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As Hollywood continues to greenlight stories about iconic musicians — minus any unsavory details that could jeopardize acquiring the music rights — one high-profile musical biopic has proven to be surprisingly controversial, despite the fact that filming hasn’t even started yet.

It was recently announced that director Sam Mendes will be helming a film project about The Beatles. But in order to fully honor the legendary group (and boost ticket sales), he’s making four full-length movies, each focusing on one of the four band members: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. And presumably Asylum will throw together a straight-to-dvd movie about Pete Best.

Mendes talked about the project at CinemaCon this week revealing that the four movies will be released at the same time, in what studio executives are calling the “first binge-able theatrical experience.” Hopefully the inevitable collectible Beatles popcorn buckets will come with free caffeine pills.

"The Righteous Gemstones" is one of the best comedies in HBO history: a "Succession"-like story about a family of infamous televangelists that explores themes of religion, corruption, greed, deviance, and propaganda. It's also the show that very well may be single-handedly evening the bare scales in terms of displaying full-frontal male nudity. There have been plenty of discussions this year surrounding the moments of male nudity on season 3 of "The White Lotus," but it's one thing to catch Patrick Schwarzenegger in the nude for a brief moment or flash a bit of Jason Isaacs' stunt hog before jolting the camera away to capture the shocked reactions of the other characters in the room — it's another thing entirely to feature a cold-open where Walton Goggins' second nude body double waterskis wearing nothing but a life jacket, boink swatter flapping in the wind.

Full-frontal male nudity is nothing new for "The Righteous Gemstones.

When the mighty Marvel Comics duo of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby debuted the Hulk in 1962, the big fella was initially gray. According to Lee, this was to keep the character from being identified with any one ethnic group -- and he might've stayed that way had colorist Stan Goldberg not struggled with the gray shading. Lee could see that the color was all wrong, so, after that first issue, he decreed that the Hulk must be green, which, aside from flashbacks to the character's origin in 1984, is the way things were in the Marvel Universe until 2008. (Even reprints of the first issue now portray the Hulk as green.)

Then Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness decided to go and add a different, bolder hue to the character: red. This was not Bruce Banner's Hulk, but the laboratory-created alter-ego of Thaddeus E. "Thunderbolt" Ross, who was keen to go toe-to-toe...

In case you didn’t know: John C. Reilly is a vaudeville guy. Not only did the beloved character actor star as half of the legendary comedy duo Laurel and Hardy in the emotionally affecting biographical film Stan & Ollie (2018), but since then he’s created a throwback stage persona of his own, the lovelorn and musically inclined Mister Romantic, who has sold out concerts across Los Angeles since 2022.

Now, Reilly is set to introduce Mister Romantic to the rest of the world with a full-fledged album that arrives on June 13. His charming debut,...

Every year, Hollywood pumps out at least one or two musician biopics. Last year alone saw the release of "Back to Black," a portrait of the late Amy Winehouse, and the Oscar-nominated "A Complete Unknown," the Bob Dylan origin story as told by James Mangold. It's easy to understand why we keep getting these films: they're pretty popular. Sure, some of them flop, but more often than not, there seems to be an insatiable hunger from the public to watch actors slap on a wig and do an impression of a famous singer. And studios are often all-in because not only are there box office dollars at work, but if filmmakers and actors play their cards right, awards season glory comes calling.

"Bohemian Rhapsody," the 2018 film about Queen singer Freddie Mercury, did boffo box office and scored several nominations, winning Rami Malek a Best Actor trophy, and all of this...

Judd Apatow has insisted an R-rated comedy could still be a huge box office hit.The 57-year-old actor - who has appeared in movies like 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin' and 'Knocked Up' as well as producing the likes of 'Superbad' and 'Step Brothers' and more over the years - has insisted "one person with a great idea" is all that's needed to give the genre a revival by inspiring everyone to "do it again".He told Variety: "These things kind of swing back and forth."If someone made something as funny as ‘The Hangover’ right now, it would make a billion dollars, and everyone would be trying to do that."It ebbs and it flows, and hopefully it’ll flow soon.”Apatow also dismissed the idea that political correctness makes comedy harder than it was in the past.He said: "I don't think there's a content obstacle.

Judd Apatow, who dominated the big screen for more than a decade with comedy hits like “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Superbad,” “Step Brothers” and “Bridesmaids,” has weighed in on R-rated comedy movies vanishing from theaters.

