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starship-imzadi · 4 years ago

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S5 E17 The Outcast

Androgyny is defined as having both male and female characteristics so that a specific gender cannot be determined.

Jonathan Frakes has reportedly gone on record to express his belief that Soren should have been cast with a male actor as it would have sent a stronger message. And I absolutely agree.

As it is, Soren identifies as a woman and is played by a woman which is just reestablishing a heteronormative status quo. In fact, all of the credited cast who portray the J'naii are women.

I have a problem with this. Often times the dichotomy of western heterosexual gendering is seen as "the haves and the have nots". E.g. men have body hair, women do not (which is absolutely untrue). Women are emotional, men are not (also absolutely untrue). Women as "the weaker sex" are often seen as "without" and androgyny is sometimes construed as being more "without" because it's supposed to be lacking the characteristics that give definition or.... features that are identifiable as a certain gender. Casting all women to be androgynous is, in a way, sexist for this reason. Though the non speaking and background J'naii are far enough away they seem less defined and more androgynous (some might be cast with men but it's not possible to tell...which is the way it should be).

Okay...so, Riker gets a bad rap for his struggle with pronouns and misgendering BUT what he's doing is actually incredibly important and valuable. Riker is canonically an American, heterosexual, cis gendered, Caucasian, male. He is the character that the most privileged, and most represented demographic will see themselves in and relate to. He is put in a position where he doesn't understand the experience of the person opposite him, he's trying his best and he makes mistakes, but he's also demonstrating that he's open to learning.

I've also seen some small uproar, especially from younger viewers (I'm looking at anyone born after the year 2000) over the writers not using they/them pronouns "I do not think there is really a translation". It is true that "they" as a pronoun to refer to a non specific person in common speech has been in use since the time of Shakespeare. Up until women's suffrage in legal context the pronoun used was "he" without specifically meaning a man. I.e. those pronouns were place holders for an unknown person regardless of gender or sex. Non masculine or feminine pronouns used to refer to a known individual is a slightly different story. There have been many different pronouns developed and used to greater or lesser extent through the entire 20th century (e.g. Hir or Xe) However, none of them really caught on for regular use across the entire language. "They" has been adopted most successfully because it is already in the language but its prominent use and acceptance wasn't until between approximately 2013 and 2015. This episode aired in 1992.

I really like that early on Soren and Riker are given an established shared interest. Too often on this show two people are put together....and it's not clear why they like each other. In such a short span of time it's tough to establish a believable new relationship, but this is a good first step.

They've known each other two days? It is reminiscent of "The Masterpiece Society" just a few episodes ago where Troi started to fall in love after five days. (Maybe they're both just very loving people.)

Also, in the midst of the misgendering, I'm pleased that the writers (or whoever) chose for Riker to use "he" because it plays against this species that's supposed to be androgynous but... Have a tendency to look feminine.

Riker's dad had a recipe for split pea soup...I wonder when he ever cooked it though. Riker mentions that it's good for cold Alaskan nights and it's the second episode in recent memory of his mentioning that he's from Alaska (the other was "Conundrum") I can't actually remember it being mentioned prior to that episode.... though there's a good chance it was established in the "Icarus Factor" and i know it's mentioned again in "Lower Decks"

A lot of the focus on this episode from fans seems to be on Soren being transgender but the J"aii are also homosexual. Riker and Soren have two different paradigms that are represented as neither worse nor better nor even given a moral label, they're just different. (Although, the J'naii's insistence that Soren cannot be male or female in gender or sex, is clearly meant to be the reciprocal of any insistence by humans that we can only be male or female in gender and sex.)

"I like one who's intelligent, sure of herself, who I can talk with and get something back. But the most important thing of all, she has to laugh at my jokes."

This conversation has a great sub text: different men like different things in women (and vis versa) so for someone to even identify as "heterosexual" doesn't mean every member of a different sex is attractive to them. And it begs the question: why are so many people with different qualities all under the same gender "umbrella"?

I've seen screen caps of Soren asking about human male genitals but they only show Riker's surprise. Really he deserves more credit because he handles the question really well. The way he handles everything very kindly and graciously, and the fact that Soren continues to ask questions, is a real testament to the safe place that he makes for discussion and curiosity.

There's some... dark humour in how Star Trek talks about misogyny and sexism. It's one of the notable hypocrisies and failings in star trek: to talk about a better future, while still operating on damaging ideals, and without any real idea of the journey it would actually take for society to reach "better". Both Gate and Marina had struggles with how they and their characters were treated compared to the men.

Oh boy. Worf's sexism fluctuates a lot, but when they need someone to be a misogynist, Worf is the go to and it's always painful. And Data asks the innocent, child-like questions. With a scene like this there are unfortunate reflection on some of the characters BUT the main purpose of the scene is, a slightly heavy handed, means of proposing different view points for representation and comparison. It's not really about the characters at all.

I'll say just from experience with that long hours spent working together will create some sort of bond for pretty much any two people. Love or other wise.

This scene is clearly about Soren coming out to Riker. And he takes it as kindly as he has everything else so far.

Geordi has a beard! (LeVar apparently grew it for his wedding)

"good hunting commander"

"thank you sir. See you for dinner." Do Riker and Picard have dinner together? (I love a good found family shared meal).

I really like this scene between Will and Deanna.

"well this one looks like you" with the teddy bear absolutely gets me every time. And Deanna's side look! I love their friendship and comfort together.

"You're my friend and I thought... I don't know, i thought I should tell you."

"I'm glad you did"

"Nothing will change between us, will it?"

"Of course it will. All relationships are constantly changing. But we'll still be friends, maybe better friends. You're a part of my life, and I'm a part of yours. That much will always be true."

This really hits home. Regardless of the label for their relationship, regardless of the details of the boundaries of their relationship, Troi is affirming for Riker that they are important enough to each other, that he is important enough to her, that she will stay in his life and keep him in hers. In a way this touches on what was established way back "Haven". The characterizations were still being sorted out to a large extent, but when Troi was due to be married Riker thought he was losing her and Troi ask him "i am no longer imzadi to you?" But even as much as they love each other, Riker isn't taking for granted that Troi will stay in his life once he becomes involved with someone. Troi is assuring him, promising to him, that she will stay. And the fact that Riker went to her, to tell her about him and Soren, was his way of demonstrating to Troi that she is still important to him, and that he wants to keep her in his life too.

Props to Riker for protecting Soren. Not only did he keep her secret he tried to help her preserve it.

This is a really good and impassioned speech that, even though its clearly about legislation against homosexuality, doesn't feel over the top like a lot of star trek speeches can. It's probably one of the better speeches not given by Picard.

This is the second episode in a row Riker has gone to Picard for guidance...kind of.

It's kind of sweet that Worf offers as a friend to help Riker jeopardize his career, for the sake of someone important to him, even though he doesn't like or understand the J'naii.

In the end, the Enterprise must maintain its status quo, so much like "The Host", there had to be a reason then love interest cannot stay. Even if the reason is honestly so disheartening and sad. I genuinely believe Riker cared for Soren, and this is so devastating. This was probably the best single episode relationship in terms of development.

Picard is so gentle and subtle with Riker.

Engage (!)

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transarchivist · 4 years ago

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do you have any podcasts recs? I want to listen to archive 81 but I need some backup and I've already listened to the more "famous" ones, like all of them I binge podcasts like they pay me for me it ajsjjshfje

!!!! ok i'm sorry it's taken me a hot minute to get to you BUT i think i have a good amount of reccomendations :o

these first few are kinda "famous" but i thought i'd point em out just in case! some of them ended a few years ago and they were more well known back when they were running

wolf 359: gotta point this one out juuuust in case you haven't listened to it! amazing sci fi... would drama be the right word? it's very intense and has some really interesting meditations on morality and the self But it's also so extremely funny. complete, ended in 2017

ars paradoxica: america during the cold war, the red scare, intense government conspiracies.... And Time Travel! complicated but amazing plot and a big cast- i would recommend not pausing and listening to something else, it gets complex! mischa stanton directed it so you Know it has stellar sound design (added bonus: lgbt main characters) complete, ended in 2018

the bright sessions: people with superpowers go to therapy! plus: shadowy capitalistic conspiracies, amazing romances and phenomenal character development! i'm not a fan of romances and i Loved the ones here (it's not heavily romance focused though!) (added bonus: lgbt main characters + main lgbt romance) complete, ended in 2018. i think a spin off series is running rn tho!

the adventure zone: this isn't an audio drama, it's an actual play d&d podcast! the first season (balance) is amazing- hilarious and heart wrenching! (the heart wrenching takes a while to kick in but MAN it's so good) the first season ended in 2017. i haven't finished the second big season (amnesty) but i loved what i did listen to, same with the currently running season (graduation)

sayer: starts off as sinister night vale but with an ai and in space, evolves into a complicated save-the-world plot concerning several ais. it's in second person and it's Amazing! lots of meditations on the self and personhood. currently on hiatus but will be ending when it resumes

alice isn't dead: from the people who did night vale! starts as a trucker trying to find her wife, evolves to include shadowy government conspiracies and the power of regular people banding together. ending made me tear up it's really good! it's Big on the horror (the first ep is the only podcast that's ever truly scared me and it continues to scare the shit out of me to this day) but its Extremely Good Horror. very americana too! complete, ended in 2018.

ok that's the more well known ones out of the way, i think? i'm not too confident about how well known some of them are nowadays ^^' all i can say is that i heard abt them frequently in 2016. now onto the lesser known ones ! the ones that are complete are generally pretty short listens (relatively- they're still a good handful of hours at the least)

zero hours: by the wolf 359 people, it's a short anthology that released all at once last year. to pharaphrase/quote the official blurb: each episode is a take on the end of the world, whether the apocalypse is planetary or personal. each episode is separated by 99 years, starting in the past (1722) reaching the present and then overtaking it. surprisingly hopeful ending, made me <:')

i am in eskew: you've probably heard me holler about this before- it follows the trials and tribulations of david ward, who lives in the nightmarish and otherworldly city of eskew. 30 episodes long and complete, with a phenomenal ending! i can't rave about this enough i could Keep talking but i'll cut myself short. it's horror and it's damn good horror! does deal with extremely heavy topics, please be careful!

janus descending: sci fi horror with what has to be the most interesting formatting i've seen in ages: the two points of view alternate each episode... but one is chronological and one is backwards! amazingly done, keeps you guessing until the end! complete. follows peter and chel as they undertake a survey mission on an alien planet

midnight radio: made by @/theradioghost! big on the idea that "all ghost stories are love stories". a 1950s radio hostess gets letters from a fan. horror, big on the 1950s aesthetics, focus on the relationship between one and one's hometown. lovely ending! it's sapphic too :]

the far meridian: by the same people who did ars paradoxica! follows peri, a bit of a hermit who has extreme social anxiety, who lives in a lighthouse that suddenly begins to teleport. each morning peri wakes up and the lighthouse is in a different place! there are like... some horror elements? kinda? but it's not intense imo. it mainly follows peri learning to cope with her anxiety & helping others, with each episode usually having a one off encounter (usually pretty strange!) often has wholesome vibes. s3 is currently in production and is the final season. plus: lgbt characters, and kinda spoilers but peri uses a cane later on!

old gods of appalachia: honestly it's what it says on the tin! a collection of short stories set in historical appalachia that deal with entities beyond human understanding. they're good about trigger warnings, but it's Horror. produced by actual appalachians! stellar music, a Lot strong female characters, and a good amount of lgbt rep! killer music!! it's currently releasing but the latest short story is finished. (do listen in order though!)

the deep vault: by the archive 81 team! in an "almost-post-apocalyptic" america a group of friends chase a rumor about a secret hidden vault, only to Find it! follows the group as they traverse the deep vault. horror, actively points out capitalism a Lot, definetly has an interesting ending! amazing sound design, which is to be expected from dan powell!

tides: the official blurb is short and sweet: "tides is the story of dr. winnifred eurus, a xenobiologist stuck on an unfamiliar planet with hostile tidal forces". extremely snarky and endearing main character and fascinating worldbuilding! i don't know the status of s2, but s1 was really good!

limetown: follows one lia haddock, a public radio reporter, as she tries to unravel the mystery of what happened at limetown. all she knows is that 10 years prior, over 300 men, women and children vanished. horror, mystery, and some sci fi elements. presented in a found footage kinda way. i really enjoyed it, especially the first season. complete.

mabel: horror (big on the haunted house type specifically), sapphic romance, fun take on the fair folk/fae! follows anna limon, an in home carer who's trying to get in touch with her client's estranged granddaughter. evolves into a big fae-horror-romance-thing! really interesting romance tbh. amazing imagery and prose- lots of prose + almost poetry, but it's really good i promise. currently on a post season hiatus

spines: horror but it evolves past just horror in an interesting way (keeping the horror bits, of course). follows wren, who woke up in an attic surrounded by the remains of a cult ritual without any memories of who she is or what she was doing. she searches for answers, encountering creepy shit along the way. really interesting take on the super-secret-organization-that's-always-been-there trope! really good ending. one of the main characters is nonbinary + there's other lgbt main characters.

mirrors: by the people who did spines. also starts as horror but evolves past just horror (it's also sci fi). follows three women in three different centuries who are all experiencing the same haunting. phenomenal take on ghosts! like i can't articulate how cool this angle on ghosts is! s3 is supposed to start this year :] one of the main characters is sapphic, and her wife is a supporting character.

the six disappearances of ella mccray: also by the people who did spines and mirrors. evolves past just horror but keeps more of the horror elements? follows the 6 povs of the people who witnessed the surreal disappearance of ella mccray. each saw something different and surreal, and as they search for her, surreal things start happening to them. unsure abt the status of s3 but s1 and s2 are really good! lgbt main characters, including a trans lesbian (played by a trans woman!)

the bridge: horror. follows the crew of watchtower 10 on the transcontinental bridge that spans across the atlantic ocean. i listened to it back in like 2016-2017 so my memory is hazy, but i remember really enjoying it! currently on hiatus.

within the wires: sci fi... horror..? i listened to the first season a few years ago and enjoyed it and i've continued to hear really good things. it's by the people who make night vale! my memory isn't great but iirc the first season is a sort of romance that's formatted as a set of relaxation/meditation cassettes. it's a few seasons in and i think each is generally self contained, im unsure if it's currently running or not

the orbiting human circus of the air: also by the night vale people! again i listened to this a few years ago so im hazy. follows julian the janitor who works at a radio station that broadcasts from the top of the eiffel tower! surreal but in a wholesome way, iirc! i remember tearing up with happy tears at the s1 finale ^^' really good music! i think the second(?) season ended recently

stellar firma: i've only listened to a handful of episodes, but i've liked what i've heard. sci fi improv comedy that follows the newly made clone david 7 and the mess that is trexel geistman as they try and design custom planets. i think it's currently running but i dunno

rusty quill gaming: also another one that i've only listened to a few episodes of. actual play pathfinder (basically d&d) podcast set on an alternate earth. alex newall (martin's voice actor) is the dm. i've heard really good things from a lot of people! i think it's currently running but again i don't know for sure

right! that's. that's what i got.

i mentioned @/theradioghost earlier (shes behind midnight radio) but i would absolutely recommend looking at her rec list tag! she has impeccable taste

#ask #anon #podcast recs #cae speaks #mine #long post #<- incase the read more doesnt work

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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The Suicide Squad: How Idris Elba Brings Bloodsport to Life

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Idris Elba has a certain unmistakeable, charismatic vibe about him. The resulting magnetism extends to the wide range of characters he has brought to life over the years – from playing the second-in-command to a drug kingpin in The Wire to playing a guy who has to deal with the likes like Michael Scott in The Office, to playing a dedicated horseman committed to fighting off gentrifying developers in his neighborhood in the recently released Concrete Cowboy. Whether it’s as a leading man or part of a larger ensemble, Elba’s performances always stand out because of what he brings to each role.

Later this summer, Elba will make his DC Extended Universe debut in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad – a comic book adaption full of talent who could carry their own features if given the opportunity. We recently spoke with him about his role as the lesser-known comic character Bloodsport and what it was like to be part of such a chaotic batch of DC villains and antiheroes.

How were you first approached for the role for Bloodsport, and what made you say yes?

James Gunn reached out to me and said he had this project that he wanted to work on and didn’t tell me what it was. We had a meeting pretty late at night [and] what was appealing to me was that it wasn’t a continuation of the last film, and this is a new character. I just wanted to see where James wanted to go with this new film and this new character. So that was really what drew me in.

Bloodsport isn’t a very famous character. So what did you learn about him and what freedom were you given to bring him to life?

Like you say, he’s not very well known so I sort of traced his history back in the DC world. He’s popped up in some places. He’s more of the vigilante soldier type. He’s not going to have special powers, he’s just a really good assassin, basically. That was pretty consistent throughout his history. There was a little bit of leniency between myself and James collaboratively just working it out … what we want to bring to life. I felt very involved in that process, so essentially I got to bring him to life the way we wanted to.

You’re no stranger to superhero movies. You’re an MCU alum and I consider Hobbs & Shaw a superhero movie because you played Brixton Lore, the fantastic “Black Superman” in it. Did you bring any of those experiences to Bloodsport?

Playing any action character requires a level of real dedication just to the amount of work you have to do. So although I’ve been in the Marvel universe, Heimdall isn’t so much of an action character, despite moments where he’s had action. But Brixton in Hobbs & Shaw was 100% full on. Going from that into The Suicide Squad was a great transition because I basically brought some of the things I learned from the experiences I had on Hobbs & Shaw. It’s not the same character, but the level of effort is the same.

This ensemble cast is one of the wildest we’ve seen in a superhero movie. What was it like to work with everyone?

That was a lot of fun. It’s challenging keeping your character in one lane while you’ve got these really larger-than-life characters around you, especially Peacemaker who is a natural rival [to Bloodsport]. It’s kind of hard to sort of stay in your character with John Cena, who is incredible with improvisations. And then everyone else has this quick-fire banter, but Bloodsport, he doesn’t even like to talk. It’s like, you don’t want to be too friendly with these people. But I think that’s what’s beautiful about his arc. When you see the movie, he goes on a journey.

The dynamic with the actors is incredible. Really good, nice, hard-working people. James was so specific around timing and comedy and how you say lines and stuff. It was great to be a part of that. It’s almost like he’s a comic strip artist and he had these characters to play with and built these amazing frames. I love working with directors that have a complete vision, but allow you a little bit of latitude to bring it to life.

What was it like wearing that intricate Bloodsport costume?

The suit was very tricky to wear. Each component of his costume does something else, so it’s quite a tricky costume to design. I remember speaking to James about the many machinations of designs that he had gone through with this costume. When I came on board, it had to fit to who I am and how Bloodsport moves. It’s intricate but it looks incredible and badass when you see it in the film, but it was a real journey getting there.

What are his weapons like?

Just imagine a weapon that can transform from one thing into another and keep going. He’s got a pretty cool array of weapons.

In the trailer we see Bloodsport in vacation wear, a nice pair of grilling sandals and linen pants. Do you believe that Bloodsport is good on the grill and who would he play Spades or Dominos with and why?

With a name like Bloodsport he’s definitely going to grill. I don’t think he’s the guy that’s seasoning, but I think he’s behind the barbecue with the fire, making sure that meat and blood are cooking. As far as playing games with anyone, he doesn’t do that, he’s solitary, he doesn’t like company, and likes to be alone. He’s very guarded. He just wouldn’t find it interesting to play cards against anyone. He might play chess, maybe, but I don’t think he’s playing Spades at the barbecue.

Earlier this year, there was an announcement about you and your wife, Sabrina, teaming up with your respective production companies to develop an Afro-futuristic animated series. Can you speak to some of the motivation for wanting to put a story like Dantai out into the world?

