#i remember watching this movie over and over because of SARAH PAULSON (bit of a crush on her character)

[girlonthelasttrain]

please bear with me for a sec as I fuckin... rewatch “Down with Love” (one of my fave romcoms ever, I watched it so many times as a teen) and realize for the first time that

Jeri Ryan is in it

she has to speak with an English accent (LMAO)

the first thing she does very early in the movie is kissing Ewan McGregor which I bet in 2003 had many scifi nerds go what???

(having watched neither the Star Wars prequel movies nor Star Trek: Voyager back then I was definitely oblivious to all of this)

knowing this movie it feels like it was all on purpose even if it wasn't

have this screenshot (feat. Renée Zellweger)

[amphtaminedreams]

Farewell to Spooky Season, AHS Style: Lookbook no.12

Hi to anyone reading,

Happy belated Halloween!

I capitalise it because if I'm gonna recognise any day as sacred, it’s the spookiest one of the year! Halloween 2020 obviously hasn’t been as exciting as usual, parties and club nights being banned has meant there’s been far less opportunities to dress up, but I still managed to get out for the night before they announced the upcoming second lockdown and do a couple of spooky movie nights (and carve a pumpkin!)!

I originally intended for this lookbook to be last minute halloween costume inspo but I was lazy and didn’t manage to get it out on time-a lot of these looks minus the makeup and maybe an accessory or two could work on any day or night out so I thought I’d go ahead and post it now anyway. Celebrating the fashion moments of American Horror Story is something I’ve wanted to do for a while; it’s probably not the first show you’d think of for sartorial inspiration but Mr. Ryan Murphy has fucking fantastic taste in stylists and the first five seasons of AHS in particular, which I’ll be focussing on in this post, have given us SO many amazing looks. The man may be guilty of many things-subjecting us to the character of Will Schuester, trying to turn Richard Ramirez into a thirst trap, embarrassing everyone who raved about how good Scream Queens was when he wrote season 2-but costume related laziness is not one of them. We see more consistency in a Ryan Murphy character’s wardrobe than we do in their story arcs and I respect that because honestly, as much as I love joining in when it comes to ripping into his ability to cohesively bring an AHS season to a close when it airs, I’d probably be the same; if you put Lady Gaga in front of me and told me to write her lines I’d probably end up getting overly invested in what her character was going to be wearing in the scene too. 

So! Enough Ryan Murphy bashing from me! I’ll get on with it! Starting with 3 season 1 inspired looks:

Murder House: Elizabeth Short, Tate Langdon and Violet Harmon

-striped jumper from caitlinlark on Depop, kick flare jeans from ellagray-

When it comes to reflecting on season 1 of American Horror Story, all I can say do is thank the internet overlords that Tumblr has moved on from the romanticising school shooters and wearing normal people scare me tops phase to instead collectively taking the piss out of the “GO AWAY, TATE!”, “YOU’RE ALL THAT I WANTTT! YOU’RE ALL THAT I HAVEEE!” exchange. 

In terms of fashion *moments*, whilst season 1 doesn’t stand out as much as the seasons that come after, Violet and Tate’s wardrobes did give birth to a bit of a 90s grunge renaissance with their oversized knits and faded jeans and layering of textures. It did also give us good costumes in the form of Alexandra Breckenridge’s Moira O’Hara and Mena Suvari’s portrayal of the Black Dahlia, Elizabeth Short; unfortunately, I didn’t have a slutty maid costume lying around so I did the best I could at giving the outfit Elizabeth wears when she makes that fateful visit to the Murder House a modern, more party appropriate update.

In terms of season rankings, Murder House isn’t my favourite. It starts off really great but lulls a bit towards the end and I could never get behind Violet and Tate as a couple because you know, one of them is a school shooter who sexually assaults the other’s mum, and that’s a hurdle that I think most couples might struggle to get over irl. That being said, it was the season that started it all and showcased some of the most innovative writing and directing on TV, and it opened up a spot for horror on primetime television which as far as I know was kind of unheard of before then. Back when I first watched it, I had no idea what to expect not only because I’d never seen horror in a serial format but also because it seemed to be able to get away with the kind of storylines you’d expect network executives to fire people over. It introduced us to Jessica Lange and Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters and Denis O’Hare who would go on to make the show what it is today and more importantly, through Jessica’s glorious portrayal of Constance Langdon, provide us with an endlessly versatile meme format for this trying time.

Asylum: ‘60s Lana Winters, ‘70s Lana Winters, and Sister Mary Eunice McKee

-afghan coat from louisemarcella on Depop, red AA skater dress from julietramage, pink gingham co-ord from zshamim-

I think we can all agree: Asylum would’ve been a perfect series of television if it wasn’t for the completely unnecessary alien storyline. Like, I get that they fit in with the whole good vs. evil theme as a kind of non-biblical alternative to the idea of a higher, all-powerful being but there was already so much going on that it just wasn’t needed. Aside from that, I think the general consensus amongst watchers of the show is that Asylum has the best writing of any season and I think I’d tend to agree. It’s not my favourite because it’s too depressing to rewatch but if we’re talking the first time round, this is the series that had me hooked. Lana Winters?

Iconic. 

Sister Mary Eunice? Iconic. The Name Game? Iconic. Remember when you couldn’t go a day on Facebook without seeing that one photo of Naomi Grossman as Pepper used as the go to “what I really look like” photo in one of those “expectation vs. reality” style posts on your newsfeed? Those were simpler times.

Because this season was mostly situated within the hospital, we didn’t get that many proper outfits but when we did, they were stunning; if I had to state my absolute favourite AHS character of the entire show I’d probably go with Lana Winters and the part her wardrobe played in her characterisation would 100% play a part in that. The late 60s/early 70s was such a wonderful period for fashion and through her character we get to see both of those explored a little. Of course there’s also *that* Sister Mary Eunice scene with the red slip dress and suspenders too which yes, could be a perfect halloween costume, but I also strongly believe should be a perfectly acceptable outfit for any day of the year. 

Coven: Misty Day, Madison Montgomery, and Zoe Benson

-chiffon dress from rags_to_riches on Depop, pinstripe corset from hanpiercey, and tennis skirt from mollie_morton-

I hate to be a basic bitch but I have to say it: Coven is my favourite season of American Horror Story. Once you get over the complete waste of Evan Peters’ acting capabilities that resulted from the *choice* to have him play Kyle, the unnecessary rehash of the Evan/Taissa pairing from season 1 in what I can only assume was an attempt to capitalise on the popularity of the questionable Tate/Violet relationship, and the subsequent sacrifice of any interesting character arc we could’ve foreseen for Zoe Benson beyond her obsessing over a resurrected, non-verbal frat boy, it’s a perfect season. A supreme (heh) balance of horror, humour, and character drama, as well as the stunning aesthetics and forever quotable dialogue, make it my go-to season if I’m ever considering a rewatch. And if you disagree, let me jog your memory with the most mainstream (not to get all “normal people scare me�� and suggest AHS is not a mainstream show, I literally just mean in the sense that even those who have never watched the show will have seen this)  reaction GIF set any FX show has even spawned:

Buzzfeed employees had a field day, Emma Roberts enthusiasts (I mean me) finally saw her cemented as the pop culture icon Scream Queens has since showed us she deserves to be (because not enough people have seen Unfabulous, Nancy Drew or Scream 4) and the gays everywhere rejoiced at the year’s worth of meme fodder they’d been provided with. It was Madison Montgomery’s world and we were truly just living in it.

And the fashion! I mean, Stevie Nicks meets 21st century teenage witches! Come on! 

Freakshow: Dandy Mott, Maggie Esmerelda and Elsa Mars

-olive green satin skirt from morganogle on Depop, headscarf from tonijordan, platform sandals from elliefewt, PVC skirt from bethpin_, corset top from sadieflinter, beret from house_of_erotique, flame detail platform boots from mad_rags_vintage-

When people talk about the declining quality of AHS, they usually point to Freakshow as the beginning of the end, but I have to completely disagree. I wasn’t a fan the first time round but on rewatch it’s probably the most emotional season of them all; no, there aren’t as many “horrifying” moments as in other seasons and Elsa is probably Jessica’s worst performance (which is still an incredible one by anybody else’s standards), however it makes up for it with the most sympathetic bunch of characters yet, and on the flip side, also one of the most amusingly depraved with Finn Wittrock’s Dandy Mott. Fans usually argue that the season went downhill once *SPOILER* Twisty the Clown was killed off but for me, he really primarily served as the catalyst for the far more interesting devolution of Dandy, who, imo, is the show’s strongest villain to date, rivalled only by Bloody Face. Then there was the episode Orphans too which made me cry buckets, the sole AHS episode to do so. 

We got a lot of great fashion content in this season too: the theatrical opulence of Elsa Mars’ wardrobe, “Maggie”’s nomadic fortune teller costumes, and all those twee suits we saw Finn Wittrock in. Highly underrated if you ask me. It seems an odd choice for me to use Elsa’s Dominatrix look as an inspiration for one of my looks here when we have that Life on Mars performance outfit and all the extravagant robes Jessica got to waltz around in for reference buuuut I didn’t really have anything to do the vibrancy of either of those justice so I went with the black leather option which is much more me. Am I saying I moonlight as a dominatrix? Maybe. Lol, no. I wish. It’s not for lack of trying. WHERE ARE ALL THE GENUINE TWITTER PAYPIGS AT!? Your girl wants to insult creepy men and get some new clothes out of it xoxo

Hotel: Hypodermic Sally, Liz Taylor, and The Countess

-silk white bralet from xlibby_maix on Depop-

Hotel is another season that I liked a lottttt more upon rewatch, once I knew I was okay to tune out the (completely predictable and utterly nonsensical) Ten Commandments Killer storyline that so much of the season initially seems to hinge on. I love Chloë Sevigny but the fact that her and Wes Bentley’s wooden John and Alex Lowe are positioned as the protagonists at the expense of the far more interesting Liz Taylor, James March and Hypodermic Sally really does a disservice to what is an otherwise great season upon initial viewing.

The visuals this season are magnificent and I think if I had to pick one character’s wardrobe to steal from the entire cast of AHS characters, it would be The Countess (a toss up between her and Misty Day tbh, so I kinda just settle for low-key channelling both). No fucking idea where I'd wear any of her clothes to but I’d make it work. Liz Taylor and Hypodermic Sally have some amazing looks too-there’s just honestly so much to choose from; that being said, this post wouldn’t be complete without a specific ode to the vampire goddess Elizabeth Bathory, who is everything I want to be in life minus the murderous qualities:

Everything. EVER-Y-THING. LOOK AT HER!

Lady Gaga is really a fucking goddess isn’t she. And people were claiming before they’d even seen it that she couldn’t act? A patriarchal society doesn’t like women that can do it all. Just saying. 

Anyways!

That’s it for now! I hope you enjoyed the post if you did read til the end! Sorry I couldn’t get this out before Halloween, I was typing and Picmonkey-ing madly from 2 in the afternoon on the 31st but I taking fucking forever to get ready and had to abandon all hope of getting it out on the day by 4PM. I’ve got so much content planned and it sucks because a couple of them are lookbooks which now feel completely redundant given we’re heading into a second lockdown, but maybe I should just do it anyway? The grunge inspired moodboard I just did seemed to get a good reception too so I’ve got some more of them planned. 

As always, hope everyone is keeping well, and feel free to inbox me with any suggestions, queries or even just to say hi if you need someone to talk to! I check here quite a lot so I should see it. Lots of love to everyone in this time!

Lauren x

[grilledcheeseandguavajelly]

Headcanon list of each character: Can they play the piano? 👏🏻

Ohhhh yes. This is everything, thank you so much for requesting this!! I had so much fun working on these and they may have gotten a little bit out of hand, but are we surprised?? No. No, we are not.  I hope you enjoy!! :) 

Alright!! Here we go --

(Special thanks to @shineestark for helping me when I got stuck. As usual, the Queen of Audrey reigns supreme xx)

Sarah Paulson’s Characters Playing the Piano Headcanons:

Billie Dean Howard:

Billie took lessons as a girl. Of course she did. It was what all respectable little girls from Southern families did. But at around twelve or thirteen her rebellious phase kicked in and she started butting against her teacher. She didn’t really know why, she enjoyed playing the piano well enough. But it was the one thing that her parents absolutely insisted that she do. So she fought and dug her heels in until they agreed to let her find an alternate hobby. She replaced it with tennis lessons and didn’t pick it up again. 

That doesn’t mean she doesn’t enjoy the sound of it, but she always gets squirmy when people bring up her playing — especially the passive aggressive way her mother always mentions it at family functions. 

Lana Winters:

Lana doesn’t play. Wendy used to, though, and Lana would love to sit on the bench with her, or wrap her arms up around Wendy’s shoulders from behind and hum in her ear while the music filled their home. 

Wendy tried to teach her. Just a little harmony here or there so they could cuddle close on the bench and make something together. But Lana hardly remembered it, often giving up quickly in favor of watching the hypnotic way Wendy’s fingers skimmed along the ivory. 

Sometimes, if Lana was really lucky, Wendy would take her to a jazz bar and let her spend her night with a cigarette between her lips and music in her ears. And if Lana let her fingers run over Wendy’s under the table, well… It was only because she knew what was coming once they got home. 

She doesn’t like it as much anymore. She still loves her jazz records and puts them on when she needs to calm down. But the appeal of a piano in her home is gone. And every time she tries to sit down and remember what it was that Wendy taught her, the world tinges just a little bit too grey and her frustration eclipses her curiosity. 

Cordelia Goode:

Cordelia absolutely plays the piano. It was the one thing that got her through all of those inconsolable days at the coven, waiting for her mother to return. Myrtle was the one who had taught her, instilling a love of music in her since day one. And that piano that sat in the corner of the living room was her comfort most nights, following her well into adulthood. 

Many times when the girls would go out, she would spend her day between the piano and her greenhouse. And sometimes late at night once everyone had gone to sleep, if she’d had a particularly rough day, she would play it just to sort out her thoughts and unwind. 

No one else played, and as Cordelia gained responsibility and her schedule became more hectic, she was often met with dusty keys. But that never diminished the comfort of that sound, no matter how out of tune, the melody floating through the air like its own kind of magic. 

Bette and Dot Tattler:

Bette always wanted to play the piano. Begged for lessons since she was a young child. After all, all of those pretty little movie stars could. But her mother (predictably) wouldn’t let anyone come over to teach them, and her hand just never got the rhythm of it on its own. Her fingers didn’t work over the keys, no matter how hard she tried. But it was harder to play a melody with your left hand. Harder to play with the left hand, period. So she couldn’t be blamed, right?

Dot can play. She had a natural knack for it, just like she did for singing. She understood piano more than she should have, since she never properly learned. But you would never know. She never played, no matter how hard Bette pleaded with her. It wasn’t until they had needed to practice a new piece for the show and Eve had been busy that she even sat down and tried. The moment someone walked into the tent, though, she froze. And that was the end of that. 

Dandy had asked them to play, once. Dot had said they couldn’t just as Bette told him of Dot’s talent. But somehow they had gotten interrupted and he hadn’t brought it up again. 

Once they got back to the show, Dot sat them down at that piano every day, just to punish Bette for her naivety with Dandy. But Dot also hated the fact that she was stuck with the right hand. That all she could play was the melody and Bette always screwed up the chords, the rhythm. 

After they got married, there were many nights where Dot would play the high end and Jimmy would stand next to Bette and play the bass chords. He tried to teach Bette for a while, but after a few months Bette gave up, holding back tears while Jimmy and Dot played and sang and got a piece of that Hollywood life.

