What the 🫎is Performance Anxiety (the Podcast) !?!?

Here’s a team of dramatic artists who are indignant at the state of the arts. Righteously indignant at the degradation of quality in favor of laziness and some thin veneer of “social justice.” The result is destruction of excellence. Worth a follow.

The internet has apparently discovered the greatest betrayal in the history of Harry Potter: the new one looks new. And annoyingly, they’re not entirely wrong. It does look less real. The old Harry Potters were shot on film and the new one has that very contemporary digital thing going on: LED lighting, colour grading, that green mystical wash. There is a genuine loss of directness. If we want to get horribly semiotic about it, it’s the old question of indexicality, the photograph as a footprint of reality, light hitting things and leaving a trace. Now the image can feel as if every inch has been decided upon. Which is possibly why something can look incredibly detailed and somehow less real. But I also think people have confused Harry Potter with their memory of Harry Potter. The first film came out 25 years ago. That particular look now is Hogwarts for a generation. But is it actually better, or is nostalgia being confused with aesthetic judgement? And are we capable of letting a new generation have a different Harry Potter without constantly putting screenshots next to each other and declaring that something has been ruined? Also, this is television, not eight very long remakes of the films. A series has different narrative demands. The books are overwhelmingly organised around Harry because that’s how Rowling controls what we know. But the story is much bigger than the plot. Things are happening in that world which Harry doesn’t see and which therefore aren’t directly narrated. Television can dramatise that material. It probably has to, because other characters need to carry narrative strands rather than Harry being in virtually every bloody scene. So when we inevitably get scenes “that weren’t in the book”, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve invented something. It may have always been happening in the story without being part of the plot. Anyway, there’s something here about nostalgia and our increasingly weird idea that loving an artwork means insisting nobody is ever allowed to make it strange again. Maybe first Performance Anxiety of the new season …

Fascinating Academy talk on The Odyssey yesterday by @perform_pod’s Maren Thom who argued that Nolan used the techniques of Hollywood cinema to do something thoroughly un-Hollywood: distance us from the hero. #cinema #movies

Excellent from @MadamMarenT

Nolan casts Odysseus’s crew like a group of mates in a pub, so the audience understands what kind of guys they are. He’s telling the story. Casting is communication not representation.

People who say Elliot Page’s character should be a masculine warrior are missing the obvious point. There’s no escaping that the character is fronting masculinity - pretending be masculine. They should not be in battle. This is why the character’s death is so traumatic to Odysseus. Who better to play this than someone who’s masculinity is obviously absent?

If you want a unique (ie correct) take on #theodyssey then here it is

Casting is communication not representation. Casting is realistic when the audience understands who the characters they are looking at are.

Is there more to Christopher Nolan’s version of the Odyssey than a crazy culture war? Yes! It’s an amazing artistic achievement that uses genius casting to give a particularly Nolan take on a particularly Nolan theme …

Here’s our take on the new and massively successful Ryan Gosling film Project Hail Mary. The reason that Project Hail Mary is so successful commercially is because people want to watch it. And people want to watch it because it is successful artistically. It feels like Hollywood getting some of its mojo back. Hollywood is returning to a genre it has been neglecting - the proper studio picture. A studio picture has at its centre something that invites people to the cinema - a big star that everyone knows and wants to watch. But this on its own is not enough. The story itself also has to be involving and compelling. The way Hollywood makes stories compelling is by using a formula. The formula goes like this - the star plays a recognisable, relatable character that goes on a journey in which the stakes could not be higher. Through the journey the character transforms themselves for the better. The character’s transformation in turn makes the world in which the character lives a better place. The audience watches this formula play out and leaves the cinema satisfied. This structure is the basis of every Hollywood film. The key for movie makers was always to make the formula fresh and interesting through the use of different stars, different genres, different journeys. Compare this to what Hollywood has been turning out for the past few years - endless sequels, franchise sludge and self-important, worthy films. The studios turned their backs on their own winning formula. Characters were not going on transformative journeys any more because they had to be representatives of the human resources department. The old studios, the engines of popular storytelling, seemed embarrassed by the very thing that made them great. What made Hollywood great was never sermonising, it was artistic craft coupled with star power. It was the ability to make audiences want to leave the house, buy a ticket, and sit in the dark with strangers. The old formula delivered this: a magnetic lead, a story that went somewhere, scenes designed to be seen on a big screen, and an ending that paid off. Project Hail Mary scratches this itch in a profoundly satisfying way. Ryan Gosling is allowed to be a film star rather than a brand extension or a eunuch in trainers. The story is told through impressive spectacle and charm. It is funny. It is not ashamed of being entertaining. In present conditions, this practically revolutionary. This is not to overstate the case. One decent film does not mean Hollywood is back and firing on all cylinders. But it does suggest that the old machinery is still there and can still work when someone bothers to use it properly. And after years of lectures, sludge and synthetic franchise rubbish, this is enough to feel hopeful.

Find out why we think the nee version might just be inspired! piped.video/d3sxQp0Smh8?si=I2PS…

We think it might be genius piped.video/d3sxQp0Smh8?si=Ih0S…

The Oscars have no credibility. They change their minds about who the best actor is every year.

We actually make two, maybe three oscar predictions in this one. Why not see if we really know what we are talking about?

By us.

How I cast movie stars: ‘I knew Paul Mescal was great in 15 seconds’ A lovely interview with @ltd_nina that pinpoints the intricacies and intangibles of casting. “It's about how the actor's essence intersects with the character on the page. So the crazy, terrible thing is that normally someone will get passed over, not because they weren't good, but because somebody else, for some unaccountable reason, seemed more right.” thetimes.com/article/d0ac1ca…

Have Pixar remembered what makes them great? For a while it looked like Pixar had lost the plot - literally. We watched Hoppers to see if they’ve got their magic storytelling touch back.

We enjoyed it thoroughly!

All the criticism of @wuthering_hts is basically that it isn’t what people want. The sympathetic reviews think it’s a “provocation”. Everyone should do themselves a favour and try to understand it for what it actually is!

On the other hand …