Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest installment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.
Julie: While Hollywood was met with decidedly mixed reviews, the idea of Ryan Murphy, who gave us Glee, but also the searing American Crime Story about O.J. Simpson and the oddly compelling Running with Scissors, tackling Hollywood is just too intriguing. It is one of those series where critics may be grumbling, but audience scores are high. The trailer is funny, scathing and very glam. Judging from that, it feels like I could do worse than have a stab at a series critics may dismiss as superficial and lacking vision, if it looks as gorgeous as this.
Mege: A long time ago, I bought all of the original seven seasons of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone on BluRay in one neat, hypno-inducing box. Some of the episodes are just too quaint, others are still very disquieting, while with others, you can tell that someone has studied them hard, and taken the main conceit to be at the heart of a feature-length movie. It’s lovely to see a young Robert Redford or a boyish Ron Howard. And Beverly Garland fell for the wrong guy with the wrong face. And Serling really did like his Chesterfields, didn’t he? Once I am through with the old episodes, I am going to watch those new Jordan Peele ones. It’s not for bingeing, but it keeps you busy.
Eric: if you’re going to have a class struggle, what better time and place to do it than on a train that can’t stop, in a world where everybody outside the train is dead? Despite the very welcome sight of Jennifer Connelly leading us through this grim future, I have strong reservations about a half-decent movie with very little meat on its bones being turned into an hours-long TV show. And here’s a bonus: the train is also, somehow, a capitalistic hellscape that grinds maximum utility out of people through an objectivist code. What better metaphor is there?*
*The answer is: hundreds. Also, didn’t they rip this concept off from The Platform a month and change ago? (I’m kidding, for all we know everyone really just ripped off some ancient, obscure Agatha Christie novel no one’s ever heard of.)
Matt: I’m not 100% sold on Danny Boyle’s stage production of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, starring the Duelling Sherlocks, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller (alternating the two main roles, Frankenstein and Not Frankenstein, nightly). I like the concept, I like the visuals, I like many of the ideas, but as a play it doesn’t entirely come together for me. What I am very much sold on, though, is the National Theatre streaming past productions during these days of pande(mic)monium – it’s a great way to spend a locked down evening and make an occasion of it while the actual theatres are closed. I’m especially looking forward to their production of Anthony and Cleopatra, staring Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 