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    #OnTheBigScreen: Jurassic World Dominion and Fire Island

    This week's new releases offer raging dinos in the action-packed Jurassic World Dominion and raving dancing queens in the gay rom-com Fire Island.
    #OnTheBigScreen: Jurassic World Dominion and Fire Island

    Jurassic World Dominion

    Experience the epic conclusion to the Jurassic era as two generations unite for the first time in Jurassic World Dominion, a bold, timely and breathtaking new adventure that spans the globe. From Jurassic World architect and director Colin Trevorrow, Dominion takes place four years after Isla Nublar has been destroyed. Dinosaurs now live—and hunt—alongside humans all over the world. This fragile balance will reshape the future and determine, once and for all, whether human beings are to remain the apex predators on a planet they now share with history’s most fearsome creatures.

    For almost three decades, the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World films, based on characters created by author Michael Crichton, have inspired awe and wonder and terror and exhilaration and unfettered joy in almost every living person who has crossed the threshold of a movie theatre in the past 29 years.

    Under the guidance of filmmaker Colin Trevorrow, who reignited the franchise with Jurassic World in 2015 and has been the series’ creative architect ever since, and long-time franchise producers Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley, the films have become woven into the cultural DNA of almost every country on Earth.

    “With these films, I’m sharing the next few chapters of a story we’ve been telling around the campfire for thirty years,” says Trevorrow, who directed Jurassic World Dominion from a screenplay he co-wrote with Emily Carmichael from a story by Derek Connolly and Trevorrow, based on characters created by Michael Crichton. “This is a world that Steven Spielberg and Michael Crichton created together, and I have been fortunate enough to be a custodian of it for three films—in collaboration with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom director J.A. Bayona, the writers and everyone who’s worked to make this what it is. I’m so grateful to Steven for allowing a new generation to continue telling the story that he and his collaborators began.”

    Read more here.

    Fire Island

    Fire Island is an unapologetic, modern-day romantic comedy showcasing a diverse, multicultural examination of queerness.

    Amid a classic Fire Island week fuelled by underwear parties, dance challenges, karaoke performances, and general debauchery, a gang of gay buddies bickers and banters over potential romantic entanglements in rising comedy star and screenwriter Joel Kim Booster’s Fire Island.

    Fire Island is my favourite place to be,” says writer, actor and stand-up comic Joel Kim Booster, a Chicago-bred, Los Angeles-based stand-up comedian, writer, and actor who was recently named as one of The Queer Young Comics Redefining American Humor by the New York Times.

    “When I was still struggling to be a success working a day job that I hated and was miserable every day, oppressed by just how straight the rest of the world is, you could go there and you would explode because you could feel so free. You can carve out your own space and find the people that you vibe with. It’s about identity and being comfortable in your skin. I think the family part is definitely just having people around you who support who you truly are. Good and bad,” Booster says.

    Producer John Hodges says, “The structure of the story and the narrative that Joel created is very finite. There is just such beautiful arcs between everything, including the exploration of family, and chosen family.”

    “I love movies like Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You—movies that have taken a classic text and updated them to a modern setting very effortlessly and seamlessly,” says Hodges. “What Joel did by grafting the commentary on social mores and politics and classism and putting it very specifically into Fire Island was very well executed. Within that was also a really funny script that has a great love story at the core.”

    You can watch Fire Island on Disney + / Hulu.

    Read more here.

    Read more about the latest and upcoming films here.

    About Daniel Dercksen

    Daniel Dercksen has been a contributor for Lifestyle since 2012. As the driving force behind the successful independent training initiative The Writing Studio and a published film and theatre journalist of 40 years, teaching workshops in creative writing, playwriting and screenwriting throughout South Africa and internationally the past 22 years. Visit www.writingstudio.co.za
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