How disconnected will we accept characters to be from their comic book universes?

Sony recently announced that Venom, Black Cat, and Silver Sable — all characters known for being part of the world of Spider-Man — are going to be broken away from the superhero for their own movies. Venom is getting an R-rated offshoot with sci-fi, horror, and action elements, while Black Cat and Silver Sable are sharing the screen for something possibly related to it. Basically the studio wants to move ahead with the shared universe they’d planned to spinoff from the Amazing Spider-Man run, only now these movies will have nothing to do with Spidey at all.

Many of us immediately thought of Catwoman, which took the DC Comics villain, whom we’d previously seen in a Batman movie (Batman Returns, played by Michelle Pfeiffer), and gave her a re-cast solo venture (starring Halle Berry) with no ties to the Caped Crusader. We’ve similarly already seen Venom and Black Cat before, the former as one of Spidey’s villains (portrayed by Topher Grace) in Spider-Man 3 and the latter as a supporting character (played by Felicity Jones) in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 who hadn’t yet gotten the chance to be revealed as her feline-themed alter ego.

Of course, Catwoman isn’t the only bad example. From DC and Warner Bros., there’s also the Shaquille O’Neal vehicle Steel, which like Venom is an interesting choice for a franchise detachment since the title character on the page was literally born out of a major comic book character. In that case, Superman. Earlier, 1984's Supergirl was just barely linked to the Superman movies being produced at the time. Before that there was Swamp Thing. But couldn’t we also say the old Superman and Batman movies did the same thing by not having any mention of, let alone connection to, each other?

Marvel already has a much bigger issue with characters who are connected in comics not being connected in movies. In fact, before this year, Spider-Man himself was disassociated from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, instead just star of his own franchise. At least for three movies pre-MCU’s existence, nobody seemed to mind that he had no ties to Iron Man, Captain America, etc. Now he does have such ties, but his other associates will have no ties to him (as far as we know —they’re at least not connected to the Tom Holland MCU version of Spidey). In the age of the MCU, fans want everything Marvel to be linked up.

But then there are also plenty of people who think the interconnectivity has gotten out of hand. It’s nice to see Spider-Man in Captain America: Civil War alongside all his fellow Marvel superheroes, but now it seems a bit much to have Iron Man so prominently involved in Spider-Man: Homecoming. And there’s a cameo from Captain America in the latest trailer, too. When Iron Man and Thor went back to their solo series post-The Avengers, there were reminders of the rest of the MCU, but that didn’t dominate their stories nor their marketing.

Guardians of the Galaxy is even better at doing its own thing, with the upcoming sequel supposedly unfastened completely from the hold of the Infinity Stones and anything else to do with the rest of the MCU, and it’s seen as a positive direction for that property. Guardians can exist as its own franchise within the mega franchise without always being informed by the big picture. That’s how comic books are, and that’s how comic book movies should be. It’s also what Fox is doing now with the Marvel-based X-Men franchise, allowing for stuff like Deadpool and Logan to be related yet ignore continuity (there’s also the TV series Legion, which focuses on a minor character from the X-Men comics, and so far it’s not related at all).

Perhaps the tolerated type of standalone franchise for comic book characters is one where the hero or antihero has his or her own ongoing publication? Venom has had multiple limited series and a couple monthly series that didn’t last too long, and Silver Sable had a regular title named for herself “and the Wild Pack,” but that was also short-lived. They and Black Cat — as well as Catwoman — will always be considered supporting characters in another’s universe, compared to Spider-Man and Batman, who will always be able to stand on their own as comic and movie stars.

Fox Should Not Sell Fantastic Four Movie Rights To Marvel

As with any idea out of Hollywood, the Venom and Black Cat/Silver Sable movies could be good or bad depending on the care put into them. It’s an interesting direction to go in as the two movies seem at first to be a nice alternative to the modern shared-universification of everything. And frankly, I’d still love to see that standalone Aunt May spy movie announced years ago. But if Sony just crosses them over and makes their own cinematic universe with these characters, that defeats their potential and will only cause fans to keep wondering if Spidey can ever be looped in at some point.

Nobody Wants Another ‘Catwoman,’ But… was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A comparative supercut.

This latest batch of Star Wars films — J.J. Abrams’ Episode VII: The Force Awakens and Gareth Edwards’ Rogue One — have so far done an excellent job adhering to the narrative and visual universe of the franchise as established by the first three films, A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. This is something the second trilogy — The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith — didn’t necessarily do, which is in part why these films don’t really stand up to the originals the way this new crop does. Anytime you have a film series with this many disparate chapters, especially as divvied out over 40 years, there needs to be continuity, there needs to be some element — whether character, theme, or aesthetic — that carries throughout the franchise, that instantly establishes the particular filmic universe. Star Wars has several of these built-in to itself: Jedis, seemingly unskilled people revealed as carriers of great potential, the opening crawl, spacecraft design, recurring species et cetera. But another at-times subtle and at-times obvious way the new films conjure the old is by mirroring scenes visually and recalling some of the shots that made the franchise iconic to begin with.

Already we’ve brought you a video cataloguing the visual similarities between The Force Awakens and the original trilogy, and now thanks to editor Zackery Ramos-Taylor we can do the same for Rogue One. ZRT has taken clips from Edwards’ film and set them side-by-side with their mirror images from either Hope, Empire, or Jedi, revealing the newer film as a cinematic ode that simultaneously respects its predecessors while building upon their visual legacy.

Rouge One will be released on Blu-Ray and DVD in the US April 4th.

The Mirror Imagery of ‘Rogue One’ and the Original ‘Star Wars’ Trilogy was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This Week in Home Video

Plus 12 more new releases to watch at home this week on Blu-ray/DVD.

Welcome to this week in home video! Click the title to buy a Blu-ray/DVD from Amazon and help support FSR in the process!

Pick of the Week

20th Century Women

What is it? A single mother in 1979 California tries to raise her teenage son with assistance from their friends.

Why buy it? Mike Mills’ (Beginners) latest is a beautiful ode to not just motherhood but family and friendships in general. Annette Bening delivers what should have been recognized as the best of last year too as she finds wit and warmth in a character trying to do right by her son. Billy Crudup is equally fantastic, and they’re joined by Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning who also deliver compelling characters. Mills’ film focuses on Bening and her son, but it finds time to explore each of the characters with looks into their pasts and futures serving as bookends to their present of 1979. It’s a very human film interested equally in the strengths and flaws that make us who we are, and it has a unique voice as a result. It’s just a beautiful film all around.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Commentary, making of, featurette]

20th Century Women [Blu-ray]

The Best

Cinema Paradiso [Arrow Academy]

What is it? A successful film director recalls his small-town childhood and how he fell in love with movies.

Why buy it? Writer/director Giuseppe Tornatore’s loving appreciation of cinema’s history and power gets a beautiful HD presentation befitting a film about film. There are moments both serious and goofy here as Salvatore’s childhood antics see him interacting with the townspeople and finding the magic in movies. It’s filled with memorable images but saves its most powerful scene for the end. Arrow Academy’s new Blu-ray features both the theatrical and director’s cuts, both newly restored, as well as a host of extras.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Commentary, documentary, making of, featurette, booklet]

Cinema Paradiso (Special Edition) [Blu-ray]

The Creeping Garden [Arrow Academy]

What is it? Something unusual and unique is living beneath our feet, and that something is called slime mould.

Why see it? Science and nature documentaries live and breathe on the strength of their footage, and this recent look at the incredibly interesting world of the plasmodial slime mould delivers on that front — for a while at least — with video of the mould moving with purpose, intelligence, and (relative) speed. It’s fascinating and a little bit frightening to discover this entity’s capabilities. Unfortunately for the film though it shifts away from the mould itself to spend an excessive amount of time on real-life people crafting research and experiments inspired by it. Twenty minutes spent with people pretending to be the mould is twenty minutes too many. It’s still an extremely interesting doc, and Arrow Academy’s new Blu-ray includes plenty of extras including the very cool soundtrack on CD if you act fast.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Commentary, short films, featurettes, booklet]

The Creeping Garden (Director Approved 3-Disc Limited Edition) [Blu-ray + DVD]

Silence

What is it? Two Jesuit priests head into Japan in search of their missing teacher despite the danger of being tortured and killed for being Christians.

Why see it? Martin Scorsese’s epic look at the folly and cruelty of mankind’s ego is a gorgeous feast for the senses. The story highlights the extremes to which we’ll go not just to prove our own convictions, but to prove those of others wrong. It’s never boring, but it does meander at times in its effort to drive home its themes on its way towards a powerful third act exploring the conflict between faith and reality.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Featurette]

Silence [BD/Digital HD Combo] [Blu-ray]

The Rest

Arsenal

What is it? A responsible businessman is drawn into a world of violence and gangsters by the actions of his older brother.

