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Indian Cinema Roundup: Supernatural Telugu Comedy SUBHAM
It’s been said that ghosts are the spirits of the dead who still have unfinished business on earth, unable to pass into the afterlife until they accomplish their final tasks.
But what if that task is to watch the last episode of a never-ending soap opera?
This whimsical premise sets the stage for the primary conflict in the new Telugu film Subham, a supernatural comedy about husbands, wives, dead grandmas, and TV.
The film begins as almost a straightforward romantic comedy, with the courtship of Srinu (Harshith Reddy), who runs a cable TV company, and Sri Valli (Shriya Kontham), a modern woman with a college education and professional background. The pair hit it off and have a gentle affection, though Srinu’s two best pals, who are already married, fill his head with terrible advice about being an alpha male and asserting his dominance as the head of the household.
But Srinu faces another unexpected wrinkle in their newlywed relationship – every night, Sri Valli turns on the TV and zones out watching a goofy soap opera – which seems particularly confusing since she openly mocks the show and its fans.
But as it turns out, it’s not just him – as the other husbands of the neighborhood are also encountering the same strange phenomenon, and soon arrive at a horrifying truth: Every night, their wives are possessed by the spirits of dead grandmothers who won’t pass on until the finished watching Janma Janmala Bandham, an awful long-running soap opera with no end in sight.
Virtually every description I’ve seen for Subham calls it a horror comedy, but while there’s a ghost angle, it’s not presented in a frightening way and certainly not what I would consider horror any more than I would Ghostbusters or Casper (both of which are probably scarier).
The boys consult a medium and try some different tricks to put a stop to the possessions, but finally decide the only way to get rid of the ghosts is to give them what they want: closure in the form of a series finale.
The film is plenty of fun with good-natured laughs, and also has a great underlying message about masculinity and macho strutting: Srinu’s pals, who had boasted about treating their wives subserviently, suddenly become meek as lambs and eager to appease their wives whenever the scary ghosts take over. Similarly, the film clearly champions Sri Valli as a modern woman – she’s educated, professionally motivated, and deserving of respect.
The film is produced by its own talented modern woman, actress-turned-producer Samantha Ruth Prabhu (known mononymously in India as simply Samantha), who also has a small role as the medium.
Subham is now playing in US theaters.
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FIGHT OR FLIGHT Packs Plenty of Punches and Punchlines
I know it’s a cliché at this point, but I’m a sucker for a good in media res opening, and Fight or Flight kicks off with a humdinger: people brawling on a plane midflight. Fists are flying, bullets whiz, a hole opens up in the plane, and is that chainsaw getting in the mix? Cut to black and a “12 hours earlier” chyron and we are off and running. Or flying.
What Fight or Flight gets right about this kind of opening is that it doesn’t just overload the senses. It offers up the kind of wtf?!? imagery that makes you want to see the build-up to that moment. And you know what? The preceding action frequently reaches those same heights. All that to say this: Fight or Flight is a bloody delight. It’s a violent and funny jolt of energy.
The exposition heavy first act sets up the story efficiently. Lucas (Josh Hartnett) is a mercenary who spends his days drinking himself to an early grave in Bangkok. Two years prior something bad happened to Lucas, leading to his current seclusion and spirituous ways. The people he used to work for, Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackoff) and Aaron Hunter (Julian Kostov) need a guy to track someone down in a pinch and, despite having infinite resources, they turn to Lucas. The goal? Catch someone called The Ghost. All we know about The Ghost is that they are headed to the airport and has possibly been shot. The Ghost appears on security cam footage, with their body obfuscated by static.
After a barroom slap-around and some fun techno spy business, Lucas boards the play and begins his hunt for The Ghost. The catch? Seemingly everyone on the plane is also after The Ghost and they all have a particular set of skills. From there, the hijinks, as they say, ensue and they are glorious.
The core creative trio of director James Madigan and writers Brooks McLaren and D.J. Cotrona bring go-for-broke energy to the film that is its biggest asset. After a decade of leading second units on various action-heavy projects, Madigan makes the jump to the top spot for his feature debut. He shows a good eye for putting together action sequences. Given the confines of the plane setting, there’s a resourcefulness on display that is impressive. It almost feels like McLaren and Cotrona’s script is trying to back Madigan into a corner and Madigan is game to wriggle out of it. I mean that as a compliment. It’s like they are issuing challenges and continuing to one up each other. From the minute Fight or Flight starts there is a playfulness that is immediately endearing.
I cannot emphasize enough how amusing Fight or Flight is. The action is violent and shot clearly so it’s each to see the cool stunt work on display. But it’s also quite funny. Quips fly around as frequently as fists, and the jokes have a good hit rate. On top of that, Madigan has a great eye for visual humor. There’s an early moment where someone is trying to hide a body in an overhead compartment, but arms and legs keep dropping down that is particularly funny. There’s a shot where a flare gun goes off inside the plane with gloriously cartoonish results.
Just about the film’s only misstep is that it doesn’t find a way to get Sackoff in on the ass-kicking. Feels like a waste to have her play a pencil-pushing G-man in one of the film’s few roles that doesn’t involve fisticuffs. Alas. The rest of the cast is quite game. Almost everyone onboard the plane gets a chance to deliver a quality joke or punch, if not both. Hartnett gives a playful performance as Lucas. It’s a largely physical effort, what with all the fighting, but Harnett mixes in enough humor to give it a slapstick feel (complimentary). The other standout is Charithra Chandra’s as Isha, one of the flight attendants on the plane. After Lucas, Isha gets the most character development and Chandra makes the most of it.
Fight or Flight is the kind of movie that knows it’s a B-movie and doesn’t strive to be more or delude itself or its audience. It wants to be a kick-ass action movie that also makes you laugh, and it goes about its business accordingly. It lands on the release calendar right before the bombast of the summer movie season ramps up and Fight or Flight is a satisfying appetizer before blockbuster season brings out the main courses.
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SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3 Keeps the Fun Rolling on 4KUHD
I should say upfront that I’m biased in favor of the Sonic the Hedgehog movies and I always will be. I barely played the games as a kid, so it’s not a nostalgia thing. It’s because of my youngest son, who went through a big Sonic phase that culminated with him wearing his Sonic costume opening weekend for the first Sonic movie. We took him five or six more times in the month or so between the film’s opening and COVID shutdown. The memories of him dressed up, striking poses, telling us everything about the movie…I’ll cherish those forever. That was the peak of his enthusiasm for Sonic, but he gets excited for the new movies and toys. On the final day of the fall semester we took a family trip straight from his class Christmas party and went straight to the theater for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (henceforth Sonic 3).
The movies themselves are fine, dripping with Easter eggs, deep cuts, and committed performances from series stalwarts Schwartz, James Marsden, and Tike Sumpter, Jim Carrey, Lee Majdoub, and Natasha Rothwell. They have gotten better with each installment, with Sonic 3 being the best one so far. The key to the film’s success is its humor. It’s silly without condescending to its audience, and mixes in just enough irreverence to occasionally catch you off guard. Add in Keanu Reeves as Shadow and Carrey pulling double duty as Dr. Robotnik and his grandfather Professor Gerald Robotnik, and Sonic 3 has its winning formula in hand.
This time out Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz), is recruited by the government to help catch Shadow. With the help of Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey), and Knuckles (Iris Elba), the trio embark on a globe-trotting adventure. As the series shepherd, director Jeff Fowler keeps the film moving at a brisk pace, hopping from one action set piece to the next. Fowler brings a deft touch to these sequences by making them fun and exciting, without overwhelming the film’s core demographic. It’s cool when you can hear a theater full of excited kids go through each beat of a chase or fight without getting lost. Watching the film at home doesn’t hold quite the same charm, but it feels unfair to knock the film based on a crowd’s reaction. The movie plays just fine either way.
