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Review: ‘American Gadfly,’ starring Henry Williams, David Oks, Elijah Emery and Mike Gravel

January 15, 2022

by Carla Hay

David Oks, Mike Gravel and Henry Williams in “American Gadfly” (Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures)

“American Gadfly”

Directed by Skye Wallin 

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York state, California, Detroit, Iowa, and Miami in 2019 and 2020, the documentary “American Gadfly” features a mostly white group of people (with some Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy and who were connected in some way to Mike Gravel’s U.S. presidential campaign.

Culture Clash: Gravel, who was a progressive Democrat, made the unconventional decision to have teenagers run his presidential campaign.

Culture Audience: “American Gadfly” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching documentaries about “progressive liberals” pretending to be “anti-establishment,” but these “anti-establishment progressive liberals” engage in very establishment and elitist practices to promote themselves.

Henry Magowan, David Oks, Henry Williams and Elijah Emery in “American Gadfly” (Photo courtesy of Gravitas Ventures)

There’s a memorable line in The Who’s classic 1971 hit song “Won’t Get Fooled Again” that says, “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.” That’s the feeling you get from watching the self-congratulatory political documentary “American Gadfly,” when it comes to so-called progressive liberal Democrats acting a lot like the conservative Republicans they claim to be against.

It’s a very gimmicky, one-sided documentary about smug, teenage left-wing Democrats who came up with the idea to steer the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign of Mike Gravel, a self-described progressive liberal Democrat who was a U.S. Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981. They admit up front that their main goal wasn’t for Gravel to win the election but just to get Gravel in the Democratic Party primary debates.

If you know who made it onto the debate stages during that election race, then you already know if Gravel’s campaign failed in this goal. Gravel dropped out of the race in 2019, the year that the majority of this documentary was filmed. The movie’s end-credit scenes shows footage from 2020, when former members of the campaign team did video chats with Gravel during the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine.

Most of the teenagers who were running Gravel’s campaign were 17 to 19 years old at the time this documentary was filmed. Gravel gave the teens complete control over his social media accounts, where they posted everything under his name but using their own words. (The documentary shows plenty of these tweets and some Twitter reactions to these tweets.)

The teens whom Gravel put in charge of his campaign preach progressive politics but then don’t include any females, black people and Latinos in their campaign leadership. The teens give sanctimonious rants about Donald Trump’s rude campaigning, yet the teens do their own smear campaigns and vulgar insults against opponents too. The hypocrisy is disgusting.

“American Gadfly” (directed by Skye Wallin) is also a “bait and switch” documentary. The film tries to make it look like Gravel is the documentary’s main attraction, but Gravel actually doesn’t get as much screen time as he should, even though it’s his political campaign. Gravel is shown having only a few meetings with these teenagers whom he put in charge of the campaign. He treats them like students who were assigned a pet political project.

Gravel is edited in the movie as someone who occasionally checks in to voice his opinion. If you believe what’s in “American Gadfly,” he was a supporting player, not a leader, in his own political campaign, and the teenagers were really running the show. Gravel is never seen making personal appearances to the general public on the campaign trail.

Gravel doesn’t even make frequent video messages where he speaks directly to his supporters. Instead, his teenage campaign team concocts memes and amateurish promo videos about Gravel that they spread on the Internet. And then they complain that mainstream media won’t take the campaign seriously.

Gravel’s main claim to fame is being the first U.S. politician to put the Pentagon Papers on public record, when he read them out loud during his Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds in 1971. He ran for U.S. president in 2008, and he made it to the presidential primary debates, but he ultimately dropped out of the race. Barack Obama got the Democratic Party nomination and won the election. Gravel was a Libertarian from 2008 to 2010, before going back to being a Democrat in 2010. Gravel died of multiple myeloma in 2021, at the age of 91.

It’s obvious from the beginning of this documentary that the teenagers were using Gravel as a “guinea pig” to get some experience working on a presidential campaign to further their own political ambitions. They knew that their ages and school commitments would be a big reason why they wouldn’t be accepted as campaign workers for a candidate who had a real shot of getting the Democratic Party nomination, so they chose a long-shot candidate instead.

The three guys who take most of the credit for convincing Gravel to run for U.S. president in 2019 are Henry Williams, David Oks and Elijah Emery, who all come from upstate New York. Williams is the biggest talker in the group and the one who apparently wrote most of the angry insults directed at Gravel’s opponents. Most of the Gravel campaigners’ vitriol was not aimed at Republicans but at Democrats whom they call “establishment Democrats,” such as Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Pete Buttigieg.

Oks is a self-described political nerd who’s the chief strategist of the Gravel campaign team. Emery is the most even-tempered and logical of the three, but Oks and Williams say behind Emery’s back (but in on-camera interviews) that Emery is too “idealistic” for the fiery brand of politics that Oks and Williams want to shove in people’s faces. Because Emery was in high school during the campaign, he wasn’t able to travel as much as Williams and Oks.

Three other members of the campaign team are featured in the documentary, but they don’t get as much screen time as Williams, Oks and Emery. Henry Magowan is the group’s treasurer. (The documentary never details now Gravel’s campaign money was spent.) Alex Chang is in charge of digital strategy. Jonathan Suhr is director of design. Chang and Suhr are both Asian and the only people of color chosen for this campaign leadership.

The decisions on who would lead everything in the campaign is basically a teenage version of an “old boys’ club.” Throughout the documentary, these so-called teenage progressive liberals from Generation Z proudly claim that their generation is going to shake things up and change politics by making everything more diverse and inclusive. And yet, they have absolutely no self-awareness of how bad they look in representing true progressive causes, by reverting to the same elitist “old boys’ club” mentality that they claim they want to change.

Needless to say, only males are invited to the Gravel campaign meetings where Gravel discusses his proposed policies and agendas for America. The Gravel campaign platform included Medicare for all; universal health care; paid family leave for all; eliminating the electoral college by having popular votes decide elections; legalizing marijuana in all U.S. states; decriminalizing prostitution; and making it a law to have equal pay for equal work. The documentary never shows or tells Gravel’s plan for how the U.S. government would pay for all these sweeping reforms.

The teen campaigners spend a lot of time bragging about how many “likes” and “retweets” they get on Twitter, and how many people they can reach on social media. And so, there is absolutely no excuse for this campaign team to have no females (who are 51% of the population in the U.S. and in the world) in any campaign leadership roles. And they can’t use the excuse that they couldn’t find any qualified females because these teens admit that they themselves are unqualified and inexperienced in this type of political campaign. If you want to know what male privilege and male entitlement look like, look no further than the Mike Gravel campaign team in “American Gadfly.”

You can’t expect to have credibility in policy issues about diverse representation when you can’t lead by example. Imagine being represented by a “progressive” politician who doesn’t seem to care that only males are leaders on his campaign team and that the gender representing the majority of the nation’s population is nowhere to be found in the campaign leadership. It’s beyond appalling.

Gravel obviously didn’t care enough about this blatant gender imbalance because he says in the documentary that his biggest complaint about how the teens were running the campaign was how they used the “f” curse word in their social media postings. Likewise, the “American Gadfly” filmmakers also didn’t notice or didn’t care to question why only males were the leaders of this campaign team. If this obvious sexism was addressed at any point by anyone in the documentary, it never made it into the movie. The people who are most likely to turn a blind eye to this hypocrisy are people who live in this type of hypocritical bubble.

At one point in the movie, Williams travels to California to meet Gravel in person for the first time. Oks can’t attend, but in his place, he sends a campaign worker named Benjamin Church, who is accompanied by someone named Rosaline Qi, who’s introduced as Church’s girlfriend. Over a meal at a restaurant, another young Asian woman is also seated at the table in this meeting with Gravel, but the documentary doesn’t explain who she is and what she’s doing there, as if the filmmakers think these young women don’t really matter at all.

How do we know that the filmmakers don’t care about these young women? Except for Qi saying hello to Gravel, these young women are not shown speaking at all during this conversation. In fact, women of color are nowhere to be found as important workers who were chosen for this campaign. This gross lack of diversity is like something you’d see in a campaign for a politician with a racist and sexist agenda.

Williams even has the tone-deaf arrogance to preach in the documentary about those who are oppressed: “It’s going to be poor people. It’s going to be minorities and immigrants—the same people who will always suffer if Trump is re-elected.” Meanwhile, the documentary shows these egotistical teens doing absolutely no personal outreach at all to the “oppressed” communities they claim to want to represent in the campaign. The teenagers seem to care most about hobnobbing with political insiders when they get invited to political events, or hanging out in restaurants with other privileged young “progressives.”

It’s not nitpicking to bring up these issues, because progressive liberals are the ones who complain the most and the loudest about the lack of diversity in American political leadership. Progressive liberals are the ones who push the hardest for laws against discrimination on the basis of gender, race, nationality, sexuality, disability, etc. But sometimes, there are people involved in politics who claim to be progressive liberals but who do not practice what they preach. The people they choose to put on their teams are not diverse at all.

A lot of “American Gadfly” is about Gravel’s all-male teenage campaign leaders approaching political campaigning as if insulting other candidates on social media (especially Twitter) is the most effective way to campaign. It’s the same political strategy that Trump used in his presidential campaigns, but these teens have such a “holier than thou” attitude, they can’t even see how much they sink to the same crude levels of the politicians they think are beneath them. These teens claim to be doing things better than politicians who are “old” and “elitist” when they’re using the exact same tactics as “old” and “elitist” politicians.

And these teen campaigners essentially boast about all the online bullying and childish name-calling that they dump on politicians whom they dislike. John Delaney is a particular target of their wrath because he was the Democratic candidate in the presidential campaign who had the closest (very low) polling numbers to Gravel. Delaney was therefore Gravel’s biggest obstacle to getting a place in a primary debate, which was limited to the top 20 candidates in Democratic National Committee-approved polls. The teen campaigners proudly take credit for getting “DropOutDelaney” to briefly trend on Twitter, but in the end, this fleeting Twitter meme didn’t help Gravel’s campaign.

However, there’s still some delusional egotism among these teen campaigners, because Suhr says in a campaign meeting: “What I’m hearing is that we’re an influencer’s influencer.” If you know how Gravel’s campaign turned out, then you’d be rolling your eyes at that statement. Influencing what? How to look like hypocritical left-wingers who act like petulant, “old boy network” conservatives?

Ironically, for a campaign team that did not include any females in leadership roles, the only Gravel political competitors who showed Gravel’s campaign any real support were two women: Democratic presidential candidates Tulsi Gabbard and Marianne Williamson. Much of the documentary is about the Gravel campaign team’s race against time to get 65,000 individual donors to the campaign, which is one of the Democratic National Committee’s requirements to be eligible for a presidential primary debate. Gabbard and Williamson (and some of their campaign staffers) also take the time to personally interact with Oks and Williams on the campaign trail.

Oks and Williams end up begging Gabbard and Williamson to help by asking Gabbard and Williamson to enlist their supporters to donate to Gravel’s campaign. Gabbard and Williamson graciously accommodate the Gravel campaign’s requests. Andrew Yang, another Democratic presidential candidate, shows some curiosity and interest in Gravel’s teen campaigners (who gush over him like fanboys), but ultimately Yang chooses not to give the Gravel campaign any real support.

Gravel actually told the teens to not associate the Gravel campaign with Yang, because Gravel says in a conference call that Yang’s proposed idea for the U.S. government to give $1,000 to everyone in the U.S. is “just crazy.” However, the teens are so dazzled by Yang, they ignore Gravel’s order to keep their distance from the Yang campaign. They try to ingratiate themselves with Yang, with the hope that Yang would lend his support to Gravel’s campaign. This effort backfired, and it’s an example of how Gravel’s teen campaigners didn’t respect Gravel’s authority and wanted unchecked power in this campaign.

“American Gadfly” is a perfect example of why so many people don’t respect certain “progressive liberals” who pompously lecture how they think they know what’s best for the United States and the world but don’t apply what they preach in their own lives. Some of these “progressive liberals” have a severe lack of racial diversity in whom they choose to have as friends, or whom they choose to hire if they’re in a position to hire people. This hypocrisy doesn’t apply to all progressive liberals, but it certainly applies to the “stars” of “American Gadfly.”

These teenagers rant against Donald Trump and conservative Republican politics. And yet, the documentary shows Williams, Oks, Emery and Magowan giddily asking conservative Republican politician (and former U.S. presidential candidate) Rick Santorum to pose for a photo with them, when they randomly see Santorum on the street and approach him almost like star-struck fans. It’s a moment where these young campaigners show that they care more about being close to establishment power than staying true to so-called “anti-establishment” progressive beliefs.

Gravel has such little interest in making personal appearances in front of his supporters, when Gabbard invites him to go to Miami to be in the audience of one of the presidential debates for the Democratic candidates, he gives his two tickets to Williams and Oks instead. It isn’t until after Gravel drops out of the race that he’s seen at any political event in this presidential race, when he goes to San Jose, California, to attend a rally for fellow progressive Bernie Sanders. Gravel ended up endorsing Sanders in this presidential race.

One of the many flaws of “American Gadfly” is how it doesn’t acknowledge this basic fact of politics: Social media cannot completely replace in-person campaigning. That’s why it looks so superficial and silly that these teenagers think it’s a big deal that comedian Sarah Silverman retweeted a comment that was made on Gravel’s Twitter account, when the campaign comments on that account were not written by Gravel in the first place. Twitter followers don’t mean much to a politician running for an elected office if most of those “followers” can’t or won’t vote for the politician.

The documentary shows major red flags that these teen campaigners are out of their league and completely inept when it comes to political campaign strategy that doesn’t involve the Internet. While some members of the team go to Iowa to do some “campaigning” (without Gravel, of course), Williams says: “I don’t know what shaking hands with brewsters in Iowa actually means, or if it corresponds to any serious political movement.”

Oks tries to cut the trip short and says, “If we were running a real campaign, I guess we’d be going around [meeting people in] Iowa. I wouldn’t really enjoy it.” Emery seems to understand that a politician who won’t campaign in person won’t be taken seriously and won’t go far in the race, so he comments to Oks: “What if people just enjoy talking to people they represent?”

