The 60-year old actor says he is retiring after his next film, according to reports.
Leslie Dart, Day-Lewis’ publicist, confirms the news in a statement “Daniel Day-Lewis will no longer be working as an actor. He is immensely grateful to all of his collaborators and audiences over the many years,” she says. “This is a private decision and neither he nor his representatives will make any further comment on this subject.”
His final film will be Phantom Thread, which Paul Thomas Anderson is directing. Both previously worked together ten years ago on There Will Be Blood. Little is known about Phantom Thread, other than it being a drama in the fashion industry.
Known as the “English De Niro”, Day-Lewis is seen as one of the finest actors of all time. He’s known for devoting himself to his roles, as well as refusing to break character. In addition, he doesn’t like to discuss his private life and grants few interviews.
Starting in the theatre, Day-Lewis soon made the jump to feature films in the 1980s, winning supporting roles in Gandhi and The Bounty. A Room With A View would make him into a leading man. By 1989, his role as paralyzed writer Christy Brown in My Left Foot made him a superstar. This is the film in which Day-Lewis began the process of method acting, such as staying in a wheelchair and learning to type with his foot. He went on to win the Oscar for Best Actor.
In the 1990s, Day-Lewis became a sex symbol for his performance as Hawkeye in The Last Of the Mohicans. He would follow that up with playing a troubled attorney in Martin Scorsese’s The Age Of Innocence. His next work was a wrongly imprisoned convict In The Name Of The Father. After making The Crucible and The Boxer, he would take a leave of absence from acting and took up shoemaking.
In 2002, Day-Lewis would make a comeback with Scorsese on Gangs of New York. His role was that of murderous gang leader Bill “The Butcher” Cutting. The film was a success, and Day-Lewis received another Best Actor nomination.
Day-Lewis would earn his second Best Actor trophy for playing antisocial oil magnate Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood. The film is though to be one of the greatest films of the 2000s. After that, he did not appear onscreen for two years until starring in the 2009 adaptation of the musical Nine.
Day-Lewis went on to play Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. The film was a major hit, and he would win his third Best Actor statuette. He is the only actor to achieve such a record. In 2014, he became a Knight of the British Empire.
Phantom Thread arrives in theatres on December 25, 2017.
Webcomics, as a medium, are pretty young. The first online comic (according to T. Campbell) was Hans Bjordahl’s Where the Buffalo Roam in 1991, and there are webcomics still running today that have been around for most of webcomic history. The medium is 26 years old – about the average age for Millenials.
That isn’t a coincidence, either. The popularity of webcomics ties into millenial identity, such as it is. It’s not just 20-somethings writing them, or reading them. However, just like crowd-funding, social media, and cheery nihilism, it’s all part of the package.
So what makes webcomics so important? And what accounts for their sudden explosion in popularity over the last ten years?
1. We Don’t Trust Corporations Anymore
Ten years ago, the stock market crashed, and Millenials – largely children and teenagers at the time – learned a valuable lesson. Corporations, banks, and the government were not family members. They have their own interests at heart.
The stock market crash isn’t the only thing affecting this particular Millenial outlook, of course. Between Occupy Wall Street, Green Day’s American Idiot album,and the revelations of both Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, the world of the 2000s is a lot more cynical than the previous century.
What’s the relevance to webcomics? It means it doesn’t matter what the brand is on the comic book – Marvel, DC, Image or Dark Horse. McDonald’s has already noted a distinct lack of millenial brand loyalty. Instead, independent comic authors are capturing more and more of our attention. We’re more prone to trust individual people – and as a result, webcomic personalities like David Willis make upwards of 5,000 dollars a month.
2. We Don’t Have Any Money
It’s no secret that Millenials are also known as ‘Generation Screwed‘. We have less money than our parents and fewer prospects. Most of us have resigned ourselves to never having a house, never having a car, and probably struggling under crushing student debt for the rest of our life. This is particularly noticeable in the continental US, where you find young adults using GoFundMe and YouCaring to pay such things like hospital fees, rent, and grocery bills.