By any objective measure, Jim Carrey is the MVP of Sonic 3. His performance as Dr. Robotnik has been delightfully silly in the previous movies, as one would expect from Carrey, Maybe it’s the double duty he’s pulling here, but he feels completely unhinged. The physicality Carrey brings to bear continues to defy his age. No one will mistake Sonic among Carrey’s best work, but it does serve as a reminder of what made him so special. The report between Dr. Robotnik and Agent Stone (Majdoub) is stronger than ever. Basically, what I’ve come to realize is that Carrey is my favorite part of these films. Despite growing up in the 90s, I have very little knowledge of the Sonic universe, so I have no idea what’s coming up next. As long as we’re getting more Carrey hijinks (a triple role???), count me in.
Sonic 3’s home release comes packed to the gills with bonus features. The version Paramount sent out for review is a Steelbook 4KUHD that also comes with a Blu-ray disc, with both options featuring the film and bonus features. Most of the features are bite-sliced (under 10 minutes) behind the scenes bits and interviews with the cast and crew. The best bits across the board occur whenever Carrey shows up. Everyone else is tends to hit on the same notes, but Carrey is borderline unhinged and completely silly. But the best feature is the commentary track with director Fowler and Schwartz. The track appears to have been recorded shortly after finishing the film and well before it’s release and accompanying press tour. Fowler and Schwartz are loose and entertaining. It’s an informative listen, but mostly it’s just a good hang. They’ve been working on the Sonic films for almost a decade and there are some endearing reflections on their journey, which is set to continue with the release of Sonic 4 in 2027.
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Me and My Interview: Billy Pedlow and Maurane’s VICTIM Narrative
Controversial Fantasia Fest winner tours America
Content Warning: The film Me and My Victim involves the subject of sexual abuse in relationships, which is discussed in this interview. Please be advised.
One of the most provocative, hot-button films in years is the no-budget, nonfiction brainchild of an outsider duo. Billy Pedlow and Maurane’s romantic relationship was disastrous, to say the least. Rather than restraining orders or social media blocking, the one-time couple devised an unconventional concept. Me and My Victim is what Pedlow refers to as a “podcast film,” in which he and Maurane dissect their failed courtship with graphic, sometimes horrific frankness. Difficult though the film is, it is a brave feat of messy, humane art that has wowed some (winning Best Film at Fantasia Fest) while appalling others.
Enjoying foamy beers on a perfectly warm May afternoon, Pedlow and I sat down at Brooklyn’s Niteglow Brewery, with Maurane joining virtually from Montreal, to discuss the thematically shocking and formally audacious movie that their fellow Dimes Square filmmaker Aimee Armstrong (Envy/Desire) says “genuinely has invented a new form of cinema.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for time and clarity.
Emma James: So, first of all, I think this is an amazing, unusual film. The way you approached it is so personal and raw that it caught me off guard. Congratulations to you both on having made something that has gotten such a reaction. What led you to decide to share your story together as a film?
Maurane: For so many reasons. We both knew we had an interesting story. We knew we were able to trust each other and be honest. Billy had this idea and we just decided to do it. He proposed it to me one night, then the day after, we were already –
Billy Pedlow: We were already working on the film the next day. I had the idea in the shower, because that’s where I have all of my ideas. “This would be so evil. This would be so good.” I was just in a crazy, very creative phase, and we were at a reading together. We were both pretty drunk, smoking cigarettes out back, and I was like “what if we made a movie?” You asked, “what would it be about?” I was like, “what if it was about this,” and you were down.
EJ: Josephine Decker made Flames, a docudrama about a relationship she had that fell apart, and then of course there’s Betsey Brown’s short Shegetsey Betsey, which is very diaristic and reflective about a relationship ending, as well as the work of Jack Dunphy. I was wondering, what were the cinematic influences for Me and My Victim?
BP: We were definitely inspired by Caveh Zahedi’s work, like The Show About the Show and I Am a Sex Addict. [But for] the actual making of it, I feel like we had a very unique, singular vision that wasn’t based on anything else.
We knew we wanted it to be centered on the dialogue, and for that to be the vital heart of the movie. What makes it different from most films is the way it’s sort of like a podcast. I’ve always liked hanging out with just one other person and shooting the shit more than with a group of people, because you can get deeper into topics. With so many films, you’re jumping from character to character and the plot overpowers the dialogue. For sure, I’m inspired by films like My Dinner with Andre. A lot of people compare this movie to the Before Sunset series, but I don’t really like those films. There’s also the Woody Allen comparison, but I don’t really like his films either, honestly.
M: (indignant) You don’t like fucking Woody?!
BP: I don’t like the Woody Allen movies! Everybody’s really mad at me for it. It has nothing to do with his accusations, I just don’t like his films.
M: (laughing) That’s like the worst answer!
BP: Yeah, yeah, I know everybody loves Woody. And I love people who love Woody! I think a lot of people who love Woody Allen films also love our movie, so I’m okay with it. But I think, really, it wasn’t inspired by anything. It was inspired by itself. When you’re making an art project, you get into a portal and you start problem-solving on top of the thing you started off with.
M: Also, me and Billy don’t come from a movie background, so that’s why our movie doesn’t really look like other movies. We treat it like visual art. We didn’t really talk about the movie while doing it that much. We were not like, “oh, I want it to look like that movie.” Except Caveh, or the concept of what Caveh does –
BP: Also, what was it, the Harmony Korine movie with Travis Scott in it? I was sort of inspired by the visuals from that at one point.
EJ: AGGRO DR1FT? I can see that.
BP: Yeah, AGGRO DR1FT was in development at the time. I saw a trailer, and I was kinda tipped off to some ideas, like the red.
EJ: I was going to ask about the heavy use of the color red as a motif throughout the film. Does that signify anything?
M: When you see red, you think about love, violence, and romance. We knew we wanted a strong symbol for the movie.
BP: One of the first ideas I had aesthetically for the movie was that my character would always be wearing a red shirt. We did a couple things to kinda differentiate myself from “Billy,” to make him more of a character versus just being me. One was not wearing glasses and the other was always wearing a red shirt. I was inspired by Star Trek red shirts. “The red shirt always dies” is the trope. It’s the throwaway character– the person who is sacrificed, essentially. Also, there’s the whole monologue about the roses, so it all just tied together and gave the film a distinct visual.
EJ: It really does give it an interesting aesthetic. Maurane edited the film in an experimental, chaotic way that is disorienting but very beautiful. The editing is almost a character itself. Did you always intend such an avant-garde approach to post-production?
M: I do video art. This is my first movie, so it’s kind of high aesthetic. It’s just a style I like, and it really fits with the movie, which is about perspective on a situation that happened, and the fact that it’s chaotic and abstract represents that we don’t really know the reality. It has some scenes that aren’t like you’re used to seeing in other movies.
BP: What scenes were you thinking about, for example, Maurane?
M: The sexual assault scene. You don’t really see what happened. It’s more like symbols – video from the Internet Archive, stuff like that, and that way of doing it fits with the concept about how we both have different perspectives. I didn’t want the visuals to remove that from the movie.
BP: We tried to make it easier for ourselves because we knew we had the limitations of no budget and only two people working together when we were living in different countries. We had limited time to film and we had to maximize every day that we were working together. Truthfully, we did not cover everything in the filming. We had to fill in stopgaps, so it’s like a practical thing too. In terms of the way that you’re saying with the red, by picking certain symbols and focusing in on them, we were able to show the full spectrum of them. I think bananas can be silly, like when she steals the bananas at one point in the movie, and that’s something that makes me fall for her, but the bananas are also being eaten during some of the most intense scenes of the film and indicative of an inescapable flavor. We also show the full spectrum of red from romantic to violent; just picking these symbols and developing their entire horseshoe– narrowing in and representing them visually.
EJ: During this intense moment when you’re discussing whether sexual assault occurred in your relationship, the banana is on screen by itself for a lengthy period of time. That’s definitely something I was going to mention.
BP: Bananas have such an aggressive flavor.
EJ: Yeah. And of course, there’s the phallic symbolism too. The way you’ve managed to get around your limitations disguises the fact that it’s a no-budget film. The choices that you probably had to make out of necessity feel like very deliberate artistic decisions.
BP: Yeah, because the movie wouldn’t exist otherwise. But also, they absolutely were deliberate artistic decisions. We chose every shot very deliberately. We are playing to our strengths, essentially. When you’re a scrappy underdog, like I think this film is, you have to elaborate that to show people we’re working with less and doing more.
EJ: You went in the opposite direction of the typical talking-head documentaries with no style. Here, the style and the substance work together very well to elevate each other. It gives the film both visual and thematic depth in a way that, like you were saying, really does feel unique. It’s outsider art in a way, because you guys hadn’t made films before.
BP: It’s 100 percent outsider art. We don’t have any backing. We just recently got some money for this tour, so for the first time, we’re getting a little help, but most of the time, we’re doing everything ourselves.
In terms of the visual elements, one of the things that people catch subconsciously but don’t totally know is that we recorded all of the audio first and then we recorded video later, so anytime we’re in the quote-unquote “studio” talking to each other, we’re literally just mouthing the words. So, sometimes, it’s a little off, but we’re lip syncing. We were inspired by watching old talkie films where they couldn’t record sound, because we knew we had the sound first, and we knew the sound was the primary element of the movie. The disconnect between the sound and the visuals is also a metaphorical elaboration on the disconnect of language that is throughout the film. Even when we’re talking, our words aren’t necessarily syncing up with our actual words.
EJ: Wow, that’s so clever and adds a whole other level that I hadn’t noticed. So, since Cinapse is an Austin publication, I have to ask: for the Austin screening, your Q&A is being moderated by Joe Rogan, basically the most famous podcaster in the world. Is he a fan of the film?
BP: Yeah, he is, actually. We’re very glad that he took the time to watch it. We’ve actually had a lot of talented artists, podcasters, or whatever, who have seen the film and are big fans. But the funny thing about this movie is, even when people really, really, really like it, they don’t necessarily want to step in front of the train and say “I like this film.” There is a group of people who advocate very harshly against the film. Not everybody wants to put their nuts on the line for it, so we’re trying to tread carefully. What do you want to say about it, Maurane?
M: I don’t think I can say more than that.
EJ: How conscious and afraid of pushback in your professional and private lives were either of you in deciding to be so honest in making this film?
M: I was scared for Billy, because that’s the reality. He receives death threats sometimes. [But] when [Billy] and I were doing that project, it didn’t stop us at any point from making it.
BP: We weren’t even sure it would be seen or be successful, so that was a secondary concern. Definitely there were some times that I was in the shower being like “is this movie gonna ruin my fucking life? Will I ever be able to get another job again?” Still, to this day, if I’m applying for another job, it’s like, “do I put this on my resume or not?” I literally don’t know. (to Maurane) You can put it on your resume but I can’t. That shit’s so fucked-up and weird.
EJ: You won a very prestigious award for this film, but you’ve gotta qualify it with an asterisk or something.
BP: It’s a very strange accomplishment. I’ve always been fascinated with “cancel literature,” which is what I call the many essays of cancellation that came out in the 2010s and early 2020s. The Aziz Ansari thing was a fascinating piece of literature that a lot of people read over and over again, because they weren’t really sure how they felt about it, and there’s a lot of analysis that goes into it. I was always very fascinated with the ways those narratives become incredibly divergent. Some people read them and they’re like, “oh, this guy definitely didn’t do it, and I’m picking up on the narcissism of the accuser,” or “this guy did it and deserves to die.” So, as someone who always wanted to make an explosive piece of art –
EJ: (interrupting) Mission accomplished.
BP: – an evil piece of art, it only made sense to do something like that, which would create a similarly divergent response, but now that we’re on the precipice of getting more attention on the film and that it might actually be more successful – and I think it will – I’m definitely reckoning with the effect it’s had on my life. People look at me differently when I enter a room. To even have that feeling when you meet someone is very strange. I don’t necessarily love carrying that burden around, but ultimately, I do like being provocative, and I do like making people uncomfortable, so I guess I’ve kind of embraced it. I don’t really have a choice at this point.
EJ: I definitely think the film contributes insightfully to the ongoing conversation in society about consent and boundaries in sex and relationships. It has something to say that’s very honest and can hopefully be a positive influence in some ways, maybe as a cautionary tale of how not to behave.
BP: We’ve had people come up to us after the film and be like, “I watched this and forgave my abuser. I feel differently about it now.” They feel like their heart and their trauma have been soothed. But for sure, there are other people who watch it and have PTSD.
M: Also, a big thing in the movie is that we drank a lot of alcohol, and I’ve had the experience of people realizing the impact of consuming alcohol or drugs in sexual situations.
EJ: As a filmmaker and a woman, I don’t think Me and My Victim is, as Billy said, “an evil piece of art.” It’s provocative, maybe incendiary, but it certainly has a heart that comes through.
M: I agree. I agree. I don’t think it’s evil at all.
BP: (laughing) I like to think it’s evil and has a big heart.
M: It’s not really evil.
BP: I don’t know. Some people say it’s evil. I think it’s evil.
M: (laughing) You’re evil.
BP: I’m evil. So, Maurane, I wanted to ask you, because Emma implied that we might ask each other questions – what’s it like to work with Billy Pedlow?
M: (laughing) That’s so hard. Fuck. It’s a journey. It’s a lot of fun, but you have to push him a bit. That movie is one of the best experiences of my life, and often when I go out in Montreal, people that have seen the movie or just read a review ask me if I’m still friends with Billy, hoping that I’m not, so it’s a hard thing to live with, because I would not have done that movie if I was not close to Billy. Working with you, it’s hard but it’s fun. Also, this movie is about our relationship and it’s so emotional that, when I was doing the editing, I had a different emotion towards you, and I’m sure you have that kind of emotion towards me, so we have to live down a lot. Also, we had never done movies, so we were learning and trying to film stuff, and it didn’t always look good. Another reason why it’s hard to work with you is that, when we do Q&As – I mean, you just said it, you like to be provocative, so it brings strong reactions.
BP: Working with a boorish American as a Canadian during the Trump era?
M: (laughing) During the U.S. tour, I’m gonna be so triggered.
BP: We have a hot and cold approach. It works out really well for us. For people who don’t like me, they can approach Maurane. For people who – well, no one doesn’t like Maurane. People approach me because I’m actually just a really nice guy when you get to know me, but I scare some people, I guess.
EJ: So, it’s sort of like “good cop, bad cop.” I love the way poems that you’ve both written are incorporated into the film, and the contrast between Billy’s edgy poem “I Want to Jerk Off All the Homeless Men,” which is in his book, Terrorizing the Virgin, and Maurane’s very poignant anus poem. Both are very vulgar and sexual, but night and day in terms of emotion and approach. That says a lot about the difference between the two of you. It’s another fun framing detail.
BP: One of the things that people miss a lot in the film, even though we tried to highlight it, is that it is the second poem Maurane ever wrote. The same way that I was inspired to make a film by working with her, who does video art, she was inspired to become a poet by working with me. I like to highlight that. (to Maurane) Would you write that vulgarly if your exposure to poetry wasn’t me first?
M: I think I have that in me.
BP: Oh, absolutely.
M: For sure, you made me see poetry in a way that I didn’t see before, because I didn’t know a lot, and it seemed boring to me.
