Let’s see how Spike Lee does with his next few movies. The “BlacKkKlansman” director had a solid outing with the aforementioned movie last year, which was deemed a comeback of sorts after a rough 10-year stretch of films which included “Miracle at St. Anna,” “Red Hook Summer,” “Oldboy,” “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus” and, although it had its fans, but not I, “Chiraq.” Those were, to me at least, the five worst Spike Lee joints of his career.
Read moreVince Gilligan’s ‘Breaking Bad’ Sequel Will Premiere on Netflix
Before she sells her soul to Disney, “The Rider" director Chloe Zhao has one final statement to make.
Before “The Rider” director Chloe Zhao helms the big screen adaptation of Jack Kirby’s “The Eternals” for Marvel and Disney, she will be going back to the American west for a final artful statement.
Read moreAziz Ansari on Accusation against him: “It’s a terrifying thing to talk about."
What happened to Aziz Ansari was unfair. In the midst of the Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey horror stories there was a sort of witch hunt for any man who may have elicited bad behavior towards women in the past. James Franco’s awkward flirting on the set of his movies had the actor shunned, and another unfortunate case was that of Ansari’s.
Read moreTodd Field’s ‘The Creed of Violence’ Reportedly Back in Production
Writer-Director Todd Field hasn’t made a film since “Little Children” (2006) and, before that, his incendiary debut “In the Bedroom” (2001). Whatever happened to him since 2006 is a mystery to me. Both films garnered eight Oscar nominations in total, he was heralded as a major new voice and then poof he was gone. What happened? I’m not sure. Something did. Either he was blackballed in the industry, for some reason, or, more realistically, he just had projects falling by the wayside due to the changing dynamics of the studio system ever since 2008’s “Iron Man” and “The Dark Knight” hit pay dirt and reshaped the way Hollywood thinks.
Read moreVanity Fair's Questionable Selections In Their “25 Most Influential Movie Scenes of the Past 25 Years” List
Vanity Fair decided to post “The 25 Most Influential Movie Scenes of the Past 25 Years.” I won’t mention the worthy additions, you can see the article for yourself, done in such a visually engaging way. No, but I do want to mention the questionable inclusions such as what the “Toy Story” opening scene is doing there, ditto the axe-murder scene in “American Psycho,” Denzel Washington’s “King Kong ain’t got shit on me” diatribe in “Training Day,’ Gollum vs. Smeagal in “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,” but more curiously, who in their right minds think that Diane Keaton crying as she writes a play in “Something’s Gotta Give,” Edward meeting Bella in “Twlight” and the “chosen one” scene in “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith” are worthy of the cinematic time-capsule?
Bryan Singer's ‘Red Sonja' Finally Put On Hold by Millennium Productions
Millennium Films, after much resistance, have finally decided to temporarily shelf Bryan Singer’s “Red Sonja” due to the alleged misconduct that has come out in recent months about his past history with underaged boys.
Singer has all but been shunned by the critical community, not to mention his Queen biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” star Rami Malek who actually refuses to thank him in any speech he gives whenever winning his best actor awards, it most recently happened again last night at the BAFTAs where Malek decided to thank Singer’s two-week replacement on the Queen biopic Dexter Fletcher instead. Hilarious.
The CEO of Millennium Films, the studio behind Singer’s latest “Red Sonja,” stood by Singer in a recent THR report. Avi Lerner claimed the allegations of sexual misconduct aimed at Singer were “agenda driven fake news.”
Despite all that, “Red Sonja” has been put on hold.
Rumored ‘Devil In The White City’ With DiCaprio And Scorsese To Be A Hulu Show Instead.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese’s “Devil in the White City,” was supposed to be their next project together, what with Scorsese crrently putting tthe finishing touches on “The Irishman".” However, it seems that now Hulu will be making it into a mini-series with Scorsese and DiCaprio still involved as producers.
Read moreWill Smith Should Have Never Taken the Impossible Task of Playing Genie
It was a risk that Disney knew would generate pushback from its fans. After all, Robin Williams’ voice work as Genie, which felt very much like fully-fleshed physical work as well, despite the animated constrictions, should be considered the greatest voicework in the history of animation. It’s not even close. Williams was already a brilliant, live-wire comedic performer when he decided to tackle the Genie in 1992’s “Aladdin”, but there’s no film that better captured Williams’ spirit and energy than his voice-over work in that movie. It felt like improvisation, and, based on some first-hand accounts, it seems like some of it was, which is unheard of in animation.
Read more“Cold Pursuit" Makes $10.8M at Weekend Box-Office; Has Liam Neeson Now Entered Nicolas Cage Direct-To-Video Territory?
