There is, somehow, a sequel to The Animal happening. The Simpsons takes on It in new Treehouse of Horror images. Plus, director Lee Cronin teases Evil Dead Rise, and new footage from She-Hulk and Rick and Morty. Spoilers now!
The Animal 2
Deadline reports Rob Schneider will reprise his role as Marvin Mange, the police evidence clerk whose organs were replaced with animal parts, in a wholly unexpected sequel to 2001’s The Animal at Tubi. According to the outlet, the sequel will see the character “get into an accident and have to be put together again with new animal parts,” which he’ll use to “hunt down a new uber-animal with powers far beyond his own.”
Spawn
THR has word Scott Silver (Joker), Malcolm Spellman (Falcon and the Winter Soldier) and Matthew Mixon are writing a new script for the Spawn reboot at Blumhouse. As of this writing, Jamie Foxx is still on board to play Al Simmons/Spawn, but Jeremy Renner’s involvement as Twitch Williams remains “to be determined.”
Evil Dead Rise
Director Lee Cronin shared a new behind-the-scenes photo from Evil Dead Rise on Twitter.
Halloween Ends
Laurie distracts Michael with an exploding lasagna in a new clip from Halloween Ends.
HALLOWEEN ENDS Clip – Michael Myers Finds Laurie in the Storage Room (2022)
MK Ultra
Meanwhile, Anson Mount is having second thoughts about the CIA’s experimental mind control program in a new clip from MK Ultra.
MK Ultra | Exclusive Clip | I Don’t Like Questions
Star Trek: Picard
In response to a fan on Twitter, showrunner Terry Matalas implied he plans to kill off at least one member of The Next Generation crew in the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard.
Werewolf By Night
During a recent interview with Fandom, Michael Giacchino described the monsters in Werewolf By Night as “person[s] with a problem, who can’t solve it and needs help solving it.”
Too often, even in Marvel movies, a lot of times monsters are just used as something to kill, something to defeat. And I’m like, no, monsters are nothing but a person with a problem, who can’t solve it and needs help solving it. Everything that I loved as a kid about these [monster] films is that they were allegories for people with afflictions that need help. And I felt like that’s the point of view we need to take with this. It cannot just be about ‘Oh, there’s something different, let’s destroy it!’ There’s too much of that going on in our world these days.
I wanted to do something that was about, no, let’s peel back the layers of the onion and understand what’s behind this thing being a monster. Why is it happening? None of these monsters want to be monsters. They don’t want to go around indiscriminately killing people and destroying things. It’s just, that’s their lot in life. Everyone has a lot in life, we all have some struggles, some sort of thing that we’re struggling to solve or deal with within our own selves. And that’s where I want it to go with this story.
Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi
Disney has released a poster for Tales of the Jedi, its upcoming series of animated short films set in the Star Wars universe.
Treehouse of Horror Presents: Not It
Bloody-Disgusting has six new images from The Simpsons’ episode-length It parody, “Not It.”
Photo: Fox
Photo: Fox
Photo: Fox
Photo: Fox
Photo: Fox
Photo: Fox
American Horror Story
Spoiler TV has synopses for the first two episodes of American Horror Story’s eleventh season.
Something’s Coming
Mysterious deaths and disappearances ramp up in the city. A doctor makes a frightening discovery, and a local reporter becomes tomorrow’s headline. Written by Ryan Murphy & Brad Falchuk, directed by John J. Gray.
Thank You For Your Service
Gino grapples with his trauma. Patrick’s search takes him to dark places. A stranger contacts Hannah with a grave warning. Written by Ned Martel & Charlie Carver & Manny Coto, directed by Max Winkler.
Quantum Leap
Ben finds himself in the Wild West in the synopsis for “Salvation or Bust,” the October 17 episode of Quantum Leap.
Ben is transported back to 1898 and the rustic, frontier town of Salvation, where he must take on a deadly outlaw. Magic, Jenn and Ian face a new threat when a curious senator shows up at headquarters asking a lot of questions about the Quantum Leap program.
[Spoiler TV]
La Brea
A deadly fog envelops the Clearing in the synopsis for La Brea’s October 18 episode, “The Fog.”
When a fog falls over the Clearing, Eve leads a defense against a group of invaders, only to encounter a threat more dangerous than they’ve faced before. In 1988, Josh and Riley pursue a woman who may hold the key to stopping the impending tidal wave disaster.
[Spoiler TV]
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law
She-Hulk meets Leap-Frog and spars with Daredevil in two clips from today’s episode.
NEW LEAP FROG FIGHT SHE-HULK CLIP Episode 8 Official Clip
Rick & Morty
Dinosaurs solve all the world’s problems in a new clip from this week’s episode of Rick & Morty.
