Avatar: The Last Airbender

Avatar: The Last Airbender :Netflix’s Live-Action Remake Is a Major Letdown

The streamer's take on the beloved animated series centers on a young boy tasked with saving the world by mastering all four elements: earth, air, water and fire.

Several times in Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang (Gordon Cormier), the 12-year-old chosen-one hero, calls for guidance from the spirits of his predecessors. And they oblige, appearing before him in a glowing blue aura to share their experiences or offer advice. But they remind him as well that each Avatar is different — that the role evolves with the needs of the times or the personality of the individual inhabiting it, that it’s on Aang now to figure out for himself what it means for him.

It is sage counsel that Avatar itself clearly wants to take to heart. The live-action drama is positioned not just as a remake of the Nickelodeon animated saga but as a corrective to the disastrous 2010 movie adaptation, and it gamely tries to incorporate the lessons of both while forging its own darker path forward. If the effort is admirable, however, the execution is decidedly not. Rather than breathe fresh life into a familiar world, this Avatar serves only to remind that some beloved properties might be better left on ice.

Of course, by the logic of entertainment franchises, leaving well enough alone was probably never an option. So creator Albert Kim dusts off the premise that devotees of Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko’s cartoon can surely recite by heart: “Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them. But when the world needed him most, he vanished.” Where Avatar 1.0 started out as a pleasant half-hour meander, though — having goofball Aang awaken from his century of accidental hibernation to befriend Water Tribe siblings Katara and Sokka, and only gradually building to harder conversations about peace, violence and conflict — this Avatar throws us right into the deep end. The opening minutes are filled with scenes of soldiers, spies, harrowing cruelty.

The brightest elements of this universe mostly cluster around the Fire Nation, and not just because their flames are inherently more cinematic than the earthbenders’ floating rocks or the airbenders’ gusts of wind. (Whatever the discipline, few of the fight scenes are anything worth writing home about.) Aang might be the one referenced in the title, but Avatar‘s ideas and intentions are best exemplified in antagonist Zuko, a teenage prince with daddy issues that would make Kendall Roy wince with sympathy. Radiating rage and pain from every pore, actor Dallas Liu stays faithful to the character originated by Dante Basco while simultaneously embodying Zuko so fully that it seems the role has always been his. With help from more seasoned performers like Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Ken Leung and Daniel Dae Kim, Zuko’s redemption arc, rushed though it is, emerges as the only truly compelling through line of the show.

Given that the original Avatar has been hailed in many quarters as one of the best series of the past few decades, living up to its memory was always going to be a nigh-impossible bar for any reboot or adaptation to clear. But the flaws plaguing this Avatar are entirely its own, separate from the unbearable weight of fan expectations. In its turn toward the dark, it forgets to make space for light. In reaching for lofty themes, it neglects the details and basics to make them land. In its impatience to grow up, it leaves its characters no room to evolve. And in all of these failings, it delivers an Avatar that, grittier though it may be, feels far less mature than the kids’ cartoon ever did.

Avatar: The Last Airbender | Official Trailer

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MAY DECEMBER

Julianne Moore's character is inspired by real-life sex offender Mary Kay Letourneau.

Todd Haynes' new film May December stars Julianne Moore and Charles Melton as a married couple with a complicated history (to say the least), and Natalie Portman as an actress who inserts themselves into their lives while preparing to perform in a movie about the beginning of their relationship.

The detail which makes this marriage so unusual, and which drives much of the deeply unsettling dynamics throughout the film, is the fact that Moore's character Gracie met her now-husband, Joe, when she was 36 and he was 13.

After initiating a sexual relationship with Joe while he was a minor, Gracie served a prison sentence for child-rape and, following her release, lives as a registered sex offender. Complicating things even further is the fact that she and Joe now have three children: college student Honor, and high school students Charlie and Mary.

Gracie and Joe, it seems, are eager for the movie Elizabeth (Portman) is making to shift public perception of their relationship—but as Elizabeth asks more and more questions about their life together, Joe becomes less and less certain of the version of events he has always claimed, and begins to wonder if he was old enough to consent.

Is May December based on a true story?

While May December is technically a work of fiction—the character of Elizabeth, for instance, is completely invented—many of the facts surrounding Gracie and Joe's marriage are rooted in reality. Director Todd Haynes and screenwriters Sammy Burch and Alex Mechanik used the true story of Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau as the inspiration for the film.

