Blueprints: "Mary Poppins Returns"

This week, Jorge explores how a movie reintroduces iconic characters to a new generation.

When a new Mary Poppins movie was greenlit, many sighed a sigh of relief when it was announced that it wouldn’t be a remake of the 1964 classic, but rather a sequel. This new story would bring Mary Poppins back to the Banks children, who are adults now, and would look after their own kids now. Perhaps she would straighten the mess in their lives once again. 

The writers of this continuation faced the challenge of not only finding a new take inside the rest of author P.L. Travers’ series, but also reintroducing a character that has become a staple of cinema. A character who, because of the 60-year gap between movies, would be a completely different person. It turns out their answer was to treat it as if Mary Poppins had never left at all…

Click to read more ...

Have a question for the podcast?

Sunday morning Murtada and Nathaniel will be recording a podcast. For this Sunday's podcast we'd like to have a whole episode of reader questions, so ask away in the comments and we'll pick several to answer! 

Review: "Glass"

by Chris Feil

M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass is a film that has been a long time coming, clamored for in some circles ever since Unbreakable’s mystery box unleashed a superhero origin story unlike any other. Two years ago, Split arrived after hopes had diminished and reignited interest by announcing itself as belonging to the same story in a quintessentially Shyamalanian twist. Here we come full circle with Bruce Willis’ train crash-surviving vigilante David Dunn and the nemesis that birthed him, Samuel L. Jackson’s Elijah Pierce, AKA Mr. Glass.

Trouble is: Shyamalan is now a vastly different filmmaker today than when this saga began. What was once enigmatic and fuss free about the director’s approach to superheroes has given way to tedium and the mundane. Perhaps the spark is gone because these kinds of stories have gone from a fascination to foundational in the near twenty years since David boarded that fateful train. But no - that pop cultural shift is where Shyamalan fully distracts himself here, spinning the story’s tires into a lot of leaden world-building and thesis-making.

Click to read more ...

Final Predictions: Best Actor & Best Actress

Other than the shorts, which we'll get to this weekend, we're all finished with our final Oscar predictions. Though we're at the top two most discussed categories, I regret to inform that this will surely be anti-climactic since I'm sticking with previous predictions in both cases. But here's why...

Click to read more ...

Final Predictions: All Visual Categories

We're almost to the nominations, can you believe it? So we're furiously trying to wrap up our predictions. Let's do Costume Design and the rest of the eye candy categories.

COSTUME DESIGN
My favourite tech category should give three-time winner Sandy Powell a historic THIRD double-nomination in a single category with both Mary Poppins Returns and The Favourite feeling secure for nominations. It also feels like there's little chance that Black Panther could miss, and we expect voters will want to take this opportunity to finally hand Ruth E Carter her Oscar (this will be her third Oscar nomination, tying her with Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer for most Oscar nominations for a black woman). Those are the locks...

Click to read more ...