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New Escapist Review! On “The Witcher: Blood Origin” as a Bloody Mess…

Posted on December 15, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist earlier in the week, a review of the upcoming Netflix show, The Witcher: Blood Origin. It is a live action four-episode miniseries spinning directly out from the streaming service’s fantasy hit, The Witcher.

Blood Origin has had a famously troubled production, with the show being cut down from six episodes to four in the editing bay, and undergoing fairly involved reshoots to work around this truncation. The results are as muddling and disheartening as this back story suggests. Blood Origin is a show that is filled with lore and backstory, but with no interest in its characters or their motivations. It’s a frustrating mess, a show that has clearly been hacked apart and reconstructed to hit a pre-determined runtime.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: blood origin, editting, escapist, meddling, netflix, streaming, studio, the escapist, the witcher, the witcher: blood origin, witcher | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! On How Streaming Relies on Theatrical Release…

Posted on December 12, 2022 by Darren

We’re thrilled to be launching a fortnightly video companion piece to In the Frame at The Escapist. The video will typically launch every second Monday, and be released on the magazine’s YouTube channel. And the video will typically be separate from the written content. 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.

This week, with cinemas in something of a fallow period between with releases of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Avatar: The Way of Water, it seemed like a good time to take a look at the complicated relationship within Hollywood, between streaming and theatrical releases. It has become increasing clear in recent years that streaming is not a viable replacement for the theatrical release model, but is instead largely dependent on it.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: cinemas, in the frame, netflix, streaming, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Wednesday” and the “Superherofication” of Everything…

Posted on December 2, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the massive success of Wednesday on Netflix, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the show in the context of larger pop culture trends.

Wednesday is an addition to the larger Addams Family franchise, focusing on the family’s eldest child. The show is built around the decision to send Wednesday to an elite private school for freaks and monsters, “Nevermore Academy.” The series obviously riffs on the genre conventions of young adult drama, particularly the high school show. However, it is also notable for leaning into another inescapable trend in contemporary pop culture. At its core, Wednesday is a superhero show.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: comic books, cw, escapist, in the frame, netflix, Smallville, superheroes, superherofication, tim burton, wednesday, wednesday addams, Young Adult | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “1899” and the Problems of Abstraction…

Posted on November 22, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist over the weekend. Last week saw the release of Netflix’s 1899, a surreal mystery thriller from the creative minds behind Dark.

1899 is an impressive show in many ways, a multilingual series with a diverse cast, that is also the most expensive television show ever made in Germany. It is packed with big ideas, and grapples with heady themes, without ever stopping to apologise for itself or condescend to its audience. There’s undoubtedly something appealing in that. However, there’s a strange coldness to the show, a detachment that makes it very hard to emotionally invest in the series as anything more than an intellectual exercise.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: abstract, dark, intellectual, mystery, netflix, review, Television, the escapist | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “The Sandman” and the Art of Adaptation…

Posted on August 9, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist yesterday. It’s a big weekend for media releases, and one of those new releases was The Sandman from Netflix, an adaptation of the comic book series from Neil Gaiman.

The Sandman is a remarkably faithful adaptation of the source material, often lifting images and dialogue directly from the comic. However, it’s also an interesting illustration of the art of adaptation as it purtains to ten-episode seasons of streaming television shows. It’s interesting to see how the source material is tweaked and altered to make it fit that familiar template, and what the adaptational choices say about what the streaming service and the production studio want from the show.

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

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: adaptation, Comics, dc, dc universe, neil gaiman, netflix, streaming, the sandman, warners | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! “The Sandman is a Reminder of What Made the Comic So Beloved”

Posted on August 7, 2022 by Darren

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 television review of The Sandman, which is streaming on Netflix now.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: adaptation, dc comics, escapist, fantasy, neil gaiman, netflix, the escapist, the sandman, tom sturridge, vertigo | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How the Third Season of “The Umbrella Academy” Captures the Pandemic Aesthetic…

Posted on June 27, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of the third season of The Umbrella Academy last week, it seemed like an opportunity to take a look back at the show.

The third season of The Umbrella Academy is not about the pandemic, but it stands as an interesting cultural marker of the moment. The show’s production has obviously been impacted by pandemic restrictions, with a lot of shoot on closed sets with a tight cast, and a recurring sense that the show’s world has become empty and withdrawn. While the third season of The Umbrella Academy is not explicitly about the pandemic, it is the rare genre show that manages to translate the experience of the pandemic into a more general mood or tone.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: apocalypse, hotels, isolation, lonely, netflix, pandemic, restrictions, show, Television, the umbrella academy | Leave a comment »

288. 365 Dni: Ten Dzień (365 Days: This Day) (-#47)

Posted on June 11, 2022 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Grace Duffy and Billie Jean Doheny, 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, Barbara Bialowas and Tomasz Mandes’ 365 Dni: Ten Dzień.

Having survived the attempt on her life at the end of the previous film, Laura is to be wed to local mafia boss Massimo. However, the couple soon find their relationship tested, particularly with the arrival of a sexy gardener named Nacho. Laura flees Massimo into Nacho’s waiting hands, but quickly discovers that there is a far more sinister game at foot, and that not all of the players have revealed themselves.

At time of recording, it was ranked 47th on the list of the worst movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Bottom 100 | Tagged: billie jean doheny, bottom 100, erotic thrillers, film, grace duffy, materialism, netflix, podcast, sex, streaming, The 250 | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On What the Netflix Marvel Shows Bring to Disney+…

Posted on March 21, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the arrival of the Netflix Marvel streaming shows on Disney+ last week, it seemed like a good opportunity to take stock of where the service’s brand was at.

Disney has established a reputation as a family-friendly company, often outsourcing its more adult-oriented fare to distinct subsidiaries with their own identities. This is arguably less sustainable in the streaming age, as companies are consolidating and the key to a streaming service’s viability might lie in the variety of its content. So Disney+ finds itself at a crossroads, forced to chose between its long-term appeal to a diverse array of audiences and its parent company’s history of wholesome family entertainment. The arrival of the Netflix Marvel shows provide a challenge and an opportunity.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: adults, brand, daredevil, family, identity, marvel, mature, netflix, streaming | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! “The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf – Review”

Posted on August 22, 2021 by Darren

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 The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, which is releasing on Netflix tomorrow.