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George Lucas entered San Diego Convention Center’s cavernous Hall H and stepped into history, as the legendary creator of Star Wars made his first-ever appearance at Comic-Con, the popular arts convention that has partially been built off his stories and creations.

It was the largest ever Sunday panel for the convention, according to sources, which usually sees its marquee presentation headline Friday or Saturday. But such is the power of Lucas.

Thousands waited hours just to get inside, chanted “Lu-cas, Lu-cas!” while they waited, and then gave a wild standing ovation as the filmmaker took to the stage, introduced by rapper-actress Queen Latifah, and sat down next to filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and Star Wars production designer Doug Chiang.

If the 6,500-strong crowd was disappointed he didn’t talk a whiff about Star Wars or Indiana Jones, it wasn’t shown, as cries of “I love you, George!” and...

It was arguably the first big Sunday Am panel post Covid at Comic-Con, as Star Wars creator George Lucas, 3x Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro and Oscar winning Death Becomes Her production designer Doug Chiang gathered to tease to a very packed Hall H, the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.

For Lucas, it was the first time he’s appeared onstage at San Diego Comic-Con.

The panel was narrated by Oscar nominee Queen Latifah.

“It’s a temple to the people’s art,” said Lucas about the Mobius-strip building designed by Ma Yansong which is opening next year near the USC campus in downtown Los Angeles.

“I refused to sell it,” says Lucas whose been collecting myriad comic books and thrifty pieces of art since his youth.

One of Lucas’ inspirations for opening the museum stemmed from the filmmaker needing a place to display his 40,000 pieces of art.

George Lucas

George Lucas is heading not to a galaxy far far away, but to San Diego for the 2025 Comic-Con. The panel planned for Sunday, July 27th will mark the first time the filmmaker has been confirmed to participate in the popular culture convention.

Four-time Oscar nominee George Lucas will appear with three-time Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro and Oscar winner Doug Chiang in Sdcc’s largest hall, Hall H, which seats 6,500. Grammy winner Queen Latifah will moderate the “Sneak Peek of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art” panel that will focus on “the power of illustrated stories and the role of narrative art in society. From ancient cave drawings and hieroglyphics to paintings, murals, illustrations, comics, digital media, and sculptures, this panel will delve into the universal language of illustrated storytelling.”

Commenting on the much-anticipated panel, David Glanzer, Chief Communications and Strategy Officer of Comic-Con, said, “We are beyond...

This year’s San Diego Comic-Con celebration will need to shampoo its red carpet in preparation for one of the event’s most illustrious guests ever, George Lucas! That’s right, nerds! Daddy’s coming home! According to reports, the Father of Star Wars is coming to Comic-Con for his first-ever Comic-Con panel, and some high-profile guests will join him. Taking the stage alongside George Lucas are Guillermo del Toro and Star Wars prequel production designer Doug Chiang for a panel exploring the influence of illustrated story and offering a sneak peek at the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. Finally, entertainment powerhouse and hip-hop legend Queen Latifah will moderate the panel on Sunday in Hall H at the San Diego Convention Centre.

For the panel, Lucas, del Toro, and Chiang will discuss the impact of narrative art worldwide and how our desire to create brings about and gives meaning...

George Lucas has been to the Met Gala, but he’s never been to San Diego Comic-Con before. That’s about to change, as an appearance for the “Star Wars” creator at the annual gathering has been announced for the forthcoming edition.

Lucas’s appearance will take place on Sunday, July 27, in Hall H, and he’ll be joined by director Guillermo del Toro and legendary Oscar-winning Lucasfilm Senior Vice President and Executive Design Director Doug Chiang for a conversation moderated by Queen Latifah. The panel will discuss Lucas’s ultimate passion project, his forthcoming Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which will open in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park in 2026.

The museum will feature Lucas’s personal collection of work from story-focused artists such as N.C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell, Frida Kahlo, and Beatrix Potter, as well as comic book artists Alison Bechdel and R. Crumb, and photographers Gordon Parks,...

The king of the nerds is finally coming to Comic-Con.

George Lucas, whose Star Wars movies helped create many of the ideas of modern fandoms, is coming to San Diego Comic-Con for his first-ever panel.

Lucas will be joined by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, and artist and Star Wars prequels production designer Doug Chiang for a panel that will explore the power of illustrated story and offer a sneak peek at the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.

Queen Latifah, the Grammy- Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning actress and recording artist, will moderate the panel, which will take place Sunday in Hall H, the cavernous and storied arena in the San Diego Convention Centre.

The panel of creators will discuss the role of narrative art in society while tracing humanity’s innate desire to draw, animate and bring to life stories across the millennia.

“We are beyond thrilled to welcome George...

Ahead of the 2025 awards ceremony on Saturday, May 24, the festival has announced the winners for the Un Certain Regard section, with the top prize going to “The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo.” A co-production between Chile, France, Belgium, Spain, and Germany, the 1980s-set drama marks the feature directorial debut of Chilean filmmaker Diego Céspedes.

