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Vincent J. Roth has announced he’s returning as Surge in the third of his Surge Of Power movies. For those unaware, these things are highly campy low-budget superhero capers starring Roth’s character, which he claims is the first out gay superhero (we’ll take his word)…plus a variety of veteran actors with cult fanbases. The lineup for Surge Of Power: When There’s Smoke includes Nichelle Nichols (“Star Trek: The Original Series”) in one of her final performances, Robert Picardo (“Star Trek: Voyager”), Joseph Culp (“Fantastic Four”), Shannon Farnon (“Super Friends”), Michael Gray(“Shazam!”) and Bruce Vilanch (“Hollywood Squares”), all of whim were in the previous films. They’ll be joined this time by Tim Russ (“Star Trek: Voyager”), Sam J. Jones (“Flash Gordon”) and John Davey (Shazam!). Roth’s latest premiered at the Tarzana International Film Festival in August 2024, and he’s planning a three-city screening tour next.

Frederick Wiseman’s new film, Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros, a four-hour documentary on the Troisgros family and their three restaurants located in central France, primarily focuses on the three-Michelin-starred La Maison Troisgros. Menus-Plaisirs translates to “small pleasures,” and the film details much of the hard work it takes to create the many found at the Troisgros family restaurants.

This is Wiseman’s sixth feature made in France, the country he now calls home. Not only does Menus-Plaisirs fit within that subcategory, but the filmmaker also clearly approaches the subject as an institution practicing or exhibiting art on the same plane as National Gallery, La Comedie-Francaise, Crazy Horse, Boxing Gym, and Ballet.

Bridging all subcategorization of Wiseman’s work, at least since the mid-90s, has been an arc exhibiting the slow decline of resources for the arts, public spaces, small-business opportunities, and handmade goods in favor of capitalism’s industrial streamlining of contemporary life.

Veteran filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, now age 92, has worked for decades making critically loved, epic-length documentaries that often reach well beyond the two-, three- and four-hour mark. His subject matter is often institutional, the places of civic and political life: large government agencies (“City Hall”) and small towns, psychiatric hospitals (“Titicut Follies”) and burlesque clubs (“Crazy Horse”), libraries “(“Ex Libris”) and Neiman-Marcus (“The Store”).

So it might come as a surprise to learn that his latest, the intense, sorrowful “A Couple” is neither a documentary nor much longer than an hour.

“A Couple” stars French actress Nathalie Boutefeu as Sophia Tolstoy, a writer and the wife of legendary Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, one half of literary history’s most infamously unhappy marriage. Tolstoy was her husband’s secretary and manuscript copyist, a diarist and the mother to their 13 children. Here Boutefeu (who co-wrote the screenplay with Wiseman) delivers a stunning solo...

For a filmmaker who’s trained his camera on institutions as disparate as mental asylums, public libraries, and university campuses, no subject seems to have exerted a more lasting fascination on Frederick Wiseman than the human face. A Couple, the nonagenarian’s latest, is no exception. Whatever else it may be, the film is first and foremost a portrait of a visage: Sophia Tolstoy’s. Played by Nathalie Boutefeu, she’s A Couple’s protagonist and sole performer, and Wiseman follows her as she swans into an Eden-like garden, pausing every so often to address her husband Leo, an invisible and mute presence standing somewhere behind the camera and haunting every frame. Less a conversation proper than a series of monologues, star-cum-co-writer Boutefeu recites excerpts she and Wiseman stitched together from Sophia’s diaries and the letters the eponymous couple exchanged through the years. Both engrossing and vitriolic, A Couple...

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Actor Nathalie Boutefeu perambulates around an exquisite garden in full bloom, reciting a monologue in French she cowrote with her director, the words drawn from writings by Sophia Tolstoy, the wife of novelist Leo Tolstoy (whose own letters are also quoted here). The result is an expressive and moving portrait of a tempestuous marriage, one told with elan that feels rich in feeling even if its entire budget probably wouldn’t have covered the cost of croissants on an average film shoot in France.

That bald description might suggest it’s a quirky programming choice for the main competition at the Venice Film Festival unless you knew that the film’s co-writer and director is 92-year-old Frederick Wiseman, the American-born auteur who lives mainly in France now and has directed nearly 50 films in a storied career. There’s something typically puckish and surprising that at this late,...

Six decades into a career of over 40 films, the last thing you might request of a new feature from 92-year-old documentarian Frederick Wiseman is that it surprise us. Yet after a run of expansive, richly process-oriented observations of mostly American institutions and communities, his new film, “A Couple,” upends expectations of his work in what feels an almost mirthfully perverse number of ways. For starters, it’s laser-focused on just one person, not a heaving collective of human labor and activity. It’s short — very much so, in fact, barely stretching past an hour. Also, lest we be burying the lede, it’s not a documentary. Wiseman’s first ever narrative feature sees him collaborating with French actor-writer Nathalie Boutefeu on a biopic of sorts: a portrait of Leo Tolstoy’s anguished wife Sophia, dramatizing her marital dissatisfaction and psychic pain with with a lyrical, literate ear.

For viewers going in with that knowledge,...

Every Frederick Wiseman movie starts like a dare. Though the 90-year-old documentary legend has been chronicling social institutions ever since 1967’s “Titicut Follies,” many of his projects casually drift through three or four hours of dense, layered portraits following the people behind vast organizational forces. Ironically, this has actually made his work even more valuable with time, and “City Hall,” which clocks in at four hours and 32 minutes, is no exception. As attention spans dwindle and the complex mess of American governance grows murkier than ever, Wiseman’s immersive dive into Boston’s city services ignores the pressure to dumb things down and marvels at the complexity of a system designed to make the world run right.

