When you boot up BioWare’s long-awaited RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard on October 31 and create your custom character, you’ll be asked what Faction your protagonist Rook came from before the game starts. As you’ll notice as you recruit new teammates throughout your journey, each of these Factions has a corresponding…
When you boot up BioWare’s long-awaited RPG Dragon Age: The Veilguard on October 31 and create your custom character, you’ll be asked what Faction your protagonist Rook came from before the game starts. As you’ll notice as you recruit new teammates throughout your journey, each of these Factions has a corresponding…
Alex Proyas, director of the 1994 version of The Crow, made it very clear that he wasn’t happy about the existence of this year’s The Crow reboot – and now Christian Tafdrup, director of the 2022 Danish film Gæsterne, a.k.a. Speak No Evil (read our review HERE) has followed in Proyas’s footsteps, revealing that he was not impressed by the recently released American remake of his film (you can read our 8/10 review of the remake HERE), even though he received an executive producer credit on the film.
James Watkins, whose previous credits include Eden Lake and The Woman in Black, wrote and directed the remake, which centers on a family who takes a dream holiday to an idyllic country house, only to have the vacation turn into a psychological nightmare. Tafdrup’s version of the story, which he wrote with his brother Mads Tafdrup, had the following synopsis: A Danish family visits a Dutch family they met on a holiday. What was supposed to be an idyllic weekend slowly starts unraveling as the Danes try to stay polite in the face of unpleasantness.
Speaking on the Danish radio show Kulturen, Christian Tafdrup said (with thanks to World of Reel for the translated transcription), “I don’t know what it is about Americans, but they are brought up for a heroic tale, where the good must win over the bad, and this version of the film cultivates that. … When I saw the film, I could see that they would never succeed with a film where the characters are stoned to death, as they do in our film. These people [in the U.S. version] must fight for their family and defeat the bad guys […] It is a kind of happy ending, and it is so deep in their culture that America must be able to handle it all.” He added that the changes Watkins made to the story and characters made the remake seem less dangerous than the original, more sanitized. Audience members seeing the remake “were completely over-enthusiastic and clapped, laughed and whooped. It was like being at a rock concert,” a very different experience from watching the original. He said, “People left my film traumatized.“
The remake was made on a budget of $15 million and, after one week in release, has earned over $24 million at the global box office, so it seems the changes that were made are paying off to some degree.
Blumhouse founder Jason Blum produced the Speak No Evil remake. Christian Tafdrup was credited as executive producer alongside Paul Ritchie, Jacob Jarek, and Bea Sequeira. The cast includes James McAvoy (Split), Mackenzie Davis (Terminator: Dark Fate), Scoot McNairy (Monsters), Aisling Franciosi (Stopmotion), and Alix West Lefler (The Good Nurse).
Have you seen either version of Speak No Evil? What did you think of them? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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The Pokémon Trading Card Game (PTCG) has been around just one year less than the video games it was based on, making it 27 years old this year. And while it generally hits the news when a classic card is sold for a ludicrous price, the actual competitive game it’s created for has never been more popular. This is…
The Pokémon Trading Card Game (PTCG) has been around just one year less than the video games it was based on, making it 27 years old this year. And while it generally hits the news when a classic card is sold for a ludicrous price, the actual competitive game it’s created for has never been more popular. This is…
Season 2 of the hit Netflix Addams Family series Wednesday has been filming in Ireland since May, and Netflix has just unveiled a video that gives a glimpse behind the scenes. In the process, they have also confirmed that the new batch of episodes will premiere sometime in 2025. Among the cast and crew members seen in the video are, of course, star Jenna Ortega, as well as director Tim Burton – and during a chat with Collider, Al Gough (who created this series with Miles Millar) revealed that Burton is directing half of season 2, which is the same thing he did for the first season. That means Burton is at the helm of four of the season’s eight episodes.
Wednesday comes to us from Millar Gough Ink, Tim Burton Productions, Toluca Pictures, and MGM Television, and is described as a comedic, supernaturally-infused coming-of-age series that follows the teenage girl’s years as a student at Nevermore Academy, where she attempts to master her emerging psychic ability, thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the town, and solve a mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago — all while navigating her new relationships at Nevermore. Snap snap.
