#i also find it hilarious that i went through like 50 different artforms and really REALLY struggled with all of them and wasn't too great

[pastafossa]

hi! not an ask or request but your woodcarving is SO FREAKING COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! literally so amazing and awesome and so fun to watch the process unfold and it's so cool that you're selling it now!! your art is AMAZING and i hope you have a great day and do some self care because you absolutely deserve it ❤️

Oh my gosh, thank you so so much! 😭 Hilariously I went so long thinking there'd just be no interest in what I was carving, both when it came to showing what I was doing online and when it came to people actually wanting to buy stuff! And now like, PEOPLE LIKE IT, which I'm happy about because it means I get to talk about it more along with make some money. 😂 My goal eventually is to teach, I'd love to do vids showing the process for some simple carvings people can do! Or even just some ASMR vids cause the little scritch scritch sound of a knife on wood is really soothing.

And in the theme of showing the process, this is the little dude I'm finishing up! He's a little shelf-sitting wood spirit, and his beard hangs over whatever shelf you put him on! He's just gotta get his face and nose cleaned up, then sealed and done! After that I've got some mothmans to make. People REALLY liked Mothman and his cute lil butt on the back. 🥰

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior Home Edition May 15, 2020 – S.C.O.O.B., CAPONE, CASTLE IN THE GROUND and more!

I have to admit that I’m getting a little weary of writing this weekly column covering movies that would barely have gotten a theatrical release BEFORE COVID, but I’m gonna do my best to stay motivated, even if it might be two months or more before we get any sort of theatrical experience again. I have a feeling this will be a shorter column than usual (Hallelujah!), and honestly, I really didn’t find any movie I liked enough to feature this week, so…

I wasn’t able to get the screener for Warner Bros’ new animated S.C.O.O.B. in time to review before this column sees the light of … inside people’s homes … on Wednesday, but the studio is taking the approach of Universal with its PVOD hit, Trolls World Tour. Hopefully, they won’t awaken the ire of AMC and the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO) as Universal has, but this updated and animated origin story for Scooby Doo will be available to buy for $19.99 vs. renting for $14.99.

 If I do get a chance to watch before Friday, I’ll add a review here (so check back!), but I’m looking forward to seeing it, especially knowing it will include a few other Hanna Barbera characters like the Blue Falcon, voiced by Mark Wahlberg. (Plus Shaggy is voiced by Will Forte, who is always hilarious.) Oh, and the film is directed by Tom Cervone, who has produced and directed so many great TV cartoons, including Duck Dodgers and the Looney Tunes Show.

REVIEW: Check back soon!

Tom Hardy plays famed Chicago mobster Al Capone in Josh Trank’s CAPONE (Vertical), which follows Capone late in his life, after he’s been released from prison and is quarantined at his palatial Florida mansion where he slowly descends into dementia while the FBI tries to uncover where he’s hidden a huge amount of money that seems to have gone missing. I was rather mixed on this film, which I’m sure is gonna be seen as this year’s Gotti. I didn’t think Josh Trank, who famously fucked up the last Fantastic Four movie, does a bad job with the material, but it’s just not the greatest point in Capone’s life to make a movie about. I had been looking forward to seeing Tom Hardy as Capone, especially knowing what he puts into every role since I first saw him in Bronson, but I don’t think I needed to see him stumbling around and mumbling incoherently with a carrot in his mouth … and yes, he deliberately shits in his pants under questioning at one point in the movie and accidentally a few other times. (Anyone who has been through medical treatment, like for cancer, will realize that being unable to get to a bathroom fast enough is a recurring problem, particularly in dementia sufferers, so it’s a little infuriating this has become the #1 pejorative against the movie.)

For all of Hardy’s amazing performances over the years, his take on Capone during this part of his life just goes too far into trying to create authenticity by being even harder to understand than even his original Bane dialogue, and that’s a major problem. I’m not sure if he did this thinking that it might get him an Oscar nomination ala Gary Oldman in The Darkest Hour or other similar portrayals of real people. Again, he should be lucky if it isn’t compared to John Travolta in Gotti.

