Charles Bramesco
A24 Says ‘Hi, Doggy!’ to ‘The Disaster Artist,’ Sets December Release
The world has come one step closer to bearing witness to the full scope of James Franco’s artistic vision. As the latest component of his ongoing interrogation of celebrity, performance, artifice, and vague pseudo-intellectualism, he’s adapted The Disaster Artist, actor Greg Sestero’s true account of his time behind the scenes of the calamitous production of The Room. Famed as one of the most bafflingly incompetent movies of all time, the real weirdness came off set, where director/writer/financier/star/madman Tommy Wiseau (played by Franco in the movie) engaged Sestero in a bizarre, homoerotically charged rivalry. Which makes the fact that Franco’s brother Dave will play Sestero just that much stranger.
Things Go From Bad to Worse for Robert Pattinson in First ‘Good Time’ Trailer
As he’s transitioned into the serious-actor phase of his career, former teen girl fantasy Robert Pattinson has become something a fixture on the film festival circuit. This week, he’ll make the journey to Cannes when his latest starring vehicle Good Time plays in the Competition section, and though we common rabble will have to wait until August 11 for the U.S. release, today brings the first trailer for the A24-fronted project. And from the looks of this dizzying swirl of color and brutality, New York’s hometown heroes Josh and Benny Safdie have brought the heat.
Watch Will Ferrell’s Rousing Rendition of ‘I Will Always Love You’ at USC’s Commencement
Beaming families, teary smiles, mortarboards in the air — it’s graduation season, which means that more importantly, it’s celebrity commencement address season. While some high-profile speakers have received a chillier reception than others, the A-lister speech has long been a reliably amusing diversion in between long-winded orations from dusty academic types. Maya Rudolph took plenty of artistic license with “The Star-Spangled Banner” at my graduation ceremony from Tulane a few years ago, an unforgettable experience that I was too drunk to currently remember. But today brings video of another movie star taking the stage before a mass of fresh-faced students blissfully unaware of how hard getting a job is. Ladies, gentlemen, Will Ferrell is in the house.
Scientists Name New Species of Dinosaur After Zuul of ‘Ghostbusters’
We owe a lot to scientists — they cured polio, got us on the moon, and they‘re doing their darnedest to stop us from methodically killing the planet. But man, what a bunch of nerds. It seems like every time biologists discover a new species of animal and need to give it a name, they take the opportunity to bust out a reference to their favorite bit of geek-approved pop culture. Lest we forget the velvet worm named after My Neighbor Totoro, and we’d be remiss to overlook the euglossa bazinga, a rare bee with a Big Bang Theory catchphrase as its namesake. And it appears that now the nerds are at it again.
‘Beauty and the Beast’ Is Now the Highest-Grossing PG Movie of All Time
We‘ve only just entered May, but in the first few months of 2017, the year has yielded a surprisingly eclectic array of blockbusters. Survey the biggest earners to date, and you’ll see a socially critical horror flick from a first-time director, a spin-off based on a cross-property licensing deal within a corporate brand expansion, and a tough-as-nails superhero side project with post-apocalyptic Western overtones. The latest Fast and Furious installment looks most at home in the top five so far, but more unexpected still is that it’s been handily defeated by the year’s top earner, Disney’s handsomely mounted revival of Beauty and the Beast. And now, the unlikely box-office behemoth has claimed another record.
Does This Random Reddit User Actually Know the First Act of ‘The Last Jedi’?
Truth is in perilously short supply these days, and whether in the spheres of politics or entertainment, reporters have had to adapt. It’s no longer enough to ferret out the actual reality of a situation and relay that to readers; writers must get out in front of and directly interface with the flurries of half-facts and hearsay that swirl around any major story. So the read on a new cache of purportedly leaked information regarding the upcoming Star Wars film is not so much “We may now know what happens in The Last Jedi” as much as it is “A Reddit user wants us to believe he knows what happens in The Last Jedi.”
