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Received yesterday — 17 December 2025

Oscars to move over to YouTube starting in 2029

17 December 2025 at 13:19

Exclusive global rights to the year’s biggest night in film will move to the video platform for a four year period

The Oscars will be moving from broadcast to online as part of a multi-year new deal with YouTube.

From 2029, the video platform will have exclusive global rights to Hollywood’s biggest night, including the ceremony but also red carpet coverage, behind-the-scenes content and Governors Ball access. The deal will run until 2033.

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© Photograph: Matt Sayles/Invision/AP

© Photograph: Matt Sayles/Invision/AP

© Photograph: Matt Sayles/Invision/AP

Melania: first trailer released for Amazon’s documentary on the first lady

17 December 2025 at 11:02

The $40m film – directed by Brett Ratner, who has been accused of sexual misconduct – follows Melania Trump in the days before the 2025 inauguration

Amazon has released the first trailer for next year’s documentary on Melania Trump.

The film will follow the first lady in the 20 days before the 2025 inauguration and has “unprecedented access” with promises of “exclusive footage capturing critical meetings, private conversations, and never-before-seen environments”.

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© Photograph: YouTube

© Photograph: YouTube

© Photograph: YouTube

‘A festive tour de force’: Guardian writers on their favorite underrated Christmas movies

From a John Cusack 80s teen comedy to the other Frank Capra Christmas crowd-pleaser, here are some seasonal picks you might not have seen

Something that bugs me about a lot of contemporary Christmas movies is how insistently self-conscious they are about the whole production – the ostentatious decorations, checklist of soundtrack chestnuts, the dialogue about the true meaning of the holidays that sounds canned even when the movie is trying to acknowledge its various stressors. Maybe because the idea of a holiday movie hadn’t yet ossified into routine, I’ve found that the versions of these films that came out in the 1940s tend to approach Christmas from more inventive, less neurotically obsessive angles. One of my favorite discoveries in sifting through 1940s Christmas comedies is It Happened on Fifth Avenue, a 1947 semi-romantic farce with a great starting hook: a cheerful vagrant Aloysius T McKeever (Victor Moore) winters in New York every year, because he knows a way into a particular Fifth Avenue mansion seasonally vacated by its enormously wealthy owner. One winter, Aloysius invites some new acquaintances to stay with him: veteran Jim Bullock (Don DeFore) and his military buddies, plus runaway Trudy O’Connor (Gale Storm) – who is secretly the daughter of the mansion’s owner. Eventually, the owner himself is forced to disguise himself as another vagrant and stay in the house, too, so Trudy can make sure Jim loves her on her own merits. This all takes place during the run-up to Christmas and into New Year’s, and director Roy Del Ruth gives the movie a found-family warmth that newer holiday movies have to labor two or three times as hard for, assembling a funny and lovable surrogate family in one of the city’s well-appointed empty spaces. Speaking of labor: It Happened on Fifth Avenue lands perfectly between class-conscious social picture about the importance of affordable housing and romantic urban fairytale. Jesse Hassenger

It Happened on Fifth Avenue is available on Plex and to rent digitally in the US, UK and Australia

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© Photograph: PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamy

© Photograph: PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamy

© Photograph: PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamy

Received before yesterday

Disclosure Day: first trailer for Steven Spielberg’s star-studded UFO movie

16 December 2025 at 12:06

Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo and Eve Hewson head up the director’s latest effort

The first trailer for Steven Spielberg’s mysterious UFO movie has now provided further details on what audiences can expect.

Disclosure Day, written by Jurassic Park’s David Koepp and based on a Spielberg story, sees a starry cast deal with the discovery of aliens. “Why would he make such a vast universe yet save it only for us?’” Elizabeth Marvel’s character says at the end of the teaser.

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© Photograph: YouTube

© Photograph: YouTube

© Photograph: YouTube

Liam Neeson denies anti-vax views after narrating Covid documentary

11 December 2025 at 19:23

Taken star lends his voice to a film that questions the legitimacy of vaccines and includes interview with RFK Jr

Liam Neeson has lent his voice to a new documentary that questions the legitimacy of vaccines and praises Donald Trump’s health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

The film, called Plague of Corruption, is narrated by the Taken actor and based on a bestselling book co-authored by Judy Mikovits, a disgraced former scientist who gained notoriety during the Covid pandemic. She claimed Covid was caused by a bad strain of the flu vaccine and urged people not to get vaccinated.

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© Photograph: Tristar Media/WireImage

© Photograph: Tristar Media/WireImage

© Photograph: Tristar Media/WireImage

Silent Night, Deadly Night review – killer Santa remake is overstuffed

11 December 2025 at 12:32

There are too many competing and overfamiliar ideas in this busy slasher reboot that’s sorely lacking in style

There was a bizarre moral outrage back in November 1984 when seasonal slasher Silent Night, Deadly Night dared to put an axe in the hands of Santa. Despite being, you know, not a real person he was once treated with enough reverence to cause parent-led protests, a ban of all advertising and then of the film itself. It provided a sharp edge to an otherwise blunt and unremarkable post-Halloween knockoff and might help to explain why it managed to eke out four junky sequels and a 2012 remake.

We’re now at the inevitable second remake stage but the 2025 redo arrives after the gimmick of Killer Santa has now become a subgenre in itself. He’s cropped up in Christmas Bloody Christmas, Christmas Evil, Santa’s Slay, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, Deadly Games and last year’s Terrifier 3 and the makers of this December’s take are more than aware that seeing Santa with a weapon isn’t enough to shock today’s horror fans.

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© Photograph: Heather Beckstead

© Photograph: Heather Beckstead

© Photograph: Heather Beckstead

Charli xcx, Natalie Portman and Salman Rushdie lead 2026 Sundance lineup

10 December 2025 at 12:00

The festival says goodbye to both founder Robert Redford and its longtime home of Park City, Utah, with a selection of provocative documentaries and starry new films

New films starring Charli xcx, Natalie Portman and Salman Rushdie will all receive their world premieres at next month’s Sundance film festival.

The festival will be held for the last time in Park City, Utah, before it moves to Boulder, Colorado, in 2027. Over the years, it has been home to the first screenings of films including Get Out, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Blair Witch Project, Past Lives, Napoleon Dynamite, Precious and Little Miss Sunshine.

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© Photograph: MRC II Distribution Company LP

© Photograph: MRC II Distribution Company LP

© Photograph: MRC II Distribution Company LP

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