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The Janus-headed The Facts of Murder looks back to the earlier neorealist docudramas of director, co-writer, and star Pietro Germi, while also presaging the sharply observed satirical outlook of films like Divorce Italian Style and Seduced and Abandoned. In the film, the comedic elements are mostly limited to the broad, almost caricatural handling of bumbling secondary characters. The primary storyline, involving an investigation into two ostensibly related crimes, is handled more like a police procedural along the lines of Jules Dassin’s The Naked City, albeit without that film’s authoritative narration.

The Facts of Murder’s central location is an apartment block. Quickly sketching in a number of characters and their relationships in the aftermath of the opening burglary, the film codes the victim, Commendatore Anzaloni (Ildebrando Santafe), as gay, and it’s suggested that the criminal might’ve been one of his pickups. But the focus of...

Director Cecilia Peck is no stranger to competing docuseries on the same topic. Her last project, Seduced: Inside the Nxivm Cult, came on the heels of The Vow, HBO's own docuseries about the group and its disgraced leader Keith Raniere. At the time, there was much discussion about which project was better, with the general consensus being that Seduced, though less discussed because of its home on Starz and later release (it premiered the night of The Vow's Season 1 finale), offered a more focused look at the cult's insidious practices and a more reliable narrator in victim India Oxenberg.

Every now and then a subject comes along that seemed compelling enough to the right decision-makers to somehow become the focus of multiple projects. Seeing the competition on the horizon, producers and distributors press their pedal to the metal instead of ceding ground. This is how we end up with two documentaries about the infamous Fyre music festival (Netflix’s Fyreand Hulu’s Fyre Fraud). It’s why the market tries to bear two limited series about Texas ax slayer Candy Montgomery (HBO’s Love and Death and Hulu’s Candy). And now,...

The tonal diversity within the science fiction genre is what has allowed it to stand the test of time. The term "sci-fi" is a broad one. You may first think of space adventures like the "Star Wars," "Star Trek," "Alien," or "Battlestar Galactica" franchises. However, there's also a subsection of sci-fi movies that are slower and more romantic such as "Her," "About Time," and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." You can find sci-fi fantasy films, sci-fi Westerns, sci-fi comedies, and even sci-fi musicals.

The genre itself encourages experimentation, particularly from actors who choose to add their own perspectives to a film. Not every sci-fi film has to be as grim and emotional as "Interstellar" or "2001: A Space Odyssey." It's always admirable when an actor in a science fiction film truly commits to the absurdity of the material.

Even if they're afraid that they might look silly, these actors...

Documentarians Cecilia Peck and Inbal B. Lessner (“Seduced: Inside the Nxivm Cult”) and Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (“Love Fraud”) not only share similar shooting philosophies, in focusing on vérité, but they are also passionate about centering their projects on female survivors’ stories.

The four-part Starz series “Seduced” explores the connection between a few women, including India Oxenberg, who escaped the clutches of Nxivm and its more dangerous subsets Jness and Dos, while the four-part “Love Fraud” for Showtime follows a group of women (including bounty hunter Carla Campbell) as they go after the con man who stole their hearts and a lot of their money.

These four powerhouses came together to talk about their experiences making these two Emmy contending series, as well as the sense of healing and justice they wanted for their subjects.

There is often a debate over how much to say a criminal’s name...

In the narrative world, sequels are all the rage for films and even “limited” series if the first installment is wildly successful, but seldom do you see follow-ups for documentaries. But all six filmmakers at Gold Derby’s Meet the Experts: Documentary panel — Samantha Stark (“The New York Times Presents: Framing Britney Spears”), J. Clay Tweel (“Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults”), Cecilia Peck and Inbal B. Lessner (“Seduced: Inside the Nxivm Cult”), Tom Beard (“The Year Earth Changed”) and Jeff Orlowski (“The Social Dilemma”) — are definitely not opposed to sequels to their films, some of which cover ongoing stories.

