Days before tickets go on sale for the limited theatrical run of Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon, Netflix decided to close out its Geeked Week 2023 festivities by dropping the first full trailer for the controversial director’s latest spectacle-filled project. It’s an epic and explosive first look at Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire, a space adventure in which a young woman from the outskirts of the galaxy leads a band of rebels in a fight against a tyrant.

To anyone hung up on the plot’s resemblance to a little franchise by the name of Star Wars, my response is: The overlords at LucasFilm would actually do well to check this one out. With the exception of Andor on Disney+, it’s been years since I’ve cared about anything or anyone from the galaxy far, far away, a result of Star Wars falling into the same trap as Marvel. Hidebound, increasingly averse to creative risk-taking, paint-by-numbers plots, and visuals that stopped impressing me a long time ago. Say what you will about Snyder, but his movies tend to be wild, escapist, and unapologetically fun.

Sofia Boutella as Kora in Rebel Moon. Image source: Clay Enos/Netflix

Netflix is giving Rebel Moon a one-week run in select theaters starting Dec. 15, ahead of its Dec. 22 debut on the streamer, and I don’t blame them. Snyder is clearly going for a supersized movie experience here — in more ways than one, actually. His script, for example, was long enough that it required splitting Rebel Moon into two parts, with the second (Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver) coming in April 2024. And as if that wasn’t enough, both parts of the movie will also come with longer director’s cuts.

“When a peaceful settlement on a moon in the furthest reaches of the universe finds itself threatened by the armies of the tyrannical Regent Balisarius,” the official Netflix summary explains, “Kora (Sofia Boutella), a mysterious stranger living among the villagers, becomes their best hope for survival. Tasked with finding trained fighters who will unite with her in making an impossible stand against the Motherworld, Kora assembles a small band of warriors — outsiders, insurgents, peasants, and orphans of war from different worlds who share a common need for redemption and revenge.

“As the shadow of an entire Realm bears down on the unlikeliest of moons, a new army of heroes is formed.”

Checked the new Rebel Moon trailer below:

The post Zack Snyder’s first full Rebel Moon trailer teases an epic, action-packed revenge saga appeared first on BGR.

On Friday, Netflix took to YouTube again for another Geeked Week 2023 showcase. Similar to the Thursday Showcase, Netflix premiered a boatload of new trailers, teasers, and clips from its upcoming TV shows and movies, including 3 Body Problem, The Brothers Sun, Yu Yu Hakusho, and The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep. If you didn’t tune in for the live stream on Friday afternoon, don’t worry — we’ve rounded up all of the trailers for you below.

3 Body Problem

Curious about what Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have been up to since their HBO show ended? Well, they’ve been working on a new adaptation for Netflix. 3 Body Problem is an original series based on the Chinese science fiction series written by Liu Cixin. The books follow an alternate history in which Earth contacts an alien civilization from a nearby system. And wouldn’t you know it — the fate of humanity is at stake.

The Brothers Sun

“When the head of a powerful Taiwanese triad is shot by a mysterious assassin, his eldest son, legendary killer Charles “Chairleg” Sun (Justin Chien) heads to Los Angeles to protect his mother, Eileen (Michelle Yeoh), and his naive younger brother, Bruce (Sam Song Li) — who’s been completely sheltered from the truth of his family until now,” says Netflix.

Obliterated

What if The Hangover was also an action thriller? Enter, Obliterated. This new series from the creators of Cobra Kai is about an elite special forces team that got so drunk they accidentally defused a fake bomb, so now they have to find the real one.

Leave the World Behind

Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, Myha’la, and Kevin Bacon come together for an apocalyptic thriller from Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail. Oh, and if that didn’t pique your interest, Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground is producing.

Code 8 Part II

To be entirely honest, I didn’t know there was a Code 8 Part I, but fans of brothers Robbie Amell (Upload) and Stephen Amell (Arrow) will be thrilled to know that both star in this sequel set in a world where “4% of the population are born with abnormal powers.”

Masters of the Universe: Revolution

“It’s technology versus magic when He-Man and the heroic warriors face the forces of Skeletor and something more in MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: REVOLUTION – the new epic chapter in the battle for Castle Grayskull!” Netflix teases. This is a direct sequel to the 1983–1985 series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

Onmyoji

For the first time, the Onmyoji Heian-period supernatural mystery novels by Baku Yumemakura are being adapted into an anime series, and this is the first clip.

