Every day, Opening Acts highlights the best pieces of writing on film, television, and literature published around the Internet. Please share if you like what you see.
For your reading enjoyment …
Fishes Out of Water: Surrealist Juxtapositions by
There’s nothing funny about a fish out of water. Flapping this way, jumping that, its eyes aghast, its mouth agape and its gills beating for breath as it fights for dear life in desperate need of its life source. As far as idioms go, however, fishes out of water are the stuff of drama: there might be a case to be made about how all forms of narrative tension involve, at their most essential, a new, challenging, perhaps dangerous context.
The Unloved, Part Thirteen: “Public Enemies” by Scout Tafoya. Scout Tafoya looks at the under-appreciated Public Enemies just in time for Mann’s new picture Blackhat.
Mann’s 2009 gangster drama retells the rivalry of gangster John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) and FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), with a side trip into Dillinger’s romance with Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard). It’s a tale we’ve heard many times before in movies and TV programs, fiction and history books, but as is so often the case with Mann, the film approaches the whole thing through eyes that are, in more than one sense, fresh.
Let 2015 Be the Year the Female Fuckup Goes Mainstream by Sarah Seltzer. Sarah Seltzer talks about Broad City and Girls, hoping that 2015 is finally the year that “the female fuckup” becomes a vital piece of the female experience.
Daily on the Internet, thousands of fans profess undying love for Broad City‘s jolly fuckup stoners, Abbi and Ilana. Needless to say, the show’s newfound worshipers who see themselves in its hard-luck heroines aren’t actually all dedicated potheads, nor do they struggle in basic life functions as adorably as those two do. In fact, some of them probably wouldn’t know a joint if it hit them in the face. Similarly, for humanity’s sake, let us hope that the fans who claim self-recognition in other hot comedies about women are not all as narcissistic, incompetent, and cruelty-prone as the girls on Girls or Transparent.
Reverse Shot’s Best of 2014 by Reverse Shot’s Staff. Reverse Shot has revealed their choices for best films’ of 2014.
In the decade-plus that we’ve engaged in the year-end activity of sorting out the U.S.-released films that best captured our imaginations and intellects over the preceding twelve months, we have seen films land firmly in the top spot that were both thrilling surprises even to us (Flight of the Red Balloon, Alamar, The Deep Blue Sea) and utterly, fabulously expected (Before Sunset, The Tree of Life). This year’s selection, as you have likely already ascertained, belongs in the latter camp.
‘Agent Carter’ Preview: Marvel Is Finally Learning Its TV Lesson by Andy Greenwald. Marvel had a tough time with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Andy Greenwald says that Agent Carter has ended up much better.
Supervillains never learn, but major broadcast networks occasionally do. A year and a half after fumbling the launch of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., an ambitious bit of corporate Spackle that initially played as if its scripts were scribbled on TPS reports, ABC has once again dipped into the shallow end of the company watercooler1 in search of ratings. A skeptic had every reason to fear the worst.
Video of the Day:
Alfred Hitchcock’s Visual Gallery by Sarah Salovaara
[vimeo 115718613 w=500 h=281]
Concession stand:
