Written and produced during the 2020 pandemic, there’s no better case of art imitating life.Īs the first feature film to return to production with a union crew during COVID, it also provided a rigorous test case for Frame.io C2C, which enabled them to follow social-distancing protocols without sacrificing creativity. Songbird, the new feature from director Adam Mason, sets a classic love story during the hypothetical fourth year of the lockdown in 2024 Los Angeles. ![]() A populace documenting their lives and sharing their experiences using FaceTime and Zoom to stay connected. But out of an abundance of caution, best to keep your distance.A global pandemic. The good news about Songbird is that, unlike the coronavirus, the film is unlikely to affect your day-to-day life. Meanwhile, Mason’s stylistic choices – whiplash-inducing cuts, and camera-work that alternates between GoPro-like first-person shots, video-chat screens and shaky-cam footage – are atrocious, unwatchable. Director Adam Mason and co-writer Simon Boyes’s lumpy script feels like it was completed as part of a long-abandoned Purge instalment, only now dusted off and spit-shined with a COVID-19 conceit. That might sound like an entertaining-enough tick-tock thriller, but Songbird is a hollow movie, exploitatively engineered and sloppily executed. But after Sara’s elderly aunt develops a fever, Nico has to race against time to get the woman he loves, but has never touched, to safety. freely thanks to his immunity bracelet, Sara cannot even open her apartment door, lest she be dragged away by the city’s Sanitation Department. Apa as the COVID-immune courier Nico, and Disney Channel mainstay Sofia Carson as the lock-downed beauty Sara. I suppose all those recognizable actors didn’t have to put in that many hours, as much of Songbird revolves around two would-be lovers played by performers only the young adults in your life might know: Riverdale star K.J. ![]() Bradley, buddy, blink twice if you’re in trouble. Either Bradley Whitford, Demi Moore, Craig Robinson, Paul Walter Hauser and Peter Stormare wanted to make history without checking the fine print of the screenplay, or were desperate to escape some very uncomfortable living arrangements of their own. That and wondering how the film managed to enlist such a strong cast to shoot during the most uncertain time in Hollywood history. Regrettably, imagining all the high jinks that might’ve been is the only entertainment that you’re going to wring out of Songbird. Courtesy of STXfilms/Courtesy of Elevation Pictures Sofia Carson plays the lock-downed beauty Sara. Dare to see the movie that will make you feel even worse than you already do, as if such a thing were possible! If Songbird were opening in theatres – it’s not, and you only get one guess as to why – I’m positive that Bay would have deployed Hazmat-suited ushers to burst into the auditorium midway, delivering an extra jolt of gimmicky terror. Completed during the thick of lockdown this past summer, making it the first feature-length narrative film to not only shoot during the pandemic but also dramatize it, Songbird has a chutzpah-y William Castle vibe to it. Still, there is something compelling about such a viscerally unpleasant idea. ![]() Happy holidays, everyone! Here’s a punch to the crotch! ![]() How would you like to spend 84 of your last minutes of 2020 watching a movie that imagines a 2024 in which the coronavirus has mutated into “COVID-23,” Americans have entered their 213th week of lockdown, and Los Angeles has set up concentration camplike “Q-zones” where infected individuals are sent to die in their own filth. Warning: If you are experiencing nausea, headache, fatigue or vomiting, you might have just watched Songbird.īearing the chef’s-kiss imprimatur of producer Michael Bay, Songbird arrives in our world as the most cruel cinematic joke of a magnificently unkind year.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |