jordan In ‘Creed III’ – Sundance Related Story Courtenay Valenti Officially Named Head of Film, Streaming and Theatrical For Amazon Studios & MGM Related Story Michael B. Jordan Teases "Creed Universe" During 'Creed III' Premiere & Says Directorial Debut Was A "Team Effort"

Previous Creed pics played during the Thanksgiving frame in 2015 and 2018, respectively opening to $29M ($42.1M 5-day) and $35.5M ($56M 5-day) off of A CinemaScores. Already, Creed III is 90% certified fresh with Rotten Tomatoes critics, which is higher than Creed II‘s 83% fresh...

Avatar: The Way of Water has just broken a major international record during its eleventh weekend at the box office. The film, which debuted on December 16, 2022, is James Cameron's long-awaited follow-up to his 2009 hit Avatar, which is still the highest-grossing movie of all time worldwide. It follows Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) as they navigate parenthood and the return of deadly human forces to their isolated moon of Pandora. Since its premiere late last year, the film has already grossed over $2 billion, becoming the third highest-grossing film of all time.

Per Deadline, this weekend the box office gross of Avatar: The Way of Water has now risen to a total of $2.26 billion worldwide. While it hasn't climbed any further up the overall chart, it has broken one major regional record. It is now the No. 1 highest-grossing film of all time in Europe, even beating out the original Avatar.

While studios have generally tried to avoid the second weekend of Marvel movies in recent years, this weekend proved beneficial for the two studios that dared to do so.

SEEAnnie Awards: ‘Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio’ wins 5 including Best Studio Animated Feature

Although Marvel’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” was thought to be the movie that could give the box office a kick-start for the year, that didn’t last very long. This weekend, it took a massive 70% drop – the worst second weekend drop for any Marvel Studios movie ever – though it remained in first place with an estimated $32.2 million. It has grossed $167.3 million in North America so far, which isn’t bad for 10 days. It has already passed the domestic total for the 2021 Marvel movie “Eternals,” and it’s nearing the $180 million that the first “Ant-Man” movie made over the summer of 2015. It has grossed another $196 million overseas with $46 million just from this weekend.

The 54th NAACP Image Awards did the thing! After its regular week-long, non-televised celebrations, the annual awards ceremony concluded with its main ceremony on Saturday night.

Hosted by Grammy, Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actress and producer Queen Latifah, Saturday’s ceremony included Janelle Monae, Taye Diggs, Kerry Washington, Jonathan Majors, Zendaya and more presenting awards to their peers, while also highlighting the accomplishments of political leaders and activists.

Jennifer Hudson, Quinta Brunson, Keke Palmer and more scored wins during the pre-awards festivities, while Saturday’s ceremony saw Angela Bassett, Viola Davis, Will Smith and more honoured for their artistic contributions.

Read More: 2023 NAACP Image Awards Nominations: See the Full List

This year’s Activist of the Year Award was presented to Dr. Derrick Lee Foward, president of the Dayton Unit of the NAACP and a vice president of the Ohio NAACP, and the Youth Activist of the Year Award honoured to Bradley Ross Jackson,...

On Feb. 24, Ray Liotta will receive a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, honoring almost 50 years of amazing work in TV and on film. Following his turn in Jonathan Demme’s 1986 film “Something Wild,” playing Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” was the moment that many moviegoers first discovered his complex, sometimes contradictory charms. When asked about the moment he knew that Liotta was the perfect choice for Hill — a character that was slick, confident, effortlessly charming, but with an edge of danger that made him fearsome and attractive at the same time — Scorsese says it wasn’t during casting, or even on set, but when the two crossed paths ahead of the beginning of production.

“We were thinking about just a few actors to play Henry Hill, and Ray was one of them,” Scorsese tells Variety. “I had one concern. I knew that he could handle...

Half a century ago Hollywood was frantically trying to figure out the newly-dominant “youth market.” Since some of that market had recently found Jesus, there was a brief spate of related films: Zefferelli’s hippie-fied St. Francis biopic “Brother Sun, Sister Moon,” adapted stage musicals “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Godspell,” the Billy Graham-produced “A Time to Run” chief among them. But as the “Jesus Movement” got absorbed into more mainstream institutions, the brief vogue flickered out.

