News

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

When done with a modicum of proficiency, action movies are pure cinema. They are kinetic, ecstatic, and occasionally balletic. Whether we're watching hand-to-hand brawls, bullet-whizzing shootouts, or tire-squealing car chases, action cinema holds the potential to leave us gasping and cheering as stunt people (or combat-trained actors) strut their fearless stuff. And if the director is skilled enough to inventively storyboard, shot-by-chaotic-shot, the mayhem unfolding on the screen, your reward is nothing short of bliss.

While the action films of maestros like John Woo, Jackie Chan, and Walter Hill make life worth living, a true movie junkie can get their daily fix from a down-and-dirty formula flick laden with crudely executed punch-ups and twisted-metal set pieces. There is a nobility to this kind of filmmaking. In her vital essay "Trash, Art and the Movies," legendary film critic Pauline Kael wrote,...

Sir Ridley Scott thinks ‘Blade Runner’ flopped because of “industrial espionage”.The Harrison Ford-starring sci-fi flick bombed at the box office when it hit cinemas in 1982, and the 87-year-old director has now pointed to bad reviews of the film from the likes of The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael as the main reason why ‘Blade Runner’ never got the chance to commercially succeed.In a roundtable interview for The Hollywood Reporter, Scott said: “It enters the realm of industrial espionage. You’re destroying the subject before it’s out and [Kael] wrote this for the very posh …The New Yorker.“I was actually kind of distressed, I mean enraged, so I wrote to the editor, saying, ‘If you hate me that much, just ignore me, don’t write anything.’ I never got a reply.”While its release didn’t impress financially, ‘Blade Runner’ got a second chance after it...

The title of Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore refers to Marie (Bernadette Lafont), whose status as a 30-year-old marks her as effectively middle aged to her modestly younger peers, and Veronika (Françoise Lebrun), a hospital nurse who copes with the tedium of her experience with casual sex. These reductive, misogynistic archetypes of female behavior aren’t reflective of the film’s own views, but those of Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a disaffected young intellectual who lives with Marie and is increasingly drawn to Veronika.

Alexandre airs his misogyny from the start as he meets up with his ex-girlfriend (Isabelle Weingarten). Speeding past any attempt at reconciliation, Alexandre proposes marriage, then proceeds to rant about her new relationship. Asking if she does the same things with her new beau as they did together, Alexandre maintains an outward veneer of calm but cannot keep the venom out of his voice.

Between the end of the ’60s and the turn of the ’70s, onscreen heroes who could save the day fizzled out in popularity. Many films were either staunchly liberal or left-wing, from “The Battle of Algiers” (1966) to “Z” (1969) and “The Confession” (1970), with protagonists as victims of fascist right-wing regimes. Films with heavy-hearted themes opened audiences’ eyes by examining the victims and consequences of these systems. It seemed conservatives were missing a hero to affirm and spread the message of their misunderstood beliefs and principles. Enter: Dirty Harry.

Harry Callahan, played by the blueprint of ideal male masculinity, Clint Eastwood, took control and got stuff done on his own terms. He challenged an entire nation’s political and moral compass. A police inspector working in the heart of San Francisco, one of the most liberal states in America, puts an end to the real perpetrators of crimes committed in the homeland — hippies!

You know a movie is legendary when, even decades later, its characters are still imprinted on our minds. When you think of Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 crime masterpiece, Pulp Fiction, what flashes before your eyes? The razor-sharp dialogue, the unforgettable dance between Mia and Vincent, or perhaps the sight of Vincent Vega in that iconic black suit, exuding effortless cool?

For those of us who lived through the early ’90s cinematic revolution, Pulp Fiction is one of those rare films that stuck in our minds like gum on the bottom of a shoe.

Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction | Credit: Miramax Films

But, there’s an aspect of this cult classic that’s far less talked about—the paycheck that Travolta took for playing the unforgettable Vincent Vega. Now, you’d be forgiven for assuming that an actor of Travolta’s pedigree would waltz onto the set and...

Forty years later and Ridley Scott is still determined to make films about abnormal topics — or at least rebuff whatever studio advice is being doled out.

Scott said during the Director’s Guild of America’s “Director’s Cut” podcast (via Entertainment Weekly) that his first four films — “The Duellists,” “Alien,” “Blade Runner,” and “Legend” — were plagued by bad marketing tactics and were misunderstood by studios and audiences upon release.

“There’s only one film worked out of all of that lot,” Scott said, seemingly referring to the franchise-spurring “Alien,” “but they’re a pretty good first four movies. So I knew I’m on the right track.”

