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https://www.thenerdelement.com/2023/11/15/manos-day-celebrating-the-long-life-of-a-cult-classic/
The first ever Manos Day is here, courtesy of Dumb Industries. The day celebrates the 1966 cult classic, “Manos: The Hands of Fate” (referred to as “Manos” by fans), considered one of the worst films ever made in some circles, but lauded by Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans because of fun riffs and the character of Torgo, a satyr who takes care of the house for The Master. If you know, you know.
Part of the charm of “Manos” is its super-low budget and the determination of director/writer/producer Harold P. Warren to commit his story to celluloid. The prints circulating for years included murky visuals, bad editing, dubbed acting, and an incessantly jazzy score. After a workprint was discovered in 2011,an industrious fan restored “Manos” and released the new print in 2015. The restored print has crisp visuals and sound–and bad editing and dubbed acting. The incessantly jazzy score sounds much better, though. Just writing about it has given me a Torgo’s theme earworm.
The Nerd Element spoke via email to Chris Gersbeck, founder and CEO of Dumb Industries, about dedicating a day to a movie that may have stayed obscure if not for its resurrection on MST3K and its subsequent fan following.
The Nerd Element: What prompted you to create a day to celebrate “Manos”?
Chris Gersbeck: Ryan Labriche, who has been helping Jackey with her social media the past year, conceived of it entirely. He and Jackey pitched me the idea of collaborating on a celebration of all things Manos on the anniversary of its premiere a couple months ago and we’ve been plotting everything together since then. It’s a true collaboration between the three of us and all of the fans and creators who have contributed so much to the Manos-verse.
TNE: What is it about “Manos” that has made it an enduring cult classic?
CG: I think there’s a certain charm in just how batshit weird the movie is, despite it following a pretty familiar horror storyline. MST3K featured loads of awful movies, but I think the fact that Manos took so many liberties with the concept of what a movie could be and that there’s a lot of iconic imagery attached to it has kept Manos in the conversation of “worst movie ever made.” There’s also an earnestness to what Hal P. Warren was trying to achieve that simply cannot be replicated.
TNE: What is the number one thing fans tell you about their love for the film? Or if not one thing, then the top elements they rave about?
CG: I actually legitimately love the soundtrack to the movie. The placement of the songs throughout the movie often makes no sense, but the music on its own is actually quite enjoyable. I also gained a new appreciation for the film after seeing Ben Solovey’s 4K remaster, because all those colors really pop on the screen.
TNE: What is your favorite scene from the movie?
CG: I love the scene when the family is finally in the house, they’re looking at the painting of the Master and his dog, and out of nowhere Torgo just seemingly wanders through the set holding all their luggage with that goofy Torgo theme playing. No one says anything, they just kinda stare at him struggling to get to the next room. It almost appears like an outtake that they accidentally left in, but it always makes me laugh because it’s just like… why?! Why was that in there?
TNE: Chris, how did you get together with Jackey Neyman Jones (who plays Debbie in “Manos”) to provide painting classes through Dumb Industries?
CG: I met Jackey when she was a guest on “The Mads Are Back” in December 2021, back when Trace Beaulieu and Frank Conniff live-riffed “Manos” for the first time. She was our post-show Q&A guest, and shortly afterwards she and I began discussing ways we could collaborate. Jackey is just so funny, down-to-earth, hard working and has so many great ideas, we just clicked right away and knew we had to work on something. Once we settled on the idea of a B-movie themed online art class, it just blossomed from there. Since then we’ve collaborated on an entire line of Manos-themed clothing, an additional online art class (Jackey Neyman Jones’ Paint Parties) and the production of the audiobook version of her book, Growing Up With Manos.
TNE: Anything else you’d like to add about the “Manos” celebration or your other projects that we haven’t asked you about?
CG: I’m really looking forward to the live AMAs we’ll be doing with Jackey on Manos Day and the world premiere of “The Manos Chronicles (Episode 1).” Willow Polson, who created the Manos Chronicles, will also be joining us for an AMA following its premiere and I’m sure folks will have so many great questions to ask. I’m also excited for everyone to get to watch all these Manos offshoots together as a communal viewing experience. We really couldn’t ask for a better group of creators or fans to be involved in this project.