Johnny Depp Makes Surprise Appearance on ‘Pirates’ Ride at Disneyland
Johnny Depp needs some public image rehabilitation, and badly. When it came out last year that he had physically abused former spouse Amber Heard, a dark and sickly pallor was cast over the heretofore beloved actor’s profile. It isn’t helping that he hasn’t been in a good movie since 2011 (Rango, though Verbinski’s follow-up The Lone Ranger has its supporters), and hasn’t been in a really profitable one since 2014’s Into the Woods. The guy has to save a little face if he wants to secure his future in this business, and what better way to do that than to play to the only demographic unaware of his unsavory personal life: the youth!
Feast Your Eyes on Gotham City and Metropolis From Warner Bros.’ New Amusement Park
If I learned anything about Abu Dhabi from watching the entirety of Sex and the City 2 while sitting in a tattoo parlor waiting room (which actually happened and is not a joke), it’s that the United Arab Emirates city is a mecca of wealth. The oil-rich nation has concentrated much of its affluence in its capital, and accordingly, the area has exploded with development in recent years. Skyscrapers have cropped up like so many dandelions, massive tourist resorts now dot the coastline, and high-end boutique shopping caters to such fashionable visitors as Carrie Bradshaw and her pals. And while Abu Dhabi’s latest attraction won’t invite as many Dolce & Gabbana puns as one might like, it will delight comic book fans worldwide.
‘Beauty and the Beast’ Knocked ‘Star Wars’ Out of the All-Time Domestic Box Office Top 10
This past weekend, a seismic shift in box-office history took place and went largely unnoticed. The writing was on the wall for Star Wars’ legacy in the all-time top 10 highest-earning films, as noted on Reddit prior to the start of this past weekend. Box-office behemoth Beauty and the Beast continued to generate healthy grosses in its fifth weekend of release, ending the weekend with a princely (or should I say, princessly!) sum of $471.1 million. This gave the film a slight edge of the next-most-lucrative film on the list, which just so happened to be George Lucas’ original space opus. Star Wars and its lifetime gross of $461 million have now slid down to the #11 spot.
Netflix Is Willing to Release Original Movies Into Theaters, But Only After They’re on Netflix
Yesterday, Indiewire film critic David Ehrlich ran an illuminating essay on Netflix’s testy relationship with the original films it releases, explaining how their model of bypassing theatrical release and going straight to streaming ultimately degrades the viewing experience and makes the movies harder to find and appreciate. (This comes hot on the heels of an official denunciation from the Federation of French Cinemas against the Cannes Film Festival for allowing TV into their lineup for the first time ever.) Clearly, his words went straight to the top of Netflix’s corporate office, as the online video giant has issued a letter to their shareholders assuring them that everything’s going to be fine and movies aren’t dead, probably.
‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ Has Five (!) Post-Credit Scenes
While the post-credits scene was once a surprise specially afforded to those superfans with the dedication to sit through the final frames of a film, it’s now become par for the course, a de facto advertisement for whatever a franchise might have up its sleeve next. Marvel Studios has turned this into standard operating procedure, to the point where viewers expect nothing less than another tasty morsel of footage, the cinematic equivalent of the delicious fries waiting for you at the bottom of your McDonald’s bag. How to continue taking audiences off-guard, then? Marvel could do no post-credit scene at all, that’d certainly throw people for a loop. Or... they could do five.
‘Jackie Chan Adventures’ to Return With New Animated Series and Feature Film
My fellow millennials can join me in fond memories of the Saturday mornings spent rapt before new episodes of The Jackie Chan Adventures on Kids! WB. Revered martial arts movie star Jackie Chan played an Indiana Jones-esque fictionalized version of himself, a former archaeology professor who takes up the arguably more vital work of protecting the world from demons and monsters. He teamed up with his precocious niece Jade, his powerful but cranky Uncle, and their hulking foe-turned friend Tohru in pursuit of the mystical talismans, little octagonal stones that imbue their holder with fantastical superpowers. The show was just as fun as it sounds, full of Shaw Brothers-caliber kung fu action and slapsticky humor from the always-game Chan.