Month: November 2020

Remember cruise ships? Even if you’ve never been on one, there’s a good chance you won’t be on one anytime soon. It’s one of many industries mostly taken away from us during the pandemic. In fact, when/if this is all over, they may never look the same. But that’s where movies come in: They allow us to experience lives we can’t lead, to watch others doing things we cannot, to show a time that may be bygone — like a world with safe cruise ships.

Enter Let Them All Talk. It’s the latest from the ever-prolific Steven Soderbergh, and, title be damned, its new trailer implies it’s more than a mere chat-a-thon. Meryl Streep plays a renowned author who, her latest manuscript soon due to its publisher, decides to take a restorative ocean voyage with old friends. Those would be Dianne Wiest and Candice Bergen — legends with 25 Oscar nominations and five wins between them. (Yes, most of the noms belong to Queen Meryl, namely 21. But don’t write off Wiest’s two wins.)

The trailer is filled with bon mots and promises of bickering, as well as supporting players Lucas Hedges and Gemma Chan. And then there’s Soderbergh, who can always be counted on to find new avenues for his diverse career. It’s about time he made a cruise ship movie — a genre that hasn’t been in vogue since the 1930s and whose last major entry appears to be 2011’s Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked. But if someone can make talkfest set aboard an ocean liner visually exciting, it’s Steven Soderbergh.

You can watch the trailer in the video above. Let Them All Talk hits HBO Max on December 10.

Somehow, someway, six episodes into the sixth season of Fear the Walking Dead, the series has only managed to get better, improving on each successive episode. Where has this show been for the last six years? If Fear had been this good since the beginning, it might have overtaken the parent series creatively and in terms of popularity around the time that Rick left TWD. Fear has now entered a stretch of six episodes that could probably rival any six-episode run in ten seasons of The Walking Dead.

I know I sound hyperbolic, but Fear really is spectacularly good this season.

The latest episode, “Bury Her Next to Jasper’s Leg,” centers primarily on June and Virginia, who hold cross-purposes but also seem to want some of the same things, namely to keep everyone safe and alive. Virginia is being confronted by the biggest threat of her reign, namely the mysterious gang of spray-painters who continue to graffiti, “The end is the beginning,” in various places around Virginia’s community as a sort of threat. It’s unnerved Ginny, who tracks down one of the spray painters in the episode’s cold open, but the woman fatally shoots herself rather than give up any information to Ginny. It’s a serious move and leaves one to wonder if Ginny’s group — the Pioneers — is the precursor to CRM, or if this spray-paint gang is the real origin of CRM?

Meanwhile, June (with Sarah as her assistant) is single-handedly running the medical operations for Ginny’s communities. Unfortunately, she’s stretched too thin and doesn’t have the necessary resources, so she keeps losing people she can’t get to in time. June wants a hospital for the community, but Ginny won’t give her one.

Ginny and June are brought together when the spray-paint gang blows up oil town, and June has to try and save as many people as possible. While Ginny also wants to save lives, she’s more interested in finding out who is responsible. She thinks that Wes (who is severely wounded) is involved, and refuses to let June care for him while she interrogates him. June eventually overrides Ginny’s wishes. However, in the chaos of a huge explosion, Ginny gets bitten by a zombie on the hand.

This is where the episode gets really interesting, because June has the ax, and if June wanted to, she could let Ginny die. It would solve a lot of problems, not least of which is John Dorie’s desire to run as far away as possible (it would also liberate Sherry’s group, which exists solely to kill Ginny). The alliances on Fear, however, are getting muddy, and that’s what’s so compelling right now. Ginny genuinely seems to believe that she is serving the greater good, and some in Morgan’s group (like Strand) seem to be leaning into that goal. Until Janice’s death, John Dorie had also bought into Ginny’s system.

Here, June has a choice: let Ginny die, or amputate her hand and save her. There hasn’t been an amputation of an infected limb in The Walking Dead universe in eight years (since Hershel’s leg was removed). Here, writer Alex Delyle pulls off a new twist: June leverages the amputation. She tells Ginny that she’ll ax off her hand, but only if Ginny builds her a hospital. Ginny agrees, and June whacks off the infected hand and saves Ginny’s life. It’s a simmering sequence full of emotional conflict. It’s also the most dramatically tense scene I can remember from the series.