The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep

Fans were devastated when they learned that Henry Cavill would no longer play Geralt of Rivia after The Witcher season 3. Netflix is doing its best to make it up to them by casting Doug Cockle as Geralt in the upcoming animated movie, The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep. You’ll recognize Cockle’s voice from The Witcher 3 video game, in which he voiced Geralt.

Yu Yu Hakusho

Yu Yu Hakusho is the latest live-action anime adaptation from Netflix. In case you haven’t seen the anime, the story is about a teenager named Yusuke who dies trying to save a young boy from being hit by a car. In the afterlife, he is given the opportunity to be revived, but in return, he has to become an Underworld Detective and battle demons.

Blood of Zeus season 2

Here’s what happens in this clip from Blood of Zeus season 2: “Heron reflects on the war for Olympus and his battle with Seraphim, and channels his new demigod powers.”

The post Netflix drops trailers for 3 Body Problem, Yu Yu Hakusho, and more appeared first on BGR.

Shortly after the 2023 actors’ strike came to an end, as SAG-AFTRA and the studios reached a new three-year deal, Disney shared new release dates for four upcoming Marvel movies. These delays are sure to frustrate fans of the franchise, but given the sad state of the MCU, this might be the break that both the viewers and Marvel need.

As for the new release dates, Deadpool 3 is now set for July 26, 2024; Captain America: Brave New World hits theaters on February 14, 2025; Thunderbolts lands on July 25, 2025; and Blade moves to November 7, 2025. That’s right — we’re only getting one Marvel movie in 2024, and it won’t arrive until the second half of the year.

I think this should be a net positive for everyone involved. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a bloated mess, and as I have pointed out on half a dozen occasions, the four lowest-rated MCU projects to date have all been released in the last three years (and The Marvels currently has a worse rating than Thor: Love and Thunder on Rotten Tomatoes).

As a self-proclaimed fan of the MCU, I have felt obligated to keep up with every new show and movie. More often than not, I’ve been let down by Marvel’s latest releases, from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to Secret Invasion. I don’t have comic book fatigue — I’m playing and loving Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 on PS5 right now! — but I am struggling to get excited about the MCU. I know I’m not alone in that, and I have a feeling that the next 12 months are going to shape the future of Marvel Studios and the MCU.

On Friday, The Marvels began playing in theaters. The initial reaction has been relatively tepid, both from critics and box office projections. However it ends up faring, there’s a decent chance that it will be the least financially successful Marvel movie in years.

After that, Marvel has three Disney+ shows on the docket: What If…? season 2 in December 2023, Echo on January 10, 2024, and X-Men ’97 in early 2024. These shows might not appear to have much in common at first glance, but they do have a key similarity: They aren’t beholden to the ongoing story of the MCU’s Multiverse Saga.

In fact, Echo will be the first project under Marvel’s Spotlight banner, which the studio describes as “a platform to bring more grounded, character-driven stories to the screen, and in the case of Echo, focusing on street-level stakes over larger MCU continuity.” In other words, you don’t have to watch 30+ movies to understand what’s going on in Echo.

Meanwhile, What If…? does explore alternate realities that are part of the MCU multiverse, but these are mostly standalone stories. And X-Men ’97 is a direct sequel to X-Men: The Animated Series from the ’90s. That’s three consecutive Marvel releases that have little or nothing to do with the multiverse, incursions, or the end of reality.

After that comes Deadpool 3, which, as noted above, will be the only Marvel Studios theatrical release of 2024. The last time Marvel released one movie in an entire calendar year was 2012. You probably remember it, because that was The Avengers.

Putting that much pressure on Deadpool 3 isn’t fair to director Shawn Levy or producer and star Ryan Reynolds, but the movie needs to be a smash hit. Marvel has one chance to get us back on board as we round the back half of the Multiverse Saga. If they can’t do it with a sequel to two of the most successful R-rated movies of all time, it might never happen.

The post Marvel’s movie delays give us the break we need from the MCU appeared first on BGR.

