CBS Bringing Back Sunday Night Movies, Sony Pictures Reveals KIDS ZONE!
Studios all across the world are dealing with production shutdowns due to the spread of COVID-19. Now that we’re weeks into this unprecedented scenario, we’re starting to see how the folks who make our films and television shows are getting creative. Universal Pictures is already running first-run films in your home, with other studios following suit, including Warner Bros., Disney, and Lionsgate. HBO has made 500 hours worth of programming free for a limited time,...
Shazam! Director Reveals How He Made His Horror Short at Home
Last week Shazam! director David. F Sandberg revealed that he’d spent part of his quarantine getting back to his roots and filming the horror short Shadowed. Working with his wife and collaborator Lotta Lotsen, Sandberg conceived of, shot, and edited this three-minute creep-fest all without leaving his home. Now, Sandberg has released a video showing exactly how he pulled this off.
You probably won’t be surprised that Shadowed was a complex undertaking...
Good Deeds Give us Reason to Hope (And Applaud)
If you’re lucky enough to be able to social distance and healthy enough to “simply” worry and absorb a relentless amount of bad news, then you’re probably primed for a little bit of positivity. If you live in a city where there’s nightly applause for our heroic healthcare workers, you’ve gotten a taste of how good it feels to take a moment to marvel at the courage and compassion of people all around us. People we usually don’t think about that much about...
Chris Hemsworth is a Mercenary With Nothing to Lose in Extraction Trailer
Perhaps what we need right now, those of us lucky enough to be able to stay home and practice social distancing, is a good, old-fashioned action flick. Something big. Something relentlessly entertaining. Something starring a well-known and liked star and written, directed and produced by folks who know their way around a spectacle. Well, we’ve got all that in spades in Extraction, Netflix’s upcoming thriller starring Chris Hemsworth, and produced and written by Hemsworth’s directors in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, ...
Little Fires Everywhere Cinematographer Jeffrey Waldron on Crafting Chaos Beneath the Surface
One of the many, many odd things about life mid-pandemic is how suddenly bizarre it is to watch shows and films that depict people touching, hugging, kissing, and gathering in large numbers. Even the folks who just filmed these series agree. There’s a kind of pre-coronavirus surreality to it, and if the show or movie doesn’t hold your attention, you can, at least for this viewer, find yourself more invested in how weird it is to see people cavalierly not keeping their distance than you are in the actual story...
John Krasinski & Emily Blunt Reunited the Hamilton Cast on Some Good News
The second episode of Some Good News, John Krasinski’s charming DIY series on YouTube, is epic. Not that the first glimpse of Krasinski’s surprise show, which is produced with help from his talented family, wasn’t sensational. The first episode included an interview between Krasinski and Steve Carell about their work on The Office, which was timed to the show’s 15th anniversary, some love for the heroes working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic,...
Never Have I Ever Director Kabir Akhtar on Filming Mindy Kaling’s New Netflix Series
When director Kabir Akhtar heard the news that producer/writer/star Mindy Kaling was, along with co-creator Lang Fisher, putting together a new series at Netflix that would focus on a first-generation Indian American teenage girl, he thought, I need to be a part of this.
“Just the idea that a show could be made about a first-generation South Asian American,” Akhtar says, a first-generation South Asian American himself, who grew up in suburban Philadelphia, “I was sitting at home,...
Writer/Director Eliza Hittman on her Bracing, Brilliant Film Never Rarely Sometimes Always
When Eliza Hittman, writer/director of Never Rarely Sometimes Always, took the stage after the premiere of her film at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24th of this year, she was greeted with rapturous applause. She and the stars of her film have gained critical acclaim for her intimate, powerful portrayal of one teenager’s perilous journey of the soul. Never Rarely Sometimes Always is about the challenges facing 17-year-old Autumn (Sidney Flanigan),...
HBO Makes 500 Hours’ Worth of Programming Available for Free
There have been watch lists galore since millions of people started practicing social distancing, self-quarantining, and sheltering in place due to the spread of COVID-19. Rian Johnson and Edgar Wright shared their favorite 70s musicals and comedies, respectively, while James Gunn offered a top-10 list of films you probably haven’t seen but should. Our own Desson Thomson gave us a thorough compendium of shows and films we could be enjoying, too. AFI announced a brand new movie club,...
Watch Shazam Director David F. Sandberg’s New Short Horror Film
Look, the most important thing for everyone to do right now, those of us not in essential jobs and not on the front lines of fighting the spread of COVID-19, is to practice social distancing. There was a whole flurry of Tweets going around at the beginning of the pandemic, reminding us what some other famous folks did during their quarantine. For example, did you know that Shakespeare wrote “King Lear” while in quarantine during the plague?...
