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calliecat93 · 4 years ago

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Callie’s Disney Princess Retrospective: Beauty and the Beast

(Snow White) (Cinderella) (Sleeping Beauty) (The Little Mermaid)

The Little Mermaid was a huge success for Disney. It was such a big success that it began the Renaissance Era of Disney Animation and returned Disney to the top animation studio. While many people such as John Musker, Ron Clements, and Glen Keane can be credited for the film's success, the biggest player by far was lyricist Howard Ashman. He put his heart and soul into the film, and not just with song lyrics. He wanted the characters to connect to the audience. He wanted to play a part in the story. He wanted this film to be something special, and he succeeded. But he was also frustrated, could be argumentative when others didn't like his vision, and unknown to everyone, he was dying. After winning two Oscars for The Little Mermaid's music, Howard revealed to composer Alan Menken that he had AIDS, and he didn't have much longer to live.

However, Ashman wasn't going down before completing one more film. Though he had been writing music for Aladdin, he ultimately ended up as the lyricist of another film. A film that had been through many different iterations and was handed off to newbie directors. Little did anyone know just how impactful this film would be for Disney, and for the industry as a whole. Well, except for Ashman himself. The film that we are discussing today is the first animated film to ever, ever be nominated for Best Feature. That film is 1991''s Beauty and the Beast.

Overview

Belle is a beautiful young woman, but is seen as an oddity in her village due to her love of books and her utter disinterest in local heartthrob Gaston. When her father, an inventor named Maurice, leaves for a science fair, he ends up taking refuge in an old, abandoned castle. But the castle is actually enchanted and acts as the home to dozens of talking inanimate objects... and a fearsome beast. When Belle goes looking for her father, she offers to take his place as the Beast’s prisoner. But during her time in the castle, Belle discovers that this Beast may not be as much of a monster as he appears, and this may lead to both discovering true love...

Review

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I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this is by far one of Disney’s most beloved films. It got praise form both critics and movie-goers when it came out, and it’s only become more beloved in the nearly 20 years since. Belle is praised as a feminist's icon and the film for it’s themes of toxic masculinity, judging a book by it’s cover, and some of the darker aspects of society like those we blindly praise. I... like the film, but I never loved it to the extent as others. Not because it’s bad, that is a ridiculous notion. I just liked other films more and Belle just didn’t interest me as others like Cinderella or Mulan or Ariel. But seeing it again as an adult who has seen the darker aspects of society since I was a kid, it REALLY rings more deeply than it did back then.

One aspect that no one can argue about is the animation. The film is beautiful. It has some of Disney’s best animators at the time such as Glen Keene, Mark Henn, Andreas Deja, and so much more. There was so much life put into the film and it is a true visual spectacle.I meant hey managed to take inaminate objects, and bring them to life. Sure they have faces to help humanize them, but to make us believe that these are talking, moving objects that were once human is still a VERY difficult task. But they have so much personality like the suave, passionate candlesick Lumiere or the stuffy, orderly Cogsworth. The backgrounds andf settings are also great fromt he Sleepy Hollow-esque village to the gothic castle of The Beast, to the creedy woods that look even more terrifying when it snows. There’s so much color and lighting that is used so well, especially with the castle eminating so much mystery and intrigue compared tot he plain village that Belle is from.

But the setting we all remember most of all is the ballroom. While Disney has been using CGI some before, such as Big Ben in The Great Mouse Detective (yes,t hat WHOLE setting was computer graphics), this is probably the biggest use to date. The ballroom is a gorgeous golden color and looks so big and vast. It takes you’re breath away. There’s a reason why this is the most well-remembered part of the film. The animaiton for this film was very straining, especially due to conditios to accomodate Ashman that we’ll get to later. It was stressful, but they absoluteley put their all into it. When you watcht he ballroom sequence, added to the dance and Angela Lansbury’s lovely vocals, you forget that you’re even watching a movie. It feels like... well, love. It’s by far one of Disney’s best looking features.

As I said in the intro, the film ultimately fell into the laps of two relatively rookie animators; Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale. This was after several various attempts to adapt the film, with none successful. Wise and Trousdale’s biggest claim to fame at the time was doing animaiton for EPCOT’s now defunct Cranium Command attraction (look up Who Stole Buzzy, boy is THAT a story) and while they had worked on other features, they had never been in the director seats. To make it more difficult, due to Ashman’s health continuing to gradually decline, Katzenburg decided to move produciton over to New York to spare him from having to travel. Which is a VERY noble effort and it’s sweet that they were willing to do so to keep working with Ashman, but as you can imagine this was quite a strain on the production team and as before, they would sometimes clash with Ashman and his vision. Still, they along with Menken returning as composer and writer Linda Woolverton, they reworked the then-script into something that they were happy with.

The setting is very reminiscent of another Disney work, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. One of two segments from the Package Film Era feature The Adventure of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. We all know the story of Ichabod and his infamous ride where he encountered the Headless Horseman. Here we have a similar quaint village where people seem rather simple-minded. Like in Sleepy Hollow where everyone took notice tot he rather strange looking Ichabod Crane, we see a similar notice of Belle who is an anomaly to them. Though unlike Ichabod, who had pretty much everyone under his thumb and is kind of a gold diging jerk, Belle is ostracized and is a FAR better person. Gaston bears a striking resemblance to Brom Bones in both looks and social status (tough Brom isn’t as bad in comparison or even compared to Ichabod, though still a Jerk Jock) and the Bimbettes bear a bit of similarity to Katrina. I wouldn’t be surprised if the crew used Sleepy Hollow as inspiration for setting and character design. Only thing missing is the Headless Horseman, which that would have been interesting XD

The film deals with several topics. There’s the standard ‘don’t judge a book by it’s cover’ and ‘true love conquers all’ messages. Both of which are handled very well. But there are also some that IDT Disney had ever really tackled to this point. There’s encouraging women to make their own choices, which Disney HAS tackled but this one does it differently with Belle rejecting the standard good-looking man and falling for the monstrous looking one. In fact there is really a strong theme tearing down toxic masculinity and male entitlement. It says that no, men are not obligated to a woman and that women have the freedom to reject them no matter the societal pressure. Especially if they act as despicable as Gaston. With how much more aware we’ve become of how horrible some men in power can be and how they use that power on vulnerable women, this remains a relevant message to todays audience. It let’s women be empowered, confident, and enjoy things like reading as well as have the hope of finding those who will be accepting. These are all important things, and the film does an excellent job in showing it and what actual love should be like. The Beast especially starts as a jerk, but once he decides to become better and wants to be better for no ulterior reasons, he proves worthy of Belle’s love. That’s how love should be and how a person should change themselves. Again, very well done.

Despite his health and being downcast about not completing Aladdin, Ashman still put his all into the film. As I said, they outright shifted production to another state at a time when social media and things like Skype and Zoom were a distant dream. Still, Ashman along with Menken put their all into the soundtrack, and it paid off big time. This film, along with The Little Mermaid, really set up the precedent for Broadway-style animaed films and considering that they continue to be successful, I’d say that that says a lot. There are a lot of memorable songs int his fimlm, and there’s even some that didn’t make it in. One in particular, Human Again, actualy got animated and added back for the film’s IMAX release and various home media releases (sadly it’s not in the Disney+ version). The score is also very well done, especially at the end. Just listen to the music when the Beast finally turns human again. It added to the outright magical animation will leave you in awe as much as Belle was.

But what about the vocal tracks? Good question. Let’s go over them:

Belle/Belle Reprise: Our first song which as the name suggests, is about our leading lady. It does a lovely job establishing her character as a book-loving, intelligent young woman feeling that there was be more than this life ans village that she remains stuck in. It also establishes the village’s rather simple-mindedness and socital expectatons, finding Belle a beautiful but very strange girl because of her loving reading more than getting married. It also establishes Gaston’s smugness, entitlement, and holding the entire village’s admiration, The music is optimistic, but there’s a lot here that’s gonna take a dark turn a the film goes on. The reprise is short and more somber, but let’s Belle express her unwillignness to marry a man like Gaston, wanting to find love on her own terms. Little does she know what’s awating her right after.

Gaston: No one can have a song named after Gaston like Gaston! Yeah, this inspired plenty of meme’s, didn’t it? Even Disney itself has gotten in on the fun haha! But seriously, this is a fun villain song. I gotta give Gaston this, he’s a smug, horrible person but he shows that he can back up many of his boasts. I don’t doubt that he can eat dozens of eggs a day or is as strong as an ox. The song also further shows the town’s utter blind devotion to this brute, not being concerned about his entitlement to a girl who clearly isnt interest and more because of how handsome and grand he is. Isn’t society fun kids?! But then at the end, after Maurice is kicked out, it takes a darker turn as Gaston makes his plans to essentially blackmail Belle with her father’s safety... and right back to blind praise! I feel zero sympathy for any of the villagers in this film. But yeah, a song with a lot of dark implications, but still a very enjoyable villain song.

Be Our Guest: This is a true show-stopper, and I’m not just saying that. Lumiere wanted to create a show, and BOY did he succeed. The song is the most like a Broadway number in it’s composition and grand feeling. The fact that we have a huge number full fo singing, dancing, stuntwork, etc is being done by a bunch of dishes and pretty freakin’ impressive. Yet the animators gave it all so much life and Jerry Orback sings with so much passion and energy and it is just SO much fun to watch! Especially with poor Cogsworth at first trying to get everyone to calm down, but by the end he gets real into it... well until Lumiere knocks him to the side. The only negative is that for being a song about serving Belle dinner, aside form a bit of The Grey Stuff she didn’t even eat dinner. For shame! So 1 out fo 10 of food servive, but the show was worthy of two thumbs up!

Something More: This was the song that replaced Human Again. It’s a sweet song about Belle and Beast beginning to realize their feelings the more that they spend aroudn each other. Belle sees that Beast may not be very well-mannered or much of a looker, but he does have a good heart and the more they interact, the more it begins to show. Belle’s kindness, intellience, and willingness to look beyond the surface has Beast falling in love with her, yet his fear of being a monster is still holding him back. Still as we see the two do things like have dinner, play in the snow, or even Beast letting Belle read to him, the more we see that spark of love slowly grow, even if they haven’t fully grasped it. It helps advance the romance, and it’s just really sweet.

Beauty and the Beast: The song that won Menken and Ashman another Oscar. It’s not hard to see why either. The song is beautiful. It’s performed by Angela Lansbury, and her gentle vocals accompanies by the gentle orchestra is just lovely. The woman outright did the song in one take. One take. That is insane, yet it happened. And I can see why because the song is just beautiful. It adds to much to the already majestic ballroom scene, being about two unlikely individuals finding love and ultimately making the other a better person. It’s just a work of beauty. There’s also the pop version by Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson, which I also really love. It’s more commerical, but still very pretty especially with Celine’s gorgeous singing voice. Both versions are beautiful, and the first thing I think of when I think of this film... and no, not just beause of the name.

The Mob Song: This is exactly as you would expect with a song with that title. It’s dark, angry, and scary. Gaston rallies the troops to kill The Beast, convincing them that he is a danger to them all. They grab their torches, weapons, and there’s just this tense atmosphere throughout. This is the culminaiton of al the socital expectations and blind devotion to a person who doesn’t at all deserve it. It’s also a very accurate protrayal of the mob mentality, where you become a part of this hivemind following the rest of the crowd no matter how wrong it may be and despite your own senebilities. The only ones who don’t fall into it, Belle and Maurice, get tossed into a basement for their trouble. What makes this song sad though? In Disney+’s documentary Howard, produced by Don Hahn who also produced this film, it was explained how in the eyes of several of his colleagues, it seemed like Ashman was venting about the AIDS epidemic. That was a VERY dark time where the gay community was especially under fire, persecuted, hated, and so many other horrible things because the world chose to blame them for it. Ashman was a gay man. He had an ex partner die of AIDS, and had another partner at the time who talked about him in the documentary. Imagine being scapegoated just because of your sexuality, even though you never caused any harm, and society hated on you and others fell into he mob mentality, and they went as far as to either demand you to die or do the job themselves. All because you were different. Really adds a new perspecive to the song, doesn’t it? This can be applied to so many groups too, which makes the song even scarier, but also emphasize even more how dangerous the mob mentality is. Very effective song.

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Sadly, Howard wouldn’t live to see all of his numbers to completion. With his health declining rapidly, Menken and various others went back and forth between Burbank and New York in order to work with him. Ashman worked until he psycially couldn’t anymore. He was even giving notes to performers like Paige O’Hara despite barely being able to talk. He managed to complete his work, at least to my knowledge, before his passing on March 14th, 1991, just a few months before the film’s release. After a screentest, which proved very successful, Don Hahn and some other colleagues went to see Ashman in the hospital to say their goodbyes. Hahn told him of the reception, and jokingly asked who would ahve expected that the film would have turned out so great? Ashman’s response? “I did.” The work he managed to do for Aladdin would be included in the film, which we’ll discuss when we get to that one. The soundtrack won the Oscar which was awarded to Ashman (as well as Menken) posthumously and a dedication to him was including at the end of the film. It’s always sad to see such a talented individual leave us far too soon, but his work truly brought new life to Disney and is beloved even all these years later. That is a legacy that will never fade.

Now we get to characters, and we have quite a good number of them. We have of course the village that Belle is from. On the surface, they seem like pretty plain people, satisfied with their way of life. But this also causes them to at least not think highly of those who break from that way of life. The men work, the women care for the children. If men don’t work, they’re jerk slobs. They all especially fall into blind admiration for the strong, handsome Gaston who is hailed as a local hero. So much so that no one gives ANY of his terrible actions an ounce of consideraiton. Selling Maurcie tot he looney bin? Well he’s alreafy viewed as crazy, so ah well. Belle trying to tell them that The Beast isn’t a monster? While their first imprression of him is defeniteley a bad one, the fact that they listen to Gaston and not the woman who actually interacted with The Beast says a lot about how simple minded they all are. I hope they learned their lesson after all was said and done, but even if not Belle doesn’t have to pay them any mind anyways.

The only person who is accepting of Belle is her father, Maurice. He’s viewed as a crackpot, but Maurice is a good-hearted, smart, and perfectly sensible man. He’s a bit of a goof with how his inventions can go haywire, but otherwise is no diferent from any other person. But like his daughter, his interests have him judged instead of what he’s like as a person. It’s especially sad when he tries to get help to save Belle, and he is merely laughed at and thrown out because of his status. Maurice is a loving father, accepting of Belle and of her interests and choices. She isn’t interested in Gaston? Fine with him. People view her as odd? That’s utterly ridiculous. It’s really nice to have a parent who is supportive and involved int heir kids life, especally compared to Triton last time who may be caring, but is utterly against everything that matters to Ariel. In fact it’s the firs ttime we’ve had this since Snow White and Cinderlla’s parents are dead and their stepmothers are horrible, Aurora grew up away from her otherwise caring parents, and Ariel... it’s complicated. Maurice is a good guy and it is good that Belle has someone who accepts her unconditionaly. She loves him so much that she sacrificed her happiness for him twice to protect him, which really shows how strong their bond is.

That brings us to our villain, Gaston. He is a hunter who is muscular, handsome, and has physical skills that he can back up. However he is also entitled, egotistical, sefish, and just a horrible person. He wants to marry Belle only because of her beauty and instead of trying to get to know her or shifitng atteniton to any of the girls who would gladly grovel before him, he pursues her despite her not liking him. It’s especially bad when he goes to her house, sets up a huge engagement party, and gets into her personal space in his attempts to charm her. She not only rejects him, but promptly humiliates him. Yet instead of thinking that he had tried far too hard and jumped the gun, he blames Belle for daring to reject him. He reflects exactly how society can view someone like him. No one thinks about the woman, they only see a good-looking man get rejected despite us not knowing anything about ther perosn or their relaitonship. Especially if that man is essentially a celebrity, which makes people look past anyhing.

