It hasn’t even been a month since its release, but publisher Warner Bros. Games is disappointed in its live-service shooter Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. With barely 1,000 people playing the gameon Steam, the company has flat-out stated that Suicide Squad completely missed its purported expectations.
Lady Gaga dropped into Fortnite Festival season 2 just a few days ago, and she’s already shaking up the battle royale—not only with her themed cosmetics, but also with her actual presence. Yes, it appears that Lady Gaga—the woman who once asked “what is fortnight?”—is playing Fortnite. And she’s not the only pop girly…
Lady Gaga dropped into Fortnite Festival season 2 just a few days ago, and she’s already shaking up the battle royale—not only with her themed cosmetics, but also with her actual presence. Yes, it appears that Lady Gaga—the woman who once asked “what is fortnight?”—is playing Fortnite. And she’s not the only pop girly…
James Gunn has been sharing his excitement for the upcoming start of Superman: Legacy this week. Previously, he shared a photo of him showing the stars of Peacemaker, Jennifer Holland and Freddie Stroma, the set of the film. He also shared a cast photo at the table read of the film. The caption on the photo read, “After the table read with the #Superman cast. Eve, Mr. Terrific, Superman/Clark, Otis, Lex, producer Peter Safran, Jimmy, Metamorpho, Lois, Hawkgirl, me, Guy, The Engineer all together for the first time! What a wonderful day.” The photo also showcases Nicholas Hoult’s new bald look for playing Lex Luthor in the film.
The DCU inaugural film is due to start shooting next week, and one person who is ecstatic about it is Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav. According to Variety, Zaslav gave a fourth-quarter earnings call this morning, which touched on a lot of the studio’s upcoming projects, like the Harry Potter TV series on Max. Besides Barbie, Warner Bros. is definitely feeling the impact of flops from the past year, but the CEO is confident about this new Man of Steel incarnation. He states, “Bottom line, the studio has really been underperforming — including at the end of the year where we had some real struggle — but we’re very optimistic about this year, and it has given us the chance to have a lot of upside in the next two years.”
Warner Bros. Discovery’s CFO, Gunnar Wiedenfels, also chimed in to say, “On the film side, obviously this is going to continue to be a hit-driven business. Just last year was a great example, with the greatest success in the film studio’s history, and some real challenges across the industry on the superhero side.”
Superman: Legacy also added John Murphy as the film’s composer. Murphy’s previous work includes musical arrangements for The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker, The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Gunn made his enthusiastic announcement on Instagram about working with him again, “Happy to announce that my frequent collaborator @johnmurphycomposer is scoring #SupermanLegacy. John was one of the first people I called when I finished the script many months ago as I knew how incredibly important the score was to this production. John has been working tirelessly since, creating hours worth of music that we’ll play on set as we shoot & use in the edit & that will eventually be recorded with a glorious symphony for all of you. Welcome to the DCU, John!”
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After being delayed several months by the writers strike and the actors strike, season 5 of the hit Netflix series Stranger Things finally went into production at the start of the year – but if you were hoping that might mean the new episodes will be available to watch on Netflix by the end of 2024, or even at the beginning of 2025, new cast member Linda Hamilton is here to dash those hopes. While speaking to Business Insider, Hamilton said Stranger Things season 5 will be filming for an entire year!
Hamilton said, “It’s a year of shooting, so I couldn’t be happier. Their season takes a year to shoot, which is just an unheard-of luxury of time. But the size of their day is also so beyond any scale that we’re used to.“
We’ve never gotten any details on the character Hamilton will be playing in the new season, and Business Insider mentions that fan speculation has ranged from an older version of Eleven or an older sister of Joyce to a CIA operative. Hamilton told them, “All of it’s true. I confirm everyone’s theory is correct. That’s all I can share. They’re all right!“
Hamilton has previously said that she has been a fan of Stranger Things up to this point, but she won’t be watching season 5 because she’s in it.
Created by the Duffer Brothers, Stranger Things has the following synopsis: A love letter to the ‘80s classic genre films that captivated a generation, Stranger Things is a thrilling drama set in the seemingly normal Midwestern town of Hawkins, Indiana. After a boy vanishes into thin air, his close-knit group of friends and family search for answers and are pulled into a high-stakes and deadly series of events. Beneath the surface of their ordinary town lurks an extraordinary supernatural mystery, along with top-secret government experiments and a dangerous gateway that connects our world to a powerful yet sinister realm. Friendships will be tested and lives will be altered as what they discover will change Hawkins and possibly the world — forever.
