Month: October 2020

Darren Star can, by many standards, be considered the king of primetime soap-opera land. Of course, Aaron Spelling ran a production empire for decades alongside (and in conjunction with) Star, but Star’s proven that his magic touch knows few bounds as the creator and harnesser of zeitgeists with Beverly HIlls, 90210 and its spinoff, Melrose Place. Both shows ruled FOX for years and eventually inspired reboots, also involving Star, but he didn’t limit himself to drama. He comedically rode HBO’s first wave of original programming with Sex and the City (which still lives on through nightly E! syndication and HBO Max replays), and he wasn’t done yet.

Sprinkle in several seasons of TV Land’s Younger, and Star’s now firmly entrenched with not only Gen X and also Gen Z but those who land in between. He’s now advancing onto Netflix with his first streaming-platform show, Emily In Paris, which arrives this Friday. The series, starring Lily Collins, does in fact see its protagonist transplant to France, where she enjoys a much cheerier turn of events than Carrie Bradshaw’s disappointment in the City of Lights. Yet there’s more beneath the surface because this show is full of heart and humor, and it provides a respite from our current situation.

Yes, Emily In Paris wasn’t intended to provide pandemic escapism, but it sure gets that job done. For those of us who are sleeplessly dream-browsing travel websites at 1:00 AM, this show will hit the spot while also featuring an international cast who delivers punch lines and bittersweet lessons. Wanderlust and literal lust combine in this series, and Emily In Paris turns into a breezy, stress-free watch. Star was gracious enough to tell us how this show came to Netflix, and how he managed to captivate while steering clear of his previous brand of pretty-people-behaving-badly drama.

I’m delighted to see that Emily’s experience in Paris is very different than that of Carrie Bradshaw.

Oh yeah. Well, it’s two different shows, and two different people.

So, how did this show land at Netflix? That wasn’t the original plan.

Originally, it was based at Paramount Network, and after it was completed, we talked about why Netflix just might be a better fit for this series.

This does seems like an impossible fit for Paramount Network, which is known as Yellowstone territory.

Right, that’s exactly what I think of, too. They’re incredibly successful with Yellowstone. In light of that, I really felt that Netflix would work better for Emily because this show has such international appeal. Not only that, but the opportunity to have a live premiere in over 190 countries simultaneously was really fantastic and tempting.

You’re known for shows with longevity, going up to 10 consecutive seasons, with loads of episodes per season. How did you downshift with episode quantity?

Sex and the City was originally twelve episodes a season, then eighteen episodes per season, so coming from doing 34 hours of Melrose Place per season to Sex and the City, I loved it. I really felt like it gave me so much time to focus on scripts to kind-of gel it. I really enjoyed fewer episodes in the seasons, and that’s the case with this new show [which has 10 episodes per season].

This show’s something different than what people expect from you. And you like mixing it up, even avoiding some spinoffs, despite the success of Melrose Place. You said no to Models Inc. back in the day.

Yes, that one was one spinoff too many. Also, like in the case of Models Inc., it was the network’s idea. It wasn’t my idea, so it wasn’t a show that I felt connected to. Whereas Melrose Place was in many ways inspired by my own experiences of being in my 20s in an apartment building with a courtyard and a pool. Not unlike Melrose Place, everybody who lived there was in their 20s, straight out of college, and I understood what that show was, but when the idea of Models Inc. was presented, I thought it didn’t feel like a show that I was that interested in.

Your instincts were correct. It only lasted one season and ended on a cliffhanger. Now I’ll never know who the sniper killed at the altar.

Oh nooooo. [Laughs] And I wasn’t involved, so I don’t know either.

Emily In Paris also has a cliffhanger. It’s not literally explosive like Melrose Place, but you’re still dangling those carrots.

Right. There are definitely ideas at work for where we can go. I like the leave the door open to different complications for the characters, which I think we did at the end of this Emily In Paris season. There’s lots of places we can go.

And there are a lot of secret weapons in the cast, like Ashley Park and Kate Walsh.

