Charles Bramesco
The Shrek-oning Approaches With ‘Big Reinvention’ and Fifth Installment in the Works
In the years since Shrek Forever After, our most recent check-in with the friendly Mike Myers-voiced ogre, DreamWorks’ animated franchise has matured from a massively successful creative property into something vaster and stranger. Gradually but undeniably, the Shrek films have turned into a Whole Big Weird Internet Thing, with various denizens of the World Wide Web creating disturbing fan-art and cracking absurdist jokes about the smart-alecky series of animated films. In certain online circles, even uttering the words “Some-BODY once told me” is enough to prompt a barrage of surreal humor and warped image macros. And now that Shrek lives on as a sense-stymieing parody of its former self, what better time to revive the franchise?
Early Reactions Suggest ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales’ May Be… Good?
After the fourth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean saga debuted to a critical shellacking, many believed the film would be a franchise-killer for the swashbruckling adventure series. (“Swashbruckling” is an industry term for Jerry Bruckheimer-produced films that include swordplay.) But because On Stranger Tides also raked in a cool billion dollars worldwide, yet another sequel was inevitable. Between the dire notices for the most recent film, the six-year gap between entries, Johnny Depp’s declining public profile, and the motivator of a financial imperative, fans braced to greet No. 5, Dead Men Tell No Tales, as more studio-mandated pap. What this article presupposes is... it might not be?
‘Wreck-It Ralph 2’ Gets a Title and Release Date, and It Will (Literally) ‘Break the Internet’
What exactly does the term “break the internet” mean? Web-surfers understand the definition as “causing a commotion of such great size and scale that the World Wide Web could shut down as a result of its enormity,” and yet the phrase only conjures one image to mind — that of Kim Kardashian on her notorious Paper Magazine cover, popping champagne directly onto a glass balanced atop her buttocks. So when Disney announced yesterday that their sequel to video game hodgepodge Wreck-It Ralph would bear the subtitle Ralph Breaks the Internet, we may interpret it one of two ways. Either Ralph’s going to go on an epic quest through the online wilds, or the 8-bit hero is about to blow our minds with the roundest ’donk in the history of animated cinema.
Go Go Read Some Early ‘Power Rangers’ Reviews
This week’s most high-profile release is the big Power Rangers reboot (I’m sorry, that’s Haim Saban‘s Power Rangers, please nobody sue me) and the earliest round of reviews has begun to surface over the past few day or so. They are, to put it somewhat charitably, mixed. The early consensus is that the film squanders what could have been remake-ready material — a multiethnic group of telegenic teens working together to form a gigantic robot that battles evil aliens sounds like a pretty hard concept to foul up — with a generic and often painfully unfunny take.
Brad Pitt Looks Like a Counter-Terrorism Ken Doll in ‘War Machine’ Trailer
Unless your name happens to be Kathryn Bigelow (and if it is, then may I say that it’s a pleasure, Ms. Bigelow, big Point Break fan), Hollywood has had a lot of trouble figuring out how to portray the Global War on Terror. The odd movies that have succeeded critically or financially — Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper — take an ambivalent stance on a complicated and nuanced geopolitical situation, but many more have attempted the same and floundered. So it’s with memories of the high-profile failure of one-time Oscar hopeful Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk that we greet the trailer for War Machine, Netflix’s latest foray into this risky genre.
Beatty-Dunaway Beefing May Be Behind Best Picture Bungle
[Bonnie and Clyde trailer voice]: They’re old, they kind of hate each other, and they read envelopes.
Since Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway mistakenly announced La La Land as the recipient of the Academy Award for Best Picture on Sunday night, everyone‘s been looking for an answer as to how such a massive goof could come to pass. Blame has been passed around like a hot potato, with fault assigned to Beatty, Dunaway, some tweeting nitwit from the accounting firm that tabulates the votes, the person who lays down the envelopes, and just for good measure, a cold and uncaring god. But now the trenchant, Spotlightesque journalists at TMZ claim to have the full story behind just what went down.
New ‘Star Wars’ Novelization to Finally Resolve the Fate of Fan-Favorite Jar Jar Binks
While critics and fans alike roundly rejected the Star Wars trilogy of prequels, they agreed that at least one aspect of it was worthwhile: breakout crowd-pleaser Jar Jar Binks. The universally beloved Gungan earned a wide fanbase with his charming dialect made up of screeching and some sort of alien ebonics, and his constant cartoonish bumbling was a welcome reprieve from the series’ usual heroism and valor. Fans cried foul when Phantom Menace’s major supporting character was downgraded to tertiary status in Attack of the Clones and barely present for Revenge of the Sith, but today brings the welcome news that our sweet Jar Jar will get some much-deserved closure in an upcoming Star Wars novelization.
‘Mary Poppins Returns’ Reveals Plot Details, Full Cast as Production Begins
After months of rumormongering and speculating and debating over whether Lin-Manuel Miranda has what it takes to make the jump to the big screen from Broadway, sequel Mary Poppins Returns has finally begun shooting. Disney sent out an official press release yesterday announcing that the production was officially underway at Shepperton Studios in Burbank, California, with a project release date of Christmas Day in 2018. (Nothing gets people in the mood for a movie-musical quite like the holidays, it would seem, as director Rob Marshall’s last film Into the Woods found a release date in late December as well.) And along with the news that the gears are now turning, the press release provided a full cast list and more comprehensive description of the plot as well.
‘Star Wars’ Theme Park Coming to a Galaxy Far Away (Orlando) in 2019
Just as the nation’s mushroom-takers have begun to hit up their connections in preparation for this May’s opening of the lush, psychedelic new amusement park Pandora — The World of AVATAR, yet another attraction has appeared on the horizon. At present, Star Wars superfans can immerse themselves in the fantasy universe with the series of films, novels, spin-off films, animated television programs, various board games, and Disneyland’s popular Star Tours ride. But some diehards demand more, a fuller and more transportive experience. And Disney CEO Bob Iger has some great news for them. (And less-great news for everyone else.)
Now That He Finished the Script for ‘Avatar 5’ James Cameron Can Begin Shooting ‘Avatar 2’
Why is it that James Cameron’s updates about progress on his colossal plotted Avatar franchise always kind of sound like threats?
In a brash nose-thumbing to the concept of economic bubbles, James Cameron went all in on his Avatar franchise gambit and decided to produce the next four films in the planned pentalogy concurrently...
Johnny Knoxville’s Next Movie Will Bring You to ‘Action Park’
Step right up, step right up and get your tickets here for the most dangerous, poorly-maintained, testicle-pulverizing amusement park on the planet! Deadline played the old-timey carnival barker this morning for Johnny Knoxville, announcing that the human crash-test dummy had suckered Paramount into funding another one of his deranged comic experiments. In the spirit of unscripted prankapalooza Bad Grandpa (a film destined to be confused with the Robert De Niro schlock-comedy Dirty Grandpa until the end of time) and the notorious Jackass series now comes Action Park, guaranteed to cause at least one instance of grievous bodily harm or your money back!
‘Hidden Figures’ Upsets at SAG Awards, Ups Oscar Chances
Just when pundits had begun to reduce the Oscar fracas to a two-horse race between toe-tapping populist favorite La La Land and critically-adored downbeat character piece Moonlight, a possible spoiler has come out of nowhere. Last night, the 23rd annual Screen Actors Guild Awards gave Hollywood’s union of performers a chance to recognize some of their own whom had done outstanding work over the past year. The most coveted award of the ceremony is the prize for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Motion Picture, regarded by some as a bellweather for Oscar night, and it went to unexpected contender Hidden Figures.