Latest news with #Left-HandedGirl
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Netflix Takes A Bulk Of The World On Shih-Ching Tsou's Cannes Movie ‘Left-Handed Girl'
EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has acquired most of the global rights to Shih-Ching Tsou's Cannes' Critics Week movie Left-Handed Girl. The movie, produced by and co-written by 4x Anora Oscar winner Sean Baker won the Gan Foundation Award as well as the Prix du Rail d'Or following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. More from Deadline Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears Talks 'Pillion' Acting Debut & "Shocking" NSFW Sex Scene With Alexander Skarsgård: "My Jaw Was On The Floor" Ollie Madden Exiting Film4/Channel 4 To Join Netflix As Director Of UK Film; Farhana Bhula & Gwawr Lloyd Upped At UK Broadcaster Netflix EMEA Chief Puts 'Mr Bates' Debate To Bed: "We Absolutely Would Have Commissioned It In The UK" The Mandarin and Taiwanese language movie follows a single mother and her two daughters who relocate to Taipei to open a night market stall, each of them navigating the challenges of adapting to their new environment while striving to maintain family unity. Janel Tsai stars as the mother, along with Nina Ye and Shih-Yuan Ma as the children. We heard back on the Croisette that Netflix was very excited about acquiring this movie. 'The original story comes from something my grandfather told me when I was young,' Tsou told Deadline's Melanie Goodfellow in our Cannes Studio. 'He told me the left is the devil's hand, do not use it. At the time I was already 'corrected' as I was originally left-handed, so I didn't really understand, but it stayed in my mind for a long, long time.' 'The story was in my heart for so long, and I really, really want to show how the world how beautiful my country is. This is like a love letter to Taiwan,' Tsou said. Deadline Chief Film Critic Pete Hammond exclaimed, 'Shih-Ching shows strong command of storytelling and shifting tones with high dramatics that could careen out of control but never do, instead keeping us on the edge of our seats. Baker's tight editing really comes into play here and proves worthy of Douglas Sirk at his height. Ultimately what holds it all together are the strong performances all around.' Coming out of the fest, Left-Handed Girl stands at 95% fresh with critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Shih-Ching Tsou is a longtime collaborator of Baker's who worked as a producer on his earlier films including Starlet, Tangerine, The Florida Project and Red Rocket. The duo also co-directed a film called Take Out 21 years ago. Both them of co-wrote the movie. Producers are Shih-Ching Tsou, Baker, Mike Goodridge, Jean Labadie and Alice Labadie. Production companies are Left-Handed Girl Film Production, LHG Films LTD, Good Chaos and Le Pacte. Netflix has rights for the majority of the world except for the Baltics, Benelux, Greece, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, France, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Scandinavia, Poland and Taiwan. Best of Deadline 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More Everything We Know About 'Nobody Wants This' Season 2 So Far List Of Hollywood & Media Layoffs From Paramount To Warner Bros Discovery To CNN & More
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Netflix Unveils Premiere Date & First-Look Photo For Rom-Com ‘The Wrong Paris' Starring Miranda Cosgrove & Pierson Fodé
Netflix has unveiled a premiere date for The Wrong Paris, the streamer's new romantic comedy starring Miranda Cosgrove and Pierson Fodé. The film is set to debut on September 12. Netflix also unveiled a first-look photo, which you can view below. More from Deadline Netflix Lands Hot Action Comedy Package Teaming Andy Samberg & Jason Momoa 'The Sandman': Season 2 Bonus Episode To Drop After Series Finale, Episode Titles Revealed Netflix Takes A Bulk Of The World On Shih-Ching Tsou's Cannes Movie 'Left-Handed Girl' In The Wrong Paris, a young woman (Cosgrove) joins a dating show thinking it's in Paris, France, but it's actually in Paris, Texas. She then plots a way to get eliminated until her unexpected feelings for the bachelor (Fodé) complicate her plans. Written by Nicole Henrich and directed by Janeen Damian, the film also stars Madison Pettis, Madeleine Arthur, Frances Fisher, Yvonne Orji, Torrance Coombs, Christin Park, Emilija Baranac, Hannah Stocking, Veronica Long, Naika Toussaint and Ava Bianchi. Brad Krevoy and Michael Damian were the producers. Exec producers included Cosgrove, Galen Fletcher, Janeen Damian, Amanda Phillips, Jimmy Townsend, Vincent Balzano, and Kelly Frazier. Best of Deadline 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More Everything We Know About 'Nobody Wants This' Season 2 So Far List Of Hollywood & Media Layoffs From Paramount To Warner Bros Discovery To CNN & More
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Left-Handed Girl' Review: Producer/Co-Writer Sean Baker's First Post-Oscar Film Follows Taiwanese Family's Secrets & Lies
