Issue 15: Mid-Summer News
It's been a rough month for everyone; this week instead of the usual essay, I'm taking a short break and doing a roundup of links instead. We'll return to our regular format in August.
What's the secret ingredient making movies like The Room and Birdemic so bad?
Ghostbusters truthers, unite: you don't have to join the chorus of angry internet fanboys if you just plain didn't like the original. (NB: I have seen neither the old nor the new Ghostbusters.)
“‘I hear it from almost every filmmaker that the second film is tougher than the first film […] They often experience a lot of noise, a lot of meetings. It’s a difficult moment for a filmmaker to get creatively inside themselves. Most filmmakers want to do something more ambitious, maybe a bigger budget. They’ve had their first group of collaborators, but now they’re trying to navigate an entire industry.’”
One of the most original directors in the history of cinema has died.
Why do we keep putting up with Woody Allen movies? One critic argues that we shouldn't.
Here's an essay I really want to get behind, but can't. Writer/director Alex Ross Perry expresses his outrage over The Neon Demon's total box office failure, calling the film a masterpiece of weird cinema. He makes an interesting point about the difference between “seeing” a movie in theaters vs. “watching” a movie at home (“There are UFO sightings. People go bird-watching. The distinction is obvious.”), but…could he have picked a trashier or more juvenile film to make this argument for?
Poster of the Day
Whiplash director Damien Chazelle returns this December with his second film, an old-school movie musical with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. The poster is delightfully nostalgic (as is the excellent trailer, also in the link).