beauty and the beast

Ever wanted to know more about Gaston and LeFou?

When special effects do their job, they create an illusion so seamless we forget we’re looking at something that’s not really there. The Beast in Disney’s hit live-action retelling of Beauty and the Beast is such an impressive work of motion-capture technology that it can be easy to overlook the amount of effort, energy, and looking incredibly stupid in a giant gray unitard required to turn Dan Stevens into a feral creature.

Audiences don’t turn their back on family. That’s the lesson to be learned from this past weekend, anyways, when The Fate of the Furious proved that this is one franchise showing no signs of slowing down. It was never a question of whether The Fate of the Furious would take the top spot this weekend, but even the most optimistic of projections couldn’t have expected the global domination that this movie undertook. Here’s the box office estimates as of Sunday afternoon:

Welcome to the calm before the storm. With a handful of blockbuster movies already released, and more on the way, the second weekend in April was a relatively quiet affair, with a few old favorites dominating the weekend yet again and a few new releases grabbing whatever box office they could before things get fast and furious at your local multiplex. Let’s take a look at the projected grosses through Sunday afternoon.

Ariana Grande, John Legend, Emma Watson, a horned beast man and several sentient parts of a tea set star in the video for the cover duet.

Emma Watson’s continuing media blitz in promotion of the upcoming Beauty and the Beast remake found her on the cover of the latest issue of Total Film (h/t E! Online), where she spoke about the moral underpinnings of the movie and her character Belle. In one quote in particular Watson declared that the film’s heroine Belle makes for a better role model than fellow Disney princess Cinderella.

Despite volumes of scholarship from feminist theorists on its undertones of spousal abuse and insidious romanticizing of male brutality, Disney‘s Beauty and the Beast has remained a cherished childhood favorite worldwide. Kids love talking furniture, go figure. The live-action remake starring Emma Watson and an unrecognizable Dan Stevens is hot on the way to its March 17 release, and Disney has now released two new TV spots to further amp up the anticipation. In the first, embedded above, the Beast implores lovely Belle to “think of the one thing you’ve always wanted, and feel it in your heart.” We get a glimpse of the timeless ballroom-waltz scene, some barroom carousing from Gaston, and yet another look at the deeply unsettling character designs for Lumiere and Cogsworth.

I’d be hard-pressed to name a Disney villain I like as much as Beauty and the Beast’s Gaston. In addition to being a Sondheim-esque twist on the traditional idea of a fairy tale prince  —  vain, violent, and eager to confuse chivalry with misogyny  —  the character of Gaston has also become something of a method actor’s dream for Disney theme park employees. Remember the time that Gaston challenged a kid to a push-up contest? Or how about the time that Gaston got shouted down by a young girl? It turns out that no one goes viral like Gaston, either.

The trailer for the handsomely-mounted live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast surfaced on Tuesday, and drew strong reactions across the board. Many were taken with the first look at the Emma Watson/Dan Stevens romance, allowing themselves to be flooded with the same swooning emotion that Disney’s animated film conjured back in 1991. Some were less impressed, expressing low-level terror at the unnatural-looking designs for Mrs. Potts, Cogsworth, Lumiere, and the rest of the anthropomorphized household object gang. But regardless of overall reception, one thing is for certain: The Guardian notes that an unprecedented crap-ton of people accessed the trailer on YouTube, making 2017’s Beauty and the Beast the most-viewed-in-a-24-hour-period trailer of all time.

The previews have come out for the new live version of Beauty and the Beast.  This was one of my favorite cartoons as a kid so I'm excited to see the live-action version.  But which version is better?

The live-action remake of the fairy tale hits theaters in March 2017.

Earlier today, news broke that NBC could be next in line to issue early renewals to the series of its current line-up, with plenty of shows on the bubble for cancellation. CBS and FOX have already issued mayor renewals, along with The CW's pickups for 'Arrow,' 'The Vampire Diaries' and 'Supernatural,' but what other CW series are on the chopping block? And which might get truncated final season or