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Jeevan Chaudhary, brought to tender life by Himesh Patel, is a man of inaction who’s constantly pushed into action. When we first meet the bearded Chicagoan in “Station Eleven,” he’s at a staged production of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” when the lead actor (Gael García Bernal) collapses and only Jeevan can see that he’s no longer performing. After the play is canceled, he encounters a young actress, Kirsten (Matilda Lawler), who needs help getting home....

But “damn” is a relatively mild entry — in its current usage — that shows not just the full spectrum of how we view explicit language now, but how much it’s changed over many centuries. “It’s really the story of how something goes from being the most offensive thing you can possibly say, this biblical understanding of you literally damning someone to hell, to being now fairly benign,” showrunner Bellamie Blackstone said....

“For me it was a dream job because I had grown up loving the film industry and had been fascinated by it,” Ferguson said, who collaborated with art director Mark Robert Taylor and set decorator Melissa Licht. “So, with some of these locations, like the El Cabrillo [apartment complex], built by Cecil B. DeMille for out-of-state actors who came to work for him, I couldn’t help but feel extra special as we were making the show....

The “Game of Thrones” prequel series launched to 9.986 million (you can call it 10 million) multiplatform viewers on Sunday, a significant increase from the O.G. show’s own start. Of course, “GoT” debuted more than a decade ago to very little built-in fanfare — and in a much different television-viewership environment — as only the fans of George R.R. Martin’s books really even knew the material ahead of launch. That would soon change, and “Game of Thrones” concluded as HBO’s most-watched show ever....

Based on Suzanne Collins’ novel “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” the prequel film will reveal the origin story behind the world of viral “The Hunger Games” series, which starred Jennifer Lawrence, Liam Hemsworth, and Josh Hutcherson in a love triangle at the root of the post-apocalyptic life-or-death tournament comprised of teen tributes. Director Francis Lawrence returns to the franchise to helm “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” introducing a whole new crop of tributes....

It was a key moment in the series that the star/creator had fully fleshed out with her costume designer Lynsey Moore. “In her mind, she needs to go back to who she was,” said Moore, when she was on the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast with director Sam Miller. “So she puts back on the [pink] wig from before, she puts on the same coat that we all know, and said, ‘This must be the answer, this is the thing I must do for my recovery....

In this odd and elongated award season, any movie backed by a distributor willing to support an awards campaign will get the benefit of additional attention. (Adding to the weirdness: For the first time, the Apple TV-accessible, pay-for-play Academy screening portal accepts Best Picture submissions. Pay $12,500 and you get a slot, much to the chagrin of some Academy members who don’t appreciate trawling through uncurated indies.) Netflix has an awards slate larger than any major studio, which it can roll out in limited theatrical release ahead of streaming....