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Joaquin and Gus — Together Again, Netflix Goes Offline, and Wes Anderson Directs The VVitch

By  · Published on December 1st, 2016

Movie News After Dark

The day’s top headlines in bite-size portions.

More than 20 years after they first worked together on the ripped-from-the-headlines erotic thriller To Die For, Joaquin Phoenix and director Gus Van Sant are re-teaming (possibly) for the film Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Too Far On Foot, the story of real-life cartoonist John Callahan who was left paralyzed after a car crash at the age of 21. Callahan first started drawing as a form of therapy before turning it into a controversial career that led to many a boycott in his hometown of Portland, Oregon.

I lived in Portland for a decade; it’s not that difficult to get a boycott aimed your way, but Callahan was a particular master at it, dealing in taboo subjects with black humor that pissed in the flax flakes of many a young white urbanite. A planned film adaptation of his autobiography has been in the works for decades, first brought up in the late 80s when Robin Williams wanted to portray Callahan, but it looks like it’s going to take another Portlander, Van Sant, to finally get it off the ground. The director and Phoenix have been looking to work together again for a number of years now, and nearly did on Sea of Trees (which ended up going to Matthew McConaughey), but this feels like a much better fit ‐ especially where Phoenix is concerned ‐ than that other project, which by all accounts is really, really bad. Nothing’s etched in stone just yet, but all signs are this is a go. Phoenix will next appear as Jesus in Mary Magdalene, and Van Sant recently shot When We Rise, an ABC miniseries documenting the LGBTQ civil rights movement from Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black.

Variety had the exclusive.

If you’re on the Netflix mobile app today, you might notice something new and amazing: a download button. That’s right, ‘Flix fans, after years of hearing our pleas, the streaming service has finally acquiesced and made programming available for offline viewing on mobile devices. Not everything is available, but a good chunk of stuff is, including several Netflix original programs like Orange is the New Black, Narcos, Stranger Things, Master of None, The Crown, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and House of Cards. This means the next time you fly, you can still visit the Upside Down without getting charged through the nose for mid-air wifi.

There’s a menu on the mobile app that will tell you what’s available for download, and expect more titles to be added soon. A couple quick technical notes: if you’re an Apple user, you’ll need iOS 8.0 or later to download and view, and if you’re on Android, 4.4.2 is required, plus the latest version of the Netflix app. For more on the subject, dig what our own Jacob Oller has to say right here.

And lastly today, we’re going to leave you smiling thanks to the fine folks at CineFix who created this trailer imagining what Robert Eggers’ The VVitch would look like if it was “a New England folk tale” written by Roman Coppola and directed by Wes Anderson, the team behind The Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom. It’s funny what a little change of music and title cards can do, and by funny I mean utterly hilarious. If you link this, there’s a bonus link below the video: X-Men as directed by Wes Anderson. Same gag, same big laughs.

[WATCH] UNCANNY: IF WES ANDERSON DIRECTED ‘X-MEN’

Have a good night, everybody, we’ll see you tomorrow for more Movie News After Dark.

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