When it comes to her characters, Emmy nominee Jurnee Smollett is guided by truth. In this episode, the Lovecraft Country star talks about how painting in the tiny details helps her know how to live in a character, and why she doesn’t need to know what her character doesn’t know. She talks about why actors shouldn’t be afraid to speak up when they are not getting what they need, and why she needs to express herself through acting for her very survival. Plus we go off on a pretty cool Al Pacino tangent, and much more! Back To One can […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Aug 24, 2021On the relatively short list of truly great films about teenage alienation, writer-director Allan Moyle’s 1990 drama Pump Up the Volume ranks somewhere near the top, alongside earlier classics like Rebel Without a Cause and Over the Edge; yet unlike those brutally pessimistic movies, Pump Up the Volume manages to be as exhilarating as it is cynical, blending its authentic despair with an uplifting sense of liberating rebellion in a manner that compromises neither. Moyle had already directed one coming of age gem, Times Square, when he came to tell Pump Up the Volume’s story of a suburban loner (Christian […]
by Jim Hemphill on Feb 19, 2021Lovecraft Country was inspired by one of those punch-line horror conceits like “Meeting your partner’s family is scarier than a house under siege” (You’re Next). Or, “Nothing’s scarier than meeting your lover’s liberal, racist, white family”(Get Out). Lovecraft Country is a high production value literalization of the pun that H.P Lovecraft invented no horror scarier than his own racism: the invisible effects of racism manifest the series’ monsters, reflected in the actions of the show’s predatory whites. It’s also no coincidence that racism materializes in such outlandish forms that white people wouldn’t believe in them if the victims told them, […]
by A.E. Hunt on Sep 8, 2020