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New Escapist Column! On “White Noise” and the Human Death Drive…

Posted on December 30, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of White Noise on Netflix, it seemed like a good opportunity to discuss Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s classic postmodern novel.

White Noise has long been considered unadaptable. However, Baumbach zeroes on a consistent throwline that guids his weird and eccentric adaptation through its various shifts and turns. White Noise is fundamentally a story about death. It is about the way in which so much culture – sex, media, consumerism – is designed as an effort to drown out the encroaching and inescapable sense of mortality. Baumbach presents a broad and cartoonish exploration of man’s inability to grapple with that universal certainty. In doing so, he tells a strangely moving story.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: adaptation, awards, column, consumerism, death, don delillo, in the frame, netflix, Noah Baumbach, Oscars, sex, white noise | Leave a comment »

302. Requiem for a Dream (#84)

Posted on August 28, 2022 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, with special guest Richard Drumm, 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.

This week, Darren Aronofsky Requiem for a Dream.

Four Brooklyn residents navigate addiction and isolation in its various forms, through Summer, Fall and Winter. There is no Spring.

At time of recording, it was ranked 84th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: american dream, ass to ass, awards, controversy, Darren Aronofsky, delusion, drug addiction, drugs, ect, ellen burstyn, films, independent cinema, jared leto, jennifer connelly, just say no, marlon wayans, Movies, nightmare, obsession, Oscars, ratings, requiem for a dream, richard drumm | Leave a comment »

252. Platoon (#222)

Posted on September 18, 2021 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, with special guest Joe Griffin, 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. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, Oliver Stone’s Platoon.

In late 1967, Chris Taylor volunteers for service in Vietnam. Arriving in country, Taylor quickly discovers that the war is not what he expected. As the platoon descends into civil war, Taylor finds himself torn between the two sergeants: the monstrous Barnes and the philosophical Elias. Taylor discovers that he might not just be fighting for his life, but for his very soul.

At time of recording, it was ranked 222nd on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: afghanistan, awards, dale dye, history, joe griffin, legacy, memory, Method Acting, oliver stone, Oscars, Platoon, podcast, propaganda, The 250, tom berenger, vietnam, Vietnam War, war, willem dafoe | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! On Why “The Expanse” Was Shut Out of the Emmys…

Posted on August 3, 2021 by Darren

So, as I have mentioned before, I am launching a new video series as a companion piece to In the Frame at The Escapist. The video will typically launch with every second Monday’s article, and be released on the magazine’s YouTube channel the following week. This is kinda cool, because we’re helping relaunch the magazine’s film content – so if you can throw a subscription our way, it would mean a lot.

With the Emmy nominations earlier last month, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at how the awards work. In particular, why they tend to overlook particular shows, despite positive reviews and consistent levels of quality. In particular, whether the institution has a longstanding bias against genre television or if there are other factors at play.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: awards, emmys, escapist, in the frame, the escapist, the expanse | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Escapist Movie Podcast – “Stop the Oscar, I Wanna Get Out”

Posted on March 16, 2021 by Darren

The Escapist have launched a movie podcast, and I was thrilled to join Jack Packard for the tenth episode of the year, with a special guest Raymond Creamer, to talk about the Oscar nominees.

You can listen to back episodes of the podcast here, click the link below or even listen directly.

Filed under: Movies, Podcasts! | Tagged: academy awards, awards, jack packard, Oscars, raymond creamer, the escapist movie podcast, wisecrack | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On the Potential of the Pandemic Awards Season…

Posted on October 14, 2020 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist today. There’s been a lot of interesting debate recently about the Academy Awards, and what what they might look like this year, so I thought it was worth taking a closer look.

With cinemas closed around the world – and most obviously in the familiar movie markets of Los Angeles and New York – it would be impossible for this awards season to work in the same way as previous years. The Academy has made changes to its rules to compensate, but some observers argue that the Oscar simply cannot go ahead in the current climate. However, there’s a solid argument to be made for pressing ahead under these conditions – for an awards season that looks as bizarre as the year that led into it.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: academy awards, awards, escapist magazine, Invisible Man, Oscars, review, the escapist, year | Leave a comment »

Hindsight is 2020: In Defense of the Best Picture Nominations…

Posted on February 5, 2020 by Darren

It’s a strange position to be in, to mount a radical argument that the Best Picture race is actually fairly solid this year.