But none of these things are indicitive of an evil perosn. An arrogant jerk yes, but not evil. That all changes when, after Maurice tries to get help, Gaston comes up with a new plan. He decides to have Maurice admitted to an asylum for being crazy, and to use this to force Belle to marry him. This is what shifts Gaston from a jerk to a true villain. This is how far his entitlement and selfishness goes. He is willing to take Belle’s own elderly father and use him and his freedom as blackmail to force her to marry him. Even compared to the four villainesses before him who committed horrible acts such as attempted murder, mental/emotional abuse, and even attempting world domination, this is utterly despicable. Then there's him deciding to kill The Beast. Despite what he says, it's not because of the potential risk to the town, it's solely because he sees that Belle loves him and can't stand it. He outright calls her crazy AND locks her and Maurice up out of pure entitlement and selfishness. He doesn't give a damn about Belle or her though and well-being. Only about his own.

Gaston is entertaining, but very much evil. As I said above he bears a lot of similarity to Brom Bones from Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. A muscular jock-like figure often the most beautifiul girl in town. Only while Brom was a jerk, he was arguably less bad than Ichabod Crane depending how you looked at it. Gaston essentially has Brom's muscles an Ichabod's selfishness. He cares only for himself and his own pride. Admittedly he put up a decent fight against The Beast, but that's only because Beast wasn’t fighting back until he saw Belle. When he did, Gaston whimpered and begged like the pathetic man that he is. Then he stabbed him despite being spared out of pure spite. An act that cost him his life. Fun fact, originally he survived the fall and was truly killed via the wolves. They ended up saving that for Scar's death in The Lion King. But yeah, Gaston died in the undignifiedmanner that he deserved. A despicable but memorable villain who was perfect for this film.

Then we have the castle characters. You’d think that it would be difficult to give life to a bunch of furniture and appliances... and it probably was. But this movie makes it look easy. They do give most of them humanoid features, like eyes and a mouth, but not all of them and even then it would be so easy to make it look creepy. But the castle staff is just os much fun and beaming with personality. We’re gonna discuss the main four: Lumiere, Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts, and Chip.

Lumiere is a candlestick, which matches his passionate characterization. He’s a showman. A romantic. A more daring, out-going character compared to his frequent frenemy Cogsworth. Cogsworth is a clock and I think he’s implied to be the Beast’s butler or some other kind of advisor. He’s stuffy, nervous, and the most lawful of the characters. Though he CAN get into the fun of things with a little provoking as demonstrated in Be Our Guest and the big battle during the climax. Hoenstly, Be Our Guest is a great number to demonstrate the two’s contrasitng perosnalities. Belle has been banned from eating and Cogsworth doens’t want to both break the Beast’s orders nor cause a bunch of noise that would anger him. Lumiere however? He’s dead set on getting Belle to fall for the Beast, so she should be treated as their guest, not a prisoner. Plus he and the other staff are tired after ten years of being stuck as they are and all alone, so cue the extravagant show number. Lumiere is having the time of his life while Cogsworth tries to convince everyone to stop... but by the end gets caught up in it and joins in ont he fun. Too bad that Lumiere knocks him off the center stage at the end haha. But yeah, their constant banter is amusing but they are clealry friends, especially in the fight where Cogsworth saves Lumiere. They’re both also performed wonderfully by their VA’s, Jerry Orbach and David Odgen Stiers, the latter of whom would appear in several more Disney films, including one for this series that we’ll get to fairly soon.

Mrs. Potts is a teapot and her son Chip is a tea cup. I guess that Chip ended up that way to match his mother, which her being a teapot matches her mothelry persona. She’s very kind and consoling towards Belle and seems the most understanding about The Beast and why he acts ike he does. Which since I think that she was essentially the house caretaker, makes sense since she’d have likely been the one looking out for him. Plus she herself is a mother, and since Beast has the emotion coping skills of a child, she’d know how to deal with it. Chip is the token child character, though not a bad one. He’s a nice kid with a huge curiosity. It’s really cute how hen allt he adults are seeing the bloomign romance between Belle and Beast, he’s uttelry confused like any kid would be haha! He takes a liking to Belle quickly, though more like he sees her as if she were an older sister than any kind fo crush or the like. He’s also smart, figuring out how to use Maurice’s inveniton to free Belle and Maurice quickly...and him wanitng to do it again got a good laugh out of me haha! Mrs. Potts is a nurturing mother and her with Chip is so sweet,e specially when they’re truly human again. Plus her advice of how things will turn out alright in the end is advice that I look back on sometimes. it’s really comforitng.

So... as I’ve mentioned in these reviews, a big issue is how underdeveloped that the prince has been. The first two were plot devices only. Phillip and Eric were better int hat they were active int he plot and Eric had some more perosnality and motivation than the other three did. But it just didn’t feel like the male elads were... quite at their full potential yet. They generally didn’t recieve any character development and were mainly there for the sake of being a lov einterest to the heroine. That all changed in this film with our hero, The Beast.

Beast is one of the most well-developed male leads in a Disney Princess film. A few like Aladdin, Naveen, and Eugene rival him for overall best (though tbf the former IS the lead of his movie so that may not count) but Beast helped make the princes more equal to their princess without overshadowing her. Beast is the co-protagonist to Belle and the character that recieves the bulk of the character development. The opening tells us all that we need to know: Beast was once Prince Adam, a spoiled brat. When he turned away an elderly begger, it turned out that she was an Enchantress and she cursed him into his monsturous form. Since he looks like a monster, he subsequently acts like a monster... or more accurately, like the child that he never truly grew out of emotionally. He’s angry, lashes out constantly, and roars at the top of his lungs when at his limit. Like how a child screams and throws a tantrum when things don’t go their way because they lack the social and emotional coping skills to handle their feelings properly. Becoming a beast left Beast isolated and ashamed to face reality, and thus he didn’t learnt he proper coping skills. He accepted that he would forever be a monster, and succumb to acting like one.

That is, until the day that Belle arrived. When she offers herself to free her father, it’s the opportunity that Beast never beleived that he would get. If he can win her love before the rose petals all fall, he’ll be human again. He’ll be free. While he begins still acitng agressive and even bordeirng on emotionally abusive, e isn’t heartless. When Belle is crying about not getting to say goodbye to her father, Beast seems to legit feel bad for hurting her. It doens’t change his behavior, but it’s still a small moment that shows some humanization. It’s important to add moments like this and his despair when using the mirror to hear Belle talk about him. She’s justified in disliking him at that point, but it’s his reactions that matter. It shows his insecurity, his fear, his utter despair that he’ll be cursed for the rest of eternity. He’s already succumbed to acting the part of a monster and is already struggling to act more polite. As amusing as the scene of him yelling at Belle through the door is, it demonstrates just how hard this is for him but if he can’t improve his behavior, then he has no chance. He knows it, and views it as hopeless. It helps humanize The Beast, showing that despite his appearance there IS a human soul in there somewhere. Someone who on some level does want to be better, but he doesn’t know how. If not for these moments, Beast would have been utterly unsympathetic, but they pulled it off.

The turning point comes after Beast rescues Belle from the wolves. Remember, he’d already pretty much given up on winning Belle over and being human again and the confrontation on the third floor certainly didn’t help matters. He could have just let Belle to her own devices... but instead he went to save her. I sincerely do not believe it was because she was a prisoner or because he needed her. He had given up. He had succumbed. But he did it anyways, showing that he isn’t a bad person. It’s something that Belle sees and she gets him back to the castle to treat him. She called him out on his temper, but is sincerely grateful and Beast is stunned by this genuine act of kindness. She didn’t fear him. She wasn’t disgusted by him. She didn’t even leave him to die despite having pretty good reason to leave him and go. Belle still chose to save his life as he did her’s, showing Beast probably the first true act of love that he ever experienced in his life. We know nothing of his family and while I’m sure that staff members like Ms. Potts certainly cared for him, clearly they didn’t do much to quell his spoiled behavior. Belle was kind because she’s a kind person, and Beast finds that he wants to be kind to her in return.

From that point, we see Beast in a new light. He calms down significantly. He’s happier. He carries himself less like a wild animal and more like a person. He’s outright excited when he prepares the library to surprise Belle with. He’s still awkward as shown with his table manners and interacting with birds durign Something There, but he is trying. He’s trying for Belle. He activly enjoys her company. He sees how beautiful she is physically, but that’s not why he likes her. She’s kind, intelligent, independant, and she makes him feel in a way that he never has. He still feels that she can’t love him because of what he is, but the change that she has caused is so evident. He’s fallen in love and the ballroom scene only strengthens that with himt he happiest that he’s been all film. But the crowner that truly demonstrates htis? When Belle expresses missing her father, he lets her use the mirror. Not only does he seem legit concerned when they see Maurice freezing to death but when he sees Belle’s clear distress, he decides to let her go. He’s sad when he does so, knowing that she may very well never return. But Belle’s father needs her. he can’t force her to say and be miserable. He loves her so much that he decided to let her go. But it does mean that he gav up his final chance at being human after feeling more human than he had in ten years, and he is left in despair.

His despair is so strong that when Gaston and the mob arrives, he doesn’t even try to fight back. He just waits and is prepared to let whatever happens to him happen. Fortunately Belle coming back restores his will to live and he fights back. When Gaston grovels for his life, what does Beast do? He grants it, simply growling at him to leave. It is that moment hat shows how much of a better person that Beast is compared to Gaston. He was an angry man bordering on abusive, but he changed. He met someone who wasn’t willing to take his behavior, but was also willing to see the good that was in him. He changed for her, and it made him a kinder, more selfless person. The only thing that remains is his self-loathing, even saying that maybe him dying is for the best after Gaston has stabbed him. Fortunately Belle confesses her love, and it not only saves his life, but breaks the curse just in time. Beast is restored to Adam, having earned the right to having his humanity back. It was a lovely way to cap off his development, and allowed him to earn his happily ever after.

Beast was very much Belle’s equal. Even nowadays they’re both promoted and marketed pretty equally. One’s story would have been incomplete without the other. They gave each other what they each wanted and needed. I’ll go into specifics for Belle when I get to her below, but in the Beast’s case he needed someone kind, but also independent. Someone who wouldn’t tolerate his behavior and push him to change himself, but still kind-hearted enough to see that there is something there and be willing to help. Belle treated him in a way that no one else had. She was defiant, but also caring. She pushed him to rediscover his humanity. She got him to want to be kind. She got him to want to be a better person, and he not only treated her better but he was kinder to his staff as well. He finally grew up from the spoiled brat that he was before. He had found a reason to, and his love was so genuine that he let Belle go to be with her father again. It’s a beautiful story of growth and did enough to make Beast’s issues clear and not excusable, but sympathetic enough that we wanted him to be better and feel happy when he does so. He’s the best developed male lead in a Disney Princess film up to this point and helped pave the way for equally well done male leads. Ones not there just to fill out a plot beat and be the princesses’ reward, but to stand at her side as her equal.

Boy did THAT one get long. there’s other minor characters. Le Fou, The Bimbettes, the psyche ward keeper voiced by the late, great Tony Jay, various other castle characters, etc. all of them are entertaining, I just don’t have much to say about them. So then... we have one more to go.

Belle Analysis

https://youtu.be/M4ne1A1aNrI

Belle is one of the most praised and beloved Disney Princesses of all time. She is smart, playful, independent, and kind-hearted. I feel like she gets overly praised at times, mainly because some like to use her to bash her four predecessors since she didn’t have the goal of falling in love. I won’t repeat what I said about the four, you can read the reviews, but it’s a VERY unfair argument not just to them, but to Belle as well. She’s used as a tool to bash other female characters instead of being loved for herself. Then agains he also gets bashed for the Stolkholm Syndrome argument, which we’ll get to that aspect here soon. But for now, let’s just discuss Belle piece by piece and see where the path leads us.

Belle’s intro establishes everything right off the bat. So much so that the intro sing is literally titled Belle. She’s bookish and cheerful, but it’s clear from her interactions witht he villagers and their own gossip that she’s seen as weird. The only people who seem to like her as she is is the bookshop owner and her own father. The women are jealous of her beauty, the men only see her for her beauty, and both sides are confused at her lack of conformity. Belle lives in a town that clearly has very old-fashioned views regarding gender roles. The men work, the women get married and have babies. They all seem content with this... except for Belle. She enjoys books and adventure, musing about wanting more than the provincial life that she has. She strolls through the village with her nose stuck in a book, but has no trouble navigating at all depsite the distraction. Books provide her a source of adventure and thrill that her limited life does not. She breaks those old-fashioned norms and he village is uttelry baffled at to how she can be this way. But what truly makes her a bafflement to everyone? Her utter rejection of Gaston. While just about every other women swoons at his feet, Belle couldn’t be less impressed if she tried. She’s familiar with how he is and if she had’t recieved his advances before their first scene, she’s probably seen it enough times to know that she doesn’t like him. Him dismisisng her passion for books and insulting her father did him no favors.

On the surface, Belle does’t seem bothered by these things. But when home, she does express some hurt about ti to her father, the one perosn who loves her for her unconditionally. She knows that she doesn’t fit in. She knows that she’s not happy with her life. She wants someone to understand her besides her father. She wants more to life where she can be herself. She wants to find love on her own terms and not have to deal with the advances of men like Gaston. None of this stops her form being able to handle herself, as demonstrated when Gaston goes to her house to force a proposal. She handles kicking him out with utter grace and her “I don’t deserve you” line is icing on the cake. But none of that changes how she feels. If anything, it enforces it. The village is all on Gaston’s side and at that point, her father has left for the science fair. He won’t be there forever, hence why she wants to find someone who will love her for her. To control her own destiny. To those who feel forced into their gender roles or being forced into a relationship that they don’t want whether by an agressive person or by peer pressure, Belle’s struggle is very relatable. Her independant spirit is also admirable as while she is dismayed with where she’s at, she still is able to smile and live her life as she wants. She’ defiant. She makes do with what she has and is able to handle what’s thrown at her with pure wit and ingenuity. Gaston nor anyone else can bring her down... at least, not until her wish for adventure ends up unexpectedly granted.

Before we progress forward, let’s pause to discuss Belle’s VA, Paige O’Hara. When Beauty and the Beast was beginning casting, O’Hara was already a rising Broadway actress and Disney happened to be seeking Broadway talent specifically. After several call-backs, she finally earned the part. She’s credited Howard Ashman as a huge help in guiding her to finding her voice as Belle, and she performs the role beautifully. She captures Belle’s independence yet playfulness very well, as well as her defiance and heartbreak in certain scenes. And her singing? Beautiful. Maybe not on par with Jodi Benson, but you can tell why she was a rising Broadway star. Today, O’Hara works mainly as a painter with Belle very much being one of her main muses. Sadly due to how much her voice has aged, she rarely plays Belle herself anymore, the role nowadays being primarialy done by VA Julie Nathanson. While she also does a lovely job at the part, O’Hara will always be the first to bring the character to life. Fortunteley she still shows a lot of love for the role and has attended multiple events and even got to reprise Belle at least one more time during Ralph Breaks the Internet. She had reprised Belle multiple times between various DTV films, TV appearances, and other events. So even if she is limited nowadays, her large body of work will live on forever.

Back to the film, Belle discovers that her father is in danger and ends up at the castle. We all know what happens at this point. Belle offers to take her dad’s place, Beast agrees, and Maurice is kicked out before Belle can so much as say goodbye. She’s distraught at this, and who can blame her? In a matter of hours, her life as she knew it was ripped away from her. Now instead of her old provincial life, she’s a prisoner in an enchanted castle ruled by an angry beast. Even when given the nicer room, she doesn’t feel that much better. She’s never going to get to see her father again or even know if he’s safely back home. She has no reason to believe that a rescue is coming. Some may say that she should try and get out, but isn’t she allowed this? To be upset and at a loss of what to do? It’s not like she just cries the whole time, she calms down enough to refuse to go to dinner despite the others insisting that she does. Even when Beast yells at her to do so, she refuses. She may be a prisoner, but she’s not going to play the victim. She’s going to be as she normally is; however she wants to be.

