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bookish-fan-things · 4 years

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The Captive Kingdom Launch Party HIGHLIGHTS

Jen has a dog that won't play fetch and a cat that hallucinates

The Kings English Bookstore is home to many authors in Utah and it has been hit hard by Covid-19. She asks for us to support them or your local indie bookstore!!!

November 14, there is going to be an author extravaganza to support TKE Bookstore

Shortly after the False Prince came out, she was still a very new author, she got a tweet from R.L. Stine, author of Goosebumps saying how much he loved TFP. She was so excited and she wanted to thank him personally but didn't know his name, and he had called her Jennifer so she didn't want to say Mr. Stine.So she ended up just saying, thanks!

Book 5 is due to her editor Monday (October 5, 2020) and she said she would be finishing this (the launch) then getting right back to it!

She showed her open project folders (there are a LOT)

Working on a World War 1 story and she showed history books she is reading such as History of the World War, A World Undone, and Weird War One.

One of her new works is about a kid with no memory, a magic sharpie, and a dice game called Boggle that sometimes talks to him and he sees a message in the dice: “they know ur here go”

Q&A!!!

Disney, book to movie adaptation possibilities? She'd be fine with it if they asked. She wants it to be made right. She wants someone who comes to at it with a fan’s perspective.

Paramount Pictures had optioned the rights to the False Prince, what happened? When you have a contract, every six months they have to decide whether to extend, cancel, or make the movie. As her six months was coming up, they fired their CEO, so everything evaporated.

How does it affect you emotionally when one of your characters goes through something traumatic or extremely challenging? She has a background in theatre and she comes to writing from a theatrical perspective. It plays out in her head like it's on stage so she becomes every character. She goes through everything with her characters, she feels it, she dreads it, she feels awful, but she's learned that “Most of us are in this stasis of being where we are just comfortable being exactly who we are and when something hard happens to us, even if we hate it, it forces us to grow. The hard thing creates heroes. So my characters start out believing they are just ordinary people, but when I do the hard things, my characters become very heroic characters. I do hard things to them because I love watching them grow.” I had to include this quote because it was so great

Favorite background character who you think gets overlooked a lot? Kerwyn, he is one of the very few stable things in the lives of the main characters, he is just good, strong, and loyal. Amarinda, she’s ok with being overlooked but she is so strong and intelligent.

Characters based on yourself? Not really, she doesn't think she is interesting enough to write about, but Sage, like her, is left handed, climbs, and has her sense of humor. She relates closely to the main character from the Scourge, Ani, and sees a lot of herself in her, but didn't base Ani on herself, they just have a lot in common.

Jen discussed how she plots out her books and how many drafts she goes through: she's got to know the twist so she can layout the hints. She shows an example of a chart of how much each character and what the reader knows. She rewrites a lot and feels it come together. First rewrite is fixing major plot issues. Second, logic. Dialogue. Description. Word choice. Could be 10-15 drafts before her editor sees it, who sees things Jen missed.

Have your characters ever taken you by surprise (with twists)? The ending of Mark of the Thief book one, she didn't expect, so she had to make some changes. Usually on top of it, and has something called the Rule of Five. Has a general idea, and makes herself come up with five possible ways the idea could play out. 1, usually pretty predictable. 5, usually really weird. 2, 3, and 4 she really gets creative. “Limitations are the mother of creativity.”

How she gets her character names: baby name books and websites (Imogen and Tobias). Symbolic, Sage (wise, a way for him to stick it to his dad and say he has wisdom), Connor (con man), Jaron (teenage boy she knew who was just a great person and outstanding kid, and if we had royalty in our country he would be a prince). Put sounds together, places, Amarinda, Mott, Roden, Kerwyn. (She also gave an example for writers to use: UTAH, UTAR, TUTAR, TOTAR, TOTARA, city of Totara!!)

She explained how she does her fantasy world building and it is mainly based on what she will need in the plot (ie Carthya is landlocked, mountains to the north, waterways that would be needed, it is resource wealthy making it desirable, etc)

Culture and religion in world building: how many gods or none? saints and devils! causing good and bad things in your life. Sage feels like he is constantly being harassed by the devils. It became a social thing in the world.

Would she want to live there [in Carthya]? Sometimes, but not in the last book that she is editing now!! *wink*

Where's fink's rat? Fink’s rat is on the castle grounds. She said this. It's canon. Fink’s. Rat. Is. In. The. Castle. (See @thedevilsofcarthya for full transcript of Jen discussing this)

TCK trailer: created by her family, particularly her son, Chase, and the voiceover was her son in law. Chase wanted to do something different and take a risk.

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Your career as an author? When she started writing she knew nothing and nobody just had a manuscript that was ‘awful’ and will be buried with her. (I personally would read ANYTHING she wrote). She submitted her second one to “every agent with a pulse” and everyone said no. She wrote a new one, they said no. Fourth manuscript, she felt ready to break in, Apprentice to a Madman, she thought it was the best thing ever, submitted it and got a rejection scribble, not a letter, worked on it and kept getting rejected. One publisher had rep for taking everybody so she sent in hers. A couple months later, on her birthday, she got a call from a friend that they got an acceptance letter from the same publisher as she had submitted hers, got her own… rejected…She thought a lot about it and decided to erase everything she thought she knew about publishing and once she had a new idea, that manuscript got her agent and first publisher. That letter on her birthday was the last rejection letter she received. “Remember you can start from nowhere and find success.”

When asked for descriptions of the characters so an artist can draw them, she said, they look like how you envision them, there is no ‘right’. (Shows fanart from the competition that is on her blog!)

TCK art print was created by her niece, Ireland. It is her concept of the characters.

Writing during covid and quarantine? She's a strong believer that when God closes a door, he opens a window. She misses the opportunities to be in schools and bookshops. Just discovered a new WW2 true story she is researching. Various stories at different stages. Very excited for stories she has created because of Covid. “We will get through this, we will, and we're going to be stronger at the end because remember, when we go through hard things we get stronger."

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murderborn-of-vengeance · 3 years

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Czarna Wdowa 2021 Cały Film Online

Welcome back everyone this is going to be my new marvel black widow movie video there's a bunch of announcements about what disney is going to be doing disney and marvel with the actual release of the movie people been asking about them putting it on disney plus apparently there's some news about that now so i'll explain what's going on and a lot of it has to do with what warner brothers is doing with their movies in 2021 and what's happening right now

The world just in general with movie theaters so if you're new to the channel be sure to subscribe to get all the videos we're obviously in the middle of Wandavision i'm doing episode videos for all that we're going to have falcon and winter soldiers starting in march so there's a lot of really really cool marvel stuff coming up we're doing that disney plus memberships giveaway all you have to do to enter is be a subscriber and just leave all your predictions about the black widow movie on the video so if you didn't see the news in the past week there's a new report from variety's insights team which is a very insidery business report that they publish about the movie and tv financials studio politics them releasing movies and tv shows and in it they talk about how disney is making some changes to their plans for the black widow movie release date because of what's been happening the last couple of months and now at the beginning of 2021 in january you may have seen that a lot of studios just delayed all their big movies pretty much up through april and last week kevin feige was doing a bunch of interviews to hype up the wand division episodes during those he talked about everything from deadpool 3 to the fantastic four movie to their new rebooted x-men movies they're doing in the mcu but he also talked about what's happening with the Czarna wdowa film online because now everybody's wondering if they're going to have to delay it again you probably saw when all the movie delays were happening people were making jokes

In their timelines like just wait for it disney's going to announce they're going to delay that black widow movie one more time it's already been delayed almost as many times as the new mutants movie last year when a lot of things got delayed they figured that by this time and by march april 2021 things would be better theaters would be open but so far that has not been the case the uk is currently under a big lockdown the u.s has been under a big lockdown there's still a lot of other places around the world where theaters are not open and won't be open for a while that's why warner brothers came up with their real grand plan to release all their 2021 movies on hbo max last year like we need subscriptions and it doesn't look like things are going to get better so why don't we just put all of our movies on hbo max and in some theaters on the same day for all of 2021 but in terms of the Czarna Wdowa film right now just nothing beyond april has been delayed again so there's still a chance that they could hit that may release date

But the big problem that marvel has that a lot of other studios don't have with their movies is that if they delay black widow again they have to delay every other marvel movie into like 2023 like pretty much every future marvel movie one of marvel's biggest strengths the connected nature of its movies also becomes a big problem too like we're at the beginning of marvel phase 4 right now all the movies happen in a certain order for a reason because each one tells a little of the overarching infinity saga style story that helps connect everything building up to avengers 5 it's like you're watching a tv show that's serialized and each of the episodes cost 200 million dollars so they delay black widow again it means they'd have to delay the shang chi movie which is coming this summer the eternals movie then spider-man 3 doctor strange 2 thor 4 love and thunder and so on the dominoes keep following well into 2023 most of you who are still in school right now if they kept delaying movies you would probably be married with children by the time avengers 5 rolls around but back last year in 2020 when the lockdowns first started happening after the first few movie delays everyone just started asking why don't you just put black widow on disney plus why not put the movies on disney plus disney pretty much has infinite money and they can just take it on the chin a little bit for a couple movieswhat do we have here there's also that extra thirty dollars that they charge for some of their disney premier movies like the mulan movie where you get it on disney plus but you have to pay an extra thirty dollars to get it early they're also doing that again with another movie raya in the last dragon in march so i'll talk about that in a second too that's another quote-unquote hybrid

Release movie that they're doing and apparently the reason why marvel did not do that with the black widow movie last year because originally they were going to release it in november didn't have anything to do with them being worried about losing money because yeah they'd lose a little bit of money according to the rumor it had more to do with the specific clauses in scarlett johansson's contract that prevented disney and marvel from releasing it on disney plus like apparently scarlett johansson's contract for the czarna wdowa movie has some special terms in it about how they're allowed to release the movie and how she earns a ton more money from a theatrical release from the box office earnings than from streaming earnings so apparently disney and marvel were legally obligated under the terms of her contract

To have to release the movie in theaters in some way they couldn't just put it on disney plus even if they wanted to what's changed recently though why there's all this renewed talk about a hybrid release for black widow then putting it on disney plus and in theaters on the same day has more to do with what happened with the wonder woman 1984 movie that was the first real big comic book movie this past year to do the hybrid release this last christmas releasing the movie on streaming on hbo max the same day that they release it in theaters where theaters are open around the world because there are some places where theaters are open so warner brothers is doing this hybrid release strategy for all of its movies in 2021 the big difference between what warner brothers is doing and what disney is doing is that warner brothers isn't charging the extra 30 dollars premier access money that disney is charging for some of its films but per this variety insights report disney and marvel are starting to feel like delaying the black widow movie straight up will just cause more problems than it will solve so they're thinking about a hybrid release strategy to fix everything they get to release the movie with no more delays meaning we get to see shang qi this summer and eternals in november no more delays for marvel movies because right now just based on the rate of how fast the virus situation is resolving itself most summer movies seem like they're going to be fine like theaters will mostly be open by later this summer and per this hybrid release strategy because they'd be releasing black widow in some theaters

Even if it's not a ton it would be enough to keep scarlett johansson from suing disney for the tens of millions of dollars she would potentially lose out on also on the side they'll probably pass her some extra change like here please take a couple extra million dollars don't sue us warner brothers kind of had to do that with gal gadot and patty jenkins when they released wonder woman 1984 on hbo max they gave him a bunch of extra money up front because they weren't going to be earning a lot of extra money on the back end you probably saw patty jenkins making a huge stink about all this christopher nolan got really pissed off about this too when they announced their big 2021 movies plan in fun fact 2 all the newer marvel phase

5 movies that they've announced like the fantastic four reboot movie the deadpool 3 movies ryan reynolds marvel is apparently also altering all their standard movie contracts with everyone to allow for streaming releases if things like this happen in the future so actors directors producers can't sue them if a big problem comes up or another big pandemic and they have to release movies on streaming so if you're wondering why you didn't see a lot of disney movies on disney plus last year it's not so much about them losing money it's more about lawsuits from people in studio contracts the next big disney plus test that they're running is for the raya in the last dragon movie is basically disney's version of avatar the last airbender they just released a new trailer for that this morning as i'm posting this video that's going to be released the first week in march so we won't have to wait too long to see what happens with that but they're charging the extra 30 dollars for the disney premier access just like they did with the mulan movie so if they're doing that for a pixar movie then you can bet that they're going to charge an extra 30 for the black widow movie this may if they also go with the hybrid release strategy like variety is saying they will what will probably happen you'll see in the next couple of months

Is marvel will wait till the last possible second that they have to before committing to an actual release strategy like they'll just wait till april to see if things get better and they don't have to worry about it and they can just release it normally in theaters like they originally wanted to right now everyone's assuming that things will mostly be back to normal by the summer so may is just sort of that in-between period like kevin feige himself is hopeful that things will be fine but he also said that he's trying not to make too many assumptions before we actually get to may so let me know in the comments if you think that marvel is going to pull the rip cord and do a hybrid release strategy for black widow in may or if you think the theaters will be fine by then thank you so much for wriging everyone stay safe and i'll see you in the next post!

