Our friends over at the Miami Jewish Film Festival have invited us to an exclusive sneak-peek screening of Gillian Robespierre’s new comedy, Landline, which stars Jenny Slate (Parks and Recreation, SNL) in a touching and funny look at a dysfunctional family, set in 1995 New York.
If Tom Holland didn’t convince you he was a worthy Spider-Man back in his short yet largely lauded role in Captain America:Civil War role last year, he is sure to win you over in the first few minutes of Spider-Man: Homecoming. Holland puts his winning boyish charm on full display in the opening sequence which shows us just how Spider-Man ended up on that tarmac in Berlin for the climactic team fight in Civil War via some amateur footage Pete shot on his cellphone while simultaneously facing off against some of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. No big deal, right?
We’re less than two months away from South Florida’s premiere film festival for horror aficionados: Popcorn Frights. The film festival, which will run from August 11th through the 17th, celebrates the age-old genre of horror while putting an emphasis on indie horror films rather than large blockbuster productions, which are arguably becoming less and less innovative than in years past. In an interview for our newsletter last year, co-director Igor Shteyrenberg shared with us that he was inspired to create Popcorn Frights (alongside his partner, Marc Ferman) back in 2015 because he found that Miami was “utterly devoid of a genre scene,” and the two sought to breathe life into the local community that was hungry for flesh horror-themed film events.
It can be easy to get lost with the sheer amount of superhero films being pumped out every year (Nearly 12 in the last two years). While many fall into the simply “good” category or maybe even “pretty good”, there are those which are widely considered to be “great”. We hand-picked a few of those superhero films that, for one reason or another, have come to be regarded as the shining standards of the genre and asked you to pick YOUR favorites. Here are the top three superhero films, according to you:
Orly Shuber, who will be teaching a course on New Hollywood Cinema (ENG 4132) in the upcoming Fall semester, was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina and lived in Tel Aviv before ending up in Miami. She is a multi-faceted filmmaker who has shot and produced several documentaries on topics ranging from art, to architecture and design in collaboration with different museums such as the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, the Architecture + Design Museum, the Coral Gables Museum, and the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Miami’s School of Communication before earning her Masters of Fine Arts from the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. Professor Shuber teaches production at Miami International University of Art & Design and film studies at FIU, where she generally teaches Communication in Film (COM 3417) among other special topic courses.
Dr. Glenn Hutchinson is the interim director at FIU’s Center for Excellence in Writing. He earned a Ph.D in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Dr. Hutchinson teaches the peer-tutoring course, Processes of Writing (ENC 3491) at both FIU campuses and enjoys writing about service-learning and the rights of undocumented students. He also writes plays and acts, many of which have gone on to be performed at local theaters. We talk with him this week about writing, film, theater, and everything in between.
A few weeks ago, we asked you all which films you were looking forward to watching this summer. The votes are in and in a surprising turn of events, we have a three-way tie between Alien: Covenant, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and Wonder Woman. This tie proves that we simply can’t choose between the wide selection of films coming out in the coming weeks!