BP: The night that we decided to do the movie, I read that poem about two rivals vomiting into each other’s mouths over and over again.
M: That’s a good one.
BP: I forgot that that’s what it is in the movie, so that’s a special detail. That’s what the poem is about. It’s about two rivals in a deep embrace where they’re just vomiting into each other’s mouths back and forth.
EJ: That reminds me of the “pooping back and forth” scene in Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know.
BP: There’s also a section in Freedom by Jonathan Franzen where the son is talking to his girlfriend about licking each other’s poop – that shit was so good. That’s one of my favorite sections of a book ever. Freedom is also a theme in Me and My Victim, because we have the Budweiser can that says “freedom” towards the end, and we were trying to imply something there about freedom. That was before I had read Freedom, but they’re similar investigations of the benefits and negatives of emotional and physical freedom.
EJ: I like that, so I’ll find a way to cut around it without all the poop and everything –
BP: I like the poop part.
EJ: Okay, I’ll leave the poop. So, once the tour is over and the film is streaming, what’s next for both of you? Is there another Billy and Maurane project, or are you working on things individually?
M: We were supposed to, but I decided to start my own movie. It’s kind of linked with Me and My Victim, but it’s going to be super different. It’s about the reception of the film and my life after it. I’m really excited to be starting that soon. My goal with Billy is to do a movie when we’re like 40. I want him to have a family and be super happy, and just show up in his life and kidnap him.
BP: We’re both doing diverging sequels, essentially. I’m like the inheritor of the true lineage, because Maurane’s not doing a podcast film. Maurane’s doing a more formal film, right? I don’t want to speak for her.
M: I wouldn’t say “formal,” but it’s not a podcast film.
BP: It’s not a podcast movie, whereas I’m gonna do a second movie in the same style. It’s about some friends of mine in an experimental project to blackmail incels into fixing their lives. It’s called Beautiful Blackmail.
M: It’s gonna be good.
BP: And then, I’m also working on a 120-hour film called Don’t Look at Me, but that’s gonna be more artsy-fartsy, not really a formal film. [Beautiful Blackmail] is in development hell, but Maurane’s movie is in development hell too, so we’re on the same page. We should talk about the tour.
M: Yes, but first, you should show your elbow.
BP: (laughing) My elbow?
EJ: What’s the significance of the elbow?
BP: (confused, flashing his elbow) This is my elbow. Here you go.
EJ: Me and My Elbow.
M: (laughing) Cute.
BP: Do you like it? Wait, Maurane, can I see your elbow?
(Maurane shows her elbow)
BP: Put it away! Put that away. That’s disgusting.
(everyone laughs)
BP: Put that fucking shit away. This is the worst elbow I’ve ever seen. Bad elbow!
M: (laughing) It’s, like, small.
BP: Okay, so before you distracted me with your slutty request to see my elbow – we’re doing a U.S. tour. We sold some equity in the film for the money. This might be the only time we’re gonna show it everywhere in theaters until it comes out on streaming platforms. Go now or forever hold your peace. We’re using the money to show the movie all over America in hopes of attracting distribution companies. We’ve had a lot of universities purchase the film to show classes, because it’s such a good example of DIY, no-budget filmmaking. Eugene [Kotlyarenko] has been helpful. I love Eugene.
M: And Cass[idy Grady]!
BP: And Cass has helped with the promotion. We’re just going around showing it everywhere we can. I literally Shark Tank pitched a guy I work with about how I was trying to sell equity in the movie for a tour, and he was like “I wanna do it.” This movie has continually been a process of doing everything ourselves. I just wanna hammer home that nobody does it like us. This is the only outsider film.
Me and My Victim is currently touring the United States with directors Billy Pedlow and Maurane. Tour dates are below:
May 11 – Small Works Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
May 13 – Aurora Chapel, Houston, TX
May 15 – We Luv Video, Austin, TX
May 22 – The Virgil, Los Angeles, CA
May 25 – Roxie Theater, San Francisco, CA
May 28 – KGB Bar, New York City, NY -
Two Cents Film Club: A Conversation on THE CONVERSATION
2¢FC continues its exploration of the late, great actor’s work with the moody 1974 Coppola thriller The Conversation
Two Cents is a Cinapse original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team curates the series and contribute their “two cents” using a maximum of 200-400 words. Guest contributors and comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future picks. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion. Would you like to be a guest contributor or programmer for an upcoming Two Cents entry? Simply watch along with us and/or send your pitches or 200-400 word reviews to [email protected].
The Pick: The Conversation (1974)
Gene Hackman was truly one of the greats, and in honor of his life we’re working our way through a sampling of his filmography – from old favorites, to some that we may be catching up with for the first time.
While Hackman was a prolific actor with a huge career that spanned multiple decades, I think in our true heart of hearts, most of us probably closely associate him with the 70s, in which he arguably has his most iconic run with of a string of hard-hitting classics, and collaborations with legendary directors and costars.
The Conversation was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and released at the height of his powers: his followup to The Godfather, and released just months before The Godfather Part II. And while those films are famously approachable and easy to appreciate, The Conversation is heavier and more demanding of its audience, dealing with themes like alienation, guilt, and paranoia, and – as acknowledged by Coppola – drawing inspiration from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup.
The film is also famously one of only five to feature the legendary character actor John Cazale, who died in 1978 at the age of 42. All five were Best Picture nominees; three of them won. The Conversation wasn’t one of the winners, but the competition was stiff – it lost to The Godfather Part II… another Coppola joint which featured Cazale in what’s inarguably his most famous role.
Gene Hackman considered The Conversation to be one of his best performances, and this week the Two Cents Film Club explores why he’s right.
The Team:
Spencer Brickey
Released between The Godfather and The Godfather Part 2, The Conversation, in many ways, has been forgotten in the conversation (ba-dum-tisk) of best films of the ‘70s. For those in the know, though, is the understanding that The Conversation is not only one of the best films from Francis Ford Coppola, but one of the best films of the 1970’s.
A film that dives deeply into loneliness, and the paranoia that it can breed, The Conversation is a film about being so intimately close to someone under the least intimate means. Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is a quiet, reserved man, protective of his trade secrets, his life experiences, even his birthday. Yet, he excels at extracting information from people, pulling their secrets out of the air, recording them at their most private. He is a man who stutters and stares at the floor when he talks about the loss of love, but comes alive, full of charisma, when discussing the many tools he’s built for surveillance. He is a man who says he fears murder above all else, but when put in a situation to save another, he cowers and runs. He is a man that will rip his apartment down to the studs, destroying iconography of his faith, but won’t touch the one thing he does openly love, his saxophone, even though it is the most obvious place for a wiretap. Harry Caul is not a good man, barely a man at all; he has one purpose, and in that, he is competent above all else.
All of this works, of course, due to Gene Hackman’s performance. Hackman plays against type, his usually charismatic and fiery self disappearing into a shadow of a man. Hackman plays Caul as a nobody, a body filling a suit that moves with the current. His only purpose in this life is surveillance, and he is useless at everything else. It’s a role far outside of his wheelhouse, a role Hackman himself said was incredibly difficult to inhabit, as it went against all his acting instincts to go so muted.
What we get though, through all the compacting of instinct and emotion, is one of Hackman’s finest performances, transcending expectations, and creating an iconic performance in the ‘70s film canon.
Ed Travis
I had given The Conversation a couple of shots before, having understood it to be an American masterpiece that I should appreciate. But I was too young to grasp what the film had to say; had too little life experience. So while I think this was my third time seeing The Conversation, it was the first time the film saw me. Hackman’s Harry Caul is just turning 44 at the start of our tale. I myself just turned 45. What a weird experience to view this art that was locked into place in 1974 but was somehow just waiting for me to catch up to it and get on its level.
