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randomingoftherandomness · 3 years

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Hi, I’m sorry to bother you with this, but I was wondering about your distaste for S*a*g C*i. I’m not very familiar with the comics or the characters. Your post caught my attention because I try to be knowledgeable about the media I consume, especially coming from Marvel/Disney(being Jewish Rromani, I’ll never forgive them for what they did to Wanda). I tried googling information about it but couldn’t find much. I was just curious if your post had a deeper meaning or if it simply isn’t to your taste. Obviously feel free to ignore this if you don’t feel like getting into it or don’t want to answer.

Hi! First up, thanks for taking the chance to ask and being willing to listen. I appreciate that a lot.

I am going to preface this by saying that I am part of the Chinese diaspora. I have never read the comics in full but I have seen enough to formulate my own thoughts. All my opinions made here are my own and I’m not looking to debate or be persuaded or to shift my point of view. I have my mind about these things and you have yours. I do urge you to keep opening avenues of discussions as I should not be the only person being asked.

Also, heads up, I will block any sort of argumentative bs-ery.

SC is obviously made with the perspective of the Asian American lens in mind and I have seen it been pointed out that it isn’t meant to be ‘representative’ but let’s be real here. How many people in the tag have already been hyping it up as Asian rep and stuff? I’m just saying. I just want to say that the experiences of Asian Americans do not reflect those of the diaspora. Yes, we can relate to a certain extent, but to generalise and distill all experiences of all members of the diaspora into that of Asian Americans is unacceptable.

My issues with SC (not gonna bother with spelling the name out and we are going into the whys) are as follows:

I would recommend starting out by reading this article on cbr.com that goes a little further into detail on the history of the character

The tl;dr is this; SC started out as an insensitive East Asian stereotype character created to capitalise on the 1970s fervour for anything Kung Fu. Sure, Marvel has done their best to retcon some of the less stellar parts of his origins, but the funniest thing is (legend. big bro. uncle Tony) Tong Leung, a renown Hong Kong actor has been casted as The Mandarin while Simu Liu, a Canadian Chinese actor, was casted as SC. Make of that what you will.

Okay deadass I’m not saying Simu Liu won’t do a good job because at this point all we have to work on is a teaser trailer but I’m all saying that is, was Arthur Chen Feiyu not available or something?? Idk. He didn’t pick up the phone?? Did Marvel even ask?? This is nonsensical salt and I digress

Then there’s the name. What kinda hell name is S**** C**??? This is some Cho Chang level bullshit. Yeah, sure we can say, oh they just want to make sure the branding is right. Ok. This coming from the studio that amalgamated the characterisations of Ned Leeds and Ganke Lee. Sure, Jan.

Full disclosure, I did like some of the vibes given out by the teaser. There were some very wuxia and xianxia inspired shots and scenes and if I do watch, I’ll be very keen on these bits. Awkwafina already looks like she is set to be etched deep into my heart and Uncle Tony looks to be gearing up to kick this out of the park because goddamn he looks good in that armour. Haven’t seen Tan Sri Michelle Yeoh’s character, but I’m sure she will be kicking ass and taking names for sure too because I am very sure veterans like her and Uncle Tony will look good doing wire works. But this isn’t a movie about them, is it? It’s about SC and right now with this teaser trailer, nothing about SC makes me want to froth at the mouth to watch.

Yes, I am saying that that subway scene does not impress me. We live in a world with stunt teams from China can work on a peanut budget to make conversations flow in a fight scene. Do better.

Again, I am very aware that this teaser is to hype people up. I know. I am still waiting for the proper first trailer to drop. I have actually deliberately kept myself oblivious to the production of this movie so as to not give myself any sort of preconceived notions. When that first trailer drops, then I will formulate my thoughts again.

Okay, I know it’s a teaser but some of the cgi just looks... very uncanny valley? It looks unfinished, is what I am getting at here. For a mega conglomerate verging on industry monopoly, even a teaser trailer should look 1000% better than this. Every beat of this should be flawless. It should look on par with the trailer. People who follow will know that I won’t ever fault a product because of shitty cgi (re: Word of Honor) but when you are the people behind the Live Adaptation of Mulan (which I hate) and Raya and the Last Dragon (which I categorically DETEST because that shit is bullshit mishmash of SEA cultures with fucking made up words being painted as *representation* and that is some fucking bullshit and as someone from SEA I’m sorry Queen Kelly Marie Tran BUT NO) I will hold you to the fucking standards of the high heavens as the House of the Devil Mouse deserves. Do fucking better.