Scott even said that Pauline Kael’s review of his now-classic 1982 feature “Blade Runner” was indicative of how “wrong” audiences and critics were of his early films.

“To me, it almost walked in the column of industrial espionage,” Scott said of the infamous review,...

Ridley Scott revealed on the Director’s Guild of America’s “Director’s Cut” podcast (via Entertainment Weekly) that he was criticized by a studio executive early in his career for not making movies about “normal people.” Scott’s directing career kicked off with his Cannes-winning historical drama “The Duellists,” followed by “Alien,” “Blade Runner” and the fantasy adventure “Legend.”

“There’s only one film worked out of all of that lot, but they’re a pretty good first four movies. So I knew I’m on the right track,” Scott said. “But somebody at one of the studios said to me, ‘Why don’t you do a film about normal people?’ I went, ‘What the fuck does that mean?’ Because no one’s normal unless you’re totally boring, right?”

While “Alien” and “Blade Runner” are considered science-fiction classics, they did not necessarily start out their runs that way.

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

In the history of the Academy Awards, only 17 Westerns have ever been nominated for Best Picture. A brief list of the nominees: "In Old Arizona" (1928), "Cimarron" (1931), "Viva Villa!" (1934), "Stagecoach" (1939), "The Ox-Bow Incident" (1943), "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948), "High Noon" (1952), "Shane" (1953), "How the West Was Won" (1963), "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969), "Dances with Wolves" (1990), "Unforgiven" (1992), "No Country for Old Men" (2007), "True Grit" (2010), "Django Unchained" (2012), "Hell or High Water" (2016), and "The Power of the Dog" (2021).

Others may be on the border of the genre, like, say, "Brokeback Mountain" or "The Revenant," but the above 17 are indisputable.

The first of those 17 films to win Best Picture was Wesley Ruggles' American history epic "Cimarron," one of the highest-reviewed films of its day. Variety's 1931 review of the film praised it as one of the modern age's great spectacles, a pinnacle of pop filmmaking.

Marshall Brickman, who won an Oscar for writing “Annie Hall” alongside Woody Allen and also collaborated with him on “Sleeper,” “Manhattan” and “Manhattan Murder Mystery,” died Friday in Manhattan. He was 85.

His daughter Sophie confirmed his death to the New York Times.

Brickman co-wrote Broadway musicals “Jersey Boys” and “The Addams Family” and started out writing for “Candid Camera” and “The Tonight Show,” where he developed the famous Johnny Carson character, Carnac the Magnificent. He also worked on the pilot for “The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence,” which later became “The Muppet Show.”

Brickman and Allen’s script for “Annie Hall” became one of the most frequently quoted and well-remembered screenplays ever, winning numerous other awards in addition to the original screenplay Oscar. “‘Annie Hall’ contains more intellectual wit and cultural references than any other movie ever to win the Oscar for best picture,” wrote Roger Ebert in a 2002 appreciation.

Courtesy of Eureka Entertainment

by James Cameron-wilson

Perhaps surprisingly, Juggernaut is being released on Blu-ray for the first time in the United Kingdom, from a high-definition restoration, to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. When Juggernaut was first released in cinemas in 1974, it was at the height of the disaster movie era, following on from The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and, in the same year, Airport 1975, Earthquake and The Towering Inferno, all stories featuring numerous sundry characters trapped together in terrifying circumstances. However, Juggernaut was a very different thing, both in its execution and in its presentation. Loosely inspired by the bomb hoax on board the QE2 luxury liner in 1972, the film was originally to have been directed by Bryan Forbes. However, when Forbes jumped ship, he was replaced by the American TV director Don Medford, who also left the project at the last minute, leaving the production company with the enormous daily...

Ridley Scott is reclaiming negativity.

The Gladiator II director spoke out in an interview with Entertainment Weekly about a 42-year-old review, which is now framed in his office, despite the fact that it “destroyed” him.

“Well, you may not agree, but at the end of the day, as a director, my state [and] age level, I haven’t honestly read press since Pauline Kael destroyed me on Blade Runner,” he said.

Keep reading to find out more…

“Pauline Kael destroyed Blade Runner. That’s 42 years ago to the extent I was so dismayed, I think is the word, I framed the four pages [of the review] in The New Yorker. It’s in my office now, which reminds me to never believe your own press, good or bad. So I don’t read it.”

“Blade Runner has nothing to give the audience—not even a second of sorrow for Sebastian. It hasn’t been thought out in human terms.

