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An absurdist glimpse at workaday life within one of the very real, very strange U.S. military training grounds where role-players simulate foreign battlegrounds in order to prepare our troops for their time in the field, Hailey Gates’ “Atropia” is hardly the first American comedy set during the Iraq War, which was something of a terrible farce unto itself. Well-trodden territory as this might be, however, it’s been a long time since beloved masterpieces like “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” and Larry the Cable Guy’s “Delta Farce” first put their stamp on the sub-genre, and the years gone by have made it possible for Gates’ feature debut — expanded from her 2020 Miu Miu short, “Shako Mako” — to go further through the looking glass than even Oliver Stone’s “W.” ever could.

Case in point: One early sequence in “Atropia” is built around a cameo by an extremely famous movie star who...

Paramount+’s full trailer for season two of 1923 warns it’s either defend or die. And as any Yellowstone fan knows, the “defend” will win. However, how this generation of the Duttons do it should be entertaining to watch when the much-anticipated second season premieres on February 23, 2025.

New episodes will stream on Sundays.

Oscar nominee Harrison Ford and Oscar winner Helen Mirren star as Jacob and Cara Dutton. Darren Mann (Animal Kingdom) plays Jack Dutton, Brandon Sklenar (It Ends With Us) is Spencer Dutton, Julia Schlaepfer (The Politician) is Alexandra, and Michelle Randolph (A Snow White Christmas) is Elizabeth Strafford. Brian Geraghty (Big Sky) stars as Zane Davis, Aminah Nieves (Blueberry) is Teonna Rainwater, Jerome Flynn (Game of Thrones) is Banner Creighton, Timothy Dalton (Doom Patrol) is Donald Whitfield, and Sebastian Roché (Sleep No More) is Father Renaud. Jennifer Carpenter joins the cast as Mamie Fossett.

“In the second...

Spencer knows his family’s ranch is under attack and vows to return home to help fight for it in the 1923 season two teaser trailer. Meanwhile, Jacob and Cara lead the fight against the ruthless and greedy mining tycoon Donald Whitfield back in Montana.

Oscar nominee Harrison Ford and Oscar winner Helen Mirren lead the cast as Jacob and Cara Dutton. Darren Mann (Animal Kingdom) plays Jack Dutton, Brandon Sklenar (It Ends With Us) is Spencer Dutton, Julia Schlaepfer (The Politician) is Alexandra, and Michelle Randolph (A Snow White Christmas) is Elizabeth Strafford. Brian Geraghty (Big Sky) stars as Zane Davis, Aminah Nieves (Blueberry) is Teonna Rainwater, Jerome Flynn (Game of Thrones) is Banner Creighton, Timothy Dalton (Doom Patrol) is Donald Whitfield, and Sebastian Roché (Sleep No More) is Father Renaud. Jennifer Carpenter joins the cast as Mamie Fossett.

“In the second season of 1923, a cruel winter brings new challenges...

The Berlinale’s World Cinema Fund (Wcf) has backed seven feature projects including films from Locarno-winning Indonesian auteur Edwin and Argentinan filmmaker Ivan Fund.

Wcf’s 41st funding round has awarded €260,000 in production grants to projects from Argentina, Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Indonesia and Rwanda.

They include Sleep No More, the latest project from Indonesian auteur Edwin, whose 2021 feature Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash won the Locarno Golden Leopard award. Edwin’s 2012 film Postcards From The Zoo was also the first Indonesian film to be selected for Berlin Competition.

Sleep No More follows a Taiwanese girl...

A decade after Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen parlayed his Cannes Camera d’Or win for “Ilo Ilo” into launching production house Giraffe Pictures, the company is expanding into distribution while strengthening its pan-Asian presence.

Chen is currently serving on the Indonesian Screen Award jury at the ongoing Jogja-Netpac Asian Film Festival.

“Giraffe was started off the back of ‘Ilo Ilo.’ After the success of the film – it was a small little film from Singapore – we didn’t expect that it would go to Cannes and then win the Camera d’Or, and then went on to win like 40 prizes around the world,” Chen told Variety.

The company’s name reflects its philosophy. “It’s not just a very cute animal, but I think it’s the only animal on Earth where it’s always standing tall and above everyone else,” Chen said. “Everyone might just be muddled and everything else,...

I’ve always found it strange how Found Footage appears more frequently in film than in television. If you think about it, most of the recovered footage that we see in real life comes from True Crime TV and investigative journalism rather than movies – or at least it used to before the internet turned the whole world into one giant Found Footage horror flick streaming live until the end of time.

