Category: News

On Monday, comments Peter Dinklage made about one of Disney’s next live-action remakes — of the company’s first feature-length animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs — went viral. What did he say? Well, he didn’t much care for how they were giving the hero a progressive face-lift, casting Latinx actress Rachel Zegler (West Side Story), but, he presumed, not doing the same for the septet of gentlemen who come to her aid. Dinklage’s comments prompted a response from Disney, who hoped to reassure people that, no, that’s not what they’re doing.

On a recent episode of Marc Maron’s podcast WTF, Dinklage railed against the Snow White reboot. “Literally no offense to anyone, but I was a little taken aback when they were very proud to cast a Latina actress as Snow White — but you’re still telling the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” he said. “You’re progressive in one way, but then you’re still making that f*cking backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together? What the f*ck are you doing, man? Have I done nothing to advance the cause from my soapbox? I guess I’m not loud enough.”

In a statement provided to The Hollywood Reporter, a Disney spokesperson revealed that actually they are trying to do something new with the seven dwarf characters.

“To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community,” the statement read. “We look forward to sharing more as the film heads into production after a lengthy development period.”

Disney did not reveal exactly what they’ll be doing with those seven characters, but they are reportedly working with cultural consultants, as they did on their redos of Aladdin and Mulan, which avoided casting Caucasian actors in roles meant for Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian characters, respectively.

(Via THR)

When You Finish Saving the World, Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut, follows an obnoxious do-gooder mom (Julieanne Moore) and her obnoxious vlogger son (Finn Wolfhard) who are both mostly unpleasant in an almost-funny way that doesn’t quite rise to the level of comedy or satire. A24 is distributing the film but hasn’t yet set a date for the wider release.

Moore plays Evelyn, a gentle Earth mother but a dark cloud in the break room, who often seems like the fun police, both at the battered women’s shelter she runs and at home, where she answers the requisite questions from her husband (Jay O. Sanders) about how her day went with a litany of other people’s problems appropriated as her own. Her son Ziggy (Wolfhard), is a sort of proto-Justin Bieber, prone to telling everyone how many followers he has on HiHat, a fictional site where he gets paid for live-streaming his Ben Kweller-ish folk-rock (with music by Emile Mosseri). The rub is that they’re both narcissists, who don’t take each other for granted so much as barely see each other to begin with.

Evelyn eventually meets Kyle (Billy Bryk), the teen son of a woman staying at her shelter, who seems respectful and engaged in exactly the ways that her son isn’t. Soon Evelyn makes Kyle her project, lavishing the kind of attention on him that she withholds from Ziggy, taking him out to Ethiopian food and trying to get him a scholarship to Oberlin. Kyle doesn’t actually want any of these things, obviously, and Ziggy is in any case preoccupied with Lila (Alisha Boe), a deadly earnest social justice girl who reads poems about the Marshall Islands at the local open mic for obnoxious art youths.

The Kyle and Lila storylines never converge with the Ziggy/Evelyn story, which is fine, I guess. The bigger problem is that while Evelyn and Ziggy are both unlikable in believable enough ways, they’re never quite deliciously unlikable, compellingly unlikable. Their mutual shittiness (and Lila’s as well) don’t quite land as jokes, and aren’t really explored enough to work as satire. It’s hard to figure out what exactly Eisenberg wants to say about these ostentatious characters. The music is probably the strongest element, nicely riding the line between gratingly cloying and genuinely catchy.

To his credit, Wolfhard is much more effective here than he was in the most recent Ghostbusters movie, maybe because Ziggy’s obnoxious is more intentional. Moore is solid as always, but oddly enough, the most interesting character in the film is a kid who dresses like an Irish day laborer from 1925 and sings pro-union folk songs, who we see only in passing at Lila’s open mic. Who is that guy? What’s his deal? Where everyone else is playing a slightly different flavor of shitlib caricature, the mini Woody Guthrie at least feels like a bit of a wild card.

To its credit, When You Finish Saving The World is only 85 minutes long, so even if it doesn’t exactly set the world on fire at least it doesn’t overstay its welcome. There was maybe something here but it feels a little undercooked.

‘When You Finish Saving The World’ is currently playing the Sundance Film Festival. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

The Blizzard umbrella of Activision Blizzard is historically a company with a small library of games. Since 1994, Blizzard has only produced 17 games, and since 2000, Blizzard has only made games for Diablo, Warcraft, Starcraft, Overwatch, Hearthstone, and Heroes of the Storm. All of this is to say that it’s rare for Blizzard to dive into a new IP.

