#i have so many links to so many horror/thriller scripts

[spnscripthunt]

READ NOW→ https://www.scriptslug.com/assets/scripts/interview-with-the-vampire-1994.pdf

[livinluxuriouslyselena]

Audiodrama Recommendations

Since I see so many requests for recommendations (mainly on the Audiodrama Subreddit) and make plenty of my own requests 😚

I decided a few months back that it seemed the least I could do was to pay the kindness forward (for all the times y’all have supplied me with suggestions).

Before browsing my list- I think it’s important to have a general idea of what kind of person the AD-lover is before getting your hopes up by their recommendations- because, taste is subjective, no? 😉☺️🌟

So, to me, audio drama is defined by having a full-cast of talented voice actors who’s job is to bring a well-written script to life. It is my opinion that *narration* has *no place* in audio drama **unless** it’s *absolutely essential* to the development of the plot as the script requires.

I’m a lover of all things **surreal** ( favorite Artist? Salvador Dalí, favorite author? Rob Shearman 🫠)- I have LOTS of weird sci-fi/horror/thriller/mystery AD’s under my belt.. (I have literally cleaned out the entire *Big Finish Audio* catalogue. 😳)

I grew up on horror everything - I was 5 when I saw *Poltergeist* 👀 so… and was reading my parents Stephen King books in elementary school 😅🙈🤷🏻‍♀️ - by the time I hit highschool I had watched every horror film in Blockbuster (wow I am old 🤦🏻‍♀️) - from the classics like *Psycho* & The Exorcist to the cheesy 80s b-roll slasher films 🙈😂🤣.

That said - I am an equal opportunity listener and I love many shades of comedy dramas. Though I do prefer my comedy to have a bit of *bite* to it.. 😅 and I’m not here for narration. Full cast audiodrama with sound production is my thing. 😅😉😘

as an adult I am partial to UK/Australian/Canada based entertainment. Even though I have lived in NYC my whole life 🤷🏻‍♀️

And here’s the list (I am sure I have forgotten about the audios from before I began this list - so feel free to add to it in the comments)

NOTE- most links take you to Spotify, some exceptions include the BBC SOUNDS app & audible

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Horror/sci-fi thriller/supernatural thrillers (simplified into “more-serious audiodrama”)

—Restart : by the creators of **The Cypher**

— Children of the Stones : (BBC) paranormal/sci-fi/thriller-mystery full cast audio drama.

—The Piper - (BBC) paranormal/sci-fi detective mystery/horror story (full cast audio drama)

— Jackie the Ripper : the infamous 19th century Whitechapel murders retold with some very sociologically-relevant, feminist twists. I debated whether to place this in the comedy or sci-fi/horror section because, technically, it’s a brilliantly British & even mix of both. Description from their website: “in this modern twist, men are the victims of dark, sexually aggressive murders. The kind that leave them penis-less... Behind all the bloodshed is a woman, Jackie, a ruthless serial killer ready to strike again, and again, and again….without a single ounce of remorse and ready to share it all on social media.”

— BODY HORROR (BBC) : psychological mystery thriller (contrary to the title of the piece, it’s not even remotely in the body horror subgenre lol - no gore or any talk of blood 🩸 because it’s not necessary - this one cuts deep, in particular for any1 who’s suffered from issues of identity or body-image disorders).

—In Another Room : paranormal investigation turned straight-horror

—Fulmar’s Folly uk-based post-apocalyptic water world

— Red Valley : surrealist-sci-fi-thriller-horror full cast UK audio drama. BRILLIANT plot & a few thought-provoking mysteries. S1 & 2 end w/ incredible twists & had me in tears one moment; and laughing the next. S3 is in the making & will be it’s final season; completing the story.

— Lusus - (BBC)- *like* an anthology (which I am not really into anthologies unless they are super original 😅) but if you *pay attention*, each very different story is linked. Each episode is unique in its own subgenre of the horror/mystery category.

—5 Week Countdown

— Murmurs (BBC) high-concept, surrealistic sci-fi-horror

—Limelight - another BBC AD: composed of mini-serials. My personal favorites are English Rose (5 part mini-series) ,The System series 1 (6 parts) & 2 (5 parts), Dead Hand (5 part mini-series, each episode a half an hour run-time), & Steelheads (5 parts)

—**Weird Tales** : (BBC) Some of these were just phenomenal. They ease you in with *The Fly* (not associated with the movie) and then they dial up the psychological fear-factor times 10 for *The Loop* - which was my favorite of the entire series. But they are all great (though the framing device is lazy & unnecessary)

— Malevolent : an indie lovecraftian tale

— Dashing Onions Audio : I read a review while Google searching best audiodrama - the mini series When We Were Two (3 part mini-series) was a perfect recommendation- this is how *every* Twilight Zone episode should have been. Upstairs, Upstairs was good just too short. Customs is a master class in script editing. Overall I prefer their mini series.

— Video Palace : traditional horror story

— The Man in Black bought on audible the version with Mark Gatiss; listened to the OG version on the BBC SOUNDS app. ((Anthology-horror)) Each episode is the length of many modern podcasted-audiodrama’s full seasons.

— Dangerous Visions (BBC) Horror/thriller

— Forest 404 (bbc) sci-fi/fantasy-thriller; hard to actually put this one into a genre category..but it’s written by Timothy X Attack, & if you’re a fan of his work with **Big Finish Audio**, it’s worth ur time.

— The Message sci-fi/mystery/thriller

— LifeAfter sci-fi/mystery/thriller

— Archive 81 : ((i suggest u start with S3. If you like it, wither go back to S1 & continue in order, or stick with the “backwards” route; going from S3->S2->S1 😉))

— The Imperfection : award winning. Any more description will ruin it. Go in cold.

— Who Killed Alaska? : sci-fi/mystery/thriller w/elements of surrealism,dark comedy, & possibilities of the paranormal..?

— How I Died : ongoing sci-fi/mystery/horror-thriller

— The Cypher : truly a great mystery (or mysteries..?), definitely a futuristic, world. Sci-fi thriller. Also by the BBC but available on most podcasting apps like the other BBC AD’s I have recommended here (spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts, a few are even available on audible)

— Petrified: Ireland based award winning full cast horror audio drama

— Subsister: A Real Podcast ongoing sci-fi mystery with multi-media/arg elements.

— The Deep Vault : made by the Archive 81 team. Fast paced true horror.

— The Oyster : this one I was apprehensive about & it was just… great. Cerebral, thought provoking, *moving*, psychologically-terrifying sci-fi. You will laugh & likely cry & feel your stomach fill with butterflies & it leaves a definite impression that lasts for days…

— Tracks (BBC) There are 5 different seasons - each could be listened to in isolation as they all have their own individual mysteries that are solved. All weird sci-fi, psychological thriller fiction

—Steal the Stars (renamed STORIES FROM THE STARS) : a shortened version (and obviously far more streamlined in storyline, production etc) of Archive 81 but here the writing shines, the pacing is absolute perfection - and then it’s like a roller coaster that I didn’t see coming - that ending I was so, so unprepared for 🤯🫢🤐

— Marvel’s Wolverine: The Long Night (can be found under the feed “Marvel’s Wolverine: The Lost Trail” - which is the 2nd season of the series) : I am not into the DC/Marvel universe. The last super-hero movie I saw was the 1990’s Batman movies 😳. I knew literally *nothing* about Wolverine, the character, when I finally caved into trying this…and boy, am I glad I did. This AD serves as yet another reminder of how holding onto preconceived notions only limits one’s potential for enjoyment. Anyway… this is absolutely not for children, & not an origin story (which is what I had been expecting). I was shocked to hear that the titular character (the term “Wolverine” is never used. It took a bit of googling for me to see that the missing “Logan” = Wolverine) is played by none other than Richard Armitage (who I know most recently from his spine-tingling portrayal of Rassilon in the Gallifrey Time War boxsets) and oddly enough, said-titular-character has very, very few lines/appearances in this story. I could go on, & on, & on trying to sell the idea of what this thing is & why it deserves your time - but it’s easy enough to just Google..

— St. Mary’s School for Children with the Stigmata

— The Grove : short serialized mythological horror story (obviously full cast)

—The Deca Tapes : almost like an experimental ARG-type formula? Basically you are dropped into a futuristic sociological experiment of sorts- and it’s up to the listener to figure out wtf is going on. This one has narration but it’s integral to the storytelling.

— BOOM (by Stak) : From their website: “It's 1999 and Enron finance manager Jim Yang has received an email from the future.”

—Parkdale Haunt* ((*I found the first season to be almost intolerable due to the very slow opening and pacing issues - but when it gets going it is good. I get the impression that they were finding their feet so-to-speak)) a supernatural horror story- seasons 2 & 3 are great - season 1 is a treck so if you don’t have the patience or tolerance, I advise skipping this one

—The Bright Sessions* (slow the 1st season. But worth it come the AM Archives)

—SCP: Find Us Alive : a darkly comedic horror serial set in the SCP universe but doing something CREATIVE within it

—The Sink: A Sleep Aid (BBC) immersive experience in psychological horror

—Case 63 : a short, professionally recorded, concisely-written psychological thriller

—Blood Culture : horror/sci-fi serial

—Quiet Part Loud : by Jordan Peele. This is a must listen.

—Tomorrow’s Monsters : serialized horror/sci-fi thriller

—Eliza : A Robot’s Story : professionally recorded.

—Borrasca* : paranormal investigation turned horror series by Q-code so that in itself is an advertisement warning complete.

—Passenger List: slow burn mystery. Caitlin Le, an Asian college student from Kansas is attending university in NYC when news breaks of a plane going missing (ala the Malaysian airline’s mystery). As the “disaster” unfurls, she is surprised to discover her twin brother was on the flight from London to New York. Months later the airline announces a “bird strike” was responsible for the flight crash; despite the fact that no evidence of a crash has been found. Caitlin Le can’t move on until she knows what happened to her twin. Soon she uncovers multiple rabbit holes 🕳️ and she gets lost . Did she really ever truly know her twin brother?

— Batman Unburied : I’m not into the whole Marvel comics thing but this audio drama does something different with classic tropes

—Batman : The Audio Adventures : again, very well done. I was into the Gotham TV show for awhile - but that’s the only marvel/DC-spawned-entertainment that’s ever caught my attention. This is another one that works for both fans of the Batman and newbs alike

—The Secret of St. Kilda : this is more of a drama with some supernatural/mythical elements

—Give Me Away : I was torn whether to put this one in the comedy or serious section because it’s more of a “dramedy ”. And it’s scary because of what it says about society but not traditional horror. It’s also by the team who did *Steal the Stars*

—Paragon : an hour-length sci-fi/horror audio drama and is part of the PRIMORDIAL DEEP feed

—Wake of Corrosion : post-apocalyptic horror (ongoing)

—Quietly Yours : straight-up horror, bottle episodes (anthology of cinematic horror drama for the ears)

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Non-horror full cast audio drama (space operas, comedic serials, etc)

—Juno Steel : part of the Penumbra Podcast

—EOS 10 : comedic space opera

— Brimstone Valley Mall : dark comedy nostalgia fest

—We Fix Space Junk : comedic space opera

—Marscorp : comedic space opera

—Classified : Dark Comedy, triggers : mental illness/asylums

—Wooden Overcoats : dark comedy “sitcom”

—Mockery Manor : nostalgia-fueled dark comedy/mock/horror

—Eternal Strife : comedic serial

—Victoriocity : a less serious, less professional version of Jago & Litefoot

—Alba Salix : comedic serial fantasy

—Bubble : this one is a weird one because it is full cast and yet it has a designated narrator… so… 😏 give it a shot & if it doesn’t work for you probably give it a pass 😙

—The Candyman : Horror-comedy/parody - very indie but quite short and worth it 👏😂

—Human B-Gone : ongoing but so far so funny

—Two Flat-Earthers Kidnap a Free Mason: This one is definitely meant to be a farcical, satirical look at the internet conspiracy world (ie: the people who followed Alex Jones’ almost religiously lol) - it’s only 14 episodes in so far, and clearly ongoing… it’s not great but it works if you’re bored..? There are certain parts that would be really funny if the pacing had been better.

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Free Full Cast Audible Audio Dramas Worth Your Time (modern radio/audio drama & *FREE*)

—Space: 1969 (comedy/alternate reality) pieces of the description from the site: “What if President John F. Kennedy had survived and rocketed the Space Race of the 1960s into overdrive? And what if he was, maybe, not quite… himself? Space: 1969 is a retro sci-fi comedy adventure that has to be heard to be believed!”

—Heads Will Roll dark fantasy comedy

—Radioman (psych thriller/horror) from the site: “When a series of gruesome murders leaves a community in despair, a former local DJ decides to start a podcast and do something about it. But as his following grows, long-buried secrets from the past resurface revealing not everyone is who they truly seem....”

—The Method (serial killing actor- intense)from the site: “James Patterson leads you into the darkest recesses of the mind with this chilling, immersive audio thriller. We meet Brent Quill, a frustrated actor trying to take his game to the next level. When he learns about the intensive Method acting process, he dives in deep—and immediately lands the lead role in a TV series about a brutal serial killer.”

—The Catchers (straight horror/paranormal possibly cryptid) from the site: “Catchers is a small-town horror tale with all the charm of a classic ‘80s creature-feature, updated for the modern era.”

—Self Center (dark comedic horror; social relevancy)

—Hit Job (dark comedy)

—The Rivals: Tales of Sherlock Holmes’ Rivals (what it says on the tin - but very funny as well as delivering good mysteries)

—Tribulation : religion trigger warning. Interesting idea - religious cult on an AM broadcast is using electricity to “steal” people and force them into “tribulation”…

—High Strangeness : Doctor Who meets X-Files & Stranger Things - very good; very funny

—Apocalypse Untreated : “five mentally ill teenagers in an inpatient wilderness program during the apocalypse face not only the end of the world, but also the end of their prescriptions. Now, they have to figure out what’s real and what’s just a side effect, and keep their wits about them as they fight for their lives and their minds. Apocalypse Untreated is a multi-part, post-apocalyptic thriller brought to life with world class sound design, and performance.”

—Sorry Charlie Miller : another one w/Zachary Quinto (the protagonist/antagonist of The Method) but this is a modern comedy - from the website “Sorry Charlie Miller is a Tik Tok era mystery with twists, turns, and a whole lot of questionable fashion choices. It takes place in Florida, hello.” - so yeah, for me it depends on the time of the day and time of the month. It’s good for the right time basically 😂

—Sheltered : British humor - very bingeable just wish there was more 😔 Description from the site: “It’s been centuries since Armageddon and no one has ever left the bunker that has sustained what remains of civilised human life....When innocent simpleton Gary and social climber Veronica are sent to explore the world outside, they soon regret ever leaving the safety, soft furnishings and quilted toilet paper of Fallout Shelter 7421.”

—Sour Hall : magical horror staring Pearl Mackie (aka: Bill from the Capaldi years of Doctor Who, also the protagonist of AD Forest 404)

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[turabafghan]

Hello, This is a guide to my main comic

I also post drawings and comic updates on Instagram, a lot more is posted there as of yet, the link is here

The name is tentatively set to “Beast Within”. It started out as a horror, mystery thriller story, but has since evolved to an adventure epic with themes around war, discipline and hope with aspects of horror still present.

Blurb/synopsis:

In this world, a significant amount of humans are born with an organ that is useless in most cases, but using stress, anger or fear as a trigger it can bring the host to the physical peak of a human as a survival mechanism. Lief "Mukhtar" Adelierre is a 17 year old boy intrigued by the origins of this "manifestation" who finds himself intimately connected to these origins as the wielder of the "Dragon" gene. Alongside others he seeks to find the unwritten history of his world for answers to his many questions but also to form a plan of action regarding the future of this world as he and others like him, good or evil, are certain to shake the foundations of society as their presence is brought to the forefront.

Initial stage development:

The story was first conceived in 2015-16 as a 16 page one-shot for an international manga competition, I would have been submitting it to the Japanese embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. Initially I wanted to submit an urban fantasy horror comic I had been working on, but after seeing the submissions from the previous years contest. I started from scratch so I could submit a piece with better art, but stayed on the template of horror. My inspirations consisted of Tokyo Ghoul, Majora's Mask and a number of horror films. I ran through at least 2 if not 3 different drafts and was 11-12 pages in when the deadline passed and I never submitted. I kept drawing and my art improved in that summer and I returned to the project when my first semester of High School started. I had new ideas to bring to the project and wanted to give everything a huge overhaul, from story themes, structure, lore, worldbuilding etc. I worked on the story throughout my time at school whenever I could squeeze it in and it has become what it has today. Milestones have been reached and Chapter 6 is in development.

