Animation
Pixar on How Personal Experiences Influenced Soul
Soul marks a series of firsts for Pixar. It’s the first film the studio has ever released with a Black protagonist, a music teacher voiced by Jamie Foxx; it’s the studio’s first film with a Black co-director in screenwriter Kemp Powers; and the first Pixar film to go straight to streaming. Due out on Christmas via Disney+, Soul follows Joe Gardner (Foxx), a music teacher whose aspirations of performing jazz come to fruition after he nabs a cushy performing gig with a well-respected group. That is, until he falls to his death. Now, left as a metaphysical soul, Joe endeavors to return to Earth to his body before it’s too late. It’s an imaginative journey that the Emeryville, California-based animation studio brings to life with a startling array of visuals that feel unprecedented. Edito...
Top 25 Films of 2020
Our Annual Report continues as we reveal the Top 25 Films of 2020. Stay tuned for more awards, lists, and articles in the days and weeks to come about the best music, film, and TV of the year. If you’ve missed any part of our Annual Report, you can check out all the coverage here. Going to the movies ain’t like it used to be, right? What an understatement. With theaters shuttered up and movie chains filing for bankruptcy, one might argue it’s been a pretty crap year for cinema. Financially speaking, they’re not wrong. But, art is a funny thing. It has a way of enduring even the most arduous obstacles — you know, that whole Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park, “life finds a way” bit — and this year was a testament to that truth. Art had no issue finding a proper stage. That stage, as fate...
Soul Wears an Old Hat But Opens New Doors for Pixar: Review
The Pitch: A new original Pixar film from the co-writer/director of Monsters, Inc., Up, and Inside Out, Soul is meant to remind us all how wonderful this studio’s films can be. And with a cast including Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, and Graham Norton … could it possibly go wrong? Death Becomes Him: The ads for Soul have been playing for roughly a year, due to the film’s original release plan being upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. But the gist has been the same: Foxx voices Joe, a kindhearted middle-school music teacher in New York City who has dreams of being a full-time jazz pianist. Lucky for Joe, he’s got the talent, too, as he shows to a jazz legend (Angela Bassett) during an impromptu audition. After getting the gig, everything seems swell for Joe…until he falls through an open sewer and die...
Gorillaz Bring the Song Machine to Life with a Multimedia Extravaganza: Review
Editor’s Note: This review is of Performance 2 of Gorillaz’s Song Machine Live, which aired on December 12th at 7:00 p.m. ET. Setting the Stage: If there’s one thing that Gorillaz are known for, it’s irresistibly creative fusions of music and visuals. From the very beginning, they’ve ensured that their videos, concerts, web content, and assorted paraphernalia provided a characteristically cartoonish spectacle to match the flamboyant edge of their tunes. Their latest multimodal project, Song Machine, is the best example yet of that fusion, as it mixed episodic webisodes with an almanac, a proper LP — this year’s Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez — and more. Really, all that was missing were live performances — that is, until now. This past weekend, the group teamed up with LIVENo...
What’s Streaming on Disney+ in December 2020
Disney+ is bringing some much-needed Soul to Christmas. Yes, on December 25th, the Mouse House is rolling out its would-be Pixar blockbuster on their streaming service. Unlike this past September’s release of Mulan, however, Soul will be completely free to subscribers. Consider it a gift from Mickey. Of course, that’s not the only present to unwrap this month. There’s also Jillian Bell’s new comedy Godmothered, the exhaustively titled High School Musical: The Musical: The Holiday Special, and the remaining episodes of The Mandalorian Season 2. Editors’ Picks Elsewhere, nostalgics can enjoy watching Tom Hanks play Josh Baskin in Big, head to the clouds with Kurt Russell in Sky High, and pretend like they’re watching Max Keeble’s Big Move for the first time. Into the Woods is somewhere...
What’s Streaming on Netflix in December 2020
Netflix is unwrapping some big gifts in December 2020. The shiniest box under the proverbial tree is David Fincher’s Mank. The filmmaker’s first feature in six years stars Oscar winner Gary Oldman as legendary Hollywood screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and the drama that surrounded his work on Citizen Kane. Another star-studded feature is Ryan Murphy’s The Prom, a fish-out-of-water comedy that finds Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, and Keegan-Michael Key putting on a Broadway production in a small town. That should keep the family business. Elsewhere, there’s the highly anticipated Selena: The Series, the fourth season of Big Mouth, the fourth and final season of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and the de facto seasonal docuseries The Holiday Movies That Made Us. EditorsR...