The director, writer and producer told Variety on the “SNL50” carpet that all it takes is “one person with a great idea” to revitalize the genre at the box office. Once there’s another comedy hit, “suddenly everyone wants to do it again,” Apatow said. “These things kind of swing back and forth. If someone made something as funny as ‘The Hangover’ right now, it would make a billion dollars, and everyone would be trying to do that. It ebbs and it flows, and hopefully it’ll flow soon.”

Agreeing with his frequent comedy collaborator Seth Rogen, Apatow said he does not believe comedy is harder than it used to be due to political correctness.

“I...

Nominations voting was from January 8-17, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 23, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7:00 p.m. Et/ 4:00 p.m. Pt. We update our picks through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.

The State of the Race

The back and forth on which nominee will win the Academy Award for Best Picture has been so drawn out, so contentious, that the surge of support “Anora” got last weekend has been a breath of fresh air. After major wins for Sean Baker and his film at the Critics Choice Awards, the PGA Awards, and the DGA Awards, we finally have some consensus as final Oscars voting opens up.

While Baker’s sex worker dramedy has been a formidable contender since last spring, when it...

Stars: Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Joe Tippett, Eriko Hatsune, Scoot McNairy | Written by James Mangold, Jay Cocks, Elijah Wald | Directed by James Mangold

The biopic has been a genre around since the early days of filmmaking, and over the course of more than 100 hundred years, it has changed drastically with every passing decade. In the early 2000s the genre, in particular the musical biopic, hit somewhat of a snag. It got caught up in formulaic storytelling and became a parody of itself. So much so that the 2007 film Walk Hard, made fun of the formula so much it ruined the genre forever. However, some films still missed the joke and went ahead and followed the formula anyway, such as 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody. The formula itself reduced the artist’s life to their Wikipedia page. Often opening with the film’s subject ready to take the stage...

Director James Mangold explores a pivotal chapter in Bob Dylan’s early career in A Complete Unknown. Our review:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that music biopics must follow The Formula. Whether they’re about Ray Charles or Elton John or Amy Winehouse or Brit rock outfit Queen, their stories follow a path of pivotal childhood experiences, chance meetings, paths to fame and the scourge of drink and drugs, before everything’s wrapped up with a rousing concert at the end.

The Formula was so well understood by 2007 that Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story fired a silver bullet at the wretched thing – and yet still the template staggered on, showing up largely unscathed in the likes of Bohemian Rhapsody and Back To Black.

Almost 20 years after he made Walk The Line – a film openly lampooned by the above-mentioned Dewey Cox Story – its director, James Mangold is back in...

At this point, the term "music biopic" is a pejorative in certain corners of the film community. The genre, hilariously ridiculed in the cult classic parody film, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, is synonymous with exhausting tropes and artistic banality. However, as a vessel to trigger nostalgia for older generations and increase streaming numbers among younger generations, it has proven to be a bankable formula, with Bohemian Rhapsody and Bob Marley: One Love chugging along at the box office despite mixed critical reception. If there was one groundbreaking, iconoclastic artist who didn't need the music biopic treatment, it was Bob Dylan. Director James Mangold, responsible for cementing the archetypal cinematic biography in Walk the Line, averted disaster by not falling for the tropes in A Complete Unknown, the rare, refreshing music biopic that shifts attention away from its subject and instead focuses on the vibrant community of the music scene.

Director James Mangold’s latest film, A Complete Unknown, is getting a lot of praise these days due in part to Timothée Chalamet’s electric performance as Bob Dylan. Long before the filmmaker explored the legendary singer-songwriter, though, his 2005 film Walk the Line took fans inside the life of the iconic Johnny Cash. Starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, the film was a bona fide hit that earned several award wins and even a satirical spoof led by John C. Reilly – Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Now, nearly 20 years later, Mangold says he wasn’t offended by the 2007 comedy but instead found it "hilarious."

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, the Complete Unknown director addressed concerns that Walk Hard scared him off doing musical biopics for a while and said that nothing could be further from the truth. He pointed to other satire films that didn’t fail to spook directors such as Robert Eggers,...

James Mangold’s new musical biography, “A Complete Unknown,” is getting mixed reviews for its portrayal of Bob Dylan’s early life. While critics have praised Timothée Chalamet’s performance, they have raised questions about how historically accurate the movie is regarding the folk legend’s rise to fame.

