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Red Carpet Rundown: BAFTAs 2016

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Ah, the BAFTAs; never the showiest jewel of red carpet season, largely because it can only barely bring itself to care about being part of red carpet season. The BAFTAs are so begrudging about the increasing importance of the red carpet that it doesn’t even bother with the hedge nonsense. This isn’t Versailles; you get a few stanchions and then we’re all done, okay? There’s something kind of soothing about a red carpet that secretly doesn’t care. In nearly every shot here, there’s either an awkward architectural feature (those BAFTA columns look like lighting-rig supports that someone decided to brand at the last second), or a clump of people who don’t care who’s taking pictures, or a soothing sea of background folks, or those stanchions, which are perhaps my favorite red-carpet appearance of recent years. The BAFTAs will show up, but you cannot make the BAFTAs care. The outfits reflect this; there’s only a handful, and there was a distinctly “save your best for later” air to the whole thing, so this is gonna be… Read more »

Merlin and the Book of Beasts

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This recap has been a long time coming. I didn’t even want to look up how long it’s been since Ellen won this recap in Con or Bust and typed “Merlin and the Book of Beasts” in an email to me in a way you could just tell was a sinister, gleeful whisper. Interestingly, that was still not long enough for my major potential foil, the Jeff-Bridges-and-a-dragon movie Seventh Son, to be released as proof that budget and quality are not always related; that movie’s been delayed from embarrassment even longer than this recap has! It did, however, turn out to be delayed long enough for The Quest to premiere, which serves just as well. For those who missed it, it’s an extremely-vaguely-LARP reality series where everyone competes to be a hero instead of actually LARPing, which is a shame, but doesn’t stop anyone from asking “Can we trust him?” every time someone asks them to do anything, a skepticism I admire in reality-show contestants. (I reviewed the first episode at AV Club, and will… Read more »

Stuff I’ve Badmouthed Recently

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Well, only sort of. But I realized the last thing I posted here was the Catwoman announcement, and not any of my nonfiction work directly before or since. Obviously I’m still stoked about Catwoman, but I didn’t realize how much time’s gotten away from me in the last few weeks. Yikes. (I don’t think I ever even mentioned how much I enjoyed Snowpiercer! Though the linked piece is more about the function of a particular image than the entire film, which I thought was a marvelously unsubtle parable that worked beautifully in its details and in the sheer variety of tones it took, so that you’re unsettled not so much by the trappings of the world but by the fact that the journey through the train often juxtaposes wrenching horror with grimly gleeful comedy. For a movie as direct as this is, the variety of tones offers some interesting latitude for the viewer to determine what it’s trying to say. Luckily that’s rolling out on VOD in the very near future, so if you just… Read more »

Belle

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It was a good week for movies over at Philadelphia Weekly! I enjoyed both the claustrophobic character study of Locke and the 18th-century period piece Belle, which is otherwise so good about addressing its various long-simmering tensions that it felt like overkill whenever someone gives a heartfelt speech nearly drowned out by the orchestra. (That happened several times.) Still, it’s a solid movie. The main cast is great, to nobody’s surprise, and the supporting cast nearly as good: I’m beginning to really enjoy Tom Felton’s tour of the Aw Jeez Dudes of History. It has the period-piece romantic mainstays I love (they’re standing so close! Extended eye contact! GASP) and does a really good job negotiating tensions within a family that isn’t afraid to call out an otherwise sympathetic character when they need it. And though the speeches can seem pitched to the cheap seats, in the particulars the movie does very well deconstructing the past to illuminate the present. Its very gorgeousness takes on a layer of meaning. The shot above was one of… Read more »

Ten Things You Should Know About I, Frankenstein

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Every year, in darkest winter, the cinemas are largely filled with leftover awards contenders and a studio’s awkward also-rans that got bumped until there was just no space left. But amid those disparate offerings lurks B-movie gold: the January Gem, which can occasionally come out in February depending on how many technothrillers a movie studio has to burn off first. That’s the kind of laid-back attitude we want in a January Gem. Last year, the amazingly bad Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters gifted us with Missing Children posters on medieval milk bottles and absolutely no introspection at any point despite the fact that they’re a witch’s kids and Gretel’s actually a witch but just ignores it. This year, the January Gem is I, Frankenstein, in which Frankenstein gets caught up in the war between gargoyle angels and demons (you know the one) until he’s a man unsure of his place in the world, drawn to a comely scientist, treated very rudely by a selection of supernatural beings, and left with nothing but his own convictions… Read more »

Red Carpet Rundown: Golden Globes 2014

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Even for an awards show where show-business people are intentionally plied with alcohol for several hours and then given microphones that are broadcasting nationally and told to improvise under pressure, last night’s Golden Globes were weird. And discounting the actual show, the results were enough to give you heartburn. (Some of this red carpet rundown ended up kind of editorial.) The good news is, thanks to the engine of publicity that drives Hollywood into a living parody of itself, everybody dressed up! Some of it was lovely! Some of it, we’ll talk about. Let’s get this out of the way: Look of the night: Lupita Nyong’o, who was completely robbed of her Best Supporting Actress award. Jennifer Lawrence is talented, but there is absolutely no comparison between the two performances. At least Lupita looks flat-out stunning in this. Whoever decided to keep accessories to a minimum made an excellent call (and, as it turns out, was on trend for the night). Hope she wears something just as striking to the Oscars, which she’d better win,… Read more »
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