Gladiator: A dormant genre awakens!

In preparation for the next Smackdown Team Experience is traveling back to 2000

by Cláudio Alves

One way to confirm a work of art's importance and influence - not necessarily its quality - is to see how much subsequent creations tried to imitate it. How many creators have attempted to capture lightning in a bottle for a second time, whether by blatant copy or freeform inspiration? This is especially true of mainstream cinematic successes. A surplus of movies can triumph at the box office any given year. Not nearly as many can claim to have birthed a string of copycats or revived a genre after decades of obscurity. Say what you want about Gladiator, but that Best Picture champion did accomplish such feats, for better and worse… 

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The Passion of the Link

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• THR details the first attempt to put Black Panther on screen in the 1990s with Wesley Snipes stories about trying to collaborate with John Singleton (ye olde creative differences)
• Coming Soon Jim Caviezel and Mel Gibson reuniting for a sequel to Passion of the Christ about, you guessed it, the Resurrection
• IndieWire you knew that RuPaul was a major film buff, didn't you? Here he is on this year's Oscar race

More after the jump including Andrew Scott, honoring supporting actors, Bollywood stars, Xavier Dolan's next project, and Armie Hammer in a track suit...

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Beauty Break: Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt covers the New York Times Magazine in which he wears as assortment of Giogio Armani gear and talks to Man Booker prize winning author Marlon James about Brexit, Trump and Mel Gibson. And of course gives great face while doing it.

As far as magazine celebrity profiles go, this is a very innocuous one. Pitt comes in as a nice and affable guy, but doesn't really offer any interesting tidbits. Except for what he says about Mel Gibson. In the course of discussing a potential film he wants to make about Pontius Pilate, he says that his movie "certainly won’t be for the ‘Passion’ crowd". Then for good measure, adds about Gibson's box office juggernaut:

 “I felt like I was just watching an L. Ron Hubbard propaganda film.”

Brad Pitt, nice guy, movie star, expert at throwing shade.