The problem, however, is this: having convinced Ginny to build her a hospital, June can’t bring herself to run away with John Dorie, who is spiraling in the wake of Janice’s death. “John, the hospital is happening,” she tells him. “We can’t just leave. I don’t want to leave… every time I run, it leads me to something worse. I don’t want to run.”

John insists that June has “the wool pulled over her eyes,” and as they are heading back to their settlement, John — following behind them in his truck — pulls off, and heads away, leaving the love of his life behind because he can’t bring himself to work for Ginny any longer. Heartbreaking.

Additional Notes

— In what appears to be a good-faith gesture to June for saving her, Ginny also reunites Wendell and Sarah in a big, crowd-pleasing moment near the end of the episode.

— Colby Minifie, who just signed on as a series regular to The Boys, is the true MVP of this season. She’s got some real Negan energy: She’s a ruthless villain, but it’s hard not to root for her a little bit. I could not believe that I found myself hoping that June would save her life rather than killing her. I’m not ready for Fear to lose Minifie.

— She doesn’t figure that much into the plot, but Luciana is in the episode if only to remind us that she’s still around.

— The stand-alone episodes have been working wonders for Fear. The one downside, however, is that we haven’t seen Alicia since the second episode.

— I suspect that John will eventually run into Dwight, Al, and Morgan’s gang, so it’s not like Garrett Dillahunt is leaving the series or anything. I do expect Dorie to continue his mental slide, at least in the short term.

— The “spray-paint gang” does not sound particularly menacing, but it is the most descriptive label we have for them now.

It’s remarkable to hear Steve McQueen sound unsure of himself, even when he’s speaking about himself in the past tense. Because when you look at McQueen’s filmography up until now – Hunger, Shame, 12 Years a Slave, Widows – this is the work of a very confident filmmaker who is in total command of his craft.

Let’s never forget the dinner scene in Shame, a six-minute masterclass in filmmaking. It’s just two people (played by Michael Fassbender’s and Nicole Beharie) having dinner, but over the course of those six uncut minutes, we watch a first date go from something that is hopeful, like most first dates start out, to something tragic. McQueen never seems to enjoy talking about these types of uncut shots, but my best guess is because they are almost treated as magic tricks, instead of what they are intended to do: Put us, the viewer, in the best possible vantage point to see and hear what McQueen is trying to tell us.

Well, with the five films that make up McQueen’s Small Axe (a number that now more than doubles his filmography), McQueen has a lot he wants to tell us. But the difference this time is the subject matter is so close to him, such a pivotal part of who he is as a human being and a filmmaker, again, as he says, he found himself scared. But McQueen’s slightly morbid, but undeniably true mantra is that we are all going to die, so might as well take a chance. Because what’s the worst that could happen?

The result (which will be available via Amazon Prime on November 20th) is an anthology about the West Indian experience in London told over the course of five films (with unconnected plots, timelines and casts) in which McQueen presents the Black experience of London in the ’70s and ’80s. To pick two, Lovers Rock is a joyous part filled with music and love. It’s infectious. Red, White and Blue stars John Boyega as a man joining the police force. As McQueen points out, he looks at it as art imitating life, because like Boyega joining Star Wars, barriers are broken, but once the barrier is broken, that doesn’t mean things automatically change.

Over the years I’ve interviewed McQueen a handful of times, but this time felt different. McQueen, as an interviewee, likes to keep journalists on their toes and it’s best to come very prepared. He is a person who knows what he’s talking about. But this time McQueen seemed more emotional than normal, which was apparent even over Zoom. With Small Axe, he’s a director who is putting his whole heart out there, and now he has to wait and see if people respond.

With Small Axe, you’ve more than doubled your entire filmography in one month. With Lovers Rock, being at the virtual version of New York Film Festival, a lot of people here needed to at least watch a party like that.

