In a post earlier this week, I wrote about a 1958 James Bond comic strip in which the cartoonist drew the character like he was drawing Sean Connery. But Connery wouldn't be cast as Bond for the first movie until four years later. — Read the rest

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In 2015’s “Jurassic World” — the first of the “Jurassic Park” franchise’s largely interminable bastard step-children — there’s a moment of action that briefly suggests the film might exist for reasons other than to extend its source material and make oodles of cash. In the scene, which occurs just as things fall apart (as they always seem to do in these films), dinosaurs break loose and attack all of the theme park’s patrons. 

In the ensuing chaos, a woman is snatched up by a flying Pteranodon and swooped into the air, where others of its species take turns throwing her between their beaks. She’s then dropped into the water, where the winged creatures swarm her once more. Just as the dinosaurs pluck her out of the depths, a Mosasaurus leaps from the water and swallows both the woman and the dino attacking her. It’s downright cruel and undeniably entertaining. But namely, this sequence of dino-terror suggests that “Jurassic World” might actually provide audiences something they’d sorely lack for the next decade: fun. 

That was, of course, not the case. In the years that followed, three more “Jurassic World” films saw the light of day, and none of them came close to reaching that first movie’s brief, brutal height. A swath of other summer blockbusters would be released alongside them; A “Spider-Man” here, a “Mission: Impossible” there. But finding a popcorn movie that could entertain beyond nostalgia alone was rare. (Though not entirely inconceivable.) Perhaps, in an ironic twist of fate, the truly original summertime creature feature went extinct before the onscreen dinosaurs could.

Cue Anne Hathaway, stepping into frame sensible sandals first, pointing a shotgun at her own ancient adversary in David Robert Mitchell’s delightful “The End of Oak Street.” That alone is the kind of image powerful enough to make any viewer believe that mainstream cinema is still kickin’. Everything that follows is simply further confirmation. 

Mitchell’s film, which follows a family of four in 1982 as they realize their entire quaint suburban neighborhood has somehow been transported back to the Mesozoic era, has understandably swept audiences off their feet. “The End of Oak Street” has everything a viewer could want — especially a viewer fatigued by the Hollywood sequel system and all its shortcomings. There’s action, romance, suspense, creatures, creatures having sex, large piles of excrement, interdimensional portals, pizza, a comical amount of split-diopter shots, and what looks to be a pleasantly well-funded public library. What’s more, Mitchell’s film is feisty and unpredictable, always managing to stay one step ahead of the viewer. 

“The End of Oak Street” has all the elements that Hollywood studio executives love to pluck from box-office hits of the past in their never-ending attempts to Frankenstein a decent modern blockbuster out of spare parts. Yet, here, there are no visible stitches, no scars or seams. Mitchell’s film succeeds where others have failed because it runs on its feelings rather than its features. It’s still pastiche, but unbeholden to the nostalgia-obsessed, highly referential style that has plagued so much contemporary media, like “Stranger Things,” “Super 8” and “Wonder Woman 1984.” The more Mitchell conjures joy and fear from thin air with the snap of his fingers, the more frustrating it becomes that audiences seldom get to experience summer fun at this caliber anymore. But as depressing as that may be, “The End of Oak Street” could very well be a blueprint for a fresh era in popcorn movies. They might not make ‘em like this anymore, but that doesn’t mean they can’t.

But that will require some convincing. For a few years now, studios have had it in their heads that the ideal way to merge art and commerce is to hire stylish, auteur-minded filmmakers to helm their franchise movies. Think Chloé Zhao taking on Marvel’s “Eternals,” or Amazon MGM tapping Denis Villeneuve to pilot “James Bond” into its next era. By and large, this formula has not worked because studios demand accessibility, even from the artistes. That cool camera setup isn’t worth it because viewers don’t care about that kind of stuff, executives say. Unless you’re Steven Spielberg, with enough money and success to have final-cut privilege, everything in a franchise blockbuster is bound to look flat, feel drab, and be nauseatingly overexplained.

That’s a big part of why “The End of Oak Street” feels like a break in the pattern from the jump. Mitchell is the film’s sole screenwriter and director, working with a clear reverence for the kinds of story-first features produced under Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment label — the movies that sprang from big, bold ideas, not financial bottom lines. The story has elements similar to popular summer blockbusters, but they’re so finely remixed and retooled that they don’t bear such exhausting resemblance to their forebears. 

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Perhaps best of all: The movie has a gritty, charming meanness to it; a stickiness that’s hard to shake off. Where “Jurassic World” balked at doubling down on its single cruel sequence, “The End of Oak Street” has at least 10 stomach-dropping thrills. With a PG-13 rating that gets away with quite a bit, the action harkens back to the days of “Poltergeist,” a PG-rated film that had whole families walking out of the theater traumatized and silent. “Poltergeist” was, notably, a summertime Amblin release that similarly riffed on classic creature scares — updating dusty, old ghost tropes with new ideas — much like Mitchell does with his dino-time-travel extravaganza.

But Mitchell wants you to make those correlations, too. When the film opens at Oak Street’s idyllic summer block party, complete with cookouts and kids happily pedaling together on their bikes, he purposefully evokes the atmosphere of the movies he covertly cites. There’s some bickering between the Platt parents, Denise (Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor), that their kids, Brian (Christian Convery) and Audrey (Maisy Stella), pick up on. But Mitchell cleverly avoids setting any tone in stone. When a storm followed by a flash of blinding light sends their house and the surrounding neighborhood back in time, the entire Platt family quickly understands that they’re in deep sh*t — or, more precisely, dinosaur feces, of which a large amount has accumulated in the neighbor’s backyard.

From here, Robert carefully stacks a Jenga tower of suspense-laden set pieces and surprisingly moving family drama, without so much as letting the structure teeter. Where other filmmakers would painstakingly elucidate every thematic detail to make their silly popcorn movie “say something,” Mitchell restrains himself. “The End of Oak Street” doesn’t need to be “about” anything, which is the best way to make a film feel like it’s actually about several things. 

On one hand, “The End of Oak Street” exists to be entirely what it is and nothing more. It’s a piece of delicious, fluffy cotton candy, sweet and quick-dissolving. On the other hand, when a director isn’t trying so hard to convey a message, that’s typically when they can conjure an emotion to fill the space left empty by thematic contrivance. This movie is about family dynamics and love, sure. It’s even got a dash of trauma. But Mitchell says so much more by saying nothing overt about those things, and instead, depicting a family who wants nothing more than to get out of the bind they’ve found themselves in. It’s as if he recognizes that so much recent blockbuster filmmaking has been about embedding heart-wrenching pathos into the nostalgic elements we know and love. But more often than not, the combination comes off forced; corny at best, insipid at worst. 

Mitchell’s self-imposed moderation might not look radical at first. But in a blockbuster landscape like the one we’re in now, thoughtful constraint is welcome and needed. I’m reminded of “The Odyssey,” which felt, to me, crushed by its own ambition, hoping to be everything at once simply because it could be. “The End of Oak Street” couldn’t be more different. It’s just as ambitious and loaded with ideas and surprises, but Mitchell isn’t trying to make this story anything more than it needs to be. 