Soon, Belle’s able to calm down enough that she decides to go explore the castle. She is ultimateley a curious, adventurous spirit. Regardless of the circumstances, she can’t help but want to learn more about this new, strange place and these new figures that she’s encountered. You can tellt hat she’s warming up reatly during Be Our Guest where despite not actually getitng to eat anything, she is just havng far too much fun to care. It gets her spirits back up and now she can’t resist exploring more. Even if it risks The Beast’s wrath, one her curiosity has peaked, she can’t resist it. It’s a great strength, but also probably her biggest flaw. Despite having been told not to and knowing by now how Beast will react, she slips away from Cogsworth and Lumiere to go explore the West Wing. This ends with her seeing the trashed area, finding the Enchanted Rose, and getting yelled at by an enraged Beast. That is the last push needed to make Belle decide to escape.

So now that we’re at this point, we have to talk about one of the big topics that comes up when discussing this film: Stockholm Syndrome. To put it simply, Stockholm Syndrome is when the victim becomes emotionally attached to their aggressor and doesn’t want to leave them and tries to justify their actions. So when the vicitm is rescued, they may react negativly or even aggressively towards the rescuers in favor of the agressor. it’s a psychological response. This is actually a case where I was able to go to a professional to ask about it,: my own mother. My mom is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and currently works as a therapist. I’m fairly sure that she’s never treated anyone with Stockholm, but it is something that she knows of. I did ask her about if the film did glorify Stockholm Syndrome as some accuse it of. The gist of what she told me is... well, there’s enough in-film that either side can use it to prove their case. After all she DOES develop positive feelings towards Beast while a prisoner, so one can take the context and use it as an example, and same for the side who don’t agree. Ultimately Belle is a ficitonal character. We can’t sit her down and give her a psychoanalysis because she’s not real, and most of us doing these analysis’ aren’t therapists, psyologists, or mental health experts anyways. I’ll leave some sources below if you’d like further reading on the topic, but doing research isn’t the same as being a professional trained to go over these kinds of things. My mom said at most, Beast can be viewed as emotionally abusive, though it is because of his own trauma and he did ultimately improve to be a better person.

I fully agree that yes, if someone wants to make the arguent that the film promotes Stockholm Syndrome, they can. It’s their opinion, this came out in a diferent time than now where we take things like emotional abuse in cinema far more seriously, and in the end it’s a piece of fiction and people are free to view it however they wish. But the same also applies to me and in my opinion, no. Belle does NOT suffer from Stockholm Syndrome nor does the film glorify it. Now I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination. This is strictly my opinion going off my understanding of it. I may be wrong and if that’s the case, I apologize. But from what I know and understand, the case in the film is not a straight forward situation like the various case studies in the real world. Plus I think we see enough of Belle being defiant and not feeling positivly towards Beast to see that she certainly hasn’t developed any psychological attachment towards him to cope with her situation. We’ll be seeing her feelings towards him change, but I’ll explain why I don’t feel that it counts down below. But again, I’m not an expert. This is just my understanding of it.

So... why the long tangent there? Well we’re now at the wolf attack scene. The turning point in the relationship. Belle’s effort to escape ends with her cornered by a pack of vicious wolves. Fortunateley, The Beast rescues her and drives the wolves away... but he is inured in the process and passes out. As I said in Beast’s character breakdown, he didn’t have to do it at that point since he’d given up, but he did so anyways. It showed that he isn’t a bad person. Something that Belle also saw. The Beast had been aggressive and rude to her throughout, and she had every good reason to continue on her way now that the path was clear. But Belle didn’t. She got Beast onto her horse and took him back to the castle, the closest shelter, to treat his wounds. Is this because she feels compelled to do so after forming a psychological dependency or attachment to him? No. We see as she treats his wounds that she still isn’t going to tolerate his temper and rudeness towards her. She stands up for herself and talks back at him until he calms down. She very much retains her independence. So then... why did she save him? Because Belle is a good-hearted person who just saw this seemingly hateful beast save her life when he didn’t have to. She isn’t the kind of person to leave an injured person to die. She did it out of kindness and gratitude as we see when she genuinely thanks Beast for saving her life. She’s seen a new side to him now, and it’s made her reconsider her earlier stance. Thus Belle remains at the castle.

The characteristics of Stockholm Syndrome include positive feelings towards the captor and belief of goodness in the captor, no real effort in escaping, learned helplessness, and feelings of pity to the captor. You can read the list and learn more here, and the link will also be with the sources. So you’re probably looking at that and going ‘...uuuggghhhh’ at the movie right now. Which fair enough. However let’s also look at where we are now. This is the part of the film where Beast makes an honest effort to improve himself. He’s nicer, trying to be more polite, and treats Belle as a person. She’s really not a prisoner anymore at this point and while mybe theposisbility of being human again is motivating Beast, for the most part I think it’s because he genuinely grows to like Belle. As for Belle, I think that she likes the castle. It’s enchanted and full of intrigue and mystery, just like in her books. It’s the escape form that provincial life in the village that she’s been longing for. It’s a temptation that she just can’t resist. The staff all like her and treat her kindly and no one tries to force her to be something that she isn’t. Beast especially loves Belle’s love of books, even giving her the huge library to repay her earlier kindness. Belle is able to be who she is and be around those who are accepting of her. Even fi for the staff it’s for ulterior motives, IDT that they’re faking liking having her around and Beast certainly isn’t. This isn’t really a straight-forward captive or abuse situaiton that Stockholm Syndrome would apply to in my opinion, especially since Belle never once succumbs to the Beast’s terms. She only respects and acts friendly with him when he does so towards her, and they are both clearly benefiting positivly from it. We know that Beast has no malicious intenitons regarding Belle and it’s Lumiere and co. insisting on the relaitonship happening moreso, and that’s because they want their humanity back so it adds a bit of complexity. It’s just not a straight forward case where we can easily apply Stockholm Syndrome to and get an accurate reading, at least in my opinion. She certainly is FAR from helpless.

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So then let’s discuss Belle’s feelings for The Beast. We know how much Belle’s influence changed The Beast. But what about Belle? She really doens’t change during the movie, nor did she realy need to. She’s already confident about herself, likes herself, and she knows what she wants with her life. Sure her curiosity can get her into trouble, but otherwise she didn’t realy need a character arc like Beast did. What Belle needed was acceptance. To find someone who would like her for who she is and not see her as weird for it. Beast doesn’t at all view her that way. He enjoys being around her because she’s smart and independant and even gets her to read to him. It’s that kind of acceptance that Belle hasn’t recieved from anyone outside her father. The more that she sees Beast try to be better, the more that she sees how sweet and endeairng that he really is and she’s more than happy to help him. I think that seeing this kinder side bloom and that acceptance and even enjoyment of her is what makes Belle fall in love with him. It’s what helps make the ballroom scene so magical. Two people considered outsiders coming together and dancing the night way happily together. It’s beautiful, magical, and the perfect culminaiton in everything prior. They brought out the best in each other. Made each other happier in a way that no one else had ever done. They’re better now because of the other, and it’s just lovely to see.

But of course, we know what comes next. While happy with Beast and being at the castle, Belle still misses her father. When she sees him in the snow and horirbly sick, she’s distressed. Seing this, Beast allows he to go. Honestly I think that Belle could have left whenever she wanted at that point and Beast wouldn’thave fought it, but she was staying willingly at that point because she was happy. But her father needed her now. If she truly had Stockholm Syndorme, I don’t think that she would have done so. But she doesn’t really give it any kind of thought here. While sad to leave The Beast, she has alreayd mad eup her mind when told that she could go. She leaves to save her father, The Beast giving her the mirror and unbeknownst to her Chip tagging along. Belle fortunateley gets Maurice home safely... and just in time for Gaston to initiate his plan to have Maurice locked away. Belle is of course shocked and outraged and in a panic, uses the mirror to confirm The Beast’s existence. Despite her insistence that he isn’t a bad person, it’s too late. Gaston realizes that she’s in love with the ‘monster’ and we get the iconic line: “He’s no monster Gaston, you are.” Beast treated her like a person and improved himself from his more toxic behavior. Gaston treated her like the prey that he seeks during his hunts, refusing to let up until he’s won. Beast had even kept his word about letting Maurcie go and returned him to the village safely, and of course let Belle go to help him and even seemed to feel guilty for what he had done previously. Gaston though? He shows no guilt over trying to use Maurice to blackmail Belle. He continues his horrible behavior not only by forming the mob, but locking Belle and Maurice in their own cellar for simply speaking against it. Belle didn’t call Gaston a monster because she’s been conditioned or due to a coping reflex. It’s because Gaston is a genuinely despicable person while Beast grew to become a good person. She saw this and stood her ground as she always has, but this time at the point where she won’t tolerate it anymore. Which if it was your parent being shipped off to the insane asylum by some jerk just because they want to marry you, woudln’t you call them a monster in comparison?

So we reach the climax. Belle and Maurice arrive after Chip frees them with Belle rushing to get to Beast. She makes it and seeing her reignites Beast’s will to live... but he’s stabbed by Gaston. Belle saves Beast from falling over the roof, but there’s nothing that she can do to stop him from dying. She’s devestated, blaming herself for it. Beast’s final words to her are that at least he got to see Belle one last time, and if she hadn’t figured it out before, I think that this was when Belle realized that Beast loved her... and that she loved him. We knew that Beast certianly loved her but we needed it confirmed from Belle as the curse was still intact. As Beast lay motionless, Belle cries and at last confesses that yes, she does love him... just as the last rose petal falls. With that confession, the curse breaks and Beast is ressurected/becomes human again. Belle is shocked as she sees not The Beast standing before her, but Prince Adam. You can tell how confused she is. is this reallyt he same person that she loved? Adam confirms it and Belle looks into his eyes... and that’s all it takes for her to finally smile. yes, it is the same man that she had fallen in love with. They kiss,a nd the curse is truly broken. Everyone becomes human again,t he castle is restored to it’s original state, and Belle and Adam dance happily, free to live happily ever after.

Belle is a role model character. She’s there for girls to look up to, and I think that the amount of fans that she has proves that she succeeded. She encourages girls to be themselves. To be independant and not bend to social norms or pressure. To find love for themselves and not succumb tot he pressure of unwanted admirers or the pressure to marry them. Something that happens far too much in reality. She doesn’t change, but there was no reason for her to. As I said, Belle’s not one of my favorites. Not because I dislike her by any means. if anythign I like her much more now as an adult now that I have a stronger understanding of the film. I just have princesses that I like more, and that’s really it. I also don’t like how some insist that she’s the best Dsney Princess compared to her predecessors because as I hope I made clear in those reviews, the previous four pricnesses are NOT badly done. If anything, I think it’s more anti-femenist to use a woman to bash other women without just cause. Saying that belle is better because she didn’t fall in love witht he guy at first sight or didn’t sell her soul for a guy without caring to analyze those characters isn’t empowering, it’s saying that if you don’t act a certain way as a woman, you’re anti-feminist. Which is a terrible stance. No woman is the same and women shouldn’t be used against women in this kind of way. Regardless, that’s an issue with certain ‘critics’, not Belle herself. She’s a great character and someone that I can admire. Maybe not as much as others, but I can certainly see why she’s left such an impact on so many and not even just little girls. To many people of all kinds. Who could be upset about that?

Final Thoughts

Beauty and the Beast is a lovely film. Is it my favorite? No. I didn’t watch it all that much as a kid. As an adult I have a greater appreciation for it. It’s beautfully animated, it’s themes are well-protrayed and still relevant, the characters are memorable and fun, and it’s music is phenomenal. I can absoluteley see why this as the first animated film to ever be niminated for Best Picture. It’s a tragedy that it lost, but it still proved that animation very much had staying power as Walt proved all those years ago. And of course the film is the final testament of Howard Ashman. He may not have been part of the Disney Renaissance for long, but his contributions single-handedly changed the company and their films for the better. Even today this style of musical films is very much going strong even over 30 years since it began with The Little Mermaid. We lost Ashman far too soon, and who knows what amaizng things he could have one if he were still alive. We can never know the what ifs, but we can always appreciate what came during his lifetime. He, Kirk Wise, Gary Trousdale, Alan Menken, Don Hahn, various animators, and so many more did so much to bring this film to life, and it will forever stand as a true Disney Masterpiece.

The film was a giant success, and Disney wasn’t slowing down one bit. The very next year, another animated feature would come out. A film about a dashing street rat who found a magic lamp and unleashed a magical genie who would make all his dreams come true. But wait you may ask, isn’t this a Disney Princess retrospective? Yep. So why am I talking about a dashing hero? Well there is a princess in it, but she occupies a bit of a unique place in the line-up. She is the first and so far only Princess to not be the main charater in her film. But she still left a huge impact and i included in the main lineup so we are NOT leaving her out. So next time, come along as we enter a whole new world to discuss 1992’s Aladdin, and in particular Princess Jasmine.

Image Source: Animation Screencaps

Further Reading on Stockholm Syndrome: Healthline, Medical News Today, GoodTherapy, WebMD,

#callie reviews #disney princess reviews #beauty and the beast

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thekillerssluts · 4 years ago

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DIY Magazine, October 2020.

Interview TALKING ‘BOUT MY GENERATION: WILL BUTLER

Talking to Will Butler is a bit like trying to have a conversation with a human magpie. Hugely enthusiastic and with a constant giggle on the go (“I have a nervous laugh, so I laugh at more things than I should…”), the 37-year-old has a tendency to veer off down strange tangents, taking your original point but then getting distracted or excited by some other new, shiny train of thought in a different direction.

You can tell he’s smart - not just booksmart, but the kind of smart where you can practically see the cogs turning at 100mph. “I love knowledge for its own sake,” he professes at one point. “I believe in it to a fault. I think it’s worth knowing all this shit, for no other reason than just knowing that it’s true.” And it’s this attitude that’s filled the three years since ‘Everything Now’ - he and his Arcade Fire bandmates’ society-skewering fifth LP.

In that time, amid world tours and festival headlines, Will has had two more children - twins - and went to Harvard to study a masters in public policy. He also found time to record ‘Generations’ - a second solo effort that takes the brilliantly all-over-the-place nature of 2015’s ‘Policy’ and hones it into something that’s more pointed, though still clearly fuelled by the same curious mind. Or as he puts it: “The first [album] it’s like, ‘I’m at the market! There’s some eggplants! Oh there’s a nice sausage guy! And OK cool I’ll get some of those and these!’ But then ‘Generations’ was much more like, ‘I’ve been storing these bones in my freezer for two years and now we’re gonna boil this down to make the pure essence of the beast’.”

Like most debuts from artists splintering off from their main projects, ‘Policy’ had been born from accumulating a collection of material that didn’t fit with his band. Unlike most, Will had just been nominated for an Oscar (for his soundtrack to Joaquin Phoenix film Her) before its release, “so that was a confidence boost,” he notes amiably. Conversely, the essence of ‘Generations’’ particular beast seems a far more targeted one - one intrinsically linked with the intense political conversations the musician had found himself wrangling with during his recent studies.

“I always want whatever I’m making to emerge out of what I’m living and for it to help me understand how I’m living better, so going to policy school was certainly part of that artistic project as well as the ‘what do we fucking do?’ project,” he explains. “I jokingly say that I was radicalised at Harvard, which is basically true. I was in a mid-career programme, so there were 25-year-old geniuses but also people in their middle age who’d worked in the UN in Pakistan or the government in Mexico. They had this whole perspective of how fucked everything is across the whole globe so it was… educational.

