Latest news with #LifeofChuck
Perth Now
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
‘It's unlike anything I've ever done before': Mark Hamill teases ‘sadistic' villain in The Long Walk
Mark Hamill has said his role as the Major in The Long Walk is 'unlike anything [he's] ever done before'. The 73-year-old actor stars as the antagonist in the upcoming movie adaptation of Stephen King's 1979 horror novel of the same name, and Hamill has now reflected on his 'sadistic' character. During an interview with Discussing Film, the Star Wars actor said: 'Well, he's amoral. I mean, for you to be able to do what he does … he's got to be some kind of sociopath. 'There's no sort of backstory for him, but you know he's a really troubled person. And sadistic and … just all those terrible things.' Hamill added The Long Walk was completely different to his other recent projects, like the Tom Hiddleston-starring fantasy film The Life of Chuck and the upcoming animated flick The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants. He continued: 'It's unlike anything I've ever done before and that's what I like. It's like Life of Chuck, which is aeons away from what I do in this. 'And then I'm doing a voice in The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants. I love that title, [it] sounds like it's important, but it's the same glorified nonsense that we've come to expect.' In The Long Walk, 100 teenage boys are forced to participate in a relentless walking contest where falling below a set pace means death. As the gruelling journey unfolds, the competitors face both physical torment and psychological collapse in a fight for survival. The movie - which was co-produced and directed by Francis Lawrence and written by J.T. Mollner - stars Cooper Hoffman, Ben Wang and Charlie Plummer, and is slated to hit screens on September 12, 2025. Hamill's Major is the military commander who oversees the walk, and the actor said he was drawn to the role after spending his teenage years in Japan, where his school was next to a U.S. military base. The Batman: The Animated Series star told Variety: 'I said, 'I know who this guy is: I've seen him firsthand'. I'd walk across the parking lot, seeing the officers putting these guys through their paces in blazing hot sun, and they were just brutal. Like if you vomit, they force you to eat it. It's horrible.' Reflecting on The Long Walk, Hamill said he hopes 'everyone will hate [his] guts' due to his portrayal as the Major. He told abc's On The Red Carpet: 'The premise is horrific and off-putting. But the real heart and soul is the story of these young guys and what they experience during the long walk. 'I'm just a bad a**. If I do my job right, everyone will hate my guts, that's okay.' Hamill's co-star Garrett Wareing - who portrays teen Stebbins in The Long Walk - warned the weight of the movie's emotional story would hit audiences hard. He said: 'It's freaky-gets me in my gut every time. That feeling doesn't leave you.'
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Who Is Matthew Lillard's Wife? All About Heather Lillard (Including Which Bravo Show You May Have Seen Her On!)
Matthew Lillard may play Scooby Doo's best friend Shaggy in the live-action Scooby-Doo films, but that title goes to a different special someone in his real life: his wife, Heather Lillard. The Life of Chuck actor and Heather have been married since 2000 — and haven't been shy about sharing their love for each other on social media since. Matthew has penned various heartfelt tributes to his wife on Instagram, referring to Heather as his 'incredible partner' and the "love of [his] life". In a post for her birthday in 2024, he wrote, "I'm not sure where I would be without you… but I wouldn't be me. Happy birthday my love, you are our everything." Matthew and Heather have welcomed three kids over the course of their decades-long marriage: Addison, Ace and Liam. The actor told E! News in 2024 that his wife has been "incredible to parent with and a real gift to partner." So, who is Matthew Lillard's wife? Here is everything to know about Heather Lillard and her relationship with the actor. Heather was born and raised in California's Glendale/La Cañada area, according to her Compass bio page. She noted that she loves Pasadena's 'big city amenities and warm, small-town feel,' as well as 'its breathtaking architecture, rich history, and unbeatable food." Heather works as a realtor at Compass in southern California. Her Compass page states that she transitioned to a full-time career in real estate in 2009 after previously working as a director of special event marketing at Disney. She has also made a number of TV appearances, including a 2018 episode of an HGTV show where she took clients to see a 1923 bungalow located in Eagle Rock, Calif. Heather also once appeared on Bravo's Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles. She shared a video of herself, Matthew and one of their children watching the episode on Instagram in 2019, in a clip that showed her and realtor Tracy Tutor going over an offer for a property. When she panned the camera to Matthew, he teased her, pointing out that she got her hair blown out for the occasion. Matthew previously shared that he followed his wife to Italy after they met at a golf tournament. 