With that in mind, it’s easy to understand why Millenials do things like torrent movies and music. But webcomics are an entirely different beast. Webcomics, by their very nature, are free; they’re passion projects, started on whims and put online out of a desire to share. You don’t have to pay anything to read a webcomic. Instead, because of things like Patreon and Kickstarter, those rare times when you do have an extra buck or five, you can throw it at a creator. Even better, when people with a few extra bucks help support a creator, everybody benefits.
This has a pretty direct effect on what people will make and draw, too. It’s hard to imagine comics like the fantastical, feminist fairytale Blindsprings or the cheeky, sarcastic Rock Paper Cynic being picked up by mainstream publishers, but both comics are fully funded by Patreon. Instead of the marketing logic that gets things like Teen Titans and Young Justice cancelled for appealing too much to girls, the popularity of webcomics is pretty easy to gage: if people like it, they’ll let you know.
Some of the art of Kadi Fedoruk’s fantasy comic ‘Blindsprings’.
3. We’re More Interested in Hearing People’s #OwnVoices
Recently, AfterShock Comics published a new series, Alters, introducing ‘the world’s first transgender superhero‘. The critical reaction to the series, however, was decidedly mixed. This is in pretty sharp contrast to Paul Jenkins’ pride that he worked with trans women to write the story. So what went wrong?
No one thing, really. It’s just that Alters, groundbreaking for a comic by a mainstream publisher, isn’t nearly as ambitious when compared to webcomics. KhaosKomix by Tab Kimpton started in 2006 and told the story of a trans girl in 2008. Assigned Male Comics by Sophie Labelle (who is openly transgender) has been running since 2014. Labelle has actually garnered enough attention from hate groups to have her Facebook hacked and replaced with Nazi imagery.
Quite simply, comics aren’t keeping pace with the stories being told in webcomics, especially ones written by diverse authors about their own experiences. It’s all well and good to set out to write a trans story for a comic book. In fact, it’s great! But the first step is to realize that for Millenials, half-hearted, single-faceted representation isn’t enough anymore. When queer creators have the ability and medium to make their voices heard, we can’t be satisfied with the glacial pace of mainstream representation.
Another example of this is the newest Beauty and the Beast movie. There was a lot of kerfuffle about LeFou being the ‘first gay Disney character’, and his ‘big gay moment’ which entailed about 5 seconds of him dancing with another man. Without webcomics, this might be a big deal. But when it takes 30 seconds to find in-depth stories about gay men – whether sci-fi robot/human love, or gay dads raising a kid – LeFou being gay is a lot less interesting.
Webcomics and the Digital Age
Webcomics as a medium didn’t originate as something for the ‘new generation’ – but that’s what they’ve become. As part of the growing world of online media, they’re an unavoidable part of the new digital age. That puts them right alongside podcasts, fanfiction, and Youtube videos as an evolved form of storytelling that uses the Internet to its advantage.
It’s not obvious if this is a bubble that’ll pop in the next few decades, or if these are around to stay. In the meantime – take your pick. There’s plenty to choose from.
Are you looking for something different in the world of comic books? Have you had enough of capes and masks to last you for years? Are you always saying that you wish someone would combine True Detective, Wall Street, and Dynasty? If so, then The Black Monday Murders may be for you.
Paying In Blood
After a brief flashback to the stock market crash of 1929, The Black Monday Murders opens with the murder of filthy rich banker Daniel Rothschild. His body is found in an elaborate, occult crime scene surrounded by symbols representing a mysterious, magical power. Daniel was one of the heads of Caina-Kankrin, the largest investment bank in the world, and a member of a secret cabal that has something to do with money, magic, and blood.
Cast of Characters
Investigating Daniel’s murder is Theodore Dumas, an NYPD detective fresh off a suspension for gunning down a serial killer. He is working with Dr. Tyler Gaddis, professor of economics, to figure out what the symbols mean.
The prime suspect in the murder is Viktor Eresko, one of the heads of Kankrin, the Russian side of banking giant Caina-Kankrin. Viktor is familiar with the mysterious symbols and their magic, using them at one point to command a lawyer who irked him to bash his own head into a table until he dies.
Returning from a mysterious exile to take over the spot left by her deceased twin Daniel is Grigoria Rothschild. Grigoria is no stranger to the arcane herself, judging by her companion Abby, who appears to be a spirit of some kind that speaks only in the language of the runes.
