Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lands on AFI’s Movies of the Year List
While Star Wars: The Force Awakens only opened last night, it's probably safe to say the film is a huge successs. J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan have not only survived the most fraught resurrection in film history, they have plainly prevailed, with a 95% fresh rating on RottenTomatoes, a whopping 234 positive reviews out of the 246 that have been aggregated thus far.
It was always going to be a success financially, such is the power of the ...
See Tina Fey in the First Trailer for Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
With Tina Fey's latest film, Sisters, opening against a tiny, obscure indie called Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Paramount has decided to pour it on with the first trailer for another one of her projects, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Based on the book "The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days In Afghanistan And Pakistan" by Kim Barker, Fey plays Baker as reporter at ProPublica (she was also the South Asia bureau chief for The Chicago Tribune from 2004 to 2009) who finds herself in Afghanistan and Pakistan,...
BB-8: From Napkin Sketch to Starring Role in The Force Awakens
We're just hours away from the premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and here's a great, spoiler free way to pass the time until you see it—a featurette on the new droid BB-8.
BB-8 is perhaps the most emblematic creation in all of The Force Awakens because this adorable "soccer ball" droid represents a return to the practical effects that director and co-writer J.J. Abrams was insistent upon. Abrams has said in multiple interviews,...
Director László Nemes & Actor Géza Röhrig on Their Heartbreaking Son of Saul
Director and co-writer Laszlo Nemes's Son of Saul, an astonishingly accomplished first feature, follows a Hungarian Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau for about 36 hours. Saul, played by Geza Rohrig, is a member of the Sonderkommando, the group that led people into the gas chambers and then disposed of their bodies. Saul identifies a new arrival as his son, and after the youth's murder attempts to arrange a proper burial for him. The protagonist's sense of urgency is underscored by the moment: The story begins on Oct...
15 New Official Star Wars: The Force Awakens Images
On the heels of the embargo lifted on reviews of The Force Awakens (read our spoiler free rundown of the reviews thus far) comes the release of a bunch of new photos by Walt Disney Pictures & Lucasfilm. With the big news today being just how much everyone seems to love the film, these photos slipped under the radar as the first new batch of officially released images that weren't part of an exclusive deal with a major publication. ...
Bill Hader’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens Involvement, Hilarious Sisters Promo & More
As we plunge ever further down the Star Wars rabbit hole, new information (again, no spoilers!) is pouring out, like Bill Hader's involvement in The Force Awakens. That's right, the Saturday Night Live alum and noted Star Wars impression expert's name was spotted in the credits by Hitfix's Drew McWeeny. Now if you haven't heard Hader's Star Wars impressions, check this out:
So what did Hader do on ...
Our (SPOILER FREE) Star Wars: The Force Awakens Look at the Reviews
So, as you know by now Star Wars: The Force Awakens was screened for a huge crowd of A-listers and entertainment journalists in Los Angeles on Monday night. Reviews were embargoed until today, folks, so if you want to achieve a childhood-level like lack of awareness about what the film's about or what those paid to critique films have to say, you may want to tread lightly on the Internet until you've seen it. For those of you who want a general sense of what people are saying without reading the reviews and thus,...
Talking to Stacey Sher, Producer of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight
Producer Stacey Sher first worked with director Quentin Tarantino on his 1994 film Pulp Fiction, in which she was executive producer. Twenty-one years later she’s working with him again on his 70mm widescreen extravaganza The Hateful Eight, their third film together (after 2012’s Django Unchained on which she was a producer). In between those films, even a partial list of her credits reads like a best-of list from the last two decades: Get Shorty (1995);...
J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Debuts Trailer
As select journalists left a screening for Star Wars: The Force Awakens last night (they're not allowed to say a peep about the film until it opens), they were greeted with the news that Warner Bros. had slipped in a brand new trailer for their most anticipated film of 2016, the J.K. Rowling scripted Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them is set in the world of the Harry Potter films,...
Watch Captain America: Civil War‘s International Trailer
A few new shots can be found in the new Captain America: Civil War trailer that was just released. Joe and Anthony Russo (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) are back to direct the first film of Marvel’s Phase Three, picking up the action where Joss Whedon's Avengers: Age of Ultron left off. It seems the world at large is tired of the collateral damage that Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers-lead Avengers keeps causing—let us not forget why Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) had to invent the Hulkbuster in the first place. In Civil War, ...