You can see this video here:

https://myfilmyonline.pl/caly-film/czarna-wdowa-2021-film-online/

#Czarna wdowa #Czarna Wdowa online #Czarna Wdowa film

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marredbyoverlength · 4 years

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Year-End Awards 2019

2019 was very good for movies. Or, rather, November and December of 2019 were very good for movies. I could speculate about why that is (Awards season? Disney? Moloch?), but I don’t really know. What I do know is that the Oscars are tomorrow, so I better get this post up today.

Honorable mentions in no particular order. Strap in, chumps.

Best Lead Performance: Adam Sandler, Uncut Gems

Sometimes it feels like Adam Sandler is cheating, lowering our expectations with awful performances in even-more-awful films so that his dramatic turns look better by comparison. But whether or not we grade him on a curve, this performance is the best of the year.

Sandler’s character, Howard Ratner, is ridiculous. In fact, much of the movie is ridiculous. But Sandler makes this absurd person human, and in doing so, makes the whole movie work. He commits hard to the role, and even though every scene is a little more unbelievable than the last, I never for a moment stopped believing in Howard. Superb work.

Honorable Mentions: Willem Dafoe, The Lighthouse; Saoirse Ronan, Little Women; Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story; Adam Driver, Marriage Story; Ana de Armas, Knives Out; Kang-ho Song, Parasite; Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes.

Best Supporting Performance: The rest of the cast of Uncut Gems

The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that Uncut Gems is a movie that survives entirely on its acting. The Safdie brothers themselves have said that the movie wouldn’t work without Kevin Garnett nailing the scene where he first holds the black opal. I’d extend that credit to all the other supporting roles: Idina Menzel as Howard’s wife who no longer even bats an eye at the insanity he brings on himself, Marshall Greenberg (a non-actor) as the fellow jeweler who expresses genuine concern for Howard but still gives him unfavorable terms on a pawn deal, deranged Garment District legend Wayne Diamond as a character just named “High Roller”—every one of these people is essential to the success of the film. When it comes down to it, Uncut Gems doesn’t make any sense. It takes a suite of perfect performances to make it feel as real as it does.

Honorable Mentions: Timothée Chalamet, Little Women; Laura Dern, Little Women; Florence Pugh, Little Women; Takayuki Hamatsu, One Cut of the Dead; Daniel Craig, Knives Out; Al Pacino, The Irishman.

The Costner Award for Worst Actor: Rebel Wilson, Cats

When we meet Rebel Wilson (as her fursona “Jennyanydots,” a name I will never utter again), she is showing her butthole to the camera. The character never gets more likable than that, because they let Rebel Wilson ad-lib numerous “comedic” lines to punch up the script. They’re awful.

Honorable Mention: James Corden, Cats.

Nicest Surprise: Cold Pursuit

I watch the Liam Neeson stupid action flick with my brother Rob every year. Sometimes we get something legitimately great, like A Walk Among the Tombstones. Other times we get a movie like The Commuter, which is dumb as rocks. But this is the first time we got a comedy. I went in expecting a second-rate Neeson-kills-people thriller, and instead got a solid black comedy. Apparently it’s nearly a shot-for-shot remake of the Norwegian film In Order of Disappearance, so maybe I should have known better. But I didn’t, so I was pleasantly surprised.

Hiddenest Gem: One Cut of the Dead

One Cut of the Dead is the best movie of the year that my friends haven’t seen, and it’s a tough movie to talk about because of how fun it is to watch knowing nothing about it. So I’ll keep it short. One Cut is a Japanese schlock horror movie with a fun twist that manages to be creepy at first, then funny, then heartwarming. Two things elevate this above the usual fun-twist movie. The first is that the surprise unfolds in little pieces over the entire second half of the movie, rather than hitting all at once. The second is that there’s real substance there: under the goofy exterior there’s a charming family story that’s worth coming back for.

Most Insulting Moment: We Hate Sensory Deprivation, Angel Has Fallen

I haven’t seen the other films in the Blank Has Fallen franchise, nor did I need to do so to understand its third installment. It’s exactly the kind of institution-worshipping great-men-of-history support-our-troops action bullshit you’d expect. But after the credits, there’s a totally inexplicable scene where Gerard Butler and his dad Nick Nolte agree to get treatment for their (implied) PTSD. Instead of leaving it as just a nice moment of healing, it cuts to a comedy scene where they go to a two-person sensory-deprivation tank and float around in the dark complaining about it. The general gist of the scene is “sensory deprivation is dumb and gay.” I’m not a sense-dep guy, but it’s used here as a stand-in for all the forms of “modernity” that reactionary filmmakers hate: you know, like mental health treatment, or trying new things, or expressing any sincere vulnerability even for a moment. Why not just show them affectionately kissing guns and save some production cost?

Honorable Mentions: The trailer for A Dog’s Way Home; The narration in Ad Astra.

Winter’s Tale Memorial “What the Hell Am I Watching” Award: Cats

At long last, a film that unites the unholy trinity of ambition, incompetence, and derangement to form a true “What the Hell Am I Watching” award-winner. The premise of Cats, in short, is that the cats of London meet every year to perform a ritual sacrifice of one of their number, believing that the chosen cat will, after their death, be reincarnated…as another London cat. And they determine the sacrifice by holding a talent show. And one of the cats is a warlock. So we’re off to a good start.

I was fortunate enough to see the original version. You see, the film is almost entirely CGI, so much so that viewing it feels like living inside a haunted kaleidoscope. Even the actors, through “digital fur technology,” are turned into cats which are anthropomorphized to greater or lesser degrees. The warlock cat, for example, has cat abs. But shortly after theatrical release, director Tom Hooper realized that the film contained major visual effects oversights, including failing to CGI several of the actors’ hands, meaning that Judi Dench and Ian McKellen appeared to have human arms on cat bodies. These are only some of the crimes of the film Cats. A full reading of the litany would take all day.

Honorable Mentions: A Dog’s Journey; Gemini Man.

Prettiest Movie: 1917

I’d be remiss not to talk about the cinematic achievement of 1917. The all-in-one-take thing, or the appearance thereof, is kind of a used gimmick at this point. (Birdman, after all, used it and won Best Picture.) I went into 1917 expecting a cheap knockoff. Instead I was blown away. Every detail was perfect, down to the mud stains on the extras’ overcoats, the stacking of sandbags in the real dug-out trenches, the bloating of the bodies clogging the waterways. One especially memorable scene follows our hero (George MacKay) sprinting through a ruined city by night, intermittently lit by mortar fire, dodging gunfire all the way. Maybe “pretty” isn’t the right word, but no film this year used the visual medium as well as 1917.

Honorable Mentions: Parasite, Once Upon A Time…in Hollywood.

Best Picture: Under the Silver Lake

Yes, I know it’s weird to give Best Picture to a movie that didn’t even get an honorable mention anywhere else. But this is my blog, dammit, I stand by it. Under the Silver Lake is a movie about capitalist-media-technology-complex-inspired brain poisoning. It stayed on my mind for weeks after seeing it, and I eventually gave it a second watch. It held up.

Criticisms of the film abound, like how male-gazey a lot of the portrayals of women are, but I think the parts that some reviewers identify as flaws are intentional and important features of the movie. We see the film through the eyes of our main character (Andrew Garfield), who is a scumbag, but the film is very clearly not endorsing being a scumbag. It’s about the interplay of personal neuroses and moral failings with the broader perverse clown-reality we all occupy, and the inescapable tinge our perspectives bring to the world we see. The film is, after all, a sort of noir film, and our hero’s attitudes are reflective in some ways of the noir mindset: find the clues, unravel the plot, get the girl. The incongruity between the stories and attitudes of our past and the demented reality of our future define the film.

I could go on about this for much longer, which is why I’m choosing Silver Lake as the best film of the year. It’s not notable for its acting or cinematography (though both are solid), but in terms of content, nothing else this year encapsulated my internal and external world quite so well as this.

Honorable mentions: Parasite; 1917; Little Women; The Irishman; One Cut of the Dead; Marriage Story; Uncut Gems.

That’s it, that’s the post. I think I’m moving to Letterboxd next year.

#2019 #oscars #awards #fervent gushing #one post of the year

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sleepykittypaws · 5 years

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Best and Worst of 2018

Well, it’s hard to believe another holiday season has come and gone. It feels like just yesterday (a.k.a. September) when I was filled with such hope and excitement for the ever-growing crop of holiday entertainment headed our way. With 83 original made-for-TV movies debuting on network/cable + Netflix/Hulu alone, I barely scratched the viewing surface, even while mostly watching new holiday content nightly from November through Christmas. For instance, this is the first year I didn’t get to a single ION or UP offering. Heck, I didn’t even get through all of Lifetime’s offerings, which I mostly really enjoyed, let alone do more than dip my toe into Hallmark’s daunting 38 new movies. But, of the more than 34 new movies and specials I did sample this season, here are my best and worst…

Best Made-for-TV Holiday Movie of 2018

Early on it became pretty clear that Hallmark’s ever-more homogenized offerings were unlikely to produce my seasonal favorite. Now, it’s possible I just missed that gem that was gonna win me over, since I stopped watching Hallmark altogether at some point, but for the second year in a row, it was Lifetime that offered up my favorite of the season, with one of their acquired titles, Every Other Holiday.

Every Other had both rom and (some) com, but wasn’t your standard made-for-TV Christmas fare. It was clearly just as low budget, but it was a lot more realistic and well-acted than average. It wasn’t light, fizzy fun, and it even had a strong faith element, which is usually not my favorite, but it was so well done, it was impossible not to like.

The story of a an estranged family fulfilling their children’s wish of spending Christmas together with extended family, instead of only sharing “every other holiday” with each parent, was well-written, holiday-centric and ultimately touching. I just loved it, and really hope it becomes available on DVD or digital.

Hitting a completely different note, I also really liked the cheese-tastic Lifetime original A Very Nutty Christmas, starring Melissa Joan Hart, who is, for me, the Queen of Made-for-TV Christmas movies. Not only did she star in the classic Holiday in Handcuffs, this is her second-straight, sweet, funny Lifetime joint, after last year’s a A Very Merry Toy Store, and I hope she continues to make more. (Hart’s company also produced both Nutty and Toy Store.)

This story of a nutcracker come to life, and the baker who falls in love with him, was super silly Christmas fun, with all the elements of the classic ballet transposed onto a small town bakery in the lead up to the holiday. The cast was outstanding, and quite funny, and it was the perfect amount of crazy Christmas fun, that really hit my holiday movie sweet spot.

Honorable mentions also go to the quite funny The Truth About Christmas (Freeform) and wacky The Princess Switch (Netflix), both of which were light, fun holiday larks that I absolutely enjoyed.

My 2018 Made-for-TV Top 10

Every Other Holiday (Lifetime)

A Very Nutty Christmas (Lifetime)

The Truth About Christmas (Freeform)

The Princess Switch (Netflix)

The Christmas Chronicles (Netflix)

Christmas Lost and Found (Lifetime)

The Christmas Contract (Lifetime)

Poinsettias for Christmas (Lifetime)

A Christmas in Tennessee (Lifetime)

Return to Christmas Creek (Hallmark Movies and Mysteries)

Honestly, Return only made the cut because it was best of a bad batch I watched from Hallmark, and there were probably plenty I rated two paws that I actually enjoyed more.

Clearly, I am hoping Lifetime stays in the Christmas movie fight, as I strongly feel they’re out Hallmark-ing Hallmark, on every level. Lifetime is bringing the cute Christmas romance, but also offering up greater diversity, better casts (with a heavy lean towards late ’80s/early ’90s nostalgia), and scripts that nail the formula, without seeming formulaic and boring. Family friendly and sweet doesn’t have to also equal absolutely boring and bland, and Lifetime is proving that year over year.

Best Theatrical Holiday Movie of 2018

This category is a bit of a cheat, since I didn’t actually go to the movies this Christmas season, but thanks to some quick video turn arounds, I was able to see some of the stuff that debuted, albeit in one case only briefly, in theaters this year.

My favorite is the not-exactly-Christmas, but very snowy and fun, Smallfoot. I did not expect to enjoy this Channing Tatum-voiced Yeti movie nearly as much as I did. It was smart, funny and great fun for the whole family. Much more savvy and sweet than expected, this story of a Yeti tribe who live isolated above the clouds for their own protection, find their belief in a series of wacky explanations is challenged when one of them sees the mythical “smallfoot,” a.k.a. a human being.

My other, much more holiday-centric pick, is Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer, which enjoyed a brief theatrical release before jumping directly to digital. This long-delayed movie about a miniature horse who wants to be one of Santa’s reindeer, boasts a talented voice cast and a charming story that went in ways I definitely didn’t expect. The animation isn’t totally up to par, but our entire family enjoyed this original take on Santa and his magic, and I definitely see us re-watching it in future seasons.

And, honestly, The Christmas Chronicles probably belongs in this list, rather than made-for-TV, since the Netflix original had a much more big screen budget. Kurt Russell’s cool Santa will be watched more than once in many households, and I can definitely see it becoming a bit of a Christmas classic over time.

Best Holiday Special of 2018

Disney Channel’s reboot of the classic Ducktales offered up its first Christmas special in 2018, and it was a doozy. Ducktales Last Christmas! got multiple watches in our household this season.

