There are a lot of things that Spike don’t like, and one was the way Clint depicted World War II. When Eastwood’s double header Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima came out in 2006, it was his chance to return to a genre he hadn’t touched in decades. But for Spike Lee, Clint Eastwood only served to erase a significant part of history, thus launching a bitter but short-lived feud between the directors that only another cinematic icon could resolve.

Spike Lee’s issue with the movies – particularly Letters from Iwo Jima – was that very few, if any, Black people were depicted, although it has been estimated that no fewer than 700 Black soldiers took part in the namesake 1945 battle. It was, to some, as if Eastwood was limiting the event to the flag raising, captured in Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photograph. As Lee put it, “Clint Eastwood did two films about Iwo Jima back to back and if you blinked you would miss the one Black person that was in it. There were Black marines in Iwo Jima.”

Clint Eastwood, naturally, wouldn’t just sit back and watch Spike Lee run all over his lawn like that, saying, “This guy’s lost his mind…A guy like that should shut his face.” Careful, Clint, you heard what Spike said about Wim Wenders…

Time does heal most wounds, but Spike Lee found a mediator in Steven Spielberg (who we know has no time for BS), who approached the 25th Hour director at an L.A. Lakers game. “He said, ‘Spike, stop talking about Clint Eastwood.’ I said, ‘I’m not…I’ve said all I’m gonna say,’ and that was it.” In a separate interview regarding that same Lakers game, Lee remembered, “I said: ‘Steven, it’s over with Clint Eastwood.’ Steven laughed and said: ‘I’ll call Clint and tell him in the morning.’ I said: ‘It’s over!’”

Spike Lee would get to tell his own side of WWII not long after Clint Eastwood’s films with 2008’s Miracle at St. Anna. Lee maintains that it was never meant to be a rebuttal of any kind, which is possibly true, as one could see the director eventually getting around to the subject matter to help better represent Black soldiers. Lee would return to war – this time using the Vietnam War as a plot device – with 2020’s Da 5 Bloods.

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While Borderlands is bound to go down as one of the biggest flops in recent memory, one has to think there are better days ahead for director Eli Roth, who’s already planning his return to horror with a sequel to last year’s hit Thanksgiving. Which of all of his movies is your favorite? Let us know by taking the poll below!

The post Poll: What’s Your Favorite Eli Roth Movie? appeared first on JoBlo.

The Cybertruck has been a menace on America’s roads since it launched, slicing open one owner’s leg, annoying residents of Maine and trapping all kinds of limbs in its openings. Now, it turns out that the angular atrocity is also ruining the virtual world as well.

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The Cybertruck has been a menace on America’s roads since it launched, slicing open one owner’s leg, annoying residents of Maine and trapping all kinds of limbs in its openings. Now, it turns out that the angular atrocity is also ruining the virtual world as well.

Read more…

After stunning the D23 crowd with announcements for upcoming animated features like Incredibles 3, Toy Story 5, Frozen 3, Zootopia 2, an Inside Out TV series, and more, Marvel Animation takes the stage this Saturday afternoon to tease upcoming projects coming our way. Marvel Animation’s showcase includes familiar titles, though new details about each make them more exciting than ever.

Marvel’s X-Men ’97 is one of the studio’s most well-received animated series in recent memory, with fans flocking to social media weekly to share their thoughts, feelings, and theories about the superpowered revival. X-Men ’97 Season 2 is coming, bringing some new mutants along for the ride, including Polaris, Warlock, Lady Deathstrike, Sabertooth, and Apocalypse. The announcement comes as Fortnite prepares to welcome more X-Men to the battle royale game, such as Cyclops, Jubilation Lee, and Colossus.

