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dankusner · 8 months ago

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From: Daniel Kusner Subject: Lawrence wright Date: September 7, 2015 at 1:29:18 PM CDT To: "Kusner, Daniel" [email protected]

You could use this: "Austin is already at the center of the bicycling culture, with flatlands on one side and hills on the other, and great weather for cycling. All we need is more bikeways to make it the perfect place for bikes to rule."

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 7, 2015, at 1:10 PM, Kusner, Daniel [email protected] wrote:

Next Thursday, author Lawrence Wright ("Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief.") is coming to Dallas for a reading and signing to promote his newest, “God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State ” which Knopf releases on April 17.

In Chapter 7, “Big D,” Wright recalls having dinner with Robert Wilonsky. That same chapter, Wright says, “The Dallas Morning News, the most important paper in the state and one of the leading papers in the county."

PDF — 512 CYCOLOGY

PDF new yorker — 1988

Can God Save Texas? A Film God Like Richard Linklater Might Help

One of Texas film's greatest voices speaks on the "cruelty" of the criminal justice system in a new HBO docuseries.

Eva Raggio

Film director Richard Linklater takes a look at the inhumanity of Texas prisons. Mat Hayward/Getty Images for IMDbGod Save Texas, a trilogy of documentaries that debuted Feb. 27 on Max, examines some of the state’s deeply rooted issues. Based on the book God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State by Lawrence Wright, the limited series was made in three parts, each by a different Texas director.

The first, “Hometown Prison,” was directed by Richard Linklater; the second, “The Price of Oil,” by Alex Stapleton; and the third, “La Frontera,” by Ilana Sosa.

Linklater has produced a widely varied body of work, including the highly stylized intellectual favorite Waking Life, the coming-of-age comedy and stoner cult classic Dazed and Confused and indie hits such as School of Rock and Bernie.

Cinephiles are perhaps most sincerely attached to his naturalist masterpieces on time, such as Boyhood — which followed its characters through scenes that took place over 12 years and earned Patricia Arquette a Best Supporting Actress Oscar— and the Before trilogy, in which he surprised viewers with out-of-the-blue sequels, completing a love story through near-voyeuristic glimpses of a couple (played by Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke) across cities and decades.

We spoke to Linklater via Zoom from Paris, where he's working on a film that’ll keep him away from his adopted hometown of Austin’s SXSW festival — an event he’s hardly missed in two decades. It's nighttime in the City of Lights, and he has Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris and much more on his mind.

For the Austin-based director, dealing with real subjects (including his own mother, Diane Margaret Linklater, a former professor and advocate for inmates) in God Save Texas prompted a different form of investment into his film’s characters.

“I'm always close to my characters, even if I've kind of created them, written them,” Linklater says. “But there's a real actor there. There's a real person you're working with. So in this case, you're working with real people, you're getting their own personal stories. On one hand, it didn't feel that different. I want to have an affection and an understanding for people, but it's personal: It's their lives, it's my life, it's my mom. It couldn't help but be personal. And you're asking others to tell very personal, sometimes painful stories in their own lives.

"So yeah, it's a big ask. But I think in a way, they trusted me because I was local and maybe they knew it was personal for me, but I feel close to every story. You're just trying to tell in the way you feel. So it felt right.”

Intercut with scenes from protests and stories of death row inmates, the film sees Linklater returning to Huntsville, a city 70 miles north of Houston that has the most active death row prison in the U.S. Viewers can practically smell the grease off the small-town diner menus as Linklater reflects with his subjects (many of them his old classmates), on how his hometown’s prison industry grew so wildly out of control — at least tenfold, from 10 prisons to 114 — in the past few decades, and uncovers the inhumanity of inmates' living conditions.

The auteur filmmaker is a proud Texan whose roots creep up in his work. And he maintains the love of home while decrying its systemic failures.

“You're catching me on the wrong night,” he says of his feelings for Texas. “We're executing an innocent guy tomorrow in Huntsville, Ivan Cantu, who's being put to death without … I mean, I can't believe it. I'm just stunned and really depressed, kind of a little desperate. We've been doing all we can. It's just like, gosh, the new normal. OK, we can kill innocent people. The next administration, maybe we can start … There's talk of camps. What's next? What can we put up with?

"So on the one hand, I love Texas and I love the people, but I really do feel a disconnect with the cruelty. ‘Cause I know Texans aren't cruel by and large, but I think our government policies are extremely cruel, and this executing an innocent person is about the top of the list. So I don't know. It's times like this you feel pretty bad.”

Linklater says he didn’t stumble into any major production roadblocks, but taking on a project that required such a deeply personal investment was a matter of facing his past to expose a haunting present.

“Everyone was so giving and open and kind; I think it was just me getting over just wanting to go there myself,” he says. “This film concerns my mom. It's a lot of my own past. I was asking people to tell their stories. So it was just deciding to do it, I think. And I mean, these issues about criminal justice and the death penalty, these have swum around in my head all these years.

“It was kind of cathartic and satisfying to find a home for some of these feelings. And my summation is fairly simple, really. I think after all of it, it's just like, yeah, the death penalty really does hurt a lot of … there's a lot of collateral damage to so many people and these state employees who have to be dragged through it. So to me, it's just kind of unnecessary trauma induced on innocent people.”

The film focuses on the trauma on both sides of the bars, from convicted inmates (many of whom proclaim their innocence) to state workers whose daily duties include strapping the bodies of death row prisoners onto and off the gurney. His opinions on the death penalty haven’t necessarily changed, but Linklater is more adamant than ever that the system predatorily exploits human error for profit, as we idly cede our rights to a state where punishment far too often exceeds the crime.

“My conclusion is don't do it,” he says. “I'm not a full-blown prison abolitionist, but I'm heading that way only in that — I don't mean let murderers out on the streets. I just think we could approach in a much more humane … the way we systematically create all this pain. We could systematically create more worthwhile treatment. I mean, face it, the prisons are full of people in on — it's mental health and drug addiction. If you treated those things, there goes 90% of the population right there.

“And then keep really the psychopaths, the murderers, serial sexual assaulters. I think we all have a vested interest in keeping certain people isolated from the general population, but people who made a bad mistake or something, I can't explain a tenfold increase. Crime is down everywhere. That's just the trend. Violent crime, everything's down. So why is our prison gone up 10 times in the last 40 years? I don't know. Things we have to ask ourselves. ... We should be investing in people, not just punishing them.”

For God Save Texas, he says, the trio of directors hardly compared pre-production notes beforehand.

“We were sort of siloed in our own projects,” Linklater says. “We knew what everybody was doing, but I guess I went first and set a certain tone, maybe with the personal. When we started I don't think we really had a full plan. I was like, ‘Larry [Wright, who also executive-produced the series], so are we gonna go to Huntsville?’ And we just felt our way through it.”

Before and After the Before Trilogy

With his cinematic oeuvre falling into an array of styles and genres, Linklater doesn't give much thought to his overarching body of work, preferring to hyper-focus on each film. He says he hasn’t even pondered the uniting thread woven across his projects.

“I don't know. I'm always telling kind of character-based work,” he says. “The concept is never bigger than the characters. They're pretty far away from superhero or anything like that.”

While his films are often of the deeply felt variety that persist on viewers’ minds long after the credits roll, he also adds: “Or laugh. I've made comedies, a little bit of everything. I don't know, just always trying to express myself in my own relation to the particular story or subject.”

Least of all does he consider his legacy, or his writing living on through the ages.

“Boy, I can tell you, I never think I'll live on for generations,” he says with a laugh. “I'm really focused on what I'm doing like right now, making this movie. So that's really all you can do.”

He concedes that he's mildly aware the Before movies have prompted a niche form of tourism, made up of fans who visit the first film’s Vienna locations, for example. But he hasn’t been to Vienna in about 15 years and assumes the interest has dwindled. (It hasn’t; visit the record shop where Jesse and Celine share a charged exchange of awkward missed glances in a listening booth, and see for yourself.) He laughs at our joke suggesting the Austrian capital should’ve given him a key to the city.

Nonetheless, as he finds himself in Paris, Linklater has learned that the bookstore featured in the second installment, Before Sunset, is still a bit of a treasure for fans following the Before map.

In Huntsville, he’s known as “Rick,” a former football player for the state’s highest-ranking team. As a young adult, he self-taught filmmaking on a Super 8 camera. Before long, Rick went on to receive Academy Award nominations, be named one of Time’s most influential people in the world in 2015, and become an advocate for filmmaking, and particularly Texas filmmaking, as co-founder of the Austin Film Society.

He's a successful independent filmmaker whose movies have made a crater-sized mark on pop culture, so one would assume Linklater finds himself in a privileged spot coveted by any artist looking to make an impact without the fine print double-dealings.