Here’s the list of the cast members and the characters they played in season 4: Winona Ryder (Joyce Byers), David Harbour (Jim Hopper), Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven), Finn Wolfhard (Mike Wheeler), Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin Henderson), Caleb McLaughlin (Lucas Sinclair), Noah Schnapp (Will Byers), Sadie Sink (Max Mayfield), Natalia Dyer (Nancy Wheeler), Charlie Heaton (Jonathan Byers), Joe Keery (Steve Harrington), Maya Hawke (Robin Buckley), Priah Ferguson (Erica Sinclair), Brett Gelman (Murray), Cara Buono (Karen Wheeler), Matthew Modine (Dr. Brenner), Paul Reiser (Dr. Owens), Jamie Campbell Bower (Peter Ballard), Joseph Quinn (Eddie Munson), Eduardo Franco (Argyle), Sherman Augustus (Lt. Colonel Sullivan), Mason Dye (Jason Carver), Nikola Djuricko (Yuri), Tom Wlaschiha (Dmitri), Myles Truitt (Patrick), Regina Ting Chen (Ms. Kelly), Grace Van Dien (Chrissy), Logan Riley Bruner (Fred Benson), Logan Allen (Jake), Elodie Grace Orkin (Angela), John Reynolds (Officer Callahan), Rob Morgan (Chief Powell), Amybeth McNulty (Vickie), and Freddy Krueger himself Robert Englund (Victor Creel).
Stranger Things is produced by Monkey Massacre Productions and 21 Laps Entertainment. Series creators The Duffer Brothers serve as executive producers alongside Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen of 21 Laps Entertainment, Iain Paterson, and Curtis Gwinn.
10 Cloverfield Lane and Prey director Dan Trachtenberg will be directing an episode, likely sometime before he heads off to make the new Predator movie Badlands in July.
Are you looking forward to Stranger Things season 5, and are you surprised to see Linda Hamilton say that it’s going to be filming for an entire year? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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Tom Green has cancer. It is early 2000, and he is about to go under for surgery, and guess what? He’s recording the whole thing because he would like to educate you on the world of testicular cancer, and if you can see his internal organs while doing so, so be it. And so there he is at 28 years old in a hospital gown, making jokes while medical professionals get ready to chop off one of his nuts. “This is going to freaking suck,” he says. But, if we know anything about him, nothing is off limits for Tom Green. It was the ultimate combination of tragedy and comedy; you have a young man in his prime facing death while telling the world’s greatest testicle joke. This comedian turned cancer into performance art, which made me believe God might have a twisted sense of humor… kinda like Tom Green himself.
The dude revolutionized a breed of comedy that borders on anarchy, using the boob tube to reveal just how wild and crazy the world can be… all you need is a warrior clown poet willing to go beyond the punch line. The comedy stylizing of Tom Green consists of gross-out reality-based chaos with flare from old-school hip hop and energy from punk rock skateboard culture. But are these jokes still funny? Was Tom Green misunderstood and ahead of his time? Was he trying to tell us something about the human condition through tom foolery and disgusting shenanigans? Is this man still out there influencing the masses? So yeah, WTF Happened to…Tom Green?
But to truly understand what the heck happened to Tom Green, we go back to the beginning. And the beginning began when he was born on July 30th, 1971, in Ontario, Canada, to Mary and Richard, who would be the butt of so many of their baby boy’s pranks. And Tom Green was a skater boy who loved pranks, stemming from a sort of anger against authority, using over-the-top and sometimes vile antics to get a laugh and make us think.
But he would soon find out that just because something was funny in high school didn’t mean it was funny in front of strangers. At least not yet. In college – not long after launching a go at stand-up as a teen, performing at Ontario’s famed Yuk Yuk’s – Green honed his skills with a college radio show. This he spun into a late-night call-in show with eventual MTV sidekick Glenn Humplik.
In its earliest iteration, The Tom Green Show premiered in 1994, airing only in Canada for years until MTV picked it up, debuting in January 1999. MTV was on the cusp of a major transition, nearly ditching the “M” in favour of reality shows. So here was the new standard, and it didn’t take long for Tom Green to make a name, love or loathe him. One week he’s putting a decapitated cow head in a bed; the next, he’s commandeering mall PA systems; the next, he’s putting crap on a mic head; the next he’s repainting the family car into the “Slutmobile”, the next he’s banging an animal carcass, the next he’s sucking milk from a cow’s udder. Tom Green would do anything for a laugh…even if you weren’t laughing. For their part, TV Guide would name The Tom Green Show one of the 50 worst programs ever.
But look at the legacy. Jackass and Billy on the Street and The Eric Andre Show (which he appeared on in 2012) all owe their greenlighting and success to Tom Green. Hell, Jackass even directly stole bits from Green, who was at least smart enough not to mess with a bull.