As with his last two films, “It Follows” and “Under the Silver Lake,” Mitchell has found a winning, thrilling formula in throwing ordinary people into extraordinary situations and searching for the resonance in the results, even if the answer is simple. That’s the real key in making something feel nostalgic, without nostalgia-farming. His latest film succeeds because it’s not trying to make audiences say, “I like this, because it reminds me of that.” Rather, “The End of Oak Street” recalls a time when both life and the movies seemed simpler, but were really much more complex than most people remember. They just didn’t feel the need to spell it out for us, allowing the movies to do the talking instead.

The post “The End of Oak Street” does pastiche right appeared first on Salon.com.

It’s difficult to get one’s hopes up when it comes to the dicey state of Hollywood filmmaking, and even more difficult to keep them there. Mergers and consolidations threaten to dictate which films can get made. Theatergoing is only starting to boast consistent numbers again, taking six years to bounce back from its pandemic freefall. And Netflix has a Rolodex of movie stars trapped in terrible roles. But when things get tough, and our spirits wane, there’s no better pair to summon than Mulder and Scully, who are returning (technically) to the feature-length format with “The X-Files: I Want to Believe — Vrach Frankenshteyn.”

This version of Mulder and Scully’s widely panned 2008 outing has more gore, more grit and more gothic delights, courtesy of its director and “X-Files” series creator, Chris Carter, returning to clean up the mess left by Fox 18 years ago. Following the FBI duo as they search for a missing colleague, Carter’s director’s cut is for the most staunch sci-fi fans, those who crave every little bit of “X-Files” lore they can get.

Carter says that when the original film was in production, he faced intense pressure to cut enough grisly material to get a PG-13 rating so the movie could reach as many people as possible. That’s not an uncommon phenomenon, especially when working with a big, financially successful, well-loved property, but it is frustrating. And more often than studios realize, fans and even the average moviegoer can sense when a studio has tampered with a film. 

But, notably, Carter’s director’s cut arrives on Hulu on the heels of Ryan Coogler finishing an “X-Files” reboot pilot for the streamer. Coogler’s recent deal with Warner Bros. to regain ownership rights to his smash hit “Sinners” was a boon for filmmakers who’ve long been frustrated with studio greed and meddling. That Carter’s been able to release the film he always intended to make, and Coogler’s helping to turn Hollywood in favor of artists, movie fans may finally have enough proof to believe again — though Scully, as always, would be skeptical.

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Overwhelmed theater apps and a scarcity mindset around exclusive big-screen formats for blockbusters like Dune: Part Three and The Odyssey have led to the “concertification” of movies.

One of the most memorable deaths in the history of the James Bond franchise came in 1964’s Goldfinger, starring Sean Connery as 007. Oh, and if that last sentence didn’t make it abundantly clear, you’re about to get hit with some serious spoilers. Anyway, early on in the film, Bond is knocked unconscious and awakens to find Jill Masterson (as portrayed by Shirley Eaton), whom he’s spent the night with, naked in bed and covered in gold paint. Bond soon reveals that she died from skin suffocation:

The image of Eaton painted gold was so iconic that it landed her on the cover of LIFE magazine later that same year. Unfortunately, her character’s unusual death also spawned an urban legend that Eaton died from skin suffocation herself during the film’s production.

According to the BBC series Debunked, two things helped perpetuate the myth: First of all, Eaton only had a few small movie roles after Goldfinger was released, and retired from acting in 1969. On top of that, people were legitimately worried at the time that skin suffocation was a real thing.

The Strange Urban Legend Behind ‘Goldfinger’s’ Most Iconic Death

As a matter of fact, cabaret dancers were known to leave part of their skin unpainted out of fear that clogged pores might prevent oxygen from being absorbed. Goldfinger director Guy Hamilton and producer Albert Broccoli even hired a physician to monitor Eaton while she filmed the scene. Furthermore, part of Eaton’s abdomen was left unpainted, just to be on the safe side. They then did their best to remove the paint as quickly as possible once the segment was completed.

It should go without saying that Eaton didn’t die from the gold paint used on her in the movie. The actress is actually alive and well at press time and is currently 89 years old. As for so-called “skin suffocation,” we now know, in part thanks to a 2003 episode of MythBusters, that this isn’t something that can happen from having your body painted.

However, painting one’s body can lead to other issues, like overheating and toxins being absorbed through the skin.

The post The Truth behind the ‘Goldfinger’ Actress Who Was Rumored to Be Killed by Gold Paint appeared first on VICE.

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The animated Walt Disney musical Moana tells the story of a young girl named—you guessed it—Moana (Auli‘i Cravalho), the daughter of a Polynesian chieftain, who sets out to find the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) in the hopes of saving her people. Or, that’s at least how somebody from the U.S. would explain the basics of the film. People living in Italy, on the other hand, know the movie and its lead character by totally different names. Over there, Disney released the film as Oceania, and Moana is known as Vaiana. 

Why the changes, you ask? Disney has never given an official reason, but that hasn’t stopped word from getting around. As it turns out, there was once a well-known adult film actress in Italy by the name of Moana Pozzi, who The New York Times once referred to as the country’s “most revered porn star.”

According to them, Pozzi was “as popular with hormonally charged young men as with devout grandmothers.”

The Adult Film Star Who Reportedly Forced Disney to Rename ‘Moana’ in Italy

Shortly after Moana was released, The Telegraph reported that the film’s directors confirmed Pozzi “played a big part in the decision.” They were evidently asked about the name change at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Davide Romani, Disney’s head of theatrical marketing in Italy, appears to have verified that claim around the same time. As he tells it, the company had been discussing the issue during a meeting with Italian exhibitors the previous year.

An Italian marketing expert, who didn’t wish to be identified, told Fox that there were two reasons for the title change. “One is that if you type ‘Moana’ and do a Google search in Italy, you risk coming up with porn videos. And it’s very expensive and a waste of money to try and change that.”

The other reason, the marketing executive explained, was that “in any Italian focus group, ‘Moana’ is Moana Pozzi the porn star.”

The post Disney Had to Rename This Movie in Italy Because of a Famous Porn Star appeared first on VICE.

If any lesson can be taken from the extremely, laughably ugly animated film Niu Lai, as it dominates the Chinese box office, blowing Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey out of the water, it’s probably that people will always love a viral, memeable disaster just as much, if not more, than a meticulously crafted masterwork. And they will come out in droves so they, too, can be in on the joke.

Niu Lai is an 86-minute animated film about a newborn calf learning life lessons or some such s—t. It went from making roughly 7,700 yuan in its first 10 days to more than 14.9 million yuan, according to The Guardian, after social media turned the too-earnest-and-scrappy-for-its-own-good movie into a national joke.