As such, his second brims with a sense of palpable unease for a society that’s not only crumbling before our eyes right now, but has been doing so intermittently for decades and centuries. The twinkling, finger-clicking patter of ‘Close My Eyes’ belies the all-too-timely despair beneath it (“The photograph is new / But I seen that same headline, and I got to dance to keep from crying”), Randy Newman-esque closer ‘Fine’ digs right back to “George Washington and all his slaves,” while ‘Not Gonna Die’, he explains, was written in direct response to the November 2015 Bataclan shootings.“All these things hit different people in different ways, but that was so close to home,” he says. “It was Christmas after that and I was shopping in Manhattan; I walked into Sephora and it was super crowded and I thought, there’s a lot of people in here, where would I go [if something like that happened]? And I got so mad. It fucking worked. You made me scared. I’m not gonna die in Sephora on 5th Avenue but you made me think about it, you fucking pieces of shit.“Mike Pence was writing about it before he was running for Vice President, like, ‘We need to make sure we don’t have any immigrants come in because the immigrants can do this to us here’. And it’s like, I’m not gonna be killed by a woman fleeing violence in Guatemala!! The terrorists and the people saying ‘Be afraid!’: what you’re doing is working, and I AM afraid, and fuck you.”

Perhaps most interestingly, however, ‘Generations’ doesn’t just point the finger outwards, it also poses questions of the singer’s own inherent part in it all. “A big chunk of this record is asking: What’s my place in American history? What’s my place in America’s present?” he explained in a previous statement about the album. “Both in general, but also extremely particularly: me as Will Butler, rich person, white person, Mormon, Yankee, parent, musician. What do I do? What can I do?”

“It’s basically like, ‘My God, how did we get here?’ - that Talking Heads line,” he continues now. “The record is at times literally a conversation with people arguing back and forth, and there’s a lot of questions raised and the answers aren’t answers - you just end the conversation in a different spot. There’s something to that process of discussing and coming to some sort of revelation only to find out what’s lacking there, and then you move onto the next conversation and find out what’s lacking there. I was pleased that the material felt cyclical and of a piece, and you feel like you’re in a different spot than you were at the beginning.”

Because yes, his latest might not provide all the answers - “This is a musical work and I don’t know what the end notes are,” he admits - but ‘Generations’ does emphasise the importance of asking the questions and having the conversations, both with the world and with yourself. And if you can have them over an album of musically explorative, rich and often perversely funny new offerings? All the better.

Next, he’ll return to the fold to begin work on Arcade Fire’s sixth opus. Writing for that had originally started in New Orleans before the pandemic hit, but the band “don’t have the file management down to really do it at a distance,” he chuckles. “Win and Régine are always demoing and working, and I’ve done a little. We always work on a record for about a year and a half and we’re not off that pace yet, we’re still weirdly on track…”

You can bet by the time that record lands, he’ll have chalked up a handful of other accomplishments to his name, too; lord only knows the political battleground of the coming weeks will give him enough food for thought. And in the inquisitive mind of Will Butler, thought and curiosity are clearly the most nourishing tools of all. “You can write a love song that’s super true, but can you write a history song that also is? And if it comes out right and there’s some value in it, then what does that mean?” he muses. “It’s about just trying different angles to express something true.”

‘Generations’ is out now via Merge.

Butler’s Bits

‘Generations’ is undoubtedly an album rooted in politics and society - this much we know. But it’s also a record that digs into the musician’s relationship with other parts of the human experience…

HUMOUR “It’s a coping mechanism and it’s also a worldview. There’s not exactly a cabaret scene in New York but the comedy here is quite musical and there’s a lot of comedians that interact with people in interesting ways. They’re a bit younger than me - I’m the oldest millennial - but there’s something in that spirit that feels relevant.”

RELIGION “I grew up Mormon and I’m still ethnically Mormon. It’s like The Smiths song, ‘Meet Me At The Cemetery Gates’ - ‘Keats and Yeats are on your side, and Wilde is on mine’, you lose, haha. I’m sure Yeats is such a fucking asshole but that’s my heritage. The classic lineage of the Western canon is how I grew up.”

ADULTHOOD “I have three kids now, and it doesn’t make me worry about the future so much as it’s made me learn so much about humanity watching them - watching how it all goes into the ‘this is what humans are’ mill. On ‘Policy’, the protagonists are a motley crew of rag-tag whatevers, whereas this is much more a coming of age novel - not like a teenager becoming an adult, but an adult becoming a worse adult…”

As featured in the October 2020 issue of DIY, out now.

#Arcade Fire #will butler #generations #interview #the HOT Butler

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astudyinfreewill · 5 years ago

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tbh i get queer fans being mad/sad about kavinsky being killed off in that yeah, bury your guys can always be upsetting no matter the character. but it's weird to me when people go the 'he didn't DESERVE it blah blah' route because like, that has nothing to do with the trope. like i agree with queer characters always getting killed off being exhausting, but i don't get people going hard for this particular character lmao

hmm i… sort of agree. i guess i can understand fans being sad about kavinsky being killed off if they empathise with him, even though personally i just… can’t imagine relating to a character like that. but i honestly, genuinely don’t believe he’s an example of Bury Your Gays. it would be BYG if kavinsky was the only queer rep in the books, or even he killed himself specifically for being gay… which, no matter what people argue, he didn’t. but rather than give my opinion on it, i’m gonna take this chance to go through the trope systematically and explain why the shoe doesn’t fit. it’s meta time!

Why Kavinsky Dying is Not “Bury Your Gays”

[All quotes are taken directly from TvTropes, though the emphasis is mine.]

The Bury Your Gays trope in media, including all its variants, is a homophobic cliché. It is the presentation of deaths of LGBT characters where these characters are nominally able to be viewed as more expendable than their heteronormative counterparts. In this way, the death is treated as exceptional in its circumstances. In aggregate, queer characters are more likely to die than straight characters. Indeed, it may be because they seem to have less purpose compared to straight characters, or that the supposed natural conclusion of their story is an early death.

Kavinsky is never viewed as “more expendable than his heteronormative counterparts”. If you see Kavinsky as simply Ronan’s foil, then the reasoning doesn’t apply, because Ronan is gay himself, so he can’t be a “heteronormative counterpart”. However, Kavinsky apologists like to latch on to Gansey’s “We matter” quote to prove Kavinsky is treated as unimportant – but that’s a fallacy for several reasons. First, you’re taking Gansey to speak for the author, or for objective truth, when Gansey is one of the most unreliable narrators in the book, and his world view is extremely biased. Secondly, Gansey isn’t Kavinsky’s counterpart. Kavinsky is an antagonist, so you have to look at what happens to the other antagonists – his actual heteronormative counterparts. And, well: they pretty much ALL get killed off. Not just that, but they often get killed off in a way that does not have the emotional/narrative impact implied in Kavinsky’s death. By that reckoning, he gets the better shake. Additionally, we get 4 heteronormative villains killed off - Whelk, Neeve, Colin, and Piper. So in the series, queer characters are not more likely to die than straight characters (even among the protagonists, Gansey and Noah are the ones who “die”, where Ronan and Adam do not).

The reasons for this trope have evolved somewhat over the years. For a good while, it was because the Depraved Homosexual trope and its ilk pretty much limited portrayals of explicitly gay characters to villainous characters, or at least characters who weren’t given much respect by the narrative. This, conversely, meant that most of them would either die or be punished by the end.

This is not applicable to TRC, as portrayals of explicitly queer characters are not limited to villainous characters; Adam and Ronan are both explicitly queer and they are treated with huge amounts of respect by the narrative. So Kavinsky isn’t being killed for being the odd one out/the Token Evil Queer; plus, there are other reasons why he doesn’t fit the Depraved Homosexual trope (while sexual molestation is a part of this trope, TVTropes encourages you to “think of whether he’d be any different if he wasn’t gay” – and Kavinsky wouldn’t. Not only because DHs are usually extremely camp while Kavinsky’s mannerisms aren’t particularly queer-coded, but also because he is not shown to have any more respect for women than he does for men, and his abuse would look the same if he was straight).

However, as sensitivity to gay people became more mainstream, this evolved into a sort of Rule-Abiding Rebel “love the sinner, hate the sin” attitude. You could have sympathetic queer characters, but they would still usually be “punished” for their queerness in some way so as to not anger more homophobic audiences, similar to how one might write a sympathetic drug addict but still show their addiction in a poor light.

Again: Neither Ronan nor Adam – the two sympathetic queer characters – are punished for being queer, hence subverting this form of the trope.

This then transitioned into the Too Good for This Sinful Earth narrative, where stories would tackle the subject of homophobia and then depict LGBT characters as suffering victims who die tragic deaths from an uncaring world. The AIDS crisis also contributed to this narrative, as the Tragic AIDS Story became its own archetype, popularized by films like Philadelphia.

Okay, this is DEFINITELY not Kavinsky’s case. Kavinsky’s death isn’t specifically connected to being gay (e.g.: a hate crime or an STD), and he’s never depicted as some innocent suffering victim. As for the “uncaring world”… eh. Kavinsky may not have a valid support system, but that’s just as much by choice as by chance - and when Ronan extends a helping hand and tries to save him, Kavinsky rejects it. Too Good For This Sinful Earth is definitely not in play.

The only trope that kind of fits the bill is Gayngst-Induced Suicide… but only on the surface. As TVTrope puts it, Gayngst-Induced Suicide is “when LGBT characters are Driven to Suicide because of their sexuality, either because of internalized homophobia (hating themselves) or experiencing a miserable life because of their “deviant” gender or sexuality: having to hide who they are, not finding a stable relationship, homophobia from other parties, etc.”. Kavinsky certainly has quite a bit of internalized homophobia, but he is absolutely not experiencing a miserable life because of his sexuality – i.e. he’s not being bullied or taunted or subejcted to hate crimes. He doesn’t have to hide who he is: his parents are effectively out of the picture, his cronies worship him, and he constantly makes gay jokes to Ronan and Gansey. As for “not finding a stable relationship”… well that’s not exactly the problem, is it. He’s not looking for a stable relationship – he’s pursuing Ronan specifically, obsessively, through stalking and abuse. So even this trope is not applicable.

And then there are the cases of But Not Too Gay or the Bait-and-Switch Lesbians, where creators manage to get the romance going but quickly avoid showing it in detail by killing off one of the relevant characters.

Once again this is not the case with Kavinsky, as 1) there was no romance going between him and Ronan, and 2) he is not killed off before the nature of his obsession with Ronan is revealed – he gets the chance to both admit (sort of) he wants Ronan, and to confront Ronan about his sexuality, to which Ronan admits that yes, he is gay, but he is not interested in Kavinsky. So, there is no But Not Too Gay nor any Bait-and-Switch here.

Also known as Dead Lesbian Syndrome, though that name has largely fallen out of use post-2015 and the media riots about overuse of the trope. And, as this public outcry restated, the problem isn’t merely that gay characters are killed off: the problem is the tendency that gay characters are killed off in a story full of mostly straight characters, or when the characters are killed off because they are gay.

This is a very good definition of the trope and why it doesn’t apply to Kavinsky: he’s not killed off because he’s gay, and he’s not killed off in a story full of mostly straight characters; TRC is definitely not overwhelmingly diverse, but 2 of the 4 protagonists are queer, giving us a solid 50% ratio (I’m not counting Noah because his “character” status is vague, and I’m not counting Henry because he came in so late, and also because his sexuality is the matter of much speculation).

For a comparison that will make it even clearer: take a show like Supernatural. Supernatural’s range of characters is almost entirely presented as straight white cis men (as of canon – despite much of the fandom’s hopes and speculation). They’ve had problems with diversity in general, with a lot of black characters dying immediately, and a lot of women getting fridged for plot advancement or male angst (a different problematic trope altogether). Now, apart from minor inconsequential cameos, Supernatural had ONE recurring gay character: Charlie Bradbury. And they killed her off for no discernible reason other than plot advancement and male angst, in a context that had elements of Too Good For This Sinful Earth (Charlie being a fan-favourite, ~pure cinnamon roll~, being killed by actual nazis, who historically targeted gay people). See, THAT was Bury Your Gays, AND Dead Lesbian Syndrome, AND Fridging…

However, sometimes gay characters die in fiction because, well, sometimes people die. There are many Anyone Can Die stories: barring explicit differences in the treatments of the gay and straight deaths in these, it’s not odd that the gay characters are dying. The occasional death of one in a Cast Full of Gay is unlikely to be notable, either.

…But that is not the case with TRC. As I’ve said above, there are no explicit differences in the treatments of the gay and straight villain deaths. Kavinsky’s death is not Bury Your Gays; it’s Anyone Can Die – even a protagonist’s foil who has magic powers and is present for most of the book.

Believe me, I would not be cavalier about this. As you rightly said, queer characters always getting killed off is exhausting, and as a bi woman myself, I am deeply affected by instances of Bury Your Gays. When Supernatural killed off Charlie, I wrote a novel-length fix-it fic and basically stopped watching the show – a show I had been following, flaws and all, for 10 years. I don’t take it lightly. But Kavinsky’s death isn’t Bury Your Gays, nor is it homophobia. Sometimes, a character death is just a character death.

#anonymous #answer #meta #trc #trc meta #tropes #joseph kavinsky #mp #my meta

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theliberaltony · 4 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

It’s been a very unusual convention season. Both major parties had to improvise on the traditional convention playbook because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, holding nearly all-virtual gatherings instead. But the Republican National Convention cast aside other traditions too — featuring some of the norm-breaking (and possible law-breaking!) that we’ve come to expect from the Trump administration and blurring the lines that separate governance from party politics, and party politics from personal advancement.

As we’ve noted here before, there’s a difference between norms and democratic values. Norms are nice, and even important sometimes. But not always: Both conventions featured new forms of roll-call voting, for example, losing some norms but not in a problematic way. Other norms, though, help enforce democratic values. And that kind of norm-breaking is the one we should really worry about.

So what values — if any — are at stake in the norm violations at the 2020 RNC?

Election integrity and good governance

Most of the norms-based criticisms of the RNC revolved around the use of government resources and governing powers for a political event. On the second night, the convention kicked off with President Trump pardoning Jon Ponder. The same night, the convention aired a pre-taped naturalization ceremony filmed at the White House. And on Thursday, Trump delivered his acceptance speech from the White House’s South Lawn. All this drew sharp criticism, including questions about whether the Trump administration had violated the Hatch Act, which bans federal officials from mixing their government work with political activities.

Indeed, since last week, the Hatch Act has been having a moment. But are there democratic values embodied in this 1939 piece of legislation? On Wednesday morning, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was quoted saying that only “Beltway insiders” cared about such things. And civil service regulation might not seem like the most exciting or relevant topic. But the Hatch Act came after many years of political struggles, and other, unsuccessful legislative attempts to address the relationship between politics and governance. These kinds of rules are in place to protect the governing process from improper political influence and elections from the sway of powerful actors. The civil service reform movement in the 1880s sought to create an effective federal government, staffed by civil servants who were trained for their work and free from fear of losing their jobs over politics. The idea of protecting elections dates back to at least the 1830s. The Hatch Act itself came about as the result of concern about the FDR administration using the Works Progress Administration for political gain and becoming overly involved in the 1938 primaries in an effort to defeat conservative Democrats. In other words, the act, which was controversial at the time and has been controversial since, was aimed at curbing the role of politics in governance and keeping the president from having too much influence over elections. The Hatch Act and other rules like it aren’t just about obscure regulations or Washington norms — they safeguard the values of election integrity and good governance.

Nonpartisan foreign policy

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech from Jerusalem also prompted Hatch Act questions. It’s possible the speech didn’t technically violate the law. And it’s not unheard of for Cabinet secretaries to speak at conventions about domestic issues. But regardless of who paid for what, the appearance of a secretary of state at a convention links partisan politics to foreign policy statecraft and diplomacy. And there’s a reason why foreign policy is different.

As Scott Anderson explained on the Lawfare podcast, the principles behind State Department policies banning partisan activities by overseas diplomats are that they represent the entire nation – not just one political party. Suggesting that one party is better than the other to our allies runs the risk of undermining our national position and credibility when the other party takes power. It defies the concept that both parties are equally invested in the security and safety of the nation, ultimately denying the legitimate role of opposition — the idea that the party out of power is still a legitimate part of the nation, and a crucial democratic value.

