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I surprisingly got a lot of intel this time around. It seems as though Barbera chose most of the known names, some of which ended up getting mixed reviews like “The Son,” “Bardo” and “The Whale.” However, he also said no to numerous high-profile filmmakers. One title that kept being brought up was Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light.” Mendes wanted to go back to Venice with this one, but the film just didn’t impress the selection committee....

The Venice and Telluride Film Festivals have paved the groundwork for Toronto to further advance the buzz of such titles as “Marriage Story” and “Ford v Ferrari.” There will, of course, be some big world premieres along the way, movies that haven’t been anyone yet, those titles include “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” “Jojo Rabbit,” “Just Mercy,” “Bad Education,” “Knives Out” and “Dolemite is My Name." And so, what did we learn from Telluride and Venice that can be used to our advantage at TIFF?...

And following his experiences working on the live-action version of “Dumbo” with Disney, he is unlikely to be working with them in the future. In fact, he says he felt like the trapped elephant he was depicting on-screen: In the late 80s, all through the 90s, Burton found a way to make personal auteured movies that, somehow, also managed to reach the mainstream. Films like “Beetlejuice,” “Batman,” “Edward Scissorhands,” “Ed Wood” “Mars Attacks,” and “Sleepy Hollow” all had that Burton imprint....

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A report courtesy of Revolver says that Reznor and Ross will be reuniting with Fincher again for his Citizen Kane biopic “Mank.” I loved the brooding, electronic atmosphere Reznor and Ross brought to their film compositions, but it has become a somewhat predictable sound for them at this point. The idea of the talented duo doing a period score in “Mank,” however, is refreshing to hear. Fincher’s upcoming Netflix drama, his first feature since 2014’s “Gone Girl,” started shooting this past November....

If you remember, I wrote about this on Monday: “Scorsese and his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker have been working at a snail’s pace on ‘Flower Moon’s’ post-production. Additional shooting has also been called for next week in Oklahoma.” “Ok, fine, but doesn’t that still give the legendary duo enough time to complete their film? That’s an editing window between June and December, 7 months to get this one in the can, but that supposedly might not enough time for Thelma and Marty....

His latest film, “Rifkin’s Festival,” which had a very limited U.S. release earlier in the year, was released in France today. I was underwhelmed by the film when I saw it via screener back in late 2020. The French seem to agree with me on this one. “Rifkin’s Festival” has a tepid 2.9 score on AlloCine. So, that settles it, the film, as I said a few months back, is truly one of the worst of Allen’s career....

It’s been six years since Fincher released his last feature, “Gone Girl.” The wait for a new film by the venerable director is finally over, as Fincher is about to release “Mank,” the forthcoming Netflix feature about “Citizen Kane” co-screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz. Gary Oldman is set to play the legendary screenwriter. On a recent appearance in the Pardon My Take podcast, “Mank” screenwriter Eric Roth stated that Fincher has “made a black and white ‘30s movie, it’s really incredible to see what he’s done....

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According to Deadline, Mark Hamill is going to voice Chuck the killer doll in the upcoming remake of “Child’s Play.” Yes, Luke Skywalker will provide the voice of the iconic horror character in the Orion Pictures revival of the franchise. Hamill joins Aubrey Plaza, Gabriel Bateman, and Brian Tyree Henry in the “contemporary re-imagining” of the 1988 horror movie. “If you’re wondering who’s going to play Chucky in the new Child’s Play,” the bearded Hamill said, “you’re looking at him....

Disney’s highly-anticipated live-action film, “Cruella,” looks to be a much grittier and darker version than expected. It’s meant to be a prequel to “101 Dalmations, set in 1970s London amidst the punk rock revolution, and tackling the early days of one of Disney’s most notorious – and notoriously fashionable – villains, Cruella de Vil (a very playful Emma Stone). Although the just-released trailer indicates a May 2021 release date, there is no platform specified....

