Just because the Merc with the Mouth is moving over to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, don’t expect him to be any less foul-mouthed, ferocious, or funny. That’s the promise that Deadpool 3 director Shawn Levy is making. In a conversation with Collider, Levy says that what fans have come to expect from the Deadpool franchise remains very much intact as they prep the third film, the first to officially fall under Disney’s MCU banner.
Levy is prepping Deadpool 3 with Reynolds and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. Levy and Reynolds have already made two successful films together—Free Guy and The Adam Project, yet this is Levy’s first time directing Reynolds’ cinematic baby, so to speak, following Tim Miller, who directed 2016’s Deadpool, and David Leitch, who helmed 2018’s Deadpool 2.
“We are writing, rewriting, developing, prepping Deadpool every day now,” Levy told Collider. “It is such a blast to laugh every day. It is so delicious to hear and write and come up with these scenes where people are just talking foul. And the violence is in your face and hardcore, and it’s very much a Deadpool movie.”
While not a single frame of the film has been shot, there’s already been a ton of excitement surrounding this third go-round thanks, in part, to the announcement that Hugh Jackman will be reprising the role of Wolverine for the film. This is, of course, despite Wolverine’s very dramatic and bittersweet death in James Mangold’s Logan. The film is slated to begin filming around May 2023.
“I’m having so much fun, and I haven’t even hit the shooting floor yet,” Levy told Collider. “I have to say, developing a Deadpool movie is one of the most fun, creative experiences of my life because it’s not just that it’s rated R. It’s that it’s so filled with self-awareness, and that makes in-writing very, very fun in a way that is unique to that franchise.”
Now that the franchise is officially a Marvel movie, all those jokes in the previous two films about how Deadpool couldn’t get any of the proper Marvel superheroes on his side—he even visited Professor X’s School for Gifted Youngsters, and had to “settle” for the likes of Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) will likely be turned on his head. Especially considering Wolverine is now officially in the mix.
Deadpool 3 is set for a November 8, 2024 release.
For more on all things Marvel Studios, check out these stories:
The first trailer for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is here, and Brooklyn’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), is in a Spot of trouble. Pun intended, of course, because the Spot (Jason Schwartzman) is one of the villains Miles will be facing in this sequel to 2018’s Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
The trailer reveals Miles and his mother, Rio Morales (Luna Lauren Vélez), having a conversation in which Mama Morales is having a little trouble letting go of her baby boy. “It’s just hard to see my little man not being my little boy all the time,” Rio says. Rio wants to ensure her little boy is cared for, loved, and poised to go out into the world and do great things. We all know Miles has already done great things, and we see some of that action, including the moment when Gwen Stacey (Hailee Steinfeld) yanks Miles through the multiverse portal.
The trailer takes a turn there, with Miles under a massive assault from a slew of other Spider-Men. The gravest threat? That honor just might go to Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac), also known as Spider-Man 2099, who attacks Miles and slams him down, hard. And he considers himself a good guy?
Joining Moore, Vélez, Steinfeld, and Isaac are returning stars from Into the Spider-Verse and newcomers alike. Those returning stars include Brian Tyree Henry as Jefferson Davis and Jake Johnson as Peter B. Parker The newcomers include Oscar-winner Daniel Kaluuya as Spider Punk, Issa Rae as Jessica Drew, Jorma Taccone as the Vulture, and Shea Whigham as George Stacey. The sequel is to be directed by the trio of Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson. Into the Spider-Verse veterans Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Dave Callaham wrote the script.
Check out the trailer below. Across the Spider-Verse is set to hit theaters on June 2, 2023, and will be the middle installment of what’s planned as a trilogy, with Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse pegged for a March 29, 2024, release date.
For more upcoming films from Sony Pictures, check out these stories:
The first trailer for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse arrives today, yet Sony has revealed a sneak peek via four new images.
The images remind us of what made Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse such a revelation. Those colors! That fantastic design work! The gorgeous animation makes the world of the Spider-Verse a Spidey fever dream, but the original film was rooted in the epic adventures of Brooklyn’s own Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) as he traversed across the multiverse encountering fellow Spider-People and lunatic villains. Across the Spider-Verse will continue that duality, with trippy animation nested within a story about a young, Afro-Latino Spider-Man and his growing group of Spidey-friends.
The new images reveal that Miles’ upcoming adventures are even more kaleidoscopic than his previous odyssey. One of the images reveals Oscar Isaac’s Spider-Man 2099, while the featured image shows Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) taking on the Spot (Jason Schwartzman).
The trailer will finally reveal Across the Spider-Verse‘s plot—or at least way more than the little we know about it now. We know that Oscar-winner Daniel Kaluuya is on hand as Spider-Punk, joined by Jake Johnson as Peter B. Parker, Issa Rae as Jessica Drew, Brian Tyree Henry as Jefferson Davis, Jorma Taccone as the Vulture, and Shea Whigham as George Stacey. The sequel is to be directed by the trio of Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson.
Into the Spider-Verse veterans Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Dave Callaham wrote the script, with the original film’s directors, Peter Ramsey and Bob Persichetti, executive producing alongside Aditya Sood. Across the Spider-Verse is set to hit theaters on June 2, 2023, and will be the middle installment of what’s planned as a trilogy, with Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse pegged for a March 29, 2024, release date.
Check out the images below.
Spider-Man (Shamiek Moore) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation’s SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac) and Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation’s SPIDER-MAN™: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE (PART ONE).Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation’s SPIDER-MAN™: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE (PART ONE).Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) and Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) take on The Spot (Jason Schwartzman) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation’s SPIDER-MAN™: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.
Featured image: Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) and Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) take on The Spot (Jason Schwartzman) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation’s SPIDER-MAN™: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.
Both 2018’s Black Panther and this year’s Wakanda Forever have hugely impacted popular culture, not least by expanding the acceptance and expression of Afro-Futurism in everything from fashion and hairstyles to architecture. Both production designer Hannah Beachler and costume designer Ruth E. Carter won Oscars for their work on the first film and are in the running for a return to the podium with Wakanda Forever.
For Black Panther, hair department head Camille Friend found ways to incorporate elements of African tribal culture and expanded those influences in Wakanda Forever. She used the same trial and error and inventive thinking required to create looks that could be worn over the entire production or in challenging environments, like those underwater sequences in Talokan. How could the Mayan-inspired Talokani hairstyles look consistent when the cast members wearing them were submerged in water for over 12 hours?
In a chat with The Credits, Friend takes us through the problem-solving required to get those gorgeous looks in Wakanda Forever. She also considers the lasting effects her designs have had on pop culture and how she is helping Hollywood become more inclusive as the founder of Hair Scholars, which mentors and educates professional hair stylists about working in film and TV.
The hair design in Wakanda Forever was partly based on research into Senegalese warriors, the Zulu tribe, and the Maasai people. What are some of the direct results of that research that viewers can see expressed as part of the specific characters or specific scenes in the film?
The Jabari are definitely inspired by Senegalese warriors. Even from the first one, you know, with Winston Duke, we really talked a lot about how the Jabari were going to look, everything from the angles of the cuts to the lines in the head, even the white paint. All of that really comes from Senegalese warriors. Then you have the Himba tribe, where you have the beautiful clay look on the tribal elders. I remember on the first one, Ryan said he really wanted to do a clay wig. I thought it would be easy. It was not so easy.
Yes! We had weeks of trial and error. After a while, I just had to pray to God for the answer, and actually, the answer was going to Home Depot. We ended up making a clay wig from different substances that would hold up and last during filming. This time, we got the clay wig down. We could do a clay wig in two days, whereas it used to take us a week. So we have evolved. It’s all basically plaster of Paris. I’ll tell you the steps. We basically take a braid wig, and then we put the plaster on top of it, and we smooth it with gloves and a little water. We let that dry, and then we go in and paint it. That’s what stays and lasts forever. We’ve got it down to a science. I’m very happy about that one.
Were there any elements pulled from history for the scenes of mourning and memorial for T’Challa?
Definitely, I’ll tell you that backstory. The reason why Shuri and Ramonda’s hair ended up short is Ryan knew that in West African culture, when somebody is in mourning, they cut all their hair off. When we go into the story, it’s the year after T’Challa’s death, so how would their hair look a year later? That’s where my design began for those characters in Wakanda Forever.
How did you design the underwater sequences in Talokan? That had to be a challenge.
I’m going to say I have a whole different respect for water. In a lot of movies, you shoot them dry for wet. The hair is really dry, but we’re putting a little spritz on them. In Wakanda Forever, it was a whole different ballgame. When you have people thoroughly submerged in water for 12 hours a day, how will you make this happen? Plus, we could not put any product in the hair because hair product in water makes it cloudy. So how are we going to make this hair stay with no product in it? We had to figure it out, and again, it was through a lot of trial and error. What glues work? What glues don’t? We ended up using a lot of silicone glue because they hold up under water and they’re more of a flexible glue. We took spirit gum, broke it down with alcohol, and made it really thin. Then we made it into a hairspray that we would spray on all the pieces and let them dry. We figured out how to get it thin enough so that it wouldn’t change the color of the hair. Then we sprayed all the pieces with the glue hairspray that we’d made, and that’s how all the hair would stay up while in the water for 12 hours a day.
