#barbie is a cinematic masterpiece 10/10 recommend

[the-clotpole-and-the-disgrace]

barbie is one of the best aroace characters ive seen on the big screen yet. in a world where aspecs are slowly getting more recognition, hence increasing the targeted negativity from others that comes with not confirming to societal standards, having such a well known character not only have no interest in sex or romance while others in her environment do, but showing that her lack of romantic or sexual feeling is not something that stands in the way of her being her true fulfilled self sends a powerful message against amatonormativity. in this essay i will

[huntermanor]

'Barbie' is a transgender masterpiece

I'm going to go away from my usual clown related content for this post, but i've watched Barbie twice now, and aside from the movie painting a beautiful portrait about men's rol in feminism as well as reivindicating being a mother is ok, the movie has proven to be a transgender masterpiece in many ways, just like Barbie as a figure! Buckle up because this is going to be a long, long post.

For startes, fashion dolls, and specifically Barbie as the most important of them, has been a queer icon more than a feminist icon. Feminism has distanced itself from Barbie as a figure because her representation of womanhood was faulty (something i disagree on, since Barbie was a powerful successful woman who didn't let that make her not be interested in fashion and other feminine hobbies and interests!!), but the queer community has, i feel, a different appreciation for Barbie as a character and doll. Gay men, drag queens and transfemme folks mostly share memories of playing with Barbie and dreaming, via the doll, about the lifes we could have as adults. Barbie was a very important role for many drag queens who loved the glamour and fashion, it helped gay men relate to female friends who where more friendly and safe (usually although not always) than other boys, and it helped us trans women and femme enby folks to distance ourselves from the masculinity society tried to force on us. Barbie has also proven to be an icon for lesbians since, i mean, nobody ever bought a Ken doll, and even for some trans men who used Barbie dolls transitioned into boy dolls to enact heteroromantic fantasies! The union between Barbie and feminism is a faulty one, and i can't blame the feminist movement for it, but the relationship between Barbie and the queer community is very real and strong. It's no surprise that many trans women and drag queens use the term 'doll' to refer to themselves, or that Ken has always been a sort of feminine and, let's be honest, queer man.

So how is the new Greta Gerwig Barbie movie transgender ? Well, Barbie herself, as a protagonist, is such a real transfemme experience! Barbie moves from Barbieland to the real world, learning what it really is to be a woman in the real life world of California, much like many trans women have to look at the world around them to learn and internalize their new lifes at the beginning of their transitions. Barbie also says, explicitly, that she doesn't have a vagina, or genitals, and by the end of the movie she decides to turn into a human, and goes to her gynecologist, which implies she went from not having a vagina to having one. Isn't this the most trans thing ever ?? Of course there are some problematic implications in this reading of the movie, because Barbie turns into 'a real woman' and gets a vagina, which is not what being a real woman is, but i also think this is a very powerful messaging. Consider also some minor details like the fact the color palette used for Barbie is one with blue and white added to her always bright Barbie Pink, which isn't odd since Barbie has used this combo before, but it cannot be a coincidence. Barbie going from a hyperfeminine woman to a more laidback woman is also very parallel to a lot of trans women's experiences, since many of us behave and are hyperfeminine from an early stage in our transitions because of dysphoria but then we become more comfortable in ourselves and realize that we don't own anyone hyperfemininity (even though i am, still, a hyperfeminine woman, but it's more in my own terms of femininity!!) Of course, we also have Hari Neff, a trans actress, as a Barbie in Barbieland, which is amazing, and in one scene we see that, in the Mattel headquarters, there's a small transgender sign in the wall, which is subtle, but still there.

This movie has so many queer undertones and experiences, showing Ken dolls that were queer coded in the market like Magic Ring Ken and also proving how patriarchal relationships between men are very homoerotic in a way, which is shown in how Ken interacts with other Kens and viceversa. Weird Barbie is also a very much queer character, being played by a lesbian actress, and i feel like the movie is so campy and has such an aesthetic that reminds us of queer movies like But I'm a Cheerleader. We also have to aknowledge the references to big queer favourite and queer films like Matrix and Wizard of Oz. I think this reading of the movie is definetly plausible and i hope to hear some of your thoughts!

