Netflix announced Tuesday afternoon, the streaming company has renewed the series ‘Ozark’ for Season 2 and ordered 10 new episodes.
The first season received mixed reviews from Rotten Tomatoes and sits at a 65%, but our own Matthew Sardo enjoyed the brutally honest family dynamic, mixed with redneck and drug running drama. The cliffhanger alone at the end of season one is enough reason to renew the series.
Jason Bateman directed four episodes of the series created by Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams.
About the ‘Ozark’:
A Chicago financial advisor, who has been quietly laundering money for a drug kingpin, must quickly uproot his family and move the operation to The Ozarks, after his partner is caught cheating the business. There, he bumps heads with both a local drug dealer whose business he inadvertently interrupts, and a clan of ruffians, led by their 19-year-old niece, who want his money, all the while avoiding the eye of a tenacious FBI agent. He must complete his laundering, to save the life of his family, as they struggle to find their own path in this seemingly foreign way of life.
The series stars Jason Bateman, Laura Linney, Sofia Hublitz, Skylar Gaertner, Julia Garner, Jordana Spiro, Jason Butler Harner, Esai Morales, Peter Mullan, and Lisa Emery.
Look for season two of ‘Ozark’ in the summer of 2018.
DC Comics released the first 4-pages of Kurt Busiek’s unsettling tale, Batman: Creature of the Night hitting your local comic book story in November.
This a prestige format limited series and set outside of regular continuity.
Check out John Paul Leon’s artwork below:
About Batman: Creature of the Night:
Young Bruce Wainwright lost his parents in a violent crime…and in the real world, no superheroes exist to save the day. But as grief and rage builds inside Bruce until he feels he can’t keep it inside anymore, something strange starts taking wing in the Gotham night! Perhaps Bruce’s grief isn’t inside him after all?
DC Comics used the term ‘spiritual companion’ when associating Batman: Creature of the Night with Busiek’s previous limited series Superman: Secret Identity.
Batman: Creature of the Night hits your local comic book store on November 29.
Creator Tim Seeley has dipped his pen into all genres in our beloved comic book medium. Starting with the cult horror comic Hack/Slash, Seeley cut himself a career that included stints on the DCU’s Grayson, Revival from Image and even a Lost Boys sequel comic for DC/Vertigo. The writer now teams up with artist Priscilla Petraites and AfterShock comics to bring you a post-apocalyptic superhero tale of epic proportions.
Tim Seeley had the following to say:
BRILLIANT TRASH is the kind of sci-fi we don’t see that often in comics. It’s not a far off planet or the distant future. There are no ships and no aliens. It’s the story of the ‘word of tomorrow,’ torn directly from the headlines, about an America that might be waiting for us. It’s cautionary, but it’s also action packed and fun.. It’s a cyberpunk superhero story pulling inspiration from William Gibson, Robocop and the social media- fake news-superhero-obsessed world we live in
He added:
I think the art by Priscilla Petraites and Marco Lesko will really grab people. This is her first US work, and she’s doing really beautiful work. The world that Brilliant Trash takes place in is really well established visually…it’s a dirtier, messier, more visually polluted version of our own, and we get to see our lead, Kennedy Avis running her ass off through its grimy underbelly. BT is a fusion of a lot of genres because our own world is quickly becoming a crazy ass story in its own right.
Brilliant Trash sounds great and very much the kind of story that seems to be very relevant to our time. Seeley also knows how to craft a well paced, fun read. And AfterShock has been putting out quality books for a while now.
Check out the official solicitation below, along with some interior pages. And as always comment and discuss below!
BRILLIANT TRASH #1 / $3.99 / 32 pages / Color / on sale 11.15.17
writer: Tim Seeley
artist: Priscilla Petraites
color: Marco Lesko
cover A: Mike Norton
cover B: Tim Seeley
In the days to come, a super powered teenage girl wipes the heavily disputed Old City of Jerusalem from the face of the globe. Now, in American dystopia after the “Lady Last Word Incident”, a click-bait headline writing “journalist” holds the key to a med-tech conspiracy that could turn people into gods for the price of days off their lives. But in a world where news is tailored to every viewpoint, will anyone believe her?