For all things Manos Day and to sign up for Jackey Neyman Jones’ online art classes, visit https://dumb-industries.com/ Be sure to check out the site’s other fun offerings, such as The Mads Are Back and The Mary Jo Pehl Show.
Check out the press release for the event here
The post Manos Day: Celebrating the Long Life of a Cult Classic appeared first on The Nerd Element.
Crunchyroll has acquired the North American and select global theatrical rights for the hotly anticipated SPY x FAMILY CODE: White. Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures Entertainment will bring the first film installment of the popular anime series – delivering an original standalone story featuring secret agent Twilight, his deadly assassin wife Yor, and their telepathic adored daughter Anya in an all-new mission – to North American theaters in 2024. The film will be available in two different versions: in Japanese with English subtitles and dubbed in English.
In addition to the North American rights, Crunchyroll has also acquired the rights for Latin America, Australia/New Zealand, and select territories in Europe, including Austria, Benelux, France, Germany, Italy, the Nordics, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland.
Based on the widely acclaimed Harvey and Eisner Award-nominated manga written and illustrated by Tatsuya Endo, the television series SPY x FAMILY originally debuted on April 9, 2022 and was quickly embraced by fans across the globe with glee. The second season of the anime premiered last month as part of the Fall 2023 Anime season on Crunchyroll.
He’s a spy. She’s an assassin. Together, Loid and Yor keep their double lives to themselves (mostly) while pretending to be the perfect family. However, their adopted daughter Anya, a telepath–the heart of their little family– knows both of their exciting secrets unbeknownst to them. While under the guise of taking his family on a weekend winter getaway, Loid’s attempt to make progress on his current mission, Operation Strix, proves difficult when Anya mistakenly gets involved and triggers events that threaten world peace!
I’m super excited for the news of not just more SPY x FAMILY as I’m watching the second season now but more of my favorite found family trope come true anime style via the Forger family! Manga readers know that in the second season come a family vacation via a cruise that has Yor working overtime. Yet in this teaser, we learn that SPY x FAMILY CODE: White contains a brand new story of my favorite little family out once again on vacation–with higher stakes! We see Yor in her Twilight Princess garb, weapons in hand. We see Loid issuing orders. There’s also Bond, the lovable and (cowardly but brave!) family dog, delicious food, a plane, treasure, keys and a scared Anya!
The anime series SPY x FAMILY is produced by TOHO animation and adapted from the widely acclaimed manga series of the same name written and illustrated by mangaka Tatsuya Endo. Serialized in Shueisha’s Shonen Jump Plus, the manga currently has over 31 million copies in circulation and has been nominated for both Harvey and Eisner Awards. SPY x FAMILY is also a New York Times Graphic Books and Manga bestseller and all 10 volumes have hit the Circana Bookscan Top 20 Adult Graphic Novels list.
The animation is produced by two acclaimed anime teams: WIT STUDIO (Attack on Titan (Season 1-3); VINLAND SAGA; Ranking of Kings) and CloverWorks (The Elusive Samurai; Black Butler: Public School Arc).
Credits: Directed by Takashi Katagiri. Written by Ichiro Okouchi. Original story by Tatsuya Endo. Produced by WIT STUDIO x CloverWorks.
Stay tuned for more info as we get closer to the date!
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The post ‘SPY x FAMILY CODE: White’ Film Coming to Theaters 2024 appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.
It’s the time of year for holiday films, whether you enjoy or despise them. With countless movies based on Christmas, you have a variety of both classic and fresh holiday fare to select from. We’ve compiled a list here of the greatest 11 holiday films of 2023!
Christmas in Harmony
Hallmark prefers a white Christmas, so it’s nice to see Black people in powerful positions in 2023. The preview for Christmas in Harmony gives us a sweet look at Ashleigh Murray and Luke James’s reunion on the way to an audition for the holiday choir. Murray’s ex-boyfriend leads the chorus, but she has no idea. Christmas in Harmony is full of cheer and fantastic musical performances, thanks to the talents of Loretta Devine and Michelle Williams in the supporting cast.
The Polar Express
As computer animation has progressed, the visual design of this film has become old, but at the time of its debut, the fact that Tom Hanks did the motion capture for his performance as the train conductor was a significant deal. The film is nevertheless enjoyable all on its own; it chronicles a little boy’s Christmas Eve train ride to the North Pole.