Upload pattern:

I will be uploading things bit by bit, with rough drafts, character design work I did (for the current version of the story and its precursors) and uploading pages of the cancelled precursor comics since I want to show them.

The current draft is 5 chapters long with chapter 6 in development. I will upload the entirety of chapter 1 for viewing first, afterwards about 2-3 pages at a time. I will try to post one of these each week on Fridays. Please understand that when the posts catch up to where the story is currently, I will not be able to post pages at this rate per week. It may change to a post every 2 weeks or a post each month with a specific date (such as the 10th or the 14th of each month), I will notify in advance when this happens.

I will also not likely be posting everyday as I have other responsibilities to attend to but will notify if there are any major hiatuses that need to be taken. A hiatus from the comic also does not necessarily mean I will stop posting entirely. Not every post I make will be drawings as well, it may be snippets of scenes from the scripting as well but I will keep that rare as the main point is to post art. The comic will have a dedicated section in the archive list and not everything I post will be related to it though a lot will be. Sometimes I may post fanart or other drawings I think were done well.

A note for the comic:

This is my first comic that I will be uploading online, though I have made smaller projects in the past. So, I do not expect it to blow up, but if fanart or anything is made or done for it, please do share as I would love to see what you do with my characters (nothing NSFW or pornographic please, I do not welcome that). Just leave a reference to me as the creator of the characters (or creator of the setting if it is your OC set in that world, that character is yours then by all means) is all. I also welcome and will consider any criticism and advice done in good faith provided it makes sense for and is within the scope of what I am trying to achieve with this comic.

Do not use MY art in any commercial sense. If it is something you drew, then of course, use it as you will and you do not need my permission for that. However, please refrain from using MY art in particular commercially in any way. Thank you.

[bewitching-elizabeth-olsen]

Press/Gallery: How Elizabeth Olsen Brought Marvel From Mainstream to Prestige

“The thing I love about being an actor is to fully work with someone and try so hard to be at every level with them, chasing whatever it is you need or want from them.”

  GALLERY LINKS

Studio Photoshoots > 2021 > Session 008 Magazine Scans > 2021 > Backstage (August 19)

Backstage: Elizabeth Olsen grins widely over video chat when recalling many such moments on set with her co-stars. Yet, she can’t bring herself to divorce such a lofty vision of film acting from the technical multitasking it requires. The camera sees all.

“But then you move your hair, and you’re in your brain, like: OK, remember that! Because I don’t want to edit myself out of a shot. I know some actors are like, ‘Continuity, shmontinuity!’ But the good thing about continuity is, if you remember it, you’re actually providing yourself with more options for the edit.”

That need to balance being both inside the scene and outside of it, fully living it and yet constantly visualizing it on a screen, feels particularly apt in light of Olsen’s most recent project, “WandaVision.”

The mysteries at the heart of the show grow with every episode, each fast-forwarding to a different decade: Could this 1950s, black-and-white, “filmed in front of a studio audience” newlyweds bit be a grief-stricken dream? Might this ’70s spoof be a powerful spell gone awry? Could this meta take on mockumentary comedies be proof that the multiverse is finally coming to the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

The series’ structure, which branches out to include government agents intent on finding out why Westview has seemingly disappeared, calls for the entire cast to play with a mix of genres, balancing a shape-shifting tone that culminates in an epic, MCU-style conclusion. What’s key—and why the show struck a chord with audiences during its nine-episode run—is the miniseries’ commitment to grounding its initial kooky setups and its later special effects-driven spectacle in heartbreaking emotional truths. It’s no small feat, though it’s one that can often be taken for granted.

“I was thinking how hard it would have been to have shot the first ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ” Olsen muses. “Like, you’re putting all these actors [into the frame] later and at all these different levels. All the eyelines are completely unnatural. And yet the performances are fantastic! And technically, they are so hard. People forget sometimes that these things are really technically hard to shoot. And if you are moved by their performance, that took a lot of multitasking.”

As someone who has learned plenty about harnesses, wirework, fight choreography, and green screens (she’s starred in four Marvel movies, including the box office megahit “Avengers: Endgame,” after all), Olsen knows how hard it can be to wrap one’s brain around the work needed to pull off those big, splashy scenes.

“​​If you think about it, it’s, like, the biggest stakes in the entire world—every time. And that feels silly to act over and over again, especially when people are in silly costumes and the love of your life is purple and sparkly, and every time you kiss them, you have to worry about getting it on your hands. Those things are ridiculous. You feel ridiculous. So there is a part of your brain that has to shovel that away and just look into someone’s eyeballs—and sometimes, they don’t even have eyeballs!”

The ability to spend so much time with Wanda, albeit in the guise of sitcom parodies, was a welcome opportunity for Olsen. Not only did it allow the actor to really wrestle with the traumatic backstory that has long defined the character in the MCU, but having the chance to calibrate a performance that functions on so many different levels was a thrilling challenge.

“It was such an amazing work experience,” she says. “Kathryn [Hahn] uses the word ‘profound’—which is so sweet, because it is Marvel, and people, you know, don’t think of those experiences as profound when they watch them. But it really was such a special crew that [director] Matt Shakman and [creator] Jac Schaeffer created. It was a really healthy working environment.”

Related‘WandaVision’ Star Kathryn Hahn’s Secret to Building a Scene-Stealing Performance ‘WandaVision’ Star Kathryn Hahn’s Secret to Building a Scene-Stealing Performance Considering that the miniseries spans several sitcom iterations, various layers of televisual reality, and a number of character reveals that needed to feel truthful and impactful in equal measure, Shakman’s decision to work closely with his actors ahead of shooting was key.

“We truly had a gorgeous amount of time together before we started filming,” Olsen remembers. “Our goal was—which is controversial in TV land—that if you wanted to change [anything], like dialogue in a scene, you had to give those notes a week before we even got there. Because sometimes you get to set, and someone had a brilliant idea while they were sleeping, and you’re like, ‘We don’t have an hour to talk about this. We have seven pages to shoot.’ And so, we were all on the same page with one another, knowing what we were shooting ahead of time.

“Matt just treated us like a troupe of actors who were about to do some regional theater shit,” she adds with a smile.

That spirit of camaraderie was, not coincidentally, at the heart of Olsen’s breakout project, Sean Durkin’s 2011 indie sensation “Martha Marcy May Marlene.” As an introduction to the process of filmmaking to a young stage-trained actor, Durkin’s quietly devastating drama was a dream—and an invaluable learning opportunity.

“It was truly just a bunch of people who loved the script, who just were doing the work. I didn’t understand lenses, so I just did the same thing all the time. I never knew if the camera would be on me or not. There was just so much purity in that experience, and you only have that once.”

The film announced Olsen as a talent to watch: a keen-eyed performer capable of deploying a stilted physicality and clipped delivery, which she used to conjure up a wounded girl learning how to shake off her time spent in a cult in upstate New York. But Olsen admits that it took her a while to figure out how to navigate her career choices afterward. In the years following “Martha,” she felt compelled to try on everything: a horror flick here, a high-profile remake there, a period piece here, an action movie there. It wasn’t until she starred in neo-Western thriller “Wind River” (alongside fellow Marvel regular Jeremy Renner) and the dark comedy “Ingrid Goes West” (opposite a deliciously deranged Aubrey Plaza) that Olsen found her groove.

“It was at that point, when I was five years into working, where I was like, Ah, I know how I want it. I know what I need from these people—from who’s involved, from producers, from directors, from the character, from the script—in order to trust that it’s going to be a fruitful experience.”

As Olsen looks back on her first decade as a working actor, she points out how far removed she is from that young girl who broke out in “Martha Marcy May Marlene.”

“I feel like a totally different person. I don’t know if everyone who’s in their early 30s feels like their early 20s self is a totally different human. But when I think about that version of myself, it feels like a long time ago; there’s a lot learned in a decade.”

Those early years were marked by a self-effacing humility that often led Olsen to defer to others when it came to key decisions about the characters she was playing. But she now feels emboldened to not only stand up for herself and her choices but for others on her sets as well.

“[Facebook Watch series] ‘Sorry for Your Loss’ I got to produce, and I really found my voice in a collaborative leadership way. And with ‘WandaVision,’ Paul [Bettany] and I really took on that feeling, as well—especially since we were introducing new characters to Marvel and wanted [those actors] to feel protected and helped,” she says. “They could ask questions and make sure they felt like they had all the things they needed because sometimes you don’t even know what you need to ask.”

It’s a lesson she learned working with filmmaker Marc Abraham on the Hank Williams biopic “I Saw the Light,” and she’s carried it with her ever since. “I really want it to feel like we’re all in this together, as a team,” Olsen says. “That was part of ‘Sorry for Your Loss’ and it was part of ‘WandaVision,’ and I hope to continue that kind of energy because those have been some of the healthiest work experiences I’ve had.”

If Olsen sounds particularly zealous about the importance of a comfortable, working set, it is because she’s well aware that therein lies an integral part of the work and the process. As an actor, she wants to feel protected and nurtured by those around her, whether she’s reacting to a telling, quiet line of dialogue about grief or donning her iconic Scarlet Witch outfit during a magic-filled mid-air action sequence.

“Sometimes you’re going to be foolish, you know? And [you need to] feel brave to be foolish. Sometimes people feel embarrassed on set and snap. But if you’re in a place where people feel like they’re allowed to be an idiot,” she says, “you’re going to feel better about being an idiot.”

This story originally appeared in the Aug. 19 issue of Backstage Magazine. Subscribe here.

Press/Gallery: How Elizabeth Olsen Brought Marvel From Mainstream to Prestige was originally published on Elizabeth Olsen Source • Your source for everything Elizabeth Olsen

[nitrateglow]

Halloween marathon 2021: 5-7

See No Evil

See No Evil is about a newly blinded woman named Sarah (Mia Farrow) staying with relatives in their remote English estate. Through a chance encounter, Sarah’s uncle unwittingly insults the dignity of a mysterious psychopath, who proceeds to butcher Sarah’s entire family while she’s on a date. Sarah returns home to a house of bodies she cannot see and before long, the killer comes back as well, intent on collecting incriminating evidence from the lonely house. Once she senses danger, Sarah tries to run for help, only to find herself wandering a hostile landscape without her proper bearings.

I always say you’ve never really seen a movie until you’ve at least seen it twice. On a cold viewing, you experience the story and on rewatch, you can better appreciate the tools used to contribute to a project’s success or failure. The second time around, I better appreciated See No Evil’s visuals, which are certainly effective in linking the (sighted) audience with the blind protagonist’s horrible predicament.

The camera is often kept low to the ground, almost as though it’s cowering in a corner, nervously observing the proceedings. The filmmakers also opt to shoot Farrow from the front and in close-up when she’s on the move, preventing the audience from seeing where she’s going, thus intimately linking us with her fear and disorientation.

Unfortunately, the cinematography is about all I have a greater appreciation for. My old problems with this movie remain: Sarah is an underwritten, reactive character and the movie is so sadistic in piling indignities and torments upon her that it ceases to be enjoyable. There is no reversal where she turns the tables and fights back “final girl” style, and her moments of resourcefulness are scant. Because her character remains a static victim, the movie also becomes pretty tedious, little more than a 90-minute catalog of misery.

As a mystery-thriller, the script is at least twisty, cleverly incorporating clues to the killer’s identity throughout. The scenario is slow-going—it takes about fifty minutes before the central chase gets underway—but at the very least, the atmosphere is strong throughout, emphasizing isolation and autumnal gloom. I suppose what makes this movie so frustrating is how skillful it is. The camerawork, atmosphere, and mystery are all compelling. Just something vital is missing...

Au Secours!

Directed by the legendary Abel Gance and starring comedian Max Linder, Au Secours is best described as a French surrealist riff on Buster Keaton’s The Haunted House. Linder bets that he can handle an hour in a notorious haunted house—should he call for help before the allotted time, he loses. Novel camera tricks and bizarre characters assail Linder at every turn, but he takes them all in stride. For the most part, this is amusing in a 1920s surrealist way.

And then things get weird. Like uncomfortable weird.

Linder gets a call from his wife, who’s being menaced by a grotesque thug in her bed. The viewer is pressed with tight, harrowing close-ups of Linder’s panicked and tear-stained face, stuff that looks like it should be in a horror movie. For real, it does NOT come off as comedic overreaction, it’s weirdly unnerving, especially since the film has been so frothy up to this point. I won’t spoil the final twist, but it’s just—what the hell??

It really has to be seen to be believed.

Black Christmas

This was a rewatch. I went from liking this movie to loving it. Black Christmas (the 1974 original-- I refuse to watch either remake) is about a group of sorority girls stalked by a killer during the holidays. Despite being an early slasher movie, the focus is less on gore and more on old-fashioned suspense. The film only benefits and remains quite intense.

I love a thousand things about this film, but what I appreciate most is how the filmmakers went out of their way to make sure you care about the characters before they start getting picked off. So many slashers just present you with generic dumb teens as the victims, but Black Christmas makes them all human and funny. In fact, the abundant comedy throughout the movie only augments the horror, making it more effective when characters are put in danger.

In fact, this movie differs from later slashers in other key ways too, like in the characterization of protagonist Jess (played by Olivia Hussey). Jess is the “final girl,” but she breaks the mold in clearly not being a virgin-- in fact, she’s pregnant out of wedlock. She is not an outsider among her peers but one of the leaders, taking on an almost maternal role when needed (in fact, there’s a lot of mother-based imagery associated with the character, such as the pieta-style position she takes on with idiot boyfriend Peter in her arms towards the end of the film).

Despite not being explicitly significant to the plot, the Christmas atmosphere adds a lot to the movie as well. The majority of the action takes place at night, lit only by the soft, colorful glow of Christmas lights.The wintry chill is palpable (especially when poor Jess is at the door, shivering while she listens to carolers), emphasizing the isolation of the characters in later scenes. Along with The Nightmare Before Christmas, this is a film you could watch during Halloween or Christmas, and it would not feel out of place.

One more thing-- the killer Billy is creepy as hell. He was creepier on rewatch than the first time, mainly because I started paying more attention to his ramblings about “Agnes.” They are so, so disturbing and imply a lot of horrible things about Billy. I like that the film opts to keep him mysterious, never sharing some tragic backstory to explain his behavior. As a result, the last scene is as chilling as Halloween’s, making Billy appear like a boogeyman figure, a personification of never-dying evil.

[imnotwolverine]

The marriage pact - Thriller nights

Henry Cavill x OC Alice - multi-chapter

< Part 11 | Part 12 Thriller nights | Part 13 >

Disclaimer: strong language, some angst and reference to cheating

Author’s note: Do you like horror movies, darling fic-readers? I must admit I don’t, most specifically because I just have to vivid an imagination. Jaws? I didn’t dare to swim in a pool for 3 months straight..and it was the middle of summer. Yep, I know it’s silly. Are there any movies you definitely wouldn’t watch again? 

Word count: 1.509

(Link to my Masterlist)

--

Dear readers,

Other then enjoying my chocolate cake, I was just cleaning up my DVD collection and what a wonderful collection of totally bloody horror movies I have apparently collected over the years. It is really, truly, quite horrible actually. Why would a sweet, innocent person like myself have such a twisted desire for watching the dark and obscure? Why did I watch IT more times than Pride & Prejudice?

It’s quite fascinating really, and most likely this horror fascination of mine has something to do with emotional control; we can experience certain feelings like anxiousness whilst still being in a safe environment. And you know me by now..I like being in control.

So what kind of movies do you like, dear readers? And what do you think that says about you? I’d love to hear from you.

Cleaning up her room and her thoughts,

Ali

‘So, thank you so much for coming Miss Taylor. Please take your time to work through the information I shared with you and we are looking forward to hearing from you again. You can contact me on the mail address on my card, or call me, and please..do not fret to ask me anything.’

‘Thank you doctor.’ I nodded, quite overcome with the overload of information and questions that had circulated through this small doctor’s office in St Helier’s Jersey General Hospital. I had simply requested an in-take, but hadn’t been quite ready for how deep and personal all this had been. 

More than a few times throughout the intake had I felt tears well up in my stubborn eyes, the simple thought of how difficult this might be becoming, nearly too much to handle. The doctor had been most kind and informative; they could not do most of the procedures here, so I’d have to fly up and down to London every month. And there was this physical exam they had to do..and I had to start tracking my ovulation cycle, take specific medicine and vitamins. And..most importantly..I had to figure out what I wanted to do with this “fresh new relationship” of mine - which I had mentioned only very briefly.

