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Dolly Parton adds star power to this formulaic music documentary about Ed and Dean Roland’s band

Unless you are a big fan of what the American charts call “mainstream rock” and entering late middle age round about now, you may never have heard of 90s outfit Collective Soul. And yet this clearly band-endorsed documentary hypes them so much, you may question your own remembrance of things past. For instance, much is made of Collective Soul’s first big hit, Shine from 1993, which first broke out via airplay at an Atlanta college radio station, with the film giving the impression that everyone was humming this tune back in the day. This may not in fact have been the case: you might associate the time more with the likes of Whitney Houston, Nirvana and dancefloor fillers like Rhythm Is a Dancer.

It turns out that Collective Soul, named after a phrase...

When was the last time you were motivated to look up into the sky and feel inspired, full of wonder and hope for the future? If you've been an adult or close to it since the turn of the century, it's probably been a good long while. In retrospect, it's highly unfortunate that the tragic attacks of September 11th, 2001, occurred right as superhero cinema began to really take root, for it meant that the bevy of beloved characters who were being brought to movie screens had to be viewed through a lens of gritty skepticism and suspicion. While this worked wonders for some characters, who either came directly at issues of politics and morality (like the X-Men) or often wrestled with their darker natures (as seen in "Spider-Man 3" and Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight" trilogy), this approach was not one size fits all.

Zack Snyder's "Man of Steel...

Jesse Armstrong steps behind the camera for the first time, shifting from the razor-sharp corporate intrigues of Succession into a self-contained chamber piece. As both writer and director, he’s assembled a lean production team that mirrors his television craft, trading boardrooms for a sprawling Utah estate that resembles equal parts Dr. Strangelove war room and Ayn Rand pastiche.

At its core, Mountainhead strands four tech-industry magnates in isolation just as Venis (Cory Michael Smith) unleashes a new deep-fake engine that ignites global unrest. The result is a weekend retreat turned high-stakes crisis, in which the gulf between profiteering impulses and real-world chaos widens with each pinging phone alert.

The drama pivots on collisions of ego and ethics: Venis, the Musk-style provocateur; Randall (Steve Carell), a venture veteran wrestling with mortality and digital immortality; Jeff (Ramy Youssef), whose “bullshit-detector” AI offers moral counterweight; and Hugo “Souper” (Jason Schwartzman), the under-funded...

Tech bros go wild while wrecking the world in “Mountainhead,” writer-director Jesse Armstrong’s follow-up to his towering series about a different set of rich assholes, “Succession.”

This ain’t that. Armstrong’s feature-directing debut does not have the bandwidth to develop searing character studies like four, intricately interwoven seasons of an all-time television great. “Mountainhead” plays more like oligarch burlesque, but although the movie’s central roles are 2-D representations of real-life moguls (and attitudes) that we’re all learning to fear, it doesn’t mean they aren’t richly written.

Armstrong crams just about every strategy and justification late capitalism can produce into densely packed dialogue that the film’s core quartet of actors make sound remarkably organic. Obsessions with acquisition and amoral innovation unfold as fast as these guys deflect blame from any resulting consequences and mistake themselves for gods.

Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith...

Ayn Rand’s 1943 novel The Fountainhead, a paean to capitalist self-interest, has become a bible for right-wingers and entrepreneurs from Donald Trump to Steve Jobs. In his latest skewering of the super-rich and his first feature film as a director, Succession’s Jesse Armstrong borrows the title of Rand’s book for a Bond villain-style lair where a group of amoral, mega-powerful tech magnates watch a global crisis unfold, one that they insist they aren’t at all responsible for.

We find host Hugo (a wonderfully weaselly Jason Schwartzman), aka ‘Souper’, waiting at Mountainhead for his friends to arrive and praying one of them will “bust a B-nut” (i.e. invest a billion dollars) in his new wellness app. But his guests have more pressing matters on their minds. Elon Musk-alike Venis (Cory Michael Smith), the richest of the quartet, has unveiled a generative AI feature on his social-media...

Even though it also concerns an architect fighting entrenched elites to achieve his singular vision, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist doesn’t bow before the altar of The Fountainhead. Yet he takes a gauntlet thrown down early in King Vidor’s 1949 film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s novel—no place originally exists in architecture, and the past cannot be improved upon—more seriously than either Vidor or Rand. Corbet’s epic, like Adrien Brody’s László Toth, remains unconcerned with choosing between honoring the past and catering to the present. László instead seeks to transcend time altogether, thus equipping his artistry to endure well into the future.

Corbet’s multi-decade survey of post-war America captures the sweeping scope of the novelistic period epics of the studio era, which embodied the cultural might of the United States as it asserted dominance across the globe. But The Brutalist rises above simple pastiche or homage.

