Is Indiana Jones 5 really going to happen? While any of us are alive, I mean? There have been so many production headaches, particularly with the script, that even Steven Spielberg threw his hands up and left. Well, now there’s another big change, and it sounds a lot like the previous ones. Speaking with Collider, writer David Koepp revealed that he’s no longer working on the screenplay.
“When James Mangold came in … he deserves a chance to take his shot at it. I’d done several versions with Steven. And when Steven left, it seemed like the right time to let Jim have his own take on it and have his own person or himself write it.”
Koepp has worked with Spielberg plenty of times in the past, so his loyalty makes sense. He’s also been involved with this franchise, and this particular film, for quite a while. He was the writer of the much-maligned Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and at one point said Indiana Jones 5 would be pretty similar. After Koepp had trouble cracking the screenplay, Jon Kasdan (Solo) and Dan Fogelman (This is Us) took stabs at it, only for Koepp to come back in. Nothing has worked.
What Koepp is basically telling us is that James Mangold is starting over fresh, which means an even longer time before production can begin. Currently, Indiana Jones 5 is set for July 29th 2022, but I remain skeptical about this whole thing.
It’s been a rough year for pop culture fanatics looking to congregate and geek out over their fandoms. Well, it’s going to be a quiet year for Star Wars fans, too, because Lucasfilm has officially canceled the bi-annual Star Wars Celebration, with the event returning in 2022.
This has been expected for some time, so it doesn’t come as a complete shock. Back in April, organizers of the event, which is basically a D23 or Comic-Con for Star Wars fans, were doing what everybody was doing. They were watching the COVID-19 outbreak and seeing how bad it would get. There was coordination with the city of Anaheim to ensure the event’s safety for a possible launch in August, but that is now off the table. Here is part of the official statement:
To our Star Wars Celebration fans and friends. At Star Wars Celebration, the health and safety of our fans, attendees, exhibitors, guests and staff is always our number one priority. Due to the global impact of the COVID-19 virus and in speaking with local and state authorities on the latest public health guidelines related to indoor conventions, we have made the decision to cancel Star Wars Celebration for 2020. While this news is disappointing, we are happy to announce that Star Wars Celebration will return to the Anaheim Convention Center on August 18-21, 2022.
There will be ticket and hotel refund opportunities beginning June 22nd for those who booked early. Those looking for refunds will want to seek out more info here.
To be fair, there wasn’t exactly going to be a lot of Star Wars shit to show off this year, right? Sure, there may have been a glimpse at the second season of The Mandalorian, but anything in 2021? The Cassian Andor series has been pretty quiet, and they had to delay production because of COVID-19 like everybody else. The Obi-Wan series in the works from director Deborah Chow has gone through its share of script troubles, which caused a further slowdown. And we know there aren’t any movies that would be close enough to talk about.
So maybe this isn’t such a big deal, after all?
Due to the impact of COVID-19, we’ve made the decision to cancel Star Wars Celebration 2020. While this news is disappointing, we’re happy to announce #StarWarsCelebration will return to Anaheim in 2022. Full statement with ticket transfers/refunds info at https://t.co/o2ObVULVVFpic.twitter.com/CnRWHZhuDq
— StarWars Celebration (@SW_Celebration) June 15, 2020
Two movies on the competitive sport of fencing, both starring women of color? What the Hell is this bizarro world we’ve stumbled into? A few months ago we learned of the Zoe Salda fencing film, appropriately-titled Fencer. And now today Deadline reports on Balestra, which will feature Tessa Thompson and Aladdin actor Marwan Kenzari.
Balestra will be directed by Nicole Dorsey (Black Conflux), and this will not be a traditional sports story AT ALL. Thompson plays “disgraced competitive fencer Joanna Bathory (Thompson), who is desperately hoping for an Olympic comeback. Pressured by her husband and coach Rafe, she receives a prototype device allowing her to extend her training into her sleeping hours. By day she’s on the piste, and by night she’s lucid dreaming. But reality begins to blur when she encounters a stranger named Elliot (Kenzari) and gets caught in her own web of subconscious desires and unfulfilling reality.”
The presence of Thompson all-but guarantees this will be the biggest film of Dorsey’s directing career. Thompson is best-known for Thor: Ragnarok, Creed, and her role on HBO’s Westworld. Kenzari has been very busy over the last few years. His biggest part by far as the villain Jafar in Disney’s remake of Aladdin. He’ll be seen next in The Old Guard opposite Charlize Theron.
What? You didn’t think the coronavirus could disrupt the entire year of movies and somehow not impact the Academy Awards, did you? How much sense would that make? As speculated, next year’s Oscars are on the move from February 28th 2021 to the new date of April 25th, two months later.
The April date is the latest ever for the Academy Awards telecast, and with it the requirements to qualify have also shifted. The eligibility period has been extended beyond December 31st for a qualifying theatrical run, to a date between January 1st, 2020 and February 28th, 2021.
