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“As a 52-year-old woman who’s been living in New York and writing comedy for 30 years, there aren’t too many rooms anymore where I feel like a charlatan and a failure, but we found one! It’s tonight! I am vibrating with the energy of a person who’s afraid that the next thing she says will reveal her idiocy!” These were the words of actress, comedian, writer, producer, and playwright Tina Fey, as part of her acceptance speech of the PEN/Mike Nichols Writing for Performance Award last Thursday in New York City. The ceremony took place in a Broadway theater (The Town Hall), not far from Rockefeller Center, the setting of her hit comedy 30 Rock (2006-2013), created by Fey based on her experiences as head writer for Saturday Night Live (SNL).

Michael B. Jordan’s feature directing debut, Creed III, delivered a knockout punch at the box office, instantly becoming the sports-themed movie that can claim to have the biggest opening weekend ever.

John Singleton was honored with a tribute during the 2022-2023 Academic year by USC (University of Southern California), his alma mater, where he developed the script for his 1991 directing debut, Boyz n the Hood, while attending the screenwriting program at USC’s Film School (the school has since been renamed the School of Cinematic Arts, or SCA). For this film, Singleton was nominated for two Academy Awards in 1992 for Best Director and Best Screenplay.

Heba Khaled sees it as her quest to speak for Syrian women who do not have a voice and who do not know how to protect their rights. With Under the Sky of Damascus, the Syrian director sheds light on a culture that is not yet ready for this quest.

China’s Hengdian World Studios (“Chinawood”) is the largest outdoor film studio in the world, and since the lifting of Covid restrictions, business has been booming, according to Global Times. Located in Zhejiang province, five hours by car from Shanghai, it covers 2,500 acres.

This month Lucy Liu celebrates two openings. On March 17, we’ll see her on big screens as Kalypso in Shazam! Fury of Gods joining Golden Globe winners Helen Mirren and Rachel Zegler as new faces of this comic book movie.

An Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Short Film, Stranger at the Gate connects as a movie for these times. Against a real-world backdrop of swirling, often over-amplified political and religious extremism, its message of dissipated hatred and communal hopefulness is a welcome one.

Dorothy Emma Arzner, born on January 3, 1897, in San Francisco, grew up in Los Angeles. Hanging out and helping out in her parent’s restaurant, the Hoffman Café in Hollywood, young Dorothy served and observed Hollywood’s elite of her day, mostly silent movie stars such as Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Mack Sennett, and stage legend Sarah Bernhardt.

Foreign language content on streaming platforms has become increasingly popular in America, providing viewers with various options. According to media analytics firm Parrot Analytics, the demand for non-English-language TV shows in the US is rising.

In 1967’s The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s aimless Benjamin Braddock is plied with a piece of one-word career advice: plastics. It’s a quip which has long endured, finding its way onto the American Film Institute’s “100 Years… 100 Movie Quotes” list in 2005.