Writer / Editor / Critic / Enthusiast
When it comes to Covid-19, Hollywood is learning to cope with a new normal. Panelists convened for a “virtual town hall” meeting held by the Hollywood Professional Association’s (HPA) Industry Recovery Task Force indicated that many post facilities are following industry guidelines for safety and are moving forward with some combination of work-from-home arrangements and, when necessary, on-site staffing situations.
As cars become Internet-connected machines, constantly streaming data from 4G and 5G networks, their use of new display technology will rapidly evolve—not only to deliver an incredible new range of data to drivers, but also to create new entertainment options for everyone in the car.
A pivotal film in director Ingmar Bergman’s corpus, The Virgin Spring is also perhaps the most disreputable. Borrowing the basic frame of a story from the 13th-century ballad
Lock Up came out in 1989, but for much of its running time it feels like it could have been made at least 15 years earlier. Shot mainly on location at a real state prison (with real prison inmates serving as extras) in Rahway, New Jersey, it isn’t exactly gritty, but it’s convincing enough.
It started with the tightrope. That was Charlie Chaplin’s original idea for The Circus—his iconic character, the Tramp, forced into a high-wire act, defying death and injury on a rope stretched taut far above the ground. It was later, shortly before production started, that the monkeys came into the picture.
Knives Out, a cleverly plotted and star-studded whodunit, is both comfortingly familiar and surprisingly novel–a loving homage to classic English drawing-room mysteries that celebrates its…
In 1933, Paramount Pictures released The Story of Temple Drake, an unusually frank melodrama that depicted a brutal sexual assault and its aftermath, with special attention paid to the reputation of the well-liked party girl named in the title.
Science-fiction thriller Dani Who? is a far cry from traditional Mexican television fare. Produced by Headroom, a boutique production unit inside Mexico City’s Argos Comunicación, the 10-episode series made for Viacom International Studios is one of a new breed of shows that’s raising the bar for storytelling and production value beyond the 120-installment telenovelas commonly associated with the Latin American market.
If price points are anything to go by, 2020 may be the year 8K finally happens. Right now, Amazon.com will sell you a 55-inch 8K Samsung QLED TV for $2,197. That’s still a lot of money, yes, but only because prices have crashed quickly on 4K screens. It seems that 8K TVs could soon face the same kind of competition that forced down 4K prices, potentially creating a tipping point for consumers that could arrive by the next holiday season.
Some of the pre-release buzz around The Irishman was … skeptical. Yes, director Martin Scorsese remains one of the most celebrated filmmakers in the world, but wasn’t he repeating himself by making another mob movie starring Robert De Niro? And was his character-and-performance-driven approach compatible with VFX-heavy filmmaking?