Steven Spielberg was playing with house money as he prepared to make his fifth feature. His previous two films, "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," had combined to gross the 2024 equivalent of $4.4 billion. He could've gotten a shot-for-shot remake of "Andrei Rublev" greenlit if he'd pressed the issue. He also could've hedged his bets and directed "Jaws 2." Whatever he made next, he was going to make it wholly on his own terms.

Spielberg turned that house money into f***-you money, and shot an anarchic comedy that's like watching the richest kid in town craft an immaculate model train set over the course of months, mainline Jolt Cola for a day, and lay complete and total waste to his creation in a shade under two hours.

"1941" is a madcap movie about reckless and irresponsible Americans who've gone wild over an impending Japanese sneak attack on the shores of California.

Pauline Kael once called the gulf between E.T. and Poltergeist a testament to the confounding ability for one man, Steven Spielberg, to produce one enduring masterpiece and one miserable failure in the space of a year—and God forever damn her for not realizing that Poltergeist is, if anything, a more harrowing portrait of the nuclear family on the verge of dissipation, but I digress. Apparently, she hadn’t seen Mel Brooks’s 1974 one-two punch.

Young Frankenstein is so loving and charmingly goofy in spoofing one of Hollywood’s most successful early genres (the Universal monster movies of the 1930s) that it winds up as much a tribute as it is a parody. But Blazing Saddles, a burlesque about a western town standing in the way of the railroad expansion and the Black sheriff sent to discourage its citizens from deserting, is a limp, shapeless mess of a film...

Ridley Scott reflects on the harsh review of Blade Runner and the valuable lesson it taught him about criticism. The 86-year-old director opened up about a scathing review from film critic Pauline Kael, which left a lasting impact on him nearly 40 years after the film’s release. Scott recalled Kael’s New Yorker review of Blade Runner, describing it as a “four-page destruction” that nearly…

Source...

Critics are possibly simultaneously the best and the worst thing to have ever happened to the world of art and literature. The deconstruction and analysis that goes into a piece of work takes away its creative individuality, instead substituting it with one person’s understanding of the subject.

Blade Runner [Credit: Warner Bros.]

Ridley Scott, one of the best directors Hollywood ever produced, has been unfortunate enough to face such extreme criticism that not only disillusioned him with the profession but made him bitter, reckless, vindictive, and somewhat transparent with his words. After all, a genius auteur who could make such a timeless epic as Blade Runner come alive on the big screen only to hear it being dismissed as ‘unimportant’ would rightfully lose his mind.

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner Against the World

Pauline Kael, the most polarizing critic in the history of cinema has brought down the greatest of the greats like Stanley Kubrick,...

Ridley Scott hasn’t read reviews of his films in more than 40 years, all thanks to the iconic late critic Pauline Kael.

Auteur Scott told The Hollywood Reporter that after Kael eviscerated his now-classic 1982 feature “Blade Runner,” he hasn’t looked at critics’ takes again.

“Pauline Kael in The New Yorker killed me stone dead with her ‘Blade Runner’ review. It was four pages of destruction,” Scott said. “I never met her. I was so offended.”

At the time, Kael wrote that Scott had a “creepy, oppressive vision” in “Blade Runner,” deeming the film a “suspense-less thriller” that was “unpleasant [and] ugly.”

While Scott hasn’t looked at reviews for his films since then, he does re-read Kael’s takedown quite often.

“I framed those pages and they’ve been in my office for 30 years to remind me there’s only one critic that counts and that’s you,” Scott said.

The ditzy blonde was a comedy archetype long before Teri Garr came along. Comedians from Johnny Carson to Monty Python to the ribald gang on Three’s Company played the stereotype for cheap laughs, somehow equating blonde hair and big boobs with a comic lack of intelligence. But Garr, who passed away Tuesday in Los Angeles at the age of 79, turned the archetype on its ear, playing characters that might be described as flighty or eccentric while secretly being the smartest person in the room.

Take her Oscar-nominated turn in Tootsie as Sandy, Michael Dorsey’s eternally flustered best friend who deserved way better than she got. Like Dorsey, Dustin Hoffman was a notoriously difficult scene partner, but Garr gave as good as she got, improvising and arguing with the actor about the best ways to insult Dorothy, his female alter ego. “We have the same comic rhythm,” Hoffman says in Making Tootsie.

