The festival finds SXSW returning to the festival circuit one year after the gathering was canceled by Austin mayor as the coronavirus pandemic spread throughout the United States. SXSW film head Janet Pierson noted that the program includes many projects made over the past year that reflect the dramatic impact of the pandemic on daily life. “We certainly saw some pandemic films that didn’t work and worried they’d all be that way,” she said....

“To be invited into the DC Extended Universe by Warner Bros., DC Films and Bad Robot is an honor,” Coates wrote in a statement given to Shadow and Act. “I look forward to meaningfully adding to the legacy of America’s most iconic mythic hero.” Coates is a renowned essayist, journalist, and writer of fiction and non-fiction. “Between the World and Me” won the National Book Award in 2015, and he won a MacArthur Genius Grant the same year....

The Bruce Lee discussion as it relates to “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” resurfaced this week during Tarantino’s appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” to promote the just-released “Hollywood” novelization. While the filmmaker can sympathize with Shannon Lee for being upset with the “Hollywood” version of Bruce Lee, Tarantino stands defiant against anyone else who has a problem. “Where I am coming from is I can understand his daughter having a problem with it....

What will inevitably come to be known as the “Ted Lasso” Christmas Special is officially titled “Carol of the Bells” — a tip of the hat to a classic holiday song in what’s sure to be a classic holiday episode. Could it have been any other way? The Apple TV+ series has become a phenomenon of goodwill and positivity, embodying the trademarks of the season without, until now, so much as a snowman....

Frances Cairns (Jumbo) details her intentions in the opening minutes of the series: “I’m going to kill a man.” She doesn’t know who the man is or where he lives, but his days are numbered. Said man ran over her six-year-old son, Marty, in a hit-and-run, leaving Frances to pick up the pieces of a life left utterly broken. Having received a letter that the case has grown cold, Frances confronts the new chief of police for the Isle of Wight, Nigel Strangeways (Billy Howle)....

Tucked inside its dazzling, old-fashioned opening credits, Carlson Young’s confounding “The Blazing World” offers an early glimpse of what’s to come. The film’s writing credits (Young and Pierce Brown) include the notation that the film was “inspired by Margaret Cavendish and other dreams.” Cavendish was a 17th-century English aristocrat, and a trailblazer: She was a scientist, a prolific playwright, and the author of the utopian sci-fi forerunner “The Blazing World.” Young seems to work from more than Cavendish’s singular work, also leaning into her own “dreams” and a hearty dose of surreal cinematic predecessors....

Morrison, who played Boba’s father Jango Fett in the 2002 “Star Wars” film “Attack of the Clones,” was one of the most popular guest actors in “The Mandalorian” Season 2. Morrison will star in the series alongside Ming-Na Wen, who portrayed elite assassin Fennec Shand in both seasons of “The Mandalorian.” Fennec teamed up with Boba during the show’s second season. Though “The Book of Boba Fett” will mark the first “Star Wars” television show to be centered on the bounty hunter, the character has been a key part of a myriad of old “Star Wars” comics, books, and other titles....