But none of these had the ill-rhyming skills of Tom Green. Whereas the Jackass boys relied on The Minutemen for their theme, Tom Green performed his own. And in 1999, he released “Lonely Swedish (The Bum Bum Song)”, wherein he sang about and executed putting his butt on everything from a step to some cheese. The year prior he had released a 1998 meta album under the pseudonym MC Face, in which he mocked Tom Green…He wouldn’t dabble in music again until 2005 with the album “Prepare for Impact” with songs like “I’m an Idiot” and “Don’t Mess with a Man (After He Takes a Big Poo Poo” (2008’s “Basement Jams” would follow).
In early 2000, Tom Green dressed as Hitler at a bar mitzvah–OK, so that didn’t happen, but many believed that led to the end of The Tom Green Show (and it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility). In actuality, it was a bout with testicular cancer – documented in a widely commended TV special – that cut the cord.
Tom Green would soon cut the umbilical cord…with his teeth in Freddy Got Fingered (2001). This was the feature that would solidify Tom Green (by way of the movie) as “offensive”, “witless”, “tragically awful”, and below the creativity of a sideshow act. But what does Tom Green care about critics? He was going to the Razzies! Freddy took home five Razzies that year: Worst Picture, Actor, Director, Screenplay, Screen Couple (Green and the animals he abuses). And yes, he accepted those honors (wearing his wedding tuxedo), having to be taken off the stage because he wouldn’t stop playing the harmonica. Anything for a laugh. But thanks to the dudes at Red Letter Media, people are now looking at this film in a whole new way. This may be a brilliant social commentary on how the Hollywood studio system operates when a new silly man becomes popular. They give these goofballs millions and let them totally mess around, and mess around is what Tom did. Some call it anti-comedy, some call it satirical genius, and some call it stupid, but sometimes you gotta be smart to be stupid.
Before Freddy Got Fingered, Green landed an oddball supporting part in Road Trip (2000), where he got to lick a mouse, and Charlie’s Angels (2000), playing boyfriend to real-life girlfriend Drew Barrymore. After a marriage stunt on SNL when Green hosted, the two actually did wed in July 2001…filing for divorce that December. But somehow, he would be trusted to co-lead another movie post-Freddy, Stealing Harvard (2002) alongside Jason Lee.
Maybe the film medium wasn’t for Tom Green. He would play the occasional lead, as in 2005’s Bob the Butler (which premiered on Disney Channel of all places!). Still, he mostly stuck to supporting roles that even most Green aficionados probably couldn’t rattle off: 2008’s Shred (a skate shop owner), 2016’s Total Frat Movie (reversing roles as the responsible one), 2017’s Bethany (a horror flick where Green plays a doctor), 2019’s Iron Sky: The Coming Race (as a cult leader)…But the small screen was his forte.
And so Tom Green settled behind the desk not long after his cancer battle subsided, leading The New Tom Green Show in 2003. Here, he leaned more into his admiration for Letterman (although his biggest guests were WTF faves Marilyn Manson and Andy Dick…); He even got the shot to guest-host for The Late Show icon in June of that year. Interestingly, he would later end up working for rival Jay Leno as a correspondent, which is pretty good considering he got shitfaced on Jagermeister during a 2002 appearance. The New Tom Green Show lasted just three months.
But we saw a more mature Tom Green – and we’re hesitant here, but it’s not inaccurate – mature Tom Green. Gone were the days of destroying drug stores and rubbing his butt on strangers. This was a man who went on USO Tours in 2003 (Kosovo) and 2004 (Persian Gulf). He is no Bob Hope, but it was admirable to use his comedy skills in such a way.
The small screen got even smaller for Tom Green – but not because his fandom had died down. He invited us into his home for 2006’s Tom Green’s House Tonight (starting as Tom Green Live), filming in his living room. For this go at an interview program, he won a coveted Webby for Best Variety Show. He would later host a podcast.
It turns out that maybe people like seeing Tom Green or at least want to know what he might do now that his shtick has mellowed. But he also can’t help himself. When he appeared on season eight of Celebrity Apprentice (2009), he was fired in the third episode for showing up late after an all-night bender with Dennis Rodman. When he partook in Celebrity Big Brother 2 (2019), he was almost refined in his odd antics, still wacky but slightly less perverted, I guess. What, really, could we expect? This guy has had so much fun being himself…even when he’s a cyborg version of himself, as he was on Workaholics (2013).