What do you do after a record-setting haul of four individual Oscars including Best Picture for Anora? For Sean Baker, it is returning to his filmmaking roots and the Cannes Film Festival, where he also took the 2024 Palme d'Or for Anora. In this case he isn't directing, instead leaving that to longtime collaborator Shih-Ching Tsou, who worked as a producer with him on earlier films including Starlet, Tangerine, The Florida Project and Red Rocket. The pair also co-directed a film called Take Out 21 years ago, and it has taken that long for Shih-Ching to take the reins of a second film, co-writing the script for Left-Handed Girl with Baker, who also serves as a producer and sole film editor. It premiered today in Cannes as part of Critics' Week. Set in a bustling Taiwanese night market that also seems like a Melrose Place-style food court, the film is focused almost entirely on its female characters: mother Sho-Fen (Janel Tsai), older teen daughter I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma), and the youngest child I-Jing (an adorable Nina Ye). Yes there are men here, most notably co-worker Johnny (Brando Hiang), who figure into the action, as well as a grandfather who warns left-handed I-Jing to never use what he terms as 'the devil's hand.' This was the most frightening part for me as I am completely left-handed and had to type this review with my right out of fear. More from Deadline Cannes Film Festival 2025 in Photos: Tom Cruise, Robert De Niro, 'Sound Of Falling' & 'Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning' Premieres 'Left-Handed Girl' Clip: Sean Baker Produced & Edited Drama By Collaborator Shih-Ching Tsou Debuts In Cannes 'The Little Sister' Review: Nadia Melliti Makes A Striking Debut In Hafsia Herzi's Seductive Coming-Out Story - Cannes Film Festival RELATED: Full List Of Cannes Palme d'Or Winners Through The Years: Photo Gallery All that aside, the real center of it all is this family of three generations of females, their quest to make it in the city of Taipei after living in the countryside and the well-hidden secrets and lies permeating this clan where everyone seems to be hiding something — except maybe young I-Jing, who is most content to traverse the expansive night market or play with her newfound pet meerkat (animal lovers, beware the fate of this particular cast member). Returning to her own home of Taiwan, filmmaker Shih-Ching is content to create a universally recognizable family unit here with Sho-Fen trying to make it on her own while bringing up the ever-independent I-Ann, who is full of wanderlust and an eye for the boys, while spending much of her time saddled with the responsibility of looking after little sister I-Jing. The film darts back and forth between the stories and struggles of this family who live in a society clearly stressing morals and keeping up proper appearances. The pace is leisurely and atmospheric, and we get to know just who they are. Or so we think, until the film takes a real left-handed turn itself at the 60th birthday celebration of the family matriarch. To put it kindly, all hell breaks loose as those closely-kept secrets start exploding into the open. RELATED: Cannes Film Festival 2025 In Photos: Awards Ceremony, Movie Premieres, Parties & More It is at this point that the character-driven tale moves heavily into melodrama territory — a Taiwanese soap opera, as it were — and it is also here that Shih-Ching shows strong command of storytelling and shifting tones with high dramatics that could careen out of control but never do, instead keeping us on the edge of our seats. Baker's tight editing really comes into play here and proves worthy of Douglas Sirk at his height. Ultimately what holds it all together are the strong performances all around. These fine actresses make it entirely watchable. Producers are Shih-Ching, Baker, Mike Goodridge, Jean Labadie and Alice Labadie. Title: Left-Handed GirlFestival: Cannes (Critics' Week)Sales agent: Le PacteDirector: Shih-Ching TsouScreenwriters: Shih-Ching-Tsou and Sean BakerCast: Janel Tsai, Shih-Yuan Ma, Nina Ye, Brando HuangRunning time: 1 hr 49 min RELATED: Oscars: Every Best Picture Winner Back To The Beginning In 1929 Best of Deadline 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery Where To Watch All The 'Mission: Impossible' Movies: Streamers With Multiple Films In The Franchise Everything We Know About 'My Life With The Walter Boys' Season 2 So Far
National Observer
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- National Observer
MOVIES: The Weeknd parks his stage name and turns to film acting. Plus two other debuts and a classic
The Cannes Film Festival is on and we'll be getting reviews and more reviews about films that won't be here for quite a while. But we'll get a good indication of what will come. Like Left-Handed Girl for instance made by Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou. They first collaborated 20 years ago but this time he's not the director, she is. Baker won big at the Oscars this year, so I'm looking forward to this film. Tom Cruise's latest Mission Impossible is there too. We'll get it here next week. And there's some progress at Cannes. Seven women directors have films in the main competition this year. That number ties one year and beats all the rest in the festival's 78 year history. And for us this week, these are new ... Hurry Up Tomorrow: 3 stars Final Destination Bloodlines: 3 ½ The Unrestricted War: 2 Killer of Sheep: 4 ½ HURRY UP TOMORROW: The Weeknd, real name Abel Tesfaye, is one of the world's top music stars ($75 million in record sales, Grammy awards, etc.) and now a movie star. For his ardent fans, for sure. For people not familiar with his music or his life story, maybe not so much. This film draws on both. There are songs from a new album and a story of a singer losing his voice, an experience he says he has had. Since he co-wrote the story you have to ask how much else is true. As the character he plays (or is) in the film, he is forced to transform, admit past mistakes in how he treated people, especially a woman who we only hear on the telephone saying he ruined her life. She says he never connected. He does connect with a young fan (Jenna Ortega) after making eye contact in a huge concert performance and meeting her when she sneaks backstage. She may be a symbolic figure only, a figment of his need to reform, but she does lecture him and even ties him to a bed until he changes. She may represent the hold he feels the fans have over him, which his manager (Barry Keoghan) discounts. 'They need you,' he says. 'You make them travel at a different level.' The film mulls over the concerns of an artist with a huge following and may be a personal statement by Testfaye. That makes it more than a vanity project, of which it does bear some signs. With its symbolism and dreamy sequences, the film, directed by Trey Edward Shults, has an art-film look and mood. At times also, a slow pace. Not your usual movie about a popular entertainer. Testfaye, now living in Los Angeles as much as Toronto, is pretty convincing as an actor, but then he's playing himself. Ortega is the life of this film. (In theaters) 3 out of 5 FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES: This is predicted to be the biggest movie this weekend and another hit for Warner Brothers, adding to their other current hits Sinners and The Minecraft Movie. Remarkable that, considering that this is the 6 th entry in this series and that the last one came out 14 years ago. But sudden-death movies are back, this one with a more realistic concept than the common slasher movie. There's not one killer. It's death itself. It arrives suddenly when you're least expecting it. A massive memorial collection of flowers at a street corner in Vancouver attests to that by reminding of one recent tragedy there. Ironically the film was also made in Vancouver and directed by two Americans who now live there: Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein. Bloodlines has a double meaning here: not only the grisly visions of the deaths that happen, like that crushed head late in the film, but also the family connections in the story. They help make this film resonate more than usual; you get to care about some of these people. They include a girl having nightmares and needing to find answers from her grandmother. That's Iris (played by Gabrielle Rose, when old, and Brec Bassinger, when as a young woman she was taken to the grand opening of a restaurant high up a space-needle like tower. She had a premonition about a catastrophe and that helped save lives. Death was cheated and years later was intent on getting her, her relatives and everybody else who survived that night. Cue the fatalities that happen one by one, imaginatively staged, often part of a progression of little events, some, as in the original restaurant catastrophe, triggered by a single penny. They're engaging to watch develop, absurd at times and usually played for laughs. That's a large part of the attraction of these films—for some people. Take that as a content advisory. (In many theaters) 3 ½ out of 5. THE UNRESTRICTED WAR: There are bits of actual history woven into this thriller which says it is fiction inspired by actual events. Remember the Chinese executive arrested by Canada on orders of the US? Or the rumors of Chinese interference in a Winnipeg laboratory? And allegations that China created the COVID-19 virus? They're all, for real or by allusion, in this lengthy thriller directed by Yan Ma in Markham and Hamilton Ontario and partially funded by The Epoch Times the China-hating, Falung Gong praising, newspaper. The film has a loathsome view of the Chinese Communist Party and its agents. Deserved maybe, but we haven't seen it this strong in years. As one character says: 'There is no privacy in China when the government is involved, which is pretty well all the time.' Agents in Beijing burst into the lab of a Canadian virologist (Dylan Bruce) and arrest him and his wife. Leaflets and conversations caught on monitors point to these horrors: Chinese labs had messed up creating a new virus and instead of cremating the animals they tested them on, sold them as food. That's an extreme allegation and was covered up to prevent 'unnecessary panic.' Three officials (played by Uni Park, Russell Yuen and Terry Chen) offer the Canadian a way out of his detention. He's to go to his old lab in Winnipeg and bring back a sample of a new virus created there. 