#emmet o'cuana

[hopscotchfriday]

Your new favourite cult show - From

Bedevilled by an SEO disaster of a title - and the inevitable comparisons with the retroactively disappointing Lost - recent EPIX release From defies lowered expectations.

With slasher-smile ghouls, a mysteriously inescapable town, hints of Viking myth (those runes!) and a mesmerising central performance from Harold Perrineau, this is the latest little cult show that could. 

It’s surprising* how much coverage has zeroed in on Lost, when a more recent comparison would be Prime’s Yellowjackets. While the latter show has a more substantive cast, including a number of headline-friendly former child actors now playing middle-aged characters (saving some ‘where are they now’ features a click) and prestige glamour, From and Yellowjackets are essentially both survival horror tales with hints of occult dread to a greater or lesser extent.  

I think I’m throwing my lot in with From as it’s the scrappier contender, and bingeable in bitesize chunks. But oh - the biting in this show! Again I am reminded that fantasy horror - spectral revenants that tear unfortunate people caught outside at night to pieces - is more palatable to me, because it’s absurd, whereas a story about teenagers resorting to cannibalism to survive borders on realistic. And therefore more difficult for me to watch. 

At any rate - From is concerned with the inhabitants of a small unnamed town that is in fact an existential trap. Travellers who happen upon it are unable to leave, with the road out looping back to return them. The terror and confusion of being caught so mysteriously, we learn some recent arrivals become violent as a response, is then compounded by an onslaught of viciously cruel ghouls who attack each night. The only protection is a runic charm residents attach to the entrances to their home, a charm discovered in the surrounding forest by the guilt-wracked Sheriff Boyd (Perrineau), who has reluctantly assumed the role of town authority figure. 

The first episode opens with a family tragedy that introduces From’s audience to the brutal stakes of life in the town. Despite the strange conveniences on offer - food, electricity, and shelter are freely available to the townsfolk - monsters hunt at night and can compel people to open their doors and windows, inviting these bloodthirsty creatures inside. 

What follows is the arrival of two cars to the town, something which apparently has not happened in some time. These new arrivals kick off an escalation of violence over the course of the first season, with plenty of mysterious hints as to the nature of this trap, the monsters that attack each night, and whether there is a purpose to the seeming collecting and sacrificing of people from across the United States to this magically contained location. 

Think Brigadoon, but with monsters (or to tip the hat to the King, Jack Kirby - Brigadoom!). 

At any rate, I quickly binged season one just in time for the announcement that season 2 will be filmed soon. Despite my reservations about mystery box storytelling - I’m in for the journey. Perrineau is great, the supporting cast is wonderful (shout out to Chloe Van Landschoot, Elizabeth Saunders and David Alpay in particular), and the supernatural hijinks are chewy enough that I am intrigued to see where creator John Griffin and his writers plan to take this. 

- Emmet O’Cuana

 *Well....not that unsurprising - they share producers/directors and a star

#from #from epix #From television show #harold perrineau #eion bailey #Chloe Van Landschoot #Elizabeth Saunders #david alpay #john griffin #Horror #Television #catalina sandino moreno #Ricky He #lost #Emmet O'Cuana

[deconcomics]

This week Emmet O'Cuana talks with Neal Curtis about how Captain America has often evolved to fit the current mood of the nation, from World War II and Watergate to the War on Terror and the age of Trump! http://deconstructingcomics.com/?p=5693

#Captain America #Marvel Comics

[hopscotchfriday]

Episode 137: Boffo Oz BO part 1

In the first of our two-part chat about what movies Aussies went to the cinemas to actually watch in 2022, we talk Sonic the Hedgehog, the folly of Baz Luhrmann's Elvis, and well there's a lot of Chris Pratt chat!

Hopscotch Friday is relaunching - as a podcast. So join us, Stevie and Emmet, for a pop culture discussion of deep cuts and pillow talk.

