by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"
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ENTERTAINMENT AND CULTURE NEWS:
MOVIES - From Deadline: Danny and Michael Philippou, the directors of the hit horror film, "Talk To Me," are reteaming with that film's distributor, A24, for a new film, "Bring Her Back." The film is set to star Sally Hawkins.
EMMYS - From Deadline: I missed this, dear readers. The nominations for the 2024 / 51st Annual Daytime Emmy Awards have been announced. The winners will be announced Sat., June 8, 2024.
CANNES - From Variety: Lily Gladstone, Eva Green, Omar Sy, Ebru Ceylan, Nadine Labaki, Juan Antonio Bayona, Pierfrancesco Favino, and Kore-eda Hirokazu comprise the jury for the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Oscar-nominee Greta Gerwig is jury president.
BOX OFFICE - From BoxOfficePro: The winner of the 4/26 to 4/28/2024 weekend box office is Amazon/MGM's "Challengers" (starring Zendaya) with an estimated take of 15 million dollars.
TELEVISION - From Deadline: The fate of "NCIS: Hawai'i" is no longer up in the air. CBS has cancelled the series after three seasons, making the announcement yesterday, Fri., April 26th.
From Deadline: CBS has renewed "The Equalizer" starring Queen Latifah for a fifth season. However, the fate of "NCIS: Hawai'i" is still up in the air.
SCANDAL - From APNews: The state Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction. The court found that the judge at the landmark #MeToo trial prejudiced the ex-movie mogul with improper rulings, including a decision to let women testify about allegations that weren’t part of the case. The court ordered a new trial. The 75-year-old Weinstein has been serving a 23-year sentence in the Mohawk Correctional Facility near Rome, New York.
From Variety: Harvey Weinstein was admitted to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan on Saturdays, just two days after his 2020 New York rape conviction was overturned (Thurs., April 25th).
MOVIES - From Deadline: Sources tell the site that actors Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Oscar-nominated Ralph Fiennes will star in the first film of the upcoming "28 Years Later" trilogy. The new film will be directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, the director and writer, respectively of the original film, "28 Days Later."
ANIMATION - From Variety: This year marks the 25th anniversary of the airing of the debut episode of Fox's long-running animated series, "Family Guy," specifically January 31, 1999. Because it was cancelled twice, the series is currently concluding its 22nd season. Recently voice actor, Patrick Warburton, who voices one of the series main character, paraplegic police officer, "Joe Swanson," says that his parents hate the show. He says that his mother even tried to get "Family Guy" cancelled.
MOVIES - From Deadline: Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, laments the end of the 20-year-old film and television production company, Participant. Participant was behind Guggenheim and Al Gore's Oscar-winning doc, "An Inconvenient Truth."
From Variety: The 20-year-old film and television production company whose mission was to inspire social justice and humanitarian action, Participant (formerly Participant Media), is shutting down. Established in 2004, Participant co-produced or co-financed a number of notable movies including the "Best Picture" Oscar winner "Spotlight," as well as Steven Spielberg’s "Lincoln" and the Oscar-winning, breakthrough documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."
MUSIC - From Deadline: The 2024 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees have been announced. The inductees are as follows: A Tribe Called Quest, Cher, Foreigner, Dave Matthews Band, Kool & the Gang, Mary J. Blige, Peter Frampton, Ozzy Osbourne, Jimmy Buffett, Dionne Warwick, Norman Whitfield, Alexis Korner, John Mayall, MC5, Suzanne de Passe, and Big Mama Thornton.
POLITICS - From Salon: "Mainstream conservatives" never really purged the fascists, according to a wonderful piece by Salon writer, Paul Rosenberg. Rosenberg interviews David Austin Walsh about his new book, "Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement and the Far Right."
BOX OFFICE - From BoxOfficeMojo: The winner of the 4/19 to 4/21/2024 weekend box office is A24's "Civil War" with an estimated take of 11.1 million dollars.
MOVIES/TRAILERS - From Variety: Warner Bros. has released the first trailer for M. Night Shyamalan's new thriller, "Trap." Starring Josh Hartnett, the film follows a father and daughter who attend a pop star's concert only to realize that they are at the center of a dark and sinister event. And Hartnett's character is a serial killer known as "The Butcher." The pop star is played by M. Night's daughter, Saleka Shyamalan, who is an actual singer-songwriter.