'I will tell you how much I believe in love at first sight," Matthew said in an old interview, which Heather posted stills of on her Instagram on Valentine's Day in 2023. "I met my wife at a golf tournament. She said she was going to Italy for a wedding with a bunch of friends." He continued, "And in 10 minutes, I saw her, and I decided to go to Italy with her. At the end of the trip, I thought, 'Oh my God. This is the woman I'm going to marry.' ' The couple went on to tie the knot on Aug. 26, 2000. The day after their 19th wedding anniversary, Matthew joked on Instagram, 'We hit 19yrs yesterday. In Hollywood, that's like 2 lifetimes. And the truth is, it wasn't that hard. You're the love of my life @heatherlillardrealtor and I can't wait to see what happens next.' The Scream star and his wife share three children: Addison, Ace and Liam. Their daughter, Addison, was born the same day 2002's Scooby-Doo opened in theaters. "I was literally holding my newborn child, and the head of the studio called to [say] congratulations," Matthew recalled to E! News in 2024. "And I said, 'Yeah, she's beautiful. I can't believe it.' He's like, 'No, we just greenlit the second movie.' " Matthew also revealed to E! News at the time that his youngest child, son Liam, wants 'nothing to do with' acting. Meanwhile, Addison graduated from the University of Southern California's Roski School of Art and Design in 2025, and Ace is currently a student studying acting at Carnegie Mellon University. "The good thing for me is that my kids have seen ebbs and flows," Matthew said of his children following in his footsteps. "They know the reality of the business. I never pushed anyone into it, but I certainly wouldn't deny the passion of my kids who are both artists." Matthew and Heather balance one another. Speaking to E! News in 2024, the actor shared that he and his wife are a 'good yin-yang.' 'I am very carefree, like, I will jump off a cliff a million times," he said. "And my wife has the ability to balance that with a sense of diligence, and she's very prudent." Read the original article on People
USA Today
15-06-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Mark Hamill is a 'Star Wars' icon. But he's loving his character actor era.
Mark Hamill is a 'Star Wars' icon. But he's loving his character actor era. Show Caption Hide Caption 'The Life of Chuck': Tom Hiddleston headlines Stephen King movie Based on a Stephen King novella, "The Life of Chuck" chronicles the life of accountant Charles Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) in three acts told in reverse. Even after all this time, Mark Hamill's still got the kids enraptured. Two years ago, Benjamin Pajak was 12 when he was going to film his scenes with Hamill for the new Stephen King movie adaptation 'The Life of Chuck' (in theaters now). Like youngsters almost 50 years ago, Pajak grew up loving Hamill in 'Star Wars' and 'I was nervous to meet the guy,' he says. 'Somehow that got out and they scheduled me a lunch with Mark and I was freaking out.' Hamill is a little amazed himself that this continues to happen. 'I certainly never expected to have the longevity,' says the erstwhile Luke Skywalker. 'Really young kids have no concept of time. They think we made those movies two months ago.' Join our Watch Party! Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox After hanging up Luke's robe and lightsaber following 2019's 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' and a couple of de-aged cameos in 'The Mandalorian' and 'The Book of Boba Fett,' Hamill has had an interesting bunch of character actor gigs. He played ruthless fixer Arthur Gordon Pym in Mike Flanagan's Netflix horror drama 'The Fall of the House of Usher' and crusty yet kind grandpa Albie Krantz in Flanagan's 'Life of Chuck.' Next, he stars as a sadistic military man known as the Major in another King adaptation, 'The Long Walk' (in theaters Sept. 12). Pajak says Albie is 'the role (Mark) was meant to do': 'Life of Chuck' tells the story of ordinary accountant Chuck Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) in reverse chronological order, and Albie is a wise father figure for young Chuck (Pajak and Cody Flanagan) after the death of his parents. Hamill says there's 'an overlay of grief and tragedy' in Albie, who's also an accountant, having lost his son, pregnant daughter-in-law and a grandchild he'd never meet. Yet Albie shows he's still got a spicy side when Chuck dares to call math boring. 'It touches a nerve in him and he is just rhapsodized,' says Hamill, who has a moving speech that was 'a bugger to memorize' and spent every day for a few weeks working on it. 'He lays his heart and soul out but even I thought how amusing it is that of all the things that would turn someone on to math, it's 'when you're looking at the stars, you're looking at the greatest equation in the universe.' That's who he is.' Albie is a definite contrast from Arthur Pym, one of the most heinous men Hamill's ever played in his career. 'I routinely play really odd characters in voiceover. I rarely get those kind of parts on camera,' he says. 'I was thrilled. Some people would be insulted that they came to mind when you're meant to play a soulless, sociopathic, evil person. But I loved it.' Hamill also dug his scenery-chewing role in 'The Long Walk.' Francis Lawrence's dystopian thriller centers on young men competing in a grueling annual walking contest who trudge along a highway: If anybody's pace falls under 3 mph, they're executed until only one survivor is left. Cooper Hoffman, Ben Wang, Charlie Plummer and David Jonsson are among the competitors who are 'the heart and soul of this movie,' Hamill says. 'I do my job, I torment them.' And during the holiday season, Hamill's back in the voiceover game playing the villainous Flying Dutchman in 'The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants (in theaters Dec. 19). He appeared on a 2007 episode of the 'SpongeBob SquarePants' show, one that was distinguished for being the first time that Ernest Borgnine and Tim Conway had worked together since 'McHale's Navy.' 