Beauty vs Beast: Boxing Buddies

Jason from MNPP here - while we're all sitting patiently on our hands waiting for Black Panther to hit theaters this weekend let us use the occasion of today's "Beauty vs Beast" to gaze backwards in Ryan Cooglar's filmography to the flick that no doubt gauranteed him this Marvel gig, 2015's great big crowdpleaser Creed. Coming nine years after Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone's original "goodbye" to the character that gave him his career, Cooglar's Creed opened the franchise up and breathed new life into the Philadelphian boxing saga via Michael B Jordan's Adonis, son of Rocky's deceased opponant and friend Apollo, and with Adonis' attempt to find selfhood in the shadow of his legendary father. The relationship between Rocky & Adonis formed the core of the film, it was one fraught with tension, which brings us to...

survey solutions

PREVIOUSLY Nobody was going to beat The Lovely Laura Linney on her birthday, not even Mark Ruffalo's probable finest performance opposite her in You Can Count On Me - she scored a sizeable 70% of your vote in the end, proving you can indeed count on her. Said RV:

"One of the all time great screen pairs -- both so flawed, both so connected to each other. Lonergan's uncomfortable (for me, maybe not for him) commitment to Casey Affleck aside, he deserves enormous credit for providing such rich writing and understated directing to two amazingly talented performers. "

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.

Black Panther Teases

Having recently returned from Disney World, where 'The Festival of the Lion King' earwormed that soundtrack into my brain again, I find myself frantically trying to rewrite "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" for Prince T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) who we last saw mourning his king and proving something of a surprise moral center to the squabbling superheroes of Captain America: Civil War (2016).

Sing it with me...

It's Hard for a Good Man To Be King 🎵"

Marvel Studios has gone and made its first movie without a white guy named Chris in the lead role (kidding) and from 112 seconds of evidence we have, they made a great decision hiring exciting young director Ryan Coogler (hot off Fruitvale Station and Creed) to direct. The movie is still an excruciating 251 days away still (February 16th, 2018) but the teaser and the poster for Marvel's sure-to-be smash hit The Black Panther have arrived after the jump...

Click to read more ...

"The Matrix" Remake/Reboot Rumors

Robert here with your daily "Wait, What?" news: it looks like iconic film franchise The Matrix will be getting a reboot, or a remake, or more sequels. No one is quite sure!

According to industry insiders Warner Bros. is in the beginning stages of revamping the series launched by the now legendary 1999 movie written and directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski. There have been a lot of rumors since just last night surrounding the project, so let's dive into them after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Michael B Jordan is the Big Winner at the Image Awards

Michael B Jordan was top dog at the Annual NAACP Image Awards taking both Outstanding Actor and Entertainer of the Year prizes for his work in Creed, which obviously should have netted him an Oscar nominations (we honored him here). Creed was a big player, too, taking Writing and Directing and Supporting Actress (Phylicia Rashad) prizes only to lose the Outstanding Motion Picture prize to Straight Outta Compton. 

In other curious developments Idris Elba, fresh off a SAG win, lost the Supporting Actor prize to O'Shea Jackson Jr for Compton. As a reminder of the strange nominee list, of the central trio in Compton only Jason Mitchell (who played Easy E) was snubbed, despite being the actor who received the strongest reviews within the film. 

The image awards, now in their 47th year, are kind of an all purpose awards show for black artists so they also honor literature, music, and television. black-ish and Empire were the big television winners and Anthony Anderson hosted the awards show. 

After the cuteness of Gabrielle Union & Keegan-Michael Key, the full list of winners.

Click to read more ...