by Wenlei Ma 13th Jan 2021 6:50 PM After dominating cinema pop culture for the past decade, Marvel Studios is set to conquer the small screen. With no less than six streaming series to debut this year, the first of these,
WandaVision, is tantalisingly close. Set to start this Friday on Disney+, the series is new ground for a studio that has cleared almost $US23 billion at the global box office with its slate of superhero blockbusters, collectively known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And with no new Marvel movies for the past 18 months, the anticipation for
WandaVision is hot. But if you think you re going to see more of the same, but just on the small screen, think again.
THE SHELF
Daily Star Books’ Favourite Reads of 2020
The DS Books staff are excited to recommend the books, published in 2020, that taught us what it means to find joy, to be terrified and uplifted, and to willingly get lost in the written world. A longer version of this list with more books suggested by more staff writers will be available online. Read and follow us on @thedailystarbooks on Instagram, @DailyStarBooks on Twitter, and fb.com/DailyStarBooks on Facebook. Have a happy new year!
The DS Books staff are excited to recommend the books some published in 2020 and other slightly older that taught us what it means to find joy, to be terrified and uplifted, and to willingly get lost in the written world this year.
Mix 107.9
by Hope Madden and George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Let’s be honest, no one saw much of anything movie-wise this year. The highest grossing cinematic releases made so little they would have been considered catastrophic bombs in any other year, and streaming numbers confirmed that we were having a hard time zeroing in on new releases.
Still, there were some exceptional films that simply disappeared without even a hello. These are movies that broke new ground, broke our hearts, explored new genre hybrids, reimagined familiar tales, startled our senses, and otherwise just impressed the hell out of us. We really want to introduce you to these guys, which we list in alphabetical order because they deserve equal attention (and we argued too much about the ranking).
TITLES COMING TO HBO MAX IN JANUARY
Exact Dates to be Announced:
Arthur’s Law (Max Original Series Premiere)
The unemployed Arthur Ahnepol (Jan Josef Liefers) ekes out a bleak existence. Drawn from the strains of his unhappy marriage and bored to death, he makes a morbid plan: he wants his obnoxious wife to die. With the money from the life insurance there’s no obstacle for a restart with his beloved mistress. But an unwritten law dominates the life of the unlucky fellow: every problem solved by Arthur has a far worse effect. And so, he sets off an avalanche of disastrous events.
3
For one blissful month, it seemed like the defining moment of movie culture this year might be the most joyful one, too. Bong Joon Ho’s class warfare crowd-pleaser,
Parasite, had beat the odds, shattered precedent, and overcome an American aversion to subtitles to win the Oscar for Best Picture. What a thing it was to experience live a wonderful glitch in the simulation! Sadly, that night now feels miles away, a distant glimmer in the rearview mirror, a speck of light from the before times of ancient February. Just a few weeks after
Parasite made history, James Bond made other plans: He would