Okja

Netflix is the future, that much seems beyond debate, but the shape of that future remains very much in flux. The video-streaming giant recently generated some friction with the Cannes Film Festival over the negotiation between theatrical runs and online releasing, a mini-controversy resolved with the edict that Netflix would have to set plans to get their movies into theaters if they want to be included at Cannes moving forward. 2017’s shaping up to be a pivotal year for Netflix, as they prepare to debut more high-profile films than ever and continuously hash out a strategy for best doing that.

The calendar may have four seasons, but Hollywood’s calendar only really has two at this point: summer and awards, and summer seems to last longer and longer ever year. Though the start of May has long been the unofficial kickoff of the S.M.S., 2017 has already seen a King Kong movie, a ghost in a shell, and the fate of Fast & Furious franchise. The change from April to May is something of a formality in 2017. Once the Oscars are over, the summer begins.

We won’t have confirmation until it premieres in Competition at Cannes next month, but from where the general public is currently standing, it sure looks like Tilda Swinton owns Okja. She was rocking a ferocious bob wig in the earliest press photos, a later still revealed the force of pure magnificence known as Braces Tilda, and now a newly-released promo video reveals that she’ll get a chance to show off her bone-dry comic timing in the latest feature from Bong Joon-ho as well. (Though the braces are conspicuously absent in this new teaser. Whence Braces Tilda?!)

With two high-profile films premiering at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Netflix is hard at work proving to filmmakers and financiers alike that it deserves to be taken seriously as both a commercial and artistic distribution platform. And while fans might be excited to watch Bong Joon-Ho’s Okja or Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories from the comfort of their own home, Netflix’s success may have run afoul of French law, putting its relationship with both the film festival and the entire French marketplace in a precarious position.

Good morning! Chances are that you’re just getting up and at ’em now, but a few time zones ahead in sunny France, the film industry has had a busy day. This morning saw the official announcement of the Cannes Film Festival’s class of 2017, with the full Competition and Un Certain Regard slates announced by head honcho Thierry Frémaux in a live press conference in the wee small hours of this morning. As ever, the Competition lineup (the most prestigious program in the world’s most prestigious film festival) boasts a deep roster of cinema’s most respected auteurs, ready to pull back the curtain on some tantalizing-sounding new projects. But let’s not talk around the real news here: Adam Sandler’s going to Cannes, baby.

I come bearing good news for all readers currently struggling to pull themselves out of the weekly Monday-morning existential spiral of perspective — what am I doing here, will this all amount to anything, what’s left, etc. etc. Those questioning the purpose of their labors here on Earth can take some small solace in a new report on Bong Joon-ho’s impending follow-up to Snowpiercer, the left-of-center creature feature titled Okja. In the period of grave self-doubt that begins every work week, it can be helpful to pin your hopes and sense of personal meaning on something greater than yourself. So, without further ado, to those feeling lost in the world and perhaps in need of a new god, I give you: BRACES TILDA.

At the risk of editorializing: Bong Joon-ho rules. The South Korean filmmaker has made a name for himself as a master of off-kilter takes on well-worn genres, most recently transforming the post-apocalyptic action flick into an intricately designed work of Communist agitprop with Snowpiercer. He took on the cop procedural with Memories of Murder, but his most beloved work may be the 2006 creature-feature The Host, in which a shaggy river monster terrorizes the citizens of Seoul. His newest feature will see him returning to the grandly ignoble tradition of movies about supernatural beasties, and with the first trailer having recently surfaced online, we’ve gotten a fleeting look at this lovable freak of nature.

2016 is almost over! Hallelujah! With everything that’s happened in the last 12 months, we can’t wait to rip the last page of our 2016 Spider-Man wall calendar and hang up our 2017 Spider-Man wall calendar.

2016 saw one of South Korea’s finest filmmakers resurface with a stone-cold masterpiece, as Oldboy and Stoker director Park Chan-wook demolished audiences at Cannes with his beguiling erotic drama The Handmaiden. In 2017, another one of South Korea’s proudest filmmaking sons will make a grand return, as Bong Joon-ho prepares to unveil his latest feature Okja. A master of blackly humorous genre work (the guy never met a B-movie he couldn’t make into high art), Bong last appeared on American shores in 2014 with Snowpiercer, his first foray into English-language filmmaking. To employ a critical parlance, it ruled, and with the first photos from Okja now trickling out in advance of its debut next year, we have every reason to believe Bong’s latest will rule just as hard.

Netflix just keeps getting bigger and more ambitious.