Rick and Morty | S6E6 Sneak Peek: Dinosaur Utopia | adult swim
Ghostwriter
Finally, Ghostwriter returns for a third season this October 21 on Apple TV+
Ghostwriter — Season 3 Official Trailer | Apple TV+
Banner art by Jim Cook
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
Natalie PortmanPhoto: Frazer Harrison (Getty Images)
Over the weekend, we reported on a story out of Baltimore that “drug dealers” had supposedly tried to get $50,000 out of the producers of the Natalie Portman-starring Apple TV+ drama Lady In The Lake and threatened to “shoot someone” if they didn’t get it. According to a statement from the police at the time, the people working on the show simply rescheduled what they were planning to film and found a new location for it.
Now, though, the cops in Baltimore have released a new statement and, well, it turns out they had the whole thing wrong. Those gun-wielding drug dealers, looking to squeeze half-a-million out of a prestigious Apple TV+ production? It was actually one “local street vendor” who couldn’t sell clothes in his usual spot because of where the show was being filmed, and he was “arrested on narcotics charges” while “awaiting paperwork to receive compensation for lost business.”
This comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which says everything about someone coming to set with a gun was also wrong. Apparently the person who said they saw a gun retracted their statement, and an employee of the security company working on the set who said they heard someone threatening to “shoot in the air” if they didn’t get paid later noted that they “did not have firsthand knowledge of the incident” (as THR puts it). THR also stresses that the cops say this is still an ongoing investigation, so there might even be more twists.
Lady In The Lake is based on the book of the same name by Laura Lippman and stars Natalie Portman as a housewife in ‘60s Baltimore who gets invested in an unsolved murder mystery and becomes an investigative journalist, which brings her into contact with a social worker providing support to the city’s Black community.
Ever since Fox got themselves snatched up Disney and Kevin Feige made it clear that the mutants would be making their way to the MCU eventually, there’s been no shortage of speculation about who’ll be playing the new batch of X-Men. Moreso than Professor X or Magneto, Wolverine is the one that everyone’s got some opinion on. These days, we now know there’s nothing stopping Hugh Jackman from coming back to the role (and the frankly absurd diet needed to maintain it) that launched him into cinematic stardom. But there’s been no shortage of folks who want someone new to take the reigns, and one actor is now specifically making their desires clear rather than simply dancing around the subject and hoping to be John Krasinski’d into an eventual film.
Specifically, it’s Taron Egerton of Kingsman and Rocketman fame (or more importantly, Moomintroll) who wants to get in on the comic book action. He said as such to the New York Times; while promoting his upcoming Apple TV+ show Black Bird, Egerton admitted that he has spoken with Marvel Studios employees, including Kevin Feige, about getting involved in the superhero game. While it’s something he’s hoping to take a shot at, he also knows that there’s some big shoes to fill, regardless of whoever eventually plays the character. “I’d be excited, but I’d be apprehensive as well,” he said. “Hugh is so associated with the role that I’d wonder if it’d be very difficult for someone else to do it.” Back in 2019, the actor talked about being aware of fans wanting him in the role, and was flattered that they were rooting for him.
Talking with Feige raises the chances of Egerton getting a shot to play Wolverine just slightly, but it’s equally possible that Feige and crew have someone else in mind for him to play. Since Marvel has just so much stuff in various stages of production, we won’t really know what Egerton’s future is until we know. Maybe he’ll wind up being Wolverine, mayhaps he’ll get locked in for Human Torch or Nova. (Maybe he’d be a good Cyclops?) Either way, it’s doubtful that he won’t wind up playing a superhero eventually, since basically everyone does…it’s just a matter of whom it’ll be.
[via The Hollywood Reporter]
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
Natasha Lyonne in Russian Doll season two Photo: Netflix
In Russian Dollseason two, New York City’s subway system is the freakiest it’s ever been on screen, and that’s really saying something. The 6 train transforms into a portal for Nadia Vulvokov (Natasha Lyonne) and Alan Zaveri (Charlie Barnett) to inadvertently travel back in time. The duo spent season one trying to escape a diabolical time loop where they kept dying at the same time, only to restart at a specific point. Four years after escaping this fate, they’re at the mercy of temporal madness again. Several train trips unravel their family’s past, setting Nadia on a course to possibly alter her future. The result is seven bewitching, off-kilter, and visually stunning episodes.
Netflix’s enthralling show debuted over three years ago. It seamlessly integrates metaphysical elements with biting humor, ipso facto—heh—it’s labeled a sci-fi dramedy. But categorizing Russian Doll as one thing does it a disservice. It’s a prolific character study at its core. The show takes an inventive and tender approach to a well-established plot device (as seen from Groundhog Dayto Palm Springsand in-between). The goal isn’t to improve Nadia or Alan as people with every passing loop, but to help them confront buried trauma so they can eventually assist each other to avoid their dark fate.
Time loops, time travel, and multiverses stories are an especially hot commodity in pop culture right now, what with all the Spider-Men converging,Everything Everywhere All At Once, orupcoming shows like Apple TV+’s Shining Girlsand HBO’s The Time Traveler’s Wife. Audiences are experiencing their own deja vu, so why go through it again? Plus, Russian Doll’s surreal and perfect end arguably makes a case for not rehashing the show at all. Luckily, season two justifies its existence. It reinvents its protagonists and its mythology, using the duo’s complex ancestry as a gut punch to further develop them.
