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gravecinema · 4 years

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Why I Had to Rewatch One Cut of the Dead - 07/13/2020

One Cut of the Dead which came out in 2017 is one of the best new zombie movies that I have seen, and the best thing about it is that it’s not even really a zombie movie. Before I go any further, I have to issue a spoiler warning, because there is no way I can extensively talk about this movie without giving away the twists it contains, and the twists are really what make this movie great. Because of how new the movie is, and how little is currently known about it with the mainstream audience, I feel it is best to let you all know that you simply must watch it first before you go any further. It is currently streaming on the Shudder channel, and you can get a free trial subscription for the channel when you first sign up at any time.

The movie is in subtitles, so you will have to actively watch it and not just browse on your phone at the same time, like I can also be guilty of doing. If you have a problem with this, then please, get over it. This movie is so worth the watch, and you’ll be glad that you did watch it. Now that we’ve got the disclaimer out of the way, let’s delve deeper into what this movie is all about, and why I had to rewatch it.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

The movie starts with a girl being attacked by a zombie, but we then quickly see that this is merely a take on the set of a horror film. The director emotionally goes off on the cast in a very Stanley Kubrick type of way, and we then follow the cast interactions between this and their next take. As the scene starts going on, I soon realize watch I’m watching. This movie is all being done in one very long take. I quickly connect the title of the film with what I’m seeing, and I conclude that this entire movie is going to be done in one very long take. An impressive feat to pull off for any movie, and the first time I would have seen such a thing.

I often see long takes used by directors before, and it’s always an impressive thing to watch and realize that that is what’s happening as you watch it. Joss Whedon has done it multiple times in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Quentin Tarantino has done it for artistic effect as well. But, these were done just for single scenes, and I have never before seen it done for an entire movie. This instantly had One Cut of the Dead grab my attention, as I needed to see just how they were going to pull this off.

As I was watching this one long take, I started to notice little things that seemed out of place, or just very obvious screenwriting tropes that would belong in a film by lazy filmmakers, even though doing a film in one take is the last thing a lazy filmmaker would ever do. The scene where the actor talks about not having any cell coverage is a well-known modern trope in horror films, and I thought it was very blatant to point it out. The one girl finding a very conveniently placed axe and oddly pointing it out also stuck out like a sore thumb to me. At times, the director would pop out of nowhere to shout for the camera to keep rolling as his cast was being attacked by real zombies. During one moment, the camera would linger on the young actress for an awkward amount of time. Perhaps the strangest thing was when a character who was killed with the axe would just randomly pop up in frame and scream with the axe still sticking out of her head, before falling back down again. Then finally, there is this strange start and stop sequence as the final zombie is going for the final girl before she finally kills him.

I was impressed by the very long take I was seeing, but I couldn’t help but notice all these strange inconsistencies that I was seeing. These odd moments just weren’t gelling with what this complete movie should be to me as I was watching it. And then the credits start to roll after about a half hour into the movie... Out of everything, this made me shout out “What!?” the most. This movie can’t be over now. What the hell is going on here!? And then the twist happened. All the inconsistencies I had been seeing had a purpose, and they were all about to make beautiful, hilarious, and perfect sense.

Once the credits were done rolling and the long take was over, the start of act 2 takes us back to one month ago. This is where we see the assembling of the cast and crew behind the movie within the movie. As it turns out, the very long take we just watched was the live broadcast of a special network presentation for a TV network. They wanted to use a gimmick of having the whole half hour broadcast being done in one very long take, hence the name One Cut of the Dead.

In the next half hour, we get to see the interactions between the cast and crew behind the scenes, their personalities and how they feel about one another. We find out that the young male lead actor was a diva. The director’s daughter has a history of working behind the scenes. One of the zombie actors has a drinking problem, and we see a young PA that always wanted to work the camera. The last big reveal is that two cast members for the broadcast had to be replaced the day of broadcast by the director himself and his spouse with little notice. This whole act sets us up for the biggest payoff in the movie. In the final act of the movie, we get to rewatch the first act of the movie again, but this time, it’s the view behind the scenes that we get to watch and follow as it’s happening.

Everything that was setup until now gets its payoff, and it’s an absolute joy to watch it all unfold. The director from the start of the movie is revealed as the actual director filling in, and he’s using this as an opportunity to completely go off on the actors for being divas during the whole rehearsal process. That’s why he seemed so extreme at the start of the movie. We see the actor with the drinking problem getting totally wasted before the camera starts rolling, and we see it cause all sort of chaos behind the scenes as the actors try adjust to the unexpected complications this creates as they keep going, just like in a live stage play.

This is the reason why the one actor mentions their lack of cell coverage, because he’s just improvising in the moment by pointing out a very obviously trope in horror, since that is the first thing that comes to his mind. The moments where we see the director pop back in and then shout for the cameras to keep rolling is because those are actual mistakes and the director is shouting for the real crew behind the scenes to have the camera keep rolling, and not to the cameraman within the film. The actress finding the axe and pointing it out was because they needed to get an axe to her to fix a mistake, and just like the actor earlier with the cell phone, she couldn’t think of any other way to cover for it then just by pointing out how convenient it was.

We even start to get some payoff from the second act as the young PA gets a chance to pick up and take control of operating the camera during a mistake in all the chaos, and we get to see her do the things she wanted to do and even be praised for it. We get to see the director’s daughter take over assistant directing duties behind the scenes during this time, and we get to see how the crew tries to control the director’s wife while we discover the reason she had to stop acting was because she got too into her roles and went way too far with method acting. She even uses her self-defense techniques that we see her learning and showing off earlier while improvising to fend the crew off as she starts to actually try and attack the other actors. This is the reason why the camera lingers on the one actress for so long, and she later just randomly pops up into frame with an axe in her head. She was regaining consciousness in that moment after the crew had to knock her out while the camera was lingering on the actress for that awkward amount of time.

Our final payoff that we get is when we see the camera crane getting knocked off the roof in all the chaos, and the crew have to solve how to get the final shot that they need. They improvise a plan to use a human pyramid, and then have to buy some time in order to set it up. This is the reason for the last zombie just randomly starting and stopping to go after the final girl from the first part of the movie. They manage to pull off the final shot, and we end the movie with a joyous crew having been able to pull this off, while the director is proud of his daughter for helping complete the final shot while being inspired from a moment from their past together.

I was amazed. I immediately had to restart the movie after it was over so that I could see the whole beginning long shot again after knowing all the extra information about it that I had just discovered. I finally got to understand why all those odd moments in the long take stood out to me, and also why they were supposed to. It made my second viewing of it just as satisfying as the first. This is also why this “zombie” movie isn’t even really a zombie movie. It’s actually one of the cleverest comedies that I have seen in a good long while. The entire premise of One Cut of the Dead reminds me of another great comedy about the behind the scenes making of a show with the cast and crew called Noises Off.

In Noises Off, we get to see the performance of a show in three acts. The first act shows us the contentious final dress rehearsal of the show from the seats of the audience with the director. The second act shows us a live performance of the show from the backstage area as escalating cast and crew drama starts to interfere with the performance of the show. The final act of the show presents us one last performance from the seats of the audience again, and the show is completely falling apart with the cast and crew going crazy behind the scenes. This is one of the funniest comedies that I’ve seen, and any other theatre person such as myself would love it just as much as I do. If you love Noises Off, then you would also love One Cut of the Dead, and vice versa.

I wonder if one day any full-length movie will actually try to all be done in one true single long take, without any clever camera edits. It would require a very solid script and a lot of preproduction work to successfully pull off. The long take lasting 37 minutes in One Cut of the Dead at the start of the movie took 2 days and 6 takes for the cast and crew to get just right. It’s a truly impressive feat on a small budget film of only $25,000, and the cast and crew should be very proud of what they’ve accomplished. What they were able to pull off definitely makes One Cut of the Dead one of my favorite films of the past decade, and well worth a watch and rewatch for anyone.

#one cut of the dead #grave cinema #video essay #critique #review #spoilers #horror #comedy #2017 #zombie

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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The Best Movies on Netflix in India [February 2020]

In its efforts to win Oscars and please its 167 million members, Netflix has been pouring billions into movies recently, including projects from or featuring the likes of Dwayne Johnson, Martin Scorsese, and Michael Bay. One of those — The Irishman — racked up 10 nominations for the streaming service at the 2020 Oscars, though it failed to come away with a single prize. Netflix has also expanded its film efforts in India in the past year, announcing projects from the likes of Shah Rukh Khan and Karan Johar. For now though, the strength of its catalogue is still the acquisitions. With over 3,500 movies, Netflix offers more choices than any other platform in India. To pick the best movies on Netflix, we relied on Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and IMDb ratings to create a shortlist. The last of them was preferred for Indian films given the shortfalls of reviews aggregators in that department. Additionally, we used our own editorial judgement to add or remove a few. This list will be updated once every few months if there are any worthy additions or if some movies are removed from the service, so bookmark this page and keep checking in. Here are the best films currently available on Netflix in India, sorted alphabetically. 12 Monkeys (1995) Inspired by the 1962 French short La Jetée, a prisoner (Bruce Willis) is sent back in time to learn more about the virus that wiped out nearly all of humanity. Terry Gilliam directs. 12 Years A Slave (2013) Duped into slavery on the account of a job, Steve McQueen's adaptation of a free New York black man's (Chiwetel Ejiofor) 19th-century memoir is an incredible true story, and an important watch. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) In Stanley Kubrick's highly-influential sci-fi film, humanity charts a course for Jupiter with the sentient computer HAL 9000, to understand the discovery of a black monolith affecting human evolution. It's less plot, and more a visual and aural experience.

3 Idiots (2009) In this satire of the Indian education system's social pressures, two friends recount their college days and how their third long-lost musketeer (Aamir Khan) inspired them to think creatively and independently in a heavily-conformist world. Co-written and directed by Rajkumar Hirani, who stands accused in the #MeToo movement. 50/50 (2011) Inspired by a true story, a 27-year-old radio journalist (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is diagnosed with spinal cancer and learns the value of friendship and love as he battles the rare disease. Aamir (2008) Adapted from the 2006 Filipino film Cavite, a young Muslim NRI doctor (Rajeev Khandelwal) returning from the UK to India is forced to comply with terrorists' demands to carry out a bombing in Mumbai after they threaten his family. American History X (1998) In a film that's more relevant today than when it was made, a neo-Nazi white supremacist (Edward Norton), who served three years in prison for voluntary manslaughter, tries to prevent his younger brother from going down the same path. American Hustle (2013) In the late 1970s, two con artists (Christian Bale and Amy Adams) are forced to work for an FBI agent (Bradley Cooper) and set up a sting operation that plans to bring down several corrupt politicians and members of the Mafia. Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner star alongside. Andaz Apna Apna (1994) Two slackers (Aamir Khan and Salman Khan) who belong to middle-class families vie for the affections of an heiress, and inadvertently become her protectors from a local gangster in Rajkumar Santoshi's cult comedy favourite. Andhadhun (2018) Inspired by the French short film L'Accordeur, this black comedy thriller is the story of a piano player (Ayushman Khurrana) who pretends to be visually-impaired and is caught in a web of twists and lies after he walks into a murder scene. Tabu, Radhika Apte star alongside. Apollo 13 (1995) Ron Howard dramatises the aborted Apollo 13 mission that put the astronauts in jeopardy after an on-board explosion ate up all the oxygen and forced NASA to abort and get the men home safely. Argo (2012) Ben Affleck directs and stars in this film about a CIA agent posing as a Hollywood producer scouting for location in Iran, in order to rescue six Americans during the US hostage crisis of 1979. Article 15 (2019) Ayushmann Khurrana plays a cop in this exploration of casteism, religious discrimination, and the current socio-political situation in India, which tracks a missing persons' case involving three teenage girls of a small village. A hard-hitting, well-made movie, though ironically, it was criticised for being casteist itself, and providing an outsider's perspective. The Avengers (2012) Earth's mightiest heroes — including Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and the Hulk — come together in this groundbreaking Marvel team-up from writer-director Joss Whedon to stop Thor's adopted brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and his alien army from subjugating mankind.

The Aviator (2004) With Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes and Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn, Martin Scorsese dives into the life of the aviation pioneer and film producer, who grapples with severe OCD while his fame grows. Awakenings (1990) Robin Williams and Robert De Niro lead the cast of this drama based on a 1973 memoir of the same name, about a doctor (Williams) who discovers the beneficial effects of a drug on catatonic patients, thereby gifting them a new lease on life. Barfi! (2012) Set in the 1970s amidst the hills of Darjeeling, writer-director Anurag Basu tells the tale of three people (Ranbir Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, and Ileana D'Cruz) as they learn to love while battling the notions held by society. Beasts of No Nation (2015) With civil war raging across a fictional African nation, this Netflix Original focuses on a young boy who's trained as a child soldier by a fierce warlord (Idris Elba), and the effects it has on him. Before Sunrise (1995) In the first chapter of Richard Linklater's long-drawn-out trilogy, two idealistic twentysomethings, an American man (Ethan Hawke) and a French woman (Julie Delpy), spend the night together walking around in the Austrian capital of Vienna. The Big Lebowski (1998) A guy known as The Dude (Jeff Bridges) seeks payback for his ruined carpet after he's mistaken for a millionaire with the same name in this crime comedy from the Coen brothers. Less about the plot and more about a way of living. The Big Short (2015) Starring Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt, a look at Wall Street's penchant for self-profit in a vicious loop that caused the 2007–08 global financial meltdown. Birdman (2014) Alejandro G. Iñárritu won three Oscars including Best Picture for this tale of a washed-up superhero actor (Michael Keaton) who struggles to revive his career with a Broadway play. Known for appearing as if it was shot in a single take, it also starred Edward Norton, Zach Galifianakis, and Emma Stone. Blade Runner (1982) One of the most influential cyberpunk films ever made is about a burnt-out cop (Harrison Ford) who reluctantly agrees to hunt down a group of fugitive “replicants”, synthetic humans with a limited life-span who aren't allowed to live on Earth. Blue Valentine (2010) Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams lead this drama that shifts between time periods to depict a couple's courtship and how their marriage fell apart. Das Boot (1981) One of the most authentic war movies ever made chronicles the life of a German submarine crew during World War II, as they go through long stretches of boredom and periods of intense conflict, while trying to maintain morale in a capsule 10 feet by 150 feet hundreds of metres under the surface. The Bourne trilogy (2002-07) Technically not a trilogy, but the first three chapters — Identity, Supremacy, and Ultimatum — starring Matt Damon in the lead as the titular CIA assassin suffering from amnesia were so good that they changed the longest-running spy franchise of all-time: James Bond.

The Breadwinner (2017) This animated film follows a 11-year-old girl living under Taliban rule in Afghanistan, who disguises herself as a boy to provide for her family after the father is taken away without reason. Uses wonderfully-drawn vignettes to stress on the importance of storytelling. Bulbul Can Sing (2019) Three teenagers battle patriarchy and the moral police as they explore their sexual identities in Rima Das's National Award-winning drama — and pay for it dearly. Das writes, directs, shoots, edits, and handles costumes. C/o Kancharapalem (2018) Set in the eponymous Andhra Pradesh town, this Telugu film spans four love stories across religion, caste, and age — from a schoolboy to a middle-aged unmarried man. A debut for writer-director Venkatesh Maha, featuing a cast mostly made up of non-professional actors. Capernaum (2018) In the award-winning, highest-grossing Arabic film of all time, a 12-year-old from the slums of Beirut recounts his life leading up to a five-year sentence he's handed for stabbing someone, and in turn, his decision to sue his parents for child neglect. Captain Phillips (2013) The true story of a Somali pirate hijacking of a US cargo ship and its captain (Tom Hanks) being taken hostage, which spawns a rescue effort from the US Navy. The Bourne Ultimatum's Paul Greengrass directs. Cast Away (2000) After his plane crash-lands in the Pacific, a FedEx employee (Tom Hanks) wakes up on a deserted island and must use everything at his disposal and transform himself physically to survive living alone. Castle in the Sky (1986) In the first film officially under the Studio Ghibli banner, a young boy and a girl protect a magic crystal from pirates and military agents, while on the search for a legendary floating castle. Hayao Miyazaki writes and directs. Chupke Chupke (1975) Hrishikesh Mukherjee's remake of the Bengali film Chhadmabeshi, in which a newly-wedded husband (Dharmendra) decides to play pranks on his wife's (Sharmila Tagore) supposedly smart brother-in-law. Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan also star. A Clockwork Orange (1971) Set in a near-future dystopian Britain, writer-director Stanley Kubrick adapts Anthony Burgess' novel of the same name, commenting on juvenile delinquency through the eyes of a small gang leader who enjoys "a bit of the old ultra-violence". Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) Steven Spielberg's slow-paced sci-fi pic — which spent several years in development, being rewritten over and over — is about an everyday blue-collar guy (Richard Dreyfuss) whose humdrum life turns upside down after an encounter with an unidentified flying object (UFO).

Cold War (2018) Jumping either side of the Iron Curtain through the late 1940s to the 1960s, Oscar-winner Paweł Pawlikowski depicts the story of two star-crossed lovers, as they deal with Stalinism, rejection, jealousy, change, time — and their own temperaments. Company (2002) Inspired the real-life relationship between Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Rajan, director Ram Gopal Varma offers a look at how a henchman (Vivek Oberoi) climbs up the mobster ladder and befriends the boss (Ajay Devgn), before they fall out. Dallas Buyers Club (2013) Refusing to accept a death sentence from his doctor after being diagnosed with AIDS in the 1980s, the true story of an electrician and hustler (Matthew McConaughey) who smuggles banned medications from abroad. Dangal (2016) The extraordinary true story of amateur wrestler Mahavir Singh Phogat (Aamir Khan) who trains his two daughters to become India's first world-class female wrestlers, who went on to win gold medals at the Commonwealth Games. The Dark Knight (2008) In the second part of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, regarded as the greatest comic book movie ever, Batman (Christian Bale) faces a villain, the Joker (Heath Ledger), he doesn't understand, and must go through hell to save Gotham and its people. Dev.D (2009) Anurag Kashyap offers a modern-day reimagining of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's Bengali romance classic Devdas, in which a man (Abhay Deol), having broken up with his childhood sweetheart, finds refuge in alcohol and drugs, before falling for a prostitute (Kalki Koechlin). Dheepan (2015) Winner of Cannes' top prize, three Sri Lankan refugees — including a Tamil Tiger soldier — pretend to be a family to gain asylum in France, where they soon realise that life isn't very different in the rough neighbourhoods. Dil Chahta Hai (2001) Farhan Akhtar's directorial debut about three inseparable childhood friends whose wildly different approach to relationships creates a strain on their friendship remains a cult favourite. Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan, and Preity Zinta star. Django Unchained (2012) Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, a German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) helps a freed slave (Jamie Foxx) rescue his wife from a charming but cruel plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio). Drive (2011) A stuntman moonlighting as a getaway driver (Ryan Gosling) grows fond of his neighbour and her young son, and then takes part in a botched heist to protect them from the debt-ridden husband.