I can tell you that it’s mainly the brainchild of Sabrina. Her deep passion and history with anime introduced me to it. From my perspective, I just love telling stories, but also this is a medium that’s kind of new and interesting to me, and it feels underserved in many, many ways. Sabrina is a super, super geek when it comes to anime [laughs], so, you know, I’m there. But I’m so engaged from what I’ve learned so far, Crunchyroll is incredible. We want to make something really exciting, hopefully that will maybe even bring more people to the genre.

You don’t know how happy it just made me to hear that your wife is a huge anime fan. I’m a huge anime fan, so finding other Black women who love that art form always makes me happy. So thank you for sharing that.

Yeah. You guys could definitely travel down some wormholes and discuss because she can go deep.

Would you all ever consider developing a superhero story or comic book adaptation?

We haven’t considered it. It would certainly be sort of a natural course of action in terms of how this came about. We would certainly consider that, but right now it’s one step at a time to try and get [Dantai] right and see how we go. But for me, if you know anything about me or my ambitions are out there, so (laughing) I’ll end up doing something in that space for sure.

Retcons and remakes and comics all go hand in hand. Are there any other comic characters you’d love a chance to bring to life, even though you’ve already been in the DC and the Marvel universe?

Well, we all need to see Black Superman but someone else is putting that in the works. But you know, that’s practically my nickname right now. (laughing) I’m being honest. I’m not the best dictionary of comic books [so] I honestly couldn’t speak with authority.

There is a character named Icon from Milestone comics, and although folks don’t like when you refer to him as the Black Superman, he is kind of like that analog. So I mean, there is still a chance for that to happen.

Oh, really?

Yes.

Wow. Okay. Thank you for that tidbit. What did you say was the name of the company it comes from?

He comes from Milestone Comics. They were a Black imprint. Dwayne McDuffie was part of this startup, but they were an imprint of DC Comics. Static Shock, Icon, Rocket and some other really prominent Black superheroes came from them. I’m sorry. I’m a comic nerd.

No, I did not know that. Who has it now?

DC does. Unfortunately, Dwayne McDuffie passed away. But DC is bringing it back. There are some actual comics that are in the works right now. Static Shock is one of them. I know that. I believe Michael B. Jordan is producing the movie. So they’re around. Yeah. So I’m just putting that bug in your ear.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Thank you very much. That’s great. I’m looking it up as we speak.

The Suicide Squad opens on Aug. 6 in theaters and HBO Max.

Check out more on The Suicide Squad in the latest issue of Den of Geek!

The post The Suicide Squad: How Idris Elba Brings Bloodsport to Life appeared first on Den of Geek.

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samcedesvegas · 4 years ago

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Movie Set || Samcedes || Mercedes Trailer

Mercedes Jones made her way onto the set, today was the first table read for her new Romance Comedy, which she was thrilled about. She had cameos and guest star spots. Even as a supporting actress in a blockbuster hit but to be the Leading Lady in her own movie, that was huge. Acting wasn't her first love but it was a fun distraction. She was fresh off her Every Woman Tour and ready to work.

Walking into the big conference room, she and her Manager/Best Friend Tina were the first ones there. Taking off her sunglasses and smoothing down her purple and pink tie dye Jersey Dress she sighed. "Still can't believe we are here. We are doing this." Tina smiled. "Well you are ready, you know your lines, and your co star is pretty hot right now."

Mercedes took her seat and grabbed her script looking back over it. "Yeah well hot and a playboy doesn't really make you a great actor now does it? But I won't judge..." She lied she totally would judge him, she knew his reputation. All men were dogs, period. And that included her dog of an ex who dumped her and got right with a groupie. Jackass.

Reluctantly, Sam Evans spent the latter part of his evening indulging in countless free shots of tequila. He felt like crap but luckily his bloodshot eyes were hidden behind dark Ray Bans. He pulled the hot coffee cup away from his lips, regretting how much he seemed to indulge in the perks of his newfound fame last night.

From the rural plains of Tennessee to sunny Los Angeles, Sam could finally say he made it. Where he was from, not many people did. It was either a nine to five at the piggly wiggly, prison, or a grave. There was no in between in that small town. Sam had played his fair share of smaller roles but this was the one. His entire team was sure of it. So, he was going to make sure no one knew how hungover he was. Especially not his beautiful songstress of a co-star. The last thing he wanted was to make a bad first impression on her.

Mercedes felt her phone vibrate, another photo of her ex Gabriel Norris with another female. The Quarterback was certainly enjoying being single. She rolled her eyes as she glanced up watching people filed inside, they were supposed to be "mingling" to get to know each other. Personally Mercedes wasn't really looking forward to it. She put the script down as Tina told her to be nice and moved over to her costars. Their conversations though, were not what she wanted to be a part of.

Her "best friend" in the movie was played by Jane Hayward, a lesser known actress but from what she heard, the girl was good. Not wanting to interrupt their riveting conversation about the best bars, she turned to see her love interest Sam Evans standing alone. Walking over to him she extended her hand. "I guess we are working together." she said a little more flat than she intended.

The room full of people gave Sam a small inkling of anxiety. This wasn’t his first rodeo, he’d done a host of tv sitcoms and supporting acting roles before but this was his first leading role. That made him nervous as hell. But he was an actor so it was easy for him to paint on the brave face. After all that was his area of expertise. This was the moment he worked his entire career for and he wasn’t going to ruin it by being a complete spaz.

“Guess we are.” He smiled extending his own hand to meet hers. Again, he was trying not to be a spaz but he couldn’t contain his excitement. He’d been around his fair share of celebrities but none as famous as Mercedes Jones. A force to be reckoned with in the music industry. Sam would shamelessly admit to having heard every one of her albums, even the ones from her girl group days. Didn’t hurt that she was also easy on the eyes. In his words...smoking hot. “Pleasure is all mine m’lady.”

Mercedes had to admit, the casting director did a great job at casting Sam. He had the look that was for sure. Tall, handsome, sexy, if she was into that kinda thing and at the moment she was not. He would get the girls and let's not be biased guys in just off his looks alone and she would have her own fanbase so as long as they did their part and gave a great performance the movie should do well. If Twilight could do it then so could they.

However the moment he spoke she understood why people called him a playboy. Those green eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses inside gave off a sense of coolness why his accent and tone would drive a woman crazy, yes he was a playboy and she would not be played by him. She pulled her hand away and nodded. "We should probably make a schedule to see if we can run lines together. Make this process as painless as possible."

A lady who was about her business, Sam could definitely appreciate that. The women that seemed to keep him company as of late were all either brainless supermodels or dense socialites that wanted nothing more than the perfect photo op. Be seen on his arm and boost their own careers. Not saying he got nothing out of it, he was a man with needs of course. But this was certainly a breath of fresh air. A woman of substance. But he was going to hold off on the questions about her girl group breakup. Those questions had been lingering around in his head for years.

“Oh sure, but I’m totally not good with numbers, dates, and all that junk so I’ll follow your lead.” As they took their seats, Sam couldn’t help but admire her natural curves. In fact he was pretty obvious with his glaring. “So what made you wanna’ jump into my world? I mean it’s not like you need the gig. You’re already one hell of a star.” He complimented hoping it’d gain him some brownie points. Plus a little harmless flirting never hurt anyone...right?

Mercedes took her seat glancing at her script, they would be starting in about ten minutes and she was ready to get it over with. As Sam started to speak again she was at first appreciative that he wouldn't be that hard to work with, but then his next words caused her to roll her eyes. "His world"? was he serious? There went another person who felt because she had been singing for the last 15 years that she couldn't possibly act as well. What did people think Music videos were?

"Well gosh I guess I figured if brainless oafs could do it why should I give it a try?" She said annoyed. "Just because I am a singer, doesn't mean I don't have talent, because I do. I am a damn great actress and I earned this part. So don't go thinking I got it because I know the director or some bull like that!" she hissed.

“Whoa, whoa...I wasn’t saying that. I know you’re talented as hell. I’ve been following your career since I was a kid. Ever since Cinderella, I’ve been a fan. Sorry I wasn’t trying to offend you. Just curious is all.” Crap he was ruining his chances before they even started. Was it wrong that her sassiness kinda sorta turned him on? She was hot, she was feisty, and the woman knew how to speak up for herself. How could Sam not like that.

Taking a deep breath he began looking over his lines as well, dialing it back a bit. So clearly she wasn’t fond of his charm which wasn’t to be expected, but a decent man always knew how to bounce back. “What I meant was, what made you wanna’ do a movie? I mean your career in music is far better than anyone here. Didn’t think you needed anything like this.”

A fan. Great, not only was she stuck with the playboy of L.A. he was a fan. This was the man who was rumored to sleep with every female he worked with. They did a spread and then he made them spread, their legs. And Mercedes was not about to be a notch on his belt. She may have been dating a Quarterback but she was not easy, she prided herself on her reputation. Sam was bad business for her good girl image.

She cleared her throat turning towards him. "Lets just clear this up right now. I am not going to sleep with you. I took this job because I am a sucker for romance. This story where boy and girl fall in love but realize it too late, it's a beautiful love story about second chances. Yes you are hot which makes my job easier and your accent...well whatever but make no mistake the closest you are gonna come to getting between my legs, is the fake sex scenes we have on screen."

Sam was undoubtedly captivated by the songstress. The way she protested, yet still managed to acknowledge how hot he was extremely gratifying. As humble as he was with his career, his ego when it came to women was a whole lot bigger. Now he wasn’t the “womanizer” the media painted him out to be. Sam Evans was actually the biggest sweetheart. He didn’t get a kick out of smashing and dashing. He was a stand up guy. The man just enjoyed the company of women, was that such a bad thing?

“Look Mercedes, I in no way plan on getting between those beautiful legs of yours...unless you want me to. I know the tabloids can kinda make me seem like a player but that just ain’t true. I just crush a lot.” He chuckled hoping his little joke would lighten the mood. Of course he was attracted to Mercedes, how could he not be? She was fine, confident, and had a whole lot of attitude. “Seriously though, I want you to feel completely comfortable with me. So although it’ll be hard not to, I’ll dial back the flirting and keep this thing strictly business.”

Everything that came out of Sam's mouth was trouble. He was definitely a smooth talking player, but right now she was immune to him. No matter how hot he was and no matter what his accent was doing to her. She rolled her eyes at his comment. "Cute." she said going back to her script, this was going to be a long night.

The table read was not bad once they got started, they read through it fairly quickly, and even though Sam seemed like a player, he was a good actor, she could give him that. The last few days were met with getting acquainted, with getting their trailers and revisions, with trying her best to not let Sam know he was getting to her. She asked him to meet her in her trailer so they could go over the revision of the first scene they were shooting. It was a love scene that she was both regretting but looking forward to. Wearing a white and pink sundress she threw her hair up into a messy buy and put her glasses on going over the script and making sure she knew her new lines.

Sam had the paper with his lines clutched in hand as he walked across the studio lot to meet Mercedes in her trailer. He already had most of his lines memorized but he still jumped at the chance to have someone on one time with Mercedes. Even if they were just handling business. He actually enjoyed being around her. She was funny, quick witted, and kept him on his toes. Not to mention her smile. It did something to him. That smile could light up an entire room.

Sam did a quick breath check in his hand and ate a couple breath mints to be safe. He took a deep breath before knocking on the trailer door and awaiting Mercedes' answer. In the meantime he began doing his daily mouth exercises to loosen up his lips. Just in case she wanted to have a few practice runs at the steamy kiss on page three.

Mercedes closed her eyes going over the lines and then opening to see if she got them right. She was on a roll when she heard someone knock. Knowing it was Sam, she cleared her throat moving to the couch and smoothing her dress. "Girl stop! He's just a coworker, get over it." She shook it off reaching down and grabbing a piece of gum. "Come in." She said pushing her glasses up and going back to the script. She did not like Sam Evans; he was a playboy who she was not gonna fall for. Plus she was on a men detox.

Sam let himself in once he heard her voice from the other side of the door. Keep it cool he thought to himself as he closed the door behind him. Mercedes made it very clear that nothing would happen between them beyond what was written in the script but for some reason Sam felt differently. To him there was already an undeniable chemistry between them. He just had to get her to see it. In due time. “So where do you want me?”

Looking towards Sam she smiled softly. "You can sit next to me, we are filming page three tonight so we might as well make sure we know what we are doing. So let's get right to it." She opened her script to the page, just in case. "So remember these two are talking about love and life, looking out at the stars, they both broke up with their partners and are consoling each other."

She closed her eyes getting into the headspace. Opening her eyes she got into character. "You ever wonder if anyone in this world can truly be happy? I thought so...once, but now i am divorced and raising my son on my own, and I don't think it's possible."

Sam took his seat next to Mercedes and settled in comfortably. He placed the sheet with his lines on the table in front of them and turned to her. As she began her lines Sam kept his own rolling around in his head. Because of his dyslexia, reading off paper was never his thing. Luckily for him, he had the memory of an elephant so his strategy was to memorize and it usually worked for him. When he wasn’t staring at his co-worker.

“Crap wait, I screwed up. Start over.” He nervously shuffled as Mercedes repeated her line. Then a complete one-eighty. Sam transformed into Ryder Stone in that very moment. “I know they can. I felt it for years...my Isabel made me believe in love. After I lost her I still felt grateful that I got to experience true happiness in the first place. I keep that with me always.”

To say Mercedes was underwhelmed was an understatement, though once he started again, she could see him getting into character so she continued her lines as Brooklyn Myers. "Yeah but what you and she had, it was raw and passionate. Nate and I never had that and I suppose that's why it didn't work out. Hey, maybe if I followed you to school and not went on my own path we would have gotten together." She said as she laughed softly, looking past Sam as if really seeing their past and future. "I don't regret my son I never could, but I regret his dad. He never truly loved me, and now I wonder if anyone besides my family ever could." She glanced at Sam longingly before looking down to her hands, as per the script.

She was really good, not that it was surprising to him or anything. From the few short days that he’d known her she was always on top of her game. This was clearly no different. Sam reached out and titled Mercedes’ chin up with his index finger, following the script. “Maybe stop looking so far and stop thinking so hard. Nate was a prick and he didn’t deserve a good girl like you.” Their eyes were now locked on each other’s as Sam stroked his thumb against the smooth skin of her chin...not in the script. A strange flutter happened in his stomach. They were acting but for some reason he was really into it. Really really into it.

Mercedes' eyes met his, his word delivery was impressive and he was improvising which was working, maybe a little more than it should since she was melting against his touch. Eyes never leaving his she continued. "I am a thinker, you dream and I am practical. It's why we are best friends why we work. Why I love you." She said softly. "If the one man I thought loved me didn't deserve me, then who does?"

His eyes never left hers, it was like they were staring into one another’s souls. At first he wasn’t completely sure about the role but he definitely felt connected to the character now. “Maybe a man who’s been right in front of you all along. One who’s always been in your corner right or wrong.“ He paused before delivering his next line. “Brooklyn what if it’s us that’s meant to be? Has that ever crossed your mind?” He cupped her cheek lovingly, his face serious but soft at the same time.

She started at him for a moment letting it seem she was taking his words seriously. "Us?" She looked away from him, pulling away and standing. Thank goodness her trailer was basically a mini house so they could move freely. "I'm not-" she wrapped her arms around herself as the script said, since it was a cold night. "You don't have to pity me Ryder. I know Isabel was the love of your life and we all know you only get one."

He quickly got up meeting her in the center of the trailer floor. His arm resting on the small of her back. “Pitty? Never. Don’t you get what I’m trying to say? Brooklyn I love you...as more than just my best friend” He slowly turned her around to face him again. He stopped momentarily really getting into character. He had to because the next line called for his lips to meet hers. “Yes, I loved Isabel and I always will. But she’d want me to be happy. You’re that for me...” without hesitation he went in for the kiss.

Mercedes knew his hand on her back was coming, but what she wasn't prepared for was the way it made her feel. She closed her eyes gathering her bearings as he spoke. He turned her towards him and she stared up at him. She knew the kiss was coming, but she figured they would stop beforehand. She wasn't prepared for him kissing her. Even more so she wasn't prepared for the way it made her feel. She had to pull away before a moan hit her lips. "Umm okay, that was great but the kiss. It really needs work." She liked moving away from him.

Sam was taken aback because he was so sure that his kissing skills were definitely on point. He damn sure wasn’t expecting that reclamation but he was a man of pride. He wasn’t going to let her see him sweat. Removing his hand from her back, he shoved them into his pockets. “Please you know it was good.” He started with a smug smile on his lips. “You were really good though. Somebody’s been practicing their lines. A proud co-star.” He winked before plopping down on her couch. “So you wanna run it again? Or you think you’re good?”

There it was, that smugness that annoyed her. Nate had it and now she saw Sam did and she couldn't stand it. Turning towards him she folded her arms across her chest. She was gonna let him off the hook because yes she did enjoy the kiss but he was asking for it so she broke it down. It was good, not mind blowing. "Good? Your technique was sloppy, delivery was weak and F.Y.I. you don't have to use that much tongue right away. You wanna make her beg for more." She moved to her fridge and grabbed a water bottle. "And of course I am really good. Mercedes Jones doesn't do mediocre."

She was faking hard and Sam knew it. However, he was going to let her have her moment. Clearly she needed it. He had the best lips in town, who wouldn’t wanna’ kiss em? “Damn...that’s pretty harsh. But I’m a strong man, I can take a little constructive criticism.” He nodded with confidence. “So Uhh...what are you doing after this. A couple of us are going out for food and drinks. Y’know mingling and all that junk. You wanna tag along?”

She knew he didn't believe her and for good reason but for some reason she just couldn't get behind him being that cocky. It oozed off him like a stench and she wasn't here for it. "Can you? Cause it seems to me you are a man with a huge ego who can't possibly imagine a woman not wanting him. News Flash, you are not God's gift to women." She shook her head. "No I am good. I wanna run my lines a few more times."

She turned from him but stopped; she wanted to further prove her point and maybe kiss him just once more. "And by the way, this is how you give a mind blowing kiss." She said moving towards him and pulling him towards her. Her lips met his in a soft kiss at first and then deepened it pushing him against the wall as her arms wrapped around his neck. Her tongue swiped across his bottom lip before she took his lower lip and nipped it gently before pulling away and stepping back. "That is how you give a memorable kiss."

Indeed the kiss was very memorable, no denying that. Sam swore he’d lay off the flirting but he couldn’t help himself. That’s just the way he was around pretty ladies. But by the way she was shutting him down maybe she just really wasn’t interested.

He was fine with that. He wasn’t a pusher and he damn sure didn’t want to pressure her, that wasn’t his style. If anything were to happen between them he wanted it to be mutual. “I can stay here too and run lines, drinks will always be there. Plus I sorta wanna get this scene right. Since my kissing is so weak and mediocre.” He chuckled.

Mercedes watched him for a moment. Then moved back. "Fine if you really wanna get this right then let's go. But look it wasn’t bad it's just. You rushed in there like a preteen having his first kiss, not like a man in love who knows this kiss, this kiss is gonna determine if she loves him back. Ryder is putting everything on the line with this kiss. She stands in front of him. "Like this." She clears her throat. “Yes, I loved Isabel and I always will. But she’d want me to be happy. You’re that for me...” her hand went to his face, softly holding it there as she leaned in. "I love you." She improvised as she kissed him softly, gradually growing deeper. Then pulled away. "Now you try."

His blood was rushing to places and quick. Sam was lost in the kiss, so much so that he hadn't even noticed that she pulled away. He slowly opened his eyes and let out a breathless "Damn". That was the only way to properly describe the kiss from Mercedes. Though he was pretty sure nothing was wrong with his kiss before. He had to admit though, she was a damn good kisser. He cleared his throat and shook his shoulders as he repeated his lines once more and mimicked Mercedes' actions, except this time he fully committed. He dipped her back, planting a feverish kiss to her lips. "Hmm how about that?" he asked, lifting her back up.