The Best Screenplay award for the Un Certain Regard section went to Harry Lighton for his feature directorial debut, A24’s “Pillion,” starring Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård. In his Critic’s Pick review out of Cannes, IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio said of the film, “Dick-sucking, boot-licking, and ball-gagging are de rigueur for a movie like writer/director Harry Lighton’s wildly graphic and strangely moving Bdsm romance, ‘Pillion.’ But for a British queer film that puts the particulars of a gay dominant-submissive affair up front and up close, actors Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling find...

Publisher. Underground Cartoonist. Activist. Historian. Quirky Collector. Troublemaker. Denis Kitchen has been taking on the establishment for decades. Now an all-new documentary, Oddly Compelling, highlights Kitchen’s long, strange trip — from his early days as a hippie cartoonist, to his thirty years as one of the most important independent comic book publishers, and his work as a fierce advocate for the First Amendment. Oddly Compelling is now on Kickstarter.

Filmmaker Soren Christiansen and Ted Intorcio have captured hours of in-depth, candid conversations with Denis Kitchen, as well as fellow cartoonists and colleagues including Alison Bechdel, Warren Bernard, Eddie Campbell, Paul Gravett, and Karen Green. The film also features rare archival footage of comic book legends Robert Crumb, Will Eisner, and Harvey Kurtzman, along with new animation of Kitchen’s iconic cartooning. The film charts Kitchen’s career as an indie cartoonist, a provocateur and publisher, and founder of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

"Publisher. Underground Cartoonist. Activist. Historian. Quirky Collector. Troublemaker. Denis Kitchen has been taking on the establishment for decades. Now an all-new documentary, Oddly Compelling, highlights Kitchen’s long, strange trip — from his early days as a hippie cartoonist, to his thirty years as one of the most important independent comic book publishers, and his work as a fierce advocate for the First Amendment. Oddly Compelling is now on Kickstarter.

Filmmaker Soren Christiansen and Ted Intorcio have captured hours of in-depth, candid conversations with Denis Kitchen, as well as fellow cartoonists and colleagues including Alison Bechdel, Warren Bernard, Eddie Campbell, Paul Gravett, Karen Green, Justin Hall, Gary Hallgren,Tom Heintjes, MariNaomi, Peter Poplaski, Carol Tyler, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s Interim Director Jeff Trexler. The film also features rare archival footage of comic book legends Robert Crumb, Will Eisner, and Harvey Kurtzman, along with new animation of Kitchen’s iconic cartooning.

Oscar Restrepo (Ubeimar Rios) is a bum. Call him a lush, a louse, a putz, a schmuck, a sad-sack, and a dumb-sob and all would apply. He can take them, and then some. He is, after all, a man of words — poor Oscar’s a poet, and woe unto all those who know him.

But good news for all those that take in “A Poet” (“Un Poeta”), director Simón Mesa Soto’s immensely appealing and often caustic character study-turned-social-satire premiering out of Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar. Put together with impressive efficiency — the film only started shooting in January — this art-world send-up explores the many fears and frustrations the acclaimed director felt in the decade since making the 2014 short film Palme d’Or winner “Leidi,” channeling them into a darkly-funny burlesque that speaks of verse while playing like a Dan Clowes comic brought to manic life.

Oscar’s a poet,...

Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse opens with an intimate portrait of its subject—Spiegelman himself—narrating early Breakdowns comics that foreshadow Maus. Premiered at Doc NYC before joining PBS’s American Masters roster, the film stakes its claim on both festival prestige and public-television gravitas.

At its core, the documentary investigates how personal calamities and collective cataclysms have been transmuted into Spiegelman’s visual lexicon.

Seated across from peers like Robert Crumb, he revisits those early xeroxed comix days in San Francisco—a world of anarchic panels and Tiny Nemo-sized rebellions. Yet the focus remains on Maus’s long shadow, which Spiegelman can neither outrun nor entirely embrace.

Here, disaster functions as muse (hence the title), shaping stories with brutal candor and occasional levity. The film’s immediacy lies in that tension: an artist both defined by and refracted through trauma. It lingers.

Forged by Trauma and Ink

Art Spiegelman...

He makes art critics cringe, but Thomas Kinkade — whose idyllic paintings of storybook cottages and pastoral landscapes glow as if lit from within — has arguably given more pleasure to the masses than any artist since Norman Rockwell. In theory, one could make the case that Walt Disney, Charles Schulz or Margaret “Big Eyes” Keane is more deserving of such an extravagant claim, and yet, it’s only Kinkade whose work was recently estimated to be hanging in roughly one in 20 American homes.

In the end, I suppose it all comes down to what you consider “art.” Do black-velvet Elvis paintings count? How about dogs playing poker, or silk-screen renderings of Campbell’s soup cans? That’s where the critics enter the picture once again, as few take Kinkade’s kitsch creations — which have been mass-produced as coffee mugs, collectible plates and dust catchers of all kinds — seriously enough to qualify them as art.

Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse chronicles the life and extraordinary artistic contribution of an iconic cartoonist who radically changed the way we look at comic books. His seminal work, Maus: A Survivor's Tale, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize Letters award in 1992 for its horrifying account of his parents' journey through the Holocaust while imprisoned at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Jews are depicted as rodents ruthlessly exterminated by fascist Nazi cats who consider them vermin. This stark imagery is a hallmark of Spiegelman's belief that comics were more than fanciful children's stories and could be literature meant to promote subversive thought and give creative light to all aspects of the human condition.

Filmmakers Philip Dolin and Molly Bernstein give Spiegelman a direct platform to explain his motivations from childhood to adult acclaim. He's also feted throughout the documentary by the noted artists and intellectuals who accompanied Spiegelman on his decades-long rise to influential prominence.

From his father, a Holocaust survivor, cartoonist Art Spiegelman learned how to best utilize the limited space in a suitcase, knowledge that he then applied to his hand-drawn panels, where information has to be conveyed in a concise manner. An eminence in the realm of comics, Spiegelman is best known for “Maus,” the two-volume graphic novel about the Shoah — where the Nazis are depicted as cats and the Jews mice — based mostly on his dad’s firsthand recollections and Spiegelman’s need to grapple with the trauma he inherited from both of his parents. The subsequent, almost inescapable acclaim for “Maus” would in turn become another source of anguish for Spiegelman.

From co-directors Molly Bernstein and Philip Dolin, the documentary “Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse” is a linear account of how his career in comics evolved from underground publications to mainstream recognition. Constructed from talking-head conversations with Spiegelman and his friends and family,...

"He opened up a door that a lot of us went through." Cargo Film has revealed an official trailer for an indie documentary film titled Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse, a profile of the iconic comic book artist / cartoonist Art Spiegelman. After premiering at Doc NYC last year, this opens in select theaters (starting in NYC of course) this month. Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus is a landmark in reckoning with the Holocaust and breakthrough in serious comic art — but his full achievements are more remarkable and eclectic. This doc tracks his beginnings in the 1960s as a co-creator of the Wacky Packages trading cards; his co-founding of the underground comics magazines Arcade (with Bill Griffith) and Raw (with wife Françoise Mouly); In the Shadow of No Towers, his reaction to 9/11, inspired by witnessing the attacks from his home in lower Manhattan; his controversial covers for The...

The Brutalist and Kraven the Hunter star Alessandro Nivola has called one of the greatest action movies of all time “the dumbest idea” he’d ever heard. And it’s hard to argue with that assessment. Nivola, who has received critical acclaim for his performance in the hard-hitting historical epic The Brutalist, and much mockery for his role in Kraven, was referring to the 1997 action masterpiece Face/Off, in which he starred alongside Nicolas Cage and John Travolta.

Informed by Letterboxd that Face/Off remains the movie in his back catalog with the most fans on the platform, Nivola reflected on the action movie’s legacy and how he first responded to the idea of a story about a cop and a criminal who swap faces.

“Okay. Yeah. You know, I started off strong. It was my first movie. It was all downhill from there (laughs). I mean, it's funny, I didn't...

In Molly Bernstein and Philip Dolin’s new documentary Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse, Robert Crumb is the man who came to dinner.

In one of the film’s central scenes, Crumb and his late wife Aline Kominsky-Crumb join longtime friends Art Spiegelman and his wife Françoise Mouly to break bread and discuss their respective connections as titans of the ’70s and ’80s underground comic movement. For purposes of this scene, Crumb is just a friendly and reflective old guy, a normal person having a normal dinner with his normal, if culturally significant, pals.

Crumb’s ease in this scene is disarming because while here he’s simply a peer and a colleague, he’s something much more significant in a broader cinematic context. Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb casts an impossibly long shadow over any nonfiction film about artists, comic or otherwise, but really over any biographical documentary of any kind.

Half a century after the groundbreaking release of the first issue of Metal Hurlant in France, the endlessly influential comic book anthology will return to print in English in early 2025 as a quarterly publication from Humanoids, and with a Kickstarter campaign now underway as part of Humanoids' 50th anniversary celebrations, we've been provided with an exclusive excerpt that invites readers to check into Elene Usdin's “Nightmare Motel,” one of the many unique stories that will be featured in the first year of the new Metal Hurlant.

Below, you can check out our exclusive preview pages from Elene Usdin's “Nightmare Motel,” as well as cover art and the official press release with additional details. To learn more about the return of Metal Hurlant, visit:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/humanoidsinc/metal-hurlant?ref=ch8qc6

Press Release: Los Angeles, November 13, 2024 – In 1974, filmmaker, writer, mime, and poet Alejandro Jodorowsky was working in...