'I'm a '60s kid and I was really excited about that,' Hamill says. Anytime Hamill waxes nostalgic in conversation, 'Star Wars' inevitably comes up. He recalls reading George Lucas' script and wishing he could play Darth Vader or Han Solo, and opines about his iconic co-stars, being 'wide-eyed and in awe' of Harrison Ford and wowed by wisecracking 19-year-old Carrie Fisher, who 'had the wisdom of an elderly woman.' He gets a kick out of people remembering him, too: 'I'll be in an airport and parents will say to their 4- and 5-year-olds, 'Look who it is, it's Luke Skywalker!' And they look up and they're just horrified. Like, what happened? This guy really let himself go! I say, 'Just tell him I'm Luke's grandfather.' '
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘It almost killed me': Horror maestro Mike Flanagan looks back at career-making hits from ‘Gerald's Game' to ‘Hill House' to ‘Life of Chuck'
The Life of Chuck is easily Mike Flanagan's least scary offering, which is interesting to note considering the new adaptation of Stephen King's novella is set around the pending apocalypse. What it is, however, is Flanagan's coziest and most gentle offering, which helps explain why the drama won the highly coveted People's Choice award at last fall's Toronto International Film Festival – and could ride a wave of strong reviews into this fall's Oscar race. Prior to Chuck, of course, Flanagan has worked exclusively in the stuff of nightmares, becoming one of the horror's world's most revered writer-directors thanks to genre favorites on screens big (Oculus, Hush, Doctor Sleep) and small (Gerald's Game, The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass). More from GoldDerby 'A Minecraft Movie' sets streaming premiere date, Matthew Conaughey reteams with 'True Detective' writer, and more of today's top stories 'I feel so lucky to be part of it': Tim Bagley on finding love, laughter, and belonging in 'Somebody Somewhere' Inside the comedy pressure cooker: How 'SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night' exposed the madness behind the magic of 'Saturday Night Live' In our latest edition of The Gold Standard, Flanagan looks back at 20-plus years of filmmaking, from his humble beginnings on the shoestring-budgeted debut Absentia to a horrific experience making Haunting of Hill House to his award-wining latest offering Chuck, whose cast includes Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, and Mark Hamill . He even picks his favorites. Flanagan used crowdfunding to finance his $70,000 debut, a supernatural scarer about a pregnant woman (Courtney Bell) whose husband mysteriously reappears after a seven-year absence that was immediately embraced by horror sites like Fangoria. So when I made when I made that one, I was working full time as a reality TV editor, and I was working a day and a night job to try to stay afloat in L.A. I'd lived in L.A. for eight years at that point, and had given myself five years to try to make something happen and get some traction, and it hadn't worked out. We used Kickstarter, which was still in its beta testing phase, it was brand new. And we shot it with available light on a Canon 5D Mark II in my apartment with a crew of eight people over two weeks. I remember feeling at the time, like one way or another that was either going to be my last movie, or it would kick something open. … It radically changed my life. I don't think Absentia would have done anything like what it did without Fangoria. Fango ran a feature piece on it, and instantly drove the audience to it. I was incredibly lucky in that I found the horror community to be so welcoming and enthusiastic about not only Absentia, but it was the same with the Oculus short (2006) before that. That was kind of championed only by Bloody Disgusting and Dread Central and Fango, and that really made all of the difference. I don't think Oculus would have been able to go forward if not for the way the horror press and the horror blogs held up Absentia and kind of demanded attention on it. … There are few fandoms as connected and passionate as the horror fandom, and they'll carry you all the way home if you let them. Flanagan was given a much more robust $4 million budget for his sophomore feature Oculus, starring Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites as adult siblings convinced that an antique mirror was responsible for the deaths that destroyed their childhoods. After premiering at TIFF, the Blumhouse and WWE-produced feature grossed $44 million. Flanagan also met his future wife Kate Siegel on the project. I was terrified going into Oculus. I was excited. I still think of it as my first real movie. I didn't know what I didn't know. I was suffering from constant imposter syndrome, and this feeling like any second now, they'd look around and figure out I had no idea what I was doing, and I was making it up as I went — which I still feel to this day, frankly. But I remember it being a time of enormous anxiety, but also it was so thrilling. It was so exciting to be on a real set with a real crew and with the equipment. And I'm a huge fanboy, so Karen Gillan was right here and Katee Sackhoff was right there, and I'm a major Whovian and Battlestar fan. And so I was geeking out every day to be working with them. There was one ghost in particular, who really, really changed my life. I remember, at the wrap party, sitting down and talking to Kate kind of for the first time outside of that type of work. And talk about life-changing. But yeah, Oculus for me was an incredible school. It was one of the most educational experiences of my life. And it kind of broke open this whole other level for me because it was released theatrically, which today I don't think it would have been. And Stephen King watched it and tweeted about it, and I about died. I mean, just completely, completely floored [by] that whole experience and going around doing the doing the press tour and going to the premieres overseas and seeing it with an audience, it was insane. There was a screening of it that WWE did where Hulk Hogan riled up the crowd and introduced the movie. It was bizarre. ... I still felt, though, that as quickly as that had happened, it could go away. And I better have another movie ready, another movie ready, another movie ready. Every one of those movies for that five -year period felt like this could be the last one. Flanagan sure had some more movies ready. The filmmaker premiered THREE different movies in 2016: Blumhouse's Hush (about a mute woman terrorized in the woods), Before I Wake (starring Jacob Tremblay as a kid with some very problematic nightmares), and Ouija: Origin of Evil (the prequel to 2014's Ouija). It's a little misleading because we shot Before I Wake before Oculus was released and because [its original distributor] Relativity went under, it was stuck in limbo for years. So really it was only Hush and Ouija that were back to back. And Before I Wake was released with them. But it would have been impossible to do all three in that time frame. But yeah, fortunately for me now, and unfortunately at the time, Relativity Media was going bankrupt and we had no idea, and so the movie didn't come out. But I had to be in prep on something new when I was in post on something, it was a compulsion and it was out of fear that whatever I just worked on was going to fail. And if I wasn't already working on a new thing, that would mean my career would just stop. And so I had to overlap them and keep it moving. And that was a panicked feeling I had that didn't let up for years. Like I was still feeling that way rolling into Doctor Sleep, like where it's like, 'Better keep going, better keep going.' Because if I stop and look down, I'm going to fall out of this career and it'll be over. And it took me a lot of years to finally look behind me and go, 'Oh no, I'm okay. I can go on vacation for a week and it's all right.' But it took a long time. This buzzed-about Netflix thriller starring Carla Gugino as a woman whose husband dies while she's handcuffed to a bed in a remote cabin marked Flanagan's first collaboration with legendary scribe Stephen King, whose 1992 novel the film was based on. He had tweeted about Oculus and that blew my mind. And then he tweeted about Hush. And at that point it was like, 'Can we do this?' And Gerald's Game was such a crazy project because no one had made it, and the book had been out for so long. I think the expectation on Steve's part was that no one was ever going to make it. And so between Oculus and Hush, that's what made him say, 'Yep, you can you can have it.' But back then, there was no communication with Steve at all. It was all [through] his agent, he gave me the rights. I sent the script out for approval. I heard that Steve had approved it, but I didn't actually communicate with Steve until after the movie was done. And when he saw the finished film, he sent me an email of his reaction to the movie. And I still have it framed in my office. But that was the first time we actually communicated. That movie also changed a lot of things for me because it didn't just start my relationship with Steve, but it also really propelled me [because] it was a Netflix original, and it really embedded me at Netflix in a very meaningful way. Now tight with Netflix, Flanagan teamed with Amblin Entertainment and Paramount Television to land his first series on the streaming giant — an incredibly well-received fright fest about adult siblings reckoning with the haunted house of their childhood. It took a massive toll on the writer-director, however. It's another case of I didn't know what I didn't know. I really wanted to get into television because I thought that was where some of the boldest storytelling was happening, and that you had time to really dig into character, which is my favorite part of what I do. Netflix was at a period of time in its evolution where they were really kind of defying the norms of the television industry and taking chances that other studios weren't, including taking a horror filmmaker who had never been involved with a TV show at all, and letting him be the showrunner and direct all 10 episodes of a show. That's crazy. And again, I don't think it would happen today. But Netflix was really cavalier back then about that. And so was I, because I didn't know what I didn't know. I had that same kind of defensive feeling where if this is my first foray into television, I have to empty the missile silos at it. I had to direct every episode because succeed or fail, I wanted it to be on my terms. It was as much about fear of it not going exactly as I wanted it to go as it was about anything else. And I learned an awful lot about television, about longform storytelling in a real crash course. And it almost killed me. I lost 45 pounds during production. Over 100 days of straight production. No breaks. Weekends were spent in prep… I think I went five months without a single day off at one point. I really overdid it. But that's what it took to direct 10 episodes all block shot like a feature. I almost didn't