Review: The Meg

by Chris Feil

Summer is for sharks at the multiplex and 2018 is no different. Recent highs include Blake Lively’s solo survival rendezvous with The Shallows and the lows have been last year’s spiteful low-fi 47 Meters Down. This year we get the highest concept and machoest of them all with The Meg, an amalgam of batshit tidied up into the most convincing guano bowl it can muster. But that’s fine, because witless mayhem is why you showed up in the first place. For something insane however, it isn't the whole hog disasterpiece of your schadenfreude fantasies.

And what do the shark invested waters have in store this time? Basically... a bigger shark. Consider it Mega-Shark Vs. Giant Sourpuss because we've got noted mean mugger Jason Statham at the head of this amusement ride...

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Showbiz History: The Vamp, a Psycho, and The Others

8 random things that happened on this day in history (Aug 10th)...

1918 Today is the centennial of Salome, one of Theda Bara's key pictures. Sadly, the film is lost as are so many silents of historic significance and almost all of Theda's films. She was nicknamed 'The Vamp' setting an archetype that would stay with the cinema forever basically. Theda was in her 40s by the time sound killed off the silents; she never even attemped a talkie.

1933 Hedy Lamarr marries her first husband (of six!) when she is just 19 years old. If you haven't yet watched Bombshell the Hedy Lamarr story on Netflix I urge you to do so. She's fascinating. Currently both Diane Kruger and Gal Gadot are planning to play her in different biographical projects for film and television. 

1950 Sunset Boulevard, only one of the all time greatest films, has its world premiere at Radio City Musical Hall in NYC

1959 Rosanna Arquette born in NYC. She's the first child in what will become a bustling family of acting siblings.  

1960 Antonio Banderas born in Málaga Spain. Meanwhile over in Los Angeles Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho premieres in Los Angeles. Banderas will later play three psychos superbly for Pedro Almodovar in Law of Desire, Tie Me Up Tie Me Down! and The Skin I Live In. 

1971 Justin Theroux is born in DC. 

2001 The Others opens in movie theaters just two months after Moulin Rouge! making it the summer Nicole Kidman went supernova.

2007 Stardust opens in movie theaters with Michelle Pfeiffer terrorizing Claire Danes and Charlie Cox with her ooh ah ah sorcery.

Review: BlacKkKlansman

by Murtada Elfadl

There’s a loaded line that Spike Lee has to navigate with BlacKkKlansman. The line is between entertaining the audience while being faithful to the crazy but true story of Ron Stallworth and making a credible and incendiary link between the bigotry and systematic oppression that has always existed and our current wretched circumstances in this country. For the most part he is successful.

The stranger than fiction story from the 1970s is about a rookie cop Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) in Colorado Springs, who pretended  to be white on a lark and called the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. He was so believable as a racist white man on the phone, that he convinced his superiors to let him lead a broader investigation to infiltrate the Klan. He was helped by his Jewish partner Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) who “played” him when meeting with the Klan...

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Blueprints: "GLOW"

As we steamroll towards Emmy season, Jorge will be diving into the pilot episodes for some of the Best Series nominees from now until the ceremony on September 17. This week, he steps into the ring for some gorgeous lady wrestling…

If a TV show has the Jenji Kohan seal (either as a creator or as an executive producer), there are several things you can expect from it: biting satire that effortlessly moves from dark comedy to emotional drama, a focus on female stories, and large ensembles.

GLOW, Netflix’s second big collaboration with Kohan after Orange Is the New Black (though here only in a producer capacity) is a perfect embodiment of these traits. Let’s take a look at how writer-creator’s for the hit comedy, Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, introduce and establish the main characters that we will be following in this journey of self-empowerment and risky physical maneuvers...

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Oscar Myth-Busting: The Academy Doesn't Like Popular Films

by Nathaniel R

The 10 biggest hits of all time when adjusted for inflation. All but one of them was nominated for Best Picture and three of them won.

We hear it every year: "The Oscars only nominate films that no one has heard of!" Every year this untruth is spread by people who a) don't pay attention to movies and are thus not the target audience of the Oscars anyway and b) don't think things through before proclaiming them and c) haven't worked out that in our increasingly niche world MANY people haven't heard of tv shows, albums, movies, or plays that are of utmost importance to a whole other group of people.

Somehow this myth of "obscure taste" has sunk deep into the Academy's own mindset and they've bought in to it. This week's catastrophic announcement suggests that they've bought into this myth that they don't like popular things to the point of self-loathing. So, here's a quick bit of factual history to bust this myth once again. Our work is never done!

Box office history is harder to suss out prior to 1980 when box office reporting became a more regular occurrence. But most historical indications suggest that the nominees for Best Picture before then were often sizeable hits. Part of the divide that's happened in the past 38 years, which people are never honest about when they complain about Oscar's "relevancy," is that audiences became progressively less interested in human drama (Oscar's bread and butter from 1928 onward), which they mostly sought out on TV, and more interested in visual effects spectacle, cartoons, and mega-sequels. The former is an Oscar interest, the second one has its own category so they mostly ignore it, and the third is not an Oscar interest for which we are grateful because if you want the same things to win prizes every year, look to the Emmys!

So is there any kind of truth to the notion that Oscar doesn't like popular films and only embraces obscure ones? Let's look at the evidence from 1980 onwards...

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