The movie follows Dylan’s life from 1961 to 1965, from the time he moved to New York City at age 19 to his controversial electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Many people like Chalamet’s performance as Dylan, but some critics say the movie changes the real story of Dylan’s artistic growth in ways that aren’t true.

Mangold is known for directing “Walk the Line,” a biopic about Johnny Cash. He focuses on the dramatic tension between Dylan and the folk music establishment. People don’t like this focus because it makes it seem like Dylan came to New...

Nearly 20 years later, James Mangold is still finding inspiration in the musical biopic genre, despite previous jabs at his work.

The 2x Oscar nominee, who co-wrote and directed the 2005 Johnny Cash pic Walk the Line, has not been scared off from paying cinematic tribute to other legendary musicians after the parody Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007).

“I found Walk Hard hilarious. But I also never understood why satire would negate making the real thing anymore,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “I wasn’t frightened off any more than Robert Eggers should be frightened of making a monster movie in the face of Young Frankenstein or if another filmmaker might be frightened of making a Western in the face of Blazing Saddles. It’s unfair to say that if someone makes a satire of a genre, it somehow has put a tombstone in the genre for all time. That seems a little ludicrous to me.

Walk Hard looms large over the "musician biopic" genre. Though not a major box office success, the cult classic has only become more appreciated over time as a pitch-perfect parody of the genre's various tropes and clichés. Star John C. Reilly has even said that "we tried to kill the musical biopic with this movie.

Plot: Four years in the life of Bob Dylan (Timothee Chalamet), from his discovery by Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) through his eventual rise to fame as a folk singer, through his controversial decision to go electric on the eve of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

Review: It’s hard to accurately sum up just how much of a profound effect Bob Dylan had on pop culture. One of the greatest songwriters of all time, for sixty years now, Dylan’s been sitting at the top of the pantheon of music greats, but oddly enough, outside of Todd Haynes’s impressionistic ode to his legend – I’m Not There, and a series of documentaries by Martin Scorsese, no one’s ever tried to tell his story as a traditional biopic until now. Sporting an impeccably assembled cast, James Mangold’s made an excellent companion piece to his own Walk the Line in that...

I’d like to invite you behind the curtain for a moment. This is my last new movie review of 2024, and I’ve reviewed so many formulaic musical biopics this year that I’m pretty sure my reviews are also becoming formulaic. How many times can one critic point out that Hollywood is still unironically copying the same tired beats that “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” ridiculed nearly 20 years ago before the finger starts pointing back in their own direction? Isn’t it just as tiresome to make the same complaints over and over as it is to do the same things that are worth complaining about, over and over? And over and over?

Well, no. No it’s not. I’m just working with the material you’re giving me, Hollywood. If you keep making the same movie over and over, the same commentary will usually apply. If...

If you were a kid around Y2K, chances are Frankie Muniz was a mainstay on your TV set. The New Jersey-born actor made his breakthrough at a young age, playing smartass kid genius Malcolm in the boisterous family sitcom "Malcolm in the Middle." The Fox show was a major hit that built its brand on the unstoppable hijinks of the Wilkerson clan, a working poor family raising five boys. Malcolm was, of course, the middle kid, and he often addressed the camera directly with his signature sardonic commentary.

"Malcolm in the Middle" made Muniz a household name, and he appeared in several high-profile movies and even headlined his own action franchise as a young adult. Eventually, his star power rose so much that the majority of roles in his TV filmography are just titled "himself," where he showed up as some version of Frankie Muniz in shows like "Arrested Development,...

The versatile John C. Reilly has been announced as the first honoree at the 19th annual Oscar Wilde Awards.

The event, organized by the US-Ireland Alliance, is set for Feb. 27 — in its traditional evening spot three days before the Oscars — at the historic Ebell theater in Los Angeles, its original home.

The casual bash celebrates the work of those from Ireland — and some who are not — who contribute to film, television and music. It also fosters artistic collaborations, from giving young actors and singers a profile in the U.S. to encouraging the shooting of films in Ireland.

The Chicago-born Reilly, 59, speaks often of his family’s strong ties to Ireland. A frequent visitor to the country, he served as the International Guest of Honor at Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Day festivities in 2022.

“It might just seem like a goof to just appear at a parade, but to me,...