survive it. And, yeah, it turned out to again be a project that radically changed my life and leveled me up in a serious way. But it came at an enormous cost with that one… It remains to this day the hardest and most brutal production experience I've ever had. And I didn't enjoy it. I [came] out of Hill House bleeding and never wanting to go back. Flanagan did quickly return to television, however — multiple times. But he learned how to pace his himself and refine his approach on the Hill House follow-up Bly Manor, Midnight Mass (his Salem's Lot-esque thriller), Midnight Club (following eight haunted terminally ill young adults) and the Edgar Allen Poe-inspired Usher. I got smarter about not trying to do it all. I only directed one episode of Bly Manor, and I was there for all of it. But I got much better at delegation, and I got much, much better at enlisting other filmmakers and giving them ownership over it as well. By the time Midnight Mass came around, I had kind of forgotten [the trouble of Hill House]. It's like childbirth. You forget. You forget the pain. And so by then I was like, 'I want to do all the episodes again. But it was only seven episodes, so that one didn't almost kill me. That was a wonderful experience. It was really hard, but I think that was the right amount. And then I would kind of modulate it. You know, I did two episodes of Midnight Club, I did four episodes of Usher. I got better at figuring out what a human workload was for me. And I got a lot better at embracing the collaborative nature of television and surrounding myself with people I trusted to shoulder a lot of that weight. And now I'm about to do my sixth series [King's Carrie], and I'm completely relaxed about it. I feel like I've I figured that out. But Hill House was a trial by fire. And I wasn't qualified. Today I would have been like, 'You want to be a showrunner, spend some time in a writers room first.' You want to direct all ten episodes of a series, you need to understand what that really means. You should maybe do half of that. And so I've learned a lot, but I kind of ran face first into that one. I wouldn't have the fortitude today to do it. I was also young enough that I was able to kind of hang on by my fingernails in a way I don't think I would be able to do today. Flanagan has called Doctor Sleep one of the other most daunting experiences of his career because of how seriously he took the responsibility of bridging the gap between King's book The Shining and Stanley Kubrick's classic 1980 adaptation, which the author famously hated. So with Doctor Sleep, I met Steve for the first time when I showed him the movie. We brought the finished movie to Bangor [Maine] and screened it for him before anyone else saw it. And I sat with him in an empty theater and watched Doctor Sleep. ... And I was terrified of his reaction, because I know how he feels about The Shining, but he loved the movie. And then after that, I'd say we became friends, we became friendly, and then we were in more regular contact. And I've seen him in person a bunch since then. And he came to the Chuck premiere, which is really neat. But after that we started texting back and forth and just kind of being in touch. READ: The Flanagan-King pipeline continued with Chuck, which follows a terminally ill man (Hiddleston) in reverse-chronological three acts as he has deeply profound impacts on certain strangers that he meets. The thing about The Life of Chuck that was so exciting for me, I read the novella back in April 2020. So right after the shutdown, I felt like the world was ending outside the window back then. And when I started reading it, I didn't think I could keep reading it. It hit so close to home. But I'm so glad I did, because by the end of the story, I was crying with joy and optimism and this incredibly surprising, gentle kind of reassurance that the story provided and I was looking back at my life in a whole different way. I shut the book and turned to Kate, and I said, 'If I get to make this, it's probably the best movie I'll ever get to make.' And I emailed Steve and kind of begged for the story. He had just given me the rights to The Dark Tower so he said, 'Not right now.' He likes to only have one thing at a time, so it doesn't slow anything down. And The Dark Tower proved to take a lot longer to get on its feet than we imagined. It's still happening, but it's taking its time. It's a juggernaut. And so there was time to do Chuck and I got to ask again a few years later. And he said, 'Are you sure? That's a strange one.' And I was like, 'That's why I like it.' And he let me run with it. And it's my favorite movie I've ever, ever worked on in my life. I know it's a major departure. But that's one of the reasons I loved it, and this was always meant to just be a little movie that I wanted to leave in the world for my kids when I'm gone. In TV, the one that came most from the heart was Midnight Mass. And for my features, this is it. And I kind of feel like that feeling I've always had of, 'What if your career goes away? What if Hollywood doesn't want you anymore?' If that happens now … I'd be crushed, of course, but I'd walk away being like, 'I got to do Midnight Mass and Chuck. I'm good.' Those are those are my favorites. Best of GoldDerby Stephen King movies: 14 greatest films ranked worst to best 'The Life of Chuck' cast reveal their favorite Stephen King works, including Mark Hamill's love of the 'terrifying' 'Pet Sematary' From 'Hot Rod' to 'Eastbound' to 'Gemstones,' Danny McBride breaks down his most righteous roles: 'It's been an absolute blast' Click here to read the full article.