Sally McKenna:

Sally obviously plays the piano. She learned when she was very little after her parents found she had a proclivity for it. She must have been about three when she sat down at her grandmother’s piano and figured out a little tune all on her own. The piano was really the only place she felt safe, comforted, and loved. And as she grew, she expanded her arsenal, taking to her bass guitar more than anything else. The lessons had stuck with her though, which ended up helping her immensely when she started to write music. She already knew how to score it down, which was half the work. And she learned very quickly that piano was the mainstay. All of her ideas transferred on the piano, where they didn’t as well on the guitar or the bass. 

She thanked her grandmother once, after winning a music contest in middle school. She even wrote her a song. But she never got to play it for her, not before the funeral. 

Sally loved that feeling of her grandmother watching over her whenever she sat at the keys. Like she was still there, hadn’t left them. But after a few years Sally stopped feeling her, the warmth fading. And that was right around the time she started doing drugs. Because if she shot herself up high enough she could almost hear her grandmother again, patting her on the head and telling her how talented she was. How loved she was. How she would always be so proud of her. 

Audrey Tindall:

Audrey can’t play the piano for the life of her, but she absolutely loves it. Her dad used to play, before his hands shook too badly, and when she was little she loved to crawl up in his lap and trace his fingers while they worked over the keys. Occasionally he would tap a note for her to play to finish off a song, pressing hundreds of kisses to her little cheeks as she giggled and beamed. But she never had any desire to learn, much preferring to curl up with a script in his study and just enjoy the music and the memories that flooded her with warmth. 

The idea of taking lessons never even occurred to her, not until her father couldn’t anymore and her parents’ house was just a bit too still. But by that point, her career was just starting to take off and she simply didn’t have time to pick it up from scratch. She felt guilty about it for a while, especially when she moved to America to film and was stuck in a deathly quiet flat. But then she found out Monet liked to play. After that Audrey constantly begged her at parties, hanging off of her as she played and singing loudly while she danced around to the music. And just being surrounded by the sound again filled her with enough joy to make the guilt melt away. 

There was one time — just once, at a wrap party — where she was completely hammered. Apparently she had sat down at a piano and played a perfect rendition of Rocket Man while everyone crowded around and sang along. Or so people told her.  But she remembered absolutely none of it, and no matter how hard she tried, she never came close to doing it again. 

Ally Mayfair-Richards:

Ally never learned. She never really saw the appeal. But then she had Oz and she quickly changed her mind. There were many long nights spent arguing with Ivy about whether or not he should learn. Ivy was adamant that he should not, because she was afraid he would be bullied. But Ally thought that some sort of music education was crucial, so once Ivy was gone she got lessons for Oz, just to spite her. And she took lessons, too. For the principle of the thing. 

Oz took to it much faster than she did. Eventually she let him lead, playing a few bass notes here and there as he ran through her favorite songs. But whether she was good at it or not, she would never trade those moments with him at the piano — watching him smile as she hummed along and making him laugh as she hit the wrong keys. 

Wilhemina Venable:

Wilhemina Venable is a genius. I mean an actual genius. Her IQ is sky high, so naturally she was proficient in piano by age six. By age eight she was fluent in violin, and by twelve she had mastered the cello, just to give her something else to do. Something else to drown out the sound of her parents fighting outside her door. 

Once her scoliosis started to develop more rapidly, she had to give up the violin. It was too painful, holding her arm up on the neck and raking the bow over the strings for more than about three minutes. She compensated for the loss by diving further into her piano, but after about a year she had to give that up, too. She couldn’t hold her posture up on the bench, and she hated playing in a chair with a back. She kept on with the cello until she started to curl around it too far, her back popping and cracking between every piece. 

Those were her deep comforts, her instruments. And losing them hurt more than losing anything else, her parents, her health, her dignity. 

The piano was her first, though, so it always held the deepest connection. Which is why she absolutely refused to sell her mahogany Steinway, even if she only had the strength to play it once a year. 

She would usually only sit down on the bench if she was deathly bored or if she’d had an especially rough day at work. It helped her think, but it also reminded her of her childhood and everything she had loved and lost, so there was always an edge of hurt on every piece she played, and she never felt quite settled once she was finished. 

[carversourcebe]

Charlie’s interview for Schön! Magazine

This has been a challenging year for most people. What is a challenge you have faced recently and how did you overcome it? Or, how are you working towards overcoming it?

“I’ve been too addicted to the news. I don’t know if that’s what you were going for, but really, it’s been a challenge. On the one hand, I think it’s especially important right now to stay informed, to understand sources, look at a subject from multiple angles, and then study how it’s being parsed to different intended audiences. But the constant refreshing, the phone time became… Immobilising. This year has been a teacher. I’ve had to learn (relearn?) how to anchor to things in the present, things actually in front of me. Enjoying each bite of a meal by myself. Spending an afternoon on a blanket underneath a tree. Cultivating an appreciation for things at that human scale. I’ve found it’s easy to get overwhelmed otherwise.”

On the bright side, has there been anything that has particularly inspired you this year that you want to share?

“Nature. It’s medicine, every time.”

To all of us that watched you since your Teen Wolf days to now, we know the diverse roles you’ve played over the years. If you had to choose, who has been your favourite character until now, and why?

“Oh gosh! I’ve been so lucky. What’s been so fun is that all of these incredible characters I’ve gotten to play have ended up inhabiting completely different worlds – different genres. Action, drama, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, comedy. That doesn’t necessarily change the underlying humanity of each character in the story, but each genre has presented new challenges and experiences. I don’t know if I have a favourite character, but I’ve loved working on period pieces. Diving into the social history of a particular time period is my kind of fun.”

Let’s talk Ratched. This Netflix psychological thriller series looks haunting in the best way! Being part of it, how would you describe it in your own words?

“I remember walking onto the sound stages on my first day and being blown away. The creative team did such a phenomenal job making the world of Ratched come to life – the sets, the costumes, the props, the makeup. When you’re given such a detailed reality to play in, so much flows from that. It was a blast. Hard work but a blast. And the loveliest group of people all pretending to do some pretty horrible things to one another. For all of the horror and heartbreak you see on the show – well, just know that we had so much fun going there. Also, Sarah Paulson is a goddess.”

Your character in the show Ratched is Huck. What do we need to know about Huck before watching the series?

“I think it’s important to know where Huck has just come from. He’s a war veteran. A veteran of World War Two, specifically. Young men entered that war with a somewhat different attitude and set of expectations. War was advertised primarily as an adventure. An initiation rite. But any notion of the explicit violence of war was mostly precluded by a heavily advertised heroic narrative. I think Huck somewhat innocently signed up to be hero, largely unaware of the horrors of the battlefield. And he returns with that trauma on his face, something he cannot hide. Wounded veterans of the First and Second World Wars were not at all met with the same welcome as the boys that came back “whole”. They were often slowly pushed out into lives of solitude due to overwhelming feelings of shame in a country that did not want to be reminded of the nature of their sacrifice. And veterans rights and services did not then exist as they do now, limited as they unfortunately still are.”

How did you land the role?

“I had just worked with Ryan on The Boys In The Band on Broadway. One of my castmates, Andrew Rannells, needed to be in Los Angeles to film a television show and we found ourselves doing a house swap – he at mine Los Angeles and me with the keys to his place in New York for a few months (We still call it The Holiday). Ryan was in New York and invited me for dinner one night, and at one point the conversation turned to the show he was developing – Ratched. I was completely taken with the world he was describing and before I knew it, he offered me a part. I was speechless. Of course, I said yes.”

Do you think that playing Huck was similar to any other roles you’ve played in the past? If not, what sets him apart?

“Hmmm. I think I’ve always been drawn to finding the sweetness, the goodness of my characters. But no, this was very new for me and a challenge. I really wanted to live up to the backstory of this character and knew early on that makeup and prosthetics would play a big part in telling his story.”

The show is loosely based on the popular novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Interestingly enough, that book is one of the most controversial and banned given some of its themes. Have you read it? What are your general thoughts on this comparison, and would you say the show is likely to be controversial?

“I have! I read it in high school. I loved the book and was very into Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as well. It’s a beautiful book. And a beautiful film. I don’t know if a comparison can be made other than that they both probe at and challenge the institutions central to them. I really love that Ratched puts women at the centre.”

How has it been working with Ryan Murphy again?

“Ryan is one of the few people in the world who makes me laugh to the point of tears. Truly. Tears. I love that man! I have so much fun watching his work. I had been a big fan for a long time. His leadership in pushes for more inclusive storytelling were a large part of the affirmation I needed from the world that I could come out. That the business was changing and would continue to change. He takes such good care of his actors and has given me chances I’m not sure I would have been given otherwise.”

Are there any particular messages you hope people find and take from watching the show, Ratched?

“First of all, I hope people enjoy it. It’s been a really challenging year. Ratched is deliciously fun and twisted. I hope it’s a welcome escape. That is so important. But I do think the show invites questions about authority and morality. So many of the horrific moments in the show come from very real psychiatric practices of the last century. Just because something is legal or ordained, does that make it right? On whose authority? And I think we as a society are only beginning to understand and appreciate how destiny is inscribed by trauma. Can I recommend a book? The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk came into my hands while filming this show. It changed my life.”

What’s the biggest lesson you learned from working on the show?

“Trust. To trust myself, yes, but really to trust the team. Making a show is a group effort. Forgetting that is the fastest way to find yourself in an unnecessary pressure cooker of your own making. Nothing can ever go “perfectly” until you trust that nobody fully expects it to. In that, there is so much more room for fun.”

Aside from Ratched, you’ve also landed a role in Batman! This highly anticipated movie is on everyone’s radar, especially with the recently released teaser trailer. How did it feel landing that? Are you a fan of the comics?

“I don’t think it’s even fully registered. I went through a big comic book period as a kid. I would buy volumes and read through each in one sitting. It’s a bit of a childhood dream come true, really, getting to act in one.”

Can you give us any details to hold us over until summer 2021?

“I can’t! But how about that trailer?”

Fair enough! You seem to have taken quite a few off your bucket list already, but what type of role would you like to pursue next?

“I’ve always had a thing for the spy genre. Something like that would be really fun. But honestly, if I’m moved by the writing and can get the job, I’ll take it. That’s the fun of this job. Jumping in.”

Link of the article here

[vintagegoddess12]

Mark Me As Yours

A/n: This is a one-shot no one asked but kept bugging my mind. I have 4 other fics that I’m currently working (one of them is the 4th chapter of Radioactive Salvation and the other is about Cordelia and the new timeline). This is a bit smut. I don’t write smut pretty well but I’m learning so help me pleaseeeeeee. Anyway, hope you can enjoy this one. Love lots!

Synopsis: You’re curious about hickeys and your friend Sarah is more than happy to help.

Ship: Sarah Paulson x Fem!Reader

Words: 1570

You were hauled up in your hotel room after a tiring day of endless press junkets for your new movie. You have always loved making films but hearing the same mundane questions about it is as irritating as it can get. Luckily for you,  the exceptional actress Sarah Paulson, though she will never admit it herself, is your co-star in this multi-million dollar picture and is more than happy to work with you. Your dear friend for years now, however, is busy partying with her other group of peers in the club downtown while you're here, shifting uncomfortably in the bed with your thoughts scattered everywhere. She did ask you if you want to tag along but you, accompanied by your droopy eyes and 'I'm really sleepy' act, politely declined. The presence of that woman is enough to intoxicate you and do stupid things, what more with the presence of alcohol? So here you are, lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling with nothing else to do when you started wondering... How are hickeys made? You're not much of a sexual person. When you get some, then you get some. And you're definitely not getting any now since you just broke up with your partner of three years. Your boyfriend is always the one giving you those hickeys during your interaction. Every morning, you'll find most of them in your neck and few more in your stomach or your thighs. He prefers to do the work in bed and you remained to be at the receiving end of his pleasing until he got tired and cheated on you. The lonely nights and cold bed made you think of intimate thoughts. With no one around to judge you for what you're about to do, you pulled out your laptop and searched for tutorial videos about the matter. The most common thing among the videos is the instruction to suck the skin. Well, that's easy, right? You thought to yourself. They said to do it on thin skin but it's highly unlikely for you to reach your neck or your thigh to try, so you opted for your arm. The first few times of trying is a disaster, you're just placing wet kisses in your arm. A few more practices and you see red spots showing. A surprised smile spread in your face, like a kid seeing all the treats in a candy store. You sucked one more time and partnered it with a bit of biting when someone knocked on your hotel room. It's already half-past one at night and there are only 3 people you can imagine will be at your door in this hour: room service to deliver your food you asked for hours ago, a fan who somehow got away from security (again), or your dear friend Lady Paulson coming back from her late night activity. You're silently praying for the food because you definitely deserve some kind of treat after learning something tonight. You walked towards the door and asked who it is. "It's me, ya know, Sarah Catharine Paulson," she replied. She's tipsy, as evidenced by her tone. You let out a small sigh. Of course, she's going to check up on you. Thoughtfulness is synonymous to her name. One of the things you like about her. You reached for the doorknob and opened the door. There she is, in all her drunken glory but still a goddess in all the amazing ways, standing in the hallway with eyes staring at you. This woman is a walking temptation. You stepped aside and motioned for her to come in. She stepped closer to kiss your cheek. Your face flushed as soon as her lips came in contact with your face. Stop it with your girl crush, [y/n]! She continued to your bed and laid herself down when you caught sight of the laptop she's about to reach for. "What have you been doing?" She asked while reaching for the device. You practically ran just to snatch the laptop away from her before answering, "just watching some tutorial videos." You noticed confusion etched to your friend's face but she decided not to press any further. She's probably tired, with the state she's in. You placed the device your holding to a nearby table and poured a glass of water for your wasted friend. You walked towards the bed and handed it to her. She gave you a weak smile after accepting it then her eyes landed on your arm, which is abundant with red spots now. Oh shit, your hickeys! Let's credit that to your stupidity, shall we? "'[Y/n], why is your arm so red?" She placed the glass on the floor and reached for your arm instead. "Have you been hurting yourself?" She looked at you with glassy eyes. You were speechless with her reaction. How are you exactly to explain that those are hickeys you gave yourself because your alone and curious? A very bad combination, by the way. You tried to find the right words to explain the situation but not before Sarah reaches over your face and tucks in a stray strand of hair behind your ear. "On the contrary, sars," you started, "those are hickey marks because I've been practicing." "Why?" You can feel the confusion radiating out of her. No use to lie to you dear friend now. "Well, I've never really given one myself. I just receive them." Her jaw literally dropped and you took that as a sign to retract your arm from her touch. Her face softens and continued to speak. "Oh, [y/n], you could have just asked. I would have taught you myself." She took the glass from the floor and drank its content. It was now your turn to be dumbstruck. Never in a million years would you have imagined Sarah offering to teach you something as intimate as this. "What, you?" You inquired. "Yes, me!" She replied then let out a chuckle. "I'm kinda good at it, you know." "With what: teaching or giving?" You asked, trying to hide the fact that there are butterflies in your stomach trying to make their way out of you. "Oh, darling, I can do both," she giggled then winked at you. You glared at her and shook your head. Alcohol does wonders to your friend's confidence. You were caught off-guard when you felt hands pulling you towards the bed. You ended up lying on your back with Sarah hovering over you. You were too damn close to her that you can smell the distinct smell of tequila. "One thing you should remember about giving hickeys," she looked at you with a certain glint in her eyes. Is that lust? "anticipation is the key." She began trailing kisses to you jawline down to your neck but not before lightly biting your ear. This a bit unorthodox for teaching but you honestly don't mind. You feel the butterflies inside you going erratic than ever. You closed your eyes and allowed yourself to savor the feeling of her kisses on you, a feeling that may never come again after she sobers up. She caresses your side while giving attention to your neck. Can this moment never end? You thought to yourself only to be distracted by your own low moans. "Are you enjoying this, [y/n]?" You hear Sarah whisper in your ear then continued sucking on your skin, which is highly sensitive by now. All you could let out was a whimper before getting lost in the feeling once again. "Let's just hope you can learn more than hickey-giving tonight," she said almost breathlessly as she starts untying your nightgown. "Wait. Wait. Wait." You stopped her ministrations on your side. She looked bewildered as to why you made her stopped. "As much as I am loving everything, I need to know if this is the alcohol talking?" Hurt passed in her eyes for a split second. She pursed her lips, probably thinking of what to reply. She tucked a stray hair behind your ear, again. Why does your hair keep getting in the way? This time, however, it's different. Her fingers lingered for a moment to your cheek and proceeded to cup it with her hand. "This is years of pent-up feelings talking, [y/n]. You don't know how long I've been meaning to do this," she lowered her head and pressed a chaste kiss on your lips, "3 glasses of tequila and your never-ending curiosity are just some help." She then smiled, like a girl who just tasted the sweetest candy in the store. "Why do you think I came here tonight?" Is this really happening? Is Sarah Catharine Paulson telling you that she likes you for a long time now? Only in your dreams things like this - her liking you back - happen. You remained frozen underneath the exceptional woman, her eyes focused on you. "What do you want me to do now, darling?" she asked. It doesn’t help that she’s grinning or that you can feel her breaths in your face. You answered, with all remaining senses flying out of your body, "mark me as yours, all night long."

