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...
Another Absurd Cameo Revealed in Star Wars: The Force Awakens
As we wrote on Tuesday, there has been an endless cascade of reveals of secret cameos in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Perhaps the best is Daniel Craig's turn as the initially petulant Stormtrooper keeping an eye on a captured Rey. You remember that scene, right? The one where Rey tries out her Obi-Wan Kenobi skills? Obi-Wan famously told a Stormtrooper in the first Star Wars, "these aren't the droids you're looking for,"...
Sundance 2016: Review Roundup, Part III
We’re back with part III of our Sundance film review roundup. You can read parts I and II to catch up on all the films we've looked at thus far.
“Meet the She-Wolves of Wall Street,” writes Variety’s Guy Lodge about Meera Menon’s sophomore feature, Equity. Menon’s “refreshingly female-skewed financial thriller proves that the women of Wall Street can be just as cold-heartedly corrupt as the boys.”...
Watch The Birth of a Nation‘s Nate Parker’s Potent Short Film
This is the power of the Sundance Film Festival, it can turn a talented artist like Nate Parker into a sensation over night. As the undisputed King of Sundance this year with The Birth of a Nation, a film Parker wrote, directed, and starred in—after nurturing the project for 7 years and using $100,000 of his own money to find financing—the man has earned this moment. And as it happens when a filmmaker suddenly becomes an object of fascination,...
Sundance 2016: Nate Parker’s Huge Night & More
We wrote yesterday about the rapturous response to Nate Parker’s Sundance-shaking Nat Turner biopic, The Birth of a Nation. Today, reports are flooding in that the whopping, festival record-setting $17.5 million offer the film got from Fox Searchlight was actually less than what Netflix was willing to part with.
THR reports that writer, director and star Parker, who had put $100,000 of his own money into the film to fly around the country in an attempt to find financiers (he eventually had a dozen investor groups,...
Actor Alex Jennings On The Lady in the Van, his New Netflix Show & More
Alex Jennings is no stranger to playing real-life characters on stage or on screen. He was Prince Charles in Stephen Frears’s 2006 movie The Queen with Helen Mirren and is playing The Duke of Windsor in Peter Morgan’s upcoming 10-episode series The Crown for Netflix — a role that just might make this longtime star of the British stage better known to audiences stateside.
The Duke of Windsor became King Edward VIII ...
More Secret Cameos in Star Wars: The Force Awakens Revealed
With Star Wars: The Force Awakens now officially a part of movie history, secrets from the production have been steadily emerging. From Bill Hader's involvement as droid BB-8's 'vocal consultant' to Daniel Craig, Ewan McGregor and a whole host of others' involvement in various parts of the film. A huge data dump of these secret cameo performances was just released in a piece by StarWars.com, which details, in chronological order, many of the folks who voiced a Stormtrooper,...
Sundance 2016: A Roundup of Reviews, Part II
Let’s take a look at what the critics are saying about some of the films that have premiered at Sundance.
Nate Parker and Tony Espinosa in 'The Birth of a Nation.' Photo by Elliot Davis. Courtesy Sundance Film Festival.
Earlier today, we took a look at Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation, including the many positive reviews the film has received,...
Sundance 2016: Fox Searchlight Nabs Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation
Nate Parker, writer, director, and star of The Birth of a Nation's seven year commitment to his labor of love has paid off in a distribution deal with Fox Searchlight Pictures, The Wrap reports. Parker's epic is currently the talk of Sundance. The Hollywood Reporter Rebecca Ford writes that Parker’s film earned a rapturous standing ovation at its' premiere in Eccles theater in Park City, perhaps the longest standing ovation in recent festival history...
Our Long-Standing Love Affair With Alien Invasion Films
As the most recent entry into the alien invasion canon- The 5th Wave– hit cinemas this past weekend (chances are you were too snowed under, or in, to go see it), we take a look back at the other notable examples to try to figure out why the aliens are often (but not always) hostile towards us, why we keep retelling these stories, and how the heck we keep defeating the ones that mean us harm. ...
Sundance 2016: A Film Review Roundup
Earlier we looked at some of the films that have premiered at Sundance that have found homes in a variety of studios, from IFC to Amazon. Now let's take a look at some of the films reviews coming out of the festival this year, perhaps gleaning what will be next on the bidding block.