But there’s nothing outrageous anymore – even his America’s Got Talent stunt where Green becomes engulfed in flames was revealed to be a stuntman. How can he be? Where has our Tom Green gone? This is the man who brought the obnoxious jerk with no limits back to the mainstream, pre-dating those idiotic TikTok pranks that have gotten people shot. Social media has sucked out the artistry and the punk rock edge of prank videos. Nowadays, pranksters seem motivated by views and clicks, but Tom was motivated by his love of comedy. Performance art is dead, taken over by desperate “internet clout.” They won’t have legacies, and you probably don’t know their names, but you will never forget the name Tom Green.
And not to put him on some golden pedestal, but Tom Green, the little udder-sucker that could, remains. He even continues stand-up to this day, tossing in variations of past MTV bits and movie scenes. But it seems now that podcasting is really his thing, and it seems to really make him happy. His dedicated fans still tune in to hear this man’s hilarious, wise words, broadcasting from his farm… that’s right, Tom Green is a farmer now… as foretold in his brilliant satire Freddy Got Fingered.
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Let me be upfront: no, you’re not the only person trying and failing to spread democracy in Helldivers 2 this week.
Let me be upfront: no, you’re not the only person trying and failing to spread democracy in Helldivers 2 this week.
PLOT: Ella Blake is a stop-motion animator who is struggling to control her demons after the loss of her overbearing mother. Suddenly alone in the world, she embarks upon the creation of a macabre new puppet film, which soon becomes the battleground for her sanity.
REVIEW: Every year, during the barren months of January and February, there’s always some horror movie that comes along and stuns. Last year had Infinity Pool and 2024 has Stopmotion. Just like the former, the latter is a mind-bending, horrific experience. The melding of stop-motion animation with horror is the perfect pairing. But it’s the story of a young girl slowly going insane that will stick with you long after the credits roll.
Aisling Franciosi is absolutely incredible as Ella Blake, a young woman obsessed with animation. But her mother is so overbearing that she’s never really able to explore her own creative side. Tragedy strikes and Ella suddenly finds herself finally being able to express what’s deep down inside of her. She starts making a film of her own, but the horrors within the frame start seeping out into her life. Even that description could get some eyes rolling. I understand and acknowledge that. But it’s the execution of both the acting, as well as the effects that help to make this film stand out.
The quality of stop-motion animation in this film is top-tier. Which I suppose should be expected, given its namesake. But it’s hard not to be impressed with how seamlessly the animation is blended with the live-action footage. I’ll always have a soft spot for this style and think others will feel the same. The design of the puppets can best be described as disturbing nightmare fuel. And I say that with love. There’s a creepy puppet that reminded me of Slappy from Goosebumps. The main puppets’ almost organic look, made it all the grosser and the sound design helped with the “ick factor.” Little touches like this really add to the visual language.
I often find myself annoyed with child performances in movies, because if they don’t work, they bring the entire movie down. Thankfully, Caoilinn Springall is fantastic as the Little Girl. The arc of her character is rather telegraphed but it still provides for some great moments. It’s challenging to make a tiny girl intimidating yet she’s able to take command of her scenes. I also appreciated Stopmotion for how fearless it was in its depiction of violence. Some of it quick, some of it prolonged, all leaving an impact. And it’s tied into the story and is so vital, that it’s hard to imagine the story without it.
If I had to pick something that didn’t entire work for me, it’s the world of stop-motion being so prevalent. Everyone in the movie is passionate about the craft and has varying degrees of knowledge. It almost reaches a point of satire, especially with how seriously certain people take it. Ella’s obsession pairs well with her own sanity breaking down, but to see others treating it like it’s the “cool thing” to be doing is rather odd. There’s some unintentional humor that sprung up from this, just with how seriously it’s all taken. Thankfully the cinematography and sound design never let up, so these lesser moments can be quickly forgotten.
Stopmotion is a surreal experience from beginning to end. Anchored by phenomenal performances, the eerie score and stunning cinematography make for unique viewing. Robert Morgan has a history with animation, so it’s not surprising that this element is so masterfully done. But what is surprising, is how much of a veteran Morgan already is working with the actors. The performances all work in service of the story and I can’t say enough good things about Aisling. She’s an absolute force of nature and does so much with so little. Had this been just a 90-minute film of Ella meticulously making a short clip from her film, I’m sure it would have been riveting.
STOPMOTION IS IN THEATERS IN THE UNITED STATES ON FEBRUARY 23RD, 2024.
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Nightingale, a new co-operative survival game developed by Inflexion Games and led by former BioWare boss Aaryn Flynn, released in Early Access on February 20 and required an always-online connection from players even when taking on the game solo. Now, only two days later, the game is walking back its online-only…