Subtext: Take that, Trump! Just as Wiseman’s 2018 portrait “Ex Libris — The New York Public Library” served as a de facto repudiation of leaders who reject intellectual discernment, “City Hall” assails the corruption...

It’s been seven years since the Boston Marathon bombing put the Massachusetts capital in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, and beyond the odd bright flash of #BostonStrong graffiti on a shabby streetscape, it’s not discussed directly in “City Hall.” It doesn’t need to be: Its community-wide burden of grief, caution and a shared responsibility to rebuild is felt throughout Frederick Wiseman’s typically sprawling, inquisitive and inclusive anatomy of the city’s inner workings. Putting his hometown under the lens for the first time in his vast career, the 90-year-old documentarian — now resident in Paris — finds it in imperfect but hopeful flux, taking stock of its social diversity, inequalities and future priorities under the conscientious leadership of Democratic mayor Marty Walsh. The result is both sober and inspiring: an urban progress report taking into account a plethora of government services, scutinized by Wiseman’s patient but unblinking eye.

While Batwoman Season 2 is officially on the CW schedule for January 2021, when it returns, it will have a different actress in the title role. Ruby Rose announced that she is leaving the series, for reasons that haven’t yet been made clear. The news came in a statement from Rose.

“I have made the very difficult decision to not return to Batwoman next season,” Rose offered in a statement (via Variety). “This was not a decision I made lightly as I have the utmost respect for the cast, crew and everyone involved with the show in both Vancouver and in Los Angeles. I am beyond appreciative to Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter and Caroline Dries for not only giving me this incredible opportunity, but for welcoming me into the DC universe they have so beautifully created. Thank you Peter Roth and Mark Pedowitz and the teams at Warner Bros. and The...

Jackson Bostwick was only 30 years old when he slipped into the shocking spandex and took on the role of the superhero Captain Marvel  -- opposite Michael Gray as the young boy Billy Batson -- on the short-running Saturday Morning television show 'Shazam!' Although the series only lasted from 1974 to 1976 Jackson Bostwick only played the character Captain Marvel for the first 17 episodes of the program ... and was replaced by John Davey for the final eleven episodes.

After recent projects focusing on major public institutions like London’s National Gallery, California’s University of Berkeley, and the New York Public Library, Frederick Wiseman made his 47th documentary about the town of Monrovia, Indiana. It might appear Wiseman narrowed his scope, but in actuality, he treats the slower pace of Midwestern life no different from communities in Jackson Heights.

In our interview with the filmmaker, Wiseman discusses his editing process, which he calls a rational and free-associative process. We talk about the full immersion his crew of three made in the town and the coincidences he happened across that become the film’s most memorable scenes.

The Film Stage: What drew you to Monrovia, Indiana?

Frederick Wiseman: I told a friend of mine, a law professor in Boston, that I wanted to make a movie about a small town in the midwest. She said she had a friend...

In the last 51 years, Frederick Wiseman has made 42 non-fiction films, plus two fiction features. In a sense, each film is the same: The filmmaker, a sprightly and sharp 88, goes to an institution — or, in a handful of cases, a confined area — with a small crew. (Currently it’s his longtime cameraman John Davey and Davey’s assistant Jim Bishop.) Wiseman doesn’t do research; as he’s said countless times, “The shooting is the research.” He does no interviews. There is no onscreen text describing who is who, or even where is where. He rarely shows any person more than once. […]...

In the last 51 years, Frederick Wiseman has made 42 non-fiction films, plus two fiction features. In a sense, each film is the same: The filmmaker, a sprightly and sharp 88, goes to an institution — or, in a handful of cases, a confined area — with a small crew. (Currently it’s his longtime cameraman John Davey and Davey’s assistant Jim Bishop.) Wiseman doesn’t do research; as he’s said countless times, “The shooting is the research.” He does no interviews. There is no onscreen text describing who is who, or even where is where. He rarely shows any person more than once. […]...

Shazam! has left many DC fans scratching their heads. The movie hasn't shied away from showing star Zachary Levi in his bulked up costume on set, and it looks like a goofy family film in the spirit of Tom Hanks' Big. Now, just for April Fools' Day, the director of this standalone adventure has dropped the first official 'teaser trailer'. But don't get too excited. It's not what you think.

The Shazam trailer actually starts off pretty cool. We see ominous thunder and lightning as we hear the familiar rock sounds of AC/DC belting out Thunderstruck. Perhaps we're about to see something super cool? Nope. Not at all.

The director has pulled some amazing footage from the old Shazam TV show, which shows our hero strapped to a moving vehicle, windshield just out of frame, to offer a pretty authentic flying scene, at least for its day. Captain Marvel...

Growing up, Saturday morning television meant cartoons and nothing but cartoons. By the 1970s, though, live-action bits crept in, starting with Christopher Glenn’s In the News interstitials on CBS along with silly things like The Banana Splits and H.R. Puffenstuff. In 1974, though, Filmation cleverly blended the two as it took the Big Red Cheese from comics to television. Shazam! debuted in the fall of 1974 with Michael Gray as Billy Batson, charged by the animated gods with their powers to fight crime in the adult body of Captain Marvel.

Last year, Warner Archive released the complete series on DVD and it is as charming as ever in its simplicity. In a mere thirty minutes, Billy and Mentor (Les Tremayne) rode the highways of California in their Rv and when danger struck, the magic lightning let Bill become the hero (Jackson Bostwick). The effects were little better than when George Reeves...