I had waved it off, signalling I had little hope that it would work anyways, to which the doctor had given me an inquisitive eyebrow raise, but thankfully she hadn’t pried any further.  

With slightly wobbly legs I stepped out of her office and thanked her again, my feet quite automatically walking back the path they had came; through the long hallway, past the waiting room and then to the elevator. But..I never quite made it to the elevator in one line, my eyes catching something quite unexpected in the waiting room.

‘Chris?’ I gasped quietly, seeing a familiar face amongst the waiting patients, a very young blonde woman right beside him, their hands entangled. I felt my heart, my soul, my everything, sink like a block of concrete to the bottom of the ocean.

She was expecting.

His large hazelnut eyes stared at me in slight shock, hands quickly disentangling from his new..lover. Lover. He had a pregnant lover. Was it his? OH FUCKING HELL. ‘Ali..hey..what a..surprise.’ He scrambled up to his feet and pulled a warm smile to his hesitant face. He felt most obviously very caught in the act.

How many months would she be? Obviously more than three or four months. Had he..had he been..cheating on me? I stared blankly at him, not quite sure of what to say.

‘Quite a surprise.’ I muttered, nodding while looking over his shoulder at the surprised looking woman. ‘It’s always good to see a friend.’ Chris smiled, pressing a large hand on my shoulder to steer me to a corner of the waiting room. ‘..Look..please don’t make a scene. Please.’ He whispered, his mouth remaining curled in a wide, friendly smile, acting as if nothing was amiss.

I couldn’t breathe. I just..couldn’t breathe, my eyes staring at him with disbelief.

HOW COULD HE?!

Wishing to not show him my tears - tears that long dared to spill during the doctor’s visit - I quickly shook my head and wished him a good day, my feet hasting off towards the elevator.

HOW COULD HE, HOW COULD HE?!

It seemed to take ages before the metal doors of the elevator finally slid closed, my eyes pricking with angry tears. And as the elevator started to descend, my organs feeling the mild drop of the cabin, my tears started to descend too. Heavy, wet and desperate. How could he..how could he…ARGHHH!!!

—

‘Hen.’ I muttered through the phone, my voice still weak and cracking.

‘Hey you.’ He said gently, easily picking up on my distress, his voice even lower and more soothing than usual.

‘Can I come over for a hug?’ My voice was but a mere whisper, but he heard it all the same. ‘Of course sweetie.’

Oh Henry, if only all things in life were this easy.

—

‘Hey.’ I stalled at the doorway of his parents’ study, the desk Henry was sitting at completely filled with large piles of what appeared to be scripts and administrational work. He looked up, his face immediately relaxing into one of tenderness. He sighed and turned in his chair, tapping both hands on his thick thighs, gesturing me to come sit on his lap.

No words were needed as I gladly crawled into the warmth of his embrace, my nose still sniffling after a near hour of non-stop crying in my bedroom. I needed him and I was glad he was here.

I could feel his hand just gently running through my hair, all the way back down to my lower back, his face studying mine. We just sat there for a few long minutes, quietly, some lone tears drifting down from my red eyes.

‘I’m just so sad.’ I muttered, another spill of tears bursting out, flooding my reddened cheeks. I gulped and heaved, not being able to stop myself from releasing all the sorrow and pain. 

It was just something about Henry that made me lower my guards. A little more each time we were together.

‘It’s okay, Ali. Sshh..’ Henry’s voice swam warm and soothing through the shell of my ear, his breath brushing through my messy hair. Oh how I wished I could just disappear right here in his lap. How good and fitting an end it would be for me.

Alice, the girl who fell down the deep black hole of adulthood until she was no more.

And how awful I was for not telling him why I was crying so. I had to make sure I’d tell him, or it would simply become too difficult. But not now. First..tears.

More long minutes crawled by as the new onslaught of tears finally subsided, Henry still not saying a word, his large arms just keeping me close and safe, hands running deliberate circles over my back.

I sniffled one more time, wiping the tears on the sleeve of my shirt before finally sitting up a bit and looking Henry in the eye. Those big, blue oceans of care and comfort looking back at me with…love. Or something like that.

‘Thanks for that.’ I breathed, inhaling deep and sharp. Henry smiled and shrugged simply. ‘I’m glad to be of service milady.’

I sighed, looking over his desk, an iPad laying forlorn in the corner. ‘Yep, read your blog.’ He hummed, smiling into my ear. I raised an eyebrow at him, my eyes red and agitated from all the tears. ‘You don’t have to, you know.’ I whispered. He chuckled, shaking his head. ‘I wouldn’t miss them for the world. I love knowing what is going on with you.’

‘And horror movies..?’

‘Mm..you know me..can’t stand females screaming.’

‘Oh papa bear gets protective then, hmm?’ I teased, the first glimmer of a smile appearing back on my lips. Henry laughed. ‘Maybe a little.’

‘Oh…Henry…come save me!’ I swooned with a bit of theatricality, my hand moving to rest on my forehead, eyes gazing desperately into the distance. When he didn’t immediately respond, his eyebrows just rising in amusement, I further exaggerated my flailing body, letting myself near drop off his lap.

‘Wow..’ Henry quickly grabbed onto me, pulling me more firmly into his chest, ‘..okay..I’ve got you.’ He sniffled. We looked at each other for an amused second before we both burst out laughing, my face now happily snuggling into his neck and my nose sniffing up that undefinable smell that was Henry’s musk. I was the fair maiden in the prince’s arms, ready to take on any horror that was to be survived.

And darn..How I loved his smell.

‘Hmm…thanks for allowing me to be here Hen.’ I hummed, making him lean back a little his large thumb moving to stroke over my heated cheeks, removing the last of the remains of salty tears from my skin. Without words required he leaned into me, offering me a much more practised kiss then that very awkward..first..puppy..

‘Ooh..hair..’ He muttered, hovering back a little and reaching for his mouth to pull out a hair.

OH GODS…we both laughed aloud.

‘This is terrible.’ I blushed through our laughter. ‘No it’s not.’ Henry smiled, brushing all hair out of my face before pulling me back to his lips. ‘It’s perfect.’ He whispered onto my lips, trying again.

—

And yes, we watched a horror movie that night from my vast collection of classics, Henry’s arm near choking me whenever a woman screamed, his muscles tightening around my rib cage until I was sure there would be bruises. But ..I wouldn’t have had it any other way. 

My heart and soul fluttered, and that is all I really wanted and needed, my reservations for a possible relationship with Henry slowly fading into the background. 

--

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[elv--eyera]

Ways to watch Jekyll & Hyde online!

I recently saw someone interested in watching Jekyll & Hyde, so I decided to spend some time today to put a post together!  Here’s information about (and links to) six productions of the show that you can watch online! 

The 2001 Broadway Cast DVD

Starring: David Hasselhoff (Jekyll / Hyde), Coleen Sexton (Lucy Harris), Andrea Rivette (Emma Carew)

(Starting with this one because this is the only non-bootleg, commercially available version of Jekyll & Hyde, and I’m sure this is the main version people are familiar with and I wanna go over this before getting to the rest.)

Good: It’s a beautifully filmed professional recording of the show on Broadway, something that most shows never get! The supporting cast (many of whom were from the original cast and played their roles from the beginning of the run to the end) is wonderful. When the focus is on the non-Jekyll aspects of the production, it’s really amazing. Coleen Sexton and Andrea Rivette are truly amazing.

Evil: David Hasselhoff. I give him props for taking on a very difficult role that is well outside of his comfort zone, and it’s clear to see that the man gave it his absolute all. He really wanted to take this on, and he really tried his best. (Here’s a four-minute interview about his experience with the show and the work he put into it - he had oxygen backstage, and he actually passed out onstage briefly after “The Way Back”.) However, watching him as Jekyll and Hyde, it’s just unavoidable that he’s just not very good. I’ll leave it at that.

How Can I Watch It?: It gets uploaded to Youtube and Dailymotion from time to time, but I couldn’t find it there today. However, you can watch it here, and a commercial for his time in J&H here. Just be warned: this is no day at the beach. 

The 2001 Broadway Cast (rehearsal!)

Starring: Rob Evan (Jekyll / Hyde), Coleen Sexton (Lucy Harris), Andrea Rivette (Emma Carew)

Good: If you were thinking “well, I wish that there was a professionally recorded version without David Hasselhoff”, This is basically, shot for shot, the same as the Hasselhoff version, but with Rob Evan instead, and it’s a fundamentally different experience. Rob Evan (who replaced Robert Cuccioli on Broadway in 1998) is a great actor and singer, who went on to play the role again in the “concert” versions in 2005 - 2006. 

Evil: It’s 480p quality, but that’s the only real downside. 

How Can I Watch It?: Right here! 

The Original Broadway Cast (1997)

Starring: Robert Cuccioli as Jekyll and Hyde, Linda Eder as Lucy Harris and Christiane Noll as Emma Carew.

Good: The original Broadway cast is amazing. This is a personal opinion on my part but Robert Cuccioli is the definitive Jekyll / Hyde. His Tony-nominated performance is awesome, and it really elevates the show. Linda Eder and Christiane Noll are also absolutely wonderful in their roles, and the talent in this cast is just amazing. Unlike the above two recordings, this one’s a bootleg, but it’s still a really great watching experience.  

Evil: Really, the only possible downside is that this cast didn’t have a professional recording. Just press reels, a nice bootleg, and TV appearances. That’s really the only downside. This cast is awesome.

How Can I Watch It?: You can watch 20 minutes of professionally shot press reels here (featuring several songs), you can watch the whole show with this cast here, and you can watch some TV appearances here: “In His Eyes” , “This Is The Moment” and “Dangerous Game” (featuring Rob Evan as Jekyll, who was the alternate for Cuccioli before taking over the role himself in 1998) Or if you’re short on time, just watch Cuccioli do “Confrontation” live. 

But wait!  I want something different from the Broadway adaptation!

Well, Jekyll & Hyde went through a lot of changes on the road to Broadway, and after the show hit Broadway, many of productions changed things further or even changed things back to the earlier versions. The following productions all interpret the material differently, and all of them have script / music changes from the Broadway version. (Many of them stick closer to or take elements from the 1994 Concept Album with Anthony Warlow.) 

The Pre-Broadway Tour (1995)

Starring: Robert Cuccioli as Jekyll and Hyde, Linda Eder as Lucy Harris and Christiane Noll as Lisa Carew.

Good: Where Broadway is more subdued, the 95′ tour went for darker Victorian gothic horror / melodrama and I adore it. Much of the staging, sets and costumes are very different from the Broadway version. The script has some really impactful, chilling moments that were cut from the Broadway version.  It incorporates more of the popular ‘94 Gothic Musical Thriller album, with songs like Bring On The Men and Girls Of The Night included. (Lucy Meets Hyde is there and that’s something I want back in the show, dammit). And it’s got the same wonderful cast that went on to originate the role on Broadway. I really, really like this version and wish that the show had stayed a bit closer to this in parts.

Evil: The picture quality is not great and there’s not a lot of super close zooms, however it’s a bootleg of a really interesting time in the show’s history and I can get past it. Some people find some moments in the script overdramatic.

How Can I Watch It?: You can watch the whole thing right here! You can also listen to some clips from the soundboard of the show, of Robert Cuccioli singing “Alive” and “Confrontation” here! 

The Original Bremen Production (1999-2002)

Starring (in this video): Darius Merstein-Macleod (Jekyll / Hyde), Maricel (Lucy Harris), Michaela Kovarikova (Lisa Carew)

Good:  The Bremen production was the first international production of Jekyll & Hyde, and they definitely do not copy the Broadway version exactly. They make interesting changes that I feel make the show stronger, and the design and the orchestra are absolutely gorgeous. They make some changes to the running order of things that I think make the beginning of the show flow so much better. The design choices are gorg (I LOVE the color palette of this production, oh my gosh) and the orchestra is absolutely stunning (though that’s best showcased on the 1999 album, one of my favorites to listen to.) Really, really interesting and awesome production. 

Bad: None, really! This cast isn’t the original cast, if you’re hard pressed on that. 

How Can I Watch It?: You can watch the full show right here, and some professionally shot clips with the lead actor in this video. The same production design and direction all around was used for two more German productions in Vienna and Koln - you can watch the Vienna one here, starring Thomas Borchert, Maya Hakvoort and Eva Maria Marold. And about that 1999 album that’s one of my favorites to listen to... shhhh. SHHHh. Enjoy.

The 2013 Broadway Revival

Starring: Constantine Maroulis as Jekyll / Hyde, Deborah Cox as Lucy Harris, and Teal Wicks as Emma Carew. 

Good: This is the most recent major U.S production of Jekyll & Hyde. The singers are all excellent, and the scenic design has more of a “steampunk” edge to it, and they use projections in an interesting way, especially in “Confrontation”. They do relatively little to fundamentally change the currently licensed script, but all the songs are completely musically reworked in more of a pop-rock style, and there are bits that are reinstated from the concept album (Lucy Meets Hyde, Jekyll’s “It’s over now, I know inside” intro from “Confrontation”). It’s really interesting, the singers are actually fantastic, and I like some of the musical arrangements! 

Evil: Objectively, none. This revival totally changed up the sound and look of the show, and those changes can be polarizing, but it’s really up to you whether or not you personally like it. 

Where can I watch it?: Act 1 is here, and Act 2 is here! Here’s a tiny montage of some songs from the show as well! 

Other Productions:

I didn’t want to leave out a lot of other productions of the show that you can watch online, so here are two other interesting productions of the show I enjoy that you can watch online:

The 2014 Russian Production. The design is fabulous, the singers are great (the music is a nice mix of the classic orchestrations and the 2013 arrangements), and the set is absolutely amazing. Love this production. The set change from “Transformation” to “Alive” is AWESOME. Pick your poison: Ivan Ozhogin: Act 1 / Act 2, Kirill Gordeev: Act 1 / Act 2, or my underrated fave, Rostislav Koplakov: Act 1 / Act 2 . 

This 2007 outdoor German production. Watch it right here! I haven’t watched this whole thing, but it starts during daytime and by the time the show ends it’s dark, which is really cool)

Whichever way you choose to watch Jekyll & Hyde, I really hope you enjoy the show! It’s one of my absolute favorites. 

Also, if you want to listen to the show, you can listen to these albums on Youtube!

1990′ Concept Album 

(Very different from the final show - wouldn’t suggest starting with this one.)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_k8KX2WKpxXWD1WReuEEnZWTiQM0brA7OY

1994′ Concept Album:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKELXRdNl-0qpSAZUBEuet90lgNT5vFra

1997 Broadway Cast:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB135F98AE9670DF6

2006 ‘Resurrection’ Album:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp1o87OC81fxi-7LFAWEqAPvf3xZAD7tx

2012 Concept Album:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoIpj63IKuYxuv4nXJjAqoez3bZK2S51J

Enjoy!! 

[letterboxd]

Bong Hit!

Today Parasite overtook The Godfather as the highest-rated narrative feature film on Letterboxd. We examine what this means, and bring you the story of the birth of the #BongHive.

It’s Bong Joon-ho’s world and we’re just basement-dwelling in it. While there is still (at time of publication) just one one-thousandth of a point separating them, Bong’s Palme d’Or-winning Parasite has overtaken Francis Ford Coppola’s Oscar-winning The Godfather to become our highest-rated narrative feature.

In May, we pegged Parasite at number one in our round-up of the top ten Cannes premieres. By September, when we met up with Director Bong on the TIFF red carpet, Parasite was not only the highest-rated film of 2019, but of the decade. (“I’m very happy with that!” he told us.)

Look, art isn’t a competition—and this may be short-lived—but it’s as good a time as any to take stock of why Bong’s wild tale of the Kim and Park families is hitting so hard with film lovers worldwide. To do so, we’ve waded through your Parasite reviews (warning: mild spoilers below; further spoilers if you click the review links). And further below, member Ella Kemp recalls the very beginnings of the #BongHive.

Bong Joon-ho on set with actors Choi Woo-shik and Cho Yeo-jeong.

The Letterboxd community on Parasite

On the filmmaking technique: “Parasite is structured like a hill: the first act is an incredible trek upward toward the light, toward riches, toward reclaiming a sense of humanity as defined by financial stability and self-reliance. There is joy, there is quirk, there is enough air to breathe to allow for laughter and mischief.