Russian Doll now switches between years and countries; it’s contained and expansive at the same time. A few days before her 40th birthday, Nadia gets pulled into ‘80s New York City when she steps into a wormhole of a train compartment. She reaches the same time period as her dead mother, Lenora (a fantastic Chloë Sevigny, on the heels of The Girl From Plainville), and is a first-hand witness to Lenora’s rough relationship with her own mom (a.k.a Nadia’s grandmother).
Amid the chaos—of which there is plenty, especially in the last few episodes—the show finds grounded emotional resonance. Nadia tries to rectify mistakes that directly impacted her upbringing. She makes eyebrow-raising choices (one, in particular, is fully mind-bending) that blur the concept of reality. The new season is ultimately a trippy but poetic display of intergenerational trauma for the Vulvokov women over the years. It’s weird and unpredictable. But it’s also Russian Doll at its unique best.
Natasha Lyonne and Annie Murphy in Russian Doll season 2Photo: Netflix
Nadia finds an unexpected friend in the character Annie Murphy plays (revealing more about the Schitt’s Creekactor’s role borders on spoiler territory). Russian Doll isn’t a serious, all-out futuristic show, so the time travel doesn’t adhere to strict rules. Nadia often goes to-and-fro from 1982 to 2022, and to some other places too. The riveting parallels between all her worlds elevate the suspense, which carries the essence of a time heist. Nadia’s best friend Maxine (acerbic comic relief Greta Lee) and godmother Ruth (Elizabeth Ashley) also fold into the story a bit more.
Meanwhile, Alan navigates his family’s backstory through train rides transporting him to parts of Europe. It might seem distinctive at first, but his arc weaves into the larger narrative in equally wild ways. Russian Doll maneuvers its “box of timelines,” as Nadia quotes in the season one finale, through carefully constructed details. No interaction is random. (Reader, this viewer recommends immediately rewatching early season two episodes after finishing it to catch all the Easter eggs, from certain dialogues to seemingly irrelevant faces).
One of the most appealing parts of season one was Lyonne and Barnett’s inexplicable chemistry. Their characters’ crushing experiences together in purgatory-of-sorts led to Nadia and Alan forming a singular connection. Russian Doll falls short of that in season two because each of them is on their own path. While their tracks do eventually converge, it comes a little too late.
Charlie Barnett in Russian Doll season 2Photo: Netflix
The writers, led by series co-creators Lyonne, Leslye Headland, and Amy Poehler, deliver top-tier caustic humor once more. Don’t worry, there are organic references to previous jokes like “What a concept” and Lyonne muttering “cock-a-roach” in her special style. Even Harry Nilsson’s “Gotta Get Up” finds its way back in. The ensemble is top-notch, with Lee stepping up as Maxine gets better material. Murphy is an incredible addition as well. But nothing beats Lyonne’s firecracker of a performance; it’s extremely precise yet irrevocably freeing. She finds new depths to Nadia’s pain and misery without ever losing her comic timing. It’s a delicate balance, and Lyonne crushes it.
Russian Doll leaves a strong legacy as one of the most exciting experimental and nuanced shows in recent years. There’s no telling if it will return for another installment. It’s a risky gimmick after all, and not every show needs to stretch out its lifespan, especially not this one. Two seasons’ worth of time travel adventures has cemented Russian Doll as one of Netflix’s most esoteric and binge-worthy originals (to stem from the U.S., at least). Hopefully, it ends on this high note.
The 94th Oscars are ready to reveal their results, and we’re ready to hear them—but first, we’d like to offer up some educated guesses as the various outcomes. The editors of The A.V. Club looked closely at the biggest categories from this year’s Academy Awards nominations list, and then we broke down each of those races into “will win,” “could win,” and, in a show of blatant bias, “should win.” While some of these picks may feel like no-brainers (hello Troy Kotsur), many of the categories are still very much up for grabs leading into Sunday’s ceremony. So grab your ballot and gaze into the crystal ball with us, and be sure to follow along with our liveblog on Sunday.
Best Picture
Nominees:Belfast; CODA; Don’t Look Up; Drive My Car; Dune; King Richard; Licorice Pizza; Nightmare Alley; The Power Of The Dog; West Side Story
Will win:CODA
Sian Heder’s coming-of-age drama about a child of deaf adults, or CODA, took home top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival and the Producers Guild of America Awards—the latter a critical precursor for success with Academy voters. The first Oscar-nominated film featuring deaf actors in key roles is more than just a representation win for the disabled community; its uplifting sweetness seems to be exactly what resonates with voters and audiences alike these days.
