Review: "Rocketman" blasts off

This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

Pop stardom is a notoriously fickle thing. For every “legacy” artist out there, there are thousands of one-hit wonders, and hundreds of sort-of famous B listers. One imagines that anyone in the center of the hurricane of New Fame imagines it will last forever. If you find yourself engineering your own biopic in your golden years, congratulations, it did. Which brings us to Reginald Dwight… better known as Elton John.

In the first frames of Rocketman, Elton John (Taron Egerton) strolls into focus, cheekily dressed as a horned devil to confront his own demons in a therapy session framing device...

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Cannes: Pedro's "Pain and Glory" is a hit at Cannes

by Nathaniel R

Antonio, Penelope, and Pedro together once again.

Hang this photo in the Louvre, s'il vous plaît. Loyal readers know that Pedro Almodóvar is my favourite living director so I bring you glorious news from Cannes -- Pedro's latest, Pain and Glory, starring his only real male muse Antonio Banderas and featuring his current female muse Penélope Cruz, is winning reviews that are much closer to glorious than painful. It could well be in contention for prizes with the jury...

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April Foolish Predictions #8: Lead Actor

by Nathaniel R

It won't be hard (qualitatively) for Taron Egerton to outdo Rami Malek in the biopic rock star acting department. But will Oscar feel like "we just did that"?

We didn't forget about our April Foolish Predictions, but just got a wee bit sidetracked. Today's update is the marquee category of Best Actor. Our crystal ball shows us virtually nothing this year in regards to this category with everyone feeling both likely and unlikely for various reasons. One of the most confusing elements is that we know Oscar loves non-fictional characters best but half of those performances seem to be in Netflix movies and you never know which they'll give the big push to, or even release in theaters at all. In the absence of sure things, even on paper, we decided to take some wild swings. For example: Daniel Kaluuya for Queen and Slim which might prove way too divisive since it was introduced as "protest art" at CinemaCon; Ben Affleck, who never has been praised all that much for the acting side of his career, for his addiction drama Torrance. We almost went with Mark Ruffalo who reads like a safe bet in a potentially great role in Todd Haynes's untitled new film. On the other hand, Haynes is not a speedy filmmaker so the likelihood of 2020 for that feels strong.

The safest bet on paper is surely Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. But they passed right by Hanks for Captain Phillips, Saving Mr Banks, The Post, and Bridge of Spies, any of which might have netted him an easier nomination in the 1990s when they couldn't get enough of him. So you never know.  Check out the chart to see where all the big names and rising stars rank. Do you have any hunches this early? 

PREDICTION INDEX / BEST ACTOR PAGE

Stage Door: "The Cher Show" and "Aint too Proud"

by Nathaniel R

Musical theater has its own version of limited and wide release / indie and blockbuster if you will. The analogy is far from perfect but those movie groupings are sort of comparable to Off Broadway and Broadway. Every Broadway show is trying to be a four-quadrant blockbuster.  

One of the safest routes to a quick buck (if not necessarily continuous sales) is the jukebox musical. Not all of them try to double as biographies of whoever's songbook it is but many do. That way they're easily marketable, excessively familiar, and can rely on nostalgia and sight-unseen goodwill to fill the house...

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Streaming Roulette April: The Dirt, Monster House, and Now Apocalypse

As is our practice we've selected a couple handful of titles and frozen the films at utterly random moments without cheating (whatever comes up comes up!) for this quick preview. At the bottom of the page, check out full listings for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and HBO for April 2019. And please do let us know if you're dying to discuss any of the films. Maybe we'll select one to write up? Okay, let's go...

Holy shit. Barnabas!

Now Apocalypse, Season 1 (2019) on Hulu (with Starz add-on)
Pictured there are the four leads of Now Apocalypse all of them gorgeous / funny / frequently naked in the first TV series from Gregg Araki of 1990s new queer cinema fame. Araki's preoccupations haven't changed much (or at all!)  since the 1990s. A twinkish lead with floppy dark hair? Check. Constant drug use? Sex. Filthy language and explicitly sexual humor? Check. A preoccupation with supernatural kinds of rape? Check. A dumb but impossibly sweet and sincere straight hunk? Check. Impossibly hip but somewhat chilly woman with black hair? Check. Sexual fluidity for every character even those with a pronounced label or gay or straight? Check. Slutty female best friend with most of the best lines? Check. End of the world fantasies and paranoia? Check. Older predatory queers in abundance? Check. Aliens or supernatural occurences? Of course! The show is way too repetitive in the early episodes (lots of flashbacks to previous episodes which is weird for streaming shows since you've literally usually just been watching what you're now flashing back to) but about halfway into the season the short episodes start  to come together in fun ways, including a hilarious and much smarter way of folding back in on itself with an in-series webseries, wherein the characters are reenacting the early episodes and playing themselves badly or being played unflatteringly by actors hired to play them. 

She never blinked during the interview.

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