Kennedy looked closely at her family when she made HBO’s Oscar-shortlisted “Ethel,” dug into the world of chess in HBO’s “Bobby Fischer Against the World,” and won a Primetime Emmy for “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib.” Her latest film, “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing,” came out of Kennedy’s primal fear of flying. That was one reason why she closely tracked the unfolding news story of two back-to-back airplane crashes that took the lives of a total 346 passengers....

According to local news site HK01 (via The Hollywood Reporter), Kidman flew into Hong Kong on a private jet on August 12 and was exempted from Hong Kong’s then-seven-day hotel quarantine, even for those vaccinated, for Australians. This was in spite of Sydney re-entering lockdown after a spike in Delta variant cases. Beginning Friday (per the Associated Press), those vaccinated travelers arriving from Australia will now have to quarantine in a hotel room for 14 days, since Australia has been reclassified as a medium-risk country....

As The Wall Street Journal reports: “Typically, the pre-title sequences have been throwaway scenes packed with gratuitous chases, violence, and sex. And in every Bond film, save the first (which had no pre-title sequence), they feature 007. However, with the opening scene, Fukunaga bucks tradition in every way: It’s slow-paced, visually arresting, subtitled with dialogue in French, and entirely Bond-free.” Fukunaga’s opening instead focuses on Lea Seydoux’s Madeleine and recounts a tragic encounter from her childhood in which “Safin (Rami Malek), wearing a Japanese Noh mask, kills her mother, pursues Madeleine through the home, and hunts her down on a frozen lake....

Yet the most innovative aspect of the film’s cinematography is the unique way van Hoytema shot night scenes in bright sunlight, resulting in onscreen skies that IndieWire’s David Ehrlich describes as “an eerily magical stretch of air that Crayola might call ‘Day-for-Night Periwinkle.’” “I literally don’t know how he did it. Well, I’m not gonna tell you,” Peele coyly told IndieWire. “In a lot of ways, we stood on the backs of some of the work that he’s done in the past to develop a new technique for night,” he added....

The series also includes films “Mangrove” and “Red, White and Blue” — both of which will also play at NYFF as part of its main slate — along with “Alex Wheatle” and “Education.” Earlier this year, both “Lovers Rock” and “Mangrove” were included as part of Cannes 2020 official selection. The opening night pick “tells a fictional story of young love and music at a blues party in the early 1980s....

Steve Martin plays former ’80s star Charles Haden-Church, best known for playing Detective Brazzos in a TV cop procedural, during “Only Murders in the Building.” Now, the Hulu series released a tongue-in-cheek cartoon music video for Haden-Church’s fictional hit song, “Angel in Flip Flops.” Featured in Episode 4 of the second season, Haden-Church (Martin) explains that he bonded with his ex-girlfriend’s daughter Lucy (Zoe Colletti) while singing the “pitta patta, pitta patta” chorus of his 1989 summer track....

As theatrical exhibition is still impacted by the pandemic this year, today’s announcement reaffirms that “eligibility requirements for the 94th Academy Awards will be consistent with the addendums made for the 93rd Awards season,” which include both those expanded theatrical cities and streaming rules (films that planned for a theatrical release but pivoted to streaming or PVOD remain eligible). While the Academy provided no other new details, today’s announcement also includes a notation that it “intends to expand the qualifying requirements for the 95th Awards....