Charles Bramesco
It’s Been a While, But Rick Moranis Is Going to Act Again
Rick Moranis: the guy Woody Allen calls a nebbish, a nervously tittering lead of family films (he lit up millennial living rooms with his Honey, I... trilogy) and bluer comedic works (Ghostbusters, Little Shop of Horrors, Spaceballs) alike. He was everywhere in the ’80s, but took an eminently understandable hiatus from acting beginning in the ’90s after his wife Ann succumbed to breast cancer. He did a noble and difficult thing by focusing all his energies on dutifully raising his motherless children, turning his back on fame and his public. Though he’s still taken the occasional job — he gave his kids something to love by contributing voice work to Brother Bear — he’s shied away from highly visible gigs. Until now!
Dame Judi Dench Returns to Her Rightful Seat as the Queen in ‘Victoria and Abdul’ Trailer
As a certified Dame, actress and living treasure Judi Dench might as well be royalty — she’s certainly played it enough. She won the Academy Award for a blink-and-you-miss-it turn as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love, and breathed new life into Victoria with the 1997 film Mrs. Brown. And after a two-decade hiatus, Dench will reprise the role of the nineteenth-century ruler for her next big film project, Victoria and Abdul. The newly released trailer wants to make one thing abundantly clear: yes, she will deliver one of those trademark Dench speeches, the kind that draws Oscar voters like moths to a high-prestige flame.
Watch Liam Neeson Take Down Nixon as Deep Throat in First ‘The Silent Man’ Clip
It’s not an exact science, making movies. Plenty of projects get stuck in the suspended animation of development, and even those that move forward do so at a gradual pace. But sometimes, everything works out just perfectly: two years ago, I reported on a picture called Felt, a biopic of Watergate informant Mark ‘Deep Throat’ Felt starring Liam Neeson in the title role. I forgot about the item soon afterward, but production has been chugging along for the past couple of years, and director Peter Landesman is preparing to unveil this new film at the most perfect time imaginable. You can plan for a lot, but it takes a stroke of divine generosity for a full-scale Presidential treason investigation to break out around the time you release your Watergate movie.
Jessica Chastain to Play Ingrid Bergman in New Romance-Biopic
Jessica Chastain’s had a busy week at the Cannes Film Festival, sitting in as one of the Competition jurors under this year’s El Presidente, filmmaker Pedro Almodovar. She’s been kept plenty occupied, flitting back and forth between screenings and photo ops, taking interviews, and skillfully changing the subject whenever co-juror Will Smith asks her what she thought of Collateral Beauty. (That last one’s in my imagination, but still.) But even as she puts a comfortingly symmetrical face on international cinephilia, the beloved and award-festooned star has found time to ink a deal on a new project. And my fellow Chastainiacs have ample cause to rejoice — it may be her most swoonworthy turn yet.
Trump Administration Opens White House Movie Theater to East Wing Tours
In one of the Trump administration’s more agreeable defilings of decades-long tradition, the White House’s ritzy move theater will now be available to those visitors touring the building’s East Wing. Say what you will about the new Commander-in-Chief — that he’s a pudenda-grabbing, fact-resistant demagogue, for instance — but at least he’s going to allow the general public a glimpse of how the most powerful man in the nation took in Finding Dory.
Martin Scorsese’s Next Gangster Film Will Be a Different Beast Than ‘Goodfellas’
See a few of his movies, and you’ll start to recognize the Martin Scorsese style: quick zooms and jump cuts cribbed from the French New Wave, exhilarating tracking shots, the occasional expertly-deployed pop hit, brief breaks from reality straight out of Powell & Pressburger’s playbook. He’s forged an entire career out of synthesizing influences and making their techniques his own, but even as he’s established himself as one of the most distinctive auteurs currently working, he’s never gotten mired in his own aesthetic. He constantly challenges himself to try more (if you need proof, just look at Silence), and in a new interview, he confirms that he’s going for something different with his next picture.
Scientists Name New Species of Dinosaur After Zuul of ‘Ghostbusters’
We owe a lot to scientists — they cured polio, got us on the moon, and they‘re doing their darnedest to stop us from methodically killing the planet. But man, what a bunch of nerds. It seems like every time biologists discover a new species of animal and need to give it a name, they take the opportunity to bust out a reference to their favorite bit of geek-approved pop culture. Lest we forget the velvet worm named after My Neighbor Totoro, and we’d be remiss to overlook the euglossa bazinga, a rare bee with a Big Bang Theory catchphrase as its namesake. And it appears that now the nerds are at it again.
Christopher Nolan Will Produce the 25th James Bond, Could Directing Be Far Behind?
The game of extremely handsome musical chairs that is staffing up for the next James Bond film continued apace today. The two biggest question marks — who will star as the secret agent extraordinaire, and who will direct him in the new picture — remain unresolved, but a new development may hold a clue as to the future of the franchise. A great ruckus was raised over the fact that the Bond property has entered the marketplace for a new studio overseer, and while the new management has not yet been decided, it’s starting to look like Warner Bros. has the upper hand. And it all has to do with Christopher Nolan.
Susan Sarandon, Christine Baranski, Cheryl Hines to Deck the Halls in ‘Bad Moms Christmas’ Sequel
But it’s true that the upcoming sequel A Bad Moms Christmas will explore the bad moms that originally birthed the bad moms we came to know and love in last year’s sleeper hit. Variety reported last night that a power trio of Susan Sarandon, Christine Baranski, and Cheryl Hines have all joined the cast of the Yuletide-appropriate installment of the Bad Moms franchise, and the item reveals that they form the first generation of moms who dared to be bad. The new film revolves around one unending visit home for Christmas from the bad moms’ worse moms, with Baranski tormenting Mila Kunis, Sarandon nagging Kathryn Hahn, and (the 51-year-old) Hines portraying the mother of (the 36-year-old) Kristen Bell. Will the revelation that Bell’s Kiki was raised by a 15-year-old number among the twists in the new film? Maybe, but probably not.
Robert De Niro, Uma Thurman and Christopher Walken Start ‘The War With Grandpa’ in New Comedy
In the ’70s, Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken starred in the seminal Vietnam War film The Deer Hunter. It ranks among the more harrowing entries in an already brutal genre, unflinchingly depicting the conditions of abject inhumanity in the war zone and then bringing the trauma home to spiritually gut a declining Pennsylvania industry town. A lot has taken place since then, however. We’re now living in a post-Dirty Grandpa world. The news of another collaboration between De Niro and Walken no longer heralds an intense drama with awards potential in its very DNA. They’re now the twin titans of Grandpa Cinema, and their latest project has to reflect that.