2018
https://www.themarysue.com/harrison-ford-solo-trailer-is-cursed/
Oh god, I’m so sorry, everyone. I wished so hard that we could have had Solo: A Star Wars Story featuring an actual young Harrison Ford, and it seems only the darkest forces in the universe heard me. Now, I must inflict this on all of you: an insta-nope version of the Solo: A Star Wars Story trailer with Harrison Ford’s face placed over Alden Ehrenreich’s.
OK, I didn’t actually wish for it all that hard, but it does kind of feel like this is what everyone who’s been trying to compare the two actors (myself included) deserves. I will say this, though: It at least looks like Nick Acosta, who put this video together and posted it on Vimeo, probably did the best anyone could’ve with the available resources. It’s not quite on the (still unsettling) level of Tarkin or Leia in Rogue One, but for a personal project with limited Ford footage to work with—from pre-Star Wars movies, TV, and still photos to get that Young Solo look—rather than expensive CGI, the best parts of it do work reasonably well.
Acosta explained in the video’s description, “Watching the trailer featuring new actor Alden Ehrenreich in the titular role it’s hard to get used to. By all accounts Alden seems like great actor and good guy. But I couldn’t help wonder what would this movie would look like if you could magically transport a young Harrison Ford to play his iconic character. So using a variety of digital compositing software and some editing tricks I tried to make that happen.”
Honestly, it’s all kind of fitting, what with Star Wars’ history with after-the-fact digital edits. Somewhere, Hayden Christensen’s Force Ghost is laughing. Smugly.
(via io9, image: Lucasfilm/Nick Acosta on Vimeo)
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Okay now things are starting to really pop off on Into the Badlands: Leopard Snares Rabbit.
Written By: Michael Taylor
Directed by: Toa Fraser
Synopsis: Sunny (Daniel Wu) and Bajie (Nick Frost) go undercover on The Widow’s frontlines, seeking passage to a possible cure for Henry. Tilda (Ally Ioannides) confronts The Widow (Emily Beecham).
Review
I enjoyed the episode more than the last two episodes combined. Even though again, certain aspects were predictable, I also felt it provided needed development for some of the characters.
Cressida (Lorraine Toussaint) was painfully seeing visions last time we saw her. What makes it so bad is I did not miss Pilgrim (Babou Ceesay) and crew at all. That is troubling to me considering I love seeing any new black characters featured on the show.
What was good was seeing another aspect of the war between the Widow aka Minerva and Baron Chau (Eleanor Matsurra). Side note, I really hope to see both Baron Chau and Lewis Tan debut has her brother in episode four. I feel like seeing Chau’s clippers so far has been a huge tease.
Profound Truths
There were several quotes I felt were profound, especially made by Sunny regarding the war. He remembers being the same way as that young clipper, blindly following a leader into battles and for what? Glory, honor for serving his baron?
What conflicted me was I understood why the young clipper Arthur (George Sear) defied orders and killed Chau’s sniper. The man has killed several fellow clippers for months before Sunny caught him. I got miffed when the Arthur was describing what happened like he did all the work. Yes, you killed the guy, but after Sunny defeated him already. I did enjoy the fight scene between Sunny and the sniper.
Lydia (Orla Brady) also dropped some truth bombs to Tilda, which she took to heart when she negotiated with The Widow near the end of the episode. Tilda seems to be a sponge. She has listened to The Widow, Waldo, Veil (lost cause there), and now Lydia. Trying to combine all that advice into something that will help her survive while being a leader is tough. I am hoping to see more of Tilda’s growth both as a fighter and leader. She can learn more from Lydia than Minerva for now.
I missed seeing Sunny being a leader. The competence and authority he showed towards the Widow’s clippers in the front lines just prove once again why he was the baddest man in the Badlands. Irony that in pursuit of the witch Ankara, he had to help the Widow’s campaign by bypassing a section held by Chau’s sniper for several weeks.
When Moon appeared at the checkpoint later in the episode, I thought “oh snap, are we getting that rematch early?” Alas, not happening. I did want to see Moon in action leading a campaign though. Showing up to capture Tilda was fine but I need to see more strategy.
Fight of the Week
The fight of Tilda vs. Nathaniel Moon (Sherman Augustus) was my favorite for this episode. I loved how Moon again was talking smack to Tilda. I am biased in thinking she handled herself better than M.K. (Aramis Knight). She just has a nice fighting style. Similar to the Widow but she made it her own, especially when she uses her cyclone ninja stars (hoping I am getting the term right here).
