Republic Records Founders Monte and Avery Lipman Named 2026 GRAMMY Salute to Industry Icons Honorees

Posted on December 7, 2025 by admin

Republic Records co-founders Monte Lipman and Avery Lipman will be honored with the GRAMMY Salute to Industry Icons award at the Recording Academy and Clive Davis’ 2026 Pre-GRAMMY Gala. The event is set for Jan. 31, 2026, at the Beverly Hilton, the night before the 2026 GRAMMY Awards.

The Lipman brothers launched Republic Records in 1995 and have since overseen one of the industry’s most dominant modern music operations. Under their leadership, Republic has repeatedly topped Billboard metrics, earning Hot 100 Label of the Year in 11 of the past 12 years and maintaining a high-impact presence across pop, hip-hop, alternative, and emerging genres. The pair were recently appointed to oversee Universal Music Group’s East Coast label group, which includes Island, Def Jam, Mercury, and Republic.

Beyond their commercial track record, the brothers have been active in philanthropy, supporting medical research, arts programs, and community initiatives. They have been recognized by organizations including City of Hope, the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, the T.J. Martell Foundation, and UJA-Federation, among others.

The Pre-GRAMMY Gala remains one of the recording industry’s most closely watched annual events, gathering major artists, executives, and creatives for an evening that honors influential contributors to the business.

“One Battle After Another” Dominates National Board of Review Awards

Posted on December 6, 2025 by admin

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another continued its awards-season surge, leading the 2025 National Board of Review honors with five major wins, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor for Leonardo DiCaprio, Best Supporting Actor for Benicio Del Toro, and Breakthrough Performance for Chase Infiniti.

The strong showing follows the film’s recent victories at both the Gotham Awards and the New York Film Critics Circle, positioning the Warner Bros. title as one of this season’s most formidable contenders.

Rose Byrne was named Best Actress for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, continuing her streak across multiple critics groups. Other notable winners included Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas for Sentimental Value, Ryan Coogler for Sinners (Best Original Screenplay), and Clint Bentley & Greg Kwedar for Train Dreams (Best Adapted Screenplay).

NBR also recognized Arco as Best Animated Feature, It Was Just an Accident as Best International Film, and Cover-Up as Best Documentary. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning earned the group’s stunt artistry honor, while Sinners cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw received Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography.

As usual, the organization released additional top-ten lists spanning films, international selections, documentaries, and independent features, which continue to serve as an early barometer of industry consensus.

The winners will be celebrated at the NBR’s annual gala on January 13, 2026, in New York City.

AFI Announces 2025 Honorees Across Film and Television

Posted on December 5, 2025 by admin

The American Film Institute has unveiled its selections for the 2025 AFI Awards, recognizing ten films and ten television programs that the organization deems the year’s most significant artistic achievements. One additional project, It Was Just an Accident, received the annual Special Award, given to works outside AFI’s standard eligibility.

This year’s film lineup spans major studio releases, acclaimed auteurs, and international literary adaptations, with titles including Avatar: Fire and Ash, Bugonia, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Jay Kelly, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, Sinners, Train Dreams, and Wicked: For Good.

On the television side, the honorees reflect a broad mix of prestige drama, genre storytelling, and serialized world-building. The 2025 selections include Adolescence, Andor, Death by Lightning, The Diplomat, The Lowdown, The Pitt, Pluribus, Severance, The Studio, and Task.

AFI President and CEO Bob Gazzale emphasized the awards’ long-standing focus on celebrating collective achievement rather than competition. Honorees will be recognized at AFI’s annual luncheon on January 9, 2026, a gathering known for bringing filmmakers and television creators together in an informal, industry-wide celebration of the year’s work.

The AFI Awards have become a consistent bellwether for awards-season momentum, often overlapping significantly with later Oscar and Emmy nominations.

Pantone Reveals Cloud Dancer as 2026 Color of the Year

Posted on December 4, 2025 by admin

Cloud Dancer, the Pantone color of the year for 2026.Pantone

Pantone has unveiled Cloud Dancer, a soft white neutral, as its official 2026 Color of the Year, marking a notable shift toward subtlety after years of saturated and expressive tones.

