#I WANTED a faithful adaption of the books Andy! and as much as you say you did you did not give me that!!!!

[frog-whisperer]

Can’t sleep thinking about how irrationally angry Andy Serkis’s Jungle Book made me

[wickedpact]

heres a transcript of that gina & greg interview i mentioned yesterday. literally nothing new is in this, but theres a lot of info in this that was scattered in varying interviews/podcasts and i like having all of it in one place for future reference purposes

(link to vid)

Patrick: Hey everybody, this is Patrick Cavanaugh from comicbook.com here to bring you a very special conversation about Netflix's The Old Guard, which just debuted last week, and everybody has seen it-- I believe people have seen it by now, so that's very exciting. And to dive deep into this film, we're actually very lucky to have the film's director Gina Prince-Bythewood, who also directed Love And Basketball and Beyond The Lights here. Hello, Gina.

Gina: Hey.

P: And we're also joined by the film's writer, as well as the writer of the original comic book series, The Old Guard. Also, you might know him from his DC Comics work, Batwoman, and Lazarus, to name a few of his titles. We have Greg Rucka! Hello, Greg.

Greg: Hello!

P: So this film just first debuted last week, and I know you guys have been inundated with fans, just loving it. And let's just get to what fans want to know, right off the bat; I'm sure you're getting daily questions about this because there's so much for an expanded universe. So let's set the record straight: will there be a Tiger King crossover?

[everyone laughs]

Greg: Uh, we're planning an animated series with giant Mech suits, and, unbeknownst to a certain franchise, we're going to crossover with Transformers and-- no. Come on. [laughs]

P: Okay, alright, we’ll hold onto that big crossover stuff. And I know Netflix, of course, hasn’t fully announced what the future might be for Old Guard, but I'm just kind of curious if you guys have had any recent conversations about what you'd like to do in the future—theoretical, nothing concrete, of course. But since the film has come out and you've seen fan feedback…?

Gina: I will just say, obviously, it's an incredible compliment that people want to see more. It means we did our job in this. It was very important that this film has a beginning middle and end. We wanted to focus on this.

Greg: Yeah.

Gina: And get it right. Having people want more is an incredible gift and I would say those conversations were really… Greg and I, early on in talking through the story... knowing Greg knows where this thing goes --and it's pretty incredible-- helped me in terms of directing this one. So I will say we've had those conversations early on.

Greg: Yeah Gina’s absolutely right. One of the things that I'm really-- one of the many things I am proud of is that the movie is a whole, you certainly leave it going ‘okay, there could be more, I can see how there is more’. But it is a complete work. It is not contingent and does not need anything else. That said, there were plenty of times we were having conversations and would jokingly be like, ‘oh that'll be in the next one, we'll do that in the next one. We had to cut this so we’ll put it in the next one’.

P: I'm sure people would be very thrilled, as would I. So we’ll try to remain patient since it's only been out a week--

Greg: I think that's reasonable.

P: [sarcastic] I mean, fans are nothing but reasonable--

Greg: [very loud laughter] You know what 'fan' is short for right? Fanatic.

P: [laughs] So Greg, I'm curious. You know, since this is a pretty unique situation where you wrote the original books but then also came to write the script-- which doesn't always happen all that often. I was kind of curious what that process was like and if, when revisiting that core story, if you were tempted to kind of go off into a new directions, you know, uncharted territory? And how you managed to stay faithful to that story.

Greg: So when Skydance initially acquired The Old Guard, Matt Grimm and Don Granger were the guys that I was working with. And they were very clear that they had acquired it because they loved the source material. So when I was doing the adaptation, it was ‘adapt this story to be told in a screen format, there are changes that have to be made’. I didn't see it so much as like ‘I can go in a different direction!’ as ‘it's a really rare opportunity to have a second bite at the apple’. Most writers don't get to tell the same story twice. And even with the collaborative nature of comics, making a movie is far more collaborative. So… being able to benefit from a lot of very smart people-- and then when Gina came aboard, and working very closely with her on the screenplay, you know, taking her notes, and talking at length about it was… I mean, I love the comic we made, I'm very proud of it. But I think this is a superior story. Because it allowed me to fix mistakes I had made. And I think that it certainly works as the film that we wanted it to be, but it has a lot more nuance and a lot more ‘shading’ than the comics ever could have had. So yeah, I mean, I'm very proud of the work we've done.

P: Yeah, as you should be, definitely agree with that. And I know, Gina, you've spoken about how you treated the source material essentially as a Bible as the blueprint for adapting the movie. So a question kind of for both of you, I was curious what scene or sequence were you most excited to bring to life? And then what scene were you most apprehensive about whether or not you could pull it off as faithful to that original?

Gina: For me, I mean, there was there were certainly a couple... Joe and Nicky in the van.

Greg: [nodding] Yeah.

Gina: Such a beautiful moment in the comic. And I wanted to get it right. I knew the actors really wanted to get it right. As soon as we started shooting, I was like, 'oh yeah, they're killing it'. Also Booker in the mine, the speech that he gives to Nile, it's everything to his character. It explains both Booker and Andy; where they are, and why they are the way that they are in that moment of time. And I know that as a director, I saw a perfect take. But going into those, you hope that, ‘am I able to evoke what I need to evoke in the audience?’ I think that the hardest really was the Kill Floor, given how iconic it is in the comic. It's just so beautifully drawn by Leandro, it pops off the page. So ‘how am I going to be able to do the same thing on film?’ But it really kind of boiled down to ‘what is the story [of the scene]’ and really focus on that first, but also wanting to really give a bit of a homage to what Leandro did too, which was my use of silhouette throughout it.

Greg: Yeah, I think that… Gina just listed all of the scenes. I mean, I wanted to see the armored car, that was enormously rewarding for me… I couldn't wait to see the killing room floor... You know, when we talk about moments of adaptation, I actually —and I thought this was really well handled in the movie in particular— Nile’s death wasn't wasn't easy in the comic, because it needed to have heart. You know, Kiki's performance and the way it's shot is just, it's phenomenal.

P: And obviously you can't really talk about this movie, which is this big action-fantasy movie, without talking about that scene between Joe and Nicky. I'm curious what both of your reactions have been to seeing that moment hit so hard with so many fans.

Greg: I'm overjoyed that we're able to give that to so many people. I am also frustrated that it's so overdue. While I don't think that either Gina or I felt that this was… It was important and special because it was important and special between these characters. But, you know, I mean I’m in that place where I recognize why we are getting the response that we are, and, I'm frustrated by the fact that it's 2020. And… apparently we're the first people to have done this? And you can say that about a lot of the reactions, you can say that about the reactions to Kiki's Nile. You can say that about reactions about Charlize portraying Andy. There’s a piece of me that's like ‘guys, we didn't invent the wheel here. All we did was show you, THERE’S A WHEEL HERE!’. So.

P: Yeah, it's interesting and it is frustrating that it is 2020 and we have to refer to this as an anomaly. That this is not the norm, that as you said, this is we're showing people that the wheel exists. And so Gina, you know, between having a film with two powered, seemingly super-powered characters, in a comic book adaptation, which is largely been devoid of such characters. [I think he meant to say female powered characters?] and being a black woman, directing a comic book adaptation— again, something in 2020 that we have to treat as a shocking revelation— I was curious, if you felt any sort of pressure about that on set, or if it was like just a confidence in the material, and support from your collaborators, that it wasn't even an issue?

Gina: Um, are you talking about the scene-?

P: Just the project as a whole.

Gina: There was a reason I took this film, because it moved me. It has to start there. There's all these things; I love putting a black female in the world, I love putting Nicky and Joe in the world, I love putting Joe’s character in the world. Those are all such incredible driving forces. But foremost, I have to feel and care about the characters in the story. And I did. And so, for me, it felt... I mean I was honored to be able to be the one to give these characters a life up on screen... or in that big screen in your living room. There's, of course, enormous pressure. Not only just doing a film, like the bigness of it. Certainly me being a woman, me being a black woman, and doing this when nobody has done it before… It's about proving myself and proving that women like me can do this, that we do like action, that we can shoot action… Just changing that narrative. So there's pressure to get it right and do a good job, but I feed off of that. It made me work harder because I felt like I absolutely had a responsibility to get it right.

P: And we've talked about Kiki a few times as Nile, of course. And Gina, I know you said it was within five seconds of meeting her that you knew she was the right one to play Nile. I was curious, how did the rest of the casting process go? Did everybody get hired that easily? Or was it a harder search to round out the ensemble?

Greg: Yes. I’m curious too!

Gina: You know, I knew going into this that I wanted great actors for every role and it's pretty amazing how many of my first choices are in this film. I mean Matthias Schoenaerts who plays Booker is an incredible actor and I knew I wanted him from the get-go. We were told he doesn't do films like this, but he wanted to meet, which was the first thing, like, ‘oh my gosh it’s on me, don't blow this meeting’ and he said again to my face, ‘I don't do these movies, but I love this movie’ and he loved the character Booker. And after that conversation and hearing my vision, he was in, which was amazing. Marwan Kenzari, I saw him in this independent film called Wolf—

Greg: Yeahhhhhh.

Gina: Phenomenal. And he was supposed to read for the part. We had a meeting over FaceTime. Then, Zoom was not what it is now. And it was such an incredible meeting. He was so passionate about the material. So passionate about the character Joe. So passionate about wanting to give that speech. His energy… I just said 'you don't need to read, like, you're Joe'. Luca Marinelli, who plays Nicky, I saw his audition. He has this depth to him, those eyes.. where you just, you felt everything, you felt his soul. But I needed to do a chemistry reading, as I would with any love story. And so, we flew him in to read with Marwan. They did this incredible improv, and it was so obvious that these two were Joe and Nicky. It was a really beautiful moment as a director to just… know, and I was so excited to show everybody what they had. It leapt off the screen, their connection; they’d never met before but, immediate connection. Chiwetel Ejiofor, I mean… [awed silence]

Greg: Chiwetel... yeah.

Gina: Yeah. To hear that he wanted to be in this and work with me on this, I didn't need anything else at that point. He's truly a genius. Charlize, you know, there are very few women who can work in the space and we believe them. And that's the thing about her work, and her action, we believe her. And we needed that for Andy. And of course she's a great actress, so it was, you know, that was kind of a no-brainer. So, lastly Harry Melling, you know our villain. It's funny, Don Granger, at Skydance, says you've done a good job with your villain if the audience wants to punch him in the face. Harry brought that reality of those templates of Mark Zuckerberg and Martin Shkreli and really rocked it.

Greg: I had, you know, I'm the screenwriter, right? And I am pretty much involved in the production at the director’s sufferance, and Gina was so gracious to want me present-- and more than that, want me present and say things, right? As opposed to ‘stand here and be quiet’, but I remember when Kiki… when they knew they wanted Kiki, like in that window before all the paperwork was done and so on. Throughout most of the casting I wasn't hearing a lot from Gina, just the occasional update. Like ‘I think we've got…’ and then the Kiki audition came in, and Gina, you called me, Granger texted me, Grimm texted me. And it was all the same thing. It was all ‘we have found Nile, oh my god, there were these two scenes and she had us howling in one and weeping in the other and she is perfect’. And the exuberant joy, you know, I remember you on that call being like ‘NO, THIS IS HER!!’. It's like, this is gonna be awesome.

P: So, and to open things up a little bit more to the actual mythology of the film and the comic book series, I think one of the coolest things is that this film doesn't entirely explore is why these characters come back to life? But we also don't entirely need to know that to just… witness this slice of time in their journey. So I'm kind of curious, maybe Greg you have more insight on this, but I'm curious if either of you have those ideas in your head of what the root of this, you know, blessing or curse, the curse of immortality? Or is that just stuff that's entirely irrelevant to this journey?

Greg: I think it's irrelevant… to the journey of the first film. That the story is a self-contained story and you don't need to know why they are immortal. And I think that the film actually does tell you, not specifically, but the film does provide you with enough information to allow you to draw certain conclusions. Because there are really a limited number of ways that they're going to get this way, right? We do not, for instance, see Nile fall into a vat of regeneration juice, right? That's not why Nile comes back. There is a mythology. We know the mythology. We know the why and that's for later. Yes, maybe it will become relevant to the story, but for this story that was told as it was told? No, you don't need to know why.

Gina: The striking thing, when I read the script for the first time was I didn't… I didn't care. Like, I didn't need it. And that surprised me because I know Greg had talked about another company who was interested in the project [Gina doesn’t say, but it was Sony lmao] kept asking ‘you have to tell us why though, in this story, an audience needs to know why’. He was absolutely right [for disagreeing with Sony]. Because I didn't need to know why.

Greg: It's the Rian Johnson School of, you know, it's Looper. ‘We can spend two hours talking about time travel or you can accept that we're in time travel. Which is it going to be?’ And I think that that is one of the most brilliant storytelling decisions made in the last 20 years in film! Literally 'here it is—DOESN’T MATTER, MOVING ON!’ you know.

P: Yeah. It's definitely a bold direction to take. And to have an issue with 'oh, well, we never learn [about the] immortality!' proves that you just miss the point of what the movie is, and that that stuff is kind of irrelevant for right now. Although I do kind of hope that because it's on Netflix someone's expecting like a post credit scene, but it's the autoplay feature, right? [Greg and Patrick talk over eachother, laughing]

Greg: We did talk about that button as a post-credit scene, the Booker [scene]—

Gina: That was originally supposed to be a tag.

Greg: And there was, for a while, the contemplation of ‘maybe we can still [put the Booker scene in as a post-credit scene] and really that'll be like a great big reward for those people who actually watch credits on Netflix. It’s like, you got a bonus scene!’

P: So another, you know, people are loving the characters, they're loving the performances, but also the action is so cool in it, and it feels reminiscent of some other films. But the urgency and efficiency of all of the action sequences always feel like they have a point, and they're not just ‘look what we can pull off this week!’ You know, it's not John Wick on a horse fighting motorcycles because we don't need to do that. It's, you know, always to a point. So I'm kind of curious Greg, what does an action scene look like in your script? And then Gina, what was your whole motivation for putting these action scenes together?

Greg: I had two approaches in this script and used both. Sometimes I would write the sequence as you know, as a series-- this is what is happening, ‘he swings and then his head goes flying’ or whatnot. But knowing very well that unless the script needed to see-- because the script has to specify what is a must. It's a must. It's a must document. ‘We must see this’. ‘We must know this information’. So for a lot of the time, I would sort of drop into a narrative voice and say, ‘okay, now we watch the five of them proceeded to kick every ass and take every name that they come across and please bear in mind you are watching over 10,000 years of combat experience, combined between them’. And then that's the description of an action sequence, right? The screenplay… it's a construction document. It's not the interior decorator’s document. It's not even the Foreman's document. It's an architectural document. And then you give it to the Foreman of the whole production, who then goes, ‘I agree, these are the important things’, and then you get out of their way and watch them do the thing that they have, you know, become an expert at doing to make it happen.

P: Gina, what's your reaction when you read Greg’s script saying, ‘oh, you know, just five immortal warriors demonstrating 10,000 years of combat experience’?

Gina: It's like ‘oh shit’. [everyone laughs] Like that's a very cool thing to read—

Greg: But how do you film it?

Gina: Yeah, exactly! Then you start at the beginning of the scene and 'what character can we reveal in the scene'? And when you start like that, it's less overwhelming. Because the best action sequences for me, when I go to the movies, are those that have a story to them and that are character driven, that have an emotion. So I really started there in the vision of what they should be and just working with my incredible, incredible stunt team, Jeff Habberstad and Danny Hernandez and Bryson Counts[? I dont know who that is]. Designing these fights to tell this story, to showcase this part of character, to further the story. And that was important as well, that we never wanted this film to feel like… rushing through the story to get to each action sequence. All of this works seamlessly. The quiet moments are just as important as the action moments. And so that was exciting to me. But being able to tell the story, reveal character, that was fun. And then it's ‘yeah, how do we choreograph so it feels as if these characters finish each other sentences, so to speak, in terms of action, knowing where the other is going to be, knowing when somebody's out of bullets and need another clip?' Like all those things, the way that they're always picking up used guns and used clips, just this dance. And it was very cool, you know, to really put that together and see what the team came up with. And then to see the actors embody that, bring character, bring performance to that. Which is why it was so great that I had the actual actors doing most of the work, so that we can see that performance.

Greg: I think you used a word that I think clearly came from what Gina’s describing and talking about with working with Danny and Jeff and Bryson. Which is 'efficient'. Like, if you watch the film, you will see that there is only one sequence where Andy is ever firing more than twice, and it is on the killing room floor. After that, whenever she fires a gun, it's one bullet. It goes exactly where she wants it to go. Everything she does becomes an issue of ‘her style is efficiency—‘

Gina: Yeah, that was a big—‘brutal efficiency’ is a term we talked about often, where they know a kill shot. They are not the type that are going to go in an environment and spray. It's lazy and not who they are. They are not going to ever hit someone by accident. They are too good. And their moral code is not like an ordinary For Hire who are just trying to get the target by any means necessary.

P: Yeah, and also speaking to what I feel set these action sequences apart from other action films is, we're used to, you know, like thumping techno or hard rock or something kick in. You know, I don't think anyone had like, you know, Frank Ocean being in an action film on Netflix on their 2020 Bingo cards. So I'm just kind of curious how you put that soundtrack together and what that process was like.

Gina: Yeah. I love music so much. It's so much a part of me as an artist. And for me, I love songs for scores, songs that can evoke an emotion, and elevate a scene or the emotion of a scene without taking it over. And music for this film was so important, to the tone. It was such a balance. This is a violent film, yet I never wanted it to feel like a celebration of violence. The fact that there was a cost to the killing and then motion to the killing. So always wanted to keep that in mind-- and music really helped with that. There's also a thing of, you know, I'm the first audience and I actually don't like heavy metal. So, it annoys me when I watch a movie and it's this non-stop thump. In the rectory —spoiler alert— when Andy kills 19 people, the music I chose was important because it took away the sting of that. I didn't want an audience to revel in ‘oh my God, she killed 19 people’. No, it was ‘she killed 19 people and you see on her face that this was not fun, this was not easy’. You see that on Nile’s face when she walks out, and the music helped that. I wanted the music to feel operatic, because what happened in that room did have that depth of emotion, so music again— so important for vibe and tone and it was fun to find these songs that could do exactly what I wanted them to do.

P: Greg, the narrative is definitely very faithful to the first two Old Guard series and, you know, blends together in this compelling and unique way… Just as a —you know, we are comicbook.com— so coming from the purest sense of interpreting the narrative... [Greg laughs] like there's definitely the flashback with Achilles from the comic book, and then also the flashback to Booker's hanging scene. Those are our absent from the film. And I was just curious if those were ever in the script or if you want to rework them for the future…?

Greg: No, I mean we also had, in the original series, the flashback that sort of accounts the Joe and Nicky, ‘we killed each other’, ‘many times’ sequence as well. There were drafts where all of that was there. And sometimes in greater detail than others. There was a version where that hospital scene— [in the movie] you get just the right amount of… when Booker's relaying it to Nile in the mine. But, you know, there was more to that, and you can see sort of Achilles' story’s presence in the mine, right? There's a glimpse of the painting. So those things weren't erased as much as… when you make a comic, every choice you are making is an efficiency choice. ‘You have X many pages, how are you going to spend them?’ And I'm not a filmmaker. I'm the guy who wrote the thing. But one of the things I can tell you when watching is that it's the same calculus but exponentially. It is— every single thing you are doing is asking if it's serving your narrative. And I think the trade —because it is a trade— of the Achilles backstory to build the Quynh story has a benefit that the Achilles story alone didn't have, in that the Quynh story —especially as it's relayed in the movie— not only does it illuminate Joe, Nicky, Booker, and of course Andy, but it's also Illuminating to Nile, in a way that… talking about Achilles would have been repeating a beat. Because as beautiful, and as important, Achilles is to Andy's character… Booker conveys that heartbreak with his story, right? So it becomes an efficiency question as much as anything else. I mean, that that's really what it comes down to.

P: Speaking to some of the changes again, I don't want to get to spoiler heavy but there's definitely a big change with one character and their possible fate. Don't want to ruin anything for anyone, so trying to play it safe.

