Film

The king of cheeses is ready for the spotlight.

The Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium, the governing body of the Italian cheese, has reportedly signed with United Talent Agency in order to pursue product placement opportunities in film and TV projects. According to a statement to the Hollywood Reporter, the organization is looking to “introduce Parmigiano Reggiano to a wide pool of partners [and] further its message of gastronomical excellence and high quality ingredients, production and distribution.”

The formaggio faithful know that Parmigiano Reggiano is a hard cow’s milk cheese that can trace its origins back to the Middle Ages. Because it has protected designation of origin, only the cheese made in the Italian provinces of Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Bologna and Mantua can legally be called Parmigiano Reggiano. (That’s why the common grated variety you may remember shaking out of a green container onto some spaghetti as a child is called Parmesan.)

According to its website, the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium traces its roots back to the early 1900s when the chambers of commerce in Italian cities were looking to establish a way to authenticate the origin of the hard cheese produced in their region. The organization was formally established in 1928.

Among the association’s objectives is to “organize and take part in initiatives aimed at promoting ‘Parmigiano Reggiano’ cheese, at enhancing its fame, image, reputation, circulation and consumption both in Italy and abroad.”

“Parmigiano Reggiano is not just a symbol of excellence rooted in tradition, but increasingly a truly iconic global brand,” Carmine Forbuso, Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium’s head of marketing, said to the Hollywood Reporter. “This partnership with UTA … allows us to connect with new audiences in an authentic and relevant way. With just three natural ingredients and centuries of artisanal know-how, Parmigiano Reggiano stands for simplicity, quality and depth and we’re excited to explore new formats and platforms to express this story globally.”

So move over, pasta, Parmigiano Reggiano is looking for a new kind of pairing. Netflix and night cheese, perhaps?

More than a dozen TV shows were awarded production incentives for filming in California, including several that are relocating from other states, such as action series “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and a reboot of “Baywatch.”

Together, the 17 series are expected to generate $1.2 billion in economic activity for the state. The shows are estimated to employ a collective 5,165 cast and crew members, as well as more than 35,000 background actors.

In total, the shows were awarded about $313 million in tax credits, with season 3 of the post-apocalyptic series “Fallout” receiving the largest credit ($166 million). “Baywatch,” which relocated from Hawaii, was awarded a credit of $21 million, while “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” returning from New York and Italy, was allocated nearly $80 million. The Netflix show “Forever” got nearly $63 million.

These shows are the second round of TV projects to receive incentive awards under the state’s revamped film and television tax credit program. Approved by state legislators and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this year, the new program now has a cap of $750 million, up from $330 million.

Eligibility criteria was also expanded to allow more types of shows to apply.

The changes to the program came after intense lobbying from Hollywood unions, studios and other insiders amid an exodus of filming to other states and countries with more generous production incentives.

“California’s creative economy isn’t just part of who we are — it helps power this state forward,” Newsom said in a statement. “And when we make smart investments like our film tax credit, we’re keeping talent here at home, supporting good-paying union jobs, and strengthening an industry that defines the California brand.”

“Baywatch” executive producer and showrunner Matt Nix noted that the wildfires in January encouraged him to want to film in the Golden State. He said in a statement that the fires nearly destroyed his home, but that the “heroism of the first responders who fought to save our community” inspired him.

“Baywatch was born in Los Angeles,” Nix said. “I’m so glad we can bring it home again.”

We are at the dawn of the era of “experimental cinema.”

At least that is the pitch by entrepreneurs such as Jeb Terry of Cosm and James Dolan of Sphere, whose domed venues have embraced the idea of reviving older films to augment them with new technologies. Terry used the phrase Tuesday in his introduction to a resuscitation of 1971’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” which debuts this week at Inglewood’s Cosm with modern, CGI animation, aiming to emphasize the whimsy and childlike wonder of the Gene Wilder picture.

“Wonka” is the sophomore attempt by Cosm to redefine the moviegoing experience — “The Matrix” got the Cosm treatment last summer and “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” will follow next year. Seeing a film in what the venue calls “shared reality” can be all-encompassing and yet intimate as well as communal and, if everything works out, somewhat thoughtful. The 87-foot diameter spherical screen wraps above, below and behind us, but an emphasis on couch seating invites a cooperative environment. And guests are encouraged, for instance, to pull out their phones and capture and share the moment.

The spherical screen can give the illusion of dimension.

(Cosm)

It’s good fun, if you don’t take it too seriously, as experiential, in the case of “Wonka,” means a film dedicated to the power of imagination sometimes leaves a little less to it. Spirited and bright, Cosm’s approach to “Wonka,” a collaboration with experiential firm Secret Cinema and visual effects house MakeMake, is to ensure audiences are never not surrounded by eye candy. The result is alternately charming and clashing — why, I wondered, isn’t the animation done in a 1970s style to better complement the film?

In turn, has the film’s new magic replaced its subtle mystery? Or is that the wrong question to ask at screenings meant to feel like a social event, complete with chocolate tarts filled with peanut butter mousse and bright red vodka drinks with gold glitter salt rims?

“Willy Wonka” is the second Hollywood film, following “The Matrix,” to run at Cosm.

(Cosm)

For this is experiential at its most maximal. Opening credits that unfold in the film with streams of chunky chocolate are now accompanied with smoothed-out images that look partly inspired by “Super Mario Bros.,” as tubes and pipes aim to place the audience inside a milky-chocolate-pouring factory. It’s cute, and you’ll find yourself diverting your attention from the framed screen of the film to take in the toy-like animated mechanisms. My only qualm here was the edges of the filmed footage have been sharpened away by gleamingly untroubled animation.

Elsewhere, news reports in the film are elongated to show us an entire, cartoon-like studio, scenes of galloping children on the sidewalk rush by as added assembly lines churn out chocolate below them and the movie’s first major song and dance moment, “The Candy Man,” is now surrounded by carnival-inspired visuals with swirling Candy Buttons, slot-machine-like flowers and gentle prods to, if not sing along, at least mouth the lyrics.

“Wonka,” a moderate success when it was released, grew in stature over time as Sammy Davis Jr. turned “The Candy Man” into a hit and second-run screenings on television made it vital at-home viewing for generations to come. It is, at times, delightfully demented, a family film with a weird streak — perhaps at times even a slightly sinister one. And yet I went to Cosm’s “Wonky” premiere not as a film critic but as someone curious about burgeoning movements in the immersive industry, interested more in how Cosm could use its tech to enhance, revitalize or find ways to illuminate a second-run film.

At Cosm, when Charlie discovers his golden ticket, digital fireworks erupt.

(Cosm)

Illuminate is a key word, as when young Peter Ostrum as Charlie unwraps a candy bar with the much-sought-after golden ticket, the animated images around the framed screen erupted in fireworks. I remember watching that scene as a kid and feeling a bit tense, fearing, perhaps, the ticket would be snatched from him by the crowd that consumes him. Yet Cosm aims to turn “Wonka” into pure joy. Such a moment was a reminder at how much sway over the emotional tonality of the film such supplemental material can possess.

In that sense, the immersive ambitions of Cosm differ from experiments of the past — interactive dalliances in the ’90s that recently lived again on Netflix (see “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch”), or more recent 4DX theaters with movement-enabled seats (see the light, water and wind effects of “Twisters”). Perhaps that’s why what I thought worked best leaned more abstract, when, say, cartoonish cityscapes gave way to black-and-white pencil-like effects, or when the animations played up the wackiness of Wonka’s factory rather than try to flesh it out.

A whimsical scene featuring the Oompa Loompas.

(Cosm)

I was distracted, for instance, when Wilder’s Wonka made his grand limping entrance, as the sheepish building behind him was now dwarfed by sparkly, shiny warehouses. Yet I was transfixed when Wilder’s character near the end was framed amid blindingly fast streaks of light, or when the helper Oompa Loompa characters were depicted out of frame as colorful orbs that looked like strands of DNA.

I do feel it’s important to note that I’m more than two decades removed from having seen the original “Wonka.” Fresher in my mind are more recent cinematic explorations of the material and characters. While I chose to revisit “The Matrix” before taking that film in at Cosm, I opted for a different approach with “Wonka,” and I believe one’s likelihood to embrace what Cosm is attempting will increase exponentially by one’s attachment to the source material. Having forgotten wide swaths of the film, I found myself conflicted — watch the original film, or focus on Cosm’s accouterments — whereas with “The Matrix,” the material was recent on the mind and I was therefore more comfortable to wander and take in the dome’s impressive screen.

And it is impressive, indeed. When Charlie starts floating in Wonka’s factory, Cosm lifts the frame of the film, surrounding it with bubbles. Soon, depending on your seat, you may find yourself looking straight up. Cosm’s visuals are so crisp that at times they can simulate movement and dimension, and we get dizzyingly lost when the characters are trapped in a seemingly doorless room.