Dunkirk (2017) Christopher Nolan's first historical war movie chronicles the evacuation of Allied soldiers from the French beaches of Dunkirk in World War II, using his love for non-linear storytelling by depicting three fronts — land, sea, and air — in time-shifted ways. The Edge of Seventeen (2016) In this coming-of-age comedy, the life of an awkward young woman (Hailee Steinfeld) gets more complex after her older brother starts dating her best friend, though she finds solace in an unexpected friendship and a teacher-slash-mentor (Woody Harrelson). End of Watch (2012) Before he made a terrible sci-fi remake of his own film, writer-director David Ayer took a near-documentarian lens to the day-to-day police work of two partners (Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña) in South Los Angeles, involving their friendship and dealings with criminal elements. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) An estranged couple (Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet) begin a new relationship unaware they dated previously, having erased each other from their memories, in what stands as writer Charlie Kaufman's defining work. The Exorcist (1973) One of the greatest horror films of all time, that has left a lasting influence on the genre and beyond, is about the demonic possession of a 12-year-old girl and her mother's attempts to save her with the help of two priests who perform exorcisms. The Florida Project (2017) Set in the shadow of Disney World, a precocious six-year-old girl (Brooklynn Prince) makes the most of her summer with her ragtag playmates, while her rebellious mother tries to make ends meet with the spectre of homelessness always hanging over them. Willem Dafoe stars alongside. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) In John Hughes' now-classic teen picture, a high schooler fakes being sick to spend the day with his girlfriend and his best friend, while his principal is determined to spy on him. Fruitvale Station (2013) Black Panther writer-director Ryan Coogler's first feature offered a look at the real-life events of a young California man's (Michael B. Jordan) death in a police shooting in 2008. Winner of two awards at Sundance Film Festival. Full Metal Jacket (1987) Stanley Kubrick follows a US marine nicknamed Joker from his days as a new recruit under the command of a ruthless sergeant, to his posting as a war correspondent in South Vietnam, while observing the effects of the war on his fellow soldiers.

Ghostbusters (1984) A bunch of eccentric paranormal enthusiasts start a ghost-catching business in New York, and then stumble upon a plot to wreak havoc by summoning ghosts. Gave birth to one of the most iconic song lyrics in history. Gol Maal (1979) A chartered accountant (Amol Palekar), with a knack for singing and acting, falls deep down the rabbit hole after lying to his boss that he has a twin, in this Hrishikesh Mukherjee comedy. Gone Girl (2014) Based on Gillian Flynn's best-selling novel and directed by David Fincher, a confounded husband (Ben Affleck) becomes the primary suspect in the sudden mystery disappearance of his wife (Rosamund Pike). GoodFellas (1990) Considered as one of the best gangster films of all time, it brought Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro together for the sixth time. Based on Nicholas Pilegg's 1985 non-fiction book Wiseguy, it tells the rise and fall story of mob associate Henry Hill, his friends and family between 1955 and 1980. Gravity (2013) Two US astronauts, a first-timer (Sandra Bullock) and another on his final mission (George Clooney), are stranded in space after their shuttle is destroyed, and then must battle debris and challenging conditions to return home. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) A bunch of intergalactic misfits, which includes a talking racoon and tree, come together to form a ragtag team in this Marvel adventure that needs no prior knowledge. Guru (2007) Mani Ratnam wrote and directed this rags-to-riches story of a ruthless and ambitious businessman (Abhishek Bachchan) who doesn't let anything stand in his way as he turns into India's biggest tycoon. Loosely inspired by the life of Dhirubhai Ambani. Haider (2014) Vishal Bhardwaj's Shakespearean trilogy concluded with this modern-day adaptation of Hamlet, that is also based on Basharat Peer's 1990s-Kashmir memoir Curfewed Night. Follows a young man (Shahid Kapoor) who returns home to investigate his father's disappearance and finds himself embroiled in the ongoing violent insurgency. Her (2013) A lonely man (Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with an intelligent computer operating system (Scarlett Johansson), who enriches his life and learns from him, in Spike Jonze's masterpiece. Hot Fuzz (2007) A top London cop (Simon Pegg, also co-writer) is transferred to a sleepy English village for being the lone overachiever in a squad of slackers. A blend of relationship comedy and a genre cop movie. Edgar Wright directs. Hugo (2011) In 1930s Paris, a boy who lives alone in the walls of a train station tries to figure out the mystery involving his late father and his most treasured possession, an automaton, that needs a key to function. Martin Scorsese directs.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013) In the best of four movies, Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss Everdeen is forced to participate in a special edition of the Hunger Games, a competition where individuals fight to the death, featuring the winners of all previous competitions. I, Daniel Blake (2016) After a heart attack that leaves him unable to work, a widowed carpenter is forced to fight an obtuse British welfare system, while developing a strong bond with a single mother who has two children. Winner of the Palme d'Or. I Lost My Body (2019) In this animated Cannes winner, a severed hand escapes from a lab and scrambles through Paris to get back to his body, while recounting its past life that involved moving to France after an accident and falling in love. In This Corner of the World (2016) Set in Hiroshima during World War II, an 18-year-old woman agrees to marry a man she barely knows in this animated Japanese film, and then must learn to cope with life's daily struggles and find a way to push through as the war rages on around her. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) Directed by Steven Spielberg off a story by George Lucas, an eponymous archaeologist (Harrison Ford) travels the world and battles a group of Nazis while looking for a mysterious artefact, in what is now often considered as one of the greatest films of all-time. Infernal Affairs (2002) Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning The Departed is a remake of this original Hong Kongian film, in which a police officer is working undercover in a Triad, while a Triad member is secretly working for the police. Both have the same objective: find the mole. Into the Wild (2007) Based on Jon Krakauer's nonfiction book, Sean Penn goes behind the camera to direct the story of a top student and athlete who gives up all possessions and savings to charity, and hitchhikes across America to live in the Alaskan wilderness. Iqbal (2005) In writer-director Nagesh Kukunoor's National Award-winning film, a hearing- and speech-impaired farm boy (Shreyas Talpade) pursues his passion for becoming a cricketer for the national squad, with the help of a washed-up ex-coach (Naseeruddin Shah). The Irishman (2019) Based on Charles Brandt's 2004 book “I Heard You Paint Houses”, Martin Scorsese offers an indulgent, overlong look at the life of a truck driver (Robert De Niro) who becomes a hitman working for the Bufalino crime family and labour union leader Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino).

John Wick (2014) In the first part of what is now a series, a former hitman (Keanu Reeves) exits retirement to find and kill those that stole his car and killed his dog. Less story, more action, with the filmmakers drawing on anime, Hong Kong action cinema, Spaghetti Westerns, and French crime dramas. Jurassic Park (1993) It might be over 25 years old at this point but watching the very first Jurassic film from Steven Spielberg — based on Michael Crichton's novel, which he co-adapted — is a great way to remind yourself why the new series, Jurassic World, has no idea why it's doing. Kahaani (2012) A pregnant woman (Vidya Balan) travels from London to Kolkata to search for her missing husband in writer-director Sujoy Ghosh's National Award-winning mystery thriller, battling sexism and a cover-up along the way. Khosla Ka Ghosla! (2006) After a powerful property dealer (Boman Irani) holds a middle-class, middle-aged man's (Anupam Kher) newly-purchased property to ransom, his son and his son's friends devise a plot to dupe the swindling squatter and pay him back with his own money. Dibakar Banerjee's directorial debut. Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) A coming-of-age story of the young titular witch, who opens an air delivery business, helps a bakery's pregnant owner in exchange for accommodation, and befriends a geeky boy during her year of self-discovery. Hayao Miyazaki writes and directs. Lady Bird (2017) Greta Gerwig's directorial debut is a coming-of-age story of a high school senior (Saoirse Ronan) and her turbulent relationship with her mother (Laurie Metcalf), all while she figures out who she wants to be through friendships and short relationships. Lagaan (2001) Set in Victorian India, a village farmer (Aamir Khan) stakes everyone's future on a game of cricket with the well-equipped British, in exchange for a tax reprieve for three years. The Little Prince (2015) Antoine de Saint-Exupery's 1943 novella is given the animation treatment, in which an elderly pilot (Jeff Bridges) recounts his encounters with a young boy who claimed to be an extra-terrestrial prince to his neighbour, a young girl. Rachel McAdams, James Franco, and Marion Cotillard also voice. A Little Princess (1995) Alfonso Cuarón directs this tale of a young girl who is forced to become a servant by the headmistress at her New York boarding school, after her wealthy aristocratic father is presumed dead in World War I. The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003) Peter Jackson brought J.R.R. Tolkien's expansive Middle-Earth to life in these three three-hour epics, which charts the journey of a meek hobbit (Elijah Wood) and his various companions, as they try to stop the Dark Lord Sauron by destroying the source of his power, the One Ring.

Loveless (2017) A Cannes winner about the social ills of life in modern Russia, told through the eyes of two separated parents who are drawn back together after their 12-year-old child goes missing. From award-winning director Andrey Zvyagintsev. The Lunchbox (2013) An unlikely mistake by Mumbai's famously efficient lunchbox carrier system results in an unusual friendship between a young housewife (Nimrat Kaur) and an older widower (Irrfan Khan) about to retire from his job. Lupin the Third: Castle of Cagliostro (1979) In legendary Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki's feature debut, a dashing master thief enlists the help of a long-time nemesis in the police and a fellow thief to rescue a princess from an evil count, and put an end to his counterfeit money operation. Marriage Story (2019) Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver play an entertainment industry couple going through a divorce, which pulls them — and their young son — from New York to Los Angeles, the two different hometowns of the protagonists. Mary Poppins (1964) Based on P.L. Travers' book series of the same name, a disciplined father hires a loving woman (Julie Andrews) — who he doesn't know is capable of magic — to be the nanny for his two mischievous children. Won five Oscars, including best actress for the debutant Andrews. Masaan (2015) Neeraj Ghaywan ventures into the heartland of India to explore the life of four people in his directorial debut, all of whom must battle issues of caste, culture and norms. Winner of a National Award and the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes. Million Dollar Baby (2004) An overlooked, veteran boxing trainer (Clint Eastwood, who also directs) reluctantly agrees to train a former waitress (Hilary Swank) to help achieve her dreams, which leads to a close father-daughter bond that will forever change their lives. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) With the organisation he works for disbanded and his country after him, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) races against time to prove the existence of the schemers pulling the strings in this fifth chapter. Introduced Rebecca Ferguson to the franchise. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) The legendary British comedy troupe mix their talents with the tale of King Arthur and his knights, as they look for the Holy Grail and encounter a series of horrors. A contender for the best comedy of all-time.

Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) Satire so cutting that it was banned for years in the UK and elsewhere, Life of Brian saw Monty Python turning their eyes on more long-form storytelling. The Life of Brian is the story of a young Jewish man born on the same day and next door to Jesus Christ, who gets mistaken for the messiah. Mudbound (2017) A Netflix Original, this World War II drama is set in rural Mississippi, and follows two veterans – one white and one black – who return home, and must deal with problems of racism in addition to PTSD. Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003) After his parents find out he has been pretending to be a doctor, a good-natured Mumbai underworld don (Sanjay Dutt) tries to redeem himself by enrolling in a medical college, where his compassion brushes up against the authoritarian dean (Boman Irani). Co-written and directed by Rajkumar Hirani, who stands accused in the #MeToo movement. My Neighbor Totoro (1988) Set in post-war rural Japan, a heart-warming tale of a professor's two young daughters who have adventures with friendly forest sprits. Hayao Miyazaki writes and directs. Mystic River (2003) Three childhood friends reunite after a brutal murder, in which the victim is one's (Sean Penn) daughter, another (Kevin Bacon) is the case detective, and the third (Tim Robbins) is suspected by both. Clint Eastwood directs. Nightcrawler (2014) Jake Gyllenhaal plays a freelance video journalist with no ethics or morals who will do anything to get the best footage of violent crimes that local news stations love. A feature directorial debut for screenwriter Dan Gilroy. Ocean's Eleven (2001) In this first of Steven Soderbergh's trilogy, which features an ensemble cast including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon, Danny Ocean (Clooney) and his eleven associates plan to rob three Las Vegas casinos at the same time. Okja (2017) Part environment parable and part skewer of corporatisation, this underappreciated Netflix Original by Bong Joon-ho tells its story of a young Korean girl and her best friend – a giant pet pig – while effortlessly crossing genres. On Body and Soul (2017) A shy, introverted man and a woman who work at a Hungarian slaughterhouse discover they share the same dreams after an incident, and then try to make them come true.

Only Yesterday (1991) A Studio Ghibli production about a 27-year-old career-driven Tokyo woman who reminisces about her childhood on her way to the countryside to see her sister's family. Isao Takahata writes and directs. Paan Singh Tomar (2012) A true story of the eponymous soldier and athlete (Irrfan Khan) who won gold at the National Games, and later turned into a dacoit to resolve a land dispute. Won top honours for film and actor (Khan) at National Awards. Pan's Labyrinth (2006) In Guillermo del Toro's fantastical version of Spain five years after the civil war, Ofelia – a young stepdaughter of a cruel army officer – is told she is the reincarnated version of an underworld princess but must complete three tasks to prove herself. The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) Emma Watson stars in this coming-of-age comedy based on the novel of the same name by Stephen Chbosky, who also wrote and directed the film. Watson plays one of two seniors who guide a nervous freshman. Phantom Thread (2017) Set in the glamourous couture world of 1950s post-war London, the life of a renowned dressmaker (Daniel Day-Lewis), who is used to women coming and going through his tailored life, unravels after he falls in love with a young, strong-willed waitress. Pink (2016) A lawyer (Amitabh Bachchan) comes out of retirement to help three women (Taapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari, and Andrea Tariang) clear their names in a crime involving a politician's nephew (Angad Bedi). Won a National Award. PK (2014) A satirical comedy-drama that probes religious dogmas and superstitions, through the lens of an alien (Aamir Khan) who is stranded on Earth after he loses his personal communicator and befriends a TV journalist (Anushka Sharma) as he attempts to retrieve it. Porco Rosso (1992) Transformed into an anthropomorphic pig by an unusual curse, an Italian World War I ace fighter veteran now works as a freelance bounty hunter in 1930s Adriatic Sea in the Mediterranean. Hayao Miyazaki writes and directs. Queen (2013) A 24-year-old shy woman (Kangana Ranaut) sets off on her honeymoon alone to Europe after her fiancé calls off the wedding a day prior. There, freed from the traditional trappings and with the help of new friends, she gains a newfound perspective on life. Director Vikas Bahl stands accused in the #MeToo movement.

Rang De Basanti (2006) Aamir Khan leads the ensemble cast of this award-winning film that focuses on four young New Delhi men who turn into revolutionary heroes themselves while playacting as five Indian freedom fighters from the 1920s for a docudrama. Ratatouille (2007) An anthropomorphic rat (Patton Oswalt) who longs to be a chef tries to achieve his dream by making an alliance with a young garbage boy at a Parisian restaurant. From Pixar. Rebecca (1940) Alfred Hitchcock's first American film is based on Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel of the same name, about a naïve, young woman who marries an aristocratic widower and then struggles under the intimidating reputation of his first wife, who died under mysterious circumstances. The Remains of the Day (1993) Made by the duo of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, this based-on-a-book film is about a dedicated and loyal butler (Anthony Hopkins), who gave much of his life — and missed out on a lot — serving a British lord who turns out to be a Nazi sympathiser. Reservoir Dogs (1992) After a simply jewellery heist goes wrong in Quentin Tarantino's feature-length debut, six criminals – Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, and Michael Madsen are a few of the actors – who don't know each other's identity start to suspect each other of being a police informant. The Revenant (2015) Leonardo DiCaprio and director Alejandro G. Iñárritu won Oscars for their work on this semi-biographical Western film set in the 1820s, which tells the story of frontiersman Hugh Glass and his quest for survival and justice amidst severe winters. Roma (2018) Alfonso Cuarón revisits his childhood in the eponymous Mexico City neighbourhood, during the political turmoil of the 1970s, through the eyes of a middle-class family's live-in maid, who takes care of the house and four children, while balancing the complications of her own personal life. Sairat (2016) In a tiny village in the Indian state of Maharashtra, a fisherman's son and a local politician's daughter fall in love, which sends ripples across the society because their families belong to different castes. Currently the highest-grossing Marathi-language film of all time. Scarface (1983) Al Pacino delivers one of his best performances as a Cuban refugee who arrives in 1980s Miami with nothing, rises the ranks to become a powerful drug kingpin, and then falls due to his ego, his paranoia, and a growing list of enemies. Se7en (1995) In this dark, gripping thriller from David Fincher, two detectives – one new (Brad Pitt) and one about to retire (Morgan Freeman) – hunt a serial killer (Kevin Spacey) who uses the seven deadly sins as his motives. Secret Superstar (2017) Though frequently melodramatic, this coming-of-age story – produced by Aamir Khan and wife Kiran Rao – of a Muslim girl from Vadodara who dreams of being a singer dealt with important social issues and broke several box office records during its theatrical run.

Sense and Sensibility (1995) Jane Austen's famous work is brought to life by director Ang Lee, about three sisters who are forced to seek financial security through marriage after the death of their wealthy father leaves them poor by the rules of inheritance. The Shining (1980) Stephen King's popular novel gets the film treatment from Stanley Kubrick, about a father who loses his sanity in an isolated hotel the family is staying at for the winter, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from the past and the future. Shoplifters (2018) Winner of the top prize at Cannes, the story of a group of poverty-stricken outsiders scraping together an under-the-radar living in Tokyo, whose life is upended after they take in a new, young member. Hirokazu Kore-eda writes, directs, and edits. Shrek (2001) A half-parody of fairy tales, Shrek is about an eponymous ogre who agrees to help an evil lord get a queen in exchange for the deed to his swamp, filled with enough jokes for the adults and a simple plot children. A Silent Voice: The Movie (2016) Based on the manga of the same name, a coming-of-age story of a school bully who tries to make amends with a hearing-impaired girl he tormented back in the day, after the tables are turned on him. Silver Linings Playbook (2012) Two people (Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper) with pain and suffering in their past begin a road to recovery while training together for a dance competition, in what becomes an unlikely love story. The Sixth Sense (1999) In writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's best film to date, a child psychologist (Bruce Willis) tries to help a young boy (Haley Joel Osment) who can see and talk to the dead. Snowpiercer (2013) Chris Evans stars in this sci-fi from Bong Joon-ho, which takes place in a future ravaged by an experiment, where the survivors live on a train that continuously circles the globe and has led to a punishing new class system. The Social Network (2010) The tale of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg gets a slight fictional spin, as it explores how the young engineer was sued by twin brothers who claimed he stole their idea, and sold lies to his co-founder and squeezed him out.

Soni (2019) A short-tempered young policewoman and her cool-headed female boss must contend with ingrained misogyny in their daily lives and even at work, where it impacts their coordinated attempts to tackle the rise of crimes against women in Delhi. Spartacus (1960) After failing to land the title role in Ben-Hur, Kirk Douglas optioned a book with a similar theme, about a slave who led a revolt — known retrospectively as the Third Servile War — against the mighty Roman Empire. Won four Oscars and was named as one of the best historical epics. The Stranger (1946) A war crimes investigator hunts a high-ranking Nazi fugitive (Orson Welles, also director) hiding in the US state of Connecticut, who is also duping his naïve new wife. Super Deluxe (2019) An inter-linked anthology of four stories, involving an unfaithful wife, a transgender woman, a bunch of teenagers, which deal in sex, stigma, and spirituality. Runs at nearly three hours. Swades (2004) Shah Rukh Khan stars a successful NASA scientist in this based on a true story drama, who returns home to India to take his nanny to the US, rediscovers his roots and connects with the local village community in the process. Taare Zameen Par (2007) Sent to boarding school against his will, a dyslexic eight-year-old is helped by an unconventional art teacher (Aamir Khan) to overcome his disability and discover his true potential. Talvar (2015) Meghna Gulzar and Vishal Bhardwaj combine forces to tell the story of the 2008 Noida double murder case, in which a teenage girl and the family's hired servant were killed, and the inept police bungled the investigation. Uses the Rashomon effect for a three-pronged take. Tangerine (2015) Shot entirely on iPhones, a transgender female sex worker vows revenge on her boyfriend-pimp who cheated on her while she was in jail. Tangled (2010) Locked up by her overly protective mother, a young long-haired girl finally gets her wish to escape into the world outside thanks to a good-hearted thief, and discovers her true self.