#Hopscotch Friday #Emmet O'Cuana #Stevie O'Cuana #film #podcast #the hopscotch friday podcast #Baz Luhrmann #Elvis #Baz Luhrmann Elvis #Austin Butler #Tom Hanks #Richard Roxburgh #sonic 2 #sonic the hedgehog #James Marsden #Jim Carrey #ben schwartz #Jurassic World Dominion #Chris Pratt #bryce dallas howard #colin trevorrow #uncharted #Tom Holland #mark wahlberg #Antonio Banderas

[hopscotchfriday]

Episode 135: Lightyear

This episode we have a chat about Lightyear: the controversy and culture war nonsense, and the quiet existentialism of Buzz's mission to return home. 

Hopscotch Friday is relaunching - as a podcast. So join us, Stevie and Emmet, for a pop culture discussion of deep cuts and pillow talk.

#Hopscotch Friday #Emmet O'Cuana #Stevie O'Cuana #film #podcast #the hopscotch friday podcast #Pixar #Chris Evans #Taika Waititi #Keke Palmer #Disney #Lightyear #Buzz Lightyear #Toy Story #angus maclane

[hopscotchfriday]

Episode 132: Our Flag Means Death

The loosely adapted tale of Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet - Our Flag Means Death - has proven to be a fan favourite. Stevie and Emmet discuss - also a cat gets involved. 

  Notes:

As Emmet mentions, The Dollop and Last Podcast On The Left have also covered this material. 

  Hopscotch Friday is relaunching - as a podcast. So join us, Stevie and Emmet, for a pop culture discussion of deep cuts and pillow talk.

#Hopscotch Friday #Emmet O'Cuana #Stevie O'Cuana #podcast #the hopscotch friday podcast #television #taika waititi #Rhys Darby #Claudia O'Doherty #Our Flag Means Death #hbo series #The Dollop #Last Podcast on the Left #Blackbeard #Stede Bonnet

[hopscotchfriday]

Episode 131: Superstore

This episode is not a review of Matt Reeves's The Batman. It's a review of season 1 to 6 of Superstore on NBC.

....although you could be fooled! 

Stevie and Emmet discuss how this workplace comedy used the format to raise issues with unionism, corporate America - and the COVID pandemic. How successful is Justin Spitzer's show in dealing with these storylines? 

Listen on to find out! 

(also Emmet keeps talking about Epix's From!). 

Hopscotch Friday is relaunching - as a podcast. So join us, Stevie and Emmet, for a pop culture discussion of deep cuts and pillow talk.

#Hopscotch Friday #Emmet O'Cuana #Stevie O'Cuana #television #podcast #the hopscotch friday podcast #Superstore #NBC #america ferrera #colton dunn #mark mckinney #nichole sakura #Lauren Ash #Nico Santos #covid shows #unionism #Ben Feldman #Justin Spitzer

[hopscotchfriday]

Obi-Wan Kenobi

I was thinking the other day that the closest comparison for Star Wars isn't fantasy epics like Lord of the Rings, or science fiction series like Star Trek - it's Dungeons and Dragons.

(yes, I’m aware Galtar has nothing to do with Wizards of the Coast, but look at that thing - that’s a reflavoured light-sabre right?)

Part of the appeal is the structure of the universe allowing for free-form storytelling within it. And that should give licence to tell stories set around the major milestones of events like the Clone Wars, the Battle of Yavin, or Luke joining the leadership on Hoth - what other characters are inspired by the adventures of the heroes to rise up? 

Or, alternatively, what are the unintended consequences of the Death Star blowing up on characters who were raised on a planet being strip-mined for its ores, now further oppressed by the Empire with the rush to build a second Death Star. 

 It's the stories taking place elsewhere that have potential to resonant more with audiences, because we don't know if new characters will live or die, and smaller scale stakes do not mean less thrilling than a fight to save the galaxy etc. etc.

Series like The Clone Wars (both versions, although I still rate  Tartakovsky’s higher) and the Jedi: Fallen Order to a greater or lesser extent scratch this itch for smaller stories. But if we could not have a Skywalker or Kenobi (or, ugh, Palpatine) pop up with so much regularity for a while, the dual bad tastes of J.J. Abrams’s weirdly dynastic Rise film, and Disney’s corporatist recycling of market friendly stories might dissipate. 

