Mark Hamill to Host Lightsaber Duel on ESPN, SAG Nominees Announced & More
Happy hump day, folks. Here's some of what we're reading about film and TV on this Wednesday, December 9th:
Did you know that the Screen Actors Guild is the largest nominating body within the Academy Awards? Well it is! And today they’ve doled out their 2016 Screen Actor Guilds Awards nominations (the ceremony will be simulcast live on Saturday, January 30, on TNT & TBS at 8 p.m. ET), with some wonderful surprises to boot. There’s a nomination for Rami Malek for Mr...
Steven Spielberg’s The BFG Releases First Teaser
"Never get out of bed. Never go to the window. Never look behind the curtain." But, of course, this is exactly what Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) does, earning her first sight of the BFG (the Big Friendly Giant, played by the great Mark Rylance, who nearly stole Bridge of Spies, Steven Spielberg‘s last film, right out from under Tom Hanks). This first teaser of Spielberg's adaptation of Roald Dahl‘s children’s classic looks very promising.
Barnhill is a newcomer, and she looks just about perfect for the role of an plucky little girl who becomes fast friends with the BFG...
Watch the new Captain America: Civil War Featurette
Curious why directors Anthony and Joe Russo and Marvel honcho Kevin Feige decided to bring the Black Panther into Captain America: Civil War? Or how about why all the turmoil started between former friends Cap (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.)? And how does the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) factor into all of this? In this new featurette, originally reported and created by Entertainment Weekly and now released by Marvel Entertainment, you'll find a bunch of answers...
Around the Web: George Lucas Has Seen The Force Awakens & More
Here’s some of what we’re reading today.
Vulture caught up with George Lucas after hearing the news that he’d finally seen The Force Awakens. His verdict? “I think the fans are going to love it. It’s very much the kind of movie they’ve been looking for.” Hmm…as Vulture notes, he didn’t say he loved it. Then again, as the Washington Post reported in their profile of Lucas,...
Watch the “Secret” Star Wars: The Force Awaknes TV Spot
Gang, the film comes out next Friday, so at this point there can only be so many more of these TV spots and teasers, right? It's been said that a full six minutes of the film has been released when you add up all the bits from every trailer, teaser, and TV spot thus far. The below teaser has just enough new stuff to keep you primed and ready to go for the release on December 18, including a bit more dialogue between Rey (Daisy Rildey) and Han (you know who plays him),...
The Big Short & the Frenzy of Must-See Films in December
As the year comes to a close, there's a frenzy of films coming out in the next few weeks that are required viewing. I caught a screening last week of Alejandro González Iñárritu's The Revenant (we'll be discussing the film in more detail soon), a brutal, simultaneously gorgeous film that I haven't been able to totally shake since. In a way, the outrageous commitment the film required (you can read all about the production process here) reminded me of what it took for director Tom McCarthy and his co-writer Josh Singer to pull off ...
Jennifer Lawrence Brings the Joy, Natalie Portman Brings the Jane
Two distinctinly different clips to share with you this morning. The first, is a short Joy teaser released by 20th Century Fox, the Jennifer Lawrence starring, David O. Russell directed film based on the life of Joy Mangano, the inventor of the Miracle Mop. This is the first time Russell has focused his film solely on a female protagonist (he's had strong women in nearly all his film, however), and Lawrence's performance is already earning raves.
The second is a trailer for Lionsgate's ...
Watch the New Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny Trailer
Netflix just dropped a trailer for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny trailer and, the followup to Ang Lee’s luscious 2000 Academy Award-winning film. Sword of Destiny (formerly subtitled The Green Legend) is set to hit both IMAX theaters and on Netflix worldwide on February 26, 2016. Following in the film's visually breathtaking style, Sword of Destiny focuses on a fight to keep a legendary warrior's sword from an evil warlord. What will help Sword of Destiny is the presence of the great ...
Around the Web: C-3PO Unmasked, Momentum Continues for Spotlight & Mad Max: Fury Road & More
A quick glance at what we're reading around the web.
In a must read for Star Wars fans, Vulture’s Boris Kachka chats with “Star Wars’ most special effect of all,” Anthony Daniels, the man in the golden droid suit.
Speaking of The Force Awakens, Slashfilm’s Peter Sciretta attended the film’s press conference this past weekend (in which there was no footage shown,...
Making Mountains With Everest VFX Supervisor Dadi Einarsson
Everest tells the true story of two groups of climbers who were hit with a deadly blizzard during their 1996 expeditions to scale the world’s highest mountain. We talk to visual effects supervisor Dadi Einarsson about the responsibility of recreating real events and why, being from Iceland, he may just have the edge when it comes to working with snow.
As Everest is shown in 3-D and on IMAX screens,...
