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The Himeji Castle Horror Story That Inspired The Ring And Ringu DreamWorks By Witney Seibold/July 31, 2022 8:00 pm EST The “Ring” franchise is one of the broader and more sprawling in current horror. The timeline on “The Ring” goes back to 1991 with the publication of Koji Suzuki’s novel, called merely “Ring,” which spawned two sequels called “Spiral” (1995) and “Loop” (1998). “Ring” was first adapted to film in 1995 with the TV movie “Ring: Kanzenban,” and then adapted to manga and to audio drama in 1996....

The Inspection Trailer: Jeremy Pope Stars In The A24 Drama Headed To TIFF A24/TIFF By Valerie Ettenhofer/Aug. 23, 2022 9:39 am EST The trailer for A24’s latest drama is here, and it’s set to navigate some intense topics while telling a story inspired by the filmmaker’s own life. “The Inspection” comes from writer-director Elegance Bratton (“Pier Kids”), and follows a young gay man who joins the Marines after being rejected by his mother as a teen....

(Possibly) more Mando-Grogu adventures Disney+ Season 3 of “The Mandalorian” is currently in post-production, allowing ample time for Favreau and his team to craft a connecting storyline that furthers Din Djarin’s (Pedro Pascal) arc. There’s Grogu to accompany him in his journey, of course, as “The Book of Boba Fett” last saw the duo reuniting after Grogu chooses the Mandalorian chainmail over Master Yoda’s lightsaber. Favreau also went on to talk about the importance of organic crossovers as opposed to purely contrived ones, as the show progressed from a blank-slate story to one that branches out and bleeds into the “Star Wars” canon as a whole:...

Feeling helpless on set Universal In an excerpt from her revealing autobiography courtesy of Vogue, Hedren explains how the assistant director James H. Brown had to finally come clean the day they filmed the classic bedroom scene. “The mechanical birds aren’t working, so we’re going to have to use live ones.” Hedren and Brown had become good friends, and the morning of the shoot he could hardly look her in the eyes....

Wearing your inner child on your sleeve Warner Bros. Pictures With Black Adam, we have an angry man, heartbroken over the death of his son, granted superpowers by the wizard Shazam (Djimon Hounsou). It’s a little more complex than that, but you get the idea. He’s angry, he’s willing to kill, and he doesn’t care about collateral damage. He’s strong enough to take on the Justice Society of America and — maybe in the future — the big three of DC; Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman....

Why Cary Grant Had To Turn Down Dial M For Murder RKO Radio Pictures By Anya Stanley/Aug. 21, 2022 9:30 pm EST Alfred Hitchcock is behind several decades’ worth of celebrated films, but some of the English director’s best works were adaptations of stage plays. “Dial M For Murder” was one such adaptation, based on Frederick Knott’s Broadway hit concerning an affair, a murder plot, and the trial that followed. Meticulously plotted and visually sparse, the thriller has one of the most satisfying endings of any of Hitchcock’s films....

Will There Be A Fate: The Winx Saga Season 3 On Netflix? Netflix By Shania Russell/Nov. 1, 2022 1:11 pm EST For better or worse, Hollywood’s nostalgia-mining tendencies come for us all. For fans of the Nickelodeon animated series “Winx Club,” this was both a blessing and a curse: when the Netflix adaptation “Fate: The Winx Saga” arrived in 2021, it brought the beloved faeries back to screens. But it also received a very mixed reception....

‘Old Hollywood’ Gladly Came To John Wayne’s Aid On The Set Of The Shootist Paramount By Jeremy Smith/Oct. 12, 2022 2:17 pm EST When producer Mike Frankovich set out to make “The Shootist,” he did not initially pursue John Wayne for the role of J.B. Brooks, a lawman-turned-gunfighter who discovers he is dying from cancer. Given the elegiac tone of Glendon Swarthout’s novel, and Wayne’s real-life battle with cancer, you’d think he would’ve been at the top of Frankovich’s list....

A New Karate Kid Film Is On The Way Columbia Pictures By Erin Brady/Sept. 16, 2022 5:48 pm EST Get ready to relearn the power of balance, because a new installment of “The Karate Kid” is hitting theaters in 2024. Sony Pictures released a statement announcing the release dates of future titles, and the yet-untitled entry has been dated for June 7, 2024. The film will be distributed by Columbia Pictures with no director, screenwriter, or cast confirmed....

Six years gone Marvel Nakia’s absence went unexplained for so long that I figured that by now, the franchise would simply keep it ambiguous. And at first, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” seemed poised to do just that. But when the film did finally share the whole story of Nakia’s absence, it was in one of the most poignant moments in the whole MCU: the revelation that Nakia had a son with King T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman)....