Marvel treated the D23 audience to a look at the upcoming animation Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man alongside the news that Coleman Domingo (Rustin, The Color Purple, Sing Sing) will voice Norman Osborne for the series. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man exhibits a more cartoony look than anticipated, with a look that harkens back to the Spider-Man comics of the 1970s. The show includes a symbiote, a version of Nico Minoru of The Runaways, Doctor Strange, and multiple versions of the wall-crawler. During the panel, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man creator Jeff Trammell said, “We get to dig into who Peter is and how that affects who Spider-Man becomes.” Hudson Thames returns to voice Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the show.

In a surprise announcement, Marvel announced that What If…? Season 3 will be the animated anthology’s final season. Marvel teased various episode elements, including a mech-based adventure with Oscar Isaac’s Moon Knight in the pilot’s seat of a battle-ready bot. Anthony Mackie’s Captain America shouts “Avengers Assemble” in an episode, with plenty of other surprises leading up to the show’s release.

Ryan Coogler brought the Black Panther animation Eyes of Wakanda to the stage, saying, “Wardogs are challenged with keeping Wakanda secret. So we can go back and look at the sacrifice people made to keep that secret.”

Finally, Marvel teased its upcoming Marvel Zombies animated series. The show features Simu Liu’s Shang-Chi (it’s about damn time), with the show being a hardcore TV-MA 4-episode event. Other characters featured in the show include Kate Bishop’s Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, Randal Park’s Jimmy Woo, Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, Red Guardian, Abomination, Captain Marvel, the Scarlet Witch, and more.

What Marvel Animation title from D23 are you most excited about? Let us know in the comments section below.

The post Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, X-Men ’97, What If… Season 3, and more swing into D23’s Marvel Animation panel appeared first on JoBlo.

Fifty years on, the conversation over The Conversation is far from over. To mark Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 paranoiac thriller — released the same year as The Godfather Part II, which is still hard to fathom — the film is getting a full 4K restoration, with Coppola himself having supervised the process.

As James Mockowski — who also worked extensively on Apocalypse Now Redux — told IndieWire, Coppola has always been satisfied with how The Conversation turned out so wouldn’t go back to the drawing board for an entirely new version. And since The Conversation never seems to get the love that most of Coppola’s other works from the decade — the film still feels like an “if you know, you know” masterpiece — they had no issues with the original negative, giving them an ideal starting point for the restoration. As Mockowski put it, “It hadn’t been used, so it was different from The Godfather, where that film had been loved so much that the original negative had gone through a lot of wear and tear with new prints and damaged sections being replaced with dupe negative…I cleaned the dirt, the scratches, all the stuff that has been collecting on it for 50 years, removing all the artifacts.”

From there, a print approved by late cinematographer Bill Butler was brought in for reference as to the color grading. A more recent sound mix created by the legendary Walter Murch was also utilized.

Even more recent than any of that, Mockowski even drew a line from The Conversation to Coppola’s latest, Megalopolis. “The common thread in all of Francis’ films is that he’s a student. He wants to learn different ways of filmmaking, and Megalopolis is certainly in that vein of trying something new and uncomfortable for him. When he made The Conversation, he didn’t know how to make a thriller. But he studied well and crafted something that has lasted 50 years and still resonates.”

With that, the 4K restoration of The Conversation has a limited theatrical run this month, while StudioCanal released a pretty awesome looking box set last month. Hopefully there is a Region 1 release coming soon enough because the labor that evidently went into this transfer sounds like it will have just the payoff fans deserve.

Are you a fan of Coppola’s The Conversation? Do you think it has found its audience or is there more to discover? Give us your thoughts below.

The post The Conversation gets deeper with 4K release for 50th anniversary appeared first on JoBlo.

It’s getting ugly. While we predicted that Eli Roth’s Borderlands was shaping up to be a box office flop, according to Deadline’s early numbers, the film is turning out to be nothing short of a catastrophe. Last night, the film only so little that the site forecasts the film is likely to end the weekend with a single digit gross, in the range of $8-10 million. While the reviews have been bad, audiences seem to hate the film even more, with it posting a truly atrocious D+ CinemaScore rating. When all is said and done, this $100 million plus blockbuster may not even earn north of $20 million (total) in North America.  It will likely go down as one of the biggest box office disasters ever, unless overseas business is brisk – which seems unlikely.

