January 31, 2023
A couple of months ago, I wrote a column about James Cameron and his obsession with the Avatar universe he created. In it, I said I was sure that the upcoming sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, would be a big hit — almost certain to surpass a billion dollars overseas and maybe even a half-billion domestically — but that I think the world has moved on from Pandora over […]
I don’t get really mad all that often. Peeved? Yes. Aggravated? Sure. Irritated? Rather easily, actually. It’s something for which my wife makes great fun of me, how quickly I will express displeasure at someone for thoughtlessness or douchebaggery — like when you let someone cut in front of you in traffic and they don’t wave a thank you, or then turns without using their signal, or that jerk who […]
I don’t know when certain studios began spending an entire weekend touting all of their upcoming content, but Disney has certainly mastered the process. The latest D23 Expo took place this past weekend, and you have to hand it to the Mouse House — the folks over there know how to put on a show. I don’t care as much as I used to about the Star Wars and Marvel […]
Some years back, I was involved in a film project that, in retrospect, was doomed from the start, but of course, I didn’t know that at the time. I hadn’t made anything in a while, so I got involved when I shouldn’t have and ignored repeated warning signs. To quote a line from the great Bojack Horseman, “When you’re wearing rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like regular […]
Many years ago, in a different lifetime, I was the staff writer at Us magazine, back when it was a monthly and, therefore, still semi-respectable. It was like a cross between Entertainment Weekly and Premiere, two late, lamented publications that had class and wrote interesting stories and weren’t just paparazzi rags, but it was filled with pictures of celebrities and “features” that were nothing more than vapid, extended captions. Anyway, […]
Like most people these days, I spend a fair amount of my day listening to podcasts. Every morning, I get on my bike and ride for a couple hours, listening to a series of entries that vary across the spectrum. There are podcast versions of daily news and sports shows, political opinion stuff like Pod Save America, interview options like Marc Maron’s WTF, a Mission: Impossible podcast called Light the […]
I generally don’t have a lot of interest in sacred cows. Want to speed up the game of baseball? Put a pitch clock in. It’s never been done before? So what? We’ve never had to regularly sit through four-hour games where only three runs were scored. Some of us want to have our cake and eat it, too. That is, enjoy a baseball game and still get to bed at […]
By now, it’s absolutely inconceivable that you haven’t heard about Warner Bros. canceling the Batgirl movie it spent $90 million on, though it’s entirely possible you’re still unclear why. I can definitely understand that since I’ve looked into it, spoken to people about it, examined it, and considered it… and I’m still not 100 percent certain why. I mean, yeah, I get that there is a huge amount of debt […]
I am a big fan of the Rocky movies, and of Sylvester Stallone himself. Always have been. I know he’s got a bit of a reputation in Hollywood, but man, I was rooting for him so hard to win that Oscar a few years ago for his performance in Creed. You’ll never hear me say a bad word about Mark Rylance — met him once, lovely fellow — but come […]
A few weeks ago in this space, I wrote an open letter to the new head muckety-mucks at Warner Bros. about what they should be doing with the DCEU. In this letter, I suggested that they needed to make a new Superman movie with Henry Cavill, and they needed to do it sooner rather than later. Notice that I said the company needed Cavill. I did not say that Cavill […]