So far Moon’s defeats have been with teens. I need him to go against someone experienced soon, like maybe Chau’s brother or eventually Sunny again. He held his own against the Widow but she still beat him at the end.
Before the fight when I saw the Tilda’s group training I got the sense that her minions were made up of former clippers and butterflies of various barons including the Widow. My guess is they were sick of the BS that is this war as well and wanted to help the little guys.
Okay did anyone else immediately think of that Star Wars: Force Awakens “traitor” scene when the one butterfly looked pissed that Iron Rabbit was Tilda?
Oh Odessa (Maddison Jaizani). It was so cute to think you had a chance against Moon. I know you were distracting Moon so Tilda could get away, but I will give you props for being most improved. The petty in me wanted Moon to kill Odessa, but it made sense to keep her, so they can find out where Tilda is hiding.
Lydia, why?
Girl, Moon was offering the “D” and you are shutting him down? I get it, but you can still do friends with benefits for right now! The Widow is supposedly trying to change things. What should she care if Moon hooks up with you if he still does his job as Regent and you as Viceroy? Take it while you can! Moon already decided to protect you by not revealing you wrote the note warning Tilda to bounce from the refugee camp. You might as well take that much needed relief.
Choosing the horse as a new signia was a smart move on Lydia’s part. I wonder if the Widow will see the hidden meaning? Lydia is playing that long game. This reminds me of season one when she traded barbs with Jade. Hopefully she comes out on top this time.
Bajie the Healer
I was pleasantly surprised they brought back Bajie’s knowledge of healing. Especially after clipper Wren (Tamsen Topolski) got shot with the poisoned arrow. I remember last season when he helped heal Sunny which was cool! I knew Wren was either going to die or get injured, especially when she got smart with Sunny about him needing her help. My eyes rolled on that scene.
Bajie comes across as selfish but he does have moments where we see the softie in him. However, Wren was correct in being upset with Bajie. He made assumptions and without permission, had the doctor cut her leg off. The man should have discussed that with her first. She was prepared to die. Being alive and handicapped, Wren does not have many options now on surviving, at least according to her.
That brings up another point. Is the Widow really changing things? If so then Wren should feel like she has more options than being a cog, a clipper, or a doll. Will Minerva even have someone make a prosthetic leg? She sure did give Moon an upgrade as regent, what about someone below him? Should we still root for Minerva at this point?
Dark Powers Activate! – Moment of the Week
I was here for M.K. getting his powers back! When his babysitters held him down pouring pee into him that was the first time in a while that I felt sorry for M.K. When he started flashing through his memory banks I was like, “oh yeah, get it M.K.!”
The Widow was shook! She was NOT ready to face M.K.! I love how Tilda again was able to bring him from the brink like back in season 1. They both still have a connection which is nice. Tilda saved the Widow. She should have the upper hand next time they talk.
Also does this mean that he can turn his powers on and off at will now? That would be an interesting development. Newcomers Nix (Ella-Rae Smith) and Castor (Dean-Charles Chapman) still need to cut themselves to access their abilities.
What did you think of the episode? Sound off below in the comments!
The post Into the Badlands Ep 303 Review: Leopard Snares Rabbit appeared first on The Nerd Element.
Ash vs. Evil Dead’s Dana DeLorenzo has had a long day of interviews and is eager to catch a flight back to her home state, Ohio, to visit her mother. The subject came up when I told her my awkward first words of our interview were due to my own long day, and she immediately sympathized. “We are going to change our day from here on out, deal?” she said.
The cheerful DeLorenzo, 35, recently wrapped her role as AvED’s earthy heroine, Kelly Maxwell, ending a three-season saga of blood, guts, humor, romance—and an F-word-heavy vocabulary. Fans of Kelly will recall she has a way with guns and a way with words.
“What the fuck are you talking about? What kind of fucking language? What kind of fucking language are you talking about?” DeLorenzo deadpanned when I mentioned her character’s colorful speech. Laughing after, she continued, “My mother hates the quality of Kelly’s character that’s everyone’s favorite.” She also noted that she told her mother, “It’s okay mom; everyone else likes it. I don’t need to have my mouth washed out with soap because it was dialogue.”
Before DeLorenzo was cast as Kelly, she worked hard, taking commercials where she had no lines and roles where her character remained unnamed (e.g., she’s credited as “Hot Court Reporter” in an episode of Comedy Central’s Workaholics). The actress also played a “personality” on the “Mancow’s Morning Madhouse” radio show, as well as Beth the CBS Executive and the voice of Sandra the Rhino on CBS’ The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.
