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Exclusive: MTV Digital Short ‘Love Reset’ Illustrates Damning Effects Of Media Representation — Watch
24 minutes ago
In “Love Reset,” the final winner of MTV’s “Look Different” campaign, a white teenage boy sees life as a video game, tallying his masculinity points, while ignoring the Indian girl who passes him, ticking off boxes on an impossible imaginary to do list. Both metaphors are apt, speaking volumes about their subjects’ vastly different daily experiences and forcing the viewer to confront the discomfort of both.
“Look Different” is MTV’s anti-bias campaign and filmmaking competition that invited emerging filmmakers to create short films on the topic of privilege – including racial, gender and sexual orientation. Three projects were chosen: “American Male,” about a closeted gay man and the pressures of masculinity, “See Me In My Black Skin,” about a white guy who dons black face for a party and wakes up black, and “Love Reset,” which premieres exclusively on IndieWire.
Read More: ‘American Male’ Exclusive Debut: MTV Tackles Privilege »
- Jude Dry
Five Things You Need to Know about DirecTV Now, At&T’s New Live Streaming TV Service
1 hour ago
Don’t call it a “skinny bundle.”
As At&T prepares to launch its over-the-top DirecTV Now offering on Wednesday, the company is taking pains to differentiate itself from rivals such as Sling, Playstation Vue and Hulu’s upcoming live TV service.
As an introductory price, DirecTV Now will offer more than 100 channels (its “Go Big” package) at $35 a month, and charter members will be grandfathered into that price for a period of time.
“The challenge with skinny bundles is your skinny is different from my skinny which is different from someone else’s skinny,” says Brad Bentley, executive vice president of marketing for At&T Entertainment Group.
Read More: Unhappy Netflix Subscriber Sues Streaming Giant For Raising Prices
But it’s unclear how long that $35 offer will last, and when DirecTV Now will revert to that “Go Big” package’s normal $60 price tag. The service’s normal $35 offering (“Live a Little”) carries 60 channels. »
- Michael Schneider
‘It’s Always Sunny in Westeros’ Is a Clever ‘Game of Thrones’ Fan Mashup — Watch
1 hour ago
Winter is officially here on “Game of Thrones,” but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a few sunny days here and there. That, at least, is one takeaway from “It’s Always Sunny in Westeros,” a YouTube mashup of the high-fantasy drama and the comedy whose sensibilities are as black as the Night’s Watch’s uniform. Watch all the episodes, which have been helpfully compiled into one eight-minute video, below.
Read More: ‘Game of Thrones’: The Queen of Thorns Is a Badass Schemer in Season 6 Deleted Scene
All of them take the form of an “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” cold open, which begin with the gang — Charlie, Dee, Mac, Dennis and Frank — coming up with a harebrained scheme and jumping to a conclusion that’s instantly contradicted by the title of the episode in question. Here, it’s the likes of Tyrion, Sansa, Jon »
- Michael Nordine
‘Star Trek: Discovery’: Michelle Yeoh, Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp Join Cast of CBS All Access Series
2 hours ago
Michelle Yeoh is officially taking command. CBS confirmed this morning that the “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon” star will in fact play a captain in “Star Trek: Discovery.” In addition, two new cast members join from very different spheres of entertainment: Broadway star Anthony Rapp and frequent Guillermo del Toro collaborator Doug Jones.
Read More: ‘Star Trek Discovery’: Female Lead, Gay Character, Prequel Timeframe Confirmed
As previously reported by Deadline, Yeoh will play Captain Georgiou of the U.S.S. Shenzhou (not the U.S.S. Discovery, the ship teased in the Comic-Con preview below). Yeoh is not officially the lead of the show, however, and will be a recurring character over the course of the series.
Yeoh’s legacy as a performer stretches from her origins as a Hong Kong action star to one of the best Bond girls ever in “Tomorrow Never Dies” to a recent recurring role in Netflix’s “Marco Polo. »
- Liz Shannon Miller
‘White Rabbit Project’ Trailer: ‘Mythbusters’ Team Returns With New Netflix Series
2 hours ago
After 13 years on the air, fans of Discovery Channel’s “MythBusters” had to say goodbye to the science crew who debunked urban legends by testing them. Now, three of the cast members, Grant Imahara, Tory Belleci and Kari Byron, known as the Build Team, are headed to Netflix for their own show “White Rabbit Project.” The streaming service debuted the first official trailer, which you can check out below.
The unscripted series will feature the three “science-loving sleuths” as they rank history’s greatest inventions, heists and more. They’ll look at the coolest tech, weirdest weapons and the craziest escapes to investigate the events from pop culture, science and history.