Why see it? Director Steven C. Miller’s latest teases a fun time thanks in large part to a cast that includes Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, Johnathon Schaech, and Adrian Grenier, but the fun never really materializes. Miller’s far better Marauders gives both Schaech and Grenier more interesting characters and more room to play them, but here they’re stuck with overly serious characters lacking in personality. Cage and Cusack meanwhile are just acting silly. The script and characters are never able to build any real drama, and when it all devolves into pure action it’s done with an excess of slow motion gibberish.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Commentary, featurette, interviews]

China Girl [Vinegar Syndrome]

What is it? An evil organization abducts a government agent and tortures her with sexual pleasure as evil organizations are prone to do.

Why see it? The setup for this ’70s porn film is simple on its face, but there’s something appealing about an adult feature that wants to include more than just lowest common denominator sex scenes. The sex is nothing to sneeze at, but we also get some action with spies and thugs including the legendary James Hong as the big bad boss. It’s a comedy so none of the murderous antics are taken all that seriously, but unlike too many adult films (from what I hear) there’s more than enough going on to entertain even when the performers are fully clothed.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: 2k restoration, interview]

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

What is it? A writer arrives in New York City and accidentally lets some of his magical creatures loose.

Why see it? J.K. Rowling’s addendum to her bestselling Harry Potter series gets turned into its own feature — and soon to be franchise — but the result is far from captivating. The visuals are occasionally impressive, but the story and characters are just ridiculously dull and instantly forgettable. Two hours in the plot still feels unimportant and difficult to summarize. There’s no shortage of talented people on both sides of the camera, but it’s to little end.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Featurettes, deleted scenes]

A Monster Calls

What is it? A young boy, bullied at school and facing the impending loss of his mother, calls upon a monster for help.

Why see it? Director JA Bayona has previously delivered real chills (The Orphanage) and big thrills (The Impossible), but his latest is an odd let down. All of the pieces are here for an intimate and affecting drama, albeit one with big effects, but it all falls surprisingly flat. It fully expects viewers to feel the sadness, grief, and loss, but we’re being told what to feel instead of it occurring naturally. There’s still a good story beneath it all, and performances are solid outside of the boy who can’t help but be obnoxious as hell.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Deleted scenes, making of, featurettes]

September Storm [Kino Classics]

What is it? A foursome go boating off the coast of Spain in search of treasure beneath the waves.

Why see it? This 1960 feature was thought lost before being rediscovered and restored, and it’s a fun enough little adventure. There is a distinct lack of sharks though despite the cover image. They’re here, but they’re just one small beat among the foursome’s travails that range from other sea life to fierce weather. There are some dramatic character moments too, but ultimately the biggest appeal here is in the film’s travelogue-like appearance thanks to some beautiful locations. Kino includes both 2D and 3D versions of the film

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Interviews, short films]

Why Him?

What is it? A father is concerned with his daughter’s choice of boyfriend.

Why see it? Brayn Cranston and James Franco headline this comedy that ends a lot smoother than it begins meaning you have to get past some rough and unfunny bits before the good stuff hits. “Good” stuff is maybe a somewhat generous as very little of the film is actively funny, but it is far less abrasive and obnoxious than the setup and casting of Franco would suggest. Zoey Deutch actually stands apart from the crowd and marks herself as deserving of roles beyond simple girlfriends, so watch it of her and enjoy the benefit of a couple laughs along the way.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Gag reel, featurettes, deleted scenes, commentary]

Wishmaster Collection [Vestron Video]

What is it? An evil djinn needs the woman who released him to make three wishes so he can unleash his kind across the globe in Wishmaster, an evil djinn needs the woman who released him to make three wishes so he can unleash his kind across the globe in Wishmaster 2, an evil djinn needs the woman who released him to make three wishes so he can unleash his kind across the globe in Wishmaster 3, and an evil djinn is surprised when the woman who released him makes three wishes so he can unleash his kind across the globe in Wishmaster 4.

Why see it? The latest Vestron Video release collects all four films in the franchise, and fans could not have hoped for better as the set is loaded with new extras. The first movie is a terrific little horror picture filled with an abundance of great gory gags, but the quality drops considerably across the other three due mainly to the lack of practical effects scenes. They become generic and dull affairs with un-creative kills and redundant storylines. That first one though is great fun.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Commentaries, featurettes]

Witchtrap [Vinegar Syndrome]

What is it? Owners of an old house attempt to discover the truth behind its haunting.

Why see it? Kevin Tenney followed up his popular Witchboard with another little horror thriller featuring bloody bits, T&A, and some deadly shenanigans. The film plays with haunted house expectations a bit as deadly spirits and trouble-causing seances lead our hapless guests into trouble. Vinegar Syndrome’s newly remastered Blu-ray adds back some previously excised gore, and Linnea Quigley’s death by shower head has never looked better.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: 2k restoration, commentary, interviews, short film]

ZPG [KL Studio Classics]

What is it? The world is overpopulated to the point that society has regulated births, but one couple decides to have a kid anyway.

Why see it? Oliver Reed and Geraldine Chaplin play the couple going against the grain, and like the film itself their performances are subdued affairs. The film has a small feel to it with locales and sets often obscured by fog, and while the ideas at play here are a bit bigger they’re kept fairly limited as well without ever trying to move beyond the simple setup of hiding a birth.

[Blu-ray/DVD extras: Commentary]

Also Out This Week:

Americana, Blow-Up [Criterion], Fragments of Love, Planet Earth II, The Wanderers, What’s the Matter With Helen? [Scream Factory]

Annette Bening Is the Warm and Witty Heart of ‘20th Century Women’ was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A new supercut reveals the discomfort of familiarity.

One of the most brilliantly unsettling aspects of the HBO series Westworld, I think, is how it toys with familiarity, making almost a menace of what would traditionally be a comfort. The show is thematically based on repetition and manipulation, namely the repetition of events and the manipulation of our expectations. Each time we see a repeated image or sequence, we compound upon it all the knowledge we’ve picked up about the involved characters and the overarching narrative since the last time we saw it, thus altering both our interpretation of it and its impact on us. Dolores starting her day has different, practically sinister connotations the second time you see it as opposed to the first, in which it’s perceived as more normal and innocent.

Repetition in Westworld is never a simple case of visual kinship, it is a specific narrative device that forms the backbone of the show’s delightfully-labyrinthine structure. To illustrate this notion, take a gander at the following supercut from Michael McLennen that gathers these cracked-mirror sequences into a grid where they play simultaneously, accompanied by the staccato tinkle of an off-tune piano that transforms the experience into something bordering the hypnotic, just like the series the video’s showcasing.

Dreams Within Dreams: The Recurring Images of HBO’s ‘Westworld’ was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Short of the Day

When the figments of a child’s imagination aren’t imaginary.

I’m not much of a fantasy fan, but even I was beguiled by this selection for Short of the Day, Goblin Queen, written and directed by Reed Shusterman. Think of it like a darker Narnia movie but from the perspective of a parent stuck here in the real world. That’s the situation in which Winona (Stacey Mosley, The Muppets, Swan’s Crossing) finds herself when her daughter Amber Lynn (Amy Letcher, Black Sails) is revealed to be the ruler of a magical land in another dimension. Amber Lynn keeps leaping back and forth between realms, and as you might expect, while making one of these transitions home, she’s followed by a most-inhospitable goblin.

Goblin Queen is concise and direct, it knows exactly what it is and what we expect from it and starts delivering as promptly as a good narrative allows. The performances are measured and even and reflect the balance between reality and fantasy the story depicts, and the fight sequences — choreographed by Jan Bryand and Dan Speaker, who worked on Spielberg’s Hook and Peter Weir’s Master & Commander — are particularly dazzling.

To-date this short has been selected for showcase at 10 film festivals; get just a minute into it and you’ll see why: Goblin Queen is well-told, well-realized, rich with imagination, and a master of its own particular magic. You don’t have to be a fantasy fan to enjoy it, you just have to like good films.

‘Goblin Queen’ is a Fantasy Short ‘Narnia’-Lovers Will Adore was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Is this a team-up movie?

This week, Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures released its big, full trailer for ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming.’ This means we need to do another Emergency Pod. To talk all things webhead, Neil welcomes Film School Rejects contributor and podcaster Theo Broxson on to talk Vulture, story theories, Donald Glover, and whether or not this is a team-up movie.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter (@OnePerfectPod) and Facebook (facebook.com/oneperfectshot). Subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher, on TuneIn, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also follow host Neil Miller (@rejects) and guest Theo Broxson (@onemorerick). We’d very much appreciate your feedback, as well. Leave us a review on iTunes or email us: pod@filmschoolrejects.com.

This week’s closing music is by Marco Cela (and Junkie XL) via Soundcloud.

An Emergency Discussion About The ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ Trailer was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

From Michel Hazanavicius, director of ‘The Artist.’

Jean-Luc Godard is no less than one of the five most influential filmmakers in the history of the medium. He’s best known as the figurehead of the French New Wave, but that’s a movement that’s been over nearly a half century now, and point of fact the overwhelming majority of Godard’s 124 directing credits come after the FNW. He’s a man who started a movement and then was somewhat forced to remain in its shadow. There’s a feeling of old cinema — perhaps “classic” is the word — to the director’s oeuvre, but in truth Godard has always been at the forefront of cinematic experimentation no matter what the year or movement du jour, he’s always put innovation ahead of traditional storytelling. This is the man, after all, who gave us the famous quote: “A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, though not necessarily in that order.”

