The call to Pandora and James Cameron’s many Avatar sequels has occupied much of Zoe Saldana’s time, but she’s got enough to agree to a new sports drama in which she’ll play real-life aspiring Olympian, Jasmine McGlade.
Deadline reports Saldana will star in Fencer, a sports drama produced by Casey Affleck and set in the world of competitive fencing. Saldana plays Mae, who must overcome personal demons and childhood rivals as she vies for a spot on the U.S. Olympic squad. The film is inspired by McGlade’s own experiences in the sport, helping to lead Harvard’s team to the National Championship.
McGlade will write and direct, making this her first movie since 2011’s Maria My Love. McGlade was also an exec-producer on La La Land alongside her ex-husband Damien Chazelle. This will be Saldana’s first non-Marvel, non-animated role since 2017’s I Kill Giants.
2020 is well underway and I know I speak for everyone when I say that I am waiting with baited breath for the year’s most anticipated event: the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. We think of the Olympics as a unifying time, countries setting aside differences to come together to compete in various sporting events. However, only the athletes know about the self-doubt, anxiety and even isolation that can take place during that exciting time. Remember, for every three athletes to receive a medal, there are 10s of athletes not on that pedestal. These ideas are explored in the new film, Olympic Dreams, the first narrative feature filmed in an Olympic village during an Olympic games. Entirely shot during the 2018 Winter games in PyeongChang, South Korea with just the writers and director with press credentials, this experiment feels more than just a concept film, full of raw emotion and cinema vérité.
The film follows cross country skier Penelope (Alexi Pappas), who is at a crossroads in her life. In her early twenties, she has reached the pinnacle of her sporting career, yet feels unfulfilled as to what to do next. Focused on her events but still worried about her future, she starts to isolate at the games, fumbling with social interaction and struggling with the weight of being alone. On the flipside, Ezra, an American volunteer dentist, comes to the games to fulfill a dream while his engagement falls apart in the states. An over-talker and over-sharer, he has the opposite problem interacting with others, hilariously failing to connect with athletes during dental exams. After an awkward meeting in the cafeteria, the duo starts to bond, navigating Korean culture, anxiety, and uncertainty together.
Written by well-known comedian Nick Kroll and indie darlings/husband and wife team of Alexi Pappas and Jeremy Teicher, Olympic Dreams had to be made bare-bones with only essential crew allowed in Olympic Village. This meant only actors Kroll and Pappas, along with Teicher as director, were allowed “on-set.” The actual Olympics themselves from the medical offices to the lounges to the dorms had to come off as authentic as possible to best capture the anxiety and excitement of the greatest sporting event in the world All the sets, fluorescent lighting, costumes, extras, and even co-stars were part of the 2018 Olympic games, providing a never before seen look into the games through a fictional narrative lens. Real life Olympians Gus Kenworthy (also seen in American-Horror Story: 1984) and Morgan Schild come as close as you can to costars, grounding the story in its premise. Keep in mind that this was filming while the actual games were going on, so to say you shot a whole movie while competing in the ultimate showcase of your sport is pretty impressive.
This is not Pappas’s first time at the Olympics, as she competed in the 2016 Summer Olympics for Greece as a runner. This experience clearly influenced her performance as every emotion seems to be naturally painted on her face. Though Kroll might be the friendly face that pulls you into the story, Pappas is the heart of the film, pumping it full of anxiety, apprehension and a sincere earnestness that compels you to keep watching.
The film’s concept could have easily devolved into spectacle is it weren’t for the natural aesthetic and chaos of the real-life event and charm of its leads. This is a result of how the film was made, not recreating an Olympics just for the movie, but creating a story around the real event. Stripping away the glamour and glory, the film allows us to see another side of the World’s greatest sporting competition. It’s nerve wracking and uncertain, ripe for a story about the human condition and the common anxieties that bind us all together: Where do we go from here? Who will go with me? Even though I’ve accomplished so many things, is this really all there is? Now what? It would be too easy to say this film is just Lost in Translation at the Olympics, but the well-crafted story and awkwardly sweet relationship and emotion at the film’s center elevate it beyond what it should have been.
Maggie Gyllenhaal is one of those actresses whose intelligence in front of the camera you always knew would translate into a directorial career if she wanted it. Well, she does, and has assembled one Hell of a cast for her directorial debut, The Lost Daughter.
