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‘American Horror Story’ Election? Ryan Murphy Reveals New Theme for Season 7
6 hours ago
First, we joked about Donald Trump becoming president. Then, we joked that his win was 2016’s real American horror story. Now, Ryan Murphy is doing what he does best: taking our jokes and turning them into terrifying TV.
In an interview on “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen,” the producer, writer, director, and creator of “American Horror Story” was asked if he had any news to share about the upcoming season.
“Well, I don’t have a title,” Murphy said. “But the season that we begin shooting in June is going to be about the election that we just went through.”
Read More: ‘Legion’: Noah Hawley’s ‘Romance of the Mind’ Might Be Hiding a Heart of Darkness
Cohen, surprised, almost cut to the next segment, but followed up by asking if there would be a Donald Trump character in the new season.
“Maybe,” Murphy responded.
- Ben Travers
‘Legion’: Noah Hawley’s ‘Romance of the Mind’ Might Be Hiding a Heart of Darkness
7 hours ago
[Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “Legion” Season 1, “Chapter 2.”]
Maybe the wild premiere left me Fubar, but the opening of “Legion’s” second episode gave off major “Apocalypse Now” vibes. David’s ominous, deadened voiceover recalled Martin Sheen’s war-torn work in Francis Ford Coppola’s classic. The song — “Road to Nowhere” by the Talking Heads — served as a modern stand-in for The Doors’ “The End,” which would be far too on-the-nose (and overused) to be repurposed yet again, but the notes guided a slow, seemingly peaceful riverboat ride; an iconic wartime image, countlessly repurposed in many an action film, but never so effectively alluding to the horrors hidden on each riverbed as in the Oscar-winning 1979 film.
Read More: ‘Legion’ Premiere: The 9 Moments That Make It a Masterpiece
And there are horrors lurking in “Legion” — literal and figurative. As sunlight shone through the trees above, men in “black masks, boots, and the one they called, ‘The Eye, »
- Ben Travers
‘Manchester By the Sea’: Why Kenneth Lonergan’s Script Is A Screenwriting Master Class
9 hours ago
“Manchester By the Sea” writer-director Kenneth Lonergan was a playwright first. He’s often lauded for his dialogue, rich character development, and the performances he gets from actors. Taken as whole, these descriptions could be interpreted as being a kind way of saying that his film is insufficiently cinematic.
That would miss the point. Like his previous films, “You Can Count on Me” and “Margaret,” his script for “Manchester By the Sea” draws a great deal of its power by taking advantage of the way movie audiences absorb story.
Building the Mask
At the beginning of “Manchester,” we watch Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), an apartment building handyman, react to his tenants — the indecisive man with a plumbing problem, the woman crushing on him as he unclogs her toilet bowl, a confrontational woman bizarrely accusing him of wanting to watch her take a shower. He’s comically expressionless as he goes about his work. »
- Chris O'Falt
The Criterion Collection Announces May Titles: ‘Ghost World,’ ‘Dheepan,’ ‘Jeanne Dielman’ and More
11 hours ago
The Criterion Collection has announced its May offerings, including “Dheepan,” “Ghost World” and a Blu-ray update of “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.” Also joining the Collection are Orson Welles’ “Othello,” a new World Cinema Project collector’s set and Yasujirō Ozu’s “Good Morning.” More information below.
