Entertainment
Aubrey Plaza's Perfect R-Rated Thriller Is An Unfairly Overlooked Masterpiece
By Robert Scucci
| Updated
Have a crappy first draft and want to make it into a better second, third, fourth, and final one? You might want to check out 2020’s Black Bear because the film shows you the process in real time, and I think I just spoiled the entire thing for you. But did I really?
It’s a movie about a woman named Allison (Aubrey Plaza), who’s staying at a beautiful remote cabin to work on a project, either a novel or a film. I think this part is obvious. We get a look at her morning routine, complete with sitting in a red swimsuit on a dock overlooking a foggy lake. We watch her sit down at a table by the window and start writing, occasionally looking up to take in the scenery before putting pen to paper.
We then get what I believe are two “drafts” in the form of acts, and the whole thing spirals from there. While there’s a lot of discussion about what Black Bear is actually about (just check the IMDb reviews, lots of people are rightfully confused), I think the answer is simple: it’s one of those movies about a writer who’s writing something; something that would come off as extremely pretentious in almost any other context.
Because of how open-ended the whole thing is, I could be way off the mark, but you really just need to sit down with Black Bear and enjoy it for what it truly is, no matter what kind of subtext you’re picking up from it: three actors showing an incredible range and crushing every single scenario.
Part One: The Bear in the Road
Before each act in Black Bear, we see Allison go through what appears to be her writing routine. She sits alone in the wilderness, folds up her towel, walks back to the cabin, and gets to work. In the first act, “The Bear in the Road,” we’re introduced to the other characters we’ll be spending time with: the pregnant and unhappily married couple Gabe (Christopher Abbott) and Blair (Sarah Gadon).
Gabe is a former musician who owns a bed and breakfast that he runs with Blair. Allison is a film director who chose to stay at their bed and breakfast so she could find inspiration for her next project. Gabe is secretly obsessed with Allison’s work, and Blair is a problem drinker even though the baby bump is starting to show.
This act ends almost exactly how you’d expect, with Allison and Gabe growing close, and Blair absolutely losing her mind over it. When things truly heat up in “The Bear in the Road,” the screen goes black, and we once again see Allison sitting alone on the dock in a red swimsuit, folding her towel, walking back to the cabin, and opening her notebook, setting up the second part of the movie.
Part Two: The Bear by the Boat House
The second half of Black Bear introduces the same characters but in a totally different context. Here, Allison is an actress who’s married to Gabe, who’s now the filmmaker, and Blair is another actress in the movie he’s working on. The same jilted lover story plays out, but the roles are reversed, and we’re on an actual movie set.
Allison is the unstable woman whose husband is having an affair, and she’s being manipulated by the crew into delivering a powerhouse performance during the final shoot. Blair and Gabe flirt and stage an affair between scenes, pushing Allison over the edge. The whole thing plays like a behind-the-scenes reel of a more developed version of “The Bear in the Road,” as if the first act we witnessed was the rough draft, and what happens here is the result of further refinement.
You see kernels of the original idea play out in “The Bear by the Boat House,” but it has a distinctly different flavor, which all clicks again when the whole thing eventually transitions back to Allison sitting on the dock in her red swimsuit, folding her towel, heading back to the cabin, and starting to write.
A Deconstruction Of The Creative Process
Most of the time, I try to keep my reviews spoiler free. I like to talk about the vibe, the talent, and the themes a film talks about, but breaking down Black Bear without first laying out its mechanics, which effectively spoils the movie, is impossible.
Or, I’ll ask again, is it?
My read on the film is that we’re watching a writer at work, and their ideas coming to life through the vignettes we get to see. The characters across both acts are the same but different in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Each act starts with crappy dialogue that eventually becomes more nuanced and intricate. The same can be said for the acting. Both vignettes feel like working drafts where the writer doesn’t quite yet know what story they’re trying to tell, and they’re working through the first few passages so they can figure it out.
I could be completely off base here, but that’s what Black Bear feels like. It’s a moment in the creative process when the creator is still trying to find their voice on a new project.
That said, I can’t say for certain that my assessment is correct here, and I can absolutely see why this film could be frustrating to some. At face value, it’s disjointed, its characters are all over the place, and aside from their names and the setting they occupy, they’re not really the same people. But that’s the point. We’re watching these characters get sketched out in real time by Allison, and we’re just seeing snippets of personality here.