The concept of longevity, of physical things that are built to endure, can sometimes feel like an anachronism in a consumer culture with far more coders per capita than old-school artisans. The men and women who hunch over workbenches and who make or repair non-digital objects with their hands — like the craftsmen of the Los Angeles Unified School District, depicted as unsung heroes in the poignant new documentary short The Last Repair Shop — can even feel a little like displaced refugees of a bygone era.

But the work that keeps the dwindling tribe of technicians busy in that Los Angeles repair shop, patching up the musical instruments of public schoolchildren, nevertheless feels surprisingly urgent and consequential in this documentary from directors Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers. One by one, The Last Repair Shop introduces us to students who explain, with beatific smiles on their faces, how instruments like the violin, the saxophone, and the piano have made a profound impression on their lives. Maybe even saved them.

“I love the violin,” one proud young girl declares, holding her instrument triumphantly. “If I didn’t have my violin from school, I’d probably … I don’t even know what I’d do. Don’t even jinx me with that!”

Another young girl shows off her saxophone, polished to a perfect shine. “My school gave me a saxophone, a case, everything I need.

“Whenever I’m feeling tense or angry,” she continues, before playing a short, hauntingly beautiful melody, “the saxophone calms me down. But the G-sharp key always gets stuck.”

The documentary, which is streaming for free on The Los Angeles Times’ YouTube channel as well as at latimes.com, then draws a straight line from those instruments and the children who play them back to the school district’s repair shop — to the men and women who polish the brass, fix the keys, re-string the bows, and search for the cracks in broken instruments. Some of them have spent years mending cracks in their own broken lives, like the repair shop supervisor who still chokes up over the murder of his father and the young immigrant mother who got this job when she was penniless.

“When wood breaks, it breaks in unique ways,” muses one repair shop technician, who as he talks weaves in the story of his coming out as a young man.

“It’s really hard being a kid. Some of them come from a place of love and support, and others come from huge dysfunction. The emotional broken things, and the mental broken things, are more difficult. You can’t glue that back together.”

I’ve already watched this documentary short twice and can’t wait to dive back into it a third time. It’s a beautiful tour de force of storytelling. I was particularly drawn to the repairman with a gravelly voice and a twinkle in his eye named Duane; he fell in love with music as a young man, begged his mother to front him $20 to buy a violin he found at a swap meet, and would not only go on to master the instrument but perform all over the world. It’s also the reason he met his wife, who was in the audience one day listening to him play.

So when he explains to the camera that fixing this one instrument could change a child’s entire life, you believe him. “You could feel like you’re fixing the instrument of a future Grammy winner, if you wanna kinda dream a little bit,” he adds, with a broad smile.

Los Angeles, we learn through the documentary, is the last US city to provide freely repaired music instruments to schoolchildren. It continues to do so, a closing voiceover narration tells us, because the repair shop does a job that’s about more than just fixing things. There’s something much more important and long-lasting going on here. “I think a lot of people see a broken thing, and they just think it’s broken,” one of the craftspeople muses.

“It could be anything. Maybe it’s public schools. Or maybe it’s the United States. Maybe it’s just a $20 fiddle found at a swap meet. But when we see a broken thing, we think, oh — with a little something here, and a little something there, we can fix the part that’s broken and make things whole again.”

The post The Last Repair Shop gets my vote as the best documentary of 2023 appeared first on BGR.

It looks like Hollywood is wasting no time after the release of the Walter Isaacson biography on Elon Musk. As reported by Puck, a biopic film about the richest man in the world is already being optioned, and some interesting people are potentially attached to the project.

According to the report, the film would be based on the biography written by Isaacson. This isn’t surprising, especially since his biography on Steve Jobs was also used when screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director Danny Boyle made the 2015 Steve Jobs film. That film earned Michael Fassbender an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of the late Apple founder.

A24 is apparently the studio that may produce the film and Darren Aronofsky is reportedly attached to direct. This also makes a heck of a lot of sense since both the studio and director worked together recently on The Whale, the 2022 drama that starred Brendan Fraser. His performance in the film earned him an Academy Award for Best Actor.