A behind-the-scenes look at the news set at Tegna-owned Kxtv Sacramento. (Still frame via Kxtv promotional video)

This column originally appeared at The Topline, and is republished here with permission. Subscribe to Tvnd.com’s e-mail newsletter by clicking or tapping here.

A favorite read on our bookshelf is Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead.” Her sweeping 1943 novel tells the story of the central character, an intransigent architect, Howard Roark, and his fight for what the author calls “individualism over collectivism.” Over the years, much debate has been had on how much the Roark character is based on real-life architectural icon Frank Lloyd Wright—with whom Rand had a long-standing correspondence.

Early in the book, the Roark character delivers this crucial line: “I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And...

Elon Musk has time for cameos, at least when it suits him. The Tesla CEO and X enthusiast (now a chain-saw-wielding Doge employee) has cultivated a pop culture presence quite fitting of his relentless quest for influence, especially over our eyeballs and immediate senses. There is no telling what the man will do next.

Elon Musk in the Simpsons episode, titled “The Musk Who Fell to Earth” | Credits: Fox

With Musk’s evolution as an individual best described by the title of the Sergio Leone film The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, here are all the films and shows Elon Musk has made a cameo in. He’s made almost a dozen appearances in both films and television shows, often playing himself. Some are quick blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments, while others are a bit more substantial.

12. Iron Man 2 (2010)

This is arguably Elon Musk’s most famous cameo. He and...

Austrian filmmaker Daniel Hoesl and German partner Julia Niemann have made a name for themselves by focusing their black comedy and documentary movies on money and capitalism and how the resulting power imbalances cause social inequality. Hoesl’s 2016 film Winwin, for example, is a comedy about a U.S. investment fund that buys Austrian companies but also takes over politics in its capital Vienna. And the 2020 documentary Davos, co-directed by the two and written by Niemann, puts a spotlight on the contrast between the lives of those who live in the Swiss town of Davos year-round and the business and political elite that gathers there for the annual World Economic Forum.

Their latest film, Veni Vidi Vici, which debuted at Sundance 2024 and is getting its U.K. premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival on Saturday, with another screening on Sunday, looks to slay the excesses of capitalism with dark humor.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November of 1989, James Bond has struggled with his own relevance. "Licence to Kill" was released that same year, but it proved to be the last James Bond movie for six years. Eon Productions scrambled to came out with "GoldenEye" in 1995, starring Pierce Brosnan, the best James Bond. "GoldenEye" featured a scene wherein M (Judi Dench) told 007 right to his face that he was a remnant of an earlier time, and the bad guys were merely ex-Soviets who tried to keep the Cold War going as best they could. Energy for the war, "GoldenEye" pointed out, had waned. 

Brosnan starred in four films as James Bond, but he ran into another relevancy problem after the events of September 11, 2001. During the George W. Bush administration, wars began anew, and Bond's slick, lighthearted spy shenanigans no longer seemed relevant. Eon Productions attempt to adapt with...

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This article contains mild spoilers for "Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man."

From its very first episode, "Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man" made it clear it would be reimagining some Spidey tenets from the ground up. This Peter Parker (Hudson Thames) still lost his Uncle Ben, but before he became Spider-Man. So, he never learned the lesson about being responsible with his great power. Worse, there's no Tony Stark swooping in to mentor Spider-Man like in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Nope, this time Peter's sponsor is Norman Osborn (Colman Domingo).

Domingo is stealing the show as Norman. This Mr. Osborn is more outwardly likable and friendly than usual, but Domingo leaves just a twinge of menace in his performance to make us as suspicious as we probably should be. He hasn't done anything evil yet, but he's been using Peter to settle his...

The Safety of Objectivism: Corbet Unleashes the Survival Instinct of Rational Egoism

“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see,” so says the heroic protagonist of Ayn Rand’s sensational 1943 novel The Fountainhead, an individualist archetype she intended as “the man that man should be…above all—the man who lives for himself.” It was a tome in which Rand began to craft her controversial theory of Objectivism, which, among its tenets, suggests morality is wholly independent of human knowledge. Filmmaker Brady Corbet, with his third feature, the masterful saga The Brutalist, finds himself, along with co-writer and partner Mona Fastvold, freely inspired by Rand’s iconic novel.…...