Read More: The Criterion Collection Announces April Titles: ‘Tampopo,’ ‘Rumble Fish,’ ‘Woman of the Year’ and More
“Terry Zwigoff’s first fiction film, adapted from a cult-classic comic by Daniel Clowes, is an idiosyncratic portrait of adolescent alienation that’s at once bleakly comic and wholly endearing. Set during the malaise-filled months following high-school graduation, ‘Ghost World’ follows the proud misfit Enid (Thora Birch), who confronts an uncertain future amid the cultural wasteland of consumerist suburbia. As her cynicism becomes too much to bear even for her best friend, Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), Enid finds herself drawn to an unlikely kindred »
- Michael Nordine
‘Doubt’ Producers on Their Show’s Transgender Breakthrough – IndieWire’s Turn It On Podcast
12 hours ago
Last Week’S Podcast: ‘The Missing’ Star David Morrissey on His ‘The Walking Dead’ Legacy, Those ‘Doctor Who’ Rumors and the Obligation to Help Refugees – IndieWire’s Turn It On Podcast
Having spent years as writer/producers on “Grey’s Anatomy,” Tony Phelan and Joan Rater wanted to do something a bit different for their next show – so they turned to law. “Doubt,” their new CBS legal drama, stars Katherine Heigl as the driving force behind a firm that specializes in legal defense.
The show also stars Elliot Gould, Dule Hill and Laverne Cox, who is now the first transgender series regular on a broadcast TV show. As a matter of fact, Cox’s character even has one of the show’s central romantic storylines of the show’s freshman season.
Turn It On recently sat down with Phelan and Rater, and the married couple shared how they were inspired by their transgender son, »
- Michael Schneider
‘Porcupine’ Trailer: A Woman Would Do Anything to Protect Her Child, Including Killing an Intruder
12 hours ago
After working as an assistant director to renowned filmmaker Martin Scorsese in films like “Silence” and working as a part of the miscellaneous crew in some indie shorts, Clifford Miu is making his directorial debut with the short film “Porcupine.” The 10-minute short just premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival last week. Watch the exclusive trailer below.
Read More: A Comedian’s Life Turns Upside Down After Paying Uncle Sam for the First Time in 7 Years in ‘Love & Taxes’ — Trailer
Based on a true story, “Porcupine” centers around a newly widowed mother named Nora. She discovers an intruder outside her trailer home where she lives with her baby daughter and immediately grabs her deceased husband’s 12-gauge shotgun and calls 911. When the man enters her home, Nora chooses to protect her baby, even if that means taking someone’s life.
“Porcupine” features Samantha Bilinkas in the role of Nora. »
- Yoselin Acevedo
‘La La Land’: How to Shoot a Musical Number — Watch Exclusive Video
12 hours ago
Even after “Whiplash” turned him into a hot filmmaker, Damien Chazelle kept his eyes on his own goals. He maintained a monk-like focus and intensity, which was shared by his composer, collaborator, and chum, fellow Harvard grad Justin Hurwitz. Film student Chazelle got school credit for his thesis movie, black-and-white jazzy Nouvelle Vague musical homage “Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench” (2010, Variance Films), although music major Hurwitz did not.
“It was a musical,” Chazelle told me, “the really low-budget, student laboratory for this. It had somewhat similar ideas about the genre, and at the time I was loving old Hollywood musicals, Fred and Ginger, and Gene Kelly, but also loving documentary film and trying to think of a way to make a realistic musical: combine a modern look at a city with the old musicals.”
After college, the duo moved to Hollywood to pursue filmmaking, supporting themselves with piecemeal »
- Anne Thompson
‘Planet Earth II’ Producers Reveal 6 Sneaky Ways They Filmed Their Animal Stars
12 hours ago
It’s been a decade since the original “Planet Earth” became a cultural event on TV, thanks to its stunning filmmaking and unparalleled access to the natural world. Since then, the team has surpassed its previous efforts to capture footage for “Planet Earth II,” thanks to innovations in technology and good old-fashioned human tenacity.
Being able to observe the natural world is not as easy as sending out a cameraman to just point and shoot. Elusive snow leopards are rare and avoid humans, soaring birds spiral up and down heights with dizzying speed, some predators are too dangerous to get near, many prey animals are too skittish to hang around humans, and some animals — such as a massive population of penguins that rule a remote island — are simply too difficult to access because of the unfriendly terrain.
Read More: ‘Planet Earth II’ Video: Epic Iguana and Snake Battle Sets Internet Ablaze — Watch
Fortunately, »
- Hanh Nguyen
‘Santa Clarita Diet’: Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant on the ‘Red Ball’ and Other Secrets of the Netflix Comedy
12 hours ago
[Spoilers for “Santa Clarita Diet” Season 1 below.]