That’s why the characters transition from one-dimensional to complex, with conflicting motives and alliances without any real rhyme or reason. It’s also a testament to everybody’s performance here, because they basically have to act like bad actors when the script is bad, and then up their game every single time (writer) Allison has a creative epiphany that allows the story to improve.
If there’s any reason to watch Black Bear, it’s for everybody’s range. I’m sure there are dozens of other ways to read this film, but I’m satisfied believing what I choose to believe. Maybe the film is actually about a girl named Allison who has amnesia, who returns to a location where she was traumatized, and she’s trying to remember what happened to her. Maybe the Black Bear is the friends we made along the way. Or maybe, just maybe, we’re watching somebody write a novel, or a play, or a movie, and we’re getting to see what happens when an incomplete story gets a full production to show you how important it is to always work past the first draft.
As of this writing, you can stream Black Bear for free on Tubi.
Entertainment
Stargate SG-1 Showed How Evil Its Villains Were In An Episode Where The Good Guys Lose
By Jonathan Klotz
| Updated
Stargate SG-1 had a lot of work to do in its first season to go beyond the setting of the 1993 film. By the time Episode 11, “Bloodlines,” hit the air on Showtime it was clear to the new and ever-growing fanbase that this was a different type of sci-fi series. Teal’c (Christopher Judge) was already being compared to Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Worf, and the introduction of his family on Chulak didn’t help the comparisons. Once “Bloodlines” came ot an end it was clear that Teal’c would be different and the Goa’uld were going to be the worst villains in any 90s sci-fi series.
Teal’c Would Do Anything For His Family
The episode opens with Teal’c undergoing treatment to remove his Goa’uld symbiote. It fails. By now, his body relies on the parasitic evil alien to function. That’s enough to get him to open up to Stargate Command about his family back home on Chulak. His son, Rya’c, is going to be implanted with a Goa’uld larvae and Teal’c wants to stop it. General Hammond (Don S. Davis) pushes back and stops the team though he folds at the flimsiest pretense to undertake the mission.
Teal’c and the rest of SG-1, O’Neil (Richard Dean Anderson), Jackson (Michael Shanks), and Carter (Amanda Tapping) sneak onto Chulak and while behind enemy lines learn a word that fans of the show will get very used to hearing: Shol’va. Traitor. Teal’c was branded as Shol’va for betraying Aphosis. That brought down his family’s standing, something Drey’auc, his wife (played by future Eureka star Salli Richardson) makes sure to let him know.
The usual full-speed ahead, gung-ho nature of SG-1 hits a snag when it turns out Rya’c is sick and needs a Goa’uld to be implanted in order to survive. After fighting to spare his son this exact fate, Teal’c is the one to implant his son. It’s a tragic moment made all the worse with the knowledge of how the Jaffa have suffered under the Goa’uld for generations. It’s a success and Rya’c lives but at an enormous cost. When “Bloodlines” ends, it’s not clear if this was a victory, or a loss, for SG-1.
Bloodlines Set The Table For The Jaffa Revolution
Teal’c kept his family a secret from Stargate Command because knew his family, deep behind enemy lines, was a weak point for him that could be exploited by the Goa’uld, and how could anyone trust him with his family in danger? What he left out was the presence of Bra’tac (Tony Amendola). At 103 years old, the legendary Jaffa warrior is still a brutal fighter capable of taking down a unit of palace guards without breaking a sweat. Like Teal’c, he’s a former First Prime to Apophis, and also like Teal’c, he becomes a close ally of SG-1.
Future scenes between Bra’tac and Hammond are among the best in the entire series. Bra’tac’s eventual defection is one of the many unintended consequences of the team’s actions during “Bloodlines.” Daniel blowing away a Goa’uld spawning tank, Rya’c and Drey’auc, humans entering Chulak so easily, all of it comes back in later seasons.
Teal’c may be the Worf of Stargate SG-1 but he’s his own, tragic character, trying to carve a new path forward for his warrior people in the face of centuries of tradition and honor. It’s completely different. At least Teal’c doesn’t get his butt kicked by every new threat.
Entertainment
Sci-Fi Spin-Off Movie Bombed Thanks To Harry Potter Finally A Success On Netflix
By Jonathan Klotz
| Updated
It took Jumanji 14 years to go from award-winning children’s book to the big screen. Author/illustrator Chris Van Allsburg’s sci-fi follow up Zathura was optioned from the moment it hit bookstores in 2002. By 2005 movie audiences were exploring the galaxy in a flying house. Or they would have been, if anyone had seen it in theaters, which, they didn’t. Zathura suffered from one of the worst release dates of the 2000s thanks to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but today it can be enjoyed on Netflix without one of the most successful franchises in history competing for your attention.
