Posts

This Was Julian Fellowes’ Inspiration For The First Downton Abbey Film Focus Features By Matthew Bilodeau/Aug. 27, 2022 10:30 pm EST Series creator Julian Fellowes (“The Gilded Age”) could have kept “Downton Abbey” going for years. After all, soap operas are notorious for spanning generations. But I admire the restraint to put a pin in the series after six seasons of television. It felt like the perfect place to allow the characters to find their own futures....

Veteran Muppet Performer Bill Barretta On The Most Difficult Scenes To Shoot With Muppets Walt Disney Pictures By Ben F. Silverio/Oct. 18, 2022 5:10 pm EST When you hear about people suffering for their art, you probably think about Dickens, Plath, Kafka, or Van Gogh. But Jim Henson and his merry band of Muppets performers should probably be somewhere on that list. During production on 1979’s “The Muppet Movie,” the team created a whole assortment of innovations to allow Kermit, Fozzie, and the whole gang to interact with the real world as regular people do....

Why Charlton Heston Had ‘No Desire’ To Get Into The Director’s Chair Paramount By Anthony Crislip/Oct. 2, 2022 5:30 pm EST Charlton Heston, the legendary star of “Ben-Hur” and “The Ten Commandments,” initially had no interest in directing films. As unusual as that was for an actor of his stature, it may be one reason why the few movies he actually did end up directing are so unmemorable. The list of movies bearing his name as director is fairly sparse: there’s a made-for-TV spy flick, a 1972 adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” and the “Treasure of the Sierra Madre”-esque adventure movie “Mother Lode....

The catchphrases The Firm / YouTube Aside from Jean-Luc Picard’s “Engage” and “Make it so,” few “Star Trek” deliver memorable catchphrases. However, even people who never watch science fiction can quote all three “The Original Series” leads. The characters’ quotability was even the premise of a hit 1987 novelty song by The Firm, which ended up topping the charts in the United Kingdom. Kirk never actually said “Beam me up, Scotty” on the series, but he did utter a number of variations: “Scotty, beam us up,” “Scotty, beam me up,” a simple “Beam us up,” and so on....

The women that started it all HBO “House of the Dragon” kicks things off by focusing on just four main players: The Targaryen king Viserys (Patrick Considine) and his brother Daemon (Matt Smith), as well as his daughter Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and her best friend, Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke). Things start to get messy when Alicent marries Viserys and becomes queen, essentially edging Rhaenyra out of her claim to the throne....

Charlton Heston Wouldn’t Agree With The Tom Cruise School Of Stunt Acting Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer By Witney Seibold/Sept. 9, 2022 4:36 pm EST To clarify right away: A stunt performer did not die during the production of “Ben-Hur.” For many years, it was rumored that Stephen Boyd’s stunt double for the film’s famous chariot race sequence was either thrown from a chariot, or trampled by horses and crushed (depending on which rumor one might have heard)....

Hot Seat First up, Lionsgate has provided us with an exclusive clip from the star-studded thriller “Hot Seat.” Kevin Dillon (“Entourage”), Mel Gibson (“Braveheart”), Shannen Doherty (“Beverly Hills, 90210”), and Sam Asghari (“Black Monday”) star, and the film is now available in select theaters, on demand, and digital. Here is the official synopsis: Oscar-winner Mel Gibson brings this explosive cyber-thriller to life. The action begins as IT expert Friar (Kevin Dillon) finds a hair-trigger bomb strapped to his desk chair....

Creepshow Was George Romero’s Chance To Pay Homage To His Childhood Warner Bros. By Andrew Housman/Oct. 16, 2022 11:59 am EST It’s not shocking that “Creepshow” is arguably the golden standard of horror anthologies, considering that it crawled out of the minds of horror legends George A. Romero and Stephen King. The duo found that they had a shared love of the EC Comics line of horror stories from the early 1950s that the two grew up reading....

Every Live-Action Albert Wesker From Resident Evil Ranked Netflix By Erin Brady/July 15, 2022 8:00 am EST When you think of iconic video game villains, Albert Wesker from the “Resident Evil” franchise is likely one of the first characters that comes to mind. Of course, this isn’t without good reason — Wesker is a great villain and is still compelling to this day. Although he’s arguably the embodiment of pure evil, you can’t help but at least let him finish his villainous monologues about the sanctity of science....

Game Of Thrones’ Final Season Seemed ‘Designed To Break’ The Cast HBO By Fatemeh Mirjalili/July 12, 2022 11:46 am EST Every few years, a television show comes and takes over the world, dominating pop culture and media discourse unlike anything we’ve seen before. “Game of Thrones” has been a global phenomenon since it first premiered in 2011 — until its eight-season run culminated in 2019. Despite its rather laborious ending, “Game of Thrones” created a world that was impossible to navigate, one that was imbued with texture and realism in great detail against a rich tapestry of fantasy elements....

