Abby Olcese

1 month ago | thepitchkc.com | Abby Olcese

Perhaps you've seen an article going around on social media about hot new books to read over the summer, published in the Chicago Sun-Times. For some reason, that article told you to read a number of books that don't exist, by authors who do, and who were both baffled by and justifiably angry about the whole situation. That article, currently going viral for all the wrong reasons, was written by a freelancer who used AI to generate the list of recommended books .

1 month ago | thepitchkc.com | Abby Olcese

With the current fascist-leaning state of life in the U.S., it feels like only a matter of time before someone attempts (again) to adapt Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Versions of Huxley's 1932 dystopian novel were made in 1980, 1998 and, most recently 2020 as a notably ill-received streaming series. But for as many times as it's been attempted, a definitive version-one that sticks in our collective consciousness-has yet to emerge. Thomas Rex would like to be the guy who helps make that happen.

2 months ago | thepitchkc.com | Abby Olcese

It's always a bummer when content and concept don't match up. This is doubly the case with Isaiah Saxon's The Legend of Ochi, a movie deeply inspired by practical effects-driven fantasies like E.T., The NeverEnding Story, and Labyrinth. Saxon and his crew attempt to reintroduce that same tactility - the movie's main furry little guy is a stunning (and adorable) puppet - and it's pretty effective. Unfortunately, Saxon doesn't give his human characters the same attention to detail.

2 months ago | thepitchkc.com | Abby Olcese

In the 1950s, Douglas Sirk made melodramas that combined soapy plots with sharp commentary on class, race, gender and sexuality in mid-century America. Against a technicolor backdrop, movies like Written on the Wind, All that Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life depicted characters struggling against social standards, domestic expectations or prescribed cultural roles to pursue the lives they desired.

2 months ago | thepitchkc.com | Abby Olcese

Andrew Ahn's The Wedding Banquet is about two gay couples (one pair female, the other male) who enter into a messy straight-presenting marriage arrangement to please the strict, traditional grandparents of one of their group. In most versions of this story - and indeed the 1993 Ang Lee movie of the same name on which Ahn's film is based - keeping the charade going would make up most of the movie, with everything falling apart at the end of the second act, followed by hard-won reconciliation.