Could win:The Power Of The Dog
Jane Campion’s Western contains slow-burning tension, sprawling fantasy, psychological drama, and some of the season’s most cohesive performances. Which begs the question: Is Campion a filmmaker or an alchemist? Sunday night will reveal whether her unique combination of genres—and this film’s Netflix distribution—will take it all the way.
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Should win:Drive My Car
The first Japanese film nominated for Best Picture, Drive My Car is helmed by the masterful Ryusuke Hamaguchi, whose inclusion in the Best Director race signals strong Academy support. Voters may not reward another non-English language film (and a three-hour affair about grief to boot) so soon after Parasite’s dominance, but they should.
Best Director
Nominees: Kenneth Branagh, Belfast; Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car; Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza; Jane Campion, The Power Of The Dog; Steven Spielberg, West Side Story
Will win: Jane Campion, The Power Of The Dog
Will Campion become the third woman to win this category, just one year after the second? All signs, including the crucial Directors Guild Of America Award, point to yes. Long after her directing nomination for The Piano, it’s The Power Of The Dog that seems to finally square with Oscar voters’ tastes.
Could win: Kenneth Branagh, Belfast
The actor-writer-director-producer’s decades of hard work have paid off this year: He now holds the record for the most nominations in different Oscar categories, with seven total for his career.
Should win: Steven Spielberg, West Side Story
Spielberg has received his due over the years, including two previous wins in this category. But at age 75, he took on his first movie musical and gave it a mesmerizing cinematic scale, political and emotional sophistication, and some of the year’s best acting, singing, and dancing.
Best Actor
Nominees: Javier Bardem, Being The Ricardos; Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power Of The Dog; Andrew Garfield, tick, tick… BOOM!; Will Smith, King Richard; Denzel Washington, The Tragedy Of Macbeth
Will win: Will Smith, King Richard
As Richard Williams, the father of burgeoning tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, Smith turns in the most Oscar-friendly performance of his illustrious career. And that’s no backhanded compliment. The Academy loves biopics, family dramas, and triumphant sports films, and King Richard is all three. Smith has captured several top honors already this season, including the Screen Actors Guild Award.
Could win: Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power Of The Dog
The Power Of The Dog received the most nominations of any film this year, but is it too strange for Oscar voters? Where do Sam Elliott’s out-of-nowhere criticisms factor into this race? Uncertainty aside, if anyone can overtake Smith, it’s the hardworking and genuinely riveting Cumberbatch.
Should win: Andrew Garfield, tick, tick… BOOM!
It’s not like Garfield is new to the Hollywood scene, or even the Oscar race. But between tick, tick… BOOM!, The Eyes Of Tammy Faye, and of course Spider-Man: No Way Home, this has been his season, the perfect time to showcase his charms both on camera and off.
Best Actress
Nominees: Jessica Chastain, The Eyes Of Tammy Faye; Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter; Penélope Cruz, Parallel Mothers; Nicole Kidman, Being The Ricardos; Kristen Stewart, Spencer
Will win: Jessica Chastain, The Eyes Of Tammy Faye
This year’s best actress race seemed like an uncertain one—the Twitter-released Golden Globe results likely won’t make an impact, while the British Academy Film Awards nominated six completely different women. Then Chastain emerged victorious at both the SAG and Critics’ Choice Awards, and those clues are all that’s needed to label her the Oscar frontrunner.
Could win: Penélope Cruz, Parallel Mothers
Cruz’s inclusion on the nominations list—without recognition from any precursor awards shows—signals strong support among the Academy’s membership. She’s already an Oscar winner, just not for a Pedro Almodóvar film. Considering that Parallel Mothers is their seventh collaboration, now could be the time to honor their extraordinary cinematic chemistry.
Should win: Kristen Stewart, Spencer
That Pablo Larraín’s impressionistic take on Princess Diana was shut out of all other Oscar categories doesn’t bode well for Stewart, whose acting, by her own admission, is not necessarily everyone’s cup of tea. But it should be. Spencer is Stewart’s most award-worthy performance in a career full of them, and it gave her a chance to inhabit the late princess’ authenticity, and, somehow, show off her own.
Best Supporting Actor
Nominees: Ciarán Hinds, Belfast; Jesse Plemons, The Power Of The Dog; Troy Kotsur, CODA; J.K. Simmons, Being The Ricardos; Kodi Smit- McPhee, The Power Of The Dog
Will win: Troy Kotsur, CODA
SAG plus Critics’ Choice plus BAFTA equals Oscar. The breakout star of CODA has charmed voters and Apple TV+ subscribers alike, earning well-deserved frontrunner status. Plus, a victory for Kotsur means the Academy doubles its total number of deaf winners (25 years after his co-star Marlee Matlin became the first).
Could win: Jesse Plemons, The Power Of The Dog
The glue that holds Campion’s extraordinary ensemble together, Plemons gives one of the season’s most underrated performances in The Power Of The Dog. Joining his real-life partner Kirsten Dunst onscreen, and on the Oscar nominations list for the first time, he could have enough goodwill among Academy members to make him a dark horse contender.