A sci-fi super-human epic from Tim Seeley, the writer of Revival and Grayson, and break out art sensation Priscilla Petraites!
‘Brilliant Trash’ interior art‘Brilliant Trash’ interior art
Adam Sandler is the most maddening actor in the history of the medium, at least in my opinion. Because, while he farts away his career with horrible garbage over and over again, every once in a while he shows what he’s capable of. Case in point: The Meyerowitz Stories.
Noah Baumbach’s latest is headed to (surprise!) Netflix, and has gotten tremendous buzz since it debuted at Cannes last spring. This first trailer is set around Sandler singing at a piano, and I am sold.
Check it out:
An estranged family gathers together in New York for an event celebrating the artistic work of their father.
The full title is The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), and it looks to tackle Baumbach’s thematics of artistic family disfunction, which he all but perfected in The Squid and The Whale. The rest of his filmography is hit or miss with me, but all of his work is worth checking out regardless.
The Meyerowitz Stories stars Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller, and Emma Thompson alongside the rare “engaged” Adam Sandler. Also, Randy Newman is scoring the film, which is a nice little touch. It will screen at the New York Film Festival and head to Netflix October 13.
Jessica Chastain runs a far-reaching underground poker circuit in Molly’s Game, the new directorial debut from prolific rat-a-tat screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. The film’s first trailer, aside from showing off an incredible cast, looks to have Sorkin’s typical rapid fire high-tone dialogue and… kind of a generic story?
Check it out:
MOLLY’S GAME is the true story of Molly Bloom a beautiful, young, Olympic-class skier who ran the world’s most exclusive high-stakes poker game for a decade before being arrested in the middle of the night by 17 FBI agents wielding automatic weapons. Her players included Hollywood royalty, sports stars, business titans and finally, unbeknownst to her, the Russian mob. Her only ally was her criminal defense lawyer Charlie Jaffey, who learned that there was much more to Molly than the tabloids led us to believe.
The true story angle doesn’t necessarily interest me, but maybe I’m shortchanging this movie based on one meh trailer. Chastain is joined by Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera, Spotlight‘s unsung hero Brian d’Arcy James, and Graham Greene as a judge. It’s a beyond solid cast, I just wish there was something more here.
Molly’s Game will hit theaters November 22, about the time Chastain’s Miss Sloane snuck into multiplexes last year.
The last four years have been the worst “retirement” for Steven Soderbergh, the idiosyncratic genius behind too many great films (and just as many weird, experimental films) to count. In those four years, after he announced his retirement from filmmaking on the heels of Side Effects, Soderbergh directed every episode of his turn-of-the-century hospital drama The Knick – arguably the best cable series to never get its full due – and the terrific HBO Liberace film Behind the Candelabra. He also produced a half dozen projects, one of which was Magic Mike XXL, which he served as cinematographer (under the common pseudonym Peter Andrews).
Point being, Steven Soderbergh never really retired, and we should all be happy that he’s “officially” backed off that sentiment with this weekend’s Logan Lucky. The notoriously rebellious filmmaker has built a decades-spanning career making whatever sort of film tickled his fancy at any given time, and some of them (Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven) were huge hits. But he’s never been keen on the typical hardline marketing techniques of Hollywood, which is why so many of his films come and go without much time to consider their greatness.
Of all the masters in the industry, Steven Soderbergh has the most substantial catalogue of underrated greatness. Here are the five I feel are sorely in need of a revival among the collective masses…
1The Limey
Soderbergh’s lean revenge drama is a sort of sideways remake of John Boorman’s 1967 thriller Point Blank. It isn’t entirely similar – this time a man seeks revenge for the death of his daughter, not for being double crossed and robbed – but it has the same singleminded drive and determination, thanks to the unfettered performance from Terrence Stamp.