Thithi (2016) In this award-winning Kannada-language film, set in a remote village in the state of Karnataka, three generations of men reflect on the death of their locally-famous, bad-tempered 101-year-old patriarch. Made with a cast of non-professional actors. The Town (2010) While a group of lifelong Boston friends plan a major final heist at Fenway Park, one of them (Ben Affleck) falls in love with the hostage from an earlier robbery, complicating matters. Train to Busan (2016) Stuck on a blood-drenched bullet train ride across Korea, a father and his daughter must fight their way through a countrywide zombie outbreak to make it to the only city that's safe. Tu Hai Mera Sunday (2016) Five thirty-something friends struggle to find a place in Mumbai where they can play football in peace in this light-hearted rom-com tale, which explores gender divides and social mores along the way. The Two Popes (2019) Inspired by real life, the tale of friendship that formed between Pope Benedict XVI (Anthony Hopkins) and Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce), the future Pope Francis, after the latter approached the former regarding his concerns with the direction of the Catholic Church. Udaan (2010) Vikramaditya Motwane made his directorial debut with this coming-of-age story of a teenager who is expelled from boarding school and returns home to the industrial town of Jamshedpur, where he must work at his oppressive father's factory. Udta Punjab (2016) With the eponymous Indian state's drug crisis as the backdrop, this black comedy crime film depicts the interwoven lives of a junior policeman (Diljit Dosanjh), an activist doctor (Kareena Kapoor), a migrant worker (Alia Bhatt), and a rock star (Shahid Kapoor). Uncut Gems (2019) A charismatic, New York-based Jewish jeweller and a gambling addict (Adam Sandler) ends up in over his head in this taut thriller, struggling to keep a lid on his family, desires, business, and enemies. The Untouchables (1987) With mobster Al Capone (Robert De Niro) making use of the rampant corruption during the Prohibition period in the US, federal agent Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) hand picks a team to expose his business and bring him to justice. Brian De Palma directs. Up in the Air (2009) A corporate downsizing expert (George Clooney) who loves living out of a suitcase finds his lifestyle threatened due to a potential love interest (Vera Farmiga) and an ambitious new hire (Anna Kendrick).

Vertigo (1958) Topping Citizen Kane in the latest Sight & Sound poll of greatest films of all time, Alfred Hitchcock's thriller about a detective afraid of heights who falls for an old friend's wife while investigating her strange activities continued his tradition of turning audiences into voyeurs. Village Rockstars (2017) A young Assamese girl of a widow pines to own a guitar and start her own rock band, but societal norms routinely get in the way. Rima Das writes, directs, shoots, edits, and handles costumes. Visaranai (2015) Winner of three National Awards and based on M. Chandrakumar's novel Lock Up, the story of four Tamil laborers who are framed and tortured by politically-motivated cops in the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh. Vetrimaaran writes and directs. A Wednesday! (2008) Neeraj Pandey's film is set between 2 pm and 6 pm on a Wednesday, naturally, when a common man (Naseeruddin Shah) threatens to detonate five bombs in Mumbai unless four terrorists accused in the 2006 Mumbai train bombings case are released. Wonder Woman (2017) After a pilot crashes and informs them about an ongoing World War, an Amazonian princess (Gal Gadot) leaves her secluded life to enter the world of men and stop what she believes to be the return of Amazons' nemesis. Wreck-It Ralph (2012) This Disney animated film tells the story of a video game villain who sets out to fulfil his dream of becoming a hero but ends up bringing havoc to the entire arcade where he lives. Zero Dark Thirty (2012) The decade-long international manhunt for Osama bin Laden is the focus of this thriller from Kathryn Bigelow, dramatised as and when needed to keep a CIA intelligence analyst (Jessica Chastain) at the centre of the story. Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011) Hrithik Roshan, Farhan Akhtar, and Abhay Deol star as three childhood friends who set off on a bachelor trip across Spain, which becomes an opportunity to heal past wounds, combat their worst fears, and fall in love with life. Zodiac (2007) David Fincher signed on Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr. to depict a cartoonist's (Gyllenhaal) obsession with figuring out the identity of the Zodiac Killer in the 1960s–70s. Zombieland (2009) A student looking for his parents (Jesse Eisenberg), a man looking for a favourite snack, and two con artist sisters join forces and take an extended road trip across a zombie-filled America, while they all search for a zombie-free sanctuary. Read the full article

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just-another-busy-fangirl-writes · 5 years

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About Me

Hello Everyone! I’m Laura. Welcome to my tumblr.

~My original tumblr was @just-another-busy-fangirl, which has been terminated by staff. I am still working to get it back, but in the meantime am beginning to rebuild here. Bear with me while I upload all my old content / keep your fingers crossed that I get my old blog back!~

Here you will see many things that interest me, including but not limited to the following:

Supernatural (All encompassing: show, cast, crew, conventions, music - Louden Swain and Jason Manns, shipping, all positive, no hate!)

My Cats and Dog (really any and all animals will show up here and there, especially cats, dogs, and sloths)

Harry Potter (again, the books, movies, actors, jo, cursed child, fantastic beasts….anything and everything)

Musicals or Stage Performers

TV Shows I like: Agent Carter, Agents of Shield, Angel, Arrow, Bones, Buffy, Flash, Doctor Who, Dollhouse, Firefly, Gilmore Girls, Merlin, Smallville, Stranger Things, Supergirl, Who’s Line

Movies I like: The MCU, Disney, LOTR, Serenity, Star Trek, Star Wars, Ten Inch Hero

People I like: Alan Tudyk, Alexis Denisof, Amy Acker, Bradley James, Chris-cubed, David Tennant, Eddie Redmayne, Emma Watson, Grant Gustin, Hayley Atwell, Ian McKellen, John Barrowman, Jonathan Groff, Joss Whedon, Julie Andrews, Lin Manuel Miranda, Melissa Benoist, Nathan Fillion, NPH, Sebastian Stan, Stephen Amell, Tom Felton

Writing Tips and Advice and Help

Knitting Projects, patterns, items I like and might make someday

Artist Boosts

Introvert Things

Music Things (I am a choir director, after all…)

Teacher Things

If you want to know more about me…

I’m a 27 year old self-employed piano and voice teacher and live in Texas with my husband and two cats (Jake and Elwood) and puppy (Luna). I’ve been on tumblr for a few years, but have only been posting my SPN writing since August 2016. Pre-tumblr I lived on fanfiction.net in the HP universe…reading, writing, beta-ing.

My masterlist is HERE

@atc74 has deemed me the Empress of Erotica, so hopefully I keep up with that title! :)

My requests are semi-open. I will take requests for my bingo cards and Kink List, if you want to visit those via my masterlist.

I am available to beta, if you want me to. Please email me at justanotherbusyfangirl @ gmail . com (take out the spaces) if you want me to beta. GoogleDocs makes that super easy.

Like my writing? Leave me a tip!

If you are a writer, please tag me! I love finding new people, and compile a weekly fic rec list that I am always wanting to find fresh people to include on.

I also have my “currently reading” page, where you can find all of the fanfictions that I am reading. I made the page to help myself keep up with everything, but I know many of you guys like to see what’s there as well. It’s extensive, so beware!

Want to join my tag team? Fill out the google form HERE

I used to co-run @spnfamilybirthdays along with @katymacsupernatural and @atc74. :) We have retired the blog after a little over two years, and are thankful to everyone who supported us with that project!

I am a mod on @supernaturaltropecelebration, @spnkinkbingo, @spnabobingo, @spnpolybingo, @deanandcasbingo, @samwinchesterbingo, @deanandsambingo, @spnluciferbingo, @castiel-bingo, @spnrareshipbingo, @heavenandhellbingo, @swansongbingo

And here’s my Unpopular Opinion. (And more Unpopular Opinions.) :)

#about me #personal

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theethird · 5 years

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My Episode By Episode Review of LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS (SPOILERS, OBV)

SONNIE'S EDGE : What's better than Mecha? Flesh-Mecha. Loved the protagonist and the twist was delivered pretty well, although the ending was more abrupt than I would've liked. I'd watch more of this though. 8/10

BEYOND THE AQUILA RIFT : It's like Dead Space had a baby with Aliens. I liked everything about the ships, the interpersonal relations were a bit meh though. The punchline was a little too much for me as a 15 minute short, probably would've worked better as a prequel to a video game.

THREE ROBOTS : This is comedy gold. I could watch these guys tour the wreckage of our failed world for an entire season, maybe two. If you thought Wall-E would've been better as a PG-13 movie or ever wondered what R2-D2 would sound like in Basic, this is your short. 9/10

SUITS : Old Mac Donald had a farm, *plasma rifle sounds* Art style was great, character dynamics was very good for something so short, appreciated the implied interracial couple and the ending only made me love the entire thing more. I need a mini series of this please.

THE WITNESS: Timeloops and Nudity, I mean if you're Rian Johnson or Joss Whedon, you probably love this entire premise, bonus points for the Asian woman lead. Also worthy of note that it's designed very similarly to Into the Spiderverse. Unfortunately for me, looking like an Oscar winner isn't enough. it wasn't what I wanted, and while I loved the moments of sex positivity, there wasn't a story, just a pseudo trippy chase sequence with no substance. 5/10, skip if you can.

GOOD HUNTING : I loved everything about this story and could easily watch an entire series built from it. The interactions made sense, there were very real stakes and also growth. The payoff didn't take me out of my immersion, and despite the racial and sexual violence triggers present, I think it's one of the stronger entries in this anthology. 9/10

THE DUMP : Grumpy Old Men at a landfill. You've seen this before, you didn't need to see it in CGI. Save yourself the trouble. It's not bad, it's just not good. Honestly doesn't belong next to some of these other shorts on a good day. 6/10, probably skip.

SHAPE-SHIFTERS : This one's a personal favourite, as ive roleplayed plenty of scenarios like this one on message boards back in the day. Upfront, if you hate soldier narratives, this isn't your episode and you should skip it. It's set in the Middle East during what very much appears to be the so- called War on Terror. I liked the camaraderie between the "dog- soldiers" and felt like what I was shown of their relationship to the humans around them matched what ive heard about prejudices in the military. I'd give it an 8, mostly because there wasn't enough world building to justify some of the emotions shown in a short window.

FISH NIGHT: Visually stunning, kinda bored me to be honest though. Didn't much care for either character and didn't really feel a need to rewatch it. That's not to say it's a throw away. If you want to watch a painting and a dream sequence put together, this is your moment. As for me, not enough umph. 6/10

WHEN THE YOGURT TOOK OVER: Straight up 7.5 out of 10 and MOSTLY because it's so short. I was laughing my ass off watching this, it's quirky, it's satirical, it's great. Fuck it. 8.5 out of 10 and fight me on it. I'd watch 10 more episodes about the future that sentient Yogurt built.

ZIMA BLUE : Breathtaking. Lovingly put together and so well presented. It's trippy in a good way and I teared up throughout. It's really an art piece for artists and not in a condescending way. It really speaks to the search that creators go through both within themselves and around them for meaning. 10/10, don't need a sequel but would love more content like it.

SUCKER OF SOULS : I mean it's a fun take on Dracula but then again, Castlevania was already a masterpiece, idk if I needed the 2000s animated version of Team Fortress goes to Transylvania. 7/10 but only because I laughed alot. It's skippable.

LUCKY 13 : Give Samira Wiley ALL the awards. Cast her in every sci fi project you can find because she NAILS everything about this short. I love pilot stories and she really captures the love a pilot has for their ship as well as their unit. 10/10, give me more damnit.

THE SECRET WAR : It's a great war meets the supernatural story. Too short honestly but I enjoyed it fully. It's been done before but I'd still recommend it because it's got alot of heart in it. I'd only allow a skip if you just aren't into WW2/ Cold War era stories about Russian soldiers. 7/10

ALTERNATE HISTORIES : Started off fun, went left and stayed left. I'm kinda over the Hitler jokes by now. 6/10.

BLINDSPOT : It's Borderlands meets Fast and Furious but with ROBOTS. I'd play the hell out of a video game about this crew, would watch a season's worth about them, honestly my only gripe with it is that it didn't blow me away like i was led to believe. It's fun, it's not revolutionary, but please give me more. 8/10

ICE AGE : If you've ever wanted to watch a world grow at your fingertips, if you're a fan of Civ and The Sims but don't know what to do when the game finally ends, this is your story. It's the only live action entry but it's worth the watch. Kinda missed watching Topher Grace in things. 9/10

HELPING HAND : It's gravity but with more blood and a fiery red head. Nothing new to see here folks, totally skip if you aren't down to watch someone lose an arm to the vacuum of space. 6/10

#love death and robots #love death + robots #love #death #robots #Netflix #aquila rift #Dracula #sucker of souls #ice age #lucky 13 #shape shifters #space time #animated shorts #the witness #good hunting #three robots #mecha #yogurt

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thelightfluxtastic · 6 years

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Like __, but with better representation.

Hey folks. I am starting this post as a resource for people to be able to say “If you liked X, Y is similar but with better representation”.

1. The representation can be of any kind. Race, gender, sexuality, religion, etc.

2. Not just surface similarities. “They’re both sci-fi tv shows” isn’t enough. This will be somewhat subjective, of course, but the more parallels, the better.

Let’s get started, please add your own!

Firefly -> The Strange Case of Starship Iris

A small crew of space smugglers tries to evade an oppressive corporate government while facing off against fellow criminals and dealing with difficulties of life on the edge of society. Except Firefly has Joss Whedon’s pseudo-feminism, and TSCOSI has wlw, trans characters (binary and nb), asian characters, and social commentary.

The Dresden Files -> The ‘Mancer Series (Flex, The Flux, Fix)

An urban fantasy series with a very flexible, personalized magic system that has strictly defined rules, but is also completely unique to each individual. The main character works with law enforcement against supernatural threats, and ends up saving the world more than once. But he must be secretive and careful with his own magic, as he’s on the wrong side of the organization that enforces magical laws and limitations. He has a daughter he will go to desperate lengths to protect. Look, I really like the Dresden Files. But it has it’s flaws, from perpetuating ‘girl on girl is hot’ to having most of it’s nonwhite characters be foreign/exotic despite being set in Chicago. The ‘Mancer series felt incredibly similar to me in style and tone, but centers on a disabled main character and has much more diversity in the race and sexuality of the main cast.

#representation #books #movies #lgbtq #race #tv show #firefly #the strange case of starship iris #the dresden files #the mancer series #mine

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cosmoshiden · 2 years

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Firefly, does it need a reboot?

It’s been nearly 20 years since Firefly was taken off the air. There have been talks of a reboot floating around for years. Yet does this series need a reboot? Well, my stance on this is that, yes Firefly really needs a reboot. There are some things that I find infuriating about Friefly that need be changed and removed. First, get rid of the US civil war allegory; cause honestly, that is KKK propaganda and is an erasing of slavery from history via sci-fi; instead, replace the backstory with a Canadian history allegory for the violent rivalry between the Northwest Company and the Hudson's Bay Company. This could be done with the Blue Sun corp. once being two companies, now forced into one by the gov't much like the Northwest and Hudson's Bay companies were merged into one. This way Mal and co. have a less murky backstory since they took part in this corporate war. Second, why not cut the cast down to 5 to start the show, and gradually introduce the remaning 4 slowly. Third, I'd like to see some Asians cast in the roles this time around, while having more LGBTQ2IA+ characters. Hell, why not combine characters like Zoe + Jayne, Wash + River, Kaylee + Innara, Book + Simon, while making River/Wash Asian and nonbinary, Book/Simon Black and Transwoman, Kaylee/Innara Hispanic and Indigenous American, and intersex, and Zoe/Jayne is pan sexual and black. As for Mal, make him a middle-aged, out of touch type who thinks he owns the ship, and in a relationship with Simon/Book, with the latter three, Zoe/Jayne, River/Wash, and Kaylee/Innara, are in a polygamous relationship. Fifth, how about there being no captain of the ship, and anytime Mal tries to give an order, he gets lynched, (which I think should be the running gag). Sixth, I would keep the premise of pirating, but there being an actual arch-enemy like the operative with hired help, but making the enemy the Blue sun corp. instead of the Alliance. Seventh, I would prefer the telepathic powers be given by a device that the crew receives from a job that goes awry, and one of the 5 gets the powers, and the operative is sent after them. Anyhow, I don't expect this to be given a warm welcome from anyone who comes across this post (mainly from Firefly fans, be they neoconfedie or not), but then again, this had to be said. One other thing, can we please get rid of the Reavers; we can do without anymore Native American stereotypes; especially taking Josh Whedon out of the picture. I suggest that the reavers be made into space pirates who are made up of poor people who joined because of lack of opportunity or job loss after the corporate war. Seventh, how this can be achieved is by hiring writers of color and LGBTQ21A+ persons and women, for arranging the show’s plots, narrative, characters and dialogue. This entails removing Josh Whedon from the picture and thus having a director of color instead. In hindsight, it just makes for more diversity in the casting, crew, writer’s room and directing. Anyhow, that's my two cents.

#Fireflyisbigotedtrash Fireflyneedsareboot Fireflysucks Freezefirefly #fireflyreboot

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daleisgreat · 3 years

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Justice League

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Despite today’s entry for 2017’s Justice League (trailer) happening nearly four years after its original theatrical release, it was imperative for me to revisit this film a month out from HBOMAX’s planned March 18th release of the director’s cut that has the added prefix, Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Where do I begin with the backstory on this one!? Glossing over the behind-the-scenes hoopla would be a disservice, especially for any of you readers checking this out many years after the fact who have no idea about how these two versions came to be. I will attempt to provide some degree of context before jumping into my take on Justice League, so please bear with me….or jump ahead a few paragraphs. Director Zack Snyder caught a lot of flak from ardent comic book fans for his darker takes and artistic direction on Superman and Batman in his two previous films, Man of Steel and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. I reviewed both films here already and was part of the minority who was a fan of the polarizing films. Fast forward a couple years later and Snyder wraps shooting Justice League, which is the big finale to the current arc of DC Comics movie canon much like how Avengers: Endgame was for the Marvel films. However, early in post-production Snyder suffers a family tragedy with his daughter committing suicide and has no choice but to leave his post on the film, but not before handing off post-production duties to Joss Whedon, the director behind the first two, uber-successful Avengers films.

Amidst all this controversy, the executives at Warner Bros. are receiving a ton of criticism of not wanting another lengthy, dark tome of a superhero film like Snyder’s previous efforts. I praised The Avengers and other MCU films on here before, and I love their style of filmmaking too, but one common trait among Marvel films is that they are generally more lighthearted with more gags and feel more like “soft” PG-13 experiences. Which is a good thing for those films because that was how they were envisioned from the beginning, but speculation was running wild going into Justice League’s 2017 theatrical release that Joss Whedon was under intense pressure from Warner Bros. executives to reshoot scenes to add in more family friendly humor, and lighten up the length and tone of the movie in post-production to appeal to the criticism. The result was a two hour movie that was not a hit with much of anyone. Snyder critics were not satisfied with the changes, and fans like myself of Snyder’s past films felt like his work and vision for the movie was compromised. Over the next few years, slow-but-steady support grew over social media to #releasethesnydercut of Justice League. I thought this social media movement was a pipe dream that would never seem like a possibility for Warner to dedicate those resources to allow Snyder to re-cut the movie. Eventually though, much of the original cast and crew, and more and more fans frequently kept that hashtag alive, which culminated several months ago when Warner Bros. announced that Zack Snyder’s Justice League will be releasing on its HBOMAX streaming service this coming March. Snyder’s version will be double in length at four hours, and HBOMAX was originally going to release it as four weekly episodic installments, but later switched it back to one whole film. I am grateful that Snyder is finally getting his chance to redeem himself and release the movie how he originally envisioned, and am hopeful he wins over fans and critics alike. Now with the director’s cut just over a month out, I wanted to make sure to watch 2017’s version of the film one more time before then so I can get a better grasp at what was switched up for the new cut. Are you still with me? Good, now let us proceed with breaking down Whedon’s take on Justice League.

This 2017 cut opens up with a flashback of kids doing a smartphone interview with Superman (Henry Cavill), fresh off the scene of duty which leads to an opening credits montage of the world still reeling from the death of Superman after his battle with Darkseid in Batman V Superman. This then jumps to Batman (Ben Affleck) failing at recruiting Aquaman (Jason Momoa) to join him for anticipating a new threat. That threat is the return of Steppenwolf (voiced by Ciarán Hinds), who is on a quest to regain his power by procuring three hidden “Mother Boxes.” Eventually Bats touches base with Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) to proselytize aid to combat Steppenwolf. That help comes in the form of Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and The Flash (Ezra Miller). Both heroes are introduced with having conflicts with their fathers, but eventually Wonder Woman convinces Cyborg to join up, and Batman has an entertaining scene with The Flash who fanboys out at Batman after he surprises Flash in his hideout. I am conflicted with Miller’s performance as Flash. I cannot help but feel he is the one who received the bulk of the re-shoot orders to add in some extra doses of levity throughout the film, because he repeatedly chimes in with one star struck idolizing gag after another throughout. A few of the jokes actually hit, but they are a bit much and I could not help but think I would have appreciated his act more if his zany would have been dialed back by about 60%. My gut tells me that was how Snyder originally directed him, so I will have to wait to see what his cut has in store. I cannot lie and admit I was like plenty of fans online wanting Grant Gustin to bring his pristine TV version of The Flash to the silver screen instead, but I understand Warner Bros. in wanting to keep the CW-TV canon and movie canon separate….but then they did that brief Gustin/Miller crossover last year on the TV series….and well, I have no idea what to make of it other than I was cracking up throughout their bizarre exchange, so I will just link you to the clip here to decide for yourselves.

A huge mid-film clash with Steppenwolf leads to Aquaman joining the team and Batman deciding it for the best to exploit the tech used on Cyborg to resurrect Superman….it does not seem right to type that out so matter-of-factly, and the buildup for this miraculous endeavor is shockingly swift and to the point. They accomplish this feat by digging up ‘ol Supes and bringing him to the magical waters that were used to resurrect Zod in the last film, and then apply one of the mystical Mother Boxes in conjunction with electrical energy from Flash’s speed to bring Superman back from the grave. It works, and the resulting fallout from a shaken-and-rampant Superman dueling with his new Super-pals was a delightful debacle to watch playout before Lois Lane (Amy Adams) shows up to reignite Superman’s humanity. Seeing those two reunite for a couple special scenes in the film was heartwarming, but also felt rushed with their brief screen time they share together, and I am hoping to see their dynamic explored more in the new cut. The final act sees the Justice League forming to take on Steppenwolf who now has the power of all three Mother Boxes on his side for an early advantage, until Superman shows up and instantly lays waste upon him and Steppenwolf instantly transforms from universal threat to a puny-putty-squad-esque-pushover. I am all for the Justice League prevailing, and I know Superman is invincible and all that, but I was stunned to see Steppenwolf instantly crumble to the ‘ol blue and red. I am hoping for a slightly more dramatic back-and-forth encounter in Snyder’s reimagining, but I will not hold out hope for the amount of CG work involved already in Whedon’s version and cannot imagine how much it would cost to completely alter the final battle for a more enticing experience. In the aftermath of Steppenwolf’s demise is the establishing of the building blocks of the Justice League’s headquarters in a charming hint of what is in store for this superhero team. Also make sure to stick around for both stingers, as the first has an awesome exchange between Flash and Superman to answer the long-debated fan question of which hero is faster, and then a stinger of the villains to come for the inevitable sequel.

There are eight extras totaling a little over an hour of bonus features to sift through. Of the eight pieces, there are three I recommend checking out the most: Road to Justice interviews many DC writers and artists who do an intriguing abridged history of key story arcs from the Justice League over the decades. Heart of Justice is a closer look at the historic core of the team in Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Justice League: New Heroes conversely goes in-depth on Cyborg, Aquaman and Flash. If you need to get caught back up to speed on the DC films, than those three extras are a recommended primer worth checking out. Even with all my aforementioned qualms with Justice League above, I did not come out of it outright hating the film. If Flash’s humor would have been dialed back a couple degrees and just an extra 10-15 minutes added to some of the scenes that I felt were shortchanged, then I would have had a better outlook here instead. I know the average theater-goer despises 2+ hour films, and for the average theater-goer that is not a hardcore comic book fan, than this Whedon cut of the film should suit you just fine. However, I cannot get fully behind what feels like a sabotaged cut, and eagerly await to see what the four hour version from Zack Snyder has in store for me next month.

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street The Accountant Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron The Avengers: Endgame The Avengers: Infinity War Batman: The Dark Knight Rises Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: Civil War Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve The Clapper Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Countdown Creed I & II Deck the Halls Detroit Rock City Die Hard Dredd The Eliminators The Equalizer Dirty Work Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Grunt: The Wrestling Movie Guardians of the Galaxy Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 Hell Comes to Frogtown Hercules: Reborn Hitman I Like to Hurt People Indiana Jones 1-4 Ink The Interrogation Interstellar Jay and Silent Bob Reboot Jobs Joy Ride 1-3 Last Action Hero Major League Man of Steel Man on the Moon Man vs Snake Marine 3-6 Merry Friggin Christmas Metallica: Some Kind of Monster Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpions Revenge National Treasure National Treasure: Book of Secrets Nintendo Quest Not for Resale Payback (Director’s Cut) Pulp Fiction The Punisher (1989) The Ref The Replacements Reservoir Dogs Rocky I-VIII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery Scott Pilgrim vs the World The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Shoot em Up Slacker Skyscraper Small Town Santa Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Sully Take Me Home Tonight TMNT The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars Vision Quest The War Wild The Wizard Wonder Woman The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Apocalypse X-Men: Days of Future Past

#random movie #justice league #DC comics #dc #superman #batman #wonder woman #flash #cyborg #aquaman #ben affleck #Gal Gadot #henry cavill #ezra miller #jason momoa #ray fisher #amy adams #zack snyder #joss whedon

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zeroviraluniverse-blog · 6 years

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33 Fun Facts About Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Visit Now - http://zeroviral.com/33-fun-facts-about-buffy-the-vampire-slayer/

33 Fun Facts About Buffy the Vampire Slayer

On the genre-busting television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the heroine saved the world—a lot—over the course of seven seasons. Buffy premiered on the WB 21 years ago today; here are a few things you should know about the show. (And this is just the tip of the stake.)

1. THE SHOW IS A SEQUEL OF SORTS TO A MOVIE.

In the late ‘80s, writer Joss Whedon had an idea for a movie that would subvert the horror genre. “I had seen a lot of horror movies, which I love very much, with blond girls getting killed in dark alleys, and I just germinated this idea about how much I would like to see a blond girl go into a dark alley, get attacked by a monster and then kill it,” he said. “And that was sorta the genesis for the movie, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” The movie, penned by Whedon and directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui, hit theaters in 1992. It starred Kristy Swanson as Buffy, Donald Sutherland as her watcher Merrick, and Luke Perry as her love interest, Pike (David Arquette also starred as Pike’s best friend-turned-vampire Benny). But the film was different from what Whedon had originally intended. “My original script for the movie was kind of dark and scary and it was comedic, but the final product was much more a broad comedy,” he said.

A few years later, the rights holders approached Whedon about making a TV show out of his creation. He wasn’t sure it would work, but “I started to think about it and I came up with the notion of playing all sorts of horror movies in high school and making them metaphors for how frightening and horrible high school is,” he said. “With the show, I kinda wanted to get back to the roots of genuine horror, but with a lot of comedy and a lot of edge and a lot of self reflective sort of examination of horror. But at the same time, get genuinely creepy and hopefully genuinely moving.” And the TV version of Buffy was born.

2. KATIE HOLMES AND RYAN REYNOLDS COULD HAVE STARRED ON THE SHOW.

Could you imagine Katie Holmes as Buffy and Ryan Reynolds as Xander? According to a 2000 biography, before she was Dawson’s Creek’s Joey Potter, Holmes was offered the role of the slayer, but turned it down to go to high school. Reynolds refused the role of Buffy’s wisecracking sidekick. “I love that show and I loved Joss Whedon, the creator of the show, but my biggest concern was that I didn’t want to play a guy in high school,” Reynolds told The Star in 2008. “I had just come out of high school and it was f***ing awful.”

3. GILES WAS THE FIRST ROLE CAST.

According to casting director Marsha Shulman, “Anthony Stewart [Head] was the first person that got cast on the first day we started casting. He was just it.”

Many other actors who read for the part, Whedon said, made Giles too stuffy, but Head’s take was a little sexier. “Tony Head was one of the few people that we saw and instantly knew right away that nobody else was going to play that part,” Whedon said. “He embodied it perfectly.”

4. SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR AND CHARISMA CARPENTER SWAPPED ROLES.

Gellar auditioned for the role of Sunnydale High queen bee Cordelia Chase before eventually being cast as Buffy. “At the time, we were all trying to find our way to make the show something, its own thing apart from the film,” Schulman said in The Watchers Guide. “We didn’t think of Sarah as Buffy because we thought she was too smart and too grounded and not enough of a misfit in a sense, because Buffy was this outsider. How could Sarah be an outsider? She’s so lovely. So we brought her in as Cordelia, and she was fantastic as Cordelia. Then we went to the network, they knew that Sarah was a star from her previous work, and that she could be Buffy, and that we could do that Buffy.”

Carpenter, meanwhile, auditioned for Buffy before being cast as Cordelia. “I think that the way it turned out is the way it was meant to have turned out,” Carpenter told the BBC. “I’m extremely pleased that I wound up with the character that I have for a myriad of reasons. … I don’t know that I would have been ready for that kind of fame if I’d gotten Buffy. So, I think [Buffy] went to the right person.”

5. WILLOW WAS RECAST AFTER THE PILOT WAS SHOT.

Willow, science geek and Buffy’s best friend, was an exceptionally tough part to cast. “We had actually cast someone else in the pilot. It just didn’t work,” Shulman said. “When we got picked up, we always felt that we were going to start again and look for another Willow.”

“I was determined that we wouldn’t have the supermodel in horn rims that you usually see on a TV show,” Whedon said. “I wanted somebody who really had their own shy quirkiness. While the network and I were looking for people, Alyson Hannigan slipped under our radar. She came in and we didn’t really know that she was going to be the guy, and then when she read for the network we were just blown away. She brings so much light and so much tenderness to the role, it’s kind of extraordinary.”

6. DAVID BOREANAZ WAS DISCOVERED BY THE CASTING DIRECTOR’S FRIEND.

Whedon, the network, and the casting director saw a number of guys read for Buffy’s eventual boyfriend (and vampire!) Angel before David Boreanaz auditioned. “The breakdown said the most gorgeous, mysterious, fantastic, the most incredible man on the face of the earth,” Shulman said. “I think I saw every guy in town. It was the day before shooting, and a friend of mine and called me and said to me ‘You know, there’s this guy that lives on my street who walks his dog every day and I don’t know what he does but he has all the things you’re describing.’ And the minute he walked in the room, I wrote down on my notes: This is the guy.”

Still, despite the fact that Boreanaz gave “very good read,” Whedon wasn’t sold on him. “He wasn’t exactly my type,” he said. “I wasn’t sure we necessarily had the guy here until I asked the women in the room, who had turned into puddles the moment he walked in. I had to defer to them—they seemed to know better than me, and thank god I did, because David turned into a great star and a very solid actor.”

7. THE FIRST VERSION OF THE THEME SONG WAS A DUD.

Whedon wanted the credits sequence—which begins with “this scary organ and then devolves instantly into rock ‘n roll”—to spell out for viewers exactly what the show was about: “Here’s a girl who has no patience for a horror movie, who is not going to be the victim, is not going to be in the scary organ horror movie,” he said. “She’s going to bring her own youth and rocking attitude to it.”

Dissatisfied with an early version of the theme, Whedon opened it up in a contest of sorts to local indie bands. It was Hannigan who suggested Nerf Herder; the band ultimately wrote and recorded the show’s theme. “They created the show and were filming the first season and the people there … hired some fancy pants Hollywood guy to write the theme song and they didn’t like it; they wanted something more rocking, I guess,” Nerf Herder’s lead singer, Parry Gripp, said. “So they asked a bunch of local, small time bands who they could pay very little money to come up with some ideas and they liked our idea and they used it. And the rest is history!”

The band rerecorded the theme in the second or third season because the first recording was a hasty affair, and the song went off-tempo in the middle, Whedon said.

8. THE SHOW SHOT IN A WAREHOUSE—AND AT ACTUAL SCHOOLS.

In the beginning, Buffy didn’t have much of a budget, so instead of shooting on a soundstage, the crew used a huge warehouse in Santa Monica, California. “We were very much on a tight budget,” Whedon said. “This hall you’ll see a lot of in the first 12 episodes. It is the entire school. We only had the one hall, so we use it over and over again. It’s really kind of sad, actually.” The outside of the warehouse also doubled as the entrance to Sunnydale’s only club, The Bronze. “When we designed the club, we put the door to the club on the outside of the actual warehouse so that we could go in from the outside because that would give it real life and make it very realistic,” Whedon said. “And of course we did it just once, and then once more in the third season, because you have to wait until night to shoot, go in and out and light it, and it’s just enormously complicated.”

Torrance High School in Los Angeles subbed in for the exterior of fictional Sunnydale High. It’s a popular spot for film and TV; you might also recognize it from Beverly Hills, 90210, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, 90210, She’s All That, Not Another Teen Movie, and more. And when Buffy went to college, most of Sunnydale University was shot in the warehouse, but some parts of the first episode of the fourth season were shot at UCLA.

9. THERE WAS A REASON FOR THE VAMPIRES’ CREEPY FACES—AND THE “DUSTING.”

In the Buffy movie, the vampires looked like regular people with sharper teeth and paler skin. But for the show, Whedon wanted to increase the sense of paranoia by making the vampires resemble normal people until it’s time to feed—at which point, they transform into monsters. But there was another reason, too. “I didn’t think I really wanted to put a show on the air about a high school girl who was stabbing normal-looking people in the heart,” Whedon said. “I thought somehow that might send the wrong message, but when they are clearly monsters, it takes it to a level of fantasy that is safer.”

Getting into vamp mode—which required a prosthetic that fit from the forehead down to the bottom of the nose—took about an hour and 20 minutes. “It can be tedious,” David Boreanaz said in 1998, “and taking it off is the worst part, because you have to sit there and you just want to rip the damn thing off—but you can’t, because you’ll take a piece of your skin with you. It has to be removed very delicately. But the end result is definitely worth it.”

The film also had vampire bodies lay where they fell after they were staked. But Whedon had different ideas for the show. “It was a very conscious decision to have [the vampires] turn to dust, clothes and all, because I didn’t think it would be fun to have 15 minutes of let’s clean up the bodies after every episode,” he said. The show’s visual effects artists worked on and refined the technique over the seasons.

10. THE CREATORS DREW ON EXISTING VAMPIRE LORE FOR THE SHOW.

But they didn’t use everything. Vampires don’t fly on Buffy or turn into bats because the show didn’t have the money and Whedon thought it looked silly. Other elements of vampire lore, however, were used: Vampires don’t have reflections; they can’t enter a house unless they’re invited; they’re vulnerable to garlic, crosses, sunlight, fire, and holy water; and they can be killed by beheading or via a stake through the heart.

11. GELLAR HAD SOME PROBLEMS WITH THE DIALOGUE.

The show was famous for its “Buffyspeak,” which was partially inspired by California Valleygirl-isms and how Whedon and the other writers spoke. For Gellar, though, that dialogue sometimes was an issue. “Joss has his own sort of language that’s difficult for us mere mortals to understand,” she said in 1998. “I grew up in New York. We didn’t have Valley girls, and constantly, I’m asking him ‘What does this mean? I’m not quite sure.’ There’s a very funny story about [my audition] where the first line is ‘What’s the sitch?’ And there I go walking in, and my first ‘What does this mean?’ No idea it meant situation. Talk about blowing a job instantly.”

12. HERE’S WHERE YOU’VE SEEN SEASON ONE’S BIG VILLAIN BEFORE.

Underneath all of the Master’s vampy makeup is actor Mark Metcalf, who has appeared in Animal House (he played Doug Neidermeyer) and Seinfeld (he played The Maestro), among many other films and television shows. “Most of the guys we read came in and gave us villain villain villain in a very unimaginative way,” Whedon said. “Mark’s not that character, he’s just sly. He undercut all of the villainousness with real charm.”

13. THE CAST AND CREW HATED THE LIBRARY SCENES.

Head delivered much of the show’s expository dialogue in the library—and cast and crew alike came to dread those scenes. “He’s brought so much to all these really tough speeches, giving them life where they had very little because they’re full of so much information,” Whedon said. “When we finally blew up the school at the end of season three and were in the library for the last time, everybody breathed a great sigh of relief because these became the bane for us when we were filming, to go back into this space and talk yet again about what the peril was going to be.”

14. DARLA WAS SUPPOSED TO DIE IN THE SECOND EPISODE.

The vampire (played by Julie Benz) was supposed to expire at the end of “The Harvest” after Willow doused her with holy water, but Whedon kept her alive because he thought Buffy and Angel’s romance would be more interesting if it was a triangle; Darla, of course, was Angel’s sire. She was eventually killed in episode seven, but would continue to pop up in other episodes—and in the spin-off show, Angel—from time to time.

15. GELLAR AND BOREANAZ WOULD EAT GROSS STUFF BEFORE KISSING SCENES.

In a 2002 interview with The Independent, Gellar called love scenes “the unsexiest thing in the world.” What she and Boreanaz did beforehand couldn’t have made it any sexier. “[We] were the worst,” she said. “We would do horrible things to each other. Like eat tuna fish and pickle before we kissed. If he had to unbutton my shirt or trousers I would pin them or sew them together to make it as hard as I could. Once I even dropped ice cream on him.”

16. THE SHOW BUILT ITS OWN GRAVEYARD.

In the first season, Buffy shot in a graveyard in Hollywood. “It meant going out all night, until sunrise, a lot of times,” Whedon said. “That was back when we had the energy for that kind of thing.” Starting in the second season, they created their own graveyard in the warehouse’s parking lot. “It made our lives a whole lot easier, but it doesn’t give you the scope that you get from [the Hollywood graveyard],” Whedon said. “It’s a really beautiful place. Looks great.”

