I’m thrilled to be launching 3-Minute Reviews on Escapist Movies. 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’ll be doing weekly reviews of The Mandalorian.
The review of the second season premiere, The Marshall, is available below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: Boba Fett, escapist, escapist movies, mandalorian, tattoine, the mandalorian, three minute reviews, Timothy Olyphant | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm last week, it seemed an interesting opportunity to take a look at the return of the Kazakh caricature, and examine how the character had shifted in the fourteen years since the release of Borat.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is the way in which it offers a much more conventional structure – and even character arc – than the original film. It’s a strange choice, particularly in the context of the film’s mockumentary sensibility and the outlandish nature of the character. However, it also illustrates how much the world has changed since the release of the original film. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm realises that the world has changed, so maybe Borat should as well.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: Amazon, america, Borat, borat subsequent moviefilm, escapist, film, in the frame, Movie, politics, sacha baron cohen | Leave a comment »
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 the Monday 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 channel.
With that in mind, here is last week’s episode, covering the anniversary of the outrage over the release of Joker, and how that demonstrates how cheap outrage has become.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: escapist, James Gunn, joker, moral outrage, Moral panic, outrage, Todd Phillips | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With Halloween approaching, the column is going to take a little bit of a detour into some spooky stuff, and I’m very excited.
John Carpenter remains one of my favourite horror movie directors. A large part of that is just down to simple craft. Carpenter can make a cheap movie look great. More than that, though, Carpenter’s unique brand of horror has aged very well. This is particularly true of Carpenter’s “Apocalypse” trilogy – The Thing, Prince of Darkness, In The Mouth of Madness. Carpenter imagines the end of the world not with a bang, with the slow and unsettling collapse of the invisible forces holding it together. The world unravels and unspools, and chaos breaks through
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: apocalypse, end of the world, escapist, in the frame, in the mouth of madness, John Carpenter, Prince of Darkness, the thing | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist on Friday. With Halloween approaching, the column is going to take a little bit of a detour into some spooky stuff, and I’m very excited.
I’m thrilled that I got to write this piece about the Mummy, which remains one of the most interesting of the classic movie monsters because it seems to exist at odds with the rest of the classic fiends. There are plenty of classic Dracula and Frankenstein films, the Wolfman and the Invisible Man have been handled well over the years, but the Mummy always seems like the odd creature out of every wave of classic creature feature films. So I was thrilled to do a bit of a deep dive into it to look at how – and why – that is.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: Alex Kurtzman, Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, escapist, hammer horror, in the frame, monster, Movie, movie monsters, steven sommers, the mummy, universal classic monsters | Leave a comment »
I published a new piece at The Escapist today. With the third season premiere of Star Trek: Discovery last week, it seemed worth taking a look at the new season of the Star Trek spin-off.
The third season of Discovery finds the characters thrown into the distant future, after the collapse of the Federation. This is interesting, because it represents both a clear extrapolation of the futures suggested by Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise, and also a clear progression of the franchise status quo suggested by Star Trek: Picard. This is a franchise dealing with the decline and collapse of American exceptionalism. However, Picard and Discovery offer easy answers to hard questions, lacking the introspection that their premise deserves.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Star Trek | Tagged: discovery, escapist, Federation, star trek, star trek: discovery, Starfleet, that hope is you | Leave a comment »
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 the Monday article, and be released on the magazine’s YouTube channel the following week. This month, it will be releasing on the Tuesday.
With that in mind, here is last week’s episode, covering the first season of Star Trek: Discovery and the way in which the show taps into the forgotten psychedelic history of the original Star Trek television series.
Filed under: Star Trek | Tagged: discovery, escapist, in the frame, psychedelia, star trek, star trek: discovery | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. It’s been roughly a year since the release of Joker, so it seems appropriate to take a look back at the controversy surrounding the film.
The controversy around Joker is interesting, because it was at once so loud and so meaningless. In the lead-up to the film’s release, there was a lot of hyperbole around the movie, arguing that it might empower or encourage a certain audience – angry young men – to commit acts of violence. This made the release of the film something of a wry practical joke, with Joker ultimately bending over backwards to avoid any potentially inflammatory choices. The result was a storm that raged in a tea cup, but which seemed eager to bubble over.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: controversy, escapist, in the frame, incels, joker, the escapist | Leave a comment »
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 the Monday article, and be released on the magazine’s YouTube channel the following week. This month, it will be releasing on the Thursday.
With that in mind, here is last week’s episode, covering the long-looming release of The Snyder Cut of Justice League, and why this might represent an attractive model for studios desperately looking for new (and affordable) content in the midst of a pandemic.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: escapist, godfather, in the frame, justice league, pandemic, rocky iv, the escapist, the snyder cut, video | Leave a comment »
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