Oks responds sarcastically, “What if people just enjoy hammering things into their legs?” Emery replies to Oks’ idiotic comment by saying, “Those are two different things.” They end up cutting the trip short out of frustration over lack of public interest in Gravel’s campaign. Once they get out of the bubble of the Internet, they have trouble handling the reality that campaigning in person is lot more work than they’re prepared to do.

It should be noted that Oks and Emery had this conversation while waiting at a politically liberal bookstore to give a talk about the campaign, but this speaking engagement is never shown in the movie. If they did go through with this speaking appearance, then the turnout was probably very low. Otherwise, it would’ve been in the documentary. So much for “widespread support” from social media followers.

In fact, there is absolutely no evidence in this documentary that Gravel would’ve been able to attract an impressive crowd in this campaign if he campaigned in person. That’s why the social media angle for this documentary is completely overrated. On the campaign trail, a few random strangers congratulate Gravel’s teen campaigners when these strangers find out who they are, but that’s about as much public recognition that they get from people in real life (not social media) who are not campaign workers.

Even how these teens approached Gravel to run for president shows they’re from a generation that can’t fully understand what it was like to communicate before the Internet existed. Williams says that they had to look up how to write a memo to get Gravel’s attention because they didn’t know what a memo was. It’s mentioned in the documentary that Oks was accepted to Oxford University, while Emery was accepted into Cornell University. It makes you wonder how what kind of high school education they had for them to be so ignorant about what a memo is or what a memo looks like.

“American Gadfly” is so insistent and narrow-minded in its agenda to make these teenagers look like cutting-edge political strategists (they’re not), the filmmakers only interviewed people who sing the praises of this amateur “old boys” political clique. Other people interviewed in the documentary include Whitney Gravel, Mike Gravel’s wife, who says she initially didn’t want Mike to run for U.S. president again because she was concerned that he was too old, but she changed her mind because of the enthusiasm of the teen campaigners. Also interviewed are Dave Weigel of The Washington Post; Jamie Keiles of The New York Times; Bernie Sanders senior staffer Keane Bhatt; and a student classmate named Miranda Luiz.

And where are the parents of these teenagers? Only two of them are interviewed in the documentary, and they both give brief comments. Anne Williams, Henry’s mother, is fully supportive of what he’s doing. Bettina Weil, Oks’ mother, has some reservations when she says of the Gravel campaign team: “They were amazing with social media, etc. Criticizing politicians—I was not happy about that.”

In the documentary, Henry Williams says his father expressed concern that all the hateful comments that Henry has written about fellow Democrats could backfire in the future if Henry wants to pursue a political career. Henry says, “I told him, ‘If I can’t speak truth to power, or if I’m too afraid to, to protect my future or my career, then am I worth anything at all?'” It’s too bad that Henry Williams and the rest of the campaign leaders on the team aren’t shown actually doing any work in communities that need help, because their idea of activism is promoting themselves by using a privileged politician’s name on social media.

“American Gadfly” is a misguided documentary that lets its “stars” off the hook too easily when it comes to many problematic issues. For a better look at how Gen Z progressive liberals from America are speaking truth to power and engaging in the political process to make real changes—instead of perpetuating old systems in a self-promoting way—watch any of these documentaries on Gen Z activists who are part of truly inclusive and diverse teams: “Us Kids,” “We Are the Radical Monarchs” or “The Day I Had to Grow Up.”

Gravitas Ventures released “American Gadfly” on digital and VOD on January 4, 2022.

Review: ‘Hotel Transylvania: Transformania,’ starring the voices of Brian Hull, Andy Samberg, Selena Gomez, Brad Abrell, Steve Buscemi, David Spade, Keegan-Michael Key and Kathryn Hahn

January 14, 2022

by Carla Hay

Blobby (voiced by Genndy Tartakovsky), Wanda (voiced by Molly Shannon), Wayne (voiced by Steve Buscemi), Griffin the Invisible Man (voiced by David Spade), Ericka (voiced by Kathryn Hahn), Dracula (voiced by Brian Hull), Jonathan (voiced by Andy Samberg), Mavis (voiced by Selena Gomez), Frank (voice by Brad Abrell), Eunice (voiced by Fran Drescher), Murray (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key) with (pictured at far right, in the front row) Dennis (voiced by Asher Blinkoff) and Winnie (voiced by Zoe Berri) in “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” (Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Animation/Amazon Content Services)

“Hotel Transylvania: Transformania”

Directed by Derek Drymon and Jennifer Kluska

Culture Representation: Taking place in Transylvania and South America, the animated film “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with one African American and two Latinos) depicting monsters and humans.

Culture Clash: Count Dracula is ready to retire and pass Hotel Transylvania along to his daughter Mavis, but a mishap with Van Helsing’s invention changes Mavis’ human husband Johnny into a monster and Dracula and his monster friends into humans.

Culture Audience: Aside from obviously appealing to “Hotel Transylvania” movie series fans, “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” will appeal mainly to people who are interested in lightweight animated films with cliché-ridden and predictable plots.

Johnny (voiced by Andy Samberg) and Van Helsing (voicd by Jim Gaffigan) in “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” (Image courtesy of Sony Pictures Animation/Amazon Content Services)

It’s never really a good sign when a movie studio takes a sequel film from one of its most popular franchise series and sells it to a streaming service. It usually means that the movie is considered not commercially appealing enough for the studio to release the film. It’s also not a good sign when two of franchise’s biggest stars decide not to be part of this sequel.

That’s what happened when Sony Pictures Animation dumped “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” (the fourth movie in the “Hotel Transylvania” hotel series) by selling it to Amazon, which is releasing it on Prime Video. (China is the only country where Sony will release the film in theaters.) It’s easy to see why Sony thought this movie was substandard. It’s also easy to see why original “Hotel Transylvania” franchise stars Adam Sandler and Kevin James took a hard pass on being involved in this movie, whether it was because they weren’t going to paid what they wanted and/or legal issues. (Sandler and James both have lucrative movie deals with Netflix.)

Genndy Tartakovsky—who directed the first three “Hotel Transylvania” movies and co-wrote 2018’s “Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation”—co-wrote “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” with Amos Vernon and Nunzio Randazzo. The first two movies in the series are 2012’s “Hotel Transylvania” and 2015’s “Hotel Transylvania 2.” Derek Drymon and Jennifer Kluskais directed “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania,” which is not a completely terrible movie. But in terms of its story, the movie is lazy and not very interesting.

As the fourth movie in the series, “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” had the potential to go on an original adventure with the franchise’s well-established characters. Instead, the movie is filled with over-used clichés that have already been in other films. “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” is essentially a not-very-funny comedy with this not-very-original concept: Two characters with opposite personalities are forced to travel together and find out how much they have to rely on each other in order to reach a shared goal. Relationships and characters that could have been developed are ignored or shoved to the margins of the story. The ending of the movie is also kind of weak and abrupt.

“Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” is also one of those sequels that doesn’t adequately explain some of the backstories of some of the main characters. If people need to watch one movie to prepare for “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania,” it should be “Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation.” That’s the movie that introduced monster hunters Van Helsing (voiced by Jim Gaffigan) and his sassy great-granddaughter Ericka (voiced by Kathryn Hahn), who started off as enemies to the “Hotel Transylvania” protagonists and ended up becoming their friends. And in Ericka’s case, more than friends, because she and widower Count Dracula fell in love with each other.

The voice of Count Dracula was originated by Sandler in the first three “Hotel Transylvania” movies. In “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania,” Dracula (voiced by Brian Hull) and Ericka (who is a human) are now happily married, but it’s barely explained in this sequel how they got together. The prejudice between monsters and humans, which fueled much of the conflicts in the previous “Hotel Transylvania” movies, is only used as a flimsy plot device in “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania.” Dracula’s vampire daughter Mavis (voiced by Selena Gomez) is married to a human named Jonathan, nicknamed Johnny (voiced by Andy Samberg), who’s had a hard time getting reluctant acceptance from Dracula, who thinks Johnny is too goofy for practical-minded Mavis.

But now that Dracula is married to a human, “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” does not do anything to explore this new aspect of Dracula’s life. Instead, the movie’s story goes back to Dracula disapproving of Johnny, which was the basis of the first “Hotel Transylvania” movie, when Johnny and Mavis began dating and fell in love with each other. In “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania,” Johnny and Mavis have been married for several years and have a son named Dennis (voiced by Asher Blinkoff), who is about 8 or 9 years old and who has very little screen time in the movie.

In “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania,” Dracula still owns and operates Hotel Transylvania (a hotel for monsters), but he wants to retire so that he can have more time to spend with Ericka. Dracula has decided that he is going to give ownership of the hotel to Mavis and Johnny. Mavis, who has hearing superpowers, overhears Dracula telling Ericka about his retirement plans, which he says he’s going to announce at the hotel’s 125th anniversary celebration.

Mavis is excited to find out that she and Johnny will be taking over ownership of the hotel. She tells Johnny, who’s also elated. Johnny immediately comes up with ideas of how he’s going to change the hotel.

When Johnny enthusiastically shares these ideas with Dracula, his father-in-law is so turned off, he changes his mind about wanting Johnny to co-own the hotel. Instead of telling the truth about why he changed his mind, Dracula lies to Johnny by telling him that there’s an ancient law that says hotels for monsters can only be owned by monsters. At the hotel’s 125th anniversary party, Dracula lies to everyone and says his big announcement is that the hotel will get a new restroom in the lobby.

A dismayed Johnny then asks for help from Van Helsing, who has been living as a retired eccentric who tinkers with inventions. Van Helsing has an invention called a Monsterfication Ray, which can turn humans into random monsters. The device looks like a long ray gun with a giant crystal as its source of power. Van Helsing uses the Monsterfication Ray on Johnny, who is turned into a giant green monster resembling a dragon. Even though his physical appearance has drastically changed, Johnny has the same personality, and he can still talk like a human.

Dracula is furious about Johnny’s transformation into a monster because he still doesn’t want to give Johnny ownership of the hotel. And so, Dracula angrily goes over to Van Helsing’s place to take the Monsterfication Ray and use it to turn Johnny back into a human. But the plan backfires when Dracula shoots the Monsterfication Ray at Johnny, the lasers on the ray ricochet off walls, and the rays accidentally hit Dracula, who turns into a human being as a result. Much to Dracula’s horror, he is now looks and feels like an old man, with a balding head, a stomach paunch and weaker physical strength.

Dracula’s four closest monster friends—good-natured Frankenstein (voiced by Brad Abrell, replacing James in the role), worrisome werewolf Wayne (voiced by Steve Buscemi), fun-loving mummy Murray (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key) and sarcastic invisible man Griffin (voiced by David Spade)—have all witnessed this debacle. Dracula is terrified about Mavis finding out about him turning into a human and Johnny into a monster. Dracula orders his friends not to tell Mavis.

Somehow, when Dracula used the Monsterfication Ray, the device got broken, and the crystal no longer works. Van Helsing says that the crystals used for the Monsterfication Ray are extremely rare. Through a tracking device, Van Helsing finds out that the nearest crystal is in South America. Guess where Dracula and Johnny are going for most of the movie?

Meanwhile, a poorly written part of the movie has Frankenstein, Wayne, Murray and Griffin turning into humans too. It’s shown in an awkward scene where the hotel’s DJ—a green blob called Blobby (voiced by Tartakovsky)—gives the four pals a drink that has something in it which automatically turns them into humans. Blobby consumes the drink too, but he’s just turn to a green gelatin mold.

Frankenstein changes into a vain “hunk” with a tall and muscular body, Wayne transforms into a very hairy man, and Murray becomes an old man with rolls of body flab. Griffin is exposed as someone who only wore eyeglasses, so he’s naked the entire time that he’s human. Griffin’s nakedness is used for some dimwitted comedy in the movie.

Just like Dracula and Murray, Griffin is horrified that he looks old and out-of-shape as a human. This movie has not-so-subtle and problematic messages that looking like an elderly human being is a terrible fate that should be avoided at all costs. It’s the closest reason to explain why Frankenstein suddenly becomes an egotistical jerk over how he looks as a young and virile human being. This drastic personality change still comes across as too phony, and it doesn’t serve the story very well.

Mavis, Ericka, Frankenstein’s shrewish wife Eunice (voiced by Fran Drescher) and Wayne’s loving wife Wanda (voiced by Molly Shannon) find out that Dracula and Johnny have gone to South America. And so, Mavis, Ericka, Eunice, Wanda, Frankenstein, Wayne, Murray, Griffin and several of Wayne and Wanda’s werewolf kids go to South America to find Johnny and Dracula. It’s never really explained why some but not all of the werewolf kids (Wayne and Wanda have dozens of children) are along for the ride or why these kids even need to be there in the first place.

Meanwhile, much of “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” shows repetitive mishaps that Dracula and Johnny go through as they wander around Amazon River areas in South America in search of the crystal. Dracula has a hard time adjusting to life as a human. He no longer has to fear being in the sunlight, but he’s frustrated that he gets tired, thirsty and sweaty on this grueling trip. When he jumps into a waterfall that Johnny warns could be dangerous, Dracula gets bitten by several piranhas and is shocked that he can’t recover quickly from these injuries.

Johnny is the same cheerful goofball, but he still gets on Dracula’s nerves. Dracula is also jealous that Johnny now has more physical strength than Dracula does. It goes on and on like this for too long in the movie. As an example of how “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” stretches out the banality, there’s a scene with Johnny singing a Spanish version of Wham!’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” during a bus ride that Johnny and Dracula take with some local people. It’s intended to be hilarious, but it just comes across as dull and cringeworthy.

Visually, “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” does nothing special, although the movie makes good use of vibrant hues in the outdoor South America scenes. The cast members’ performances are adequate. Thankfully, movie clocks in at just 98 minutes, but the story is filled with too many recycled tropes of two opposite personalities stuck together on a road trip; the hunt for a treasured item; and the central characters being chased by people who want to find them.

“Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” doesn’t have much use for the adult female characters, who basically just worry about and react to what their husbands are doing. And because Dracula is separated from his four closest monster pals for most of the movie, that friendship rapport is largely missing from “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania.” This rapport was one of the highlights of previous “Hotel Transylvania” movies.

The movie shows almost nothing about what Dracula is like as a grandfather to Dennis. Wayne and Wanda have a daughter named Winnie (voiced by Zoe Berri, replacing Sadie Sandler in the role), who is Dennis’ best friend/love interest, but that relationship is also essentially ignored in the movie. Instead, some the werewolf children, who do not have names or individual personalities, get unnecessary screen time when they tag along during the trip to South America.

