After a full month of folks obsessing over Martin Scorsese declaring that Marvel movies aren’t “cinema”, filmmaker and agent of chaos Werner Herzog has decided to shift the “cinema” conversation elsewhere. Herzog has a part in the new Disney+ Star Wars TV series The Mandalorian. And even though everyone agrees that The Mandalorian is part of the TV landscape, Herzog just went ahead and referred to it as “cinema.”
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Netflix wants you to know that they are not concerned about the launch of Disney+, a service that will quickly become one of their biggest competitors.
Speaking at the Paley International Council Summit in New York today, Netflix chief creative officer Ted Sarandos was asked what has changed at Netflix in the wake of Disney+’s release earlier this week, and he responded, “I don’t mean to say this [as] anything but the truth, which is — nothing, really.” Read his justification for that statement below, as well as his most recent thoughts on the problem of Peak TV.
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While doing press for last night’s world premiere of The Mandalorian, which showcased the first three episodes of the Disney+ series, showrunner/creator Jon Favreau addressed the pilot episode’s shocking ending. Read his comments below, but beware of spoilers if you haven’t seen the first episode yet. Read More »
When writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins made Watchmen, it was like nothing the audience had ever seen. Everything from the nine-panel grid structure, to the supplemental fictional documents at the end of each issue, to the intertwined narratives, to its use of flashbacks and nonlinear storytelling served to make the graphic novel a deconstruction and satire of the superhero story. Because of how much the story depended on the comic-book structure and aesthetic, it was deemed unfilmable – the most common criticism of Zack Snyder’s adaptation is that it was too close to the comic and didn’t add anything that wasn’t already on the page.
By all accounts, HBO’s newest adaptation of Watchmen, creator Damon Lindelof and executive producer Nicole Kassell succeed where Zack Snyder did not. Instead of doing a straight-up sequel, the show is — as Lindelof kept calling it in the months before the show’s premiere — a “remix” of the original graphic novel. It serves as both a sequel and a brand-new story taking inspiration from the core ideas. The show satirizes current politics and our mythologizing of authority figures, and updates it to 2019 politics and sensibilities. This is how Watchmen manages to bring the comic to 2019.
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The Mandalorian has been buzzed about all week since the debut of the first episode on Disney+. While we have to wait until tomorrow to see how the story continues with the second episode, a crowd in Los Angeles was treated to a screening of the first three episodes of the series on the big screen at Disney’s El Capitan theater right in the heart of Hollywood. Following the screening, there was a live Q&A that was streamed through the Star Wars YouTube channel that you can watch in full now.
The big push for The Mandalorian being all over the place and dominating social media conversation is largely thanks to the publicity team behind the Disney+ series, and they were just nominated for International Cinematographers Guild Publicists’ Maxwell Weinberg Award for Television Publicity Campaign. Find out more below. Read More »
On the November 14, 2019 episode of /Film Daily, /Film editor-in-chief Peter Sciretta is joined by /Film managing editor Jacob Hall, weekend editor Brad Oman, senior writer Ben Pearson and writers Hoai-Tran Bui and Chris Evangelista to discuss what they’ve been up to at the Water Cooler. Read More »
Noelle would seem to have all the necessary elements you’d want to find in a feature comedy: a few recognizable actors, a high-concept premise, a character arc, setpieces, etc. But there’s something just…off about the whole affair, from its opening moments. Maybe the key problem here is that the basic conclusion of the movie is such an obvious, foregone conclusion. Or maybe it’s that the humor is lifeless, or the emotion false and unearned. Whatever it is, Noelle is the kind of Christmas present that has shiny packaging and a whole lot of nothing behind all the wrappings.
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Quentin Tarantino keeps swearing up and down that he’s going to retire from filmmaking after he makes one more movie. And it looks like he won’t be making his tenth and final film for a little while – but that doesn’t mean he won’t be keeping busy. The filmmaker recently revealed plans to stay occupied with a novel, a play, and also a TV show.
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Aquaman, the best superhero movie of 2018 (don’t @ me) will have a sequel soon enough, and you can expect to see some familiar faces. In addition to Jason Momoa‘s underwater hero, the sequel will also be bringing back Patrick Wilson as Aquaman’s half-brother/enemy Orm, AKA Ocean Master. James Wan is returning to direct Aquaman 2, which will begin production next year.
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Brooklyn Nine-Nine, one of the best network comedies of the past decade, has officially been given the go-ahead for an eighth season. And no, you haven’t missed anything, because Season 7 hasn’t aired yet – that debuts in February 2020. But NBC, which rescued the show after Fox cancelled it two summers ago, evidently wants to keep it alive for a little while longer. Read More »
