Le Journal

Democracy has fallen and the most evil forces in the galaxy have no checks on their virtually unlimited power. We’re talking, of course, about the new trailer for Maul — Shadow Lord, of which Disney shared a new teaser for today. The series will pick up where Star Wars: The Clone Wars left off, and Maul’s got one thing on his mind: revenge. “Times have changed. I will show you the galaxy for what it truly is. See things from a new perspective,” he intones as the trailer starts. Within the clip, Maul meets a “disillusioned Jedi Padawan” who apparently survived Order 66 and now has potential to be his new apprentice. Described as a “pulpy adventure,” Disney shares that the plot will otherwise focus on “Maul plotting to rebuild his criminal syndicate on a planet untouched by the Empire.” Untouched for how long, it’s hard to say—as Maul hears by the end of the trailer, “the Emperor wants you dead.” Dave Filoni, the mind behind Clones Wars, The Bad Batch, Rebels, and several other Star Wars series also created Maul — Shadow Lord. Sam Witwer, Gideon Adlon lead the voice cast along with the newly-minted Oscar nominee Wagner Moura. Maul — Shadow Lord will debut on Disney+ on April 6; two episodes will air each well until its conclusion on May 4.

En 1988, len URSS, le Chœur de Chambre d'État de Moscou dirigé par Vladimir Minine grave la Liturgie de Saint Jean Chrysostome de Rachmaninov. Composée en 1910, cette œuvre sacrée a cappella témoigne de l'attachement du compositeur russe aux souvenirs liturgiques de son enfance.

Sundance Film Festival is wrapping up its storied run in Park City, Utah, just a few months after founder and frequent festival emcee Robert Redford died. Sundance is bringing a chapter to a definitive close, preparing to start anew in Boulder, Colorado in 2027, perhaps becoming a less isolated and dense collision of indie film nerds, industry players, out-of-place marketeers, and unflappable skiers. But regardless of what that move brings, 2026’s festival offers a familiar selection of documentaries with dry descriptions, dramas from some of the smallest filmmaking communities in the world, and Hollywood talent striving to make their tiny film stand out amid the packed program. The A.V. Club‘s most anticipated movies of Sundance 2026 count bleeding-edge genre films and long-gestating lost films alike as we unearth the hidden gems among the 90 feature films that made the cut. While we’ll be covering Sundance 2026 from Chicago, publishing dispatches and features throughout the festival’s run from January 22 to February 1, we’ll still be watching as much as the poor parka-clad souls standing in line one last time in Utah. As the festival begins, our preview can help prepare prospective ticket-seekers for what’s in store, ranging from timely immigration documentaries, insightful artist biographies, searing Japanese delinquent dramas, and the greatest party of Black luminaries ever held. Barbara Forever Barbara Hammer’s prolific work already put her life front-and-center, and Brydie O’Connor’s documentary about the pioneering lesbian experimental filmmaker completes the referential cycle, making Barbara Forever into a visual biography run through with Hammer’s aesthetic and ideological fascinations. That means it’s very gay and very naked—body-based and poetic in its focus as opposed to the structural filmmakers that made up the majority of her avant garde contemporaries in the ’60s and ’70s. Her early projects feel like a filmed sexual awakening; her final films find beauty and energy in the end of life. With her spiky dandelion hair, addiction to cameras, and unrepentant openness (a prime example is her doing a version of Subway Takes decades and decades ago), Hammer offers something rare to a nonfiction filmmaker: An electrically watchable subject who was constantly documenting her own life. The resulting archival assemblage is therefore more than just her life story, but her life story viewed in a similar fashion as she perceived it, full of loving relationships, professional slights, artistic triumphs, and great sex. Big Girls Don’t Cry A charmingly contained Kiwi coming-of-age drama, Big Girls Don’t Cry sees writer-director Paloma Schneideman capture a moment on the cusp—a teen encountering her own queerness for the first time, exploring the shadier elements of the internet, and trying to grow up too fast. The posturing of puberty bleeds into the anonymity of being online—Sid (Ani Palmer, an excellent newcomer) plays at being one of the cool kids in person, while catfishing through instant messenger and Omegle. She’s got no real safety net, either. Her drunk single dad (Noah Taylor, perfectly scuzzy) is ill-equipped and her big sister brought a flirty exchange student home to stay with them. This small-scale collision drives Sid to some questionable decision-making, captured with an understated yet evocative style. Reminiscent of Cate Shortland’s Somersault and 2024’s Sundance charmer Dìdi, Big Girls Don’t Cry is both bittersweet and nostalgic, filled with memories that might dance around your mind as you lie awake at night. Burn A visually chaotic and inventive runaway saga smackdab in the Kabukicho red-light district in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Burn is like a nightmarish, Requiem For A Dream take on a side quest from the Yakuza games. Plenty of silly humor interrupts the harrowing story of the stuttering Ju-Ju (Nana Mori) and her gang of eccentric street kids, but writer-director Makoto Nagahisa fills Burn with bright, pink,…

