A LITTLE UNDER 10 years ago, Michael Showalter realized the time had come to give up on his Hollywood dreams and start taking whatever work he could find to pay the bills. He’s the star and co-creator of the 2001 cult classic Wet Hot American Summer, and a key member …
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Dominique Thorne made her MCU debut in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever as Riri Williams (a.k.a. Ironheart), a young genius from Chicago’s South Side who builds her own flying armor, but she seems to have always been destined to be part of the franchise. Five years ago, as a sophomore at …
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This post contains spoilers for the entire first season of Andor, which is streaming now on Disney+. A lot of memorable things happen in the Andor Season One finale. Marva (Fiona Shaw) digitally rises from the dead, as her impassioned, pre-recorded funeral speech inspires the people of Ferrix to rise …
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The underwater ruler Namor, as introduced in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, is a radical revamp of his Marvel Comics incarnation, masterminded by director Ryan Coogler. In the comic books, Namor is king of Atlantis, just like Aquaman (created two years after him, for the record). But Coogler was intent on …
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For Joe Robert Cole, co-writing the Wakanda Forever screenplay with director Ryan Coogler was a personal and professional challenge wrapped into one. The duo, who also wrote the original Black Panther, finished a draft featuring Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa battling the water-logged monarch Namor (eventually played by Tenoch Huerta) before Boseman’s …
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Taffy Brodesser-Akner made a name for herself as an incisive, award-winning, frequently hilarious celebrity profiler, with viral features on the likes of Britney Spears and Gwyneth Paltrow. But on her odyssey from journalist to novelist to TV show creator, she was startled to realize she wasn’t as good at her …
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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever may be an effective, harrowing examination of grief, which depicts a nation and a family mourning the significant loss of King T’Challa — but it is still a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, meaning there is a potentially catastrophic global threat that our heroes (in this case, …
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Just days after its much-anticipated debut, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is poised to continueMarvel Studios’ box-office dominance. But the new movie might also signal a major evolutionary shift in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s geopolitical world-building. An inescapable aura of grief distinguishes director Ryan Coogler’s latest work from other MCU movies. …
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You play Ramonda, the Queen Mother of Wakanda, in the Black Panther films. Is there one person or inspiration you keep in your head to play a queen?For me, it’s just the essence of the Black woman. Our strength, resilience, patience, generosity, intellect. That’s what I try to hold onto. …
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Atlanta, one of the great shows of this or any other era, came to a close last night with a series finale titled “It Was All a Dream” — a fitting name for a series that so often has blurred the line between dreams and waking life. The show’s ability …
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