In 2007, Jake Kasdan's hilarious "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" arrived to take the piss out of musician biopics. Focusing on the fictional Dewey Cox (played memorably by John C. Reilly), "Walk Hard" was a parody of the musician biopic in general, but specifically lambasted the then-recent films "Ray," Taylor Hackford's flick about Ray Charles, and "Walk the Line," James Mangold's look at the life of Johnny Cash. It was a brilliant, biting send-up of everything wrong with those films: the lazy shortcuts they take in condensing a famous person's entire life, the by-the-numbers approach to an artist's rise and fall and inevitable redemption, the seemingly endless parade of familiar supporting characters who pop up and have their full, famous names uttered out loud so we know who they are. The satire and parody of "Walk Hard" is so sharp, so cutting, that one can't help but...

In a revealing anecdote after the first screening of his latest biopic A Complete Unknown, James Mangold relayed the question posed to him by Bob Dylan: “So what is this movie about?” It’s a fair inquiry, especially for a legendary figure whose profound resonance has been felt in cinema just as it has in music. In documentary form, his presence has been the focus of D.A. Pennebaker’s seminal direct-cinema film Dont Look Back, no fewer than two Martin Scorsese documentaries (No Direction Home and Rolling Thunder Revue), and his own Eat the Document. His fictional representations are also considerable: the highlight is likely Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There––which forms a definitive statement precisely because its mélange of faces and styles refuses to settle on one interpretation of the musician––though Dylan also put forth offbeat and personal efforts like Renaldo and Clara and Masked & Anonymous.

From the moment he stumbled out of the Midwest and into Greenwich Village, Bob Dylan, né Robert Zimmerman, has blurred truth and fabulism in ways that resist the subsequent decades of obsessive study of his life and work. And the best attempts to unpack the artist, from Martin Scorsese’s willfully slippery documentaries to Todd Haynes’s cubist ciné-portrait I’m Not There, have engaged with this tall-tale aspect of Dylan’s life.

At first glance, James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, an account of Dylan’s (Timothée Chalamet) arrival in New York and rapid ascent to folk stardom, ostensibly follows suit in accepting the mystery of this iconoclastic artist. On an early date with girlfriend Sylvie, the pair see the film Now, Voyager, which she interprets as the story of a woman overcoming her past to become her true self. Dylan disagrees, saying that Bette Davis’s protagonist simply constructs...

“Walk the Line” was hardly the first Hollywood movie that dared to serve up a facsimile-driven portrait of a singularly original artist, as though lightning-in-a-bottle creative genius could ever hope to be recaptured by studio notes and a three-act structure, but if writer-director James Mangold didn’t invent the standard-issue music biopic, I would argue that he committed the far more reprehensible crime of perfecting it — of so perfectly crystallizing the sub-genre in the public imagination that it had to be destroyed from several different angles at once. Arriving at essentially the same time some two years later, Jake Kasdan’s “Walk Hard” and Todd Haynes’ “I’m Not There” both humiliated Mangold’s 2005 Johnny Cash biopic for its formulaic inauthenticity; one was a parody and the other a prism, but each of those (under-performing) cult classics so devastatingly exposed the paint-by-numbers essence of Mangold’s Oscar-winning hit that Hollywood naturally...

The Bob Dylan Cinematic Universe is a-changing. Dozens of films about the legendary singer-songwriter already exist — including two documentaries by Martin Scorsese, the experimental 2007 drama I’m Not There from Todd Haynes (which saw no fewer than six actors take on Dylan’s famous drawl), and the bizarre 2003 drama Masked And Anonymous, in which Dylan played a version of himself and served as co-scribe, writing under the pseudonym ‘Sergei Petrov’.

There have been many, many ballads of this thin man. This latest effort comes from James Mangold, the filmmaker whose 2005 Johnny Cash film Walk The Line inspired the music biopic parody Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, the standard by which all music biopics must now be judged. To its credit, A Complete Unknown deftly avoids such clichés.

Chalamet’s musical talent is unimpeachable, his renditions gazed upon by many reverent ‘listening faces’...

It is, instead, a straightforward, clear-eyed musical drama.

