‘2023 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Live Action’ Review: Brevity Proves a Blessing in a Year of Overlong Oscar Nominees

Manchester United centre-back Raphael Varane has admitted that he expects to finish his playing career at one of three clubs.

SZA was joined by Lizzo and Phoebe Bridgers during the final show of her North American ‘SOS’ arena tour – check out fan-shot footage below.SZA’s ‘SOS’ tour kicked off last month and ended Thursday evening (March 23) with a show at Los Angeles’ Kia Forum.During the gig, Phoebe Bridgers joined SZA onstage to perform their collaborative track ‘Ghost In The Machine’. The pair had previously performed the song together at a show at Madison Square Garden earlier this month.Towards the end of the set, SZA was also joined by Lizzo to perform their remix of the latter’s ‘Special’.

A national food critic has heaped praise on a new Manchester restaurant that she’s described as ‘pointedly bonkers’.

Online shopping often feels like the dream option to avoid the weekend rush in your local supermarket as you battle the queues while doing your weekly big shop. But one of the biggest downfalls to doing to picking out your meals for the following week, and those additional treats, is that if they're not available, you can't choose what to get instead.

Lawrence Okolie fights in Manchester on Saturday night, with a defence of his WBO cruiserweight world title against New Zealand's David Light.

Guy Lodge Film Critic Doug and Kris Tompkins’ dream sounded like a fanciful one. Seduced by a region of ravishing South American wilderness in which they found particular sanctuary, and wishing to protect it from any insensitive or unseemly development, they landed on a solution both simple and absurd-sounding: Why not simply buy as much of it as possible? Backed by the fortune they’d collectively amassed from the clothing industry — Doug as the founder of Esprit and The North Face, Kris as the former CEO of Patagonia — the couple successfully parlayed business tycoon status into an unprecedented scale of eco-activism: As one talking head notes in “Wild Life,” Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s soaring documentary tribute to the Tompkins’ romance and shared conservationist mission, they “could do anything, and chose to do anything.”

Jessica Kiang If for any reason you’ve recently been feeling complacent about global security, international relations and oh, you know, little things like the continued existence of the species, here to herald the end of all that comes Tonje Hessen Schei and Michael Rowley’s “Praying for Armageddon,” a glossy, persuasive and increasingly alarming documentary exposing the influence of the fundamentalist Christian lobby on US politics.  Loosely tracking the investigative sleuthing done by Lee Fang, a reporter at The Intercept, but also taking ample time with parachurch pastors, GOP politicians, Israeli and Palestinian observers and Mission: M25 — an evangelical biker gang who traverse the country on compact-car-sized motorcycles proselytizing and occasionally knighting one another with swords — Schei and co-director/cinematographer Rowley’s film can feel a little scattershot, as it lops off one of the Hydra heads of this malign movement, only for two or three more to sprout in its place.

Succession is coming to an end with its fourth and final season.Created by Jesse Armstrong, the HBO comedy-drama series follows the internal power struggle within the Roy family, the owners of media conglomerate WayStar Royco, amid mounting concerns around the health of patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox).At the end of the show’s third season, Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) tipped off Logan about the Roy siblings’ plan to prevent the company from merging with rival GoJo – creating a sharp dividing line between Logan and his children.Armstrong confirmed season four would be the show’s last in February. “You know, there’s a promise in the title of Succession,” he said.

Jessica Kiang The busy public hospital in the Parisian suburb of Clichy has one psychiatrist on staff. Every day, as doggedly tracked by the nervy handheld camera of Nicolas Peduzzi’s “On the Edge,” he deals with some of the most intractable afflictions the hospital ever sees. His patients, often referred to him after being treated for other ailments, can be mentally ill, traumatized, addicted, depressed, suicidal or any combination thereof. After Claire Simon’s wonderful “Our Body” and Nicolas Philibert’s Golden Bear winner “On the Adamant,” this CPH:DOX award winner is the third major doc in about as many weeks to be set deep in the belly of the French healthcare system, and while it is its own, remarkable achievement, it also merits the comparison. 

St Mirren Women midfielder Jennifer Caldwell believes a winning finale to crown their top-six finish this weekend will prove just how far the club have come.

If there's one time you can eat chocolate guilt free it's Easter and there's no shortage of treats on the supermarket shelves.

With pretty boutiques housed in a patchwork of historic buildings along its bustling High Street, Tarporley is a thriving village community in the heart of Cheshire. It has won countless "best kept village" awards over the years, has a Royal connection, and can now add the accolade of being named one of the Best Places to Live in the UK by The Sunday Times.

Raven Ross has a new man in her life, but fans will have to wait a while before she introduces him to the world. During her Amazon Live! «Workout Essentials» stream, the 30-year-old reality star and Pilates Body by Raven founder was asked about her new relationship following her very public breakup from Sikiru «SK» Alagbada, whom she met on the Netflix series. «Girl, I am traumatized. No, just kidding. Eventually, down the line,» she said of going public with her new guy. «We’re figuring it out. He is such a great human, and I’m literally so obsessed.

Tensions ride high as Netflix’s hit reality dating show returns.

95th Academy Awards are finally here, set to be handed out live on Sunday, March 12. Presented at the end of the awards season, the Oscars will put a definitive stamp on what was considered the best in film from the past year. Among this year's top contenders is, which has the most nominations, 11, going into the ceremony and is up for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and several other major categories.

Variety asked editors Peter Debruge, Clayton Davis, Tim Gray, and Jenelle Riley, to answer four questions about this past year in film and discuss its standout moments. The questions are: 1. How would you rate 2022’s films against previous years? 2. What was the most important issue this year for the industry?  3. What film inspired you the most this year?

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic While Peter Farrelly was off winning Oscars for “Green Book,” younger brother Bobby has been largely absent from feature directing. It’s been nearly a decade since the siblings shared credit — the last time being 2014’s “Dumb and Dumber To.” Now, rather than competing with Peter at the respectability game, Bobby sticks to what he knows with “Champions,” in which Woody Harrelson plays a minor-league basketball coach court-ordered to assist a Special Olympics team for 90 days — just long enough to take the team from bumbling incompetents to national finalists. There are zero surprises in “Champions,” unless you count the not-inconsiderable shock that such a movie exists at all. A remake of 2018 Spanish box office sensation “Campeones,” this awkward (if presumably well-intentioned) comedy might have felt enlightened 25 years ago — back when “Forrest Gump” was an Oscar favorite — but today makes for a patronizing portrayal of people with intellectual disabilities. That’s still better than no portrayal at all, I suppose, and there’s some satisfaction to be had in watching Harrelson’s character overcome his prejudices — reflected by using the “boo-boo word” that starts with “R” — and grow to see these amateur athletes for more than their limitations. But did the film (little more than a “Role Models” redux) have to paint its players as such extreme incompetents from the outset?

He who must not be named? Raven Ross seemingly dissed ex-fiancé Sikiru “SK” Alagbada while discussing her hopes to move forward following their broken engagement.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent While they come from different worlds, “Avatar” director James Cameron and “Murina” helmer Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović bonded over their shared passion for filmmaking during a video interview (see below) hosted by Disney+ ahead of the Independent Spirit Awards. “Murina” was released in the U.S. by Kino Lorber and is is vying for three Spirit Awards — first film, breakthrough performance and cinematography. It world premiered at Cannes where it won the Camera d’Or and went on to win a Gotham award for its young star Gracija Filipović. The film is set on a remote island along Croatia’s Adriatic coast where 17-year-old Julija spends her days diving for eel, longing to free herself from her domineering father, Ante. When a rich and mysterious guest, Javier, comes visiting, he seems to offer a way out for Julija. But Javier’s presence sets off a battle of masculine ego that pushes Ante to humiliate and control his daughter even more.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic On Oscar night, “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” will almost certainly win the Academy Award for feature animation. For many of those following along at home, it will look as though the director of “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Shape of Water” is being rewarded for some kind of secondary passion, as if del Toro had scaled Everest and then set his sights on a smaller peak on which to plant his flag. But that’s not how it happened at all. Way back in Mexico, del Toro started his filmmaking career doing animated shorts: Obsessed with Ray Harryhausen, the amateur future auteur built rudimentary armatures, painstakingly repositioning the puppets one frame at a time. Decades later, once established in Hollywood, del Toro accepted a side gig at DreamWorks Animation, serving as a story consultant on films such as “Megamind” and “Kung Fu Panda 2” as a pretext for teaching himself the trade. With “Pinocchio,” he put those lessons to work on a stop-motion passion project that’s every bit as challenging as his most impressive films.

Daron James Along with its record setting box office numbers and four Oscar nominations, “Avatar: The Way of Water” brings a “Metkayina” wave of impressive next-gen technology that will undeniably set new industry standards in motion capture, animation and underwater photography.  The original facial motion capture rig that also impressively immersed Andy Serkis as Gollum and Caesar, received an overhaul. Not only physically but also in the way the software replicates a performance.  “We looked at how the muscles in the face, eyes and lips are all related and created a neural network that maps all the connections between them,” says senior VFX supervisor Joe Letteri. “This gave us this sympathetic motion in the actor’s face which allowed us to translate the performance to the character and make each frame more believable.”