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Towleroad a Russian distributor is planning some law-defying cinephilia -- they're going to release Carol despite Russia's absurdly homophobic "anti-propaganda" law 
Marvel 2016 is Captain America's 75th anniversary so they'll be the new film Captain America: Civil War as well as a 2 hour TV special "75 Heroic Years" to air on ABC on January 19th
Pajiba clears up what the word "spoiler" means since the internet is always confused about it
MNPP Save the date - new Michael Fassbender picture on Oct 13th, 2017
Comics Alliance forget what we said earlier about Nicole Kidman co-starring in Wonder Woman. Apparently they coudln't work out schedules. The'll presumably be looking for another iconic star in Kidman's age range for the Queen of the Amazons  

List-Mania
Associate Press and Rolling Stone have best albums lists for 2015. Adele's "25" and Madonna's "Rebel Heart" make both of the top 10s
i09 best comics and graphic novels of the year
Film Comment picks the 20 best undistributed films of the year. I haven't seen even one of them which is strange given multiple festivals this year
THR the Women Film Critics Circle goes all in for Suffragette with 7 (!!!) awards. This is a group I'd love to sing praises to except so often their ideas about gender seem reductive / surface level. I like Suffragette just fine but in no way does its topic (women's voting rights) make it a better film about women than say Carol or Brooklyn or even less high profile pictures like Grandma or I'll See You In My Dreams or Mustang you know? They also say super strange things like this:

The Invisible Woman Award (performance by a woman whose exceptional impact on the film dramatically, socially or historically, has been ignored): Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl

How, exactly, has a performance with that much Oscar buzz from a new star the media is fawning all over having a wildly successful ubiquitous breakout year count as "invisible"?

a long time ago in a galaxy far far away...
Vogue a grown Star Wars fan remembers her adolescent obsession with the series and debates whether or not to go to the new film
Vanity Fair looks at the origins of Star Wars - an indie film no studio wanted to make
Movie City News the 5 things David Poland hated about Episode 7 (SPOILERIFFIC obviously). Agree completely on #1 (oy!) and sort of on #2 and #3. Don't understand #4 or especially #5 as I loved the Darth Vader obsession -- a great dark mirror to our own Star Wars fixations only embedded organically into the actual narrative.
The Incredible Suit 'froths at the cock' (sorry) for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Funny review  

The Superheroes Are Coming. After the Oscars.

Travel with me into spring 2016 - it will help you to appreciate the now of prestige season more! 2016 is arguably the year in which we see just how insatiable the public's appetite for spandex crime fighting is. Especially now that they can watch the same on TV regularly for free with Agents of SHIELD, Arrow, Supergirl, Flash, Agent Carter, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Daredevil, Legends of Tomorrow, Gotham all on the air now or by the end of 2016. I'm not an expert on the topic but this feels like the most based-on-comics material that movies/tv have ever seen in one calendar year (There was almost even one more but Channing Tatum's Gambit movie is now looking at 2017 since it hasn't started filming.)

2016's Superhero Schedule
Feb 4th   Deadpool (Fox)
Mar 25th Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (WB)
May 6th  Captain America: Civil War (Marvel/Disney)
May 26th X-Men: Apocalypse (Fox)
Jun 3rd   Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 (Paramount)
Aug 6th   Suicide Squad (WB)
Nov 6th   Doctor Strange (Marvel/Disney)

So far awards bodies like Emmy and Oscar haven't much cared about the genre at all. Apart from two things...

