You are hereby invited to The Mustache Party đ
Sorry to inform you, there will NOT be dancing
In This Weekâs Edition: a new way to read Whatâs In Theaters +, an odd Disney promo, muuuurder! and a bunch of new trailers with terribly inaccurate descriptions
âTime to accessorize!â
-hint: considered a terrible movie when it was released in 2004, and still considered terrible today, but like, in a fun way
So. Howâs the olâ inbox these days? A bit over full? Yeah, boy do I hear that. âŚ..? What, thatâs not an odd question. I mean I know thatâs where youâre (very likely) reading this - over 90% of all my readers consume the newsletter via email so itâs a pretty strong likelihood.
I know, it can be a little creepy for some people to know that I know that. Itâs fiiiiine, itâs not like I installed a hack that allows me to take over your phone or computer camera such that I can gaze at your beautiful face as you read, expectantly waiting for any tiny chuckle or subtle guffaw. Or did I? I didnât, itâs fine. Or am I lying?! Iâm not, I promise. But did I just cross my fingers before I typed that?!!? Donât sweat iiiiit, I donât even have fingers.
đ
Digital tracking aside, I bring this up because when I switched this publication over to Substack many months back, I never informed yâall that you could actually read it on Substack. Some of you likely know what Substack is already, and others of you may be like subba-whata? The short version is that Substack is a writing / reading platform where people send out newsletters, like mine. But itâs also a little ecosystem with a website and an app on which you can read not just my, but publications from lots of people.
Iâm not telling you because anythingâs changing or this is some sponsored post (I wish), but to let you know that you can, if you so choose, read Whatâs In Theaters + âon Substack.â Why might you want to do so? Iâll list a few reasons:
Formatting - probably the primary reason I bring all this up. Some email clients muck the look up a bit, or truncate a post (the worst), reading on Substack ensures itâll look good and that you can âinfinite scrollâ every time
Trailers - you can watch them right in the post. No getting sent off to YouTube and then having to trek back to your inbox
Interaction - like and comment on posts far more easily than having to click *wait for another app to open* and then click again
Community - instead of replying to the email (which will always be appreciated) did you know you can comment on my posts? Well you can, and if other people posted, you could comment on their post and soon enough weâd have a little WIT+ community đ
Notifications - this may actually sound like a bad thing (who needs more), but if you really wanted to know when posts dropâŚ
Discovery - I told you I wasnât pushing other newsletters, and Iâm not, but there are a lot of great ones on Substack if youâre curious
Less Distraction - Substack is focused on writing and reading. Itâs nice go to a place specifically for that sometimes
If youâre interested, you can download the app via this handy link Iâm posting below.
One more thing - based on the results of last weekâs poll, it looks like:
roughly 60% of you do NOT have a movie theater subscription
thereâs 30% of you trying to see movies on the reg
and 14% (aka two of the fourteen of who took the poll), still have no idea what they are đĽ¸
NEWSY BITS đž - media related news
âToy Storyâ-Themed Animated Simulcast Of NFL Game Set To Stream On Disney+ And ESPN+ (Full Article) - maybe the most ridiculously confusing headline to ever headline. Brief explainer: Disney is using tech to turn players into digital âtoysâ in real time such that youâll still be watching the game, itâll just be animated and in âAndyâs room.â The Toy Story part is clearly just to associate the thing w/ a recognize-able brand. I think it just makes it more confusing, but Bob Iger (head of Disney) I am not. Also, Nickelodeon has been doing something similar for a couple years, but instead of recreating the games, theyâre just overlaying stuff on top, like splashing âslimeâ after touchdowns - Deadline Hollywood
Martin Scorsese Rewrote âFlower Moonâ Because âI Was Making a Movie About All the White Guysâ and It âConcerned Meâ (Full Article) - yes, it still stars two white guys (DiCaprio and De Niro), but apparently the shifts centered it far more on the Indigenous characters than before. Feel like these are slight changes in culture that are not super massive headline worthy, but with enough instances can help change culture conceptions. Yeah, that may be a bit hyperbolic for one instance, but anecdotes can be indicative of a larger narrative - Variety
EXTRA CREDIT MOVIE(S) đ -
A Million Miles Away - the definition of earnestly heartwarming. Child of migrant farm workers has a dream to become an astronaut and go to space. Gets turned down a buncha times, finally succeeds. đ đŠđ˝âđ Not a spoiler alert cuz you know whatâs gonna happen and because itâs based on the real life of JosĂŠ HernĂĄndez, as played by the interminably like-able Michael PeĂąa. The reviews say it plays just like it sounds, a nice and tidy story of inspiration. If a bit too nice and tidy on the overall. Streaming on Amazon Prime Friday
Love at First Sight - a chance encounter at an airport which leads to a dewy flight to London?? An ill timed event which means they may never see each other again?! Yâall, these people are crazy, who would ever think that is the kinda of stuff to kick off a romantic adventure for two young, good looking people (Haley Lu Richardson from the second season of The White Lotus and Ben Hardy). Absolutely wild. Sorry, is it dripping onto your lap? The sarcasm I mean. đ But just because itâs been done before doesnât mean it can be done again, and well. Though while it has been done again, the âwellâ part is still up in the air (đ) as there are only a few reviews to go off of. Streaming on Netflix Friday
The mustache, is back. And itâs brought some new friends along. No, not like other mustaches, but that would be super fun, right? A big olâ mustache party where The Pencil is chumming it up with The Dali, debating whoâs skinnier, while The English is talking shit to The Horseshoe about how âdreadfully sillyâ they look until theyâre interrupted by The Walrus waddling over to grab some hors d'oeuvres when suddenly the needle skips on the record (Duke Silver of course) as The Toothbrush tries to tiptoe in, âgod damn it, we told you Toothbrush, youâre banned for life!â Oh man, thatâd be so funny. HahahahâŚhaâŚ.haâŚ
âŚâŚ.
