Review: "Stowaway" on Netflix

by Matt St Clair

Shamier Anderson is the titular "Stowaway"

One common trope in space movies is daddy issues. Whether it involves trying to find one’s dad in space or a sad father dealing family issues, as this 2019 Vulture article points out, it's a constant in outer-space movies. That's been especially true of this last decade with First Man, Interstellar, Ad Astra, and Netflix’s very recent space venture The Midnight Sky. But a surprise development! The new space movie Stowaway, from writer/director Joe Penna, is the rare film to abandon that trend altogether. The central quartet have struggles but not one of them is a daddy issue. 

Commander Marina Barnett (Toni Collette), botanist David Kim (Daniel Dae Kim), and medical researcher Zoe Levensen (Anna Kendrick) barely touch on their respective home lives as they make their way to Mars for a two-year space mission...

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Olympia Dukakis (1931-2021)

by Nathaniel R

Olympia Dukakis as "Anna Madrigal", one of three iconic roles

Olympia Dukakis, the much-loved Oscar winning actress of stage and screen, has died just a month shy of her 90th birthday. The Los Angeles Times has a lovely article which goes in depth into her early career and backstory. On her devotion to theater, which often pulled her away from mainstream success, she's quoted as saying:  

I did not become an actor in order to become famous or rich. I became an actor so I could play the great parts.

I regret that I never had the opportunity to see her on stage. Like the rest of the world, I fell in love with her first via "Rose Castorini" in Moonstruck (1987), a role she initially and surprisingly didn't think too highly of. Nevertheless she aced it, becoming one of the most beloved and famous screen moms of that era -- a screen mom to Cher no less!

But I'm not here to talk about Moonstruck. Have you ever had a actor that reminded you specifically of one exact person in your life? I don't mean an actor who looked like a loved one in some small way, but a star who always brought a real loved one immediately to mind...

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Streaming Revisit: "Bound" is 25

Please welcome guest contributor Brent Calderwood... 

by Brent Calderwood

I first saw Bound in 2000 at a special screening at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, four years after its initial release. The audience was rapt, cowering in their seats or nervously laughing in all the right places. Back then, my college friends and I were so desperate for LGBTQ content that we’d hold house parties to watch pirated VHS tapes of the original ten-episode British series Queer As Folk, converted from imported PAL-format tapes by a friend of a friend in our school’s AV department. Given the dearth of queer representation, we convinced ourselves that we loved everything we saw no matter what, down to the neutered gay characters serving up puns on Will & Grace. Fast forward to 2021—would Bound live up to my memory and expectations?

I was nervous about how Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s debut would hold up 25 years after it was first released, but as it turns out I didn’t need to worry. The 1996 noir, which just began streaming on Hulu, remains as fresh and edgy as ever...  

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'in brightest day in blackest night, no link shall escape my sight'

• Screen Daily what can we expect to see at Cannes this year?
• Variety Taika Waititi will be back in front of cameras soon, not just behind them. He'll play the pirate Blackbeard for an HBO comedy series
• Deadline Florence Pugh to star in Sebastian Lelio's next film called The Wonder 
• /Film Cate Blanchett, Cheyenne Jackson, Haley Bennett, Gina Gershon and more signed on for videogame adaptation Borderlands (Blanchett is the lead)

Pixar artist worries, Cronenberg & Viggo reuniting, HBO's Green Lantern and more...

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Nicole Kidman as "Lucille Ball" and "Masha"

My fellow Kidmaniacs, we have so much to look forward to! By now you've probably seen this photo of Nicole Kidman on the set of Aaron Sorkin's next project, Being the Ricardos a week in the life of the stars of seminal sitcom "I Love Lucy". An earlier image of a much more orange wig is also floating around. People seemed to take offense at the very orange wig as if they had never actually looked at old photos of Lucille Ball. That hair was a COLOR... and a mood. No, a way of life. (This wig above is more subdued.) 

This week we also got the trailer to Nicole's next miniseries Nine Perfect Strangers  while playing some kind of shady self-help figure / cult leader? Neither have release dates yet but the miniseries is "soon". We suspect the other is a likely December release in theaters (or 2022 if Amazon is feeling confident about their next Oscar slate as is.)

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