Some people might enjoy “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” if they want to see another “Hotel Transylvania” movie about Dracula and Johnny trying to navigate their tension-filled relationship. “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” is being marketed as the final movie in the “Hotel Transylvania” series. If that’s true, then the “Hotel Transylvania” movie series is going out with a toothless whimper, not a bang.

Prime Video premiered “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” on January 14, 2022.

Review: ‘Scream’ (2022), starring Melissa Barrera, Jack Quaid, Jenna Ortega, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, David Arquette and Marley Shelton

January 14, 2022

by Carla Hay

Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox in “Scream” (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

“Scream” (2022)

Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett

Culture Representation: Taking place mainly in the fictional California city of Woodsboro, the horror film “Scream” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans and Latinos) representing the middle-class and working-class.

Culture Clash: Ghostface Killer murders start again in Woodsboro, with new characters and familiar franchise characters in a race against time to find out who’s responsible for this killing spree.

Culture Audience: Aside from fans of the “Scream” horror series, “Scream” will appeal mainly to people who like horror movies that combine graphic gore with sarcastic comedy.

Dylan Minnette, Jack Quaid, Melissa Barrera and David Arquette in “Scream” (Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

The 2022 version of “Scream” proves that the series is running out of fresh new ideas, but the movie’s self-aware snarkiness and effective nods to “Scream” franchise nostalgia make the film mostly watchable. Viewers don’t have to see the previous “Scream” movies to understand or be entertained by 2022’s “Scream,” which is the fifth movie in the series. Because it shares the same title as 1996’s “Scream” (the first movie in the series) the 2022 “Scream” movie’s title does it a disservice because it’s more of a sequel than a reboot.

Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the 2022 version of “Scream” is the first “Scream” movie that wasn’t directed by Wes Craven, the horror filmmaking master who died of a brain tumor in 2015, at the age of 76. The 2022 version of “Scream” also has screenwriters who are new to the “Scream” franchise: James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick. Kevin Williamson—who wrote 1996’s “Scream,” 1997’s “Scream 2” and 2011’s “Scream 4” movies—is an executive producer of 2022’s “Scream.”

The 2022 version of “Scream” follows almost the exact same formula as certain parts of previous “Scream” movies. A group of people in their late teens and early 20s are targeted and gruesomely murdered, one by one, by a serial killer dressed in a black robe, wearing a creepy ghost mask, and usually killing with a large knife. This murderer is named the Ghostface Killer. The end of each “Scream” movie reveals who’s been responsible for the murders.

Unlike most other horror movie series that keep the same villain for each movie in the series, the “Scream” movie series has a different culprit dressed up as the Ghostface Killer in each “Scream” movie. The first “Scream” movie is constantly referred to in the sequels because the Ghostface Killer murder sprees in the sequels are copycat crimes of the original Ghostface Killer murder spree, which took place in the fictional city of Woodsboro, California. The 2000 movie “Scream 3” added a movie-within-a-movie storyline, by creating a fictional horror movie series called “Stab,” which was inspired by what happened in the first “Scream” movie.

Those are some of the basic things that might be helpful to people who watch 2022’s “Scream” without knowing anything about the previous “Scream” films. The people who will enjoy this movie the most are those who’ve seen all of the previous “Scream” movies, although the 1996 “Scream” movie and “Scream 3” are the two most essential previous “Scream” films to watch to understand all of the jokes in 2022’s “Scream.”

The 2022 version of “Scream” begins with the same type of scene that began 1996’s “Scream”: A teenage girl from Woodsboro High School is home alone in Woodsboro when she gets a mysterious call from the Ghostface Killer, who breaks in the home and attacks her. Drew Barrymore’s Casey Becker character famously got killed in that opening scene in the 1996 “Scream” movie.

The outcome is different for the opening scene in 2022’s “Scream.” Tara Carpenter (played by Jenna Ortega), the teenager attacked in the opening scene, survives this attempted murder. Tara, who’s about 16 or 17, lives with her single mother Christine Carpenter, who is never seen in the movie. Tara’s father abandoned the family when Tara was 8 years old. If you consider some of the family secrets that are revealed, Christine’s absence is the “Scream” filmmakers’ lazily convenient way to not have Christine around, because she would have a lot of explaining to do.

The movie gives a vague explanation that Christine has mental-health issues where she frequently goes away for long stretches of time. When the Ghostface Killer calls Tara, he asks for Christine and says that he knows her from group therapy. Tara says that Christine isn’t home and begins to question how well the caller knows Christine. And that’s when the Ghostface Killer starts to taunt Tara by doing things such has force her answer trivia questions about the “Stab” movies.

Christine’s absence still doesn’t explain why the police or hospital officials don’t seem too concerned about finding Christine when her underage child is in a hospital after an attempted murder. It’s one of the sloppy aspects of this movie, which puts a lot more emphasis on making references to previous “Scream” films than filling any plot holes in the 2022 “Scream” story. There are some other preposterous aspects of the movie, but the absence of Christine is the one that’s the least adequately explained.

More characters eventually populate the movie until most of them are killed off by the end. Tara’s circle of friends consists entirely of other Woodsboro High School students. Because so many characters are murdered, it becomes a very easy process of elimination to find out who’s responsible for this killing spree.

And there’s a part of the movie where someone literally lists all the formulaic rules for “Scream”/”Stab” movies, so major clues are purposely dropped in the film. Therefore, this “Scream” movie, although it has plenty of jump scares, isn’t as suspenseful as previous “Scream’ movies when it comes to the solving the mystery of who’s responsible for the killings.

The other characters in the movie include:

  • Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera), Tara’s older sister, who lives in Modesto and goes to Woodsboro when she finds out about the attempted murder of Tara.
  • Richie Kirsch (played by Jack Quaid), Sam’s new boyfriend who works with her at a retail store. Sam and Richie, who have known each other for about six months, go to Woodsboro together during this family crisis.
  • Amber Freeman (played by Mikey Madison), Tara’s best friend who made plans to party with Tara at Tara’s house on the night that Tara was attacked.
  • Mindy Meeks-Martin (played by Jasmin Savoy Brown), a member of Tara’s social circle who’s a “Stab” trivia fanatic. Mindy is also the niece of original “Scream” character Randy Meeks (played by Jamie Kennedy), whose fate is shown in “Scream 2.”
  • Chad Meeks-Martin (played by Mason Gooding), Mindy’s twin brother, who is a popular athlete at school.
  • Liv McKenzie (played by Sonia Ammar), Chad’s girlfriend who’s a bit of a wild child. She had a fling with a creep in his 30s named Vince Schneider (played by Kyle Gallner), who later stalks her.
  • Wes Hicks (played by Dylan Minnette), a nice guy who’s often teased by his friends because his mother works in law enforcement.
  • Deputy Judy Hicks (played by Marley Shelton), Wes’ mother who is one of the lead investigators in the murder spree. Deputy Judy Hicks was also a character in “Scream 4.”

In addition to these characters, the 2022 “Scream” features the return of these original “Scream” franchise characters, who’ve been in other “Scream” movies:

  • Sidney Prescott (played by Neve Campbell), the Ghostface Killer’s original target who has appeared in every “Scream” movie leading up this one.
  • Gale Weathers-Riley (played by Courteney Cox), an extremely ambitious TV reporter/book author, whose brash and pushy attitude rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
  • Dewey Riley (played by David Arquette), the goofy and easygoing cop who originally clashed with Gale, but then they fell in love and got married.

Sidney, Gale and Dewey all live far away from Woodsboro, but they are lured back to town when they hear that Ghostface Killer murders are happening again. Sidney, who was a Woodsboro High School student in the first “Scream” movie, is now married to someone named Mark (who’s never seen in the movie) and is the mother of infant twin daughters, who are also never seen in the movie.

Gale and Dewey are now divorced. According to conversations in the movie, their marriage fell apart soon after Gale took a prominent newscasting job in New York City. Dewey didn’t like living in New York, so he left Gale. It’s art somewhat imitating life, because in real life, Cox and Arquette met because of the “Scream” movie, they fell in love, got married, and eventually divorced.

While Gale’s career has been thriving, Dewey’s life and career have been on a downward spiral. When certain characters seek out Dewey to enlist his help in catching the Ghostface Killer, they find him living as an emotionally damaged recluse in a run-down trailer. Once a police sheriff, he eventually confesses that he was asked to leave the police department under circumstance he doesn’t full explain. Dewey has become a drunk, although it’s unclear if his drinking problem began before or after he lost his job.

Dewey is also heartbroken over his divorce from Gale. Meanwhile, Gale shows she has a heart because she’s been devastated by the divorce too. Dewey has a personal reason for investigating Ghostface Killer murders: His younger sister, Tatum Riley (played by Rose McGowan), who was Sidney’s best friend in high school, was killed in the original Ghostface Killer murder spree chronicled in the first “Scream” movie.

The 2022 “Scream” movie balances out a lot of the explicitly violent and bloody murder scenes with self-effacing jokes. There are many references to what sequels, reboots or “requels” (movies that are hybrids of reboots and sequels) should or should not do to please die-hard fans. At one point in the movie, when “Stab” trivia buff Mindy marvels at what has happened to Sam so far and how “Stab” fans would react, Sam asks Mindy sarcastically, “Are you telling me I’m part of fan fucking fiction?”

Mindy, just like her uncle Randy, is the self-appointed authority on clues and patterns in these serial killings. She lists three rules of finding out who’s the serial killer:

  • Never trust the love interest.
  • The killer’s motive is always connected to the past.
  • The main victim has a friend group that’s also targeted by the killer.

Because “Scream” spends so much time pointing out “rules” and “clichés” of horror movie franchises, it takes a little bit of the fun out of trying to guess who’s responsible for the serial killings in this movie. The movie literally tells the audience who the killer is, but even if it didn’t, enough people get killed in this relatively small cast of characters to figure out who’s behind the murder spree long before it’s officially revealed.

“Scream” should please fans who want a movie that’s heavy on nostalgia for beloved franchise characters, but something happens to one of these characters that might get very mixed reactions from fans. Because slasher flicks like “Scream” rely heavily on characters in their teens and 20s getting murdered, this “Scream” movie doesn’t do much with character development for the young characters who aren’t Sam and Tara. The two sisters were estranged for a number of years, for reasons that are explained in the movie. Predictably, Tara and Sam set aside their family friction to join forces to get the Ghostface Killer.

Except for one shocking death in “Scream,” the movie really does stick to the formula that it constantly lampoons. At times, this constant ironic self-referencing wears a little thin and comes across as a little too smug. Some of the violence might be a turnoff for people who are extremely sensitive, very squeamish or easily offended by scenes in movies where knife slashes and blood gushing are depicted to full gory effect. This “Scream” movie has no intention of being as original as the first “Scream” movie, but for horror fans, there’s enough in the 2022 “Scream” to be entertained by classic horror tropes, with the ending inevitably leaving open the probability of a sequel.

Paramount Pictures released “Scream” in U.S. cinemas on January 14, 2022.

2022 Screen Actors Guild Awards: ‘Succession,’ ‘Ted Lasso’ are the top nominees

January 12, 2022

Editor’s note: The HBO drama series “Succession” and the Apple TV+ comedy series “Ted Lasso” lead all contenders, with five nominations each.

The following is a press release from the Screen Actors Guild:

Nominees for the 28th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards® honoring outstanding individual, cast and ensemble performances for the past year were announced this morning by Rosario Dawson (Dopesick, Go-Big Show) and Vanessa Hudgens (tick, tick…BOOM!, The Princess Switch) via Instagram Live. The nominees for outstanding action performances by film and television stunt ensembles were announced by SAG Awards Committee Members Jason George and Elizabeth McLaughlin with an introduction by SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher. A replay of today’s announcement is available for viewing on instagram.com/sagawards. 

The 28th SAG Awards® will be nationally simulcast LIVE on TNT and TBS on Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022 at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT from The Barker Hangar in Santa Monica.

One of awards season’s premier events, the SAG Awards annually celebrates the outstanding motion picture and television performances from the previous calendar year (SAG Awards Eligibility Period: March 1 – December 31, 2021). Of the top industry honors presented to actors, only the SAG Awards are selected entirely by performers’ peers in SAG-AFTRA with 124,000 eligible voters. The SAG Awards was the first televised awards show to acknowledge the work of union members and the first to present awards to motion picture casts and television ensembles. 

For a complete list of 28th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations and fast facts, please visit: https://sagawards.org/media/newsinfo/press-kit. 

About the 28th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards®
The 28th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards®, presented by SAG-AFTRA with Screen Actors Guild Awards, LLC will be produced by Avalon Harbor Entertainment, Inc. and will be simulcast live on TNT and TBS on Sunday, February 27, 2022, at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT. For the latest updates, follow the SAG Awards® on social (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok), online at sagawards.org, and join the conversation by using the official hashtag #sagawards. 