Can you talk about how both Black Panther and Wakanda Forever have had an influence in the real world in terms of access and expansion of hair products and designs for Black hair?
After the first one, a writer friend called and told us we made Black hair beautiful. After Black Panther, there have been so many more movies that have showcased natural hair. I’m so proud that we could have an impact in starting that movement. I have people who hit me up on Instagram and tell me, “My daughter was so happy to see somebody that looks like her onscreen.” They saw somebody whose hair texture was the same. Also, 3C or 4A, B, or C textures were very hard to find on the first one. We had to make it. We had to perm it. It was a lot of work that we had to do. On this one, every manufacturer has that now. I think culturally, that’s what’s changed. Even with products, I was doing some research recently and found over 40 Black-owned, female-owned haircare companies. That’s a beautiful thing to have that many in the marketplace.
It’s the whole spectrum of natural hair, both on the screen and off, being celebrated.
I think there’s a huge difference. And we have things like the C.R.O.W.N. Act, which has legalized wearing your hair naturally. You can wear your hair in any style that you want and still be in the workplace. It doesn’t matter if you’re a lawyer, doctor, or a short-order cook; you have the right to wear your hair naturally, how it grows out of your head. The younger generation will grow up with that, without any shame about their hair. It just gives us such better body positivity and gives us so much more of a beautiful image and confirmation that Black hair is beautiful.
And to further push the needle forward in Hollywood, you founded Hair Scholars, which has its own website and is having a big impact on inclusivity in the business.
It’s one of my greatest passions. I’m a firm believer in equity and inclusion. I used to work for Warner Brothers, and that’s what I did for them. It’s about education. Education is freeing for people. What I love to teach is how to be in the business, how to treat it as a business, how to make your deals, and how to be a department head because that’s definitely what people are looking for, is equity in the business. This is how you put on a wig. This is how you do textured hair. So all those things, together, will make a better community. At this point, a lot of producers call me on movies that I don’t even do, and I help people crew up because I know the people in LA, New York, London, and Atlanta; I know all the people and what their skill sets are. I’m perfectly happy to do that. Whether you’re white, Black, Native American, Asian, or Filipino, there’s absolutely no excuse why a performer sits in the chair and you, as a professional hair artist, makeup artist, or barber, cannot do their hair. That is unacceptable in 2022 and 2023 and going forward. Every performer has a right to walk into the trailer and sit down in the chair and be taken care of and feel beautiful.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is currently in theaters nationwide.
For more on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, check out these stories:
Co-writer/director Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two has officially wrapped filming. We learned this from Paul Atreides himself—Timotheé Chalamet—via an Instagram post. The image shows Chalamet in the desert, along with his father Marc, and the caption “DUNE 2 WRAPPED (with desert dad !!).
Dune: Part Two will now move into post-production, where editing, visual effects, sound, color correcting, and a whole lot more will be fine-tuned. The sequel will pick up where Dune left off, with Paul Atreides and Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) moving deep into the Arrakis desert with the Fremen, led by Stilgar (Javier Bardem), and with Chani (Zendaya) taking on a much larger role, as they plot to strike back at House Harkonnen.
Chalamet, Ferguson, Bardem, and Zendaya are joined by returning cast members Josh Brolin as Atreides ally Gurney Halleck, Stellan Skarsgård as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, and Dave Bautista as Glossu Rabban Harkonnen. New cast members include Léa Seydoux as Lady Margot, Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan Corrino, and Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen.
Dune: Part Two will complete Villeneuve’s vision for adapting Frank Herbert’s seminal, meaty 1965 tome. He and his fellow Oscar-nominated co-writer Jon Spaihts had made a bold (and brilliant) decision to cut Herbert’s novel in half instead of trying to fit the entire epic into a single film. Their decision paid off when Dune was a critical and commercial success and the sequel was greenlit. Now, Villeneuve is one step closer to completing his adaptation.
Check out Chalamet’s update below. Dune: Part Two will hit theaters on November 3, 2023.
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
Joker: Folie À Deux has officially begun filming. How do we know this? Co-writer/director Todd Phillips has shared an image from the sequel to his critical and commercial 2019 hit Joker on Instagram, revealing Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck catching a shave. The caption simply reads: “Day 1. Our Boy. #joker.”
I’m not sure I’d go so far as considering Arthur Fleck my boy, but you can’t fault Phillips for being excited about going deeper on this troubled, would-be comedian and killer after the success of Joker. And the sequel is not short on intrigue. For starters, Lady Gaga is co-starring with Phoenix as Harley Quinn. The two of them will get to embody arguably the most demented relationship in the entire comic book canon. Folie À Deux refers to the medical term for insanity shared by two or more people, which certainly fits the romance between the Joker and Harley. Plot details are, of course, being kept secret, but we know that Brendan Gleeson has also joined the cast, and, incredibly, the film will be a musical.
The first image looks more in line with the original film’s moody, gritty tone and less like a still shot from a fun, colorful musical. Yet considering Gaga’s immense talent and the desire by all involved not to simply follow the playback from Joker, we should expect Folie À Deux to upend our expectations. Yet there’s little chance Phillips and his team won’t double down on just how un-superhero-y the first film was.
It’ll be a while until we get a trailer for Folie À Deux, but we’ll keep an eye on any updates Phillip or the cast shares from production. Joker: Folie À Deux is due to dance and sing its way into theaters on October 4, 20
For more on Joker: Folie á Deux, check out these stories:
Featured image: Caption: JOAQUIN PHOENIX as Arthur Fleck in Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures and BRON Creative’s “JOKER,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Niko Tavernise
In Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, Brendan Fraser is transformed so completely he is nearly unrecognizable playing the title character. Fraser has been the frontrunner for Best Actor in the Oscars race since the film received a six-minute standing ovation at its Venice International Film Festival premiere in September.
The film is based on Samuel Hunter’s award-winning 2012 play of the same name, which is inspired by Hunter’s own challenges with eating disorders and growing up gay in the Midwest as part of an evangelical community. The story centers on five days in the life of Charlie, a reclusive English professor still mourning the loss of his partner. Charlie is working to reconnect with his estranged daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink), a teen who seems to feel nothing but disdain and bitterness for her father.
The Credits spoke to Hunter about his connection to the material, both as a playwright and screenwriter, the inspiration he took from Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” and the importance of optimism even in the face of dark realities.
Samuel Hunter. Courtesy A24.
What were some of the references for your own life that inspired the writing of The Whale? And in terms of the experience of having had a food addiction, being a larger size, and having emotional trauma that you were carrying?
I had been writing plays, but my plays up until The Whale were kind of like student writing. In those plays, I was figuring out structure, I was figuring out the landscapes that I was interested in, and the dramatic vocabulary I was interested in. But there was something with The Whale where I left the tools behind.
What shifted for you?
I just wanted to write something from a scary and deeply personal place, a place of growing up gay in North Idaho in the 90s, where Matthew Shepard was murdered one state away when I was 16 or 17 years old, and attending a very fundamentalist religious school where I hide that part of myself until I was outed and had to leave. Once I left and came out of the closet, I moved to New York to go to NYU and become a playwright, where it’s safer to be gay. I arrived in New York thinking, “Here I am.” But I was still a very young person, and I had not properly processed everything that I had gone through over the last few years. Because I hadn’t, and I was always a big kid, but in college, it got pretty bad. I didn’t feel like I fit in with the gay community at NYU at all because I didn’t fit within their prescribed ideas of beauty. I did well in school, and I worked hard, but I was isolated. I spent a lot of time in my dorm room self-medicating with food and getting pretty big. I was able to find an off-ramp, the biggest off-ramp being when I met my husband in 2005. I had that love and support, and love and support of my parents, too, so I was able to, over many years and many therapy sessions, work my way out of that. Writing The Whale was not the final piece of it, but a big piece of that personal reckoning for me.
There are so many kinds of loss explored in this story, not just the loss Charlie experiences, but for him, it’s like grief is a ghost that haunts him.
So many people have dealt with loss in so many different ways. Grief is a fundamental aspect of modern life, and I feel like it’s under-explored. There’s a value in grief. Grief is what we do with love after we lose it. There’s this fundamental kind of positivity about it. I don’t believe in closure. The myth of closure is really toxic, actually, because it makes people feel bad for not being able to let things go.
In the film, there’s redemption but not really any closure.
For all the stories in the film, there’s a kind of closure, but it’s not this neat thing where everybody goes their separate ways. I’m thinking about the Thomas storyline. He doesn’t leave that apartment with any amount of certitude about anything. If anything, that’s the gift that Charlie has given him. “You live in the gray, kid, you don’t live in a black-and-white world.” We all live in that gray. Loss has a lot to do with living in that gray. On a daily basis, we’re always negotiating our own traumas and our own senses of loss by just trying to be human beings and trying to be kind and trying to live our lives with meaning and substance. There are all these little pebbles that we accumulate that weigh us down in different ways. All five of these characters are weighed down by those things, and they’re desperate to shed them, but we can’t. We can process them. I think that’s the tragedy of Charlie is he never had that therapist or personal reckoning. He’s just still carrying all of this grief and trauma around.