“We poured in kerb, back-filled it with dirt and planted grass and lots of trees and stuff and that’s our graveyard set,” production designer Carey Meyer told the BBC. “The majority of our cemetery stuff actually takes place in that little tiny parking lot. At night, with a couple of headstones in the background with all the trees and such, you can really cheat to make it look quite large.”

17. WHEDON HAD AN INTERESTING NICKNAME FOR GELLAR.

At a cast reunion in 2008, Whedon revealed—to Gellar’s surprise—an odd nickname for her, borne from the fact that she dealt with so much pain on screen. “David [Greenwalt] and I used to crow, when we realized what Sarah could do,” he said. “We used to call her Jimmy Stewart, because he was the greatest American in pain in the history of film.” Gellar laughed and said “I never knew that!”

18. AT LEAST TWO ACTORS PLAYED MORE THAN ONE VILLAIN.

Brian Thompson, who played vampire Luke in the first two episodes, returned in the second season to play The Judge. “Quite frankly, we were in a hurry,” Whedon said. “We already had his face cast and we knew he could put makeup on and give us a good performance.” Camden Toy, meanwhile, played a number of villains, including one of the Gentlemen in “Hush” (season four), a skin-eating demon called Gnarl in “Same Time, Same Place” (season seven), and Ubervamp Turok-Han (throughout season seven).

19. THE WRITERS HAD THEIR OWN TERM FOR PLOT-MOVING DEVICES.

It was coined by writer David Greenwalt. “A lot of this stuff is based on myth and horror movies, and a lot of it made up for our convenience,” Whedon says. “At one point, when we were trying to figure out exactly what Buffy would be trying to do [in the first episode], Greenwalt just shouted out ‘For God’s sake, don’t touch the phlebotnum in Jar C!’ We have no idea to this day what it was supposed to mean, but it became our word for the vague mystical thing—such as the master’s cork in the bottle theory—so phlebotnum is our constant on the show.”

20. WHEDON WROTE THE LARGELY DIALOGUE-FREE EPISODE “HUSH” TO CHALLENGE HIMSELF.

Season four’s tenth episode, “Hush,” features creepy villains called The Gentlemen, who come to Sunnydale and steal the residents’ voices … so that no one can scream when the monsters cut out their hearts. There are only 17 minutes of spoken dialogue in the 44 minute episode. Whedon wanted to do a largely silent episode because he felt like he was phoning it in. “I had fallen into the ‘people a-yakkin, I can sort of do this without really thinking about it’ style of directing, and I wanted to curtail that in myself,” he said. “On a practical level, the idea of doing an episode where everybody loses their voice presented itself as a great big challenge because I knew that I would literally have to tell the story only visually, and that would mean that I couldn’t fall back on tricks. I wanted to do something harder.” Though Whedon was terrified that he wouldn’t be able to pull off the episode, it was well received by critics, and is a favorite of fans and the series’ stars alike.

21. THE GENTLEMEN WERE INSPIRED BY A DREAM.

A version of Buffy’s creepiest villains first appeared in a dream of Whedon’s; they floated toward him while he was in bed. “What I was going for was very specifically a very Victorian kind of feel, because that to me is very creepy and fairytale-like,” Whedon said. He created a drawing, which he delivered to makeup supervisor Todd McIntosh and John Vulich at Optic Nerve, the special effects house that created the prosthetics for the show. “I was drawing on everything that had ever frightened me, including the fellow from my dream, Nosferatu, pinhead, Mr. Burns—anything that gave that creepy feel,” Whedon said. “We get into a lot of reptilian monsters and things that look kind of like aliens, and what I wanted from these guys was, very specifically, fairy tales. I wanted guys who would remind people of what would they were scared of when they were children.”

Whedon’s ultimate hope was that kids of a certain generation would be as traumatized by the Gentlemen as he was by the Zuni Doll from Trilogy of Terror. The team cast mimes and actors who had done creature work—like Doug Jones—to play the Gentlemen.

22. THE HARDEST CHARACTER FOR WHEDON TO KILL OFF WAS BUFFY’S MOM.

One of Buffy‘s most critically acclaimed episodes is season five’s “The Body,” in which the slayer’s mom, played by Kristine Sutherland, dies of natural causes. Whedon said in a 2012 Reddit AMA that Joyce was the toughest character for him to kill. He did the episode, he said in DVD commentary, because “I wanted to show not the meaning or catharsis or the beauty of life or any of the things that are often associated with loss, or even extreme grief, which we do get in the episode. But what I did want to capture was the extreme physicality, the almost boredom of the very first few hours. I wanted to be very specific about what it felt like the moment you discover you’ve lost someone. And so what appears to many people as a formal exercise—no music, scenes that take up almost the entire act, if not the entire act, without end—is all done for a very specific purpose, which is to put you in that moment of dumbfounded shock, that airlessness of losing somebody.”

The moments after Buffy discovers her mother dead on the couch were done in a single take, which Whedon had Gellar perform seven times (the actress has called the episode one of her favorites). “The cameraman had the camera on his shoulder the whole time and was running around,” Whedon said. “It wasn’t a steadicam—he had no harness because I wanted that urgency of handheld, that you’re in the moment of it. It’s an extraordinary piece of acting from Sarah … to go from the extremity of first finding her, the helplessness of not knowing what to do. All the things that Sarah had to go through in this, she had to go through many, many times. And every take was extraordinary.”

23. ONE SHOT IN “THE BODY” WAS INSPIRED BY DIRECTOR PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON.

One shot in “The Body” follows the coroner after he examines Joyce’s body out to where Buffy waits with her friends in another single take. “I am a huge Paul Thomas Anderson fan,” Whedon said, “and I had been watching Magnolia excessively before I shot this. So these endless tracking shots probably owe something to that. What can I say, I’m a hack. But what I was really trying to get at here was, again, the reality of the space. I wanted to see Joyce very clearly, and then I wanted to walk all the way over to where Buffy was, where her loved ones were, so that you understood she was down the hall, she was really there. We weren’t on a different set.” Whedon gave kudos to production designer Carey Meyer for building sets that would let him get those long takes.

24. GELLAR KNEW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IN SEASON FIVE WELL IN ADVANCE.

Several moments in the final episode of season three foreshadowed two major events in season five: Namely, that Buffy would get a sister (Dawn, played by Michelle Trachtenberg) and that the slayer would die at the end of season five. “I’ve actually known the [plot of the] entire last season for about three years,” she told the BBC. “There was a dream sequence that Buffy had with Faith. Faith had a riddle, and it was something like ‘Little Miss Muffet, sitting on her tuffet,’ counting down from whatever the numbers were, and I went to Joss to ask what it meant. That’s when he explained to me that I was going to have a sister, that Dawn, the character of Dawn, would be coming on the show. I think that’s exactly when I became aware also of what the future plans were.”

Why manufacture a sister out of thin air? “Part of the mission statement was, let’s have a really important, intense emotional relationship for Buffy that is not a boyfriend,” he told Salon. “Because let’s not have her be defined by her boyfriend every time out of the bat. So, Season 5, she’s as intense as she was in Season 2 with Angelus, but it’s about her sister. To me that was really beautiful.”

25. SEASON SIX WAS THE TOUGHEST FOR GELLAR.

After the fifth season, Buffy moved from the WB to UPN and resurrected its heroine for the sixth season—which was darker in tone (and more controversial) than any season before it. “It was definitely tough for me,” Gellar said at a Paley Center event in 2008. “It’s so hard to separate myself from her, so it was tough for me to see these situations and say ‘But Buffy wouldn’t do this.’ … I know Joss and Marti both had to talk me off a ledge a couple of times because it just felt so far removed from me at the time, and maybe that was the point. Maybe I was struggling the same way she was struggling to find out who she was. It just felt so foreign to me. … We love her, and I think it was hard for all of us to watch her suffer. … It was a tough time. And I think that’s what came through in the end, and that was great. When Buffy herself resurfaced, we sort of found our voice again.”

26. WRITER/PRODUCER MARTI NOXON HAS A CAMEO.

She’s the lady with the parking ticket in “Once More, With Feeling.”

27. GELLAR CALLED THE MUSICAL EPISODE “DAUNTING.”

“I’m a perfectionist, I come from a long line of lots of preparation, and certainly that was not the case with this,” she said. “If I had my druthers, we would have gotten it about two years ago and been in classes for a year and a half, maybe six weeks of rehearsals? Instead of four days.” At a Paley Center event in 2008, Gellar admitted to “begging” to be let out of it. “I begged for Buffy the rat,” she said. “I kept thinking, ‘Bring the rat back.’”

28. STONE TEMPLE PILOTS’ LEAD SINGER WAS A FAN.

Scott Weiland reportedly became a fan while watching the show in prison. Gellar, who later appeared in the band’s music video for “Sour Girl,” had a theory about why the show was so popular among prison inmates: “Hot chicks doing battle. It’s like acceptable porn.”

29. GELLAR KNEW THE SHOW WAS OVER BEFORE THE REST OF THE CAST.

In the March 7, 2003 Entertainment Weekly cover story, Gellar announced that Buffy was coming to an end after seven seasons. “I love this job, I love the fans,” she said. “I love telling the stories we tell. This isn’t about leaving for a career in movies, or in theater—it’s more of a personal decision. I need a rest. Teachers get sabbaticals. Actors don’t.” The rest of the cast found out the day the story hit stands. “I was devastated,” Hannigan said in 2013. “I was just very shocked.”

30. BUFFY’S ADVENTURES CONTINUE IN COMIC BOOKS.

A number of writers who worked on the TV show have also worked on the comics. Even James Marsters, who played vampire Spike on the show, wrote a comic about his character. “I was at the San Diego Comic Con and I was describing an idea that had been kicking around my head for a long time to [artist] George Jeanty, who draws a lot of the Buffy comic books,” Marsters told io9. “And he thought that it was a fabulous idea and that I should definitely get in touch with [Dark Horse editor] Scott Allie. He made the phone call and then I pitched it to Scott over the phone and Scott liked it a lot. It’s a story that was going to try to be made into a Spike movie years and years ago.”

31. THERE WAS TALK OF AN ANIMATED SERIES.

Whedon and the show’s other writers produced seven scripts for an animated Buffy series, which would have taken place during the show’s first three seasons and been voiced by the cast. Sadly, no one wanted the show. “They were really fun to write,” Whedon said. “We could not sell the show. We could not sell an animated Buffy, which I still find incomprehensible.”

32. THE SHOW SPAWNED ACADEMIC COURSES…

A number of colleges and universities offer courses on the show; they’re called “Buffy Studies.” People have written books and held conferences dedicated to discussing the themes of the show and presenting papers on it. According to the Los Angeles Times, attendees at a 2004 Buffy conference “were presenting 190 papers on topics ranging from ‘slayer slang’ to ‘postmodern reflections on the culture of consumption’ to ‘Buffy and the new American Buddhism.’ There was even a self-conscious talk by David Lavery, an English professor at Middle Tennessee State University, on Buffy studies ‘as an academic cult.'”

An informal study conducted by Slate in 2012 showed that, when it comes to pop culture in academia, Buffy is number one: “More than twice as many papers, essays, and books have been devoted to the vampire drama than any of our other choices—so many that we stopped counting when we hit 200.”

33. … AND A BOOK OF SLANG.

Publisher’s Weekly called Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon “a strange marriage of a fan guide and a linguistics textbook.” Said The Kansas City Star: “If you’re curious about the word ‘ubersuck,’ or just want to remember which episode you first heard it in, this is the place to look. As Buffy would say, it is not uncool.”

BONUS: RARE BEHIND-THE-SCENES FOOTAGE

During the second season, Pruitt filmed behind-the-scenes footage of the cast goofing off and getting into makeup, the stunt crew at work, and some of the show’s most iconic sequences. You can watch it above.

Additional sources: DVD commentary; The Watcher’s Guide.

All images courtesy of Getty Images unless otherwise noted.

This piece originally ran in 2014.

#33 #Buffy #facts #Fun #Slayer #Vampire #Facts

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heartland2036 · 7 years

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Sense8 #renewSense8 #Sense8 #BringBackSense8

Contacting Celebrities per Reddit (long, but important!) r/Sense8 Contacting Influencers and Celebrities, Phase II u/newthrooawayyy Dear Senates, Thank you so much for the overwhelming response to Phase I and to /u/kanda_92, /u/StariNight69, /u/CaptainGreezy, /u/mjaybe, /u/Kaffeebohnson, /u/simkaspruce, /u/rangerpax, and /u/cameron_quickdraw for adding to the list and for their contributions to organization. Thank you to /u/nosebleed22, /u/PopeJP22, /u/jesstheblessedmess, /u/MissUrchin, /u/NynaAndromeda, /u/kacypup, /u/MjSpyt777, /u/lydiasmartin, /u/kronch, /u/edwintou, /u/Mataxor, /u/404GravitasNotFound, /u/rangerpax, /u/WildRaphy, /u/jayyyemmm, /u/smpower8, /u/vajochamp, /u/mpc9, and /u/klutzkoala for contributing to the list and expressing support. If I accidentally missed anybody, know that you are also appreciated! The task at hand right now is how to organize our Twitter outreach to influencers. As a starting point, we may: Decide on a day to start the Tweet campaign.Increase our numbers by recruiting on other social media platforms dedicated to Sense8.Coordinate days to tweet at specific celebrities. We should make those who have connections to the Wachowskis and/or have already tweeted support for Sense8 in the past our biggest priority, but please post your own suggestions as well and let the Cluster decide. The list is reprinted below, and as the evening and next day goes on, I will be adding dates next to the names. Edit 1: Sensates, I am setting the tentative start date for 6/8. Each day will have one person from the Wachowski/JMS list and one person from the LGBT-friendly list from Phase I. This is to express our wish that any show revival be directed by the original creators only in order to preserve its original social and artistic vision. Please feel free to comment! From /u/StariNight69's suggestion, please repost this thread and the one before it throughout the interwebs to increase our numbers. Again, thank you so very much for all the interest! Feel free to suggest more names as well, although since we have a long list already, these will be added into the schedule for the following thirty days. ------------------------------------------------Note: Those who don't have an official page on Twitter (does not tweet) may have Twitter fanpages or other social media. Feel free to add those in as well. Sense8 Pages Twitter: @Sense8Tumblr: sense8.tumblr.comFacebook: @Sense8TV Sense8 Main Cast Miguel Angel-Silvestre: @ma_silvestreDoona Bae: (does not tweet)Jamie Clayton: @MsJamieClaytonTina Desai: @tinadesai07Tuppence Middleton: @TuppenceToby Onwumere: @toby_onwumereMax Riemelt: @MaxRiemeltBrian J. Smith: @BrianJacobSmith Twitter Campaign Calendar (Preliminary) Thank you for the suggestion, /u/simkaspruce. First item: Actors and actresses who worked with the Wachowskis or J. Michael Straczynski Second item: LGBT-friendly influencers 6/8: Tom Hanks: @TomHanks, Laverne Cox: @Lavernecox 6/9: Keanu Reeves: @keanureeves, Marc Jacobs: @themarcjacobs 6/10: Carrie-Anne Moss: @annapurnaliving, Jean-Claude Van Damme: @RealJeanClaude 6/11: Channing Tatum: @channingtatum, Melissa Etheridge: @metheridge 6/12: Halle Berry: @halleberry, Lady Gaga: @ladygaga 6/13: Chris Hemsworth: @chrishemsworth, Ellen Degeneres: @TheEllenShow 6/14: Bruce Boxleitner: @boxleitnerbruce, Kirk Hammett: @kirkhammett 6/15: Naomie Harris: @NaomieHarris, Troy Sivan: @troysivan 6/16: Christina Ricci: @ChristinaRicci, Matt Bomer: @mattbomer 6/17: Roger Allam: @All_Allam, Wentworth Miller: @WenthworthM 6/18: Hugo Weaving: (does not tweet), JK Rowling: @jk_rowling 6/19: Stephen Fry: @stephenfry, Nyle DiMarco: @NyleDiMarco 6/20: RAIN: @29rain, Andy Cohen: @Andy 6/21: Keith David: @ImKeithDavid, RuPaul: @rupaul 6/22: Jim Broadbent: (does not tweet), Ian McKellan: @IanMcKellan 6/23: Hugh Grant: @hackedoffhugh, Misha Collins: @mishacollins 6/24: Laurence Fishburne: (does not tweet), Cheyenne Jackson: @cheyennejackson 6/25: Monica Bellucci: (does not tweet), Andy Dick: @andydick 6/26: Eddie Redmayne: (does not tweet), George Takei: @GeorgeTakei 6/27: Sean Bean: (does not tweet), Lauren Jauregui: @LaurenJauregui 6/28: , Joss Whedon: @joss 6/29: ,Tyler Oakley: @tyleroakley 19 Comments 62 Best Write a comment 404GravitasNotFound • 11h Thank you for making this thread!! If this works, this could be a big pain in the butt for Netflix, and, it'll work in true Sense8 style--by leveraging social connections! 10 newthrooawayyy • 9h Thanks! :) 2 LordAnubis10 • 8h Gotta exploit us virts! 2 AnnaAvery • 10h I think adding more LGBT friendly Youtubers would be great, they are communicating with the target audience of the show. I first watched this show because the diversity and cultural aspects seemed amazing, but stayed for the awesome sensates and plot! Here's some good Youtubers that may be good to reach out to: Bria and Chrissy: @BriaAndChrissy Gay Women Channel: @GayWomenChannel , @AgeDilonardo , @Srotella Stephanie Frosch: @ElloSteph Hart Beat: @iHartBeat @IISuperwomanII Hope this helps! 6 newthrooawayyy • 9h It definitely does! Thanks! 2 rangerpax • 9h This article compares Sense8 with Star Trek in terms of diversity and breaking down barriers (it was the first white/black kiss on television iirc). This could help with tweets to George Takei @GeorgeTakei (and could open up other Star Trek avenues as well!) 5 newthrooawayyy • 9h I'll save this post for when we tweet at him and I'll mention it in the OP later. Thank you! 3 kanda_92 • 12h Nice schedule, P.S. I noticed a lot of people are already tweeting Ellen & Gaga. 5 newthrooawayyy • 11h Great stuff! Hopefully if they retweet, it will encourage their own influencer friends to retweet in kind! 1 jayellteee • 10h Might I suggest adding Anthony Rapp (@albinokid) to the list? He's an openly gay Broadway actor (known best for the original cast and film adaptation of RENT) and will be playing a gay scientist in the new Star Trek series on CBS! I've already tweeted him about Sense8 and he said he hasn't seen the show but applauds its diversity. Hopefully he could retweet some stuff. 3 newthrooawayyy • 9h Great suggestion! Let's add him in! 1 Dlexx • 10h You should add Linda Perry@RealLindaPerry to that list. With her song playing such an important role in the series. Maybe add her wife Sara Gilbert @THEsaragilbert, too. 2 newthrooawayyy • 9h Yes, let's do that! 1 rangerpax • 9h Another thought: do check the time of day they tend to post/retweet. Tweeting during those times may yield better results... 2 newthrooawayyy • 9h Very valuable suggestion! 1 cm880 • 9h Hi guys! This sounds fantastic and thanks so much for compiling. I'll share this with our Twitter crew. Is there a specific hashtag we want to include when we Tweet them? 1 newthrooawayyy • 9h BringBackSense8 1 cm880 • 9h Got it. I'll pass along! 1 PiezStivi • 5h https://twitter.com/sense8/status/865582690786983939 looks that actors are really enjoining Sense8, they will probably help. 1

#sense8

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letterboxd · 7 years

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Obsessive.

