Daniel Day-Links

• Vanity Fair the interrupted erupted into crazed outrage early today over fake news regarding Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman payday. Katey clears up the confusion

• Time has a gorgeously written profile of Sofia Coppola by Stephanie Zacharek as The Beguiled heads to theaters.

• Meanwhile, though, not everyone is happy with the film. Our own Murtada thinks the film lacks tension and should've switched its setting away from the Civil War. Slate details the whitewashing of the source novel that happened in both the 1971 movie and to an even larger degree in the current film. I think a couple of the Slate article complaints are overdoing it particularly when it comes to the dialogue addressing the absence of slaves -- that feels absolutely authentic as to how that particular character (Nicole Kidman's stone-faced self-serving Miss Martha) would dismiss the topic but there are enough valid ones that now I'd love to see a third version that is actually more faithful to the book because it sounds, at least in this article, like its more fascinating than either movie version. I guess we should read it.

• THR Young Han Solo loses/fires (?) its hot directors Phil Lord & Christopher Miller under the typical "creative visions" disagreements. The worrying part is that they're already several months into production. Deadline follows up with the bad news that they want Ron Howard to finish the film

• GQ Joel Schumacher looks back on the reviled camp of Batman & Robin. Has no regret about the Bat Nipples.

• Village Voice Transformers: The Last Knight wrecks Bilge Ebiri. Perfect. This review is perfect. 

 • And you have probably heard that Daniel Day-Lewis is retiring...
The Wrap reminds us that he's announced his retirement before but Variety goes with the sensational misleading "Shocker!" headline even though Daniel Day-Lewis hardly ever works by his own choice and thus it was only a matter of time before he did this. Letters of Note shares a cool story about how hard he fought for his breakout role in My Beautiful Laundrette. I personally think it's fine that he's retiring. He's clearly not a "hungry" actor anymore and actors are better when they really want it (just as people in all professions are). Also Lucy Prebble, Clarisse Loughrey, and Teo Bugbee had amusing notes to comfort us on this topic on twitter.

Naturally this means that Phantom Thread, his next Paul Thomas Anderson picture opening in December, would theoretically be his last. Cynics will tell you -- and have already told you online surely -- that this means he's a lock for the Oscar yet again. But let's not get carried away. People will have to at least really like the movie and Oscar voters will have to really want him to tie Katharine Hepburn's record for that to happen. Will they? We'll see.

Top Ten: Best Moments in "Wonder Woman"

by Nathaniel R

I've spent a bit of time this summer reconnecting with friends, many of whom are only casual moviegoers rather than cinephiles. Everyone has wanted to see or been talking about Wonder Woman. I think it's fair to say, after a second viewing and hearing similar enthusiasms repeated again and again, that it's a better cultural object than a  movie. It's shocking to realize that there just aren't any movies like it even though it's not very original. That's proof that a little (big) thing like a female lead and a female director can make an enormous difference. While the cinema has given us many strong female icons (to pretend otherwise, as some voices seem to be doing, is to be supremely ungenerous to the artform and/or to reveal either one's extreme ignorance of movies made prior to, say, 2004 or a very limited taste in film genres).

But, yes, the superhero genre has been shockingly non-representative of the real world where women make up half of all humanity. Nevertheless you can't be a great cultural object as a movie without having some true pizazz as a film so let's give Wonder Woman its due after the jump...

TEN BEST MOMENTS IN WONDER WOMAN

Click to read more ...

Wonder Woman at The Alamo Drafthouse

Please welcome guest contributor Shannon Fox with a report from the all female screening of Wonder Woman at the Alamo Drafthouse.

Photo Credit: Proma Khosla/Mashable (Right to left: Stephanie Barnes, Annemarie Mancino, Shannon Fox)

Be careful.”  

This was the general response by friends and family, both male and female, upon learning that I had secured tickets to the women-only Wonder Woman screening at my local Alamo Drafthouse.  And, I mean, sure, we live in a scary world nowadays-- crazy things happen.  But it’s a pretty atypical response to catching a flick, you know?  I mean, I don’t know about you, but I usually hear “let me know if it’s any good” rather than “please don’t get murdered” when it comes to going to the movies.

But if that isn’t telling of the female experience in today’s society, I’m not sure what is.  

Alamo’s women-only screenings have garnered quite a bit of press over the past week, thanks to the multitude of mostly-male detractors on the internet.  There have been lawsuits, threats of storming the theater, and demands of men-only screenings in the future (for the female-led The Last Jedi, inexplicably) to name a few. Because of that, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect this past Sunday...

Click to read more ...

Review: "Wonder Woman"

by Chris Feil

The absurdly long wait for Wonder Woman to arrive on the big screen is officially over with the arrival of Patty Jenkins’s stellar adaptation. Gal Gadot may have been the all-too-brief bright spot of last year’s Batman v Superman, but in her own story she emerges as a hero for the ages.

While this is yet another superhero origin story, Wonder Woman’s conviction keeps its more common beats alive. Gadot’s Diana is raised to be a warrior among the Amazons, with a strong sense of true justice, under the watchful eye of her mother Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) and trainer Antiope (Robin Wright). On the otherwordly arrival of earthly spy pilot Steve Trainor (Chris Pine), Diana sets out for a righteous battle with destiny on the World War I front.

Click to read more ...

"Wonder Woman" Gets More Promising

Chris here. Among the seemingly endless barrage of horrors, 2016 has also been the year that gave us two DC filmic trainwrecks. Next year however Warner Bros. will be able to turn that around in equal measure with Wonder Woman and Justice League (and, oh yeah, The LEGO Batman Movie). While we're less optimistic about Justice League, the goods on Wonder Woman keep getting better and better.

These new posters send clear strong messages to the fanboy hoardes ready to trash a female superhero picture. Maybe we'll even get more in this series with the captions YAAAS, QUEEN, and SLAY. For my money, we have enough "power" and "courage" at the movies, but Woman just might make good on that "wonder" promise. Check out the new trailer below...

Click to read more ...