First Image from "The Post"

Chris here. Luckily this year only has a few late-breaking Oscar hopefuls, with the highest profile being Steven Spielberg's The Post. The film has been another snappy production for the director after beginning production earlier this year, a strategy that worked out just fine for the director with Munich. The rush carries an added weight this time as the film details the release and fallout of the Pentagon Papers, a subject of great topicality in our current administration. Add in the first cinematic pairing of Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep (not to mention an ever expanding cast) and you've got a can't-miss assemblage.

We will hopefully see a trailer any day now since its Christmas Day limited release date is getting closer. For now, we have this first image of the newsroom and its various hairpieces to ponder over. Or in the case of Carrie Coon's beehive, to worship over. So let's do an old-fashioned Tag Yourself - I'm Tony-winning Jessie Mueller peeking out behind some white guy. Tag yourself in the comments!

NYFF: "Spielberg" the Documentary

by Jason Adams

Before there was Hitchcock, before there was Michael Haneke and Todd Solondz and the Davids Cronenberg and Lynch, before Almodovar and Assayas and Campion herself, there was Steven Spielberg. A Jewish kid from the suburbs of Arizona who threw a malfunctioning shark robot into the Pacific Ocean and changed the movie business, he was My Guy. I saw Jurassic Park twelve times in the theater in the Summer of 1993 - I read my first Pauline Kael review for him. Steven Spielberg changed the movie business and his movie business changed my life.

Spielberg the documentary, on the other hand, isn't changing any business any time soon...

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Everyone Joins "The Papers"

by Ben Miller

Steven Spielberg made news a few months back with word that his next film about the Pentagon Papers would bring together two American treasures in Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep.  The film, originally referred to as The Post and now titled The Papers, chronicles the Washington Post’s Vietnam War expose’ with Hanks and Streep as the Post’s editor and publisher, respectively. 

The big news is who else has been cast in the supporting roles.  Rather, who hasn’t been cast...

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Doc Corner: Is 'Five Came Back' Netflix's Oscar Moment?

by Glenn Dunks

It can sometimes feel like we’ve seen WWII from so many perspectives that there can’t possibly be new ways to convey the weight of its tragedy. That Five Came Back, a new three-part mini-docu-series on Netflix, manages to succeed at doing this is just one of its many virtues. Adapted from Mark Harris’ book of the same name by Harris himself and directed by Laurent Bouzereau, this is a three-hour documentary about the work of five of Hollywood’s biggest directorial names of the 1930s who enlisted to support the American war effort the only way that they knew how: through film, and the personal battles they fought in order to do so.

They were Frank Capra, John Huston, George Stevens, William Wyler and John Ford – the latter of whom gets the biggest laugh labelling documentaries in the 1930s as “silly things that rich kooks made” – each of whom left behind successful careers without the promise of anything when they came back.

If they came back at all. The series charts their early efforts before America’s entering the war after Pearl Harbour in 1941 before digging more deeply in the works that they produced from the front lines on the ground and in the skies....

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Spielberg Getting Topical with Streep and Hanks

Chris here, with one of the biggest powerhouse team-ups we've seen in ages. Steven Spielberg has signed up both Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks for The Post, a historical drama about the Pentagon Papers from a script by Liz Hannah. For the unfamiliar, the Pentagon Papers were classified documents used by The Washington Post to prove President Johnson lied to the public to advance the Vietnam public. So expect a solid dose of topicality to go with the star wattage, and do try to keep the Oscar talk at bay.

Can you believe this will be the first screen pairing of Streep and Hanks? Though Hanks is a Spielberg perennial, Streep has only done voice work for Spielberg on A.I. - it's somewhat depressing that it takes a project that reflects our own terrifying political climate to get this convergence of legends to finally happen. Without a start date announced, we can guess that we might be waiting a bit for the film considering Spielberg's packed schedule. A fifth Indiana Jones has been officially slated for summer 2019 with the director attached, plus Ready Player One in the can for next year and The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara set to shoot this year. The director isn't a stranger to jammed schedules, but he's about to be on his way to a well-earned nap.