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New Escapist Column! On “I Think You Should Leave” as Peak Internet Comedy…

Posted on June 7, 2023 by Darren

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 release of the third season of I Think You Should Leave this week, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look the show.

It is ultimately reductive to try to boil a sketch comedy show down to a single thematic idea. However, there is something fascinating in how I Think You Should Leave operates as a sketch show that isn’t just perfectly suited to internet distribution – short clips, memes, absurdist gags – but also how it feels like a show that is in some ways about the internet. Obviously, not in a literal sense, in that I Think You Should Leave is about awkward social situations. However, it captures the sense in which online spaces can truly break social interactions.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: comedy, escapist, I Think You Should Leave, internet, netflix, Online, out of focus, Sketch comedy, social media, tim robinson | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Avatar: The Way of Water” as the Rare Discourse-Free Blockbuster…

Posted on January 30, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With Avatar: The Way of Water continuing to push its way up the list of highest-grossing movies of all-time, it is interesting that James Cameron’s sequel hasn’t dominated the discourse to the same extent as comparable blockbusters like Avengers: Infinity War or Avengers: Endgame.

Truth be told, there is something innately charming about that. It’s fun to have a big and bombastic blockbuster that hasn’t become an online shouting match, a film that audiences have just turned out to see and then gone back to their lives without making the film’s performance or reception a key part of their identity. Whatever problems there may be with The Way of Water, there is something to be said for a film that manages to entertain that many people without causing too many ripples.

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

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: avatar: the way of water, box office, culture, debate, discourse, in the frame, pop culture, social media, the escapist, whales | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “Poker Face” as a Show About Empathy and Action…

Posted on January 29, 2023 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist during the week. With the recent release of the first four episodes of Poker Face on Peacock, it seemed like a good opportunity to discuss the show’s central thematic and narrative preoccupations: the importance of both empathy and action in response to injustice.

Poker Face exists as part of Rian Johnson’s filmography, and is an obvious companion piece to Knives Out and Glass Onion. However, it fits alongside those stories in more than just its genre. Johnson is a filmmaker fascinated by the power of empathy, and the importance of understanding other human beings on a personal level. Poker Face is the story of a character so good at listening that she can instinctively spot a lie. However, in this world, empathy is not enough of itself. Poker Face is a show about the need for action in support of empathy.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: action, empathy, glass onion, knives out, phones, poker face, Rian Johnson, social media, the escapist | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: @zola

Posted on June 29, 2021 by Darren

The opening line of @zola is inevitable.

“Y’all wanna hear a story about why me and this b!tch here fell out?” asks Aziah King, the “Zola” of the title. “It’s kind of long but full of suspense.” There was simply no other way that the film was going to start. The line was foregrounded in the movie’s first trailer, and of course it was the opening tweet of the viral twitter thread (#TheStory) that inspired this cinematic adaptation. To put it simply, there was never any way that @zola was going to open any other way.

#NoTimeForReflection

However, the opening line is also a statement of purpose and a key to the film’s central joke. @zola positions that opening salvo as an iocnic statement of itself, a millennial riff on “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” and “call me, Ishmael.” The central conceit of Janicza Bravo’s adaptation of the twitter thread is to treat the work like a piece of some modern literary canon, a snapshot of modern America filtered through the prism of art, captured 140 characters at a time. It’s a clever approach, and the best part of @zola is how eagerly it commits to that wry framing.

@zola is an impressive piece of craft, a collision of a very classical formalism with a more modern sensibility to create something that exists in a striking and imaginative space. However, there are times when @zola commits too heavily to studying its characters through the prism of social media, making them feel more like macabre exhibits in some twenty-first century freakshow than actual human beings. Still, @zola sets out to capture an extremely online aesthetic and it largely succeeds – for better and for worse.

#FreaksAndGeeks

Continue reading →

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: apps, cinema, facebook, film, formalism, Janicza Bravo, language, Movie, non-review review, review, social media, zola | Leave a comment »

“The Truman Show” Didn’t Just Predict Our Future, But Also the Future of How Movies Would Be Sold…

Posted on June 26, 2020 by Darren

More than twenty years after its release, it feels like everything that might be said about The Truman Show has already been said.

The Truman Show is that rare Hollywood blockbuster that feels somehow simultaneously timeless, timely and prescient. It speaks to anxieties that resonate throughout history, fears that were very particular to the cusp of the millennium, and to nightmares that were yet to come. It belongs at once to that age-old anxiety that the world is an illusion and human comprehension is insufficient, to the difficult-to-articulate existential uncertainty of the so-called “end of history”, to a future in which everybody would willingly become the star of their own Truman Show.

