How Does the End of Sharp Objects Compare to the Book?
Posted on June 13, 2024
| 6 minutes
| 1211 words
| Zora Stowers
Amy Adams as Camille. Gillian Flynn insists she never even considered changing the ending of Sharp Objects to shock faithful readers who had tuned in to the show. The book was published over a decade ago and its double-twist ending probably wasn’t well-known; some authors might jump at the chance to have another go at their first novel. But Flynn kept the bones of the story intact. “We were all in agreement that we wanted it to be faithful to the book,” she explained in a Vulture interview.
[Read More]How Girl Meets World Successfully Built on Boy Meets Worlds Legacy
Posted on June 13, 2024
| 5 minutes
| 1014 words
| Zora Stowers
Remakes, comebacks, and sequels are rarely good, but that doesn’t mean we’ll ever stop making them. Nostalgia (not to mention money) is a powerful force, one that can pull any well-meaning creative bringing back beloved characters for another go. That’s why it was rather surprising when Girl Meets World, the Boy Meets World sequel that debuted on Disney last year (14 years after the original ended its seven-season run), turned out to be so wonderful.
[Read More]How King Cobra Got a Disney Actor to Play Gay Porn Star Brent Corrigan
Posted on June 13, 2024
| 5 minutes
| 870 words
| Zora Stowers
Brent Corrigan (left) and Garrett Clayton (right). King Cobra might be best known as the gay porn–murder movie starring James Franco, but the film’s actual star is Garrett Clayton, a unknown whose previous credits include the Disney Channel original movie Teen Beach Movie and a short stint on ABC Family’s The Fosters. Clayton plays real-life twink porn star Brent Corrigan, and as director Justin Kelly told Vulture in a recent interview, his sparse résumé was a boon for the film: “I definitely thought that would really help for the role, if it could feel like we’re discovering someone at the same time that [the porn industry] is.
[Read More]How Mrs. Maisel Put Together Its Marvelous 1950s Soundtrack
Posted on June 13, 2024
| 8 minutes
| 1638 words
| Aldo Pusey
With all of the TV shows withstandout soundtracks this year, it was a particularly welcome surprise to end 2017 on a sonic note that harkened back to the 1950s. 1958, to be precise: In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, co-creators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino created a diverse musical world that’s not only as meticulous as their fast-paced dialogue, but one that’s whip-smart with its choices and cues. (Robert Preston talk-crooning, “Friends, the idle brain is the devil’s playground!
[Read More]How Patton Oswalt Did the Unimaginable: Write Stand-up About Being a Widower
Posted on June 13, 2024
| 10 minutes
| 2018 words
| Aldo Pusey
Patton Oswalt. With a new special, Talking for Clapping, about to premiere on Netflix (which would eventually win a Grammy for Best Comedy Album and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special), Patton Oswalt was planning on taking a break from stand-up. Then his wife, true-crime writer Michelle McNamara, surprisingly died in her sleep and everything changed.
Time passed and Oswalt decided that he needed to get back onstage.
[Read More]How Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Revived the Monsters of Your Childhood
Posted on June 13, 2024
| 9 minutes
| 1815 words
| Sherie Connelly
“I wanted it to be like a relentless machine coming toward you,” André Øvredal says of the Pale Lady, “and confusing to the character. Is this a dream? Is this reality? What is real here?” Adapting any popular children’s book for the screen is a lofty endeavor, but Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark posed a unique challenge. The original book series by Alvin Schwartz is most famous for Stephen Gammell’s grotesque illustrations, visions of creatures that seem to have materialized out of evil mist, straight from a whirlpool of nightmares and onto the page.
[Read More]How Soap Operas Changed TV Forever
Posted on June 13, 2024
| 8 minutes
| 1672 words
| Elina Uphoff
Luke and Laura’s wedding on General Hospital. The Story of Soaps, which premieres Tuesday at 9 p.m. Eastern on ABC, is a rare example of a broadcast network bankrolling scholarship that also happens to be entertaining. Moving back and forth through nearly a century’s worth of media, this is a real documentary, not just a cynical repurposing of one network’s intellectual property. It covers the evolution of daytime soaps on rival broadcast networks as well as ABC, plus the radio soaps that preceded them and the nightime soaps (notably CBS’ Dallas and ABC’s Dynasty) that followed.
[Read More]How to Talk to Girls at Parties Finds a Way to Make Punk-Rock Aliens Uncool
Posted on June 13, 2024
| 3 minutes
| 559 words
| Zora Stowers
How to Talk to Girls at Parties. This review originally ran during the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.
Young love has been used to great effect as a canvas for the fantastical, and How to Talk to Girls at Parties follows a long line of narratives in which the object of desire is literally a zombie or vampire or superhero, wink, wink. In this case, she’s Zan, an alien in the body of Elle Fanning, who is visiting Earth with her colony, on what amounts to an intergalactic school trip.
[Read More]I Dont Want to Be Erased
Posted on June 13, 2024
| 21 minutes
| 4434 words
| Janel Helmers
Frustrated by his failing health, Lou Reed spent his final days intent on making something “really astonishing.” Photo: Mattia Zoppellaro/contrasto/Redux Excerpted from LOU REED: The King of New York. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Copyright © 2023 by Will Hermes. All rights reserved.
In 2010, Lou Reed planned to perform with Gorillaz for their headlining set at the Glastonbury Festival, a highlight of a busy summer. Then his health took a downturn.
[Read More]I Never Want to See This Movie Again
Posted on June 13, 2024
| 4 minutes
| 828 words
| Janel Helmers
Maria Hofstatter in The Devil’s Bath. This review was originally published on June 21, 2024. We are recirculating it now that The Devil’s Bath is available to stream on Shudder.
It’s the severed finger that does it. Not because it’s gross, but because it’s presented so matter-of-factly. When Agnes (Anja Plaschg), the protagonist of Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s The Devil’s Bath, gratefully receives that body part from her brother on her wedding day as a good-luck charm for a hoped-for pregnancy, the film enters a fully alien place.
[Read More]