Palworld has seen updates here and there since its launch earlier this year, but its biggest came on June 27, 2024 with the Sakurajima update. In addition to a slew of new endgame content and updated mechanics, the focal point is the eponymous island that makes up the game’s latest region. But what should you do when…
The upcoming nominations for the best in television have been announced. The list of this year’s nominations for the 76th Primetime Emmys has been announced today by actors Sheryl Lee Ralph and Tony Hale in Hollywood. This year’s event has a rare distinction of taking place less than a year after the last event, which had been postponed to January of this year due to the ongoing writers’ and actors’ strikes that lasted for a bigger part of the summer and fall in 2023.
Last years Emmys included winners from such shows as The Bear, Abbott Elementary and HBO’s massively popular series Succession. The ceremony is set to take place on September 15 (ABC, 8 EDT/5 PDT), exactly eight months after the 75th Primetime Emmys were presented on Fox. The Hollywood Reporter has listed the nominations for this year, which can be seen below:
Best Talk Series
The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
Jimmy Kimmel Live! (ABC)
Late Night With Seth Meyers (NBC)
The Late Show With Stephen Colbert (CBS)
Best Reality Competition Series
The Amazing Race (CBS)
RuPaul’s Drag Race (MTV)
Top Chef (Bravo)
The Traitors (Peacock)
The Voice (NBC)
Best Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or a Movie
Matt Bomer (Fellow Travelers, Showtime)
Richard Gadd (Baby Reindeer, Netflix)
Jon Hamm (Fargo, FX)
Tom Hollander (Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, FX)
Andrew Scott (Ripley, Netflix)
Best Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or a Movie
Jodie Foster (True Detective: Night Country, HBO/Max)
Brie Larson (Lessons in Chemistry, Apple)
Juno Temple (Fargo, FX)
Sofía Vergara (Griselda, Netflix)
Naomi Watts (Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, FX)
Best Limited or Anthology Series
Baby Reindeer (Netflix)
Fargo (FX)
Lessons in Chemistry (Apple TV+)
Ripley (Netflix)
True Detective: Night Country (HBO)
Best Actress in a Drama Series
Jennifer Aniston (The Morning Show, Apple)
Carrie Coon (The Gilded Age, HBO/Max)
Maya Erskine (Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Prime Video)
Anna Sawai (Shogun, FX)
Imelda Staunton (The Crown, Netflix)
Reese Witherspoon (The Morning Show, Apple)
Best Actor in a Drama Series
Idris Elba (Hijack, Apple)
Donald Glover (Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Prime Video)
Walton Goggins (Fallout, Prime Video)
Gary Oldman (Slow Horses, Apple)
Hiroyuki Sanada (Shogun, FX)
Dominic West (The Crown, Prime Video)
Best Drama Series
The Crown (Netflix)
Fallout (Prime Video)
The Gilded Age (HBO)
The Morning Show (Apple TV+)
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Prime Video)
Shogun (FX)
Slow Horses (Apple TV+)
3 Body Problem (Netflix)
Best Actor in a Comedy Series
Matt Berry (What We Do in the Shadows, FX)
Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm, HBO/Max)
Steve Martin (Only Murders in the Building, Hulu)
Martin Short (Only Murders in the Building, Hulu)
Jeremy Allen White (The Bear, FX)
D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (Reservation Dogs, FX)
Best Actress in a Comedy Series
Quinta Brunson (Abbott Elementary, ABC)
Ayo Edebiri (The Bear, FX)
Selena Gomez (Only Murders in the Building, Hulu)
Maya Rudolph (Loot, Apple)
Jean Smart (Hacks, HBO/Max)
Kristen Wiig (Palm Royale, Apple)
Best Comedy Series
Abbott Elementary (ABC)
The Bear (FX)
Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO/Max)
Hacks (HBO/Max)
Only Murders in the Building (Hulu)
Palm Royale (Apple TV+)
Reservation Dogs (FX)
What We Do in the Shadows (FX)
The post The nominees for the 2024 Emmy Awards have been announced appeared first on JoBlo.
Deadpool & Wolverine is apparently a movie that’s happening, and the only reason I know that is because the marketing has been in full swing for weeks now. The constant ads have been pretty annoying, but the latest stunt makes me believe that maybe this whole thing won’t be entirely ass.
Deadpool & Wolverine is apparently a movie that’s happening, and the only reason I know that is because the marketing has been in full swing for weeks now. The constant ads have been pretty annoying, but the latest stunt makes me believe that maybe this whole thing won’t be entirely ass.