Equality and access

At the Democratic National Convention this year, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris both had family members speak about them. But at the RNC, in addition to Ivanka Trump’s introduction of her father, three of Trump’s children had evening speaking slots. His sons, Eric and Donald Jr., spoke about politics, castigating “cancel culture” and the Biden campaign. Contrasted with Melania Trump’s speech as first lady, the Trump children — and his sons, in particular — stepped out of the ceremonial role as “first family” and into a more partisan, political one. As some commentators noted, the speeches sounded like they were gearing up to run for office.

Family political dynasties are hardly unusual in American politics. There are the Bushes, the Romneys and of course, the Kennedys — as well as many others. And political conventions are supposed to showcase speakers who might run for office later. But combining these two things flies in the face of core democratic values like equality and access and instead turns the political party into a personal vehicle for the president and his family.

Personalistic leadership

The deeper democratic value violation in the RNC’s use of these presidential powers — both real and ceremonial — in a convention context is what political scientists call personalistic leadership. It’s not just that Trump merged governance and party politics. It’s that, in this merging, the impression is given that Trump himself — rather than the Constitution or the office — is the source of privileges like granting pardons and citizenship. This gets directly at one of the principles the nation’s founders worried about when creating the office of the presidency: that it would place too much power in the hands of a single individual, endangering the idea of a “government of laws and not of men.”

Finally, and relatedly, Trump accepted the nomination in a closing speech on the South Lawn of the White House, followed up with “Trump 2020” fireworks over the Washington Monument. Some commentators have questioned not only the propriety of this but also suggested these events were illegal. (A gathering of 1,500 people, most of them unmasked, also violated local laws, though federal property is exempt from those laws.)

Political parties have become more focused on the presidency over time, with candidates rarely stepping up to challenge incumbent presidents for the nomination. And it’s standard for the conventions to focus heavily on the sitting president in that way, highlighting that this is the person already in the office while also competing to stay there. But Thursday’s use of the White House, accompanied by Trump’s declaration of “we’re here and they’re not” in his renomination acceptance speech, undercuts the reality that all presidents occupy that space temporarily. The separation of the presidency from the president is a key democratic value. The presidency and its symbols do not belong to one president or his supporters, but to all of the American people.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Julia Azari

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bbclesmis · 6 years ago

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Josh O’Connor: Every actor should just turn up on time, be nice and learn the lines

The actor has charmed as Larry in The Durrells and next up he plays Marius in Les Miserables and Prince Charles in The Crown

Unremittingly grim is how I would describe the BBC’s Les Misérables. Andrew Davies’s song-free adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel is a litany of grinding poverty, injustice, corruption and exploitation occasionally leavened, if that’s the right word, by short bursts of extreme peril. It’s also completely gripping.

This weekend’s episode introduces a new face. Until now Marius Pontmercy has appeared only as an angelic moppet, parroting royalist slogans fed to him by his overbearing grandfather, Monsieur Gillenormand. Now time moves on and we see him as a young law student, played by Josh O’Connor. It’s an episode full of upheaval for young Pontmercy: without giving too much away, there’s a girl, a family bombshell and a political awakening.

When we meet in a central London café, O’Connor, 28, whom viewers might recognise as Larry from ITV’s The Durrells, is considerably jollier than his earnest student. Dressed in jeans and a well-loved chunky sweater, his very dark, very curly hair constantly threatening insubordination, he is excellent company — all smiles and unfailingly polite. As we talk, it’s clear that, although he’s having a delightful time at the moment (the cast and crew on Les Misérables were “lovely”; working on it and The Crown — he will play the young Prince Charles in the third season, of which more later — had him “wide-eyed and pinching yourself”), he’s very serious about work. He has even read Hugo’s novel, which in unabridged English translation tends towards 1,500 pages.

“I know, that’s mad, isn’t it?” he says. “And I’m a terrible reader. I’m very dyslexic and I find it incredibly hard. It was a struggle, but the themes of it — it’s all about redemption essentially. I was obsessed with that idea, which I’ve stolen from my dad, who is an English teacher. He’s always been really interested in forgiveness and redemption and hope, and it’s very present in that book.”

Although the story is set in Paris between 1815 and 1832, O’Connor thinks it retains its relevance. “There were different translations for the title, like ‘The Wretched’, ‘The Wretched Poor’, ‘The Dispossessed’. I think they’re more accurate. It’s all about class, and the forgotten and the sidelined, which is obviously relevant to now. Marius has an important role in that he is like the audience looking in — he exists as part of a higher social class, but he has this social conscience.

“Obviously we’re in different times, but I would say that we’re experiencing politics in the extreme on both sides at the moment. And while we’re not building barricades, we are setting up camp outside parliament, and how that has manifested itself in recent news has been pretty nasty. To me it seems that there are lines to be drawn from that.”

So upright is Pontmercy — even when languishing in a filthy garret — that you might not immediately make the link between the young lawyer and the role that made O’Connor’s name, the taciturn Yorkshire farmer Johnny Saxby in Francis Lee’s extraordinary 2017 film God’s Own Country. The similarities are almost non-existent — apart from anything else, it took O’Connor’s Saxby about half the film before he cracked a smile. O’Connor’s committed performance as the emotionally inarticulate youth being painfully and beautifully taught how to love and be loved by the tenderness of another man was universally praised and earned him a Bafta rising star nomination and a best actor win at the British Independent Film Awards, among other accolades. Not that he had much choice about commitment: Lee made him spend nearly four weeks working full-time on the farm where the film was shot before they started.

“John, the farmer, he’s an incredible man. He hadn’t had a holiday I don’t think for 25 years. We’d get up at 6am and we’d go and feed the sheep, then we’d come back and have these sandwiches [he uses his hands to indicate something about the size of an entire standard loaf] — plain white bread, greasy bacon, ketchup, more bacon, bread. I turned into an animal, but it was the best energy source. His lifestyle is non-stop. Of course he can’t have a holiday. Sheep don’t rest.” The physicality of O’Connor’s performance is one thing that gives it authenticity — all from John, he says.

“He was hunched over. There are practical reasons — the rain in Yorkshire even somehow rains up, so you’ve got your hood up, and the sheep are down here.” It helped his casting that O’Connor has huge hands. “They’re like spades.” You don’t see much of them in Les Mis — apparently his “city hands” had such terrible eczema when he started filming the series he could hardly open them, which he puts down to subjecting them to farm work on God’s Own Country, although he concedes that the diet may also have been a factor.

If you think Pontmercy and Saxby are different, his next TV role, as Prince Charles, is an even bigger leap. He’s filming at the moment and says it’s “probably the most enjoyable job I’ve done”, perhaps because, instead of a freezing Yorkshire hillside, the locations are “every nice stately home in England, seemingly. We’ve been in Grantham, Buckinghamshire — we rock up and are, like, ‘Who lives in this house?’ I feel like I’m on Antiques Roadshow a lot of the time.”

It’s odd, he says, playing someone so present in the public consciousness, but for him, finding that performance “starts with the voice, and then they’ve got teams of researchers and professionals who work on dialect and movement. If you watch footage of the young Charles, there’s this thing — when he turns, he doesn’t turn with his body, he turns with his neck first, in a weird sort of Justin Timberlake-esque dance move. I find it helpful to have an animal to imagine, because it gives a certain pace to someone.”

Er, OK, I wonder, fearing treason, what animal is the Prince of Wales? O’Connor laughs. “I like to think of Charles at the moment as a sort of tortoise, because he puts his neck out. It’s not even that he’s particularly slow, it’s more this idea of inquisitive head first.” This time it wasn’t the hands that helped O’Connor get the role, but the ears — they’re not, in fact, particularly large, but they are sort of swivelled forwards, as if anticipating something of great interest.

O’Connor was more or less ambivalent about the royal family before — although his grandmother takes a keen interest, he says — but since taking over the role he has developed a fascination with and, he admits, an affection for Charles.

“Essentially you have someone whose whole life only comes into focus when his mother dies. That keeps hitting me — he only has meaning when his mum dies. Where does that put a young man? And then you’ve got his relationships — you can’t just get married or be with someone, they have to meet a set of [outside] criteria. That is a lot to get your head around. I’m discovering something every day about him and the world he exists in.” He tells me about a scene he has just done with Derek Jacobi, who plays the Duke of Windsor, formerly Edward VIII. “You’re playing that interaction, and you think, ‘Who does Prince Charles have, at that stage, as a guide?’ ”

Of course, there’s always his mother, played in the new cast by Hollywood’s queen of the moment, Olivia Colman. O’Connor is predictably adoring of the star of The Favourite, which he thinks is “the film of the year”.

“She’s everything that’s said about her. She’s a proper actress and a proper person. Turns up on time, does her job professionally — she’s wicked. It’s great that the world is loving her because we should.”

He is equally gushy about his co-star Emerald Fennell, who will play the young Camilla Shand, later Parker Bowles, and whom he describes as “such a laugh” (series three and four take us up to 1976, so we’ll have to wait a while for the appearance of Lady Diana Spencer — her casting has not been revealed).

He seems to take immense joy in things, which he puts down to “a pretty perfect upbringing” in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, as the middle son of three to John, an English teacher, and Emily, a midwife, both now retired. “I’ve got two lovely brothers and I’ve got cracking parents.” He recalls a phrase improbably culled from the American TV crime drama Ozark — “I’m rephrasing it, but if I were to have kids, and they’re half as proud of me as I am of my parents, then I’m sorted. They’re decent and kind and considerate, and as I’m getting older I’m learning that those qualities are the most important things.”

Inspired by his parents, last year he came up with a manifesto for his career: “Turn up on time, be nice and learn your lines. If everyone just did that in the acting world, everything would be just great.” His younger brother, Seb, is an ecological economist and is doing a PhD; the eldest, Barney, is an artist.

O’Connor lives in east London with his girlfriend, whom he politely declines to name, but hopes that they’ll be able to live predominantly outside London in future. “Drama schools say you have to be in London because that’s where the work is and that’s where the auditions are, but more and more the auditions seem to be tapes, for film and television, so maybe we’ll all move up to Yorkshire.” I’m sure Yorkshire would be delighted, I say. “Yeah, who are all these people with scarves? They’re all wearing scarves!”

Soon, although the release date is uncertain, we’ll see him in another film, Hope Gap, in which he plays the son to parents divorcing later in life (Annette Bening and Bill Nighy). It’s a “tiny little film” written and directed by William Nicholson, who is better known for such epics as Gladiator, Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. It won’t surprise you to learn that O’Connor is unfailingly enthusiastic about it and his co-stars. There’s another film, with a much bigger cast, coming up, he says, but it hasn’t been announced, so he can’t tell me what it is, except that it isn’t Star Wars. He is, of course, very apologetic.

As I’m leaving, something occurs to me — is it indeed him shoving his arm inside a cow in an early scene in God’s Own Country? “Yeah!” he says, with startling enthusiasm. “And that was actually really nice. As you know, it’s incredibly cold in Yorkshire, and it’s incredibly warm in there. You go in through the bum, because there’s a thin membrane between the bum and the womb, and you’re checking to see where the head is. And it’s really comforting to the cow. It’s just really pleasurable because you know you’re caring for this animal, but also you’re, like, at least this arm is warm.”

I think we could all learn something from Josh O’Connor’s outlook on life. Les Misérables continues on Sunday at 9pm on BBC One. The third season of The Crown will be on Netflix this year

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/josh-oconnor-every-actor-should-just-turn-up-on-time-be-nice-and-learn-the-lines-r8bqkcpcb

#les mis bbc #bbc les mis #josh o'connor #Marius Pontmercy #Interviews #articles #the times

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howardhawkshollywoodannex · 6 years ago

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The 2019 Oscars

I recently watched three lousy movies, and they're all nominated for Best Picture. I'd already seen spike lee’s lousy Black KKK Klansman, his first such nomination. As usual, the only points spike has to make are the obvious ones. Undercutting the historical parallels, his movie time travels to the earlier 70s so spike can take advantage of the biggest afros, and when the soul music was more to his liking.

Bohemian Rhapsody is nothing more than a cash grab for the surviving members of Queen, The reason for the movie is in selling Queen albums to millions of new American teenage fans. Nothing in the movie rings true. Much of what happens is contradicted by actual events that took place in chronological order. It's a PG movie of an X rated rock star lifestyle. Bohemian Crapsody. It will be no surprise when it wins for best editing. Here’s an 80 second clip that sums up the movie quite nicely

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBzaRD9eWyk.

Roma is strictly for the critics and eager art house trendies anxious to praise a film for being "deeply personal." In two hours and 20 minutes, only four dramatic events occur, while the rest of the movie is the monotonous drudgery of humdrum everyday existence. We are expected to weep over the silent nobility and endurance of the poor working class despite the lack of even one interesting character. One observant critic wrote “I felt sorry for the dog.” The black and white photography is notably weak. If you've seen at least a few classic films, you’ll appreciate the often dazzling high contrast black and white images, but somehow the effect here is muted for remarkably low contrast. Many times I thought the film would at least look better in color.

A Star is Born is the weakest effort for Bradley Cooper who also directed and co-wrote. He has little chemistry with Lady Gaga, and in a concession to today’s pervasive political correctness, he repeatedly tells plain Jane Gaga how beautiful she is. Her songs are featured in her repellant way of beating every song into submission with an over-the-top wrecking ball style. Every concert performance includes non-stop uncontrollable audience cheering in the sound mix. Brad was fine in his singing bits, but unbelievable as a buffed and sun tanned alcoholic.

So I've seen five of the eight best picture nominees, and the only one that doesn't suck is Black Panther, which stands out by being average. I liked the costumes and makeup. Recent years have featured at least one good film - Birdman, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Revenant, Three Billboards or Dunkirk, but I’ve seen nothing of quality yet this year. I haven't seen First Man, with Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong, which I expect will be good, as the film was much criticized and was weak at the box office because Neil is not a likeable and traditional hero. Conservatives complained of a literal lack of flag waving.

Here's an article from Canada on the Oscar's long history of awfulness, with a relevant Howard Hawks quote.

https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/movies/was-there-ever-a-time-when-the-oscars-were-good

#oscars #2019 oscars #Oscars 2019

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spryfilm · 6 years ago

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“Sicario: Day of the Soldado” (2018)

Drama/Thriller

Running Time: 122 minutes

Written by: Taylor Sheridan

Directed by: Stefano Sollima

Featuring: Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Jeffrey Donovan, Isabela Moner, Catherine Keener, and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo

Alejandro: [to Isabela] “You have no reason to trust me, but trusting me is how you’re going to survive.”

Critical Commentary:

There is no doubt in my mind that the release of “Sicario” (2015) three years ago not only announced a few new talents but also solidified quite a number more in front of, as well as behind the camera, it also was possibly the most underrated film of that year. It should have scored multiple Oscar nominations but for the most part flew under many peoples radar which is a crime. On the surface it was a film about drug cartels, revenge as well as the journey of a young idealistic DEA agent, of course it was much more than that as well as a precursor to the unruly politics that would follow just a year later. It also stated that the war on Mexico was just beginning, one that would not only rage at the border but on nightly television, ultimately right now in the White House itself. “Sicario” was that rare breed of film that had at its heart a female protagonist surrounded by men who were undermining her at almost every point, it had a well thought out plot as well as an almost Cinéma vérité narrative but with a look that was stunning in its widescreen lushness and not afraid to, at times pull back for the big picture eschewing star power and good looks for some kind of grittiness even though at times it was still a Hollywood film. The one aspect of the film that was overwhelming was that I know when I saw it I wanted more, now three years later the sequel has arrived, “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” (2018).