So everything is going to be affected now because of this. The fall awards season will be different, and the other awards shows such as the Golden Globes, Critics Choice, etc. will have to follow suit. It’s also likely we’ll see the 2022 Academy Awards change dates, as well. [Deadline]
If there’s a single image that may have changed the entire course of the Civil War, it’s that of Gordon, or “Whipped Peter”. In 1863, he escaped enslavement in Louisiana and made his way to a Union camp in Baton Rouge. There, pictures were taken of his whip-scarred back and published in the pages of Harper’s Weekly, enflaming northerners and inspiring many blacks to join the Union cause. That story of Peter is now becoming a movie, put together by director Antoine Fuqua and star Will Smith.
Deadline reports Fuqua and Smith will teamup for Emancipation, the story of Peter’s escape from slavery and 10-day journey through the swamps to escape his captors. The true story of the image of Peter’s scarred flesh will serve as historical backdrop for what is expected to be an action flick, which is pretty much what we’d expect from Fuqua, who will direct with Smith starring.
Fuqua and Smith have been putting this together for some time, and the director talked about why the time is perfect for telling this story…
“It was the first viral image of the brutality of slavery that the world saw. Which is interesting, when you put it into perspective with today and social media and what the world is seeing, again. You can’t fix the past, but you can remind people of the past and I think we have to, in an accurate, real way. We all have to look for a brighter future for us all, for everyone. That’s one of the most important reasons to do things right now, is show our history. We have to face our truth before we can move forward.”
“It’s almost two years now from when I first read the script. It hit my heart and my soul in so many ways that are impossible to convey but I think you understand. We’re watching some of the feeling that I had, in the streets right now. There’s sadness, there’s anger, there’s love, faith and hope as well because of what I see young people doing today. They’re doing all the heavy lifting now. Black, white, brown, yellow, you name it. They’re out in the street, they’re young, and they’re standing up for their future. That’s important to see, and the most hopeful thing that I’m seeing, that they’re not going to stand for it anymore.”
In 2014 Tom Hardy and Matthias Schoenaerts teamed up for The Drop, a crime flick based on a Dennis Lehane novel. The film came and went, didn’t make too many waves except for the cute pitbull pup that served as Hardy’s true co-star. But it’s notable to me for starring my two favorite actors, and now they’re joining forces again, albeit in a different way, for Wildlands.
Deadline reports Schoenaerts will star as a bomb disposal expert in Wildlands, a film that Hardy will produce. The film will be co-written and directed by Kim Mordaunt (The Rocket), based on her decade-long connection to the bomb disposal worlds of Asia and Africa. Here’s how the plot is described:
On the heels of his dismissal from UN forces following a failed mission in Afghanistan, the film will follow Richard Thomas, a jaded bomb disposal specialist with a penchant for recklessness, who gets a final shot at redemption when he’s sent to Angola, Africa – one of the most heavily mined lands in the world. There, his unexpected new team includes ten spirited Angolan women and their bomb-sniffing African Pouched Rats. Soon, he comes under pressure to make a remote village safe for civilians, but also finds love.
Nothing yet on Hardy potentially taking a role, but let’s hope he does. My love for Schoenaerts is no big secret. He’s been my favorite actor since Rust & Bone and still is to this day. He and Hardy are similar; big, bruising, charismatic actors who can be sensitive one moment, then flip a switch and go on a rampage the next. Schoenaerts was recently seen in The Mustang and Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life. He’ll star with Charlize Theron in Netflix’s The Old Guard next. Hardy is currently starring as Al Capone in Josh Trank’s Capone, and has Venom: Let There Be Carnage coming up.
I know it seems like it, but not every movie has been delayed or pulled from its theatrical release. Some have had their theatrical runs cut woefully short. One of those is The Burnt Orange Heresy, an adaptation of Charles Willeford’s artsy novel starring Claes Bang, Elizabeth Debicki, Donald Sutherland, and a Mick Jagger performance as cool as the other side of the pillow. The film opened in March, just before the shutdown, and Sony Pictures Classics thinks it deserves another go.
Sony Pictures Classics plans to re-release The Burnt Orange Heresy on August 7th, giving those who may have missed it another chance to check out the high-class art world drama. The story follows an art critic and his lover who are tasked by a patron with stealing a famous painting from a reclusive artist.
My prior experience with The Burnt Orange Heresy wasn’t great. While the film has a certain aristocratic style and more than its share of poetic turns of phrase, I found it painfully dull and couldn’t get through it. Maybe I was in the wrong frame of mind. It’s been a regret to have left it unfinished, and this is a chance to fix that.
The winds of political change have always gusted through the films of director Olivier Assayas (Something in the Air, Carlos), and now they get turned up another level with Wasp Network. The Netflix film stars Penelope Cruz, Gael Garcia Bernal, Ana de Armas, Wagner Moura, and Edgar Ramirez, centering on the Cuban Five, spies held as political prisoners for more than fifteen years.
