Vince Gilligan Talks Alternative BREAKING BAD Series Finale Endings
Really, you couldn’t ask for a better series finale than the one we got with Breaking Bad. It’s cinematic in the way it ties things up and never ever overreaches, something that it could have easily done. But there were a number of ways the show could have ended according to creator Vince Gilligan. In speaking with EW, Gilligan listed a few of the scenarios that were tossed around the writers room leading up to the finale: There was a version we kicked around where Walt is the only one who survives, and he’s standing among the wreckage and his whole family is destroyed. That would be a very powerful ending, but very much a kick-in-the-teeth kind of ending for the viewers. We talked about a version where Jesse kills Walt. We talked about a version where Walt more or...
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Review: Hugh Jackman’s Performance Elevates PRISONERS
Prisoners (2013) — *** When it comes to thrillers, there are the ones that feel so thoroughly contrived that it’s hard to accept them as legitimate pulp entertainment. (Think anything adapted from James Patterson or Dan Brown.) Then there are the ones that take themselves seriously enough to engross an audience with the artistry of the pulp narrative that contrivances don’t matter. (Think David Fincher or David Mamet’s films.) Prisoners is could have easily fallen into the first category, but doesn’t quite commit itself to the genre enough to fall into the second. And though comparisons have been made to Mystic River since the film debuted at the Telluride Film Festival, Denis Villeneuve’s English language debut isn’t nearly as clear cut a revenge drama. No, there’s a subtlety to the character development that plays in tandem with outsized performances,...
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Saoirse Ronan Up For STAR WARS VII, Benedict Cumberbatch Denials Debunked
When we found out that Saoirse Ronan turned down the role of Scarlett Witch in The Avengers: Age of Ultron, we had to wonder: What could be more important a film that big? Well, if Latino Review is correct, we may have the answer. According to the site, Saoirse Ronan went in to read for an unnamed part in Star Wars VII, which for my money would be a HUGE addition to the cast. Girl. Can. Act. And based on her performance in Hanna, she would pretty much make the most badass female Jedi/Sith/whatever the series has ever seen. (A low bar, I know, but still.) But that’s not all folks… You know those official denials of Benedict Cumberbatch‘s involvement in the Star Wars VII? They could be outright bullshit. Given J.J. Abrams history with this kind of crap, it would make sense that everyone would...
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Pixar Takes A Year Off To Do Some Soul Searching
It’s a common lament these days that Pixar just isn’t living up to the creative standards of its hayday (which ended with Up in 2009). Brave, Monsters University, Cars 2, Planes. Only Toy Story 3 in 2010 has really stood out, and that movie, while emotionally masterful, blatantly ripped off the story from Brave Little Toaster. So it’s not a bad thing to hear that 2014 will be the first year without a Pixar movie in nearly a decade. The news comes after Pixar fired director Bob Peterson from the upcoming feature The Good Dinosaur, which presumably set the picture back. In a reshuffling of release dates, The Good Dinosaur will move from Summer 2014 to November 2015, taking Finding Dory‘s release date which moved to Summer 2016. Now The Good Dinosaur will be released the same year as Pete Docter’s next film Inside Out, which takes place entirely in the...
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NUOVOMONDO: An Exercise in Historical Art House
Hollywood is, as I’m sure we all subconsciously know, not as much of a noun at times as it is an adjective implying a kind of attitude, style, and set of expectations we carry with us. What then can we do with these expectations when a film might subvert them so seamlessly? Well, as I watched an Italian film called Nuovomondo from 2006 (with the English title The Golden Door, as if to intentionally deny the viewer any chance at thinking they know that they’re getting into as they would have done had they translated it literally to the seemingly trite “new world”), these expectations proved refreshingly useless. It satisfies on a level that Hollywood historical epics so seldom do, perhaps because we are not shown the typical set of images and conventions we are used to, which can...
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New Potter-Verse Movies On The Way, Courtesy of J.K. Rowling
Well, it was only a matter of time before Warner Bros. went back to the biggest franchise in the movie history for more. In a huge announcement yesterday, timed perfectly for the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2013 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference, Warner Bros. said that J.K. Rowling herself will write the screenplay for an adaptation of her 2009 spinoff book Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander. From the press release: “Although it will be set in the worldwide community of witches and wizards where I was so happy for seventeen years, ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ is neither a prequel nor a sequel to the Harry Potter series, but an extension of the wizarding world,” said Rowling. “The laws and customs of the hidden magical society will be familiar to anyone who has read...
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