Oh, thank you. Yeah, I really do think that there’s so much potential there and hope we can explore it with future seasons.

I keep saying that this show tastes “like a sugar cookie.” It could have gone sideways, easily. How did you bypass the ugly American stereotype with Emily?

Well, I wanted to create a character who was career-driven and self-confident but maybe overly self-confident, who had not really traveled overseas and was going to Paris for a career opportunity, not really because she was so excited to see Paris. Her life was really well mapped out for her in Chicago, so I think she comes in with a sense of naiveté, but she’s maybe a little too overenthusiastic, with a real sense of purpose and drive.

You don’t have to worry too much about spoilers with Netflix, but when you planned this with Paramount Network, was it going to be weekly?

Yes, it would have been weekly. I think I always think about an episodic format like we’re going weekly. You always wanna have that drive and keep the audience tuning in. The challenge is there when it’s a weekly series because it’s not necessarily going into the next show. You really have to sort-of give the audience something to wanna come back for. It certainly also suits the streaming mindset, but even when you do a show on a network now, and even cable, you should work around the idea and imagine that a lot of people will be finding the show on a streaming service and seeing the episodes in season-long chunks.

So, I’m talking to the guy who pitched the scene in Melrose Place where Kimberly whipped off her wig to reveal a surprise skull scar. How do you tone that tendency down but still keep people coming back for more episodes? This show’s addictive once you start watching.

I’m glad to hear you think that! I just focused here on becoming emotionally involved with the characters and not being as dramatic in Melrose Place. In this case, you know, just being involved in Emily’s journey and finding a character that you wanna stay with and find out what’s next.

In closing, if you could have Emily be best friends with any of your previous characters, who would it be?

Hmmmmm. I think she’d really enjoy hanging out with Carrie Bradshaw. I think Lily sort-of discussed with me that Emily was probably a fan of Sex and the City.

She certainly seems to have learned some of that show’s lessons.

For sure, she did. And I think Emily would love to step into that world.

Netflix’s ‘Emily In Paris’ streams on October 2.

Though Week 4 of the NFL season will not feature 16 games as previously scheduled, there is still room for intrigue on what is essentially a full slate of contests. To that end, that means opportunity for handicapping interest and, in this space, the 2020 season has been at least relatively kind through three weeks. That extends to a winning card in Week 3 but, before we get to the Week 4 agenda, let’s take a moment to reflect on where we’ve been.

• Week 3: 3-2
• 2020 Season: 10-5

Come get these winners.

Washington Football Team (+14) over Baltimore Ravens

We may be jumping in front of the wrong train here, but Washington is getting two full touchdowns… at home. I know home-field isn’t what it used to be in this strange season, but the narrative is out of control. Baltimore is significantly better than Washington and they should win comfortably. We still can’t ignore the principles that got us here, and that involves taking a two-touchdown NFL underdog when the opportunity presents itself.

New York Giants (+13) over Los Angeles Rams

I don’t know what to even say about this, other than we are playing the number, not the team. The Giants are bad. The Rams are probably pretty good, if not better than that. This is still an example of the line getting away from where it should be, especially with some built-in overreaction to the disastrous performance from New York last week. The line should be 9 or 10. We’ll take the 13.

Las Vegas Raiders (+3.5) over Buffalo Bills

Home underdogs forever. The Bills are riding high after avoiding the blown lead from hell last week, and now they have to go to the Pacific Time Zone to face a solid Raiders team. Las Vegas led us to a win in a similar spot against New Orleans, and we’re going to back to the well with the hook to boot.

Philadelphia Eagles (+7) over San Francisco 49ers

The Eagles have disappointed everyone, including us, this season, and that helps to explain this point spread. Still, it seems a little bit aggressive to have this incredibly banged-up 49ers team laying a full touchdown against a squad with talent like the Eagles have. Carson Wentz might be bad, Philly has documented flaws and this might bite us, but give me the dog on Sunday night.