So yeah, a little more ‘emergent storytelling’ in the D&D style for Star Wars strikes me as a good idea.  Which is to say, I watched the latest Obi-Wan Kenobi show and it was fine so far. 

Sung Kang’s casting really brought that silly Fast and Furious gag about Han Seoul-Oh full circle huh? 

- Emmet O’Cuana

#Star Wars #obi-wan kenobi #Dungeons and Dragons #Emmet O'Cuana #jedi: fallen order #genndy tartakovsky #The Clone Wars #Fast and Furious #sung kang #han seoul-oh #Sung Kang Star Wars

[hopscotchfriday]

Episode 138: Boffo Oz BO part 2

In part two of our run-down of Australian box office releases, we're up to our knees in cape-wearing vigilantes and magic folks. 

BUT - at the time of publishing, James Cameron's Avatar the Way of Water has completely reordered the list! So consider this episode a curio, a remnant before the Ego landed. Enjoy. 

Hopscotch Friday is relaunching - as a podcast. So join us, Stevie and Emmet, for a pop culture discussion of deep cuts and pillow talk.

#Hopscotch Friday #Emmet O'Cuana #Stevie O'Cuana #Pop culture #film #comics #books #television #podcast #the hopscotch friday podcast

[hopscotchfriday]

Episode 136: In Search of Darkness part III with David Weiner

Director David Weiner is back to toll the bells for the end of the In Search of Darkness part III campaign over on In Search of Darkness Part III - Ends Midnight Halloween! – CreatorVC Studios Inc (80shorrordoc.com)

Listeners have until Halloween midnight to get their order in for a copy of the film - as well as a chance to get your name in the credits (and some juicy sounding merch as well. 

Emmet asks David Weiner about our nostalgia for horror movies, the thrill of discovering gross out catharsis in a VHS case hidden away at the back of a video store - and recent resurrected iconic horror franchises such as Hellraiser and Halloween.

Hopscotch Friday is relaunching - as a podcast. So join us, Stevie and Emmet, for a pop culture discussion of deep cuts and pillow talk.

#Hopscotch Friday #Emmet O'Cuana #Stevie O'Cuana #film #podcast #the hopscotch friday podcast #david weiner #In Search of Darkness part III #in search of darkness #In Search of Tomorrow #horror #horror cinema #horror movies #hellraiser #Halloween Ends #Night of the Comet #The Empty Man

[hopscotchfriday]

Emmet has a wee story* in this collection from The BeBop which is now being crowdfunded on Kickstarter. There’s 20 days to go until it meets its target, so pop on over if you can!

*How To Win A Raid with Jeferson Sadzinski and Cardinal Rae delivering art and letters. 

#emmet o'cuana #Jeferson Sadzinski #Cardinal Rae #Comics #Crowdfunding #Kickstarter #kickstarter comics #The BeBop

[hopscotchfriday]

Episode 134: Jurassic World Dominion

The dinos are back - but so are the old crew.  And everyone looks just so tired! 

Hopscotch Friday is relaunching - as a podcast. So join us, Stevie and Emmet, for a pop culture discussion of deep cuts and pillow talk.

#Hopscotch Friday #Emmet O'Cuana #Stevie O'Cuana #Pop culture #film #podcast #the hopscotch friday podcast #Jurassic World #Jurassic World Dominion #Colin Trevorrow #Laura Dern #Sam Neill #jeff goldblum #Chris Pratt #bryce dallas howard #mamoudou athie #dinosaurs

[hopscotchfriday]

Episode 133: Stranger Things season 4

Phew! Finally, we get round to discussing all things Stranger Things season 4. From the Eddie of it all, to the mushrooming cast and the changes to the kinds of horror being depicted onscreen, we dig in. 

Hopscotch Friday is relaunching - as a podcast. So join us, Stevie and Emmet, for a pop culture discussion of deep cuts and pillow talk.