Described by the Pantone Color Institute as a “calming, aerated white” that embodies clarity, serenity, and creative renewal, Cloud Dancer reflects what the organization sees as a cultural move toward quiet focus and intentional simplicity. The shade is positioned as both versatile and expressive, able to harmonize with softened palettes or provide crisp contrast across fashion, interiors, product design, and digital spaces.

Pantone’s annual selection, launched in 1999, draws on global research across design, technology, culture, entertainment, and emerging visual trends. According to the Institute, Cloud Dancer represents a desire for a fresh start in a world negotiating rapid digital acceleration while seeking deeper human connection.

The announcement follows recent picks such as Mocha Mousse (2025), a warm, comforting brown, and Peach Fuzz (2024), a soft peach tone symbolizing gentleness and wellbeing.

As Pantone describes it, Cloud Dancer is a “pared-back, reflective white that encourages balance and creative expression”—a quiet statement hue chosen for a moment defined by transition.

Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend Returning to Theaters in 35mm This December

Posted on November 27, 2025 by admin

Billy Wilder’s landmark 1945 drama The Lost Weekend is set for a limited theatrical return beginning December 26, screening in a 35mm print for one week. The film, which won four Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Ray Milland, and Best Adapted Screenplay, remains one of cinema’s most influential depictions of alcoholism.

Milland stars as Don Birnam, a writer whose battle with addiction spirals over a destructive four-day binge, anchored by Jane Wyman’s performance as the woman determined to pull him back from the edge. Initially met with hesitation from preview audiences unaccustomed to its stark realism, The Lost Weekend later emerged as one of Wilder’s defining achievements and a milestone in Hollywood’s shift toward more unsparing drama.

Screenings will also include the 1947 Warner Bros. “Merrie Melodies” short Slick Hare, which features animated caricatures of 1940s celebrities, including Ray Milland himself, in a playful nod to the film.

A post-screening discussion with Eric Monder, author of Dashing to the End: The Ray Milland Story, and film critic Molly Haskell will be held on opening night, December 26.

Documentary Fantasy Hybrid ‘Adrianne & The Castle’ to Debut on VOD

Posted on November 23, 2025 by admin

A genre-blending portrait of love, grief, and artistic devotion, Adrianne & The Castle will be released on VOD beginning December 5, 2025. Directed by Shannon Walsh, the film follows Illinois artist Alan St-George as he continues work on Havencrest Castle, the elaborate, hand-built home he created with his late wife, Adrianne.

Part documentary and part musical fantasy, the film recounts the couple’s decades-long partnership, their shared creative world, and the ornate, theatrical environment they constructed together. After Adrianne’s passing in 2006, St-George continued their project, transforming the castle into both a memorial and an evolving work of art.

Walsh incorporates staged musical sequences and fantastical imagery alongside archival material and interviews, creating a tone often described as a real-life fairytale. The film explores St-George’s process, his coping with loss, and the way imagination shapes his ongoing tribute.

Adrianne & The Castle will be available on digital platforms starting December 5.

SFFILM Names 2025 Awards Night Honorees

Posted on November 20, 2025 by admin

L to R: Scott Cooper, 20th Century Studios. Benicio Del Toro, Warner Bros. Discovery, Wunmi Mosaku, Warner Bros. Discovery, Kristen Stewart, Emily Soto.

SFFILM has announced the recipients of its 2025 Awards Night honors, recognizing four artists whose work has had a major impact on contemporary cinema. This year’s event will celebrate filmmaker Scott Cooper, actors Benicio Del Toro and Wunmi Mosaku, and actor-filmmaker Kristen Stewart. The ceremony will take place December 8 at San Francisco’s Gateway Pavilion.

Cooper will receive the Irving M. Levin Award for Film Direction, joining past honorees including Denis Villeneuve, Greta Gerwig, and Ryan Coogler. Del Toro will receive the Maria Manetti Shrem Award for Acting, presented by Regina Hall, acknowledging a career that includes an Academy Award, a Cannes Best Actor win, and collaborations with many major directors.