(Disem)Body Talk: Guadagnino Pays Homage to the Paradoxical Beat Pariah

If Ayn Rand had dared to write a character who was a genius gay white male unable to reconcile his hedonistic tendencies and is thus thrown out of the heavenly refuge of Galt’s Gulch back to the hellishness of Earth, he might have resembled someone like Williams S. Burroughs. A non-conformist who set himself apart from the already non-conformist Beat generation he rose out of in the 1950s, Burroughs more readily identified as a heroin addict than a gay man, despite blatant suggestions to the contrary in his writings. Perhaps most famous for his 1959 novel Naked Lunch, and the subsequent obscenity trials it overcame in the ensuing decade (notably adapted into a pretty damn good film by David Cronenberg in 1992), he has long been a bruised icon for the social refugee.…...

Plot: When a plague of unprecedented virulence sweeps the globe, the human race is all but wiped out. In the aftermath, as the great machine of civilization slowly and inexorably breaks down, only a few shattered survivors remain to struggle against the slide into extinction. The series is based on George R. Stewart’s classic sci-fi novel of the same name.

Review: Most post-apocalyptic stories tend to skew towards horrific and dystopian narratives. From The Walking Dead to Mad Max, the future usually looks pretty grim after the fall of civilization. Zombies, plagues, aliens, or even nuclear war have served to pave the way for cautionary tales brimming with violence through a microcosm of society seen through the survivors. Post-covid, these stories have continued to thrive even as we have experienced a real pandemic. Still, it has also afforded refreshed opportunities to tell hopeful and aspirational tales of the world to come.

Development continues on "Spider-Man" co-creator Steve Ditko's faceless crime fighter 'The Question" as a live action crime-fighting vigilante character for a DC Studios TV series:

'The Question' ('Vic Sage') created by writer/illustrator Steve Ditko, debuted in Charlton Comics' Blue Beetle #1 (June 1967), followed by Charlton's "Mysterious Suspense" (October 1968) . 

The character was then acquired by DC Comics in the early 1980's...

...and incorporated into the 'DC Universe', with former 'Gotham' police officer 'Renee Montoya', a protégé of Sage, becoming the new 'Question'.

"...in 'Hub City', TV investigative journalist 'Vic Sage' looking into criminal activities by a 'Dr. Twain', was approached by 'Aristotle Rodor', a former college professor, telling Sage about an artificial skin he had developed with Twain called 'Pseudoderm' with sometimes fatal side effects. 

"Rodor and Twain agreed to abandon the project and parted ways, but Rodor discovered  Twain had decided to proceed with...

Warning: contains spoilers for The Question: All Along the Watchtower #1!

The Question is one of DCs most underrated characters, and their new book: The Question: All Along the Watchtower restores them to relevance once again. A cult favorite among DC fans, as well as the inspiration for Watchmens Rorschach, the Question is a character that can bring out the best in their creators, and All Along the Watchtower is no exception as it pushes the character to new heights.

The Question: All Along the Watchtower writer Alex Segura has also written novels set in the Star Wars universe.

The Question: All Along the Watchtower #1 is written by Alex Segura and drawn by Cian Tormey. The Question, Aka Renee Montoya, has been ousted as Gothams Police Commissioner, but has landed with the newly reformed Justice League. The scene flashes back a week. Batman and Superman approach the Question with a problem:...

This article contains mild spoilers for "Megalopolis" and "Joker: Folie à Deux."

The film industry has just experienced what seems to me an unprecedented two week span of outrageous misfortune. If we trust the high end of their estimated budgets, Francis Ford Coppola's "Megalopolis" and Todd Phillips' "Joker: Folie à Deux" combined to gross a mere $44 million on exorbitant budgets totaling $344 million.

On the surface, "Megalopolis" would appear to be the bigger disaster; now in its second weekend, the $136 million production has amassed only a paltry $6 million. Granted, Coppola sold his Sonoma Country wineries and borrowed against his new ownership stake in the company that absorbed them to personally finance his physically and intellectually ambitious epic. It's not my money, so I don't care to discuss the wisdom of Coppola's investment; what matters to me is that a massive, star-studded film made without the support of a firmly established...

Even though it also concerns an architect fighting entrenched elites to achieve his singular vision, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist doesn’t bow before the altar of The Fountainhead. Yet he takes a gauntlet thrown down early in King Vidor’s 1949 film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s novel—no place originality exists in architecture, and the past cannot be improved upon—more seriously than either artist. Corbet’s epic, like Adrien Brody’s László Toth, remains unconcerned with choosing between honoring the past and catering to the present. They instead seek to transcend time altogether, thus equipping their artistry to endure well into the future.

Corbet’s multi-decade survey of post-war America captures the sweeping scope of the novelistic period epics of the studio era, which embodied the cultural might of the United States as it asserted dominance across the globe. But The Brutalist rises above simple pastiche or homage.

