Posted on January 23, 2023 by Darren
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the looming release of Scream VI, it seemed like as good a time as any to consider the state of the modern horror franchise.
When Scream premiered, it was a radical deconstruction of classic slasher movie tropes that breathed new life into the genre. It even helped to resurrect troubled slasher franchises like Halloween or Child’s Play. So it’s interesting that, as the series has progressed, it has become more and more like the kinds of movies that it was originally a reaction against. It’s a fascinating illustration of how these franchises evolve over the decades since their original release.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: deconstruction, franchise, horror, in the frame, Movie, Scream, scream 6, slasher, trailer | Leave a comment »
Posted on January 22, 2023 by Darren
I published a new piece at The Escapist yesterday. With the recent release of That ’90s Show on streaming, it seemed like a good opportunity to delve into the show’s very interesting nostalgia.
Part of what is so fascinating about That ’90s Show is that layers of nostalgia that permeate it. It is not simply a show nostalgic for the nineties. It is a show that is itself nostalgic for the nostalgia of the nineties. It’s a conscious effort to resurrect the multi-camera sitcom, a classic institution of American television that has become something of a cultural artifact. It’s also a show that is less interested in its own nineties setting than it is in indirectly channelling the nostalgia that that show felt for the seventies. It’s a hall of mirrors.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: netflix, nineties, nostalgia, resurrection, revival, Sitcom, that '90s show | Leave a comment »
Posted on January 21, 2023 by Darren
Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest David Monaghan, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.
So this week, Brian Levant’s The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas.
Years before they become the family that audiences know and love, Fred and Wilma are living very different lives. Fred is a quarry working, looking for connection. Wilma is the daughter of a wealthy family, looking to experience something real. Fate (and a meddling alien named Gazoo) conspires to throw the two into one another’s lives. However, Fred soon discovers that he has a potential romantic rival in the spiteful Chip Rockefeller, who invites the couple on a trip that they’ll never forget to Rock Vegas.
At time of recording, it was ranked 92nd on the list of the worst movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
Continue reading →
Filed under: The Bottom 100 | Tagged: alan cumming, david monaghan, john goodman, mark addy, podcast, steven spielberg, The 250, The Flintstones, the flintstones in viva rock vegas | Leave a comment »
Posted on January 20, 2023 by Darren
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the looming release of Luther: The Fallen Sun, it seemed like a good opportunity to talk about the show. In particular, the interesting space that it occupies as a police procedural that arguably owes more to comic books than anything else.
Luther is a fascinating show. It is ostensibly something similiar to Law & Order or CSI, the story of a detective who works grim and sensationalist crimes to their conclusions. In practice, however, Luther is something altogether more heightened. It occasionally veers over into outright horror, and Luther himself often seems to face characters more like comic book supervillains than ordinary criminals. The result is fascinating, a show that arguably feels closer to a certain strand of comic book storytelling than any of the actual comic book shows out there.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: bbc, comic books, constantine, john luther, luther, netflix, police procedural, superheroes | Leave a comment »
Posted on January 19, 2023 by Darren
I published a new piece at The Irish Independent last week. With the release of The Last of Us, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the history of video game adaptations.
There’s a lot riding on The Last of Us, and HBO have really gone all-out on the show. It stars Pedro Pascal of The Mandalorian and is written by Craig Mazin of Chernobyl. It’s an interesting approach, in large part because video games have frequently posed a challenge to studios longing to adapt them to other screens. Just based on Hollywood’s experience with the medium, The Last of Us poses a significant challenge to any production team hoping to translate it to another medium.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: adaptation, curse, game changer, irish independent, the independent, the last of us, video games | 1 Comment »
Posted on January 18, 2023 by Darren
We’re launching a new column at The Escapist, called Out of Focus. It will publish every second Wednesday, and the plan is to use it to look at some film and television that would maybe fall outside the remit of In the Frame, more marginal titles or objects of cult interest. We kicked off the column with a look at The Menu, Mark Mylod’s black comedy.
The Menu has been framed of something an “eat the rich” satire, a companion piece to films like Glass Onion or Triangle of Sadness. However, that perhaps misses the intricacies of what The Menu is doing. The movie is not so much an example of the trend as it is a movie about the trend. In particular, it plays as a commentary on the extremely privileged individuals who make large sums of money producing art about how awful the superrich truly are, and whether that art can ever be truly insightful or engaging. It’s an exploration of how these stories work, where they come from, and the artists who make them.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: adam mckay, mark mylod, out of focus, ralph fiennes, the escapist, the menu | Leave a comment »
Posted on January 17, 2023 by Darren
I am doing weekly reviews of The Last of Us at The Escapist. They’ll be dropping every Sunday evening while the show is on, looking at the video game adaptation as the show progresses. To start with, though, a look at the season premiere.
The Last of Us is effectively a survival horror show. It’s very clearly riffing on archetypal zombie apocalypse narratives. The show’s opening scene evokes I Am Legend. Its depiction of the collapse of civilisation recalls everything from Night of the Living Dead to Shaun of the Dead. However, what makes this particular show interesting is the way that its central apocalyptic force, a infectuous fungus, ties into the show’s core themes of co-dependence and mutual support. The fungus at the heart of the show is a monstrous parasite, but The Last of Us argues that the only way human beings can survive is together.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: co-dependence, escapist, fungi, fungus, reliance, the escapist, the last of us, when you're lost in the darkness | Leave a comment »
Posted on January 16, 2023 by Darren
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of The Last of Us, it seemed like a good opportunity to talk about the show. In particular, what it says about the challenges of adapting a video game to another medium.
Hollywood has spent decades trying to figure out how to translate video games into movies, resulting a somewhat embarrassing list of adaptations: Super Mario Bros., Double Dragon, Wing Commander, and so on. Adapting video games to another medium often means erasing the immersive quality that defines the medium. While it’s impossible to replicate the interactivity of a player steering the protagonist, there is a sense that film is not a medium that can faithfully emulate that level of worldbuilding and progression. The Last of Us suggests that television is much more perfectly suited to that task.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Leave a comment »
Posted on January 15, 2023 by Darren
I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. With the recent release of M3GAN in theatres, it seemed like a good opportunity to delve into the breakout horror success.
Like most stories about artificial intelligence, M3GAN is ultimately a story about parenthood. In particular, it’s a very modern story about parental anxieties, concerning how modern technology has in some ways usurped or replaced the role that parents place in shaping the lives of their children. Central to M3GAN is the idea that the eponymous doll serves as a parental surrogate for its companion, and in doing so makes life easier for parents. However, M3GAN itself is a child without a parent, left to educate and raise itself, with potentially horrifying results. What is M3GAN but a child of the internet?
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: artificial intellegence, Artificial Intelligence, escapist, m3gan, parenthood, the escapist, universal | Leave a comment »
Posted on January 14, 2023 by Darren
I am doing weekly reviews of Willow at The Escapist. They’ll be dropping every Wednesday evening while the show is on, looking at the legacy sequel as it progresses from one episode to the next.
With its season finale, Willow revealed that it was basically the statistical mean of Disney’s streaming shows built around existing intellectual property, even more than their Marvel of Star Wars shows. At various points in the season, Willow felt more like a checklist of familiar narrative beats than it did a cohesive story, and that was particularly true of the season finale, with its non-deaths ands its beams of multi-colour energy.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: disney, finale, Season finale, streaming, streaming shows, willow | Leave a comment »
the m0vie blog 