Author: BRWC

By Frankie Wallace.

Home renovation shows are available on several TV channels as well as through streaming and subscription apps including Hulu and Netflix. Some of the most popular design celebrities have earned rock-star level fame from their home design shows including twins Drew and Jonathan Scott, AKA Property Brothers. They went from a show on home renovation to selling half a billion dollars of their home design products in just one year. And then there’s the farmhouse style power couple, Chip and Joanna Gaines of the show Fixer Upper, who are responsible for one of Target’s most coveted home collections season after season: Hearth & Hand with Magnolia. 

What makes home renovation shows — and the personalities behind them — so popular? Here are four reasons why.

1. Do It Yourself (DIY) Is More Accessible Than Ever

Decades ago, home renovation projects were left to contractors or professionals. A trip to the hardware store may have meant approaching the man behind the counter, asking for an item, and waiting while he went to find it in a box in the back room. It wasn’t exactly an empowering experience if you were in the mood to change out your light switches.

Home Depot came around in 1978 to revolutionize the way consumers saw home improvement projects. All of a sudden, anyone could wander the aisles of the store for design inspiration and marvel at the variety of stylish (and affordable!) interior and exterior lighting collections, or choose a paint color from the hundreds of paint swatches available. The home improvement superstore even hosted clinics on weekends so people could learn how to do home projects themselves.

The TLC show Trading Spaces debuted in 2000 as what’s arguably the first show to highlight how people could transform a room on a small budget and lots of sweat equity. Then came the explosion of DIY design blogs and Pinterest, inspiring people to try their hand at more creative home renovation projects. Home renovation shows reflect and reinforce the DIY home improvement movement. Watching someone you identify with complete a successful kitchen remodel on TV may encourage you to take matters into your own hands and finally finance the kitchen of your dreams. 

2. As Home Values Rise, More People See Their Home as an Investment

Home values have risen consistently in the last decades. Of course, there are peaks and valleys as recessions come and go, but in general, buying a home is one of the most important investments you can make towards your future. The Scott brothers’ show, Property Brothers, shows how a fixer-upper can increase in value with a few home renovations. Most homeowners today are aware of the investment value of their homes and how making improvements can impact their bottom dollar when it comes time to sell. 

A homeowner may tune-in to home renovation shows for ideas on projects they can do to increase their home’s value. Interestingly enough, many of the home improvement projects that return the biggest bang for your buck can be completed over a weekend such as replacing the front door, adding a backyard deck, or making smart-technology home upgrades.

3. Homeowners Want a Home That Reflects Their Personality

For most people, their home is their sanctuary. Life can be hectic and chaotic. A home environment that fits your personality is your getaway from the hustle and bustle. 

Then there’s the growing number of remote workers who work from home. They may want, more than ever, a beautiful and functional space. This demographic may need ideas on how to make a smaller home work well as an office and living space. 

The variety of home renovation shows means there’s a design show for every style, need, and personality. There are shows for apartment and loft dwellers, for viewers who prefer to live green and sustainably (or even off the grid shows like Cabins in the Wild on Netflix), and design shows for people in search of tiny house projects, such as Tiny House, Big Living, or for dream vacation homes.

4. Design Tastes Are More Sophisticated Than Ever

Besides the home renovation shows, movies play a large role in what we think about home and design as a whole. The average homeowner or renter may not necessarily pick up a copy of Architectural Digest magazine for their home design ideas, but they may find design inspiration in a movie or TV show setting. Who can forget Diane Keaton’s gorgeous Hamptons beach house in Something’s Gotta Give?

As people are more exposed to aesthetically pleasing room settings in movies, they’re receiving a design education they may not even be aware of. AMC channel’s Mad Men TV series ushered in a wave of cocktail-chic rooms and Fifties fashion that dominated trends long after the show ended. The show revived MidCentury Modern design and a whole new wave of hipsters was born.