That’s why the sudden, and rather quiet, announcement that Blizzard will create a new unnamed survival game got people excited. Not only is this apparently a new IP from Blizzard, but it’s one that was announced with very little fanfare, which is odd for a studio with the pedigree of Blizzard.

As we can see in the blog post released by the company, this primarily seems to be an attempt to recruit talent to join the project.

Blizzard is embarking on our next quest. We are going on a journey to a whole new universe, home to a brand-new survival game for PC and console. A place full of heroes we have yet to meet, stories yet to be told, and adventures yet to be lived. A vast realm of possibility, waiting to be explored.

…

Do you like survival games? Do you want to join a collaborative team of experienced developers at the early stage of a new project in a new world…and help write the next chapter in Blizzard’s story?

It feels a little unusual for a game to advertise to potential employees in this way, but there are few better ways to get the word out on a game in development than an official tease or announcement like this. Once it’s out there, it can, in theory, use the excitement it generates to bring people on board. It also has the added bonus of enticing fans with a tease of what’s to come.

It’s important to remember that we have no idea how deep into development this game is — it’s being teased with an “unannounced” title. The title of the game doesn’t really matter until it releases, and maybe it’s just something the company really wants to keep under wraps, but traditionally, studios have an official name for a game when it’s closer to release. Until we get a release date, we’re not going to anticipate this game coming out anytime soon.

Mimi Cave makes her feature directorial debut this week with Fresh, a comedic-horror movie with a killer hook, that’s goofy and fun but just clever enough to make it work.

Fresh, premiering at Sundance this week in advance of a Hulu release in March, stars Daisy Edgar-Jones as Noah*, a 20-something Portlander slogging through the worst of app-based dating. We meet Noah just before her first date with Chad, who texts her beforehand to remind her bring money because the restaurant is cash-only, then proceeds to spill Chinese food on his scarf. Then one day Noah meets Steve (Sebastian Stan), who seems perfect. Maybe too perfect.

The reveal of Steve’s big secret takes up the bulk of the movie, and you could probably piece it together if you wanted to, but I wouldn’t feel right spoiling it here. Fresh, written by Lauren Kahn, formerly an assistant to Adam McKay, isn’t the first movie ever to use elements of the fantastic to depict the horrors of dating, but it’s rare in the way it never overplays the metaphor or tries to be didactic. Fresh always feels like it’s telling a story, never like it’s delivering a message. It’s also a sublime combination of exuberant schlock and subtle detail, a broad, splattery romp that still rewards the viewer for paying close attention.

Edgar-Jones, previously best known as one of the bookish sex teens in Normal People, is solid as the relatable heroine, even if I desperately wanted to push her bangs out of her eyes the entire movie. Do bad bangs make her more relatable? Oh well, at least she isn’t falling down. Sebastian Stan ends up being a fitting match, joining the pantheon of actors who look like they’ve never run before while playing a handsome doctor with the haircut of a 10-year-old boy. But hey, it is set in the Pacific Northwest, after all, where the adults all dress like smart toddlers.

Fresh premiered in Sundance’s Midnight category, dedicated to all things goofy, gory, horrific, and fantastical, but Fresh is the rare midnight movie that seems above all balanced. It’s silly without being stupid, smart without being dull, and broad without being corny. It’s a hell of a feature debut for Mimi Cave and a solid sophomore effort for Lauryn Kahn.

‘Fresh’ is currently playing at the Sundance Film Festival. It’s set for release via Hulu on March 4th. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

*IMDB lists this character as “Noa,” but I imagined it as “Noah” for an entire film and I prefer my own mental image to this oddly-spelled, post-facto imposition.

Jake Gyllenhaal sure likes heist movies about moving vehicles. The acclaimed actor’s next big movie is Ambulance, which pairs him with Michael Bay for a heist movie involving, yes, an ambulance. Clearly, Gyllenhaal likes this specific genre because he’s doing another one, this one called Cut & Run, which is [drumroll] about a speedboat heist.

This news comes from The Hollywood Reporter, and this is what the logline is: “A group of thieves using high-powered speedboats to rob superyachts steal the wrong thing from the wrong group of people.” Just to underline and bold this: It is a thriller not only about thieves who steal things with “high-powered” speedboats, but they also like to rob “superyachts.”

