Latest news with #TheExorcist
Los Angeles Times
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘M3GAN 2.0' gets a humor upgrade with twice the killer dolls and half the scares
'M3GAN 2.0' is another shiny display case for its violent antiheroine, an artificially intelligent doll with little regard for human life. In the new movie, there are two of them: Meet AMELIA, a lithesome blond who opens the film decimating a bunker somewhere near the border of Turkey and Iran. The robot babe's name stands for Autonomous Military Engagement Logistics and Infiltration Android, and one can imagine the real White House asking if we can actually build her. This fledgling franchise has rewired itself from horror to action-comedy. Bigger and goofier than the 2022 hit, 'M3GAN 2.0' is content to be this summer's fidget spinner: an amusement soon forgotten. You can easily accuse returning director Gerard Johnstone (who's taken over screenwriting duties too) of assembling it from other movies' nuts and bolts. He's not hiding his influences, including 'The Terminator,' 'Metropolis' and the head-spinning theatrics of 'The Exorcist.' It's a magpie movie that's happy to give audiences the tinselly things they want — i.e., two robots clobbering the Wi-Fi out of each other. But Johnstone creates openings for his own shaggy sense of humor. I'm excited to keep tabs on the promising New Zealander. The snippy robot begins the film with her body destroyed but her ego as big as ever. M3GAN, voiced by Jenna Davis and embodied by both an animatronic puppet and the young dancer Amie Donald, will be reconstructed and built back better — and taller, as the physically gifted Donald has herself aged from 12 to 15. As an interim step, M3GAN gets temporarily placed in a tiny teal bot with flipper hands named Moxie, who seems adorable unless you know that Moxie was a real AI emotional support doll launched in 2020 that was abruptly bricked last year, teaching kids a sad lesson in startup funding and, in essence, death. (You can find videos online of people saying goodbye to their comatose friend.) Meanwhile, M3GAN'S creator Gemma (a droll Allison Williams) is out of prison and rebranding herself as an anti-technology crusader. 'You wouldn't give your child cocaine — why would you give them a smartphone?' she hectors, while her bland do-gooder boyfriend Christian (Aristotle Athari) enlists the United Nations to fight back against the creeping omnipotence of AI. Cady (Violet McGraw), Gemma's 12-year-old orphaned niece, wants a career in computer science. Gemma prefers that she concentrate on soccer. Smartly, these films don't create a phony dichotomy between tender humans and cold machinery. Gemma's interpersonal skills could use an update. She can't connect to her young charge. Hilariously and hypocritically, she orders Cady around with zero respect for the child's free will. When Cady insists that she's not sleepy enough to go to bed, Gemma snaps, 'Take a melatonin.' What interests Johnstone here is how biological and synthetic beings blend together. Gemma and her colleagues Cole and Tess (Brian Jordan Alvarez and Jen Van Epp) are designing a mechanized exoskeleton that would allow a human worker to toss around concrete blocks as breezily as a penny (although when it glitches, Cole can't get out of the suit to use the bathroom). Their billionaire potential investor, Alton (Jemaine Clement, whose oily lecherousness may remind you of a recent government employee), has a neural chip in his temple that's layered an invisible computer screen over his retinas. Blinking his eyes to take photographs, this repellent tech bro appears so ridiculous that you half-wonder if his innovation is fake, — the emperor's new code. But when AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno) uses his eyeballs against him, we enjoy Alton realizing how pitiful he looks. The plot here is the same one we're going to keep repeating until today's technofeudalist geeks quit inventing things that the majority of people don't want. (So, probably forever.) AMELIA wants access to the computer cloud that controls every facet of our existence, from the power grid to the financial markets. There's a cool, if truncated, car chase in which AMELIA treats humans like roadblocks, flinging us into traffic by freezing scooters and releasing cash from sidewalk ATMs. On a more intimate scale, Gemma and Cady's new Bay Area rental is a smart house where everything is a potential poltergeist, from the ice dispenser to the vacuum. They thought M3GAN was dead; turns out, she's the ghost in their machines. The movie isn't scary in the slightest. But afterward, it's terrifying to count how many things you own that aren't truly under your control — and, scarier, how hard it's getting to stop this home invasion. Does anyone really need their refrigerator authorized to order more eggs? 