LOS ANGELES — Some of this year’s Oscar-nominated documentary shorts hit so hard, viewers may be grateful to come across one that simply follows donkeys visiting an observatory in the desert — even if it bumps up against the very boundaries of the genre.

‘All the Empty Rooms’

Director Joshua Seftel hadn’t spoken with his former colleague, longtime CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman, in 25 years. Then Hartman, famed for stories of human kindness and compassion, reached out: He and photojournalist Lou Bopp had been documenting bedrooms left behind by children killed in American school shootings.

“I said to him, ‘This could be a great film,’” says Seftel, though Hartman asked not to be in it. “I said, ‘You are the “Good News Guy” and people trust you. If the Good News Guy is telling you he’s got some bad news, people are going to listen.’ ”

The rooms provide silent testament to those who once lived there. One is festooned in SpongeBob memorabilia; another contains the rack on which a girl would arrange her outfits for the week.

“You meet these families and hear the stories and there’s a heaviness” in the rooms, says Seftel. He says he could see them weigh on Bopp and Hartman. A filmmaker friend, on seeing the film, told Seftel, “Steve Hartman is a haunted man.”

‘Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud’

Brent Renaud and his brother, Craig, made documentaries in Haiti, Egypt, Iraq and other hot spots, and won awards for their portrait of a troubled Chicago school. Then, while covering the war in Ukraine, Brent was killed by Russian soldiers.

“For Brent, it was always a focus on people caught in the middle of conflicts,” says Craig Renaud. “Going back to the front lines over and over again, we often had to be on the ground for months at a time in these war zones.”

Included in the clips of Brent Renaud’s work: a weeping Iraqi woman clutching the bloody jeans of her slain son; Renaud interviewing a Honduran boy embarking on the hazardous trek to the U.S. on his own; and a Somali man telling Renaud, “The way you hold the camera, you’re doing it from your heart.”

It also includes casual mention of his diagnosis as neurodivergent.

“He’s calm as a monk in a firefight,” Craig Renaud says, “but a cocktail party in Brooklyn is absolutely terrifying.”

‘Children No More: Were and Are Gone’

In Tel Aviv, a group of Israeli protesters stands silently, holding posters emblazoned with the faces of Palestinian children who have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military.

“They didn’t choose to be part of this war,” says Israeli filmmaker Hilla Medalia. “They were killed not because they brought it on themselves, but because someone decided they needed to die.”

Medalia’s film follows activists whose silent vigils draw both support and condemnation. So far, despite sometimes having to abandon their protests when situations become potentially threatening, they remain undaunted.

“Their focus is to stop the war and this war crime and other things that are happening in our name, and to force the general public to confront those images and to look at the kids and to feel for them,” Medalia says. “It’s amazing to me how humanity and compassion become an act of resistance.”

‘The Devil Is Busy’

At a women’s health clinic in Atlanta, a typical day includes religious protesters on megaphones (“All men,” points out co-director Geeta Gandbhir) and women seeking help only to discover their pregnancies are just past the six-week mark, making terminating them illegal in Georgia.

“We decided to focus on the providers,” says Gandbhir. “They’re putting themselves at risk to provide care. What you see are the hurdles they face.”

Co-director Christalyn Hampton says the burdens on these independent clinics have drastically increased as about 50 Planned Parenthood sites closed last year. She points out the spectrum of healthcare provided and the complexity of situations for both patients, many of whom must travel considerable distances, and providers.

“When the technician is giving the young lady a sonogram, the [patient] goes through several emotions: She’s happy, she’s crying, she’s nervous. That speaks to the vulnerability these women feel when they have to make certain decisions. That emotional moment [reminds us] of that human aspect.”

‘Perfectly a Strangeness’

A trio of donkeys traverses a desert to an observatory. Captured with creative camera angles and accompanied by an imaginative score, Alison McAlpine’s film pushes the boundaries of what documentaries are.

While shooting her previous feature in Chile, McAlpine noticed donkeys hanging out around an observatory. “We hired three gentle donkeys [for the film]. It was a combination of trying to direct the donkeys up from the valley to the observatory, and sometimes we just followed the donkeys.”

McAlpine acknowledges that her film has been difficult to categorize. “Sometimes it’s at IDFA, which is an international documentary festival. Sometimes it’s just competing with fiction, where it’s been lucky to win awards sometimes. But what is a documentary? As soon as you put on a lens and a frame, it’s a personal document, not something objective.

“I’ve been moved because people have been touched; they seem to be transported elsewhere, which is what one wants as a filmmaker.”

©2026 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

LOS ANGELES — To get to the “Sinners” exhibit on the Warner Bros. Studio Tour, you have to navigate past the backlot’s iconic water tower, cross through the New York Street and then skirt city hall and the fountain from the opening credits of “Friends.” Eventually, you wind up at Stage 48, home of the Central Perk Cafe, a gift shop selling all manner of “Friends” bric-a-brac and offering a smattering of knockoff furniture from Monica’s palatial apartment to enjoy.

Comparatively, the newly installed “Sinners” showcase, featuring costumes and a couple of props, is, to use a real estate agent’s euphemism, “cozy,” certainly smaller than Rachel’s closet. On the night of its opening, “Sinners” production designer Hannah Beachler and cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw are inside sitting on a sofa — not the sofa, but close enough. A few hours ago, they were celebrating with their fellow Oscar nominees at the academy’s annual luncheon.

“She’s a regular,” Arkapaw says, her arm around Beachler, who won an Oscar in 2019 for her work on “Black Panther.”

The two women and the rest of the “Sinners” team have been hobnobbing with Oscar and guild voters for months now and talking about their work on the film, which was released in April, for even longer. At the time of this “Sinners” event on the Warner Bros. lot, which included yet another screening of the movie for guild members, the Oscars were still more than a month away.

“I can believe it,” Beachler says. Adds Arkapaw: “Me too. I’m stressing about the stuff they’re having us doing. But I think Teyana Taylor said it best: ‘Don’t be complaining about answered prayers.’”

“Sinners” had a lot of prayers answered when Oscar nominations were announced last month — 16, to be precise.