Mercedes smirked hearing his response. Yeah she was good, and that kiss was fire. She stood back waiting for him and yeah the kiss was great but he still wasn't getting it. "Sam, now you are just over doing it, you need to connect with Ryder. With why he loves her. He's her best friend, she was always there for him and he knows he can depend on her, forever. Every touch and action proves that. It's a touch during a kiss." She said touching his face. "Now try it again but be in love."

Huffing under his breath he closed his eyes. He liked the way Mercedes seemed to push him. Was it because she saw his potential? Or maybe she was just as happy to keep kissing him as he was with her. Either way Sam had no complaints. “Yes, I loved Isabel and I always will. But she’d want me to be happy. You’re that for me...” He placed a hand softly on her cheek, caressing her soft skin. His eyes stayed locked on hers as he stared intensely. Her lips were in view and he just went for it. Pulling her face inches from his, he closed his eyes letting his lips work their magic.

Mercedes waited for Sam to start again, and was pleasantly surprised at the way he looked, the way he spoke. His hand on her cheek sent shivers up and down her spine, and his kiss proved that with a little work, Sam could make the most of his talents. His kiss, this kiss was amazing. It took everything in her not to go weak in the knees but she couldn't help herself wanting more. Her arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him closer.

Sam wasn’t expecting for Mercedes to match his energy but she did. It took everything in him to break away, not even realizing his hands had fallen to her hips. “When we shoot that scene on Monday, the entire cast in crew are gonna’ be in awe. Totally gonna crush it.” He winked. “Now if you’ll excuse me I think you took off all my chapstick with that last one.” He joked as he pulled his hands off of her with a smile.

Mercedes let her hands fall, shocked at her actions, not missing a stride she shook her head with a smile. "Yeah, considering that I acted my ass off and you improved, I think they are gonna be shocked at your improvement." She teased. She walked over to her water and took a sip. "Do you want some water?"

Sam nodded as Mercedes supplies him with some water. Much needed for the amount of times they ran that kissing even. If she hadn’t made it clear that she had no intentions on falling for his charm, he would be pretty sure that she liked him. Maybe not on a deep level but the chemistry was undeniable. “You sure that was all acting?” He teased as he fanned himself. “Because woo! I’m impressed if so.”

Mercedes rolled her eyes going back to her water and sitting on the sofa. "Trust me you will know if I liked you. A real kiss from me, a real true Mercedes Jones kiss, it'll leave you speechless, it will make you lose all train of thought other than wanting to kiss me again." She said staring at him.

#glee #samcedes #samcedes 1x1 #mercedes jones #sam evans

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letterboxd · 4 years ago

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How I Letterboxd #7: Cinemonster.

Hooptober’s head honcho opens up to Jack Moulton about his love for Texas-born horror director Tobe Hooper, the joys of running Letterboxd’s most beloved Hallowe’en community challenge, and the “terrifying, magical” experience of seeing Frankenstein at the age of four.

“You can’t spell October without Tobe.” —Cinemonster

Cinemonster, known to his family and friends as David Hood, is a restaurateur in Pittsburgh by day, and the head honcho of Hooptober by night. Now in its seventh year, the horror film challenge sees participants set their own 31-day viewing agenda of 31 films, curated according to a list of criteria set by its creator.

‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ (1974), directed by Tobe Hooper.

With over 5,000 films logged on Letterboxd and a growing collection of posters, DVDs, Blu-rays, laser discs and film memorabilia, Cinemonster is a literal monster of cinema. He has created more than 500 lists, including a ton of year, director, actor, actress, franchise and memoriam lists.

What brought you to Letterboxd? I found Letterboxd while I was doing a Google search for a horror film that I had forgotten the name of. I ran into a list that Hollie Horror had made and wound up starting a profile and it went from there. That would have been a little over seven years ago.

How freakin’ cool is last year’s Hallowe’en Easter egg with the dripping blood from our logo? [Pro members get this added to their pages by mentioning #horror in their bio.] I’m a fan.

Unfortunately I haven’t heard of a single one of your four profile favorites! What’s urging you to highlight these films? They are just lesser-seen and have something good or great about them. Eyeball is a great little underseen Umberto Lenzi film. Death Machines is an awkward, weird and wonderful film with kung fu and blood. Massacre at Central High is one of my favorite films and sadly lacking a disc release of any kind—anyone who has seen Heathers will recognize a couple of things if they watch it. Rituals is a criminally underseen stalked in the woods film from the ’70s.

In this this list description, you explain how the original Frankenstein (1931) hooked you into horror at four years old. Can you describe what you most remember about that life-changing experience? It was both magical and terrifying. The space, the creature, the little girl. I had trouble sleeping for weeks afterwards. No matter where I am in the world, if there is a screening of Frank, I’ll go. I watched most of the major universals by the time I was six or seven. I saw Alien and Jaws 2 with my folks and those stuck with me. Cable and a local UHF station showing Hammer films on Saturdays are what really allowed me to get sucked in.

‘Frankenstein’ (1931), directed by James Whale.

The horror films of 1980 and 1981 were the most impactful and are the ones that mean the most to me to this day; Fade to Black, Night School, Motel Hell, The Fog, Alligator, Altered States, Terror Train, Death Ship, Scanners, An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, The Funhouse, Dead & Buried, Hell Night, Wolfen, Ghost Story, The Pit and Evilspeak. I saw all of them five to ten-plus times on cable as a kid. They’re still all high on my list. I am glad that Fade to Black is on Shudder. People need to watch it. More relevant now than then.

What exactly provoked you to start Hooptober seven years ago? I moved into an old spooky house and had a backlog of Blu-rays to watch and the 4K of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was about to come out. I’d done some interactive stuff on Letterboxd previously and had a decent amount of people involved. I was also at a point in my life where 31 films in 31 days is tough, as it is for a lot of us now. So I thought ‘Why don’t I do something that starts a little early, clears some of my list out, and has some parameters that don’t feel like I am handing out an assignment?’ I grew up in Texas, Tobe [Hooper] is close to my heart, and with all the Hooper I owned and the 4K coming out, I decided to christen it with his name. You can’t spell October without Tobe.

What’s the most members that have participated in a Hooptober? The number of people who participated was a little more than I expected, but that wasn’t what I was surprised by. I never thought of it as a recurring event until I started to hear from people the following summer about ‘the next one’. I just kinda chuckled after about a dozen people had asked and I said out loud to no one, “I guess I’m doing another one of these”. We are well over 700 this year, and still climbing.

‘Fade to Black’ (1980), directed by Vernon Zimmerman.

Where do you get the ideas for the rules for films to consider watching? At this point, I look back at past years so that I don’t repeat myself. I look to the current year for inspiration. Is there a film from a sub-genre that was prominent? Was it a strong year for output from women, Mexico, Asia, Black filmmakers, something cultural, and so on? I may focus on effects creators, an actor or writer on a whim. I try to keep an eye out for blind spots I haven’t covered. Shudder, archive.org, the big streamers are all resources. Sadly, rarefilmm no longer exists.

In last year’s interview with Merry-Go-Round magazine, you mentioned plans to turn Hooptober into a film festival. How’s that going? In a post-pandemic world, how can we keep independent niche film festivals thriving? The world has not been agreeable, obviously. I’m not even sure how viable something like that will be next year. I’ve been taking a look at streaming options. Post-pandemic will require more creativity and outside-the-box thinking, and will probably continue to feed some drive-ins. Been a while since more than a handful of people wanted to put money into a drive-in, which is nice to see.

I’m going to do a tweet along to The Witch Who Came From the Sea in October, and I’ll give you an exclusive here: The George Romero Foundation and I are doing online Horror Trivia on October 11. I had been doing it live with them here in Pittsburgh until the pandemic.

Based on this year’s rules and conditions, if there was one essential you-can’t-miss film you could force all your participants to add to their challenge, which film would it be? Demons, Eve’s Bayou or The Witch Who Came From the Sea.

‘The Witch Who Came from the Sea’ (1976), directed by Matt Cimber.

What have been your own greatest film discoveries through your Hooptober adventures? A Tale of Two Sisters, I Drink Your Blood, Blood Diner, and though it is a bit of a cheat to list this one, The Amusement Park. It’s cheating because it didn’t exist as something that I or anyone else could have watched, prior to when I saw it.

Do you have any acclaimed horror movies still lingering in your list of shame? Eyes Without a Face, Upgrade, Cure and Scream 4.

Have you ever completed one of your own Hooptober challenges yet? Errrrrrrrrr, one. I’m on track this year.

What about the participants over the years—any Letterboxd friends you’ve made who would you like to give a shout-out to? Aaron, Sarah Jane and Chris Duck are people that I talk to outside of Letterboxd. There have been a few others over the years. Slappy McGee has helped me with Hooptober the last two years. They are great. Javo and David Lawrence are pretty great, too.

Before Hooptober, many of your lists invited discussion with your followers. In what ways is Letterboxd the ideal forum to foster a community of film fans? Fans exercise their fandom in so many ways. The platform is so flexible that it allows you to utilize it in a small and personal way, in a promotional way, or to dive into the community pool and see who’s out there that shares something with you or can show you something. The more people that we are exposed to and listen to, we are all the better for.

Which of your review—from any genre—are you proudest of? The Invisible Man or The Hustler, probably. I have a capsule of Hud that I like.

So, you’re the horror guy. Nobody is denying that. You are Cinemonster, after all. But when I look at your top movies list and see that Singin’ in the Rain is your all-time number one, I’ll need you to explain yourself. I go back and forth between that and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They are 1A and 1B in some order. Singin’ in the Rain is a perfect film and the studio system at its best. I will ignore your implied insult. ;)

‘Fear of a Black Hat’ (1993), directed by Rusty Cundieff.

It’s true, even a horror aficionado needs some levity in their life. What other comedies pick you up from a dark place? Fear of a Black Hat always does the trick. Same with The Awful Truth, Murder by Death, Hollywood Shuffle, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Blazing Saddles, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Black Dynamite.

Who has been keeping you company during this tough year? I have watched thirteen Spike Lee films so far this year. I’ve taken a break the last few months, but I’ll probably knock out five or six more. With the exception of 25th Hour, everything is a revisit. It’s been a joy to go back through everything. Crooklyn is much stronger than I remembered, and Bamboozled just gets better and more impactful as time passes. I have loved Spike since the day I saw School Daze. His films have always connected with things that are important to me and to those that have been around me. Lee is still grossly under-appreciated as a narrative film director and a documentarian.

We’re bowing down to your epic Blu-ray and DVD collection. Which ones are your most prized possessions? Make us jealous. I have an Anchor Bay DVD of Dawn of the Dead signed by the cast and George A. Romero, a steelbook of Battle Royale, the first Slumber Party Massacre set before they had to reprint the box, the original Star Wars trilogy on Blu. I’m sure there are things I’m not thinking of. I have a lot of out-of-print and laser-only stuff. I’ll never get rid of my Holy Grail, Ghostbusters and Akira Criterion laser discs.

A selection of Cinemonster’s signed memorabilia.

I have a copy of Painting with Light signed by John Alton, John Waters and Steven Soderbergh I’ll send you a picture of. I used to collect movie posters, and I have the original Revenge of the Jedi one-sheet and the Drew Struzan Squirm poster. I do love those.

From your top directors list, let’s put one horror director on a pedestal. Who does the genre better than anyone else and why? George. They’re always topical, intelligent, thoughtful, personal and sometimes prescient. At their best they hold up both a mirror and a crystal ball. He was writing found-footage scripts in the early 70s, for god’s sake. Tobe is grossly under-appreciated. James Whale and Mario Bava could scare you in so many ways.

So, thinking beyond Ari Aster, Robert Eggers and Jordan Peele, which up-and-coming horror directors are you most excited about? Issa López, Gigi Saúl Guerrero, Benson and Moorhead, Shinichiro Ueda, Na Hong-jin, Julia Ducournau, Nia DaCosta, Jeremy Gardner and Leigh Whannell.

The 2010s were a great decade for horror. We have more money on-screen, moving away from the low-budget films of the 2000s. Which favorite horror film of the last decade inspired you the most? Get Out. What Jordan did for generations to come is unmatched in this century.

Chucky from ‘Child’s Play’ (1988).

Which probably-too-long horror franchise gets too much flak and is top-to-bottom a great time? Child’s Play. Chucky has always been treated generally as second tier. [That franchise] has tried a lot of interesting and out-there things during its lifespan that had no business working, but did.

I know it’s been a slow year but you haven’t logged many 2020 movies yet! Which is your most anticipated horror movie of 2020 or 2021? Peninsula, for sure; I love Train to Busan. Then Candyman, The Dark and the Wicked, Grizzly II: Revenge, Bad Hair, #Alive, After Midnight, The Platform, Bulbbul, Underwater, Shirley and Swallow.

Interview by Jack Moulton. Follow Jack on Letterboxd.

#letterboxd #how i letterboxd #cinemonster #el cinemonster #elcinemonster #horror #horror films #horror genre #tobe hoooper #tobe hooper #hooptober #hoop-tober #halloween #halloween films #halloween challenge #letterboxd challenge

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medea10 · 5 years ago

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My Review of Dirty Pair

Now that I think about it…if you look at Dawn and Zoey from Diamond & Pearl…they could pull this off. I’m starting to have some questions for Pokemon’s animators in the mid-2000s. Next factor is that every time I attended Kraken Con in Oakland, they would usually play the first 4 episodes of this anime. And I would catch a few minutes or a random episode (most of the time it was episode 3). And finally, it’s an anime that came out in the 1980s. Let’s face it, what other anime have I watched came out before 1986 that’s not named Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, or Ranma ½? Thought so! If you're in big trouble, call the World Welfare Work Association or 3WA. They will send out a team of highly trained capable agents (also known as Trouble Consultants) who can solve your problems. But if the team they send you is the infamously named Dirty Pair, there will be a lot of collateral damage aside from solving your problems. The Dirty Pair (or Lovely Angels as the girls would like to be refered to) consists of Kei and Yuri, two ladies who are well equipped to help whoever, wherever, and whenever…for the right price. Win these ladies over with handsome men, bonuses, and luxurious items and they’ll help you with whatever the problem is. BETWEEN THE SUB AND THE DUB: I do face the same kind of dilemma watching this as I did with Rose of Versailles because I’m going to experience hearing people I’ve never really listened to until now (with the exception of Yuri’s seiyuu because she was in a lot of the Rumiko Takahashi animes I’ve watched). Licensing wise, last checked, Nozomi Entertainment has all the Dirty Pair animes (including the TV series, specials, OVA series, the spin-off series, and the movie). And if memory serves, I believe ADV once had claims over some if not all of this series. However, not everything got a dub. Pretty much, everything except for the original TV series got a dub. I got a chance to listen to the English dub and thought it was okay for the most part. It’s not ear-gratingly horrifying if that’s what you want me to say. With the dub, I noticed Yuri’s voice was different in some specials and I do have a theory on that. Apparently Jessica Calvello voiced Yuri during the OVA series, while Allison Sumrall did the specials and movies. My guess for that was when they were dubbing this, it was around that time when Calvello blew out her vocal chords…Yeah, that happened. But no complaints from me here either! Here’s what you might recognize these folks from. JAPANESE CAST: *Kei is played by Kyouko Tonguu *Yuri is played by Saeko Shimazu (known for Kodachi on Ranma ½, Princess Abi on InuYasha, and Shinobu on Urusei Yatsura) ENGLISH CAST: *Kei is played by Pamela Lauer *Yuri [in the OVA series] is played by Jessica Calvello (known for Prima on Pokemon, Hange on Attack on Titan, Excel on Excel Saga, Aika on Aria, Kanako on Maria Holic, and Suigintou on Rozen Maiden: Zurückspulen) *Yuri [in the movie] is played by Allison Sumrall (known for Kagura on Azumanga Daioh, Miia on Monster Musume, Shinichi’s mother on Parasyte, and Sasasegawa on Little Busters)

SHIPPING: These ladies are quite promiscuous. So it’s pretty easy to say they flirt with a different sort of men each episode. But there was one episode during the television run where Yuri really had something for a boy that deserves a mention. In the 8th episode of the original TV series, Yuri gets word of a childhood love (named Billy) reaching out to her. She was ready to leave her life and job as a Lovely Angel to be with him. Unfortunately, Kei comes across the unfortunate truth about Yuri’s long-lost love, Billy. He died while trying to complete his project. But Kei decided to keep this fact away from Yuri and instead told her it’ll take Billy a lot longer to complete his work. And Yuri will wait for him.

There have been a few notable men as well that made a dent in Kei and Yuri’s love life. Hell, there was even an episode where Yuri almost tied the knot with a man in the OVA series that almost got me to second guess Yuri’s angle. When it comes to Kei…yeah, there were a few guys on her radar but none that really stood out. Except I couldn’t help but wonder if there would ever be something between Kei and Carson from the movie! Regardless, Kei and Yuri are just too promiscuous and wild to just settle down with one guy (unless he was a handsome sugar daddy). ENDING TO TV SERIES: I don’t want to call it much of an ending because all the episodes follow the same pattern and that’s the girls work on a case they’re given and they finish their mission (more or less). If you ask me, the television series should have ended on the two-parter episode where Kei and Yuri are helping a family find a plane that has 463 missing passangers.

The final episode consisted of the girls in an apartment with three salesmen and a policeman in game of who’s the killer. Because of recent murders in the area involving women, Kei and Yuri were placed in an apartment to be on lookout. And for some reason, those four men wound up in the apartment together. Thanks to some clever intuition on Yuri’s part, she was able to figure out who the killer was and the reason behind the killer’s message. A year after the television series ended, they released two special episodes that follow suit to the series. Meaning the girls have to solve their mission. And the final one involved trying to save their chief from some kidnappers. PROJECT EDEN: Oh my God, could this movie be any more 1980s?! Half the movie has no dialogue and all those parts feel like a long-ass music video. I’m not knocking it, I just find it amusing. I want to call it a side-story from the original series. Basically, Kei and Yuri are working together with a smuggler (named Carson D. Carson…this name is literally too funny to comment on) from a previous mission to stop a crazy doctor from unleashing aliens upon the world. Seriously, just watch this! It’s a trip! OVA SERIES: Two years after the original television series finished (1987), Dirty Pair was given 10 more episodes in an OVA series. I guess you can call it a sequel as the stories all seem to follow the same premise as Yuri and Kei are on a different mission in each episode. There were only a few key differences here. First of all, unlike the television series, this set got an English dub. Again, I still don’t know why they neglected to dub the original TV series and dub this, the movie, and spin-off. Whatever! Secondly, in this series we got to see a few more people who work in the 3WA (besides Chief Gooley). The 3WA is a big organization and we really knew nothing about anyone else aside from Kei and Yuri (and to a lesser extent Chief Gooley). But there were characters like Madam Beryl and Dr. Q who seem to show up in more than just one episode here to help the girls. It's a shame we never saw more of these OVA's. And then we have Dirty Pair Flash!

What the shit?! What is this hot mess? This is not Yuri and Kei! I know their names are Yuri and Kei, but they’re not the ones I’ve been watching for the past year. As you can see, this is a definite product of the 1990s. Take something from the 70s and 80s and bastardize it with wonky animation, flashy colors, and every kooky sound effect you heard during 1990’s animes! Give me one good reason why I should even look at this!

Holy crap, is that Rica freakin’ Matsumoto in that fucking main cast?! And this was BEFORE she played Satoshi?! Fine…Imma watch it!

This is Kei and Yuri. No, they’re not the Kei and Yuri from the original series. This Kei and Yuri are different. This series is sort of an alternate setting to the original Dirty Pair. It’s not the same universe where the 3WA gives the names “Kei” and “Yuri” to new recruits. There won’t be an episode where both Kei’s and Yuri’s meet. This is something completely different! Now aside from their “radical” new look, Kei and Yuri here kinda differ from the Kei and Yuri from the 1980’s anime? Just a smidge. Kei is way more tomboyish than the original one. I know the original Kei was a tomboy too, but she also seemed promiscuous when it came to men unlike the newer one. This Kei didn’t really feel too interested in men all that much. Both Yuri’s seem the same as they can both be promiscuous, flighty, and hopelessly romantic when it comes to men. But the one thing that stays the same is that these girls always find a way to botch-up the missions. The cast of course has changed and with many more recognizable voice actors in the sub (to me). Here’s what you might recognize these folks from. JAPANESE CAST: *Kei is played by Rica Matsumoto (known for Ash on Pokemon, Yami/Bakura on YGO, Rumi on Perfect Blue, Choromatsu on Osomatsu-kun, and Sis on Now and Then Here and There) *Yuri is played by Mariko Kouda (known for Sakura on Pokemon, Nayuki on Kanon, Kaya on One Piece, and Juri on Vampire Knight) ENGLISH CAST: *Kei is played by Sue Ulu (known for Ritsuko on Neon Genesis Evangelion and Ayako on Golden Boy) *Yuri is played by Kim Sevier (known for Yui on Neon Genesis Evangelion and Noriko on Golden Boy) Dirty Pair Flash had something I kinda wished to see with the original series. Continuity! At least it was the case of the first set of OVA’s as it does show how this Kei and Yuri got paired up and their hardships of having to work together as the “Lovely Angels” of the 3WA. While with the original, we already jump into Kei and Yuri’s line of work where they already have a reputation as the infamous “Dirty Pair”, here we actually see this Kei and Yuri first get paired up. Kei was a delinquent and on probation and Yuri was one of the lowest in her class, let’s pair them up! What could possibly go wrong?

The first set of OVA’s had Kei on a literal manhunt for someone only to later find out it was a former member of the 3WA who has been causing mischief. Hell, she was one of the original Lovely Angel duo. The second set of OVA’s Kei and Yuri had to spend 5 episodes with a computer geek named Touma. The episodes here weren’t as continuous as they were in the previous set (as they don’t follow a strict storyline). And the finale to the second set felt very rushed to take out one bad guy. Seriously, all that build-up for such a sorry payoff!

The final set of OVA’s, five more stories that don’t connect whatsoever. And that’s a shame since you got an episode where Kei is taking care of a (now) orphaned baby and an episode where Yuri is a literal object of a little boy’s desire. I will give it this, the final episode where there’s a terrorist on the loose trying to kill the chief of the 3WA was pretty intense. All in all, Dirty Pair Flash was okay. I think I was more of a fan of the original Dirty Pair, but that’s just me. There were some things I liked from Flash too, don’t get me wrong. This series however gets extra points having Rica Matsumoto sing several songs on here. As for old school Dirty Pair…I can honestly say I jumped into this series blind-folded. One of the types of animes I don’t normally touch are sci-fi and mecha. It was never really my thing but every few years or so I would pick up titles with those specific genres. But I enjoyed watching the episodes of Dirty Pair. I almost want to compare this to any cop show you see on TV. Mostly for the aspect of two cops working together! It’s easy to say that Kei and Yuri do get the job done, but sometimes they fuck up. And that’s a common trope in many cop shows/movies (the entertaining ones). Plus I always found myself chuckling at the witty/catty banter between Kei and Yuri. How often do you see two female cops in this situation? In most of the shows I’ve seen it’s always between two guys! Sure it gives off a stereotype of if you put two girls in a room, all they’ll do is bitch and scratch each other’s eyes out. Yes, this does happen from time to time. But Kei and Yuri have always gotten along for the most part.

…Oh yeah…I suppose I should talk about the sex appeal. Even for the time this aired, I’m surprised they got away with these girls wearing butt-hugging shorts in literally every episode. Then again, it’s Japan. I can’t imagine what they’d be wearing nowadays. But for what it’s worth, I say give it a watch. If you’re a fan of police shows, mecha, or both, this might be right up your alley. And if you want to give Dirty Pair Flash a try, go for it too. I just suggest watching the original first, but that’s just my opinion. Through Nozomi Entertainment, you can purchase just about anything of Dirty Pair for home video. Nozomi Entertainment also put up a few of the specials, the movie Project Eden, and the entire set of Dirty Pair Flash on their Youtube page. Okay, now that’s over with. What’s the next Discotek license/older anime am I watching next?

Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-Chan? 2019 sure loves to torture me.

#anime review #dirty pair #dirty pair flash #kei #yuri

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vincent-marie · 5 years ago

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The Oft Overlooked A BUG’S LIFE

A BUG’S LIFE…

What can I really say about this movie that other animation fans on the internet haven’t already? It was critically dubbed Pixar’s most mediocre film before the horror that is the CARS franchise.

I was about nine years old when this film came out, and I really liked it then. Honestly, I still kind of do, but admittedly some of it is nostalgia on my part and I’m well aware that it could have been better.

Like I said, this film has been talked about by other online critics about how it is okay, at best. That it was just the Pixar placeholder in between the first two TOY STORY movies. However for the purposes of this article I would actually like to highlight some of the good things about this movie, or at least my reasoning for why I still have a fondness for it.

Now before I continue I do feel like I should address two big elephants in the room: Namely, John Lasseter and Kevin Spacey. Knowing what we know now about them, if you can’t watch this movie without feeling uncomfortable, I totally understand. I’ll admit it makes me a wee bit uncomfortable to watch the film now, and more so the behind-the-scenes featurette on the DVD. (Wish I could blur their ugly faces when they’re being interviewed…)

However my opinions of this film on its own have nothing to do with them or whatever they contributed to the film, so they are irrelevant to what I have to say here. As far as I’m concerned if they hadn’t been involved in the film someone else would have taken their place, and those other people would have done just as good a job, if not better. Not to mention they would have been able to do it without being complete and utter creeps. To conclude, Lasseter can go suck a jellyfish and I hope Spacey rots in hell.

I’m going to primarily talk about the things I like about this movie, both then and now. But before I get to that I’m going to talk about why I agree with most critics who consider this one of Pixar’s lesser films.

A big problem with the movie is primarily the story and characters being a bit weak.

Part of that problem is the story’s initial structure. It’s clearly a retelling of Akira Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI; village is being attacked by thugs, one villager leaves to get help in the form of warriors, villager brings back help, and they successfully fight off the invaders.

Probably the biggest difference in story is SAMURAI ended on a bittersweet note due to casualties among the samurai themselves, whereas BUG’S LIFE didn’t have any real casualties on the heroes’ side. That said, though, it’s funny that the ants seemed so damn certain there would be.

Initially modeling an original story off of a classic isn’t a bad thing in of itself. Back when I was in college it was something a lot of my writing and animation professors encouraged: learn from the classics. Not just film, but also literature and mythology.

The thing is SEVEN SAMURAI as a film was three to four hours long. It had time to accommodate for its fairly large cast, while still keeping its focus on a select few.

BUG’S LIFE, however, was only maybe an hour and fifteen minutes long. The writers probably could have stood to trim down some of the Bug Circus and take time to polish the story rather than try to give EVERYBODY an opportunity to have a funny line.

Having a couple ensembles in place isn’t a bad thing. They had that in TOY STORY with Andy’s toys, the Little Green Men in the claw machine, and the mutant toys. The groups, however, were smaller in that movie, and in the case of the Mutant Toys they had no speaking lines and had to convey everything with silent acting.

However something that’s been pointed out is that with Pixar films there was always a real progression in technical quality. That with each movie they got better and better with the tool of their trade that was CG animation.

Let’s look back at TOY STORY. The reason they made the characters plastic toys was because that’s just what their character models at the time always looked like. It would be a long way before they could even consider rendering complex fur textures for MONSTERS INC., and more complex still Merida’s tangled head of hair in BRAVE. It’s why the human characters in TOY STORY also look a bit weird and plasticky by today’s standards.

With TOY STORY they accomplished lively character animation in 3D. With TOY STORY 2 they managed to make better looking, less stiff human models like Al of Al’s Toy Barn, and slightly nicer fur textures on Buster the dog. MONSTERS, INC. had the aforementioned complex fur textures for Sully and some pretty decent early snow effects.

So what did BUG’S LIFE accomplish on a technical level?

Two words: textures, and lighting.

The last time I watched BUG’S LIFE I was absolutely FLOORED by how beautiful the set pieces were.

Take this scene of Flik giving Dot a pep-talk.

All that detailing in the blades of grass in the background, the pebbles on the ground, the textures on the pebbles, the textures on Flik’s contraption, and even the textures on the characters. It blows my mind trying to imagine how long it took to create those models, differentiate between the more see-through nature of the grass blades and the opacity of everything else, and arrange them in a way that makes for a convincing bug’s eye view of a patch of grass.

Then there’s the scene of the grasshoppers breaking into the anthill.

TOY STORY had some decent lighting that helped establish the needed atmosphere, but I don’t recall it being nearly this crisp.

Once again, there’s the textures on the objects and characters. As a kid, while I was aware the film was CG animated, I found myself speculating if the grasshoppers’ muzzles were made of foam rubber.

These were all things I took for granted as a kid, because I did not yet have the experience to know just how much work and skill it takes to make 3D animation.

This is a still from a minute-long film I made in a 3D computer animation class. I was given maybe only a couple months to make it. That included having to navigate my way through these complex computer programs I was completely unfamiliar with, and technical difficulties like the textures not grafting onto the models right. Let me tell you, it was a pain in the ass.

I look at the backdrops for BUG’S LIFE and I’m left to ask: “How many computers CRASHED trying to render all that?” Because, believe me, that happens. A lot.

Also, here’s the thing. When technical elements of a film are done well, such as lighting or camera focus, the audience LITERALLY doesn’t notice it. They’re too swept up in the story because the visual storytelling keeps up the illusion for them. The audience only notices important technical details like this when they’re done BADLY, hence a lot of people outside the film industry really take for granted just how much work and skill is taken into making a film that looks good.

(It’s why I think everyone should watch FOOD FIGHT at least once in their lives, especially animation fans.)

Okay, while it is inevitable that I would bring up Dreamworks’ ANTZ, I’m not going to talk too much about it. (It’s like the Cola Wars; everyone inevitably picks a side.) All I’ll say for now is I’ve always preferred BUG’S LIFE because it’s nicer-looking design-wise and its content and execution is more family-appropriate. (Also, in 1998 we didn’t know at the time Kevin Spacey was a creep, but everyone and their DOG knew Woody Allen was. Nice job, Dreamworks!)

It’s been pointed out that there’s a distinct casting difference between ANTZ and BUG’S LIFE. ANTZ had a cast of recognizable movie actors, while BUG’S LIFE had a cast of recognizable television actors.

For BUG’S LIFE that’s not necessarily a bad thing. One of the things that bothers me about celeb casting in animated movies is that oftentimes it feels like a flimsy attempt at star-power when said stars don’t have the power to elevate the characters. Actors who might be good front of a camera but bring nothing to a recording booth.

However for the most part Pixar has been really good at casting well-known actors who actually fit their characters and add some personality to them. BUG’S LIFE was no exception.

In fact, quite a few of them had loaned their voices to animation before this film, and some damn good performances too.

And I can name at least one BUG’S LIFE alum who graduated from funny performance to heartfelt performance with Pixar…

(… I’m not crying! YOU’RE crying!)

But I digress. I consider the casting for this movie pretty solid. (With the obvious exception of Kevin Spacey.)

What’s more, growing up I remember a lot of the TV spots for Pixar films usually down-played the celeb cast and let the product speak for itself. The celeb casting was less of a selling point for the films and more like a fun little Easter egg for the parents who had to take their kids to the theater.

Earlier I stated that the story and characters in BUG’S LIFE are a bit weak, and I stand by that. However there are a couple characters I’d like to highlight here as I’ve always found them interesting and memorable in their own ways.

First, let me talk about Hopper for a minute.

(I’ve already stated that Kevin Spacey can rot in hell, so there will be no more of that.)

I’ve heard criticism about Hopper as a character that he was a very bland, one-dimensional villain. To be fair, they’re not wrong.

But the thing I always liked about Hopper is that his one and only goal is to hold dominion over the ant colony. To keep them under his foot, both literally and figuratively, and he wasn’t afraid to use deadly force to do that. He was willing to kill a few of his own goons just to illustrate a point. That’s how threatening he was.

In a lot of children’s media I had seen up to that point, there were several bully characters that were often portrayed as the bigger kids who would demand your lunch money. They were usually ineffectual doofuses like Bulk and Skull from POWER RANGERS, or kids with serious insecurities like Binky Barnes from ARTHUR. While not the first of his kind, Hopper was one of the first characters I had ever encountered as being a prime illustration of not just a bully, but one who had the makings of a dictator.

With his rather one-note motivation, I can see why audiences found him bland, but given his violent means of staying in power, I’m glad they didn’t try to make him “complex” or give him any sympathetic character traits.

Frankly, we live in an age where horrible people are romanticized in the media as being “misunderstood”. I feel like, unlike those media outlets or the upcoming JOKER movie, BUG’S LIFE gets it. They don’t deserve to be portrayed with humanity. These people are monsters. Nothing more.

Maybe if Pixar hadn’t felt the need to rush the production maybe Hopper is one of many characters that could have been polished up a bit in the writing process. Give him some more distinct, memorable traits as a character. Maybe hints at a backstory of Hopper having a long-standing history of using and abusing others, and always getting away with it.

(When I put it that way, we can just say Hopper is the John Lasseter Story. Just draw a pair of glasses and a tacky shirt on the guy and it’s a spitting image.)

The other thing I’ve always liked about this movie was the portrayal of Princess Atta.

Besides being the first Pixar Princess, I always liked how, unlike the Disney Princess pantheon up to date in the late 90s, Atta actually had a bit of a character arc related to the fact that… well, she’s royalty! She’s going to have to take over the colony eventually as queen.

We see this from the beginning as she’s overseeing the harvest and going into a panic when things go even slightly wrong. Also, I find it interesting that it’s a guy that screws everything up when Flik accidentally destroys the food offering, yet she’s the one who gets blamed for it. (Ironic commentary coming from the studio led by an egotistic creep who wouldn’t let women in on meetings.)

But what I loved about her as a kid was that her personality and approach to things was a lot more real and down-to-earth than your average glamorous Disney Princess. She felt less like fairy tale royalty and more like a woman up for promotion at a big company. From a pragmatic standpoint that can be just as scary, stressful and daunting.

(It also feels appropriate in hindsight considering her voice actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus would later star on VEEP…)

My friend @baxterfilms and I have had a lot of discussions about this movie, and we agreed that Atta should have been the protagonist. She actually has a character arc of her own of being unsure of herself at the start of the film, taking charge in the second act, and eventually standing up to Hopper in the third.

Remove Flik entirely, and have her go on a journey to find reinforcements against the grasshoppers. Have her realize that Hopper’s demands are impossible, she’s sick of having to adhere to him, and have her sneak out to get help. When she finds out she literally brought home a bunch of clowns, she understandably freaks out. She has to figure out a resolution because there is a lot of pressure on her to make things right and free the colony from bondage.

Strangely enough, with that version of the story you could still probably have all the indulgent fun of the celebrity cast. It’s just the very core of the film’s story needed some serious tightening up, and maybe Dave Foley as Flik would have fared better as a comic relief sidekick.

With all that said, I thank you for taking the time to read this. I really do think that this film is highly under-appreciated in the animation community. There might have been trouble in the writing room, but the technical achievements in this film were still there and helped Pixar hone their craft into making their animated features as stunning as they are heartwarming.

I have to say, though, I find it funny that there’s almost a pattern to these insect-driven animated movies. Going all the way back to MR. BUG GOES TO TOWN, they usually have rather weak leading characters, and the supporting cast winds up leaving more of an impression.

Weird, huh?

#a bug's life #pixar #animation #review

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safflowerseason · 5 years ago

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(Part 3) 4) also, re: season 7 so far, and keep in mind I’m two episodes in, I don’t even recognise Dan, and to a lesser extent Amy, anymore. I don’t even feel I’m watching Veep anymore, not as it was set out for the first four seasons. Is Mandel known to be the devil or something? What in the frack was this vision of the characters meant to be - ‘evolved’? Or does he just hate them? 5) I hated what he did to the Selina and Amy relationship too. Does Mandel hate women? Is this a known thing?

These are all questions that we’ve been batting around on here since the finale aired in May (which is when I got on Tumblr, incidentally, because I had to take my Veep feelings somewhere.) To a certain degree, there’s never going to be a solid, black-and-white answer to any of them, really. You can read everything David Mandel ever said in public about his vision for Veep, you can close-read what the actors say on press tours…but it’s just not the same as being in the room. And certainly, it’s worth pointing out that all shows evolve, and they gain and lose fans through those changes. No show ends the exactly the same as when it started (although…some shows manage this evolution better than others.)

So, now that I’ve gotten my neutral disclaimer out of the way, I can get on with the fun ranting.

4) Dan is absolutely unrecognizable in S7 from how he appears even at the end of S6, barring little flashes here and there. While Amy’s general arc holds together slightly better than Dan’s, she still suffers from some major out of character moments in 7.02, as we all were just discussing recently. (Dan’s arc just makes no sense.) 7.02 is just rough on all counts. Unless you’re an avid Selina/Tom shipper in which case you probably got something out of it.

Also—and this is a general pet peeve of mine, as a California native—the episode is supposd to take place in Colorado and yet was so clearly filmed in Southern California (they posted a ton of pictures from the ranch where they filmed). Like, there are parts of California that resemble Colorado, but you have to go a little further than Malibu to get there. (I have the same beef with Parks and Rec. It’s so obviously not Indiana.)

Mostly, what it all boils down to is bad writing. I don’t care if Mandel thought Dan and Amy would never work as a couple. That’s fine. That’s a legitimate opinion. Run your show the way you want, dude. What I do care about is bad writing. It is bad writing when in 7.01, Amy seems intent on having the baby without Dan, and then in 7.02, suddenly Amy wants to pitch Dan a white-picket fences vision of domestic stability that neither of them have ever been particularly interested in. Sex-Psychopath Dan is bad writing because it completely contradicts everything we know about the character even taking S6 into consideration. The Dan we see in S7 would have slept with Leigh Patterson in S4 just because she was young and there and he is apparently a sex-addict, hahahaha, when of course S4 Dan would never be caught dead in the sexual proximity of a nineteen year old he theoretically works with. And yes, of course, characters can change. But you have to show that change, which they do not.

As for whether Mandel is the devil, (lol)…I think he was just very intent on doing the version of the show he saw in his head, and did not feel very obligated to try and replicate the show that Armando Iannucci had built. He had a completely different sensibility as an artist. I wrote a longer post somewhere on my blog about the differences in their approaches, if you’re interested, but ultimately I think what happened is that two very different universes got mashed together. Mandel didn’t hate the characters…he just thought they were all monsters and that was the point.

Also, two things happened the show couldn’t get away from, for obvious reasons: Trump was elected and the show was on an extended hiatus for 2017 and most of 2018 due to JLD’s cancer diagnosis. In the interim, all of America watched the government begin to melt in real time on Twitter. As a result, David Mandel rebooted the original ending for the show, in order to better capture this new moment in American politics (how effectively he did so is obviously up for debate.) The creative team and the cast were all fairly open about how dramatically Trumpian politics shaped their approach to the final season. So basically Trump is the short-answer reason to why a ton of plot threads get dropped between S6 and S7. I am 99% percent sure that the original plan was for Amy to have the baby before the hiatus and the resulting reboot. (Although at the same time, I do not think Dan and Amy would have gotten a very satisfying ending under Mandel. He also posted some pre-reboot snippets of the original outline for the finale, which have hinted that quite a few things did not change…for example, it seems that BKD was always doomed to be a one-episode plot device designed to get everyone back on Selina’s team, which is stupid.)

