Film
How Turning Red and The Baby-Sitters Club Prove We Need More Teen Girl Tales
It’s a bit funny to remember how, thirteen years ago, the enemy of fandom had a face, and it was Robert Pattinson. This is a bit of an exaggeration, except maybe it isn’t, when one remembers how the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con, that annual orgy of fandom love, featured a nasty undercurrent of young men “protesting” Twilight‘s invasion of Hall H. In the year 2022, of course, Pattinson has now been embraced to some degree by the fanboys as our newest on-screen Batman. But while that might have changed, the vibes of those lackluster protests remain a too-familiar echo of an attitude to which female members of fandom have always been aware: In the pantheon of the great media landscape which distracts and delights us daily, girly shit is always seen as second-class. Not important. Not because it’s...
Ukrainian President Zelensky Thanks Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher for Raising $35 Million in Aid
In just over two weeks, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher have raised a whopping $35 million to provide humanitarian aid to refugees of Ukraine following the ongoing invasion by Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently hopped on Zoom with the couple to express his gratitude for the couple’s efforts, while also sharing a snapshot of the call on social media. “.@aplusk & Mila Kunis were among the first to respond to our grief,” Zelensky wrote on Twitter. “They have already raised $35 million & are sending it to @flexport & @Airbnb to help [Ukrainian] refugees. Grateful for their support. Impressed by their determination. They inspire the world.” Earlier this month, Kunis (who immigrated from Ukraine to the US in 1991) and her husband started a ...
A ‘Patria Y Vida’ Documentary Will Showcase the Song That Is Changing Cuba
Cuban rapper Yotuel Romero and his superstar singer/songwriter wife, Beatriz Luengo, wrote the first verses of “Patria y Vida” in 2020 to “report the constant violations of human rights in Cuba and the repression of freedoms of expression for the artistic community,” said Luengo during a panel on March 17 at SXSW. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Today, even after “Patria y Vida” — which was also co-written with Gente de Zona, Descemer Bueno, Maykel Osorbo and El Funky — inspired Cuba’s current anti-government uprising and won the Latin Grammy for song of the year, change has been slow to come. But Romero and Luengo hope an upcoming documentary of the making of the song will take its message even further. “People have the power,” stressed the ra...
Alex G Drops “End Song” from We’re All Going to the World’s Fair Soundtrack: Stream
Alex G has released his new track “End Song” via Milan Records/Sony Music Entertainment. The vocal track scores the end credits for the upcoming indie thriller We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, which the singer-songwriter also soundtracked. “I choose to stay/ There is no other way/ I read the sign/ I do not ask it why/ You know what they do to little dogs like you,” he repeatedly warns over spare guitar. After making its world premiere more than a year ago at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is set to premiere April 22nd in theaters and on HBO Max. Starring Anna Cobb, the haunting film follows the story of a teenage girl who gets initiated into a horror role-playing game and begins losing her grip on reality as she documents her entire experience...
Pixar’s Lightyear Restores Same-Sex Kiss After Staff Revolt over Support of ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill
Disney continues to do damage control following reports that the company donated to every sponsor of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. After Pixar staff publicly accused the House of Mouse of censoring gay affection in their films last week, Variety has learned that a previously-cut same-sex kiss has been restored to Lightyear. Lightyear is a Pixar origin tale starring Chris Evans as the astronaut upon which the Buzz Lightyear action figure in Toy Story is based. Uzo Aduba co-stars as the character Hawthorne, an astronaut in a relationship with another woman. While the movie reportedly always treated her romantic partnership as serious, a kiss between the characters had been cut. Now, it’s back in the film. It’s the latest attempt by Disney to win back LGBT...
The Riddler Himself Paul Dano to Write New DC Comic Riddler: Year One
Paul Dano didn’t just play The Riddler in Matt Reeves’ The Batman, he got inside the villain’s head. Now he’s ready to put that knowledge to good use with Riddler: Year One, a new DC comic book due out in October. DC Comics unveiled their newest property in a social media post. “A new Riddler comic book hits stores this October with RIDDLER: YEAR ONE,” the announcement read. It also included a first look at the artwork, which shows a very suggestive pair of glasses framing the title. What they did not share was the artist responsible for that first look, thereby continuing a long tradition of comic book companies screwing over the less-well-known people who make their comics. There are other mysteries at this time, too, including the plot of Riddler: Yea...
