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Studio Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata, who passed away in 2018, has received a posthumous North American release of his final anime TV series, Chie the Brat. The release comes from Discotek Media, a distribution company that focuses on licensing and distributing anime and other Japanese media, especially retro titles from the 1970s, '80s and '90s.

Discotek announced this week that Takahata's Chie the Brat - The Original First TV Series - Blu-ray has officially been released via the Crunchyroll Store. Fans in North America can now order the Blu-ray for the first time ever, priced at US$52.46 ($69.95 Msrp), with Crunchyroll teasing the release, "This complete collection includes all 64 episodes of the groundbreaking comedy classicpresented in high definition with the original Japanese language and English subtitles!" Readers can check out the Blu-ray footage, cover and additional stills below.

Related Studio Ghibli's Anime Art Book Receives English-Language International Release

Ghibli's upcoming...

Major Spoilers for The Last of Us Part II and potentially The Last of Us season 2.

Casting Jeffrey Wright as Isaac Dixon in The Last of Us season 2 hints at Abby's storyline significance. HBO's adaptation will challenge viewers to empathize with Abby, a controversial character. Expect Jeffrey Wright to bring complexity to Isaac, one of the most compelling antagonists in The Last of Us series.

An exciting casting announcement has been made for The Last of Us season 2, indicating how significant the Abby storyline from the game will be. The first season of HBO's award-winning video game adaptation was a smash success, earning praise from lovers of the game and broad television audiences alike. Audiences will be kept waiting until 2025 for the highly-anticipated second season, leaving plenty of time to speculate on potential game story changes. A recent announcement saw Westworld and The Batman star Jeffrey Wright added to The Last of Us...

Here’s a bit of The Last of Us casting news you’ll want to wolf down: Jeffrey Wright is joining Season 2 of the HBO series, TVLine has learned.

Wright will play Isaac in Season 2 of the dystopian drama based on Naughty Dog’s video-game series. This is a huge deal for fans of The Last of Us Part II, because Wright also played Isaac in the game.

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More actors are set to join the highly-anticipated The Last of Us Season 2.

Variety reports the upcoming second season of HBO's hit series has just added four new cast members. Several other names have already been announced for the upcoming installment, and the casting continues. Among them is one of the stars of Uncharted and the upcoming Mortal Kombat sequel, Tati Gabrielle (You), getting her on board for another video game adaptation. Danny Ramirez (Top Gun: Maverick), Ariela Barer (How to Blow Up a Pipeline), and Spencer Lord (Riverdale) are also among the latest names joining The Last of Us Season 2.

Related Nick Offerman Speaks Out Against 'Homophobic Hate' for Last of Us Character Upon winning a Spirit Award, Nick Offerman clapped back against critics of his character's romance in the first season of The Last of Us.

Gabrielle will play Nora Harris, a supporting character in Abby's story and...

This Last of Us article contains spoilers.

While The Last of Us Part III hasn’t officially been announced yet, the odds of getting a third game in the popular Naughty Dog series have slightly increased. In the documentary Grounded II: Making The Last of Us Part II, Neil Druckmann, vice president of developer Naughty Dog and creative director and co-writer for The Last of Us Part I and Part II, talked briefly about the prospect of a third game. He said, “I don’t have a story, but I do have that concept that, to me, is as exciting as 1, as exciting as 2, is its own thing, yet has this through-line for all three. So it does feel like there’s probably one more chapter to this story.”

We don’t know much beyond that or what this concept might be, but we’re definitely excited about what The...

Almost four years later, Joel’s death in the first act of The Last of Us Part II remains one of the most shocking twists in video game history. Led to believe by the game’s marketing that Joel would be a major part of the sequel, back alongside Ellie, who’s on a quest for revenge, fans weren’t expecting to have to say goodbye to this character so soon. But as revealed by the new documentary Grounded II: Making The Last of Us Part II, they could have been made to say farewell a lot earlier than Part II.

The doc reveals that Joel actor Troy Baker actually pitched that the character’s death should come at the end of the first game after Joel kills Marlene and the Fireflies in Salt Lake City. Baker felt that if Joel wasn’t punished for committing such a heinous act...

Laura Bailey, the voice of The Last of Us' Abby Anderson, is firmly in Kaitlyn Dever's corner.

The Critical Role member posted an X message supporting Dever's official casting as the live-action The Last of Us Part II adversary for season 2 of Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin's HBO adaptation. "Huge congrats, Kaitlyn! So excited to see Abby's evolution in your performance!," Bailey wrote, jokingly adding "Let me know if you want a workout buddy," in a nod to Abby's large arm muscles throughout the game.

Related Everything We Know About The Last of Us Season 2 The Last of Us TV series helped show how impactful the story could be to new fans. Now, it's left many questions about what's in store for Season 2. Huge congrats, Kaitlyn! So excited to see Abby’s evolution in your performance! Let me know if you want a workout buddy. 💪 https://t.

HBO is prioritizing the writing of the second season of The Last of Us and the third seasons of Euphoria and The White Lotus after the end of the writer's strike. House of the Dragon has already finished filming its second season and plans to return in the summer of 2024. Other companies like Netflix are prioritizing the next seasons of Wednesday and Stranger Things, their most-watched shows.

Now that the writer's strike is over after the WGA and AMPTP have reached an agreement, HBO begins the race to finish the scripts for the next seasons of its most successful series as soon as possible, including the smash hit video game adaptation, The Last of Us. While House of the Dragon was able to continue filming despite the strikes, other extremely popular shows had to stop their production. The most notable were The Last of Us, The White Lotus and Euphoria,...

The resemblance of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us to a prestige TV or film drama has been the object of both praise and derision since its release in 2013. The game’s prioritization of its characters’ antiheroic arcs—rendered through meticulously staged motion capture—along with its episodic structure and on-rails story progression, made it possible to either laud its narrative ambition or accuse it of aspiring to be something more than a game.

Thus, some kind of adaptation to a non-interactive medium, overseen by Neil Druckmann, the game’s writer and creative director, seemed inevitable, and HBO’s The Last of Us series proves that the terms of such a debate may be false. Co-created by Druckmann and Craig Mazin (Chernobyl), this eminently faithful adaptation, despite some powerful performances, is evidence that The Last of Us is ultimately just great as a game, as the parts of it...

"Barbenheimer" is the cinematic event of the summer. Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" and Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" are highly anticipated films by two acclaimed directors that could not be more different. One is a deep, subversive exploration of an iconic figure in American history, whose complicated legacy is filled with controversy. The other is a movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer.

What makes this particular case of counterprogramming so unique and fun is that, beyond the tone of both movies, their subject matters themselves are polar opposites. "Oppenheimer" deals with one of the darkest chapters in human history and recreates a nuclear explosion, and "Barbie," well, is a pink-colored party with Ryan Gosling continuing to prove he belongs in comedies. That's what separates this from other competing summer blockbusters like "The Dark Knight" and "Mamma Mia," but it is not the first time a gripping drama about WWII is released on...

THR reports that Pedro Pascal has signed on to star in Weapons, the new movie from Zack Cregger, director of last year’s surprise horror hit Barbarian.

Zach Cregger will write and direct Weapons, which has been described as an “interrelated, multistory horror epic” said to be tonally in the same vein as Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. It’s not known who Pedro Pascal would play in Weapons. Production is expected to get underway this fall, with Cregger also producing the project alongside Roy Lee of Vertigo and J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules of BoulderLight Pictures.

Related Gladiator 2: Pedro Pascal joins cast of Ridley Scott’s sequel

You might remember that Weapons was at the heart of a brief but intense Hollywood bidding war. New Line Cinema came out the winner, with Zach Cregger receiving eight figures to write and direct. The project also has a guaranteed greenlight and theatrical release,...

The third and final act of Smashing Pumpkins’ Atum, the “rock opera” Billy Corgan wrote as a follow-up to the iconic albums Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and Machina/The Machines of God, has arrived. Get melodramatic and listen to the complete project below.

Pronounced “autumn,” Smashing Pumpkins’ 12th album marks another lengthy addition to the band’s catalog. The 33-track LP was released in three parts, with Act 1 arriving in November and Act 2 following in January. Now that Act 3 has hit streaming services, you can also order a boxset that features 10 more bonus tracks.

In a past interview with Kerrang!, Corgan said the album goes in “a million different directions. I’d say about a third of the record is heavy. A third is kind of more similar to what we’ve been doing recently, and I don’t know what the other third would be called. I...

Filming for The Last of Us season 2 will begin shortly. After season 1 ends with Joel (Pedro Pascal) lying to Ellie (Bella Ramsey) about what happened to the Fireflies, the two return to the Jackson settlement. Their journey is tense, promising some interesting conflict going forward. While The Last of Us season 2 has been confirmed by HBO, the filming date and the eventual release date has been elusive.

Now, showrunners Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin have confirmed to Deadline that The Last of Us season 2 will begin filming within a much shorter timeframe than previously anticipated. Check out Deadline's tweet below:

“Months, not years away from starting”: Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin confirm of #TheLastOfUs’s Season 2 start date Deadline FYC House + @hbomax pic.twitter.com/bAMOGlWWMQ — Deadline Hollywood (@Deadline) April 29, 2023

As The Last of Us only earned a season 2 renewal after its world-shattering premiere, being "months, not years away...

The trailer of fantasy drama series, ‘Fireflies – Parth aur Jugnu was unveiled on Wednesday. It shows a down-and-out fourteen-year-old kid, Parth (played by Meet Mukhi) who meets a mystical kid named Jugnu (played by Aekam Binjwe).

Jugnu hails from the haunted forest of Bheem Mukteshwar. Both of them embark on a journey full of adventure peppered with action, self-discovery, and bedtime stories. It stars Meet Mukhi, Aekam Binjwe, Madhoo Shah, Priyanshu Chaterjee, Luke Kenny, Akshat Singh, Zoya Afroz, Varun Kapoor, Harshit Bhojwani, Anaya Shivan, Riva Arora, Rahul Singh, and Hitesh Dave in key roles. The series has been helmed by National award-winning filmmaker, Hemant Gaba from a script by Alok Sharma.

Actor Luke Kenny said “Fireflies is a show unlike any in the Indian Ott space. It not only combines mythology and important life lessons but also provides entertainment and enlightenment. The show is a perfect mix of action-packed adventure,...

If you’ve been on social media in 2023, chances are you’ve seen Pedro Pascal … a lot. That’s a good sign for him at the MTV Movie and TV Awards, which are decided by fans voting online. He earned a pair of nominations this year for his performance in “The Last of Us.” Can he win them both?

Pascal rose to prominence as Westeros’s favorite bisexual antihero Oberyn Martell on “Game of Thrones,” but even as popular as that show was, the actor didn’t ascend to meme status until more recently. He now plays the title bounty hunter in the “Star Wars” series “The Mandalorian,” where he seldom shows his face, but most recently he appeared — mask off — as Joel Miller in HBO’s adaptation of the iconic video game “The Last of Us.” As the protective caretaker of a girl who could hold the key to reversing the apocalypse,...

Sara Kays splices some “silly goofy” verses with her real-life struggle of opening up to people on her new song “Bored.” On Friday, the songstress released the new single, inspired by her fear of people getting bored of her after they get to know her, and its video with Rolling Stone.

“I wrote ‘Bored’ about how I struggle to open up to people because of the fear that people will get bored of me. I do this thing where I try to keep conversations off of myself by asking other people about themselves,...

HBO's The Last of Us season 1 features cameos from many of the original game's actors, with some appearances more obvious than others. The Last of Us follows Joel Miller as he transports teenager Ellie Williams across the post-apocalyptic United States, trying to get her to the rebel Fireflies, so they can use her immunity to cure the cordyceps infection. The original game actors both voiced their characters and brought them to life via motion capture, although they don't all resemble the characters physically.

For HBO's The Last of Us, different actors were cast in most roles, partially due to different physical appearances as well as different ages. Joel was voiced by Troy Baker in the original Naughty Dog game, but is played by Pedro Pascal on screen. Ellie was voiced by Ashley Johnson, but given the Johnson is in her 30s, teenager Bella Ramsey was cast as Ellie for the show.

Season 1 of The Last of Us recently aired its incredibly emotional finale, leaving a clicker-shaped gap in our Sunday nights. The final episode of the first season saw Joel (Pedro Pascal) forced to make a dark decision. When the Fireflies conclude that the best way to research Ellie's (Bella Ramsey) immunity and formulate a cure is to cut open her brain and kill her, then Joel has no other choice than to destroy them all in order to save her. Before that climactic turning point happens though, we spend a few quiet moments with Joel and Ellie as they finally acknowledge how far their relationship has come.

Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) have both captured the hearts of audiences with their dynamic, found family bond that lies at the center of "The Last of Us," the HBO series based on the hit video game of the same name. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey are fantastic, but the show wouldn't be what it is without an amazing ensemble cast of supporting characters who quietly accentuate Joel and Ellie's transformations from hardened survivors to parent and child.

Though he only makes a few appearances in season 1, Gabriel Luna's (previously known for his underrated performance in "Terminator: Dark Fate") role as Joel's little brother, Tommy Miller, makes a huge impact. Living with the trauma of surviving with Joel in the early days of the Cordyceps pandemic and disillusionment with his time fighting alongside the Fireflies, he and his partner Maria (Rutina Wesley) created the Jackson commune. It's a trade society,...

Warning! Spoilers ahead for The Last of Us' season 1 finale.

The Last of Us co-creator Craig Mazin explains how the show almost changed the game's final moments. Based on the beloved Naughty Dog video games, HBO's The Last of Us premiered earlier this year, earning strong reviews and boasting impressive viewership numbers. Sunday night's action-packed finale sees Joel (Pedro Pascal) slaughtering a hospital full of Fireflies in order to rescue Ellie (Bella Ramsey). The episode's moments, like the game, see Joel lie to Ellie about the massacre to which she simply replies, "Okay," before it cuts to black.

In a recent interview with GQ, Mazin reveals that Ali Abbasi, the director of The Last of Us' finale, actually experimented with slight changes to the game's ending. While most of the ending would have remained the same, an extra scene would have made the consequences of Joel's lie more apparent, with...

Spoilers for The Last of Us season 1 finale below!

HBO's The Last of Us co-creator Craig Mazin recently revealed that season 2 will further explore the infected hive mind. The popular video game adaptation stars Pedro Pascal as Joel Miller, a weathered survivor who is tasked to safely escort 14-year-old Ellie across a post-apocalyptic United States filled with people infected by a mind-controlling fungus. Although The Last of Us received near-universal praise for its compelling storytelling, The Last of Us has faced some criticism regarding its overall lack of infected.

Speaking on the final episode of HBO's The Last of Us Podcast, Mazin discussed how the nature of the infection will be addressed in The Last of Us season 2. The co-creator and writer explained that the Cordyceps hive mind concept and its intricate "interconnectivity" will be further explored when The Last of Us returns. Read what Mazin said below:

And that,...

The Last of Us creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann comment on whether Ellie believes Joel at the end of the finale, and the answer is a little complicated. After spending much of season 1 trekking across a post-apocalyptic version of the U.S., Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) finally reach the Fireflies in Sunday's finale. After realizing that using Ellie to create a cure would kill her in the process, Joel goes on a rampage through the Firefly hospital, killing everyone who gets in his way and later lying about it when Ellie wakes up.

In the most recent episode of The Last of Us Podcast, as shared by Collider, Mazin and Druckmann address whether Ellie actually believes what Joel says before the credits start to roll. While the creators offer several different interpretations of what Ellie is actually thinking at the end of The Last of Us' finale,...

It’s fitting that a song about doing it yourself is the only track in Rolling Stone‘s year-end Top 50 chart to be penned by a single writer. The song in question, Tones and I’s “Dance Monkey,” was inspired by busking, which is exactly what the Australian artist — born Toni Watson — quit her job to do for the sake of following her dream.

Watson writes all of her own music, which is a rarity these days, but especially in popular music. Billie Eilish’s “When the Party’s Over” was...

NEWSJackieThe Toronto International Film Festival has wrapped and its winners (such as they are) have been announced, including Damien Chazelle's La La Land (read our take) and Pablo Larraín's Jackie. Our full index of coverage, as well as our favorite films, can be found here—stay tuned for director interviews! Meanwhile, if you want the truly best and most comprehensive review of the many, many films that played in Toronto, we highly recommend Cinema Scope's coverage.Director Curtis Hanson, best known for L.A. Confidential, has died at the age of 71.Netflix is going to produce a 10-episode version of Spike Lee's debut film, She's Gotta Have It, with Lee returning to direct.Recommended VIEWINGThe trailer for a movie we hadn't realized existed: Costa-Gavras's Missing, Palme d'Or and Best Actor Winner—for Jack Lemmon—at Cannes in 1982. Also starring Sissy Spacek, the film is newly restored and ripe for our ignorant re-discovery.

