Film Review: A Place Among the Dead

Fans of TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer will forever remember Juliette Landau as Drusilla, the willowy, unhinged cockney vampire who named the stars and played rough with her dollies. The thing about playing a vampire on screen is that, after a few decades, the performer is no longer able to reprise that role convincingly. No amount of Hollywood self-care truly stops the aging process (Paul Rudd, notwithstanding). But Landau comes as close as she can to revisiting Drusilla in her writing/directing debut, A Place Among the Dead. Landau plays Jules, a fictionalized version of herself, who becomes immersed in investigating a string of murders which may or may not have been committed by a vampire. Landau (and, thus, Jules) uses her Hollywood connections to collect testimonials from vampire-adjacent celebrities. These interviews punctuate the true crime documentary she’s crafting about the killer. A Place Among the Dead is an ultra-meta exploration on the ways in which pop culture glamorizes death and destruction whilst trading youth and beauty as currency. The daughter of actors Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, Landau seasons the brew with a dash of Old Hollywood pathos…

Read the rest at Hammer to Nail!

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16 Stars Who Lost Roles Due To Pregnancy

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Though women struggle for equality in every line of work, Hollywood may be one of the most egregious examples of the gender divide. Procreation is a literal fact of life, and yet, pregnancy undeniably effects the type of work actresses are able to land.

There are all sorts of ways a production can hide a pregnancy including wardrobe, and shot angles. TV shows with established characters will often make such concessions for their actresses, or a film will delay production to wait for its lead to give birth. But it’s not uncommon for a producer to make a different call.

When a 1996 jury ruled in favor of pregnant soap actress Hunter Tylo for wrongful termination, the defense attorney had no remorse, saying, “If nothing else, this decision will cause producers to pay even more attention to the wording of their contracts.”

The actresses on this list all lost a role because they decided to bring a new life into the world. No matter how you slice it, it’s never going to be something that a male actor will have to deal with.

Here are 16 Actresses Who Lost Roles Due To Pregnancy.

Read the list at Screenrant!

Buffy: 15 Things You Didn’t Know About Spike

spike-in-buffy-the-vampire-slayerThere’s not a more charismatic antihero in all the Buffyverse than Spike. Creator Joss Whedon originally meant to kill him off after his first story arc in season 2. But fan response was so fervent, they kept him around, and Spike grew to be one of the most popular (and controversial) characters of Whedon’s career.

There are things that even a casual fan knows about this globe-trotting London ex-pat. Turned vamp in 1880, he reinvented himself through the decades, but settled on first wave punk as his “forever look”. Spike is a fan of the Sex Pistols and the daytime soap, Passions. Always armed with a snarky quip, Spike can rock some eyeliner, and he loves a bit of the old Ultraviolence.

Maybe you’ve seen every episode of Buffy and Angel, and worn out the pause button on that scene in “Wrecked” (you know the one). But even the most dedicated Spikettes won’t know all 15 of these Spike facts. If you’re not caught up on all things Buffyverse, proceed at your own risk. Here be spoilers.

Read the list at Screenrant!

FINT Book Review: Joss Whedon & Race

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Let’s face it. White liberals are having a “woke” moment that is shamefully long overdue. Growing up in the 1980s and early 90s as a white middle class kid from a moderately open-minded family (albeit residing in the conservative American south east), I was taught that the most respectful way to treat people of color was to be “color blind”. That is, to behave as if the color of their skin did not matter. It’s who they are inside that counts. And while that is a lovely notion for a fictional, utopian, post-racial society, it is unrealistic for our world. Moreover, it’s disrespectful and hurtful because it negates the realities of people of color. In Virginia, I could see that racism was alive and well. But I moved to Seattle, Washington at my earliest opportunity and was quickly absorbed into a little bubble of like-minded people. How easy it was for me to forget what it was like beyond the membrane of my blue cocoon.

Mary Ellen Iatropoulos and Lowery A. Woodall III’s collection of critical essays, Joss Whedon and Race cover Whedon’s relationship with race, ethnicity, and nationality on his television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), Angel (1999-2004), Firefly (2002-2003), and Dollhouse (2009-2010), as well as the Firefly movie, Serenity (2005). Though Whedon is known for his progressive narratives, he’s not immune to perpetuating cultural stereotypes even as he seeks to subvert or transcend them. This is particularly true of his early work…

Read the rest on Film International!