Latest news with #Dreamworks
Forbes
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Netflix's Best New Movie Has Near-Perfect Critic And Audience Scores
The Wild Robot It can be tough to know what to watch on Netflix in a given day or night, but the service has licensed one of the best movies I've seen in recent years, kid-focused or otherwise. While children may have been its target audience, it's a movie that all ages can enjoy. That would be The Wild Robot, the 2024 Dreamworks film about a lost robot that bonds with forest animals and ultimately becomes their guardian against encroaching technology. Here's the synopsis: The Wild Robot has stunning scores from both critics and audiences. With 253 reviews in, The Wild Robot has a 96% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and with 5,000+ audience reviews, an even higher 98%. On IMDB it has an 8.2/10, which in the context of that site, is extremely high, and a full quarter of its reviews are 10/10. Having seen the film myself, I think it very much lives up to these high scores. The Wild Robot It's a kids movie, but it isn't. It's one of those situations where a movie aimed at children can be so good that parents and kids alike will enjoy watching it together as opposed to the adults just sitting around flipping through their phones while it's on. For me, the best part of The Wild Robot is its absolutely gorgeous animation, where I've really never seen anything quite like it. The story is good, sure, perhaps a tiny bit cliché, but there is no frame of this film that isn't fantastic to look at. It's an easy recommendation for all ages, and family statuses. If you don't have kids or aren't watching it with any, it doesn't matter, as it's worth checking out for anyone. There are likely going to be two more films in the series adapting two more books that the first one was based on, but we do not have much information about those as of yet. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
Winnipeg Free Press
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
The back story of the meat-pie baker
When it comes to his novels, horror author David Demchuk's output is a bit of a zig-zag. His first book, The Bone Mother (2017) took us on a tour through a menagerie of monsters tied into the Slavic mythology of Ukraine and Romania. It was nominated for the Giller Prize and a Shirley Jackson Award. The monster in his followup, Red X (2021), though supernatural, was untethered from established myth, inspired by a real-life serial killer who stalked Toronto's gay village. Interspersed with the horror was a good deal of autobiographical content, describing, among other things, the Winnipeg-born Demchuk's migration to Toronto in the mid-'80s. Dreamworks pictures Johnny Depp in the titular role and Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett in the 2007 film Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Demchuk's new book, The Butcher's Daughter: The Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs. Lovett (Hell's Hundred, 432 pages), written in collaboration with Canadian author Corinne Leigh Clark, returns to the realm of legend. It's an ambitious telling of the story of Mrs. Lovett, the fabled Victorian-era murderess who aided London serial killer Sweeney Todd in the disposal of his victims' bodies by baking their remains into pies. While Mrs. Lovett and Todd were almost certainly fictions, the product of 19th-century penny dreadfuls — cheap, sensational serial publications — the book adds a dimension of reality that is more sympathetic to the Lovett character, at least more than the character in playwright Stephen Sondheim's 1979 Broadway musical interpretation, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. (Patti LuPone, who played the role in a 2000 production, said she felt Mrs. Lovett was the true villain of the story.) In fact, Demchuk — also a notable playwright — got the ball rolling on the book in December 2021, a month after Sondheim died. 'I first mentioned the project to my agent, Barbara Berson, and indicated to her that I would need another writer with greater knowledge of the time and place to partner with me to complete the book on a reasonable timeline,' Demchuk says in an email interview from his home in St. John's, N.L, where he lives with his husband. 'Corinne was another client of Barbara's who was remarkably well suited for the project. By Christmas we had agreed to work together and began in earnest in January 2022.' Supplied Sketches of Mrs. Lovett for the 2018 Sweeney Todd musical at Vancouver's Arts Club Theatre The book hardly seems like the product of two authors. One can detect no demarcation anywhere in the book's narrative, which largely takes the form of letters from one 'Margaret C. Evans' to investigative newspaper reporter Emily Gibson. Demchuk, who turns 63 next month, says the collaboration was a happy conjunction of expertises. 'I was familiar with some of the stage melodramas, sensation novels and penny dreadfuls of the era, so I began to develop the plot and the structure with those as the inspiration,' he says. 