This full-of-callbacks half hour managed to bring in Mickey’s Christmas Carol and Dr. Who, with a large nod to David Tennant, current voice of Scrooge McDuck, and a host of other meta-jokes that make it well worth watching more than once.

The tale of Scrooge visiting great Christmas parties across time with a little help from these, “three ghosts he met once when they meant to visit another Scrooge,” was great, classic animation that was a just a ton of fun to watch, and I think I liked it even better the second time around.

Honorable mentions go to NBC’s A Legendary Christmas with John and Chrissy, who’s throwback quirky style put a huge smile on my face, and Netflix, for finally blessing us with Great British Baking Show: Holidays.

Best New-to-Me Holiday Discovery of 2018

The 2017 theatrical The Man Who Invented Christmas was, I believe, considered a box office flop, but this somewhat ahistorical tale of how Dickens created his legendary A Christmas Carol was great holiday fun, with Dan Stevens ably channeling the Victorian-era author. I’m not sure it’s funny or schmaltzy enough to become a Christmas classic in the It’s a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Story vein, but I have no doubt it will become much better known as more people get a chance to experience it.

I also want to offer up two honorable mentions for made-for-TV movies of yore I saw for the first time this season, including the delightful 2013 Hallmark movie, Window Wonderland, which earned a spot on my all-time-favorites list and definitely made me wish Hallmark still made smartly written and less formulaic movies like this.

I also really liked Melissa Joan Hart’s 2014, The Santa Con, which she directed herself and was her first holiday pairing with Barry Watson, also her co-star in A Very Nutty Christmas. Con was another definitely different movie not afraid to buck the formula, which I really enjoyed.

But it wasn’t all Christmas Eve snow and candy canes this season so on to what I didn’t like…

Worst Made-for-TV Holiday Movie of 2018

I was deeply torn between two Hallmark movies I spent the entire runtime hating more and more as the movie went on: Christmas in Evergreen: Letters to Santa and Mingle all the Way. Both contained actresses I’ve really enjoyed in other Hallmark projects, Ashley Williams and Jen Lilley, respectively, and in the case of Evergreen, the 2017 original actually made my best-of list last season.

Both were less “movies” than a checklist of Hallmark plot points so grimly adhered to and executed that you could almost see the script writer’s notes

decorate Christmas tree ✔️

make gingerbread house ✔️

have snowball fight ✔️

save business ✔️

kiss under soap bubble snow ✔️

The End ✔️

These are the exact sort of competently produced (they look just fine), content-free, promo-filled (everything in the picture above, with the sole exception of actress Jill Wagner, can be purchased at a Hallmark store near you) faux-festive slogs that I find mind-numbing, and not in a good way.

I totally want silly, cheesy and cozy in my Christmas fare. But I do not care for churned out, near-identical schlock. Basically, there’s good cheese, and there’s bad, and Hallmark’s brand this season seemed to be entirely of the “cheez” variety, a.k.a. we-can’t-legally-call-it-cheese-because-it-contains-no-dairy.

Slick, but joy-free is how I sum up Hallmark’s 2018 slate. Don’t get me wrong, I know I’m in the minority here, as their ratings are going up and up and up. I fully expect to see even less interesting movies, and more of ’em, in 2019. I’m just not sure I’ll be bothering to watch.

Not that there weren’t bad fare to be found beyond Hallmark’s borders…

Lifetime’s A Twist of Christmas was a boring promo for the weirdest product ever: an Oreo music box. Still baffled how they didn’t make the “twist” title into an Oreo pun, and I think its lack made me dislike the movie even more.

Freeform’s No Sleep ’Til Christmas had so much potential, but got so many things wrong, it kind of infuriated me more than any other movie this season, simply because it was so close to being really good. (I had a somewhat similar take on A Shoe Addict’s Christmas, but that one wasn’t tone deaf like No Sleep, just boring.)

And, lastly, if I’d been able to make it all the way through the execrable Life-Size 2: A Christmas Eve, I’m pretty confident it would have topped my worst-of picks by a mile. This utterly unwatchable sequel to the quite charming 2000 Wonderful World of Disney film was an epic fail on every level. Not festive, incredibly dumb and not even accidentally funny. All in all, this wildly hyped outing was a disaster of Holiday Joy (my most-hated of 2016) proportions, but with a much bigger budget.

Worst Holiday Special of 2018

Nailed It! is a show that a lot of people, including my 11-year-old son, really enjoy, but I find tedious and kind of disgusting. Nailed It! Holiday! was my first, and frankly, last, experience with the show, and all I can really say is that it is very, very much Not. My. Thing.

Worst New-to-Me Holiday Discovery of 2018

For the second year in a row, Trolls figure into the worst category of my list, this time via this new-to-me 1981 HBO special, The Trolls and the Christmas Express, that I picked to show my kiddos.

Wow, this Canadian-made animated special was a slog. Not terribly festive, it makes Santa’s elves into idiots, and the entire premise of wearing out the reindeer seems … dumb. I mean, aren’t they magic? Do magic reindeer get tired?

We try to watch a Christmas special every night between Thanksgiving and Christmas—kind of a TV advent calendar—and this was my YouTube pick, as I wanted to watch something we hadn’t seen before. Big mistake. Huge. My kids (justifiably) didn’t let me make a pick again all season.

So, that’s a wrap on Christmas TV 2018. I’ll be back with renewed hope and festive fantasies of TV movie greatness in 2019, mostly because, with each year, there is fresh hope that this time will, for sure, actually be the Best Christmas Ever. 😂

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screenandcinema · 3 years

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Coming Attractions December 2021

As usual, we present monthly previews of new movies being released. These are the movies that will be hitting your local cinemas (and streaming services) this month:

December 3rd

Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Coming to Disney+ is a new animated film based on the acclaimed Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series. The books have been adapted before with four live-action films (the first three starring the cast) that collectively grossed $265 million worldwide. Fun fact about those four films, in the first three, Steve Zahn plays the titular Wimpy Kid’s father, while in the fourth, Tom Everett Scott plays the father. So in the live-action universe of the Wimpy Kid, Greg and Rodrick’s dad is always played by a member of The Wonders. Chris Diamantopoulos is the voice of the dad in this new animated film, I assume Ethan Embry was busy.

December 10th

West Side Story - Steven Spielberg takes on the 1957 musical of the same name with his long-awaited adaptation of West Side Story. Early reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, so keep an eye on this one.

Don’t Look Up - In limited theaters today and on Netflix Christmas Eve is the newest film written and directed by Adam McKay. This black comedy follows two astronomers (Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence) trying to warn mankind that a comet is coming to destroy the Earth. Fun stuff, right? The impressive cast also includes Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Cate Blanchett, and Meryl Streep.

Being the Ricardos - Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed this upcoming drama starring Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball and Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz. The film, which is a behind-the-scenes look at I Love Lucy is in limited theaters today, and on Amazon Prime on December 21.

National Champions - Stephan James stars a college quarterback threatening to protest the national championship game in order to see compensation for collegiate athletes. J.K Simmons, Alexander Ludwig, Lil Rel Howery, Kristin Chenoweth, Timothy Olyphant, and Uzo Aduba all costar in this sports drama from the director of Greenland.

December 17th

Rumble (December 15th) - It has been quite the ride for the animated monster wrestling film Rumble which features the voices of Will Arnett and Terry Crews. Rumble was originally slated for release in summer 2020, before quickly shifting to early 2021. Then the pandemic forced it to summer 2021 before ultimately settling on a release date in February 2022. And then in late November, it was announced it will be coming exclusively to Paramount+ in December. So either the Clifford the Big Red Dog streaming numbers were great, or the theatrical box office numbers were abysmal, either way, Paramount changed their mind.

Spider-Man: No Way Home - Putting aside the multi-verse and the rumors of who may or may not be showing up, Spider-Man: No Way Home marks the first complete trilogy from one director in the MCU. Other directors have done three films in the MCU, the Russo brothers did two Captain America films and two Avengers films but didn’t nail the cohesive trilogy (though Civil War, Infinity War, Endgame is close). Jon Watts achieved this, even though Peyton Reed and James Gunn (who will both close out their trilogies in 2023) had a head start on Watts each releasing their first film (and second in Gunn’s case) before Spider-Man: Homecoming. Two big factors led to Watts finishing this feat first, the first is that since Spider-Man is a joint Sony production, they have a hand in dictating release dates (hence why we have gotten a new Spider-Man every two years). The Spider-Man trilogy only took four years from the first film to the third. Shorter than Iron Man (five years), Thor (six years), Captain America (five years), and Avengers (six years). The other important factor is the firing of James Gunn by Disney in 2018, and rehiring in 2019, which caused Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 to move further down the release calendar. Congratulations to Jon Watts on this achievement, you win a chance to direct Fantastic Four.

Nightmare Alley - With his first film since his double Oscar wins for The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro delivers this adaptation of a 1946 novel of the same name. The film stars Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collete, Willem Dafoe, and Rooney Mara.

The Lost Daughter - Maggie Gyllenhaal makes her directorial debut with this drama starring Olivia Colman and Dakota Johnson. The film hits select theaters today and will be on Netflix on New Year’s Eve.

December 22nd

The Matrix Resurrections - Are you ready to step back into the Matrix? I sure am. Do I need to say more? I don’t think so. The Matrix is resurrected in theaters today and on HBO Max.

Sing 2 - Buster Moon is back with his friends Rosita, Ash, Johnny, Meena, and Gunter has they try to take the music world by storm in this sequel to the delight 2016 film, Sing.

The King’s Man - Matthew Vaughn directs this Kingsman prequel set around World War I. Ralph Fiennes, Gemma Arterton, and Rhys Ifans star in this film that depicts how the Kingsman came to be in the first place.

A Journal for Jordan (December 25th) - Denzel Washington directs Michael B. Jordan in this drama based on a memoir of the same name.

American Underdog (December 25th) - Zackary Levi is Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner in this biopic coming Christmas Day.

Now for a quick look ahead to January, my top picks for next month are Scream, The 355, and Morbius.

-MB-

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Upcoming Marvel Movies Release Dates: MCU Phase 4 Schedule, Cast, and Story Details

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A bold new era for the Marvel Cinematic Universe began in 2021 on Disney+ with the wildly successful WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but Marvel Studios certainly hasn’t been resting on its laurels in terms of upcoming cinematic blockbusters. Not only does it have Shang-Chi, Eternals, Thor 4 and Doctor Strange 2 all in various stages of production, there are also TV series on the way for the likes of Hawkeye, Ms Marvel, Moon Knight and She-Hulk!

If you’ve been a little confused by Marvel’s shifting dates and streaming priorities, never fear! We’ve got a comprehensive release calendar for you here detailing all the forthcoming MCU projects, so you’ll always be able to find the latest updates when you need them.

Let’s take a look at everything Marvel has in store over the next few years…

Loki

Release Date: June 11, 2021

Tom Hiddleston will reprise his most famous role, as Loki finds himself on a heist through time and space “as he steps out of his brother’s shadow” after the events of Avengers: Endgame! Oh, and based on this trailer, there’s all kinds of time-travelling weirdness awaiting, including the return of Heimdall, some other Asgardian hijinks, DB Cooper (yes!), Owen Wilson playing an obscure character based on a beloved Marvel Comics writer, and…Loki possibly running for President!

Tom Hiddleston stars, of course, and the cast also includes Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Sophia Di Martino, Wunmi Mosaku, and Richard E. Grant. Michael Waldron is head writer.

Black Widow

Release Date: In theaters and on Disney+ with Premier Access Friday, July 9, 2021

The Black Widow movie was heading for a May 1, 2020 release before the pandemic, but Disney and Marvel decided to delay it until the industry’s infrastructure was back to some semblance of normal. They seemed absolutely committed to keeping Natasha on a theatrical release rather than sending her to Disney+, but eventually semi-caved in March as it was confirmed that Black Widow would hit both streaming and theaters simultaneously in July.

Here’s the official synopsis:

“Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow confronts the darker parts of her ledger when a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past arises. Pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down, Natasha must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger.”

Cate Shortland directed the film, and Scarlett Johansson stars, with Florence Pugh and David Harbour alongside her. One of the movie’s villains is Taskmaster, and we wrote a little bit more about him right here.

Natasha Romanoff will get a prequel movie of sorts here, as we catch up with Widow right around the events of Captain America: Civil War. Will the plot affect her character’s ultimate fate in Endgame? Do not count on it.

We have more information on the Black Widow movie right here.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage

Release Date: September 17, 2021

Andy Serkis (Mowgli) steps behind the camera for Venom 2, which now boasts the catchy title of Venom: Let There Be Carnage. The first film, buoyed by a terrific showing at the Chinese box office, made an absolute ton of money, despite being released to mostly scathing reviews.

Venom 2 will follow up Sony’s 2018 Spider-Man-less spinoff film, but will likely be more connected to the MCU this time around, thanks to a renewed deal between the company and its Marvel Studios partners. Tom Hardy will return as Eddie Brock, of course, and as you can probably guess from that title, he’ll be facing off against Woody Harrelson’s villain, Cletus Kasady aka Carnage!

Read everything else you need to know about Venom 2.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Release Date: September 3, 2021

Simu Liu has been cast as the titular Shang-Chi and Tony Leung as The Mandarin (hey, that name sounds familiar! But this time, we’re getting the real Mandarin on screen). Destin Daniel Cretton is directing from a script by Dave Callaham. Given its “Ten Rings” title, Shang-Chi should be steeped in Marvel lore!