Get Jiro! is getting turned into a TV series by Adult Swim. Having gotten a series order, the new show is based on the graphic novel co-written by the late Anthony Bourdain.

Per THR, Get Jiro! is one of two shows that were announced to be in the works at Adult Swim. The series adaptation will be a half-hour animated show created by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka. It is directly based on the DC/Vertigo graphic novel series that's written by Bourdain and Joel Rose with artwork by Langdon Foss and Al Garza. The first installment of the series was published in 2012.

Related Adult Swim Icon Talks Hitting 'Rock Bottom' on Space Ghost Coast to Coast's 30th Anniversary

The Brak Show co-creator and animation icon Andy Merrill opens up about hitting "rock bottom" in response to another classic series' anniversary.

DC describes the original graphic novel as a "stylized...

In a scene worthy of one of his animated works, Terry Gillam took to a stage covered in crashed paper planes at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on Sunday to receive its honorary Cristal award and give a masterclass about his animated works.

Gilliam was last in Annecy, where its audience has a tradition of bombarding the stage with paper planes, in 1975 with Miracle of Flight. The anarchic comedy about mankind’s different attempts to fly debuted in the shorts competition but did not win a prize.

“Do you know how long it’s taken me to get this f**king award… They’ve finally let me in… I think they know I might not be around next year,” joked the director as he received the trophy.

The French lakeside animation festival, running from June 9 to 15, is set to welcome close to 16,000 animation professionals this year, many of them...

The Simpsons has successfully adopted various animation styles over the years to pay tribute or parody other animated projects. From adopting Fritz the Cat's style to Sylvain Chomet's tribute, the show has showcased its flexibility while retaining its distinct characters. Notable animation shifts include parodies of Schoolhouse Rock, Rick & Morty crashing in, and a tribute to Primal, seamlessly blending different styles.

The Simpsons has a very distinct animation style that's been successfully bringing in audiences for over three decades, but the show has also never been afraid to shift animation styles to either pay tribute, directly parody, or take inspiration from other animated films and shows. The Simpsons has been on the air for 35 seasons, and has endured numerous changes in pop culture and shifting tastes in animation. One of the show's most consistent ways of poking loving fun at the rest of the animation industry over the...

It is not uncommon to happen upon subversive art in the mainstream. You can find the provocative work of R. Crumb, Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe smuggled into the background of films, or, in many cases, outright adapted as a feature (à la Ralph Bakshi's take on Crumb's "Fritz the Cat"). What you don't expect is to throw on a network evening soap opera and notice that a character's pillowcase is adorned with a design pattern of unrolled condoms -- especially in the 1990s.

MacArthur "genius grant"-winning artist Mel Chin thought the same thing 30 years ago while teaching art simultaneously at CalTech and the University of Georgia. Inspired by the notion of product placement exploding across movie and television screens all over the world, Chin wondered what would happen if he could sneak a conceptually contentious piece of art into the background of an otherwise apolitical show.

“Trolls Band Together,” the third chapter in the DreamWorks Animation franchise, gets psychedelic with the introduction of new worlds and characters, helped along by some trippy 2D animation from Titmouse. It’s a musical tribute to ’90s boy bands, fittingly enough, as Justin Timberlake’s Branch reunites with his long-lost brothers (known as the family band BroZone): Floyd (Troye Sivan), John Dory (Eric André), Spruce (Daveed Diggs), and Clay (Kid Cudi).

But Floyd is kidnapped by pop-star siblings Velvet (Amy Schumer) and Veneer (Andrew Rannells) as part of their nefarious musical scheme.

“With Justin and boy bands as part of the DNA of the Troll universe, it felt like a natural extension, and also, musically and visually, it’s more psychedelic,” director Walt Dohrn (“Trolls World Tour”) told IndieWire. “If you can see my room, I live in a kaleidoscopic, Technicolor, psychedelic world. I was so influenced by psychedelic...

Because "Futurama" is set 1,000 years in the future, show creators David X. Cohen and Matt Groening had to invent a sci-fi conceit that would provide an organic reason to include celebrity cameos. Thanks to a special fluid, human heads can be kept alive in jars more or less indefinitely. In the very first episode, the head of Dick Clark hosted a televised New Year's Eve special to ring in the year 3000. Clark played himself. Since then, multiple other celebrities have played their own severed heads, including the Beastie Boys, the cast of "Star Trek," Al Gore, Conan O'Brien, Beck, Lucy Liu, Penn Jillette, and most recently, Bill Nye. 

Of course, Cohen and Groening were more creative than merely storing severed heads in jars, and multiple other notable actors have continued to appear on "Futurama" as robots, aliens, space deities, and other sci-fi creatures. John Goodman, for instance, played the homicidal...

Batman: The Animated Series is one of the greatest adaptations of a comic book character of all time, and a big part of that is one of the original series’ directors, Kevin Altieri. Altieri recently returned to the world of the Dark Knight with the publication of Batman: The Adventures Continue: Season Three #2, for which the legendary animation director provided the art.