I was just very enthused in New York with the reception of Lovers Rock, and the other two as well. But I think with Lovers Rock, it was this one thing about the liberation of the senses and the impression that people were just sort of taking with it, because of the unfortunate situation we find ourselves in with sensuality. There’s the liberation of hearing, of smell. It was pretty. Yeah, I was very touched. Very very touched.

Seriously, it just felt great to watch that.

It was amazing to make it, too. What was happening on the other side of the cameras was just… you know, sometimes you can be in a situation where you are, and I’ve said this before, but you are a witness. No! Not even a witness, I would say you’re invited. Regardless of your presence, it would have happened anyway. That was the environment that we create, I created. The fact that it happened that way in such an infectious way – euphoric sort of visceral way – was fantastic.

Last time we spoke you were talking about seeing North by Northwest with a big crowd. You said there’s no point looking at a movie on your laptop and the thrill of cinema is to be in an audience with 200 people. Now we don’t have that. People are going to watch these on whatever setup they have.

Yeah. Well, listen, there’s a positive out of it. I won’t even say the negative, just positive. The positive is that hopefully we’ll get back to those screens very, very soon. Again, when this thing is over, I can’t wait.

Me neither.

I think there’s going to be a cascade, an avalanche, a stampede of people to the big screen. I’m hoping that people hold on because there will be a lot of people, their thirst will be quenched by cinema. I mean, people want to go to the cinema!

Yes, they do.

It’s not a dead medium. It’s actually going to be crazy. On the other side of that, we still have this other medium, the streaming situation, that people can actually still see films. Of course not with each other, but at home. At the same time, it’s something that we can actually just have at least. It’s something we can actually celebrate, at least, because we’re still active, it’s still active. It’s not like it’s … how would you say? it’s not like it’s cinema, but at the same time at least we have this medium. I think it’s great. I’m very grateful for it. More people see it than they would in a cinema. Nothing can beat the cinematic experience as far as I’m concerned. But for film, this comes close.

I was actually surprised when this was first announced because last time we spoke you were talking about your experience with HBO, which didn’t go well. It sounded like you were pretty against doing anything like that again. Why did you change your mind?

I think it was to do, firstly, with the BBC. I wanted this to be on the BBC because, for me, these stories, these small acts, were national stories. So the fact that anyone in the UK who turned on the TV had access to these stories was very, very important to me – rather than limiting to a cinema release or whatever. So that was very much a turning point for me. Also, how these films were received at Cannes, New York Film Festival, Rome and London? It’s just having the best of both worlds. Yes, I wanted these to be on television and in a streaming situation because I wanted people to have access to these stories the way they wouldn’t have had if it was only cinema release.

I know you’ve been wanting to do these since right after Hunger. Did it work out the right way that it’s coming out now? It sounds so cliché to go it’s of the moment, but it really feels like this was meant to come out this year.

Well, I wasn’t mature enough. I didn’t live enough. I didn’t understand enough until now. Now was the time to make these films. Sometimes the things you know about, or are close to you, are under your nose, under your chin. You can’t see them. You need perspective on them to sort of have a real understanding of them. The whole idea of what happened with these movies coming out now with the unfortunate situation with George Floyd, well all I can say is that I’d rather George Floyd would be alive today to be honest. But in this situation, you know, there’s never a good time or bad time to release something. Yeah, I don’t know what to say about that. These stories go on and on and on.

I am curious, too, because you mentioned last time, when you were talking about Collin Farrell’s character in Widows, and you were mentioning there’s some Bush there, there’s maybe some Trump there. How much was Trump or Boris Johnson on your mind when you were making these films? Or maybe not, since Lovers Rock is such a celebration.

It’s not about Boris or Trump. It’s about this sort of continuing narrative of unfortunate situations or unfortunate individuals that prop up or keep up a certain kind of mentality. So, for me, that’s why it was just about a celebration of the Black experience as much as them having to sort of deal with the unfortunate surroundings. With Black people we’re always in a situation where we’ve always been inventive within the tragedies often we find ourselves in. How do we make something bad into something good? That’s what we do. If it’s in the arts or whatever, we’ve always had a situation where we have to sort of turn the environment into something else. Look at it differently. That’s the only way to survive.