This movie has been delayed a whole bunch of times. Let’s hope we see it come to our screens soon!

We have more info on the Shang-Chi movie right here.

What If…?

Release Date: Summer 2021

The beloved comic book series that tells tales of how things might have turned out differently in the Marvel Universe is becoming an animated series on Disney+!

Here’s the official synopsis:

“What If…? flips the script on the MCU, reimagining famous events from the films in unexpected ways…Marvel Studios’ first animated series focuses on different heroes from the MCU, featuring a voice cast that includes a host of stars who reprise their roles.”

We know that at least a couple of these roles include Chadwick Boseman’s final performance as T’Challa as well as the return of Hayley Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter!

The Eternals

Release Date: Nov. 5, 2021

The Eternals has completed principal photography and is in post-production. Acclaimed Nomadland helmer Chloe Zhao is directing from a script by Matthew and Ryan Firpo. Marvel described the film as an “epic story, spanning thousands of years” that features “a group of immortal heroes forced out of the shadows to reunite against mankind’s oldest enemy, The Deviants.”

The cast features Richard Madden as Ikaris, Kumail Nanjiani as Kingo, Lauren Ridloff as Makkari, Brian Tyree Henry as Phastos, Salma Hayek as Ajak, Lia McHugh as Sprite, Don Lee as Gilgamesh, Angelina Jolie as Thena, Gemma Chan as Sersi, and Kit Harrington as Dane Whitman, the Black Knight.

This one was another victim of the release date shuffle, having moved from February of 2021 to November. We’ll get to see Jack Kirby‘s wildest creations eventually!

You can read more about The Eternals movie right here.

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Release Date: Dec. 17, 2021

The next Spider-Man movie finally has a title! Spider-Man: No Way Home will once again take place in the MCU since Marvel and Sony solved their differences, good sense prevailed, and Tom Holland’s Peter Parker will remain a vital part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

This one, well…this might be a live action Spider-Verse movie from the sound of it. Jamie Foxx will reprise his role as Electro from the maligned Amazing Spider-Man films and Alfred Molina will return from the Raimi era as Doctor Octopus. Wait. Are they trying to make this a multiversal Sinister Six movie? Because…we could be down for that.

Hawkeye

Release Date: Late 2021

Jeremy Renner returns as Clint Barton to train his replacement as Hawkeye, Hailee Steinfeld’s Kate Bishop! Apparently based on the brilliant run of comics by Matt Fraction and David Aja, Hawkeye will also prominently feature Lucky the Pizza Dog, one of the great canines in Marvel Comics history.

The cast also includes Vera Farmiga as Eleanor Bishop, Fra Fee as Kazimerz Kazimierczak, Tony Dalton as Jack “Swordsman” Duquesne, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Alaqua Cox as Maya “Echo” Lopez, and Zahn McClarnon as Willie Lincoln. We wrote more about all these new characters here.

Ms. Marvel

Release Date: Late 2021

Ms. Marvel is finally coming to live action! Here’s the official synopsis for the series…

“Ms. Marvel introduces Kamala Khan—a 16-year-old Pakistani-American growing up in Jersey City. “A great student, an avid gamer and a voracious fan-fiction scribe, she has a special affinity for superheroes, particularly Captain Marvel. But Kamala struggles to fit in at home and at school—that is, until she gets super powers like the heroes she’s always looked up to. Life is easier with super powers, right?”

The cast includes Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan aka Ms. Marvel, Aramis Knight, Saagar Shaikh, Rish Shah, Zenobia Shroff, Mohan Kapur, Matt Lintz, Yasmeen Fletcher, Laith Naki, Azher Usman, Travina Springer, and Nimra Bucha. Episodes are directed by Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah, Meera Menon, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy.

Morbius

Release Date: January 21, 2022

Spider-Man spinoff Morbius is Sony’s next big Marvel wild card, and it’ll officially be the first spinoff to properly connect to the MCU. Here’s the official synopsis for the film…

“Dangerously ill with a rare blood disorder, and determined to save others suffering his same fate, Dr. Morbius attempts a desperate gamble. What at first appears to be a radical success, a darkness inside him is unleashed and transforms this healer into a hunter.”

Safe House‘s Daniel Espinosa directs from a script by Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway. Jared Leto stars as the vampiric title character, and the cast also includes Matt Smith, Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, Al Madrigal, and Tyrese Gibson.

Read more about the character of Michael Morbius here, and find everything you need to know about his upcoming movie, right here.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Release Date: March 25, 2022

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness looks like it will open up the storytelling possibilities in the MCU like never before. And that’s just based on the name alone. Scott Derrickson was scheduled to direct, but has bowed out because of “creative differences” with Marvel. But the good news is that Marvel found a suitable replacement in none other than Sam Raimi, who of course has plenty of superhero experience thanks to his Spider-Man trilogy in the early 2000s!

This one has loads of connections to the wider MCU. Elizabeth Olsen will be here as Wanda Maximoff post-WandaVision, and the film will also connect to Spider-Man: No Way Home and its own multiversal ambitions. There are also a few rumors doing the rounds that Jericho Drumm aka Brother Voodoo could be introduced in this sequel. We’ll keep an eye on that and update this if there’s any substance to them.

We have more information on Doctor Strange 2 right here.

Thor: Love and Thunder

Release Date: May 6, 2022

Taika Waititi, who gave us the delightful Thor: Ragnarok, will return to write and direct. Chris Hemsworth will be back. Natalie Portman is your new Thor (yes, you read that right, Jane Foster will wield the hammer…just as she did in the comics!). Christian Bale has also joined the cast as the terrifying Gorr the God Butcher.

Oh, and did we mention that the Guardians of the Galaxy will be along for the ride, too?

We have more info on Thor: Love and Thunder right here.

Black Panther 2

Release Date: July 8, 2022

Black Panther 2 is still on Disney’s release schedule, despite the tragic, untimely death of star Chadwick Boseman. Marvel has made it official that they have no intention of recasting the role of T’Challa, which is absolutely the right move.

Ryan Coogler will return as director, but there are no other details currently available. We have more information on Black Panther 2 right here. Interestingly, Coogler is also bringing a Wakanda TV series to Disney+ at some point in the future, too.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Sequel

Release Date: October 7, 2022

Is it technically an MCU movie? Nope. But with all the legal weirdness going on between Marvel and Sony, and this franchise’s very multiversal concept, who’s really to say that it ISN’T an MCU movie either, right? In any case, the sequel to the best Spider-Man movie of all time is coming in 2022 with Avatar: The Last Airbender mastermind Joaquim Dos Santos directing and David Callaham writing.

There’s also an “untitled Marvel movie” still technically scheduled for this date but…that is almost certainly not gonna happen now. Expect whatever that project was to move to one of these below dates or to some other currently unspecified date on the calendar.

Captain Marvel 2

Release Date: November 11, 2022

WandaVision writer Megan McDonnell has been tapped to write the screenplay for Captain Marvel 2. You know what else is really cool? Candyman‘s Nia DaCosta will direct!

We have no idea where we’ll find Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) in the sequel to her hugely successful first standalone MCU entry. Will she be fighting to loosen her former Kree pals’ iron grip on a pre-Avengers galaxy? Or will the follow up film see her fighting for justice in the present?

In any case, we know that she’ll be facing off with Zawe Ashton as a currently-unnamed antagonist, and WandaVision‘s Monica Lambeau (Teyonah Parris) will also return in her superpowered state after the events of that game-changing show.

Read more about Captain Marvel 2 here.

And then there are still some dates that Marvel has announced that they have yet to match projects to. Those dates are…

Feb. 17, 2023

May 5, 2023

July 28, 2023

Nov. 3, 2023

Some of those dates could very well be good fits for the following films…

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Peyton Reed will return to direct the third installment of the Ant-Man saga, perhaps the most unlikely trilogy in Marvel’s entire arsenal. Paul Rudd will return as Scott Lang, and you can almost certainly expect Evangeline Lilly to return as The Wasp and Michael Douglas as Hank Pym.

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The villain of the film? That will be Kang the Conqueror, who will be played by Lovecraft Country‘s Jonathan Majors. The inclusion of Kang opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities for the MCU, and may even tease the arrival of the Fantastic Four down the line! We wrote more about those possibilities right here.

We’re also going to need fast confirmation on Michael Pena’s return as Luis, though. Luis is key…

This will probably slide in to one of those 2023 release dates above.

Blade

Well this one was a surprise. In 2019, Marvel announced that they will be rebooting the Blade franchise with Mahershala Ali playing the titular daywalker. Ali’s True Detective co-star – and former Blade villain – Stephen Dorff is excited to see what he can do with the character, and so are we.

We have more info on Blade here.

Deadpool 3

Wendy Molyneux and Lizzie Molyneux-Loeglin will be the writing team tasked with bringing the Merc with a Mouth to the MCU. What a Deadpool 3 could look like in the interconnected Marvel Cinematic Universe is, of course, anybody’s guess, but if anyone can crack wise about the follies of this kind of corporate synergy, it’s Ryan Reynolds.

Fantastic Four

The MCU Fantastic Four movie is finally happening! Marvel’s first family will join the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a film directed by Jon Watts, who did such a wonderful job with the first two MCU Spider-Man movies. That’s all the information that’s out there at the moment, but as soon as we have more, we’ll update this. It also appears that WandaVision is setting up the Fantastic Four, so stay tuned.

We have our own theories on why Marvel went with the Fantastic Four before the X-Men, but that’s another story.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

Avengers: Endgame left the team in an interesting place. We broke down some of the story possibilities right here.

After a tumultuous period which saw James Gunn fired and then rehired as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 director, he will become the first Marvel director to ever complete a trilogy for the studio. However, Gunn can’t even begin filming Guardians 3 until he finishes production on The Suicide Squad for DC, as well as an HBO Max Peacemaker prequel. Once those projects are finished, he’s free to return to the MCU.

We have everything else you need to know about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 right here.

And as for those others? Well, we’re still waiting on word on movies to bring the X-Men (other than Deadpool, of course) into the MCU. Could any of those 2023 dates do the trick? It’s very possible! And this doesn’t even account for all of the other MCU Disney+ TV shows that don’t have release dates yet…

She-Hulk

Tatiana Maslany will play Jennifer Walters, a lawyer who ends up with her cousin Bruce’s gamma-irradiated blood. Hilarity certainly ensues. Kevin Feige has promised that since this will be a courtroom show, you never know who else from the MCU could show up.

Moon Knight

Oscar Isaac will play Marc Spector, a disturbed fortune hunter who also happens to be the avenging avatar of an Egyptian moon god.

Ironheart

The first of two series that will explore the legacy of Iron Man and Tony Stark in the MCU, Ironheart stars Dominique Thorne as Riri Williams, a teenager at M.I.T. who creates her own suit of armor to right the wrongs of the world.

Armor Wars

Don Cheadle will reprise his role as Rhodey and will have the solo spotlight in the War Machine armor in a series that deals with a nightmare scenario for the MCU: what if Tony Stark’s Iron Man technology fell into the wrong hands and was getting duplicated by villains? Based on a classic comics run, Armor Wars promises big action and lots of obscure bad guys. We can’t wait.

Secret Invasion

Samuel L. Jackson will return as Nick Fury alongside Ben Mendelsohn as Talos for a series about the shape-shifting Skrull infiltration of Earth. Secret Invasion could be the biggest thing to happen to the MCU since Endgame.

Wakanda

Very few details are available on this one at the moment, but Ryan Coogler will develop at least one Wakanda-set TV series for Disney+. We wrote more about some of the implications of this here.

Hopefully all these shows arrive by 2022. We’ll keep updating this with new information as it becomes available.

The post Upcoming Marvel Movies Release Dates: MCU Phase 4 Schedule, Cast, and Story Details appeared first on Den of Geek.