John Travolta has paid tribute to ‘Pulp Fiction’ for giving him "a second chance at a high-end career" in Hollywood.The 70-year-old actor starred as gangster Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 picture and has thanked the film for being "a next-level, upper echelon opportunity" that revived his career after a lean period following his 1970s success in 'Grease' and 'Saturday Night Fever'.In a retrospective look back at the flick in celebration of its 30th anniversary, Travolta told Variety: "The last success [I’d had] before ‘Pulp Fiction’ was the ‘Look Who’s Talking’ films, so getting the ‘Pulp’ offer was certainly a next-level, upper echelon opportunity more along the lines of the Oscar nomination-type performance of ‘Saturday Night Fever’ and ‘Blow Out’ integrity."I was one of his [Tarantino’s] favorite actors growing up on ‘Welcome Back Kotter’, ‘Saturday Night Fever’, ‘Grease’ and ‘Blow Out’, and he wanted to work with me.

This article contains a discussion of sexual assault.

A new retrospective focused on Quentin Tarantino's masterpiece "Pulp Fiction" in Variety revealed the that notorious — and disgraced — producer Harvey Weinstein had a very clear idea regarding the film's casting, and he was ultimately overruled.

Journalist Todd Gilchrist spoke to a ton of people involved with the Oscar-winning film and learned, through executive producer Danny DeVito, executive producer Michael Shamberg, and producer Lawrence Bender, that Weinstein really wanted Daniel Day-Lewis to play Vincent Vega, the role that ultimately went to John Travolta. DeVito had an overall development deal at TriStar Pictures and got final cut on his projects there. As he recalled, he spoke to Weinstein, who insisted that Day-Lewis — who had just won his Academy Award for "My Left Foot — play Vincent.

"I said, 'The director wants John Travolta,'" DeVito told Gilchrist. "I told this kid I've got final cut,...

Dame Maggie Smith passed away today at the age of 89, after giving the world decades' worth of indelible, beloved performances. A star of stage and screen since the 1950s, the highly decorated actress was best-known to a generation as Hogwarts' stern but heroic Professor McGonagall, while others loved her best as the Dowager Countess of "Downton Abbey."

Smith may have only become a household name to younger generations in the past two decades, but she did much of her best work in the 20th century, winning Oscars for "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" and "California Suite" in the '60s and '70s and a Tony Award for her role in the satirical play "Lettice and Lovage" in 1990. While her TV, film, and stage work was prolific and wide-ranging, only three Smith movies were ever universally embraced by critics, according to Rotten Tomatoes. One is a James Ivory classic,...

A trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis was released last month but was pulled just hours later. It became apparent that the quotes from negative reviews of Coppola’s previous movies, such as The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, had been faked. Lionsgate apologized, a longtime marketing consultant was fired, and the world kept on moving. While speaking with Entertainment Tonight at the Megalopolis premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Coppola took credit for the concept of using bad review quotes in the trailer but isn’t sure how it went so wrong.

“Well I know that there were bad reviews. I’m the one that who said there were bad reviews,” Coppola said. “But I don’t know. It was a mistake, an accident, I’m not sure what happened.“

The Megalopolis trailer included a quote from iconic critic Pauline Kael, who was cited...

Brian De Palma, the director behind Carrie, Scarface and The Untouchables, was sometimes criticized for “borrowing” from more accomplished directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard. But he was a favorite of Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael, a sought-after director whose visual style led to offers to helm huge Hollywood hits like Fatal Attraction, Flashdance and Taxi Driver, according to ScreenRant.

De Palma, though, told Business Insider he had no regrets about turning down those smashes. But there is one career move that he’d like to take back. “Now a movie I wish I hadn't done was Wise Guys,” he explained. “The studio changed their minds and didn’t want to make it. They just wanted us to go away. I should have just taken my money and walked instead of dealing with a studio that didn’t want to make the movie.”

The screwball plot of Wise Guys...

Leni Riefenstahl, who died in 2003, aged 101, remains forever Google-able as “Hitler’s favorite director” for her daringly innovative documentaries The Triumph of the Will, about the Nazi rally in Nuremberg in 1934, and Olympia, about the Berlin Olympics of 1936. Acclaimed and infamous in equal measures —was she a pioneering genius, a Nazi propagandist, or maybe both? — Riefenstahl remains a subject of fascination and debate over whether her talent can be separated from her political views.

What exactly those views were, what Riefenstahl knew about Hitler and the Holocaust and when she knew it, is key to this debate and the subject of countless books and documentaries. It’s the question at the center of Riefenstahl, the new documentary from German filmmaker Andres Veiel (Black Box Brd).

The documentary screens out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, the same festival where Leni Riefenstahl won a gold medal for The Triumph...