The list of actors who broke out after getting a start under filmmaker Judd Apatow is long and illustrious. Some, like Jonah Hill and James Franco, have even gone on to garner Oscars attention. But in his career, Apatow has also empowered fellow directors. Look no further than Jake Kasdan, the son of veteran writer Lawrence Kasdan, who was perhaps best known for having directed the cult comedy film Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story before graduating to the big leagues. Kasdans films have now generated billions of dollars worldwide, thanks mainly to his collaborations with Dwayne Johnson. Their latest, the Christmas-themed action-adventure film Red One, debuted in theaters this past week.

The new movie by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Chris Evans, Red One, comes out this weekend, and there's plenty of reason to believe it will be a hit. At the helm of Red One is Jake Kasdan, a director who has made two hits with Johnson that have cumulatively made a billion and a half dollars, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Jumanji: The Next Level. But Kasdan's track record extends beyond his cooking with The Rock, not only directing the cult classic Orange County, but also episodes of Freaks and Geeks and the pilot of New Girl. But Kasdan's best work is the comedic parody masterpiece Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, and if you don't agree, then... "the wrong kid died."...

If there was a Guinness World Record for the most jacked-up Santa in a big-budget, Hollywood-financed, holiday-themed action-comedy, Oscar winner J.K. Simmons (Whiplash) would win hands down and biceps curled for his committed portrayal of Father Christmas in Jake Kasdan's otherwise disposable, forgettable Red One. Simmons' Crossfit-loving, hyper-trophied Santa not only unironically loves those fading odes to crass commercialism, American shopping malls but also works out obsessively in his private gym back at the North Pole, relying on his personal security guard and nominal head of Elf (Enforcement Logistics and Fortification), Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), to spot him when he goes big on bench-pressing free weights....

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Editor’s Note: This review was originally published during the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Disney releases the film in select theaters November 15 before streaming on Disney+ starts December 13.

Near the end of R.J. Cutler and David Furnish’s documentary “Elton John: Never Too Late” John says, “It did take me 43 years to learn how to function as a human being rather than a rockstar.”

However, the film, which premiered in the Gala section of the Toronto International Film Festival, is far more interested in the rockstar part of John’s life than it is in the human being portion. Look, it makes sense, the glittering glamor of superstardom is inherently more attractive than the day-to-day monotony of just trying to get by. Still, with the access this doc has — Furnish is, after all, John’s husband — it feels like a squandered opportunity.

At its outset, “Never Too Late” sets up an intriguing structure.

Your honor, may Timothée Chalamet approach the bench. Chalamet is guilty as charged, having committed one of the worst crimes an actor can do before starring in a biopic: He watched five minutes of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. The results are unsurprising. The film scared the hell out of him.

Sigourney Weaver and David Duchovny’s star power wasn’t enough to stop one of Jake Kasdan’s movies all but disappearing for a while.

This weekend, director Jake Kasdan’s new film, the megabudget festive flick Red One, is in cinemas. He’s also linked with directing a Jumanji film for the third time, and also is one of the filmmakers announced as making a new Lego movie.

Across his career, he’s made Zero Effect, Orange County, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Bad Teacher, Sex Tape, Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle and Jumanji: The Next Level. That’s just as a feature director, with a whole bunch of television stuff as well.

Yet in the midst of his run of films, he also brought Sigourney Weaver and David Duchovny in 2006, for a low budget independent film called The TV Set. If you’re in the UK in particular,...

Blockheads, it's time to celebrate. Deadline is reporting that Universal and the Lego Group have greenlit not one, not two, but three new Lego movies, with directors Jake Kasdan, Patty Jenkins, and Joe Cornish.

According to Deadline, "all three movies plots are under wraps," but their scripts are well underway and unique to each directors' vision. Kasdan will be directing his Lego feature off a script from Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul, "based on an original idea and previous draft by Matt Mider and Kevin Burrows." Jenkins' movie is "from a script she wrote with former DC Entertainment President Geoff Johns." Meanwhile, Cornish's toy bricks will come to us via a rewrite of a previous draft from Heather Anne Campbell, which was based on a treatment written by Simon Rich.

Related Which Hollywood franchise would work well as a Lego movie?

While 2017’s The Lego Batman movie is the most...

After teaming up for 2018’s Stan & Ollie, a biographical comedy focusing on the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, John C. Reilly and Steve Coogan are reuniting for The Players, an upcoming comedy about competing Shakespearian actors.

