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“I told you so. But no one wanted to listen to me. NASA’s DART rocket lifted off today! It’s going to do a little BAYHEM in space!” wrote Bay, whose next film is February’s “Ambulance” starring Jake Gyllenhaal, on Instagram. (See the post below.) He also told TheWrap, “Our plan was not far off,” said Bay, nodding to how in “Armageddon,” scientists use a spacecraft as a planetary-scale defense system to stop an (albeit much larger) asteroid from colliding with the Earth....

The series was created, written, and executive-produced by stars Fred Armisen, Tim Heidecker, and John C. Reilly, with “Baskets” co-creator Jonathan Krisel, who also serves as series director. Krisel first began working with Heidecker on the animated series “Tom Goes to the Mayor” as an animator, producer, and senior editor. He also worked as director, writer, co-executive producer, and senior editor on the sketch comedy series “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!...

“We talked about a broken consort — a central core collection of musicians playing in an ideal way more than literally,” said Howard, a nine-time Oscar nominee (seven for score). “But it was the idea of feeling uncertain, fragile, roughly hewn, and then surrounding that with orchestral music. And the way I tried to achieve that was by using more ancient instruments: cello d’amore and viola da gambas, instruments that, in my mind, have a more fragile sound to them, less expression....

That sequence, mind you, is something of an outlier in this elliptical doc, which the director and cinematographer shot over the course of three years on the borders between Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria and Lebanon. Despite the sound of gunfire off in the distance, “Notturno” is less a film about life during wartime than the life that subsequently follows it, as those damaged by the violence try to move forward. As he did with his previous prizewinners “Sacro GRA” and “Fire at Sea,” Rosi constructs this film as a series of handsomely shot vignettes that forgo interviews, voiceover, or context cues in order let the striking, fixed-camera compositions do much of the talking....

There has been some debate about what form the Oscar show will take, whether in-person or in hybrid form like the Emmys. Clearly, the Academy will do what it takes to keep participants safe. Directing Oscar winner Soderbergh (“Traffic”) has earned recent praise, not only for his filmmaking, but for leading the taskforce at the Directors Guild of America that has set COVID safety guidelines for the industry. “The upcoming Oscars is the perfect occasion for innovation and for re-envisioning the possibilities for the awards show,” stated Academy President David Rubin and Academy CEO Dawn Hudson in an official statement....

Getting a boost during 2021 is any film that debuted to real, live audiences at a film festival like Cannes. Writers branch voters often look overseas for their contenders. Auteur Joachim Trier (and writer Eskil Vogt) landed a surprise nomination for Norway’s International Feature Film nominee “The Worst Person in the World,” a coming-of-age drama starring Cannes Best Actress winner Renate Reinsve, which competes against a slate of high-powered Best Picture contenders....

An Academy press release deemed that those who have tested positive for COVID-19 and are within a zero to five-day window from the date of their first positive test are not permitted to attend “under any circumstances.” The news comes after a spike that followed the recent BAFTAs weekend (March 13) and rising cases in the U.K. overall. Oscar nominee and “Belfast” director Kenneth Branagh was among those who tested positive as of a THR report on March 19, as well as actor Ciaran Hinds....