Atlanta Falcons (+7) over Green Bay Packers

Part of our brand in this space is giving out picks that the public hates. This pick is testing that limit. The Falcons might be un-bettable after the last two weeks, imploding in historic fashion on the way to epic losses. However, this line is just a touch too high according to basically any metric or power rating and the entire world will be on the favorite in prime time on Monday. Atlanta might lose and, frankly, they should be the underdog in this game, but the full seven is enough for me. Prayers appreciated.

You’re about to see a mountain of Halloween-related content pouring onto the streaming sites. That’s a great thing, obviously, since staying inside and binging is a lot safer than going to any holiday gatherings, but whittling down all the options isn’t so simple. Fortunately, Hulu’s Monsterland handily earns a place in the spooky-priority queue while diving into an episodic-anthology structure, which is all the rage again with CBS All Access’ Twilight Zone revival and Shudder’s successful Creepshow. That’s more intense than Hulu’s seasonal-anthology horror show, Castle Rock, since each Monsterland episode has a fresh cast and must accelerate tension within a new story, and so on. Well, the show does a fine job of executing scares with at least half of these attempts.

This might not sound like an entirely positive review so far, but I believe that, overall, Monsterland is worth a binge. It’s a hell of a challenge to pull off eight stellar episodes with eight different directing personalities, even if creator Mary Laws also penned several of the screenplays. What I really think is happening is that each of these episodes will appeal to many audience members, but by design, not all of them will appeal to all horror lovers. Those fans can be pretty picky, after all. Some viewers prefer less shock and more suspense, some dig gore, and then there are the fans of a slow burn, which is almost impossible to pull off while packaging a story in an hour-long format. The good news is that the stories are inspired by the best-selling short-story collection, North-American Lake Monsters, which embraced the something-for-everyone approach.

Describing the set-up is simple enough. Each episode dives into a penny-dreadful (emphasis on the dread)-style tale that layers on complex manifestations of monsters that source from human shortcomings. Stories get named after the story’s setting, and in particular, the New Orleans and NYC-set episodes integrate the local architecture, sights, and sounds. That’s especially the case with the NOLA episode, which stars Nicole Beharie (Sleepy Hollow) and will not only rattle your eardrums but your soul.

There are a lot of familiar faces, like Kelly Marie Tran (The Last Jedi), who stars in the “Iron River, MI” episode, where she plays a neglected daughter who forges a new life (and identity) for herself that’s eerily reminiscent of a dead frenemy. And the below creature (I’ll refrain from naming the episode to avoid spoiling) is portrayed by an actress from a wildly popular, long-running series from another streaming service.

The season begins strong with the “Port Fourchon, LA” episode starring Kaitlyn Dever, who’s beloved in so many projects, including Booksmart, Unbelievable, and Justified. Her performance as a down-and-out waitress with a nightmare of a daughter is one of the best of the season. Dever’s character is world-weary and has seen some sh*t, and she’s overwhelmed in the same ways that all single mothers are overwhelmed with several additional stressors at work. And Dever does more-street-smart-than-her-years better than almost any young actress out there. She’s so compelling that Mary Laws knew damn well that Dever shouldn’t be confined to only one episode. So, I’m pleased to report that she briefly surfaces in a few other places throughout the season.

I highly encourage you to have fun with the sport I just invented called “Dever-spotting.”

Many of the episodes work well. A few of them are fantastic, even. I did not love all of them, but again, that’s down to horror-taste (mine happens to sway toward psychological horror and morally ambiguous reckonings, and those boxes do get checked) more than matters of execution. There’s a major humans-are-more-monster-than-monsters-themselves component at work, and that’s a well-treaded approach, but there are enough creative twists to keep things fresh. Some stories will stick with you for awhile while inviting you to debate who the “monster” might actually be. And the show prefers to place more emphasis on how humans handle monstrous threats, rather than the actual monsters. Some of these creatures are figurative and/or symbolic, too, with pieces of puzzles sliding together in the most unsettling of ways.

Don’t get me wrong, though, there are definitely some literal monsters and other freaky creatures. If that’s your jam, no worries there. Yet even more notably, these stories are often challenging — not in a sense that they’re overly intellectual but that many of these stories arrive in a way that might make you second-guess who you’re rooting for and why. The end result with Monsterland is frequently emotional, often cerebral, and favors an insidious sense of dread over the cheap-and-easy jump-scare-type tactics. Shadows are often more frightening than what lurks within them, and if you’re a horror lover, you’ll be challenged (and possibly frustrated) but ultimately rewarded for your efforts. It’s not an easy watch, but it’s an engrossing one. I also strongly believe that everyone will be able to find something in this season of horrors that will scare the bejesus out of them and keep them up at night. Monsterland is all over the map, literally, but it’ll burrow into your American skin.

Hulu’s first ‘Monsterland’ season streams on October 2.

The Los Angeles Lakers are the front-runners to win the 2020 NBA championship, especially after a blowout Game 1 win over a Miami Heat team that is now battling significant injury concerns. While the series is far from over, many are looking big-picture for story lines and, for Lakers guard Rajon Rondo, NBA history is in the balance.

Rondo can become the first player to win a championship with both the Lakers and the Boston Celtics and, before Game 2, he was asked by NBA TV’s Jared Greenberg about that potential feat.

“It’s funny. I’ve always said that, even last year when I signed with the Lakers,” Rondo said. “I said that from the jump. I wanted to look up the history and see if any player has done it. What better way to end the back end or part of my career is winning another championship, and to do it with one of the most, if not the most, storied franchise in history. And to have the opportunity to have both the two most winning franchises is definitely something I’m looking forward to. It’s a humbling feeling to be a part of something so great, and to be blessed to play this game for so long.”

Though Rondo has transitioned into a role as a sometimes inconsistent role player in recent years, the veteran guard has been a crucial piece for the Lakers during this run. He is averaging 8.9 points, 6.9 assists, 3.7 rebounds and 1.5 steals per game and, perhaps most importantly, Rondo is knocking down 41.2 percent of his three-pointers and giving strong effort on the defensive side.

On one hand, it is perhaps more trivia than history to document the first player to win a title with a pair of franchises. On the other, the Lakers and Celtics are the clear top two when it comes to NBA franchises from a historical perspective, and it would be something quite cool to see a player win a title while operating as a key cog for both teams. Rondo is three wins away from doing just that.

It’s well-known how powerful social media can be in boosting underground songs to the forefront and making them unexpected hits. Social media app TikTok is responsible for lifting many of these songs to mainstream success. Tracks like K Camp’s “Lottery (Renegade),” Wiz Khalifa and Ty Dolla’s “Something New,” and Curtis Roach’s “Bored In The House” all received a boost through the social media app.

Reaching back to the past this time around, Fleetwood Mac is the latest act to receive a boost with their music as a viral video tripled one of the group’s hit songs’ sales as well as nearly doubling its streams.

The viral success comes from a TikTok user under the name of @420doggface208, who’s real name is Nathan Apodaca. The video depicts a man in a grey hoodie breezily skateboarding around his city as Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 hit song, “Dreams,” plays in the background while he drinks a bottle of Ocean Spray. After the video was posted on September 25, the song “Dreams” picked up 2.9 million on-demand US streams and 3,000 digital download sales according to Dazed Digital. The number is a 88.7% increase in streams and a 374% increase in sales. After the video landed on Twitter, Fleetwood Mac reposted it with a simple message that read, “We love this!”

Thanking everyone for supporting and sharing his TikTok video, Apocado shared a message through his Twitter page. “So thanks for the love and support an here it is my original video same as all going around but yes thanks for the love n donations it’s very appreciated an much needed,” he said before concluding his message with “vibe on world.” This is also not the first time the song went viral on TikTok. Back in 2018, the song quickly gained popularity thanks to a dance video.

Joe Biden and Donald Trump certainly had a debate of sorts on Tuesday night, and now we know what Jim Carrey will look like when Saturday Night Live inevitably rehashes said debate on NBC. Ahead of the first episode of Season 46 of SNL, which will run new episodes until November’s presidential election, SNL teased how Jim Carrey has prepared for his Joe Biden impression, and the result is… interesting.

