Charles Bramesco
‘Beauty and the Beast’ Unseats ’Fifty Shades’ as Most-Viewed Trailer in 24 Hours
The trailer for the handsomely-mounted live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast surfaced on Tuesday, and drew strong reactions across the board. Many were taken with the first look at the Emma Watson/Dan Stevens romance, allowing themselves to be flooded with the same swooning emotion that Disney’s animated film conjured back in 1991. Some were less impressed, expressing low-level terror at the unnatural-looking designs for Mrs. Potts, Cogsworth, Lumiere, and the rest of the anthropomorphized household object gang. But regardless of overall reception, one thing is for certain: The Guardian notes that an unprecedented crap-ton of people accessed the trailer on YouTube, making 2017’s Beauty and the Beast the most-viewed-in-a-24-hour-period trailer of all time.
‘Minecraft’ Strikes Gold with Steve Carell as First Cast Acquisition
Minecraft, an open-space computer game in which players can build and create anything their heart can desire, has amassed a gigantic following among youngsters who use their imaginations to give birth to expansive worlds. Universally beloved among the world’s middle-schoolers, the game has spawned every merchandising tie-in under the sun, from pixelated foam swords to T-shirts with snappy slogans to lunch boxes. And now, the youth phenomenon will permeate the mainstream even further through a feature film adaptation. The project was announced in 2014, they landed a director in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia creator Rob McElhenney in 2015, and this year, they’ve made moves to lock down their first star.
The War Comes Home in Latest ‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’ Trailer
We know more about Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk today than we did when the first trailer debuted back in May. Our own Erin Whitney was present for the film’s world premiere at the New York Film Festival earlier this month, and relayed their full scoop back to us through their review: Ang Lee gets a lot of points for sheer chutzpah, having shot the first feature-length film using highly sophisticated 4K 120 frames-per-second technology, but his gambit ultimately fails. The realistic look of the film is almost too real, its crisp movements too unnaturally fluid for their own good.
‘Aquaman’ Will Be in the Spirit of ‘Romancing the Stone’ and ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’
The ages-old query of “So, who were your influences on the film?” still appears regularly in interviews following a big-name movie’s release. But in recent years, directors have started to name the films they drew from before the premiere as a way of drumming up anticipatory buzz. At the Star Wars Celebration in London earlier this year, Episode VIII director Rian Johnson name-checked Bridge on the River Kwai, Three Outlaw Samurai, Letter Never Sent, and 12 O’Clock High as points of reference for the next Star Wars picture. The initial public response went along the lines of “lol what the hell are you talking about,” but eventually cooled into “Alright, can’t front, that sounds pretty awesome.”
Bruce Springsteen Wrote a Song for the ‘Harry Potter’ Films, Which They Passed on Somehow
Back around Christmastime, the well-regarded genre-defiers Radiohead revealed that they had recorded their own theme for the latest James Bond picture, Spectre. It was baffling, not just because their composition was swooningly beautiful, but because the Spectre team ultimately ended up going with Sam Smith, instantly agreed upon as one of the lesser Bond theme singers. But that’s all peanuts compared to the latest gross injustice from the world of film soundtracking, with greater effrontery dealt to an even more esteemed statesman of rock.
Smithsonian Mounts $300,000 Campaign to Preserve Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers
A step above the sought-after Maltese Falcon and the fabled Ark of the Covenant, Dorothy Gale’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz have to be the single most vital prop in cinematic history. The red-sequined shoes, so lusted after by the Wicked Witch of the West in the immortal 1939 fantasy film, have spent the last 30 years as one of the Smithsonian's most popular attractions. But not even magical footwear is immune to the ravages of time, and Judy Garland’s old kicks have lost a bit of their luster. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, the iconic slippers have faded from their original Technicolor ruby to something closer to “a dull auburn.”
C’mon and Slam Now: ‘Space Jam’ Returning to Theaters Next Month
Millennials: Is there nothing we can't do? We got denim jackets back in fashion, forced a new season of Twin Peaks into existence, and peer-pressured LeBron James into signing on for a remake of Space Jam in the Michael Jordan role. Whether these are good or bad things is very much up for debate, but the matter stands that mid-’90s nostalgia has been a powerful motivating force in recent entertainment business. And now, the millennials of America have staged their greatest coup of all: the original Space Jam is coming back to theaters next month, notes The Hollywood Reporter.
TCM and Criterion Teaming for Cinephile-Geared Streaming Service FilmStruck
Quick, without thinking, what’s the biggest problem with Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, and the smorgasbord of competing video-streaming platforms available in today’s crowded marketplace? If your answer was “They took X-Men: Evolution off of Netflix, like, what’s that all about” then I am glad to have found a kindred spirit at long last, but the much more common response tends to be “Most of t
Latest ‘Secret Life of Pets’ Trailer Feels a Lot Like ‘Toy Story’ But With Animals
When Illumination Entertainment announced the basic premise for their upcoming The Secret Life of Pets — an animated adventure-comedy about the shenanigans our furry pals get into while we’re away at work for the day — it sure sounded an awful lot like Toy Story...
Warner Bros. Jump-Starts ‘Cannonball Run’ Remake
The original film collected Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore, Dom DeLuise, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Farrah Fawcett, Jackie Chan, Jamie Farr, and Peter Fonda in a cameo role, which means this new Cannonball Run will be required to cast at least nine beloved famous people if they want to get this up and running. Truly, the Fast and Furious parallels could not be more glaring.
The New ‘Angry Birds’ Trailer Is Urine-Drinking Fun For the Whole Family
Even as video games go, the mobile app Angry Birds is pretty conceptually thin. There are birds. They are angry, ostensibly because green pigs have constructed elaborate castles all over their bird-world, and nobody likes developers. The birds live only to slingshot themselves at high speeds into said castles, destroying them and hopefully eliminating all pigs in the process...
Washington Woman Accidentally Shot During ‘13 Hours’ Showing
The gallant paramilitary contractors of Michael Bay’s Benghazi film 13 Hours risked life and limb to defend our American way of life — our freedom to speak our minds, to worship as our souls move us, and most importantly, to carry fully loaded firearms into public spaces. And so it is with a dark, tragic irony that we relay the news that a Washington state woman sustained a gunshot wound during a screening of 13 Hours last night.