Elon Musk attends Heidi Klum’s 2022 Halloween Party at Sake No Hana at Moxy LES on October 31, 2022, in New York City. Image source: Taylor Hill/Getty Images

Other details of the film are still unknown, such as who may star as Musk or when the film may be released. The project is in the very early stages, so we’ll likely need to wait a bit before we start to hear more information. The project, of course, could also get scrapped, but that seems less likely — especially as Hollywood has been leaning more into biopics lately. Just last year, Baz Luhrmann released the anticipated Elvis biographical drama starring Austin Butler and Tom Hanks.

While the film could obviously be very interesting, this seems like an odd time to do it. Musk is obviously still in the middle of his career, so I’m curious why Hollywood would choose to make this film now when we are still unsure where the billionaire and his companies (Tesla, SpaceX, and X) will end up in the long run.

Of course, Musk is obviously a controversial and well-known character on the world stage right now, so perhaps that is all Hollywood needs to push the project forward.

The post An Elon Musk biopic is in the works appeared first on BGR.

Like magic, the SAG-AFTRA strike concluded just in time for The Marvels premiere. Of course, there’s no connection between the strike and Marvel’s final MCU movie of the year.

However, the former lets Marvel restart work on Deadpool 3 and the future movies and TV shows that will lead to the Avengers adventures of the Multiverse Saga. As for The Marvels, it advances the arcs of three of the Earth’s mightiest heroes while also delivering a few exciting developments in the post-credits scenes for the overarching story.

Specifically, The Marvels‘ post-credits scenes help link the movie to two important developments we’re about to witness as we head to Avengers: Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars. I’ll explain both of them, but know that big spoilers follow below. And this time around, I’ll address confirmed leaks, as The Marvels has started playing in early previews on Wednesday night in some regions.

Like many of the previous Phase 4 and 5 movies, The Marvels plot and credits scenes leaked well before the film’s premiere. The promo trailers that Marvel released only helped confirm those leaks.

Marvel did alter one of The Marvels credits scenes recently. But even those changes leaked. Reports teased two mind-blowing cameos for the scene, and it looks like the leaks are accurate. I will not provide links to leaked footage, but those of you who know their way on social media will have no problem finding them.

The Young Avengers

A plot leak said that The Marvels will tease the formation of the Young Avengers. After all, various rumors said in the past that Marvel was working on a Young Avengers movie or TV show. I’ve often explained how the superpowered teenagers have been teased or introduced via the various Phase 4 and 5 projects that Marvel finished so far.

Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) is one of the most prominent young superheroes in the MCU. She’s also one of the three protagonists in The Marvels; Ms. Marvel might be instrumental in assembling the first Young Avengers teams.

The Marvels ends with her showing up at the home of Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), much like Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) would appear in the Infinity Saga credits tags.

Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) in The Marvels trailer 2. Image source: Marvel Studios

Ms. Marvel talks to Hawkeye’s replacement and asks Kate if she knows Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) has a daughter. She’s referring to Cassie (Kathryn Newton), whom we last saw in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

It sure looks like Ms. Marvel has learned a thing or two from Fury. Or that, at least, she accessed his files to learn more about young superheroes.

This The Marvels credits scene practically sets up the Young Avengers team. But we have no idea when we’ll see them in action.

The X-Men reappear in the MCU

Kamala might be the first mutant of the MCU, but there’s no label for such individuals in this reality. However, we did see X-Men in a previous Marvel movie. That’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, of course, where Professor X (Patrick Stewart) showed up and promptly died.

Also, we knew from the moment Deadpool 3 was announced that Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) would join Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) in this one. These are two other powerful X-Men members from the Fox universe joining the MCU.

With that in mind, The Marvels practically confirms that the X-Men are coming to the MCU in Phases 5 and 6. And it’s all happening before Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars.

The Marvels has two amazing cameos in the credits scene that saw last-minute changes. Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) is stranded in an alternate reality after preventing an incursion. That’s when two realities collide, potentially leading to the destruction of both timelines.

Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) in The Marvels trailer 2 – Is that an incursion? Image source: Marvel Studios

To save the main MCU reality, she had to stay behind in the other one. Monica wakes up in a medical facility that happens to be part of the X-Men mansion. She’s not shocked to see that, as she has no idea what the X-Men are.