For the record, Drew Barrymore appreciates a good zombie pun — especially in the context of discussing “Santa Clarita Diet,” the Netflix comedy created by Victor Fresco (“Better Off Ted”).
Read More: ‘Santa Clarita Diet’ Makes a Perfect Case for Watching TV Without Even the Most Trivial of Spoilers
The pun wasn’t intentional on IndieWire’s part; we’d simply asked Fresco how “fleshed out” the mythology for his series during last week’s press day in New York. The series, after all, might be easily described as a zombie show, but those who have seen it know that there’s more to the mystery that transforms Sheila (Barrymore) from the subdued wife and partner of Joel (Timothy Olyphant) into a flesh-craving member of the undead.
As Barrymore grinned at IndieWire’s phrasing, “We know what the rules are, which is what I like — there aren’t a lot of rules, »
- Liz Shannon Miller
‘The Void’ Trailer: Steven Kostanski & Jeremy Gillespie’s Indie Horror Film Is Not for the Faint of Heart
13 hours ago
Having worked together in big productions such as “Suicide Squad” and the “Hannibal” TV series, design and FX veterans Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie are ready for their writing/directing duo debut with “The Void.”
Read More: Michiel Huisman Finds All’s Fair in Love and World War I in ‘The Ottoman Lieutenant’— Trailer
“[We’re] committed to introducing audiences to a unique horror-mythology,”Kostanski and Gillespie told Empire Online. According to the duo, this film “combines the aesthetic attitude of modern horror cinema as it emerged in the 1970s with the splatter and sophisticated practical special effects that ruled the creature features of the 1980s and early ’90s.”
The indie horror film follows the story of officer Daniel Carter, who, in the middle of a routine patrol finds a young man soaked in blood limping down a deserted road. When he rushes the man to the hospital, he discovers that some »
- Yoselin Acevedo
‘Love Actually’ Sequel: Cast and Director to Reunite for Short Film
13 hours ago
Great news for “Love Actually” fans: A reunion of Richard Curtis’ 2003 Christmas classic is actually in the works. The director and some of the cast have reunited to work on a short film to sponsor the annual Red Nose Day via Comic Relief, a charity funded by Curtis in 1985 alongside actor/comedian Lenny Henry.
Read More: ‘The Fits’ Director Anna Rose Holmer Creates Beautiful ‘Moonlight’-Inspired Short Film
“Over the years I’ve enjoyed doing Red Nose Day specials of TV things I’ve worked on — ‘Blackadder,’ ‘The Vicar of Dibley’ and ‘Mr Bean,'” Curtis said in a statement. “It seemed like a fun idea this year to do a special sketch based on one of my films, since Red Nose Day is now in both the U.K. and America.”
Titled “Red Nose Day Actually,” the 10-minute short film will revisit the film’s characters to discover what »
- Yoselin Acevedo
‘Love & Taxes’ Trailer: A Comedian’s Life Turns Upside Down After Paying Uncle Sam for the First Time in 7 Years
14 hours ago
April 15 looms large over every American’s head, but brothers Jacob and Josh Kornbluth have manifested a nightmarish visit from the taxman in their new romantic comedy, “Love & Taxes”. The film follows the story of Josh, a part-time autobiographical monologist who has not filed his taxes in seven years; this is despite the fact that his day job is working for a high-profile tax attorney. When his boss convinces him to “join the system” and file his taxes, things start going extremely well for Josh. His stage career starts to take off and he even finds a girlfriend. But then, things take a turn for the worse.
