All posts tagged: Bride

The Thief and the Traitor Bride by V.L. Bovalino

The Thief and the Traitor Bride by V.L. Bovalino

Published by Jenni Sidey

Nore Gordon has spent five years certain her husband tried to kill her. She is right about the blade and wrong about nearly everything around it, and The Thief and the Traitor Bride by V.L. Bovalino takes five hundred pages to correct her in the most expensive way available, which is to put into her hands the letters she was never given. This is the second entry in The Hand and the Heart, and it hands the point of view to an entirely new couple. Where The Thief and the Traitor Bride Picks Up The Second Death of Locke raised a drowned island and ended a sixteen year war, and it belonged to the woman who did both and the commander who helped her. Those two are still here. They are no longer the story. Instead the leads are a merchant in a filthy northern port who also runs intelligence for her queen, and the man she married at twenty and condemned at twenty six. That reassignment is the smartest thing here. The first novel …

Pixar’s ‘Hoppers’ to Jilt Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ‘The Bride!’

Pixar’s ‘Hoppers’ to Jilt Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ‘The Bride!’

Published by Daniella Wilson

In a much-needed win for Pixar’s core mission to provide original storytelling, Hoppers is positioned to deliver the iconic animated studio its biggest opening in nearly a decade for a non-franchise title. Conversely, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s new film, inspired by the 1935 film The Bride of Frankenstein, is in danger of being jilted at the altar. Disney is forecasting a global debut of $88 million for Hoppers. The last time a Pixar original did so well was Coco in 2017. In North America, tracking suggests it could open anywhere from $36 million to $40 million, with room for upside. It’s also expected to come in leaps and bounds ahead of Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!, which Warner Bros. believes will open in the $16 million to $18 million range domestically and roughly $38 million-plus globally, although decidedly mixed reviews could ding the $80 million film. (It goes without saying that the two movies couldn’t be more different.) Hoppers has the advantage of hitting theaters in the wake of Disney Animation’s mega-blockbuster Zootopia 2, which provided further evidence that …

‘The Bride!’ review: Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ‘Frankenstein’ is a riot

‘The Bride!’ review: Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ‘Frankenstein’ is a riot

Published by Miika Tikkanen

What Maggie Gyllenhaal has done in her reimaging of The Bride of Frankenstein is utterly deranged. And thank God.  No shade to brilliant director James Whale, whose 1935 Universal sequel The Bride of Frankenstein is both exhilarating and cheekily queer. But — as Gyllenhaal has repeated frequently on The Bride!’s press tour — his titular monstress never speaks a word in her few short minutes of screen time. Still, as that original Bride, Elsa Lanchester made this she-beast an instantly compelling marvel who has become truly iconic, an intoxicating mix of high femme and the horrific.  Gyllenhaal smartly pulls these stylistic elements into her Bride!, as her revived Bride coughs up black bile that stains her lips in a perfect Cupid’s bow, with a chic and unnerving stain creeping up her high cheekbones. Gyllenhaal also borrows from Whale the inspired choice to have her lead actress play both the Monster’s Mate (as Lanchester was originally credited) and the author who birthed her, Mary Shelley. However, far from the prim, giggling lady presented in The Bride of Frankenstein, …

Jessie Buckley on Her Oscar-Tipped Turn in ‘Hamnet’ and ‘The Bride!’

Jessie Buckley on Her Oscar-Tipped Turn in ‘Hamnet’ and ‘The Bride!’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Jessie Buckley, this year’s best actress Oscar frontrunner for her portrayal of Agnes Shakespeare in Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet and the guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, is an Irish stage and screen actress who has been described by The Observer as “one of the most exciting actors of her generation,” by Vanity Fair as possessing “both dazzling charisma and a remarkable authenticity” and by The New York Times as having “a reputation for playing complicated roles with devastating power,” adding, “Few other actresses of her generation can gain access to such a wide spectrum of emotions, or seem as willing to risk being disliked for exploring the tougher ones.” Over just a decade on the big screen, Buckley, 36, has already given a host of memorable performances. She earned particular acclaim for her work in 2018’s Wild Rose, in which she played a Scottish ex-con who dreams of being a country music star, and for which she received a best actress BAFTA Award nomination; 2021’s The Lost Daughter, in which …