Rather than have someone from the SNL cast play Biden, the show has opted to hire Carey to portray the former vice president, taking the part from a string of other former show hosts like Woody Harrelson, who continued to appear in cameo roles. And the video officially gave us a look at what Carey will look like on Saturday.

Carrey, no stranger to prosthesis and other effects to morph himself into roles, somehow looks more like his role as Count Olaf in the Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events movie, though this brief 18 second clip only really shows him scowling and doesn’t feature any of the Biden mannerisms and his voice, which might further sell him in the role.

Joining Carrey in the video was Maya Rudolph, though we already know how she will look at vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, as she’s pretty consistently played her on the show since she herself was running for president. That portrayal actually won Rudolph one of two Emmy nods this year, the other coming for her spectacular voice acting on Big Mouth.

We’ll have to wait and see if Carrey earns similar praise for his role as Biden, but at least we have a few days to square with this image before we see it in motion on Saturday when Chris Rock takes the stage as the show’s first host of the new season.

After a lopsided Game 1 defeat at the hands of the Los Angeles Lakers, the Miami Heat would be seen as a sizable underdog under any circumstances in the 2020 NBA Finals. After all, the Lakers entered the best-of-seven match-up as a substantial betting favorite and, with the two best players on the floor, Los Angeles taking a 1-0 lead was always going to inspire a sharp reaction. With that as the backdrop, things got worse for Miami with the revelation that both Goran Dragic and Bam Adebayo are listed as doubtful for Game 2, and the Heat are fighting an unquestioned uphill battle as a result.

Still, the Heat do have a star-level player in Jimmy Butler and, in catching up with ESPN’s Rachel Nichols on Thursday, Butler didn’t shy away from additional responsibility, while also expressing big-time confidence.

It certainly isn’t a surprise to hear Butler say the Heat expect to win, but the gaping hole on offense is one that he is seemingly ready to fill.

“I think so,” Butler said when asked if he needs to put his fingerprints more on every possession. “I gotta be able to do more. I gotta impact the game a lot more than I ever have before. Right now, in the next four wins for us, we have to play damn near perfect basketball, but we’re going to have to impact the game in so many more ways.”

Dragic has been the team’s leading scorer throughout the playoffs, and the former All-Star seemingly rekindled his offensive game at exactly the right time. From there, Adebayo makes everything work for Miami, operating from the elbow as a tremendous passer, attacking the rim with vigor and crashing the glass in a dynamic way. As such, there is nothing that Butler can to replace all of their contributions.

However, Butler is capable of taking on a larger role and, at the risk of being reductive about the NBA process, the Heat simply aren’t likely to win if he doesn’t make a substantial offensive leap in Game 2. Butler has a documented and successful history as a No. 1 option but, for a Miami team with a diverse, egalitarian offense, he can usually save some of his individual heroics for crunch time. Butler will have the help of Tyler Hero, Duncan Robinson, Kendrick Nunn and others but, simply put, he has to carry a significant workload while his cohorts are on the sideline.

National Bourbon Heritage Month may be over, but that won’t stop us from continuing to drink and write about this once-again-booming corn-based spirit. Earlier in the week, we covered bartender-beloved young whiskeys in the 4-5 year range. Today, we turn our attention to whiskey (bourbons in particular) that have spent a little more time in the barrel.

When it comes to creating complex flavors without completely losing the dram to oakiness, 10-14 years often seems to be the bourbon sweet spot. And while 14-year-old expressions start to get pretty spendy, most 10-year-old bourbons won’t break the bank. To help us find the best decade-old bourbons on the market, we once again decided to ask the folks behind the bar. Check their answers below.

The Clover Single Barrel 10-Year-Old Tennessee Straight Bourbon Whiskey

Daniel Gamiño, assistant food and beverage manager at Banyan Tree Cabo Marques in Acapulco, Mexico

The Clover Single Barrel 10-Year-Old Tennessee Straight Bourbon Whiskey. This is a very artisanal bourbon which is like syrup in every single way. The barrels are smoked in maple sugar-infused charcoal chips before it enters the cask. This spirit is very smooth – the sweetness is indescribable, and I particularly love its dark amber color.

