Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman Getting Historic Broadway Screening
If any director was going to see his film be the first-ever to play at the historic Belsaco Theater on Broadway in New York, it would have to be Martin Scorsese. The legendary auteur’s upcoming (and highly touted) The Irishman will be the first film to play in the Belasco’s 112-year history. Netflix is providing the theater with state-of-the-art equipment for the screenings, which are set to run for a month, from November 1 to December 1...
Edward Norton on Redefining Heroism in Motherless Brooklyn
Edward Norton brought Motherless Brooklyn, his long-gestating passion project, to the Motion Picture Association’s brand new theater last night for a special screening and Q&A moderated by professor Yanick Lamb, Director of Media Studies at Howard University. Norton’s film, which explores institutional racism built into the very foundations of New York City, was inspired as much by Robert Caro’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of “master builder” Robert Moses, “The Power Broker,” as it was Jonathan Lethem’s novel of the same name...
Let’s Talk About Joker‘s Wild Batman Connection
*Obviously, major Joker spoilers below.
So you’ve seen Joker. Good, then this story is for you. Writer/director Todd Phillips (he co-wrote the script with Scott Silver) and Joaquin Phoenix delivered on their promise that Joker wouldn’t be like any previous superhero film. True enough. In nearly every conceivable way, Joker defied the conventions of the comic book movie and set itself apart narratively, stylistically, and emotionally. No superpowers. No faceoff between equally matched,...
Klaus Trailer Reveals Netflix’s First Animated Feature Film
Ho ho ho, Santa’s getting his own origin story.
Klaus is the first animated feature film from Netflix, and it’s going to give the cheeriest resident of the North Pole a fullsome backstory. Netflix has released the first trailer, which gives us the tale of a postal worker in need of a career boost, one very unhappy town, and a reclusive carpenter whose cabin is filled with his wonderful creations. Klaus features contemporary music and whimsical touches and is directed by the co-creator of the Minions and Despicable Me,...
Raising Dion Showrunner Carol Barbee on Netflix’s Singular Superhero Show
On film or television, there has never been a superhero origin story with a focus on the superhero’s mom. That changes with the new Netflix show Raising Dion, which is based on a 2015 comic book of the same name by Dennis Liu. The show features Alisha Wainwright as Nicole Reese, a young widow raising 8-year-old Dion (Ja’Siah Young), who begins to exhibit superhuman abilities. Michael B. Jordan plays her late husband Mark,...
Joker Composer Hildur Guðnadóttir on Creating a “Wordless Dialogue”
A female composer being hired for a studio film is a rarity, with 94 percent of the 250 films released in the US in 2018 scored by men. It is to his credit that director Todd Philips hired Icelandic cellist and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir to create the score for Joker. It offers a welcome challenge to the statistics, and also has proven to be a brilliant move on his part. Guðnadóttir just won an Emmy for Chernobyl,...
How Joker Costume Designer Mark Bridges dressed The Clown Prince of Crime
The wait is over. Todd Phillips’ Joker dominated the box office with a record-breaking $93.5 million opening weekend.
The fresh origin story is set circa 1980s Gotham where Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) lives a mundane life working as a clown to scrounge up enough cash to take care of his ailing mother Penny (Frances Conroy). It’s only after a few avoidable mistakes that turn Arthur into who he truly feels he’s meant to be – Joker...
Joker’s Makeup Designer on Creating the Clown Prince of Chaos
It’s hard to think of a more iconic look from the world of comic books than the Joker — Batman’s most nefarious adversary. Nicki Ledermann was all too aware of this when she was approached to design the makeup for Joker, director Todd Phillips’ new feature that offers up the origin as to how Arthur Fleck, a failed comedian, came to be this ominous creature.
“To be honest, I was scared shitless,” says Ledermann,...
The Official Trailer for Sam Mendes’ 1917 Reveals Astonishing Visuals
Universal Pictures recently revealed that director Sam Mendes and his legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins have done something extremely difficult with their World War I epic 1917. They devised, along with their crack cast and crew, a way to shoot the film as if it were a continuous, unbroken single shot. Now Universal has released the film’s first full-length trailer, and you can see for yourself the fruits of their labor. Granted,...
The Official Oscar Campaign For Avengers: Endgame has Begun
Disney has officially launched its Oscar campaign for Avengers: Endgame, zeroing in on a slew of categories for their massive, globe-dominating mega-hit. Disney’s official For Your Consideration website details the categories they’re (currently) focused on. Superhero movies can and should be nominated for Best Picture if they’re good enough, as we learned last year when Ryan Coogler’s excellent Black Panther was nominated for Best Picture (as well as 6 other categories) and notched wins for Costume Design (the incomparable Ruth E...