Sadie Sink in “The Whale.” Courtesy A24.
In the film, Leaves of Grass is referenced. Walt Whitman once said his book of poems was “the most religious book among books crammed full of faith.” It definitely has a lot of religious influences. How did it figure for you in the screenplay and the play?
There’s something about Leaves of Grass that is so humanist at its core. I’ve had a long story with my own relationship to faith. When I left that school and moved to New York, I think I had this idea I was leaving all that behind, but there is just a part of me that was like, “Nope.” It’s never going to leave me. I think I do have a fundamental worldview that feels Christo-centric, in both good and bad ways, in ways that I’ve had to unpack. The beautiful thing that I take away from Christianity and still hold very dear to myself is the sense of grace, forgiveness, redemption, and love. When religion is doing its best, that’s what it’s doing. It’s plugging into those values and lifting people up. I chose “Leaves of Grass” because it does feel very religious, but it’s also so humane.
Humanism as religion.
It’s the religion of love, of people, interaction, connection, and communication. That’s where a lot of modern day evangelicals misstep; they stop thinking it’s about other people. They think it’s just about God and vengeance and punishment and rules and tribalism. I had to leave that school because I was no longer part of the tribe there. They were telling me that couldn’t be there if identified as gay. I was like, “Okay, I broke the rule, so I’m out.” That was easy for them. It’s very clear. These are the people who are allowed in the door, everybody else needs to stay out. Leaves of Grass is so radically inclusive, and it was published in the 1850s.
There’s a quote in the film about people being incapable of not caring. And there’s definitely a battle between cynicism and optimism at play. In what way do you see the film as a message of hope?
It’s pretty dark, but here’s the thing: I’m not interested in easy hope. I’m not interested in facile hope, because I think hope is hard. Hope is really hard, especially right now. I think there’s this really idiotic notion that being cynical is also being intelligent or that saying cynical things like the world’s going to hell demonstrates sophistication. Cynicism is so easy and boring and pointless. Especially as a dad, now, I just can’t be cynical. I’ve never been a cynical person, but now especially. How can I say the world’s burning and then actively raise a child in that world? I think the play and the movie are all about hard-won hope. The valuable hope is the stuff that you actually have to earn. Faith is hard. Faith takes work, especially faith in other people. It takes work and dedication, and that’s what the movie is fundamentally about.
The Whale plays in select theaters December 9th and nationwide on December 21st.
For more interviews with filmmakers, check out these recent stories:
It’s that rare thing in our current era of whole-season episode binging where a single series, with an episode-per-week release schedule, seems to capture everyone’s attention at once. This was definitely the case for the second season of Mike White’s The White Lotus, which began by promising multiple deaths at the eponymous Sicilian resort and spent seven episodes building to them and creating a delicious amount of speculation among the viewing public about who was leaving Sicily with a toe tag. If you’re anything like this writer, you had multiple text threads with multiple groups of friends that became devoted to the series and took on the feel of a Reddit subthread. At last, we have our answer. Spoilers ahead.
Whereas season one of The White Lotus was a biting social satire centered on money with a surprise death in the finale, season two was built as a who-dun-it, with sex and death at its very core. We learned in the opening moments of the season that Daphne (Meghann Fahy), on her final swim in the Ionian sea off the coast of the resort, comes across a dead body. Then, when The White Lotus resort’s director Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) is alerted to the tragedy by her much-maligned staffer Rocco (Federico Ferrante), we learn that “a few” people have actually died. We were no more than two minutes into season two, but the game was already afoot. Who was going to die? Who would be the killer? Which one of the disaffected guests would meet their fate?
Theo James, Meghann Fahy. Photograph by Fabio Lovino/HBO
We knew Daphne, Valentina, and Rocco would survive, but they were the only characters we could say that about. And throughout the season, Daphne herself was given reasons to have possibly put that dead body (or bodies) in the water. Might the body Daphne “discovers” in the opening belong to her philandering, finance bro husband Cameron (Theo James)? Or what about Cameron’s mopey, newly super-rich college roommate Ethan (Will Sharpe), who, as the season progressed, turned out to be a bit of a rage ball and whose faltering marriage to his wife Harper (Aubrey Plaza) became a source of tension, and paranoia, between him and Cameron? Might Ethan have killed Cameron, or might they both have died, fighting over Cameron’s possible seduction of Harper? Maybe Daphne and Harper killed them both? Did Daphne kill Harper after finding out something happened between her and Cameron? These four characters alone had enough drama to fuel a tragedy, and yet there were plenty more possible killers and victims in season two.
Beatrice Granno, Simona Tabasco. Photograph by Fabio Lovino/HBO
Or what about the Italian American Di Grasso family, traveling from Los Angeles to reconnect with their Sicilian roots? Father Dominic (Michael Imperioli), another philanderer, quickly finds two local girls, Lucia (Simona Tabasco) and Mia (Beatrice Grannó), to pay to pass the time. Lucia, especially, seems ripe to take center stage in the death plot. She’s got an aggressive pimp who would be a likely source of violence—that is, if that’s what he actually is and he isn’t part of some overarching scam she’s running. Dominic’s father, Bert (F. Murray Abraham), a frisky oldster with a penchant for unwanted flirting, was certainly the most likely person to meet a bad fate, no? The man fell multiple times in the first few episodes. Or, the son, Albie (Adam DiMarco), a painfully earnest Stanford grad who in short order falls in something adjacent to love with Lucia, the young woman his own father has already paid to sleep with, who seems ripe to die. For one thing, he becomes, predictably, convinced he can save Lucia. For another, he seems like the type of guy who makes a big, grand gesture having to do with his decency and fraught masculinity and dies in the process. Might Lucia be entrapping them all with deadly results? Or, this being a Mike White show, wouldn’t it make sense for Lucia and Mia to be the ones to pay the prices, much as the manager of the White Lotus in Hawaii, Armond (Murray Bartlett), was the one who suffered at the hands of the obnoxious guests in season one?
And then, there were the only crossover characters from season one, Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), the multi-millionaire heiress with money to burn, and her deeply unpleasant new husband, Greg (Jon Gries), who we learn fairly early on loathes her and seems to be playing her for her money. Tanya’s assistant Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) is swept up in the drama, first kissing Albie, then sleeping with Jack (Leo Woodall), the supposed nephew of Tanya’s new bestie Quentin (Tom Hollander), a rich gay Brit who owns an insanely gorgeous Palazzo in Palermo and seems to have been planted in the White Lotus solely to charm and fete Tanya, with growing intensity, until even Tayna herself starts to doubt his sincerity. With so much foreshadowing of Tanya’s potential demise (Quentin takes her to see Madam Butterfly at the opera, and she muses it seems like a coded message that she’s going to be the heroine who dies at the end), one of the dead bodies at the end of season two couldn‘t be Tayna’s, not with so much evidence pointing that way.
Stefano Gianino, Tom Hollander, Jennifer Coolidge. Photograph by Fabio Lovino/HBO
Well…the dead body that Daphne swam into in the opener was, in fact, Tanya. However, Tanya’s death came after she refused to be the victim of Quentin’s dastardly plot to kill her and split the windfall of money surely to flow Greg’s way after (A photo of a young Quentin and young Greg, at Quentin’s palazzo, alerted Tanya to something darker going on). Portia knew something terrible was coming when she realized the handsome but unhinged Jack, who had essentially abducted her and taken her to Cefalu, was not who he said he was. He left her on the side of the road, near the airport, and told her not to mess around with Quentin or his cohort. This was while Tanya was uncovering their plot on board their yacht and trying, and failing, to shoot her way to freedom.
Tanya uncovered the hit that had been planned on her life and shot her way to near freedom on Quentin’s yacht, killing nearly everyone on board. Her problem? She had to get down to the dinghy tied to the yacht and, in the process, fell overboard, slammed her head against the metal railing, and drowned. Cue Puccini.
Naturally, when Tanya is face down in the water, she’s framed like an opera heroine, and, in fact, the swelling music and the beauty of the composition (she looks angelic in death) evoke Puccini’s iconic opera Madam Butterfly one last time. In an interview with White in an after-the-episode special on HBO, the creator said he’d had the idea to center season two on Tanya’s death while they were filming the season one finale. In that episode, Tanya told Greg, “I’ve had every kind of treatment over the years. Death is the last immersive experience I haven’t tried.” So, White brought Tanya back so she could have that experience. He went on:
“Not that I really wanted to kill Tanya, because I love her as a character, and I obviously love Jennifer, but I just felt like, we’re going to Italy, she’s such a kind of diva, larger-than-life female archetype; it just felt like we could devise our own operatic conclusion to Tanya’s life and her story.”
White hinted that season three of The White Lotus might resolve some of the lingering questions from season two, including Greg’s culpability in the murder plot. He said that if season one was all about money, and season two about sex, season three, set in Japan, will be a “satirical and funny look at death and eastern religion and spirituality.”