Now the question is whether that record-breaking haul might be enough to catapult Ryan Coogler’s genre-defying American horror story to a best picture Oscar victory.

When it opened in September, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” immediately took the pole position in the best picture race, and it remains the front-runner. But all those “Sinners” Oscar nominations do complicate things. Put it this way: When you submit your movie in 16 different categories and hit in each and every one of them, you have a film boasting broad support across a dozen voting branches. That’s significant.

And if you’re a voter and you weren’t necessarily a fan of the film — or had put off watching it because the horror genre gives you pause — the nominations total does something else. It prompts you to take stock. What is everyone else seeing? Maybe you watch “Sinners” again. Maybe you finally clear the deck and press play for the first time. Perhaps you see that it’s just as much a movie of the moment as “One Battle,” what with the unapologetic, overt racism coming from the White House.

So if you’re on the fence and you do reconsider “Sinners,” maybe it’s not a complete reversal. But it might be enough for you to put the movie higher on your ranked ballot when you vote for best picture.

As you may know, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences uses a preferential ballot for the best picture category and only the best picture category. When the academy’s 10,136 voting members mark their ballots this year, they cast a single vote in 23 of the 24 Oscar categories. The nominee with the most votes wins.

For best picture, though, members are instructed to rank the 10 nominated movies. The system, in place since the academy expanded the best picture field from five to 10 nominees in 2009, is designed to reflect the wishes of the greatest number of voters. This means that the winner is sometimes not the movie that is most passionately loved but the picture that is most generally liked — or, if you’re a glass-half-empty kind of person, the picture that is least disliked.

The process works like this: Once voting ends, PricewaterhouseCoopers accountants sort the best picture ballots and place them in stacks based on members’ No. 1 votes. They then eliminate the movie with the fewest first-place votes, giving those votes to each ballot’s second-ranked film. The process continues — smallest stacks eliminated, votes redistributed to the next choice down — until one movie has more than 50% of the vote.

The math to “Sinners” winning best picture necessitates it being the No. 1, 2 or 3 choice on more ballots than “One Battle After Another.” And that plays into what a couple of awards consultants told me about the psychological effect the movie’s record-breaking 16 nominations might have on voters when they rank the nominated movies.

“Maybe it’s not your favorite, but you still rank it high because of that overwhelming level of respect,” says one rival campaigner. “Who knows if the math adds up. But at this point in the season, you’re looking for any advantage you can find.”

A test of that math will come Saturday at the Producers Guild Awards, a ceremony that uses the same preferential ballot system to determine its best picture. The PGA winner more often than not repeats at the Oscars, though in the last decade there have been two notable exceptions — “Moonlight” besting PGA winner “La La Land” in 2017 and, three years later, “Parasite” taking the Oscar over “1917.”

Should “Sinners” prevail at the PGA and then the next night go on to win the cast prize at the Actor Awards (formerly known as the Screen Actors Guild Awards), then the race will be dramatically recast. Both ceremonies take place in the middle of the window of final voting for the Oscars, which runs Feb. 26 through March 5.

“It’s a miracle that we were all nominated,” Beachler says. “That’s rare for everyone to get that recognition.”

For a film with a hero named Preacher Boy, one last miracle certainly isn’t out of the question. And if the last few months have taught us anything, it’s that you underestimate “Sinners” at your peril.

©2026 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

He reached out to his Elvis experts and quickly heard back.

“This wonderful man called,” Luhrmann says on a recent video call from the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood. “Ernst [Mikael Jorgensen] is like the scientist of all things Elvis, and he says, ‘I think there are these lost reels.’”

Jorgensen told him that they might not be easy to get, if they’re even gettable at all, Luhrmann says.

“Unfortunately, they’re in the salt mines in Kansas where they keep all the negatives of everything,” he says of the underground vault in Kansas where many Hollywood studios store their original negatives and master copies.

It’s too expensive to go down, Jorgensen told Luhrmann. But maybe you can get to them, he added.

“I think, ‘Well, maybe I can use the footage in the showroom [scenes in Las Vegas],” Luhrmann continues. “Like to sort of deal with budget.

“We met, and it cost a lot to get down there,” he says. “About $100,000 just to go down and look.”

But what he found there was priceless: 65 boxes of never-before-seen footage from the concert documentaries “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is,” shot in 35mm anamorphic film at the International Hotel in Las Vegas in August 1970, and “Elvis on Tour,” filmed at arena shows in New York, Virginia, Florida and Texas in 1972.

Angie Marchese, vice president of archives and exhibits at Graceland, came up with a few more boxes of unseen footage, a stash of Super 8 movies of Elvis that included rare footage of Elvis with his wife, Priscilla Presley, and only child, Lisa Marie Presley.

Now, Luhrmann had 59 hours of extremely rare footage and the irresistible opportunity to do much more than he’d initially considered.

“And then we find this half hour of audio of Elvis just talking about his life,” Luhrmann says of the epiphany that he and longtime editor Jonathan Redmond experienced as they worked through the archival negatives. “I said, ‘This is it. We’ve got to let Elvis just tell his own story.’

“Because Elvis stuff is always someone telling you about it,” he continues. “That was the light bulb moment. It was that and then all the song choices that help tell the story, you know?”

“EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert” opened in IMAX theaters on Friday, Feb. 20, and opens in movie theaters everywhere on Friday, Feb. 27.

It’s a remarkable look at Elvis, the untouchable icon restored to his flesh-and-blood humanity through a forgotten trove of film footage that had sat for decades in a vault hundreds of feet below the Kansas plains.

In an interview edited for length and clarity, Luhrmann talks about why he wants everyone to see it on the biggest screen possible, what it took to restore the film and audio, how he fell for Elvis as a boy growing up in Australia, and more.

Q: So you must be a busy guy this week.

A: I’m good, man. It’s like “EPiC” weekend, so you do everything you can. By the end, you just hope enough people come to see the man on the big screen.

Q: I saw it earlier this week in IMAX, and it’s so impressive. People are going to come see this.

A: I hope so. I love the fact that you saw it in IMAX. I’m really glad you took the time because I just think the nature of the subject is there’s no screen big enough for Elvis, you know?