We were reading a recent Den of Geek story that contemplated whether you have to see a film twice for it to work, when the writer posed an interesting question:

“The top rated film of all time at the IMDb, The Shawshank Redemption, boasts nearly a million people who rank it as a ten out of ten movie. But also, there are 30,000 who rate it 1/10, and 4,528 who’d score it a 4/10. What IMDb doesn’t measure, interestingly, is how many times people have watched a certain movie. That’s the sub-division of scoring I’d be fascinated to see. What’s the highest rated movie of all time, when the criteria is you must have seen it five times or more? I’d still not bet against The Shawshank Redemption, personally.”

Unlike IMDb, we do let you to record how many times you’ve watched a film. (We can also help you import your IMDb data to Letterboxd, but that’s a tale for another day.)

So using Simon Brew’s question—“What’s the highest rated movie of all time, when the criteria is you must have seen it five times or more?”—we got our stats guy to punch the numbers on a category we’ll call “The Highest-Rated Obsessively Rewatched Club”.

First, we found all films that had been watched five or more times by at least 25 different members. As we allow members to cast a rating each time they log a film, we were able to compute an average rating for each “obsessive” member for every film in our list, and from there we calculated a single average rating for each film. Then we ordered by the highest average.

Still with us? Good. Here it is then: Letterboxd’s 100 Highest Rated, Most Obsessively Rewatched Films. Occupying the top ten spots, in order: Her, La La Land, Back to the Future, The Thing, Carol, Inception, The Empire Strikes Back, Jaws, Alien and It’s a Wonderful Life. And here is the full list.

Lots to see here:

No Shawshank (sorry Frank Darabont). It didn’t even show up when we dropped the minimum thresholds a little.

No Godfathers. No Francis Ford Coppola in the top 100, actually.

Fittingly, The Thing made the top five. It was specifically called out in the Den of Geek story: “Where would John Carpenter’s The Thing be, a movie bashed on its original release, without its army of advocates, and the people who went back to try again?”

Only one film with a female director (Frozen’s Jennifer Lee). Come on people, get your #52FilmsbyWomen cranking.

Let’s be frank: there’s not a lot of intersectionality going on anywhere on this list. If it weren’t for Māori What We Do in the Shadows directors Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, and Mexican faves Cuarón and Iñárritu, we’d call this whole thing a whitewash. Anyone we missed?

No subtitled/foreign-language films. We thought something like Amelie might have made an appearance here.

Like attracts like, it seems. Obsessive movie fans Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg made the Top 100 with all three of the films in their Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World’s End). Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs The World made it, too.

A strong helping of Christmas movies, no doubt helped by annual replays on broadcast television: Die Hard, Elf, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, The Muppet Christmas Carol, The Nightmare Before Christmas, A Christmas Story, It’s a Wonderful Life, Home Alone and Love, Actually.

Likewise, it’s no surprise that Groundhog Day appears in the list, helped by annual replays on the small screen.

Typically, the big action/fantasy series get a look-in: LOTR/Hobbit, Harry Potter, Star Wars… and superheroes, of course, most notably Batman, but also a smattering of Avengers and X-Men.

But nice also to see some smaller-budget films on the list: What We Do in the Shadows, Frances Ha, Whiplash, The Guest and It Follows.

Don Hertzfeldt’s award-winning World of Tomorrow was the only short film to make the list and how lovely is that?

It’s worth noting the difference between seasonal and perennial favorites. Will La La Land be there in ten years’ time? Or Her or Carol for that matter?

(At this point, we checked in with Letterboxd’s resident Carol obsessive for his reaction to the impressive fifth placing of Todd Haynes’ modern classic. “Carol was robbed,” came the immediate, devastated reply from IndieWire’s David Ehrlich.)

Finally, we totted up the directors who inspired the most obsessive viewing:

Christopher Nolan (5 films)

Quentin Tarantino (4 films)

Peter Jackson (4 films)

Edgar Wright (4 films)

Ridley Scott (3 films)

J.J. Abrams (3 films)

Paul Thomas Anderson (3 films)

David Fincher (3 films)

John Carpenter (2 films)

Steven Spielberg (2 films)

Joel Coen (2 films)

Alfonso Cuarón (2 films)

Wes Anderson (2 films)

Richard Linklater (2 films)

Joss Whedon (2 films)

Damien Chazelle (2 films)

Gareth Edwards (2 films)

Nerd note: a few of these director rankings would change if we included writing and producing credits (George Lucas would appear, Spielberg would be higher, that sort of thing). If you notice any other patterns, please share in the comments of the list. We’d love to hear from you.

*All stats are as of March 2017, and this blog post relates to the results from this period. We may revisit in the future to see how the ranking of seasonal favorites is affected by time and newer releases.

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ethanalter · 7 years

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‘Farscape’ Star Claudia Black Revisits Aeryn Sun’s On- and Off-Screen Feminist Journey

Claudia Black and Ben Browder as Aeryn Sun and John Crichton in ‘Farscape’ (Credit: Everett Collection)

Leading up to the 20th anniversary of the March 10, 1997 premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Yahoo TV is celebrating “Why Genre Shows Matter” and the history of how these shows have tackled universal themes (e.g. how much high school sucks) and broader social issues.

Perhaps because they seek to imagine the world that’s possible rather than the world that is, genre shows have a long tradition of striving to expand the horizons of what’s possible for women on television. Within the realm of space operas alone, there’s a direct line that connects Lieutenant Uhura’s prominent perch amongst the Enterprise‘s largely male bridge crew on the original Star Trek to The Expanse‘s fiercely independent engineer, Naomi Nagata. And each point along this continuum helps inform the next: commanding officers like Babylon 5‘s Susan Ivanova and Voyager‘s Kathryn Janeway are linked by a devotion to duty, if not necessarily temperament, while Killjoys‘ scrappy bounty hunter, Yala, could have been a student of Firefly‘s highly-skilled soldier, Zoë Washburne. On this International Women’s Day, we celebrate the accomplishments of one such influential intergalactic heroine.

Her name is Aeryn. Officer Aeryn Sun if we’re being formal, one of the interstellar outlaws at the center of Farscape, the wildly ambitious Australian/American space serial that ran from 1999 to 2003 on the Sci-Fi Channel. Bred from birth to be a loyal Sebacean soldier in the Peacekeeper army that patrols her section of the galaxy, Officer Sun switches careers after inadvertently ending up aboard a living spaceship named Moya that’s occupied by a motley crew of jailbreakers. These convicts-turned-comrades include towering warrior Ka D’Argo, blue-hued priestess Zhaan, flatulent deposed despot Rygel XVI, and John Crichton, an Earth-born astronaut who is very, very far from home. Created by Rockne S. O’Bannon and produced by The Jim Henson Company, Farscape enjoyed a bumpy four-season stateside run that ended prematurely when the network declined to fund a fifth and final year. (Sci-Fi later aired, but didn’t finance, a wrap-up miniseries, Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, in 2004.)

The cast of ‘Farscape’ (Credit: Everett Collection)

One of the joys of Farscape is that its defining house style is the lack of a defining house style. Episodes can range from standalone homages to body-switching comedies and vintage Loony Tunes cartoons to densely plotted multi-part stories that don’t conclude with conventionally happy endings. The primary constant amidst this narrative and tonal juggling is the turbulent love story between Aeryn Sun and John Crichton. Revisited today, Farscape stands as something of a bridge between eras of space opera, linking the last wave of episodic space adventures like Star Trek: Voyager and Stargate: SG-1 to the intensely emotional serialized narratives that later drove Battlestar Galactica and its ilk. Aeryn is both a traditional and transformational figure as well; raised to be an impersonal enforcer in the Imperial Stormtrooper mold, she comes to live out a promise that John makes to her in the very first episode: “You can be more.”

“Oh, I’ve got chills down my arm,” says Aeryn’s alter ego, Claudia Black, as she reflects on the character and those prophetic words nearly two decades later. “Her evolution as an individual takes off in an extraordinary way [after that].” Over the course of Yahoo TV’s hour-long conversation with the Australian actress, it’s clear that she does regard Aeryn as an individual unto herself, one who took on a life that sometimes superseded the actress’s own. “I was always happy to hand the charactbuer off,” Black says. “I would say [to the producers], ‘If I’m going in the wrong direction then please find someone to serve Aeryn, please. Because she deserves to have the full love of a person who can give you what you need.’ She was honestly such a privilege to play, and I never abused that privilege.”

And Black very nearly didn’t get that privilege. The role had already been cast when she first auditioned for Farscape, but the creative team encouraged her to read for Aeryn anyway. That reading later led to a screen test opposite Tennessee-born Ben Browder, who would be playing John Crichton. (Interestingly, Browder’s casting is, in part, what opened the door to Black inheriting the role from the English actress who had originally been chosen as Aeryn. “Because of the Australian co-production agreement, if they brought in a lead actor from America, the second lead had to be Australian,” Black explains. “So thank god for our union!”) Immediately recognizing the crackling onscreen chemistry between them, Browder pushed hard for her to land the role over network skepticism. “I was a controversial choice for sure,” Black says now. “I was just lucky in the end.”

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Whatever the circumstances of how she got the role, Black climbed aboard Moya with strong ideas about how to play Aeryn. Superficially, the character is part of the wave of warrior women that swept through genre shows in the ’90s and early ’00s, whose ranks included Xena, Buffy, and even Cleo of Cleopatra 2525 fame. But as conceived by O’Bannon and carried forward by executive producer David Kemper, who became a driving creative force behind the show, Aeryn cuts against that archetype as well. Unlike Xena, she doesn’t necessarily relish battle; it’s something that’s been programmed into her. (Although, as Aeryn memorably remarks in The Peacekeeper Wars: “Shooting makes me feel better!“) She also reverses the arc traversed by Buffy and Cleo, which begins with them in places of perceived weakness — as a cheerleader and exotic dancer, respectively — and leads towards empowerment.

Related: ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ 20th Anniversary: Joss Whedon Looks Back — And Forward

Because of her militaristic upbringing, Aeryn starts from a place of fierce strength. Her journey over the lifespan of the show, then, becomes about softening what Black describes as Aeryn’s “jagged edges” without surrendering her agency. “I’ve always loved science fiction because of the way it affords us an opportunity to look at humanity from an outsider’s perspective,” Black says. “And Aeryn really gets to experience it firsthand the best way that humans can, which is through love, in all of its forms. When I look at humanity, and my own life, we have to break before we can grow. That’s really what happened with Aeryn; she became stronger with softer edges.” (For the record, Aeryn may start out as a superior fighter to Buffy, but Black says that Sarah Michelle Gellar would easily mop the floor with her in real life. “Sarah has a black belt in karate, and I have two left feet! I always felt like a bit of an imposter [as Aeryn] just on the physical front. If I could push the reset button, I’d go back and get good at some form of martial art.”)

But that stronger-to-softer arc is also more treacherous to navigate than a traditional empowerment story, flirting, as it does, with the fanboy-friendly stereotype of the buttoned-up ice queen whose resolve (and inhibitions) melt when love, generally in the form of a strapping male hero, comes her way. The risk of falling headlong into that tired trope is something Farscape had to deal with throughout its run, especially as the core of the show was always the romance between John and Aeryn.

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And while that romance takes a number of unexpected twists and turns — most boldly in a Season 3 storyline that saw Aeryn committing herself fully to a cloned version of Crichton, only to see him die and then have to re-learn how to love the original John — it ultimately culminates with two staples of a standard love story: a marriage proposal and a pregnancy. “It seemed pretty clear to me that Rockne’s intention in the pilot was that this was going to be a love story for the ages,” Black says. Not only that, but it was a love story penned by a largely male writing staff who had their own opinions about how to depict Aeryn’s gradual acceptance of Crichton’s love that sometimes ran counter to Black’s feelings. “I recall moments where they wanted me to be more vulnerable with Aeryn, and I didn’t want to be because I didn’t think it was time and I didn’t think she was ready,” she says. “But it wasn’t my place to say.”

Nevertheless, she persistently found ways to make her voice heard, whether it was by talking one-on-one with specific writers or her co-star, who was equally eager to avoid certain genre show clichés. Black recalls one instance early on in the show’s run when Browder actively pushed back against Sci-Fi’s directive that John Crichton demonstrate the same sex drive as James T. Kirk. “They wanted Crichton to have an alien girl of the week. Ben put his foot down and said, ‘No, he’s not that kind of guy. This isn’t the story I want to tell.’ And on my side I was saying, ‘Yeah, what does that say about Aeryn if she’s going to fall in love with a guy [like that]?’ We wanted to investigate and have them experience the more positive aspects of attraction, as well as what’s worth fighting for and what’s worth dying for,” she says. “Maybe the show would have continued longer if we’d been able to please the network! They know what they’re going to need in order to keep [viewers] interested and tuning in. But we’re very proud of what we managed to make regardless, because of those choices.”

The ongoing battle that Black personally waged throughout Farscape‘s run was ensuring that Aeryn maintained control over her own body. In the genre shows of her era, the female leads were stronger and savvier than ever, and that translated into fashion choices that expressed their own body confidence and sexuality. Xena rode into battle in a heaving breastplate, while Buffy fought vampires in halter tops and Relic Hunter‘s Sydney Fox always donned a tight tank top before exploring some ancient tomb. But flashing cleavage, leg, and midriff also made those characters desirable pin-ups for the male audience courted by networks and advertisers. (Farscape added its own version of a pin-up type midway through the first season in the form of Chiana, a grey-skinned con artist with a plunging neckline and a voracious sexual appetite.)

But those fashions didn’t make sense for a soldier fighting in an army where men and women’s bodies were interchangeable. In fact, Black remembers reading a very specific direction to the makeup department in the production notes for the pilot. “When I take my Peacekeeper helmet off [for the first time], the note read in big print, ‘She looks masculine.’ They thickened my eyebrows — which are already thick! — and shaded my face in very minimal makeup. All of the on-set gallery images of me in the first season are with that very masculine makeup.”

Aeryin in her ‘masculine’ Season 1 appearance (Credit: Everett Collection)

By Season 2, though, Aeryn’s appearance underwent a noticeable change; her hair got longer and straighter, and her Peacekeeper uniform gave way to outfits that walked a line between practical and revealing. Black, who describes herself as a feminist, agreed to these cosmetic changes as she felt they were part of a “natural progression” for Aeryn. “I was honoring where she had come from at the same time having to find a way to let her grow into whatever it is she was going to become,” she says. (This clip from Farscape‘s aforementioned Looney Tunes-inspired episode, “Revenging Angel,” neatly summarizes — and satirizes — the female body types commonly featured on genre shows that Aeryn deliberately defies.)

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Already objectively beautiful, Aeryn’s sexuality continued to emerge as she grew into her new self. Even so, Black could sense it wasn’t emerging quickly enough to satisfy certain expectations. “I felt that I was being pushed to show more flesh than was necessary,” she admits, pointing to one incident in the show’s fourth season where it was written into the script that Aeryn would sit poolside in a bikini. “I just said, ‘I will get in a bikini for you if it makes sense, but this woman’s world is falling apart.’ It was the last thing I thought Aeryn would do [in that moment]. It felt really frivolous and superficial to me.” (Black had already donned a bikini to play pregnant Aeryn in a hallucinatory scene in the Season 4 premiere. “They not only had me in a bikini, but they gave me a pregnant belly as well, which is really hard to pull off and make it look naturalistic,” she says.)

Black remembers shooting down an even more egregious bit of flesh-flashing in an earlier episode. As an international production, Farscape frequently shot extra scenes for certain ad-free European markets that would fill the time normally allotted for commercials. The cast referred to these filler sequences as “Euro scenes,” and they rarely involved big story or character beats. According to Black, this particular episode dispatched D’Argo and Aeryn on a planetside mission, and the writers cobbled together a Euro scene that she describes as “absurd.” “They said, ‘Let’s have a scene where we cut to them by a lake, and Aeryn turns and sees a bunch of soldiers across the lake. Aeryn takes off her clothes, swims across the lake, and fights these soldiers completely naked, then comes back to D’Argo and off they go.'”

In later seasons, Aeryn naturally progressed towards more revealing fashion choices (Credit: Everett Collection)

“There were so many things about it that were so bizarre,” she continues. “I said, ‘You know what, please explain this to me, how this honestly can fit in.’ In the end, they just said, ‘All right, fine — we won’t do it.’ That’s what I felt I was having to haggle for a lot of the time: my right to keep my clothes on until it was appropriate. I’ve always felt as an actor — and I’m sure other females have felt like this as well — that when you sign on the dotted line and enter the business that somehow you’ve given your body away as a piece of property, and you spend the rest of your career haggling for pieces of it back.” And the actress credits Browder with backing her up in her fight for Aeryn to be in full control of her own femininity and, by extension, her destiny. “Aeryn is really as feminist as I am, but she’s nothing without Crichton, which is an interesting statement to make,” she says. “So as much as we praise Aeryn, we must give full credit to Crichton and to Ben for shaping him the way that he did. It’s the space that he gives her. He’s such an exquisite champion of her growth and development, that it becomes possible for her to grow to her full size.”

In the 13 years since the concluding Peacekeeper Wars miniseries, rumors have occasionally flown about Farscape‘s return. At one point, there was talk of a webisode series following John and Aeryn’s child, D’Ago Sun-Crichton, but funding never came to fruition. (The show did continue in comic book form for a time, but publication ceased circa 2011.) Black, whose recent credits include stints on The CW genre shows Containment and The Originals, has no updates on any future revivals, and jokes that if Aeryn and Crichton ever do return, they’ll be “tired, ornery, and not really wanting another battle.”

Claudia Black as Dahlia on ‘The Originals’ (Credit: Annette Brown/The CW)

In a way, though, Aeryn’s larger battle has already been won. One of the breakout characters on Battlestar Galactica — which premiered in December 2003, nine months after Farscape‘s series finale — was Kara “Starbuck” Thrace, who displays some of the same steely spine, and jagged edges, of Officer Sun. And today’s genre TV landscape is populated with women who, consciously or not, reflect Aeryn’s assertiveness, independence, and refusal to conform to societal (or genre) norms of appearance or attitude, whether it’s Orphan Black‘s Helena, Sense8‘s Nomi, or Jessica Jones.

Related: ‘Battlestar Galactica’ EP David Eick Revisits 5 Episodes That Remain Relevant

For this Scaper, she lives on off-screen as well. When my wife and I learned that we’d be having a daughter, we thought about all the things we wanted for her life. To know that she, and she alone, is in control of her body. To be strong in the face of injustice. To be confident in her own power. And to know that when she chooses to give her heart to another person, that person will be her champion, and give her the space to grow to her full size. And so we picked a name that, for us, would embody all of our hopes and dreams for the individual she’s becoming with each passing year.

Her name is Aeryn.

Farscape: The Complete Series is available on Blu-ray.