USA Today
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
We ❤️ Chuck
We ❤️ Chuck If the thought of a Stephen King movie makes you want to get up and dance … hoo boy, do I have the flick for you. 'The Life of Chuck,' based on the brilliant King novella, may surprise you if you're used to stuff like 'The Shining' and 'It,' but it's the kind of story that'll lift your spirits rather than scare the stuffing out of you. Along those same lines, a new live-action version of 'How to Train Your Dragon' gives extra dimension to the story of a boy and his adorable scary flying friend. So check out those heartwarming flicks at the cinema but don't forget to stream some TV: Peacock's 'Poker Face' is doing quirky mysteries-of-the-week like a champ these days. Now on to the good stuff: See the best movie of the year (so far), Stephen King adaptation 'The Life of Chuck' Let's face it, y'all. There have been a lot of terrible Stephen King movies – more than you might think, given how talented that guy is. Much of it comes down to the filmmaker, and with 'Life of Chuck,' director Mike Flanagan proves he understands King like no other. 'He's not writing horror even when he is writing horror,' Flanagan told me of how he tackles King as a reader and a filmmaker. 'He's an optimistic humanist and he's writing about love and humanity.' Also check out my video interview with star Tom Hiddleston where he talks about the importance of those 'Chuck' themes. By the way, 'Life of Chuck' is the best movie of the year so far, the story of a life told backward and a soulful exploration of humanity and grand existential questions. (Peep my ★★★★ review.) Soar with the live-action characters of new 'How to Train Your Dragon' While Pixar and Disney take up most of the conversation when it comes to animated movies, one movie outside the Mouse House that has a deep fandom is 'How to Train Your Dragon.' The original 2010 adventure is a spectacular tale of Viking teen Hiccup and his best dragon friend Toothless. I was a little miffed when I heard there was going to be a live-action remake, and even while it still wasn't necessary, I am happy to report that the take feels as vital as the original. (Peep my ★★★½ review.) I also put together a parent's guide for the redo and chatted with director Dean DeBlois and cast members about what's different from the first flick, such as teen appeal and an expanded role for Hiccup's friend Astrid. 'The original wasn't broken, so you can't fix it,' says Mason Thames, who plays the live-action Hiccup. 'All we could do was elevate it.' Stream 'Poker Face,' Natasha Lyonne's starry, standout sleuth show The second season of the Rian Johnson mystery show 'Poker Face' has featured an endless supply line of guest stars, from Cynthia Erivo and John Mulaney to Kumail Nanjiani and John Cho. And Natasha Lyonne, who plays amateur detective Charlie Cale, wears almost as many hats: actress, director, writer and producer. My bud Patrick Ryan visited the set and chatted with Lyonne, who likens her many roles to being a musician and identified with Jughead from the 'Archie' comic books. 'He was a one-man band, but also a friend of the gang,' she says. 'He just kind of hung out and had instruments around." "Poker Face" didn't make TV critic Kelly Lawler's list of the best TV shows so far this year, but some pretty good stuff did like "Andor," "The Pitt" and "Overcompensating" – all of which get the Brian Seal of Approval. Even more goodness to check out! Got thoughts, questions, ideas, concerns, compliments or maybe even some recs for me? Email btruitt@ and follow me on the socials: I'm @briantruitt on Bluesky, Instagram and Threads.
