Bite Me, Tony

Backrooms A little background on today's subject: Kane Parsons is a 21-year-old independent film director whose debut, Backrooms , skyrocketed to #1 at the box office when it opened this past May. As of this writing, the movie has grossed more than $400m since its release. Originally developed as a YouTube series (when Parsons was 17), Backrooms  quickly went viral, attracting the attention of several movie studio executives and industry luminaries, including Osgood Perkins (film director, and son of Anthony) and James Wan (architect of the Saw , Conjuring , and Insidious franchises), who signed on as producers of the film.  Initially I wasn't certain if I even wanted to write about Backrooms after viewing it. For one thing, I wasn't exactly sure how I felt about it. I'm still not 100% sure but I've somewhat come around in the past couple of days, now that I've had time to think about it. So, there is no "in-a-nutshell" way of breaking down what thi...

The Shards According to Ryan Murphy   Oof! That was a rough one. After spending the last 5 weeks hatewatching Ryan Murphy's bastardization of The Shards ,  I have finally reached the conclusion of this limited series. Or maybe I haven't, who knows?  But we'll get to that later. First, let's get the obvious out of the way right up front: FX should have retitled this The Sharts  lest any unsuspecting viewers get the idea that it's a straightforward adaptation of Bret Eason Ellis's 2022 bestseller. It is not. In the Murphyverse, the book and the series are a mix-and-match mashup that is rarely harmonious.  Just a few years ago, I was praising the virtues of Bret Easton Ellis's new novel, The Shards    His magnum opus , I declared, a true masterpiece!   One of the 10 best books of 2022  ( see my post from Feb. 22, 2023) ! Receiving widespread critical acclaim at the time of its release, the novel is a sort of coming-of-age thriller about a...