Author: acsversace news

5 REASONS YOU SHOULD WATCH AMERICAN CRIME STORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE

The new season of American Crime Story, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, premiered in January this year and recently concluded its short nine-episode course.

It received mostly favourable reviews for its portrayal of the 1997 assassination of Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace and the course that led Andrew Cunanan, the 27-year old serial killer, to commit it. If you haven’t already seen it then here are five reasons to add it to your watchlist.

1) The miniseries has been tremendously cast, with Emmy nominee Édgar Ramirez as title-character Gianni Versace, Academy Award winner Penélope Cruz as Donatella Versace (Gianni’s younger sister), Ricky Martin as Antonio D’Amico (Gianni’s partner), and Darren Criss as Andrew Cunanan (Gianni’s killer) in what has been widely considered to be a breakthrough performance in his career.

2) It’s Ryan Murphy’s second ACS instalment after The People v. O.J. Simpson, which won the 2016 Emmy for Outstanding Limited Series.

3) While it does cover the murder of the legendary fashion designer, it goes beyond that to explore the background of Andrew Cunanan and his previous victims, along with his relationship with them.

4) The show was based on Maureen Orth’s Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History, a book that chronicled Cunanan’s crimes. It led to some off-show drama as the Versace house distanced itself from the show terming it to be fictitious, while the network firmly stood by it and Orth’s reporting.

5) Gianni Versace was killed on the front steps of his Miami Beach mansion in 1997, which now exists as Casa Casuarina, a hotel, and a lot of what is seen in the show is as real as it gets as certain scenes were shot at the mansion itself, such as the entire opening of the show.

5 REASONS YOU SHOULD WATCH AMERICAN CRIME STORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE

A Dark Tale, The Murder Of Gianni Versace

★★★★☆

Behind 21st Century Fox’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace is a dark tale of tragedy and psychotic violence. 

Andrew Cunanan was a serial killer who, after beating a former US Naval Officer to death with a claw hammer, and stabbing victim Lee Miglin 20 times with a screwdriver, shot Gianni Versace on the doorstep of his Miami beach mansion.

The show first aired on the last day of February on BBC Two, and is the second in the series following on from The People Vs OJ Simpson.

American Crime Story is a hypnotic watch, depicting real life crimes in the airbrushed universe of American TV.

It sounds like an ideal combination, and it almost is, watching superstars including Penelope Cruz as Donatella Versace, on the small screen in sets dripping with expense.

However problems lie within American Crime Story. One of them being that, in approaching stories that are incredibly sensitive to certain people (impending lawsuits and all the rest of it) the show is almost tied having to play it incredibly straightforward in nature.

By the end of OJ it felt like the veneer of drama was starting to fade away. Replaced by a systemic approach to bullet pointing all the facts, safely tying all the loose ends, and then the viewer starts resentfully realising he/she has just spent ten hours of their life watching a ‘did he/didn’t he’ murder mystery in which everyone knows the conclusion.

This shouldn’t deter the viewer. The show still nestles exceptionally the essence of its entertainment- the common person’s fascination with murder. And there’s not so much ‘did he/didn’t he’ in Versace’s murder. We watch Cunanan kill him in the opening scene.

It’s also worth watching for the performances of Darren Criss (Cunanan) and Ricky Martin (Versace’s forsaken lover Antonio D’Amico). Martin is a powerful performer if a little hammy. While Criss plays the disturbed Cunanan with an emotionally naive, child-like demeanour that is inclemently spine chilling.

A Dark Tale, The Murder Of Gianni Versace

Damien Love’s TV highlights

American Crime Story: The Assassination Of Gianni Versace

9pm, BBC Two

As this astonishing series nears its end, it gets even more brain scrambling. It’s the penultimate episode, and the backwards-running structure stretches back to its furthest points, to offer two parallel, contrasting portraits of childhood, in two different timeframes. In 1957, we glimpse the young Gianni Versace, aged 10 or so, and encouraged by his dressmaker mother to follow his heart and learn about and designing clothes, despite the taunts of other kids and disapproval of his teachers. Flipping forward to 1980 comes a fuller and more unsettling picture of Andrew Cunanan around the same age – singled out for special treatment and pressurised to succeed by his father, Modesto, a stockbroker with big dreams, and given to making big exaggerations about himself. As Cunanan becomes a young man, however, the house of cards Modesto has built begins to collapse. Darren Criss’s performance as Cunanan is extraordinary again, while the casting of the child actor playing young Cunanan (Edouard Holdener) is spooky.

Damien Love’s TV highlights

Watch What Happens Live Comes To LA And Courts Emmy Voters

This isn’t the first time “Watch What Happens Live! with Andy Cohen” has shot in Los Angeles, but there was something different Monday night about the Bravo talk show’s broadcast at the historic Wiltern theater. Oh, right. It was the rows of Television Academy Emmy voting members invited to catch the festivities first hand.

[…] As for the night’s episode, Cohen’s guests were two other Emmy contenders, “This Is Us‘” Milo Ventimiglia and “The Assassination of Gianni Versace’s“ Ricky Martin (who Cohen repeatedly reminded us also has a current Las Vegas residency). Word was having the two potential acting nominees on hand wasn’t planned for an audience partially filled with Television Academy voters, but it didn’t hurt FX’s campaigns that Darren Criss, also from “Versace,” stopped by at the end of the half hour to take shots with Cohen and his guests (Oh, drinking is also a big part of the ‘WWHL’ experience). Viewers learned that Ventimiglia is sort of a bad interview (the large audience might have hurt) and Martin is pretty blunt (he chastised himself for not coming out during a notorious Barbara Walters interview in 2010). The sound also was problematic (the audience often had problems hearing what was being said on stage), but a lesson learned when figuring out where to film the next time around. Other guests this week in LA include the entire cast of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” Anna Faris and Snoop Dogg, among others.

Watch What Happens Live Comes To LA And Courts Emmy Voters

16 of the Best Anthology Series Ever on Television

Ryan Murphy is one of the hottest names in TV, and he’s behind a few of the top anthology series. American Crime Story tells a different true crime story each season, and the first two seasons have been unreal. The first season, which focused on the murder trial of OJ Simpson, received universal acclaim and basically won every award. Sarah Paulson was amazing as prosecutor Marcia Clark, and the entire supporting cast was just great. The recent second season told the story of Gianni Versace‘s murder, and it was also pretty strong.

16 of the Best Anthology Series Ever on Television


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Pop Rocket Episode 162: Pop Rocket is for Lovers with Dave White

Karen Tongson takes over hosting duties this week and film critic Dave White joins the panel to discuss all things Valentine’s Day. Who are our favorite TV couples? Are rom coms over? What couple do our panelists aspire to be like? Plus, Karen talks the Winter Olympics, Dave tells us about his new favorite chef, and Wynter has a few more words on Versace. | 14 February 2018