Charles Bramesco
Spidey Gets an Upgrade Courtesy of Tony Stark in First ‘Homecoming’ Teaser
For a fresh start with Spider-Man, Sony had to give him something distinctive. To set Tom Holland’s take on the webslinger apart from Tobey Maguire’s (and way, way apart from Andrew Garfield’s), the studio sent the hero back to high school and returned him to his teenage roots. Spider-Man: Homecoming aims to be a new take on the comic-book mythos all over, in fact — a new girlfriend in pop star Zendaya, the first onscreen appearance of the villainous Vulture, and with a new teaser unearthed today, we learned that a key piece of latter-day Spidey tech will make it movie debut as well.
Fort Worth PD Enlists Empire Stormtroopers for New Recruitment Video
Over the past couple of years, policemen have fallen pretty far out of favor with the American people. The U.S. police force is in dire need of a little PR management, something that shows their sense of humor and gives a more human, relatable slant to the boys in blue.
James Gunn Wants You to Know He’s Worked Real Real Hard on ‘Guardians Vol. 2’
Dangerous business, making trailers these days. When a beloved franchise unveils the first look at its latest installment, they can be sure that the devoted fanbase will go through each and every frame with a fine-toothed comb, on the hunt for any context-free images that may hint at a new character, location, or plot development. In the worst cases, a trailer becomes a maddening game of keep away between the editor cutting it and the fans itching to strip-mine it for spoilers. James Gunn, as he’s readied the first trailer for his upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy sequel, has had to learn this the hard way.
Schedule Shuffling at Fox May Have Just Outed the ‘Avatar 2′ Release Date
Big things are a-happenin’ over at Fox, per The Hollywood Reporter. The studio made a slew of scheduling changes on the night before Thanksgiving as a sort of special edition of a Friday dump. (That term refers to the PR practice of burying bad or otherwise uninteresting news on a Friday afternoon, when coverage will be minimal.) Big-name projects have all been shuffled around, and that’s all fully detailed below, but the most eye-catching item on Fox’s docket happens to be an unnamed project from James Cameron’s production company Lightstorm Entertainment.
‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ Cast Delights Hospitalized Children, Except for the One Kid Who Likes Batman
When you’ve been fortunate enough to land the headlining role in a potentially lucrative film franchise, the least you can do is give a little back. Superhero actors making guest appearances in hospitals to spread a little cheer to bed-ridden children has become an increasingly common practice in recent years, with Chrises Evans and Pratt both leveraging their celebrity as Captain America and Star-Lord, respectively, to brighten sickly youngsters’ days. It’s a harmless PR stunt — the movie gets some positive, feel-good publicity while making some kid’s day/week/life, and everyone walks away smiling.
IMDb Sues California Over Law Forcing Site to Remove Actors’ Ages
The closest corollary to Notorious B.I.G.’s dictum advising “never let no one know how much dough you hold” is Hollywood’s absolute commandment to “never let ’em know how old you really are.” Over time, an actor’s real age becomes a jealously guarded secret with the power to instantly push a casting profile from “love interest” to “love interest’s comic-relief parent.” The Internet Movie Database has posed a threat to this lie agreed upon in Tinseltown by adding exact birth dates to actors’ profiles, and the industry has pushed back. Today brings a pushback to that pushback, with the web giant defending their right to let everyone know who’s no longer passing for under 40.
Try to Make It Through the ‘Beware the Slenderman’ Trailer Without Freaking Out
Even for a case in which a 12-year-old girl gets stabbed nearly 20 times, it was particularly heinous: young Payton Leutner of Waukesha, Wisconsin was recovered bleeding out in the woods near a slumber party she had been attending in 2014. Her attackers were two of her good friends, fellow middle schoolers. What could have possessed a couple of innocent kids to suddenly turn psychopath without warning and leave their pal for dead in the middle of the night?
No One Enjoyed the Cubs’ World Series Win More Than Bill Murray
Late last night, a little after the midnight hour, Hell froze over. Reports of pigs and other assorted swine growing wings and taking flight started pouring in from all over the country. Dogs and cats were living together — it was mass hysteria, all because the Chicago Cubs had finally won the World Series after a 108-year drought.
