Ian Swan (Bruce Willis) is a famed bounty hunter who has spent the last ten years of his life pursuing an escaped fugitive who is wanted for the cold-blooded murder of four FBI men. Swan has tracked his prey to Hawaii but, when he’s shot and falls into the ocean, Swan is presumed dead. Swan’s long-estranged son, Ryan (Blake Jenner), comes to Hawaii to try to track down the man who killed his father. He meets up with Ian’s former partner, Robbie Cole (Stephen Dorff), and also the only cop on the island who cares about justice, Savannah (Praya Lundberg). Reluctantly, Cole works with Ryan and discovers that Ian’s shooting is somehow connected to a shady businessman named Arlene Buckley (John Travolta). A real estate developer, Buckley is working hard to elect a man named Kane (Branscombe Richmond) to the U.S. Senate. Buckley’s plan also involves taking control of a part of the Island that the natives call Paradise City. Got all that?
2022’s Paradise City has been advertised as being a John Travolta/Bruce Willis film but make no mistake. Neither Travolta nor Willis get much screen time, though they both make an impression in the limited time that they do have. Stephen Dorff manages to steal every scene in which he appears, playing Robbie as a well-meaning guy who can’t help but be kind of a screw-up. That said, Dorff really isn’t in that much of the film either. Instead, the main star of the film is Blake Jenner. Jenner has the blandly affable screen presence of a low-key frat boy. That worked for him when he was in films like Richard Linklater’s EverybodyWants Some!! but it’s not exactly ideal for an action star. Whereas the best action stars feel as if they’re always ready for a fight, Jenner comes across as the guy who would be trusted to order the keg for the next party.
Instead of taking charge of the screen, Jenner finds himself overshadowed by the gorgeous Hawaiian scenery. Hawaii is the true star of Paradise City and, even when the film itself doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, Hawaii itself is always amazing to look at. In many ways, Paradise City feels like an extra-violent episode of Baywatch Hawaii. (The film’s Baywatch aesthetic is confirmed when Savannah wears a bikini to a crime scene.) Just as with that show, the beaches and the jungles and the waterfalls and the oceans are all so stunning that it’s tempting to give the film a pass on the fact that the plot never makes much sense and any genuine emotional stakes are pretty much non-existent.
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to ignore the plot because, for a low-budget B-movie, Paradise City takes itself way too seriously. It’s one thing for Ryan to be estranged from his father. It’s another thing for the film to feature flashbacks to Ryan’s childhood, in which we discover firsthand that Ian never understood Ryan. It’s also one thing to make Buckley a family man. It’s another thing try to create a clumsy parallel between the way that Buckley is raising his son and the way that Ian raised Ryan. As opposed to films like Gasoline Alley or the DetectiveKnight films, Paradise City seems to be trying too hard to be something that it isn’t. Instead of just embracing its pulpy style and trying to entertain, the film is determined to tug at the audience’s heartstrings and make a statement about evil land developers. The film forgets that, sometimes, just being entertaining is the best thing that a film can be.
This was one of the last films that Bruce Willis made before it was announced that he would be retiring from acting. Watching the film, it’s easy to tell that a stand-in was used for most of Willis’s action scenes. When Willis delivers the majority of his lines, it’s hard not to miss the wiseguy energy that used to be his trademark. That said, when Willis is acting opposite Travolta and Dorff, he shows a bit of his old spark. The two scenes in which he confronts John Travolta are the best in the film. For a few minutes, he seems like the Bruce Willis who we all remember and it’s hard not to get a bit emotional watching two talented (if often underappreciated) actors acting opposite each other for what will probably be the last time.
Paradise City is not a particularly memorable film and the overly complicated plot is next to impossible to follow but I am happy that the cast and the crew got to hang out in Hawaii for a bit. It’s a lovely place to visit.
The 1971 “pseudo-documentary”, Punishment Park, imagines an alternative America that still feels very familiar.
With America paralyzed by continuing protests against racism, economic inequality, and the war in Viet Nam, President Richard Nixon declares a state of emergency and invokes the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950. The law (which is a real law and still on the books, by the way) allows the federal government to detain anyone who is deemed a risk to national security. Anti-government activists are rounded up and put on trial before “community tribunals,” which are made up of a combination of military officers, politicians, businessmen, and housewives. Though the arrested are given a chance to defend themselves against the charges, there’s never any doubt that each trial will end with a conviction. Those convicted are given two options. They can either serve their entire sentence in federal prison. Or they can spend three days in Punishment Park.
Most of them make the mistake of picking Punishment Park.
What is Punishment Park? It’s 53 miles of California desert. Detainees have got three days to cross the desert, without food or water. If they make it to the American flag at the end of Punishment Park, they will be given their freedom. However, along with having to deal with the extreme heat, the detainees are also going to be pursued by a group of police officers and National Guardsmen. If the detainees are caught before reaching the flag, they’ll be sent to prison. The detainees are given a head start but it soon becomes apparent that the head start doesn’t count much for much when you’re in the desert without water. It also becomes apparent that Punishment Park is much more about revenge and reminding people of their place than it is about justice. The rules of Punishment Park only apply to the detainees.
As he did with the majority of his films (including the Oscar-winning The War Game), director Peter Watkins presents the film as being a documentary. Though they’re never seen onscreen, we hear the voices of the British and German film crews asking questions to both the detainees and the people pursuing them. (We also occasionally hear them protesting the brutality of what they’re witnessing, though the cops and soldiers are quick to point out that they really don’t care what a bunch of Europeans thinks about their actions.) The film cuts back and forth from one group being chased through Punishment Park and another group being put on trial and eventually convicted. Watkins cast the film with amateur actors, with the detainees being played by actual anti-war activists while many of the people pursuing them were played by actual guardsmen and police officers. Watkins has subsequently started that the attitudes and the hostilities of the people in the film were mirrored off-screen by those playing them as well. Much like the Stanford Prison Experiment, every one was more than willing to play their roles. It brings a much-needed authenticity to the film’s alternative history. (Interestingly enough, it also leads to several of the detainees coming across as being a bit annoying, as people who are convinced of their own righteousness tend to be. The important thing is that they’re authentically annoying. Even 50 years after the film was shot, both camps are full of people who still seem familiar.) Ironically, the film’s biggest weakness is that everyone seems to be so genuinely worried about whether or not they’ll survive the trek through the desert that it’s difficult to believe that they would actually stop moving so they could have a conversation with the documentary crew.
Still, whatever flaws the film may have, Punishment Park feels sickeningly plausible. In our current era of rising authoritarianism, militarization, reckless accusations of treason, and cries to set aside the Constitution so that “enemies” can be stripped of their rights, Punishment Park continues to feel frighteningly relevant today.
In case you were wondering what Hillary Swank has been up to (other than starring on that television show about newspaper in Alaska), here’s your answer! She’s playing an alcoholic in Ordinary Angels, which appears to be another “uplifting, based on a true story” film of 2023. This film is scheduled to be released on October 13th. That’s Friday the 13th, by the way.
Actually, I imagine that this film might do well with an October release date. Consider it to be counter-programming for all the folks who aren’t into horror. Here at TSL, we’ll be in the middle of our annual horrorthon. As the song goes, “if it makes you happy….”
Apparently, A Haunting In Venice is not the only crime-related film that Tina Fey (who one does not usually associate with crime films) has coming out this year. On June 16th, she will be co-starring in Maggie Moore(s), along with Jon Hamm and Nick Mohammed. The film was directed by Hamm’s Mad Men co-star, John Slattery. Here’s the trailer:
Based on a true story, eh? To be honest, the trailer make it look like this film might be trying too hard to be quirky and Coenesque but who knows? Sometimes, a good film gets a bad trailer and, more often, a bad film will get a really good trailer. The cast is certainly talented so we’ll see!
Eric Roberts appears about twenty minutes into 2020’s Free Lunch Express. He plays a man standing in line at a Vermont welfare office. He tells a youngish Bernie Sanders (played, at that point in the movie, by Sam Brittan) that the easiest way to make some extra money is to run for public office because there’s no limit on the amount of money you can raise and you can keep whatever you have left after the campaign. Having been recently kicked out of a commune and having no interest in getting a real job, Sanders is intrigued by the advice and soon embarks on his first political campaign. Roberts only appears in that one scene. It probably took an hour or two of his time to film. Roberts spends the entire scene laughing, supposedly because he’s amused over the idea of making a living as a perennial political candidate.
