A Chinese court has ruled that producers of a hit kids’ TV cartoon hold partial responsibility for serious burns sustained by two children in a copycat act of violence. The court also laid partial blame on the legal guardians of a 10-year-old boy who in April tied two others to a tree and set them on fire in Jiangsu province, the Xinhua news agency reported. The 10-year-old boy said he had been imitating a scene from the cartoon Xi Yangyang & Hui Tailang (Pleasant Goat And Big Big Wolf). With increased scrutiny on how violent images affect TV and film audiences, and how ratings systems inform parents, the decision by the court comes at a notable moment.

One of the injured boys, aged seven, had burns to 80% of his body. His four-year-old brother was burned across 40% of his body. The court ordered the 10-year-old boy’s guardians and Guangzhou-based producer, Creative Power Entertaining, to pay 60% and 15%, respectiely, of their compensation. Because the show is aimed at children, the court said producers are obliged to scrutinize violence carefully, and that inappropriate scenes should be cut and warnings given, Xinhua said.

Creative Power is understood to have previously been criticized for some of Pleasant Goat And Big Big Wolf‘s depictions. The show has aired over 800 episodes on myriad local stations, including state network CCTV, since it debuted in 2005. In 2010, Creative Power Entertaining signed an agreement with Buena Vista International for broadcast on Disney channels in the Asia-Pacific region. The story follows a group of goats and the clumsy wolf who wants to eat them. According to the Associated Press, other violent scenes have included a goat being plunged into boiling water and receiving electric shocks. The wolf’s wife also regularly hits her husband over the head when he fails to bring a goat home for dinner.

PANORAMA
Arrête Ou Je Continue (If You Don’t, I Will)
France
By Sophie Fillières
With Emmanuelle Devos, Mathieu Amalric
World premiere

Bai Mi Zha Dan Ke (The Rice Bomber)
Taiwan
By Cho Li
With Huang Chien-wei, Nikki Hsieh, Michael Chang
World premiere

Bing Du (Ice Poison)
Taiwan / Myanmar
By Midi Z
With Wang Shin-Hong, Wu Ke-Xi
World premiere

Calvary
Ireland / Great Britain
By John Michael McDonagh
With Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Kelly Reilly, Aidan Gillen
European premiere

Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho (The Way He Looks)
Brazil
By Daniel Ribeiro
With Ghilherme Lobo, Tess Amorim, Fabio Audi
World premiere

Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?
France
By Michel Gondry
With Noam Chomsky
World premiere

O Homem Das Multidões (The Man Of The Crowd)
Brazil
By Marcelo Gomes, Cao Guimarães
With Paulo André, Silvia Lourenço
International premiere

Papilio Buddha
India / USA
By Jayan Cherian
With Kallen Pokkudan, Saritha Sunil, Sreekumar SP, David Briggs, Prakash Bare, Thampy Antony
European premiere

Quick Change
Philippines
By Eduardo Roy Jr.
With Mimi Juareza, Jun jun Quintana, Miggs Cuaderno, Natashia Yumi, Francine Garcia
International premiere

Stereo
Germany
By Maximilian Erlenwein
With Jürgen Vogel, Moritz Bleibtreu, Petra Schmidt-Schaller, Georg Friedrich, Rainer Bock
World premiere

Test
USA
By Chris Mason Johnson
With Scott Marlowe, Matthew Risch
European premiere

The Better Angels
USA
By A. J. Edwards
With Jason Clarke, Diane Kruger, Brit Marling, Wes Bentley
International premiere

The Lamb
Germany / Turkey
By Kutluğ Ataman
With Nesrin Cavadzade, Cahit Gök, Mert Taştan, Sıla Lara Cantürk, Nursel Köse
World premiere

Things People Do
USA
By Saar Klein
With Wes Bentley, Jason Isaacs, Vinessa Shaw, Haley Bennett
World premiere

Triptyque (Triptych)
Canada
By Robert Lepage, Pedro Pires
With Lise Castonguay, Frédérike Bédard, Hans Piersbergen
International premiere

Uber-Ich Und Du (Superegos)
Germany / Switzerland / Austria
By Benjamin Heisenberg
With André Wilms, Georg Friedrich
World premiere

Unfriend
Philippines
By Joselito Altarejos
World premiere

Xi You (Journey To The West)
France / Taiwan
By Tsai Ming-liang
With Lee Kang-sheng, Denis Lavant
World premiere

Yves Saint Laurent
France
By Jalil Lespert
With Pierre Niney, Guillaume Gallienne, Charlotte Le Bon, Laura Smet, Marie De Villepin
International premiere – Opening film Panaroma Special

Earlier this year, ITV and PBS both ordered a second season of the Jeremy Piven-starring department store drama Mr Selfridge. The promo below for the much-anticipated new 10-episode series has aired on British TV in the past few weeks, but had somehow flown under the online radar until ITV gave it a little nudge today. The show is based on the life of flamboyant American entrepreneur Harry Gordon Selfridge (Piven) who founded the London shopping mecca Selfridges in 1909. Season 2 picks up in 1914 as the store celebrates its fifth anniversary. With talk of war in Europe, Selfridge prepares his staff for challenging times ahead. The store must play its own part in the war effort and help keep morale high on the home front. Mr Selfridge is produced by ITV Studios for ITV. A debut date has yet to be set on either side of the Atlantic.

