Oklahoma is rolling out the welcome mat to Hollywood. Early next month, it is set to launch a new film incentive program that’s nearly quadruple the size of its current program. It’s part of a concerted vision by lawmakers and local industry leaders to turn the Sooner State into a production powerhouse through the incentive, workforce development, and infrastructure investment like soundstages. The new program offers film and TV productions up to a 38 percent rebate on money they spend in Oklahoma, with a cap of $30 million annually....

That distinction goes to KD Dávila’s futuristic prison satire “Please Hold,” about a wrongful arrest that takes a young man through a Kafkaesque techno hellscape. Even without the home country advantage, the fact that “Please Hold” is a topical comedy, similar to last year’s winner in the category “Two Distant Strangers,” gives it an edge. Though hardly a guarantee, a few past Oscar winners and nominees appear on the shortlist, weighting their odds slightly....

They’re competing against James Newton Howard’s soaring, elegiac music for Paul Greengrass’s post-Civil War western “News of the World,” starring Tom Hanks. Howard has been nominated eight times, including for “Defiance” and “Michael Clayton.” He’s overdue. Terence Blanchard follows up his first nomination for Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” with his second, for Lee
’s 60s-flashback to Vietnam, “Da 5 Bloods” (Netflix), the film’s only nomination. Also in the running is Emile Mosseri’s BAFTA and CCA-nominated score for Lee Isaac Chung’s ’80s rural Korean-American family drama “Minari” (A24)....

The official “Red Notice” synopsis from Netflix reads: “When an Interpol-issued Red Notice — the highest level warrant to hunt and capture the world’s most wanted — goes out, the FBI’s top profiler John Hartley (Dwayne Johnson) is on the case. His global pursuit finds him smack dab in the middle of a daring heist where he’s forced to partner with the world’s greatest art thief Nolan Booth (Ryan Reynolds) in order to catch the world’s most wanted art thief, ‘The Bishop’ (Gal Gadot)....

Meanwhile, the studio is celebrating the latest milestone for “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” On Monday, it crossed $760 million in domestic gross. That places it as #3 of all-time moneymakers on the “ignore film history and inflation list,” or around #23 among all sound-era domestic releases based on ticket sales (rather than variable prices). Either way: That’s phenomenal. It’s doing 80 percent or more of the business seen by “Avatar,” “The Force Awakens,” and “Avengers: Endgame,” none of which had to contend with a pandemic or a freefall in theater attendance....

“I did my usual thing when I do these adaptations of trying to fix things that I think need fixing in the story and fixing in the science,” Foster said about his approach to writing “The Force Awakens” novelization. “Not so much with the characters, because the characters are fairly well-established in a screenplay. Some things they said to take out, and some things they left alone. Some of the things they said to take out I thought were silly and would really have improved the book....

The characters in Michel Franco’s “Sundown” are on a luxurious Mexican holiday in which they swim in the clear sea and their private infinity pool, take a regal interest in the local singers and cliff divers, and lie flat out on sun loungers on their hotel suite’s terrace while a waiter brings them their morning margaritas. It’s relaxing for them, but absolutely nerve-frazzling for anyone who saw Franco’s last film, “New Order,” a traumatizingly gory drama in which a high-society wedding turned into a bloodbath, and things got more stressful from there....