Charles Bramesco
Black Panther Will Fight the Power (Using Superpowers) in ‘Avengers: Infinity War’
A thought to chew on this morning: is the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War the It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World of superhero movies? Both films sought to engineer success by jam-packing as many celebrities and other known quantities into its run time, assured that volume of wattage would surely translate to box-office paydirt. In the case of Stanley Kramer’s epic comedy, it worked, but the jury’s still out on Marvel’s latest superpalooza. Today brings the news that yet another big name will indeed be shoehorned into the third installment of the Avengers ensemble franchise, and fans are sure to be pleased.
Watch the Mandible-Dropping Trailer for Disney/Pixar’s ‘Coco’
From the earliest announcement of its premise, Disney/Pixar’s latest project Coco has sounded a little derivative on paper. The angle of “boy uses enchanted stringed instrument to contact family members from beyond the grave during fantastical journey” bore an unfortunate resemblance to last year’s outstanding Kubo and the Two Strings, and moreover, the recent animated film The Book of Life also imagined a vibrant hidden world behind the culture surrounding Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. But today brings the first real taste of Coco with an official trailer, and I am pleased to report that in practice, it sure looks like its own thing.
‘Wonder Woman’ Emerges Victorious at the 18th Annual Golden Trailer Awards
The Academy Awards may have run back in February, but the Golden Trailer Awards — nothing if not the Academy Awards for people without the patience to sit for a feature-length film — took place just last night. At the Saban Theater in Beverly Hills, Hollywood’s best and brightest were not present but did send marketing copywriters to collect special citations for outstanding achievements in the ma
Daredevil Tom Cruise Defied Death With His Latest Crazy Stunt in ‘American Made’
Tom Cruise has made it a professional point of pride that he does all of his own stunts. 54 years old, still ripped, and with nothing to lose, he’s made headlines and earned respect by jumping out of every structure imaginable, developing proficiency with various firearms, and most recently and notably, clinging to the side of a aircraft in active flight like a little gecko with a death wish. It would appear there’s nothing the man won’t do (aside from keep his shirt on for the full duration of a studio film), and a special report from the set of his upcoming thriller American Made has raised the bar even higher.
Mystery’s Afoot in Star-Studded ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ Trailer
The game is afoot, chums. There’s been a murder most foul, and you are a suspect. That is, in the event that you happen to be Willem Dafoe, Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley, Judi Dench, Josh Gad, Tom Bateman, Lucy Boynton, or one of the other travelers aboard the Orient Express. As the grand locomotive makes its hazardous journey through a snow-tipped mountain range, one of the riders commits a heinous crime, and it falls to none other than the great investigator Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh, who also happens to be directing this hullabaloo) to sort out the facts in pursuit of the truth.
A New Cut of ’Spider-Man 3’ Appeared Online This Weekend, But How Different Is It?
Spider-Man 3 truly is The Godfather III of its franchise: widely reviled as the weak point in a strong trilogy, fascinating in its own embarrassing and imperfect way, appreciated by some for what it is, but largely forgotten when compared to its towering predecessors. (More delightful still, this makes Topher Grace the Sofia Coppola of Spider-Man 3 by default.) But perhaps the film is due for a bit of a reappraisal, as an upcoming rerelease of the original trilogy has promised a recut version of the third installment. And in a fleeting surprise this past weekend, that new “editor’s cut” of the film popped up online for anyone to pore over.
Watch Liam Neeson Take Down Nixon as Deep Throat in First ‘The Silent Man’ Clip
It’s not an exact science, making movies. Plenty of projects get stuck in the suspended animation of development, and even those that move forward do so at a gradual pace. But sometimes, everything works out just perfectly: two years ago, I reported on a picture called Felt, a biopic of Watergate informant Mark ‘Deep Throat’ Felt starring Liam Neeson in the title role. I forgot about the item soon afterward, but production has been chugging along for the past couple of years, and director Peter Landesman is preparing to unveil this new film at the most perfect time imaginable. You can plan for a lot, but it takes a stroke of divine generosity for a full-scale Presidential treason investigation to break out around the time you release your Watergate movie.
Ian McKellen and Gabriel Byrne to Star in ‘Hamlet Revenant,’ Sans Bear Attacks
Ian McKellen is one of the most esteemed board-treaders alive, a thespian who has consistently and successfully balanced work on the stage with appearances before the camera. At 77, he’s had the chance to assay some of history’s great Shakespearean roles, portraying everyone from Macbeth to Coriolanus to Richard III. And today brings the news that a new project will allow him to blend his passions for the proscenium and the closed set in a revisiting of a signature role that McKellen last tackled way back in 1971.
Something’s Approaching (But What?) in the Terrifying New ‘It Comes At Night’ Trailer
Pronouns — terrifying, right? At least when they don’t have antecedents, that is. There’s suspense baked right into the title of It Comes At Night, the upcoming feature from Trey Edward Shults, director of last year’s self-assured debut Krisha. So what is the ‘it,’ and why is it coming at night? The attendees of the Overlook Film Festival are keeping mum, having gotten the first glimpse at the film this past weekend when it popped up as the festival’s secret surprise screening. They offered rapturous but spoiler-free praise, but luckily for the rest of us, a new trailer and poster have surfaced to shed a little light on what’s going on while simultaneously compounding the mystery.
Robert De Niro, Uma Thurman and Christopher Walken Start ‘The War With Grandpa’ in New Comedy
In the ’70s, Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken starred in the seminal Vietnam War film The Deer Hunter. It ranks among the more harrowing entries in an already brutal genre, unflinchingly depicting the conditions of abject inhumanity in the war zone and then bringing the trauma home to spiritually gut a declining Pennsylvania industry town. A lot has taken place since then, however. We’re now living in a post-Dirty Grandpa world. The news of another collaboration between De Niro and Walken no longer heralds an intense drama with awards potential in its very DNA. They’re now the twin titans of Grandpa Cinema, and their latest project has to reflect that.
The Title of ‘Avengers 4’ Is an ‘Infinity War’ Spoiler
Over this past weekend, CinemaBlend ran an interview with Marvel Studios decision-maker Kevin Feige. As per usual, the man was exceedingly tight-lipped about the future of his beloved superhero playthings, but even his obfuscating non-answers contained the tiny seedling of a revelation within them. While getting grilled about the fate of the Avengers franchise, its third entry of Infinity War slated for 2018, Feige let slip that there was a good reason that the already-scheduled fourth installment has no subtitle as of yet. Though the film was originally planned as the second half of Infinity War, the two projects were recently split into their own individual spheres, and Feige doesn’t want the fourth installment’s full title coming out because apparently it contains a spoiler.
Watch Gold Leader Deploy an F-Bomb in Unseen Footage From Original ‘Star Wars’
For a franchise about slightly sketchy space crooks and intergalactic military types, the Star Wars films are almost conspicuously free of profanity. It makes sense from a business perspective — keeping the series PG-13 ensures that it’ll be open to a wider array of viewers — and yet the absence of cussing feels especially noticeable in a movie starring the famously coarse-tongued Carrie Fisher. The closest the series came to a four-letter word was Han Solo getting dissed as a “scruffy nerf-herder,” but a recently discovered cache of lost footage from the original 1977 Star Wars is going to change all that in short order.