When Cut & Run arrives, it will join a growing genre of aquatic vehicle movies, including the docudrama about the big boat that spent days stuck in the Suez Canal, to the fascination of social media. That’s not to mention Speed Kills, which also concerned speedboats and which starred John Travolta as a champagne-loving baddie.

This news about Jake Gyllenhaal doing a movie involving the water comes a few months after he revealed details about some of his unusual bathing habits to a reporter, admitting, “More and more I find bathing to be less necessary, at times.” When his comments inspired social media backlash, he tried to clarify what he meant, saying, “I’ve never been accused of being smelly. It’s fine. Of course, I bathe.”

(Via THR)

Critically-acclaimed comedy series The Righteous Gemstones has just returned for its second season on January 9th and has already been renewed for another season. HBO announced their comedy series will return for another season, after the second season finishes airing on February 27th. The all-star comedy cast features Danny McBride, Adam Devine, Edi Patterson, John Goodman, Cassidy Freeman, Tony Cavalero, Tim Baltz, Skyler Gisondo, Greg Alan Williams, Walton Goggins, Jennifer Nettles, and more. Jason Schwartzman and Eric Andre also joined the cast for season two.

Executive Vice President of HBO Amy Gravitt confirmed the news, saying “After a season of literal fire and brimstone, blood, sand, and rollerblading, who wouldn’t come back for more?” says Gravitt. “The Gemstone family makes us laugh like nobody else.”

No guest stars have been announced for the third season yet, but if snagging Joe Jonas for the season two premiere means anything, they can only go up from here.

The show follows a world-famous yes slightly dysfunctional televangelist family, led by Eli Gemstone, played by John Goodman. He and his children, Jesse (McBride), Judy (Patterson) and Kelvin (DeVine), work to expand their network of megachurches while threatening smaller churches.

Uproxx spoke to McBride and Patterson ahead of the season two premiere, saying The Righteous Gemstones is “the richest world [he and his creative cohorts David Gordon Green and Jody Hill] have explored.”

Donald Trump may have a talent for getting people to play along with his duplicitous schemes—see: Rudy Giuliani and The Big Lie—but his track record for keeping those people on his side and loyal to the tales they’ve spun and half-truths they’ve told on his behalf is pretty abysmal. The latest one-time MAGA stooge to turn their back on the former president looks to be William Barr.

On Monday, CNN’s Anderson Cooper reported that Barr, the former Attorney General under Trump, has already had a “preliminary” discussion with the January 6th sub-committee. Whereas Barr has reportedly claimed that he doesn’t know much because he was no longer working under Trump at the time of the insurrection, “the fact is he was on the job up until the 23rd of December,” Cooper said, “by which time the former president’s pressure campaign on the Justice Department to cast doubt on the election had already been underway for several weeks.”

Cooper brought on New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman to shed some further light on the situation. In addition to confirming that Barr could play a significant role in getting to the bottom of exactly what part Trump played in the events that led to the Capitol riots, she noted that “It’s also important that he’s voluntarily speaking to them. There has been such resistance from people who are still close to the former president to being involved with this committee at all.” Which begged the question: Do Barr and Trump still have any sort of relationship?

According to Haberman, as Raw Story noted:

“They don’t have a relationship now. They haven’t had a relationship in quite some time I think that, you know, there are things that the former president accomplished that I think that the former attorney general, you know, supported and certainly was against, as Jonathan said. He was not in favor of the Mueller investigation. That’s part of why the former president brought him in, to end that moment in time. There were things they agreed on. There were a number of things they didn’t agree on over time. That began, you know, frankly, long before Election Day. Their relationship is nonexistent now.”

You can watch the full clip below.

(Via Raw Story)

For seven out of The Office’s nine seasons, Steve Carell’s Michael Scott lorded over John Krasinski’s Jim Halpert, often annoying him, but ultimately leaving Dunder Mifflin on his good side. Now the tables have turned. As per Deadline, Krasinski — who’s added “hot shot film director of popular movies” to his CV in the last few years — has assembled what he call his “dream cast” for his next directorial effort. And among those actors is no less than Carell himself.

The movie is called simply If, and while details are scant, Deadline describes it as a “child’s journey to rediscover their imagination.” That doesn’t make it sound much like an absurdist comedy, but with Carell on board, it’s an Office reunion nonetheless. (Krasinski has so far shied away from rounding up his many fellow Office alumni for the four movies he’s directed so far. Rashida Jones did have a small role in his debut, the David Foster Wallace adaptation Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, while Randall Park — who played Steve, Jim’s prank replacement in one episode, found his way into his indie comedy The Hollars.)