In 1996, 34-year-old Letourneau began a sexual relationship with 12-year-old Fualaau, who had previously been a student. She was arrested in 1997, and pled guilty to two counts of second-degree rape of a child. While awaiting sentencing, she gave birth to a daughter, her first child with Fualaau.

Through a plea deal, Letourneau's original six-year sentence was lowered to six months, provided she stayed away from Fualaau. Letourneau's plea agreement was annulled by the judge, though, and she was sentenced to seven years in prison, during which time she gave birth to her second daughter with Fualaau, following their discovery together in a car.

Letourneau registered as a sex offender in the state of Washington after being released from prison in 2004. In 2005, she wed Fualaau, who was 22 years old. After a 14-year marriage, they filed for legal separation in 2019. 2020 saw Letourneau's cancer-related death.

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Mean Girls 2024

Mean Girls Musical Movie: Everything You Need to Know 

Get in, loser — the Mean Girls musical movie is near. The classic young adult comedy has had an entire generation in a chokehold from the moment it premiered in 2004. The film was later adapted into a Broadway musical, which is now also getting its own movie. Yes, folks, we kinda have another High School Musical: The Musical: The Series scenario on our hands, just a little less meta.

The screen adaption of the Tony-nominated Broadway musical, which is currently being referred to as Mean Girls, sort of like a reboot, was first confirmed to be in development back in 2020. The film is now moving full steam ahead and will arrive on the big screen sooner than you think — so here's everything you need to know before then, including the trailer, cast, release date, and more.

The first full trailer is set to Olivia Rodrigo's “Get Him Back!" and starts out with the warning: “This is not your mother's Mean Girls.” We get our first glimpse of Reneé Rapp as Queen Bee Regina George — wearing the character's now-iconic “R” initial necklace — the return of the hot pink Burn Book, Damian and Janis in all their bestie glory, Cady being awkward towards her crush Aaron Samuels, the disastrous “Jingle Bell Rock” performance at the Winter Talent Show, aaaand Regina’s unforgettable “Get in, loser.” The only thing missing, it seems, is the original music from the film. Interesting?

Paramount must have taken the feedback on social media in stride, because on November 15, the studio released the “Regina's Version” of the trailer, which includes Reneé Rapp's (iconic) sung introduction as Regina George that was leaked earlier this month. All is right with the world.

Much like the 2004 version, the new Mean Girls musical movie will follow the story of Cady Heron, a teenage student who's just arrived at a new high school in suburban Illinois after growing up in the African savanna with her two research zoologist parents. After scheming with the school's “misfits,” Cady does everything and more to fit in with The Plastics, the most popular trio at North Shore High, led by queen bee Regina George..

However, since it's adapted from the 2018 Broadway musical, you can expect a lot of the dialogue and plot development to happen through songs. All three versions of Mean Girls — film, stage, and musical movie — have been penned by Tina Fey, and this new musical movie iteration will be co-produced by Lorne Michaels and directed by Arturo Perez and Samantha Jayne.

Yes! Tina Fey, the mastermind behind everything Mean Girls as we know it, will reprise her role as Ms. Norbury, and so will comedian Tim Meadows as Principal Duval. Fey confirmed the news during an interview on Late Night with Seth Meyers in early 2023. “Teachers work forever. I want it to be like when Gilligan from Gilligan’s Island would be at a trade show and you’d be like, ‘Oh, he looks so old in his little hat.’ That’s my goal," she joked when she revealed her involvement.

While those are the only confirmed returns, plenty of actors from the original movie have publicly stated they are down for a cameo. Rachel McAdams, who played Regina George in the original film, teased that she'd be down for a cameo if Fey could figure out a way to make it work organically in a recent interview. “I don’t see a way to shoehorn us in,” she told Bustle, but “if Tina can figure it out, I’m there, for sure.” Previously, Amanda Seyfried, the OG Karen, also openly admitted she was “very open” to joining the project if the opportunity presented itself. Again, nothing is confirmed, but we definitely suggest keeping an eye out.

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ROB N ROLL

HK action comedy Rob N Roll are as good as they get

In a pairing of greats, German film-maker Wim Wenders directs Japanese actor Koji Yakusho as a dedicated toilet cleaner in Tokyo going through his cyclical rituals: rising every dawn, misting his bonsai plants, downing coffee, then heading out to Shibuya Ward’s 17 public toilets to scrub and mop.