I think my perception of the film previously was that it was cold, distant, and analytical. Boy was I wrong. Harry is a tragic figure, often quiet and aloof, certainly distrustful and unwilling to share many of his feelings. But feel he does. Caul is an expert in his field, and deeply private, but he’s profoundly human and cares a lot about the cost that his work brings about for those he surveils. He has no idea how to relate to people, but wants profoundly to be able to connect and trust. Yet as the case he’s working unravels, in spite of his obvious expertise and technical prowess, Harry is duped and suckered continuously, by his peers, his competitors, lovers, and even the subjects of his surveillance. He’s a lost soul, struggling to find any kind of connection with the humans around him who seem to baffle him with their complexity and moral ambiguity. His Catholic roots seem to only have added extra layers of guilt and questioning of his chosen profession.
And this time around, watching The Conversation, the emotional power of the film I’d previously thought clinical really broke through. Whereas I’d struggled to relate to the curt and distrustful Harry Caul, I now viewed him as a tragically bleeding heart desperate to be understood, desperate to find love and understanding, only to be metaphorically snuffed out by a world that doesn’t feel the same moral compunctions that he does. Part of me wants to give Harry Caul a big hug, and the other part of me thinks: Yeah, maybe I am Harry Caul. Maybe we’re all Harry Caul, caught up and morally compromised in a system that demands complicity. Damn, Coppola, take it easy on me, will ya?
Justin Harlan
When it comes to this classic Hackman/Coppola joint, I’d like to keep The Conversation going, as it were. The others who have contributed to this post so far are really tapped in, but something about their analysis really bugs me. I can’t quite seem to track what it is exactly. But I will go on record to say that Hackman is genuinely better than you’ve heard.
Puns aside, I dug this one a good bit and almost entirely because of the late great Harry Call… excuse me, I mean Caul… himself. This is a type of thriller that often leave me bored or, at least, not nearly as “thrilled” as I’d like to be. And, despite being told repeatedly throughout my life by friends, critics, and all type of film lovers that Coppola is the GOAT, I’m very hit or miss on his films.
What Hackman does here, though, is make you care. Without him, it’s hard to believe that Caul would be nearly as captivating a character. There are certainly implicit stakes in the story, but Hackman really puts a face on those stakes, with charisma to spare. With each week of this Hackman watchalong marathon, it becomes more and more undeniable just how amazing an actor this man truly was.
In short, The Conversation deserves all the talk is gets and Hackman’s manner in which he can tap into our very souls is why.
Austin Vashaw
As these last few weeks have certainly demonstrated, Gene Hackman was a terrific actor with an absolutely huge range. With The Conversation, we get to see a rarer – but no less powerful – kind of performance from him. His Harry Caul, a surveillance spook, is a complex man with a lot of quiet emotions and foibles, both on and beneath the surface. He is awkward, timid, petty, guilt-ridden, and deeply private – or perhaps more accurately, deeply paranoid.
But is it paranoia if it’s true?
This was a first-time watch for me, and I was surprised by how different the film was from the procedural version in my head. The style incorporates dreamlike qualities and atmosphere (including, but not limited to, an actual nightmare) in its storytelling.
It’s worth noting that a pre-fame Harrison Ford is terrific here in a now rare antagonist role, though at the time it followed another in American Graffiti. His next film, set in a galaxy far, far away, would change audience perception forever.
Goodbye to a Great: TWO CENTS Celebrates Gene Hackman
Two films still remain in our titanic selection of some of the late, great Gene Hackman’s biggest and best performances. Feel free to join us in discussing these upcoming entries!
May 12 – Enemy of the State – (Prime Video – 2 hours 12 minutes)
May 19 – The Royal Tenenbaums – (Hulu or Digital Rental / Purchase – 1 hour 50 minutes)
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In MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE The Enemy Is Always Us
With THE FINAL RECKONING On The Way, There’s One Villain Ethan Hunt Will Never Outrun
“I’m on the same side I’ve always been on. Stay out of my way.” – Dead Reckoning
Ethan Hunt goes rogue. If you needed to condense the plot of any of the famously convoluted Mission: Impossible films down to an elemental form, that’s as tidy a summation as is possible.
Ethan Hunt goes rogue.
He’s a renegade operative on the run from his own country for pretty much the entirety of the original Mission, Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, and Dead Reckoning, while in 3 and Fallout he spends the first half of the film on the right side of the law before having to go off reservation for the second half. Even in 2, the only movie in which Ethan Hunt does not go rogue, get disavowed, and become a fugitive from his own government, he still disobeys the direct orders given to him at the outset of his mission, choosing to destroy the central supervirus he’d been commanded to retrieve.
It’s like he’s some kind of…maverick, or something.
Ethan Hunt not being able to order DoorDash without triggering an international manhunt makes more sense when considered in tandem with the Mission franchise’s series long distrust of any and all authority figures and existing systems of governance. James Bond deals with every megalomaniac with a volcano lair, but Ethan Hunt’s adversaries have always pointed more inward.
There’s been a Mission: Impossible movie in every presidential administration going back to Bill Clinton, but regardless of which way the political winds are shifting, the thesis of each film remains unchanged: The enemy is within.
The villain of the first film is an IMF agent who has turned bad in pursuit of profit. The villain of the second film is an IMF agent who has turned bad in pursuit of profit. The villain of the third film is an IMF agent who has turned bad in pursuit of…engaging an arms dealer to orchestrate a false flag operation. (Can you guess which one of these was produced deep in the Bush years?)
Ghost Protocol is the closest the series ever gets to breaking from this pattern, with a villain who is more your typical spy movie madman with nuclear launch codes. But A) this character is noticeably the least interesting antagonist in any Mission movie (if not necessarily the actual worst in overall quality [hi, Dougray]) and 2) the dramatic thrust of Protocol is that Ethan’s efforts to stop this madman are endlessly complicated and thwarted by the same governments that should be supporting him. Because come hell or highwater, Brad Bird’s movie WILL be about how bureaucracies impede genius.
And then there’s the Christopher McQuarrie essayed back-half of the series, a four film saga where suddenly continuity exists and the wildly divergent aesthetics, tones, and conceptions of the main character are shoved together into a singular dramatic statement. Sometimes gracefully, sometimes…not so much.
Just what sort of world does McQuarrie envision surrounding Ethan Hunt? A broken one, quite frankly. In Rogue Nation, Fallout, and Dead Reckoning, the powers that be are utterly corrupted, their every office awash in circular firing squads of self-defeating conspiracies and masterplans. Rogue Nation eventually reveals that British intelligence organized and funded the splinter cell of former agents turned terrorist and then engaged in some more light quadruple-bluff backstabbing to try and cover up having done so.
Fallout brings the CIA’s malfeasance back into play, while Dead Reckoning pulls the scope back far enough to reveal the Director of National Intelligence attempting to curry favor with a homicidal AI to fashion a new world order (things get weird after six movies, what can I tell you).
The villains in the early films were entirely upfront about their mercenary motivations, while the baddies in 3 and Ghost Protocol at least give lip-service to their destruction being for the greater good. The McQuarrie saga’s original main threat, a terrorist sect of former spies now known as The Syndicate, followed the latter approach, claiming to wreak havoc in the name of overthrowing the awful systems that created the need for espionage and dirty dealings.
But by the time you get to Dead Reckoning, the men pulling the strings of the various conspiracies openly mock the idea of having an ideal. The purpose of amassing power isn’t to ‘do’ anything with it, it’s to HAVE it while others don’t. The good fight isn’t just lost, people think you’re an idiot for even trying to fight it.
