PopHampton: Sunscreen, Silver Screen, Summer Is Here!
The television season is winding down, the blockbuster movie season is in full swing and the East End is about to be flooded with visits from celebrities, vacationers and snowbirds. Revenge aired its series finale on May 10, wrapping up the years-long tale of Emily Thorne’s quest to take down the Hamptonites who ruined her father’s life. While we loved watching the show and pointing out its various inaccuracies—hey, Stony Brook has a trailer park! Who knew?—it was long past time to wrap things up. The show switched creative teams after two seasons, and while the finale was a lot of fun, we can’t help but wonder what would have happened had creator Mike Kelley been able to carry out his vision.
Speaking of “vision” (you’ll get the reference if you’ve seen the film), have you checked out Avengers: Age of Ultron? Amagansett’s Scarlett Johansson is a standout as Natasha Romanoff, whose dark backstory is finally revealed. Johansson, whose character is usually cool and collected in the midst of crisis, does a wonderful job conveying Natasha’s vulnerability and self-hatred. The film has received criticism for a romantic subplot between Johansson’s character and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), with some saying it reduces her to a love interest for a more important male character. Lighten up, people! A strong woman can in fact find love and experience heartbreak, and the film does a good job of showing that. Age of Ultron has been a huge success, raking in more than $1 billion and becoming the highest grossing movie of 2015 (so far).
In other movie madness, Hamptons regular Sofia Vergara’s buddy crime comedy Hot Pursuit has been universally panned by critics, with a ridiculously low 6% on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer, which aggregates professional reviews from all over the web. On a more positive note, Hamptons fave Blythe Danner has been getting rave reviews for I’ll See You In My Dreams, which marks the 72-year-old actress’s first lead role in a film! The drama stars Danner as a widow who begins to find love again after attending a speed-dating event for seniors.
Everything old is about to be new again for fans of Archie Comics. The beloved comic book publisher will be rebooting their iconic characters with Archie #1, on shelves in July. With a new creative team featuring a fresh art style and more contemporary storytelling, the character will be much removed from the nostalgia-laden books of the past. The late Stan Goldberg, an East Ender, was a frequent Archie artist until 2010, when the publisher started a changing of the guard. Goldberg’s last big story for Archie was a series that imagined two possible futures in which Archie married Betty in one and Veronica in the other.
Netflix has announced Montauk, a new series about the search for a boy who goes missing in the titular beachside community. The drama takes place in 1980 and explores all sorts of government conspiracies and supernatural lore. No word on casting or if Montauk will actually be filmed in Montauk, but we imagine Camp Hero would be involved if government conspiracies are part of the story! Showtime’s The Affair will be filming in Montauk again this summer in preparation for its second season. Alena Smith, a writer for the show, also wrote the play The New Sincerity, which has its world premiere at Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theater on May 26. The New Sincerity is directed by Bridgehampton’s Bob Balaban.
Go beyond PopHampton with more celebrity news and gossip in our South O’ the Highway section!