OBITS:
From Deadline: American television actress, Marla Adams, has died at the age of 85, Thursday, April 25, 2024. Adams was best known for her roles as "Belle Clemens" on the former CBS soap opera, "The Secret Storm," from 1968 to 1974, and also as "Dina Abbott Mergeron" a recurring character on "The Young and the Restless," that appeared in 235 episodes on and off from 1983 to 2021. Adams was twice nominated in the Daytime Emmy Award category of "Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series," winning in 2021.
From Deadline: British art director and production designer, Ray Chan, has died at the age of 56, Tuesday, April 23, 2024. Chan was best known for his work in art direction, production design, and additional photography for Marvel Studios, beginning with "Thor: The Dark World" (2013) to the upcoming "Deadpool & Wolverine" (2024). He was nominated for five Art Directors Guild Awards and won twice.
TRASH IN MY EYE No. 48 of 2022 (No. 1860) by Leroy Douresseaux
Men (2022)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: United Kingdom
Running time: 100 minutes (1 hour, 40 minutes)
MPA – R for disturbing and violent content, graphic nudity, grisly images and language
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Alex Garland
PRODUCERS: Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Rob Hardy
EDITOR: Jake Roberts
COMPOSERS: Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury
HORROR
Starring: Jessie Buckley, Rory Kinnear, Gayle Rankin, Sarah Twomey, and Paapa Essiedu
Men is a 2022 British horror film from writer-director Alex Garland. The film focuses on a recently widowed young woman on a solo holiday to the English countryside who finds herself tormented by a group of strange men.
Men introduces a young woman named Harper (Jessie Buckley). Following the shocking and unexpected death of her husband, James Marlowe (Paapa Essiedu), London-based Harper decides to take a holiday alone in the small village of Cotson, located in the English countryside. She will be spending her two weeks staying in a pricey rental, Cotson Manor.
Not long after Harper arrives at the spacious manor house, things start getting strange. She is welcomed by the manor's owner, an odd sort of fellow named Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear). Later, while taking a walk, Harper has a bizarre encounter with a strange man who seems to be naked. As things start to turn more bizarre, Harper realizes that all the men in the village look alike...
I can see why Alex Garland's film, Men, is so controversial and even considered incendiary. Basically, Garland's film is a horror movie about toxic masculinity, and the main point of toxicity is that men want to control how women react to men, maleness, and masculinity. Here, men think that women should downplay some acts of violence and aggression, and that women exaggerate even the most violent and threatening behavior of males. Harper's husband, James, is emotionally abuse and manipulative, and even his threats against himself are attempts to control Harper, in addition to being an act of violence against her.
In Men, Garland does not offer answers or, at least, many of them. He uses surrealism and tropes from the horror sub-genre known as “folk horror” (isolated English village, pagan symbolism, atmosphere music, etc.) to create a scary movie that practically yells, “Fact! Toxic masculinity is bad, and men are controlling and manipulative just as much as they say that women are.” And that makes Men a flashpoint work of art and entertainment in a flashpoint time, so it automatically has groups of people that will not like it or be very critical of it – even before seeing the film.
The performances are good, but not great. It is not that the actors aren't capable; it is just that the movie does not give them many verbal showcases. Thus, Jessie Buckley spends a lot of time looking scared, but when she can speak as Harper, the film has more dramatic impact. Also, as Geoffrey and others, Rory Kinnear gets to look like a chameleon without getting to play a chameleon.
The politics of men and women aside, Men is yet another film that reveals Alex Garlands ability to take conventional ideas for stories and twist them into unconventional film narratives. His films offer his audience a visceral and unforgettable experience. In this case, Garland presents Men as a kind of magical realism; the surreal and real live side by side and are sometimes as one. Garland is a visual stylist as a film director and a maverick as a screenwriter. With his contentious film, Men, Garland's reach sometimes exceeds his grasp, but the movie is simply more evidence that he can take his audience in the most unexpected directions.
8 of 10
A
★★★★ out of 4 stars
Thursday, August 19, 2022
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