[moviepitpodcast-blog]

‘Glass’ Review

Director:  M. Night Shyamalan

Writers: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sarah Paulson, Spencer Treat Clark and Charlayne Woodard

Synopsis: Security guard David Dunn uses his supernatural abilities to track Kevin Wendell Crumb, a disturbed man who has twenty-four personalities.

*Reviewer Note: This will be a spoiler free review.*

 The name M. Night Shyamalan for a while was a laughing stock. After breaking into the scene with The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs, the director’s fanbase started to turn on him after films like The Village – which I didn’t personally mind – Lady in the Water, and, of course, the coup de grace to his career was the combination of The Happening and The Last Airbender. I’m not even going to mention After Earth – because do you remember After Earth? Does anyone?

Anyway, Shyamalan slowly came back with the still underrated The Visit, but then really returned to form with Split, which is true Shyamalan fashion, had the twist ending that no one saw coming – the whole movie was connected to Unbreakable. The long awaited sequel that everyone wanted was finally real, and when Split turned out to be a hit, Shyamalan went on to finish the trilogy he had wanted to create since Unbreakable’s release. Glass is a sequel nineteen years in the making, but was the wait worth it? Does Glass live up to the expectations Split left us with? Let’s dig in shall we?

Glass follows David Dunn (Bruce Willis), the only survivor of a deadly train crash fifteen years prior, which left him with super-strength and led him down the path of becoming the vigilante named The Overseer, all with the help of his son, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark). After seeing the devastation left by Kevin Wendell Crumb aka The Horde (James McAvoy), David manages to track Kevin and faces off with The Beast until the two are taken in by the police and the mysterious Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson). Dr. Staple sends them to a psychiatric facility with the goal being to convince them that their super-human abilities are all in their heads.

However, unbeknownst to David at first, Elijah Price aka Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson) has been a patient of the facility since the end of Unbreakable, and when he learns of his new neighbors, a plan starts to go into motion.

Much like Unbreakable, Shyamalan keeps Glass as grounded as possible, well, as grounded as you can get with super-powered individuals. Buildings aren’t falling over, there are no over-the-top action scenes, although the brawls between David and The Beast look hard-hitting, and the characters feel real. In fact, Paulson’s Ellie Staple drives the point that David, Kevin and Elijah are just normal people and are “sick.” For the most part, it actually sounds somewhat believable, but it just falls a tad flat and too smart for its own good.

When it comes to the cast, James McAvoy steals the movie, continuing his amazing performances from Split. He actually gets to play around with the characters a little more this time around, and having Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson to play off of this time around adds a lot more to his performance. Willis thankfully doesn’t phone it in as the returning David Dunn, but it somehow feels like he’s underused. Then there’s Jackson’s Elijah. Despite the name of the movie being Glass, Jackson is heavily underused until the third act of the movie, and even then, it’s still mostly McAvoy’s show. It is a bit of shame to see that happen, especially considering how the movie ends.

The supporting cast have only a few moments to shine, with Spencer Treat Clark’s Joseph and Anya Taylor-Joy’s Casey getting the better of it. In fact, I’ll say that Taylor-Joy’s Casey has one of the better, if not the best scene in the movie, where she comes face-to-face with Kevin again. The two have great chemistry together, and it actually has a pay-off toward the end of the movie, which I really appreciated. It was also nice to see Charlayne Woodard return as Mrs. Price, but she doesn’t really have anything to do, other than a couple brief scenes with Jackson’s Elijah. Finally, Sarah Paulson’s Ellie Staple gets to shine along the main cast, and her presence does throw a wrench in everything.  

Going back to the ending though, this is a spoiler-free review so I won’t spoil anything, but Shyamalan couldn’t help himself to put not just one twist in here. The problem with one of the twists is that, despite the concept of surprise twists, it literally comes from out of nowhere with no real context and no real lead-in. Shyamalan just throws it in to connect to his other twist, that has divided audiences already, and if you haven’t watched it, will divide you too.

It also doesn’t help that Glass is a bit sluggish throughout its runtime. The second act in particular is pretty slow paced, that when everything breaks down in the much promoted encounter between David and The Beast in front of the facility, we’re pumped to see what will happen. Unfortunately, for me, I honestly don’t know how to feel about the whole third act. It’s a bit too messy for me, and with all the hype and the exceeded expectations that Split led into Glass, it’s a shame that Shyamalan went down this road.

All in all, Glass had some great potential, and despite its saving grace performance by James McAvoy, Shyamalan’s surprise connected universe movie is a mess. Is Glass a bad movie? No, I don’t think so. Is it a frustrating movie? I would say yes, yes it is. Needless to say, the choice is ultimately yours on how you view the ending, and whether it fits into everything that was built up to it.

Glass

3 out of 5

[thesarahtomypaulson]

I was tagged by @yellowlitchi    thank you  💞

Nicknames: I don’t really have any nicknames 

Height: 5'2

Time: 11:50 a.m

Favourite band/artist: Fleetwood Mac, Twenty one Pilots, Panic at the disco. I couldn’t decide… :P

Song stuck in my head: there are actually two songs stuck in my head atm. ‘you should see me in a crown’ by Billie Eilish and  ‘Believe’ by Cher

Last movie I watched: Home alone

Last thing I googled: ‘Family guy maid’ 😄

Other blogs: I have like 8 other blogs😅

Do I get asks: not reallyyy

Why I chose this url: because I love Sarah Paulson ❤️

Following: over 400

What I’m wearing: Jeans and a hoodie

Dream job: I’d actually like to work at a radio station.

Dream trip: Amsterdam or New York I guessss

Favourite food: Piiizzaaa

Instrument: acoustic guitar, Ukulele and a little bit electric guitar :)

Hair colour: dark blonde

Languages: german, English, and I used to learn French and Russian in school, but I don’t really remember that much… I’m currently learning polish

Most iconic song: ‘Gypsy’ by Fleetwood Mac

Random fact about myself: when I’m driving alone and remember embarrassing things I’ve done, I scream at the top of my lungs

Zodiac: Taurus

Age: 21

Nationality: German

Favourite fruit: Mango 🥭

Season: Summer or autumn

Scent: vanilla, cinnamon

Colour: blue

Animal: cows… and dolphins…. And dogsss

Coffee, tea or hot chocolate:  Teaaa

Average hour of sleep: 3-6

Favourite fictional character: Cordelia Goode, Lorelai Gilmore, Frankie Bergstein, Misty Day , Regina Mills:)

Year blog was created: 2013

Favourite subject: I used to love English and Psychology

Hogwarts house: Hufflepuff, according to Buzzfeed haha

Favourite artist: Franz Marc :)

I’m tagging everyone who wants to do that :)

[daantaat]

I was tagged by @opisthia thanks bud!!! <3

I’m tagging: @lesbiyawns, @winonalesbian, @supernova-supersonic, @catebelivet, and @margaretwindsor (there’s no obligation~ only if you want to do it!!)

name: Kelly

star sign: Leo

height: 5′2″

put your library on shuffle; what are the first 4 songs that came up?: Frequencies by Katie Herzig, Born to Be Needed by Tennis, Holiday by Madonna, Winter Sound by Of Monsters and Men

grab the book next to you and turn to page 23; what’s on line 17?: “Blomkvist shrugged and said nothing.” (hardcover edition of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson)

ever had a song or poem written about you?: Hmm not to my knowledge, no. 

when was the last time you played air guitar?: Ah, I don’t quite remember :( must’ve been a long time ago though lol

who is your celebrity crush?: Oof so it was Sarah Paulson for the longest time, but since then I haven’t had a celeb crush quite as strong as that one. Most recently they’ve been on Sally Hawkins and Florence Welch, and I’ve been going through a Katie Herzig Renaissance and have since channeled my 2012 self by giving my entire heart to her and her music, so I guess she’s my crush as of right now

what is 1) a sound you hate and, 2) a sound you love?: sound I hate: [I’m keeping opisthia’s answer because hard same]: “the sound of people chewing loudly or smacking on their food” 

sound I love: the sound of rain tapping against a window

do you believe in ghosts?: Yep!

how about aliens?: Yes. The universe is so big!! We can’t possibly be the only ones here

do you drive?: HA! lady_gaga_i_have_to_laugh.gif (I don’t have my license, but I have a permit and have been practicing... so... yes but not really)

if so, have you ever crashed?: Nope! *knocks on wood*

what was the last book you read?: Tell it to the Bees by Fiona Shaw!!! In my opinion it was a little slow in the beginning because of the world building and also because Lydia and Jean don’t even meet in person for nearly 90 pages. Also the book alternates between three perspectives: Charlie, Lydia, and Jean, and normally that would bother me, but by the end I truly cared for these characters and having the three perspectives really fleshed things out. There might be some tropes and I thought the ending was a bit rushed, but I enjoyed the book overall. Anyway I’m so excited to watch the movie!

do you like the smell of gasoline?: Not really. It’s very potent

what was the last movie you watched?: I finished watching Ismael’s Ghosts yesterday and by finished I mean I started watching the movie last Thursday and attempted to finish watching it several times over the course of a few days until I made myself sit down yesterday and watch it through to the end. It was very choppy and neither Marion Cotillard nor Charlotte Gainsborg were in it long enough :(

what’s the worst injury you’ve ever had?: Y’know I don’t think I’ve ever really injured myself that badly D: I’ve never broken a bone or had a wound that required stitches. I did break the body of the nail on my right index finger back in elementary school and it was bleeding and hurt quite a bit but it healed just fine~

do you have any obsessions right now?: Hmm, not really. I mean I do like a lot of things as a Fan(TM) and I’ll blog about them for a while, but my obsessions have been fleeting recently, like I’ve just jumped from thing to thing and not really invested my time in things as deeply as I might’ve done a couple years ago. Carol (2015) will always be an obsession of mine though

do you tend to hold grudges against people who’ve done you wrong?: Yeah. I want to be better and more positive but it just be like that sometimes

in a relationship?: No :(

[thekoogler-blog]

The Koogler Watches Comic Con Trailers 2018

Comic Con Trailer

Glass.

I’ll be honest, not too concerned about this one. I feel like this trilogy should have been like a duology. Split could have been like a 20 min lead in to Glass. Like he takes the girls, there’s a montage of all his personalities, the little rascal, ms doubtfire, or maybe she was more professor mcgonagall. And then there was like his demon one who could bend bars or whatever. He’s fully demon now like climbing the walls like a cricket demon. So I’m trying to figure out the twist from the trailer, and I guess the twist is going to be this is all in their heads. Or the twist is that they’re like actually heroes and villains and then they need to save the world. The twist is that there will be a 4th movie. They’re going to wring this out and try and get one last movie out of it. Plus it has pouty face Sarah Paulson in it, I’ll probably catch this one on the VOD or something. I’ve never seen the whole movie of Unbreakable but I got the key points. Willis survives the crash, he’s unbreakable and Jackson is super breakable. He’s like the guy from SpongeBob the chocolate episode. I won’t lie, when he fell down those steps, I kind of laughed, which is like some hidden superpower that I have. I can’t get through Precious without cracking up at least three times. But anyway…….

Koogler Scale of Watchability: Three MeowMeowBeenz

 AQUAMAN

I feel like I don’t have to say much about this. I know the immense intense hate that some of the DC universe has for it. Mostly just the DCEU, the animated bit is good. The comics are good. The games are good. The movies, to me, are good too. Look, we didn’t have any of these movies, none, now we have them all over the place. I agree that we need quality over quantity, but on the DC side, we are just getting started. Let’s give it a chance. Now to the trailer. Man oh man. I’m digging the visuals. The inevitable war scene looks good. The giant jellies, the SEA TURTLES (side note, I love sea turtles. SO FUGGIN MAJESTIC), the deep sea monsters and riding sharks and sea horses and shig. DOOOOOOPE. I’m a big fan of under the ocean life in general so I’m here for all of it. They fixed the speaking thing from JL where they had to conjure a water bubble to talk, they just talk. Favorite part of this whole trailer, the sharks willing to just destroy the entire aquarium to help little AC. One thing I’m not too fond of, that red hair of Mera. And I do see the similarities of this and BP. But, there’s room for both. Always has been, always will be. I’m looking forward to seeing this because I want to see if maybe this is somehow going to set up Legion of Doom. We have the Joker, Lex, and Deathstroke, add in Manta with Cheetah coming in and then possibly Black Adam sometime in the future. I’d like to see Reverse Flash get added into this somewhere as well but hopefully DC pulls this off with all the shakeups. I’m just hoping its not going to be too heavy on the puns and one liners and what not. Arthurs transition from the surface world to becoming the king of Atlantis was no laughing matter and I hope that comes through on the screen.

Koogler Scale of Watchability: Five MeowMeowBeenz

  Shazam!

Yes BOYEEEEEEEE. As per usual with the DCEU, people have a lot of complaints, but I’m here for this one as well. Kid in a superhero body came through in the trailer and I’m looking forward to it. This is one movie that needs to have that light and breezy funny and easy touch. Billy is a foster kid down on his luck, home to home, who just got the gift of a lifetime. Needs to be funny and goofy, but have the action of MOS. Shazam and whoever he is fighting need to be slingin each other all over the place and what not. I like the suit and everything, but the lightning on the chest looks more like a night light than anything else. But you don’t really get much other than a quick intro to Shazam. Tells you the gist of who he iis. Meets the Wizard, says the name, now he is Shazam. Just like I was talking about with Aquaman with the LOD filling out, for the next one, the Justice League should be filling out as well. Now is the time to plant the seeds for it. Lex needs to be in the background of all of this plotting and scheming with Deathstroke putting his team together to take on the League. Maybe do the JLA: Doom storyline but have Lex in the driver seat instead of Vandal Savage. Yeah, yeah, that could work

Koogler Scale of Watchability: Five MeowMeowBeenz

 Godzilla: King of Monsters

So, I won’t lie, I know nothing about anything Godzilla other than what I learned from the Godzilla 2000. I think I saw pieces of the one released before this, but not much. I don’t remember if he fought a monster or not, but. This looks ok, but ONLY IF Godzilla is fighting all of these monsters. Also, Clair de Lune in the trailer. That gets two BIG THUMBS up from me. And it sounds like Vera Farmiga is going to be a bad guy somehow. Cuz Friday Night Lights coach and Millie BB don’t seem to like her. It looks like we’re going to see Mothra, and I’m guessing Rodan and the three headed one….Golgon? I don’t know names. I saw the moth one, there was a flying fire one, and the three headed one. Looks like its going to be a more dramatic world smasher. You don’t play Clair de Lune in a movie that is a bit classy

Koogler Scale of Watchability: Four MeowMeowBeenz

 Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

You guys…..you guys you guys……you……guys. When I hear that music and I see those towers. You know the music that I’m talking about. Even though Harry isn’t here anymore that sense of wonder and magic still pulls you in. It still makes you want to watch WHATEVER they put out. Its great stuff, it really is. But this is about to give us a little glimpse into the world young Dumbledore, some of his humble beginnings. We get some returning faces along with some new ones. I personally can’t wait to see this and Nicholas Flamel. I mean….I feel we’re getting deep into some of the things we kind of just glossed over in the original series. I can’t wait. I’ll see this alone if need be because I’m always ready to dive back into the Wizarding World. I’d like a movie on the founders of Hogwarts to be honest, there has to be a story there. Right? RIGHT!!!! I just want more stories and more books and more all of it.