The Motion Picture Nominees are:
 
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
JAVIER BARDEM / Desi Arnaz – “BEING THE RICARDOS”
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH / Phil Burbank – “THE POWER OF THE DOG”
ANDREW GARFIELD / Jon – “TICK, TICK…BOOM!”
WILL SMITH / Richard Williams – “KING RICHARD”
DENZEL WASHINGTON / Macbeth – “THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH”
 
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
JESSICA CHASTAIN / Tammy Faye Bakker – “THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE”
OLIVIA COLMAN / Leda – “THE LOST DAUGHTER”
LADY GAGA / Patrizia Reggiani – “HOUSE OF GUCCI”
JENNIFER HUDSON / Aretha Franklin – “RESPECT”
NICOLE KIDMAN / Lucille Ball – “BEING THE RICARDOS”
 
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role
BEN AFFLECK / Uncle Charlie – “THE TENDER BAR”
BRADLEY COOPER / Jon Peters – “LICORICE PIZZA”
TROY KOTSUR / Frank Rossi – “CODA”
JARED LETO / Paolo Gucci – “HOUSE OF GUCCI”
KODI SMIT-McPHEE / Peter Gordon – “THE POWER OF THE DOG”
 
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
CAITRÍONA BALFE / Ma – “BELFAST”
CATE BLANCHETT / Dr. Lilith Ritter – “NIGHTMARE ALLEY”
ARIANA DeBOSE / Anita – “WEST SIDE STORY”
KIRSTEN DUNST / Rose Gordon – “THE POWER OF THE DOG”
RUTH NEGGA / Clare – “PASSING”
 
Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
BELFAST
CAITRÍONA BALFE / Ma
JUDI DENCH / Granny
JAMIE DORNAN / Pa
JUDE HILL / Buddy
CIARÁN HINDS / Pop
COLIN MORGAN / Billy Clanton
 
CODA
EUGENIO DERBEZ / Bernardo Villalobos
DANIEL DURANT / Leo Rossi
EMILIA JONES / Ruby Rossi
TROY KOTSUR / Frank Rossi
MARLEE MATLIN / Jackie Rossi
FERDIA WALSH-PEELO / Miles
 
DON’T LOOK UP
CATE BLANCHETT / Brie Evantee
TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET / Yule
LEONARDO DiCAPRIO / Dr. Randall Mindy
ARIANA GRANDE / Riley Bina
JONAH HILL / Jason Orlean
JENNIFER LAWRENCE / Kate Dibiasky
MELANIE LYNSKEY / June Mindy
SCOTT MESCUDI / DJ Chello
ROB MORGAN / Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe
HIMESH PATEL / Phillip
RON PERLMAN / Benedict Drask
TYLER PERRY / Jack Bremmer
MARK RYLANCE / Peter Isherwell
MERYL STREEP / President Orlean
 
HOUSE OF GUCCI
ADAM DRIVER / Maurizio Gucci
LADY GAGA / Patrizia Reggiani
SALMA HAYEK / Pina Auriemma
JACK HUSTON / Domenico De Sole
JEREMY IRONS / Rodolfo Gucci
JARED LETO / Paolo Gucci
AL PACINO / Aldo Gucci
 
KING RICHARD
JON BERNTHAL / Rick Macci
AUNJANUE ELLIS / Oracene “Brandi” Williams
TONY GOLDWYN / Paul Cohen
SANIYYA SIDNEY / Venus Williams
DEMI SINGLETON / Serena Williams
WILL SMITH / Richard Williams
 
Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture
BLACK WIDOW
DUNE
THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS
NO TIME TO DIE
SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS

The Television Program Nominees are:

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series
MURRAY BARTLETT / Armond – “THE WHITE LOTUS”
OSCAR ISAAC / Jonathan – “SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE”
MICHAEL KEATON / Dr. Samuel Finnix – “DOPESICK”
EWAN McGREGOR / Halston – “HALSTON”
EVAN PETERS / Det. Colin Zabel – “MARE OF EASTTOWN”

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series
JENNIFER COOLIDGE / Tanya – “THE WHITE LOTUS”
CYNTHIA ERIVO / Aretha Franklin – “GENIUS: ARETHA”
MARGARET QUALLEY / Alex – “MAID”
JEAN SMART / Helen Fahey – “MARE OF EASTTOWN”
KATE WINSLET / Mare Sheehan – “MARE OF EASTTOWN”

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series
BRIAN COX / Logan Roy – “SUCCESSION”
BILLY CRUDUP / Cory Ellison – “THE MORNING SHOW”
KIERAN CULKIN / Roman Roy – “SUCCESSION”
LEE JUNG-JAE / Seong Gi-hun – “SQUID GAME”
JEREMY STRONG / Kendall Roy – “SUCCESSION”

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series
JENNIFER ANISTON / Alex Levy – “THE MORNING SHOW”
JUNG HO-YEON / Kang Sae-byeok – “SQUID GAME”
ELISABETH MOSS / June Osborne/Offred – “THE HANDMAID’S TALE”
SARAH SNOOK / Shiv Roy – “SUCCESSION”
REESE WITHERSPOON / Bradley Jackson – “THE MORNING SHOW”

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series
MICHAEL DOUGLAS / Sandy Kominsky – “THE KOMINSKY METHOD”
BRETT GOLDSTEIN / Roy Kent – “TED LASSO”
STEVE MARTIN / Charles-Haden Savage – “ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING”
MARTIN SHORT / Oliver Putnam – “ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING”
JASON SUDEIKIS / Ted Lasso – “TED LASSO”

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series
ELLE FANNING / Catherine – “THE GREAT”
SANDRA OH / Ji-Yoon Kim – “THE CHAIR”
JEAN SMART / Deborah Vance – “HACKS”
JUNO TEMPLE / Keeley Jones – “TED LASSO”
HANNAH WADDINGHAM / Rebecca Welton – “TED LASSO”

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series
THE HANDMAID’S TALE
ALEXIS BLEDEL / Emily Malek
MADELINE BREWER / Janine Lindo
AMANDA BRUGEL / Rita Blue
ANN DOWD / Aunt Lydia Clements
O-T FAGBENLE / Luke Bankole
JOSEPH FIENNES / Commander Fred Waterford
SAM JAEGER / Mark Tuello
MAX MINGHELLA / Commander Nick Blaine
ELISABETH MOSS / June Osborne/Offred
YVONNE STRAHOVSKI / Serena Joy Waterford
BRADLEY WHITFORD / Commander Joseph Lawrence
SAMIRA WILEY / Moira Strand

THE MORNING SHOW
JENNIFER ANISTON / Alex Levy
SHARI BELAFONTE / Julia
ELI BILDNER / Joel Rapkin
NESTOR CARBONELL / Yanko Flores
STEVE CARELL / Mitch Kessler
BILLY CRUDUP / Cory Ellison
MARK DUPLASS / Charlie “Chip” Black
AMBER FRIENDLY / Layla Bell
JANINA GAVANKAR / Alison Namazi
VALERIA GOLINO / Paola Lambruschini
TARA KARSIAN / Gayle Berman
HANNAH LEDER / Isabella
GRETA LEE / Stella Bak
JULIANNA MARGULIES / Laura Peterson
JOE MARINELLI / Donny Spagnoli
MICHELLE MEREDITH / Lindsey Sherman
RUAIRI O’CONNOR / Ty Fitzgerald
JOE PACHECO / Bart Daley
KAREN PITTMAN / Mia Jordan
VICTORIA TATE / Rena Robinson
DESEAN K. TERRY / Daniel Henderson
REESE WITHERSPOON / Bradley Jackson

SQUID GAME
HEO SUNG-TAE / Deok-su
JUN YOUNG-SOO / Game Operator Voice
JUNG HO-YEON / Kang Sae-byeok
KIM JOO-RYOUNG / Mi-nyeo
LEE BYUNG-HUN / Front Man
LEE JUNG-JAE / Seong Gi-hun
OH YOUNG-SOO / Oh Il-nam
PARK HAE-SOO / Cho Sang-woo
ANUPAM TRIPATHI / Ali
WI HA-JUN / Hwang Jun-ho

SUCCESSION
NICHOLAS BRAUN / Greg Hirsch
JULIANA CANFIELD / Jess Jordan
BRIAN COX / Logan Roy
KIERAN CULKIN / Roman Roy
DAGMARA DOMINCZYK / Karolina Novotney
PETER FRIEDMAN / Frank Vernon
JIHAE / Berry Schneider
JUSTINE LUPE / Willa
MATTHEW MACFADYEN / Tom Wambsgans
DASHA NEKRASOVA / Comfrey Pellits
SCOTT NICHOLSON / Colin
DAVID RASCHE / Karl Muller
ALAN RUCK / Connor Roy
J. SMITH-CAMERON / Gerri Kellman
SARAH SNOOK / Shiv Roy
FISHER STEVENS / Hugo Baker
JEREMY STRONG / Kendall Roy
ZOË WINTERS / Kerry Castellabate

YELLOWSTONE
KELSEY ASBILLE / Monica Dutton
WES BENTLEY / Jamie Dutton
RYAN BINGHAM / Walker
GIL BIRMINGHAM / Thomas Rainwater
IAN BOHEN / Ryan
EDEN BROLIN / Mia
KEVIN COSTNER / John Dutton
HUGH DILLON / Sheriff Donnie Haskell
LUKE GRIMES / Kayce Dutton
HASSIE HARRISON / Laramie
COLE HAUSER / Rip Wheeler
JEN LANDON / Teeter
FINN LITTLE / Carter
BRECKEN MERRILL / Tate Dutton
WILL PATTON / Garrett Randle
PIPER PERABO / Summer Higgins
KELLY REILLY / Beth Dutton
DENIM RICHARDS / Colby
TAYLOR SHERIDAN / Travis
FORRIE J. SMITH / Lloyd
JEFFERSON WHITE / Jimmy Hurdstrom

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series
THE GREAT
JULIAN BARRATT / Dr. Vinodel
BELINDA BROMILOW / Aunt Elizabeth
SACHA DHAWAN / Orlo
ELLE FANNING / Catherine
PHOEBE FOX / Marial
BAYO GBADAMOSI / Arkady
ADAM GODLEY / Archbishop
DOUGLAS HODGE / Velementov
NICHOLAS HOULT / Peter
FLORENCE KEITH-ROACH / Tatyana
GWILYM LEE / Grigor Dymov
CHARITY WAKEFIELD / Georgina

HACKS
ROSE ABDOO / Josefina
CARL CLEMONS-HOPKINS / Marcus Vaughan
PAUL W. DOWNS / Jimmy Lusaque, Jr.
HANNAH EINBINDER / Ava Daniels
MARK INDELICATO / Damien
POPPY LIU / Kiki
CHRIS McDONALD / Marty Ghilain
JEAN SMART / Deborah Vance
MEGAN STALTER / Kayla Schaeffer

THE KOMINSKY METHOD
JENNA LYNG ADAMS / Darshani
SARAH BAKER / Mindy Kominsky
CASEY THOMAS BROWN / Lane
MICHAEL DOUGLAS / Sandy Kominsky
LISA EDELSTEIN / Phoebe
ASHLEIGH LaTHROP / Breana
EMILY OSMENT / Theresa
HALEY JOEL OSMENT / Robbie
PAUL REISER / Martin
GRAHAM ROGERS / Jude
MELISSA TANG / Margaret
KATHLEEN TURNER / Roz

ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING
AARON DOMINGUEZ / Oscar
SELENA GOMEZ / Mabel Mora
JACKIE HOFFMAN / Uma Heller
JAYNE HOUDYSHELL / Bunny
STEVE MARTIN / Charles-Haden Savage
AMY RYAN / Jan
MARTIN SHORT / Oliver Putnam

TED LASSO
ANNETTE BADLAND / Mae
KOLA BOKINNI / Isaac McAdoo
PHIL DUNSTER / Jamie Tartt
CRISTO FERNÁNDEZ / Dani Rojas
BRETT GOLDSTEIN / Roy Kent
BRENDAN HUNT / Coach Beard
TOHEEB JIMOH / Sam Obisanya
NICK MOHAMMED / Nathan Shelley
SARAH NILES / Dr. Sharon Fieldstone
JASON SUDEIKIS / Ted Lasso
JEREMY SWIFT / Leslie Higgins
JUNO TEMPLE / Keeley Jones
HANNAH WADDINGHAM / Rebecca Welton

Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Television Series
COBRA KAI
THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER
LOKI
MARE OF EASTTOWN
SQUID GAME

Review: ‘Best Sellers’ (2021), starring Michael Caine and Aubrey Plaza

January 11, 2022

by Carla Hay

Michael Caine and Aubrey Plaza in “Best Sellers” (Photo courtesy of Screen Media Films)

“Best Sellers” (2021)

Directed by Lina Roessler

Culture Representation: Taking place in New York state and in various U.S. cities, the comedy/drama “Best Sellers” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Asians and African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: After inheriting her father’s financially struggling book publishing company, a woman in her 30s convinces a reclusive, elderly author to come out of retirement to publish another book and go on a book tour with her.

Culture Audience: “Best Sellers” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of star Michael Caine and anyone who likes predictable dramedies set in the literary world.

Aubrey Plaza and Michael Caine in “Best Sellers” (Photo courtesy of Screen Media Films)

Just a like a hack novel with a stale formula, “Best Sellers” is an uninspired comedy/drama that limps along until the movie’s very predictable end. Michael Caine and Aubrey Plaza play mismatched characters, but their pairing as actors is also a misfire. It’s another movie about two clashing personalities who are stuck working together, with the added discomfort of taking a road trip together. “Best Sellers” does absolutely nothing that’s creative or engaging in this cliché-ridden story, although die-hard fans of Caine and Plaza will probably like this film more than most people.

Directed by Lina Roessler and written by Anthony Grieco, “Best Sellers” further typecasts Caine and Plaza in the types of roles they’ve been doing in their most recent movies. Caine plays a cranky eccentric, while Plaza plays a pouty, sarcastic misfit. They also don’t appear to have any emotional investment in their characters. If they don’t seem to care, then why should audiences?

A movie about two different people who start off disliking each other can be fun to watch if there’s genuine chemistry between the cast members and witty dialogue. Unfortunately, “Best Sellers” is so lackluster and predictable, even the cast members seem bored with everything. The movie also tries to bridge a gap between the traditional world of print book publishing and the non-traditional world of social media publishing, but the scenarios are just too forced and phony.

In “Best Sellers,” Caine plays Harris Shaw, a curmudgeonly widower who lives as a recluse in Westchester, New York. (“Best Sellers” was actually filmed in the Canadian province of Quebec.) Harris is so “old school,” he still uses a typewriter. Harris’ claim to fame is his first novel, titled “Atomic Autumn,” which was a bestseller more than 50 years ago. Since then, he hasn’t written another book.

Harris has become such a recluse, some people wonder if he’s still dead or alive. When the phone rings in his home and someone asks for Harris, he answers the phone and barks: “He’s dead! Bugger off!” Harris’ wife Elizabeth has been dead for an untold number of years, but grief over her death is not the reason why Harris hasn’t written a second book. And it’s not because he has writer’s block.

Harris just seems to be afraid of not being able to surpass the success of his first book. It’s unknown what Harris has done to make a living in the years since “Atomic Autumn” was a hit. Whatever money he made from the book seems to be long gone, and he’s in dire financial straits, because Harris is seen burning a foreclosure notice with a cigarette lighter while he’s home alone in his misery.

