Another Badass "Black Panther" Trailer!

Chris here. Okay guys, hear me out: Marvel is getting good again? Aside from business-as-usual as the Avengers arc closes, the superhero house will give us Cate Blanchett in drag for Thor, Pfeiffer in the Ant-Man sequel, and of course the most eagerly anticipated: Ryan Coogler's Black Panther.

Excuse me while I pick my eyeballs off of the floor. The goods on what Coogler has created keep getting better and better, and a brand new trailer has yours truly at a fever pitch. The amount of set pieces and plot threads already at play in this trailer suggest that it might be another bloated actioner, but there are genuine thrills everywhere, all the more rapturous for the film's existence in our current political atmosphere. Chadwick Boseman may be our star, but its most exciting element might be its celebration of black women - let's all geek out over Danai Gurira's Okoye.

This (paired with Wonder Woman) feels like the first time in quite a long while that superheroes are actually awe-inspiring on a deeper level. It pays to have an identity all your own and not retread on the diminishing returns of other retreads. It's going to be a long four months waiting for this one.

Nobody Nose

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Beauty vs Beast: Political Animals

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" where we are wishing the grand Dame Angela Lansbury a happy 92nd birthday today! It's difficult to believe we still have an entire year before Rob Marshall's Mary Poppins Returns film comes out (Xmas 2018) but we're still hoping, as we did when she was cast, that Landsbury's got something lovely to work with in the film - we don't get to see her on-screen nearly as often as we'd like to.

But she's such a legend... how could I possibly find someone to compete? Well "somebody" already had the gumption to do it herself - in 2004 a working actress by the name of Meryl Streep tackled Lansbury's still delightfully against-type turn in the remake of The Manchurian Candidate. So let's put these two ladies in a room and see which one walks out...

PREVIOUSLY Did everybody watch Mindhunter over the weekend? I did not so don't say anything if you did. But feel free to share your thoughts on last week's decision on David Fincher's original serial-killer vision Se7en, in which y'all chose Brad Pitt over Kevin Spacey 57 to 42%. That needs explaining! Said Huh:

"Spacey gets a lot of hate nowadays but anyone who thinks Brad’s performance here is better and adds more to the film than Spacey’s is nuts."

The Furniture: A Plaster Haze in The Beguiled

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled is no sprawling epic of the Civil War. The Farnsworth Seminary for Girls, where Miss Martha Farnsworth (Nicole Kidman) presides, is no Tara. There are no ballgowns or battlefields. There is only a big lonely house, the seat of a plantation that has decayed into an isolated finishing school for an especially isolated handful of girls.

Corporal John McBurney (Colin Farrell) is thrust into this setting, his leg wounded and his uniform bloodied. The resulting tension simmers for days, weeks even, before exploding in nocturnal chaos and violence. All the while the house stands silent, forcing these emotions up and down the stairs and into small, dimly-lit corners. There is a forever haze about this place, though never quite hot enough to break into a sweat.

This tightly-knotted mood owes a great deal to production designer Anne Ross, a frequent collaborator of Coppola’s, as well as art director Jennifer Dehghan and set decorator Amy Beth Silver...

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Beauty Break: Michelle Pfeiffer's Cover Girl Comeback

by Nathaniel R

Hollywood's greatest blonde is back after a way-too-long hiatus and she's the covergirl for both Variety for their Women in Hollywood issue and in the "Edit" insert of Net-a-Porter for their "white" issue (the clothing trend not the race!). And with these fine profiles / interviews come photos. So let's share beautiful portraiture and the best quotes after the jump...

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