There are a lot of questions that remain from season two. Did Harper and Cameron sleep together? White says it was probably just a kiss but that the specter of infidelity freed Ethan in a sense. “It kind of brings back that first sexual charge that happens in the beginning of relationships and sometimes fades away over time. By the end you’re like, well, maybe what Ethan and Harper need was just a small dash of what Cameron and Daphne have.”
Aubrey Plaza and Will Sharpe. Photograph by Fabio Lovino/HBOa
Michael Imperioli’s Dominic seems to be getting another shot at redeeming his marriage, which we learned on a phone call towards the end of the episode. While both Portia and Albie got played, respectively, by the messed up Jack and Lucia, they exchanged phone numbers at the airport and might have their own fling, or more, in the future.
Tanya’s future, however, is no more, but what Jennifer Coolidge brought to the first two seasons of The White Lotus will be hard to replace. Yet it will be really fun to see Mike White try in season three. That’s a ticket many, many people are eager to book.
For more on Warner Bros., HBO, and HBO Max, check out these stories:
This is a major casting coup. Michelle Yeoh, coming off a big year with her incredible performance in the astonishing Everything Everywhere All At Once, is joining the cast of director Jon M. Chu’s Wicked films.
Varietyreports that Yeoh will be playing Madame Morrible, the headmistress of Crage Hall at Shiz University, joining a star-studded cast that includes Ariana Grande as Glinda and Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba. Bridgerton star Jonathan Bailey will play Fiyero, while Broadway veteran Ethan Slater will play Boq. The two Universal Pictures films will be released on Christmas in 2024 and 2025.
Wicked, of course, has been a best-selling book and a best-selling Broadway show, and tells the story of how Elphaba turned into the Wicked Witch of the West and how Glinda became the Good Witch, in The Wizard of Oz. Madame Morrible, a canny, opportunistic figure, sees her own future political power in Glinda.
As Chu said when the film was announced, it was decided that the adaptation needed to be big. So big, in fact, it couldn’t be contained in a single film.
“We decided to give ourselves a bigger canvas and make not just one Wicked movie but two,” Chu wrote in his announcement statement. “With more space, we can tell the story of Wicked as it was meant to be told while bringing even more depth and surprise to the journeys for these beloved characters.”
For more on Universal Pictures and Focus Features projects, check out these stories:
Featured image: TORONTO, ONTARIO – SEPTEMBER 11: Michelle Yeoh attends the TIFF Tribute Awards Gala during the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival at The Fairmont Royal York Hotel on September 11, 2022 in Toronto, Ontario. (Photo by Jeremy Chan/Getty Images)
As the Wood Sprite (Tilda Swinton) grants Geppetto’s (David Bradley) grief-stricken wish to bring forth a son from his wood carving, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio draws life where there are only puppets and sound where there is only silence. The hearty revamp of Carlo Collodi’s classic is so engrossing, you may not recognize the meta miracle the movie accomplishes in an inanimate world. However, there are endless marvels to be seen and heard.
Sound designer/supervisor Scott Martin Gershin developed a sound library that is as expressive as the film’s characters. “I have to give Pinocchio (Gregory Mann) emotion with sound,” he described. “At one point, he’s embarrassed – like he apologizes – and he does a cute wave. I could do a very delicate squeak that was so endearing to the moment. So, what you’re constantly doing is taking inanimate objects and trying to figure out how to make wood, rubber, and metal squeaks to give it emotion. To glue it to a picture in such a way that it’s not annoying, but it has personality.”
Nothing about the stop-motion movie is as straightforward as it may seem. Developing many of the sounds in a literal way will not yield the intended result. Matching the action with effective audio often requires creative solutions.
“It’s a puzzle. It’s a puppet. We gotta go get a puppet and record a puppet. Sounds like bowling pins,” Gershin recognized. “Well, we’re getting an old puppet. Well, old puppets don’t work. So now you have to start using your imagination. What does work?”
Instead, Gershin turned to a musically inspired source for Pinocchio’s wooden sounds. He contacted Paul Reed Smith guitars to acquire truly unique and handcrafted wood. But like the film’s hero, these “guitars” have no strings.
“I said, ‘I’ve got this crazy idea. I know when you guys cut the wood for guitars, you always have scraps. I’m wondering, can I get your scraps?’” Gershin recalled. “And [Paul] was like, ‘Sure.’ So he sent me fifty pounds of scraps. But it was all like Brazilian rosewood and mahogany and flame maple and very tonal wood.”
Gershin’s musical inclinations are reflected throughout his work. The dramatics of a well-composed piece are akin to the structure of a sonic arc.
“As a musician, I like things to phrase, and everything resolves,” Gershin described. “I sometimes go up to create tension because most times when you resolve on an up, it feels awkward. So, part of what I have to do is be an audio psychologist. I’ve got to push people’s buttons based on sounds.”
With his signature sound library assembled, Pinocchio was ready to set off on an epic journey through adolescence. The dark new vision from del Toro is the most daring interpretation yet, filled with monsters, a chilling reeducation camp, and even visits to a bureaucratic afterlife. Pinocchio learns and grows with an audio track that reflects his developing maturity.
“When Pinocchio is first created and born in the first 15% of the show, he sounds like he’s going to fall apart,” Gershin noted. “He sounds like if you hit him, it would sound like a bunch of Lincoln Logs. His nails are sticking out, and he looks very haphazard, and he looks fragile.”
Eventually, Pinocchio finds his wooden footing and even learns to dance. His innocence is endearing and unpredictably insightful. As his personality takes shape, Gershin fills out Pinocchio’s audio palette.
“But then, as he keeps talking and moving and then scenes go on, I start fading away that [fragility]. Now he becomes a character who you love. So, you start taking away the ‘it’ and turn it into the ‘he’ in a way that doesn’t force itself on the audience.”
Once viewers are familiar with the characters’ expressions, Gershin can manipulate them to serve the story. A return to form can be equally impactful as introducing a new element. A previous sound cue can speak volumes.
“There’s a time later in the film where [Pinocchio] is exhausted, and he’s being pushed beyond his limits, and he collapses, and I revisit the fragility that I introduced at the beginning,” Gershin revealed. “You want to remind the audience in ways that aren’t obvious. When you hear it, you should automatically go, ‘I know what that means. I know what that is,’ without having to think about it. You should just feel it.”
Gershin worked with foley artist Dan O’Connell to create the library of sounds that were used for the film. Gershin estimates that 99% of Pinocchio’s sound alone was recorded from scratch. Of course, not a single sound is organic in animation. Everything we hear must be added and is truly intentional.
“People just think there’s a microphone perfectly spaced, and they just think you record all the cars and the ambiances and the police sirens and all the newsrooms, and all of it is just there because the illusion works,” Gershin noted. “But the reality is, in many of these shows, I’m doing a thousand different audio tracks. There are thousands of sounds that go into a movie to make it feel like there’s no sound.”
Of course, all those painstakingly recorded sound effects rely on a counterpoint. Gershin says that the absence of sound can be just as powerful as an explosion.
“Part of what I do is deciding what sounds to put and what sounds not to. The loudest sound that I have is silence, especially in a theater,” Gershin reflected. “There are times the only way for me to get loud is to start with silence. Sometimes I can jolt you quickly. Sometimes I can build it up to a crescendo. Tension, tension, and then release.”
Your ears play a critical role in understanding the story the way the filmmakers intended. Sometimes audio reveals action offscreen or can even highlight the most important information you see.
“There’s given points of what we want to focus our eyes and our ears on because they work together,” Gershin confirmed. “Every time you watch a show, if you look to the left, you’ll hear that. If you look to the right, you’ll hear that. But you may not always hear everything because if you’re not looking at it, you won’t hear it. It’s this weird psychological effect.”
Gershin recognizes that no one audience member can take in all his work in a single sitting. Unbothered, he sees every piece of a film as being in service to the whole.
“A great film is a film that you watch, and you lose yourself. You buy the illusion.” Gershin said. “If you lose yourself in the story, all the crafts – the painters, the puppeteers, everybody who did it – they all disappear into the illusion. And that’s why we’re in it. To tell a story and create an experience.”
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is now streaming on Netflix.
For more on big titles on Netflix, check these out:
This year, the Motion Picture Association partnered with the Entertainment Industry College Outreach Program (EICOP) to launch a first-of-its-kind initiative—the MPA-EICOP Entertainment Law & Policy Fellowship. This is the first entertainment-focused law and policy program to serve outstanding recent graduates from Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), and other Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs).
The fellowship program, which lasts a year, provides housing, travel, and stipends, eliminating the systemic barriers that would bar a potential Fellow from the experience. For one of our first Fellows, Billy Davis, a graduate of Howard University and the Howard University School of Law, the program felt like a perfect fit.
“When I graduated from law school, I was just trying to find stuff within sports and entertainment or something within intellectual property, and this came across my desk,” Davis says. “It was the perfect opportunity for me. Especially as the first step in my career, it just seemed like it was the best way to get into the entertainment field.”