Single All the Way
Single All the Way, one of the year’s most talked-about holiday films, features the typical tropes and misinterpretations of its genre but with LGBTQ+ protagonists instead of straight ones. After years of criticism from his relatives, Michael Urie finally agrees to have his closest friend, Philemon Chambers, act as his boyfriend for the holiday season. Kathy Najimy, Urie’s mom, has plans to introduce her son to a personal trainer. Jennifer Coolidge and Barry Bostwick have joined the cast, and Coolidge is expected to steal the show.
A Christmas Story
You could just stream it anytime you want instead of waiting for TBS’s 24-hour Christmas marathon on Netflix. It’s a Christmas story about a small kid who wants a BB pistol for Christmas and is one of the most iconic films ever. A leg lamp, do you have one? You probably know somebody who does if you don’t.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Jim Carrey takes on the role of the infamous Grinch from Dr. Seuss’s books, who emerges from his cave one Christmas to bring misery to the citizens of Whoville. Here, Carrey is hamming it up under a thick layer of green fur at his Carrey best.
Boyfriends of Christmas Past
What kind of Hallmark Christmas movie doesn’t feature a marketing professional too focused on work to notice that he or she has fallen in love? Cathy Haena Kim gives up on love far too quickly and fails to see that her best friend, Raymond Ablack, is the ideal partner for her. She is up late working on a project when her ex-boyfriend unexpectedly turns up to assist her in waking up. Will Kim’s character admit her reluctance to settle down before it’s too late? Ideally, this will be achieved while striking a satisfactory work-life balance.
The Family Stone
In the film The Family Stone, Sarah Jessica Parker plays a New York City businesswoman who, for Christmas, visits the family of her boyfriend. After that, everyone gets along great, and there are zero disagreements. His mother (Diane Keaton), sister (Rachel McAdams), and brother (Luke Wilson) are all quite critical of him, prompting SJP to call on Claire Danes’s character to play the role of her support. I won’t spoil the rest of the movie but just know that it has some strange family dynamics and takes place around the holidays.
The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star
The Princess Switch was so popular in 2018 that it got two sequels in 2020 and 2021. Queen Margaret and her double, Princess Stacy, are on the trail to discover who stole a priceless relic from the Vatican vault in The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star, starring Vanessa Hudgens. Their strategy requires yet another change. If you’re thinking this is a catastrophe, you’re right.
Un Navidad No Tan Padre (Grumpy Christmas)
The Mexican comedy Un Padre No Tan Padre (2016) has a follow-up in the form of Un Navidad No Tan Padre (Grumpy Christmas). In this story, Héctor Bonilla plays a grandfather who agrees to spend Christmas on the beach with his daughter-in-law and grandchildren. But his daughter-in-law’s demanding aunt (played by Angélica Mara) won’t let them celebrate Christmas as a family. Bonilla wants Christmas his way and starts a family battle, but there’s more to Maria’s character than meets the eye.
Christmas at Castle Hart
Lacey Chabert is an essential part of any holiday film lineup. There have been 27 Hallmark movies in which the star of Party of Five and Mean Girls has starred since 2010. Her most recent film, Christmas at Castle Hart, places her in Ireland as a woman exploring her Irish heritage. The Earl of Glaslough misjudges her and employs her to throw a lavish Christmas celebration at his castle. Will she be cornered into admitting the truth before things get out of hand? Certainly not before she discovers love.
Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster have been crafting visual stories for decades. Their expressive storytelling counters stereotypes of people of color, showing their subjects drawing upon personal strength and culture while challenging the status quo.
The co-directing couple has gained acclaim for Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, a hybrid documentary celebrating Giovanni’s lasting impact as a poet, artist, and social commentator. This cultural icon gets her flowers in this film for being an outspoken truth-teller on racism, sexism, and other social issues.
BGN had the pleasure of speaking with these thought-provoking filmmakers via Zoom about their work on the Going to Mars project, visualizing Nikki Giovanni’s significance to the culture, and why telling our stories is crucial.
First, let me say that this film was beautiful. It is complex and rich with all the archival footage. Nikki Giovanni is so significant to the culture across generations. Can you speak about the plan for this film and how you wanted to frame the presentation?