Lionsgate's s Cold Pursuit “slightly exceeded [box-office] expectations with an $10.8 million opening,” according to BoxOfficeMojo. The film played to a 58% male audience, with 79% of the overall audience coming in aged 25 or older. Neeson's The Commuter, opened last January with $13.7 million and went on to gross around $36 million domestically. If anything, the “slightly’ exceeded expectations might have to do with the controversy which hit the actor earlier this week, it probably alerted audiences who may have not known that he had a new movie out that “Cold Pursuit” was being released.
Read moreJames Cameron Claims in the Future We Will Have ‘AI creating movies – and it’ll suck’
“I think you’ve got plenty of AI experts around who would say, yeah, sure. They’d take every movie every made, throw it into a massive database, feed all that into an AI, deep learning neural networks will analyse why they work, and you’ll have an AI create a movie – and it’ll suck. Because the AI is not embodied, it’s not having the human experience. It’ll be like a filmmaker who only knows other movies as opposed to being human.” - James Cameron
“Moonlight" director Barry Jenkins says growing up he was inspired by “Aliens," “Die Hard," and “Coming To America"
“Which films inspired him, growing up? “I wasn’t really inspired by film,” he says, “but I admired Spike Lee’s movies because they just felt very, very, very black. I remember watching School Daze and thinking, ‘What the hell is this?’ There were colleges for black people that just black people go to? And those colleges had all this shit going on? This is so energizing!
“Otherwise, it was the really big Hollywood stuff – The Color Purple, Aliens, Die Hard, Coming To America. I would catch the bus to go to the AMC theatre downtown. But I never thought, ‘Hey, maybe one day I might like to do that.’ It just didn’t seem possible.”
James Cameron reveals title for new “Terminator" movie is “Dark Fate"
James Cameron has been doing press for his misbegotten Alita: Battle Angel, which he co-wrote and produced, but in an exclusive interview with Yahoo!, the director revealed the title for the next Terminator movie": “We’re calling it, Terminator: Dark Fate,” Cameron said. “That’s our working title right now.”
Read moreScorsese’s longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker on “The Irishman": “Please don’t think it’s gonna be Goodfellas, because it isn’t.”
Martin Scorsese’s longtime Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker will be honored with the Fellowship award at the BAFTA’s this coming Sunday evening.
Read moreSean Penn Defends Bradley Cooper's “A Star is Born": “It's One of My Favorite Films of All-Time"
Sean Penn has decided to write an op-ed [via Deadline] defending his friend Bradley Cooper amidst his Best Director snub at the Oscars. Penn acknowledges that “A Star is Born” is most likely toast as far as winning Best Picture but that the film itself will stand the test of time and age like fine wine, at least when compare to some of the other nominees that “pander to the politics of the day,” according to the actor.
Read moreLegendary Actor Albert Finney Dies Aged 82; King of “Kitchen Sink"
It’s quite strange sitting here and writing about Albert Finney’s death because earlier this week I had dreamt he had died. Weird coincidence.
Read moreBryan Singer's BAFTA nomination Suspended by Academy
Bohemian Rhapsody director Bryan Singer’s name has been removed from the film's Bafta Awards nomination. ‘Rhapsody’ itself will remain nominated for the Outstanding British Film award on Sunday - but Singer's nomination has been "suspended,” which, in all likelihood, means removed.
Read more‘Shaft' Trailer: Badass Motherf***er Now Has a Son
I remember being severely disappointed by Samuel L. Jackson’s remake of “Shaft” back in 2000, then again I’m not necessarily a fan of the 1972 Richard Roundtree-starring original, it’s all part of the silliness of Blaxploitation, give me “Superfly” any day of the week. But, count me as looking forward to this father and nephew duo sequel, along with Shaft III aka John Shaft Jr. aka JJ (played by Jessie Usher) in the upcoming, still, titled “Shaft.” Yup, three film with the same goddamn title. It was originally titled “Son of Shaft.”
Read moreMichelle Rodriguez Says Liam Neeson Not a Racist Due to Way He Kissed Viola Davis in ‘Widows'
Steve McQueen's “Widows” begins with the wondrously set-up image of Viola Davis and Liam Neeson in bed together and passionately kissing. Some of the audience I saw the film with actually gasped at the scene and how, quite frankly, erotic the smooching was. Was it because Davis is an African-American woman and Liam Neeson is pure Irish white? Quite possibly. The reaction was telling; it showcased how some people are still in total denial that an interracial couple can have a passionate on-screen romance.
Read moreWoody Allen Sues Amazon For $68 Million Lawsuit; Claims Breach Of Contract Due To “A 25-Year-Old, Baseless Allegation”
Woody Allen will not go down without a fight.
After accusations of child molestation being brought back to the forefront last year, most notably by Ronan Farrow and Mia Farrow, the filmmaker, whose latest work “A Rainy Day in New York” seems to be in total limbo, has decided to sue Amazon for $68 million
Read more