“WandaVision” Director Matt Shakman on Landing His Dream Job
So many of director Matt Shakman‘s worlds collided when he took on Marvel Studios WandaVision. “I come at it from this bizarre perspective, as I’ve been a lifelong Marvel fan, a comic book fan, I’ve been in the audience for all of Marvel’s movies, but I’m also a sitcom kid, I grew up in Hollywood as an actor on sitcom sets,” Shakman says of his fortuitous role as the series director. “It all felt like the weird coming together of all these parts of my life...
The First “Eternals” Poster Teases a Very Different Kind of Marvel Movie
A new entrant into the Marvel Cinematic Universe is always exciting, but Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao’s Eternals seems to deserve even more than the usual interest. This morning we got our first good glimpse at the film, and the first thing you notice is wow, this movie looks gorgeous. Of course, gorgeous moviemaking is Zhao’s stock-and-trade, and Eternals, at least at first blush, looks like a Chloé Zhao movie first, a Marvel movie second...
The First “Eternals” Teaser Has Arrived
And here it is, our first real look at Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao‘s Eternals. Clocking in at two minutes long, this glimpse at Zhao’s star-studded Marvel movie is, unsurprisingly, gobsmackingly gorgeous. Zhao’s images all seem to shot around magic hour, with creamy-hued skies, lush fields, and sweeping vistas of the ocean. What you’ll also notice here is how gentle this teaser is. Sure, there’s going to be action in Eternals—this is a Marvel movie,...
A New “Cruella” Featurette Riffs on the Rocking Soundtrack
Director Craig Gillespie’s live-action look at Cruella de Vil’s origins in Cruella has an appropriately rocking soundtrack. For the future villain of 101 Dalmations, she of the famous black-and-white coif and gleeful sadism, the music needs to own the airwaves as easily as Cruella (Emma Stone) will own the screen. Thus this new featurette on the film’s music reveals the likes of Nina Simone, Queen, Blondie, The Clash, and more.
Gillespie says his film has around four dozen songs...
First Look at Edgar Wright’s “Last Night in Soho” Revealed
If you caught Anya Taylor-Joy on Saturday Night Live this past weekend, then you also got a first glimpse at her starring role in Edgar Wright’s mysterious new movie Last Night in Soho. Wright’s film, which he co-wrote with 1917‘s Oscar-nominated screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns, is centered on a young woman, Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie)
who’s crazy about fashion design. So crazy, in fact, she’s somehow able to transport herself to 1960s London,...
Review Roundup: “In The Heights” Soars
“If you have any doubt about the theatrical movie-going experience, In the Heights is the film to assuage it. It’s big, it’s beautiful, and it’ll make you believe,” writes Jeva Lange for The Week, in a perfect summation of why seeing a film like John M. Chu’s In The Heights in the theater is such a must. In The Heights is one of the reasons why The Big Screen is Back,...
Review Roundup: “A Quiet Place Part II” Joyously Shreds Your Nerves
We’re a mere week away from the May 28 release of John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place Part II, and the reviews are already coming in. There’s mostly only good news here—Krasinski has, according to critics, matured as a director, and his cast and crew help him deliver the goods. It wasn’t going to be an easy feat—it never is when you’re following up a surprise, critical and commercial smash like his 2018 original film—but Krasinski and his team have managed to deliver a satisfying,...
James Gunn Teases Epic Harley Quinn Action Sequence in “The Suicide Squad”
Writer/director James Gunn has written and filmed his fair share of epic action sequences, but he says he thinks the biggest he’s ever pulled off is for Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn in The Suicide Squad.
Gunn told the AP that Robbie’s skills as a performer were impressive, as was her athleticism, and the two allowed him to create a stunning action sequence. Robbie’s Harley Quinn stole David Ayer’s 2016 film Suicide Squad,...
The Motion Picture Association’s Film Workshop Suggests Vietnam’s Industry is Now Open for Business
As part of its mission to facilitate the development of a sustainable and internationally competitive screen industry in Vietnam, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) hosted an in-person film workshop with the Vietnam Film Development Association (VFDA) at the University of Economics in Ho Chi Minh City on April 28.
The event was over-subscribed, with approximately 130 filmmakers, government officials, celebrities, and media in attendance. It was also screened online on May 12, attracting a further 240 attendees.
After VFDA chairperson Dr...
Justine Seymour on Outfitting the Fleeing Foxes of “The Mosquito Coast”
Clothing isn’t a primary concern for The Mosquito Coast’s misfit Fox family. Broke patriarch Allie (Justin Theroux) invents unsuccessful machines to save the world while scraping by as a handyman/asparagus farmer. His suffering, formerly wealthy wife, Margot (Melissa George), is his primary enabler. Their teenage kids, Dina (Logan Polish) and Charlie (Gabriel Bateman) tolerate their unorthodox home life to varying degrees. In Stockton, where the Foxes live mostly off the grid, the household seems about 15 years behind the times,...
