#was supposed to go in 2020 then had to sell my ticket for Louis

[halohamilton]

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[joydilouis]

Lucky Again analysis

This is a lyric analysis and just my personal take on the song. Before I get into it I want to make it clear that if harry and louis never come out, I will always support them whether or not it is their personal decision. But I do know they were closeted not by their own choice and I do believe they have every intention to come out in the future.

My take is Lucky Again foreshadows a coming out. Louis wants to be out one day, both him and harry. The standing info we got is Louis was supposed to be out of certain contract agreements with the old label in 2020 but it got put aside because of the months of pandemic. My belief is he was ready to shed that weight and look forward to a freer life with harry but because of these delays they had to mash brakes leaving harry open for Jeff/Sony to take advantage and grab harry into dwd stunt. So lets go.

You give and give until it’s gone away

Louis speaks about fetus days and what he had to give or work at to keep up the lie. He kept giving away parts of himself and his relationship until no more interactions/tweets etc and enemy narrative comes into play. Now louis just wants it all to end so they can live.

Just tell yourself

You got another day

While in the band they were bullied and threatened to act 'appropriately' so they will see 'another day' as a band etc. This was embedded until they started to tell it to themselves. Another day as in you got another day in the band living the life of a star, your dream and it is worth it to put your true self/relationship in the closet.

You’ve lived that life

You just don't see it yet

Louis is saying to him "You did closeting in the band and lived that way where we couldn't do what we wanted so now we have to change things go forward not backward.

I see how hard you’ve worked

To be yourself 

Speaks for itself. Harry worked to get himself out of het norms in every possible way they could without being able to come out ever since "not that important" to e.g Vogue mag cover. Louis doesn't want to see him hide it away again, he wants to be part of it too. He wants to do it too.

If you believe a guy is Superman

There selling tickets at the cinema

Whatever gets you through the darkest night

Superman as in someone who can save you. He is talking about jeff. Harry hired jeff as a way to get out from under syco/ modest who turned their lives upside down. But in reality his only job is to sell harry as a commodity/make him marketable. He only wants to make money off him putting on a show. (goes with mfasr mv.) He is still his manager today and things are not the same as it was in 1D but he is still not able to fully come out. Whatever gets harry through the hard times is fine but....

Just find the light out in the madness. Hold tight.

Light is a recurring theme in both artists' songs (e.g Lights Up and SIBWAW) meaning the thing that keeps them grounded, the thing that shows them for who they really are and not keeping them hidden in the darkness (closet.)

Cos I'm a hard man to lose

Hard for Simon to lose he means. Louis was the only boy who Simon was able to keep as solo artist after hiatus and he had to do xfactor etc for him instead of releasing his album.

But I figured it out

Then made my way back

To a life I would choose

He figured out how to get himself out from under syco shit contract and back to who he is and the life he wants to live which does not include hiding and changing who he is and who he wants.(goes with Walls mv he had to walk through the desert to make his way back.)

We were lucky once

I could be lucky again

What are the odds of being put in a successful band with someone you realize is your soulmate and find out you two are in love and you have no problem being candid to the world about it on twitter and in interviews etc and you had fans calling you one name larry stylinson that's how much they supported you openly and you got that for a moment before they (management) took it away. They were lucky to have had that in the beginning.

I’m a hard man to find

But you figured it out

And I love you for that

Theme of fitf is louis suffered a lot of heartache due to syco contract and closeting and he almost lost who he is. The person he addresses in this song helped bring him back and he is grateful and wants them to stop hiding now.

Look back on a time

I was lucky once

I could be lucky again

Again he says to look back on when they were able to be out and live free before all was lost and he has hope they will be that lucky again when he finally comes out in the future.

Before the world had got so serious

Before the time it got away from us

I meet you at the favourite subway stop

We grab some food

Then meet the lads for one

Before straight washing closeting beards hiatus they could just be together hang out openly in public without having to worry about image etc. Louis wants to look back on that time and be that again.

Hold tight cause I'm a hard man to lose

He is saying I ain't going anywhere this time I am in this for the long haul whatever happens because...

But I figured it out

Out in the madness, hold tight cause I’m a hard man to lose 

Then made my way back

We were lucky once

Could be lucky again

[papermoonloveslucy]

LUCY SHUNS AUDITIONS

July 21, 1950

[In the below article, reprinted verbatim, Johnson writes using a lot of imagery and insider jargon.  This sort of article was common in trade papers like Variety, but seems odd in a daily newspaper.]