5) As for Mandel’s writing of female characters, I feel more comfortable speaking definitively here because in this case, it doesn’t matter what they were thinking in the room, but how it came across on the page and on the screen. Mandel obviously would say he doesn’t hate women, but he’s seems like one of those “liberal” white guys who has a lot of sh*t to work through regarding his own assumptions about women and femininity. He turned Selina into this misogynistic sociopath who abuses every woman in her sight with extremely gendered language, and he consistently punished Amy the character explicitly for not being hot enough or quiet enough or acquiescent enough for a woman. Like, the show always made fun of Mike for being dumb. It did not always make fun of Amy for being ugly and old. Moreover, Mandel/the show basically implies that Amy is a failure as a woman because she’s not maternal and also old and ugly, so she never got to be a mother and she never got to be with the man she truly loved. (sorry, Bill.) (Um, also, the audience has eyes? Anna Chlumsky is neither old nor ugly.)

I find it plausible that Amy and Selina’s relationship deteriorates over time…there is a subtle professional Dan/Amy/Selina triangle at work in S1-S4, and as Amy gets older and starts to figure out what she really wants from her life (and if Dan were the one she was trying to figure it out with), I don’t think Iannucci-Selina would react very well to it. (She would never be as openly abusive as S7 Selina, but I can’t imagine she’d be thrilled if Amy got pregnant just in time for her reelection campaign.) The show also makes it clear that Selina has an extremely complicated relationship with women and feminism, not to mention the fact that Amy herself is not particularly confident in her own body.

However…there were lots of ways to explore those complex character fault-lines without Selina abusing Amy constantly. She tries to sell her to Leon! Part of it is a complete lack of nuance and part of it is just plain old sexism.

Veep and the sexism of its later years has also been a pretty big discussion topic within the Veep Tumblr community, and you’ll definitely find posts on it if you poke around more closely (my blog, and also @thebookofmaev has written a lot about it as well.)

#veep season seven #rip dan egan #veep and politics #veep and sexism

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bigskydreaming · 5 years ago

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thoughts on the cw the lost boys recastings?

Not really? LOL I mean I had to google lost boys recasting because I’ve gotten a couple asks about it this week but this was the first one that mentioned recasting, and I had had no idea why all of a sudden ppl were asking about it again, so...*shrugs*

So I guess the CW didn’t like the pilot that was shot and they released all the cast from their contracts except for two of the lesser known names. I mean sure, I’m kinda bummed that we won’t get Posey playing a vampire in a campy CW show that’ll likely be at least as terrible as TW if not worse, lolol, but that’s literally about as high as my expectations ever went? I’m sure he’ll land something else soon enough.

I know people are always looking to make a big deal about this sort of thing, and so anyone’s free to believe me or not or assume I’m biased because of what a huge Posey stan I obviously am, but tbh....its really not that big a deal. This sort of thing happens all the time, its just nobody outside the industry really pays attention except when its involving a specific project or show they’re interested in, or an actor, so it seems less common from that perspective than it actually is, but like...honestly, this kinda thing happens at least once a pilot season, if not more.

Like literally all that happened, far as I can tell, is the CW passed on the pilot. That’s it. That happens allllllll the time, with something like 70% of the pilots shot every pilot season never seeing the light of day. That’s actually a conservative estimate.

The only thing that’s different from the rest of that 70% here, that puts this in the ‘usually only happens once or twice a pilot season,’ is that the CW didn’t scrap the whole project, and are looking to recast. Usually when that happens, its for one of two reasons: its a passion project for someone hide up on the food chain like one of the executive bigwigs, or else their option on the IP is about to expire and they either are afraid they won’t be able to re-up on it because someone else is looking to horn in, or they don’t want to waste their investment in the project so far but still don’t want to commit for yet another year with nothing to show for it either.

We’re talking about Lost Boys here, so my guess is it could be either, or even more likely, a combination of both. It’s a cult classic with a sizable following and big footprint in the vampire genre. I’m sure there are always people looking to snatch the option for it up the second it becomes available again. The CW’s had this project in development hell for a number of years from what I can see, ever since Rob Thomas first wanted to do something with it for them, and that means the option’s been tied up for years and this is the first time they’ve even gone all the way to pilot with it.

So if they still can’t make it to air with a new pilot and pass on that too, they’ll have to go back to whoever holds the IP rights for the movie and try and re-up again for another year (idk who that is, could be Schumacher, could be the studio that produced the movie, it depends). And if they’ve already had the option tied up for this many years, I guarantee the second word got out that the CW had passed on their pilot, people started making calls and making sure the source option holder knew they were interested, should the option become available again. Which means the holder of the original IP rights now has additional leverage to make the CW pay a higher price to re-up, or else they’ll take their option elsewhere, to the many others who are interested.

And trust me, the CW doesn’t want that. Because then they’ll have to decide if they want to let it go, despite all the money sunk into it over the years already.....or if they want to hang on to it, pay even more than usual to re-up, in addition to the money they dropped this year on one, possibly even two pilots. I’m sure at least some of the people in the decision-making chain at the CW are fans of the original movie, given the nature of most of the shows the CW greenlights, so its pretty much a given that some of them really WANT to see something come out of this option, but sooner or later every studio has to cut their losses and walk away, and I suspect from not just them going back to the drawing board, but going back this late in the year, that there’s a degree of urgency to this that you don’t see most years, meaning they’re probably on the brink of having to make that call. If they pass on this second pilot, whenever they reshoot, I wouldn’t be surprised if they then go ahead and let their option expire next year.

As for everyone but two actors being recast.......okay, so look, this is part of where the whole ‘there are reasons I don’t really ‘stan’ for actors the way most people on social media do’ thing I’m always going on about, lol. Yeah a large part of that has to do with having worked with so many actors the shine has worn off and I’m very aware they’re just people no different from anyone you work with, and you’d find it very odd to stan for a random coworker of yours, I’d imagine. But another part of it is just.....my perspective on the industry and actors is from a very different angle from most peoples’, so a lot of the times I’m just kinda....bwuh, at the things people make a big deal out of, if that makes sense?

Like I mean, as I said, this is literally the first I heard about the show being recast, I haven’t been keeping up with any news or gossip about it at all, but I know, I just KNOW that there are people reading a lot into this, either in support of Posey or looking to make digs at him for....what to my POV....very likely has absolutely fuck all to do with the cast at all?

LMAO. Like I just mean, in my perspective, it wouldn’t even occur to me to assume the actors all gave shitty performances or were a let down and that’s why they’re all being recast, at least, were it not for years on social media making me aware that is a common assumption.

Like...nope, that’s really not a thing that happens, like, it literally just doesn’t. Again, people can believe me or not, but I promise, I PROMISE, there has been no pilot in the history of ever, where almost the entire cast was recast because every single one of them phoned in a shitty performance. Nope. Look, no matter HOW long you’ve worked in the industry, pilots are NOT easy to come by. Pilot season is hands down THE most competitive time of the year for any actor, on pretty much any level. Unless we’re talking actors who don’t even have to be cast because their involvement is the only reason a project is happening, that sorta thing.....NO ACTOR EVER TAKES A PILOT CASTING FOR GRANTED. Like, if an actor honestly just didn’t even care all that much whether a pilot gets picked up? Then why the fuck would they even bother going on auditions for that pilot, or why not just sit out that pilot season? It’s a bunch of hassle they don’t need as well as possibly getting locked into a longterm contract for a project they don’t really care about....lol just no, that’s not a thing. Actors don’t do pilots unless they WANT that pilot to be picked up, and for them to have a contracted role. Full stop.

So when you keep that in mind....honestly, what are the chances that in a full cast of professional actors, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM couldn’t manage to give a compelling performance, while bringing their A-game, except for the two cast members with the least on their resumes?

The chances are zip, because on the occasions an entire cast or almost an entire cast gets replaced for a reshoot, it has absolutely zero to do with any of the performances, and everything to do with the direction taken with the premise, like, the basic pitch they chose to go with for the characters.

Because again....its about Hollywood’s favorite magic word: leverage.

Nah, if one actor gets replaced after a pilot, before reshoots or even just between shooting the pilot and the show starting shooting on the rest of the season? Then it might be about the performance there, the studio just didn’t like that actor in the role and wanted to recast. Or it might be about the actor having had competing commitments that meant they turned out not to be available longterm after all, or there was a ceiling to how long they’d actually be available, or maybe they had enough other commitments that technically made them available but were still a hassle for the studio to work around and they just didn’t want to bother.

OR, in some cases....an actor gets recast before the show goes to air, because the studio couldn’t negotiate an agreement with the actor for their contract, that satisfied both parties.

Because that’s the angle most people forget to consider in this specific type of situation: actors sign on for a pilot, when they get cast. Their contracts have nothing to do with a full season at that point, because there’s nothing to even negotiate there, until a pilot is actually greenlit. Because until that point, nobody even knows for sure if they’re going to get a full season pick up, a half a season pick up, if the studio is just going to order eight episodes at first and then see how the ratings are before picking up five more episodes on the back end, etc.

So AFTER a pilot gets greenlit, the casts’ representation goes back to the table with the studio and hammer out their longterm contracts for the actual season.

And when a cast has to shoot not one pilot but two, before they even reach the negotiation stage for a full season pickup....they come to the table with a HELL of a lot of leverage. Because they know exactly how badly the studio needs THIS particular show to work out at this point, after that much of an investment. They know that the studio used up pretty much any buffer time they had, in order to get a whole second pilot shot, and they literally can’t AFFORD to have too many of their main cast walk at this point, if they don’t agree to their terms.

So when a studio recasts almost an entire cast before going back to reshoots, its because they’re trying to hedge their bets as much as possible and nip that negotiating power in the bud with a full recast with brand new actors who are brought in with the understanding that ‘we know we don’t have a lot of time to get this done and don’t want to waste our investment on this flopping, and YOU know that and we KNOW you know that, but if you want this part at all, you’re not going to make that a thing when it comes to full season contracts, do we have an agreement there.’

And you can’t make that kind of agreement halfway through things with a cast you’ve already made any kind of commitment to, not and expect them to be on board without any kind of concessions made.

So yeah, that’s why my guess is who knows what kind of performances the cast gave, it very likely had nothing to do with the recastings. Best bet is the studio just wasn’t happy with how the pitch they went with for this initial pilot looked when realized on screen, or maybe they were torn between two pitches initially anyway and now they feel the other might be a better bet.....and they couldn’t afford to stick with a cast that already had this much negotiating power this late in the game, so they released everyone from their contracts except for two of the ones who had relatively little negotiating power to begin with, and weren’t likely to give the studio too much of a problem over full season contracts.

Besides, if the new pilot does make it to air, by the time the new cast negotiates their full season contracts, the studio can sit down with these two and say its not that big a deal to recast one or two more at this point, all things considered, so.....again, do you want this role or not.

Ahhh, good old Hollywood. Where the bullshit in question is never exactly the bullshit most people assume it is, but make no mistake - its bullshit all the same. LOLOL.

Ugh, if only I weren’t a masochist who didn’t love being a THEEEEEEEESPIAN so much. Ah well.

But seriously guys, the thing you have to remember always, is there are never any guarantees, ever, at any stage, so its always a mistake to assume that a late stage decision or change has anything to do with quality, when there are a million other bullshit factors studios tend to consider before they even get around to giving a shit about what they think of the quality.

Like, an example....six or seven years ago, I don’t remember exactly...maybe it was eight, even? The year Jay Leno’s scandals were all over the news and NBC pulled his contract and all the late night talk shows moved around and swapped hosts.

Anyway, doing that meant that all of a sudden, NBC had an entire slate of open slots they needed to fill in the ten o’clock hour of their season lineups. Monday through Friday, when they usually would have a brand new hour of Leno programming for viewers from 10-11, all of a sudden, they had NOTHING. It was pretty damn unprecedented and nobody knew for sure how things were going to play out....just that it was November, and NBC was scrambling to pick and staff and cast as many pilots as they could in as short a time frame as they could, to cover the gap.

In the end, they had about half a dozen to maybe ten pilots at most, all filming at breakneck speed throughout December, right before the holidays, with the studio hoping to make a decision on them over hiatus and start shooting again over sweeps for a late midseason premiere to them.

So us poor dumb bastards who got cast and shoved through contracts, fittings, filming and all that good stuff in one of the most whirlwind and exhausting start-to-finish shoots any of us had ever experienced in the industry, were like, okay we KNOW better than to assume anything’s a sure thing, but like....this is PRETTY CLOSE to a sure thing, right? RIGHT?

Ugh, what dumbasses.

LOL and me I was one of the worst, because I wasn’t SAYING it out loud where anyone could hear it, but like, I was SURE this was going to be my big break. Because see, I wasn’t cast just on any old last minute pilot. No, I landed a bit-part-with-possibilities-of-recurring on a pilot starring David Tennant, like, fresh off his role on Doctor Who and very much in demand. It had a fair number of other names going for it...Jane Curtin, Cleo King who’d just gotten a big boost in popularity from The Hangover releasing over the summer, Abigail Spencer from Timeless although back then she was mostly just known for her work on Mad Men, etc. Like, this production was so rushed it never even got to the point of having an actual title, it was called something like “Rex Is Not Your Lawyer" on all our official contracts and stuff lol. We shot it over two weeks in December and wrapped filming the day before Christmas. And then we waited to hear about a decision, pretty fucking confident we were about to get a midseason pickup, because like....literally what else did the studio even HAVE?

Well. Nothing. We were right on that front, at least. They had nothing else to put on air besides the pilots they’d hastily pulled together and shot.....but in the end, after ALL of that, and after all that expense, and drama, and rushing and whatnot....the higher ups decided eh...you know what? We’re not really feeling any of these, hey, let’s just air re-runs of the Leno show in his old ten o’clock spot, that’ll be good enough.

....*headdesk*

LOL and the best thing was they didn’t even bother to tell ANY of the casts their decision until like, a month after making it. I mean we’d pretty much figured out from watching the clock that for whatever reason, it just wasn’t going to happen, but despite being a nobody, I was weirdly one of the very first in the cast to know for sure we weren’t getting picked up, because one of my friends who works in costume design was working on a different show on the lot where we’d shot Rex, and called me at like 6 am one day to say ‘oh shit, they’re packing up your sets, wtf,’ and that was basically as good as confirmation, lmao, ugh.

Though tbh, for me personally, that one doesn’t sting nearly as much as Washington Field, which was....I wanna say one or two pilot seasons before that? It was my first year in town, going out on auditions for pilot season as a fully paid up and registered SAG actor, the CSI franchise was winding down and CBS was looking to replace it with a brand new franchise, and Washington Field was the procedural they were hoping to use as a launching point for that new franchise. Some FBI procedural, like lbr, I would have never ever watched it myself and probably hated every script with a passion lol. I remember first time I got the full script for the pilot, like, it was pretty much right before we were all set to fly out to where we were shooting on location, so a bunch of my acting friends were over for a last minute party kinda thing, THOROUGHLY enjoying a drinking game they’d made out of the script, called something like “Get a shot every time Kalen’s character is a MASSIVE TOOL of the Establishment!” LOL like lbr, it wouldn’t have been my favorite role to break into the biz with haha. But the cast was pretty cool and we had a blast - GINA TORRES, ugh, still so bummed there, Teri Polo, Cole Hauser which is ironic given this is an ask about Lost Boys, lol, oh and Eddie Cibrian but he was super cranky the whole time b/c like his affair with LeeAnn Rimes had just become public knowledge lolol whooooops - anyway.

I was pretty sure that was a sure thing too, because CBS was pushing the hellllll out of that pilot, talking up all these big plans they had for it, it was something like a $5 million pilot, we had helicopters, shut down a whole freeway for filming one day, the works. Big big production. I didn’t even have representation at the time, I was booking my own auditions and literally only got called in for that one because the casting director had remembered me from some indie I did, weirdly enough, and looked me up on a whim. But like, yeah, I only found out we’d been passed over on that one when I ran into one of the other cast on the street like the week before pick-ups and she was like “oh honey no, didn’t you hear? They passed on our pilot, we’re all released from contract.” ....lol, that was not a super fun way to find out.

Oh well, ANYWAY, point is, nobody ever knows anything even when they think they know and also studios are stupid and dumb and make stupid dumb decisions all the time so never ever assume a studio’s decision has anything to do with anything other than being stupid and dumb and also, I am DEFINITELY not biased, okay, maybe I am a little bit but my bias has actually absolutely zero to do with Posey and everything to do with being Jilted one too many times by studios who are both stupid and dumb, and thus clearly not to be trusted. Harrumph.

....I think there’s an answer to your question in there. Somewhere. Idk, I think I got lost too.

#Anonymous

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ethenell · 6 years ago

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Best Films of 2018: Honorable Mentions

The time, once again, has come. The Oscars nominations are out there, and they’re ... puzzling ... But anyone interested in an alternate take can look no further.

The cinema of 2018 offered too many notable treasures to whittle down to a simple list of ten, so before we get into the meat of my countdown, here is an alphabetical list of ten films that just missed out on making my list, but are essential viewing for anyone looking to take in the best that 2018 had to offer.

Enjoy!

Blindspotting (dir. Carlos López Estrada)

I’m still waiting for the moment when the world collectively discovers the thing at which Daveed Diggs is not amazing. He had already garnered acclaim as a part of the experimental hip-hop group clipping. before reaching a wider audience and netting himself Grammy and Tony Awards for his role in the paradigm-altering musical, Hamilton. To that already distinguished list, we can now add co-writing and co-starring in one of 2018’s most original films. Blindspotting, set in Digg’s hometown of Oakland, CA, is a searing take on gentrification, racism, and police brutality that show off a deep understanding of the myriad political problems in the rapidly-changing Bay Area, while displaying an equally deft touch with the characters who find their lives irreparably damaged as a direct or indirect result. It’s impressive work from Diggs and co-writer/co-star Rafael Casal that first-time director Carlos Lopez Estrada brings to life with singular vision. Something tells me we’ll continue to see more of everyone involved, but Diggs is undoubtedly headed for greatness.

The Death of Stalin (dir. Armando Iannucci)

You’d be forgiven if you thought the creator/director of Veep, The Thick of It, and In The Loop had already mined politics’ deepest, darkest depths for the pitch-blackest comedy that one could possibly generate from the toxic combination of bureaucratic incompetence and egotistical narcissism. However, as The Death of Stalin shows with brutal precision, you would be wrong. The Death of Stalin is at times so bleak its difficult to even describe as a comedy without a bit of a cringe on your face, but it revels brilliantly in the theater of the absurd and probes ruthlessly at the ruling class with chilling contemporary resonance. And that’s all without mentioning that it features one of the best ensemble performances of the year. In a time when its easy to despair how much our everyday political reality has started to resemble a particularly discomfiting episode of Veep, Iannucci makes a triumphant return with an even more discomfiting message - never forget, things can always get much, much worse.

Hereditary (dir. Ari Aster)

Another year, another Sundance horror breakout. Even if it doesn’t quite match up with some of its more distinguished predecessors (I wouldn’t quite put it at the level of It Follows, The Babadook, or The Witch) Hereditary is clearly the year’s best horror film, featuring a handful of sequences sure to push you to the edge of your seat, and then keep you up at night. The perennially under-appreciated Toni Collette delivers a performance of such vast emotional range that it deserves mention among the absolute best performances of the year – which, of course, meant that it was doomed to be ignored by the Oscars. Nevertheless, any fans of the genre should stop what they’re doing (including, presumably, reading this list) and watch this film immediately. You won’t be sorry.

