A Conversation About "Westworld" - Part 1

This week, Team Experience members Lynn Lee and Kieran Scarlett have tackled the first two episodes of new HBO sci-fi drama, "Westworld," which has captured the interest, fascination (or ire, depending on who you talk to) of audiences. Here's Part 1 of the 2 part discussion...

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

KIERAN: Watching the “Westworld” pilot and then the second episode, my immediate reaction—even in thinking that the pilot was relatively strong and an intriguing opening statement to the show—was that these two episodes should be reversed.   I might even go so far as to say that the pilot, with all of its beautifully creepy, world-establishing glory (more on this later) is missable when held up against the power (both narratively and stylistically) of the second episode...

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NYFF: Jackie, Natalie, Peter and Pablo

Murtada reporting from NYFF.

Thursday night marked the first New York public screening of Jackie. Pablo Larraín’s film about the former first lady in the few days after JFK’s assassination, took Venice and TIFF by storm and now it's NYFF’s turn...

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Look Who's in Marie Antoinette!

It's Marie Antoinette week: We're celebrating the Queen Consort of France each afternoon for a week for the 223rd anniversary of her death and the 10th anniversary of the Sofia Coppola biopic.  

by Murtada

The casting in Marie Antoinette is imaginative and to die for. You could say it’s not hard to imagine Kirsten Dunst in the title role especially since she had already worked with Sofia Coppola. Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI is not that far fetched since he’s the director’s cousin. However putting Rip Torn, Molly Shannon, Judy Davis and Asia Argento together in 1790s France took some chutzpah...

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Thoughts and Questions about "American Horror Story: My Roanoke Nightmare"

by Eric Blume

Despite five years of shifting locals and time frames and characters, American Horror Story remained essentially the same beast. Season 6 is shaking the formula up but I couldn't be more bewildered.  Here are three general questions. Perhaps we could work out the answers together?

01. What the hell is happening? 
We are meant to be watching a “true crime TV show” but what show like that looks like this?  When re-enactments are made in a show of this nature, they’re never dramatized at length like the extended scenes in My Roanoke Nightmare. Even if we grant them structural leeway...

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Jack Arnold Centennial

Tim here. Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of director Jack Arnold, and if your response to hearing that name is a polite look of blank incomprehension, I wouldn't feel bad. Arnold's not exactly a household name and never has been, but you wouldn't want to imagine what classic sci-fi would look like without him. For a short time in the 1950s, Arnold was possibly the most admirable genre film director in Hollywood. I can't think of any better way to demonstrate how singularly iconic his work has been than to point out that he's the only filmmaker to have two different films named dropped in "Science Fiction/Double Feature", the opening number from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Undoubtedly the film for which Arnold remains best-known is the 1954 Creature from the Black Lagoon (and it's dimwitted first sequel, Revenge of the Creature, but it wouldn't be sporting to hold that against him), and it's fairly easy to argue that it's his best work, too.

on the set of The Black Lagoon

But however impressively he handled that last gasp of the Universal Horror machine, it's by no means his only noteworthy achievement...

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