There have been some great fights throughout the history of the MCU, but Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings promises to raise the bar. Finally tackling the kung fu side of the superhero universe, the film draws inspiration from sources that will have fans of martial arts movies very excited.
Speaking with Empire, director Destin Daniel Cretton talked about Shang-Chi‘s action choreography, which he says was inspired by a martial arts legend and an Oscar-winning wuxia classic…
“Authenticity and respect and staying true to this genre was the main objective from day one. There’s choreography that’s reminiscent of ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,’ and other fight scenes are inspired by Jackie Chan. We also had choreographers from mainland China who created some beautiful wuxia-style fight scenes“, Cretton said.
Of course, Shang-Chi co-star Michelle Yeoh starred in Crouching Tiger, so there’s a perfect throughline for her to lend some experience to the production.
Cretton continued, “It was important for us from the beginning to have the MCU’s first Asian-American superhero be a superhero. We want him to be on par with other superheroes in the MCU and not just be the master of kung fu. Shang-Chi is an incredible martial artist, but he’s so much more than that.”
Shangi-Chi opens September 3rd and stars Simu Liu, Awkwafina, Tony Leung, Michelle Yeoh, and Fala Chen. It opens exclusively in theaters, making it the first Marvel Studios film to do so since the pandemic. Black Widow, which arrives in July, will be available also on Disney+ Premier Access.
Hard to believe it’s been eight years since visionary filmmaker Wong Kar Wai’s last feature, martial arts epic The Grandmaster. In that time he’s had a lot of projects proposed that never came to fruition, such as a Gucci fashion film with Margot Robbie, but one that has been talked about off-and-on is a television series, Blossoms Shanghai, that not only appears to be nearing completion but it has a teaser and everything. In typical Wong style it is absolutely gorgeous.
Set to the sounds of Chubby Checker’s “The Twist”, the footage introduces us to a series that we have seen very little of. Wong had initially described Blossoms Shanghai as the third leg of his romantic trilogy including In the Mood for Love and 2046, but that could have changed the way so many things about it have. It was first meant to be a feature film, then a series that led to a movie, but now it’s just a standalone effort.
What we do know is that it will star Hu Ge (1911) and is based on Jin Yucheng’s novel, adapted by writer Qen Win. Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon cinematographer Peter Pau is providing the lush visuals, as you can see in this footage which was entirely shot in Shanghai.
The series “tells the story of an enigmatic, self-made millionaire, Mr. Bao (Hu Ge), and his journey of reinvention from a young opportunist with a troubled past to the heights of the gilded city of Shanghai. Set against the backdrop of massive economic growth in 1990’s Shanghai, the series unveils the glamour that follows his dazzling wealth and his entanglement with four fabulous women that represent the pursuits of his life: adventure, honor, love and innocence.”
Blossoms Shanghai arrives, somewhere, in 2022. [via ThePlaylist]
First trailer for 'Blossoms Shanghai', Wong Kar-Wai's upcoming television series, described by the director as the third part of 'In the Mood for Love' and '2046', which will be released in 2022. pic.twitter.com/B7ix6ArARd
A designer drug has Dylan O’Brien trippin’ balls in Christopher MacBride’s listless psychological thriller Flashback. As much fun as that might seem to invite, its grim and deadly seriousness is only half as frustrating as a story that circles the drain to nowhere. You’ll find little to care about anybody in this film, where they’re going, and even less about where they’ve been.
O’Brien stars as Fred Fitzell, who begins seeing visions of his high school days just as his life is at a crossroads. He lives a nice, comfortable life with his nice, comfortable wife (Hannah Gross), and dull office job that offers a nice, comfortable existence with room for advancement. But Fred’s mother is in the late stages of a terminal illness and suffering from dementia, and that’s something he isn’t willing to confront.
Are these visions a coping mechanism of some kind? Offering Fred an escape from a reality he doesn’t want to face? Is it possibly a psychological disorder passed along the Fitzell family line? Or could it be the after-effects of a hallucinatory drug called Mercury that Fred and his high school pals used to indulge in? An impromptu reunion with old friends (Emory Cohen, Keir Gilchrist) and a seemingly random homeless person dredge up the mystery of Cindy (Maika Monroe), another Mercury user who vanished never to be seen again. As reality and memory blur, Fred seemingly becomes unstuck between his past and his present.
Or something. MacBride introduces a number of options without really moving anything forward, or giving us a reason to want to learn what’s happening. Fred isn’t a particularly interesting character, nor is he especially likable. He’s not a bad guy, but his problems all seem to revolve around his perceptions of women. Cindy is like the most morose Manic Pixie Dreamgirl ever; she exists solely as an idea of Fred’s misspent youth and his desire to relive that time; while his wife demands he act like an adult and be a stable husband.