Hollywood—(NEA) Lucille Ball slipped me the lowdown on her failure to pin to the canvas the dumb chick role in “Born Yesterday” and make it holler uncle. (1)

She’s got a touch of Francis the mule in her when it comes to auditions. (2)

Instead of scrimmaging for the role with Evelyn Keyes, Judy Holliday, Marie Wilson, Shelly Winters and Jan Sterling, (3) Lucille went bolting the other way. 

The “let’s-see-if-you’re-it” boys pleaded and cajoled. 

But Miss Anti-Auditions wasn’t having any of the competition, thank you. 

“I figure if they want you, they want you,” Lucille plainspoke it. If you’ve got to read and test for it, to heck with it.’

She isn’t chronicled in Hollywood history, but once, badgered by her RKO bosses, Lucille went tripping over to David O. Selznick’s office for a whack at the Scarlett O’Hara role in “Gone With the Wind.” 

That’s what curdled her in the first place. 

“It was awful,’’ Lucille shudders. I was shaking all over when I hit Selznick’s office. My knees gave way. I did the whole audition in scrubwoman position. Selznick laughs and says thanks a lot. (4)

Judy Holliday landed the junkman’s doll role and Lucille grabbed a railroad ticket for a personal appearance tour with hubby Desi Arnaz. She strutted to Latin rhythms, swung a glittering purse in a manner dear to runaway girls and wisecracked for the customers. (5)

MIMICS OSCAR WINNER 

At the last moment she nixed a dancing and singing routine. The star with the forest-fire hair shrugged: 

“I decided it would be silly to compete with Grable.” (6)

A lot of movie queens laid in fresh supplies of smelling salts, ice beanies and copies of “Release From Nervous Tension” when word got around that Lucille was about to whoop it up on the six-a-day circuit. (7)

She’s a blister-raiser from way back and the air was shrill with ouches about a year ago when she whipped up an impression of an Academy Award winner. 

But the girls can go back to worrying about other things—like shrinking from larger-than-life to television screen size. 

Lucille didn’t let any “furriners” see the routine. 

“It's for Hollywood only," she said. “I should take radio-active material on the road?” 

Her Oscar-grabber routine is strictly for unreal anyhow, she says. and no blood relation to Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Ingrid Bergman or any other Screen Duse. (8) She insisted:

“She's any movie star, even me. This character has to go up on that stage and act surprised. She’s only been rehearsing what she's going say flor eight weeks. So she says, ‘Ye gads, me?  But I’m so unprepared. Really, I didn’t dream...” Lucille is generally is as unflinching about the movie queen business as Pearl White was about onrushing trains. (9)

But her knees executed some wobbles that aren’t in Arthur Murray’s rhumba dance book when she checked into her first vaudeville dressing room. (10)

“Those stages—they’re so big.” she gasped. “Hey, I’d hate to get caught in the middle of one of those stages without bread and water.” 

Lucille didn’t take any chances with out-of-town press interviews, either. “I once did a personal appearance tour with Maureen O'Hara and had to show up at a press party,” she grinned. (11)

My sinus - I just die from it - was acting up. The reporter next to me didn’t understand my puffed eyes and cold sores. He called Maureen a lady in his story. But he referred to me as a whisky tenor with red-runny eyes.” 

Lucille’s brain cells work on direct current and she’s not one to make with the figure eights when a straight glide to home base would get her there quicker. 

They still laugh about her exit line to Louis B. Mayer. (12) Mayer always referred to her as a thoroughbred and sometimes compared her to his famous horses. "Yes, and like your other nags, I'm leaving your stable," Lucille said when she decided to bow out of her contract. 

She has high hopes for her new picture “The Fuller Brush Man.” Not that she enjoyed it: (13)

“Honey, this ones that I don t enjoy turn out be the best ones.  This one put me in the hospital. My feet are still bandaged up. I’m a mess. No more physical-type pictures for me.”

#   #   #    FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE

(1) The 1946 Broadway hit comedy Born Yesterday by Garsin Kanin was bought by Columbia Pictures. Things got complicated when its stage star, Judy Holliday, swore she would not do the film version. Columbia used this as fuel for publicity about who would win the role.  Naturally, Lucille Ball was considered a top contender.  As the article states, she was not eager, however, to prove her worth to the ‘let’s-see-if-you’re-it’ boys (aka producers).  There was talk of Lucille performing the play in London, or summer stock, but her film contracts would not allow her time off for a stage run. 

