Tag: bbc

March 22, 2019

‘Stranger Things’ Drops Trailer for Season 3

Hold your breath and grab your nearest box of eggos. Netflix has dropped the trailer for Season 3 of Stranger Things (finally!) and this season looks even more exciting than the second. Featuring the return of all the actors from the previous season, including Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matazarro, Caleb MacLaughlin, Charlie Heaton, Sadie Sink, and Dacre Montgomery. A new addition to the cast is actress Maya Hawke, who made her screen debut in the BBC 2017 adaptation of Little Women. She will be playing a new character who works at the town’s mall, which looks to be a centerpiece for the season.

Image Via IGn

Highlights from the trailer include the characters dealing with something more horrible than any demogorgon: puberty! Yes, it seems this season will be about growing from kids into teenagers in this season and dealing with the pressures of growing into adulthood. The kids, from Eleven to Mike to Max, all looking to be handling these confusions with appropriate teenage angst and it looks to add even more drama to the circle of friends. Of course, not all threats are grounded in reality, and besides the themes of maturity, the monsters are coming back in full force as well. Glimpses of a terrifying new beast are seen near the end of the trailer, a grisly thing pulsating with tentacles and teeth. Not to mention, the whole thing is set to the chaos of July 4th, with images of fireworks and celebrations littered throughout the trailer.

We look forward to seeing the continued adventures of the Stranger Things crew this summer. The new season drops on July 4th and should prove for a binge-worthy time.

Featured Image Via IGN

March 13, 2019

Britney Spears Developing Feminist Fairytale Musical!

Britney’s coming to Broadway! In this article for the BBC Britney Spears revealed she will be developing a new musical featuring a feminist spin on old fairytales. The title of the play will be A One More Time, centering on a book club attended by various fairy tale princesses. Their lives are turned upside down when a rogue fairy godmother brings them a copy of The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan and makes them question their decidedly un-feminist roles.

Photo by Matt Baron/BEI/REX/Shutterstock (4705528u)

The musical will be set to numerous pieces of music from Britney Spears, including Baby One More Time, Toxic, and Oops I Did It Again. The piece is described as a ‘feminist jukebox musical’ and Spears said she’s very excited to bring it to the stage. The show will make its debut in Chicago later this year, before moving to New York in 2020.

Featured Image Via BBC

February 25, 2019

New Trailer for BBC’s ‘His Dark Materials’ Drops, and I’m Excited

Philip Pullman’s astounding His Dark Materials trilogy suffered a serious blow when, in 2007, it was the victim of what was one of the worst book-to-film adaptations in history, in my opinion. I have previously written about my (very strong) feelings regarding a number of disastrous Hollywood adaptations of children’s books, but I truly feel that Chris Weitz’s The Golden Compass wins the Oscar for Worst Adaptation, Really Terrible, or as I like to call it when awarding the recipients in my head: W.A.R.T. Because I feel that I expressed my needlessly intense feelings adequately the last time I wrote about this, here is a quote from my original article on children’s adaptations that have personally offended me:

Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is arguably one of the most intricate, marvelous, and thought-provoking series in the history of fiction. It deals with vast concepts using incredible characters, and is set against the backdrop of a meticulously constructed world. The film, however, is more along the lines of ‘haha look at this talking polar bear.’ A hideously miscast monstrosity, The Golden Compass dumbed down and abbreviated this text almost beyond recognition, no doubt deterring a great number of potential readers from the books. I will never forgive anyone who was involved in its making and will be angry about it forever.

Frankly, I don’t care if you think I’m being dramatic; my rage at Weitz’s film will never be soothed. However, when it was announced that the BBC would be taking a whack at adapting the trilogy, I was a little more hopeful. A television series gives a story space to breathe, it gives concepts room to be explored, which is exactly what a plot as complex as Pullman’s requires if it is to stand any chance at translating well to screen.