Perfect Days sounds like the unsexiest movie ever.

But 78-year-old auteur Wenders has traversed Paris, Texas (1984) and communed with angels on Wings Of Desire (1987). He also visited Tokyo for Tokyo-Ga, his 1985 documentary on his Japanese cinema idol Yasujiro Ozu.

Gordon Lam and Richie Jen buddy up as timid wannabe robbers who cross paths with an actual bad-a** robber, played by Aaron Kwok, when they unwittingly foil his heist.

Director Albert Mak has long been an assistant of Hong Kong cinema doyen Johnnie To (Drug War, 2012; Life Without Principle, 2011).

Whether To appreciates this parody of his crime dramas featuring his stock players as losers, Rob N Roll is a blast.

Lam and Jen’s pair of dispirited middle-aged best friends are, respectively, a taxi driver with a crabby pregnant wife and a widowed social worker behind on his nursing home rent. They plan a robbery to plug their finances.

Kwok has a rocking time subverting his Heavenly King image as the pro wrestler turned buck-toothed bandit, who hires them to retrieve his bag of stolen cash after it is mislaid in Lam’s cab.

From his Yau Ma Tei neighbourhood money exchange heist – which is also the scene of a subsequent secondary hold-up – the action fans out across the territory.

Maggie Cheung Ho-yee’s ambitious lady cop and her young partner (Leung Chung-hang) are in pursuit.

Lam Suet, John Chiang and Michael Wong add to the melee as triad figures, the last losing a finger amid the shoot-outs and slip-ups.

With clockwork nimbleness, Mak locks together the dozens of moving parts and the dozens more zany characters, all excellently played.

The caper is a model of old-school efficiency. It has brio and heart in the trio’s bromance, and in portraying – under the guise of farce – the struggles of the city’s underclass.

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The Movie Emperor

‘The Movie Emperor’ : Andy Lau Plays Vain Version of Himself in Hong Kong Megastar Meta-Satire

Director Ning Hao takes aim at his local film industry, enlisting Andy Lau to confront a fast-evolving media landscape where celebrities appear to be an endangered species.

In America, doing what Andy Lau does in Hong Kong film industry satire “The Movie Emperor” would likely net him an Oscar nomination. Or at least an MTV Movie Award. Or maybe just the admiration of his peers, considering how few stars are willing to poke fun at their own image, much less entertain the question of what might happen if their fans were to turn on them tomorrow.

Reteaming with “Crazy Stone” director Ning Hao for an ultra-polished, good-sport parody of A-list vanity, Lau plays Dany Lau — not quite himself, but a megastar of roughly his own stature. The movie is loaded with inside jokes, but like French series “Call My Agent,” it should have no trouble translating around the globe. Between Lau’s international standing — bolstered by roles in everything from “Infernal Affairs” to “A Simple Life,” plus a Cantopop singing career — and the script’s deft way of contextualizing some of its best jokes.

Dany Lau is more of an amalgam of several prominent Hong Kong actors, such as Tony Leung and Stephen Chow, than it is of Andy Lau. These stars have something in common with Hollywood's hotshots: all they have worked so hard to achieve may be taken from them in an instant. In the era of social media, that potential seems more daunting than it has ever been. Dany should not be in charge of his own profile, which causes a number of readily preventable blunders.

That may sound like fodder for an easy-target sketch comedy, but Ning aims higher, shooting the film in the style of a crisp, meticulously composed Ruben Östlund movie like “The Square.” “The Movie Emperor” is cinema, designed to be screened on the biggest possible screen, as DP Wang Boxue constructs each shot the way Jacques Tati might have: from such a distance that each location starts to feel dehumanized and absurd — as when Dany attends the Hong Kong Film Awards.

At what appears to be the actual kudocast, he’s not only snubbed for best actor, but subjected to the indignity of accepting the trophy on behalf of “Jackie Chen,” who didn’t even bother to show up. In Hong Kong, as in Hollywood, actors are celebrated for “serious” roles, and Dany’s mistake (he thinks) is that he hasn’t played a peasant in a self-important art-house movie. “In Chinese films, it’s all about cotton padded jackets,” explains director Lin Hao (played by Ning) at a wardrobe fitting where Dany tries on the uniform of stereotypical salt-of-the-earth Chinese farmers (essentially the safer version of the “Simple Jack” joke in “Tropic Thunder”).