Read more from Yahoo TV’s “Why Genre Shows Matter”: ‘Battlestar Galactica,’ ‘Buffy,’ and Other Series That Genre Show Producers Believe Deserved More Emmy Love ‘Luke Cage’ Showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker on Embracing Exploitation Superheroes, Spells, and Sexual Abuse: A Conversation With Melissa Rosenberg and Sera Gamble, EPs of ‘Jessica Jones’ and ‘The Magicians’

#Ben Browder #_revsp:wp.yahoo.tv.us #_uuid:51ad5995-91f1-347e-a801-b7cafdeb9f25 #Farscape #Buffy the Vampire Slayer #_author:Ethan Alter #Why Genre Shows Matter #Claudia Black #_lmsid:a0Vd000000AE7lXEAT

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Double Edged Double Bill Podcast

New Post has been published on https://esonetwork.com/podcasts/double-edged-double-bill-podcast/

Double Edged Double Bill Podcast

Please have your ticket stubs out for the Double Edged Double Bill! Each week, Adam Thomas and Thomas Mariani will come to the table to discuss the randomly selected yin and yang of a double feature. Then, both will have to pick a number between one and ten in order to seal their fates for the next episode. One will have two good movies. The other two bad ones. Let the chaos begin!

Got questions? [email protected]

Double Edged Double Bill Each week, Adam Thomas and Thomas Mariani will come to the table to randomly select the yin and yang of a double feature. One will have two good movies. The other two bad ones. Both will have to pick a number between one and ten in order to seal their fates for each episode.

65: No Pain, No Gain, No Holds Barred

by Thomas Mariani on July 30, 2019 at 5:02 am

It's time for Thomas Mariani and Adam Thomas to get in the ring for another round of Double Edged Double Bill! With Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw coming out as a vehicle for a certain pro-wrestler-turned-actor, our duo takes on a double bill of films starring pro-wrestlers! First up is their bad feature No Holds Barred, a giant tribute to wrestler and controversial human/gas station hot dog hybrid Hulk Hogan. Then, their good feature Pain & Gain, which our heroes argue isn't just the best film for pro-wrestler turned star Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson & director Michael Bay, but may just be the most brutally dark satire of our modern age. Together, our duo dare to address big issues like Tiny Lister Jr's eyebrow maintenance, Dwayne Johnson's even more massive proportions and picking the films for next week's episode on Guillermo del Toro. So grab your folding chairs and get ready to slam down on that download button! OH YEAH! To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

64: Quentin Tarantino Presents A Death Proof Jackie Brown

by Thomas Mariani on July 23, 2019 at 5:01 am

Quentin Tarantino doesn't make films too often. So, to celebrate the release of Once Upon a Time In Hollywood this week, Adam Thomas and Thomas Mariani are looking back at the influential filmmaker's filmography with special guest Christian Alvarez! First up is their good pick Jackie Brown, which our trio praises as underrated and nuanced. Then, there's much debate over how bad their bad feature Death Proof is, a highly stylized tribute to 70s exploitation that may be too faithful to its influences. Together, our trio answers all the important questions. Is Jackie Brown peak De Niro face? Is Death Proof a prequel to Drive? What are Adam & Thomas' picks for next week's episode on pro-wrestlers in film? Well, put in that 8 track and get ready for one hell of a double bill, baby! To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

63: The Island of Dr. Highlander - Films Worth Remaking

by Thomas Mariani on July 16, 2019 at 5:01 am

Hollywood keeps remaking movies that don't need to be remade, like a photorealistic The Lion King remake we're getting this week. So, for this week's Double Edged Double Bill, Adam Thomas and Thomas Mariani are suggesting two films that would be worth a new take! First up is Highlander, the fantasy action film that Thomas argues could benefit from better action and less miscasting of Frenchmen playing Scottish. Then, Adam argues the 1996 version of The Island of Dr. Moreau has the definitive version of a classic story with a less ego & more empathy for animal/human hybrids. Together, our duo tries to make sense of a Scottish man playing a Spaniard from Egypt, wonders what movie Marlon Brando was in and picks the films for next week's episode on Quentin Tarantino. So listen in for pitches of what could be! To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

62: Goonies R Not Good Enough for Strange Days - Overrated vs Underrated Part Deux

by Thomas Mariani on July 9, 2019 at 5:01 am

After their last excursion into the world of overrated & underrated cinema, Adam Thomas & Thomas Mariani are returning to spark controversy with their hot takes on Double Edged Double Bill yet again! This time, the duo is joined by guest Desmond Peel of the Desmond's Flicks Podcast and YouTube channel for this strange randomly decided double header. First up, Adam's underrated choice of Strange Days, the Kathryn Bigelow film where she got the villain of Schindler's List to play a VR used car salesman. Then, Thomas' overrated choice of The Goonies, which will likely send an angry mob of '80s kids to his door. Together, our trio pitches their Tom Arnold podcast, reveals Adam's crippling One Eyed Willy related debt and picks the films for next week's episode all about films that deserve to a remake. So hook up your SQUID headset and dial into our show, ya Goonies! Check out Thomas talking Midsommar and The Wicker Man on The Horror Returns! To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

61: Replicas of Us in 2019 So Far

by Thomas Mariani on July 2, 2019 at 5:01 am

2019 has hit the halfway mark and Double Edged Double Bill is celebrating with a good and not-so-good film from the first six months of the year! First up, Adam Thomas' bad pick that the listeners voted for is Replicas, the Keanu Reeves film from 2019 no one wants to bring up in his modern Keanu-ssance. Then, our good feature that was Thomas Mariani's choice is Jordan Peele's second feature Us, in which Lupita Nyong'o leads a strong double header cast to scary heights. Together, Adam & Thomas wonder how Keanu relates to today's Cardi B obsessed youth, highlight the aristocratic nature of physical media owners and pick the films for next week's episode revisiting Overrated & Underrated movies! So share an Airpod with your horrific duplicate of science gone mad and listen in! To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

60: Aliens Resurrection: Xenomorphobia Runs Rampant!

by Thomas Mariani on June 25, 2019 at 5:01 am

Alien turns 40 this year and Double Edged Double Bill is celebrating by covering two entries in this bizarre yet enduring franchise! Adam Thomas and Thomas Mariani both love the sci-fi/horror/action tales of Xenomorphs and Ellen Ripley... to varying degrees. First up, the good feature & second film in the series Aliens, which made Sigourney Weaver an action legend and James Cameron the titan he is today. Then, the bad feature is Alien Resurrection, where a snarky Joss Whedon screenplay and a visionary French director clash to form a sultry Xeno/Ripley hybrid. Together, our duo laughs hysterically at Jenette Goldstein's "authentic" makeup, confirm Dan Hedaya's status as Hollywood's hairiest man and pick the films for next week's episode on 2019 So Far! So download the podcast now before that xenomorph blood burns your hand off! To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

59: Pixar Presents Up Yours, Good Dinosaur

by Thomas Mariani on June 18, 2019 at 5:01 am

As we all prepare to open our toy boxes again for Toy Story 4, Double Edged Double Bill is doing a double feature from everyone's favorite Disney subsidiary Pixar Animation Studios! Adam and Thomas are joined by guest James 'Rodders' Rodrigues as he classes up the show with his British accent. First up is the good film Up, which drives our trio to tears from it's famous start to it's underrated finale. Then, the bad feature The Good Dinosaur, which feels almost unfinished compared to other Pixar films. Together, our trio makes this an unofficial Christopher Plummer stan podcast, recommends playing with Fisher Price toys on hallucinogens, pitch the Pixar slasher film and picks the films for next week's episode on the Alien franchise. So tie those balloons to your house and give us a listen while you soar over the city! To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! Remember to vote for our bad film pick on the 2019 So Far episode by June 19th! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

58: Samuel L. Jackson in The Caveman's Jumper

by Thomas Mariani on June 11, 2019 at 5:01 am

Samuel L. Jackson is one of the most ubiquitous actors working today. So, given he's returning to screens for the fourth time this year with Shaft, Adam Thomas and Thomas Mariani are here to do a double header of films from his filmography alongside returning guest Shakyl Lambert of Seequels podcast and OneOfUs.net! First up, our good film is The Caveman's Valentine. What? You've never heard of the classic mystery/thriller where Jackson plays a cave dwelling homeless man trying to solve a murder before? Well, neither ha 2/3rds of our crew. Then, our bad feature is Jumper, in which a teleporting Hayden "Anakin Skywalker" Christensen is hunted down by a bleach blonde Jackson. Together, our trio compare the integrity of Samuel's wigs, drive Adam to his breaking point and pick the films for next week's episode on Pixar. So jump right into this episode before Samuel L. Jackson starts cursing at you! To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! Remember to vote for our bad film pick on the 2019 So Far episode by June 19th! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

57: 50 Shades of Evil Within Troubled Productions

by Thomas Mariani on June 4, 2019 at 5:01 am

Making films can be rough. Budgets inflate, personalities clash, directors are on meth. Movie magic doesn't come easy. That is exactly what Adam Thomas and Thomas Mariani are dissecting this week on Double Edged Double Bill! This week, in honor of X-Men: Dark Phoenix shambling to theaters following a delays & reshoots, it's all about films with troubled productions. First up, our good feature The Evil Within, a horror film that took 15 years of production while being made by reclusive billionaire and meth addict Andrew Getty. Then, our bad feature is 50 Shades of Grey, the massively popular yet universally loathed erotic thriller which had author E.L. James hovering over the entire production. Together, our hosts ponder how to explain surreal nightmares, debate the investment of Dakota Johnson and pick the films for next week's episode on Samuel L. Jackson. So tune in now before this podcast goes even more over budget! Listen to Thomas' guest spots on the podcasts We Forgive You and The Horror Returns. To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

56: Godzilla vs Ghidorah: All Kaiju Revenge Parade

by Thomas Mariani on May 28, 2019 at 5:01 am

With Godzilla: King of the Monsters stomping into theaters this week, Double Edged Double Bill is covering a bizarre kaiju two-fer. Adam Thomas, Thomas Mariani and returning guest Sam Brutuxan are here two discuss two films featuring the massive lizard. First up is the good feature Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster, in which Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra tag team to defeat the titular tri-headed dragon while a princess from Venus is chased by assassins. Then the bad feature Godzilla's Revenge, in which a young boy dreams of hanging out with Godzilla and his son while he is kidnapped from his home unsupervised by his working parents. Fun for the whole family! Together, our trio worries about Godzilla's reproductive health, praises the most underrated kaiju Giant Condor and pick the films for next week's episode on Troubled Productions! So Go Go parade through Tokyo with us, won't you? Buy a copy of Sam's book The Quietus Breaker: Brother Death on Amazon and read his blog Lounging Lizard. Also listen to Thomas talk about Brightburn and Superman: The Movie as a guest on The Horror Returns podcast. To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

55: Will Smith In Men In Focus

by Thomas Mariani on May 21, 2019 at 5:01 am

Witness Double Edged Double Bill going Big Willy Style over actor/rapper/blue boy enthusiast Will Smith! To celebrate the release of Disney's new Aladdin, Adam Thomas and Thomas Mariani are talking two films on the opposite sides of quality from Mr. Fourth of July himself. First, the bad feature Focus, in which Smith plays off his future Suicide Squad co-star Margot Robbie as a con artist. Remember it? Neither do our hosts! Then, our good feature of the original Men In Black, the film that solidified Smith as a bonafide star alongside his perfect straight man Tommy Lee Jones. Together, our duo are baffled by elaborate con games, divided over the effectiveness of Linda Fiorentino and excited to pick their choices for next week's episode about Godzilla films. So put on those airpods that you make look good and listen to us "Woooo" and "Haha Haha" about the Fresh Prince himself! To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

54: Keanu Reeves Is Tai Chi Dracula

by Thomas Mariani on May 14, 2019 at 5:01 am

Double Edged Double Bill is doing an episode about Keanu Reeves in honor of John Wick Chapter 3 Parabellum coming out? Whoa! Adam Thomas and Thomas Mariani bring back returning guest & massive Keanu stan Heather Thomas on to talk two films in Mr. Reeves' extensive and varied filmography. First up is our good feature Man of Tai Chi in which Keanu took his first stab as a director while playing a Bond villain running an underground fighting ring in China. Then, our "bad" feature is Bram Stoker's Dracula, a film all three of our hosts really like... but will fully admit it's largest flaw is Keanu Reeves playing stoic Englishman Jonathan Harker. Together, our trio explains how to train a child to perform wire work choreography, ponder how much baby powder is in grey haired Keanu's 'do and pick our films for next week's topic all about Will Smith! So download our most triumphant episode and party on, dudes! Listen to Keanu Believe It here. To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

53: Scott Pilgrim Vs. Chun-Li - The Legend of Video Game Cinema

by Thomas Mariani on May 7, 2019 at 5:01 am

Insert your coins and grab your controllers because Double Edged Double Bill is doing video game inspired films this week in honor of Detective Pikachu. Now, Adam Thomas and Thomas Mariani are both well aware of how bad most films adapted from video games are. Their bad feature Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li exemplifies that succinctly. So, the two of them opened up the qualifications to films with video game aesthetics, which fits perfectly for our good feature Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. Together, our Player 1 & Player 2 puzzle over Chris Klein's massive nostrils, consider joining the Vegan Police and pick the films for next week's episode that's all about Keanu Reeves. So press start now to get in on all this combo breaking back & forth! To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

52: Marvel Cinematic Universe Will Ragnarok Your Iron, Man

by Thomas Mariani on April 30, 2019 at 1:01 am

We're all still in the glow of Avengers Endgame blowing our minds (no spoilers here, so don't worry). Yet, there's another major finale to focus on: the end of the first year of Double Edged Double Bill! To celebrate 52 straight weeks of episodes, Adam Thomas and Thomas Mariani are returning to the subject of the very first episode with the Marvel Cinematic Universe alongside special guest Ryan Corderman! The good feature for our trio is Thor Ragnarok, the third Thor film that radically reinvented the Thor character by making him fun. Then our "bad" feature is the highly divisive Iron Man 3, which even our hosts can't universally agree on. Together our Avengers assemble to marvel at how thicc Hulk is, hear as Adam becomes everything he hates and pick the films for next week's topic on video game inspired films! Tune in now before the episode turns to dust! Listen to Thomas talk Batman Forever and the rest of Joel Schumacher's filmography on Zackman Forever. To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

51: Escape from Inside Llewyn Davis: A Redemption Song

by Thomas Mariani on April 23, 2019 at 5:01 am

By the very nature of Double Edged Double Bill's format - in which Adam Thomas and Thomas Mariani each have two films & have one from those pairs selected as the good and bad portion of a double feature - many potential films from previous episodes are left by the wayside. Given they've passed the 50 episode mark, our duo has decided to give two previous losers of the draw a chance at the spotlight. First the good feature is Inside Llewyn Davis, Thomas' alternative choice from their Coen Brothers episode. Then the bad feature is Escape from L.A., Adam's alternative choice from their dystopian fiction episode. Quite a double bill, huh? Together, our duo will advise Justin Timberlake to come to terms with his new dorky dad phase, pitch a Wyatt Russell take over of the Snake Plissken franchise and pick their films for next week's topic on the Marvel Cinematic Universe! So tune your guitars and play along with their ballad of redemption, ya post apocalyptic folkies! To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

50: Fantastic Mr. Monkeybone

by Thomas Mariani on April 16, 2019 at 5:01 am

Double Edged Double Bill turns the big 5-0 at 24 frames per second. Since the Laika title Missing Link came out recently, Adam Thomas and Thomas Mariani are joined by their returning animation enthusiast guest Scott Johnson to talk about two films featuring the artform of stop motion animation. First up is the good feature Fantastic Mr. Fox, where Wes Anderson brought his live action dollhouse aesthetic to a miniature landscape. Then, the bad feature is Monkeybone, in which Henry Selick's stop motion aesthetic was squandered on a lame fantasy comedy filled with crass humor and Brendan Fraser mugging. Together, our trio wonders how many corduroy jackets Mr. Anderson sacrificed, feels weird about heaping praise on Chris Kattan and picks the films for next week where our alternate choices from the last 50 episodes are given a chance at redemption! So get that cussin' cotton out of your ears and listen to the latest bout of chaos! To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

49: Red Sonja Of Oz - Return to Fantasy

by Thomas Mariani on April 9, 2019 at 5:01 am

Double Edged Double Bill returns to the realm of fantasy films! Along with returning guest Caitlin Turner, Adam Thomas and Thomas Mariani take a look at two fantasy films from the magical year of 1985! First is our bad feature Red Sonja, where Bridget Nielsen makes her awkward debut and Arnold Schwarzenegger is... briefly there. Then, our good feature is Return to Oz, the weird quasi sequel to the classic musical that Disney has tried to bury for being too dark. Together, this trio will marvel at the early stunt work of Ernie Reyes Jr, shudder at the dead eyes of The Scarecrow and pick their films for next week's episode on stop motion animation! Quick, download the episode now before Princess Mombi's headless body gets you! Listen to Adam's appearance on The Horror Returns talking the old and new Pet Sematary here! To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

48: Spawn of the Ninja Turtles

by Thomas Mariani on April 2, 2019 at 5:01 am

Double Edged Double Bill has done episodes on Marvel and DC Comics adaptations, but what about the films based on comic books outside the big two? Given a new Hellboy movie is on the horizon along with several other comic book films this month, Adam Thomas and Thomas Mariani decided to do a double feature of independent comic book film adaptations with returning guest Torrey Depina! The good feature is 1990's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the first cinematic adaptation of the anthropomorphic shelled beings. The bad is 1997's Spawn which brought Todd McFarlane's edgy demonic character to life... before killing it pretty instantaneously. Together, our trio contemplates the brunch habits of Casey Jones, declares that Spawn was the origin point of CGI hate and pick the films for next week's episode where we revisit the fantasy film genre! So grab that last slice of pizza and listen in on this radical discussion! To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

47: Tim Burton's A Big Fish in an Ape Planet

by Thomas Mariani on March 26, 2019 at 5:02 am

Put on your black and white stripes, you pale loners! It's time for Adam Thomas and Thomas Mariani to talk two films from director Tim Burton because Dumbo is coming out! The good feature is Big Fish, Burton's underrated bid for Oscar gold that will make you cry. Then, the bad feature is his very odd attempt to remake Planet of the Apes that will also make you cry... for different reasons. Plus, our duo grimaces over the idea of a CG deaged Jack Nicholson, marvels at the conceit of a Tim Burton/Arnold Schwarzenegger collab and picks the films for next week's episode on non-DC or Marvel comic book adaptations! So stop listening to that Danny Elfman playlist on a loop and switch over to us now! To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

46: Nothing But Prestige

by Thomas Mariani on March 19, 2019 at 5:01 am

Are you watching closely? Do you see double? Well, you certainly are seeing Double Edged Double Bill's new episode! Given Jordan Peele's new film Us is coming out this week, Adam Thomas and Thomas Mariani are covering a double header of films where actors play multiple roles. Our good film is Christopher Nolan's The Prestige, in which both Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale play dual roles while dueling with each other in the world of stage magic. Then, our bad feature is Nothing But Trouble, in which Dan Aykroyd directs himself and John Candy in multiple roles for an uniquely laugh-free comedy. Or whatever the hell that film is. Plus, our duo grapples with Nolan's phobia of digital video, tries to fight off the nausea induced by horrific man babies and picks their double header for next week's episode on Tim Burton! Hopefully you're listening in for all the secrets. Hear Thomas on the Horror Returns Podcast's March Madness Best Kill episode here. To stay up to date about the podcast, follow us on Twitter @DEDBpod, our Facebook page and send us feedback at [email protected]! If you like the show, please subscribe to or rate us on platforms like iTunes, Spotify or Stitcher! […]

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In our weekly recap of news from BOOM! Studios we bring you a look at the upcoming 3rd issue of FIREFLY, a preview of the first issue of the new BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER series, on a first look at a new series based on characters from ADVENTURE TIME, and more.

