If the Avengers are the superhero version of work friends, then facing down an intergalactic villain like Thanos is the ultimate team-building exercise. Our six original heroes—Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Hulk, and Thor—likely emerged from Infinity War closer than ever, bonded by their successes…
On Sunday, we reported that Marvel had a relatively small list of female directors it was considering for the long-awaiting, much-requested Black Widow spin-off movie, including Deniz Gamze Erguven, Chloe Zhao, Amma Asante, Maggie Betts, and Angela Robinson. According to Variety reporter Justin Kroll, though, the list…
Even though it has inexplicably taken a very long time, Marvel seems to finally be moving forward with a movie dedicated to Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, with the studio hiring writer Jac Schaeffer to put together a script. Now a recent Hollywood Reporter story has floated the names of some female filmmakers as…
The Marvel Cinematic Universe hasn’t just changed the way people consume movie franchises. It’s also changed the way audiences engage with cinematic characters. Heroes introduced as the lead of their own film can go on to be tertiary characters in another and vice versa. And no character better embodies this new form…
Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi is gearing up to work with yet another Avenger, with Variety reporting that Scarlett Johansson has signed on to appear in his new film, Jojo Rabbit. Set in Germany during World War II, the film will see Johansson play a young mother hiding a young Jewish woman in her home during…
Dogs do not have it easy in the bright, glorious dollhouse worlds of Wes Anderson. Think of Buckley, beloved beagle of the youngest Tenenbaums, run down in the prime of his life. Or poor Snoopy, impaled casualty of the boy-scouts war raging across a woodland moonrise kingdom. (Who’s to say if he was a good dog, but he…
We’re now six weeks away from the release of Avengers: Infinity War, which was recently moved up at the behest of Iron Man. Marvel’s fresh out of teasers and trailers, having hyped the third Avengers film for what feels like infinity. Presumably, all the studio has left to fan the flames of the geeky masses at this…
Just a few days after James Franco attended the Golden Globes with a Time’s Up pin indicating his support for the campaign to set up a legal defense fund in support of women who have been harassed in the workplace, The Los Angeles Times published a story about five women who had accused him of “sexually inappropriate…
For years now, people have been loudly wondering why someone, somewhere, won’t give Scarlett Johansson’s immensely popular Black Widow character her own film. (Oddly enough, the people asking this have included the increasingly successful Russo brothers, and Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige, either of whom you’d think…
Director Luc Besson’s Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets failed to become the next great sci-fi film franchise (and nobody really should’ve expected that to happen), but his film studio EuropaCorp isn’t going to just pack up and quit. Instead, Variety is reporting that the studio is planing to “scale back its…
We’ve expanded the definition of AVQ&A—our weekly thought-starter—by asking you (and us) a simple question each week: What pop culture did you consume this weekend, and what did you think of it? If you have suggestions for AVQ&A questions, big or small, you can email them to us here.
The thing that makes Comedy Central’s Broad City so successful is the specificity and relatability of its comedy. Fans feel like they really know the fictional Abbi and Ilana, creating a bit of an awkward situation for the real Ilana Glazer, as she recently revealed in an interview with Bustle. Well, for better or for…
Who she is: Black Widow, a.k.a. Natasha Romanoff (née Natalia Romanoff)
One of the year’s most controversial blockbusters is also one of its most visually ravishing. On this episode of Film Club, A.A. Dowd and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky sit down to talk about the new live-action adaptation of Ghost In The Shell, discussing the allegations of whitewashing, the ways the film deviates from the…
Thoughts on, and a place to discuss, the plot points we can’t reveal in our review.
The new Ghost In The Shell is a strange creature, an art robot, a cine-droid that replicates the pace and look of anime in the uncanny valley of live-action. It isn’t a remake of Mamoru Oshii’s sci-fi animated feature, which is a classic of the genre, but a very studious homage; the plot is original (provided one has…
Controversy has surrounded Ghost In The Shell’s casting of Scarlett Johansson since the moment she was first announced as The Major, its taciturn cyborg hero. Known as Motoko Kusanagi in the original anime and manga versions of the story, the character has generally been identified as Japanese, leading to accusations…
The internet has a bad habit of judging things sight unseen, especially when it comes to movies that are adaptations of beloved, preexisting properties. This can be a wise decision, since it’s a good way to prevent the disappointment that often comes with high-profile adaptations, but it can also make the discourse…
The American adaptation Ghost In The Shell is now just days away from hitting theaters, after months—nay, years—of concerns that the film was carrying on Hollywood’s tradition of whitewashing Asian characters by casting Scarlett Johansson as the film’s protagonist. But while she may be the lead, it’s been made clear…
Alec Baldwin decided to pop in for one of his intermittent Donald Trump cold opens on last night’s Scarlett Johansson-hosted Saturday Night Live. His Trump is, it turns out, very bad at coping with an alien (as in space alien) invasion, as one might expect. The sketch was fine, even if it smacked of Baldwin’s one foot…