“But every hill must go down, and Parasite is an incredibly balanced, plotted, and paced descent downward into darkness. The horror doesn’t rely on shock value, but rather is built upon a slow-burning dread that is rooted in the tainted soil of class, society, and duty… Bong Joon-ho dresses this disease up in beautiful sets and empathetic framing (the camera doesn’t gawk, but perceives invisible connections and overt inequalities)—only to unravel it with deft hands.” —Tay

“Bong’s use of landscape, architecture, and space is simply arresting.” —Taylor Baker

“There is a clear and forceful guiding purpose behind the camera, and it shows. The dialogue is incredibly smart and the entire ensemble is brilliant, but the most beautiful work is perhaps done through visual language. Every single frame tells you exactly what you need to know while pulling you in to look for more—the stunning production design behind the sleek, clinical nature of one home and the cramped, gritty nature of the other sets up a playpen of contrasts for the actors and the script.” —Kevin Yang

On how to classify Parasite: “Masterfully constructed and thoroughly compelling genre piece (effortlessly transitioning between familial drama, heist movie, satirical farce, subterranean horror) about the perverse and mutating symbiotic relationship of increasingly unequal, transactional class relationships, and who can and can’t afford to be oblivious about the severe, violent material/psychic toll of capitalist accumulation.” —Josh Lewis

“This is an excellent argument for the inherent weakness of genre categories. Seriously, what genre is this movie? It’s all of them and none of them. It’s just Parasite.” —Nick Wibert

“The director refers to his furious and fiendishly well-crafted new film as a ‘family tragicomedy’, but the best thing about Parasite is that it gives us permission to stop trying to sort his movies into any sort of pre-existing taxonomy—with Parasite, Bong finally becomes a genre unto himself.” —David Ehrlich

On the duality of the plot: “There are houses on hills, and houses underground. There is plenty of sun, but it isn't for everybody. There are people grateful to be slaves, and people unhappy to be served. There are systems that we are born into, and they create these lines that cannot be crossed. And we all dream of something better, but we’ve been living with these lines for so long that we've convinced ourselves that there really isn’t anything to be done.” —Philbert Dy

“The Parks are bafflingly naive and blissfully ignorant of the fact that their success and wealth is built off the backs of the invisible working class. This obliviousness and bewilderment to social and class inequities somehow make the Parks even more despicable than if they were to be pompous and arrogant about their privilege.

“This is not to say the Kims are made to be saints by virtue of the Parks’ ignorance. The Kims are relentless and conniving as they assimilate into the Park family, leeching off their wealth and privilege. But even as the Kims become increasingly convincing in their respective roles, the film questions whether they can truly fit within this higher class.” —Ethan

On how the film leaps geographical barriers: “As a satire on social climbing and the aloofness of the upper class, it’s dead-on and has parallels to the American Dream that American viewers are unlikely to miss; as a dark comedy, it’s often laugh-aloud hilarious in its audacity; as a thriller, it has brilliantly executed moments of tension and surprises that genuinely caught me off guard; and as a drama about family dynamics, it has tender moments that stand out all the more because of how they’re juxtaposed with so much cynicism elsewhere in the film. Handling so many different tones is an immensely difficult balancing act, yet Bong handles all of it so skilfully that he makes it feel effortless.” —C. Roll

“One of the best things about it, I think, is the fact that I could honestly recommend it to anyone, even though I can't even try to describe it to someone. One may think, due to the picture’s academic praise and the general public’s misconceptions about foreign cinema, that this is some slow, artsy film for snobby cinephiles, but it’s quite the contrary: it’s entertaining, engaging and accessible from start to finish.” —Pedro Machado

On the performative nature of image: “A família pobre que se infiltra no espaço da família rica trata a encenação—a dissimulação, os novos papéis que cada um desempenha—como uma espécie de luta de classes travada no palco das aparências. Uma luta de classes que usa a potência da imagem e do drama (os personagens escrevem os seus textos e mudam a sua aparência para passar por outras pessoas) como uma forma de reapropriação da propriedade e dos valores alheios.

“A grande proposta de Parasite é reconhecer que a ideia do conhecimento, consequentemente a natureza financeira e moral desse conhecimento, não passa de uma questão de performance. No capitalismo imediatista de hoje fingir saber é mais importante do que de fato saber.” —Arthur Tuoto

(Translation: “The poor family that infiltrates the rich family space treats the performance—the concealment, the new roles each plays—as a kind of class struggle waged on the stage of appearances. A class struggle that uses the power of image and drama (characters write their stories and change their appearance to pass for other people) as a form of reappropriation of the property and values ​​of others.

“Parasite’s great proposal is to recognize that the idea of ​​knowledge, therefore the financial and moral nature of that knowledge, is a matter of performance. In today’s immediate capitalism, pretending to know is more important than actually knowing.”)

Things you’re noticing on re-watches: “Min and Mr. Park are both seen as powerful figures deserving of respect, and the way they dismissively respond to an earnest question about whether they truly care for the people they’re supposed to tells us a lot about how powerful people think about not just the people below them, but everyone in their lives.” —Demi Adejuyigbe

“When I first saw the trailer and saw Song Kang-ho in a Native American headdress I was a little taken aback. But the execution of the ideas, that these rich people will siphon off of everything, whether it’s poor people or disenfranchised cultures all the way across the world just to make their son happy, without properly taking the time to understand that culture, is pretty brilliant. I noticed a lot more subtlety with that specific example this time around.” —London

“I only noticed it on the second viewing, but the film opens and closes on the same shot. Socks are drying on a rack hanging in the semi-basement by the window. The camera pans down to a hopeful Ki-Woo sitting on his bed… if the film shows anything, it might be that the ways we usually approach ‘solving’ poverty and ‘fixing’ the class struggle often just reinforce how things have been since the beginning.” —Houston

The birth of the #BongHive

London-based writer and Letterboxd member Ella Kemp attended Cannes for Culture Whisper, and was waiting in the Parasite queue with fellow writers Karen Han and Iana Murray when the hashtag #BongHive was born. Letterboxd editor Gemma Gracewood asked her to recall that day.

Take us back to the day that #BongHive sprang into life. Ella Kemp: I’m so glad you asked. Picture the scene: we were in the queue to watch the world premiere of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite at Cannes. It was toward the end of the festival; Once Upon a Time in Hollywood had already screened…

Can you describe for our members what those film festival queues are like? The queues in Cannes are very precise, and very strict and categorized. When you’re attending the festival as press, there are a number of different tiers that you can be assigned—white tier, pink tier, blue tier or yellow tier—and that’s the queue you have to stay in. And depending on which tier you’re in, a certain number of tiers will get into the film before you, no matter how late they arrive. Now, yellow is the lowest tier and it is the tier I was in this year. But, you know, I didn’t get shut out of any films I tried to go into, so I don’t want to speak ill of being yellow!

So, spirits are still high in the yellow queue before going to see Parasite. I was with friends and colleagues Iana Murray [writer for GQ, i-D, Much Ado About Cinema, Little White Lies], Karen Han [New York Times, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The Atlantic] and Jake Cunningham [of the Curzon and Ghibliotheque podcasts] who were also very excited for the film. We queued quite early, because obviously if you’re at the start of a queue and only two yellow tier people get in, you want that to be you.

So we had some time to spare, and we’re all very ‘online’ people and the 45 minutes in that queue was no different. So we just started tweeting, as you do. We thought, ‘Oh we’re just gonna tweet some stuff and see if it catches on.’ It might not, but at least we could kill some time.

So we just started tweeting #BongHive. And not explaining it too much.

#BongHive

— karen han (@karenyhan)

May 21, 2019

Within the realms of stan culture, I would argue that hashtags are more applicable to actors and musicians. Ariana Grande has her army of fans and they have their own hashtag. Justin Bieber has his, One Direction, all of them. But we thought, ‘You know who needs one and doesn’t have one right now? Bong Joon-ho.’

And so, you know, we tweeted it a couple of times, but I think what mattered the most was that there was no context, there was no logic, but there was consistency and insistence. So we tweeted it two or three times, and then the film started and we thought right, let’s see if this pays off. Because it could have been disappointing and we could have not wanted to be part of, you know, any kind of hype.

SMILE PRESIDENT @karenyhan #BongHive pic.twitter.com/Dk7T8bFYtv

— Ella Kemp (@ella_kemp)

May 21, 2019

But, Parasite was Parasite. So we walked out of it and thought, ‘Oh yes, the #BongHive is alive and kicking.’

I think what was interesting was that it came at that point in the festival when enthusiasm dipped. Everyone was very tired, and we were really tired, which is why we were tweeting illogical things. It was late at night by the time we came out of that film. It was close to midnight and we should have gone to bed, probably.

Because, first world problems, it is exhausting watching five, six, seven films a day at a film festival, trying to find sustenance that’s not popcorn, and form logical thoughts around these works of art. Yes! It was nice to have fun with something. But what happened next was [Parasite distributor] Neon clocked it and went, ‘Oh wait, there’s something we can do there’. And then they took it, and it flew into the world, and now the #BongHive is worldwide.

I love the formality of Korean language and the way that South Koreans speak of their elders with such respect. I enjoyed being on the red carpet at TIFF hearing the Korean media refer to Bong Joon-ho as ‘Director Bong’. It’s what he deserves!

I like to imagine a world where it’s ‘Director Gerwig’, ‘Director Campion’, ‘Director Sciamma’… Exactly.

Related content:

Ella Kemp’s review of Parasite for Culture Whisper.

Letterboxd list: The directors Bong Joon-ho would like you to watch next.

Our interview with Director Bong, in which he reveals just how many times he’s watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

“I’m very awkward.” Bong Joon-ho’s first words following the standing ovation at Cannes for Parasite’s world premiere.

Karen Han interviews Director Bong for Polygon, with a particular interest in how he translated the film for non-Korean audiences. (Here’s Han’s original Parasite review out of Cannes; and here’s what happened when a translator asked her “Are you bong hive?” in front of the director.)

Haven’t seen Parasite yet? Here are the films recommended by Bong Joon-ho for you to watch in preparation.

With thanks to Matt Singer for the headline.

[ohlukcs]

                                                          – task 001 : ooc survey

YOUR ALIAS & NICKNAMES — sam !

AGE — 22

TIMEZONE — aest babey

PREFERRED PRONOUNS — she/her

MBTI — um i have no freakin idea except definitely introvert, i would do the test but i woke up like ten minutes ago so i am no functional enough for that rn lmao

HP HOUSE — now listen i wanted to be a ravenclaw when i was 11 so i believe i have to stick to that, based on my values and who i think i am now i think it’d be more hufflepuff but 11 yr old me wanted to be the smartest bitch around so im a ravenclaw 

ARE YOU A STUDENT? WHAT DO YOU STUDY? — i used to be, i graduated last year i studied film and television

ARE YOU ENJOYING IT? — ya! it was a lot of fun and i got to make a lot of cool stuff ! made a film that won best student horror at toronto short film festival so that was really fucking exciting

LINKS TO OTHER ACCOUNTS & SOCIAL MEDIA — im @spookyrps and on weheartit and pinterest 

DISCORD USER — im scared of bots so not gonna put the whole thing but im skelesam in the chat 

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE FICTION GENRE? — horror, thriller, anything crazy and ridiculous and fun. starting to like comedies a lot now too but it really depends on how its made

TOP FIVE FAVOURITE FILMS — oh boi um booksmart, the martian, whiplash, god help the girl, and the scooby doo movie. theres a million others i could put there but im just gonna go with the first five that came to mind or else i’ll be here all day (special shoutouts: bad times at the el royale, hereditary & midsommar, the new it movies, jennifer’s body, clue, the barkley marathons, harry potter series, se7en, and the saw franchise)

A BOOK YOU FEEL “CHANGED” YOU? — the night circus by erin morgenstern

A MOVIE YOU THINK ABOUT OFTEN? — the room lmao

WHAT IS YOUR SIGN? — aquarius babey

ARE YOU INTO ASTROLOGY? — i dont like follow it but i do like to read up on them and use the signs to help build my characters (eg. lukas is a scorpio and drea is an aquarius too)

WHAT PLATFORMS HAVE YOU ROLEPLAYED ON? — almost exclusively tumblr but i was in a forum rp back in like 2009 or something lmao

WHAT OTHER HOBBIES DO YOU HAVE? — i do a lot of stuff based around film making, like everything from script writing/reading, production design, filming, editing, thats what i love to do. and i wanna be a gamer but i have a shit computer and very limited hand eye coordination lmaoo

HAVE ANY PETS? IF SO, TALK ABOUT THEM! —  ya ! i have a black cat named zelda who is admittedly a lil .... thicc. i love her so much and she barely tolerates me. she grooms me and my roommate bc i think she thinks she’s our mom and like she is tbh

IS THERE A TV SHOW YOU RECOMMEND A LOT? — search party, its so fucking good and funny and crazy and i love it. if u like zany comedies with a lil mystery, its really fun. big broad city vibes

ANY SHOWS YOU LIKE SOME MIGHT BE SURPRISED TO HEAR THAT YOU DO? — um i dont think so, i think i’m very predictable in my media consumption lmao

WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ? WOULD YOU RECOMMEND IT? — bro its been so long since i finished a book, i think it was the miseducation of cameron post by emily m danforth. idk if i would recommend it, i think it depends what ur after from a book bc this was VERY DEPRESSING and threw my little bi ass through the ringer lol

CURRENTLY READING? — jonathon van ness’ autobiography over the top: a raw journey to self love (im rlly enjoying it so far)

LAST FILM? REC IT? — not technically a film but i watched unnatural selection on netflix last night and it fucked me up and i need everyone else to watch it so i can talk about it

THREE MOVIES YOU NEED TO WATCH — gattaca bc of the unnatural selection viewing lmao, the cat and the moon to support my boi alex wolff, and knives out bc it looks so fucking good i wanna see it so bad

WHAT MOVIE DO YOU THINK YOU’VE SEEN THE MOST TIMES? — harry potter and the philospher’s stone probably. i used to watch it multiple times a year and now i watch it at least once

WHAT ALWAYS PUTS YOU IN A GOOD MOOD? — watching my fave stand up comedies lol. go tos are john mulaney and bo burnham

WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE MUSICIAN / BAND? LIST IF THERE ARE MORE THAN ONE. — all time fave is the front bottoms but a more recent fave is rex orange county

WILD NIGHT OUT OR QUIET NIGHT IN? — quiet night in 

ANY PHOBIAS? — not really

DO YOU LIKE BUGS? — fuck no but i dont really lose my shit over them

BIRDS? — they can chill, except for emus fuck them

ARE YOU A CAT OR DOG PERSON? BOTH? — more cat than dog but i want a dog rlly bad

BIGGEST PET PEEVE? — being talked over/ignored lol

FAVOURITE THING ABOUT THE RPC? — that i’ve met and become friends with so many cool people from all over the world ??? like what the fuck ???

TOP TEN FAVE FCS TO USE? — i mean obv at the moment its alisha boe and alex wolff, but also love liana liberato, benedetta gargari, joe keery, really love using all the skam nl fcs, lili reinhart, oliver jackson-cohen, zoe kravitz, and probs a million more i just cant think of

FIVE YOU LIKE WRITING AGAINST? — literally all of them bye lmao

FAVOURITE TYPE OF FOOD? — i luh me some pasta ok

WORST FOOD? — seafood lol i’ve never eaten it and i probs never will

DO YOU PLAY VIDEOGAMES? IF SO, WHAT ONES AND ON WHAT PLATFORM DO YOU PREFER? —  i play a lil and wanna play more! atm i have a ps4 and i like to play a lot of like “””decision making games””” (until dawn, detroit become human, etc) but mainly i play graveyard keeper. currently saving to get a pc so i can play more

ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE WITH THE TAG? — i said something about the barkley marathons before and i would just like to say netflix took it down recently and i haven’t recovered i feel like pure shit i just want her (the barkley marathons) back x

LASTLY, HOW DID YOU FIND US? — i follow a couple of the admins from my ooc blog and saw it was back (after never having time to join any of the other iterations of lockwood) and was like fuck it yk

[thedeaditeslayer]

Josh Becker interview: Thriving, surviving and doing it his way.

Here’s yet another interview from 1428 Elm except with Josh Becker. You can support the Evil Dead/Michigan Mafia alumni by giving his latest film Morning, Noon & Night a look. You can read the interview at the link above or attached below.

Josh Becker is a talented writer and director whose film school was the Super 8 shorts that he made with pals, Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Scott Spiegel while growing up in Detroit. Known for quirky films like Lunatics: A Love Story and his ode to Hitchcock and film noir, Running Time, he is a maverick with a unique voice in a cookie cutter Hollywood.