The follow-up to International Emmy and Peabody Award-winning comedy/talk show hybrid The Kumars At No. 42 will bring the Kumar clan back to television after a seven-year break. The new show, titled The Kumars, is a six-part series that will air on the UK’s Sky1 HD from January 15th. The original ran on the BBC for 53 episodes and was also broadcast on BBC America. There is no U.S. deal yet, but given the earlier show’s popularity and the caliber of guests, it wouldn’t be surprising to see it land Stateside. The original scripted and improvised show centered on three generations of a British Indian family. Sanjeev Bhaskar played the thirtysomething son whose parents support his dream of being a talk show host by building a TV studio onto the back of their home. Celebrity guests were greeted with fanfare at the family’s front door, sometimes making a pit-stop on the living room couch for nibbles (see video below), before being ushered into the TV studio for a chat with Bhaskar while his parents and grandmother offered inappropriate questions from the peanut gallery. The new series will kick off with Daniel Radcliffe, Chevy Chase and Broadchurch‘s Olivia Colman as guests. Returning cast include Bhaskar, Vincent Ibrahim and Meera Syal. But fortunes have shifted and the family now lives in a flat behind a homewares and gift shop that the father runs. Guests lined up for the rest of the series include Ray Winstone, Rupert Everett, Diana Rigg, Richard E Grant, Elizabeth McGovern, James Corden and Terry Gilliam. The Kumars is a co-production from Episodes producer Hat Trick Productions and Avatar Productions. Bhaskar is writer. Exec producers are Helen Williams and Jimmy Mulville for Hat Trick, and Saskia Schuster for Sky. In the series’ earlier version, it drew guests like Alan Alda, Stephen Fry, Jennifer Saunders and Donny Osmond. In the clip below is Nigel Havers (Coronation Street, Chariots Of Fire, Brothers & Sisters) as he makes his way through the lounge to the TV studio:

BBC Taps Mark Freeland To Controller of Fiction and Entertainment
Mark Freeland has been named BBC Controller of Fiction and Entertainment. The exec has been Controller of Comedy Production for six years. In his new role, he will lead the BBC’s in-house production teams within drama, entertainment and comedy. He also will work closely with the broadcaster’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide. During his tenure at the head of comedy production, the in-house comedy business has grown by 10% and commercial income has increased by 50%. Freeland has overseen such productions as Olympics comedy Twenty Twelve, three record-breaking Comic Relief Red Nose Days, Absolutely Fabulous and Armando Iannucci’s The Thick Of It. He previously was at Hartswood Films, now the makers of Sherlock, and had an earlier stint at the BBC, where he commissioned, developed and exec produced shows including Stephen Fry’s QI, Mock The Week, The Catherine Tate Show, The Kumars At No 42 and The Mighty Boosh.

The Cinema Guild Picks Up ‘What Now? Remind Me’ For U.S.
New York-based The Cinema Guild has acquired all U.S. distribution rights to Joaquim Pinto’s What Now? Remind Me. The documentary won the Jury and FIPRESCI Prizes at the 2013 Locarno Film Festival and was an official selection of the 2013 New York Film Festival. A 2014 theatrical launch is planned. Pinto has been living with HIV and hepatitis C for the two decades. His film chronicles a year of clinical studies with toxic, mind-altering drugs that have yet to be approved.

When The X Factor gets renewed for a fourth season, it will be without judge Demi Lovato.  Speaking on the red carpet after tonight’s performace finale, X Factor boss Simon Cowell confirmed that Lovato won’t be back next season but indicated the door will be left open for her in the future. Word that Lovato would be leaving after two seasons got out earlier today on People.com. It came two days after Cowell announced that X Factor will be renewed but it would undergo major changes in Season 4, including Cowell possibly taking on “a different kind of role.” Lovato was the only judge on the X Factor panel from Season 2 to continue in Season 3.

The long-rumored crowning of Paul Rudd as Ant-Man is finally happening. He is Marvel‘s choice to star as the title character in the Edgar Wright-directed film. Rudd has proven himself adept at light drama and he is exceptionally good at  comedy, but I never really thought of him as superhero material. Wright, who wrote the Ant-Man script with Joe Cornish, showed at Comic-Con two years ago a demonstration of the technology developed that displayed a speck-sized Ant-Man running down the barrel of a gun and then re-emerging in actual size to put a hurting on a bad guy. It was pretty cool stuff, but Wright put the whole thing down to make The World’s End first. He did that mainly because the film’s producer, Working Title’s Eric Fellner, was diagnosed with cancer. Wright — who felt that Shaun Of The Dead — the first leg of what would become the Cornetto trilogy wouldn’t have gotten made if it wasn’t for Fellner — never would have forgiven himself if he didn’t make the third film in the series quickly, just in case the producer’s condition worsened. Marvel relented, and Kevin Feige agreed to wait. Fellner got his movie and, more important, a clean bill of health.