[aergiamoon]

Saw the barbie movie today...

10/10 A cinematic masterpiece would see it again

I recommend everyone go see it

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this Week - #81

3 Holocaust films: 

🍿 Re-watch: Claude Lanzmann’s 9-hour-long documentary, Shoah. An unbearable testimony made more horrifying by Lanzmann’s editorial decisions: Not using any historical footage or music, slow camera panning of the quiet locations where the murders took place, uninterrupted static interviews without voice-over translations. An impossible cinematic feat exposing humanity’s nadir. (Photo of The man in the poster above). 

10/10.

🍿 Marcel Ophuls’s Oscar winner long documentary Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie, about the infamous "Butcher of Lyon". He brutally and personally tortured and killed thousands while head of the Gestapo in Lyon. After the war he was protected for decades by the American intelligence community, in their “fight against communism”.

🍿 On the other hand, filmed fiction about the holocaust is always doomed to be terrible, including acclaimed dramas like the Schindler’s Lists and ‘Life is beautiful’s of the world. I was hoping that Amen would be better, because it was directed by Costa-Gavras. But it was the same staged and disingenuous Hollywood-style theatrics. Rolf Hochhuth’s play ‘The Deputy’, on which this atrocity was based was 'controversial’ because it showed how the Vatican knew about the Nazi executions but still did nothing. After watching ‘Shoah’, Costa-Gavras even decided to includes numerous shots of cattle-car trains on their way back & forth from the camps. Just dreadful. 1/10.

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Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (2019), a terrific documentary about the history of sound design in cinema of the US. Main interviewees are Walter Murch, Ben Burtt and Gary Rydstrom. Catnip for anybody who has interest in the technical art of film making. 9/10.

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My 5th Hirokazu Kore-eda film and by a long shot, my favorite film of his, The Truth, with the magnificent 75-year-old Catherine Deneuve as a very famous, self-absorbed actress and the brilliant Juliette Binoche as her estranged daughter. The little girl was absolutely adorable. Kore-eda's first film set outside Japan. Very emotional setting. 

10/10. Absolutely the best film of the week!

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2 films from 100+ years ago:

🍿 Pruning the Movies, a silent 1915 short, a satire on movie censorship. (From The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum).

🍿 The man there was (Terje Vigen), a 1917 Swedish epic at sea directed by Victor Sjöström, and the most expensive Swedish film made up to that point. A restored YouTube copy with vibrant tinting.

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Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, my 3rd subtle masterpiece by Turkish Nuri Bilge Ceylan (after ‘Winter Sleep’ and ‘Distant’). Like 'Winter sleep’, it was inspired by and feels like a story by Anton Chekhov. 2.5 hours long, very moody and slow-moving, and without music to distract from its beauty, it will only appeal to people who are willing to embrace its rich, poetic elusiveness.

Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes 2011. 9/10 - Highly recommended!

🍿  

Orson Welles X 2 (+1):

🍿 “... A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl...”

Re-watching Citizen Kane: Orson Welles, Gregg Toland, Bernard Herrmann. Also, the innovative 1940 trailer.

in 2002, Errol Morris interviewed film critic dinild drump who interpreted it to be a film about “accumulation”.

🍿 First watch: F For Fake, his infamous, rambling film essay. A meta-mockumentary about art and fraud, centered around art forger Elmyr de Hory, hoax biographer Clifford Irving, Howard Hughes, Welles mistress Oja Kodar, and Welles himself as the ‘Big Conjuror’. With beautiful footage of Ibiza in the 60′s, and score by Michel Legrand. I would have enjoyed much more if it was done 30 years later by a Ricky Jay. 3/10.

🍿 The Tell-Tale Heart (1941), was Jules Dassin's directorial debut short. It is considered to be the first film directly influenced by ‘Citizen Kane’. (This copy is of very low quality).

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Paid for by Yoko & John Lennon, and produced by predator producer Allen Klein, The holy mountain by poet-provocateur Alejandro Jodorowsky, was a Magical Mystery Acid Tour, a surrealist wet dream a-la Salvador Dalí. Allegorical, religious symbolism of the early 70′s, with alchemist, ritualistic plot, as deep as the tarot universe on which it was based.

