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 »
Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Philip Bagnall, 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, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather.
Michael Corleone has spent most of his life running away from his family connections, enlisting in the United States Marines to avoid the siren call of his father’s organised crime empire. However, when Michael returns home for his sister’s wedding, events conspire to draw the prodigal son back into the family business.
At time of recording, it was ranked 2nd on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: al pacino, america, auteur, authorship, box office, cinema, crime, Diane Keaton, francis ford coppola, gangsters, Mafia, marlon brando, Movies, new hollywood, paramount, phil bagnall, philip bagnall, prestige, robert evans, the godfather | Leave a comment »
Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Dean Buckley, 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, Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times.
A factory worker suffers a psychotic breakdown on the assembly line, and loses his job. Upon recovery, he very quickly finds himself swept up in a series of misadventures that reflect the rapidly changing balance between human labour and industrialisation. Is there still room for the lovable tramp in a society so dramatically reinventing itself?
At time of recording, it was ranked 40th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: change, charlie chaplin, dean buckley, Great Depression, history, humanity, industrialisation, machines, mechanisation, memory, modern times, nostalgia, paulette goddard, romance, silent cinema, sound, talkies, The 250, the great depression, the great recession, the tramp | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist earlier this week. With the upcoming release of Severance on Apple TV+, it seemed like a good excuse to take a look at one of the most interesting players in the streaming wars.
Apple TV+ lacks many of the advantages shared by its competitors. It doesn’t have a deep library of back content and intellectual property like Disney+, HBO Max and Paramount+. It also lacks the reach of Netflix or Amazon Prime. However, slowly and surely, without the comfort of existing brands and established intellectual property, Apple TV+ has managed to carve out a unique and distinctive identity in the stremaing wars. Not everything on the service works, but there’s generally a sense that anything that made it to screen is there because somebody fought for it.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: apple tv, brand, dickinson, intellectual propert, see, severance, streaming, streaming wars, ted lasso | Leave a comment »
The Escapist have launched a new pop culture podcast, and I was thrilled to join Jack Packard for the fifth episode. Jack and I get to talk about Moonfall, a movie that we have very different opinions about.
Filed under: Podcasts! | Tagged: jack packard, moonfall, roland emmerich, your feature presentation | Leave a comment »
Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Ciara Moloney, 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, Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night.
Wealthy heiress Ellie Andrews has married playboy “King” Westley agaisnt her father’s wishes. Hoping to reunite with her lost love, she absconds and finds herself on a night bus with recently-fired reported Peter Warne. Even drunk and unemployed, Warne can smell a story. He decides to join Andrews on this unlikely adventure, and sparks begin to fly.
At time of recording, it was ranked 241st on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: academy awards, ciara moloney, clark gable, claudette colbert, corniness, Drake, Frank Capra, heat 2, it happened one night, Oscars, podcast, production code, romantic comedies, screwball comedies, sex, sublimation, The 250, the hays code | 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 piece at The Escapist this evening. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of James Gunn’s Peacemaker, which is streaming weekly on HBO Max. The seventh and penultimate episode of the show released this week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.
Much of the discussion around the show has focused on the soundtrack, with James Gunn drawing heavily from hair metal bands. This gives the soundtrack a unique texture in the modern superhero genre, but it also plays into the larger themes of the show itself. The choice of hair metal says a lot about the character of Christopher Smith, particular compared to everything else that the show has told the audience about the protagonist. Indeed, hair metal suggests something close to a path to redemption for a character who struggled to find other means of escape and exposure.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: art, escapism, escapist, escapist magazine, hair metal, james cena, Peacemaker, Rock and roll, stop dragon my heart around, the escapist | Leave a comment »
I published a new review at The Escapist today. I’m reviewing new episodes of The Book of Boba Fett weekly, so this week I’m covering the season finale, In the Name of Honour.
In the Name of Honour is big. In the Name of Honour is bombastic. In the Name of Honour looks like people spent a lot of money on it. Unfortunately, In the Name of Honour is curiously hollow. It’s a season finale that bungles most of the season’s strongest thematic and character arcs, often descending into a chaotic mess of “stuff happening.” It’s a finale that has nothing of substance to say about its characters, the larger show or even the world that it depicts. It is spectacle, though.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: Boba Fett, escapist magazine, finale, in the name of honor, in the name of honour, star wars, the book of boba fett, 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 »