It’s been a wild awards season leading up to this year’s Oscars. Who would have expected that the hottest feud to emerge would be between Jane Campion and Sam Elliott? Or that the showdown for Best Picture would come down to two streaming films — The Power of the Dog and CODA — with classic awards bait like Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast struggling to get traction? This year’s Oscars contenders also include huge stars like Will Smith, poised to score his first-ever win for Best Actor after his crowd-pleasing work in King Richard, Paul Thomas Anderson’s writing and directing work for Licorice Pizza, and a Best Actress race packed with staggering talent like Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Olivia Colman, Jessica Chastain, and Kristen Stewart. Not to mention the battle that will ensue in the technic...
A song of joyful defiance. Hans Zimmer took a moment to honor a Ukrainian pianist during his London concert earlier this week. Pausing his own performance at the O2 Arena, the composer showed a video for the audience depicting the young musician named Alex, who refused to stop playing the main theme to 2010’s Inception when air raid sirens began going off in a Lviv subway station. National Geographic photographer John Stanmeyer captured the moment in a Lviv subway station and posted the video on social media. “When bomb sirens began, police asked everyone to move inside the railway station,” wrote Stanmeyer in the Instagram caption. “Alex @alexpian_official wouldn’t stop, playing his piano louder against the air raid warning. His friend joined with the most calming pink nails. A simple, ov...
Boasting a career spanning multiple decades, Aunjanue Ellis is on the cusp of Oscar glory for her turn in the Will Smith-led King Richard, portraying Oracene “Brandy” Price, the mother of tennis legends Venus and Serena Williams. While King Richard primarily follows the life story of the sisters’ father, Richard, the film highlights the wide scope of Oracene Price’s work and the important role she held in making her daughters the greatest tennis players of all time. Ellis delivers a dynamic, moving, and multifaceted performance that transcends mere biopic impersonation; instead, it taps into something deeper and rawer. Ahead of the Oscars on Sunday, where King Richard is up for Best Picture, Best Actor (Smith), Best Supporting Actress (Ellis), Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, a...
The Pitch: Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) has lived a life of quiet, overwhelmed lament. There are so many things she could have done, so many hers she could have been. Instead, she’s a middle-aged owner of a failing laundromat, with a miserable husband gunning for divorce (Ke Huy Quan’s Weymond), a withdrawn daughter (Stephanie Hsu’s Joy), and an increasingly frail father (James Hong’s Gong Gong) who doesn’t yet know that his granddaughter is gay. It gets worse: It’s tax season, and their unsympathetic IRS auditor (Jamie Lee Curtis‘ Deirdre) is breathing down their necks. As if that weren’t complicated enough, the IRS office becomes a battleground for the fate of the multiverse as Evelyn learns that she’s the only one who can stop a multi-dimensional agent of chaos named Jobu Tupaki fro...
A24 has announced a deluxe vinyl box set of the Moonlight soundtrack in honor of the film’s historic Oscar win five years ago. The reissue will feature the full original soundtrack by Nicholas Britell as well as eleven previously unreleased tracks like “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,” “I’ve Seen Good and You Ain’t It,” and “Why’d You Call Me?” In addition, the box set includes a dual bound sewn book; Britell’s original, handwritten score to “Little’s Theme”; and a commemorative essay by Moonlight director Barry Jenkins. Pre-orders are now ongoing. “It’s been so exciting to revisit Moonlight with Barry and to now present this five year anniversary edition deluxe vinyl,” said Britell in a statement. “Working on Moonlight was a truly unforgettable journey for all of us, and we are thrille...
Superhero movies have come to make a few enemies in the world’s more sophisticated cinephiles, but Nicolas Cage doesn’t mind the big-budget flicks. In a recent interview, the actor defended Marvel’s industry domination from vocal critics like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, saying, “I don’t see what the issue is.” Back in 2019, Scorsese proclaimed that Marvel movies were more like theme parks than cinema, while this year, Coppola — Cage’s uncle, for those unaware — described the franchise’s films as “one prototype movie that is made over and over and over and over and over again to look different.” When GQ asked Cage to comment on these theories, he didn’t understand the beef. “Yeah, why do they do that?” Cage said. “I don’t understand the conflict. I don’t agree with t...
Red Notice director Rawson Marshall Thurber is set to pilot a legendary robot in a live-action adaptation of Voltron. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Thurber will co-write the script with Ellen Shanman. World Events Productions, the company that owns the rights to the character, will serve as a producer through CEO Bob Koplar. The film is currently looking for a distribution home, though interest is reportedly high. World Events created Voltron: Defenders of the Universe in 1984. The show was a dubbed and recut version of the Japanese mecha anime Beast King GoLion, with an unrelated anime, Kikou Kantai Dairugger XV, serving as the basis for much of Season 2. The plot follows five space pilots who each steer their own lion robot. All fi...
In her upcoming film The Lost City, Sandra Bullock plays a romance novelist whose go-to cover model (Channing Tatum) isn’t always too proud of his work. Bullock herself can relate to being ashamed of a past project: In a recent interview with TooFab, the actress admitted that she still has some regrets about signing on to the notoriously awful Speed 2: Cruise Control. The topic came up when the interviewer asked Bullock and her co-star, Daniel Radcliffe, if they had any past projects of which they were initially embarrassed, but eventually made peace with after seeing fans’ positive reactions. Radcliffe confessed that strutting around in a Hogwarts uniform on the set of Harry Potter didn’t always make him feel too chic, but he obviously grew to realize how spe...
It’s official: Beyoncé will perform at the 2022 Academy Awards. The Academy has announced that Queen Bey will perform “Be Alive,” her Oscar-nominated song from King Richard, during Sunday’s awards show. It’ll mark her first public performance since 2020. Additionally, the Academy has confirmed that Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas, will be on hand to perform “No Time to Die,” their Oscar-nominated theme song to the latest James Bond film of the same name. Related Video Two other Oscar nominees are also scheduled to hit the stage: Reba McEntire will sing “Somehow You Do” from Four Days Gold, and Sebastián Yara will perform “Dos Oruguitas” from Encanto. Van Morrison, the fifth and final nominee for Best Original Song, was also invited to perform “Down to Joy” from Belfast, but is ...
To the surprise of no one, Billie Eilish has been confirmed to perform at the 2022 Academy Awards, during which she’ll play the Oscar-nominated “No Time to Die” with her brother and collaborator FINNEAS. “No Time to Die,” the latest James Bond theme from the film of the same name, is up for Best Original Song. It’s a heavy favorite to pick up the award, having already snagged trophies at the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, and Grammys. As The Hollywood Reporter points out, the Oscars have a history of awarding Bond themes. Adele’s “Skyfall” from the 2012 movie of the same name was the first one to win the Best Original Song trophy, followed by Sam Smith’s “Writing’s on the Wall” from 2015’s Spectre. Advertisement Related Video Eilish and FINNEAS join Travis Barker as c...
Jack Nicholson immortalized Jack Torrance in the 1980 film adaptation of The Shining, but Ben Stiller may soon take his own stab at the character on the stage. According to Variety, Stiller is in talks to star in Ivo van Hove’s upcoming theater adaptation of Stephen King’s classic story. van Hove’s production is scheduled to open on London’s West End next January, with rehearsals set to begin in the fall. According to Variety, the production is expected to stick more to King’s novel than Stanley Kubrick’s film, which King famously criticized for, amongst other things, attributing Torrance’s psychological breakdown to the isolation of the Overlook Hotel more than to the hotel’s supernatural forces. Simon Stephens has signed on as a writer, while Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender ...