If you’re going to start a new business, perhaps Harlow, Texas, is not the ideal destination? This would be a bit of advice we’d give Melody (Sarah Yarkin), her sister Lila (Elsie Fisher), and their pals Dante (Jacob Latimore) and Ruth (Nell Hudson) after watching the first trailer for Netflix’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which follows the legacy of Tobe Hooper’s 1974 classic and acts a proper sequel to that film.
Directed by David Blue Garcia, this fresh installment takes place decades after the grisly murders of the original film. The iconic monster Leatherface will once again start stalking and obliterating a fresh crop of victims, yet, there’s one person who might not be so easy to dispatch. That would be Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré), a survivor of Leatherface’s 1973 rampage, who knows all too well how relentless his maniac is.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre comes from a script by Chris Thomas Devlin and an original story written by Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues. Like the recent Scream, this new Massacre acts almost like a re-quel, a reboot/sequel hybrid. Joining the aforementioned stars are Mark Burnham, Moe Dunford, Alice Krige, and Jessica Allain.
Check out the trailer below. Texas Chainsaw Massacre shreds its way to Netflix on February 18, 2022.
Here’s the official synopsis:
Melody (Sarah Yarkin), her teenage sister Lila (Elsie Fisher), and their friends Dante (Jacob Latimore) and Ruth (Nell Hudson), head to the remote town of Harlow, Texas to start an idealistic new business venture. But their dream soon turns into a waking nightmare when they accidentally disrupt the home of Leatherface, the deranged serial killer whose blood-soaked legacy continues to haunt the area’s residents — including Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré), the sole survivor of his infamous 1973 massacre who’s hell-bent on seeking revenge.
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At long last, Master Chief is ready to rumble and is coming to a TV screen near you. The first official trailer for the live-action Halo series arrived this past Sunday during halftime of the Cincinnati Bengals/Kansas City Chiefs game, revealing Paramount+’s adaptation of the massively popular video game series. This is the longest look yet at the highly-anticipated series, and it also came with the show’s premiere date—March 24.
The adaptation of the mega-popular XBox Game Studios’ first-person shooter will be the biggest series in Paramount+’s history. Produced by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television, the trailer gives us a closer look at Master Chief Spartan John-117 (Pablo Schreiber), one of the cybernetically enhanced super-soldiers called a Spartan created to defend humanity from an alien race called the Covenant. The Spartans serve at the behest of the United Nations Space Command and were created by scientist Dr. Halsey (Natasha McElhone).
The specifics of the plot are still largely unknown, but we do know Halo is set in the 26th century and will be centered on Master Chief Spartan John-117’s service as he leads the battle against the Covenant. The trailer also hints at the tension building between the Spartans, designed to be not only humanity’s best fighters but also to be controllable, essentially little more than weapons. Yet, the trailer hints that while they were modified to be the perfect killing machines, Master Chief’s journey will not just be physical, but emotional.
The trailer makes great use of a cover of a classic chills-inducing tune, Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight.” This long look reveals the massive scope of the series, which won’t skimp on the game’s epic battle action. Joining Schreiber and McElhone are Jen Taylor, who reprises her role as the voice of the A.I. Cortana from the games. The cast includes Yerin Ha, Charlie Murphy, Shabana Azmi, Bokeem Woodbine, Olive Gray, Kate Kennedy, Natasha Culzac, Bentley Kalu, Danny Sapani and Jesse Tyler Ridgway. Steven Kane serves as the showrunner, and he executive produces alongside Steven Spielberg, Darryl Frank, and Justin Falvey.
Check out the trailer below. Once again, Halo arrives on Paramount+ on March 24.
Here’s the official synopsis from Paramount+:
In its adaptation for Paramount+, HALO will take place in the universe that first came to be in 2001 with the launch of Xbox®’s first “Halo” game. Dramatizing an epic 26th-century conflict between humanity and an alien threat known as the Covenant, HALO the series will weave deeply drawn personal stories with action, adventure and a richly imagined vision of the future. The series stars Pablo Schreiber (“American Gods”) as the Master Chief, Spartan-117; Natascha McElhone (“Californication”) as Dr. Halsey, the brilliant, conflicted and inscrutable creator of the Spartan super soldiers; and Jen Taylor (“Halo” game series, RWBY) as Cortana, the most advanced AI in human history, and potentially the key to the survival of the human race. Additional stars include Bokeem Woodbine (“Fargo”), Shabana Azmi (“Fire”), Natasha Culzac (“The Witcher”), Olive Gray (“Half Moon Investigations”), Yerin Ha (“Reef Break”), Bentley Kalu (“Avengers: Age of Ultron”), Kate Kennedy (“Catastrophe”), Charlie Murphy (“Peaky Blinders”) and Danny Sapani (“Penny Dreadful”).
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Here it is, the first official scene from writer/director Matt Reeves’s upcoming The Batman. The brand new video, titled “Funeral Scene,” reveals Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattison) attending a funeral, while Bella Reál (Jayme Lawson), a Gotham City mayoral candidate, mentions to Bruce that unlike his parents before him, he’s made no recent contributions to the city’s charities. She hopes that’ll change when she’s elected mayor.
While Bella goes off to pay her respects to the family, Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) reports to the Chief of the Gotham City Police that district attorney Gil Colson (Peter Sarsgaard) has gone missing. Bruce overhears this, and, considering he’s already in the second year of his vigilante work, we know he’ll now be on the hunt for the missing DA. This is when things get really interesting. There’s a sound outside, distant but growing, that materializes into screams. The tension inside the church mounts, until a lone figure standing in the balcony above seems to be staring directly at Bruce Wayne. That’s when all hell breaks loose.
An SUV comes crashing into the funeral, nearly killing the young boy who is there mourning his father. Luckily, Bruce Wayne is able to get the boy to safety at the last second. The police then surround the car. And who’s the driver who comes stumbling out? It’s the missing DA Gil Colson with a bomb taped around his neck and a phone taped to his hand. The phone rings. And just as Jim Gordon begins to clear the place out, Bruce Wayne sees the sign taped to Colson’s stomach, just below the bomb—”To the Batman.”
It’s a riveting scene, expertly paced, somber and tense. Everything about it, from the color palette to Bruce Wayne’s wordless intensity to composer Michael Giacchino’s subtle, menacing score speaks to the noir feel that Reeves and his team have created for their rebooted Batman franchise. There’s also the sadistic playfulness of the scene’s twist, set into motion by the Riddler (Paul Dano), a psychopath hellbent on unmasking Batman and terrorizing Gotham in the process.
Check out the scene below. The Batman hits theaters on March 4, 2022, with tickets on sale on February 10.
Here’s the official synopsis for The Batman:
Two years of stalking the streets as the Batman (Robert Pattinson), striking fear into the hearts of criminals, has led Bruce Wayne deep into the shadows of Gotham City. With only a few trusted allies—Alfred Pennyworth (Andy Serkis), Lt. James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright)—amongst the city’s corrupt network of officials and high-profile figures, the lone vigilante has established himself as the sole embodiment of vengeance amongst his fellow citizens.
When a killer targets Gotham’s elite with a series of sadistic machinations, a trail of cryptic clues sends the World’s Greatest Detective on an investigation into the underworld, where he encounters such characters as Selina Kyle/aka Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz), Oswald Cobblepot/aka the Penguin (Colin Farrell), Carmine Falcone (John Turturro), and Edward Nashton/aka the Riddler (Paul Dano). As the evidence begins to lead closer to home and the scale of the perpetrator’s plans becomes clear, Batman must forge new relationships, unmask the culprit, and bring justice to the abuse of power and corruption that has long plagued Gotham City.
Talk about an exciting addition to the family. Aquaman himself, Jason Momoa, is in final negotiations to join Vin Diesel and the gang for Fast & Furious 10. The Hollywood Reporterhas the scoop that Momoa is closing in on a deal to join Diesel for the tenth installment of the franchise, and could be playing one of the film’s villains. Momoa would represent a major infusion of muscle and gravitas to a franchise that has boasted some of the biggest stars (literally, in Dwayne Johnson’s case) in the world. Director Justin Lin will helm the film after returning to the franchise for 2021’s F9: The Fast Saga, which saw Charlize Theron return as the villain Cipher, and introduced John Cena as Jakob Toretto, the brother to Vin Diesel’s Dominic.
Nothing is yet known about F10‘s plot, save for the fact that Lin has said it would likely unfold in a two-part epic. Momoa would join Diesel and the core family, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, and Sung Kang. Charlize Theron is also expected to be back as Cipher. Diesel is producing along with Lin.
With Dwayne Johnson officially not returning for the franchise capping film(s), there was a coordinated search to find someone who could boost the now two-decades-long franchise with the right amount of star power. In Momoa, they’ve found the ideal candidate.
The franchise has remained a massive draw, with the relentlessly insane stunts that get wilder with every new installment. One of the joys of a new Fast & Furious film is to see how they’ll possibly top the shenanigans from the last film. For F10, that’ll mean somehow outdoing Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej (Ludacris)’s car ride into outer space.
Another consistent draw for the franchise is the star power. Along with Johnson and Theron, Gal Gadot, Jason Statham, Kurt Russell, Helen Mirren, and John Cena have all gotten Furious. Momoa will not only add another huge name to the roster, but he’ll also get to enjoy playing a bad guy, something he hasn’t had much of a chance to do.
Momoa has already wrapped filming Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, and he’ll next be seen in Slumberland, an adaptation of Winsor McCay’s comic strip, due from Netflix later this year. Fast 10 will begin shooting this spring and is slated for a May 19, 2023 release.
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When James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 lands in theaters, it’ll mark the end of this current era of Guardians. Gunn confirmed as much to Deadline, revealing that the lovable intergalactic misfits we’ve come to know will have their last adventure together in Vol. 3.
“This is the end for us. This is the last time people will see this team of Guardians,” Gunn told Deadline‘s Hero Nation podcast. “I just want to be true to the characters, and I want to be true to the story and I want to give people the wrap-up that they deserve for the story. So that is always a little bit scary; I’m doing my best.”
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 will complete a saga that Gunn began in 2014 when his first Guardians film ushered in a wild, wackier side to the MCU. Chris Pratt became a big-time star with his turn as Peter Quill/Star-lord, yet the entire cast, including Zoe Saldana as Gamora, Dave Bautista as Drax, Bradley Cooper voicing Rocket the Raccoon, Vin Diesel voicing Groot, Michael Rooker as Yondu, and Karen Gillan as Nebula gave the MCU an intergalactic jolt. This core group of mercurial misfits returned for Vol. 2 in 2017, and you could argue the success of Guardians and its focus on the weirder side of Marvel made room for the likes of Taika Waititi to release his colorful, often hilarious Thor: Ragnarok, changing Chris Hemsworth’s title character from a brooding alien God to a lovable joker (but still a god). It was fitting when Thor took off with the Guardians at the end of Avengers: Endgame, feeling right at home with the rag-tag group of aliens.
When we last saw them, Peter Quill had faced off against his egomaniac father, Ego (Kurt Russell), a living planet. Vol. 2 also saw the loss of Quill’s mentor and father figure, Yondu. In Vol. 3, the Guardians will be facing their most potent challenge yet in the form of Adam Warlock, played by newcomer Will Poulter.
“It’s big; it’s so, so big and dark, and different from what people might be expecting it to be,” Gunn told Deadline. “I’m aware that the third film in most trilogies sucks; not always.”
The end of this particular cosmic road arrives in theaters in May 2023. Yet before that, Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special will appear on Disney+ in December, 2022, offering a chance to start to say your goodbyes.
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The last time we saw C-3P0 (Anthony Daniels) in action, he was playing a crucial part in saving the galaxy in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. In J.J. Abrams’s trilogy capping film, C-3P0 allowed his entire memory bank to be erased in order to rewrite his code so he could translate the Sith language. The fussy, nervous droid stepped up when it mattered most, and even Poe (Oscar Isaac) had to begrudgingly accept 3P0’s heroic sacrifice. And luckily for the protocol droid, his good pal R2-D2 was able to restore his memory and return him to himself.
Well, it looks like Daniels isn’t done playing everyone’s favorite multilingual droid (the dude speaks more than six million languages!), as he took to Instagram to reveal himself in a motion-capture suit with a caption that reads, “Finally, a new suit — that fits!” Daniels posted the photo from Ealing Studios, where he’s busy reprising his iconic role as C-3P0 for a new Lucasfilm project.
Anthony Daniels poses in a mo-cap suit. Courtesy Anthony Daniels/Instagram
The likeliest project Daniels has suited up for is the upcoming animated series Star Wars: A Droid Story. The series was announced back in 2022 and is focused on an epic mission between the droid best friends we’ve known and loved since the late 1970s, following C-3P0 and R2-D2 on a secret mission.
Daniels has played C-3P0 in 11 Star Wars films, including every episode of the “Skywalker Saga.” While it’s likely his Instagram post is teasing his role in A Droid Story, considering he’s the most tenured Star Wars actor of them all, don’t be surprised if C-3P0 pops up in an upcoming Disney+ series, too. Say, Obi-Wan Kenobi?
Featured image: Anthony Daniels is C-3PO, John Boyega is Finn and Oscar Isaac is Poe Dameron in STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER. Courtesy Lucasfilm/Walt Disney Studios
The Oscar race clarified a bit yesterday, with some clear frontrunners emerging from the pack. Oscar voting began in earnest, while four of the most influential guilds delivered their own nominations. The Directors Guild of America, the Writers Guild of America, the Producers Guild of America, and the American Cinema Editors delivered their lists, giving some shape to the race ahead. The DGA and WGA nominations specifically help define the pack of Oscar hopefuls.
The only two films that were selected by all four groups were Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic Duneand Paul Thomas Anderson’s coming-of-age story Licorice Pizza. Not far behind was Kenneth Branagh’s deeply personal Belfast, and Jane Campion’s austere, gut-punch of a western The Power of the Dog.
For the DGA, Villeneuve, Anderson, Branagh, and Campion were joined by Steven Spielberg for West Side Story. The DGAs serve as a relatively stable predictor for which films will be nominated for a best picture Oscar since the category was expanded beyond five films. Only David Fincher’s DGA anointed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo failed to garner a best picture nomination back in 2011.
Campion is only the second woman ever to receive a second nod from the DGA. She last earned one for her work on The Piano in 1993, which led her to become the second woman ever nominated for a best director nomination at the Oscars. Campion’s one of eleven women to be recognized by the DGA after last year saw two women earn nominations with Chloé Zhao for Nomadland and Emerald Fennel for Promising Young Woman.
The DGA has another category for first-time feature directors, introduced in 2015. This year, there’s no overlap between the DGA’s two categories. Interestingly, of the six nominees, four directed films for Netflix:
Maggie Gyllenhaal – The Lost Daughter (Netflix)
Rebecca Hall – Passing (Netflix)
Tatiana Huezo – Prayers for the Stolen (Netflix)
Lin-Manuel Miranda – Tick, Tick… Boom! (Netflix)
Michael Sarnoski – Pig (NEON)
Emma Seligman – Shiva Baby (Utopia)
Meanwhile, the WGA nominations for both original and adapted screenplays included scripts from a slew of heavyweights; Aaron Sorkin, Adam McKay, Wes Anderson, Tony Kushner, and Guillermo del Toro were all nominated. Here’s the breakdown:
Original Screenplay:
Being the Ricardos (Amazon Studios) – Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin
Don’t Look Up (Netflix) – Screenplay by Adam McKay, Story by David Sirota
The French Dispatch (Searchlight Pictures) – Screenplay by Wes Anderson, Story by Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola & Hugo Guinness & Jason Schwartzman
King Richard (Warner Bros) – Screenplay by Zach Baylin
Licorice Pizza (MGM/United Artists Releasing) – Screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson
Adapted Screenplay:
CODA (Apple Original Films) – Siân Heder
Dune (Warner Bros) – Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, Eric Roth
Nightmare Alley (Searchlight Pictures) – Guillermo del Toro, Kim Morgan
Tick, Tick … Boom! (Netflix) – Steven Levenson
West Side Story (20th Century Studios) – Screenplay by Tony Kushner
If you’re curious who the biggest snubs were from both the DGA and WGA lists, they have to be Joel Coen for his masterful work on The Tragedy of Macbeth, and Mike Mills for his tender drama C’mon C’mon. As strong of a predictor as the DGA and WGA nominations are, they are not, alas, the final say. We’ll get that picture of what the Oscar nominations are announced on February 8.
Featured image: Caption: (L-r) ZENDAYA as Chani and TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET as Paul Atreides in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures
The final trailer for Uncharted has arrived, charting the adventures of Nathan Drake (Tom Holland), a thief tapped by treasure hunter Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) to help him track down a bounty worth a cool $5 billion. The film, from director Ruben Fleischer (Venom), is adapted from the hugely popular PlayStation game and is Holland’s first role since he starred in the world-beating Spider-Man: No Way Home.
Holland is ideally suited to play Drake, the wise-cracking thief with a penchant for getting into trouble that’s way, way over his head. We’ve already shared just how serious the stunt work was on Uncharted, which has a swashbuckling vibe reminiscent of Indiana Jones, the most beloved treasure-seeking action-adventure franchise of all time. (A hat tip to another outstanding treasure-obsessed film, Goonies.)
The final trailer revels in Uncharted‘s straightforward, old-school action vibe, with Holland and Wahlberg pairing up to beat a slew of villains to find “the greatest treasure never found.” The film will center not just on the adventure, but the relationship between Drake and Sully, with Drake becoming Sully’s protégé. Drake might be good at lifting things that don’t belong to him, but he’s got a lot to learn from Sully, including how to survive goons hellbent on beating you to the treasure at any cost.
Joining Holland and Wahlberg are Antonio Banderas as the film’s big villain, Moncada, and Tati Gabrielle as the mercenary Braddock. After a bunch of delays, Uncharted is finally ready to hit theaters on February 18.
Check out the final trailer below:
Here’s the synopsis for Uncharted:
Street-smart thief Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) is recruited by seasoned treasure hunter Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) to recover a fortune lost by Ferdinand Magellan 500 years ago. What starts as a heist job for the duo becomes a globe-trotting, white-knuckle race to reach the prize before the ruthless Moncada (Antonio Banderas), who believes he and his family are the rightful heirs. If Nate and Sully can decipher the clues and solve one of the world’s oldest mysteries, they stand to find $5 billion in treasure and perhaps even Nate’s long-lost brother…but only if they can learn to work together.
Tom Holland is not new to wild stunts. Considering he’s played Spider-Man, the most acrobatic of superheroes, for three movies now, the guy knows a thing or three about using his body during a performance, and in the case of Spider-Man, often attaching said body to wires. Even though quite a bit of the stunt work in a Spider-Man or MCU film is computer generated, there are still plenty of sequences in which Holland is putting in the work himself. Yet for his first role since Spider-Man: No Way Home, the young actor doesn’t have a mask—or superpowers—to rely on. In a new video released by Sony, we get a sense of a typical day on the set of Uncharted. It involves a lot of stunts, many of which see his character, Nathan Drake, getting pummeled.
Uncharted follows the adventures of Nathan Drake, a thief recruited by a treasure hunter named Sully (Mark Wahlberg) to locate the score of a lifetime, worth a cool $5 billion. The problem, of course, is they’re not the only ones looking for it, and their competitors play rough. Hence all the stunts.
In a previous clip, we saw Nathan Drake and Sully involved in some extremely high-stakes negotiations aboard a cargo plane. Let’s just say these negotiations were conducted in a manner befitting armed treasure hunters, and soon enough, we’re treated to a breathless two-minute-long sequence that finds Drake, Sully, and an assortment of very committed henchmen falling out of the plane. They managed to survive (initially) by hanging onto the cargo that’s still attached to the cargo bay. Oh, and while they’re hanging off the plane, they continue fighting.
These are the kinds of stunts Holland and the expert team of stunt performers were tasked with in Uncharted. These aren’t superheroes (even if they’re capable of some pretty inhuman feats), and the stunts are much closer to Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible than they are a Marvel movie.
Ruben Fleischer directs the film, based on a script from Rafe Judkins, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway. Uncharted is adapted from a Sony Playstation game, and Holland was actually a player himself before he was tapped for the role. “One of the luxuries of making these Spider-Man movies is they’re made by Sony,” he said at the CES conference. “One of the luxuries of working for Sony is PlayStation. So all the actors’ trailers were outfitted with the best TVs and the newest PlayStation — and one of the games they’d given me was Uncharted.”
Now that game is a major motion picture starring Holland, due in theaters on February 18. Check out the look at the stunts below:
Here’s the synopsis for Uncharted:
Street-smart thief Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) is recruited by seasoned treasure hunter Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) to recover a fortune lost by Ferdinand Magellan 500 years ago. What starts as a heist job for the duo becomes a globe-trotting, white-knuckle race to reach the prize before the ruthless Moncada (Antonio Banderas), who believes he and his family are the rightful heirs. If Nate and Sully can decipher the clues and solve one of the world’s oldest mysteries, they stand to find $5 billion in treasure and perhaps even Nate’s long-lost brother…but only if they can learn to work together.
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The adaptation of the mega-popular game Halo will arguably be the biggest series in Paramount+’s history. A new poster for Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television series gives us a closer look at Master Chief Spartan John-117 (Pablo Schreiber), one of the genetically and technologically enhanced super-soldiers engaged in a war with an alien race called the Covenant. The poster points to an upcoming trailer that’ll drop this Sunday, where we should learn the series’ release date.
Halo will be centered on the same above-mentioned struggle from the game, an intergalactic war between humanity and the alien race the Covenant set in the 26th century. The super-soldiers, called Spartans, were created by scientist Dr. Halsey (Natasha McElhone), with Master Chief Spartan John-117 as our focal point.
Amblin revealed the new poster on Twitter, which reveals that the new trailer will arrive on Sunday during halftime of the AFC championship game.
Joining Schreiber and McElhone in the cast are Jen Taylor, Shabana Azmi, Natasha Culzac, Olive Gray, Yerin Ha, Bentley Kalu, Kate Kennedy, Charlie Murphy, Danny Sapani, and Bokeem Woodbine.
If you missed the official trailer for the series, this will give you a better sense of how showrunners Steven Kane and Kyle Killen have approached adapting the game, which has been in development for almost ten years. After a few twists and turns, Halo ended up with Paramount+, and now, at long last, is set to grace our screens.
Here’s the official synopsis from Paramount+:
Dramatizing an epic 26th-century conflict between humanity and an alien threat known as the Covenant, Halo the series will weave deeply drawn personal stories with action, adventure and a richly imagined vision of the future.
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No Time To Die gave us an appropriately epic sendoff for Daniel Craig’s final mission as James Bond. With ripping action rooted in Bond’s emotional journey, unusual for this franchise until Craig became 007, No Time To Die manages to be a breathless, nearly three-hour-long sprint towards the most bittersweet ending in Bond film history. From the riveting opening scene, a flashback that reveals the connection between Madeline Swann (Léa Seydoux) and the film’s villain, Safin (Rami Malek) through Italy, Jamaica, Cuba, London, and beyond, No Time To Die offers the Bond enthusiast and the Craig appreciator a saga that moves as swiftly as Bond’s beloved Aston Martin.
We spoke editor Tom Cross, who shared duties cutting Craig’s swan song with Elliot Graham. Cross discusses the film’s massive scope, finding each scene’s emotional pulse, and the incredibly tense sequence where James Bond does the unthinkable in a moment of extreme danger—nothing.
L-r: Léa Seydoux and Daniel Craig in “No Time to Die.”
I wanted to start by asking how you and your fellow editor Elliot Graham split your duties?
Elliot is a fantastic editor, I’ve been a fan of his work for years so it was a pleasure to work with him and share the duties. For a movie of this size you really do need two editors. We’d basically pick scenes as they came in, so whoever was a little bit less busy would jump on whatever the latest stuff was. We might strategize and say, ‘You cut the scene leading into this, why you don’t take this next scene so you have a whole run,’ but we kind of divided it up piecemeal. We’d definitely consult with each other, show each other cuts and get feedback. When you work on these movies with multiple editors, you want to be unified and check your egos at the door.
Were you and Elliot in the same editing studio?
We were both in the same location. During dailies, we had our own cutting rooms just down the hall from each other, but we were at Pinewood Studios where they were shooting primarily.There was one time when Elliot went on location in Scotland, which was doubling for Norway, to cut with Cary [Fukunaga] and the second unit, but other than that, we were in the same place. We both went to Matera, Italy. We both did a little bit of everything, action scenes, drama scenes, you name it.
This film was truly epic. How did the scope of the film and the fact that it was Daniel Craig’s big sendoff shape your work?
On a Bond movie, of this scope and size, you definitely need to be close to the camera. Also, it was important for us to be close to the shooting so that meant having our editing room at Pinewood so we could bring rough cuts to Cary on set. That’s why we wanted to go to Italy so we could follow him very closely and be there to advise. To be sounding boards in terms of what might make these scenes work, what might make them interesting.
So you’re editing basically from day one of filming?
What you really want to have is a first cut of the film done very shortly after they wrap so you can hit the ground running with the director. For No Time To Die, with all these locations and multiple units, sometimes you’re shooting action scenes several weeks or months apart, so you really need to piece it together as you go so you see what pieces you need. For example, we had a big challenge when Daniel Craig suffered an ankle injury and we had to rearrange the shooting schedule. So some of the action scenes that were planned were shot weeks or months later, so it was really important to piece these sequences together so Cary could see what was missing and what was needed. I think it’s always beneficial to be cutting while shooting so you can spot potential challenges as you go along.
Do you remember the scene when Daniel got injured?
I think it was the escape from Cuba scene. It’s funny because I think Daniel hurt his ankle not really during a major action moment, but when he was jumping down from the dock to get on a seaplane. I think he landed on it incorrectly. I don’t think it was a major stunt.
Speaking of stunt sequences, what’s the key to cutting those so that they’re maximally impactful?
As an editor, we’re always somewhat reactive. In other words, you react to the performances you get, the footage you get. We come along at that part of the process as opposed to being there beforehand. What was different about this movie was, because of shooting with multiple units, and because they had to shoot action scenes over certain spans of time, finishing weeks or months later, it gave us an opportunity as editors to start suggesting things ahead of the camera. A big thing with this movie is we always knew the action had to be propulsive, keep the pace going, but what was really important was the character and the emotion.
How did you juggle the action with keeping sight of Bond’s emotional journey?
Early on when we started cutting, producers Michael Wilson and Barabra Broccoli came to the cutting room and the biggest thought they left with us was to make it emotional. They knew that we’d instinctually make the action propulsive and exciting, so the reminder was to not leave out the emotion. I think that’s what makes this movie unique and what makes Daniel Craig’s Bond movies unique. If you go back to the very beginning at the old movies, the audiences might wonder what happened to Bond after or in between a scene? What is Bond really like? Something that Michael Wilson, Barbara Broccoli, and Daniel Craig set out to do was to say, ‘Let’s make a fully fleshed out character, and show you what happens after Bond kills a man.’ What does he do? That’s where you lean into Bond washing the blood off or lean into Bond having to pour a stiff drink after he’s just dispatched two or three people in a story. Along those lines, No Time To Die continues to lean into this emotional component that’s a hallmark of Daniel Craig’s James Bond.
Did director Cary Fukunaga have any referents for what he was attempting to do?
A kindred spirit movie is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. That’s a movie Cary referenced and it was a very important one, especially because both that film and No Time To Die have to do with loss. In the case of the old movie, that’s just a peek into an emotional aspect. Something happens at the end of the movie, Bond’s wife dies, and we get a peek into that pain. That pain was something that was very important for us to lean into.
There’s definitely a sense of gravity and weight to the action sequences in No Time To Die that propel us to the bittersweet ending.
Yes, for example, look at the car chase with the Aston Martin in Matera. In another movie that would be a propulsive, fast-action scene. In this story, Cary really wanted to luxuriate in the scene at the cemetery where Bond goes to say goodbye to Vesper at her grave and ask for forgiveness, so then when the bomb goes off we move into this different mode, the betrayal part of the story. That whole chase, fleeing with Lea Seydoux from the hotel, we really thread in this idea that he’s been betrayed. So by the time we get into the sequence we call donut square where the car is cornered and being hailed with bullets, Bond chooses to be inactive because he’s in such pain. When he finally relents, it’s really a moment where he weaponizes his pain. These are aspects you don’t normally get in an action movie, and I don’t think you got that in a lot of Bond movies before Daniel Craig’s tenure. We linger on shots, especially when the car’s being shot up. We linger on Léa Seydoux squirming as the bullets are hitting the car. The longer you pull back the rubber band, the more impactful it’s going to be. But of course, you have to know when let go.
For more on No Time To Die, check out these stories:
Director Sam Raimi was in a very unique position when he got a chance to see Spider-Man: No Way Home. Unlike the rest of us, who delighted in seeing the return of not only iconic villains like Doc Ock (Alfred Molina) and the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) but also see Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield reprise their respective versions of Peter Parker, it was something of a family affair for Raimi. He was the man who brought us Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker to the big screen, as well as arguably the two best Spider-Man villains of all time, Dafoe’s Green Goblin in Raimi’s very first Spider-Man, and Molina’s Doc Ock in Spider-Man 2. Raimi is rightly credited, alongside Christopher Nolan with his Dark Knight trilogy, as raising the bar for what a superhero film could be. Raimi’s first two Spider-Man films garnered five Oscar nominations in the craft categories, with Spider-Man 2 winning for Best Visual Effects. So, when Raimi got a chance to see No Way Home, he was watching his own tenure with Spider-Man reappear before his eyes.
In a conversation with Variety, Raimi offered his reaction to seeing No Way Home. He also offered an update on where things stand with his big foray into the MCU, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
“It was so much fun,” Raimi told Variety about seeing the film. “I love No Way Home and the audience I was with went crazy. It was delightful to watch Alfred play his role, and Willem Dafoe, just seeing these guys take it to the next level. And Tobey was awesome as always. The best word I can say is it was refreshing for me.”
As for his Doctor Strange sequel, Raimi isn’t quite sure when the film will be officially done, but he seems sanguine about the potential for more reshoots and very positive about the overall experience.
“I wish I knew the answer to that question,” Raimi said to Variety about when the film would be officially done. “I think we’re done, but we just cut everything. We’re just starting to test the picture and we’ll find out if there’s anything that’s got to be picked up. If something’s unclear or another improvement I can make in this short amount of time left, I’ll do it. One thing I know about the Marvel team is they won’t stop. They’ll keep pushing it until it’s as close to being great as it could.”
As for his first experience working with Marvel Studios, Raimi feels good.
“Marvel’s been a great team to work with. I think that was a not-surprising surprise. I’ve been super-supported by the whole Marvel operations, starting at the top with Kevin Feige, and working all the way down to the crews that they work with. [They’re] super professional and have supported me every step of the way.”
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is due in theaters on May 6, 2022.
For more on Spider-Man: No Way Home, check out these stories:
When you think about the now history-makingSpider-Man: No Way Home, one thing you’d probably never say is, “that movie needed more villains.” No Way Home already provided a slew of legendary adversaries once Peter Parker (Tom Holland, obviously) messed with Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) in the middle of a spell. Yet concept art from one of the film’s designers reveals that a sixth villain was considered at some point.
Before we get to that potential sixth villain, let’s recap why we had five to begin with. Doctor Strange was trying to do Peter a solid and erase the memories of everyone who “knew” that Spider-Man had not only dispatched Quentin Beck/Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) at the end of Far From Home but that Peter Parker was Spider-Man.But Peter just couldn’t let Doctor Strange cast the spell, he kept asking for modifications up to the last second and, well, you know the rest. Strange accidentally unleashed a multiverse of villains on New York—Doc Ock (Alfred Molina), Electro (Jamie Foxx), the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), and the Lizard (Rhys Ifans). We know it took our Spider-Man and two more Spider-Men—the versions played by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield—to help deal with this five-pack of mayhem. Yet there was another supervillain who was going to potentially show up—Mysterio himself.
Had Jake Gyllenhaal’s Mysterio appeared, it would have been the long-awaited cinematic arrival of the Sinister Six. Mysterio’s return, despite having died at the end of Far From Home, would have likely been possible because of the very same multiverse loophole that loosed the other five on our current Peter Parker’s New York. We know that Mysterio was at least a consideration because of concept art by digital artist and set designer Andrew Reeder, who worked on No Way Home as well MCU films like Avengers: Infinity War, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and Captain America: Civil War. In Reeder’s No Way Home section, along with a bunch of cool, moody images of Peter Parker’s New York, there’s this awesome picture of Mysterio battling Doctor Strange above the Statue of Liberty (h/t /film):
Statue Battle Sequence. Courtesy Andrew Reeder.
Alas, Mysterio never appeared in No Way Home and therefore the Sinister Six remains an untapped villainous force, for now. Besides, Mysterio is the reason the events in No Way Home happened as they did, so he was there in spirit.
For more on Spider-Man: No Way Home, check out these stories:
You may have heard that Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s soundtrack for Encanto has become a massive musical hit, returning this week to number 1 on Billboard’s album chart, beating out stiff competition from superstar the Weekend. More to the point, the soundtrack’s biggest earworm, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” has surpassed Frozen‘s Oscar-winning smash “Let It Go” as the biggest Billboard Hot 100 hit from a Disney animated film since Aladdin.