A teaser trailer for the upcoming series, (starring Lin Manuel Miranda, James McAvoy, Dafne Keen and Ruth Wilson) has just been released, and I must say, it looks promising. While the 2007 version relied heavily on CGI, the novelty of a talking bear, (who is a very serious character, actually) and the dumbing down of the plot in an attempt to fit it into two hours, this version seems less preoccupied with rendering the text digestible, and more devoted to the unsettling, genuinely frightening, and intriguing energy of the book. In addition to this, Dafne Keen seems well-equipped to carry off the role of Lyra, having won Best Female Newcomer at this year’s Empire Awards for her role as Laura opposite Hugh Jackman in Logan. Keen and Jackman also won Best Duo at the MTV Movie & TV Awards and over the last two years, she has accumulated eight additional nominations for her roles in Logan and The Refugees. So in short, despite my unnecessarily strong feelings about the first adaptation, I am more than willing to be optimistic about BBC’s take on it.

Check out the trailer below and see if you can obsess as hard as I can!

Featured Image Via IGN.com

January 3, 2019

BBC Launches Unforgettable Les Miserables Adaptation

Everyone knows Les Miserables, even those of us who think the length is miserablé. It’s pretty likely you’ve seen both the musical or the movie, but neither is the original. It’s far less likely that you’ve read Victor Hugo‘s original Les Miserables, even though it’s packed with hilarious capers, deep friendships, and horrifying deaths. Fans call the novel ‘The Brick’ for a reason—at 1,900 pages, it’s one of the longest novels in history. Given that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is 607 pages and needed two movies to cover all the important parts, it’s a little surprising that the Les Miserables movie directors thought that they could tell the story in under three hours. After watching it, some fans thought they would never get the retelling they deserve.

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Devotees of ‘The Brick‘ have one common complaint when it comes to the recent movie and musical: where did 80% of the story go? The novel depicts much deeper relationships between characters… and their relationships to historical events. Those who have read and love ‘The Brick’ also have complaints about the story itself, including and mostly limited to why does Victor Hugo spend hundreds of pages describing the sewers of Paris? Rife with French history and cultural context, the novel occasionally has more in common with a textbook than its honestly monstrous size. So here’s the compromise—a TV show that you won’t die before finishing. (No guarantees that the characters won’t die before the show is over.)

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The series, which has just begun airing on the BBC, will run for six weeks. Jean Valjean actor Dominic West believes that the TV production will remind viewers more of the source material. For those who believe the show will be a rehash of the same plot, West promises that viewers “should expect grand ambition from the series, which avoids the songs of the musical theatre production and 2012 film.” The star-studded cast also features The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones actress Lily Collins and Selma actor David Oyelowo. You’ll want to barricade yourself in your room to finish this one right away!

Featured Image Via Lesmis.com

July 16, 2018

New ‘Les Miserables’ Mini-Series Will Be Different From Past Adaptations

It looks like Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables has gone from classic novel to beloved musical to Academy Award-winning movie and is now becoming a TV mini-series. The six-part adaption will be a collaboration between BBC One and Masterpiece, and, just like the movie adaption, the cast is star-studded yet again. Dominic West will play Jean Valjean, David Oyelowo will portray Javert, while Lily Collins will take on the role of Fantine, and Adeel Akhtar will play Monsieur Thenardier nad. Madame Thenardier will be played by Olivia Colman.

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The mini-series will actually be a different take on the story with writer Andrew Davies, adapting storylines from the original novel rather than the musical.

Photos from Deadline highlight the show’s main characters: West’s Jean Valjean, Oyelowo’s Javert and Collin’s Fantine.

^{Image Via Deadline}

According to Deadline, the story will focus on the many layers of Valjean and Javert’s cat-and-mouse relationship set against the backdrop of civil in post-Napoleonic France. The series started filming this past February, with Tom Shankland directing.

Other well-known cast members include Ellie Bember (Nocturnal Animals) playing Cosette, Erin Kellyman (Raised By Wolves) as Eponine and Josh O’Connor (God’s Own Country) as Marius.

Executive producers will be Davies and Bethan Jones for BBC Studios, Mona Qureshi for BBC One and Rebecca Eaton for Masterpiece. West and Oyelowo have also taken executive producer credits.

The Weinstein Company was originally associated with the project then their involvement was scrubbed back in October after the slew of allegations against Harvey Weinstein.

The mini-series will air later this year on BBC One and Masterpiece.

Featured Image Via Variety