“Palm Springs” Costume Designer Colin Wilkes Gets Existential
Palm Springs costume designer Colin Wilkes had her work cut out for her when she came aboard director Max Barbakow’s new comedy. The film—now a record-breaker for Hulu—posits a nightmare scenario for the wedding averse; nuptials set in the sun-baked California desert town that you can never leave. At least that’s the case for Nyles (Andy Samberg) and Sarah (Cristin Milioti), who find themselves reliving the wedding day over and over again...
Watch The Entire Opening Scene to Season 2 of “The Umbrella Academy”
What you need to handle the mid-week doldrums is a shot of The Umbrella Academy straight into your veins. The opening scene to the delightfully bizarre, beautifully constructed Netflix series is available to do just that, and it starts off with a bang.
The opening scene begins with Aidan Gallagher’s Number Five touching down in Dallas. He’s looking for his lost siblings, but the first thing he finds is that the Cold War has gone suddenly hot;...
Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Snags Merawi Gerima’s Drama “Residue”
Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY is putting its money where its mouth is—again. Duvernay’s ARRAY Releasing has snagged filmmaker Merawi Gerima’s poignant drama Residue, and they’ve revealed the trailer to this timely film to boot. Gerima wrote, directed, and produced Residue, which is centered on aspiring filmmaker Jay (Obinna Nwachukwu) who, upon returning to his old neighborhood in Washington, DC, finds the place hardly recognizable. It’s become one of the many communities in the country to be gentrified near completely,...
“Watchmen” Tops List of 2020 Emmy Nominations
Your 2020 Primetime Emmy Award nominees have been announced. The full list is available here. The Emmys are currently scheduled to air on ABC on September 20 with Jimmy Kimmel hosting. What form the ceremony will take is, like just about everything this year, subject to change. What we do know is that Kimmel and the Emmy producers are putting on some kind of show, and they’ll be celebrating a truly remarkable year on the small screen (all hail the most nominated show of the year,...
Showtime Developing Series About Mafia’s First Family
If you were going to put together a new series based on the history of organized crime in America, we feel confident you really couldn’t do a better job than Showtime is currently doing. Granted, it’s still early days here, but the network is in the early stages of developing a series from Goodfellas and Casino co-writer Nicholas Pileggi, Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter (he also wrote and executive produced a little show called The Sopranos),...
How DP Nancy Schreiber Sidesteps Voyeurism for a Naturalistic Look in “P-Valley”
If you think you’re in for a sexy, easygoing watch with P-Valley, Starz’s new series on the life and times of the employees of a Mississippi Delta strip club, expect an emotional awakening. The show’s creator, Laurence Olivier Award-winning playwright Katori Hall, first brought P-Valley to life as a critically well-received play, “Pussy Valley.” Hall’s television adaptation may be less explicitly titled, but it retains the nuance of a work fit for the stage, offering resonant explorations of community,...
“We Are Who We Are” Trailer Reveals Luca Guadagnino’s Lush New HBO Series
Well, this looks like a series we need about now. Call Me By Your Name and Suspiria filmmaker Luca Guadagnino makes his TV debut with a brand new series for HBO. The premium cable giant has revealed the first trailer for We Are Who We Are, an eight-episode series set on a U.S. military base in Italy. The show stars Jack Dylan Grazer as a quiet,...
Netflix Orders “The Witcher” Prequel Series
If you enjoyed The Witcher as much as we did, you’ll be pleased to hear that the universe of everyone’s favorite monster-slayer (played by Henry Cavill) just got bigger. Netflix has ordered a six-part limited prequel series titled The Witcher: Blood Origin, which will take us back to the very first Witcher and the moment when the worlds of monsters, men, elves, and more converged.
Blood Origin is set 1200 years before the events in The Witcher and will take place in the world of elves...
Meet the Fight Coordinators Who Gave “The Old Guard” Their New Moves
Years before Wonder Woman, Black Panther, and Captain Marvel came out, Charlize Theron set the bar for female action heroes in 2005 when she starred in the sci-fi bloodbath Æon Flux. She followed that with her incredible performance as Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road and then as a super-spy more than willing to fight in Atomic Blonde. Now Theron returns to the fray as immortal ax-wielder Andy in The Old Guard...
Rethinking Old Age in Sergio Navarretta’s “The Cuban”
The Cuban, director Sergio Navarretta’s (Arctic Dogs) new feature out on streaming and in theaters on July 31st, melds two missives into one sweetly heartfelt film: a tribute to Afro-Cuban jazz and a reminder to cherish our elders. Opening in the cold light of a Canadian nursing home, brisk nurses attend to Luis Garcia (Oscar-winner Louis Gossett Jr.), the film’s titular star. Luis, a former jazz musician, is gripped by dementia and Alzheimer’s,...
