Charles Bramesco
God Is a Woman of Color (and Has an Oscar!) in the Trailer for ‘The Shack’
What does God look like? It’s an eternal question with which fiction has tussled on plenty of occasions, from the standard-issue “bearded white guy clad in flowing robe” to the off-beat “wordless flower child Alanis Morisette” to the factually accurate “Morgan Freeman chilling.” The upcoming faith-based drama The Shack takes a rather unusual tack in its depiction of the Lord; the film adapted from William P. Young’s best-selling novel splits the divine presence into the Trinity, with Jesus Christ as a carpenter of Middle Eastern descent, the Holy Spirit as a meek Asian-American woman named Sarayu, and God portrayed by none other than Octavia goddamn Spencer. Let the record show — God’s real, she’s black, and she’s got an Oscar.
Schedule Shuffling at Fox May Have Just Outed the ‘Avatar 2′ Release Date
Big things are a-happenin’ over at Fox, per The Hollywood Reporter. The studio made a slew of scheduling changes on the night before Thanksgiving as a sort of special edition of a Friday dump. (That term refers to the PR practice of burying bad or otherwise uninteresting news on a Friday afternoon, when coverage will be minimal.) Big-name projects have all been shuffled around, and that’s all fully detailed below, but the most eye-catching item on Fox’s docket happens to be an unnamed project from James Cameron’s production company Lightstorm Entertainment.
Barack Obama Goes to College in Netflix’s New ‘Barry’ Trailer
“You take the baton from the ones who’ve come before, and you carry it as far as you can. And maybe you hand it off.”
‘Beauty and the Beast’ Unseats ’Fifty Shades’ as Most-Viewed Trailer in 24 Hours
The trailer for the handsomely-mounted live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast surfaced on Tuesday, and drew strong reactions across the board. Many were taken with the first look at the Emma Watson/Dan Stevens romance, allowing themselves to be flooded with the same swooning emotion that Disney’s animated film conjured back in 1991. Some were less impressed, expressing low-level terror at the unnatural-looking designs for Mrs. Potts, Cogsworth, Lumiere, and the rest of the anthropomorphized household object gang. But regardless of overall reception, one thing is for certain: The Guardian notes that an unprecedented crap-ton of people accessed the trailer on YouTube, making 2017’s Beauty and the Beast the most-viewed-in-a-24-hour-period trailer of all time.
Robert Redford’s Getting Out of the Acting Game After Two More Roles
Redford says he plans to focus on directing after shooting two final acting jobs.
No One Enjoyed the Cubs’ World Series Win More Than Bill Murray
Late last night, a little after the midnight hour, Hell froze over. Reports of pigs and other assorted swine growing wings and taking flight started pouring in from all over the country. Dogs and cats were living together — it was mass hysteria, all because the Chicago Cubs had finally won the World Series after a 108-year drought.
Smithsonian Mounts $300,000 Campaign to Preserve Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers
A step above the sought-after Maltese Falcon and the fabled Ark of the Covenant, Dorothy Gale’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz have to be the single most vital prop in cinematic history. The red-sequined shoes, so lusted after by the Wicked Witch of the West in the immortal 1939 fantasy film, have spent the last 30 years as one of the Smithsonian's most popular attractions. But not even magical footwear is immune to the ravages of time, and Judy Garland’s old kicks have lost a bit of their luster. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, the iconic slippers have faded from their original Technicolor ruby to something closer to “a dull auburn.”
Harriet Tubman Biopic ‘Harriet’ Headed to Theaters
Abolitionist, humanitarian, and regular fourth-grade history report subject Harriet Tubman may very well be the most significant black woman to have ever lived. She ferried what scholars estimate to be over seventy runaway slaves to freedom through her Underground Railroad network of sanctuary, and to this day continues to provide inspiration to anyone struggling to do the right thing in a status quo that enforces injustice. Having most recently unseated former president and noted genocidal maniac Andrew Jackson as the face of the $20 bill, Harriet Tubman may be the closest thing U.S. history has to an actual superhero.
Scarlett Johansson to Star in Male Stripper Comedy From ‘Broad City’ Team
Paul W. Downs and Lucia Aniello, the boyfriend-girlfriend comedy team known as Paulilu, has been churning out hilarity at factory-levels for the past couple years. In addition to working on the writing staff of Broad City (where Downs also appears as Abbi’s insufferably upbeat boss Trey), they created the Time Traveling Bong miniseries that ran on Comedy Central just last week and have loads of so
Rob Lowe, Kristen Bell Headline Ken Marino-Directed ‘How to Be a Latin Lover’
Sometimes, a movie’s premise sounds like maybe a little bit it’s been completely structured around an outmoded cultural stereotype. But also sometimes, this same movie is being made by people who have proven themselves intelligent and funny and capable of doing fine work in the past, and so you’re left with an awkward ambivalence about the entire production, not sure who to trust, and figure maybe