Deadpool & Wolverine is finally upon us in a matter of days. It is the only official MCU movie being released this year, and it happens to be a massive one. Reynolds, Jackman and their director, Shawn Levy, have been making the rounds doing promotion for the much-anticipated sequel. This sequel is already setting records for pre-sold tickets, so it’s quite amazing looking back to see how much of a hardship it was to get the first film made. 20th Century Fox would famously drag their feet on the project, especially since they already had Wade Wilson show up in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
According to Variety, Reynolds spoke to The New York Times when he revealed that he had actually paid out of his own pocket to have the screenwriters on set since the production on the first film was much more run-and-go. Reynolds explained, “No part of me was thinking when Deadpool was finally greenlit that this would be a success. I even let go of getting paid to do the movie just to put it back on the screen: They wouldn’t allow my co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick on set, so I took the little salary I had left and paid them to be on set with me so we could form a de facto writers room.”
He continues, “It was a lesson in a couple of senses. I think one of the great enemies of creativity is too much time and money, and that movie had neither time nor money. It really fostered focusing on character over spectacle, which is a little harder to execute in a comic-book movie. I was just so invested in every micro-detail of it and I hadn’t felt like that in a long, long time. I remembered wanting to feel that more — not just on Deadpool, but on anything.”
The original 2016 film had been released in a market that was already flooded with a bevy of superhero comic book movies. The majority of the films would showcase grand sequences and flaunt around in their mega-budgets. Deadpool was very scaled back in comparison and Reynolds thinks it benefited from having to work around a smaller budget, “Necessity is the mother of invention. The more constraints you place on a creative process, the more you think outside of the box. So, personally, I didn’t want more money than we needed. We wanted just enough money to make what we set out to make, but also find ways to creatively pivot.”
The post Ryan Reynolds reveals that on the first Deadpool, he let go of his salary and paid for the writers to be on set appeared first on JoBlo.
Stallone. Schwarzenegger. JCVD. Seagal. Snipes. Gibson. These were the legends of eighties and nineties action cinema, but let me tell you something, folks, back in the 80s, there was one guy who was just as big as any of them, and his name was Chuck Norris. Nowadays, his movies don’t get quite as much play as those of the other guys I mentioned, probably because Norris never really made an A-level studio film, with him mostly toiling in elevated B-movies throughout the decade. But, some of them were really a lot of fun, as we’re going to dig into one of the most over-the-top and explosive ones of them all – INVASION U.S.A.
Cut back to the year 1984. After years of making lower-budget action films, Norris’s career started to hit its stride. In 1983, Lone Wolf McQuade brought him to the attention of Menahem Golan, the head of Cannon Pictures. Golan hired him to star in two back-to-back Vietnam War epics, Missing In Action 1 and 2. Fun fact, the sequel was so good that it was released as the first film, while the crappy first film was released second, as a prequel. So Missing in Action was a runaway hit in 1984, leading to Norris signing on to a long-term contract with Cannon. As Missing in Action was such a smash for him, they re-teamed Norris with director Joseph Zito on one of the biggest movies in the company’s history, Invasion U.S.A.
This is a movie that needs to be seen to be believed. In this era, Cold War tensions were running at a fever pitch, and this was reflected in cinema. On the small screen, The Day After warned us all about what a real war with the Soviet Union would look like – basically that the world as we know it would end, but that was seen as too much of a bummer for Hollywood. Instead, the Cold War was typically fought on screen by proxy, such as in Rambo: First Blood Part 2, where Russia is shown to be working in cahoots with the Vietnamese government, and in Rocky IV, where it was fought in the ring. But, in Red Dawn, director John Millius attempted to do a sensitive, nuanced depiction of what a traditional war on the ground with the Soviets would look like, with sympathetic figures on both sides.
Invasion USA is not that film.
In this one, a Soviet Operative, Rostov, played by Richard Lynch, leads a Latin American guerrilla army (financed by cocaine) into southern Florida to commit acts of terror, at Christmas mind you, which include literally blowing up housefuls of families engaging in gold old fashioned Christmas cheer. The villain, Rostov, is so evil that the movie literally opens with him machine-gunning a boatful of Cuban refugees seeking asylum and freedom in the U.S.