As far as the rest of the cast, Kyle MacLachlan has the biggest role as Capone’s most trusted confidante, while Noel Fisher plays his son. Blink and you’ll miss Matt Dillon, who isn’t in the movie very much other than one of its few sex scenes. I wanted to like Linda Cardellini as “Fonzo’s” wife Mae, but this was almost the exact same character she played in the Oscar-winning, Green Book, which most will know was one of my favorite movies that year. It’s almost like she’s being typecast as a classic Italian-American period housewife, which is disappointing. Ultimately, it’s a combination of weaker material and Hardy’s method-y performance that causes Capone’s downfall as a movie to be on par with the way the notorious gangster faded away both literally and mentally after being released from prison.

Alex Wolff and Imogen Poots star in Joey Klein’s CASTLE IN THE GROUND (Gravitas Ventures), Wolff playing Henry, a small-town teenager whose mother is fighting cancer. When he befriends his off-the-wall neighbor (Poots), he ends up getting dragged into her world of opioid addiction and violence.

I was generally unimpressed with this movie, since it seemed like another one of those twee indie films we frequently see at Tribeca – in fact, this premiered at Toronto last year. I feel like I should have liked this movie more, since I find Poots to be a fascinating actor, same with Wolff, but this one just doesn’t connect or come together at all. I didn’t find any of the characters particularly compelling, and Klein seems to be trying to jam in  a lot of different elements such as Henry’s Hassidic Jewishness into the movie, but that seems to be an unnecessary tangent that doesn’t fit into the overall narrative. Neve Campbell plays Henry’s mother, Rebecca, and I’m not sure I would have even recognized her if not for the press notes. Otherwise, I don’t have a ton to say about a movie that covers ground that’s been covered far better in many other indie movies. This one is quite forgettable and not really mandatory viewing.

Visual effects animator Eric Demeusy’s directorial debut, the sci-fi thriller PROXIMITY (Shout! Studios), stars Ryan Masson as Isaac, a young NASA JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) scientist abducted by aliens, who becomes obsessed with finding proof of his journey when nobody believes him. It’s the feature debut from the award-winning VFX artist who has worked on Stranger Things and Game of Thrones, and actually, it’s not a bad little sci-fi movie. I mean, it isn’t small by any means, and it has pretty decent production values over all that makes it seem like Demeusy could be ready to direct bigger studio movies, although it does have some issues. I did enjoy that it’s a bit of a throwback to sci-fi movies of the ‘80s like War Games and Close Encounters, plus I’m always up for a decent alien abduction movie, and this one isn’t bad. I had some issues with the writing and the number of clichés pulled out, and it takes some adjusting to the inexperienced Masson and his low-key performance as the lead. (I will admit that the film drifts further and further away from those clichés as it goes along, particularly when it throws in some action and moves the story to Costa Rica.) My bigger problem was with the music, which tended to be so overblown, going between very loud and boisterous orchestral music (almost stock music, more suitable for a ‘50s sci-fi film) and cheesy pop songs. I’m sure these were intentional nods on Demeusy’s part, but it definitely takes the movie into the lamer territory we frequently see from Hollywood studio films and away from the cooler recent sci-fi films like Arrival and Annihilation. If you’re a fan of the sci-fi genre, you should be able to find things to like about Proximity. I’ll certainly be curious to see if Demeusy can use this as a calling card towards bigger things. You can find all the “Watch at Home” links on the Official Site.

Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña’s THE WOLF HOUSE (KimStim) was one of the press screenings I saw before everything went to hell. It’s a Chilean stop-motion animated film that puts a spin on the “Three Little Pigs,” tying it into the infamous torture colony, known as Colonia Dignidad, which had been imprisoning, torturing and killing dissidents under the Pinochet regime. It deals with a young woman named Maria who hides in a constantly evolving house in Southern Chile after escaping from German religious fanatics.  This was one of the last press screenings I saw before the NY theatrical shut down, and I found it infinitely fascinating and haunting as the filmmakers used an endless amount of media and formats to create the animation that flows between 2-and-3 dimensionality so easily you’ll often wonder how they did it. I’m not sure I was able to understand all of the political undertones so much, since I know every little about Chilean politics or history but it’s quite an accomplished achievement that is sure to astound fans of animation as an artform. The film is in Spanish and German, and there’s a fantastic introduction that explains how Chile’s European ex-pats contribute to the country’s community and how it differs from other neighboring countries. (This is also definitely more for an arthouse film than something to watch with the kids ala most Hollywood animated films.) Following its NY Premiere at Film at Lincoln Center’s “Neighboring Scenes” program earlier this year, The Wolf House will be available through Virtual Cinema for Anthology Film Archives in New York (where it was supposed to open in March) and the Laemmle theaters in L.A. You can see the full list of participating theaters and get links to watch the movie on the KimStim site.