Should win: Troy Kotsur, CODA
Kotsur brings a scruffy, sensitive charm to his role as a father and a fisherman in a film that picked up steam at just the right time this season. There’s one scene in particular, in which his Frank asks his daughter Ruby (Emilia Jones) to sing for him, that alone should clinch the deal.
Best Supporting Actress
Nominees: Jessie Buckley, The Lost Daughter; Ariana DeBose, West Side Story; Judi Dench, Belfast; Kirsten Dunst, ThePower Of The Dog; Aunjanue Ellis, King Richard
Will win: Ariana DeBose, West Side Story
Even if DeBose didn’t have the major precursor accolades already on her mantle, including SAG, Golden Globe, Critics’ Choice, and BAFTA, her twirling, belting, emoting Anita would still be a shoo-in. After all, she’s following in the footsteps of her West Side Story co-star Rita Moreno, who became the first Latina Oscar winner for the same role in the original film.
Could win: Aunjanue Ellis, King Richard
Ellis, who plays mother hen Oracene “Brandy” Price in this sports biopic, gives a performance that’s just as Oscar-worthy as that of her co-star, Will Smith. Ellis combines maternal grace with fierce competitiveness in a vivid portrait that could prove unforgettable for voters.
Should win: Kirsten Dunst, The Power Of The Dog
Dunst deserves a win, not just for her haunting performance as a woman teetering on the edge, but in recognition of a career full of nuanced portrayals.
Best Original Screenplay
Nominees:Belfast; Don’t Look Up; King Richard; Licorice Pizza; The Worst Person In The World
Will win:Belfast
Despite nominations in seven different Oscar categories during his career, Kenneth Branagh has yet to win. If anything can reverse that trend, it’s his semi-autobiographical tale of 1969 Belfast, which has already picked up Critics’ Choice and Golden Globe honors.
Could win:Don’t Look Up
Love him or hate him, the Academy’s track record with Adam McKay makes it clear how they feel. His Writers Guild Award-winning script about the all-too-plausible scenario of an apocalypse that almost no one takes seriously brings humor to the big screen and insights to the ongoing conversations about climate change (and its denial).
Should win:The Worst Person In The World
Writer-director Joachim Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt’s rendering of this sometimes romantic, sometimes comedic, always philosophical rom-com deserves awards recognition for subverting audience expectations at each of the film’s 12 chapters. Plus, what a showcase they gave to breakout star Renate Reinsve.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominees:CODA; Dune; Drive My Car; The Lost Daughter; The Power Of The Dog
Will win:CODA
If Best Picture is a showdown between Apple’s CODA and Netflix’s The Power Of The Dog, and Campion is a Best Director lock for the latter, this category will likely be how Oscar voters honor BAFTA Award winner Sian Heder, who was left out of the directing race.
Could win:Drive My Car
It’s always notable when a non-English language film breaks through in a screenplay category, but the fact that Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe’s Drive My Car also notched nominations for Picture, Director, and International Feature boosts its chances here.
Should win:The Lost Daughter
After years of fascinating performances, Maggie Gyllenhaal proved just as adept behind the camera, and with the script, of her Elena Ferrante adaptation. Every line of dialogue in The Lost Daughter screenplay is dripping—or, like the misplaced doll crucial to its plot, infested?—with provocative subtext.
Best International Feature
Nominees:Drive My Car; Flee; The Hand Of God; Lunana: A Yak In The Classroom; The Worst Person In The World
Will win:Drive My Car
Whenever a film is nominated for both Best Picture and the International Feature prize, it’s pretty unlikely that it will lose the latter, regardless of its chances for the former.
Could win:Flee
Drive My Car isn’t the only film with recognition in other major Oscar categories this year; Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Danish film Flee finds itself in the running here and in both animated and documentary feature races. There’s no contender like this gorgeously rendered refugee tale, which could mean voters are ready to honor it.
Should win:Drive My Car
Hamaguchi’s intimate epic about a theater maker, his car, and the woman hired to drive him should sweep its four categories. It’s as nuanced and sublime a portrayal of both human connection and isolation as you’ll ever see.
Best Animated Feature Film
Nominees:Encanto; Flee; Luca; The Mitchells Vs. The Machines; Raya And The Last Dragon
Will win:Encanto
In what could be one of this year’s tightest races, the Disney juggernaut is the safest bet. Encanto is the rare film to earn Oscar nominations for both score and original song, the latter of which might edge this past other worthy nominees.
Could win:The Mitchells Vs. The Machines
The Annie Awards—Hollywood’s foremost animation accolades, and a useful clue for Oscar prognosticators—opted for Mike Rianda’s frenetic Netflix comedy this year. Campaign materials for The Mitchells Vs. The Machines have underlined its emphasis on the joy of creativity and filmmaking, which isn’t a bad strategy for an awards voting body that especially loves movies about movies.