Meanwhile, the New York City-based book company that published “Atomic Autumn” is also experiencing financial problems. Joseph “J.F.” Stanbridge (played by Luc Morissette) is the company’s founder, but he’s currently a widower in a nursing home. The responsibility of running Stanbridge Publishing has fallen to his only child, Lucy (played by Plaza), who is desperate for the company to get another best-selling author.

Things aren’t going so well for a Stanbridge-published young-adult fantasy book called “Dragons of Orion” that Lucy had high hopes would be a hit. The book is a flop that has gotten a negative review in The New York Times. And it’s getting a lot of criticism on social media.

As an example, Lucy looks apprehensively at an adolescent book reviewer who has a YouTube channel called Tracey’s Book Club, which has more than 4 million subscribers. The YouTuber (played by Charli Birdgenaw) snarks in a video: “‘Dragons of Orion’ is dumb. All caps DUMB. It’s trying to be ‘Harry Potter,’ but it’s not even a bad ‘Twilight.'”

The top-selling author at the moment is Drew Davis (played by Veronica Ferres), who is a writer that Stanbridge Publishing wouldn’t be able to afford. Lucy pouts as she tells her assistant Rachel Spence (played by Eileen Wong): “We need our own Drew Davis … We need relevant writers to make us relevant again.”

And so what does Lucy end up doing? She puts her time and resources into a has-been writer (Harris Shaw), whose only book was published more than 50 years ago. Why? Because she finds Harris’ old contract and discovers that he owes Stanbridge Publishing one more book. Lucy thinks that Harris still has enough name recognition that his second book could be a hit.

Rachel is highly skeptical of this idea. She warns Lucy that Harris has a reputation of being “a drunk and a madman” who “shot his assistant once” because Harris mistook this male assistant for a bear. Lucy and Rachel track down Harris at his current address. And since Harris doesn’t like to communicate with anyone and this is a very phony-looking movie, Lucy and Rachel don’t just show up at his house unannounced. Lucy and Rachel break into Harris’ house when they think no one is there.

Of couse, Harris is in the house during the break-in, and he pulls a gun on Lucy and Rachel. Lucy and Rachel explain the reason for this unnanounced visit. And it just so happens that Harris does have a novel that he’s been working on for years. There’s some hemming and hawing as Lucy tells Harris that it’s in his contract to hand over the novel to her company.

Harris doesn’t want to feel pressured into finishing the book, but since he and Lucy need the money, the manuscript is completed. A clause in Harris’ contract says that he has the choice of having the manuscript edited by whoever is in charge of the company, or he has to agree to promote the book on a book tour. Harris lets it be known how he feels about his work being edited when he snaps at Lucy: “I’ll be damned if I let the incompetent hands of nepotism molest my words, Silver Spoon!”

And you know what that means: Harris and Lucy go on the road together and get on each other’s nerves. “Best Sellers” consists mostly of this tedious road trip, where Lucy tries to market Harris on social media, but he resists. Many of the tour stops draw an embarassingly low turnout for Harris. Lucy and Harris also find out that people who go to Harris’ book readings/signings show up out of mild curiosity, but most of them don’t buy his new book.

The name of Harris’ second book is “The Future Is X-Rated.” That title alone could’ve been mined for numerous hilarious scenes if the filmmakers of “Best Sellers” were more creative with the contents of the book. Instead, people who watch “Best Sellers” will be hard-pressed to remember what Harris’ new book is supposed to be about after they finish watching the movie. In other words, “Best Sellers” fails to convince viewers that Harris is a talented author.

Instead, “Best Sellers” stoops to littering the movie with cheap gimmicks, such as Harris having temper tantrums, instigating dumb arguments, and getting violent. On separate occasions, Harris urinates on copies of his new book in front of an audience, and then he commits a despicable act of arson that won’t be described here. “Best Sellers” has an entirely lazy way of letting Harris off of the hook for the crimes he commits during this moronic movie.

“Best Sellers” also has a stereotypical portrayal of a New York Times book critic. His name is Halpern Nolan (played by Cary Elwes), a pompous blowhard who seems like a Truman Capote wannabe. Predictably, Harris despises Halpern. And because Harris is a loose cannon, he gets in a fist fight with Halpern.

The clichés don’t end there. Lucy is supposed to be a “poor little rich girl” because not only could she lose her family fortune but she’s also emotionally damaged because of the suicide of her mother. It’s supposed to make Lucy more sympathetic to viewers, but Lucy still comes across as irritating by all her eye-rolling and whining. She’s not as problematic as Harris, but Lucy isn’t a smart as she thinks she is. Lucy doesn’t really know what she’s doing and seems very unqualified for her job.

Another cliché: Lucy has to contend with a shark-like publisher rival named Jack Sinclair (played by Scott Speedman), who might as well wear a T-shirt that says “Lucy Stanbridge’s Love Interest.” Lucy is annoyed by Jack, but she’s also attracted to him. Jack knows it too. And you know what that means in a hackneyed movie like “Best Sellers.”

In addition to being plagued by boring and witless scenarios, “Best Sellers” has very drab cinematography, where too many scenes are poorly lit. It might have seemed like an inspired idea to bring Caine and Plaza together in a movie, but their comedic styles and personas don’t mesh well at all. “Best Sellers” is a movie that could have worked well with an improved script and better casting decisions. As it stands, “Best Sellers” is a dud without much appeal and would’ve been better off permanently shelved.

Screen Media Films released “Best Sellers” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on September 17, 2021 The movie was released on DVD on November 2, 2021.

2022 Puppy Bowl: See photos and videos

(Photo courtesy of Discovery+/Animal Planet)

The following is a press release from Discovery+ and Animal Planet:

Everyone’s favorite other game is back in action for the ultimate woof-a-thon. The original call-to-adoption television event and cutest sports competition, PUPPY BOWL, returns for its 18th year, highlighting more shelters, more incredible stories, and the most puppies ever featured in PUPPY BOWL history. Get ready to cheer on the adoptable puppy players of TEAM RUFF and TEAM FLUFF as they give it their all to catch air-speed and take home this year’s CHEWY “Lombarky” trophy. Catch all the action in the GEICO ‘stadium within a stadium’ that takes this game to the next level. Between ear pulls, tail tugs, sloppy kisses, incredible interceptions, puppy penalties and hard-won touchdowns, this is the game you don’t want to miss! Tune in to PUPPY BOWL XVIII, the 3-hour spectacular event that can be streamed on discovery+, the definitive non-fiction, real life subscription streaming service, and Animal Planet on Sunday, February 13 at 2 PM ET/11 AM PT.

PUPPY BOWL celebrates adoptable pups in all their cuteness and showcases the incredible shelters and rescues, as well as their staffers, who dedicate their lives to helping animals find their fur-ever loving homes. This year an astounding 67 shelters and rescues from 33 states bring 118 incredible adoptable puppy players out to sport their TEAM RUFF ‘Tail Mary Tangerine’ and TEAM FLUFF ‘Bark Blue’ bandana colors. Each pup player is coming to strut their paws and show off their uniqueness, and with the help of the Wisdom Panel™ dog DNA test, we’ll find out what’s beyond those bandanas and luscious fur, and how each dog’s breed mix might give them a leg-up on the field. And on top of these hidden traits which may be revealed, these players will give it their all to chase, fetch, guard, heel, and sprint to the CHEWY end zone pylons for the ultimate touchdowns and score game catching field goals on THE HOME DEPOT goal posts.  

Thanks to our returning and notoriously entertaining slo-mo cam, fans will get to see these canines’ devotion to the game as they put their tricks to the test to score a touchdown and a possible chase of the tail. While showing off their tricks and shakes, audiences will get the pawesome views from the water bowl cam which will catch our furry friends in a PEDIGREE® timeout to re-energize their quirky selves and quench their thirst. For the ultimate top-notch aerial view, the TEMPTATIONS™ Kitty Sky Box will also be featured throughout the game so fans can feel as if they’re in the center of all the puppy madness. 

The PUPPY BOWL XVIII Pre-Game Show begins exclusively on discovery+ and Animal Planet at 1PM ET/ 10AM PT where fan-favorite PUPPY BOWL sportscasters Rodt Weiler, Sheena Inu, James Hound, and field reports Mini Pinscher and Greta Dane provide the inside scoop on this year’s Puppy Bowl Draft ahead of the big game. The pre-game show spotlights exclusive interviews with coaches and players, a look at the adorable pups warming up and running their favorite routes during CHEWY’s ‘Play of the Day.’ In addition, audiences will get a first-look tease at the purr-fect halftime show through the ARM & HAMMER™ Clump & Seal™ Kitty Halftime Report. We’ll also get puppy DNA analysis from Wisdom Panel™ dog DNA test Players Report and catch up with several special puppy players past and present including Chunky Monkey, who won the hearts of many during Puppy Bowl XVII and Marshall, who was declared victorious as the winner of the Puppy Bowl XVII ‘Pupularity Playoff”. Those who tune-in will meet Biscuit, the Washington Capitals service pup who is training with America’s VetDogs and see a special look at the BISSELL Pet FoundationTM and their rescue efforts of transporting cats and dogs out of the Hurricane Ida danger zone to safety at Animal Welfare League in Alexandria, VA. 

To kick off the game, special guests Elmo & Tango are traveling all the way from Sesame Street to gather the PEDIGREE® Starting Lineup players in the center of the field for the PUPPY BOWL XVIII coin toss to who from Team Fluff or Team Ruff will be the first to wag their tails! In addition, Elmo & Tango will be featured throughout the game as they cheer on one unforgettable pup, Wasabi, a Chihuahua/Cocker Spaniel mix from The Sato Project, from the sidelines throughout the game. As the game progresses, we will see which pup has what it takes for the one and only BISSELL Pet FoundationTM MVP (Most Valuable Puppy) award by scoring the most touchdowns. This pup will join a league of past MVP champions, and through TROPICAL SMOOTHIE CAFE®, audiences will catch up with a previous Puppy Bowl MVP now in his loving, forever home and living his best life “on Tropic Time”. Be sure to tune in to find out which lucky pup will also take home the coveted SUBARU OF AMERICA, INC. Underdog Award! 

And of course, Dan Schachner, PUPPY BOWL’s official and favorite Ruff-eree is returning for his 11th year of calling the puppy penalties, ruffs stumbles & tumbles, and awesome touchdowns for a game unlike any other. Dan is ready for the ultimate puppy showdown and fans will hear all these calls and more from returning commentators Steve Levy and Taylor Rooks as they give us the play-by-play coverage of the rambunctious pups of Team Fluff and Team Ruff as they frolic, jump, dive, and occasionally snooze their way to victory. In addition to seeing these puppy players on the field, audiences will also see the return of the SUBARU OF AMERICA, INC. Pup Close and Personal segments that shine a light on adorable star athletes including one special Senior Spotlight story which showcases that age is just a number and senior dogs are ultimately puppies at heart. This year’s Pup Close and Personal features various segments including:

  • A special profile on Orange Twins Rescue, started by Ariana Grande and her choreographers and creative directors’, twins Scott & Brian, who accompany a pair of bonded Siberian Husky/ Chihuahua mix puppy sisters, Bimini & Tayce to Farm Animal Refuge in San Diego where they meet baby goats and cows
  • Kirby, a very special Labrador retriever who is the Houston Texans’ service pup in-training in partnership with America’s Vet Dogs, who visits NRG Stadium for a service practice session with Texans player Justin Reid
  • Hoku, a American Staffordshire Terrier/ Catahoula Leopard Mix; and Puppy Bowl’s first ever Hawaiian pup, from Maui Humane Society, who as a participant of the rescue’s ‘Buddies’ program, embarks on a special field trip to a hike in Maui’s National Parks where we learn about the legend of the ‘Poi’ dogs of ancient Polynesian culture
  • Birch, a Chihuahua / Toy Fox Terrier mix who is cared for by a special foster under Ninna’s Road to Rescue foster program and is coached for the big game by Puppy Bowl XVI alum, Darcy
  • Benny, a special needs Labradoodle, who is living his best life with a foster from Bosley’s Place where he spends his days practicing laps on the lush property with his fellow dog companions
  • A special look at The Dogist (Elias Weiss Friedman) who teams up with Pilots to the Rescue, to bring one incredible Dalmatian puppy, Pongo, on a flight from a Virginia shelter to New York City for PUPPY BOWL XVIII

 In addition to these incredible Pup Close stories, PUPPY BOWL XVIII will also feature an unforgettable senior spotlight story featuring Mr. Lee Asher from the upcoming discovery+ series, My Pack Life, as he hosts Sharkey, a Greyhound Mix from Family Dogs New Life shelter at his own rural sanctuary, The Asher House, in Oregon where Sharkey will not have a day full of adventure but will have a chance of finding a forever home.  

During the game, audiences will also meet nine fuzzball special needs players that are looking forward to finding their forever home; including Benny, a wheelchair bound Labradoodle featured in one of this year’s Pup Close stories; Forrest, a one-eyed Neapolitan Mastiff/Cane Corso Mix; Rocket, a deaf Chihuahua/Dachshund: Pongo, a deaf Dalmatian; Ridley, a deaf and vision impaired Border Collie; Bunny, a deaf American Staffordshire Terrier/Labrador Retriever Mix; Moby, a French Bulldog with a cleft palate; Bimini, a vision impaired Siberian Husky/Chihuahua Mix; and Irwin, a three-legged ​​American Pit Bull Terrier/Chihuahua Mix. This year’s big game will feature the return of two special PUPPY BOWL moments. First, TEAM RUFF and TEAM FLUFF players will be cheered by adorable, adoptable puppy cheerleaders who will root and howl for their favorite players from the sidelines. This year, the new cheer squad will bring-it from their own special sideline setup to shake their pom poms, run a few cheer-formations, and amp up the volume with an overload of cuteness as PUPPY BOWL XVIII players make their way down the field. Next, audiences will again see Puppy Bowl’s ‘Adoptable Pup’ segments, hosted by Dan Schachner and sponsored by CHEWY. Sprinkled throughout the program, 11 shelters from around the country will feature one of their puppies (and 3 shelters with kittens during KITTY HALF-TIME) that are all up for adoption during the game! 