Watch This New Star Wars: The Force Awakens “Legacy” Featurette
Wow, the notion that the "final" trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens aired during the Monday Night Football game on October 19 is totally laughable now, right? But we're not complaining. Check out this new featurette for The Force Awakens that premiered at Comic-Con Brazil, and we'll meet you below for a few thoughts.
- Right off the bat, that shot of the very real Millennium Falcon is pretty incredible, right?
- At 25 seconds,...
From Germanic Folklore to Hollywood, the Spooky Arrival of Krampus
With Michael Dougherty’s holiday horror film, Krampus, out this week, the Christmastime demon counter to St. Nicholas finally lands in the U.S. This pre-Christian figure of Germanic folklore, who accompanies jolly old St. Nick into town every December, has until recently been limited to visiting his terrors on Austrian, southern German, and Scandinavian children. Having gotten his green card thanks to Hollywood, American kids will finally be appropriately punished for their sins all year long learn about the dark flip side to presents and reindeer and cookies left out next to the tree...
From Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth to Orson Welles & Joss Whedon: Directors Love the Bard
Finally ready to meet U.S. audiences is Justin Kurzel’s brutal Macbeth, a modern perspective on the Scottish play starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard in two of their most visceral and intense roles to date. It opens today, December 4, and as we've written, it's one of the most impressive Shakespeare adaptations in ages. (You can also read our interview with the film's producer, Iain Canning, here.) Though Macbeth is only Kurzel’s second film after his merciless The Snowtown Murders,...
Watch the Sisters: The Farce Awakens Hilarious Star Wras Spoof Trailer
You've got to love this. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, the stars of the upcoming Sisters, get in on the Star Wars: The Force Awakens insanity with this loving, hilarious send-up of the film's behind-the-scenes trailer they dropped at this past summer's Comic-Con. Watch them both below to get the full impact of how ingenious Sisters: The Farce Awakens is, especially the business at 20 seconds in of the computer generated model needed…to simulate a man being booted in the groin...
Around the Web: Girls, a new Thor Writer & More
We already posted the new trailer for Batman v Superman, which revealed a major new villain that will clearly unite our fighting supeheroes (including Wonder Woman!) against, well…it.
Thor: Ragnarok has landed writer Stephany Folsom to do some rewrites on the project, the woman who wrote 1969: A Space Odyssey of How Kubrick Learned to Stop Worrying and Land on the Moon...
Watch the Thrilling New Batman v Superman Trailer
We shared with you the dark, twisted little 40-second teaser on Monday, and now here's the first official Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice trailer. It's surprisingly funny and totally insanse (in a good way). As always, we'll share the trailer with you first so you can take it all in, then we'll go through it and discuss some of the finer points. Welcome back to Gotham, folks—you're in for a wild ride.
- Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) and Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) first meet at a party thrown by…...
The New York Film Critics Circle Have Spoken, & They’ve Said Carol
Earlier today we told you about the exciting surprise win for Mad Max: Fury Road as the National Board of Review's film of the year, and now it's another slightly surprising and equally exciting film, Todd Haynes' excellent Carol, which has nabbed top honors from the New York Film Critics Circle. Haynes adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's lesbian love drama "The Price of Salt" has garnered high praise from critics since it bowed at the BFI London Film Festival in mid-October,...
Composing Christmas: Talking the Score of Christmas Eve With Christian Davis
With Thanksgiving neatly in the rearview mirror, the holiday season is officially upon us as it becomes time for holiday cheer and the year’s newest crop of Christmas films. Among them is Mitch Davis’ Christmas Eve, a witty dramedy following the stories of six different groups of strangers trapped inside elevators during a power outage on Christmas Eve. Starring Patrick Stewart, Jon Heder, James Roday and Julianna Guill, Christmas Eve looks to be a funny and cathartic look at life through the lens of the cheery but often stressful holiday season...
The Return of “In-Camera” Effects in Krampus & The Force Awakens
With the technological leaps and bounds that CGI made after the turn of the 21st century, the mid to late aughts brought with it a deluge of films relying heavily on newly discovered and increasingly honed special effects, particularly in genres like sci-fi and horror. But after years of reboots and remakes that sought to improve upon the original like Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and the 2011 retelling of John Carpenter’s The Thing,...
Watch the Painstaking Craftsmanship Poured Into Anomalisa
When we saw Anomalisa at the Middleburg Film Festival this past October, we were blown away. Written by Oscar-winner Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and directed by Kaufman and Duke Johnson, the stop-motion animation was as gorgeously detailed as any we'd ever seen before, and the bittersweet story (this being Kaufman, after all) of a successful but troubled customer service expert, coalesced into a film that stuck with you for hours,...
