Film
Minari Submitted to Golden Globes as Foreign Language Film, Ineligible for Best Picture
Producers of the film festival darling and critically acclaimed Minari have stirred controversy by submitting the film for the Golden Globes’ Best Foreign Language Film category, making it ineligible for Best Picture. Though mostly in Korean, Minari is a quintessentially American-made film. It was produced by an American company (A24), written and directed by an American filmmaker (Lee Isaac Chung), shot in America, and stars a South Korean-American actor (Steven Yeun). Even the plot is all about the American story, that of an immigrant family fighting for their dreams. Yet, because of Golden Globe rules, the movie was submitted under the Best Foreign Language Film category. According to The Los Angeles Times, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s rules for submissions classify a forei...
Pixar on How Personal Experiences Influenced Soul
Soul marks a series of firsts for Pixar. It’s the first film the studio has ever released with a Black protagonist, a music teacher voiced by Jamie Foxx; it’s the studio’s first film with a Black co-director in screenwriter Kemp Powers; and the first Pixar film to go straight to streaming. Due out on Christmas via Disney+, Soul follows Joe Gardner (Foxx), a music teacher whose aspirations of performing jazz come to fruition after he nabs a cushy performing gig with a well-respected group. That is, until he falls to his death. Now, left as a metaphysical soul, Joe endeavors to return to Earth to his body before it’s too late. It’s an imaginative journey that the Emeryville, California-based animation studio brings to life with a startling array of visuals that feel unprecedented. Edito...
Mad Max Spinoff Furiosa Receives 2023 Release Date
Mark those calendars, ’cause Warner Bros. has officially announced a release date for Furiosa. The Mad Max spinoff film will arrive on June 23rd, 2023. Furiosa serves as the prequel to the acclaimed 2015 epic Mad Max: Fury Road. George Miller is returning to direct, co-write, and produce the project alongside Doug Mitchell. An exact premise hasn’t been revealed, but as its title indicates, the movie will revolve around a young Furiosa, played by Anya Taylor-Joy. Our 2020 Performer of the Year has unsurprisingly picked up a ton of buzz the last few months thanks to The Queen’s Gambit, the most viewed scripted limited-series in Netflix history. Taylor-Joy will be joined by Chris Hemsworth and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, though their exact roles aren’t known at this time. Editors’ Picks...
Tom Cruise and Russia Are Engaged in an Actual Space Race
The movie that Tom Cruise is set to film in outer space somehow just got even more realistic. According to IndieWire, a Russian TV channel is aiming to shoot its own movie beyond our atmosphere before Cruise gets a chance to take off, creating a modern equivalent of the Cold War-era space race between America and the Soviet Union. Earlier this year, Cruise confirmed that he was teaming up with NASA and Elon Musk’s Space X program to star in a $200 million dollar film that will be partially shot on the International Space Station. The feat would make Cruise the first actor to ever film a Hollywood narrative feature in outer space. But between his prior obligations and the ongoing COVID pandemic, shooting for the still-untitled film isn’t supposed to begin until at least 2022, and Russia (cl...
Amazon Shares Trailer For Eddie Murphy’s Coming 2 America: Watch
Amazon Studios has shared the first trailer for Eddie Murphy’s Coming 2 America. The Coming to America sequel 32-years-in-the-making Is scheduled to premiere digitally on Amazon Prime on March 5th, 2021. The follow-up to its 1988 predecessor sees Zamunda’s newly-crowned King Akeem (Murphy) returning to America to meet his long-lost son. Along with Arsenio Hall, playing Akeem’s trusy sidekick Semmi, the film’s cast includes Wesley Snipes, James Earl Jones, Jermaine Fowler, Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan, and Teyana Taylor. It was directed by Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow) and written by original screenwriters Barry Blaustein and David Sheffield with Kenya Barris. Like many of 2021’s upcoming blockbusters, Coming 2 Amer...
Denzel Washington Is on Jared Leto’s Tail in The Little Things Trailer: Watch
One of the first movies Warner Bros. is using to smash release windows in 2021 is the Denzel Washington-starring The Little Things. Arriving in select theaters and HBO Max day-and-date on January 29th, the psychological thriller has today received its first trailer. Written and directed by John Lee Hancock (The Founder, The Blind Side), The Little Things finds Washington playing Joe “Deke” Deacon, a Kern County Deputy Sheriff with an impeccable track record yet no forward career momentum. While on an evidence-gathering assignment in Los Angeles, Sergeant Jim Baxter (Rami Malek) ropes him into a serial killer investigation. They both have their sights set on one particular man (Jared Leto), but their hunt for a murderer threatens to unearth some dark secrets from Deke’s past. The trailer ce...
