05
Mar
LeBron James, currently the greatest basketball player on the planet (all differing opinions, feel free to be mad and wrong in the comments), is gearing up for the release of his highly anticipated upcoming film Space Jam: A New Legacy. James recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly about his team-up with the Looney Tunes, a follow-up to the massively successful original Space Jam, which starred then-greatest player Michael Jordan and earned $230 million at the box office, spawned a billion-dollar merchandise empire, and inspired a soundtrack that went six times platinum. In an interview with the magazine, James, director Malcom D.…
24
Feb
One of the questions lingering over the launch of a slew of Marvel Studios shows on Disney+ is whether the characters introduced on the nine Marvel shows that aired in the last decade on Netflix or ABC — including Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Agents of SHIELD, and others — could find their way to the Disney streaming service in rebooted form. That query was posed today to Marvel Studios chief creative officer Kevin Feige during a Television Critics Association (TCA) presentation for Marvel’s Disney+ offerings, which include the currently streaming WandaVision, the upcoming The Falcon and the Winter Soldier…
14
Feb
This article contains WandaVision spoilers. As much as we love it, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has never been great about telling complex emotional stories. Perhaps that’s understandable, as the franchise’s various Avengers must regularly wrestle with potentially world-ending stakes and still somehow save the day, all within a two-and-a-half-hour theatrical runtime. These aren’t stories that generally time to be but so concerned with things like the psychological trauma that inevitably resulted from these life-or-death events or how our heroes are meant to heal from them, provided they manage to do so at all. Thankfully, WandaVision seems determined to change that,…
14
Jan
This article contains spoilers for Search Party season 4 episodes 1-3. Through two seasons on TBS and one on HBO Max, Search Party has defied genre expectations. While ostensibly a comedy about young Brooklyn millennials, each new year of the show has brought another unexpected tone to the table. Season 1 was a Nancy Drew-style mystery, with Dory Sief (Alia Shawkat) and her friends searching for their old missing college acquaintance Chantal Witherbottom (Clare McNulty). When that search went…poorly, season 2 dealt with the life and death consequences and added “paranoid thriller” to its genre collection. Season 3 then took…
07
Dec
This Attack on Titan review contains spoilers. Attack on Titan Season 4 Episode 1 “Isn’t war a terrible thing?” The third season of Attack on Titan ends with a lengthy jump forward in time where Eren and company are seemingly more ready than ever to realize their goal. The group has taken on some difficult opponents over the past three seasons, but as they prepare to invade Paradis Island and dethrone a corrupt king they begin to understand that the end to all of this warfare is finally within grasp. The final moments of last season posed the question, “If…
04
Dec
With a couple’s impending wedding as the backdrop, Love, Weddings & Other Disasters weaves multiple storylines as it follows the search for love by a colorful group of characters including: an inexperienced wedding planner (Maggie Grace) nicknamed “The Wedding Trasher”; a fussy celebrity caterer (Jeremy Irons); his blind date (Diane Keaton); and a tour-bus guide (Andrew Bachelor) looking for his Cinderella. Rated: PG-13Release Date: Dec 04, 2020
24
Nov
The Other History of the DC Universe, John Ridley and Giuseppe Cammuncoli’s new prestige miniseries from DC’s Black Label, has a particularly evocative title. When you hear that name, you think Howard Zinn, something like A People’s Crisis on Infinite Earths. It implies a grand, broad look at the sweep of DC Universe history from the perspective of marginalized people, voices who were not the ones telling the story (in and outside of it). But the book that is out this week is…not quite that. Ridley was “less interested in putting obelisks on the timeline,” he said at a roundtable…
09
Oct
The following contains spoilers for every episode of The Haunting of Bly Manor. Henry James (probably known as Hank Jim to his friends) is one of the most prominent and prolific writers of his era. Originally appreciated for his novels like The Portrait of a Lady and The Ambassadors, James is now best-known for his 1898 work The Turn of the Screw, an eerie, ambiguous ghost story novella that would become one of the most enduring Gothic horror texts ever. The Turn of the Screw has been adapted dozens of times into films, operas, ballets, and more. And James’s classic…
29
Sep
Disney is rolling out a brand new feature for Disney+ subscribers: GroupWatch. The “watch party” function is not the first of its kind across the market, but it is the first of its kind specifically for Disney+. The new function will allow Disney+ subscribers to synchronously stream with up to six other accounts. According to Jerrell Jimerson, SVP of product management for Disney Streaming Services (via Variety), the feature has long been part of Disney’s rollout plan for Disney+, but the pandemic has moved up the timeline for its implementation. Disney+ launched a test version of GroupWatch earlier this month…
03
Sep
Disney‘s new live-action adaptation of Mulan may be PG-13, but it’s still a Disney Princess movie. While the main storyline involves a young woman going off to fight in a war, this is a family film, which means things aren’t going to get particularly violent, even when Hua Mulan is facing off against invading armies. While that PG-13 rating broadens the potential audience for the film, it also limits the potential narrative scope of the story. For those looking for a bloodier war film about Chinese legend Mulan, there is another recent, live-action option for you. (There’s actually a few…