If Beale Street Could Talk (dir. Barry Jenkins)

A pairing like Barry Jenkins and James Baldwin makes so much sense, and has such immense creative potential, that it’s generally something that could exist only in cinephile dreams. It simply makes *too* much sense. Yet, here we are, and Jenkins’ follow-up to the critically-revered Moonlight, an adaptation of one of Baldwin’s lesser-known novels, If Beale Street Could Talk, is very much real. Does it measure up to the immense expectations thrust upon it, due in no small part to Moonlight’s rapturous reception and the much-hyped pairing of Jenkins and Baldwin? In some important ways, no. Is Jenkins’ script at times overly-reverent of its source material? In some important ways, yes. But when Jenkins filters Baldwin’s story of the redeeming power of love in the face of oppression through his own unique cinematic voice, the results are breathtaking. Jenkins remains one of cinema’s greatest emerging artists.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (dir. Christopher McQuarrie)

At the very least, this latest installment in the M:I franchise was the most balls-to-the-wall fun I had in a theater this entire year, hurtling at a breakneck pace from one jaw-dropping set piece to the next with one of the world’s biggest stars carrying the screen from the first frame to the last. But at most, you could call it one of the decade’s best action films, with some of the most breathtaking stunt work ever put to film with an absolutely singular star who continues to push his penchant for cheating death and tempting fate for our entertainment to daring new heights. The truth probably lies somewhere between the two extremes, but either way, the Cruise’s latest ride as Ethan Hunt is undeniably one of the most thrilling yet.

Private Life (dir. Tamara Jenkins)

With 11 years having passed since her Oscar-nominated feature debut, The Savages, hit the silver screen, news that Netflix was financing and developing a new film from Tamara Jenkins was met with nearly unbridled optimism. More than delivering on that promise, Jenkins once again delivered a film that delves deeply into all-too-common but dramatically under-explored modern adult experiences. While The Savages followed two adult siblings dealing with the mental decline of their elderly parent, Private Life details a couple in their 40s going through fertility treatments. Like her debut, Private Life uses this trying, even destabilizing experience to explore the ways in which our long-established adult lives can be uprooted as much by our own choices as by external, unforeseeable events. With two sterling performances from Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti at its center, Private Life is rife with incisive observations about overlooked truths of aging together. It’s beautiful work, and undoubtedly one of Netflix’s best “original” offerings.

The Rider (dir. Chloe Zhao)

Using a cast of untrained actors to spin a poetic tale lost opportunity by way of the American rodeo, director Chloe Zhao’s sophomore feature has keyed her as a rising master of cinematic realism. The film follows the struggles of a former rising rodeo star dealing with the fallout of a traumatic head injury suffered during a bronc riding competition, and mirrors the real-life experiences of its star, Brady Jandeau. who Zhao befriended while shooting her debut feature, Songs My Brothers Taught Me. Drawing out brilliant performances and setting them against the perma-golden picturesque of the Badlands, The Rider is a testament to what truly independent cinema is capable of and is sure to springboard Zhao to greater heights.

Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse (dir. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman)

The most unexpected triumph of the year, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse is not just a high watermark in the Spider-Man film series, it is almost certainly the best film to ever come out of Marvel Studios, and possibly the greatest superhero film since The Dark Knight. With an airtight script that spans several universes (literally) with ease, and featuring some of the most glorious and inventive animation ever to grace the big screen, Into the Spiderverse is a rare and perfect marriage between the words on the page and the visual language employed on screen. It a testament to what’s possible when talented artists with an original vision take big risks - it’s a breath of fresh air.

A Star is Born (dir. Bradley Cooper)

Even with an improbably underwhelming Oscar campaign sputtering its way to the finish line, it’s hard not to peg A Star is Born as the year’s most-talked about film. Bradley Cooper brought his gestating passion project to life with scope and vision rarely seen from a first-time director and Lady Gaga turns in an absolutely electric performance that elevates the film whenever she’s on screen. From the spine-tingling live concert scenes to the beautiful on-screen chemistry between Cooper and Gaga, there’s an awful lot to love about this latest iteration of this long-tenured Hollywood classic. Sure, there’s also plenty to nitpick at - obviously more than enough to fuel a backlash against the once-assumed Oscar frontrunner - but when this film is firing on all cylinders, it’s right up there with the greatest cinema of 2018. Cooper is officially a filmmaker to watch, and A Star Is Born looks every bit like a directorial debut that will stand the test of time.

You Were Never Really Here (dir. Lynne Ramsey)

One of the year’s most boldly-directed films, Lynne Ramsey’s latest is a lean thriller that goes for your throat but takes up permanent residence in your gut. Ramsey and star Joaquin Phoenix (delivering yet another show-stopping performance) bury you deep inside the mind of killer for hire, traumatized by his abusive childhood and haunted by his military past, as he embarks on a job to rescue a young girl from sex traffickers. If this premise seems familiar, believe me, the execution is anything but. Ramsey’s direction is unerringly brilliant, elevating You Were Never Really Here well beyond it’s pulpy origins to bracing, almost hallucinogenic heights. Oh, and did I mention it boasts one of Jonny Greenwood’s most adventurous scores to date? If that’s not enough to get it in your Amazon Prime queue (hint hint), then I don’t know what to tell you ...

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xtattlecrimex-blog · 6 years ago

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Why Do You Keep Doing This?

A lot of people wonder why I keep doing this. I know a good portion of it is just fascination. Hannibal is one of the lesser known TV shows it’s a cult show. I’m aware that there are a lot of shows like this but honestly, this has got to be one of the worst fandoms (if not the worst) I’ve ever come across. The behavior of the majority of these people is unparalleled to any other fandom I’ve personally been in or witnessed. Now, one of the biggest arguments people throw at me all the time is “There are crazy idiots in every fandom” which I’m not even denying but in these fandoms the vast majority of the fans aren’t crazy. The Fannibals are a different story.

See, Hannibal is a cult show. I’ve already discussed how it caters to people with mental illness as well as attracts them. It glamorizing significant behavioral issues that are violent and criminal so it makes these women who are watching the show feel like they are safe. Like they are okay. Like they are special because they are also incredibly mentally unstable. It normalizes and romanticizes abuse. It gives severely abnormal people something to cling to and a community of other severely mentally ill women to be friends with so they can all reside in an echo chamber where all of them are normal and it’s the world that is wrong. It created a community of these people who have the inability to be able to see how incredibly obnoxious (and sometimes terrifying) their behavior actually is. Even more, it’s all perpetuated and encouraged by the creator of the show which also isn’t the norm at all.

If you take another fandom, and my favorite “Go-To” Fandom for this example is Supernatural, you will see the creator doesn’t advocate that behavior. At all. The stars of the show also have historically refused to put up with the crazy girls. Are there really crazy Supernatural fans? Yes. Are they the vast majority of the fandom? Not in the least. That’s what separates the Fannibals from another fandom with crazy fan girls. We are talking majority versus minority. Even in other fandoms for other cult TV shows (or movies) you still won’t find that the majority of the people are insane like the fannibals and even if you could you wouldn’t find the creator getting on Twitter and going to conventions to encourage the crazy behavior. We have a combination of an egotistical, power hungry show creator who ships his own fictional characters as much as his insane fans. This is practically unheard of and when anyone complains and I ask them to name me just one other creator who has ever behaved this way, well they are very hard pressed to do it.

Then, of course, the question that comes up next is “who is this harming?” well at lot of people. It’s actually, in real life, harming a lot of people. This fandom (and groups like this in general) typically do. If it’s not some kind of scam that’s being run to trick people out of their money then it also gives room for sexual predators to move in and prey on easy targets. Young girls who are so blinded by their love of the show that they don’t realize that hanging out with a 45 year old women who wants to read them erotic gay fan fiction is a very weird thing to do. It also has the potential to harm many more people, and of course, the actual cast of the show. Things can get out of control super easily with a situation like this, especially when it’s being encouraged by the creator of the show and to some extent the actors themselves. The actors who I’m pretty sure aren’t super aware of how bad it gets behind the scenes. Even if one can plainly see the “deer in the headlights” look that Hugh Dancy obviously gets when he’s accosted by these people, he probably doesn’t know all the details.

I would highly doubt that Hugh or Mads actually know the extent of how deep this runs for these girls who are tracking them down. That we have women who 100% believe that these men are gay for each other and Bryan Fuller is some type of catalyst that brought them together for a secret love affair. That this isn’t fan fiction to them that this is reality. That these Fannibals are not afraid at all to send death threats, dox people, or attempt to destroy the lives of any person who doesn’t agree with them. That this is a religion for some these people. That some of them are so invested they are writing letters every day to TV networks to try to get them to pick up the show, that they build literal shrines to these actors and characters in their houses to pay tribute to, that they cosplay constantly and have no actual life outside of this fictional world. No, I don’t think Hugh and Mads understand or even know to what lengths these fans are going to in order to keep this up. Not at all. Some idea? Maybe, but not the exact idea. Which is okay given the fact that I really wouldn’t want them to find out. It would be pretty horrifying.

If people want to admit it, or not, this behavior is definitely harmful to people and could turn downright psychotic at any moment it’s hard to tell. If you take the statistics on stalking, for example, that’s such and unknown variable of danger. There’s actually no way of telling when or if it’ll escalate. Some stalkers always remain at the same level, some perpetually escalate until they commit a crime, some just suddenly lose interest and go away for ever never actually harming anyone. There’s no way to predict this, no way to know who’s dangerous, and no way to tell when or if it will climb to the level of actual murder. This is all backed by data. If this is the case, then who’s to tell me that any one of these people doing the stalking (and there’s a bunch) won’t, one day, decide they can’t live without Hugh Dancy and stab him? If you think this is any sort of overreaction you can look up the dozens of cases where this has happened, including to actual actors. No one ever see it coming because it is just that unpredictable but it’s far from unheard of.

The problem is, that because this fandom is so small and there’s only a couple hundred women doing it, it flies under the radar. No one seems to care. Plus, they are women. They get a free pass. Everyone just assumes they are harmless little wallflowers being “normal fan girls” and I need to just leave them alone because they aren’t going to do anything. Psychological and statistical data says otherwise. As much as I can agree there is no telling if or when they may escalate I can certainly show a pattern of escalation from several of these women. How they were when they first started and how they are now. You don’t actually know how dangerous they are, neither do I, and no one is keeping an eye on them because everyone assumes that it’s stupid to do so. That they are just fans of a show and that’s it. I can tell you if this was a group of men going after two women constantly to hound them for pictures or bug them about a cancelled TV show they did years and years ago, people would take notice and everyone would be a lot more concerned, but it’s no the case with them because they are women. Massive double standards.

People commonly forget that for the entire first season I was a part of the fandom. I was one of them. People commonly forget that I’ve seen this behavior, first hand, on several occasions. People think, for some reason, that all I’m doing here is guessing based on speculation when that’s not what I’m doing. I can tell you from very first hand experience, not only running my blog but in real life, a huge portion of these people are terrifying, some are psychotic, and some are sexual predators. To turn a blind eye to it under the assumption that they aren’t harming anyone (or going to) or they haven’t ever harmed anyone is ludicrous. Why? Why do that? If you see a problem why turn away from it? Why not keep an eye on it? Bystander apathy is deadly and I, for one, refuse to be a part of it.

Maybe nothing will come of this, maybe one day they will all suddenly grow up and realize that this is fucking stupid and Hannibal isn’t coming back, Bryan Fuller is a liar, and Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy are just people who need to be left alone. That day is not today and until that day comes I’m going to keep watching them, because someone should be watching them. They are terrifying.

#Hannibal #Fannibal #Fannibals #Fannibal Family #Bryan Fuller #NBCHannibal #Hannigram #Mads Mikkelsen #Hugh Dancy

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esonetwork · 6 years ago

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Star Wars legends: ESO Network chats with author Timothy Zahn

New Post has been published on https://esopodcast.com/star-wars-legends-eso-network-chats-with-author-timothy-zahn/

Star Wars legends: ESO Network chats with author Timothy Zahn

He may not be the “Chosen One,” use Force powers, or wield a lightsaber, but Timothy Zahn is most definitely still a Star Wars legend.

Back in the early ’90s, the author played a key role in the establishment of the Star Wars series of novels called the “Expanded Universe” — now known as “Star Wars Legends” — and created such well-loved characters as ex-Imperial agent Mara Jade and Grand Admiral Thrawn. Zahn recently started writing for the new Star Wars canon with the book “Thrawn” and its sequel, “Thrawn: Alliances.” “Alliances” was released in July 2018 and features two separate timelines: one set in the Clone Wars era with Thrawn/Anakin teaming up on a mission, and one set in the original trilogy era with the Emperor deploying Thrawn/Vader to the unknown regions of the galaxy.

At Dragon Con 2018, ESO Network reporters Mary Ogle and Ashley Pauls had a chance to sit down with Zahn and chat about Star Wars, the art of writing, and just who might make a good Thrawn if the character ever appears in one of the live action films. Read an excerpt from our interview below, and listen to the full interview on Earth Station One Podcast Episode 437: https://esopodcast.com/the-earth-station-one-podcast-437-the-big-lebowski-live-from-dragon-con/

ESO: What has been your experience getting to work for the new canon? You kind of have an interesting perspective — you wrote for the old Expanded Universe and now you’re writing for the new. What’s that transition been like and what have you enjoyed about that?

Zahn: Just as a side note, it’s canon and Legends. They’re trying to train us to [use], not “new canon,” not EU — canon, Legends.

It’s tricky to get used to that.

It is very much, and I’m told [Lucasfilm’s] Story Group occasionally goofs up on that as well. (laughter) They’re trying to get us to talk that way. The big difference with writing in canon is that there’s so much less established at the moment. There were over 200 books in Legends that you had to work around and make sure you weren’t double-booking characters, having them be two places at the same time. Because we’ve just started up the last few years with canon, there aren’t nearly as many diggings in the field, as it were, finding/mining the ore and all that. So it’s easier to find a place and a time where you can put your story. Story Group also is much more efficient than the old days, when we were all trying to keep track of things ourselves, because they have a finger on the pulse of everything that’s being done at Lucasfilm.

I don’t have to worry about continuity or stepping on somebody else’s toes, especially somebody I don’t even know what they’re working on. Story Group will pick up on all of that. So there’s a freedom to, okay, I will put TIE fighters in this era; if there’s something wrong with that, Story Group will pick up on that and will get it changed so I don’t have to worry nearly as much about what I’m doing in continuity.

Aside from that it’s pretty much the same as it’s always been. We’ve got the extra layer of Disney on top, but I never see that.

So do you find that freeing or constraining?

Oh, pretty much freeing, because again I don’t have to worry about things. With my first canon book, “Thrawn,” somebody asked me after it was published if Tarkin was a Grand Moff at the time I’ve got him in that story, and I can unequivocally say yes because Story Group didn’t bat an eye on that. If that was the wrong rank for him at that time, they would have caught it. The fact they didn’t change it means yes, that is correct.

In “Thrawn: Alliances,” Anakin and later Darth Vader team up with Thrawn. Was that an idea that you came up with, or was that something Lucasfilm approached you to say, we’d like this book with these two characters together?

Well, I left the hook in the “Thrawn” novel of Anakin and Thrawn having met, and so when it came time to pitch another book that’s what I suggested, “I’d like to do the Thrawn and Anakin [story].” They wanted a Thrawn/Vader. So we compromised and did both.

Is it usually you approaching them or do they approach you?

Typically, I mean almost always in the past, it has been them approaching me. I think with “Thrawn: Alliances,” it was more or less a general yes, we’re going to do a second book because the first one has done so well. Clearly the audience is out there for Thrawn; what else can we do?

One of the things that was interesting in reading “Thrawn: Alliances” is that Vader/Anakin and Thrawn have such different perspectives and means of responding to situations. What was it like digging into both those two characters and then contrasting the way they approach the world?

One of the fun things about adding new characters to the Star Wars universe is seeing how other established characters interact with them. And you’ve got the contrast with Vader, who’s been sent out on a mission with Thrawn, and Anakin, who has more or less been thrown into the situation with Thrawn, not exactly of his own choosing or of his own volition. In that one, Anakin and Thrawn are largely reacting to other things rather than being proactive; they’re having to react to what the enemy throws at them.

You also have to be careful that Vader is not stupid; Vader is very smart, Anakin is smart, they’re both tactically knowledgeable, you know good pilots, etc. So you have to balance, it’s not just a “Thrawn is the smart one, Vader is the powerful one.” You do have to change off back and forth. And you also have to be aware that Vader, if he is displeased with somebody, may just choke him. To balance that is [the idea] that the Emperor still has use of Thrawn, and Vader’s knowledge that he’s seen this guy in action before and he knows he can deliver. So when Thrawn says, trust me, a lesser person might find themselves kind of floating off the floor; Vader will be a little more patient with Thrawn because “I’ve seen he can deliver, so let’s watch and see what happens.” I did get a couple of concerns from some of the people at Lucasfilm about that. So I added in bits of okay, Vader is not only being constrained by the Emperor’s will but he’s also curious. I can see Vader and Anakin having a certain amount of curiosity: “All right, let’s see how this plays out…I can always choke him later.”

It’s been really cool to see Thrawn come into the “Rebels” TV show; would you ever like to see a live action Thrawn? And if so, if you could cast anybody, who would you like to see in that role?

People ask me that one all the time; the problem is that I see characters in terms of attitude and personality, not necessarily face or voice. I have heard several suggestions that I think I could easily go with. One is Benedict Cumberbatch. Second would be Jason Isaacs from Harry Potter and so many other things. Lars Mikkelsen who does the voice on “Rebels” is an accomplished actor in his own right; he could certainly play the character. And I think I lean a little towards Jeremy Irons. He could pull it off. But again, any actor who could capture the presence, the global awareness of the character, the calm demeanor. The makeup and the contact lenses are easy. It’s the pulling off the attitude.

Would I like to see him in a live action? If they did him right. I do not want to see him messed up by somebody who didn’t understand the character. The “Rebels” team understood him very well, and they knew how to write for him.

Do you have a favorite fan encounter that stands out to you? Or maybe it’s difficult to pick one.

I think what mostly jumps out at me with fan encounters is, I’m always grateful people like the books, of course. I mean, that’s my job to entertain, and to give them their money’s and time’s worth. But there’s an extra bonus when someone says “this book helped me through a really bad time in my life.” Or, you know, “this book taught me reading could be fun. I never read a book for fun until this one. Now, I read all the time.” Or “this book helped me through my deployment in Iraq,” or something like that. I’m writing to entertain, but I’m affecting people’s lives, some people’s lives much deeper than I ever anticipated. And that’s just a bonus.

I had one woman last convention who told me she was autistic and had a problem with not filtering out the truth from what people wanted to hear and got in trouble. And she really understood and felt Thrawn was like her, that he doesn’t understand why people don’t want to hear the truth. And she said, this is the first fictional character she’d read who she can identify with. Not at all anything I would have ever anticipated. But she grabbed onto him as somebody that “I understand him. He’s like me in many ways, and that makes me feel better.” So just things like that. No way to anticipate that — I’m just an old country entertainer, but it’s affecting some people in very good ways.

Is writing something you always wanted to do?

Oh no, I was on track getting a doctorate in physics, and saw bad TV shows [and thought], “I can write better than that.” Wrote a story that wasn’t very good, but I enjoyed it, started as a hobby for a couple of years. My adviser died of a heart attack, left me with a project that was never going to work; it was fundamentally flawed. So decided, after a semester of working with a new professor and a new project, you know, I’m having more fun writing, I’ve sold two stories — let’s give this a shot.