Layers and Layers
The first issue makes us think we are exploring a murder mystery, but as we make it through each of the next three issues, more is revealed about this world and more questions are introduced: What is the relationship of the four families that run Caina-Kankrin? How does money relate to the supernatural elements of the story? What exactly is Abby, the ghostly familiar of the Rothschild family?
Is she a murderous ghost, or a ghostly murderer?
Creative Team
The illustrations by Tomm Coker and the coloring by Michael Garland are dark and expressive while remaining understated, perfect for the noirish feel of most of the book.
Writer Jonathan Hickman, as he often does, uses not only typical comic book panels, but also text pieces in the form of journal entries, newspaper articles, and transcripts to give a fuller understanding of the world we are visiting.
The Black Monday Murders is written by Jonathan Hickman (East of West, Pax Romana) and illustrated by Tomm Coker (Daredevil Noir, Undying Love). You can pick up Vol. 1, reprinting issues 1-4, from Image Comics.
The band Radwimps has always been popular in Japan, even expanding their reach across certain parts of Europe. Yet prior to the release of Kimi no Na ha, Radwimps had virtually no prior involvement in the anime scene. This was probably due to the fact that Radwimps had no need for it due to their popularity in Japan. Extra publicity could never be a negative though, or could it?
With Kimi no Na ha’s release and introduction to America, Radwimps finally gained traction in the United States. Normally this would be seen as a positive for the renowned rock band. However, with the United States release of Kimi no Na ha came an opportunity for a dubbed title. With this English adaptation, the band also deemed an English translation of the songs was necessary. Normally this wouldn’t raise as much of an alarm, but with dubs being a mainstay for casual and non-anime viewers it does cause a problem. Having been relatively unknown in the United States, the poorly adapted song could possibly negatively influence their image. What needs to be recognized is that despite the English songs being poorly done, it shouldn’t cause a negative view on the group.
Despite having the double release in English and Japanese there is still hope that fans of the movie will listen to their Japanese music. Having been designed for the Japanese release, the music deserves to be listened to in this fashion. However, even if the music from Kimi no Na ha was listened to in English, Radwimps has many exceptional songs in Japanese. With this in mind, please listen to Radwimps as their music truly is great.
For about 20 minutes, “Somebody to Love” is a normal episode of Fargo… and then suddenly it isn’t.
Everything about the beginning works, in large part due to the direction of Keith Gordon. This season saw a bleaker color palette than ghosts of Fargo past, but Gordon manages to make this jaundice livelier, particularly with the choreographed movements of the hitmen. Their blocking makes them move in unison like ballet dancers when they approach Emmit, and later, on their journey to the meeting place with Nikki, the way the camera follows them somehow makes it feel like an army of predatory birds is converging on the two avengers. The elevator ride up is choked with tension, and the shootout Wrench has with Varga’s henchmen evokes Malvo storming Tripoli’s hideout in the first season.
But once Emmit wakes up on his dining room floor with the Sisyphus stamp stuck to his forehead, everything starts to fall apart. And not in the fun, Fargo way, where the levee breaks and all the surmounting chaos suddenly envelops all characters involved. It’s as though when Emmit wakes up, he is waking up in a universe where Fargo is no longer thematically cohesive, and suddenly is a little too impressed with its own intelligence.
Admittedly, the cracks were showing a little bit during the shootout sequence. Why did Wrench allow Meemo to live in the previous episode if he was just going to gun him down here? Taking out Varga’s top guy seems like a pretty sound plan, when you have him cornered in a room with a silenced pistol to the back of the head. Sure, it might have made Varga more resistant to meeting with Nikki again, but what choice did he have? Surely, even in this encounter, he wasn’t going to let Nikki get away. The fact that she then allows Varga to escape makes the entire scheme fall a little flat, as well, but both of these things are forgivable. Much of what comes after is not.
Emmit wakes up, gets in his car, and then, somehow perfectly according to Nikki’s plan, he breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Obviously, when she planted the stamp on his head, she tampered with his gas tank or something in that vein, so this isn’t too much of a stretch. But Emmit confronted Ray in his own home, where, as far as Nikki can tell, he murdered him. Wouldn’t it make more sense for Nikki to do the same to Emmit, rather than some contrived plot to get him on a road when anyone could interfere at any moment?