If you can find a working filmmaker worth a damn who claims to have never been inspired by a film of Godard’s, then you’ve found yourself a liar. It’s impossible to be aware of filmmaking without being aware of Godard, the two are practically synonymous. Which is why it was almost a foregone conclusion that one day someone would make a film about the filmmaker. Well, that someone is Michel Hazanavicius, director of the Best-Picture-winning ode to the silent era, The Artist, and today he released the first trailer for Redoubtable, his Godard biopic that places its focus on the director’s revolutionary period that began in the late 1960s. Louis Garrel (The Dreamers) plays Godard, and Stacy Martin (Nymphomaniac) plays his love interest of the time, Anne Wiazemsky, upon whose memoir the movie is based.

The trailer’s below, and while it isn’t subtitled, the gist is conveyed through filmic language, something you’d think the man himself would appreciate, but when it comes to Redoubtable, Godard is, shall we say, less than enthused.

“Oh, to even hear about it do not want to! I do not like it. Although, in fact, do not care. Stupid, stupid idea.”

Maybe now that there are some images to go with this “stupid idea” the maestro will change his mind.

As for his own work, the 86-year-old director is currently in production on Image et Parole, which he describes as a Middle-Eastern parable about oil and control. Expect it to be nothing like what you expect.

Redoubtable also stars Berenice Bejo (The Artist) opens in the US later this year. Enjoy the synopsis below, then the trailer.

Paris 1967. Jean-Luc Godard, the leading filmmaker of his generation, is shooting La Chinoise with the woman he loves, Anne Wiazemsky, 20 years his junior. They are happy, attractive, in love. They marry. But the film’s reception unleashes a profound self-examination in Jean-Luc. The events of May ’68 will amplify this process, and the crisis that shakes the filmmaker. Deep-rooted conflicts and misunderstandings will change him irrevocably. Revolutionary, off-the-wall, destructive, brilliant, he will pursue his choices and his beliefs to the breaking point… As he did with The Artist, Academy Award® winning director Michel Hazanavicius delivers another tribute to classic cinema, both wildly funny and deeply moving.

Hazanavicius Michel

Source: The Film Stage

In other news and points of interest…

…Louis CK is doing his first standup special in two year over on Netflix next month, and today we were treated to the trailer…

…Vanity Fair released a must-read interview with “the worst director in the world,” Uwe Boll…

…Parks & Rec vets Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman are reuniting for a new show…

…and our boss Neil Miller held an emergency podcast to discuss the new trailer for Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Over in our corner of the internet we had a lot of really interesting posts go up yesterday, including reason to be excited about the Escape From New York remake, a study of the music of Blue Velvet, a look at disconnected comic book movies, a video comparing the imagery of Rogue One and the original Star Wars trilogy, and Rob Hunter’s Blu-Ray/DVD Pick of the Week.

And lastly, take a look at five of the most popular shots we tweeted over the last 24 hours. Want more? You know where to find us.

Godard on Godard Biopic: ‘Stupid, Stupid Idea.’ But the Show Goes On was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A Star Wars Story.

One of the quirks of my cinephile upbringing was that, despite Star Wars coming out the year before I was born, I didn’t see it until I was eighteen. At the time I was preparing to major in film at a program focused specifically on non-narrative experimental filmmaking, and we were actively scorned for caring about popular films or indeed any popular art. (I only lasted a year before they gave me the heave-ho, partially for liking Led Zeppelin, although that was a symptom, not the disease; it was thus that I became a literal film school reject.) The desire to fit in didn’t supersede my personal taste, but strictly in terms of the kind of movies I was seeing at the time, and not having grown up with Star Wars like everyone else my age, watching the original trilogy for the first time on VHS, in one sitting, with a bunch of people who were watching me watch the movies and gauging my responses, was the wrong introduction. There is a possibility that even with a better one, Star Wars never would have really been my thing. But with the company I keep, and the evolution my taste underwent with the concurrent erosion of insecurities over it, I’ve long envied the joy people get from Star Wars. It wasn’t until The Force Awakens and Rogue One that I finally felt it.

This came as a surprise. When Disney acquired Lucasfilm with the intent of cranking out new Star Wars films I had a range of thoughts, from “ah, shit” to “guess it’s a good thing I don’t really give a fuck” to “I hope they don’t insult the Star Wars fans.” Because even though I’d never felt it, I knew that the joy of Star Wars fandom was a pure and special thing that should be respected, out of kindness if nothing else. And so, despite the occasional irritation at the omnipresence of marketing and related chatter, it came to be that years of not quite getting it melted away and I greatly enjoyed The Force Awakens, and then a year later enjoyed Rogue One even more.

In concrete terms, the filmmaking in these new films is nothing extraordinary; indeed, it never has been. The compositions mainly showcase the production design and visual effects, although those are admittedly well worth pointing out. From an editing perspective, the first Star Wars film was a game-changer within popular American cinema but the techniques employed were pioneered by Eisenstein and popularized the decade before in the worldwide New Waves. However, in keeping with a series involving an invisible yet omnipresent and extraordinarily powerful Force, Star Wars’ intangibles are nonpareil. The films’ ability to induce awe are self-evident: they have, in millions of people. The exciting parts are exciting (non-fan though I may be, I’m not made of stone: Han Solo coming in at the last minute to clear the way for Luke is, for lack of any worthy comparison, Han Solo coming in at the last minute to clear the way for Luke. That’s the apex of the kind of movie moment that is), the suspenseful bits are intense, the endings cathartic.

One tangible element, that I think ties these two hemispheres together, is the casting, which in every Star Wars film (including the prequels) has been almost universally outstanding. (Take that “almost” as you will.) Most famously, the original series was buoyed by inspired choices, from the central trio of Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher to the army of British film and theater luminaries led by Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing, to voice-casting James Earl Jones to be Darth Vader. Time and again thinly (to be kind) written characters on the page were transformed into robust, vivid, unforgettable icons. The Star Wars films stand as one of the great arguments on record that it’s the end result, the whole, that counts, rather than the the sum of the component parts.

This brings us, at last, to The Force Awakens and Rogue One, both of which are marvelously cast, and which draw the bulk of their emotional weight from that. I’m not sure if it was a long-delayed awakening to the wonders of Star Wars, or whether it was Daisy Ridley and John Boyega, or if the latter were my guides to the former. I’m not sure if it’s even relevant if it was Donnie Yen or the Force itself that made me believe, but the important thing is by the end of Rogue One, I did. The closest I can come to putting my finger on a reason why is that everyone in both movies looked so utterly thrilled to be in a Star Wars movie.

That excitement is the key, for me. There’s been some criticism of them as fan fiction but I would counter that that’s their greatest strength. George Lucas is certainly entitled to be ambivalent about his most famous creation, and there’s no reason on Earth, or Coruscant, that he should bend to his fans’ every whim. On the other hand, the ebullient nerd joy pulsing through every frame of The Force Awakens or Rogue One is so refreshing, and energizing. It wins over even grumpy shitheads like me. It slips the bonds of these movies’ origins as (at best faintly) cynical cash-ins and gracefully affirms one of the highest truths in popular entertainment: a thing ceases being a commodity the second fans get their hands on it. Only then does it take its true form. When pop works, it’s a beautiful thing to behold.

How ‘The Force Awakens’ and ‘Rogue One’ Brought One Grumpy Film Critic To The Force was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The ‘Donnie Darko’ director imparts important Hollywood lessons.

It only takes one movie to make you a notable filmmaker, as we’ve seen with Richard Kelly. His 2001 debut feature, Donnie Darko, is a “mainstream cult classic,” if the oxymoron may be allowed. Initially a flop, the sci-fi teen movie is now popular enough to warrant a new 4K restoration and re-release in honor of its 15th anniversary last year.

He has made two other features, neither of them so successful, and hasn’t directed anything in eight years. But that one movie is enough to make him an expert on the good and bad of Hollywood, and fortunately he hasn’t become a curmudgeon sitting on the wayside, so we can still look to his lessons learned and the six tips collected below as positive guidance.

Take Risks

Kelly’s first two movies (the second is Southbound Tales) are unlike anything ever made before, and of course he’s paid the price of them not being immediately understood, embraced, or appreciated. Even before their later cult status achievement, he can live with his films’ negative reception, because at least he took risks and did something unique and impassioned.

Back in December, when the Donnie Darko restoration hit UK theaters, care of the British Film Institute, Kelly was asked how one makes a cult film. Here’s the key, as he explained it to Forbes:

You can’t plan to make a cult film, it just happens. You just have to try and be original. I think what people do now is they become too complacent and they just copy what has been done before and they are afraid to paint outside the lines or take the detour or take the unconventional course in making their art. The films that really stand out are the ones that take risks. Originality is always going to be the leader.