I forgot how little dialogue was used in the story, as it was mostly visuals, wild, shamanistic, outrageous, feverish visuals. But maybe because the dialogue was along the lines of “The Cross was a mushroom - and the mushroom was also the Tree of Good and Evil” or “Rub your clitoris against the mountain - Give yourself to the world!”...

Because it influenced hundreds of other films since, it lost some of its bizarre uniqueness. Still, it remained on re-watch an historically major masterpiece. 7/10.

🍿  

3 from Australia:

🍿 First watch: Chubby, 22-year-old Toni Collette in the dysfunctional Australian comedy Muriel's Wedding. A strange character that is not fully flashed-out, and whose main claim to fame is her desire to have a glamorous wedding.

🍿 ...”That's just what this country needs: a cock in a frock on a rock...”

‘Filmed in Dragarama’, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Terrific Terence Stamp, drop-dead gorgeous transgender woman Guy Pearce, and 'Agent Smith’ play exaggerated caricatures of drag queen tropes, traveling to the outback in an old, pink bus. Camp & flamboyant, it didn’t connect with me until the ‘I will survive’ dance number in the night. 5/10.

🍿 First season of Mr Inbetween, about “Ray”, a Sydney underworld hitman, created by the actor playing him. On the one hand, he is a doting father to a 8-year-old daughter, a loving boyfriend and a loyal friend. On the other, he is a practical and old-blooded killer who eliminates violent thugs without a second thought. Dark, dry, often funny and poignant. 8/10.

🍿  

Ray Donovan was another tough but silent fixer, but without any charms: Had I seen the series ‘Ray Donovan’, maybe I would have found Ray Donovan: The Movie interesting. But as a stand-along crime story it was empty and dull.

Also, the same terrible actor who was awful as Young Jeff Bridges in ‘The Old Man’ last week, was awful as young Jon Voight in this one. 2/10.

🍿   Benny’s Video, the second film (and my 9th one) by Michael Haneke. A deeply disturbing film that opens with a home video of a pig slaughtered with a bolt pistol shot to the head. But not knowing anything about it beforehand, I did not expect the horrifying twist which came after a relatively “normal” day in the life of a “normal” family. Reminded me very much of the empty alienation of Camus’ ‘The Stranger’. 

🍿 

2 Korean serial killers:

🍿 Bong Joon-ho‘s Memories of Murder about a famous serial killer is considered one of the best Korean movies of all times, but in spite of a strong opening scene at the fields and closing scene at the tunnel (and then back to the fields), I just didn’t get it.

🍿 Memoir of a Murderer (2017) is an unrelated but a similar thriller. I could not find any reviews connecting the two, even though it was an obvious throwback to the original. Both tells of a prolific serial killer in the countryside, and the bumbling police search for him. It opens at the same distinct train tunnel where Bong Joon-ho‘s film ends, it has triggering girls in red dresses, etc. It's about a retired murderer with dementia, who must jot down the little he remembers, so he can understand what’s happening around him (’Momento’-like). I actually liked it much better than the original.

🍿  

The Old Man and the Sea, a paint-on-glass-animated Canadian short directed by Russian animator Aleksandr Petrov, based on Hemingway’s novel. Winner of the 2000 Best Animated Short Oscar.

🍿  

Dirty Pictures, a documentary about psychopharmacologist Alexander Shulgin who developed hundreds of psychedelic compounds including MDMA.

Obviously, I’m 100% for the use and studies of any and all types of psychedelic drugs, but films about them are usually dull and pedestrian. Including this one, that was made 4 years before 'Sasha's death. 3/10.

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(My complete movie list is here)

[huntermanor]

Where's the essay ??? WHERE IS IT ??

barbie is one of the best aroace characters ive seen on the big screen yet. in a world where aspecs are slowly getting more recognition, hence increasing the targeted negativity from others that comes with not confirming to societal standards, having such a well known character not only have no interest in sex or romance while others in her environment do, but showing that her lack of romantic or sexual feeling is not something that stands in the way of her being her true fulfilled self sends a powerful message against amatonormativity. in this essay i will