Koogler Scale of Watchability: Six MeowMeowBeenz

 The Walking Dead Season 9

So…..Rick is an old man now. Yes, there will be a time jump I suppose, and I still need to catch up because the last episode I saw was Carl getting bit and dying in a sewer. Do I care that much about that to stop watching the show? No. Will I catch up? Yes. Do I know what’s about to happen? Yes. Everyone seems to be living in harmony. The last of the Saviors, the bad ones at least seem to be gone. The Sanctuary, Kingdom, and the Hilltop, along with the trash people, seem to be living in harmony. But, there’s some cracks in the armor. The people seem to maybe not be getting along together. Some don’t want to be in a big group and others don’t want to play nice with each other. I mean, you had to expect that this would come, the Saviors did some messed up shig to everyone and forgiving them aint gonna be as easy as 1, 2, 3. This is also the fabled season of Rick and Maggie leaving I think. There is a shot of some boots walking with blood dripping down. I wager Rick is going to get but of course and die or whatever and Maggie or Michonne is taking over. And maybe the feud between Darryl and Rick is going to boil over. My man Dan Fogel looks like he’s going to play a part in this. Maybe he’s a Whisper. Who knows. But I will watch it, but I have to watch half a season, plus Preacher is on so I’m gonna fit this shignattle in here somewhere. I won’t lie, after the whole meeting with Negan where he first arrived, I gotta say my interest in TWD has waned from about 100 to a 90, maybe an 89. But I’m still fully on the wagon.

Koogler Scale of Watchability: Four MeowMeowBeenz

 Disenchantment

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know if I dreamed this maybe, but didn’t they try this already with another Matt Groening show that didn’t work out. But I hear Abbi, I hear Keegan, not sure who the goblin person is, but I like all the stuff. Most of the stuff so I’ll watch and take a quick sneakle peekle and see if it keeps my interest.

Koogler Scale of Watchability: Two MeowMeowBeenz

 Titans

Yall. This one gon be zoppity. These are no longer Teen Titans. These are just straight up Titans as evidenced by the trailer giving the the large TV MA right in the beginning. With Raven being such a central part of the trailer, you already know who’s coming to dinner. That’s right, I know my boy Trigon is going to be making an appearance, how, when, and in what capacity, we don’t know. But, I’m anxious to see it. The core crew from the show is there, Robin, Star, Raven, and Beast Boy, but I’m guessing in this universe, Cyborg has been drafted to the JL and they are getting two new additions, Hawk and Dove, played by Thad Castle and ARods ol girl. The one thing I’m really anxious to see, just what the hell did Batman do to make Robin that….damn…mad. Because there is an episode here called Jason Todd, so this whole I’m kinda Jason Todd but I’m also Dick is gone. He’s got a real grudge against the Bat in this one with the standout line from the trailer

“Fuck Batman”

I mean, I’m in. Plus add in the fact that Jason Todd will be mentioned in the show, throw in the Doom Patrol, and Wonder Girl. I’m getting more of a Young Justice vibe (great comic by the way), from this than anything. With just a splash of adultness. I mean Robin really stepped on that guys face pretty friggin hard

Koogler Scale of Watchability: Five MeowMeowBeenz

 There were other trailers that I didn’t mention, Arrow, the Flash, the Orville, Black Lightning, Yeah, I’m not caught up on these either so I didn’t watch because I don’t know what happen with Flash and the Thinker. I don’t know what happened with the Arrow crew Diaz or Dominguez or whatever his name is. And I don’t know what happened with Black Lightning and Tobias Church. Hoping they didn’t kill him because I like him.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 11/20/20 – SOUND OF METAL, MANGROVE, RUN, EMBATTLED, COLLECTIVE, VANGUARD and More!

There are some really great movies out this week, oddly two of them being from Amazon Studios, although only one will be on Prime Video this week, while you’ll have to wait until after Thanksgiving for another. Honestly, I’m a little freaked out by the fact that next week is Thanksgiving, and normally I’d be pulling my hair out trying to figure out the box office in what’s always a difficult week to predict. As of now, I’m kind of giving up on box office for a while – just like Governor Cuomo (rimshot) -- so hopefully you’re able to enjoy some of these reviews and find some movies to enjoy out there. I’m just sitting here waiting for the last shoe to drop. (Not sure what’s weirder this week, that four of the movies premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year or that four of the movies are directorial debuts.)

Although I already reviewed Mangrove, the first film in Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe Anthology,” when it played at the New York Film Festival a few months back, it will finally hit Amazon Prime Video this Friday. If you hadn’t heard or don’t remember from when I first wrote about it, “Small Axe” is McQueen’s five-film anthology that’s set within London’s West Indian community, exploring the issues they’ve had with the racist London police from the late ‘60s to the ‘80s.  (I’ve only seen three of the movies but Mangrove is clearly the best, in my opinion, although all three have warranted repeat viewings.)

Mangrove actually works pretty well as its own standalone movie, starring Shaun Parkes as Frank Crichlow, owner of the title club that becomes as local community hang-out for the West Indian community. It’s also the target of violence and racist police, led by Sam Spruell’s PC Pulley, who are constantly raiding Frank’s establishment making it impossible for him to do business. The community circles around Frank, joined by young Black Panther activist Altheia Jones, played by Black Panther’s Letitian Wright. They eventually decide to protest, which leads to a conflict with the police, and of course, Frank and the other black people at the otherwise peaceful march end up having to go to court to defend themselves.

Since I’ve already reviewed the movie – and you can read that review at the link above – I won’t go too much further, but honestly, if you saw and enjoyed The Trial of the Chicago 7, you need to see McQueen’s film, which in my opinion, handles history that’s far tougher and is far less known in the States in a similarly brilliant way.  I’m a little bummed that being a part of an “anthology” that isn’t getting a theatrical release, we’re not going to hear Mangrove discussed until next year’s Emmys, I assume, but it’s some of McQueen’s best work with an incredibly engaging ensemble cast that keeps you invested for the entire two hours. (The next two chapters, Lovers Rock and Red, White and Blue will be on Amazon Prime Video on November 27 and December 4 respectively.)

(Also, I will have an interview with filmmaker Steve McQueen over at Below the Line very soon.)

Since I’ve already reviewed Mangrove, I’m going to go with Darius Marder’s SOUND OF METAL (Amazon Original) this week’s “Featured Flick.” This is a movie that I feel like I’ve been hearing a lot about over the past few months but actually, it’s one of three movies in this week’s Weekend Warrior that premiered over a year ago at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. Riz Ahmed from The Night Of and Nightcrawlers plays Ruben Stone, drummer in a loud touring metal band with his girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke), but Ruben’s loud playing style is finally taking its toll, as he has practically lost all of his hearing. Unable to communicate with Lou or play, Ruben agrees to spend time in a camp for the deaf to learn how to survive without hearing where he’s kept in line by his tough counselor, Joe.

I assumed I’d like this movie because it takes place in the world of music, but it’s not really about the music. In fact, I was a little puzzled when my screener seemed to have subtitles stuck on, and I couldn’t figure out why that would be. Well, it certainly makes sense as the film goes along as Marder and his sound team start playing with the sound to give you some idea what Ruben is and isn’t hearing. It’s probably one of the more masterful uses of sound I’ve seen in a movie in quite some time.

And yet, it doesn’t do anything to take away from Ahmed’s amazing performance as a young musician who has issues with violence and addiction and frustration with the fact he can no longer hear Lou. At first, Ruben looks into possibly getting some sort of hearing aids although the surgery needed so that he could hear again would cost upwards of $40,000, which is money he doesn’t have. He agrees to go into the camp where he finds himself in sign language class with a group of far younger kids. Ruben obviously has a hard time adjusting to his new environment, especially since it separates him from Lou and the outside world.

It’s interesting to note that the original story is from Derek Cinafrance, who is a masterful storyteller in his own right, and who co-write Place Beyond the Pines with Marder, which may be how it arrived on Marder to make as his directorial debut. And what a directorial debut it is! Even once you admire the brilliant storytelling and pacing of the film, you watch Ahmed’s performance and realize that this actor who we’ve known is talented for quite some time can still blow us away by playing a character so different from himself. It’s a jaw-dropper of a performance at times, but Cooke and

I really don’t want to say too much more about the plot from there, because Marder really has weaved an interesting for journey through coming to terms with his deafness. Sure, there may be more than a little bit of comparisons to make with Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, which was one of my favorite movies the year it came out, but that may just be because they’re both movies involving drummers, but that’s where the comparisons begin and end, because Marder’s film is just such an emotional journey where you can feel for and understand Ruben every step of the way even when he’s doing things that seem counter-productive to his rehabilitation.

You may think you know where Sound of Metal is going, but you’d be very wrong, and it in fact leads to an ending that is probably one of the more powerful and emotional ones I’ve seen this year. There’s no question in my mind that Sound of Metal and particularly Ahmed and some of Marder’s crew will be in serious talks for awards in the new year.

Anyway, Sound of Metal will be in select theaters on Friday, maybe some drive-ins, too, although I’m not sure all the incredible sound work will work in that environment necessarily. Either way, it will be on Prime Video on December 4, and I hope you’ll make an effort to see it however way you can. It should be able to quite readily get into my top 10 for the year.

Also very good is Aneesh Chaganty’s thriller RUN (Hulu), the follow-up to Chaganty’s Searching from a few years back, which will be available on Hulu starting Friday. It stars Sarah Paulson from every Ryan Murphy everything as Diane Sherman whose daughter Chloe (Kiera Allen) is born with all sorts of maladies. 17 years later, Chloe is a teenager and ready to possibly leave the nest and go off on her own despite her illnesses that keeps her wheelchair-bound, but she starts noticing her mother behaving oddly and giving her a new medication that makes her suspicious.

While Chaganty’s previous film Searching used a clever and innovative method of telling a story, all from a laptop screen, he decided to take a more traditional approach to this “empty nester thriller” (for lack of a better spoiler-free description) that effectively mixes Hitchcock with a movie like Misery. With that latter reference, you might immediately assume you know where every beat of Run may be going, especially when it becomes obvious that Paulsen’s character is one that will do anything to keep her daughter rom going off on her own and leaving her behind.

As much as I hate comparing Chaganty to M. Night Shyamalan, only because they’re both of Indo-American descent, but they both decided to take a similar career path in terms of using twisty thrillers as their calling card and impressed early in their careers. Similar to Shyamalan, Chaganty has created a well-crafted thriller that manages to keep you on the edge of your seat while never slowing down, and it also doesn’t try to hit you over the head with twists as Shyamalan sometimes does.

That said, Run does indeed have a pretty major twist that may or may not help endear those to what they’ve seen up until to that point, but that’s always the danger when you try to turn a genre on its ear, and Chaganty’s film does get into some crazier and crazier places as it goes along.  A lot of that comes down to Paulson, who is playing an absolutely insane crazy, but kudos go out to the young Ms. Allen who was quite good, and honestly, I never realized that she actually used a wheelchair in real life.

I’m a little bummed Run missed its opportunity to find a theatrical audience, because it’s very much the kind of movie that would be fun to watch with others.  I’m sure it’ll get seen, and Chaganty will continue to do interesting things as a filmmaker. I know, maybe this was one of my lamer reviews, but you know what? If you want to pay me to write them, I’ll put more effort into it. :)

You can read more about this movie in my interview with Chaganty over at Below the Line a little later.

One of the nicer surprises of the week was director Nick Sarkisov’s EMBATTLED (IFC Films), which I didn’t have very high expectations of, mainly since it was another MMA drama, this one about a father and son, rather than being about brothers. Also, about a decade ago, I might be a little hesitant to watch a movie starring either Stephen Dorff and Elizabeth Reaser, because they’ve both made a lot of bad movies… but this is not one of them. Dorff plays Cash Boykins, one of the most successful MMA fighters on the circuit, who is trying to reconnect with his estranged 18-year-old son Jett (Darren Mann) by training him while staying away from his ex-wife (Reaser) or their other son Quinn (Colin McKenna) who has a learning disability.

If you’ve read that far, you may already think you know where this is going, because let’s face it, there have been way too many boxing and fighting dramas that generally used the same techniques and plot devices. Heck, just a few weeks away, we got Jungleland, which was a very rare case of a movie that was able to surpass its overused genre. Oddly enough, Embattled is now the second decent fight movie in a matter of weeks.

If I may address the Stephen Dorff in the room, this is easily one of the actor’s best performances in many years, possibly since Ric Roman Waugh’s Felon. Dorff plays Cash as just such a despicable villain in terms of his racist attitude and the abusive way he treats his sons and his current wife Jade (Karrueche Tran). Even more impressive is Mann, who holds his own both in and out of the ring. The movie really is about the conflict that dates back to a violence incident between them that eventually forced Jett’s mother to split with Cash. Even with the focus being so much on Cash and Jett, Reaser is quite good as we watch her trying to get her life together by dating Quinn’s wheelchair-bound teacher, played by Donald Faison.

I really wasn’t familiar with Sarkisov as a producer, but this is another impressive directorial debut this week.  In many ways, it feels like the film’s screenwriter David McKenna is getting back to his dramatic roots from writing American History X. I also kind of liked his adaptation of Blow with the late Ted Demme.

I’m not sure I necessarily believed the film’s last act, which turns into a high-profile Vegas grudge match between Jett and his father for a huge amount of money, but Sarkisov finds a way to end things on a high note despite the film frequently resorting to overused clichés, such as the tired training montage. Despite Embattled being a little predictable at times just by the nature of its genre, Sarkisov and his cast end up creating an unforgettable family drama that uses MMA merely as a jumping off point to far more interesting realms.

One of this week’s docs I was able to get to was Alexander Nanau’s COLLECTIVE, which is finally getting a digital and VOD release by Magnolia Pictures over a year after it debuted at the Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals. It begins with a massive fire in the Bucharest nightclub Colectiv in 2015 that leaves 26 people dead on the site but then 38 more of the burn victims died after the fact, leading to a huge inquest into the horrible condition of the city’s hospitals and whether government corruption could have led to some of the deaths of innocents.

Even though Collective has been in circulation for a while, I never really heard much about it, so I literally had no idea what it is about. While you might assume that it’s about this fire, and you may be shocked that there’s actual footage of the fire starting as a metal band played fairly oblivious to the fact that their pyro set it off. The real story takes place when a team of investigators, including Catalin Tolonta, a reporter from the Sports Gazette, learns that the dozens of deaths could be traced back to bacteria in the disinfectant used in the burn ward that had been diluted up to ten times, basically being ineffective in creating a sterile environment for the Colectiv victims.