Mads Mikkelsen Is Intoxicating In Another Round: Review
The Pitch: Mads Mikkelsen goes all-in for alcohol consumption in Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round (Druk), arguably the most generous film about drinking in recent memory. Sure, it’s a far-flung premise: Four academic buds decide to take a sip of Norwegian psychiatrist Finn Skårderud’s real-life hypothesis that human beings are born with a blood alcohol level that is 0.05 percent too low. In the US, a .08 is considered too drunk to drive. But .02, or a variable amount of alcohol based on individual physiology, can lead to lost focus and skill, he postulates. Skårderud’s big idea? When you’re a bit tipsy, you’re also on top. That’s to say you’re looser, more spontaneous, even inspired. Obviously he’s never binged, ignores addiction, and has likely never admitted to an excruciating hangover....
R.I.P. David Giler, Writer-Producer of Alien Franchise Dead at 77
David Giler, a writer and producer best known for his work on the Alien film franchise, has died at the age of 77. He passed away in his Bangkok home on December 19th. A cause of death hasn’t been revealed at this time. His longtime friend and fellow Alien producer Walter Hill announced the news in a statement. “If you knew David, you knew he was special,” he said. “The magic of his personality is hard to describe: funny, angry, extremely knowledgeable, extremely well read; it was my privilege to write and produce with him, and more importantly, to have his close and deep friendship for nearly 50 years.” Giler’s first breakout moment in Hollywood arrived in 1962 when he wrote the teleplay for an episode of ABC’s The Gallant Men. Throughout that decade, he spent his time penning scripts for...
The Accent Police Were Vigilant in 2020
Our Annual Report continues today with a look back on the year’s curious run of accents in film and television. Stay tuned for more awards, lists, and articles in the days and weeks to come about the best music, film, and TV of the year. If you’ve missed any part of our Annual Report, you can check out all the coverage here. Watching John Patrick Shanley’s new movie Wild Mountain Thyme is, in many ways, a picturesque experience. It’s set in the Irish countryside, and stars Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan, two very attractive people. But as I watched a very odd man played by Dornan buzz around his romantic feelings for a very charming woman played by Blunt, something began to nag at me. Somewhere in the distance, outside the movie itself, I heard sirens. I could tell that the Accent...
Pete Davidson Says He’s Getting All His Tattoos Removed
Covering up one tattoo at a time apparently isn’t working for Pete Davidson anymore. The Saturday Night Live comedian says he’s currently in the process of removing every one of his 100 tattoos. Davidson is one of the most heavily tattooed celebrities around. He doesn’t go off the rails with one giant phoenix on his back like some actors, but instead tends to get one-off tributes to influential figures, like Hillary Clinton, RBG, and Harry Potter. In a 2019 interview with Inked, he said getting tatted is “just a release … When [I’m] so manic and upset, sometimes that’s the only thing that will work for me.” However, now that his Hollywood career seems to be heating up on the back of films like The King of Staten Island and the upcoming The Suicide Squad, all that ink is slowing him do...
Education Ends the Small Axe Anthology With Full Marks: Review
The Pitch: Courtrooms, prisons, the police — Steve McQueen‘s Small Axe anthology has taken probing, deeply personal looks at the effects of racial discrimination, bias, and anti-Black violence on London’s Afro-Caribbean communities in the ’60s through the ’80s. With Education, McQueen turns his eye to London’s school systems in the 1970s, a place rife with bifurcated ideas about the intelligence of Black and white people. Enter Kingsley (a warm, intelligent turn from young Kenyah Sandy), the 12-year-old son of West Indies immigrants (Sharlene Whyte’s Agnes and Daniel Francis), who finds himself transferred to a “School for the Educationally Subnormal,” essentially a babysitting gig for special needs kids. Kingsley’s smart, intellectually curious; the school, filled with disi...
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Is an Exclamation Point on Chadwick Boseman’s Inspiring Life: Review
The Pitch: By definition, the word value means “the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something.” A person’s value, however, is most often overlooked, under-appreciated or even unknown. To understand one’s worth is a unique ability that not many possess – that attribute alone can change the trajectory of an individual’s life, drastically. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom digs deep into the core of one of America’s most beautiful artforms, during a time where segregation and racial oppression escalated across the country. Based on August Wilson’s Broadway play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom chronicles an emotional recording session housed within a Chicago studio in 1927. Along with a string of talented actors, George C. Wolfe’s direction explores the dicho...