(2) Mules are supposedly notoriously stubborn animals - just like Lucy. Francis the Talking Mule was the star of seven popular Universal-International film comedies. The character originated in the 1946 novel Francis by David Stern III, adapting his own script for the first entry, simply titled Francis.  On “I Love Lucy” Fred Mertz sometimes called Ethel “Francis” to indicate she was being stubborn about something. 

(3) These were some of the Hollywood stars looking to play the part of Billie Dawn in the film Born Yesterday. Evelyn Keyes (1916 – 2008) was best known for playing Sue Ellen, Scarlett O’Hara’s kid sister, in Gone With The Wind (1939).  Judy Holliday (1921-65), changed her mind about playing the role she originated on Broadway, but by then the casting net was cast, and she was just another performer on the short list. She eventually got the role, which defined her career. Marie Wilson (1916-72) was a zany comedic actress in the style of Gracie Burns. She was widely known as the star of radio and TV’s “My Friend Irma”. Shelley Winters (1920-2006) would be nominated for an Oscar the year after this article. She was adept at playing drama and comedy, and had a long-lasting career in Hollywood.  She appeared on “Here’s Lucy” in 1968; Critics raved about her Jan Sterling’s portrayal of Billie Dawn in the Chicago touring company of Born Yesterday and Columbia brought her out to the West Coast to test for the film. At one point, she was actually announced to play the part but the role ultimately went to Holliday.

(4) Lucille Ball did indeed read (not screen test) for the role of Scarlet O’Hara, just like nearly all of the women in Hollywood in 1938. Ball told the story several times on television, each time with varying details, but probably most completely on “Bob Hope’s Unrehearsed Antics of The Stars” (1984).

(5) This is a vivid description of the “Cuban Pete / Sally Sweet” portion of Lucy and Desi’s nightclub act to convince sponsors to buy them as a couple. 

(6) Betty Grable (1916-73) was considered one of the most famous pin-up girls in history. In addition to her million dollar gams (legs), she could sing, dance, and act, too. She guest starred with her then-husband Harry James on “Lucy Wins A Racehorse”, an installment of “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” aired on February 3, 1958.

(7) “Release from Nervous Tension” was an actual best-selling book by Dr. David Harold Fink, published in 1950. Vaudeville and Burlesque shows were often known as the ‘six-a-day circuit’ because sometimes there would be as many as six performances of the same act in a day.  Naturally, this did not apply to Lucy and Desi, who were big film and radio stars at the time. 

(8)  These were some of Hollywood’s top-line dramatic actors. Bette Davis (1908-89) had won two Oscars, and was nominated for several others during her long career. She was supposed to guest-star on “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” in “The Celebrity Next Door” in 1957 but dropped out after a horse-riding accident, leaving the role to Tallulah Bankhead; Olivia de Havilland (1916-2020) had also won two Oscars, the second the year this article was published. She was best remembered for playing Melanie Wilkes in Gone With The Wind (1939); Ingrid Bergman (1915-82) was a Swedish-born actress, who, by career’s end, had scored three Academy Awards.  When Johnson talks about “any other screen Duse” he is referring to Eleonor Duse (1858-1924), an Italian-born stage actress known for her grand, dramatic style.  

(9) Pearl White (1889-1938) was best known as the silent film actress who was tied to the railroad tracks in “The Perils of Pauline” (1914).  

(10) Arthur Murray (1895-1991) was a ballroom dancer and businessman best known for the chain of dancing schools that bear his name. Murray was often a punchline on “I Love Lucy,” especially when the subject of dancing came up. The Rhumba was a Latin dance that took America by storm in the late 1940s and 1950. Desi Arnaz often called his orchestra a ‘rhumba band.’ 

(11) Maureen O’Hara (1920-2015) and Lucille Ball had starred in Dance, Girl, Dance in 1940. As a result, the two went on a promotional tour that took them to several US cities, including the nation’s capitol. 

(12) Louis B. Meyer (1884-1957), along with Samuel Goldwyn and Marcus Loew of Metro Pictures, had formed a new motion picture company called Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1918. Over the next 25 years, MGM was "the Tiffany of the studios," producing more films and movie stars than any other studio in the world. Mayer became the highest-paid man in America, and one of the country's most successful horse breeders. Both he and MGM reached their peaks at the end of World War II, and Mayer was forced out in 1951, just a year after this article was written. 