But Rostov’s got a problem – a bearded warrior who haunts his dreams, played by the one and only Chuck Norris. While the CIA and authorities are clueless, a former operative named Matt Hunter, who lives on a gator farm in the Keys, knows what’s going on and has tangled with Rostov before. Soon, Hunter, who arms himself to the teeth, declares his own war on the terrorists, and what follows is the most testosterone-soaked bloodbath Cannon ever made, and that’s saying something.
Truly, this film needs to be seen to be believed. There’s literally a bit when leering terrorists gleefully try to blow up a school bus full of children, only for their plan to be foiled by Norris sporting perhaps the most glorious mullet this side of Kurt Russell. Norris is a killing machine in this movie. In a booze-fuelled conversation some years ago, I debated the merits of this film with John Fallon, who some of you may know as the man behind Arrow in the Head and our current director of operations. He told me this film is good because it’s essentially a slasher movie, albeit one in which the slasher is a good guy and is played by Chuck Norris. That’s pretty accurate, as Norris’s screen time is kept minimal, with much of the movie centred around Richard Lynch’s Rostov and the clueless authorities. When Norris’s Hunter shows up, it’s usually to either kick, kill or maim someone. The exposition is handled chiefly by his nominal love interest, a Miami reporter played by Melissa Prophet. Fun fact: Norris badly wanted Whoopi Goldberg to play the role. Goldberg, who hadn’t yet won an Oscar at this point, was willing as she had a fondness for Norris, but the director said no. Norris was so upset that he never worked with him again.
As it is, Invasion USA is a blast, with the action all done practically, with stunt people and real explosions. It was one of Cannon’s bigger movies, with the mall shootout costing more than many full movies they produced. Through it all, Norris, who’s magnificently coiffed and oiled throughout, is in fine form. He’s supported by the great Richard Lynch, whose memorable look has an interesting back story. You see, as a young man in the sixties, Lynch once got high on LSD and set himself on fire in Central Park. He survived but was left with extensive scarring, yet in some ways, this made his career, as he became a popular bad guy in action movies in the 70s and 80s.
Surprisingly, like many Norris’s other Cannon fare, the film was only a modest theatrical success, grossing $17.5 million – more than its $12.5 million budget. Yet, it became – and I swear this is true – MGM/UA’s best-selling videocassette of all time after Gone with the Wind. It also inadvertently led to the overthrow of Romania’s communist government.
Say what? Yes, as documented in the film Chuck Norris vs Communism, VHS tapes of the film found their way to Romania, which was under communist rule, and the film was one of several that helped fuel a popular uprising to overthrow the government. 1985 would prove to be a banner year for Norris, with it also seeing the release of his best film ever – even better than this one – Code of Silence – but perhaps that’s a story best left for another day. If you want to know more – hit us up in the comments, and we’ll do it. LONG LIVE CHUCK NORRIS
The post Invasion USA: Chuck Norris’s Most Insane Film Is Also One Of His Best appeared first on JoBlo.
PLOT: An epic drama set in the corrupt world of the spectacle-driven gladiatorial competition, exploring a side of ancient Rome never before told — the dirty business of entertaining the masses, giving the mob what they want most…blood and sport. The series introduces an ensemble of characters from all corners of the Roman Empire who collide at the explosive intersection of sports, politics, and dynasties.
REVIEW: The recent release of the Gladiator II trailer proves that the spectacle and grandeur of the Roman Empire make for fascinating storytelling. Influenced by epics like Spartacus, Cleopatra, and Ben-Hur, the arenas and gladiatorial combat have rarely been as good as they have been on the big screen. Returning to the book that inspired David Franzoni’s initial script for Ridley Scott’s 2000 Best Picture-winning feature film, Those About To Die takes a deeper dive into the politics and machinations of Rome during the first century. With a diverse cast replicating the massive empire’s varied denizens, this series feels like Game of Thrones without the dragons. Full of violence, nudity, and a fair amount of backstabbing and melodrama, Those About To Die fails to embrace the scale that made Gladiator a critical and box office hit despite having blockbuster filmmaker Roland Emmerich aboard as director and producer.
Where Gladiator focused on the conflict between Maximus rising from defeat to face off against Commodus, Those About To Die has half a dozen narrative threads to follow over the course of the ten-episode first season. At the forefront is the competition between the children of Emperor Vespasian (Anthony Hopkins). On one side is the elder son and experienced soldier Titus (Tom Hughes); on the other is the duplicitous and conniving Domitian (Jojo Macari). Both have skills that would make them leaders in the true annals of Roman history, but their rise to power is influenced by dramatic license that helps add to the details of this story. As the brothers and their father try to appease the crumbling control they have over their sprawling empire, we see various angles and class levels at play, which seem to center around the gladiatorial and chariot races, which are the main sports of the time period. Tenax (Iwan Rheon) manages a chariot team featuring Scorpus (Dmitri Leonidas) with aspirations to have their own faction. Kwame (Moe Hashim) is a warrior who becomes a slave and gladiator as he tries to free his sisters. Their mother, Cala (Sara Martins-Court), travels to Rome to free her three children and is embroiled with Tenax and the rest.
