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New Escapist Column! On “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” as a Story of Love In the Time of Capitalism…

We’re launching a new column at The Escapist, called Out of Focus. It will publish every second 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. This week, we took a look at Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike’s Last Dance.

In interviews around the film, Soderbergh has returned time and against to thirties romances as a point of reference, and it shows. Magic Mike’s Last Dance is movie very firmly tied to the traditions and roots of those classic romances, right down to making the butler a supporting character. As with a lot of Soderbergh’s recent films, Magic Mike’s Last Dance is a movie fascinated with commodification and globalisation, in particular the idea of the packaging and selling of intimacy and emotional connection. It’s a film about sex, power and money – and the intersection of those three things.

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

New Podcast! Podcast 616 – “Eternals”

Podcast 616 is a podcast looking at the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I was thrilled to be invited to join Dan Owen for a discussion of Chloé Zhao’s Eternals, which is a movie I enjoyed considerably more than most.

It’s a fun and broad discussion, which delves into questions around auteurship within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the paradox of superheroes, the question of power, and the challenges in adapting concepts like the Deviants for the big screen. It was really fun to roll up my sleeves and delve into this discussion with Dan, which allowed me to chat about everything from my blind spots with certain characters to the way in which the plot and themes of Eternals feels true to the spirit – if not necessarily the art – of Jack Kirby.

You can listen to the episode here, or click the link below.

Non-Review Review: Savages

I am torn. Savages feels as if Oliver Stone somehow found a way to stream his thoughts on celluloid for the world to devour at their leisure. It’s bright, vibrant, random, illogical, contrary, obtuse, surreal and visceral – often all at the same time. It’s far too uneven to earn an unqualified recommendation, as it’s a disorienting mess of a film at the best of times. However, it’s also consistently interesting, a strangely compelling. Savagesmight be too all over the map to ever be consistently great (or even good), but it is never boring.

That’s a savage mask!

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Win! Savages Goodie Bags!

With thanks to the always lovely folks at Universal Pictures Ireland, we have some goodies to give away for Oliver Stone’s latest film, Savages. The cartel thriller has a phenomenal cast (including John Travolta, Salma Hayek, Benicio Del Toro, Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Blake Lively) and opens in Ireland on 21st September 2012. It’s the story of two guys growing dope in Southern California who find their existence threatened when a Mexican cartel decides that a merger would beneficial.

To find out more about the movie, check out their facebook page here.

We have some prize packs to give away, each one including:

  • Sunglasses
  • Windbreaker
  • Bandana

If you’d like a chance to win these goodies, simply answer the question below.

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Non-Review Review: Puss in Boots

Puss in Boots is a fun film. It’s a very fun family film that works because it never takes itself too serious. Breaking free of the increasingly irrelevant Shrek films, which devolved into exactly the type of feel-good fairy tale stories they originally savagely lampooned, Puss in Boots benefits from the freedom to define its own identity. Of course, it retains the trappings (after all, Puss inhabits a world with Jack and Jill and Humpty Dumpty and Little Boy Blue), but it doesn’t carry the same level of baggage that its parent series does. It’s not a vicious parody of Disney values, and in fact feels remarkably straight-forward. However, the simplicity of its approach is remarkably endearing, and means it’s easy to sit back and enjoy the ride. Puss in Boots is solidly entertaining family fair, arriving perfectly in time for the holidays.

Here, kitty kitty kitty...

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Non-Review Review: Grown Ups

It’s very difficult to offer a movie that takes a cynical “Hollywood type” back to their roots. There are many reasons. The most obvious is that the type of person making the movie is a cynical Hollywood type and there’s something of an irony about making a film about the roots they’ve lost contact with – oftentimes it is more difficult to offer a grounded version of reality than it is to depict an alien invasion or a thoroughly ridiculous premise. Grown Ups is the second film this year which sees Adam Sandler playing a character attempting to reconnect with the common man – perhaps a timely theme in light of the recession, when the glitz and glamour of Hollywood stand in even starker contrast to the day-to-day lives of regular folks. However, if I didn’t know better, I’d think Sandler (whose production company produced the film and who co-wrote the script) is having something of a midlife crisis.

Not exactly a deep pool of talent...

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Non-Review Review: Dogma

I have to confess that I have a soft spot for Dogma. It’s very much the black sheep of Kevin Smith’s “View Askew” trilogy (of six films), veering away from incorporating his trademark witty banter and dialogue with a relatively new philosophical and religious undercurrents. Dogma is, in fact, an odd film by any standard – one part “group on a quest” film akin to The Lord of the Rings, one part slapstick comedy and part indie introspective dramedy. Smith admittedly has great difficulty balancing the different demands on his script, pulling it one way or the other. It doesn’t always work, but the cocktail is certainly interesting and – truth be told – I am actually quite fond of the film.

Alan Rickman found himself winging it...

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