Jenna Ortega plays the title character and beyond Wednesday, other members of the Addams Family include Isaac Ordonez as Pugsley, Luis Guzmán and Catherine Zeta-Jones as Gomez and Morticia, and Fred Armisen as Uncle Fester. Uncle Fester has only appeared on one episode of Wednesday so far, but we recently heard that the character might be getting his own spin-off series. New additions to the cast for season 2 include Steve Buscemi (The Big Lebowski), Billie Piper (I Hate Suzie), Evie Templeton (Lord of Misrule), Owen Painter (Tiny Beautiful Things), Noah Taylor (Law & Order: Organized Crime), Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future), Joanna Lumley (Absolutely Fabulous), Thandiwe Newton (Westworld), Frances O’Connor (The Missing), Haley Joel Osment (Tusk), Heather Matarazzo (Scream), and Joonas Suotamo (The Acolyte).
The cast of season 1 also included Christina Ricci as botanical sciences teacher Marilyn Thornhill; Riki Lindhome as Wednesday’s therapist Dr. Valerine Kinbot; Joy Sunday as Siren Nevermore student Bianca Barclay; Emma Myers as Wednesday’s sunny roommate Enid Sinclair; Hunter Doohan as townie Tyler Galpin; Moosa Mostafa as quirky Nevermore student Eugene Otinger; Georgie Farmer as awkward and shy Nevermore student Ajax Petropolus; Naomi J. Ogawa as vampire Nevermore student Yoko Tanaka; Percy Hynes White as supernaturally artistic Nevermore student Xavier Thorpe; Jamie McShane as Sheriff Donovan Galpin, Tyler’s father, who has a vendetta against Gomez; Gwendoline Christie as Larissa Weems, “the principal of Nevermore Academy who still has an axe to grind with her former classmate Morticia Addams”; Victor Dorobantu as Thing, the non-verbal disembodied hand; George Burcea as Lurch; Tommie Earl Jenkins as Mayor Walker; Iman Marson as Lucas Walker; William Houston as Joseph Crackstone; Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo as Deputy Santiago; Oliver Watson as Kent; Calum Ross as Rowan; and Johnna Dias Watson as Divina. Some of them are returning for Wednesday season 2, some are not.
Are you looking forward to Wednesday season 2, and are you glad to hear that Tim Burton is directing half of the season? Take a look at the behind the scenes video, then let us know by leaving a comment below.
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Netflix is continuing their love of all things dark by releasing the thriller Don’t Move next month. It has been over a year since we got our first look at the movie, so finally getting the trailer is definitely a treat.
Here is the official plot for Don’t Move, which comes to Netflix on October 25th: “A grieving woman hoping to find solace deep in an isolated forest encounters a stranger who injects her with a paralytic agent. As the agent gradually takes over her body, she must run, hide, and fight for her life before her entire nervous system shuts down.” That’s a pretty terrifying plot right there, especially if you are someone who has a genuine fear of paralysis or even suffers through it.
Don’t Move stars Kelsey Asbille, who has a very minor history with the genre (albeit of a different variety), having appeared in MTV’s Teen Wolf, but you might be more familiar with her from her role as Monica in Yellowstone and criminal Swanee Capps in season four of Fargo. It also stars Finn Wittrock, who has been on the scene through movies, TV and the stage for the better part of the past 20 years. Rounding out the core cast are Daniel Francis and Moray Treadwell. Don’t Move is directed by Adam Schindler and Brian Netto, who had a hand in urban legend-exploring series 50 Stages of Fright. It is written by T.J. Cimfel and David White, the team behind V/H/S Viral and Intruders.
But maybe the biggest draw for fans of the genre is that the movie is produced by Sam Raimi. Raimi has been an active champion for his team on Don’t Move, saying of Schindler and Netto, “I am delighted to collaborate again with our co-directors Adam and Brian on this incredibly frightening and tense story full of so many twists and turns – it will deliver a fantastic horror punch to the audience!” That’s awesome for the directors considering Raimi isn’t only their producer but one of the defining figures of the genre’s modern history.
