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18 articles
Sundance: Lakeith Stanfield's Prison Drama 'Crown Heights' Nabbed by Amazon
56 minutes ago
Amazon is moving into Crown Heights, acquiring the title after its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
The streaming service nabbed the film for just over $2 million. The film will receive a theatrical release.
The prison drama stars Lakeith Stanfield as Colin Warner, who is arrested and wrongfully convicted for a crime he did not commit. While losing hope, his best friend, Carl King, devotes his life to restoring Colin's freedom, doggedly pursuing every lead for years.
Matt Ruskin wrote and directed the film, which also features »
- Ashley Lee
'Hacksaw Ridge,' 'Rogue One,' 'Arrival' Lead Sound Editors' Feature Nominees
1 hour ago
With three nominations apiece, Arrival, Hacksaw Ridge and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story lead the feature film competition of the Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel Awards, which will be handed out Feb. 19 at the Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles.
The sound editing teams on the three films were all nominated in the feature film categories for dialogue / Adr, effects / Foley and music.
Arrival and Hacksaw Ridge are also nominated for the Academy Award in sound editing, along with Deepwater Horizon, La La Land and Sully, which received one Mpse nomination apiece.
As previously announced, during the ceremony Guillermo del »
- Carolyn Giardina
James Cameron Isn't Impressed with the Shape of the 'Alien' Franchise
1 hour ago
In 1986, James Cameron's Aliens proved that there was life in the Alien concept beyond Ridley Scott's first movie. But thirty years later, Cameron isn't convinced that the series should have continued beyond that point.
"The franchise has kind of wandered all over the map," the Avatar and Terminator director told Vulture when asked about Scott's upcoming Alien: Covenant. "I don't think it's worked out terribly well. I think we've moved on beyond it. It's like, okay, we've got it, we've got the whole Freudian biomechanoid meme. I've seen it in 100 horror films since. I think both of »
- Graeme McMillan
Berlin: Ethan Hawke, Noomi Rapace to Star in Thriller 'Stockholm'
2 hours ago
Ethan Hawke and Noomi Rapace will star in Stockholm, based on the true story of the 1973 bank heist and hostage crisis in Stockholm.
Written and directed by Robert Budreau, the film follows the drama chronicled in the New Yorker article "The Bank Drama" by Daniel Lan about the hostages who bonded with their captors and turned against the authorities, giving rise to the psychological phenomenon known as “Stockholm Syndrome."
Scott Aversano and Will Russell-Shapiro will executive produce and oversee the thriller via the Aversano Films banner along with Jason Blum via Blumhouse Productions. Nicholas Tabarrok will produce via his »
- Rebecca Ford
'My Father Die': Film Review
2 hours ago
Southern Gothic tales don’t get any swampier than Sean Brosnan’s debut feature about a deaf-mute young man intent on exacting violent revenge on his abusive father. Visually stunning but strained by pretentious poeticism and a simplistic storyline, My Father Die is ultimately as labored as its ungrammatical title.
The black & white prologue sets up the story, depicting the loving bond between teenage Chester and his younger brother Asher. Chester decides to initiate his sibling into the joys of copulation by introducing him to Nana, a willing young neighbor. But before the deed can be consummated their father Ivan (Gary »
- Frank Scheck
Adam Shankman to Direct Kate Beckinsale in 'The Chocolate Money'
3 hours ago
The big screen adaptation of Ashley Prentice Norton's hit 2012 novel The Chocolate Money, set to star Kate Beckinsale, has found itself a director.
Adam Shankman (Hairspray, A Walk to Remember), has been brought on board to helm the feature, which Beckinsale is also producing and will tell the story of an impossibly rich chocolate heiress and her precocious young daughter.
Beckinsale produces together with Mar-Key Pictures’ president Leslie Urdang, Miranda de Pencier and Kelly E. Ashton, with Emma Forrest having written the screenplay. Production is due to start in New York in the Spring.
Set in »
- Alex Ritman
Stephen Karam's 'Speech & Debate' Film Set for April Release
4 hours ago
Speech & Debate is ready for the big screen.
Sycamore Pictures and Vertical Entertainment have announced that the film adaptation of Stephen Karam's off-Broadway play will hit select theaters and VOD on April 7.
Directed by Dan Harris, the coming-of-age comedy stars Liam James (The Way Way Back), Sarah Steele (The Good Wife) and Austin P. McKenzie (When We Rise) as teenagers who become an unlikely trio while reviving a defunct school club.
Roger Bart, Janeane Garofalo, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Kal Penn, Kimberly Williams-Paisley and Skylar Astin are also featured in the cast, which also includes cameos by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Darren »
- Ashley Lee
'Resident Evil: The Final Chapter': Film Review
5 hours ago
Marking the announced end of the video game-inspired sci-fi/horror film franchise that has produced six films in 15 years (it’s amazing how time flies when you’re bored out of your mind), Resident Evil: The Final Chapter delivers fans more of the same. Again starring the formidable Milla Jovovich as Alice, the ass-kicking heroine desperately attempting to save society from being decimated by an evil corporation, this installment provides a fitting finale for the series, inasmuch as it’s as mediocre as all the ones preceding it.
As with the recent edition of the similar Underworld franchise, the film begins with a »
- Frank Scheck
How 'La La Land' Got Its 6-Minute Sunset Dance Just Right (in Only 4 Takes)
5 hours ago
La La Land, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling share a romantic dance as they walk to their cars after a party — all against the backdrop of the setting sun. It's literally "magic hour," that brief period during which the light softens as the sun disappears from view.
According to Oscar-nominated cinematographer Linus Sandgren, the roughly six-minute uninterrupted take, which was shot in September 2015 in Griffith Park overlooking Burbank, required a lot of careful planning.