A Quiet Place: Part II & Top Gun: Maverick Get New Release Dates
While all dates are subject to change at the moment considering the unprecedented situation we find ourselves in, there is some news on the film release front worth sharing. Paramount Pictures has announced that two of their big releases for this year have new release dates. John Krasinski’s highly anticipated A Quiet Place: Part II and the return of Tom Cruise’s speed-needing super pilot in Top Gun: Maverick will be out on the first weekend in September and during Christmas,...
Late-Night TV Adapts to a Changed World
As the spread of COVID-19 stalled productions and delayed film premieres, you could make a case that the most visible manifestation of the global pandemic on the entertainment industry was the lack of late-night TV shows. Starting around mid-March, every single one of the late-night programs, from The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to Full Frontal With Samantha Bee to Conan, went dark. The folks that millions of Americans invite into their living rooms and bedrooms every night,...
ESPN’s Michael Jordan Documentary The Last Dance Reveals 1st Trailer
There’s a certain beat that will instantly transport those of us who were avid sports fans in the 90s. The beat comes from a song (which I’d never known until this moment, after Googling it) by the British rock band The Alan Parsons Project. The song is called “Sirius.” This brief instrumental, under two minutes long, was adopted by the Chicago Bulls to introduce their starting lineup during their epic run of six NBA championships between 1991 and 1998. For millions of people,...
Rick and Morty’s Season 4 Trailer is as Bonkers as You’d Hope
Need a laugh? Yeah, us too. We all do about now, and there are few more reliable places to get a bunch of them then Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon’s Rick and Morty. Season four continues on May 3, which, yes, feels like a very long time from now. The Emmy Award-winning animated comedy aired five episodes of season four at the end of last year (December 15 to be exact), and now we’ve got the second half of season four coming our way...
Steven Spielberg Introduces the New AFI Movie Club
While those of us not on the front lines of battling the spread of COVID-19 are all hunkered down and doing our part by staying at home, we’ve gotten our fair of share of great watch lists from some major talents. Rian Johnson and Edgar Wright shared their favorite 70s musicals and comedies, respectively, while James Gunn offered a top ten list of films you probably haven’t seen but should. Our own Desson Thomson gave us a thorough compendium of shows and films we could be enjoying,...
An Aspiring Costume Designer Contemplates Life after COVID-19
The call came in 2014. It was 6 o’clock at night, Rachel Apatoff remembers. Would she be interested in working as a costume production assistant on a little TV show called Mad Men? It would bring her a straight 10 months of work, a nice stretch of employment for anyone in the industry, not just for a costumer.
Well, sure, Apatoff told them. When did they want her to start?
Tomorrow at 8 AM,...
A Most Beautiful Thing Director Mary Mazzio Films a Miracle on the Water
Director Mary Mazzio was set to take her documentary A Most Beautiful Thing to SXSW this year. Then the spread of COVID-19 became such an undeniable reality in the United States that SXSW was canceled. The news of that cancellation came along with the shuttering of film and TV productions all across the globe. Once theaters started closing, world premieres were pushed back months, too.
“It’s a bummer, but we’ve now pivoted,...
Spike Lee Shares his Unproduced Script for Jackie Robinson Biopic
Yesterday we got a surprise gift from writer/director/actor John Krasinski revealed Some Good News, his DIY news program he revealed on YouTube that he and his family filmed from their homes. True to its title, Some Good News showed us video from all over the world, from Italy to the United States and points in between, which featured much deserved praise for healthcare workers battling the spread of coronavirus. Some Good News also featured two interviews;...
John Krasinski Creates Some Good News & Interviews Steve Carell
If you’re looking for something funny and heartwarming (and frankly, who isn’t right now?), John Krasinski has got you covered. The writer/director of A Quiet Place (parts I and II) and, of course, a former member of The Office‘s phenomenal ensemble cast, has a new YouTube series called Some Good News, which delivers exactly what its title promises. The first episode, now streaming, also includes an interview between Krasinski and Steve Carell about their work on The Office,...
Post-Production Crews Pivot To Homework To Keep The Lights On
Anybody walking down West 45th Street in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood on a recent Tuesday might not have noticed them. In the narrow parking lot of the eight-story building marked 432, men loaded equipment cases into waiting vehicles. Two of those enclosures contained Sony BVM-X300s, top-of-the-line professional monitors that colorists use to finish tv shows and films for broadcast. Each can easily cost $30,000.
This wasn’t the scene of a brazen heist in broad daylight; it was the execution of one TV and film industry studio’s business continuity plan...
