Daniels Throwback "Turn Down For What" 🎵

by Nathaniel R

Daniel Kwan in "Turn Down For What"

We made a hilarious discovery today. Daniels, the directing duo of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, have not updated their official website since 2016! That was the year of their film debut Swiss Army Man. The website very much sells them as music video guys which they, of course, were. Six years later, post the huge success of Everything Everywhere All At Once they are in the Oscar conversation, and have a first look deal with A24 and a multi-picture deal with Universal so they're hardly those "We Direct Music Videos" guys anymore. Time to update the site, maybe? Tick-tock...

Watching one of their most famous videos "Turn Down For What" (2014) today in 2022 is a special thrill, given how much of the unhinged action-scene chaos and bawdy humor of Everything Everywhere All At Once you can see in it...

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Dragula: Titans S1.E2 "Revenge of the Witch"

by Nathaniel R

Just give us dark beauty, right?

Challenges on competition reality shows are planned out in advance but sometimes it's fun to imagine they aren't but instead, forced by the previous episode. Last week, when Dragula Titan's competitors were asked to reinterpret a classic horror type for a Halloween party, nobody chose a witch, surely the most common costume of all. So for episode two, witches are the whole theme. Revenge! 

For those of you who need a little cinematic referencing in your TV (oh, maybe that's just me?) the guest judges were the "Demon Nun" herself Bonnie Aarons (The Conjuring 2, The Nun, Mulholland Drive) and director Darren Stein (Jawbreaker, GBF)...

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Taylor Swift, Star-Studded and "Bejewelled"

by Nathaniel R

Do we have any Swifties amongst the readers? I personally rarely thought of Swift outside of liking a few hits but with the queer-ally song "You Need To Calm Down" followed by the double pandemic punch of the Folklore and Evermore albums, the common wisdom that she was a very talented songwriter finally pierced my consciousness where pop music is but a small niche (crowded out by cinema, tv, and theatre). Her new album "Midnights," which was immediately at the top of the charts giving her the most #1 albums of any woman (though she's tied in that with Barbra Streisand), is 20 songs long so it'll take a while to sink in.

But let's talk music videos. Taylor has always loved celebrity cameos (remember "Bad Blood" and its bevy of young actresses?) and the first two Midnights videos are star-studded fun...

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Some thoughts on David Fincher's 60th birthday

Today, The Academy tweeted this image of David Fincher's filmography and asked which three you'd choose to watch in a marathon.

But even before they did we were thinking about David Fincher...

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Alexander Skarsgård Special

by Nathaniel R

Alexander Skarsgård in his first movie role in 1984

Alexander Skarsgárd is nothing if not committed to his nearly feral manchild in The Northman. He embraces the movie's mythological brutality and reminds us of both his indisputable screen charisma and the too little acknowledged fact that its unusually flexible in terms of tone and genre and auteurial vision. This may be another northman (you can't change your ancestry) but it's definitely not Eric Northman of True Blood fame! And speaking of the Nordic vampire that made him internationally famous, this is a good time to look back to his breakthrough season from the summer of 2008 to the summer of 2009. Not that he was a "new" actor in 2008, mind you...

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