Here’s how to get tickets While tickets are now on sale for the sneak preview screening, you can also win them exclusively through /Film. To enter the contest, simply follow /Film on Twitter at @slashfilm, then quote-tweet our post about the giveaway (linked below) with a comment that includes the name of the Alamo theater or location where you’d like to see the movie. Make sure that it’s one of the six participating locations — New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas, Austin, Denver, and San Francisco — and, of course, your tweet will have to be publicly visible to be considered....

High Fantasy Shows To Watch If You Aren’t A Game Of Thrones Fan HBO By Cass Clarke/Sept. 12, 2022 1:26 pm EST Days after “House of the Dragon” flew into homes with its Gwen Stefani-colored wigs and a lecherous Targaryen uncle, HBO renewed the “Game of Thrones” spinoff series for Season 2. Plenty has been written about how its predecessor over-relied on misogynistic violence. Ironically, “Game of Thrones” creator George R....

How John Lithgow Dodged A Common Sitcom Problem With 3rd Rock From The Sun Carsey-Werner Distribution By J. Gabriel Ware/Oct. 8, 2022 4:44 pm EST When the creators of the ’90s NBC sitcom “3rd Rock from the Sun” developed the idea about an alien family posing as humans on earth, they did so with the hopes of casting John Lithgow as its central protagonist, Dick Solomon. Lithgow got on board, breaking his own biggest rule in Hollywood, which was to never do a sitcom....

Christopher Robin goes to college Altitude Film Distribution “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” was announced in early 2022, shortly after A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard’s original novel entered the public domain at the start of the year. While the Mouse House still retains the exclusive rights to its specific version of Winnie the Pooh and his friends, “Blood and Honey” writer/director Rhys Frake-Waterfield and production company Jagged Edge Productions are free to revamp the characters as they deem fit....

Hulu’s Reboot Scratched Judy Greer’s Itch To Do Comedy Again [Exclusive] Hulu By Sandy Schaefer/Sept. 21, 2022 10:48 am EST How does that old joke go? Ah, yes: If Hollywood made a Judy Greer biopic, Greer would co-star as her own best friend. There was, in fact, a time in the aughts when Greer found herself oddly pigeonholed as the go-to choice to play the “best friend” in rom-coms and similar genre movies, enough so she would later poke fun at this by starring in the aptly-titled 2014 short comedy film, “Judy Greer Is the Best Friend....

Is There Another Star Wars Romance Brewing Between Cassian Andor And Bix Caleen? [Exclusive] Lucasfilm By Sandy Schaefer/Sept. 15, 2022 9:37 pm EST “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” showed the world a darker, grittier, and relatively morally gray side of a galaxy far, far away that had never been seen before when it came out in 2016. The film tells the previously untold tale of how a plucky team of Rebels — Er, spoiler?...

James Caan Thought His Misery Casting Might Be A ‘Sadistic Joke’ Columbia Pictures By Lee Adams/Aug. 26, 2022 11:34 am EST In 1979, Stephen King was in New York for an appearance on a late-night talk show. Greeted by fans outside the studio, one man, claiming to be the author’s “Number One Fan,” wanted a polaroid photo with his idol instead. King was in a hurry so he relented to the request and signed the picture....

Memoria Review: Past And Present Collide With A Contemplative Sonic Boom NEON By Joshua Meyer/Sept. 19, 2022 12:28 pm EST Starring Tilda Swinton, “Memoria” is the movie you might have heard about that was originally slated for a never-ending theatrical release. The plot, which takes a backseat at times to the unfettered stillness of slow cinema, concerns a Scottish ex-pat named Jessica who begins hearing a mysterious sound no one else can hear in the jungles of Colombia....

Rewriting Tarantino It might appear that Tarantino swaggered into Hollywood and became a go-to filmmaker, but he sacrificed to make it, including selling his original work and watching others bring it to life. This can be a very hit or miss experience for a screenwriter especially when the new director makes changes to their original work. “True Romance” originally ended with the death of Clarence (Christian Slater), which Scott changed, but Tarantino respected that rewrite and believed it was the right choice....

Star Trek: Lower Decks Star Noël Wells Shares The Similarities Between Improv And Starfleet [Exclusive Interview] Paramount By Danielle Ryan/Sept. 8, 2022 3:12 pm EST The voice cast of “Star Trek: Lower Decks” has quite the challenge: They have to make their animated characters come to life not only in comedic ways, but they have to stay true to the franchise. That’s a lot to take on, given the decades of “Star Trek” lore that have gone into making “Lower Decks,” but the lower deckers do it with aplomb....