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orbemnews · 3 years

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Amazon Moves From Film Industry’s Margins to the Mainstream Sacha Baron Cohen may have been going a little mad. It was August 2020, the pandemic was raging and his secret production had shut down. He was determined to reprise his role as Borat in a feature film designed to satirize the Trump administration ahead of the November election. But how? First he persuaded Universal Studios to allow him to shop his incomplete movie. Then he cobbled together an hour of footage. (The infamous scene with Rudolph W. Giuliani had yet to be filmed.) Hulu was interested. So was Netflix. But Amazon Studios was the one most committed to getting the movie out in time, no matter the cost. Amazon spent $80 million to acquire “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” a decision that incurred extra expenses because of Covid protocols, test screenings in New Zealand — one of the few places in the world at the time where the company could gather a group of people in a dark movie theater — and a last-minute dash to incorporate all the gonzo footage before the film’s release on Oct. 23. (Mr. Cohen was cutting it close, still shooting three weeks before he had to deliver the movie.) “They broke every rule for us,” Mr. Cohen said in a phone interview. “There was a certain delivery schedule that they felt was necessary, and they halved that time. They realized the imperative of getting this out before the election. And they changed their procedures completely to help us do this. I’m really, really grateful.” Jennifer Salke, the head of Amazon Studios, is also grateful. When the Golden Globes air on Sunday, “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” will be competing for three awards: best comedy or musical, best actor and best supporting actress (Maria Bakalova). Other Amazon acquisitions, including Regina King’s directorial debut, “One Night in Miami,” and “Sound of Metal,” starring Riz Ahmed, are also contending for prizes. Those accolades, coupled with the cultural impact “Borat” has enjoyed across the globe, have significantly altered the perception of Amazon Studios’s film division in Hollywood and among Amazon’s more than 150 million Prime subscribers. (The studio, which does not disclose viewer numbers, will say only that tens of millions of subscribers watched “Borat.”) Once a home for indie darlings such as “Manchester by the Sea” and “The Big Sick,” Amazon Prime Video is transforming itself into a place for commercial films with broad appeal that can travel internationally. It’s all part of Ms. Salke’s plan to turn Prime into a service people subscribe to for more than free shipping for their paper towels. “We had seen firsthand when Amazon gets behind a piece of content, just how big the muscle is that they are capable of flexing,” said David Ellison, chief executive of Skydance Media and the producer of Amazon’s “Jack Ryan” series. He recently sold the films “Without Remorse” and “The Tomorrow War” to Amazon. “With ‘Borat,’ they showed they could do that with films, too,” he said. Amazon has thrived in the last year, with profits increasing some 200 percent since the pandemic began. That success has extended to its film business. Like other streaming services, it has been able to snatch up big-budget, star-driven films that studios have been forced to shelve in response to the closing of movie theaters. Netflix, Apple, Disney+ and Hulu have all benefited from the studios’ woes, but Amazon has been one of the most aggressive in acquiring new movies. In September, Ms. Salke acquired “Without Remorse” — starring Michael B. Jordan and based on a Tom Clancy series — for $105 million. It will debut at the end of April. The following month, it paid $125 million for the rights to “Coming 2 America,” which will premiere on March 5. Eddie Murphy was initially hesitant about taking the sequel to his much-beloved film to Amazon, but Ms. Salke and others say he was reassured by the performance of “Borat.” In January, the company made its biggest bet yet, paying $200 million to acquire the Chris Pratt-led action film “The Tomorrow War,” which Paramount was set to release. To date, it stands as Amazon’s largest financial commitment in acquiring a feature film. The company hopes to debut it on Prime Video this summer. “We don’t have a huge bench of big blockbuster movies in the works,” Ms. Salke said with a laugh. “So for us it was opportunistic to be able to lean into that.” With more players than ever joining the streaming fray (Paramount+, anyone?), the pace at which new content is delivered is an issue every service worries about. Netflix threw down the gauntlet in January when it announced its 2021 strategy of delivering one new movie per week, which followed WarnerMedia’s announcement that all of Warner Bros.’s 2021 theatrical films would debut in theaters and on its HBO Max streaming service at the same time. With so much volume being offered by those two companies, along with Disney’s recent announcement that at least 80 percent of its 100 new projects would be earmarked for Disney+, the only way to compete is to go big. “It’s going to be really interesting over the next three years,” said Roeg Sutherland, one of the heads of media finance for Creative Artists Agency. “With platforms programming one new movie a week, this is fueling a competitive marketplace for high-end, independently financed films.” At the Sundance Film Festival last month, Apple paid a record $25 million for rights to the independent film “Coda.” Ms. Salke pushes back on the idea that her plans to broaden her offerings is a reaction to her competitors. Rather, she said, it’s the culmination of a strategy that began at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, when as a newcomer to the film world, she spent $46 million to acquire four films, including “Late Night” with Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling, and the feel-good movie “Brittany Runs a Marathon.” Before joining Amazon, Ms. Salke spent her career in television, shepherding hits like “Modern Family” and “Glee” at Fox and “This Is Us” at NBCUniversal. After her Sundance shopping spree, she was mocked by some film insiders as an out-of-touch television executive overspending to acquire niche movies. She was criticized for paying $13 million for “Late Night,” when it grossed $15.4 million at the box office. “Brittany Runs a Marathon” earned just $7 million. That commentary still seems to sting Ms. Salke, though she argues that she released the films theatrically only to appease the filmmakers. The movies’ real metric of success, she said, was how they played on the streaming service. “Those movies all kept coming out as No. 1,” said Ms. Salke, referencing the films’ performances on Amazon Prime. “Every time we launched one, the next one would eclipse the next one. We were training our audience to know that we would have big original films that were more commercial on Prime Video. It’s a little bit of an ‘If you build it, they will come’ strategy.” But what happens to that plan once the pandemic is over and studios are no longer willing to sell their movies to streaming platforms? Amazon has some 34 films in various stages of production around the world and Ms. Salke said the company was committed to spending upward of $100 million on a production if merited. (Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, is stepping down as the company’s chief executive later this year, but the studio isn’t expecting any big changes when Andy Jassy takes the reins.) The Culver City, Calif., complex is still being built and, if anything, investment has increased. Ms. Salke points to Aaron Sorkin’s upcoming film about Lucy and Desi Arnaz, starring Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem, as a potential hit. There’s also George Clooney’s film “The Tender Bar,” starring Ben Affleck, and an LGBTQ romantic drama called “My Policeman,” featuring Harry Styles and Emma Corrin (“The Crown”). “The new news is that you will see us embrace some bigger projects going forward that are self-generated,” she said. In Ms. Salke’s mind, this was always the place where Amazon Film was going to land. And there is a newfound confidence to her outlook as she celebrates her third anniversary as the head of the studio. In addition to her recent acquisition spree, she’s made overall content deals with Mr. Jordan and the actor and musician Donald Glover, which she says will reinforce her mission to burnish Amazon’s reputation as a talent-friendly place. With its healthy subscription base, Amazon is attracting those in Hollywood who are interested in the company’s global reach but also curious about the company’s other businesses that have the potential to expand a star’s brand beyond film and television. Mr. Jordan, for one, said his overall content deal would allow him to explore areas other studios can’t offer: specifically fashion, music and podcasts. His portrayal of the physical incarnation of Amazon’s Alexa during a Super Bowl ad was an example. And Ms. King got a kick out of just how pervasive Amazon’s marketing of her film was whenever she logged into the company’s e-commerce site. “When I’m on Amazon, buying doggie bags, and my film pops up at the top, that’s pretty amazing,” she said. “That’s like, wow! Every single day I am getting a text from someone who saw the movie that probably wouldn’t have seen it if it didn’t pop up in their shopping queue.” Source link Orbem News #Amazon #Film #Industrys #mainstream #Margins #Moves

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wazafam · 3 years

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Moviegoers have grown more comfortable returning to movie theaters, according to an NRG poll. Movie theaters have taken a massive hit since first closing almost a year ago due to the coronavirus pandemic. While many theaters were given the green light to reopen over the summer, theaters have struggled to bring in audiences since, and major film studios have chosen to either push their movie releases back or have a limited theatrical run and head to streaming early. Long-awaited blockbuster titles like Black Widow and No Time to Die have faced numerous release changes, with the studios determined to still give them theater debuts. With the COVID-19 vaccines rolling out, the industry hoped to be back on its feet by this year. While the domestic box office has been at an all time-low, moviegoers might be ready to return to cinemas soon.

With the reopening of theaters, moviegoers' comfort in returning to theaters has hit a record high of near 50%, according to a recent poll by NRG, who has been polling frequent moviegoers over three times a week since the start of the pandemic. The data surpassed poll results from the September-November period when the confidence in returning to theaters was last at a significant degree. Before the fall, the last time moviegoers' confidence level was at “very or somewhat comfortable” with going to theaters was March 15-16, before the pandemic caused chains to close their theaters.

Related: Disney+ Will Have More Star Wars and Marvel Every Year Than Theaters

Reports show that as of now 47% of 5,900 movie theaters in the U.S. and Canada are open. Mississippi and Utah lead in the most open states with 80%, followed by Arizona with 77% and Alabama and Georgia at 70%. After a seven month-shutdown, Governor Cuomo allowed movie theaters to re-open in New York outside of New York City back in October, while California Governor Gavin Newsom is expected to announce re-openings on February 23.

NRG reports show that the comfort in returning to theaters is highest among teens (60%) and males under 25 years old (62%). According to NRG, a record 82% of moviegoers say they expect to be “very or somewhat comfortable” once the vaccine is more broadly available. While there aren't many releases currently, major films are expected to come out this summer and fall, which will hopefully see a time for moviegoers to feel safe enough to return to theaters.

More: Why James Bond's No Time To Die Delay DIDN'T Kill Cinema

Source: Deadline

Moviegoers Are Growing More Comfortable With Returning To Cinemas from https://ift.tt/2NsB2Mz

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anonymouscatt · 3 years

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My traditional New Years Fandom meme! Under the cut, if you’re interested:

1. Your main fandom of the year: Did I… even have one? There was a lot of stuff I liked and followed this year but not one main thing I was into. I watched Doctor Who, and the finale of the Good Place, and got into some new fandoms with Friends at the Table and The Mandalorian, but… no main fandom. Just freaking out with the rest of the internet about the state of the world in general.

2. Your favorite film this year: Does the film release of the musical Hamilton count? LOL the loss of theatres and theatrical releases means I can’t really think of any other movies I saw this year. Soul was okay but not Pixar’s best imo, and I never even watched Mulan because I heard it wasn’t very good at all. The release of the Hamilton recording was a boon this summer, it was something for my family to look forward to and it felt like an Event in a year that had very few of those. And the music and choreography really is excellent; it was awesome to see the original cast perform! I hope it sets a pattern for other Broadway shows.

3. Your favorite book this year: The Illuminae Files Series by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff! I discovered this series in the early months of quarantine, and it was some of the most engaging content I’ve read all year. Relationship drama, fighting big corporations, a deadly virus (-_-) and a murderous AI that is somehow the most compelling character… IN SPACE! I loved it, and the unique format the series was written in was extremely cool. Although I read them all on kindle, so some of the formatting did not translate the way it should… these books were made to be read in physical format, and it shows. It didn’t keep me from really enjoying the story and becoming really attached to the characters though; what a great read. I also read the novel-length Murderbot book Network Effect, and it did not disappoint! It was great to follow Murderbot and friends on a full-length adventure, with hints of more to come.

4. Your favorite album or song this year: Maybe Jodie Whittaker’s cover of Yellow by Coldplay… I don’t have a good reason except I liked it and I didn’t listen to a lot of music this year either. Sad to say I didn’t really “get” Taylor Swift’s Folklore or its sequel, though I think it’s pretty cool to release so much new music in one year. She clearly had a lot of time on her hands, lol.

5. Your favorite TV show this year: The Mandalorian! After the huge disappointment of Disney’s Star Wars sequel trilogy, this show was an unexpectedly welcome return to the galaxy far far away. It’s engaging, it’s fun, it has moments of humor and drama and found family, and I love it. It’s also refreshing to see a Star Wars story that isn’t centered around Skywalker Family Drama, the cameo in the S2 finale notwithstanding. And even that cameo was so fun, a return to form for a beloved character… I’m eager to see where the show goes in the future.

6. Your favorite tumblr moment this year: Listen… nothing is going to top the evening of November 5th, 2020. Nothing. The moment Destiel went ‘canon’ and the internet lost its shit is going to be memorialized in the tumblr hall of fame for all time.

7. Your best new fandom discovery of the year: Friends at the Table! I was thinking about trying another tabletop podcast after listening to The Adventure Zone, and when quarantine hit and I suddenly had tons of free time and the need to go for daily walks, it seemed as good a time as any to start a new one. It was kind of slow-going at first, but I’m glad I started at the very beginning and listened to the team grow and change- you can tell they’ve gotten a lot better at actually role-playing as their characters instead of summarizing what action they take, plus I catch all the little in-jokes from previous seasons. The style and tone is very different from TAZ but I like it a lot and I think Austin Walker is a fantastic GM. Like, the amount of detail and planning that goes into it… mind-boggling. And I love that he comes up with, like, mini-games and writes new game mechanics for them, like when characters are exploring a new place or defending a town… I’m just in awe. FatT has saved my sanity during this hell-year and I am eternally grateful.

8. Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year: Thinking it’s going to be Doctor Who for the Timeless Child plot, or The Outer Worlds for being, not terrible but kind of a mediocre game in a year when I desperately needed a new RPG to get lost in when… wait, what’s this? IT’S SUPERNATURAL WITH A STEEL CHAIR! I haven’t been invested in the show for YEARS and tapped out around season 10 with literally no expectations for this dumpster fire of a narrative, and then 15x18 shows up with a legit LOVE CONFESSION from Castiel that sends him straight to Turbo Hell?!? How are they possibly going to resolve this?! I (and indeed the entire internet) was on the edge of my seat waiting to see what would happen… and the answer was nothing. It didn’t go ANYWHERE. Like, you’re on tumblr, you already know this, and really what else would you expect from Supernatural of all shows… but they still managed to get me to watch the finale LIVE out of curiosity only for it to be senseless death and boring montages and NO SIGN OF CAS. I was OUT and they baited me back with the promise of resolution for Cas and then they BROKE that promise and I should not be surprised but somehow I am. Wow.

9. Your favorite male nonbinary character of the year: Can’t think of any male characters I was really into this year, so let’s just nominate Murderbot, with a return to form in Network Effect. It’s snarky and relatable and I love it very much, and the new installment included plenty of juicy character moments to sink my teeth into.