Josh Becker is an independent filmmaker who honed his craft writing and directing majority of the Super 8 shorts featuring Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, Rob Tapert and Scott Spiegel. Known for his candor and his innovative approach to moviemaking, he is a modern-day storyteller.

Currently, in post-production on his western, Warpath, (which coincidentally sparked a murder investigation but more on that later) we were fortunate enough that the director was able to take some time out of his busy schedule to chat with us.

So, without further ado, here is our interview.

The Interview

Birth of a Maverick

1428 Elm: When you were growing up in Detroit, did you always want to be a director? Was that what you originally set out to do?

Josh Becker:  When I was a young kid, I first wanted to be an actor.  Then, when I came to realize there was such a thing as a director, perhaps when I was 9 or 10, I switched goals.

1428 Elm: Everyone knows how Sam and Bruce met initially. How did you become a part of the group?

JB:  My family moved to Franklin in 1968 and the Raimi family moved in around the block from us a few months later.  I immediately became best friends with Ivan Raimi, Sam’s older brother, then soon became friends with the whole family.  At that point I was in 4th grade and Sam was in 3rd grade. Then, when I started junior high (now called middle school), the lockers were alphabetical and about five lockers down from me was Bruce Campbell.  We became buddies and were both in the drama club and in a play together. That’s where we met Scott Spiegel.  Then, the next year, Sam started junior high and became friends with Scott and Bruce and that’s when we all started making Super-8 movies together.

1428 Elm: You cut your teeth as a director on the Super 8 shorts. What was your most memorable shoot?

JB:  The many various slapstick comedies, like: “The Blind Waiter” and “Cleveland Smith Bounty Hunter” were all fun to make, but my epic was “Stryker’s War,” which I spent $5,000 making.  That was my biggest, and most memorable Super-8.

The Lunatic Is on the Grass

1428 Elm:  Umbrella Entertainment recently released Lunatics: A Love Story. I feel this is one of your underrated gems. Very trippy. What was the inspiration for this movie? How did Bruce become involved as a producer?

JB:  The inspiration was my desperate need to make another movie and make some money.  I got the idea from listening to Pink Floyd, and when they sang, “The lunatic is on the grass,” I thought, “Hey, no one has yet used “lunatic” as a title. I then dreamed up a story to go with it and pitched it to Sam and Rob. They liked it and optioned it.  After a year of development (meaning 14 rewrites), they hired Bruce to produce the film.

1428 Elm:  Running Time is another terrific film of yours. Everyone knows about the “single take” like Hitchcock’s Rope. Tell us something that isn’t common knowledge about the film.

JB:  It’s nearly ready to come out on Blu-Ray from Synapse Films. I wrote an essay about it that’s in my book “Rushes” that explains everything.  It was shot on film so there’s a hidden cut every five minutes.  I think it turned out pretty well and I know Bruce likes it a lot.

1428 Elm: For those of us that like the 50’s style B-movie sci-fi thrillers, Alien Apocalypse is a great deal of fun. Do you remember your pitch to the SyFy Channel?

JB:  I didn’t pitch it to SyFy.  Bruce and I were working with a now long-defunct company who pitched SyFy on making any movies with Bruce, and they said “send us some scripts.”  I dug out “Alien Apocalypse” (which was 14 years old) and Bruce dug out “The Man with the Screaming Brain” (which was 16 years old) then at some point not too long later we were in Bulgaria making both films.  I never talked to SyFy at all about it.

“Everybody’s Gotta Choose Their Own Poison”

1428 Elm:  Morning, Noon & Night is getting a special showing in Royal Oak, MI on June 6. This is a darkly comedic take on addictions which relies on actually telling a story which isn’t something filmmakers do anymore. Can you see Hollywood ever getting back to doing that and where can our readers view this film?

JB:  “Morning, Noon & Night” is available right now on Amazon — and will soon be on many other platforms, too. I can’t see the future, but I can’t imagine Hollywood correcting itself any time soon.  It’s a thousand times easier to do sequels and remakes then to come up with a good story that everybody agrees on.  I think the entire Hollywood system is broken.

1428 Elm:  Let’s talk about your latest production, Warpath. Something unusual happened when you were doing pick-ups. Gerry Kissell told me about it. Can you tell our readers the story because it sounds like an incident that would be on the ID Channel?

JB:  Well, “Warpath,” which will probably be fully done by July, just had its final pick-up shoot a few days ago where we got the few missing shots we still needed.  As we were shooting in the woods not far from my house, folks in the cast and the crew kept mentioning a funky odor. Finally, someone pushed back a pile of branches and underneath was a decomposed human body. Suddenly, my set became a crime scene.  The police showed up and we all had to fill out witness reports.  Then me and the co-producer quickly found a new location, hustled everybody and everything over there and got all of the remaining shots.

1428 Elm: Wow. That’s crazy!

JB: That pile of branches is in the foreground and background of a couple of shots, so it will be in the film.

**An interesting footnote to add regarding this unfortunate turn of events, one of the cast members, Joaquin Guerrero is an active duty K-9 officer. He stepped in and took charge of the situation before local law enforcement arrived. According to the actor/officer:

“My main concern was preserving the scene and the well-being of the crew, because of the traumatic effect it may have on them afterwards.”

Riding Off into the Sunset

1428 Elm:  You have an impressive cast, horror vets Thom Matthews and Ted Raimi. The film synopsis sounds like a fresh take on The Searchers. Are you a fan of Westerns? This feels like a new subject for you to tackle.

JB:  I’ve always been a fan of westerns.  I was the film critic for True West Magazine just a few years ago. “Warpath” certainly owes something to “The Searchers,” although in this case it’s a wife out looking for her husband, with the aid of a tough bounty hunter played by Thom. I’ve always wanted to make a western and now I have.  I think it turned well, and the lead, Sasha Higgins, is terrific. Thom has aged into the perfect Marlboro man and plays it wonderfully.

1428 Elm: Do you have any upcoming projects in the pipeline? Anything you can talk about?

JB: As for the future, me and my cohorts at Panoramic Pictures — one of whom is Gary Jones, maker of such cult classics as “Mosquito” and “Spiders” — are gearing up to make my JFK script that was previously called “Head Shot” but has been retitled to “I Killed Kennedy.” It’s the account of how the assassination really came down and the professional hit men who were brought in from France by the mafia who actually did the shooting, as well as how Oswald got set up, then murdered. Th-th-that’s all, folks.

Thanks so much to Josh Becker for speaking with us. We look forward to seeing Warpath.

[citizen-undead]

10 Years of Cloverfield: Part Two

By Jay Truant

I love monster movies. When I was a wee prehumous lad, my dad spent many weekend afternoons introducing me to classic monster movies such as Toho’s Godzilla series, King Kong, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Them! and many more. My fascination with giant city-destroying monsters developed quickly and would follow me into adulthood – so when I saw the first teaser trailer for the JJ Abrams-produced found footage monster flick Cloverfield, I was all in. I followed the movie’s Alternate Reality Game (ARG), bought a Slusho t-shirt and even took the day off of work to catch the earliest showing of the film on 1-18-08. I was excited by Abrams’ desire to make the Cloverfield monster America’s equivalent of Japan’s Godzilla, and patiently awaited further sequels. As it would turn out, it would be nearly a decade before a sequel arrived in theaters – and once it had, it completely defied any and every expectation that fans had for it.

Cloverfield was a huge success for Paramount Pictures and producer JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions. On a production budget of $25 million, the film quickly turned a profit during its opening weekend, debuting in 3,411 theaters with a final weekend gross of $40 million. Rumors that Paramount were eager to push a sequel into development were the talk of the Internet that Monday morning, and director Matt Reeves addressed the possibility of a follow-up in an interview with Coming Soon:

There’s a moment on the Brooklyn Bridge, and there was a guy filming something on the side of the bridge, and Hud sees him filming and he turns over and he sees the ship that’s been capsized and sees the headless Statue of Liberty, and then he turns back and this guy’s briefly filming him. In my mind that was two movies intersecting for a brief moment, and I thought there was something interesting in the idea that this incident happened and there are so many different points of view, and there are several different movies at least happening that evening and we just saw one piece of another.

Over the next eight years, Reeves and Abrams would discuss the sequel in interviews, despite Abrams’ confirmation of the monster’s death at the end of the original film in an interview with Rolling Stone. In January 2016, Cloverfield fans would have their patience rewarded when a surprise trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane debuted ahead of Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.

10 Cloverfield Lane was conceived as its own original story independent of the Cloverfield universe in a spec script by Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken titled The Cellar. In 2012, the script was sold to Paramount Pictures and earned a spot on the Tracking Board’s year-end hit list.

In the script, a young woman named Michelle wakes up in an underground bomb shelter with a man named Howard who claims to have rescued her from a nuclear attack that has rendered the air outside the shelter contaminated. Howard’s claims are backed up by Nate, who arrives at the shelter in a hazmat suit and quickly forms a bond with Michelle. Throughout the script, Howard and Nate’s credibility is repeatedly called into question and the reader is left to wonder if an apocalyptic event has truly taken place, or if Michelle has been the victim of an elaborate kidnapping.

Paramount hired Bad Robot to develop The Cellar for their fledgling Insurge Pictures division. Based on Paramount’s success with 2009′s found footage horror flick Paranormal Activity, Insurge was created to focus on the development of micro-budget films. Whiplash director Damien Chazelle was hired to further develop the script, and Dan Trachtenberg signed on to make his feature directorial debut. Chazelle made several updates to the script which included further development of the film’s characters. The character of Nate was changed to Emmett, and retained none of the sinister qualities he possessed in the original spec script. Howard subsequently became a more cagey and volatile character, while Michelle is much stronger-willed than she appears in the script.

During the film’s production, producer JJ Abrams began to feel a kinship between Trachtenberg’s contained science fiction thriller and the original Cloverfield.  In interviews, Abrams explained that while 10 Cloverfield Lane wasn’t a direct sequel to Cloverfield, it was a ‘blood relative’, stating that the series would take on an anthology approach similar to Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone where each film would be connected in tone only.

“The spirit of it, the genre of it, the heart of it, the fear factor, the comedy factor, the weirdness factor — there were so many elements that felt like the DNA of this story were of the same place that Cloverfield was born out of. It just became clear that as we were working on the movie, this could be something that is not the sequel that anyone might expect. It’s not the continuation of the story that people might think of, but it was so clearly associated.”

–JJ Abrams, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.

A large portion of the success of the original Cloverfield can be attributed to the film’s innovative viral marketing campaign. In-game websites such as the now defunct 1-18-08.com and Slusho.jp (temporarily down) were initially discovered by fans who obsessively analyzed the film’s teaser trailer looking for potential clues that would help them understand the nature of the film’s monster. The teaser for 10 Cloverfield Lane was similarly picked apart upon arrival, though fans would have to endure a certain degree of misdirection before the official ARG started.

At one point in the teaser, the film’s characters can be seen drinking Swamp Pop, a Louisiana-based soft drink. Fans immediately began scouring Swamp Pop’s official website for clues, believing the cola to be 10 Cloverfield Lane’s equivalent of the fictional Slusho that appeared in the original film. Swamp Pop, however, is a very real product that can be purchased in stores and was likely featured in the film to pinpoint the story’s regional location. This didn’t stop the company from having a bit of fun with fans, however, as their online store offered a “long-term shelter supply” for a brief period of time.

Fans also began investigating Tagruato’s website for potential updates that would point them in the direction of the film’s ARG. Several fans began e-mailing Tagruato with in-game questions, hoping to illicit a reply from the fictional Japanese mining company that played a key role in the Cloverfield ARG. While this tactic initially seemed far-fetched, fans would eventually begin receiving replies from Vanessa Gwon, Tagruato’s employee of the month for January 2016. This would lead to the discovery of Tagruato’s “Employee of the Month” page, which featured a picture of John Goodman as Howard Stambler. Howard is listed on the page as a Telemetry Analyst for Tagruato’s subsidiary company Bold Futura whose work had resulted in a significant breakthrough diagnosing transmission complications with two of Tagruato’s governmental clients’ orbiting satellites. Fans also noticed that he was wearing a shirt containing the phrase “Radioman70″. Visiting radioman70.com redirected fans to FunandPrettyThings.com, the first and only original website of the 10 Cloverfield Lane ARG.

The homepage of FAPT features a number of images that directly reference the film’s teaser trailer. One of those images is a screenshot from Pretty in Pink that prompts the entry of a passphrase when clicked upon. Entering the phrase “Do you want to talk?” leads to a message board with posts from Howard Stambler.

The first post on FAPT’s message board is used to set up the premise of the film’s ARG: Howard Stambler is posting these messages for his daughter Megan to warn her of an impending danger, and instructing her to get to his underground shelter as quickly as possible. Towards the end of his message, Howard insinuates that Megan’s mother has been keeping her from him, potentially due to her belief that Howard is mentally unstable. Further updates from Howard would reference his disdain for Megan’s mother, as well as his longing to reconnect with his estranged daughter. 

Fans soon discovered another page on FAPT titled “Life Preserving Information”. The page featured a survival guide that Howard put together for Megan, complete with tips on how to put together a bug-out bag or hot-wire a car. Howard also provided links to other (real) survival websites and included widgets that provided weather updates and train schedules. Subsequent updates featured a link to a real news article about a train track fire in New Orleans.

Similar to the original Cloverfield ARG, FAPT also provided fans with some background information on Howard. In one of Howard’s message board posts, he mentions that he used work with spy satellites. He references a discovery that he and his team made while in space and explains that the government is now trying to cover it up. Howard also mentions that he worked on Seasat, the  first Earth-orbiting satellite designed for remote sensing of the Earth’s oceans. Conspiracy theorists believe that the military shut down Seasat when they discovered it could also be used to track submarines, using a short circuit as a covering story. Finally, Howard explains that his mentor was accused of spying and sent to prison for 365 years. It is assumed that Howard’s mentor was a real life Navy Radioman named Jerry Whitworth, a member of the Walker Spy Ring who was sentenced to 365 years for selling secret information to the Soviets.

Howard also designed a text-based survival simulation game for Megan to help her practice surviving inside of the bunker. Fans were able to interact with the game, and could even post their high scores. One user was able to pass 1,000 days inside the bunker, and was rewarded with a secret message from Howard revealing the location of a dead drop in Chicago. Reddit user helveticatt went to the locker at the HI Chicago hostel and found a Paris bag containing a cellphone. The phone had one voicemail, which was a message from Howard to Megan:

“Megan, as promised - a phone just for you and me to talk. Keep it hidden so your mother doesn’t ruin this too. I put my number into your contacts. Call me as soon as you can. I need to hear your voice, and I gotta get you out of Chicago before everything happens. Your life is in real danger, Radiogirl. But I promise to keep you safe. Call me please. Love, dad.”

After the discovery of the dead drop, FAPT continued to be updated regularly. In one message board post, Howard made reference to his estranged wife Denise selling their family heirlooms. Fans quickly found a listing from Denise on Craigslist that contained a picture of the heirlooms with one of Megan’s school notebooks visible to the side of it. Fans e-mailed Denise to ask about her husband, and her replies relayed frightening stories of Howard’s “extreme prepping” and suggested that something terrible may have happened to Megan:

Howard was always worried about emergencies. I used to think it was just how he’d learned to see the world from when he was in the Navy. But things got so much worse when he started working at Bold Futura. He used to come home at night and sit through dinner without saying a word. He became obsessed with building his fallout shelter, putting all our money into it. I didn’t even think he’d mind too much when we left. That way he could keep building his bunker without anybody to get in his way. But reading everything you’ve shown me on this site. I can see that it’s just made him more obsessed. This is not the first time he’s done this. Every few years there’s some new danger that’s going to kill us all. But the disaster never happens. And then he just finds something else to obsess about. During one of his panics, he made us hide in the cellar. Megan must have been about 11, and she wouldn’t stop asking him why we were hiding. So he put his hand over her mouth to keep her quiet, and kept it there so long that she couldn’t breathe. That was the moment I knew that I needed to get us away from him. Maybe if I’d realized it sooner, things wouldn’t have turned out so badly.

The last update on FAPT came from a message board posting by Nikolia Roza, a fellow employee of Bold Futura. Linked in the message is a strange audio file, which starts out as haunting music, but appears to contain some sort of encoded message. Playing the audio file, while running a decoder program, generated an image of one of the alien spaceships from the film approaching the earth.

The trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane would return to theaters ahead Deadpool. Depending on which theater fans attended, a brief image would quickly flash at the end of the trailer, containing random numbers. By combining the numbers featured on each of the five images, fans were given geographical coordinates to a second dead drop.