But she’s certainly shocked to see the two people taking care of her. One of her is a version of Captain Marvel, Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch). This Maria never had a kid, so she can’t recognize the grown-up Monica.

More puzzlingly, there’s a beast of a creature delivering the bad news to Monica. That’s actually Kelsey Grammer’s Beast from Fox’s X-Men movies. Among other things, he tells them that he has to report back to Charles. That means Professor X of this reality hasn’t just died at the hands of Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen). Either that, or we’re looking at a scene that predates the events in Multiverse of Madness.

Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) looking up at someone in The Marvels promo clip. Image source: YouTube

I will point out that Maria has a different suit from the one we saw in Doctor Strange 2. As a reminder, that Captain Marvel might have died, just like Charles, as they were fighting Wanda.

As exciting as the Young Avengers teaser might be, I think The Marvels teasing the old X-Men’s arrival in the MCU is the most interesting credits scene of the sequel. With that in mind, Deadpool 3 can’t come soon enough. Hopefully, Marvel can restart shooting soon now that both strikes are over.

The post How The Marvels post-credits scenes set up the future of the Avengers appeared first on BGR.

It feels like, all of a sudden, Hollywood can’t stop talking about Apple TV+. Some of the biggest and buzziest movies of the year, backed by the iPhone maker’s now four-year-old streaming service, include Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and Ridley Scott’s Napoleon — the latter of which arrives in theaters later this month ahead of its release on Apple TV+. As a superfan of the service, it’s certainly exciting to see everyone coming around to its potential, notwithstanding the cynical take that Apple is just throwing gobs of money at the biggest names it can find and hoping something sticks.

One of the many things I like that Apple does more of, compared to its bigger streaming rivals, is its offering of generally shorter TV seasons. They quite often run to no more than, say, 8 episodes or so. Netflix also does that, to a degree, but it seems to be more of the norm at Apple TV+. The thing is, though, I have less and less time to invest in new TV series these days and find myself increasingly drawn to the movie side of the Apple TV+ content library.

And, thankfully, the hit-to-miss ratio there remains satisfyingly high — at least for this Apple TV+ subscriber.

Eight can’t-miss Apple TV+ movies available right now

For anyone out there who’s a new subscriber to the service — or, maybe you’ve paid for it but haven’t dipped into the app all that much — here are some suggestions for what to watch. Specifically, these are eight of the best movies available on Apple TV+ that, for a variety of reasons, I’d classify as “can’t-miss.”

Flora and Son

Eve Hewson in “Flora and Son” on Apple TV+. Image source: Apple

We’ll start with one of the newest Apple TV+ movie releases. In this music-filled delight from writer-director John Carney, Eve Hewson plays a single mom who’s struggling with how to handle her rebellious teenage son. The police encourage him to pick up a hobby, so Flora takes that ball and runs with it — bestowing upon him a beat-up acoustic guitar. Mother and son, over time, eventually learn to bond over the power of music.

The Pigeon Tunnel

British best-selling author John le Carre, photographed during an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur at a hotel in Hamburg, Germany, 16 October 2017. Image source: Christian Charisius/dpa (Photo by Christian Charisius/picture alliance via Getty Images

Another of the most recent Apple TV+ movie releases is this documentary from director Errol Morris, featuring the last-ever interview with the father of the modern spy novel himself — John le Carre, aka David Cornwell. I’m going to quote myself here, from my review of Morris’ The Pigeon Tunnel: “In the documentary, le Carre comes across as an avatar of the Cold War-era spy caught in a cycle of delusion and futility, an impression that stands in contrast to the Hollywood glamor of 007.

“Betrayal is a recurring theme in his novels, as is reinvention — and le Carre, the alter ego of a son whose mother abandoned him at five and whose charlatan father was a ‘confidence trickster’ he never respected, spent a lifetime in the thrall of both ideals. A first-rate fabulist who equates history with chaos, his cat-and-mouse stories about spy games probe deeper truths about a profession that le Carre believed to be devoid of answers in ‘the inmost room.'”