Widow Jane 10 Year

Kendie Williams, master mixologist at Four Seasons Resort Nevis in Charlestown, St. Kitts & Nevis

My favorite 10-year-old bourbon is Widow Jane. It has been aged for 10 years in charred American white oak barrels. This bourbon has a nice, rich, and incredibly smooth sipping experience.

Eagle Rare 10 Year

Carlos Lopez, bar manager at Stiltsville Fish Bar in Miami

Eagle Rare embraces the best maturity of the Buffalo Trace recipe. It’s aged for at least ten years and filled with the flavors of rich vanilla, sweet caramel, and toasted oak.

Bulleit 10

Jess Thorson, bartender at TORO Kitchen & Lounge in Snowmass, Colorado

Bulleit 10 year has been one of my favorites for the last couple of years. It is rare to find such a high-quality whiskey under $100. This award-winning bourbon is effortlessly smooth and carries hints of vanilla beans, caramel, and a subtle smoky finish.

Russell’s Reserve 10

Zach Wilks, bartender at Anthony’s Chophouse in Carmel, Indiana

I’m a huge fan of Russell’s Reserve 10 Year from Wild Turkey. It’s their small-batch release to honor Jimmy and Eddie. You get a ton of vanilla and caramel right up front with a great mouthfeel and just a little bit of spice.

My home bar would feel incomplete without this bottle in it.

Old Forester Birthday Bourbon

Hayden Miller, head bartender at Bodega Taqueria y Tequila in Miami

Old Forester Birthday Bourbon. It has a ten-year age statement that catches my eye. It has spice from the rye but being mostly corn, the mash bill is very drinkable.

Old Bones 10 Year Reserve

Jeremy Allen, bartender at MiniBar in Los Angeles

There’s a brand that we love called Old Bones, which does 10-year MGP’s in batches. It’s fairly smooth and has flavors like dried cherries, vanilla, and brown sugar.

Henry McKenna 10-Year-Old Bottled in Bond

Andy Printy, beverage director at Chao Baan in St. Louis

Henry McKenna 10-Year-Old Bottle in Bond is hard to beat. Its nose is sweet oak and honey. As it greets you at the door, it has a fair amount of heat and caramel that gives way to a bit more woody and strawberry notes as it invites you in.

This one has taken no time to get noticed on the market but worth the hunt.

Michter’s Ten Year Kentucky Straight Bourbon

Efren López Fernandez, bartender at Banyan Tree Mayakoba in Playe del Carmen, Mexico

Michter’s Ten Year Kentucky Straight Bourbon. It reminds me a lot of fresh corn and caramel with honey, the smoky notes seem very present. A highly sippable bourbon.

Writer’s Pick:

Basil Hayden’s 10

This high rye bourbon is a great mix of sweet and heat. It has the caramel sweetness you and vanilla essence drinkers expect from bourbon, but the high rye content gives it an added kick of peppery spice.

The most consistently compelling thing about 2067 is star Kodi Smit-McPhee’s face itself. The kid from The Road is all grown up now, with striking, deep-set blue eyes set so wide across his face that he looks a little bit like Sid the Sloth from the Ice Age movies, reimagined as a male model, with an impossibly long neck and pronounced Adam’s apple giving him a condor-like quality.

He seems futuristic or otherworldly, which fits in 2067, set in a fittingly depressing vision of the future (are non-bleak futures even possible to imagine in 2020?) in which climate change has killed all of Earth’s plants. This has lead to an oxygen shortage, and the artificial oxygen the world’s remaining humans have been forced to subsist on is causing a mystery sickness. Wow, climate change and a pandemic? What an imagination, writer/director Seth Larner! (Do you think he hired Kodi Smit-McPhee just so he wouldn’t have the goofiest sounding name on set?)