In Red, White and Blue, John Boyega is becoming a police officer tells a friend he’s joining the force. The reply is, “You’re going to be a Jedi?” I wasn’t expecting a Star Wars joke and I’m curious what John thought of that.

Courttia Newland wrote that line.

Ah, okay.

Courttia Newland wrote that line, which I thought was fantastic. It’s just one of those things where, yeah, what’s interesting enough about Leroy Logan, he kind of parallels John’s life in the movie. He’s the golden boy. He goes into the force, just like our man John in Star Wars. There were all these expectations and all these things which were sort of going to occur. What happens is he comes up against something. He’s not allowed to proceed further. So, in some ways, it’s art imitating life, in a way, with John’s situation. Not just John’s situation, not just Leroy Logan’s situation, but with a lot of Black people’s situation within the corporate world or in the workforce. That’s what they will come up against in whatever sort of environment they’re in: that they want to integrate in order to change things, but not be allowed to progress. So this is something which, you know, groups in the UK but also groups in the US will identify with immediately. They will recognize it.

In the film, he calls for backup but they don’t arrive. Which kind of feels like art imitating life, in a way, with when he speaks out on social media. I hadn’t thought about that until you said that.

Well, I’m only basing my opinions on obviously what we’re reading in GQ. Obviously we were all there, we all saw, so that’s happening.

The music is just phenomenal throughout. I might be wrong on this one, in Red, White and Blue, you only hear it for a few seconds, was that the original Gloria Jones version of “Tainted Love?”

Yes.

Also, I certainly didn’t expect to hear “Uptown Girl.”

Ha! I love that tune.

It’s great.

Also, Al Green was huge in this picture, just because there’s a real kind of soulfulness about him and also that was one of Leroy’s favorite artists.

For you, how important were the song selections in all these films? They do seem to be there to help tell the story.

Absolutely. I mean, again, it’s always been the refuge, often for music. I did this thing in the Shed last year. The inauguration exhibition at the Shed in New York. I made a crazy show – Grace Jones, myself – called Soundtrack of America. It is the bloodstream of Black life. It is kind of the soundtrack of Black life. You hear it often when you’re walking down the street in your head. So, to translate that and put it into these films was vitally important. It was the perfume that had to be in the air that fueled a lot of things and sort of heightened a lot of things. We should definitely do a conversation just for the music, but it would go on forever.

When I asked you about that scene in Widows when Colin Farrell is in the car and going from one section of Chicago to the other, you played it off as, look, I’m a British filmmaker, we got to stretch a pound. But now you did five movies. If you’re stretching pounds, how did you do this?

I think it’s passion. Nothing becomes hard because it’s the passion, you want it so much. Again, these were somethings which I had to do. These were things I had to do, so it didn’t feel hard, it felt like… What did it feel like? It felt like a gift. It’s kind of corny to say that but it did. It was a privilege. It was a privilege to tell the stories of my ancestors and my family, which had never been told. It was a privilege to do that. I went to work, I ran to work. I ran to work! And I stretched a pound. Amazon helped a bit but it’s, yeah.

Well, it certainly doesn’t look like it. It looks like a very expensive production.

That’s the trick! Make it look easy!

You mentioned earlier you weren’t mature enough after Hunger to make this? When did it hit you? Was it after doing a certain film? Was it after 12 Years a Slave? What was it where you were just like I understand what this needs to be?

I knew I could do it now, but was I ready?

Right, okay.

Doing it, yes, I know how to do it. But was I ready upstairs?

You mention the passion. Could you have summoned that then, to do what you did today?

I was scared. I was scared. I was scared because it was things that I knew about, but I didn’t know… I told them, I was scared. Can you imagine? Isn’t it strange? Things that are so close to you that you feel are the easiest things to do? I did not feel that. I felt the further it was away from me maybe, so it’s a very strange thing. I had to sort of prepare myself in some ways for it. The day before I shot, I didn’t sleep. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t sleep. The day before we shot, I didn’t sleep a wink. I couldn’t sleep. So I don’t know, maybe I knew I was ready to do it, but there was something that wasn’t there? Again, you’re making something that you know, or is so close to you? No, I haven’t answered that, I don’t know what that was. Sometimes you just got to jump. Don’t look at how you’ll land, just jump. That’s what I did.