Read More: Drew Barrymore’s Netflix Comedy ‘Santa Clarita Diet’: First Look Photos Featuring Timothy Olyphant
The first sneak peek at the show includes the crew drinking wine while being strapped to a bunch of wires, training a pigeon, »
- Liz Calvario
‘Incorporated’: Why Syfy’s Cutthroat World of Corporate Overlords and Pricey Bacon Could Be Our Future
3 hours ago
Don’t expect to see flying cars or lots of lasers on “Incorporated.”
Instead, Syfy’s latest futuristic series set in 2074 features very accessible technology, such as self-driving cars and wearable tech, that only appear a step or two beyond what we have today. That familiarity makes “Incorporated’s” grimmer aspects of the future seem all too plausible. It’s a world where natural food resources and clean water are dwindling and have created fierce competition.
Read More: 7 Indie Filmmakers Making Must-See TV This Fall
Alex Pastor, who created the series with his brother David, told Indiewire, “I think that ecological and climate change and the degradation of the environment is going to cause that certain things that now we take for granted, things that right now we consider plentiful, are not going to be anymore. That’s what food and clean water comes to be. Once you push people »
- Hanh Nguyen
The Best Shows That Will Be Overlooked on the Top 10 Lists of 2016 — IndieWire Critics Survey
5 hours ago
Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of TV critics two questions and publishes the results on Tuesday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best show currently on TV?” can be found at the end of this post.)
This week’s question: What is one of the best shows of the year that you think will be snubbed/overlooked when it comes to the Top 10 Best-of lists for 2016?
Ben Travers (@BenTTravers), IndieWire
As much as I’d like to point to an early year entry like “Bloodline” Season 2 (far better than Season 1, thanks to the improved structure) or “The Path” (Hulu’s most complete offering to date), I’m going to make the case for “Divorce.” I feel the HBO drama — “black comedy” could fit, too, but the show’s highest merits lie within its emotional substance — may be overlooked simply because too many critics (and viewers) find it hard to return to, »
- Hanh Nguyen
‘Billy on the Street’: Lupita Nyong’o Tries Her Hand at Standup Comedy in Hilarious New Clip — Watch
22 hours ago
Oscar-winning and Tony-nominated actress Lupita Nyong’o is undoubtedly best known for her stellar dramatic work in films like “12 Years a Slave” and plays like “Eclipsed,” but the Kenyan-Mexican starlet is looking to do something a little different these days: standup comedy.
Well, not really, but that’s the theme of this week’s “Billy on the Street,” which will feature Nyong’o and host Billy Eichner taking it to the streets (of course) so that Nyong’o can show off her burgeoning standup comedy chops — billed as part of her (fake) upcoming comedy special, “Lupita Nyong’o: Bring the Pain” — to predictably confused and/or angry packs of passerby. (Big love to that guy who yells that he likes “a quiet life.”)
Read More: ‘Billy on the Street’: 10 Classic Clips to Get You Ready for Season 5
For her new career, Nyong’o is borrowing from some of the greats, »
- Kate Erbland
Great Expectations: Do High Hopes for TV Shows Make You Like Them More?
28 November 2016 8:18 AM, PST
As we get ready to look back at the best of 2016, it’s important to remember where we started. What were we excited for? What surprised us? What did we write off, and what did we over-inflate? Luckily, the internet works as a time machine for questions like these, so the answers can usually be tracked down in convenient list form. For TV shows, that means IndieWire’s guide to the most exciting new series of the year; a list we must say still looks pretty prestigious as 2016 nears a close.
From “Atlanta” to “Westworld,” many of our most anticipated new shows turned out to be worth the wait. A few we’d previewed before making the list (“The People v. O.J.”), and there were one or two big misses in there — “The X-Files,” we’re looking right at you — but a vast majority of these programs turned out »
- Ben Travers
‘Westworld’ Season Finale Trailer: Watch The Bodies Pile Up in Wild Teaser
28 November 2016 8:06 AM, PST
If you’re still reeling from last night’s penultimate episode of “Westworld” Season 1, chances are that the season finale teaser that followed the episode did little to ease your mind. After an outing filled with big revelations and further twists and turns (the timelines! what is happening with the timelines!), HBO blasted its audience with a look ahead that promises a jaw-dropper of a finale.
Read More: ‘Westworld’ Review: ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier’ Goes Down the Rabbit Hole For Answers
The new teaser hints at the culmination of some of the season’s most intriguing plotlines, including Maeve (Thandie Newton) staging her own kind of breakout, William (Jimmi Simpson) continuing to evolve in some not-so-great ways, Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) uncovering more about her past (and her future?) and Ford (Anthony Hopkins) presumably sitting around his office cooking up more mayhem (or his “new narrative”).
One thing is for sure, »
- Kate Erbland
Drew Barrymore’s Netflix Comedy ‘Santa Clarita Diet’: First Look Photos Featuring Timothy Olyphant
28 November 2016 7:54 AM, PST
Netflix is appealing to post-Thanksgiving dieters by announcing the release date for its Drew Barrymore comedy series “Santa Clarita Diet.” The show stars Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant and premieres on February 3, 2017.
Read More: Bad Comedies Come to Netflix: What We Can Learn From Kevin James’ Digital Future
Here’s the official synopsis:
In “Santa Clarita Diet,” Joel (Olyphant) and Sheila (Barrymore) are husband and wife realtors leading vaguely discontented lives in the L.A. suburb of Santa Clarita with their teenaged daughter Abby (Liv Hewson), until Sheila goes through a dramatic change sending their lives down a road of death and destruction…but in a good way.
Created and executive produced by Victor Fresco, “Santa Clarita Diet” also counts Barrymore, Olymphant, Aaron Kaplan, Tracy Katsky, Chris Miller and Ember Truesdell as executive producers. Nancy Juvonen is a producer on the series.
Read More: Watch: Drew Barrymore Snuggles With Puppies in »
- Graham Winfrey
‘Gilmore Girls’: That Ending Was Perfect, and We Need to Accept It
28 November 2016 6:00 AM, PST
[“Gilmore Girls” fans have been waiting to hear the “final four words” for almost a decade, but it turns out not everyone was ready for them. Below, IndieWire TV Critic Ben Travers (a casual fan), Senior Film Critic David Ehrlich (a “Gilmore Girls” lifer), and TV Editor Liz Shannon Miller (who only recently binged the series) interpret the extreme feelings experienced in those final seconds and try to find an answer as to how we can all move forward, together. Be warned: the discussion contains spoilers for “A Year in the Life,” up through those final four words, and for more on the ending, be sure to read Senior Editor Hanh Nguyen’s report on what’s next.]
‘Gilmore Girls’: The Ending Was Perfect, So Please Don’t Make More
Read More: ‘Gilmore Girls’ Final Four Words: Let the Debates Begin About That Brilliant Ending
Ben: While it’s arguably belittling to “A Year in the Life” — which I liked quite a bit overall — to start asking, “What’s next?” so soon after completing the six-hour binge, I think the heavily teased “final four words” demand that we start there. To me, the reveal of Rory’s pregnancy felt like a classic cliffhanger ending setting up more narrative to come. And because so much coverage (including our own) led us to believe Netflix’s revival was here to provide the proper ending to a series denied one during its initial run, such a major last-second reveal could easily be seen as misleading to fans who were tuning in for some closure. There’s been no word from Amy Sherman-Palladino, »
- David Ehrlich, Liz Shannon Miller and Ben Travers
‘Westworld’ Review: ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier’ Goes Down the Rabbit Hole For Answers
27 November 2016 8:07 PM, PST
Last Week’S Review: ‘Westworld’ Review: ‘Trace Decay’ Reminds Us That We’re All Just Stories, In the End
Diagnostic Report
Let’s start with Maeve, who flexed her newfound powers in a few key scenes but otherwise seems to be playing the long game. After first recognizing Bernard for what he is (and triggering his latest descent into madness), Maeve then went on to properly recruit Hector to (in her words) “break into hell with me and rob the gods blind.” We’ll look forward to seeing how that takes shape next week.
William, Logan and Dolores aren’t having the happiest of reunions, what with Logan taking the two of them prisoner with some help from the Confederados and doing his best to remind “Billy” that Westworld isn’t real, and neither is Dolores. After a gruesome confrontation with a knife that Dolores manages to escape, Logan thinks he’s wooed William back. »
- Liz Shannon Miller
‘The Walking Dead’ Review: Tara Returns, and a New Community Is Introduced
27 November 2016 7:10 PM, PST
Last Week’S Review: ‘The Walking Dead’ Review: ‘Go Getters’ Gives Maggie a Reason to Live
Whose Episode Is It?
Hey, remember Tara and Heath? Tara, the American hero who once flipped Rick Grimes off as hard as she could? And Heath, the Alexandrian guy who it seemed might be pegged for some character development before he had to go star in “24: Legacy”? Well, they’re back! And quite a few things have changed in the two weeks since they’ve been on a supply run, but they remain blissfully ignorant as the episode begins.
Obligatory Zombie Action
The zombies long ago stopped being the central threat on “The Walking Dead,” but we still have to have some zombies show up every episode, lest the makeup department not earn their keep. This week, Tara and Heath encounter a bunch of zombies buried under several dump trucks worth of sand, »
- Jeff Stone
14 articles