Airing as part of NBC’s Red Nose Day on May 25, Red Nose Day Actually features several cast members from the original 2003 film Love Actually reprise their roles. Among whom include Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Keira Knightley, Colin Firth, a bearded Andrew Lincoln, and Laura Linney, among others.
Check out the utterly delightful trailer here:
Sadly missing is Alan Rickman, who passed away early last year. Emma Thompson has confirmed that she will not be returning, as she was a close friend of Rickman’s and also played her husband in the original film.
The Love Actually short sequel is only a about 10 minutes long, showing how the characters have changed since the original movie, which was released 14 years ago.
But most things seem to have remained the same. Hugh Grant still enjoys dancing in his home. Andrew Lincoln still loves speaking via poster cards. Bill Nighy is still shacking up with pop culture icons.
Red Nose Day, which originated in the UK, and eventually made its way over to the States (naturally), is a fundraising event organized by Comic Relief every other year.
It culminates with a telethon (hosted by Chris Hardwick), featuring music, comedy, and moving documentary films. Red Nose Day unites the entire world in trying to make a difference to the lives of thousands of people across the globe who are facing terrible injustice or living in desperate poverty.
The Love Actually follow-up will air on Thursday, May 25 on NBC to coincide with the United States’ Red Nose Day.
Who is watching the Watchers? Or rather, who owns the film rights?
The answer may surprise you. Marvel Studios and Fox share film rights to the Watchers, according to Kevin Feige.
In an iFilm interview, Feige explains how this arrangement works. While there’s no deal with Fox, they do have an understanding of how things work.
“There’s joint custody with a number of things,” he says. “There are certain characters that they have, but races that we share. If that makes sense?”
Since the Watchers’ first appearance is in Fantastic Four, it would seem they belong to Fox as part of the film package. Yet it appears Marvel is open to using them if they choose to do so.
This bears similarities to the Skrull situation. Both Marvel and Fox share the Skrull race, but the latter owns the rights to Super-Skrull. Indeed, Marvel did toy with using the Skrulls in The Avengers, but they chose to go with the Chitauri.
Where Uatu stands in all this is not known. Since he’s close to the F4, he might belong to Fox. It is possible he could appear on the big screen in the future.
In a Collider interview, the question of whether or not Lee is Uatu comes up. “Well, I wouldn’t say you saw Uatu,” says Feige. “I would say that you saw some Watchers.”
Now that Riverdale has wrapped its first season, are you left with Archie withdrawal? If your answer is yes, then you just have to hold on until May 17th for the next big Archie Andrews story, Over The Edge! We first wrote about this anticipated new chapter in the Riverdale gang’s life here. Now, check out a neat trailer and preview pages below!
ARCHIE #20
It’s the BIGGEST comic event in ARCHIE HISTORY! Archie and Reggie’s ongoing feud reaches a fever pitch that pits the two against each other in a thrill ride on the deadly Serpent’s Tail!
Script: Mark Waid
Art: Pete Woods, Jack Morelli
Cover: Pete Woods
Variant Covers: Elliot Fernandez with Joey Vazquez, Greg Smallwood
On Sale Date: 5/17
32-page, full-color comic
$3.99 U.S.
Page from Archie #20Page from Archie #20Page from Archie #20
Despite moments of visual splendor, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is a generic origin story whose narrative is structurally a mess.
Summary
The picture starts off with a great fight scene that is a cross between Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. We get to see Eric Bana leaping from place to place, slicing up guys and escaping peril at a ridiculous rate. Ritchie includes this extended prologue to provide context for how Arthur’s (Charlie Hunnam) parents were slaughtered and the throne was stolen by Lord Vortigern (Jude Law). Arthur escapes down the river in a baby pram (he is only a few years old in the prologue) and found by some day workers at a local brothel. What transpired after this is a very generic origin story that begins with showing Arthur as a common man and ends with him leading the attack against his parent’s murderer.
What Worked
The battle sequences at times were visually stunning, and that helped keep my attention when the storyline clearly wasn’t.