Related: Disney Moves Up ‘Ant-Man’ Release To Summer 2015

Now, it’s Ant-Man‘s turn. Marvel chased Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who wasn’t as interested in this as Warner Bros’ Sandman, which he is eyeing to direct as well as star in and produce. Rudd was the other long-rumored choice. This will be a big test for Rudd; Marvel’s superhero successes so far have been well-established outsized heroes that audiences grew up with. Guardians of the Galaxy will be the first real test for Feige’s hit machine to launch a new franchise, and then Ant-Man will be under the microscope even more because it is not an ensemble. Marvel has a way of bolstering its movies with all those heroes who signed nine-picture option deals, but this will be an interesting one to watch. I’m just not sure that a size-changing hero is that interesting, and I’m not sold on Rudd as an action star. Maybe he’ll prove me wrong. Marvel certainly has made a lot of right calls on superhero casting, from Robert Downey Jr to Mark Ruffalo, who made a splendid Hulk in The Avengers.

UPDATED: 6:44 PM: Here comes the backlash to the Duck Dynasty star’s anti-gay remarks published in GQ today. The Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBT civil rights group in the U.S., is demanding an apology from Phil Robertson and for A+E Networks to denounce his comments. “These remarks go beyond being outlandishly inaccurate and offensive,” the group said in a long and detailed statement. “They are dangerous and revisionist, appealing to those in our society who wish to repeat patterns of discrimination. We urge A+E to immediately denounce and repudiate Robertson’s comments. Furthermore, we call on you to see that Phil Robertson apologizes for his vitriolic comments. Surely a brand like A+E does not want to be associated with such racist and homophobic remarks. Meanwhile, GLAAD, which had slammed Robertson’s remarks as “vile” earlier in the day, praised A&E for its swift action to suspend its star. “What’s clear is that such hateful anti-gay comments are unacceptable to fans, viewers, and networks alike,” the organization said in a statement. “By taking quick action and removing Robertson from future filming, A&E has sent a strong message that discrimination is neither a Christian nor an American value.”

PREVIOUSLY: A+E Networks said that Phil Robertson has been put on an indefinite hiatus from his hit reality series for anti-gay remarks he made in the January issue of GQ magazine, which became available today.  This comes as Season 5 of the series is set to debut January 15. We’re hearing that the show isn’t shooting right now, and there are episodes in the can that Robertson will be in. But he will not be a part of the production when filming resumes. “We are extremely disappointed to have read Phil Robertson’s comments in GQ, which are based on his own personal beliefs and are not reflected in the series Duck Dynasty”, the network group said in a statement just now. ”His personal views in no way reflect those of A+E Networks, who have always been strong supporters and champions of the LGBT community. The network has placed Phil under hiatus from filming indefinitely.”

This move is no small potatoes for A&E Network — the series’ Season 4 debut remains the No. 1-rated nonfiction series telecast in cable history with 11.8 million viewers. For A&E was its best-ever series telecast in adults 18-49 (6.3 million viewers) and adults 18-34 (3 million). It has spawned a couple of Christmas specials (the one last week drew 8.9 million viewers) and just landed its first major awards nomination this month, a PGA Awards nom for best reality series. The Louisiana family also secured big salary increases just before that record Season 4 premiere, with the clan reportedly earning more than $200,000 an episode — roughly 4.5 times more than their previous salaries – divvied up among the nine adults and 11 kids on the show. Those negotiations with the WME-repped family and series producer Gurney Prods caused a delay in the start of the season.

In today’s GQ article profiling the family behind the reality hit, Robertson — who in the story described his family as “Bible-thumpers who just happened to end up on television” — sounded off on among other things homosexuality, calling it a sin. “It seems like, to me, a vagina — as a man — would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.” Later, when asked what is sinful, he replied: “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men.”

The comments quickly drew the ire of gay-rights groups like GLAAD. ”Phil and his family claim to be Christian, but Phil’s lies about an entire community fly in the face of what true Christians believe,” said GLAAD spokesperson Wilson Cruz. “He clearly knows nothing about gay people or the majority of Louisianans – and Americans – who support legal recognition for loving and committed gay and lesbian couples. Phil’s decision to push vile and extreme stereotypes is a stain on A&E and his sponsors who now need to reexamine their ties to someone with such public disdain for LGBT people and families.” The group said it reached out to A&E to see whether the network stood by Robertson’s statements.