Reddit user MugensKeeper discovered the dead drop, which contained survival gear, dry food, a puzzle piece and a USB drive. The USB drive was loaded with an audio file that contained a recording of a Mission Control conversation concerning a large burst of unexplained magnetic energy. At the end of the conversation, they are instructed to cover up the incident.

Shortly after the discovery of the second dead drop, the outgoing message on Howard’s cellphone was changed:

This phone belongs to my daughter. I don’t know how you got it, but it doesn’t matter much anyways. It’s happening… and, I wish everyone just listened to me. I could have helped you all if you just listened.

Howard also texted Megan’s phone, instructing her to delete all the messages in her voicemail box so he could leave her a new message. The final message from Howard arrived a few days later:

“It’s my fault, I see that now. Now it’s too late for you to leave Chicago. I was never going to see you again. You were my little girl, and it was my job to protect you. I failed. I’m going to make it up to you, I know how to make it right, I promise.”

10 Cloverfield Lane yielded another success for Paramount Pictures and Bad Robot Productions. The film was met with critical and commercial acclaim, earning a 90% certified fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and $110 million at the worldwide box office. Some fans, however, felt as though the movie was marketed under false pretenses; at the end of a TV spot that aired during the Super Bowl, a clear variation of the Cloverfield monster’s roar can be heard, leading them to believe that this movie would be a direct follow-up to the original This roar would make its way into the film as one layer of the sound the alien spaceship makes after its blown up by Michelle. Despite their disappointment, these fans nonetheless admitted to enjoying the film as a standalone movie, praising the performances of John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Gallagher Jr.

After the release of 10 Cloverfield Lane, Paramount and Bad Robot announced that they would be adapting a screenplay from writers Doug Jung and Oren Uziel called God Particle with Julius Onah set to direct. The synopsis of the film described a crew aboard a space station finding itself alone after a scientific experiment caused the Earth to disappear. Fans immediately began speculating that the audio file contained in Howard’s dead drop was a reference to the crew and station set to appear in God Particle. A leaked synopsis from the online survey website Swagbucks also made reference to an alien attack, leading many to believe that the next film in the Cloverfield franchise would be a direct follow-up to 10 Cloverfield Lane. As they would discover two years later, the next film in the series wouldn’t be quite so easy to figure out.

[aion-rsa]

Boss Level Pushes Action Movie Time Loops to Their Limits

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The new action sci-fi thriller Boss Level begins with former Special Forces agent Roy Pulver (Frank Grillo) and an unnamed woman waking up in Pulver’s bed, fully clothed, after what looks like a rough night. But things get rougher very quickly, as an assassin enters Pulver’s apartment and attempts to kill him. Pulver defeats him but ends up dying anyway–only to wake up the next morning and do the whole thing again, perhaps living a little longer and getting killed by someone else, but still dying.

In a running voiceover, Pulver casually informs us that this is the 140th time he’s done this. And he still can’t figure out why or how it’s happening, or how to break out of the time loop he’s stuck in. All he knows is that he will wake up again on the very same morning and despite doing everything he can to prevent it, will nevertheless get shot or stabbed, or beheaded or run over, for reasons unknown. He also knows that his destiny is linked to that of his scientist ex-wife (Naomi Watts), the son who doesn’t know Pulver is his father (Rio Grillo) and his ex-wife’s sinister boss (Mel Gibson).

Boss Level is directed and co-written by Joe Carnahan, who revamped a script originally written by Chris and Eddie Borey. It’s the first feature film Carnahan has directed since 2015’s Stretch, and continues his exploration of taking different approaches to hardcore action and crime thrillers, a track record that includes movies like The Grey (2011), The A-Team (2010), Smokin’ Aces (2006), and Narc (2002). But Boss Level is different in that it also represents Carnahan’s first full dive into sci-fi territory.

“The Boreys wrote this really great script called Continue,” says Carnahan when we connect via Zoom. “I had read it. It started out as kind of a rewrite job. I dug it, because I’ve always loved, as I think a lot of us do, the subgenre of the time loop. It’s kind of a proven commodity in movies. As I got into it more, I was like, ‘I’m not really a sci-fi guy.’ But [late director] Tony Scott, rest his soul, was one of my great mentors. I always loved the way he treated Déjà Vu, which is a great kind of brick and mortar approach to time travel.”

Carnahan says he applied the same approach to what eventually became Boss Level, explaining, “The more fantastical elements of it, I wasn’t really concerned about. But I did love the idea of kind of combining Groundhog Day and Die Hard–the way I think that Doug Liman did it with Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow. But I thought it’d be much funnier if the guy was just bored stiff by all of it and didn’t know what the hell to do.”

The title of the movie itself is a gaming reference (the “boss level” is the final and usually most challenging level of a video game), and Carnahan admits that the narrative is set up to mirror the way a player moves through the levels of a game–sometimes repeating them over and over again.

“That was absolutely deliberate,” he says. “I’m not a huge gamer. But when I was a kid, I played all those games. And it’s funny, I play with my kids now, I have an old stand-up that’s got all these games on it. I got to load up that arcade with all my favorites, Robotron, Galaga–all these dumb games that I loved. So I built that in, but I never wanted that to overwhelm the central core of the story.”

Incredibly, Carnahan’s journey to get Boss Level made started as he was finishing up The Grey more than a decade ago. He had worked with Frank Grillo on that film (now a minor cult classic) and wanted Grillo for the part of Pulver in his time loop tale. But getting the backing to make it was an entirely different story and took 10 years, eventually employing what Carnahan describes as “not a traditional financing structure… every piece of bad luck you could encounter, we basically went through it all.”

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Boss Level is now premiering on Hulu, a result of its long, twisting road to existence, the rise of streaming outlets and the effects of the pandemic on traditional theatrical releases.

“I think the age of our traditional theatrical exhibition is done as we knew it,” says Carnahan confidently. “I think it’s going to shift in ways that people who are at the leading edge of that right now are figuring out… But I don’t think we’re going to go back to 350, 400 seats in a traditional kind of–I just don’t think you’re going to have that happening. Not for the foreseeable future.”

The future, both long term and short term, is very much at the heart of Boss Level. Grillo’s Roy Pulver begins to gradually extend his lifespan on each turn of the loop, living a little longer every go-round and discovering another piece of information that he needs to solve the puzzle he’s trapped in. But while Pulver’s life, those of his wife and son, and possibly many others are at stake, Carnahan says that first and foremost he wanted to make a bonkers action movie that pushed the genre to its limits.

“I was able to make an action movie/Three Stooges film,” he says. “So it was kind of an ideal scenario for me, because we could really go bananas and gonzo with the stuff that we were doing. But listen, you’re always looking to evolve the form. I think that we want to keep pushing it. I don’t know that you’re going to be able to do just the straight action film anymore without any kind of emotional content–without some sort of heart and soul. I think the Marvel films have done this so well, combining this big kind of spectacle action filmmaking with heart, with these small, idiosyncratic and quirky moments.”

Boss Level is the latest movie to emerge from Warparty, the production company that Carnahan and Grillo officially began in 2016. Grillo, of course, has enjoyed a long career as one of film’s most reliable tough guys, especially in movies like The Grey, End of Watch, Zero Dark Thirty, The Purge: Anarchy, and The Purge: Election Year, while also playing the villainous Brock Rumlow/Crossbones in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Carnahan says that their similar tastes and outlook is what makes the partnership work and drives their acquisition of material to produce.

“We’re always looking for kind of elevated genre stuff,” Carnahan says. “Stuff that we think we can sink our teeth into and make better than the sum of its parts, [so] that we’re not just doing an action film, or a horror film, or a thriller. We want to plus it up. Frank and I have a great ease of use. We have a great shorthand at this point. We just know how the other one’s going to move in a situation and what to expect, and so on. There’s great comfort and certainly great creative strength in that.”

With both men producing, Grillo acting and Carnahan directing or writing or both, the pair have several formidable projects coming down the pipeline. One is an English language version of the already classic 2011 Indonesian action thriller The Raid, which has yet to start filming, while the other, Copshop, is now in post-production. The latter film teams Grillo with Gerard Butler, and Carnahan promises that the sparks will fly between the two action heavyweights.

“They’re dynamite,” the director exclaims. “I’ll say right now, I don’t know that Gerry’s ever been better in a movie. That’s how good he is in Copshop. He’s dynamite, man. He’s really, really something in this film. I think people are going to kind of be blown away. And then there’s this young woman, Alexis Lauder, who’s basically the lead of the film. She’s just a movie star. She’s just absolutely captivating. And the movie is really good. I’m very proud of it and I think audiences are going to dig it.”

As for whether we’ll see Butler and Grillo go head to head in a fight sequence or two in the film, Carnahan doesn’t want to get into details but adds, “We’re not going to disappoint people.”

Right now, however, Carnahan is focused on getting the word out about Boss Level, and is not shy about what he thinks he, Grillo, and their team have accomplished with it.

“I think it’s the best action movie of the last five years,” he says. “I just think it’s awesome and it’s funny. It’s rare that you make a film where everything that movie tries to do, it succeeds at doing. I think that’s a great testament to the people involved in it and how, even when it seemed like it was born under a bad sign, we still persevered. I just think it’s a blast, and a hell of a lot of fun on a Friday or Saturday night.”

Boss Level begins streaming now on Hulu.

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The post Boss Level Pushes Action Movie Time Loops to Their Limits appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[actualbird]

Hello, I'm that anon that gave you all that Filipino emotional dump earlier (thanks for helping me sort that out btw) and yes I would love some recommendations!!! Also, my appreciation for your existence (which was already very high) went up about one hundred million percent.

ahhhh thank you!! i just wanted to say that your message really meant so, so much to me.

and now: RECS. YES!!! pls take note that all of these recommendations are subject to my own biased preferences, so while i love them with all my heart, it may not be everybody’s cup of tea

NOVELS (these can easily be found at national bookstores!!)

Janus Silang series by Edgar Calabia Samar (YA MMPORG filipino mythology horror story of epic proportions. exciting and fun and downright terrifying at times.)

Mga Ibong Mandaragit by Amado V. Hernandez (a socio political pseudo sequel to Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. WILD RIDE!)

Cave and Shadows by Nick Joaquin (a martial law era metaphysical murder mystery thriller. giant crabs! pagans! the line “this puta country and its puta weather.” gorgeous!!! novel!!!!)

Salamanca by Dean Francis Alfar (a beautiful, magical, absurd tale of love and lust and family and friendship. i havent finished reading this yet but my god, is it fucking good.)

SHORT STORIES/SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS (again can be found at national bookstores. probably. the hunt is worth it.) (pls buy local books)

The Distance to Andromeda and Other Stories by Gregorio Brillantes (i dont have this one but i read The Distance to Andromeda for class and. god. wow)

The Kite of Stars and Other Stories by Dean Francis Alfar (literally changed my life and made me pursue writing in college. personal favorites: The Maiden and the Crocodile, Six From Downtown, and (push). please read this)

How to Traverse Terra Incognita by Dean Francis Alfar (i warned you about my bias)

The Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction 2005-2010 ed. by Dean Francis Alfar and Nikki Alfar (SPECTACULAR COLLECTION filled with a phenomenal array of stories from so many writers. personal favorite: Bearing Fruit by Nikki Alfar. the Alfars are too good. we dont deserve them)

POEM (im not as well read here so bear with me)

Aral Sa Heograpiya by Edgar Calabia Samar (i cant find it online so heres a sneaky pic from my fil textbook bc u just…gotta read this) (simple and heartbreaking portrayal of best friends/maybe more and growing apart)

POETRY COLLECTIONS

Spleen by Mabi David (Mabi David gently reached her hand through my ribs and pried my heart through my chest for everybody to see)

Narcissus by Mark Anthony Cayanan (raw and brutal and painfully personal. ive met this guy a lot and he wears shiny silver shoes. you can buy this book at the Ateneo Press!)

Tonight We Slurp In Color by Andrea V. Tubig (my god. sexual, intimate, intelligent, and witty. please) 

NON-FICTION

At Last, the Ocean by Alie Unson (i bought this chapbook just a few months ago and i had to stop after the first essay to just. breathe. for an hour. my god. if my heart was ripped out, her essays forcibly put my heart back in)

MORE LINKS OF NOTE

since it’s pride month, here’s a Youngstar article recommending seven LGBT+ filipino authors!!!

and heres a very good twitter thread with more LGBT+ filipino lit recs

my university’s official literary folio Heights publishes every issue they have online right here. every. issue. please read them!! theres breathtaking works in both english and tagalog spanning from poems to scripts to stories to non fic to photography and art. i spent three days once doing nothing but reading through these. (personal faves off the top of my head: Vol. 63 No. 2. Company by Luis Wilfrido Atienza and The One With The Killers Concert by Regine Cabato)

Youngstar also has an online zine that publishes various works by writers!! check out my friend’s phenomenal poem Quarter Rest by Elise Ofilada.

this looks like a lot but this is just baaaaarely the tip of the iceberg. it’s like. an icecube from the iceberg. im not as well read as i wish to be, but i will read and read and read til i am! i enthusiastically encourage all ph readers out there to give some of these a try and maybe venture even further!!! go to chapbook launches!! open mics!! find out what you like and what you dont like!!! buy and read classics and buy and read new stuff from up and coming writers!! 

the ph literature scene is, heh, lit, and exploring it is an utter joy. i hope you find some of these useful. happy reading, anon!!!

[thenightisland]

you know the drill:

this is becoming like its own series but idk how else to explain this awful year i don’t even feeling like properly linking so here’s just the URLs of the other ones in the series: 1. http://thenightisland.tumblr.com/post/161087786689/explanationsupdates-under-the-cutmore-i 2. http://thenightisland.tumblr.com/post/161920216354/additional-updatesexplanations-under-the-cut 3. http://thenightisland.tumblr.com/post/163767959805/updates-under-the-cutmore-post-one-post-two-on 4. http://thenightisland.tumblr.com/post/164398486219/on-the-fourth-edition-of-what-the-fuck-is

one of the assessors got jumped a while back. she was just walking past a pt in the main assessment dept and he jumped up, punched her in the back of the head, took her to the ground and beat the fuck out of her. she was out for weeks and weeks and had broken facial bones. i can’t believe she didn’t quit.

our nurse executive quit though. not like, went prn or gave two weeks notice, like just straight up was like I’M DONE and walked out which honestly is the closest i’ve ever come to respecting him.

while having more psychologically unstable pts isn’t new, having more medically unstable pts has been a problem lately. like our crash cart is not like a medical hospital’s crash cart it’s like. an ambu bag some iv supplies and a stethoscope no lifesaving medications. when a pt has a medical issue we send them out to a medical hospital because obv we don’t have the resources to treat complex medical issues where we work. which didn’t used to be an issue because you’d used to see maybe two medical codes a year on my unit. we’ve had /ten/ since my last update post /just on my shift/. two of which weren’t even “pt is going downhill fast” codes they were “pt has no heartbeat and isn’t breathing” like we had to fucking bring two people back from the goddamn dead /within ten minutes of each other/. we’re all like we’re psych nurses man if we wanted to do this shit we’d work er. [and the er we’re required to send these pts to is awful like they sent us back a guy who had almost died twice in three days who had an /untreated brain tumor/ bc obv he’s totally fine]. or we’ve been doing mash unit style medicine like the suicidal kid with partial thickness burns all over his chest and neck that literally no one was doing anything about. we were debriding burns with a mixture of different PO IM and SQ drugs to achieve the same effect as IV morphine because debriding is extremely painful but not doing it will just make things worse and no one else seemed to care so we just fucking did it. like we’ve done so much medical nursing lately. like the one with the uncontrolled severe seizures that led to the medical hospital labeling her first break schizophrenia despite no family history of mental illness but /five different medical issues that all cause psychosis/. or the one they let on the unit despite being on the do not readmit who has untreated hiv that he actively tries to give to other people and /active tuberculosis/. or the one with the aneurysm. or the one with severe CHF. and on and on and on. and remember: we’re not the most medically unstable unit in the hospital because we have a 40 bed /geriatric psych unit/ so you can imagine the kind of pts /they’re/ getting. on the plus side, all of our ten odd codes lived.

my personal life is still a goddamn mess, of course, but that’s a given. don’t even know where to begin with all that. and i can’t talk about a lot of it which makes it that much more fun.

i had an entire crisis about the odyssey [which tbh is still kind of going on even after /weeks/] because i’m getting so cagey in memphis because i fucking hate this town. and i just got back from new orleans which is the closest thing i have to an ithaca at the moment and it killed me to come back to this fucking city.

