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
Meet C2-B5, the New Imperial Droid From ‘Rogue One’
On the latest episode of the YouTube series, The Star Wars Show, host Peter Townley unveiled a never-before-seen member of the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story cast. He may look like R2-D2 with a paint job, but that’s just because ... he looks like R2-D2 with a paint job. But this is a different droid! It’s C2-B5.
7 Classic Gene Wilder Performances Available to Watch Right Now
How to eulogize Gene Wilder? I keep sitting here trying to find words worthy of the man who gave us Willy Wonka and Dr. Frederick Frankenstein and the Waco Kid. None do him justice. The most fitting tribute to Wilder came from Wilder himself, in a classic song from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: When traveling in the world of his creation, what we saw defied explanation...
Jon Stewart Came Out of Retirement to Slam Donald Trump on ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’
I’ve missed Jon Stewart. I’m guessing you have too. The Daily Show continues in his absence with Trevor Noah at the helm, and it’s not a bad TV show. But it’s not the same. For one night only, though, the old Daily Show magic was back, on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
VHS, Beloved Home Video Format, Dies at 40
Very sad news out of Japan: According to Mental Floss, Funai Electric, the last company making VCRs has announced that it will cease production of VCRs, “due to declining sales and difficulty acquiring parts.” Though effectively on life support for the last several years, the will mark the true and final death of the VCR, or video cassette recorder. It was 40 years old.
Here’s Why There Are Suddenly Mini-Trailers Before the Movie Trailers on YouTube
If you watch a lot of trailers on YouTube, you’ve probably noticed a trend that’s suddenly become very prevalent: You click to play a trailer, but before the actual clip begins, you get a five-second flash of the thing you’re about to watch, complete with its own title card. Then the MPAA warning shows up and the full trailer plays. You can see an example above, in the teaser for Ron Howard’s Inferno.
‘The Birth of a Nation’ Trailer: Meet Next Year’s Oscar Frontrunner
There’s a quote, apparently apocryphal, attributed to President Woodrow Wilson about D.W. Griffith’s silent epic, The Birth of a Nation. "It is like writing history with lightning,” Wilson allegedly said of the film ever screened at the White House. For all of its technical achievements, Griffith’s movie was horrifically racist, and depicted “heroic” members of the Ku Klux Klan saving Southerners from blacks (actually white actors in blackface).
Requiem for a Movie Theater (And Maybe All Movie Theaters?)
The Ziegfeld Theater isn’t much to look at from the outside. True, it has that old-fashioned marquee, with the little light bulbs and the name “Ziegfeld” written in perfect cursive, as if God himself signed his name to a building. But otherwise its exterior is totally nondescript; maybe even ugly. It’s a bland gray and black box amidst the offices and hotels on 54th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues. It’s not attention grabbing. It’s easy to walk by without giving it a second thought. And clearly thousands of people do exactly that every day; the theater has been losing money for years (over $1 million annually, according to The New York Post). Although the theater’s leaseholder, Cablevision, has made no formal announcement, today is apparently its last day as a functioning movie theater. After tonight’s 10PM showing of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the Ziegfeld closes forever.
Academy Announces Initiative to Improve Member Diversity
Despite some nominees insistence that it is they, the white people, who are suffering under the brutal oppression of racism, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has decided to respond to the growing controversy over the lack of diversity among this year’s Oscar nominees by making some significant changes to how it selects its members, and then how it maintains those members once they’re admitted into the group.
‘The Hateful Eight’ Trailer: Quentin Tarantino’s Latest, Wanted Dead or Alive
I can’t blame anyone who’s got Star Wars: The Force Awakens at the top of their list of most anticipated movies of the fall and winter. But for me, it’s all about The Hateful Eight.
The BBC Names the 100 Greatest American Films of All Time
What is the greatest American film of all time? According to BBC.com, who just released a brand new ranking of more than a century of great U.S. cinema, the old favorites are still the best; perennial pick for best film ever, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, came in first in a poll of “62 international film critics ... from the United Kingdom and continental Europe to South America, Australia, India, and the Middle East” and the United States as well.