Jude Law was a fine choice to play Lord Vortigern. He exhibited just enough virtue, in the beginning, to show he was a once a decent man. What was certainly a departure for Law was seeing him turn into a power hungry fiend who would sacrifice anything for the crown (even if it means murdering his daughter). Perhaps we will see Law take on more roles where he’s the villain down the road.
The sequence that leads to Arthur pulling the sword from the stone was engaging. The build up of other prisoners attempting to pull the mystical sword unsuccessfully only to see this commoner easily remove it from the stone was the film’s most intriguing part.
Aidan Gillen was an excellent choice to play Bill (one of Arthur’s closest friends). Now mind you, Gillen was just playing a slightly different version of Little Finger in the film, but that doesn’t detract from how entertaining he was.
What Did Not Work
I’m not sure why Guy Ritchie felt it was necessary to include extreme closeups of Arthur and others during various chase scenes. It was extremely odd, and it takes you completely out of the narrative.
The 2nd half of the film was a complete mess. We went from a pseudo Game of Thrones narrative to a story involving Arthur becoming the “chosen one.” The “chosen one” storyline doesn’t match with the beginning of the film. Maybe there was a reshoot or perhaps rewrite that cause 1st half of the movie to be so disjointed from the 2nd half.
Charlie Hunnam certainly was in great shape when he stepped into the role of Arthur. However, being in great shape and performing well are two very different things. The former Sons of Anarchy star’sperformance is incredibly forgetful in the lead role even bordering on tiresome.
Why did we need to have David Beckham make a cameo?
Overall
Paying to see King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is a complete waste of time and resources. There is a reason why this film was delayed this long, and it was to postpone the inevitable. Warner Brothers even went so far as to buy out large amounts of theaters to generate buzz for a film they knew was dead on arrival. With so many great options at the box-office, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword should be the furthest from your mind.
Hounds of Love, the new abduction thriller from writer/director Ben Young, is one of the more harrowing, unsettling thrillers of its kind. Part psychosexual horror, part domestic drama about an unstable (putting it lightly) couple, Young’s film shows a new director with a keen eye for style amid madness, and it will reward those strong enough to endure the horrific moments of terror.
Based loosely on true events – which adds a certain element of horror on its own – Hounds of Love takes place in Perth, Western Australia, in 1987. Evelyn and John (Emma Booth and Stephen Curry) are a couple who spend their weekends together kidnapping, raping, torturing and murdering young girls. They have what seems to be a pattern, convincing the teens to get in their car and getting them in their home where they are promptly drugged and chained in a bedroom. Once they’re done with their victim, the young girl is promptly killed and buried in dense forest, a pattern we see in the film’s prologue.
Our main story focuses on Evie and John’s abduction of Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings), who may be more than the emotionally unstable pair can handle. Vicki is a teen in the middle of her parents’ separation, and her rebelliousness drives her to sneak out of her mom’s house one night for a party. It’s here where she’s abducted, and we are thrust in the emotionally and mentally fractured domestic world of her captors. Evie is a broken woman, hiding a lifetime of pain and poor decisions behind stone blue eyes that seem black when she’s inside the house. John is her lover, and he is genuinely evil. Early scenes between Evie and Vicki carry a sense of comfort, relatively speaking given the circumstances, but when John arrives back home, Young’s story tenses up to relentless levels of suspense and unease.
Without giving too much away, Vicki soon figures out she can drive a wedge between Evie and John. Evie has children, but they aren’t allowed to live with her. We see John being pushed around by drug dealers, his weakness in the world no doubt provoking his evil urges at home. The film is a series of failed escapes and mental manipulations, executed with terrific performances from the three leads. Curry is perfectly slimy, and Cummings plays the victim in the same strong-willed, rebellious nature we see her in the early moments. But Hounds of Love is dominated by Emma Booth.
Booth is a revelation here, an unstable woman who seems to always be trembling with nervous, uncertain energy. Her eyes are cold and distant, her chiseled jaw outlining a striking gaze, Booth and Cummings develop a sick and twisted sort of bond that ebbs and flows with Evie’s emotional breakdowns. It’s a testament to Booth’s work that her sadistic character earns our pity from time to time.