Nikki starts off the season setting up schemes and then derailing them due to some sort of emotional impulse, in typical Fargo/Coen fashion. But after everything that happens with Ray, she’s different. Her time with Wrench turns her into an operator, someone capable of nearly taking out Varga, who is, for the most part, a criminal mastermind. How is she capable of this and yet simultaneously stupid enough to try to kill Emmit in a public area? By having her act in this way, Noah Hawley and the other writers are actively walking back huge swaths of the way she developed through the season.
Which is to say nothing of the more glaring issue, which is that she dies gunning down a police officer. Her interaction with Paul Marrane in the bowling alley granted her a new lease on life, and made her an agent acting in the name of divine justice. Having this collapse with her killing an innocent person doesn’t feel like the clever genre or trope subversion Hawley seems to think it is; instead, it is as though the character is once again taking an axe to her own development. This does not feel intentional, as though there is an observation being made about how people never change. Instead, it is almost as though the writers couldn’t think of anything better to do with the character, and thought the visual spectacle of a Justified homage would somehow remedy this. It felt abrupt and random, as much of Fargo does. But here, it did not work.
Compounding the issue further is the abrupt time-skip, another Fargo staple which normally works in beautiful, unexpected ways. Instead, it comes across as nonsensical that Wrench would wait five years to execute someone to avenge a woman he knew for three months. Maybe he really loved Nikki, and maybe he was in hiding after the police got hold of his picture, sure, but this seems like an extravagant amount of time for him to wait. The only reason for this is so it’s recent enough for Gloria to reference it when she meets Varga again, and for Sy to be sitting there at the table without it feeling like a cheat. But it feels like a cheat anyway.
Having Wrench kill Emmit is unsatisfying for a few reasons. Truth, and how untruth is often perceived as truth anyway, was an important theme of the season. To Nikki, the truth was that Emmit tricked and then murdered Ray, even if this isn’t actually what happened. In turn, it can be supposed that Wrench believed Emmit somehow killed Nikki, and this is why he shoots him. But Wrench was always an “intruder” in this season; the only reason he didn’t feel out of place was because he felt like an externalization of Nikki’s desire to lash out violently against the forces which had made her feel powerless while taking away the man she loved. So to have him play such a crucial role after she’s gone is less like watching a functional human engage in logical behavior, and more like seeing a major character get strangled by another’s severed arm. It falls utterly flat.
Wrench and Nikki were a great pair, and each felt like the culmination of the other’s arc of development. This episode squandered that, as it did with much of the rest of the season’s thematic underpinnings. Perhaps most egregious is that we never got a shot of two kittens together after Nikki’s death. That, at least, would have alleviated some of the pain of this utterly dysfunctional hour of television.
As for the final scene, Peter and the Wolf finally confronted each other… and Hawley elected to leave it up to the viewer whether or not justice won the day, or whether Varga escaped to continue his terrifying binges as a free man. The problem is, once again, much of the thematic framework of the season feels squandered in doing so. Varga recalling the line about pitchfork peasants is supposed to underscore the idea here, but instead it calls to mind how everything about the season felt like setup for his downfall. And vaguely alluding to quantum physics seven episodes ago is not laying down the proper groundwork to “resolve” the story with a Schrödinger’s wolf. (This might have worked better if Gloria’s “actualization” hadn’t happened in the previous episode, if she herself still felt like something that may or may not exist.)
Perhaps, had the rest of the hour felt less like a disaster, this ending would have been a pleasant surprise. Hawley describes Fargo as “a tragedy with a happy ending,” and to end the season with Gloria eating with her son, or putting him to bed, while reciting some monologue about the inner good of human beings would have felt like a retread. Fargo has been there, and it has certainly done that. The fact that it was willing to take a risk like this shows tremendous creativity. But for the first time in the show’s history, it felt like the risks it was taking weren’t paying off. I spent the entire season defending this season to its detractors, but honestly, at the end, it felt like the show set out to prove me wrong.