If you haven’t seen any footage, it looks like the animation you see in a late-90s children’s TV show. Like ReBoot, but much worse. Probably closer to the more recent Adult Swim show Xavier: Renegade Angel, but Xavier had the benefit of looking shitty on purpose. Niu Lai was made over five years by just two people, a mother-son filmmaking duo. It had no marketing, no trailer, and almost no audience.

Then some of the few people who did see it started posting clips recorded in the theater showing off its bizarrely bare-bones visuals, and it took off.

An Animated Movie With Almost No Audience Became a Hit After Everyone Started Mocking It

That puts Niu Lai into the proud cinematic tradition of movies that become successful because they sucked real hard. American film history is littered with films with more ambition than budgets and filmmaking know-how could support, creating a whole subgenre we affectionately call “so bad it’s good.”

I feel like we’ve been seeing fewer and fewer of these in recent years. There used to be a whole lower-middle class of filmmakers and film financiers who seemed to specialize in making objectively terrible movies that were still undeniably watchable. The kinds of movies that were the bread and butter of podcasts like How Did This Get Made and the legendary show Mystery Science Theater 3000 before it, along with countless local TV hosts like Elvira and Joe Bob Briggs.

While I haven’t seen the whole thing, from everything I’ve read and seen online, Niu Lai is bad in a way a lot of things aren’t bad anymore. In an era where things are bad because they were run through AI, which only knows how to make things aggressively subpar using a factory process that churns out a sea of sameness, Niu Lai is a special, handcrafted kind of bad that used to be an abundant resource and has sadly dried up like the rivers and lakes being chugged by data centers. It’s quaint. It’s cozy.

It has the distinct whiff of human-made garbage, and that’s exactly why it’s made millions.

The post The ‘Worst Animated Movie Ever’ Is Somehow Becoming a Box Office Hit appeared first on VICE.

Harrison Ford came dangerously close to making his final film appearance in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. While preparing to shoot a scene aboard the Millennium Falcon one day, Ford was knocked to the ground and crushed beneath the ship’s hydraulic metal door, which was described as weighing about the same as a small car. The door was reportedly operated by another person, who’d apparently pressed the button to make it go down while Ford was standing underneath it. Ford was badly injured and unable to continue working on the movie for two months.

As Ford told Jonathan Ross in December 2015, the design of the Millennium Falcon had evolved significantly since the 1970s, when the doors were controlled using a pulley system. “Now we had lots of money and technology, and so they built a f—king great hydraulic door which closed at light speed,” Ford explained. “And the door came down and hit me on my left hip because I was turned to my right,” he continued. “And then it flung my left leg up and it dislocated my ankle, and as it drove me down to the floor, my legs slapped on the ramp up to the Millennium Falcon and broke both bones in my leg.”

Harrison Ford Was Crushed by a Millennium Falcon Door and Nearly Died

The company responsible for the incident, Foodles Production, was later fined £1.6 million (more than $2 million). During one hearing, prosecutor Andrew Marshall said that the accident nearly cost Ford his life. “It could have killed somebody,” Marshall told the court. “The fact that it didn’t was because an emergency stop was activated.” Had it not been pressed in time, Marshall asserted, things might’ve turned out very differently.

Though production was halted as Ford recovered, the actor was eventually able to complete his scenes. Director J.J. Abrams recalled that Ford’s injuries had actually helped bond the crew on set. When Ford finally returned, Abrams claimed he was “better and stronger than ever.” Abrams went on to say that there was “a fire” in Ford’s eyes that you can see in the final cut of the movie.

The post Harrison Ford Was Nearly Killed by the Millennium Falcon While Filming This ‘Star Wars’ Film appeared first on VICE.

Though 2000’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas ended up being a huge hit, the experience of making it was not a fun one for Jim Carrey. In fact, the comedian came very close to walking away from the production early on because of the costume and the grueling makeup process. “The first day in makeup took eight hours,” Carrey told Vulture in 2025. “And I went into the trailer and asked Ron [Howard] and Brian [Grazer] to come in, and I told them that I wouldn’t be able to do the movie and I was quitting.”

Carrey even offered to pay back all the money he’d gotten for the role—with interest. Things got so bad on set that Carrey started having panic attacks in between takes. Howard remembered seeing Carrey lying on the floor breathing into a brown paper bag at one point. Finally, Grazer found a man named Richard Marcinko, who’d trained CIA officers and special-ops people to endure torture (he also developed SEAL Team Six). 

Jim Carrey Nearly Quit ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’ Because the Makeup Was So Brutal

Marcinko was very instrumental in getting Carrey through the movie. “He gave me a litany of things that I could do when I began to spiral,” Carrey explained. Among Marcinko’s suggestions for Carrey were punching himself in the leg as hard as he could, punching a friend in the arm, and smoking cigarettes as much as possible. “There are pictures of me as the Grinch sitting in a director’s chair with a long cigarette holder,” Carrey recalled. “I had to have a holder, because the yak hair would catch on fire if it got too close.”

Interestingly, another thing Carrey credits with putting him at ease was listening to the Bee Gees. Carrey said that they eventually got the makeup process down to just three hours, and he spent that time going through the entire Bee Gees catalog. According to Carrey, their “joyful” music really helped take the edge off. “I’ve never met [Bee Gees singer] Barry Gibb, but I want to thank him,” Carrey joked.

The post Jim Carrey Needed a Special-Ops Trainer to Get Through Filming ‘The Grinch’ appeared first on VICE.

The fame machine is a distinctly American invention. In what other country is it wired into people’s heads from the moment they can coherently string together five words that they, too, can be a star if they work hard enough and dream big enough? Here, “fame” doesn’t merely suggest flashy movie-star celebrity; it’s a status you can attain in any industry, so long as you climb to its upper ranks. Fame is a bedfellow of the newer, more modern American dream, which promises not only contentment, but success, as a reward for ambition, ravaging the lifestyles of millions of people in the process. It’s getting harder to be happy with what one has, and even more difficult to stop destroying ourselves — either with contempt for others or regret for what we perceive as imperfection — in striving for more. America might not have a monarchy, but that doesn’t mean most of us won’t try to bow at fame’s feet at some point. Each trade has its kings and queens, its princes and princesses.

When news broke of actress Hayden Panettiere’s death at the age of 36 late last week, the immediate aftermath felt like watching the fame machine go on the fritz, rumbling and sputtering before outpouring a swath of both genuine grief and rubbernecking greed. Those who grew up watching Panettiere light up screens both big and small were devastated. Others — maybe even a subset of the same people — jumped to alarmism and misinformation. After an extended hiatus from acting, Panettiere was returning to work and primed for an even bigger comeback. Earlier this summer, she detailed her struggles with postpartum depression, abuse, child stardom, addiction and recovery in her memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning.” Many assumed her death was a result of any one of these. (First responders found Panettiere in cardiac arrest, but no exact cause of death is known at the time of writing.) 

Within hours, conspiracies about Panettiere being killed for speaking out about Hollywood appeared online. A TikTok search for her name brings up ghoulish videos with thousands of views: “Last video of Hayden Panettiere alive”; “Nobody realized Hayden made three unusual moves before her death.” CBS News posted audio of the 911 response call to their TikTok page just this morning. It’s as if, in the untimely death of a famous person — especially a former child star — particles of their fame dissipate into the air, leaving the desperate and discontent to try to snatch a piece of their own before it dissolves completely.