10. Your favorite female character of the year: Kady Grant from Illuminae. She’s so determined even up against impossible odds, and the way she learns to trust AIDAN and build that relationship only to be betrayed… heartbreaking. And fascinating.

11. Your biggest squee moment of the year: Possibly when they announced Omniblades in the Dark, the Mass Effect/Friends at the Table Crossover I never expected but enjoyed very much!

12. Your most missed old fandom: Dragon Age? It doesn’t feel old but like. I’m so ready for the next installment. And I know it’s a ways away and I don’t want to rush the devs or drive them to crunch. Crunch is bad! But I’m so ready to play in that universe again and it’s been six years since the last game and I miss it. They released a collection of short stories from Thedas teasing at new developments in the world and those stories were awesome, plus the new trailer… I’m worried the new game will be a disappointment, doubly so if they rush it to release, and yet. I want it. :(

13. Your fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to: I WAS going to play Cyberpunk 2077, but, well. What with the epilepsy controversy, general glitchyness, and just the sense that it’s not my kind of story, I don’t think it’s on the table anymore. Can’t think of anything else… anyone want to rec me something?

14. Your biggest anticipation of the New Year: Literally just. Anything good. Anything better than the year we just had. 2021, the bar is so low. Whatever happens though there is another new Murderbot novella set to be published in spring so that’s something.

#new years fandom meme #happy new year #this is me

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gwynnew · 6 years

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How 'Frozen' has changed from screen to stage, including Elsa's brand new power ballad

Caissie Levy as Elsa, Patti Murin as Anna, and Jelani Alladin as Kristoff (Photo: Andrew Eccles/Disney Theatrical Group)

Composers Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez break down new moments and songs film fans will see in the stage musical, plus give an update on the status of the sequel.

When Yahoo Entertainment called Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez to talk about their Oscar-nominated Coco song “Remember Me”, the songwriters first had to find a quiet corner – because they were in a tech rehearsal for Broadway’s Frozen (in previews now). For the stage adaptation, the frequent Disney collaborators wrote 12 new songs to be performed alongside those from the 2013 film, including the mega-hit that won them their first Oscar for Best Original Song, “Let It Go.” Between Broadway rehearsals and Oscar luncheons, the married songwriting team is also working on a score for the Frozen sequel, about which little been revealed beyond a release date (November 2019) and the return of voice actors Kristen Bell (Anna), Idina Menzel (Elsa), Josh Gad (Olaf), and Jonathan Groff (Kristoff). The Lopezes were not at liberty to share story details of Frozen 2. They did, however, discuss the themes and ideas that keep them coming back to Arendelle. “I think all of us have patterns that get solidified in early childhood that we spend our whole lives working out,” Kristen Anderson-Lopez said, referencing Frozen’s sibling heroines. “I think that’s in the zeitgeist with This Is Us right now too… our stories are always connected to the past.�� The songwriters also talked to Yahoo Entertainment about what to expect from Frozen’s Broadway debut. “We put so much love and so much new depth into this thing,” said Bobby Lopez. “I really can’t wait to share it.”

Jelani Alladin as Kristoff and Andrew Pirozzi as Sven. (Photo: Deen van Meer/Disney Theatrical Group)

Yahoo Entertainment: Do you want to talk about Frozen on Broadway or are you too in the weeds with it? Kristen Anderson-Lopez: We can talk about it. I talked about it all day yesterday! I had a press junket for four hours yesterday.

Can I guess what three questions you answered over and over again? Kristen Anderson-Lopez: [laughs] “How do you feel about taking Frozen to Broadway?” I can say, “It’s really extraordinary. It’s wonderful.” Because when we were writing Frozen, we were chasing a moving target. The story was constantly changing and we were just writing songs hoping they would stick and land on something that wasn’t going to change. And the whole thing came together at the very last moment. We were literally writing “Fixer Upper” in July. And the movie had to be done by August. This time, we have the luxury of a story that has proven itself to resonate, that we can just deepen, and make so much more emotional and sophisticated and much more adult and psychological. Bobby, do you want to add to that? Because I talked about this for four hours yesterday while he was in rehearsal. Bobby Lopez: We’ve added so many new songs to this thing. And I’ve been getting reacquainted with them after some time away from it, and we just put some of them down on tape to share with people before the show goes into previews. And I’m just falling in love with it again. There’s so much new stuff. We put so much love and so much new depth into this thing, I really can’t wait to share it.

Watch Caissie Levy as Elsa sing the new power ballad ‘Monster’ from the ‘Frozen’ Broadway musical:

youtube

When you were writing the new songs, did you learn anything about any of the characters that surprised you? Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Heck yeah. We learned so much more about Anna and what’s underneath this need for true love, this idea, and how sometimes childhood patterns can manifest in making bad decisions as adults. I think we learned a lot about Kristoff, because Kristoff only gets to sing half a song in the movie. And so we’ve learned a lot about, when are moments that Kristof can sing, and when are moments that it feels wrong? Bobby Lopez: We wrote a song in Act I for the two of them that we really could sing to each other. It’s like a traveling song where they go up the mountain and they save each other from a treacherous ice bridge, and all the while bickering back and forth. It’s a Tracy-Hepburn kind of moment. And Kristen and I, it’s gonna be in our cabaret one day. [laughs]

Jelani Alladin as Kristoff and Patti Murin as Anna (Photo: Deen van Meer/Disney Theatrical Group)

Is there a moment you can reveal that you are really excited to see in the production for the first time? Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Bobby and I probably have different answers. This fall we finally found the right ending and I’ve never seen it in front of an audience before, but it makes me cry every time, and I’m really excited to see it. I’ve only seen it teched once. How about you, Bobby? Bobby Lopez: We took a song for Kristoff — it’s a reprise of the same song I just mentioned before, but Kristof sings it as a solo when they finally learn Anna is freezing to death. In Denver [where the show premiered], it was sort of a ballad where he comes out and just sings it. And now we’ve placed it in this moment of, they’re trying to save her and time sort of stops and he sings it. I’m really excited to see how that changes the moment. I think it’s going to really work much better.

Are you guys officially attached to Frozen 2? Kristen Anderson-Lopez: We are. And we have written some songs. And we are working with Jennifer Lee, our co-writer on Frozen Broadway. And it is going well. And that’s I guess what I’m allowed to say! [laughs] Bobby Lopez: Yeah, we’re excited. It’s again a deepening, and a return to characters we love who, when we put it out the first time, it definitely got embraced by the world and they made what they were going to make of it. And now we get to return to it and clarify and deepen what we’ve been trying to say with it.

The original Broadway cast: John Riddle as Hans, Caissie Levy as Elsa, Patti Murin as Anna, Jelani Alladin as Kristoff. (Photo: Andrew Eccles/Disney Theatrical Group)

Now that you’ve been through the movie and this Broadway adaptation, and now another film — what is it that keeps you coming back to these characters and this story? Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Well, they are like a weird version of our own kids by this point. Not that they are like our kids, because our kids are very different individuals, but meaning they were birthed by us, and we’ve been raising them and nurturing them and taking them on these journeys. And I think there’s still a lot to say about — I think all of us have patterns that get solidified in early childhood that we spend our whole lives working out. We spend our whole lives having to toggle back and forth to these moments of trauma and look at the patterns and look at where they came from so that we can move forward in our own adult lives to the next chapter and the next chapter. I think that’s in the zeitgeist with This Is Us right now too, and in Coco also, that we are not our stories in the moment; our stories are always connected to the past. Bobby Lopez: The people that precede us too. They’re not just our pasts — it’s our relatives’ pasts, and the pasts of our countrymen, and all that stuff. It all precedes us and it all predates us. Kristen Anderson-Lopez: And I think that’s something we’re all talking about. And also just, from a feminist point of view, the fact that there’s a movie with two female protagonists and it’s not about their romantic connections — yes, there’s romance in it, but these are two three-dimensional women with faults who make bad choices and that’s OK. We’re following them, and they aren’t always talking about a man, and so few movies pass the Bechdel test. That’s another reason why I will always be there if Anna and Elsa need a song.

I remember seeing Moana and realizing she never even talks about falling in love, and thinking that Frozen opened the door for that. Kristen Anderson-Lopez: I think Disney sure saw that there’s a bottom line that is good when you tell stories about women, for women, that aren’t always about “the prince is going to come and kiss me.”

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

The evolution of an earworm: ‘Coco’ songwriters on how they came up with Oscar-nominated ‘Remember Me’

‘Moana’ Doesn’t Have a Prince Charming — and That’s a Big Deal

From Ariel to Kobe Bryant: Disney legend Glen Keane takes us inside Oscar-nominated ‘Dear Basketball’

#news #broadway #frozen broadway #frozen #frozen-2 #_uuid:925ef85d-9b17-3790-b7f1-f3a49f9bc7ab #_revsp:wp_yahoo_entertainment_us_421 #_category:yct:001000031 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT #_category:yct:001000593 #interviews #bobby lopez #_author:Gwynne Watkins #disney #movie:frozen-2 #kristen anderson lopez #interview

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chicagoindiecritics · 4 years

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New Written Review from Mike Crowley on You’ll Probably Agree: What it was like returning to the theater to see “Inception” and what theaters will look like after the pandemic

SKIP TO THE FIFTH PARAGRAPH FOR MY THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE

I had my doubts if Christopher Nolan was the true authoritarian on demanding “Tenet’s” release. I know he has enormous power in Hollywood, but was he wielding it like a selfish dictator? A man of his intellect couldn’t be narrow-minded enough to refuse to delay his film until it’s safe to show in theaters, right? About 70 films have been pushed to the fall, next year, or placed on streaming. James Bond, Christopher Nolan’s childhood hero, was even forced back to a November release date. A November release date in which, like many, is viewed to be moved until things are safe. After seeing the promotional materials for the 10th anniversary 70mm print of “Inception,” there’s absolutely no doubt that Nolan is entirely hell-bent on releasing his film only in theaters. To see these promotional materials, I couldn’t access them online. At least not by any legal means. Much like his iMax previews to his last four films, it was mandatory to watch them in the cinema.

Attached were two reels. One was a 10-minute preview for “Tenet.” After that was a 2-3 minute look back on “Inception.” In both shows, Christopher Nolan makes it crystal clear that his films are intended to be seen on the biggest screen possible with the loudest speakers surrounding the audience. On the “Inception” reel, Nolan expressed his disappointment that there are those who couldn’t see his 2010 film in a theatre, so here was their chance to do so. The problem is from my understanding is that the 70mm print of “Inception” that I viewed is the only available one in the United States. I know that when they filmed the sizzle for these movies, Nolan couldn’t have predicted such a global catastrophe. I feel incredibly fortunate to have seen “Inception” on 70mm film when initially I saw it on a generic digital 35mm reprint in a theatre that wasn’t a lover of cinema like The Music Box Theatre in Chicago is.

But even before the Pandemic, how many people would get access to this print other than iMax cinemas? How long could iMax last? Most of the country has switched to digital. Celluloid has become a novelty that I will always prefer over digital, a uniqueness that appeals to a very niche audience. How would that be profitable in the long run? Now with the COVID-19 Pandemic, that novelty will probably die forever. It was probably going to die anyway, just not this fast.

To make a movie on film is far more costly than to use digital. Not only do you shoot the movie, but you must also send it to a lab to develop the print afterward. The chemical emulsion process is an expensive mechanism. Shooting on digital only requires a memory card or hard drive that you can directly dump the data onto another hard drive to start editing immediately on a computer. It’s cost and time efficiency towers over film. The theatrical distribution model is a dying breed, only left alive through purists like Mr. Nolan. His purity may be going a bit too far, however. It was only a matter of time before iMax would once more be something that was only used for nature and space films to be seen in a museum.

Walking into a theatre once more felt like going into a gallery. I can happily make it very clear that The Music Box Theatre is not taking this Pandemic lightly. Instructions weren’t given to me; they were borderline shouted.

-Theatre Attendant: Have you been here since we reopened?

-Me: Uh, I was here before.

-Theatre Attendant: NO! Have you been here on JULY 3rd SINCE WE REOPENED?

-Me: No

The attendant proceeded to provide me with the social distance seating protocol. He ended the briefing with “that’s it.” I almost expected him to say, “dismissed.” Usually, I would have been taken back by such an aggressive custom. Considering the unprecedented circumstances we all are in, I respected the young man’s sternness. I was picturing all the morons he had to deal with that didn’t follow proper instructions. People who ignored the blue “do not sit here” taped signs, took their masks off when not using a concession—pulling their phones out during the movie. Let alone, coughing or sneezing without their face cover. With 745 available seats, only 50 were free to use. People were spread exponentially more than 6 feet apart. In the row next to me, there were two young ladies. One of them was politely holding in her cough. Her mask was still on before the lights dimmed. During my state of alarm, I knew it was only a matter of time before one cough might slip out. Trying to mean no offense, I quietly sneaked towards the nearest row of the screen.

The woman’s coughing wasn’t the only reason I sat in the semi front row; I was also wearing glasses, whereas you may know, masks and glasses don’t make the best mix. If I was close enough to the screen, I can take my fogged up glasses off and still clearly see what was going on the screen. That mostly worked, but my natural eyesight couldn’t substitute for my assisted one. And boy did those glasses get foggy. I increasingly grew jealous of those that could tolerate contact lenses. Even worse were people with perfect vision. I had to limit my breathing during the film because every natural exhale felt like a steam pipe was being burst onto my eyes.

