Industry

The poster for director Jean Renoir’s 1946 film Diary of a Chambermaid shows a large photo of Paulette Goddard wearing a (very short) maid’s uniform and a knowing smile, holding up a key and resting her arm on a very large book (the diary) against a bright yellow background. Elsewhere on the poster are pictures of her embracing three different men.

Celebrating Cinco de Mayo, a holiday to commemorate Mexican culture and heritage, is synonymous with the term, Tequila time!  And if you’re looking to spend the day toasting with some of Mexico’s finest, the choices are endless, especially with an ever-increasing array of new brands on offer from your favorite celebrity, some of whom include Michael Jordan, Carlos Santana, Kendall Jenner, Rita Ora, and Nick Jonas.   The gold standard, Casamigos, was founded by George Clooney and friend entrepreneur Rande Gerber and launched in 2013.

 Welcome to the Golden Globes Around the World podcast. This week’s episode is a colorful CinemaCon wrap-up from HFPA members Brent Simon, David Caspi, and Earl Gibson III.

A colossal, odd-shaped spaceship crash landed in the Haeundaegu-District of Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city, and nobody cleaned up the mountain of debris. That could be the first impression a visitor has at the sight of a remarkable building.

At first glance there’s nothing in common between Godzilla, that monstrous lizard terrorizing Tokyo, and the delicate artistry displayed in every Bollywood extravaganza. Yet, those startling creations come from one and same place, Asia, the vast land that keeps giving the world some of the most stirring and inventive moving images ever shown on the big screen.

Asian actors have always been a part of the Hollywood landscape, and with the recent emphasis on increasing diversity both in front of and behind the camera, it has only helped them to push the dial forward into mainstream roles. Now, leading men such as Malaysian-British Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians, Snake Eyes:  GI Joe Origins), Chinese-Canadian Simu Liu (Shang-Chi, Legend of the Ten Rings), Taiwanese Chang Chen (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Dune), Chinese-British Lewis Tan (Deadpool, Mortal Kombat), and Chinese-American Daniel Wu (Reminiscence), the idea of an Asian A-lister is no longer an anomaly in Hollywood.

“You may not be able to travel to Tatooine,” reads a comforting announcement currently circulating planet Earth. The Force may lead you instead to the Star Wars Celebration held at the Convention Center in Anaheim, CA, from May 26 to 29, 2022: “Star Wars Celebration,” according to the promise of the ad, “is truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience where memories are made – all in the setting of the ever-evolving Star Wars universe.

Apur Sansar (The World of Apu) concludes the Apu Trilogy, director Satyajit Ray’s magnum opus. The three Bengali language films, based on the books by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, tell the coming of age story of Apu – Pather Panchali (1955, Song of the Road) is about Apu’s childhood growing up in the village of Boral in rural Bengal; in Aparajito (1956, The Unvanquished) the story moves to his adolescence in the holy city of Benares; and Apur Sansar concludes the story in Calcutta with Apu facing the challenges of adulthood.

Ang Lee was born in Taiwan in 1954, in Pingtung, a southern agricultural region. He was educated at the National Taiwan University of Arts, the best high school in Taiwan where his father was the principal.

Haruki Murakami is a best-selling author, short-listed for the Nobel Prize in Literature, regularly featured in The New Yorker, the darling of more book clubs in the West than in his native Japan. Collector of jazz records, T-shirts, and, as a runner, marathon miles.