The George Gund III Award for Virtuosity will be presented to Mosaku, whose recent work includes Sinners, Lovecraft Country, and the MCU. Actor Delroy Lindo will present the honor. Stewart will receive the Nion McEvoy & Leslie Berriman Award for Storytelling, recognizing her evolving work as both performer and filmmaker, including her feature directorial debut The Chronology of Water.

Proceeds from Awards Night support SFFILM’s year-round programming and artist development initiatives.

Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces Returns in Newly Restored 4K Edition

Posted on November 18, 2025 by admin

Film Forum will present a new 4K restoration of Bob Rafelson’s landmark drama Five Easy Pieces from December 19 to 25. Released in 1970, the film is considered a defining work of the New Hollywood era and features one of Jack Nicholson’s most celebrated early performances.

Nicholson stars as Bobby Dupea, a former piano prodigy turned oil-rig worker drifting through a life he can’t fully commit to. The film follows his uneasy relationships, including his volatile dynamic with girlfriend Rayette (Karen Black), encounters with fellow travelers on the road, and a return to his estranged family for a final attempt at reconciliation. Its blend of working-class realism, counterculture disillusionment, and character driven storytelling helped cement the film’s reputation as a touchstone of American independent cinema.

Shot by cinematographer László Kovács, the film was written by Carole Eastman, under the pseudonym Adrien Joyce, from sketches developed with Rafelson. Five Easy Pieces went on to earn four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actress.

The restoration offers audiences a rare chance to revisit the film on the big screen more than fifty years after its release.

Award-Winning Animated Documentary Endless Cookie Opens in NY and LA Theaters December 5

Posted on November 13, 2025 by admin

The acclaimed animated documentary Endless Cookie, created over eight years by brothers Seth and Peter Scriver, arrives in New York and Los Angeles theaters on December 5 from Obscured Releasing.

The film is a vivid, surreal portrait of the Scriver family, blending autobiography, memory, and playful imagination. Through colorful, shifting animation, the brothers revisit their upbringing in Toronto’s Kensington Market and Peter’s current life in a remote First Nations community in Northern Manitoba. Their stories overlap with family recollections, turning the film into both a family chronicle and a meditation on creativity.

Seth is a Toronto-based artist and animator known for the TIFF-winning feature Asphalt Watches. Peter is a First Nations carver, poet, mechanic, and storyteller whose real-life heroism in rescuing a neighbor from a house fire underscores the film’s themes of resilience and connection.

Endless Cookie has earned major honors worldwide, including the Golden Alexander at Thessaloniki, the Contrechamp Jury Award at Annecy, the Rogers Audience Award at Hot Docs 2025, and awards or mentions from Sitges, Dok Leipzig, Guadalajara, and Calgary Underground Film Festival.

Emmy-Winning Filmmaker Nick Davis Explores Acts of Courage in Documentary “This Ordinary Thing”

Posted on November 7, 2025 by admin

Emmy-winning filmmaker Nick Davis brings together an extraordinary cast to tell a story of courage and compassion in his new documentary This Ordinary Thing, opening December 5 at Cinema Village in New York City, with a wider theatrical and VOD release to follow.

The film revisits the real stories of non-Jewish individuals who risked their lives to save Jewish people across Europe during the Holocaust. Blending archival footage with readings performed by some of the world’s most celebrated actors, the documentary illuminates acts of quiet heroism from those who never considered themselves heroes at all.

The ensemble cast includes Helen Mirren, F. Murray Abraham, Jeremy Irons, Ellen Burstyn, Carrie Coon, Stephen Fry, and more than thirty others, collectively representing dozens of Oscars, Emmys, and Tonys. Each voice performs excerpts from original testimonies that reveal moments of moral clarity amid overwhelming fear.

This Ordinary Thing poses a question that still resonates today: What would you have done? With music composed by Tony Award winner Adam Guettel, the film underscores the power of empathy and the capacity for good in the darkest of times.

Directed by Nick Davis (You Had to Be There) and executive produced by Albert M. Tapper, the film joins a growing body of contemporary Holocaust documentaries focused on individual moral choices and human connection.