Category Archives: All the Spoilers
Jeff Tells Liz What Happened in “Winter’s Tale”
Dear Liz,
Yes, I know it’s not a true story, because it’s not a documentary.
If you’re anything like me, you remember seeing the ads for Winter’s Tale and thinking, “So, Colin Farrell is in love with that girl from Downton Abbey, but then he gets reincarnated in modern day New York? Or something?” The ads certainly suggested romance, and then some vaguely supernatural buggery-boo, but mostly they made no damn sense, and the film only grossed $30 million worldwide on a $60 million budget.
Why were the ads so cagey? This is a romance that opened on Valentine’s Day — why not give us some indication of why Farrell winds up in present day New York, or what Russell Crowe is doing in the movie at all? Could it be that the studio simply wanted to indicate sweeping romance while hiding the fact that this movie is BUGFUCK INSANE??? Liz, this film is so crazy that I started taking notes about 1/3 of the way through because I knew I had to tell you about it. And now I will. [Oh, thank god. –Liz]
DARK ANGEL: Liz Tells Frank Live Ep. 1
Dear Frank,
You already know that our first official Liz Tells Frank Live is on YouTube, but let’s dial it up a notch! A PODCAST-Y notch.
This is just the beginning of the podcasting action, Frank! Because as you well know, last Friday we got Sucker Punch-ed. And that, in many forms, will be COMING SOON.
Love,
Liz
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In “Dark Angel” LIVE!
Dear Frank,
A few weeks ago, you and I and some other awesome people got together so I could tell you what happened in the 2000-2002 series “Dark Angel,” executive produced by James Cameron.
We learned a lot about pagers, Canadian science fiction, Ron Perlman, the not-too-distant future and safe sex. We unfortunately did not learn why the show was called “Dark Angel,” but really, there’s no actual answer for that.
It was a good time, and I have done my best to recapture the magic via the below video, which combines an audio recording from the evening plus my Keynote presentation dissecting this seminal moment in pop culture history — or, as everyone else likes to refer to it, “Wait, you mean NOT the show with Eliza Dushku?” Read the rest of this entry
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In “After Earth”
Dear Frank,
As I write this, let me tell you — I’m not feeling great. Some sort of head/chest congestion thing. It’s way better today than it was on Sunday, thanks to the joys of modern medicine, but it also means that I write this now after having just taken my second dose of DayQuil of the day, and I’m gonna tell you, I feel a little bit loopy.
Which is probably the best possible place from which to approach After Earth.
Yes, Frank, technically I know what I’m getting into. I know this movie is not good. But I need to know JUST HOW BAD.
Because here’s the thing — the question I pose today isn’t “is After Earth a terrible film?” but rather “is After Earth WORSE than Battlefield Earth?” It’s time for the Scientology Metaphor Movie Showdown! Read the rest of this entry
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah”
Dear Frank,
Monday night, about ten minutes before a screening of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, I made the following joke on Twitter:
Do you think I’ll have a hard time understanding “Noah” if I don’t read the book first? (I remember hearing it was based on some book…)
Not exactly groundbreaking, as jokes go. But it happened to be couched in some amount of truth. I would probably consider myself a spiritual person, but that spirituality owes absolutely nothing to the Good Book and any knowledge of the material within is due largely to pop culture’s appropriation of it. Like, I know what Gethsemane is, but only because there’s an X-Files episode called that, you know?
(DAMN IT I almost made it a full 24 hours without referencing The X-Files in some context. Frank, I was doing SO GOOD.)
Point is, I know the basics of the Noah story — God decides to punish Man with flood, one guy builds a really big boat to save the creatures that can’t swim to survive it — and went into Aronofsky’s interpretation assuming that the rest of what happened in the film would be drawn from the original text.
But the next day, when I was talking with people online about what I’d seen, I was surprised to learn that NOPE. Not only is the original text, in one person’s words, “really bare bones” but Aronofsky took some, um, liberties with the source material. And Aronofsky’s version? BONKERS. Read the rest of this entry
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In “How I Met Your Mother”
Dear Frank,
So it’s been a little while — sorry about that. There are a number of reasons, most of which boil down to “I really am going to tell you about After Earth out of revenge for it NEARLY KILLING ME the first time I tried oh god that movie’s bad.”
But someonething I loved left us forever this week, and I’ve been waiting for years to tell you about it. Once upon a time, Frank, this guy named Ted made his kids listen to the story of how he met their mother. It only took NINE SEASONS, Frank, but tonight that story came to a close.
And look, I could get into a lot of the details about this epic journey through the mid-20s to mid-30s years of a group of attractive white Manhattanites. I mean, just for starters, Ted’s many failed relationships, the incredibly loving marriage of his best friends Lily and Marshall, their womanizing buddy Barney’s love of manipulating women into casual sex, Ted’s long-time crush Robin’s pursuit of success as an on-air journalist, Lily’s failed art career, Marshall’s struggles as a corporate lawyer, Ted’s architectural obsession with the Empire State Building, Lily’s credit card debt, Robin’s secret past as a Canadian teen pop star, Barney’s black half-brother, Marshall’s obsession with puns, that time Ted and Barney licked the Liberty Bell, the Slap Bet…
Like I said. I COULD GO INTO DETAIL. But Frank, you want to know who the mother is. We all have wanted to know who the mother is FOR NEARLY A FUCKING DECADE. So I’m going to tell you. Read the rest of this entry
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In... 