i’m also really paranoid right now because after i come back from vacations, something terrible always happens and i’m not exaggerating it’s like clockwork to the point that the bad things have all happened between friday and sunday after i’ve returned from my vacation, each time, without fail. well that would be this weekend so i am just waiting to see what great horrors await me this goddamn time. [last time, it was the whole coworker killed in vehicular homicide thing]. but i guess paranoia isn’t the right word. you’re only paranoid if you’re wrong, and my life has already set the precedent. so i guess anxious is the better word.

the anxiety is increased given that my mother has been out of work all week because they’ve had trouble regulating her blood sugar and so she’s been really sick and even said so herself she’ll probably end up in the er over the weekend because she doesn’t think she can make it till her next doc appt because she’s miserable, and she’s already been in the er once when this weird shit started happening a month or so ago so the Vacation Curse has me even more concerned than usual, which is saying something. 

there’s a new psych doc working now and everyone is really unsettled by him and we’re pretty sure he’s a genuine psychopath like completely without exaggeration and he’s already done a lot of really creepy things to/with staff members and one nurse said in passing “i’ve known a lot of doctors like him he’ll end up fucking a pt at some point” which we initially left to hyperbole but he’s been doing shit like transporting female pts to other units without the staff’s consent in his own car which is like all kinds of not allowed, and the way he talks to some of the staff is just downright rapey honestly. and so we had a rough case this summer who, through the combined efforts of my squad, we got her from a diagnosis of intellectual disability with schizophrenia, nonverbal, self harming all the time, history of physical and sexual abuse, constantly in restraints and on a 1:1 obs level to a new diagnosis of autism spec with ptsd because her “hallucinations” were /flashbacks/ and she ended up very social and verbose and like fucking read william blake for fun and had a great sense of humor and was off all special observations and had a transfer to another facility pending so she could get more 1:1 long term therapy, and the creepy doctor was covering her case while her actual doc was out of town and he rode all the way to the other hospital with her which is another thing you do not do, and we found out from a coworker that she is now a /2:1/ [two staff members within arm’s reach 24/7], self harming again, in full shutdown/meltdown mode, and nonverbal. and it was such a rapid deterioration that all of us lost sleep over the possibility that this creepy doctor might have done something because even after she was at the other hospital and therefore no longer our pt, /he kept going to see her/. which fucked us up a lot because we were the ones who worked so hard for so long with her. like even the thought of it.

recently had 25th birthday so naturally had a crisis about that because i’d always said my goal was to be out of memphis by 25 and yet here we are. 

another of our fave pts, esp one of /my/ fave pts, died out of literally nowhere. the day before my birthday. so that was great.

also felt really surreal to see the news about the convictions in the holly bobo case, which i found out about when one of my coworkers was reading the news on his phone during a lull one night i forgot that to him and everyone else it’s a national news story [hell it even has its own wikpedia page] but to me it’s just /holly/ because she was /in the class above me in our nursing program/. my first semester in college i remember seeing her face on missing posters on every building on campus. so it was really a weird moment of dissociation for me. glad the motherfucker was found guilty on all charges, obv. 

the tech of mine who got his skull slammed into the floor, the one who’s been out with what can only be called severe psychological trauma, is supposed to be coming back the third week in october. which i just. i mean i’m glad because he’s one of our best guys, but i’m also like /why the fuck would he come back/ because he could be a fucking english professor again. motherfucker spent part of his youth growing up in italy and montreal, lived on the west coast for years, /was/ a college professor, did time as a script doctor in LA, and was a fucking thriller novelist who just gone girled himself for whatever reason and ended up working with us. there’s literally a reddit thread asking if anyone knows what happened to him and i want to be like don’t worry it’s fine he works with me. but so we’re like why would you come back to this place after what happened to you when you have so many other options available to you????? what are you running from that makes you so desperate to keep centering your life around a locked acute psych ward???? why did you gone girl yourself to begin with??? like he was screwed up enough there for a while that he wasn’t even answering his calls or texts and our boss had to send the police to do welfare checks on him because he lives alone so it’s like man why not go back to the life you had before and /get away from all of this/ it’s not like my situation where i’d rather be living a different life but have never done so, he already has the foundation because he’s already lived a different life he has an in that i don’t have and i can’t for the life of me figure out why he thinks working as an acute pysch tech is the better option. 

but i mean. we /do/ call our unit the hotel california for a reason.

[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND September 27, 2019  - ABOMINABLE, FIRST LOVE, JUDY, THE LAUNDROMAT

There’s only one movie in wide release this week, and it’s the second DreamWorks Animation/Universal animated movie of the year, ABOMINABLE, which is also the third animated movie involving some sort of Bigfoot, Sasquatch or Yeti (if you don’t include Monsters Inc. and Monsters University). 

I actually really enjoyed this movie quite immensely, even though I’m not sure I’m up for a full review. It features the voice of Chloe Bennet (from Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) as Yi, a young Chinese girl who finds a young Yeti on the roof of her apartment building and goes on a magical adventure to bring the beast (she dubs “Everest”) back to his home (on Mount Everest) along with her two friends, one voiced by Albert Tsai from Fresh Off the Boat. DreamWorks has been somewhat erratic in my book as far as their recent animated films, but Abominable really offered a lot to enjoy, from some of the sillier humor to the magical fantasy elements. There’s also a lot of really touching and even moving moments that really hit me in the feels, partially thanks to the score by Rupert Gregson-Williams. (How this guy has not been nominated for an Oscar is beyond me.) So yeah, this is the third animated movie of the last year involving a Yeti, but I think DreamWorks and director Jill Culton really nailed the storytelling and visuals in a way that was lacking, at least in The Missing Link earlier this year.

You can read my interview with Chloe Bennet over at The Beat later today.

The movie that people should definitely try to find is Takashi Miike’s latest crime thriller, FIRST LOVE (Hatsukoi), released by Well GO USA in New York (at the Angelika) and L.A. (at the Laemmle Nuart) on Friday then expanding on October 2.

Besides returning Miike to his crime roots, being a movie that involves the Yakuza, it also is as much a love story as Ichi the Killer only without all the genre weirdness that made that one (and many of Miike’s other movies) such a hard sell to mainstream audiences. First Love still has a lot of fun and a tiny bit of weirdness, but it’s also something more akin to the work of Tarantino, at least with Kill Bill.

It stars Masataka Kubota as a young boxer named Leo, who learns he has a tumor and little time to live when he encounters a call girl named Yuri who being forced into paying off a debt to the Yakuza (played by Sakurako Konishi). They meet under the strangest circumstances, as the two go on the run, her trying to escape from being used by a rival faction as a scapegoat in a planned drug heist.

Despite the title, this isn’t a romance film although it definitely has romantic elements between the two characters. The film sets up an intricate cast of characters around them with various factions and double-dealings that unfold over the course of the movie. That’s partially what makes True Love such a breakthrough for Miike, who has been doing so much Manga-derived work in recent years. He manages to take the incredible ensemble of actors and give all of them some good screen time as we follow Leo and Yuri trying to evadde those various factions, most of whom want them dead. It culminates in one of the most amazing action-packed last acts that’s up there with anything in 13 Assassins and Blade of the Immortal, two of Miike’s fairly recent Edo-period films.

As someone who has seen a LOT, if not most of Miike’s films over the last 20 years – we’re talking almost fifty films, here – First Love is his best movie since Audition, and having seen that again recently, I think it’s even better than that. It’s just a brilliant action-thriller from the filmmaking vet that I hope people will look for, even if they’re not a fan of Miike’s work before this.

RATING: 8.5/10

The other movie worthy of note is the biopic JUDY (LD Entertainment/Roadside Attractions) starring Renée Zellwegger as Judy Garland, directed by British theater director Rupert Goold (True Story). I have to be honest that I was genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed this movie, because I was never a really big Judy Garland fan—I’m not even sure I’ve seen many of her movies besides The Wizard of Oz– and I can’t say I’m really a fan of Zellwegger either.

Although Judy has a few traditional biopic elements as it flashes back to Judy’s dealings with Louis B. Mayer (one of the M’s in MGM) lording over Judy as a teenager around the time of “Wizard,” it mostly takes place in the mid-to-late 60s as she’s fighting for custody of her two kids with her ex Sid, falling for a young piano-playing entrepreneur played by Finn Wittrock and trying to maintain a comeback at a London residency that’s plagued by her bouts with drugs and alcohol.

In some ways, the movie reminded me a little of last year’s Stan and Ollie, another great film about screen stars of yesteryear in their later years based around a solid script. In this case, the script is by someone named Tom Edge (The Crown) who clearly did enough research that as you’re watching the movie, you’re likely to wonder “Did that really happen?”

One of those moment is when Judy meets two elderly gay fans and ends up spending the night hanging with them at their home, a moment that will play a pivotal part later. I also liked some of the rest of the cast around her including Jessie Buckley (who was amazing in Wild Rose) and Finn Witrock, as Judy’s closest confidante.

More than anything, it’s about how Zellwegger embodies Judy Garland, and it’s more than just an impression, as she pulls out some amazing emotions as she struggles with life without her kids, but as soon as she steps on stage in front of an audience, she goes through an amazing transformation.

Again, Judy really surprised me in how much I enjoyed it, but I won’t be even remotely surprised if Zellwegger wins her second Oscar

RATING: 8/10

LOCAL FESTIVALS

Before we get to the rest of this week’s limited releases, I need to talk about two great film festivals, one on each coast. Of course, I have to talk about Film at Lincoln Center’s New York Film Festival first, since I’ve been attending it now for almost sixteen years, and it’s another banner year beginning this Friday with the WORLD PREMIERE of Martin Scorsese’s long-anticipated return to crime and reunion with Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel with The Irishman, which also brings Al Pacino into the fold as Jimmy Hoffa. (I’ll be seeing this Friday morning and reviewing for The Beatsometime over the weekend.) The closing night film is Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn, a crime novel that he’s been trying to get made for nearly a decade or more, but this one also has a significantly incredible cast around him, including Alec Baldwin, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Willem Dafoe and many more. I’ll also review it for The Beat.

Beyond that, NYFF includes a lot of upcoming releases that I’ve missed by not going to many other festivals this year, including Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story (the Centerpiece) and a bunch of other movies that have played Cannes, TIFF and other festivals. There’s also a few docs in there that I’m looking forward to, including Michael Apted’s 63-Up, the latest in his ongoing series that began way back in the 60s with a television special about a group of schoolkids who the filmmaker followed over the course of their lives, revisiting every seven years without fail. It’s a pretty amazing achievement, and I’m definitely in until the filmmaker decides to stop (or more likely and sadly, dies). I hope to write more about the New York Film Festival both here and over at The Beatover the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

Over in Los Angeles, the 2019 Beyond Fest will be taking over the Hulu Theater at the American Cinemateque’s Egyptian starting Weds. and for the next few weeks, kicking off with the West Coast Premieres of Richard Stanley’s Color Out of Space in a double feature with Daniel isn’t Real, two movies from Elijah Wood’s excellent horror production company SpectreVision. The festival will also screen Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit and Bong Joon-wo’s Parasite, two movies I still haven’t had a chance to see, probably making me the last person on earth to see both of them. (They both open in October, so I expect that to change soon.) Other movies playing Beyond Fest include The Lodge, Little Monsters (which is a lot of fun) and a few repertory screenings that I’ll mention in the appropriate section below.

LIMITED RELEASES

A few weeks back, I was a little remiss by forgetting to include the Bulgarian drama ÁGA (Big World Pictures) in my column when it played at New York’s Film Forum. I want to make up for it this weekend, as it opens at the Laemmle Royal in L.A. Milko Lazarov’s film is set in a yurt in the furthest regions of Siberia, and honestly, I thought I was watching a documentary at first, since it’s filmed in such a cinema verité way where you think you’re watching real people, but nope, it’s a scripted film with local actors. It revolves around a couple, Sedna and Nannok, living in that yurt, whose only connection to the outside world is their son Chena, who tells him that he’s found their daughter Ága after a family argument that made her leave home.  I won’t say much more but the way that the story is told and shot really takes advantage of the locale, and I was glad to hear that Bulgaria selected it for the Oscars’ newly-titled “International Film” category.

Another fun movie worth seeking out is Daniel Schneiber’s dark comedy THE DEATH OF DICK LONG (A24), the first solo feature from one half ofSwiss Army Mandirectors, “The Daniels.” Schneiber also plays the title character, essentially a corpse – I’m seeing a trend here –as the film involves two friends who are involved with the accidental death of another man, actually the drummer in their band. We won’t find out for quite some time how “Dick Long” died, and I’m not going to spoil it, because it’s the film’s oddest turn – maybe one where it will lose a few people—but I think it’s another creative film with a great cast, mostly of lesser known actors but ones that really deliver a fun experience. I’m not sure where this is all playing, but I do know that one of the places is the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn on Friday night.

Similarly opening at the Metrograph this weekend for one screening only on Saturday -- but one where star Timothy Blake Nelson will be present for a QnA – is Chris Poché’s The True Don Quixote, which also stars Jacob Batalon from Spider-Man: Far from Home. It’s a new take on Cervantes’ classic tale that shifts it into Louisiana with Nelson’s Danny Kehoe accompanied by Batalon’s Sancho. It’s odd this is coming out the same year as Terry Gilliam’s long-in-development-hell The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, but I’m checking it out on Saturday for sure.

I won’t be seeing Stephen Soderbergh’s THE LAUNDROMAT (Netflix) until after this column posts, but I know a little bit about it. Like I know that it stars Meryl Streep, who plays a widow who is investigating insurance fraud and finding two law partners in Panama City (Antonio Banderas, Gary Oldman) who are exploiting the world’s financial system. Soderbergh’s cast also includes Will Forte, Jeffrey Wright, David Schwimmer and Sharon Stone, and it’s probably his The Big Short. It won’t be on Netflix until October 18, so if you want to see it, you’ll have to find one of the select cities where it’s playing, including New York’s IFC Center where it opens Friday.

Mini-Review: Let’s just get this out of the way, because I wrote the above before actually seeing the movie, but yes, The Laundromat is indeed Soderbergh’s attempt at making a Big Short-like examination of the world of finance and shell corporations and how the rich exploit the poor or “the meek”… and he has a cast full of well-known actors, many in a higher tax bracket, to tell what ends up being something that is probably more apropos for a documentary than an attempted comedy.

There is little question that The Laundromat is intended to be a comedy, beginning with the “wacky accents” sported by Oldman and Banderas as lawyers Jürgen Mosseck and Ramón Fonseca who begin to explain how the world of finance works. Before that, we meet Meryl Streep’s Ellen Martin and her husband Joe (James Cromwell) on a romantic anniversary get-away where their tour boat topsizes, drowning 21 people, including Joe. She then learns that she can’t collect from the boat company’s insurance due to a series of shell companies that she traces back to Mosseck and Fonseca in Panama. Before that, we see Jeffrey Wright appear as someone else involved in a way that is never quite understandable…. And that’s while the entire time, Mosseck and Fonseca break the fourth wall to try to make what’s happening EASIER to understand.

Frequent Soderbergh collaborator Scott Z. Burns is a fantastic writer – his screenplay for The Report, which he also directed, is proof-positive – but something about this one gets lost in translation. There’s clearly a desire to

The oddest decision is to cast two GENUINELY funny actors like Will Forte and Chris Parnell, and literally have them in one scene before killing them off. That’s just one of the many tangents that seem to come from out of nowhere and have very little to do with the overall “story” – and I use that term loosely. If I were watching this on Netflix, the first major tangent into the dalliances of a wealthy African businessman (Nonso Anozie) trying to buy his daughter’s silence about his affair was me sitting on the remote and actually switching to another movie. The second tangent to China – a complete waste of Rosalin Chao -- is even worse.

And yet, that’s still better than all of the shenanigans and silliness we’re forced to watch great actors like Oldman and Banderas (who is AMAZING in Almodovar’s new film Pain and Glory) get up to – it’s actually painful. Most people already know how little I care for Streep but to play what seems like a kindly widow trying to get through her grief only to have that not being entirely the case. (I won’t spoil it, but if you can’t figure out that it’s Streep under the make-up playing ANOTHER character, then you’re probably not going to get the attempted intricacies of the world of finance being explored.)

Despite being only ninety minutes long, this was a chore to sit through, partially due to the confusing tangents, but also due to some of the questionable filmmaking decisions which would seem below a filmmaker of Soderbergh’s caliber.

It feels like everyone involved with Soderbergh’s latest has grown tired of the Oscars on their mantle and decided to make a concentrated effort to go for a few Razzies. They might get their wish.