In addition to these unforgettable moments, put your paws together midway through the game for the ARM & HAMMER™ Clump & Seal™ KITTY HALF-TIME SHOW for these adoptable kittens at their practically purr-fect beach party. At this ocean-side getaway, audiences will experience the beach-tastic party with these felines having some fun in the sun and learning about their heartwarming adoption stories in their loving new fur-ever home.

Fans can also access even more furry fun and exclusive content by downloading discovery+. Leading up to PUPPY BOWL XVIII, discovery+ and Animal Planet GO users will find exclusive in-app original programming, including the PUPPY BOWL mid-form series “Pupclose & Personal” featuring Ariana Grande’s best friends and choreographers, Scott and Brian Nicholson, who founded Orange Twins Rescue, a non-profit organization that rehabilitates and rescue animals in need. Plus, we’ll also see Dan the Ref take us down memory lane, highlighting the very best and firsts of Puppy Bowl’s 17-year history. Additionally, fans are also invited to Tweet along with game day commentator Meep the Bird and vote in real time, for the winner of the Most Valuable Puppy award. Results will be revealed during the epic program.

For the first time in Puppy Bowl history, there will be 23 exclusive Puppy Bowl NFTs released leading up to and on the day of the game hosted by Chronicle, an NFT studio and marketplace. Each drop will feature unique and pawsitively adorable trading cards varying in price and rarity, and a portion of the proceeds from all the sales will benefit Orange Twins Rescue, an animal rescue organization founded by brothers Scott and Brian Nicholson, and Ariana Grande. For the latest on when the NFTs are releasing, follow along on Animal Planet’s Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

Additionally, fans can look forward to the following exclusive digital content: Elmo will be taking over Discovery’s Instagram Story to tell his own puppy adoption story; Kirby, the Houston Texans’ service pup in-training, will be hosting a Discovery Instagram Story takeover as he prepares to play in the Puppy Bowl; and the cutest pregame puppy scrimmage will stream live on Animal Planet TikTok the day of the game.

Fans can also show off their puppy fandom by using the special custom GIF sticker pack available by searching “Puppy Bowl” in the GIF section on social platforms or by visiting the Puppy Bowl GIPHY page. 

Official PUPPY BOWL XVIII sponsors include ARM & HAMMER™ Clump & Seal™, BISSELL Pet FoundationTM, CHEWY, GEICO, THE HOME DEPOT, the PEDIGREE® brand, SUBARU OF AMERICA, INC., TEMPTATIONS™, TROPICAL SMOOTHIE CAFE®, and Wisdom Panel™ pet DNA test. 

For more information about the shelters, rescues and organizations that participated in PUPPY BOWL XVIII, Animal Planet audiences can visit Puppybowl.com/Adopt. 

PUPPY BOWL XVIII is produced for discovery+ and Animal Planet by Bright Spot Content, an All3Media America company. Simon Morris is executive producer and showrunner with Suzanne Rauscher and Sandy Varo Jarrell also serving as executive producers. For Animal Planet, Erin Wanner is executive producer, Pat Dempsey is supervising producer, and Marissa Donovan is production coordinator.

PUPPY BOWL XVIII PLAYERS

Review: ‘Gap Year’ (2020), starring Darius Bazley

January 10, 2022

by Carla Hay

Darius Bazley in “Gap Year” (Photo courtesy of 1091 Pictures)

“Gap Year” (2020)

Directed by Josh Kahn and T.J. Regan

Culture Representation: Taking place in Boston, Los Angeles, Memphis, Charlotte and Cincinnati from June 2018 to June 2019, the documentary “Gap Year” features a group of African Americans and white people representing the middle-class and wealthy in this chronicle of basketball player Darius Bazley’s year after he graduated from high school and before he found out if he would be drafted into the National Basketball League (NBA).

Culture Clash: Bazley gets praise and skepticism for his decision to accept a $1 million internship from New Balance during this “gap year.”

Culture Audience: “Gap Year” will appeal mainly to people who are interested in stories about how basketball players prepare for the NBA.

Darius Bazley in “Gap Year” (Photo courtesy of 1091 Pictures)

The documentary “Gap Year” sometimes comes across as a gimmicky marketing ploy for New Balance, but it’s still an enjoyable watch because of basketball player Darius Bazley, the movie’s engaging star. The documentary chronicles what happened in the year after Bazley graduated from high school and did a marketing internship with Boston-based sports footwear/apparel company New Balance while he trained for the NBA. This wasn’t just any internship: New Balance paid Bazley a $1 million salary for this internship, with the idea that it was a starter salary for Bazley to be a New Balance spokesperson if he ended up becoming a star in the NBA.

Directed by Josh Kahn and T.J. Regan, “Gap Year” has a breezy 75-minute total run time. It’s just about the right amount of time to tell this story, which ends in with Bazley finding out in June 2019 if he got drafted into the NBA or not. “Gap Year” begins in June 2018, when Bazley (a native of Cincinnati) has graduated from high school and is considered a hot prospect for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the traditional stepping stone to get into the NBA.

However, Bazley doesn’t want to go to college. He wants to be drafted into the NBA within two years after graduating from high school. It’s a bold and risky move that has paid off for only a small percentage of NBA players—most notably, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett.

As NBA analyst Jay Williams (a former Naismith College Player of the Year) comments on the NCAA to NBA rule: “We live in a society where everybody abides by the rules. And we don’t even know what the rule is or where it came from. They just abide by it.” Williams adds that Bazley’s decision to take a year off from the NBA G League to train while doing the New Balance internship was “the most fascinating and disruptive thing I’ve ever seen in basketball.”

ESPN college basketball/NBA draft analyst Jay Bilas says, “When [Kevin] Garnett and Kobe [Bryant] came out, I think people were still having a hard time—myself included—wrapping their head around the idea of a high school kid going into the NBA.” David Stern, who was the NBA’s commissioner from 1984 to 2014, comments: “I think at the time, my own view was that we didn’t want out scouts in high school gymnasiums.” Michele Roberts, executive director of the National Basketball Players Association union, offers a different point of view on the NBA recruiting players right out of high school: “Frankly, I don’t see the difference between that and seeing them in a college gym.”

Rich Paul, CEO of Klutch Sports Group, which represented Bazley during this post-high-school transition, has this to say about Bazley bypassing college to get to the NBA: “I believe college is necessary for most kids. It was truly about trying what’s best for Darius.” The movie shows some footage of Bazley in gyms with basketball trainer Mike Mills in Memphis and basketball trainer Pierre Sully and physical trainer Bryan Doo in Boston. However, the majority of the documentary footage is showing Bazley’s internship at New Balance headquarters in Boston.

In January 2019, Bazley temporarily moved to Boston, where he was given corporate housing at an apartment bulding, with all expenses paid for by New Balance. His internship was only for a three-month period, but he was expected to learn a lot of the ins and outs of marketing for New Balance, particularly in the launch of new products. Not only was it Bazley’s first time living away from home but it was also his first office job.

As expected, Bazley experienced some culture shock. On his first day on he job, Bazley had to call his manager because Bazley didn’t know how to fill out a tax form. And being a tall, African American teenager, he stood out in an office environment consisting of mostly white people who are older than he is. A few of the white female employees seem intimidated by Bazley at first when they interact with him, possibly because of his race but also possibly because he’s so tall.

Still, Bazley seems to sense that he won’t adjust easily to this office environment because although people are friendly to him, they don’t seem interested in becoming his “work friend.” He’s also visibly uncomfortable using computers when he first arrives on the job, which makes you wonder what kind of education he got in high school to not be familiar with using computers as a high school graduate. Bazley is willing to learn what he’s taught on the job, which is a good sign that he’ll have the right attitude in the real world of professional careers.

Later in the documentary, Bazley settles into a work routine that he admits is lonely: He comments that after work, he spends time in his apartment alone, and it’s not unusual for his dinner to consist of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. Klutch Sports CEO Paul says in an on-camera interview that he purposely left Bazley alone during this internship because he didn’t want to coddle Bazley. “One of the things I want is for him to align himself with his good habits,” Paul comments.

Being a restless teenager, Bazley does gripe a little about the monotony of an office job. The documentary show a few things that break up his routine. In February 2019, Bazley went to Charlotte for the NBA All-Star Weekend, which was a great motivation for his NBA dreams. It’s easy to see that because of the business knowledge he gained in the internship, Bazley is now equipped to making better-informed decisions about endorsement deals than if he didn’t have that behind-the-scenes internship experience.

In another scene, entertainer Jaden Smith visits New Balance headquarters for a meeting about a collaboration. Bazley gets to hang out a little bit with Smith during this meeting and says he’s impressed with Smith’s maturity. Bazley also seems to enjoy himself at a New Balance focus group at a high school in Lawrence, Massachusetts. It’s at this focus group (when he’s around people in his age group) that Bazley seems to enjoy his internship the most, because he can see how the focus group has a direct impact on marketing decisions.

After his internship ended, another big day for Bazley was in May 2019 at Klutch Pro Day in Los Angeles, where he sees firsthand how deals are made for pro athletes to get endorsement deals. It’s an eye-opening experience that gives him a sneak preview of what types of opportunities can come his way if he makes it into the NBA. Although this type of dealmaking might be nothing new to viewers who know the business of sports, what “Gap Year” does very well is convey Bazley’s perspective of someone who’s new to it all.

When it comes to his basketball skills, Bazley is confident but not arrogant. His personality is a little bit on the quiet side, but he has a lot of positive energy that makes him very easy to like. His family is briefly shown in the documentary, but the documentary very much keeps the focus on the “coming of age” journey for Bazley, who goes through the adult rite of passage of living away from parents for the first time. Other people interviewed in “Gap Year” include New Balance global marketing director Patrick Cassidy; Klutch Sports employee Brandon Cavanaugh; rapper Dave East, who’s labeled in the documentary as a “former Amateur Athletic Union standout”; New Balance global marketing manager Sean Sweeney; and former Bleacher Report editor-in-chief Ben Osborne.

People who are expecting “Gap Year” to be mostly about basketball training sessions might be disappointed. And the movie doesn’t do anything very spectacular when it comes to cinematography or editing. However, “Gap Year” is a very interesting chronicle of one teenager’s journey to be a nonconformist when it comes to pursuing his NBA goals. The documentary is best appreciated as a story where professional basketball is a catalyst but not the main reason why a child becomes an adult.

1091 Pictures released “Gap Year” on digital and VOD on December 1, 2020.

2022 Golden Globe Awards: ‘The Power of the Dog,’ ‘West Side Story,’ ‘Succession’ are the top winners

January 9, 2022

With three awards each, the Netflix drama “The Power of the Dog,” 20th Century Studios’ musical remake “West Side Story” and HBO’s drama series “Succession” won the most prizes at the 79th annual Golden Globe Awards. The private ceremony—which took place in Los Angeles on January 9, 2022—was not televised or webcast, and the news media were not invited to cover the event. Instead, winners were announced on the official Golden Globes Twitter account.

“The Power of the Dog” took the prizes for Best Motion Picture – Drama; Best Director (for Jane Campion); and Best Supporting Actor (for Kodi Smit-McPhee). The Golden Globe Awards for “West Side Story” were Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy; Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy (for Rachel Zegler); and Best Supporting Actress (for Ariana DeBose).

“Succession” won Golden Globes for Best Television Series – Drama; Best Actor in a Television Series – Drama (for Jeremy Strong); and Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television (for Sarah Snook).

“The Power of the Dog” and Focus Features’ drama “Belfast” led the nominations with seven nods each. “Belfast” ended up winning just one Golden Globe Award: Best Screenplay. In the TV categories, “Succession” was the top TV nominee, with five nods, including Best Drama Series.

The non-profit Hollywood Foreign Press Association votes for the Golden Globe nominations and awards. As previously reported, NBC dropped the Golden Globe Awards telecast in 2022, because of controversies over the HFPA’s lack of racial diversity and because of how the HFPA handles funds and gifting that its members receive for HPFA-related things. Up until August 2021, the HFPA did not have a black person as a member for 20 years.

The HFPA (which currently has about 100 members) has also come under fire for questionable spending and for its members accepting lavish gifts from studios that wanted to get HFPA members to vote for whatever the studios were pitching. The HFPA has since changed its leadership, modified its gifting/funding policies, and added more people of color to its membership, including a few black people. However, it remains to be seen if the HFPA and the Golden Globe Awards can fully recover from their very tarnished reputation.

