Charles Bramesco
Explosive Racial Tensions Turn Harrowing in New ‘Detroit’ Trailer
It’s a tableau with which anyone who watches the news is all too familiar: police station, pair of white interrogators, terrified-looking black man. But it’s not from last night’s 10 o’clock broadcast — the year is 1967, and that’s Star Wars star John Boyega in the chair, fielding aggressive and leading questions from the stern officers. It’s a tense scene bordering on the sickening, and the trailer for Kathryn Bigelow’s supercharged period piece Detroit only get more brutal from there.
A New ‘Frozen’ Short Is Coming to Theaters This Fall
Do you wanna build a snowman... again? Disney sure hopes so, as they announced in a new press release today that their mega-successful Frozen would gain a sort of mini-sequel in an upcoming short to be bundled with Coco. But Olaf’s Frozen Adventure is no ordinary lead-in to the main event; it sounds like quite a bit has gone into the short that Disney repeatedly refers to as a “featurette,” running at 21 minutes and including four new songs, as well as returning cast members Josh Gad, Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, and Jonathan Groff. Parents, batten down the hatches, for a new ‘Let It Go’ is close at hand.
The Average Netflix User Has Streamed Almost Three Adam Sandler Movies
Netflix has been notoriously secretive about their data, whether that’s subscription demographics or the all-important individual streaming figures for specific titles. Though they’ve grown into a major player in the world of entertainment, we really have no earthly idea whether Netflix is successful or not. (They almost definitely are, unless this is the single most brazen bluff in showbiz history.) The only knowledge we have of Netflix’s inner workings comes from the occasional missive issued by content head Ted Sarandos, who made one such announcement in a recent letter to shareholders. Among the financial jargon and quarterly earnings reports, Sarandos dropped the chilling detail that Netflix’s 100 million-strong user base has collectively streamed over 500 million hours of Adam Sandler movies since The Ridiculous Six opened. Today, ScreenCrush invites you to consider the brain-collapsing enormity of that number.
Why’s Everyone Talking About ‘The Babadook’? Explaining the Internet’s New Weirdest Joke
There‘s a new gay icon in Hollywood currently enjoying a moment of enhanced visibility. If you find Ellen too squeaky-clean, Neil Patrick Harris too eager-to-please, or Lance Bass too Lance Bass, then you’re in luck, because a new LGBT champion has emerged from the shadows to capture the hearts of millions. He’s here, he’s queer, and he wants to eat the child that cracked open his cursed pop-up book: good citizens of the Internet, the Babadook has burst out of the closet, and he’s hungry.
‘An Inconvenient Sequel’ Bumped Back to Incorporate Trump’s Paris Accord Decision
Between its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016 and its theatrical release last month, Laura Poitras’ WikiLeaks documentary Risk transformed into a different film. In that interim year, her subject Julian Assange nabbed quite a few headlines as he stuck his thumb in the 2016 Presidential election, and Poitras rightly believed she’d have to recut the film to account for all the new developments. And now, in a similar situation, another festival-feted nonfiction film has been made to rewrite its own story as real-world news breaks.
Chloe Grace Moretz ‘Appalled’ at Trailer Featuring Snow White Body Shaming
When the Cannes Film Festival descends on the French Rivieira, movie billboards and banners crop up all around the Croisette area to catch the attention of industry big shots in town. One such poster advertised a little film called Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs, a new animated project out of Korea in which Chloe Grace Moretz voices the apple-eater of note Snow White. But the passersby at the festival were none too pleased with the advertisement, see if you can guess why: it displays two Snow Whites, one thin and tall, the other shorter and a bit plumper. The tagline? “What if Snow White was no longer beautiful and the 7 Dwarfs not so short?”
It’s Been a While, But Rick Moranis Is Going to Act Again
Rick Moranis: the guy Woody Allen calls a nebbish, a nervously tittering lead of family films (he lit up millennial living rooms with his Honey, I... trilogy) and bluer comedic works (Ghostbusters, Little Shop of Horrors, Spaceballs) alike. He was everywhere in the ’80s, but took an eminently understandable hiatus from acting beginning in the ’90s after his wife Ann succumbed to breast cancer. He did a noble and difficult thing by focusing all his energies on dutifully raising his motherless children, turning his back on fame and his public. Though he’s still taken the occasional job — he gave his kids something to love by contributing voice work to Brother Bear — he’s shied away from highly visible gigs. Until now!
Enter the World of Miyazaki With a Studio Ghibli Theme Park
Watching the fanciful films of Studio Ghibli, it’s all too easy to imagine yourself transported to these far-off worlds of fantasy. The universe created by animation heads Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata feel simultaneously cozy and adventurous, practically inviting you to take a ride on My Neighbor Totoro’s catbus, pig out at the enchanted buffet (pun intended) of Spirited Away, or goof around with the cute little forest spirits in Princess Mononoke. That dream has now inched closer to reality, as worthy competition emerges to rival the insane-sounding Avatar theme park that opened earlier this week.
Pixar Establishes New Division for Experimental Shorts
Is Pixar losing their touch? They’re no longer the coolest animation house, having ceded some of that street cred to the international curators of GKids and the stop-motion prestidigitators at Laika. They’re not the most profitable, either, as their box office receipts are regularly dwarfed by the money factories erected by parent company Disney or Illumination. (Last year’s mega-smash Finding Dory was sorely needed after the underperforming The Good Dinosaur.) Pixar’s rep as the industry’s most creativity-driven, unfailingly excellent studio has faded as they’ve leaned a little harder on moneymaking sequels — Cars 3, coming soon! — but today brings the news that they’ve taken a significant step into regaining supremacy over the industry.
Elizabeth Banks-Led ‘Charlie’s Angels’ Reboot Now Slated for Summer 2019
As noted in a new item at Variety today, Sony has been on something of a roll when it comes to getting female talent behind the camera. They’ve put together a respectable slate of films directed by women: Catherine Hardwicke was tapped to translate narco thriller Miss Bala for American audiences, Broad City mastermind Lucia Aniello wrote-directed the upcoming bachelorette-shenanigans comedy Rough Night, Michelle MacLaren landed the Sam Claflin-led thriller Nightingale, and perhaps most intriguingly of all, Elizabeth Banks has taken her next directorial project with a reboot of Charlie’s Angels. And for the latter two, today brings concrete news of impending developments.
Evangeline Lilly Shows Off Snazzy New ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ Costume on Twitter
Even as Marvel continues to crank out massively scaled spectacles, they’re always keeping one eye on the future. Ant-Man sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp won’t shrink down and infiltrate theaters until July 6, 2018, but the wheels of pre-production have begun turning on the sequel audiences apparently asked for.
Jessica Chastain to Play Ingrid Bergman in New Romance-Biopic
Jessica Chastain’s had a busy week at the Cannes Film Festival, sitting in as one of the Competition jurors under this year’s El Presidente, filmmaker Pedro Almodovar. She’s been kept plenty occupied, flitting back and forth between screenings and photo ops, taking interviews, and skillfully changing the subject whenever co-juror Will Smith asks her what she thought of Collateral Beauty. (That last one’s in my imagination, but still.) But even as she puts a comfortingly symmetrical face on international cinephilia, the beloved and award-festooned star has found time to ink a deal on a new project. And my fellow Chastainiacs have ample cause to rejoice — it may be her most swoonworthy turn yet.