Jumanji IN SPPPPAAAAACCCCEEEEE
Zathura is the forgotten film in the Jumanji franchise. It opens like all the rest though, two young brothers, Walter (Future Hunger Games star Josh Hutcherson) and Danny (Jonah Bobo) find a mysterious board game, start playing, and realize it’s shaping reality around them. Instead of Robin Williams turning up, the kids get Dax Shepard as an astronaut lost in space, and instead of a crazy old hunter, they have to deal with the lizard-like Zorgons. A pre-Twilight Kristen Stewart plays Lisa, the boys’ older sister who gets dragged along for the adventure after sleeping in.
Even though the entire movie is centered around the house spaceship, Favreau found ways to make Zathura visually interesting, surprisingly for the time, by using practical effects over CGI. That includes multiple miniature models for the spaceships, a full-sized replica of a frozen Kristen Stewart, and the impractical decision to film the house falling into a gravity well by actually tilting the set 40 degrees straight down. With all of the performers on it. The result is a movie that looks amazing even today.
Robert Pattinson Vs. Kristen Stewart
The story of Zathura isn’t as good as the original Jumanji, but it’s not bad. An obvious moral and writing that decides to turn subtext into text is perfectly acceptable for a film meant for children. The problem with the movie was it was released on November 11, 2005. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was released on November 18, 2005. Which movie do you think kids wanted to see?
Ironically, the dueling release dates means that prior to changing pop culture forever, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson went head-to-head at the box office. Goblet of Fire made $900 million, Zathura made $64 million. In this case the release date and box office mean so much to the film because if people watched it, they’d realize it’s a fun movie.
Zathura Is Ready For A Remake
The success of the Jumanji sequels with Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, and Jack Black has started talks about a potential Zathura remake. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’s bazaar hinted at a larger world of interconnected boardgame universes which could be the perfect setup to return the franchise to space.
By flipping the Jumanji formula to be avatars in a reality-warping video game instead of kids playing a board game, the franchise found a whole new level of success that lets them use major Hollywood stars as a way to appeal to kids and adults. For everything Zathura did right, Dax Shepard is no Robin Williams. Jumanji in space is a great concept that today, would find the right audience and be another in a string of hits for the revitalized franchise.
Zathura is now streaming on Netflix.
Entertainment
Xbox hopes to win back disaffected gamers with new disc-to-digital program
Following the recent news that Sony will end support for physical discs for its PlayStation consoles beginning in Jan. 2028 and the attendant fan backlash (Forbes called it “Sony’s Biggest Scandal in 20 Years“), Microsoft’s Xbox team is taking proactive steps to get ahead of the negative publicity for its own next-gen console, the Xbox Helix, which is every bit as unlikely to have a physical disc drive as the rumored PS6.
Last month, details about a new Xbox program code-named “Positron” were leaked, hinting at a potential disc-to-digital program, but the details were relegated to spare snippets of code labeled Disc2Digital. Now, a new report obtained by Windows Insider gives us better insight into what Microsoft hopes to achieve with Positron.
Most of the fan backlash has focused on the second-hand market, which would be effectively killed off if all games became digital products, but there’s another valid issue raised by the loss of physical disc drives: backward compatibility. What are the millions of gamers with vast libraries of physical games supposed to do if future consoles no longer support a disc drive?
Mashable Top Stories
Thankfully, Microsoft has already emphasized the importance of backward compatibility in previous iterations of its Xbox gaming consoles, and Positron seems like a continuation of this same commitment.
According to reporting by The Verge, Microsoft plans to allow gamers to digitize their physical media libraries without third-party hardware. All that will be required is the disc, a compatible game console, and a Microsoft account, though be forewarned: this feature will only apply to Xbox One and Series X discs — neither the original Xbox nor the Xbox 360 is supported by Positron.
Of course, as we’re still in the testing phases for this technology, and as neither the Xbox Helix nor PS6 has been officially announced, all of this is still subject to change. Maybe, just maybe, the fan backlash will be loud and convincing enough to force these major gaming companies to change course. Unfortunately, we’ll likely have to rely on projects like Positron to keep our physical media alive and functioning in the future all-digital era.
Rockies eager to ignite fireworks again vs. Giants
Cardinals determined to continue hit parade vs. Cubs