Q: So tell me how you started to explore all those boxes of film.

A: Well, we bring the stuff back to Warner’s, and it smells so strongly of vinegar, which means it’s falling apart. And some is missing, and some is mislabeled, and there’s no sound. So the first thing we do is I convince Warner’s to scan it because it’s going to disappear. Then we spent two years finding mag track [magnetic tape used to sync the audio track to the film images]

We were able to get the mag track, which gave us voices and the band. But a lot of the micing on the orchestra, the Sweets [backing vocalists the Sweet Inspirations], and the gospel singers was a bit up and down.

We wanted to do it in five months. It took two years to sync the sound with the pictures.

Q: Your new film – is that all stuff that’s never been seen before? Or does it include material from the original concert films?

A: Yeah, that’s a good question. There will be some bits that are in the previous doc, but there’s a lot in there where people think, “Oh, I’ve seen that before.” And they might have seen that, but they wouldn’t have seen that camera or that take or that night. [Eleven cameras simultaneously shot performances for the 1972 movie.]

And if you notice, his costume changes all the time, and we didn’t care about that. We didn’t care that in one song we got six versions. The third thing is they would have seen online and on YouTube lots of bootleg. There’s a huge black market in stolen stuff. So even with the sound, sometimes we had deal with gangsters in carparks to get a little bit of missing sound.

There are a few actual bits where we’ve gone, “Ah, that’s what we need to join that to those other two shots [by inserting a piece from the ’70s films between newly discovered footage]. It’s very small. I don’t know what the percentage is.

Q: Watching the movie, I was struck by how real and how human he seemed here.

A: That’s it, that’s it. Like he says in the film, there’s the image, and there’s the man. When you see as much material as I have, you really realize that there’s the humor and the goofiness, too. I think that’s him disarming everyone so they get past the icon and they see the man.

Q: What else struck you as you worked through the footage?

A: Some things really jumped out. There’s some things we couldn’t use because it just didn’t have the focus of the story. You realize he just kind of hung with people, and he’s very human, very empathetic, very polite. And he’s always goofing, because I think he’s just damn shy, and he’s trying to disarm everyone.

It’s like Whitney Houston said. Her mom [Cissy Houston] was in the original Sweets the year before. And she meets Elvis, she was probably 10 or something. She said he walked in the room with a fur coat on, and it wasn’t like, “Hello, Mr. Elvis.” She said, you just stare. You freeze and stare. Because of the way he looks, you know? So there was a lot of that

It’s happening quite a bit actually now. People not into Elvis at all, they know the caricature. But they come out of this film, they go, “Who is this guy? I love this guy!” Because he’s human.

Q: Tell me how the unused audio of Elvis talking about his life was recorded.

A: In the tour, there’s a little bit you see, and he looks very tired. He’s talking about, “Well, I like all kinds of music,” and he talks about gospel, and he says, “Look, I’m too tired. I’ll do it in the morning.”

And when he comes back, he says, “Guys, I can’t be on camera. I’ll just talk.” So they never used the talking bit. That’s where he goes, “I got a whipping from my mother,” and that same bit is where he goes, “I was very shy, you know.” About girls liking him after he started singing.

Q: What needed to be fixed or restored in the film and the audio? And how did you go about it?

A: Yeah, one thing I want to be really clear about: there’s not a frame of AI. Some people said, ‘Oh, it’s AI.” No, no, no. There’s no AI, and there’s no visual effects. But [filmmaker] Peter Jackson, the magician, and his wonderful team at Park Road, we gave them the anamorphic.

I don’t know if you know about anamorphic 35mm, but it’s squashed. And when you stretch it, you just sort of head towards a possible 70mm. You get a lot more out of it. What [Jackson] does is, he’s able to go frame by frame and take out aberrations and really help the grain. There’s 8mm footage in that’s the size of two buildings, and it still holds up.

He’s just brilliant at that. Peter, I mean, he’s a savior of many, many things. He did it with the Beatles [the docuseries “Get Back”]. Love that piece.

And with the sound, some of it we had to do remixes, some we take three [versions of] songs and make new works because we couldn’t just do everything straight off the stage. A lot of it is. I mean, “Suspicious Minds” is just remixed.

Q: The editing is such a terrific part of storytelling. How did you and Jonathan go about that?

A: The process was once we said let him tell the story, we worked out parts. Like, “OK, now he’s going to talk about his Hollywood years, now he’s going to talk about relationships, now he’s going to talk about his feelings.”

You know, when he was asked about politics, he says, “Well, I’m just an entertainer.” They seldom play the second clip where he’s asked, “Should other people speak about their politics?” and he says, “Sure.” Then we put “In The Ghetto” and that other lovely song [“Walk a Mile in My Shoes”] where he goes “There are people on reservations and in ghettos and there but for the grace of God go you.” It’s a very empathetic song.

Then take the cut of “Poke Salad Annie,” which I think is brilliant. Jonathan is a brilliant cutter, anyway. He started with U2 when he was a kid, but he’s worked with me for years, and we make these, like, tone poems. Poetry, more than linear. The vibes of the movie. But it had to be guided by Elvis’s story, and the way we did it was by this question: What would Elvis have done?

Q: You don’t use the usual documentary talking heads – were there models for that for you?

A: The only one I can think of that I actually really enjoyed was that documentary [“Listen to Me Marlon”] where they found all these tapes that Brando did. I was a big Brando fan, and at one stage, Marlon Brando was maybe going to be in “Romeo + Juliet,” believe it or not. I have some very treasured letters from Marlon Brando.

I just loved the way you heard Marlon just talking [in the documentary]. It made you fall in love with Marlon all over again, just the way he illuminated things. [He does a quite good impression of Brando talking about Cary Grant.] I love that stuff. I just think you can’t beat it having someone actually tell their story.

Q: What was it like when you showed “EPiC” to Priscilla and Riley?

A: Actually, Priscilla’s only seeing it for the first time next week, and Riley’s about to see it, too. But I want to explain something. First of all, they were so supportive during the making of the [“Elvis” biopic]. But since then, it was a great sadness of what was a beautiful journey. [Lisa Marie Presley, Priscilla Presley’s daughter with Elvis, and Riley Keough’s mother, died in January 2023.]