For a moment there, however, counterculture and Christ had a groovy thing going on, one that promised both salvation for those who’d gone overboard on sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, as well as a healthy shakeup of churches that had lost touch with younger generations. Dramatizing that moment is “Jesus Revolution,” an engaging, upbeat new effort from co-directors Jon Erwin (“I Can Only Imagine”) and Brent McCorkle (“Unconditional”), adapted from Greg Laurie’s memoir.

“The Jesus Music,” a film about the Christian music scene that earned more than half a million dollars over its opening weekend, is about as friendly and far removed from being an expose as a documentary can get, but that doesn’t mean the filmmakers want fans to think they’re getting anything but unvarnished truth. So the opening moments feature some of the movie’s primary participants — including Kirk Franklin, the three former members of DC Talk, Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith (the last two of whom are also among its executive producers) — sitting down for their interviews with tight faces and grim demeanors, as if about to be forced to spill their darkest secrets. But this introductory sequence doth protest too much: “The Jesus Music” is an altogether celebratory film made by the industry for its fans and, as with a lot of contemporary Christian music, throwing...

JESÚS Breaking Glass Pictures Reviewed by: Harvey Karten, Shockya Grade: B Director: Fernando Guzzoni Written by: Fernando Guzzoni Cast: Nicolás Durán, Alejandro Goic, Gastón Salgado, Sebastían Ayala, Esteban González Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 9/14/17 Opens: September 1, 2017 with September 19, 2017 DVD/VOD In the superb episodic TV drama “Homeland,” a 16-year-old girl involved […]

The post Jesus Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Jesús premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last autumn.

Breaking Glass Pictures, who acquired North American rights to Chilean writer-director Fernando Guzzoni’s Jesús last November, has unveiled release dates for the film.

Jesús will open theatrically in New York and Los Angeles on September 1, New Orleans on September 8, with other markets to follow leading up to the DVD/VOD release on September 19.

Nicolás Durán and Alejandro Goic star in the film that centres on eighteen-year-old Jesús, who is trapped in a dead end cycle of drugs, sex, apathy, and an obsession with violence.

After he and his friends attack a young boy, Jesús has no choice but to turn to his father for help, despite their troubled relationship.

The film held its Us premiere at the Neighboring Scenes Series held by the Film Society of the Lincoln Center in New York City.

Jacques Bidou, Marianne Dumoulin, Giancarlo Nasi produced, while [link=nm...

Keep up with the wild and wooly world of indie film acquisitions with our weekly Rundown of everything that’s been picked up around the globe. Check out last week’s Rundown here.

-Gravitas Ventures has secured the worldwide rights to “Folk Hero & Funny Guy,” the debut film from writer-director Jeff Grace. The comedy follows a successful singer-songwriter who helps his friend’s struggling comedy career and broken love life by hiring him as his opening act on his solo tour. “Folk Hero & Funny Guy” premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival and stars Alex Karpovsky, Wyatt Russell, Meredith Hagner, Melanie Lynskey, Hannah Simone, Heather Morris, Michael Ian Black and David Cross.

“It was impossible to resist the witty and memorable characters in Folk Hero & Funny Guy,” Nolan Gallagher, Founder and CEO of Gravitas Ventures, said in a statement. “It’s a laugh-out-loud bromance that we know will resonate with audiences near and far.

The distributor has picked up North American rights to Fernando Guzzoni’s thriller, which premiered in Toronto last autumn.

Jesús went on to screen at the San Sebastian International Film Festival and will receive its Us premiere at the Neighboring Voices Series held by the Film Society of the Lincoln Center in New York City.

Nicolás Durán stars alongside Pablo Larrain collaborator Alejandro Goic in the story of a Santiago teenager who gets involved in an incident that may tear him apart from his father, with whom he has a fraught relationship.

Breaking Glass CEO Richard Wolff and Amanda Rae Simon negotiated the deal with Premium Films CEO Jean-Charles Mille and Leslie Saussereau.

“Fernando Guzzoni has crafted an intense and unrelenting thriller about the strained relationship between a dysfunctional father and son, which implodes when the boy commits a heinous act and turns to his father for help,” said Richard Ross, co-president of [link...

