But Did You Watch the Simpsons Version of Planet of the Apes?

Posted on July 18, 2017 at 8:00 am

To no one’s surprise, the critically acclaimed “War for the Planet of the Apes” was a big hit at the box office in its opening weekend. Vulture was inspired by this last of the rebooted trilogy to revisit one of its offshoots, the musical version in a “Simpsons” episode.

The bit has so many disparate parts — ’80s Austrian-pop parody, old-school-musical homage, Planet of the Apes, break-dancing, old vaudeville-style jokes — but in the hands of The Simpsons and its writers, it works. Or as Bill Oakley, one of the two showrunners at the time, told Vulture, “ was just a magic visit from the joke fairy.”

One of my favorite details: “The person running the room had never seen it, yet was able to concoct a beloved parody of it just through pop-culture osmosis.”

Related Tags:

Behind the Scenes Television

Susan Glatzer on her Swing Dance Documentary, “Alive and Kicking”

Posted on July 18, 2017 at 1:37 am

The director of the new swing dance documentary “Alive and Kicking” knows her subject from the inside out. Susan Glatzer is a swing dancer herself and “part of the dance world,” which she vividly depicts in the film as an exceptionally joyous, generous, and connected community. My interview with Ms. Glatzer is now on the website of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists.

Here is an excerpt:

“Each dance is so special because it’s how each partner is interpreting the music and reacting to their partner. So as Andrea Gordon says in the film, it’s almost like you dance with someone you have never met before and by the end you feel like you can finish each other’s sentences because you’re connecting on a very, very basic human level of touch and movement and music and improvisation and trust. There is that incredible connection that goes well beyond ‘we have a shared passion.’

You’ll never have the same dance and you’re always looking for that next high with somebody else. You go on to the next person, the next partner but that’s when you get the sense of community. And you can go to a town where you do not know anyone and have an instant community of people who will welcome you….

It’s not about having a beautiful line; it’s being a badass, and it’s being silly and goofy. The whole point of this is: take the time, have fun, be silly, be goofy, be as crazy as you can be. The competitions are really intense and people do amazing stuff but at the end they all just want to dance with each other and cheer each other on. Everybody just wants to see something great and have fun and then we all have a good time and dance with each other.”

“Alive and Kicking” is now available on streaming and DVD.

Related Tags:

Directors Interview

David Lowery on “A Ghost Story” — The Costume, the Pie, the Story of Grief

Posted on July 17, 2017 at 12:35 pm

My interview with writer/director/editor David Lowery is on HuffPost. He explains the mechanics of the surprisingly complicated ghost costume worn by Casey Affleck through the film, and the already-legendary scene of Rooney Mara eating an entire pie.

It definitely started with Charlie Brown. We initially thought that were going to take a childlike image of a ghost, the Halloween costume that everyone knows from Charlie Brown and finds some pathos in it. But to find that pathos we really had to develop that symbol, that image that costume to a degree we hadn’t expected.

Related Tags:

Directors Interview Writers

Tribute: George Romero

Posted on July 17, 2017 at 12:04 am

We mourn the loss of writer/director George Romero, a towering figure in the history of American film. The influence of his “Night of the Living Dead” is immeasurable. Not only did he invent an entirely new genre of zombie films, but it was a major breakthrough for independent films, and, as “Rosemary’s Baby” would do later, it was an original re-imagining of the horror genre by virtue of its setting, in this case not a spooky castle or a haunted mansion but the American countryside. Equally important, the film, released in 1968, one of the most tumultuous years in American history, was utterly revolutionary in having a black man as its hero. The political overtones in his films continued in, for example, “Dawn of the Dead,” again using the setting, this time a shopping mall, to make some sharp points about mindless consumerism.

May his memory be a blessing.

Related Tags:

Directors Horror Tribute

A Wrinkle in Time: Teaser Trailer from Oprah Winfrey and Ava DuVernay

Posted on July 16, 2017 at 11:52 pm

I could not be more excited about seeing one of my all-time favorite books brought to screen by one of my all-time favorite directors. Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time is a magnificent story of a brave girl named Meg who has to save her scientist father (Chris Pine). He disappeared while testing a theory about traveling through space. The book was rejected at first by publishers because it did not fit into any one category — it has adventure and science fiction and romance and questions of faith and philosophy. Meg, like Jo March and Mary Lennox, is smart, strong, and brave — and, crucially, succeeds because of her faults, not in spite of them. I interviewed L’Engle’s granddaughter on the 50th anniversary of the book.

And now Ava DuVernay (“Selma”) is directing the movie version. This early glimpse of the film, which will be out next spring, looks thrilling. The trio of otherworldly creatures wonderfully named Mrs. Which, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Who, are played by Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling.

I hope she signs up to do the whole series.

Related Tags:

Trailers, Previews, and Clips