(13) Erskine Johnson gets the title wrong. Lucille had madeThe Fuller Brush Girl, a sequel to The Fuller Brush Man (1948).  The film was released in mid-September 1950. 

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior Home Edition May 1, 2020 – THE WRETCHED, VANILLA, DEERSKIN, BULL

Just think...  this weekend would have been the start of the summer box office with Marvel’s Black Widow before COVID came along. Now, we’re waiting for anywhere from two to three months or longer for the next big studio release in movie theaters with so many other “big” movies already being dumped to digital.

This is yet another week with no movies in theaters unless you’re in driving distance to a drive-in (i.e. you have a car), but at least we have some great stuff to watch at home, including a few virtual film festivals and virtual cinemas.

The first major disaster brought on by the advent of COVID-19 was the cancellation of the annual SXSW Festival in Austin. The movie that was supposed to open the fest, Judd Apatow’s The King of Staten Island, starring Pete Davidson, was supposed to open SXSW in March and then play Tribeca earlier this month, but Universal reported earlier this week that it was going to release it via digital download on June 12, the same day it was going to get a theatrical release.

Amazon has teamed with SXSW to screen 39 projects, including seven features, that will screen free of charge on Amazon from April 27 through May 6. The four narrative features available are the British-Bulgarian dramedy Cat in the Wall from Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova, which is being compared to Ken Loch’s I, Daniel Blake. There’s also the Guatemalan romance Gunpowder Heart, the French period film Le Choc du Futur and the French sci-fi anthology, Selfie.  The docs being offered are Karen Bernstein’s I’m Gonna Make You Love Me is described as “Fellini meets Motown” about one man’s search for self-acceptance, while Matt Riddlehoover’s My Darling Vivian about Johnny Cash’s first wife, Vivian Liberto, who gave the country singer four daughters. Last up is Alex Lee Moyer’s TFW no GW, a doc about the state of isolation, rejection and alienation that we all seemed to be feeling these days. There will also be a ton of shorts available that you can learn more about at The Hollywood Reporter.

The second weekend of the Virtual Oxford Film Festival will launch a few more feature premieres, as well as a virtual panel and the Fest Forward collection of experimental films. First up, on Friday, May 1 is a panel called “Creating Black Stories in Mississippi” at noon central time, and if you’re interested in that, you may want to check out the Mississippi Shorts, Getting to the Root and 70 Years of Blackness, which will now run through May 8, giving you more time to see them. Friday will also see the premieres of Daniel Lafrentz’s crime-drama The Long Shadow, preceded by Will Goss’ short, Sweet Steel. (Hey! I know Will Goss!) There will be a Zoom Q&A for the two movies on Wednesday, May 6, at 6pm Central. Also available Friday is Travis Beard’s doc, Rockabul, which is about the Afghan band District Unknown who fought against the USA’s counter-culture campaign by challenging freedom of expression and youth identify in Kabul with a QnA on May 8 at 8pm central. The Fest Forward Collection includes 8 international animated films from places like Estonia and Egypt, and those will have a virtual QnA on Saturday, May 2, at 1pm Central. (All of these Oxford QnAs and panels are recorded and available to watch for as long as the films are available to watch.)  You can get tickets for all these movies and events on Eventive.

This week’s Featured Film is the Pierce Brothers’ (Brett and Drew Pierce) horror flick, THE WRETCHED (IFC Midnight), which was a nice surprise since I’m not as easy a lay when it comes to horror flicks as other “horror fan” movie writers. The film involves a somewhat quizzical premise that isn’t too apparent as it begins, as we’re not exactly sure what is going on as it begins. It stars John Paul Howard as Ben, a young man living with his father (Jamison Jones), who has separated from Ben’s mother, as the two of them work at the nearby marina over the summer. Ben is immediately picked on and bullied by the locals, but he’s more distracted by the odd behavior of the woman next door (played by Madelyn Stunenkel). I’m not going to go too far into spoiler territory but the premise does involve witchcraft and an ancient evil that’s cropped up in the small town and is causing the disappearance of many small children… maybe… most of their parents seem to forget they have kids as they follow under the spell of the evil Ben’s discovered.

This is just a fantastic little scarer that at times reminded me of the original Fright Night, and I was really impressed with what the Pierce Brothers, first of all by working with a cast of great lesser-known actors, but the visual FX are fantastic and every aspect of the film’s mood and tone is just about perfect. I guess I’ve seen so much low budget horror that doesn’t really match the standards or production values of even some of the smaller-budget Blumhouse movies.