I really appreciated what you said in the Star Wars authors panel at Dragon Con. I liked how you commented on the Legends stories — they may not be canon technically, but they’re still out there. They’re still enjoyable. So it’s still very much a part of the fandom and the overall fabric of the Star Wars universe.

You’re sitting around the campfire, Coruscant’s a long way away, the HoloNet breaks down a lot. You don’t get much news out here. And while you’re working on your s’mores, somebody says “hey, have you guys ever heard the story of Luke Skywalker and Grand Admiral Thrawn?” And by the time you’re in your sleeping bag, you don’t know if that was true or not, but it was fun. You enjoyed it. And that’s what a legend is, and maybe based somewhat in truth, it may not be. There probably was somebody that Robin Hood was based on; probably nothing like what we’ve come up with in stories from the 1600s or maybe earlier, but he’s an intriguing character. And you’ve got all these legends: Robin Hood, King Arthur, William Tell. Every culture has got their own legends and they’re still fun to read.

#canon #Darth Vader #Dragon Con #interview #novel #Star Wars #Thrawn #Timothy Zahn

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scrawnydutchman · 7 years ago

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‘Isle of Dogs’ Movie Review (Spoiler Free)

Isle of Dogs is the second animated stop motion film of Wes Anderson, who is famous for his stylized mainstream arthouse flicks such as The Grand Budapest Hotel, Moonrise Kingdom and this first animated stop motion film, an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel of the same name, Fantastic Mr. Fox. Being such a fan of Fantastic Mr. Fox in particular, Isle of Dogs has been on my most anticipated list of 2018 film releases for some time (basically ever since production was first announced). I was given the honour of attending an advanced screening in Calgary by my good friend Vinson Chan who managed to get me an extra ticket, so big shout out to him and his brother Simon (go check out Banana Planet Films at: https://www.facebook.com/bananaplanetfilms/, they are amazing). I can confidently say I was not too disappointed. The film has a great distinct feel, awesome cinematography done in that signature Wes Anderson style, appealing animation and a killer soundtrack. But does it compare to Fantastic Mr. Fox? And are all the decisions made for the movie necessary? Let’s approach this one point at a time, starting with story.

Story:

Synopsis: In a futuristic setting of Japan, domesticated house dogs are outlawed due to a spreading dog flu virus that allegedly has potential to eventually spread to humans. The remaining dog population is deported to a neighboring Island known as “Trash Island” where they are forced to subsist off of Garbage just to barely survive (why they didn’t just pass a bill for mandatory euthanasia is beyond me as it’d be more cost effective and full proof, but whatever, just go with it). The story follows a group of dogs sticking together in a gang, all named after some sort of authoritative society figure (Boss, King, Duke, Rex and Chief) who decide to help a little Japanese boy named Atari who one day came to Trash Island to look for his lost dog Spots. Will they be able to find this boys long lost dog?

I’m just gonna tell you right now without spoiling anything . . . the trailers are misleading. The trailers give off the impression that the film is going to give each dog of this pack their own unique characters and personalities and they’re all going to have their own kind of special moments . . . but it isn’t that kind of movie at all. If you’ve seen previews floating around the internet, you might have figured out that the only dog that really matters is Chief (played by Bryan Cranston). He’s the odd one out; the tough stray of the pack who never takes orders from anyone. He’s the only dog with a driving conflict and a character arc. Every other dog is just sort of there for the ride. They give their backstory in a single sentence and than they just sort of help, but they are otherwise inconsequential and that becomes VERY apparent in the second half especially. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as the plot itself is still engaging and original and the bits between Chief and Atari are genuinely heartfelt. It just disappointed me because the movie seemed to be banking off of character interaction between the dogs in the trailer and then the focus was never really that after all. Not to mention the immense acting talent Wes got for the film (we’ll get to that in a bit). That said, the story really is engaging like I said before. The world that Wes managed to create from this concept feels real and immersive, which is further sold by the movies astounding art direction and soundtrack. While Fantastic Mr. Fox was like an urban folktale that explored themes of innate animalistic nature and accepting who you really are, Isle of Dogs is more like a simple road trip movie where the theming never really goes much deeper than “dogs are great” (hence the title of the film is a pun on the phrase “I love dogs”), so it isn’t as complex or as thought provoking as Fantastic Mr. Fox but to be fair it doesn’t need to be. It’s just a fun little sentimental ride between a boy and his dog that ends up devolving into a greater happy ending.

Characters:

So like I said before, this film’s marketing plays up like the five dogs all get their own special characters and moments, but that’s not what happens at all. Duke, Boss, King and Rex . . . they’re all basically the same character. They all spout dialogue about their past as a former housepet (albeit their origins are all slightly different but it’s the same basic outcome nonetheless; they are housepets and Chief is not). They all sneeze sometimes in random places. They all spout exposition about the lore and worldbuilding of the setting this film takes place in in the form of “rumors”. Like “Hey, I heard this one rumor that this place has this thing happen in it.” Kind of a reoccurring plot device that frankly felt like a writing crutch if I’m honest. But the focus of the movie isn’t on them anyway. The focus is clearly on Chief and his relationship with Atari . . for half the movie anyway. While this definitely could have used more screentime in my honest opinion, it’s definitely the strongest part. I LOVED watching the loner stray Chief slowly but surely own up to the idea to accepting affection from a human master. I LOVED watching the boy grow a genuine attachment to a new best friend after he lost his former one so long ago. It was genuinely heartwarming to see these two’s bond grow. The other half of the film is dedicated to the, I guess you could call, “political thriller” in the city where the human characters get some of the spotlight. Most of the human characters speak Japanese with no subtitles; just the occasional verbal translation by a nearby English translator. I actually prefer it this way. It gives a real sense of authenticity and immersion to the world Wes is creating, which is a worthy accomplishment in an American produced film adapting a foreign culture. Besides that there is also the English speaking foreign exchange student Tracy Walker (played by Greta Gerwig). She’s a feisty, no nonsense conspiracy buff who is determined to do what’s right against the anti-dog prejudice. She’s pretty damn funny and captivating, particularly in one scene near the climax. I love how in your face she gets whenever she’s on screen and she’s never afraid to stand up for herself. There’s also the female showdog Nutmeg, played by Scarlett Johansson, who I guess acts as a love interest to Chief. I say “I guess” because she’s in like . . . two scenes . . . in the whole movie. Yeeeah, this movie maybe could have benefited from keeping the story less complicated than it ended up being. The best stuff was always whenever it focused on Chief and Atari, and while nothing else is bad or even boring they DO end up taking away from it. I think this could have been a much nicer experience in a way if it acted like the first half of Wall-E, where there’s nothing to see outside of character interaction between Chief and Atari as they journey through a trash wasteland looking for his dog. This actually holds the record for longest running feature length stop motion film ever, beating Coraline by just two minutes, and . . . honestly, nothing in what it portrays warrants that milestone. It really would have benefit from trimming the fat.

Acting:

So one of the most noticeable aspects of Wes Anderson films is how he’s always able to reel in an all star cast of some of the most beloved acting talent in Hollywood. This film is no different. Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban and Scarlett Johansson are all in the movie. These are all HUGE names. Not to mention the extensive Japanese talent they got for this film like Koyu Rankin and Akira Takayama. Wes always goes all out with his star power and, truthfully EVERYONE in this film does a spectacular job doing what they do. Bryan Cranston in particular gives an intimidating yet heartwarming performance as Chief; I actually wouldn’t mind if he was given an award for best actor for this film. But I have to ask . . . why have ALL this star power and have most of the people here do next to nothing??? Don’t get me wrong, it’s super charming to hear Norton, Goldblum, Murray and Balaban give deadpan comedic delivery in this movie, one would argue these men are the KINGS of deadpan . . . but beyond that they pretty much serve as exposition dump. Again, Scarlett gets like two scenes in this movie. By far the most random addition to the cast is Yoko Ono. She plays a scientist assistant and has one scene . . ONE SCENE . . . of barely any dialogue where Greta Gerwig is the center of attention. Like . . . why?? Why was it so important to have Yoko Ono of all people in your movie? What would have been different if it was just some random Japanese actress trying to get a breakthrough role in the industry? The marketing, again, treats Yoko like she’s a major centerpiece for the cast and . . . . no. She does nothing of significance. She’s shear star power for the hell of it and that’s all. That’s truthfully what most of this cast comes down to unfortunately, though to a lesser extent than Yoko. To compare, Fantastic Mr. Fox ALSO had a great all star cast including George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray again, Jason Schwartzman and Willem Dafoe. But they did SO much more with their cast in much less time than Isle of Dogs. More characters get great lines, they have distinct personalities from each other and Foxy isn’t the only one who has a character arc and changes for the better by the end of it. Fantastic Mr. Fox in general just did so much more with it’s resources and a more complicated plot with less time to do it in. Again, I ENJOYED a lot of what was in Isle of Dogs, but so much of it just felt unnecessary in the long run.

Visuals (Cinematography, Animation, Composition, etc.)

I don’t know what it is about Wes, but he’s always had a great knack for animation direction from the get go. The nature of stop motion just beautifully coincides his storybook style frame composition and tendency to hold still shots. Not to mention the fact that animating multiple characters in real time, even minor details, while doing shots involving panning around a set has to be extremely difficult. You can definitely tell this is the same guy that worked on Fantastic Mr. Fox, but the film also bears a healthy amount of it’s own visual identity as well. Particularly in the art direction. The sets for both the trash island and the Japanese city are GORGEOUS. I love the way the film uses limited colour palettes for every scene. It makes contrast and depth all the more apparent. Plus the nature of the sets like ongoing trains or shifting skylines naturally fits with Wes’ style of directing. The film also has an assortment of clever visual gags. every fight scene happens in the form of a cartoony cloud with peoples legs sticking out a-la Hanna Barbera style and the smoke effects in the film are seemingly done with cotton (could be wrong though). The editing is used to sell a lot of gags too, my favorite in the whole movie being in the very first introduction of the dogs (you’ll know what I mean when you see it). The film also has a tendency to be really up close on facial expressions; much more so than Fantastic Mr. Fox. the stop motion molds on the faces are quite expressive given they don’t cycle through as many assets as anything Laika produces. But that ALSO shows in the limited nature of how they express; particularly in how every characters eyes just gets drenched in water.

The visuals of the film are damn near close to perfect . . . with only one minor discrepancy, and unfortunately it’s another area in which Fantastic Mr. Fox does better. As mentioned before, Wes likes to do a lot of shots in which the camera pans left to right on a set. This technique makes an appearance in Isle of Dogs, and while sometimes it’s executed to typically excellent effect . . . other times not so much. There are some moments in this film where it actually hurts my eyes to try and keep up with all the action that was happening as the camera was moving. I attribute this to there being no center focus as it happens (again, in the times where it’s a problem). In the times it’s done right, there’s a single asset in the shot moving along in the same direction and pace as the camera, making it the center of attention the viewer focuses on that makes the effect work. A great example of this is from the opening of Fantastic Mr. Fox where Mr. and Mrs. Fox are running through a farm trying to not get caught to the sound of “Heroes and Villains” by the Beach Boys. What they’re doing is always the focus. Isle of Dogs tries to do this thing where it cycles through with multiple things going on at once and it simply isn’t as effective. Now it’s very possible I may just have to view the film again to clarify as this review IS based on my first impressions, and it isn’t prominent enough to hold against the overall score anyhow, so I won’t count it for the time being. It was just something I personally noticed. Beyond that, the movie is visually astounding.

Sound (Soundtrack, Sound Design, etc.)

This is usually the category in which I don’t have a whole lot to say, because even the worst hollywood or major studio produced movies usually have serviceable sound design. Wes Anderson always makes it easier to comment on though. For one thing, this films soundtrack was done by Academy Award winning composer Alexandre Desplat . . . who I ABSOLUTELY LOVE. He’s always the kind of composer who creates music that makes me think “I have GOT to get that on Spotify”. Fantastic Mr. Fox, Shape of Water and Isle of Dogs all have spectacular soundtracks because of him. Also, the Japanese drumming compositions done by Kaoru Watanabe are great as well. Wes also usually has great use of sound effects that not only stand out as unique given his method of storytelling, but actually contributes to the narrative in some way, Such as Atari and Chief whistling to find each other. His use of sound always stands out as really giving a much needed “uumph” to the comedic deliverance of his outlandish humor.

Conclusion:

Isle of Dogs is wildly entertaining, creative and cleverly made in a fashion you would expect from the mind of Wes Anderson. It’s just a shame it often gets too complicated for it’s own good. This film would have been better with a shorter running time, more focus on the relationship between Chief and Atari done in relative silence and less focus given to ultimately ineffectual celebrity cameos (ESPECIALLY Yoko Ono). It’s definitely not better than Fantastic Mr. Fox as that generally does more with less, but it’s still a very exceptional animated film that I would love to see again. Matter of fact, given how many minor details are sprinkled throughout in both visuals and dialogue, this definitely seems like the kind of film that gets better with every viewing. For the time being though, this is my rating.

Story: 1.5/2 - Above average

Characters: 1.5/2 - Above Average

Acting: 2/2 - Exceptional

Visuals: 2/2 - Exceptional

Sound Design: 2/2 - Exceptional

9 out of 10 - Great, but would have been better if made simpler.

{BONUS NOTE: This movie has been a subject to controversy regarding appropriation of Japanese culture, not dissimilar to the controversy that was surrounding Kubo and the Two String in 2016. My opinion on the matter hasn’t changed. Cultural Appropriation is a real occurrence, yes, but it isn’t inherently bad. In fact, so much of cultures around the world have appropriated something from somewhere else and is better off as a result of it. Hair buns are a product of Japanese culture, pajama bottoms are a product of Arab culture, lots of different rings are a product of Irish culture, etc etc. Cultural appropriation CAN be harmful when it comes to serving a means aside from actually providing any appreciation of the culture you are taking from (and actually defaming it in some way) such as aboriginal Halloween costumes, but that just goes to show there is a right and wrong way to do it. Isle of Dogs may be an American-German co produced film, but it very clearly is done with respect to Japanese history and artwork. It’s the whole films appeal in fact. The soundtrack is made to be authentically Japanese, even going as far as bringing in a Japanese co-composer. A great deal of the cast is Japanese and the plot of the film itself is closely tied to Shinto folklore. Point is, Wes didn’t just pull haphazardly from a culture with no regard for what any of it meant. He actually did his homework. The same thing can be said for Kubo and the Two Strings. The film was made with close ties to actual Japanese mythology and little bits of Japanese cultural items can be found in every setting of the film. So much of our greatest art is built on this principle.The Breadwinner is an interpretation of Afghan culture done by an Irish studio and is one of my favorite films ever. Japan usually nails it with it’s adaptation of Western culture in such animes asCowboy Bebop. I could keep going with examples, but my point is that the issue of cultural appropriation is a lot more intricate than just “this culture should only do this thing”. It’s a matter of how well educated you are and how respectful you are of people all over the world, and I for one believe that allowing media to explore themes and tropes foreign to us encourages us to understand them more, not less.}

#isle of dogs #film #movies #film review #movie review #wes anderson #fantastic mr fox #2018 #april 2018 #stop motion

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weekendwarriorblog · 4 years ago

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The Weekend Warrior Home and Drive-In Edition July 24, 2020: THE RENTAL, MOST WANTED, YES GOD YES, AMULET, RETALIATION and more

Are we all having fun yet? Does the fun ever truly begin when you’re in the middle of a pandemic, and no one can seem to figure out how to get out of it? While I love New York’s Governor Cuomo and the amazing job he did getting us through the worst of it, he just doesn’t seem to know how to get movie theaters reopened, nor does he seem to care. I mean, they’ve had four months now to figure this out and New York City is already in Phase 4 (which was supposed to be the last phase of the reopening). It’s a real shame, because this has been a ridiculously hot summer and with none of the “cooling centers” from past summers being possible, it is brutal out there. Fortunately, there are a few decent movies this week to watch at home and some in the drive-ins that are popping up all over the country.

I gotta say that I’m particularly bummed that my favorite local theater, the Metrograph, won’t be opening any time soon, but starting Friday, they’ll be starting “Metrograph Live Screenings,” which will consist of the type of amazing programming the theater has gained a reputation for since opening four years ago. They are offering new “digital memberships” at $5 a month or $50 annually (about half the price of a normal membership) so that you can watch any of the movies being offered at home. The program begins on Friday with Claire Denis’ 2004 film, L’Intrus, which Metrograph Pictures picked up for release. That’s followed on Monday with St. Claire Bourne’s doc, Paul Robeson: Here I Stand. You can see the full list of screening times and dates (many with filmmaker introductions) on the Official Site, and this will be a good time for those who can’t get downtown to the coolest area in New York City to check out the Metrograph programming until they reopen. (Apparently, they’re working on a drive-in to open sometime in August. Wish I had a car.)

If nothing else, it’s safe to say that IFC is killing it this summer. The indie distributor stepped right up to the pandemic and said, “Hey, we’ll play in those drive-in theaters that have mostly been ignored and didn’t play our films for decades!” It has led to at least two big hits in the past few months.

This week, IFC releases the horror/thriller THE RENTAL (IFC Films), the directorial debut by Dave Franco. In it, brothers Charlie (Dan Stevens) and Josh (Jeremy Allen White) decide to take a weekend away with their significant others, Charlie’s wife Michelle (Allison Brie) and Josh’s girlfriend Mina (Sheila Vand), who also happens to be Charlie’s creative work partner. They have found a remote house to rent, but they’re immediately suspicious of the caretaker (Toby Huss), who they think may be spying on them. He’s also racist towards Mina’s Arab lineage.

The premise seems fairly simple and actually quite high concept, and there have been quite a few thrillers that played with the premise of a creepy landlord/caretaker, including last year’s The Intruder, directed by Deon Taylor, and a lesser known thriller called The Resident, starring Hillary Swank and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Part of what makes The Rental different is that Franco co-wrote it with Joe Swanberg, so you know it’s going to be more of a character-based thriller than some kind of gorefest. Sure enough, this deals with the competitive nature between the brothers and the jealousy that arises when you have such a close working relationship with your brother’s girlfriend. It’s what happens between these two couples over the course of this vacation that makes you even more interested in their behavior after things start happening to them, but there’s a pretty major twist that happens just when you think you know where things may be going.

That’s all I really should say about the plot to avoid spoilers. Although the third act veers into the darker horror tropes we may have seen before, that’s also when it starts to get quite insane. Franco clearly shows he has the eye for the type of suspense and timing necessary for an effective thriller, and his cast, including wife Alison Brie, really deliver on all aspects of his script to deliver shocking moments that will keep you invested.

In some ways, The Rental might be the most obviously accessible movie of the weekend, and since it will be playing in drive-ins (and maybe a few still-open theaters?), it probably is worth seeing that way i.e. with others, although it will also be available via digital download, of course.

Another “Featured Flick” this week -- and I’m guessing this is one you won’t be reading about anywhere else -- is Daniel Roby’s MOST WANTED (Saban FIlms), a real-life crime-thriller starring Josh Hartnett as Globe and Mail journalist, Victor Malarek, who discovered that a French-Canadian junkie named Daniel Léger (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) had been sentenced to 100 years in a Thailand prison for drug trafficking in 1989. As Daniel attempts to survive the violent conditions of the Thai jail, Victor tries to uncover the crooked practices by the Canadian federal police to get Daniel imprisoned for their own means.