23
Aug
If you’ve seen The Batman trailer already—and let’s be honest you’ve watched that bad boy several times by now—you were probably taken with how stripped down and grim it all appears. Suddenly overnight Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy appears to be lighthearted by comparison. That is no accident, of course. More than typical superhero movie directors, Matt Reeves is open about how his film is reaching back toward the influences of significant 1970s Hollywood filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, William Friedkin, and Roman Polanski. This came up late in The Batman DC FanDome panel when Reeves was asked about his…
17
Aug
Other Music was an influential and uncompromising New York City record store that was vital to the city’s early 2000s indie music scene. But when the store is forced to close its doors due to rent increases, the homogenization of urban culture, and the shift from CDs to downloadable and streaming music, a cultural landmark is lost. Through vibrant storytelling, the documentary captures the record store’s vital role in the musical and cultural life of the city, and highlights the artists whose careers it helped launch including Vampire Weekend, Animal Collective, Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, William Basinski, Neutral Milk Hotel,…
12
Aug
Decades ago (pandemic time), DC Comics announced that John Ridley, Oscar-winning writer of 12 Years a Slave and creator of the award-winning American Crime, would be writing a series about major events in DC history from the perspective of heroes from traditionally marginalized groups. And now, in the wake of All This *waves at the world*, that series finally has a release date. The Other History of the DC Universe is coming from DC Comics in November of this year. The book is written by Ridley, with art from Giuseppi Camuncoli (Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith), Andrea Cucchi,…
01
Aug
This article is presented by: “It was possibly the most frustrating thing I’ve ever been through in my career,” Paul Feig says. “To make something I’m so proud of that was exactly what I wanted it to be that had this amazing cast, and the writing was so good. And then to be so happy with the final product and then nobody sees it.” Feig isn’t talking about the bizarre internet backlash that greeted the 2016 version of Ghostbusters, but instead, lamenting how a year prior, in 2015, his series Other Space — which originally debuted on the now-defunct Yahoo…
23
Jul
Tenet will be released in theaters. Eventually. While hardly shocking news, there had been some speculation this week after Christopher Nolan’s Tenet abandoned its Aug. 12 release date (the third it’s had scheduled) over just what Warner Bros. has planned for the time-bending epic. But though WB’s previous announcement that the film would not enjoy a “traditional global day-and-date release” confirms the studio is intending to stagger its release around the world, AT&T CEO John Stankey is now making it clear that Tenet will have only a theatrical release… even if other delayed WB films may not. The news comes…
22
Jul
This article is presented by Five years ago, one year before Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters hit theaters, the Bridesmaids comedy mastermind debuted a quirky, heartwarming science fiction series called Other Space. If you missed the streaming-only show back in 2015, the easiest way to describe the series would be Community meets The Orville, but better and more charming than both. Other Space is like HBO’s Avenue 5 or Netflix’s Space Force, but funnier and far less cynical. And now, after a long absence, you can finally catch one of the best sci-fi shows you may have missed the first time around.…
21
Jul
Here’s a bumper crop of the weird and the British – streaming service Britbox, which is home to a wide selection of BBC, ITV and Channel 4 series including classic Doctor Who, is fortifying its sci-fi ranks. From Thursday the 20th of August, a host of new additions will be joining the classic and modern British fare, including cult series The Prisoner and the complete collection of Sapphire & Steel. Here’s the full list of new arrivals, known collectively on BritBox as the ‘Out of this World Collection’… The Prisoner (1967) All 17 episodes of the television drama created by…
17
Jul
Captain America — otherwise known as Chris Evans — and other members of the Avengers, along with other actors who have spent time in the superhero genre, took time out this week to pay tribute to a real-life hero. That hero is six-year-old Bridger Walker of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and according to an Instagram post by his aunt (via Deadline), little Bridger — who’s apparently a huge Cap fan — saved his four-year-old sister’s life on July 9 when he put himself between her and a charging dog. Bridger sustained several bites on his face and head before he got himself…
16
Jul
This article contains Agents of SHIELD spoilers. One of the main mysteries in the first season of Agents of SHIELD was the identity of Daisy Johnson’s parents, only back then Chloe Bennet’s character was known as Skye. Eventually, the show introduced us to her father Cal who led her to her mother Jiaying and the transformative Terrigenesis process that gave Quake her powers. With the Inhuman storylines that followed, Daisy’s journey remained at the heart of the series for several seasons. So how did we not know that she had a sister named Kora? In the season 7 episode, “After,…