Vulture's Bilge Ebiri has written that Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea, which was purchased by Amazon for somewhere near $10 million,...
Batman v Superman Drops Two New TV Spots
The countdown to the biggest battle of the year (not including your fight to dig out from under Winter Storm Jonas and go to work this morning) has officially begun; Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice premieres on March 25. As we inch closer to colossal fight between the son of Krypton and Gotham's Dark Night, Warner Bros. is releasing a bunch of new TV spots, including two just last night. Let's take a look...
Sundance 2016: Complete Unknown, Morris From America & More are Sold
As the first major film festival of the year, and arguably one of the most important on the ever expanding festival circuit, the Sundance Film Festival is something of a taste maker. Studios small and large vie for the distribution rights of a number of films, while unknown talents can, in a single Park City night, become hot commodities. Here's a look at the news coming out of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.
Before we get into what films have sold thus far,...
Talking to the Writer/Director of the Epic Balkan Western Aferim!
It’s a safe bet that you’ve never seen a movie quite like Aferim!
An epic Balkan Western shot in 35mm black-and-white, Romanian director Radu Jude’s third feature earned a Silver Bear for best director at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival and was the Official Selection at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.
Aferim! (an Ottoman Turkish expression that apparently translates as “bravo!” and is used ironically in the film) is set in the barren landscape of mid-19th-century Wallachia...
Not Just For Kids: Best Animated Feature Nominees
Though it wasn’t added to the Oscars slate until 2001 (when Shrek took home the statue), the Best Animated Feature category is more interesting than ever this year, pitting Inside Out, Pixar’s most astonishing and well-reviewed film in quite a few years, against the equally beloved but decidedly adult Anomalisa. Outside of the two front runners, the category remains a refreshing combination of stop motion, computer generated and traditional hand drawn animation,...
Production Designer Jon Billington Talks Alien Invasions in The 5th Wave
Director J Blakeson brings Rick Yancey’s novel The 5th Wave to the big screen this week, a blockbuster version of the popular young adult title. Chloë Grace Moretz stars as Cassie, a suburban teenager fighting for her life while searching for her younger brother, taken by aliens in the fifth of a series of deadly attacks on humanity. The unseen alien invaders, creative for their type, have explored a variety of ways to kill off humankind during the first four waves,...
Dates Set for Dates for Star Wars: Episode VIII & Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Walt Disney Studios has announced new release dates for two of their biggest upcoming films, hoping (and very likely) to recapture the magic that The Force Awakens managed in its mid-December slot.
Owing to the crazy huge success of J.J. Abrams first installment in the new trilogy, Star Wars: Episode VIII, originally scheduled for release on May 26, 2017, will now debut on December 15, 2017. The Force Awakens ...
Creating Clouds, Cigarettes, Feet & More in Anomalisa
We've already written about Starburns Industries, the mechanics behind the magic of Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson's Anomalisa. It's a film of tiny things. In order to populate every frame of Michael Stone's business trip to Cincinnati with those life-like things, the creators of Anomalisa were tasked with creating thousands of beautiful, identifiable elements in exacting, miniature detail. Thanks to a series of behind-the-scene featurettes released by Paramount Pictures, we can show you glimpses of the "tiny things"...
Winter Storm Jonas Movie Watch List
When I think of Jonas, I think of the brothers, Nick, Joe and Kevin. Sigh. You remember them; they gained fame in the mid-2000s with appearances on the Disney Channel and their films, Camp Rock and Camp Rock 2: the Final Jam.
Unfortunately, it won't be the Jonas brothers Burnin’ Up this weekend; Jonas is a major winter storm that will impact millions across from Ohio to the Tennessee Valleys to Mid-Atlantic and Northeast...
Watch Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Extended Look
And the final piece of last night's "DC Films Presents: Dawn of the Justice League" on The CW that we want to share with you is the three minute deep-dive into the film that's going to bring the Justice League to the big screen, Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Director Zack Synder, and Batman and Superman themselves, Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill, discuss the evolution of their characters and why, exactly, each of them are just so pissed at the other...
