A ton of Things You Didn’t Know About Batman & Superman

As you prepare for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the biggest superhero battle of them all (until Captain America: Civil War bows), we have two new sources of great Batman and Superman information to help give you some context for their coming fight.

First, Abraham Riesman has written a great piece about the history of these two iconic superheroes and how they went from friends and colleagues to begrudging partners and,...

SXSW 2016: A Q&A With Long Nights Short Mornings‘ Director & Star

Writer/director Chadd Harbold’s Long Nights Short Mornings stars Shiloh Fernandez (We Are Your Friends, Evil Dead) as James, a young man looking for love (or perhaps just sex) in New York through a series of connected vignettes, each titled with the name of the woman he's courting (I use this term loosely). These vignettes unfold over the course of what feels like one very long,...

See how they Created Maz Kanata in new Star Wars: The Force Awakens Featurette

Lupita Nyong’o’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens character, Maz Kanata, is a pivotal player in the new saga. She delivers Luke Skywalker's lightsaber to Finn (John Boyega) and Han Solo (Harrison Ford) after Rey (Daisy Ridley) initially rejects it. It has already been reported that Nyong'o's diminutive, ancient Maz had a few of her scenes cut, including one in which she makes a ceiling collapse on some Stormtroopers (despite her telling Han, Rey and Finn she's no Jedi)...

Hardcore Henry Producer Timur Bekmambetov on the Groundbreaking POV Film

When an action film is at its best, it becomes easy to imagine yourself at the center of the action, jumping building to building, bolting down busy streets and going mano a mano with your attackers. But in the case of Hardcore Henry, the world’s first feature-length action film shot entirely in POV, that feeling of immersion is simply part of the deal.

The premise is simple: a nameless protagonist – you, that is –...

SXSW 2016: Writer/Director Sophie Goodhart on her Hilarious My Blind Brother

In the opening sequence of My Blind Brother, you meet Robbie (Adam Scott), physically fit save for the dark shades and the sweaty, anguished man he's pulling along via a tether that suggests his titular affliction. That man is his brother Bill (Nick Kroll), who Robbie has just dragged through an entire Marathon. And although he needs Bill, once they cross the finish line Robbie all but forgets Bill exists, thanking the person who was with him "every step of the way,"…God. Later that night,...

SXSW 2016: Director Todd Bieber & Legendary Sketch Comedians Matt Walsh & Matt Besser on Thank You Del

You've probably never heard of Del Close, but you’ve definitely heard of the people he’s taught, inspired, and helped turn into legends—Bill Murray, Amy Poehler, and Chris Farley to name a few. Director Todd Bieber, who has directed for Comedy Central, Vice, IFC, and more, was approached by legendary sketch performers, actors and co-founders of The Upright Citizen’s Brigade, Matt Walsh (Veep, Step Brothers) and Matt Besser (The UCB Show, Rick &...

SXSW 2016: Writer/Director Joey Klein, Tatiana Maslany & Tom Cullen on The Other Half

Joey Klein’s The Other Half manages to be both a beautifully shot tone poem about grief and loss, and a deftly written drama about two people at loose ends who find in each other a glimmer of hope. The lead performances from Tom Cullen and Tatiana Maslany are outstanding, and writer/director Klein allows them plenty of room to experiment with the varieties of grief, hope and regret that each character struggles with throughout. There's also the work of a nimble and talented crew,...

Writer/Director Emmanuelle Bercot on Standing Tall

French actress and director Emmanuelle Bercot took the Cannes Film Festival by storm in 2015. She starred in Maiwenn’s Mon roi (My King) which garnered Bercot the festival’s Best Actress prize. Meanwhile, La Tete haute (Standing Tall), which Bercot cowrote and directed, kicked off the prestigious festival, making Bercot the first female director to open Cannes since 1987.

Bercot says that as an actress and a viewer,...

Steven Spielberg & Harrison Ford to Reunite for Indiana Jones

Disney just broke the big news—Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford are reuniting for Indiana Jones, with The Force Awakens super producer Kathleen Kennedy on board to produce. This is pretty major news. Here's the full presser:

SPIELBERG AND FORD REUNITE AS INDIANA JONES RETURNS TO THEATERS JULY 19, 2019

Indiana Jones will return to the big screen on July 19, 2019, for a fifth epic adventure in the blockbuster series. Steven Spielberg, who directed all four previous films,...