Rating: 4.5/10

One of the ACTUAL docs I’ve seen this weekend is Bill Haney’s new doc Jim Allison: Breakthrough (DADA Films), which follows the career of Jim Allison, an amazing geneticist who specializes in immunology, making huge breakthroughs into curing cancer by discovering that antibodies have a special nodes that help them fight against illness and disease and how cancer tumors shut them off. Allison won the Nobel Prize in Medicine last December. It’s a fairly brainy and scientific doc that at times seems more like an advertising for the pharmaceutical company who mass-produced the drug that came out of Allison’s research, but there’s a great case study of a woman who is diagnosed with myeloma and given only a few years to live. The doc is opening at a couple theaters in New York, including the Quad Cinema, and a couple in L.A., and then it expands to other cities next Friday. Oh, and it’s narrated by Woody Harrelson!

I’m a little more mixed on the doc Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (Kino Lorber), a combined effort by Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier  and Edward Burtynsky, which also opens at the IFC Center. I’m not even sure I can properly describe this world-spanning environmental doc… so I won’t try. It’s beautifully shot but not quite so obvious what the filmmakers were going for.

I haven’t had a chance to watch Chris Morris’ The Day Shall Come (IFC Films), which stars Anna Kendrick as an FBI agent who must go to great lengths to catch Moses Al Shabaz (Marchánt Davis), a Miami street preacher who wants to overthrow the US government who gets the backing of a Middle Eastern terrorist organization. And apparently, it’s a comedy? Okay, then.s

The last vestiges of MoviePass is their sole movie production, Bryan A. Miller’s 10 Minutes Gone (Lionsgate), an action-thriller starring Bruce Willis as crime-boss Rex, who hires Michael Chiklis’s Frank to lead a crew on as jewel heist, but when things go wrong and Frank wakes up with no memory of what happened (and no jewels), he must solve that before Rex has him killed. It will open in select cities but probably will be seen by most on Video On Demand.

I was kind of hoping I’d have a chance to see Fatih Akin’s new film The Golden Glove (Strand Releasing) as I’ve been a fan of the filmmaker for some time, but no such luck. This tells the story of notorious German serial killer Fritz Honka who terrorized Hamburg’s red light district – I’ve actually been there!!! – in the ‘70s, frequenting the “Golden Glove” bar and chasing after lonely women… and presumably killing them… cause he’s a serial killer. It’s opening at the IFC Center and presumably somewhere in L.A. as well?

Gilles Lelouch’s French comedy Sink or Swim (Level Film) stars Mathieu Amalric as one of a group of 40-something men who decide to form their pool’s first-ever all-male synchronized swimming team.

Samantha Buck & Marie Schlingmann’s Sister Aimee (1091/Obscured Pictures) stars Anna Margaret Hollyman as the title character, America’s most famous evangelist who is fed up with her success, so she goes on a wild trip to the Mexican border with her lover.  It opens in select theaters Friday and will On Demand next Tuesday.

Other films out this week in select cities (and On Demand) include Matthew Currie Ross’ The Curse of Buckout Road (Vertical/TriMuse Entertaiinment), starring Evan Ross, Henry Czerny and more. It takes place on New York State’s “most haunted road.” It should not be confuse with the Venezuelan thriller The Vampire of the Lake (Uncork’d Pictures/Dark Star Pictures), which only opens at L.A.’s Laemmle Glendale on Friday.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

This weekend, the Metrograph will begin screening a restored 35mm print of Alain Corneau’s 1979 film Série Noir, which adapts a Jim Thompson novel for the screen. Welcome To Metrograph: Redux will screen Antonioni’s Le Amiche (1955) a few times over the weekend and Pierre Schoendoerff’s documentary The Anderson Platoon (1967), neither which I’ve seen or know much about. The series will also screen the 1955 film Artists and Models, starring Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, s and Fassbinder’s 1974 film Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, two movies which I ALSO have never seen. (I’m more likely to see the former.) Late Nites at Metrograph  will show David Lynch’s 2001 film Mulholland Drive, which is actually a rather boring choice for the usually innovative series. (Heck, I can go see that at the New Beverly one the one day they’re not showing Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood if I lived in L.A..) On the other hand, my favorite ongoing Metrograph series Playtime: Family Matinees will screen the 1979 film The Black Stallion this weekend, and that’s another movie I have never seen.

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE BROOKLYN (NYC)

Since I’m sort of back on schedule, although tonight’s “Weird Wednesday” Tank Girlis already sold out. You can still get tickets for the weekend screenings of Joel Schumacher’s 1987 film The Lost Boys on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Claude Chabrol’s The Cérémonie from 1995 will screen on Saturday as part of “Cutting Class: Films Inspired by Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite” – wait, shouldn’t that be the other way around? Oh, I guess maybe the programming was inspired by seeing Parasite, which I haven’t seen yet. Buster Keaton’s 1923 film Our Hospitality will screen on Sunday with “live theater organ accompaniment” – what is this? The Film Forum?  Kidding… Monday night screenings include Mark Wahlberg’s 1996 film Fear and (separately Millennium Actress (2002), the latter part of the “Anime-Zing” series. Next week’s “Terror Tuesday” is Tony Scott’s The Hunger from 1983, but earlier is a 4k restoration of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Joseph Losey’s The Servant from 1963 will also play that night, as a movie that inspired Bong Joon-ho vs. the other way around. Next week’s Weird Wednesday is Hulk Hogan’s 1989 movie No Holds Barred, which is not sold out… yet.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

Although Robert Altman’s Nashville will end on Thursday, the Film Forum will begin a week-long run of a 4k restoration of Fritz Lang’s Indian epic with the two parts, The Tiger of Eschnapor and The Indian Tomb, both from 1959 shown with separate admission fees rather than as a double feature. (Sad trombone.) The movie was originally shown in the U.S. in an edited (almost cut in half) version, so this is a rare chance to see the full movie on the big screen starting Friday. This weekend’s Film Forum Jr. is appropriately Jim Henson and Frank Oz’s beloved 1982 fantasy film The Dark Crystal.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Although the Hulu(ween) Theater is being taken over by Beyond Fest (see above) much of this week and next, there’s a few repertory screenings including a 30th Anniversary screenings of Killer Crocodile and Luigi Cozzi’s 1989 film Paganini Horror on Friday and a 10th anniversary screening of Karyn Kusama’s Jennifer’s Body (with Kusama AND Megan Fox in person!) on Sunday. They’re also showing a screening of Al Adamson’s 1971 film Dracula Vs Frankenstein on Sunday.

AERO  (LA):

A bunch of non-rep stuff going on this week but on Saturday, they’ll screen a new 35mm print of Joan Tewkesbury’s 1979 directorial debutOld Boyfriends with Tewkesbury, stars Talia Shire and Keith Carradine in person! Sunday is the monthly “The Style of Sin: Pre-Code Film” series with a Marlene Dietrich double feature of 1930’s Morocco and the 1932 film Shanghai Express, both directed by her frequent collaborator Josef Von Sternberg. On Sunday night is a screening of Easy Rider (1969) in tribute to the late Peter Fonda. On Tuesday is a matinee screening of Fritz Lang’s 1931 film M, starring Peter Lorre, as part of “Tuesdays with Lorre,” free to Cinematheque members.

FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER (NYC):

FilmLinc is probably going to be pretty busy this week with the New York Film Festival starting Friday (see above), but it includes a few repertory screenings that I’ll try to mention. This weekend, they’re premiering a new restoration of Luis Buñuel’s 1930 film L’age d’or on Sunday as well as a new restoration of his 1950 film Los Olvidados. Béla Tarr’s 1994 film Sátántángo will also premiere in a new restoration on Sunday. On Tuesday, there’s a new restoration of Valerio Zurlini’s Le Professeur, while on Monday will screen new restorations of Three Short Films by Sergei Parajanov.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Weekend Classics: Staff Picks Summer 2019 is Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book (2006), starring Carice van Houten from Game of Thrones, picked by “Carlos” in a rare 35mm print! Waverly Midnights: Staff Picks Summer 2019 is George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), a great choice by “Tashika.” Late Night Favorites: Summer 2019 ends with something new that hasn’t been shown all summer… the 1986 film Critters, chosen by “Shane”!

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

“See It Big! Ghost Stories” continues this weekend with The Innocents (1961), which inspired Alejandro Amenabar’s 2001 film The Others, and the Japanese thriller Empire of Passion (1978).Also starting Friday is “Five by Forsyth,” as in Bill Forsyth, showing five movies including his 1979 debut That Sinking Feeling, as well as Comfort and Joy (’84), Breaking In (’89), Local Hero(’83) and Housekeeping (’87). On Saturday night, MOMI is also screening William Peter Blatty’s 1980 debut The Ninth Configurationas part of its ongong “Disreputable Cinema” series.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

Sadly, “Laws of Desire: The Films of Antonio Banderas” ends on Thursday, but it will end with a screening of Steven Soderbergh’s new movie, The Laundromat as it opens theatrically… at the IFC Center further downtown. (Waugh Waugh….)

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

Friday night’s midnight offering is the ever-popular Anime Vampire Hunter Dfrom 1985.

ROXY CINEMA (NYC)

On Wednesday night, there’s a special screening of the doc The Blank Generation (1976) about the New York new wave/pun scene with director Amos Poe doing a QnA afterwards. (The movie is also screening on Saturday sans QnA.) On Friday, they’re screening Susan Seidelman’s 1983 punk movie Smithereens. Otherwise, it’s all Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. What the holy fuck?

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

Still showing Once Upon a Time …  in Hollywood most of the time so still relegated to the bottom of the repertory section ‘cause IT ISN’T REPERTORY! But at least October is looking more promising for the New Bev to get back on track. We’ll see. The New Bev is showing the 1949 Burt Lancast film Criss Crossas a Wednesday matinee and one of my most beloved Disney movies ever That Darn Cat! (1965) over the weekend as its “Kiddee Matinee” but otherwise, it’s all Tarantino all the time. (Kill Bill: Volume 1 is the Saturday midnight offering.)

STREAMING AND CABLE

Pretty excited to hear that Jim Mickle, who directed Stakeland and Cold in July has a new movie on Netflix called IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON – part of Netflix’s “Netflix and Chills” series (har har). This one stars Boyd Holbrook from Logan as Philadelphia police officer Thomas Lockhart, who begins tracking a serial killer who keeps reappearing every nine years, his murders defying any scientific explanation. I haven’t seen it yet, but it also stars Michael C. Hall from Dexter and Cleopatra Coleman.

Apparently, Gwyneth Paltrow is in a new series called The Politician, but I know nothing about it, except that it’s Ryan Murphy’s first series for Netflix. Sorry!

I don’t have Shudder, so I can’t really say much about its programming, although this week, it will debut its new anthology series based on the George Romero anthology movie Creepshow, which might be a reason for me to subscribe. We’ll see.

Next week, it’s Joaquin Phoenix as Joker, a movie I’ve yet to be invited to see, as of this writing. Sad clown face…

[paulwesleychronicles]

VL Media Interview with Paul - https://paulwesleychronicles.com/vl-media-interview-with-paul/ #PaulWesley

New Post has been published on https://paulwesleychronicles.com/vl-media-interview-with-paul/

VL Media Interview with Paul

Paul Wesley (Tell me a story): “Eddie is not a bad guy but a guy who makes bad choices”. Paul recently went to Paris to promote “Tell Me A Story” – VL Media sat down and interviewed Paul and we translated it into English for the fans. Click the link at the bottom of the post for the original version.

Tell me a story, new series of Kevin Williamson arrives on 13th Street with Paul Wesley (The Vampire Diaries) in one of the main roles.

What is Tell me a story (with Paul Wesley)?

Tell Me a Story, adapted from a Spanish series, is inspired by the most famous fairy tales in the world and revisits them to create a dark psychological thriller. In today’s New York, the first season interweaves the adventures of The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel & Gretel in an epic and subversive version of a love story where loss, envy, revenge and Murders are at the heart of the plot.

Tell me a story is a very surprising project, which imagines fairy tales without the supernatural aspect. What convinced you to accept to play in the series?

Paul Wesley: I remember seeing a trailer of the original Spanish series, on which it is based, and I thought it looked really interesting and there was a lot of potential. When I accepted the role, I had not seen the script yet but I knew it would be good because it’s Kevin Williamson. I had worked with him, I know his resume and his work, so I was very excited. Then Kevin told me about the character, explained to me some things about Eddy. And I thought I had never done this before … Well, yes, but not with so many possibilities, so it was very exciting.

How would you describe Eddy’s character and how he fits in this modern tale?

Paul Wesley: He’s not a bad guy, but he’s making bad choices. In the story, he is in the plot of the three little pigs and it is actually the youngest pig, the one who built his house with straw, the lazy. He’s a guy who can be convinced by his older brothers that it’s a good idea to rob a jeweler. They rob a jeweler, they steal diamonds, they put on pig masks to hide their identity, and the big bad wolf is the person who wants to catch them and get justice.

What elements did Kevin bring to the series, as an author? He is one of the most popular television authors; in your opinion, what did he bring?

P.W .: Well, it’s something like surrealism, it’s a kind of hyper reality. Nothing supernatural happens, but we feel that everything is exacerbated. Kevin has a way of creating a world that seems wrapped in a nice gift wrap, while there is blood everywhere. You see, it’s like a beautiful shiny and gleaming object, but it’s actually very dark inside.

You told us what Kevin Williamson brought to the series, but what did he bring you as an author, and how did he help you evolve as an actor?

P.W .: Well, first of all, here’s a guy who watched me play Stefan for eight years. That he had enough confidence to say “I know you can play that role” means that I do not have to ask myself the question. It’s great, because I tell myself that this person has confidence in me, having seen me play for eight years, so it gives me above all confidence in me. And you know, I had never visualized New York as a character, as he wanted to do; I had never done a show that saw New York as a character. New York, it makes somehow the woods, in history it is the forest. And I thought it was interesting to imagine it this way. Having grown up and lived there, I realized that there were so many places to hide, so many dark corners, so many people and so much more … You can mingle with the crowd, you can hide, you can escape into the woods, you can get lost … and it’s an extremely interesting way to look at New York, in a way that has never really been done before.

One can imagine that the character of Tell me a story is important to you, because it’s a new character, after The vampire diaries. Was it important for you to make the right choice after this adventure?

P.W .: Yes, a lot. I really felt that whatever I do next, it had to be different first. This role was perfect, and I think I have to continue. For the next role, the same thing: continue, continue, continue to do things that surprise people, that push them to reconsider what they think of you, to think that perhaps they would see you do such thing while this was not the case before. You understand ? I think it is extremely important to challenge yourself as an artist and to defeat expectations.

Tell me a story is a cable type series. Does it change something for you, in your work?

P.W .: Confinement. You know, you have the opportunity to slow down, you do not worry about time, you do not have to worry about advertising, you do not have to worry about language, you can swear and react in a way natural, you are much less constrained. Advertisers are nonexistent, everything depends on the number of subscribers. It’s not like you have an advertiser telling you that they will not advertise your network if you do such and such, because there is none. Everything rests on the subscribers, and they are the ones to interest.

Like an FX series, American Horror story, Tell me a story is an anthology. How do you explain the success of this type of program, today on television?

P.W .: I think that the old way of watching a drama is dead, I think that the twenty-two episodes per year is dead, and I think the new format requires constantly reinventing itself. Our mind, our attention span is getting shorter and shorter. So now we went from twenty-two episodes to ten episodes and then to one season; Black Mirror is only an episode. You know, I think people react to it positively. Frankly, people have a shorter attention span, because we are always glued to our phones.

You’re a lucky actor, you work with Kevin Williamson but, if I’m not mistaken, one of your first TV roles was with Greg Berlanti in Everwood. Do you keep a memory of your work with him?

P.W .: I have never really worked directly with Greg. I know Greg, he’s a very nice guy and we stay in touch, we see each other at parties or things like that. But Greg was not really often on the set, I worked mostly with the other actors. I became very good friends with Emily van Camp, she is great; from time to time, I get an alert on my phone and I see Chris Pratt, who is now in all these superhero movies … He was a great character. Well, Tommy was an addict, very much like Eddy, it was a wreck, but I really enjoyed that role. And I would love to watch it again, maintained that I think about it. Yes, Everwood is great. We were shooting in Utah and it was a really fun time. It’s funny, because I always play dark characters. And then I ended up in Vampire Diaries and everyone thought I was the hero. Oh God, do not we care about me? Now I’m stuck, I always play dark characters.

Story Credit