Here is the complete list of winners and nominees for the 2022 Golden Globe Awards:

*=winner

MOVIES

Best Motion Picture – Drama
“Belfast” (Focus Features)
“CODA” (Apple TV+)
“Dune” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
“King Richard” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
“The Power of the Dog” (Netflix)*

Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
“Cyrano” (MGM)
“Don’t Look Up” (Netflix)
“Licorice Pizza” (MGM/United Artists Releasing)
“Tick, Tick … Boom!” (Netflix)
“West Side Story” (20th Century Studios)*

Best Director 
Kenneth Branagh (“Belfast”)
Jane Campion (“The Power of the Dog”)*
Maggie Gyllenhaal (“The Lost Daughter”)
Steven Spielberg (“West Side Story”)
Denis Villeneuve (“Dune”)

Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama
Mahershala Ali (“Swan Song”)
Javier Bardem (“Being the Ricardos”)
Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Power of the Dog”)
Will Smith (“King Richard”)*
Denzel Washington (“The Tragedy of Macbeth”)

Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Leonardo DiCaprio (“Don’t Look Up”)
Peter Dinklage (“Cyrano”)
Andrew Garfield (“Tick, Tick … Boom!”)*
Cooper Hoffman (“Licorice Pizza”)
Anthony Ramos (“In the Heights”)

Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama
Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”)
Olivia Colman (“The Lost Daughter”)
Nicole Kidman (“Being the Ricardos”)*
Lady Gaga (“House of Gucci”)
Kristen Stewart (“Spencer”)

Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
Marion Cotillard (“Annette”)
Alana Haim (“Licorice Pizza”)
Jennifer Lawrence (“Don’t Look Up”)
Emma Stone (“Cruella”)
Rachel Zegler (“West Side Story”)*

Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture
Ben Affleck (“The Tender Bar”)
Jamie Dornan (“Belfast”)
Ciarán Hinds (“Belfast”)
Troy Kotsur (“CODA”)
Kodi Smit-McPhee (“The Power of the Dog”)*

Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture 
Caitríona Balfe (“Belfast”)
Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story”)*
Kirsten Dunst (“The Power of the Dog”)
Aunjanue Ellis (“King Richard”)
Ruth Negga (“Passing”)

Best Screenplay
Paul Thomas Anderson, “Licorice Pizza”
Kenneth Branagh, “Belfast”*
Jane Campion, “The Power of the Dog”
Adam McKay, “Don’t Look Up”
Aaron Sorkin, “Being the Ricardos”

Best Original Score
Alexandre Desplat, “The French Dispatch”
Germaine Franco, “Encanto”
Jonny Greenwood, “The Power of the Dog”
Alberto Iglesias, “Parallel Mothers”
Hans Zimmer, “Dune”*

Best Original Song 
“Be Alive” from “King Richard,” written by Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Dixson
“Dos Orugitas” from “Encanto,” written by Lin-Manuel Miranda
“No Time to Die” from “No Time to Die,” written by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell*
“Down to Joy” from “Belfast,” written by Van Morrison
“Here I Am (Singing My Way Home)” from “Respect,” written by Jamie Alexander Hartman, Jennifer Hudson and Carole King

Best Animated Film 
“Encanto” (Walt Disney Pictures)*
“Flee” (Neon)
“Luca” (Pixar)
“My Sunny Maad” (Aerofilms)
“Raya and the Last Dragon” (Walt Disney Pictures)

Best Foreign Language Film
“Compartment No. 6” (Sony Pictures Classics)
“Drive My Car” (Janus Films)*
“The Hand of God” (Netflix)
“A Hero” (Amazon Studios)
“Parallel Mothers” (Sony Pictures Classics)

TELEVISION

Best Television Series – Drama
“Lupin” (Netflix)
“The Morning Show” (Apple TV+)
“Pose” (FX)
“Squid Game” (Netflix)
“Succession” (HBO)*

Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy
“The Great” (Hulu)
“Hacks” (HBO Max)*
“Only Murders in the Building” (Hulu)
“Reservation Dogs” (FX on Hulu)
“Ted Lasso” (Apple TV+)

Best Actor in a Television Series – Drama
Brian Cox, “Succession”
Lee Jung-jae, “Squid Game”
Billy Porter, “Pose”
Jeremy Strong, “Succession”*
Omar Sy, “Lupin”

Best Actress in a Television Series – Drama
Uzo Aduba, “In Treatment”
Jennifer Aniston, “The Morning Show”
Christine Baranski, “The Good Fight”
Elisabeth Moss, “The Handmaid’s Tale”
Mj Rodriguez, “Pose”*

Best Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy
Anthony Anderson, “Black-ish”
Nicholas Hoult, “The Great”
Steve Martin, “Only Murders in the Building”
Martin Short, “Only Murders in the Building”
Jason Sudeikis, “Ted Lasso”*

Best Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy
Hannah Einbinder, “Hacks”
Elle Fanning, “The Great”
Issa Rae, “Insecure”
Tracee Ellis Ross, “Black-ish”
Jean Smart, “Hacks”*

Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
“Dopesick” (Hulu)
“Impeachment: American Crime Story” (FX)
“Maid” (Netflix)
“Mare of Easttown” (HBO)
“The Underground Railroad” (Amazon Prime Video)*

Best Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Paul Bettany, “WandaVision”
Oscar Isaac, “Scenes From a Marriage”
Michael Keaton, “Dopesick”*
Ewan McGregor, “Halston”
Tahar Rahim, “The Serpent”

Best Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Jessica Chastain, “Scenes From a Marriage”
Cynthia Erivo, “Genius: Aretha” 
Elizabeth Olsen, “WandaVision”
Margaret Qualley, “Maid”
Kate Winslet, “Mare of Easttown”*

Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Kieran Culkin, “Succession”
Billy Crudup, “The Morning Show”
Mark Duplass, “The Morning Show”
Brett Goldstein, “Ted Lasso”
Oh Yeong-su, “Squid Game”*

Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television
Jennifer Coolidge, “White Lotus”
Kaitlyn Dever, “Dopesick”
Andie MacDowell, “Maid”
Sarah Snook, “Succession”*
Hannah Waddingham, “Ted Lasso”

Review: ‘Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time,’ starring Kurt Vonnegut

January 8, 2022

by Carla Hay

Kurt Vonnegut in “Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time” (Photo courtesy of C. Minnick and B Plus Productions/IFC Films)

“Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time”

Directed by Robert B. Weide and Don Argott 

Culture Representation: The documentary “Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time” features an all-white group of people (scholars, book publishers, family members and fans) discussing the life and career of celebrated American writer Kurt Vonnegut.

Culture Clash: Vonnegut had high points and low points in his life, including getting criticism about his relevancy, his artistic merit and choices he made in his personal life.

Culture Audience: Besides obviously appealing to Vonnegut fans, “Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in documentaries about writers who made their biggest impact on pop culture in the 1960s and 1970s.

Robert Weide and Kurt Vonnegut in “Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time” (Photo courtesy of C. Minnick and B Plus Productions/IFC Films)

“Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time” is a documentary that’s a hybrid of a Kurt Vonnegut biography and co-director Robert B. Weide’s personal narrative of his longtime friendship with Vonnegut. Weide could have inserted himself a little less in this movie, but it’s still a fascinating portrait of this influential author. Weide co-directed “Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time” with experienced documentarian Don Argott, but the movie very much has the tone that it’s Weide’s singular vision that brought this movie to fruition. If you didn’t notice the film credits to see that there are two directors of this documentary, it would be easy to assume that only Weide directed it, since he doesn’t really acknowledge his co-director in any part of his narration on screen or in voiceover.

One of the main reasons to see “Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time” is the treasure trove of previously unreleased footage that Weide was able to get when he interviewed Vonnegut off and on over the years. Vonnegut died in 2007, at the age 84, from brain injuries that he sustained during a fall. Weide (who frequently appears in the documentary footage) says on camera that he was 23 years old (circa 1982) when he first approached Vonnegut to do a documentary about Vonnegut, who would have been 59 or 60 years old at the time.

Some of this footage includes an informal 1988 interview that Vonnegut did on a train to Buffalo, New York. However, it wasn’t until 2014 that Weide says he began to seriously move forward in completing the documentary. In the documentary, Weide also shares several personal letters and voice mail messages that he got from Vonnegut over the years. The documentary remained an unfinished project for Weide that he would come back to off and on, but he had a difficult time completing the film. In the meantime, Weide went on to other projects in film and television, as a screenwriter, producer, director and editor.

Weide received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature for 1998’s “Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth,” which also won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Non-Fiction Programming – Picture Editing. Weide has won two other Primetime Emmy Awards: Outstanding Informational Special (for being a producer of 1986’s “W.C. Fields: Straight Up”) and Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series (for “Curb Your Enthusiasm”), a prize he received in 2003. Weide was also the screenwriter and a producer for the 1996 feature-film adaptation of Vonnegut’s 1961 novel “Mother Night.”

Weide comments on this long journey to finish this Vonnegut documentary: “This was going to be a conventional documentary … I don’t even like documentaries where the filmmaker has to put himself in the film. Who cares? But when you take almost 40 years to make a film, you owe some kind of explanation.”

The documentary then goes into how Weide became a Vonnegut fan in the first place: He first discovered Vonnegut when Weide was a 16-year-old student at Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, California. He had a teacher named Valerie Stevenson, who assigned her class to read Vonnegut’s 1973 best-selling novel “Breakfast of Champions.”

“Breakfast of Champions” is a story about of the meeting of two very different men—science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout and rich businessman Dwayne Hoover—and how this meeting results in a series of twists and turns. “Breakfast of Champions” touched on themes of class differences, mental illness and pre-determined destiny versus free will. It was a combination of science fiction and satire that was highly influential at the time.

Weide’s former teacher Stevenson comments in the documentary about making “Breakfast of Champions” required reading for her students: “Looking back now, as an educator of many years, I’m just horrified that I did it. It’s a pretty edgy book and kind of iconoclastic.” Weide, however, says that he’s glad he discovered Vonnegut in this way: “He was the guy who made me think, ‘He thinks what I think about the world.'”

Weide’s fascination with Vonnegut led to Weide teaching an informal class about Vonnegut while Weide was in his last year of high school. Weide says about this class: “It was like a very cool Vonnegut reading club.” Weide puts a lot of emphasis that a part of him still feels like that star-struck teenager who discovered Vonnegut for the first time. More than once, Weide’s narration says some variation of, “If someone had told the 16-year-old me that I would be hanging out with Kurt Vonnegut and doing a documentary about him, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

The parts of the documentary that are essentially Vonnegut’s biography do a fairly good job of describing his life and career, even though there isn’t anything that die-hard Vonnegut fans don’t already know. The documentary includes interviews with Vonnegut biographers (such as Jerome Klinkowitz, Gregory Sumner, Ginger Strand and Rodney Allen) to describe various points of Vonnegut’s life.

Born in Indianapolis on November 11, 1922, Vonnegut was proud of his Midwestern roots, even though he spent most of his literary career living in the Northeast. Klinkowitz says of Vonnegut’s parents Kurt Vonnegut Sr. and Edith Vonnegut: “Kurt’s mother was [emotionally] distant and really had her own mental problems. His father was not the warmest, fuzziest father in the world. He was a good father and a serious architect.”

Of all the people in the family, Kurt Jr. was closest to his older sister Alice, nicknamed Allie, who was five years his senior. Kurt Jr. also had an older brother named Bernard, nicknamed Bernie, who was eight years older than Kurt.

Klinkowitz says of Allie: “She substituted for Kurt’s mother. I think that [Allie] gave him the nurturing and the love he was not given.” The documentary has some brief, exclusive footage of Bernie, who died in 1997. Weide mentions that he became close to Bernie while making the film.

The Great Depression was financially devastating to Kurt and his family. Their father had problems finding work, and they had to downsize from a middle-class house to a cramped apartment. Kurt came from a family of architectures (he claims one of his ancestors invited the panic door bar), so his career in creative writing was considered somewhat of a radical departure.

In a documentary interview, Kurt says of his childhood: “I wish my parents were happier than they were. I think it was largely my mother’s unhappiness that made the Depression harder on all of us.”

Kurt’s writing skills were honed at Shortridge High School in Indianapolis, where he was co-editor of the school’s newspaper. In a documentary interview, Kurt describes Shortridge as “an extraordinary high school” that was “better than any university” he attended. That’s a huge compliment, considering that he attended Cornell University, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and the University of Chicago.

Before he a received dual bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago, he enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II. Kurt had the harrowing experience of being a prisoner of war in Germany. Kurt survived the 1945 bombings in Dresden by hiding in a slaughterhouse. His war traumas later became the basis for his breakthrough sixth novel, “Slaughterhouse-Five,” which was first published in 1969. The subtitle of this documentary comes from this “Slaughterhouse-Five” line: “Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time.”

Vonnegut’s biggest champion, long before he became a famous writer, was his first wife, Jane Marie Cox Vonnegut, whom he married in 1945. Kurt and Jane were high-school sweethearts who both attended the University of Chicago. Jane was the one who pitched Kurt to magazines and became his unofficial agent in the early years of his career.

Kurt and Jane had three kids together: Edie, Nanny and Mark. All of the children are interviewed in the documentary. They describe their father as highly creative but not very affectionate and often impatient with them. Mark says of his father: “His attempts to work at regular jobs did not go well.”

During the early years when Kurt couldn’t get work as a writer, the documentary doesn’t adequately explain how the family was surviving when Kurt was frequently unemployed. It’s not really mentioned if Jane worked outside of the home to contribute to the household income. For a while, Kurt worked at General Electric, but he quit to become a full-time writer. Kurt and his family then moved from Schenectady, New York, to Barnstable, Massachusetts.

Kurt wasn’t an overnight sensation by any means: His earliest years as a writer were steeped in rejections and poverty-level incomes. He got his start in professional fiction writing by doing short stories for magazines. He became a novelist when magazines began to decrease publishing of short stories, as TV became more popular.

Tragedy struck in 1958, when Kurt’s beloved sister Allie died of cancer just two days after her husband, James Carmalt Adams, died in a train accident. The couple’s orphaned sons—Peter, James, Kurt (nicknamed Tiger) and Steven—were adopted by Kurt and Jane Vonnegut. The four brothers, who are interviewed in the documentary, admit that they were quite the handful because they were troublemaking hellraisers in their youth.

Nanny comments on how Allie’s death affected Kurt: “I think Allie’s death was the biggest loss in his life.” Nanny and Edie also say that their father never talked about his prisoner-of-war experiences and tended to downplay how any of this trauma affected him. His daughters say that they had to find out about everything by reading “Slaughterhouse-Five.”

Edie and Nanny share vivid memories of their father chainsmoking, playing Muzak and hunched over his typewriter in his home office. He was often so focused on his work, he would get upset and yell at the kids if he thought they were being so loud that it would distract him from his work. They say his angry outbursts weren’t really abusive, but they could be frightening.

His nephew/adopted son Kurt “Tiger” Adams remembers: “He was moody. You had to be on guard, so as not to get his wrath.” Nanny says that her father was not “cuddly” with his own children, but he was cuddly with the family dog. And things were so financially tough for Kurt in those early years, Mark says that when he was 12, his father asked to borrow $100 from Mark that Mark had saved from his part-time job a newspaper delivery boy.

In public and in his work, Kurt had the persona of a witty, politically liberal raconteur with a sarcastic and sharply observant sense of humor about the best and worst of society. When his career as an author began to wane in the 1980s and beyond, he became in demand for public speaking appearances. The documentary includes archival clips of Kurt giving commencement speeches at university graduation ceremonies.

“Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time” has such a laudatory tone that the movie doesn’t really press Kurt on the issue of Kurt doing what many married men do when they become rich and famous: They divorce their wife (usually the spouse who was with him before he became rich and famous) for a younger woman to have more of a celebrity lifestyle. This type of divorce is often a sign of a mid-life crisis.

Several people in the documentary say that’s what happened when Kurt began an extramarital affair with photographer Jill Krementz, whom he eventually married in 1979. Kurt and Jill lived in New York City until his death. Kurt’s adult children say that when he divorced their mother Jane, it was devastating to the family, but that Jane (who eventually remarried, to author Adam Yarmolinsky) refused to be bitter about the divorce, and remained friendly with Kurt until her death in 1986.