The Film Society of Lincoln Center

and Cinema Tropical announce

Neighboring Scenes: New Latin American CinemaJanuary 26–31: The Film Society of Lincoln Center announces the second annual Neighboring Scenes, a showcase of contemporary Latin American cinema, co-presented with Cinema Tropical

Exhibiting the breadth of styles, techniques, and approaches employed by Latin American filmmakers today, the festival highlights impressive recent productions from across the region. Featuring titles from Paraguay, Peru, and the Dominican Republic for the first time, as well as films from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, Neighboring Scenes celebrates the expanding range of contemporary Latin American filmmaking in its second edition.

“This year, we are pleased to highlight several emerging filmmakers, with many fantastic debut and second films in a range of styles — from political thriller and bleak comedy to observational documentary,” said Film Society of Lincoln Center Programmer at Large Rachael Rakes. “Furthermore, half of the works...

Massoud Bakhshi’s Yalda wins two prizes at the event.

Production awards worth more than €470,000 were handed out at the 2016 TorinoFilmLab Meeting Event (Nov 23-25), held within the Torino Film Festival.

Three films were awarded Tfl co-production awards worth €50,000 each; Danielle Lessovitz’s Port Authority; Maya Da-Rin’s The Fever and Massoud Bakhshi’s Yalda.

Yalda also took home the audience award, voted for by attendees at event, worth €30,000.

Tehran-born Bakhshi’s feature debut, A Respectable Family, premiered at Cannes in 2012.

The international jury, which was chaired by the Venice Film Festival’s Artistic Director Alberto Barbera, also awarded production awards worth €40,000 each to three films; The Guest by Duccio Chiarini; The Orphanage by Shahrbanoo Sadat and The Staffroom by Sonja Tarokić.

New award

A new prize this year was the Lago development award, worth €5000, which went to Jan-Ole Gerster’s Imperium.

Apprentice by Boo Junfeng, Felicity by Alain Gomis, Jesús by [link...

When a few hundred films stop by the 41st Toronto International Film Festival, it’s certainly impossible to cover everything, but we were able to catch over 120 features — and, with that, it’s time to conclude our experience, following the festival’s own award winners. We’ve rounded up our top 20 films seen during the festival, followed by a list of the complete coverage.

Stay tuned over the next months (or years) as we bring updates on films as they make their way to screens. Note that we didn’t include films screened at other festivals in our “best of” round-up, but you can see Venice, Cannes, Berlin, and Sundance wrap-ups at those links, which feature some of the most-praised films of the festival, including La La Land, Arrival, Manchester by the Sea, Certain Women, Elle, Things to Come, Nocturnal Animals, and many more.

One can also click here for...

Adolescent hijinks turn tragic on multiple fronts in Fernando Guzzoni‘s Jesús despite my not being sure there was going to be a solid point to the film until mid-way through. Everything previous merely sat as a slice of life for the titular character, a normal everyday Chilean punk named Jesús (Nicolás Durán) with too much autonomy and not enough direction. He’s practically raising himself after the death of his mother, Dad (Alejandro Goic‘s Héctor) constantly out of town working. So the eighteen-year old roams the streets dancing with a Korean Pop band for kicks, breaking into parks at night to drink and do whippits, or cruising for girls at parties to earn a blowjob. He means well most times, but his malleability when drunk inevitably spells trouble.

And it’s a good thing trouble comes — not for him, but the audience. Before then the only real action occurs off-screen,...

Next month’s Toronto International Film Festival has nearly completed its lineup announcements, and each one is more impressive than the last. Today’s Tiff picks feature a number of slate additions for sections as varied as the forward-focused Discovery, their burgeoning Pop Vr section and even a handful of last minute additions to the Tiff Docs list. New titles of note that have just been announced include the Cannes hit “The Red Turtle,” Wayne Roberts’ “Katie Says Goodbye” and the well-regarded “Sand Storm,” all of which will screen as part of Discovery.

Read More: Tiff Lineup: 5 Reasons to Get Excited About the 2016 Program

Both the Next Wave and Tiff Kids section pull titles from other, previously announced sections to create an appealing lineup for the next generation of cinephiles. Standout titles include “Moonlight,” “My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea” and “The Eagle Huntress.”

Additionally, the festival has...