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BIRDS OF PREY and the DC Movie Visual Aesthetic

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Jesse
Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
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There is a scene around halfway through Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) where One Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), bon vivant, high-spirited thief, and ex-girlfriend of the Joker, enters a police station and fights her way through multiple officers, on her way to abduct a young pickpocket. Rather than leaving all-out carnage in her wake, Harley employs a serious of non-lethal methods: a beanbag gun, confetti bombs, and brightly colored smoke. (She also beats the shit out of a few of them, but no one appears to die.)

Normally, this would seem like another superhero movie hedging its bets, indulging violence while avoiding any real consequences—and to some degree, it probably is that. But Birds of Prey has an emphatic R rating (albeit seemingly more for the convenience of saying “fuck” as often as it wants than for its occasional gore), so these nontraditional weapons serve a purpose beyond appeasing the MPAA. The color-coordinated smokebombs and glitter explosions aren’t calling cards Harley Quinn leaves behind so much as the character art-directing her own music video as she goes along.
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Comics, Movies

Shazam! is another superhero movie that’s not like all the other superhero movies that aren’t like other superhero movies

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Jesse
Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
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Shazam!, based on the DC Comics hero originally called Captain Marvel and originally not published by DC Comics, stars Zachary Levi, who once appeared in a Thor movie for Marvel Studios. Levi plays the hero; the bad guy is played by Mark Strong, who also played a supporting role (and unrealized future bad guy) in Green Lantern, based on the DC Comics hero, but unconnected to the current DC Comics movies. Shazam! also co-stars Djimon Hounsou, who also has a supporting role in Captain Marvel, currently in theaters, a separate character from Shazam, the former Captain Marvel, and based in part on the Marvel Comics hero originally called Ms. Marvel.

Shazam! is about a teenager learning to wield his superpowers responsibly, like Marvel’s Spider-Man; it’s also concerns the effects of those superpowers on family dynamics—sort of like The Incredibles, a Disney film which is not based on a comic book, but owes a lot to the Fantastic Four, whose movie rights were recently welcomed back into the Disney fold when Disney completed its purchase of 20th Century Fox’s film division. The end credits of Shazam! feature charmingly scrawled drawings of the main character’s superheroic antics, followed by a post-credits scene goofing on another superhero, both elements that recall Deadpool, an offshoot of the X-Men series, which was also recently absorbed back into Disney via Fox. Disney, of course, owns Marvel, and Captain Marvel, but not Shazam!, which belongs to Warner Bros., which owns DC, which bought the character from Fawcett, the company that originally published stories about Shazam, back when he was called Captain Marvel.
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Movies, Podcast

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Star Wars, Rogue One, and the Forever Franchise

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Jesse
Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Latest posts by Jesse (see all)

Just as TV shows don’t really end anymore, the new platonic ideal for a movie series, at least for some fans and/or execs, is one that keeps going indefinitely, with no end designed or in sight. That’s what seems to have happened to the Star Wars series following its 2012 sale to the Walt Disney Company, resulting in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first Star Wars movie without an “episode” designation. Naturally, Rob and Sabrina and Nathaniel and Marisa and Jesse went to see it and naturally we all had some opinions.

Our second Star Wars podcast, then, examines Rogue One and our thoughts on it, along with how it fits into this new mass-media landscape of franchises that just don’t know when to quit. Glory to our thoughts on Rogue One as a prequel, the uncanny valley, our internal squabbling over the status of the various Extended Universes, and our many impromptu pitches for further Star Wars spinoffs, and that’s before we even get to talking about the Fox X-Men movies and the DCEU. It’s all very nerdy and spoilery and you’re gonna love it.

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Comics, Movies, Podcast

The SportsAlcohol Podcast: Suicide Squad

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Rob
Rob
Rob is one of the founders of SportsAlcohol.com. He is a recent first time home buyer and it's all he talks about. Said home is in his hometown in Upstate New York. He never moved away and works a job to pay for his mortgage and crippling chicken wing addiction. He is not what you would call a go-getter. This may explain the general tone of SportsAlcohol.com.
Rob
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By the time you listen to this, The Suicide Squad movie will have set a box office record for August while receiving such bad reviews its fans are petitioning to shut down review aggregate site rottentomatoes.com. So is it any good? There’s actually a lot to break down here:

  • Studio meddling
  • Racism
  • Ike Barinholtz
  • Sexism
  • Soundtrack cues
  • The triumph of Margot Robbie
  • Unnecessary DC vs Marvel comparisons
  • The many lives of Jai Courtney’s career
  • How much worse Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice was
  • Hollywood It Boy Joel Kinnaman
  • Method Acting
  • Ike Barinholtz again for good measure

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Comics, Movies, Podcast

SPORTSALCOHOL PODCAST: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

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Rob
Rob
Rob is one of the founders of SportsAlcohol.com. He is a recent first time home buyer and it's all he talks about. Said home is in his hometown in Upstate New York. He never moved away and works a job to pay for his mortgage and crippling chicken wing addiction. He is not what you would call a go-getter. This may explain the general tone of SportsAlcohol.com.
Rob
Latest posts by Rob (see all)

Jesse, Nathaniel, Rob, and Sabrina all saw Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. None of them really liked it. They knew this would probably be the case. So why go see and then record a very long podcast about it? Long story short: Zack Snyder. This film’s director makes watchable movies that are always some degree of hot mess.  For the long version: listen on! You may want to read this seminal essay that is referenced early on.

There will be spoilers, but not nearly as many as there were in the trailers.

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