Where to begin? This past few days saw an influx of "Best of" lists, which will probably continue until and beyond year's end. Let's kick it off with Cahiers du Cinéma's Top Ten:

1. Li'l Quinquin (Bruno Dumont)

2. Adieu au langage (Jean-Luc Godard)

3. Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)

4. Maps to the Stars (David Cronenberg)

5. The Wind Rises (Hayao Miyazaki)

6. Nymphomaniac (Lars Von Trier)

7. Mommy (Xavier Dolan)

8. Love is Strange (Ira Sachs)

9. Le Paradis (Alain Cavalier)

10. Our Sunhi (Hong Sangsoo)

Above: I expect we'll be seeing a lot of lists topped with Richard Linklater's Boyhood. Sight & Sound is one such list and also includes the following:

1. Boyhood (Richard Linklater)

2. Adieu au langage (Jean-Luc Godard)

=3. Leviathan (Andrey Zvyagintsev)

=3. Horse Money (Pedro Costa)

5. Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)

6. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson)

7. Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

8. The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy)

=9. Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski)

=9. Jauja (Lisandro Alonso)

See the rest here.

Review Billy Grifter 10 Jan 2014 - 16:23

Regrettably, Revolution's version of The Three Amigos does not contain Steve Martin, Chevy Chase or even Martin short...

This review contains spoilers.

2.10 The Three Amigos

There was me thinking I’d seen the last of turkey, and then Revolution came back.

What The Three Amigos reminded me of most is how far from the original premise this show has wandered. Because people have entirely given up even mentioning the power outage issue and their focus is decidedly south of the border.

Our three Amigos in this instance are Miles, Rachel and Bass, who head to Mexico to hang out with Bass’s long lost son. It’s as simple and as dumb as that statement makes it sound, as when you leave people for decades they’re invariably either not where you left them or the same person when you come back.

But...

We’ve got questions, and you’ve (maybe) got answers! With another week of TV gone by, we’re lobbing queries left and right about shows including How I Met Your Mother, S.H.I.E.L.D., Parenthood and Grey’s Anatomy!

1 | Doesn’t the Emmy producers’ statement that the guy randomly standing behind host Neil Patrick Harris was intentionally planted there, to create buzz/laughter, seem a little suspect?

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FIlming has begun on a new ABC1 telemovie about Dr Bert Wainer and two extraordinary women who exposed the deadly impact that Melbourne's anti-abortion laws had in the 1960s.

Dangerous Remedy is currently shooting in Melbourne and stars Jeremy Sims (Corridors of Power, Fireflies, Underbelly Files), William McInnes (Curtin, East West 101, Look Both Ways), Susie Porter (East West 101, Sisters of War, East of Everything), Maeve Dermody (Paper Giants, Miss Fisher.s Murder Mysteries, Beautiful Kate), Mark Leonard Winter (Balibo, Van Dieman.s Land, Blame), as well as Gary Sweet and Caroline Craig.

The political-thriller is set in 1969 and follows Bert Wainer, a local Gp, who embarks on a campaign for law reform after the death of a young woman. He discovers an illegal abortion ring protected by corrupt homicide detectives, allowing the medical establishment, media and politicians to ignore the impact of anti-abortion laws.

ABC TV head of fiction,...

FIlming has begun on a new ABC1 telemovie about Dr Bert Wainer and two extraordinary women who exposed the deadly impact that Melbourne's anti-abortion laws had in the 1960s. Dangerous Remedy is currently shooting in Melbourne and stars Jeremy Sims (Corridors of Power, Fireflies, Underbelly Files), William McInnes (Curtin, East West 101, Look Both Ways), Susie Porter (East West 101, Sisters of War, East of Everything), Maeve Dermody (Paper Giants, Miss Fisher.s Murder Mysteries, Beautiful Kate), Mark Leonard Winter (Balibo, Van Dieman.s Land, Blame), as well as Gary Sweet and Caroline Craig. The political-thriller is set in 1969 and follows Bert Wainer, a local Gp, who embarks on a campaign for law reform after the death of a young woman. He discovers an illegal abortion...