The series does not stop there as we see the far-flung distances of the Roman Empire. Each episode boasts multiple on-screen titles indicating antiquated names of regions, cities, and outposts. Most of these will not register any familiarity for the audience with Rome as the sole recognizable location. The cast includes so many other actors, including Rupert Penry-Jones, Gabriella Pession, Lara Wolf, Johannes Haukur Johannesson, Angeliqa Devi, and more, as the poor aim for freedom, the plebians squabble for power, and the powerful murder their way to more power. With many of these faces, aside from Game of Thrones veteran Iwan Rheon and Sir Anthony Hopkins, it is hard to invest in the story, which suffers from big ambitions but a limited budget. Most of the wide shots of vast Imperial-controlled lands suffer from mediocre CGI. The same can be said for the lions, tigers, and other wild animals that feature in the excess of the bread and circuses central to the 79 A.D. period. What does not seem to suffer is the plentiful nudity that feels like it is used to try and compensate for the lack of interesting narrative elements.
Iwan Rheon is well cast as Tenax, playing the character as amoral but not solely a villain either. Rheon has struggled to escape the shadow of his memorable performance as Ramsay Bolton and is one of the more interesting parts of this series. Equally, Moe Hashim and Sara Martins-Court provide the closest we have to heroes as the protagonists rarely seen in epics like this: Roman slaves of color. Djimon Honsou provided that role in Gladiator, but here, Hashim’s Kwame provides a Maximus-level character worth rooting for while Martins-Court develops into the most interesting part of this series by the finale. On the other side of the power spectrum, Jojo Macari somehow plays a despicable royal prince who is a blend of Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus and Malcolm McDowell’s Caligula. You will hate him as much as audiences hated Joffrey on Game of Thrones, but even Macari’s smug smirk begins to wear thin halfway through the ten-episode season.
Created by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Robert Roday (Saving Private Ryan), Those About To Die is closer to the scribe’s work on 10,000 BC and Thor: The Dark World than his historical epic The Patriot. Rodat has experience with television, having created Falling Skies for producer Steven Spielberg. Still, with this series, he tries to display every excess of Rome, but none of it feels as grand or decadent as the two-season HBO series about the same era. Without any major stars and Anthony Hopkins attached to lend some credibility to this cast, it falls to Independence Day director Roland Emmerich and helmer Marco Kreuzpaintner. Both directors helm five episodes each, providing the series with visual continuity. Still, the budgetary restraints mean that most scenes are shot within back alleys or closely within arenas to avoid the scale becoming a visual issue. When landscape shots are needed, they are used for establishing purposes only to avoid breaking the suspension of disbelief this series tries desperately to hold onto.
Those About To Die struggles to balance the historical accuracy of life in 79 A.D. with the complexities and dramatic tension needed for a long-format television series. There are characters in this series worth rooting for and despicable ones you will hate. The violence is explicit, and the action is well-choreographed. But that is all established in the premiere episode and repeated with minimal variation for ten episodes. Those About To Die is one of Peacock’s most visually ambitious projects, and it also says a lot about the limitations put on streaming series these days. I wanted to like Those About To Die but felt bored and underwhelmed. This series asked if I was entertained, and I responded with a big thumbs down.
Those About To Die premieres on July 18th on Peacock.
The post Those About To Die TV Review appeared first on JoBlo.
Earlier this year, it was announced that director Luc Besson would be making Dracula movie called Dracula: A Love Tale, a “big-budget reimagining” of the Dracula concept that will feature “some epic and potentially spectacular set pieces.” that project is now several months into production, aiming to wrap up this month – and Deadline has just shared a behind the scenes image that shows Besson and Caleb Landry Jones, who just worked with Besson on his most recent film, Dogman – with Jones in costume as Dracula! An edited version of the image can be seen above, and the full image can be found at the bottom of this article.
