Cinema, Theater & TV news

• Les Misérables review – merci, Andrew Davies, c'est magnifique

  30-12-2018 23:00
  Liberally scattered with talent from Dominic West and David Oyelowo to Lily Collins, this mercifully song-free adaptation was a rich feast to end the year
  Andrew Davies’s six-part adaptation of Victor Hugo’s classic novel Les Misérables (BBC One) begins with an explanatory caption. “After 20 years of war, France is defeated and Napoleon is exiled. A new king is waiting to be crowned. The old order is to be restored. The revolution is to be forgotten. And there are no son
  
  Read more

• Les Misérables episode one recap – it's the big muscle, magnificent trouser show!

  30-12-2018 23:00
  How do you rewrite a story everyone knows? With Dominic West as the Incredible Hulk, Derek Jacobi as a pruning bishop – and the Tinder profile from hellMagnificent trousers! A twirly-tached war hero saved on the battlefield! Pretty ladies drinking lots of wine! Revolutionary crowd scenes! A cute starving baby! Dominic West with a convict beard so large it has its own casting agent and dressing room!You can see why the BBC thought it might be exciting to take on Les Misérables as rei
  
  Read more

• ‘Aquaman’ Keeps Its Box-Office Lead as ‘Mary Poppins’ Gets a Holiday Boost

  30-12-2018 21:32 via nytimes.com
  “Mary Poppins Returns” saw an increase in ticket sales during its second week in theaters. It’s one of several films that benefited from a post-holiday bump.
  
  Read more

• Susanna Dinnage pulls out of Premier League top job

  30-12-2018 21:24 via ft.com
  TV executive appointed as Richard Scudamore’s successor has change of mind
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Former Apprentice Staffers Doubt Donald Trump N-Word Tape Actually Exists

  30-12-2018 21:05 via feedproxy.google.com
  Despite claims from Tom Arnold and Omarosa Manigault-Newman that assert there’s physical evidence of Donald Trump using racially insensitive language during his stint as host of The Apprentice, a new feature in The New Yorker argues tapes of those moments — tapes that people have been trying to obtain for...More »
  
  Read more

• A Star is Born Again: Lady Gaga’s Vegas Residency Dazzles

  30-12-2018 21:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  It’s possible that we are undervaluing Lady Gaga. Alright, she’s coming in hot for 2019’s awards season following Bradley Cooper’s remake of A Star Is Born. Yes, she’s forever a household name. But there isn’t that universal hysteria lent to Gaga that we employ with Beyoncé or Teslas or Meryl...More »
  
  Read more

• In ‘Grey Rock,’ a Palestinian Playwright Tackles the Ordinary

  30-12-2018 20:44 via nytimes.com
  Occupation is an ancillary concern in Amir Nizar Zuabi’s new play, in which an everyday Palestinian man decides to build a moon rocket in a shed.
  
  Read more

• A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Review of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

  30-12-2018 20:25 via feedproxy.google.com
  Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, the choose-your-own-adventure Black Mirror “event” that dropped on Netflix in the wee hours of Friday morning, is many things.It’s another installment of Black Mirror that raises questions about technology, free will, and the impact of innovation on mental health. It’s also an installment of Black Mirror unlike...More »
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Give the Oscars Zoloft After These Delightful Golden Globe Promos With Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh

  30-12-2018 19:27 via feedproxy.google.com
  While the future of the Academy Awards continues to unravel at an alarmingly stupid rate, in walks the Golden Globes with a margarita mix, pizza, and two people you definitely want to spend an evening gossiping about boys with. So begins the countdown to Sandra Oh and Andy Samberg’s co-hosting...More »
  
  Read more

• The Affair’s Dominic West Never Talked With Ruth Wilson About Her Pay Gap

  30-12-2018 18:35 via feedproxy.google.com
  Ruth Wilson’s unexpected departure from Showtime’s The Affair is still being shrouded in a whole lot of secrecy, mostly because Wilson herself admitted she’s “not allowed” to discuss anything about it. However, there’s one thing she spoke freely about in the weeks following her character’s death: She was being paid...More »
  
  Read more

• Netflix Had to Create Ridiculously Complex Software for Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

  30-12-2018 17:25 via feedproxy.google.com
  For all of the dad murders and ‘80s era synthpop we’re subjected to in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch — we chose Thompson Twins, obviously — perhaps the one thing we didn’t think of while ruining Stefan’s life is how exactly Netflix was able to create its first-ever interactive project. The short...More »
  
  Read more

• Kavanaugh, Kanye, Beyoncé, ‘Black Panther’: Washington on Pop Culture in 2018

  30-12-2018 17:01 via nytimes.com
  Three reporters and The Times’s politics editor shed light on moments that revealed deeper truths about politics this year.
  
  Read more

• Critic’s Notebook: What It’s Like to Be a Female Movie Critic in the #MeToo Era

  30-12-2018 17:00 via nytimes.com
  For Manohla Dargis, who spent a lifetime loving movies, ordinary, unremarkable sexism was so much harder to glide over. And it deserves outrage too.
  
  Read more

• In the Criminal Justice System, This Brooklyn Nine-Nine Trailer Is a Law & Order: SVU Parody

  30-12-2018 16:23 via feedproxy.google.com
  We’ll continue to be the iconic sitcom-savers that we are and chant NINE-NINE at inanimate objects until our pals at the precinct return for a new season, but until then! What do we have here? 30 glorious seconds of a Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Law & Order: SVU mash-up, which means,...More »
  
  Read more

• Staging Reality Winner: An F.B.I. Transcript Becomes an Offbeat Thriller

  30-12-2018 14:00 via nytimes.com
  In the 2017 interrogation that resulted in a leaking charge, the creators of “Is This a Room” found a fascinating mix of the surreal and the banal.
  
