Culture, style, and media — the stories, sounds, and scenes shaping the conversation.

Just when the victim/villain discourse about sleeper smash “Obsession” was finally beginning to die down, along comes “Everybody Wants to Fuck Me” — another story of a young man’s desires getting violently over-satisfied — to start it all up again. Merging romantic comedy, body h

There are few things as calmingly enjoyable as the modest, closeup spectacle of an expert craftsman at work. Whether the trade is cooking or carpentry, watching them ply their trade with equal parts ease and intense concentration is both gratifyingly instructional and escapist: a

Jimmy Kimmel’s pulled TV interview with James Talarico, the Texan Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, has crossed 5 million views in the 24 hours since it was posted to YouTube. It was revealed during Wednesday night’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” that the interview would no

A court will hold a two-day settlement conference in the Paramount-Warner Bros. antitrust case in late October. The conference is a standard part of civil procedure and does not indicate whether a deal is in the offing. A magistrate judge, Thomas Hixson, has been tasked with over

Alexandra Pechman dipped into her own story for “Magazine,” a coming-of-age tale set in the early 2010s in a New York City print scene on the verge of change from forces it can’t imagine. That could also describe Nora (Lily McInerny, who made waves two years ago at TIFF in “Bonjo

After plenty of behind-the-scenes drama on Paramount+ hit “MobLand,” which saw Tom Hardy almost booted off the series, the cast and creatives reunited for the premiere of Season 2 in London, Thursday night. Leading trio Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren — who play crime couple Conr

Unscripted powerhouse 32 Flavors has made two key executive moves. Variety has learned exclusively that the company has named Michael Beck senior vice president of programming, while Jessica Snavely has been promoted to senior vice president of production and operations. Both wil

Melissa Rivers is returning to the red carpet. Fashion expert and author Rivers — who rose to fame reporting outside awards-shows with her late mother, the comedian Joan Rivers — will be joining Variety co-president and co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh and CNN correspondent Eliz

British writer-director Lakeem Rose, is developing his feature debut, a contemporary adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” with Canadian producers Plato Fountidakis and Paul Rapovski and Hong Kong-based producer and casting director Mike Leeder. In Rose’s

Variety and Chanel’s annual Women in Film dinner was the place to see and be chic at the Toronto Film Festival on Friday night. The hottest invite of the festival gathered prominent women and nonbinary filmmakers, where the legendary fashion house co-hosted an evening to remember

In “The Stunt Driver,” Jay Baruchel reteams with his “Goon” director Michael Dowse and takes on a showy lead part as stunt driver Ken Carter, who’s best remembered for a jump he didn’t make: a proposed mile-long leap over the St. Lawrence River in a rocket-powered car. The five y

Toward the end of Rebel Wilson’s “Girl Group,” a fizzy, gaudy clone of “Pitch Perfect” sculpted from the mentor formula of “Bad News Bears,” the movie spirals into an interminable sequence of pop music performances. The song-and-dance numbers are so awkwardly endless that they ca

Scottish writer-director Tom Nicoll is unveling at Toronto his buzzy debut “Salvation.” It tracks an aspiring online life coach whose attempt to reinvent himself and then sell that transformation to others pulls him in increasingly desperate directions. The psychological and blac

Seven years after “Moving On,” Korean filmmaker Yoon Dan-bi returns with “The World Before,” a coming-of-age film about desire and first love. Speaking with Variety ahead of the film’s Toronto Film Festival Platform world premiere, Yoon discusses how capturing the authenticity of

In “Masc,” director Bertil Nilsson pulls off a nifty trick: He observes an observer. Usually a film’s protagonist has the dominant POV, but here, Robin (Joshua Griffin) is trying to find his personality by observing other men in his orbit. He almost never initiates the action and

“Happily Ever After,” the follow-up feature from Taiwanese director Feng-i Fiona Roan, is bowing in the Toronto Film Festival’s Special Presentations lineup, arriving amid heightened attention following the success of her acclaimed debut, “American Girl.” “American Girl” premiere

Abinash Bikram Shah’s “Elephants in the Fog” has been sold to distributors across 10 territories, Best Friend Forever has revealed, as the Cannes Un Certain Regard Jury Prize winner plays at the Toronto Film Festival with Nepal’s Oscars international feature submission also confi