Francis Ford Coppola has been dreaming about making "Megalopolis" for more than 40 years, and now, after decades of starts and stops, he delivers it to us and dares us to make sense of it all. A sprawling, confusing, confounding, messy extravaganza, "Megalopolis" feels like it needs an entire companion textbook to parse out its influences and meanings. Coppola has jam-packed the movie with a million different ideas, drawing on such wide-ranging sources as Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged," Robert Caro's "The Power Broker," and the Catilinarian conspiracy, in which politician Lucius Sergius Catilina tried to seize control of Rome in 63 Bce. Coppola also seems to be drawing on his own work, most notably two of his biggest flops, "Tucker: The Man and His Dream" and the sort-of-musical "One From the Heart."

Having helmed some of the best movies in the history of the medium, Coppola has earned the benefit of the doubt here.

One of the most anticipated releases of the fall movie season (that in no way involves renovating a dilapidated Mexican restaurant) is Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed $120 million epic Megalopolis.

The reviews so far have been largely mixed, and in some cases, downright cruel, which is what seemingly prompted the film’s marketing team to craft an ad campaign hinging on the premise that critics are frequently wrong about Coppola’s work — a strategy that promptly backfired once it was revealed that the catty quotes about films like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now were A.I.-generated fakes.

The film just made its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and, having seen it, I can honestly say, it’s a lot.

Basically, Megalopolis tells the story of a future where everyone in New York acts like it’s Ancient Rome, but also the 1940s. An architect named...

Vic Sage embodied Steve Ditko's Objectivist philosophy in Justice League: Crisis On Infinite Earths trilogy, showcasing his unwavering moral code. The character of The Question evolved over time, reflecting different interpretations of Objectivism and individual liberty. The Tomorrowverse captured the essence of The Question in line with Ditko's original vision, presenting a unique and authentic hero.

The following contains spoilers for all three parts of Justice League: Crisis On Infinite Earths now available to own or stream.

One of the last projects in the venerated DC Animated Universe was Justice League Unlimited, celebrating its 20th anniversary. While the series and its attendant universe is still beloved by fans, the recent adult animated DC shared universe, called the Tomorrowverse, bested its predecessor where one character was concerned. Steve Ditko's Vic Sage, also known as The Question, appeared in both, but only the Tomorrowverse realized the character as his creator intended.

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...

The Question is a controversial DC character, but the publisher fixed them over a decade ago. Created as a mouthpiece for Ayn Rand's philosophy, the Question found a new meaning in the DC Universe. After Vic Sage's death in 52, Renee Montoya took over as the Question, showing what the character could truly be.

Warning: contains spoilers for "Duality," appearing in Batman: The Brave and the Bold #15!I just realized DC fixed one of its most controversial heroes over a decade agoand now it is time to give them the spotlight they deserve. Although the Question is not one of the publishers best known heroes, they still enjoy a cult following. The characters current incarnation, Renee Montoya, takes center stage in the story Duality, appearing in Batman: The Brave and the Bold #15and it shows how far the character has come.

Alex Segura, the writer of "Duality," also wrote the novel Secret Identity,...

Suicide Squad Isekai has been a major success for the DC property, and it showcases how malleable the group of lovable villains can be. Jumping on the bandwagon of the isekai genre being perhaps the most ubiquitous in comics, it also proves that DC can provide ample material for anime productions. While they might not necessarily all work as isekai, other DC characters and properties would be perfect for anime adaptations of their own.

These could be gritty thrillers starring street-level heroes, or cosmic political dramas featuring the willpower-wielding defenders of the universe. Said anime could be made in the same vein as other popular works in those genres. Regardless of which characters are chosen, however, there's a lot of crossover potential between the world of anime and the DC Universe.

Your browser does not support the video tag. The Question Could "Objectively" Make for a Great, Gritty Anime In...

Despite being announced in 2022, theres been little news on the film adaptation of the hit video game, BioShock, which was picked up by Netflix as a streaming original. Thanks to producer Roy Lee, however, we now know that the film is still in the works, but with a budget that will be much less than was previously thought. Lee was in attendance at Sdcc to share the news yesterday, which comes at the hands of a recent restructuring at Netflix.

Per Variety, the new BioShock movie still has The Hunger Games Francis Lawrence attached to direct, but thanks to a recent regime change at Netflix which saw Dan Lin take over for Scott Stuber as the streamers film chief, the movie will be made on a much smaller scale. Lee says that BioShock will now be a "more personal" film.

The new regime has lowered the budgets. So were doing a much smaller version.

Jon Voight keeps moving. The 85-year-old actor is shadowboxing, his footwork nimble for a man of any age, let alone someone older than even Joe Biden and Voight’s friend Donald Trump.