Right in this building, after the Golden Globes, I remember Lisa Marie saying, “Can you help me down to the car?” And of course, she was gone a few days later. [“EPiC”] is about Elvis, but for Riley, it’s about mom, and for Priscilla, it’s about her daughter. There’s some really poignant unseen 8mm in there that no one’s ever seen of Lisa Marie as a little baby, you know?

I think they need to see it in their own time. Just anywhere that suits them. I mean, I love them, so anytime, anywhere they need it, I’ll make it happen.

Q: As a boy growing up in Australia, how’d you first encounter Elvis and become such a fan?

A: We lived in a very isolated little country town. We had a gas station on the highway through it, and we had a farm. Dad was super industrious. He was in the Vietnam War. So we had artists living with us, and we did everything from command training to ballroom dancing to learning how to shoot film and process photography.

At a certain point, we [owned] the local cinema, and there were Elvis matinees every Sunday. So that was my intro, and I just thought he was the coolest guy in the world, you know? I probably think differently about “Easy Come, Easy Go” now, but then I thought, “Wow, look at that guy in that black sweater.” I wanted to be him.

Then he loomed large, but in life, I ran away and grew and [explored] opera and Bowie and all sorts of different musical forms. He was there, but not in the same way. I’m a great admirer, as I was making films, of “Amadeus,” and a lot of people wanted me to do different musical bios.

Yes, you learn about a lot about Mozart [in “Amadeus”], but it’s really about jealousy then. And I thought, well, if you want to make “Amadeus” for America, it’s Elvis because of this relationship between the Colonel [Tom Parker] and Elvis.

One is the great salesman, promoter, and the other sort of what [the Colonel] thought was a carnival act but turned out to be sort of Orpheus. Sort of Greek, mythical, very sensitive and gifted. A singer, mover, creator. Remember, Elvis didn’t have a choreographer; Elvis didn’t have a stylist.

Q: He just made that up on his own. You see him playing around and seeing what works in “EPiC.”

A: Well, as he says, “I just do what I feel.” And that’s kind of interesting, because that kept the band always having to watch him, and they never knew what he was going to do. Neither did the audience, and that makes it really spontaneous.

The theme park’s reimagined and renamed land will be known as the Walt Disney Studios, and will include the Magic of Disney Animation building, housing an Animation Academy experience called “Olaf Draws.”  The space will have animator desk-inspired workstations, and the Olaf figure will also be seated at one on stage, just as he was in the “Once Upon a Studio” short film released in 2023.

As it turns out, Olaf can’t draw, so prerecorded instructions from Disney animators will be presented to park guests in the experience.

“Olaf is learning with us,” Danny Handke, senior creative director with Walt Disney Imagineering, said in a Disney video posted on YouTube and on the official Disney Parks Blog.

Among the characters that will be sketched in the lineup of classes are Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Genie, Moana, Stitch, Ursula, Judy Hopps, Nick Wilde and Olaf. The sessions are instructed by directors and animators from a range of Disney productions, from “Aladdin” to “Zootopia 2.”

“If you have an artistic bone in your body and you’re enthusiastic about being a Disney animator, you’re going to learn a little bit here as well and have fun, too,” said Dan Abraham, a story artist and animator for Walt Disney Animation Studios.

“My hope is that that magic becomes even more elevated in terms of the type of experience you get by sitting this close to this incredible piece of technology that feels real, that looks real, that, hopefully, sounds authentic,” said Josh Gad, the actor who originally gave voice to Olaf in the films. He contributed new lines for the upcoming Hollywood Studios attraction.

“The guy who drew Olaf teaching Olaf how to draw Olaf? Wow, we are way beyond the looking glass here, people,” Gad — as Olaf — said in the video, which shows him in a recording session.

Disney World: ‘Frozen’ ride updates, seadragons arrive at Epcot

Disney World visitors previously had access to drawing classes at the Animation Experience at Conservation Station at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. They were led by in-person instructors, but that area is now closed in preparation for a Bluey attraction also set to debut this summer. There have also been drawing classes held during the Epcot International Festival of the Arts, which concluded this week.

First look: Disney World shows star villains, Little Mermaid, tech

Other elements planned for the refreshed Walt Disney Studios section include the Drawn to Wonderland playground, character meet-and-greets, an “enchanted art” gallery and showings of “Once Upon a Studio,” which was co-directed by Abraham. “The Little Mermaid — A Musical Adventure,” a stage show that debuted in May, continues, and a new Disney Jr. show is planned for the space across the courtyard.

Email me at dbevil@orlandosentinel.com. BlueSky: @themeparksdb. Threads account: @dbevil. X account: @themeparks. Subscribe to the Theme Park Rangers newsletter at orlandosentinel.com/newsletters.

By LINDSEY BAHR, AP Film Writer

Robert Carradine, the youngest of his prolific Hollywood family and whose biggest hit was the 1984 comedy “Revenge of the Nerds,” has died at 71.

In a Tuesday statement, his family said he lived with bipolar disorder for two decades. His brother told Deadline that Carradine died by suicide.

“We want people to know it, and there is no shame in it,” Keith Carradine told Deadline. “It is an illness that got the best of him, and I want to celebrate him for his struggle with it, and celebrate his beautiful soul. He was profoundly gifted, and we will miss him every day.”

Known for both his film and television work, Robert Carradine worked steadily in the industry for over 40 years. Though he collaborated with some of the most respected directors of the day, he never gained the worldwide recognition of his more famous siblings Keith Carradine (also the father of Martha Plimpton) and half-brother David Carradine, who died in 2009.

Robert Carradine, a Los Angeles native and son to character actor John Carradine, was introduced to audiences with roles on the television series “Bonanza” in 1971 and in the John Wayne Western “The Cowboys” in 1972.

Despite his family background, acting wasn’t his first calling, though.

