News

-Writers Guild Awards went to The Grand Budapest Hotel (Original Screenplay), The Imitation Game (Adapted Screenplay), True Detective (Drama Series and New Series), Louie (Comedy Series) and Olive Kitteridge (Long Form Adapted).

-The ridiculously stacked 40th Anniversary Special of Saturday Night Live aired last night, and it was a pretty great time. Highlights included Bill Murray’s “Love Theme from Jaws” and Dan Aykroyd stuffing fish into a blender.

-Spider-Man will join the Marvel Cinematic Universe at last, coming in the wake of a deal between Marvel and Sony. The webslinger will have a solo film and could possibly crop up in Captain America: Civil War. The good people at Collider have dutifully summarized Spidey’s history in the Civil War comics, which is worth checking out for a little background info on what may come to pass in the MCU. Better yet: go read the comics.

-Jon Stewart announced his departure from The Daily Show after more than 16 years as host. He’ll be missed.

Trailers

Pretty solid week for big-budget trailers. Cameron Crowe’s Aloha, starring Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone, received a first look early in the week:

Guy Ritchie’s feature update of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. got a good-looking teaser, and stuff from Ritchie is always good fun:

Also, a trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s horror flick Crimson Peak dropped a few days ago:

I’m actually surprisingly excited for Crimson Peak, but then again I’d probably pay to watch Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain sit silently for hours on end.

Lastly, a trailer went up for Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja, starring Viggo Mortensen, which premiered at NYFF last October and is getting a limited stateside release in 2015. Sad to say that the trailer is a heck of a lot better than the film itself.

In Cinemas

February 20 stateside releases continue the trend of phenomenally intellectual thinkfilms with the likes of Hot Tub Time Machine 2 and The DUFF, the Kevin Costner vehicle McFarland, USA, and All the Wilderness, the latest in a string of movies that tries really hard to make a movie star out of Kodi Smit-McPhee but still looks super boring. We’ll see.

On TV

As usual it’s AMC’s The Walking Dead and Better Call Saul that provide the majority of the reason to turn your TV on at all this week. There’s also the series finale of both The Mentalist and Two and a Half Men on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, for anyone who cares about those.

And the Oscars are this coming Sunday (Feb. 22), preceded by a could-be-interesting-but-maybe-not 1-hour special “Countdown to the Oscars: 15 Movies that Changed American Cinema”, playing at 10/9c on Tuesday. Head here for our ongoing Oscar coverage.

On Netflix

Last year’s The Dark Valley just became available for streaming, which is definitely worth checking our for the stunning visuals alone. Check out the most recent Netflix recommendations from our staff as well.

Review of the Week

Our Writer Series on Charlie Kaufman continues with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.