Venice is where Wasp Network had its world premiere, and Assayas wasn’t impressed with the reaction it received. That’s when he took the film back to the drawing board, debuting a newly-edited cut at the New York Film Festival. Assayas and his crew spent more than a year shooting in Havana, after initially being refused by the Cuban government.
Based on Fernando Morais’ book, The Last Soldiers of the Cold War: The Story of the Cuban Five, the true story centers on Cuban spies who infiltrate an anti-Castro organization in Miami. In 1998 they were arrested and charged with illegal activities, including conspiracy to commit espionage and murder.
Another airplane hijacking movie? This particular sub-genre has become a regular feature of the American blockbuster ever since 9/11, but 7500 promises something different than action-hero theatrics. The English-language debut feature from German filmmaker Patrick Vollrath is all about capturing, with painfully-realized authenticity, the madness of just such a terrorist scenario from a lone co-pilot’s perspective. It’s an unconventional, technically-proficient thriller and a curious leading role for Joseph Gordon-Levitt that puts a lot on his shoulders.
7500 strives for realism; the opening scenes are little more than security footage of Berlin Airport. Travelers come and go; it’s so quiet you might think the volume has accidentally been turned off. There’s a focus on a handful of Middle Eastern men making their way through security. It’s all just another day on the job for American co-pilot Tobias (Gordon-Levitt), who lives in Berlin with his young son and girlfriend, Gokce (Aylin Tezel), who happens to be a stewardess on the same flight to Paris. They sneak kisses in the cockpit and try to keep their relationship under wraps, but Tobias sucks at keeping secrets.
All of this is taking place in the plane’s cockpit, and that’s where we’ll stay for the movie’s duration. It’s a tight, low-key effort from Vollrath, that puts considerable weight on Gordon-Levitt to carry the tension through. But it doesn’t always work; the first 30 minutes are fairly dull as Tobias chats with his pilot about matters that have nothing to do with the plot.
Things pick up considerably from there when hijackers attempt to bust into the cockpit. A scuffle breaks out and only one of the attackers makes it inside. He manages to gravely injure the pilot, leaving Tobias the man in control. The lives of everyone on board are in his hands now, and keeping the plane in the air is just one of the many ways he’ll be forced to decide all of their fates.
7500 is a film that will have audiences asking “What would I do in that situation?” Vollrath never introduces us to the passengers, which keeps us emotionally disconnected from them, but at the same time we can see, via a small monitor screen, the terrorists causing havoc outside the door. They can’t get in, but Tobias is forced to make some excruciatingly difficult, heartbreaking choices when a few travelers are threatened. Does he open the cockpit door and risk losing everyone, or does he keep it closed and endanger a few of emotional significance?
When 7500 heaps a ton of weight on Tobias to make a decision, it’s a gripping pressure-cooker of responsibility and ethics. At other points it flies into ludicrously contrived territory with characters making choices that make no sense. Vollrath doesn’t give himself a lot of options by keeping the action focused in a single, contained location. It becomes a function of plot that Tobias gets knocked unconscious for a too-long stretch, allowing for another hijacker to enter and muck things up, only to make a consequential choice later that doesn’t feel earned. But that is another big problem with 7500 in general; that none of the characters, be it Tobias or the one-note Muslim terrorists (they hate the West because we suck, is the gist of it) have many nuances to latch on to.
That makes this a pretty easy role for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who seems to have slipped out of the Hollywood radar of late. His last feature role was 2016’s dud, Snowden, and before that he had been a series of underwhelming attempts to turn him into a studio A-lister. He’s matched pretty well with Omid Memar as Vedat, an 18-year-old hijacker whose internal struggle becomes a catalyst for the final act. While his motivations are also under-written, the back-and-forth between him and Tobias flips the cockpit power structure in an interesting way, leading to a strange sort of Stockholm Syndrome as they both fight to survive.
7500 is precise in execution and walks a fine balance between thrills of the genre and its need to be genuine. Vollrath’s commitment to his vision shows, and could lead to bigger and better things as his feature career takes off.
If you ever wanted to see Ben Platt vs. the tag team of Judith Light and Bette Midler, the second season of Ryan Murphy’s The Politician is all about that. In the first season, we saw how ruthless aggression and morally-questionable tactics could destroy lives in an ultimately pointless political campaign for student body president. So what will the ambitious Payton Hobart (Platt) do to win now that it really counts and the stakes are much higher?
The answer should be obvious. Payton is ready to get nasty as he seeks to unseat longtime New York Senator and Senate Majority Leader Dede Standish (Light), whose incumbency has led her to disregard anyone as a real threat. But when Payton proves he can be just as nasty as she is, Dede has to turn to her Chief of Staff Hadassah Gold (Midler) to get the real dirt on this new kid on the block. But for Payton, this is just the next step in his destined push to be President of the United States. Now if only his own mother (Gwyneth Paltrow) could get out of the way.
I found the first season a bit too chaotic. It’s not likely to change since Murphy is pretty much able to do what he wants without any safeguards. We’ll see what happens, but I’ll definitely be watching at some point.
The Politician season two hits Netflix on June 19th.
