I never thought I’d write about political pundit Megan McCain, but here we are, the industry is vastly shut down until next week and this is a rather amusing story.

The interns, who were asked to assemble Barack Obama’s annual list of 2023’s best films, came up with a peculiar crop of films this year. It doesn’t look as algorithm-generated as in previous years.

Back at #1 is “Wonka,” which grossed close to $10 million on Tuesday. The film’s a hit — $88 million, so far, domestically and $263 million worldwide.

Why not have an end of the year Cannes spitball? It tends to be a monthly thing here to update and predict Cannes, leading up to the lineup announcement in mid-April.

Michael Mann’s “Ferrari” was initially planned to go direct to streaming on Showtime. It’s only after a sudden bidding war happened, between Neon and A24, that theatrical was an option.

Scandal in the Korean film world. Actor Lee Sun Kyun is dead. To U.S. audiences, he’s best known for his role as the father of the affluent family in “Parasite.”

I’ve been reading The Atlantic’s Zack Snyder profile, “The Director People Love to Hate,” and here comes Christopher Nolan defending, again, Snyder’s influence on cinema.

Bad reviews be damned, Zack Snyder’s “Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire” is a decent success on Netflix.

“Poor Things” opened wide, in an extra 800 theaters, this weekend. I’d love to gauge some of our readers’ thoughts on this unusually eccentric film. Does it deserve its glowing reviews?

Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” was released 10 years ago yesterday. Its resonance still looms large.

The big winner seems to be Warner Bros’ “The Color Purple,” a $100 million budgeted musical that made a whopping $18 million on Christmas Day. It’s a hit. Whether it recoups its budget remains to be seen, but it’s a hell of a good start.

There’s an inordinate amount of struggling actors and actresses desperately looking for their shots at Hollywood fame — the sad fact remains that 99.9% of them won’t make it.

When it comes to A-list directors naming some of their favorite movies, there have definitely been a few head scratchers over the years, and I absolutely love it.

When recently asked who is the actual Oscar frontrunner between Cillian Murphy and Bradley Cooper, The New York Times’ Kyle Buchanan, an astute Oscar observer, says watch out for Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers”).

We are a little less than a year away from Todd Phillips’ “Joker: Folie à Deux” being released in theaters. Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix are set to star in the sequel, which is said to be a musical.

Two weeks ago, DC head James Gunn had stated that no script had been submitted yet to to him — a deadline has now been officially set for early February script submission, with casting to follow soon afterwards.

One of Snyder’s superfans is noted National Review critic Armond White, who hasn’t been shy in his unadorned, and very vocal, fandom for Snyder’s films — calling him the best living mainstream filmmaker.

A quick update on ‘Avengers 5’ aka “Avengers: Secret Wars.” Daniel Richtman is reporting that it will start production in late 2024. There is still no director for this project after Daniel Destin Cretton dropped out late this year.

James Wan is done with ‘Aquaman’ and has quickly announced his next project. He’s adapting “The Call of Cthulhu.” An ambitious endeavor that will hopefully turn out to be fruitful one for him.

I think this year has confirmed what some believed to be a myth: the term “superhero fatigue.” It’s real and it’s spectacularly present right now.