The 1963 March on Washington did not merely come together on its own via a whim, a wish, and good will. It took years of strategizing, planning, building coalitions, dodging bureaucratic obstacles and opponents both within and outside the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. Students and veteran activists worked phone lines, …
Read More »Daniel Radcliffe's Moving Tribute to His Paralyzed 'Potter' Stunt Double David Holmes
The movies like to lionize stunt people, from the fugitive thriller The Stunt Man to Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to the upcoming big-screen reboot of The Fall Guy. They do dangerous work in near-anonymity, toiling in close proximity to stardom with few of …
Read More »Taika Waititi's 'Next Goal Wins' Has One Big Problem: Taika Waititi
31-0 — that was the final score of the World Cup qualifying match in 2001 that made the American Samoa soccer team legends in the world of international soccer. Not legends in a good way, mind you; they were the ones on the receiving end of that epic lambasting. Think …
Read More »'A Murder at the End of the World' Is a Riveting Murder Mystery
In the opening scene of the new FX miniseries A Murder at the End of the World, a woman named Darby stands in front of a small bookstore crowd to do a reading from her true crime book The Silver Doe. She is very young, speaks haltingly, and seems determined …
Read More »'The Curse' Premiere: Nathan Fielder, Small Dicks, and Emma Stone
This post contains spoilers for the first episode of The Curse, which is now streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime. Perhaps the only way to begin discussing Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie‘s deliberately weird and even more deliberately uncomfortable new miniseries is to paraphrase Reservoir Dogs. So let me tell you …
Read More »'The Marvels' Is Marvel Hanging Its Female Superheroes Out to Dry
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the Marvel Cinematic Universe — or, and we’re just coining this term right this very second, the “MCU” — has had a shaky time trying to find a post-Infinity Saga groove. But one of the major highlights of the past few years has been …
Read More »'For All Mankind' Returns to Soaring Heights in Season Four
No current drama on television tries to cover as much ground, literally or figuratively, as For All Mankind. The fourth season of the Apple TV+ drama — set in an alternate version of history where the Soviets beat America to the moon, triggering a never-ending space race — splits its …
Read More »'Blue Eye Samurai' Is a Gory and Gorgeous Animated Series From Netflix
The samurai Mizu stands backed up to the edge of a seaside cliff, flanked by four master swordsman known as the Four Fangs. It is seemingly a no-win scenario for the title character of Netflix‘s Blue Eye Samurai. But for eight riveting minutes, Mizu turns this dangerous terrain into an …
Read More »'Escaping Twin Flames': How to Break Up With an Online Dating Cult
Every now and then a subject comes along that seemed compelling enough to the right decision-makers to somehow become the focus of multiple projects. Seeing the competition on the horizon, producers and distributors press their pedal to the metal instead of ceding ground. This is how we end up with …
Read More »'The Curse': Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone Will Make You Squirm
Nathan Fielder has created and starred in two of the most cringe-inducing comedies of the past decade in Nathan for You and The Rehearsal. Benny Safdie has, with his brother Josh, directed some of the most profoundly uncomfortable films of the past few years, including Uncut Gems. So when Fielder …
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