MacBride does come up with some nifty ways to show Fred’s hazy, fractured mental state. Images from the past bleed into the present and possibly even the future, and with O’Brien playing every version of Fred it adds to the unhinged nature of it. MacBride isn’t untalented as a filmmaker, but perhaps he overthought this story more than was needed. It’s hinted that Mercury could be the connection to a larger, possibly paranormal world out there but it’s never given more than a second thought, one of many ideas introduced that fall flat. O’Brien coasts along without exuding any of the appeal that has attracted him so many fans, while Monroe ends her streak of being the best thing in bad movies. She’s not particularly good in this, either, although she is given so little to do it’s hardly her fault. With all of its trippy games of the mind amounting to nothing, Flashback is one film that you’ll probably want to just forget.
Flashback is available now in select theaters and VOD.
Only one major release opened in theaters this weekend, and unsurprisingly it’s the top film. The Conjuring 3 bested A Quiet Place 2‘s second week with $24M. That’s actually not too bad for the R-rated, $39M horror, considering the pandemic and a simultaneous HBO Max debut. The first two Conjuring films earned $41M and $40M respectively, so while Warner Bros. and New Line would’ve wanted that streak to continue, it was never really likely. An additional $33M overseas gives it $57M worldwide.
2. A Quiet Place Part II– $19.5M/$88.6M
Going head-to-head with The Conjuring put a dent in A Quiet Place Part II, which fell 59% to $19.5M in its second weekend. The film now has $88M and $138M worldwide. Obviously, it will fall short of 2018’s A Quiet Place which ended its domestic run with $188M and nearly twice that globally.
3. Cruella– $11.2M/$43.6M
Disney is obviously quite happy with the two-week $43M haul for Cruella, plus whatever it’s made on Disney+ Premier Access. The Mouse House has already started moving on a sequel with the same creative team.
While Dreamworks Animation did open animated spinoff Spirit Untamed in over 3200 theaters, it never quite felt like a huge domestic release. An offshoot of 2002’s Oscar-nominated Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and the Emmy-winning Netflix series Spirit: Riding Free, the film galloped away with just $6.2M, which I think makes a case for this needing to be on streaming rather than in theaters.
5. Raya and the Last Dragon– $1.3M/$53.5M
The Disney movie that just won’t die. Raya and the Last Dragon opened in theaters and Disney+ with $8M way back in March, and just keeps chugging along.
For the past 50 years, children across the world have been educated and entertained by Bert, Ernie, Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Count Von Count, Oscar The Grouch, Elmo, and countless others by watching Sesame Street. The incredibly popular children’s programming and educated and inspired generations of children (and adults) through the years with their wonderful characters and education that never tried to talk down to children, it just wanted to teach them, and the world as we know it has been better off as a result. Inspired by the book “Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street,” director Marilyn Agrelo filmed Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street and provided not only a great history lesson of the origins of the honored television show, but an intimate look at the show from the cast and crew who made the magic happen for the last 50 years.
Frustrated with the fact that at the time, many children’s television shows were simply just marketing tools for sugary foods and drinks (with even weirdly jingles to sell alcohol), television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and Carnegie Foundation vice-president Lloyd Morrisett sought out to create a television show that would “master the addictive qualities of television and do something good with them” and create an educational television show that would help children prepare and for school by giving them the educational tools to be successful. Now that’s something we all take for granted nowadays, but in the 1960s, that was considered a radical idea. So, Cooney would work the television side of things, and Morrisett would work the educational side of things to help build a comprehensive television show to help educate children.
One thing right off the bat that Street Gang helps illuminate is just how forward-thinking, progressive, and incredibly woke the creators of Sesame Street really were. We tend to think of Sesame Street as just learning about numbers and letters through muppets, but one of the driving factors of the show was to help young inner-city black and brown kids have tools of education, something that wasn’t available at that time, and they wanted to help close the education gap for minorities all the way in 1969! Getting young suburban homes to watch a children’s television program might now have been that difficult, but Street Gang shows the steps taken to ensure that was their mission including a massive outreach campaign to ensure that black households knew about a barely known public broadcasting show was available so that young children of color would be able to watch the program when it debuted.
