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THE BEAR, Season 2

September 21, 2023 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

THE BEAR (FX Original exclusively on Hulu in the US, on Disney Plus in Canada) was a surprise watch for me. I honestly fell in love with it. Season 2 was just as good, though different, with a particular hour-long episode that was one of the funniest and most heartbreaking TV episodes I’ve ever watched. This. Is. Good.

In the first season, we meet Carmine, a famous chef who takes over his deceased brother’s small Chicago restaurant and all its problems. From the gritty visuals to the deep, lovable characters to the realistic dialogue to the exciting and tense focus on what happens in the kitchen when things are humming and when things crash into disaster, it fired on every cylinder for me.

At the end of that season, Carmine comes into a surprise amount of cash from his deceased brother, which promises an end to all the restaurant’s problems. Instead, Carmine invites a whole new set of problems by interpreting the gift as a sign to create the restaurant he’d always wanted to build with his brother.

At first, I was wondering at the second season’s heavy turn toward comedy and the characters’ cuteness, a common sign of a show becoming a surprise hit and possibly struggling to find its footing with a second season. The first season comes at you like it has nothing to lose, while the second starts off with an awareness it now does. Happily, it doesn’t take long for THE BEAR to shake it off and find its groove and then raise the volume past the previous season’s high of 11.

There’s a lot of focus on the secondary characters this season, which is handled beautifully. While the renovations occur–at a frantic pace to meet their financial obligations and need to reopen quickly–many of the Beef’s staff members go off to learn new skills and level up to be able to contribute to the new Bear, which will offer fine dining. These episodes are goddamn heartwarming. Everybody gets a chance to find their best selves via a sense of owning what they do, often aided with powerful guest appearances by the likes of Will Poulter and Olivia Colman. They all contribute to the season’s overall theme that self-actualization is a journey with big gains but also a significant cost.

Then there’s the family Christmas episode, and oh wow. The less said, the better. I’ve never laughed so hard watching a human train wreck in my life. The guest stars, the dialogue, the pacing, all of it is landmark TV. And it perfectly encapsulates why all the major characters in the show are the way they are and why they have the motivations they have.

Overall, THE BEAR is fantastic. Big, big recommend. It’s a show that hits big themes, feels real without ever being boring, bakes your heart in the heartwarming moments, and fries your nerves when things go wrong. Can’t wait for Season 3.

Filed Under: MEDIA YOU MIGHT LIKE, Movies & TV, The Blog

THE BEAR, Season 1

September 10, 2023 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

In THE BEAR (FX Original exclusively on Hulu in the U.S., on Disney Plus in Canada), a famous chef takes over his deceased brother’s small Chicago restaurant and all its problems. The result is one of the most affecting series I’ve ever watched.

This is a show about a new chef taking over a restaurant and trying to fix it, only to be resisted at every turn. The staff is resentful and set in its ways, the finances are a disaster, the restaurant owes money to an uncle with shady connections, and everything goes right before it all goes perfectly wrong. It’s also a show about a man trying to fix himself and understand his estranged brother and why he took his own life. In the end, he learns that maybe it’s less important to fix than to find something’s real potential.

Thematically, it’s even more than that if you want it. The joy of food and cooking, the comedy of a light moment, family, work, control, the self worth and pride of a job well done, and change, all wrapped in plenty of raw humanity.

The directing style is terrific, combining a gritty, almost cinema-verite approach with quick cutaways of images reflecting state of mind and big closeups showing urgency and emotion. In the kitchen, the pacing is particularly quick as we see the team that is a restaurant staff work together to prepare meals and react to the new boss trying to change their culture and how they work together.

When the shit hits the fan–and it does a lot in this show from interpersonal conflict to kitchen mishaps (often both at the same time)–the tension is unbelievable. Then there are plenty of moments where everything just sings, from relationships to the restaurant finding its groove. If I had to describe THE BEAR in a few words, I’d call it a story about dysfunctional family told with plenty of heart, though sometimes it feels far more like a heart attack.

Overall, I absolutely loved season 1 of this show, which in many ways felt like BOILING POINT, a great movie, stretched out in a story told with far more depth and humanity. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I got this tense while laughing this much during almost every single episode of a TV show.

Filed Under: MEDIA YOU MIGHT LIKE, Movies & TV, The Blog

Cover Reveal for HOW TO MAKE A HORROR MOVIE AND SURVIVE

September 7, 2023 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

Cover reveal for HOW TO MAKE A HORROR MOVIE AND SURVIVE, my new horror novel coming in 2024.

A slasher film director makes a horror movie with a camera that might be demonic. The scream queen he loves wants to survive the night. Together, director and Final Girl, they’re about to make movie history.

Big thanks for Lisa Pompilio for another great cover and of course to Hachette Book Group for publishing it.

