According to the Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department is moving to completely wipe out the Paramount consent decrees, a ruling which, for the past 70 years, has regulated how movie studios distribute films to movie theaters. If those decrees are indeed overturned (and it looks like they will be), it could have devastating consequences to the theater industry as we know it, and the entire movie landscape could shift as a result. Here’s what this means in practical terms.
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For his third feature in a row, writer/director Trey Edward Shults (Krisha, It Comes at Night) dives back into the subject of a family in crisis with Waves. This time around, he sets his drama in South Florida to trace the epic emotional journey of a suburban African-American family, led by Ronald (Sterling K. Brown), a well-intentioned father who puts a great deal of pressure on his high school athlete son Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr., from Luce, last year’s Monsters and Men, and Shults’ It Comes At Night), while tending to ignore his quiet, studious daughter Emily (newcomer Taylor Russell).
When tragedy strikes, the family—who also includes stepmom Catharine (Renée Elise Goldsberry)—has to find the strength to regroup and forgive flaws even in the darkest times they have every faced. Emily is able to find some kind of solace with the help of a new boyfriend Luke (Lucas Hedges). Waves is a sometimes uncomfortably real and emotionally raw experience, in which all of the characters find very different paths through suffering and recovery, but it’s the journey that Shults paves for his characters that makes the film such a worthy and fulfilling experience.
/Film spoke with Shults, Harrison, and Russell in Chicago recently during the Chicago International Film Festival, where they discussed the very personal events that led to the screenplay, and the ways in which the actors found their way into their very different characters, and the way Shults represented each with unique visual languages. Waves is currently in limited release, opening in top markets on November 22, and continuing to rollout throughout the holiday season.
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Justin Lin’s Fast & Furious 9 doesn’t hit theaters until May 2020, but if you’re dying for more stories set in the Fast universe, you won’t have to wait nearly that long to see one. Fast and Furious: Spy Racers, the new animated series from Universal and DreamWorks Animation, arrives on Netflix in just over a month, and the studio just sent out a batch of new images from the show as well as the full cast list. Check them out below, and learn who Vin Diesel’s daughter is playing in the series. Read More »
Will we ever see The Snyder Cut, the fabled alternate version of Justice League? I really don’t know. But a lot of people want it to see the light of day – not just fans, but the folks associated with the film as well. Last night, director Zack Snyder and a large chunk of the Justice League cast took to social media to petition Warner Bros. to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut. The comments looked so coordinated that many assumed it was all a build-up towards an official announcement that the cut was coming – perhaps to HBO Max. But that’s not the case. According to Warner Bros., there are no immediate plans to release the Snyder Cut. Unless they’re lying and this is all part of a very elaborate campaign.
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For decades, Anthony Daniels has been hidden by a golden mask, a globally recognized droid with an instantly recognizable voice that’s played by a man few would notice walking down the street. As the man and voice behind the beloved Star Wars character C-3P0, he’s helped usher audiences into this vast space saga like no other performer. At the outset of the release of Star Wars the human contribution made by Daniels was downplayed, with early marketing efforts avoiding how such an indelibly neurotic character was brought to life. After struggling to come to terms with both the massive success as well as his connection to this iconic automaton, Daniels is finally in a space to tell his tale, rivets and all.
His new book, I Am C-3P0: The Inside Story, is a briskly told tale of a young stage actor who found the role of a lifetime, a man who struggled at first to make sense of just how he could navigate the success and anonymity of what brought his creation global attention. The film provides some fascinating insights, and is told with a droll, eminently British dry wit that’s indicative of the man. Like his costume, some of the more burnished moments are matched with events that are tarnished, yet throughout the telling there’s a sense of both gratitude and bemused amazement for what the last four decades have brought this soft-spoken, intelligent performer.
With the calculated odds high that The Rise Of Skywalker promises an even more integral role for Threepio, a capper for a saga that began with lines of dialogue spoken in wonderfully neurotic fashion from that iconic auriferous visage, making this a perfect time to reflect upon this remarkable journey that has shaped generations.
/Film spoke to Daniels while he was in Toronto for the launch of his book.
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On the November 18, 2019 episode of /Film Daily, /Film senior writer Ben Pearson is joined by /Film managing editor Jacob Hall and writer Chris Evangelista to have a spoiler discussion about the fifth episode of HBO’s Watchmen, entitled “Little Fear of Lightning.” Read More »
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a little over a month away, and if you’re somehow not hyped for the final entry in the Skywalker Saga, maybe this new image will do the trick. It features Oscar Isaac‘s Poe Dameron looking either shocked, thrilled, or both shocked and thrilled to be piloting the Millennium Falcon for the very first time. See it in full below.
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This post contains spoilers for The Mandalorian.
Writing about The Mandalorian episode-to-episode feels like folly, since the show seems so clearly designed for the binge era of streaming. Granted, “Chapter 2: The Child” arrives just three days after “Chapter 1” (which looks discernibly Star Wars but zips past anything discernibly human), though were the gap a traditional seven days, the hook might not have been strong enough to linger in people’s memories and draw them back for more. Yes, there is a little green baby that resembles Master Yoda. No, this infant’s presence doesn’t immediately challenge the Mandalorian — perhaps it might in episode 2?
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The infamous giant alien squid made its onscreen debut during last night’s Watchmen, and it was quite a stunning reveal. During a flashback sequence to 1985, we see the aftermath of the squid being dropped onto the Big Apple, with its aftershocks rippling all the way to Hoboken, New Jersey. In a new interview, Watchmen showrunner Damon Lindelof talked about bringing the squid into the show, and how “post-traumatic squid disorder” still affects certain characters.
Plus: watch a trailer for the next episode, which promises to answer questions and be mind-blowing at the same time.
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Cool Posts From Around the Web:
There has been a lot of buzz surrounding the arrival of the first live-action Star Wars series The Mandalorian since Disney+ became available in the United States, Canada and the Netherlands. However, discussing the show itself has proven to be somewhat tricky since the end of the first episode features a big character spoiler that is an important part of the show’s foundation, and that’s challenging for audiences around the rest of the world trying to avoid spoilers until they can watch the series themselves.
Well, Disney has now moved away from classifying this character as a spoiler, because they tweeted about them openly from the official Star Wars account on Twitter, including an image from The Mandalorian. That means we’ll be changing how we approach referencing this character in future coverage. Don’t worry, we won’t spoil who this character is in this article, but we will explain how our coverage will continue from here on out so you know how best to proceed to avoid The Mandalorian character spoiler. Read More »
