It is virtually impossible to see Ready Player One, Steven Spielberg’s wild ride into the world of virtual reality, just once. There is so much going on in this movie, both retro and futuristic, that it is hard to compute in one sitting. A pop culture treasure hunt of the past 30 years as seen through the prism of a…

Predictable as white sales and BOGO promos, Broadway made a hard landing after the Christmas-to-New Year’s high-flying, record-breaking stand. The Boss dodged the winter drafts and took the week off; Amy Schumer and co-star Laura Benanti skipped a performance of Meteor Shower due to plague (well, it felt like plague…

Before Bridge of Spies, The BFG and Wolf Hall made him familiar to millions, Oscar winner Mark Rylance was known to theatergoers as an actor who wore the heavy mantle of The Best with considerable grace and wit. In 2008, he accepted his first Tony award with an incomprehensible speech quoting an obscure Minnesota…

Sweetening an already upbeat week on Broadway, Mark Rylance returned, in Farinelli and the King at the Shubert Organization’s Belasco Theatre, where the Claire van Kampen play brought in an admirable $767K for its first seven previews before its December 17 opening. Rylance last was seen in these precincts doing…

Mark Rylance, Naomie Harris, Anna Wintour and Victoria Beckham are among the famous faces that have made Queen Elizabeth II's New Year Honors list, a list which recognizes those who have made a significant contribution to British society, business or culture. Rylance, who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar earlier…

EXCLUSIVE: Mark Rylance, Ciro Guerra and producer Michael Fitzgerald have joined to bring J.M. Coetzee’s award-winning book Waiting For The Barbarians to the big screen. Coetzee, a Nobel Prize winner for literature, adapted the novel which the Nobel Prize committee called “a political thriller in the tradition of…

EXCLUSIVE: The Leone Film Group S.P.A. has come aboard as a production partner on The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, the drama that Steven Spielberg will direct for Amblin Partners with production to begin February in Italy. LFG will distribute the film in Italy, an extension of its deal with the former DreamWorks…

The creative mix for new fantasy film The BFG is about as magical a recipe for movie success as you can have. Take three major brands like Disney, Steven Spielberg and Roald Dahl and you have a kid-friendly flick that should delight families everywhere. In fact, as I say in my video review above, it is rather…

Steven Spielberg’s The BFG got a 4 1/2-minute standing-O at its Cannes premiere Saturday night, and today Disney released a new trailer for the pic. “Please don’t eat me!” begs the little girl of the enormous dude who reached through her bedroom window and snatched her up. “You think because I’m a giant that I’m a…

Steven Spielberg hit Cannes again and it was a return worth celebrating. It has been a very long time coming — 1993 to be exact, when Roald Dahl’s children’s book The BFG was first optioned — but this master director, working again in the fantasy genre, pulls off a movie worth the wait. Saturday night at the Grand…

Three programs scored double wins at tonight’s BAFTA TV Awards in London. Wolf Hall — Playground Entertainment, Company Pictures and BBC Two's adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize winning novels — which led the nominations coming into the evening, took the Drama Series win. Star Mark Rylance, also a BAFTA Film…

Oscar winner Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies) is hoping schedules work out so that he might step into Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One at Warner Bros. The project is set to start principal photography at the end of June. An offer went out last night but negotiations have yet to begin. “There is a willingness to do…