Nanau uses a cinema verité style of documentary filmmaking that I’ve never been a huge fan of because it takes out the narration that’s often needed for context, especially in a case like this where we’re dealing with a foreign country which Americans might not be that familiar with. Listen, I know from the movie The Death of Mr. Lazrescu that I would never want to have a medical emergency in Romania (where I’ve been a few times)

Nanau’s film is a terrific investigative piece that follows three of the key players, the aforementioned reporter, the incoming and quite beleaguered Minister of Health, and one of the surviving victims, a model whose beauty is still evident despite losing limbs and being horribly scarred.  Following these three subjects, Nanau and his editor was able to weave an intricate journey to find answers for why so many innocents died within the Bucharest hospital system. More than once, I was pleasantly surprised that Nanau was able to have his cameras present during important conversations between the minister and others about what to do about the corruption. The sad part is that the Minister’s hopes for change rely heavily on an election similar to the one we just had in America. In that case, it results in what might have happened if Trump won reelection in terms of dashing many hopes, including the whistleblowers who come forward to call those responsible to task.

I know that Collective won’t be for everyone, not just because it’s a foreign language doc i.e. two strikes against it but seeing how much worse things are in other countries, might help you appreciate our own medical system, which is constantly being put at risk as it gets overrun due to COVID. (It almost makes you wonder how Bucharest has been able to handle COVID, and if things have improved despite the overwhelmingly corrupt government.)

I wasn’t quite as bullish about Jesse Dylan’s SOROS (Abramorama), which has a live streaming premiere Weds. before going to virtual cinema this Friday. That may have been just because I wasn’t particularly familiar with the film’s subject George Soros or his principles, but also, I’m just not in the mood for a political doc that involves our country right this moment. Maybe I’ll check it out eventually, but this week, I just wasn’t up for it.

A couple of other docs I was hoping to get to but just ran out of time, include LEAP OF FAITH: WILLIAM FRIEDKIN ON THE EXORCIST (Shudder) and THE ORANGE YEARS: THE NICKELODEON STORY (Gravitas Ventures), both which are fairly self-explanatory.

This week’s WWII drama is Dan Friedkin’s THE LAST VERMEER (TriStar Pictures/Sony), a movie I went into rather cynically, because who keeps asking for these post-Holocaust movies that we seem to get almost like clockwork whenever the weather turns to awards season? This one stars Danish actor Claes Bang (Force Majuer, The Square) in his second movie about artwork of the year after The Burnt Orange Heresy. In this one, he plays Captain Jack Piller, the Dutch officially put in charge of discovering how a rare Vermeer painting ended up in Goebbels’ private collection, which brings him to Guy Pearce’s Han Van Meegeren, a painter and art enthusiast who seems to have connections to the Nazis but also has a secret Piller has to find out before Van Meegeren is hung as a traitor.

This ended up being another pleasant surprise for me this week, because as much of the beginning of the film feels a bit like the same-old same-old, where a troubled and conflicted man is given an assignment that turns into an obsession. In this case, it’s finding the owner of a rare and valuable Vermeer painting, but also trying to find out how the Nazis got their hands on it. As much as I enjoy the handsome and gregarious Bang in this type of role, it’s really Pearce’s performance as Van Meegeren that I found to be the most worthwhile among an ensemble cast that also includes Vicky Krieps (who incidentally will be at the Metrograph Friday night for a screening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread for digital members!)

As someone who isn’t necessarily an art lover, I still enjoyed this in a similar way as a film like Woman in Gold. In this case, it at least leads up to a spectacular last act showing Van Meegeren’s court trial, in which a massive rug is pulled out from under the viewer, while still leaving room for one more shocking twist after that.

More than anything else, I was most impressed by the fact that (like so many other films this week), The Last Vermeer is Friedkin’s directorial debut. It’s just such an involved and intricate story to tell, as well as one where I literally had to go online and check to see whether it was based on real history after watching it. (It is.)

From China comes VANGUARD (Gravitas Ventures) the latest pairing of filmmaker Stanley Tong and Jackie Chan, who made the first two Supercop movies together and whose film Rumble in the Bronx helped break Chan in the States 25 years ago. In this one, Chan plays the head of a global security agency called Vanguard hired to protect a wealthy businessman and his daughter, a mission that takes them across the globe and puts them against all sort of awful characters.

Where do I even begin with a movie that’s clearly very bad but has so many enjoyable and crazily entertaining at times that I can’t completely toss it into the trash as I might have liked? It starts out with such an amazing opening in London that’s more about seeing the rest of the cast: Yang Yang, Miya Muqi and Lu Ai (all huge Chinese superstars, I’m sure) in action while Chan sits back and lets the youngsters have all the fun. The opening section ends with a stretch limo drifting through the busy streets around (seemingly) Covent Garden.

From there, we meet the members of Vanguard for real, Yang Yang’s handsome Lei, the James Bond of the group, family man Kaixuan (Lun Ai) and the tough Mi Ya (Mugi) before they’re sent on their mission to retrieve and protect the daughter of the businessman we see trying to be kidnapped in that opening scene. The bad guys’ next target is the bubbly Fareeda (Ruohan Xu), activist and animal lover, something we see by her cavorting with some awful CG lions that make the ones in Favreuau’s The Lion King look good. After another fight and chase, she’s taken  hostage but so is Lei, so now Vanguard’s mission includes rescuing their teammate.

Vanguard’s biggest problems are two-fold, the first one being that the writing by Tong and presumably his daughter, Tiffany Alycia Tong, is terrible. Also, by trying to blend equal parts action with laughs, Tong throws everything but the kitchen sink at the viewer, and only some of it sticks.  Chan does have a few fun moments, although wisely, he leaves most of the heavy lifting to his younger cast. Even so, he’s still allowed to deliver a few of his trademark moves, a couple quips and his usual beloved charm. Other than Chan, I particularly liked Miya Muqi playing the type of tough, kick-ass martial arts heroine that’s a large part of why I love Chinese action movies.  

For the most part, the movie is full of all sorts of crazy stuff, not just the massive explosions and gun fights we’ve seen many times before, but other stuff that tries to take advantage of the movie’s global setting, some of which works and other parts, not so much. (Seriously, those CG animals in the African section of the movie are absolutely horrid and inexcusable! Did they run out of money before post-production?)

As much as Vanguard is a flagrant Mission: impossible rip-off that both Chan and Tong to be long past their sell-by dates, there’s an aspect to it that makes you think they realize this and just want to have one more absurd fling. Realizing this allows Vanguard to be way more entertaining than it ought to be. Vanguard will be in over 700 theaters this Friday, which might indeed be wider than every other movie I’ve mentioned put together.

Matthew Rankin’s quirky retro-comedy THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (Oscilloscope) was another interesting surprise this week, which I’m not even sure I can properly describe or tell you why you should or shouldn’t see it. (Let’s face it. I’m getting pretty burned out on doing so many reviews each week, especially when I’m getting zero feedback, which really sucks.) The film stars Dan Beirne as Mackenzie King, a young man who we watch on his rise to become the leader of Canada. As far as I can tell, it’s completely fictitious. (Nope. King really was Prime Minister... for a long time, too!)

Anyway, this is very quirky movie set in Canada that reminded me so much of Guy Maddin’s work, which I used to hate, especially the first time I saw The Saddest Music in the World, which Rankin’s film reminded me of. Fortunately, I’ve gotten over whatever issue I had with the weirdness of Maddin’s work, and this one was weird but also quite witty and had me openly laughing, especially a race for Prime Minister of Canada that had the contestants churning butter, writing their name in the snow with pee and yes, even clubbing baby seals.

The production design, while looking and feeling very low-fi, still has a very original look, and besides the obvious Guy Maddin reference, you might find yourself harking back to some of David Lynch’s earlier films, particularly Eraserhead or The Elephant Man. Sure, if there’s such thing as a movie being TOO weird, The Twentieth Century certainly can be seen as guilty of that, but to me, this was akin to a Canadian Monty Python that had me chortling even when I wasn’t even quite sure what was so funny.

Check out the trailer below and you can watch it virtually through your favorite arthouse with a list of venues here.

Chad Faust’s GIRL (ScreenMedia), which will be in select theaters this Friday and then on VOD on Tuesday, stars Bella Thorne and Mickey Rourke. Thorne plays a young unnamed woman who returns to her hometown with plans to kill her abusive father, only to learn that someone has beaten her to the punch, so she tries to find answers, going up against Rourke’s sheriff of the town and his son, played by Faust himself. I don’t have a ton to say about this movie because it’s a fairly bland indie that never improves from Faust showing up as a lethario Thorne encounters in a laundromat. As much as I enjoy watching Thorn throw an axe, it wasn’t as enjoyable as watching her kick-ass in last week’s Chick Fight.  (She does get into a fun tussle with Faust though, but that wasn’t enough to keep me interested.)

Now available on Disney+ is the LEGO STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL, which certainly has quite an onus over its head due to the quality of the LAST Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978. This one at least has the added entertainment value that comes with the LEGO creative team. Honestly, I had enough of Star Wars with last year’s The Rise of Skywalker, and I certainly didn’t have much interest in seeing more of these characters.

Also starting on Disney+ this week is the new Marvel series (and the only thing you’re getting from Marvel this year), Marvel’s 616, which is a series of documentaries about a variety of subjects, including women comic book creators (directed by Gillian Jacobs), one that follows Paul Scheer trying to find some lost Marvel characters to turn into the next hit (directed by Scheer) and what?!? There’s also one directed by Alison Brie, so that’s TWO of the six episodes directed by ex-Community members. But none by Danny Glover or Chevy Chase? Shame.

Other stuff that I just didn’t have time to get to, although there may be some true gems in there, who knows?:

Team Marco (Samuel Goldwyn) One Night in San Diego (1091) The Test and the Art of Thinking (Abramorama) The Truth is the Only Client (Gravitas Venturs) Ghosts of the République Murder on Middle Beach (HBO Documentaries) Crazy Not Insane (HBO Docs) Lowdown Dirty Criminals (Dark Sky Films) Donbass (Film Movement) In Wonder (Netflix)

Also, RJ Cutler’s well-received BELUSHI doc will hit Showtime on Sunday, and Sean Durkin’s thriller The Nest (IFC Films), which I reviewed a few months back, will hit VOD this week.

[acsversace-news]

Given how different the second season of American Crime Story is from the first, there’s really no use in comparing them. But I can’t help it (no one can?). The People v. O.J. Simpson was a big deal, initially so popular because of the nostalgia and the appeal of seeing re-creations of the “trial of the century” with John Travolta camping it up as Robert Shapiro, but then so celebrated for its breakout performances. Sterling K. Brown was a relative unknown before the series. Sarah Paulson saw a boost in her career, as well. The Assassination of Gianni Versace doesn’t have as well-known a story. Its ensemble isn’t so packed with famous names, with its characters or the actors portraying them. The follow-up series can therefore be surprisingly disparate. But it nevertheless does a good job of pulling us into what it offers.

Even if we can forgive the unfair expectations, though, Ryan Murphy’s latest production is a bit of a bait and switch. The first two episodes of The Assassination of Gianni Versace promise as much of an operatically tinged biopic about fashion icons Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) and sister Donatella (Penelope Cruz) as the circumstances of his murder. Ricky Martin is there and impresses as Gianni’s longtime partner, Antonio D’Amico. These are the promoted stars of the show, and yet they’re not in very much of the ensuing chapters. When they are on screen, they’re incredible and worth the wait, but the irregularity of their involvement is more shocking than any contrast against the O.J. installment of this anthology program. I’ve seen eight of the nine episodes (all that were shared with press in advance), and they’re a mixed bag.

The series might as well be called The Assassin of Gianni Versace because it’s almost completely about Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), the spree killer who finished out a five-murder run when he shot Gianni in the face outside the fashion designer’s Miami Beach mansion. After depicting the murder in the pilot then continuing with a bouncing-around of time to show a years-earlier meeting between Versace and Cunanan and also some of the police investigation, the series jumps rewinds in chronology with each episode. Watched all together, the structure is reminiscent of the movie Memento. It also plays like each chapter is a prequel to the one that came prior. Villains tend to get such backstories to reveal their fall from innocence to become the evil monster we were originally introduced to. But not in backward spurts.

So we follow in reverse as Cunanan’s other killings are shown. The middle episodes of the series are sort of like standalone vignettes presenting who the victims were and how they met their end. Episode three (“A Random Killing”) is particularly strong as its own thing, mostly thanks to how it plays as a character piece about Marilyn Miglin, wife of the murdered Lee Miglin, and for Judith Light‘s exceptional guest performance in the role. It’s the peak chapter of the show (so far) for me, even if it’s the first instance where we realize The Assassination of Gianni Versace isn’t going to actually have much Versace in it. And that it’s scarier, gorier, more akin to Murphy’s American Horror Story than the sort of legal drama we saw with The People v. O.J. Simpson. For the next few episodes, these are the tales of a true American psycho.

Spree killers can be interesting, though they aren’t always as compelling as serial killers or one-off murderers. The former lends to psychological character studies, the latter more to whodunits and courtroom procedurals such as the first American Crime Story season. Apologies for the spoiler, but there was no trial for Cunanan, as he took his own life before he could even be apprehended. So instead of moving forward in time and dealing with retroactive explanations and defensive claims in the form of legal proceedings a la The People v. O.J. Simpson, here we get an attempt to connect the dots that may provide some understanding of Cunanan’s bloodshed. Of course, most of what we see is, while not necessarily fictionalized, certainly full of speculation. Many scenes solely involve people not around to provide details.

The series never makes a definite case for the why. We will never know what exactly triggered Cunanan to kill two of his friends, one of his many closeted and married lovers, a random cemetery worker, and a fashion legend whom he may or may not have ever met beforehand. In its best-directed episodes (the Murphy-helmed first, as well as the three by Gwyneth Horder-Payton, including “A Random Killing”) The Assassination of Gianni Versace doesn’t even explicitly spell out everything going on from scene to scene, which is respectably trusting of the intelligence and attention of the audience. The real question explored, as it is in the journalistic and more pointedly titled book it’s based on, “Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U. S. History,” is how did authorities let one of the most wanted men in America elude capture so long that Versace’s slaying could occur.

That inquiry takes this story through a cloud of themes and contexts pertaining to being a gay man in the ’90s. Not unlike The People v. O.J.‘s essential addresses of race and gender as it informed and mattered to the case of O.J. Simpson and the arguments and conduct of the trial, The Assassination of Gianni Versace touches on how homosexuality was viewed and treated at the time and how Cunanan and his victims’ lives were impacted by the difficulties and dangers of both secrecy and disclosure (one episode even focuses on the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy), the HIV/AIDS scare and eventual life-saving drug cocktails that arrived mid-decade, and the plethora of stereotypes. But it’s all kind of tricky, as viewers shouldn’t come away focused on the story’s unavoidable alignment with the “depraved homosexual” trope.

Murphy manages to avoid crossing any lines that could generally offend, I think. Where he doesn’t succeed as well is in the attempt to integrate the Versaces’ story with that of Cunanan. Following the first two episodes, Gianni and Donatella, joined often by Antonio, only sporadically return to the narrative. Initially they’re welcome distractions, but their part in the whole thing becomes inconsistently significant. Weak parallels are made, including one very bad cross-cutting between the nervous coming-out moments of Gianni and another character. Other times it seems like the series is just taking us back to the Versaces randomly now and then because they’re famous persons of interest, there are real events that can be reenacted, and well, Ramirez, Cruz, and Martin are deservedly the primary draw.