Every Thursday, the Paste staff and contributors will choose their five favorite songs of the week, awarding one entry a “Song of the Week” designation. Check out last week’s roundup here. Song of the Week—Modern Woman: “Dashboard Mary” When Modern Woman’s Sophie Harris sings, you can feel it in your ribs. On “Dashboard Mary,” her voice moves like a sprung trap: taut with pressure, capable of sudden force, and brutal when it snaps. The song unfolds as a charged overnight vignette—age gaps, bad decisions, long drives, the queasy silence of the morning after—rendered with a novelist’s eye for detail and restraint: “She thought that he was regretting, cos his hands on the wheel were blue / If the boy at home had woken and if the Dashboard Mary knew.” The instrumentation thrives on tension and contradiction, gliding between hush and abrasion as violin, saxophone, and rhythm section pull against one another—at least until the song’s final stretch, which is all riotous distortion. Nothing here is smoothed over or moralized; the thrill curdles, the momentum keeps going, and the picture never quite resolves. It’s an utterly gorgeous and brilliantly structured track, possibly one of my favorites of the year thus far (granted, it’s only mid-January, but still). Modern Woman’s debut record, Johnny Dreamworld, is set to release this May, and believe you me, I’m already lining up to hear it. —Casey Epstein-Gross Joshua Chuquimia Crampton: “Ch’uwanchaña 〜El Golpe Final〜” A year ago, Joshua Chuquimia Crampton and his sibling Chuquimamani-Condori made a masterpiece together: the psychedelic, structureless Los Thuthanaka. Now Crampton’s first solo full-length since 2024’s Estrella Por Estrella is coming next month. Anata is dedicated to the Andean ceremony of the same name, “where we celebrate the Pachamama (Mother Earth) before the rainy season, giving thanks for harvest with offerings & the principle of reciprocity (Anyi) between humans/nature,” according to the liner notes. Crampton has totally redefined the compositional possibilities of guitar playing, and the elaborate “Ch’uwanchaña 〜El Golpe Final〜” is shredded noise captured in trance-y loops and crushing ascending lines. Surges of metal guitar couple with the acoustic backings of charango and ronroco into an overwhelming spate of texture. It’s blown apart and obscured, analogous to YouTube clips of Andean ceremonies where the audio’s bottomed out. The energy of “Ch’uwanchaña 〜El Golpe Final〜” takes me to a different place. It’s not magic but a creative experiment—an explosive, suspended tribute. —Matt Mitchell Mitski: “Where’s My Phone?” Everybody wants to figure Mitski out but nobody can. In the wake of her 2018 breakthrough Be the Cowboy (long before she landed a Billboard Hot 100 spot with “My Love Mine All Mine”), she gave management the keys to socials and has since maintained an enigmatic distance from her adoring audiences who’ve turned her into a patron saint of sad girls (a role which she has vehemently rejected). On the lead single for her eighth album, she’s fighting fruitlessly to de-clutter her mind—jangly guitars and dusty distortion crowding its corners, fogging up the “clear glass” every time she tries to wipe it clean. Mitski plays the in-between Mother to a Maiden and Crone, rounding out the Hecate trio in a music video that lands somewhere between The Haunting of Hill House and Grey Gardens. Following a wordless bridge of backing vocals and a rising tide of strings, Mitski returns to ask once again, “Where did it go?” Over a decade into her strange and unparalleled rise through the ranks of (and beyond) indie fame, it’s a joy to see Mitski revel in meta-madness once again. —Grace Robins-Somerville OHYUNG: “all dolls go to heaven” Between the exquisite You Are Always On My Mind and the delicate dressings of her Sorry, Baby score, OHYUNG was my most important artist of 2025. Lia Ouyang Rusli makes sounds that have stayed so wonderfully present in my body, and…

La jeune compositrice Anne Castex a composé pour le trio KDM en 2024, une suite qui s'inspire des figures d'un jeu de cartes pour suggérer en musique des relations entre les classes d'une société.