CODA

Emilia Jones in the Apple TV+ movie “Coda.” Image source: Apple

Apple’s 2021 movie CODA, starring Emilia Jones as the only member of an all-deaf family who also has a talent for singing, was the first film from a major streamer to win a Best Picture Oscar (much to the chagrin of Netflix, which has been trying to win the award for years). So, I kind of have to include CODA on this list of must-watch Apple TV+ movies, right?

This one is a no-brainer if you’re looking for feel-good and family-friendly content. The title, by the way, has multiple levels of meaning, being both a reference to the “coda” section of a piece of music as well as an acronym that stands for Child of Deaf Adults. Jones plays 17-year-old Ruby, — who, instead of continuing to help her father work on his fishing boat, dreams of going to a prestigious music school and honing her talent for singing. This movie will have you laughing, crying, and cheering by the time it’s all over.

Tetris

Taron Egerton and Nikita Efremov in “Tetris” on Apple TV+. Image source: Apple

Somehow, the Tetris movie Apple released earlier this year functioned as much as a drama filled with Cold War intrigue as it did the story of how the video game Tetris was created.

Taron Egerton stars here as Henk Rogers, the entrepreneur who negotiated a dispute over the rights for the game (which was created by a Soviet software engineer). Nintendo eventually licensed the game in order to package it with the Game Boy handset, but the rights to it were so complex that at one time about a dozen different companies believed they owned them. No wonder there was a movie’s worth of drama to be found in the story of this simple game.

Causeway

Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry in “Causeway.” Image source: Apple

Director Lila Neugebauer’s Causeway, which stars Jennifer Lawrence in the kind of atmospheric drama she used to make before she got really big, offers a narrative about two lonely people who come to take solace in each other.

Lawrence plays a soldier back home in New Orleans who’s grappling with PTSD after an IED explosion in Afghanistan. “It’s a painful and slow recovery,” Apple says about the film, “as (Lynsey) relearns to walk and retrains her memory, aided by a chatty but tender caretaker (Jayne Houdyshell). But when she returns home to New Orleans she has to face memories even more aching and formative than those she had in service — a reckoning with her childhood.”

Lawrence’s character stays with her mother (Linda Emond), with whom she has a tense relationship. Meanwhile, she’s desperate to get back to work as an engineer. Her doctor (Stephen McKinley Henderson) isn’t sure she’s ready, so she takes a job cleaning pools. “When her truck breaks down,” Apple continues, “she meets James Aucoin (Brian Tyree Henry), who works at the auto repair shop and offers her a ride home. Slowly, they start to rely on each other for company and solace. James, it turns out, is also suppressing his own past trauma.”

Cha Cha Real Smooth

Vanessa Burghardt and Dakota Johnson in the Apple TV+ movie “Cha Cha Real Smooth.” Image source: Apple

Where do I even begin with this Sundance favorite from director (and star) Cooper Raiff?

For starters, this Apple TV+ gem boasts one of those soundtracks that will send you hunting down more than one song to add to your playlists. As “Domino,” Dakota Johnson gives one of the most effervescent performances of her career. And then there’s Raiff, the earnest, love-struck star of this breezy, charming film.

“Fresh out of college and without a clear life path going forward,” Apple’s summary explains, “22-year-old Andrew is stuck back at home with his family in New Jersey. But if there’s one thing that belongs on his nonexistent résumé, it’s how to get a party started, which lands him the perfect job of motivational dancing at the bar and bat mitzvahs for his younger brother’s classmates. When Andrew befriends a local mom, Domino, and her daughter, Lola, he finally discovers a future he wants — even if it might not be his own.”

Finch

Image source: Apple

These final two Apple TV+ movies both star Tom Hanks, in vastly different roles. In 2021’s Finch, for example, he plays a robotics engineer who’s slowly dying. It’s at a time when a solar flare has caused global devastation — and, because his character doesn’t have a lot of time left, he builds a robot to take care of his beloved dog named Goodyear after he’s gone. Make sure you have a box of Kleenex handy for this one.

Greyhound

Image source: Apple

Finally, this next Apple TV+ movie finds Hanks portraying a World War II-era naval officer assigned to protect a merchant ship convoy from Nazi submarines. There’s a claustrophobic intensity that pervades the entire film, thanks to the fact that the viewer essentially stays at Hanks’ side for almost the entirety of the movie, on the ship he commands. Overall, the movie features the perfect mix of action and drama, and I highly enjoyed it.

