Wow, classic noir! Fake movies within movies, wow! Book thieving, celebrity interviews, snakes on a monkeyfeathered plane, wow, wow, wow!
Wow, scb0212 contributing this week! Send articles throughout the week to ploughmanplods at gmail, post articles from last week below for discussion and have a Happy Friday! Wow!
At Esquire, Ryan D’Agostino interviews Owen Wilson about Loki, Wes Anderson and, you know, whatever:
Here Owen pauses, dabs his mouth with the napkin, nods his head as if he’s come to a conclusion.“It would be nice to not feel any pressure with this story—the way I sometimes feel with movies—to do set pieces. Just to have a story be . . . I wouldn’t say boring, because I don’t find it boring. A movie that’s just this. Where we don’t have whatever burden you have with an article, where we gotta do something. We were kind of kidding about how this is the stuff people want to know: ‘No, it’s not crunchy peanut butter. I use smooth, but actually I use almond butter in place of peanut butter.’ See, I do find that interesting!”
Time flies, unlike snakes… unless they’re on a plane! Gizmodo‘s Germain Lussier reminds us that whole Snake on a Plane hullabaloo was 15 years ago:
Why was the opening so bad? The overall negative reviews were one reason, but mostly it was a realization that excitement inside the bubble of the internet isn’t the end all, be all. When a person outside that bubble hears a title like “Snakes on the Plane,” odds are they’re going to dismiss it. And so it was that after its opening weekend, Snakes on a Plane took its place in history. For 15 years, the film has been best known as a cautionary tale—proof that buzz among the geek crowd is good, but doesn’t guarantee a hit. I should know. I was at Comic-Con as a fan when the footage played, got hugely hyped about it, and went to see the film in theaters as soon as I could.
For Film School Rejects, Emily Kubincanek revisits classic Joseph H. Lewis noir My Name is Julia Ross:
Julia’s struggle in My Name is Julia Ross seems to align with what second-wave feminism took on in the decades that followed. The cultural practices that allow Mrs. Hughes to keep Julia locked away and in control were the focus of liberal feminists such as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. A marriage and a beautiful home did not mean a woman was safe from harm and had agency in her own life. Mental illness was a by-product of the isolation and dissatisfaction women felt when confined in the home. But it gave even more reason for these women not to have control of their own lives.
If this Vulture article’s title and tag line doesn’t get you, I don’t know what’s up –The Spine Collector: For years a mysterious figure has been stealing books before their release. Is it espionage? Revenge? Or a complete waste of time?
This was a setup Stieg Larsson would have admired: a clever thief adopting multiple aliases, targeting victims around the world, and acting with no clear motive. The manuscripts weren’t being pirated, as far as anyone could tell. Fake Francesca wasn’t demanding a ransom. “We assumed it was the Russians,” Mörk said. “But we are the book industry. It’s not like we’re digging gold or researching vaccines.” Perhaps someone in publishing, or a Hollywood producer, was desperate for early access to books they might buy. Was the thief simply an impatient reader? A strung-out writer in need of ideas? “In the hacker culture that Stieg Larsson depicted, they do a lot of things not for financial benefit,” Mörk pointed out this spring, “but just to show that they can do it.”
Not really news per se, but has everybody seen Nestflix, the site where you can browse titles for fictional movies within movies? Never has Angels with Filthy Souls seemed to close to watchable:
The Magnificent Three
PG-13 1h 37m movie, drama
A son who doesn’t want to follow in his father’s business. His father is President of Earth (and he’s Vice President).
“Signing bills into law was always your dream, not mine.”
Cast: Harold Zoid, Calculon, John A. Zoidberg Director: Harold Zoid As seen in: Futurama (1999-2013)