McPhee plays Ethan Whyte, who lives in future Australia, where most of the world’s remaining population has fled to escape climate catastrophe, and works as some kind of tunnel rat (a “fogger” in 2067 parlance, an occupation it never entirely explains) alongside his adopted brother, Jude (Ryan Kwanten). Outdoors, everyone wears gas mask-type breathing apparati, and desperate urchins murder each other for puffs of sweet, sweet air. Ethan has a wife named Xanthe (the words “Xanthe Smit-McPhee” echoing through my brain uninvited), played by Sana’a Shaik. For her birthday, Ethan gives her a breathing mask, a gift apparently so lavish that she feels compelled not to accept it at first. When she finally does it makes her cough up blood, almost always a harbinger of terminal illness in movies.

Whyte, who has a mysterious iron cuff attached to one wrist that he seems embarrassed of, later gets Shanghai’d by some agents and told by a corporate functionary (Deborah Mailman) that he’s been selected for a special mission. It turns out Ethan’s now deceased, absentee physicist father (Aaron Glenane) — who permanently bolted the cuff through Ethan’s wrist when he was just a boy — had been developing a time machine. They’d been able to send radio waves 400 years into the future. The waves bounced back, in the form of a cryptic message, “SEND ETHAN WHYTE.”

It turns out they have just enough juice to squirt Ethan into the future and maybe find the key to saving humanity (the future folk must surely know-how, considering they’re both alive and capable of texting), but no plan in place for how to get Ethan back once he jumps ahead. So it might be a suicide mission. Will it be worth abandoning his wife in order to potentially save her, humanity, and the rest of this movie?? I’ll let you guess how that one plays out.

It’s an intriguing setup, and 2067 has the world-building and production design of a much more expensive movie. It seems to have all its Macguffins in the right places, and yet, the writing is so vague and the characters’ motivations so murky that the actors end up flailing, trying desperately to breathe life into lines like telling Ethan has to “have faith” for the umpteenth time. Ethan’s father (via flashback) also compares people to the stars in the sky, leading to an eventual explanation that does little to justify the metaphor. Music swells and characters scream at each other (Smit-McPhee often in a feline strangle) but it’s hard to tell what exactly they’re so upset about. The conflict seems imposed. 2067 is an epic score in search of epic action at times.

Ethan’s buddy Jude seems like he might be evil, yet the actual words he says are those of a caring guy (maybe it’s the American accent). Even worse, Jude and anyone who knows Ethan as more than an acquaintance have a terrible habit of calling him “Ethie.” Between the constant repetition of “Ethie” and “Xanthe” I was worried my brain might be getting a lisp. Am I hearing this right or do I have a hearing impedimenthie?

In the end, the timeliness of 2067’s premise is matched only by the clunkiness of its execution. It zooms straight from a convoluted conflict to an ending so headslappingly stupid that the characters in the movie actually call it “the deus ex machina.” Even that doesn’t quite do it justice. I suppose I could just tell you, but that would ruin the suspense.

‘2067’ opens October 2nd in theaters and via VOD. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Earlier this year, Jorja Smith celebrated the two-year anniversary of her debut album, Lost & Found, a project that impressed many and left no doubt that the England-born singer would have a promising career. Since the album, Jorja has kept things rather quiet, however, sharing just a few singles.

Hopefully set on ramping things up, however, she returns alongside Popcaan with a new single, “Come Over.” The song presents herself as the lone fighter in a crumbling relationship, unsure if her partner seeks to continue their love as much as she does. Paired with a matching animated video, Jorja and her love both wonder when the other will reach out before they accidentally run into each other and confirm that they want the relationship to continue.

“Come Over” arrives after Jorja shared her “By Any Means” single at the end of July. The song, which will appear on Roc Nation’s upcoming Reprise compilation album, found Jorja speaking on many of the pains that sparked today’s Black Lives Matter movement. Paired with a video, the visual shows some of the people of color faces that live in her hometown. Prior to that Jorja delivered a smooth cover of a jazz track for a compilation done by renowned label Blue Note Records.

Listen to “Come Over” in the video above.

Popcaan is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.