The Full Monty’s Peter Cattaneo directs The Players from a script by Jeff Pope. The Players is an 1800s period comedy revolving around two thespians, Edwin Forrest and William MacCready. According to Deadline‘s exclusive report, The Players “is set in 1847 New York, where Edwin Forrest (Reilly) holds the undisputed title as the country’s top Shakespearian actor. Playing magnificently to a sold out, raucous crowd every night, Edwin is “The Star”. But when critically celebrated English thespian William MacCready (Coogan) arrives from London to perform his sophisticated Hamlet, Edwin’s title is thrown into jeopardy. Each man wants what the other has, and the rivalry between them starts a hilarious and unforgettable battle of egos.

When I first heard about Pharrell Williams’s Piece by Piece, it mostly seemed like an amusing novelty. A traditional musical biopic elevated by the medium of Lego and not much else. However, after seeing the film, I realized that it was much more than simply telling the same kind of story in a new way; rather, using a new medium to change how we tell these stories.

For too long, musical biopics have felt stale and monotonous, utilizing tired tropes to tell similar stories that often fail to capture the spirit and sometimes the facts themselves of a given artist to fit in a specific box. Meanwhile, Piece by Piece not only stays true to Pharrell Williams’ actual story but does so in a way that’s far more visually stimulating and creatively ambitious than a live-action version of this story would be.

Why Most Musical Biopics Fall Flat...

A new trailer just dropped for A Complete Unknown, director James Mangold’s highly anticipated biopic about the legendary Bob Dylan starring Timothée Chalamet. The story ends around 1965, meaning that we won’t get a scene in which Chalamet bangs a tiny Ikea wrench against a microphone while wearing old age makeup.

A Complete Unknown looks like a boilerplate Hollywood music biopic, full of eye-rollingly obvious moments. And it’s nearly impossible to accept these types of formulaic music biopics, not just because Hollywood has practically run the genre into the ground at this point, but because they were so perfectly parodied in 2007’s Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

Mangold has admitted to enjoying Walk Hard, which was primarily a send-up of his previous music biopic effort, Walk the Line. But for some reason, he seems to be leaning into those Dewey Cox-esque elements again, rather than avoiding them.

Jenna Fischer announced on Instagram that she was diagnosed with triple positive breast cancer last December and is now living cancer free after “completing surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.” “The Office” actor wrote that she was coming forward with her cancer journey as October is breast cancer awareness month.

“Triple positive breast cancer is an aggressive form of breast cancer but it is also highly responsive to treatment,” Fischer wrote. “In January, I had a lumpectomy to remove the tumor. Luckily my cancer was caught early and it hadn’t spread into my lymph nodes or throughout the rest of my body, however because of the aggressive nature of triple positive breast cancer it still required chemotherapy and radiation to be sure it didn’t return. In February I began 12 rounds of weekly chemotherapy, and in June I started three weeks of radiation. And while I continue to be treated with...

Alex Ross Perry’s 2019 backstage rock drama Her Smell is bookmarked by cutaways to faux-documentary video footage, capturing its fictional 1990s alternative group in moments of camera-friendly bliss. Placed next to the emotional apocalypse that comprises most of the rest of the film’s runtime, the supposedly “real” Behind the Music-style footage can’t help but feel like an obfuscation of the band’s true story.

Perry avoids such pitfalls with Pavements, a docu-fiction about indie rock titans Pavement. The band’s legendary status, quickly achieved in the early ’90s indie underground, has always felt somewhat at odds with the sense of shaggy self-effacement that their critics often mistook for a conscious lack of effort. Wisely anticipating that the traditional rock-doc format would be a poor fit for such a group, Perry has crafted a far less easily classifiable tribute.

Pavements pulls together at least four different strands for its...

Well, that's one way to kick off your Wednesday morning. If you came away assuming Coralie Fargeat's goopy body horror flick "The Substance" would end up being the strangest film of 2024 ... you're probably right. But 2025 already has a strong contender in that arena in the form of "Better Man," a musical biopic about the life and times of English pop music superstar Robbie Williams. As Paramount's official synopsis explains, the movie follows Williams as he goes from "being the youngest member of chart-topping boyband Take That, through to his unparalleled achievements as a record-breaking solo artist -- all the while confronting the challenges that stratospheric fame and success can bring." Sounds like your average, cookie-cutter musician biopic right?Before you start pulling out your box of old "Walk Hard" references, though, here's the big thing this summary conveniently leaves out: Williams is depicted as a CGI chimpanzee in the film.