Something you said last time that’s really stuck with me, especially this year, I think we were talking about Widows but you so bluntly said, “We all die, why not take a chance because we’re all going to die.” I think about that a lot, especially this year when everything seems so terrible.

Yeah. That’s me, that’s my mantra. Go for it, what’s there to lose? Absolutely. You will die anyway, what’s the worst thing that can happen to you? What’s the worst thing that can happen to you? Just go for it. Who gives a shit! You know? I think that’s the thing. Propel yourself, because why not? If you’re too careful nothing ever happens. You got to go for it. Sometimes do something and ask questions later. You know?

Right.

Your self-doubt could stop you from doing anything. If you start questioning things too often, you end up sort of discounting yourself. Well, this was the hardest thing I ever did in some ways. Definitely the hardest thing I ever did because I was confronting myself in that way. I had to basically shout that mantra to myself every morning.

‘Small Axe’ premieres on BBC on November 15, and Amazon Prime on November 20. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

The Arizona Cardinals have had a wild ride the past few weeks, with an outrageous win over the Seahawks on Sunday Night Football and then a gutting loss to the Miami Dolphins last week, but this Sunday’s game with the Bills managed to be an even more ridiculous ending than any of those.

The Bills were able to take a 30-26 lead with just over 30 seconds to play on a sensational throw from Josh Allen to a diving Stefon Diggs in the front corner of the end zone that seemed likely to be the game-winner.

However, the Cardinals were able to get the ball to midfield quickly, but needing a touchdown it was going to require a miracle to get a win. That miracle was granted by Kyler Murray and DeAndre Hopkins, with the young quarterback escaping pressure and then firing up a prayer to the end zone that, somehow, was hauled in cleanly by the star receiver over the outstretched arms of the entire Bills secondary.

Just look at how Hopkins manages to squeeze this over three Bills defenders.

Murray’s heroics in this shouldn’t be ignored as he had to not only evade a sack but also square himself on the run and launch the ball 50 yards downfield on target and managed to do so. It’s an all-time Hail Mary, though, because of how Hopkins caught it. Fully contested, not tipped, and just calmly squeezed and brought in by the All-Pro receiver, proving exactly why the Cardinals traded for him this offseason and gave him a big extension.

Now, from a gambling perspective, the big swing with this play was the Cardinals were 2.5-point favorites and with the extra point would’ve covered, but to not risk a block being returned for the tie, they took a knee on the extra point to win by two, failing to cover. On top of that, the game’s point total closed at 56 or 56.5, meaning that touchdown either ruined a push or a winner for many Under bettors. So, yeah, a lot happened in the final minute of this game.

It’s been cool to hate on the Star Wars prequels for almost as long as they’ve existed, much as it’s long been cool to do the same to the original trilogy’s Special Editions. (Neither discredits their maker, George Lucas, who’s used his untold riches to become one of the great saviors of film history.) But there’s a chance all of this — or at least The Phantom Menace — could have been avoided. As per IGN, an old Empire interview with Lucas from 1999 is making the rounds, and it finds him admitting that he was warned up and down that making a movie about a 10-year-old Anakin Skywalker might “destroy the franchise.”

Mind you, people weren’t telling Lucas to avoid a young Anakin altogether. They just wanted him to skip to the part where he wasn’t a little whippersnapper whose yen for saying “yippee!” clashes with him growing up to be a genocidal half-robot. In the piece, Lucas talks about how people kept telling him to skip to him being a teenager, devoting the trilogy to his relationship with Natalie Portman’s Amadala. But Lucas held forthwith.

“I kept it as it was originally intended,” Lucas said. “You can’t play too much to the marketplace. It’s the same thing with the fans. The fans’ expectations had gotten way high and they wanted a film that was going to change their lives and be the Second Coming. You know, I can’t do that, it’s just a movie. And I can’t say, now I gotta market it to a whole different audience. I tell the story.”

