Matt Singer is the editor and critic of the website ScreenCrush.com. For five years, he was the on-air host of IFC News on the Independent Film Channel, hosting coverage of film festivals and red carpets around the world. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, he’s been a frequent contributor to the television shows CBS This Morning Saturday and Ebert Presents At the Movies, and his writing has also appeared in print and online at The Village Voice, The Dissolve, and Indiewire. His first book, Marvel’s Spider-Man: From Amazing to Spectacular, is on sale now.
Matt Singer
‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Character Names Unveiled!
J.J. Abrams is famous for keeping secrets. His whole schtick as a director is the “mystery box”—finding pleasure in the unknown, and in the tease of that uncertainty. He didn’t show the monster in the trailer for ‘Cloverfield’; hell he didn’t even show the title of the movie in the trailer for ‘Cloverfield.’ If J.J. Abrams could release a movie without telling you anything about it, he probably would.
‘The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies’ Review: Give Me Back My Precious (Time)
Having gone on an unexpected journey and endured the desolation of Smaug, Peter Jackson’s bloated adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’ finally comes to ‘The Battle of the Five Armies,’ which is less of a climax to this trilogy than a distended epilogue. After spending two movies and 330 minutes building up the dragon Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) as the ultimate antagonist, he’s eliminated from the story completely in the first ten minutes. He’s literally gone before the title appears onscreen.
This Vintage Paramount Pictures Promo Video Teases ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’ and ‘Hook’ Before They Even Had Titles
This is a fun little video curio to brighten your Monday. Tucked away in a random corner of YouTube for the last five years has been a clip titled ‘Paramount Today ... Where the Future Goes On.’ The description says it’s presumably something that was made by the studio “for Hollywood insiders [and] investors,” and it details the company’s upcoming slate for 1985 and the rest of the decade. And it’s a very entertaining, behind-the-scenes look at the movie hype machine some 30 years ago.
The Best Movie Trailers of 2014
Trailers are a huge part of the fabric of movies. They play before every film shown in theaters, and on every movie website around the world. They’re commercials, obviously, but they’re also more than that; miniature works of art that utilize the core elements of cinema—image, sound, music, action, editing—at their most pure and refined. And today at ScreenCrush we’re celebrating movie trailers by saluting the best sneak previews of 2014.
Celebrate the Best Movies of 2014 With This Great Supercut
Every year, Little White Lies Editor-at-Large David Ehrlich celebrates the best movies with a video countdown supercut. The newly released 2014 edition is typically excellent, and covers Ehrlich’s picks for the top 25 films of the calendar year (even if I might quibble with some of his individual choices coughsomethinginmythroatnotreallyIjustdon’tlike‘Godzilla’cough).
The T-800 Is Back in the ‘Terminator Genisys’ Motion Poster
Even as a nearly lifelong ‘Terminator’ and Arnold Schwarzenegger fan, it is tough to figure out what to expect from ‘Terminator Genisys.’ Those ultra-agro cast photos looked like a cosplay party gone wrong, the title looks like an autocorrect disaster, and the plot synopsis as we understand it right now (with Sarah Connor, played by Emilia Clarke, raised from childhood by a Terminator, played by Schwarzenegger, she calls “Pops”) sounds ... weird. Like, really weird.
May the Schwartz Be With This Hilarious ‘Spaceballs’/‘Force Awakens’ Parody Trailer
We never did get a ‘Spaceballs’ sequel, but now we have something almost as good: A ‘Spaceballs’ parody trailer of the ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ teaser.
The Amazon Customer Reviews on this $120,000 Television Are Amazing
“The black levels and color depth on this TV are pretty good for the price. However, the small screen is a deal breaker. I recommend buying an IMAX theater instead.”
James Cameron Promises the ‘Avatar’ Sequels Will Make You “S–t Yourself”
James Cameron doesn’t lack for confidence. And why should he? This is the guy who made the biggest movie in the history of the universe, and then he topped himself and made the biggest movie in the history of the universe a second time. If there is anything in the world of movies James Cameron can’t do, he hasn’t found it yet.
‘Blade Runner 2’ Is Still in the Works, but Ridley Scott Won’t Direct It
What a great day for dinosaurs who refuse to die! First a new ‘Jurassic Park’ trailer and now, via Variety, a report on the sequel to ‘Blade Runner,’ which has been rumored for most of the 30 years, since Ridley Scott released the original film back in 1982. Scott says that, yes, you can expect Harrison Ford to return as detective Rick Deckard, but no, you shouldn’t expect Scott to direct the film; instead he’ll just be serving as a producer