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The Cure celebrated their new album, Songs of a Lost World, with a marathon three-hour record release show at London’s Troxy that was also streamed live online and is available to replay in full below.

The evening began with a full performance of Songs of a Lost World, the band’s newly released first album in 16 years. From there, Robert Smith and co. played a set of classic hits and fan favorites, including tracks like “Plainsong,” “Pictures of You,” Lovesong,” “Fascination Street,” “Just Like Heaven,” and “Disintegration.”

The Cure then treated fans to a surprise five-song mini set of songs from their 1980 sophomore album, Seventeen Seconds, in celebration of its 45th anniversary, before closing the night with an encore that included “Lullaby,” “Friday I’m in Love,” and “Boys Don’t Cry.” All told, The Cure played a total of 31 songs over the course of the three-hour set.

Following a...

On Wednesday, “Fixing the War,” about news fixers in Ukraine, won the Special Eurimages Co-production Development Award at Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel. It was one of 15 projects selected in this year’s edition of VdR-Pitching, the event’s international co-production and financing platform. Variety accompanied the team as they pitched to potential partners.

The film’s producers Gary Lennon of Plainsong Films and Oleksandra Kravchenko of Moon Man were in Nyon to pitch the film, which is directed by Clare Stronge and Vadym Ikov. “Fixing the War” was pitched as the first film to show the vital role of local field producers, otherwise known as “fixers” in the journalism community – locals hired to help a journalist working in a foreign country navigate everything from logistics to translations or safety issues.

The pair started with a 12-minute pitch to a room full of industry professionals, during which they outlined...

Robert Smith serenaded his wife of 34 years, Mary Poole, with The Cure’s “Plainsong” during a recent performance on the band’s ongoing “Shows of a Lost World” tour.

A newly released fan-captured video, reportedly from The Cure’s May 24th concert at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Bowl, shows the frontman facing away from the audience and singing directly to Poole backstage. With an unbroken, stoic delivery, he recites the song’s closing lyrics “Like I’m living at the edge of the world/ ‘It’s just the way I smile,’ you said” before taking a long pause to make some discernibly intense eye-contact with his wife, then turning back to the audience. Watch the interaction below.

For the heartwarming display of affection to his high school sweetheart, The Cure singer opted for the opening track of 1989’s Disintegration rather than the album’s highest-charting single, “Lovesong,” which Smith notably wrote...

This post originally appeared on Entertainment Weekly.

Whether he’s reading to kids at the White House, hitting up local bookstores on Black Friday, or giving recommendations to his daughters, President Barack Obama may as well be known as the Commander in Books.

Potus is an avid reader and recently spoke to the New York Times about the significant, informative and inspirational role literature has played in his presidency, crediting books for allowing him to “slow down and get perspective.” With his presidency coming to an end this Friday, EW looked back at Obama’s lit picks over the years...

As a big fan of the novels by Kent Haruf, I’m really wary of his work being adapted. Granted I can’t vouch for Hallmark‘s 2004 take on “Plainsong,” but generally speaking, the author’s work hinges on small moments, with heartbreak and drama unfolding in the everyday modulations of regular life. And bringing that to the big screen, or Netflix, where emotional beats are often decorated by performances and score selections and more, could bring the wrong tone to the source material.

Continue reading First Look: Robert Redford & Jane Fonda In Netflix’s ‘Our Souls At Night’ at The Playlist.

Writer Kent Haruf, who authored Plainsong and several other novels set in small-town Colorado, died Sunday at age 71, his publisher said. Haruf's editor at Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Gary Fisketjon, confirmed Haruf's death. Knopf spokesman Paul Bogaards said Haruf had been battling cancer. During a 1999 interview with The Associated Press, Haruf said that he was a preacher's son who grew up in a family of book lovers. He attended Nebraska Wesleyan University, spent two years in the Peace Corps in Turkey and returned to the United States to fine-tune his fiction at the University of Iowa's Writers Workshop. The Tie That Binds,...

CBS' Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation Plainsong was the most-watched program on what was otherwise a ho-hum Sunday night overall for the major broadcast networks. CBS' led in total viewers (14 million) while ABC nudged past Fox and NBC to the top spot in the adults 18-49 demo (3.5 rating/10 share), according to preliminary estimates from Nielsen Media Research. CBS' 9-11 p.m. airing of Plainsong, starring Aidan Quinn and Rachel Griffiths in a story about the intertwined lives of eight very different people living in a small Colorado town, averaged 15.5 million viewers and 3.1/8 in adults 18-49.