Decoding The Brilliance of Michael Giacchino’s “The Batman” Theme in Eight Bars
In his score for The Batman, the brooding emotional tone of composer Michael Giacchino’s character theme is established from bar one in the track of the same name. No soaring violins. No muscular brass orchestra. No superhero triumphalism. In their stead, a muted piano taps its rhythm low and slow, establishing the key of B flat before quickly descending. The tonal interval—moving from the tonic down two whole tones to the minor sixth degree—is inherently menacing, invoking the image of a glowering figure emerging from the shadows...
Chris Hemsworth Reveals “Furiosa” Prequel Has Begun Filming
Mad Max: Fury Road fans, start your engines. Chris Hemsworth has revealed on Twitter that the Furiosa prequel has finally begun filming. Like so many other movies, Furiosa was delayed due to the pandemic, and the original release date of June 2023 got pushed to May 2024. But now, the stars have literally aligned as the cast has finally assembled and filming is underway on George Miller’s highly-anticipated prequel, exploring the conditions and context that made Charlize Theron’s deathless Furiosa character in Fury Road possible...
Bradley Cooper is Unrecognizable as Leonard Bernstein in “Maestro”
Bradley Cooper’s next project might be his most ambitious yet. Imagine being offered the plum role of playing the legendary American conductor Leonard Bernstein by Steven Spielberg, and telling Spielberg you’d take on the role, but you’d also like to write and direct it, too. This is the path Cooper took, and you’ve guessed by now that Spielberg said yes, and while the film’s not due until 2023, we have our first look at Cooper as Bernstein, and the transformation is astonishing...
Tom Hanks & Cynthia Erivo Highlight First Trailer For Live-Action “Pinocchio”
There are few tales as timeless as Pinocchio, the story of a wooden puppet’s quest to become a real boy, and there are few actors as beloved as Tom Hanks, so, what might happen when you put the two together? We’re about to find out in director Robert Zemeckis’s live-action Pinocchio, which stars Hanks as Geppetto, the woodcarver who treats his wooden creation, Pinocchio (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) as if he were his actual son. Lucky for them both,...
Tom Cruise’s Historic “Top Gun: Maverick” Opening Weekend
Did you see Top Gun: Maverick this weekend? If you’re anything like us, you were one of the many, many people who eagerly went to the theater to catch Tom Cruise reprise the role of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, 36 years after the original Top Gun, and you’re a part of the astonishing $154 million haul that the film made in North America. Globally, Top Gun: Maverick pulled in a whopping $248 million...
First “Indiana Jones 5” Image + Release Date Reveals Indy’s Back on the Hunt
Harrison Ford made an appearance at the Lucasfilm panel at the Star Wars celebration to make a very big announcement—Indiana Jones 5 will hit theaters on June 30, 2023. Along with that big news, the first image from the hotly-anticipated film, from ace director James Mangold, has also been revealed. It shows us Indy in silhouette, flashlight in hand, his iconic brown fedora on his head, moving across a rickety-seeming bridge (Indy loves rickety bridges) on a fresh case...
Going to Flight School With “Top Gun: Maverick” Stars Glen Powell & Greg Tarzan Davis
Based on everything from the reviews to the overwhelmingly positive chatter online to the 5-minute standing ovation at Cannes, Top Gun: Maverick seems destined to become Tom Cruise’s biggest weekend opening in his career, which is saying something. For the sequel to the beloved 1986 film, Cruise, the film’s executive producer and star, waited until he had a great story and the right people in front of and behind the camera, which included producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Joseph Kosinski...
Idris Elba is Hunted by a Rogue Lion in First “Beast” Trailer
Director Baltasar Kormákur knows a few things about filming the sublime beauty and terror of the natural world, and he’s bringing all the skills he’s honed in films like his Himalayan adventure epic Everest and North Atlantic ocean adventure The Deep to South Africa. The first trailer for Beasts implies that Kormákur is just at home on the South African savanna, too.
Beast stars Idris Elba as Dr. Nate Daniels,...
Natalie Portman & Christian Bale Highlight New “Thor: Love and Thunder” Images
Marvel has revealed new Thor: Love and Thunder photos, including one of a Goddess (Natalie Portman’s Mighty Thor, and one of a God Butcher (that would be Christian Bale’s Gorr)—two new sparring partners in the MCU’s hotly-anticipated next film. Following the ripping new trailer released just a few days ago, we’re now starting to get a better picture of what co-writer/director Taika Waititi’s sequel is all about.
Here’s what we’ve learned thus far: Thor (Chris Hemsworth,...
From “Moana” to “Lupin”: How the Tool “VoiceQ” Does Dubbing Right
It’s all about “lip flap” when it comes to quality voice dubbing for movies and TV. Voice actors make their living by synchronizing dialogue to the micro-movements that happen when on-screen characters open and close their mouths, AKA lip flap. Imprecise voice work results in cheesy-sounding foreign language adaptations. But voice dubbing, done right, has helped propel series like the Korean language Squid Game, Spanish-language Money Heist, and French-language Lupin to hit status in the United States. ...
