Independent films
fromEsquire
1 day agoHow 'Over Your Dead Body' Reinvented the Action-Comedy (Again)
Jorma Taccone's latest film, Over Your Dead Body, blends comedy and violence in a home-invasion thriller inspired by action cinema.
"How can you not land on Silicon Valley?" he says, pointing out that most of us are already living inside its influence every time we pick up our phones. That constant presence makes it fertile ground for satire, even if the show leans hard into drama.
The script is so blunderingly crude, so sluggish in its attempts at emotional depth, and so mean-spirited in its approach that it leaves viewers feeling deflated.
The show, which traced the depths into which two Angelenos descend after a road-rage incident, reintroduced Ali Wong as a dramatic lead, gave Steven Yeun a chance to go darkly comic, and shined a rare light on the issue of Asian American mental health.
Kanye West sold out Inglewood, California's SoFi Center and took in a reported $33 million less than a year since he released a song called 'Heil Hitler.' West's apology for his antisemitism was evidently enough for his LA fans, and no doubt some went because of the antisemitism.
"I think we're in a place where we're trying to make marriage seem more like a positive choice, rather than an obvious obligation. It's a fascinating fiction that those who get married subscribe to, hoping that the fiction becomes true."
Bryan Cranston's performance in the Malcolm in the Middle revival, especially a scene where he experiences a drug-induced ego death, may be his greatest work.
Matthew Macfadyen started his career in a 1998 TV film adaptation of Wuthering Heights as Hareton Earnshaw, Heathcliff's whipped dog, and has been giving us brilliant incarnations of beta cucks ever since.
Shuffling under the mortal coil this week (aka hosting the Gabfest), it's our OG players Steve, Dana, and Julia. Like a morose Danish prince contemplating a human skull, they gaze upon the Oscar nominated , based on the novel by Maggie O'Farrell inspired by William Shakespeare's life. Directed by Chloé Zhao and starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, Hamnet has brought some critics to tears and left others cold. Our hosts share where they landed.
Two deeply incapable siblings who are in over their heads when a misguided theft for their dying grandmother accidentally pulls them into the world of organized crime. Blackmailed into increasingly dangerous assignments, they clumsily fail upwards, sinking deeper into chaos they're ill-equipped to handle.
In the fourth season of Industry, everyone has a story to sell: a neutered fund or loveless marriage, shamed husbands, a life aimless after retirement, a payment-processing firm hampered by its ties to porn and sex work. These labels seem to indicate mistaken priorities or misplaced trust. But they are just narratives to be refined or redefined. Everything is up for grabs if you tell the right story.
On February 11, reported Apple has acquired from its original production company Fifth Season for $70 million. This means Severance is now Apple's exclusive intellectual property, rather than a licensed show made by an outside partner. Deadline goes into the weeds of how and why it all happened-including deep dives into Apple's pay structures-but the short version is that the show was too expensive for Fifth Season to shoulder by itself.
Unfortunately, Matt's love of film is inconsistent with his real assignment, which is to make the most money possible while taking the fewest risks. And he believes in that, too, because he wants to keep his job and he loves the life it gives him. So in this world, the desire to make art and the desire to make money are in tension, but not because they put pure artists and mercenary suits on opposite sides. They are competing desires that exist inside the hearts and minds of many, if not most, of the people in the industry, just in different proportions.
This is also a great opportunity for those who missed Schitt's Creek during its initial run on the CBC in Canada and Pop TV in the U.S. Created by Eugene and Dan Levy, the series follows temporarily embarrassed millionaire video-store magnate Johnny Rose (Eugene Levy), his high-maintenance soap-opera star wife Moira (O'Hara), and their idiot kids David (Dan Levy) and Alexis (Annie Murphy).