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The 2025 anime scenario is nothing short of heart-wrenching, with Takopi’s Original Sin already serving a punch to the gut. However, the anime industry might not rest till it has carved out the hearts of fans. Get ready to welcome Peleliu: Guernica of Paradise, an upcoming anime movie that can put even the biggest anti-war stories to shame.

Peleliu is all set to premiere on December 5, 2025, in Japan and holds the promise to deliver an emotional blow that will be unparalleled by anything else in recent years. Not even Takopi’s Original Sin or the backstory of Evil Eye and Acrobatic Silky from Dandadan might be able to hold a candle against it.

Takopi’s Original Sin Is About to Have Some Serious Competition Peleliu: Guernica of Paradise is a devastating blow in the form of a cutesy anime film | Credits: Shinei Animation, Fugaku

Peleliu: Guernica of Paradise is a manga by Kazuyoshi Takeda,...

Was Brad Pitt criticized for Fight Club? ( Photo Credit – Flickr )

David Fincher is done fighting over Fight Club. The iconic director has faced criticism from every corner, with myriad labels labeling Tyler Durden—a character brought to life by Brad Pitt—as a symbol of toxic masculinity, racism, and misogyny. But now, Fincher steps into the ring to defend his creation. He sees Tyler not as a role model but as a cautionary tale, misunderstood by many who missed the film’s point.

You’d think a movie from ’99 would have faded into cinematic obscurity, but here we are, still discussing its legacy. Fincher expressed his frustration clearly: “It’s impossible for me to imagine that people don’t understand that Tyler Durden is a negative influence.” He challenged the audience to recognize the film’s toxic masculinity critique rather than embrace it. Fincher was not just defending his work...

Some of the greatest achievements in the annals of horror aren't the creations of a screenwriter's imagination but come from folklore and historical fact and can be utilized as a subversive means of social commentary. In 1972, Spanish director Amando de Ossorio delved into the legends of the Knights Templar, famous for taking part in the Crusades and later condemned for alleged heresy and participation in black magic. The outcome of this endeavor was Tombs of the Blind Dead, an atmospheric tour de force that spawned three sequels and has since become a beloved treasure among fans of cult European cinema.

De Ossorio's efforts in resurrecting the Templars not only shocked audiences, especially with their specter-like movements, ghastly skeletal appearance, and Gregorian chant-like musical accompaniments, but they also came to represent a subversive display of the political climate that had been prominent in Spain from 1937 to 1975 under the dictatorship of fascist general Fransisco Franco.

Talking to Variety at the Taormina Film Festival, celebrated Israeli director Amos Gitai spoke about his next feature film following his Berlinale entry “Shikun,” which has the title “Why War?”

Gitai explained: “Why people make war is the subject of my next film. It’s the dialogue between Einstein and Freud in 1931. Albert Einstein was asked by the League of Nations to choose one intellectual to put one question to. And he chose Sigmund Freud. And he asked him a question of two words, which is: ‘Why war?’ There’s an exchange of letters between the two with Einstein putting his interpretation on Freud’s answer and that’s the basis of my next project.”

According to production company Elefant Films, the script for “Why War?” was written by Marie-Josée Sanselme, and the film is produced by Alex Iordachescu. The cast includes Irène Jacob, Mathieu Amalric, Bahira Ablassi, Keren Mor,...

Paris, 1959. The staff of Cahiers du Cinema, the now-legendary French film magazine, convened only its second all-hands-on-deck critics' round table. The occasion, headlined as "an event which seems important enough to warrant a new discussion," was the release of the film Hiroshima mon amour, the debut feature film by Alain Resnais. Present at the recording of this proto-podcast were many critics who would go on to become filmmakers, such as Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, and ric Rohmer. It was Rohmer who gave the film the perfect pull-quote when he called it "the first modern film of the sound era," comparing it in importance to Picasso's "Guernica." The shocking thing is that this praise still holds up. The film captures the sensations of a brief, intense affair between two nameless lovers who meet randomly in Hiroshima, 15 years after the end of World War II. 65 years later, it's immediately easy to...

Madrid-based producer José Alba of Pecado Films gets the Cannes Close-Up treatment, revealing his plans for finding international co-production partners, and an “amazing moment” at last year’s Cannes.

Alba is in Cannes selling May I Speak With The Enemy, a biopic of stand-up comedian Miguel Gila based on an original idea by Alba.

Pecado Films was a producer on Victor Erice’s 2023 Cannes competition title Close Your Eyes and 2016 romantic war drama Guernica, distributed by Sony.