“We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” written by Miranda and credited to Carolina Gaitán, Mauro Castillo, Adassa, Rhenzy Feliz, Diane Guerrero, Stephanie Beatriz, and the Encanto cast, has now hit number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. This means it’s the second-highest rank for a song from a Disney animated film, behind only Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle’s “A Whole New World,” from Aladdin, which hit number 1 in 1993. “Bruno” has now surpassed Elton John’s “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” from Lion King, which hit number 4 in 1994, and Vanessa William’s “Colors of the Wind,” from Pocahontas, which also hit number 4 in 1995.
Miranda told Billboardhe was humbled by the company his tune now keeps and amazed at the success of “Bruno” considering “ensemble numbers don’t usually get this kind of love.”
“We Don’t Talk About Bruno” has also been translated into 46 languages (and counting), from Bahasa Malaysian to Greek to Norwegian to Korean to Taiwanese Mandarin to Vietnamese—you get it. And, the song has inspired thousands of loving tributes on TikTok, which has only furthered its reach and success.
You can hear this world-beating song sung in 21 of those languages below:
The Batgirl movie keeps getting more intriguing. Ivory Aquino has joined the cast to play Alysia Yeoh, Barbara Gordon/Batgirl’s best friend (to be played by Leslie Grace). This is a historic piece of casting, as Aquino, who is transgender, will play the first openly trans character in a live-action DC movie. Alysia Yeoh was created by writer Gail Simone and first appeared in “Batgirl #1, Volume 4” in 2011. She was the first major transgender character written in a contemporary context for a mainstream comic book.
There have been some trans characters in the superhero world thus far, beginning in 2018 when Nicole Maines played the trans character Dreamer on The CW’s Supergirl. A year later, Zach Barack, who is trans, appeared in Marvel Studio’s Spider-Man: Far From Home as one of Peter Parker’s classmates. Aquino’s casting is a big deal, as her role will likely be a big one, and Batgirl will be one of DC’s biggest original films for HBO Max. Aquino is best known for playing trans rights activist Cecilia Chung in ABC’s LBGTQ miniseries When We Rise.
Her Batgirl casting, confirmed by Deadline, was first speculated about when Leslie Grace revealed a photo of her and Aquino together in an Instagram story earlier this month. Aquino joins a growing cast that, along with Grace leading the charge, includes Michael Keaton reprising his role as Batman, J.K. Simmons reprising his role as Commissioner Jim Gordon (from Justice League), who is also the father of Barbara Gordon, and Brendan Fraser as the film’s villain. We’re still waiting to find out exactly who Fraser is playing.
Batgirl comes from Bad Boys for Life directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, from a script by The Flash and Bird of Prey scribe Christina Hodson. The film doesn’t yet have a release date for its debut on HBO Max.
Featured image: L-r: Ivory Aquino speaks onstage at the Point Honors Gala at The Plaza Hotel on April 3, 2017 in New York City. Alysia Yeoh. Courtesy of DC.
One of the most intriguing cinematic journeys of 2021 emanates from Japan and is aptly named Drive My Car.
A mesmerizing sojourn that exactingly unfolds over a three-hour running time, the film follows acclaimed actor and theatre director Yûsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), beginning with his unorthodox marriage to Oto (Reika Kirishima), before segueing to a stage production he is directing of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. The latter brings him together with Misaki Watari (Tôko Miura), a young woman who has been hired to drive him to and from rehearsals. Yûsuke initially resists. He considers his car his sanctuary and his time on the road an opportunity to be alone with his thoughts and absorb the text of the play. Eventually, Misaki wins him over with her command of the wheel, and the two form a bond over their past experiences. Life imitates art as Yûsuke confronts his failings and regrets and finds they are not that different from Vanya’s.
Hidetoshi Nishijima and Toko Miura. Photo courtesy Slideshow and Janus Films.
For director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, who wrote the screenplay with Takamasa Oe, his trip with Drive My Car began in 2013 when a friend suggested he read a new short story of the same name by author Haruki Murakami. Hamaguchi was taken by its theme of people in transit and how that sparked conversations and grew relationships. He also liked that the main character was an actor, an idea he had used during his early film efforts. At that point, Hamaguchi was an independent filmmaker and didn’t think beyond his enjoyment of the writing. Fast forward five years and the director, who was building a reputation with such features as Happy Hour and Asako I & II, was approached by a producer with the idea of turning Drive My Car into a feature film. Hamaguchi didn’t have to be asked twice.
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi. Photo courtesy Slideshow and Janus Films.
Transforming a 40-page tale into a fully-realized feature film turned out to be a daunting task in itself.
“The most challenging part was maintaining the worldview of the short story… the two main characters of Yûsuke and Misaki,” says Hamaguchi during a Zoom interview, deftly interpreted from Japanese to English by David Neptune. “I wanted to make sure that they were portrayed accurately. I wasn’t altering their characters in any way for the film.”
On the page, much of Yûsuke’s character is revealed through internal dialogue. Hamaguchi needed a way to show this on screen without resorting to lengthy monologues. In its place, the director shows Yusuke listening to an audiotape of Uncle Vanya as he drives. It contains all the voices of the play, except for the title character, allowing the actor to recite his dialogue while he is behind the wheel of the car.
“Yûsuke practicing the lines for Uncle Vanya is a very direct way that we get to hear his internal dialogue,” explains Hamaguchi. “Vanya and Yûsuke are so very similar in that things didn’t pan out in ways that they had hoped in the past. And so his internal world is really translated through Uncle Vanya. Really, the entire world of Drive My Car is translated through the play of Uncle Vanya.”
Adding an additional poignancy to these moments is that the tape was created by Yûsuke’s wife Oto. He continually hears her voice as he plays it over and over again, a constant reminder of the mixed feeling his marriage evokes.
“A lot of thought went into how I portray his inner world and develop the relationship between him and Misaki,” adds Hamaguchi. “And that’s why it became three hours long.”
Hidetishi Nishijima. Photo courtesy Slideshow and Janus Films.
The audiotape also provides one of Drive My Car’s most memorable shots. As the car drives along, its wheels mesh with the cogs of the cassette as Oto’s voice resonates. But this is far from the only instance where motion is used to represent the transitory momentum of the characters. Hamaguchi and cinematographer Hidetoshi Shinomiya fill the film with haunting images built around the car.
“I always had the sense that the characters are emerging into a new space, the idea of them emerging out of the tunnel, that sort of thing,” says Hamaguchi. “ I think that was influenced by the Iranian director (Abbas) Kiarostami. I was also influenced by Haruki Murakami’s pieceColorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. The sort of travel images that were portrayed in that story were very influential for me as well.”