With an over thirty-year career in animation, Altieri has worked on not only Batman, but also properties as varied as Spider-Man, the Transformers and Scooby Doo. In addition to his animation work, Altieri has also written and drawn several comics for DC, Wildstorm and other publishers. Altieri also co-directed the 1998 video for Pearl Jam’s “Do the Evolution,” which was nominated for a Grammy Award for “Best Music Video, Short Form.” In this exclusive interview with Screen Rant, the artist discusses his new Batman issue, his love of comics and animation,...

The influences of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird are well established at this point. Many fans likely know the influence Frank Miller and Jack Kirby had on the duo, but the Tmnt creators recently revealed another influence that hasn’t been talked about nearly as much: underground comix.

When Eastman and Laird unleashed their multimillion dollar Tmnt juggernaut on the world, it was initially as a black-and-white, self-published indie comic with a print run of just over 3,000 copies. Both creators wore their influences on their sleeves right from the beginning: the cover of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 is a clear homage to Frank Miller’s Ronin. That same issue also paid tribute to Miller’s work on Daredevil, suggesting that the radioactive material that mutated the Tmnt was the very same that gave Daredevil his radar senses. However, in addition to those famous works, Eastman...

Director Hugh Mulhern, who Dn last featured as part of our coverage of the Nfts graduate showcase last year, returns today with a new Riff Raff Films produced music video for artist Hak Baker. Mulhern’s video is a chaotic blaze of live action and animation, showcasing the pure chaos of a night on the town through a blend of forms and styles. The seedy, twisted imagery of the animation in particular feels like it could be lifted from a Robert Crumb comic or Ralph Bakshi’s controversial Fritz the Cat and the frenetic camerawork perfectly reflects the descending feeling of losing your inhibitions. With the video’s recent online release, Dn discussed the process of making it with Mulhern, talking through the challenge of blending animation and live action footage, the equipment necessary to pull it off, and the freeing creativity afforded to filmmakers through making music videos.

How...

Boots Riley doesn't seem like the type of person who'd want to take on a Marvel or DC adaptation, but there are clearly a lot of superhero comic influences on his new Amazon Prime Video series I'm a Virgo. Riley filters those influences through his radical anti-capitalist perspective and skewed surrealist sensibility, as previously expressed in his 2018 feature film Sorry to Bother You. I'm a Virgo is also set in Oakland, California, at the intersection of political activism and magical-realist absurdity. Riley packs in a lot of both of those elements, making I'm a Virgo unwieldy but compelling and full of strange, unexpected twists.

The Virgo of the title is Cootie (Jharrel Jerome), a literal giant who's spent his entire life hidden away from the outside world. At 19 years old, he stands 13 feet tall and lives in a custom-built house designed by the aunt and uncle who raised him. Martisse...

Showing Up contains many of the hallmarks of a classic Kelly Reichardt picture: a Pacific Northwest setting, a Jonathan Raymond co-writing credit, Christopher Blauvelt cinematography, a rich ensemble cast, and an unrivaled attention to locations, production design, and wardrobe. There’s also Michelle Williams appearing in her fourth Reichardt film, their collaboration having begun with 2008’s Wendy and Lucy.

In Showing Up, Williams is Lizzy, a talented sculptor who finds herself a bit worn down by the realities of modern life. By all accounts she has a decent day job––something she likely wouldn’t refute––working in the office of the liberal arts college she attended. Outside of offering her rent and cat food money, the position keeps Lizzy plugged into the local art scene and most importantly grants her free access to the campus kiln (operated by André Benjamin in a joyful role).

Outside of Williams, that aforementioned...

Spirited Away (2001) Screenshot: Gkids In the Disney and Pixar era, most American moviegoers have come to define animation as candy-colored kiddie fare that traffics in facile, rugrat-ready themes about family and finding yourself. But according to Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro, that definition is not only limiting, it’s insulting.

Following The Film Stage’s collective top 50 films of 2022, as part of our year-end coverage, our contributors are sharing their personal top 10 lists.

2022 was the year I had to recalibrate my relationship with cinema and television. Like Brendan Gleeson’s exasperated Colm in The Banshees of Inisherin, a man nearing the end of his life and done wasting his energy on natterers, post-pandemic life has me questioning how much time I have left on this earth to devote to art that simply doesn’t appeal to me. As a maximalist consumer by nature, I’ve spent my first 34 years watching anything and everything to stay sharp on what’s buzzing in the zeitgeist. I’m getting tired. And maybe, just maybe, the omnicrises of the early 2020s are pushing me toward shows and movies that uplift me in some way. That’s probably why I gravitated toward family films, romantic comedies,...

Our year-end coverage continues with a look at the best performances of 2022. Rather than divide categories into supporting or lead or by gender, we’ve written about our 35 favorites, period. Find our countdown below and start watching the ones you’ve missed here.

