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New Escapist Column! On “Peacemaker” and “Watchmen”…

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.

New Escapist Column! On How “Peacemaker” As a Story of Redemption Through Art…

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.

New Escapist Review! “The Book of Boba Fett – In the Name of Honour”

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.

 

New Escapist Column! On Overthinking “Jackass”…

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.

New Escapist Video! “Jackass Forever is Review-Proof… and Still Funny”

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.

272. Dersu Uzala (#156)

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Chris Lavery and Niall Glynn, 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, Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala.

On a routine survey mission into the Russian wilderness, Captain Arsenyev comes a cross a local tracker and hunter named Dersu Uzala. Dersu agrees to guide the expedition on their journey through the forest. An unlikely bond is forged between Arsenyev and Dersu, as civilisation begins its encroachment into this previously isolated space.

At time of recording, it was ranked 156th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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New Escapist Column! On How “Peacemaker” Turns Its Weaknesses Into Strengths…

I published a new piece at The Escapist last week. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of James Gunn’s Peacemaker, which is streaming weekly on HBO Max. The fifth episode of the show released last week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.

Understandably, given that the show is built around a piece of established intellectual property and superheroes, much of the discussion around Peacemaker had focused on creator James Gunn’s earlier work on films like Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 and The Suicide Squad. However, with its (relatively) lower budget and scrappier aesthetic, Peacemaker arguably hews closers to Gunn’s earliest films as director, movies like Slither and Super. Enjoying incredible creative freedom and lack of ocersight, Gunn is reconnecting with the aesthetic of his earliest work.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

New Escapist Review! “The Book of Boba Fett – From the Desert Comes a Stranger”…

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 From the Desert Comes a Stranger.

Following on from Return of the Mandalorian, From the Desert Comes a Stranger is another episode of The Book of Boba Fett that is surprisingly uninterested in Boba Fett himself. It’s an hour of television that splits its time across two significant plot threads, and the differences between the two are instructive. One of those threads is at least basically functional, if largely unremarkable. The other thread exerts a much stronger gravity, and perhaps demonstrates the worst tendencies of modern Star Wars.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

New Escapist Column! On the “The Book of Boba Fett”, “Now Way Home” and Nostalgia For Things That We Hate…

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.

New Podcast! The Spookies Podcast – “The Dark Knight And The Joker “

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.