In such a world, the Ethan Hunt we have come to know becomes the only solution. The more Cruise’s public persona has become uncanny and unknowable, the better suited Ethan Hunt is to his increasing role as not only a superspy, but the stop-gap who will intervene to keep the world on course even after all its leaders forsake their intended purpose.
We can’t trust in anyone or anything, but we can trust in Ethan Hunt (andtomcruise) to always be ready, willing, and able to climb a tall thing he shouldn’t climb or drive a vehicle off a tall thing he shouldn’t drive a vehicle off of if that’s what it takes to save us from our worst selves.
The original Mission: Impossible (which, it is easy to forget, is a nasty piece of work beneath its popcorn bluff) emerged from the same cultural moment that gave us the James Bond relaunch Goldeneye and John Frankenheimer’s masterful Ronin. All three films grapple with what spy-craft becomes in a world where the Cold War has been won, and the question of what happens to the soul-rotted, sociopathic living weapons now left without a war to fight or a cause to kill for.
Since then, the Bond and Mission films have continued to run parallel to one another while weaving similar narrative notions and real world geopolitical threads together (both 2004’s Casino Royale and 2006’s M:I 3 involve a superspy tangling with an international arms dealer engaged with terrorist plots). But while Daniel Craig’s 007 raged against the weary toll of his work, he remained dedicated to queen and country to the (very literal) end.
Ethan Hunt, though?
Ethan Hunt goes rogue.
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WEIR WATCH: An Introduction and Trip to HOMESDALE
Our summerlong exploration of one of Australia’s finest begins with a gritty little short film about fear, class, and distraction.
Over on Letterboxd, I have a running list that outlines my favorite film that came out every year since I was born. It is an eclectic list to be sure, but one that I think serves as an overall view into my tastes as a film critic. From an auteurist perspective, it is an interesting data point that one three directors show up on the list more than once: Carl Reiner, Spike Lee, and Peter Weir.
Namely, Weir’s films Witness (1985) and Truman Show (1998) are the ones that top out their respective years. When considering these two films, they reflect a few things about Weir’s filmography. They are distinctly different films, but they reflect one of Weir’s great strengths, which is to find central performances that elevate high concepts premises into high-gloss crowd pleasures. They also are both beautiful films, both aesthetically and regarding their deeply empathetic perspective. But they never delve into the sentimental, providing deeply felt observations on human experiences. They are honest, but lovely, films that reflect Weir’s humanistic perspective as a storyteller.
But despite these two and Dead Poets Society, Weir’s filmography was a giant blindspot for me. I couldn’t quite quantify why however; I simply had never sought it out, despite having heard high praise for a large portion of his work.
So this summer I am going to fix that. Starting this week, I am going to be watching in chronological order the full Weir filmography, week by week. My hope is to discover a deeper understanding of Weir as a filmmaker, and perhaps find some new favorites along the way.
This project is split into two distinct parts: Weir Australian New Wave period, and his American films. Fascinatingly, the two acts are almost equal in length: Weir made seven films in Australia, with his last, A Year of Living Dangerously (1982) being considered a paramount classic of the Australian New Wave movement, and then eight films in America, concluding with 2010’s The Way Back. Weir has announced he considers himself retired, meaning that while he is still alive, unless he changes his mind this is an effectively complete filmography.
This split does feel noteworthy not just because of the working conditions and budgets he was working in, but also because Weir’s earlier Australian work feels like a world apart from his later output. His Australian New Waves work, for most of the run, feels esoteric by comparison, playing more with genre as a means of expression. He mainly made horror and thriller films, movies with a sense of impending dread, before closing out this period with two historical epics starring Mel Gibson (Gallopoli and Living Dangerously.)By comparison, looking at Weir’s American output, they are much more populist. While Witness might have the DNA of a genre filmmaker in its bones, it’s still extraordinarily approachable, a crowd pleaser that taps into the visual language of neo-noir but delivers a kinetic movie star performance from Harrison Ford, earning his lone Oscar nomination. Weir also bounces between genres, making melodrama, comedy and historical epics all with the same relish and attention to making fine crafted populist cinema. While his final film The Way Down received warm but not rave praise from critics and less attention commercially, the whole scope of his career is littered with the sort of serious, grown ups-oriented cinema we are increasingly lacking
But before we get to the end of the line, let’s look at the beginning. Like most up-and-coming directors, Weir cut his teeth on several short films, mostly funded by the Australian Experimental Film and Television Fund. While we won’t be covering all of his short films, we are going to examine probably the most significant: Homesdale.
This was the last and by far the longest of Weir’s short films. Similar to his others, it was shot in black and white on 16mm film that was later converted to 35mm for display. This gives the film a slightly distorted, disorienting quality, especially in digital conversion. But rather than working against this distortion, Weir uses it to the full effect as a special effect in Homesdale, offering a scratched out window into a strange alternate Australia.
The titular Homedale in the film is a hunting lodge, where we see several guests visiting, several returning guests, seeking some form of escape. But once there, the staff at Homesdale stretches the attendees past their breaking point. Through a series of disturbing conversations, it becomes clear that the purpose of the hunting lodge is less to experience the outdoors, and more to push the limits of guests’ comfort.
Homesdale is in many ways a difficult film to write about. It is deliberately opaque with its themes and storytelling, a film about people being forced to confront that which makes them most afraid that never quite spells out what exactly is going on. But it is also silly, a comedicaly large exploration of issues surrounding death and aging. While there are aspects of the short film that are unnerving, the overall effect of it is a farce, a broad comedic take on Australian elites, and how they busy themselves to avoid their actual fears of aging and death.
A lot of the themes of Homesdale will pop up in later Weir works; in many ways The Cars That Ate Paris feels like a logical extension of Homesdale’s world view. Those later takes are more thematically nuanced and certainly more aesthetically confident. But there are a lot of the things that will form Weir into the director he is bound to become. The movie’s dialogue, from a script co-written of Weir’s early collaborator Piers Davies, is sharp, but it is the way that the performances from the film’s ensemble cast that give this largely unlikable crew some veritas and empathy.
Like most of Weir’s early short films, Homesdale is a bit difficult to track down. I only found it as a special feature on Picnic at Hanging Rock. And ultimately while it is an interesting entryway into Australia-era Weir, I don’t find it especially crucial. It is more a fascinating glimpse into Weir’s identity as a darkly funny filmmaker, a trait that will become more subtle in his later work, but always lies under the surface.
Next Week: We visit another strange locale as we explore the seething politics of small town life in The Cars That Ate Paris.
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Dattebayo! A Chat with Naruto: The Symphonic Experience Conductor Heidi Joosten
One of the most iconic anime series of the last few decades has to be Naruto, which exists in the mythic big 4 for fans – alongside the likes of Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Bleach. It’s the familiar Shonen story of a young outcast, Naruto Uzumaki, who lives in a village of ninjas who must overcome the odds and go from being a “cursed” child who was cast aside, to the best warrior in the village, and earn the title of Hokage, or the leader. The OG run, which featured Naruto as a feisty 12 year-old ran for about five years (2002-2007), with a somewhat solid run of about 220 episodes. Given the show’s popularity and weekly slot, it quickly caught up to its source from time to time resulting in a fair amount of filler, but not enough to stop a run that is going on today with a new series following the exploits of Naruto’s son Boruto.
Needless to say with the booming popularity of pop culture musicals and anime in general, Naruto seemed like a perfect candidate for a full orchestra adaptation, and it is currently touring as Naruto: The Symphonic Experience. This two and a half hour event, which will be in my hometown of Philly – May 13th and 14th at the Miller Theater presented by Ensemble Arts Philly, features a montage of iconic scenes from the OG series original 220 episode run, synchronized to a live orchestra performing Toshio Masuda’s original score with all dialog Japanese no less. In anticipation for the event I got to chat with conductor Heidi Joosten as to what fans could expect from the show and what it’s like conducting such events as Barbie: The Concert, Avatar: The Last Airbender In Concert, and Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse.