35. The Ensemble of Funny Pages

Owen Kline’s Funny Pages may be the sweatiest, stinkiest, most stress-inducing film you’ll ever watch, and you’ll be happy about it. Daniel Zolghadri (believably manipulative) plays a pushy, privileged teen who dreams of being a cartoonist, but the weirdo script buzzes largely thanks to an offbeat supporting cast. Standouts include Stephen Adly Guirgis as a larger-than-life art teacher, Miles Emanuel as a geeky deadpan Bff, Marcia Debonis as a cheeky public defender, and Michael Townsend Wright and Cleveland Thomas Jr. as the illegal basement apartment roommates from hell. But Matthew Maher, playing an unstable former comic book colorist our protagonist tries coercing into mentorship,...

Exclusive: The Cinema Eye Honors announced its first round of nominations today for artistic achievement in documentary film and series, with HBO’s Four Hours at the Capitol earning the most of any contender [full list below].

The documentary by Jamie Roberts about the January 6 insurrection scored nominations for Broadcast Film, Broadcast Editing and Broadcast Cinematography. Peter Jackson’s Disney+ series The Beatles: Get Back, landed two nominations — for Broadcast Series and Broadcast Editing. Get Back swept five Primetime Emmy categories last month.

‘Downfall: The Case Against Boeing’

Rory Kennedy’s Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, snubbed by the Emmys, earned a Cinema Eye Honors nomination for Broadcast Film. It will go up against Four Hours at the Capitol, and Emmy winner George Carlin’s American Dream, the two-part HBO film directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio, among other contenders.

Nanfu Wang’s HBO docuseries Mind Over Murder, which premiered after the...

“Four Hours at the Capitol,” “The Beatles: Get Back,” “Playing With Sharks,” “We Need to Talk About Cosby,” “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy” and “How To With John Wilson” are among the nonfiction television programs that have been nominated in the Cinema Eye Honors broadcast categories, Cinema Eye Honors announced at the organization’s annual fall lunch in Los Angeles on Thursday.

“Four Hours at the Capitol,” Jamie Roberts’ HBO film about the Jan. 6 insurrection, received three nominations to lead all programs. “Get Back,” “Cosby,” “Stanley Tucci,” “John Wilson” and “Playing With Sharks” each received two nominations.

Along with “Four Hours at the Capitol” and “Playing With Sharks,” broadcast film nominees were “Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes,” “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing” and “George Carlin’s American Dream.” Nonfiction series nominees were “Get Back,” “Cosby,” “Black and Missing,” “Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey,” “LuLaRich” and “Mind Over Murder.” Nominated anthology series...

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art announced on Tuesday that the institution, which is now under construction in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park, will open in 2025.

In 2017, Los Angeles won the location sweepstakes over San Francisco for George Lucas’ one-of-a-kind museum, which will house art from films including Lucas’ own “Star Wars,” as well as photography, Renaissance paintings, and ancient Roman mosaics. When construction began in 2018, it was expected to open in 2022, then was delayed to 2023.

Sandra Jackson-Dumont, director and CEO of the museum, shared the “significant progress” already made on the five-story, 300,000-square-foot building, which will be surrounded by a park and gardens on its 11-acre campus.

Also Read:

Actor and Activist Omar Sharif Jr. Takes on New Role at Holocaust Museum LA (Exclusive Photos)

She also told The Hollywood Reporter that the museum, which will include two 299-seat movie theaters, will house the Lucasfilm archive.

“It’s humbling...

Crafted as a love letter to underground comics and the pursuit of art-making, Owen Kline’s Funny Pages is a fantastically fucked-up coming-of-age story about Robert, a young cartoonist who will go to any lengths to reach success. Ever the dark comedy, Funny Pages was produced by Josh and Benny Safdie, esteemed masters of gonzo discomfort. It should be noted, however, that for all of the laugh-out-loud shocks the film delivers, Kline has created a story that still manages to be genuinely touching and earnest at its core. Infusing central New Jersey with Robert Crumb’s strange overtones, Funny Pages is ultimately about finding one’s artistic voice—and what it takes to be true to that voice. While this is his debut feature, Owen Kline is no stranger to show business. The son of actors Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates, he broke out as the younger brother in Noah Baumbach...

Owen Kline’s Funny Pages is not a cartoon, but its young hero, Roger, nevertheless comes off like a coyote on the run from the anvils threatening to fall on his head. His own ego is dropping the anvils. Roger, played by Daniel Zolghadri, is an 18-year-old wannabe comic artist, a promising young man who’s been given the leeway to dive into his own obsessions at the expense of most anything else, his fat imagination nourished by his job at a comic-book store, his subversive (read: dirty) mini comix...

Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on The Eddie Volkman Show with Hannah B on Wssr-fm on August 26th, 2022, reviewing the new film “Funny Pages,” the latest indie film from A24 Studios, currently in theaters and available through VOD.

