Film
R.I.P. Stephen Sondheim, Iconic Broadway Composer Dead at 91
Stephen Sondheim, the American composer and lyricist known for hit Broadway musicals such as West Side Story, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, has died. He was 91. Richard Pappas, Sondheim’s lawyer and friend, announced the death on Friday (November 26th) via the New York Times. Sondheim died at his Roxbury, Connecticut home early Friday, with Pappas noting that the death was “sudden.” The evening prior, Sondheim had celebrated Thanksgiving with friends. Advertisement Related Video Sondheim was born on March 22nd, 1930 in New York City, and grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and on a farm near Doylestown, Pennsylvania, following his parents’ divorce. He has said his interest in theatre began when he saw the Broadway musi...
Paul Thomas Anderson Unveils Licorice Pizza Soundtrack with New Jonny Greenwood Song: Stream
Get ready to devour some Licorice Pizza: The original soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson’s new coming-of-age film has arrived today via Republic. Stream it below via Apple Music or Spotify. Boasting an impressive roster including Sonny & Cher, David Bowie, and more, the Licorice Pizza soundtrack acts as a time machine to the movie’s ’70s SoCal setting. Of course, there’s also one contemporary contribution from Anderson’s frequent collaborator, Johnny Greenwood. Beloved highlights from the Licorice Pizza soundtrack include The Doors’ “Peace Frog,” Taj Mahal’s “Tomorrow May Not Be Your Day,” and Nina Simone’s “July Tree.” At 20 tracks total, there’s plenty to immerse yourself in the film’s setting. Greenwood’s song is appropriately titled “Licorice Pizza,” and marks the fifth t...
Jared Leto’s House of Gucci Method Acting Involved “Snorting Lines of Arrabbiata Sauce”
Jared Leto is a proud method actor who often goes to bizarre and uncomfortable lengths to portray a particular role. In preparing for Requiem for a Dream, Leto lived on the streets with a group of heroin addicts and went as far as to shoot up water. He gained nearly 70 pounds in order to play Mark David Chapman in Chapter 27, and after being cast as the Joker in Suicide Squad he tormented his fellow cast members by mailing them live rats and bullets. For his latest role, Leto portrays fashion designer and business magnate Paolo Gucci in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci. In an interview with i-D, Leto detailed how he got into character, which involved “snorting lines of arrabbiata sauce.” “I did it all. I was snorting lines of arrabbiata sauce by the middle of this movie. I had olive oil for b...
Producer Adapting Rape Memoir Realizes Story Doesn’t Make Sense, Helps Clear Man’s Name
Timothy Mucciante was executive producing a film adaptation of Lucky, Alice Sebold’s 1999 memoir about being beaten and raped in 1981, when he noticed several issues with the subsequent trial that led to the conviction of Anthony J. Broadwater. Mucciante became so convinced that an injustice had occurred that he dropped out of the movie this past June, hired a private investigator, and turned over the findings to Broadwater’s lawyer. On Monday, as the New York Times reports, Broadwater was finally exonerated of the crime. Broadwater, now 61, was only 20 years old at the time of his arrest. He had returned home to Syracuse, New York from a stint in the Marines to spend time with his ill father. Throughout the trial, his father’s health worsened, and he died shortly after...
DC League of Super-Pets Trailer Shows Pups Helping Heroes During Ruff Times: Watch
Call it Mission Impawsibble: Superman’s dog Krypto teams up with a ragtag band of shelter pets to save the Justice League in the new trailer for DC League of Super-Pets. The preview opens with Krypto (Dwayne Johnson) attempting to wake his out-of-this-world owner Clark Kent (John Krasinski) for a super walk. We find out that while Krypto is loyal, kind, and capable of flight, he has trouble relating to more Earthly dogs, leaving him somewhat lonely. But when Lex Luthor (Marc Maron) contrives to capture the Justice League, it falls on Krypto to save the day — with a little help. Something small, bright and red explodes in a room full of caged animals, granting them superpowers. The dog Ace (Kevin Hart) becomes indestructible, the pig PB (Vanessa Bayer) gains the ability to expand in si...
Every Paul Thomas Anderson Movie, Ranked from Worst to Best
This article originally ran in 2014 and has been updated. Welcome to Dissected, where we disassemble a band’s catalog, a director’s filmography, or some other critical pop-culture collection in the abstract. It’s exact science by way of a few beers. This time, we sort through the best and worst of the man who gave us a sobbing Philip Seymour Hoffman. In many ways, Paul Thomas Anderson is our 21st century Stanley Kubrick. You always get the sense that every single shot in his films have been carefully constructed. From the portrait of a man sitting down in an empty warehouse to a long shot following our lead through a porn party, the attention to detail is so great all we can do is just sit back and admire the man’s vision. For that reason alone, it wasn’t easy ranking Anderson’s filmograph...