Check out This Gorgeous Star Wars: The Force Awakens Concept Art

Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) has just released a bunch of concept art from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, all of which is totally mind-blowing. Some of these pieces were more or less exactly what eventually appeared in the film (like the shot of the TIE Fighters advancing against the backdrop of a huge setting sun), while others depict what could have been a totally different version of the story.

We've embedded some of our favorites below,...

SXSW Alumni: Ed Helms’ Start in Austin

Ed Helms is yet another actor who can credibly claim his career started at SXSW. The star of The Office and The Hangover movies made his acting debut in Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story, which was released at the 2004 South by Southwest Film Festival and won the Audience Award. The film is an improvisational comedy set in the world of paintball.

Helms has gone on to a spectacular comedic career...

Talking to Eye in the Sky Director Gavin Hood

Entering a conference room in a downtown Washington hotel, South African director Gavin Hood is carrying a book about drones, which are central to his new film, Eye in the Sky. He's clearly fascinated by the technology, as well as the policy questions they raise. Hood mentions his pleasure in visiting D.C., where drone warfare is a matter of widespread professional interest. His previous movies include Rendition, a consideration of anti-terrorist policies that was partly set in Washington,...

SXSW 2016: The Exciting but Uncertain Future of Virtual Reality Filmmaking

On March 28, Oculus will finally release their highly anticipated experiment in consumer virtual reality technology, the Rift headset. The Oculus Rift has been synonymous with VR technology since the company’s original Kickstarter campaign more than three years ago in August of 2012, and although the Rift is not yet available as a consumer product the company has made development kits available that ship with various stages of prototypes of the device, and developers have made promising experiments in virtual reality using this and other hardware like the Samsung Gear and the HTC Vive,...

SXSW 2016: Keegan-Michael Key & Jordan Peele’s Keanu Brings Down the House

If fans had it their way, Key & Peele would have probably never ended. Yet when it did, after five seasons, all you could do was applaud; here were two guys going out on top after creating one of the best comedy sketch shows of all time. Before their feature film debut, Keanu, played here as a work-in-progress, a great documentary called Thank you Del: The Story of the Del Close Marathon ...

SXSW Alumni: Bryan Singer’s Start in Austin

We've already looked at Trey Parker and Matt Stone's SXSW debut, as well as Lena Dunham's. Now we turn our attention to one of the most prolific director's working today. The first edition of SXSW’s film festival hosted the regional premiere of Public Access, the debut feature by Bryan Singer and his screenwriting partner Christopher McQuarrie. Their follow-up, The Usual Suspects,...

SXSW 2016: Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some a Perfect Festival Opener

There are few filmmakers out there who have had as big of an impact on their city as Richard Linklater has had on Austin. Festival director Janet Pierson introduced Everybody Wants Some, saying that Linklater was the reason she moved to Austin in the first place. She then handed the reigns over to Lewis Black, founder of the Austin Chronicle and cofounder of Austin's SXSW festival, as well as the director of the documentary Richard Linklater: dream is destiny, ...

SXSW Alumni: Lena Dunham’s Start in Austin

Girls creator Lena Dunham can credibly say that her career officially began at the SXSW Film Festival. It started with the rejection of her short film Creative Nonfiction. Instead of giving up on it, Dunham kept working on it and re-submitted the film. The determination paid off— Creative Nonfiction was accepted. When she came to Austin with the film, she not only had what she called "the best week of her life" (which she recounted in her hilarious 2014 SXSW keynote address),...

The Hilarious Writer/Director Michael Showalter Discusses Hello, My Name Is Doris

Hello, My Name is Doris, the latest comedy from Wet Hot American Summer co-creator Michael Showalter, stars Sally Field as a woman falling in love for the first time. We talk to the writer/director about creating a new type of comic protagonist, landing Sally Field and having to be the bad guy on set.

Hello, My Name is Doris started as a short film...

Team Iron Man v Team Captain America in Two New Teasers

Although we're still two months away from the May 6 premiere of Captain America: Civil War, that hasn't stopped Marvel and Walt Disney Pictures from whetting our appetite for the ultimate superhero brawl. We published the new photos and poster they dropped just this past Monday, and now there's two new clips, highlighting the division between Captain America (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), and just who's taking whose side.

It'll be interesting to see how former friends like the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) ended up on different sides,...

Watch the new International Trailer for Ghostbusters

We were thrilled when the first official trailer for Paul Feig's Ghostbusters dropped on March 3. Frankly, if you're not excited about watching Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones battle the supernatural in New York, well, maybe you need to have your head examined (or you're a humorless ghost). The new Ghostbusters movie, directed by Feig from a script he co-wrote with Katie Dippold,...