The Evolution of Style

As the public becomes more exposed to design in TV series, movies, and other forms of print and digital media, home renovation shows come out on top. The most successful ones fill the public’s need to elevate the style of their home or make changes that reflect their tastes and personalities for a feel-good home environment, and the hosts or trendsetters who are the face of the show become celebrities in their own right with lucrative household lines for sale at your favorite big box or online retailer.

OFF THE RAILS: SNOWPIERCER AND THE BEST TRAIN-BOUND ACTION MOVIES

Fast-moving trains have been supplying cinematic shocks to audiences since the earliest days of film. Legend has it  in 1896 when the Lumiere brothers first screened 50-seconds of a train approaching a station to show off their miraculous new invention, the assembled patrons panicked and fled, believing the train was hurtling towards them!

We may have become a little more sophisticated as spectators in the hundred years since, but filmmakers are still using speeding trains to excite audiences. With the high-velocities, cramped carriages and exotic atmosphere, the action genre in particular has made regular use of trains to create thrilling and explosive stories.

One such example comes from Academy Award-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) who assembled an A-list cast for his own foray into train-bound action, Snowpiercer. Full of hard-hitting sci-fi spectacle and plenty of biting social commentary, Snowpiercer is set aboard a train carrying the last survivors of humanity as it hurtles through an earth reduced to a frozen wasteland. Within the carriages the remnants of the human race have formed their own divisive economic and class system. This is all set to change when Curtis (Chris Evans) leads a group of lower-class citizens, who live in squalor at the back of the train, on a fight to the front. Each section of the train holds new surprises for the rebel group as they battle their way from carriage to carriage. Snowpiercer is great!

As Snowpiercer finally makes its way to UK Blu-ray™ and DVD we celebrate with a look back at some of the most exciting train-bound action movies to date.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963)

Arriving just one year after Bond’s big-screen debut, 1962’s Dr. No, this second outing for the famed spy sets the template for what would become one of the longest-running action franchises in cinema history. With more exotic locales, Bond girls and the first appearance of gadget-maker ‘Q’, many established Bond staples were put firmly into place while the action was increased, culminating in a thrilling fistfight aboard the Orient Express. After some initial escapades in Istanbul, agent 007, here played by original star Sean Connery, finds himself boarding the legendary Paris-bound train with Turkish colleague Kerim, defector Tatiana Romanova, and in possession of top-secret Russian cryptography device, the ‘Lektor’.

Unbeknownst to Bond, super-assassin ‘Red’ Grant (played by Robert Shaw who would later appear as grizzled boatman Quint in classic thriller Jaws) is also on board, where he quickly dispatches Kerim and drugs Tatiana before coming after his prize… What follows is one of the most brutal close-quarters fights in Bond history as the two men go at it in the cramped confines of their train carriage. When Bond gets hold of Red’s garrot, it’s goodnight for the Russian agent. Red Grant may not be as outlandish as some of Bond’s freakier later adversaries, but he’s memorable as one of his toughest. Of course this isn’t the last time we’d see Bond battle aboard a train, the opening set-piece of 2012’s Skyfall sees the agent back in Istanbul and battling on the roof of a speeding train. Bond isn’t so lucky the second time around…

THE TRAIN (1964)

Director John Frankenheimer made his name in the 60s and 70s with a string of acclaimed action thrillers often with political leanings. His best-known works include The Birdman of Alcatraz, The Manchurian Candidate, The French Connection II and Black Sunday. In 1964 Frankenheimer teamed up once again with his Birdman of Alcatraz star Burt Lancaster to tell the daring story of the French Resistance’s attempts to stop the Nazi looting of priceless artworks and their removal, by train, to Germany. Enter resistance fighter Paul Labiche (Lancaster) who is initially reluctant to endanger human life for the preservation of art but is soon convinced to take up the challenge and thwart Nazi art-lover Colonel Franz von Waldheim’s scheme.

