Movie News After Dark
The day’s top headlines in bite-size portions.
This time next year there’s going to be a new member of the Pixar family, and his name is Miguel. Coco is the film and Miguel is its 12-year-old protagonist, and for nearly five years fans of the animation studio have been waiting to hear anything more than the title and its basic setting – the Day of the Dead celebration – and now at long last thanks to Entertainment Weekly there’s a fresh batch of news concerning the film’s plot and voice cast.
Miguel will be played by newcomer Anthony Gonzalez, who will be supported by Benjamin Bratt (Miss Congeniality), Gael Garcia Bernal (Mozart in the Jungle), and Renee Victor (Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones). Toy Story 3’s Lee Unkrich is co-directing with Adrian Molina, who also wrote the script.
Now check out the synopsis EW ran:
Coco follows the secret musical ambitions of Miguel, who resides in a lively, loud Mexican village but comes from a family of shoemakers that may be the town’s only music-hating household. For generations, the Riveras have banned music because they believe they’ve been cursed by it; as their family history goes, Miguel’s great-great-grandfather abandoned his wife decades earlier to follow his own dreams of performing, leaving Imelda (Miguel’s great-great-grandmother) to take control as the matriarch of the now-thriving Rivera line and declare music dead to the family forever.
But Miguel harbors a secret desire to seize his musical moment, inspired by his favorite singer of all time, the late Ernesto de la Cruz (Bratt). It’s only after Miguel discovers an amazing link between himself and De la Cruz that he takes action to emulate the famous singer and, in doing so, accidentally enters the Land of the Dead.
In the beautiful underworld, it’s not long until Miguel encounters the souls of his own family – generations’ worth of long-dead but no less vivacious Rivera ancestors, including great-grandmother Imelda. Still, given the opportunity to roam around the Land of the Dead, Miguel decides to track down De la Cruz himself. He teams up with another friendly (and skeletal) spirit – a trickster named Hector, voiced by Bernal – to find De la Cruz, earn his family’s blessing to perform, and return to the Land of the Living before time runs out.
Coco is currently the only film Pixar has in development that isn’t a sequel – Cars 3 bows in June, and both The Incredibles 2 and Toy Story 4 are ramping up for production – and it’s slated for a November 22, 2017 release.
Emma Watson and Tom Hanks have teamed up for the director of The Spectacular Now, James Pondsoldt, onthe filmic adaptation of Dave Eggers’ novel The Circle, which has some serious Black Mirror vibes going on. The first trailer was released earlier today:
This is Hanks’ second Eggers adaptation in as many years – the last was A Hologram for the King. John Boyega (The Force Awakens), Karen Gillan (Guardians of the Galaxy) and Ellar Coltrane (Boyhood) co-star. The Circle releases April 28th, 2017.
Being the best film about Los Angeles is almost like being the best film about people – there are a lot of contenders in the mix. It’s the Mecca of movies, after all, the nexus of the global cinematic industry, home to the best film schools, the biggest studios, and it’s the number one destination for innumerable starry-eyed dreamers. But Damien Chazelle’s La La Land has a lot of folks saying it is indeed the best film about Los Angeles ever made. Ever humble, Chazelle himself put out a list for Fandango of his 10 favorite LA-based movies, and as expected from a filmmaker of his caliber, it’s a damn fine list. Check it out below and if there are any you haven’t seen, watch them around your visit to La La Land for a more informed appreciation of the City of Angels.
- Boogie Nights
- Chinatown
- Heat
- Killer of Sheep
- The Long Goodbye
- Pulp Fiction
- Rebel Without a Cause
- Singin’ in the Rain
- A Star is Born (1954)
- Sunset Boulevard
Related Topics: Animation