Click on each name above to watch that person’s individual panel interview. Watch our full panel above to hear everyone’s answers and more.

“With our film it feels like it just cracked us open,” Stark says of “Framing Britney Spears,” which spotlights the 13-year conservatorship the pop icon...

Nxivm was presented as a self-help group, boasting such enticing but vaguely named seminars as Executive Success Programs (Esp), but the reality was that it was actually a sex cult that targeted young women, masterminded by founder Keith Raniere. And Cecilia Peck, director and co-executive producer of “Seduced: Inside the Nxivm Cult,” was one of the many women targeted for recruitment.

“Inbal [B. Lessner, lead editor and co-executive producer of the series] and I had an intern from a former project who was a college graduate and extremely intelligent and motivated. We had lost touch with her but in 2013 and ’14, I started receiving emails inviting me first to a women’s group and becoming more and more persistent in telling me I should come and it would change my life,” Peck shares at Gold Derby’s Meet the Experts: Documentary panel. “And I never ended up attending any of the events, but when she emerged from Nxivm, she called and said,...

Amazon Prime just won a couple of Oscars for their film “Sound of Metal,” and now the streaming service is jumping right into Emmy season with “Beyond the Screen” virtual events and a “Prime Video Presents” podcast to promote their slate of programs from May 1 through June 10. Their events can be found on the Emmys FYC calendar.

Among the programs being promoted by Amazon this season include the sci-fi dramas “The Boys” and “The Expanse”; the Barry Jenkins limited series “The Underground Railroad”; the telefilms “Uncle Frank,” “Yearly Departed,” and “Sylvie’s Love”; the documentary “All In: The Fight for Democracy“; the anthologies “Solos” and “Them”; and the theatrical special “What the Constitution Means to Me.”

Seersvp now for May 10: TV documentary directors for ‘Framing Britney Spears,’ ‘Heaven’s Gate,’ ‘High on the Hog,’ ‘Seduced,’ ‘The Year Earth Changed’ join Gold Derby’s Meet the Experts series

“Beyond the Screen” kicked...

In describing how Nxivm operated, ‘Seduced: Inside the Nxivm Cult” showrunners Cecilia Peck and Inbal Lessner explain that it really is on the same level as being in a physically or emotionally abusive relationship. “I think so many people have been in a coercive relationship that’s hard to get out of. There’s really no difference between a domestic abuse relationship, where you just feel so broken down and you feel there’s nowhere to go,” Peck explains. She hopes that this documentary can help viewers understand how people can become involved with harmful groups like Nxivm. “That’s what these women were in and especially someone like India [Oxenburg], who went in at 19 and was broken down by them for seven years. It’s very hard to imagine that you can have another life.”

“Seduced” is a four-part docuseries, currently available on Starz, that explores the group known as Nxivm.

In the final episode of Starz’s documentary “Seduced: Inside the Nxivm Cult,” there’s a discussion about how cult founder Keith Raniere — sentenced this week to 120 years in prison — specifically preyed on smart, intelligent women of influence. Cecilia Peck, director and showrunner of “Seduced,” might have been one of those women. “I had a personal experience with Nxivm,” Peck told IndieWire. “Someone who I had worked with on a previous project actually targeted me for recruitment. [She] emailed me over the course of about a year and a half about an incredible women’s group that she was a part of; she told me it would change my life and, eventually, she wanted me to meet Allison Mack.”

Mack, the former “Smallville” actress, was one of Raniere’s most devout acolytes, and the women’s group was Dos, a subsidiary of Nxivm revealed in 2017 to be branding and trafficking women as sex slaves.

Image Source: YouTube user Entertainment Tonight

Similar to HBO's The Vow, Starz's latest docuseries, Seduced: Inside the Nxivm Cult, sheds light on the disturbing world of Nxivm and its founder Keith Raniere through the eyes of former member India Oxenberg. However, Oxenberg wasn't personally involved with The Vow, like she is with Seduced, and the reason for that is simply because she just wasn't ready to tell her story. The Vow first premiered on Aug. 23, whereas, Seduced just debuted it's first episode on Oct. 18.