The week kicked off with a preview of the 3rd issue of FIREFLY. The issue from writer Greg Pak and artist Dan McDaid along with story consultant Joss Whedon will focus on the leader of the Unificators, Boss Moon as she plots revenge on Mal and Zoe.

Look for the issue on January 16th with a main cover from Lee Garbett as well as variant covers from Garbett, Joe Quinones, and Marguerite Sauvage.

The news continued on Monday with the announcement that New York Times bestselling author Gaby Dunn will team up with artist Claire Roe for the graphic novel BURY THE LEDE. The story is based on Dunn’s experiences as a reporter for The Boston Globe, and will be released next October.

On Thursday a preview of the upcoming first issue of the BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER series was released.

The series from writer Jordie Bellaire and artist Dan Mora, along with Joss Whedon as story consultant are the team behind the new series that will will re-imagine the TV series from the very beginning. The first issue will be released on January 23rd, 2019 with a few different cover versons including the main cover from Matthew Taylor, variant covers by Kevin Wada, Royal Dunlap, Becca Carey, and Jen Bartel.

But that’s not all in terms of variant covers, there will also be two interactive covers from Miguel Mercado that will “reveal your inner Slayer or inner Demon“, and two rare variants from Kaiti Infante one that will feature Willow with the other featuring Vampire Willow.

Also on Thursday a preview of the upcoming ADVENTURE TIME: MARCY & SIMON #1 was released. The new six part series from writer Olivia Olson (who actually voiced Marceline on the show) and artist Slimm Fabert will debut in January. The series will pick up where the show ended with Marceline and the Ice King continuing their relationship.

The first issue of the mini-series from BOOM! Studios’ KABOOM! imprint will feature a main cover with art from Brittney Williams and with variant covers by Lisa Dubois, Sofie Drozdova, and Ashley Morales.

On Friday, BOOM! announced that through their Archaia imprint they will release a graphic novel from French cartoonist and illustrator, Margaux Motin. PLATE TECTONICS: AN ILLUSTRATED MEMOIR is a story about “detailing a modern approach to life, romance, and motherhood after divorce“.

The 256 page hardcover has an MSRP of $24.99 USD, and will be released on June 26, 2019 at comic book stores wil traditional book stores getting it on July 2, 2019 Full press releases are below. All artwork courtesy of BOOM! Studios.

BOOM! Studios Unveils The First Look at FIREFLY #3

“Excellent craft and a compelling story come together to create a comic book that Browncoats are likely to be very, very pleased with” – ComicBook.com “[Greg Pak] has a particular skill with group dynamics and sympathetic but flawed warriors, which makes him the ideal fit for this title’s band of well-intentioned misfits” – Paste Magazine

LOS ANGELES, CA (December 10, 2018) – BOOM! Studios today unveiled a first look at FIREFLY #3, arriving in comic book shops on January 16th. New York Times best-selling writer Greg Pak (Star Wars, Ronin Island) and artist Dan McDaid (Judge Dredd), along with series creator & story consultant Joss Whedon (the visionary writer/director behind Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Marvel’s The Avengers and more) continue the iconic worldwide pop culture phenomenon’s sold-out return to comic books in partnership with 20th Century Fox Consumer Products.

As the crew learns the shocking truth about the actions of their leaders in the Unification War, they find themselves splintered and more vulnerable than ever to the Unificators . . . and an enemy they never expected. Now, discover the untold origin of their leader Boss Moon as she puts her plan into effect to extract revenge on the two people who ruined her life – Mal and Zoe.

FIREFLY #3 features a main cover by Lee Garbett (Skyward), along with variant covers by Garbett, Joe Quinones (America) and Marguerite Sauvage (Archie).

“We’ve always known that Mal and Zoe had to make tough decisions during the Unification war, but Boss Moon is the living embodiment of the consequences. As we learn more about her connection to the captain and his first officer, we’ll also see that sometimes the lines between heroes and villains is even thinner than we ever imagined,” said Jeanine Schaefer, Executive Editor, BOOM! Studios. “Firefly has always explored the nuances of the people we choose as family and how we forgive the past without forgetting it. This is the issue where we’ll see just how strong the bond between the crew really is – and discover more about the past that has defined Mal and Zoe.”

Created by Whedon and set 500 years in the future in the wake of a universal civil war,FIREFLY centers on the crew of Serenity, a small transport spaceship that doesn’t have a planet to call home. Captain Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds, a defeated soldier who opposed the unification of the planets by the totalitarian governed Alliance, will undertake any job — legal or not — to stay afloat and keep his crew fed. Thrust together by necessity but staying together out of loyalty, these disparate men and women are seeking adventure and the good life, but face constant challenges on the new frontier, such as avoiding capture by the Alliance, and evading the dangers you find on the fringes of the universe.

FIREFLY #3 is available January 16th exclusively in comic shops (use comicshoplocator.com to find the nearest one) or at the BOOM! Studios webstore. Digital copies can be purchased from content providers, including comiXology, iBooks, Google Play, and the BOOM! Studios app.

Available now, Firefly: Legacy Edition Book One collects previously released Serenity comics for the first time under one cover in a new value-priced format as Mal & the crew ride again in these official sequels to the critically acclaimed Firefly television series and Serenity film.

FIREFLY is the latest release from BOOM! Studios’ eponymous imprint, home to a world-class group of licensed comic book series and ambitious original series, including Joss Whedon’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Planet of the Apes, Abbott, Mech Cadet Yu, Grass Kings, and Klaus.

For continuing news on FIREFLY and more from BOOM! Studios, stay tuned to www.boom-studios.com and follow @boomstudios on Twitter.

New York Times Best-Selling Author Gaby Dunn & Claire Roe BURY THE LEDE at BOOM! Studios

LOS ANGELES, CA (December 10, 2018) – BOOM! Studios today announced BURY THE LEDE, a new original graphic novel from New York Times bestselling author Gaby Dunn (I Hate Everyone But You) and artist Claire Roe (Batgirl and The Birds of Prey), which arrives in stores October 2019. Inspired by Dunn’s own experiences at The Boston Globe as a reporter, BURY THE LEDE is a timely story about how we find answers in an increasingly complex world and the hidden threats surrounding those truths.

Twenty-one-year-old Madison T. Jackson is already the star of the Emerson College student newspaper when she nabs a coveted night internship at Boston’s premiere newspaper, The Boston Lede. The job’s simple: do whatever the senior reporters tell you to do, from fetching coffee to getting a quote from a grieving parent. It’s grueling work, so when the murder of a prominent Boston businessman comes up on the police scanner, Madison races to the scene of the grisly crime. There, Madison meets the woman who will change her life forever: prominent socialite Dahlia Kennedy, who is covered in gore and being arrested for the murder of her family. The newspapers put everyone they can in front of her with no results until, with nothing to lose, Madison gets a chance – and unexpectedly barrels headfirst into danger she never anticipated.

Dunn has distinguished herself as a New York Times bestselling author, journalist, YouTuber, actress, and comedian. She and her comedy partner, Allison Raskin, created the successful YouTube channel Just Between Us along with the novel “I Hate Everyone But You,” published under Wednesday Books’ inaugural list, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, with a sequel to be published in 2019.

She has written for The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, New York Magazine, The Boston Globe, and Vulture, as well as a finance column for Marie Claire. Dunn served as a writer on ”Big Mouth” (Netflix) and in 2016, co-created and starred in a pilot for MTV, later developing original half-hour pilots for 20th Century Fox, YouTube Red, and FX, as well as joining the cast of “Take My Wife” (Starz) in the role of Brie. She is also the host and creator of the podcast, Bad With Money With Gaby Dunn, which has been featured as one of the “Best New Podcasts of 2016” by The New York Times and Vulture. The show is now in its 3rd season and a book based on the podcast will be published by Simon & Schuster on January 1st, 2019. BURY THE LEDE is Dunn’s graphic fiction debut release.

“I’m obsessed with ‘ripped from the headlines’ crime shows and am so honored and stoked to be jumping into this genre, especially in a medium like graphic novels which allowed me to collaborate with incredible talent like my editor Dafna Pleban and artist Claire Roe,” said writer Gaby Dunn. “I love working alongside women to make cool stuff about flawed, complex female characters like our book’s heroine (and the women she surrounds herself with). Especially in a genre like crime that is so heavily male, it’s been cool to make such a queer, colorful, realistic-to-my-own-experiences depiction of being a crime reporter.”

Claire Roe is an acclaimed artist from the east of Scotland and studied animation at Duncan of Jordonstone College of Art, graduating in 2013. She has distinguished herself with dynamic work on some of the biggest properties in comics, including Wonder Womanand Batgirl and The Birds of Prey from DC Comics; Halo: Rise of Atriox from Dark Horse;The Wicked + The Divine from Image Comics; and Welcome Back from BOOM! Studios.

“On the surface this is a crime story, but in its heart it is the story of some very flawed women,” said artist Claire Roe. “We rarely get to enjoy these type of women in media, especially if they’re poc and queer, so getting to dive into this world and draw this story was right up my alley. I think true crime lovers will connect instantly with Madison, and will enjoy uncovering the motivations of the beautiful and enigmatic Dahlia.”

BURY THE LEDE is the first release in an exciting slate of adult original graphic novels from BOOM! Studios’ eponymous imprint, home to a world-class group of licensed comic book series and ambitious original series, including Joss Whedon’s Firefly and Buffy The Vampire Slayer; Abbott from Saladin Ahmed and Sami Kivelä; Mech Cadet Yu from Greg Pak and Takeshi Miyazawa; Grass Kings from Matt Kindt and Tyler Jenkins; and Klausfrom Grant Morrison and Dan Mora.

“BURY THE LEDE masterfully blends the thrilling relationships of Killing Eve with the sharp insights of Devil Wears Prada for an affecting reflection on the world around us,” said Dafna Pleban, Senior Editor, BOOM! Studios. “Gaby and Claire bring a different perspective the world of crime fiction, drawing from their own experiences to examine what it really means to be an investigative journalist in a world where it’s getting harder to trust the headlines.”

Print copies of BURY THE LEDE will be available for sale in October 2019 at local comic book shops (use comicshoplocator.com to find the nearest one), bookstores or at the BOOM! Studios webstore. Digital copies can be purchased from content providers, including comiXology, iBooks, Google Play, and the BOOM! Studios app.

For continuing news on BURY THE LEDE and more from BOOM!, stay tuned to www.boom-studios.com and follow @boomstudios on Twitter.

BOOM! Studios Unveils A New Look at BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1

An Exclusive Look at the Hotly Anticipated Pop Culture ReVAMP in 2019

LOS ANGELES, CA (December 13, 2018) – BOOM! Studios today unveiled a first look at BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1, the highly anticipated start of the all new BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER monthly comic book series that will debut on January 23rd, 2019, in partnership with 20th Century Fox Consumer Products. Eisner Award-nominated writer Jordie Bellaire (Redlands) and Russ Manning Award-winning artist Dan Mora (Klaus, Saban’s Go Go Power Rangers), along with series creator and story consultant Joss Whedon (the visionary writer/director behind Firefly, Marvel’s The Avengers, and more), reimagine the groundbreaking pop culture phenomenon from the very beginning in BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1. This is the Buffy Summers you know, who wants what every average teenager wants: friends at her new school, decent grades, and to escape her imposed destiny as the next in a long line of vampire slayers tasked with defeating the forces of evil. But the Slayer’s world looks a lot more like the one outside your window, as this new series brings her into a new era with new challenges, new friends…and a few enemies you might already recognize. The more things change, the more they stay the same, as the Gang – Giles, Willow, Xander, Cordelia and more – faces brand new Big Bads, and a threat lurking beneath the perfectly manicured exterior of Sunnydale High, confirming what every teenager has always known: high school truly is hell. WELCOME BACK TO THE HELLMOUTH, FOR THE FIRST TIME! BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1 features a main cover by acclaimed Mondo illustrator Matthew Taylor, along with variant covers by superstar Kevin Wada (She-Hulk), Royal Dunlap (Spitball), Becca Carey (Bitch Planet), and Jen Bartel (Blackbird). Fans can join the fight between Good and Evil by choosing between two special interactive variant covers from acclaimed artist Miguel Mercado (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers). Hold each one up to your face to reveal your inner Slayer or inner Demon! Will you stand with the Chosen One (#TeamSlayer) or will you side with the Vampires (#TeamVamp)? You can also track down two rare variant covers from artist Kaiti Infante that depict fan favorite Willow Rosenberg on both sides of the battle, one as Buffy’s best friend and the other…as Vampire Willow?! Buffy The Vampire Slayer premiered on the WB Network on March 10th, 1997. The Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated series, which ran for seven seasons from 1997-2003, starred Sarah Michelle Gellar as “Buffy Summers.” Chosen to battle vampires, demons and other forces of darkness, Buffy was aided by her Watcher, Rupert Giles, and a circle of friends known as the “Scooby Gang.” BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER is the latest release from BOOM! Studios’ eponymous imprint, home to a world-class group of licensed comic book series and ambitious original series, including Joss Whedon’s Firefly, Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Planet of the Apes, Abbott, Mech Cadet Yu, Grass Kings, and Klaus. Print copies of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #1 will be available for sale on January 23rd, 2019 exclusively at local comic book shops (use comicshoplocator.com to find the nearest one) or at the BOOM! Studios webstore. Digital copies can be purchased from content providers, including comiXology, iBooks, Google Play, and the BOOM! Studios app. For continuing news on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER comic books, graphic novels and more from BOOM! Studios, stay tuned to www.boom-studios.com and follow@boomstudios on Twitter. And follow Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Your First Look at ADVENTURE TIME: MARCY & SIMON #1 by Olivia Olson and Slimm Fabert

Discover The Future of Your Favorite Vampire Queen & Former Ice King in January 2019

LOS ANGELES, CA (December 13, 2018) – BOOM! Studios and Cartoon Network today revealed a captivating first look at ADVENTURE TIME™: MARCY & SIMON #1 (of 6), the start of an all-new limited series in January 2019. Writer Olivia Olson (voice of Marceline on Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time™) and artist Slimm Fabert (Adventure Time™ comic series) unveil the exciting official comic book continuation of the Emmy® Award-winning Cartoon Network animated series by revealing what’s next for the reformed Ice King and Vampire Queen Marceline in comic book form. Marcy and Simon’s friendship has endured over 900 years and through bouts of insanity and amnesia. After the events of Adventure Time™ Season 10, we get to see the Vampire Queen and former Ice King rediscover themselves and their ever-evolving relationship as they tour the Land of Ooo in order to make amends for Simon’s past misdeeds. But the transition from evil Ice King to gentle Simon isn’t without its consequences, and Marcy will have to face her greatest fear once again: losing Simon. A modern day fable, the Emmy® Award–winning animated series Adventure Time™ has become a global success since its premiere in 2010, attracting adult and kid viewers in their millions over the course of 10 seasons. It follows unlikely heroes Finn and Jake, buddies who traverse the mystical Land of Ooo and encounter its colorful inhabitants. The best of friends, our heroes always find themselves in the middle of heart-pounding escapades. Finn, a silly kid with an awesome hat and Jake, a brassy dog with a big kind heart, depend on each other through thick and thin. Adventure Time™ is created by Pendleton Ward and produced at Cartoon Network Studios. BOOM! Studios has been publishing the New York Times bestselling Adventure Time™comic books and graphic novels through their KaBOOM! imprint for middle grade readers since 2012 and been honored with Eisner, Harvey, and Diamond Gem Awards for the series. ADVENTURE TIME™: MARCY & SIMON #1 is Olson’s third writing contribution to the expanded literary world of the eponymous franchise, previously collaborating with her father Martin Olson (the voice of Hunson Abadeer) on The Adventure Time™ Encyclopedia. The two also co-authored Adventure Time™: The Enchiridion & Marcy’s Super Secret Scrapbook, written from a first person perspective through Marceline’s diary entries about when she and Simon first met. Both Adventure Time™ books, published in partnership between Abrams and Cartoon Network, are available now everywhere books are sold. ADVENTURE TIME™: MARCY & SIMON #1 features a main cover by Brittney Williams (Goldie Vance), along with variant covers by Lisa Dubois (Rugrats), Sofie Drozdova (Regular Show) and Ashley Morales. ADVENTURE TIME™: MARCY & SIMON is the latest release from BOOM! Studios’ award-winning KaBOOM! imprint, home to comics for middle grade and younger readers including licensed series such as Over The Garden Wall, Regular Show, Steven Universe, Peanuts, and Garfield, along with original series like Mega Princess by Kelly Thompson and Brianne Drouhard, Bodie Troll by Jay Fosgitt, Ruinworld by Derek Laufman, and The Deep by Tom Taylor and James Brouwer. Print copies of ADVENTURE TIME™: MARCY & SIMON #1 will be available on January 16th, 2019 at local comic book shops (use comicshoplocator.com to find the one nearest you), or at the BOOM! Studios webstore. Digital copies can be purchased from content providers like comiXology, iBooks, Google Play, and the BOOM! Studios app. For continuing news on ADVENTURE TIME™: MARCY & SIMON and more from BOOM! Studios, stay tuned to www.boom-studios.com and follow @boomstudios on Twitter.

Your First Look at PLATE TECTONICS: An Illustrated Memoir

French Illustrator Margaux Motin navigates shifting ground with humor, charm, and wit in June 2019

LOS ANGELES, CA (December 14, 2018) – BOOM! Studios today revealed a first look at PLATE TECTONICS: AN ILLUSTRATED MEMOIR, an original graphic novel that depicts a modern approach to life, romance, and motherhood after divorce from the popular French cartoonist and illustrator, Margaux Motin (But I Really Wanted to Be an Anthropologist), arriving in stores June 2019. At age thirty-five, Margaux’s life is full of upheaval and unexpected twists and turns. She’s divorced, raising a child on her own, and trying to get back on her feet in today’s fast-paced world. Thankfully, she’s got her family, friends, and daughter to tell her exactly what they think at every turn. And when romance eventually returns it takes on the most unexpected shape . . . in that of her best friend! Could her life possibly get more complicated?! “Margaux’s unapologetic portrayal of herself as a single parent suddenly set adrift in the modern world is at once charming, hilarious, and brutally honest,” said Sierra Hahn, Executive Editor, BOOM! Studios. “PLATE TECTONICS is Margaux’s love letter to relearning the lines of who you are and how those lines get redrawn after life-shaking events but inevitably for the better.” PLATE TECTONICS is the latest release from BOOM! Studios’ ambitious Archaia imprint, home to graphic novels such as Mouse Guard by David Petersen; Rust by Royden Lepp;Bolivar by Sean Rubin; Jane by Aline Brosh McKenna and Ramón Pérez; About Betty’s Boob by Vero Cazot and Julie Rocheleau; Waves by Ingrid Chabbert and Carole Maurel; and licensed series like Jim Henson’s The Power of the Dark Crystal and Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: Coronation. Print copies of PLATE TECTONICS: AN ILLUSTRATED MEMOIR will be available for sale on June 26, 2019 at local comic book shops (use comicshoplocator.com to find the nearest one), and July 2, 2019 at bookstores or at the BOOM! Studios webstore. Digital copies can be purchased from content providers, including comiXology, iBooks, Google Play, and the BOOM! Studios app. For continuing news on PLATE TECTONICS and more previews from BOOM! Studios, stay tuned to www.boom-studios.com and follow @boomstudios on Twitter. BOOM! Studios – NEWS WEEK (December 10th, 2018) @boomstudios #BoomStudios In our weekly recap of news from BOOM! Studios we bring you a look at the upcoming 3rd issue of

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