Jordan Peele - Blog Posts

A Bloody Spectacle

“I will cast abominable filth upon you; make you vile, and make you a spectacle.” ~Nahum 3:6

A triple crossover of Little Shop of Horrors, Carrie by Stephen King, and Nope by Jordan Peele. This piece brings out the themes of spectacle and the terrible consequences that come if we are not careful about it.

As Jean Jacket spews the bloody remains of its latest victims over poor Carrie White, standing barely safely above the anticipating pod of Audrey II. All three show the catastrophic results of how we are not always aware of how terrible the actual story certain events originated from really are or how dangerous what we are seeing can be.

P.S. Always wanted to try making something like this after connecting all three horror stories together by themes.

Little Shop of Horrors belongs to Roger Corman, Alan Menkan, and Howard Ashman

Carrie belongs to Stephen King

And Nope belongs to Jordan Peele

Jean Jacket (unfolded) from Nope

Made with acrylics/oil paints, I figured I celebrate the occasion of Halloween by painting a recreated screenshot of Jean Jacket’s true form. Ever since I watched the movie, I have always been fascinated by this creature, the themes surrounding it, and especially how it works. If Peele ever decides to make a sequel, I definitely want to learn more about what these things are, if there are more, and where they came from.

“Nope” and Jean Jacket belongs to Universal Studios, Monkey Paw Productions, and Jordan Peele

Web Shoutout: Youtube Edition

Today, I’m starting a new series: Web Shoutout. It’s a place where I Shoutout random stuff from all corners of the Internet that I find interesting, most especially regarding movies. Hope you like it!

This time I feature standout channels from Youtube that help me, as an amateur movie reviewer and movie enthusiast, understand layers of movies and moviemaking that I might never paid attention before. This list is by no means all encompassing, it’s just a bunch of channels that I enjoy watching at the moment.

1. Every Frame A Painting ( @everyframeapainting on tumblr )

I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that my first pick is Every Frame A Painting, because in my mind, anybody who’s plugged into the Internet’s movie newsreel for a while must have stumbled into an Every Frame A Painting video at least once. 

The channel is created by filmmaker and editor Tony Zhou, to host a video essay series dedicated to the “analysis of film form”. Like the name suggest, the channel mostly--but not limited to--dissects movies you love on cinematographical level and makes you realize things you’ve never thought of before. But most importantly, he encourages “ordinary” people like me to appreciate a movie beyond the skin-deep, like with The Silence of the Lambs essay above. 

To this day, Every Frame A Painting features a wide range of analysis from the works of Martin Scorsese, Jackie Chan, Edgar Wright, etc., to an entire video dedicated to texting on screen, and another one exclusively on chairs. Heck, even his video on Michael Bay makes you appreciate the director more (Bayhem is still crap, but a masterful kind of crap). To my knowledge, Every Frame A Painting is the first of its kind to gain real media recognition, and for good reason. His videos are engaging, crazy good, and always of excellent quality.

Subscribe to Every Frame A Painting. Support the channel through Patreon.

2. Nerdwriter1 ( @thenerdwriter on tumblr )

Due to no fault of its own, I immediately compared Nerdwriter1 to Every Frame A Painting when I first discovered it. In retrospect it was a bit funny to ever think that, because it turned out that Nerdwriter1 (by Evan Puschak) existed almost 3 years before Every Frame A Painting. But it was obvious why I did--they both produce high quality video essays (very often) on movies--but fortunately, I eventually understood that Nerdwriter1 is a different beast.

It took me a while to realize why I love his videos so much: it was because he treated movies not as a separate entity, born in a vacuum, but as part of humanity. Once I understood that, it’s actually very apparent on his channel. That’s why he makes video essays about Donald Trump, Youtube as a medium, and Black Friday--but the same holds true whenever he talks about movies (as evidenced by Children of Men essay above) and entertainment, like when he used Louis CK’s jokes to illuminate the nebulous nature of humor and morality.

His “Understanding Art” series, especially, is most excellent, in which he talks about movies a lot, but also about paintings, poetry, etc. His video on David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises might be my favorite yet (which you can watch on his channel, it’s too bloodily graphic to embed here. SERIOUS WARNING, guys), and others include Pan’s Labyrinth, Ghost In The Shell, A Serious Man, Batman, etc.

Subscribe to Nerdwriter1. Support the channel through Patreon.

3. RocketJump Film School ( RocketJump is @rocketjumptv on tumblr )

If you want to get a bit technical about what happens behind the scenes, RocketJump Film School is an excellent place for you to be. RocketJump itself is a digital movie studio that specializes in original web video content, including hit webseries Video Game High School (it ran for 3 seasons, BTW), and a collaboration with Youtube/TV breakout stars Key & Peele (can be seen through their main channel, RocketJump). They also recently had a deal with Hulu and their 8-episode documentary about their production will premiere this December. RocketJump Film School channel, however (they also have a forum), is their place to share their knowledge with budding film-related workers.

There are lots of themes discussed in their videos, ranging from editing, cinematography, lighting, screenwriting, sound, effects and CGI--to more random stuff like how to create fake blood, how to fold a green screen (it's surprisingly hard and easy at the same time), even as simple as how to hold a boom.