“I always had a passion to be a race car driver, and that’s what I thought I was going to do, and at some penultimate moment … I think I was sitting with my brother David when ‘The Cowboys’ was being cast, and they were interested in David as the bad guy, and he didn’t want to be the guy that shot John Wayne in the back,” Carradine recalled in a 2013 interview with Popdose. “But he said, ‘You know, it is called The Cowboys, and they’re meeting all these young guys. Why don’t you go in?’”

In addition to starring in a short-lived television spinoff of “The Cowboys,” and appearing alongside David Carradine in his popular ABC series “Kung Fu,” he would go on to nab roles in Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets,” Hal Ashby’s Vietnam drama “Coming Home,” and Samuel Fuller’s World War II film “The Big Red One.”

The heights of his brother David’s success eluded Robert Carradine, but the two could often be seen in the same projects, including in Walter Hill’s “The Long Riders” and Paul Bartel’s “Cannonball.”

Robert Carradine’s biggest hit would come in 1984 with the off-color comedy “Revenge of the Nerds,” in which he played head nerd Lewis Skolnick, with his abrupt, infectious and guttural laugh. He reprised the role for the big-screen sequel and two made-for-television follow-ups, and continued to pay homage to the beloved character with a guest role on the series “Robot Chicken” and as a co-host (with “Revenge of the Nerds” co-star Curtis Armstrong) of the pop culture competition show “King of the Nerds,” which aired for three seasons.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, according to the family statement, Carradine realized his racing ambitions and was a driver for Lotus. In the 2000s, Carradine gained small-screen success in The Disney Channel’s “Lizzie McGuire” as the eponymous character’s father.

“It’s really hard to face this reality about an old friend,” Hilary Duff, who played Lizzie McGuire, wrote on Instagram. “There was so much warmth in the McGuire family and I always felt so cared for by my on-screen parents. I’ll be forever grateful for that. I’m deeply sad to learn Bobby was suffering.”

Work remained consistent even if the projects diminished in prestige and quality. Then Quentin Tarantino, ever the champion of fading character actors, cast Carradine in “Django Unchained” as one of the trackers in the 2012 film after seeing a “very furry” photograph, as Carradine told Popdose.

In 2015, Carradine was cited for a Colorado crash that injured him and his wife, Edith Mani. They later divorced, after more than 25 years of marriage.

Carradine’s survivors include his three children, actor Ever Carradine, Marika Reed Carradine and Ian Alexander Carradine.

“Whenever anyone asks me how I turned out so normal, I always tell them it’s because of my dad. I knew my dad loved me, I knew it deep in my bones, and I always knew he had my back,” Ever Carradine wrote on Instagram. “I think it’s partly because we basically grew up together. Twenty years age difference really isn’t that much, and while I never ever thought of him as a sibling, I did always think of him as my partner. We were in it together.”

LONDON (AP) — The British Academy Film Awards and BBC apologized Monday for a racial slur that was broadcast during Sunday’s show while two stars of the film “Sinners” were onstage.

The Tourette syndrome campaigner who shouted the slur said he was “deeply mortified” and what he said was “not a reflection of my personal beliefs.”

The highly offensive word could be heard as “Sinners” stars Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo, who are both Black, were presenting the award for best visual effects during Sunday’s ceremony. Host Alan Cumming had earlier told the audience that Tourette syndrome advocate John Davidson was in attendance.

The incident prompted the British Academy of Film and Television Arts to apologize for “offensive language that carries incomparable trauma and pain for so many,” adding “We would like to thank Michael and Delroy for their incredible dignity and professionalism.”

Davidson, a Scottish campaigner for people with Tourette syndrome, who inspired the BAFTA-nominated film “I Swear,” said in a statement Monday that he was “deeply mortified if anyone considers my involuntary tics to be intentional or to carry any meaning.”

Tourettes Action — a Tourette syndrome charity — called for understanding of the condition.

“We deeply understand that these words can cause hurt but at the same time, it is vital that the public understands a fundamental truth about Tourette syndrome: tics are involuntary. They are not a reflection of a person’s beliefs, intentions, or character,” said Emma McNally, CEO of Tourettes Action.

Tourette syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder, is characterized by sudden, involuntary movements or sounds called tics that tend to wax and wane but can worsen with excitement or anxiety, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. They may appear to be purposeful but are not, and the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke’s Tourette information page says people trying to suppress them often report a buildup of tension before a tic erupts.

The Tourette Association of America says about 10-15% of people with the syndrome experience a kind of vocal tic called coprolalia — involuntary swearing, slurs or other socially unacceptable words or phrases.

Several shouts were audible during the first part of the ceremony, although what was said wasn’t intelligible to an Associated Press reporter in the press room.

After the slur was shouted during Jordan and Lindo’s presentation, Cumming apologized to the audience at London’s Royal Festival Hall for the “strong and offensive language.”

“Tourette syndrome is a disability and the tics you have heard tonight are involuntary, which means the person who has Tourette syndrome has no control over their language,” Cumming said. “We apologize if you were offended.”

Davidson said in his statement that “I chose to leave the auditorium early into the ceremony as I was aware of the distress my tics were causing.”

The epithet could be heard when the BBC broadcast the ceremony about two hours after the live event. The broadcaster apologized for not editing it out before the broadcast, though the offensive word could still be heard on its iPlayer streaming service on Monday morning. The program was later removed, and the BBC said the slur would be edited out.

“Some viewers may have heard strong and offensive language during the Bafta Film Awards,” the BBC said in a statement. “This arose from involuntary verbal tics associated with Tourette syndrome, and as explained during the ceremony it was not intentional.

“I Swear” won two BAFTAs, including best actor for Robert Aramayo, who plays Davidson.

Representatives for the film and for Jordan and Lindo did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

___

AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard in Washington and National Writer Jocelyn Noveck in Paris contributed reporting.

NEW YORK (AP) — Warner Bros. Discovery is briefly reopening takeover talks with Skydance-owned Paramount to hear the company’s “best and final” offer, while the Hollywood giant continues to back the studio and streaming deal it struck with Netflix.

In a Tuesday regulatory filing, Warner said it had received a waiver from Netflix to reopen talks with Paramount for the next seven days, or until Monday. Warner said this will allow the companies to discuss unresolved “deficiencies” and “clarify certain terms” of Paramount’s latest bid.

But in the meantime, Warner’s board is still recommending shareholders support of its proposed merger with Netflix. A special meeting is now scheduled for Friday, March 20 to hold a vote on that deal.

In a statement, Netflix said it was confident that its proposed transaction “provides superior value and certainty” — but recognized “the ongoing distraction for WBD stockholders and the broader entertainment industry caused by PSKY’s antics.” The streaming giant noted it had granted Warner a seven-day waiver to “finally resolve this matter.”

Warner’s leadership similarly reiterated its support for the Netflix deal. Paramount did not immediately respond to The Associated Press’ request for comment Tuesday.

In December, Netflix agreed to buy Warner’s studio and streaming business for $72 billion, now in an all-cash transaction that would cover its legacy TV and movie production arms, as well as HBO Max. Including debt, the enterprise value of the deal is about $83 billion, or $27.75 per share, and would be finalized after Warner completes a previously-announced separation of its cable operations.

Meanwhile, unlike Netflix, Paramount wants to acquire Warner’s entire company — including networks like CNN and Discovery — and went straight to shareholders with an all-cash, $77.9 billion hostile offer just days after the Netflix deal was announced in December.

The enterprise value of Paramount’s bid currently stands around $108 billion including debt, or $30 per share. But Warner disclosed Tuesday that a Paramount representative separately informed the company it would up its offer to $31 per share “pending engagement.”

Analysts at Raymond James said they had “long believed” Paramount was willing to raise its offer “and now it seems we are finally moving in that direction.” If Paramount were to up its price to $32 or $33 per share, they noted it would be “increasingly difficult to argue the Netflix agreement is superior,” although Netflix could then move to match the bid.

“Netflix is still in the driver’s seat, but now having to make its case,” the analysts added in a Tuesday research note.

Paramount has made more attempts to sweeten its offer recently. Last week, the company said it would pay Warner shareholders an added “ticking fee” if its deal doesn’t go through by the end of the year — amounting to 25 cents per share, or a total of $650 million, for every quarter after Dec. 31. Paramount also pledged to fund Warner’s proposed $2.8 billion breakup payout to Netflix under its merger agreement.

The company has been scrambling to solidify more shareholder support. Paramount previously extended the deadline for tender offer three times. According to company disclosures, more than 42.3 million Warner shares had been “validly tendered and not withdrawn” from its hostile bid as of the start of last week, down from over 168.5 million Warner shares Jan. 21 — still a small fraction of Warner’s 2.48 billion shares outstanding in series A common stock.

But also last week, one activist investor, Ancora Holdings, publicly expressed opposition to Warner’s proposed merger with Netflix. And beyond its tender offer, Paramount has also moved to solicit proxies in opposition of the Netflix deal.

What, if anything, changes after the next seven days of talks has yet to be seen. Paramount, Warner and Netflix have spent the last couple of months in a heated back and forth over who has a stronger deal on the table.

The prospect of a Warner sale to either company has raised tremendous antitrust concerns from lawmakers worldwide, who are calling on regulators to carefully scrutinize a merger of this size.

The U.S. Department of Justice has already initiated its reviews, and other countries may also scrutinize either deal. Both Paramount and Netflix have said they received securities clearance from German authorities last month.

Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery rose more than 2% in Tuesday morning trading. Paramount Skydance climbed nearly 6%, while Netflix’s stock fell slightly.

When Robert Duvall was floundering around in college, his father, a career Navy man who retired with the rank of rear admiral, told him to shape up — and start acting.

“I wasn’t pushed into it but suggested into it,” Duvall once told an interviewer. “They figured I did skits around the house. They figured I had a calling, or whatever, in that line.”

They figured correctly. With his weathered face and receding hairline, he did not stand out for his movie star looks but for the intensity and depth he brought to his craft. New York Times film critic Vincent Canby in 1980 called him “the best we have, the American Olivier.”

Duvall, a veteran of many leading roles but best known for his sharp portrayal of supporting characters like the Godfather’s Irish-American consigliere and the unhinged Army colonel who loved the smell of napalm in the morning, died at 95, his wife Luciana Duvall announced on Facebook.

“Bob passed away peacefully at home, surrounded by love and comfort,” she wrote.

While he could play comic characters like Maj. Frank Burns, the priggish Army doctor who was obsessed with nurse Hot Lips Houlihan in “M*A*S*H,” Duvall specialized in tightly wound tough guys.

In “The Great Santini,” he was a Marine fighter pilot who was as overbearing and explosive with his family as with the men under his command. In “The Apostle,” he was a preacher who killed his wife’s lover with a baseball bat. In “The Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II,” he was Tom Hagen, a buttoned-down attorney who was loyal to his mob bosses and lethal to those who got in their way. He was an expert, one critic said, in playing “self-controlled men who should not be pushed too far.”

Duvall was known for pouring himself into his characters. He could move with the grace of the tango aficionado he became or with the slow, pained gait of the cancer-ridden editor he played in “The Paper.” He was a keen student of dialect; doing movies in the South, he meandered down backroads, learning just the right way to frame a question in rural Mississippi or deliver a compliment in west Texas.

He loved playing country people and particularly loved Westerns.

“That’s our genre,” he said in a 2011 interview with the News and Advance in Lynchburg, Va., near his home on a 362-acre horse farm. “The English have Shakespeare, the French Moliere, and the Russians Chekhov. The Western is ours.”

When asked about his acting technique, Duvall would describe it as simply as his favorite character — Augustus McCrae, the wry trail boss on the TV miniseries “Lonesome Dove” — might have described riding a horse.

“It’s just talking and listening,” Duvall told The Times in 2006. “Nothing’s precious. Just let it sit there and find its own way.”

Nominated six times for an Academy Award, Duvall won best actor honors in 1983 for his role as Mac Sledge, a broken-down country singer in the film “Tender Mercies.” A guitar player since childhood, he did his own singing and wrote two of the songs.

Turning down his studio’s offer of a cast party at glitzy Studio 54, Duvall hosted a heartfelt hoedown in his New York City apartment. The crowd ate downhome food cooked by character actor Wilford Brimley, who had flown in from Tennessee. As the party ended at 3 a.m., an exuberant Duvall had everyone join hands for a chorus of “Amazing Grace.”