Greg: [laughing] Yeah, how are we supposed to answer this, Patrick?

P: Why don't we just text each other? [everyone laughs] Well, I'm kind of curious. One character's trajectory has changed a little bit. What were the discussions like over, you know, altering their trajectory and what that could mean, you know, for their future adventures?

Greg: Well, how do we talk around this?

P: Also, if anyone's been watching this for 40 minutes and hasn't seen the movie, they've got to adjust their priorities.

Gina: I would say, it was about adding more jeopardy and stakes. It absolutely did that. What I love so much about the story and what Greg created is that these characters are mostly immortal. So there is always that threat. But it just added another level to that. But it also crystallized so well… the fact that the moment that Andy is truly saying ‘I'm done’ a new Immortal shows up in Nile. So it just seemed to work really well and, you know, obviously having Greg be so on board with that and take it and run with it was really important.

Greg: It externalizes the conflict beautifully. And I believe I think David Ellison at Skydance likes the term downward pressure, I believe. [Gina smiles, Greg sees] Did you hear that? Did you hear that during editing? [Gina nods] But it does. Look, here's a fundamental problem; it's actually one of the problems at the heart of Force Multiplied: what's jeopardy to an immortal? Cuz it's kind of, you know, as Joe says, ‘what are you gonna do, tough guy? Kill me?’ You know, ‘if I go, I go. I don't know when I'm going’. So you you need to be able to inject into the story some level of jeopardy. You want to heighten the stakes. And it also externalizes that particular character’s conflict.

P: Gina, hopefully I don't put you too much on the spot with this question. But, you know, any time there's a big comic book project announced its, you know, fans start saying, oh, I'd love this person who's done action movies to do it’ or ‘this person who’s already done 10 Sci-Fi movies…’, you know, like Taika Waititi can't direct every movie.

Gina: I would love him to!

P: I'm just actually kind of curious, Gina, if there are any directors that you're particularly a fan of who don't necessarily have the same, you know, Marvel DC, Star Wars experience that that you'd love to hear get announced as tackling, you know, a big budget comic book movie.

Greg: I would like to know too.

Gina: Certainly, I'm excited about what Victoria Mahoney's going to be doing-- she just did second unit [director] on Star Wars, first woman to ever do that. I dig her brain so much and her aesthetic. I'm really excited to see what she's going to do in the action space, certainly.

P: Yeah, very cool. Really looking forward to her career for sure. And I think we're just about out of time here. We were down—

Gina: [raising her hand] Can I ask a question real quick? Sorry, I just need a definitive answer on this because I got called out on Twitter and I asked Greg--

Greg: [laughing] Ohhhhhhh—

Gina: So is Old Guard, is it a graphic novel? Or is it a comic?

Greg: You got to answer that Patrick.

P: Oh boy.

Greg: [laughing] Literally he's watching all credibility start to evaporate if he doesn't get this right. [holding up a comic of Opening Fire] This is a what?

P: I mean… part of me, knowing that it is part one of a three-part overall series… You know, my brain goes to ‘trade paperback’, you know, like it's a volume collecting a certain amount of issues. But if you ask me before volume 2 came out, it would be collected as a graphic novel, but… they're all comic books. They're all just comic books, everybody. Let's just take it easy.

Gina: Okay, thank you.

P: That's my answer.

Greg: Thank you. Thank you. I think that is the appropriate answer.

P: They're all just comic books. Take it easy.

P: Yeah, but I am curious. Of course, one of the interesting things about the film is that over the course of hundreds… thousands of years, these characters, the old guard have kind of influenced humanity in some definitely interesting ways… And ultimately for good, is a little bit of what we're seeing in the film. And I can't help but wonder… is it possible that the old guard could have unintentionally influenced the world for bad? And have some negative ripples come from their actions, or do I have to wait for a sequel for that?

Greg: I think that is a very reasonable and logical question to ask, especially when you know, there are 19 dead bodies lying in a church. You know what I mean? There is a certain amount— and it's almost fatuous to talk about it but there is always the doctrine of unintended consequences. I will say this goes to something else— and I'll say it really quickly because I know we're running out of time. I think one of the things that I really, really loved about what's being said, in the movie, is that at the end of the film… The definitive statement is, if you take away everything about immortality, what it's saying is that… our choices matter and our actions matter and they matter in ways and to people that we will never see and never know of. We try to put right in the world by doing right. And we do that without ever seeing what the ramifications of it are. And sometimes we're going to succeed, gloriously, and sometimes we're going to fail and we may never know that either, right? It's the choice paralysis that that you get from cheating in The Good Place, right? I can't eat or drink or move because morally it's all wrong, right? But the takeaway from the film is that, ‘yeah, your life matters and what you do with it matters and it matters to people that you're never ever going to see.’

P: So yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's a great positive, you know, message for us to leave on. And I definitely think that comes across in the film, especially, you know, from the characters like Joe and Nicky just professing… you know, it's about the time that you have. And you don't know when your number is going to be up. So you just try and do as many good things before that happens as you can, and hopefully the world responds to that. So I really connected with that message in the film. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me. The Old Guard has been out for… five days. So I look forward to reuniting--

Greg: Does it feel longer to you. Gina? It feels like it's longer for me. [Gina laughs]

P: I look forward to reuniting in maybe 10 more days to talk about the sequel and spin-off and the prequel and all that sort of thing. [Greg laughs] But for now, The Old Guard is still on Netflix. And of course don't be tricked into watching any post-credit scenes because you might end up watching, you know, The Great British Bake Off. Well, thanks so much guys, it was a pleasure.

[maxwell-grant]

OK, so what adaptations of The Shadow DO you like?

I actually like several of the adaptations! 

Obviously, I love the radio show and in a lot of ways it’s arguably just as integral to the character by this point as the pulps, maybe more so. Not better, not even close, but it’s got a lot of charms and definitely shouldn’t be ignored. 

To be more specific regarding the other adaptations:

I actually love the movie! Of course it’s got a ton of issues and ended up having a bad influence on a lot of Shadow adaptations, of course it could have been better (could have also been much worse too, as Will Murray once pointed out, there were a lot of awful scripts that got passed around before they settled). But to sum it my thoughts on it: once I stopped lamenting what the movie could have been, and focused more on what it is, I find myself enjoying it quite a bit. It’s a pretty fun experience. The character looks on point even if the nose kinda looks like a potato glued to his face. Alec Baldwin does a decent job as Cranston (not so much as The Shadow but, can’t win everything). John Lone does great and elevates the material he was given, I like movie Margo a lot. I love the set design, I like some of the scenes, and above all, I ADORE the soundtrack. Seriously, Jerry Goldsmith carries the hell out of the film. There’s some really good stuff about it and I don’t think it deserved to flop as badly as it did. 

The 1940s serial starring Victor Jory may be the best of the film adaptations, and Victor Jory is easily the best live-action Shadow (not much of a competition). It’s got Harry, it’s got funny moments, it’s got car chases, it’s got detective-ing, it’s got way too many exploding cliffhangers and some really outdated aspects, but on the whole it works and it’s easily the only Shadow serial I’d actually recommend. 

The 40 Street & Smith Shadow Comics are largely mediocre, but like so many other Golden Age superhero comics, they tend to flip back and forth between tepid and boring, and sheer lunacy, and obviously the latter is of great interest of me and part of the reason I ultimately read so many of them. The mere fact that I can talk about a time The Shadow met the Clown King of Venus makes their existence worthwhile to me.

I like a lot of aspects of the 70s DC series. It’s got a lot of stuff that aged poorly and it loses a lot of points with me for completely ruining Harry as well as some very asshole-ish moments from The Shadow, but it’s virtues easily outweight it’s weaknesses and my grievances. And of course Hitler’s Astrologer is easily the best thing Denny O’Neil’s ever done with the character and easily among my top Shadow works.

Dark Horse has easily the most consistently good published Shadow comics of the bunch. Coils of Leviathan, Hell’s Heat Wave, The Mysterious 3, the adaptation of the 1994 movie, Ghost and The Shadow, Grendel of The Shadow. All of these are either decent to outright great and easily get my stamp of approval. 

I like the comics Michael Uslan has done with the character, they are enjoyable. They do have a lot of faults (Justice Inc in particular I like a little less everytime I revisit it) I could probably write more on if asked to, but I do feel a little bad about criticizing them too harshly because Uslan’s a very nice man who tried very hard to be faithful to Gibson’s vision and also had very nice things to say to me when I praised the comic on the Facebook group, back when I was still in it. So I do recommend these as fun romps involving the character. 

I...like...parts, of the Andy Helfer run. Even if it’s based on a version of the character I completely despise, and has a lot of moments in it I deeply despise and make me want to tear my hair out in frustration (it helps me appreciate it better when I think of it as a pisstake on Chaykin’s Shadow, rather than The Shadows I actually like). It’s got probably the strongest critical reputation of all Shadow comics and I have...thoughts, on that, but while I can’t exactly recommend it to people who actually give a shit about The Shadow, since most fans of it largely like it because of the incredible talents involved in it, I do think it’s got some really solid aspects as a comic book and it’s a chapter of the character’s history worth looking into. 

Dynamite is a total mixed bag but I don’t think everything they did with the character was awful, like some fans have declared. For a start, Dynamite gave us Matt Wagner on The Shadow, who created what is easily one of my favorite takes on the character and also the comics I tend to recommend to people who want to start reading the character. It gave us lots of great cover art. It gave us the Uslan comics, it gave us Agents of The Shadow, and in particular it gave us Death Factory which I think is very solid and one of the more faithful adaptations, and Twilight Zone: The Shadow, which is one of my favorite Shadow stories and one of the earliest stories I’ve read that got me to fall in love with the character. I think the 2012 run that Ennis got involved with has it’s good points. Even the more mediocre comics still had one or two good things in them that I was able to get material out of. 

I complain about the changes they make to the character and the source material and how they neglect the things that really made him so great in the source material without offering much in return, but I don’t hate most of them, they are often perfectly decent, sometimes even great. And often, even the adaptations that aren’t very good still tend to have aspects that I find interesting or that I think should be preserved and reappropriated. 

I’ve mined material from just about every Shadow story and adaptation I’ve ever picked up with only a few exceptions, and those are the ones that I don’t talk about either because I haven’t gotten to them or they are so bad or forgettable I prefer not to mention them for one reason or another. If the adaptations really were all irredeemably awful, then I doubt I would have even heard of the character and even become a pulp fan, because it was only through my obsession with The Shadow that I started looking into pulp fiction. 

[365days365movies]

May 6, 2021: The Martian (2015) (Recap: Part One)

We’re leaving lo-fi sci-fi, people. Kind of.

I mentioned before that films like Her are what I define as “lo-fi sci-fi”, which is a category that I’ve kind of made up. Basically, it’s the science fiction version of low fantasy, meaning it contains science fiction themes contained within an otherwise contemporary setting. In the case of Her, Joaquin Phoenix’s character, along with many others, live in a world and setting basically like ours, but with technology advanced enough to generate AIs (like Siri) that are intelligent enough to actually ascend our reality. Because we live in a society.

You give me Joaquin Phoenix, I’m gonna make a Joker reference; it’s in the contract of my existence. Anyway, that is admittedly kind of broad, right? I mean, that has the capability of crossing over with a BUNCH of sci-fi genres and themes. And, considering that we’ve already seen magic, speculative technology, time travel, monsters, and artificial intelligence, we’ve already touched on quite a bit.

And with science fiction, the sky’s the limit. Literally. So, I think it behooves us to re-examine lo-fi sci-fi a little bit. Specifically, we should note that it can also be defined as an extension of currently existing technologies and possibilities. Writers would call this “speculative sci-fi”, assuming in this case that it’s set within the present or a near and attainable future. Her definitely fits in this category, as does Westworld. But, let’s crossover to another genre by speculating upon another possibility. And it begins with this man. Probably.

Hey, Elon, what’s up? Now, Mr. Musk here is a...controversial figure, for COMPLETELY understandable reasons. Instead of touch upon the man himself, I feel like touching upon one of his recent focuses: space travel. With SpaceX and the various upcoming space trips and journeys that they’re planning, Musk has made it clear that he plans to shoot to the Moon. Again, literally.

In fact, this full plan is to go even further than that, and to fuel potential commercial space flights in the future, which is admittedly very cool. And of course, if you’re going to shoot for the Moon...

Guys...guys, that’s Mars. THAT’S FUCKING MARS

Is that not amazing? We have sound and pictures from FUCKING MARS! THAT’S A DIFFERENT PLANET, GODDAMN IT! It’s cooler than I have the ability to properly express, but it IS goddamn cool. And this means that, easily within my lifetime, we could (and likely will) land on Mars. Which is amazing. God, I really want to see that happen.

And so, landing on Mars is BARELY science fiction, but since we haven’t yet done so...yeah, it’s fictional at the moment. And so, any film about landing on Mars falls within this category. Well...to an extent.

2000′s Mission to Mars, for example, was a Disney-funded film (to my IMMENSE surprise; and it’s based off of an old Disney World ride, WHAT), and a movie that I saw a LOT when I was a kid. I also barely remember it, to be honest. But that film is straight-up science fiction because of, well...aliens. The idea of Martians is, as far as we know it, fictional. And most fiction involving Mars includes these aliens somehow. Whether it’s DC Comics’ entire civilization of Martians, as seen in Justice League, Supergirl, or Young Justice...

...Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s heavily mythologized civilization, as seen in the Barsoom series of novels (and another Disney film)...

...Or one of the best Looney Tunes characters.

Mmm. Yes. Isn’t that lovely?

But, yeah, Mars and aliens go hand-in-hand in our media. So, to properly look at lo-fi science and speculative science fiction in relation to the Red Planet, we’ll need a movie that goes to the planet, and doesn’t touch upon the concept of aliens AT ALL.

Enter...Ridley Scott?

Yeah, the director of Legend, Alien, Thelma and Louise, Blade Runner, Gladiator. Also the director of Kingdom of Heaven, Prometheus, Exodus: Gods and Kings, and...ugh, 1492: Conquest of Paradise. I’ve talked about his mixed record before, in my Recap of Legend right here.

In 2014, he was brought on to adapt a book by Andy Weir called The Martian, which is a great book! I’ve listened to the audio book, and I whole-heartedly recommend doing that. And because of that, I am VERY MUCH looking forward to watching this film, especially seeing as it’s often called one of the best science fiction films made during that year, and was critically acclaimed then and now. It got seven Oscar nominations (although it won none of them), amongst other awards. So, enough navel-gazing, huh? The Martian!

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

On Acidalia Plantitia, at the landing site of the Ares III mission, a group of scientists are gathering samples. These scientists are commander and geologist Melissa Lewis (Jessica Chastain), pilot Rick Martinez (Michael Pena), systems operator Beth Johanssen (Kate Mara), surgeon Chris Beck (Sebastian Stan), German chemist Alex Vogel (Aksel Hennie), and overly talkative botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon). 

The group seems to have a good dynamic, but that dynamic is interrupted by a massive dust storm, which is large enough to cause the entire crew to evacuate. However, in the chaos of the dust storm, Mark is hit by debris and lost in the shuffle. Although Lewis goes back to find him, she can’t get to him before they need to leave, and Mark is believed dead. This is reported (pretty callously) by NASA Director Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels) to the press soon afterwards.

But of course, that wouldn’t be much of a movie, now would it? Mark’s alive! And Mark’s alone. With his suit damaged, and low on oxygen, he trudges back to headquarters, which is intact and still contains breathable oxygen. He gets inside, and realizes that he’s been stabbed in the abdomen by some debris. He removes it, and stitches up his own wound. Which is...god, it’s fucking BRUTAL just to think about, nevertheless watch.

Once he’s finished, he records a log for the future, if he doesn’t make it. It’s day 19 of the 31-day mission at this point, and Mark’s basically screwed. He needs lasting oxygen, water, and food, and he might need that for 4 years, when the next manned mission can come to the red planet. Additionally, he has absolutely no way to contact NASA, leaving him completely stranded. Another dust storm rolls in that night, and Mark looks over the belongings of his colleagues, packing them up for their eventual return. It’s somber, to say the least. However, Mark affirms that he’s determined not to die on the planet.

After doing the math, Mark should have enough food to last him for about 300 days, especially if he rations it. Until then, he’ll need to figure out how to grow his own food, on a planet where nothing grows. Which is, of course, going to be a difficult feat to accomplish. But Mark Watney’s a botanist with botany powers, and he’s gonna do it.

It’s day 31, and Mark’s brought in dirt from the outside, and uses the bio-waste from the crew’s stay there for a form of compost. After 5 days, mostly full of him watching Happy Days on TV and trying to farm, he realizes that he needs water, both for himself and for the soil. To do that, he goes chemical and decides to use hydrogen-laden rocket fuel, wood from Martinez’s belongings, and good old-fashioned fire to make water! And since hydrogen + oxygen = water, it should work. With a minor side-effect.

So, yeah, he blew himself up. As as he records a video log, the sound mixing makes itself impressively known by subtly and realistically generating a tinnitus sound. It’s VERY well-done, holy shit. Anyway, he makes a stable fire, and the place is soon covered in condensation, moistening the room and the soil successfully.

We get to day 54, and Mark’s planted leftover potatoes from the crew in order to grow them. And while he’s being mourned at a funeral on Earth, and in NASA, he’s seeing the fruits (or shoots) of his efforts.

Back on Earth, Mars Mission Director Vincent Kapoor (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is trying to convince Director Teddy to let him lobby for another Ares mission, despite the risk of bad press for the callousness of the proximity to Watney’s death. Meanwhile, satellite technician Mindy Park (Mackenzie Davis) looks down at the Ares III site, and realizes that the site has changed visually, meaning that Mark may actually be alive.

Shocked by this, she tells Kapoor, Teddy, and media director Annie Montrose (Kristen Wiig) about this, and they realize the absolute clusterfuck that this whole thing is. They can’t tell the other members of the Ares III crew about it, because it’d devastate them for the 10 months they have to get back to Earth, at the VERY least. They can’t tell the WORLD about this, because they just had a funeral for the guy, and they’d reveal that they left him stranded on Mars accidentally, destroying faith in the Mars Missions Program. And they can’t save Mark, who they’re sure will starve eventually. It’s a mess. And Kapoor also wonders what’s happening to Mark psychologically through all of this.

And yet, they reveal this to the world regardless, causing the clusterfuck reaction that they think it’s going to cause. But Mark’s busy on Mars, figuring out how to get to the site of the next Ares IV mission in 4 years, at the Schiaparelli crater about 50 days travel away. This is a struggle, as his Rover has only so much power and fuel, and he can only get more power by cutting out the heater is risking death by freezing. So, problems. However, he figures out a potential solution: radioactive isotopes! In a move that is, let’s face it, COMPLETELY INSANE, he digs up a radioactive generator from the ship in order to heat the ship.

On Earth, they try to figure out Mark’s moves, as well as how to resupply Ares IV sooner for Mark’s benefit. This is with the director of JPL, Bruce Ng (Benedict Wong), and the flight director of the ship Hermes, Mitch Henderson (Sean Bean), who insists that they tell the Ares II crew. They continue to monitor Mark, and note that he’s been travelling for 17 days in his Rover towards something. Kapoor figures it out, and flies to California.

See, Mark needs a way to contact NASA, and he believes that the way to do so is through Pathfinder, the first probe ever sent to Mars in 1997, lasting for 9 months since landing until they lost contact. Mark digs it up, and the people at JPL in California start their own efforts for contact. And despite communication being extremely rudimentary, initially limited to yes/no questions that use a still-frame camera, it fucking WORKS! WHOO!

To boost this communication hurdle, the two camps figure out a hexadecimal system for communication, allowing them to communicate using a circular table of numbers that represent an alphabet. That allows them to teach Mark to hack into the Rover, allowing it to piggyback off of its broadcast signal and send them messages via keyboard. Nice! Now that communication is reasonably possible, Mark’s able to ask how the crew is handling his death. But upon learning that they haven’t told him. He’s understandably a little goddamn enraged. And so, they FINALLY tell the Ares III crew about this.

