Movies

As far as teaser trailers for summer blockbusters go, it takes quite a lot to make jaded audiences – or cynical critics – sit up and say, “What the hell?” But what’s exactly what the latest trailer for Christopher Nolan’s eagerly awaited The Odyssey has done. Not because it has featured a couple of new shots of Tom Holland’s Telemachus squaring off with Robert Pattinson’s villainous Antinous, or Matt Damon’s Odysseus participating in the bloody sack of Troy with his fellow Greeks, but because it introduces the most unexpected cameo of the year, possibly of the decade. Ladies and gentlemen, enter the latest feature of Nolan’s all-star cast: the hip-hop

The casting of the new James Bond is the biggest story in Hollywood at the moment. The sheer amount of disinformation and exaggeration that has accompanied snippets of news about the production of a new 007 adventure is remarkable, even by the standards of La La Land. Ever since the Bond franchise was purchased by Amazon, taken out of the restrictive hands of Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, and placed in the care of Amy Pascal and David Heyman, the question of who’s doing what has been a source of fascination. The hiring of Dune’s Denis Villeneuve to direct was broadly seen as a smart, auteur-ish move; the decision

Can Sinners pull off the biggest Oscars upset in recent times? That’s the question that many in Hollywood will be asking after Ryan Coogler’s genre-bending period-musical-horror picture has been nominated for a mighty 16 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor and Actress, and more. While it has been looking like a done deal that Paul Thomas Anderson’s Pynchon adaptation One Battle After Another will be sweeping to victory – and with a far from inconsiderable 13 nominations, it still could – the fact that Sinners is now the most nominated film of all time means that, on paper at least, it’s a serious challenger. Still, PTA won’t

The news that the producer Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down with immediate effect as president of Lucasfilm, to be replaced by Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan, may not sound especially consequential; film executives come and go all the time, and their arrival and departure is normally only of interest to those in the movie business. Yet Kennedy, who has run Lucasfilm – home of Star Wars, Indiana Jones and a great deal more – since 2012, and been in sole charge after the departure of the company’s founder George Lucas the same year, is the most consequential Hollywood studio head of the past couple of decades. And, her millions of

Did you know we’re living in a dictatorship?

The left has entirely abandoned even the pretense of postmodern skepticism