Films and Feelings

      I've been trying hard to find to see if I can't find a way to talk around the Scream 7 situation with all its associated turmoil. On the one hand, congrats to Neve Campbell for holding her ground until Paramount recognized her contributions to the franchise. On the other hand, it's a shame they had to drown Melissa Barrera in order to welcome her back into the fold.      But these kinds of contradictions, they follow both the slasher genre as a whole as well as this franchise specifically. I definitely have mixed feelings about the delight that comes with watching this movie in the theater as the audience all winces in unison while Ghostface delivers a particular nasty cut to a young girl who certainly did not deserve to be vivisected this way. The franchise itself has mixed feelings about the fandom it engenders, punishing the mania that springs up in the wake of humans being hacked to death--while also very much depending on it.  So it's perhap...

    There isn't a story on the books that can't somehow trace its genealogy to the works of William Shakespeare. Such is the nature of inspiration and archetype.       But the latest film from anime auteur, Mamoru Hosoda, is almost an adaptation of, rather than a homage to, Shakespeare's Hamlet , carrying over character names and even a few iconic lines.  Yet it's not what Scarlet borrows from Shakespeare that gives the story its weight, but what it adds--and I'm not just talking about the giant thunder dragon in the sky.      The Prince of Denmark in this story is reimagined as Princess Scarlet. This film sees her failing in her quest to avenge her father and being doomed to wander in some sort of desolate afterlife. Her only consolation is the idea that she might find her treacherous uncle somewhere in this wasteland and see her vengeance fulfilled in this world. But her quest sees her crossing paths with someone else, a medic from a ...