“I’ve been hustling for a long time,” DeLorenzo stated. “It has been a very long, difficult road with some real high highs, but some real low lows. I’ve gotten war wounds from this business.” She has remained philosophical about her experiences, however. “[W]e can all learn from these kinds of the ‘hard knocks’ in life,” she said. “When you work hard for something, you do appreciate anything you get, no matter how long or short it lasts.”
Bigger roles followed, including Emily/Andrea in 2015’s web series-to-TV-show Impress Me, where she stars with her long-time friend, Ross Marquand of The Walking Dead, and Claire, one of the two leads in the 2017 film The Mad Ones, which DeLorenzo characterizes as a “rom-dramedy.” Both are currently available on Amazon Prime and several other streaming platforms.
The ebullient DeLorenzo is an animated raconteur who shared with The Nerd Element via phone how she got the role of Kelly, what she thought of Kelly’s journey throughout the series, her process of performing as different characters in the show, her excitement about a new role she recently booked, and what it was like working on Ash vs. Evil Dead with Lucy Lawless and Bruce Campbell. The conversation was punctuated often by her throaty, infectious laughter.
When asked about how she was cast as Kelly, DeLorenzo deadpanned, “Craigslist. No, that was a terrible joke.
“It was one of those things that was oddly serendipitous, she said, noting that her casting “happened furiously fast, which is kind of the same of how we do everything on the show.” DeLorenzo spoke of how she was working the closing shift at a bar in Los Angeles the night she received an email to report the next morning bright and early to audition.
“I have to be up at 6 a.m. the next day in order, because of L.A. traffic, to get to this audition,” she said, crediting her co-worker at the time, Dominic, with taking over her shift so she could leave and practice her lines.
“I recorded my lines on my iPhone and listened to them in the car, three scenes, on the hour-and-a-half drive, 22 miles—this is L.A. for you—to the other side of town,” she said. “I do the audition and I decided to pratfall because there was a scene in this audition where Pablo [played by Ray Santiago] hits Kelly over the head with a frying pan. [T]he casting director laughed.”
About a week-and-a-half later, she says, she was back in Ohio with her family when the casting director asked her to report the next day in L.A. for a callback. DeLorenzo laughs as she recalls saying, “Do you know I can’t scream? I scream like a 75-year-old man.” DeLorenzo said that the casting director liked her so much for Kelly, she made a “special appointment” so DeLorenzo could return in time. About a week later, she was asked to head to New Zealand to screen test with Sam Raimi, creator of The Evil Dead, and Campbell, who played the title role of Ash.
Her first thought? “Holy sh—What, what?”
DeLorenzo said she approached the test fearlessly because she didn’t think she’d get the role, believing the showrunners would cast someone with a “big name.” “That served me in the end,” she said.
“I did that screen test with Bruce with Sam Raimi behind the camera and within a day, I found out I got the part. I collapsed on the floor! True to Ash Williams’ ‘Shoot first, think never!’—that was the perfect example of that actually happening. Go with your gut, take the risks and then just go for it,” she said.
DeLorenzo’s Kelly went on a journey from a woman who wasn’t really interested in Ash’s fight against evil to a full-on Deadite-killing machine. “She was lost at the beginning,” DeLorenzo said. “Her mom had already died [but] her mother came back. Her mother had to die twice. Her father got [killed]. That’s traumatizing and that’ll make you want some revenge.”
Kelly’s journey mirrored DeLorenzo’s experience on the show, she said.
“I sort of got thrown into this in that way you get thrown into the deep end. I had never done stunts; I had never done action. I’ve certainly never been covered in 30 gallons of blood!”
DeLorenzo added that Kelly “was a very quick learner; she had the fight in her because she is driven by the need to avenge what happened to her parents. Because she became orphaned, she immediately latched on to these two little knuckleheads that she loves so much, which was Pablo and Ash. She became the scrappy fighter who was trying to keep everyone grounded and stay on track.”
One particular episode stands out in Kelly’s oeuvre for DeLorenzo: her one-on-one “epic battle” with Ruby in Season 3.
“Some fans said that Kelly was stupid for going into that alone and I disagree,” she said. “She had been painted in this catch-22 situation that she couldn’t think or fight her way out of. You don’t do that to Kelly Maxwell; you do not put her on the bench so she’s stuck with her hands tied.
