#2,441: Upgrade

Circle - ★★½☆☆
Not so compelling on a re-watch. Maybe what I liked best about it last time was how it stacked up against The Exam.

Moon - ★★★★☆
Quite compelling on a rewatch! Happily, I’d forgotten the finer points of this movie and was delighted by them all over again.

Upgrade -★★★½☆
This is a movie with you pick up in a video store in the 90s because of its crazy box art, constructed around a minimum of actors, a couple rad action sequences, and a bad guy with a weird moustache. It’s the kind of crazy fun action flick something like Kung Fury wishes it could be.

Also, even though this is the, like, eleventh Logan Marshall-Green movie I’ve seen, if you told me this movie starred Tom Hardy I would believe you.

#2,440: Deadpool 2

Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond - ★★☆☆☆
The studio didn’t want a movie like this to come out to promote Man on the Moon because they didn’t want their star to seem like a jackass. Not out of any particular feeling for Jim Carrey, but in order to protect their bottom line. In the years since, the film company has either managed to grow as a person, or they've found a way to reboot a movie without remaking anything.

Avengers: Infinity War - ★★★★★
Still dug it. It’s weird how the pop culture moment around this is everyone “discovering” the Harry Potter-ness of the MCU (In brief: the movies assume familiarity with the world’s biggest franchise)

I hope that the next movie won’t be about someone else wielding the gauntlet to undo everything because it's obvious, and I hope it’s not that the dusted are actually the living members of a new reality, because it seems like so many people came to that idea fairly quickly. (I do think it would have been inappropriately funny if Thanos had immediately died as part of the unlucky fifty percent.) I can accept that they might be in the soul gem, but I’d think I could be on board with the boldness of everyone just really being dead.

Deadpool 2 - ★★☆☆☆
Kind of boring. A lot of the gags felt kind of old to me. Like they should have been in a movie that came out just over two years ago. Because they were. The inconsequential X-Force was the best part. Shame they don’t do anything except make an overly long movie longer.

Better Radio Writing Submission Guidelines

Hello Friends,

We are currently hard at work on a new season of Better Radio, a scripted sketch comedy podcast by Rob Schultz and Russell Anderson, and writing submissions are now open.

What’s the show about?

In the distant future, an Archeo-Astronomer travels the stars listening to transmissions broadcast from Earth, researching where exactly things went wrong for our planet.

Each transmission (re: sketch) needs to work in audio only. This is not necessarily the same thing as having no visual component - this might be your chance to do things you could never bring to life on stage, or in video.

All scenes must necessarily take place after 1935. Anything we hear that takes place earlier or is supernatural in some way must, logically, be part of some other piece of media. (We don't need your framing device explained to the audience, but knowing that you're in fact writing a sitcom, or a monster movie, or a broadway cast recording, may unlock something for you.)

How do I submit?

Send your script to BetterRadio at NotArt.org by or before Bastille Day, 2018!

.highland documents and .PDF files are our top choices of file formats. 

Please name your file NAME-OF-SKETCH_YOUR-NAME.file

What do we like?

We strongly prefer the conceptual over the topical. Self-contained ideas over reference-fests. Parody is a coin toss.

We like character monologues that we can build into scenes with interesting sound design.

The opportunity to do a cross-over or side story featuring your existing characters from a different project is something we’re very interested in. If your script or pitch falls into this category, please do send a link to the other show.

We like scenes that happen to be set in other decades for flavor. Remember, the show is set in the distant future. It’s weird and sad if all the scenes are about the news of 2018.

Feel free to go beyond the stock 5 settings for an SNL scene. We’ve done film noir, fake commercials, radio call-in shows, game shows, press conferences, and indeed, old-time radio drama. Remember that we have all of audio-visual recording history available as a playground.

The rules

Individual writers and sketch teams are both welcome to apply. Non-exclusive submissions are okay - that scene in your drawer from six months ago is welcome as long as it’s well- suited to radio.

Time and space are finite and not all submissions will be recorded. If yours is not selected, it’s probably not personal.

If we do select your scene for recording, we offer a writing credit on our program in exchange for the non-exclusive right to produce your scene and to publish the script. (You still own your work and may use it in other ways.) We may edit your script.

We will contact writers about submissions we would like to use by or before early August, which is when recording will begin.  The new season will air in October, and be accompanied by a live taping at The Pack Theater in Hollywood on September 29.

Reference

To hear what we’ve done before, visit the show on iTunes at http://tinyurl.com/betterradio or Overcast at https://Overcast.fm/itunes320972864/better-radio or just stuff this in your podcatcher: http://feeds.feedburner.com/BetterRadio

Please direct your submissions to BetterRadio at notArt.org, and feel free to forward this to your writerly friends.

Your pals,
Rob Schultz &
Russell August Anderson

#2,438: Avengers: Infinity War

Girls Trip - ★½☆☆☆
I’m too white or too old or too not-a-movie-theater-full-of-people to appreciate this movie properly. Also, separately, in addition to that, I can’t remember the last time I was so faked out by an ending. This movie ends, and then, just, like, goes and goes and goes.

The Death of Stalin - ★★½☆☆
It’s perhaps the mark of a truly black comedy that it’s so consistently silly and yet never fun.

Avengers: Infinity War - ★★★★★
Loved it. The cast-of-thousands battle scenes stand in such contrast to the standard lasers-and-noise DC movie endings; it’s probably a testament not only to the directors ability to establish and maintain geography, but all the years of getting to know and care about the characters.

I’m so happy to have gotten my predictions wrong, because it’s way more fun to be surprised than to go ‘ah, I knew it!’ The closest that anyone I know got to the truth of things was with a guess that Thanos was the Red Skull. Wrong, but I was still happy for the guesser when we saw that red smiling face. For my part, I'd been spending my valuable time trying to convince people that Thanos would die in the first act of this movie and Iron Man, mad with power and other infinity stones, would be the real villain. That's not how it shakes out, of course, but I hope that in the back of certain minds during a certain scene, someone might have been worried that I was right!

#2,435: Love, Simon

Ready Player One - ★½☆☆☆
This is what you get when you make the whole movie out of the last act of Tomorrowland.

Credit where credit’s due, my audience loved the Shining references.

Pacific Rim: Uprising - ★★★☆☆
Pacific Rim 2 feels a bit like it maybe should have been a straight-to-video sequel, but it's fun, it knows what was good about the original (robot fights), and next to Ready Player One, it shines.

Much like the original, this movie is a thin connective web of scenes you'll skip past on netflix designed to vaguely justify a bunch of robot fights. See it if you’re into robot fights. Although, if not if you’re *too* into robot fights and going to end up complaining about something. If you're that guy, maybe give it a pass.

Love, Simon - ★★★★★
Man, this was great. We're still early enough in the year that pretty much everything that comes out is on the top ten list for the year, but for now this is topping the list.

I just like when a smaller (let's say under $200m) movie like this can come out and stand in contrast to the past few months of robot fights, and manage to do it with significantly deeper stakes and tension than something bland and abstract like the fate of the world. Best high school movie since Bad Genius, and a fun way to do a mystery.