Looking at your body of work it seems like films and pop culture have long been part of the equation. Did you always want to be a conductor and when did you find this niche that combines these two passions?
So both my parents are conductors. They were music teachers that retired into professorships and everyone in my family at one point picked up a baton, so I think I was destined to do it at some point. But both of my degrees are in composition, I started writing when I was really young and really followed that passion through my degrees. But I’ve always had an interest in musical theater and so music directing and musical theater is something that has naturally been a huge part of that. You end up becoming a conductor. And I’ve just been very fortunate to be able to work in that vein and I love it very, very much.
I just attended the Sailor Moon musical recently and what surprised me the most was it was as much an Anime convention as it was a Broadway show, what surprised you the most when you start tackling these more niche genres and properties?
I mean, I think of the things that have surprised me the most, especially when you get under the hood of the music that accompanies a live picture or, like a television show or a film is just how nuanced and how rich all of this music really is. So, when we’re able to shine a spotlight on it, specifically with these concerts that are live to picture. It’s a really rare experience to be able to focus in on this music, create it live every single night and just bring it to life in a whole new way for fans that have been with this material for three days to 20 years.
Now unlike Sailor Moon, which was a Japanese production, this is an American production. You’ve conducted Barbie: The Concert, Avatar: The Last Airbender In Concert, and Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse can you shed some light on how this production differs from some of your western productions?
For this particular show, the dialogue is all in Japanese and the songs that we’re singing as a part of it are sung in the original Japanese. So we are honoring the tradition as well as we can when it comes to keeping the languages as a part of it. We aren’t doing the English dub, we are doing the original Japanese. Even along those lines, we have the traditional Japanese instruments such as the Shakuhachi, which is the Japanese flute, the Shamisen, which is like a Japanese lute, sort of like a guitar, but along those lines, we also have American western rock and roll instruments. It is a rock and roll concert. We’ve got a bass guitar, drums, a horn section, a string section, reeds. It is just meant to be a live concert experience.
So you’re going to be covering the openings and and and closings as well as the score?
Some of it, yes. The material that we’re covering in this particular concert happens to cover the first 220 episodes of Naruto, and there are over 700 episodes. So, the producers that designed this particular concert had to be picky. We obviously can’t cover all of it, but I think we did a pretty great job and at least put it together as much of it as we could in a 2 and a 1/2 hour experience.
In preparation did you do any research and by research I mean watch the OG run of Naruto?
I watched some of it, yes. My brother-in-law has seen all of it, so he sat me down and walked me through all that I needed to see to be sure that I knew where everything was coming from when we were telling this particular story.
But even in that sense, with this concert, even if you haven’t seen Naruto, from the start of the experience through the end of it, you get a solid idea of the beats of the 220 episodes that we’ve covered. So, for example, my parents came to the Milwaukee show and they understood what was going on. We may not hit every single detail, but there’s enough that you’re getting the through line story.
Were you an anime fan before taking on the property?
You know, I may be slow coming, but I am becoming a fan. My first experience with you know, anime inspired was when I worked on Avatar last fall, which I came to when I was in grad school. So I understand the art form. I recognized it as being incredibly beautiful, but I’m coming to it now. When I get to One Piece everyone will know. (Laughs)
Oh goodness, I am even too intimidated to start that one. That makes Naruto look like a light novel.
So you’ve worked on over 125 different productions. Everything from Barbie: The Live Concert, which I sadly missed, to the musical of American psycho. What would be your dream property to do a symphonic experience if you just got a blank check?
So like my bucket list item as a conductor, which already has been created, but it’s like hitting the market this fall is How to Train your Dragon.
I love it so very much.
Conductors and ninjas both use their hands to summon something, Naruto summons a sexy clone of himself and you summon an orchestra to play music. What’s something ninja’s can’t do that conductors can that might surprise people?
I often describe conducting as having the best seat in the house, because I just get to watch all of these world-class musicians who are my friends do their thing night in, night out; and make incredible music. The conductor’s responsibility is to help shape all of that, but also have a bird’s eye view of how it all gets put together. So, for me, it very much feels like a coach of a football team. Not only are you putting it all together and making sure you’ve got everything in place to play defence against whatever you need to play defense against, but also making sure that people aren’t getting injured. You’re making sure that as we’re looking at things we’re always keeping a fresh pair of eyes on it, because this particular tour, especially, you know, we’re in a different city every night.
We were in Reading, Pennsylvania last night. I’m talking to you right now from Washington, DC. We don’t really get a whole lot of time to get super used to the theaters that we’re playing in, because we have a different theater every day and we have the greatest crew in the world just setting us up and taking us down every single night in these theaters. From a conductor perspective it’s how can I best be helpful? How can I best be helpful in navigating, making sure that every single night, not only are we having a great show but we’re having fun?
Finally, like you mentioned before Naruto has been going for over 20 years, why do you think people are showing up and still discovering this property? Why do you think it resonates so much with its fans?
You know the story is timeless. The lessons that are taught are timeless, it’s such an effective medium to get the messaging out that we’re finding this is becoming cross-generational. You know, some people that have watched it are now introducing it to their children. So we have people of all different ages coming to the show and on top of that, the participation culture that comes with anime, comes with cosplay, that comes with Comicon, is so welcomed in our concerts that I think that has a lot to do with it.
The name of the show is Naruto: The Symphonic Experience, but it is not a stuffy orchestra concert. If you’re seeing something on screen that makes you excited, we want you to cheer, we want you to laugh, we want you to cry with us. Have a great time and participate. Come and live your best life with this series that previously you were only able to watch in your living room. Now we’re bringing it to you live where you get to experience it with 1500 people.
That communal aspect is something that’s really special and it’s something you don’t appreciate until you’re there in that group of people and it’s a shared experience. It’s great.
Agreed.
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Reb00t: THIRTEEN GHOSTS Is A Lot Of Great Makeup Effects, And Not Much Else.
The remake of the ’60s William Castle film is a bit of a dud, with a confusing plot and wooden performances, but is slightly redeemed through its top tier monster makeup effects.
Welcome to Reb00t! A series where I dig deep through the 2000’s to find all the horror remakes that we were inundated with over that weirdly bleak decade. Sometimes they’ll be good, sometimes they’ll be terrible, sometimes they’ll be great. In a few, rare times, they’ll be better than the original! These are all my personal views, obviously, so feel free to tell me I’m insane in the comments.
This week we’re diving into 2001’s Thir13en Ghosts!
Will it be as rad as I remember after my first viewing as a preteen? Or as mediocre as I remember watching it in college? Little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.
Thir13en Ghosts (Last time I’m spelling it like that) is a remake of the 1960’s William Castle picture, 13 Ghosts. For those who don’t know William Castle, or his overall effect on the horror genre, Castle was specifically known for his “event” films; he would routinely produce films that would have some sort of physical gag or showpiece that would be presented in the actual theater. He had electric shocks installed into theater seats and actors planted in the audience for his film The Tingler, and had a skeleton on a wire hover above the audience for The House On Haunted Hill. (This won’t be the last time I discuss William Castle; there’s a reason why many of the remakes of this era came from a production company called “Dark Castle”).
13 Ghosts was no different. The big technological selling point to get butts in seats was 3D. Each of the 13 ghosts would have their time to shine in the 3rd dimension, reaching out to the audience with their ghostly appendages. It was a hell of a gag at the time, and played like gangbusters to a sold out crowd.
But, how is it as a film? Kinda terrible! The real thing on display here is the tech, so story takes a pretty distant back seat. This is essentially 90 minutes of “oh, here comes the next ghost! Get those 3D goggles on, kids!”. Its still fun enough in a crowd, but it’s barely a film when actually watched with intent.
