Updated every Friday 12:00 PM
August 14 - August 20

APPLE TV
Apple TV announced that it has picked up "Ascension," a new drama from multi-Oscar Award winner Alfonso Cuarón ("Disclaimer," "Roma," "Gravity") and starring and executive produced by BAFTA TV Award winner and five-time Golden Globe nominee Caitríona Balfe ("Outlander," "Belfast"). The series will be co-showrun by Natalie Erika James ("Apartment 7A," "Relic") and Christian White ("Apartment 7A," "Relic"), and is written by James, White, Alfonso Cuarón and Carlos Cuarón. James will also serve as lead director. The project hails from Apple Studios and is executive produced by Alfonso Cuarón under an overall deal with Apple through his production company Esperanto Filmoj and produced by Anonymous Content...

A cultural tentpole and one of the blockbuster film franchises in the Philippines, "Ang Tanging Ina" gave then-unknown lead star Ai Ai delas Alas her shot at onscreen immortality just as it propelled filmmaker Wenn V. Deramas, years after directing melodramatic soaps and romance movies, to the highest echelons of Filipino comedy. An early-2000s demand for a different type of comedy led to "Ang Tanging Ina," a high-risk and rare champion at the tills that did away with male-centric slapstick comedies and crystallized the political temperament among popular culture at the time. Written by Mel Mendoza-del Rosario, the film eventually became the quintessential example of the modern Filipino family comedy satire. Elevating the careers of Delas Alas and Eugene Domingo as comedic giants, it likewise anticipated the shift of mainstream studios away from the hyper-masculine action and slasher movies of the prior decade. After the eponymous first film debuted in 2003 as then the highest-grossing Filipino film ever made, a distinction it kept until 2006, the franchise went on to produce a television spinoff of the same title (2003-2005). It was followed by two direct movie sequels, namely "Ang Tanging Ina N'yong Lahat" (2008) and "Ang Tanging Ina Mo (Last na 'To!)" (2010), the crossover film "Enteng ng Ina Mo" (2011), and the tangential spinoff "Ang Cute ng Ina Mo!" (2007) — all of which became theatrical hits...

As part of the global distribution and sales company's investment in the creator economy, Filmhub has inked a partnership with talent management company UnderCurrent. Filmhub's goal with the partnership is to help digital creators expand their distribution reach — whether that's by licensing their content to VOD platforms or helping them negotiate original film and TV deals — with a special interest in those working in supernatural and true crime spaces. Under the new deal, Filmhub works exclusively with creators repped by UnderCurrent, like Kelsi Davies, who makes paranormal content for her 3.2 million YouTube subscribers; Jimmy Here, who creates reaction-style comedy videos for his nearly 2 million subscribers; and horror documentarian Nexpo, who has nearly 4 million subscribers. So far, Filmhub has launched a FAST channel on Roku for Davies, representing VOD rights for her over 150 hours of content. Davies has also launched her videos on the ad-supported service Tubi, with a six-episode series coming soon that she's directing, producing and editing. Filmhub also aims to help the creators maintain control over their IP. "We're also an interesting shop in that we don't necessarily believe in exclusivity. We're here to allow creators to really own and maintain their rights," d'Escragnolle adds. "Many distributors solely think in terms of, 'We want 20-year exclusive rights and licensing.' That's a very different business model than we think about."...

The Academy Museum has announced three honorees for its sixth annual fundraising gala: John Carpenter, Charlize Theron, and Colman Domingo. The gala is set to take place on Saturday, October 17, with Steven Spielberg, Robert Rodriguez, and Kate Capshaw serving as the event's co-chairs. Carpenter, a legendary genre filmmaker who changed the horror industry forever with "Halloween" and went on to direct hits like "The Thing," "Escape from New York," "They Live," and "Big Trouble in Little China," will receive the Luminary Award. Theron, the Oscar-winning star of "Monster" whose penchant for physical transformations has given her a filmography that includes everything from "Mad Max: Fury Road" to "The Odyssey," will receive the Icon Award. Domingo, the prolific actor with an Emmy win and two Oscar and Tony nominations, is set to receive the Vantage Award. The honorees will also participate in additional programming leading up to the event. Carpenter will host three nights of film screenings in September as part of the museum's new "The Horror Show" exhibition, while Theron will participate in a "Fury Road" Q&A hosted by the museum's Teen Council...