Some of Panettiere’s most notable roles point back to this phenomenon, with her TV arcs in series like “Heroes” and “Nashville,” at their cores, tracking the effects of the whole world watching and depending on you. But it’s her 2005 Disney film, “Ice Princess” — one of my first experiences with Panettiere’s work — that’s most illustrative of both fame’s pitfalls and the culture that cosigns them in the name of success. In the movie, Panettiere plays Gen Harwood, an archetypal most-popular-girl-in-school and less-than-standard teenage ice-skating prodigy. Though her form and marks in the sport are good, real success is just out of Gen’s reach. That is, until physics geek Casey Carlyle (Michelle Trachtenberg, another child star gone far too soon) begins studying the science of Gen’s skating in hopes of scoring a college scholarship. 

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Casey and Gen’s journey from competitors to confidantes is the film’s familiar emotional center, but tucked into an unfamiliar narrative. Beneath its Disney dialogue and some smoothed-over depictions of the harsher realities of competitive sports, “Ice Princess” boasts winning messages about the pressures put on young people to achieve greatness at an age when they’re too young to define personal success. That the film is led by two young women who accomplished such greatness in their childhood and teenage years at the risk of their privacy and potentially their well-being is a tragically meta asterisk that will now hang over the movie forever.

But that doesn’t mean “Ice Princess” doesn’t still come loaded with hope and pertinent themes of personal choice, active listening, and cheering young people on in whatever they choose to do (within reason). Considered alongside its stars’ tragically brief lives, “Ice Princess” conveys the critical need to give teenagers both stalwart encouragement and the tools to speak up when they need help. And while the movie’s legacy looks a little more macabre now, Panettiere and Trachtenberg’s glimmering performances are enough to push through the darkness.

Casey and Gen are, for a Disney movie, as different as they come. Casey lives with her mother, Joan (Joan Cusack), in a cozy, rural house outside of town, where Casey skates for fun on the frozen pond in their backyard. Gen is your typical blonde suburbanite who wishes she could spend her Saturday nights at parties or with her friends, instead of in intensive training on the ice, coached by her mother, Tina (Kim Cattrall). Gen and Casey aren’t enemies, but they’re not exactly friends, either. But when Casey’s science teacher encourages her to apply for a college scholarship that could change her entire life — and make the project she submits as part of her application personal — Casey’s affection for ice skating becomes a thorn in Gen and Tina’s side.

The two girls are thrown together by their mutual commitment to their passions, science and skating. What Gen and Casey want is to enjoy these things for the personal thrills they offer. Fame or excellence in either field seems to be the desire of their parents and other adult figures in their lives. “People wait their whole life to find their calling,” Casey’s teacher tells her about the scholarship, asserting that a natural fluency in science means it must be her destiny. These sentiments are reflected by Joan, who desperately wants more for her daughter than she’s been able to provide on her own teacher’s salary.

Tina, on the other hand, gets to the point with candor. “You’re not like other girls,” Tina tells Gen when her daughter asks why she can’t take a half-hour break from training to be with her boyfriend. “Winners make sacrifices.” For Gen, those sacrifices come at the expense of joy. Gen knows the exact measurements of her salad order and is strictly forbidden from eating any bread. Her practice doesn’t stop when the sun goes down. And attending a high school party is entirely out of the question. There is something genuinely quite heartbreaking about watching Panettiere, a young woman just coming to understand Hollywood industry standards, repeat the sickly refrains of a similarly demanding profession. When Gen orders cheese (in a strict one-quarter cup measurement) for her salad one afternoon, her friends poke fun at her. “It’s Saturday,” she replies, “I can pig out if I want to.”

With its focused screenplay, “Ice Princess” quickly cultivates an atmosphere that’s sympathetic to Gen and Casey. The film frames their lapses in rigor as the joys of being a teenager, rather than imperfections — or worse, weakness in the pursuit of glory. No 16-year-old should be so strictly confined to a routine that prevents them from actually living their life.

But that’s not the message that America is selling. The same tracks to success still exist for young people gifted in sports or science. But fame as a general concept also seems much more attainable than it did 21 years ago. Teenagers want to grow up to be influencers or TikTokers, spending a significant portion of their youth creating content about life instead of actually living it.

It’s a lifestyle not entirely dissimilar to the rigorous training of an ice-skating prodigy, putting in the work at all hours to hone their skill. But it does strike me as odd that, in the aftermath of Panettiere’s death, so much of the response was about the lack of protections offered to child stars in the film and television industries, and not the rapidly booming content creation field. How ironic that social media is the new breeding ground for the kind of toxicity that the people mining Panettiere’s death for views purport to abhor.

That dissonance is a big part of why “Ice Princess” holds up today. One could even argue that it’s now an even more critical part of Panettiere and Trachtenberg’s legacies. The film is no longer just a tender-hearted story of fame and all its drawbacks, but also a look at two women who bravely wrestled with those flaws, making a major impact in the short time they were here. When they’re on screen, Panettiere and Trachtenberg shine through all the Disney conventions, their characters pointing back to their real selves. 

Each one has her singular presence — Trachtenberg plucky and inspiring; Panettiere charming and bold — but together, they’re beautiful complements. Panettiere’s grounded presence helps untether the film from its somewhat corny conceit, giving it authentic complexity. She deviates from the one-note mean girl role, supplying Gen with dimensionality and kindness that characters like these were rarely afforded. That Gen’s growing discontent with skating is so closely linked to Panettiere’s real-life trajectory — trying to figure out where she fits in a ruthless industry — is a sour cherry on top: unexpected, but worth embracing. Though the importance of “Ice Princess” is obscured by histrionic high school drama and feel-good fluff, it remains a vital work for teaching parents and kids of all ages that success is what you make of it. And none of that would be possible without its two forever-shining stars.

The post “Ice Princess” quietly defined Hayden Panettiere’s whole career appeared first on Salon.com.

Rogue Studios, a new cinematic adult AI-generator, is betting big on the future of “sophisticated” spicy content.

Beneath the shadows of indigo-streaked clouds, a young woman strolls through a fog-covered city, stopping at the base of a skyscraper. She looks up, eyes following every square inch of the structure until the point where it juts past the clouds and into the dark atmosphere above, beyond where she can see. She is the princess, and this is the castle she’ll be locked in, an indomitable beast of a citadel fittingly titled the Tower Hotel. 

“How hokey,” you might say, “a modern princess trapped in a luxury high-rise.” But really, everything in “Her Private Hell” is contrivance. Writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn — “NWR,” as he’s taken to branding himself — isn’t exactly known for his subtlety. His previous feature, 2016’s love-it-or-hate-it loony toon “The Neon Demon,” was a modeling industry semi-satire that featured beauties quite literally gobbling up their ingenue competition. It’s really no surprise that his first film in 10 years would arrive with its thematic commentary just as legible.

