Film
Encanto Composer Germaine Franco on the Magic of Collaboration: “We Felt Like We Had This Amazing Gift”
A Zoom malfunction meant we had to restart midway through our conversation, but Oscar-nominated composer Germaine Franco was more than understanding — because Encanto was a COVID production. “Usually you want to be in the same room so everybody’s listening to the same mix, the same speaker, the same environment,” she tells Consequence via Zoom. “But I was presenting cues on Zoom, and everyone had different headphones. It was so tricky to say, ‘Okay, I’m going to play this. I have no idea what it sounds like on your end.’” Prior to Encanto, Franco’s film work included The Book of Life, Dope, Tag, and Coco — her Oscar nomination this year, for the lively Colombian-influenced score of Disney’s latest animated feature, makes history, as she’s only the sixth woman ever to be nominated for...
Puss in Boots Uses Up Eight Lives in New Trailer for The Last Wish: Watch
Puss and Boots is down to his ninth and final life in the new trailer for DreamWorks’ The Last Wish. This is the long-gestating sequel to 2011’s Puss in Boots, which itself was a spinoff of 2004’s Shrek 2. Antonio Banderas returns as the titular fearless feline, who begins the trailer by defeating a giant, but who lingers in his victory speech a little too long and finds himself crushed to death. That’s nothing new to Puss in Boots, who, as he soon recounts, has died a number of times. There was the bull-fighting incident, the time he didn’t land on his feet, the mix-up with seafood, and the whoopsie in a cannon. He’s a bit slow to count it up — “I’m not really a math guy,” he says — but to his horror, he soon realizes he has already perished eight times. “What do ...
AMC Entertainment Buys Stake in Literal Gold Mine One Year After Flirting with Bankruptcy
With the energy of a person who becomes newly engaged two days after leaving rehab, AMC Entertainment — a company that nearly went bankrupt less than a year ago — has spent $27.9 million on the troubled gold and silver mining company Hycroft, despite having zero experience in the excavation of rare metals. The Hycroft Mining Holding Corp. owns the 71,000-acre Hycroft Mine in northern Nevada, which is thought to possess “some 15 million ounces of gold deposits and some 600 million ounces of silver deposit,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. AMC Entertainment has purchased a 22% stake in the company, and Adam Aron, the chairman and CEO, sounds positively manic about the decision. “To state the obvious, one would not normally think that a movie theater company’s core c...
Benedict Cumberbatch Plans to Host Ukrainian Refugees
Actor Benedict Cumberbatch plans to open up his inner sanctum to Ukrainian refugees in the wake of Russia’s unprovoked invasion. The London resident and star of The Power of the Dog shared his intentions to take part in the UK’s new “Homes for Ukraine” initiative on the red carpet for the 2022 BAFTAs on Sunday, March 15th. “It is a really shocking time to be a European two-and-a-half hours’ flight away from Ukraine and it’s something that hangs over us,” Cumberbatch told Sky News. “We all need, as we know, to do more than wear a badge. We need to donate, we need to pressure our politicians to continue to create some kind of refugee safety and a haven here for people who are suffering and figure that system out. I know it’s ongoing, I know that’s happening. Everyone need...
SXSW Review: Under the Influence Interrogates the Addictive Escalation of David Dobrik
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 SXSW Film Festival. The Pitch: Out of the great, grand entertainment experiment that is YouTube, David Dobrik is easily one of the platform’s greatest successes. Leveraging his devil-may-care attitude and penchant for increasingly ambitious or invasive stunts, Dobrik quickly became a multi-millionaire on a level most non-movie stars would never enjoy, with six-figure sponsorship deals, 18 million subscribers, and a cadre of fellow sex-and-booze-loving daredevils (colloquially known as the Vlog Squad) whose boats his rising tide would also lift. But the same sensationalism that fueled Dobrik’s success would also be his downfall (inasmuch as one of the richest kids on YouTube, with a cultish zoomer following, can fall). In 2021, he suffere...
SXSW Review: Tony Hawk Keeps His Distance in Skate Doc Until the Wheels Fall Off
The Pitch: The secret to Tony Hawk’s success is his willingness to fail. When we first see him in the opening minutes of Sam Jones’ doc Until the Wheels Fall Off, we see exactly why: The skateboarding titan, still the face of the sport even in his fifties, tries and tries again to pull a 900 — the borderline-impossible skate trick he miraculously pulled off at the 1999 X Games — only to eat shit on each attempt. His body slams into the wood with concussive force every time, occasionally hurting enough to make him scream in pain. And yet, he gets up and tries again. What fuels someone like Hawk to keep sacrificing his body for the chance at a twice-in-a-lifetime flip? Over the course of two hours, Jones interrogates this question, charting Hawk’s youth as a child skating prodigy, his d...