He does admit it would have been easier to sell…though what’s easier to sell in 1999 than the first Star Wars movie in 16 years. (And Menace was the year’s top box office draw, by a lot.) Still:

“I knew if I’d made Anakin 15 instead of nine, then it would have been more marketable … If I’d made the Queen 18 instead of 14, then it would have been more marketable. But that isn’t the story. It is important that he be young, that he be at an age where leaving his mother is more of a drama than it would have been at 15. So you just have to do what’s right for the movie, not what’s right for the market.”

When Lucas stuck with his guns, Fox execs told him, “You’re going to destroy the franchise, you’re going to destroy everything.” He also remembers how he wound up admitting to colleagues that was “making a movie that nobody wants to see.”

Lucas did what he wanted, though, casting Jake Lloyd as the boy Anakin and, inadvertently, making the poor guy’s life a living hell. Instead, we might have wound up with a bit more Hayden Christensen. But when he sold the property to Disney for a princely sum — a good chunk of which he reportedly donated to charity — fanboys could no longer come after him when a Star Wars turned out to be not very good.

(Via IGN and Empire)

The South Carolina Gamecocks have struggled in the 2020 season, as they’re just 2-5 with wins over Vanderbilt and Auburn. On Saturday, they gave up 59 points in a 17-point loss to Ole Miss, making for their third straight game giving up 48 or more, as things have spiraled a bit in Columbia.

On Sunday, word broke from Bruce Feldman of Fox Sports that Muschamp had been let go by the program in his fifth season at the helm.

The school confirmed the news shortly after the initial report.

In his time at South Carolina, Muschamp went 28-30, showing brief promise in his second season going 9-4 with an Outback Bowl win, but from there he never found the same success. The last two seasons the Gamecocks have gone a combined 6-13 and their performance over the last three games seemed to seal the deal. Muschamp will get a buyout of around $13 million, so it’s a massive financial commitment from the school to let him go and pay a new coach next season, but it seems the boosters were willing to put up the money to make this move happen.

As for who comes next at South Carolina, it’s an interesting job in that the expectations aren’t necessarily to be a title contender but to simply be a good team capable of competing in the East and maybe pick up some wins over Georgia and Florida. After the Muschamp era, it wouldn’t be surprising to see them take a swing on an offensive coach in an effort to change things up in Columbia.

Ariana Grande is still at the top of the Billboard albums chart, with her sixth album, Positions, holding on to the No. 1 spot for a second straight week. The pop singer made her debut on the chart last week thanks to 174,000 equivalent album units. Positions also became the fifth No. 1 album in Grande’s career, while it also helped her become the fastest scorer of No. 1 albums by a woman in Billboard history.

The “34+35” singer’s second week at No. 1 is mainly thanks to 73,000 streaming equivalent album units. Positions becomes Grande’s second album to spend two weeks at No. 1 after 2019’s Thank U, Next did the same early last year. That album surrendered its No. 1 position after its two weeks, so if Positions is able to keep the top spot for another week, it would become the longest-tenured chart-topper of her career.

Elsewhere the albums chart, Pop Smoke’s Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon nabbed No. 2 while The Kid Laroi’s F*ck Love jumps to No. 3 after a deluxe re-issue. The top five is rounded out with Luke Combs’ What You See Is What You Get at No. 4 and King Von’s Welcome to O’Block earning its highest position at No. 5.

You can revisit our review of Ariana Grande’s Positions here.

(via Billboard)

Donald Trump’s current plan while still president of the United States appears to be to disrupt the results of the election that will remove him from office come January. But once he’s done toying with the idea of a soft coup, it seems he may simply wind up back on television.

It’s long been rumored that Trump wanted to start his own TV network, and several reports have said that he thought that would be a good Plan B if he lost in 2016. But his new anger at Fox News for calling the election for Joe Biden in Arizona, among other perceived slights, may push him and his surrogates to make that a reality, creating a conservative network that rivals Fox News.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, surrogates of the president are interested in making a bid for Newsmax, a small conservative TV network that’s seen gaining Trump fans who think that Fox News just isn’t conservative enough anymore.