The news breaks the crew, even though Mark continues to stress that he’s all right, and that it wasn’t their fault. Meanwhile, Mark’s able to survive for 912 days with his potato plants, and things improve with the help of technicians on Earth. They plan to launch a supply rocket to him in the next year, and things are looking fine! Unless, of course...something goes horribly HORRIBLY wrong.

Well...fuck. Good place to pause for Part Two, then?

[wiccamoody]

If I want to understand reddie what do I need to do? Read some Stephen King books or watch some movies? I am confused as to what I need to consume in order to understand this ship.

I would say watch the movies! That’s like, the base level of it. And then go forth and enjoy a ton of amazing fanworks!!! 

But if you want more depth/info (or have an addictive personality like myself) you can also read the book and watch the miniseries. The book will give you all the backstory you need if you want it, and the miniseries is just another perspective on how to adapt the book. I’d say between the movies and miniseries they’re both equally faithful to the books in the amount of content that is taken from it and what has been changed (but the miniseries is very much a product of its time and hard to watch lol).

There’s also multiple rejected scripts out there (check reddit) for pitching the IT movies before Andy took over. Stephen King also writes in the Derry verse a lot, and some of the characters in IT show up in other books of his if you wanted to read those. 

Hope this helps!!

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior February 21, 2020 – CALL OF THE WILD, BRAHMS: THE BOY II, THE IMPRACTICAL JOKERS MOVIE, EMMA and more!

After overestimating Birds of Prey… I mean, Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey… it looks like I underestimated Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog… I mean Jim Carrey’s Dr. Robotnik… with Sonic. It truly spanked my lowball prediction in the mid-$40 millions, but I wasn’t alone there at least. Hey, it’s a fun movie and my positive review wasn’t off-base with the critical world at large, so there’s that, too.  (Apparently, I liked both Downhill and Fantasy Island more than most people, including CinemaScore voters who gave the movies a “D” and “C-“ respectively… ouch!)

This is likely to be another down week as neither of the two new movies are particularly strong, which gives me a chance to focus instead on this week’s FEATURED MOVIES! And we have four of ‘em this week, no less!

That’s right. I think it’s time I go back to my previous desire to use this column to focus on smaller movies that you may have missed since very few of the bigger outlets bother to cover them, and there’s a few worth pointing out this week. I’m gonna start with the two foreign films, because hopefully, you’ve listened to Bong Joon-ho and his translator and are not as fearful of subtitles…

First up, opening on Wednesday at New York’s Film Forumis Jan Komasa’s CORPUS CHRISTI (Film Movement), Poland’s selection for the Oscar International Feature category, which was actually nominated for an Oscar in the category in which everyone already knew Parasite was always gonna win! It’s a shame, cause this is a really amazing film with Bartosz Bielenia playing Daniel, a troubled youth just out of juvenile hall who steals the trappings and identity of the youth prison’s pastor and is therefore mistaken as an actual priest when he arrives at a small community village that has suffered a tragic loss. It’s an amazing film about faith and forgiveness and redemption, and how the script came to Komasa from screenwriter Mateusz Pacewic is an equally amazing story. Seriously, if you get a chance, definitely check this powerful drama out, since it’s another fantastic film from a country that has continually been delivering the goods in terms of original storytelling.

I was just going to do three featured movies this week, but a really good German thriller is finally hitting the States, opening at the Quad in New York Friday then in L.A. on March 13 before a nationwide rollout. Michael Bully Herbig’s incredibly suspenseful German thriller BALLOON (Distrib Films USA) is about two families from the GDR (aka East Germany) who try to cross over into West Germany in 1979 using a hot air balloon, over a decade before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Based on the actual events, their story previously was adapted into the Disney movie Night Crossing (which oddly, isn’t on Disney+ yet-- I checked­, but it’s on Amazon Prime if you wanna compare the two movies). The movie doesn’t spend nearly as much time in the balloon as something like The Aeronauts, as the family’s first attempt fails miserably, so much of the film involves them working towards a second attempt, while trying not to be caught.

Balloon is a pretty heavy film (irony?), sometimes a little overwrought with drama but it keeps you on the edge of your seat as it cuts between the families trying to figure out their escape plan and the authorities trying to put together the clues to find these defectors. There’s a particularly amusing man in charge of the investigation, played by the always-amazing Thomas Kretschmann (The Pianist), who is constantly berating his men, something that helps lighten the otherwise heavy tone that permeates the film. This is another fairly low-key foreign film that’s worth seeking out.

Another movie people should make an effort to seek out is Rashaad Ernesto Green’s PREMATURE (IFC Films), an amazing film that follows the relationship between two young people in Harlem over the course of a summer. We first meet Zora Howard’s Ayanna as she’s hanging with her friends kibitzing about boys, as they begin their last summer before Ayanna heads to college. Shortly after, she meets Josh Boone’s Isaiah, and the two hit it off. The rest of the film follows the ups and downs of their relationship including incredibly intimate moments that lead up to Ayanna getting pregnant.

I won’t go through the plot play-by-play style, because it’s interesting to discover the twist and turns in their relationship in a similar way as we do our own relationships. Needless to say Green has a pretty amazing partner and lead in Howard, who co-wrote the screenplay, which is probably why it feels so authentic and real. Sure, there are a few scenes between Howard and Boone, both fantastic actors, that feel a bit too showy dramatically but otherwise, it’s a fantastic second feature from Green who has mainly been directing TV since his earlier film Gun Hill Road. I’ll definitely be very curious to see what Green and Howard get up to next either alone or working together.

Opening in New York and L.A. this Friday but in theaters nationwide on March 6 is the latest incarnation of Jane Austen’s novel EMMA. (Focus Features), this time starring the wonderful Anya Taylor-Joy (from The VVitchand Split/Glass) as the title character, Emma Woodhouse, a 28-year-old matchmaker who prides herself on the relationships she’s put together even while unable to find her own mate.  The film follows as the latter starts coming in the way of the former as she infiltrates herself into things as an “expert on love” who can’t find it herself.

Maybe it’s not surprising that I haven’t read much of Austen’s work and have missed this one altogether, never having seen any of the other iterations, but it’s a fairly wild and witty ride. Much of that is due to the amazing and wonderful cast around the young actor, the most surprising behind Mia Goth, who is in fact three years older than Taylor-Joy, but plays the younger wide-eyed Harriet who looks up to Emma and elicits her advice. Emma basically steers Harriet from the farmer she likes to Josh O’Connor’s Mr. Elton, the wealthy local vicar who is more than a little bit of a dark. This leads to a bit of a revolving door of who is interested in whom, etc especially when Emma’s nemesis Jane Fairfax (Amber Anderson) returns to Hartfield.

Some of the other men in the mix are Johnny Flynn’s dashing George Knightley – the brother-in-law to Emma’s sister – and Callum Turner’s wealthy Frank Churchill, whose attentions lead to more misunderstandings. Both were great but I was more impressed with O’Connor who transforms into a completely other person when Emma spurns his affections and seems like a different person from the way first-time features director (and photographer) Autumn de Wilde shoots him. Of course, Bill Nighy is as great as always as Emma’s father, always feeling a slight draft, but even more impressive is the wonderfully hilarious Miranda Hart (from Spy) as Miss Bates, a woman who gabs at length about how wonderful Jane Fairfax is, much to Emma’s annoyance. As much as Emma. is Anya Taylor-Joy’s show, it’s the ensemble cast around her that makes the movie so infinitely enjoyable, getting better as it goes along.

This is a very good first feature from de Wilde, who has directed quite a number of music videos for Beck, and Emma. seems very different from the movies we normally get from video directors, much of that to do with Austen’s source material and the cast. Either way, how things develop over the course of the film makes it more enjoyable as it goes along. (Although I have never read the book, the film seems fairly faithful to the book’s Wikipedia page, so Austen fans should enjoy it, too.)

I guess we can now get to the wide and semi-wide releases and the rest of the movies – merging my two columns into one means you get more 5,000-word columns, you lucky ducks!

The higher-profile of the two new wide releases is probably CALL OF THE WILD (20thCentury Studios), a PG adaptation of Jack London’s classic novel starring Harrison Ford and the most adorable CG dog (i.e. not real, so back off PETA!) you’ve ever met named Buck! Sure, dog lovers might say, “Why would we want to watch a movie with a CG dog when clearly, a movie with actors in green suits turned into dogs using CG would suffice?” But no, it’s actually a very heavily CG movie directed by Chris Sanders, who directed Lilo & Sitch, the first How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods before giving a go at live action. (Sanders also provided quite a few voices in earlier animated films like Disney’s Mulan and Tarzan.)

A film that already was well into production when Disney bought Fox (now 20thCentury Studios), Call of the Wild also stars Omar Sy (returning for next year’s “Jurassic World” finale), Karen Gillan, Dan Stevens, Bradley Whitford but the real star of the movie is the dog Buck, which is performed by the immensely talented Terry Notary, who you’ll know for his work on the “Apes” movies with Andy Serkis, Kong: Skull Island and some of the characters in the last couple “Avengers” movies.

Of course, opening the weekend after Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog, which has turned out to be a bigger hit than anyone imagined, certainly won’t help The Call of the Wild.

In many ways, this reminds me of the 2002 Disney movie Snow Dogs, which opened with $17.8 million over the 4-day MLK weekend. The combination of Ford (who appears in very few movies) and the adorable dog antics might be enough for the movie to make $15 to 17 million this weekend, maybe a little more, although it only has two weeks to do business before Disney’s next Pixar movie, Onward, takes over, not giving it much time to make bank.

Mini-Review: It’s pretty evident that this exceedingly faithful take on Jack London’s book will not be for everyone. While I personally was mixed, I expect this to be one of the rare positive reviews just ‘cause. Surprisingly, it’s also the most “Disneyfied” movie that could possibly come from the newly-renamed 21stCentury Studios as it’s a movie clearly made for kids and animal lovers even if never the ‘twain shall meet, in some cases.

The story follows a large St. Bernard named Buck (portrayed by Terry Notary – but we’ll get back to that), who begins his life as the spoiled and pampered pet of a wealthy judge in California but is sold to a man who trains Buck with his club sending the dog on a wild journey across the Yukon as part of a dog sled for a pair of Canadian postal workers (played by Omar Sy and Cara Gee from “The Expanse”). Eventually, he’s paired with an alcoholic frontiersman (Harrison Ford) and he finds true love, as the two of them go off looking (and finding) gold.

Some might be surprised that director Chris Sanders (who has an extensive animation background) decided to go for straight-up CG when depicting the animals and some of the environments in Call of the Wild. In fact, it feels almost necessary to make Buck as expressive as he needs to be to carry this film, and that’s where Terry Notary (Andy Serkis’ partner-in-performance-capture from the “Apes” movies) and the CG team comes in handy. Buck is already lovable but being able to make him so expressive doesn’t hurt, and the scenes where he’s interacting with other animals are pretty amazing.

We do have to discuss the negatives, and one of them is the episodic nature of Buck’s story that means that Harrison Ford, other than the narration and a brief appearance, doesn’t play a large part in Buck’s story until about the 45-minute mark. I didn’t think much of the performances by Sy and Gee or Dan Steven and Karen Gillan as the spoiled rich people who buy Buck to drive their dog sled off to find gold. Buck’s experiences as part of the first dog sled is far more positive even though it’s rigorous and it puts him at odd with the dog pack leader. The problem is that most of the human actors don’t come close to delivering what Notary does as Buck, the exception being Ford, but it’s still one of those odd CG-live action amalgations that doesn’t always work.

If you’re fond of Jack London’s Arctic adventures (as I generally am), Call of the Wild offers as much good as it does bad, but it’s worthwhile more for the amazing vistas and terrific use of CG (and Terry Notary’s performance as Buck) than anything else.

Rating: 6.5/10

I won’t have a chance to see the horror sequel BRAHMS: THE BOY II (STXfilms), but I never got around to seeing the first movie either, although this one, starring Katie Holmes, does look kind of fun. 2020 has not been a great year for horror so far with almost a new horror every weekend and few doing particularly well – The Grudge tops the heap with just $21 million and that opened almost two months ago!

I really don’t have a lot to say about this other than the fact that the original The Boy(not to be confused with The Boy, The Boy or The Boy, which are also movies about a different “Boy”), also directed by William Brent Bell, opened in January 2016 to $10.8 million on its way to $35.8 million domestic but it also opened at a time when there were no strong horror films in theaters. Some could argue that there are still no strong horror films in theaters, especially since so many of them quickly lost theaters after bombing. Still, there have been a lot this year already and the most recent one, Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island underperformed this past weekend, so why would anyone want more?

STXfilms’ marketing has been solid even as this moved from its December release to now, but I still think it will be tough for this to make more than $10 million this weekend and probably will end up closer to $8 million or less.

Opening in limited release but also sure to be exciting to the fans of the TruTV hidden camera prank show is IMPRACTICAL JOKERS: THE MOVIE, which brings the hilarious Tenderloins comedy troop – Q, Murr, Sal and Joe -- to the big screen as they go off on a cross-country adventure to attend a party in Florida, playing their usual prank-filled games to see which three get to attend. At this writing, I have no idea how many theaters it’s opening – I’m assuming 150 to 200 maybe? – so no idea how it might do although there are already some sold out showings in my general area (NYC) where the guys are from.

Mini-Review: It feels like there need to be two reviews for this movie – one for those who already know and love the show and find the Tenderloins hysterical (this includes me) —and then one for everyone else.  The former can probably skip the next paragraph.

The Tenderloins are a group of four Staten Island friends (names above) whose antics led to a successful TruTV hidden camera show where they pull pranks and challenge each other to say and do whatever they’re told. The show has run eight seasons, and it’s made the Tenderloins such big stars they regularly sell out enormous venues (like Radio City Music Hall) to perform live for their fans. Considering the success Johnny Knoxville’s “Jackass” show has had in movie theaters where it can take advantage of an R-rating, there’s little reason why the “Impractical Jokers” shouldn’t be able to do the same. (For some context, I watched this movie with a theater full of the group’s friends, crew as well as Q’s firehouse buddies, in other words, 75% of Staten Island.)

The movie, directed by Chris Henchy, long time McKay and Ferrell collaborator – the film is presented by their “Funny or Die” brand –opens with one of a number of scripted/staged scenes to frame the road trip the Tenderloins to attend a party in Miami being held by Paula Abdul. Since they only have three passes, they need to compete in their usual challenges to determine who misses out.

If you are a fan of the show, I’m not going to spoil any of the challenges or pranks they plan on each other, but they generally get better and funnier as the movie goes along, to the point that when it returns to the “story” and the scripted stuff, the movie does falter a little. Although the Tenderloins aren’t the greatest actors, they are great improvisers and you can tell when they’re coming up with lines by the seat of their pants.

The majority of the movie is basically what we see on the show without all of the commercial breaks cutting in just as things start to get outrageous, and as someone who watches more of the show than I probably should admit, I find it hard to believe no one watching the movie will at least get one good snicker out of the movie. There are a few recurring gags throughout the movie as well as a follow-up to a memorable punishment from an earlier season. (Like with the show, you’re likely to feel bad for Murr and Sal, the nicer half of the group who always get the most abuse because of it.)

If you’re already a fan of the Impractical Jokers, you’ll probably like the movie, but if not, you might not get it and there’s just no real use trying. In other words, not a great intro to the “Impractical Jokers” but a fine bit of fun for the already-converted.

Rating: 6.5/10

This week’s Top 10 should look something like this…

1. Sonic the Hedgehog  (Paramount) - $29 million -50% (up $1.5 million)**

2. Call of the Wild (20th Century) - $17 million N/A (up .3 million)** 3. Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey  (Warner Bros) - $9 million -48%

4. Brahms: The Boy II (STXfilms) - $7 million N/A (down .6 million)**

5. Bad Boys for Life (Sony) - $6 million -48% (down .1 million)**

6. The Photograph (Universal) – $5.5 million -55% (down .6 million)**

7. Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island (Sony) - $5.3 million -57%

8. 1917 (Universal) - $5 million -38%

9. Parasite (NEON) - $3.6 million -35%

10. Jumanji: The Next Level  (Sony) - $3.3 million -42%

-- The Impractical Jokers Movie (TruTV) - $1.8 million*

-- Las Pildoras de mi Novio (Pantelion/Lionsgate) - $1.3 million*

* These last two projections are made without much info on either movie, including theater counts for the former.

**A few minor tweaks as we go into weekends with actual theater counts, although this weekend will still mostly be about Sonic the Hedgehog. I still don’t have any theater counts for Impractical Jokers on Thursday night so I guess we’ll just have to see if the theaters playing it report to Rentrak and it gets some sort of placement, presumably outside the top 10, on Sunday. 

LIMITED RELEASES

There are lots of other new limited releases this weekend beyond the ones I mentioned above.

On Wednesday night, Fathom Events is releasing Masaaki Yuasa’s new movie RIDE YOUR WAVE (GKIDS) across the nation for one night only in some places, although it will get a limited release on Friday at New York’s Village East and maybe other places, as well. If you’ve seen any of Yuasa’s other films like 2017’s The Night is Short, Walk on Girl or Lu Over the Wall or Mind Game, then you can probably expect this to be another wild ride, except this time it’s on a surfboard. It follows the story of a surfer and a firefighter who fall in love. You can learn more about how to get tickets here.

Like Portrait of a Lady on Fire last week, Una director Benedict Andrews’ SEBERG (Amazon) received a one-week release in 2019 but it’s getting a legit limited release this Friday. It stars Kristen Stewart as French New Wave icon Jean Seberg who came to the States in the late ‘60s and began a relationship with civil rights leader Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie), putting her in the sights of the FBI who were hoping to use her to bust the Black Panthers. The film also stars Jack O’Connell, Margaret Qualley, Vince Vaughn, and Stephen Root, and it’s a pretty solid historical drama, although I haven’t seen it so long I’m not sure I can say much more about that.

I was never a huge fan of Bob Dylan or the Band but I found Daniel Roher’s doc ONCE WERE BROTHERS: ROBBIE ROBERTSON AND THE BAND (Magnolia) (about the latter) to be quite compelling as the story is told by various people who were there, including the film’s exec. producer Martin Scorsese who directed the band’s legendary concert film The Last Waltz. This is also produced by Ron Howard and Brian SGrazer of Imagine, so you know it’s gonna be a quality music doc, and it certainly is, although I’m not sure it will be of that much interest to people who aren’t already fans of The Band.

Opening in roughly 350 theaters this weekend is LAS PILDORAS DE MI NOVIO (Pantelion), translated as “My Boyfriend’s Meds,” a comedy about a woman (Sandra Echeverria) who falls for a mattress store owner who suffers from multiple personality disorder and when they go on vacation… he forgets to bring along his meds! Humor abounds. As usual, this won’t screen in advance for critics.

Tye Sheridan stars with Knives Out’s Ana De Armas in Michael Cristofer’s thriller The Night Clerk (Saban Films), Sheridan plays a hotel clerk with Asperger’s Syndrome who witnesses a murder in one of the rooms but ends up as the main suspect by the lead detective, played by John Leguizamo. The film also stars Helen Hunt and it will be released in select theaters (including New York’s Cinema Village), on demand and digitally this Friday. Just couldn’t into this one, having at least one good friend with Asperger’s, due to the way Sheridan played this often-debilitating disease. (Think Rain Man without the talent of Dustin Hoffman.)

Opening exclusively at theMetrographFriday with an expansion on March 3 is Portugese filmmaker Bruno de Almeida’s Cabaret Maxime (Giant Pictures), starring Michael Imperioli as Bennie Gaza, the owner and manager of the title nightclub specializing in a mix of burlesque, striptease, music and comedy. Bennie is fairly old-fashioned so when a modern day (translation: trashy and demeaning to women) strip club opens across the way, Bennie finds himself pressure to make changes to stay in line as he starts getting pressure from his mobster financer to change. I was kinda mixed on this movie, which delivers another typically great performance from Imperioli but the way it cuts between various acts and disparate scenes that do very little to move the story forward (including the far-more-interesting subplot about Bennie’s wife Stella, a performer suffering from depression, as played by the amazing Ana Padrão). I think one of the reasons I just couldn’t get into the movie is cause a friend of mine attempted a similar film based out of a nightclub and the film never got much traction. De Almeida should have paid more attention developing the storytelling than showing off his talented musical singing/dancing friends.