Speaking of WWII, by the way, Hanks also reteamed up with Steven Spielberg on Masters of the Air, the follow-up to HBO’s WWII miniseries The Pacific and Band of Brothers — both of which, in my opinion, are among the best things HBO has ever produced.

The post Apple TV+ movies: My picks for the best films on the iPhone maker’s streamer appeared first on BGR.

Nia DaCosta rediscovered her love of Korean dramas during the Covid pandemic, picking back up with a TV genre that she’d especially been a fan of during her teenage years. Friends told the future director of The Marvels that she needed to check out Itaewon Class — a 2020 Netflix series with a David vs. Goliath story about an ex-con and his friends who try to get a diner off the ground and make it a success in Seoul’s trendy Itaewon district. The lead actor, Park Seo-joon, ended up wowing DaCosta so much that she remembered him when her opportunity to direct The Marvels arrived.

“Seo-joon’s acting in [Itaewon Class] really impressed me,” DaCosta told South Korean film magazine Cine21. “When I was offered to direct The Marvels, I thought hard on who to choose for the role of Prince Yan. Then, suddenly, Park Seo-joon came to my mind.”

For those of us who are constantly devouring the latest K-dramas on streamers like Netflix, that’s a feeling we have no trouble understanding. Ask any fan of the genre to list their favorite actors, and I guarantee you that PSJ, as he’s sometimes affectionately referred to, will be somewhere on that list — and most likely near the very top. He’s been in everything from Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 film Parasite to the drama series Record of Youth, as well as Zen-inducing reality shows like Jinny’s Kitchen and In the Soop: Friendcation.

His most recent roles include this year’s Netflix movie Dream, in which he stars alongside Korean pop star IU as a soccer coach.

In The Marvels, his character Prince Yan has been a bit shrouded in mystery. “We very purposefully didn’t give much information [about Prince Yan],” the director said, speaking with Korea JoongAng Daily. “He is the sovereign ruler of a foreign planet, and he and [Captain Marvel] have a deep history. They both care a lot about the people that they are protecting, and that’s where they connect.”

It’s certainly easy to see why she chose him for the role.

PSJ has a combination of movie star good looks, charisma, and a boyish smile, all of which have allowed him to play everything from romantic leads to heartthrobs, friends, and much more. After watching him in The Marvels this weekend, fans can also check him out in new episodes of Jinny’s Kitchen, which are coming to Prime Video on Nov. 12. For that show, he joined a group of Korean celebrities (including Tae-hyung of BTS) in opening a Korean street food restaurant in a beautiful town in Mexico. That formula, at least for me, turned the show into one of the most feel-good and relaxing of the year.

The post The Marvels cast includes beloved K-drama star Park Seo-joon, making his Hollywood debut appeared first on BGR.

Samsung Gauss is the name the Korean giant chose for the generative AI language model that customers will use on future devices. Samsung confirmed its work on this ChatGPT rival earlier this week at the AI Forum event in Korea. Gauss will probably debut on the Galaxy S24 phones, though Samsung has yet to confirm anything. Samsung did say recently that it will launch an AI phone next year. The Galaxy S24 phones would likely be the best fit for that role.

Gauss has three components, Samsung announced. These are Gauss Language, Gauss Code, and Gauss Image. They’re all generative AI features that will match experiences available from competing products, like ChatGPT, Google Bard, and others. But then Samsung teased a specific AI feature coming to phones in the near future.

The feature is called “AI Live Translate Call” and will do what the name implies. It’ll likely debut with the Galaxy S24 phones in a few short months. However, again, Samsung is only teasing its work on generative AI right now instead of committing to anything.

If you’re a fan of Star Trek, you’re probably familiar with the idea of universal translator tech that allows humans to talk to most alien species in real-time. That’s sci-fi artificial intelligence (AI) at work in there, of course. But Samsung AI Live Translate Call sounds like the kind of tech that will get us there in the future, assuming we find some aliens to talk to.

In the meantime, AI Live Translate Call will let you make calls to people who speak a different language. The smartphone will then translate the conversation in real-time, as it happens.

