Charles Bramesco

A few days from now, January 10 will mark the one-year anniversary of David Bowie’s surprising death and the beginning of the unending parade of horrors that was 2016. The tributes poured out in the wake of the announcement with commemorative parades and parties taking place in cities across the globe. But while the flow of memorials to the musical pioneer may have ebbed, it hasn’t stopped completely. A new report from Variety indicates that later this year, Bowie’s spirit will continue to live on at cineplexes across Europe with what is now the closest a person can get to attending an actual David Bowie concert.

Does America really need another Death Race movie, considering the fact that America is approximately a year and a half out from living out its own insanely budgeted real-life Death Race sequel? Or do we, in fact, need a new Death Race movie now more than ever? As we rapidly hurtle towards our own dystopian world, can’t we look to the upcoming Death Race 2050 as a guide, a bloody roadmap for the deranged years to come? In order — yes, yes, and yes. (Note: this lede can be easily recycled for news concerning other apocalyptic franchises such as Mad Max, Terminator, and Bad Moms.)

Rogue One will have to settle for being the second-highest grossing film of the year — damn you, cultural juggernaut Finding Dory! — but it does have the distinction of being among the better-reviewed films in its franchise. Many critics have praised director Gareth Edwards’ vision of some unexplored pockets of George Lucas’ universe, singling out Darth Vader’s castle lair that appears in the film on a violent, molten-lava planet. (The planet bears a strong resemblance to Mustafar, the magma-covered site of the final showdown between Anakin Skywalker and Obi-wan Kenobi in Revenge of the Sith.) Now, one of the key designers from Rogue One has provided a little background on the memorable locale and how it came to be.

It sounds like a diss to say that an actor was a perfect fit for a blank, expressionless automaton, but Michael Fassbender owned his performance as synthetic robot David in Prometheus. The film remains a polarizing quantity among fans of Ridley Scott’s original, but Fassbender’s turn as the wry, faintly sinister David was a clear high point. He lent the character a small semblance of recognizable personality, but mostly dialed it back to create an unsettling, entertaining, and entirely memorable role. When the news came that Fassbender would play an android in the upcoming Alien: Covenant, many fans automatically assumed David would make a return. And while they’re not wrong, Fassbender has more circuitry hidden up his sleeve.

All is right with the galaxy far away: Rogue One has dominated at the box-office, as expected, and earned mixed-to-positive reviews from critics, also as expected. But watching the film, especially in light of the revelations that Lucasfilm ordered massive reshoots that stretched on for weeks, it’s clear that there’s a Rogue One that’s gone unseen. The unused footage from the trailers, Tony Gilroy stepping in with rewrites to the point where he earned a co-writer credit, friction between Lucasfilm and director Gareth Edwards — it all points to an alternate version of the film laying on some Los Angeles editing suite floor.

The world’s still stinging from the loss of Carrie Fisher yesterday, and while we will most likely remember her first as Princess Leia, the actress cultivated a long career of comedy after her Star Wars years. Her one-woman show Wishful Drinking was a must-see on Broadway, and her hilarious, often inscrutable Twitter account will stand as a testament to her bizarre wit. In the wake of Fisher’s sad death on Tuesday, one video in particular has begun to pop up again, and it might just be the comic’s most searing public appearance of all.

Even if it feels like things are getting worse all the time, with Hollywood delivering an unholy crop of expensive flops amidst murmurs of cinema’s death in 2016, that may not be the case. At the very least, the American film industry isn’t in danger of collapsing any time soon — quite the opposite, in fact. If we’re to take the total sum of money generated by ticket sales in a given year as a barometer of the industry’s overall health, Tinseltown’s still as strong as an ox, Ben-hur remake or no.

For gentiles far and wide, yesterday was a day of rest and relaxation; Henry Cavill spent it making headlines. Today brings a twofer of Super-news in the post-Christmas lull:

It’s the Friday before Christmas. Those of us who aren’t currently concealing the fact that we’ve slumped over at our desks in a eggnog-hangover-induced nap have glued our eyes to the clock, counting down the minutes to a leisurely holiday break. Everyone just wants to get home, gather with family or other loved ones around a crackling fire, put on the musical stylings of Burl Ives or Bing Crosby, and have a nice mug of hot cocoa. Time slows to a crawl on the Friday before a long weekend, and we both know you’re not getting any work done today, so why not kick back with the soothing sounds of Chewbacca moaning out a classic Christmas standard?

James Gray's latest effort The Lost City of Z caused no small commotion when it debuted earlier this year to close out the New York Film Festival. The filmmaker already enjoys a small but dedicated fanbase, and after his 2014 film The Immigrant got all but buried by its distributor the Weinstein Company, Gray's devotees were eager to see what he'd cooked up this time. Among the splashy debuts for The 13th and 20th Century Women, Gray delivered a work of knotted moralities and visual splendor, and those parties present left the theatre with a consensus of breathless praise. Now, we commoners can get an eyeful of the film before its debut in April from Amazon and Bleecker Street.

It has become increasingly apparent that the best thing a revival of a tired ‘80s pop-culture artifact can be is the neo-21 Jump Street, judging by the new trailer for the Dwayne Johnson-fronted Baywatch. The parallels are striking: we’ve got the central odd couple in the Rock’s bombastic beach hero and Zac Efron’s hard-partying young gun, light meta touches about “reviving the brand,” some playful winks to the core goofiness of the source material (the “why does she always look like she’s running in slow motion?” line may be the best of the clip), even a scene where our heroes are dressed down by a furious black cop. You may call it derivative, but I call it a good start.

We’ve still got 15 days on the clock until the wait for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story comes to an end. And while fans can kill the next couple of weeks watching the two-and-a-half-minute trailer approximately 8,600 times, there are better ways to run out the clock, and of course I don’t mean “going outside” or “talking to another person.” Felicity Jones, out on the publicity circuit to talk up the impending release of Rogue One, sat down with late-night talk show host/overgrown summer camp counselor Jimmy Fallon last night. The actress showed off some of the moves she picked up during her martial arts training for the film, and then Fallon casually introduced the first official clip of footage from Rogue One as if he wasn’t giving fans simultaneous heart attacks across the globe.