Charles Bramesco

L. Frank Baum‘s fantasy novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has proven a malleable property over the years. Of course everybody knows and loves Victor Fleming’s 1939 film adaptation, then came the urban-set musical revision The Wiz, the villain’s-eye-view retelling Wicked, Sam Raimi’s limp-noodle Oz the Great and Powerful, NBC’s crazytown new gritty-reboot series Emerald City, not to mention the dozens of films that have paid homage to the timeless scenes of Fleming’s film. (The bit in O Brother, Where Art Thou? when our heroes sneak into a KKK meeting like it’s a Winkie stronghold is a particular standout.) And today brings the news that the merry old land of Oz will get yet another new spin, and this time, there will be blood.

After months of rumormongering and speculating and debating over whether Lin-Manuel Miranda has what it takes to make the jump to the big screen from Broadway, sequel Mary Poppins Returns has finally begun shooting. Disney sent out an official press release yesterday announcing that the production was officially underway at Shepperton Studios in Burbank, California, with a project release date of Christmas Day in 2018. (Nothing gets people in the mood for a movie-musical quite like the holidays, it would seem, as director Rob Marshall’s last film Into the Woods found a release date in late December as well.) And along with the news that the gears are now turning, the press release provided a full cast list and more comprehensive description of the plot as well.

Look, you can’t blame a studio for taking notice when something is working and wanting to replicate their own success. Sequels wouldn’t get greenlit unless someone, somewhere, wanted them. It makes perfect fiscal sense for upstart animation studio Illumination to follow up on their blockbusters Minions, The Secret Life of Pets, and Sing. But, god, did they have to announce them all at once like that?

Like a group of silent, monolithic, clamshell-shaped intergalactic vessels, Arrival will make an unexpected appearance later this week. Denis Villeneuve’s high-concept sci-fi picture has had a cracking week already, scoring a whopping eight Oscar nominations during yesterday’s announcement, including key nods for Best Picture and Best Director. A little Oscar love can be a huge windfall for a film, drawing new viewers to cineplexes and upping box-office totals, but the trouble is that in most markets, Arrival has already left the rotation. So in an effort to capitalize on the recent bump in the film’s public profile, Paramount will send the film back from whence it came, returning to nationwide theaters for a limited run on Friday, January 27.

The 1988 caper comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a cracking good time, pairing Steve Martin and Michael Caine as a pair of no-good con men fleecing rich old ladies on the shores of the French Riviera. The mismatched duo — Caine’s the image of suave refinement, Martin’s an inveterate ham — team for one big score, but a mysterious rival con artist known as “The Jackal” complicates matters. Also a good time: the Broadway musical based on the film, the 1964 Marlon Brando picture Bedtime Story that inspired Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and now we can add to that list Nasty Women.

Forcing audiences to watch a movie in which a dog lives, finds true happiness, and then dies over and over again would’ve been an act of sadism all on its own. But the crew of the upcoming family film A Dog’s Purpose have recently been outed as sadists of another, more stomach-churning sort. TMZ posted a shocking video from a second-unit shoot for the film in which an animal handler forces a reluctant German Shepard into rushing waters, the dog begins drowning, and handlers rush to retrieve the animal amid cries of “cut it! cut it!” PETA has already called for a boycott of the film, with the most shame heaped upon the industry supplier Birds & Animals Unlimited, and the rest of the fallout has been swift.

Like many American moviegoers, I caught the new film Hidden Figures over the weekend. And throughout the true-to-life account of three pioneering women of color that broke boundaries at NASA, one thought kept reoccurring to me (well, two, if you count my realization that I am deeply in love with Janelle Monae): that much like the Wu-Tang, Hidden Figures is for the children. The story’s prevailing message that gender or skin color shouldn’t hinder anyone from achieving excellence is precisely what the youth in this country need, arguably now more than ever. The one problem, of course, is the astronomical price of a movie ticket — not everybody wants to or is able to shell out $15 for a day at the movies.

More streaming services than you can shake a virtual stick at have cropped up over the past year, which makes it all the more aggravating when that one movie you want to watch is nowhere to be found. You shell out every month for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Shudder, Filmstruck and a dozen more, and yet once that craving to rewatch The Lion King hits, you’re plum out of luck. What’s the point of having countless hours of programming at your fingertips for your immediate enjoyment if that doesn’t include The Little Mermaid?

Even for a case in which a 12-year-old girl gets stabbed nearly 20 times, it was particularly heinous: young Payton Leutner of Waukesha, Wisconsin was recovered bleeding out in the woods near a slumber party she had been attending in 2014. Her attackers were two of her good friends, fellow middle schoolers. What could have possessed a couple of innocent kids to suddenly turn psychopath without warning and leave their pal for dead in the middle of the night?

Late last night, a little after the midnight hour, Hell froze over. Reports of pigs and other assorted swine growing wings and taking flight started pouring in from all over the country. Dogs and cats were living together — it was mass hysteria, all because the Chicago Cubs had finally won the World Series after a 108-year drought.