Category: With Eyes Wherever

The 20-Year Marketing Legacy of “Training Day”

September 12, 2021

Filmmakers can be sensitive sometimes. David Fincher still won’t talk about Alien 3, a 25-year-old wound by the time he produced Mindhunter, co-starring Holt McCallany (from Alien 3). Maybe on the promotional circuit, McCallany mentions that he first worked with David on Alien 3, and the director has to sit by silently — we apply the Eisenstein montage to his blank face and imagine the inner turmoil. Once a film has been made, it’s printed onto public record, and may follow its filmmaker through their career. I understand via pop culture osmosis that Stephen King wants to be known for The Dark Tower, but everybody talks about The Stand instead. You may not get to choose, as budgets inflate and stakes raise and the realities of showbiz bear down on creative passersby. … More The 20-Year Marketing Legacy of “Training Day”

Making the Best of It | Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020) Review

February 8, 2020

What has long been said of Mary Elizabeth Winstead, from her early days of horror through her trading insular indies with strange blockbusters, is that she’s the best part. Sometimes this comes from her starring in genre trash like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter or a remake of The Thing, but regardless the prestige, she always gives a commanding performance. She speaks with that deep voice and you listen — lest you think I toss off an idiom like “commanding performance,” without charming self-consciousness. The slow arrival of Mary Elizabeth Winstead has made me anxious since I first saw her in Death Proof circa 2011. Not only that she’s too talented to play in genre garbage like The Thing remake, too beautiful to remain overlooked by conventional wisdom, but more broadly, her perpetual square peg to Hollywood’s round hole illustrates one of Hollywood’s woman problems. And it begins with The Thing. … More Making the Best of It | Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020) Review