While you may not be near any of the scattered drive-in across the country that will probably be playing the movie, I definitely recommend downloading and/or renting it if you’re a fan of quality horror. The Pierces are extremely talented filmmakers who I’m sure will be doing better things down the road. For me, this is right up there with The Invisible Man, as far as this year’s stronger horror films.

Out now on VOD and Digital is Will Dennis’ quirky road comedy VANILLA (Gravitas Ventures) about a comedian (Kelsea Bauman) who goes on a three-day road trip from New York to New Orleans with an ice cream entrepreneur (Dennis), to sell his van with a questionable past to his ex-girlfriend. Both of them see the trip as a date, of sorts, but they set up a number of rules and boundaries to make the trip work.  It’s a pretty simple premise that’s made more fun by the unique elements Dennis introduces. Vanilla is a sweet, cute romantic movie with two actors appearing in their first movie that reminds me a little of the early work of the Duplass Brothers or Joe Swanberg where there’s a simplicity to the storytelling, but it’s really driven by the wonderful chemistry between the two leads.  It’s kind of amazing how enjoyable this movie is considering the inexperience of both actors, and I hope this gets seen by more people.  This is a wonderful discovery film that I was told played at the Lighthouse International Film Festival in Jersey and the Phoenix Film Festival, just a reminder why film festivals are so important!

Also on VOD and Digital this Friday is Annie Silverstein’s BULL (Samuel Goldwyn), starring Rob Morgan from Mudbound, Just Mercy and Netflix’s Daredevil. Amber Havard plays 14-year-old Kristal, a young troubled girl who is on her way to ending up in jail like her mother. After an incident where Kristal is in danger of going to juvie, she’s given a choice instead to help her next door neighbor, Morgan’s bull rider Abe Turner, with errands around his home. Kris soon discovers her own love for bull riding, as this unlikely relationship grows. I’m a big fan of Rob Morgan as an actor, because his work is highly-underrated, and I do have to say that Bull is a great vehicle for Morgan to have more of a leading role than he normally gets. He shines in that capacity, and Havard does a decent job in their scenes together, even though it’s a far lower key role. Then again, I thought this was a moderately decent indie that covered topics very similar to other movies, including Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s The Mustang last year and Chloé Zhao’s The Rider a year earlier.  Unfortunately, the material and especially Silverstein’s writing isn’t up to par with those movies, and it took me a little longer to get into this vs. those other films. Oddly, this will probably be seen by more people due to its VOD release, and that’s fine since I’d love movies like this to find more of an audience even with its pacing issues.

Back in the VOD/digital world, we have a handful of new releases including Quentin (Rubber) Dupieux’s DEERSKIN (“Le Daim”) (Greenwich), which I got a chance to see at Rendezvous with French Cinema back in February before the world came to a screeching halt, and that series ended up also being sidelined. The movie stars Oscar winner Jean Dujardin from The Artist whose obsession with a designer deerskin jacket leads him into a life of crime as he tries to complete his all-deerskin wardrobe. I generally like Dupieux’s weird sense of humor, and though this is less of a genre film than Rubber, it’s an entertaining film as we watch Dujardin’s character get further and further into trouble as he becomes obsessed with making a movie… as well as abolishing the world of all other jackets besides his own. If that sounds weird like a strange premise, then you clearly don’t know Dupieux’s work, and maybe it’s not for you. Deerskin is a movie I fully appreciated, because it was so weird and you never know where it was going, even going into the realm of American Psycho as it went along. Dujardin’s expressive performance was quite fun to watch, plus it it also co-stars Adèle Haenel from Portrait of a Lady on Fire, for those who loved that movie. Again, not for everyone, but if you enjoy Dupieux’s strange filmmaking ethos then Deerskin is another highly original offering.

Film at Lincoln Center’s Virtual Cinema will also be playing Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra’s new film Liberté (Cinema Guild), following it being a selection at the 57th New York Film Festival last year. This one takes place in the 18th century where a group of “bewigged libertines” engage in “pansexual games of pain, torture, humiliation and other dissolute, Sadean pleasure.” Sounds like something that would never play in Middle America if not for being available across the country thanks to this Virtual Cinema. I can’t remember if I saw Serra’s other film, The Death of Louis XIV, but this doesn’t sound like something I would watch unless I had free time at a festival, and clearly, I didn’t have time for this one at least year’s NYFF.