"For a long time, I just wasn't ready to speak out. I needed to take care of myself and prioritize my own healing and recovery and I was kind of turned off by the media, to be honest," Oxenberg recently said in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. "I actually got introduced to the producers and directors on Seduced, and they explained to me that they...

On the October 23, 2020 episode of /Film Daily, /Film editor-in-chief Peter Sciretta is joined by /Film managing editor Jacob Hall, weekend editor Brad Oman, senior writer Ben Pearson and writers Hoai-Tran Bui and Chris Evangelista to discuss what they’ve been up to at the Water Cooler. At The Water Cooler: What we’ve been Doing: […]

The post Water Cooler: Borat, Mulan, Seduced, Wind of Change, Les Diaboliques, Wolf, Friends, The Vow, Hades appeared first on /Film.

For seven years, India Oxenberg was the frog slowly boiling in the pot of water that was so-called self-empowerment group Nxivm. For about three years she was a supporting character in stories told by everyone from directors Karim Amer and Jehan Noujaim to her own mother, Catherine Oxenberg. Now, she has reclaimed her life and is reclaiming her narrative along with it in “Seduced: Inside the Nxivm Cult,” a new four-part docuseries premiering Oct. 18 on Starz.

“I felt like it was my chance to take the story back into my own hands and say, ‘Hey, there’s a person here! Not just branded, sex slave, cult girl — a human being,'” India Oxenberg tells Variety.

For many who have been following the Nxivm saga, including Clare Bronfman’s recent sentencing and the fact that group founder Keith Raniere and his right-hand woman who was one of the heads of Dos,...

It was the kind of story Hollywood might dream up — but not only was it real, it had some ties to the industry. Starz has set Sunday for the premiere of Seduced: Inside the Nxivm Cult, a four-part documentary series that takes a first-person look at the sex cult that was broken open in April 2018. It premieres at 9 p.m. this Sunday, October 16. Watch the trailer above and see the key art below.

Hailing from the filmmaking team of Cecilia Peck and Inbal B. Lessner (Brave Miss World), Seduced follows the harrowing journey of India Oxenberg, the daughter of former Dynasty actress Catherine Oxenberg and a descendant of European royalty — who was seduced into the modern-day sex-slave cult Nxivm. More than 17,000 people, including India, enrolled in its “Executive Success Programs,” a front for the cult and a hunting ground for its leader, master predator Keith Raniere — who was convicted on...

Leon Redbone, the singer who built a career out of performing ragtime, vaudeville and American standards with a sly wink and an unmistakable, nasally voice, died Thursday. He was 69.

A statement on Redbone’s website confirmed his death, though it did so with a sweet bit of humor and joking that he was actually 127 years old.

“He departed our world with his guitar, his trusty companion Rover and a simple tip of his hat,” his family said in a statement. “He’s interested to see what Blind Blake, Emmett and...

MoreHorror.com

Screen Star and prolific Producer Mem Ferda has joined Actor / Director Martin Copping to bring to us a new exciting psychological thriller set in Australia on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, ‘The Dunes’.

‘The Dunes’, which is written by Copping, is a story about a renowned journalist for the La Times, who returns to his hometown of The Dunes and while he’s there, a mysterious figure from his past re-emerges and threatens his entire existence.

The film is peppered with underlying themes of substance abuse. The director and lead actor (Copping), wrote the screenplay after the tragic loss of his own mother to Alcoholism.

Co-Producer Mem Ferda (London Heist, Smoking Guns) commented;- ‘this film is of such importance, in spreading awareness and educating the public about the vulnerabilities of addiction. I myself lost a dear friend to addiction and feel this delicately woven story will highlight and...