  Read more

• Miranda Sawyer’s best audio of 2018

  30-12-2018 10:00
  Podcasts marched on apace while radio presenters engaged in an elaborate game of musical chairs. See our top 10 list below• Read the Observer critics’ review of 2018 in full hereA tsunami of podcasts this year, as the BBC and other institutions gave us show after show to make up for past reticence. Some podcasts were oversold (Death in Ice Valley, The Ratline), others an unexpected delight (GrownUpLand., Duvet Days). Business joined in the new audio rush – Land Rover’s inn
  
  Read more

• Euan Ferguson’s best TV of 2018

  30-12-2018 10:00
  My Brilliant Friend, Killing Eve and Save Me were among the highlights in a vintage year for drama. See our top 10 dramas below
  • Read the Observer critics’ review of 2018 in full hereThe standout aspect of 2018 on television was simply the proliferation of wonderful drama. I’ve had to exclude so much blistering merit from my own (highly subjective, as ever) top 10. So Bodyguard doesn’t (quite) make it, despite holding people rapt over August and September and reminding us
  
  Read more

• The week in TV: The ABC Murders; Watership Down; You; The Dead Room; Mrs Brown’s Boys

  30-12-2018 08:00
  John Malkovich’s turn as an ageing Hercule Poirot fleshed out the Belgian sleuth, while Watership Down offered gory lessons in team managementThe ABC Murders (BBC One) | iPlayer
  Watership Down (BBC One) | iPlayer
  You (Netflix)
  The Dead Room (BBC Four) | iPlayer
  Mrs Brown’s Boys (BBC One) | iPlayer
  Best thing about Christmas, apart from the relief from wall-to-wall Westminster yawl, was the quite spooksome, gorgeously tense, adaptation by Sarah Phelps of Agatha Christie’s The AB
  
  Read more

• The week in radio: The Deke and Dealey Show; Chris Evans Breakfast Show; Wise Women; Today – review

  30-12-2018 08:00
  A seventysomething DJ got his big break after 50 years broadcasting from his garden shed. Plus, a teary farewell for Chris EvansThe Deke and Dealey Show (BBC Three Counties) | iPlayer
  Chris Evans Breakfast Show (Radio 2) | iPlayer
  Wise Women (6 Music) | iPlayer
  Today (Radio 4) | iPlayerWith some of radio’s big beasts moving to new pastures – Eddie Mair earlier this year, Simon Mayo and Chris Evans this month – there have been plenty of new voices on the airwaves of late. Especi
  
  Read more

• Sunday's best TV: Les Misérables; Cities – Nature's New Wild

  30-12-2018 07:00
  Dominic West, David Oyelowo and Lily Collins star in Andrew Davies’s epic take on the Hugo classic, while Daniel Kaluuya narrates a new nature doc9pm, BBC One Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• The year in podcasts — never have our ears been so spoilt for choice

  30-12-2018 06:00 via ft.com
  The format is in rude health with series such as Last Seen and Personal Best
  
  Read more

• Enjoy This Supercut of Ted Danson’s Reassuring Arm Pats on This, the Day of his Birth

  30-12-2018 05:47 via feedproxy.google.com
  Today is Ted Danson’s birthday! Do you know who cares about that, possibly more than Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen combined? Paul F. Tompkins. The comedian has been celebrating the glad tidings on Twitter all day, even demanding supercuts of his favorite moments of Dansonia. Tompkins requested a compilation of...More »
  
  Read more

• You Can Read the Whole Into the Spider-Verse Script Online

  30-12-2018 05:13 via feedproxy.google.com
  Sony has released the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse script for the world to download and peruse at their leisure. Written by Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman, the script is a peek behind what it really takes to create an animated spectacular. In animation, you have to specify e-ver-y-thing. What is...More »
  
  Read more

• Do You Want Your Movie to Dominate at the Box Office? Hire Letitia Wright

  30-12-2018 04:18 via feedproxy.google.com
  According to Fandango, Letitia Wright is the highest box office-earning actor of 2018. According to Wright herself, people need to be paying her in reflection of that fact. Wright had key roles in some of the biggest films of 2018: Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Ready Player One, and The...More »
  
  Read more

• R.I.P. Absolutely Fabulous Star June Whitfield

  30-12-2018 03:19 via feedproxy.google.com
  Legendary British comedic actress Dame June Whitfield has died. She was 93. When Whitfield was damed last year, Prince Charles said the event was “some time coming,” and apparently the Queen herself does a mean impression of Whitfield’s character in a 1953 radio comedy.Whitfield wove her way into many of...More »
  
  Read more

• Netflix Has Finally Stopped Genocide-Shaming Thanos

  30-12-2018 02:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  Fan backlashes, gotta love ‘em. When Netflix released Avengers: Infinity War on Christmas Day, it referred to Thanos as an “intergalactic sociopath.” Well, the Stanos (Thanos stan) community was not having it, honey! Apparently someone who kills half of all life is not sociopathic if he looks real sad doing...More »
  
  Read more

• City on Fire Director, Ringo Lam, Is Dead

  30-12-2018 02:21 via feedproxy.google.com
  Ringo Lam, the seminal Hong Kong action director, has died. He was 63. Lam is best known in the west for his collaborations with Jean-Claude Van Damme and for the highly influential City on Fire. The film–written, directed, and produced by Lam– starred Chow Yun-fat as a conflicted undercover cop...More »
  
  Read more

Follow @newslock_cinema on Twitter!