This isn't your mother's "Mean Girls"

by Cláudio Alves

Maybe this trailer deserves the "Yes, No, Maybe So" treatment, but why do all that work when the answer is a resounding NO? Though the musical of Mean Girls isn't an especially well-regarded Broadway property, there was some hope regarding its transfer to the screen. That was before it kept getting delayed until landing on the dumping ground of January 2024. Everything's pointing to it being a disaster, and the first trailer only accentuates those doubts rather than dispelling them. And no, it's not just because it's so eager to make the original audience for Tina Fey's teen comedy feel as old as Methuselah…

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Happy Halloween with Hercule Poirot

by Cláudio Alves

I don't know about you, but after the double whammy of Belfast and Death on the Nile, I was ready to give up on Kenneth Branagh as a director. Yet, like Michael Corleone famously said: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!"

Turns out that what Branagh and, more specifically, his Agatha Christie adaptations needed was a healthy shot of nonsense plus the spooky seasonings of horror. A Haunting in Venice, now streaming on Hulu, succeeds by untethering itself from literary fidelity, twisting Christie's Hallowe'en Party out of shape in pursuit of maximum entertainment. Though a sense of melancholy pervades, self-serious prestige is abandoned, or mayhap sacrificed at a witches' altar. And from its deadened carcass, Hercule Poirot emerges as the center of a ghostly storm, the skeptic anchor keeping this Hammer Horror resurgence from floating away on the Lido tide…

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Who's Zooming Who? A Very Virtual Golden Globes Night

by Nathaniel R

On of the funniest bits had Tina defying the split screen to stroke Amy's hair

Given the restrictions placed on Hollywood's most convivial hobnobbing boozy party things went as well as you could probably expect for the 78th Golden Globe Awards. The HFPA was wise to lean into something that always works (Tina Fey and Amy Poehler paired... although this time they were on different coasts) in a year where all the other things that make Globes night so fun, weren't really going to be there to lean into...

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"Wine Country" on Netflix

From new contributor Samantha Craggs

In theory, there's a lot to love about Wine Country. It's two whole hours devoted to women in their 40s and 50s, an often invisible demographic in film. What's more it's rarely about typical topics like marriage or children. It stars watchable and funny women. It passes the Beschdel Test in spades. 

But with Wine Country, sadly, the result is as bland as the biscuit and asparagus tones that permeate the backdrop...

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Team Experience Oscar Reax Pt 2: Good Times, Speech Writers, and Noticeable Absences

As is our practice we polled the team and a few friends shortly after the Oscars to get their takes. You already saw part one on joyful and horny moments so here's part two. We hope you'll answer the same questions in the comments. 

1. Who was having the very best time in the theater?
2. Who most needed a speechwriter?
3. Without a host who was the MVP guiding you through the night?
4. Whose absence did you most feel during the broadcast?

Our answers are after the jump...

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