Should win:Flee
The most resonant and relevant entry in this race is also its most unique; the animated documentary format of Flee enables its protagonist, called Amin, anonymity as he recounts his fraught journey from Afghanistan to Russia to Denmark. It’s a hyper-specific refugee story as well as a universal tale of perseverance and love conquering all.
Best Documentary Feature
Nominees:Ascension; Attica; Flee; Summer Of Soul; Writing With Fire
Will win:Summer Of Soul
Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson has added BAFTA, Critics’ Choice, Spirit, and PGA awards to his mantle for Summer Of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised). Considering how much Academy voters adore music documentaries, the love is not likely to stop there.
Could win:Flee
Animated documentaries are so unusual in awards history that it’s tricky to gauge how voters might feel about this one.
Should win:Summer Of Soul
Questlove’s ode to, and gorgeous depiction of, the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival joins the elite group of filmmakers with stunning feature debuts. You almost feel like he should have made the jump behind the camera sooner. His film brilliantly interweaves past and present with jaw-dropping footage and insightful interviews that linger in the mind long after credits roll.
Best Original Song
Nominees: “Down to Joy,” Belfast; “Dos Oruguitas,” Encanto; “Somehow You Do,” Four Good Days; “Be Alive,” King Richard; “No Time To Die,” No Time To Die
Will win: “No Time To Die”
A chance to crown a rising music star and a strong Oscar track record for Bond anthems makes Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell obvious frontrunners for this most unpredictable of Academy Award categories. Of the nominated songs, this one not only had the biggest commercial footprint, hovering on the charts and commercial radio, but it kept No Time To Die in moviegoers’ minds for almost 18 months ahead of its theatrical release.
Could win: “Dos Oruguitas”
Lin-Manuel Miranda would clinch EGOT status with this Encanto song—the one Disney submitted for this category over chart-topping hit “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” (which, despite its absence from the nominations, will be featured in the upcoming ceremony). Not that James Bond isn’t popular, but this Disney juggernaut of a movie is certainly fresher in voters’ minds.
Should win: “Be Alive”
How is Beyoncé not an Oscar winner? What are we even doing here, people? Even if “Be Alive,” her song for Venus and Serena Williams co-written with Dixson, weren’t terrific—which, of course, it is—the Academy should be clamoring to make sure they’re not ignoring the career of one of today’s most impactful artists.
Apple recently acquired AI Music, a startup that creates soundtracks by using artificial intelligence to piece together sounds from royalty-free music. The purchase of the London-based company was reportedly completed in recent weeks, according to unnamed sources speaking with Bloomberg.
The startup’s website has been taken down but a cached version shows how AI Music and its “Infinite Music Engine” change and adapt music for publishers, marketers, fitness pros, and other professions. The tech could even adapt music “to your heartbeat.” On its LinkedIn page, AI Music says its goal is to “give consumers the power to choose the music they want, seamlessly edited to fit their needs, or create dynamic solutions that adapt to fit their audiences.”
In a 2017 interview, AI Music’s CEO Siavash Mahdavi told Music Ally that the startup is “shape-changing” music to shift the way songs are consumed rather than generating music from scratch. One method would be to increase the tempo of a song when someone is running or to slow it down when they are walking. In more advanced applications, the AI could take an existing song, transform it, then let you swipe left or right to hear a different version. This presumably means you could take a song from a genre you don’t listen to and use AI to make it fit your preferences.
“It’s that idea of contextual AI. Maybe you listen to a song and in the morning it might be a little bit more of an acoustic version,” said Mahdavi. “Maybe that same song when you play it as you’re about to go to the gym, it’s a deep-house or drum’n’bass version. And in the evening it’s a bit more jazzy. The song can actually shift itself. The entire genre can change, or the key it’s played in.”
Apple declined to comment on the acquisition so we don’t know how much the tech giant paid for the startup or how it plans to use the technology within its own services. We can only speculate at this point, but it seems like the AI could make its way to Apple Music in some form or another. Of course, using AI to essentially make remixes of existing songs (if that’s the direction Apple takes) would raise all sorts of legal questions regarding copyright.
Alternatively, Apple could use this song-altering AI to create soundtracks for Apple TV+ shows, workout music for Apple Fitness+, or background tracks in marketing material (AI Music wrote that its AI could be used for “audio advertising that matches listener context”).
Apple has quietly made moves to bolster its music streaming service, having purchased classic music service Primephonic in August of last year. These, as Bloomberg notes, are two of only a handful of acquisitions Apple has made in the past 12 months.
Netflix announced tonight that it’s raising the prices for all of its subscription tiers by $1 to $2 a month. It’s been roughly a year and a half since the streamer’s last price hike, which hit in October of 2020.
The increases—which will “roll out” for existing subscribers in coming months, as part of the company’s ongoing efforts to not get torch-and-pitchforked every time they do this—break down like this: Premium subscribers, who currently pay $18 a month for 4K content and 4 screens at once, will be knocked up to $20 a month. Standard plan members (HD content, 2 screens) will be jumped up a buck fifty, from $14 to $15.50. And Basic members, who don’t get HD content, will now be paying $10 a month for the privilege.