But that’s where the fun begins. Once the viewer understands where Refn is headed, they can submit themselves to his grotesque neon visions. His appeal as a filmmaker lies in his stylistic flair; the joy comes from watching him marry the aesthetically manicured with the ideologically bizarre. Whether it’s a union of love or force is another matter. NWR’s high concepts and their abrasive execution don’t always coalesce. But when they do, it’s like watching a magic trick play out before your eyes, leaving you so stunned you’re stammering, unable to utter even a single “How?”

“Her Private Hell” is Refn’s greatest trick yet: A beguiling fairy tale for a lost lamb named Elle (Sophie Thatcher). In this story, Elle is the archetypal royalty figure, thrust through a kaleidoscope of Refn’s signature bright pinks and blues and spit back into the tower where she passes her days, waiting for her savior to arrive. But as she greets her fate and rides the elevator to her penthouse prison, Elle strolls past Hunter (Kristine Froseth), a real-life Sleeping Beauty, napping on the lush chairs in the hallway outside. Elle and Hunter are due to shoot a movie together, which Elle’s father, the filmmaker Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), will produce. “The airline lost my luggage because of the Mist,” Hunter tells Elle. Ugh. Of course. The Mist seems to be screwing up everything these days.

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In the extraordinary abstraction that follows, Thatcher finds her ideal role as one of NWR’s stilted avatars, gussied up in couture and spouting riddles. Her energy rises and falls alongside the mysterious mist, which has engulfed the city and brought whispers of a mysterious ancient entity lurking in its haze. Thatcher performs as if this was the part she was born for, and it very well may be. 

Refn’s cold, theoretical violence and Thatcher’s knack for affected, high-glamor drama are a match made in DayGlo heaven. Her work is unlike anything I’ve seen this year, a ruthless and surprising turn from someone who’s struggled to find the right type of script for her unique style and physicality. If there is a God, somewhere amid all this mist, “Her Private Hell” will be Thatcher’s entrée to a new era of hyper-ostentatious, Elizabethan — Taylor, that is — cinematic elegance, a large void in the once-plentiful pool of subgenres that only she can fill.

Thatcher has been searching for her niche for a moment, but the delay hasn’t been for lack of trying. Since her breakthrough in Showtime’s “Yellowjackets” in 2021 — where she plays the troubled teenager Natalie, fighting for survival in the Canadian wilderness alongside her high school soccer teammates after their plane crash-lands — Thatcher’s had more than a few substantive roles. In 2024’s “Heretic,” she played a Mormon missionary lured into a violent theological maze by a wicked Hugh Grant. And in 2025’s “Companion,” Thatcher scored a decent turn as a sex robot with her programming on the fritz after she’s implicated in a murder plot. If those films sound preposterous, it’s because they are. “Heretic” was underbaked and half-thought, while “Companion” tried to create big laughs and bigger action from minuscule ideas. Thatcher, though, was far and away the best part of both films, bringing a striking depth to her thinly sketched characters. 

But one gets the sense that Thatcher’s worried about being pigeonholed. “Yellowjackets,” “Heretic” and “Companion” are all horror-thrillers. And Thatcher’s other film roles in 2023’s “The Boogeyman” and a bit part in the following year’s “MaXXXine” certainly don’t help Hollywood’s perception of her as a wannabe scream queen. The perennial problem with horror, even contemporary horror, is that it’s an extremely difficult genre to migrate from. But Thatcher’s talents extend past genre confines. She conjures a bewitching onscreen presence that many of her contemporaries could only dream of, pulling the viewer’s gaze with a single glare from her steely eyes or the quiver of her chin. The same grin can look menacing or jovial, depending on how Thatcher contorts the rest of her features. What’s more, there’s an ease to all of these things — a soft tenderness that counterbalances the frigidity — as if such intensity comes casually. And maybe it does.

With “Her Private Hell,” Thatcher has found an auteur who matches her refreshing self-assurance. Here, Refn lets it all go and indulges in his every artistic impulse, drenching a Brian De Palma-inspired deception in neon (and bringing in De Palma’s longtime collaborator, Pino Donaggio, for a resplendent score better than anything you’ve heard this decade). Thatcher isn’t so different from De Palma’s muses either. The naive exuberance of Nancy Allen, the innate sex appeal of Melanie Griffith and Michelle Pfeiffer, the informal immorality of Amy Irving; Thatcher has it all, rolled into one captivating package. When Elle and Hunter witness the brutal murder of a neighbor across the way — presumably by the mist’s fabled entity, The Leatherman — Refn completes the thread that ties his violent vapidity, where pretty girls do ugly things, to De Palma’s voyeuristic dreaminess. If you’re a fan of film and all the places it can take you, you can’t do much better than this. 

That is until Thatcher ratchets up the eerie tension tenfold while Refn builds his gorgeous fantasy around her. When Elle’s father unexpectedly departs, leaving her to finish shooting her movie in the care of her not-so-wicked stepmother, Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), the pair’s psychosexual strain further complicates matters. Before Dominique married Elle’s father, the two were the best of friends. As strange as it is, their dynamic seems to alter everything around them, as if their mutual destiny were written in the stars — not that anyone can see the stars with all this mist, that is.

For a director who’s staked a name on films and television shows that are narratively impenetrable, “Her Private Hell” may feel like a big ask for some viewers. And I get that, I do. The movie sways almost imperceptibly between Elle’s quest for the truth and the haunting story of Private K (Charles Melton), a soldier who lost everything to the mist and its monstrous entity the last time it immersed the city. It can occasionally feel as if Refn is playing a game with you, softly whispering if you’re still there. But though some have complained about what they call “a total lack of plot,” I simply must object, and not just on behalf of Thatcher, whose work is worth seeking out even if you don’t jive with Refn’s aesthetic obsessions. 

There is so much to admire with “Her Private Hell” — too much for just one go-round. It’s not only gripping, but extremely intricate if you’re brave enough to get on its level. Two women witness the strange murder of a neighbor and begin to believe that something could be lurking in the mist that’s enveloped the Earth. When they start shooting a movie together, they begin to understand their connection to this ancient evil, and their place in a cyclical inferno wrought by absent parents and bad weather. They soon understand that to be heartbroken is to be damned to know the exquisite pain of being alive. This film is not merely glittering debris, as some have posited, nor is it style over substance; it’s a campfire story told by Thatcher’s unearthly orator.

As the night grows black and the last embers start to dull, “Her Private Hell” sends you off to bed wondering if it could all be true. Thatcher’s warbly voice hangs in the air; tales of the Leatherman and lost daughters spinning around your brain as you try to fall asleep. “None of this is real,” you tell yourself, turning off your brain for a good night’s rest. But just then, a piercing pink light appears outside, and a low, opaque mist begins to creep through the seams of your tent. As it turns out, the fantastical has much more grounding in reality than we ever want to imagine.

The post “Her Private Hell” belongs to Sophie Thatcher appeared first on Salon.com.