Elsewhere, Cosm takes on a buoyancy when Denise Nickerson’s Violet transforms into a bouncy blueberry. Another clever moment: When Charlie’s wall of moving hands is stretched beyond the screen and starts waving to the audience.

It’s in these instances when the film comes alive, and Cosm’s take on experiential cinema no longer feels like a novelty and becomes an experience.

Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka and Julie Dawn Cole’s Veruca Salt in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” as presented by Cosm.

(Cosm)

Welcome back to another Oscar season!

I’m Matt Brennan, editor in chief of The Envelope, and each Wednesday from now until Jan. 7, I’ll be sending you a (digital) editor’s letter with some highlights from our Phase I issues.

Our first issue of the 2025-2026 campaign features stories on documentaries, films about the Palestinian experience and “Marty Supreme’s” Odessa A’zion.

A Deeper Dive: Documentaries

(Illustration by Daniel Stolle / For The Times)

I won’t pretend to be Nostradamus when it comes to Hollywood’s top awards — my Gold Derby Emmys ballot didn’t even crack the top 1,000 — but most anyone who ran into me at this year’s Sundance Film Festival heard at least one bold prediction that turned out to be correct: 2025 has been a sterling year for documentaries.

With journalists under attack in the U.S., Ukraine, Gaza and beyond, the form’s close connection to reportage has never felt more urgent, at least not to me. In the contraband prison images of “The Alabama Solution,” the body camera footage of “The Perfect Neighbor,” the conflict coverage of “2000 Meters to Andriivka” and “Love + War,” the portraiture of “Cover-Up” and much more besides, the year’s finest documentaries — no, the year’s finest films — manage to unearth new ways of seeing our society’s most pressing issues, often with more precision and subtlety than scripted films much longer (and costlier) in the making.

To that end, this week Steve Dollar asks the filmmakers behind five of the year’s many worthy nonfiction films — “Apocalypse in the Tropics,” “Folktales,” “Predators,” “Seeds” and “The Tale of Silyan” — to share what images became the keystone of their latest projects.

Digital Cover: Odessa A’zion

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

I can confirm Tim Grierson’s reporting that Odessa A’zion is a hugger: I received several myself from the “Marty Supreme” and “I Love L.A.” performer when she stopped by The Times newsroom recently for an Envelope digital cover shoot, her own 16mm still camera in hand.

As Grierson notes of the actor, A’zion “doesn’t behave like a rising star” — and she’s not particularly comfortable with the label, either.

“A’zion has heard those predictions before, so she’s wary about being anointed the next big thing,” he writes. “After all, she remembers all the auditions that went nowhere. She remembers being behind on her rent. She remembers almost being evicted. She remembers getting fired from gigs. Simply being cast in a Josh Safdie film doesn’t make those old wounds disappear. ‘To all of a sudden be like, “OK, I’m done [worrying about my career]!” — I don’t see that feeling coming anytime soon.’”

A trio of Palestinian films in the international feature race

A scene from “All That’s Left of You.”

(Watermelon Pictures)

Palestinian stories are no stranger to awards season. But this year, as Gregory Ellwood writes, a trio of films from female directors — each submitted by a different country and each set in a different time period — make for a particularly remarkable confluence.

“In a way, the movie lived what most Palestinians live: war, exile, fleeing,” “All That’s Left of You” filmmaker Cherien Dabis told Ellwood of her film having to shift production after the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war. “All of the uncertainty, the financial and logistical crisis of it all. I think that what really grounded me during that time was just knowing that the movie was more relevant than ever, and that it had to get done.”

Read more on “All That’s Left of You,” “Palestine 36” and “The Voice of Hind Rajab.”

Additional highlights from our Nov. 20 issue

Hugh Jackman never thought he’d be a karaoke guy. But then Neil Diamond happened.

Starring opposite Kate Hudson in the Christmas Day release “Song Sung Blue,” the 57-year-old Australian actor portrays not the legendary Grammy winner and shaggy-haired sex symbol, but rather a Neil Diamond “interpreter,” the real-life Mike Sardina, who, with his wife and stage partner, Claire (Hudson), found unexpected success with a tribute band in mid-1990s Milwaukee.

It was this film that recently brought the “Greatest Showman” star to Diamond’s Colorado ranch, where the two participated in a singing session that convinced Jackman to buy his own karaoke machine.

The only guide you need for holiday entertainment.

“Normally, I’m like, ‘I don’t want to do that,’” says Jackman, over Zoom from a New York hotel room, as if he’s confessing a mortal sin. “But I did karaoke with Neil, and I’m like, ‘All right, now I’m in.’”

What did they sing? Diamond soloed on “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Misérables,” paying tribute to Jackman’s musical theater bona fides, before the two duetted on Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” and, of course, Diamond’s own “Sweet Caroline.” The good times never seemed so good.

It was a hang session so epic that Hudson, joining the call, seems green with an envy that matches her sweater. “I can’t believe I missed this karaoke party,” she says. “I have a whole karaoke setup at my house with a microphone and everything. I feel very left out.”

Thankfully, when it came to making “Song Sung Blue,” it didn’t seem so lonely for her. Based on Greg Kohs’ 2008 documentary of the same name, the film is as much Claire’s tale as it is Mike’s, following the real couple’s love story set to the tune of Diamond’s extensive songbook. At the height of their success, which included playing with Pearl Jam at Eddie Vedder’s request, the Sardinas became local celebrities, billed as the duo “Lightning & Thunder.”

Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson in the movie “Song Sung Blue.”

(Focus Features)

A Vietnam vet and mechanic with a dream of entertaining, Sardina seems a role tailor-made for Jackman, who can go from Wolverine to Broadway in a single season. “Song Sung Blue” writer-director Craig Brewer, who first saw the documentary at a small film festival in Memphis, Tenn., never envisioned anyone but Jackman as the insatiable Wisconsinite.

“It was always Hugh because there’s not anybody else out there who could understand the wild showmanship that Mike Sardina had,” says Brewer, calling from his Memphis home. “He’s doing two layers of a character. He’s playing this working-class guy that loves to entertain any way he can. If he’s got to wear sequined shirts, he’s going to. He’s going to give you everything he has.”

The role presented a puzzle for Jackman, despite having played career impresarios like pop idol Peter Allen and P.T. Barnum. “I had to lose Hugh Jackman to be Mike,” says the actor, relaxed in an umber-colored button-down shirt. “How does Mike find himself within his love of Neil? It took me a second to find him and lose my shtick, because I’m a performer too.”

Ultimately, the solution wasn’t his Neil Diamond impersonation, though Brewer encouraged Jackman to make a meal of that. “You can lay a little bit more butter on it,” the director remembers telling him.

Instead, Jackman’s breakthrough came via deep self-identification.

“His dream was always huge but this was not how he thought it was going to go,” Jackman says. “It was that ‘one plus one equals three’ thing where, all of a sudden, they found themselves being the next big thing.” Similarly, Jackman never intended to become a movie star synonymous with musical theater. He’d never even sung before a post-university audition changed the course of his life.

“One of the hardest things to do is fake chemistry,” Kate Hudson says. “You can’t do that. You have to actually fall in love with each other and find the chemical connection.”

(Victoria Will / For The Times)

Hudson is a less-obvious casting choice. Though she’s made a career playing rom-com heroines, with “Song Sung Blue,” she’s already generating awards buzz for her turn as a guileless Midwestern mom miles away from the glittering women Hudson typically portrays, and one with her fair share of trauma. She has to go to some dark places, channeling Claire’s depression, addiction to painkillers and more — but despite her penchant for playing more carefree women, Hudson says she wasn’t intimidated by the role’s meatier aspects.

“When you grow up with storytellers,” she says, referencing her actor parents Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, “you forget the camera’s there. You’re not thinking about anything glamorous. You’re looking at the role and what it needs. It’s what you long for as a performer. It allows you to almost leave your body.”

For Hudson, the opportunity also dovetailed with a new act in her own life as a recording artist. Even though she released her debut album “Glorious” only last year, Hudson has long identified as a singer-songwriter. “I was always so scared of it,” she confesses of her fear of going public about her songwriting. “But the studio is where I’m very happy. I’ve been in the studio since I was 19, but I just never shared my music because I was too scared to put it out.”

It was a discovery Jackman made while they were recording their vocal tracks for the film. “I said, ‘You’re a musician,’” he recalls, Hudson beaming at him. “You were so relaxed and in your home.”

“I’ve always had a lot of cheerleaders for me to do music,” Hudson replies, sheepishly.