One Mean Girls star who even returned for the 2024 reboot has officially found his next project. A new report from Deadline revealed that Tim Meadows, also known for performing on Saturday Night Live and for his roles in The Ladies Man and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, has been tapped to star in the upcoming CBS comedy pilot, Dmv. The upcoming series is a workplace comedy set in everyone's (least) favorite place in the world, the Dmv.

Tim Meadows is set to star in the CBS comedy pilot “Dmv,” Variety has learned.

The single-camera comedy pilot was originally announced at the broadcaster in August. The show is based on a short story by Katherine Heiny. The official logline states that the show is “set at the place everyone dreads going most: the Dmv. Our quirky and lovable characters are making minimum wage, doing a thankless job where customers are annoyed before they even walk in the door. Good thing they have each other.”

Meadows will appear in the role of Gregg. Gregg is described as “a former high school English teacher. Gregg is the examiner who likes to get through the driving tests, and the day, as quickly as possible. An uncanny ability to make dead-on observations of those around him, Gregg is sardonic, defeated and would love nothing more than to retire.”

Meadows is best known...

Tim Meadows has been cast in CBS’s upcoming pilot “Dmv.”

The former “SNL” cast member is the first to join the cast of “Dmv,” which was ordered to pilot by the network in August. The single-cam workplace comedy, which hails from CBS Studios, is written by Dana Klein, who executive produces alongside Aaron Kaplan, Wendi Trilling, Robyn Meisinger.

The official logline for “Dmv” is as follows: Based on award winning author Katherine Heiny’s short story, a single camera workplace comedy set at the place everyone dreads going most: the Dmv. Our quirky and lovable characters are making minimum wage, doing a thankless job where customers are annoyed before they even walk in the door. Good thing they have each other.

Meadows will play Gregg, a former high school English teacher, who likes to get through the driving tests, and the day, as quickly as possible, per the official character description.

Tired: The Saturday Night Live Five-Timers Club, a group of show veterans that has grown so bloated that its members barely bother to steam-clean their silk robes anymore.

Wired: The Saturday Night Live One-Timers Club, a group of one-off hosts that run the gamut from “What was Lorne thinking?” to “Why the heck weren’t they invited back immediately?”

Many of the best one-time hosts were one-time hosts for a reason — they’re getting laughs at the big 30 Rock in the sky. But for other one-hit wonders, there’s no excuse not to issue return tickets.

Here are five single-shot hosts that we’d love to see back on SNL for Season 50…

1 Nate Bargatze

Bargatze was Season 49’s Rookie of the Year, an unexpected killer since there was nothing in his straight-faced stand-up to suggest he could pull off sketch characters. Turns out that Bargatze’s understated, 21st-century-Newhart deadpan worked...

If the Hollywood superhero-industrial complex is perishing, the Rolling Stone and Spin magazine extended universe is hastily being built. What better defines “pre-awareness” for the studios like the data logged by Spotify’s algorithm, where billions of track plays confirm what past popular music has stood the test of time, and also how––in the streaming era––you can gouge ancillary money from it?

But unlike the still-brilliant Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which stood to excoriate the nostalgia sought by such films, recently reinvigorated by the success of Bohemian Rhapsody, Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements, on the eponymous ’90s slacker idols, justifies that every great band deserves a film portrait helping us to wistfully remember them, and also chuckle as pretty young actors attempt to nail the mannerisms of weathered, road-bitten musicians. So good luck, Timothée.

This leads us to Pavements’ most exciting conceit, part of a sweep...

Forget about the ongoing divide between Democrats and Republicans, because Reagans wildly divergent Rotten Tomatoes scores reflect two completely different opinions when it comes to the new biopic. If one were to believe the critics, director Sean McNamaras Ronald Reagan movie isnt worth watching, and, as a result, registers only 18% on the Tomatometer. Conversely, audiences are in love with the Dennis Quaid-led film about the United States 40th President. Thus, the Rt Popcornmeter reflects a nearly perfect score of 98%. First, the bad news: la the disappointment with the flick. MovieWeb's own Greg Archer says:

"It opts to shine a flattering light on the man, capturing him as some kind of glorified soul, somebody who came from humble beginnings and managed to get a break in Hollywood then enter politics and emerge as the man who helped thwart communism and The Cold War in the 1980s. Its the kind of...

