Bryan cranston

Jason Bateman breaks bad in Black Rabbit

When Bryan Cranston staggered on-screen in the opening scene of Breaking Bad in 2008, stumbling out of a crashed RV dressed only in his underpants, and addressed the camera with, “My name is Walter Hartwell White…to all law enforcement entities, this is not an admission of guilt,” he immediately changed perceptions of who he was as an actor. Previously, he was best known for being the goofy dad in Malcolm in the Middle, and despite some effective straight performances, most thought of him as a comedic performer, rather than the star of what became the most talked-about crime drama series since The Wire. Jason Bateman would, one presumes, like to follow Cranston’s lead.

Wes Anderson movies have become meaningless

The trailer for Wes Anderson’s latest film, Asteroid City, depicts the lonesome, desert sci-fi-induced death of twee. A sepia-toned artifice of the American West filmed near Madrid, it has everyone you would expect to be in a Wes Anderson movie, depicting themselves as always, with that special twinge of beautifully centered shots combined with at least one saccharine line which is designed to make you choke up a bit about a character who probably died off screen. Here is the trailer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FXCSXuGTF4&ab_channel=FocusFeatures There is something so horribly depressing about this.

wes anderson asteroid city

Bracing for the tension of Better Call Saul

Next week will see the final tranche of episodes of the sixth series of Better Call Saul swaggering onto Netflix. They follow a tense mid-season cliffhanger that saw the sudden death of one major character and the unexpected return of a former nemesis. Expectations for the last installment are appropriately high, not least because of the much-heralded return of the two characters who defined the Breaking Bad universe from which the series was spun off: Aaron Paul’s hapless Jesse Pinkman and, most excitingly of all, Bryan Cranston’s Walter White. Better Call Saul’s creators, Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan, are intelligent men. Gilligan was responsible for Breaking Bad, on which Gould was a writer, producer and director.