A second Portugese filmmaker, Pedro Costa, also releases a new film this week.  Vitalina Varela (Grasshopper Film) will open at New York’s Film at Lincoln Center on Friday. The title of the film is also the name of the non-actor who returns from Costa’s Horse Moneyto play a woman from Cape Verdean who comes to Fontainhas for her estranged husband’s funeral and sets up a new life there.

Also opening at the Quad Friday is the latest from the Dardenne Brothers, Young Ahmed (Kino Lorber) about a 13-year-old (Idir ben Addi) who has come under the grips of radical jihadism in his Belgian town, putting him at odds with various factions. When he carries out an act of violence, he ends up in a juvenile detention facility. The Dardennes won the Best Director award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where their films have been honored with the Palme d’Or twice. I’ve never been much of a fan but what do I know?

Opening at the IFC Center Wednesday is Nicolas Champeaux, Gilles Porte’s documentary The State Against Mandela and the Others, which is built around recently recovered audio recordings of the 1963-4 Rivona trial in which Nelson Mandela and eight others faced death sentences for challenging Apartheid. The film mixes animation showing the trails with contemporary interviews with the survivors including Winnie Mandela, about their fight against the country’s corrupt system.

Another doc I know little about is Andrew Goldberg’s Viral: Antisemitism in Four Mutations, which will open at the Village East Friday but it includes the likes of Julianna Margulies, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton as anti-semitism rears its ugly head over 70 years after the end of World War II and the Holocaust.

Also opening at Cinema Village is Matt Ratner’s Standing Up, Falling Down (Shout! Studios) starring Billy Crystal and Ben Schwartz (the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog!), the latter playing a stand-up comic whose L.A. dreams have crashed and burned leaving him with little money, forcing him to return to Long Island. Once there, he pines over his ex (Eloise Mumford) and becomes friends with an eccentric dermatologist (Crystal) as they help each other deal with their respective failures.

Playing at the Roxy for a one-week run starting Friday is Sam De Jong’s Goldie (Film Movement), starring actress/model Slick Woods as the title character, a teenager in a family shelter pursuing her dreams of being a dancer while trying to keep her sisters together. This premiered at the Tribeca Film Festivallast year.

Oscilloscope (the distributor that brought you the cat doc Kedi) is doing something called “Cat Video Fest 2020,” which will take place at the Alamo in Brooklyn (although the Saturday screening is sold out there) and the Village East Cinema. This screening of pre-selected cat videos is also taking place at other cities throughout the country, and you can find out where right here.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

This Friday, the Metrograph will debut its newest series “Climate Crisis Parabels,” a series of varied future shock films, this weekend with Robert Bresson’s The Devil, Probably (1977), Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke (1999) (hosted by Naomi Klein Sunday afternoon, but also playing as part of the Playtime Family Matinees”) and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner: The Final Cu ton Sunday night. “To Hong Kong with Love” also continues with screenings of Stanley Kwan’s Rouge (1987) and the 2016 film Raise the Umbrellas. The ongoing Welcome To Metrograph: Redux also continues with HarunFarocki’sdocumentary Before Your Eyes: Vietnam (1981).  This week’s Late Nites at Metrograph is another Japanese thriller, Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1966 thriller The Face of Another, and the Metrograph’s Japanese love continues as Playtime: Family Matinees will also show Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke from 1999.

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE BROOKLYN (NYC)

Tonight’s “Weird Wednesday” is Ken Russell’s 1987 film Gothic, and this week’s “Kids Camp” offering is the 2006 animated Curious George with a special “pick your own price.” In preparation for the release of Emma. On Friday, the Alamo is doing a “Champagne Cinema” screening of the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley, which unfortunately, is sold out already. (Waugh Waugh) Monday’s “Out of Tune” is the Prince film Under the Cherry Moon from 1986, which is also sold out. (Hey, Jeremy Wein, why don’t you tell me these things are going on sale so I can go!?!) Next week’s “Terror Tuesday” is the horror classic Candyman (1992), which is ALSO almost sold out and then we’re back to “Weird Wednesday” with next week’s offering, 1985’s soft-core actioneer Gwendoline.

If you’re one of those poor souls living in L.A., you can also go to see Don Coscarelli’s 2002 film Bubba Ho-Tep, starring Bruce Campbell, on Wednesday night or the 1986 Little Shop of Horrors on Thursday at the grand, new(ish) Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Downtown Los Angeles. Saturday afternoon is a matinee of Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight (1998), starring George Clooney and J-Lo and Saturday night, you can see Cassavetes’ Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), starring Seymour Cassel and Gena Rowlands. Monday night is Juliet Bashore’s 1986 Kamikaze Hearts, which looked into the X-rated SF underground of the ‘80s. The West Coast “Terror Tuesday” is Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula, starring Keanu Reeves, Gary Oldman and Winona Rider!

THE NEW BEVERLY  (L.A.):

Wednesday’s afternoon matinee is the classical musical The Sound of Music (1965) and then Weds and Thurs night’s double feature is Robert Redford’sThe Hot Rock (1972) and Cops and Robber (1973). Friday’s matinee is the late Tony Scott’s The Hunger (1983) and then the Tarantino-pennedTrue Romance (1993, also directed by Scott), will play Friday midnight and Saturday’s midnight movie is the 1967 film Carmen, Baby. This weekend’s Kiddee Mattine is Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005). Monday’s matinee is Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973) and the Monday night double feature is A Man for All Seasons(1966) and The Mission  (1986). Tuesday’s Grindhouse double feature is 1980’s Super Fuzz and 1977’s Death Promise, both in 35mm, of course.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Weds’ “Black Voices” movie is William Greaves’ 1968 film Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, and then on Friday night in the Spielberg Theater, you can see the 1913 film Traffic in Souls with live music as well as a couple shorts. The Japanese horror film Kwaidan(1965) will play in the normal theater. On Saturday, the Egyptian is presenting “Leigh Whannell’s Thrill-A-thon” a series of four films that helped to inspire Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, which comes out next week with some great options worth seeing, including 1987’s Fatal Attraction, David Fincher’s 2014 film Gone Girl, Rob Reiner’s Stephen King adaptation Misery(1990) and the classic Aussie thriller Dead Calm(1989) starring Nicole Kidman … all for just 15 bucks!

AERO  (LA):

The AERO’s “Black Voices” film for Weds. is the great Stir Crazy, starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, and then on Thursday afternoon, you can see Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 classicDr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb for $8 (free to Cinemateque members!) New restoration of the Russian film Come and See (also opening at the Film Forum in New York) will play on Saturday evening as part of the “Antiwar Cinema” series. Sunday’s double feature in that series is Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957) and the Russian film The Ascent (1977). Tuesday’s “Black Voices” matinee is Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust  (1991) and then Greg Proops will screen the 1996 film Ridicule as part of his Film Club podcast which precedes the film.

MOMA  (NYC):

Modern Matinees: Jack Lemmon continues through the end of the month with Mister Roberts (1955) on Weds., Billly Wilder’s Avanti (1972) and the classic (and one of my all-time faves) Some Like it Hot (1959) on Friday. This weekend also sees movies in the continuing “Theater of Operations” series, which will include Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker (2009) on Saturday afternoon and a bunch of docs including Werner Herzog’s 1992 film Lessons of Darkness on Sunday. Weds also kicks off “Television Movies: Big Pictures on the Small Screen” – pretty self-explanatory, I think – with 1953’s The Trip to Bountiful and 1955’s Tosca on Weds. and Sunday, 1967’s Present Laughter Thursday and Tuesday and more. (Click on the link for full schedule!) Following Film Forum’s focus on black actresses (for February, Black History Month, get it?) MOMA begins a  “It’s All in Me: Black Heroines” series with All By Myself: The Eartha Kitt Story and Julie Dash’s Illusions, both from 1982, on Thursday and many more running through March 5.

ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES (NYC):

The Anthology still has a few more films in its “Devil Probably: A Century of Satanic Panic” including Eric Weston’s Evilspeak (1981) tonight in 35mm, but also David Van Taylor will be at tonight’s screening of his 1991 film Dream Deceivers. I’ve never seen either of these, by the way. Robert Eggers’ The VVitch and Alan Parker’s Angel Heart screen one more time on Thursday night, as well. This weekend also begins a new series, “Dream Dance: The Films of Ed Emshwiller” but since I have no idea who that is, I have nothing further to add. (Sorry!)

NITEHAWK CINEMA  (NYC):

Williamsburgis showing David Lynch’s 1990 film Wild at Heart as part of its “Uncaged” series on Friday just after midnight and John Singleton’s Poetic Justice on Saturday morning as part of “California Love.” They’re also showing Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride on Saturday morning for an “All-Ages Brunch Movie.”

FILM FORUM (NYC):

Elem Klimov’s 1985 Russian drama Come and See (Janus) will have a DCP restoration premiere at the Forum and Sunday afternoon will be a screening of the 1953 Mexican film El Corazon y La Espada in 3D. This weekend’s “Film Forum Jr.” is the 1953 pseudo-doc Little Fugitive.  Monday night is a screening of David Rich’s Madame X  (1966) introduced by actor/playwright Charles Busch.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

This weekend’s Weekend Classics: Luis Buñuel is the Mexican film The Exterminating Angel (1962), while Waverly Midnights: Hindsight is 2020s will screen Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Mnemonic and Late Night Favorites: Winter 2020is taking a surprising weekend off.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

Still waiting to see if Pandora and the Flying Dutchman continues through the weekend, as at this time (Monday), there is nothing repertory listed.

BAM CINEMATEK(NYC):

Horace Jenkins’ Cane River continues through Friday. Saturday night’s “Beyond the Canon” is a double feature of Ida Lupino’s The Hitch-Hiker(1953) and Malick’s Badlands (1973).

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

This weekend’s “See It Big! Outer Space” offerings include1974’s Space is the Placeon Friday and 1924’s Aelita, Queen of Mars and the 1980 Flash Gordonscreening on Saturday and Sunday. As usual, 2001: A Space Odysseywill screen on Saturday afternoon as part of the ongoing exhibition.

ROXY CINEMA(NYC)

Weds’ Nicolas Cage movie is Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead (1999) and then Thursday is a 35mm screening of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012)!

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

Friday’s midnight movie is Who Killed Roger Rabbit (1988).

STREAMING AND CABLE

Let’s see what’s going on in the world of streaming this week, shall we?

Netflix is debuting Dee (Mudbound) Rees’ new movie THE LAST THING HE WANTED on the streaming service Friday, even though apparently, it opened in select cities last week, including New York’s Paris Theater, although it got such terrible reviewsout of Sundance, maybe Netflix didn’t want any more bad reviews before it begins streaming. Regardless, it stars Anne Hathaway, Willem Dafoe, Ben Affleck and Rosie Perez, and it’s based on Joan Didion’s novel about a D.C. journalist named Elena (Hathaway) who abandons her work on the 1984 campaign trail to run an errand for her father (Dafoe). I guess I’ll watch it when it’s on Netflix just like everyone else but my expectations have been suitably lowered.

The Jordan Peele-produced series “Hunters,” starring Al Pacino, which is about a group of Nazi hunters will hit Amazon Prime this Friday as well, and a new season of the popular series“Star Wars: The Clone Wars” will debut on Friday on Disney+, adding to the amazing amount of content already available on that network.

Next week, Saw and Insidious co-creator Leigh Whannell revamps The Invisible Man for Universal with Elisabeth Moss, and there’s also (supposedly) a movie call The Ride, which I know nothing about. You can guess which movie I’ll be focusing on.

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or send me a note on Twitter. I love hearing from readers!

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

50 things to be thankful for in 2018

There's no denying 2018 has absolutely tested our patience, but it turns out the year hasn't been complete trash.

Beyond some of the most important aspects of life like your loved ones and your health, 2018 has truly given us a lot of good. From social justice initiatives like Time's Up and March for Our Lives, to pop culture masterpieces like Queer Eye, Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again, and "thank u, next," the year had its share of hopeful, joyous, entertaining, and positive moments.

So when times get tough and it feels like there's not much to be happy about in the world, here are 50 things to be thankful for.

SEE ALSO: The internet's best tips for how to be kind on World Kindness Day

1. Time's Up launched. 2018 started off strong with a group of more than 300 women in the entertainment industry coming together to form Time's Up — an initiative dedicated to standing up against sexual harassment.

I stand with women across every industry to say #TIMESUP on abuse, harassment, marginalization and underrepresentation. ⁰@TIMESUPNOW https://t.co/4zd5g2ByU0 pic.twitter.com/0h8ojLOq9U

— kerry washington (@kerrywashington) January 1, 2018

2. Laverne Cox made history on the cover of Cosmo. In January, actress and producer Laverne Cox also made history as the first ever trans covergirl for Cosmopolitan Magazine. Cox graced the cover of Cosmo South Africa's February issue.

3. The Fab Five came into our lives. It may feel like Jonathan Van Ness, Tan France, Karamo Brown, Bobby Berk, and Antoni Porowski have been inspiring us all to eat, dress, groom, self-love, and decorate to the best of our abilities for a lifetime, but Netflix's Queer Eye reboot only premiered in Feb. 2018.

4. Drake's "God's Plan" music video. Remember pre-Meek Mill beef when Drake gave away nearly one million dollars and filmed himself doing all those good deeds like paying for people's groceries? That was nice!

5. The Parkland teens. Though 2018 was full of an unfathomable amount of tragedy and gun violence,  the year also inspired a heartwarming amount of youth activism in America. After the deadly Parkland shooting in February, a group of teen survivors from the Florida high school shooting has consistently stood up to government officials and publicly advocated for gun control.

Parkland teens at March For Our lives rally.

Image: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

This year alone they've formed March for Our Lives, led school walkouts, inspired others (both young and old) to register to vote and protest gun violence, and even inspired the Obama's to write a heartfelt entry in the Time 100 issue.

6. Mirai Nagasu landed a triple axel. The Winter Olympics also took place this year! There were many standout moments but Mirai Nagasu absolutely slayed, making history by becoming the first U.S. woman to land a triple axel in the Winter Olympics. Thankful we got to witness this moment.

7. Black Panther came out. We were truly blessed this year by the arrival of the record-breaking Marvel's cinematic masterpiece, Black Panther, and the talented actors, fierce as hell soundtrack, and on-screen representation it brought to our world.

8. Jordan Peele's Oscar win. Speaking of movies, Peele's film Get Out won "Best Original Screenplay" this year, making him the first black screenwriter to receive the award.

9. The Super Smash Bros. Ultimate wait is almost over. The highly anticipated video game is set to come out for Nintendo Switch on Dec. 7.

10. Beto O'Rourke. 2018 was the year of Beto, burgers, and a Beyoncé midterms endorsement.

We just want to say thank you to everyone who made this possible. Everyone who made us feel hopeful, everyone who inspired us. Everyone who became the most amazing campaign we could have ever hoped to belong to. Grateful that we got to do this with you. We love you. Goodnight! pic.twitter.com/1j6JnhtP0f

— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) November 7, 2018

11. A Quiet Place. John Krasinski directed and starred in a horror film alongside his IRL wife that was so quiet and terrifying people were too nervous to eat snacks in theaters. What a time to be alive.

12. Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer. Remember when the rapper was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his fourth studio album, DAMN? Hell yeah!

13. Beyoncé at Coachella. Beychella was THIS YEAR. We knew she would slay but nothing prepared us for the sheer magnitude of her powerhouse performance, or Destiny's Child, or the movement she inspired.

14. The Royal Wedding. When the world needed a distraction from the bad and an escape from reality, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry were there for us. And for that we thank them.

15. Brooklyn Nine-Nine was saved. For several terrible, horrible, no good, very bad hours Brooklyn Nine-Nine was cancelled. But thankfully, after a whole lot of love from fans, NBC picked it up for a sixth season.

Image: fox

16. Won't You Be My Neighbor reminded us of Mr. Rogers' magic. We needed a heavy dose of Fred Rogers' pure and wholesome goodness to get us through the year and this film did just the trick.

17. Ava DuVernay made history. DuVernay's adaptation of A Wrinkle In Time led her to become the first black woman to direct a film that grossed more than $100 million at the box office.

18. The world is finally taking action against plastic pollution. Plastic straw bans are spreading across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Businesses like McDonald's and Starbucks are even getting on board the movement. 

19. We still have dogs. No matter how bad things get we still have furry companions to turn to, and play with, and occasionally throw cheese on.

20. Eighth Grade filled us with middle school anxiety. Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade reminded adults how stressful growing up can be and gave teens an emotional look at middle school through a more relatable lens.

Image: a24

21. Crazy Rich Asians was a smashing success. The film dominated box office sales and served as an important milestone for Asian representation in American pop culture. And guess what? It's getting a sequel.

22. Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again! Love. Pregnancy. Death. Flashbacks. Dancing. Singing. Abba. Meryl. Cher. Andy García. Help!

23. Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra. 2018 has seen the rise (Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin) and fall (Ariana and Pete) of celebrity relationships. But through the ups and downs of the year Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra's love never seemed to waiver. We're thankful this nice, soon-to-be-wed couple is here to restore our faith in love.

24. LeBron James opened up a school. The NBA star opened his "I Promise" school in Akron, Ohio, to give 240 third and fourth grade students a life-changing educational opportunity.

25. To All The Boys I've Loved Before captured our hearts. Netflix introduced the world to the film adaptation of Jenny Han's young adult book and after Peter Kavinsky's "woah woah woah," our hearts will never be the same. Not to mention it inspired dozens of Lara Jean Halloween costumes.

Image: netflix

26. That quirky, super high-maintenance cat was adopted. Remember Bruno, the thicc, polydactyl cat that Wright Way Rescue Animal Shelter in Morton Grove, Illinois, was trying to find a home? He found one :').

27. A sixgill shark was discovered. This is cool because most sharks have five gills. It's also a reminder that we should be thankful for oceanographers, researchers, and all those who explore the our vast and mysterious oceans.

28. India strikes down gay sex ban. On Sept. 6, members of India's Supreme Court unanimously voted to make the landmark ruling that eliminates the ban on consensual gay sex.

29. Moth memes lit up our lives. The year was filled with good memes but those moth/lamp memes? Pure joy.

30. Amy Sherman-Palladino and all those Emmys. Amy Sherman-Palladino has always been genius. Gilmore Girls? Bun Heads? Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life? It's about time she's properly celebrated, so we're thankful The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel won four Emmys. We are also thankful for her husband, Dan Palladino.

Image: Rich Fury/Getty Images

31. Twitter did one good thing. We have no edit button and there's still bots and harassment a-plenty, but at the very least, Twitter brought back the chronological timeline.

32. Gritty came into our lives. Can anyone even remember a world without the Philadelphia Flyers' new hairy orange mascot?

33. The Office is back ... sort of. While fans of the NBC comedy are still holding out hope for a revival, 2018 treated those nostalgic for the days of Dunder Mifflin to a charming off-broadway musical.

34. Speaking of The Office — be thankful for Steve Carell. He stars with Timothée Chalamet and Amy Ryan (Holly Flax) in Beautiful Boy. He's got Welcome to Marwen coming out, which looks, uh interesting. He's on SNL. And he's making his triumphant return to television!

35. Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper gave us life. A Star Is Born came out this year, along with a kickass soundtrack and some perfect memes. We will never be the same.

36. Fat Bear Week ran our lives for 7 days. Much love to all the fat bears out there who distracted us for an entire week just by living their lives. 

37. This throwback baked potato costume. Halloween costumes are great but this throwback baked potato get-up really made us smile.

38. Thankful for the hot duck in Central Park. We thought we lost him, but he's back again. <3

39. We have a new anthem: "Party For One." How did Carly Rae Jepsen know we were in desperate need of a song to dance in our underwear and eat a large pizza alone to? And the music video! UGH!

40. And there's no musical praise without discussing Ariana Grande. The warrior of 2018, Ariana Grande, has given fans so much love, inspiration, and hope throughout the year. Not to mention, the ultimate independent BOP: "thank u, next."

i’m so ..... fuckin ..... grateful

— Ariana Grande (@ArianaGrande) November 11, 2018

41. BDE came to be. Speaking adjacently of Pete Davidson, for better or worse 2018 also gave us Big Dick Energy and that's something we'll never forget.

