Meme-ready Joker: Folie À Deux photos, Barack Obama’s favorite films of 2023, and more of this week’s top news stories

New teaser photo for Joker: Folie À Deux could be 2023’s last new meme format

Joker: Folie À Deux director Todd Phillips offered up a little holiday gift to everyone earlier this week in the form of two new photos from his Joker sequel, and while it’s nice(?) to see ol’ Arthur Fleck again through a little window, Phillips’ second photo seems like an even nicer gift—if only for its meme potential. – Sam Barsanti Read More

Christopher Nolan thinks Zack Snyder is some kind of powerfully influential artistic genius

Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy arguably changed the course of movie history, proving that superhero movies could be good if you at least took the making of it seriously and creating an appetite for good cape movies that was eventually fully sated by Marvel Studios with Avengers: Endgame (and yet they keep making the things), but if you were to ask Nolan, he’d say there’s someone else out there making more influential blockbusters than he is: Zack Snyder. Yes, the same Zack Snyder we all know from those Zack Snyder movies, not some arthouse Zack Snyder. – Sam Barsanti Read More

Ads are coming to Prime Video in January

Fresh off of what has most likely been another ungodly lucrative holiday season (there are other places where you can buy things, folks), Amazon has apparently decided that it’s sick of all of this “peace” and “goodwill” shit that everyone has been talking about for a month and will instead be embracing greed and antagonism (is that the opposite of goodwill?) for 2024. – Sam Barsanti Read More

Kanye West apologizes in Hebrew to Jewish community for antisemitic outbursts

Ahead of the long-delayed release of his upcoming collaborative album with Ty Dolla $ign, Vultures, Kanye West is apologizing to the Jewish community for a dizzying number of anti-semitic rants that have drastically marred his career over the past year. – Emma Keates Read More

R.I.P. Lee Sun-kyun, Parasite star

Lee Sun-kyun, a South Korean actor known for his roles in Parasite, Dr. Brain, and more, died Wednesday morning, according to Associated Press and South Korean news agency Yonhap. He was 48. – Emma Keates Read More

Ken Jennings seems surprised at Mayim Bialik’s Jeopardy! departure

We’ll take “a series that just keeps landing itself in the headlines” for $200, please. Earlier this month, former Jeopardy! co-host Mayim Bialik announced that “Sony has informed me” that she would no longer be hosting the syndicated version of the stalwart trivia competition moving forward (a.k.a. the main version of the show that broadcasts on primetime television). While Bialik was gracious to the series in her post and used most of her statement to express gratitude for her time behind the lectern, one doesn’t need to read too far into her use of passive voice to glean that this departure was not her choice. – Emma Keates Read More

The holiday box office was pretty merry for The Color Purple, middling for Aquaman

Even if most cities didn’t have a white Christmas this year, it was a green Christmas at the box office this year. With three major releases all slated on Christmas day—that’s The Color Purple, Ferrari, and The Boys In The Boat—families were keen to leave eggnog and wrapping paper behind to watch Adam Driver drive (ha) and Callum Turner row. All in all, the box office’s four-day total was up 11% from this time last year, despite a massive 2022 showing by Avatar: The Way Of Water drowning out this year’s equally water-based winner (via Deadline). – Emma Keates Read More

Barack Obama’s list of the best movies of 2023 sure has a lot of Barack Obama movies on it

It’s a long-standing tradition for Barack Obama—who’s done a lot of work, over the years, to cultivate his image as “The President who might actually like a movie you like”—to release lists of his pop culture consumption. This year, though, Obama’s listing of his favorite films of the year was a bit different—in so far as it was topped with a number of movies that Obama had himself produced, through his film production business Higher Ground. – William Hughes Read More

Walker Scobell, Aryan Simhadri, and Leah Sava Jeffries on Percy Jackson And The Olympians

The actors discuss working on the new television series

Lily Gladstone loves Titanic … for Kate Winslet

The actor says she pre-ordered the double VHS set from Toys “R” Us