Stamp squares off with old-school cinematic rebel Peter Fonda, further defining The Limey as a throwback film to the urgent, existential revenge thrillers of yesteryear. Soderbergh balances the directness of his characters with a circuitous narrative which seems to double back on itself a few minutes at a time, and a breezy Southern California tone draped over the violence. The Hollywood Hills become a character in its own right, and Stamp’s Wilson (Lee Marvin was simply Walker in Point Blank) has a blast confusing everyone with his Cockney slang. The picture often drifts off into a dreamlike memory state. The Limey was never going to be a huge hit, but it certainly deserves reappraisal.
According to Variety, Michael Sheen (Passengers) is slated to play the meticulous angel Aziraphale, while David Tennant (of Doctor Who fame) will play the demon Crowley in the Amazon adaptation of Good Omens.
The miniseries will consist of six one-hour episodes, written by Neil Gaiman.
Written by Neil Gaiman (American Gods) and Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch takes place in 2018 when the Apocalypse is near and Final Judgment is set to descend upon humanity. The armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, and tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan — except a somewhat fussy angel, and a fast-living demon are not looking forward to the coming war, and someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist.
“I first read Good Omens as a teenager and it’s been one of my favorite stories ever since,” Sheen said in a statement to Variety. “To be part of the team entrusted with bringing it alive on screen is a bit of a dream come true to be honest. To work alongside Neil, who I think is one of the greatest storytellers of all time, is incredibly exciting. And, just like the rest of the world, I’m a huge fan of David’s so I relish trying to save it with him.”
“Almost 30 years ago,” explains Gaiman when the series was first announced, “Terry Pratchett and I wrote the funniest novel we could about the end of the world, populated with angels and demons, not to mention an 11-year-old Antichrist… It became many people’s favorite book. Three decades later, it’s going to make it to the screen… I just wish Sir Terry were alive to see it.”
Good Omens has had a long road to adaptation since being published in 1990. A film, directed by Terry Gilliam, was planned back in 2002 with a rumor that Johnny Depp was cast as Crowley and Robin Williams as Aziraphale.
In 2011, it was reported that a television adaptation may be produced, with Terry Jones (Monty Python) and Gavin Scott (The Mists of Avalon) were in talks to write an adaptation.
Good Omens was finally adapted as a radio drama by BBC Radio 4 in 2014, with Peter Serafinowicz (The Tick) and Mark Heap in the cast.
Are you excited to see Good Omens on the small screen with Sheen and Tennant as the stars? Let us know in the comments!
Poison Ivy and Jason Woodrue, the Floronic Man, attempt to re-create on a global scale the accident that transformed Alec Holland into the Swamp Thing. Batman and Nightwing are then forced to team with the Joker’s sometimes girlfriend and Ivy’s former best friend, Harley Quinn, to stop the global threat.
Batman and Harley Quinn
Starring: Kevin Conroy, Loren Lester, Melissa Rauch, Kevin Michael Richardson and Paget Brewster. Written by: Bruce Timm & James Krieg Directed by: Sam Liu
The Warner Bros. animated DCU properties have always been a bit of a mixed bag. For every Batman: The Animated Series, which got everything right and is in my opinion still the definitive version of Batman outside the actual comics, there is something like the adaptation of The Killing Joke, which took something great and all but ruined it. The latest project, Batman and Harley Quinn, falls somewhere in-between.
First I’ll tell you about the good. The voice cast is great. Kevin Conroy is now THE voice of Batman (it’s him I hear when I read the comics) and he delivers as always. Melissa Rauch, from The Big Bang Theory, also does a good job with Harley Quinn. She has huge shoes to fill taking over the great job Arlene Sorkin did on the animated series, but she does well here. She gives Harley a nice balance of menace, pathos and humor. Loren Lester, as Nightwing, has good chemistry with both Conroy and Rauch. He gives Dick Grayson a flippant levity that is also welcome. And a highlight for me was Kevin Michael Richardson as The Floronic Man, who imbues the character with an eerie otherworldliness that is quite effective.