In 2025, it was announced that Weezer is getting their very own movie. Now, we’ve got a major update on the forthcoming rock flick.

Stereogum reports that on Aug. 12, Weezer guitarist Brian Bell attended the premiere of Green Day’s new film, Nimrods, in Los Angeles. During the event, local radio station Alt 98.7 asked him if Weezer had thought of making a movie. “We already have,” Bell replied.

He went on to say, “Although I’m not supposed to talk about it. But yes, it’s in the can. It’s gonna be incredible.” Finally, Bell confirmed, “You’ll see it in 2027.”

At this time, the Weezer movie does not have an officially announced premiere date

The Weezer movie is said to be in a mockumentary style, similar to the 2022 Weird Al movie Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. The film is rumored to be titled Weezer: Security Threat, and is directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman.

Not a whole lot is known about the plot of the film. During a 2026 Rolling Stone interview, frontman Rivers Cuomo described it as a “comedy improv project.”

Keanu Reeves has been cast as the film’s villain, reportedly playing a fictional version of himself. Other cast members include Ben Schwartz, Eric Andre, Johnny Knoxville, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Rainn Wilson.

Additonally, Weird Al is set to make an appearance, as is Spike Jonze. As for musical friends of Weezer: Olivia Rodrigo, Courtney Love, and Juliette Lewis all make appearances.

Keanu Reeves and Weezer are old friends

Interestingly, Keanu Reeves and Weezer go way back. Reeves’ band Dogstar actually played a part in Weezer’s rise to fame. Dogstar was the first band that Weezer played with when they originally formed in the early 90s.

During the heyday of grunge, Dogstar was a pretty well-known group. The band released two albums between the mid 90s and ealry 2000s: Our Little Visionary (1996) and Happy Ending (2000). In 2002 they went inactive, but later reunited in 202o. Three years later, they released Somewhere Between the Power Lines and Palm Trees in 2023.

As for Weezer, we pretty much all know that story. Their self-titled (blue) album in 1994 was a mega hit, and a landmark album for rock music. They too went on hiatus—in 1997—after releasing their sophomore record, Pinkerton. Weezer reunited a few years later and have since gone on to release many more studio albums. Their 20th album, Weezer (Gold Album), is set to release on Aug. 21, 2026.

Photo by YURI CORTEZ/AFP via Getty Images

The post The Weezer Movie Just Got a Major Update appeared first on VICE.

Jesus might’ve taken a serious beating in the 2004 Mel Gibson epic The Passion of the Christ, but the actor who played him didn’t exactly get off scot-free himself. While filming the final shot in the movie back in 2003, Jim Caviezel, who starred as Jesus, was struck by lightning, along with production assistant Jan Michelini, who’d also been struck earlier in the shoot. Producer Steve McEveety described the second incident to Variety, saying, “I’m about a hundred feet away from them when I glance over and see smoke coming out of Caviezel’s ears.” 

Though it was reported at the time that neither Caviezel nor Michelini were badly hurt, that didn’t end up being true in Caviezel’s case. The effects of the lightning strike eventually led to two different heart surgeries for the actor, along with “lots of medication.” It wasn’t until the second procedure in 2014 that Caviezel says his problems were “finally corrected.” However, even that wasn’t without its hiccups.

Jim Caviezel Was Struck by Lightning While Playing Jesus, Leading to Years of Heart Problems

Despite crediting the 2014 surgery with saving his life, he explained to Shawn Ryan in 2023 that it, ironically enough, killed him as well—temporarily, that is. “I died on the operating table,” Caviezel revealed. “They brought me back. But I was supposed to be here,” he continued. “The reason why I brought that up is I felt incredible peace and love. That’s waiting for us.”

Caviezel went on to describe his brush with death as “amazing,” and compared the experience to cracking an egg. “And then it just came out, and I was dead, and I didn’t have to breathe anymore,” he recalled. Although Caviezel remembered the dying part being painless, he said that all changed when the doctors were finally able to revive him. You can listen to Caviezel recount the story for yourself in the video above.

The post 23 Years Ago, Jim Caviezel Was Struck by Lightning While Filming ‘The Passion of the Christ’ appeared first on VICE.

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Back in 2007, long before the MasterClass franchise was a thing, Jane Espenson, one of television’s most respected and imaginative writers, wrote an essay/tutorial for The New Republic that breaks down the embraceable genre formula she calls the Chosen One.

It’s a catchy idea that explains why figures like Peter Parker, Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter have a lasting hold on their fans in ways that other heroes don’t.

Although each occupies a distinctly separate universe, Espenson says they all fit the same pattern. “They’re living a life, sometimes a fine one, often a troubled one, but certainly one governed by ordinary rules, when suddenly the curtain is pulled back and a whole new world, or a new set of rules of this world, is revealed,” she said. “And what’s more — and this is the important part — in that new world, they are something special.”

Once I read that simple recipe, it changed the way I thought about every kind of genre fiction, including superhero tales like HBO’s “Lanterns.”

The Green Lanterns don’t neatly fit into the Chosen One mold, you see. And that may explain why they seem to be less popular than other DC heroes.

I can imagine diehard Green Lantern fans firing up their rebuttals as they read this. After all, the very nature of how Green Lanterns obtain their superhuman abilities involves cosmically empowered rings choosing their wearers. Once the selected become official members of the Green Lantern Corps, they can wield their rings to create astronomical constructs. The top members of the Lantern Corps are only limited by their imagination.

But mainstream culture’s best-known Green Lanterns aren’t orphans or troubled. Hal Jordan and John Stewart are both military men. John is also an architect. They aren’t living drab or depressing lives when the Guardians of the Universe activate them — they’re faring pretty well, all things considered.

Hal and John also stand apart from other test pilots, Marines and field experts in ways that make them not merely suitable choices for superheroic duty but worthy of it. This, I think, is the difference between Espenson’s Chosen Ones and heroes like the Green Lantern. Hal, John and the rest must work to be worthy of their power.

 

Worthiness is a tougher bar to clear than being chosen for greatness. The Chosen Ones Espenson cites are part of a destiny ordained either by their bloodline or some greater lineage. What makes a Chosen One common in their society marks them as extraordinary once they cross the threshold into the fantastic.  

And some heroes are Chosen at random. That radioactive spider that transformed Peter Parker into Spider-Man could have bitten the class moron just as easily. The tornado that transported Dorothy Gale from dusty Kansas to vibrant Oz might have swept up the village idiot instead.

The idea that anyone can suddenly be endowed with superhuman specialness simply by being in the right place at the right time is a little like daydreaming about winning the lottery. So it’s entirely understandable if most of us aren’t into the labor aspect of the Lanterns’ audition process.

If the box office is a fair, measurable indicator of how the public feels about these superhero archetypes, guess what? Espenson’s theory still holds: Chosen One stories still rule.

Looking at a BoxOfficeMojo.com ranking of all the Marvel feature films to date, the only solo act to appear twice in the “Avengers” dominated top five is Spider-Man, by way of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”

Meanwhile, the introduction of the Worthiest of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in “Captain America: The First Avenger” ranks #52 on a very long list.