To be fair, there are legitimate grievances to be had. The Academy went with old favourites in several of the acting categories, overlooking amazing work. The Best Actress category would be stronger if the voters opted for Lupita Nyong’o for Us over than Charlize Theron for Bombshell. The Best Supporting Actress race would have been more interesting had Kathy Bates for Richard Jewell been replaced by Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers. The all-male Best Director category is also frustrating, considering the fine work done by directors like Olivia Wilde, Lulu Wang, Céline Sciamma, Lorene Scafaria, and more over the past year.

However, there is also something inevitable about the tone of the debate over the Best Picture race. The Academy Awards is never going to actually please everybody. There are several hundred films released every year that meet the criteria for eligibility. Taste is inherently subjective. Everybody likes different things. More than that, the Academy is a large body comprised of a variety of different voices, especially after recent diversity pushes to modernise the membership. Even if there was a list of (up to) ten films that would satisfy everybody, the Academy would never be the body to produce it. And that is okay.

Instead, the Best Picture nominees this year offer a snapshot of cinema as it was in 2019. They offer a glimpse of the breadth and the depth of mainstream movie-watching, a list of nine very distinct films that offer nine very distinct perspectives on where the medium is and where it might be going. The beauty of the Best Picture nominees this year is that there’s something for everyone, but nobody gets everything. This seems fair, even if the impulse is to want an entire slate that reflects personal taste.

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Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: 1917, academy awards, awards, ford v. ferrari, jojo rabbit, joker, little women, marriage story, once upon a time in hollywood, Oscars, parasite, populism, the irishman | Leave a comment »

Dublin Film Critics Circle Awards, 2019

Posted on December 17, 2019 by Darren

IT’S CHRIIIIIISTMASSSSSS!

Which can only mean one thing: end of year “best of” lists!

I’m a member of a couple of critics’ organisations, so we’ll be releasing a couple of these sorts of end-of-years lists upon which I voted.

The Dublin Film Critics Circle have released their end of year awards. As ever, I am thrilled to be a part of the group, who are voting on films released in Ireland during the calendar year of 2019. As such, it will be a different pool of films than the Online Film Critics Society awards; films like Parasite or 1917 are excluded from consideration.

A massive thanks to the wonderful Tara Brady for organising the awards this year, balloting members and collating results.

Anyway, without further ado…

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: awards, best of, dfcc, dublin film critics circle, end of year | Leave a comment »

149. American Beauty – Summer of ’99 (#73)

Posted on September 28, 2019 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Charlene Lydon, 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. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, continuing our Summer of ’99 season, Sam Mendes’ American Beauty.

1999 was a great year for movies, with a host of massively successful (and cult) hits that would define cinema for a next generation: Being John Malkovich, Magnolia, Fight Club, The Green Mile, The Insider, Run, Lola, Run. The Summer of ’99 season offers a trip through the year in film on the IMDb‘s 250.

Trapped in a loveless marriage and father to a daughter who wants him dead, Lester Burnham finds himself going through a midlife crisis. In the year leading up to his death, Lester attempts to reconnect with his youth and rediscover the man that he once was before the embers die out for good.

At time of recording, it was ranked 73rd on the Internet Movie Database‘s list of the best movies of all-time.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: anxiety, awards, best picture, charlene lydon, controversy, film, imdb, kevin spacey, masculinity, millennial, Movie, Oscars, podcast, summer of '99, The 250 | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! Scannain Podcast (2019) #1!

Posted on January 11, 2019 by Darren

Happy New Year! It’s time for the latest Scannain podcast!

This week, I join Grace Duffy, Ronan Doyle and Jay Coyle to discuss the week in film news. As the first podcast we’ve recorded in three weeks, since the end-of-year spectacular back in December, there is a lot to talk about. And so we do! Everything from T2 Trainspotting to Bird Box to Bandersnatch to The Dead, it’s an eclectic selection of films. It includes some of the new releases that we didn’t get to cover over the break, including Life Itself and Welcome to Marwen.

There is also understandably a lot of ground to cover. In awards season news, the success of The Favourite at both the Golden Globes and in the BAFTA nominations. The various Oscar-season gossip, including the success of Bohemian Rhapsody, the chaos around Green Book, Kevin Hart’s controversy and the decision to go hostless. Closer to home, there was an acknowledgement of James Hickey’s decision to step down at the end of his term as head of Screen Ireland and a brief discussion of the Dublin Bowie Festival.