What do you think of the trailer for Don’t Move? Will you be catching it on Netflix next month?
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If you listen closely, it feels like you can hear the jingle of plastic and metal for Nintendo’s next console as its manufactured and assembled in faraway factories. You can almost sense its launch lineup coming into focus as the company’s developers prepare to put their finishing touches on whimsical new experiments.…
If you listen closely, it feels like you can hear the jingle of plastic and metal for Nintendo’s next console as its manufactured and assembled in faraway factories. You can almost sense its launch lineup coming into focus as the company’s developers prepare to put their finishing touches on whimsical new experiments.…
PLOT: Two top-level fixers (Brad Pitt and George Clooney) with underworld connections must overcome their rivalry when a job goes awry.
REVIEW: Wolfs is getting a curiously unceremonious release, considering the talent involved. There was a time when Brad Pitt and George Clooney doing a buddy action movie together would have been an event. And the movie’s good to boot! Yet, Wolfs, which comes from director Jon Watts, who made the Tom Holland Spider-Man Trilogy for the MCU, is getting a quiet one-week theatrical run before its debut on Apple TV Plus on September 27th. It’s playing on precisely one screen here in Montreal and was not screened for critics.
So, what’s going on here? Probably, Apple is still licking its wounds from the embarrassing failure of their mega-budget movies, Argylle and Fly Me To The Moon, which, despite huge casts, cratered at the box office. Their debuts on Apple TV were met with indifference, as both films have the reputation of being flops, and Apple likely didn’t want that to happen with Wolfs, as this is part of a planned franchise for them. It’s too big to fail if you want to get into clichés.
Yet, it says something when a movie starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney can’t be relied on to deliver big box office, especially given that it’s an action comedy, which isn’t a tough genre to sell. The premise here is good, even if it would be a huge stretch to call it original. Likely, everyone reading this will remember Harvey Keitel playing Winston Wolf in Pulp Fiction, the guy you need to call to get rid of a body. That’s exactly the service both Pitt and Clooney’s characters perform here, with the title, Wolfs, being a nod to QT’s films – apropos given they both come from that world (Pitt is a regular in his movies, while Clooney played his brother in From Dusk Till Dawn).
Both actors play to their strengths here. They’re famous for playing cool and collected, albeit with human touches and a sardonic sense of humour. This served them well in the Ocean’s Trilogy, and Wolfs is very much in the same vein, albeit with a bit of a harder edge. Like those movies, this is a crime caper, but Watts has an R-rating to play with, meaning lots of F-bombs, and some violence.
The stakes in this are deadlier than in the Ocean’s films, with the two fixers called in to dispose of a dead body a wannabe DA (Amy Ryan) has inadvertently ended up with after a one-night stand gone awry. Of course, the guy they’re getting rid of (played by Austin Abrams) isn’t quite dead and happens to be in possession of a quarter million dollars of heroin that’s been stolen from the Albanian mob.
Clooney and Pitt have always had great chemistry, and the film is totally built around this aspect. They’re supposed to hate each other, but the bromance gradually building between the two is palpable, building to a legitimately great finale that calls to mind Newman and Redford in Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid.
Working with a streamer gives Watts more leverage to make this more adult than the Ocean’s movies were, as a PG-13 does not shackle him. Both Clooney and Pitt have fun with their advancing ages, with them having similar bad backs and sharing a bottle of Advil at one point. It also has some great needle drops, with Clooney’s character a fan of Sade, plus a little Phil Collins on the soundtrack never hurt anyone.
While it’s a shame a movie like Wolfs can no longer be assured of a major release, it will likely find an audience on Apple TV Plus. It’s far from the best either Pitt or Clooney has done, but if you look at their combined filmographies, that’s to be expected. This is the two of them having fun, and with a contained setting, it’s a great hangout flick. Watching the two of them do their thing together has always been a blast, and Wolfs is their best as a combo since the original Ocean’s Eleven.
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