'M3GAN 2.0' is at heart a B-movie about a technological arms race fought by femmebots with literal swinging arms. It's dopey by design. At least Johnstone punches up the premise. There's not just one secret lair — there are three! — and each has its own playful reveal. Later, he finagles a physical comedy beat in which Gemma is delighted to realize she's more like M3GAN than she thinks. I was never that moved by M3GAN's girl-power-y argument that she has a soul ('I'm nobody's plaything,' she growls.) And the scene in which she and Gemma bond starts off like a groaner but gets us howling when the doll goes too far and begins to sing another cringey pop song, a great gag recycled from the last movie. Most of the other obvious yuks are flashy and hollow: Of course M3GAN will dance. Of course M3GAN will zip into a flying squirrel suit and go soaring over the trees. Of course a souped-up smart sports car will blare the theme music from 'Knight Rider.' That gets a reflexive chuckle, but it mostly reminds us that today's so-called genius inventors just wish their childhood toys were real. But what intrigues me about Johnstone are the jokes that barely involve M3GAN at all. The most surprising laugh in the first movie came when a detective giggled as he described a little boy's murder. Killer dolls, we get. Yet, this was the stock cop character seen in every genre flick acting fundamentally against his programming. Here, that humor has gone viral — it's now in every scene — insisting that humanity itself is fundamentally strange and unpredictable. The robot is the draw, but I'd watch 'M3GAN 2.0' for the people. And stay for the end credits disclaimer: 'This work may not be used to train AI.' Good luck with that.
Buzz Feed
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
17 Jaw-Dropping Facts About Classic Film Production
Over the years, and especially back in the day, Hollywood has put the cast and crew of movies in some truly wild and dangerous situations. Here are some infamous examples of the extremes people have gone to just to get the right shot: As a minor, Judy Garland was forced to work 72-hour shifts, and given both amphetamines and sleeping pills in order to control her energy levels for such a gruelling schedule. The Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz was originally played by Buddy Ebsen, who got aluminium poisoning from the pure aluminium makeup and was hospitalized. Jack Haley replaced him and is the Tin Man we see in the movie — aluminium paste was used for his makeup, which gave him an eye infection. Meanwhile, Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West, had significant burns from the smoke and fire effects in the film, and her stunt double, Betty Danko, was so badly injured when the asbestos-coated "broomstick" she was riding exploded that she had to have a hysterectomy. The Wizard of Oz also used asbestos as fake snow, and it was far from the only movie to do so — it was a common prop in iconic movies like Citizen Kane and It's a Wonderful Life. It's a Wonderful Life was actually shot during summer, and production had to shut down at one point so the cast and crew could recover from heat exhaustion. Tippi Hedren spent five days having live birds thrown at her and finally tied to her costume to film the climactic attack scene in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. In her memoir, she described the experience as "brutal and ugly and relentless". Both Linda Blair and Ellen Burstyn permanently injured their spines in two separate incidents while filming difficult stunts for The Exorcist. Malcolm McDowell described filming A Clockwork Orange as "torture" — he cracked several ribs during a violent scene, and also went temporarily blind when his corneas were scratched during the filming of the infamous eye clamping scene. The fight scene between Sonny Corleone and Carlo Rizzi in The Godfather got too real when actor Gianni Russo broke two ribs and cracked his elbow. In a fight scene, Bruce Lee kicked his Enter the Dragon co-star Robert Wall so hard that one of the extras behind him who tried to catch Wall actually broke his arm. For Grease, the dance scene was shot in a gym with no windows, leading several cast and crew to suffer from heatstroke. Sylvester Stallone ended up in intensive care for eight days while filming Rocky IV because he wanted the fight scenes to feel "real," leading to him receiving such a hard blow to his chest that his heart was injured. Burt Reynolds insisted on doing a stunt that involved jumping into a waterfall himself for Deliverance, which led to him falling unconscious and cracking his tailbone. Bo Derek was attacked by a lion while filming Tarzan, the Ape Man, slicing open her shoulder. Arnold Schwarzenegger was actually chased by German Shepherds for the wolf scene in Conan the Barbarian, and was injured when one caught up to him. Michael J. Fox actually passed out and could have died while filming the hanging scene in Back to the Future Part III. And finally, for Police Story, Jackie Chan performed a stunt where he slid down a multi-story pole, tearing through strings of lights, and smashing into a glass pane below. Chan did it in one take, and ended up with second-degree burns on his hands. Which of these facts shocked you the most? Do you have your own stories about Old Hollywood to share? Drop them in the comments!