42. Netflix still delivers. Netflix has an entertaining social media presence and continues to create quality original shows and movies.

43. There was an increase in voter turnout. 2018 proved Americans are standing up for what they believe in and exercising their right to vote. Voter turnout for midterm elections reached a 50-year high, and young people voted at historic rates.

44. Midterm results showed a refreshing amount of diversity. It was a night of historic firsts — from over 100 women elected to Congress (the highest number ever) to wins for the LGBTQ community and more.

45. The Detective Pikachu trailer looks delightful. Another cute as hell movie to look forward to? Yes please.

46. Cher's Twitter is hilarious. Twitter is sometime awful but not Cher's account. That's always good.

47. All of the books. The world has so many books just waiting to be read — books for when you're mad at the patriarchy, books for hikers, books all about pride. And some great books written this year.

48. All of the great TV shows. Streaming aside, there are dozens of phenomenal shows airing on television this year, like Superstore, The Good Place, This Is Us, Killing Eve, and more.

49. Sports are still a thing! We've got football, we've got soccer, we've got basketball, baseball, hockey, and so many more. Sports bring people together!

50. All the people working to keep others safe, informed, and up-to-date with the news. It's been a tough year for news, mass shootings, and natural disasters, which is why we're thankful for all the hard working journalists, reporters, news anchors, first responders, weather forecasters, and hurricane scientists.

So remember: No matter how bad things may seem there are always some bright spots in the world.

WATCH: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez makes history as she becomes the youngest woman ever in Congress

[bb-bigbang-org]

EPISODE 2 -  “I feel like there was no drama caused this week” - CODY

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MANDI

well pretty sure i just ruined my relationship with drew. i think he is pissed at me for not evicting cody. but my true alliance is with joe and frosby. they wanted to keep cody and i was doing what they wanted and joe kept saying we had the votes. and thankfully we did! but the house is definitely going to be split now. drew really wanted cody out because someone told him joe, brooke, frosby, and cody were in an alliance and he wanted to break that alliance up. but sorry drew! had to do what i had to do!

CODY

Oh my lord

I had a good feeling that if I survived it was gonna be close. Holy shit I was one vote away from first boot!!! 

But I survived, and I’m humbled a lot by it. I’m not going to carry on. I’m basically only talking strategy at this point with the couple of people who have reached out to me via DM’s in Joe and Mandi

The big piece of info that I found out late after my trust rankings were done is that Kayla is after me. Which came as a tad surprise initially but in retrospect it’s not at all because she hardly spoke to me after I gave up the character. My impression of her is that she was incredibly put off by me in character mode and therefore she did not wanna be guilty by association. Which is certainly a fair point. However it might cost her the game if she’s too vocal about this

FROSBY

So Episode 1 is in the books and now is time for the good ol Frosby recap. Wow I learned bits and pieces about everyone and learned what I want to do for this season. First off I need to establish the most important factor for this season hinges on 1 thing, Katrina. We have a final 2 pact and our goal is to work our way into the finale by working different ends of the game without drawing to much attention to ourselves. To do this I had to find myself some quiet players to get myself sitting nice and pretty with and I found that in both Andrew and Desiree who both are going for the same strategy as me. Along with that I have a really tight alliance with Both Joe and Mandi. I am totally cool with using this alliance because I know joe is a good player that is excellent at working a social game but I also know that due to him taking third last season I know that he will have a big target on his back and that means less of a target on mine which is good. Finally the last element to my game is completely tanking every challenge to hopefully get people to forget about the fact that I am a challenge beast. The main reason I was voted out last time was due to the fact that I won every other challenge I was in, this caused everyone to see me as one of the biggest players in the game when in reality I was just a good cover piece for Bob and Ferg. This time I'm choosing my fate and im choosing to play on the outside but to be a good outside player I need to avoid the limelight and to do that I need to tank challenges (While still doing a partial good job that it looks like im not tanking them) As for Katrina she is running the same strategy as me with trying to stick on the outside but she is working with players like Kayla and Brooke which is a great because like myself with Joe, sticking around Kayla and Brooke will keep the heat off of Katrina and she can use them to hopefully do a good push in the later half of the game. 

Now to talk about the first vote. I for one had zero care about either player, but I figured keeping Cody in the game would create more chaos that I can hide on along with the outsider players im teamed up with. All 3 of us voted for cody so not only did we keep him in the game we also don't have to worry about cody getting mad at us for not voting for him plus we are in the majority of the aftermath vote. Now we are at the next HoH challenge and im going to tank this one and just see who wins this bad boy. Watch Cody win it, that would be hilarious and Kayla would be in big trouble. 

PS:  Im still fully new to Big Brother in general  so I'm crafting these ideas and strats on the go so don't judge me for pulling any stupid plays in the future. Here is your warning I will in fact do stupid plays. 

JOE

I’m going hard for this HoH and I’m pretty sure the only reason I want it is so Joe can’t have it.. who would I nominate? Probably the people who don’t reach out to me. Kayla, Joe, Mandi, Ash, Sammy and Cody are 100% safe with me but everyone else is fair game. 

CODY

Ok so my number 1 objective of this week is to avoid going on the block at all costs. I will consider that an absolute win because after receiving 6 votes against me I’m in a super odd spot. And the person who is HOH this week in Austin was one of the 6 who voted to evict me last week. However he told me that his vote was kind of up in the air and he could have gone either way. So I feel better about him being in power over someone who was vocal in wanting me out such as Kayla or Sammy

I have decided to throw out Kayla as a target to Austin with the main reason being that she is after me, and I feel like she genuinely is playing a smart game and playing both sides. I think she has great adaptability in the game and could easily slide under the radar despite voting incorrectly at the first eviction

Hopefully this works and Kayla and another person go up

CODY

So I have spoken with Desiree and it turns out Austin was leading the charge to take me out from her perspective so that is a bad idea lol. I’ve asked her to suggest the other person and she chose Frosby which is great because he is someone who definitely had my back

Unfortunately the objective of that alliance idea hasn’t quite been fulfilled as i was hoping we could include Austin to try and throw ideas into his head and show some loyalty. But it sounds as though I am his number 1 target so there’s no point forcing such a big thing onto him

So I have spoken with Desiree and it turns out Austin was leading the charge to take me out from her perspective so that is a bad idea lol. I’ve asked her to suggest the other person and she chose Frosby which is great because he is someone who definitely had my back

Unfortunately the objective of that alliance idea hasn’t quite been fulfilled as i was hoping we could include Austin to try and throw ideas into his head and show some loyalty. But it sounds as though I am his number 1 target so there’s no point forcing such a big thing onto him

DESIREE

Daily Thoughts for Day 5:

Collecting Votes:

The house seems pretty split on the vote. It's interesting to see two groups forming for votes and I'm wondering if that's indicative of any alliances that are lurking. Austin & Sammy are leading the campaign to vote out Cody. They have both messaged me with a very similar list of people that they say are voting Cody out, so I'm guessing they are a duo. Despite their efforts, I do believe Pennino is going this week, and that's where my vote is going. But, it is going to be a close call and nothing is certain. To be honest, I'm not super gungho on either one going. On one hand, Cody doesn't seem trustworthy. But, he is a big target that we can worry about later, and it's always good to have a target bigger than you in the house. Pennino has been putting in very little effort in this game, which I don't want to see rewarded. Ultimately, I'm going with Pennino because that's what Frosby is doing, and he's my biggest ally. That being said, I want to keep an eye on Cody because I am worried he may be making deals to stay here. He's definitely still on my radar.

Pennino's Eviction: The votes went exactly as I'd predicted (7-6 with Pennino being evicted). Of course, I can't know for sure who voted where, but the numbers lined up with what I thought would happen. I do feel bad about Pennino going because he seemed like a sweet kid, but I am just glad to be on the right side of the vote today and I feel good knowing that, even though I don't have a single alliance chat, I still kind of know what's going on in the house. But, now that the first eviction is up, it is time to start solidifying alliances. Let's go!!!

DESIREE

Daily Thoughts for Day 6:

HOH: So, I abstained from the HOH competition this week. I feel bad about having to do that, but I just have a lot going on on my end with these protests and I didn't have the social energy to ask for selfies. I'm not sure I would've wanted the responsibility yet, anyway. One Step At A Time, just like my pre-season song pick.😉 Austin won HOH and I feel okay with that. Not super excited or scared. I've chatted with Austin and he campaigned against Cody last week for votes but I ultimately did not end up voting that way. He probably knows that, but still I don't think I'm at the top of his radar.

Alliance Formed: I might have done something bad for my game... I voice chatted with a few people, including Cody, and he seemed fairly cool. Then, he privately messaged me asking about forming an alliance. He picked one person and I picked one person. He picked Andy (which is great because I love Andy) and I picked Frosby. It might be a dumb idea to join an alliance with the person at the very bottom of my trust rankings, but for some reason I believe he has good intentions? It was definitely a show of good faith for us each to pick a person to join. So Cody is definitely growing in my favor this week. I plan to stay true to that alliance.

Strategy: Originally, Cody suggested Austin for the alliance along with Andy. I told him that Austin was the one spearheading the campaign against him and that adding him to an alliance probably wasn't the best idea. I think offering this information to Cody allowed him to trust me a bit more, while also potentially making two more people in the house who are bigger threats than me. Cody said that Austin is playing both sides and he also is worried about Kayla as a threat to his game. I definitely agree that Kayla is a threat, she seems well-connected and well-versed in BB ORGs. But at the moment, I don't have any personal targets.

CODY

Ok so I’m on the block again. No surprise there. I’ve been told by Austin that he has some sort of backdoor plan in place for if he wins the veto where he saves me and someone else goes up. However I genuinely know nothing else. He could be flat out lying 

I’m really sad that it’s me and Joe. He is my number 1. But I’m confident that we can work together with our alliances to keep us both safe and eliminate whoever gets backdoored...

I have come up with a move tho. So basically, one of the things I did when Austin was HOH was I sold out Kayla. Told him she’s not to be trusted, can’t keep her around. Turns out they’re working together so I couldn’t win there

Instead I’ve gone down the reverse psychology route with a move I’ve never personally tried before but hopefully it works

I reached out to Austin and said to him that I’m really close with Brooke, and if the backdoor plans work I do not want her gone. But I’m actually saying that because he might see what I’m saying, take advantage of it and put her up to “weaken” me. When in reality if Brooke goes up, the person it weakens the most is Kayla.

While myself, Brooke, Joe have been aligned throughout the whole game. I have realised that Brooke plays too loyal of a game to her people. And her number one person no questions asked is Kayla. I think it’s not good if both of them are kept in the game together. So that’s why I’ve made this move because I’ll happily take out Brooke if it means her Kayla doesn’t have a lot of power and can take out me. Because if it’s me and Kayla on the block next to each other I have lost Brooke’s vote. So I wanna prepare for the possibility of me and Kayla on the block later down the line by taking out someone who would not vote to save me in that hypothetical in Brook

DESIREE

Daily Thoughts for Day 7:

Key Order: Austin nominated Cody & Joe. That doesn't surprise me. He told me that Cody was his target and Joe is a pawn because he is well-liked in the house. He also assured me that I would be safe this week. What was most revealing, though, is the key order. I referenced the key order back to my predictions for votes on the first eviction. All of the people that I suspect voted for Cody to go were given their keys first, except for one. I was given my key in the middle, and then all of the people that voted for Pennino to go. However, Katrina was in the the latter group, despite her voting to evict Cody. This leads me to believe that Austin still thinks I voted to evict Cody and that Katrina is the one who flipped her vote. Katrina was the last person he convinced to swap, so it would make sense that he would assume she was the one to flip her vote. ......Am I playing both sides of the house? Am I the villain? Oh man... I'm just glad Austin put me in the middle instead of towards the beginning, which would make this way more obvious.

Alliance Chat: Based on the key order, Andy has surmised that Katrina and Ashley are floating atm. I don't know why he didn't include Brooke or Mandi, because they were also in the bottom half of the list and they are not in our alliance. He is suggesting we form an alliance with those two as well to catch the floaters, but I think it's a bit too soon to make that call based entirely on key order. I suggested we wait a bit and see what happens this week.

BROOKE

Austin nominating Joe and Cody irritates me so much. I guess he wants an enemy in me.. Austin better watch his f*cking back because if Joe leaves, I’m out for blood

ANDREW

Austin made it quite clear, the alliance he is in, with they key placement. It looks like the house is divided in the ones that wanted Cody out(Austin, Kayla, Drew, Lukas and Sammi) and the ones that wanted to keep Cody (Frosby, Mandi, Brooke, Andrew, Desiree) Katrina, Ashley and Chloe seem Wild cards. Idk this game is long, I’m later on showing you guys, my alliances chart. 

That’s how the house is divided. FROSBY

Well this is the worst, like the actual worst thing that could have happened at this point in the game. Cody and Joe are both key allies for the 2 alliances i'm in and basically one of these alliances is going to lose a player. The player I would like to go home would be Cody. The alliance I have with Cody is with Andrew and Desiree and honestly I was already working with both of them before cody came into the picture so if cody got voted out not much would change between our trio alliance. As for Joe, I really need joe to stay in. He is a future vote shield plus him and his sister give me great intel and safety in the game that can push me into the game. The only thing is they will both be extremely strong in the late game so we will have to be careful about that. As for working with Katrina, she is good allies with Austin in the background of the game so that helps knowing which way he may be going in the future now knowing that he can be a challenge threat. As for the Power of Veto competition this is really hard for me. Like I want to save Joe so he won't go home but its WAY to early to show who my true allies are. Also if I choose 1 over the other I am hurting my connections with either alliance so the best course of action is throw the game and pray Cody gets a massive amount of votes.  

CODY

Holy fuck

I’m so sad I lost the veto. However I’m glad Austin won because he has told me that he has a crazy plan. Which I’m being super tight lipped about and I’m pretending that I’m gone. In which I think legit everyone thinks is gonna happen

I actually have no idea what Austin’s plan really entails. It might end up being really bad for an ally of mine however it will save myself and could save Joe which I’m all for! Joe is my boy in this game. Being put on the block next to him is horrible. Hopefully we both survive and one of us wins the next HOH

AUSTIN

i kinda forgot about these so lets just go back and start at day 1 . i was happy to see a few familiar faces like sammy lukas and chloe . didnt know any of the rest but happy to meet new ppl. kayla and drew seems great so bounded with them pretty good at the start. after the first hoh and veto i could kinda tell they was a lil goup in the house like brook, joe,frosby,and ash all seemed close but they also talked about being in othe games together. to my fucking surprise i WON the second hoh comp . i put up cody ( becuase no one trusted him) and joe ( bc i secretly wanted him gone ) . it was simple cody would probs go but if they was the chance i won veto i had a backdoor plan. THEN  i fucking won veto as well. so i talked with my alliance ( lukas,drew,sammy,chloe,and me) they wanted ash to go up so i thought it was perfect timing for me to take cody down and put up ashley so that foursome loses a number. fist time ever im good at challenges so wish me luck bc i feel i have a target now and will need it 

DREW

YOU SEE THAT?! YOU SEE THAT EXCELLENCE? THAT'S HOW YOU PLAY BIG BROTHER! 

Cody's bitch ass thinks that I'm playing a piss poor game, but I don't care about that little catfish. I care about taking out the bigger guns, and right now- miss conniving, scheming, manipulative, fake ass lips, nails and extensions Ashley... is going HOME! 

I know that Chloe is a little mad that Cody is being taken down and what not, yeah I understand that. But that fake attitude that Ashley has over some of these houseguests, myself included, that isn't apart of this "premade" of her, Joe, Frosby and Brooke... UGH WE WON... and I HAD A BIG PART IN THAT ROLE... GOURMET MEAL HERE I COMMMMMEEEE

DESIREE

Daily Thoughts for Day 9:

House Drama: In the morning, Cody got upset with Drew for not responding to his DM's and decided to air his dirty laundry in the house chat. I think this was a stupid idea because Cody already has a big target on his back for the whole "house meeting" on Day 2. Once I woke up and saw what he did, I told him he really needs to lay low if he doesn't want the whole house against him. Hopefully he will listen to that advice... I understand it's frustrating that Drew doesn't like him and doesn't respond to his DM's, but Cody made an enemy out of him by accusing him of leaking the Unde9able alliance. He can't expect Drew to all of the sudden be fine with him just because he dropped his "character".

Contingency Plans: Before the POV winner was even announced, Ashley was in my DM's asking me if I'd vote Cody out. (For the record, I'm pretty sure she voted to keep Cody last week...) Austin won POV which seemed like the final nail in the coffin for Cody. In DM's, Frosby & I were already agreeing that if we needed to vote Cody out to save ourselves, we would. If Cody was going to be eliminated anyway, it would be better if the house didn't know we were with him. 

POV Ceremony Fallout: In a shocking turn of events, Austin took Cody off the block and replaced him with Ashley. Nobody was expecting this and we were all very confused. As far as we were concerned, Cody was Austin's number 1 target. Before the POV ceremony, Austin DMed me, intending to tell me the plan. I didn't log on until immediately after the POV ceremony, so I didn't see it. After the ceremony, I messaged him and he told me that Ashley, Frosby, Brooke, & Joe all had pre-game relationships, so he wanted to take one of them out. I immediately messaged Frosby about this, and he said that they have played together before but he barely talks to Ashley and Brooke hates him. Him and Joe seem to be close, though, which is fine by me because I like Joe too.

Voting: I spoke with all of the alliance members separately about which way we should vote. I guess we're all still a little nervous because it seemed we didn't say anything about the vote in the group chat until we had all decided in DM's. Andy was the only one considering voting out Joe, because he believes that we could get Ashley on our side. He didn't seem that pressed, though, and ultimately the group decided to vote to evict Ashley.