The First Trailer for Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell is Here
Richard Jewell was working as a security guard at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia, during the 1996 Summer Olympics when his life took a drastic turn. Jewell discovered a duffel bag filled with explosives, and his quick-thinking helped clear most people out of the area before the bomb went off, killing one person and injuring 111. Were it not for Jewell’s action, the death toll would have likely been much, much higher. He was, by any stretch of the imagination,...
Renée Zellweger on Becoming Judy
Despite numerous screen classics over decades, Judy Garland famously never won an Oscar. She was favored to win for her major career comeback in 1954 for A Star is Born but lost to fresh-faced Grace Kelly. So it would be a fitting, full-circle tribute if Renée Zellweger, in her own major comeback role as Judy Garland, took home the Oscar for Judy, as many expect she will after the film’s recent triumphant festival reception including a standing ovation at the Toronto International Film Festival that brought Zellweger to tears...
Check out This Glorious New Alien From Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
His name is Frik. Babu Frik. He’s a handy dandy Anzellan droidsmith and he’s as talented as he is cute. He’s a new Star Wars alien and he’s here to help. He’ll be appearing in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and by the itty-bitty description we’ve got of him, we have a notion on how, exactly, he might be of service.
The introduction of a new Star Wars alien is now a 36-year long event of feverish debate,...
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Screenwriter Chris Terrio on the Mysterious Rey
In Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, we learned quite a bit about Rey (Daisy Ridley). One was that her powers with the Force are significant. So much so that her abilities seem as potent, if not more so, than her mentor Luke Skywalker’s were at the same age. (And Rey has gotten more powerful without the training Luke received from Yoda, although she did get some schooling once she tracked Luke down on Ahch-To.) Yet as much as we learned about Rey’s power and passion in Johnson’s film,...
The First Trailer for Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen Reveals a Star-Studded Crime Caper
Guy Ritchie made his name with whip-smart, kinetically filmed crime capers that all but leapt off the screen. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch were the two movies that American audiences fell in love with. They were hilarious and thrilling, reveling in a British underworld filled with captivating characters and occasionally impossible-to-decipher dialogue (we’re looking at you, Brad Pitt in Snatch). Ritchie went on to make ever bigger films, including rebooting the Sherlock Holmes franchise,...
New Terminator: Dark Fate Trailer Reveals Closer Look at Star-Studded Film
In Tim Miller’s Terminator: Dark Fate, there’s a new focus of homicidal obsession for a time-traveling Terminator—Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes). She’s the person the new Terminator (Gabriel Luna) is after, yet we still don’t know the reasons why. What we do know is Dani will need help if she’s going to survive, and she’s got that in spades. Her protectors the return of Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor and Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s original T-800. Those are some powerful allies...
Harley Quinn Ditches the Joker in First Birds of Prey Trailer
“You know what a harlequin is? A harlequin’s role is to serve. It’s nothing without a master.” These are the lines that open the first trailer for Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey, spoken by star/producer Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, the former sociopathic sidekick to the Joker who is lighting out here on her own. The first trailer reveals that Harley and her former main squeeze, the Joker, have broken up. The hand-drawn image of the Joker that she throws a knife at looks very much like the version Jared Leto played in 2016’s Suicide Squad,...
Harley Quinn’s Got a Pet Hyena in New Birds of Prey Poster
You have to hand it to Harley Quinn—nobody seems to have more fun breaking bad than she does. Back in mid-September, we were enjoying the release of the first theatrical poster for Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). The film is the result of star and producer Margot Robbie’s gangbusters turn as Quinn in David Ayer’s 2016 antihero ensemble film Suicide Squad. Robbie was the best thing in the film,...
Roger Deakins Shot 1917 to Look Like a Single Continuous Shot
Director Sam Mendes upcoming World War I epic 1917 enjoyed one considerable advantage during filming: he had the legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins at his disposal. Mendes and Deakins collaborated on one of the best Bond films of all time—2012’s Skyfall. Now they’re back with 1917, and what they’ve pulled off sounds astonishing. The ever-ambitious Mendes went for something really special on 1917; he had Deakins and his nimble camera team create the illusion that the entire film is one long continuous shot...
Critics & Fellow Filmmakers Hail Scorsese’s The Irishman as a Masterpiece
Martin Scorsese’s return to the world of crime is being hailed as a masterpiece. The legendary director’s The Irishman, which recently had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival, has been screened now by festival-goers, critics and some of Scorsese’s contemporaries. The reactions thus far are ecstatic.
Scorsese’s film is centered on Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) and spans much of Sheeran’s life as he looks back on his career as a driver and hitman for the mob...