'Why waste a good pandemic, right General?' is a line we hear later. You can speculate on what the film is alleging but its logic escapes me. (In theaters) 2 out of 5 KILLER OF SHEEP: This milestone of American filmmaking is back, finally. It was made in 1975 but has hardly been seen outside of film festivals and the Library of Congress which called it a national treasure and "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". A critics' group put it on its 100 Essential Films list. Now it's been restored to modern 4K standards; the sound too, the music rights paid for several recordings heard on the soundtrack and is in theaters interested in motion picture history. Like the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto, the ByTowne in Ottawa and The Cinematheque in Vancouver. Charles Burnett made it in 16-millimeter as a thesis for a film course. Now it's considered a masterpiece. That's largely because it depicts real life in a poor Black neighborhood in Los Angeles with empathy, understanding and compassion. The 'killer' is Stan who works in an abattoir slaughtering sheep. He hates the work, has done it all his life but has nothing. Two buddies try to recruit him for some unspecified crime and when his wife intercedes one justifies like this: 'That's the way Nature is. An animal has its teeth. Man has his fist.' People around him are presented respectfully. A man says he 'ain't poor'. He donates to the Salvation Army. Boys play in the street, occasionally fight. A couple dance to a record. A man holds a teacup to his cheek because it feels like a woman making love. Details add up to a vibrant portrait of a society that back then wasn't given much attention in the movies. It's still an engaging watch, and with a song list from Paul Robeson to Dinah Washington and Elmore James, to hear. 4 ½ out of 5
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
São Paulo's Film Cash Rebate Delivers Early Wins, Sets Stage for 2025 Edition
Brazil's Spcine, the city of São Paulo's film-TV body, is delivering tangible results with its cash rebate program as it prepares for its third edition later this year. Four projects have advanced under the second rebate, including dark medical thriller 'Suture,' created by Fabio Montanari and produced by Boutique Filmes for Amazon Prime Video, which secured R$3 million ($527,000). The series follows Ícaro (Humberto Morais), a debt-ridden doctor and Dr. Mancini (Cláudia Abreu), a top surgeon battling trauma-induced tremors, as they lead a double life performing illegal procedures. More from Variety Brazil's Trailblazing Film-TV Org Spcine Turns 10 'Left-Handed Girl' Review: Sean Baker Collaborator Shih-Ching Tsou's Solo Debut Pulses Like Taipei After Dark Young Italian Filmmakers Come to the Fore at Cannes' Un Certain Regard Other partially funded projects include a Portuguese-language remake of Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis starrer 'Friends with Benefits' (Biônica Filmes, HBO Max), the telenovela 'Scars of Beauty' (Coração da Selva, HBO Max), and 'Maníaco do Parque' (Santa Rita Filmes, Prime Video), a dramatization of Brazil's most infamous serial killer. Launched in 2021, the initiative stood alone in Brazil as the country's first and at the time, only, production incentive. Ary Scapin, Director of economic development and strategic partnerships of Spcine, says 'the cash rebate program marked a groundbreaking step in Brazil's audiovisual industry. Its initial success not only validated the initiative but also inspired similar programs across the country.' The second edition, rebranded in 2022 as the Program for Attracting Film Productions to the City and State of São Paulo, substantially expanded funding to R$40 million ($7.03 million) through a partnership between São Paulo's City Hall and State Government. Module 1, targeting international co-productions or service-based productions, has taken applications since May 25, 2023, with R$25.5 million ($4.5 million) available. Eligible productions can receive between 20% and 30% reimbursement on qualified spend. Projects enhancing sustainability, diversity, and regional filming practices can get higher rebates. The program requires minimum eligible expenditures of R$10 million ($1.8 million) for live-action and R$7 million ($1.2 million) for animation. It also mandates that at least 20% of expenditures occur outside São Paulo's capital, buttressing regional development. Negotiations are ongoing to renew the successful city-state partnership, with a goal of 'expanding its impact and attracting even more large-scale national and international projects.' Scapin says. Spcine CEO Lyara Oliveira is not anticipating major structural changes to Spcine given their understanding of the sector but notes 'Our challenge is to keep up with this momentum, to grow alongside the sector, and to expand and diversify our actions as the industry itself transforms.' While the rebate alone may not be sufficient to spark a nationwide boom, signs point to growing government support, including talk of a R$800 million ($140.6 million) incentive from Brazil's Ministry of Culture. Scapin believes the production sector is still in a recovery phase. 'International productions often have financing cycles that take up to two years and many of the projects previously scouted are still securing funding,' Scapin says. 'Our policies are constantly evolving.' Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