About that. Two caveats, and they’re big ones, have to do with the quality of certain heroes’ movie introductions and America’s longstanding genuflection before elites.

Mainstream culture’s relatively lower esteem for the Green Lantern is absolutely related to cartoonish interpretations of his power in live-action depictions. Comic book versions of the Green Lantern toss around the power of the cosmos. When Lantern Corps members unite their rings’ powers, they can move planets. That has never been adequately portrayed in theatrical features.

In animated renditions streaming on HBO Max, the Green Lantern fares much better. Avid “Justice League” and “Justice League Unlimited” viewers recognize John Stewart as being held in equal esteem to the Big Three (i.e., Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman), especially in a crisis.

In the most recent “Superman” and 2011’s “Green Lantern” starring Ryan Reynolds, the way that Guy Gardner and Reynolds’ Hal Jordan toss around cartoonish CGI bubbles or massive green mallets falls short of conveying the Lantern Corps’ two-fisted punch of willpower and vision.

Also, not all heroes neatly fit into the Chosen vs. Worthy popularity equation. Superman, Wonder Woman and Thor were born to greatness. America’s most-loved fictional titans, Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne, have bottomless wealth to fund their vigilante adventures, making them especially mesmerizing to an audience raised on rags-to-riches fables.

To a man and woman, they made themselves Earth’s protectors because they have the means and muscle to take on the job. And once Stark Industries and Wayne Enterprises bankroll their respective super-squads’ fortified headquarters, they attract the universe’s talent. By their nature, Earth’s Green Lanterns are a natural fit to serve the Justice League’s governing inner circle. They’re also the only leaders who answer to other bosses. (Boo.)

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But what some perceive as a negative makes the Green Lantern legend appealing to others, especially those driven to ascend through ambition and hard work.

HBO’s “Lanterns” is the first series to explore how that idea unfurls in a society that functions like our own — that is, one in which all things aren’t equal, and superheroes have a reputation for doing as much harm as good.

Maybe “Lanterns” can inspire us with its portrayal of worthiness. But it may take more than one good show to turn the tide of the Green Lantern’s reputation. Much as we respect that with great power comes great responsibility, it’s a lot dreamier to imagine what we could do with all that might if it were simply handed to us.

“Lanterns” premieres at 9 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 16 on HBO and HBO Max.

 

The post Here’s why we like some superheroes more than others appeared first on Salon.com.

In the dog days of summer, there’s no better place to escape the heat than inside the air-conditioned paradise of a movie theater. Perhaps you’ll even find yourself there with a romantic companion, their uncovered leg grazing against yours as you both tuck your feet in to make room for the annoying person who came in late and is now trying to find their seat in the dark. Your skin touches theirs, trading the dewy moisture of perspiration. How electric; erotic, even. For just a second, the spark between you two is so powerful that it melts away every care outside of that place and time. 

And then, your film — a romantic comedy or dramedy that seems like the perfect date movie — begins, and you’re quickly reminded that no amount of desire can remove you from the context of the world you exist in. The fantasy comes crashing down. Even the fluffy rom-coms are steeped in real life’s anxieties about the social and political, the wars and the wages. But the passion was there; it was real. Maybe the moment was even more charged by the knowledge, somewhere in the back of your head, that these unexpected, carnal joys arrive far less often when so much of our time is spent just trying to make it from one day to the next. Sex, even just the lingering thought of it, can feel like an extravagance. I’d wager that’s a big part of why this summer’s theatrical slate has been so overtly horny: Everyone is trying to figure out how sex fits into this strange modern life.

No film makes that more clear than Will Gluck’s new romantic comedy, “One Night Only,” where, brace yourself here, premarital sex has been outlawed except for one outrageous annual holiday. Think “The Purge,” but for sex — “The Urge” was right there, but whatever — and just as dystopian, though with quite a bit more charm and fewer dead bodies. In the movie, unlucky-in-love strangers Owen (Callum Turner) and Allie (Monica Barbaro) find their paths repeatedly crossing during the 12-hour sex purge window, as both of them seek partners to get it on with. We know the pair will inevitably end up together. But it’s their journey and all the bizarre autocratic municipal rules they have to dance around that make “One Night Only” a clever, peculiar and head-scratching standout from the rom-com crowd.

“One Night Only” also happens to be the discourse darling du jour, with some suggesting that its unusual fusion of genre tropes and political overtones is an insidious embrace of our backslide toward fascism. Indeed, Owen and Allie quibble less about living under a punitive abstinence edict than one might expect, and the film doesn’t have nearly as much fun with, or fury for, the civic regime as it should. 

But like this summer’s “The Invite” and “I Want Your Sex,” Gluck’s film encourages a compelling and multilayered dialogue about the role of sex and intimacy amid terrifying political fury. How can we find the joy in all of this? Is, say, one hour of fleeting sexual pleasure enough to combat the 14-some others that we spend in waking dread? The solutions won’t, ahem, come easily, but there’s really no more appropriate time to ask these questions and search for their answers than summer, when the heat makes us alternate between f*cking furiously and f*cking furious.

Curiously, “One Night Only” is more of the former than the latter. As the film’s title card tells viewers, the movie takes place three years into “the mandate,” as the characters refer to it. “It’s been . . . a lot,” the card continues. Opaque and jokey as it is, this is the only bit of tangible backstory the film provides about the average American’s response to the forbiddance of fornication. Though a few ideological asides do provide some additional color as the night goes on. Owen’s mother (Molly Ringwald) and her partner (LeVar Burton) get into a spat about the mandate’s legislation — “That’s what happens with single-issue voters!”; “No one voted for it, it was passed by Congress!” — that soon turns hot and heavy. 

It’s a silly but reasonably shrewd way to depict how many of us have landed at some level of complacency in a political atmosphere where, most of the time, we have little direct control and negligible impact over the laws that dictate our lives, no matter how oppressive. We bicker about them, but the majority of Americans aren’t in the streets protesting. As neo-fascist as the country’s become, we still live under capitalism, and the ability to regularly protest is somewhat a luxury. But, then again, so is living in America at all (at least to some extent), even when it’s awful. 

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I realize I’m probably giving Gluck and screenwriter Travis Braun too much credit when I say these are the kinds of questions they wanted viewers to ask. But I find “One Night Only” to be a far more interesting film because it doesn’t answer everything up front or take the blanket optimist’s route. These characters know that the mandate is awful, but they’ve found screwed-up ways to live with it. Anyone who says that doesn’t reflect the modern American way has their head in the sand. And frankly, a film as pleasant but ephemeral as this isn’t going to push democracy any further into the dark.

What “One Night Only” makes so apparent is that our personal pleasure is at stake in this environment. Constant federal surveillance and deeply rooted institutional corruption are simply not sexy, even if being cognizant and fearful of them absolutely is. (Caring is still hot!) And I’ve always said that there is no better place to work out thorny, complex ideas — the kind that are sometimes difficult to devote time and energy to amid the stress of our day-to-day lives — than at the movies. 