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Turning Red

A touching story about your cringiest adolescent memories

'Turning Red' finds ways to creatively illustrate the growing pains of adolescence and its root causes. It's a tear-inducing stroll down memory lane.

Who would’ve thought that a fluffy red panda would help me come to terms with the most embarrassing moments of my childhood?

It’s easy to relate with Turning Red, the latest animated offering from Pixar that gives comforting explanations for the silly actions that children, including myself, have exhibited in the past. The story revolves around Mei Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang), a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl navigating adolescence while battling her overprotective mother Ming (voiced by the ever-marvelous Sandra Oh), and controlling her emotionally-driven panda transformations.

It’s the first family-oriented animated film released in Philippine cinemas since the lockdown. It comes at a time when restrictions have loosened, allowing children to return to the movies once again. Incidentally, in the US and other territories, Turning Red flew straight to Disney+, a move met with disappointment from Pixar employees since it was touted to be their return to the big screen. It’s why viewing this film with a raucous crowd filled with enthusiastic children is a unique privilege — and it pays off splendidly.

Set in 2002, Mei finds herself stuck in a seemingly life-altering conundrum: her parents won’t let her see a boy group concert with her friends. A childish problem in the grand scheme of things? Certainly. But a justified feeling to have given the context? Also, yes. Director Domee Shi claims that those naive impulses were valid and worthy of scrutiny, not for shameful reasons, but for compassionate ones.

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THE PIGEON TUNNEL

 

Once upon a time, John le Carré was a literary enigma wrapped in the kind of mystery appropriate to his genre, the spy thriller. In the footsteps of Graham Greene, he kept himself in the shadows, rarely if ever gave interviews, and cultivated a persona that offered a teasing mix of riddle and conundrum.

Those days are long gone. In 2015, there was an authorised biography. Earlier this year, as David Cornwell, his real name, the novelist played a cameo in an acclaimed TV adaptation of his 1993 novel, The Night Manager. And now, despite an admitted “childish aversion” towards the press, and a declared love for “the privacy of writing”, here he comes again, backing into the limelight, with “Stories from My Life”, The Pigeon Tunnel.

For Cornwell watchers, this rag-bag compilation of old and new material will seem like vintage Le Carré. “Stories” is the key word. Cornwell remains a magician of plot and counter-plot, a master storyteller. But look behind the smoke and mirrors and you will find a more reflective and slightly chastened figure, all passion spent, and perhaps less comfortable than hitherto in the world of cross and double-cross he has created around himself.

Take, for instance, his career as a spy. Cornwell no longer presents himself as the cold war antihero of the myth-making that surrounded his masterpiece, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. When he resigned from “the service” in 1964, he now reports “a negligible contribution”. No more is his “debt of gratitude to MI5” for the bleak treacheries of the secret world. Instead, recruiting Curzon Street as a writing school, he salutes the “rigorous instruction in prose” he got from the “classically trained senior officers” who massacred his “dangling clauses and gratuitous adverbs”.

This Le Carré redux also tempers his exhilarating portrait of his incorrigibly crooked father, Ronnie, “conman, fantasist, occasional jailbird”, the inspiration for A Perfect Spy. In a raw moment of candour, the novelist acknowledges how “very, very bent” his father had been, and how horribly violent towards his mother and himself. Even more remarkable, the son now addresses a subject he has scarcely touched on before: Olive Moore Cornwell, aka “Wiggly”.

Cornwell, repeating Greene’s line about childhood being the writer’s credit balance, has always maintained that he was “born a millionaire”. But another reading of The Pigeon Tunnel might sponsor the idea that young David was possibly bankrupted by Wiggly’s maternal derelictions. He tells us he never felt “any affection in childhood”, and admits that “the frozen child” within did not show “the smallest sign of thawing out” until “the mother who had no smell” was dead. It was in the void left by Olive’s midnight flit, when he was barely five years old, and out of the confusions of his life with Ronnie, that Cornwell became adept at covering his tracks and making up self-consoling stories. He has always recognised that people who have had unhappy childhoods learn to invent themselves.