The price increases come at an undeniably weird time for the service, which is simultaneously riding about as high as it’s ever been, while also finding itself facing down stiffer competition than it’s ever seen. On the one hand, Netflix’s subscriber base is about as good as it could conceivably be at the moment, with the service currently supporting some 200+ million subscribers planet-wide, and 74 million in the U.S. and Canada—where these latest price increases are aimed.
The problem is that Netflix’s subscriber base is also, well, as high as it can conceivably be at the moment; when you’re already installed in the homes of basically every internet-enabled home in a decent chunk of the planet, it’s hard to carve out that pesky “growth” that shareholders crave. Hence, partly, the price increases, which put Netflix on par (or a little past, for Premium) HBO Max, which has generally been the priciest plan in the game at $15 a month. (For comparison, Disney+ remains at $8 a month, Paramount+ at $10 a month, Apple TV+ at $5, and Hulu just kicked its own prices up to $13 a month last year.) (That’s for the non-ad versions of the services, to be clear.)
And the mere length of the above parenthetical demonstrates the other issue Netflix is currently facing down: There are a lot of other companies out here right now trying to house its lunch. And while its multi-year head start in the streaming wars is obviously a boon, the company still needs to keep throwing as much money as it can at original content to keep subscribers happy. (Especially since studios who were once eager to license their shows to the streamer for some quick post-life profits are now far more reticent to feed a rival the content that it needs.)
The upshot of all of that being: Expect that little monthly bill to get a little less little in the coming months.
Daniel Radcliffe and Helena Bonham Carter in the Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to HogwartsPhoto: Nick Wall/HBO Max
1. The crushes of yesteryear
The most significant new information divulged in the special involves cast crushes. Watson reveals she had a massive crush on the actor who played her character’s primary antagonist, Draco Malfoy, feelings that developed after she saw Tom Felton draw a girl with a backward baseball cap on a skateboard as his vision of God. Not that anything happened between them (Watson’s direct quote: “Nothing ever, ever, ever, ever, ever happened,”) as Felton was almost four years older than her, which, in teen years, is practically a lifetime. But their declaration of how deep the bond still runs is a highlight.
Another utterly adorable moment has Helena Bonham Carter bring the note Radcliffe wrote her at the end of the final film. She has him read aloud, on camera, how he, at 18, wished he was a decade older so he could have been “in like a shot” with her. Aww.
Finch surviving out in the open thanks to his special suit.Screenshot: Apple+
In director Miguel Sapochnik’s upcoming post-apocalyptic drama Finch, Tom Hanks stars as the titular inventor who finds himself living in almost complete solitude after a cataclysmic event wipes out the vast bulk of the world’s population save for him and his dog. Keen on making sure that his canine companion is taken care of once he dies, Finch sets out to construct an intelligent robot meant to protect the pup, and Finch follows as the unlikely family leans on one another in the end times.
Though Finch’s trailers have made the film out to be far more bright and hopeful that other features with similar themes like I Am Legend and The Road, that isn’t necessarily a reflection of how much easier it was to bring the story to life. During a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter, where he compared his experiences working as a director on both Game of Thrones and Finch, Sapochnik said that it’s “harder to do something with any sort of hope or lightness for many reasons,” but that it’s immediately apparent when the is working.
While Finch largely revolves around Hanks’ character, who often interacts with a live dog, Sapochnik said that the actor’s grounded, relaxed demeanor played a large role in the smoothness of the production. Because the outside world Finch and his pet live in is so inhospitable to living organisms, he has to don a specialized suit at multiple points throughout the movie to survive the elements. Bulky exosuits are common enough in sci-fi films that everyone’s heard horror stories of people being made to stand around in what amounts to heavy, wearable saunas for hours on end—but Sapochnik described how Finch’s creative team made a point of building something Hanks could reasonably work in.
“He would come onto set in the suit, do his scenes, then sit in a chair, close his visor, turn on the AC and go to sleep,” Sapochnik recalled. “Then when we were ready, he’d open the visor and go. That might not sound unique, but it has this cumulative effect. Everybody else was ‘on’ as a result.”
Finch is releasing just a little over a year after Tom Hanks became one of the first major celebrities to reveal he’d contracted covid-19, and Sapochnik said that the events of the real world definitely ended up shaping the arc of the new film. But rather than trying to “club an audience” with direct parallels between Finch and our reality, Sapochnik said that his goal was always to make a story about a family on a road trip. “The sci-fi is incidental,” Sapochnik said of Finch. “We realized you didn’t need the world turned completely upside down for it to feel very close to home. The problem with making post-apocalyptic movies is we’re getting closer and closer to the truth and that’s kind of terrifying, you know?”
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Finch is slated to hit Apple TV+ on November 5.
