I’m thrilled to be launching movie reviews on The Escapist. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be joining a set of contributors in adding these reviews to the channel. For the moment, I’m honoured to contribute a three-minute film review of The Batman, which is in theatres on Friday.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: 3mr, bruce wayne, escapist, matt reeves, Robert Pattinson, the batman, three minute review | Leave a comment »
The Escapist have launched a new pop culture podcast, and I was thrilled to join Jack Packard for the sixth episode. Jack and I get to rank the live action Batmen, in preparation for the upcoming release of The Batman.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: adam west, batman, batmen, ben affleck, discussion, michael keaton, Movies, Robert Pattinson, the batman, the escapist, val kilmer, your feature presentation, youtube | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the penultimate episode of Peacemaker released this week, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at how the show – along with a lot of James Gunn’s work – exists in conversation with Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen.
Gunn has been very candid that Watchmen is a major influence on his films, particularly his superhero films. However, what’s most striking about Gunn’s use of Watchmen as a source of inspiration is the fact that he actually engages with the text. Many of Gunn’s projects, particularly The Suicide Squad and Super, are very much in conversation with Watchmen, asking what that core text means in a slightly different modern context. That is just as true of Peacemaker, which not only draws from the comics that inspired Watchmen, but also extrapolates boldly out from Watchmen.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: alan moore, dave gibbons, escapist, in the frame, James Gunn, Peacemaker, the escapist, watchmen | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of Jackass Forever this weekend, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the cultural phenomenon.
It’s possible to look at Jackass as the intersection of three overlapping traditions in entertainment, particularly American entertainment: the freak show, the silent comedy and early reality television. There’s a fascinating and heady cocktail at play in this, and Jackass exists as a curious modern hybrid. There is sense of evolution here. There’s perhaps something to admire in the way that the cast of Jackass retain control of their narrative.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: films, freak show, freak shows, in the frame, Jackass, jackass forever, Movies, reality television, silent cinema, silent comedy, the escapist | Leave a comment »
I’m thrilled to be launching movie reviews on The Escapist. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be joining a set of contributors in adding these reviews to the channel. For the moment, I’m honoured to contribute a three-minute film review of Jackass Forever, which is in theatres now.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: escapist, film history, Jackass, jackass forever, movie reviews, review, silent movies, the escapist | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the most recent episode of The Book of Boba Fett leaning heard into nostalgia for Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, and with Spider-Man: No Way Home bringing back Andrew Garfield from the Amazing Spider-Man movies, I tackled a question that has been bothering me for a while: why are fans nostalgic for things they hate?
Of course, there are fans out there who love The Phantom Menace and The Amazing Spider-Man movies, and more power to them. However, there is something interesting in how these nostalgic properties couch their nostalgia for these objects, layering it with distance and approaching it often indirectly – evoking not so much the object itself, but the faint fandom memory of the object. In many cases, it feels like such nostalgia is driven more by a sense of ownership and obligation than by any meaningful affection or appreciation.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: bad memories, book of boba fett, fandom, in the frame, nostalgia, ownership, spider-man: no way home, the amazing spider-man, the book of boba fett, the escapist, the phantom menace | 1 Comment »
I was thrilled to be invited to join the wonderful Michael and Stephanie Little for an episode of their new podcast, The Spookies Podcast.
It was a fun conversation, in which I got to chat a little bit about The Dark Knight, one of my favourite blockbusters ever. The nominal topic of the conversation was the Joker himself, but it was a broad and wide-ranging discussion that ended up touching on everything from modern fandom to Christopher Nolan to the state of modern auteurism. I hope you enjoy.
You can listen directly to the episode below or by clicking here.
Filed under: On Second Thought, Podcasts! | Tagged: auteurism, batman, blockbusters, Christopher Nolan, Comics, fans, heath ledger, michael black, stephanie black, The Dark Knight, the spookies | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the looming release of The Batman, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at Matt Reeves’ other recent films. In particular, Reeves directed the last two films in the recent Planet of the Apes trilogy.
The recent Planet of the Apes prequels are the rarest of things: beautifully made and powerfully resonant blockbusters. The films are constructed with genuine artistry and craft, but – more than that – they speak to the particular moment in which they were released. These are films that against all odds manage to capture something of the soul of America on celluloid, beautifully encapsulating a deeply troubled era, and skilfully using their nostalgia in a way that deepens their themes and enhances their resonance.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: america, blockbusters, dawn of the planet of the apes, escapist, matt reeves, planet of the apes, rise of the planet of the apes, the batman, the escapist, war for the planet of the apes | Leave a comment »
I published a new column at The Escapist earlier this week. It’s been an interesting few weeks and months in terms of pop culture. There’s been a lot of debate about critics and the role of critics, there’s been a lot of news about pop culture that the internet doesn’t seem too excited about, and there’s been a lot of coverage about mundane aspects of The Batman.
All of these things speak to an interesting and ongoing anxiety about the “monoculture”, the idea of pieces of pop culture that are seismic enough to become part of the shared vernacular. The pandemic has had a number of major impacts on the production and the consumption of popular culture, and part of that has been an increasing sense of disconnect from a shared sense of the monoculture. However, is the monoculture truly dead? Or is it simply resting?
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Movies, Television | Tagged: criticism, films, internet, monoculture, pop culture, the escapist | Leave a comment »
the m0vie blog 
New Escapist Column! In the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” Franchise…
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist earlier this week. With the release of Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Netflix, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at the larger franchise spawned from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is one of the defining horror movies of the seventies, an innovative and influential low-budget indie that demonstrated what was possible outside the mainstream production machine. However, few horror classics have been as poorly served by the sequels that followed as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. While most other major horror franchises can boast a genuine (or even just cult) classic among their sequels, the sequels to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre have been a slow and brutal slog into generic horror nonsense. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is just the latest stop on that journey.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: commentary, escapist, gore, horror, in the frame, leatherface, slasher, texas chain saw massacre, the escapist, the texas chainsaw massacre, violence | Leave a comment »