The Floronic Man!
There are also some cool details. Bringing in Swamp Thing was a nice surprise. And the small appearance by Sarge Steele was a good deep cut. There are actually plenty of easter eggs and jokes for DCU fans to discover, which makes it fun at times. Keep your ears on alert for Booster Gold.
The style and design of the movie are also much like the ’90s series. It’s filled with art deco architecture, expressionistic shadows, and red skies. That element gave me a bit of a nostalgic kick.
Now on with the bad. The animation itself is a bit rough at times; it’s inconsistent. It goes from smooth to choppy and doesn’t flow well from scene to scene.
You’re better off grabbing some fries and a shake…
The music is horrible. It’s filler, boring and adds nothing.
The tone of the movie is also all over the place, going from slapstick humor to strong sexual innuendo to superhero action in a strange rhythm that just doesn’t grab you. It can’t decide at times what it is and that doesn’t make it compelling.
It also tries way too hard at times to be funny. And one sequence actually relies on fart humor that goes on way too long (And I’m no snob. A well placed fart noise will always be CLASSIC. But cut the cheese and move on folks!)
In the end, this is an average film that really just feels like a longer subpar episode of Batman: The Animated Series. And that’s a shame because tying it to that world gives you a lot of potential. And that potential was sadly not met by this film.
When the trailer hit for ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ at San Diego Comic-Con International last month, my response was, ‘I really wish Freddie Mercury was still alive so he cold do the soundtrack for ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ a.k.a. ‘Flash Gordon Part 2.’
Apparently I wasn’t that far off as director Taika Waititi explained his influnces.
“I’ve often said if Freddie Mercury were alive, I would have asked Queen to do the soundtrack. It just has that feel: it’s a cool bold, colorful cosmic adventure. And it just needed to be fun,” said Waititi to EW. “I loved the kind of cosmic trippy vibe of the (Jack Kirby) Thor comics. Another influence for me was Flash Gordon. I grew up loving that movie.”
There you have it. ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ is as close as you’re going to get to ‘Flash Gordon Part 2.’
Are you fan of the ‘Flash Gordon’ / Queen influence? Comment below.
About ‘Thor: Ragnarok’:
Thor’s world is about to explode in Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok. His devious brother, Loki, has taken over Asgard, the powerful Hela has emerged to steal the throne for herself and Thor is imprisoned on the other side of the universe. To escape captivity and save his home from imminent destruction, Thor must first win a deadly alien contest by defeating his former ally and fellow Avengers… The Incredible Hulk!
‘Thor: Ragnarok’ stars Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Idris Elba, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban, Mark Ruffalo, and Sir Anthony Hopkins. Taika Waititi directs with Kevin Feige producing the film.
‘Thor: Ragnarok’ will destroy the universe on November 3, 2017.
The Sunshine State is home to a bevy of filmmaking talent. Most of it goes away to Los Angeles, New York, and Georgia where tax incentives make those places meccas for producing movies. However, some brave directors, DPs, sound engineers, boom operators, and writers say “F it!” The Popcorn Frights Film Festival is a celebration of horror filmmaking from around the world. Being a Florida-born event, this year Popcorn Frights addedHomegrown, a collection of horror shorts created by the talented and brave souls who stayed in the swamp to make movies.
Homegrown premiered on Saturday with a heavy-hitting
list of exciting short horror films.
5Primal Screen
The most conceptually creative of all the Homegrown movies, Primal Screen, is part documentary, part horror film. The film tells the story of several kids, all who were affected by the trailer for a 70s film called Magic starring Anthony Hopkins. Moreover, Primal Screen focuses on the ventriloquist puppet in the movie and its haunting psychological effect. But to take the film to another level, they use these stories to make a point about our modern society. It’s subtly brilliant and shot on an all black stage with no backgrounds which create a dreamy or nightmarish void for the viewers and story to exist within.