Charlie Cox Calls Ben Affleck’s Daredevil Movie “Tonally Confused,” Says the “Suit Sucks”
Charlie Cox wasn’t the first actor to play Daredevil, but he’s not afraid to criticize his predecessors. When discussing the future of Netflix’s Daredevil series at the 2022 Middle East Film & Comic Con, Cox revealed he was no fan of the Ben Affleck-starring 2003 Daredevil film, which he called “tonally confused.” “I watched it once, and then I wanted to go and do my own thing,” Cox said. “I hadn’t seen it before I got the role. I watched it when I got the role.” Cox clarified that he didn’t have a problem with Affleck’s performance — “I like his Matt Murdock,” he admitted — so much as he had a problem with the film itself. “I feel like the movie tried to do too much and it was a little tonally confused,” he said, adding: “They had everyone in that movie — they had Kingpin, t...
SXSW Review: X Is Ti West’s Raucous TeXXXas Chain Saw Massacre By Way of Shyamalan’s Old
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 SXSW Film Festival. The Pitch: X has a lot on its mind, and the line between exploitation and empowerment is just one of many rich themes mined by Ti West in his first feature film since the 2016 John Travolta and Ethan Hawke-starring Western In A Valley of Violence. “So the camera changes things,” Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) says midway through the film, just before RJ, Lorraine’s boyfriend and the young starry-eyed director of the porno at the center of the film, storms out of the shoot, furious and uncomfortable with her sudden interest in appearing on-screen in their dirty picture. Lorraine, quiet as a church mouse, is the innocent boom mic operator, not like these other girls willing to debase themselves on-camera, or at least that’s how RJ ...
Shirley Bassey Sings “Diamonds Are Forever” at the BAFTAs: Watch
Dame Shirley Bassey kicked off the 2022 BAFTAs (British Academy Film Awards) on Sunday with a special tribute honoring the 60th anniversary of James Bond. The 85-year-old singer performed “Diamonds Are Forever,” her legendary theme to the 1971 Bond film of the same name. Elsewhere during the BAFTAs, Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood and HAIM’s Alana Haim appeared on stage together to accept Paul Thomas Anderson’s Best Original Screenplay trophy for Licorice Pizza. Haim starred in the film, while Greenwood composed its score. “Paul is going to be very excited to win this, not least because it means I’ve been forced to come and give a really awkward and inarticulate speech on his behalf which he will find very funny,” quipped Greenwood. Advertisement [embedded content] [embedded content] Shar...
Brent Renaud, Award-Winning Documentarian, Shot and Killed in Ukraine
Brent Renaud, an award-winning American documentarian, was shot and killed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine on Sunday (March 13th). Renaud was on assignment for MSNBC and TIME magazine, capturing footage for a documentary series about refugees. According to fellow filmmaker Juan Arredondo, he and Renaud came under fire at a checkpoint in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv. Both men were shot and “we got split,” Arredondo told reporters from a hospital gurney, where he was being treated for his own injuries (via Deadline). Renaud was struck in the neck and died soon after. “We are devastated by the loss of Brent Renaud. As an award-winning filmmaker and journalist, Brent tackled the toughest stories around the world often alongside his brother Craig Renaud,” TIME Editor in Chief and CEO Edward Felsentha...
R.I.P. William Hurt, Oscar-Winning Actor Dead at 71
William Hurt, the acclaimed actor who received an Academy Award for his performance in 1985’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, has died at the age of 71. Variety was first to report news of Hurt’s passing. According to his friend Gerry Byrne, Hurt passed away Sunday (March 13th) from natural causes. Hurt also received Oscar nominations for his work in the films Children of a Lesser God, Broadcast News, and A History of Violence. His other notable roles included films like Body Heat, The Good Shepherd, and Into the Wild. He also portrayed General Thunderbolt Ross in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Advertisement Related Video A Juilliard-trained actor, Hurt received acclaim from the very beginning of his storied career. His debut performance in the 1980 film Altered States earned him a Golden Globe ...
SXSW Review: Dolly Parton Doc Still Working 9 to 5 Chokes on Its Own Ambition
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 SXSW Film Festival. The Pitch: More than 40 years ago, 9 to 5 burst onto movie screens with a deceptively winning formula for 1980: Take three women at the top of their game — actress/producer/activist Jane Fonda, top-tier comedienne Lily Tomlin, and country music superstar Dolly Parton — and throw them together in the dreary workplaces of Carter-era America with a chauvinistic boss (Dabney Coleman) you’d just love to see tied up and tortured. It may have played like a lark, thanks in no small part to a whip-smart script from Patricia Resnick (3 Women) and fanciful direction from Colin Higgins (Harold and Maude), but it had feminist teeth underneath the laughs, which led it to box-office success and decades of appreciation. Decades ...
