All posts tagged: followup

Sean Baker ‘Anora’ Followup ‘Ti Amo!’ Lands at Warners Specialty Label

Sean Baker ‘Anora’ Followup ‘Ti Amo!’ Lands at Warners Specialty Label

Warner Bros. is getting in the Sean Baker business. The studio has acquired Ti Amo!, Baker’s first feature since becoming a best picture Oscar winner with Anora. It will release the film globally in 2027 and has worldwide rights, excluding France. The acquisition announcement was made at CinemaCon, as part of the reveal that the studio has formed a new specialty label called Clockwork, which will be led by former Neon exec Christian Parkes. “Sean Baker is an artist who embodies everything we believe in at Clockwork, and Ti Amo! will be another gift to Cinema. Plus, his poster game is on point,” said Parkes, who reports to Warners film bosses Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy. Baker write, direct, edit, cast and produce the feature, working with Anora producers Alex Coco and Samantha Quan. Cre Film and Rapt Film are producing with financing by FilmNation Entertainment. No other details of the feature were available, but the film follows Baker’s Oscar success at last year’s Oscars with Anora, where in addition to best picture, he …

Hooked by Asako Yuzuki review – follow-up to global hit Butter | Fiction in translation

Hooked by Asako Yuzuki review – follow-up to global hit Butter | Fiction in translation

Asako Yuzuki’s international bestseller Butter was a taste sensation based on the true story of a Japanese female serial killer and gourmet chef who scammed and poisoned male victims with her culinary offerings. Attempting to get a scoop, a journalist bonds with the convicted prisoner by asking her for recipe tips, and gradually reassesses her own life and values as a result of this peculiar relationship. One review described the book as “the Martha Stewart Show meets The Silence of the Lambs”, but as well as the crime thriller/foodie mashup, a critique of capitalist society and deep-seated misogyny also emerged from the narrative. Yuzuki’s prose style, a mix of the banal and the profound, proved to be catnip for sales. Hooked is the follow-up for English-language readers, though it was written earlier, in 2015, and like the previous novel is translated with crackling verve by Polly Barton. While a more introspective work, its high-wire plot and uneven trajectory make for a relentlessly dizzying experience. Fans of Butter might even view it as a trial run. The book again features …

Lisa McGee on her Derry Girls follow-up: ‘When you’re approaching 40, people just go mad’

Lisa McGee on her Derry Girls follow-up: ‘When you’re approaching 40, people just go mad’

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter After you make a hit like Derry Girls, what then? Lisa McGee’s Channel 4 comedy, which charted the lives of a gang of gobby girls and one wee English fella at a convent school during the Troubles, aired from 2018 to 2022 and became the most-watched series in Northern Ireland since records began. But it travelled, too. Martin Scorsese is among its famous fans – “Those nuns!” he marvelled. It made stars of the cast, from Nicola Coughlan to Siobhan McSweeney. And its final season won three Baftas and an Emmy – with the very last episode, about the Good Friday Agreement, praised for teaching English viewers more about that moment in history than any lesson ever did. Following that, you’d surely be feeling under a bit of pressure when writing your next show. How do you match it? But the …

Small Prophets review: Mackenzie Crook’s superb Detectorists follow-up brings surrealism to the suburbs

Small Prophets review: Mackenzie Crook’s superb Detectorists follow-up brings surrealism to the suburbs

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Trust Mackenzie Crook to do it again. Since his BBC curio Detectorists concluded in 2017 (the 2022 Christmas special notwithstanding), it has achieved cult-like status: a comedy that excavated the profound from the prosaic, transforming muddy fields and failed treasure hunts into something more. Crook’s deft writing made his tale of two men and their metal detectors less a satire about hobbyists than a meditation on male friendship, thwarted dreams, and the quiet devastations of middle age. Expectations are high, then, for Small Prophets. It doesn’t disappoint. Just as Detectorists found poetry in the Suffolk landscape and church halls, so Small Prophets discovers it in retail parks and overgrown suburban gardens – that same mournful melancholy punctured by moments of brilliant, absurdist humour. Even the music, haunting and ethereal, will twang its way into your soul. Pearce Quigley stars as Michael …