This Anaconda don't want none unless you've got—well, you get it. After the 1997 Anaconda helped launch Jennifer Lopez's career, a new version is about to go A-list again. But this isn't your mother's Anaconda. No, this one's going to be a meta horror-comedy from Tom Gormican (director and...

The trailer just dropped for A Complete Unknown, Hollywood’s latest attempt to turn your parents’ record collection into box-office gold. The upcoming film stars Timothée Chalamet as the legendary Bob Dylan, chronicling the young troubadour’s early years as he bums around the ‘60s New York folk circuit and (spoiler alert?) eventually freaks everybody out by playing an electric guitar.

Pfft, call us when there’s a movie about the making of Dylan’s Christmas album.

A Complete Unknown marks a return to the music biopic genre for director James Mangold, who previously helmed the Oscar-winning Walk the Line, which starred Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash, Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash and Robert Patrick as the T-1000, after he killed Johnny Cash’s father and took his place.

While Walk the Line was a critical and financial success, it was also painfully formulaic. And its structural triteness was...

"Ball don't lie. People do." Peacock has unveiled the first official trailer for a scripted fake doc comedy series called Mr. Throwback, from the creators of "Happy Endings", with episodes directed by filmmaker David Wain. It's ready to stream on Peacock starting this August in just a few weeks. This sports mockumentary follows a down-on-his-luck memorabilia dealer who looks for redemption by reuniting with his sixth-grade teammate, NBA legend Steph Curry. Now bumbling and washed-out, "Danny's the kind of guy whose B-ball career failed to launch the way Curry's did, despite the reverence Curry still holds for his legendary throwback skills: 'Bro, he was the king!'" The comedy series stars Adam Pally, as Danny, Stephen Curry, Ego Nwodim, Ayden Mayeri as Samantha, Tracy Letts, Layla Scalisi, Tien Tran, & Rich Sommer. Curry comments: "I'm looking forward to viewers getting to see me play a version of myself no one has ever seen before,...

It's been 17 years since Jake Kasdan delivered the definitive, beat-by-beat parody of the popular music biopic with "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," but filmmakers keep churning out these cookie-cutter, rise-and-fall portraits of great artists. Even when done reasonably well, they're little more than jukebox musicals that play the greatest hits and misses of their subjects' lives. Worst of all, given that you need to license the songs from the artists or their estates, these subjects have creative control over their story –- i.e. they'll only get as ugly as the artist or their estate can bear.

This brings us to James Mangold's "A Complete Unknown." Mangold, who made one of the better music biopics of the 21st century in "Walk the Line," has wisely limited the scope of his Bob Dylan film to the artist's early-to-mid-1960s transformation from conscience-pricking folk singer to electric-guitar-wielding rock prophet. This...

Quick Links The Man Behind the Music The Music Makes It Real Cox Entered the Hall of Fame Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story isn't a conventional comedy. While its humor is irreverent, there are great moments of satire that still hold up. Walk Hard may not be a perfect movie but its look at the music industry and biopics is unforgettable.

The late great Dewford Randall Cox seemingly rose from the dead in April 2024, channeled by John C. Reilly for a last hurrah at a Sierra Ferrell show at the Fonda Theatre in L.A. The legendary country star's reappearance reminds fans that his story, retold in Jake Kasden's movie Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, brilliantly captures facets of musical biopics while sending fans on a hilarious journey through satirized superstardom. Unlike the somber, "real" Dewey Cox shown in the film's post-credit scene, Kasden's film builds Cox up...

The Power Of The DogImage: Netflix

Netflix’s line-up of Original movies vary wildly in quality, ranging from Oscar-worthy work from some of our finest filmmakers to rom-coms one wouldn’t wish upon their worst enemy. But taken together, along with the streaming service’s passable library, Netflix has one...

Starring Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu, Kiernan Shipka, Bonnie Hunt, Kristofer Hivju, Nick Kroll, Wesley Kimmel and J. K. Simmons, and directed by Jake Kasdan, Red One is set to be another contender for your Christmas movie rotation!

After Santa Claus – Code Name: Red One – is kidnapped, the North’s Pole’s Head of Security (Dwayne Johnson) must team up with the world’s most infamous bounty hunter (Chris Evans) in a globe-trotting, action-packed mission to save Christmas.

Amazon MGM Studios will release Red One theatrically in the US on November 15, 2024 and will be released in the UK in November 2024 by Warner Bros. Pictures. Check out the trailer and poster below:...