“Successful? I don't know. It doesn't feel that way all the time when you're working on a real low budget and you don't have enough time or money to make your movie,” he says. “But maybe that's it. I've just never cared about, I guess, the money or that result. I've really just focused on the next story I'm trying to tell and kind of avoided a certain kind of careerist trappings. Maybe staying in Texas probably was a good thing for my mental health.”

It hasn’t been hard, he says, to sustain that balance, keeping a sense of artistic autonomy while avoiding industry money grabs and other Hollywood pitfalls.

“You say no a lot," he says. "I think you define yourself a lot in this world — it sounds corny or maybe you heard it: It's like you kind of define yourself by what you don't do. Just because you have opportunities doesn't mean you have to do it. So the things I've turned down, the things I've not wanted to do that I could have, kind of defined you. It's like, yeah, no, I'm really focused over here. I know that's more money and that [I’ll] get to work with some big star, but I don't really want to do that. I want to tell [my stories]. So just follow your own muse.”

During the pandemic, his kids became an elite audience in a Linklater-selected, at-home film festival. He was glad they’d grown past the animated children’s movie days (“I could not wait to get out of kid movies. We did that pretty quick. I'm a filmmaker, I was showing them stuff, but yeah, I could not wait until they were starting to ask me more about movies”) and into more sophisticated cinematic territory.

“Say what you will, the pandemic was terrible, but we watched a movie every night,” he says. “These teenagers [would ask], ‘What movie are you going to watch now? Let's do the French New Wave, or let's watch films from Brazil.’ It was like my own little one-year curation, my own little film society in the family.”

For all the brilliant dialogue that mark his own films, the uniting thread he never thinks about, Linklater isn’t surprised that the most quoted line from his movies was famously ad-libbed by Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused.

“He wasn't even scheduled to work that night,” he says of his fellow Texan. “We worked up that scene and he just threw in that 'All right, all right, all right’ — he said that as he was driving in, and I thought it was really funny."

Linklater remembers that "within a day or two after that," the expression became a popular saying among the film crew.

"I noticed a key grip say, ‘OK, we're laying some dolly track over there. Let's go do that. And [he] goes, ‘All right, all right, all right, all right.' He was already repeating it," Linklater says. " And on one hand, I'm not surprised. I mean, of course you're surprised when you see a T-shirt with it or something like that, that's crazy.

“Matthew … he's earned it, I guess.”

click to enlarge

A new HBO docuseries finds Austin director Richard Linklater visiting his hometown to examine a universal issue: the ever-expanding prison industry.

Max/Richard Linklater

newyorker.com

In “Hometown Prison,” Richard Linklater Looks at Life on Both Sides of the Wall

Richard Brody

8–11 minutes

With little fanfare, a complex and far-reaching personal documentary by Richard Linklater, “Hometown Prison,” dropped last week on the streaming service Max. It’s one of a trio of excellent films made under the rubric “God Save Texas,” based on the book by Lawrence Wright, of this publication—all of which consider the state’s history and politics in the light of the filmmakers’ own lives and families. The second film, “The Price of Oil,” directed by the seventh-generation Texan Alex Stapleton, traces the economic racism on which the state’s oil industry was built, as manifested in its disproportionate pollution of predominantly Black neighborhoods, including her family’s own. The third, “La Frontera,” by Iliana Sosa, who was born in El Paso to a family of Mexican descent, considers the historical unity of that city with its Mexican neighbor, Ciudad Juárez, and the enduring burdens imposed on Mexican Americans by white supremacy and the resulting militarized border. It takes nothing away from these latter films—exemplary blends of journalistic investigation, historical analysis, and intimate experience—to call particular attention to the power and the aesthetic range of Linklater’s documentary, which combines a narrow focus on a single institution with a conjoined exploration of the director’s life and his œuvre.

“Hometown Prison” is about Huntsville, Texas, where Linklater lived from 1970 (the year he turned ten) to 1981. He has previously explored his boyhood experiences there in such films as “Dazed and Confused,” “Everybody Wants Some!!,” and, of course, “Boyhood.” However, “Hometown Prison” concentrates on one oppressive peculiarity of the town: there’s a large prison in the middle of it, in plain view of much of daily life there, and a vast network of prisons spread throughout the town and its vicinity. The prison system is the town’s main employer. Texas, as Linklater relates, has the most incarcerated people of any state; it also executes more people than any other state, and those executions take place in Huntsville. Prisons, in other words, are a ubiquitous presence in Huntsville’s landscape, and yet, Linklater says, “At some point, you don’t really even see it.” In “Hometown Prison,” he attempts to see—and to give voice to silences on the subject, in his life and his work, that he has until now not managed to break.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. Though Linklater credits Wright (one of the filmmaker’s longtime friends, who appears on camera, as he does in the other two films in the series) with the suggestion to make “Hometown Prison,” the work is anchored in two incomplete projects of Linklater’s. The first, a drama that he’d hoped to make in 2002, was about two high-school football players who, a year after graduation, end up on opposite sides of the prison walls. The second was to have been made from documentary footage that he shot in 2003, of protests outside those walls, when an inmate named Delma Banks, Jr., was about to be executed despite abundant evidence of his innocence. Linklater couldn’t find funding for the drama and never did anything with the footage—plentiful amounts of which appear in “Hometown Prison.”

Here, Linklater breaks silence in the most direct and literal way—by speaking. He delivers a copious and confessional voice-over, complete with reminiscences, observations distilled from research, and candid assertions (as when he declares capital punishment “barbaric”). He also appears on camera, in conversation with Huntsville residents whose lives intersect with his and with the town’s carceral economy. Linklater’s recollections of his late mother, Diane (included by way of a talk with one of her friends), involve her activism on behalf of incarcerated people released into town with no support. One of the most revealing exchanges is with Elroy Thomas, a manager at a Huntsville bus depot, who estimates that, in his thirty years on the job, he has sold one-way tickets out of town to hundreds of thousands of newly released prisoners—and adds that, in the process, he has become acutely sensitive to their frame of mind and the extent of the preparedness to return to private life. It’s shocking to see a line of former inmates walking casually away from prison with no clear destination down the closed-off vista of a leafy street. “They don’t offer no rehabilitation,” one of them comments. “If you’re trying to get right, you need to do it on your own.”

Among the ex-prisoners with whom Linklater speaks is Dale Enderlin, one of his former baseball teammates from Huntsville’s Sam Houston State University, where Linklater’s mother taught. (The team was later the subject of “Everybody Wants Some!!”) Enderlin spent thirty-nine months in prison for white-collar crimes, and his main observation from his time there is how routinely young, nonwhite people are railroaded into confessions for crimes that they didn’t commit. A civil-rights lawyer, Bill Habern, who arrived in town as a public defender in the nineteen-seventies, dated Linklater’s mother, and remained a family friend, says, “I came to Huntsville and I thought I’d landed in Mississippi twenty years before.” He shows Linklater bullet holes in his home, estimating that there are twelve to fifteen. Ed Owens, the first Black warden of a Huntsville prison, says that he experienced far more racism owing to his work inside the walls than to anything in ordinary town life; during protests involving one execution, the Ku Klux Klan demonstrated outside his house.

A prison in Huntsville, Texas.

The attitudes of many Sam Houston students interviewed in the documentary belie the centrality of prison to life in Huntsville. Despite being on a campus with clear views of uniformed prison guards, inmates being released, and demonstrations against capital punishment, they claim not to pay much attention to the facility’s proximity. “I’ve never given too much thought to it, until you hear the siren go off,” one student says. Another notes, “It seems that everyone’s aware of it, but no one wants to talk about it”; a third adds, “I’ve never heard no professor talk about it.” Linklater affirms that the “disconnect” is “kind of a Huntsville tradition.” One of his former high-school football teammates says that, even now, the prison “doesn’t even come to my consciousness.”

Of course, there are some in Huntsville for whom the prison system looms large. Linklater interviews many of them: the formerly incarcerated, and family members of the incarcerated; a local historian and activist who seeks to change the town’s civic life and is well aware of being despised for it; former corrections officials, whose firsthand experiences witnessing or even participating in executions has caused them to reject the practice; and a current one who finds the rigors of the carceral system hard to bear. Moreover, Linklater recalls one of his stepfathers, a prison guard (whom he dramatized in “Boyhood”) whom the stresses of the prison system psychologically warped and darkened.