I am not clairvoyant but I can already see how it is going to go when this movie doesn’t “do as well as expected” in Asia; you’ll hear people going on about how the Asian Asians don’t support these types of stories, how we don’t put effort into hyping movies and shows that push for representation. But can I ask whose representation are we talking about? I saw it with Crazy Rich Asians and Mulan, I saw it with Raya. Whose rep are we talking about? If someone out there, some little child sees themselves in these media products, sure, great! Empower these next generation for the push for a better hope. But whose rep are we pushing for? Because I definitely do not see myself in the Asian American lens of representation and I’m very sure I won’t ever and I know that I am not alone in this.

Hollywood needs to do better. To borrow the words of a friend, excusing mediocrity for ‘cultural appreciation’ is no good.

This rant has gotten long enough and I’m so sorry to everyone seeing this on your dash. I have a lot of salt today.

#gab rants #I’m typing this out in my phone I’m so sorry

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the-everqueen · 3 years

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why i disliked “the traitor baru cormorant”

so...recently i read Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant. i bought it thinking, Cool, an insightful fantasy series for me to get into while i wait to hear whether i passed my qualifying exams! i have some time before the semester starts!

and then i absolutely hated it and spent every minute cataloguing what i thought Dickinson got wrong.

...uh, if you want to get the tl;dr of the liveblog i gave the gf, here’s the top three reasons i disliked this book:

1) not a fan of the “strong female character” trope

yes, Baru doesn’t sling around a sword or shoot arrows better than Anyone In The Whole World. but Dickinson IMMEDIATELY tells us (not shows, tells) that she’s good at math, she’s clever at picking apart strategic scenarios, she’s a savant. (tbh, i don’t love how he shows this, either, with the standard child-prodigy-who-catches-the-attention-of-a-powerful-adult trope.) in Dickinson’s crafted world, her math skills aren’t entirely unusual: women (for...some reason?) are stereotyped as being good at calculations, despite also being aligned with hysteria and too many emotions. this bothers me more than it’s probably supposed to, because the sexism in this novel doesn’t really seem to follow an internal logic. i guess it’s so we can have a woman as the protagonist? also...hoo boy...her “savant” characterization bothers me because...she’s heavily coded as South East Asian (...maaaybe Philippines or Native Hawaii, but as i’ll get to later, Dickinson doesn’t make a huge distinction). uh...model minority stereotypes anyone? yes, within the text, plenty of people associated with the Empire comment that it’s impressive someone of her background got into a position of power so young. at the same time, i’m sure that sounds familiar to so many Asian-identified people! the constant tightrope of being expected to perform to a certain (white, Western) standard while also being Othered. mostly this bothers me because Baru is also characterized as...a sellout for the Empire. sure, her stated goal is to undo the Empire from within, but [MAJOR SPOILERS] in the end it appears that her actual goal was to attain enough power that the Empire would let her be a benevolent dictator over her home island? and it’s only after a major PERSONAL betrayal that she revises this plan? [END SPOILERS] Baru also assimilates without much pain or sacrifice. she hardly ever thinks about her parents or her childhood home. she willingly strips herself of cultural signifiers and adapts to Empire norms (apart from being a closeted lesbian, which...yeah, i’ll get to that, too). and it’s not that Dickinson doesn’t TRY to make her a nuanced character, but...to me, it feels so painfully obvious that this is not his experience. it feels almost...voyeuristic.

...much like his descriptions of wlw desire!

2) we get it, you read Foucault

the categories of sexual deviance are based entirely on a Western Victorian-era medical discourse around non-heterosexual forms of desire, but Dickinson ignores the network of sociocultural, religious, and historical contexts that contributed to that specific kind of discourse. he uses the terms “tribadism” and “sodomy” but those ideas CANNOT EXIST outside a Euro-American Christian context. yes, a huge part of the 19th century involved the pathologization of sexual and romantic desire (or lack thereof). but that in turn goes back to a history of medicine that relied on the “scientific method” as a means of studying and dissecting the human body--and that method in itself is a product of Enlightenment thinking. Theorist Sylvia Wynter (whomst everyone should read, imho) discusses how the Enlightenment attempted to make the Human (represented by a cisgender, heteronormative, white man) an agent of the State economy. every categorization of so-called deviance goes back to white supremacist attempts to define themselves as ‘human’ against a nonwhite, non-Christian Other. and IN TURN that was ultimately founded on anti-Black, anti-Indigenous racism. at this point it’s a meme in academic circles to mention Foucault, because so many scholars don’t go any further in engaging with his ideas or acknowledge their limits. but SERIOUSLY. Dickinson crafts the Masquerade as this psuedo-scientific empire that’s furthering erasure of native cultures, but...where did these ideas come from? who created them? what was the justification that gave them power? [MINOR SPOILER] blaming the Empire’s ideology on a handful of people behind the Mask who crafted this entire system makes me...uncomfortable, to say the least. part of what gives imperialism its power is that a lot of ordinary people buy in to its ideas, because it aligns with dominant belief systems or gives them some sense of advantage.

also speaking of cultural erasure...