I adore Fargo, and aside from the finale and all scenes involving Moe Dammik (who, along with Winnie, never got any kind of conclusion), I thought it was brilliant. Despite the frustration with how it ended, I hope Hawley takes a few years off and then returns to it. Maybe returning to the series with a fresh mind will prevent future installments from imploding the way this one did.
In a recently released Blade Runner 2049 featurette, Harrison Ford calls returning to Rick Deckard “fun;” comparing it to trying on old clothes. But for director Denis Villenuve and cinematographer Roger Deakins, the film is a chance to extend the world. According to producer Ridley Scott, “there is always more story to tell.” And actor Ryan Gosling wanted to be part of that.
The film takes place decades after Scott’s original Blade Runner. Gosling’s Officer K hunts synthetic humans. But a case brings him to Rick Deckard, who must return to Los Angeles after thirty years in the wilderness. Well, the sort of adobe wilderness only Villeneuve can create. Ana De Armas, MacKenzie Davis, Sylvia Hoeks also star.
The Jurassic Park franchise surprised everyone in 2016 and Universal Pictures is hoping to recreate that success next year. It’s exactly one year until the release of J.A Bayona’s Jurassic World sequel and the film is already one of the most anticipated blockbusters of 2018. To celebrate being one year away from release, Universal Pictures has finally revealed a first look poster, which also announces that the film will be titled Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
The upcoming sequel will see the return of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom will also introduce newcomers Toby Jones, Daniella Pineda, Justice Smith and Rafe Spall. Jeff Goldblum will also reprise his iconic role as Ian Malcolm. No plot details are currently available however, we can safely assume that the story will include humans running away from gigantic, scary dinosaurs. Thankfully, one thing we do know is that Bryce Dallas Howard won’t be forced to run around all day wearing unbearable high heels.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is set for release on June 22, 2018.
With another month almost over, it’s time to look at the new releases from Netflix. After the barbeque and fireworks are done you’re going to need some geek entertainment to help you wind down. Here are the best picks to keep up your geek credentials.
10Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (July 18th)
Rogue One is coming to Netflix. Do I need to say more? If you haven’t taken the time to watch this Star Wars side story, you really owe it to yourself to give it a shot. It has a lot to offer even the most lukewarm fan of the franchise.
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Which titles are you looking forward to most? Leave a Comment below and let us know.
Ron Howard has officially stepped in to direct the untitled Han Solo spinoff film, Lucasfilm has confirmed.
Company President Kathleen Kennedy has this to say on the matter:
“At Lucasfilm, we believe the highest goal of each film is to delight, carrying forward the spirit of the saga that George Lucas began forty years ago. With that in mind, we’re thrilled to announce that Ron Howard will step in to direct the untitled Han Solo film. We have a wonderful script, an incredible cast and crew, and the absolute commitment to make a great movie. Filming will resume the 10th of July.”
Howard was rumored to direct the picture after Phil Lord and Chris Miller left two days ago – those rumors turned out to be correct.
How do you feel about the directorial choice for Han Solo’s spinoff movie? Sound off in the comments below.
The gang’s all here — and then some! Check out the the trailer for Wet Hot American Summer – Ten Years Later:
Let’s get the timeline in order. In 2001, former State members David Wain and Michael Showalter made Wet Hot American Summer, an over-the-top comedy set during the last day at a sleep away summer camp in 1981. The feature starred then lesser known talent such as Bradley Cooper, Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, and Elizabeth Banks, among many others. Though all were roughly 30 years of age at the time, they were playing teenage counselors at the summer camp. While it wasn’t a critical or box office darling at the time of its release, the flick garnered a tremendous cult following on DVD.
Cut to 14 years later – the aforementioned actors are among the biggest stars on the planet. Wain and Showalter are able to bring EVERYONE back for an eight-episode prequel series on Netflix entitled Wet Hot American Summer – First Day of Camp. The cast is now in their 40s, yet still playing the same age as they did in the original flick.
As promised at the end of the original movie, Ten Years Later, shows (most of) the original cast, now in their “20s,” reuniting to see what kind of people they have blossomed into. As the trailer suggests – hilarity is bound to ensue.
Netflix will premiere all eight episodes of Wet Hot American Summer – Ten Years Later on August 4.
Will you be watching Wet Hot American Summer – Ten Years Later? Let us know in the comments!