Just a few minutes into “Hometown Prison,” there’s a shot of a restaurant across the road from a barbed-wire-fenced prison unit, which has a cheerful sign announcing “Sunday: Kids Eat Free.” I was reminded of another movie in current release, Jonathan Glazer’s historical drama “The Zone of Interest,” which is set outside the walls of Auschwitz, in a house where the camp’s commandant, Rudolf Höss; his wife, Hedwig; and their three young children live, apparently pretending, to the fullest of their capacities, that their lives are normal. Unlike Glazer, Linklater doesn’t merely observe Huntsville residents’ lives alongside prison but also hears from them. He displays deep and sincere curiosity about what people involved in a cruel system—or even merely living in view of one—say, think, and feel. He probes the psychology of their efforts to keep prison from their minds and also considers the ideologies behind the prevalence of incarceration and the death penalty in Texas—including racism, class-based inequity, an enduring myth of frontier justice, brazen demagogy, and a form of Christian fundamentalism that emphasizes strictness rather than mercy—as well as the practical policies that sustain the carceral system there, including the economic motives of contracts for businesses and employment for residents.

“Hometown Prison,” with its free and hybrid form, empathetically and indignantly brings suppressed agonies to light. It does more, too. Linklater looks deeply at the town’s self-gaslighting, at how it’s maintained and who maintains it, and to what ends. The film is a fervent and trenchant work of political psychology, living history, investigative journalism, and anguished confession.

With humor and the biting insight of a native, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence explores the history, culture, and politics of Texas, while holding the stereotypes up for rigorous scrutiny.

God Save Texas (Penguin, 2018) is a journey through the most controversial state in America. It is a red state in the heart of Trumpland that hasn’t elected a Democrat to a statewide office in more than twenty years; but it is also a state in which minorities already form a majority (including the largest number of Muslims). The cities are blue and among the most diverse in the nation. Oil is still king but Texas now leads California in technology exports. The Texas economic model of low taxes and minimal regulation has produced extraordinary growth but also striking income disparities. Texas looks a lot like the America that Donald Trump wants to create. And Wright’s profound portrait of the state not only reflects our country back as it is, but as it was and as it might be.

Lawrence Wright is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of nine previous books of nonfiction, including In the New World, Remembering Satan, The Looming Tower, Going Clear, Thirteen Days in September, and The Terror Years,and one novel, God’s Favorite. His books have received many prizes and honors, including a Pulitzer Prize for The Looming Tower. He is also a playwright and screenwriter. He is a longtime resident of Austin.

A light reception will precede the event beginning at 5:30 pm, with the lecture starting at 6:00 pm. Parking will be available on the SMU campus. FREE passes will be emailed to registered guests before the event. Seating is limited, and not guaranteed.

Wright's publication of the same title will be available for purchase and signing after the event.

TEACHERS ONLY -- Please sign in at the registration table to receive continuing education credit.

Co-sponsored with SMU's Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Center for Presidential History, the John Tower Center for Political Studies, the Clements Department of History, the Dedman College Interdisiplinary Institute, and Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.

-- Southern Methodist University

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moneymakedblog · 1 year ago

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Melissa Benoist Net Worth, Biography, Career, Family & more

Melissa Marie Benoist was born in the United States on October 4, 1988. She is an actress and singer. Her first big part was as Marley Rose on the Fox musical comedy-drama "Glee" (2012–2014), where she was a main cast member for the fifth season.

She became well-known for playing Supergirl on the CBS/CW superhero show "Supergirl" (2015–2021) and in other "Arrowverse"-related media. In 2018, Benoist made her Broadway bow in "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical." She played Carole King in the show.

Melissa Benoist's Net Worth

Melissa Benoist is a well-known American actor with a net worth of $6 Million. Several websites, like Wikipedia, Forbes, and Bloomberg, say that the most famous American actor, Melissa Benoist net worth of about $6 million.

People liked what she did in the business world. People know her for how well she does things. She has agreed to act in movies and TV shows by signing a contract. Her movies have also done well at the box office and made millions of dollars around the world.

Melissa Benoist Biography

Melissa Benoist was born on October 4, 1988, in Houston, Texas. Her parents, Jim and Julie Benoist got a split when she was 13. Jessica and Kristina are the names of her two sisters. She started taking dance classes when she was three, and her aunt led her in a church play when she was four. She got her high school diploma from Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, in 2007. In 2011, she got her bachelor's degree in theater arts from Marymount Manhattan College in New York City.

Benoist started her work when she was a young teen. She joined the Academy of Theater Arts at Disneyland and did local stage shows there. In 2008, the movie "Tennessee" was the first movie she was in. In 2010, she was on a lot of TV shows, such as "Blue Bloods," "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," and "The Good Wife."

In an episode of the TV show "Homeland" the next year, she played Stacy Moore. The part that made her famous was in the 2012 TV show "Glee." She went to the Roundabout Theater Company in New York five times to try out, and each time she had to sing five different songs. Then she had to take two more tests in California before she was picked. She was in 35 episodes of the television show over its four seasons. In 2012, Coca-Cola hired her as a spokesperson for a new product called Coke Mismo.

In 2014, she played Nicole in Damien Chazelle's movie "Whiplash." Two awards were given to the movie at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2015, she became more well-known when she got the lead part in the CBS TV show "Supergirl." In the years after that, she played important parts in movies and on TV. On May 7, 2018, it was said that Benoist would make her Broadway debut at the Stephen Sondheim Theater in "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical" as the main character.

Her production business, Three Things Productions, was set up in February 2021. "Haven's Secret," the first book in Abrams Kids' The Powers series, was her first book. It came out on October 26, 2021. Her marriage to her Glee co-star Blake Jenner was announced in 2015. However, she filed for divorce in late December 2016, claiming irreconcilable differences, which turned out to be Jenner's domestic violence.

In December 2017, they officially split up. Chris Wood was cast as Mon-El in the second season of "Supergirl" in 2016, and Benoist and Wood's relationship was revealed in 2017. They got engaged on February 10, 2019, and got married that same year in September. The next year, they told everyone that their son had been born.

Melissa Benois Career and Awards

Melissa Benoist started her professional career in 2000 when she played Brigitta von Trapp on stage in the show Melissa Benoist. She has also acted on stage in Cinderella by Rodgers and Hammerstein, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and The Unauthorized Biography of Samantha Brown. In 2008, she played the part of Laurel in the movie Tennessee, which was her first role in the movie business.

She has also been in Whiplash, Band of Robbers, and Danny Collins. In 2022, she played the Auditioner in the movie Clerks III, which was her most recent job. She became well-known in the business thanks to Glee, which ran from 2012 to 2014. She has also worked in television for a long time. In 2010, she played Renee on the show Blue Bloods, which was her first part on TV.

She has also worked on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Legends of Tomorrow, and Robot Chicken. She has been nominated for and won many awards. In 2017, she won the Teen Choice Awards and the Saturn Awards. She also has Teen Choice Awards and Saturn Awards to her name. In 2021, she was up for the Critics' Choice Super Award and the Saturn Award.

#Melissa Benoist #Actress #Model #Hollywood #Heroine #Melissa

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entertainment · 5 years ago

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Entertainment Spotlight: Diona Reasonover, NCIS

If you’re a fan of CBS’ veteran crime drama NCIS, you probably recognize Diona as Ducky’s (David McCallum) graduate assistant, Kasie Hines. On the film front, you can soon catch Diona starring in the indie comedy Film Fest, which follows a group of struggling filmmakers who travel to an obscure festival to sell their movie. An alumna of the CBS Diversity Showcase, her series acting credits include 2 Broke Girls, Grace and Frankie, Superstore, Girl Meets World, Comedy Bang! Bang!, and Clipped. As a seasoned writer, Diona’s credits include the Emmy-nominated I Love You, America, I Love Dick, Adam Ruins Everything, and the 32nd Film Independent Spirit Awards. She lives in the Los Angeles area with her wife and cat, Engine Cat. We got the chance to ask her some questions:

If you were to create a TV show or film, what would the title be and what would it be about?

I want to create a podcast called “Replacement” where I talk to people who have stepped in to replace someone and what that’s like. Second spouses, Vice Presidents who’ve had to fill in. You know who I’d love to talk to? Daphne Maxwell-Reid. She became Aunt Viv on The Fresh Prince after Janet Hubert left. I think we’ve all felt like the replacement or the newbie at some point.

What song(s) are you currently playing on repeat?

I fall hard for songs. Two months ago, it was “What we Are” by Beginners. Last month was “Cruel to be Kind”. I’m on a Whitney Houston kick rn.

Do you have any secret skills or talents?

No. What’s the point of having a talent and keeping it secret? Put yourself on display, baby!

If your cat could understand you for one minute, what would you tell it?

Quit stalking the mailman. He’s done nothing to harm you.

What are you most excited about (in work and/or life)?

Everything. My life is so much better than I imagined.