Star Wars Countdown, 1st Star Trek Beyond Trailer & More
Slashfilm’s Peter Sciretta sat down with Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy and J.J. Abrams to discuss the future of the Star Wars saga. While Lucasfilm and Disney are clearly focused on this week’s premiere of The Force Awakens, they’re also deep into planning the remainder of the planned sequel trilogy. Check out the piece to find out what’s been planned thus far.
The Critics’ Choice Awards have released their nominations,...
Talking to Mark Ulano, Production Sound Mixer on The Hateful Eight
Production Sound Mixer Mark Ulano has been recording and mixing location sound for Quentin Tarantino’s films since 1997’s Jackie Brown. Entrusted by the director with obtaining the best possible recording of his legendary character dialogues, along with the rest of the location sound work, Ulano takes understandable pride in the fact that not a single word of dialogue has ever been replaced [looped] in post-production on their films together. Beginning his production sound mixing career in the late 1970s working on a slew of low budget films produced by Roger Corman and also Canon Films,...
Enjoy 12 Days of Deadpool This Holiday Season
"Hi, I'm Deadpool, the other jolly guy in a red suit with a lap worth sitting on." Yup, we're definitely in Deadpool country, with another quippy, chippy teaser released just in time for the holidays. In this case, Deadpool and 20th Century Fox are giving away "12 days of Deadpool," which every day for the next twelve a new site will debut a "tasty treat" of Deadpool images and information, culminating in the big gift on Christmas,...
A New Star Wars: The Force Awakens TV Spot
We're now merely three days and 14 hours from the premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (if you want to know how many minutes and seconds you have until the film opens, click here), and the final burst of TV spots are coming fast and furious. It's up to you to decide how much of a good thing is too much, as by now we've seen well over 6 minutes of the film. Even though there's little new here,...
The First Independence Day: Resurgence Trailer has Landed
After 20-years since the last alien attack in the original Independence Day (not counting the alien attacks in The Avengers, Man of Steel, or any other of the countless films in which the planet has been plundered by space invaders), the bad boys from outer space are back in Independence Day: Resurgence.
Since the 1996, July 4th attack, the United Nations created the Earth Space Defense Program to serve as an early warning detection system in the case of another attack...
Behold the First X-Men: Apocalypse Trailer
"I saw the end of the world. I could feel all this death." This comes from the young Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), who tells this vision to Charles Xavier (James McAvoy). "Jean," Charles says, "it was just a dream." Um, Charles, you do remember that one Jean Gray is an "Omega-level" mutant, right? Let's assume she doesn't just have pointless dreams, okay? Also, the film's subtitle is Apocalypse.
Thus begins 20th Century Fox's first trailer for next summer's hotly anticipated ...
How They Made the White Whale in Ron Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea
“There she blows! There she blows! A hump like a snow hill! It is Moby Dick!”
This is the moment in Herman Melville's iconic "Moby-Dick" that the titular white whale is spotted, the demon that mad Captain Ahab has made the Pequod's suicidal mission. It's one of the most breathtaking moments in American literature, coming on page 624 (in the Barnes & Noble Classics edition, at least), on chapter 133. For the final three chapters of arguably the greatest piece of literature in the American canon,...
Brooklyn’s Production Designer Francois Seguin’s Period Perfection
Though the romance film is about as out of vogue as ever before, it’s a testament to the work behind director John Crowley’s Brooklyn that the quiet Saoirse Ronan-starring love story has become an Oscar favorite since its premiere at Sundance earlier this year. A respectful return to the traditions of melodrama, Brooklyn is stuffed with astonishing performances and masterful design, causing many critics to take note not just of the affecting emotional qualities, but the bewitching and immersive world that envelopes Ronan’s Eilis...
Your Golden Globes Nominees Announcements LIVE
You can still catch the live broadcast of the Golden Globe nominations here. Below's the list thus far.
Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Series, Limited Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television
Idris Elba, Luther
Oscar Isaac, Show Me a Hero
David Oyelowo, Nightingale
Mark Rylance, Wolf Hall
Patrick Wilson, Fargo
Original Score,...
Talking to Casting Director Fiona Weir About Brooklyn, Room & More
It remains a baffling omission that casting directors don't have their own Academy Award category. There is hardly a more important aspect of pre-production, and few decisions can make or break a film like those charged to the casting director. From Selma's Aisha Coley to the legendary Bonnie Timmerman (The Karate Kid, Bull Durham, Black Hawk Down) and Pat Moran (The Wire, VEEP, Game Change),...
