Best of the Week: New ‘Star Wars’ Title, Threading Up ‘Interstellar,’ a Real ‘Nightcrawler’ and More

The Important News

Star Wars VII revealed its title as The Force Awakens just as production wrapped on the sequel.

Speaking of Star Wars, we learned Christopher Nolan made stop-motion Star Wars movies in his youth. 

Pixar announced another Toy Story sequel. And Lionsgate announced a Broadway version of The Hunger Games.

Loki will be back in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Marvel shared new footage of that movie and Ant-Man.

Tom Cruise performed his most dangerous stunt yet for Mission: Impossible 5.

Ridley Scott is doing a sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey as a TV series. 

Jake Gyllenhaal beat a board game at the box office. 

The Hellraiser remake is moving forward. Universal set a release date but not which monster will follow The Mummy come 2017.

We got our first look at Kurt Russell in the Western Bone Tomahawk.

Channing Tatum is going to be in Quentin Tarantino’s Western The Hateful Eight. And he’s moving forward with his Gambit movie.

Mark Wahlberg is going to star as The Six Billion Dollar Man. Kevin Spacy is going to be the next actor to play Nixon, opposite Michael Shannon as the next to play Elvis.

The Academy named the 20 animated features vying for an Oscar.

Johnny Rockets is getting into the drive-in movie theater business. 

The Videos and Geek Stuff

Trailers: Furious 7, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Chappie, The Gambler, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever, Minions, Annie, Hardcore, Penguins of Madagascar and Selma. 

And here are the best trailers of the week. We also saw a fake trailer for Birdman Returns.

Watch the short that spawned Chappie.

See how they made the coolest opening credits sequence of the year.

Watch a video about the process of projectin Interstellar in 70mm IMAX. Now watch a mom try to explain Inception.

See what a Call of Duty movie starring Taylor Kitsch would look like. Now watch Key & Peele’s hilarious ’80s action movie parody.

Look at the initially cast David Warner as Freddy Krueger. And check out the Ghostbusters reunion.   

Listen to the best movie podcast you weren’t aware of. Now listen to the very best podcast (ours) on the new Star Wars title and Interstellar.

Look at some amazing posters paying tribute to early Tim Burton movies.

Watch a supercut of the best fake ads in movies. Now watch a supercut of outer-space movies.

See what the George Lucas museum is going to look like.

Look at all the best new movie posters that debuted this week.

Watch the Schmoes review Interstellar, Big Hero 6 and The Theory of Everything. And watch them list their top five save-the-earth movies.

Our Features

We released our calendar of November releases and anniversaries. 

We interviewed a real “nightcrawler” like the one played by Jake Gyllenhaal.

We also interviewed screenwriter Jonathan Nolan about Interstellar. And we had you rank Christopher Nolan’s movies.

Our comic book movie expert wrote about post-credits sequences and why Christopher Nolan avoids them. Our sci-fi movie expert wrote about the movies that informed Interstellar.

We reviewed Interstellar in comic strip form.

We remembered Jan Hooks, Elizabeth Pena and others who died last month.

Up for discussion: Does Jake Gyllenhaal make better movies than Daniel Radcliffe? What filmmakers should have their own amusement park?

We listed a bunch of Marvel characters who deserve animated movies.

Our resident geek offered a guide to what’s worth seeing and buying this month, inluding a Serenity sequel and a Batman box set.

Here’s our guide to everything hitting VOD this week. And here’s our guide to everything hitting DVD this week. And here’s our guide to everything hitting Netflix Watch Instantly this month. 

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