Thanks for taking the time, Diona! Catch NCIS on Tuesdays at 8pm on CBS.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Kim Newmoney | HAIR: Kachay Dorsey | MAKE-UP: Anton Khachaturian | STYLING: Lauren Frost

#entertainment spotlight #diona reasonover #ncis

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myyenlee · 3 years ago

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Celebrating UK Black History Month: Learning Resources, a Read & Watch List, and Content Creation Tools

This year’s UK Black History Month theme, Proud To Be, is about celebrating the Black experience. As a distributed company with employees around the world, including the United Kingdom, we believe that the more perspectives we embrace, and the more we learn about our teammates, the better we are at engaging and helping our global community.

This October, we encourage individuals and organizations to learn more about Black history, heritage, and culture in the UK. “Black British history is British history. It’s more than a month; it is interwoven in everything,” says Ama, a colleague based in Scotland. “We have changed landscapes in education, law, politics, work, and equality for all within the UK.” Black history is deeply embedded in UK culture, says Ama, from institutions — like the National Health Service — to music, sports, art, media, and popular culture.

Interested in learning more? We’ve compiled a list of staff recommendations:

websites and organizations on WordPress

books, films, and television by Black thinkers and creators in the UK

blogging and website-building tools

Explore these resources this month — or bookmark them for learning and inspiration anytime.

#PoweredByWordPress learning resources

From the official UK Black History Month hub to the website of the Stephen Lawrence Day Foundation, these resources are great starting points for your journey.

Black History Month 2021

All year long, Black History Month publishes news, features, career and education information, and event listings across the UK. Make it your first resource for getting educated and involved.

Black Heroes Foundation

Focused on youth education and development, this London-based community charity raises Black cultural awareness of the general public, educating and uplifting youth in particular. The foundation envisions a world where Black heroes are acknowledged, respected, and celebrated.

Stephen Lawrence Day

The 1993 murder and case of Stephen Lawrence — an 18-year-old from southeast London who was killed in an unprovoked racial attack while waiting for the bus — led to a major shift in the UK in attitudes about racism, the criminal justice system, and the role of the police. The Stephen Lawrence Day Foundation continues to tell Stephen’s story, offers resources for educators and organizers, and works toward creating a just society.

The National Archives

The National Archives is the official archive and publisher of the UK government, documenting over 1000 years of history. Researchers can browse the Black British history section of the website for a guide on social and political history in the 20th century, lots of blog and multimedia content, and records relating to British citizens of African and African-Caribbean descent.

Black History Walks

Partnering with museums, schools, and other institutions, Black History Walks offers a dozen walking tours throughout London, public monthly educational talks, and video courses and resources on Black history. Its diverse programming targets a range of people both in person and online, from students to travelers to businesses.

A read & watch syllabus

Looking for book, TV, and film recommendations about Black history and culture in the UK — or by Black scholars and creators — but aren’t sure where to start? Here are some of our nonfiction, fiction, and film and television picks.

Nonfiction

Black and British: A Forgotten History: Published to accompany the BBC Two series noted in the Film and Television section below, this must-read book by historian David Olusoga examines the shared history between the British Isles and the people of Africa.

100 Great Black Britons: In this book, Patrick Vernon and Angelina Osborne — founders of the 100 Great Black Britons campaign — celebrate Black British history and recognize key Black Britons who have helped to shape Great Britain.

Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging: A hybrid of history and memoir, Afua Hirsch’s book “reveals the identity crisis at the heart of Britain today” and explores a nation in denial about its imperial past and present.

This Is Why I Resist: Don’t Define My Black Identity: In a book that demands fundamental change, activist and lawyer Dr. Shola Mos-Shogbamimu examines the roots of racism and anti-Blackness and calls for meaningful action.

The Louder I Will Sing: A Story of Racism, Riots and Redemption: In 1985, when Lee Lawrence was a child, his mother was wrongfully shot by police during a raid on their home in Brixton. Published more than three decades later, his memoir chronicles what it was like to grow up as a young Black man in England and how that day influenced his family.

In Black and White: A Young Barrister’s Story of Race and Class in a Broken Justice System: Experiencing a tragedy as a teenager pushed Alexander Wilson to become a barrister — a type of lawyer — so she could make a difference within an unjust system. Her debut book describes her experience as a mixed-race woman in a field lacking in diverse representation.

Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire: In this book, author and hip-hop artist Akala blends biography and personal experience with an examination of race and class across topics — from education to politics and the police to the far right.

Misfits: A Personal Manifesto: This “coming-to-power manifesto” by Michaela Coel — the actress, writer, and creator of I May Destroy You — builds on an inspiring keynote address she delivered at the 2018 Edinburgh International Television Festival about resilience, empathy, storytelling, and growing up in public housing in East London.

What a Time to Be Alone: The Slumflower’s Guide to Why You Are Already Enough: In this illustrated self-help guide, author and influencer Chidera Eggerue, also known as the Slumflower, writes about self-love, empowerment, and creating your own narrative. The book also includes Igbo proverbs from Eggerue’s Nigerian mother.

I recommend David Olusoga’s Black and British: A Forgotten History. It’s a really important book, with new updates on the Windrush scandal and Black Lives Matter from the UK perspective.

—Victoria Jones, UK

Fiction

White Teeth: Published over 20 years ago, Zadie Smith’s debut novel focuses on the lives of two unlikely friends and their families in London. Considered a “modern classic of multicultural Britain,” the book is a window into the immigrant experience.

Girl, Woman, Other: Weaving a dozen narratives about different people across ages, backgrounds, and professions, Bernardine Evaristo examines topics of identity, race, and womanhood in modern Britain.

Love in Colour: This collection of short stories by author Bolu Babalola reimagines ancient love stories and folktales from around the world, from Greek myths to Middle Eastern legends, and centers Black women and strong female characters.

Queenie: This sharp and funny novel by Candice Carty-Williams is about the life of Queenie Jenkins, a mid-twenties British Jamaican woman living in London who’s struggling to find her place in the world.

Such a Fun Age: One night, a supermarket security guard sees a young Black woman, Emira Tucker, in the aisles with a white toddler. The guard accuses Emira of kidnapping, when in reality she’s the babysitter. In this novel, Kiley Reid takes a look at race, class, power dynamics, and privilege.

I’ve greatly valued Zadie Smith’s work. Her novels — especially White Teeth — are well crafted and offer a mix of comedy and realism that often focuses on social class in England. Her essays are things of beauty. She’s worth a read, no matter the month.

Daryl L. L. Houston, USA

Film and Television

Black and British: A Forgotten History: This BBC Two series by David Olusoga, composed of four episodes, looks at the relationship between Britain and people of African origins, slavery, and Black British identity in the 20th century.

Small Axe: In this anthology of five films, 12 Years a Slave filmmaker Steve McQueen brings to life the stories of West Indian immigrants in London from the 1960s to 1980s.

Black Power: A British Story of Resistance: This hour-and-a-half documentary includes interviews with activists involved in Britain’s Black Power movement in the late 1960s. (The BBC’s larger collection of programming for Black History Month is also worth browsing.)

I May Destroy You: Michaela Coel’s recent Emmy-winning drama series is about a promising young writer, Arabella, who is sexually assaulted one night while out with her friends. The show explores consent and trauma, and stars a primarily Black British cast.

Black and Welsh: Cardiff-born filmmaker Liana Stewart brings together people from across Wales to highlight its multiculturalism and to share stories from community members about what it means to be Black and Welsh.

Hair Power: Me and My Afro: Irish writer and broadcaster Emma Dabiri has intimate conversations with both men and women about their hair, digging into how and why Afro and Black hair is an important and complex aspect of the Black experience.

Highlife: This premium reality TV show follows the lives of eight successful, glamorous British West Africans and depicts a different angle of Black life in the UK.

Desmond’s: Originally running from 1989 to 1994, this sitcom was set in a barbershop in Peckham, southeast London, and featured a mostly Black British Guyanese cast.

Blog and website resources

Lean on these resources, tools, and organizations during UK Black History Month — and beyond — to publish content on your site that’s fitting for your audience, or to connect with and collaborate with others.

Stock illustration libraries like Black Illustrations.

Diverse stock photography sites, including free resources like Nappy, Picnoi, and CreateHER Stock, and premium photo collections at TONL, Eye for Ebony, Mocha Stock, and Raw Pixel. (Disabled and Here, a free stock image library with photos of disabled Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), also publishes an interview series with disabled BIPOC writers and activists.)

Organizations at the intersection of tech and diversity, like UKBlackTech, which supports diverse innovation and equity, transparency, and representation across the UK; and TechUP Women, a tech training program for people from underrepresented communities.

Teaching resources across age groups, including a Black History Month resource pack, a BBC series of short films for primary and secondary school teachers, and The Times Educational Supplement’s Black experiences hub.