Samsung says the feature will work on-device, which means the data will never hit Samsung’s servers. AI Live Translate Call will offer both audio and text translations as you speak:

For a tiny glimpse of one benefit Galaxy AI will enable, look no further than the very thing our phones were originally created to do, calling each other. AI Live Translate Call will soon give users with the latest Galaxy AI phone a personal translator whenever they need it. Because it’s integrated into the native call feature, the hassle of having to use third-party apps is gone. Audio and text translations will appear in real-time as you speak, making calling someone who speaks another language about as simple as turning on closed captions when you stream a show. Because it’s on-device Galaxy AI, you can trust that no matter the scenario, private conversations never leave your phone.

AI Live Translate Call feature will probably be available on Galaxy S24 phones. Image source: Samsung

We can already use translation apps to talk to people in other languages. But most apps involve face-to-face conversations. What Samsung proposes would let you translate what people are saying over the phone. The feature should come in handy in a variety of situations, provided it works as seamlessly as Samsung is teasing.

As you can see in the quote above, Samsung doesn’t mention the Galaxy S24 by name. Instead, it mentions “the latest Galaxy AI phone.” This implies multiple devices could get the feature, but the Galaxy S24 should be the first. You don’t announce Gauss and tease features like AI Live Translate Call a few months before the Galaxy S24 launch without equipping the upcoming flagships with these generative AI features.

The entire blog post makes a big deal about generative AI, with Samsung suggesting it’ll unveil AI features that aren’t available elsewhere:

No company can harness AI’s potential like Galaxy. Why? Because Galaxy puts the power of openness in the palm of your hand. Designed to empower everyone, everywhere, Galaxy AI is universal intelligence on your phone as you’ve never seen it before. In all the places it matters most — from barrier-free communication, to simplified productivity, to unconstrained creativity — we’re unleashing new possibilities.

Samsung also confirmed that Galaxy AI will be powered by “both on-device AI developed at Samsung and cloud-based AI enabled by our open collaborations with like-minded industry leaders.” It’s unclear what those collaborations might be.

The post Galaxy S24 will use AI to translate phone calls in real-time, and it sounds amazing appeared first on BGR.

Anxiety comes for all of us at some point in our lives, but probably not more than when we turn into dreaded teenagers. It seems that Riley is going to deal with the same struggles when anxiety moves into her head and starts causing havoc with the other emotions in Inside Out 2.

Today, Disney and Pixar released the official teaser trailer for Inside Out 2. The animated film, which will tell the story of the new range of emotions that Riley will go through as she turns into a teenager, will premiere in theaters in June 2024.

You can check out the official teaser trailer for Inside Out 2 on YouTube below:

What is Inside Out 2 about?

Inside Out 2 will introduce a new voice inside Riley’s head. In addition to Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust, Anxiety — as well as a range of other emotions — are moving into her head. Director Kelsey Mann said “Anxiety, voiced by Maya Hawke, might be new to the crew, but she’s not really the type to take a back seat. That makes a lot of sense if you think about it in terms of what goes on inside all our minds.”

Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” returns to the mind of newly minted teenager Riley just as headquarters is undergoing a sudden demolition to make room for something entirely unexpected: new Emotions! Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust, who’ve long been running a successful operation by all accounts, aren’t sure how to feel when Anxiety shows up. And it looks like she’s not alone.

Maya Hawke, who will be playing the new character of Anxiety, will be joined by Amy Poehler as Joy, Phyllis Smith as Sadness, Lewis Black as Anger, Tony Hale as Fear, and Liza Lapira as Disgust. The film is directed by Kelsey Mann and produced by Mark Nielsen.

Watching the teaser trailer for Inside Out 2 makes me want to go back and watch the first film again. It also makes me want to watch Elemental again, Pixar’s sole film from 2023. According to Disney CEO Bog Iger in the company’s most recent earnings call, that film has already made more than $500 million, so Pixar seems to be doing just fine.

Inside Out 2 will premiere in theaters in June 2024, but we don’t have an actual release date just yet. If you want to watch the film in the best quality possible when it eventually comes to Disney+, check out our list of the Best TVs and Best Soundbars.

The post Anxiety is making itself comfortable in Pixar’s Inside Out 2 teaser trailer appeared first on BGR.