This is one of two Saban Films releases that really surprised me, maybe because I’ve gotten so used to them releasing so much action and genre schlock meant mainly for VOD, usually starring fairly big-name action stars from the past, usually not doing their best work. Most Wanted is a far more serious crime-drama that tells an absolutely amazing story from North America’s famed war on drugs from the ‘80s. First, we meet Antoine-Olivier Pilon’s Daniel, a lowlife junkie who is trying to find a place to live and a job, something he finds when he gets into business with Jim Gaffigan’s Glenn Picker, a complete low-life in every sense of the word. It’s funny, because when Gaffigan’s character is introduced, you’re immediately reminded of the famous “Sister Christian” in PT Anderson’s Boogie Nights, and as we watch Picker completely humiliate and then betray Daniel, you realize that we might be seeing one of Gaffigan’s best performances to date.

What keeps Most Wanted interesting is that it tells the story on a number of concurrent storylines, ignoring the fact that one of the threads might be taking place years before the other. Through this method, we see how Daniel begins working with Glenn, while also seeing Victor’s investigation, as well as the sting operation being perpetrated by the Canadian feds, as represented by the always great Stephen McHattie. (McHattie’s appearance is also a telltale sign that this is indeed a Canadian production, as is the role played by author and filmmaker Don McKellar.) I’ve always feltHarnett was a really underrated actor especially as he got into his 30s and started doing more mature roles, and while his reporter character may not always be the central focus of the story, his attempt to get his editor to respect his work is something far too familiar to far too many writers. One also can’t sleep on the fantastic performance by Antoine-Olivier Pilon, who really holds the film together by starting out as a scumbag almost as bad as Picker but through his troubles to survive in Thai jail, we start to become really invested in his story. (The only character who doesn’t get nearly as fulfilling a story arc is Amanda Crew as Victor’s wife Anna who gives birth just as he gets involved in this major story.)

I wasn’t at all familiar with Daniel Roby’s previous work but the way he broke this story down in a way that keeps it interesting, regardless of which story you’re following, makes Most Wanted as good or better than similar films by far more experienced and respected filmmakers. (For some reason, it made me think of both The Departed and Black Mass, both movies about Whitey Bulger, although Daniel’s story is obviously very different.)

Okay, let’s get into a trio of religious-tinged offerings…

Natalia Dyer from Stranger Things stars in YES, GOD, YES (Vertical Entertainment), the semi-autobiographical directorial debut by Obvious Child co-writer Karen Maine (expanded from an earlier short), which will open via virtual cinemas this Friday as well as at a few drive-ins, and then it will be available via VOD and digital download on Tuesday, July 28. The coming-of-age comedy debuted at last year’s SXSW Film Festival and won a Special Jury Prize for its ensemble cast. Dyer plays sixteen-year-old Alice, a good Midwestern Catholic teenager, who has a sexual awakening after a racy AOL chat. Wracked by guilt, Alice attends a religious retreat camp where the cute football player (Wolfgang Novogratz) catches her eye, but she constantly feels pressure to quell her masturbatory urges.

I’m not sure I really knew what to expect from Ms. Maine’s feature film debut as a director. I certainly didn’t expect to enjoy this movie as much as I did, nor did I think I would relate to Dyer’s character as much as I did -- I’ve never been a teen girl, nor have I ever been Catholic, and by the early ‘00s, I was probably closer to the age that Maine is now versus being a teenager discovering her sexuality. In fact, I probably was expecting something closer to the Mandy Moore comedy Saved!, which was definitely more about religion than one character’s sexual journey.

Either way, I went into Yes, God, Yes already realizing what a huge fan I am of coming-of-age stories, and while there were certainly that seemed familiar to other films, such as Alice’s inadvertent AIM with an online pervert early in the film. Even so, Maine did enough with the character of Alice to keep it feeling original with the humor being subdued while definitely more on the R-rated side of things. On top of that, Dyer was quite brilliant in the role, just a real break-through in a similar way as Kaitlyn Dever in Book Smart last year. (Granted, I’m so behind on Stranger Things, I don’t think I’ve even gotten to Dyer’s season.) The only other familiar face is Timothy Simons from Veep as the super-judgmental (and kinda pervy) priest who Alice has to turn to when confessing her sins. (A big part of the story involves a rumor started about Alice and a sex act she committed on a fellow student that keeps coming up.)

Yes, God, Yes proves to be quite a striking dramedy that I hope more people will check out. I worry that because this may have been covered out of last year’s SXSW, it might not get the new and updated attention it deserves. Certainly, I was pleasantly surprised with what Maine and Dyer did with a genre that still has a lot to tell us about growing up and discovering oneself. (You can find out where you can rent the movie digitally over on the Official Site.)

Another horror movie that premiered at this year’s Sundance is AMULET (Magnet), the directorial debut by British actor Romola Garai, who also wrote the screenplay. It stars Romanian actor Alec Secareanu as Tomaz, a former soldier who is offered a place to stay in a dilapidated house in London with a young woman named Magda (Carla Juri from Blade Runner 2049) and her ill and dying mother. As Tomaz starts to fall for Magda, he discovers there are sinister forces afoot in the house with Magda’s mother upstairs being at their core.

I was kind of interested in this one, not just because it being Garai’s first feature as a filmmaker but also just because Sundance has such a strong pedigree for midnight movies, probably culminating in the premiere of Ari Aster’s Hereditary there a few years back. It feels like ever since then, there are many movies trying to follow in that movie’s footsteps, and while this was a very different movie from the recent Relic, it had its own set of issues.

The main issue with Amulet is that it deliberately sets itself up with a confusing narrative where we see Tomaz in the present day and in the past concurrently, so it’s very likely you won’t know what you’re watching for a good 20 minutes or so. Once Tomaz gets to the house, escorted there by a nun played by Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake), the movie settles down into a grueling pace as the main two characters get to know each other and Tomaz explores the incongruities of the decaying house.

Honestly, I’m already pretty burnt out on the religious horror movies between The Lodge and the still-unreleased Saint Maud, and the first inclination we get of any of the true horror to come is when Tomaz discovers some sort of mutated bat-like creature in the toilet, and things get even more disturbing from there. Although I won’t go into too many details about what happens, the movie suffers from some of the same issues as Relic where it’s often too dark to tell exactly what is happening. As it goes along, things just get weirder and weirder right up until a “what the fuck” moment that could have come from the mind of David Lynch.

I don’t want to completely disregard Garai’s fine work as a filmmaker since she’s made a mostly compelling and original horror movie – I have a feeling some might love this -- but the grueling pace and confusing narrative turns don’t really do justice to what might have been a chilling offering otherwise.

Going by the title and the fact it’s being released by Saban Films, I presumed that Ludwig and Paul Shammasian’s RETALIATION (Saban Films/Lionsgate) was gonna be a violent and gritty crime revenge thriller, but nothing could be further from the truth. Adapted by Geoff Thompson from his 2008 short film “Romans 12:20,” it stars Orlando Bloom as Malcolm, a troubled ex-con doing demolition work while fighting against his demons when he spots someone in the pub from his past that caused a severe childhood trauma.

This is another movie that I really didn’t know what to expect, even as it began and we followed Bloom’s character over the course of a day, clearly a very troubled man who has been dealing with many personal demons. Make no mistake that this is a tough movie, and it’s not necessarily a violent genre movie, as much as it deals with some heavy HEAVY emotions in a very raw way.

Honestly, I could see Geoff Thompson’s screenplay easily being performed on stage, but the way the Shammasian Brothers have allowed Malcolm’s story to slowly build as we learn more and more about his past makes the film so compelling, but they also let their actors really shine with some of the stunning monologues with which they’re blessed. While this is clearly a fantastic and possibly career-best performance by Bloom, there are also good performances by Janet Montgomery, as the woman who loves Malcolm but just can’t handle his mood changes. Also good is Charlie Creed-Miles, as the young priest who tries to help Malcolm.

I can easily see this film not being for everybody, because some of the things the film deals with, including pedophile priests and the effects their actions have on the poor, young souls who put their faith in them, they’re just not things people necessarily may want to deal with. Make no mistake that Retaliation is an intense character drama that has a few pacing issues but ultimately hits the viewer right in the gut.

A movie I had been looking forward to quite some time is the Marie Currie biopic, RADIOACTIVE (Amazon Prime), directed by Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) and starring the wondrous Rosamund Pike as the famed scientist who helped discover radiation. Based on Lauren Redniss’ book, this is the type of Working Title biopic that would normally premiere in the Fall at the Toronto Film Festival, and sure enough, this one did. The fact it wasn’t released last year makes one think maybe this didn’t fare as well as potential awards fodder as the filmmakers hoped. It’s also the type of movie that works too hard to cater to the feminist resurgence from recent years, which ultimately ends up being its undoing.

The problem with telling Marie Currie’s story is that there’s so much to tell and Redniss’ book as adapted by Jack Thorne just tries to fit too much into every moment as years pass in mere minutes. There’s so much of Marie’s life that just isn’t very interesting, but trying to include all of it just takes away from the scenes that do anything significant. Maybe it’s no surprise that Thorne also wrote The Aeronauts, Amazon’s 2019 ballooning biopic that failed to soar despite having Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones as its leads.

I’m a similarly huge Rosamund Pike fan, so I was looking forward to her shining in this role, but she does very little to make Marie Currie someone you might want to follow, as she’s so headstrong and stubborn. This is the most apparent when she meets Pierre Currie, as played by Sam Riley, and maybe you don’t blame her for being cynical, having had much of her work either discredited or stolen by men in the past. Shockingly, Pike’s performance seems all over the place, sometimes quite moving but other times being overly emotive. Almost 90 minutes into the movie, Anya Taylor-Joy turns up as Curie’s grown daughter, and it’s one of the film’s biggest infraction, wasting such great talent in such a nothing role.

While Radioactive could have been a decent vehicle for Ms. Satrapi to flex her muscles as a filmmaker, the movie spends so much time having Currie fighting against the male-dominated science field that it loses sight of why she was such an important figure in the first place. Radioactive just comes across as a generally bland and unimaginative by-the-books biopic.

Also on Digital and On Demand this Friday is Chris Foggin’s FISHERMAN’S FRIENDS (Samuel Goldwyn Films), another quaint British comedy based on a true story, much like the recent Military Wives. Rather than being about a group of singing women, this one is about a group of singing men! What a twist!

Daniel Mays plays Danny, a music biz exec from London who travels to the seaside town of Port Isaac, Cornwall with some of his record company coworkers. Once there, they discover a local group of singing local fisherman, known as “Fisherman’s Friends,” who Danny wants to sign to a label. He also wants to get closer to Tuppence Middleton’s single mother Alwyn, who, no surprise, is also the only pleasant-looking younger woman in the town.

Fisherman’s Friends isn’t bad, but if you’ve seen a lot of British movies from the last few decades, then you’ve already seen this movie, particularly the “fish out of water” humor of a guy from the big city trying to relate to the down-to-earth ways of folk in a fishing village. It’s the type of really forced humor that is perfectly pleasant but not particularly groundbreaking in this day and age with so many filmmakers trying to do cutting-edge work.

Instead, this goes for a very typical and cutesie formula where everything works out with very little real conflict even when it throws in a needless subplot about the local pub falling on hard times and selling to a rich man who has little regard for the ways o the town. On top of that, and even if this wasn’t based on a true story, it’s very hard to believe anyone in the music industry or who buys records would be that interested in this group to make them worth signing a million-pound record deal. (Apparently, this really happened!)

I think it’s adorable that filmmakers are trying to turn character actor Daniel Mays (who you’ve seen in everything!) into a romantic lead, especially when you have James Purefoy right there! Instead, 56-year-old Purefoy is instead cast as Middleton’s father, while she’s put into a situation where she’s the love interest for a man that’s 23 years her elder. This kind of thing rarely bothers me as it does many younger female critics, but their romance is just ridiculous and unnecessary if not for the formula. As much as I enjoyed seeing Dave Johns from I, Daniel Blake as one of the singing fishermen, there really isn’t much for him to do in this.

If you like sea shanties and you are a woman over 60 (or have a mother that age) then Fisherman’s Friends is a cute butnever particularly hilarious British comedy that tries to be The Full Monty. But it never really tries to be anything more or less than the formula created by that movie 23 years ago, so it’s quickly forgotten after its saccharine finale.

Unfortunately, I just wasn’t able to get THE ROOM (Shudder/RLJE Films), the live action directing debut from Christin Volckman (Renaissance), but it’s now available on VOD, Digital HD, DVD AND Blu-Ray! It stars Olga Kurylenko and Kevin Janssens as a couple who leave the city to move into a an old house where they discover a secret hidden room that has the power to materialize anything they want, but this is a horror film, so what might seem like a fairy tale is likely to get dark. (I actually think I saw the trailer for this on Shudder, so I’ll probably check it out, and if it’s worth doing so, I’ll mention it in next week’s column.)

Yet another horror movie hitting On Demand this Friday is Pamela Moriarty’s A DEADLY LEGEND (Gravitas Ventures) that stars Corbin Bensen as a real estate developer who buys an old summer camp to build new homes unaware of the dark history of supernatural worship and human sacrifice. I’m gonna take the fifth on this one, which also stars Judd Hirsch and Lori Petty.

Available via Virtual Cinema through New York’s Film Forum and L.A.’s Laemmle is Gero von Boehm’s documentary, Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful (Kino Lorber), about the photographer who had a nearly five-decade career before dying in a car crash in 2006.

From Colombia to various Virtual Cinemas is Catalina Arroyave’s debut, Days of the Whale (Outsider Pictures) set in the city of Medellin, where it follows two young graffiti artists, Cristina and Simon, who tag places around where they live but coming from very different backgrounds, but they eventually bond while part of a revolutionary art collective.

Danny Pudi from Community and Emily C. Chang from The Vampire Diaries star in Sam Friedlander’s comedy Babysplitters (Gravitas Ventures) as one of two couples who have mixed emotions about having kids, so they decided to share one baby between them. Okay, then.

Netflix will also debut the rom-com sequel, The Kissing Booth 2, once again starring Joey King as Ellie, who is trying to juggle her long-distance romance with Jacob Erlodi’s Noah and her close friendship with Joel Courtney’s Lee. I haven’t seen the first movie. Probably won’t watch this one.

Next week, more movies in a variety of theatrical and non-theatrical release!

If you’ve 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 tweet me on Twitter. I love hearing from my “readers,” whomever they may be.’

#Movies #Reviews #TheRental #Retaliation #Radioactive #YEsGodYes #VOD #Streaming #MostWanted #Amulet #TheWeekendWarrior

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john-marshall · 7 years ago

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If people haven’t seen this, Patinkin rejected Oak’s role because he agreed with the concerns of fans, and Oak’s choosing not to return later [NY Times]

Mandy Patinkin, left, who declined to replace Okieriete Onaodowan, right, as the male lead in “The Great Comet.”

The Broadway legend Mandy Patinkin said Friday he was canceling a plan to join the cast of “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812” after an uproar on social media over the fact that the show brought in Mr. Patinkin, who is white, to replace an African-American actor, Okieriete “Oak” Onaodowan.

“My understanding of the show’s request that I step into the show is not as it has been portrayed and I would never accept a role knowing it would harm another actor,” Mr. Patinkin said. “I hear what members of the community have said and I agree with them. I am a huge fan of Oak and I will, therefore, not be appearing in the show.”

The statement, which Mr. Patinkin emailed to The New York Times on Friday afternoon, came after a tumultuous two days for the show, which had been trying to stabilize its finances after the departure of Josh Groban from the leading role of Pierre. It was not immediately clear what would happen now — Mr. Onaodowan had said Friday morning he would leave the cast Aug. 13. The show’s producers and creative team were clearly blindsided by the turn of events. They had previously asked another performer, Brittain Ashford, to take a leave during the summer so she could be replaced by a well-known singer-songwriter, Ingrid Michaelson, and did not anticipate that replacing Mr. Onaodowan with Mr. Patinkin would be seen differently.

“So sorry to have missed the racial optics of it,” the show’s creator, Dave Malloy said on Twitter Friday. “We had to do same thing with dear beloved Brittain so in my head it was no different.”

Mr. Malloy also said that the show made the cast changes out of financial necessity.

“The show was in desperate shape; sales after Ingrid leaving Aug. 13 were catastrophically low,” he said on Twitter. “Show would have closed.” Producers of the show had no immediate comment on Mr. Patinkin’s withdrawal. But earlier in the day, the show’s producers had issued an apologetic statement. “As part of our sincere efforts to keep ‘Comet’ running for the benefit of its cast, creative team, crew, investors and everyone else involved, we arranged for Mandy Patinkin to play Pierre. However, we had the wrong impression of how Oak felt about the casting announcement and how it would be received by members of the theater community, which we appreciate is deeply invested in the success of actors of color – as are we – and to whom we are grateful for bringing this to our attention. We regret our mistake deeply, and wish to express our apologies to everyone who felt hurt and betrayed by these actions.”

The show’s producers announced in February that Mr. Onaodowan, a member of the original “Hamilton” cast, would step into the show’s leading male role after Mr. Groban left the show in early July.

But this week, the producers abruptly cut short Mr. Onaodowan’s expected nine-week tenure, saying that during his final three weeks, he would be replaced by Mr. Patinkin, who became famous with “The Princess Bride,” won a Tony Award for “Evita” and is now featured in television’s “Homeland.”

Although producers periodically replace lesser-known performers with big-name actors in the hopes of selling more tickets, the move at “The Great Comet” prompted outrage among some black actors. They turned to social media to express their concern that Mr. Onaodowan was not given sufficient opportunity to succeed before being replaced by a white actor.

There were multiple complicating factors. Mr. Onaodowan’s tenure was always going to be short — it just got shorter. Mr. Patinkin is unquestionably better known on Broadway, which could have boosted publicity for the show and ticket sales during a traditionally slow end-of-summer period. (On Thursday, for example, he was interviewed on NBC's “Today” show.) And the production is among the most diverse on Broadway, with an African-American actress, Denée Benton, playing Natasha, and multiple other nonwhite actors in the company. (This month, Actors’ Equity gave the show an award for “extraordinary excellence in diversity on Broadway.”)

But some performers argued that the casting change reflects a larger problem in the entertainment business. The move “raises questions about how Black actors are valued and supported within Broadway,” declared the website BroadwayBlack.

Rafael Casal, a writer and performer who called attention to the producers’ move on Twitter, called it “infuriating.”

“It’s like the integration of baseball, where a player has to be twice as good,” Mr. Casal said in a phone interview.

Mr. Onaodowan, who spent months preparing for the role, including learning to play the accordion, posted a response on Instagram on Friday morning — before Mr. Patinkin dropped out — saying, “In spite of everything, I am grateful to have had the time to bring this character to life with a remarkable cast that truly make the Imperial Theater a sacred place every night.”

Although the show’s lead producer, Howard Kagan, had said Mr. Onaodowan would be welcome to play the role again at a later date, the actor said he did not intend to do that.

“I will not be returning,” he said.

To no one’s surprise, the show’s grosses have dropped since Mr. Groban’s departure. The show had been bringing in about $1.2 million a week with Mr. Groban in the role of Pierre; it brought in $923,571 last week, with Mr. Onaodowan as Pierre. That’s still higher than the amount for most Broadway shows, and still more than the production’s running costs, but not as much as the musical was likely to bring in with Mr. Patinkin in the role. Mr. Patinkin was scheduled to play Pierre from Aug. 15 through Sept. 3.

The producers had not said who was to play Pierre after Labor Day, but they appeared to be considering the occasional use of well-known performers in key roles to excite interest — a strategy many other shows use.

The most prominent performer to express concern was the actress Cynthia Erivo, who won a Tony Award last year for her performance in a revival of “The Color Purple.” Ms. Erivo posted a series of seven messages on Twitter on Wednesday, suggesting that the changeover was unfair to both Mr. Onaodowan and Mr. Patinkin.

“I honestly am flabbergasted,” she posted. She added, “The disrespect of both actors is highly concerning.”

#p.txt #great comet

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