On the surface this sequel may seem like a real mixed bag, undoubtedly the star of the first film has returned in Taylor Sheridan the screenwriter, who has gone from strength to strength in his career having written the magnificent Oscar nominated “Hell or High Water” (2016), writing and directing his magnificent noirsh “Wind River” (2017) as well as the upcoming series “Yellowstone” (2018). Also returning are the definitely now great character actors, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Donovan in the same roles. Unfortunately there is a downside with the loss of Denis Villeneuve, Emily Blunt, Daniel Kaluuya, Roger Deakinsand Jóhann Jóhannssonare all not returning which does lessen the impact of the sequel but it is still a fascinating affair to be sure. What is great to see is that new fresh talent has replaced these non returnees to the betterment of the film overall.

“Sicario: Day of the Soldado” has been directed by Stefano Sollima an Italina filmmaker who is possibly best known for directing a large proportion of the series “Gomorrah” (2014 – ) based on the film of the same name, so the subject matter is not far removed from this new film. The great aspect of both films was to have foreign directors in charge as it always seems to be a benefit to politically charged movies, that to have someone removed from the situation in charge, opens up the narrative as well as the plot in ways someone who has a stake in the subject matter might do. This is accentuated by the look of the film, here Deakin’s has been replaced by Ridley Scott’s long-time cinematographer Dariusz Wolski who like his predesscor is an expert at creating both interior as well as exterior palate that are not only original but subject sensitive and eye catching.

The film is set fter discovering that Mexican drug cartels are smuggling terrorists across the United States border, the CIA sends Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) and former undercover operative Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro) to eliminate the problem. They kidnap Isabela Reyes (Isabela Moner), the daughter of a drug lord, in a false flag operation designed to incite war between rival cartels. The mission goes awry when it is discovered by the Mexican government, prompting Graver to order Reyes’ death; when Gillick refuses, he turns rogue to protect her as Graver assembles a new team to hunt them both.

The quality of the leads goes without saying in Oscar winner Benicio del Toro who has become one of the great character actors as well as someone who can play physically imposing men that with the subtly in his face can play deep emotion, while Josh Brolin has aged well into his middle age and someone who knows how to build a character from the ground up, one need only look at his increasingly complex roles over the past five years to see the evidence in that. While they are both playing the same characters from the first film, it is del Toro who is the one with real growth especially when thinking about his arc from “Sicario”. Added to the mix are Isabela Moner, Catherine Keener, Mathew Modine, Shea Whigam and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo who all play new characters designed to reinvigorate the film with the light shining directly on Moner as the maguffin of this new story. Moner has to show a range of very tough emotions as well as starting her character in one place of dominance but winding up with her persona changed in a very extreme way with layers peeled back for all to witness. The other relative newcomer is Manuel Garcia-Rulfo who like his co-star is a changed character from beginning to end, something that is a very rare to witness not just in film but also for minority characters that are normally marginalised or reduced to stereotypes. All of the actors do incredibly nuanced work with material that is not only complex but much of the narrative just have been found in the edit so to see performances as good these is rare indeed.

There is no doubt that this is a narratively as well as plot heavy film that rewards those that stick with the complex goings on within the story, following different characters at different times with varying objectives as well as never losing sight of the human drama at the core of this challenging piece of work. The ways in which the story begins to unfold on different fronts of the world may seem scattershot but they are executed in a way that the audience witness how in the dark, law enforcement can be losing sight of the people they are trying to protect so that lines are blurred between the good of the many against destroying the rights and loves of the few, especially when we are talking about cross border skirmishes. For me the key to the film is the returning character of Alejandro Gillick who as we know from the previous entry lost his family to the drug war in particular one cartel leader who is one the plot points of this film. In fact the key scene and one I imagine the writer loved creating involves sign language, a family in the middle of nowhere and a small explanation of his past which for me was one of the two best scenes of the movie. This is a film loaded with meaning as well as motivations of everyone involved, one scene sees Matt Graver going to meet the Secretary of Defence a comment is made about him being sunburnt as he is always in the field carrying out covert actions. The next scene we see a roomful of Generals and politicians, it is easy to see the pale faced men who make decisions sending the tanned men out into the danger to do the dirty work, something that should not be lost on viewers especially as we hear and see these politicians changing their minds on a whim without a thought of those doing the work in the field. It could also be seen as a comment on those holding high office especially the Presidency who have never served in their life.

As far as this years films go “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” is one of the best so far, it is a truly great sequel that stands on its own in every way. It transcends the first film in that it is about so many elements of not only human nature but incorporates social, political and personal issues that are as relevant today as they have ever been. We see the fingers of the White House through an unnamed President who fears impeachment over public support or anything else, sound familiar? Another important aspect of the film that cannot be underestimated is the mix of genre that takes place within its narrative, at points it is a road movie, a drama, a political movie, a thriller and at times even has some comedy, it melds all these genres into one coherent narrative that never lets up from its shock beginning to its almost ultimate conclusion that is at once revealing, shocking but expected.

This is a film that must be seem and seen on a big screen it takes risks with its plot and narrative which pay off for the audience it is almost all believable in its own way with nary a false move which is something to behold. Even though it is missing some key figures in front of as well as behind the camera, the screenwriter has wisely pivoted the plot to make it more of an original movie with familiar characters than attempting to make it a fully fledged sequel which seeing this movie now would have been a major error. I recommend this even for those that have not seen the first movie as it stands on its own in almost all ways which is not something that can be said of all movies even though that is how it should be, something that has been lost over the past few decades.

Technical Commentary:

Video:

“Sicario: Day of the Soldado” arrives onto 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray with an upscaled 2.40:1 2160p transfer with HDR10 from a 2K digital intermediate. Dolby Vision is not an option on the disc. While upscaled, the image offers a notable uptick in detail clarity over the 1080p Blu-ray – in particular for close-ups and middle shots.

With HDR10, the image enjoys a kick in the primaries without overdoing things. Reds, blues, and the abundant yellows throughout all see some nice enhancements.

While that is a plus for Dolby Vision, a negative is in some of the night sequences things just look too dark. The brief scene where the Spec-Ops team halo jumps in the middle of the night to capture the smuggler Bashiir is an example. That scene in HDR10 is still dark, but light enough that you can actually make out some of the details of the soldiers as they fall. Dolby Vision goes dark almost to the point where they’re shadowy blobs falling from the sky. Regardless, this 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray is a solid effort from Sony and provides a clean and clear improvement over the 1080p disc.

Audio:

On 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” is upgraded to a full object-based Dolby Atmos mix.

Dialogue is well balanced throughout and, like the DTS-MA 7.1 mix, Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score offers some great mood and atmosphere pumping up those low LFE tones giving that creepy dissonant vibes. Levels are spot on without any softness issues or need to raise the volume higher than you normally would.

Special Features:

From Film to Franchise: Continuing the Story (HD 8:06)

An Act of War: Making Sicario: Day of the Soldado (HD 15:34)

The Assassin and the Soldier: The Cast and Characters (HD 14:04)

Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin star in SICARIO 2: SOLDADO.

4K Blu-ray review: “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” (2018) "Sicario: Day of the Soldado" (2018) Drama/Thriller Running Time: 122 minutes Written by: Taylor Sheridan Directed by: Stefano Sollima…

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m-guitguiten · 3 years ago

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I posted 94 times in 2021

94 posts created (100%)

0 posts reblogged (0%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 0.0 posts.

I added 130 tags in 2021

#movie review - 45 posts

#netflix - 40 posts

#poetry - 7 posts

#grammar - 6 posts

#serial - 6 posts

#short story - 6 posts

#english - 6 posts

#documentary - 5 posts

#christians - 5 posts

#poem - 4 posts

Longest Tag: 34 characters

#to all the boys always and forever

My Top Posts in 2021

Personally, Good on Paper is very relatable. It deals with insecurity issues and how some people would go to great lengths just to quench this emotional virus. Sometimes exaggerated and weirdly comical, yet it deeply connects to the hearts of some audience who can say in front of their computers and television, "I felt that!". Iliza Shlesinger, Ryan Hansen, Margaret Cho, and Rebecca Rittenhouse are just the perfect cast. All of them just fit together. Good on Paper reminds the audience in the end that maybe some of us feel that we may not reach others' standards, yet this frustration should not make us feel like we don't have any chance of a real relationship. If we would just be cool and be honestly good as ourselves, we might just meet someone who felt the same way. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. There were so many LOL and some cringy moments, but overall this is one fun adventure of a woman who is still discovering herself and the journey of finding the right person.

13 notes • Posted 2021-06-27 13:42:15 GMT

Watching the life of Jonathan Larson before he became 30 rings so true to me. Although I'm way past 30, the question of "what have you done in life?" becomes louder and louder every day and most especially when someone makes it audible like I have been lazy all my life and have not been contributing any goodness in this world. Tick, Tick...Boom could be the next film that I could label as a personal favorite and most relevant to me. Obviously, I love this film. The music, the performances, and the directorial debut of Lin-Manuel Miranda are nearly perfect. Andrew Garfield could secure an Oscar nomination for this, and other supporting actors like Vanessa Hudgens, Alexandra Shipp, and Joshua Henry just blend right in. Sunday is an all-star performance, Come to Your Senses is a memorable duet of Alexandra Shipp and Vanessa Hudgens, and the last song Louder than Words just brought my tears down. Wistful and hopeful, Tick, Tick...Boom drives you to take one step closer to your dreams even if it looks so impossible. Even though Larson didn't live to see the mega success of Rent, his life embodies optimism, durability, and inspiration. Tick, Tick...Boom is a film that makes you ask questions like "What are you doing in your life?" and that's good because rarely do movies give you these kinds of thoughts and feelings.

14 notes • Posted 2021-11-28 14:31:14 GMT

Watching this movie reminds me of Parasite: its tale of class, ambition, and murder, and even its style with light tones in the beginning and then it takes a dark turn. This is a fun ride of a movie and again a reminder that the world is always unfair, and only those who are clever can actually go out of the mire of poverty and the caste system. Well, in comparison with Parasite, The White Tiger has a more fulfilled ending. An ending that tells us that anyone can live a good life even those who committed crimes.

16 notes • Posted 2021-02-02 13:07:50 GMT

The Forgotten Battle, like any other World War II drama, creates the same feeling of sadness and reflection on how war separates relationships, destroys hopes, and also brings new dreams of peace and order. I like how the movie intertwines two stories of the two opposing armies. It doesn't seem random and not forced as well. Tom Felton is here and he plays the role of an injured soldier. His performance is brief but very convincing. The young performers play their characters very well: Susan Radder, Jamie Flatters, and Gijs Blom. Their characters are both in a situation that calls them to create a decision that's so new to them yet successfully gets out of all the challenges and emotional tensions. The Forgotten Battle reminds me of another war drama on television World on Fire. Both have the same feels and storylines. Even though World War II dramas tell the same story, again and again, they are always heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time.

22 notes • Posted 2021-10-19 13:44:21 GMT

Silver Skates is the first Russian-language film I have seen. It is a sweeping love story which is very predictable but really enjoyable. The film recycles a Romeo & Juliet-esque plot and the rich girl/poor boy romantic tropes. The female lead is strong as she has a progressive attitude toward knowledge and education which, for me, is a highlight and something that provides nuance in this traditional romance. The heroine carried the hero to worlds unknown, and this is a highlight in the film. The film's a bit long but the plot, again, even if we know how it ends, is still exciting. I also love the setting. 19th century Russia looks so beautiful plus the lead characters who are also dreamy, as an audience, you will really be transported into this magical world. Moreover, because of this film, I get to learn why Russians are so good with skates.

74 notes • Posted 2021-06-20 13:36:08 GMT

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 7 years ago

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The Shape of Water review

Last year saw the release of an utter travesty of filmmaking: Beauty and the Beast. It is easily one of the worst films I have ever seen in my life; it lacked everything that made the original Disney film great. The side characters were all dull, Gaston was a fucking bore, the Beast was a bland CGI furry, and Emma Watson as Belle gave the most lifeless, miserable, atrocious performance of her entire career. And it sucks, because we DESERVE a good Beauty and the Beast film, we deserve a love story where the monster is more human than the human suitor, with sympathetic characters and an interesting antagonist… and visionary genius and absolute madman Guillermo del Toro gave us just that, with the Shape of Water, a film that is easily one of the greatest love stories ever told.

This film has been memed to Hell and back, what with the basic premise – a woman bones a fishman – being particularly amusing to the internet for obvious reasons. But to the shock of absolutely no one, the film is so much deeper than the sex – in fact, you don’t even get to see the sex, and I’ll get into why later in the review. For now, let’s start with a plot summary:

It’s the early 60s, and the Cold War is at its peak. Elisa Esposito is a mute janitor working at a government lab with her black BFF Zelda. One day, she discovers a creature being held at the government lab that the superiors are calling “The Asset.” An amphibious fishman from the Amazon, she finds herself intrigued by this being and soon finds herself befriending it. Not long after, the government plans to vivisect the creature, but Elisa ain’t having any of that shit, and so with her old man artist friend Giles plots to get the Asset free. But all this is easier said than done… can they free the Asset, or is the man running the show, Richard Strickland, going to catch on?

I’m gonna be doing a lot of comparing and contrasting to Beauty and the Beast, because these films do follow the same sort of basic structure and have a lot of the same archetypical characters and themes, such as “the real monsters are prejudiced humans” and “strong female who feels alienated from her society.” The latter is particularly relevant here, and not just for Elisa; del Toro has stated that the movie is meant to reflect on how he feels as an immigrant in America, and the feelings of isolation and being an outsider are major parts for every single one of the film’s sympathetic characters. Elisa is a mute, as is the Asset (though the Asset is also, you know, an Amazonian fishman); Zelda is a black woman in the early 60s; Giles is an elderly gay man; and Dimitri is a communist scientist undercover at the government facility. Unlike in Beauty and the Beast, which has such a dull and unappealing supporting cast (save for Lefou), this movie’s supporting cast all have deep stories to them that are intricately woven into their characterization and reflect some of the core themes of the film. It really is impressive when a character who is a proud communist is sympathetic, likable, and heroic; Dimitri is to this movie what Stronheim is to Battle Tendency, to put it in the most bizarre way possible. Every single actor does a fantastic job, and it’s pretty easy to believe any of these characters could be a person’s favorite of the film.

But what is a Beauty and the Beast story without a Gaston? I hated the Gaston in the Disney remake, as he was a bland, unappealing, and uncharismatic waste of a good actor. None of that is a problem here; Michael Shannon (who you may know best as General Zod from Man of Steel) is playing Strickland, and it is just as fantastic a performance as the rest of the cast. He’s arrogant, pompous, and honestly kind of disgusting – even before his fingers start rotting he pisses all over the bathroom floor because he doesn’t hold his dick when he pees, and then he doesn’t wash his hands, oh and he’s also racist, prejudiced, and harasses Elisa – but he’s also the poster child for idyllic 60s life. He has a home with a wife, two kids, he buys himself a fancy new car… unlike our heroes, Strickland’s life is picture perfect, like the families in old timey ads. This is a stark contrast to the less perfect lives our heroes lead, but it is an important part of the film, as it showcases that true humanity doesn’t simply come from fitting the mold of the what people think humanity is, it is who we are when no one is looking, who we are when we are in a bad spot and help others, who we are when we are truly selfless. Strickland is not selfless; in fact, he is an utter bastard. And yet for all the world he seems nothing but your normal perfect white 60s husband, while the heroes are a ragtag assembly of the sort of people who would be most shunned in that time period.

Of course, one of the most essential parts of this sort of story is the leads themselves; Beauty and the Beast had a lifeless CGI doll that drifted into the uncanny valley every other shot as the leading man, and Emma Watson giving one of the blandest, most lifeless performances this side of Jennifer Lawrence in an X-Men movie as our leading lady. Needless to say, they fucking blew. But here, HERE we have Elisa and the Asset, two very unconventional leads. You’d think a character being mute would be a huge hindrance, but as movies like The Little Mermaid show, you can be strong and interesting even without a voice, and Elisa is definitely both of those things. She is so expressive even when not using her sign language, you can always get a really good feel for what’s on her mind at any time, and actress Sally Hawkins just really nails it, especially in a ll her interactions with the Asset. And the Asset himself, played by Doug Jones, is perhaps the greatest leading man in romantic history. Leave it to a master like Doug Jones to truly sell you that this massive walking fish creature is the perfect romantic lead. Frankly, I’m a bit miffed he didn’t get an Oscar nomination for this performance, because despite not speaking and despite being an amphibious beast, he really delivers a compelling performance, above and beyond what you’d expect. And as you would expect of any del Toro monster, the Asset is gorgeously designed and really appealing to look at despite being a big fish creature. And guess what? Unlike the Beast, the Asset utilizes a lot of practical effects and isn’t just a nonstop CGI dummy the whole film!