With the imminent liberation of Paris by Allied forces, the masterpiece-packed train only needs to be delayed by a couple of days but with the delicacy of the cargo, an elaborate and potentially deadly plan must be put into place to safely stop its journey into Germany. Containing old-school action set-pieces on a scale rarely seen today, actual planes, trains and dynamite are used to stage genuine destruction of a French rail yard. Explosive!

THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE, TWO, THREE (1974)

In 1974, when New York City was at the height of its crime epidemic,  nowhere was more dangerous than the city’s graffiti-covered subways. This hotbed of crime proved the perfect setting for a tense action classic which saw beloved comic actor Walter Matthau (The Odd Couple) square off against Robert Shaw, returning to another villainous role after his aforementioned Bond stint. In the film, four colour-coded criminals hijack downtown train Pelham 1-2-3 threatening to kill one passenger a minute unless they receive 1 million dollars within the hour.

Undercover cop Garber (Matthau) is one of the hostages and is forced to negotiate with the increasingly violent Mr. Blue (Shaw) leading to a deadly finale. Shot on location in an abandoned section of the New York Subway, the city transport authority took some convincing before they would cooperate with filmmakers, with one of their chief concerns being that the detailed plot would inspire real-life attempts at train hijackings. The filmmakers were also ordered to not include any graffiti in the film, leading director Joseph Sargent to comment, “New Yorkers are going to hoot when they see our spotless subway cars,”!

THE BULLET TRAIN (1975)

Japan’s famous Shinkansen ‘bullet’ train provides the setting for this 70s disaster film. Something of a precursor to Keanu Reeves’ action hit Speed, terrorists plant a bomb on a high-velocity, passenger-loaded bullet train shuttling out of Tokyo station. If the train drops below 80km/h the bomb will detonate, and with passengers panicking as the train starts to skip stops, the race is on to find either the bomber or the bomb before time runs out…

In a rare bad-guy role the film features one of Japan’s most renowned actors, Ken Takakura, who was already a superstar in his native country and would later earn international recognition in such features such as Sydney Pollack’s The Yakuza and Ridley Scott’s Black Rain. Playing train conductor Aoki, Sonny Chiba is an instantly recognisable face for action film fans the world over. As one of the biggest martial arts stars of all time thanks to hard-hitting titles including The Streetfighter, director Quentin Tarantino would later pay his respects by casting him in his own eastern-film homage, Kill Bill. 

TRAIN TO BUSAN (2016)

Audiences were growing increasingly tired of zombie flicks when this excellent South Korean effort put a new lease of life into the undead formula by adding fast-paced action and emotional character weight – and all onboard a speeding passenger train. The film follows a divorced workaholic father, who attempts to make amends with his young daughter by taking her to see her mother on the train from Seoul to Busan. The only hitch in the plan is the zombie outbreak that begins to take over the country, and the infected passenger who boards the train just as it departs Seoul Station…

Intense train bound action follows, as the zombie infection quickly spreads throughout the train and a small band of survivors must fight their way through the undead menace. Look out for actor Don Lee who plays a brawny bruiser with a heart-of-gold in a break-out role. Following it up with a string of South Korean hits, the actor can next be seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with upcoming title The Eternals. Train to Busan may be notable for tense sequences amid the cramped carriages, but the father-daughter relationship proves the heart of the film, ending in a sequence that will leave even the most hardened action-fan in tears. 

Snowpiercer is on Blu-ray™ and DVD 25 May 2020 from Lionsgate UK Amazon Blu-ray^TM: https://amzn.to/2KFk88p. Check out Snowpiercer!

A Tribute To Actors Tragically Lost To Overdose. By Maggie Potter.

Drug use in Hollywood is nothing new.  That’s kind of an easy statement to gloss over, isn’t it?  Doesn’t that make you a bit sad when you really think about it? 

As a culture, we’ve seemed to accept the fact that many celebrities take drugs. Some have been very upfront about their usage and have even publicly checked into rehab facilities. Others tend to keep their addictions hidden until tragedy strikes and the public learns about their struggles with addiction by reading about their deaths due to overdose. 