It’s kind of wild that there has never been an official soundtrack album for Choose Me, Alan Rudolph’s 1984 kooky-but-foxy ensemble rom-com. For starters, the movie was distributed by Island Alive, a joint venture between then-indie company Alive Films and Island Records co-founder Chris Blackwell. Secondly, the songs in...

Laurence Fishburne stars in “Megalopolis,” but even he doesn’t know all that went down with the debacle over the very trailer for the film he narrated.

“Megalopolis” cannot seem to escape controversy. At first, there were allegations of a chaotic set, though lead star Adam Driver denied he saw any such thing. Then there were accusations that the writer/director Coppola was inappropriate with female extras. He has denied those.

Even the film’s trailer has been problematic. The first full “Megalopolis” trailer was taken down hours after its release due to its inclusion of fake quotes critiquing other Coppola films like “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now.” The faux quotes were attributed to real-life critics like Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael.

The made-up quotes are believed to have been created by an AI chatbot. Lionsgate cut ties with marketing consultant Eddie Egan after the mishap, and distributor Lionsgate issued...

Does Steven Spielberg have a "style"? It's a question many who have studied Spielberg's work over the years have asked, with lots of folks proclaiming that Spielberg's style is kind of invisible. He tends to adapt himself to whatever story he's telling — the film dictates the style, in other words. Sure, he has his tricks he likes to employ, but the Spielberg style can more or less by summed up as "anything that's cinematic." As Pauline Kael once said, "If there is such a thing as a movie sense — and I think there is, Spielberg really has it." Spielberg is also very controlled — he's extremely precise as to where he puts the camera, and when.

That said, when it came time too helm his World War II epic "Saving Private Ryan," Spielberg decided to change things up a bit compared to his other films. He had dabbled in the WWII-era before,...

Laurence Fishburne had politics on the mind when he learned of the furor surrounding the latest trailer for director Francis Ford Coppola’s star-studded feature Megalopolis.

The Oscar-nominated actor spoke with The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the Aug. 30 launch of his new sci-fi thriller Slingshot, in which he stars alongside Casey Affleck. The in-demand Fishburne also appears with Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito and Nathalie Emmanuel in the forthcoming Megalopolis, which was the subject of controversy last week, when Lionsgate pulled the film’s trailer after it was discovered that the promo included fabricated quotes from well-known movie critics about other Coppola projects.

Fishburne, who narrates the Megalopolis trailer, explains that he was overseas when the drama unfolded. As it happens, he was actually in the middle of viewing footage from the Democratic National Convention when he was informed of the situation.

“I’m here in London, and somebody told me about it,...

Lionsgate yanked the trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s ambitious sci-fi Megalopolis from circulation this week after it was revealed that included quotations from several prominent movie critics that turned out to be fabricated.

The two-and-a-half-minute trailer, released online on Wednesday, began with skin-peeling critiques of The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Fabricated Quotes aAnd Apologies

True genius is often misunderstood,” says a narrator at the beginning of the trailer, before informing us that Coppola ‘was ahead of his time’ right from the start.

The trailer then weaves in footage of supposedly panning reviews written by such famous (and fictitious) critics as Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, and Roger Ebert. Kael is quoted as saying The Godfather, Coppola’s best picture-winning crime drama, was ‘diminished by its artsiness’.

But it didn’t take social media long to observe that none of these quotes appeared in any of the actual reviews.

In the high-stakes world of Tinseltown, are we guilty of putting all our eggs in the basket of box-office draw as the ultimate yardstick of a film’s success? It’s admittedly a bit disheartening. Sure, a billion-dollar movie grabs the headlines and dominates conversations, but instant financial success is far from the whole enchilada. Take, for instance, Blade Runner. Ridley Scott’s helmed flick has woven itself into the fabric of science fiction culture, albeit with a bumpy start.

Sean Young in Blade Runner (1982) | Credit: Warner Bros.

With a backstory chock-full of personal spats, and spurts of creativity, it’s no wonder the film commands a cult following today. Yet, let’s not forget that its initial reception was as mixed as a bag of trail mix. Critics were split on their opinions, and Ridley Scott found himself at loggerheads with one New Yorker film critic who didn’t...

Eddie Egan, a very real marketing consultant, lost his gig with Lionsgate this week after the studio discovered that quotes he used in a trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis were fabricated, according to Variety.

The conceit behind the teaser, which Lionsgate recalled on Wednesday, was that critics had trashed Coppola’s masterpieces throughout the decades, so why trust them? Except that the critics quoted didn’t actually write any of the pith. A quote attributed to Pauline Kael that was said to have run in The New Yorker,...