The Pigeon Tunnel, which concedes that being untruthful became a modus operandi, fitfully explores two potent kinds of invention: the spy novelist who did “a sort of Tolkien job” on MI5 and MI6, and also the gifted contemporary novelist in quest of a fugitive self. On the evidence of these pages, there’s not much doubt that this second line of inquiry is what animates Cornwell in what he calls “the evening of my life”. For the first time, in the frustrating absence of a new novel, he has devoted himself to himself.

In his prime, Le Carré was a great bestselling writer who achieved the rare feat of creating a world that told us something about ourselves, while also providing world-class entertainment, the novel’s first calling. Trollope achieved this with Barsetshire, and in another key, Wodehouse with Blandings. Smiley and his Circus are similarly immortal. Perhaps it is in keeping with their archetypal shabbiness that their creator should be riven with so much self-doubt. A lesser artist might have settled for the shuttered chateau.

There are many possible interpretations of “the pigeon tunnel”, the haunting image of birds bred for slaughter in the casinos of Monte Carlo that opens this poignant autobiographical collection, but one reading is obvious: however much the free bird of the imagination might long to fly home unscathed, there’s no escaping the fateful guns of a merciless reality.

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ARGYLLE

'Argylle' serves up screwball romantic spy comedy

In the new film "Argylle" (opening Feb. 2), a writer discovers that her spy novels are mirroring real life.

The film opens with an outlandish set piece in which Agent Argylle (Henry Cavill looking like he's doing an over-the-top audition to play James Bond) must capture a sexy spy. If it all feels trope-laden and artificial, that's because it is. The scene is actually being played out from the latest spy novel by Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard). But then Elly ends up meeting a real spy, Aidan Wilde (Sam Rockwell), who informs her that her novels have been predicting real events with such accuracy that a secret organization now wants to kill her.

"Argylle" is a cartoon version of real spies from the man who has masterminded the ridiculous action of "The Kingsman" films. Director Matthew Vaughn started his career with darker violence, in films like "Layer Cake" and "Kick-Ass." So what possessed him to make this wacky action-comedy-romance?

"Basically, I was with my daughters and we watched 'Romancing the Stone' during lockdown," Vaughn recalled. "And they turned around to me and said, 'Why is nobody making movies like this anymore? And would you make a movie like this for us?'"

How could a father refuse? So "Argylle" was born.

As in "Romancing the Stone," a chain reaction of outlandish action is set in motion when a mousy novelist encounters a real world adventure and is thrown into an unexpected relationship with a man she initially dislikes. But antagonism is the basis for most screwball comedies.

"The world was quite bleak during lockdown, obviously. And sadly, the world's gotten bleaker," Vaughn added. "So I thought, you know what? It's time to make a ray of sunshine in a dark, dark world and make a movie that is pure escapism, is fun and can be enjoyed by everybody in a room together, and could be a family movie, could be a date movie Just give people their money's worth and a reason to watch a story in a communal cinema where you get to have the ups and the downs, and the whoops and the cheers, and the gasps and the confusion and the looking at each other, did that really happen? And just go on a roller coaster ride."

That rollercoaster involves a cat, a couple of secret organizations, double crosses, red herrings, plot twists, skating on an oil slick, and a showdown that’s equal parts Matrix and MGM musical.

"Argylle" is fun mainly because Sam Rockwell dances his way through anything the film throws at him.

"He can definitely dance," Vaughn said. "Some actors love to ad-lib. Sam just loves to ad-dance. He's amazing the way he does it. But one of the whole concepts of the movie is sort of taking all the spy cliché tropes, which I'm guilty of sort of creating with 'The Kingsman' — the handsome guy with a ridiculous haircut in a well cut suit and then having Sam Rockwell as the real life spy. And I just loved the idea of doing sequences where this is what the fantasy spy would do, and this is what the real spy is doing. And they both have the same result at the end. But there's two different paths to get to that pinnacle."

Rockwell dances around tropes and clichés as easily as his character dodges bullets and bombs. Howard, however, is adequate as the timid novelist but less convincing as the character undergoes some significant changes. Howard doesn't have much range so the role taxes her talent. But the character is an interesting female action role and suggests a sweetness and humanity that we don't usually see in Vaughn's work.

Props to Catherine O'Hara and Bryan Cranston for delivering the goods in small supporting roles.

"Argylle" has uneven pacing and runs a bit too long but it does deliver on the escapism that Vaughn promised his daughters.