As Cunanan, Criss is also pretty phenomenal and this should be a breakout performance for the lesser-known former Glee regular. But the character becomes less interesting over time  (especially during a binge-watch, as I experienced them). It’s a tough task to pull off such a mysteriously maniacal charlatan and have him carry a nine-week program so prominently without humanizing the monster too much nor depicting him as an unrealistically heightened caricature. Criss makes it work in spite of the character’s absence of complexity, coming off as a clever yet deranged Clark Kent who never felt loved enough to become a superman with his strengths rather than a villain. Still, the actor is overshadowed by Light and the uncannily perfect Ramirez and often unintelligible but magnificently committed Cruz.

Without seeing the finale, which is being held and which will surely return to the setting of the first two episodes (many viewers will suddenly be reminded after two months that Orange is the New Black‘s Dascha Polenco, as a police detective on the case, once seemed to be one of the stars) I can’t make a call on the series as a whole. But even halfway in it was clear that The Assassination of Gianni Versace is an uneven and sometimes disappointing take on this true-crime story. But as usual with Murphy’s shows, there is enough good to outweigh the bad. They’re mainly watchable for their casting and slew of standout performances — this one even slips Cathy Moriarty in for a bit role and Aimee Mann gets a nice cameo. And the attention to detail in the production design here will make you feel like you’re literally going backwards in time with the narrative.

It’s also worth remembering that these series are never perfect. Even The People v. O.J. Simpson has tons of flaws but might be misremembered as being more substantial than it is if you also saw the documentary O.J.: Made in America around the same time (perhaps all of these true story based anthology shows could use an unaffiliated but complimentary documentary accompaniment). Of course, they also tend to be more fun. The Assassination of Gianni Versace is dark without the camp and levity that fans are likely to anticipate. Whether it will manage to keep most viewers tuning in anyway, I don’t know. But I recommend at least watching the fantastic first three episodes.

[vagaries-and-caprices-blog]

Notes on the Hugh Dancy oeuvre: “Martha Marcy May Marlene” (2011)

Throughout the entire evolution of conspicuous expenditure, whether of goods or of services or human life, runs the obvious implication that in order to effectually mend the consumer’s good fame it must be an expenditure of superfluities. In order to be reputable it must be wasteful. […] A standard of life would still be possible which should admit of invidious comparison in other respects than that of opulence; as, for instance, a comparison in various directions in the manifestation of moral, physical, intellectual, or aesthetic force. Comparison in all these directions is in vogue today; and the comparison made in these respects is commonly so inextricably bound up with the pecuniary comparison as to be scarcely distinguishable from the latter. This is especially true as regards the current rating of expressions of intellectual and aesthetic force or proficiency; so that we frequently interpret as aesthetic or intellectual a difference which in substance is pecuniary only.

Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899)

“[Martha] is overtly questioning the track that he and his wife are on, which is [an] aspirational, middle-class lifestyle of trying to hold a job together and earn some money, and get the kind of house in the country. I mean, it’s all pretty reasonable, really, and she just stands up to their face and says, ‘What’s the point? It’s meaningless.’ And it drives him crazy. One of the things I liked about Ted is that under the surface there’s a lot going on […] you’re never quite clear of his motives. He has very mixed feelings about this young, attractive girl who has suddenly arrived in his home, not as clear cut that he is attracted to her, but something is bubbling away. She just touches a nerve in him and it sends him a little bit over the edge in that one moment.” –Hugh Dancy

Screen Team Media, interview of Hugh Dancy about Martha Marcy May Marlene, October 18, 2011

“Martha Marcy May Marlene” is a disturbing and thought-provoking movie about coercion and how easily politeness can veer into violence: in a cult, in society in general, in the company of loved ones and family. It shows what happens to an individual who struggles against coercion in all its forms.

Sean Durkin’s directing and writing are excellent. Elizabeth Olsen, as Martha, brings just the right mix of youthful sullenness, fear, and internal strength. John Hawkes and Maria Dizzia as the cult leaders, Patrick and Katie, are creepy and brilliant. Hugh Dancy and Sarah Paulson, as Ted and Lucy, tenderly and painfully portray a self-satisfied, middle-class couple reacting to Martha’s challenge to everything they hold dear.

The cult scenes are shocking and work so well that I was drawn in with queasy fascination. The cult rejects modern consumerist culture. They do not simply “épater la bourgeoisie,” but literally stab the bourgeoisie with their own (expensive) kitchen knives in their own (expensive) vacation homes.

What makes the movie so effective are Martha’s PTSD-like flashbacks to her time in the cult—her memory and reality start to blend. But, in addition, her reactions are to feeling pressure to conform even in the “normal” society of her own family. The movie encourages us to see parallels in coercion between the two “cults,” so to speak, and to join Martha in her critiques.

Katie: We switch off jobs each day so we all know how to do different things. Do you knit? Martha: No. I can learn though. Katie: Oh no, that’s okay, you’ll find your role. It takes time for people to find their role in a new family.

Lucy: Put this on. Martha: You’re kidding. Lucy: Martha, your clothes are disgusting, just try it. Martha: Why does it matter? Lucy: Because it feels good to put on something nice and comfortable.

Martha: Why is the house so big? Lucy: The house isn’t so big. Martha: It’s big for two people. Lucy: Well, yeah, but we like to entertain. Sometimes friends come up for the weekend, sometimes we have parties. It’s just nice to have space. Martha: So no one else lives here? Lucy: Of course no one else lives here.

Although Hugh Dancy’s part is supporting, the character is important to the story. Ted parallels Patrick welcoming Martha to the cult. Ted acts kindly and shows concern for Martha when she arrives, but when Martha refuses to act as he wants and questions the “system” he has set up, his mask of civility falls and he erupts in rage.

Ted: There are moments in my life when I would love to just go to France and exist. Martha: You can do that if you want to. Ted: It is not that simple. Martha: You know, it’s not your fault but you learned to measure success by money and possessions. It’s just not the right way to live. Ted: Not the right way to live? What is the right way to live exactly? Martha, what is the right way to live? Hmm? Is it, um, vanishing off the face of the Earth and not calling your family for two years or until they are worried sick about you? Is that the right way to live? Or is it, I don’t know, living without possessions until you actually need some and then turning up on our doorstep, where you know you can get some? Is that the right way to live? Lucy: Ted— Ted: No no no no no! You sit there lecturing us about our lives and so far I have not witnessed one sign that you have any values of your own. You should remember, Martha, that you are living under my roof and you are eating my food. And you should watch your mouth because you are rude. Martha: You don’t know anything about it!

Patrick similarly drops his mask of “love” when provoked. After shoving Martha against a wall, he releases her and pulls away:

Patrick: Maybe I asked too much from you too soon. I’ll expect less of you from now on, ok? Martha: I’m sorry. Patrick: No no, shhh. You’re my favorite and I won’t lose you. [He puts his hand on the inside of her thigh.]

This scene cuts back to Ted and Lucy’s house. Martha is dreaming about Patrick threatening her and stroking her thigh. We see a glimpse in the dark of Ted’s hand. It is not clear what he’s doing, but she reacts in fear and ends up kicking him down a flight of stairs. I find it irrisistible that no resolution or explanation is given. That is, Ted was about touch her, either to fondle her overtly or perhaps to adjust a blanket as a subconscious “excuse” to touch her. Sean Durkin refrains from telling us exactly what Ted was doing or if Martha’s response was appropriate. We are left to decide for ourselves.

This movie is one of my favorites of the past decade. Hugh Dancy’s performance is shocking and believable and simply excellent. I’m a big fan.

Gifs for the gif-inclined

ETA: I strongly recc reading Veblen.

[mexcine]

Glass (2019) review: I was conflicted about seeing Glass, having read a couple of spoilery, unflattering articles about it, but the huge disparity between critics’ opinions and public approval (36% vs. 76% right now on Rotten Tomatoes), and the film’s surprising box-office popularity (top film in the USA, 3 weeks’ running, although considering the competition…) tempted me, tantalised me, and finally pushed me over the edge.  It’s not bad.  I can more easily see why “the people” like it more than I can empathise with the (snobbish intelligentsia) critics who ravaged it online.

           To be fair, Glass does mostly follow the trend of series/sequels in which the filmmakers essentially say “screw you if you didn’t watch the other movie(s), we’re not explaining anything.”  I had seen (and mostly liked) Split (2017) but I’ve never watched Unbreakable (2000), and M. Night Shyamalan provides only a bit of back story to catch up viewers on either film. [Consequently, I was never sure exactly what Bruce Willis’s “powers” were.]  Is this a massive conspiracy to force audiences to buy DVDs or subscribe to streaming services in order to understand the latest installment in a series? I suspect it is, possibly conceived by the alien lizard people (excuse me, I think “reptilian humanoids” is their preferred mode of address) for some inscrutable but undoubtedly sinister purpose (such as bolstering film producers’ profits).

           The plot, in brief: the Beast is on the loose, abducting cheerleaders for future snacking. David Dunn is a low-level mystery vigilante (“The Overseer”) who stumbles onto the Beast’s lair. After a confrontation between the two, they’re both captured and sent to an institution where Dr. Staple attempts to convince them that they’re “normal” human beings, not “super-heroes” (frankly, I wouldn’t consider the Beast a “super-hero,” but apparently that’s the generic term for every “super” person, good or bad).  By the way, Elijah Price (Dunn’s nemesis from Unbreakable) is also in custody there. What’re the odds!?

           Glass takes its sweet time getting to the point but it wasn’t slow or boring.  The conclusion is sort of muddled and confusing but not frustrating or infuriating. James McAvoy has to share the screen with Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson (although Willis mostly disappears in the middle section of the movie and Jackson is catatonic until the last third or so), and his multiple-character gimmick is more limited this time: Split was essentially McAvoy’s acting show-reel (as if he needed one), whereas in Glass he mostly shifts between two or three characters, often so rapidly that it’s a bit difficult to realise who he is before he switches again.  Still, McAvoy is great and Samuel L. Jackson is also good, when he finally wakes up. Sarah Paulson’s Dr. Staple is more or less a one-note character, but she’s sincere enough.

           It’s interesting that Shyamalan was not only able to bring back McAvoy, Jackson, and Willis (alright, Willis probably wasn’t too busy), but also got Anya Taylor-Joy (Casey from Split), Spencer Treat Clark and Charlayne Woodard (Dunn’s son and Elijah’s mother from Unbreakable) to repeat their roles from the first two films of the trilogy.  They’re all still working actors so it’s not that remarkable, but it is a nice touch.  Casey’s affection for Kevin (aka the Beast, aka Patricia, Dennis, etc., etc.) is a bit puzzling, but not a major problem: Glass is a pseudo-“comic book movie” so coincidences, plot holes, and motivational mysteries are par for the course.

           One aspect of Glass that doesn’t hold up so well is the insistence on drawing some sort of meaning or relevance from comic books and applying this to “explain” the events of the film.  This is apparently a hold-over from Unbreakable, but just because Elijah equates comics and reality doesn’t mean Casey, Dr. Paulson, Dunn’s son, Elijah’s mother, etc. need to buy in to this unified theory of superheroes, and the comic book shop scenes are sort of silly.

           Technically, Glass is slick and the effects are satisfactory.  There’s one scene during the final confrontation in which the Beast lopes across a grassy field like an ape, and looks remarkably like “the Beast” from X-Men (at least, the comics I remember from the late Sixties/early Seventies).  Considering McAvoy’s recurring role as Professor X in various X-Men movies, this is sort of an in-joke.

           So, as much as I like to tout my iconoclastic credentials, in this case I’ll side with the majority, rather than those nattering nabobs of negativism (film critics): Glass is generally entertaining.

[mrmichaelchadler]

Gotti

My wife and I have been watching “American Crime Story: The People vs. OJ Simpson” (second time for me, first for her), and I’ve been impressed by its depth and quality all over again. One thing that's notable on a repeat viewing is the ensemble performers who fell a bit under the shadow of Emmy winners Sarah Paulson, Courtney B. Vance, and Sterling K. Brown. In particular, John Travolta is fantastic, finding just the right balance of old-school bravado and increasing insecurity in his portrayal of Bob Shapiro. There’s a bit of Shapiro’s arrogance in Travolta’s turn as John Gotti in “Gotti,” but that’s all that it shares with the FX series. There may one day be a great movie made about John Gotti. This one ain’t it.

Directed by Kevin Connolly—yes, “E” from “Entourage” directs movies now—“Gotti” is a film without a voice. It pulls from pop culture representations of mobsters to create a Frankenmob movie. Jumping back and forth between eras of Gotti’s life, moving from his son’s perspective (it’s based on a book by John Jr.) to the old man’s, and cluttered with enough clichéd lines of dialogue to play “Mob Jargon Bingo,” “Gotti” has zero POV. Well, its POV is basically someone who watched too much “Goodfellas” and “The Sopranos,” and then saw a Discovery Channel special about Gotti that they barely remember. 

The trend of the day may be to end biopics with photos of the real-life subjects of the film, but Connolly chooses to open with a montage of Gotti photos and clips, set to a new song by Pitbull, who contributes multiple songs, as well as some of his hits, to the movie. Because when someone thinks of John Gotti, they think Pitbull, of course.

“Gotti” then bounces around through greatest hits of Gotti’s ascendancy in the mafia, structured around a conversation an older Gotti is having with his son, who is considering taking a plea in a case that he’s currently facing. Dad is an old-fashioned mob boss, and the thought of taking a plea is just below considering ratting on the list of Cardinal Sins. You don’t give into the government. You always keep fighting. Never let them win. And Gotti notoriously beat so many charges that he became known as the Teflon Don.

How Gotti went from a soldier in the mob to the King of the organization is loosely sketched in over the course of “Gotti,” but it’s all just an excuse for the kind of awful mob dialogue that reminded me more of the satirical “Mafia!” then anything else. Gotti says things like “There is no choice—there is only what you do,” and speaks about manhood and duty so much that it becomes numbing long before it’s over. It just wallows in the clichés, and so this portrayal of Gotti never feels threatening, even when he warns someone that he will “park a bus up your ass fucking sideways.”

As if he knew there wasn’t really a movie here as much as some nice outfits and bad Joisey accents, Connolly layers his film with music choices, including James Brown, Dean Martin, The Escape Club, Duran Duran, and a lot of Pitbull. It’s a crutch of filmmaking to over-rely on music, and even the crutch here is annoying. It’s not just a movie with too many music choices, but the choices aren’t quite right either. 

Gotti resided over a tumultuous time in the history of the mob, and how he got there and the way he wielded his power could make for an interesting film. It would have to be one that focused more tightly on a portion of his life, or possibly turned into a series. And it would have to be one that relied less on music, makeup, and clichés than “Gotti,” which never gets as deep into the life of its title character. He may have been a murderer, but even Gotti deserved better than this.

This review is based on the version of "Gotti" that screened last month at the Cannes Film Festival. 

from All Content https://ift.tt/2ykAQqu

[stokan]

The 20 Best Things of 2016

Fun fact: Many good things actually happened in the year 2016. It’s true! It wasn't all death and Trump, although as you’ll see, those two factors hang heavy over even the best of things. But just like every year, 2016 still managed to produce its fair share of great art, cultural triumphs, and viral delights. Leaving out, obviously, things from 2016 that it seems like I’ll probably love but have yet to experience (OJ: Made in America, Search Party, 20th Century Women, Fences, etc.), and TV shows I’ve already written about in years past (OITNB, Transparent, You're the Worst, Veep, etc) here are my top 20 favorite things from 2016, listed in no particular order:

1. Beyonce - “Formation” video

How upset old white people were about this should give you some idea of just how great it is.

When I was growing up, the biggest music video from the biggest female pop star of the day involved her dancing around suggestively in a Catholic school girl outfit. Trump may have won the election, but progress still remains undefeated.

2. Kendrick Lamar’s Grammys Performance

(Of course this isn't anywhere on the internet for me to link to. Because Neil Portnow.)