Aside from that, RocketJump Film School also have 101 classes as well as master classes, field trips, and podcasts (talkshow-type follow-up video to their previous content)--which, for lack of better word, are all kinds of awesome and full of information. If you don’t go to film school, it's the second-best place to learn and appreciate all the little things behind the art of film. And if you can believe Youtube comments, even people who actually went to film school frequently say that they learned something the were never taught at school. More than anything, I think that speaks a lot about the quality and dedication of the RocketJump FIlm School crew. Basically, it’s a channel that is chock full of information, if you are at the slightest bit interested in learning what happens behind the scenes, RocketJump Film School is a treasure.

Subscribe to RocketJump Film School.

Jupe is taking the picture

There are some beautiful moments between Emerald and OJ at the end of the scene; and then they play or they do something…. The only time you see a bit of play with OJ is when Emerald gets it out of him, ya know? Because she’s the only person that can really unlock him.

- Daniel Kaluuya

I love the vintage look of this!

OK, so.

I have rewatched Nope in a quiet room with no interupptions as God (Jordan peele) intended and I have some new opinions on some characters specifically Jupe so buckle up motherfuckers cause this is all I'm going to talk about for quite awhile!

The first time I watched the movie I hated Jupe and thought he was a egotistical moron who doomed himself and everyone he loved for another chance at fame but on the second rewatch I realized that I felt nothing but pity for him.

Jupe was a traumatized child til the very end and was never able to move on from the Gordy's home incident. He had to believe he was chosen or special because if he didn't then that meant he survived unscathed for no reason other then a tablecloth and and good timing and that truly would have broken him more then the truma ever could.

From that point on that was all he was because he could never move past it to the point where he got all the pieces of his personality and brand from before the Gordy incident, because he genuinely did not know how to move away from it, so he just...didn't. He recycled these pre written parts from his past to be his future, the western theme and the over the top cowboy persona, for God's sake the costumes his kids wore were just old camera reels on monkey bodies (a detail I never would have pieced together with scrolling through the nope tag)

The parallels between childhood Jupe looking at Gordy through the tablecloth to adult jupe looking at Jean Jacket was the final moment where I decided he wasn't a character meant to be hated, he's a character meant to be pitited. He has always been a scared kid both outrunning his past and chasing it in this never ending cycle who finally found out that he wasn't chosen or special or magic. He was saved by a table cloth once, but once was all he got.

I just watched Jordan peele's nope for the first time tonight and the longer I have thought about it the deeper I love I am falling. It's a western horror reverse horse girl movie with what is most certainly the most graphic and disturbing vore scene that has ever been filmed as well as a social commentary about the abuse and down right neglect that animals and poc have faced in the film industry since the literal beginning of film. I am watching again tomorrow alone and with a much closer eye to find what I have most certainly missed

OUT THERE SCREAMING edited by JORDAN PEELE (REVIEW)

quickly: the ‘horrors’ of blackness have its natural and supernatural roots revealed (bad cop with a third eye / grandma’s love is deadly / wandering man running from nothing / in vivo alien invasion / unstable ex’s / sea siren with your sister’s face / dead man’s swamp revenge / serial killer targeting black robots / white men ruining the atmosphere / daddy’s secret / chaos in the dark / part woman part fish-devil / black magic as an HOA / grief and its blindness / games that ghosts play / negro folk tales as an american requiem / prison industrial complex goes A.I. / black magic as an addiction / whiteness as psyche and psychosis)

A fantastically original collection of short horror stories that span quite a range of horror sub-genres (sci-fi, thriller, romance, and even americana). All unapologetically Black. A superb addition to the limited number of Black horror anthologies (Tales from the Hood, anyone?).

My favorites were Wandering Devil (loverboy with wandering feet can outrun everyone but himself), The Rider (a dead man intervenes on behalf of two black women traveling alone), Flicker (an intermittent darkness unleashes chaos from the shadows), The Norwood Trouble (a group of black ‘practitioners’ will be damned if white rioters try to destroy their town), A Grief of The Dead (grief separates and reunites a pair of twin brothers), Your Happy Place (an incarcerated man must decide his reality after having it stolen from him), Hide & Seek (brothers learn to protect themselves with the same magic that wants to harm them).

★★★★★ Superb.

Top 10 Horror Films (as voted by my followers): #4 — Get Out (2017) dir. Jordan Peele 🍵 All I know is sometimes if there’s too many white people, I get nervous, you know?

MINOR WENDELL AND WILD SPOILERS‼

.

.

.

.

Hello Wendell and Wild fandom I am here to drop a silly little headcanon about the demon bros because they're silly and I love them!

I have a headcanon that Wendell and Wild in fact are both quite talented with cosmetics and enjoy applying makeup on people and on themselves! The best part about this is that I have evidence to back this headcanon up! Wendell and Wild like, applied makeup on some of the undead council members and Father Bests literally said "your work is remarkable!" so yeah! I also just like the idea of Wendell and Wild in eyeliner I think it just suits them in a way!

I can also imagine Wendell and Wild doing makeup with Kat, because sometimes putting on makeup with your demon uncle figures sounds fun!