So, 41 years later, released 6 weeks after 9/11, Thirteen Ghosts hits the scene, with an updated color palette, and all the era’s trappings. So, is it any good?
Kinda! There’s a whole lot of stuff that does not work here, even carrying over some of the issues of the original, but it is also a pretty rad showcase of make-up effects that don’t really exist anymore in the digital world.
Thirteen Ghosts follows the same basic structure as the original; a young family inherits a house filled with 12 ghosts, all of them intent on making a 13th. What the 2001 remake adds to the plot is convoluted, to say the least. There is now an evil scientist/ghost hunter uncle ( F. Murray Abraham) who collected said 12 ghosts in his insane, Lament Configuration looking mansion, all in the service of powering a clock designed by the devil. If that sounds both cool and confusing, that’s about right! We’re never really given any sort of explanation to why he is building said clock, and what he intends to do with it, beyond just “human advancement”. It all looks real cool, but makes absolutely zero sense.
What this also inherits from the original, unfortunately, is the blank slate of a family. Even with a tragic backstory and Tony Shalhoub playing the patriarch, everyone is kinda just there, no deeper emotions or characterization beyond “look at how cool this house is” and “ghosts? Are you crazy?!”. Even with the whole dead mom angle, which is admittedly explored pretty uniquely here with the whole “Ghost Number 4” thing, it never plays for anything than a trope for the family, as they try to survive her loss in word alone.
The kids (played by Alec Roberts and every boy in ‘99 crush Shannon Elizabeth) are such nonentities here, that they straight up disappear for almost the entirety of the 2nd act, and you know what? Good chance you won’t even realize it until they show back up in the last 5 minutes.
Honestly, the only characters that do work here are side characters. F Murray Abraham is having a lot of fun playing a narcissistic evil scientist, Matthew Lillard dials up his twitchiness to 1000 as a cracked out psychic, and Embeth Davidtz shows up as a Ghost Rights Activist who is the only capable and efficient person in group (which is why it both sucks and is real weird when she does the double cross).
There’s a lot that doesn’t work here, of course, but what does work? The vibe, man; The vibe. If you’re anything like me, the very specific mood of these late ’90s, early ‘00s films hit like crack. Everything is dark and sinister, with most of the locations looking like the set of a Marilyn Manson video. There’s a very, very specific type of edge to these films, something like “Nu-Metal Horror”, that honestly only lasted for like 3 or 4 years, before the horror of 9/11 shifted the genre from dark but edgy to dark and mean.
What makes that look work, especially here, is the makeup effects. Like the original, the real star of the show isn’t the plot or characters; it’s the effects! And Thirteen Ghosts really brings the thunder with its ghost designs. Each of the 12 ghosts are incredibly unique in their look, each of them pulled from different nightmares. Everyone will have their favorites, from the Hellraiser inspired spiked and studded “The Hammer”, to the zombified gargantuan convict “The Juggernaut”, to the tortured, cage wearing witch “The Jackal”, or the upsetting mix and match of the “The Dire Mother & The Great Child”. My favorite is honestly “The First Born Son”, aka the boy with the arrow in his head. To this day, I find him creepy as all hell, how he just appears in the background, staring, with his tomahawk and bloodied arrow headdress.
Listen, is this good? No, not really. It’s structured to showcase the ghosts, but really only 2 or 3 of them ever get any screen time, and the central family is just a dud. There are definitely moments of where the film comes alive, especially in the few moments where it really dives into the lore, but for the most part, it’s a bit of a slog.
For those who grew up watching it, I think there is still enough meat on the bone for an entertaining evening. For those who haven’t, I’d put this under either “for completionists only” or “great to have on in the background, but not good for a dedicated watch”.
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The Accountant 2: Cuter Than You’d Expect!
Affleck and Berenthal are back in THE ACCOUNTANT 2, which, beyond being a great action film, is a hell of a lot warmer and earnest than you’d ever guess!
The Accountant was always a bit of an odd duck. Released in 2016, the entire “superhuman autism” angle always felt more like an SNL gag than an actual movie. As a film, it’s fine, following Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck), CPA and Assassin extraordinaire, as he starts to uncover a dark secret at a robotics company. The twists and turns are fun, but it’s a bit overly serious, and doesn’t really bring much to the table, action wise (doesn’t help that The Equalizer essentially did the “autistic assassin” thing 2 years earlier, without being explicit about it).
All of this is to say it was definitely surprising to learn that we were getting The Accountant 2 nearly a decade later. Many of the same players are back, including an expanded role for Jon Berenthal, who plays Affleck’s brother. So, how does this deadly CPA fair in the 2020s?
I’m happy to say that this is not only a whole hell of a lot of fun, but also much cuter than you’d ever expect it to be!
This time, Christian is enlisted by Treasury Agent Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) to help her find the people that killed her old boss, and help solve his last case. Affleck does so through plenty of shooting, ass kicking and autistic ticks. While not as consistent with the ass kicking as its predecessor (most of the action is in the final 3rd), what The Accountant 2 focuses on is the twists and turns of its story. While some elements are a bit overwrought and on the nose (there’s a whole bit where Affleck keeps repeating what one victim said, “I don’t have kids”, just to come to the conclusion that “the children must be in danger!”), the central mystery actually kept me guessing throughout, with the final reveal being a genuine “oh, wait, what?” moment for me.
What elevates The Accountant 2, though, even over its predecessor, is the relationship between Affleck’s Christian and Berenthal’s Brax. Both Berenthal and Affleck bounce off each other perfectly, taking on a natural sibling relationship, with deep shades of the “buddy cop” archetype. Brax is continuously befuddled by Christian’s ways, while Affleck plays a great deadpan straight man to his frustrations. Why it works is because there is never any true animosity between the two; Brax just wants to be closer to his brother, and Christian wants to find a way to let him in. It’s a relationship built on love, so even when they are squabbling, it’s all in good fun.
As a perfect illustration, there is a sequence about halfway through where the brothers visit a honkey-tonk bar together. The scenes opens with them arguing about Christians inability to talk to women, leading into a goofy as all hell (in a good way) square dancing scene, before ending on a freeze frame right out of a Burt Reynolds film. The scene has zero effect on the plot, and exists almost as a vignette, but is something that made The Accountant 2 a pretty great time, and something that modern cinema seems to be sorely missing; sometimes, the plot doesn’t need to be advanced. Sometimes, we just want to watch these characters hang out and get into trouble with each other. It’s called character development, and it’s why this was much better than it had any right to be.
To those that might have been a bit put off by the original films “mental illness as a super power” plot point, though, you might find this no better on that front, if not a little worse. Joining Christian in his journey is a group of autistic children that act as a network of hackers. Like Christian, they are presented as somewhat supernatural in their abilities, able to hack into any system in the world with ease, all of them working out of a small New England school that has some Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters vibes. There is also a wild “traumatic brain injury turns you into a super soldier” plot line that, again, is bonkers and right on the line of potentially being problematic. I personally found most of this all so goofy as to be comical, but, not being a part of that marginalized group, I could understand someone finding it all a bit tone deaf.
With the release (and success) of Den Of Thieves 2 earlier this year, it seems we may be entering a new era of buddy cop films, and The Accountant 2 is very much a part of that genre. I’m not surprised I liked this; action films with guns are exactly my wheelhouse. What I am surprised by is how absolutely charmed I was by this. Be it the way Berenthal mockingly copies an annoyed Affleck, or the way Affleck says “Braxton” after Berenthal throws out his sunblock, or the way that, after an intense gunfight, this literally ends on a “save the cat” moment. The Accountant 2 is earnest, cute, and fun as hell. Not exactly what I was expecting from my action cinema in 2025, but a much welcomed reprieve.