In addition to working with educators and psychologists to fine-tune the show to help educate children, Sesame Street needed to be able to entertain children as well as educate them. Cooney enlisted Jim Henson, who at the time was a puppeteer who was doing the equivalent of “late-night puppet TV” with somewhat adult humor on them to help create characters that would resonate with children. We all now know Henson as the literal god of puppeteering at television programming, but at the time he was an unknown person who looked “like a hippie.” Henson and his team of puppeteers (including Yoda himself, great Frank Oz) helped build great characters that as Cooney says herself, will be around 200 years from now. She also bought in the unsung hero of Sesame Street, director Jon Stone, who was pretty much the showrunner of the program to put everything together. Also brought on board is musical director Joe Raposo, who is responsible for all your favorite childhood songs like “C is for Cookie” and “Not Easy Being Green,” which the Street Gang even provided its racial double meaning contexts. Cooney, Henson, Stone, and Raposo then put together something magical that has remained the best thing done for children for the past 50 years as a result.
Street Gang works incredibly well at pulling at your nostalgia as literally everybody loves Sesame Street. Interviews with all the living cast members. You can’t help but get excited when you see Luis, Maria, Gordon, and countless others share their experiences. Speaking of Gordon, we even got to learn about the history of Matt Robinson, the actor who originally played Gordon. Prior to Sesame Street, Robinson hosted his own Philadelphia talk show “Opportunity in Philadelphia” to showcase opportunities for African-Americans in the Philadelphia area. He was also the father of actress Holly Robinson Pete, who spoke on his behalf with her brother and mother for interviews, and even shed light on his unfortunate departure after a puppet he created was removed from the show for being what was considered to stereotypical at the time.
As Sesame Street showcased a diverse and integrated cast, there were a few roadblocks through the years. A small part of the documentary shows how the show was banned in Mississippi because… well it was Mississippi. Even though there were issues in education and income in that state, their public broadcasting groups refused to show Sesame Street when it first aired. However, this is a badge of honor that Cooney (who was active in the Civil Rights Movement) wears with pride. In the end, she did not have any of the programmings changed, and eventually, the state’s broadcasting groups decided to air the show as their young people could care less about an integrated cast.
In addition to showing all the joys and wonders of working on Sesame Street, Street Gang also showed the demanding sacrifice of putting on such a beloved and time-consuming show. Children of Henson, Raposo, and Stone speak of how they rarely got a chance to see their parents because so much time was dedicated to Sesame Street. Stone’s two daughters say that Sesame Street was his third child by how much focus he had on running the show. His daughters also speak of how their father was frustrated that he never got the credit he probably deserved as much of the media attention of the show’s success was always centered on creator Joan Ganz Cooney and not his hard work, which led him to continuously battle depression.
The only real criticism of Street Gang is that it seemed the sale from PBS to HBO/HBO Max was not discussed during the documentary. Sesame Street received a little bit of criticism for taking a children’s show and putting it behind a paywall on a premium cable channel with a 9-month first look before showing episodes on PBS almost a year after airing. It would have been interesting if that subject was explored during the documentary.
Of course, Street Gang touched the sad subject of Mr. Hooper’s death, which allowed Sesame Street to deal with and educate children on the subject of death. When actor Will Lee passed away, everyone thought it could be a great teaching opportunity to help young children understand the subject of death. Sure, he could have just “retired” and moved “down south,” but instead the show decided to tackle the subject head-on and have Big Bird be the audience avatar and learn about death and how to process it in a way that respected children as well as respected Will Lee. Each of the cast and production crew members who discussed that episode did it with a great deal of emotion about not only losing a family member, but then trying to help children understand the process as they were going through it itself. It was incredibly emotional. Another emotional aspect displayed in Street Gang is the death of Jim Henson as he truly was the glue of the show.
Street Gang is an incredible documentary that should be seen by children of all ages though. It provides a historical and intimate look at what was just a radical idea to help teach children, through becoming a cultural institution for education and entertainment across the world. Much of the behind-the-scenes footage is priceless. You’ll love to hear Big Bird say “what the hell” in outtakes as well as see the dedication, time, and energy the cast and crew put into each character, song, line, and acting in the name of helping children across the world learn to their best ability.
Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street is available now on VOD.
The cast of John Wick 4 is really heating up, a Keanu Reeves gears up to return as the Baba Yaga himself. In recent days the film has added international superstars Donnie Yen and Japanese-British popstar Rina Sawayama, and now joining them is Shamier Anderson, fresh off his breakout role in Netflix’s Stowaway.
It’s unclear what Anderson’s role will be, but returning director Chad Stahelski was hyped to add him to the cast…
“It’s a thrill to be working with an actor of Shamier’s caliber. He’s proven exceptional with drama and action and is a compelling presence on screen,” Stahelski said in a press statement.