It’s interesting to note that the actual romance and the infamous fishman sex do not occur earlier in the film; it happens more towards the midway/final third of the film. But this is a good thing, because it does give us proper buildup and leads to the attraction feeling natural rather than forced and rushed. You see the two build a connection with each other, these two outsiders no one else truly understands connecting with each other because, in their eyes, the other is not the flawed, broken being that others see them as. To each other, they are perfect. And this leads me into talking about the sex scene, and why we don’t see it: we don’t see it, because doing so would turn something beautiful into nothing but cheap titillation. Let me explain further: the only sex we see in the film is the awkward, bland, missionary position sex between Strickland and his shiny, idyllic housewife. During sex he shoves his bleeding fingers in his wife’s mouth as she moans in pleasure so he can shut her up and imagine Elisa. The sex is awkward, uncomfortable, and almost disturbing to watch. There’s no passion, no love, there’s nothing there. It’s basically a million other sex scenes in a million other movies. The love between Elisa and the Asset, on the other hand, is beautiful, passionate, intimate… we shouldn’t be allowed to see it. We shouldn’t reduce the love of these two, this beautiful romance, down to some sleazy masturbatory visual extravaganza. What they had together is something truly special, and I believe it was truly the right thing to leave their lovemaking to the imagination; it is not our place to intrude on and gawk at true love being consummated.

This is the Beauty and the Beast movie we all deserve. It’s The Creature from the Black Lagoon movie we deserve. This is easily del Toro’s best and strongest film, better than Hellboy II, better than Pan’s Labyrinth, better than Pacific Rim… and make no mistake, saying that is REALLY SAYING SOMETHING, as all those films are absolutely fantastic. I absolutely loved this movie, it really was everything I could have possibly hoped it would be and more, and there is absolutely no way I could live with myself if I didn’t recommend this wholeheartedly to everyone. Honestly, even if it’s not my favorite film of 2017, I would have put this as the #1 best movie of last year regardless, because from an objective standpoint, it IS the best movie of 2017. If you’re looking for a weirder sort of romance film, if you’re looking for a movie where the monster finds love, if you’re looking for a 2017 Beauty and the Beast movie that doesn’t absolutely suck ass, this right here is the movie for you.

#Review #movie review #the shape of water #guillermo del toro #the asset #doug jones #Sally hawkins #sci-fi #romance #beauty and the beast

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weekendwarriorblog · 4 years ago

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The Weekend Warrior 3/19/21: SXSW, Zack Snyder’s Justice League,The Courier, City of Lies, Happily and More!

Remember a couple weeks back when I stated the plan was to bring back the Weekend Warrior as a regular weekly series again? Yeah, well if you looked for a column last week and wondered what happened, I just didn’t have time to write one. And I also just haven’t been able to get back on the ball in terms of writing reviews. It just takes a lot of time to watch all the movies let alone review them the way I did last year. I honestly have no idea how I did it last year, but things have been busier than ever at Below the Line, which does throw a bit of a spanner into any extracurricular plans.

The big event this week is the annual SXSW Film Festival, which I’ll be taking part in virtually, and somewhat tangentially, watching as much as I can while still doing other things. It’s been a while since I’ve attended SXSW in person, but it tends to have great docs, especially music docs. In fact, this year’s Opening Night Film is the documentary, Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil, about Demi Lovato’s drug overdose from 2018 and its aftermath. Other music docs of interest include Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché, about the late frontwoman from early punk band X-Ray Spex through the eyes of her daughter; Mary Wharton’s doc Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free made from archival footage of the late singer making his 1994 record “Wildflowers”; Alone Together about Charlie XCX’s pandemic record; Under the Volcano about George Martin’s AIR Studios Montserrat; and it gives another chance to see Edgar Wright’s excellent, The Sparks Brothers, which was picked up by Focus Features after Sundance. There’s also an amazing doc about Selma Blair’s fight with MS, Introducing, Selma Blair, which is equal parts heartbreaking and inspirational.

SXSW also has pretty solid Midnighters, and there’s a number of those I’m also looking forward to, including Travis Stevens’ Jakob’s Wife, starring horror legends Larry Fassenden and Barbara Crampton, who were so great in my buddy Ted Geoghegan’s We Are Still Here. (No coincidence since Stevens produced that movie.) And I hope to watch a few others like Lee Haven Jones’ The Feast, Jacob Gentry’s Broadcast Signal Intrusion, and Alex Noyer’s Sound of Violence. We’ll see how much I get to see this week, cause it’s a lot of movies over only a couple days, basically from Tuesday through Saturday.

Closer to home at the Metrograph, the still-closed movie theater is doing a virtual series called “Bill Murray X6” which has already shown Lost in Translation and What about Bob? With Rushmore screening until Thursday, and then The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou available through Friday. Become a digital member for just $5 a month! This past weekend I saw a really amazing 7-part doc series called Untitled Pizza Movie by David Shapiro. In fact, I stayed up late on Sunday to watch the whole thing since it was leaving the digital screeners, but it’s a very entertaining, intriguing and personal story about the director, his friend and partner in crime Leeds, who he went around to different NYC pizza shops in the ‘90s trying to find the perfect slice, and then they come across pizzaman Andrew Belluci at the world-famous Lombardi’s in Soho. The project that took over 20 years to make follows what happened to the three men, but mainly Leeds and Belluci as they have ups and downs that ultimately leads to Belluci starting his own pizza joint in Queens. Everything that happens in between is quite fascinating.

I saw a couple other movies this past weekend including Robin Wright’s Land, which I quite enjoyed, and the rom-com Long Weekend, which came out last Friday but I totally missed. Land is a pretty amazing directorial debut that’s mostly a one-woman show with her character alone in the wilderness until she runs into trouble and meets Demian Bichir’s kindly Samaritan and they become friends. Directed by Stephen Basilone, Long Weekend stars Finn Wittrock and Zoe Chao in what starts as a meet cute rom-com and turns into something much deeper with a couple sci-fi-tinged twists, a bit like Palm Springs, but much more grounded. I loved the two leads and how Basilone made a romantic comedy that actually was romantic and very funny, as well. Both movies I recommend.

Getting into some of the streamer offerings this week, ZACK SNYDER’s JUSTICE LEAGUE will hit HBO Max on Thursday, so we can finally see whether or not that extra money and work paid off. I’ll be reviewing this over at Below the Line, so won’t spend too much time here. I figure that anyone who has been waiting for this will watch it, as will anyone who has been curious about it. As you can read from my review, I was quite impressed by the film as an achievement in finishing what is clearly a far superior film to the 2017 theatrical release. Some of the highlights include great stuff between Ray Fisher’s Cyborg and his father, a far more fun introduction to The Flash that was cut from the 2017 release and just some insanely crazy good action. I can’t wait to watch the movie again.

Kicking off on Friday is the anticipated Marvel Studios series, THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER (Disney), bringing back the title characters played by Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan, who were introduced in one of the MCU’s better movies, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I was sent the first episode and unfortunately, there’s an embargo until Thursday afternoon, but I do think that MCU fans are gonna be thrilled with the first episode, especially with the Falcon’s opening action sequence, which is like something right out of the movies.

Okay, fine, so let’s get to some new movies and some real reviews…

Probably the movie with the widest release this weekend will be THE COURIER (Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions), starring Benedict Cumberbatch, which I’m guessing will be in 1,000 or so theaters. The movie premiered at Sundance way back in 2020 under the significantly worse title of “Ironbark” with plans to release it later in the year, but then COVID happened. I’m not sure if Roadside Attractions planned for this to be an awards movie, but after a few delays, releasing it in mid-March just days after the Oscar nominations, I’m guessing probably not?

Directed by Dominic Cooke (On Chesil Beach) from a screenplay by Tom O’Connor (The Hitman’s Bodyguard… wait, WHAT?), this Cold War spy thriller set in the early ‘60s stars Cumberbatch as Greville Wynne, a British businessman who is coerced by agents from MI6 and the CIA (repped by Rachel Brosnahan) to smuggle Russian secrets from military man Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze). Greville’s trips to Moscow start getting more and more dangerous under the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and his wife (the always great Jessie Buckley) wants him to stop taking the trips. It all leads up to a pretty exciting second act as the KGB starts to figure out what Greville and Oleg have been up to and work to put a stop to it.

I have to admit that as much as I enjoy a good spy-thriller, a lot of this reminded me of Cumberbatch’s earlier film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – yes, the John Le Caree adaptation, which I was never a particularly big fan of. This has similarities in that it starts out fairly slow, making me think this might be one of those well-made, well-acted movies that are just plain boring cause the subject doesn’t interest me. I’m sure when this was greenlit, there was probably more relevance to the situation between the U.S. and Russia, although this is obviously a British production and maybe something better to watch on the Beeb than in a movie theater.

In general, the stuff with the two men and their families tends to be the best part of the movie. I wasn’t familiar with Merab Ninidze beforehand, but he’s a really good actor who holds his own in scenes with Cumberbatch. Although Cumberbatch’s performance is significantly better here than in The Mauritanian, that’s definitely a better movie, so even in the last act which sees Wynne in a Russian jail, it just doesn’t compare. This is the second film with Rachel Brosnahan in which she didn’t really impress me much after hearing how great she is on Mrs. Maisel. Even so, the movie did make me want to go back and rewatch the beginning again to see if maybe I wasn’t as focused on it, as it should be.

As far as box office, I don’t have much hope for this making more than $2 or 3 million this weekend, since it seems more like a prestige platform release that would have to build audiences from rave reviews or positive word-of-mouth. Coming out so long after its festival debut (kinda like that Thomas Edison movie a few years back) may have helped people forget about the midling festival reviews. Even so, this movie just doesn’t have much buzz or interest from #FilmTwitter who has had its tongue so far up the superhero movie ass this week between Zack Snyder’s Justice League and Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier to pay much attention to this. (Hey, facts is facts!)

Johnny Depp and Forrest Whitaker star in Brad Furman’s crime-thriller CITY OF LIES (Saban Films), which is about the real-life search for the killer of the Notorious B.I.G. aka Biggie Smalls with Depp playing Detective Russell Poole, who ended up on the case in 1997, and Whitaker playing reporter Jack Jackson, doing a story on Smalls for the 20thanniversary of the unsolved murder.

Based on the book “Labyrinth” (the movie’s original title), it’s a story that takes place in two time periods, Los Angeles in the ‘90s after the Rodney King beating and L.A. riots and how it’s made the criminal element that surrounds rap mogul Suge Night. It begins with Poole investigating the death of a black police officer named Gaines, shot by a white police officer (Shea Whigham) in what is seemingly a road rage incident. As Poole investigates, he learns about police corruption in the force including a number of officers tied directly to Knight.

As Jackson interviews Poole to try and find out who killed Biggie, we flashback to Poole’s investigation and interaction with some of those corrupt cops and being put into extremely dangerous situations. The movie isn’t bad, especially the scenes between Whitaker and Depp, who gives a far more grounded performance than we’ve seen from him in recent years. Even so, the performance that really impressed me was Toby Huss as Poole’s superior, who just brings something new to the tough head detective role we haven’t really seen.

Regardless of what you think of Depp’s activities off-camera, this is a fairly solid crime thriller (as was Scott Cooper’s Black Mass), and though you never actually get to see Biggie, Tupac or Suge Night, it’s an interesting examination into a period in L.A. that seems so long ago but still rings true to what’s been going on in the last year.

BenDavid Grabinski’s HAPPILY (Saban/Paramount) is a dark comedy-thriller starring Joel McHale and Kerry Bishé as Tom and Janet, a happily married couple who annoy their friends by still having sex on the regular whenever they possibly can. In fact, their friends decide to uninvite Tom and Janet to their planned couples’ weekend because they’re so annoyed by them. One day, a mysterious man (played by Stephen Root) shows up at Tom and Janet’s house, one thing leads to another and they kill and bury him. Thinking that the man’s visit might be part of a friend’s prank, they go to the planned couples’ trip, trying to figure out if the prankster has gotten suspicious about what they’ve done.

For the sake of transparency, I met Grabinski at my very first Sundance ever as he was friends with some of my colleagues, but I never spent a ton of time talking to him. This film impressed me, since it’s a prtty strong debut from him, one that benefits greatly from a strong cast that includes Paul Scheer, Breckin Meyer (who I didn’t even recognize!), Charlyne Yi, Natalie Morales and more, making for a really solid ensemble dark comedy that reminded me of the tone of last year’s The Hunt or Ike Barinholtz’s The Oath or a great lesser-seen movie from last year, Robert Schwartzman’s The Argument. Dark comedy isn’t for everyone, and this is definitely a little mean-spirited at times, but more importantly, it’s very funny and tends to get crazier and crazier as it goes along.

More importantly, I loved Grabinski’s musical choices from Devo’s “Working in a Coal Mine” to not one but two OMD songs, and great use of Public Image Limited as well. The way Grabinski puts this together comes across like a hipper and fresher Hitchcock, and while it might not be for everyone, I could totally see this killing at a genre fest like Fantastic Fest or even this week’s SXSW. It’s clever and original and rather intriguing how Grabinski puts all the various pieces together.

Hitting Shudder on Thursday is Elza Kephart’s horror-comedy SLAXX (Shudder) about a possessed pair of jeans brought to life to punish the practices of a trendy clothing company, which it does by terrorizing the staff locked in overnight. Didn’t get to watch this before getting bogged down in SXSW but definitely looking forward to it.

Another horror film coming out this week is the horror anthology PHOBIAS (Vertical), exec. produced by the filmmaking team “Radio Silence” (Ready or Not) with segments directed by Camilla Belle, Maritte Lee Go, Joe Sill, Jess Varley and Chris von Hoffman. The stories follow five dangerous patients suffering from extreme phobias at a government facility with a crazed doctor trying to weaponize their fears.

Jeremy Piven stars in Paolo Pilladi’s LAST CALL (IFC Films) playing real estate developer Mick, who returns to his old Philly neighborhood and must decide whether to resurrect his family bar or raze it. I actually watched a few minutes of this, but apparently, IFC Films isn’t allowing reviews, so I have nothing more to say about the movie beyond the fact that it’s coming out on Friday.

Opening at the newly reopened Film Forum – currently doing a hybrid of in-person and virtual cinema – is Chris McKim’s doc WOJNAROWICZ: F**K YOU F*GGOT F**KER (Kino Lorber), premiering virtually on Friday. It’s about David Wojnarowicz, one of the loudest voices in the ACT-Up movement during the ‘80s who died of AIDS himself in 1992. (Correction: Film Forum actually isn’t reopening until April 2.)

A few other things this week include Aengus James’ doc AFTER THE DEATH OF ALBERT LIMA hitting Crackle about Paul Lima, a son obsessed with capturing his father’s murderer who has remained at large in Honduras due to a failed legal system. Because of this, Paul travels to the Honduras with two bounty hunters to find and capture the killer.

Lastly, streaming on Topic Thursday, there’s Parliament, directed by Elilie Noblet and Jeremie Sein, about a young man named Samy who arrives in Brussels after the Brexit vote trying to get a job into the European Parliament without really knowing how it works.

That’s all for this week. It might be a while before I can get The Weekend Warrior back into some sort of fighting weekly shape, but I’m doing the best I can right now, so let me know if you’re reading any of this.