Indeed, The Truman Show seems to say so much about the world outside itself and the human condition that it’s possible to miss the film itself. Peter Weir’s late nineties blockbuster is a surreal slice of history itself, a relatively big budget mainstream release starring one of the most famous people on the planet, built around a rather abstract high concept. Not only was the film a massive critical success, it also managed to survive and prosper against a heated summer season.

While its actual themes and contents might be dystopian, The Truman Show itself offers an optimistic glimpse of a kind of blockbuster that seems increasingly unlikely.

Continue reading →

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: advertising, Andrew Niccol, film, jim carrey, marketing, Peter Weir, prediction, reality, social media, Television, the truman show | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Fantasy Island

Posted on April 17, 2020 by Darren

What, exactly, is the point of the Blumhouse reboot of Fantasy Island?

To be fair, Blumhouse are a studio with a varied track record. They have produced some of the most interesting and compelling mainstream horror movies of the past few decades, including films like Get Out and The Invisible Man. They have also produced a fair amount of cynical schlock, such as Truth or Dare. There are also a number of films that seem to exist in the middle ground between those two extremes, like The Hunt or Black Christmas. It’s certainly a more varied approach than the standard horror films that heralded the studio’s arrival, like Insidious or Sinister.

Palming it off.

Jason Blum is a shrewd producer, and there’s a sense in looking at the studio’s output of trying to balance competing artistic and commercial demands. Blum tends to keep budgets under control, but he also seems to offset the riskier and more ambitious projects with generic crowd-pleasing fare. Fantasy Island would seem to belong in that category, but exactly what crowd is it intended to please? Watching Fantasy Island is a strange experience, and not just because of the multitude of structural and storytelling problems.

On a more basic level: who exactly is this movie for?

Can’t stick the island-ing.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: blumhouse, fantasy, fantasy island, film, horror movie, internet, Movie, non-review review, nostalgia, review, social media | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! Scannain Podcast (2018) #39!

Posted on October 19, 2018 by Darren

It’s time for the latest Scannain podcast! A somewhat bumper edition this time.

This week, I join Jason Coyle, Grace Duffy and Ronan Doyle to discuss the week in film. As usual, we talk about the top ten and the new releases, as well as what we’ve watched this week. In this episode, Jay talks about “instant classics”, Ronan discusses the heartbreak of Rosie, and Grace inadvertently watched The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings again.

In film news, we discuss the upcoming Cork Film Festival, Katie winning Screen Directors Guild Finders Series Award, and Netflix’s successful “Summer of Love.” There’s also an extended season about awards season social media fatigue.

The top ten:

Night School
Cliff Richard Live: 60th Anniversary Tour (Concert)
Bad Times At The El Royale
Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween
Kler (Clergy)
First Man
Johnny English Strikes Again
Venom
Smallfoot
A Star is Born

New releases:

The Lonely Battle of Thomas Reid
Dogman
Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween
Halloween

You can download the episode here, or listen to it below.

Filed under: Movies, Podcasts! | Tagged: a star is born, awards fare, cork film festival, First Man, katie, netflix, podcast, social media, thes 350 | Leave a comment »

GoSave Deals…

Posted on March 5, 2011 by Darren

The guys over at Simply Zesty sent this link on, and it’s something close to my better half’s heart, so I thought I’d share it. Basically, GoSave.ie is a website that runs deals on Irish businesses, and donates a certain percentage of their costs back to charity. It’s a very handy way of supporting the local economy, which is – understandably – a source of concern for many people in this day and age. If you’re Irish, and interested in this, you can check them out on Facebook here or by clicking the link below.

Note: I am sharing this link because I think it’s the kind of thing that might be important people viewing the blog, and I know that supporting local industry matters to some people very close to me in my personal life. I’m not earning or receiving anything in return for this post, nor does it represent a direct endorsement of the service – I’m merely sharing something that some readers might find interesting. It’s unfortunate that this sort of thing needs to be clarified, but it’s important that I am open and transparent with you, the reader, on why I post a link to a corporate website.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: business, ethnicity, facebook, Google, Simply Zesty, social media, Social Network, twitter | Leave a comment »

Is 300 Racist? A Counter-Argument…

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Darren

I know that we’re officially about five years past this discussion, but I was thinking about it lately. 300, as imagined by Zack Snyder and Frank Miller, gets a lot of slack for its perceived Islamophobia and racism towards Persians (modern-day Iranians). There’s a rather excellent article here outlining one perspective, which makes the argument that it’s a fundamentally racist film. I sat down and I watched it, and I kept the ideas in mind, and I jotted down some thoughts. it should be noted that I’m just a layman, I’m an expert or a professor in film or literature, but it seemed to me that a lot of the critics were taking the film far too seriously at face value.