Lionsgate has parted ways with marketing consultant Eddie Egan after the Megalopolis fake quotes trailer fiasco, which it has emerged involved AI-generated content.

The studio would not comment on Friday’s developments, which came two days after it pulled a trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s dystopian epic when it became apparent the marketing asset contained fake quotes attributed to famous critics.

Sources confirmed that Egan compiled a document of snippets of reviews that he and the studio believed were taken from film criticism of Coppola’s early work dating back to the early 1970s.

Somehow AI-generated content was involved and misled the parties.

Den of Otaku, our anime podcast series, is at this weekend’s Anime NYC partnering with Crunchyroll to give away two grand prize merch bundles!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Den of Geek (@denofgeek)

Lego’s new partnership with Nike promises to bring the spirit of Just Do It to the imaginative power of Lego brick creation.

“Lego and the American sportswear manufacturer have just announced a partnership, although details are scant and vague at the moment. The press release reveals that ’the multi-year global partnership connects two of the most beloved and iconic brands to highlight how the power of play shapes lives,’ and ‘the brands will bring to life the many ways creative play and sport can help kids be the best versions of themselves.’”

Read more at Brickset

Lionsgate has apologized for its fabricated critiques for Francis Ford Coppola films that appeared in the latest Megalopolis trailer.

Following its recent debacle involving fabricated trailer quotes, Lionsgate’s Francis Ford Coppola epic Megalopolis has cut ties with marketing consultant Eddie Egan, sources have confirmed to Deadline.

Lionsgate declined comment. But we hear that the quotes featured in yesterday’s trailer, revealed by Vulture to be fake, were found to have been generated by AI following an investigation. The materials fell under the purview of Egan, who prior to his work as an independent consultant, held executive posts at STXfilm and assorted major studios.

In the immediate aftermath of the trailer snafu, some questioned whether the fake quotes were part of a a marketing ploy purposefully designed to keep the film in the headlines. But we’re told this couldn’t be further from the truth. Rather, the situation should be looked at as a cautionary tale, as neither Egan nor Lionsgate was out to intentionally fabricate quotes. Mistakes...

We have our first casualty of the controversy over the use of fake film critic quotes in the first trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” — ones that appear to have been generated by artificial intelligence.

Variety is reporting that Lionsgate has cut ties with Eddie Egan, a veteran marketing consultant, in the wake of the scandal and that the made-up quotes were most likely created by an AI chatbot like ChatGPT. Variety even prompted ChatGPT to give them negative review quotes of Coppola’s films “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now” and claimed the results were strikingly similar to what was seen in the trailer. Puck’s Matt Belloni also reported that Lionsgate cut ties with Egan.

However, Egan and Lionsgate didn’t intend to make up quotes, a source told IndieWire, but the source material of the quotes wasn’t properly fact checked or vetted. The idea of the...

Lionsgate has parted ways with Eddie Egan, the marketing consultant who came up with the “Megalopolis” trailer that included fake quotes from famous film critics.

The studio pulled the trailer on Wednesday, after it was pointed out that the quotes trashing Francis Ford Coppola’s previous work did not actually appear in the critics’ reviews, and were in fact made up.

Sources tell Variety it was not Lionsgate or Egan’s intention to fabricate quotes, but was an error in properly vetting and fact-checking the phrases provided by the consultant. The intention of the trailer was to demonstrate that Coppola’s revered work, much like “Megalopolis,” has been met with criticism. It appears that AI was used to generate the false quotes from the critics.

For instance, the trailer claimed that Pauline Kael wrote in the New Yorker that “The Godfather” was “diminished by its artsiness.” Kael in fact loved the movie.

There's a certain kind of schadenfreude that kicks in only when you see something truly stupid happen in public view of the entire internet, think to yourself, "Welp, someone's getting fired for that one," and then, lo and behold, someone absolutely gets fired for that one. In this specific case,...

El tráiler comenzaba con citas inventadas de críticos famosos. © Lionsgate

Lionsgate ha retirado el tráiler de Megalópolis, la nueva película de Francis Ford Coppola, debido a una controversia.

El tráiler de la película comenzaba con una serie de citas atribuidas a conocidos críticos, que criticaban duramente algunas de las obras más emblemáticas de Coppola, como El Padrino, Apocalypse Now o Drácula. Estas citas incluían frases como «no sabe lo que quiere ser» sobre El Padrino, «una basura épica» sobre Apocalypse Now, y «un triunfo de estilo sobre sustancia» sobre Drácula. Con estas citas negativas sobre películas muy aclamadas del director, el estudio quería restarle importancia a la dura y fría acogida de Megalopolis en su estreno mundial en Cannes. ¿El problema? Todas estas citas son inventadas y falsamente atribuidas a críticos famosos como Pauline Kael, Rex Reed y Roger Ebert.