Hounds of Love is a challenging film, to put it lightly. This is a horrific thriller, first and foremost, a story Young knows hot to properly manipulate. Slow motion shots fade in and out of focus at perfect times, heightening tension that’s already tough to stomach at times. It’s a white-knuckle ride form start to finish, but thankfully Young spares us the grimmest details. This film will reward viewers who gravitate towards these sort of uncomfortable thrillers, and those viewers with enough intestinal fortitude to make it to the end.
Hounds of Love is out today in limited theatrical release and VOD.
Season two of Aziz Ansari’s critically acclaimed comedy, Master of None, hits Netflix today. I plan on binging it in its entirety this weekend and getting an overall review of it up sometime before the weekend ends. In the meantime, I thought it would be good to post a “retro review” of season one so all of you know where I stand on that season before I write about where I stand on the new one.
The following is the review I wrote for a personal blog that I used to manage two days after season one premiered on Netflix.
“About Last Night” is a movie review show, where movie critic EJ Moreno talks about the movie he saw last night. This week’s episode is about ‘Alien: Covenant‘!
Being the sixth installment in the franchise, ‘Alien:Covenant‘also plays as a sequel to the prequel film ‘Prometheus‘. Things get a little less confusing but way more morose.
“The crew of a colony ship, bound for a remote planet, discover an uncharted paradise with a threat beyond their imagination, and must attempt a harrowing escape.”
The film stars Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterson, Danny McBride, and Billy Crudup. It’s directed by Ridley Scott with the screenplay by John Logan and Dante Harper.
Find this horror/sci-fi film in theaters on May 19th, 2017!
What did you think of episode 11 of About Last Night? Will you see Ridley Scott’s new film ‘Alien: Covenant‘? Let me know in the comments below!
Since Rick and Morty‘s first episode of the third season premiered back on April Fool’s Day, fans have been clamoring for any sweet, sweet morsel of information regarding the beloved animated series. Co-creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland are well aware of this, and have had loads of fun with it.
Most recently, co-creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon posted a video to the Adult Swim Facebook. It shows Roiland — who also voices both Rick and Morty — downing shots of tequila and getting “method drunk” for an uber-inebriated version of Rick who will appear in the fourth episode of season three.
You can watch the video below:
How many shots is the right amount of shots for drunk Rick? Justin investigates.
IGN dropped an exclusive Wonder Woman poster that features Gal Gadot’s titular character and Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor. See it below.
As we get closer to the film’s release, the marketing is increasing. However, whart I’m noticing is that Warner Bros. seemed to learn their lesson from the BvS and Suicide Squad trailers and TV spots that showed far too much – from what we can tell, there hasn’t been any major spoilers revealed yet. To put it in perspective, we have not even seen the main villain yet.
“Wonder Woman hits movie theaters around the world next summer when Gal Gadot returns as the title character in the epic action adventure from director Patty Jenkins. Before she was Wonder Woman, she was Diana, princess of the Amazons, trained to be an unconquerable warrior. Raised on a sheltered island paradise, when an American pilot crashes on their shores and tells of a massive conflict raging in the outside world, Diana leaves her home, convinced she can stop the threat. Fighting alongside man in a war to end all wars, Diana will discover her full powers…and her true destiny.”
Wonder Woman stars Gal Gadot as the title character, Chris Pine, Robin Wright as Antiope, David Thewlis, Danny Huston, Elena Anaya, Connie Nielsen, Ewen Bremner, and Lucy Davis.
As a hardcore fan of Batman and his world, I thought I knew everything there was to know about the circumstances of his creation. Long before Bill Finger received his first joint credit with Bob Kane for creating the character of the Dark Knight (in last year’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice), I was aware of the behind-the-scenes drama that occurred over recognition for one of the most popular fictional characters of all time. I knew that Bob Kane claimed sole credit, while in reality Bill Finger played a large role, but until I watched Hulu’s new, original documentary Batman & Bill, I had no idea about how heartbreaking Finger’s story actually is.
ARCHIE #20