This year Alba is on the lookout for new international partners at Cannes: “We are going to meet, above all, Japanese and Indian...

War onscreen, whether fictive or documentary, is often a sort of highlight reel: the excitement and terror of battle, cities in flames, the devastated aftermath. It’s infrequent that a film dedicate itself to the disorientation of civilian survival in a long-term war zone, when everyday life goes on to an extent despite a surreal atmosphere of constant threat, and the uncertainty of any future at all.

That largely interior state is what director Olga Chernykh seeks to capture in “A Picture to Remember,” which opened the 2023 International Documentary Film Festival. Her family having already endured various erasures during the Russian Revolution, World War II and the fall of the Soviet Union, Chernykh catalogs the remaining evidence of their past as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine once again threatens to wipe the slate brutally “clean.”

This arresting short feature, which mixes elements of film diary, experimentalism, reportage and archival assembly,...

Cage leads a strong cast into the wilderness in an adaptation of John Williams’ punishing novel that cannot quite convey the full horror of its events

John Williams’s punishing 1960 western novel Butcher’s Crossing was described by Bret Easton Ellis as “a precursor to what Cormac McCarthy would do with the genre”. It follows Will Andrews, a dreamy 23-year-old Harvard dropout, as he tags along with Miller, a buffalo hunter targeting hidden valleys in the Colorado territory in the late 19th century. Will hopes to learn “more about this country”; what he gets, as the four-man crew shoots and hacks its way through dwindling herds in ever more treacherous conditions, is a lesson in remorseless brutality. Any screen version would need to find a cinematic equivalent for the prose’s tensile strength, and for what critic Leo Robson calls the “regime of methodical close description” from which Williams offers no respite.

Fight Club gained a cult following despite its initial box office failure, and has recently become popular among far-right groups. David Fincher, the director, acknowledges the film's popularity within these groups but is confused by their idolization of the negative influence character, Tyler Durden. Chuck Palahniuk, the author of the novel, finds it fascinating that these groups identify with Fight Club.

David Fincher's Fight Club has had quite the ride. The satirical drama follows two men who form an underground fight club for men that evolves into much more. When the film premiered in 1999, it failed to meet expectations at the box office and received mixed reviews from critics. Despite that, the film gained a cult following, with many publications still analyzing the film's cultural impacts and themes. In recent years, the film has become a favorite among far-right groups and incels (member of an online community of young men...

Depiction doesn’t equal endorsement, director David Fincher helpfully reminded folks in a new interview.

The filmmaker, whose new movie “The Killer” is out now in a limited release before arriving on Netflix next week, was asked in an interview with The Guardian how he felt about his 1999 movie “Fight Club” being embraced by misogynists and those who align with the far right of the political spectrum.

“I’m not responsible for how people interpret things,” Fincher said when the topic of “incels” and the “alt-right” appreciation of his film was broached. “Language evolves. Symbols evolve.”

Pushed by the interviewer about the film becoming a “touchstone” for the far right, Fincher added, “Ok, fine. It’s one of many touchstones in their lexicography,… we didn’t make it for them, but people will see what they’re going to see in a Norman Rockwell painting, or [Picasso’s] Guernica.”

“Fight Club...

From Patrick Bateman to Tyler Durden, Men’s Rights Activists, incels, and other misogynistic men have a tendency to idolize fictional characters that are meant to be cautionary tales. David Fincher — who brought Durden to the big screen with Fight Club — is as baffled by it as you and me.

Starring Edward Norton as the disaffected Narrator and Brad Pitt as Durden, Fight Club — Fincher’s 1999 adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s 1996 novel of the same name — tackled the same middle class ennui as Office Space, but took its characters’ frustrations to much more violent ends. Steve Rose of The Guardian asked Fincher about the film’s negative impact in a new interview, but Fincher was quick to avoid taking any personal responsibility for the rise of incel culture.

“I’m not responsible for how people interpret things,” Fincher said. “Language evolves. Symbols evolve.” Pressed on the number of male supremacists...

David Fincher's 1999 film "Fight Club" may be one of the most widely misinterpreted films of all time. 

"Fight Club" follows a nameless office wonk (Edward Norton) who finds that modern life is sapping him of his passions and forcing him to become a mindless consumer. He eventually achieves catharsis in under the tutelage of the ultra-cool Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a devil-may-care soap salesman who espouses an ultra-masculine philosophy of strength through personal violence. He and the Norton character begin hosting underground bare-knuckle fight clubs with other equally pathetic men seeking to assert their masculinity. A lot of knuckles are skinned, eyes damaged, and bruises inflicted. 