The Roku Channel launched Fairground AI, a 24/7 channel that runs entirely on AI-generated content. You get a nice mix of narrative shorts and commercials, all created for humans by our AI overlords. It's the kind of mind-numbing stuff they forced Alex DeLarge to sit through in A Clockwork Orange, and now you have access to it in your own home.Roku's plans to go global, or, at least, go far East to a market that dwarves America. China's short-form video ecosystem is currently undergoing a massive, AI-driven pivot: Mass Production: More than 95% of the ~128,000 microdramas released in China last quarter were AI. Explosive Viewership: In January, AI-generated short-form dramas captured 38% of the top 100 hits (up from just 7% a year prior), pulling in an astounding 2.55 billion views. Synthetic Superstars: The Tilly Norwoods of China, "Qin Ling Yue" and "Lin Xi Yan" are already set to star in 60+ shorts. Founder & CEO of Fairground Entertainment Colin Petrie-Norris said of the new Roku deal, "Cable and linear TV was the realm of the very well-financed. FAST disrupted that by doing away with retransmission fees and making it easier for smaller digital brands to launch their own 24/7 network. Generative AI offers that same democratization for storytellers." ...

Four films Screened as 1.33 at NYFF was Rose of Nevada, one-man-band filmmaker Mark Jenkin's distinctive mélange of ghost-ship, horror, time-travel, and working-class toil in a Cornish fishing village. It was screened as 1.33 because it was shot retro, in standard 16mm, often with a wind-up Bolex. Also in 1.33 was Lav Diaz's Magellan, with Gael García Bernal as the doomed Portuguese explorer. Magellan was shot with a Panasonic Lumix GH7, which resembles a stills camera. The GH7's Micro Four Thirds sensor has a 1.33 aspect ratio, and Diaz utilized the entire sensor without cropping, a technique called "open gate." at NYFF in September featured the outmoded 1.33:1 aspect ratio. This was the OG motion picture aspect ratio, dating from the earliest 35mm silent films. In the early 1930s, the Academy (AMPAS) ever-so-slightly adjusted the camera aperture to 1.37:1 while making room for a sound track alongside the picture. In practice, there's no discernible difference between 1.33 and 1.37, and screens were always 1.33 only. Nonetheless, Sergei Loznitsa's Two Prosecutors, a grim drama set mostly in a drab Soviet prison during Stalin's Great Purge, adopts a 1.37 ratio, despite being shot with an ARRI Alexa Mini. Loznitsa relies on a static camera, desaturated hues, and murky lighting. Critics laud his choice of frame shape as "claustrophobic," one that "allows little space to breathe." 1.33 isn't natively supported in digital projection. Digital projector imaging chips are either 4096 × 2160 (4K) or 2048 × 1080 (2K) pixels, and their native aspect ratio is always 1.91. To theatrically project 1.33 with a digital projector, black bars are inserted to the right and left of the 1.33 image when the DCP is made. This is called "pillar boxing." With luck a theater's screen has adjustable masking or curtains on the right and left to mask off these added black sections. Yorgos Lanthimos's Bugonia (Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons) was shot on Paramount's 1950's format VistaVision, a 35mm 8-perf format that moves sideways in the camera, akin to a 35mm stills camera. It has an open-gate 1.50:1 aspect ratio, and Lanthimos used the entire 1.50 open-gate VistaVision image for digital "flat" projection with pillar boxing, in contrast to VistaVision's usual role as a film format for non-anamorphic widescreen...