Deadline reports Gyllenhaal will direct Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley, and husband Peter Sarsgaard in The Lost Daughter, an adaptation of Ella Ferrante’s book. Colman plays a college professor who becomes obsessed with a mother (Johnson) and her young daugher while on summer vacation. Consumed by their relationship, “she becomes overwhelmed by her own memories of the terror, confusion and intensity of early motherhood.”
With a cast as good as this, Gyllenhaal should have zero issues finding a distributor. Colman, Johnson, and Sarsgaard need no introduction, but for those unfamiliar with Buckley you may want to check out the multi-talented actress in Wild Rose or the HBO series Chernobyl.
From surreal neo-Westerns to Disney remakes to haunting ghost stories and heist movies, David Lowery is a filmmaker whose unpredictable choices make him a perfect fit for A24. The indie distributor who gave us Uncut Gems, Midsommar, High Life, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, and The Lighthouse just in 2019 (!!!), have joined Lowery for his latest, an Arthurian drama The Green Knight.
And yeah, by Arthurian I mean as in King Arthur. But this is no lame attempt to turn the legend into just another blockbuster. The Green Knight stars Dev Patel and is based on the chivalric poem Sir Gaiwin and the Green Knight, in which the knight of Arthur’s Round Table goes on an epic quest to challenge the gigantic Green Knight, facing many battles along the way and testing his mettle.
The original story is fairly vague, and has Gawain decapitating a Green Knight who has made him swear to take a blow in return after a year and a day. It’s as the fateful day approaches that Gawain goes on his journey to fulfill the promise he made, even though it will likely mean his death. How much of that Lowery is unclear, but the basic ideas of courage and honor remain.
The Green Knight opens on May 29th and co-stars Barry Keoghan, Ralph Ineson, Joel Edgerton, Alicia Vikander, Erin Kellyman, Kate Dickie, Sean Harris, and Sarita Choudhury.
While it probably wasn’t on the minds of fans at the time, the Comic-Con announcement that Taika Waititi would return to Marvel for Thor: Love and Thunder meant something else on his slate would have to get pushed back. Nothing was announced, but it was clear that movie would be Akira, the forever-developing adaptation of the anime/manga classic. Speaking with Variety, Waititi made it clear that Akira has indeed been pushed back, and casts doubt whether he’ll ever get around to it.
“The whole thing went on hold. We had to keep pushing the dates, and it encroached on the ‘Thor’ dates, which were immovable. So ‘Akira’ ended up shifting two years down the track.”
Two years is a crazy long time in Hollywood terms, and Waititi can’t promise Akira will be front of mind when his schedule frees up…
“Post-’Thor.’ So I’m not sure if even in two years I’d be — I don’t know what I’m doing in fucking two days. I think eventually it will happen. I’m just not sure if I’ll be doing it.”
Fans of Akira have been waiting so long they’ll probably wait two years to have a director like Waititi on it. That said, in the past whenever a filmmaker has expressed doubt on this project, they’ve tended to move on to something else. The nearly two-decade-long track record speaks for itself. Waititi, who just won an Oscar for Jojo Rabbit, may want to tackle a film with a hope of getting him back on that stage.
Disney’s wish was granted last year when their live-action Aladdin brought in over $1B at the box office, and they didn’t even need a magic lamp to do it. So they’re going to do it all again, and make sure all of the original pieces come back for another ride on the magic carpet. You knew this was coming, didn’t you? We all did.
THR reports that an Aladdin sequel is in the early stages at Disney, with John Gatins (Flight) and Andrea Berloff (Straight Outta Compton) hired to write an original story. Here’s hoping this version of Aladdin shares nothing in common with either of those writers’ movies, although the idea of an alcoholic Aladdin flying upside down on his magic carpet has potential.
It’s expected that Mena Massoud will return as the titular street urchin, which I guess will help lessen the sting of being persona non grata to casting directors. Will Smith, Naomi Scott, and even director Guy Ritchie are all wanted back, but there won’t be any offers until a script is finished and resembles nothing like the animated movie’s straight-to-video sequel The Return of Jafar. Nobody wants to see that.
Sonic the Hedgehog became notorious long before its debut when promos showed how badly animators had botched his iconic look. Rather than pushing through the negative hype, the right move was made by having Blur Studios go back to the drawing board, recreating Sonic so that he resembled the furious Sega mascot gamers know and love. But that controversy is nothing compared to the new one that will arise when people see the movie, because only then will they realize Jim Carrey must’ve been injected with some alien hallucinogenic to be so batshit as Sonic’s techno-nemesis, Dr. Robotnik.