Eventually, Tyler has formed a cult of put-upon middle-class white service workers who begin tainting customers' food and committing city-wide acts of vandalism as a form of punk rock defiance. But then, a line is crossed. Tyler's cult turns to military-like tactics and bomb-making.

David Fincher was recently asked by The Guardian about how his 1999 directorial effort “Fight Club” has become a favorite amongst incels and far-right groups for depicting disenfranchised white men coming together to rally against capitalist society. The director distanced himself from such a topic, telling the publication, “I’m not responsible for how people interpret things…Language evolves. Symbols evolve.”

“Ok, fine,” Fincher replied when the Guardian writer said “Fight Club” has become a touchstone for the far right. “It’s one of many touchstones in their lexicography.” Is the director bothered by that? “We didn’t make it for them, but people will see what they’re going to see in a Norman Rockwell painting, or [Picasso’s] Guernica,” he reasoned, reiterating that he’s not responsible for how people interpret his work.

“It’s impossible for me to imagine that people don’t understand that Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) is a negative influence,...

Since its release in 1999, “Fight Club” has become a cultural touchstone for a subset of the human population referred to as the manosphere — men who are known as “incels” and are typically steeped in misogyny and Neo-Nazi beliefs. If anyone is surprised by that, it’s the movie’s director David Fincher.

Addressing the extremist audience that has embraced a film he himself hasn’t seen in two decades, Fincher told The Guardian, “We didn’t make it for them, but people will see what they’re going to see in a Norman Rockwell painting, or [Picasso’s] Guernica.”

“I’m not responsible for how people interpret things. Language evolves. Symbols evolve,” Fincher added. Still, he understands that the movie is “one of many touchstones in their lexicography.”

This echoes comments from the author of the “Fight Club” book. In 2018, Chuck Palahniuk told the same outlet that it’s “fascinating...

David Fincher says he can't control how people interpret his work, and he is not responsible for how symbols in Fight Club have evolved for right-wing groups. The popularity of Fight Club among the far-right stems from its themes of masculinity and societal disruption, which align with their ideals. The film's ending serves as a warning against radical social change, indicating that far-right interpretations of the movie omit crucial narrative elements.

Fight Club director David Fincher has responded to the far-right political fandom that has formed around the movie in recent years, saying he can't control how people interpret his work. The cult classic follows an unnamed man (Edward Norton) who forms an underground fight club with soap salesman Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). While the film was polarizing upon release, it has earned favorable critical reception - though has, in recent years, drawn the eye of right-wing advocates.

Speaking with The Guardian,...

There has been a great deal of angst expressed over artificial intelligence during the recent WGA and current SAG-AFTRA strikes. Although I can certainly understand the concern due to the newness of the technology, the perceived looming battle is nothing new. It’s just a continuation of a conflict that has been ongoing for centuries.

Specifically, it’s the battle which is so old that it’s a cliché: the struggle between art and consumerism. The proverbial war between artists and those that attempt to profit from their work.

One could argue that AI, or at least the fruit of its work, has also been around for centuries. Since AI is incapable of creating both anything original and anything that resembles art in any substantive form, it’s a useless tool for an artist. But a very powerful tool if one is only concerned with making money.

The purpose of...

When the 27th annual Art Directors Guild Awards are handed out at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown, Michael Denering, best known for his work in such movies as Die Hard, Batman Returns, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, will be one of several big-name artists receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award. Ahead of the Feb. 18 event, Denering looked back at some of his prized work, including a piece seen in Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur classic.

The scenic artist was a member of a small team that created a mural for the original Jurassic Park (above). The project was based on Picasso’s famous 1937 oil painting Guernica — the film version swapped out the original antiwar motifs of a gored horse, a bull and screaming women with dinosaurs. The final mural appeared in the compound of park owner John Hammond (played by Richard Attenborough) in various shots of the action flick.

You are not your job. You are not your sculpture at a fancy art gallery. You are, however, quite the Renaissance man. Not only is Brad Pitt an actor, architect and furniture designer; he’s also quite the artist. Brad Pitt has officially debuted his sculptures–but you’ll have to go to Finland to see them.

Nine works by Brad Pitt are now on display at the Sara Hildén Art Museum in Finland. These include his very first piece, titled House a Go Go, described as being “made out of tree bark, crudely held together with tape.” Hey, it’s art!

Another piece, titled Aiming At You I Saw Me But It Was Too Late This Time, is a wall piece that shows a gun battle. While stylistically and thematically different, one can see some possible inspirations from Pablo Picasso’s Guernica.