Another foreign film to look out for via virtual cinema is César Diaz’s Belgian-Guatemalan film, Our Mothers (Nuestras Madres) (Outside Pictures), which will be available via Virtual Cinema Friday. Besides being the Belgian entry for the 92nd Academy Awards, it also won the Caméra d’Or at last year’s Cannes, where it premiered during Cannes International Critics Week. It stars Armando Espitia as young anthropologist Ernesto who works for the Forensic Foundation in Guatemala as the country is in the middle of trying the soldiers who began the country’s civil war. Ernesto’s job is to identify the bodies of the missing, including possibly his father whose went missing during the war. The project began as a documentary and then became a narrative film.

Semi-related to the above, Cinema Tropical will be releasing three new genre-breaking films from a new generation of Brazilian directors, the “Cinema Tropical Collection” also done in conjunction with Lincoln Center, beginning with Gabriel Martins and Maurílio’s In the Heart of the World on Thursday, April 30.

Another movie getting a “Virtual Cinema” release (i.e. VOD/Digital) is Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra’s “docu-thriller” THE INFILTRATORS (Oscilloscope), which tells the true story of two immigrants who are thrown into a detention center. Marco and Viri are members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, a group of young DREAMers who want to put a stop to unjust deportations by being put in detention themselves, a plan that doesn’t go the way they planned. The film cuts between documentary footage of the real “infiltrators” with reenactments of the events inside the detention story, so it’s part documentary and part drama.

Also, Kino Lorber will be releasing Beanpole director Kantemir Balagov’s 2017 debut film, Tesnota (Closeness), virtually on Friday to help assist New York arthouse, Anthology Film Archives. This one is set in 1998 Nalchik in the North Caucasus of Russia and focuses on 24-year-old Jewish girl Ilana who works in her father’s garage, and while celebrating her young brother David’s engagement, he and his fiancée are kidnapped, but the Jewish community won’t go to the police to pay the ransom, so Ilana and her parents have to figure out a way to save them on their own.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Lots of stuff on Netflix this week, including THE HALF OF IT, the new film from Alice Wu, her first movie as as director since her terrific 2004 debut, Saving Face! This one stars Leah Lewis as Ellie Chu, a cash-strapped teen who writes a love to the school’s jock but ends up becoming friends with him and falling for the girl he has a crush on. I haven’t watched it yet to review, but I’m looking forward to it being a nice twist on Netflix’s other teen-oriented romance films.

Ryan Murphy’s second series for Netflix, Hollywood, will debut its first season on Friday, this one co-created with Ian Brennan (Glee, Scream Queens). It takes place in a post-WWII Hollywood and tells the story of a group of actors and filmmakers trying to make it. The cast includes Darren Criss, Patti Lupone, Mira Sorvino, Rob Reiner, Samara Weaving AND Michelle Krusiec, who starred in Alice Wu’s Saving Face! (See how it’s all connecting together?)

Chris Bolan’s documentary A Secret Love, which premieres on Netflix Wednesday, about two women, Pat Henschel and pro baseball player Terry Donahue, who fell in love in 1947 but had to keep that love a secret for 65 years due to the prejudice against lesbians they would have had to face.

Starting on Amazon this Friday is Upload, the new series from Greg Daniels (The Office, Parks and Recreation), with the first season being made up of ten episodes.  It stars Robbie Amell, who I got to interview last year for a small indie sci-fi film called Code 8. This is another dealing with life, death and the afterlife which seems to be a running theme through many series in recent years (such as Miracle Workers and The Good Place). In this one, Amell plays Nathan, a spoiled rich guy who ends up at Upload after a horrifying accident that takes his place, while Andy Allo plays the Upload “angel” assigned to Nathan who has to get him acclimated to his new afterlife. I’ve only watched the first episode of this so far, and it’s okay. I’m curious to see where it goes since it’s not a straight comedy perse like some of Daniels’ other work, and a lot is put on Amell’s shoulders to be funny, and Daniels is working with a lot of lesser-known actors for this one.

On Sunday, Showtime will launch the season debuts of Billions (Season 5) and the first season of Penny Dreadful: City of Angels.

Also, Lionsgate’s free movie offering this Friday is Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, my #1 movie of that year… thanks for nothing, #Schmoonlight!

Next week, more movies and shows not in theaters!

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