With me, I came equipped with two masks. The medical kind you see everyone wearing, and a cloth one. Both were on at the same time. In my pocket was a bottle of hand sanitizer for whenever I touched a surface. I heard that COVID doesn’t last on surfaces, but I’ve listened to the CDC change their minds before. My paranoia level varied. Once comfortably watching the film from a safe distance with my double-layered mask, I felt secure. The Music Box has been open for long enough since the Pandemic. I haven’t heard of any cases appearing within their establishment. They’re not like some local restaurants or bars I saw in Wisconsin during my vacation there who acted like everything was normal. With that said, you can’t control the actions of others.

Let me be clear that I never removed my mask once during the entire three hours I was in that theatre. While the movie played, I turned around to see if my fellow patrons were applying the same amount of caution that I was. In the beginning, everyone was covered up during the pre-roll “Tenet” adds. The rule in the theatre was that once seated, you can only remove your mask when eating or drinking, then immediately put it back on. This rule was announced by the man I spoke to earlier, where he took the stage before the film began. There was no way you could claim you were unaware of the safety guidelines. Of course, Americans had to act like Americans. Once the film started after the promos, everyone’s masks were off. At one point during the movie, that lady who I moved away from that was coughing, yup, one cough slipped out. Luckily I was about 50 feet away from her while looking like Shredder with my extra protection. Throughout the rest of the film, I didn’t hear a single cough or sneeze. How did the movie look on its correct format though? Spectacular.

Christoper Nolan may be a stubborn stick in the mud, but my God is he right when it comes to the beauty of the theatrical experience. The black levels in the colors are vibrant far beyond anything you’ll get on your 4K 60-inch television; the sound is bone shatteringly clear. Every nuanced detail in the phenomenal production design is visible to an otherwise naked eye; this is something special. “Inception” is a bombastic operatic picture in the very best sense of the meaning. My appreciation for the 2010 spy thriller was improved when seeing it on the big screen. Even with my fogged up glasses and short breaths, I felt like it was an experience worth having. To have that experience though you really, REALLY, have to love film. The common man would not go to the trouble I did to see a movie that they can easily watch at home.

Seeing “Inception” in a nearly abandoned theatre that still classifies as sold out was a bit of a relic. I felt like the little kid in “The Last Action Hero” walking into the old man’s theatre. I’m experiencing something from a great past time that no longer exists. It was like going to the Omnimax Theatre in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Only this time, there was an inherent fear of disease, which luckily rapidly dissipated once there. I sympathize entirely with Christopher Nolan’s stone wall decision on maintaining a theatrical release for “Tenet.” He doesn’t have the power alone to release the film, whichever way he sees fit. Warner Bros is in the same boat as him. Nolan was the man who brought Batman back from the dead. He’s the one man in Hollywood who can sell an original big-budget picture on his name alone. Chris brought Warner Bros a lot of money.

The theatre is located upstairs

The termination of the Paramount decree’s 72-year law is the final nail in our current chain’s coffin. Movies won’t be evenly distributed. All of our existing theatrical establishments are running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to make their money back to the point of offering 15 cents per movie ticket upon initial reopening. When theaters do come back, they’ll be rebuilt, owned by the studios that distribute them. You’ll have your Disney theatre attached to your Disney store. Watch “Spider-Man Homecoming 3” on the second floor, then buy your Spider-Man toy on the first floor. Go to your Netflix theatre so you can see a film four months before it hits streaming. Finally, go to a Warner Bros theatre in Six Flags Great America, where you can watch Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.” Then buy your Robert Pattinson caped crusader doll when exiting the show. The funeral is in procession for theaters as we know it. Christopher Nolan may be able to make movies on film throughout the rest of his career, but to see them on celluloid; you’ll have to go to a museum or a specialty theatre like The Music Box. Such a realization is a heartbreaking reality. The sooner we can accept it, the better off we’ll be.

More of my thoughts on the future of movie theaters can be seen below.

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junker-town · 4 years

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An up-to-date look at the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney

Expect a lot of sequels.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe closed out its “Infinity Saga” last summer with the releases of Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home, which ended a 23-film cycle of big, ambitious, and thrilling storytelling. Despite what felt like a logical beginning, middle and end to its first few phases of films, Disney and Marvel have no plans to slow down anytime soon.

Captain America, Iron Man, and some of the other key Avengers from the last decade-plus are now set aside for characters stepping forward into bigger roles — such as Black Panther and Captain Marvel — and characters we have not seen in this iteration of films yet. With Disney’s merger with Fox, characters like the X-Men and Fantastic Four are on the way with Marvel Studios now having the rights to the majority of the storied comic company’s intellectual property. This comes after decades of heroes’ film rights being divided among several studios.

Here is the full list of projects that are currently in development for the next phases of the MCU.

Theatrical Releases

Black Widow (November 6, 2020)

There had been rumors for years that Scarlett Johansson would get her own solo film and now it is set to lead Marvel’s “Phase Four” as the first-post Infinity Saga movie. However, this film is set to take place between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. Other cast members include David Harbour, Rachel Weisz and Florence Pugh, among others. Taskmaster will be the villain in this movie, who is known for his ability to copy the powers of the heroes he is facing.

The Eternals (February 12, 2021)

Marvel is never afraid to throw something new and weird at its audience, and did so with massive success with the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. The Eternals is set to tell the story of a race of human-god aliens created by beings called Celestials that have lived on Earth for 7,000 years among us. The cast includes Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Angeline Jolie, Gemma Chan, Lauren Ridloff, Salma Hayek, Brian Tyree Henry, Lia McHugh, and Kit Harington, to name a few from the massive lineup. Chloé Zhao will helm the film.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (May 7, 2021)

The MCU has a way of existing as genre films inside of a superhero film packaging. To name a few examples, we have seen political thrillers (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and heist films (Ant-Man), but now Marvel steps into its first kung fu-inspired take. Shang-Chi is a master of the martial arts and will be played by relative newcomer Simu Liu. We have actually heard of the Ten Rings before, as they were the terrorist organization introduced when Tony Stark was kidnapped in Iron Man. Then, we met its leader, The Mandarin, in Iron Man 3. Except we didn’t because that was a fake out. Tony Leung is set to play the “real” Mandarin and Awkwafina is also set for a role in the film, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton.

Untitled Spider-Man Sequel (November 5, 2021)

Things were dicey here for a bit with Disney and Sony, who owns Spider-Man’s film rights, having a contract dispute in the summer of 2019. However, both sides came to an agreement and Tom Holland’s Spidey is back on track with Zendaya also set to return and Jon Watts directing once again.

Thor: Love and Thunder (February 11, 2022)

Thor is one of the only original Avengers set to play a role in the next phase of films and both Chris Hemsworth and director Taika Waititi are set to return. Tessa Thompson will also return as Valkyrie and Natalie Portman is making her return to the role of Jane Foster in the film. Foster is set to become the female version of Thor in this next installment with Christian Bale making his MCU debut as the film’s villain, though we do not yet know who he is playing.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (March 25, 2022)

Doctor Strange’s solo outing was solid, but did not do a ton to movie the needle among MCU fans. That changed with the key role that he played in both Infinity War and Endgame and now he is back for another film centered around him. This time, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Strange will be joined by another Marvel hero in the form of Scarlet Witch, played by Elizabeth Olsen. Benedict Wong is set to return as Wong with Chiwetel Ejiofor also back to play Karl Mordo. The events of this film will be tied into the Scarlet Witch Disney+ series WandaVision (which we will discuss here a bit later). The film will be directed by Sam Raimi of the Evil Dead franchise and the 2000s Spider-Man films.

Black Panther II (May 6, 2022)

When Black Panther became the cultural phenomenon it was after coming out in February of 2018 — eventually earning a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars — it was only a matter of time before we got a sequel. Not much is known about the project other than Ryan Coogler returning to direct and the expectation is that the majority of the cast from the last film should return, as well. The rumor is that the sequel may feature Namor, who actually preceded Aquaman as the Atlantean/human hybrid character in pop culture.

Untitled Captain Marvel Sequel (July 8, 2022)

The only thing that is known about this film is that Brie Larson is set to reprise her role as the titular hero. Seeing as her solo film took place in the 90s and Endgame brought her into the present day, there is no shortage of possibilities for what her next outing might look like.

Unscheduled theatrical projects

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

After a brief brush with controversy over old tweets that saw James Gunn fired from the job of directing this movie, all sides came to an agreement and he was brought back. This is expected to close out the story thread of his iteration of the Guardians, but it is going to have to wait until he finishes work on DC’s The Suicide Squad, which he signed on to direct when he was originally fired by Marvel.

Untitled Ant-Man and The Wasp Sequel

A more recent addition to the upcoming slate of films with news of its development dropping in April 2020. Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly are expected to be back in their roles, and Peyton Reed will be back to direct after doing the last two films.

Blade

This was the surprise of all surprises when its development was announced at San Diego Comic-Con 2019. Mahershala Ali will be playing the role after lobbying Marvel to bring back the character, and the Oscar winner reaching out was too good for the studio to pass up. That is all we know about this film for now, but it has fans of the vampire hunter excited to see what Ali and the studio can come up with.

Fantastic Four

It is only a matter of time before we get to see Marvel’s iconic foursome of heroes hit the screen again after the Disney-Fox merger went through. After a few “meh” outings in the mid-2000s and a putrid reboot attempt in 2015, the characters are back where they belong. All we know so far is that the studio is developing the project with no other details available at this time. Fans have been clamoring for the real-life couple of John Krasinski and Emily Blunt to play Reed Richards and Sue Storm, respectively. You can add my name to the list of people who would love to see that casting.

X-Men

We are probably far away from the X-Men making their debut in the MCU, which is not the worst thing in the world. Fox’s franchise ran for almost 20 years and it is going to take some time for people to cleanse their pallets of the Hugh Jackman/Patrick Stewart-era of characters. They are on the way, but it is going to take some time and they might be the last of these projects that we see on the screen.

Disney+ Shows

These will appear exclusively on the Disney+ streaming platform, but Marvel maintains they will have cinematic budgets and that everything will connect to the theatrical releases, so this is a brand new layer to the MCU.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (August 2020)

Now that Black Widow has been pushed to the fall, this is the next MCU property we are set to see. This series is set to follow Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) after the events of Endgame, where an old Captain America passed his shield and mantle on to Wilson. Daniel Brühl is set to return as Helmut Zemo of Civil War fame and Emily VanCamp returning as Sharon Carter. Wyatt Russell joins the cast as John Walker, the U.S. government created successor to Steve Rogers.

WandaVision (December 2020)

As we mentioned before, this series is set to lead into the events of the Doctor Strange sequel with Wanda Maximoff involved in a big way. Paul Bettany is also set to return as Vision, as it appears that Wanda has created an alternate reality where they can live together among the backdrop of sitcom-style settings from multiple decades (yeah, it’s going to get really dang weird). An adult version of Monica Rambeau, who was a child in Captain Marvel, is set to debut and be played by Teyonah Parris. Randall Park and Kat Dennings are going to return to the MCU in their roles of Jimmy Woo and Darcy Lewis, respectively.

Loki (Early 2021)

Loki stealing the Tesseract in an alternate timeline in Endgame screamed Disney+ series, and now Marvel is doing just that. The series will see Tom Hiddleston reprising his role as the God of Mischief as an alternate version of his 2012 self traveling back in time and altering history. Owen Wilson and Richard E. Grant are also set to join in some form or fashion.

What If...? (Mid-2021)

This is going to be an animated anthology series that explores how events of the MCU would have happened by changing different variables, a la if Peggy Carter was given the super soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers. The original actors from MCU films will return to reprise their roles in a voice acting capacity for the series, which will star Jeffrey Wright as The Watcher. A second season has already been greenlit, as well.

Hawkeye (2022)

A limited series is set to come for the bow-and-arrow wielder with Jeremy Renner reprising his role as Clint Barton, which would see him pass on his mantle of Hawkeye to Kate Bishop (reportedly to be portrayed by Hailee Steinfeld).

Ms. Marvel (2022)

Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel has been a recent character in the comics with rapidly growing popularity among fans. Not a whole lot is out there on the series other than Bisha K. Ali being hired as the head writer. It is also possible Ms. Marvel is introduced in Captain Marvel’s sequel.

Moon Knight (2022)

Moon Knight is Marvel’s answer to Batman, except he has a dissociative identity disorder. So ... that’s an interesting concept. In addition to his Disney+ series, Moon Knight will be appearing in future MCU films, as well.

She-Hulk (2022)

She-Hulk is set to revolve around Jennifer Walters, the cousin of Bruce Banner/Hulk who gains powers after receiving a blood transfusion from him. Walters is a skilled lawyer and has often appeared as representation to heroes and other enhanced beings over the years. Another ... interesting concept. Marvel is reportedly looking for an “Alison Brie-type” to play this character. The lead writer on the series is set to be Jessica Gao of Rick and Morty fame.