Photos of various pieces were posted on a fan Twitter account,...

For many artists, their subjects have a deep connection to their world view, their past and one experience which perhaps still haunts them to this day, even though this link is quite difficult to grasp for the viewer. Sometimes the theme, for example, with a masterpiece such as Munch’s “The Scream” or Picasso’s “Guernica”, is obvious, albeit without maybe getting the many details and finer textures of the work upon first viewing. When it comes to a concept such as water or water drops, the idea itself is such as multi-leveled metaphor, it is too abstract to find the aforementioned connection, despite acknowledging the level of skill that comes with painting this subject realistically. South Korean artist Kim Tschang-yeul, however, made a career painting water and water drops, among many other subjects, but when asked about his works, he claimed “Water drops mean nothing to me. If anything,...

Funny Or Die has optioned writer and illustrator John Paul Brammer’s “¡Hola Papi!: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons” to develop into a scripted series.

Brammer started the Substack advice column “¡Hola Papi!” in 2017, and published his memoir of the same name last year through Simon & Schuster. The paperback edition is set for release in June.

“Working with the team at Funny Or Die is a dream come true, and I’m so grateful for the opportunity to take ‘¡Hola Papi!’ to yet another medium,” said Brammer, who will also serve as an executive producer on the series. “From the column to the book and now to the screen, watching Papi’s journey has been one of the great joys in my life. It’s a journey only made possible by my readers, and my hope is to make a...

“Funeral Parade of Roses” has long been hailed as one of the greatest achievement of Japanese independent film in the sixties. Focusing on a gay and cross-dressing community in Tokyo, this energetic work moves swiftly between fiction and non-fiction. “Funeral” devours everything cultural and creates a constant shape-shifting beast of cinema.

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It is almost impossible to summarize the plot. A common way to describe it is to say that the story follows the adventure of Eddie (played by amateur actor Peter), and through his journey he discovers the true identity of his father. Yet, this summary neglects the fact that the film doesn’t follow a linear logic of time and space. Moreover, “Funeral” doesn’t contain only one story, it has the adventure of Eddie, a documentary about the film-making process, a quasi-trailer, and a commentary of a scene by a television host. Perhaps just like...

“Anpo Joyaku” is one of the earlier films by Japanese experimental film director Toshio Matsumoto, whose most well-know film is probably the recently restored “Funeral Parade of Roses” (1969). The title refers to the first security treaty signed between the Us and Japan.

Well versed in Western and Japanese modernist aesthetics and artworks, Matsumoto was also deeply invested in the social movements of the time. More importantly, he was not only interested in using film to engage with social issues, since film, especially the post-war Japanese cinema, was also the problem itself. In an interview with film scholar Aaron Gerow, Matsumoto criticized the old masters of classical Japanese cinema for not being able to reflect upon, or investigate one’s own responsibility of Japan’s World War II effort. Matsumoto argued that this lack of thinking informed the aesthetics of the Japanese mainstream filmmaking after the war. Since these filmmakers were...

Exclusive: Universal Pictures has optioned rights to the title story in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s New York Times bestseller Friday Black. A collection of short stories from Mariner Books, Friday Black explores the inhumanity, injustice and a hope that persists in black American life, often with a surrealist eye.

Adjei-Brenyah will adapt the script for the film and executive produce, while Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw director David Leitch will produce alongside his producing partner Kelly McCormick. No director has been set.

“Friday Black” is the seventh story in the book and is set on Black Friday in a dystopian near future. The protagonist, a department store salesman, copes with vicious, insatiable Black Friday shoppers while attempting to win a sales contest among employees, in order to give the prize jacket to his mother as a gift. The New York Times described the short story as “a not-so-subtle critique of consumerism run amok.

When Saverio Costanzo, the director of HBO and Rai’s “My Brilliant Friend,” started to plan how he would depict the grand but gritty city of Naples — one that’s so vivid in the imaginations of millions of Elena Ferrante readers, he quickly decided that the working-class neighborhood at the core of her four Neapolitan novels had to be fictional.

“Our starting point was always the fake city,” he says, noting that precisely because no other city in Italy has such a strong identity, keeping the right distance from Naples was what enabled him to represent it so intensely.

The drab ’hood called Rione Luzzatti was reconstructed on the grounds of an abandoned glass factory in Caserta, about 20 miles north of Naples, a roughly 5-acre converted space that’s become among the largest sets in Europe. Production designer Giancarlo Basili and local craftsmen built many of the story’s most...