He said something similar to Cardiff University’s Quench magazine around the same time, giving hope that eventually he’ll deliver another unique film:

It’s so easy to be complacent and to just copy what’s come before. That’s all fine, but I think if you want to break out and forge an identity for yourself as an artist, you’ve got to try and take some risks and be bold. I don’t want to get complacent or surrender to the market place. I want to keep exploring new ideas.

Kelly also recently, in an interview for The Skinny, pointed out what specifically might be causing too many filmmakers to be complacent these days. Things are just too easy now:

Digital filmmaking has made things much more accessible, but I don’t know if that’s made filmmakers more complacent in a way, where they don’t feel the need to take as many risks because they’ve all these tools at their disposal.

Please Yourself (aka Fuck ‘Em)

Whether or not his movies wind up cult classics or forgotten flops, Kelly can feel pride knowing that he did things his way, for himself, not for them or anyone else. He comes off as a true artist with this approach and attitude, particularly through this quote from an interview included in Joshua Horowitz’s 2006 collection “The Mind of the Modern Moviemaker: Twenty Conversations with the New Generation of Filmmakers”:

I think it’s all about pleasing yourself. The biggest mistake a lot of writers make when they’re first starting out is, “Oh, I have to try to please the studio executives or I have to try to write for the marketplace.” That’s where you lose your voice, and your voice is diluted by what you anticipate studio executives responding to. And that’s when you are handicapping yourself. I never once thought, “I need to do this because I need to sell this screenplay.” I thought, “I’m going to write exactly the movie I want to see.” It was all about, “If no one else likes it, fuck ‘em.” I might be the only person in the world who understands this script and wants to see it made, but that was my attitude and it continues to be my attitude, because I think the purest essence of an artist is ultimately pleasing yourself first. Ultimately, if there’s anyone else who likes it, great. If not? Fuck ‘em.

Believe In Yourself (aka Be Relentless)

If you’re going to do something that pleases yourself first, you need to believe in it all the way through or else other compromises will corrupt your vision. Maybe not everything you try to make gets made, but eventually you will hopefully break through with something you stand behind and which stands behind you. Here’s the advice Kelly gave to aspiring filmmakers via an interview for MovieMaker magazine in 2004 after Donnie Darko found its fanbase:

There are miracles that happen, certainly. But they also require a lot of hitting the sidewalk every morning and knocking on doors and asking for signatures and asking, ‘Will you sponsor me?’ I had many, many doors slammed in my face. We walked into many meetings with executives and producers and people who would immediately roll their eyes and nod their heads and say, “Yeah, great, okay, see ya.” The meeting would be over before it started. And you know, stuff like that, it just made us more confident.

The only way to respond to that is to believe in yourself even more and have an even greater desire to prove those people wrong. So, honestly, the only way I know how to deal with rejection is to become more confident.

Two years earlier, when Donnie Darko was beginning to find an audience, Kelly gave this similar statement in an interview for Future Movies:

I think you always run into moments where you wake up in the middle of the night and question what you are doing, and come to the conclusion that this is a disaster and that you should go and work on Wall Street and join the herd. But I think that you’ve just got to keep pushing forward every day and be relentless in chasing success and making it in Hollywood. If you look at any successful person coming out of Hollywood in this business, regardless of whether or not they really have talent, because not everyone does, the one thing the all have in common is that at some point they have been relentless about putting themselves out there and making someone believe in them in order to give them an opportunity. It takes time, it certainly doesn’t happen overnight and although it happened very quickly for me there was a tremendous amount of hard work. Everyone deals with rejection, my way of dealing with it was to just become more confident and more relentless, it’s the only way to deal with it.

And this is from an interview in Stephen Lowenstein’s 2008 book “My First Movie: Take Two: Ten Celebrated Directors Talk About Their First Film,” focused more on when you finally get a project going and more specifically on his relentless demand for an anamorphic lens for Donnie Darko:

You can’t let them underestimate you. If you know you can deliver something and they’re underestimating your potential because you’re 25 and you never shot a film before, don’t let them do that to you because you’re then stuck and the film is then stuck not looking the way you want it to. You’ve got to pick your battles. You can’t win them all. But the ones you know you can win, you’ve got to fight them. You have to. And in the end they’ll respect you for fighting for what you want.

And after all that, the advice still may carry weight through the movie’s release and beyond. Believing in the project and having patience keeps you strong as you wait to finally see a movie find its audience. “I feel like sometimes things just need time to marinate,” Kelly told The Guardian ahead of the UK re-release. And here’s another bit from the Quench interview:

I was always worried that this film might just fall off a cliff. But I joke that it’s a bit like the Energizer bunny, it just keeps going and going and oh my god, here we are again talking about it!

Do It Yourself

You can be patient and relentless, but don’t simply sit around while you wait for a miracle to happen. In the meantime, you can work on other things or work further on the one thing you’re really wanting to get made. Here’s the advice he gave very early on, in 2002, in the Future Movies interview:

Just write a lot, believe in your script, and find a couple of scenes that really work and try to get these shot as a short film. You can do this reasonably easily and inexpensively, and it works. Wes Anderson , for example, did this for his first break into the industry.

That short film idea is still a gateway that works today, and it should be even easier than it was 15 years ago. In the Quench interview, Kelly acknowledges that giving advice now is different because of how things have changed:

As to how one pulls this off in 2016 is a whole different story. When we shot the film it was the year 2000 — a completely different world. Now people can make feature films with their phones. But iPhones with filming devices didn’t exist in the noughties, we had to go and get a big expensive 35mm Panavision system and film stock. The business was completely different back then. As to now, anyone can make a film with an iPhone and get it to a competition at Sundance Festival… it’s happened. So that’s the method I would at least consider. If you can afford an iPhone, you can make a feature film. I don’t know if it’d be good, but you can definitely try.

Be Economical

If you’re going to take risks, please yourself, believe in yourself, and do it yourself, you’re going to need to be thrifty, and so you’re also going to need to be economical with your production process. From the interview in “My First Movie”:

The kind of films that I’m going to to continue to make are very risky, and the only way I’m going to do them is when I’m given barely enough money, when the actors are all working for scale, and so on. So you have to have everything planned in advance, otherwise you’re never going to make your day. There’s no worse feeling than knowing that you’re not going to make your day and there’s a shot that you can’t live without that you’re going to lose. And we always got the shot that I couldn’t live without. Sometimes I lost stuff but it turned out I didn’t really need it. We got only what we needed, and the film looks better and plays better because of that economy and because Steven would urge me to risk it all in one shot. Start here and move in and and get it all in one shot. I became someone who would turn back to Steven and say, “Steven, we don’t need any more coverage. I’m not going to use it. It’s a waste of time.” And that economy is something that helped my editor. It helps the film because a lot of first-time filmmakers shoot too much coverage or they think they need to use all the coverage — you know, because we had four setups we’ve got to use them all. The truth is you should only cut when necessary. Only shoot what is necessary. It makes the process of watching the film more economical. Economy is a great discipline.

And here is Kelly talking about his economical lack of coverage in an interview from 2002:

Let the Actors Do Their Thing

When Kelly started out, he was all set with technical knowledge but didn’t really have any experience or expertise with professional actors. So his approach to working with them understandably has been to give them freedom with their craft. Here’s what he said during a 2011 LA Film Fest panel (via IndieWire) about directing Jake Gyllenhaal for Donnie Darko:

He’s an old soul and would challenge me on every line of dialogue. The more you can invite the actors into the process, the more you can give them ownership of the characters. They can help police you, in a good way.

And almost 10 years earlier, during a San Diego Film Critics Society screening Q&A (via ThoughtCo), he explained his actual approach to directing actors as letting them do most of the work:

There’s only so much you can do in directing someone. They need to come to the table really prepared, and then I look at it as 90% of the job is theirs and 10% is you coming in and not getting in their face too much. I think a lot of first-time directors get in there and they overdo it or they overcomplicate it. I think they can annoy the actors, to be honest. I mean, you have someone like Mary McDonnell who’s been doing this for a long time and has been nominated for Oscars. I don’t need to explain to her how to prepare for a role. I just need to answer all the questions that she has. If she wants to alter a piece of dialogue, allow her to do that. If she wants to improv, allow her that opportunity. Then explain to her who the character is and what the story means.

Kelly needs actors to do their own thing because he can’t always fully guide them through the kinds of stories he tells. In a recent interview for FlickeringMyth.com on the occasion of the Donnie Darko anniversary, he was asked how his actors work with such “confusing” material. His answer:

You know, this happens on all my movies where most of the actors are unclear about the whole story. They don’t quite understand the whole story, nor do they need to or should they, but I feel like I’ve done a pretty good job of making them understand their character. That’s all I need to do — it’s not their job to understand the whole story, that’s my job! If I haven’t figured it out by the time we shoot their scenes then I’ll sure as hell have figured it out by the time I finished the whole movie — I hope! So it’s mostly a case of they understand their character and their motivation and we get there together.

6 Filmmaking Tips from Terry Gilliam

What We’ve Learned

It’s not surprising that one of Kelly’s idols is Terry Gilliam, as both filmmakers put their iconoclastic vision above all else and wind up having great trouble getting films made as a result. Kelly recommends taking risks and fighting for passion projects all the way through their legacy, in order to be a happy success or a happy failure, whichever turns out to be the case.

But you have to be a very good planner and have the trust of actors to achieve such projects. Whether or not anyone else likes your movies, at least you can say you did them your way and didn’t show a lack of skill and weren’t really any trouble during their making.

6 Filmmaking Tips from Richard Kelly was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Will Hipsters Finally Get Their ‘American Idol’?

Reality-TV historians rightly remember Antiques Roadshow as one of the genre’s formative forebears. One of the earliest updates of the storied traveling freak show for the televisual medium, the venerable institution (the original British version dates to the very punk year of 1979) paved the way for cheap, glorious crap like the early rounds of American Idol, everything about Hoarders, and everything on HGTV. But what if, instead of finding garbage in their attics, insufferable people made the garbage with their own two hands? What if NBC filmed it? That’s the question that hipster hero Amy Poehler and her production company, Paper Kite Productions, are asking in their sell of The Handmade Project, an “unscripted series” focused on competitive arts and crafts. To make things even more affable, she will be joined by Nick Offerman, her co-star on NBC’s hit Parks and Recreation. NBC has put in a six-episode order.

Each episode, Deadline reports, will feature “eight all-around makers, from all walks of life… [taking] on a series of projects with the hopes of impressing Poehler [and] Offerman.” The show will be structured around an escalating series of challenges that each week’s lucky eight will task their hands to complete. Further judges will join and ascertain such craft matters like use of the proverbial school glue connecting the sticks but it will be Poehler and Offerman’s primary duty to provide “comedic guidance.”

In their previous pairing, Poehler, as Leslie Knope, played the naive liberal waif to Offerman’s libertarian beef package named Ron Swanson. Remaining in character, Offerman has continued to do other brawny-man things like churn out books on folksy living, losing his business to Micheal Keaton like a man in a movie and urinating profusely in a FIDLAR music video. For her part, aside from a starring role in Sisters (2015) and hosting the Golden Globes, both reuniting her with her former SNL-collaborator Tina Fey, Poehler has kept behind the scenes: producing a number of television shows under her Paper Kite arm (Difficult People, Welcome to Sweden, but most notably, Broad City) and voicing the feeling of Joy in Disney’s Inside Out (2015).

It is not is not known if Poehler and Offerman will resume their brains-vs-brawn dynamic but both are making in-character goes of appearing enthused about their new venture. “I’m looking forward to finally conquering my fear of paper mache,” Poehler told Deadline. [I’m] tickled pink to have a front row seat at this prodigious display of talent,” Offerman, has also said, his publicist’s voice diligently reminding me of somebody with a fondness for pancakes, “admiring and cheering on an amazing crop of American makers.”

Interestingly, Poelher and NBC are really pushing against calling their new thing a reality show or a game show. In addition to ‘unscripted series,’ other phrases that are being tossed around include “competition series” (USA Today),“an unscripted craft-friendly offering” (Uproxx) and NBC, themselves, are going with “friendly competition.” Just sell me some Pizza Hut, guys. Since Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen’s Portlandia became enough of a runaway hit to help gentrify a community, millennial hipsters have slowly evolved into a demographic worthy of generating television content. Bob’s Burgers has slowly geared themselves toward becoming a cesspool of indie rock bonafides and did you know The A.V. Club now has a show now? It is literally the most embarrassing thing in the world since Morrissey wrote about sex.

Parks and Recreation was never able to generate the vaguely popular appeal of The Office but, like Neutral Milk Hotel, it was cute and people seemed to like it in big cities. It generated memes! Thinkpieces! Its fitting that their next project will target this demographic even harder, nailing down their love of Etsy and calling themselves creatives. While its most immediate TV forebear would appear to be an olde’ game show like Beat the Clock, with its promise of little tasks, The Handmade Project’s lineage, points to the highly profitable turmoil of reality TV by way of The Voice or American Idol. Nicolle Yaron, who developed The Handmade Project with Paper Kite, worked as a producer on The Voice for its first two years. Matching an anyone-can-do-it promise with the banter of funny people who’ve sold books about how funny they are, The Handmade Project has eyes outside of hipsterdom and into the greater community of people who watch competitive reality TV.

Those interested in having their work laughed at by both Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman are warmly invited to fill out a hundred-and-three-question questionnaire on the show’s website.

Have fun!

Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman Want to Laugh at Your Crafts was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A companion piece to this week’s Shot by Shot podcast.

For this week’s episode of Shot by Shot, the official cinematography podcast of One Perfect Shot and Film School Rejects, OPS founder Geoff Todd and myself selected easily one of the most popular films of the last few years, as well as one of the outright greatest action films of all-time: George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, shot by legendary cinematographer John Seale, who came out of retirement just to work on this picture.

As usual, both Geoff and I have chosen three shots or types of shots from the film that we use as the basis for an in-depth discussion about the particular brilliance of Fury Road, which is an adrenaline-fueled nightmare from start to finish that simultaneously manages to be a rich drama full of heart and hope. This balance is only one element of the film to which cinematography lends itself, but for more of the good stuff you have to play the link below.

Once you have, be sure to let us know how were doing by leaving a rating and review over at iTunes (link above), and if there are any films you’d like us to add to the list of potentials for upcoming episodes, sound off in the comments or on Twitter. And don’t forget to check out last week’s show if you haven’t already; we talked 2001.

Next week we’ve got an exclusive interview with two-time Oscar-nominee Rodrigo Prieto, cinematographer of Martin Scorsese’s Silence, and the week after that we’re back to our regular format with a look at Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive.

To wet your whistle, check out the four Fury Road shots and one recurring technique we discuss in this week’s episode:

[WATCH] FAST AND FURIOUS: THE CAMERA PUSHES OF ‘MAD MAX: FURY ROAD’

The Perfect Shots of ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Approaching the Apocalypse as an essential self deprecating act of survival in ‘The Girl With All The Gifts’ and ‘Planet of the Apes.’

Curiosity killed the cat. But what about Schrodinger’s feline? In Colm McCarthy’s The Girl With All The Gifts, the kitty facing extinction is a young girl stumbling into an inherited wasteland where she must answer the classical thought experiment forced upon her by scientists desperate to cling on to the last dregs of humanity. Like that cat in the box, the film also attempts to exist in two states of being. It is certainly a traditional zombie film ripe with brain chomping ghouls, but The Girl With All The Girts also reaches for the moral high ground of The Twilight Zone with a climax that proudly extends a middle finger to its audience. It joins the ranks of the original Planet of the Apes as a cinematic experience birthed from a pessimistic political landscape fraught with self-loathing and downright disgust for the populace. Do we deserve this planet we hang our hat on? Absolutely not.

The less you know about either film, the better. However, I’m guessing that if you’ve clicked on this article then you’ve lived on this rock long enough to have had The Simpsons spoil the best bits of Planet of the Apes, and if you’ve seen the trailer for The Girl With All The Gifts then the big plot elements have already been paraded before you. That being said, what I need to discuss below will spoil large chunks of both movies. You’ve been warned.

“YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! DAMN YOU!” Having survived capture and trial on the Planet of the Apes, Charlton Heston’s Commander George Taylor plops his mute girlfriend he acquired from the zoo on the back of his horse, and the two march towards a future filled with fornication, rugrats, and inevitable resentment. Then they see her. Around the next bend, Heston encounters the ruined Statue of Liberty and the revelation that he’s been back home on Earth this whole time. A rage ripples through Heston, and thrusts him into a beach smashing tirade against those supposedly smart scientists that rocketed him off into space, and allowed Earth to succumb to nuclear fallout centuries ago.

In the most fitting of Rod Serling’s testimonies against his people, the screenwriter has the chimpanzee Cornelius preach the final condemnation, “Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil’s pawn. Alone among God’s primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed…he will make a desert of his home and yours.” Not the subtlest of sci-fi warnings, but the best coup de graces are the ones committed with a big damn rock, and if you’re going to get on your high horse to teach a lesson to an audience filled with historically ignorant dolts then delicacy can not be your weapon. Planet of the Apes is a savagely angry film, and demands its viewers to wake up to the horror show they’ve been born into.

“It’s not over. It’s just not yours anymore.” The revelation that hammers the final nail in the coffin of The Girl With All The Gifts is not as violently furious as the one found in Planet of the Apes, but it is as equally depressing…or at least it is if you’re one of the sadsacks still hoping to hold on to the past, the same as it ever was. The creature at the center of our story is not dead or alive. She’s both. The oddity of her origin makes her fodder for scientists trying to cure the zombie plague threatening to consume the world. Glenn Close’s Dr. Caroline Caldwell wants to scoop out her brain and juice a vaccine from its contents, but as an evolutionary jump forward, The Girl elects her kind as the next dominant population for the Earth.