The production of Uncle Vanya reinforces the film’s themes of loss and moving forward. The play is staged in Hiroshima, a city known for its tragic legacy, but also its resilient rebirth. This versionis multilingual with actors speaking Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin. One actress is mute, delivering her lines through sign language. Throughout rehearsals, the performers struggle as they are unable to understand each other, emphasizing their inability to communicate. Yûsuke encourages his cast to “trust the text.” Once they truly understand its meaning, they’ll connect with each other.
“As I was writing the script, it was really a marrying of Chekov and of the text that I was writing based on Haruki Murakami’s original story,” continues Hamaguchi. “And so I read the original over and over. Similarly, the actors, when they’re practicing the play, say the lines over and over until it is absolutely effortless to them. That was the power of the dialogue. It’s a play that has survived over 100 years. It really resonates even now in these modern days. It motivated me to make the film.”
Surprisingly, as key as Uncle Vanya is to Drive My Car, Hamaguchi admits his connection to the 19th-century Russian playwright is somewhat newfound. “I wasn’t into Chekhov that deeply before this film. I had read his four main plays,” says the director. “I found that watching the actual plays performed wasn’t as interesting to me as reading them. There were really fascinating details in there. Bringing those moments to life was very interesting to me.”
Just as interesting is the reaction Drive My Car is getting. It won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Screenplay and received the Golden Globe as this year’s Best Foreign Language Film. The National Society of Film Critics Awards recently named it Best Film of the Year. Hamaguchi’s directing, his and Oe’s screenplay, and Nishijima’s acting were also honored. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association, New York Film Critics Circle, and Boston Society of Film Critics all named Drive My Car as 2021’s best film. Many other U.S.-based critic groups cited it as their favorite foreign feature.
But of the many accolades Drive My Car has received, one, in particular, delights Hamaguchi the most. “We made Obama’s list of films — notable films this year,” the director reveals. “I know that he has great taste and I know that he makes a list every year. So it was just really great to make it onto that list. I thought, ‘Oh, Wow!’”
Featured image: Reika Kirishima and Hidetoshi Nishijima. Photo courtesy Slideshow and Janus Films.
We are getting ever closer to seeing writer/director Matt Reeves’s The Batman, which means we can expect more TV spots to emerge in the coming weeks. To that end, a new Riddler-focused spot titled “Game” is focused on The Batman‘s main villain, Edward Nashton/The Riddler, played by Paul Dano. The new spot is centered on the Riddler’s psychotic interest in Batman (Robert Pattinson), which takes the form, as you’d expect given his personality, as deadly a deadly puzzle. In the rogue’s gallery of Batman villains, the Riddler has always fancied himself smarter than all the rest, and that includes Batman himself. In Reeves’s noir-tinged detective story, the Riddler is the perfect villain—the director has compared his version of the villain to the Zodiac Killer, a lunatic obsessed with ciphers. And like all the scariest villains, the Riddler believes what he’s doing is justified.
Check out the new spot here:
It’s intriguing how efficiently this spot gets at the heart of what Reeves, his cast, and his crew have created here. The Batman isn’t an origin story—the Caped Crusader is already in the second year of his vigilante work—which is why the Riddler has his sights set on him. We recently learned that the film is the longest in franchise history, and one of the longest superhero films of all time. This means there will be plenty of times for the Riddler’s games.
Joining Pattison and Dano are a stellar cast, including Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Colin Farrell as Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, and Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon.
The Batman swoops into theaters, nearly three hours worth of it, on March 4.
If you’re going to take a fresh look at Carlo Collodi’s deathless story about a wooden marionette who’s magically brought to life to help heal the soul of a grieving woodcarver named Geppetto, can you think of a better filmmaker for the task than Guillermo del Toro? The visionary director has appropriately chosen to tackle the tale via a stop-motion musical, and Netflix has delivered the first official teaser. Del Toro co-directs the film alongside Mark Gustafson, and it’s a project that has deep meaning for the Oscar-winning director.
The teaser introduces us to Sebastian J. Cricket (Jiminy Crickett in the original story), our Orthopeteran guide through this new take on Pinocchio. Sebastian J. Cricket (voiced by Ewan McGregor) is featured in the main image above, and will no doubt prove a useful guide into what we expect will be a quite different take on the legendary story.
Del Toro has been pursuing the project for years. In a statement when the film was officially greenlit in 2018, he made his passion for the story clear. “No art form has influenced my life and my work more than animation and no single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to me as Pinocchio. In our story, Pinocchio is an innocent soul with an uncaring father who gets lost in a world he cannot comprehend. He embarks on an extraordinary journey that leaves him with a deep understanding of his father and the real world. I’ve wanted to make this movie for as long as I can remember.”
Del Toro’s Pinocchio is set in Italy during the 1930s, right as Benito Mussolini is consolidating his fascist control of the country. This will be Del Toro’s first Netflix film as director.
McGregor joins a star-studded cast voicing Pinocchio’s characters, including Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Christoph Waltz (voicing the fox) Finn Wolfhard (voicing Lampwick), Gregory Mann (voicing Pinocchio), and David Bradley (voicing Geppetto).
Check out the delightful teaser below. Pinocchio arrives on Netflix this coming December.
Here’s the official synopsis from Netflix:
Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro reinvents Carlo Collodi’s classic tale of the wooden marionette who is magically brought to life in order to mend the heart of a grieving woodcarver named Geppetto. This whimsical, stop-motion musical directed by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson follows the mischievous and disobedient adventures of Pinocchio in his pursuit of a place in the world.
For more on Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley, check out these stories:
After his 1955 murder, Emmett Till’s death became a galvanizing event for the burgeoning Civil Rights movement. The mutilated 14-year-old was given an open casket funeral at the behest of his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who wished the world to see what Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam had done to her son. Lynched while on holiday to visit family in Money, Mississippi, after being falsely accused of whistling at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, (Emmett had a stutter, and he whistled as part of his coping mechanism to control it), his murderers were acquitted, then admitted to the murder in a magazine, Look, only a year later. Beginning with Emmett’s birth, ABC’s Women of the Movement quickly moves ahead to 1955, reenacting what happened to Emmett (Cedric Joe) and then shifting focus to Mamie (Adrienne Warren), from her pivotal decision for her son’s public viewing to her rebirth as an activist.
The limited series’s costume designer, Justine Seymour (Unorthodox, Mosquito Coast), anchored her design process around Mamie. “She was always really done up and presented beautifully, so that’s what I started with. Of course, most of the photographs available to me were post the loss of her son,” said Seymour. “As we started before that, I had to extrapolate what she would have been like. I chose to make her joyful, fun-loving, and very vibrant and colorful.” At home in their comfortable Chicago apartment, Mamie and Emmett have a warm, jovial relationship, and the mother is hesitant to let her son travel to the South, where Jim Crow is in full force, to visit his sharecropper-preacher great uncle Mose Wright (Glynn Turman).
