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 – so if you can throw a subscription our way, it would mean a lot.
This week, we took a look at the emergence of the multiverse, which appears to be the future of various shared cinematic and television universe. Why is this idea suddenly so popular? What does it mean? What does it hold for the future?
I published a new column at The Escapist yesterday. With the new trailer for the rebooted Mortal Kombat, it felt like the perfect opportunity to take a look back at Paul W.S. Anderson’s 1995 original.
Recent years have seen a reassessment of Anderson as a director, frequently celebrating his understanding of the field in which he operates. Anderson’s Mortal Kombat is unapologetic pulp, and pitches itself perfectly at that level. Anderson understands that the key to faithfully adapting Mortal Kombat is not fidelity to continuity, but instead an appreciation of what audience and players actually love about the series. It exists in marked contrast to the version that Mortal Kombat suggested by the new trailer.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
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 – so if you can throw a subscription our way, it would mean a lot.
This is a video that I’m particularly proud of, and intimidated by. Promising Young Woman was one of my favourite films of last year, so I was thrilled to get the chance to properly dig into it. I take a look at the way in which the film plays with audience expectations, and its understanding of the way in which it knows the audience will look at it.
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’m honoured to contribute a three-minute feature film review to the channel, discussing Space Sweepers.
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’m honoured to contribute a three-minute feature film review to the channel, discussing Nomadland.
The Escapist have launched a movie podcast, and I was thrilled to join Jack Packard and Will Cruz for the fifth episode of the year. We talked a little bit about how disappointingly conventional this year’s awards season looks to be, but the real meat of the podcast was a discussion of Sam Raimi’s much (and perhaps deservedly) maligned Spider-Man 3.
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 – so if you can throw a subscription our way, it would mean a lot.
This week, with the penultimate season of The Expanse winding down and with the frequent comparisons to Game of Thrones, I took a look at what the two shows have in common – and where they differ from one another.
Promising Young Woman is a remarkably well-constructed film. It’s a film that is very actively engaged with the idea of watching and looking – what characters choose to see, and what they choose to ignore. However, the film is also very much aware of how audiences will see the film. It is cleverly constructed in such a way as to play with the audience’s gaze, and to challenge the way that they look at the film – the way the viewer looks at its actors, its characters, and the kind of story that it is telling. It stares its audience right in the eye, and it never blinks.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
I published a new column at The Escapist this evening. Since I binged The Expanse and since the season finale is out this week, I figured it was worth taking a look at the show as one of the defining television series of the past ten years.
Every generation gets a science-fiction show that reflects its particular anxieties. The Expanse is a show that engages aggressively with the concerns of the moment. It is a show about fragmentation, about nationalism, about inequality, about exploitation and about power. In the same way that Star Trek spoke to the uncertainty and tumult of the sixties, and Battlestar Galactica spoke to the nightmare of the War on Terror, The Expanse resonates with a world still coming to terms with the aftermath of the Great Recession.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. Last week, there were rumours that Chris Evans might be returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, following his departure in Avengers: Endgame.
This is interesting, because it potentially undermines one of the more interesting facets of the Marvel Cinematic Universe going forward. Comic books are largely shaped and defined by nostalgia, with beloved characters filling familiar roles in perpetuity, with any major change to the status quo eventually rolling back to the default. In contrast, a cinematic universe operates by different constraints: actors move on, age out and even die. This would force a long-form shared universe to evolve in a way that comics haven’t had to. This is a good thing, as evolution is necessary.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
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