Indianapolis Star
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Indianapolis Star
Pascal Siakam explains 'demonic' viral moment: 'I have this problem where I can't really close my eyes'
OKLAHOMA CITY – One of Pascal Siakam's agents once told him after a game a camera had caught him during the National Anthem looking like his eyes had rolled up into his head. His eyes were open but his pupils weren't visible — just the sclera or the white part of the eye — so he looked like something out of "The Exorcist" or some other movie about demonic possession. The irony was Siakam had actually been caught in the act of praying. He comes from a devout Catholic family in Cameroon and his father sent him to seminary school in hopes that he would become a priest. Though he graduated, Siakam opted against that life, but still remains religious. He prays multiple times before every game with his eyes closed — well, mostly closed. "I have this problem where I can't really close my eyes," Siakam said Saturday in an off-day media availability at the Paycom Center before Game 7 of the NBA Finals. "Sometimes I'll be thinking I'm closing my eyes, but they are not really closed. Even sometimes having conversations, sometimes I look up and it feels like I'm thinking, and my eyes just go up." And that's what happened Thursday night, he said, when television cameras caught him in a pre-game huddle with his teammates in the hallway outside the Pacers' locker room at Gainbridge Fieldhouse just before Game 6. He had his head bowed but then raised it up and when he did, his pupils were under his eyelids but enough of the whites of his eyes were still visible. This of course, made the rounds on social media with various jokes about Siakam being a demon, accessing some kind of dark magic or that he'd entered the Ancestral Plane from the "Black Panther" movie franchise. Siakam didn't find out about until after the game. He said in a video on Instagram teammate Myles Turner had showed him pictures and videos. Siakam had 16 points and 13 rebounds in the Pacers' 108-91 win but he joked that he wished he'd scored 30 because he could say the spirits took him over. "I'm glad people are enjoying it and having fun with it," Siakam said. "Literally I was praying and trying to close my eyes and I was thinking in my head my eyes were closed, but clearly they weren't closed. That's just all it is, really." Siakam has tried to be cognizant about keeping his eyes as closed as he can, and sometimes even covering his face with his hands. But in the NBA Finals with cameras everywhere, that's not easy to do. "I've got to do better," Siakam said. "I've got to start doing this (covering eyes with hands) or I can put my head down and y'all can't look at me no more. And the NBA with all these cameras, it's too much, man. Get the cameras away from us."