Some might see it as a full circle moment for Hudson, who received an Oscar nomination for her performance as the groupie Penny Lane in Cameron Crowe’s 2000 rock memoir “Almost Famous.” It was such a formative experience that Hudson still remains close with Crowe. She tells me she’s reading his new book, “The Uncool,” to prepare to interview him on his tour.

But no matter how much Penny Lane has shaped her life, Hudson doesn’t see a through line from her to Claire. Instead, she draws a line between fandom and musicianship, specifically the distinction between those who chase the high of being in the room or backstage living the lifestyle, and those who have a song they have a visceral need to share.

“With Claire, it needs to come out,” she continues. “It doesn’t matter where or what we’re doing or how we’re doing it — we just need to do it. That is also how I feel about music.”

The real-life Claire Sardina and her two children (played by Ella Anderson and Hudson Hensley on-screen) threw their full support behind “Song Sung Blue.” But Hudson’s instinct was to build her own version of Claire without too much outside influence. “You want to make a choice in a film because it’s the right choice for the character, not because you’re trying to mimic something,” says Hudson.

Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson in the movie “Song Sung Blue.”

(Focus Features)

That need to avoid mimicry and feel the moment was particularly crucial for the film’s heartbreaking second act, in which Claire is hit by a car in her front yard and loses a leg, plunging into self-loathing, depression, body dysmorphia and addiction. Hudson had to do extensive physical work to prepare to authentically represent Claire’s lived experience. “Movement is a huge part of what actors do,” she says. “There’s the emotional part but the physicality is like rebalancing your brain.”

In addition to watching YouTube videos of amputees and speaking with those in the disabled community, Hudson got useful advice from another screen legend — her dad.

“Kurt said that Claire is like Rocky,” she says, referring to the iconic character’s grit and determination to go the distance. “The part that really got my dad emotional was that she just wanted to figure out how to get on her feet.”

Jackman marvels at the bravery and skill of Hudson’s performance, noting that she even captured something the real Claire told him off-camera.

“Claire said, ‘The thing is Mike was a leg guy,’” he remembers. “Kate played that so well. That feeling of shame about: Is my partner attracted to me anymore? I found that incredibly moving.”

Hudson welcomed the challenge, but she did worry about one thing outside her control. For “Song Sung Blue” to work, the actors playing Claire and Mike need to be in perfect alignment: one the words, the other the tune.

“One of the hardest things to do is fake chemistry,” Hudson says. “You can’t do that. You have to actually fall in love with each other and find the chemical connection. That was my biggest anxiety.”

Jackman shared this concern. “I remember the first day after our table reading, you said, ‘This movie works if we work,’” he reminds her.

They needn’t have worried. “They were a net for each other as the other one was up on a tightrope,” Brewer says. “It was incredibly inspiring for the crew to see that kinship and respect.”

Their mutual generosity is evident in the way Jackman checks in with Hudson after each anecdote during our interview, confirming she has nothing to add or correct. Though this is their first film together, their repartee is so easy and warm it’s hard to believe they haven’t co-starred in at least a dozen movies.

“It felt easy to just inhabit these characters,” Jackman says. “The word that comes to me is trust. All of the scenes, particularly in that darker period, we could just live in that — the frustration, the paranoia, the anger, the loss, the fear. Every take felt really very different. I felt very free.”

Hudson agrees, adding with a giggle, “I told Hugh, ‘I’m really tactile. Just tell me if I make you uncomfortable. I’m going to kiss you all the time.’”

It helps that Hudson and Jackman are naturally sunny, curious people, celebrities who’ve never cared for the sound of being alone. “We like to connect with people,” Hudson says. “There’s no internal process that removes us. We’re both community people. We like to be in the circus. When we’re on set, we sit on set. There’s no separation of crew and cast. It’s very rare that you work with someone who is like that.”

Ultimately, that openness allowed Hudson and Jackman to approach Claire and Mike with honesty, essential for a film that’s a fullhearted paean to dreamers at their highest and lowest.

“Eddie Vedder told me something that moved me so much,” Jackman says, a note of emotion in his voice. “He goes, ‘Some might say these people led small lives. Their dreams were so huge and perhaps, naive. But dreams are so powerful that 30 years later, it’s come true.’”

From playing Milwaukee dive bars to becoming the subjects of a major motion picture, the Sardinas have far exceeded even their own expectations. To quote another beloved Diamond tune, it’s enough to make anyone a believer.

The line where the sky meets the sea is calling to the new “Moana.”

The first teaser trailer for the live-action Disney film released Monday features star Catherine Laga’aia singing a few lines of her character’s signature “I Want” song as the footage offers glimpses of the island and people of Motunui, the demigod Maui, the seafaring Kakamora and Moana’s clumsy rooster Heihei.

“I am a girl who loves my island and the girl who loves the sea,” Laga’aia as Moana sings in the opening moments of the trailer. “It calls me.”

Fans of the original animated movie will recognize the scene of a young Moana playing with the ocean after seeing a seashell on the shore. Speaking of the 2016 film, Dwayne Johnson, who voiced the shapeshifter demigod and hero of men in the animated “Moana,” will also portray the live-action version of the arrogant trickster. You’re welcome.

Directed by Thomas Kail, the live-action remake will follow Moana, who dreams of being a wayfinder and exploring the ocean. She leaves Motonui in search of Maui and the Heart of Te Fiti to help save her people.

In addition to Laga’aia and Johnson, the “Moana” cast includes John Tui as Moana’s father, Chief Tui; Frankie Adams as her mother, Sina; and Rena Owen as Gramma Tala.

The trailer ends with Laga’aia triumphantly singing, “I am Moana.”

The animated “Moana,” with Hawaiian actor Auliʻi Cravalho in the title role, grossed $643.3 million worldwide during its initial run. Its follow-up “Moana 2” was one of three films released in 2024 that crossed the $1-billion mark at the worldwide box office. Cravalho serves as one of the executive producers of the live-action film, along with Kail, Scott Sheldon and Charles Newirth.

The live-action “Moana” will hit theaters July 10.

Movies can become forever memorable through the magic of a singular image, that celebrated “one perfect shot” that illuminates everything before and after it. The Envelope asked directors of five awards-contending documentaries to talk about the shot their film couldn’t live without.

‘Apocalypse in the Tropics’

Director Petra Costa’s sequel to “The Edge of Democracy” (a 2020 Oscar nominee) examines the powerful role played by evangelical Christianity in Brazilian politics and the rise of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro.

“I chose the shot of the Statue of Justice, decapitated and upside down,” says Costa, describing a scene in front of the Supreme Federal Court in Brasilia after Bolsonaro’s supporters sacked the nation’s seat of government on Jan. 8, 2023. “[It] symbolizes much of this story on many levels. This film is ultimately using Brazil as a metaphor for the current crises of our democracies worldwide. This picture symbolizes how violent speech is, not just violent speech. It produces violent action, and that was what brought Bolsonaro to power.”

‘Folktales’

Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing’s “Folktales”

(Magnolia Pictures)

Directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (2007 Academy Award nominees for “Jesus Camp”) follow a group of adolescents through a year at a traditional Norwegian folk high school.

“The first time you see the Tree of Life in the movie,” says Ewing, describing a powerfully symbolic image in the story, “it’s shot from below. It’s a wide angle and it’s almost like a creature. I call it Guillermo del Toro’s tree, because it’s knotty and dead, but it’s everything. It’s breathtaking and there was no other tree like it in the forest. It inspired the whole layer in the film that became the myth of Odin and using Norse mythology as a metaphor for growing up, and we use the tree as our centerpiece.”

‘Predators’

Director David Osit (“Mayor”) unpacks the complex and disturbing legacy of the TV exposé “To Catch a Predator,” which became a pop-culture phenomenon during its run in the mid-aughts.

“So much of my film is about looking at images, and part of it was me looking at images … and really just thinking: The only way I know how to make this movie is I’ve got to give someone the experience I’m having, making the film and looking at material. So there was an image that I filmed, but it didn’t mean anything to me until I saw it. And that’s the image that I chose. There’s this moment in the film where I’m interviewing Dan Schrack, who is one of the decoys who … was involved in what happened in Texas. [The subject of the show’s sting operation took his own life, which led to the show’s cancellation.] I’m having him look at some pictures, and I get a shot from behind him. What I didn’t notice during the filming … was my reflection, perfectly placed in a small mirror. Only for a split second did I think to myself, ‘Oh no, I ruined the shot.’ Immediately afterwards, I felt a deeper understanding … that I couldn’t take myself out of this movie. It wasn’t my intent to be in it, but more often than not, documentaries neuter and make invisible the acts of their creation. And every single time I tried to film this movie, the opposite was happening. My identity, my motivations, my interests kept asserting themselves, and that shot was it. That was the shot where I realized what the film was.”