En una declaración facilitada a Vulture, un portavoz de Lionsgate...

This week, Lionsgate released — and then promptly recalled — an audacious trailer for “Megalopolis,” an ugly yet undeniably ambitious late-career monstrosity from Francis Ford Coppola.

Normally, trailers come padded with hyperbolic quotes from less-than-credible critics — “quote whores,” we call them — plucked out of context and punched up with exclamation marks.

“An edge-of-your-seat thrill ride!” (“Any Given Sunday”)

“The best Western since ‘Unforgiven’!”

“Two thumbs way up!” (professional enthusiasts Siskel and Ebert on more movies than you can count)

In the case of “Megalopolis,” the marketing team tried a different strategy. Instead of quoting reviews out of the Cannes Film Festival, Lionsgate lied.

Whoever oversaw that trailer seemed to be working on the assumption that you’ve already heard that “Megalopolis” is a disaster, so they set out to discredit the critics … by making up negative reviews of past Coppola triumphs. The trailer quotes Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael sniping “The Godfather,...

This already figured to be an uphill climb for “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed ($120 million) epic that had generated decidedly mixed reviews coming out of its May premiere at Cannes. While it also generated a seven-minute standing ovation for that first screening, it logged in at a lukewarm 53% on Rotten Tomatoes from 68 reviews. The somewhat bewildered consensus from those early critiques was that the movie was a beautiful, imaginative, erudite disaster bolstered by flashes of brilliance.

Hoping to launch a preemptive strike on any other critics looking to denigrate the movie and get a jump on any potential bandwagon of negativity, the Lionsgate marketing department outsmarted itself so badly that heads had to be rolling by midweek. It released an official trailer on Wednesday that pushed, without an ounce of subtlety, to make the point that any critical pans of “Megalopolis” could put reviewers in the same box as...

"Megalopolis," the upcoming movie from "The Godfather" director Francis Ford Coppola, has been generating headlines as much for its behind-the-scenes drama as for the actual content of the movie itself. There have been reports of erratic behavior from Coppola throughout production, and videos obtained by Variety show the director trying to kiss young female extras during a nightclub scene. Now, Lionsgate has had to pull the latest trailer for "Megalopolis" and offer an apology.

Perhaps in response to the negative buzz surrounding "Megalopolis," the trailer opened with voiceover of Laurence Fishburne's narrator saying, "True genius is often misunderstood." It then winds back the clock to 1972 with a review of "The Godfather" by the Village Voice's Andrew Sarris, which calls it a "sloppy, self-indulgent movie." Another, attributed to the New Yorker's Pauline Kael, says the film is "diminished by its artsiness." A review for "Apocalypse Now" by National Review's John...

Within hours of its appearance, a glitzy trailer for Megalopolis has been withdrawn by distributor Lionsgate after its quotes from film critics were discovered to be made up.

Given how divisive Megalopolis’s Cannes premiere was, the decision to make its mixed reception a part of its marketing must have sounded like a bold one. The only problem was, mere hours after the latest trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s fantasy epic emerged on Wednesday (21st August), people began to notice that the quotes from critics included in it were almost entirely fabricated.

In response, Lionsgate has taken the unusual step of withdrawing the trailer from the web, and has even issued an apology for the whole situation.

“Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for Megalopolis,” the studio wrote in a statement sent to Variety. “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and...

Hours after releasing the second trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis on Wednesday, red-faced Lionsgate marketing executives pulled the asset after it reportedly contained fabricated snippets of unfavourable reviews of the filmmaker’s early canon.

“Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for Megalopolis,” a spokesperson for the studio said. “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.”

Megalopolis and Coppola have endured a rough ride ever since the dystopian epic starring Adam Driver was panned by...

Lionsgate is working to take down its trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis after it was revealed to include fabricated quotes from movie critics.

Said a Lionsgate spokesperson in a statement: “Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for Megalopolis. We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.”

The trailer launched Monday and featured supposed snippets from reviews for Coppola masterpieces such as The Godfather, The Godfather Part II and Apocalypse Now. His latest, Megalopolis, has been divisive and controversial from the get-go, and these fabricated quotes seemed to show that Coppola has been doubted before, even for movies that are considered classics.

But as Vulture first pointed out, the negative quotes featured in the trailer do not actually appear in those vintage reviews.

