![]() Armin Afshani to Massachusetts, including tours of Boston museums and a whale-watching excursion outside of Salem. ![]() But I do remember thoroughly enjoying a social studies class trip with Mr. Q: Favorite moments while at NTHS and also living in North Tonawanda?Ī: Being a fairly nerdy (and more-than-moderately loudmouth) kid, I can’t say I have a bevy of favorite moments from which to choose. He is also the author of two Disney-related books, “Yesterday Is Forever” and the upcoming “Walt’s Original Sins.”Īnswer: I wrote for NeXt as a film critic during my entire high school run, starting as a freshman in the fall of 1998 until my senior year in 2001-2002. For the last five years, he has hosted Mousterpiece Cinema, a weekly podcast which reviews the full Disney film library. Spiegel also is managing editor for the website Movie Mezzanine. He worked at the University of Phoenix until last year, when he joined the administrative staff at ASU. Spiegel, a North Tonawanda High School alum, earned an undergraduate degree from Arizona State University and a master’s from Northern Arizona University. I had the opportunity to catch up via email with former NeXt writer, Josh Spiegel. 29, 2016***įor some 20 years, NeXt has served as an outlet for teenagers in Western New York to write stories that readers their age are interested in. In other words, this ain't " The Long Goodbye.*** As seen in the NeXt section of the Buffalo News, Sept. They hint at some backstory (he's a disgraced cop and there's suggestion of a troubled past home life), but they mostly want to ignore the work of development and skip right over to the fun stuff. They do the bare minimum to ground Willis' character in reality without going through the effort to give him much characterization, let alone depth. Unfortunately, the Cullens deal primarily in the superficial, which all but negates this effort. Willis fits the part well and they pepper the film with enough incident to both keep the story afloat and allow a threaded character study. The Cullens clearly wanted to tell a character-based story starring Willis as a lax private dick who acts his shoe size rather than his age, and to their mild credit, they have all the material for that kind of feature. Plus, for a 90-minute film, there's way too much padding to speak of, especially in the first "act," if you can call it that. ![]() ![]() It features a completely unnecessary, wholly smug voiceover, courtesy of Middleditch. It's amiable and pleasant, but never exactly funny. There are plenty of thinly-sketched characters whom the film discards or forgets at will until they're suddenly necessary for any given scene. It awkwardly shuffles along from scene to scene while introducing various inane plot points that abruptly conclude before they're developed. Its bare bones plot isn't the issue (Willis' beloved pup has been stolen by Jason Momoa and his drug gang) since it mostly strives for an ambling, shaggy dog tone, but it has no rhythm. ![]() It's genuinely nice to see him work in that mode.īut though Willis, Goodman, and roughly half of the large supporting cast (which includes Thomas Middleditch, Adam Goldberg, Wood Harris, and Kal Penn, just to name a few) acquit themselves well, "Once Upon a Time in Venice" largely suffers from profound laziness. The film mostly consists of two-hander scenes where Willis gets to crack wise with various character actors, and generally be a likable screen presence. He plays Steve Ford, a private eye in Venice Beach who appears to mostly just skateboard, sleep around, talk shop with his recently-divorced, mildly depressed best friend Dave ( John Goodman, also cutting loose and having fun), and occasionally solve minor mysteries. The best thing that can be said about "Once Upon a Time in Venice," a very light action comedy from Mark and Robb Cullen, is that it allows Willis to cut loose and have fun. ![]()
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