Read More: Watch ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ Sweded Trailer
Written by Josh and directed by Jacob, “Love & Taxes” is a film adaptation of the brothers 2003’s stage production. “We made the film in bits and pieces over eight years. I’m in almost every shot, »
- Yoselin Acevedo
‘The Midwife’ Review: Catherine Deneuve Gives Her Best Role in Years in Minor-Key Crowdpleaser — Berlinale 2017
14 hours ago
As Goldie Hawn once put it, Hollywood has only three roles for women: Ingénue, District Attorney and “Driving Miss Daisy”. The fact of the matter is, too many strong talents see the pool of good parts unfairly dry up once they reach middle age, and short of radically reshaping the American film industry (I’m for that, too!), might I suggest this temporary stop-gap – might they consider learning French?
While it doesn’t reach the heady highs of last year’s festival hit “Things To Come,” Martin Provost’s “The Midwife” once again proves that French filmmakers know how to treat actresses of a certain age. Offering plum roles to Catherines Frot and Catherine Deneuve, “The Midwife” is a minor-key crowd pleaser about friendship, forgiveness and rolling with the punches.
Single mother Claire (Catherine Frot) lives a lonely, vampiric existence in the suburbs of Paris. She sleeps days and works nights, »
- Ben Croll
‘Moana’: How Disney Crafted Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Oscar-Contending ‘How Far I’ll Go’
14 hours ago
The journey of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Oscar-nominated “How Far I’ll Go” song parallels the eponymous teenager’s arc in Disney’s “Moana.” That is, until the filmmakers of the animated contender figured out Moana’s quest, they struggled with her “I Want” song.
Naturally, Miranda was inspired by the Disney films of composers Howard Ashman and Alan Menken (including the two directed by “Moana’s” John Musker and Ron Clements: “The Little Mermaid” and “Aladdin”). “Lin very much wanted to write an ‘I Want’ song, but we had to figure out what Moana wanted,” Clements told IndieWire.
Read More: ‘Moana’: How Disney’s Sci-Tech-Winning Drawing System Aided the Oscar Contender
First, Moana [Auli’i Cravalho] sang about being misunderstood and wanting to leave her island, which echoed Ariel’s desire in “Part of Your World” from “The Little Mermaid.” But, as Moana developed a more complex inner struggle, her song »
- Bill Desowitz
Video Essay Makes the Case for Black-and-White Film Noir’s Influence on ‘Breaking Bad’ — Watch
16 hours ago
“Have you ever heard somebody say, ‘I can’t watch black-and-white movies?'” asks the creator of the Now You See It YouTube channel in his latest video. Said video essayist takes issue with that mindset, and he’s here to explain why in just four minutes. “Black and white can do just as much as color,” he contends, and for Exhibit A he turns to film noir.
Read More: 8 Essential Film Noir Movies MoMI is Resurrecting From the 1940s
Our intrepid host uses examples of both good and bad parodies to make a point: “Saturday Night Live” got it wrong by using low-contrast black and white in a recent skit inspired by “Casablanca,” while an old “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strip mimicked the style much more skillfully. The poor imitation demonstrated by the likes of “SNL,” he argues, is why some consider black and white to be boring — they »
- Michael Nordine
Steven Spielberg’s Strange History With ‘Cruising’
16 hours ago
Back in the early 1970s, while George Lucas was immortalizing the “cruising” culture of teens and their cars in “American Graffiti,” his future frequent collaborator Steven Spielberg was exploring a different kind. Nearly a decade before director William Friedkin created a scandal with the Al Pacino-starring “Cruising” (released 37 years ago today), the wunderkind filmmaker—who has won over generations of audiences by evoking a childlike sense of wonder—almost made his leap from TV to features with the most adult-themed project imaginable.
It all started with producer Philip D’Antoni, who had won an Oscar for the 1971 drug-bust saga “The French Connection” and was looking for a filmmaker to helm another New York City-set crime project. He had just bought the rights to the novel “Cruising,” written by The New York Times feature writer Gerald Walker, in which an undercover cop descends into the leather bars of Greenwich Village as he tracks a homosexual murderer. »
- Michael Gingold
‘Moonlight’-Inspired Short Film: ‘The Fits’ Director Anna Rose Holmer Shares Beautiful Dance Clip
16 hours ago
“The Fits” director Anna Rose Holmer has teamed up with New York’s Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Academy Award-nominated composer Nicholas Britell to create a short film inspired by the award-winning feature “Moonlight.” Watch the short film below.