“Kelly was able to follow her gut and get her revenge, and I stand by the fact that she did because she went into battle taking an opportunity to get one over on evil. She knew that Ruby would never see it coming,” DeLorenzo added, noting that Kelly would do anything to protect her new “family” of Ash, Pablo, and Arielle Carver-O’Neill’s Brandy.
“I felt so much that was her swan song. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way than for Kelly to go down swinging, which is what she said she would do in the diner at the table [in Season One] right before her very first kill. I think it’s an epic journey for her, and even if in the end, she looked like Keith Richards, she got one more good kill, she got one more ‘fuck up some Deadites.’ The fact that Kelly got to have that last Sarah Connor moment was awesome.”
Throughout the series, DeLorenzo wound up playing variations on her character: Kelly possessed by the demon, Eligos (Ben Fransham); Kelly displaced by the betrayer, Kaya (Chelsie Preston Crayford); and Kaya pretending to be Kelly to fool Ash, Pablo, and Brandy. Her approach to the different characters “happened organically,” she said, noting that Kaya was harder to play because “it was not established who the character was. They had kept going back and forth” on who Kaya would be. “It was very challenging because I had three different directors on all three episodes and I was technically playing three versions: I was playing Kaya, who was straight up Kaya in Kelly’s body in the scenes with Ruby, but then I was also playing actual Kelly in the Rift, [and] Kelly/Kaya, who was trying to fool Ash and Pablo.”
DeLorenzo said that in order to play Kelly/Kaya, she decided to go back to “bad habits” she had spent years obliterating. “I just played Kelly badly. That was my big secret.”
Now that Ash vs. Evil Dead has aired its series finale, DeLorenzo is moving on to her next project.
“I can’t say too much because they haven’t announced, but I can tell you I just got cast in a small role in an independent feature written and directed by Nicol Paone,” she enthused. “It’s a female-driven comedy that I am so excited about.” Paone recently posted on her Facebook page that the name of the film is “Friendsgiving”.
The film will star Malin Akerman, Jane Seymour, Christine Taylor, and Deon Cole. The film will also star Kat Dennings, whom DeLorenzo has worked with in the past when she had a bit part on Denning’s TV show, 2 Broke Girls. DeLorenzo has been cast as Dennings’ sister in the project, which is being executive produced by Taylor’s husband, Ben Stiller.
“I can’t give anything away, but […] I promise that any fan of Kelly Maxwell will be a fan of this character I play. You’ll just have to wait and see.”
Despite having been asked “so many times” about working with Lawless and Campbell, DeLorenzo graciously obliged the fannish question, noting that her answer “gets longer and longer every time.”
“Let me try and say this as concisely as possible,” she began. “Working with them is exactly as you would hope and dream and want it to be, only even better.”
Lawless in particular became a friend. “She is the epitome of grace and talent, and is brilliant. I cannot say enough about her as a woman, as an actor, and as a co-star. Whenever I did a scene with her, I never felt more electric…. I just I never felt more present onscreen with anyone. And that is all credit to Lucy Lawless.”
Regarding Campbell, DeLorenzo was equally effusive. “From minute one from the screen test, we immediately slipped into the roles of Ash and Kelly. I was just reminded of this when Arielle was staying with me recently. We were both very sentimental and she suggested we watch each other’s screens tests,” she stated.
“I forgot the little details of it,” DeLorenzo said. “The first time that Bruce and I were ever on camera together, immediately I was Kelly. Sam Raimi’s behind the camera and has us stand next to each other to make sure that Bruce is taller. I came up to his hips,” she laughed. “I’m 5’3’’; he’s a mountain man!”
Raimi had the two facing each other and filmed close up on DeLorenzo’s face. “You don’t see Bruce’s, you just see my reaction,” she said. “I had been in the same room with Bruce for all of 30 seconds,” she added, and “he immediately makes a face when I look at him. He makes a face like he’s appalled, and I say, ‘Thanks a lot, dude.’ He says, ‘What? It’s a horror show!’ We had chemistry from the start.”
DeLorenzo summed up Campbell in a way that surprised even her. “He is a one-take wonder. He is the king of one-liners and the king of one take. Actually, that’s a great line and I can’t believe I fucking never thought of that in three seasons!” she laughed. After I expressed delight at getting an “exclusive” quote, DeLorenzo laughed again.
“See, I told you we’d turn our days around!”
The post Ash Vs. Evil Dead’s Dana DeLorenzo Talks All Things Kelly appeared first on The Nerd Element.