In this week’s issue, André Hereford talks to out comic Sam Jay, who has a new Netflix special (3 in the Morning) and is a staff writer at SNL, about the art of writing comedy and the perils of stand up.
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Also: Sean Maunier reviews Beyoncé’s Black is King, Randy Shulman looks at three must-stream shows, and Doug Rule talks to Jade Jones about her alter-ego Litty Original. Plus news, arts, entertainment, and Retro Scene revisits a 2002 Liquid Ladies at Phase One and a night at Remington’s in 1997.
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Alejandro Iñárritu's rambling satire Digger is a woolly mess of a film, though admirable in its ambition. Few modern movies aiming to reheat Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove recipe of doomsday dread, political satire, and broad absurdist comedy come as close to the Kubrickian ideal as Digger does in fits and starts.
Digger likewise plants us beside the President of the United States (John Goodman) and members of his cabinet cartoonishly fighting in the war room over what to do to avert an imminent disaster. Here, the threat's not an atomic bomb, but rather an American-made climate catastrophe that could wipe out thousands, maybe millions of lives.
Everybody just wants Ridley Scott to get on with it.
By that, of course, I mean wrap up the damn Alien trilogy he started with Prometheus and left dangling -- quite unnervingly -- nearly a decade ago with Covenant. But Ridley is a stubborn old director, and he's going to make what he feels like making, even if he teases us sadistically with promises of "Maybe it'll be my next film -- I'm developing it."
Kodak film from 1966 develops faster.
I am one of those people -- a fan, if I'm being honest -- who really, really, really want to see how David's story resolves and how the Xenomorph actually comes into being, if that's even the point anymore. So you'll pardon me for going into Scott's latest film, The Dog Stars, with a critic's chip on my shoulder. I didn't expect to be thrilled, interested, or moved. I didn't expect to like it, even slightly.
It's said that "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," but what if life is all play and no work? It turns out that the end result can be just as unhinged, if not more so, if the latest thriller from TV super-producer Ryan Murphy is anything to go by.
The Shards opens with a fictionalized version of American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis (Igby Rigney) watching an early screening of The Shining in 1980s Los Angeles. Bored with little to do, the affluent teen loses himself in fictional worlds, some of his own creation, and others helmed by directors like Stanley Kubrick.