But what of the rest of Krasinski’s dream cast? The others include Ryan Reynolds, Brits Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Fiona Shaw, kids Alan Kim (Minari) and Cailey Fleming (The Walking Dead), plus no less than legend Louis Gossett Jr.

Krasinski’s If has a release date of November 17, 2023.

(Via Deadline)

After Nipsey Hussle‘s death in 2019, the Los Angeles Police Department denied that he was the target of an investigation into the neighborhood of his Marathon Clothing store. The investigation was aimed at trying to curb gang violence in the Central LA area around the store, but representatives for the LAPD said that Nipsey wasn’t being investigated.

However, in a new episode of Guardian‘s Today In Focus podcast, the initiative, called the LASER (Los Angeles Strategic Extraction and Restoration) program, Nipsey’s brother, Samiel Asghedom (aka Blacc Sam) revealed that many of those anti-gang efforts centered on the Marathon store, despite the positive work the rapper had committed to. “The agenda was, ‘Whatever they’re doing over there, crush it,” he said.

Meanwhile, law professor Andrew Ferguson described the program, explaining its title as a “metaphor that they were going to, like laser surgery, remove the tumors, the bad actors from the community” via “predictive policing technology.” According to Los Angeles Times, the program used data to identify “anchor points” were more officers could be concentrated. In 2019, the program was ended by the LAPD after community criticism, with a spokesperson saying, “We discontinued LASER because we want to reassess the data. It was inconsistent. We’re pulling back.”

Listen to the full episode below.

The pandemic has been hard on everyone, but there are certain groups of people who have faced particularly intense challenges these past two years. Healthcare workers? For sure. Teachers? Definitely. Parents? Um, yes.

Moms specifically? Yesssss.

It’s hard to describe how hard navigating the pandemic with kids has been. Figuring out childcare when schools and daycare centers shut down, managing kids’ remote or hybrid schooling, constantly making decisions about what’s safe and what’s not, dealing with the inconsistency and chaos of it all, weighing risks with who is vaccinated and who isn’t—none of it has been easy. Many parents are also raising kids with mental, emotional, behavioral or physical challenges that have only been made harder by pandemic life.

COVID-19 has forced us to give up and/or alter the systems we rely on to keep our lives running smoothly, and because moms tend to take on the lion’s share of child-rearing and logistical household management, we’ve felt those changes intensely. And at this point, heading into the third year of pandemic uncertainty, we’re exhausted. Wiped out. So done.

That’s why when editor Lucy Huber shared that her online moms group had invited everyone to an empty field to scream, it resonated with so many:

If you’re wondering what things are like for parents right now, someone in my online moms group invited everyone to a Facebook event that is just going to an empty field and screaming and a LOT of people RSVPed yes.

— Lucy Huber (@Lucy Huber)
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Some days we just want to scream because it feels like we can’t do anything else. We need to vent somewhere, let out some of this tension and frustration and exhaustion we’re carrying around, and we don’t want to take it out on our families. The idea of getting together with other moms who get that feeling is incredibly appealing.

The group Huber mentioned actually did this, gathering at a high school in the Boston area on the evening of January 13. Around 20 moms showed up and participated in a group scream session led by licensed therapist Sarah Harmon, according to GMA.

Looks cathartic, doesn’t it?

The idea of a primal scream isn’t exactly new. In fact, The New York Times set up a “primal scream” hotline for parents to call and scream or cry or vent about anything they feel like getting off their chest. The hotline number is 212-556-3800, and you can let it all out for a full minute.

“Any of our readers or anyone who is not a reader can call to scream, laugh, cry,” said the Times’ editor at large Jessica Bennett, according to WCBS Newsradio. “We’ve been hearing for months now about how women have been disproportionately affected in the pandemic and we’ve been hearing about parents who are struggling to manage work and child care.”

Anyone can utilize the primal scream hotline, but most of those who have called in have been women. Shocker.

Ironically, Huber herself wasn’t able to attend the in-person scream session because she had to put her toddler to bed. That’s how it is, and part of why the scream space is needed in the first place. Even under normal circumstances, mothers need an occasional space to vent. In pandemic times? Absolutely vital.

Really, anyone could probably benefit from finding a place to scream right now, whether it’s to the air in the middle of an empty field, into a pillow in a closet or to a random someone on the end of a newspaper’s hotline. Times are hard, folks. Let it out, let it out, let it out.