He pauses and arches an eyebrow and becomes a matinee villain. “You think you’re tough. I’ll show you tough.”

Today, we’re outside his Beverly Hills home. There’s a pool and a driveway where Voight designed the pavement that features tiny ducklings, rabbits, monkeys and a dragon etched into the cement. Near the entrance are the words “Wots Modder Wot You Jonny,” in honor of his Czech grandfather who never quite mastered English.

I’ve talked with Voight many times over the past year, and he is always engaging. But the presence of a photographer has kicked him into a high gear. He picks up a plastic rabbit in his yard and speaks to it,...

Filmmaker Brady Corbet has premiered features twice before at Venice, but never at this scale.

“The Brutalist” is the director’s first feature since 2018’s “Vox Lux,” which starred Natalie Portman as a pop star haunted by a school shooting. Before that, Corbet also premiered “The Childhood of a Leader” (2015) at Venice, announcing a singular cinematic voice after years of acting in indies like “Melancholia,” “Simon Killer,” “Mysterious Skin,” and “Thirteen.”

As Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera revealed during the July 23 press conference announcing the lineup, “The Brutalist” will premiere in competition. It’s also a whopping 215 minutes long, which includes a 15-minute intermission. The film was shot on Vista Vision by Lol Crawley, director of photography on the celluloid-made “Vox Lux” and “The Childhood of a Leader” as well as Noah Baumbach’s “White Noise” more recently. Barbera confirmed that the Italian film festival will screen “The Brutalist” in 70mm,...

"The Simpsons" gets a lot of mileage out of its voice actors. Seriously, it feels like half of Springfield is voiced by Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, or Tress MacNeille. Despite the numerous cases of voice actors doubling up, each character in the cast sounds unique and immediately recognizable. Even Maggie Simpson, the perennial infant who never says a word, has her distinctive pacifier sound.

Most of Maggie's baby sounds are provided by Nancy Cartwright (whose primary "Simpsons" is playing Maggie's older brother Bart). On the rare occasions where Maggie does do more than squeal or suck on her binky, the show has brought out some big acting guns.

In season 2's "Bart vs Thanksgiving," Bart imagines his family being angry with him; Maggie declares, "It's your fault I can't talk!" That one line was provided by none other than an uncredited Carol Kane (who these days is rocking it as...

Every year, when Uncle Steve went back home to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, from New York City, there was a strict rule: No one talks to him about work. He’s not here on business, his brother, Patrick, would tell the kids.

The adults, at least, knew about his profession as a comic-book creator, but to his nieces and nephews, he was simply the funny uncle who scientifically manufactured bobalki balls, the traditional Slovak Christmas dish. “We were told not to pester him, so we didn’t,” his niece Joanna Opela tells Rolling Stone,...

In the long-gestating, career-encompassing allegory that is “Megalopolis,” director Francis Ford Coppola puts his name above the title and, in the film’s lone act of modesty, the words “A Fable” beneath it. To call this garish, idea-bloated monstrosity a mere “fable” is to grossly undersell the project’s expansive insights into art, life and legacy. Here, backed by an estimated $120 million of the “Godfather” director’s own money, is the sort of big swing audiences and critics have come to adore him for: a ginormous, recklessly ambitious epic in which humanity’s eternal themes — greed, corruption, loyalty and power — threaten to suffocate a more intimate personal crisis. In this case, a conservative politician and a forward-thinking urban designer clash over a mythic city’s future, with unwieldy results.

It’s Coppola’s fortune, and he can spend it as he likes, but grandiose title aside, it’s not at...

As audiences take their seats for Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis in Cannes, we have a big update on the status of the movie's theatrical release.

Despite speculation that the legendary Godfather director's self-funded passion project might struggle to find a distributor (there was already some concern before the recent controversies), it's just been announced that the sci-fi epic has been given a global IMAX release.

“The film is going to get an IMAX release,” IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond told the press during a Cannes event earlier today. “One of the things that we pride ourselves on is being filmmaker-friendly. So we’ve committed to Francis to do a global Imax release.”

Gelford added that he'd met with Coppola in Cannes, and that they would most likely wait to see who will distribute the film in the U.S. and when before deciding on a theatrical release date. The film...

Francis Ford Coppola’s baroque epic Megalopolis has a new trailer ahead of its premiere at Cannes this week. It’s quite something.

Francis Ford Coppola’s long-in-gestation film Megalopolis makes its debut at the Cannes Film Festival this week. And while industry reactions to it have been mixed so far, Coppola’s self-described ‘Roman epic fable’ clearly has some spectacular visuals.