Gluck’s film arrives on the heels of a pair of sweltering summer peers that already laid quite a bit of thematic groundwork in the sex space for audiences to traverse. The stickiest of them all, Olivia Wilde’s terrific chamber dramedy, “The Invite,” just landed on VOD after steadily working its way up from limited to wide theatrical engagements — sort of like cinematic release-schedule foreplay. The film navigates ideas large and small, moving between the casual intimacies, or lack thereof, that make up long-term relationships, and the baseline human carnality that points us toward sex even when those relationships aren’t working. 

Put simply: It’s more difficult to maintain the true intimacy than it’s ever been. The prevalence of dating apps and our ability to follow someone else’s every move on social media have zapped the honeymoon period’s lifespan. Throw in demanding jobs, expensive rugs, rapidly changing social mores, the desire to start or maintain a healthy relationship with your neighbors, and the nagging feeling that everyone in the world is having sex but you, and life gets overwhelming fast. Sex shuffles to the back burner. But though the flame might be small, it remains lit. And “The Invite” attests that it’s never too late to dial up the heat, so long as we’re honest about what we want and what we need from our partners. 

“The Invite” is all about communication and open conversation. And that’s a critical strength in both relationships and in the ways we watch and digest art. That this summer has been replete with dialogues not only about our sexual neuroses and compulsions, but real, steadfast love in all its forms, is a sure sign that love and sex are on our minds more than they have been in a few decades. Much like the influx of grief-laden horror movies that followed the 2016 election, one can trace our preoccupation with intimacy back to political rot. Our government directs so much of our lives that it’s impossible to remove its influence completely. Now, we’ve moved past grieving the lost hope and have the chance to create our own using the spark of romance and physical connection.

As Gregg Araki’s playful comedy “I Want Your Sex” asserts, crafting the transient delights of the flesh into something stable and meaningful will take some trial and error, perhaps even some sacrifice. We’re living in a moment where people can easily choose to void sex from their lives or pursue it as a ritualistic part of their existence, and the space in the middle is murky and treacherous. If you have questions about sex and where it fits into your life, Araki’s ardent message is to explore them. The answers may come with regret or heartbreak, but they may also come with glorious satisfaction and unbelievable revelations. More often, the resulting discoveries will sit somewhere in between those two emotional polarities. We can’t live our lives to the extreme all the time, but we can do ourselves a favor and become better acquainted with exactly what we want and how to get it. 

That’s the glorious thing about going to the cinema: You’re bound to leave any movie with both questions and answers. Occasionally, one such question might be, “Does this movie covertly support fascism by making totalitarian sex mandates cute and manageable?” And those are queries that must be addressed because, whether we like it or not, even dystopian rom-coms might point us in the right — or even new — direction. The federal government certainly isn’t trying to orient us toward a brighter, more consistently pleasurable future. Why not take matters into our own hands? Or better yet, put those hands on someone we love and care for, even if only for a night.

The post “One Night Only” and the summer of rom-com sex talk appeared first on Salon.com.

A new Apple documentary explores the life of Aziz “Zyzz” Shavershian, who rocketed to internet fame in an age before influencers, then died at age 22 in 2011.

Avatar Aang, Heartstopper Forever, and Exit 8 are among the films deserving of your eyeballs this month.

With all the other craziness going on in 1997’s Batman & Robin, it’s easy to overlook the fact that rapper Coolio had a cameo appearance in the movie. In case you missed it, that’s him playing the “banker” that Barbara (Alicia Silverstone) pays to participate in the motorcycle race.

Just after Robin (Chris O’Donnell) sneaks his way in from the shadows, Coolio can be seen firing the gun that signifies the beginning of the competition. Check out the scene for yourself below.

On the surface, it might seem like a random cameo from a rapper who was at the height of his success at the time. However, during a 2017 interview, Coolio revealed that there was a little bit more to the story.

According to him, the only reason he agreed to be in Batman & Robin was because he was promised the role of the Scarecrow in the next Batman movie. In the end, Coolio didn’t feel like he missed out since he apparently didn’t get along too well with director Joel Schumacher.

Coolio’s ‘Batman & Robin’ Cameo Was Apparently Meant to Lead Somewhere Much Stranger

For his part, Schumacher said that he went out of his way to try and get another actor to play the Scarecrow in the unproduced sequel. While speaking with The Hollywood Reporter in 2015, Schumacher explained that he’d actually gone to visit Nicolas Cage on the set of Face/Off to gauge his interest. But even though a script—entitled Batman Unchained—had been written by I Am Legend scribe Mark Protosevich, the poor reception of Batman & Robin ultimately led to the project’s cancellation. 

There were a few other interesting ideas proposed before the plug was officially pulled on Batman Unchained, though. For example, the possibility of Courtney Love playing Harley Quinn was floated at one point. The studio also wanted the film to feature cameos from all of the villains from the previous Batman movies.

To be clear, that would’ve included Jack Nicholson reprising his role as the Joker, along with Danny DeVito as the Penguin, Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman, Jim Carrey as the Riddler, and Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face.

The post The Weird Reason Coolio Has a Random Cameo in ‘Batman & Robin’ appeared first on VICE.

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Three days after the 1977 animated movie The Rescuers was reissued on home video in 1999, the Walt Disney Company announced that they were recalling 3.4 million VHS and LaserDisc copies because they contained an “objectionable background image.” As it turns out, two frames of the film, which couldn’t be seen under ordinary viewing circumstances, featured a photo of a nude woman.

The hidden picture pops up roughly 38 minutes into the movie, when rodents Bernard and Bianca are riding around on the back of Orville the albatross. You can check out the footage in question below, and it should go without saying that it’s NSFW:

A Disney spokesperson said that the offending image was placed in the film more than 20 years earlier, but declined to reveal who was responsible. This marked the first time that a Disney release was recalled for such a reason. According to the company, they opted to take action in order to keep their promise to customers that the brand could be trusted to provide them with “the finest in family entertainment.” The Rescuers was later reissued with the nudity removed.

Over the years, many have understandably wondered about the person who decided to sneak a topless woman into a beloved children’s movie, and what their motivation was. In 2023, Eddie Bowley of the Eddache YouTube channel claimed that a background artist named Ann Guenther was the culprit. The source of this information, Bowley says, is animator Tom Sito, who worked on Disney classics like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. Sito knew Guenther personally and apparently heard it from her directly.

As for the why of it all, Bowley uncovered that Guenther was passed over for a promotion at Disney in favor of a man she’d trained for the position—this was reportedly because they didn’t want a woman to have the job. The Rescuers was the last movie Guenther worked on for the company prior to being let go, which would appear to suggest that she did it out of revenge. However, when Bowley ran the idea past Sito, he was informed that it was merely an in-joke on Guenther’s part.

Furthermore, Sito told Bowley, “Animators have been putting things like this in cartoons since the 1930s.”

The post There Was a Topless Woman Hiding in This Classic Disney Movie for Decades appeared first on VICE.

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