Despite this, there were actually quite a few big-name TV shows that recognized the storytelling potential of the Found Footage format and decided to experiment with Pov filmmaking during their run. And in honor of these small screen pioneers, today we’d like to highlight six excellent Found Footage episodes of non-Found-Footage TV shows.

For the purposes of this list, we’ll be focusing on traditionally shot (or animated) programs that only temporarily fooled around with Found Footage – so...

I can’t stop following Tori Sparks. With an austere glower and sometimes a winking, welcoming grin, Sparks swaggers through the corridors of the Conwell Tower venue inside Twenty Exchange, fully in command. Sparks plays a minion of the devil himself in Life and Trust, her face lighting up with wicked gleefulness as she waltzes with her Faustian prey, literally bouncing off walls while clasping her victim close. Later, in the eerie wings of a makeshift theater, she tries on a bright red dress matching her striking hair before gazing at herself in a mirror, half-coyly, shuddering as she clutches a drooping mask to her face.

I’d like to call it a can’t-miss performance. But take a left turn instead of a right, or dawdle a few extra moments to take in the vaulted ceilings, and you might miss Sparks altogether. That’s the cost of investing in...

[This story contains spoilers from the Doctor Who season up to and including “73 Yards.”]

There aren’t many television shows that could, in the matter of only a few episodes, feature a monster made of boogers that terrorizes babies, a killer drag queen defeated by the power of music (with a little help from The Beatles) and a pointless religious war catalyzed by a capitalist algorithm.

But, not all shows are Doctor Who.

And since Disney+ acquired the long-running BBC science-fiction show, the Time Lord — now played by Ncuti Gatwa — in the quintessentially British show remains as quirky as ever.

The latest episode, penned by showrunner Russell T Davies, continues its unpredictable streak by donning the guise of folk-horror in an eerie decade-spanning epic that will have Whovians tapping their keyboards in forums for years to come.

Below, THR breaks down some questions viewers may have about “73 Yards” and the Disney+ season so far.

***

Ncuti Gatwa...

Warning: spoilers ahead for Doctor Who season 14, episodes 1 & 2.

The Bogeyman in Doctor Who season 14, episode 1, "Space Babies," is literally made of bogeys. It's amazing Doctor Who hasn't thought of this idea before - especially given some of its previous monsters. The Bogeyman is indicative of the slightly sillier, more outlandish direction Rtd is taking Doctor Who in.

Doctor Who season 14, episode 1's gross twist on the Bogeyman is both brilliantly simple and utterly within the spirit of the show - so it's strange this monster idea is only happening now. Kicking off the new era proper after 2023's Doctor Who Christmas special, "Space Babies" revisits the classic base-under-siege format. Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor and Millie Gibson's Ruby Sunday are tasked with protecting the nappy-clad inhabitants of an abandoned space station from a raging, fanged monster patrolling the lower levels - a creature the babies - sorry, space babies - call "the Bogeyman.

Edwin, the Locarno-winning director from Indonesia, is using the Taiwan Creative Content Fest’s project market to bring his “Sleep No More” to fruition. The dark fantasy film is being structured as an Indonesian-Taiwan coproduction and should shoot in the third quarter of next year.

With four Citra awards in his native Indonesia, Edwin has been a regular fixture on the art-house and festival circuits since breaking out in 2005 with his “Dajang Soembi, the Woman Who Was Married to a Dog.” His 2021 feature “Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash” won the Golden Leopard top prize at Locarno.

The new film’s story is set in an Indonesian factory that manufactures custom-made fake body parts. Its workers have hidden dark and greedy sides and the place’s elderly owner knows how to bring out those demons. Despite being warned by a Taiwanese visitor, a young woman seeks out the factory’s secret.

Writer/director Stephen Cognetti’s Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor, the fourth installment in the found footage series, leaves the Abaddon Hotel behind for new scares and terrain. And it’s streaming Now. Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor began streaming exclusively on Shudder on October 30, 2023.

For the film’s release, Bloody Disgusting spoke to Cognetti about creating an original story away from the Abaddon and keeping the scares fresh within the found footage format.

For the filmmaker, Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire closed the chapter on Abaddon Hotel. The Carmichael Manor explores more of the origins behind the hotel’s mythology, yet it’s set in the present at an entirely different location, though not too far from the Abaddon Hotel.