Continuity Isn’t A Concern For Bob’s Burgers’ Creator Loren Bouchard By Lyvie Scott/Nov. 3, 2022 2:35 pm EST When it comes to narrative continuity, animated television is in a realm of all its own. Time moves differently in animated sitcoms — if it does move at all — but once a show like “Bob’s Burgers” or “The Simpsons” starts racking up seasons in the double digits, the concept of time is pretty much a non-entity....

Game Of Thrones Already Told Us How House Of The Dragon Ends (But That’s Okay) HBO By Shania Russell/Aug. 11, 2022 2:42 pm EST It won’t surprise you to learn that Joffrey ‘The Bastard King’ Baratheon, aka one of the most-hated characters in modern TV, is still the absolute worst. His very long list of crimes includes murdering the honorable Ned Stark, torturing Sansa for seasons on end, treating everyone in his vicinity with vicious cruelty, threatening the innocent kitty, Ser Pounce, and a dozen other horrific moments that we’ve all tried to cleanse from our minds (RIP Ros)....

Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special Trailer Breakdown: Yep, That’s Kevin Bacon Disney+ By Ben F. Silverio/Oct. 25, 2022 7:45 pm EST It’s the most wonderful time of the year. No, it’s not quite Christmas time yet, but it is time for new Marvel Cinematic Universe releases. Thanks to Disney+, these occurrences are happening more often each year, which is sure to please all the good little True Believers across the multiverse....

How A Sci-Fi Western TV Pilot Landed Ryan Condal The Job Of House Of The Dragon Showrunner [Comic-Con] HBO By Jenna Busch/July 23, 2022 8:21 pm EST San Diego Comic-Con 2022 is making up for lost time, and the announcements are just blasting over us like the fire from Daenerys’ dragons in “Game of Thrones.” Don’t worry if you can’t keep up. /Film has a team on the ground staking out the panels and bringing us every shining dragon egg full of news and interesting information....

How Andor Will Actually Explore The Title Character Lucasfilm By Lyvie Scott/Aug. 24, 2022 8:30 am EST “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” had quite the rocky start six years ago. With a troubled production and extensive reshoots that fundamentally changed the structure of the film, it could have been a very different “Star Wars” story. But the story that did emerge from all that chaos eventually became a critical and commercial success....

How House Of The Dragon Has Transformed Daemon Targaryen And Ser Criston Cole HBO By Fatemeh Mirjalili/Sept. 27, 2022 8:46 am EST “The Princess and the Queen,” the sixth episode of “House of the Dragon,” is a lesson in character development. It features a significant time jump and is a reintroduction to the characters we’ve spent five episodes getting to know. Ten years have passed since that fateful wedding day in Westeros....

John Huston’s Treasure Of The Sierra Madre Cameo Was One Big Humphrey Bogart In-Joke Warner Bros. By Witney Seibold/Aug. 4, 2022 10:28 am EST In the opening scenes of John Huston’s 1948 Academy Award winning film “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” Fred Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) is down on his luck. He’s in Mexico looking for work in 1925, and can’t seem to find any. He’s reduced to asking for pesos in the street, and approaches a tall American man in a white suit and hat....

King Of The Hill’s Opening Sequence Planted The Seed For The Entire Series By Andrew Housman/Aug. 31, 2022 4:36 pm EST “King of the Hill” left an enduring legacy on sitcom history for its animated depiction of the mundane yet heartfelt lives of suburban Texans, painting a sympathetic and relatable picture of middle America not often seen on television. The series has its share of memorable moments, but perhaps none represent the show as much as Hank Hill hanging around with his buddies, standing in front of a fence while sipping cans of Alamo beer and making “conversation” with a laconic series of back-and-forth “yeps....

Shin Ultraman Review: A Haphazard, Kaiju-Sized Blockbuster [Fantastic Fest] Toho By Ryan Scott/Sept. 28, 2022 12:00 pm EST “Ultraman” is a franchise that has deep roots dating back to the mid-’60s with the original series that birthed the giant Japanese superhero. We’ve had several iterations of the character since but now, it’s radical reinvention time: “Shin Ultraman” arrives from Toho and director Shinji Higuchi to give us an Ultraman for modern times....

Smile Review: A Frequently Creepy Fright Flick That Doesn’t Have An Original Thought In Its Head [Fantastic Fest] Paramount By Chris Evangelista/Sept. 23, 2022 8:12 am EST What are we to make of “Smile,” a horror pic that is somehow both effectively creepy and almost comically derivative? Movies steal from other movies all the time, but it starts to get downright ridonkulous when “Smile” is concerned. “The Ring,” “The Grudge,” “Oculus,” “It Follows,” the recent “The Night House,” and many, many more films in a similar vein make up the skeleton of “Smile,” which seems to think that all you need to tell a new scary story is to simply rip off a bunch of other successful horror movies first....