Harold

Friday the 13th-inspired story In A Violent Nature gets its trailer. It looks like something Deadman-related will be coming to DC Studios—and we get a look at Harold and The Purple Crayon. It’s spoilerin’ time!The Real Ghostbusters Toys With Fantastic Fright Features are Back!Graphic: G/O MediaThe SimsAccording to a new report from The InSneider newsletter, Kate Herron (Loki) is attached to direct a film adaptation of The Sims produced by Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerly, Josey McNamara, and Sophia Kerr of LuckyChap, and Roy…

The inventive Harold Halibut, an adventure game leaning into the plasticine visuals of famous IPs like Wallace & Gromit, hits all major platforms in early April 2024, so clear your schedules. When it was first revealed, Harold Halibut stunned me with its ingenious mix of stop-motion animation, adventure game mechanics, and a story that dives deep for a little soul-searching. The game looks like a labor of love and the story sounds like it’ll be as zany as the works that inspired it. Harold Halibut cruises onto all…

Argylle (February 2)Director Matthew Vaughn has made a name for himself making off-the-wall spy films like Kingsman, but Argylle is something new entirely. Or so we think. The film, following an spy author whose work is happening in real life, has been marketed with an odd mystery at its center. The only mystery we’re worried about is whether it’ll be as good as most of Vaughn’s previous films.She Is Conann (February 2, limited)A queer, surrealist take on the legend of Conan the Barbarian.Skin Deep (February 2,…

The Atlantic hurricane season is just over the horizon, and we can expect a near-normal year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said this Thursday. Hurricanes and Climate | Extreme EarthIn a forecast for the 2023 hurricane season, NOAA projected that there’s only a 30% chance of an above-active season. There’s a 40% chance of a near-normal season and a 30% chance that this year will see below-normal storm activity. Hurricane season officially lasts from June 1 to November 30and reaches its peak in the…

Mild-mannered pensioner Harold Fry (Jim Broadbent) takes a stroll to the postbox one bright Devon morning. But for some reason he can’t bring himself to post the letter. It’s just a few stunted lines on headed notepaper, a reply to his old friend and former work colleague Queenie (Linda Bassett), who, he learned recently, has terminal cancer. Then a chance encounter in a petrol station gives Harold a new purpose: he decides to walk from Devon to Berwick-upon-Tweed, where Queenie is receiving palliative care in a hospice.…

Despite being impeccably acted, sincerely intended and often beautifully shot, there is something basically unsatisfying in this quirky/sad movie, adapted by Rachel Joyce from her own Booker-longlisted novel; it is undermined by issues of tone and plausibility connected with that word “unlikely” in the title. The film presents partly as a sentimental oldie heartwarmer, but also asks us to believe in it as something more serious and even tragic: an emotional investment made harder by the unreality of what we’re seeing.Jim…

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Monday, March 27. I’m Gustavo Arellano, writing from Orange County. I’m also a columnist, which means I’m allowed to have opinions like:Harold Lloyd is cool.The silent film star was one of the most popular screen comedians in the 1920s, outdrawing even Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. His films almost always had the same plot: a wimpy striver in round horned-rimmed glasses tries to better his lot in life, finds himself in hijinks that lead to…

It is one of the most famous images in film history: a bespectacled man dangles from the hands of a broken clock, 12 storeys above the Los Angeles traffic. The climax of Harold Lloyd’s slapstick suspense masterpiece Safety Last!, which is about to celebrate its centenary, is also a defining image of the city, much like the construction workers perched on a steel beam in the 1932 news photograph Lunch Atop a Skyscraper is for New York. They share a sense of the giddy dangers of 20th-century urbanism, and the precarity of…

It’s hard to even imagine. A world ravaged by climate change. People totally consumed by technology. Mega corporations in control of everything. Robots performing menial tasks. Wait, did we say “hard” to imagine? We meant we’re literally living it. The “it” being Wall-E, Pixar’s 2008 Oscar-winning masterpiece co-written and directed by Andrew Stanton.The tale of a lone robot left to clean up the Earth who finds himself on an intergalactic adventure to protect the future of the planet wowed audiences when it was released…

Darth Vader in Obi-Wan Kenobi.Image: LucasfilmAndrew Stanton knows a thing or two about storytelling. A two-time Oscar winner best known for directing Finding Nemo and Wall-E, Stanton has been with Pixar since the very beginning, lending his expertise to not just his films, but most of the films the studio has released. In between, he’s begun to spread his wings and work more on television, directing episodes of Better Call Saul, Legion, Tales From the Loop, and For All Mankind. Most recently, he worked as a writer on the…