It turns out that Lake of Fire was very nearly the end of the franchise for Cognetti, except he couldn’t shake loose...

After focusing on Taiwanese projects for its first three years, the pitching section of Taiwan Creative Content Fest (Tccf) opened its doors to international projects for the first time this year.

The move attracted 539 projects from 20 regions including Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Iran, France and the U.S. After a selection process overseen by four separate juries, the applications were whittled down to 43 across four sections: Project to Screen, divided further into Feature Films and Series; Animation Features & Series; and Documentary Features & Series.

The feature film section includes projects from leading filmmakers such as Japanese director Koji Fukada, Indonesia’s Edwin, the Philippines’ Sheron Deyoc (Women Of The Weeping River) and Japan-based, Indian-origin filmmaker Anshul Chauhan (December).

Tccf pitching also includes an additional ten Taiwanese IPs that have strong potential for adaptations. These include books, webtoons and...

Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor Photo: Cognetti Films/Shudder If you’ve ever scrolled through the horror movies available on any given streaming platform, you’ve probably seen Hell House LLC or one of its two—soon to be three—sequels, possibly as your eyes glazed over at the generally generic cover art,...

Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael ManorPhoto: Cognetti Films/Shudder

If you’ve ever scrolled through the horror movies available on any given streaming platform, you’ve probably seen Hell House LLC or one of its two—soon to be three—sequels, possibly as your eyes glazed over at the generally generic cover art,...

Punchdrunk has released new images of The Burnt City as the show enters its final eight weeks. Following a record-breaking eighteen months in London, the final performance of Punchdrunk’s The Burnt City will be held on 24 September 2023.

Punchdrunk’s The Burnt City. Photo by Julian Abrams

Opening in March 2022, the production has sold over 200,000 tickets. By the time it closes, the show will be the longest running mask show that the company has presented in London.

Over 600 people have worked on the show, making it the largest project in Punchdrunk’s history. The epic retelling of the end of the Trojan war, set between the neon-drenched backstreets of downtown Troy and the menacing but opulent shadow of Greece, is played out across two vast warehouse buildings. Part of the old Woolwich Arsenal, these buildings provide Punchdrunk with its first permanent home in London.

Punchdrunk’s The Burnt City. Photo...

Mikhael Tara Garver has joined the executive ranks of Culture House Media as the head of a new division, Culture House Immersive. Prior to the appointment, Garver most recently served as Director of

Immersive Experience creating the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser.

Garver will lead the department from the Culture House headquarters in LA alongside founder Carri Twigg. Raeshem Nijhon and Nicole Galovski will continue to oversee the New York office.

“As I was looking for the right home to build the next generation of immersive entertainment and the

next phase of my career – Culture House became the obvious choice,” commented Mikhael Tara Garver.

“I am first and foremost a fan, but more importantly, we share an ethos, a commitment to quality work,

and a belief in entertainment that can impact culture. My vision for Culture House Immersive includes

the creation of a slate of original narrative experiences, a best in...

Two years ago, we heard that production was about to wrap on an action horror film called Wolf Mountain, directed by David Lipper and starring Danny Trejo (Machete) and Tobin Bell (Saw). Wolf Mountain has since had its title elongated – it’s now known as The Curse of Wolf Mountain – and Deadline reports that Uncork’d Entertainment is planning to give the film digital and DVD release in the United States this May. A specific release date has not been revealed.

Written by and starring Keli Price (Sleep No More), The Curse of Wolf Mountain centers on Aj (Price), who begins having vivid dreams of his parents’ death. He decides to go back to the spot where they were killed, 20 years ago, accompanied by his brother and his brother’s family. But legend has it there is something mysterious roaming these woods.

This is the second deal Lipper has landed with...

Laura Dern and science-fiction have often made for great bedfellows in the past, as evidenced by "Jurassic Park" and "Star Wars: The Last Jedi." For her return to the genre, "Morning," Dern is teaming up with "The Snowtown Murders" and "Macbeth" (2015) director Justin Kurzel. The latter's previous excursion into sci-fi with "Assassin's Creed" didn't work out so well, but you know what they say: If at first you don't succeed, try casting Laura F**king Dern instead and see what happens.

Dern is far from the only exciting cast member for "Morning," of course. According to The Hollywood Reporter, "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" veteran Naomi Ackie has also joined the film's ensemble on the heels of her performance as Whitney Houston in the musician biopic, "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" (for which Ackie herself earned top marks; the rest of the movie less so). With production slated to...