*ahem* right, the movie. So as I said, the mustache is back, along with its keeper, Hercule Poirot, Mr. Muse to the famed mystery novelist Agatha Christie. While sheâs long since passed, Kenneth Branagh has decided to keep the characterâs spirit alive. And speaking of spirits *SEGUE ALERT* you might encounter some in this gothic-twinged whodunnit. Whereas the first two mysteries directed by and starring Branagh (Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile) were far more straightforward whoâs-the-killer tales, Haunting has a bit of a supernatural element.
Itâs not to say the crux of the movie isnât still who did the murdering, but itâs something that should add another wrinkle to what are considered solid, if a bit staid set of movies.
âWe trust Poirot to have an explanation for everything, but what happens when he simply does not? That's the question at the heart of the action, a ghostly war between Poirot's reliance on deduction and logic and the far more human, irrational foibles of loss, greed, obsession, and the unexplainable.â - from the Entertainment Weekly review of A Haunting in Venice
As with each new setting, there are new characters as well, most notable here is Tina Fey playing a mystery novelist who enlists Poirot to help her illuminate what she thinks are the deceptions of a self-described medium (played by Michelle Yeoh). Fey inevitably ends up as a suspect but also a sort of meta character by being a bit of a proxy for Christie herself.
Reviews are the best of the three so far, saying that the horror elements (as well as Feyâs presence which keeps things sprightly) while not actually all that scary, prevents the movie from becoming overly predictable. In tone at least, if not in the inevitable big reveal ending.
Because donât get it twisted, itâs still essentially a high-production value whodunnit where youâll see one famous person accuse a bunch of other famous people of being a killer. And turns out, one âem is.
But whoâŚ
đŚ
Out: Friday
Where: Theaters
1 hr 43 mins | PG-13 | đ : 80%
This week I present to you, entirely inaccurate movie descriptions based solely on their titles.
Killers of the Flower Moon - an epic sci-fi drama in which The Squares become stranded on a planet they (counterintuitively) dub The Flower Moon which is inhabited by The Circles where The Squares become incensed by all the free love floating in the (2/3 gravity of Earth) atmosphere and definitely not another Martin Scorsese sojourn into the dark side of humanity based on the well regarded book by David Grann.
NYAD - action comedy about the secretive Not Your Auntieâs Detective agency, NYAD for short, who solve crimes involving missing gerbils and definitely not the story of Diana Nyad on her quest to become the first person to swim the 110 miles from Cuba to Florida at age 64 in the first narrative feature directed by wife and husband duo Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo).
Quiz Lady - a quiet English drama set in the mid-70âs which follows a widow who rides the bus everyday to remember her late husband, lost in WW II, with whom she read the daily newspaper quiz and definitely not a raunchy road trip comedy starring Sandra Oh and Awkwafina as they try and figure out a way to pay for their aging motherâs gambling debts.
The Burial - a super intense horror movie where three friends are buried together six feet
deep and itâs just 82 minutes of pure darkness where all you can hear is them trying to scrape and dig themselves out into fresh air and definitely not a movie starring Jamie Foxx as a brash lawyer taking on the case of âthe little guyâ (played by Tommy Lee Jones) taking on the âthe big guy.â
The Royal Hotel - an incendiary documentary about a posh hotel loved by the British royal family for decades which exposes all the chaos wrought by money and power and definitely not an Aussie set thriller about two friends who take a job in the middle of nowhere, only to discover that no matter how far you go, creepy men will find you.
Thanksgiving - a body-swap comedy where Frank Langella (in his first role since being âcancelledâ) trades bodies with his one year old grandson on Easter and they have until Thanksgiving to figure out how to switch back where itâs mostly just 90 mins of Langella drooling and shitting himself and definitely not a slasher movie from Hostel director Eli Roth where people are murdered in brutal fashion on the glutinous holiday.
Poll note: Substack only lets you add five entries, so if youâd chose the fake Thanksgiving (cuz I would), just write it in the comments!