Indianapolis Star
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Indianapolis Star
'Jaws' took a big bite out of the box office and changed Hollywood
After "Jaws" hit the big screen 50 years ago – and smashed the then-current box office record – moviemakers and studios knew from then on they were going to need bigger budgets. The Steven Spielberg-directed film cost $12 million to make, more than three times its original budget and about four times the cost of an average film at the time. Of course, much of that involved the building of three mechanical great white sharks. "Jaws" opened June 20, 1975, on 400-plus screens across the U.S. and Universal spent $700,000 on an unprecedented TV advertising campaign, according to the 2010 book "George Lucas' Blockbusting," to drive movie lovers to theaters and create lines as a show of bloodthirsty demand. Overall, Universal spent "a whopping $1.8 million on promo," notes Empire magazine, which in its special June issue deemed the movie "unequivocally the most influential, important and game-changing summer blockbuster … ushering in new levels of pre-release publicity." Hollywood was never the same after "Jaws" and its effects "are still resonating today," said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. "The sensation 'Jaws' created made the movie theater experience the epicenter of culture and spawned what would become known as the summer popcorn movie blockbuster," Dergarabedian told USA TODAY. Join our Watch Party! Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox The Guinness Book of World Records agrees. "Not only did people queue up around the block to see the movie, during its run in theatres it became the first film to reach more than $100 million in U.S. box office receipts," according to the Guinness description of its first summer blockbuster film award. In just over two months, "Jaws" surpassed previous box office leaders "The Godfather" and "The Exorcist." Despite being blockbusters in their own way, "those obviously were not aimed at younger moviegoers and not released in the summer," Dergarabedian said. While "Jaws" is a movie classic, Spielberg recently said he deemed "The Godfather," the film "Jaws" overtook as the box office godfather at the time, stands as the "greatest American film ever made." By the time "Jaws" finished its domestic run in theaters it had made more than a quarter of a billion dollars ($260 million), which is over a billion dollars today," said Ross Williams, founder and editor of The Daily Jaws website in a new documentary "Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story." The documentary premieres July 10 on National Geographic and streams the next day on Disney+ and Hulu. Shark screen attack: From 'Jaws' to 'The Meg,' we rank the 10 best shark movies of all time Also in the "Jaws @ 50" documentary, filmmaker George Lucas recalled how Spielberg invited him and some others to see the in-development shark. 'He (Steven) wanted to show us the construction of the shark, which was impressive. So I thought, 'Great this is going to be a good movie.' It was obvious it was going to be a big hit.' Spielberg, who discusses the struggles making the film in the documentary, was skeptical. "George looked at the shark and said, 'Wow this is going to be the most successful movie ever made.' and I, of course, looked at George like, 'Well you know from your lips to you know' ... but I didn't believe that." Lucas would go on to write and direct "Star Wars," which was released in May 1977 and would break the box office record set by "Jaws." Then, Spielberg would leapfrog him with "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" in 1982. Before "Jaws," summer had been theatrical territory owned primarily by B movies and exploitation films such as 1974's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." After "Jaws," the major Hollywood studios, which had avoided summer, now identified it as the prime releasing season, and 'Jaws' inspired hundreds of summer thrillers and F/X pictures," wrote the late Roger Ebert in his book "The Great Movies II." Spielberg himself would go on to spawn many more summer blockbusters including "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "Jurassic Park," "A.I. Artificial Intelligence," "War of the Worlds" and "Minority Report" – all hitting theaters in the month of June. Two Indy adventures – "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" – released in May, the years 1989 and 2008, respectively, and "Saving Private Ryan" in July 1998. Outliers: "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" landed in theaters in December 1977; other December releases were "The Color Purple" (1985) and "Schindler's List" (1993). Spielberg had "hit after hit after hit for so long, and most of the time they were summer blockbusters," Shawn Robbins, founder and owner of Box Office Theory, told USA TODAY. His hit list included thrillers, fantasy and science fiction. "Genres, in a lot of ways, evolved because of what 'Jaws' did for summer blockbusters," he said. "Jaws" also raised the stakes, by moving "the bar in terms of audiences and what kind of thrill they might get," said J.J. Abrams, in the "Jaws @ 50" documentary. For instance, Lucas in "Star Wars," sought to match the thrill audiences got when Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) kills the shark in "Jaws," said Abrams. "When you think about it, it is a bit like the Death Star moment.' Studios' desire to have a release crowned as a summer blockbuster continues today. This summer's success, so far, of "Lilo & Stitch" and "Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning" suggests the goal of a summer hit remains. "'Lilo & Stitch' has been a huge start to the summer season and one of Disney's most successful remakes that they've done," Robbins said. The financial success of "Jaws" migrated beyond the movie theater. Spielberg, along with Lucas, transformed movies into intellectual properties, which could be parlayed into merchandise, theme parks, video games, books, and TV shows, Robbins said. "They became a significant part of the pop culture fabric." ''Jaws' was the perfect movie at the right time to become an absolute sensation and in turn changed the whole model on which Hollywood based its revenue generating capabilities," Dergarabedian said. "Nothing was ever the same after 'Jaws.'" Mike Snider is a reporter on USA TODAY's Trending team. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, X and email him at mikegsnider & @ & @mikesnider & msnider@
New York Post
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
‘Jaws' did what no movie could do today — it made the entire world terrified to swim
Shark! Shark! 'Jaws,' which hit theaters 50 years ago next Friday, is known for making many splashes. It was the first hit for a 27-year-old Steven Spielberg, the man who'd go on to become one of Hollywood's all-time greatest directors. Advertisement And the innovative 1975 horror film is considered one of the earliest blockbusters. An estimated one third of Americans went to see it. Those are Super Bowl numbers. 5 'Jaws' caused an entire generation to develop an irrational fear of sharks. Courtesy Everett Collection There's composer John Williams' 'duh-dun' score that everyone can hum, and the classic ad-libbed line 'We're gonna need a bigger boat' that everyone can recite. Advertisement But my favorite feat of 'Jaws' is that the monster movie had such a powerful bite when it was released that it made the masses terrified to so much as dip a toe in salty water for months. Years! No major films come anywhere close to that kind of impact today. Sure, 'Barbie' got groups of friends to get dolled up in pink frocks, and 'Minecraft' pushed a few idiots to trash theaters for kicks on TikTok. But 'Jaws' actually changed how people lived their lives. During the summer of 1975, The Post wrote a lot of stories about the 'shark scare' along the southern coast of Long Island, from East Quogue to Fire Island, that was 'touched off by the movie version of Peter Benchley's 'Jaws'.' Advertisement 'Jaws' was set in the fictional Long Island town of Amity. Suddenly, the real place was Sharksville, USA. 5 Beaches from Long Island to North Carolina and more reported visitors being hesitant to go in the water. Courtesy Everett Collection This one's a real doozy. In August of that year, we reported that two police officers on a boat off Jones Beach encountered a 10-to-14-foot-long shark and started to open fire into the ocean — 15 rounds! — killing the fish. Imagine watching that unfold from your folding chair. Advertisement 'Everybody clapped. But when we left they were still standing on the shoreline,' one cop said of the Jaws-struck crowd. 'You know,' the wannabe Roy Scheider added, 'if it weren't for the movie, this wouldn't be such a big deal.' 5 One third of Americans are said to have seen 'Jaws' in 1975. Courtesy Everett Collection But, boy, was it. Scientists believe 'Jaws' caused an entire generation to develop an irrational fear of sharks. They dubbed it 'the Jaws Effect.' And the fin-phobia extended far away from New York state. That same month in Carolina Beach, North Carolina, a tourism chief bemoaned, 'We feel this movie is adversely affecting our coastal economy.' Films can still hurt local economies today, of course. 'Snow White' did because nobody went to see it. The reverberations of 1970s smashes such as 'Jaws,' 'The Exorcist' and 'Star Wars' were enormous beyond what we can imagine now. 5 'The Exorcist' had a major affect on the 'satanic panic' of the 1980s. ©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection Advertisement Take the ingenious demonic possession picture. One shaken man who saw 'The Exorcist' in 1973 broke three ribs during a screening. He's not sure how it happened. Ticket-buyers were vomiting at their seats. A theater in Boston kept 'a stockpile of smelling salts' to wake up patrons who fainted. William Friedkin's landmark film went on to become a huge factor in the 'satanic panic' of the 1980s, which saw thousands of unsubstantiated claims of satanic ritual abuse ripple across America. Back then, blockbusters also rocked the Oval Office. Advertisement 5 Even 'Star Wars' made its way to the White House. When President Reagan announced his 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative, a plan to use futuristic technology to prevent a nuclear attack, the press jokingly nicknamed it 'Star Wars.' The moniker stuck. I'm pretty sure we won't be reading about 'the Lilo & Stitch law' anytime soon. Obviously, the world is different. 'Monoculture,' entertainment that's experienced by everybody, no longer exists. We're inundated by niche fare and Saltine retreads. Maybe a movie just can't pack the social punch that one could 50 years ago. Advertisement Then again, no one expected 'Jaws' to explode the way it did. Implode, more likely. Production went 100 days over schedule and nearly $6 million over budget. Some thought its director would never work again. But the next time you sprint out of the water screaming because that fin you saw turned out to be a cute little dolphin, blame Spielberg.
