Star Wars, The Revenant & Game of Thrones Shine at Visual Effects Society Awards
A bear, a dragon and a scavenger from Jakku walk into a bar. This start to a bad joke also functions as a decent (okay, not really) summation of the big winners at the 14th Annual VES Awards, the annual celebration that recognizes the real people behind the surreal, photoreal, and out-of-this-world visual effects that are such a huge part of the entertainment industry. The now infamous bear attack suffered by Hugh Glass (Leonadro DiCaprio) in The Revenant won the Outstanding Animated Performance in a Photoreal Feature...
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies‘s Production Designer Melds High Society With the Undead
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the film adaptation of the novel adaptation of Jane Austen’s iconic tome of class, manners, marriage, and love, opens this week. Starring Lily James as heroine Elizabeth Bennett and Sam Riley as Mr. Darcy, these two have something else on which to focus their fraught, unlikely courtship: the undead. As a zombie disease sweeps through the bucolic British countryside and London walls itself off from the plague, the audience is treated to a refreshingly badass set of Bennett sisters —...
Director Tim Miller Talks What Makes Deadpool Special in new IMAX Featurette
Deadpool will finally deliver all the quips, banter and NSFW bon mots we've been enjoying in tiny bites as a full scale, feature length meal on Friday, February 12. Director Tim Miller, who has been attached to the project since 2009, explains in this new featurette why Deadpool is the perfect Marvel hero for right now. And this being an IMAX featurette, Miller also explains why the film’s best seen on the biggest of big screens.
“I’m not some Hollywood director who decided to jump on the comic book bandwagon,”...
Star Wars: The Force Awakens Summarized in Awesome 60 Second Animation
If you've never watched a super sped up illustrated animation by 1A4 studio, today's your lucky day. The awesome animation studio takes beloved films, television episodes, characters, and the like and summarizes them in hilariously quick, deceptively simple illustrated animation that boil said film or show or character down to its' most essential sequences. They've now done this for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and it's awesome.
But to prep you for what this is like before you take the Force Awakens ...
Star Wars: Episode VIII‘s Connection to Game of Thrones & More
Let’s see how much Star Wars: Episode VIII news we can pack into this post.
The Star Wars: Episode VIII & Game of Thrones connection…
No, we're not talking about the news that GOT's Gwendoline Christie, who had a small role in The Force Awakens as Captain Phasma, is back for Episode VIII, but we might as well start there...
World Renown Composer Emilio Kauderer on Scoring Animation in Underdogs
Emilio Kauderer is a Los Angeles-based Argentine composer who scored the film El Secreto de Sus Ojos, which won the 2009 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Kauderer was then brought on to score last year’s English language remake Secret in Their Eyes, which starred Julia Roberts and Nicole Kidman. We discuss the unusual experience of working on different versions of the same film, how scoring live action compares to his work on the animation Underdogs and his thoughts on Quentin Tarantino’s recent controversial take on film scoring at The Golden Globes. ...
DreamWorks Kung Fu Panda 3’s Chinese Version a 1st for Studio
For the first time DreamWorks Animation has created two versions of a film – one especially for the Chinese market. Kung Fu Panda 3 is the first release from the Shanghai-based Oriental DreamWorks, which worked closely with the Californian team. The film’s characters are animated so that their speech is in sync with both English and Mandarin.
The franchise has been embraced by China – the first Kung Fu Panda grossed $26 million in 2008,...
Boba Fett! Code Names! The Rogue One Rumor Mill is Alive & Well
What you already know about Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the next addition in Disney's Star Wars canon, is probably pretty limited. You know it's the first film in Disney's upcoming release schedule that's not a part of the Skywalker saga trilogy, to which The Force Awakens was the first, and you know it's about the band of rebels who stole the plans for the Death Star, which were eventually uploaded to R2D2 and set the events of the very first ...
Watch the new Batman v Superman International Trailer
With the premiere date drawing ever closer (March 25, folks), Warner Bros. Pictures has been releasing a slew of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice trailers and TV spots. The latest is a new international trailer, which keeps the dialogue to a minimum and the mayhem at full throttle.
By now you know that the premise of Batman v Superman is right there in the title; Gotham City's winged vigilante (Ben Affleck) takes on Metropolis's alien savior (Henry Cavill) in a battle for the ages...
Watch This Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Featurette
"The job we have to do is to make it seem natural and kind have to ignore your own sense of wonder watching it," says actress Katherine Waterston about her work in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The highly secretive and hugely exciting project is the first screenplay penned by J.K. Rowling herself, and will transport Harry Potter fans back into the wizarding world, only one that takes place an ocean away from Hogwart's,...