Hulu’s Animaniacs Returns Prettier, Glossier, and Shinier: Review
The Pitch: Twenty-two years after their last escape from the Warner Brothers water tower on the Burbank studio lot, Yakko, Wakko and Dot are back for more slapstick comedy, more hijinks, more political commentary, more pop culture dissections, and more absurdity. Also returning to the fold is executive producer Steven… Please click the link below to read the full article. Hulu’s Animaniacs Returns Prettier, Glossier, and Shinier: Review Ryan Larson You Deserve to Make Money Even When you are looking for Dates Online. So we reimagined what a dating should be. It begins with giving you back power. Get to meet Beautiful people, chat and make money in the process. Earn rewards by chatting, sharing photos, blogging and help give users back their fair share of Internet revenue.
US Republican senators confront Netflix over Chinese sci-fi show
Five Republican US senators have confronted Netflix over the streaming giant’s plan to adapt a Chinese sci-fi book trilogy, expressing concern over the original author’s comments about claims of forced labor in Xinjiang. Liu Cixin’s bestselling “The Three-Body Problem,” which tells the story of humanity’s first contact with aliens, is set to become a major Netflix series co-written by the creators of “Game of Thrones.” In a letter to content boss Ted Sarandos, the senators accused Liu of “parroting dangerous [Communist Party] propaganda” and suggested Netflix was “providing a platform to Mr Liu in producing this project.” They highlighted a New Yorker article from last year in which Liu is quoted defending mass internment in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, where activists say more th...
Bob’s Burgers Renewed for Two More Seasons by Fox
Bob’s Burgers was renewed for Season 11 mere months ago, and it looks like the animated series won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Fox just gave an order for Season 12 and 13 of the Emmy-winning TV show as well, reports Deadline. “Family Guy and Bob’s Burgers are key pillars of our network’s success. By taking the genre to new heights and driving pop culture in meaningful ways, they’ve laid the foundation for making Animation Domination one of the most powerful program blocks in all of television,” said Michael Thorn, President, Entertainment, Fox Entertainment. “Both of these two-season renewals affirm once again our commitment to animation and empower us to continue in our build as the leader in the space with distinct and fresh new comedies. We’d like to thank Seth, Loren and their en...
The 25 Most Anticipated Movies of Fall 2020
“New year, new decade, new films, right?” That was January, back when we were still looking ahead at 2020 with blind optimism and ill-fated excitement. Sigh, hindsight is 20/20 they say, right? Who knew. At the time, we had 50 exciting new titles we were anticipating, most of which have since been either postponed, dumped to VOD, or relegated to a limbo state. It’s been an unnerving year for the film industry, to say the least. A year fraught with shutdowns, furloughs, layoffs, bankruptcies, and re-evaluations. All of that change has prompted a seismic shift in how everything’s run across the media landscape, and no one truly has a grip on things just yet. Odds are they won’t for quite some time. Because of this, anticipating anything right now — let alone anything in pop culture — seems l...
A Brief History of Marge Simpson Versus Washington
You may think it’s a sign of our perpetually insane times that a member of the Trump administration somehow managed to kick up a feud with a cartoon character. Nevertheless, Trump’s Senior Legal Adviser, Jenna Ellis, recently tweeted that Democratic VP candidate Kamala Harris “sounds like Marge Simpson.” This prompted Marge, ever the consummate (albeit imaginary) professional, to issue a polite but cutting response, criticizing Ellis for resorting to name-calling, something she discourages in her young children, and for disrespecting suburban housewives. That might seem like the latest bizarre cut from the never-ending “greatest hits” of 2020. But The Simpsons, and Marge in particular, have long found themselves entangled with real life political figures, most of whom, like Ellis, underest...
Ranking: Every Clerks Animated Episode from Worst to Best
Nothing about Kevin Smith’s 1994 cult-classic film Clerks lent itself to making an animated version for ABC. Not the maxed-out credit-card budget, not the grainy, black-and-white cinematography, and surely not the foulmouthed, esoteric nerding out about innocent plumbers dying on the Death Star or how much the average jizz mopper makes working a nudie booth. And yet, thanks to studio politics, the Disney-owned network is exactly where the animated adaptation landed. It was no surprise then when the premiere got bumped back to the pilot graveyard that is summer, only two of the original six episodes aired on the network, and Dante and Randal curtly got told that they weren’t supposed to be there today … or any day for that matter. Editors’ Picks No, Clerks the cartoon dropped dead qui...