Anderson has been a busy guy over on the Netflix side of the aisle lately. Along with Stowaway, he’s set to appear in Halle Berry’s directorial debut Bruised, and will be seen next week opposite Gina Rodriguez in Awake.
John Wick 4 opens May 27th 2022 and will be followed by the already-confirmed John Wick 5. [Deadline]
There’s still a lot that we don’t know about The Matrix 4, which seems fitting. But what we know now is the full casting, which has been revealed to include Wednesday Addams herself, Christina Ricci.
An updated press kit from Warner Bros. includes Ricci in the cast, led by Keanu Reeves as Neo, Carrie Anne-Moss as Trinity, Jada Pinkett as Niobe, Lamber Wilson as The Merovingian, Daniel Bernhardt as Agent Johnson, plus Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jessica Henwick, Neil Patrick Harris, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Jonathan Groff.
It’s the Speed Racer reunion fans have been asking for! Ricci starred as Trixie in Lana Wachowski’s live-action Speed Racer back in 2008. I know that movie bombed but I still want a sequel.
The Matrix 4 opens on December 22nd. My guess is with this latest bit of news we should be getting an official title and teaser fairly soon.
The long-awaited and as-yet-untitled fourth film in the “Matrix” universe, the groundbreaking franchise that redefined a genre. It reunites original stars Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss as Neo and Trinity, the iconic roles they made famous in “The Matrix.”
Lucky Jack Aubrey is back on the high seas! And it only took 18 years for it to happen. In what I find to be an unusual move for Disney and 20th Century Studios, they’ve hired Patrick Ness (A Monster Calls) to pen a prequel to 2003’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
Master and Commander was directed by Peter Weir and starred Russell Crowe as Captain Jack Aubrey with Paul Bettany as ship doctor Dr. Stephen Maturin. The two would butt heads while battling the French from their ship the HMS Surprise during the Napoleonic Wars.
The film was based on the nearly two dozen Aubrey novels by author Patrick’s O’Brian. Deadline says the new prequel could be based on the first of O’Brian’s books, titled Master and Commander, which finds a young Aubrey and Maturin sailing together for the first time and facing a Spanish Naval boat.
Master and Commander was not a huge hit despite the accolades it received, including 10 Oscar nominations and 2 victories. The film only made $211M worldwide on a $150M budget, killing, or I guess delaying nearly two decades, hopes for any sequels.
Ness is the bestselling author behind A Monster Calls and the Chaos Walking series, both of which have been adapted into feature films he wrote.
I just don’t see where 20th Century can possibly think a Master and Commander movie could be a box office success right now unless the budget is on the smaller side. If we’re only looking at recognizable brand, it’s just for fans of O’Brian or Weir, and that is definitely not a very large contingent.
While we haven’t heard anything from Paramount on a sequel following the massive box office success of A Quiet Place Part II, they’re ready to set a date for the franchise’s expansion from Midnight Special director Jeff Nichols.
Paramount has confirmed Jeff Nichols’ untitled A Quiet Place film for March 31st 2023. Details on the film are still being kept hush-hush, but it is definitely not the third chapter in the Abbott family’s story. Instead, it is a spinoff set in the same post-apocalyptic world overrun by monsters that hunt using their accute sense of hearing.
Nichols will write and direct based on a story idea by John Krasinski. This will be Nichols’ first film since 2016’s Loving. While there’s still no casting, one has to assume that Michael Shannon will be involved in some way since he’s starred in every Nichols film to this point.
Disney hasn’t just scored themselves another live-action spinoff hit with Cruella, they may have found a new franchise to build around. Following the Emma Stone-led film’s $26M box office last week, coupled with 686K views on PVOD, Disney is in the early stages of a sequel.
Deadline has the news, but fails to mention if Emma Stone would return as Cruella de Vil, who grows up to be the iconic 101 Dalmatians villain. However, they do say that director Craig Gillespie an writer Tony McNamara are exected back.
“We are very pleased with Cruella’s box office success, in conjunction with its strong Disney+ Premier Access performance to date. The film has been incredibly well received by audiences around the world, with a 97% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes in addition to A’s in every demographic from CinemaScore on opening weekend, ranking it among the most popular of our live-action reimaginings. We look forward to a long run as audiences continue to enjoy this fantastic film”, said a Disney spokesperson.
The only surprise here is that Disney waited even this long to reveal sequel plans. I have to believe Stone will return, the only question is how closely will this connect to 101 Dalmatians or will it take her further from the character she’s meant to become?