Actress Sennia Nanua brings so much joy to the role of Melanie. She beams with warmth and good cheer as she greets her captors each day with a chipper, “Good morning, Sergeant Parks!” She has known nothing beyond the classroom and the chair she is strapped down to each morning before her lessons. But she has been listening to Miss Justineau’s stories, and she has been defining herself against the role models found within the Greek myths. Behind that good cheer is a lust for life, and a calculation for an existence beyond the walls of her prison, her box. She has been preparing for her rightful takeover of the planet from the very first whispers of the film, counting down how long she can hold her breath, and looking for that particular formula to play out in her favor.

Science Fiction is a genre for dreamers. Often I find myself looking for hope in its bright depictions of flying cars, transporters, replicators, and the big shrug of its shoulders to the concept of capitalism. All for one, and one for all. Nightmares, however, are of equal importance. Change does not seem occur until we’ve hit the bottom of hopelessness. So when I’m crawling on the floor in utter despair of our species’ survival on this landfill, I start rooting for the apes to take it all away. We’ve lost the right.

The appeal of the Apocalypse film is in allowing ourselves to wallow in our failures for a couple of hours. Planet of the Apes and The Girl With All The Gifts hold the mirror up and say we can do better. They say we have to do better, or some one else will. Out with the old, in with the new. Depicting the apocalypse is unequivocally essential to our survival, unfortunately we have to replicate it every few years cuz our memory is garbage.

Beware The Beast (Man) was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How what you hear can tell a story as sure as what you see.

In the 1920s, sound started creeping in to motion pictures, first via shorts then later making its feature debut in 1927’s The Jazz Singer. In those first formative years, sound was an accessory, it was a flashy new gimmick and that’s how it was used, for the enjoyment and amusement of the audience. Sound was for musical numbers or punching up comedic scenes, and, of course, for dialogue, but it wasn’t yet considered to be the storytelling element, an equal to film’s visual aspect, that it is today.

Until 1931, that is, and Fritz Lang’s M.

A serial-killer thriller and Lang’s first time working with sound, M is also the first major feature to utilize sound as a narrative and filmmaking tool: it advances the plot, it serves as a transition between scenes, it outs elements not revealed visually, and it provides a score of other ingenious results intelligently detailed in the latest video from Mr. Nerdista entitled: “M: The Importance of Sound Design.”

Sound design, like cinematography and editing, is one of the lesser-heralded storytelling facets unique to cinema, and this video is an excellent primer not just on the history of sound’s introduction to film, but also its importance, impact, and indispensability when it comes to creating a truly complete cinematic experience.

The Masterful Sound Design of Fritz Lang’s ‘M’ was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Commentary Commentary

“Now this is especially hideous. There’s no possible reason that this shot is in the movie.”

Multiple Maniacs (1970)

Commentator: John Waters (director, writer, producer, cinematographer, editor)

1. Frequent Criterion Films partner, Janus Films, has been a big part of Waters’ life, and he’s thrilled to be recording this track on the day this film was actually premiering in a Janus art theater. They “were the first ever to show [Ingmar] Bergman to me when I was in high school, I’d see art movies and it was always Janus Films. Criterion always was a class act with what kind of films they’d pick, so I’m incredibly honored that they’d pick to distribute this movie.”

2. “Is it ironic, or is it a natural ending to my career in the best kind of way,” he says regarding his arrival on the Criterion label. He adds the film is what he started with (it was his first proper feature) and “what I’m ending with.” Did I miss a memo? Has he officially retired? I’m not usually depressed this early in a commentary.

3. The credit roll was “written” with press-type on a long roll of shelving paper.

4. He wonders if Gaspar Noe has seen the film and in particular the credits as the ones for Irreversible bear some similarities.

5. The cameras they used were of the 16mm variety, “the kind they used to shoot the news,” and they overlapped the audio by 24 frames which made it impossible to cover scenes from various angles because it was near impossible to edit together. He says the film was sturdy though as evidenced by it being in his attic for years, “and here we are today.”

6. The opening scene was filmed on his parents’ front lawn “because we wer afraid of the police because we had been arrested for making the last movie, Mondo Trasho.”

7. His parents funded the film, “and I paid them back with interest at the end.”

8. He points out a joke that no longer works when someone brings out a tray of hamburgers for one dollar. “The joke was it would be really expensive. Now I routinely in Provincetown go to this place that has $18 hamburgers, so times have changed.”

9. He’s enjoying pointing out all the “shocking” moments that today are utterly harmless from foul language to two men kissing.

10. His biggest influences at the time were foreign films “that were used to break the taboos. But at the same time I was going to see nudist camp movies and going to the drive-in and seeing gore movies.”

11. He was crushed to discover a long time ago that his movies “did not work in the grindhouses and drive-ins because those audiences didn’t think those films were funny. They were screaming in the horror movies. They were jerking off in the sex movies. We were laughing and embracing them… and always one step removed in irony.”

12. Divine’s appearance here is inspired in part by Elizabeth Taylor, “and oddly enough I met Elizabeth Taylor at the end of her life, and she kind of looked like Divine.”

13. His parents were great friends wit Mary Vivian Pearce’s until the pair became “juvenile delinquents” together forcing the adults to stop speaking to each other for a decade.

14. Regarding Divine and gender pronouns, Waters followed a simple structure. “I call Divine her when he’s in a movie dressed as a woman, and I call him in real life because Divine was never a her except for when we’re talking about the character. Divine never ever walked around dressed like a woman.” He adds later that Divine never wanted to be a woman, he wanted to be a monster. “He wanted to be Godzilla, not Miss America. Other drag queens then hated him because they knew he was making fun of it.” Waters says they were dressed like real female icons, “and he would come looking like this with fake scars, carrying a chain saw, and people would not go for it.”

15. The Puke-Eater is actually eating cream corn. “I don’t know where he is today,” he says, but he’d love it if the man got back in contact with him. He knows the guy’s name doesn’t want to say it in case he’s currently an important CEO somewhere at a company filled with people who don’t know he was once the Puke-Eater.

16. The MPAA didn’t see the movie until 1980 because before then it was never shown for “commercial” purpose in a theater. When the censor board finally watched it the woman was aghast at the obscenity, but since there was nothing explicit to cut she asked a judge to step in and block the entire film. He himself declared the film insulted his eyes for ninety minutes but was not illegal.

17. People used to shoot up acid (as opposed to taking it orally) and “instantly you were on a trip when the needle came out.”

18. The house that comes into view at 15:34 was his childhood home, and the middle window was his bedroom.

19. He points out that Divine has a Boston accent around the 18:50 mark “and he never did later.”

20. The car actually died forcing them to abandon it where they were — an area which happened to be the Baltimore projects — so the trio of actors walked past the camera, hopped into Waters’ car, and they took off.

21. The film’s plot involves Divine making David think he was responsible for the Sharon Tate murder. “When we shot this they had not caught Charles Manson. Nobody knew who he was at all or anything about it.”

22. The Little Tavern is apparently “the worst restaurant” in Baltimore.

23. The film features a character giving out Waters’ real phone number at the time, 235–2354.

24. “Now this is especially hideous,” he says as Mink Stole wipes the rosary clean after pulling it from Divine’s anus. “There’s no possible reason that this shot is in the movie.”

25. The guy shooting up heroin in the church is there solely to be “more gratuitous,” and he’s doing it for real on camera there. “I shot up once in my life, it was with him.”

26. The scene starting at 51:22 is meant to imitate and homage the 1965 Swedish hit I, a Woman.

27. The best review he received for the film came after he sent it to a theater in Canada to see about playing the film there. He never heard back from the theater but instead got “a receipt in the mail from the Ontario Board of Censors that just said ‘Destroyed.’ They just burned the print.”

28. Several of them, including Waters and David Lochary, were arrested during production of their previous film, and when their names were read out in court the police had listed the latter as David Gaylord Lochary. “His middle name was not Gaylord. The cops made it up for a homophobic slur, and it was in the papers. David was furious.”

29. He was very active in the anti-establishment and political scenes, but while he attended protests and riots he says he “learned a long time ago if you want to change someone’s opinion you make them laugh, and then they’ll listen to you.”

30. Waters moved to San Francisco before making his next film and befriended a local theater owner who ran The Palace Theater where the Cockettes performed. He played both of Waters’ films and offered to fly Divine out to SF for a screening. Divine boarded a plane in full drag (“like my kind of drag, not passing as Caitlyn Jenner”), was met at the SF airport by the Cockettes, and “never went back to his other life. We performed together a lot, we would come out before the movie… I would introduce the most beautiful woman in the world, Divine would come out and throw fish in the audience, rip phone books in half, and then fake cops would pretend to arrest us, we’d strangle the cops and the movie would start.”

31. He had to do a quick re-write when Manson was captured. They included the newspaper breaking the story in the scene, and he still has it.

32. Those are cow innards that Divine pulls from the dead man and begins to chew and gag on. “He’s a trooper.”

33. He loves seeing modern reviews approaching and appreciating the film through an intellectual lens, but even he thought upon re-watching it “what was I thinking?”

34. As for where the idea for Lobstora came from, Waters credits postcards from his youth showing a broiled lobster in the sky over a beach filled with bathers, and they would joke about it coming to kill them. He kept the giant suit for years before finally deciding it was taking up too much space and setting it free in the harbor for a sea burial.