(For that matter, Eric Roberts is not the only familiar face to pop up in Free Lunch Express. Not surprisingly, Kevin Sorbo shows up. He plays the ghost of George Washington and I’ll admit that I chucked at his Elizabeth Warren joke. Far more surprisingly, Malcolm McDowell shows up as the narrator and epically rolls his eyes at every major moment of Sanders’s life.)
As for the rest of the film, Free Lunch Express is an attempt to do an Adam McKay-style satire about the career of Bernie Sanders. Unfortunately, the problem with trying to make fun of Bernie Sanders is that even Bernie’s most fervent supporters already realize and often acknowledge that he’s a vaguely ludicrous figure. Indeed, the very things that the film pokes fun at — like Bernie’s permanently messy hair, his thick Brooklyn accent, his habit of yelling out his comments while pointing upwards, and his apparently inability to make normal small talk — are the same things that most of his supporters find to be appealing about him. I disagree with Bernie on the majority of the issues and I would probably move to another country if he was ever elected President but, at the same time, I can’t help but kind of like him. One reason why so many people voted for him in 2016 is because he seemed to be authentic in a way that other politicians did not. It’s easy to poke fun at a slick politician but it’s far more difficult to do so at someone who looks like he just got out of bed and who tends to say whatever pops into his mind. It’s far easier to satirize the personality of a Hillary Clinton or a Mitt Romney than it is to satirize a Bernie Sanders.
Free Lunch Express follows Bernie through three stages of his life. As a child, Bernie (played by Jonah Britton) swears a blood oath while standing in front of a poster Joseph Stalin and he declares that he’ll never be bullied again. As a young man, Bernie (Sam Brittan) moves to Vermont and annoys all the other hippies to such an extent that he’s forced to take Eric Roberts’s advice and run for political office. And, as an old and ineffective Senator, Bernie (now played by Charles Hutchins) runs for the presidency and only drops out after Hillary (Cynthia Kania) promises to campaign in Wisconsin and Ohio in the general election. There were a few moments that made me chuckle, like the portrayal of Ben & Jerry as being two hippies who can’t have a conversation without shouting out the name of their latest flavor or Bernie cluelessly traveling to dreary Moscow for the worst honeymoon ever. But, for the most part, the humor falls flat and the jokes are often too repetitive to really be effective. Having a young and nerdy Bernie swear his allegiance to Stalin because he thinks that Stalin, who killed millions of his own citizens, will create a world without bullies is funny. However, having the ghost of Stalin randomly speak to Bernie throughout the years is a joke that grows tiresome and never really pays off. It’s pretty much the same issue that I had with Adam McKay’s Vice. Much as Vice did with Dick Cheney, the film tries so hard to take down Sanders with ridicule that it instead makes him seem almost likable. Indeed, by focusing on the times that Bernie was, in the film’s view, humiliated by Hillary Clinton, the hippies at the commune, and basic economic realities, the film actually portrays Bernie as someone who refuses to surrender his principles, regardless of how often the rest of the world tells him that he’s wrong. The film aims to be Tartuffe and instead turns into Candide.
Finally, on a personal note, I think anyone who ever runs for office should be ridiculed, regardless of what they believe or whether or not they’ve done a good job. It’s a good way to keep them honest and to remind theme that they’re supposed to work for us and not the other way around. If one’s beliefs can’t survive a joke or two, that says far more about the beliefs than it does about the jokes.
Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:
Somehow, I missed this trailer when it dropped last week. Well, no matter! The movie’s not being released until September 15th so I still have time to share the trailer for A Haunting in Venice, the latest Agatha Christie adaptation from Kenneth Branagh! This film finds Poirot retired and living in self-imposed exile in Venice. When he attends a séance, he is dragged back into the world of mystery solving.
The cast of suspects includes: Kyle Allen, Camille Cottin, Jamie Dornan, Tina Fey, Jude Hill, Ali Khan, Emma Laird, Kelly Reilly, Riccardo Scamarico, and Michelle Yeoh! Not having read Christie’s Hallowe’en Party, I can’t tell you who the murderer is or even who the victim is. But, personally, I suspect Tina Fey did it.
