The Founder
Director: John Lee Hancock
Screenwriter: Robert D. Siegel
Cast: Michael Keaton, Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch, Linda Cardellini, Patrick Wilson, B.J. Novak, Laura Dern
Distributor: The Weinstein Company
Rated PG-13 | 115 Minutes
Release Date: January 20, 2017

McDonald’s is about as American as apple pie, and they serve apple pie, so it goes full circle. But like any good organization, there is a history behind it. So in John Lee Hancock‘s The Founder, this is the history of how Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) turned himself from a small town milkshake salesman into the multi-million dollar owner of McDonald’s. But this is no ordinary story of a nobody turning himself into something than just a somebody, it is a story of how Kroc did it, which consisted of backdoor deals and underhanded tactics that ripped a beloved restaurant from two humble brothers. Check out my full review of the film below.

Saving Mr. Banks
Director: John Lee Hancock
Writers: Kelly Marcel, Sue Smith
Cast: Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti, Jason Schwartzman, Bradley Whitford, Colin Farrell, B.J. Novak
Walt Disney Pictures
Rated PG-13 | 125 Minutes
Release Date: December 20, 2013

Directed by John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side), Saving Mr. Banks centers on the life of Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), shifting between 1907 with her childhood in Queensland, Australia, the 1961 negotiations with Walt Disney (Tom Hanks), and the subsequent making of Mary Poppins.

While in California for filming, Travers has flashbacks to her difficult childhood in Australia with her sweet but self-destructive father (Colin Farrell), the inspiration for her story’s patriarch, Mr. Banks.

Some film critics, like the immortal Leonard Maltin, have called Saving Mr. Banks “a charming and heartwarming piece of entertainment, highlighted by a handful of superior performances.” I, on the other hand, would call it a nauseating, sentimental piece of corporate propaganda about an anti-Semite and a very British – and very bitchy – author who may or may not be a crazy person.

Richard Sherman played a ton of his legendary Disney songs during the D23 Expo in Anaheim, CA this weekend. Here are some video highlights of the major Disney occasion, drawing thousands of attendees and encouraging even more memories.

Richard Sherman 1960’s film medley

Check out this video that shares snippets of 1960’s favorites from features like The Jungle Book, Winnie the Pooh, and The Parent Trap.

Saving Mr. Banks marks the debut of a Disney film where its founder, Walt Disney, is depicted as a character, and attendees at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, CA, yesterday were among the first to watch scenes from the feature.

Jason Schwartzman and B.J. Novak, who play Richard and Robert Sherman, respectively, the brothers who wrote the songs to Mary Poppins, appeared at the Expo to share memories and footage.

The first scene showed Emma Thompson‘s P.L. Travers, the woman who wrote the book later adapted into the Mary Poppins film we all love, arriving at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, circa 1961.

The first trailer for Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks, which sees the great Tom Hanks becoming the man behind the mouse, Walt Disney, has been released online.

The movie tells the story of Disney’s often futile efforts to obtain the rights to make a movie based on the P.L. Travers (played by Emma Thompson) book Mary Poppins. Disney promised his daughters he would make the movie, but did not anticipate Travers’ strict refusal to allow her work to be transferred to the silver screen.

You can read a full description of Saving Mr. Banks and check out the first trailer for the movie below now!