These Are the ‘Deadpool 2’ and ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Working Titles to Look Out For
Nothing gums up the works during a high-profile film shoot quite like looky-loos poking around the set. When a big-name production gets up and going, the goal is to attract as little outside attention as possible, leading many crews to adopt “working titles” that conceal the true nature of the project. Most famously, George Lucas shot Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi under the codename “Blue Harvest” in an effort to give his legions of fans the slip. Christopher Nolan, perhaps in an effort to evade Batman geeks and summon Gilmore Girls geeks in one fell swoop, worked on The Dark Knight using the title “Rory’s First Kiss.” More recently, one of the production designers for Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters informed me during an interview that the remake shot as “Flapjack” while on set in Massachusetts.
‘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.”
Tom Hardy to Get Even Hardier as Explorer Ernest Shackleton in New Epic
The exploits of the great adventurer Ernest Shackleton are already the stuff of legend, myths of a time gone by when fearless men circumnavigated the globe just to see if they could. The Irishman led three expeditions to Antarctica, staving off sub-zero temperatures and general hardship to expand the limits of man’s knowledge of his world. Shackleton was a leader of men, often keeping his charges calm and collected during times of extraordinary peril; his ship, the aptly named Endurance, crashed on an ice floe and Shackleton kept his crew sane and alive through the harrowing ordeal that followed. He’s the sort of historical figure that macho actors line up to play, preferably in a well-financed biopic.
James Gunn Unveils the First ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ Poster
Doctor Strange could come out of nowhere and wow us all, but barring that, it’s been a lackluster year for superheroes at the movies. And as if responding to our culturewide cry for help (or at least a little fun from time to time), James Gunn and the crowd-pleasing Guardians of the Galaxy franchise have returned to get audiences psyched up for the impending sequel, cheekily titled Vol. 2, as if the second installment in cassette-obsessed Star-Lord’s mixtape series. The first theatrical poster is here at last, obviously:
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.
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
A Crazy and Exciting New Way of Watching Movies Is Coming to a Theater Near You
With the rise in on-demand and streaming options for home viewership and American reluctance to leave the house at an all-time high, brick-and-mortar theaters have scrambled to keep viewers in the seats. High-end boutique chains have survived by committing themselves to the luxury of the theatrical experience, installing ritzy overstuffed La-Z-Boys in theaters and shrinking down the size of each i
Man Arrested For Failing to Return VHS Copy of ‘Freddy Got Fingered’ 14 Years Ago
In precisely the sort of absurdist mix-up that sounds like something Tom Green would come up with, a North Carolina man has been arrested for failing to return a VHS copy of the Tom Green comedy Freddy Got Fingered 14 years ago. The Wrap relays the odd tale of James Meyers, the unfortunate soul that checked out a tape of the widely reviled but cult-beloved surrealist comedy at a video store in Kan
Mark Wahlberg Saves the Gulf of Mexico in First ‘Deepwater Horizon’ Photos
In one way or another, all of Mark Wahlberg’s movies have involved him playing the role of the savior. In many instances, this takes a pretty literal form — Wahlberg protected Earth from alien robots in Transformers: Age of Extinction, protected America from terrorism in Lone Survivor, and in his Oscar-nominated role in The Departed (remember that time Mark Wahlberg got nominated for an Oscar...
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Would You Pay $50 To Watch ‘Batman vs. Superman’ At Home On Opening Night?
Leaving your house, driving to the nearest movie theater (or, if you want to find a film other than a wide-release studio picture, driving what could be very far away), dropping $13 on a ticket, spending $8 more on a soda and popcorn, watching fifteen minutes of commercials and trailers, and staring daggers at jagwagons using their cell phones in the theater is cool...
Tom Hiddleston Would Totally Play James Bond, If Anyone Wanted to Know
Thor star Tom Hiddleston was sitting for an interview with British newspaper The Sunday Times when they sprang the Bond question, and the actor was not shy about his desires.