‘Seeds’

Carlie Williams in “Seeds.”

(Brittany Shyne)

Shot in black and white, Brittany Shyne’s debut feature explores the lives and challenges of Black farmers in south Georgia.

“The scene that I always go back to is with Carlie Williams, the 89-year-old farmer,” Shyne says. “It’s a moment when we’re in his house, and he gets up from his chair, and he goes over to tend to his daughter, Lois. I really like that moment, because we could see a father who’s utterly devoted to his child, making sure that her health is OK. I love that moment of tenderness, because that is something I try to view throughout the whole film, this kind of familial care that we see between generations.”

‘The Tale of Silyan’

(National Geographic Documentary Films)

The Macedonian film, from 2020 Oscar nominee Tamara Kotevska (“Honeyland”), is the story of Nicola, who rescues an injured stork from a landfill after the collapse of his family farm.

“The moment when Nicola captures the stork,” Kotevska says. “It completely changed the course of the film and the story itself. We thought that it was going to be more of a sad story, but it ended up being more of a hopeful story — not a happy one, but a hopeful one. It eventually became a story of a man saving a stork and a stork saving a man.”

Sometimes all you want is the opportunity to slow down life and enjoy a refreshing break somewhere quiet and idyllic – this location is the perfect way to do just that

If you’re dreaming of an escape where rolling green hills meet charming cobbled streets and you’re only ever a heartbeat away from a good cup of tea then one town should be right at the top of your list.

This little gem in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales has become something of a star in its own right, thanks to its role as the fictional Darrowby in Channel 5’s ‘All Creatures Great and Small‘. Fans of the show will instantly spot the familiar streets and stone-fronted shops. But even if you’ve never seen an episode, then the real-life town of Grassington has enough to win anyone over. For families, it’s the perfect blend of adventure and wholesome days out. Start in the bustling village square, where independent shops and cosy cafes, including the Cake House, invite you to linger for a while.

And then there are the proper North Yorkshire pubs where the welcome is warm, the portions are generous and the ale flows freely. Grassington’s inns are the beating heart of the village, from the Gamekeeper’s Inn to Grassington House, offering everything from roaring fires and Sunday roasts to locally brewed pints and family-friendly dining.

Whether you’re settling into a snug corner after a long walk or enjoying a meal in a lively bar where locals swap stories across the tables, it’s the sort of place where time slows down. Many visitors swear the pubs alone are worth the trip, especially if you want an authentic taste of Dales hospitality.

One of the best things about Grassington is how quickly you can slip from village charm into full-blown countryside magic. The surrounding Dales are tailor-made for family walks, from gentle riverside rambles along the Wharfe to more adventurous routes up towards Linton Falls.

The falls themselves are just a short stroll from the village and offer a spectacular view, especially after a good rain. Kids love watching the water thunder over the rocks, and parents love that it’s one of those rare beauty spots that doesn’t require a three-hour trek to get to.

If your family has a soft spot for wildlife, then the Grass Wood Nature Reserve is a must. This ancient woodland is a haven for birds, wildflowers and even the occasional roe deer. The trails here are peaceful and atmospheric, perfect for a slower-paced wander where little explorers can hunt for bugs, spot woodland creatures and burn off some energy.

History lovers won’t be left out either. Head to the nearby Grassington Folk Museum, where the whole family can learn about rural life through the centuries. It’s surprisingly engaging for kids, with plenty of hands-on displays, and gives a real sense of the community spirit that still holds strong in the village today.

And of course, no visit would be complete without a nod to the popular ‘All Creatures Great and Small’. Fans can stroll the same streets James Herriot walks on screen, peek into shop fronts used for filming and soak up the quaint atmosphere that makes the series so beloved. Many visitors say it feels like stepping straight into the show (minus the odd unruly cow).

Whether you’re after cosy pubs, picture-perfect scenery or a family weekend that blends relaxation with just enough adventure, Grassington delivers in spades. It’s no wonder TV crews, walkers and families all fall a little bit in love with it and, after one trip, you probably will too.

Chinese state media says distributors made ‘prudent’ decision to postpone releases due to audience sentiment.

Chinese film distributors have suspended the release of two Japanese anime films amid an escalating diplomatic row over Taiwan.

Crayon Shin-chan the Movie: Super Hot! The Spicy Kasukabe Dancers and Cells at Work! will not be screened in mainland China as originally scheduled, Chinese state-run broadcaster CCTV said on Tuesday.

The move comes as relations between Tokyo and Beijing are at their lowest ebb in years following Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s suggestion that Tokyo could intervene militarily if China attempted to take control of Taiwan.

CCTV said distributors made the “prudent” decision to postpone the releases in view of the overall market performance of Japanese films and “Chinese audience sentiment”.

Film distributors reported that Takaichi’s “provocative remarks” would inevitably affect Chinese audience perceptions of Japanese cinema, CCTV said, adding that the companies would follow “market principles and respect audience preferences” by delaying the releases.

Naoise McDonagh, an expert in economic coercion at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia, said the postponements followed a well-worn playbook in Chinese statecraft.

“China is usually careful to target trade that is non-essential for China, but which will impact Japanese firms, creating both financial costs and symbolic pressure,” McDonagh told Al Jazeera.

Such incidents allow Beijing to signal that parties who act against its interests will face costs, “providing China some degree of influence on other governmental decision-making processes that impact China’s red line,” McDonagh said.

The delayed film releases follow a series of retaliatory moves by Beijing in response to Takaichi’s comments, including an advisory warning its citizens against travel to Japan and the deployment of warships to waters near the disputed Senkaku Islands.

Japan on Monday issued its own travel advisory for China, warning its citizens to respect local customs, avoid crowded places and exercise caution in their interactions with Chinese people.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara on Tuesday told a regular media briefing that its advisories were based on “the social situations” of various countries and its latest statement reflected recent reports on the Tokyo-Beijing tensions.

Kihara also said that Tokyo had an “open stance” on dialogue with China after Beijing said that Chinese Premier Li Qiang had no plans to meet Takaichi on the sidelines of this weekend’s G20 summit in South Africa.

Kihara made the comments as Japan’s top official for Asia Pacific affairs, Masaaki Kanai, met his Chinese counterpart, Liu Jinsong, in Beijing on Tuesday in a bid to calm tensions between the sides.

China considers self-ruled Taiwan part of its territory and has pledged to “reunify” the island with the Chinese mainland, by force if necessary.

Japan views China’s stance on Taiwan with concern due to the island’s close proximity to Japanese territory and its location in waters that carry large volumes of trade.

China insists that countries, in order to have diplomatic ties with Beijing, must not officially recognise Taiwan. Most countries follow China’s demand, but many maintain economic and semiofficial diplomatic ties with Taipei.

If you agree with filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu that Tom Cruise “doesn’t just make movies — he is movies,” then the Oscar that Cruise received at the motion picture academy’s annual Governors Awards wasn’t just long overdue. It was a restoration of balance, a necessary correction, not to mention a nod to the sheer weight of Cruise’s body of work in the collective imagination.

When multi-hyphenate Debbie Allen, herself an honoree, worked in a reference to the “tighty-whities” Cruise wore sliding across the floor in “Risky Business” into her own acceptance speech, you could understand why he received the night’s longest ovation. He really is movies. In one way or another, he completes us.

Cruise, 63, was still shaking hands and posing for pictures long after the ceremony ended Sunday night. He may in fact still be in the Ray Dolby Ballroom, listening to people tell him giddy and sometimes teary stories of when they first saw him in a movie. After Iñárritu introduced him, Cruise delivered a gracious, cinema-booster speech, at one point asking everyone in the room who had worked with him to stand.

“I carry you with me, each of you, and you are part of every frame of every film I have ever made or ever will make,” Cruise said. And yes, he was in alignment with Iñárritu. “Making films is not what I do. It’s who I am.”

Trailblazer Wynn Thomas, widely recognized as the first Black production designer in film, and Dolly Parton also received Oscars at the Governors Awards ceremony. These honorary Oscars, once part of the televised Academy Awards, were spun off into their own event in 2009.

Parton, 79, was given the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Health issues, which led to a postponement of her December Las Vegas residency, prevented Parton from attending in person. But she thanked the academy by video, saying, “We didn’t have too much to share, but my mama and daddy showed me that the more you give, the more blessings come your way. And I have been blessed more than I ever dreamed possible, like with this award tonight.”

Lily Tomlin, Parton’s “9 to 5” co-star, gave a delightful, digressive introduction. Capping the presentation, Andra Day sang a spine-tingling cover of Parton’s classic “Jolene.”