#TheWeekendWarrior #TheCourier #Movies #Reviews #BoxOffice #ZackSnyderJusticeLeague #Happily #CityOfLies

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201908195caic2021 · 4 years ago

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Hollywood and race – Cinema Left Black and White in the Past, Will Hollywood Do the Same?

“Spike Leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” exclaimed Samuel L. Jackson when announcing that Spike Lee had won his first Oscar in 2019 for the BlackkKlansman . Lee responded by jumping into his arms…It was the celebration of a long-awaited formal welcome into the Hollywood family, the culmination of an almost 40-year career in which Lee had been trying to carve out a space as a commercial filmmaker.

For so long Hollywood has had a race problem, seen all way back in 1915 with The Birth of a Nation and from then on forging stereotypes of African Americans into the American minds. Stereotypes such as the Mammy, the “magical Negro”, the “best friend”, the “sassy black woman”, the “violent gang-banger” which all have little interiority and only serve to further the main plot. Gone With the Wind is deeply embedded within American culture and is arguably at fault for the stereotype of the mammy, as well as the white celebrated saviour; whilst the black characters are racial props to boost white goodness also seen in The Birth of a Nation where heroes are the KKK. The Birth of a Nation is the foundation that American cinema is built upon, a film that screened at the White House, prompting President Woodrow Wilson to declare it “history written in lightning”. It was celebrated for its technological mastery of visual storytelling, yet its narrative is nothing more than racist propaganda. Hollywood’s role in disseminating such demeaning, dehumanized, stereotypical images can no longer be ignored.

Nancy Wang Yuen’s book Hollywood Actors and Racism explores African Americans in films and their disadvantage in achieving roles when up against their white opponents. “Despite having a greater presence, African American actors still face limitations. A significant number of film and television shows have no black characters. In 2013, the percentage of African Americans in more than half of the top-grossing films was smaller than in the US population, while nearly a fifth of these films had no African American characters at all. Similarly, 16 percent— 37 percent of all cinematic, television, or streaming stories in 2014– 2015 failed to portray a single speaking or named African American on screen.” At the 2015 Oscars which was hash-tagged OscarsSoWhite as not one person of colour was nominated alongside, racial tensions throughout the year such as the high-profile shooting of unarmed black men by the police which yet again provided fodder for discussions about race in Hollywood.

After the 2015 #OscarsSoWhite, Spike Lee along with Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith, planned to boycott the next ceremony in protest of the whiteness among the nominees. The New York Times calls for representation for African Americans stating; Hollywood continues to ignore the simple fact that people of color want to see their lives reflected in the movies they watch. Representation is not a lot to ask. If we’re going to boycott the Oscars, we also need to boycott the movie studios determined to ignore the box office success of movies featuring people of color. We need to boycott the people who are so reluctant to produce movies made by people of color. We need to boycott this system that refuses to acknowledge life beyond the white experience as rule and not exception. Hollywood has left us with little choice. In the article How to fix Hollywood's race problem from The Guardian in 2016 commented that one could argue that every year at the Oscars is a whitewash – only one woman of colour has ever won best actress (Halle Berry), and only 7% of best actor winners are men of colour (with nearly 40 years between two of the black winners, Sidney Poitier and Denzel Washington). Some commentators, such as Andrew Gruttadaro, have even suggested that it’s not the Academy’s fault that “this year, no black people deserved a nomination.” Despite the lack of representation of people of colour there were a lucky few who made it onto the screens; Idris Elba, Samuel L Jackson, Tessa Thompson, Michael B Jordan and Will Smith. The problem isn’t just a lack of recognition come awards season – it’s Hollywood’s staggering lack of representation across all of its films.

In 1988, Eddie Murphy said: “I will probably never win an Oscar for saying this, but what the hey, I gotta say it … I came down here to give the award, but I feel we have to be recognised as a people. I just want you to know that black people will not ride the caboose of society or bring up the rear any more.” Chris Rock, (hosted the Oscars in 2016) on twitter posted “The #Oscars. the White BET Awards” referring to the lack of diversity, for a second year not one black actor was nominated for main categories. Over a quarter of a century later, we have utterly failed to meet those demands.

Douglas Kellner’s book Aesthetics, Ethics, and Politics in the Films of Spike Lee (1997) notes that “Spike Lee’s films constitute a significant intervention into the Hollywood film system. Addressing issues of race, gender, and class from a resolutely black perspective, Lee’s films provide insights into these explosive problematics missing from mainstream white cinema.” Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing (1989) depicts flawed characters, not conforming to stereotypes or the idea that it is a black filmmaker’s responsibility to show African Americans in a positive image. Do the Right Thing also highlights America’s race issues which are still relevant today such as, police brutality towards African Americans evident by the shooting of Michael Brown in 2015 and George Floyd in 2020.

At the Oscars in 2019, Spike Lee is sat where Jack Nicholson was sat, who would notice Jack was gone when Spike Lee is sat in his seat, Lee is a lot more of a statement. What does it take to be nominated for an Oscar? Age and privilege? Race? whiteness, maleness, heteroness — in an industry that privileges all three, after several decades you acquire the kind of legendary status where you don’t stand on ceremony because everyone else is standing for you. At the 2019 Oscars the seats are no longer occupied solely by the old white men who once claimed all the accolades for building the industry. But now taking their seats are Spike Lee, Oprah, Cicely Tyson — not only for their own achievements coming up within a much less diverse industry, but for how they, like so many older people of color in so many other industries, have set the stage for the younger generation facing a less hostile world, built on the work of their predecessors. Remembering Kim Basinger’s speech in the 1990 ceremony mentioning Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, which she said told “the biggest truth of all.” Whether or not it was intentional, Barbra Streisand’s presentation of BlackKklansman as one of the best picture nominees this year echoed Basinger’s words. “It was so real, so funny and yet so horrifying because it was based on the truth,” Streisand said of the film. “And truth is especially precious these days.”

Though there has been little improvement in films representation over the past decade, television is seeing increased diversity within the Oscars. Three out of the four acting trophies went to people of color, while two black women — Black Panther’s Carter for costume and Hannah Beachler for production design — made history in their categories. As Lee alluded to, this is only possible through changing optics, the slow trickle of diversity into the establishment that builds, generation upon generation, toward a welcome deluge. The result is a new and improved Hollywood that reflects reality over antediluvian ideals, in a world that is moving in the same direction — from politics, to science, to tech, to everything. Indiewire’s Eric Kohn managed to freeze a symbolic moment after the Oscars in which Spike Lee, trophy in hand, asked Black Panther director Ryan Coogler how old he was — 32 to his 61 — before saying, “Man! I’m passing it to you.” It was Lee acknowledging his own legacy in the direct presence of its heir. As he had said during his speech earlier in the night: “We all connect with our ancestors. We will have love and wisdom regained, we will regain our humanity. It will be a powerful moment.”

Looking back at Hollywood movies throughout the years it is evident that the African American stereotypes have been fixed in the American minds. The film industry’s failure to represent people of colour runs far deeper than #OscarsSoWhite. The Bechdel test has been used to measure female representation in films; where two female characters would have a conversation on something other than men. Attempts have been made to use the Bechdel test when looking representation of African Americans and people of colour who talk to each other about something other than their race. Will this test encourage Hollywood to fix it’s race problem?

Guns! Violence! Swearing! Or maybe a comedic character, is this what we think when we see African Americans in movies? We grasped at the rare appearances of actors of colour – we loved badasses including Billy Dee Williams in Star Wars (cape!), Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction (guns!), and Tina Turner in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (wig!). But more often, characters fell into tired stereotypes. Hollywood films may present a person of colour but they are mainly stereotypes or just there as a side character as seen in the Harry Potter film series where only six minutes are spoken by characters of colour, in American Hustle 40 seconds, Black Swan twenty seconds and in the Lord of the Rings trilogy forty-seven seconds, but only if you count the orcs as black.

Only three of the nominated films passed the racial Bechdel test, in 2016 The Big Short, The Martian and The Revenant which had representation of people of colour whilst the films; Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn and Spotlight didn’t have a single named character of colour. In 2015, only American Sniper and Selma passed. If you look at best picture winners over the past 15 years, six pass our test (including 12 Years A Slave, Slumdog Millionaire and Crash) but seven do not have a single named character of colour.

looking at these films we see that characters of colour are still in the stereotypical roles Hollywood has made for them. The Guardian highlights that; there are undoubtedly historical settings that might require very specific casting (though the erasure of people of colour from the historical narratives of films such as Suffragette is grating). We’re not going to insist on a black man being cast in Valhalla Rising any more than we would insist on a woman being cast in The Shawshank Redemption. But the whitewashing of Other narratives is an epidemic in Hollywood today.

These historical type films that feature racism such as 12 Years a Slave, even with its horror and brutality, serve as a comfort to white people seeking to feel a distance between the monster that is racism. HuffPost reminds us about how racism is still relevant today; “Progress!” we congratulate ourselves, proud that America has overcome its brutishly violent history. “We used to be horrible people that owned other human beings and now we don’t! We’re a post-racial society now! Go America!” But if we’re talking about reality, the reality of racism in 2013, a reality that generally doesn’t make it to the silver screen, we have to talk about things like environmental racism and structural racism in our systems of education, employment, criminal justice, and more. It is films like 12 Years a Slave, Selma, Malcolm X and more which remind us that racism is still relevant and we’d be foolish to ignore it.

It has taken a long time for Hollywood to represent African Americans and people of colour and in a non-stereotypical way, although now we see more diversity among white and black actors in the Oscars there is still little representation in films. To move past its race problem will Hollywood continue to move forward with more characters of colour represented in films?

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nclkafilms · 7 years ago

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The First Rough Draft of History

(Review of ‘The Post’ seen on the 21st of February 2018)

Steven Spielberg is a productive director. His IMDb reveals no less than 57 Director credits. His latest, The Post, follows in slipstream of recent works, Lincoln and Bridge of Spies, in showcasing important, historical events in the relatively short history of the United States. This time it is not revolutionary leaders or spy exchanges that in the centre of events; in stead he know portrays a story of the free press that is so important to a modern democracy. As it is stated in the film: “The press is for the governed, not the governors!” As such the film has rarely seemed more relevant than it does today in the media presence of world leaders such as Trump and Putin alike. How far should the press go to reveal the truth and what should their relationship be to he leaders in charge? Those are the two central questions that Spielberg asks and answers with his most recent film.

It is the story of the Pentagon Papers and how these - confidential - papers were shared with the press at the height of Nixon’s presidency. We follow the newsroom crew at the Washington Post - at this time a local newspaper - as they observe the more prominent New York Times receive an indictment from the authorities as they publish a story based on the leak. When Post editor Ben Bradlee and his team finally gets a hold on the leaked papers, he and owner, Kay Graham (who have inherited the ownership from her late husband) faces the questions mentioned earlier as they are entangled in moral and ethical questions relating to personal relations, their journalistic oath, the disclosure of methodical government lies and injustices as well as the very future existence of the paper. As the papers threaten to uncover lies of not just Nixon’s administration but the three before him as well, the White House lures in a distance determined to prevent the publication…

At the centre of it all is a powerduo who remarkably stars in their first film together here: Meryl Streep as Kay Graham and Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee. Hanks who is a Spielberg-usual (Bridge of Spies, The Terminal, Catch Me if you Can and Saving Private Ryan) delivers a well-balanced and convincing performance as Bradlee, who refuses to be bullied by neither the authorities or company big heads in his battle to uncover the truth. His performance bears many similarities to his turn in Bridge of Spies and it is hard to put a finger on it, although it is oddly anonymous at the same time.

Opposite of him, Spielberg first timer, Meryl Streep, is the films main asset as Kay Graham. Even though, I have an issue with Streep in the sense that I always see her in her characters (unlike Daniel Day-Lewis for instance) it is hard to look beyond her here and admittedly her Oscar nomination is one of her more well-deserved. She delivers one of her most nuanced performances in years as the insecure yet stubborn Graham, who faces a journalistic dilemma with the potential to change history without ever really having had her daily life in the newsroom or offices of the Post. Her character develops in a satisfying way throughout the film and despite a slightly overdone scene towards the end that highlights this in a blatant way, her character sure is a great role model and idol for women in leading jobs. In this way, the film becomes even more relevant in the 2018 political climate thanks to more than just its focus on the free press.

The supporting cast is great but also slightly forgettable; perhaps with the exception of Jesse Plemons’ legal advisor who provides an interesting and somewhat funny opposition to the stubborn journalists as he represents the harsh facts of the legal aspect of their otherwise heroic, journalistic mission. It is hard not to compare this film to recent journalistic portrayals as the one in Spotlight (2015); a film that was much more of an ensemble film. Make no mistake; here Meryl and Tom rule above all.

Despite its flaws in storytelling and character building (for the supporting roles), this is a master at work. Spielberg knows what he is doing and he masterfully manages to create not only a historically important film but also actual tension and suspense despite the fact that we know what happens. One great example of this is a scene in which all the important people are discussing whether or not to publish the papers. This is done over the phone, but obviously way before the age of conference calls. No, instead every single person stands in different places (some within the same house) with different telephones. A scene, which could so easily have been a scene of hopeless editing from one person to another, becomes a nail-biting and suspenseful scene in the hands of Spielberg. One of the best scenes in the entire film for sure.

With the score composed by living legend John Williams (his 143rd composer credit that is!!), Janusz Kaminski behind the camera with his ever observant eye and Michael Kahn (along with newcomer Sarah Broshar) in the editing room, this is Spielberg playing it safe. However, it is difficult to blame him for doing so when the result is such a well-functioning film finished in an unprecedented timeframe with just 9 months from finished script to final cut that hits right into the political climate of its time. That is a proof of not only a masterful filmmaker, but also a filmmaker who knows and acknowledges the power of the medium to promote and provide a perspective on current issues. Much like the press in the film, arts share the same possibility of commenting on and revealing truths.

4/5

#Film #Film Review #Movie #Movie Review #Oscars #Oscars 2018 #academy awards #Best Picture #Best Actress in a Leading Role #The Post #steven spielberg #Tom Hanks #Meryl Streep #Jesse Plemons #John Williams #Janusz Kaminski #Michael Kahn #Sarah Broshar

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newsmanmdgn · 5 years ago

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Today’s Top Stories: March 13, 2020

youtube

Coronavirus update:

136,929 infected. 5,065 dead, spreads across US & globe. WHO declares it’s a pandemic.

Relevant stories:

Sophie Gregoire Trudeau tests positive for COVID-19; PM begins 14-day isolation

U.S. Hospitals Prepare for Coronavirus, With the Worst Still to Come

China government spokesman says U.S. military may have brought virus to China

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro denies testing positive for deadly bug

Watch this video for tips on what to do if you fear you have coronavirus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unN8leCvHyM

Economy Update:

Stocks up! But only by about 100 after opening 500 up. Rally is losing steam, probably will finish down again.

Oil prices are down. Gold is down. We cannot BE in a recession until we have two consecutive down quarters in GDP. BUT we are in it now.

Stories:

Market turmoil sparked by coronavirus fears is worse than financial crisis, James Bianco says

Congress Nears Stimulus Deal With White House as Wall Street Suffers Rout

Stocks’ rebound from their biggest drop since ’87 is losing steam

Coronavirus recession is “likely,” economist says

Democratic Primary News

Does this even matter any more? Well, yes, yes it does. With Trump bungling everything (coronavirus readiness & response), fiscal support for the looming recession, etc., it’s important we nominate a person who a) can beat him (shouldn’t be hard) and b) who can get us out of this mess.

That guy is Joe Biden.

Stories:

2020 Democratic Primary Debate Between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders Moved Due to Coronavirus

Offbeat Story of the Day:

23-year-old dies while trying to make tractor TikTok

A 23-year-old from Muzaffarnagar, India, recently died while filming a tractor stunt for a TikTok video. The man was attempting to capture a clip while riding on a fast-moving tractor when the vehicle overturned and crushed him.