Anime series “Spy x Family” will return for a fourth season in 2027. Japanese studio and exhibitor Toho Co., Ltd. is also lining up a new feature film to open in Japan the same year. To mark the news, Toho released a teaser visual for Season 4, the first image from the new season to […]
SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers for “Black Doves” Season 2, now streaming on Netflix. Keira Knightley is back as super spy Helen Webb in Season 2 of “Black Doves,” alongside Ben Whishaw as her troubled colleague Sam Young and Sarah Lancashire as her stoic spymaster Reed. The show, created by Joe Barton, returns […]
As James Bond casting rumors heat up, a couple more A-list actors have entered the mix: Robert Pattinson and Nicholas Hoult were among the stars who screen-tested to play the new 007. Both British actors have the acting pedigree to play the suave spy. They also have a keen awareness of what it takes to […]
The comedian is currently working on a reimagining of the spoof spy franchise for Warner Bros.
Series two of this rambunctiously entertaining espionage drama might be implausible. But it’s a magnetically acted tale of friendship, with moments of genuine poignance Is Helen Webb Britain’s busiest mum? Or Britain’s least busy mum? On the one hand, she’s got two kids, is the wife of the recently promoted prime minister and also a deep cover spy, who spends her days passing information about her husband’s work to a shady intelligence organisation and her nights on covert missions which often involve acts of bloody slaughter. Yet the reason she can do all this is that nobody expects her to do anything at all: she doesn’t have to look after her children (she has an ever-present nanny – who, unbeknown to Helen, is in fact another spy), manage the household, hold down a job or even sleep in her own bed at night. Forget getting away with murder – how does she get away with not doing the school run?! I don’t think you’re meant to spend Black Doves obsessing over Helen’s domestic arrangements, but if you like cataloguing the ways spy dramas stretch credulity to its absolute limits, Joe Barton’s thriller will certainly scratch that itch. This is a show so relentlessly preposterous it’s practically nihilistic: not just because Black Doves’ excessive body count makes life itself look cheap and worthless, but because searching for coherence in its bewildering storylines quickly starts feeling like a waste of time too. Continue reading...
Neve Campbell and Ambika Mod join the sophomore outing of Joe Barton's drama following an undercover agent and an assassin who work for a private intelligence agency in London.
Singer-songwriter Jackson Wang, currently starring in an Apple campaign tied to his new single and music video, “Thank You,” has signed with WME for representation. Wang’s 2019 debut album, “Mirrors,” became the first album by a solo Chinese artist to hit the Billboard Top 200 and over the years he has collaborated with Ciara, Swae […]
Chen Chusheng, the Chinese singer-songwriter who won Hunan TV’s “Singer 2025,” has brought in contemporary artist Li Erpeng to paint 14 original works for the vinyl release of his album “Wasteland of Wonders.” On June 9, the day pre-orders opened, QQ Music awarded the vinyl edition its “Double Diamond” sales certification. “I’ve always felt that […]
Lucy Liu and Eloise Singer are preparing to take “The Pirate Queen: No Safe Waters,” their immersive experience about Chinese pirate leader Cheng Shih, on an international tour next year, Singer tells Variety. The pair have also co-written a graphic novel and are developing a new game. The news comes as Singer, the project’s writer […]
Chinese investors placing high value on AI despite unpopularity of Sanxingdui: Future Past China’s first fully AI-generated movie has flopped, earning just 1.7m yuan (£191,000) at the box office despite costing “tens of millions” to make, according to its producer. But is it any good? The Guardian watched Sanxingdui: Future Past in a virtually empty cinema in Beijing, and found it no worse than plenty of human-centred mindless action flicks. Continue reading...
Chinese director Wang Jiangyong keeps the camera at a distance in his feature debut “The Night That Binds Us,” which world premiered in competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival, observing the uneasy connection between a college student and an older dormitory manager. “I think you have to show the painful parts truthfully for the […]
Chinese artist and filmmaker Sun Xun never expected “Magic Atlas” to become the first animated feature selected for the Tokyo International Film Festival’s competition. “I never thought of ‘Magic Atlas’ as an animated film. To me, it brings together many art forms. Animation is simply the label we use for its form. I’m glad people […]
Chinese painter and filmmaker Qiu Jiongjiong began shaping his new film during the pandemic. With the world suddenly forced to pause, he tells Variety, people felt an urgent desire to return to everyday life and to gather around a table. That idea became the starting point for “Fuxi: Four Tales of Feasting,” which is competing […]
Indonesian filmmaker Ariani Darmawan stepped away from directing for years to raise a family. Her first feature, “Jani Be Good,” which is playing in the Tokyo International Film Festival’s Asian Future competition, turns that experience into a portrait of four women across three generations. “I stopped making films for over 10 years because I was […]
In Qiu Jiongjiong's latest, highly stylized sets and costumes contribute to a strange banquet of storytelling where food plays a key role.
The German actress was 23 when she arrived in Hollywood, where she starred in movies with Peter Sellers, Paul Newman and Bob Hope.
The star takes on her biggest challenge yet: resurrecting her family’s Cantonese restaurant. She discusses the stress of rewatching her sitcom, nearly becoming a meat inspector … and her beloved matriarch, who passed away after filming I’m embarrassed I didn’t bring anything. It’s 10-something in the morning, and I’m meeting Nora Lum, 38 – best known as rapper, comic actor and writer Awkwafina – the morning after the Bafta TV awards. I feel that I should have brought her a pastry pick-me-up. Yet here I am empty-handed. “It could have been Chinese buns,” she playfully suggests. Yes, it could have been. Especially because we are meeting to discuss her new series on Apple TV, Awkwafina: The Unlikely Cook. It sees the star of box-office hits Crazy Rich Asians and Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings travel across the US to learn from a new generation of Asian American chefs, in the hope that she might revive her own family’s long-closed Cantonese restaurant. But there’s one problem: she can’t cook. Continue reading...
Sanrio has apologised after its merchandise line with Japanese TV series Vivant drew criticism.
“Why are you telling these people who gathered to see you in their Chinese-made, American-flag, Hawaiian shirts that they can’t afford to eat at your house?” Jimmy Kimmel asked.