That right, everyone! We’ve got yet another After movie coming out this year. So far, I think I’ve listed every single After movie on my annual “worst films of the year” list and, judging from this trailer, I have a feeling that it might happen again.
As far as I can tell, Tessa is still angry that Hardin turned their extremely boring relationship into a book. So, Hardin decides to pout, scowl, probably start drinking again, and eventually he continues to stalk her because that’s pretty much what happens in every After film. I really do have to wonder what type of contract was signed by Josephine Langford and Hero Fiennes Tiffin that requires them to spend the rest of their careers playing these extremely shallow and unlikable characters.
(And yet, as shallow and unlikable as Tess and Hardin are, I’ve still watched every film in this stupid franchise. I’m not sure why, to be honest. I think it might have something to do with the terrible fascination that everyone tends to have with natural disasters and grisly car accidents.)
To me, it will never not be funny that Hardin Scott, one of the most pretentious and self-pitying characters ever forced on the reading and viewing public, is apparently now to be portrayed as the literary voice of his generation. I don’t know if it’s sad because it’s so silly or because it’s so plausible.
In the late 1970s, the Rev. Jim Jones was a very powerful man.
The leader of the California-based People’s Temple, Rev. Jones had made a name for himself as a civil right activist. As a minister, he made it a point to reach out to the poor and to communities of color. (It was said, largely by Jones, that he had been forced to leave his home state of Indiana by the Ku Klux Klan.) Local politicians eagerly sought not only Jones’s endorsement but also the donations that he could easily raise from the members of the People’s Temple. Though there were rumors that he was more of a cult leader than a traditional preacher, Jones was appointed chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority. Everyone from Governor Jerry Brown to San Francisco Mayor George Moscone appeared with Jim Jones at campaign events. Among the national figures who regularly corresponded with Jim Jones were First Lady Rosalyn Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale.
Of course, what actually went on behind the closed doors of the People’s Temple was a bit of secret. Jones was a self-proclaimed communist who claimed to have had visions of an upcoming nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia. In his sermons, he often claimed that it would be necessary for both him and the rest of the People’s Temple to eventually leave the United States. Jones spoke of enemies that were trying to destroy him, like the reporters who investigated Jones’s claim of being a faith healer and who followed up on reports that Jones was sexually exploiting both the women and the men who followed him. Jones secretly started to make plans to leave the United States in 1973 but it would be another four years before he and a thousand of his followers arrived in Guyana. The People’s Temple Agricultural Project sat in the jungle, isolated from oversight. It was informally known as Jonestown.
Over the next year, Jonestown did not exactly thrive. Rev. Jones demanded that his people work hard and he also demanded that they spend several hours a day studying socialism and listening to him preach. Jones ran his commune like a dictator, refusing to allow anyone to leave (for their own safety, of course). Anyone who questioned him was accused of being an agent of the CIA. In the U.S, the families of Jonestown’s citizens became concerned and started to petition the government to do something about what was happening in Guyana. A few people who did manage to escape from Jonestown told stories of forced labor, suicide drills, rape, and torture. The People’s Temple claimed that those people were all lying and, because Jones still had his government connections, he was largely left alone.
Finally, in 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan, a Democrat who had a history of opposing the political establishment, flew down to Guyana so that he could see Jonestown for himself and also bring back anyone who wanted to leave. Despite the efforts of Jones to disguise the truth about life in Jonestown, several people did ask to leave the colony with Rep. Ryan. Jones sent his most loyal men to meet and open fire on Rep. Ryan’s entourage at a nearby airstrip. Rep. Ryan and four others were shot and killed, making Ryan the first Congressman to be assassinated since 1868. Nine others, including future Rep. Jackie Speier, were wounded in the attack.
Back at Jonestown, Jim Jones announced that his prophecy was coming true and that the imperialists would soon descend on Jonestown. Though 85 of Jones’s followers managed to escape into the jungle, the other 909 residents of Jonestown subsequently died. Though some showed signs of having been murdered by Jones’s followers, the majority committed suicide by drinking poisoned Flavor-Aid. Jim Jones shot himself in the head.
The world was horrified and the term “drinking the Kool-Aid” entered the discourse. And, of course, many filmmakers were inspired by the horrific events that happened in Jonestown. Ivan Rassimov, for instance, played a Jim Jones-style cult leader in Umberto Lenzi’s Eaten Alive. Meanwhile, Powers Boothe would win an Emmy for playing Jim Jones in a 1980 television miniseries called Guyana Tragedy.
Guyana Tragedy is often described as being the definitive film about Jim Jones. However, a full year before Guyana Tragedy aired, the Mexican director, Rene Cardona Jr., was in theaters with his own version of the Jim Jones story. To anyone who is familiar with Cardona’s style of filmmaking, it’s perhaps not surprising that 1979’s Guyana: Crime of the Century did not win any awards.
Cardona’s film opens with a rather odd title card, explaining that, though the film is based on Jonestown, the names of certain characters “have been changed to protect the innocent.” But if you’re going to start the film by announcing that it’s about the biggest news story of the past year, what’s the point of changing anyone’s name? And for that matter, why is Jim Jones renamed James Johnson and his colony rechristened Johnsontown? Jones was hardly one of the innocents, not to mention that he was dead and in no position to sue when the film came was released. Why is Leo Ryan renamed Lee O’Brien, especially when the film portrays Ryan as being the type of hard-working and honest congressman that anyone would be happy to vote for?
The film opens with Rev. James “Johnson” (played by Stuart Whitman) giving a lengthy sermon about how it’s time for the congregation to move to Guyana, which he describes as being a Socialist paradise. Oddly, in the film, the People’s Temple is portrayed being largely white and upper middle class whereas, in reality, the opposite was true. Indeed, Jones specialized in exploiting communities that were largely marginalized by American society. One reason why Jones’s claim of government persecution was accepted by the members of his church is because the People’s Temple was made up of people who had very legitimate reasons for distrusting the American government.
A few scenes later, Johnson is ruling over “Johnsonville.” Since this is a Cardona film, the viewers are shown several scenes of people being tortured for displeasing Johnson. A child is covered in snakes. Another is shocked with electricity. A teenage boy and girl are forced to kneel naked in front of Johnson as he announce that their punishment for trying to run away is that they will be forced to have sex with someone of Johnson’s choosing. Once the torture and the nudity is out of the way, the film gets around to Congressman O’Brien (Gene Barry) traveling to the Johnsontown. Since the audience already knows what’s going to happen, the film becomes a rather icky game of waiting for O’Brien to announce that he’s ready to go back to the landing strip.
Because the film has been released under several different titles and with several different running times, Guyana: Crime of theCentury has gotten a reputation for being one of those films that was supposedly cut up by the censors. I’ve seen the original, uncut 108-minute version of Guyana and I can tell you that there’s nothing particularly shocking about it. Instead, it’s a painfully slow film that doesn’t really offer much insight into how Jim Jones led over 900 people to their deaths. While Gene Barry make for a convincing congressman, Stuart Whitman gives a stiff performance as the Reverend Johnson. There’s very little of the charisma that one would expect from a successful cult leader. One gets the feeling that Whitman largely made the film for the paycheck.
Of course, Whitman was hardly alone in that regard The film features a host of otherwise respectable actors, including Yvonne DeCarlo, Joseph Cotten, John Ireland, Robert DoQui, and Bradford Dillman. As well, Cardona regular Hugo Stiglitz appears as a photographer. (Stiglitz is perhaps best known for starring in Nightmare Cityand for lending his name to a character in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.) Of the large cast, I appreciated the performances of Cotten and Ireland, who play Johnson’s amoral but well-connected attorneys. (The characters are based on the Temple’s real-life attornes, Charles Garry and Mark Lane. Lane also wrote the first JFK conspiracy book, Rush to Judgment.) I also liked Yvonne DeCarlo’s performance as the most devoted of Johnson’s followers. Even Bradford Dillman’s natural blandness was used to good effect as his character comes to represent the banality of evil when it comes time for him to start administering the Flavor-Aid. But those good performances still can not overcome the film’s slow pace and the fact that the film didn’t bring any new insight to the tragedy.
The film sticks fairly close to what is believed to have actually happened at Jonestown but, in the end, it barely even works as an example of shameless grindhouse filmmaking. It’s not even offensive enough to be enjoyable on a subversive level. Instead, it was just a quick attempt to make some money off of the crime of the century.
Released in 2008, Germany’s The Baader Meinhof Complex begins in 1967. The entire world appears to be in the grip of protest and revolution. The Viet Nam War is raging. Economic inequality is increasing. For neither the first nor the last time, the Middle East is consumed with conflict. All across Europe, young Leftist activists protest against what they consider to be American imperialism.
At a protest in Berlin, the police shoot and kill an unarmed student. Outraged by not only the shooting but also the lack of accountability on the part of the police, journalist Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck) announces on television that, even though the Nazis may no longer be in power, Germany is still a fascist state. Her words scandalize many viewers but they inspire two young activists named Andreas Baader (Moritz Bliebtreu) and Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek). Baader and Ensslin protest by blowing up a department store. Their subsequent arrest and trial makes them celebrities. It also leads to them meeting with Meinhof, who finds herself drawn to the two charismatic radicals. Though convicted, both Baader and Ensslin are released pending an appeal and they soon become the leaders of the Red Army Faction. They amass a following of other young radicals, many of whom are searching for some sort of purpose for their lives. Among those who join them is Meinhof herself, who abandons her safe, middle-class liberalism and instead commits to Baader and Ensslin’s revolution. For every violent act that Baader and Ensslin mastermind, Meinhof writes the press release that justifies it by pointing out the violent acts being carried out by governments acoss the world.
At first, the revolution itself is almost fun. Baader and Ensslin both obviously enjoy their celebrity. When the RAF goes to Jordan to attend a sort of terrorist training camp, they promptly get on their host’s nerves by appearing not to take their training particularly seriously. The heads of the camp want to teach combat skills. Baader just wants to learn how to rob a bank and he and Ensslin take such delight in upsetting the stuffy heads of the camp that it’s hard not to like them. From the start, though, there are hints that the fun isn’t going to last. Baader may be charismatic but he’s also arrogant, temperamental, and lacking in self-awareness. He’s the type of revolutionary who will goad his lawyer into stealing a woman’s bag but who throws a fit when, moments later, someone else steals his car. For all their talk of how they’re willing to do whatever it takes to bring about a revolution, neither Baader nor Ensslin seem to initially understand the true risks of their activities. When a member of their group is killed in a shoot-out with the police, they are stunned and angered, as if it never occurred to them that the police would kill someone who opened fire on them. As the RAF’s action grow more violent and more people are killed as a result, Meinhof struggles to justify the violence. Eventually, not even Baader and Ensslin can control the organization that they’ve created.
It’s a familiar story. What starts off as idealism is eventually consumed by fanaticism and cynicism. The belief that’s one cause is right leaves people on both sides convinced that anything they do to promote that cause is correct. The film presents the violence of the 60s and 70s as being a never-ending cycle, with the violent response of each side merely fueling the anger on the other. At one point, a government official wonders why Baader has such a hold on his followers and the reply is that Baader has become a living myth, an activist celebrity who is idealized by his followers but who, in reality, can be just as arrogant, petty, and egotistical as those that he’s fighting. For many, he and his organization offer an escape from a pointless bourgeois existence but, in the end, he and Ensslin and Meinhof are perhaps the most bourgeois of all.
Aided by a strong cast, director Uli Edel captures the feel of a world that seems like it’s perpetually on the verge of revolution. Though the film is full of scenes of car chases, bombs exploding, and bullets being fired, Edel never allows us to forget the real costs of such actions. The film ends with the suggestion that the cycle of violence and revolution is destined never to end as one act leads to another. As the film reminds us, it’s a story that has played out many times in the past and will continue to play out in the future.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasionally Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We snark our way through it.
Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1988’s Space Mutiny! I picked it so you know it’ll be good.
It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, pull up Space Mutiny on YouTube, start the movie at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag! Then, at 10 pm et, switch over to Twitter and Prime, start Hoosiers, and use the #MondayMuggers hashtag! The live tweet community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.