Would you like to recommend a website on WordPress, writing or media by a Black thinker or creator in the UK, or another resource? Tell us in the comments.

from Blogging Tips https://wordpress.com/blog/2021/10/04/uk-black-history-month-resources-recommendations-tools/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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schlock-luster-video · 4 years ago

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Today in supernatural horror / comedy movie history: on April 18, 1987 Stuart Gordon's Dolls was screened at the Houston Film Festival.

Here's some pop art homages to the film!

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Sky Cinema: What’s New in February 2021?

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

It’s that time of the month where we can give you a look ahead at what Sky Cinema has planned for the coming weeks, and since it doesn’t look like many of us are going very far, hopefully some of these upcoming movies will help to keep us busy during lockdown.

Without further ado, he’s what Sky Cinema has lined up for us…

Premieres

The 24th – 2nd February

BlacKkKlansman and Da 5 Bloods writer Kevin Willmott brings us the story of the all-black Twenty-Fourth United States Infantry Regiment, and delves into the the Houston Riot of 1917.

Weathering With You – 3rd February

In this acclaimed animated film, impressionable young Hodaka meets the conflicted Hina, who can control the weather. It’s really touching, funny and wonderful, and also a perfect movie for fans of Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name.

Bull – 4th February

Bull, which was a hit at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, focuses on the story of two people who find they have an unexpected connection. The drama follows a teen who collides with her neighbour, an aging bullfighter.

Birds of Prey – 5th February on Sky Cinema and the Sky Cinema Pass on NOW TV

Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) dumps the Joker and forms her own squad in this DC spinoff film. Ewan McGregor co-stars as its villain, Black Mask.

Adopt a Highway – 7th February

Ethan Hawke leads this drama as a man recently released from over two decades in jail who finds an abandoned baby. Making sure the child has a good shot gives him a new purpose in life.

The Oath – 8th February

In this dark comedy, a man and his wife are shocked after learning that American citizens will have to sign a loyalty oath to the US president.

Nuclear – 9th February

Emilia Jones (Locke & Key) and George MacKay (1917) put in stellar performances in this tense offering about a young girl who holes up in an abandoned nuclear power station with her mother.

Dragon Rider – 12th February

Firedrake (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) wants to prove himself to the more senior dragons of his pack, but when he finds out humans are going to destroy their forest, he aims to stop the disaster from occurring.

Walkaway Joe – 17th February

A boy searching for his dad forges an unlikely friendship with a loner. Starring The Walking Dead’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

Spontaneous – 18th February

Mara’s (Katherine Langford) school classmates keep exploding, and thinking she might be next in line for the same fate forces her to live every moment as though it were her last.

To Olivia – 19th February

Hugh Bonneville plays late author Roald Dahl and Keeley Hawes stars as his wife Patricia Neal in this true story about the death of their young daughter.

You Should Have Left – 27th February

A smaller budgeted horror movie set in Wales with Amanda Seyfried and Kevin Bacon. You Should Have Left is very silly, but sometimes you want the comfort of a well-worn creepy tale.

The Silencing – 28th February

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones) stars in this thriller as a reformed hunter chasing a killer who may have kidnapped his daughter years ago.

Collections

Must See Movies – 22nd January to 11th February

Highlights: Pulp Fiction, Harriet, The Godfather Part II, Lawrence of Arabia, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Green Mile, Scarface, Goodfellas, Almost Famous, The English Patient, The Colour Purple, The Theory of Everything, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Social Network, Shrek.

Musicals – 28th February to 7th March

Highlights: The High Note, Rocketman, Yesterday, The King and I, Judy, Cats, Annie, Trolls World Tour, Grease, The Wizard of Oz, The Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado, Dreamgirls, Behind the Candelabra.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

See you next month!

The post Sky Cinema: What’s New in February 2021? appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2NFHwrc

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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letterboxd · 5 years ago

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Bong Hit!

Today Parasite overtook The Godfather as the highest-rated narrative feature film on Letterboxd. We examine what this means, and bring you the story of the birth of the #BongHive.

It’s Bong Joon-ho’s world and we’re just basement-dwelling in it. While there is still (at time of publication) just one one-thousandth of a point separating them, Bong’s Palme d’Or-winning Parasite has overtaken Francis Ford Coppola’s Oscar-winning The Godfather to become our highest-rated narrative feature.

In May, we pegged Parasite at number one in our round-up of the top ten Cannes premieres. By September, when we met up with Director Bong on the TIFF red carpet, Parasite was not only the highest-rated film of 2019, but of the decade. (“I’m very happy with that!” he told us.)

Look, art isn’t a competition—and this may be short-lived—but it’s as good a time as any to take stock of why Bong’s wild tale of the Kim and Park families is hitting so hard with film lovers worldwide. To do so, we’ve waded through your Parasite reviews (warning: mild spoilers below; further spoilers if you click the review links). And further below, member Ella Kemp recalls the very beginnings of the #BongHive.

Bong Joon-ho on set with actors Choi Woo-shik and Cho Yeo-jeong.

The Letterboxd community on Parasite

On the filmmaking technique: “Parasite is structured like a hill: the first act is an incredible trek upward toward the light, toward riches, toward reclaiming a sense of humanity as defined by financial stability and self-reliance. There is joy, there is quirk, there is enough air to breathe to allow for laughter and mischief.

“But every hill must go down, and Parasite is an incredibly balanced, plotted, and paced descent downward into darkness. The horror doesn’t rely on shock value, but rather is built upon a slow-burning dread that is rooted in the tainted soil of class, society, and duty… Bong Joon-ho dresses this disease up in beautiful sets and empathetic framing (the camera doesn’t gawk, but perceives invisible connections and overt inequalities)—only to unravel it with deft hands.” —Tay

“Bong’s use of landscape, architecture, and space is simply arresting.” —Taylor Baker

“There is a clear and forceful guiding purpose behind the camera, and it shows. The dialogue is incredibly smart and the entire ensemble is brilliant, but the most beautiful work is perhaps done through visual language. Every single frame tells you exactly what you need to know while pulling you in to look for more—the stunning production design behind the sleek, clinical nature of one home and the cramped, gritty nature of the other sets up a playpen of contrasts for the actors and the script.” —Kevin Yang

On how to classify Parasite: “Masterfully constructed and thoroughly compelling genre piece (effortlessly transitioning between familial drama, heist movie, satirical farce, subterranean horror) about the perverse and mutating symbiotic relationship of increasingly unequal, transactional class relationships, and who can and can’t afford to be oblivious about the severe, violent material/psychic toll of capitalist accumulation.” —Josh Lewis

“This is an excellent argument for the inherent weakness of genre categories. Seriously, what genre is this movie? It’s all of them and none of them. It’s just Parasite.” —Nick Wibert

“The director refers to his furious and fiendishly well-crafted new film as a ‘family tragicomedy’, but the best thing about Parasite is that it gives us permission to stop trying to sort his movies into any sort of pre-existing taxonomy—with Parasite, Bong finally becomes a genre unto himself.” —David Ehrlich

On the duality of the plot: “There are houses on hills, and houses underground. There is plenty of sun, but it isn't for everybody. There are people grateful to be slaves, and people unhappy to be served. There are systems that we are born into, and they create these lines that cannot be crossed. And we all dream of something better, but we’ve been living with these lines for so long that we've convinced ourselves that there really isn’t anything to be done.” —Philbert Dy

“The Parks are bafflingly naive and blissfully ignorant of the fact that their success and wealth is built off the backs of the invisible working class. This obliviousness and bewilderment to social and class inequities somehow make the Parks even more despicable than if they were to be pompous and arrogant about their privilege.

“This is not to say the Kims are made to be saints by virtue of the Parks’ ignorance. The Kims are relentless and conniving as they assimilate into the Park family, leeching off their wealth and privilege. But even as the Kims become increasingly convincing in their respective roles, the film questions whether they can truly fit within this higher class.” —Ethan

On how the film leaps geographical barriers: “As a satire on social climbing and the aloofness of the upper class, it’s dead-on and has parallels to the American Dream that American viewers are unlikely to miss; as a dark comedy, it’s often laugh-aloud hilarious in its audacity; as a thriller, it has brilliantly executed moments of tension and surprises that genuinely caught me off guard; and as a drama about family dynamics, it has tender moments that stand out all the more because of how they’re juxtaposed with so much cynicism elsewhere in the film. Handling so many different tones is an immensely difficult balancing act, yet Bong handles all of it so skilfully that he makes it feel effortless.” —C. Roll

“One of the best things about it, I think, is the fact that I could honestly recommend it to anyone, even though I can't even try to describe it to someone. One may think, due to the picture’s academic praise and the general public’s misconceptions about foreign cinema, that this is some slow, artsy film for snobby cinephiles, but it’s quite the contrary: it’s entertaining, engaging and accessible from start to finish.” —Pedro Machado

On the performative nature of image: “A família pobre que se infiltra no espaço da família rica trata a encenação—a dissimulação, os novos papéis que cada um desempenha—como uma espécie de luta de classes travada no palco das aparências. Uma luta de classes que usa a potência da imagem e do drama (os personagens escrevem os seus textos e mudam a sua aparência para passar por outras pessoas) como uma forma de reapropriação da propriedade e dos valores alheios.

