Saturday, August 8, 2015 at 1:56PM Happy birthday to the Sensates. Netflix renewed Sense8 for a second season today (the actors seem very happy). To celebrate let's all masturbate simultaneously all over the world at 8:08 PM tonight.
[If you missed our coverage, Nathaniel talked about the NSFW radical sexuality and Tim reviewed the whole season.]
Friday, June 19, 2015 at 12:31PM Team Experience is sharing their dream picks for the Emmys each day at Noon. Here's Margaret...
Tituss Burgess' performance as Titus Andromedon on Netflix's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is nothing short of genius. (Before we get any further into this, it should be established that Tituss with two S's is the actor, and Titus with one S is the character. Confusing, yes, but blame Tina Fey and Robert Carlock.)
His vocal control is exquisite, and we see it tested time and again as the writers work up excuses for Titus to belt whenever possible. His grip on his comedy is similarly iron-clad. Every gesture, every line reading, is laser-precise. He never fails to deliver the biggest laugh of whatever scene he's in--he's a dexterous physical comic and quite nimble with Fey & Carlock's twisty punchlines-- but he also lends a distinct pathos to the performance that makes it more than just funny.
And he's tremendously gif-able. Sweet mercy, how gif-able.
Though often ridiculous, Burgess makes damn well sure we know that Titus is the one telling the joke. Even the most absurd lines fly out of his mouth with self-awareness and complete conviction. (In lieu of apologizing for putting his foot in his mouth, he shrugs: "I am as God made me.") One of the things that makes Kimmy Schmidt so special is its improbable sense of melancholy. Hints about Titus' past point to frustration and pain, and that's present in his performance even as he lives confidently and without contrition.
But most of all, he's just purely and entirely funny. He makes me laugh more than any other TV character, certainly today, maybe ever. To deny him would be like denying Jane Krakowski's Jenna Maroney, which... well... please don't make that mistake again, Emmys.
Previously: Ann Dowd talks The Leftovers and Nathaniel fusses over the Emmy ballot
Monday, June 15, 2015 at 8:46PM Tim here. We've had a little more than a week now to play around with the new Netflix series Sense8, which has hopefully been enough time for everybody to process it. For myself, I'm still working on that: it's a whole lot of show, frequently not to its benefit. But it dreams no little dreams.
The show is the brainchild of J. Michael Straczynski, whose Babylon 5 largely created the "pre-planned serialized television" in the 1990s, and siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski, of The Matrix and its many attempted follow-ups, all of which have been met with widespread derision and a small but freakishly adoring cult. In the interest of full disclosure, I should confess that I'm part of that cult. I even really liked Jupiter Ascending. So feel free to not trust anything I have to say about anything ever again.
Straczynski's achingly earnest liberal humanism blends seamlessly into with the pie-eyed optimism and sincerity of the Wachowskis' post-Matrix work, especially the swooning globalist poetics of Cloud Atlas. The result is a show that wears its politics and its sentiment right out in the open, with actors navigating big mouthfuls of dialogue that sound like an op-ed first, a stoned philosophy student's stream-of-consciousness second, and things that human beings would ever say out loud to other human beings third (another legacy of Babylon 5. I'm not even entirely sure I mean that as a complaint. Artlessness born out of sincere passion is a very different thing than a simple lack of talent. It's charming, albeit in a shaggy way.
Netflix, Reviews, Sense8, TV, Tom Twykver, Wachowski Siblings Sunday, June 14, 2015 at 4:03PM Fact: People love themselves from prehistoric monster movies.
Jurassic World (aka Jurassic Park 4) took absolutely no chances whatsoever on losing the collective global nostalgia for Steven Spielberg's original dino-blockbuster, modelling itself almost exactly on its predecessor. The only plot elements and story beats missing in this very very familiar movie are the kind you can't regurgitate: Spielberg's brilliance, Laura Dern's Face o' Wonder, and that scene with the dinosaur poop. As a result its opening weekend was big enough to fund the development of a real life theme park with ½ a billion in worldwide grosses in just 3 days. It's now the second biggest opening of all time after Marvel's The Avengers (2012). Which means that it's fairly certain that Jurassic Park 4 or Star Wars 7 will be the Crowned Champ of 2015 when the year wraps up. Sorry about it Avengers 2, Hunger Games 4, Furious 7, and Originality; you've all lost!
This way towards ridiculous grosses, you monster!
WIDE RELEASE
June 12th-14th Weekend
01 Jurassic World NEW $204.6 Jurassic Park Articles
02 Spy $16 (cum. $56.9) Rose Byrne FYC
03 San Andreas $11 (cum. $119.3)
04 Insididous Chapter 3 $7.3 (cum. $37.3)
05 Pitch Perfect 2 $6 (cum. $170.7) Review
06 Entourage $4.3 (cum. $25.8)
07 Mad Max: Fury Road $4.1 (cum. $138.6) Review & Podcast & Random Articles
08 Avengers: Age of Ultron $3.6 (cum. $444.7) Review & Marathon & Podcast
09 Tomorrowland $3.4 (cum. $83.6) Review
10 Aloha $.9 (cum. $18.9) Review
UNDER 800 SCREENS
June 12th-14th Weekend
01 Love & Mercy 573 screens $1.7 (cum. $4.7)
02 I'll See You In My Dreams 246 screens $.8 (cum. $2.9)
03 Home 584 screens $.7 (cum. $119.3)
04 Furious 7 357 screens $.5 (cum. $350.7) Review
05 Far From the Madding Crowd 366 screens $.4 (cum. $10.7) Review
06 Cinderella 270 screens $.2 (cum $199.2) Review
07 Ex Machina 194 screens $.2 (cum. $24.7) Review & Podcast & Random Articles
08 Me and Earl and the Dying Girl NEW 15 screens $.2 Review
09 Paul Blart Mall Cop 2 234 screens $.2 (cum. $68.8)
10 Woman in Gold 198 screens $.1 (cum. $32.2)
The story in limited release was also oldies but goodies: The Beach Boys & Blythe Danner. Love & Mercy got quite an enthusiastic critical (and audience) response and Mama Paltrow continues to headline the non-story story of the summer in that her movie has received very little press but has somehow found an audience anyway and steadily accumulated a very nice little gross for a septugenarian romantic drama. Do you think Bleecker Street will have the guts to fund her an Oscar campaign?
What did you see this weekend?
I saw the dinosaurs (guilty), finished up Sense8, and wisely decided not to binge Orange is the New Black but to truly savor it this time. I'm savoring my visitation privileges with these convicts this year for as long as I can manage will-power wise. Maybe I can make it last through Mid July?!?
Tuesday, June 2, 2015 at 10:31AM We recapped the first half of Grace and Frankie and then abruptly quit talking about it, but since it's been renewed, we should tie this up in a neat bow. As with other Netflix shows in the past like OITNB and Daredevil it didn't quite engage people in the blogging model as weekly series coverage does despite the fact that it was clear that most readers were watching. The problem, as documented in ongoing media hand-wringing and cultural conversations about binge-watching, is that nobody's ever on the same page.
But on the other hand people do seem to have ended up on (mostly) the same page with Grace & Frankie in terms of its overall quality. More...
