Charles Bramesco

The emperor of planet Playboy made the world a safer place for sex, leaving behind a complicated legacy.

Forcing audiences to watch a movie in which a dog lives, finds true happiness, and then dies over and over again would’ve been an act of sadism all on its own. But the crew of the upcoming family film A Dog’s Purpose have recently been outed as sadists of another, more stomach-churning sort. TMZ posted a shocking video from a second-unit shoot for the film in which an animal handler forces a reluctant German Shepard into rushing waters, the dog begins drowning, and handlers rush to retrieve the animal amid cries of “cut it! cut it!” PETA has already called for a boycott of the film, with the most shame heaped upon the industry supplier Birds & Animals Unlimited, and the rest of the fallout has been swift.

Superheroes don’t have to come from the brightly-colored pages of American comic books; the Power Rangers series that captivated youngsters during the ‘90s and early 2000s had roots in Japan, stemming from their tradition of kaiju films. It’s a powerful bridge between cultures, the universal desire to watch a team of teenagers with extraordinary abilities team up to beat the stuffing out of gigantic monsters, And now it’ll connect generations, too, as the official trailer arrives today with the promise of the same spirit of teamwork and towering-menace-fighting that made them an unlikely cross-Pacific sensation two decades ago.

The most jarring line in the new trailer for James Mangold’s increasingly buzzy Wolverine spinoff Logan comes when the gruff mutant informs his young charge, “This is the real world. People die.” He tells her this after seeing one of her vintage X-Men comic books, and informing her that the team’s actual exploits bear little resemblance to what’s on the page. It all sends a clear message: this is a film unlike the solo Wolverine pictures that came before it, distinctive both in its high stakes and self-awareness. It’s a sharply written moment, but the new clip doesn’t linger on it for too long before getting to the good stuff — in this instance, a young girl cutting off an adult man’s hands.

Because we tend to think of him more commonly as “slick neo-soul songbird” or “La La Land’s chief threat to the integrity of jazz” or “husband of Chrissy Teigen,” it can be easy to forget that John Legend’s got an Oscar under his belt. The musician and composer took the golden statuette for Best Original Song with his original tune “Glory” from Ava DuVernay’s thunderous Martin Luther King biopic Selma, and ever since, he’s been Hollywood’s go-to guy for poppin’ fresh (is that still what the kids are saying?) theme music. And today, a new announcement from Disney reported by Deadline lines up Legend’s next big gig.

Despite volumes of scholarship from feminist theorists on its undertones of spousal abuse and insidious romanticizing of male brutality, Disney‘s Beauty and the Beast has remained a cherished childhood favorite worldwide. Kids love talking furniture, go figure. The live-action remake starring Emma Watson and an unrecognizable Dan Stevens is hot on the way to its March 17 release, and Disney has now released two new TV spots to further amp up the anticipation. In the first, embedded above, the Beast implores lovely Belle to “think of the one thing you’ve always wanted, and feel it in your heart.” We get a glimpse of the timeless ballroom-waltz scene, some barroom carousing from Gaston, and yet another look at the deeply unsettling character designs for Lumiere and Cogsworth.

Walt Disney exerted an almost dictatorial command of the authorship behind the early films of the Mouse House; they were all to be Walt Disney productions, unmistakable for any other. But plenty of phenomenally talented artists went unrecognized for years, even as their handiwork became world famous and molded the childhoods of millions of viewers. Tyrus Wong was one such artist. Deadline confirms that he died at the age of 106 on Friday, leaving behind a legacy woven into the fabric of children’s entertainment.

Disney’s currently riding a wave of buzz for their latest release Moana, a delightful Polynesian adventure that ticks all the most essential boxes for the Mouse House: precocious princess, lovable animal sidekick, well-placed showtunes, the whole nine yards. With Disney fever at a relative high, there’s no better time for the happiest PR department on Earth to start drumming up enthusiasm for their next original project, a Pixar Animation production that sounds like it’ll be catnip for anyone charmed by the return to form of Moana. And what’s more, this feature will continue its predecessor’s mission to introduce even more diversity to the Disney/Pixar racial palette.

Revisiting Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, it’s easy to hate li’l Annie Skywalker, the hero-to-be of the film. He says a lot of dumb stuff, mostly about sand, or angels, or whether or not this is podracing. (To clarify: it is, indeed, podracing...

The gradual exposure of Hollywood’s internal moral rot continues on down the line today with a new report on the bull that stuntwomen must regularly tolerate while on the job. First, actresses spoke out about disparities in pay from their male co-stars...