“A grande proposta de Parasite é reconhecer que a ideia do conhecimento, consequentemente a natureza financeira e moral desse conhecimento, não passa de uma questão de performance. No capitalismo imediatista de hoje fingir saber é mais importante do que de fato saber.” —Arthur Tuoto

(Translation: “The poor family that infiltrates the rich family space treats the performance—the concealment, the new roles each plays—as a kind of class struggle waged on the stage of appearances. A class struggle that uses the power of image and drama (characters write their stories and change their appearance to pass for other people) as a form of reappropriation of the property and values of others.

“Parasite’s great proposal is to recognize that the idea of knowledge, therefore the financial and moral nature of that knowledge, is a matter of performance. In today’s immediate capitalism, pretending to know is more important than actually knowing.”)

Things you’re noticing on re-watches: “Min and Mr. Park are both seen as powerful figures deserving of respect, and the way they dismissively respond to an earnest question about whether they truly care for the people they’re supposed to tells us a lot about how powerful people think about not just the people below them, but everyone in their lives.” —Demi Adejuyigbe

“When I first saw the trailer and saw Song Kang-ho in a Native American headdress I was a little taken aback. But the execution of the ideas, that these rich people will siphon off of everything, whether it’s poor people or disenfranchised cultures all the way across the world just to make their son happy, without properly taking the time to understand that culture, is pretty brilliant. I noticed a lot more subtlety with that specific example this time around.” —London

“I only noticed it on the second viewing, but the film opens and closes on the same shot. Socks are drying on a rack hanging in the semi-basement by the window. The camera pans down to a hopeful Ki-Woo sitting on his bed… if the film shows anything, it might be that the ways we usually approach ‘solving’ poverty and ‘fixing’ the class struggle often just reinforce how things have been since the beginning.” —Houston

The birth of the #BongHive

London-based writer and Letterboxd member Ella Kemp attended Cannes for Culture Whisper, and was waiting in the Parasite queue with fellow writers Karen Han and Iana Murray when the hashtag #BongHive was born. Letterboxd editor Gemma Gracewood asked her to recall that day.

Take us back to the day that #BongHive sprang into life. Ella Kemp: I’m so glad you asked. Picture the scene: we were in the queue to watch the world premiere of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite at Cannes. It was toward the end of the festival; Once Upon a Time in Hollywood had already screened…

Can you describe for our members what those film festival queues are like? The queues in Cannes are very precise, and very strict and categorized. When you’re attending the festival as press, there are a number of different tiers that you can be assigned—white tier, pink tier, blue tier or yellow tier—and that’s the queue you have to stay in. And depending on which tier you’re in, a certain number of tiers will get into the film before you, no matter how late they arrive. Now, yellow is the lowest tier and it is the tier I was in this year. But, you know, I didn’t get shut out of any films I tried to go into, so I don’t want to speak ill of being yellow!

So, spirits are still high in the yellow queue before going to see Parasite. I was with friends and colleagues Iana Murray [writer for GQ, i-D, Much Ado About Cinema, Little White Lies], Karen Han [New York Times, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The Atlantic] and Jake Cunningham [of the Curzon and Ghibliotheque podcasts] who were also very excited for the film. We queued quite early, because obviously if you’re at the start of a queue and only two yellow tier people get in, you want that to be you.

So we had some time to spare, and we’re all very ‘online’ people and the 45 minutes in that queue was no different. So we just started tweeting, as you do. We thought, ‘Oh we’re just gonna tweet some stuff and see if it catches on.’ It might not, but at least we could kill some time.

So we just started tweeting #BongHive. And not explaining it too much.

#BongHive

— karen han (@karenyhan)

May 21, 2019

Within the realms of stan culture, I would argue that hashtags are more applicable to actors and musicians. Ariana Grande has her army of fans and they have their own hashtag. Justin Bieber has his, One Direction, all of them. But we thought, ‘You know who needs one and doesn’t have one right now? Bong Joon-ho.’

And so, you know, we tweeted it a couple of times, but I think what mattered the most was that there was no context, there was no logic, but there was consistency and insistence. So we tweeted it two or three times, and then the film started and we thought right, let’s see if this pays off. Because it could have been disappointing and we could have not wanted to be part of, you know, any kind of hype.

SMILE PRESIDENT @karenyhan #BongHive pic.twitter.com/Dk7T8bFYtv

— Ella Kemp (@ella_kemp)

May 21, 2019

But, Parasite was Parasite. So we walked out of it and thought, ‘Oh yes, the #BongHive is alive and kicking.’

I think what was interesting was that it came at that point in the festival when enthusiasm dipped. Everyone was very tired, and we were really tired, which is why we were tweeting illogical things. It was late at night by the time we came out of that film. It was close to midnight and we should have gone to bed, probably.

Because, first world problems, it is exhausting watching five, six, seven films a day at a film festival, trying to find sustenance that’s not popcorn, and form logical thoughts around these works of art. Yes! It was nice to have fun with something. But what happened next was [Parasite distributor] Neon clocked it and went, ‘Oh wait, there’s something we can do there’. And then they took it, and it flew into the world, and now the #BongHive is worldwide.

I love the formality of Korean language and the way that South Koreans speak of their elders with such respect. I enjoyed being on the red carpet at TIFF hearing the Korean media refer to Bong Joon-ho as ‘Director Bong’. It’s what he deserves!

I like to imagine a world where it’s ‘Director Gerwig’, ‘Director Campion’, ‘Director Sciamma’… Exactly.

Related content:

Ella Kemp’s review of Parasite for Culture Whisper.

Letterboxd list: The directors Bong Joon-ho would like you to watch next.

Our interview with Director Bong, in which he reveals just how many times he’s watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

“I’m very awkward.” Bong Joon-ho’s first words following the standing ovation at Cannes for Parasite’s world premiere.

Karen Han interviews Director Bong for Polygon, with a particular interest in how he translated the film for non-Korean audiences. (Here’s Han’s original Parasite review out of Cannes; and here’s what happened when a translator asked her “Are you bong hive?” in front of the director.)

Haven’t seen Parasite yet? Here are the films recommended by Bong Joon-ho for you to watch in preparation.

With thanks to Matt Singer for the headline.

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dustedmagazine · 4 years ago

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Dusted Mid-Year Exchange, Part 3: Writers’ Lists

Joe McPhee

We wrap up our mid-year feature with writers’ favorites from the first half of the year. If you missed them, check out Parts One and Two from earlier this week.

Tobias Carroll

SAULT — UNTITLED (Black Is) (Forever Living Originals)

Irreversible Entanglements — Who Sent You? (International Anthem)

Cold Beat — Mother (DFA Records)

African Head Charge — Drumming is a Language 1990 - 2011 (On-U Sound)

En Attendant Ana — Juliet (Trouble in Mind)

Positive No — Kyanite (self-released)

Helen Money — Atomic (Thrill Jockey)

Matt LaJoie — Everlasting Spring (Flower Room)

Xetas — The Cypher (12XU)

Alison Cotton — Zener_08 (Sensory Leakage)

Coriky — Coriky (Dischord)

Błoto — Erozje (Astigmatic Records)

Gerycz / Powers / Rolin — Beacon (Garden Portal)

75 Dollar Bill Little Big Band — Live at Tubby’s (self-released)

Slum of Legs — Slum of Legs (Splurge Recordings)

The Soft Pink Truth — Am I Free to Go? (self-released)

Tim Clarke

Activity — Unmask Whoever (Western Vinyl)

Alabaster DePlume — To Cy and Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1 (International Anthem)

Drab City — Good Songs For Bad People (Bella Union)

Fake Laugh — Dining Alone (State 51 Conspiracy)

King Krule — Man Alive! (XL)

Owen Pallett — Island (Domino)

Andrew Forell

Irreversible Entanglements — Who Sent You? (International Anthem)

Wire — Mind Hive (Pinkflag)

Peel Machine Dream — Agitprop Alterna (Tough Love/Slumberland)

Rowland S Howard — Teenage Snuff Film (Fat Possum)

The Wants — Container (Council Records)

Shabaka And The Ancestors — We Are Sent Here By History (Impulse!)