The new trailer, which you can find below, provides a glimpse at a grand baroque-looking drama that imagines New York as an empire on the edge of collapse. There are decadent parties, chariot races, and Shia Labeouf hopping about in a toga. There are collapsing buildings, what may or may not be a meteor strike, and dreamlike images straight out of a Buñuel flick.

Aside from the years or writing, rewriting, planning and false starts, the production of Megalopolis was, according to several accounts, fraught with difficulties. A...

Though Megalopolis still doesn't have a distributor, the movie is expected to release before the end of the year, and we have a first official look at the sci-fi epic's main characters.

A lot of people were pleasantly surprised when Francis Ford Coppola's passion project came to fruition after the legendary filmmaker's previous failed attempts to get his vision off the ground, but the Godfather director announced that he had returned to the project back in 2019, and cameras started rolling in 2022.

Despite reports of some significant production issues, the movie wrapped late last year, and Vanity Fair has now shared the first official stills.

The images feature Star Wars actor Adam Driver as "an idealistic architect named Caesar, who hopes to rebuild the once great city, while Game of Thrones alum Emmanuel plays Julia Cicero, "the socialite daughter of a corrupt mayor (played by Giancarlo Esposito), and Driver’s character’s nemesis.

Exclusive: CAA has signed Tony and Olivier-Award winning director Ivo van Hove in all areas.

Belgian-born van Hove has built a reputation for experimental revisions of Hollywood and Broadway classics including Broadway revival productions of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, for which he received a Tony Award and a Laurence Olivier Award, and The Crucible as well as Lee Hall’s Network (starring Bryan Cranston and Tatiana Maslany), All About Eve (with Gillian Anderson in the Bette Davis role) and Stephen Sondheim’s West Side Story.

Last year, van Hove teamed with John Wells to develop Doll at Warner Bros. Television. The project is described as a psychological thriller series set in the ruthless world of a modern music conservatory. The former’s artistic collaborator, Jan Versweyveld, was set to serve as production and lighting designer on the project, which marks the duo’s first foray into scripted television.

The daring new musical Lempicka, based on the life of the Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka, opened on Broadway’s Longacre Theatre, on Monday night.

Tamara de Lempicka was a pioneering female artist renowned for her Art Deco images of powerful and detached women, making her a celebrity in Paris and later in Los Angeles. While her name may not be widely recognized, her unmistakable aesthetic can be seen in various cultural touchstones, such as the covers of Ayn Rand’s novels and Madonna‘s iconic music videos.

Written by Matt Gould and Carson Kreitzer, the musical focuses on Lempicka’s bisexuality and explores her relationships with two significant loves: her unremarkable husband, Tadeusz Lempicki, and the dynamic Parisian prostitute, Rafaela. While Rafaela’s allure and creative inspiration for Tamara are evident, her devotion to Tadeusz remained a focal point of the show. Despite Tadeusz’s lack of ambition and disdain for her art,...

Francis Ford Coppola’s sci-fi passion project Megalopolis is to screen in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

Megalopolis, the long-in-the-making sci-fi opus from director Francis Ford Coppola, is still seeking a distributor, but it’s also set to make its debut at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

There have been reports for a while that Coppola’s latest movie would make an appearance at the festival, but now it’s been confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter that Megalopolis will screen in competition on the 17th May – meaning it’s in contention for a coveted Palme d’Or prize. The previous winner was Justine Triet’s forensically precise drama, Anatomy Of A Fall.

Coppola first came up with the idea of Megalopolis back in the 1970s, and he’s spent the decades since trying to get it made. It’s a project that has so obsessed him...

Francis Ford Coppola, the legendary director behind masterpieces like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, has poured his heart and soul into his latest project, Megalopolis.

Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis

Coppola’s biggest successes have been his commercially popular films, but his winery has also been a steady earner. He bought Niebaum-Coppola winery back in 1979, and it’s been there to back his filmmaking ambitions—especially during rough patches.

Suggested“I would’ve made something interesting”: Martin Scorsese Broke Silence on His Godfather Sequel Despite Francis Ford Coppola Wanting Him to Direct

With a staggering $120 million self-financed budget, Megalopolis features a star-studded cast, including Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Dustin Hoffman, and many others. The film has been a passion project for the director for over two decades.

But with early reviews calling it “baffling” and “unflinchingly batsh*t,” the big question is: will people love Coppola’s vision, or...

Initial reactions to Coppola's Megalopolis highlight just how bizarre the movie is, with one attendee deeming it commercially unviable. The film, self-financed with a $120 million budget, has been described as a surreal mix of Ayn Rand, Metropolis, and Caligula. The sci-fi epic stars Adam Driver as an architect attempting to rebuild New York City as a utopia following a disaster.

Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis has now been screened, and a new report details what the reaction to the film was like. Representing a long-time passion project for Coppola, who is best known for The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, Megalopolis stars Adam Driver as an idealistic architect who attempts to rebuild New York City as a utopia following a catalclymis disaster. The film, which is self-financed, carries a budget of $120 million.

A new report from Matthew Belloni at Puck now reveals how Megalopolis was received following its first screening. According to Belloni,...

Netflix rejected Zack Snyder's pitch to adapt The Fountainhead due to it being taboo and controversial. Snyder first had the idea in 2016, but shelved it due to working in the Dceu and later permanently postponed it in 2021. Combining Snyder's controversial style with the already controversial source material in The Fountainhead could create his most divisive project yet.

Zack Snyder reveals that Netflix rejected his pitch for a television adaptation of an infamous novel from the 1940s. One of the most divisive directors working today, Snyder is best known for directing Dawn of the Dead, Watchmen, and 300, as well as the installments in the DC Extended Universe – Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Justice League. Since 2021, Snyder has directed films exclusively for Netflix, including Army of the Dead and Rebel Moon.

During his recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, Snyder revealed that Netflix rejected...

Zack Snyder has revealed that his new creative home, Netflix, turned down his first-ever idea and pitch for a television series because the streamer believed it was too controversial.

Snyder made the revelation on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, where he discussed, among other things, his desire to bring the 1943 novel The Fountainhead to the small screen. "I pitched [Netflix] Fountainhead. No one wants to make it," he said. Russian-American author Ayn Rand's book is about an architect who rejects accepted, conventional standards and pressures. Snyder revealed why Netflix rejected his pitch, stating, "Yeah, yeah, we've talked about it a lot. I mean, nobody wants Fountainhead, but that's what I wanted to do. I pitched them Fountainhead because I've written this super adaptation of that book. I think it would be amazing, but no one wants to make it because they think it's taboo. Ayn Rand is taboo."

Related 'It's a Movie!

Filmmaker Zack Snyder hasn’t totally given up on his dream project to adapt Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” book. Trying to make it as a movie for years, Snyder recently appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast to loosely promote “Rebel Moon,” but also just talk about everything as one always does on that discursive podcast (the conversation is two hours long).

In their long and winding conversation, Rogan ended up talking about the pleasures of binge-watching and asked Snyder if he’d ever considered making a series.

Continue reading Zack Snyder Says He Pitched His ‘Fountainhead’ Movie To Netflix As A Series, But They Passed at The Playlist.

In his last dramatic and interminable years, Michael Cimino spent his days in solitude rewatching old movies in the Bel-Air mansion he bought during his heyday. On the rare occasions that he ventured out, he drove a Rolls-Royce he acquired while making The Deer Hunter in 1978, his chauffeur having left long ago, as well as his success.

Even in those final moments, he did everything he could to show a winning image to Hollywood, a town that had ostracized him ever since the colossal Heaven’s Gate fiasco that had bankrupted United Artists during the early ’80s. He had a perpetually ironic, scornful smile, but he was the first to know how pointless, even miserable, that act was. The only thing he had left from his triumphant years was some money, and he would show up at the hangouts of movers and shakers like the Polo Lounge, where he often ended...

There’s a striking dissonance between the serene and realistic surface of Daniel Hoesel and Julia Niemann’s Veni Vidi Vici and the way it bludgeons its points home using the exaggerated methods of social critiques common to such genre pieces as Snowpiercer or Infinity Pool. How effective this will be depends in part on the viewer. Some will appreciate this class satire’s grim portrait of a venal polo-playing billionaire class who explain away their amoral behavior with self-aggrandizing business-speak. Others may thrill to the dark comedy of a serial killer operating so in the open that he’s practically begging to be caught. Either way, the message of Hoesel’s screenplay is blunt: Everyone not at society’s pinnacle is only prey.

The film’s serial killer is Amon (Laurence Rupp), a chipper Austrian billionaire with a thing for picking off strangers with a sniper rifle. He pursues his targets carefully,...

One of my favorite categories of Reddit posts (don’t judge) are those where people who have worked for or near the super-rich share stories that people “wouldn’t believe.” From ordering private jets like they were pizza to hosting children’s parties where A-list performers sing to indifferent toddlers, these stories make it quite clear that the 1% lives on a planet most of us will never visit. “Pharaoh-level shit,” as one of my favorite Reddit reactions of all time said.

The craziest thing about Veni Vidi Vici, Daniel Hoesl and Julia Niemann’s pitch-black satire about a wealthy family with a predilection for human-hunting, is that it doesn’t seem that crazy.

