Heist
Locked Down Masks Up for a Charming Enough Romantic Caper: Review
The Pitch: At the outset of COVID-19 lockdown in London, Linda (Anne Hathaway) and her longtime partner Paxton (Chiwetel Ejiofor) have broken up. Unfortunately, they’re still quarantined together, and they’re both experiencing career crises — hers over a heartless but lucrative corporate job, his over what he sees as dead-end prospects. Their various neuroses come together when they’re presented with an unusual opportunity to pull off a daring heist. COVID: The Movie: Locked Down is the second big-studio-style movie conceived, produced, and released entirely during the pandemic, after last year’s woeful Songbird. Screenwriter Steven Knight wrote it in the fall; director Doug Liman shot it in the fall; and now it’s hitting HBO Max just months after principal photography wrapped. Though some...
US Republican senators confront Netflix over Chinese sci-fi show
Five Republican US senators have confronted Netflix over the streaming giant’s plan to adapt a Chinese sci-fi book trilogy, expressing concern over the original author’s comments about claims of forced labor in Xinjiang. Liu Cixin’s bestselling “The Three-Body Problem,” which tells the story of humanity’s first contact with aliens, is set to become a major Netflix series co-written by the creators of “Game of Thrones.” In a letter to content boss Ted Sarandos, the senators accused Liu of “parroting dangerous [Communist Party] propaganda” and suggested Netflix was “providing a platform to Mr Liu in producing this project.” They highlighted a New Yorker article from last year in which Liu is quoted defending mass internment in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, where activists say more th...