Meet Miss Minutes in Delightfully Weird New “Loki” Teaser
She’s got a southern accent and a cheery disposition, which both add to the delightful weirdness—and creepiness, frankly—of Miss Minutes. She’s something of an onboarding specialist for the Time Variance Authority (TVA), the place Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has been sent to at the start of Marvel’s upcoming Disney+ series Loki. Miss Minutes’ job is to catch Loki up before he stands trial for his crime. The crime in question (one of many, many the Asgardian trickster god has committed) was his purloining of the Tesseract—that crucially important magical thingamajig in the Marvel Cinematic Universe—during Avengers: Endgame. ...
Taking Flight with “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” Creator Malcolm Spellman
The success or failure of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier laid heavily upon many folks, but perhaps none as specifically as creator and showrunner Malcolm Spellman. Spellman succeeded in delivering not only a thrilling, six-episode season with cinematic-level action but also a character study of one would-be Captain America in Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier absorbed the narrative traumas Sam had already endured as well as the real-world traumas that Black Americans have been dealing with forever...
The Big Screen Is Back
During the pandemic, there were few cultural institutions more emblematic of the new normal of social distancing and quarantining than the closed movie theater. The darkened theater used to symbolize the start of the movie when you could finally slide your phone into your pocket, settle into your seat, and prepare to enjoy a communal experience with your fellow film lovers. For the past year, the darkened theater symbolized the cessation of normal life. But now, at long last, theaters are back...
“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” Director Peyton Reed Shares Set Photo
Just how revolutionary is the technology created for Disney+’s The Mandalorian? It’s being used by major franchises far outside the Star Wars galaxy, from Matt Reeves’s upcoming The Batman for Warner Bros., to Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania for Marvel. The latter became known today, when Reed took to Twitter to share the first photo from the Ant-Man set—which revealed that the production is utilizing technology to help create some of the film’s big effects and locations,...
Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” Will Get An Exclusive Theater Release After All
Last December 4, we wrote about all the Warner Bros. movies that would hit theaters and HBO Max on the same day. For film purists, it was always a little depressing to imagine movies that were designed for the big screen, down to the tiniest detail, going straight to streaming, and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune remake was one of those films. Now, WarnerMedia has decided that Dune needs to get an exclusive theatrical release after all...
Cinematographer Alicia Robbins on Filming the “Grey’s Anatomy” Covid Season—During Covid
While there’s little in the way of “good luck” that can be attributed to an ongoing pandemic, there is perhaps a little good timing, in the speedy arrival of a vaccination. For cinematographer Alicia Robbins, she chalks up her arrival as one of the two people chronicling the struggles in Seattle’s fictive-yet-storied Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, from behind a pretty active lens, to both “a stroke of good luck, and good timing.”
“I was working on For The People,...
Costume Designer Laura Montgomery Gets Noir on “Spiral: From the Book of Saw”
The ninth installment of the Saw film franchise, Spiral: From the Book of Saw, directed by Darren Lynn Bousman and in theaters now, takes the series in unexpected new directions. Chris Rock shelves his comedic side for the brash but grim role of Ezekiel “Zeke” Banks, a divorced detective who winds up leading an investigation into a grisly series of murders, wherein the dead are all Zeke’s fellow cops. Working with rookie William Schenk (Max Minghella) and their captain,...
The “A Quiet Place Part II” Cast Talk Tension & Terror in New Video
Director John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place Part II is now only a few weeks away, and a new video from Paramount features Krasinski, his star (and wife) Emily Blunt, and one of the film’s newcomers, Cillian Murphy. Murphy says he was “blown away” by the first film, and he’s of course not alone in that reaction. The video also does a nifty job of giving us a brief sket of the timeline of events, from day 89 since the creatures arrived (depicted in the first film) to day 474 (in the sequel)...
Meet Owen Wilson’s Agent Mobius in New “Loki” Clip
As the Marvel Cinematic Universe has expanded to serial form on Disney+, the cast of characters has expanded, too, and some terrific actors have entered the fray. Some of the talented folks to join the Marvel fold include the great Kathryn Hahn as the powerful witch Agatha in WandaVision, a brief but compelling cameo for Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the HYDRA agent Valentina Allegra de Fontaine The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and now Owen Wilson as Agent Mobius M...
First “Snake Eyes” Trailer Teases Henry Golding as the Ninja Warrior
We’ve got our first look at director Robert Schwentke’s Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, revealing Henry Golding as the titular hero who will ultimately go on to become one of the original members of the G.I. Joe military unit. Snake Eyes has long been the most mysterious member of the G.I. Joe team, the masked warrior who is more comfortable fighting than revealing anything about himself. That looks like it’ll change in Schwentke’s film, of course—you don’t cast the star of Crazy Rich Asians if you’re going to hide him in a mask the whole time...