The Governors Awards are not televised and, as Will Arnett, introducing the evening, noted, “There are no commercial breaks. The orchestra is not waiting to play anybody off. There is nothing stopping us from doing this until the sun comes up.” The relaxed nature of the show gives honorees room to roam with their speeches and also offers current Oscar contenders a chance to schmooze with voters.

In one corner of the ballroom, you might find filmmakers Richard Linklater, Noah Baumbach and Joachim Trier engaged in a debate over who is better, Jean-Luc Godard or Francois Truffaut, a French New Wave throwdown inspired by Linklater’s sly homage “Nouvelle Vague.” Across the room, Sydney Sweeney, meeting Cruise for the first time, compared notes on broken bones. Outside, Iñárritu told director Ryan Coogler (“Sinners”) about his upcoming movie, starring Cruise. (“It sounds crazy,” Coogler said.)

Cruise was on everyone’s mind, except perhaps Spanish filmmaker Oliver Laxe, director of the superb thriller “Sirāt,” who did not know the actor was receiving an honorary Oscar. People offered me their favorite Cruise movies. Director Eva Victor (“Sorry, Baby”) went with “Edge of Tomorrow.” Shih-Ching Tsou (“Left-Handed Girl”) chose “Top Gun.” (“I fell in love,” she says.) And Coogler went with a wild card, picking the compulsively rewatchable 1988 comedy “Cocktail.”

“It was my parents’ favorite movie, so I saw it all the time,” Coogler says. “I know it’s nonsensical.”

Ethan Hawke, who made “The Last Movie Stars,” a six-part documentary on Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, recalled how Newman didn’t want his honorary Oscar in 1986. He hoped to win one outright. A year later, he took the lead actor trophy for “The Color of Money,” which, yes, co-starred Cruise.

“Cruise should have won for ‘Magnolia,’ one of the best performances of my lifetime,” Hawke told me. “My suspicion is that this will be the first of many Oscars for Tom Cruise. He’ll get this honorary one and then four more in the next 20 years.”

Thomas, it could be argued, should have won a competitive Oscar years ago for any number of movies, including his striking work creating the single block setting in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood for Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.” Relating his journey to becoming a visual storyteller, Thomas recalled growing up in “one of the worst slums of Philadelphia,” sitting on his front stoop reading Shakespeare, James Baldwin and Tennessee Williams, immersed and transported.

“The local gangs looked down on me and called me sissy,” Thomas said. “But that sissy grew up to work with some great filmmakers.”

Presenting Allen with her Oscar, “Wicked’s” Cynthia Erivo said “to know Miss Debbie is to know that she refuses to let dreams fade and has a determination to make them happen.”

“I myself am fortunate enough to consider her my auntie,” Erivo added.

Allen’s five-decade career includes choreographing the Oscars seven times, as well as films including “Forget Paris” and “A Jazzman’s Blues.” Her producing credits include Steven Spielberg’s 1997 historical drama “Amistad.” She’s probably best known as an actor on the ’80s television series “Fame,” for which she also served as a choreographer. Her nonprofit dance academy is a Los Angeles institution.

Allen namechecked the Dodgers, her husband (the Los Angeles Lakers legend Norm Nixon) and, of course, Oscar.

“It’s like I got married … sorry, Norm,” she said, cradling the statue. “I’m definitely taking him to work with me and keeping him close to remind me, not of what I’ve done, but what I get, need and have to do.”

How do you find inspiration? Say you’re doing your holiday shopping and you’re struggling to find the perfect gift for that difficult person on your list — parent, partner, paramour. How do you let your mind drift to a place where the clouds part and you achieve a sort of awakening?

To be honest, I don’t always get there. But caffeine is usually a good place to start.

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter, back in your inbox for the next few months as we sail through the atmospheric river of awards season. Climb aboard.

Cover story: The best six minutes in movies this year

(Bexx Francois / For The Times)

You might remember how much I love “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler’s audacious, genre-defying blockbuster that explores the intrinsic power of American blues music and Black life in the Jim Crow South within the context of a vampire horror movie.

So I was thrilled to talk with Coogler and his longtime department heads — a movie family that includes Oscar winners who have been with him since his 2013 debut, “Fruitvale Station” — for The Envelope’s first cover story of the season. There were a dozen different ways I could have gone with the piece, but our conversations kept coming back to the scene in the juke joint when young Sammie (Miles Caton) conjures spirits from the past and future onto the dance floor.

How did Coogler summon this scene? It goes back to that question I asked at the outset: How do you find inspiration?

For Coogler, “Sinners” began on Nov. 17, 2021, a date fixed in his mind because it was the day one of his favorite rappers, Young Dolph, was murdered. Coogler was devastated. And his mind drifted back to Nipsey Hussle, the L.A. rapper gunned down outside his South L.A. clothing store in 2019. Coogler was living in Los Angeles at the time, trying to get a “Space Jam” sequel off the ground.

“I felt like I had my heart ripped out, bro,” Coogler told me. “I have two younger brothers I’m really close with, and I remember reading an article in the L.A. Times about his older brother recounting what happened. It just broke me. And then I get the news that Dolph’s been killed in his hometown, and I just remember feeling, ‘I’m done with rap, man.’”

Later, Coogler spoke with his friend, “Black Panther” producer Nate Moore, lamenting that rappers who talk about their lives, beating the odds and escaping hardship, sometimes end up succumbing to the thing they thought they left behind. Moore isn’t a rap guy, but told Coogler that his favorite music, grunge, was just like that — in this case, artists addressing their struggles with depression and addiction and then, on occasion, overdosing or taking their own lives.

Toward the end of that day, Coogler was driving back from the set of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” Passing through Byron, Ga., the Oakland native looked out his window and saw, for the first time in his life, a cotton field. During our interview, Coogler pulls out his phone and finds a video his sister-in-law shot of him taking it all in and picking a sprig of cotton. Coogler kept it, eventually putting it on his work desk at home.

“That was a part of finding ‘Sinners,’” Coogler says. “The other thing that happened was I started listening to grunge music, taking a break from rap. And as soon as I put the music on, I was like, ‘Yo, this feels like my uncle’s. It led me right back to his record collection.”

That uncle, James Edmonson, loved the blues. Coogler’s cousin, Edmonson’s youngest daughter, told the filmmaker about a Bill Withers’ song, “I Can’t Write Left-Handed,” written from the perspective of a Vietnam veteran. Coogler listened to it, and it reminded him of “Rooster,” the Alice in Chains song written by guitarist Jerry Cantrell for his father, who served in Vietnam.

“So I’m playing these two songs one after another, and I’m like, ‘These genres that you wouldn’t find next to each other at a Tower Records back in the day, they’re so close,’” Coogler says. “And studying the history of it, it’s people playing it different, but it’s the same idea.”

“And that’s when I realized I had to make ‘Sinners.’”

Coogler scrolls through his phone and shows a picture of the cotton sprig on his desk. He dedicated “Sinners” to his uncle, who died about a decade before it arrived in theaters.

“So many cosmic moments came together for this movie,” Coogler says. “I was always like, ‘All right. I just gotta make sure I don’t f— it up.’”

The Palestinian experience has been a mainstay of global cinema for decades. Despite countless obstacles, the Palestinian Ministry of Culture has submitted 18 titles for the international feature Oscar since 2003, earning nominations in 2006 and 2014. But this year, at a pivotal moment in its history, three films from acclaimed female filmmakers, each set in war-torn Gaza, are up for Oscar consideration: Annemarie Jacir’s Palestinian entry, “Palestine 36,” Cherien Dabis’ “All That’s Left of You,” representing Jordan, and Kaouther Ben Hania’s “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” selected by Tunisia. It’s a remarkable field, one that Jacir believes is more a coincidence than a reflection of the political climate.

“I think that there’s so many Palestinian filmmakers and people have been doing a lot of work for a long time,” Jacir says. “I remember when I made my last film, there were three films shooting at the same time.”

From the outbreak of the Arab revolt in 1936 to the generational trauma of the capture of Jaffa during the Arab-Israeli 1948 war to the current Israel-Hamas war, each film has a distinct and important story to tell. Notably, both “Palestine 36” and “All That’s Left of You” were scheduled to begin production in Palestine just days after Israel began an aerial assault in October 2023 in response to the Hamas-led attack Oct. 7.

After struggling just to get the movie off the ground, Jacir says the real-time events made it difficult to “keep going emotionally, mentally, financially.”

“Nothing was clear,” she says. “We just didn’t know if we would really be able to shoot, if we would be able to start something, if we would be able to finish … We were just making it up as we went along and hoping for the best. It’s sort of a mix of, I would say, stubbornness and perhaps stupidity.”

Saleh Bakri and Cherien Dabis in “All That’s Left of You.”