Davey Harms — World War (Hausu Mountain)

Bohren & Der Club Of Gore — Patchouli Blue (Ipecac)

Ray Garraty

Rio Da Yung Og — City on My Back (#Boyz Entertainment)

Cash Kidd — No Socks (4746 Global)

The Jacka — Murder Weapon (The Artist Records)

Z-Ro — Quarantine: Social Distancing (1 Deep Entertainment)

Ka — Descendants of Cain (self-released)

Bandgang Lonnie Bands — The Scamily (TF Entertainment)

Jennifer Kelly

Six Organs of Admittance—Companion Rises (Drag City)

Gil Scott Heron and Makaya McCraven—We’re New Again (XL Recordings)

Obnox—Savage Raygun (Ever/Never)

Cable Ties—Far Enough (Merge)

Lewsberg—In this House (12XU)

James Elkington—Ever Roving Eye (Paradise of Bachelors)

Jehnny Beth —To Love Is To Live (Arts & Crafts)

Destroyer—Have We Met (Merge)

Decoy w/ Joe McPhee — AC/DC (otoROKU)

Chouk Bwa & The Ångströmers— Vodou Alé (Bongo Joe)

FACS—Void Moments (Trouble in Mind)

Elkhorn—The Storm Sessions (Beyond Beyond Is Beyond)

Arthur Krumins

Gil Scott-Heron, Makaya McCraven — We’re New Again (XL)

The Giving Shapes — Earth Leaps Up (Elsewhere)

Wut — Now (Self-released)

Ranil — Ranil y su Conjunto Tropical (Analog Africa)

Ash Brooks — Temple of Roses (Flower Room)

Chip Langer — Songs for Melissa (Xylem)

Keenan Ahrends Trio — Live at House on the Hills Session (Self-released)

Jeff Parker — Suite for Max Brown (International Anthem)

Julius Eastman — Feminine (Frozen Reeds)

White Poppy — Paradise Gardens (Not Not Fun)

Pharoah Sanders — Live in Paris 1975 (Transversales Disques)

Waterless Hills — The Great Mountain (Cardinal Fuzz)

Jim White and Marisa Anderson — The Quickening (Thrill Jockey)

Aoife Nessa Frances — Land of No Junction (Ba Da Bing)

Andrea Cortez — The Secret Song of Plants (Aural Canyon)

Patrick Masterson

Yves Tumor — Heaven to a Tortured Mind (Warp)

Squirrel Flower — I Was Born Swimming (Polyvinyl)

Black Taffy — Opal Wand (Leaving)

Mint Mile — Ambertron (Comedy Minus One)

Moodymann — Taken Away (KDJ)

Sarah Mary Chadwick — Please Daddy (Sinderlyn)

Andrea — Ritorno (Illian Tape)

Cable Ties — Far Enough (Merge)

Torres — Silver Tongue (Merge)

Russell Ellington Langston Butler — Emotional Bangers Only EP (self— released)

Tan Cologne — Cave Vaults on the Moon in New Mexico (Labrador)

Future — High Off Life (Epic)

Ian Mathers

Aidan Baker & Gareth Davis — Invisible Cities II (Karlrecords)

Anastasia Minster — Father (self released)

Helen Money — Atomic (Thrill Jockey)

Holy Fuck — Deleter (Last Gang)

Hum — Inlet (Polyvinyl)

Solar Woodroach — 7 Perversions on Pachabel's Canon (Nilamox)

Spanish Love Songs — Brave Faces Everyone (Pure Noise)

Stars Like Fleas — DWARS Session: Live on Radio VPRO (self released)

Well Yells — We Mirror the Dead (self released)

Yves Tumor — Heaven to a Tortured Mind (Warp)

Special mention to the incredible Charles Curtis Performances & Recordings 1998-2018 box we talked about here.

Bill Meyer

(The last entry is not a record, but a festival of recordings)

Owl — Mille Feuille (SOFA)

Paul Lytton / Nate Wooley — Known / Unknown (Fundacja Sluchaj)

Six Organs of Admittance — Companion Rises (Drag City)

Elkhorn — The Storm Sessions (Beyond Beyond is Beyond)

*Waterless Hills — The Great Mountain (Cardinal Fuzz / Feeding Tube)

Powers / Rolin Duo — s/t (Feeding Tube)

Tashi Dorji / Tyler Damon — To Catch A Bird (Trost)

James Elkington — Ever Roving Eye (Paradise of Bachelors)

Chicago Underground Quartet — Good Days (Astral Spirits)

Steve Beresford and John Butcher — Old Paradise Airs (Iluso)

Irreversible Entanglements (International Anthem)

Sandy Ewen — You Win (Gilgongo)

Various artists — AMPLIFY 2020:quarantine

Jonathan Shaw

Raspberry Bulbs — Before the Age of Mirrors (Relapse)

Mamaleek — Come and See (The Flenser)

Thou — Blessings of the Highest Order (Robotic Empire)

Sun City Girls — Live at Sky Church (2182 Recording Company)

Gil Scott Heron and Makaya McCraven — We’re New Again (XL Recordings)

Neutrals — Rent/Your House (Domestic Departure)

Derek Taylor

Twenty from 2020: Jazz and Improv (order entirely arbitrary)

Decoy w/ Joe McPhee — AC/DC (otoROKU)

Stephen Riley — Friday the 13th (Steeplechase)

Damon Smith — Whatever is Not Stone is Light (Balance Point Acoustics)

James Brandon Lewis & Chad Taylor — Live at Willisau (Intakt)

Jeremy Pelt — The Art of Intimacy, Vol. 1 (HighNote)

Peter Brötzmann/ Maâlem Moukhtar Gania/ Hamid Drake — The Catch of a Ghost (I Dischi Di Angelica)

Patty Waters — An Evening in Houston (Clean Feed)

Whit Dickey — Expanding Light (AUM Fidelity)

Brandon Seabrook — Exultations (Astral Spirits)

John Scofield — Swallow Tales (ECM)

Paul Desmond — The Complete 1975 Toronto Recordings (Mosaic)

Cecil Taylor & Tony Oxley — Birdland, Neuberg 2011 (Fundacja Sluchaj)

Kidd Jordan /Joel Futterman /Alvin Fielder — Spirits (Silkheart)

Sam Rivers — Ricochet (No Business)

Frank Lowe & Rashied Ali — Duo Exchange: Complete Sessions (Survival)

Dudu Pukwana — and the Spears (Matsuli Music)

Sun Ra — Heliocentric Worlds, Vols. 1 & 2 (Ezz-thetics)

Shirley Scott — One for Me (Arc/Strata-East)

Buddy Collette — The Complete 1961 Milano Sessions (Fresh Sound)

Lennie Tristano — The Duo Sessions (Dot Time)

#dusted magazine #midyear #lists #tobias carroll #tim clarke #andrew forell #jennifer kelly #patrick masterson #ian mathers #arthur krumins #bill meyer #jonathan shaw #derek taylor

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tabloidtoc · 4 years ago

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In Touch, September 28

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Kardashians’ $3 billion empire torn apart by greed

Page 1: Contents

Page 2: Who Wore It Better? Nicky Hilton vs. Scarlett Johansson, Celine Dion vs. Shailene Woodley, Camila Morrone vs. Joan Smalls

Page 4: Cate Blanchett’s a red carpet recycler -- at the Venice Film Festival this year Cate is rewearing some of her favorite red carpet styles

Page 5: Queen Elizabeth’s famed Sandringham Estate in Norfolk where the entire royal family celebrates Christmas every year will be hosting drive-in movie nights, Number of the Week -- 100 million dollars that Alex Rodriguez and Jennifer Lopez promised to give to charity if they become owners of the New York Mets and the team doesn’t win the World Series within 10 years, Makeover of the Week -- Brittany Snow ditched her red locks for a short blond bob, Winner of the Week -- Taylor Swift ties Whitney Houston’s record as the female artist with the most cumulative weeks with No. 1 albums, Loser of the Week -- top seed Novak Djokovic is disqualified from the U.S. Open after recklessly hitting a ball that struck a line judge

Page 6: Crib of the Week -- Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s daughter Willow Smith moved out on her own and into a stunning hilltop abode overlooking the Pacific Ocean for $3.1 million

Page 9: Up Close -- Sofia Richie models the Kappa X Juicy Couture campaign

Page 10: Olivia Wilde kicks a soccer ball then kicks back enjoying a day at the beach in Santa Monica

Page 11: Charli D’Amelio takes a tumble in the surf, Alessandra Ambrosio avoids a wardrobe malfunction in the ocean in Santa Monica

Page 12: Diane Kruger jumping for joy in front of her car, Mariah Carey styles daughter Monroe’s hair

Page 14: Body Beautiful -- Halle Berry and Peter Lee Thomas show off the results of their hard-core training sessions, Eva Longoria works out

Page 15: Chris Hemsworth shows off his biceps while lifting weights, Brooke Burke teaches her Booty Burn class in her backyard

Page 16: Josh Duhamel and a donkey, Billie Eilish with her dog Shark and the Fender Billie Eilish Signature Ukulele

Page 17: Justin Hartley and his pooch Paisley, Annalynne McCord and her cat

Page 19: Alec and Hilaria Baldwin proudly show off their fifth child Eduardo

Page 20: Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff help rent out a wing of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’s mansion on Airbnb, Olivia Culpo and Christian McCaffrey show off PDA, Jennifer Lopez at lunch with friends

Page 22: Cover Story -- The end of the Kardashian era -- Keeping Up With the Kardashians made the Kardashians but now its cancellation could break them

Page 26: KUWTK’s 25 most shocking moments

Page 32: Katie Holmes steals another woman’s fiance Emilio Vitolo Jr. -- Katie has found love again with someone who was already taken

Page 34: Gosselin Family Heartbreak -- Collin Gosselin accuses Jon Gosselin of abuse -- Kate and Jon Gosselin are at war again after one of their sextuplets makes a shocking claim

Page 36: Prince Harry to Royals: We’re Even -- thanks to a $150 million Netflix paycheck Harry and Meghan Markle cut their last ties to his family

Page 38: Emma Stone’s baby joy -- plus she and fiance Dave McCary who postponed their spring wedding because of COVID-19 are now wearing matching bands on their ring fingers

Page 39: On the heels of her breakup with Scott Disick Sofia Richie went public with her new romance with Jaden Smith -- they dated briefly in 2012 but they were both so young and immature but they kept in touch and would run into each other at parties so when Jaden knew Sofia was available again he made his move, three months after Colton Underwood and Cassie Randolph split she submitted paperwork for a restraining order claiming he harassed her via text messages and put a tracking device on her car and showed up uninvited to her apartment and to her parents’ home

Page 42: The Big Interview -- Kenan Thompson on being SNL’s longest-running cast member -- he plans on staying forever -- he may be starring in a new sitcom but the sketch comedy vet will still be live from New York every Saturday night

Page 44: Get Organized -- pro tips from The Home Edit’s Joanna Teplin and Clea Shearer on how to contain clutter

Page 46: Beauty -- Mascara -- Katherine Langford

Page 48: Entertainment

Page 50: Animal Overload -- my cat looks like Kamala Harris

Page 54: Horoscope -- Libra Donald Glover turned 37 on September 25

Page 56: Last Laughs

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newyorktheater · 5 years ago

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Diahann Carroll in House of Flowers at the age of 19

Diahann Carroll, who died Friday at the age of 84, is best known as the first black woman to star on a TV series, “Julia” in 1968, but she was a barrier breaker on Broadway too. Born in the Bronx, she made her Broadway debut way back in 1954, at the age of 19, in Truman Capote and Harold Arlen’s “House of Flowers,” the only debutante in an illustrious company led by Pearl Bailey and Alvin Ailey. The famous Harlem photographer Carl Van Vechten captured her here in color.

Carroll was the first black woman to win the Tony Award for Best Actress for a musical, for “No Strings” in 1962.She returned to Broadway in 1982 to portray Doctor Martha Livingstone in “Agnes of God”

Diahann Carroll in No Strings with Richard Kiley

Diahann Carroll in Agnes of God with Geraldine Page

Her experiences on Broadway were in sharp contrast to her experience on television. As a black female” surrounded by white supremacists and chauvinists, she once said, “I had to learn how to tap dance around the situation”

Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman”, featuring an all-star cast including DeNiro and Pacino and Cannavale, will be presented at Broadway’s beautiful Belasco Theater from November 1 to December 1. It is not a play, but a film — the first movie screening in the theater’s 112-year-old history. The film, about a mob hitman recalling his possible involvement with the slaying of Jimmy Hoffa, will then be shown on Netflix. The director had hoped to put the film in movie houses, but major movie chains balked at playing host to a Netflix film.

Though Netflix will be installing equipment to allow for state of the art screening, it will maintain the normal schedule for productions at the Belasco — eight screenings a week, including Mondays dark and matinees on the weekend.

The Week in New York Theater Reviews and Previews

Preview: Linda Vista on Broadway Ian Barford realizes that some audience members may view the 50-year-old divorcé he portrays in Tracy Letts’ Linda Vista as “despicable, a misanthrope, a narcissist and probably a nihilist.” He feels that way about him too. But the actor also sees his character, Dick Wheeler, as “incredibly articulate, and hilarious,” even “noble.” “He has so many dimensions and contradictions: He’s lovable and he’s hateable,” Barford says. “I’m scared many people will love to hate him — and I’m sure that many people will hate to love him.”

Heroes of the Fourth Turning

Conservatives don’t all think alike; some of them hate Trump; some don’t see Liberals as evil (some do.) Some are deeply weird.

It is a sure sign of the political divisiveness in America that these observations may well seem like revelations to some theatergoers attending Will Arbury’s new play at Playwrights Horizons. “Heroes of the Fourth Turning” allows us to eavesdrop on what feel like astute and authentic conversations at a gathering of former classmates at a conservative Catholic college in Wyoming. Terrifically acted and intellectually stimulating, “Heroes” is also eerie, at times confusing, too long and too dark. And I mean dark literally; it takes place during nighttime in the dimly lit backyard of Justin’s house.

Chalk

“Chalk,” a 40-minute comedy in which silent comic Alex Curtis creates an entire world for the audience using little more than a piece of chalk, is exactly the sort of show I always hope for at the Fringe Festival — inventive, entertaining, and short.

Unmaking Toulouse-Lautrec

“Moulin Rouge” on Broadway has several things in common with Bated Breath Theater Company’s low-budget show about the same people, place and period, especially in my reaction to them both. As with “Moulin Rouge,” I found “Unmaking Toulouse-Lautrec” thrilling from the moment I entered the West Houston bar where it takes place…until a few minutes after it began. That’s because the environment on the second floor lounge of the Madame X bar is spot-on in look and feel….a show about the life and times of French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec that is at best inventive, at worst amateurish, and overall a mishmash.

The Week in New York Theater News

Ed Harris

Nina Grollman

Nick Robinson

Russell Harvard

Kyle Scatliffe

Taylor Trensch

M Emmet Walsh

Year 2 of “To Kill A Mockingbird,” which begins Nov 5, features some intriguing replacement casting:

Ed Harris as Atticus Finch, Nick Robinson as Jem Finch, Eliza Scanlen as Mayella Ewell, Kyle Scatliffe as Tom Robinson, LisaGay Hamilton as Calpurnia, Nina Grollman as Scout Finch, Taylor Trensch as Dill Harris, Manoel Felciano as Horace Gilmer, Russell Harvard as Link Deas and Boo Radley, M. Emmet Walsh as Judge Taylor

The 2019 New York International Fringe Festival: What happened?!

The short answer is: They ran out of money.

Lauren Gunderson

The Half-Life of Marie Curie, starring Kate Mulgrew of Orange Is the New Black, will open at Minetta Lane Theater November 19, produced by Audible. It is written by Lauren Gunderson, who is yet again this year the most produced playwright in America – but has never been produced on Broadway.

Is America’s Favorite Playwright Too Much for New York?

“Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” the show will now be known as “MJ.” It’s currently in a multi-week development phase in New York City and is scheduled to hit Broadway in the summer of 2020.

Seventy-nine artist have been granted MacDowell Fellowships, which enable them to attend fall residencies. These include composer Jeanine Tesori and theater artists: Sarah DeLappe, Lisa Dring, David Mallamud, Stevie Nemazee, Terry O’Reilly, LaDarrion Williams, Gary Winter, and Zack Zadek.

What is immersive theater? The six elements that define it at its best

Foundry Theatre to Close After 25 Years

Uta Hagen centennial

The history of modern celebrity

Study shows viewers want more representation for those with disabilities

Spielberg: “We filmed West Side Story all over New York, from Flatbush to Fort Tryon Park” — and finished at Steiner_Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. “The city lent us its beauty and its energy….” Movie’s coming out Dec 18,2020.

Martin Scorsese’s film “The Irishman” will be screened at the Belasco Theater on Broadway from Nov. 1 through Dec. 1

Elsiefest

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Rip Taylor, 88, mostly known as a TV game show panelist. But he also starred in a Broadway show in 1981, Sugar Babies. also wrote and performed an autobiographical one-man play called “It Ain’t All Confetti.”

#Stageworthy News of the Week: Diahann Carroll (1935-2019) Broadway Groundbreaker. DeNiro, Pacino, Cannavale in Broadway’s Belasco….for Netflix. Diahann Carroll, who died Friday at the age of 84, is best known as the first black woman to star on a TV series, "Julia" in 1968, but she was a barrier breaker on Broadway too.

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