“Self Made” DP Kira Kelly on Why Black Stories Matter
Cinematographer Kira Kelly shot Ava DuVernay‘s 2016 Oscar-nominated 13th documenting how American prisons target Black men. Then she filmed miniseries Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker, named after the hair products entrepreneur who became the country’s first Black female millionaire. Most recently, she shifted into rom-com mode for an episode of Insecure, set in South L.A. and featuring Emmy-nominated Issa Rae as a witty Black single woman trying to sort out her personal life...
Amy Roberts on the Subtly Changing Fashion in Season 3 of “The Crown”
The third season of The Crown, Netflix’s lavish, semi-fictionalized series about Queen Elizabeth II and her family, sees the monarch, Prince Philip and Princess Margaret entering middle age. Claire Foy hands off the role of Elizabeth to Olivia Colman, with Helena Bonham-Carter and Tobias Menzies joining the cast as her sister and husband. Kicking off in 1964 with a Soviet spy scandal ripped from the headlines and ending with the Queen’s 1977 Silver Jubilee,...
The Top 5 European Filming Regions to Visit This Summer
For many, containing the coronavirus means this will be a travel-free summer, but for many in the broader European region, travel opportunities are opening back up. With some judicious planning, there’s plenty to do, even if you can’t make it to your preferred, farthest-flung destination. Enter film tourism: though you might be stuck a bit closer to home, trips arranged around visits to real-life locations familiar from films and television offer another form of escapism, one that uniquely expands any trip’s reach...
How Director Mimi Leder Shaped Apple TV+’s “The Morning Show”
Hollywood has become somewhat more diverse since the eighties when director Mimi Leder became the first woman to graduate from the American Film Institute. And yet, as her latest drama The Morning Show illustrates, some male entertainment moguls still give talented women a hard time. Originally inspired by Brian Stelter’s book “Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV,” showrunner Kerry Ehrin (Friday Night Lights) re-tooled the Apple TV+ series as a #MeToo saga centered on the firing of popular infotainment anchor Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell) for sexual misconduct...
Emmy-Winning Director Randy Wilkins on Capturing His Mentor Spike Lee
Randy Wilkins is a three-time Emmy Award-winning writer, director, and editor from the Bronx who has edited a handful of Spike Lee joints, including She’s Gotta Have It and Rodney King for Netflix. But for his latest project, Apple TV’s Dear… the tables were turned, and Wilkins was tasked with interviewing and directing Spike Lee, his longtime mentor.
“It was weird,” Wilkins says. “There was pressure for sure. When I told him I was doing the episode,...
“Saturday Night Live” Wants to Resume Filming in Studio 8H—Just No Audience
Some hopeful news—Saturday Night Live is working out a way to possibly return to their legendary studio, 8H, in NBC’s 30 Rockefeller Center next season. The catch is that this would likely be without a live studio audience. Variety has the scoop that executive producer Lorne Michaels and NBC are hoping to find a way to get cast and crew back to the studio to produce SNL in-house (perhaps not all of them at the same time,...
This “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” Reunion Table Read is a Must-Watch
Much of the news in the film and TV world has been pretty bleak as of late, so why not enjoy something that’s just absolutely and totally joyous? That, my friends, is what this Scott Pilgrim vs. The World reunion table read is—pure, undiluted happiness. Co-writer/director Edgar Wright‘s beloved 2010 flick featured a veritable smorgasbord of talent, and nearly all of them returned for this giddy virtual table read. You can watch the entire thing below...
Warner Bros. Announces New Plans to Distribute “Tenet” Non-Traditionally
As we’ve watched the United States struggle—maddeningly, tragically—with COVID-19, the news that Warner Bros. is delaying Tenet‘s theatrical release date indefinitely is sad but inevitable news. Christopher Nolan‘s latest was set to be the big blockbuster that would auger a return to some semblance of normalcy in the States, playing in theaters all across a healing country. This has been made impossible by the spread of the disease. Thus, Warner Bros. really had no choice here,...
KiKi Layne on Her Lethal Left Hook (And More) in “The Old Guard”
With her star turn in Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, KiKi Layne left a lasting impression on critics and producers alike. In director Gina Prince-Bythewood‘s The Old Guard, now streaming on Netflix, Layne shows herself to be a performer capable of handling wildly divergent roles. Her character, Nile Freeman, the youngest and newest member of a team of immortal mercenaries, is a highly trained Marine with a strong moral compass,...
All Hail Beyoncé’s New “Black Is King” Trailer
We were still floating from Beyoncé dropping the surprise first trailer for Black Is King on us when Disney+ revealed a new, somehow more gorgeous trailer for the superstar’s upcoming visual album yesterday. And Black Is King really does come from Beyoncé—she wrote, directed, and executive produced this project, based on her music from her album “The Lion King: The Gift,” which she crafted for 2019’s live-action The Lion King. ...