At the MPA, Davis supports the legal team on various issues, including privacy rights, content protection, intermediary outreach, and legal drafting. Davis joined his fellow Fellow (if you will) Rhyan Lewis, a graduate of Spelman College. They both worked in the MPA’s Los Angeles offices, and are now in-house at the MPA’s Washington D.C. headquarters with longtime MPA employees, working with the MPA’s member studios alongside senior executives and policymakers. It was a front-row seat to a side of the entertainment industry neither Davis nor Lewis had prior experience with, yet were well suited to thanks to their backgrounds and work ethic.
“Working on the policy side has given me a bird’s eye view of the entertainment industry,” Lewis said. “I learned so much. Whether it was about how many hours child actors can work or production incentives and how much of a benefit it is to the filmmaking process, I just didn’t realize how much thought goes into this area of production and how important the policy side of filmmaking is. All the different issues that the MPA focuses on have been the most interesting part of this Fellowship and the part I will carry with me no matter what I’m doing in the entertainment world. It’s just really valuable knowledge to have.”
Davis was surprised and gladdened by the amount of collaboration he was a part of.
“Probably the first thing I would say about the Fellowship was how collaborative everyone was,” Davis says.”Coming out of law school, you don’t have many group projects, but at the MPA, everybody’s been extremely helpful regarding the legal drafting and the legal research. It’s really a team effort.” he says.
Davis was also surprised with how big of a part technology is in the DNA of the MPA’s work.
“Another thing that surprised me is just how on the cutting edge the MPA is, especially with the intersectionality of technological advancements and how the law has to keep up with it, whether it’s NFTs or Crypto and how contracts will have to reflect that, and past contracts didn’t. It’s challenging when there’s no case law or no precedent set. Most of what I was working on was content protection and intellectual property. Then I also worked on privacy matters, diversity standards, and having to work with privacy regulations in the US and abroad. I just never thought of that stuff before this Fellowship; like, it never crossed my mind. So working here has definitely been a valuable experience.”
Part of the Fellowship Program’s goals is to not only give Fellows experience working on the MPA’s core issues but also help them build the skills to become the next generation of law and policy leaders in the entertainment industry. One major way to do that is to create opportunities and build a much bigger pipeline for graduates from diverse backgrounds.
For Billy and Rhyan, their journey is just beginning. Billy will continue his work with Paramount as their inaugural Legal Fellow next January, while Rhyan is headed to Sony to work with their Government Affairs Team.
“One of the things that I’ve developed an interest in since being a part of this Fellowship and getting so much exposure to entertainment is the production side of things,” Lewis said. “And I talked to Sony about how they’re implementing entertainment policy into what they there. They want to give me a very collaborative and immersive experience, so I’ll probably be able to dip my toe in many different areas, and I’m really excited about that.”
With the early reactions to James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water coming in so overwhelmingly positive (the common theme was, essentially, “never bet against James Cameron“), the prospects for Cameron completing his entire Avatar saga (he has three more films planned) seems more possible than ever. Cameron already shot Avatar 3 and parts of Avatar 4 — they filmed The Way of Water and 3 concurrently — so they’ve already got that footage in the can. If all goes to plan, Avatar 3 would bow in 2024, Avatar 4 in 2026, and Avatar 5 in 2028.
In an interview with Collider‘s Perri Nemiroff, Cameron spoke about writing his Avatar sequels (he had every script finished before they began production on The Way of Water) and why Avatar 4‘s script is possibly the wildest of the bunch. Cameron wrote The Way of Water with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver.
Cameron told Nemiroff that his model for his epic saga was, appropriately, what Peter Jackson pulled off his The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Cameron was impressed with how Jackson launched all three films at once. “He had the books mapped out, so he could always show the actors what they needed to know about their character arc,” Cameron told Nemiroff. “So I felt I had to do the same thing. I had to play this as if the books already existed. So the only way for us to do that was to write all the scripts and let the actors read all the scripts and see where their characters were going and what it all meant.”
Cameron pointed out that for the world to ever see what he and his team cooked up for Avatar 4 and 5, things will need to go well at the box office for The Way of Water and Avatar 3. “By the time we get down to 4 and 5, if we’re so lucky, knock wood, to get that far, which is obviously driven by market forces, we have to be successful,” he told Nemiroff. But about Avatar 4…
“I can’t tell you the details, but all I can say is that when I turned in the script for 2, the studio gave me three pages of notes,” he told Nemiroff. “And when I turned in the script for 3, they gave me a page of notes, so I was getting better. When I turned in the script for 4, the studio executive, creative executive over the films, wrote me an email that said, ‘Holy f*ck.’ And I said, ‘Well, where are the notes?’ And she said, ‘Those are the notes.’ Because it kind of goes nuts in a good way, right?”
He also added this nugget about people who, after seeing Avatar: The Way of Water, might be able to guess how Avatar 4 could play out: “If you think you know what it’s about, and then, oh no, you don’t,” he said. “I hope I get to make that film, is what I’m saying.”
Considering Avatar: The Way of Water is being hailed as a visual masterpiece and another masterclass in creating a sequel from the man who brought you Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgement Day, the chance of us all seeing Avatar 4 seems more likely by the day.
Avatar: The Way of Water comes to theaters on December 16.
For more on Avatar: The Way of Water, check out these stories:
As with all films written and directed by Alejandro Iñárritu, the auteur’s new release Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths is difficult to define or categorize. He himself has said it is his most personal work, but viewers who love it have felt their own powerful connection to elements of the story. Without question, it is a cinematic experience that goes beyond suspension of disbelief and calls for surrender from its audience. This is no surprise, given the name of the film, Bardo, is based on a word in Tibetan Buddhism for the state of existence between death and rebirth.
The movie follows acclaimed Mexican journalist and filmmaker Silverio (Daniel Giménez Cacho) in a series of experiences with his family, his environment, and his memories, that blur the lines between reality and fantasy. Iñárritu asked his performers to pull from the depths of themselves in bringing the roles they play to life, so much so that members of the cast have said it is hard to draw the line between where their characters end and their own identities begin.
The Credits spoke to Daniel Giménez Cacho and Ximena Lamadrid, who plays Silverio’s daughter Camila, about what aspects of the film have continued to resonate for them, that spectacular crowd scene in a Mexican dance hall, and, basically, the meaning of life.
The word bardo references a sort of in-between place. Many experience the immediate feeling of loss or grief as being in a world in between life and death. Sounds and colors are experienced differently. Everything slows down. Both Silverio and Camila are in between worlds. How did you both experience that?
Lamadrid: Bardo is that transition between life and death. It’s something being born, something dying. It’s really more that journey that everyone’s experiencing, and it’s shown in a very poetic and metaphorical way. I think for my character, she begins grieving her past, the past that never happened, in the pool scene with Silverio. She’s very nostalgic for something that never was, and begins in a quite melancholic place. At that moment, she’s grieving that past, she’s grieving the loss of her brother Matteo, who didn’t get to see life as she did. She’s also excited for a future. She’s thinking to move to Mexico and continue her journey, and maybe reconnect with her past and her roots. Then personally, me as Ximena, I lived that grief and that journey with her, because I have a similar experience in my life. I grew up away from home, and I didn’t get to Mexico until I was 22 years old, so I really related to that.
Giménez Cacho: I think that many, many interesting reflections come from the fact of facing that. If you are at that moment, then, of course, you reconsider all you’ve done. What were your deepest desires? Have you accomplished everything you wanted? Why did you have such a desire? Was it really yours, or was it a social construction, and then you started to desire that, and that’s not really you? It’s not who you really are. For me, I’m becoming anxious now that you realize all this mostly when it’s too late, only just when you’re about to die. That’s the case with this character, I think. Maybe he has a lot of revelations, but it’s too late.
Daniel, the scene at the dance hall contains moments of transcendence, and it’s captured in the poster, where Silverio is surrounded by family and friends. Could you talk about your experience of that scene and filming it?
Giménez Cacho: The first thing that I want to say is that the place where I’m dancing, it was such a huge construction of technique and Alejandro’s dream. You are aware that you’re dancing, and I have the image like I’m on an aircraft carrier, and they say, “Do your thing. Dance here.” But of course, you have to realize you are supported by an enormous structure. In that way, it’s also very familiar for me because I’ve been rehearsing that all my life. That kind of party I’ve done plenty of times.
Giménez Cacho: Yeah, me, as Daniel, in that place with the same people because all the extras were the people that used to dance in that place.
Lamadrid: It’s not a set. It’s an actual dance club that he would go to.
Giménez Cacho: It’s almost dead or closed now, so this was a bit of a temporary resuscitation. They reopened it for this. So it was very familiar. That you’re dancing suddenly by yourself, that’s something I also do very naturally.
Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022). Daniel Giménez Cacho as Silverio. Cr. Limbo Films, S. De R.L. de C.V. Courtesy of Netflix
This scene is at once community, family, and the individual, all celebrating simultaneously.
Lamadrid: I think Alejandro was a genius in planning it that way. Every family member has this moment with Silverio in that scene. We each have a moment with him and his friend, Martin, played by Andres Almeida. We’re all there with him, and every one of us has a different connection with him. So that’s beautiful, and then surrounding us is the community, and it’s a mixture of people, and everyone’s wearing different colors, which was done so well by the costume department. It’s just a little bit of everything, and I think that’s what the world is.
