Charles Bramesco
Check Out the New ‘Beauty and the Beast’ TV Spots, Go Ahead, Be Our Guest
Despite volumes of scholarship from feminist theorists on its undertones of spousal abuse and insidious romanticizing of male brutality, Disney‘s Beauty and the Beast has remained a cherished childhood favorite worldwide. Kids love talking furniture, go figure. The live-action remake starring Emma Watson and an unrecognizable Dan Stevens is hot on the way to its March 17 release, and Disney has now released two new TV spots to further amp up the anticipation. In the first, embedded above, the Beast implores lovely Belle to “think of the one thing you’ve always wanted, and feel it in your heart.” We get a glimpse of the timeless ballroom-waltz scene, some barroom carousing from Gaston, and yet another look at the deeply unsettling character designs for Lumiere and Cogsworth.
Did ‘Friends’ Chandler and Monica Move Into the ‘Home Alone’ House?
It’s not uncommon for movie studios to recycle their sets between productions, or for different crews to make use of the same locations. For sharp-eyed viewers, this can create the surreal effect of fictional universes overlapping and coexisting with one another. Take Hogan’s Heroes, for instance: the company behind the popular POW camp-set sitcom put the compound on which they shot most of their episodes up for sale after they had wrapped. It was later used for numerous other shoots, most notably in the pornographic Nazi-exploitation film Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S.
‘Fifty Shades Darker’ Soundtrack Lands Taylor Swift and Zayn Malik for Lead Single
For someone who’s oriented so much of her music around her relationships with men, Taylor Swift has remained strangely asexual. Though she’s often seen canoodling with her various paramours, her public persona has remained squeaky clean and her music matches. Her songs focus on romance rather than seduction, more concerned with the dress she’s wearing rather than the process of taking it off. She’s a big fan of the “just sort of bending over” dance move, which could be kinda sexual, if you insist on taking it there. But for the most part, she’s kept it chastely PG.
AFI Spreads the Wealth With Their Best Films of 2016 Selections
As December rolls on, so too does the cavalcade of year-end lists. The latest authority to weigh in is AFI, by which I mean the American Film Institute and not the Californian alternative-rock group also known as A Fire Inside. While we may never know which films the quartet behind “Miss Murder” favored this year, the other AFI has released their list of 2016’s ten best releases, and it’s a little more varied than some of the heretofore published lists, bringing in some films with less awards buzz along with your usual suspects of Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, and La La Land.
T-Minus 11 Days to ‘Rogue One,’ So Here’s a Featurette and TV Spot
Eleven long days separate the general public from the wide release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. I dreamt last night that in their efforts to continue to stoke the eternal flame of hype, Lucasfilm unknowingly released the entirety of the film piecemeal over dozens of spliced-together promos. Some ambitious fan isolated each snippet of footage and stitched it back together into the competed feature and released it on his own under the title Not Rogue One. Other Star Wars aficionados, out of respect for the effort, then started to edit fan videos devoted to the DIY film that pretty much resembled the original promos from Lucasfilm. If Borges was alive today and far worse at writing, this would be his latest novella.
Harriet Tubman Biopic ‘Harriet’ Headed to Theaters
Abolitionist, humanitarian, and regular fourth-grade history report subject Harriet Tubman may very well be the most significant black woman to have ever lived. She ferried what scholars estimate to be over seventy runaway slaves to freedom through her Underground Railroad network of sanctuary, and to this day continues to provide inspiration to anyone struggling to do the right thing in a status quo that enforces injustice. Having most recently unseated former president and noted genocidal maniac Andrew Jackson as the face of the $20 bill, Harriet Tubman may be the closest thing U.S. history has to an actual superhero.
Will Ferrell to Star as Ronald Reagan in Satirical Biopic
As a President and as a man, Ronald Reagan has a complex and divisive legacy. To modern-day conservatives, his sweeping return of power to the free market and decentralization of federal influence was tantamount to an act of God; to his detractors, Reagan’s the guy who waged a racist “War on Drugs” and may or may not have approved the governmental manufacturing of crack-cocaine, the guy who allowe
Superman Only Has 43 Lines of Dialogue in ‘Batman vs. Superman’
The number 43 has held many different significances over the years. The newest significance of the number will surely eclipse any previous, however: heretofore, the number 43 shall be known as the exact number of lines of dialogue spoken by Henry Cavill‘s Superman in Batman vs...
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Animated Scooby-Doo Reboot ‘S.C.O.O.B.’ to Launch Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe
Remember the late ’90s? Remember the dot-com bubble, when this exciting newfangled invention called “the Inter-net” was going to make us all richer than god and jet-propel the American economy into the future? Wall Streeters started buying up highly speculative tech stocks like crazy, and when it came time for the invested companies to deliver the goods, many failed completely and the business wen
Denzel Washington to Direct, Star in ‘Fences’ Film with Viola Davis
Turn back the clock to 2010, and the hottest ticket on Broadway is a revival of August Wilson’s Pulitzer-winning play Fences, a poignant and daring meditation on race relations in America with a focus on the hardships of the black experience. It has all the necessary qualifications for a bona fide Broadway smash: a handsome pedigree of awards and acclaim (the production took the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play in 2010), urgent social significance, and some Hollywood talent slumming it on the boards in between film projects. Denzel Washington and Viola Davis starred as the married couple at the heart of Fences, winning raves and a Tony apiece, and created a rare sensation that dazzled audiences for thirteen weeks and then vanished.