CODY

This round was a lot more telling as I was able to get some legs within the game and I tried super hard to diffuse my target. With the exception of when I called out Drew for his lack of social play I feel like there was no drama caused this week. And even that I think more people were on my side with that than other people have been and understood that it was a game move. Because legitimately I do feel like Drew is setting himself up for failure. He’s made it too obvious that he’s not willing to work with anyone who I seem to be close with and hasn’t talked to majority of them. And even though we are only up to week 3, it’s the day 1 bonds that are maintained throughout the game that matter most. If someone only starts talking to me properly later in the game and unapologetically does not care about the lack of bond they will not get my vote

WEEK 2 CAST ASSESSMENT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36ScH-fNJ-k

[troxk]

okay so eddie’s d**** in it: chapter 2, yeah? literally, what is the purpose of it. as far as i can tell, it was wholly unnecessary from a narrative perspective and that makes me angry!! i haven’t read the book yet, so not sure if it’s the same deal, but eddie dying felt like it had little to no thematic significance in that movie. what does eddie’s death tell us about childhood trauma or the nature of memory or the power of trust and sacrifice to overcome evil, or any other of the story’s themes? it does Nothing for any of those crucial aspects because in the movie, eddie’s death isn’t a sacrifice, isn’t a reflection of the desperation that’s built up over 27 years and so much pain, as could’ve perhaps justified his death. a good thematic use of death is stan’s death (even though i hate it) because it represents not only the horrifying reappearance of childhood trauma in adulthood, but also later demonstrates the strength of sacrifice. eddie’s death in the movie is tragic and moving, but it’s fundamentally nothing more than a mistake because he didn’t mean to die. he SHOULDN’T have died because even beyond not furthering the story’s themes, it actually COUNTERACTS a lot of the thematic development that had already occurred. the whole idea that if you believe in your actions, trust your and your friends’ abilities despite fear is something i’d say andy muschietti developed quite well throughout the runtime, and eddie throwing the fence piece felt like the logical culmination of one of the movie’s key themes. 

and then they decided to undermine eddie’s belief and bravery, his entire character arc over both movies, this complex theme at the heart of the story. for no reason at all.

because death can obviously be an incredibly useful tool in fiction to drive the plot or assist the characterisation of other characters. don’t get me wrong, it absolutely should not be used for this purpose at the expense of thematic exploration. but even giving the movie this pass, death as a plot/character motivator is NOT something we should be seeing so late in the story and ESPECIALLY not in the middle of a fast-paced action climax that is essentially the final scene of the movie. i’d go so far as to say it can’t be used in this way. death can be a useful motivator, but that late in the story, there’s nowhere to drive the plot or characters. eddie’s death is sad but ultimately has no significant effect on the outcome of the losers’ fight with pennywise - had he not died they DEFINITELY would have ended up using the ‘make him feel small’ tactic, and perhaps even sooner since it was EDDIE WHO FIGURED IT OUT IN THE FIRST PLACE. additionally, his dying can’t develop his character, his decision to believe he could kill pennywise did (a huge moment of character development for him that the movie immediately shits on). and his dying doesn’t develop any of the other characters because it’s way too late in the story for that! there’s no time to properly examine the impact of his death on the others (not that this stopped mr andy from trying, giving us that mischaracterised, half-assed quarry scene with everyone laughing - juxtaposed nicely with a heartbroken richie. not a good closing sentiment for your series, andy! that’s not how good storytelling works! you’re meant to actually give your characters satisfying, and at the very least, plausible, endings). so yeah, no use as a characterisation device either.

again, i’ll mention i haven’t read the book and i understand that the movies want to be faithful to mr king’s literary genius blah blah but people take artistic liberties, evidenced frequently in the modern adaptations. so @mr andy: stop being lazy, if you can change one part, you can change another, especially when the other part is as nonsensical and pointless as your movie accidentally framed it.

so tl:dr eddie’s death in it:chapter 2 had no necessity as a thematic, plot or characterisation device, actively made all these narrative aspects WORSE and MORE CONFUSING and just to top it all off: the head clown himself decided it was a good idea to have a literal - in all senses of the word - ‘bury your gays’ ending. i’m :) tired :)

[ethanalter]

Andy Serkis and Andrew Garfield on 'Breathe': 'We wanted to buck the audience's expectations'

Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy in Breathe. (Photo: Bleecker Street/Participant Media)

At this point in Andy Serkis‘s career as geek icon and performance-capture pioneer, it’s not a surprise to seem him playing an ape, an intergalactic despot, or a Marvel Cinematic Universe troublemaker. What is surprising, though, is to find him behind the camera for a dramatic period piece like Breathe, the new biopic about polio victim and patients’ rights activist Robin Cavendish, played onscreen by ex-Spider-Man Andrew Garfield. “It’s quite an unusual outing for me,” Serkis admitted to Yahoo Entertainment at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Breathe had its world premiere in September. (It opens in limited release Friday.) “People wouldn’t have expected me to something like this one, I think.”

Had Serkis not found his way to fame via fantasy and science fiction, it’s very possible he would have been directed a movie like this one much earlier. Back in his school days, the British actor studied the visual arts with an eye towards being a painter, and he often describes his directorial approach to Breathe in painterly terms. “We chose to shoot the film in a way that makes the audience feel that they’re going to watch a very romantic ’60s film, but then buck those expectations. It had to have an element of fairy tale to it, in the design of the costumes and the color palette. You paint the picture in a particular light so it will affect the audience in a particular way.”

Breathe director Andy Serkis in London (Photo: John Phillips/Getty Images for BFI)

Serkis may have ultimately embraced an actor’s journey, rather than a painter’s path, but as he explains it, directing allows him to bring those twin interests together, using the camera as a kind of paintbrush to specifically capture performance. It’s no surprise, then, that Breathe is particularly attuned to the actors’ faces and body language, with the director inviting the audience to closely observe Garfield and Claire Foy — who plays Robin’s wife, Diana — as they portray a couple whose lives are forever changed by illness. (Cavendish passed away in 1994.) “For Robin, I was only able to express myself through my face and eyes,” Garfield says of the experience of playing Cavendish, who was confined to a bed and wheelchair for 36 years after polio left his body paralyzed from the neck down. “Andy wanted to get inside Robin’s experience and honor that limitation. All of my energy went to the part of my body that could express something. My duty and privilege was to attempt to begin to understand the depths of what that would do to the psyche, and your understanding of life and how the universe works.”

Cavendish’s son, Jonathan, is a producer on Breathe and functioned as a valuable resource for Garfield and Serkis during production, providing unique insight into his father’s personality and spirit. Interestingly, one aspect of his father that isn’t as prominently represented onscreen is the elder Cavendish’s conflicted feelings about religion. “Robin was a very spiritual man before [his illness],” Garfield explains. “He was a devoted Christian who converted lots of people in his army battalion. Without being forceful, he was connected to sense of spirituality that went when the polio hit. After that, he had no faith whatsoever in the God he formally did.” Picking up that thought, Serkis says that Cavendish eventually found an outlet for those spiritual leanings by making a conscious choice to live every day to the fullest. “By the end of his life, there are moments where he did say, ‘It helps knowing that this is it, there’s nothing after this.’ He was a spiritual man, but not necessarily a religious man in the last part of his life.”

Andrew Garfield in Breathe (Photo: Bleecker Street/Participant Media)

It’s rare that a filmmaker embarks on one assignment with another already in the can. But that’s just how the timing worked out for Serkis, who shot his performance capture-augmented adaptation of The Jungle Book before jumping to Breathe. (After several delays, that film is set to be released in October 2018.) Asked if he’s hoping his next directorial assignment will be one of the fan-friendly entertainments he regularly appears in — say the next iteration of the Planet of the Apes franchise or a stand-alone Star Wars story like Rogue One — Serkis says he’s looking to make his stamp as an auteur, not just a craftsman. “I have scripts that I’ve written that I want to make, and which I was originally going to make before all these other things started to happen. So that’s the one that I’m concentrating on. But I love the Apes franchise, so who knows? They all interest me hugely.”

Breathe is currently playing in theaters.

Watch: Andrew Garfield reveals how he pulled off his stunning transformation in Breathe:

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment: 

It’s Daniel Radcliffe vs. jaguar in a tense clip from ‘Jungle’ (exclusive)

Jackie Chan wants to show audiences he can really act with ‘The Foreigner’

No, Corey Feldman did not bring Michael Jackson’s chimp Bubbles to the set of ‘The Burbs’

[ginnyzero]

Catching the Spirit of the Times

Being an artistic person, there is one thing I can tell you that is pretty common in artistic endeavors, change. Art is expressed differently during different time periods. Movements, trends, rages and fads all meld together to express an overall feeling. In art school, or at the least the art school I attended, we are taught to try and recognize and then capitalized on these moods. They called it catching the zeitgeist or the spirit of the times. That way we could take what we wanted to do and tune it into the universal consciousness of all mankind of that moment and potentially make money. (Yeah, they were a little cutthroat about the making money bit. Granted these are artists they are talking to and ‘starving artist’ is a stereotype for a reason.)

Granted catching this spirit of the times was probably a lot easier several hundred years ago when the art scene was confined to an area the size of the United States (aka Europe) and artists didn’t have to compete with the internet age and the idea of a global economy. But now we have strange things like marketing analysis and trend forecasts! (I swear, if you want to go into an industry that is over analyzed and forecasted to death, choose anything related to fashion. This includes advertising. Oye vie.)

And still where art is a business, they will still make the same things that worked before over and over even though the market is tired of it. (Though the market doesn’t help because they keep going out and watching or buying these things. Mainly, because there is nothing else there.) This is what I feel happens when art is reduced to the bottom line of dollar and cents. The spirit of the times gets ignored in favor of things that are considered a ‘sure deal.’

Case in point, how many Spiderman Origin stories have we had in the past two decades? How many times have we seen Batman fight against the Joker or Two Face or “insert villain of the week” here?

Right now we’re in the middle of a ‘stand alones are not welcome,’ series franchising is paramount, and the summer tent pole is King. It feels we are in the middle of the era of the 1980s remake. Where the real spirit of the times is embodied in the early Marvel Cinematic Universe (and if they keep going the way rumors suggest they’re going to shoot themselves in the foot with it.)

I like watching these swings. What are people talking about? What are fans talking about versus what are critics talking about? What are average people talking about? Critics see things completely differently than how fans see it. And fans see things differently than the average movie goer. Critics are about opinion. Fans tend to be ahead of the curve. The average person can say “this is what I like, right now, at this moment.” They are the immediate temperature test to see if things are going in the right direction or the wrong direction. Because the average person might read something by a critic or view a trailer and decide to see what the fuss is for themselves and come out with a completely opposite opinion of what the critic is saying.

Take John Carter for example, the critics hated it. Financially, it was going to be a flop no matter what happened. Those who went and saw it in theatres, liked it. (You know, that is if they knew it was in theatres to begin with and had an inkling what the story was about.) So while critics and articles use John Carter as an example of a bad movie that just stank, the average movie goer gets mad because that was a good movie in their opinion and that critic and article is just plain wrong! Whereas the fans of John Carter of Mars who have read the book get angry because the movie destroyed the story of the books. They wanted a more faithful adaptation. (It’s Disney, that wasn’t going to happen, ever.) So, for every article saying that John Carter was a bad movie, there will be at least half a dozen comments on how it wasn’t a bad movie. That it never stood a chance to be a financial success. And that it is giving anyone who is involved with it a bad rap. (The fans of the books go mutter in their corner about how the spirit of the books were completely ruined and the ground breaking story ideas for that time were completely ignored.)

In the fashion world at least, we call these three different types the trend setters (Critics), the early adopters (fans) and the followers (average person). Things can work their way down from the trend setters to the streets or they can work up from the streets to the trend setters. This is the difference between Haute Couture ideas working their way down to discounter and outlet stores. (Yes, outlet stores have their own designed ranges now.) Versus, street fashion working its way into the designs of ready to wear.

There is the scene in the Devil Wears Prada where Miranda is talking to Andy about the godawful acrylic bright blue sweater she’s wearing. And how that color, cerulean, had started on the runways of an haute couture fashion show several years earlier and had worked its way down to whatever chain store Andy had picked the sweater from. And somewhere, at some time, Pantone told said designer that cerulean was the next it color. (Really, it is enough to boggle the mind, remember how a few years ago it was orchid. Orchid? Really? Fuchsia? My eyes hurt. Cerulean is just as bad. Cerulean was at least fictional.) This is the example of top to bottom.

Whereas bottom to top would be the Harajuku fashions of Japan. Harajuku wasn’t really a fashion trend in Japan. It was a place where Japanese teenagers came and wore clothes to express their individuality. This was extremely important in Japan because the culture is a total opposite of the United States. Individuality wasn’t and isn’t really encouraged. They express their individuality much differently over there, especially among the younger set. (Fashion is marketed and sold completely differently in Asian countries were branding is much more emphasized.) Harajuku and places like it were places where Japanese teenagers could throw off the constraints of their family and their schools and try to form an identity by being ‘someone else’ for a while. Well, this street fashion became something of a news story. It made it into Vogue even as something to watch. There were photo books published called “Fruits.” And then later, Gwen Stefani created a whole ready to wear line based on the aesthetics of the Harajuku. Street fashion became ready to wear. (Whether or not this was even appropriate is a different discussion.)

You see, by the time the trendsetters, or the critics in this case, are tired of an idea, the average person is raving about it. To keep your eye on the spirit of the times, you have to look ahead. (In fashion you are always designing 18 months in advance.) You need to keep your finger on the pulse by seeing what the early adopters or the fans want and catering to their needs, because by the time you get it out, that is probably what the average fan is going to want too.

Fortunately, the spirit of the times tends to stick around for several years before the average person gets tired of it and moves on to something else. In some cases, using critics as your trend setters isn’t the best idea, because like I said, they see things extremely differently than the average person does. So, in whatever area you’re trying to figure out what your ‘spirit of the times’ will hopefully be in the near future, do your research carefully.

[wellesleyunderground]

Four Weddings and a Funeral reviewed by Lakshmi Gandhi (@LakshmiGandhi) & Asha Sundararaman ‘04 (@mixedtck)

This review first appeared on Lakshmi and Asha’s weekly newsletter - sign up here!

We love a good rom com and screenwriter Richard Curtis's 1994 "Four Weddings and a Funeral" has always been a favorite of the genre. (Who could forget Hugh Grant at his most bumbly and floppy-haired as he courts the elusive Andie McDowell?)

That was one of the reasons we were both surprised and intrigued when it was announced that Mindy Kaling would be making a Hulu series based on the classic film. This is also one of the reasons it pains us so much to reveal that the resulting series is NOT GOOD. In fact, it's pretty actively bad and is strange and painful to watch.

Fortunately, we watched (most of!) the available episodes so that you, dear readers, don't have to.

(Editor's note: As usual, we're going to spoil everything, but we can't imagine anyone voluntarily spending their time with these characters, so it's ok!)

Lakshmi: Asha, I hadn't read anything about this series going in for once, so while I knew the reviews were iffy I simply wasn't prepared for the extent of the badness. All of the scripts felt like first drafts? None of the romantic relationships made sense?! The New York Times review was brutal:

The show, which has almost nothing in common with the film except for a London setting, comes from the creators Mindy Kaling and Matt Warburton, but without any of the clever sparks they brought to “The Mindy Project.” Though it is set in England, the four main characters are American. They are allegedly best friends, but no one has anything in common nor do any of them have any chemistry, platonic or romantic. The inevitable couple seems like a bad match, and no two characters seem like they’re on the same show. Do not go to the chapel; do not get married.

Asha: I hadn't read much about it either. (Also, full disclosure, I actually haven't watched the original movie.)

Lakshmi: What?! We need to get that fixed immediately. But (as you’ve probably guessed) the basic premise is that Hugh Grant goes to four weddings and a funeral (of course) and all of the characters grow and change as a result of those five events.

Asha: Right, makes sense. (Also, I promise that I will watch the original film soon.)

Lakshmi: But in addition to the original being super white and super upper crust English (which is different from this adaptation in perhaps a bad way) the film had a lot of depth. This series has all American main characters and is just strange because so many aspects are nonsensical.

First, what are the odds that all of your good friends from your college experience in the US will land cushy jobs in London?!

Asha: Right?! I went to grad school in London, so I kept wondering how all of them had work visas! Banking, I could see, but starting a design business? Working as a teacher? None of it makes sense!

Lakshmi: And none of them even have English parents or seemed to go to grad school there (two other routes to getting visas). Also, since none of them are actually married when the series begins, they don’t qualify for spousal visas either.

Asha: Exactly.

Lakshmi: So there was a definite "what about Brexit? How did any of you get visas?" feeling throughout my viewing experience.

Asha: Mine too, especially having lived there.

Lakshmi: Yes! And you can definitely speak more one this (I've never lived in the United Kingdom) but my impression has always been that it is REALLY hard to get a UK work visa. And Brexit of course makes it clear that the political climate is not friendly to non-UK born people or immigrants of any kind.

Asha: it's definitely not easy. I know people who've done it post-grad school, mostly working for multinational corporations. But moving to London after college on a whim? Nah.

Lakshmi: Right. The only people I know who moved to London on a whim did so without documentation (meaning they worked off the books in restaurants while they had their quarter life crisis or whatever).

So Brandon Mychal Smith's character's job is the only one that sounds legit (he works for a giant financial institution.)

Plus,  these people would never be friends in real life. Additionally, no one is likeable and no one has anything in common. There is no thread that unites them at all (and the same goes for all of their partners)

But let's back up a little and talk about the plot.

The pilot episode starts with Maya (Nathalie Emmanuel from ‘Game of Thrones’) arriving in Heathrow for one of the weddings in the show's title. Her bag goes missing and she throws a fit (she's extremely unlikeable in those scenes!) and an airline manager, the middle aged British Pakistani Haroon Khan (who is played by the Indian actor Harish Patel) asks his son Kash to help her.

That is the big meet cute of the first episode. The twist of course is that Maya soon discovers that Kash is engaged to her friend Ainsley and in fact their wedding is the one Maya flew to London to attend. I have no idea what Kash and Ainsley saw in each other and the subsequent scenes never give us any clues either!

Asha: Well, to be fair, I think that was the point. They liked the facade of each other, rather than who they actually were.

Lakshmi: But they never talked about anything? Ainsley is definitely part of the one percent (her parents fund her entire business AND rent a London townhouse for her.) Kash lives with his widower father and little brother in a working class neighborhood.

Plus they were going to have a Church of England wedding and no one talks about how they are of different faiths (the dad mentions it as an aside only after things go south). And the dad makes a joke about not drinking alcohol yet Ainsley gifts Kash with whiskey glasses (I get that Kash obviously drinks alcohol, but it's still strange that they ever made a "oh we're not supposed to be doing this" joke or anything.

Asha: Well, it is pointed out in episode 2 that the whiskey glasses were a bad gift...

Lakshmi: But not because of the religious tradition thing! But because of because of the impersonal nature of whiskey glasses as a gift.

And it's strange (especially in England of all places) to have a relationship like that and never talk about money or standing or whatnot.  It was one of the many reasons I wished this show had been transported to New York or Boston or LA or somewhere else in the United States.

Asha: But once again, that was kind of the point, they didn't talk about anything!

Lakshmi: So why were they getting married in the first place? And all of the couples had the same problem! They were all terrible communicators.

Asha: Yes, that's true.

Lakshmi: Why were Zara and Craig together?

Asha: I have no idea.

Lakshmi: Craig was the Brandon Mychal Smith character who worked at the huge bank. Zara herself spent a lot of her time exotifying him too.

I also need to point out (and this continues Mindy's terrible record with regard to writing Black characters)  all of Craig’s storylines were AWFUL and I feel comfortable calling them othering and borderline racist.

For example, there is a joke in which Craig says six girls asked him to prom and the punchline is that "one of them was my Spanish teacher." (And readers know me well enough by now to know that was a huge cringe and a big no for me.)

And then! He gets a message out of the blue from a girl he hooked up with six years ago and it turns out.. dun dun dun... he has a secret baby! Gross and also... why didn't they give one of their upper crust white British male characters that storyline? Choosing to give your only Black character a secret baby is a weird decision! It just seemed unnecessary and his partner was so disconnected from him and the realities of his life.

Basically, I cannot believe that money and class weren't more of an issue in all of these relationships with British people. Mindy must have read Austen at some point? (or any other British novel, hahaha)

Asha: One would think! But they actually do bring up class issues a bit in episode three with their British friend Gemma. She's "new money" which means she ends up being the butt of the joke in her British social circles.

Lakshmi: Yes, that was interesting! But by episode three the series had been so frustrating to me that I couldn't appreciate the good parts as much as I should have. For example, episode one was BAD but episode two was JUST MEDIOCRE and episode three was JUST OK but the badness of the pilot made my tolerance for the rest go down a bunch.

Asha: I want to say that the show does have some good parts! I enjoyed the relationship between Kash and his family.

Lakshmi: Yes, I loved that as well. The dad was a well written character. And they watch a British game show that is a lot like Jeopardy! every night, which felt like something most South Asian families would do Plus there were little asides where they did talk about religion and those also felt real.

Asha: I actually feel like the dynamic between Kash, Kash's dad and his brother was the best part of the show. All three were the standout characters of the series.

Lakshmi: I wish they had made Kash the central character, rather than Maya.

Asha: Agreed.

Lakshmi: And the child who played the little brother Asif was also very good.

Asha: Definitely

Lakshmi: I liked this thread by the author Rachel Hawkins on the show:

Nathalie Emmanuel deserves better than Four Weddings and a Funeral, OOF. I ADORE Mindy Kaling, but this is so bad I kind of can't believe it exists.

Asha: The entire show was just so underwritten.

Lakshmi: And I know I keep sounding like a broken record but we never really see why these characters are friends.

Asha: Well, they might be that group of college friends who are best friends because they were best friends in college and would have grown apart if it weren't for the fact that they all moved abroad

Lakshmi: Perhaps... but usually those tight bonds don't last even if you do end up being in the same place. I mean, why live in England (or set your show in England) if the characters hang out with and act like Americans all day.

Asha: Hahaha, that was the one realistic thing to me actually

Lakshmi: I don’t know...this would have been a great show to set in Boston or another upper crust New England town. I show featuring characters that went to boarding school and their working class New England friends would have been so good. (and that concept hasn't been explored in a modern day show in a while.) Plus, Mindy is from Massachusetts! She missed the boat there!

Asha: Well...she did go to private school, and to Dartmouth....

Lakshmi: So it's her world! She should have done it!

Asha: Her world was minus the working class New Englanders!

Lakshmi: She could have gotten other writers for those scenes. I feel like a lot of the parts that especially annoyed us would have been eliminated had this been an American show..

Asha: That's probably true.

Lakshmi: You've seen “Love Actually,” right?

Asha: Yes.

Lakshmi:  So a lot of the scenes here were like “Love Actually” fanfiction (another thing reviewers pointed out.) There's a novelist who flirts with a woman who speaks English as a second language. There's a weird choir that pops up during one of the weddings.

Those scenes with the French teacher did illustrate how fragile male writers are!

Asha: Hahahahaha

Lakshmi: Seriously though! Anyway, the character Duffy gives her a draft of his novel to read. It's a 1200 page book (and everyone knows about my strong belief that nothing needs to be above 350 pages!) and he asks her for honest feedback.

But when he receives honest feedback he goes nuts and acts like a baby (which is totally unsurprising.) He’s even so upset that he asks her to leave his home.

Asha: he does make amends later on, once he realizes that none of his friends who praised his book had actually read it.

For the record, her feedback was that there were 20 pages of that 1200 that were great! Plus, those pages she liked were at the end, so he should be appreciative that she engaged with the work! His was so gross and so thin-skinned.

Asha: it really means that you're too attached to your work and that you see it as a reflection of who you are as a person. It also means you're not ready to be a professional writer.

Lakshmi: I strongly feel that the way people respond to edits reflects who they are as a person. This has nothing to do with the show at all really, but I maintain there is one way to know everything you need to know about a person, and that’s by FACT CHECKING THEIR WORK.

The person who blows up when you ask "oh,where did you get that stat from?” is insecure in all aspects of their life. Also, "Remember to spell check" is never a personal attack, but you'd be surprised at how many people act as if it is! So I think that's why I had such a personal reaction to that scene (and kept wondering at why Mindy and the other writer put it in.)

Asha: Hmm...I don't agree that it reflects who they are as a person. But i do think it means they're probably insecure, ha.

Lakshmi: So you do agree it reflects SOME aspects of their personality. I don’t know, as a fact checker, I just want to make sure we're accurate and don’t get sued! But I'm kind of used to people blowing up when I ask questions like "can you send me the link to this study?" (which should be a neutral question but rarely is).

ANYWAY, another annoying thing was how Maya randomly decides to stay in England after going through her own breakup and then starts interviewing with Members of Parliament essentially right away. Again, my brain went to the place of "what about Brexit?!”

Asha: Same.

Lakshmi: Even the most liberal Labour Party member probably doesn't want to deal with the optics of hiring an American on a whim? There are people in England who would kill for those jobs...

But it was interesting to see Maya process the aftermath of her affair. She had been working for a New York Senator and had an affair with him. She then realizes that she never knows why these other politicians are granting her interviews. Are they hoping for an affair as well?

(Maya is VERY talented but she feels like people are overlooking her skills because of her personal life.) I actually thought those scenes were some of the most realistic of the series.

Asha: Well, other than the fact that she was an American interviewing for British political positions, which as we’ve noted wasn’t at all realistic.

Lakshmi: Of course. But that internal conflict was very real.

Lakshmi: OK, we went well over our usual time! (We always have strong feelings about Mindy's work!) My final thought was that I just couldn’t believe this novelist dude thought his friends had read his work.

I feel like writers would be a lot happier if they realized their nearest and dearest probably aren't going to read their stuff (and oftentimes won't even buy their stuff!) and that sometimes that is all for the best.

Asha: Agreed.

Lakshmi: Also if you ask for honest critique and then blow up when you receive it 1) you aren't a good person 2) you shouldn't write publicly, because Goodreads reviewers aren't going to be as kind as a woman invited to your house as a guest. (She was really sweet about delivering the feedback; everyone should be that kind and deliberate when giving honest reactions.)

[theatellsstories]

POP ART

I have chosen to delve into the Pop Art movement. I chose this because I feel like it has a lot of possibilities for creating interesting collages and visuals by putting together different parts of modern culture. 

ORIGIN: 

Pop art originated in England and was most popular in America and in the UK. The art mostly used imagery from american culture and used it to comment on society. Pop art was a reaction to the “high art” tradition. Early pop art in Britain was fuelled by American popular culture viewed from a distance, while the American artists were inspired by what they saw and experienced living within that culture. Some people have seen it as an early manifestation of Postmodernism. As for it’s stylistic history it was a descendant of Dada, a nihilistic movement current in the 1920s that ridiculed the seriousness of contemporary Parisian art and, more broadly, the political and cultural situation that had brought war to Europe.

Where they felt that the art of the time didn’t reflect the world they saw around them. Therefore the Pop Artist took imagery from places such as adverts and other parts of popular culture.

The Tate modern described the origin of the movement like this: 

Young artists felt that what they were taught at art school and what they saw in museums did not have anything to do with their lives or the things they saw around them every day. Instead they turned to sources such as Hollywood movies, advertising, product packaging, pop music and comic books for their imagery.

Reaction to the percieved way art should be, The subject matter became far from traditional "high art" themes of morality, mythology, and classic history. They used commonplace items and depictions to reflect how they saw the world around them.

The reaction to Pop art was mostly negative, it was not taken seriously by the public. However, it found critical acceptance as a form of art suited to the highly technological, mass-media oriented society of Western countries. 

THE STYLE:

In 1957, Richard Hamilton of the Independent Group described the “POP ART AESTHETIC” like this:  

Pop Art is: Popular (designed for a mass audience), Transient (short-term solution), Expendable (easily forgotten), Low cost, Mass produced, Young (aimed at youth), Witty, Sexy, Gimmicky, Glamorous, Big business

ARTIST:

Andy Warhol

Warhol’s motto, for example, was, “I think everybody should be a machine,” and he tried in his art to produce works that a machine would have made.

was an American artist, director and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. Some of his best known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962)

His most notable style, photographic silkscreen printing, replicated the look of commercial advertising. It gave Warhol a faithful duplication of his source images while allowing him to experiment with various techniques, such as over-printing (printing one colour on top of another), registration (aligning colours on a single image), and colour combinations.

Warhol is probably the most famous Pop artist, quickly becoming a household name, mostly due to the very commercial art style.  

Roy Lichtenstein

His work defined the premise of pop art through parody. Inspired by the comic strip, Lichtenstein produced precise compositions that documented while they parodied, often in a tongue-in-cheek manner. His work was influenced by popular advertising and the comic book style. He described pop art as "not 'American' painting but actually industrial painting".

Famous for the heavy comic book referencing. 

James Rosenquist

Drawing on his early experience as a billboard painter, Rosenquist culled imagery from print advertisements, photographs, and popular periodicals and recombined these to create mysterious and bold compositions. Utilizing the visual language of advertising.

Where the Water Goes (1989) And Time Door Time D’Or (1989)

Claes Oldenburg

American sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring large replicas of everyday objects. Another theme in his work is soft sculpture versions of everyday objects.

Spoonbrigde and Cherry(1988)  

Knife Slicing through wall (1989)

Lipsticks in Piccadilly Circus, London 1966

The beginning of the movement is often credited to THE INDEPENDENT GROUP In 1952, a gathering of artists in London calling themselves the Independent Group began meeting regularly to discuss topics such as mass culture's place in fine art, the found object, and science and technology.

The Collage to the left might be one of the first works accredited the ”POP” label, due to the ”Pop” spelled out in the puff of smoke.

”I was a rich man’s plaything” (1947) Edouardo Palozzi. (one of the members of the independent group)

This work is classified as an ”Art collage” a format that is widely seen within the pop art movement.

”Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?” (1956) Richard Hamilton – Also the independent group.

Here there is a more structured approach to the collage. It is all in one canvas.

POP ART IN FILM:

Pedro Almodóvar

A Spanish filmmaker who used a lot of popular media, such as music, to illustrate emotion. It was also heavily satirical. ALSO: One pop trademark in Almodovar's films is that he always produces a fake commercial to be inserted into a scene.

OTHER: 

Tadanori Yokoo

Because his work was so attuned to 1960s pop culture, he has often been (unfairly) described as the "Japanese Andy Warhol"

Train with eyes by Tadanori Yokoo. 2005

Keiichi Tanaami

Japanese Pop artist – uses manga and anime as inspiration. Which are now symbols of pop art.

POP ART IN FASHION:

The use of popular motifs, either directly from the pop art movement or from popular consumer culture of the present day.

MODERN POP ART:

Lives today artists like Philip Colbert are prime examples of the perseverance of this style. The idea is the same but the references are different. An adaptive style that reflects the society of its time.

Another reason why I chose Pop Art is because there was an exhibition at the Saatich Gallery in London with artist Philip Colbert. Me and Magdalena went to this exhibition together, there were several large scale paintings and each had clear elements of modern pop culture. What I found most captivating about his art was the technical skill. The mix between incredibly matte and vibrant colours, as seen especially in the red lobster. And then contrasted with other elements that look incredibly realistic, additionally the mix of art styles and art history references, making his art very engaging. You are constantly looking for the next reference and it kind of becomes an activity to try and spot and understand every detail.

PHILIP COLBERT

Described by Andre Leon Talley as "the Godson of Andy Warhol."

Philip Colbert’s strong use of colour and abstraction of iconic imagery place his work within an engaging dialogue with the contemporary post pop art movement. Like his Pop Art predecessors, he employs distilled compelling symbols of mass culture and re-contextualizes them in his life to create a provocative, multi-disciplinary satirical language of his own.

"I am interested in art of the everyday. I am inspired by everyday symbols that can unlock profound meaning, I want to wallpaper my life with these symbols, from my suits, cars and interiors, for me LIFE and living is the ultimate essence of art"

POP ART IN GAMES:

Katamari Damacy – use everyday object to create the biggest ball possible. the use of everyday times and the feeling of creating a “collage” of items can give this game a “POP feel”

Gary’s Mod - takes assets from other games and make them available for players to put together and play around with. Making it like a video game collage, and giving the player freedom to create.

Wikipedia says this about Gmod:

Props and ragdolls can be selected and placed into the sandbox from any installed Source engine game or from the community-created collections, such as PHX3 for props and Civil Protection model packs for ragdolls.

The description that wikipedia gives very much describes what I stated, that Gary’s Mod takes from different source engines or other community created content. This is very reminiscent of what the pop artists did with taking visuals from different sources around them and then piecing them together. I want to make it clear that Gary’s Mod has never been classified as Pop art, but this is the conclusion I made based on my research. The same goes for the example below, Cards against Humanity. 

CARDS AGAINST HUMANITY – written form of POP art, heavily references modern society whilst also ridiculing it.

I have an idea that CAH might be a form of POP art, due to it heavily referencing modern pop culture and using that for its advantage.

Web SOURCES:

Art Movement: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/pop-art http://www.theartstory.org/movement-pop-art.htm https://www.britannica.com/art/Pop-art https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/pop-art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_art https://pixel77.com/art-history-modern-design-pop-art/ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960s http://www.history.com/topics/1960s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01glsyl

Independent Group: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/i/independent-group http://independentgroup.org.uk/contributors/

Roy Lichtenstein: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/roy-lichtenstein-1508 http://lichtensteinfoundation.org/

Andy Warhol: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/andy-warhol-2121 https://www.warhol.org/ http://www.theartstory.org/artist-warhol-andy.htm

Claes Oldenburg: http://www.oldenburgvanbruggen.com/ http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/claes-oldenburg-1713 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claes_Oldenburg Philip Colbert: https://www.saatchigallery.com/art/philip_colbert.php https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Colbert https://www.philipcolbert.com/

James Rosenquist: http://www.jamesrosenquiststudio.com/ http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/james-rosenquist-1866 Pedro Almodovar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Almod%C3%B3var https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_on_the_Verge_of_a_Nervous_Breakdown

Tadanori Yokoo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadanori_Yokoo http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/ey-exhibition-world-goes-pop/artist-biography/tadanori-yokoo http://www.tadanoriyokoo.com/

Keiichi Tanaami: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiichi_Tanaami http://keiichitanaami.com/ http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/ey-exhibition-world-goes-pop/artist-biography/keiichi-tanaami

Games: https://gmod.facepunch.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry%27s_Mod http://store.steampowered.com/app/4000/Garrys_Mod/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katamari_Damacy

Other sources:

Saatchi gallery

[londontheatre]

On October 22nd at the Harold Pinter Theatre, a host of stars will gather to perform scenes from Shakespeare’s plays in response to modern-day refugee video stories. The evening will be directed by Jamie Lloyd. All profits go to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR.

A cast including such luminaries as Bertie Carvel, Lee Evans, Martin Freeman, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Wunmi Mosaku, James Norton, Jack Whitehall, Olivia Williams & many more will join together to create a one-night-only, never-to-be-repeated gala event in support of the millions of forcibly displaced people around the world. The evening includes a special guest performance by actor Jay Abdo, himself a refugee of his native Syria.

Inspired by Shakespeare’s ‘refugee’ speech from ‘The Book of Sir Thomas More’, written as a plea for tolerance during the London riots of May 1517 (500 years ago this year), ‘Whither Would You Go?’ pairs scenes from Shakespeare, read by stars of stage and screen with genuine refugee stories from around the world.

Jamie Lloyd says ‘Whither Would You Go? uses the words of William Shakespeare to highlight our shared humanity. When we focus on what we all have in common, we can start a conversation. With more than 65m forcibly displaced people in the world – the highest levels ever recorded – we should be talking and we should be acting.‘

Stephen Fry, who participated in the inaugural event in LA said ‘Shakespeare has always been a friend to the marginalised. Who better to champion the needs of refugees worldwide?’

Olivia Williams, LA event alumni & London cast member said ‘Contributing to Whither Would You Go? is the answer to the question, ‘what can I do to help?’

‘Whither Would You Go’ is the creation of Ella Smith & Emma West, both actors & producers who wanted to harness the power of storytelling to bring tangible help to refugees. Their inaugural production took place in Los Angeles in March and sold out. Further productions are now planned for New York & Sydney.

We are now witnessing the highest levels of displacement on record. An unprecedented 65.6 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 22.5 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18.

  Cast of WWYG LA Photo by Mark Brown

Often the first on the ground to help those forcibly displaced by conflict or persecution, UNHCR is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions. All profits from ‘Whither Would You Go?’ go directly to UNHCR – the UN Refugee Agency.

Best known for his work with his eponymous theatre company (The Jamie Lloyd Company) for Trafalgar Transformed at the Trafalgar Studios, Jamie Lloyd has been credited with drawing new people to the theatre and introducing plays to a wholly diverse audience. He is a proponent for affordable theatre for young and diverse audiences and has been credited with ‘redefining West End theatre’ (Nick Curtis, Evening Standard – ‘Jamie Lloyd: The Playmaker‘). He has an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre for ‘The Pride’ at the Royal Court – and has been nominated a further four times. His production of ‘Passion’ during his associate directorship at the Donmar Warehouse won an Evening Standard award for Best Musical. He has also worked at the National Theatre, the Old Vic and in the West End.

A refugee of his native Syria, actor Jay Abdo’s career was cut short in 2011. During a trip to Beirut where he spoke to a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, Abdo spoke out against the Assad government and how they were “responsible for killings within their borders”. After returning to Syria, Abdo began to receive threats and was intimidated and criticized for his lack of patriotism. As a result, he moved to the United States in October 2011 to escape persecution. He joined his wife in Minnesota, where she was studying as a Humphrey fellow at the Fulbright Program and the couple later moved to Los Angeles so he could start acting again. After working several odd jobs, including delivering pizzas for Domino’s Pizza and driving an Uber, he finally began to land major roles again, including QUEEN OF THE DESERT with Nicole Kidman, A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING with Tom Hanks & most recently 1ST BORN with Val Kilmer & William Baldwin.

Bertie Carvel is currently starring as Rupert Murdoch in INK at the Duke Of York’s Theatre in the West End, and on screen as Simon in the BBC’s hit drama DOCTOR FOSTER. Previously he starred in JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL, COALITION, BABYLON and as Miss Trunchbull in MATILDA, THE MUSICAL in Stratford-Upon-Avon, the West End and on Broadway (Olivier award for Best Actor in a Musical).

Over the past decade Lee Evans has received rave reviews for his West-End theatre roles including; Samuel Beckett’s ENDGAME alongside the legendary Michael Gambon, Mel Brooks’ musical THE PRODUCERS with Nathan Lane plus Harold Pinter’s THE DUMB WAITER, with Jason Isaacs – for which he received the London Theatregoers’ Choice Award – and Clive Exton’s BARKING IN ESSEX. Lee has won many accolades in the comedy world including ‘Special Contribution To Comedy’ Award at The British Comedy Awards 2011, the highly coveted ‘Perrier Award’ and the Time Out Award for Comedy. He has experienced huge success as an international film star with major starring roles in FREEZE FRAME THE MEDALLION, THE MARTINS, THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, MOUSE HUNT, THE FIFTH ELEMENT and FUNNY BONES. He has also starred in several television series and television films; DOCTOR WHO, THE DINNER PARTY and THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY.

Currently treading the boards of London’s West End in Jeremy Herrin-directed ‘Labour of Love’ for the Michael Grandage Company, Martin Freeman was most recently seen reprising his role of ‘Dr. John Watson’ in the much anticipated fourth series of SHERLOCK on both BBC One in the UK and PBS in the US. Martin is currently filming Ryan Coogler’s sci-fi drama BLACK PANTHER, alongside Danai Gurira, Michael B. Jordan, Andy Serkis, Forest Whitaker and Lupita Nyong’o. Martin takes on the role of ‘Everett K. Ross’ in a story concerning the story of new ruler ‘T’Challa’ defending his land from being torn apart by enemies from outside and inside the kingdom of Wakanda. The film will be released in February 2018.

Prior to this, Martin was seen in Crackle’s new drama STARTUP, alongside Adam Brody and Edi Gathegi. The series TX’d in September 2016 and ran for 10 episodes. Martin will also be seen in the big screen adaptation of Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman’s GHOST STORIES. The thriller also stars George MacKay and Andy Nyman and is due to be released later this year. 2017 will also see Martin in the feature film adaptation of award nominated short CARGO. The post-apocalyptic thriller also stars Anthony Hayes, Caren Pistorius and Susie Porter.

Kobna Holdbrook-Smith’s theatre credits include: DEATH & THE KING’S HORSEMAN, ANTIGONE, EDWARD II & Guildenstern in ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD (NT 50th Anniversary show) for the National Theatre; A RESPECTABLE WEDDING, JOE TURNER’S COME & GONE, THE CHANGELING & FEAST for the Young Vic; THE LOW ROAD for the Royal Court and HAMLET for the Barbican.

His film credits include: THE DOUBLE, DOCTOR STRANGE, JUSTICE LEAGUE, PADDINGTON 2 & MARY POPPINS RETURNS. Kobna’s TV credits include the BBC’s LITTLE BRITAIN, PULLING, SILK, FATHER BROWN, CLASS, WAGSTAFFE & THE SPLIT, as well as PHONE SHOP & MIDSOMER MURDERS.

Wunmi Mosaku’s theatre credits include: Jeremy Herrin’s THE VERTICAL HOUR, Debbie Tucker Green’s TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION & Vicki Featherstone’s CYPRESS AVENUE for The Royal Court; MR. BURNS for The Almeida & TIGER COUNTRY for Hampstead Theatre.

Her film credits include: STOLEN & MY BABY for the BBC, Stephen Frears’s PHILOMENA, PAN, FANTASTIC BEASTS & WHERE TO FIND THEM, BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE & MACBETH. Wunmi’s TV credits include: SILENT WITNESS VIII, MOSES JONES, BLACKOUT & Stephen Poliakoff’s DANCING ON THE EDGE for the BBC; FATHERS & SONS, SCOTT & BAILEY & VERA II for ITV and BLACK MIRROR: PLAYTEST for Netflix.

After graduating from Cambridge University, James Norton immediately went on to study at RADA. He is a bright star in the British acting landscape which was confirmed when he was selected by Screen International to be one of their highly prestigious ‘Stars of Tomorrow’.