French New Wave icon Jean-Luc Godard is set to adapt his latest film, “The Image Book,” which is competing at Cannes Film Festival into an exhibit in Paris, Madrid, New York and Singapore.

The roadshow tour is being produced by the team behind the film, Fabrice Aragno at Casa Azul and Mitra Farahani at Ecran Noir Productions.

Aragno told Variety that both Casa Azul and Ecran Noir Productions are currently in talks with the Beaubourg museum in Paris, Arte Reina Sofía in Paris, and the National Gallery in Singapore.

The installation will spread over 500 to 600 square meters and will break down the images of Godard’s film to deliver an interactive experience. “Those who will discover the exhibit will walk through a forest of images and sounds,” explained Aragno, who compared “The Image Book” to Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica.” “Except that ‘Guernica’ related to one historical chapter, whereas ‘The Image...

Written by Alex Paknadel, Dan Watters | Art by Jose Holder | Published by Titan Comics

Seems like an age since the last time I reviewed this book, which is probably a good thing as it allows a reviewer to regain a little perspective. Although the book as a whole I like, I was getting a little picky with details here and there, so will be interesting to see if I was getting a little over critical, not critical enough, or getting it just about right. I’ve been a bit Assassin’s Creed absorbed of late, playing the games and reading some of the novels, so reviewing this issue is a bit of a busmen’s holiday as well.

Can’t remember everything that’s going on since the last review? Me neither, so time for a swift recap. The central premise of this book has been the rise of The Instruments of the First Will,...

NatGeo is putting a lot of stock in one of Spain’s greatest artistic exports. Oh yeah, and it’s about to launch a TV show about painter Pablo Picasso, too.

Antonio Banderas will star as the famed artist/fellow Spanish native in Season 2 of the cabler channel’s Genius, a Ron Howard-produced anthology series which chronicles a different brilliant mind each go-around. Season 1 depicted the life of Albert Einstein, played in his youth by Johnny Flynn and in his advanced years by Geoffrey Rush. Similarly, Season 2 finds the artist as a young man portrayed by Alex Rich (Glow...

On April 18 National Geographic announced the subject of the third season of its anthology series “Genius.” Author Mary Shelley, the woman behind “Frankenstein,” will follow scientist Albert Einstein and painter Pablo Picasso in the scripted series about great thinkers and creators.

Shelley will be the oldest of the “Genius” subjects thus far. She was born in 1797 and died in 1851, before either Einstein or Picasso was born. She was the daughter of philosopher William Godwin and women’s rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft. She was also the second wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, a famous Romantic poet. She will be the first woman profiled by the Nat Geo series.

“Genius” debuted in April 2017 with Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush in the role of Einstein for the 10-episode biographical drama. It received 10 Emmy nominations, including Best Limited Series, Best Movie/Mini Actor for Rush and Best Movie/Mini Directing for Oscar winner Ron Howard...

What is the role of an artist in a time of international crisis? Are they bound to use their platform to speak up, either through their work or other means? Or should they remain silent, stuck in their lane and apolitical?

The second season of National Geographic’s anthology “Genius” takes a hard stand for the former. The limited series, which followed Albert Einstein’s life last season, turns its gaze to Spanish painter Pablo Picasso in the late 1930s. Fascism is on the rise, and the curators of Paris’ Exposition Universelle want Picasso to create something on a giant, wall-sized canvas at the expo. But they don’t want just any Picasso painting — they want something that will speak to this moment, to the fear of creeping Nazism across Europe.

“The threat is enormous, so the picture must be enormous, so as to move the people,” one of the curators says.

It was back in June of 2015 that our own Shelagh Rowan-Legg had the chance to visit the set of Koldo Serra's war picture Gernika. Telling the story of a Basque town bombed by the Nazis in support of Franco's forces The Backwoods director Serra is working on a much broader canvas here than on his debut and with the release of the first teaser we know have our first look at the results. James Darcy and Maria Valverde anchor the international cast in a film that appears to adopt the time worn tradition of telling a smaller, more intimate story against the backdrop of larger events and to do it very well. Production values are fantastic and while this is very much just a...

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Director Koldo Serra greets me with a plate of cookies. This is the first indication that the set of Gernika is not perhaps typical of the usual Spanish Civil War dramas. But this isn't surprising; Serra's first feature film The Backwoods put a new spin on the traditional rural thriller. Serra's friendly and relaxed manner belies his talent for taking challenging material and making it into something unexpected, and I expect his new film will be no different. I visited the set last week in Bilbao, and was able to take some photos. The film has a Facebook page, and more photos (some of which are below, you can tell, as they are much better than mine) can be found there....

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