Giménez Cacho: It’s a very natural way that we learn in Mexico to dance at parties with family. It’s how we relate.
Lamadrid: It doesn’t matter who you are. The producer might be there, and the guy who picks up garbage in the morning is there, and the taxi drivers, and the actors, it’s just this mix of people.
It also feels like a suspended moment of memory.
Giménez Cacho: Maybe it is also like a dream. That’s the trick with this movie. You don’t know exactly if this is happening in real-time or in Silverio’s memory. It doesn’t matter. That’s what I love about the movie, that it’s very free to reconsider this or to erase a little bit of the border or the lines between what’s real and what’s unreal. It allows us to reconsider what is real. That’s very liberating.
Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022). Daniel GimÈnez Cacho as Silverio. Cr. Limbo Films, S. De R.L. de C.V. Courtesy of Netflix
Bardo is very much an in-the-present-moment film as a cinematic experience, but parts stay with you, which are very individual to each viewer. What over time has stayed with you as you have watched the film again?
Giménez Cacho: For me, I think it’s the fragility, the vulnerability of our souls, like we’re lost in an infinite ocean of mystery. We don’t know where we’re going, we just know we have to swim like a little baby turtle in the ocean. There is an intuition that we have to swim, swim, swim, but we don’t know where we’re going. We don’t know if a big shark is coming, and it’s going to eat us, and we’re going to disappear. We don’t know. There’s this sense of vulnerability.
Lamadrid: For me, I’ve definitely taken away something I had never really questioned in my life, which was a lot about identity. I’m Mexican, I grew up in Dubai, then moved to New York, then went back to Mexico a few years ago. I had never considered that I never belonged here or I never belonged there. But then, watching the film, there’s a sense of maybe not belonging, or going into a country and feeling excluded, or feeling looked down upon because of your color or your language or even just your financial situation. It still happens. I hope that watching this movie really reflects that you can be from everywhere, and belong everywhere, and have a part of everywhere with you. I was recently in New York staying in a hotel room, and right in front of it, outside, there was a poster that said, “We are all on our way home.” There was an image of a house with legs. That’s us. That’s what the movie is. We are that, and inside the house, it’s lit up with lights. Home, for us, is our family. It’s what we love to do. It’s the details of life that really light up our day. It’s recognizing your own soul, asking those questions, and diving internally. That’s home. That’s what I take with me.
Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths is currently playing in theaters nationwide and streams on Netflix beginning on December 16th.
For more on big titles on Netflix, check these out:
Featured image: Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022). (L-R) Daniel Gim»nez Cacho as Silverio and Ximena Lamadrid as Camila. Cr. Limbo Films, S. De R.L. de C.V. Courtesy of Netflix
During the previews before Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, there was a trailer that made people squirm a little in their seats—director Gerard Johnstone’s M3GAN. Now, a second trailer for the Universal Pictures horror flick is here, capturing what gave people an enjoyable jolt in the theater that night. M3GAN is, you’ll see, a robot built by a brilliant robotics engineer working at a toy company. This being a film from horror maestro James Wan (he wrote the story and produces, alongside his fellow horror maestro Jason Blum, Michael Clear, and Couper Samuelson), you can rest assured that M3GAN is not just some average, friendly robot toy. Naturally, she will have to kill some people.
The trailer sets up the stakes swiftly. Our robotics engineer is Gemma (Allison Williams), who designed the toy robot to help her recently orphaned niece, Cady (Violet McGraw), from feeling lonely. Gemma shows Cady how to press on the robot’s palm to “pair with her,” then instructs the irrefutably creepy robot, who definitely pushes us deep into the uncanny valley, to “protect Cady from harm, both physical and emotional.” The robot takes this command extremely seriously.
The creative team behind M3GAN knows what they’re doing. This was a robot was designed to make us feel ill at ease, lifelike but certainly not alive. The trailer reveals some beautiful, creepy touches, such as when the girls dance together at the 19-second mark or when Gemma shuts her laptop only to find the robot standing there, staring at her. With hints of Chucky and memories of every robot gone berserk by carrying out commands far too literally (think HAL in 2001: A Space Odyessy, only in the form of a doll), M3GAN toys with our expectations and memories of both horror and sci-films about badly behaving machines. Considering the talent involved, especially Wan, M3GAN will likely subvert our expectations or expand upon them in the creepiest way possible.
M3GAN also stars Ronny Chieng (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), Brian Jordan Alvarez (Will & Grace), Jen Van Epps (Cowboy Bebop), Lori Dungey (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, extended edition) and Stephane Garneau-Monten (Straight Forward).
Check out the trailer below. M3GAN creeps into theaters on January 6, 2023:
For more on Universal Pictures and Focus Features projects, check out these stories:
The first trailer for season two of Star Wars: The Bad Batch is here, and our favorite clone mercenaries are in a bit of trouble. The crazy part? They’re not being hunted or attacked by any galactic goons, stormtroopers, or Sith Lords, but rather, some very large, very angry extraterrestrial crabs.
Such is life for a member of the Bad Batch, and it’s a life that Star Wars fans have loved to get to know. The second season picks up months after the events on Kamino in season one, with our rogue clones on the run from an increasingly powerful Empire after the fall of the Republic. As the Empire grows stronger and more ruthless, for the Bad Batch to survive, let alone thrive, they’re going to have to grow and change with it. Season two promises more adventure, bigger heists, and greater stakes as the Empire looks to strengthen its hand and crush anyone stepping out of line. And that’s precisely what the Bad Batch were born—er cloned—not to do. Yet what makes them special is the very fact that they’re fighting back.
Check out the trailer for season two of Star Wars: The Bad Batch. The series returns to Disney+ on January 4.
Here’s the official synopsis for season two:
When the new season opens, months have passed since the events on Kamino, and the Bad Batch continue their journey navigating the Empire after the fall of the Republic. They will cross paths with friends and foes, both new and familiar, as they take on a variety of thrilling mercenary missions that will take them to unexpected and dangerous new places. “Star Wars: The Bad Batch” season 2 stars Emmy Award® nominee Dee Bradley Baker (“American Dad!”) as the voice of the Bad Batch and Emmy Award® nominee Michelle Ang (“Fear the Walking Dead: Flight 462”) as the voice of Omega. Emmy Award® winner Rhea Perlman (“The Mindy Project,” “Cheers”) returns to guest star as Cid, Noshir Dalal (“It’s Pony,” “The Owl House”) returns to guest star as Vice Admiral Rampart and Emmy Award® winner Wanda Sykes (“The Upshaws,” “Black-ish”) makes her guest starring debut in the series as as Phee Genoa.
“Star Wars: The Bad Batch” is executive produced by Dave Filoni (“The Mandalorian,” “Star Wars: The Clone Wars”), Athena Portillo (“Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” “Star Wars Rebels”), Brad Rau (“Star Wars Rebels,” “Star Wars Resistance”), Jennifer Corbett (“Star Wars Resistance,” “NCIS”) and Carrie Beck (“The Mandalorian,” “Star Wars Rebels”) with Josh Rimes (“Star Wars Resistance,” “Star Wars: Visions”) and Alex Spotswood (“Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” “Star Wars Rebels”) as producers. Rau is also serving as supervising director with Corbett as head writer and Matt Michnovetz as story editor.
For more stories on Century Studios, Searchlight Pictures, Marvel Studios and what’s streaming or coming to Disney+, check these out:
Never bet against James Cameron. This seems to be the overriding theme of the first reactions to his long-awaited sequel Avatar: The Way of Water, which arrives 13 years after his groundbreaking Avatar arrived in 2009.
The initial reactions are more or less uniformly positive, with critics and viewers alike marveling at how, once again, Cameron has seemingly reinvented what’s possible on screen. The staggering visuals, especially the scenes set underwater, come in for major praise, but so too do the emotional stakes. Cameron is a master world builder, and here he has built out the alien planet of Pandora, and its native inhabitants, the Na’vi, to incredible effect. The Way of Water is being hailed as a superior effort to the original Avatar in every way, which is, of course, the highest-grossing movie of all time.
We’ll need to wait until December 13 for the full reviews from critics once the review embargo is lifted, but here is a glimpse at the first social media reactions from critics who saw advanced screenings and the folks who attended the premiere on Tuesday in London. If you were only mildly interested in seeing Avatar: The Way of Water when it hits a theater near you on December 16, you mind find your mind about to change:
So, #AvatarTheWayOfWater is one of the most visually stunning films I have seen. Incredible on an almost obscene level. Crucially, it also manages an engaging story with new & returning characters. Yes, it is long at 3+ hours, but James Cameron’s only gone and bloody delivered… pic.twitter.com/oBjoWwiGaF
James Cameron is that dying breed of filmmaker who can package the most accessible of human emotions & a beautifully coherent story inside a spectacular & innovative Hollywood package. Earns every minute of its running time & all your feelings. Loved it. 1/2 #AvatarTheWayofWater
Avatar The Way of Water: lol imagine being dumb enough to bet against James Cameron. or teen alien Sigourney Weaver. or giant whales subtitled in papyrus.
light years better than the first & easily one of the best theatrical experiences in ages. streaming found dead in a ditch.