Andrew Sarris’ The...

Lionsgate is pulling the trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” that was released this morning after the internet observed that quotes about older Coppola films like “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now” as attributed to film critics like Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Roger Ebert, and more, all appeared to be fabricated.

“Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for ‘Megalopolis,'” a spokesman for the company said in a statement provided to IndieWire. “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.”

From the moment Lionsgate released the first trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” on Wednesday morning, online cinephiles began to suspect that something was amiss. The trailer attempted to lean into the film’s polarizing critical response by posting negative reviews from Coppola films like “The Godfather...

The new trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s upcoming film “Megalopolis” has generated controversy due to apparently fabricated quotes attributed to respected film critics. The trailer opens with scathing remarks supposedly made by influential reviewers like Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert about Coppola’s past works like “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now.” However, close examination by several media outlets found that many of the quotes did not appear in the original reviews.

For example, the trailer credits Kael with calling “The Godfather” “diminished by its artsiness,” but she did not use this phrase in her positive review. The trailer also wrongly attributes a comment about “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” to Ebert, when it was actually written by Owen Gleiberman in his review for Entertainment Weekly. Gleiberman himself has spoken out against the trailer, stating critics “hardly deserve to have words put in our mouths.”

The revelation of fabricated attributions has cast...

Update: That was quick. Lionsgate has decided to pull the trailer for Megalopolis due to the made-up quotes which appear. “Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for Megalopolis,” said a Lionsgate spokesperson. “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.“

— original article follows —

Lionsgate dropped the new trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis earlier today. The trailer begins with quotes from negative reviews of Coppola’s previous movies, such as The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, seemingly positioning Megalopolis as another future classic. That’s all well and good, except for the fact that the quotes appear to have been made up. Uh oh.

The Megalopolis trailer includes a quote from iconic critic Pauline Kael, who is cited as saying that The Godfather is “diminished by its artsiness.

In a highly unusual move, Lionsgate is pulling its new trailer for Megalopolis, unveiled early this morning.

The decision comes following controversy over critic quotes featured in the trailer, which digging by Vulture and other outlets revealed to be fabricated.

“Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for Megalopolis,” said a spokesperson for the studio. “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.”

The quotes featured in the Megalopolis trailer highlight previous “criticisms” of Coppola’s now-iconic works, such as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, by such famed critics as The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael and Village Voice’s Andrew Sarris. With reference to The Godfather, for instance, Kael is quoted as calling the film “diminished by its artsiness,” with Sarris referring to it as a “sloppy self-indulgent movie.

Francis Ford Coppola is hardly the first director to make a movie about the tension between past and future, but he might be the first to release a trailer that accidentally explores those themes at his own expense. In a Megalopolis trailer released on August 21st, film footage brackets derisive quotes from critics who had apparently missed the point of Coppola’s masterpieces — except, as Vulture discovered, those critics never said that stuff. Words attributed to the late greats Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Vincent Canby, and Roger Ebert were either made up or taken from the wrong review, leading to questions like: Where did the quotes come from? Who thought this was a good idea? And did you guys use ChatGPT? Because you know it hallucinates, right? Right?

Unless Coppola or his representatives make a statement, we won’t be able to definitively prove that the quotes were chat bot-generated.

Lionsgate is recalling its latest trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s epic “Megalopolis,” which featured a litany of fabricated quotes from famous film critics.

“Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for ‘Megalopolis,'” a Lionsgate spokesperson said in a statement provided to Variety. “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.”

The trailer, released on Wednesday morning, aimed to position Coppola’s latest film as a work of art that would withstand the test of time, much like his previous masterpieces “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now.”

The video included several quotes from critics panning Coppola’s previous work — but none of the phrases, attributed to the likes of Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael, could be found in any of their reviews.

Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman was incorrectly...

Francis Ford Coppola’s long-in-the-works “Megalopolis” finally hits theaters next month. A new trailer, released earlier Wednesday by Lionsgate, takes a more combative approach to the film’s marketing.

At the beginning of the video, apparent quotes from reviews of previous Coppola masterpieces like “Apocalypse Now” and “The Godfather” flash on the screen. It’s a way of getting ahead of the divisive response to “Megalopolis,” which left critics bewildered when it screened at this year’s Cannes. It’s also pretty funny. The only problem… as New York Magazine critic Bilge Ebiri pointed out, the quotes are all made up.

The question remains: what happened, exactly?

“Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for ‘Megalopolis,'” a Lionsgate spokesman told TheWrap after the company pulled the trailer down. “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process.