William Hurt’s Former Partner Comes Forward with Domestic Violence Claims
Days after the death of William Hurt, the actor’s former long-term partner Donna Kaz has shared her response to the news and opened up about the abuse she suffered at the actor’s hands. In a guest column for Variety, Kaz looked back at her relationship with the late actor, which began in 1977 and officially ended in 1980 — though they would still see each other a few times per year until 1989. “Bill would snap, physically shove, punch and beat me, followed by tears, apologies and him offering me expensive gifts,” she wrote. “When the battering began I sloughed it off. He said he was sorry. Perhaps I instigated it. I only had to visit the ER once. It was only after many, many years I admitted to myself that I was the victim of domestic violence.” The author of 2016’s Un/Masked: Memoirs...
Windfall Review: Netflix Thriller is a Thin Exercise in Hitchcockian Style
The Pitch: A man (Jason Segel) breaks into a well-furnished California vacation home; he rifles through the drawers for cash and valuables, eats fruit from their lush orange grove, and pisses in their shower. But just as he’s about to leave, the couple to whom the house belongs — a snotty tech CEO (Jesse Plemons) and his wallflower wife (Lily Collins) — return home early and catch him in the act. Rather than break out into violence, though, a curious game of negotiation begins: What does the man want? Why did he pick this particular guy’s home to rob? And just what will it take to make him go away? This One Goes Out To…: We’re two full years into the COVID-19 pandemic now, which means we’re still dealing with the surfeit of small-scale, isolated thrillers facilitated by the restr...
Pearl Jam’s 10 Best Needle Drops
Pearl Jam famously abstained from making music videos for a few years in the 1990s, when they were one of the biggest bands in the world. But their music has regularly graced television and the big screen in other ways, appearing on the soundtracks of films like Judgment Night, The Basketball Diaries, and Reign Over Me. And Pearl Jam songs have popped up all over television, sometimes in surprising places like over a dozen episodes of the CBS procedural Cold Case. Here’s a look back at the 10 best Pearl Jam needle drops in film and TV. 10. “Man of the Hour” – Big Fish (2003) Advertisement Related Video [embedded content] In 2003, Tim Burton adapted Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions, a story of a man’s reconciliation with his dying father. Burton sought out Pearl Jam ...
Channing Tatum Teases Magic Mike 3 Plot: “It’s a Reverse-Role Pretty Woman”
Grab your stash of one-dollar bills, because Magic Mike 3 is officially underway: In a recent New York Times sitdown, Channing Tatum offered an update on the third film in the dramedy stripper series. Titled Magic Mike’s Last Dance, its plot takes inspiration from another famously salacious rom-com: Pretty Woman. “I leave for London tomorrow, and it’s going to be pretty bonkers,” Tatum said. “We’re kind of swinging for the fences — there never needs to be another stripper movie after this one. We’re trying to do a fish-out-of-water story where it’s a reverse-role Pretty Woman story that ends up with a lot of dancing in it.” In case you haven’t seen the 1990 rom-com classic, Pretty Woman follows a Hollywood prostitute (Julia Roberts) who is hired to be an escort by a wealthy ...
Amazon Closes $8.5 Billion Deal to Acquire MGM
Amazon has officially brought yet another company under its wing. Jeff Bezos’ empire announced today that it has closed its $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM. The deal, which was first announced back in May 2021, adds more than 4,000 movies and 17,000 TV shows to Amazon’s Prime Video catalog. This merger means that giant franchises like the James Bond series, as well as Silence of the Lambs, Rocky, and The Hobbit, now belong to Amazon. The company now owns the rights to some storied TV classics, such as The Apprentice and the fabled racist Donald Trump tapes. With their ownership of MGM’s studios now in effect, Amazon plans to use the acquisition to boost Prime Video and Amazon Studios’ growing catalog of new originals. Advertisement Related Video “The storied, nearly century-old studio — wi...
SXSW Review: Richard Linklater Goes to the Moon, But Keeps Things Grounded in Apollo 10 1/2
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 SXSW Film Festival. The Pitch: Anyone and everyone who was alive in the summer of 1969 likely knows where they were when they saw the first men landing on the moon on their television screens. But for young Stan (Milo Coy), his experience was a li’l different. Turns out, months before the iconic trip, the suburban Houstonite was approached by a couple of NASA suits for a once-in-a-lifetime mission. You see, due to an engineering blunder, they’d built the lunar module juuust a bit too small for an adult astronaut. So they needed a kid. And Stan, of course, is the perfect candidate. Related Video This didn’t happen, of course; it’s the stuff of childhood reverie, and adult Stan (Jack Black), who narrates, establishes early that he was a “fabuli...
