Movies

Julia Roberts to receive George Eastman Award for movie work. Actress Julia Roberts will be this year's recipient of the George Eastman Award, given to honor contributions to the art of cinema. The George Eastman Museum in Rochester says it will honor the "Pretty Woman" and "Steel Magnolias" actress on May 2. Past recipients include Lauren Bacall, Charlie Chaplin, Gary Cooper and Meryl Streep. Museum director Bruce Barnes cites the breadth of Roberts' career and roles over the past 30 years. She has earned a best actress Academy Award and three Golden Globes, along with more than a dozen other nominations. The museum says it established the George Eastman Award in 1955 as the first retrospective award to honor film work of enduring artistic value. Tickets for the May ceremony go on sale March 18. (PageSix)

'Mrs. Maisel' star Marin Hinkle confirms return to 'Jumanji' sequel. Marin Hinkle will appear in the forthcoming "Jumanji" sequel, reappearing as Spencer's (actor Alex Wolff's) mom. "I will be back! Is that what the Terminator said?" she joked to Page Six on Sunday night at the Writers Guild Awards. "If you got popcorn you missed me [in the first movie], but this time around I think you can get popcorn and candy and a soda and hopefully you won't miss me." Hinkle, 52, who currently stars as Midge Maisel's mother on Amazon's hit series, "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," gushed about working with The Rock, Jack Black and Kevin Hart. "It was such a joy," she said. "When I met those big stars. They are so funny. That Jack Black ... to die for. He's so funny." She added, "I loved it, and I loved working on it. I look forward to it." Danny DeVito and Awkwafina were previously announced as add-ons to the cast for the sequel, which started production last week. The original cast from The Rock's "Jumanji," including Nick Jonas, is also slated to return. Plot details for the film have been sparse. Hinkle's "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" won best comedy series at the award show, where star Tony Shalhoub also told us how blessed he feels to be part of the series after an Emmy-winning run on "Monk," which ended nearly 10 years ago. "I feel like the luckiest person," Shalhoub, 65, said. "I feel like I am having a whole second career, third, fourth career." "Monk" ended in December 2009, and since then Shalhoub confessed to feeling like he was riding a "rollercoaster." "It's always such a rollercoaster," he continued. "There are times when you feel like things aren't working and you're just in a slump and kind of over, and something like this comes along if you're very, very, lucky and you just sort of have this resurgence." (PageSix)

Marvel's Jessica Jones, Punisher canceled at Netflix. That's it for the Marvel-Netflix universe. The streaming giant has canceled The Punisher after two seasons as well as Jessica Jones ahead of its third season, which is still set to air, EW has confirmed. The double cancellation rounds out Netflix's purge of Marvel content, which began in October with the axing of Iron Fist, then Luke Cage (both after two seasons), and finally Daredevil (after three seasons) in November. "Marvel's The Punisher will not return for a third season on Netflix," the streamer said in a statement. "Showrunner Steve Lightfoot, the terrific crew, and exceptional cast including star Jon Bernthal, delivered an acclaimed and compelling series for fans, and we are proud to showcase their work on Netflix for years to come. In addition, in reviewing our Marvel programming, we have decided that the upcoming third season will also be the final season for Marvel's Jessica Jones. We are grateful to showrunner Melissa Rosenberg, star Krysten Ritter, and the entire cast and crew, for three incredible seasons of this groundbreaking series, which was recognized by the Peabody Awards among many others. We are grateful to Marvel for five years of our fruitful partnership and thank the passionate fans who have followed these series from the beginning." Marvel TV head Jeph Loeb also released a letter to fans, thanking them for tuning in to the series, while hinting that the characters could always appear again elsewhere. "Our Network partner may have decided they no longer want to continue telling the tales of these great characters... but you know Marvel better than that," he wrote. "As Matthew Murdock's Dad once said, 'The measure of a man is not how he gets knocked to the mat, it's how he gets back up.' To be continued... !" The library of Netflix-Marvel content began with four standalone character-centric series set in New York: Daredevil, about the blind lawyer-turned-vigilante played by Charlie Cox; Jessica Jones, about the super-powered private investigator starring Krysten Ritter; Luke Cage, about the bulletproof hero of Harlem starring Mike Colter; and Iron Fist, about the billionaire-turned-mystical-martial-arts-expert played by Finn Jones. The Punisher starring Jon Bernthal as the trigger-happy Marine Corps veteran spun off of the second season of Daredevil, while the original quartet teamed up in the miniseries The Defenders, then dispersed for further seasons of their individual shows. And though the project had been popular with fans -- Daredevil's ending particularly shocked viewers -- the decision not to air subsequent seasons on Netflix is unsurprising: Disney's own streaming service, Disney+, is set to launch this year and will feature new Marvel shows, and Marvel TV just inked a new partnership with Hulu that will include four standalone animated series culminating in a crossover. (Sound familiar?) Still, the end of the Marvel-Netflix universe hasn't gone unnoticed by invested fans -- some have begun a campaign to save Daredevil -- as well as the cast and creators behind the various series. And Cox, who helmed the flagship series Daredevil, expressed disappointment in the cancellation as well. "A lot of us really expected to keep going, and I certainly did," Cox told EW in December of saying goodbye to Matt Murdock. "The truth is, I felt like we had a lot of stories to tell, and although I understand [the cancellation], I'm very saddened by that." (Entertainment Weekly)

Berlin: 'God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya' Wins German Film Guild, Ecumenical Jury Prizes. A woman defies patriarchal society to take part in a men-only religious ceremony in the drama from Macedonian writer-director Teona Strugar Mitevska. God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya, the fifth feature from Macedonian writer-director Teona Strugar Mitevska (How I Killed a Saint) has won two of the main independent juries prizes at the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival, scooping best film awards from both the Ecumenical jury and the jury for the German Film Guild. The feature, inspired by a real-life incident, follows a woman who defies her hometown's patriarchal traditions to take part in a traditionally men's only Epiphany Day ceremony. The Ecumenical jury praised the film for it "daring portrayal of the transformation of a disempowered young woman into an outspoken defender of women's rights." The Ecumenical jury awarded Rodd Rathjen's Buoyancy, a brutal yet realistic depiction of the situation for Cambodian forced laborers, its top prize for a film screening in Berlin's Panorama section. A special mention went to Hassan Fazili's documentary Midnight Traveler, which charts the exodus of the director and his family from Afghanistan to Europe, captured on mobile phones. Nikolaus Geyrhalter's Earth, a look at human-made natural devastation, told through images of seven locations, including an open-cast mine in Hungary, the Canadian tar sands and a German salt mine used to store radioactive waste, took the Ecumenical prize for best film in Berlin's Forum section. Another Forum documentary -- Heimat Is a Space in Time -- picked up the Caligari Film Prize from the art house cinemas association CICAE. In the film, director Thomas Heise uses documents from his personal archive, including letters, photographs and diary entries, to follow the story of four generations of his family from Vienna to East Berlin. Other independent jury awards handed out this year included the Peace Film Prize for Eliza Capai's Your Turn, a look at disenfranchised and disenchanted youth in Brazil which also won the Amnesty International film award, presented by the German branch of Amnesty International. The Heiner Carow Prize for the promotion of German cinematic arts went to the Annekatrin Hendel's documentary Beauty and Decay, a portrait of Sven Marquardt -- a legendary bouncer at Berlin techno club Berghain and an acclaimed art photographer. System Crasher, Nora Fingscheidt's debut drama, about an out-of-control nine-year-old, which won the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize at the official Berlin awards ceremony Saturday night, also picked up the best film honor from readers of Berlin daily newspaper the Berliner Morgenpost. Readers of the competitor, Berlin's Tagesspiegel newspaper, picked Marius Olteanu's Romanian drama Monsters, a brutal look at the collapse of a relationship over 24 hours, as its favorite film in Berlin's Forum section. (Hollywood Reporter)

Berlin: Hikari's '37 Seconds' Wins Panorama Audience Award. The story of the sexual and creative awakening of a wheelchair-bound woman with cerebral palsy won over ordinary film fans in Berlin. First-time Japanese director Hikari's 37 Seconds, an honest and unflinching look at disability, has won the audience award for best movie in the Berlin film festival's Panorama section. For her debut feature, Hikari chose the challenging story of exploring the sexual awakening of a woman with cerebral palsy. Disabled first-time actress Mei Kayama stars, and shines, as Yuma, a wheelchair-bound woman who struggles to break free from a smothering mother, and a childhood friend turned exploitative Internet star, in the pursuit of her dream of becoming a manga artist. The title refers to the length of time Yuma was unable to breathe immediately after her birth, leading to her developmental difficulties. The Panorama Audience Awards are voted on by some 500,000 film fans who buy a ticket to attend a screening at the Berlin festival. Second place this year went to Miroslav Terzic's drama Stitches, about Serbia's illegal adoption market, which earlier won the art house cinema association's Europa Cinemas Label Prize. Best documentary went to Talking About Trees, director Suhaib Gasmelbari's chronicle of the demise of Sudanese cinema and the group of retired directors trying to revive their country's love of film. Hassan Fazili's Midnight Traveler, which documents the director's flight -- along with his wife and two children -- from Afghanistan to Europe, all shot on mobile phones, took second prize in the documentary section. (Hollywood Reporter)

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