35. The man making out in the car is played by Waters’ late brother who died from a brain tumor.

36. The crowd running from the maniacal Divine grew as strangers joined the fray.

37. The restoration team matched their new end credits to the look and style of Waters’ opening down to taping a name on a piece of paper to address an “error.” He loves the little touch — “That really proved to me that Janus and Criterion totally understood the aesthetics of this movie and what the re-release should be.” — and he’s equally thrilled to see the proper music credits.

Best in Context-Free Commentary

“We knew no one that could play the straight people.”

“Hmm, licking a bicycle seat.”

“He’s still alive and sort of well? He’s fine.”

“Everybody had the crabs.”

“You know, Bergman had puke. Puke was always the sign of an adult movie.”

“I think people would still pay to come in to see a sideshow where you could see an addicted heroin addict.”

“Before my mom died we used to go on rides to bad neighborhoods.”

“You can always tell when Edith has a line because her head starts moving.”

“Sniffing glue, I did that. It sorta works.”

“There’s no premature ejaculation in the rosary-job scene.”

Multiple Maniacs [Blu-ray]

Final Thoughts

Multiple Maniacs may not appeal to me — at least not until its third act goes off the rails — but I can listen to John Waters talk for days on end. The man is incredibly funny and knowledgeable, and his commentaries display a memory for detail that is endlessly impressive. From the names of every performer to the local businesses involved in varying capacities, he recalls specifics of this half century-old film that put most commentators to shame. Fans of the film will love this new Criterion release, but I recommend it even if you’re just a fan of Waters himself.

Read more Commentary Commentary from the archives.

37 Things We Learned from John Waters’ ‘Multiple Maniacs’ Commentary was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We could be looking at the best King adaptation since ‘The Mist.’

If you’re like me, well first off congratulations, but more relevantly, the announcement of a feature film adaptation of Stephen King’s epic horror novel, IT, probably left you feeling conflicted. On the one hand, more King adaptations and horror films in general are undeniably good things. On the other though, that’s a lot of book to cram into a feature film, and we already have a fairly competent mini-series adaptation as well.

Plus — and I may be alone on this one — I don’t love the novel. To clarify, the parts involving the kids work really well, but the book as a whole just bites it when that goddamn intergalactic turtle shows up. It stops the story and the scares dead cold.

The film went through a few different creative hands, some more promising than others, before settling on director Andrés Muschietti (Mama). The plan seemed to be to break the monster novel into two features, one focused on the children and the second on their return as adults. This is good news in theory, but it also means the first film will be an incomplete experience — something YA films have grown to bank on but which genre films have never really tackled. Making matters worse, photos of the new Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) just look ridiculous. Those ruffles… eesh.

So no, I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of a new IT adaptation — and then I watched the new trailer. Check it out below, and then join me in saying “holy shit, give me this movie now.”

Holy shit. Give me this movie now.

Forget all the bad things I’ve said about how stupid Pennywise looks in still photos as he appears terrifying in action. Focusing on the kids keeps us where the horror is strongest, and it prevents any kind of distraction from familiar “star” faces we’ll inevitably get with the adults. (Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard is present, but he gets a lifetime welcome pass for his name alone.) I have a small concern over the loud sound cues for jump scares, but that may just be for trailer usage.

It looks to be a wonderfully atmospheric and far more attractive film than the genre typically sees too. Muschietti gets some credit there, but we’d be remiss in not pointing out cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon whose work we last salivated over in Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden.

So yes, I’m fully on board for this one now, and I don’t need to see any more trailers, teasers, or images. If the movie itself can deliver even a portion of the dark beauty and utter creepiness of this trailer than we may be looking at another kick-ass horror movie in a year that’s already seen several. Even better, it may just be the best King adaptation in a decade.

“When children begin to disappear in the town of Derry, Maine, a group of young kids are faced with their biggest fears when they square off against an evil clown named Pennywise, whose history of murder and violence dates back for centuries.”

Stephen King’s IT screams into theaters on September 8th.

Stephen King’s ‘IT’ Wins Us Over With Creepy As Hell First Trailer was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Short of the Day

Forget the Four, This Villainous Film is Fantastic.

For my money, there really isn’t a Marvel villain as classically iconic as Dr. Doom. He looks like a villain, talks like a villain, acts like a villain, and embodies pure, ravenous evil. He’s intelligent, devious, fearless and ruthless, and he puts folks like Green Goblin or Doctor Octopus to shame on the scale of no-goodery.

But man oh man Victor Von Doom can’t catch a break on the big screen. In the 2005 and 2007 Fantastic Four films he was depicted as a pretty-boy siphoning electrical energy with his body, and in the 2015 version of events he’s a disgraced lecher turning on old friends. Neither is particularly worthy of the villain from the comics, and with the recent announcement that Venom is getting his own, Spidey-free film next year, I’m wondering if the problem isn’t Victor, but the heroes around him onscreen. And after seeing the following, unofficial short film Von Doom from writer-director-editor Ivan Kandor, I’m thinking a solo shot is just what the Doctor ordered.

Von Doom is a trippy, labyrinthine origin story of sorts, oscillating between time periods and pivotal moments in Doom’s development. It clocks in at 13 minutes and in that time it pitches a fascinating point of departure for studying the man behind the iron mask. Strong performances throughout are bolstered by dazzling visual effects that remind you at every turn this is no mere fan-film, it’s a professional and calculated effort that plays like a proof of concept for a much longer, officially-sanctioned film.

Who knows, maybe Venom is the start of the Marvel supervillain movie boom. If it is, you have to figure Dr. Doom is high on the list to get his own film. And if that’s the case, I know a guy perfect for the directing gig. See below and share.

And for an insightful making-of article — one many burgeoning filmmakers should find quite helpful — check out this link.

‘Von Doom’ is the Unofficial Film the Doctor Deserves was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Just be happy it’s not another portal.

You know about Marvel movies by now, let’s not be coy. It’s hard to avoid them considering there’re toy, TV (streaming and traditional), comic, snack, amusement park, and film properties developing the lucrative universe and all its heroes. But its villains, that’s always the issue. It’s comic rival, DC, has always had the better villains. Joker, Mr. Freeze, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, General Zod, Bizarro, Brainiac, Lex Luthor. I bet you recognized at least one of those names. With Suicide Squad, it proved even its minor leaguers could make a smash (financial) hit. Marvel’s a bit of a different story.

Would fans watch a film starring a team-up of Obadiah Stane, Whiplash, and Thor’s Dark Elves? Probably not. Would some nod their heads knowingly as I made up a name for the weird bugs/robots/aliens that came through the various portals in the Avengers films as long as it had plenty of Ks? Something like “the Kitakuri?” Almost definitely.

Marvel villains, as pointed out by Kofi Outlaw, underwhelm for two main reasons: they’re either not given enough depth or they’re snuffed out to make way for some imposing larger force that never quite gets here. The main reason anyone’s excited for DC movies (and were excited for Civil War) is that they show a clash of characters people actually want to see, not an audience’s action figures bashing a slew of anonymous inhuman fodder.

That’s why The Vulture, particularly Michael Keaton’s grizzled take on the character, could change Spider-Man: Homecoming’s villain game. Spider-Man films have had decent baddies in the past (Venom, Doc Ock, The Green Goblin….basically everyone but Electro), but this is the first time Spidey’s been a bona fide part of the Marvel squad. His villains now have the opportunity to affect activities and characters beyond their single-hero scope, both narratively and in a corporate sense as the company learns works in its franchise. That also may mean their life expectancy shrinks, seeing as they now have a god and some mecha-suited badasses to contend with in addition to a high schooler, but so be it.

We saw Keaton as the Vulture for the first time in the film’s latest trailer, a wrinkled, dusty, angry guy who’s disillusioned with billionaires and wants to protect his family. Who can’t get behind that? Keaton introduced much of America to the brooding side of Batman, then underwent a metatextual evolution in Birdman as a character that once played a superhero and wanted to reclaim his artistic legitimacy. What that movie didn’t expect is for him to go back to superherodom. Thankfully, he picked a good character. Vulture doesn’t ask for any over-the-top theatrics — no Beetlejuice here — but a dark, bitter, intimidating wit that Keaton’s recently performed with an understated ease in movies like Spotlight or even this year’s The Founder.

The character’s backstory, that of Adrian Toomes, is that of an engineer-turned-businessman-turned-criminal with much more of an understandable motive than any purple godlike beings, Hydra Nazis, or robot-building idiots. In this way he fits well with Spider-Man. Especially THIS Spider-Man. They’re very DIY. We see in the trailer that Vulture’s flight suit isn’t flashy or gaudy — it’s unpainted steel and all business. It looks like a winged Battlebot. His few lines of dialogue are there to tell the goofy, uninhibited, hotheaded Peter Parker that he’s way out of his league. It’s what the villain in Guardians of the Galaxy could’ve done if he wasn’t a weird, blue hammer-wielding Kiss reject.