Deadpool Director’s Cut to be “Even More Raw”
Deadpool opens wide on February 12, finally bringing the Merch with the Mouth (Ryan Reynolds) and the much hyped R-rating to the big screen. For fans clamoring for a Marvel movie that's geared towards the 18 + crowd, the latest news is sure to delight; there will be a much raunchier director's cut available.
Screencrush reports that director Tim Miller has said the director's cut will be "that's going to be even more raw,...
10 Incredible Hidden Details in Star Wars: The Force Awakens Revealed
Even if people weren't going to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens multiple times (and they are), it would have gone on to become a record-shattering box office smash regardless. Yet what many of those folks who keep going back are doing is scrutinizing every last little detail, able to concentrate on things going on in the far reaches of the screen without worrying about following a plot they already know so well. It's during these repeat viewing experiences that Star Wars ...
Spotlight Wins SAG Award, Shaking up Oscars Race
You can consider the Oscars race officially shaken up. The Screen Actors Guild handed out their awards to their fellow members, and your big award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture went to Spotlight, bucking the recent rise of The Revenant, the big winner at the Globes, and The Big Short, the big winner at the Producers Guild Awards. All of these are considered key awards on the long,...
Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation Sweeps Top Two Prizes at Sundance
Nate Parker is, officially now, your king of Sundance, 2016.
The festival's a wrap, and this past Saturday night, the awards for feature filmmaking were given, including the two biggest, The Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award. As was evident from the standing ovation writer, director, producer and star Parker received before his The Birth of a Nation even played, he and his film were the odds on favorites to be the big winners once the festival ended—the jury didn't disappoint. ...
The Finest Hours & Our 5 Best Rescue Films Based on True Stories
Over the years, there have been countless films about great rescues or rescue attempts. From the highly-acclaimed The Ten Commandments in 1956 (which portrayed Moses’ rescue of the Egyptian people from slavery) through the 1977 classic sci-fi film Star Wars (which featured Luke Skywalker fighting to rescue Princess Leia from the grip of Darth Vader) to the 2015 drama The Martian (which chronicled the attempts to rescue an astronaut on Mars),...
In the Near Future, Star Wars Will be Told in Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality is becoming a creative practicality for filmmakers and studios, as the technology is finally catching up to the ideas storytellers have had (for years) about how they would use the medium to give viewers an unprecedented cinematic experience. The Sundance Film Festival has included VR films in their New Frontiers lineup, with this year’s crop including American Bison, Kiya and Waves of Grace.
With this in mind, it shouldn’t be surprising that Lucasfilm and Disney are planning on taking Star Wars into the VR realm...
The Real Effects Used to Simulate the Raging Sea in The Finest Hours
The Finest Hours tells the incredible true story of a daring rescue mission conducted by a handful of men from the Chatham, Massachusetts, Coast Guard when a huge storm struck New England on February 8, 1952. The storm ripped two 500-foot oil tankers in half, leaving their crews stranded at sea. Despite hurricane-force winds and 60-foot waves Bernie Webber (played by Chris Pine) successfully skippers a 36-foot wooden lifeboat, with a destroyed compass, to rescue 32 of the men left stranded aboard the SS Pendleton...
Wade Wilson Pops the Question in This Deadpool Clip
In order to earn your superhero bonafides, you need to love someone very dearly, and then have that person cruelly taken away from you. Whether it's Bruce Wayne losing Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight or Pepper Potts being in constant danger and bringing out the best in Tony Stark, superheroes require a love interest with which fate can deal a tough hand, thus igniting the super in these varied heroes.
For Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds),...
Zack Snyder’s Candid Talk With Christopher Nolan About Making Batman Bad
In their upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice issue, Empire has some intriguing insights from director Zack Snyder, specifically about seeking Christopher Nolan's blessing about his plans for Batman. Nolan was an executive producer on Man of Steel, which is when Snyder approached him about his intentions to turn Batman against Superman in a battle royale—one in which, Empire's John Nugent writes, "Batman would essentially be the bad guy."...
Sundance 2016: Review Roundup, Part IV
Welcome back. You’ve already read parts I, II and III of our Sundance film review roundup.
Let's begin with Whit Stillman's Jane Austen adaptation, Love & Friendship. While you might be thinking, another Austen adaptation, keep in mind Stillman is the man who brought you Metropolitan and Last Days of Disco, and is uniquely suited to bring out Austen's biting humor, which she has in spades...