(Watermelon Pictures)

Concurrently, Dabis had been prepping with a Palestinian crew for five months with the intention of shooting the entire project there, only to be forced to make the “devastating” decision to shift production to Jordan, Greece and Cyprus. (Hopes of eventually returning were dashed.)

“In a way, the movie lived what most Palestinians live: war, exile, fleeing,” she says. “All of the uncertainty, the financial and logistical crisis of it all. I think that what really grounded me during that time was just knowing that the movie was more relevant than ever, and that it had to get done.”

The stark reality of the civilians under constant fire, and in a much worse position than Jacir, motivated her team to continue with “Palestine 36.” She bluntly observes, “We had no right not to, you know what I mean? It’s like we are the privileged ones, actually. We’re not in Gaza. It didn’t feel like it was an option for any of us to stop because they weren’t stopping and it was like, ‘Well, we do it for them too.’”

Depicting the humanity of the Palestinian people, who have suffered mightily under the current occupation, is one reason why Ben Hania felt such urgency in bringing the harrowing final hours of 6-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab to the screen less than a year and a half after her death under Israeli fire.

Dhafer L’Abidine and Yasmine Al Massri in “Palestine 36.”

(Watermelon Pictures)

“There was something about silencing their voices [that] was completely abhorrent for me, and I know that cinema is the place for empathy and the place where you can put face and raise the voice,” Ben Hania says. “So, for me it was part of saying, ‘Stop this dehumanization of Palestinian victims.’ You see the pain in this movie, you can feel the sense of what is happening.”

Despite critical accolades and, in the case of “Voice,” a record standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival, none of these submissions were able to secure major distributors in the U.S. “Voice of Hind Rajab” is being released by relatively new player Willa, while both “Palestine 36” and “All That’s Left of You” are set for release by Watermelon Pictures, traditionally a production entity. (Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land” was self-released in cinemas and, last month, on streaming platforms.) Ben Hania says that is nothing new: Films about Palestine simply don’t reach U.S. audiences.

“I’m frustrated because as a filmmaker, when you do a movie, you want everybody to see it, especially this one,” Ben Hania says. “So, I mean, yeah, it’s a huge frustration, but I can’t put a gun [to a] distributor and tell them, ‘Distribute my movie.’ When you do movies, you have several obstacles, and this is one of them.”

Despite the hurdles, Jacir says she has never had so many people want to know the historical background behind one of her movies.

“People are curious,” Jacir says. “Before people used to say, ‘Oh, it’s very complicated and let’s leave it. I don’t want to know because it’s too complicated.’ I don’t think people are like that anymore. I don’t think the new generation is like that anymore. I think people really want to know, and they want to see these stories and they’ll make their own judgments and thoughts, and they’ll have their own feelings about it.”

An accessible set for all requires intention. There are practical needs, of course — ramps for restrooms and extra-bright neon tape on the ground to better light up and mark cues and equipment for low-vision performers and crew members. But there’s also a need to weave accessibility into the production so seamlessly that it doesn’t feel tacked on or burdensome.

On a sweltering day in June at the Van Nuys Elks Lodge, the cast and crew of “The Hog Queen,” a short film starring “Wicked: For Good’s” Marissa Bode, were doing just that: re-creating a drag show at a small-town Texas gay bar, yes, but also modeling what a set that puts accessibility and inclusion at its center can look like.

“I have been lucky in the way that ‘Wicked’ was an incredibly accessible set,” Bode tells me later over Zoom, looking back on her experience making writer-director Katherine Craft’s short horror film. “I didn’t really have to think at all about my own accessibility. However, I know that’s not the same for all my disabled peers.”

Nor is it common practice on any given set.

“Honestly, even prior to ‘Wicked,’ the No. 1 question I’m always asking when I’m collaborating with somebody is, ‘Have you worked with disabled people before? If not, how are you accommodating for that?’” Bode says. “Even when I signed on to my agency — or even my PR team, or even my manager — that was one of the first questions I asked. That’s always at the top of my mind.”

That’s what made “The Hog Queen” so rewarding. This was a production that made accessibility a priority. “I just felt taken care of in a way with this process that I have not in others,” Craft says.

Craft’s short film is part of Inevitable Foundation’s Visionary Fellowship. The yearlong program, supported by Netflix, was designed as an incubator for disabled filmmakers. Since its founding in 2021, Inevitable Foundation has supported disabled writers at various stages of their careers. But with this latest and most ambitious fellowship, founders Richie Siegel and Marisa Torelli-Pedevska wanted to put the emphasis on directors with feature-length projects ready for production.

Director Katherine Craft, left, producer Shelby Hadden and assistant director CJ Palmisano go over logistics for a scene on the set “The Hog Queen.”

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Each of the projects selected has been carefully scaled down to a short length to guarantee they could be produced within the yearlong fellowship; all five are set to be unveiled at a showcase in November.

Craft and the other members of the fellow inaugural Visionary cohort — Zayre Ferrer, Monica Lucas, Filipe Coutinho and Alys Murray — each received $55,000 in funding for their respective short films, including a production grant, health insurance, access to an experienced crew as well as marketing support and financial aid for access and travel.

Rather than merely focusing on mentorship, networking or community-building, the Visionary Fellowship was designed to give these filmmakers the production experience they’ll need to thrive in the industry. More than just a pipeline, the 12-month program is an explicit investment in disabled filmmakers and the stories they’re eager to tell. And to arm them, in turn, with an encouraging environment that aims to reframe the way accessibility is often understood.

“I think there’s this misconception that making a set accessible is going to be a huge pain in the ass, that it’s going to cost a ton of money, and it’s going to slow you down,” Craft, who has low vision, explains. “I don’t think any of that has to be true. The other thing is people think of it as something that is going to benefit someone else. But when you start looking at it through a lens of accessibility and inclusivity, you’re benefiting everyone.”

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1. Bode makes her way onto the set. 2. Christian Zamudio performs during a drag show scene. 3. The slate lights up with a digital time code. (Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Siegel and Torelli-Pedevska knew they needed to bake that philosophy into their process. That meant setting money aside for any accommodations early and having a line item for accessibility in the budget templates they were creating to make sure it was something they could anticipate, measure and track.

“A lot of it goes to starting early,” Siegel says. “But more importantly, it’s about rejecting the belief that [accessibility] comes at the expense of the creativity in the final product. Saying the opposite, in fact, which is: if everyone feels like this is a safe set and they can do their best work, the work will just be better.”

Bode agrees — and sees Inevitable Foundation’s approach as one that can be replicated across the industry.

Before shooting, the entire cast and crew of “The Hog Queen” received a form that sought to garner information about their needs. “It asked about everything under the sun in terms of disability,” Bode explains. “‘Do you get overstimulated? Would you need a room to go to if you do get overstimulated? What are your physical access needs? Do you need a ramp? Do you need this? Do you need that?’

“I really think that should just be standard on sets. I don’t think disability accommodations are a luxury. I think everybody should be taken care of.”

The door creaks as I push it back and move forward into the gloom. The ceiling is vaulted and dark, but light falls in shafts of gold from the upper windows, revealing ancient stone carvings and tombs. It’s the right atmosphere for a ghost-hunt. I take a few steps and the door clicks, making me jump. Must be the wind.

Exploring old English churches is always a pleasure. There is no one to disturb you, and in the dim quiet will be a historical jaw-dropper: a centuries-old face carved in oak, a grisly tomb, an inscription to the dead hero of a forgotten battle. Each site is a mini detective puzzle, waiting to be unravelled, often with a helpful booklet available near the door. The spirits of those who have shuffled off this mortal coil hang in the dust motes, but here, in Weobley, Herefordshire, I am looking for someone specific.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV welcomed Spike Lee, Cate Blanchett, Greta Gerwig and dozens of other Hollywood luminaries to a special Vatican audience Saturday celebrating cinema and its ability to inspire and unite.

Leo encouraged the filmmakers and celebrities gathered in a frescoed Vatican audience hall to use their art to include marginal voices, calling film “a popular art in the noblest sense, intended for and accessible to all.”

“When cinema is authentic, it does not merely console, but challenges,” he told the stars. “It articulates the questions that dwell within us, and sometimes, even provokes tears that we didn’t know we needed to shed.”

The encounter, organized by the Vatican’s culture ministry, followed similar audiences Pope Francis had in recent years with famous artists and comedians. It’s part of the Vatican’s efforts to reach out beyond the Roman Catholic Church to engage with the secular world.

But the gathering also seemed to have particular meaning for history’s first American pope, who grew up in the heyday of Hollywood. The 70-year-old, Chicago-born Leo just this week identified his four favorite films: “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “The Sound of Music,” “Ordinary People” and “Life Is Beautiful.”

