#jake coyle

NEW YORK | ‘A Star Is Born’ tops SAG Awards nominations

NEW YORK — Bradley Cooper’s romance revival “A Star Is Born” has led nominations for the 25th Screen Actors Guild Awards with four nods including best ensemble.

Nominationswere announced Wednesday morning in West Hollywood, Calif., from the actors guild, one of the most predictive bellwethers of the Academy Awards. The other nominees for the group’s top award, best ensemble, were: “Black…

NEW YORK | Kevin Hart quits as Oscars host over his anti-gay tweets

NEW YORK— Just two days after being named host of the Academy Awards, Kevin Hart stepped down following an outcry over past homophobic tweets by the comedian.

Capping a swift and dramatic fallout, Hart wrote on Twitter just after midnight Thursday that he was withdrawing as Oscars host because he didn’t want to be a distraction. “I sincerely apologize to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive…

NEW YORK | Responding to homophobic tweets, Kevin Hart draws more ire

NEW YORK— Kevin Hart’s response to criticism over earlier homophobic tweets has further inflamed the backlash to the newly minted Oscar host.

On Thursday, Hart wrote on Instagram that critics should “stop being negative” after years-old tweets surfaced in which he used homophobic slurs. In an accompanying video, a shirtless Hart said he wasn’t going to “let the craziness frustrate me.” Hart said…

NEW YORK | Criterion Collection to launch stand-alone streaming service

NEW YORK— FilmStruck may be no more, but the Criterion Collection will live on as a subscription-streaming service.

In an announcement that warmed the hearts of cinephiles everywhere, Criterion said Friday that it has reached an agreement with WarnerMedia to launch the Criterion Channel as a stand-alone service in spring next year.

FilmStruck, the streaming offshoot of Turner Classic Movies and…

NEW YORK | Spirit Awards heap noms on ‘Eighth Grade,’ ‘First Reformed’

NEW YORK— The 34th Film Independent Spirit Awards showered nominations on Bo Burnham’s coming-of-age tale “Eighth Grade,” Lynne Ramsay’s existentialist thriller “You Were Never Really Here” and Paul Schrader’s religious drama “First Reformed” in nominees announced Friday .

Each scored four nods including best picture. Also nominated for best picture: Barry Jenkins’ James Baldwin adaptation “If…

NEW YORK | Aretha Franklin doc ‘Amazing Grace’ to finally see the light

NEW YORK — More than 46 years after it was shot, the Aretha Franklin concert film “Amazing Grace” will finally be released, ending one of the most tortured and long-running sagas in documentary film.

The late gospel singer’s estate and film producers said Monday that “Amazing Grace” will premiere Nov. 12 at the DOC NYC film festival with the full support of Franklin’s estate. The film, largely…

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NEW YORK' | Green Book' wins audience award at Toronto Film Festival

NEW YORK— Peter Farrelly‘s crowd-pleasing Deep South road trip movie “Green Book” won the Toronto International Film Festival’s audience award on Sunday, putting it on an envious path to the Oscars.

Toronto’s People’s Choice Award is one of the most closely watched of the fall festival circuit because it often corresponds with awards-season success. In the past decade, every Toronto People’s Choice winner has scored a best-picture nomination at the Academy Awards.

Few pundits pegged “Green Book” as an awards favorite ahead of its world premiere in Toronto. It is, after all, directed by one-half of the sibling duo best known for broad comedies like “There’s Something About Mary” and “Dumb and Dumber.”

But the audience response was rapturous to “Green Book,” which stars Mahershala Ali as a classical pianist on a concert tour of the Deep South in the 1960s. Viggo Mortensen plays the Italian-American bouncer hired to drive him while relying on “The Green Book,” the guide for African-American-friendly hotels and restaurants.

The first runner-up for Toronto’s top prize was Barry Jenkins’ James Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk. The second runner-up was Alfonso Cuarón’s black-and-white neo-realistic drama “Roma.”

Failing to place in the top three, to the surprise of many, was Bradley Cooper’s “A Star Is Born.” His remake of the Hollywood classic, starring Lady Gaga, had been widely considered the audience-award front-runner in Toronto.

Last year’s audience award in Toronto went to “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”

Toronto’s audience award for documentary went to E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s “Free Solo,” about mountain climber Alex Honnold.

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TORONTO | Study finds diversity in film criticism lacking

TORONTO — USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative on Friday expanded on its previous findings regarding diversity in film criticism to give a more detailed look at what researchers conclude is a not level playing field for critics.

The study, the second in a three-part series, evaluated reviews posted by aggregator Rotten Tomatoes for the top 300 highest grossing films from 2015 through 2017. It found that 67.1 of the critics were male, 32.9 percent were female and that of critics with an “ascertainable” race or ethnicity, 23.2 percent were from minority groups while 76.8 percent were white.

The USC researches suggested the race or gender of a critic can have an effect on their reviews. They found that women of color were more likely to rate a movie with a minority female lead “fresh” than white male critics, though researches expressed caution on those results due to small sample size.

According to the study, entertainment trade publications contained the lowest percentage of female “top” critics (10 percent of reviews) on Rotten Tomatoes. General news outlets fared the best with 34.6 percent of reviews written by female “top” critics.

The center’s earlier studied analyzed more than 19,000 reviews of the 100 top-grossing films of 2017. It found that nearly 80 percent of critics were male, according to reviews compiled by Rotten Tomatoes.

In response to the researchers’ earlier study, the Toronto International Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival have sought to diversify its press corps by inviting and paying the way for underrepresented critics and journalists. The currently running Toronto Film Festival has brought nearly 200 critics (approximately 20 percent of the festival press) to Toronto.

Rotten Tomatoes has since modified its review aggregation to include a wider pool of critics.