Please tell us how we can help with your moviemaking challenges; that time a logging empire clear-cut the Ewok village; Doctor Strange may be the start of a cinematic comeback. All in today’s Movie News Rundown.
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My Hero the Hitman: To his sister, Shane Stant is a loving brother and protector who helped her cope with childhood abuse. To everyone else, he’s the guy who attacked Nancy Kerrigan. The excellent new indie doc My Hero the Hitman looks at a man who made the biggest mistake of his life at age 22, and has tried to make up for it in the decades since. I talked to first-time director Justin Kawika Young about how he made the film, and you can listen on Repod, Apple, Spotify or here:
The Comeback: The Associated Press says this summer could be a great comeback story for the theatrical experience. Speaking of which…
Out Today: Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is probably playing somewhere near you.
The AMC in Times Square has 70 different screenings of Doctor Strange today. (This is not all of them, I couldn’t fit them all in a single screengrab.) pic.twitter.com/RrHWWceyB9
— Matt Singer / mattsinger.bsky.social (@mattsinger) May 5, 2022
The Darkest Star Wars Story: May the 4th, aka Star Wars Day, brought forth many happy and nostalgic Star Wars stories — and also this very, very dark one about the entire Ewok habitat being clear-cut by a logging company. Thanks for cheering everybody up, SFGate.
But Seriously Folks: Click on that Ewok story. Though hilariously sad, it’s a cool look at the savage brutality of location scouting.
Fantasia: The Fantasia International Film Festival, one of our 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee, has just released its first wave of premieres. The festival will give a career achievement award to director John Woo, and premiere films including Rebekah McKendry’s Glorious, Satoshi Miki’s Convenience Story, Rodrigo Gudiño’s The Breach and Karim Ouelhaj’s Megalomaniac. This year’s festival will be held July 14 through August 3 in beautiful Montreal, and we will cover it extensively. You can learn more about Fantasia here.
Country Gold: Of all the Fantasia announcements, I’m most excited for Mickey Reece’s 29th feature, Country Gold. He’s one of my favorite moviemakers, and I first learned of him through Fantasia when it screened his daring and completely different vampire film Climate of the Hunter in 2020. The logline for Country Gold is as follows: “George Jones (Ben Hall, Minari) invites country music superstar Troyal Brooks (Mickey Reece) out on the town in Nashville in 1994 – the night before George is to be cryogenically frozen.” Reece is an Oklahoma-based filmmaker who has made at least a film a year for much of his adult life, often relying on the same actors. Ben Hall is the most captivating of the ensemble, in my opinion. Here he is at his gravelly voiced best in the Climate of the Hunter trailer:
Comment of the Day: “When you realize “Fan” is short for fanatic, maybe it does fit.” — Darrell, on my objection to the use of the word “fan” to describe the guy who attacked Dave Chappelle. Good point, Darrell.
‘Nobody’s Safe’: There’s a great journalism joke that goes like this: “How does a reporter count to three? One… two… trend!” The fundamental truth behind the joke is that if a thing happens three times, reporters start to treat it as the new normal. So if 1. Will Smith getting smacked was one, and that weird Olivia Wilde situation was two, the Dave Chappelle attack means it’s time for stories like this one.
Netflix Lawsuit: The streaming service is being sued by investors who claim that the company misled them about its declining subscriber growth before it announced last month that it had lost 200,000 subscribers — a disclosure that caused the stock to plummet. Variety has details.
Yup Nub: Since you’re going to Google it anyway, here is the Ewok song. I know one of you wiseacres is going to point out that the Ewok Village was a soundstage, and was not in the real-life California forest that was destroyed, and to you I can only say… Allay loo ta nuv.
Main image: Wicket W. Warrick, a prominent Ewok who is among many Ewoks reportedly displaced by a logging company.