Happy to say #AvatarTheWayOfWater is phenomenal! Bigger, better & more emotional than #Avatar, the film is visually breathtaking, visceral & incredibly engrossing. The story, the spectacle, the spirituality, the beauty – this is moviemaking & storytelling at its absolute finest. pic.twitter.com/RicnpDghrx
#AvatarTheWayOfWater is pretty incredible. I had faith James Cameron would raise the bar w/ the effects but these visuals are mind-blowing. One stunning frame after the next. But the thing I dug most is how the technical feats always feel in service of character & world-building. pic.twitter.com/MXeN3z8BnP
James Cameron & Co. deliver yet another riveting, awe-inducing masterclass in world-building with #AvatarTheWayOfWater . Immersive, emotionally engaging & epically entertaining, it’s a thrilling ride. CG artifice melts away where we’re just watching the characters’ humanity steer pic.twitter.com/6CksGpEumJ
AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER absolutely owns bones. I was slapping my seat, hooting, screaming for the Na’vi to take out every last one of those dang sky people
James Cameron’s #AvatarTheWayOfWater is a monumental filmmaking achievement striking a great balance between technical & emotional. The 48fps 3D experience features some of the most jaw-dropping immersion I’ve ever seen. Felt like a kid again watching T2 for 1st time. Astounding. pic.twitter.com/cfiMADJzU4
Some real thoughts on #AvatarTheWayOfWater: Yeah, incredible. It’s a James Cameron limit break where even intimate feelings slam with seismic force. Jaw-dropping design make a mostly CG world and cast (miraculously emotive) feel impossibly alive. Even the water’s hypnotizing. pic.twitter.com/E6JyLEa1gM
#AvatarTheWayOfWater is “more is more” writ large. It’s more beautiful, more in awe of Pandora; more vocal in its environmentalism, more damning of humans. It’s an adrenaline shot to 3D filmmaking and an uncompromising doubling down. You’d expect nothing less from Cameron.
Avatar: The Way of Water is a never-ending visual spectacle.
It’s a better, more complex story than the first with solid emotion but the characters could grow a bit more. It’s definitely long, running on incredible visuals & techniques which are 3D’s best.#AvatarTheWayOfWaterpic.twitter.com/ezySHunXOe
Listen, I wasn’t excited about #AvatarTheWayofWater but it blew me away. It’s so beautiful it’s hard to put into words. Say what you will about Cameron but… he knows what he’s doing.
Avatar: The Way of Water is an EPIC, STUNNING, CINEMATIC ADVENTURE. It delivers on both action & heart while giving fans an intriguing story that feels earned & warranted. Never doubt James Cameron. Biggest issue: feels like a stepping stone for what’s next.#AvatarTheWayofWaterpic.twitter.com/dQBEfBkN7z
One would think grammar school teachers and drag queen wigmasters have little in common. But having been both, Abdiel Urcullu can see the similarities.
For the past two years, Urcullu, who previously taught math to 4th and 5th graders, has served as the key hairstylist for the HBO series We’re Here. Debuting in 2020, the reality series follows drag queens Eureka O’Hara, Shangela, and Bob the Drag Queen as they travel to small-town America to encourage a community to get in touch with its inner drag.
The hosts (dubbed “drag moms”) meet with locals (“drag daughters”) and help them create a drag performance that takes place at the end of the episode. As the daughters are put through their paces, their stories unfold — a sexagenarian lesbian couple who wed during their performance; a Tunisian refugee who comes to terms with the sexuality that would have imprisoned him in his home country; a good old boy from South Carolina who dons high heels and a dress to better understand and support his gay brother who is a drag queen; and a New Mexico mother coping with her gay daughter’s suicide.
We’re Here – Season 2, episode 6: Eureka, Pastor Craig, and Abdiel – Photograph by Jakes Giles Netter: HBO
Though it doesn’t hold back on the campiness, the overall goal of the Emmy-winning series is to promote positivity, love, and understanding for the LGBTQ community. And that’s what particularly drew Urcullu to We’re Here. As much as he wanted to follow his creative passion, he missed the feeling he got in the classroom.
“What I loved about teaching is that I felt I was making a positive impact and helping people,” Urcullu said during a recent Zoom call. “Doing wigs for drag queens, even though it’s rewarding on a personal level, doesn’t necessarily feel like I’m making much of an impact. We’re Here is giving me a bridge between personal success and helping and educating the community — providing a brighter future for queer youth.”
As an added bonus, Urcullu realized his math skills came in handy in the world of hairstyling. “There is actually quite a bit in haircutting,” he continues. “There’s a surprising amount of geometry involved. And when you’re coloring, there’s quite a bit of ratios. After the show got picked up, I went back to school for cosmetology. It was really interesting to see a lot of the math things that I had been teaching. It was like, ‘Yeah, this is what we do.’”
Urcullu, who also goes by the stage name “Gloria Divina,” estimates that he takes between 40 and 50 wigs with him for each episode. Typically, only a fraction of those get used over the 12 shoot days. The tight schedule doesn’t allow for much building, so instead, he draws from his arsenal of hair to create the desired look.
We’re Here – Season 2, episode 3: Abdiel, Esael – Photograph by Courtesy of HBO
The opening shot is the biggest challenge. The “moms” wear wigs during the entrance segment when they descend on the location in all their fabulous glory. Location plays a big role in the choices. For example, season 2’s Del Rio, Texas episode saw the drag moms decked out in football-inspired, shoulder-padded ensembles. Extending down to his ankles, Bob’s braided coif included the message, “Go Rams,” to cheer on the local high school team. The Selma, Alabama opener took big Southern hair to new heights.
Shangela in “We’re Here.” Photograph by Courtesy of HBO
“Probably 50% of our time is spent on those entrance wigs,” explains Urculla. “And they’re seen for like a minute and a half. But it’s supposed to be a very high-impact moment.”
The wigs are also crucial to the show-stopping finales. Urcullu creates the hairpieces for all three sets of drag moms and daughters. The process starts even before the cast and crew leave for a location. It seems that before he can unpack his bags from the last shoot, Urcullu is receiving details about the next one.
“It has a bit of information about the town and a profile of the people that have been cast,” Urcullu says. “It has their pictures, their gender identities, their ages, and a very brief summary of what we think their stories might be.”
Next comes a meeting with the producers, the drag moms, and the other designers to brainstorm. Music themes are volleyed about. From these ideas, designers come up with sketch options.
“The wig design is heavily dependent on the costume designers,” continues Urcullu. “Once they submit something, I’ll call or text the drag queen mom and say, ‘Hey, this is what I’m thinking. Do you have any ideas?’ We try to collaborate and merge it all together.”
We’re Here – Season 2, episode 1: Bob The Drag Queen, Leila Mcqueen, Abdiel Gloria Urcullu, Domino, Faith Photograph by Courtesy of HBO.
But Urcullu also keeps it flexible until he arrives at the location and meets the daughters. “That’s when we pick the color. A lot of times, we’re like, ‘Okay, we think she’s gonna want to be a brunette. We think she’s gonna be a blonde,’ he says. “But there are many shades of brunette, many shades of blonde. And we want to make sure that it’s gonna work for them.”
Urcullu also realizes he will encounter varying degrees of attitude towards doing drag and is prepared to adjust accordingly. He’ll dial it down for a straight cisgender man who’s never worn a wig and take it up a notch if he feels someone is willing to go full queen.
Visiting all these small towns also provides a reality check. Urcullu is a Houston native, and most of the cast and crew are from New York or Los Angeles. They’ve used to having their lifestyle choices accepted, or at the very least, tolerated. We’re Here has shown him that not all of America is ready to greet the LGBTQ community with open arms.
Such was the case for season 3’s opening episode in Granbury, Texas. Some in town didn’t take kindly to what the show was doing. And for a reason Urcullu can’t explain, they focused on the costume shop.
“They took pictures of the inside of the workroom and spread the word about these horrible things we were doing,” Ursula remembers. “There was absolutely nothing particularly graphic about it. It was a few mannequins, a couple of wigs, and pieces of fabric. As soon as we found out, the designers, myself, and my assistant were like, “We’re gonna go back to our hotel. Let us know when security gets here.”
Season 3, episode 1 in Granbury, Texas. Shangela. Photograph by Greg Endries/HBO
Overall, Urcullu finds his We’re Here experience inspiring. The season 3 Kissimmee, Florida episode holds special meaning. One of its daughters is a survivor of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting. The episode also features a preteen trans girl. “I believe she’s 11 or 12 years old,” says Urcullu. “Her parents are just so supportive. And we know what’s going on in Florida with not only book banning but with trans medical care for children. So having someone that is an advocate at home has to be very impactful for them.”
Urcullu hopes that he and the show can build on that feeling.
“To me, what’s important is those teenage kids that are watching at home — possibly hiding that they’re watching this,” he says. “I do think this show’s impact is enormous to them. I know it is because I hear about it all the time. I know that if I had had a resource like this, I would have been able to get past my personal challenges and my traumas would not have been as deep.”