#Hopscotch Friday #Emmet O'Cuana #Stevie O'Cuana #Pop culture #television #podcast #stranger things #Duffer brothers #eddie stranger things #If Steve dies we riot #Netflix #Vecna

[hopscotchfriday]

#Emmet O'Cuana #Pat O'Shea #The Hounds of the Morrigan #Aurealis #Aurealis magazine #Irish mythology #Irish literature

[hopscotchfriday]

I was featured on the U22 podcast as a James Joyce reader, discussing the Oxen of the Sun chapter of Ulysses. 

#ulysses #James Joyce #podcast #Bloomsday #Emmet O'Cuana #oxen of the sun

[hopscotchfriday]

So this weekend I learned my friend Jason Franks had killed me. Here's how it happened.

In his novel X-Dimensional Assassin Zai, the unerringly lucky contract killer Zai - he avoids directly attacking his targets, instead events somehow conspire with him to take a life - meets an Irishman named Emmet.

He's an overseas traveller, a bit pretentious, bearded and with a chip on his shoulder. I messaged Jason, is this me?

Yes came the reply. But don't get too attached to him.

And in fact at a certain point Emmet meets a "sticky" end.

It is quite odd to read about your own demise, albeit a fictionalised version of you.

But despite dying within the pages of Jason's novel, I really love this book.

It's not smart, it's clever. It parodies and pokes fun at the spy and gun for hire thriller genres in a way that draws attention to the biases baked into these traditions of populist writing, particularly around questions of race. It's political without lecturing. It's clever not smart - the intelligence is on the page, not in your ear.

And that's why I don't mind that my friend Jason Franks killed me. Read this book, it's a lot of fun https://ifwgaustralia.com/title-x-dimensional-assassin-zai-through-the-unfolded-earth/

Emmet 'not dead yet' O'Cuana

#Books #JASON Franks #Spy thriller #X-Dimensional Assassin Zai

[hopscotchfriday]

Amazon’s The Wheel of Time episodes 1 – 5

To say my feelings about Robert Jordan’s series of novels – The Wheel of Time – are conflicted is an understatement.

From the age of 12 they were a constant presence in my life until the gaps between releases started widening, as did my taste in reading. At this point my thinking surrounding The Wheel of Time changed from, this is my The Lord of the Rings methadone to, this is embarrassingly bad – the result of my haunting the popular fantasy sections of bookstores, shelves heaving with door-stopper Tolkien-knock offs.

And I did return to read the concluding entry in The Wheel of Time, titled A Memory of Light in 2013. That is a span of years reading these books that covers two decades. The sunk cost fallacy definitely applies.

Even in my review of the last book, written by author Brandon Sanderson after the passing of Robert Jordan in 2007, I noted “The Wheel of Time has long had its critics and this book will certainly do nothing to change their minds.” The flaws in the series were always apparent, I simply aged into noticing them. Having done so I felt I had to commit to finishing the books, even though I no longer enjoyed reading them.

Some would point the finger of blame at Sanderson for rushing the ending to the series – but then he reached the finish line after writing three novels wrapping up the majority of the story. A daunting task to say the least. If anything, I would criticise Sanderson for being too faithful to the stylistic tone of Jordan’s, let’s call it, sleep-inducing prose.

Enter one Rafe Judkins, the showrunner for Amazon’s fantasy genre blockbuster miniseries The Wheel of Time.

Was this property developed so Jeff Bezos’s media empire had a Game of Thrones/The Lord of the Rings title of its own? Absolutely. Happily, as an adaptation it has more in common with the latter than the aggressively trumpeted fantasy deconstruction of Benioff and Weiss.

Were George R.R. Martin’s richly grimed prose, though similarly dragging as a book series à la Jordan’s, was rendered as disturbingly titillating rape and violence for HBO viewers, Judkins has veered in the opposite direction.

