Charles Bramesco
Check Out the New ‘Beauty and the Beast’ TV Spots, Go Ahead, Be Our Guest
Despite volumes of scholarship from feminist theorists on its undertones of spousal abuse and insidious romanticizing of male brutality, Disney‘s Beauty and the Beast has remained a cherished childhood favorite worldwide. Kids love talking furniture, go figure. The live-action remake starring Emma Watson and an unrecognizable Dan Stevens is hot on the way to its March 17 release, and Disney has now released two new TV spots to further amp up the anticipation. In the first, embedded above, the Beast implores lovely Belle to “think of the one thing you’ve always wanted, and feel it in your heart.” We get a glimpse of the timeless ballroom-waltz scene, some barroom carousing from Gaston, and yet another look at the deeply unsettling character designs for Lumiere and Cogsworth.
Revisit Carrie Fisher’s Uproarious Roast of George Lucas at the 2005 AFI Awards
The world’s still stinging from the loss of Carrie Fisher yesterday, and while we will most likely remember her first as Princess Leia, the actress cultivated a long career of comedy after her Star Wars years. Her one-woman show Wishful Drinking was a must-see on Broadway, and her hilarious, often inscrutable Twitter account will stand as a testament to her bizarre wit. In the wake of Fisher’s sad death on Tuesday, one video in particular has begun to pop up again, and it might just be the comic’s most searing public appearance of all.
Dick Van Dyke to Revive Magnificently Bad Cockney Accent in ‘Mary Poppins’ Sequel
Dick Van Dyke remains a beloved and esteemed entertainer at age 91, fondly remembered for his charismatic performances as a hapless songwriter in Bye Bye Birdie and a sooty-faced chimneysweep in Disney’s 1964 musical Mary Poppins. What he’s remembered decidedly less fondly for is the other role he played in the period-piece musical, elderly bank chairman Mr. Dawes, Senior. Clad in old-age makeup and credited as “Nackvid Keyd” (an anagram of Dick Van Dyke), the notorious D.V.D. busted out a frightfully bad Cockney accent in his scenes as the tight-fisted money man. Widely mocked at the time and voted the second-worst accent ever in a poll from Empire, it was not the high point of Van Dyke’s impressive career.
‘Rock Dog’ Trailer: A Character In This Movie Is Named Fleetwood Yak
If you heard the title Rock Dog and made the reasonable assumption that the film is about a dog who rocks, then well done, you’ve cinched your saddle up on the basic premise of Lionsgate’s upcoming animated feature. Bodi (voiced by Luke Wilson) is a dog, who dreams of one day rocking. But this dog cannot rock — not yet, anyway. For the dog to attain his dreams of rock stardom, he’ll need the help of feline record producer Angus Scattergood (voiced by Eddie Izzard), a cartoon kitty version of Ralph Fiennes in A Bigger Splash. But the new trailer released today seems to indicate that rock is well within this dog’s abilities, and that after undergoing a substantial personal transformation, he will take up his rightful mantle as the one true rock dog. Rock Dog.
‘Fifty Shades Darker’ Soundtrack Lands Taylor Swift and Zayn Malik for Lead Single
For someone who’s oriented so much of her music around her relationships with men, Taylor Swift has remained strangely asexual. Though she’s often seen canoodling with her various paramours, her public persona has remained squeaky clean and her music matches. Her songs focus on romance rather than seduction, more concerned with the dress she’s wearing rather than the process of taking it off. She’s a big fan of the “just sort of bending over” dance move, which could be kinda sexual, if you insist on taking it there. But for the most part, she’s kept it chastely PG.
As If We All Haven’t Been Through Enough Already, Paramount Delays ‘Baywatch’ One Week
2016 has already been a bastard of a year: beloved public figures died, Nazis became a thing again, America began its slow skid into fascism, and Bones got cancelled. When do the hits stop coming? Is there no respite from the barrage of tragedies that this monstrous year has heaped upon us? No, no there is not. Because throughout the seemingly unending cluster-F-word of 2016, one light on the horizon has held us up, both as a nation and as a human species. From indignity to indignity, we’ve always been able to pin our hopes on the glorious day of May 19, 2017 — known to you and I, of course, as the release date for the Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson-led reboot of beloved ‘90s lifeguard soap opera Baywatch. But even after this year’s parade of tragedies, [Don LaFontaine voice] there is one tragedy more.
‘Rogue One’ Advent Calendar Continues with New Footage from Chinese Trailer
The long countdown to the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story on December 16 has at last hit the ten-day mark, and with buzz now at a nearly deafening roar, each day has demanded fresh preview material to keep the hordes of fans docile. It’s like an advent calendar, but instead of delicious chocolates and trinkets symbolizing holiday cheer, we get fragmented, context-free snippets symbolizing the insatiable will of America’s pop-culture mavens. It’s the reason for the season, and by “it,” I mean “the inability to allow one’s self to be pleasantly surprised by a blockbuster.”
Fort Worth PD Enlists Empire Stormtroopers for New Recruitment Video
Over the past couple of years, policemen have fallen pretty far out of favor with the American people. The U.S. police force is in dire need of a little PR management, something that shows their sense of humor and gives a more human, relatable slant to the boys in blue.
Bradley Cooper Enlists in Gavin O’Connor’s WWII Drama ‘Atlantic Wall’
It’s the Hollywood circle of life: one of the greatest working filmmakers can’t keep it together on set, you’re brought in to complete her production after she’s ousted, it flops, you lick your wounds and release an action potboiler later that same year, the critics roast it but the picture makes a beautiful dollar anyway, you proceed to GO to collect your next, even more handsomely budgeted project.
‘Beauty and the Beast’ Unseats ’Fifty Shades’ as Most-Viewed Trailer in 24 Hours
The trailer for the handsomely-mounted live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast surfaced on Tuesday, and drew strong reactions across the board. Many were taken with the first look at the Emma Watson/Dan Stevens romance, allowing themselves to be flooded with the same swooning emotion that Disney’s animated film conjured back in 1991. Some were less impressed, expressing low-level terror at the unnatural-looking designs for Mrs. Potts, Cogsworth, Lumiere, and the rest of the anthropomorphized household object gang. But regardless of overall reception, one thing is for certain: The Guardian notes that an unprecedented crap-ton of people accessed the trailer on YouTube, making 2017’s Beauty and the Beast the most-viewed-in-a-24-hour-period trailer of all time.
‘Minecraft’ Strikes Gold with Steve Carell as First Cast Acquisition
Minecraft, an open-space computer game in which players can build and create anything their heart can desire, has amassed a gigantic following among youngsters who use their imaginations to give birth to expansive worlds. Universally beloved among the world’s middle-schoolers, the game has spawned every merchandising tie-in under the sun, from pixelated foam swords to T-shirts with snappy slogans to lunch boxes. And now, the youth phenomenon will permeate the mainstream even further through a feature film adaptation. The project was announced in 2014, they landed a director in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia creator Rob McElhenney in 2015, and this year, they’ve made moves to lock down their first star.
Robert Redford’s Getting Out of the Acting Game After Two More Roles
You gotta respect Robert Redford’s style. He’s not one of those interminable wafflers like Quentin Tarantino or Michael Jordan, constantly announcing and then un-announcing retirement every few years to shore up relevancy when necessary. Robert Redford says he’s gonna do a job, he does the job. He says he’s gonna finish up the two acting gigs he’s already taken and then shift to full-time direction, you can be sure he’s not gonna pop up in a couple years with a “gotcha!” and news of a new role.