Filed Under: APOCALYPTIC/HORROR, Books, CRAIG'S WORK, How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive, MEDIA YOU MIGHT LIKE, The Blog

RENFIELD (2023)

September 3, 2023 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

RENFIELD (2023) is a terrific movie trapped inside a bad movie. I don’t know how else to put it.

In this film, Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) has been serving Dracula (Nicholas Cage) for over a century. Exhausted by constantly finding victims and fleeing vampire hunters, he brings his master to America and starts to question their relationship after a chance walk-in with a support group for emotionally dependent personalities. He gains the seed of independence and self worth and hopes to act on it, but rejecting the evil, narcissistic, and vengeful prince of darkness will be no easy thing.

What an amazing setup for a movie, truly killer high concept and fertile ground for an excellent, deep, and dark comedy. Unfortunately, it’s not explored to its full potential. Instead, we get a major plot line involving an organized crime family and a cop seeking justice for her murdered father. This rote storyline helps catalyze Renfield’s journey but dominates the film, hoping to please fans with a lot of CGI action and Monty Python levels of gore but ultimately just eating up the run time. The result is a movie with two personalities, and the dominant one is the paint-by-numbers crowd pleaser.

Nicholas Hoult and Nicholas Cage are terrific actors and always great to look at. Cage in particular transcends even his usual Cageyness to bring something zany and new but also familiar to a role that has been played many times before. Their characters’ conflict is the real gem even if it’s largely obscured by the mob/cop plot, ironically showing us a different kind of codependent relationship between telling a good story and satisfying expectations, a case study for Hollywood’s tendency to avoid complexity to please the most amount of people.

All that said, RENFIELD ain’t a bad movie. Just the opposite, I quite liked it for its better qualities. I just wished it had been lovable, as it so easily could have achieved with its terrific premise.

Filed Under: APOCALYPTIC/HORROR, MEDIA YOU MIGHT LIKE, Movies, Movies & TV, The Blog

THE HANDYMAN METHOD by Nick Cutter and Andrew F. Sullivan

August 21, 2023 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

In THE HANDYMAN METHOD by Nick Cutter and Andrew F. Sullivan, a man moves into a new home with his family, only to become obsessed with fixing its many deficiencies and by extension, his own manhood. I picked this one up after reading Sullivan’s THE MARIGOLD, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and after noting it was co-authored by Nick Cutter. I liked this one a lot.

In this story, Trent moves into a new house in an unfinished development with his successful wife Rita and son Milo. Soon after moving in, he notices a crack and turns to Handyman Hank, a YouTube DIY expert and all-around manly guy ready to offer home improvement advice along with his own aw-shucks wisdom about being a real man. As more things go wrong with the house, Trent finds himself immersing in Hank’s increasingly monstrous worldview, producing a horror story reminiscent of THE SHINING, if Jack Torrance were seduced by the toxic form of masculinity in order to solve his insecurities. He discovers he is a pawn, both in an ancient pact and of the house itself.

Some readers wanted more clarity in the narrative and a tidier landing, and I’m not sure I can argue with that, but I didn’t mind. I found the book a perfect blend of the authors’ strengths–Cutter’s fine skill at writing the horror set piece and Sullivan’s deep and provocative ideas that included his take on one of my favorite elements, the idea of a house within a house. Overall, I had a great time with this story. As with THE MARIGOLD, I appreciated Sullivan showing me something I hadn’t seen before along with his writing that again showed solid skill.

Check it out if you’re looking for something new from a haunted house story.

Filed Under: APOCALYPTIC/HORROR, Books, MEDIA YOU MIGHT LIKE, Reviews of Other Books, The Blog

THE MARIGOLD by Andrew F. Sullivan

August 21, 2023 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

In THE MARIGOLD, Andrew Sullivan delivers a weird and bold if sprawling story about a dystopian future Toronto, where rich developers satiate the earth with blood before building and a sentient fungus appears intent on making the city and possibly all of humanity its own. I loved it.

The novel has an ensemble cast doomed to play their parts in multiple, sometimes intersecting storylines. Decadent developers engaging in an ancient blood rite to fuel their real estate empires, public health workers investigating the monstrous fungus, teens probing the underworld to find a lost friend, and more. Through their perspectives, we see a Toronto built on blood, haunted by its victims, and possibly careening toward destruction. The book is sprawling in its scope and struck some readers as slow and a bit bloated, but I didn’t mind. In fact, I loved it for its bold and original ideas, general weirdness, provocative writing, and overall integrity. Sullivan gave me something I hadn’t seen before, and for that alone, he won my respect.

Check it out if you’re into eco-horror and looking for something new and different.

Filed Under: Apocalyptic, APOCALYPTIC/HORROR, Books, MEDIA YOU MIGHT LIKE, Reviews of Other Books, The Blog

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