In fact, it’s what the other minor antagonists in Guardians did because they developed a bit of personality: put the jokers in their place.

Speaking of joking, going after weapons and threatening urban-dwellers on boats — these sound like things done by the best cinematic supervillain of all time, The Dark Knight’s Joker. Keaton’s Vulture seems to be taking all of the threatening malice and none of the instability from that character. He threatens Spidey’s loved ones and looks to be the only villain in the film. No larger, franchise-building nonsense here. Just a great actor in a cool suit threatening a teenager.

If he dies, if he’s captured, it won’t matter. We’ll expect it after all. But that the hero faced a real villain and was changed because of the continued encounters? That’s what’s been missing. The Marvel films have been so intertextually reliant (and with Tony Stark’s heavy trailer inclusion, Spider-Man: Homecoming may be no different) that character growth always comes from inter-protagonist discussions and conflicts, leaving the ostensibly main conflict feeling like an afterthought. Keaton’s grounded charisma, and seemingly singular villain status, could be exactly what the film (and company) needs as a foil to its newest hero.

Michael Keaton’s Vulture Could Fix Marvel’s Villain Problem was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Anytime Paul Thomas Anderson releases a new movie is cause for celebration, but this year doubly so.

Via Jeff Sneider, EIC of The Tracking Board, it was announced yesterday at the Focus Features presentation during Cinema Con that the writer-director’s next film, the yet-to-be-officially-titled collaboration with Daniel Day Lewis about a royal dressmaker in the 1950s, will be released here in the US on Christmas Day 2017.

No footage was shown and that pesky working title — Phantom Thread­ — was neither confirmed nor denied, but by all accounts production is going swimmingly and an end-date is in sight. As I mentioned above, the film deals with a dressmaker, played by Day Lewis, but specifically the film “illuminates the life behind the curtain of an uncompromising dressmaker commissioned by royalty and high society.” Other members of the cast include Lesley Manville (Secrets & Lies), Richard Graham (Titanic), and Vicky Krieps (Hanna). It wasn’t revealed whether the December 25th release date is a limited run or nationwide engagement, but chances are the film will bow in New York and L.A. before going wide in early 2018.

Either way, this date places Phantom Thread — or whatever he’s calling it — in Oscar contention. Sorry, everybody else acting this year, DDL’s back to drink your awards season milkshake.

In other news and points of interest…

…the first trailer for the new film adaptation of Stephen King’s It was released…

…as was the second for Luc Besson’s sci-fi epic (and potential masterpiece) Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets…

…Disney announced the title and release date for Wreck-It Ralph 2…

…Netflix announced that the next film from Gareth Evans, director of The Raid, will be all theirs. Title, release date, and cast info right here…

…and is Jordan Peele going to direct a live-action version of Akira? Maybe…

Over in our corner of the internet we had a lot of really interesting posts go up yesterday, including an assessment of the rest of 2017’s superhero movies, a grumpy critic’s Star Wars story, filmmaking tips from Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly, a look at the new show from Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman, and the newest episode of Shot by Shot in which the cinematography of Mad Max: Fury Road is discussed.

And lastly, take a look at five of the most popular shots we tweeted over the last 24 hours. Want more? You know where to find us.

Happy Holidays from PT Anderson: The Director’s New Film Drops Christmas Day was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Last night’s finale literally drove off into the unknown.

It’s not the best comic book adaptation of all time, nor is it a perfect superhero screen story, but Legion might be the greatest attempt to produce something of this genre for actual grown ups. As its own source material (Marvel’s X-Men comics) also leads the new trend toward R-rated superhero movie fare, the FX series reminds us that swear words and graphic violence and nudity don’t make something more suited to adults. That would be smart storytelling, which is Legion’s currency.

It’s complicated, though, because the show is, at its heart, still just a silly comic book tale of super-powered mutants and weird science and often cartoonish action. But it’s intelligently structured, challenging its audience mentally as it takes us literally into the minds of its characters. Sometimes plots are made more complex like this in order to hide flaws in the story, and there’s surely some of that going on here, but regardless, the way Legion plays out is probably the most apt for who and what it’s about.

There have been many surprises throughout the the show’s first season, but its finale was shocking for how plain and conventional it was compared to the surreal ride of especially the last few episodes. These are the days of relatively closed-book TV seasons, the best series lately consisting of anthological stories — perfect example being Legion producer Noah Hawley’s Fargo — or confined, conclusive narratives, which feel like long, segmented movies and if continued promise something akin to a sequel rather than an ongoing whole. This show ends while still it’s in motion.

Frankly, that’s fine, especially if the initial parting shot of Lenny (Aubrey Plaza) and Oliver (Jemaine Clement) driving off, the latter now possessed by the former, aka Amahl Farouk, aka the Shadow King, isn’t exactly a cliffhanger. For that, Legion has, perfect for its genre, a mid-credits sequence that leaves us wondering where David (Dan Stevens) is being taken after he’s whisked away and imprisoned inside a miniaturizing drone doohickey. Maybe Season 2 can primarily deal with where that leads and not repeat the same villain, at least not for a while. If we can stand Plaza’s absence.

But an even bigger question than what is Legion without Plaza is what is Legion without Farouk and all the subconscious and astral plane stuff that goes along with the concept of a schizophrenic telepath with a parasitic monster in his head. Does the show have reason to keep up with what’s most visually and narratively interesting about itself? If not, should it maintain that design anyway, or else become the equivalent of a Nightmare on Elm Street franchise without Freddy and the dreamscape? Will it continue on the same path just in Oliver’s mind instead?

Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves with concerned speculation. As far as the season and episode that just aired, “Chapter 8” had the usual confusing stuff of David in a lab, a lot of fantasy science happening to him, and the fragmented depiction of the inside of his brain. What occurs during Farouk’s departure from David through Syd (Rachel Keller) and then Kerry (Amber Midthunder) before winding up in Oliver and what’s going on with the red vs. blue clash of David and Farouk-in-Kerry — that stuff isn’t as important as how it’s brilliantly explained as “unmaking soup.” What an idea! Sure, this is a visual medium, but the visuals don’t have to be on screen when you’ve got a metaphorical implant into your imagination like that.

The other noteworthy part of the Legion finale is its opening sequence, which backs up to show what’s been going on with the interrogator from the first episode, now known to be named Clark (Hamish Linklater), since David’s rescue party nearly killed him. He’s revealed to be a family man, with a husband and adopted son, and he’s horribly scarred from burns, looking more mutant-like than the mutants. He never seemed like a real bad guy anyway, but now he’s shown to be a kind of regular government employee just doing his job. Yet his bosses still look fairly nefarious.

What’s up with those guys in their situation room? Maybe we’ll find out another time. Looking back on the first season now, there’s a lot left unknown or underdeveloped, and so it’s for the best that Legion is taking a more traditional forward direction as a series and can keep stringing us along in our wanting of answers or more character arcs — the first season could have used one for Ptonomy (Jeremie Harris), that’s for sure. Alas, it’s hard to criticize the series for things it may not be finished with.

‘Legion’ is An Evolution in Superhero TV

While I can’t make much of a conclusion on a show that hasn’t made much of one itself, yet, Legion remains a series that’s constantly stimulating on many levels and is really tremendous in specific moments and episodes — like the standout “Chapter 6” — with phenomenal performances and exceptionally envisioned and communicated ideas about mental illness, memory, strange super powers, and more. It’s maybe the most clever and by far the most unique show on TV in years and will hopefully continue to be.

‘Legion’ Concludes Its First Season an Open (Comic) Book was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Worlds where powerful women rule just to be dethroned.

In classic sci-fi from the 1950s and 60s, there’s a very specific subgenre that deals with alien planets or hidden worlds populated entirely by women. In the video store where I used to work in Portland, OR, Movie Madness, we called this subgenre “Male Chauvinist Fantasies/Nightmares,” because that’s usually how these flicks go: male astronauts/explorers discover a world where the only inhabitants are lovely alien ladies who’ve gone too long without the company of men. This works itself out in one of two ways: it’s a fantasy world of a commitment-less sex and blind idolatry on the part of the women, or it’s a nightmare, the women are alone for a reason, and that reason usually revolves around breeding men to death. Either way there’s a lot of sex implied, but the connotations fluctuate.

We’re talking about films like Cat Women of the Moon, Fire Maidens of Outer Space, Queen From Outer Space, and scores of others that play a pretty insidious trick on audiences: they make us think that women are in charge, when really they’re not in charge at all, and these movies are just another fetishistic perspective from the male gaze. There’s a reason Movie Madness categorizes such films as “Male Chauvinist” rather than “Feminist,” after all.

In the following video “Lady Lands” from Catherine Stratton for Fandor, the myth behind these movies is exploded and their “feminism” is revealed to be of the straw variety; that is, “the fictive act of creating powerful women solely for the purpose of proving them wrong.”

This is fascinating, entertaining, enlightening work from Stratton, and it deserves to be shared far and wide across your personal corner of the internet. Get your eyes on it then help spread the good word.

The Straw Feminism of Lady Lands in Classic Sci-Fi was originally published in Film School Rejects on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.