Rating: 4.5/5.0

18-year-old Robert (Daniel Zolghadri) wants to be a comic book artist, but not superheroes, more of the underground and animal type art like R. Crumb meets Donald Duck.He decides to run away instead of going to college, so he moves into a crappy apartment in Trenton, New Jersey. Working for a lawyer, he meets Wallace (Matthew Maher), who was a colorist on his favorite comic book. Robert desires art lessons, Wallace desires justice for his rash behavior.

“Funny Pages” is currently in theaters and through VOD. Featuring Daniel Zolghardri, Matthew Maher, Josh Pais, Marcia DeBonis and Ron Rifkin,. Written and directed by Gwen Kline. Rated “R”

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When Owen Kline was 14 years old, he wrote cartoonist Johnny Ryan a fan letter. “I didn’t know who he was,” Ryan told IndieWire. “I just thought it was amusing that a child was sending me fan mail.” Featuring characters like Loady McGee and stories like “The Whorehouse of Dr. Moreau,” Ryan’s “Angry Youth Comix” were not exactly age-appropriate for Kline. But the introduction proved fruitful. Years later, the now 30-year-old Kline went to Ryan when he was working on his first feature, the A24-distributed “Funny Pages.”

“Funny Pages” centers on a New Jersey teen obsessed, like Kline was and clearly still is, with underground comics. After his art teacher and mentor dies in a shockingly horrific accident, Robert (Daniel Zolghadri) decides to quit school with the idea of devoting himself to his craft.

Kline was in need of drawings to represent his protagonist’s body of work,...

In the opening scene of Funny Pages, the directorial feature debut of Owen Kline, seventeen-year-old Robert Bleichner (David Zolghadri) shows off his drawings to his teacher, Connor Katano (Stephen Adly Guirgis) Robert wants to be a cartoonist, but he’s torn between what he should do and what he wants to do—which couldn’t be at more polar opposites. Robert’s portfolio is full of figure drawings because he knows that art colleges will want to see that type of work, but Robert’s real passion comes in his absurdist drawings that seem to be quite influenced by R. Crumb’s more cartoony work. However, Katano wants Robert to embrace his passion and ignore what society tells him to do. Katano tells Robert that he should “always subvert,” and it’s a lesson that Robert takes to heart in almost every scene of Funny Pages.

Owen Kline’s darkly hilarious directorial debut “Funny Pages” is a coming-of-age tale that finds the sublime in the grotesque, and the profound in an absurd search for meaning in the basement apartments and comic book shops of Trenton, New Jersey. Kline showcases a simultaneously provocative and poignant point-of-view and delivers an instant indie classic of lo-fi tri-state area cinema.

Kline’s “Funny Pages” is a delightfully disgusting and daring debut, featuring a breakout performance from “Eighth Grade”’s Daniel Zolghadri, as well as a host of New York’s most unique character actors. It also has notes of the Safdie Brothers’ “Uncut Gems” (the brothers serve as producers and Kline helped out on their shorts), a similar subject matter to “American Splendor” and just a soupçon of the gross-out sensibility of “The Greasy Strangler.”

Our protagonist, the young Robert (Zolghadri) is an aspiring comic artist in the tradition of R. Crumb,...

Owen Kline fuses teen innocence with adult sexuality in a bad-taste debut film that recalls American Splendor and Crumb

As a child actor, Owen Kline played Jesse Eisenberg’s kid brother in The Squid and the Whale, Noah Baumbach’s excruciating comedy about a middle-class New York family wrecked by divorce, with Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney as the warring parents. Kline played the troubled 12-year-old kid who sympathises with his mother and has developed a habit of covertly masturbating in public.

His debut feature as a director features many of the same unwholesome themes. This is a genuinely bizarre, startling, freewheelingly lo-fi and funny indie picture with the refreshing bad-taste impact of Todd Solondz or Robert Crumb. Daniel Zolghadri plays Robert, a talented high-school graphic artist and cartoonist who idolises his art teacher – the man that might, very possibly, have been about to abuse him sexually before fate took a terrible hand.

If only Andy Warhol had lived to see “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers,” the cinematic culmination of the Campbell’s soup can painter’s meta-commentary on the blurring of art and commerce. This frenetic and funny crossbreeding of live action and cartoon is both a reboot and an anti-reboot, a corporate-funded raspberry at corporate IP, and a giddily dumb smart aleck committed to mocking its joke — and making it, too.

Director Akiva Schaffer, a producer and occasional helmer, has already helped to invert the meathead action flick (“MacGruber”), the rock biopic (“Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping”), the time-loop comedy (“Palm Springs”) and, of course, the music video as one-third of The Lonely Island, co-founded with his middle school friends Andy Samberg and Jorma Taccone, both of whom voice characters here. The trio met around the time Disney’s original 1989 “Rescue Rangers” series shifted into syndication and one barely has...