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News Bits & Bobs: Steve & Natasha, Jenn & Donald, Taika & Mjölnir

• Asking the important question: Is Captain America a virgin still? [Pajiba]
• Damnit. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have delayed the opening of their new museum. I'm so excited about this but we're talking 2018 now [Variety]
• Queen of Dystopia Jennifer Lawrence (who should thus know) has declared that if Donald Trump becomes President it will be "the end of the world". This may have been the most intelligent thing the verbally uninhibited actress has ever said [AV Club]
•  71's awesome debut director Yann Demange will director a true crime story about a teenage undercover informant - they're looking for a quick start in 2016. Yay! [Deadline] 

• John Waters might finally make another movie. But he won't talk about it yet! [Speakeasy]
• Black Widow is getting a new comic book in 2016. Why can't the movies understand that she deserves her own? [Comics Alliance]
• Harry Potter's voice actor in Brazil (Caio César Ignácio Cardoso de Melo), who also works as a cop, has been killed. Tragic. [The Guardian]
• 10 reveals from Joss Whedon's Avengers: Age of Ultron commentary including why he put them in marble in the end credits (I personally ♥ed that) [Coming Soon]
• What the hell is going on with Xander (Nicholas Brendan) from Buffy? Violence and arrests right after rehab? So sad. Hope he pulls out of this tailspin. [Variety]
• Joseph Gordon-Levitt will likely headline a new thriller In Sight from screenwriter Katie Lovejoy after a bidding war [Tracking Board]
• Handsome* New Zealander hired to lift Mjölnir. Taika Waititi of What We Do in the Shadows fame will direct Thor: Ragnarok [The Wrap]
• An interesting review of Janet Jackson's new album via Rich Juzwiak. I wish the talented Juzwiak didn't have to diss Madonna to complement her but dissing that icon is as natural to humans as breathing. (sigh) [Defamer] 
• Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tatiana Maslany, Olivia Cooke, and Gina Rodriguez are all in the mix for the two key female roles in Star Wars Episode VIII. That's a formidable shortlist of strong popular diverse and young actresses. Let's hope the two roles are good and not just window dressing. John Boyega will chemistry test with them. [/Film]

*What? I met him one time at a festival for his second directorial feature Boy and to my surprise was struck semi-incoherent. I am only human. 

Guardians Up, Captain Down at the Saturn Awards

The Saturn Awards, which began in the 1970s, get increasingly more confusing each decade. When they first began they were very sci-fi/fantasy niche and now they regularly seem to honor films that don't have anything at all to do with once geeky now mainstream genres like that. Consider that they have nine best picture type categories and they're expansive enough in their definitions that at least half of Oscar's Best Picture nominees were nominated for something and Whiplash and The Theory of Everything even get to be Best Film winners -- neither of which seem at all "genre" though I suppose The Theory of Everything is kinda cosmic in that it has a genre icon in Stephen Hawkings as its subject.

The big winners at the annual event were Interstellar and Guardians of the Galaxy. The big loser was Captain America: Winter Soldier which had the most nominations of all (11) and managed to lose them each one. Complete list of winners after the jump...

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Age of Ultron... And Marvel's Very Long "Connected" Movie

This article was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

Movies really ought to be seen (and reviewed for that matter) on their own terms. But what if their very terms are -- "it's all connected!?" I had the exhaustive if qualified pleasure this week of attending "The Ultimate Marvel Marathon," in which select theaters across the nation played back-to-back screenings of all 11 of Marvel Studio's films. Those take you from Iron Man (2008) through to the latest superheroic orgy of mayhem known as The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Between the screenings (20-30 minute breaks) were interstitials selling the television program "Marvel's Agents of SHIELD" that frequently reminded us that it was 'all connected'. Does the latest film The Avengers: Age of Ultron satisfy all on its own? My early guess -- only time will tell -- is "not so much" but then, is it really intended to? 

Seeing the movies back-to-back threw their problems into sharp relief: the movies are ultimately formulaic, disinterested in women, and have weakly conceived villains (an oddity given that good villains are such a comic book staple). They also betray an unfortunate tendency to end with a battle in which large inanimate objects frequently collide or crumble, mistaking mass destruction as the highest form of entertainment when the figurative character beats as well as, yes, literal character beatings are nearly always the most pleasurable moments.

On the plus side, the marathon was a great reminder of why blockbuster culture has been stampeding all over more intimate cinematic triumphs for a long time now. [More...]

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