Film
New Tom Petty Documentary To Premiere at SXSW 2021 Film Festival
With Sundance now behind us, South by Southwest has gone ahead and announced its feature film lineup for 2021. Set to take place virtually from March 16th to 20th, the Austin-based festival will screen nearly a hundred new features. Not surprisingly, the major highlights of the lineup are of the musical variety, specifically documentaries Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free, Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil, and the Charli XCX-focused Alone Together. “It’s been a year unlike any we’ve experienced, first marked by the cancellation of SXSW 2020,” said Janet Pierson, Director of Film. “We feel privileged to have been able to pivot to SXSW Online and present a fantastic treasure trove of programming, including a pared down and wonderful selection of films that we know will delight, ente...
Robin Wright Tries to Ground Herself in the Sumptuous But Hollow Land: Review
The Pitch: Edee (Robin Wright) wants to get away from it all — life, family, civilization. She’s mourning something, or rather, escaping, but we don’t know precisely what. Flashbacks to a husband (Warren Christie), a son, and a concerned sister (Kim Dickens) give us plenty of clues, though. Packing up a U-Haul and driving across the country from Chicago to a remote cabin in Quincy, Wyoming, Edee makes it clear that she wants to be left alone to fend for herself. Edee sends the truck and U-Haul away, leaving only herself and a sparse collection of canned food to fill her new home. Naturally, the city slicker doesn’t make it long before weather, starvation, and dangerous wildlife force the intervention of a kind stranger named Miguel (Demián Bichir), who helps her back on her feet and t...
Debating the Essential Hannibal Lecter
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Art is subjective. Music and movies aren’t about competition; they’re about artistic expression. Well, for those of you who know better than to believe those lies, welcome to another installment of Vs. This time, Justin Gerber, Clint Worthington, and Dominick Suzanne-Mayer debate over who played the best Hannibal Lector as Ridley Scott’s Hannibal turns 20 and Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs turns 30. Mind you, this piece originally ran in 2016. Justin Gerber: I grew up on Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal. It earned him an Academy Award for Best Actor. It gave his career a boost it desperately needed, and he’s been pretty much riding the waves ever since. He’s great. No question. However, there’s something about the laissez-faire performance of Brian...
Judd Apatow’s Pandemic Comedy The Bubble to Star Pedro Pascal, Karen Gillan, Maria Bakalova
Pedro Pascal (photo by Gage Skidmore), Maria Bakalova (Felicity Kay, image via Instagram), and Karen Gillan (Skidmore) From The 40-Year-Old Virgin to the 40+-week quarantine: Judd Apatow’s next project is a COVID-19-inspired comedy called The Bubble. Via The Hollywood Reporter, it stars The Mandalorian himself Pedro Pascal, Karen Gillan of Guardians of the Galaxy fame, and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm breakout actress Maria Bakalova. While you may be rolling your eyes at the the thought of another unnecessary pandemic movie, the Knocked Up director has a twist in mind. Reportedly, The Bubble takes inspiration from the real-life experience of the cast and crew on Jurassic Park: Dominion. That team found themselves quarantined away from their f...
Borat’s “Wuhan Flu” on Shortlist for Best Original Song Oscar
Oscar’s comin’. The Academy has unveiled shortlists for nine categories at the upcoming 2021 Oscars, including Best Original Song. Already, there’s plenty of competition among those listed, including from — believe it or not — Kazakhstan’s most trusted journalist. Yes, “Wuhan Flu” from Amazon’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is one of the 15 original songs that made the shortlist. The ridiculous singalong joins a tough assembly that includes heavy hitters like Janelle Monáe (“Turntables” from All In: The Fight for Democracy), Mary J. Blige (“See What You’ve Done” from Belly of the Beast), H.E.R. (“Fight For You” from Judas and the Black Messiah), and Leslie Odom, Jr. (“Speak Now” from One Night...
New Movie Long Live Rock Features Members of Metallica, RATM, Slipknot, GN’R, and More: Watch Trailer
Long Live Rock … Celebrate the Chaos A new movie documenting the culture of hard rock music, titled Long Live Rock … Celebrate the Chaos, is set to premiere on March 11th. Among the many artists appearing in the film are members of Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, Slipknot, and Guns N’ Roses. The documentary was filmed at various U.S. rock festivals, and boasts interviews with Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, RATM’s Tom Morello, Slipknot’s Corey Taylor, Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan, Rob Zombie, Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell, Korn’s Jonathan Davis, Body Count’s Ice-T, Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale, and more. The movie is directed by film/TV producer and music supervisor Jonathan McHugh (Saw franchise), and produced by Gary Spivak (Danny Wimmer Presents) and Jonathan Platt (Saw franchise music pr...
