Oscar Isaac

Tag Archive: Oscar Isaac

TCM’s Viva Hollywood chronicles rich legacy of a century of Latin and Hispanic creators in cinema

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September 9, 2022

Review by C.J. Bunce

Stagecoach, Lost Horizon, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, High Noon, The Seven Year Itch, Giant, Rio Bravo, Batman, Chinatown, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. What do these films have in common? They each featured significant contributions by Latinx and Hispanic creators. Next week Turner Classic Movies/TCM and Running Press continue their long-running master class in cinema with the latest volume of the TCM Film Library. For it they tapped the biggest expert in Latinx and Hispanic cinema, Luis I. Reyes, author of the authoritative 550-page treatise on the subject, Hispanics in Hollywood.

In TCM’s Viva Hollywood, Reyes updates and highlights pieces from his earlier work, pulling back the veil into a world of actors in front of the camera as well as filmmakers behind the scenes. Since the heyday of silent film, Latin and Hispanic performers have provided audiences some of their most memorable movies. From Antonio Moreno’s first film appearance in 1912 to modern entertainers Zoe Saldana, Michelle Rodriquez, Ana de Armas and Oscar Isaac, they all come together in TCM’s Viva Hollywood, available for pre-order now here at Amazon and arriving in bookstores next week.

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And the best superhero series of them all? Marvel’s fantastic Egyptian adventure Moon Knight

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May 5, 2022

Review by C.J. Bunce

With a small but significant first–and possibly only–season now behind us, the latest Marvel series proved the promise of the series opener wasn’t just a fluke. With unusually fantastic superhero storytelling and backstory, top acting, and unparalleled art production and music, Moon Knight is a serious contender for not only the best of Disney’s era of superhero series, it also springs ahead as better than all the Netflix Marvel series and any series (DC, Marvel, or indie) that came before in the superhero genre, complete with a Dark Knight villain done right, and a Wonder Woman who finally delivered on the excitement and potential of nearly a century of comic book superheroines. The sixth and final episode of the season is now streaming on Disney+. We’re only through four months of 2022, and even with some high calibre shows so far, if you see only one series this year, so far this is the one not to miss.

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The Offer–The Godfather nostalgia series delivers

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May 2, 2022

Review by C.J. Bunce

Whether or not every element of the new Paramount+ series The Offer is based in reality just doesn’t matter. Fifty years ago Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather premiered in theaters across America and it’s maintained its status as one of cinema’s best films. Viewers want all the crazy legends behind its creation to be real, including Frank Sinatra getting into a public argument with author Mario Puzo, and the mob getting irked by its very existence. When you have to choose between legend and history in storytelling, give audiences whatever makes the better story. And the story from the view of The Godfather producer Albert S. Ruddy is like reading the exploits of gangster Jimmy Alo in Dylan Struzan’s book A Bloody Business (reviewed here). When an old bird is telling fish tales from decades ago–and he’s good at it–you just let him go (the character of Johnny Ola in The Godfather, Part II is based on Alo, so the comparison has some credence). Only this limited television series has the kind of result that makes you wish it were a movie. As peeks into Hollywood go, the acting, writing, direction, and production values are exactly as the streaming provider has been promising in its months long advance marketing.

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Moon Knight–Marvel delivers its best superhero series pilot yet

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April 2, 2022

Review by C.J. Bunce

The best of the Marvel Cinematic Universe happens when a new writer or director’s vision is something we haven’t seen before. For the movies, that’s merging into the MCU a quirky space fantasy crew in Guardians of the Galaxy, superheroes with restricted powers as in Thor: Ragnarok, or starring a less than super superhero like in Ant-Man. In the TV series it’s introducing a unique, cool style like in Luke Cage or featuring an ex-military antihero with serious drama like in The Punisher. In Disney’s Moon Knight, which is premiering its pilot episode now on Disney+, it’s building an intense, thrilling character who finds that something or someone has taken over his body, and he–and the audience–have no idea why. It’s a mix of ancient mythology, magic, and adventure of the level of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with the best of today’s actors creating some truly fantastic and exciting characters. And that’s just the first hour.

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The Godfather’s 50th anniversary arrives with a movie and a series about how they made it

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April 1, 2022

Fifty years ago this week The Godfather premiered in theaters across America. That fiftieth anniversary is netting more than one re-creation from Hollywood of the making of that movie. Barry Levinson is directing Francis and The Godfather, a movie starring Oscar Isaac as The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola facing off against Jake Gyllenhaal as producer Robert Evans (an actor who eventually produced Chinatown), with Elle Fanning as Ali MacGraw, and Elisabeth Moss as Eleanor Coppola. It began filming last year, so expect it in theaters or streaming by year end.

Before that arrives, a limited series that is also about the making of The Godfather is heading to streaming service Paramount+ next month. The Offer has an impressive cast, all seemingly well cast against their real-life counterparts. Dan Fogler (Fantastic Beasts) plays Coppola, Matthew Goode (Watchmen) plays Evans, and Miles Teller (Fantastic Four, Top Gun: Maverick) plays producer Albert S. Ruddy.

Here is the trailer for The Offer:

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Moon Knight–Marvel Studios gives a peek behind the scenes

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March 12, 2022

“I can’t tell the difference between my waking life and dreams.”