Kurt’s widow was not interviewed for this documentary. However, his son Mark has this to say about the affect that Kurt’s celebrity status might have had on decisions that Kurt made: “I think fame is a horrible, destructive thing to do to people.” Some people in the documentary also hint that Kurt’s second marriage was very unhappy in the final years of his life, but this documentary’s filmmakers chose not to go into further details.

Instead, Weide talks about his own marriage to his wife, actress Linda Bates, whom he met in 1994. Weide says that Kurt was always interested in what was going on in Weide’s love life, and he encouraged Weide to propose to Linda when Weide was hesitant on if he should take the relationship to the marriage level. In the documentary, Weide also shows the wedding gift he got from Kurt: two Victorian candlesticks that are replicas of the same candlesticks that Kurt gave as wedding gifts to his own children. And there’s a segment toward the end of the documentary about Linda’s battle with progressive supranuclear palsy.

Some viewers might be turned off by so much of Weide’s personal life being put in a documentary about Kurt Vonnegut. However, it serves as an example of how difficult it can be for documentarians to remain objective when they become close friends with a person who’s the focus of their documentary. Their lives become intertwined with the documentary subject’s, and it’s hard to separate the two. At least Weide admits this bias up front.

One of the best scenes in the documentary is when Kurt (who graduated from high school in 1940) goes to his 60th class reunion in 2000. He talks about World War II to a man who was a former classmate and who lost one of his eyes in combat during the war. In true Kurt Vonnegut fashion, he asks the man: “Have you considered suing the government?” The man says no.

Because the documentary has a lot of previously released footage that was filmed decades ago, some of it looks very dated, including most of the interview footage with Kurt’s children. One of the Vonnegut admirers who’s interviewed is TV news journalist Morley Safer, who died in 2016. And the types of people who are interviewed aren’t very diverse. Even though the documentary mentions that Kurt got backlash, starting in the late 1970s, for having declining creativity in his later works, the documentary doesn’t interview anyone with these criticisms.

Aside from family members and biographers, most of the people interviewed in the documentary are his friends from the publishing world, such as book publisher Dan Simon; writer Sidney Offit; In These Times magazine editor Joe Bleifuss; author Dan Wakefield; and author John Irving, who was one of Kurt’s students when Kurt was a writing professor at the University of Iowa. Other people interviewed are self-professed Vonnegut fans, such as actor Sam Waterston and book critic Dave Ulin.

Several of Kurt’s novels were made into movies, but they don’t get nearly as much screen time in the documentary as “Mother Night,” the ill-fated flop that Weide was involved in making. It’s an example of how Weide inserts himself a little too much in “Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time.” There’s some footage of Kurt on the “Mother Night” film set, but it would’ve been better to get Kurt’s candid thoughts on his more high-profile novels that were made into movies.

Fortunately, Kurt Vonnegut had such a larger-than-life personality, it overshadows any ego-driven decisions made by the documentary’s director. Even if people watching this documentary never read any Kurt Vonnegut books, they will get a very good sense of who he was as a person. It’s by no means a whitewash of his life, but you get the feeling that some aspects of his life got the “glossed-over” treatment in this movie.

In his speeches and interviews, Kurt Vonnegut often talked about how the world is full of lonely people. He would quip: “My advice: Find an extended family.” Through Weide’s very personal lens, this documentary gives viewers an idea of what it was like to be part of Vonnegut’s extended family.

IFC Films released “Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital adn VOD on November 19, 2021.

Review: ‘The Many Saints of Newark,’ starring Alessandro Nivola, Leslie Odom Jr., Jon Bernthal, Corey Stoll, Michael Gandolfini, Ray Liotta and Vera Farmiga

January 8, 2022

by Carla Hay

Pictured clockwise, from left to right: Corey Stoll, Joey Diaz, Vera Farmiga, Jon Bernthal, Michael Gandolfini, Gabriella Piazza, Alessandro Nivola and an unidentified actress in “The Many Saints of Newark” (Photo by Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros. Pictures)

“The Many Saints of Newark”

Directed by Alan Taylor

Culture Representation: Taking place from 1967 to 1972, in New Jersey and New York, the mobster drama film “The Many Saints of Newark” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class involved in mafia activities.

Culture Clash: Members of the Moltisanti and Soprano families of “The Sopranos” TV series rise through the ranks of the Italian American mafia in New Jersey while having conflicts with each other, as an underage Tony Soprano is groomed to learn the family’s crime business. 

Culture Audience: “The Many Saints of Newark” will appeal primarily to fans of “The Sopranos” and predictable mobster movies with good acting.

Leslie Odom Jr. and Alessandro Nivolo in “The Many Saints of Newark” (Photo by Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros. Pictures)

As a movie prequel to “The Sopranos” series, “The Many Saints of Newark” disappoints by not making Tony Soprano the main character. However, the cast members are so talented, they elevate this typical mobster drama. You don’t have to be familiar with “The Sopranos” to understand “The Many Saints of Newark,” although the movie is more enjoyable to watch for anyone who has a basic level of knowledge about “The Sopranos,” which won 21 Primetime Emmy Awards during its 1999 to 2007 run on HBO. At times, “The Many Saints of Newark” looks more like it’s trying to be a Martin Scorsese mafia film than a “Sopranos” prequel.

Directed by Alan Taylor and written by “The Sopranos” showrunner David Chase and Lawrence Konner, “The Many Saints of Newark” opens with a scene of a graveyard that shows the gravestone of Christopher Moltisanti, Tony Soprano’s troubled protégé, whom Tony killed in Season 6 of the series. Christopher (voiced by Michael Imperioli) is briefly a “voice from the dead” narrator to explain to viewers that this story will go back in time (from 1967 to 1972), to show how Christopher’s father Dickie Moltisanti (played by Alessandro Nivola) became a mafia mentor to Tony.

It’s not the ghost of Christopher who really haunts “The Saints of Newark.” It’s the ghost of James Gandolfini, the actor who made Tony Soprano an iconic character in “The Sopranos.” Gandolfini died in 2013, at the age of 51. Any TV show or movie that’s about “The Sopranos” saga has a huge void to fill without Gandolfini playing the role of the adult Tony Soprano. It’s a void that really can’t be filled, but “The Many Saints of Newark” makes an attempt to create another “larger than life” mafia character for “The Sopranos” saga, but it’s extremely difficult for any “Sopranos” character to overshadow Tony and his legacy.

“The Many Saints of Newark” is about Dickie (Tony’s first mentor) more than anyone else. The movie reveals the family tree in bits and pieces for any viewer who doesn’t know the family background. Dickie’s father is Aldo “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti (played by Ray Liotta), who has an identical twin brother named Salvatore “Sally” Moltisanti (also played by Liotta), who is in prison for murder. Dickie is a cousin of Carmela De Angelis (played by Lauren DiMario), Tony’s high-school sweetheart who would later become his wife. Even though Dickie is not related to the Sopranos by blood, he becomes so close to Tony, Dickie is eventually referred to as Tony’s “uncle.”

Tony’s parents are Giovanni Francis “Johnny Boy” Soprano (played by Jon Bernthal) and Livia Soprano (played by Vera Farmiga), who have very different personalities. Johnny is gregarious and fun-loving, while Livia is uptight and judgmental. During the five years that this movie takes place, Tony is seen when he’s 11 years old (played by William Ludwig) and when he’s 16 years old (played by Michael Gandofini, the real-life son of James Gandolfini).

Tony, his parents and his two younger sisters live in the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey. Tony’s sisters Janice and Barbara are doted on by their parents, while Tony feels negelcted in comparison. (Mattea Conforti portrays Janice as a child, Alexandra Intrator portrays Janice as teenager, and Lexie Foley portrays Barbara as a child.)

A family party celebrating Janice’s confirmation in the Catholic religion shows how much Tony feels like an ignored outsider in his own family. Dickie is one of the people who’s a regular at the Soprano family gatherings because members of the Soprano family and the Moltiscanti family work for the DiMeo crime family that rules this part of New Jersey. It’s at Janice’s confirmation party that Tony sees his father Johnny and Dickie talking about some mafia business. Tony is intrigued.

Tony is intelligent, but his academic grades don’t reflect that intelligence because Tony doesn’t really like school. It’s the first sign that he’s not comfortable with authority figures or following rules. Livia is overly critical of Tony and thinks he’s not as smart as Tony actually is. At one point, Tony’s teacher Mrs. Jarecki (played by Talia Balsam) tells Livia that Tony is intelligent and has leadership potential. Livia’s reaction is to say that there’s a difference between being smart and being a smart aleck.

Johnny’s older brother Corrado John “Junior” Soprano Jr. (played by Corey Stoll) is more stoic and serious-minded than Johnny. (Dominic Chianese played Junior in “The Sopranos” TV series.) Johnny and Junior eventually have a rivalry over who will rise the highest in the DiMeo crime family. But when this story takes place, Dickie’s father Hollywood Dick has more seniority than Junior and Johnny.

Much of the family drama in “The Saints of Newark” is about the tensions between Dickie and his father. Hollywood Dick abused his first wife (Dickie’s mother), who is now deceased. It’s implied that she was killed by her husband, who got away with the crime. Dickie’s father was abusive to him too when Dickie was a child. Dickie’s childhood is not shown in flashbacks, but it’s described in conversations. As an adult, Dickie has a love/hate relationship with his father.

In 1967, Hollywood Dick arrives back in Newark from a trip to Italy and has someone with him: a much-younger Italian woman named Giuseppina (played by Michela De Rossi), whom Hollywood Dick impulsively married in Italy. Giuseppina, who is described as a beauty queen, barely knows English and is young enough to be her new husband’s daughter. She’s really a trophy wife who doesn’t hide the fact that she married Hollywood Dick so that she could live in America as the wife of a man who can take care of her financial needs.

Hollywood Dick introduces Giuseppina to Dickie for the first time after she has already become Hollywood Dick’s wife. Dickie and his wife Joanna (played by Gabriella Piazza) eventually become parents to Christopher, their first child. Even though Dickie and Giuseppina are married to other people, it doesn’t take long for Giuseppina and Dickie to start looking at each other lustfully. Their feelings are also accelerated when Dickie finds out that his father is abusing Giuseppina. Dickie feels very protective of her, and he wants to help Giuseppina in her dream to own her own hair salon.

Meanwhile, Dickie is in regular contact with some of the African Americans who are part of the criminal underground in Newark. Harold McBrayer (played by Leslie Odom Jr.) collects bets for the mafia. In an early scene in the movie, Harold is shown beating up Leon Overall (played by Mason Bleu), the leader of an African American gang called the Saints, because Leon is suspected of stealing from Harold.

“The Many Saints of Newark” makes some attempt to be more racially diverse than “The Sopranos” by having a subplot about how Harold’s relationship with Dickie changes over time. The movie also has scenes depicting racial tensions, such as the Newark race riots and what happens when Harold’s relationship with Dickie is tested for another reason. But because the African American people in this movie are supporting characters, issues of racism are not at the forefront of this story.

And where is Tony Soprano during all of Dickie’s family drama? The movie trailers for “The Many Saints of Newark” make it look like the teenage Tony Soprano will be in nearly all of the film. He’s not. The teenage Tony Soprano doesn’t appear until 51 minutes into this two-hour movie.

Tony is a rebellious teen who needs a father figure more than ever when his father Johnny is arrested and sent to prison for assault with a deadly weapon. The arrest takes place in front of Tony and Janice. During Johnny’s incarceration, Dickie becomes even more of an influence on Tony.

Viewers who are looking for more insignt into Tony and Carmela’s teenage relationship won’t really get it in “The Many Saints of Newark.” There’s a scene where Tony and a few friends show off to Carmela by stealing an ice cream truck and giving away free ice cream to people in the neighborhood during this theft. At this point, Tony and Carmela aren’t officially a couple. He’s showing a romantic interest in her, but she’s not really all that impressed with him.

“The Many Saints of Newark” gives more background information about Tony’s rocky relationship with his mother Livia. There’s a minor subplot about Livia being in therapy (it’s implied that she might have bipolar disorder), she’s prescribed Elavil, and Tony wants some of the Elavil too. The only point to this subplot is that it’s a foreshadowing nod to a well-known “Sopranos” story arc about an adult Tony being in psychiatric therapy. Tony’s sessions with his therapist Dr. Melfi (played by Lorraine Bracco) were among the most-praised aspects of the TV series.

In addition to Tony and his sisters, “The Many Saints of Newark” has the younger versions of some other “Sopranos” characters, but they aren’t given much to do in this movie. John Magaro portrays a younger Silvio Dante, who was played by Steven Van Zandt in the TV series. Billy Magnussen depicts Paulie Walnuts, a role played by Tony Serico in the TV series. Samson Moeakiola is in the role of Pussy Bonpensiero, who was played by Vincent Pastore in the TV series.

However much “The Many Saints of Newark” might have been marketed as a Tony Soprano origin story, this movie is really a Dickie Moltisanti story, with Tony as a supporting character. The movie’s tagline is “Who Made Tony Soprano?,” but it still seems like a “bait and switch” marketing ploy. Throughout much of the movie, viewers might be asking instead, “Where is Tony Soprano?”

Fortunately, the performances by all of the movie’s cast members (especially Nivolo, Liotta, Odom and Farmiga) maintain a level of interest, along with the suspenseful aspects of the story. However, people who’ve seen enough American mafia movies will find a lot of familiar tropes in “The Many Saints of Newark.” Taylor doesn’t do anything spectacular with the movie’s direction. Chase and Konner approached the screenplay as if delving into Tony Soprano’s underage youth ultimately wouldn’t work as the central focus of a movie that showcases very adult crimes.

“The Saints of Newark” is not a bad movie, but it’s not a great one either, considering the high bar set by “The Sopranos.” The movie’s technical aspects, including the cinematography and production design, are perfectly adequate, but everything about “The Many Saints of Newark” looks like a made-for-TV movie, not a big event movie that was made for a theatrical release. As long as viewers know in advance that Tony Soprano is not the central character of “The Many Saints of Newark,” they have a better chance of enjoying this watchable but not essential entry in “The Sopranos” saga.

Warner Bros. Pictures released “The Many Saints of Newark” in U.S. cinemas and on HBO Max on October 1, 2021.

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