"We found a very remote spot — a paved road »
- Carolyn Giardina
Carrie Fisher Once Asked for Harrison Ford to Sing at Her Oscars In Memoriam Tribute
5 hours ago
It is so cool, and so sad.
On Friday, ABC News reported an unearthed interview the late Carrie Fisher gave in which she said she wanted Han Solo, Harrison Ford, to sing during her tribute at the Oscars after she passed. Fisher died last month of a heart attack. She was 60.
In addition to her on-screen—and once real-life—love interest, Fisher also once said she wanted her obituary to read that she “drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.”
The Princess Leia actress, who appeared in the original trilogy »
- Ryan Parker
Box Office: 'Passengers' Fights to Break Even Amid Stiff Competition
6 hours ago
Like its doomed protagonists, Passengers doesn’t seem like it will get a happy ending at the box office. The decade-in-development project has been watched closely because Sony Pictures chief Tom Rothman made it his first big-budget greenlight in 2015 and he hoped it would save a down year at the studio. Rothman thought he had a good bet in casting Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt — arguably Hollywood’s hottest young stars — in a two-hander romance set aboard a transport ship hurtling through the galaxies. He agreed to a gross budget of $156 million, including a $20 million fee for »
- Pamela McClintock
Critics' Conversation: At Sundance 2017, One Movie Soared Above the Rest
13 hours ago
Frosch: One of the questions looming over Sundance 2017 was whether the movies could penetrate the pall cast by politics (i.e., the inauguration and Week 1 of the extremely alarming new presidency). For a day or two, festivalgoers seemed dazed and anxious, and I heard more expletive-laced angst about Trumpelstiltskin than chatter about films seen or anticipated. Slowly but surely, though, the movies started to matter. The Big Sick finds director Michael Showalter and writer-star Kumail Nanjiani spinning Nanjiani's real-life relationship with co-writer Emily Gordon (played by an incandescent Zoe Kazan) — including her brush with a life-threatening »
- Jon Frosch,Todd McCarthy,David Rooney
How Anime 'Your Name' Became an Unlikely Phenomenon
14 hours ago
Makoto Shinkai's body-swapping, time-shifting anime Your Name may have missed out on an Oscar nomination, but it has been setting records both in Japan and overseas, single-handedly driving both the domestic film industry and studio-distributor Toho to record revenues last year. And it isn't finished yet.
Last weekend, Your Name (Kimi no Na wa) returned to the top of the box-office charts in Japan for the first time in nine weeks, on its 22nd weekend in theaters. While big films often have longer runs in Japan than in other major markets, regaining the top spot after more than two months »
- Gavin J. Blair
Watch Taylor Swift and Zayn's Steamy Video for 'Fifty Shades Darker' Song
15 hours ago
It’s here, and it's kinda hot. Taylor Swift and Zayn Malik’s bombshell collaboration on "I Don't Wanna Live Forever" now has a steamy video.
The slick new clip, which dropped at midnight, studies the two pop superstars who are living it large but torn up from separation. It's a tale of emptiness, loneliness and longing, framed in a twilight world that clearly takes style pointers from the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise to which it's connected.
The video opens with the former One Direction singer stepping out a limo in the rain as paparazzi chase him through a plush »
- Lars Brandle, Billboard
'Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton': Film Review | Sundance 2017
15 hours ago
Taking a breather from the social-issues docs that have been her main sphere, prolific nonfiction filmmaker Rory Kennedy steers the audience on an exhilarating ride in Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton. An extreme-sports film that's also a laser-focused biographical study of a crazy man lacking a functioning fear mechanism, this portrait of the charismatic big-wave surfer catalogues almost four decades of Hamilton's achievements while offering an admiring assessment of his unstoppable drive. Tapping into a wealth of breathtaking action footage, the film naturally is at its most exciting when it puts us right there in the surging »
- David Rooney
Mike Connors, Principled Private Detective on 'Mannix,' Dies at 91
18 hours ago
Mike Connors, who took a punch as well as anyone while playing the good-guy private detective on the long-running Saturday night action series Mannix for CBS, has died. He was 91.
A former basketball player for legendary coach John Wooden at UCLA, Connors died Thursday in Encino from leukemia, the actor's agent confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.
Mannix, the last series from Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s famed TV company Desilu Productions to air, ran for eight seasons from September 1967 until April 1975. Created by Richard Levinson and William Link and developed by executive producer Bruce Geller (Mission: Impossible), the »
- Mike Barnes
Box Office: 'Resident Evil' Rakes In $1M, 'A Dog's Purpose' Fetches $455K Thursday
18 hours ago
Sony and Screen Gems' Resident Evil: The Final Chapter took in $1 million in previews, beating out Lasse Hallstrom's A Dog's Purpose, which earned $455,000 in late-night shows, with showings starting at 6 p.m.
The film, which follows a dog looking to discover his purpose in life over the course of several lifetimes and owners, came under fire just ahead of its release over the treatment of a German shepherd on the set. Tracking has the film earning around $21 million, according to sources with access to the survey.
An opening north of $20 million should be enough »
- Rebecca Ford
The Pain and Gain of Making Video Game Movies
19 hours ago
In 1993, and Oscar-nominated director, the biggest video game company in the world, and the most famous plumbers of all time were teaming up for a movie. What could possibly go wrong with a Super Mario Bros. movie?
As it turned out, quite a lot.
First-time directors Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel oversaw a fraught production of the first big budget video game movie, which would go on to be one of the most infamous bombs of the 90s and would even see stars Bob Hoskins (Mario) and Dennis Hopper (the villain Koopa) later disavow the project.
"It was a really »
- Aaron Couch
18 articles