The idea that Jones would make a great Dracula occurred to Besson while they were on the set of Dogman. Wanting to work with the actor again as quickly as possible, the filmmaker then started assembling his take on Dracula. He told Deadline he’s fascinated with Jones because “He’s crazily talented. It’s something I haven’t seen since Gary Oldman. On a human level, he’s a gem, kind, lovely… there’s no entourage, no agents and assistants in tow.” This is the most inspired he has been by an actor since Jean Reno, who he made six movies with.
Dracula: A Love Tale is, as the title gives away, a love story, following Dracula as he connects with a woman in Belle Epoque Paris, who resembles his beloved wife Elisabeta, who died in mid-15th century Transylvania. Per legend, it was Elisabeta’s suicide that led Romanian ruler Prince Vlad III (the real-life inspiration for Dracula) to forsake God and embrace life as a vampire. The action moves between time and the settings of Dracula’s castle in Romania’s Transylvanian Mountains and Belle Epoque Paris, which substitutes Stoker’s original UK settings of Whitby and London. The Paris-set scenes in the second part of the film unfold in the lead up to July 14, 1989, as the city gears up to celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution.
Jones is joined in the cast by Zoë Bleu (Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?) as Elisabeta and her 1989 look-alike Mina, Matilda De Angelis (Citadel: Diana) as Mina’s best friend, and Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained) as a vampire-hunting priest who is on Dracula’s tail.
Deadline visited the set of Dracula: A Love Tale while filming was taking place on a 4,000 meter castle set that was built in the Darkmatters studio near Paris. The set includes a dungeon set complete with torture instruments, including a suspended metal cage; a decaying chapel; the vampire’s bedroom, featuring a large four poster bed carved with dragon motifs and strewn with roses; a majestic, double-staircase entrance hall, which is reached by a snow-covered driveway and courtyard, as well as a magnificent banquet hall. To learn more about the production, click over to Deadline.
Are you interested in Dracula: A Love Tale? Take a look at the first image of Caleb Landry Jones as Dracula, then let us know by leaving a comment below.
The post Luc Besson’s Dracula unveils behind the scenes image of Caleb Landry Jones as Dracula appeared first on JoBlo.
Lionsgate will be bringing a new version of The Crow to theatres on August 23rd – and while we had previously been referring to this project as a remake, Lionsgate recently let it be known that this is not to be called a remake, but rather a new adaptation of the source material, the comic book series created by James O’Barr. With just one month left to go before the film reaches the big screen, a poster has been unveiled, and you can check it out at the bottom of this article.
Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) directed this version of The Crow, working from a screenplay by Oscar nominee Zach Baylin (King Richard). The film is produced by Victor Hadida, Molly Hassell, John Jencks, and Edward R. Pressman. Dan Farah serves as executive producer. Here’s the synopsis: Soulmates Eric (Bill Skarsgard) and Shelly (FKA twigs) are brutally murdered when the demons of her dark past catch up with them. Given the chance to save his true love by sacrificing himself, Eric sets out to seek merciless revenge on their killers, traversing the worlds of the living and the dead to put the wrong things right.
As the synopsis mentions, Bill Skarsgard plays the lead character and is joined in the cast of The Crow by singer FKA twigs, who takes on the role of Shelly, the love of Eric’s life. Danny Huston (Yellowstone) plays the lead villain. David Bowles (Brothers), Isabella Wei (1899), Laura Birn (A Walk Among the Tombstones), Sami Bouajila (The Bouncer), and Jordan Bolger (Peaky Blinders) are also in the cast.
Based on the comic book series created by James O’Barr, the first version of The Crow was released in 1994. Following the production of three sequels (each about a different resurrected character), a redux was first announced in late 2008… then it had to make a long journey through development hell. Several screenwriters came and went, scripts were written and scrapped, studios went bankrupt, and directors like Stephen Norrington, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, Corin Hardy, and Francisco Javier Gutiérrez were all involved along the way. Actors up for the lead role during the long development period included Bradley Cooper, Mark Wahlberg, Tom Hiddleston, Luke Evans, Jason Momoa, and Jack Huston.
Are you looking forward to seeing the new version of The Crow? Take a look at the poster, then let us know by leaving a comment below.
The post The Crow reboot gets a poster ahead of August release appeared first on JoBlo.
A week after releasing a teaser for a new horror game seemingly called Emio, Nintendo has pulled back the curtain on the mysterious project with a full reveal. Turns out, it isn’t exactly what the creepy first trailer made it out to be, and is instead a new entry in the long-dormant Famicom Detective Club series. The…