Power Link and Iron Fist

Vanity Fair interviews reclusive legend Warren Beatty. He talks Annette, his trans son Stephen and
i09 Forest Whitaker is joining the ever-expanding cast of Marvel's Black Panther movie
Vulture Daniel Craig, newly platinum blonde, is warming up to returning to the 007 gig. Money money money. Money money money. ♫ Money money money. If you happen to be rich - .......Ooooh -- and you feel like a Night's entertainment, you can pay for a gay escapade.

 

Antagony & Ecstacy catches up with The Neon Demon and loves it more than he knows he should
MNPP it looks like Nicolas Hoult will be playing Nikola Tesla in the costume drama Current War about the fight over monetizing electricity co-starring those actors of endless ubiquity: Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Shannon.
The Playlist Guy Ritchie will direct Disney's live action Aladdin. Weird.
/Film Boyd Holbrook will play the cyborg villain Donald Pierce in the third Wolverine movie, now titled Logan
AV Club Ron Perlman has finally given up his dream of Hellboy 3 

Power Man and Iron Fist
I don't know how many people who are into Marvel's modern universe of TV and movies knows this but Luke Cage was always paired with Iron Fist in the comicbooks. That's hard to imagine now because Luke Cage has been portrayed as such a loner in both Jessica Jones and on his own show.

I know this because I was kind of addicted to that duo as a kid. When I heard they were adapting it for television I wanted Marvel to quit whitewashing the Iron Fist character. Yes Danny was always white but since he grew up in Tibet and is a master of martial arts it would make sense that he were Asian. What's more the common narrative of the white man being better than all the Asians at the super powerful stuff they picked up over in Asia (see also Dr Strange's sorcery) is inherently a racist trope. We were not alone in this thinking. Apparently the handsome actor Lewis Tan, who will play one of the villains in the show, actually wanted to play Iron Fist but Marvel was adamant that he be white (sigh). So we get Finn Jones in the lead role who is most famous for playing Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers in Game of Thrones.

In happier casting news, after Iron Fist premieres we'll eventually get the team up series The Defenders (which will feature Sigourney Weaver as their big bad (yes!))  Here's the new Comic Con teaser for Iron Fist in case you missed it.

TIFF: Michelle Rodriguez & Sigourney Weaver in (re)Assignment

Nathaniel R reporting from the Toronto International Film Festival

We must ban the use of the word "problematic" so that it may be deployed to describe pop culture offerings which are PROBLEMATIC in all caps. (re)Assignment is one of those, even if its too dumb to capitalize on its sophomoric provocations.

A hired hitman named Frank (Michelle Rodriguez...with prosthetic dick because her figurative big one wasn't enough) is drugged and operated on by an amoral vengeful doctor (Sigourney Weaver) and wakes up with breasts, vagina and a smoother more beautiful face...

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A Cocktail with Sigourney

Nathaniel R reporting from the Toronto International Film Festival

That's me telling Sigourney Weaver some story (presumably about how awesome she is). It's all a blur...

You have to act quickly in these situations as you only get a minute. The event was a party for A Monster Calls in which Sigourney plays the emotionally distant British (!) grandmother of a young boy (Lewis MacDougall) whose mother (Felicity Jones) has cancer. As escape from his life or possibly as solution to it the boy meets regularly with a giant tree monster (voiced by Liam Neeson) who tells him morally ambiguous stories about witches, princes, and apothecaries.

I didn't once mention Ripley because I'm sure Sigourney hears this daily (on the red carpet outside there were people with Aliens posters wanting her to sign them) but took the opportunity to tell her how much I loved her on Broadway in Vanya & Sonya & Masha & Spike. Especially in the second act with her Snow White costume.

I almost wore that tonight.

...she quipped. Hee. Then she said it was funny I'd mentioned it because she had just emailed a playwright friend saying "we need a reunion" because she'd love to get back on stage. 

Now off to another screening! TIFF moves so quickly on the first weekend.

Stage Door: Toruk - The First Flight

Errisson Lawrence © 2015 Cirque du Soleil

Jose here. While worldwide audiences wait for the impending Avatar sequels, the folks at Cirque du Soleil are aiming to quench their thirst with a new spectacle called Toruk - The First Flight, which bills itself as being “inspired by” the James Cameron film, but feels more like just another chapter in what’s become a “universe”. Imagined for those who maybe don’t like video games, are too passive for amusement parks, and have deep admiration for the human body, the show is a two hour long arena extravaganza in which Pandora comes to life in “real life 3D”.

Avatar borrowed elements from films like Pocahontas, Dances with Wolves, Fern Gully, and to an extent some of Cameron’s own oeuvre (Aliens star Sigourney Weaver was two seats away from me and was always the first to applaud, during a particularly complex sequence she held both her hands near her face and sighed in relief when the acrobats gracefully pulled it off...

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Ranking the Ghostbusters Orginal Star Cameos

Murtada here. It’s been a full 3 days since Ghostbusters has been released. The reviews, including Nathaniel’s, are respectable but not euphoric. Same with the the box office. It could’ve been much worse. The Ghostbros still won’t shut up, so let’s rank how their so called childhood heroes, did this time around.

Ghostbusters tried to blend nostalgia with a new story and characters, the same way that Star Wars did successfully last year with The Force Awakens. While I liked the movie and thought it was the best blockbuster released this lackluster summer season, I would say that its nostalgia blend was not successful. All of the original cast - except for Rick Moranis and Harold Ramis - came back for at least one scene each. But most of the cameos were extraneous to the plot and could’ve easily been cut. The actors’ commitment also left a lot to be desired.

Let the ranking begin! 

SPOILERS ahead, proceed with caution...

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