Doc distributor Abramorama has created a new “mind body soul” imprint called Mangurama, and this week, they’re releasing a 10-part docu-series, The Road to Dharma – Riders of the Himalayas, with the first two episodes offered for free on Apple TV and Prime right now. It’s written, produced and directed by Adam Schomer, which follows a group of people who go on a motorcycle adventure across the cliffs of the Himalayas, led by a Himalayan Master who pushes them to face their own fears. You can learn more about this series at the Official Site.

Film at Lincoln Center continues its Virtual Cinema with another repertory addition with Nanni Moretti’s 1993 film Cara Diario (Film Movement) which played at the 32nd New York Film Festival. Moretti stars in the film himself as he goes on three journeys through Italy, the first on a scooter in Rome, musing on cinema and meeting Jennifer Beals. His next journey takes him and his friend, Renato Carpentieri, looking for a place to write a screenplay, and the third involves Moretti visiting doctors to get a skin rash diagnosed.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Let’s begin with this week’s Netflix options, which includes the David Spade rom-com, THE WRONG MISSY, co-starring Lauren Lapkus as Missy and Sarah Chalke. The premise is that Spade’s character falls for a woman, whom he to his company’s corporate retreat, except that he sent the invite to the… wait for it… WRONG MISSY! Get it? Having just recently seen The Do-Over, I’m not sure how I feel about Spade still having a career thanks to his long-time pal, Adam Sandler, but I’ll probably give this a look when it streams starting Friday. Oh, yeah, and Rob Schneider is in this one, too.. not sure that’s a good or bad thing.

Although I’m way behind on catching up on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, I’m pretty excited about the longer form “make your own adventure” episode, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend, which will include guests like Daniel Radcliffe and Jon Hamm.

Hitting Amazon this week is Seberg (Amazon Prime Video), Benedict Andrews’ sadly-overlooked drama, starring Kristen Stewart as French New Wave star, Jean Seberg, as it deals with her involvement in J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI investigation of the Black Panthers in the late ‘60s due to her affair with activist Hakim Jamal, as played by Anthony Mackie. I feel like this movie really didn’t get the push it deserved when it was given a one-week theatrical last year and even less when it reopened earlier this year. This features some of Stewart’s best acting in my opinion, and love hearing about this little known story about American history.

Panama’s first-ever horror film Diablo Rojo PTY debuts on Amazon this week. The debut feature of Sol Moreno, the film deals with the Costa Rican and Panamanian folklore surrounding the legend of La Tuliveja, a cursed woman who drowned her own son and haunts the river where he died. It follows a “Diablo  Rojo” bus driver, his helper, a priest and two policemen who fall under a spell when they get lost in the Chiriqui jungle and have to survive the creatures the face on the road.

Probably the cable show I’m most excited about this week is TBS’s SNOWPIERCER show that will premiere on Sunday night. Based on the Bong Joon-ho adaptation of a French graphic novel, this sci-fi series about a miles-long train speeding through the frozen tundra the earth has some pretty awesome stars in Daveed Diggs, Jennifer Connelly, Lena Hall and many, many more.

Apparently, Hulu also has a new series debuting on Friday called The Great from one of the co-writers of The Favourite, but I haven’t received one Email about this, so yeah, Hulu needs to get better publicity, cause the one(s) they’re currently using kinda suck.

Also, don’t forget that the virtual Oxford Film Festival is still going on and in its fourth weekend of premiering new features and short films! This week’s offerings are Christopher Wesley Moore’s horror-thriller, A Stranger Among the Living, about a young teacher who has a premonition of a school shooting that stops it from happening until phantoms show up to make his omen come true. (Sounds very Final Destination to me, which is very cool!) Also, the “American Lens Narrative Shorts” will premiere with six shorts including a documentary short called “Dick Pics!” as well as the second block of “Fest Forward” shorts, and remember that all of these will have live Q&As, which is not something other virtual fests (like SXSW and Tribeca) have been doing. Most of these will only be available for a week so don’t miss some great filmmaking. You can get tickets for all these movies and their Q&As at Eventive, as well as watch some of previous week’s offerings.

Next week, more movies and shows not in theaters!

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