Fantastic Beasts Behind the Scenes

Manuel here. We talked briefly a while ago about Eddie Redmayne's dapper outfit as Newt Scamander in JK Rowling's upcoming Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. We got a teaser shortly thereafter and now, we've gotten some behind the scenes footage of the Harry Potter spinoff that fleshes out a bit more about what we can expect from this franchise prequel.

The film follows Scamandar, a famed British Magizoologist who arrives in New York City in the 1920s with a suitcase full of fantastic beasts some of whom escape, putting the necessary plot into motion. Joining him are a pair of wizarding sisters (played by Katherine Waterstone and Alison Sudol) as well as a muggle (Dan Fogler, perhaps the most curious casting of them all) — together they must... well, it's unclear still. I'm guessing they'll have to wrangle the beasts back into the suitcase? We're still in teaser territory so maybe we shouldn't worry about that yet.

You can watch the entire video below but I've isolated four moments that caught my attention.

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Art Directors Guild Winners: The Revenant crawls out in front?

David here to wish a happy 20th anniversary to the Art Directors Guild’s annual Excellence in Production Design Awards! The group handed out their 2015 awards last night, and their three film categories saw all three winners taken from this year’s pool of Oscar nominees. The Revenant, in the Period category, beat out the remaining two Oscar match-ups, Bridge of Spies and The Danish Girl, while The Martian triumphed in the Contemporary category and Mad Max: Fury Road took the Fantasy gong.

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Thoughts I Had... while staring at this photo from the set of "xXx: The Return of Xander Cage"

Thoughts I had in the order they came to me after the jump...

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Podcast: Sundance Buzz and SAG Awards Chatter

Nathaniel,  Nick, Katey, and Joe vape with Leonardo DiCaprio at the SAG Awards. Also we share the Sundance titles we're most curious about...

39 minutes 
00:01 Sundance Winners: Swiss Army Man, Netflix and Amazon
09:30 Birth of a Nation and other black films that could take the pressure off of it as the #OscarsSoWhite corrective
13:52 Most anticipated titles
16:30 SAG: Boosts for Spotlight, Alicia Vikander
22:20 Don's Plum vs. Flora Plum
25:15 Brie & Leonardo & final SAG thoughts

Related Reading For Context:
• Best Ensemble Choices -From Nathaniel
• Best Ensemble Choices -From Joe
• Nick's SAG Blogging - a first for him
• Leo's Vaping - via E!

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes soon. 

SAG Reactions

Box Office: Panda Kicks, Jane Misfires

What did you see this weekend? Kung Fu Panda 3 had a strong debut on the typically slow final session of January. Without a vocal fanbase for the series, the sequel still performed well thanks to family audiences hungry for something for the whole family - like me and you they've exhausted their Star Wars repeats and have no idea what the hell Norm of the North is.

Jane Got a Gun, a well-documented troubled production, has arrived with about the quietest thud you could imagine. Weinstein Co. has quietly snuck it into release after endless delays at its former distributor Relativity continually shuffled its debut. Over the weekend, there were plenty of "It opened??" responses with nary an actual reaction to the film - a sure sign of the bare bones publicity the film was was granted.

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