Jacob Hall
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‘Fast and Furious 8’ Will Happen, But Still Needs Actors, Script and a Director
Furious 7 had one of the biggest box office openings of all time last weekend, earning a jaw-dropping $392 million worldwide. Somehow, Universal’s silly car-racing franchise has officially grown up and has the monetary clout to stand alongside the biggest movies of all time. So yeah, of course everyone wants a Fast and Furious 8, but fans hoping for a quick turnaround need to get comfortable. The next film is stuck at a red light and it’s going to be a little while before it turns green.
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‘The Dukes of Hazzard’ Star James Best Dead at 88
Prolific character actor James Best, most known for playing the bumbling Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane on The Dukes of Hazzard, has passed away from complications following a battle with pneumonia. He was 88 years old.
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‘Sesame Street’ Parodies ‘Game of Thrones’ With ‘Game of Chairs’
Because there is nothing small children still learning to read love more than ultra-violent fantasy epics, Sesame Street has created a Game of Thrones parody. And we’re not talking about a simple excuse to dress up some Muppets in medieval garb. There are some serious George R.R. Martin deep cuts in this strange little sketch, which marks the first and probably last time that Sesame Street will obliquely reference brutal massacres, beheadings, and regicide.
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Plastic Surgeon ‘Devastated’ By ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’ Character Found Dead
When you are a known quantity, a famous face or maybe a guy well known for working on famous faces, you open yourself up to parody. That’s the number one rule of comedy: nothing and no one is off limits. And yet the news that infamous “celebrity dermatologist” Dr. Fredric Brandt has passed away so shortly after being ruthlessly (and let’s be brutally honest here, hilariously) mocked on Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is sad news ... especially since it is now being implied that the show’s take on him may have contributed to his death.
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Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Furious 7’ Smashes April Records
The early estimates for the opening weekend gross of Furious 7 are all over the place and we probably won’t have a definitive number until tomorrow, when the dust finally settles and everyone gets a chance to breathe. However, this one thing we know for sure: the seventh film in the Fast and Furious series didn’t just shatter in-franchise records, it shattered records for any April release.
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SNL Casts Michael Keaton in One Very Strange Teen Movie
Mike O’Brien is one of SNL’s greatest secret weapons, a writer and performer whose truly unique voice shines through the show’s usual template. When he’s given total control of a digital short, it’s a genuine cause for celebration. His work feels less like just another sketch or parody, but more like an actual, full-fledged short film escaped into the show’s line-up.
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SNL Lets ‘The Walking Dead’ Star Norman Reedus Crash “Weekend Update”
Since The Walking Dead just ended its fifth season and it’s still one of the biggest shows in the history of television, it makes sense that SNL would pause to talk about it. After all, what good is the “Weekend Update” segment if the anchors don’t occasionally stop to talk about what’s big in popular culture? And what good is SNL if it can’t get one of the most popular actors from The Walking Dead to stop by for a minute-long cameo?
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SNL Pulls a ‘Going Clear’ and Goes After Scientology
With the HBO documentary Going Clear currently making waves with its brutal expose on Scientology’s founders and members, it only makes sense that SNL would take a few shots at the world’s most controversial religion while it’s down. The show’s method of commenting on a pretty harrowing and horrifying case is genuinely brilliant: the show’s cast has assembled for a 25 year old music video extolling the virtues of a religion called “Neurotology,” which has been updated with annotations on the current situations of the many participants.
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SNL Asks Michael Keaton to Play Batman and Beetlejuice Again
Most of the time, the SNL opening monologue is a formality and a tradition, a road bump on the way to the actual good parts of an episode. It feels like something the guest host does because he has to, not because anyone on the writing staff actually had a good idea. And that’s why last night’s monologue was such a joyous surprise: it was not only the best monologue of the season, but the best sketch of the whole night.
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Disney Is Making a Live Action ‘Winnie the Pooh’ Movie
It was inevitable: Disney is making a live action Winnie the Pooh movie because of course Disney would make a live action Winnie the Pooh movie. The studio’s tactic of bringing their animated properties into the live action realm has already paid off with Alice in Wonderland, Maleficent and Cinderella, so why not pay another visit to the Hundred Acre Wood and let a live action Christopher Robin hang out with a CGI Piglet?