For more on Warner Bros., HBO, and HBO Max, check out these stories:
Director Andy Muschietti’s The Flash will race into theaters a week earlier than expected, Warner Bros. has announced. The studio revealed on Monday that the stand-alone film starring Ezra Miller as the supersonic speedster Barry Allen will now head into theaters on June 16, 2023, up a week from its previous spot on June 23, 2023. This will give the film a little more distance from Disney’s big release of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the last go-round for Harrison Ford in the iconic role.
The Flash features not one but two iterations of Batman. One will be played by Michael Keaton, reprising the role for the first time since 1992’s Batman Returns, and the second by Ben Affleck, playing the version of Batman he embodied in the Zack Snyder films. The Flash also makes one very big introduction—Sasha Calle as Supergirl—as it weaves all these storylines together thanks to the multiversal mayhem Barry creates as he tries to race back in time to save his mother’s life.
The Flash was scripted by Christina Hodson and was inspired by the “Flashpoint” comic book series in which Barry speeds across the multiverse in a desperate effort to reverse his mother’s fate. In doing so, he comes into contact with both Keaton and Affleck’s Batman, Calle’s Supergirl, and more. The film also stars Kiersey Clemons as Iris West, Maribel Verdú as Nora Allen, and Ron Livingston as Barry’s imprisoned father, Henry Allen (replacing Billy Crudup).
For more on Warner Bros., HBO, and HBO Max, check out these stories:
Oscar-winning director Bong Joon Ho’s first film since his masterpiece Parasite swept the Academy Awards has revealed a brief, tantalizing sneak peek. Mickey 17, starring Robert Pattinson, is the latest from the South Korean master, returning him to the sci-fi genre in which he’s made some of his most ambitious films, from 2006’s The Host to 2013’s Snowpiercer and his 2017 Netflix film Okja. A new teaser reveals a glimpse at Pattinson in the lead role and reveals that the film will arrive on February 29, 2024. (Leap day, no less).
The film is based on the novel “Mickey7” by writer Edward Ashton, published this past February, about the titular protagonist who works as a “disposable employee” on a dangerous mission. In Ashton’s novel, Mickey7 works on a human expedition setting out to colonize the frozen planet of Niflheim, and his role is to step in on any mission that’s deemed too dangerous or borderline suicidal for a human being and sacrifice his body for the cause. The genius of the “disposable employee” design is that while they can regenerate an entirely new body, most of their memories will remain intact. That is, until after six deaths when a replacement clone takes over. The key inflection point in Ashton’s book is when Mickey7 refuses to let Mickey8 take over his job.
As you’ll see from the brief first look, Pattinson plays Mickey17, and he’s joined in the cast by Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo. How closely Bong has stuck to the details of Ashton’s novel is unclear (he changed Mickey’s number, for starters), but with Bong’s immense skills, such dark, potentially funny source material, and this stellar cast, Mickey 17 will be one of the most eagerly anticipated films of 2024.
Check out the teaser below:
For more on Warner Bros., HBO, and HBO Max, check out these stories:
Featured image: MILL VALLEY, CA – OCTOBER 05: Robert Pattinson appears at the 42nd Mill Valley Film Festival – Special Screenings Of “The Lighthouse” And “Harriet” on October 5, 2019 in Mill Valley, California. (Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images)
Based on the novel by Miriam Toews, writer/director Sarah Polley’s new narrative Women Talking considers how a group of women can move forward after the shocking betrayal and abuse by men in their isolated religious community. The backstory of the novel and subsequent film, which is set in 2010, mirrors horrific true events that took place at a Mennonite colony in Bolivia. For over four years, nine men secretly sedated over a hundred girls and women, raping them while they were unconscious. The film is not a violent one, however. Polley wanted the violence to only be reflected in short glimpses of the aftermath, focusing instead on the community of women coming together to build a better world for their children, each other, and themselves. Toews’ book raised questions within her about faith, forgiveness, community, and self-determination, she said. “I wanted to feel in every frame the endless potential and possibility contained in a conversation about how to remake a broken world.” Bringing this conversation to life is an exceptional ensemble cast that includes Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivy, and Frances McDormand.
The mood and tone in Women Talking are enhanced with the contribution of an organic, hopeful score by Academy-award-winning composer Hildur Guðnadóttir. Guðnadóttir has had a very successful 2022, with her scores for Todd Field’s Tárand Sarah Polley’s film both currently in Oscar contention. The Credits spoke to the composer about her deeply personal score for Women Talking, a film that offered her the first opportunity to work with a female director.
In Women Talking, it seems the central questions are about if community and unity can help individuals heal from evil, all told from a feminine perspective. It’s impossible not to come from a really personal place for this as an artist.
Yeah, well, I think you’re absolutely right; I think it’s really impossible not to be personal about this subject because, as a woman, I have come across, not obviously and thankfully the same type of things that these women go through in the film, but I have experienced some things in that direction. So, just personally, you feel a sense of connection to what they go through, and you feel a large amount of empathy, I think, with what they go through. They actually had trauma specialists there for the actors because it’s a hugely sensitive and difficult and emotional subject to examine and dive into. For this narrative, the music needed to really be a vehicle of hope and forward movement, to give us the courage to keep on moving, and to bring everyone together into these discussions and this decision-making of what to do. The music needed to draw us to them and give us a connection and a sense of community.
How did you find that within yourself?
I really had to just do a lot of self-work, and I had to examine not only how I feel and how I want to react to this story in particular but also just everything that’s happening to women in reality all around us. We’re seeing such huge waves of movement for women’s rights, just for women in general. There’s this huge shift that’s been going on for the better and for the worse. With #MeToo, we saw great energy and lots of positivity from women coming together, not being silent, and pushing things forward. Then we see these huge backward movements like Roe v Wade being overturned. It’s just a huge backward step for women’s basic fundamental rights and the right to health care. It was intense to be in this story and experience all these things simultaneously in reality. I really had to ask myself, “Am I going to allow myself to be paralyzed by anger and therefore do nothing? Or will I need to cultivate the sense of hope and connection to community in order to move forward personally, and therefore also in the story of this film?” It was a really interesting process for me, personally and musically.
Well, I think you can hear it instantly when you’re faking something in music. Specifically, when you’re dealing with true events, I think it’s important to try to be as honest as you possibly can, because there are people that have actually lived these events, and you don’t want to over-dramatize them, like waltz in with a string orchestra and taiko drums. I felt that the only way to bring this hope and love and community was to to actually do that in how the music was recorded and performed, so I leaned into my community and my friends who I’ve been playing with for over two decades. I have a deep love and friendship with the main performer, Skuli Sverrisson, who plays on the guitar. He’s one of my best friends, and because we’ve played so much music together over the last two decades, we’ve developed a sense of telepathy when we’re working together. We access really deep places within both of us when we work together because we don’t have to explain anything, we just know. Our recording sessions were equally recording music, and just laughing together and talking about our hopes or dreams or hard things we might be going through. So we just poured as much love into this music as as we could, which really spoke to the depth of our friendship.
You used the guitar as the main instrument, and there are a lot of cues with bells. Can you give us a sense of your overall thought about building the score?
I wanted the sounds to be very down-to-earth and simple, not highbrow. I didn’t want any fancy, upper-class instruments, like a harp, that will be completely out of reach for the environment that these women lived in. I imagined that the guitar would be in the nearest vicinity of their environment. Traditionally, it’s considered a very humble instrument. I wanted the score to feel almost tangible or visceral, so I used the guitar as a percussive instrument for the more tension-driven scenes. I wanted it to sound like something you could touch in its natural texture, like touching dirt. That was my overall imagination for the score. I worked intuitively. In the flashback scenes where we see what actually happened to these women, I experienced that as somehow both a doomsday and a call to prayer, so I just felt that bells were a really good connection to both of those feelings, because bells can sound an alarm or be heard at prayer time, so I thought it was fitting.
In the cues “Work of Ghosts,” “Doomsday,” and “Teeth,” the way you use the guitar and bells, it almost feels like being trapped inside a cavern or even trapped inside an abandoned church. It feels primordial.
My first instinct for these cues was the bells, and it’s exactly as you described it and a great observation because these women are trapped in this situation, in an almost unimaginable way, with their family in a horrifically violent environment. I wanted to create a sense of claustrophobia, a lack of movement. They are stuck, trapped in this place without any power. I can’t imagine how terrifying and inhuman that must be.
You’ve spoken about how this score required you to go very deep into yourself about your own experience. What are you left with, having created the score, that you feel is permanent in you?
I feel very energized from having worked on this film. I feel a huge amount of connection to Sarah and the women that were on this film, and a huge amount of energy to move forward and to not be silent. I want to do my best in whatever way I can to inch us forward and closer to justice and equality, because I think we still have a long way to go, and it’s very easy to lose hope or give up. The process of working on this film gave me a lot of hope and energy to not shy away from it and to stay present. It’s the first project that I’ve done with a female director, for example, which was a wonderful one, to experience that difference in working in a feminine environment. It also gave me a huge amount of energy and positivity for what’s to come.
Women Talking is releasing in theaters nationwide on December 23rd.