Hicks Equity Partners, a private-equity firm with ties to a co-chair of the Republican National Committee, has held talks in recent months about acquiring and investing in Newsmax, according to people familiar with the matter, part of a larger effort that could also include a streaming-video service.

Newsmax’s viewership has risen sharply since Election Day, as it wins over viewers loyal to Mr. Trump who are frustrated that Fox News and other networks have declared Democrat Joe Biden the president-elect. Newsmax hosts have promoted Mr. Trump’s claims that the election was stolen. No evidence of significant fraud has emerged or been presented.

As noted in the WSJ story, Trump has a “complicated” relationship with Fox News. The network’s opinion shows, led by Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, continue to support Trump and his baseless accusations about the election. The problem is, the network’s news department has to report, you know, the news. That includes the network’s decision desk, and you just can’t editorialize a reality Trump won’t accept.

Talks seem preliminary right now, but it seems to make sense that Trump’s pivot would be involved in taking some sort of revenge on the network for reporting the facts. Trump still insists the election isn’t over, but that bit can only last for so long. Eventually, he’ll have to occupy himself with something else, and that something just might be taking vengeance upon Fox News.

[via WSJ]

Over the weekend, esteemed director David Fincher got in trouble for a pissy interview, in which he managed to diss both Orson Welles and Todd Phillips’ Joker. Now it’s time for another filmmaker to run his mouth, not caring whose toes he steps on: the director of Home Alone and Bicentennial Man. Chris Columbus has been yapping to journalists about his disdain for the former’s multiple reboots. He already talked smack about the pot parody version from Ryan Reynolds. Now he’s coming for the more family friendly one heading for Disney+.

“Nobody got in touch with me about it, and it’s a waste of time as far as I’m concerned,” Columbus told Insider. The Disney+ version, whose production went on pause during the outbreak of the pandemic, will star Jojo Rabbit’s Archie Yates as the latest latchkey kid who has to fend off robbers and the like when left home by his seriously crappy parents. But Columbus ain’t having it.

“What’s the point? I’m a firm believer that you don’t remake films that have had the longevity of Home Alone. You’re not going to create lightning in a bottle again. It’s just not going to happen. So why do it? It’s like doing a paint-by-numbers version of a Disney animated film — a live-action version of that. What’s the point? It’s been done. Do your own thing. Even if you fail miserably, at least you have come up with something original.”

Speaking of, Columbus is doing press because he directed the sequel to Netflix’s perhaps unexpected hit, 2018’s The Christmas Chronicles, starring Kurt Russell as an unusually dashing Kris Kringle. He did not direct the first. In addition to directing the first two Home Alones, he’s also helmed a lot of family fare: Mrs. Doubtfire, the first two Harry Potters, as well as stuff like the Rent movie. He also wrote Gremlins, so he can say whatever he wants forever.

(Via Insider and EW)

Back in 2006, Tower Records was forced to close down its 200 stores across the world two years after filing for bankruptcy. Now, over fourteen years later, the franchise is making its return, now as an online store. According to Bay Area’s ABC7, Tower Records can be now be found on the internet. Consumers who visit the site will find scheduled livestream concerts as well as a digital version of the company’s Tower Pulse! magazine. The store will also sell its usual vinyl, cassette, and CD collection.

Tower Records initially planned its relaunch to take place during this year’s SXSW music festival, but the coronavirus pandemic put the kibosh on that. Danny Zeijdel, Tower Records CEOe, spoke about the recent change. “That has been met with tremendous success,” he said, “A lot of people are so happy taking pictures of when they receive an order from Tower Records posting it on Instagram.” The company also hosts interviews on Instagram Live with rising artists.

The store’s online relaunch will unfortunately occur without its founder Russ Solomon, who passed away back in 2018. The Sacramento Bee reported at the time that Solomon died of a heart attack while watching that year’s Oscars award show with his family.

You can take a look at the new Tower Records online shop here.