'Corinne was less experienced than I was at plot and structure and form, but had studied in London and worked in theatre there for a while, primarily on sets and costumes, which meant that she had literal hands-on experience with the look and feel of Victorian England. She also has a great love of all things Gothic, and had considerable historical knowledge and access to research materials.' To start, Demchuk gave Clark some preliminary research and writing assignments, such as developing some of the secondary characters. With that groundwork, the two were able to adapt and meld their writing styles to create a unified voice. Supplied David Demchuk 'I think we were both amazed at how quickly it came together from there. It was very much a 50/50 partnership — I think by the end there wasn't a word left that we hadn't both touched in one way or another,' Demchuk says. The book offers a more fleshed-out interpretation of Mrs. Lovett, the result of careful consideration between the authors. 'Our key question going into the project was: even considering how grim the Victorian era was for working-class people in general and women in particular, what happened to this particular woman that led her to assist her murderous associate by grinding and baking his victims into pies?' Demchuk will be signing copies of The Butcher's Daughter on Thursday at 7 p.m. at Raven's End Books in St. James. 'Twelve-year-old me would never have believed that Winnipeg would have a bookstore focused on horror, and that I would one day be signing my novel there,' he says. 'And yet I think Winnipeg has always been a strong supporter of horror, in film and in print and on other platforms. I think the genre is more popular than ever, thanks to our worldwide anxieties over just about everything.' Randall KingReporter In a way, Randall King was born into the entertainment beat. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
The Independent
28-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Shrek trailer unveils distinctive new look for Mike Myers' ogre as fans call for Sonic-like redesign
Shrek fans are calling on DreamWorks to redesign the green ogre for its fifth instalment, after its first trailer unveiled a new look for Mike Myers ' character. Twitter/X users have compared it to "ugly Sonic", the original design for the 2020 film Sonic the Hedgehog which was updated following online criticism. In a post with more than 336,000 likes, a user asks: 'Can we bully Dreamworks to change the Shrek 5 animation like we did to Paramount to change Sonic's animation?' Shrek 5, out in December 2026, will also feature Euphoria star Zendaya as Shrek's daughter, Felicia.
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Rick Caruso Says He Would Not Shake ‘Dangerous' Jeffrey Katzenberg's Hand
Former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Rick Caruso on Tuesday said he declined to shake Jeffrey Katzenberg's hand at a recent event, after the entertainment kingpin had heavily criticized him before and after his run for office. '[Katzenberg] came up to me and tried to shake my hand, and I said, 'There's no way I'll ever shake your hand,'' Caruso told Bari Weiss on her 'Honestly' podcast. Caruso said people like Katzenberg — who publicly and financially backed his opponent, current LA mayor Karen Bass, during the 2022 election — are 'dangerous' and they 'should be held accountable for the things that they did.' Katzenberg was Caruso's most prominent critic during his unsuccessful run to be LA mayor. At one point in 2022, the famed producer said the real estate mogul had 'made it abundantly clear that he is way too thin-skinned and temperamental to serve as our mayor.' The Dreamworks co-founder also donated $1.85 million to help Bass win the election. And after her victory, Katzenberg mocked Caruso for continuing to lead media trips to Skid Row in an effort to show how bad the city's homelessness issue had become. 'Caruso, you have $5 billion, why do you keep taking people to Skid Row? Katzenberg said to Vanity Fair in 2023. 'You just pissed away $104 million on a failed campaign, why don't you put that towards the homeless?' Those barbs are still fresh in Caruso's memory, with him telling Weiss on Tuesday that Katzenberg went out of his way to paint him as a 'terrible human being.' When asked how Katzenberg responded to his non-handshake, Caruso said he had a 'sort of stunned' look on his face. Katzenberg did not immediately respond to TheWrap's request for comment. 'If you want to oppose me, at least do it in a way that has a sense of honesty to it. But if you're not going to be honest, I don't want you in my world, and I'm certainly not going to give you the benefit of a handshake, which is a gesture of friendship,' Caruso told Weiss. He continued: 'There is no friendship there, because he disrespected my family. And so unless he says he's sorry publicly, and that what he said was wrong publicly — at that point, I'll forgive him, because forgiveness is important. But until then, I won't.' Caruso has made a few media appearances lately, including an interview last month on 'Real Time with Bill Maher,' after Bass has been skewered by many on the left and the right for her handling of the devastating LA wildfires. The post Rick Caruso Says He Would Not Shake 'Dangerous' Jeffrey Katzenberg's Hand appeared first on TheWrap.