In a sign of how seemingly star-struck he was, Leo spent nearly an hour after the audience greeting and chatting amiably with each of the participants, something he rarely does for large audiences.

Drawing applause from the celebrities, Leo acknowledged that the film industry and cinemas around the world were experiencing a decline, with theaters that had once been important social and cultural meeting points disappearing from neighborhoods.

“I urge institutions not to give up, but to cooperate in affirming the social and cultural value” of movie theaters, he said.

Celebrities just happy to be invited

Many celebrities said they found Leo’s words inspiring, and expressed awe as they walked through the halls of the Vatican‘s Apostolic Palace, where a light luncheon reception awaited them after the audience.

“It was a surprise to me that I even got invited,” Lee told reporters along the red carpet in the palace.

During the audience, Lee had presented Leo with a jersey from his beloved Knicks basketball team, featuring the number 14 and Leo’s name on the back. Leo is a known Chicago Bulls fan, but Lee said he told the pope that the Knicks now boast three players from the pope’s alma mater, Villanova University.

Blanchett, for her part, said the pope’s comments were inspiring because he understood the crucial role cinema can play in transcending borders and exploring sometimes difficult subjects in ways that aren’t divisive.

“Filmmaking is about entertainment, but it’s about including voices that are often marginalized, and not [shying] away from the pain and complexity that we’re all living through right now,” she said.

She said Leo, in his comments about the experience of watching a film in a dark theater, clearly understood the culturally important role cinemas can play.

“Sitting in the dark with strangers is a way in which we can reconnect to what unites us rather than what divides us,” she said.

A ‘hit and miss’ guest list that grew

The gathering drew a diverse group of filmmakers and actors, including many from Italy, like Monica Bellucci and Alba Rohrwacher. American actors included Chris O’Donnell, Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann, Apatow’s wife.

Director Sally Potter said she was impressed that Leo took the time to speak with each one of them. And she said she loved his comments about the value of silence and slowness in film.

“It was a good model of how to be and how to think about cinema,” she said, noting especially Leo’s defense of “slow cinema” and not seeing the moving image just in terms of algorithms.

Director Gus Van Sant said he liked Leo’s vibe.

“He was very laid-back, you know, he had a fantastic message of beauty in cinema,” he said.

Archbishop Paul Tighe, the No. 2 in the Vatican culture ministry, said the guest list was pulled together just in the last three months, with the help of the handful of contacts Vatican officials had in Hollywood, including director Martin Scorsese.

The biggest hurdle, Tighe said, was convincing Hollywood agents that the invitation to come meet Leo wasn’t a hoax. In the end, as word spread, some figures approached the Vatican and asked to be invited.

“It’s an industry where people have their commitments months in advance and years in advance, so obviously it was a little hit and miss, but we’re very pleased and very proud” by the turnout, he said.

The aim of the encounter, Tighe said, was to encourage an ongoing conversation with the world of culture, of which film is a fundamental part.

“It’s a very democratic art form,” Tighe said. Saturday’s audience, he said, was “the celebration of an art form that I think is touching the lives of so many people and therefore recognizing it and giving it its true importance.”

Winfield writes for the Associated Press. AP journalists Trisha Thomas and Isaia Montelione contributed to this report.

Look around lately and 20th century science fiction has become 21st century fact. Real life in the year 2025 — the date in which Stephen King set his 1982 novel “The Running Man” — involves technological surveillance, corporate feudalism, infotainment propaganda and extreme inequality, all things that his story about a grisly game show predicted. King, like the great sci-fi authors Philip K. Dick and George Orwell before him, was writing a cautionary tale. But the decades since have seen people take their bleak ideas as a blueprint, like when Elon Musk bragged on X that the Tesla Cybertruck is “what Bladerunner would have driven,” missing the point that we don’t want to live in a dystopia (and that Bladerunner isn’t even Harrison Ford’s name in “Blade Runner”).

The timing couldn’t be better — and worse — for Edgar Wright to remake “The Running Man,” only to put no fire into it. He and his co-writer Michael Bacall have adapted a fairly faithful version of the book, unlike the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger meathead extravaganza. (The only way to suffer through that one is if you imagine it’s a parody of pun-driven testosterone flicks.) Tellingly, they’ve left off the year 2025 and only lightly innovated the production design with spherical drones. But there’s little urgency or outrage. Instead of a funhouse mirror of what could be, it’s merely a smudged reflection of what is.

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Glen Powell stars as Ben Richards, a cash-strapped, employer-blacklisted father who begrudgingly agrees to be a contestant on a television hit that no one has survived. There’s only one network, FreeVee, and its goals overlap enough with those of the government that the distinction between them isn’t worth parsing. Every day Ben dodges a death squad, he’ll earn money for his wife, Sheila (Jayme Lawson), and sick baby, up to a billion “new” dollars if he can last a month. (The updated bills have the Governator’s face printed on them.)

But as ever, the game is rigged. The network’s boss, Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), and smarmy host Bobby T (Colman Domingo) rally viewers to turn Ben in for a cash prize, fibbing that he’s a freeloader who refuses to get a job, the typical tax-leeching scapegoat trotted out to turn the middle class against the poor and the poor against themselves. One enraged FreeVee-addicted granny (Sandra Dickinson) genuinely believes Ben eats puppies. “She used to be a kind, clever woman,” her son says with resignation.

Clearly, Wright wants to make a political satire that echoes the drivel of our own actual news. The politics are there in the armored vehicles rolling down city streets and the masked militias out to nab Ben for the bounty money. Yet we don’t feel the paranoia of eyeballs over the streets, even though it turns out that there’s no way to disguise Powell’s foxlike features under a silly stick-on mustache. A hustler named Molie (William H. Macy) warns that the TVs themselves are watching people. It doesn’t really feel like they are. I’ve felt more uneasy in a house with an Alexa.

As for the satire, this faintly cruder version of right now doesn’t have much bite. Little we see is surprising, stimulating or even that futuristic. Screens blare commercials for a drink called Liquid Death (real) and a Kardashian-esque reality show called “The Americanos” (essentially real). The film’s sole representative of upper-middle-class normality — a hostage named Amelia (Emilia Jones) — could trade places with any Pilates instructor.

When an underground rebel, Bradley (Daniel Ezra), breaks down how the network chases ratings by flattening people into archetypes, he’s not telling today’s audience anything it doesn’t already know. King wrote the character as an environmental activist; here, he’s more of a TV critic. Likewise, Bradley’s crony Elton (Michael Cera) has mutated from a pathetic idealist to a Monster-chugging chaos agent — as if “Home Alone’s” Kevin McCallister grew up to join Antifa. Elton’s motivations don’t make sense, but at least Cera barges into the movie with so much energy that his sequence is a hoot. Chuckling that he likes his “bacon extra crispy” as he takes aim at a police squad, he also breaks the seal on this remake’s use of bad puns. From his scenes on, the script crams in as many groaners as it can.

Wright has talent for casting actors that pop. Domingo’s fatuous celebrity host is fantastic, even doing the retro running man dance with Kid ‘n Play aplomb. We see just enough of Ben’s fellow competitors, played by Katy O’Brian and Martin Herlihy, to wish we had more time with them. One of the hunters, Karl Glusman, has so much intensity that I’ll be looking out for what he does next. Pity that the charismatic Lee Pace’s main villain has to spend most of the film covered by a shroud.

Meanwhile, Powell is being put through his own test of Hollywood survival. Everyone seems to agree that he’s the next movie star, but he hasn’t yet landed the right star-making vehicle. Here, as ever, he’s being treated like a Swiss Army knife on a construction site: Handy at a lot of things from humor to action to drama to romance, but his character lacks the oomph to truly showcase his skills. We’re told over and over that Ben is the angriest man in the world, but Powell’s innate likability, that cocky-charming heroic twinkle in his eye, makes him come across peevish at worst. His best moments are all comedy, like when Ben slaps on a thick brogue to hide out as an Irish priest, or his snappy back-and-forth with a psychologist who puts him through a word-association test. (Anarchy? “Win.” Justice? “Hilarious.”)

Still, I missed the truly misanthropic lead of King’s novella, a sour bigot radicalized to see himself not just as a cog in a machine but as a spoke in a revolution. There’s lip service to that idea here, but the film doesn’t take itself seriously enough to give us the chills. It’s not fair to judge “The Running Man” by how closely it hews to the book — and if you remember King’s ending, then you know there’s no way Wright could have pulled that off, although his fix is pretty clever. But tonally, there’s just not enough rage, gore or fun.