On Thursday, Nielsen reported that an average audience of 6.5 million viewers watched “El Camino” in its first three days of release. The story goes that “If every person who saw “El Camino” this weekend bought a ticket at that price, the film would have earned an opening weekend total of approximately $58 million.” This immeasurably speaks not just of the popularity of Netflix, but, more importantly, of the cultural impact “Breaking Bad” has had on our culture as a whole....

The Joe Russo quote comes to us courtesy of an interview he did with the Washington Post — In it, Russo says that RDJ’s “cumulative body of work from these movies is staggering,” adding that “If you look at the work over just even the last four [Marvel] films he’s done, it’s phenomenal. . . . He deserves an Oscar perhaps more than anyone in the last 40 years because of the way that he has motivated popular culture....

However, clocking in at 135 minutes, “Her Smell” should very much be qualified as an endurance-test for anyone except Alex Ross Perry’s most ardent of fans. The fact that you have to succumb to the camera and follow Becky’s point-of-view during the entirety of this film feels like hell because she’s nothing more than a mean-spirited individual who gets her endorphin rush not just from the drugs she injects, in what seems to be an hourly basis, but most especially from putting down anyone and everyone around her orbit; Some of her victims include her two bandmates (Agyness Deyn, Gayle Rankin), the opening act (Cara Delevigne, Dylan Gelula, Ashley Benson), her ex-husband (Dan Stevens), a record-label owner (Eric Stoltz) and her manager (Virginia Madsen)....

Director Jessica Hausner’s “Little Joe,” is meant to be a metaphorical indictment of antidepressants and how America’s obsession with these popular “mood stabilizers.” Hausner’s story follows scientist and lead plant breeder Alice (Emily Beecham), so enthused by her new work, a potent flower that, just by its presence in a room, exudes the power to make you feel happier. Hell, she even breaks the rules by bringing one plant home to her son Joe (Kit Connor); She decides to call her lab creation “Little Joe....

In “Mindhunter,” he shot 75 takes for one particular scene. For “Zodiac,” he spent an entire afternoon trying to get a closeup of Jake Gyllenhaal’s hand tossing paperwork inside his car. And you never see the actor’s face in the final shot. In “The Social Network,” in response to a question about how many laptops he broke during that famous laptop smash scene, Andrew Garfield stated that it took 13+ scenes to get the shot Fincher wanted (that’s a lot of wasted laptops)....

“Based on the director’s own upbringing in the 1980s as a seven-year-old Korean American boy, the film has on-screen father Jacob (Steven Cheung) disapprovingly moving his son, David, and daughter from the West Coast to rural Arkansas with frustrated wife, Monica — she’s irked by the relocation to a mobile home in the middle of nowhere. Troublemaker David and his sister are bored by the vast plains, but have their lives quickly disrupted when their grandmother arrives from Korea to live with them and set the family dynamic straight again, but life gets in the way, and things don’t go as planned....

In that tweet I wrote: “Want to know how mediocre Sundance 2018 has been thus far? The first standing ovation this year at the Eccles goes to director Anthony Mandler’s conventional, but watchable courtroom drama MONSTER #Sundance2018.” Okay, so I found it “watchable.” I shrugged it off as another cliched courtroom drama filled with some more of that racially-fueled injustice. From what I can recount, there didn’t seem to be anything fresh or innovative about it....

Let me just get it out of the way, the show itself is compulsively watchable and that I wouldn’t miss an episode from here on. I had skepticism going into it, about just how compassionate show creator Dahvi Waller (“Mad Men”) would be in his portrayal of Schlafly. The answer is, actually, quite sympathetic. The trailers led us to believe that Schlafly would not only be a cardboard villain, but also the centerpiece of “Mrs....

If you’ve seen Denis Villeneuve’s films, a lot of the visual brilliance on-display has to do with the cinematography that Deakins brought to the table. They’ve already worked on three films together (“Blade Runner 2049,” “Prisoners” and “Sicario”) and those works were are almost as much a showcase for Deakins’ talents as they were for Villeneuve’s gift as a filmmaker. Villeneuve seemed to be giving carte blanche to Deakins with every movie, not a bad idea, with the two complementing each other to greater degrees....