Will Smith Developed “Psychosomatic Reaction” to Too Much Sex, Would “Vomit” After Orgasm
Come again? Sounding simultaneously like a man who has had too much and too little therapy, Will Smith said that as a young star, he engaged in so much sex that he “developed a psychosomatic reaction to having an orgasm,” that would “make me gag and sometimes even vomit.” The revelation comes from his new memoir Will, which hit store shelves earlier this month. Via BuzzFeed News, he began his downward spiral after coming home from a two-week tour to find that his girlfriend, Melanie, had cheated. “I desperately need relief but as there is no pill for heartbreak, I resorted to the homeopathic remedies of shopping and rampant sexual intercourse,” he wrote. Advertisement Related Video “Up until this point in my life, I had only had sex with one woman other than Melanie. But over the next...
Dinosaurs Rule the Earth in New Jurassic World: Dominion Prologue: Watch
Before the year even started, Jurassic World: Dominion was postponed to 2022, but fans don’t have to wait any longer to get a glimpse at the latest Jurassic Park installment. Today, Universal Pictures released a five-minute prologue video that sets up the events of the dinosaur sequel. Directed by Colin Trevorrow, who helmed the franchise’s original 2015 revival before J.A. Bayona filled in for 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the clip offers original content not found in the upcoming film. It starts off 65 million years in the past, when dinosaurs were the dominant creatures on the planet. For several minutes, near silence soundtracks our look at the animals as they live peacefully, swimming in rivers and hunting for food. It’s an eerily immersive clip; shoutout to the eff...
Delroy Lindo Joins Cast Of Marvel’s New ‘Blade’ Movie
HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Mike Coppola / Getty One of the highly anticipated movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe just got a major addition to the roster, as the new Blade movie has added Delroy Lindo to its cast. Lindo, who has been captivating audiences recently in Netflix’s The Harder They Fall as Marshal Bass Reeves, is set to be part of Marvel Studios’ reboot of Blade as reported in Variety. The 69-year veteran actor is the first to join the film after Mahershala Ali was booked to play the iconic vampire hunter, resulting in a triumphant announcement of the reboot in 2019 at the end of Marvel’s panel at the San Diego Comic-Con. Related Stories Lindo has been on a tear of late, also scoring critical acclaim for his performance in Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods alongside the late...
Ridley Scott Blames “Millenians” for The Last Duel’s Box Office Flop
Ridley Scott knows he’s a film legend, so he’s not taking the blame for his latest endeavor’s modest success. Instead, the English director has found a different explanation for why his historical drama The Last Duel flopped at the box office: millennials — or as he calls them, “The millenian.” Scott joined Marc Maron for a recent episode of the comedian’s WTF podcast to discuss his long-spanning career, and he took the time to reflect on the low sales of his latest picture, which drew only $4.8 million domestically from a $100 million budget in its October 15th opening weekend. Scott said he feared the Disney-owned 20th Century Studios would undersell the film — which sees Matt Damon and Adam Driver fight to the death in a medieval France duel — since Disney’s target audien...
House of Gucci Is as Italian as a Pizza Bagel and It Knows It: Review
The Pitch: On March 27, 1995, Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), then head of the luxury fashion label Gucci, was shot dead on the steps outside his Milan office. Two years later, his ex-wife, Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga), and her accomplices were sentenced to prison, most of them for more than twenty-five-year sentences. But how did we get here? How did a woman who found herself at the top of the fashion world turn into a black widow? Ridley Scott‘s House of Gucci wants to answer those questions, with all the brio and style to which the Gucci name is accustomed. We flash back to the early ’70s, where a young Patrizia meets and charms the bookish Maurizio, who wants less than nothing to do with the Gucci dynasty, considering his strained relationship with his ailing father Rodolfo (J...
Eddie Redmayne Calls Playing Trans Woman in The Danish Girl a “Mistake”
Eddie Redmayne is reflecting on his Oscar-nominated turn in 2015’s The Danish Girl, calling his performance as Lili Elbe, one of the first trans women to ever undergo gender reassignment surgery, a “mistake.” “No, I wouldn’t take it on now,” he told The Sunday Times. “I made that film with the best intentions, but I think it was a mistake.” He added, “The bigger discussion about the frustrations around casting is because many people don’t have a chair at the table. There must be a leveling, otherwise we are going to carry on having these debates.” Tom Hooper directed The Danish Girl from a 2000 novel of the same name by Daid Ebershoff. Some members of the LGBTQ community criticized the film at the time of its release, suggesting that the part of a trans w...