Documentary on Four Seasons Total Landscaping in the Works
Four Seasons Total Landscaping is still cashing in on its increased exposure thanks to the bumbling, blundering 2020 Trump campaign. Since the humble Philadelphia business became the accidental site of a Rudy Giuliani press conference back in November, the company has raked it in with exclusive merch and that cheeky “Opportunity Knocks” Super Bowl ad for Fiverr. Now, the debacle that started this whole thing will become the focus of a new documentary from a pair of Oscar-winning producers. Entitled Four Seasons Total Documentary, the in-production film is being directed by Christopher Stoudt (Patron Saint of Jazz Fest). Glen Zipper and Sean Stuart, who won Academy Awards in 2012 for their high school football doc Undefeated, are serving as producers (via The Hollywood Reporter). Four Seaso...
Glenn Danzig Shares NSFW Trailer for His Upcoming Vampire Western: Watch
Glenn Danzig has unveiled the NSFW trailer for his upcoming vampire Spaghetti Western, Death Rider in the House of Vampires. The film follows the Misfits frontman’s previous directorial outing, Verotika. Bridging Danzig’s love of vampire horror and Italian westerns, the film’s trailer is steeped in the atmosphere of Sergio Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy” …only with a lot more blood. These cowboys have fangs. Danzig wrote, directed, scored, and stars in the upcoming film alongside the likes of Devon Sawa, Julian Sands, Danny Trejo, Eli Roth, and Kim Director. It follows the Death Rider (Sawa), who travels to the desert Vampire Sanctuary, ruled by Count Holliday. The price of admission is “one untouched virgin.” The trailer’s combination of bloodthirst and gunslinging recalls Robert Rodriguez and ...
CODA Hits All The Right Notes: Sundance 2021 Review
This review is part of our Sundance 2021 coverage. The Pitch: 17-year-old Ruby (Emilia Jones) doesn’t have your typical adolescence: the child of a Massachusetts fishing family, she splits her time between the awkwardness of high school and helping her family out on the boat, doing her best to help her family keep the business afloat amid union disputes and predatory fish buyers who try to take advantage of them. There’s another complication: Ruby is the only hearing member of her family, the rest of whom — father Frank (Troy Kotsur), mother Jackie (Marlee Matlin), and brother Leo (Daniel Durant) — are deaf. This places added pressure on her as the one person who can translate ASL to the world around them; she’s inexplicably tethered to them. Of course, Ruby soon discovers she has dreams o...
Saint Maud Is Wholly Terrifying: Review
This review was originally part of our coverage of the 2020 Beyond Film Festival. The Pitch: Maud (Morfydd Clark) does palliative care for a private healthcare facility and becomes the maid for Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a former avant garde dancer and choreographer. Maud has found God following a traumatic event at work, hinted at through flashbacks and haunting visions, and has now taken a pious approach to work that borders on fanaticism. Faced with antagonism from Amanda, Maud slowly spirals more and more into religious fueled actions and experiences — talked to and touched by God — that will lead to a string of actions that have an irreversible impact and her and those around her. This Cast and Crew Are Doing the Lord’s Work: British writer and director Rose Glass boldly shows off her ch...
M. Night Shyamalan Shares Teaser Trailer for New Film Old: Watch
M. Night Shyamalan’s trailer for Old During the Super Bowl, we saw a group of people go through a horrifying process that rapidly aged their bodies and brains. Oh, and M. Night Shyamalan released the first teaser trailer for his new film Old. The follow-up to 2019’s Glass was inspired by the 2010 graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters. That story involved a dead body on a beach, a racist accusation, and a terribly rapid onset of aging. It appears Shyamalan has kept several of the original elements, though whenever he’s at the helm, there’s always a chance for a twist. Yet also a killer cast, and Old is no exception. Stranded on this nightmarish beach is Gael García Bernal, Eliza Scanlen, Thomasin McKenzie, Alex Wolff, Abbey Lee, Embeth Davidtz, a...
Marvel’s Blade Reboot Taps Watchmen Writer For Script
The coronavirus has made everything from before 2020 feel like ancient history, but back in 2019 Marvel announced that they were rebooting Blade with a new film starring Mahershala Ali. There hasn’t been any major developments since its initial announcement, but now Marvel Studios have revealed that Watchmen writer Stacy Osei-Kuffour has been tapped to pen the script. In addition to her role in the Emmy-winning HBO mini-series, Osei-Kuffour earned an Emmy nomination for her writing on Hulu’s Pen15, and she was also a story editor on Amazon Prime’s Hunters and HBO’s Run. According to The Hollywood Reporter, her prestigious position in the vampire-hunting blockbuster was solidified after six months of a “meticulous search” for suitable writers that Ali was directly involved in. Onl...