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If you were to ask any major talk show host during the mid-1990s who their single biggest influence was, they would likely say one name: Johnny Carson. A decade later, it was probably David Letterman. However, today that name is very likely Jon Stewart, whose 16-year run on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show took the superficial format of Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” and elevated it beyond simple fake news and pop culture references.
Four nights a week, Stewart delivered incisive satirical commentary about the very real political issues impacting the world. Four former Daily Show correspondents now host their own talk shows that each bear Stewart’s mark in some way: Stephen Colbert (The Late Show), John Oliver (Last Week Tonight), Samantha Bee (Full Frontal), and his eventual Daily Show successor Trevor Noah. Former Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac hosted Problem Areas in 2018 (Stewart has acknowledged the similarity in titles).
That’s a tremendous legacy on its own, but it doesn’t end there: Seth Meyers (Late Night) might’ve hosted Weekend Update for years, but his regular “Closer Look” segments are more like The Daily Show than Letterman’s old Viewer Mail bits.
Stewart left The Daily Show in 2015 at the top of his game. Now, he’s returned with a new Apple TV+ series, which premieres September 30. The open credits cycle through several potential titles (The Money Grab With Jon Stewart, The Monthly Show With Jon Stewart, The Trouble With Jon Stewart) before settling on The Problem With Jon Stewart, but the cold open makes it clear there’s no actual confusion about the show Stewart wants to create.
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Seated at a table during a producers meeting, Stewart explicitly lays out the format—monologue that introduces this week’s “problem,” then an interview segment devoted to those the problem directly impacts, followed by an interview with someone important who could possibly help.
The intro also reveals the faces of the people working with Stewart, and it’s a sharp contrast to his notoriously white male staff on The Daily Show, which he said he regretted in an interview last year on The Breakfast Club. Stewart has made good on what he described as an obligation to “actively dismantle” a discriminatory system. The show’s head writer, Chelsea Devantez, is a woman, and the executive producer, Brinda Adhikari, is a woman of color. And she’s not alone! This is a refreshing change.
In his last episode on The Daily Show, Stewart declared the world “demonstrably worse than when I started this!” This wasn’t entirely hyperbole or (in my case) Gen-X nostalgia speaking. Stewart took over from original host Craig Kilborn in 1999. Bill Clinton was still in office, and the Supreme Court hadn’t yet installed George W. Bush in the White House. Then came 9/11 and the Iraq War. Donald Trump wasn’t yet president when Stewart quit, but he was no longer the obvious punchline Stewart had assumed when he’d walked down that escalator in June 2015.
Stewart told Charlie Rose in 1997 that the key to his comedy was recognizing life’s absurdities. But the Trump era, arguably still ongoing, wasn’t simply absurd. It was devastatingly real. Stewart admirably doesn’t try to return to a simpler milieu. He seems focused on making the change he wants to see in the world.
That said, the first “problem” Stewart tackles is familiar terrain—the country’s shoddy treatment of its military veterans. Stewart has advocated on behalf of 9/11 first responders, who suffered from the long-term effects of a terrorist attack, but these Iraq War veterans are victims of not-so-friendly fire. They were exposed to toxic fumes from what’s known as “burn pits,” where U.S. military contractors dumped trash and set it aflame with jet fuel. “Trash” is too benign a word. The pits contained piles of human feces and random body parts. There are veterans still dying from cancer, but the government would prefer to bury them as well, claiming that there’s no proven link between otherwise healthy young men who now struggle to breathe or have been driven to attempted suicide from their chronic pain.
This isn’t funny material, obviously, but Stewart is too personally invested to make the first segment’s few jokes land. Here, the show does not quite meet the standard set by John Oliver’s deep dives on a topic that are informative yet never less than hilarious. Amber Ruffin is also able to deliver “Schoolhouse Rock”-style studies on racism that still manage to leave you laughing. Stewart struggles with this balance to the extent he actually tries (the few overt efforts fall flat).
The Problem With Jon Stewart is ultimately more advocacy than activism, and while that’s consistent with Stewart’s past work, it lacks bite. Our current political climate is so absurd that even actual news anchors, such as MSNBC’s Brian Williams and CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper, frequently have satirical segments where they perform more like Stewart than the stiff, buttoned-up Walter Cronkite wannabes parodied on “Weekend Update” and the original Daily Show with Craig Kilborn. They exist in a post-Stewart reality. The challenge for Stewart is whether he can truly thrive in the world he’s created.
Stray observations
The interview segments were never my favorite part of Stewart’s Daily Show. This episode’s interview with Denis R. McDonough is awkward, and unfortunately, McDonough, who seems well-meaning, comes off like Martin Short’s shady businessman in a 60 Minutes spoof on Saturday Night Live. That was funny, of course. This isn’t.
It seems even more impressive now that John Oliver can keep my attention on a single subject for 30 minutes.
I know it seems like an odd criticism given The Daily Show format, but Stewart could really use someone to banter with on the show.