Emperor

As in Star Wars, Dune has an interplanetary emperor, and as with most similarities between the two universes, it’s probably not a coincidence, given the all-too-obvious influence of Frank Herbert’s novels on George Lucas. But in Denis Vileneuve’s Dune 2, instead of Ian McDiarmid’s lightning-tossing, “unlimited power”-bellowing Palpatine, we get a fantastically understated Christopher Walken as the faded ruler of the known universe, looking bummed out from years of governance, with a vibe not unlike Mitch McConnell’s at…

Little love is lost between Star Wars fans and the last movie in the saga, The Rise of Skywalker, but the biggest sin that film committed may not have been its botched handling of the legacy, but rather making us think about what Emperor Palpatine gets up to in the privacy of his living quarters, when he’s not busy terrorizing the galaxy. I don’t know if you can fully wrap your head around the scope of this travesty, because we had basically gone more than 40 years without even conceiving of the idea that this sinister…

Elagabalus ruled as Roman emperor for just four years before being murdered in AD 222. He was still a teenager when he died. Despite his short reign, Elagabalus is counted among the most infamous of Roman emperors, often listed alongside Caligula and Nero. His indiscretions, recorded by the Roman chroniclers, include: marrying a vestal virgin, the most chaste of Roman priestesses, twice; dressing up as a female…

“All art is autobiographical,” Federico Fellini once said. “The pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.” No one would accuse Napoleon, Ridley Scott’s two-and-a-half-hour epic (that’s the theatrical cut’s running time, mind you; there’s a four-hour version waiting in the wings as well) about the French dictator’s rise and fall, of being thinly veiled autofiction in period dress. You sure as hell wouldn’t call it a pearl, either. Starting with the French revolution and ending with Monsieur Bonaparte’s no-bang-all-whimper…

Many directors have tried following Napoleon where the paths of glory lead, and maybe it is only defiant defeat that is really glorious. But Ridley Scott – the Wellington of cinema – has created an outrageously enjoyable cavalry charge of a movie, a full-tilt biopic of two and a half hours in which Scott doesn’t allow his troops to get bogged down mid-gallop in the muddy terrain of either fact or metaphysical significance, the tactical issues that have defeated other film-makers.Scott cheekily imagines Napoleon firing on…

The first trailer of Ridley Scott's Napoleon is here. Joaquin Phoenix teams up with his Gladiator director to star in this epic historical drama, which sees him play the French commander Napoleon Bonaparte. The film sees the rise of Napoleon and his romance with Empress Joséphine (played by Vanessa Kirby). (Also read: Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One review: Tom Cruise fights evil Chat GPT, brings insane fun back to the movies) Joaquin Phoenix stars as Napoleon and Vanessa Kirby stars as Josephine in…

Photo via Warner Bros. There are a lot of moving parts in Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming Dune: Part Two, and while some of them were fully established in the first part of the cinematic adaptation, there is one major player we have yet to meet. The new trailer for the film gives us our first glimpse of Christopher Walken’s portrayal of the Emperor. Shaddam IV of House Corrino is the Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe, who is only ever mentioned, but not shown, in 2021’s Dune. This mimics the books as a way to…

The dead speak! Three times, in fact. At Star Wars Celebration 2023, three deceased Star Wars villains came back from the dead (and on Easter no less) to chat about their experiences playing baddies in a galaxy far, far, away. There was Gwendoline Christie who played Captain Phasma, Andy Serkis who played Supreme Leader Snoke, and the baddest of them all, Ian McDiarmid who played Darth Sidious/Emperor Palpatine/Rey’s Grandfather.Spoilers of the Week May 2-6“Every time it happened, I didn’t know it was going to,” McDiarmid…

By Yuri Kageyama and Mari Yamaguchi | Associated Press TOKYO — Ryuichi Sakamoto, a world-renowned Japanese musician and actor who composed for Hollywood hits such as “The Last Emperor” and “The Revenant,” has died. He was 71. Japan’s recording company Avex said in a statement Sunday that Sakamoto died on March 28 while undergoing treatment for cancer. He was first diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014. In 2022, he revealed that he had terminal cancer, a year after he disclosed suffering from rectal cancer. Sakamoto was a…

In honor of this year’s Penguin Awareness day, the British Antarctic Survey the existence of a previously undiscovered emperor penguin colony in one of the most remote and inaccessible parts of Antarctica. Scientists spotted the colony, the 66th to be found on the continent, by comparing satellite imagery captured by the European Space Agency’s and Maxar’s WorldView-3 satellite. The photo you see below is the one that led the British Antarctic Survey to the colony. The brown stains that contrast against the stark white…