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Wonder Woman 3 Joins DC’s Reworked Post-2022 Movie Schedule

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Wonder Woman 1984‘s crucial Christmas Day streaming premiere on HBO Max yielded interesting results—notably a surprisingly strong showing at theaters with $16.7 million in North America and $68.3 million internationally—but attention has already shifted to the future of the DC Extended Universe, for which untitled threequel Wonder Woman 3 is now a confirmed part. However, the threequel will eventually arrive through the studio’s ambitious new post-2022 release structure.

An announcement this past weekend from Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairman Toby Emmerich confirmed the studio’s plans to fast-track production of Wonder Woman 3, which will close out a film trilogy, retaining the primary duo of star Gal Gadot and writer/director Patty Jenkins. Yet, with the announcement having come off the historic holiday weekend streaming premiere of what would have been (if not for the pandemic,) one of the biggest box office hits of the year, it notably clarifies that the developing threequel is aimed exclusively as a theatrical release. In other words, after Warner labors through its revealed HBO Max drop of would-be 2021 blockbusters, expect a return to theatrical distribution normalcy in 2022, albeit one with a pandemic-era twist.

DC Films president Walter Hamada, the hitherto low-key proprietor of the DCEU, divulged some intriguing details to The New York Times about the studio’s plans for 2022; a time when its 2021 streaming bonanza is in the rearview mirror, and the industry, nay, the world, will have hopefully—as vaccines are now getting distributed—nipped COVID in the proverbial bud. Thus, Hamada confirms a new release structure starting in 2022, in which DC Films aims to release four exorbitantly-produced DCEU movies a year at theaters. However, the studio’s HBO Max pandemic escape pod won’t be completely abandoned, since Hamada also confirms plans for additional superhero films that will be released exclusively on the premium streamer. Thus, each year will also see two DCEU films arrive in HBO Max streaming slots specifically reserved for “riskier” characters, with already-gestating movie projects like Batgirl (which once had Joss Whedon attached to direct,) and Static Shock specifically confirmed to be among these streaming exclusives.

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Wonder Woman 1984 Post Credits Scene Explained

By Mike Cecchini

Of course, this release structure is the continuation of existing plans for the DCEU to temporarily thrive on HBO Max, with James Gunn-directed sequel The Suicide Squad now one of 2021’s formerly theater-aimed offerings, set to stream on August 6, after which (on a date not yet revealed,) it will be followed up with spinoff television series Peacemaker, in which star John Cena reprises his ruthless antihero vigilante role from the sequel film. From there, DCEU A-listers are set to take the theatrical release baton, with Robert Pattinson donning the cape and cowl onscreen for director Matt Reeves in the Earth 2-set (as Hamada clarifies) reboot, The Batman, on March 4, 2022 (sidetracked Gotham PD TV spinoff plans notwithstanding), followed by the long-developing, multiverse-establishing solo movie for Ezra Miller’s version of The Flash on November 4, 2022, and the untitled Aquaman 2, with star Jason Momoa and director James Wan, on December 16, 2022.

So, where does all of this leave Wonder Woman 3? Given what we now know about the new release structure, there still seems to be one 2022 vacancy left for the DCEU films. However, we would more likely see unscheduled Dwayne Johnson-starring Shazam spinoff Black Adam get slotted in, or even see sequel Shazam 2: Fury of the Gods get moved up from its June 2, 2023 date, than see Wonder Woman turn over a new movie quick enough to make said vacancy. Indeed, all the studio fast-tracking in the world would not likely make the film ready to fill a 2022 slot at this point, especially with director Patty Jenkins having been recently tapped to direct Star Wars spinoff movie Rogue Squadron for Disney, which has already set a December 2023 release date for that film. Thus, with the aftermath of obligations for Wonder Woman 1984 likely to extend into the beginning of 2021, Jenkins seems destined to spend the rest of the year and beyond in a place set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” presumably leaving Wonder Woman on the backburner.

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Consequently, Warner Bros. didn’t have the hubris to schedule a release date for Wonder Woman 3, despite its move to fast-track the picture. While it is possible that Jenkins might be procured to hit Wonder Woman before she tackles Star Wars (which could yield enough time for a late-2022 or early-2023 release for the threequel), the known time-consuming, collaborative nature of the latter franchise seems likely to dominate her docket for the next two years if she is to make Rogue Squadron’s set December 2023 release date. Indeed, fans would likely want a more refined and thought-out Wonder Woman 3, perhaps arriving sometime in 2024, over a juggled rush job designed to expediently make a 2022/2023 schedule.

The post Wonder Woman 3 Joins DC’s Reworked Post-2022 Movie Schedule appeared first on Den of Geek.

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timalexanderdollery · 5 years

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The Frozen 2 soundtrack: a guide to the best songs

Disney

The best songs from Frozen 2 are the ones that didn’t make it into the movie. Sorry, “Into the Unknown.”

It’s not an exaggeration to say the release of the Frozen 2 soundtrack this past weekend — just ahead of Frozen 2’s November 22 release date — counts as an event. Not since the heyday of Disney’s ’90s animated musicals has a film soundtrack had such high expectations to live up to.

Sales of the original Frozen soundtrack blew away all other competitors when it was released in late November 2013 (just a few days before the film itself); it then went on to reign as the No. 1 album of 2014. At the 2014 Oscars, “Let It Go” won Best Original Song; the next year, at the 2015 Grammys, the album won Best Compilation Soundtrack, garnering Robert Lopez — who wrote all of Frozen’s songs with his wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez — the rare EGOT distinction. (The pair is credited with writing the entire Frozen 2 soundtrack as well.)

Oh, and if you had younger kids, your kids were probably obsessed with it. In 2014, Frozen was everywhere: The film itself grossed a staggering $1.27 billion worldwide, and the film’s fandom was so eager for more that it drove over $5 billion in retail sales of related Frozen merchandise — just in 2014 alone. Not only that, but five years after the film’s release, the soundtrack was still on the CD sales charts. That’s some heavy lifting.

So does the new Frozen 2 soundtrack hold up to all that hype? Yeah, pretty much.

The Frozen 2 soundtrack has just seven new songs — plus a reprise, several covers, and a few “outtakes.” But there’s a lot to explore.

The Frozen 2 soundtrack boasts the soundtrack versions of its seven totally new songs as well as covers of those songs by artists Kacey Musgraves, Panic! At the Disco, and Weezer. Both Kristen Bell, who voices Princess Anna, and Jonathan Groff, who plays her boyfriend Kristoff, get songs of their own. (There’s also a teensy reprise of the Groffsauce classic “Reindeer(s) are Better Than People.”) The soundtrack also comes with a few surprises — most pleasantly, the revelation that Westworld star Evan Rachel Wood, a new addition to Frozen cast, has a great singing voice. (Fun fact for Broadway buffs: Wood is in a band with guitarist Zane Carney, brother of Hadestown’s Reeve Carney.)

Wood plays Queen Iduna, Elsa and Anna’s late mother. Apparently, her spirit is still alive and kicking, and in the Frozen 2 soundtrack’s opening number, “All Is Found,” she gets a beautiful refrain — “where the north wind meets the sea / there’s a river full of memory” — that recurs throughout other songs and the film’s score. Musgraves covers this song, and it’s just lovely.

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If you already know you love Frozen, you’ll specifically want to seek out the “deluxe” version of the soundtrack, which contains a few more songs listed as “outtakes.” These songs — which were apparently all cut before they made it into the movie — include extra solos for Anna and Kristoff, and a gorgeous duet, “I Seek the Truth,” between songwriter Anderson-Lopez and Patti Murin, who originated the role of Anna in Frozen on Broadway.

The best of the outtakes is “Get This Right,” a fun, conversational duet between a self-doubting Kristoff and an ever-adventurous Anna, which doubles as a kind of spiritual sequel and answer to Frozen’s “Love Is an Open Door.”

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Oh, and here’s the best part if you like to sing along: The deluxe soundtrack contains with instrumental — a.k.a. karaoke — versions of all the songs.

Let go of the idea that there’s a new “Let It Go” on the Frozen 2 soundtrack

The centerpiece of the new soundtrack, however, is clearly meant to be “Into the Unknown.” It’s the showcase song for Broadway superstar Idina Menzel, who plays, Elsa. But is it the diva power number that fans of “Let It Go” have been wanting?

Eh. I’m leaning toward “no.”

Menzel earned her superstar rep for belting into the stratosphere on songs like Wicked’s “Defying Gravity” and Frozen’s “Let It Go,” and Frozen 2’s “Into the Unknown” seems to take off the musical gloves and let her fling high notes left and right as Elsa wrestles with restlessness and the call of a new adventure. She’s joined in the chorus by Norwegian pop artist Aurora, who voices an eerie incorporeal voice that’s been summoning Elsa out into the snowy wilderness.

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Audio ads for the Frozen 2 soundtrack all feature Menzel’s version of the song, but if that version itself isn’t far enough over the top, the album also sports a cover from Panic! At the Disco, with frontman Brendon Urie repeatedly shrieking the central motif at the very top of his — and humanity’s — vocal range.

It’s all very showy and attention-grabbing. But that doesn’t make it the album’s best song.

As a musical theater nerd, I personally get annoyed whenever lyrics feel repetitive or time-biding — that is, when they seem to exist just to fill out a line, or when they say something generically relatable but not character-specific. The Frozen songwriting team usually avoids those traps. (Robert Lopez co-created Avenue Q and The Book of Mormon, while he and Anderson-Lopez also did songs for Disney’s Coco and the Broadway version of Frozen.) But “Into the Unknown” has a few lyrics that fall flat, like “some look for trouble while others don’t” and “Ignore your whispers, which I wish would go away.” It’s fine, but compared to the tight, character-building lyrics of “Let It Go” — “a kingdom of isolation and it looks like I’m the queen” — it’s not nearly as satisfying.

The other detail that makes “Into the Unknown” less effective for me is that it’s overly packed with drama. If we assess how well the Frozen movies function within the constraints of the musical theater genre — where songs must drive plot and/or provide important character revelations — then “Into the Unknown,” like “Let It Go,” is a “want song.” It arrives early in the plot and reveals the heroine’s inner desire for something new, thus providing the motive that will propel the rest of the storyline. But “Into the Unknown” gives away too much, too early, both structurally and theatrically. High notes spell out drama, which is why “Let It Go” really only has one good one. Too many high notes too often, and the drama becomes less effective.

Think of “Into the Unknown” in terms of the function it serves in Frozen 2’s overall story. In fact, let’s consider in the context of a Broadway show that the first Frozen film has a lot in common with, Wicked.

In Wicked, the want song — the equivalent to Frozen 2’s “Into the Unknown” — is “The Wizard and I.” It’s followed by the big exciting number that closes the first act, “Defying Gravity.” And then later, there’s the “eleven o’clock number”: the late-in-the-second-act showstopper that marks as a crucial character turning point or climax. In Wicked, that’s “No Good Deed.” Each of these songs has one or two dramatic points, but they work because they aren’t all high-intensity all the time.

Perhaps because an animated movie like Frozen 2 doesn’t have as much room to steadily build drama through multiple songs, it seems to have overloaded on drama in one big early number with “Into the Unknown.” But that makes the song less exciting for me than it may be for others.

At first, my pick for best song went to Kristoff’s solo number, “Lost in the Woods” — but upon reflection, I think I was just glad Jonathan Groff finally got a chance to really sing in a Frozen movie. (He’s probably best known now for Manhunter, but before that, he found fame originating Broadway roles in Spring Awakening and Hamilton.) After a few listens, “Lost in the Woods” starts to feel too generic. Any character could sing these lyrics at any time — which is great if you want a song to be a pop hit, but disappointing as a character-builder for Kristoff. It doesn’t help that the out-of-place ’80s rock instrumentation gives the song an REO Speedwagon-y, Peter Cetera ”Glory of Love”-era vibe. Nothing against the Speedwagon, but it doesn’t quite mesh with Kristoff’s 19th-century Norwegian ice-harvester aesthetic.

Basically, I want good musical scores to give me specific, interesting character development through interesting songs that propel the plot — high notes optional. That’s why “I Seek the Truth,” Anna and Elsa’s duet from the outtakes section of the deluxe edition, is probably the Frozen 2 song I’d take with me to a desert island. It’s a beautiful duet with insights into both characters, and it’s one of the more complex songs in the score. (In general, the “outtake” songs are collectively the score’s strongest group of songs, and I wish the movie had had room for them!)

But if the outtakes don’t count, then after many listens, I’ve decided that the best song from the Frozen 2 score is “Show Yourself,” which Elsa sings when she apparently reaches the end of her quest and locates the source of the “disembodied voice” she’s been following. Menzel and Wood get a gorgeous duet in this number, with Wood appearing to attach a definable spirit to the incorporeal voice performed by Aurora in the earlier “Into the Unknown.”

“Show Yourself” also has plenty of suspense and excitement, but at this point in the story, that intensity level feels more earned than it does on “Into the Unknown,” and the duet is thrilling.

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Of course, we don’t yet know which song works best in the movie itself. Perhaps, in context, Josh Gad’s songs as Olaf the Snowman will win the day! One thing is a given, however: This weekend, movie theaters will be full of Frozen fans wanting to experience these songs in their full glory. And I’ll be right there with them, heading into the mostly known experience of Frozen 2.

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