Anyone perusing a new psychedelic-era artwork exhibit in New York is bound to pause along the way and think, “Wait, isn’t that a Grateful Dead album cover?”

And they would be partly correct. About 30 years ago, artist, curator and art collector Jacaeber Kastor was checking out a gallery auction and came across the nearly century-old ink drawing that served as the basis of the Dead’s logo and album art. He snapped it up, and now that piece (titled “A Skeleton Amid Roses”) can be seen publicly, for the...

According to Dallas-based Heritage Auctions, a page of original black and white, pen and ink interior art from "Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars" #8 (1984) by illustrator Mike Zeck, introducing the "Spider-Man" black suit 'symbiote', a precursor to Marvel Comics 'Venom', has sold for $3.6 million:

"Today's results prove what we’ve long been saying", said Joe Mannarino, Heritage’s director of comics/comic art in New York. "Comic book art is as beloved and valuable as anything put on canvas..."

Collectible original comic art in recent years also include works by illustrators Robert Crumb ("Zap Comix")...

...Fred Rhoads ("Sad Sack")...

...Jack Kirby ("Fantastic Four")...

...and Paul Fung Jr. ("Blondie").

The journalist and podcaster talks about some of her favorite cinematic grifters and losers with Josh and Joe.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Nightmare Alley (1947) – Stuart Gordon’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

The Third Man (1949) – George Hickenlooper’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairings

All About Eve (1950)

The Hot Rock (1972) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary

Die Hard (1988)

Sunset Boulevard (1950) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

The Producers (1967) – Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review

Panic In The Streets (1950) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing

The Music Man (1962)

My Fair Lady (1964)

Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s review

The Band Wagon (1953) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

The Wizard Of Oz (1939) – John Badham’s trailer commentary

A Night At The Opera (1935) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary, Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review

The Cocoanuts (1929)

Animal Crackers (1930) – Robert Weide...

“Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope,” we hear in The Freak Brothers, Tubi’s first animated original series. It just about sums up the series. Pot is legal now, and all over the San Francisco neighborhood. It still costs money, but now it makes money, and capital means licensing, and licenses are for dogs. The characters at the center of The Freak Brother have mange, scratch themselves on rugs, but they have a cat, who Bogarts every joint.

The sad thing about The Freak Brothers is the jokes don’t go as far as it seems the series wants to go. The counterculture of the 1960s was an antidote to the culture. Cartoonists like Robert Crumb, who invented Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural and Devil Girl, and Gilbert Shelton, who created The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers...

Fritz the Cat – The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1972, 74/ 1.85:1/ 80, 76 Minutes

Starring Skip Hinnant

Directed by Ralph Bakshi, Robert Taylor

The typical toddler tends to relate more to the cuddly animals in a Disney cartoon than their own flesh and blood playmates. Robert Crumb and his brother Charles were anything but typical toddlers yet the boys were preoccupied with what was known as “funny animal comics”—everything from Bugs Bunny to Pogo. Their fascination took on an obsessive twist; for Robert the material was inspiration for his remarkable future as an artist, for Charles it was a trip down a long, dark rabbit hole. Those who weathered Terry Zwigoff’s harrowing Crumb learned a lot about the bleak side of childhood fantasy but they also learned about Robert’s compulsive work ethic and his focus on a house cat named Fred—a “typical big old...

The great cartoonist/provocateur Robert Crumb disowned this 1972 film based on his comic strip about the low-down adventures of a randy tom-cat. Clearly a labor of love for director Ralph Bakshi, he spent years finding backing and several more years producing it. With the help of long-time Disney animator Edwin Aardal (Fantasia), Bakshi finds a reasonable approximation of Crumb’s densely populated visual style but he doesn’t capture the passive-aggressive humor of the misanthropic artist’s shaggy-dog storytelling. The movie flaunted its adults only rating, not only to cement its counter-culture cred but to distance itself from more juvenile animation fare. Producer Steve Krantz began his career in animation with the bottom-of-the-barrel syndicated shows, The Mighty Thor and Spider-Man in 1966-67. Nsfw!

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After taking a turn into genre territory with Thelma (2017) and a trip to Upstate New York in Louder Than Bombs (2015), Norwegian writer-director Joachim Trier lands back on familiar ground for his latest feature, once again chronicling the joys, sorrows, love affairs and ensuing deceptions of Oslo’s bourgeois-bohemian class.

Indeed, The Worst Person in the World, as his new film is somewhat ironically titled, feels like the third part of a trilogy that began with the auteur’s New Wave-ish 2006 breakthrough Reprise and was followed up in 2011 by the darker, though still very French-influenced, Oslo, August 31st.

Both films starred Anders Danielsen Lie, who at this point could be considered Trier’s Antoine Doinel, and he returns here as a graphic novelist named Aksel whose trajectory adds a fair amount of pathos to a story that’s by turns light and gloomy, whimsical and downright depressing. More than ever, Trier...