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New Escapist Column! On the Myths and Lies of “Barry”…

We’re launching a new column at The Escapist, called Out of Focus. It will publish every 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. With the end of Barry this week, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look the show’s final season.

Barry is a show about Hollywood, but it is also a show about America. It is a show about mythmaking and self-delusion, about the stories that people tell themselves to feel better and about the stories that are told about people to make everybody else feel better. It’s a black comedy about a hitman who becomes an actor, but over the course of its four seasons it evolved into something decidedly more complex and compelling. Like Succession, it is a show that speaks perfectly to the current moment, holding a mirror to a nation in crisis.

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

192. Hamilton: An American Musical – This Just In (#20)

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Deirdre Mulomby, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users.

This time, Thomas Kail’s Hamilton: An American Musical.

Reconstructed from a pair of live theatrical recordings and additional material compiled in June 2016, Hamilton features one of the last performances from the original Broadway cast of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s record-breaking smash hit cultural sensation, available on streaming for the first time.

At time of recording, it was ranked 20th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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The X-Files – Aubrey (Review)

This August (and a little of September), we’re taking a trip back in time to review the second season of The X-Files. In November, we’ll be looking at the third season. And maybe more.

Aubrey doesn’t necessarily a make a lot of sense. Even as episodes of The X-Files go, “serial killer genes that skip a generation” feels like a logical leap. The idea that not only memories but personalities can be passed from grandfather to granddaughter is absurd even by the standards of a show that just did “magic mushrooms that cure Alzheimer’s and give people telekinesis and open portals to another world.” Perhaps it’s the fact that Aubrey tries to root its story in genetics that makes it seem so ridiculous.

And yet, once you get past that logical leap, Aubrey is a fascinating little episode. Aubrey works on quite a few levels that are disconnected from the story itself. For one thing, it is a Rob Bowman episode, and he is clearly pushing himself. For another, the guest cast features superb performances from Deborah Strang, Terry O’Quinn and Morgan Woodward. There’s also the fact that Aubrey connects almost perfectly with both the underlying themes of The X-Files as a show and of the second season in particular.

Hey little sister, what have you done?

Hey little sister, what have you done?

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