Willie Nelson — who sang duets with Duvall at the party — told Village Voice columnist Arthur Bell that “Tender Mercies” was dead-on accurate.

“These people Bobby portrayed in his movie, I grew up in those parts and know each of them personally,” he said. “And I’ll probably be that character he plays someday if I don’t take care of myself.”

Many of Duvall’s characters had hardscrabble backgrounds, but Duvall grew up in privilege. Born in San Diego on Jan. 5, 1931, he was raised in places around the U.S. where his naval officer father was posted.

When he was 10, the future star of so many Westerns rode his first horse and got to know his first Texans, on a family trip to see his mother’s relatives.

By his teen years in Annapolis, Maryland, Duvall had become an excellent mimic, absorbing dialects and mannerisms wherever he happened to be. He did hilarious impressions of people like his cousin Fagin Springer, a singing evangelist from Virginia, and the tough old cowhands on his uncle’s Montana ranch. Years later, on the set of “The Godfather,” he did impressions of Marlon Brando.

In his more than 85 movies, many of his characters were heavy drinkers, but not Duvall. He went to a Christian Science boarding school in St. Louis and to Principia College, a Christian Science college in Elsah, Illinois, and never smoked or drank.

When the affable, athletic Duvall was nearly kicked out of college for poor grades, administrators summoned his parents for an emergency meeting. Everyone agreed he was miscast as a history major. The boy’s only talent, besides tennis, appeared to be acting.

Switching to drama — a decision supported by his parents, who wanted him to stay in school — he turned his academic career around.

In a college production of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons,” Duvall so deeply merged into the character of a ruthless businessman haunted by a bad decision that he found himself crying. “That clinched it,” wrote Judith Slawson in “Robert Duvall: Hollywood Maverick,” a 1985 biography. “Acting was for him.”

Graduating in 1953, Duvall was drafted into the Army. He trained in radio repair at Camp Gordon in Georgia but spent his off-duty time with a community theater group in nearby Augusta. When he left the service in 1955, he studied at New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, a training ground for such top talents as Gregory Peck, Steve McQueen and Jon Voight.

Sanford Meisner, the school’s legendarily demanding director, was impressed.

“There are only two actors in America,” he told playwright David Mamet years later. “One is Brando, who’s done his best work, and the other is Robert Duvall.”

In New York, Duvall worked night shifts at the post office, washed dishes and kept auditioning. He shared an apartment at Broadway and West 107th Street with a fledgling actor named Dustin Hoffman. The two also palled around with Gene Hackman and James Caan.

Over coffee at Cromwell’s Drugstore, the yet-to-be-discovered actors would discuss the mumbling, moving technique of another young actor.

“If we mentioned Brando once we mentioned him 25 times,” Duvall told The Times in 2014.

After several years of off-Broadway productions, summer stock, and roles in TV dramas like “Naked City” and the “Twilight Zone,” Duvall landed his first Hollywood role in 1962.

As Boo Radley, a mysterious recluse in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Duvall was on screen for less than five minutes at the film’s end and had no lines. But he played a pivotal character and the film launched a cinematic career that lasted more than five decades.

In the 1979 Vietnam epic “Apocalypse Now,” he delivered one of the most famous lines in the history of film. As the swaggering Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore, he orders U.S. helicopters to destroy a coastal Viet Cong-held village so he and his men could surf there.

“You smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that,” Kilgore says nonchalantly as the village before him erupts in flame. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

Kilgore’s chilling monologue topped the list of best movie speeches in a 2004 BBC poll. Duvall later said he had no idea people would remember it.

Duvall seldom played leading men, but Mac Sledge, in “Tender Mercies,” was a notable breakthrough.

“This is the only film where I’ve heard people say I’m sexy,” he told an interviewer. “It’s real romantic — rural romantic. I love that part almost more than anything.”

Duvall was married three times before meeting Luciana Pedraza, a young woman who was dared by her friends to approach him on a Buenos Aires street and invite him to a tango gathering. She played opposite him in “Assassination Tango,” a 2002 film in which he portrays a hitman dispatched to Argentina. They married in 2005 and for years practiced tango on a dance floor they installed in one of their barns.

In addition to his wife, Duvall is survived by his older brother William, an actor and music teacher. His young brother John died in 2000.

Duvall’s legacy includes a wide range of films, from “True Grit” to “True Confessions.” He played a retired Cuban barber in “Wrestling Ernest Hemingway”; a cynical TV executive in “Network”; a dirt-poor Mississippi farmer in “Tomorrow”; a quietly effective corporate attorney in “A Civil Action”; a middle-aged astronaut in “Deep Impact”; a grizzled cattleman in “Open Range”; a tobacco company bigwig in the satirical “Thank You for Smoking”; and in the miniseries “Ike,” he was Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

He also tackled some less commercial projects. In 1977, he directed a documentary about a Nebraska rodeo family, “We’re Not the Jet Set.” In 1983, he wrote and directed “Angelo, My Love,” a drama inspired by and starring gypsies Duvall came to know in New York City

He worked well into his later years. In the 2009 film “Get Low,” he was a backwoods hermit who staged his own funeral. Two years later, he was a rancher and ex-golf pro who takes a young golfer under his wing in the spiritual drama “Seven Days in Utopia.” And four years after that he played an alcoholic and abusive justice in “The Judge,” earning a best supporting actor Oscar nomination — the oldest actor at the time to do so.

In “A Night in Old Mexico” (2014), he played an ill-tempered rancher preparing for suicide after losing his land to foreclosure. His plans change when he meets an adult grandson he never knew he had and the two wander across the border into bars and bordellos and reflect on life.

“No one plays wise old coots more convincingly,” the New York Times said.

Duvall drew on his inner curmudgeon throughout his career.

As an actor who prided himself on an up-close, deep-down knowledge of his characters, he sometimes bristled at direction.

“If I have instincts I feel are right, I don’t want anyone to tamper with them,” he told After Dark magazine in 1973. “I don’t like tamperers and I don’t like hoverers.”