Michèle Stephenson: We didn’t want it to be an expose on what happened to her at this point in her life, who hated her, or what was her reaction to this and those kinds of conventional devices we sometimes see, especially in the commercial space that we wanted to avoid. We wanted to still stay very intimate and emotional as well.
She is reckoning with the passing of time, as well as reconciling relationships with her son, granddaughter, and partner. It was evident that throughout the film that she has very clear boundaries about what she will answer or explore. How did you go about making that a seamless part of the film?
Joe Brewster: Well, it’s always an issue with every film. The characters have boundaries. Sometimes they will tell you and sometimes you have to learn by trial and error. I would say that hers were fairly clear; clearer than most. There were other things we discovered. But our process is to discover those and move beyond them.
What we discovered is that most of what we needed to know was in a poem somewhere. You hear very early on that these are obstacles she has with memories. It’s in the opening credits. She establishes those boundaries, and we’re very intentional about letting the audience know this is what we are experiencing. The beauty of that is later on we’re able to use that in the telling of the story. Case in point, when she completely refuses to remember one of her most famous poems about the death of Martin Luther King. We have a cornucopia of vehicles that tells stories on different levels, sometimes parallel.
MS: The seamlessness that you mentioned? It comes from a lot of hard work of clunkiness and being able to be self-aware enough to realize where the clunkiness comes in and whether something is working or not. You have a particular vision as a director but the end result is often out of a communal conversation because you want the guidance or the feedback that helps you get to the finishing of the film.
This is where we often debated back and forth of whether we were going to be not just transparent but to fully center her boundaries in the film. We realized this was very important. You’ll see that her explaining her boundaries happens in rhythms. We set it up with more of the dramatic ones. In some ways, that intentional insurgence is about her personality development revealing who is really is and how she negotiates her own vulnerability.
This is very important when we see this boundary come back not just in the audience discussion over Martin Luther King’s assassination but we see it in the boundaries with her son. Those moments are really important to explain her reaction to an audience member or her harsh boundaries with her son. We need to understand that refusal to be vulnerable in her most painful moments, being the driving force, is how she sets boundaries at whatever cost. The stubbornness comes from this place that’s quite deep that we reveal in the first few minutes of the film. It allows us to take the journey from a particular perspective that embraces complexity and contradiction.
Taraji P. Henson gives voice (so amazingly, by the way) to the poems, and she’s also one of the executive producers. How did she come on board for this project?
JB: We were gifted that via Nikki. Nikki would not read some of her older work but did not stand in the way of it being in the film. So, we initially found someone, a teacher here in Brooklyn, who was amazing but we lost her. We decided to broaden our search. Our producer, Tommy Oliver from Confluential Films, had a personal relationship with Taraji. She was very busy and on her way to Asia for a mental health break. She called and said she had a few hours, let’s go!
We found a studio there, tapped in via Zoom, and we had a session in which she read seven poems over the course of two to three hours. She knocked them out of the park. It’s a reoccurring voice that might be Nikki’s younger voice or interpreted as her younger voice. Taraji was so powerful. We’re deeply grateful for her collaboration because it definitely brought the film to a whole other level for us.
What are you hoping people receive from the film? What are you hoping people feel?
JB: There may be obstacles but there is a way to love, to grow, to be in community, even though there are hard knocks. Nikki’s relationship with Gus, her father, is about as traumatic as you can have as a child. But she took that and, in her own way, rose above that. Her work tells us that we can rise above. She will not discuss things that make her unhappy. But I was gifted with her work and it inspired me not to think about the trauma that we are bombarded with every day by the media. Instead was the reminder that there was a love in my community and excellence in my community. Hopefully, the audience will not lose sight of that.
MS: There is a moment in the film when Nikki is talking to her students, and she mentions that you can’t be happier, five or ten years down the road, when someone reads your poem and tells you how much it moved them. But you didn’t do that poem to teach or to lecture. So, I think it’s the soul of the film, in terms of us as artists. We were gifted with this experience and this artistry Nikki provided us. We did a remix based on our own sources of pain and search for healing that in some ways only art can provide as a balm. Then you share it out there and see how it lands. My hope is that as we share this, people are bringing their own interpretations and maybe see things we never expected. That is really what art is about and what keeps us surviving and thinking.
Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project coming soon to Max.