The opioid problem certainly isn’t limited to Hollywood. It’s a major issue all across the country. In fact, drug overdose is the number one cause of death for adults under the age of 50. 

Even though it’s easy to assume that famous actors have everything they could ever want, and maybe when it comes to materialistic things, that’s true. But actors and depression often go hand-in-hand, causing many of them to turn to drugs as coping mechanisms. That has resulted in many beloved actors taking their own lives with drugs over the years. 

Let’s dive a little deeper into the impact of drug use in Hollywood, and pay tribute to some of the best actors that were taken from us too soon. 

The Pressures of Hollywood

It’s easy to think that actors have nothing but free time, but Hollywood itself places a lot of pressure on celebrities to stay relevant, to stay beautiful, and to stay popular. Many actors work 15+ hour days when they’re on set, thanks to everything from location changes to hair and makeup. While they may not be shooting movies or TV shows all year, they spend a lot of their free time traveling to promote what they’ve been working on, doing interviews, photoshoots, and training. It’s not always the “life of luxury” that we assume it to be. 

In addition to some pretty intense working conditions, there are a lot of pressures in the film and television industry to look a certain way. 

For some actors, that means things like restrictive diets or working out more than the average person. Sometimes, even a specific role can cause an actor to have to modify their body in an extreme way. Zac Efron had to get down to 5% body fat in just 12 weeks for his role on Baywatch, combining weight loss and bodybuilding techniques to transform his physique. Christian Bale lost a dangerous 63 pounds for his role in The Machinistby only eating one can of tuna and an apple each day. 

Body image issues and the pressure to look a certain way can lead to mental health conditions like: 

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Body dysmorphia

When actors feel they have to look a certain way, either to fit into the celebrity culture or for a specific role, it creates a pressure that most of us don’t have to deal with on a regular basis. Some use drugs as a way to cope or to feel better about those pressures. 

Glamorizing Drugs on Screen

Hollywood has never been shy about showing drugs on-screen and even glamorizing their usage. Unfortunately, some movies fail to show the huge risks of drug usage or the consequences that could come from it. 

Actors are just that. The drugs they portray using in movies aren’t real. But it’s a culture that can sometimes feel more accepting of drug use than others. Because of the pressures of Hollywood and the culture itself, we’ve unfortunately lost some incredible, legendary actors through the years, including: 

• Philip Seymour Hoffman
• Judy Garland
• John Belushi
• Chris Farley
• Brittany Murphy

While some of these actors struggled with drug use for years, others dealt with addiction in silence until their deaths. While that should make the awareness of drug use and mental health in Hollywood more important than ever, not much has changed when it comes to the film and television industries’ fight against drugs. 

Actors Gone Too Soon

Opioids and other harmful drugs aren’t only problematic for adults. According to the Department of Health & Human Services, 3.6% of youths ages 12-17 reported misusing opioids, and that number doubled for those ages 18-25. 

Young actors aren’t immune to the drug crisis facing America. Even if they might have bright, successful futures ahead, they can face the same pressures from Hollywood that veteran actors have to deal with. In fact, they might even be under more stress when it comes to appearing youthful and energetic, combined with having a demanding schedule. 

Some of the most notable actors who died incredibly young due to an overdose or a combination with alcohol include: 

• River Phoenix (23)
• Heath Ledger (28)
• Cory Monteith (32)

Even the classic Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe died of an overdose at just 36 years old. 

The stories of young actors struggling with depression, the pressure to perform, to look perfect, and to really “make it” in Hollywood seem to be far too common. It’s difficult to think of an umbrella solution to the problem, since drug use is so prominent throughout the country, and the world, but for the Hollywood elite and up-and-coming actors, making mental health a priority and finding healthy ways to cope with the pressures of an acting career can help to lower the risk of developing addictions. As a result, hopefully, we’ll see fewer news headlines about a beloved actor taking their own life with drugs.