Horton Foote, who adapted “Mockingbird” for the movies and wrote “Tender Mercies,” became one of Duvall’s few lifelong friends in the industry.

When Duvall was checking out Southern churches as he researched “The Apostle,” which he wrote, directed and starred in, the two were frequently in touch on the phone.

“I could always tell he’d been with a different preacher,” Foote told The Times in 2006, “because he’d try out these different voices.”

Authenticity was so important to Duvall that he gave some key roles in “The Apostle” to local people with little or no acting experience.

Rick Dial, who played a small-town radio reporter in the film, was actually a local furniture salesman.

“Rick improvised a lot of his dialogue,” Duvall told Backstage magazine in 2001. “At the end of ‘The Apostle’ when they cart me off, his skin turned a certain color of grief. I don’t know who told him to do that. He just did it.”

For Duvall, known as an actor who “just did it” in film after film, that was the highest kind of praise.

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Steve Chawkins is a former Times staff writer.

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©2026 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Martin’s latest fundraiser in support of domestic-violence survivors is Thursday, Feb. 19. “Champions Against Domestic Violence” will take place at 6 p.m. at the Hilton hotel at 350 Northlake Blvd. in Altamonte Springs. The black-tie affair will feature live boxing matches.

“Champions Against Domestic Violence” is presented by Christy’s Champs, the nonprofit Martin established to help support, educate and empower those who have suffered domestic abuse. It provides resources to help survivors escape violent situations.

The cause is personal to Martin, who was nearly killed by her husband in 2010. After he shot and stabbed her, Martin was able to escape their Apopka home and flag down a passing motorist who took her to the hospital. Her husband — who had been her manager as Martin became a pioneering superstar in women’s boxing — was convicted for the attack and died in prison in 2024.

Martin’s story was told in the movie “Christy,” released in 2025. At the time, she told the Orlando Sentinel she hoped the film would inspire women trapped in abusive situations to seek help.

Central Florida’s Christy Martin survived terrifying abuse. She hopes filming her story helps others

“I think it’s really going to make a difference,” Martin said of the film’s message of resilience. “I really, really do.”

The Feb. 19 boxing event will feature seven fights with up-and-coming boxers, including Tony Aguilar and Joshua Draughter. The evening will also include 50-50 raffles and a silent auction.

Different levels of sponsorship are available, single tickets are $75.

Martin, who still lives in Apopka, has championed new boxers since her retirement. As part of that, organizers of “Champions Against Domestic Violence” are suggesting if people want to donate to the cause but cannot attend, they can buy a ticket that will be given to a young boxer who otherwise couldn’t afford the event.

For more information, go to christymartin-promotions.com or call 407-720-6008.

Follow me at facebook.com/matthew.j.palm or email me at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com. Find more entertainment news and reviews at orlandosentinel.com/entertainment or sign up to receive our weekly emailed Entertainment newsletter.

NEW YORK (AP) — Hollywood largely ceded attention to football over a slow box-office weekend, with the survival thriller “Send Help” repeating as No. 1 in ticket sales and the Melania Trump documentary “Melania” falling sharply in its second weekend.

Super Bowl weekend is typically one of the lowest attended moviegoing times of the year. It was the second slowest weekend last year and in 2024 it ranked dead last for moviegoing.

Studios instead put their focus on advertising movies for the massive television audience. Among the trailers expected to hit the NFL broadcast Sunday were The Walt Disney Co.’s “Mandalorian and Grogu,” Lionsgate’s Michael Jackson biopic, “Michael” and Universal Pictures’ “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.”

In North American theaters, the Disney.-20th Century Studios release “Send Help,” directed by Sam Raimi, lead all films with $10 million in its second weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. With $53.7 million globally thus far, the R-rated survival thriller has proved a solid midbudget success. Disney meanwhile watched its remarkably long-lasting “Zootopia 2″ cross $1.8 billion worldwide in its 11th week of release.

“Melania,” from Amazon MGM, added 300 theaters in its second weekend but dropped steeply with to $2.4 million in ticket sales, down 67% from its much-discussed debut. The rapid downturn means the Brett Ratner-directed documentary is likely heading toward flop territory given its high price tag. Amazon MGM paid $40 million for film rights, plus some $35 million to market it.

The North American total for “Melania” stands at $13.4 million. Amazon MGM has not released international figures, though they’re expected to be paltry.

Kevin Wilson, head of domestic distribution for the studio, said the movie’s box-office performance “is a critical first moment that validates our wholistic distribution strategy, building awareness, engagement, and provides momentum ahead of the film’s eventual debut on Prime Video.”

The film’s ticket sales — which would be very good for a less expensive documentary — were a talking point throughout the week. Late-night hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel hammered the movie’s sales. Kimmel called them a “rigged outcome.” Elsewhere in theaters, the Italy-set Kevin James romantic comedy “Solo Mio” debuted with a robust $7.2 million, a major win for the Christian-oriented Angel Studios. “Stray Kinds: The Dominate Experience,” a K-pop concert film released by Bleecker Street, launched with $5.6 million. The Luc Besson-directed Bram Stoker adaptation “Dracula” opened with $4.5 million, a studio-best debut for the indie distributor Vertical.

One of the most unusual releases in theaters, however, remains the low-budget indie “Iron Lung.” The YouTube filmmaker Markiplier, whose real name is Mark Fischbach, self-financed and self-distributed the R-rated video game adaptation, along with writing, directing and starring in it. In its second weekend, “Iron Lung” collected $6.2 million, bringing its two-week total to $31.2 million. It cost $3 million to make.

Top 10 movies by domestic box office

With final domestic figures being released Monday, this list factors in the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:

1. “Send Help,” $10 million.

2. “Solo Mio,” $7.2 million.

3. “Iron Lung,” $6 million.

4. “Stray Kids: The Dominate Experience,” $5.6 million.

5. “Dracula,” $4.5 million.

6. “Zootopia 2,” $4 million.

7. “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” $3.5 million.

8. “The Strangers: Chapter 3,” $3.5 million.

9. “Shelter,” $2.4 million.

10. “Melania,” $2.4 million.