The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story (2023) | Short Film Spotlight

Still image from Sony Pictures’ THE SPIDER WITHIN: A SPIDER-VERSE STORY, directed by Jarelle Dampier — PHOTO: Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Directed by Jarelle Dampier — Screenplay by Khaila Amazan.

Sony Pictures Entertainment has today released Jarelle Dampier’s animated short film The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story on YouTube (click here to watch it). The animated short film, which originally premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June of 2023, is a part of Sony’s animated Spider-Verse trilogy, and it is set between the events of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse from 2018 and last year’s sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. In the animated short, we follow Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore) as he returns home after a stressful day of crime-fighting and being a teenager and is approached by his father Jefferson Davis (voiced by Brian Tyree Henry), who wants to have a father-son night where they watch horror films on the TV and snack on popcorn. Miles, however, is unprepared for this, and he hides away in his room where all his fears manifest in the form of first a shadow and, later, spiders.

Continue reading “The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story (2023) | Short Film Spotlight”

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) | REVIEW

Miles Morales as Spider-Man (voiced by Shameik Moore) in Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation’s SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE.

Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson — Screenplay by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Dave Callaham.

With 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, a vast team of storytellers caught lightning in a bottle, as they managed to make a film that not only captured what makes superhero and Spider-man films so electric and fun to watch, but they had also made an animated film with a groundbreaking animation style. At the same time, they managed to introduce the world to Miles Morales — a once lesser-known Spider-Man — in a way that made him an instant fan favorite. Into the Spider-Verse is one of the best animated films of the 2010s and arguably the century at the time of writing. Since then, a lot has happened. The idea of a multiverse film has become so mainstream that the Academy Awards has even given Best Picture to a multiverse-focused film. To add to that, we even got a live-action Spider-Man multiverse film with Spider-Man: No Way Home. It would be totally understandable to think that the idea of multiverse storytelling is played out and that no one is clamoring for more Spider-People. Thus, recapturing that same lightning in a bottle was not anywhere close to being simple. And yet, that is exactly what has happened with Across the Spider-Verse, the direct sequel to the 2018 animated hit. Across the Spider-Verse is not just more of the same.

Continue reading “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) | REVIEW”

REVIEW: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Theatrical Release Poster – Sony Pictures Releasing

The following is a review of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse — Directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman

The late, great, legendary film critic Roger Ebert opened his review of my favorite Spider-Man film, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, with the line: “Now this is what a superhero movie should be,” a sentence that feels pretty appropriate to use today when describing the first of, likely, many theatrically released Sony Pictures Animation Spider-Man-related films because Into the Spider-Verse is a special movie in virtually every way imaginable.
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The Next Lando – Dagobah Day #19

Dagobah Day - 2016

A couple of days ago, The Wrap reported that Lando Calrissian will be appearing in the Han Solo anthology film! Now, we haven’t gotten that confirmed yet, and we don’t know how much he’ll be in the film, if he is indeed in it. But Birth.Movies.Death have reported that Community‘s Donald Glover is the first choice for the part, which obviously makes me happy. But let’s today talk about who could, or should, play Lando if Glover doesn’t take the role. Continue reading “The Next Lando – Dagobah Day #19”