The Ulrich Seidl-produced film opens with a quote from The Fountainhead, which can never mean a good thing unless we’re in store for a comedy. “The point is who will stop me”––a quote part...

Hailing from the country that gave us such grim social critics as Michael Haneke and Ulrich Seidl, Vantablack Austrian satire “Veni Vidi Vici” opens with a senseless homicide. It’s a startling scene, no less upsetting than the Scorpio killing that kick-starts “Dirty Harry” — except that in this case, the incident is calibrated as the darkest sort of comedy. Rather than picking off an unsuspecting rooftop swimmer, the serial killer does his hunting out in the open, without shame or any pretense of covering his tracks.

The movie makes no mystery of the sniper’s identity, revealing it right from the jump, the way a “Columbo” episode might. And yet the authorities show zero interest in arresting the guilty party, even going so far as to toss an eyewitness out of the police station (that man winds up offing himself in exasperation). That’s because the person responsible, Amon Maynard (Laurence Rupp), is a millionaire,...

Argentina has elected a self-described anarcho-capitalist libertarian Javier Milei as its next president. The result of Sunday’s runoff election will mean sweeping changes to the second-largest economy in South America, which will now be helmed by one of the most bizarre figures in modern politics.

An economist-turned-legislator, Milei’s abrasive political stylings, unruly mop of hair, anti-communist ravings, and taste for conspiracies have earned him comparisons to Donald Trump, and support from right-wing figures within American media and international politics.

While wielding chainsaws as campaign props and sporting “Make Argentina Great Again” hats,...

A marketing group behind one of the most successful TikTok ad campaigns of all time is drawing scrutiny for its alleged ties to Nxivm, the so-called “sex cult” once led by Keith Raniere in upstate New York.

Geoffrey Goldberg and Evan Horowitz are the married co-founders of Movers+Shakers, a Brooklyn-based ad agency that has collaborated with brands like Netflix, Neutrogena, Tinder, and Arm + Hammer. They are perhaps best known for their work with makeup brand e.l.f., with whom they created hugely viral TikTok campaigns, such as 2019’s “Eyes Lip Face (e.

Development continues on "Spider-Man" co-creator Steve Ditko's faceless crime fighter 'The Question" as a live action character for DC Studios:

'The Question' ('Vic Sage') created by writer/illustrator Steve Ditko, debuted in Charlton Comics' Blue Beetle #1 (June 1967), followed by Charlton's "Mysterious Suspense" (October 1968) . 

The character was then acquired by DC Comics in the early 1980's...

...and incorporated into the 'DC Universe', with former 'Gotham' police officer 'Renee Montoya', a protégé of Sage, becoming the new 'Question'.

"...in 'Hub City', TV investigative journalist 'Vic Sage' looking into criminal activities by a 'Dr. Twain', was approached by 'Aristotle Rodor', a former college professor, telling Sage about an artificial skin he had developed with Twain called 'Pseudoderm' with sometimes fatal side effects. 

"Rodor and Twain agreed to abandon the project and parted ways, but Rodor discovered  Twain had decided to proceed with an illegal sale of...

Welcome to the 166th edition of Adventure(s) Time, where we examine beloved animated series and their comic cousins. This week, we explore another Justice League Unlimited episode showcasing the fan-favorite conspiracy kook the Question, and an issue of the tie-in comic with intriguing similarities. And if you have any suggestions for the future, please let me know on Twitter.

The Eccentric Charm of a Faceless Man

Debuting on June 25, 2005, "Question Authority" is a highlight of not only this series but the interconnected DC Animated Universe. Writer Dwayne McDuffie and director Dan Riba are on top of their game here, balancing a story with a varied cast and dramatic shifts in tone. Kicking off a four-part season finale arc, "Question Authority" raises the temperature on the big government/big business cabal known as Cadmus' ongoing feud with the League.

Unlimited, with its goal of utilizing every DC superhero the producers had permission to use,...

Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed “Oppenheimer,” which revolves around J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist considered the father of the atomic bomb, is one of the most highly anticipated films of the summer. Actually of the year. Over the decades there have been several films dealing with the Manhattan Project that culminated with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki thus ending World War II on Sept. 2, 1945.

Soon after the global conflict ended MGM, Paramount and Twentieth Century Fox were rushing to be the first studio to greenlight a movie dealing with the birth of the atomic bomb that ushered in the Cold War. MGM quickly put a project in motion hiring Robert Considine to write a story . The studio was circling the likes of its “A’ stars Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and Van Johnson. Meanwhile over at Paramount, producer Hal Wallis was preparing a $1.5 million atomic bomb film called “Top Secret.