The review comes from Film Authority writer Eddie Harrison, who found the movie to be “contrived and ridiculous,” adding, “I reviewed ‘Paddington 2’ negatively for BBC radio on release in 2017, and on multiple occasions after that, and I stand by every word of my criticism. This is not my Paddington Bear, but a sinister, malevolent imposter who should be shot into space, or nuked from space at the first opportunity....
The Paramount statement reads: “While there are no imminent plans for another film in the ‘Godfather’ saga, given the enduring power of its legacy it remains a possibility if the right story emerges.” Even if Paramount moves ahead with a fourth “Godfather,” don’t expect Coppola back in the director’s chair. While the filmmaker told The New York Times “there may well be a ‘Godfather IV’ and ‘V’ and ‘VI,’” he added that “I won’t do ’em....
Feig’s film, which starred Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, and Melissa McCarthy, was famously the target of a misogynistic online campaign fueled by outrage that women were stepping into the iconic jumpsuits first worn by Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Ernie Hudson, and Harold Ramis. As in “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” the three surviving leads (Ramis died in 2014) reprised their roles, though after it opened to disappointing box office, Ackroyd told an interviewer that Feig “won’t be allowed back on the Sony lot anytime soon....
PBS announced an open call for submissions for long and short form films by content creators. According to the network: “This initiative will further amplify the voices of diverse/BIPOC producers across public media, inviting submissions that explore a broad range of experiences, perspectives and points of view.” The network will be launching a call on March 1st for the “next generation of filmmakers,” with top contenders receiving funding by PBS and having their work featured on PBS’ platform....
Austen’s books have inspired all manner of adaptations on both stage and screen, from the faithful (Ang Lee’s luminous “Sense and Sensibility”) to the lightly loosened (hello, iconic BBC series version of “Pride and Prejudice,” infamous for its depiction of Mark Darcy as a naughty swimmer) and even the straight-up free-wheeling (“Bridget Jones’s Diary”) to the mostly inane (“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”). Austen’s books incisively depict a specific time in British life (mostly the life lived by the rich, the white, the privileged), but her keen understanding of human interactions and desires can happily be transplanted to a range of stories....
“They asked me if I wanted to [be] involved – [writer-producer Fran Walsh] and I – and I said, ‘That’s an impossible question to answer without seeing a script,’” Jackson said. “So they said, ‘As soon as we get the first couple scripts, we’ll send them to you.’ And the scripts never showed up. That’s the last thing I heard, which is fine. No complaints at all.” “In pursuing the rights for our show, we were obligated to keep the series distinct and separate from the films,” a spokesperson for the company said....
If Kornél Mundruczó and Kata Wéber’s “Pieces of a Woman” seems to rearrange the fragments of a typical melodrama into something unusually jagged and incomplete, perhaps that’s because there aren’t many films about miscarriages or stillbirths. Movies often introduce such tragedies as plot twists — cruel yet narratively convenient ways of bridging the gap between one part of a story and another — but few dare to make them the crux of the story itself....