Anyone else see the Jason Isaacs series Awake? It, too, followed a hero who was alive in two different worlds, each where he believed he was awake and the other, the world in his dreams. That’s the path Marvel Studios is taking with Moon Knight, the next MCU superhero series, which stars Oscar Isaac (is he Steven Grant or Marc Spector?), coming later this month to Disney+.

Marvel released a brief featurette providing some insight into the character, including interviews with Isaac, plus Ethan Hawke, who plays Arthur Harrow, and Disney exec Kevin Feige. Check it out below, along with previous trailers for the series:

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Tags: 2022 Marvel Cinematic Universe, Awake series, Disney Plus, Ethan Hawke, Jason Isaacs, Kevin Feige, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase IV, Marvel Comics, Moon Knight, Moon Knight featurette, Moon Knight official poster, Moon Knight series, Moon Knight trailers, Oscar Isaac

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The Galaxy’s Greatest Heroes–A look at Star Wars heroes in a new way

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November 28, 2021

Review by C.J. Bunce

When I was a kid in school, periodically we were given book orders, full of discount versions of books, but also posters and popular magazines like Dynamite, and lots of tie-ins with the latest news on current movies and TV shows. Anything Star Wars was quickly added to our book order form, and that’s what Titan’s latest tie-in reminds me of most. Star Wars Insider: The Galaxy’s Greatest Heroes looks at 16 of the biggest heroes of the franchise from the creators and actors behind them. But after nearly 45 years, the book allows a greater opportunity for even more people behind the scenes to offer their commentary on fan-favorite characters, with something for every Star Wars fan.

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As Marvel’s Hawkeye arrives, Disney releases glimpses at what’s next for Marvel

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November 13, 2021

The first two episodes of Marvel’s Hawkeye series are less than two weeks away. After the mental anguish of this year’s first round of Marvel streaming series–depression and loss as the themes of WandaVision, self-doubt and imposter syndrome as the themes of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and regret and hopelessness as the themes of Loki–Marvel fans have earned themselves a fun Marvel series, and Hawkeye looks like it will fit the bill.

In yesterday’s quick Disney Plus Day event, the streaming service previewed what should be another fun series, as critically acclaimed Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany looks like she finds it easy being green as the title superheroine of She-Hulk. It’s a little harder to see what angle will be taken with Oscar Isaac as Moon Knight. A deadly war of the gods with Egypt as a backdrop feels and looks like Isaac in X-Men: Apocalypse. And Iman Vellani stars in Ms. Marvel, which looks a lot like Marvel’s version of DC Comics’ Stargirl. New announcements include series Echo starring Alaqua Cox, Ironheart starring Dominique Thorne, Agatha: House of Harkness starring Kathryn Hahn, and Secret Invasion starring Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn.

Take a look at another great Hawkeye trailer, and our first glimpses (barely) at She-Hulk, Moon Knight, and Ms. Marvel below.

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SDCC @Home 2021–Superhero actors take over Denis Villeneuve’s latest trailer for Dune

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July 23, 2021

I don’t like sand. It’s all coarse and rough and irritating. And it gets everywhere.

We have yet to see anyone get a live-action Dune to be exciting yet, and a new San Diego Comic-Con 2021 trailer for the new Denis Villeneuve movie doesn’t give us much hope it will happen anytime soon. One of the reasons Star Wars was so successful was that George Lucas cast relative unknowns in his leading roles, and the new trailer for Dune reveals why that was a good thing. It’s not Frank Herbert’s characters jumping off the screen but familiar faces that stand out, like Aquaman Jason Momoa and his trademark comedy one-liners, Galaxy Guardian Dave Bautista, Star Warrior Apocalyptic Oscar Isaac, Spider-friend Zendaya, and Thanos himself Josh Brolin. (Were there only superhero movies to cast from?) The images in this week’s trailer for Dune, the latest adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sand… er… spice planet world, could easily be spliced from the wide-angle, sparse landscapes of Villeneuve’s recent Blade Runner 2049. He also is conjuring bits of cinema’s sandy sci-fi heritage, like George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, and you may even recognize shots straight out of the Star Wars J.J. Abrams movies (and the prequels), Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, The Chronicles of Riddick, and John Carter of Mars. You’ll see a lot going on in this trailer, which inexplicably adapts only the first part of Herbert’s novel. But is there anything new to get audiences back in the theater?

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Preview–First behind-the-scenes chronicle of the entire third trilogy arrives in Star Wars: Age of Resistance

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February 25, 2021

You may have thought Age of Resistance was only the subtitle of The Dark Crystal television series, but no. It’s a new identifier for the third Star Wars trilogy, and those films are part of a new behind-the-scenes book arriving in two weeks. Star Wars: Age of Resistance–The Official Collector’s Edition, available in hardcover and trade paperback editions, the book for the first time chronicles all three films in the final Star Wars trilogy: The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker. Beginning with a 17-page timeline of the entire nine-film Star Wars Skywalker saga, the book showcases photographs and behind the scenes concept artwork, schematics, costume designs, and close-up images of props. Executive producer and director J.J. Abrams, key production personnel, art and effects department creators, and stars Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, and Joonas Suotamo–and more–dig into their characters, discussing key scenes, and the importance of each film to the entire Skywalker family story.

Here’s a first look inside the book, plus three variant edition covers, courtesy of publisher Titan:

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