It’s Ryan Gosling vs Chris Evans in Ripping First “The Gray Man” Trailer
“What do you know about the Sierra Program?” Regé-Jean Page’s character asks CIA agent Dani Miranda (Ana de Armas), as we see another CIA operative, Court Gentry (Ryan Gosling) stepping into the frame. Gentry also went by another name back in the day— Sierra Six—but that was when he was employed by the American government. “Reckless mystery men you guys sent in when you can’t officially send anyone else,” she replies. “The gray men.”
The first trailer for Joe and Anthony Russo’s The Gray Man is really something else,...
New “Thor: Love and Thunder” Trailer Reveals Christian Bale’s Gorr the God Butcher
In an electrifying new trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder, we get to see the precise moment when Thor (Chris Hemsworth) thinks he’s about to be reunited with his magical hammer Mjolnir, only to find it belongs to somebody else now. You know who that new somebody is—her old name was Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), but in Love and Thunder, she’s Mighty Thor, and she’s worthy of wielding Mjolnir and a whole lot more.
While seeing Thor deal with this new reality in which there’s another,...
Tom Cruise Returns as Ethan Hunt in “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” Trailer
It’s Tom Cruise month, folks. While Cruise is still flying high from the stellar reviews for Top Gun: Maverick (which zooms into theaters on May 27), Paramount has just dropped the first trailer for Cruise’s other massive franchise, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. Cruise returns as super spy Ethan Hunt, and he’s joined by the modern Mission: Impossible mainstays, with writer/director Christopher McQuarrie at the helm and Cruise’s longtime co-stars returning...
“Moonage Daydream” Trailer Reveals Riveting New Footage of David Bowie
“Questions have arisen such as is who he is, what is he, where did he come from, is he a creature of a foreign power, is he a creep, is he dangerous, smart, dumb, nice to his parents, real, a put-on, crazy, sane, man, woman, robot—what is this?”
These are the words that open the chills-inducing first trailer for Moonage Daydream, the first-ever feature-length film about David Bowie and sanctioned by his estate. Capturing such an uncategorizable colossus in a single film might sound nigh on impossible,...
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” Star Letitia Wright Says Sequel Honors Chadwick Boseman
One of the most bittersweet intrigues in 2022’s film slate is how Black Panther: Wakanda Forever co-writer/director Ryan Coogler and his talented cast and crew handled the passing of Chadwick Boseman, the franchise’s star, in crafting the sequel without him. One person who certainly knows the answer to this question is Letitia Wright, Boseman’s co-star in the first Black Panther and one of the major returning figures in the sequel. Now, Variety has spoken with Wright about how the cast and crew dealt with Boseman’s absence from the sequel...
Composer René G. Boscio on Scoring Teenage Turmoil in “Emergency”
Carey Williams’s new film Emergency (premiering in theaters on May 20 and Amazon Prime Video on May 27) is billed as a comedy-thriller. But when college students Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins) and Sean (RJ Cyler), who are Black, and their buddy Carlos (Sebastian Chacon), who is Latino, find a drunk white girl they’ve never seen before passed out on the floor of their campus housing, it feels like Emergency is about to transform into straight horror...
“Top Gun: Maverick” Gets Five-Minute Standing Ovation at Cannes
Before the crowd at the Cannes was even strapped in for a second of Top Gun: Maverick, they were cheering. This was because Tom Cruise received a surprise Palme d’Or, which he accepted with what appeared to be genuine surprise. Cruise and his co-stars, including Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, and Miles Teller, had already enjoyed an epic entrance when eight fighter jets leaving red, white, and blue contrails streaked overhead as they stood on the red carpet. Red,...
The Official “Bros” Trailer is Decidedly NSFW & Totally Hilarious
The official trailer for director Nicholas Stoller’s (Neighbors, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) Bros is here, and it’s the comedy we’ve all been waiting for. Bros is also making history as the first rom-com about two gay men to come from a major studio (Universal), and boasts a cast made up entirely of LGBTQ+ actors. The trailer, decidedly NSFW, shows why Bros made such a splash at this year’s CinemaCon in Las Vegas...
“Spider-Man” Director Jon Watts Will Direct New “Star Wars” Series for Disney+
Director Jon Watts is taking a galactic leap. Watts, who directed all three of the Tom Holland-led Spider-Man films, is leading a brand new Star Wars series for Disney+. Vanity Fair broke the news in their big Star Wars cover story where they tracked all the upcoming projects the franchise is seeding on the small screen. One of those projects, code name Grammar Rodeo (which is a reference to a classic Simpsons episode where Bart and his pals steal a car and run away),...
“Spiderhead” Trailer Reveals Chris Hemsworth in Adaptation of a Gloriously Insane George Saunders Story
There are so many reasons to be excited about Spiderhead. Let’s start with the fact that the film is an adaption of a George Saunders’ short story, “Escape From Spiderhead,” from his must-read collection “Tenth of December.” Then let’s add the fact it was directed by Top Gun: Maverick helmer Joseph Kosinski, from a script by the Deadpool screenwriting duo of Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. Excited yet? Oh yeah, add Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller,...