Maybe Wright feels the same way too. He’s been wanting to make this movie since 2017 and had the lousy luck to do it for Paramount in the year that the studio embraced the government and sacrificed its employees for its own billion-dollar reward. There’s no bleaker satire than making it through “The Running Man’s” end credits, past images of a raised fist that reads “Together Against the Network,” to see the last words on screen: A Skydance Corporation. Or maybe there is, if someone makes a documentary about what Edgar Wright may have had to cut.

The “Purge” movies are missing from the list, as are the entries in the “Saw” franchise. There are no “Evil Dead” titles. “The Exorcist” is suspiciously absent.

The list, in this case, is the favorite four films of Pope Leo XIV, f.k.a. Robert Francis Prevost of Chicago. The pontiff released the list via video ahead of a planned meeting Saturday with luminaries from the world of cinema.

To avoid the risk of being played off the stage by the academy’s orchestra, let’s share the winners quickly:

1. “It’s a Wonderful Life,” 1946
2. “The Sound of Music,” 1965
3. “Ordinary People,” 1980
4. “Life Is Beautiful,” 1997

That’s it. No “The Agony and the Ecstasy.” No “Pope Joan” or “Spotlight” or “Conclave,” for obvious reasons. No “Sister Act” or “Oh, God!” or any of the associated sequels, for less obvious reasons.

As a matter of fact, not a single comedy at all, much less a goofy comedy. And on either the drama or comedy fronts, the pope definitely could have chosen at least one flick set in his former neck of the woods. Think “The Blues Brothers,” “Home Alone,” “The Untouchables,” “High Fidelity,” “Eight Men Out” or “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” (Think “Chicago,” for goodness’ sake.)

Pope Leo will apparently be meeting Saturday with Hollywood types including, Variety reports, actors Monica Bellucci, Cate Blanchett, Alison Brie, Dave Franco, Viggo Mortensen and Chris Pine, plus directors Spike Lee, George Miller, Giuseppe Tornatore and Gus Van Sant.

Seems the pope “has expressed his desire to deepen dialogue with the World of Cinema, and in particular with actors and directors, exploring the possibilities that artistic creativity offers to the mission of the Church and the promotion of human values,” according to a statement obtained by CNN.

That sounds all well and good, and a person can’t really go wrong with the movies on the pope’s list — two of the four are best picture Oscar winners, and the other two are best picture nominees.

That said, let’s shed a tiny tear for the exclusion of “Bruce Almighty,” if only because Morgan Freeman could use a little papal recognition too.

The prey may change — the planets, too, their digital backdrops swirling like screensavers — but take comfort in knowing that when it comes to a “Predator” movie, we’re still talking about a dude in a suit. This time, that dude is New Zealand’s Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, a game 7-foot-3 actor whose eyes bulge behind those motorized mandibles and sometimes shine with feeling.

Despite his size, his Dek in “Predator: Badlands” is what you might call a baby: an untested youth who endures a sibling’s beatdown in the film’s opening moments. Their warlord father is displeased with both of them. After some extreme parenting that would be frowned upon in most societies, alien or otherwise, neon-green blood flows and Dek is hurtling toward another world, vengeance burning in his heart.

“Bring it home — for Kwei,” he mutters in an elaborate creature language invented expressly for the film. (The dialogue itself gets less attention.) Dek will seek the “unkillable Kalisk,” prove his worth in the hunt and, presumably, have some terse words with Dad upon his return.

Not to kill a Kalisk or anything but these Yautja (to use their species name) were never meant to carry a movie. Put one in a film with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the original 1987 summer action hit and suddenly the Terminator seems chatty. Pit them against the immortally gross creatures of “Alien vs. Predator” and the Yautja are nearly huggable.

But main characters they are not. “Predator: Badlands” has a misshapen gait to it, like a comedy skit drawn out to feature length. Fortunately, almost as soon as Dek lands on Genna, a planet of murderous flora, to bag his Kalisk, he runs into a babbling half-robot missing her legs who makes the movie much more compelling. You can either wonder how Elle Fanning, the tremulous heart of “A Complete Unknown” and this season’s “Sentimental Value” found herself in it, or smile at the good fortune of her being a stealth nerd who apparently loves a challenge.

Strapped to Dek’s back C-3PO-style, the disembodied Thia (Fanning) fills the movie with a semi-stoned running commentary: “And what does the chewing — your outside fangs or your inside teeth?” she asks him. When a second Fanning shows up as Thia’s vicious sister Tessa, another “synthetic” built for dangerous off-world work, the film finds its groove as a new chapter in the continuing saga of our friends at the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, a fictional enterprise with such spectacularly bad luck at acquiring bioweapons, they should have faced a hostile takeover by now.

And, like virtually all of Hollywood’s anti-corporate sci-fi adventures, “Predator: Badlands” is, at heart, a pro-business statement, bowing especially deeply to James Cameron’s designs for 1986’s “Aliens,” including its squat vehicles, soulless directives (“The Company is not pleased,” says a computer who isn’t the screenwriter) and the colossal power loader that lets someone human-sized do battle with a beast.

There isn’t much of an original signature here. Returning director Dan Trachtenberg hits the beats competently but not too stridently, like a good superfan should. If you’re expecting Dek’s sensitivity to become an asset, give yourself a trophy. Yet if a machine — or a studio — can produce a robot as fun as Thia, there’s hope for this franchise yet.

Elizabeth Berkley has been on tour with “Showgirls” to commemorate its 30th anniversary — but 30 years ago there was nothing to celebrate.

As the former “Saved by the Bell” star told the Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Monday, the reception to the 1995 film was so brutal that she was unable to land any acting jobs in the aftermath.

“For a good two years, I wasn’t allowed to audition for things,” Berkley said. “The hardest part was being literally locked out of something I loved so much.”

This meant the actor had to fight her way back into Hollywood’s good graces — and she has. One of her most recent roles is a guest spot on the star-studded (but similarly panned) campy legal drama “All’s Fair.”

Directed by Paul Verhoeven from a script by his “Basic Instinct” collaborator Joe Eszterhas, “Showgirls” was Berkley’s first starring film role as well as her first big project after her time on the teen TV breakout “Saved by the Bell.” But the movie was mired in controversy, from its NC-17 rating to the hostile reviews and cratering at the box office.

“I took a beating, guys,” Berkley reportedly said during a fan Q&A before a recent screening. “It was not fun for a little while. I’m not going to lie. It was painful. I was isolated. I felt abandoned by the very people I collaborated with.”

The Times reported in 1995 that Berkley was “unfairly” taking most of the heat for how “Showgirls” was received, noting at the time that she had been dropped by her agent and had yet to line up her next job.

The latest Hollywood Reporter interview recounts how at the time Berkley was left to fend for herself on the film’s press tour and that preparation involved publicists showing her clips of reviews that insulted her looks and acting ability.

“A lot of things went on that wouldn’t be allowed now — someone could not be pummeled to that degree,” Berkley said to the outlet. “I couldn’t understand how people could be so cruel, but I’m tough. I had to separate out what they said from what I believed to be true.”

“Showgirls,” of course, has since been reevaluated and embraced by audiences and academics, elevating it beyond even its cult status. It’s a redemption arc that Berkley especially deserves to celebrate.

“I’ve had some obstacles,” she said, “but I’ve never given up.”

In a small win for California’s film and TV industry, mixed martial arts franchise Combate Global will relocate production from Miami to Burbank.

The franchise, which will air on Spanish-language network Estrella TV after a six-year run on Univision, will film 20 live events at Estrella’s new networks studio, starting in February. That space seats 500 people and has been used to film the talent competition show “Tengo Talento Mucho Talento.”

The franchise wanted to relocate to Southern California because of the bigger media market, said Campbell McLaren, chief executive of Combate Global and co-creator of the UFC.

The move is expected to create about 60 jobs, and is estimated to have an economic impact of more than $1 million on an annual basis for the 20 shows, which is up from the eight produced this year, he said.

“It’s a bigger market, access to more talent, access to more behind-the-camera talent, access to more on-camera talent,” McLaren said. “We feel we’re making a big, big step.”

The move also allows the franchise to target the large Mexican American market in L.A. — Combate Global currently has its largest viewership in Mexico — as well as others who have not been as exposed to the mixed martial arts events, such as the Korean community. The sport’s Japan vs. Mexico nights have also been popular and could find broad appeal in in L.A., McLaren said.

“It’s a move to super serve our core audience,” he said. “We’re going to have real audience traction.”

The news comes as California tries to lure film and television productions back to the Golden State after many have relocated to other states and countries in search of more lucrative tax incentives.

Over the summer, state legislators bulked up the state’s film and TV tax credit program and agreed to more than double the annual amount allocated to it. So far, dozens of projects have been awarded tax credits, including 22 series and 52 movies. (Combate Global did not receive a tax credit because sports do not qualify for the program.)