Like Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings series – also due to be revisited by Amazon – this is more a spiritual adaptation. It spotlights the values of the series Judkins prefers to focus on. In interviews he has highlighted that sex will be depicted with an emphasis on pleasuring women characters. Five episodes in and we’ve already seen depictions of queerness casually introduced – Jordan acknowledged situational homosexuality among mainly the women who train in the magical university of Tar Valon, referred to in text as ‘pillow friends’, but little more. Judkins’s The Wheel of Time, like Bioware’s Dragon Age video game series, features queerness as an ordinary reality of the characters. The show’s use of violence and physical harm is brutal, but not sadistic in its depiction.

The Wheel of Time feels more like a commentary on HBO’s Game of Thrones, which is amusing as Martin was credited for undercutting the stuffy Medievalism and Tolkien-tokenism of his genre.

I should quickly digress here to note that Martin and Jordan were friends, and supported one another’s work in fantasy fiction.

I think it was a smart decision for Judkins and his writers and cast to keep established fans of the books on their toes. The emphasis on an ensemble-oriented plot is good, because it allows actors like Madeleine Madden, Daniel Henney and Zoë Robins to lift up their respective characters, excluded by the novel’s narrow assortment of point of view chapters.

Jordan’s books rest on chapter-by-chapter interior narration. Shifting the storytelling to instead lean on the relationships between the characters is a good choice. And what a cast – at the time of writing I have just watched episode 5, Blood Calls Blood. Madden and Henney in their respective scenes show incredible emotional commitment to the physical and emotional suffering of Egwene and Lan (she’s been tortured by the fascist White Cloak religious supremacists – he’s publicly grieving at a funeral). I found myself very moved by this episode and it surprised me because I am so used to cheap and cheerful fantasy or science fiction television adaptations that through a combination of fan service and nostalgia tend to get a rueful pass from me.

But this show… I like it. It has issues. Overall though I am enjoying it both as an entertainment and a commentary on the flawed source material. Jordan’s books were praised for their vaunted sexual politics, despite their boiling down to scenes with powerful women being spanked, or men yelling in frustration at their lovers (who secretly love it). Yeesh.

Here violence is instead answered by compassion and love. Maria Doyle Kennedy’s speech – oh this cast! – as Illa describing the Way of the Leaf underlines this approach. What she describes, a peaceful philosophy that in the books was ultimately a failed throwback to a misunderstood tradition of servitude, is here a richly articulated practice of non-violence. And in a time of cops beating protesters on camera without consequence, that’s a powerful moment to show onscreen. 

Sex is emotionally expressive, whether it’s Rand and Egwene unknowingly coming together as their lives move apart, or the sweet-natured thrupple of an Aes Sedai and her two Wardens. In the books sexuality is as much a matter of power and dominance as anything else – Jordan’s principal theme, if the series can be said to have one, is the idea of domination underlying all relations. The show seems to be flipping that dynamic.

In eight seasons of HBO’s Game of Thrones, I watched …maybe two episodes more than once. Those episodes were season 6’s Hold the Door, which was just heartbreaking, and the previous season’s Hardhome, a thrilling zombie adventure set during the events of the series.

Nothing else from the show ever truly grabbed my attention.

I have, to my pleasure and shame, watched all five episodes of The Wheel of Time at least two times each. It is doing something for me. And I think it’s the emotional lives of these characters that I am drawn to most. So, credit to Judkins. And Rosamund Pike. And Alexandre Willaume’s Thom Merrilin for delivering a song that neatly sums up the first prologue of Jordan’s books and made it a bop. Credit to Salli Richardson-Whitfield for her staging of the funeral sequence in Blood Calls Blood – she was in Black Dynamite you guys!

So yeah. I think I like it.

… but as a pill for the Amazon of it all, support your union, support organised labour, buy from your local bookstore!

#The Wheel of Time #Robert Jordan #rafe judkins #Amazon Wheel of Time #Alexandre Willaume #Thom Merrilin #Rosamund Pike #salli richardson-whitfield #madeleine madden #zoe robbins #Maria Doyle Kennedy #Daniel Henney #Fantasy fiction #Game of Thrones #George R.R. Martin #J.R.R. Tolkien #The Lord of the Rings #david benioff #db weiss #emmet o'cuana