Kendrick’s performance was the performance that Kayne always thinks he is giving. It’s a performance that made everyone else who took the stage on Music’s Biggest Night seem like talent show contestants.

I don’t want to tell artists how to use their fame, but this is how they should use their fame.

3. Last Week Tonight - #MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain

SPOILER ALERT: He didn't make Donald Drumpf again. In fact the viral success of this piece and lack of any resultant effect on Trump whatsoever does raise some big questions about the effectiveness of comedy in actually changing anyone’s mind about anything in 2016. But yet, like death from a thousand paper cuts, it definitely drew a little blood. And even though I really wish John Oliver had stuck with guns and only referred to Trump as Drumpf for the rest of the year, it was still a more thorough and effective attack ad than anything the Clinton campaign managed to put together, and that was basically their whole job. John Oliver can never be president, but the world is going to be a better place as long as he keeps trying to help decide who will be.

Also, says everything about 2016 that this piece now feels like it came out ten thousand years ago.

4. La La Land

Hey, remember joy? And love? And having hopes and dreams? Well La La Land sure does! The best and worst thing you can say about it is that it’s a pre-Trump movie. Maybe the last one ever in fact. But for my money, Damien Chazelle’s quest to Make Musicals Great Again is exactly the tonic we need right now. And it seems fitting the Oscars after the death of Debbie Reynolds are going to be headlined by a colorful and happiness-inducing musical about show business, complete with its own dream ballet. Sometimes the best way to reinvent an art form is to just do it the same way its always been done, only better and at the right time.

5. Olympic Swimming

When the Olympics began I barely cared. I was raised on the Olympics, but in 2016 there’s so much else going on it felt like maybe time has passed the Olympics by. And then the swimming started. And Ledecky destroyed all challengers. And Phelps proved that calling him the greatest swimmer of all time is still underrating him. And Simone Manuel made history. And Lochte Lochted. And Anthony Ervin spun an all-time Olympic athlete backstory into Olympic gold. And for a week there was nothing in the world more compelling than watch people swim laps in a pool.

So turns out the Olympics are the Michael Phelps of sporting events - the second you think they’ve slipped a bit is when they have you right where they want you.

6. LVL Up - “Pain”

Point: Rock and roll is dead

Counterpoint: “Pain” by LVL Up

7. Stranger Things

I hate the 80s. I hate supernatural shows and horror-based shows and “genre” shows in general. I hate homage as the starting place for a work of art. I hate culture’s obsession with nostalgia and youth. And yet I loved Stranger Things. It felt like nothing else on TV while feeling like so many other things all at once. It’s the show Lost wishes it could have been, and what JJ Abrams wishes he had made instead of Super 8.

Also: I hate that there’s going to be a season two. I hate that dialogue around the show seemed so #TeamBarb when clearly any sane right-thinking person is #TeamNancy all the way. I preemptively hate all the imitators Stranger Things is going to spawn. And I hate the Stranger Things backlash that’s inevitably coming and coming hard. But right now, in this moment, let’s all embrace a wonderful television ride and not worry about the demigorgons in the woods coming to put slugs in its mouth.

#KeepHawkinsWeird

8. Flossie Dickey

Sometimes you find true love where you least expect it. Like in an interview with a 110-year woman at a nursing home.

9. Sam Donsky on The Ringer

(Speaking of soul mates…)

In the age of Trump it’s more important than ever that we have writers brave enough to ask the tough questions. Like: Who would win the Oscar for Best Baby? What is the best night any celebrity has ever had at Madison Square Garden? And why does David Benioff always thank his wife by her full name?

From analyzing the Kim/Kayne/Taylor tapes like they're the Zapruder film, to asking 74 questions about a film no one saw or liked, 2016 was the year Sam Donsky officially made himself into this generation’s Woodward and Bernstein, if Woodward and Bernstein were mostly known for dissecting dumb pop culture on the internet. We may never fully understand why Trump won, but, also, what’s up with Chris Pratt’s vests?

10. Black-ish - “Hope”

A perfect piece of writing and a perfect argument for the continued existence of network TV.

That being said though, 40 years ago this would be a classic TV episode people would talk about for generations. Now, it didn't even get nominated for an Emmy. Maybe network TV is just beyond saving.

11. The People vs. OJ Simpson

It’s almost a cliche at this point to point out how many societal issues the OJ Simpson case touched on, but watching this miniseries unfold was a great reminder that looking at the the past is usually the best vehicle for exploring the present. To choose just one example, the scene where the jurors argue over what to watch on TV is a perfect encapsulation of how something like a Trump victory could some day be possible. And if Marcia Clark isn't a perfect Hillary Clinton avatar then I don’t know who is. My only complaints about a perfect eight hours of television are that it wasn't longer and that Sarah Paulson and Courtney B. Vance aren't eligible for Oscars.

12. Samantha Bee’s Donald Trump Conspiracy Theory

Look, I don't want to say that Full Frontal with Samantha Bee is the best and most important show on TV. That is has the best joke writers in the business. That it has the righteous anger and indignation that this year called for. That it’s going to be our guiding light for the next four years. And that it’s proof that giving The Daily Show to Trevor Noah was one of the dumbest decisions in recent television history. All I’m saying is that some people are saying that, and who am I to disagree? If I was going to make claims that outlandish, I guess the first pieces of evidence I would direct you to are this already iconic Donald Trump conspiracy and the show’s Harriet Tubman segment. But I’m not one to make accusations about things using facts and evidence. I’m no expert; I’m just a guy. A guy standing in front of samanthabee.com asking it to to love him.

13. David Bowie - “Lazarus” video

The ultimate mic drop.

They say Native Americans used to make use of every part of the buffalo. David Bowie was like that, only the buffalo was his life.

14. SNL

“Farewell Mr. Bunting”

Having enough trust in your audience and your vision to attempt this sketch is super inspiring. Getting people in 2016 to wait through two and a half minutes of build up in a viral video before it pays off feels like a miracle. And getting the feeling back in my face when I finally finish laughing at this is going to be really great.

“Black Jeopardy” This is what comedy can do when its at it’s best. It cuts to truths about America more clearly and cleanly than 1,000 think pieces ever could. Are comedy sketches eligible for the Nobel Prize in Literature now?

“Hillary Clinton/Hallelujah” And this is what comedy can do when it’s not comedy at all. When historians 200 years from now want to know what the days just after the election of Donald Trump felt like all they need to do is watch this. The best thing SNL has ever done.

15. Songs That Made Me Unsure Whether I Should Be Sad, Dance, Or Both

Christine and the Queens - “iT”

I have absolutely no idea what this song is about. All I know is it sounds like the feeling of being alive. Between this song and Marion Cotillard’s eyes the French really continue to have the whole beautiful sadness thing figured out.

Eleanor Freiberger - “My Mistakes” The best Rilo Kiley song of 2016. The world can change however it wants; as long as it keeps giving me new versions of the exact song I’m totally good.

Mike Posner - “Took a Pill in Ibiza” The exact opposite of me is an EDM-influenced song about taking drugs in a nightclub in Ibiza. Yet here we are. Turns out that existential melancholy translated into Douche from the original Neurotic Intellectual is still pretty damn relatable. And yes I realize this song came out in 2015, but this will always be the sound of 2016 to me.

16. Moonlight

Moonlight feels like a miracle. That a serious drama without any name stars about a poor, gay, black man coming of age could be made at all, yet alone breakthrough into the popular consciousness. That a cast this natural and flawless could be found, like an album where every song that comes on makes you go “no THIS one is my favorite!”. That there are two different sets of three actors so similar and so good that when I see them together doing press it hurts my brain because I can’t process that they were not ACTUALLY the same person at three different ages. That two people making small talk at a table in a diner could have a whole audience on the edge of their seats. That a no-name director with one prior little-seen credit could create the most powerful and well-made movie of the year. None of these things seems possible or plausible, and yet they're all true. This movie is a miracle. And its success gives me hope. To quote critic Dana Stevens, in the pitch-black year of Trump, Moonlight was a “crack in the wall that allowed light to shine through”.

17. Atlanta

In 2016, what even is TV? It’s basically anything now. And it’s everything. It’s whatever it wants to be. And no artist has yet risen to meet the challenge and possibility of our post-Louie world better than Donald Glover has. In 2016 Atlanta is TV, and TV is Atlanta. There are no rules. There is only what you can dream up.

What will season two of Atlanta be? It could be literally anything and no one would bat an eye.

18. Chance the Rapper - Coloring Book

Chance the Rapper is so millennial it hurts. Chance the Rapper definitely has strong feelings about safe spaces and Bernie Sanders. Chance the Rapper has never even considered doing something ironically. Chance the Rapper makes Lin-Manuel Miranda look like a cynical pessimist. Hell, Chance the Rapper named himself Chance the Rapper. And as a millennial, Chance the Rapper is the future.

And the future sounds amazing.

The future is like if Old Kanye had been raised on new Kanye and was actually good at rapping. (As the old saying goes: every generation gets the Late Registration it deserves) The future is like if Picasso painted with emojis. The future is earnestness being the new aggression. The future is Future being the past.

Hip-hop is dead, long live hip-hop.

19. “A Closer Look” on Late Night With Seth Meyers

I almost left this reoccurring segment off my list of the best of 2016 because it’s become such a constant part of my life that I assumed it had been around longer than just this year. Who knew when Jon Stewart retired that the new iteration of The Daily Show would be called Late Night With Seth Meyers? Or as I call it: Essential.

20. Revisionist History Podcast

Facts and knowledge really took a beating in 2016, but turns out both are still great if you just re-examine them rather then throw them out all together. Perhaps looking more deeply into our assumptions about the world can help us better understand human nature and the reality we all share. Who knew?

Of everything I experienced in 2016 this podcast is the thing I reference most frequently. I’m fun at parties.

[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND September 13, 2019  - ONE CUT OF THE DEAD, FREAKS, HUSTLERS, THE GOLDFINCH and more

We’re well into September, and the Toronto Film Festival is slowly grinding to a halt as I continue to sulk for missing so many movies that I won’t be able to see until November or December. At least I’ll be at the New York Film Festival this month, and there’s a little bit of overlap there.

Besides the wide releases, there’s some really good limited releases this week, but I want to focus specifically on three movies that played at the What the Fest?! in New York City back in March:

The first of them is the Japanese zombie horror-comedy ONE CUT OF THE DEAD from director Shin'ichirô Ueda, which Shudder is releasing and streaming after it played a number of festivals including last year’s Fantastic Fest. What can I say about this really innovative film? I guess I can tell you that it’s about a zombie attack on the crew of a zombie movie, but that wouldn’t be the whole story. Honestly, it’s best to go in not knowing too much about it, other than it’s not your typical zombie movie. The complex intricacies of what Ueda does with his cast makes this one of my favorite recent zombie-related movies since the similarly great Korean film, Train to Busan. One Cut of the Dead will be released in New York (at the IFC Center) and in L.A. on Friday but then it will get special one-night screenings next Tuesday (Sept 17) in other citiesbefore premiering on the Shudder streaming channel sometime down the road. And if you’ve been wondering why everyone who sees this movie keeps yelling “Pom!,” well you’ll just have to see the movie for yourself.

Another great movie from “What The Fest!?” is Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein’s FREAKS (Well Go USA), which will open a little wider than some of the other limited releases this weekend. It stars relative newcomer Lexy Kolker as Chloe, a young girl living in a world where those with powers are considered “freaks,” shunned and captured for experiments. Her father (Emile Hirsch) has been keeping her in hiding, but as Chloe gets older, she has questions about her mother, and also, there’s that weird ice cream man (Bruce Dern) who seems to know about her. Freaksis really a fantastic film from these filmmakers, Lipovsky having directed Leprechaun: Originsa few years back. I was truly impressed with Kolker’s performance opposite much more experienced actors, and Lipovsky/Stein find a way to build up the story to a satisfying climax.

I’ll have an interview with the directors over at The Beat later this week, as well.

I also want to call attention to DEPRAVED  (IFC Midnight), the new film from director Larry Fessenden, which is his take on the Frankenstein mythos with David Call playing Henry, an army medic who decides to build a human being called Adam (played by Alex Breux), but finds his invention hard to control as Adam remembers his past. Another “What the Fest?” vet (actually, this year’s opening night film), Depraved also stars Joshua Leonard, Chloë Levine and Ana Kayne, and it’s so nice to have Larry back making movies. You can read more with Larry in my interview over at The Beat.

And then of course, there are this week’s wide releases, STXfilms’ HUSTLERS and Warner Bros’ THE GOLDFINCH, which I’m hoping I get to see one or both by the time this posts. If so, I’ll have review of both of these movies below. (Note: I did get to them, and they’re both interesting movies in that neither of them was anything like I expected.)

I’m really curious about HUSTLERS (STXFilms), because it’s the third film from director Lorene Scafaria, whose previous films, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World and The Meddler, I quite enjoyed, mainly because they featured actresses I like. I can take or leave Jennifer Lopez, but I genuinely love Constance Wu, and I really want to see what she can do in a more dramatic role. And then, of course, there’s the premise of New York strippers scamming a bunch of sleezy rich men out of their money, which is based on a New York Magazine article. That’s just one of those great pitches that makes me think many will be interested in checking it out this weekend, and it might do better than expected.

Mini-Review: I honestly think Hustlers is going to be an interesting litmus test for whether people who usually frown or turn their noses at the very real adult entertainment business that permeates big cities and small towns alike will be able to look past the setting to appreciate it for the skillful crime-drama that it is.

The film begins in 2007 with Constance Wu’s Dorothy on her first day at a big New York City strip club where she has to deal with slimy Wall Street types and equally sleazy bosses who take a big chunk of her earnings. Things change when she meets Jennifer Lopez’s Ramona, the absolute queen of the strip club scene, which you can tell as you first watch her performing. Ramona knows the ropes and takes a liking to “Destiny” (Dorothy’s stripper name) enough to befriend her and give her some tips.

After a bit  more shenanigans explaining how things work in stripping, the story then cuts forward years later after Dorothy has had a child and is a single mother needing money. She returns to the club but business isn’t as good after 2008 as the Wall Street jerks aren’t as anxious to throw their money around. When Ramona reenters her life, the two of them come up with a scheme to drug their marks and then empty out their credit cards of money. It’s going well, and they’re getting away with it to the point where they need to expand.

Although Scafaria uses a fairly standard format to tell this story in the screenplay – basically having Constance Wu telling Julia Styles’ reporter the story as it plays out -- it’s the way she allows the story to unfold which allows the film to improve as it goes along. Sure, it’s a little predictable where and how things are going to go wrong, but the movie still works on quite a few levels beginning with the performances by Wu and J-Lo that a lot of people will be talking about later. When we first see Lopez dancing, she looks absolutely amazing, and it must be incredibly empowering for a former dancer now 50 years old to be able to get on stage with barely any clothes on and strut her stuff.

A lot of why the movie doesn’t come across as sleazy as it might otherwise (such as in the hands of a male director) is the way that Scafaria focuses so much on the friendship between Ramona and Dorothy and what happens as things start breaking down between them, especially when Dorothy starts growing a conscience. The rest of the mostly-female cast is great, although most of the men in the movie are depicted as such slimy and disgusting pigs, it’s hard to feel sorry for them either.

Hustlers is the type of movie that we wouldn’t blink if Scorsese or even producer Adam McKay had directed, but the fact that Scafaria can transition so smoothly from her light comedies to something so well-constructed is part of why the movie is so impressive.

I’m not sure if women who see this movie will rush out to take stripping classes in order to fuel their sense of empowerment, but Hustlers is a genuinely enjoyable film that tells a fascinating story and Scafaria should get full credit for making another movie this good.