James can currently be seen in FLATLINERS, the reboot of the hit 1990 sci-fi horror. He stars alongside Ellen Page, Diego Luna and Nina Dobrev as the character of would-be doctor ‘Jamie’. The story follows a group of medical students who conduct near-death experiments in order to explore the afterlife. James has recently completed work on the AMC/BBC One crime drama MCMAFIA, which is anticipated to release in 2018. Written by Hossein Amini and directed by James Watkins, the story follows Alex Godmanthe, English-raised son of Russian exiles with a mafia history, who has spent his life trying to escape the shadow of that criminal past, building his own legitimate business and forging a life with his girlfriend Rebecca.

James is also set to star alongside Imogen Poots in the Donmar Warehouse’s production of BELLEVILLE, penned by Amy Herzog. Directed by Michael Longhurst, the pair play American expatriates whose marriage violently unravels when they move to Paris. Faith Alabi and Malachi Kirby round out the production, which runs from December 7th to February 3rd.

Jack Whitehall is an award-winning comedian, writer and actor. As a successful and much sought-after stand up, actor, writer and presenter, Jack has firmly established himself as one of the UK’s most exciting and successful comedy talents, a status cemented by his People’s Choice Award for the King of Comedy at the 2012, 2013 & 2014 British Comedy Awards.

2017 saw Jack film a new adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel DECLINE AND FALL for BBC2 alongside David Suchet and Eva Longoria. This autumn sees Jack co-star in a new travel series with his father, Jack Whitehall: TRAVELS WITH MY FATHER which airs on Netflix and his arena tour, JACK WHITEHALL AT LARGE will also air as a Netflix Special later this year. In addition, Jack has co-written a new series for Sky 1 – BOUNTY HUNTERS is a comedy drama and sees Jack co-starring alongside Rosie Perez and Robert Lindsey – which will air this autumn.

Olivia Williams studied English at Cambridge University before training at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Theatre credits include: For the National Theatre; Mosquitoes, Waste, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Richard II. For the RSC; Peer Gynt, The Wives’ Excuse, The Broken Heart, Wallenstein, Misha’s Party. For the West End: In a Forest Dark and Deep. Her TV credits include; Counterpart, The Halcyon, Manhattan, Salting the Battlefield, Playhouse Presents, Case Sensitive, City Hall, Dollhouse, Miss Austen Regrets, Krakatoa, Agatha Christie, Jason and the Argonauts, Friends, Emma, Van Der Valk, Ruth Rendell.

Olivia’s film credits include; Victoria and Abdul, Man Up, Altar, Maps to the Stars, Sabotage, Last Days on Mars, Seventh Son, Hyde Park on Hudson, Anna Karenina, Now is Good, Hanna, Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, The Ghost Writer (ALFS award Supporting Actress, NSFC award Supporting Actress), An Education, Flashbacks of a Fool, There for Me, X-Men 3, Tara Road, Valiant, To Kill a King, The Heart of Me (British Independent Film Award, Best Actress), Below, Man from Elysian Fields, Lucky Break, Born Romantic, The Body, Dead Babies, Four Dogs Playing Poker, Sixth Sense, Rushmore, The Postman, Gaston’s War, Wesley, A Brand from the Burning.

Whither Would You Go? Sunday 22 October 7:30pm Harold Pinter Theatre Panton St, London SW1Y 4DN Tickets £50-200 Tickets http://ift.tt/2fPMzon MORE CAST ANNOUNCED SOON…

http://ift.tt/2xXDSOT LondonTheatre1.com

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior Home Edition 7/31/20 – THE SHADOW OF VIOLENCE, SUMMERLAND, THE SECRET: DARE TO DREAM, SHE DIES TOMORROW and More!

As I started to gather what’s left of my wits for this week’s column, there seemed to be fewer movies than usual, and I was quite thankful for that. Then, a few of the movies scheduled for some sort of theatrical release this weekend were delayed and I discovered a bunch of movies I didn’t have in my release calendar to begin with, so this is a little bit of an odd weekend but still one with 8 movies reviews! I went into most of the movies this weekend without much knowledge of what they were about, probably was the best way to go into many of them, since it allowed me to be somewhat open-minded about what I was watching.

The first surprise of the week is that we’re getting another decent film from the one and only Saban Films, so maybe the VOD distributor has been using the pandemic to step up its game as well.  Directed by first-time feature director Nick Rowland, the Irish crime-drama THE SHADOW OF VIOLENCE (Saban Films), based on the book “Calm with Horses,” stars relative newcomer Cosmo Jarvis as Douglas Armstrong, known as “Arm,” the enforcer for the drug-dealing Devers family. Douglas also has a young toddler with local woman Ursula (Niamh Algar), but when his handler Dympna (Barry Keoghan) orders Arm to kill for the first time, he’s forced to rethink his career.

Much of the story revolves a member of the Devers family caught making a lurid pass at Dympha’s 16-year-old sister, leading to consequences, as Arm is sent to beat the crap out of him. For head of the family, that isn’t nearly enough and soon, Arm is ordered to kill the man. (This aspect of the story reminds me a little of Todd Field’s Little Children, particularly the Jackie Earle Haley subplot.)

As I mentioned above, I watched this film with zero expectations and was taken quite aback by how great it was, despite not having been that big a fan of Keoghan from some of his past work. On the other hand, Cosmo Jarvis, in his first major role, is absolutely outstanding, giving a performance on par with something we might see from Thomas Hardy or Matthias Schoenaerts, at least in their earlier work. Barely saying a word, Jarvis instills so many emotions into “Arm” as we see him playing with his young autistic son, Jack, trying to keep his jealousy over Ursula under control, while also being there when Dympna needs him.  Even as you think you’re watching fairly innocuous day-to-day stuff, Rowland ratchets up the tension to an amazing degree right up until a climactic moment that drives the last act.

Despite the film’s title, The Shadow of Violence isn’t just about violence, as much as it is about a man trying to figure out how to change the trajectory of his life. If you like character-based films like The Rider, this movie is definitely going to be for you. Another surprise is that the movie will be available only in theaters this Friday, rather than the typical VOD approach Saban Films generally takes, so check your local theater if it’s playing near you.

The faith-based drama THE SECRET: DARE TO DREAM (Lionsgate), starring Katie Holmes and Josh Lucas, is directed by Andy Tennant (Hitch, Sweet Home Alabama) and adapted from Rhonda Byrne’s self-help book, The Secret (which is based on a 2006 movie also called The Secret). Originally planned for a theatrical release, it’s now being released as PVOD, which seems to be the way that so many movies are going now. In it, Holmes plays Miranda Wells, a struggling widow living in New Orleans with three kids who on a stormy night meets a kind stranger (Lucas) who tries to pass on his philosophy of using positive thinking to get whatever you want in life.  

Mini-Review: I don’t usually buy into some of the faith-based movies that are released every year, but that’s mainly because I rarely get a chance to see any of them, so why bother?  I was ready to go into The Secret: Dare to Dream with a healthy amount of skepticism, because it seemed to be another movie about grand miracles… but in fact, it’s just a bland movie pimping Rhonda Byrne’s New Thought technique from her New Age-y self help book.

The idea is that positive thinking is all that it takes to get anything you want, something no less than Oprah quickly glommed onto.  While the movie doesn’t hit you over the head with such a message, and “God” is only mentioned once, it also just doesn’t seem to offer much in terms of storytelling to maintain one’s interest.

Katie Holmes does a fine job playing an amiable single mother who meets Josh Lucas’ Bray Johnson as a huge storm is about to hit New Orleans, and he seems like a nice enough fellow as he helps her replace a broken bumper (after she rear-ended him, no less) and then fixing up the house after the storm. But Bray has a secret (hence the title) and it’s in an important envelope that he hesitates to give to Miranda.

The film’s biggest problem is that there never is much in terms of stake when it comes to the drama, because Bray seems to be there to fix everything and make everything better. Miranda’s only other real relation is an awkward one with Jerry O’Connell’s long-time (presumably platonic) friend Tucker, which only gets more awkward when he surprises her by popping the question. She says “Yes” without talking to her own kids first.  The whole time while watching the film, I was expecting some sort of big Nicholas Spark level romance between Miranda and Bray, so when Tucker proposes, it throws a real spanner in the works, but only for a little while.

Incidentally, the “secret” of the title that Bray resists telling Miranda until pressured isn’t particularly groundbreaking either. I won’t ruin it. You’ll just be annoyed when it’s finally revealed.

The Secret: Dare to Dream is as generic and bland a tale you can possibly get, one that really doesn’t accomplish very much and feels more like a Lifetime movie than something particularly revelatory.

Rating: 6/10

Jessica Swale’s WW2-set SUMMERLAND (IFC Films) stars Gemma Arterton as fantasy author Alice Lamb, quietly living on the South of England in a small beachside town when she’s presented with a young London evacuee named Frank (Lucas Bond) for her to mind while his father’s at war.  Alice lives alone but many years earlier, she had a friendship with a local woman named Vera (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) that turned into something more, despite the taboo of their relationship during those times.

This was another nice surprise, and as I watched the movie, it was hard not to compare it to last week’s Radioactive, since they’re movies intended to appeal to a similar audience. This one seems to be more focused, and Arterton does a better job being likeable despite being as persnickety as Pike’s Marie Currie. Although this isn’t a biopic, it did remind me of films like Goodbye Christopher Robin and Tolkien, and possibly even Finding Neverland. (Incidentally, the Summerland of the title is a mythical place that Alice is writing about, which adds to the fairy tale angle to the film.)

As the film goes along, there’s a pretty major twist, of sorts, and it’s when the stakes in the film start to feel more dramatic as things continue to elevate into the third act. The movie actually opens in 1975 with Penelope Wilton playing the older Alice, although I’m not sure the framing sequence was particularly needed for the film to work the way Swale intended.

Summerland is generally just a nice and pleasant film that stirs the emotions and shows Swale to be a filmmaker on the rise.

Another really nice indie film that might involve a bit more searching is director Sergio Navaretta’s THE CUBAN (Brainstorm Media), written by Alessandra Piccione. It follows 19-year-old Mina (played by Ana Golja), a Canadian pre-med student who lives with her aunt, Bano (Shohreh Aghdashloo), who pushes her career in medicine, although Mina would rather be a singer. At her part-time job at a long-term care facility, Mina meets Luis (Louis Gossett Jr.), a quiet elderly patient who sits in his wheelchair never talking to anyone until Mina discovers his love for music, and the two bond over that, although Mina’s employers don’t think she’s helping Luis despite his obvious change in nature.

This was just a lovely film driven by Golja, who is just wonderful in the lead role with an equally terrific cast around her, and while it gets a little obvious, I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying this film that harks back to some of the great earlier work by Thomas McCarthy, as it follows a touching story that mixes a number of cultures in a surprisingly fluid way. It turned out to be quite a pleasant and unexpected film in the way it deals with subjects like dementia in such a unique and compelling away, especially if you enjoy Cuban music.

The Cuban already played at a couple Canadian theaters, but it will be available via Virtual Cinema and in some American theaters Friday, and you can find out where at the Official Site.

I was pretty excited to see Amy Seimetz’s new film, SHE DIES TOMORROW (NEON), since I was quite a fan of her previous film, Sun Don’t Shine. Besides having played quite a fantastic role in recent independent cinema through her varied associations, Seimetz also cast Kate Lyn Sheil, a fantastic actress, in the main role. It’s a little hard to explain the film’s plot, but essentially Sheil plays Amy, a woman convinced she’s going to die tomorrow, a feeling that starts spreading to others around her. I’m not sure if you would get this just from watching the film, because it’s pretty vague and even a little confusing about what is happening despite the high concept premise.

For the first 15 minutes or so, the camera spends the entire time watching Sheil as she cries and hugs a wall, while listening to the same opera record over and over. When her friend Jane (Jane Adams) comes over to check on her, she finds her vacuuming in a fancy dress. Amy tells her friend that she’s going to die tomorrow, and she wants to be turned into a leather jacket. Soon, after we’re watching Jane, a scientist, going down the same wormhole as Amy. That’s pretty much the running narrative, although the film opens up when we meet some of Jane’s family and friends, including Katie Aselton, Chris Messina, Tunde Adebimpe, Michelle Rodriguez and more. Soon after we meet them, they TOO are convinced that they’re going to die tomorrow. Incidentally (and spoiler!), no one actually dies in the movie. Heck, I’d hesitate even to call this a “horror” movie because it takes the idea of a pandemic that we’ve seen in movies like Bird Box, Contagion and others and sucks all the genre right out of it, but it still works as a character piece.

The thing is that the film looks great and also feels quite unique, which does make She Dies Tomorrow quite compelling, as well as a great vehicle for both Sheil and Seimetz. Even so, it’s also very much a downer and maybe not the best thing to watch if you aren’t in a good place, emotionally. You’ve been warned. It will open at select drive-ins this weekend, but it will then be available via VOD next Friday, August 7.

Next up, we have two fantastic and inspiring docs that premiered at Sundance earlier this year…

In recent years, Ron Howard has made a pretty amazing transition into respectable documentary filmmaker, and that continues with REBUILDING PARADISE (National Geographic), which takes a look at the horrible fires that struck Northern California in November 2018, literally wiping out the town of Paradise and leaving over 50,000 people homeless and killing roughly 85 people.

It’s really horrifying to see the amount of destruction caused when a spark from a faulty transmission line ignites the particularly dry forest surrounding the town of Paradise, destroying the hospital and elementary school and displacing the homeowners. This is obviously going to be a tough film to watch, not only seeing the fires actually raze the town to the ground but also watching these not particularly wealthy people having to contend with losing their homes. (It’s even tougher to watch now since you wonder how COVID may have affected the town as it’s in better shape now then it was last year.)

Using a cinema verité approach (for the first time possible?), Howard finds a small group of people to follow, including the town’s former mayor, the school superintendent, a local police officer, and others.  It’s pretty impressive how much time this doc covers, and often, you may wonder if Ron Howard was there at all times, because it seems like he would have to have been embedded with the townspeople for an entire year to get some of the footage.

As I said, this is not an easy film to watch, especially as you watch these people dealing with so much tragedy – if you’ve seen any of the docs about Sandy Hook, you might have some idea how hard this movie may be to watch for you. But it is great, since it shows Howard achieving a new level as a documentary filmmaker with a particularly powerful piece.  

Produced by Kerry Washington, THE FIGHT (Magnolia Pictures) is the latest doc from Weiner directors Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman, this time joined as director by that film’s editor, Eli B. Despres. The “fight” of the title is the one between the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Trump administration that began shortly after his inauguration in 2017, his Muslim travel ban that quickly followed, and going up until mid-2019 when a lot of obvious civil rights violations were being perpetrated by the U.S. government.

This is a particularly interesting doc if you weren’t aware of how active the ACLU has been in helping to protect people’s rights on a variety of fronts. The doc covers four particular cases involving immigration, LGBTQ rights, voting rights and reproductive rights, and we watch the lawyers involved in four important cases, including a few that are taken right up to the Supreme Court. In following these four particular lawyers, the filmmakers do a great job helping the viewer understand how important the ACLU is in keeping the conservative right at bay from trying to repeal some previous laws made to protect Americans’ rights. 

Of course, this film is particularly timely since it covers a lot of dramatic changes, including the nomination of Justice Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, which ends up being ironic, since he was the judge presiding over an earlier ACLU case involving a pregnant teen immigrant who isn’t allowed to get an abortion. The movie doesn’t skirt the fact that often the ACLU is called upon to help the likes of white supremacists and potential terrorist factions, since they’re about protecting everyone’s rights. I would have loved to hear more about this, but it does cover the backlash to the ACLU after the Charlottesville protests went horribly wrong in 2017.

Be warned that there are moments in this film where the waterworks will start flowing since seeing the ACLU succeed against oppression is particularly moving. If you’ve been following the country’s shifting politics keenly and want to learn more about the ACLU, The Fight does a great job getting behind closed doors and humanizing the organization.

The Fight will be available on all digital and On Demand platforms starting Friday, and you can find out how to rent it at the Official Site.

Vinnie Jones (remember him?) stars in Scott Wiper’s crime-thriller THE BIG UGLY (Vertical) about a pair of British mobsters who travel to West Virginia to make an oil deal in order to launder money. Once there, they encounter some troubles with the locals, particularly the sadistic son of Ron Perlman’s Preston, the man with whom they’re dealing.

Sometimes, as a film critic, you wonder how a movie that has so much potential can turn into such an unmitigated disaster, but then you watch a movie like The Big Ugly, and you realize that some bad filmmakers are better at talking people into doing things than others.

That seems to be the case with this film in which Jones plays Leland, who comes to West Virginia with his boss Harris (McDowell) to make an oil deal with Ron Perlman’s Preston, only for the latter’s son “PJ” (Brandon Sklenar) causing trouble, including the potential murder of Leland’s girlfriend. Of course, one would expect to see tough guy Vinnie Jones out for revenge against the endless parade of sleaze-balls he encounters, and that may have been a better movie than what Wiper ended up making, which is all over the place in terms of tone. (It was only after I watched the film did I realize that Wiper wrote and directed the absolutely awful WWE Film, The Condemned, also starring Jones. If I only knew.)  

Jones isn’t even the worst part of the cast, in terms of the acting, because both McDowell and Perlman, two great actors, struggle through the terrible material, though Perlman generally fares better than McDowell, who doesn’t seem to be giving it his all.

There’s a whole subplot involving one of PJ’s friends/co-workers (recent Emmy nominee Nicholas Braun from  HBO’s Succession) and his relationship with a pretty local (Lenora Crichlow) that goes nowhere and adds nothing to the overall story. Once PJ is seemingly dealt with, there’s still almost 35 minutes more of movie, including a long monologue by Perlman telling a sorely wasted Bruce McGill how he met McDowell’s character. Not only does it kill any and all momentum leading up to that point, but it’s probably something that should have been part of the set-up earlier in the film.

The fact this movie is so bad is pretty much Wiper’s fault, becuase he wrote a script made up of so many ideas that never really fit together – kind of like Guy Ritchie doing a very bad Deliverance remake before deciding to turn it into a straight-up Western. Wiper then tries his hardest to salvage the movie by throwing in violence and explosions and leaning heavily on the soundtrack. (The fact that both this and the far superior The Shadow of Violence used a song from the Jam was not lost on this music enthusiast.) Regardless, The Big Ugly is a pretty detestable piece of trash that couldn’t end fast enough… and it didn’t. (It played in drive-ins and select theaters last Friday but will be available on digital and  On Demand this Friday.)

Available through Virtual Cinemas (supporting Film Forum and the Laemmle in L.A) is Martha Kehoe and Joan Tosoni’s documentary, Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind, about the Canadian singer-songwriter who changed people’s impressions of Canadian culture, covering Lightfoots’s greatest triumphs and failures.

Film at Lincoln Center’s Virtual Cinema will premiere Koji Fukada’s Japanese drama A Girl Missing (Film Movement) on Friday, while New York’s Metrograph Live Screening series continues this week with Manfred Kirchheimer’s Bridge High & Stations of the Elevated starting today through Friday, and then the premiere of Nan Goldin’s Sirens (with two other shorts) starting on Friday. You can subscribe to the series for $5 a month or $50 a year.

Premiering on Disney+ this Friday is Beyoncé’s Black is King, her new visual album inspired by the lessons from The Lion King, as well as the new original Muppets series, Muppets Now. Since I haven’t seen either Lion King movie, I’m definitely looking forward more to the Muppets returning to "television.”

Launching on Netflix today is Matias Mariani’s Shine Your Eyes about a Nigerian musician who travels to Sao Paulo to look for his estranged brother and bring him back to Nigeria, as well as Sue Kim’s doc short, The Speed Cubers, set in the world of competitive Rubik cube solving and the friendly rivalry between two young “speedcubers.” Also, Season 2 of The Umbrella Academy will premiere on Netflix this Friday.

Premiering on Shudder tomorrow (Thursday, July 30) is Rob Savage’s Host, the first horror movie made during the quarantine about a group of six friends who decide to hold a séance over Zoom.

Amazon’s drive-in series continues tonight with “Movies to Inspire Your Inner Child,” playing Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Hook.

Next week, more movies not in theaters!

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!