Read More: ‘Moonlight’ Has 8 Oscar Nominations, But An Adapted Screenplay Win Is Almost Guaranteed
Titled “Just Dance: Moonlight x Alvin Ailey,” the short film pays homage to Barry Jenkins’ critically acclaimed drama. The short features professional dancers Jamar Roberts, Christopher Taylor and Jeremy T. Villas as they dance to an intense score by Britell, the composer behind the soundtrack of award-winning drama. The choreography in the film is by the theater’s artistic director Robert Battle.
“Moonlight” follows the story of a young black man as he goes from childhood to adulthood and comes to terms with his sexuality. The film highlights the struggles he faces trying to find his »
- Yoselin Acevedo
‘The Raid’: Joe Carnahan and Frank Grillo Announce ‘Reimagining’ of Popular Action Film on Instagram
16 hours ago
If, like any reasonable moviegoer, you thought that Joe Carnahan’s “The Grey” was totally rad, here’s some good news: He and Frank Grillo have just announced a remake of “The Raid.” Or, in their words, “a reimagining” of Gareth Evans’ popular action film, which has already spawned one sequel and has another in development. Carnahan announced the news in a brief Instagram post featuring him and Grillo.
Read More: Joe Carnahan to Write Film Version of Playstation’s ‘Uncharted’ Series
“Caracas, Venezuela’s pretty dangerous,” Carnahan says at the beginning of the brief video, “and I wouldn’t go in with this many guys.” Grillo, whose action bona fides have also been displayed in the last two “Captain America” and “The Purge” movies, agrees: “You wouldn’t, right? Maybe six guys…the fighting would have to be something no one’s ever seen,” the actor says, musing on the prospect of their film. »
- Michael Nordine
New Ways to See Non-Fiction: How MoMA Doc Fortnight Brings a Fresh Perspective to Documentary Films
16 hours ago
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) kicks off its 16th annual Doc Fortnight on Thursday, a 10-day festival that includes 20 feature-length non-fiction films and 10 documentary shorts. This year’s lineup includes four world premieres and a number of North American and U.S. premieres.
Read More: 2017 New Directors/New Films Announces Full Lineup, Including ‘Patti Cake$,’ ‘Beach Rats,’ ‘Menashe’ and More
The festival is far from the only major North American showcase for non-fiction cinema. Festivals ranging from Hot Docs to True/False have played key roles in the expanding documentary festival circuit. However, Doc Fortnight has maintained its own niche on the scene, by aiming to expose undiscovered stories and filmmakers, screening a range of documentaries from around the world and capturing the ways in which artists are pushing the boundaries of non-fiction filmmaking.
“It’s not an industry festival, there aren’t awards, and distributors aren’t all coming looking to buy, »
- Chris O'Falt and Graham Winfrey
Karyn Kusama On Making Horror Films and Fighting Evil in the Age of Trump
16 hours ago
No one is more surprised by Karyn Kusama’s second act as a horror filmmaker than Kusama herself. Best known in the early aughts for her girl power-driven, high energy offerings “Girlfight” and the Charlize Theron-starring “Aeon Flux” film adaptation, Kusama dipped a toe into horror with 2009’s icky-great “Jennifer’s Body.” It was the perfect feature to kick off the next part of her career, blending her desire to tell female-centric stories alongside genuinely gag-inducing scenes that would feel at home in any horror film.
With 2015’s lauded “The Invitation,” Kusama completed the leap, helming the psychological thriller with white-knuckle ease, a horror story about broken relationships and broken people gussied up into a cross-genre nailbiter. In short, it was scary. And making that kind of film instantly changed the expectations regarding the kind of films that Kusama wanted to make in the future.
“I don’t know »
- Kate Erbland
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