Sonic the Hedgehog is a character borne from the 1990s, and so it makes sense that his movie be an old school kid-friendly buddy comedy. The themes are pretty easy to understand, as well, rarely straying beyond simple “friendship”, as the speedy blue hedgehog with the spikey hair tries to combat his own loneliness. But whatever message the movie might have is secondary to Carrey who dominates literally every moment he’s on screen. giving such an exaggerated, wacky performance it makes Fire Marshall Bill look positively tame. Carrey’s pure madness personified, and it’s perfect for a movie about a talking hedgehog who can run faster than the speed of sound. What in the world were you expecting Carrey to do? This ain’t Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. When he wants to throw subtlety out the window he does it to the extreme, twirling his mustache and sounding like a crazy person.
While generally an upbeat movie to match the video game’s tone, it actually starts pretty dark as Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz) flees his jungle homeworld (modeled with all the loops and swerves of the game’s opening level) following a sudden tragedy. Using a bag of magic rings, he’s transported to Earth and the small town of Green Hills, Montana. Sticking to the outskirts to avoid being spotted, keeps himself busy by playing baseball…by himself, playing ping-pong…by himself, and basically doing everything by himself. He’s lonely, but finds comfort spying on the local townsfolk, including local cop Tom Wachowski (James Marsden) aka the Doughnut Lord, and his wife Maddie (Tika Sumpter). Unnecessary voiceover tells us that, aw shucks, Sonic isn’t just super fast, he’s also super lonely. Adults may not need that level of hand-holding but kids, who may think Sonic’s antics look like fun, will need the push. Fortunately, Sonic isn’t alone long enough for the narration to become a drag.
When Sonic’s powers trigger a massive blackout, the military gets called into action in a scene so ridiculous it could’ve been a Hot Shot! outtake. Leading the charge, for no good apparent reason, is the overly evil private contractor Dr. Robotnik, a tech-obsessed madman whose solution to every problem is to unleash unholy drone firepower wherever he goes. And soon, that includes Green Hills, where Sonic’s first encounter with Tom leads to his losing of the magic rings through a portal into San Francisco. He’ll need Tom’s help to get there, recover the rings, and escape through a new portal into a lonely mushroom world where it’s safe.
What follows is a fairly conventional road trip story, with Marsden paired up as the affable everyman opposite a frenetic CGI animal with an attitude, much like in the film Hop. The comedy set pieces aren’t terribly inspired; like a stop at a nearby motorcycle bar which ends, predictably, in a giant barroom brawl. During these sequences we do see the visual effects budget pushed with slow-motion sequences that’ll be very familiar to fans of the X-Men movies. Time slows down to a crawl, leaving Sonic free to rearrange the landscape for maximum hilarity. In his feature debut, director Jeff Fowler, a veteran animator who worked on Where the Wild Things Are, shows a strong hand with the CGI action. Sonic’s blue streak always looks cool when he’s on the go and taking on Robotnik’s vast technological arsenal. Fans of the old school platformer will dig the clever way Fowler incorporates some of the game’s signature style, particularly in the climactic showdown.
Sonic could’ve used more of the attitude that made him Sega’s antithesis to Nintendo’s Mario during the video game console wars. Marsden is abnormally good at clicking with animated characters, as Tom and Sonic find common ground in their willingness to sacrifice for the greater good. Both are overshadowed by Carrey, who is so insanely over-the-top he’s bound to be VERY divisive. He devours each line like a starving man on a deserted island, occasionally breaking into robot dance for no apparent reason, threating world domination like a megalomaniacal fool. I was completely into it, but your mileage may vary.
Zipping along at an appropriately brisk clip, Sonic the Hedgehog races to the finish line before you have time to fret over the details. As video game movies continue to strive for the love their comic book counterparts get, this is just a small hedgehog-sized step in the right direction. You probably won’t think too hard about the movie once it’s over, but don’t be surprised at an urge to fire up the ol’ Sega Genesis.
What a run Taika Waititi is on. Blowing up in the public conscience after Thor: Ragnarok Taika’s brought his quirky awesome-ness to everything from Hitler to Star Wars. He’s really the type of person we need more of in this world, and I hope this run for him continues on until he’s ready for it to be done. Following his win in the ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ category for Jojo Rabbit at this past Sunday’s Academy Awards Taika sat down with Variety to talk all things Waititi. While his Oscar winning screenplay was the topic of conversation, they couldn’t NOT address the two most popular properties in the world, of which he is associated with both, Marvel and Star Wars. First up is Thor: Love and Thunder which made waves this summer at Comic-con when it was announced that, not only would Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster be returning, but she would be wielding Mjolnir as Thor in the film. Comic’s fans will know that this is an actually story-line from the Thor books, in which Jane takes on the power of Thor to beat the cancer that has stricken her body. At first, it seemed like Taika was confirming this story-line, but then quickly added a few qualifiers that leave everything pretty much up in the air, when asked if Jane would have cancer as she did in the comics Waititi responded:
We don’t know. That comics run was a big inspiration, and was an influence on the first few drafts. But at Marvel, we always change everything. I could say one thing right now, and in two years, it will be the complete opposite — or that thing won’t exist. We continue writing even in post-production.
I mean, maybe that’s more just being truthful then evasive but still doesn’t leave us with anything solid. Then they venture into Star Wars at which point the hot director points out something very obvious about how we pop-culture and media writers pull stories from the smallest stretch of something possible. When asked if he’s working on a project from a galaxy far, far, away he adds:
I think people see me hanging out with people, especially with “Star Wars,” and think I’m having some big discussions about it. I would f—ing love to.
So there you have it, maybe they’ll follow the Lady Thor comics, and he would love to work on something Star Wars related. Not to be cynical, the truth is that if the comics were a big inspiration then we can pretty much count on at least part of that story-line being included. The MCU has been pretty damn awesome at pulling out the pieces of a particular story-line that works and adding what’s needed to make it theatrical.
Jane Campion may be best known for her feature film The Piano, but she hasn’t actually directed anything for the big screen in over a decade, that being 2009’s Bright Star. Instead, her attention has turned to TV where she created and oversaw the series Top of the Lake for two seasons, bringing in big names that included Elisabeth Moss and Nicole Kidman. Now she’s returning to features with Netflix’s The Power of the Dog, which has just added Jojo Rabbit and Leave No Trace star Thomasin McKenzie.
Deadline reports rising star Thomasin McKenzie, Dolemite Is My Name‘s Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Joker‘s Frances Conroy have joined the cast, along with Keith Carradine, Peter Carroll, and Adam Beach. They’ll be working alongside the previously-announced leads Benedict Cumberbatch, Jesse Plemons, and Kirsten Dunst.
McKenzie has been all over the place recently. While Jojo Rabbit is getting most of the attention lately, she was also seen alongside Timothee Chalamet in Netflix’s The King. Smit-McPhee had a busy 2019, as well, wrapping up his run as Nightcrawler in the X-Men flick Dark Phoenix.
Campion will direct and adapt the screenplay from Tom Savage’s book about two brothers who couldn’t be more different, living on a Montana ranch in the 1920s. All is well until the younger brother marries a widow, which drives the older brother to try and destroy the relationship and the new wife.
A start date is unclear, as if when or if Netflix will give it a theatrical run. If the plan is to push it for possible Oscars, expect to see it in theaters at some point.
While fans of The Raid and its equally-violent sequel (both of which were on my best movies of the decade list) will forever hope Gareth Evans returns to the realm of action flicks, he’s found new ways to depict murderous rage and brutality. Following on his gory Netflix horror Apostle, Evans has found his way to television with Gangs of London, and the director’s fans won’t be disappointed judging by the look of it.
Evans’ brand of stylish ferocity and savagery is evident in the new trailer for Gangs of London, a series he co-created with Matt Flannery. The Brit series centers on the violence that erupts when the head of a powerful crime family is murdered, and the London gangs race to fill the power vacuum. Green Room‘s Joe Cole plays the murdered boss’s son, who tries to maintain control while finding those who murdered his father. The cast includes Colm Meaney, Sope Dirisu, Michelle Fairley, Mark Lewis Jones, and Valene Kane.
Half of the 10-episode series will be directed by Evans, and he’s joined by an impressive group that includes Corin Hardy (The Nun) and Xavier Gen (The Divide).
Gangs of London will have its U.S. premiere on Cinemax later this year.
