Films and Feelings

     I have wondered if I was the only one who thought that "Sea of Monsters" was the weakest of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians pentalogy, but I have seen my reading echoed by other book loyalists.      This second installment is perhaps penalized partially because it marks several major junctions in the larger series. This is, for example, the part of the series where the scope of the adventure really starts to enlarge. We know going in that there's an angry, deceased titan out to destroy Olympus, and that he's amassing an army, and so we need a sense that this threat is growing stronger. But this also marks a turning point in how series author, Rick Riordan, chooses to develop his main character. And so, season 2 of the Disney+ television adaptation faces similar crossroads.     Season 3 of this show is already filming as we speak, so its immediate future is already spoken for, as far as production goes. But stylistically, this second seas...

    That which has teased studios since the freak success of La La Land and The Greatest Showman has finally come to pass: Hollywood has finally launched a successful musical. Or rather, they've launched two.     The musical is sort of like the golden idol at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark . It's valuable beyond imagination--but only if you know just how to retrieve it. There have been specific periods where the musical has yielded tremendous rewards for Hollywood, but for the greater part of the lifespan of feature-filmmaking, studios have been punished for reaching beyond their means.     Yet after ages of dormancy, t he years leading up to the Wicked movies were lined with musicals, more than we'd seen in the previous decade. A few of them were quite well crafted. Others were ... learning experiences. None really became what we'd call "mainstream."      But Wicked and Wicked: For Good have both seen rare success. I'm publishing ...

      I'm conflicted about how to approach this review. I know everyone has their own yellow brick road to the myth of The Wizard of Oz as a whole and the specific Broadway adaptation that brought us all here.   I don't want to write this only for others who are familiar with the source material.       Even so, I can't help but review this from the perspective of a fan of the Broadway show--someone who has been tracking the potential for a film adaptation since before Jon M. Chu's participation was announced for the ambitious undertaking of translating one of Broadway's most electric shows onto film. I can't help but view this from the vantage point of someone who knew just how many opportunities this had to go wrong.     And it's from that vantage point that I now profess such profound relief that the gambit paid off. We truly have the " Lord of the Rings of musicals ."  What Jon M. Chu and his team have done here with these two...

  The saga of Hollywood lives and dies on the ripples of a thousand different choices. Hundreds of movies each year from hundreds of artists serving hundreds of markets creates a complex, interconnected ecosystem that can never really be explored in its totality. Still, if there was one film, one moment, that trampolined Hollywood from one era into the next, it was in 1975 with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws .      Moviegoing had naturally been a part of the global industry since moving pictures stole everyone’s attention at the start of the century. Tentpole films were also very much a part of the program. But the treatment of movies like The Sound of Music and Ben-Hur was done with an eye for prestige, more comparable to how Oscar hopefuls handle things today.  Theaters at this time were still generally accustomed to having sporadic releases across the country over a period of several weeks. Limited roadshow releases were how you signaled that a movie’s importanc...