In another surprise, the Blake Lively-led Colleen Hoover adaptation, It Ends With Us, is doing truly blockbuster business. In fact, the film out-earned Deadpool & Wolverine on Friday, with Lively’s movie earning $24 million (including previews) next to the superhero blockbuster’s $15 million gross. Lively and hubby Ryan Reynolds are definitely this summer’s box office power couple, that’s for sure (don’t forget that his family movie, IF, also earned north of $100 million). It Ends With Us should finish the weekend just shy of $50 million, putting it in second place to Deadpool & Wolverine’s estimated $55 million.

Meanwhile, Neon’s Cuckoo, starring Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens, is opening more modestly than the indie studio’s recent horror breakout Longlegs. It should make about $3 million this weekend, which seems weak for such a well-reviewed film (our critic loved it). To note, for all the doom and gloom reports about the summer box office, Deadline reports that year to year, this weekend is up a full 44% from a year ago, when we were smack dab in the middle of the WGA and Actor’s Guild Strikes. 

What did you go see this weekend? Let us know in the comments!

The post Box Office Update: Borderlands may not crack $10 million; Blake Lively outgrosses hubby Ryan Reynolds on Friday appeared first on JoBlo.

This week, we’ve got tips for you on how to make the most of attunement as it returns to Destiny 2, as well as how to nab Fallout 76’s formidable Union Power Armor. We’ve also got a recommendation for The Order: 1886 which was much-maligned on release, tips about some sales you may want to take advantage of, and more.

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This week, we’ve got tips for you on how to make the most of attunement as it returns to Destiny 2, as well as how to nab Fallout 76’s formidable Union Power Armor. We’ve also got a recommendation for The Order: 1886 which was much-maligned on release, tips about some sales you may want to take advantage of, and more.

Read more…

“My name is Percy Jackson. I am a demigod.” We all knew that Percy Jackson and the Olympians would be getting a season two based on its massive viewership numbers, but seeing the teaser out of D23 is just what the fans deserve.

In the footage, we see Percy Jackson (Walker Scobell) facing off against monsters and getting cued up for what will surely be his greatest challenges so far. Scobell, too, looks and sounds comfortable reprising the character made famous in Rick Riordan’s book series. This season is, appropriately, based on the second book in the series, The Sea of Monsters.

In season two of Percy Jackson and the Olympians “Percy Jackson returns to Camp Half-Blood one year later to find his world turned upside down. His friendship with Annabeth is changing, he learns he has a cyclops for a brother, Grover has gone missing, and camp is under siege from the forces of Kronos. Percy’s journey to set things right will take him off the map and into the deadly Sea of Monsters, where a secret fate awaits the son of Poseidon.”

In attendance for the D23 event to tease Percy Jackson and the Olympians was Scobell, Riordan, Leah Sava Jeffries (Annabeth, daughter of Athena), and Aryan Simhadri (Percy’s best friend Grover), all of whom took a brief hiatus from filming to greet fans. Canadian actor Daniel Diemer has been added to the cast of season two. As the debut season had a colorful cast that featured the likes of Jason Mantzoukas (Dionysus), Megan Mullally (Alecto), Adam “Edge” Copeland (Ares), Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hermes), and the late Lance Reddick (Zeus) — who was paid special tribute in his episode, “The Prophecy Comes True” — let’s hope we have plenty of returning and some fresh faces to bring the book to life. Judging by the quality of the first season — which greatly improved on the 2010 film adaptation — certainly we can expect a strong follow-up.

What did you think of the teaser for season two of Percy Jackson and the Olympians? How do you think it will stack up against the first? Drop your thoughts in the comments below!

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