Mamie Till-Mobley (ADRIENNE WARREN) and her son Emmett (Cedric Joe). (ABC/Eli Joshua Ade)
CEDRIC JOE, SEKOU LAIDLOW, GLYNN TURMAN, JAMIR VEGA, LUKE HARDEMAN. (ABC/Eli Joshua Ade)
Once Emmett arrives, the Tills’ middle-class household in quasi-integrated Chicago feels a world away from Money, MS, where the only thing Blacks and whites seem to have in common is poverty, a difference heightened by the show’s costuming. “I had a very strong color palette for Chicago, which I then imported when Mamie came down South looking for her son,” Seymour said. “I wanted it to feel like she was very different from the Southerners.” In just one example of the show’s Mason-Dixon line drawn through fashion, Mamie’s suits are a sharply tailored contrast to Carolyn Bryant’s (Julia McDermott) dowdy workwear at her family’s store.
Sketch courtesy Justine Seymour.
A stylistic detail conspicuously absent from both regions are the fluffy skirts and exaggerated wasp waists usually seen flouncing through mid-50s period pieces. Whether on Mamie, her mother Alma (Tonya Pinkins), or the southerners, Seymour gave the show’s women a slimmer, more subdued silhouette. “Even though I wanted to use iconic looks from that time and make it really as it was, I didn’t want to sugar coat it. Not everybody wore bobby socks in the 50s,” said Seymour, who relied instead on getting the reality of the era across by forgoing big petticoats and faithfully recreating what Mamie really wore, which became an anchor for everyone else around her. “People looked beautiful then, anyway, because we used to care a bit more about how we presented ourselves,” the designer pointed out. “But Mamie was a heightened woman, even in the 50s.”
“The Last Word” – After the verdict is reached and the story becomes international news, a movement begins – and Mamie Till-Mobley fights to defend Emmett’s legacy. The season finale of “Women of the Movement.” ABC/James Van Evers) ADRIENNE WARREN“The Last Word” – After the verdict is reached and the story becomes international news, a movement begins – and Mamie Till-Mobley fights to defend Emmett’s legacy. The season finale of “Women of the Movement.” (ABC/James Van Evers) ADRIENNE WARREN
For a color palette, Seymour had to get creative. After learning from Adrienne Warren that blue was the only color that didn’t work for her skin tone, the costume designer used the hue to help Mamie look her worst the day she learns what’s happened to her son.
WOMEN OF THE MOVEMENT – Hour Two – After receiving the call that her son was kidnapped by white men in Mississippi, Mamie rallies her community in Chicago to bring Emmett home. As a result, Mamie is thrust into the spotlight while facing unimaginable tragedy. The series premiere of “Women of the Movement.” (ABC/James Van Evers) ADRIENNE WARREN
Afterward, working off a black and white photo and making a symbolic color choice, Seymour had a graphic artist recreate the fabric for the dress Mamie was wearing when she went to pick up Emmett’s body and witnessed, for the first time, what was done to him. “I decided to use the blood from her that had gone into her son to give him life, which had now come back onto her because he had passed away,” Seymour said. Mamie’s clothing then cuts to black. “I wanted there to be lots of playfulness with her wardrobe — sort of sensual, fun, and bright — so as soon as the story started to get darker, I could pull out that happiness, and I could pull it away visually on a subliminal level for the audience to understand that things were really changing, her mood was changing, and she wasn’t coping.”
Adrienne Warren. (ABC/James Van Evers)
Given all we know about Emmett’s murderers, Bryant and Milam, respect wasn’t even a consideration behind their courtroom garb, so it should come as no surprise when the two men appear in court in their shirtsleeves. With everyone in the same room, the difference between them, their wives’ simple dresses, and Mamie’s fashion can’t be ignored. “She was also of a higher socio-economic group than the people who had murdered her son,” Seymour noted. “I wanted that to speak strongly to the audience, so that as she’s there in the courtroom, she’s this pillar of strength and this beautiful, educated Black woman, as opposed to the white supremacist, nasty, bullying men who committed a terrible, terrible crime.”
CARTER JENKINS, CHRIS COY. (ABC/James Van Evers)
Prior to the trial, the costume designer sometimes had to infer what Mamie ought to wear based on her research, but once “Women of the Movement” reaches the courtroom, she shot for total historical accuracy. “I recreated a lot of her clothes — anything I could get a picture of, I had remade for Adrienne to look exactly like Mamie. And then all the men within the courtroom, I just copied them exactly. There was one guy in a plaid shirt and I put one guy in a plaid shirt — we counted out the rows and did it really strategically.”
Earlier, however, at Emmett’s funeral, Mamie is dressed in the same outfit as her mother, as they were in reality. “I never found out the reason why,” but Seymour faithfully recreated their outfits. “I wanted her to look strong. I wanted her to look like the black letter on a white page that wrote the history of America, and what was happening. That’s where her story was going to start, from that day, moving forwards to show the world what had happened.”
ADRIENNE WARREN(ABC/James Van Evers)
Featured image: WOMEN OF THE MOVEMENT – “Let the People See” – After her son’s body is recovered in Mississippi, Mamie (ADRIENNE WARREN) insists on having a public wake with an open casket to ensure that he did not die in vain. The case becomes national news, which puts pressure on Mississippi officials to do the unthinkable-go to trial. (ABC/James Van Evers)
The Batman has already surpassed all previous stand-alone films based on Gotham’s Dark Knight in one way—it’s going to be the longest film in the franchise. Writer/director Matt Reeves’s forthcoming trip to Gotham has a runtime of two hours and fifty-five minutes, topping Christopher Nolan’s trilogy capping The Dark Knight Rises, which ran to two hours and forty-four minutes.
The Hollywood Reporter scooped the runtime, which we should note includes eight minutes of credits, via insiders at Warner Bros. Not only does The Batman‘s runtime exceed any previous Batman film, but it also makes it one of the longest superhero films ever, behind only Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame, which took three hours and one minute to wrap up (and is the number two top-grossing film of all time).
If you want to get technical, however, there’s another superhero film that is by far the longest and will likely never be topped, and that’s because it never played in theaters. Zack Snyder’s Justice League is four hours and two minutes long, but as you likely know Snyder’s director’s cut was released exclusively on HBO Max. The onscreen version, which was ultimately finished by Joss Whedon, was a pedestrian two hours long.
As for The Batman, this meaty runtime means Robert Pattison has plenty of time to ply his vigilante trade as the new Bruce Wayne. It also gives the great ensemble more room, including Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Paul Dano as Edward Nashton/The Riddler, Colin Farrell as Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, and Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon. Reeves has promised a noir detective feel to his superhero story, and it seems he’s carved out enough runway to tell this particular Gotham-set tale the way he wants.
The Batman swoops into theaters, nearly three hours worth of it, on March 4.
