From The%20A.V.%20Club

  • Screw it, Netflix just isn't going to tell you how many subscribers they have any more

    One of the big things that happened, when the rise of streaming TV kicked off roughly a decade ago, is that everybody got very cagey about numbers, very quickly. Netflix was the first to get the big idea, of course, realizing that, since they’d essentially sidestepped Nielsen ratings entirely (with the polling company only recently able to offer even loose numbers of its own to track who’s watching what), it didn’t do anybody any good to tell the public what they weren’t watching. This...

  • Netflix and A24 both land in hot water over apparent AI stuff

    Despite the fact that Hollywood’s actors and writers went on strike in part because of the encroachment of AI just this past summer, we’ve already seen the technology pop up more during the past few months. In January, disappointed True Detective: Night Country fans spotted and called out a clearly AI-generated poster in the background of an episode. Last month, indie horror film Late Night With The Devil endured a similar blowback after using computer-generated images during a few transitions...

  • NBC's Olympics plans have heart monitors, Snoop Dogg, a strong hint of desperation

    The Olympics are almost upon us once again—that hallowed event where humanity comes together, once every two years, to ask itself the big, important questions that define us as a species. What is the pinnacle of human athletic achievement? How do some of these people swim so fast, and why? And, of course, the most important question of all: Why the fuck can’t NBC make any money off of the Olympics any more? That’s certainly the question the network is asking itself this year, if a recent...

  • Top Chef recap: In da (supper) club

    It’s official: We, and our plucky contestants, have made it to the top 10 on Top Chef: Wisconsin. But before our chefs can get even remotely comfortable with that reality, Kristen Kish bombarded them with an early-morning video message (“It’s always something!” Kévin cried in French. For their QuickFire Challenge, the chefs had to descend upon the unsuspecting Dane County Farmers’ Market, “like bats out of hell,” outside their hotel in Madison, WI and spend $100 each on farm-fresh ingredients....

  • Rebel Moon screenwriter says Zack Snyder's vision now includes a six-movie "trilogy"

    Stretching the definition of the word “trilogy” to (and, frankly, beyond) its logical breaking point, one of the writers of Zack Snyder’s Netflix-set sci-fi series Rebel Moon has claimed that he and Snyder actually have plans for six movies, with each pair of two films (like last year’s initial film, and this month’s The Scargiver) essentially one “installment” of the “trilogy.” That is, admittedly, a lot of scare quotes for a single lede, but damn if the idea of a Zack Snyder trilogy in which...

  • Quentin Tarantino reportedly decides The Movie Critic isn't good enough to be his final movie

    Hype has, both steadily, and inevitably, been building up for Quentin Tarantino’s The Movie Critic for a while now. It’s only natural: Not only is Tarantino coming off of one of the best films of his career, in the form of 2019's Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, but he’s also applied a huge amount of self-directed pressure on the movie by stating that it’ll be his 10th and final film. Now, that pressure has reportedly reached a breaking point, as Deadline reports that, after at least one...

  • The B-52's Kate Pierson is selling her little love trailers

    In what we can only assume is a dedicated effort to drive the parts of our brains devoted to writing punny headlines completely insane, Kate Pierson of The B-52s has announced that she’s selling a series of small, metal, inherently disposable living structures that cannot, in good conscience, ever be described as “shacks.” (Love-related, or otherwise.) No, in an act of frankly irresponsible linguistic cruelty, Pierson is instead selling “Kate’s Lazy Desert,” a campground she owns with wife...

  • Sundance might hit the snowy trail out of Utah

    There comes a time in every film festival’s life when they must flee the nest. Having spent the better part of 40 years in Park City, Utah, the Sundance Film Festival may be looking to spread its wings and fly within the year. Per Variety, the Sundance Institute’s contract with Park City is nearly up, and they are casting their gaze outside of Utah’s snowy borders. The Insitute is currently requesting information from prospective hosts, who can submit information on their movie theater or man...

  • Save room for live squid, because Oldboy is coming to TV

    Park Chan-wook started a revenge revolution with 2003’s Oldboy; that stylish, bloody-as-all-hell thriller featuring a man in a dark suit still gets made today. This month alone sees the release of two Oldboy-inspired action movies, Monkey Man and Boy Kills World. Now, Lionsgate, the finest purveyors in American Oldboy knockoffs, is teaming with director Park for an all-new Oldboy television adventure that presumably ends with a man cutting out his own tongue because he doesn’t want to tell his...

  • Brian Cox really hated Napoleon

    If Brian Cox were the one launching cannonballs at the pyramids with Ridley Scott, it wouldn’t have gone down like it did. This revelation comes from Brian Cox himself, who launched into a veritable tirade against the director’s Napoleon at a history event panel in London this week, with some extra, seemingly unprompted vitriol towards the film’s leading man. “Terrible. It’s terrible. A truly terrible performance by Joaquin Phoenix. It really is appalling,” he said (via British outlet The...

  • The art of the training montage

    Overlook the training montage sequence in Monkey Man at your own pop culture and movie peril. Kid (Dev Patel) aims to avenge his mother’s death by vanquishing the police chief (Sikander Kher as Rana Singh) who raped and killed her and the false spiritual guru (Makarand Deshpande as Baba Shakti) who ordered the massacre of Kid’s village in India. In a dense, tense, and pivotal 90-second sequence, Kid works himself into fighting shape by punching a rice sack repeatedly—for how many days, we don’t...

  • Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead offered a dose of reality in the Nickelodeon '90s

    For those old enough to remember it, kids ruled the ’90s. Between our very own “Choice Awards” and a steady stream of slime to shower celebrities with, Nickelodeon, The Disney Channel, and Nerf retailers flooded TV screens with images of independent youngsters with the magical ability to eat McDonald’s whenever they wanted. “Kids rule,” the tagline for 1994’s Camp Nowhere read, and it was an ethos injected into the culture four years earlier with the release of Home Alone. But Steven Herek’s HBO...