Posterized: Michael B Jordan

by Nathaniel R

Photographed by Kayla Reefer for The New York TimesAny list of the newest generation of exciting movie stars would have to include Michael Bakari Jordan (aka Michael B Jordan), and presumably way up top. The Jersey-raised actor, started young on television as a teen actor with acclaimed work on The Wire. With a name so reminiscent of a superstar in another field, it felt like a dare; How could he be that big for the movies? When he hit his mid 20s, though, the movies came calling to make good on the pop culture connotations of that name. It's been a match made in heaven thus far.

All that said he's been strangely absent from our movie screens since proving his film-carrying charisma so thoroughly with the one-two punch of Fruitvale Station and Creed. But then came 2018 to prove to us that he'd been hard at work all along but movies have their own temperamental calendars and sometimes they all get bunched up together. Four movies arrived in quick succession, one of them likely to be the biggest hit he'll ever have. He's already an Emmy nominee for producing the TV movie Fahrenheit 451 earlier this year, but the Oscar nomination has to date eluded him. Will that change with the Black Panther campaign? We don't yet know though we definitely hope so since it's his second, not his first, nomination worthy role; Oscar was sleeping on that whole Creed success back in 2015, a movie that was wildly better than it had any right to be given its provenance.

How many of his Michael B Jordan's key movies and TV shows have you seen? The posters are after the jump.

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Links: A Star is Born obsessions, Scarlett's big payday, Aladdin Teases

• Broadway World Anthony Ramos, of Hamilton fame and currently onscreen as Lady Gaga's bestie in A Star is Born, will headline the film version of Lin Manuel Miranda's In the Heights
• Variety Steven Yeun, Wong Kar Wai and Awkwafina are VIPs at the Hawaii Film Festival. Zhang Yimou's Shadow will open the fest.
• /Film John Carpenter is NOT happy that Dwayne Johnson is remaking Big Trouble In Little China
• /Film Guy Ritchie lines up stars for his next film Toff Guys including Henry Golding

More after the jump including Marvel superhero updates, Scarlett Johansson's payday, Willam and Shangela in A Star is Born, and the fresh teaser to Disney's next billion-dollar grosser Aladdin...

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Yes No Maybe So: Creed II

by Sean Donovan

The son of Apollo Creed returns in Creed II! Creed was one of the surprise gems of 2015, delivering blockbuster entertainment with genuine impact and grit. I was ready to write off this idea of a sequel as soon as I learned Ryan Coogler was not on board as a director, thinking that the resonance, intensity, and readiness to embrace topical political contexts of the first Creed all came from him.

But the first trailer, along with the film’s very elegant first poster, brawny and tough in the best way, has come along to soundly quell those concerns and suggest this is in no way a simple studio rush job. So let’s go over the evidence with a Yes No Maybe So™ Breakdown of the trailer and a full look at that perfect teaser poster...

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Podcast: Black Panther (plus underseen gems)

With Nathaniel now ensconced in new digs, the podcast can resume. Up first a mini-podcast on Ryan Coogler and Marvel's Black Panther blockbuster with Nick Davis and Katey Rich. It's paired with a "deleted scene" from the last podcast as Nick, special guest Teo Bugbee and Nathaniel discuss favorites that were never really in the awards conversation but we hope people will find on streaming including super-hero adjacent Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Black Panther and More

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. "

Wakanda Forever!

Chris here. Everything for Ryan Coogler's Black Panther just continues to look better and better. We got a pretty rousing trailer a while back, and now EW has a whole slew of photos to tease next year's first Marvel extravaganza.

The photo set gives us a closer look at this star-packed ensemble and promises unique character design. Coogler is apparently drawing on both The Godfather and the James Bond series for his narrative inspiration, but these aesthetics take my mind closer to 80s and early 90s fantasy epics for their gorgeous genre craftsmanship. The go-for-broke oppulence of Ruth E. Carter's costume design looks to be a hybrid of sci-fi tropes and African influences, certainly the most eye-popping Marvel has delivered. If you've been begging Marvel to break its mold, it looks like Black Panther could be a superhero oasis of originality.

Some favorites after the jump...

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