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| The Guardian - Culture: Film | | | | Rock Dog 2: Rock Around the Park review – hectic sequel with an all-over-the-place plot | | by Phil Hoad Dec 31, 2021 | | This follow-up to the 2016 flop makes a scattershot attempt at fusing celebrity satire with a riotous musical plot “Fans are fickle. You never know when taste might change. It’s a numbers game, and I’m going to play it,” says Bodi, the guitar-hero hound from the village of Snow Mountain. While Rock Dog 2 nominally denounces selling out, perhaps mindful of how the 2016 original – one of the most expensive Chinese-produced animations ever – bombed, it hectically plays the numbers game itself. Half modern entertainment-biz trawl, half nostalgic Asian rural fable, this messy sequel tries to cover both western and Chinese angles – and toss around enough scattershot energy to keep everyone happy. Bodi’s power-pop trio True Blue are the hottest new act on the block, their music radiating cyan energy waves out to their following. But they have popped up on the radar of Lang, a music-impresario sheep with a fluffy pompadour and British Invasion accent, who has multiple agendas: not just to separate Bodi from his bandmates by teaming him up with starlet Lil’ Foxy, but to shut down Rock’n’Roll Park where the city’s diehard guitar warriors keep the flame burning. Meanwhile in Snow Mountain’s Tibet-style fastness, Bodi’s family are fretting about his sudden fame – though, making a killing selling keychains to True Blue-mad locals, possibly succumbing to the mania themselves. Continue reading... | | | | | Amy Schumer: 'If you can just keep your family speaking to each other, that's a win. Sometimes it's not doable' | | by Benjamin Lee Dec 31, 2021 | | Along with her female co-stars, Schumer speaks about how making The Humans – and having a baby – helped her reassess her life. And, perhaps, a previous review written by her interviewer … ‘Talking about The Humans always becomes like a therapy session,” Beanie Feldstein says, a few minutes into a group chat about the oppressive and unsettling adaptation of Stephen Karam’s Pulitzer-nominated play about a family gathering at Thanksgiving. Karam’s haunting and quite brilliant directorial debut reimagines a quirky dysfunctional-family drama as an eerie, anxious horror movie set in the New York equivalent of a haunted house: a crumbling downtown apartment. It’s a place that forces his characters to confront the brutal realities of who they are, who they’re not and who they’re stuck with. It also forces us to do the same. Amy Schumer and Feldstein play sisters, and Jayne Houdyshell, who won a Tony for playing the role on stage, their mother. Richard Jenkins, Steven Yeun and June Squibb round out the cast. “It evokes so much emotion,” Schumer says of the film. “And it made me feel better about my own family, our trauma and struggles. If you can just keep your family speaking to each other, that’s a win. And sometimes it’s not doable.” Feldstein refers to it as a drama that “gets in your guts”, while Houdyshell agrees that “it makes you feel raw”. Continue reading... | | | | | |
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