Rating: 8/10

I don’t know nearly as much about THE GOLDFINCH (Warner Bros.) except that it’s based on a best-selling Pulitzer price-winning book by author Donna Tartt, and it has an insane cast that includes Ansel Elgort, Nicole Kidman and Jeffrey Wright. I know that reviews out of TIFF were not good, and I’m not sure it will find an audience even with the popularity of the book.

Mini-Review: I haven’t read The Goldfinch, and actually, I’m kind of glad I didn’t read it before seeing this John Crowley-directed movie, because it might have taken away from one of the main reasons I enjoyed it.

The basic premise is simple but the overall story and movie that tells the story is quite complex, maybe needlessly so, but if I didn’t know this movie was based on a beloved book, I could totally have guessed that was the case since so much of what happens in the movie is more literary than cinematic… though not necessarily in a bad way.

The story revolves around Theo Decker, played as a youngster by Oakes Fegley and about ten years older by Ansel Elgort. We meet Theo shortly after his mother was killed in an explosion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, after which he’s turned over to the wealthy Barbour family, his friend Andy’s mother overjoyed to bring Theo into their family of five. Just when things are going well, Theo’s real father (Luke Wilson) shows up and drags the boy back to his home in a desolate area outside Vegas with his white trash girlfriend (played by an unrecognizable Sarah Paulson). There, Theo makes a new friend in Boris (Finn Wolfhard), and the two of them get into trouble, smoking cigarettes, drinking and doing drugs. And then stuff happens.  

If you haven’t read the book, I’m not going to do a play-by-play on the plot, because SO MUCH happens in this movie, and that’s part of why it’s enjoyable because it’s such rich and dense storytelling ably pulled together by Brooklyn director John Crowley.

One of the things I will mention is the movie’s title “The Goldfinch” which is a priceless work of art that Theo takes from the Met after the explosion, and he holds onto it for years, for reasons we won’t learn until much later. Another piece of the puzzle is Jeffrey Wright’s Hobie, who restores antiques into convincing fakes. There’s also Pippa (Ashleigh Cummings), the granddaughter of Hobie’s business partner who also died in the explosion.

There is a way that these people connect together, and a reason why almost all of them have an important place in Theo’s journey, but there is absolutely nothing predictable about how many of these pieces will come together. To say that The Goldfinch is full of unexpected surprises would be an understatement.

I generally liked Oakes Fegley better as Theo than Ansel Elgort, but Finn Wolfhard quickly steals the movie as Theo’s eccentric friend, who returns later in the guises of Aneurin Barnard. Both pairs of actors make their portions of the film particularly interesting. In fact, I thought that Nicole Kidman probably brought the least to her role as Theo’s adoptive mother.

Filmed by Oscar-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins, the movie looks absolutely gorgeous, leaving little question why he is considered the master. Every actor and location looks amazing, and there’s a lot of variety in environments in which the story takes place. On top of that, the choices in music really helped me to enjoy this movie, even if it’s the choice of New Order to introduce Finn Wolfhard’s Boris, all dressed in black, to the rest of the score by Trevor Gureckis that helps bolster the film’s more dramatic moments.

Yes, the movie does feel long at times and maybe a little slow, but it’s also quite captivating because you never know where things are going, and everything is so unpredictable. You have to give props to screenwriter Peter Straughn for tackling such difficult material in such a fluid way. (I will mention that there’s at least one aspect of the film’s big plot twist that is almost impossible to believe, but I won’t ruin it.)

In my opinion, all of these seeming tangents that take Theo on this wild journey does pay-off with an ending that got me quite teary-eyed. Sure, it’s long at 2.5 hours but Theo’s story is a complicated one to tell, and it all adds up and pays off eventually.

Rating: 7/10

Amazon Studios has been advertising that Paul Downs Collaizo’s BRITTANY RUNS A MARATHON nationwide this Friday but that could mean anywhere between 500 and 1500 theaters or more. I hope it’s somewhere in the middle, as I’d like to see it make a play into the top 10 like The Peanut Butter Falcon did last weekend. It’s a terrific film and Jillian Bell is quite wonderful in it, oh, and if you haven’t read my interview with her, you can find that over at Next Best Picture. It’s a fun interview and a fun movie, so I hope people make an effort to check it out.

LIMITED RELEASES

One of the more interesting releases of the weekend is the Colombian film MONOS (Neon /Participant Media) from director Alejandro Landes that centers on a pack of wild gun-toting teenagers living on a mountaintop in the South American jungles where they run sort of wild but also are well-trained as a fighting unit. They actually have taken a hostage, a doctor played by Julianne Nicholson, who is just great in this role, continuing to show off how she’s one of the most underrated actresses working today. There’s definitely a “Lord of the Flies” feel to Landes’ film which has been submitted by Colombia as its Oscar submission for the newly-labelled “Best International Film Festival,” and I wouldn’t be surprised if it finds enough fans to get into the short-list, at least. Not sure about the nomination as this is already a tough year with high-profile submissions like the new Almodovar and Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite. Still, I think this will find its share of fans, and I can recommend it for its artistry more than as something you must rush out to see.

GKIDS’s latest animated release is ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE, based on the book by journalist Ricardo Kapuscinski that looks at the outbreak of civil war in Angola after being freed of its independence from Portugal in 1975. The autobiographical film follows  Kapuściński’s search for the rebel leader Farrusco through wartorn Angola, so this is very much an animated documentary similar to Waltz with Bashir. It will open in New York at the IFC Center and in L.A. at the Laemmle Glendale this Friday.

And then there’s Michael Tyburski’s THE SOUND OF SILENCE (IFC Films), which stars Peter Sarsgaard, an actor I generally like, as a “house tuner.” Basically, he goes into people’s apartments and find out what notes or tones are causing them anxiety or preventing them from sleeping. One of his clients is a woman, played by Rashida Jones, and they sort of have a thing going, but Sarsgaard’s character is so strange and the movie is so slow, I didn’t really get more than an hour into this before I gave up.  This was based on a short film called “Palimpsest,” and while “The Sound of Silence” is a much better title, this is a concept that probably works best as a short, since as a feature, it’s boring as fuck.

Another Friday the 13thhorror release is Scott Becks and Bryan Woods’ HAUNT (Momentum Pictures), which follows a group of friends who go into an “extreme haunted house” on Halloween in a night that turns deadly. Unlike the movies mentioned above, I feel that this really should have been held until next month, because it’s just going to get lost in the shuffle of all of the releases this weekend.

Since this column doesn’t post until Wednesday, I should probably mention that Rob Zombie’s new movie 3 from Hell will get a three-day wide release on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in about 500 theaters, each day offering another bonus. It’s a direct sequel to The Hell’s Rejects, a movie I actively hated, and this one is more of the same, so I can’t recommend it at all. I hated this movie, and it’s use of violence for entertainment. UGH. 

Let’s get to a few documentaries, a few of which I’ve seen...

Opening at the IFC Center is Michelle Esrick’s Cracked Up, a movie about “Saturday Night Live” vet Darrell Hammond and the history of childhood trauma he kept locked up for 40 years. I missed this at Doc-NYC last year but both Hammond and Esrick will be at the IFC Center Friday evening to answer questions.

Irene Taylor Brodsky’s Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements (Abramorama) opens at New York’s Landmark 57 Friday and in L.A. at the Lammle Royal on Friday, Sept 20, and it’s an interesting film for the director of Beware the Slenderman, an excellent doc from a few years back. It looks at three people dealing with deafness, a young boy, an aging grandfather and no less than Ludwig van Beethoven, their stories weaved together to explore what it means to be deaf.

I had mixed feelings on Liam Gallagher: As It Was (Screen Media), which will be in theaters this Friday, available via Digital Download Sept. 17 and on VOD platforms Oct. 8.  I saw and liked the Oasis doc Oasis: Supersonic a few years back, but Gavin Fitzgerald and Charlie Lightening’s doc focuses on the former Oasis frontman and his fall from grace after his very public feud with his brother Noel Gallagher put the spotlight on a singer who I personally feel is an egotistical prat… and he goes about proving that in every scene of this movie. The movie covers how the break-up of Oasis led to Liam immediately starting Beady Eye, which proved to be a failure before he decides to go solo. Maybe it isn’t a coincidence that this is being released a week before Gallagher’s new solo album “Why Me? Why Not.”

After playing last year’s Fantastic Fest and the recent Fantasia and BAMCInemaFest, Aaron Schimberg’s Chained for Life will be released at the IFC Center on Weds and at the Landmark Nuart in Los Angeles on Friday. The movie stars Jess Weixler as movie star Mabel, who has been slumming it in art-horror film being shot in a hospital opposite Rosenthal (Adam Pearson), a gentle young man with a severe facial deformity, as their relationship grows.

Elise Duran’s high-concept rom-com Can You Keep a Secret? (Vertical) is based on Sophie Kinsella’s novel and it stars the super-cute Alexandra Daddario as a New York woman who is having troubles in life and when turbulence hits her plane, she confesses all her secrets to her neighbor, who turns out to be the company’s CEO.

Next up is a bunch of odds and ends including some VOD specials. Opening in New York and L.A. is Larry Clarke’s comedy 3 Days with Dad (Unified Pictures), starring Tom Arnold who returns home to deal with his dying father. There’s also the Bollywood courtroom drama Section 375 (Reliance Entertainment), directed by Ajay Bahl.  Jim Gaffigan’s second movie of the year, American Dreamer (Saban/Lionsgate), co-written and directed by Derrick Borte (The Joneses), has him playing a ride-share driver who kidnaps the child of a drugdealer. It opens at New York’s Cinema Village Friday and in L.A. and VOD next Friday. There’s also Garrett Batty’s Out of Liberty (Purdie Distribution), and I’m not even sure what to say about Seth Prices’ Redistribution, opening at the Metrograph, except that it’s a “reflexive work on art and interpretation.” Make of that what you will…. Or just check out the weird trailer.

LOCAL FESTIVALS

On Thursday begins the Tribeca TV Festival, which will showcase some of the newest and most anticipated television shows of the fall season including ABC’s Bless This Messwith Lake Bell, Dax Shepard and Pam Grier in attendance; the Apple+ series Dickinson, starring Hailee Steinfeld and Jane Krakowski; the CBS series Evil; and much more. Click on the link above to see what’s going to be screening, but it’s a pretty impressive line-up if you’re an avid TV watcher.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

The Welcome To Metrograph: Redux series continues this weekend with Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966) and Fellini’s Amarcord (1973), while Late Nites at Metrograph  will screen Buñuel’s Belle du Jour (1967) and Playtime: Family Matinees  will screen Charlie Chaplin’s 1931 film City Lights.

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE BROOKLYN (NYC)

Monday night is Franc Roddam’s 1979 film Quadrophenia, based on The Who’s concept album, while this week’s “Tuesday Terror” is Dario Argento’s 1975 film Deep Red, which ironically, Italian rockers Goblin will be in town playing the score for LIVE at the PlayStation Theater on Friday in case you miss it at the Alamo. (Although tickets are obviously much more expensive for the concert.) Next week’s “Weird Wednesday” is the Rutger Hauer movie Split Secondfrom 1992.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Thursday will be a 40thAnniversary screening of Breaking Away with some of the cast in person, while Friday is a hockey double feature of Slap Shot  (1977) and Sudden Death  (1995). Saturday is a 70mm screening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, while Sunday is a double feature of The Godfather  (1972) and The Godfather Part II  (1974). Also Sunday, the George Lucas Family Foundation sponsors a screening of the 1919 silent film The Son-of-a-Gun (in 8mm!!!)with musical accompaniment, as well as some of Gilbert Anderson’s other shorts from the time.

AERO  (LA):

Wednesday’s Greg Proops Film Club will screen Fritz Lang’s Ministry of Fear (1944) in 35mm, while Thursday begins a series of “Anime Double Features” of Ninja Scroll (1993) with Vampire Hunter D (1985). Friday is a Satoshi Kon anime double feature of Millennium Actress  (2001) and Perfect Blue  (1997). Saturday’s Anime double feature isRedline  (2009)and Ghost in the Shell (1995), while Sunday is a Studio Ghibli double feature of Grave of the Fireflies (1988) and Only Yesterday  (1991).  Tuesday’s “Heptember Matinee” is a new 4k restoration of Katherine Hepburn’s Holiday from 1938.

BAM CINEMATEK (NYC):

BAM begins an awesome appropriate series called “Purpose and Passion: The Cinema of John Singleton,” showing a lot  (if not all) of the late filmmaker’s work, including Boyz in the Hood, Poetic Justice, Higher Learningand even more recent movies like Four Brothers, Abductionand his 2000 Shaft, starring Samuel L. Jackson. This week’s “Beyond the Canon” offering on Saturday is a double feature of Valie Export’sInvisible Adversariesfrom 1977 and Invasion of the Body Snatchersfrom 1978. It’s also showing Craig Brewer’s Hustle and Flow, starring Terrence Howard, which Singleton produced.

FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER (NYC):

On Thursday, Film at Lincoln Center begins a short series called “Two Free Women: Lily Tomlin & Jane Wagner” which should be fairly self-explanatory, focusing the spotlight on the actor/comedian and her life partner, which will include a conversation with the two women on Saturday evening. The series will open with John Bailey’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1991) on Thursday night with a QnA  with the two women. The rest of the series includes All of Me (1984), 9 to 5 (1980), Big Business (1988), Nashville (1975), the recent Grandma  (2015) and many more films, including Nick Broomfield’s doc Lily Tomlin.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Weekend Classics: Staff Picks Summer 2019 is Sean R’s pick Labyrinth (1986) while Waverly Midnights: Staff Picks Summer 2019 is the GREATEST STAFF PICK OF ALL TIME… Alex Cox’s 1984 classic Rep Man, picked by Jeff!  Late Night Favorites: Summer 2019 is a 35mm print of Scorsese’s Mean Streets. (As far as I can tell, the 4k restoration of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet is ending on Thursday.)

FILM FORUM (NYC):

This weekend’s “Film Forum Jr.” is three Laurel and Hardy shorts and on Monday is a screening of Preston Sturges’ 1941 film The Lady Eve, starring Barbara Stanwyk, with a QnA and signing with Sturges’ son Tom. Joseph Losey’s Mr. Klein will continue running through Thursday, Sept. 19.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

Not really repertory but MOMI is playing the director’s cut of Ari Aster’s Midsommar this weekend as well as Makoto Shinkai’s amazing 2017 film Your Name, the latter on Saturday and Sunday at noon.

ROXY CINEMA (NYC)

On Weds., Thursday and Sunday, the Roxy is showing a 35mm print of David Byrne’s True Stories from 1986, which seems to have found new life over 30 years since its debut.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

This week’s midnight movie on Friday isJohn Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch from 2000!

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

Sorry, Quentin, but as long as you use your excellent rep theater just to show Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, the New Bev will remain at the bottom of this section. The Wednesday matinee is Possessed (1947), starring Joan Crawfors, while the weekend’s “KIddee Matinee” is a classic… 1965’s The Sound of Music! There’s a special Cartoon Club on Saturday morning and Pulp Fiction is the Saturday midnight and then Monday’s matinee is Fast Times at Ridgmont High (1985) in 35mm.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Probably more than anything, I’m excited for the return of Jon Favreau’s The Chef Show this Friday, but there’s also a new original film called TALL GIRL, directed by Nzingha Stewart and starring Ava Michelle as the tallest girl in school (hence the title), who deals with being so tall until she meets Luke Eisner’s Stig, a Swedish foreign exchange student who is even taller than her. It’s another cute teen-targeted rom-com from Netflix that I’m not sure I’ll ever see.

Next week is a mix of stuff including James Gray’s Ad Astra, starring Brad Pitt; Sylvester Stallone is back as Rambo: Last Blood and Downton Abbeyr eturns… but only in theaters.