3) culture is more than set dressing

again, to reiterate: Baru does NOT think back to her childhood home for longer than a couple passing sentences at various points in the narrative. but even though the early chapters literally take place on her home island, i don’t get a sense of...lived experience. this is true of ALL of the fantasy analogues Dickinson has created in his Empire. i felt uncomfortably aware of the real world counterparts that Dickinson was drawing inspiration from. at the same time...there are basically no details to really breathe life into these various fantasy cultures. i HATE the trope of “fantasy Asia” or “fantasy Africa” or “fantasy Middle East” that’s rampant among white male sff writers. Dickinson does not get points from me for basically just expanding that to “fantasy South East Asia,” “fantasy Mongolia,” “fantasy South America,” and... “fantasy Africa,” plus some European cultures crammed in there. he’s VERY OBVIOUSLY drawing on those languages for names, but otherwise there’s no real sense of their religious practices, the nuances of their cultures, the differences between those cultures (besides physiological, which...oh god). part of that is probably supposed to be justified by “well, the Empire just erased it!!!” but that’s not an excuse imho.

also...in making the Empire the ultimate signifier of the evils of imperialism...Dickinson kind of leans into the “noble savage” stereotype. Baru’s home island is portrayed as this idyllic environment where no one is shamed for who they love and gender doesn’t determine destiny and there are no major conflicts. (there is a minor nod to some infighting, but this is mostly a “weakness” that the Masquerade uses as an excuse to obliterate a whole tribe.) Dickinson justifies young Baru’s immediate assimilation as her attempt to figure out the Masquerade’s power from within, but given that the Masquerade presumably killed one of her dads and her mom maybe advocates a guerilla resistance...it’s weird that Baru basically abandons her family without a second thought. yeah, i get that she’s a kid when the Masquerade takes over the island, but...that’s still a hugely traumatic experience! the layers of trauma and conditioning and violence that go into this level of colonization are almost entirely externalized.

(later it’s implied that Baru might qualify as a psychopath, and tbh that feels like an excuse for why we haven’t gotten any sense of her inner world, not to mention kind of offensive.)

this isn’t exhaustive but...

it’s not that i don’t think white people shouldn’t ever address POC experiences in their books. just...if your entire trilogy is going to revolve around IMPERIALISM IS BAD, ACTUALLY, maybe you should contribute to the discourse that Black, Brown, and Indigenous authors have already done. reading this book made me so, so angry. i did not feel represented! i felt like i was being talked down to, both on a critical theory level AND on a craft level. there are SO MANY books by actual BIPOC and minority authors that have done this better. N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy and her current Cities series. Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti trilogy. Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House remains one of the more powerful novels i’ve read on how The System Is Out To Destroy You, That Is The Point. (Bardugo is non-practicing Spanish and Moroccan Jewish on one side of her family, and her character Alex is mixed and comes from a Jewish background!)

...

there’s not really a point to this. i get a lot of people have raved about this book. good for them. if that’s you, no judgment. i’m not trying to argue IF YOU LIKED THIS YOU ARE PROBLEMATIC. i’m just kind of enraged that a white dude wrote about a Brown lesbian under a colonial empire and that THIS Brown lesbian under a colonial empire couldn’t even get behind the representation. also kind of annoyed that it’s the Empire of Masks and Dickinson either hasn’t read Fanon or didn’t see fit to slip in a Fanon reference, which like. missed opportunity.

#meta #book review #maybe y'all can get enjoyment from my rage #also i don't want to publish this on like. goodreads.#i'm not out to destroy Seth Dickinson personally #i know this was a highly reviewed book #i just...hated it #and i figured putting the rage on my blog is less harmful #than leaving a one star review #while also maybe giving someone the insight #for why they might not want to read this #the traitor baru cormorant #the masked empire

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dweemeister · 3 years

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2020 Movie Odyssey Awards

Because the 2020 Movie Odyssey Award for Best Original Song final was extended, the 2020 Movie Odyssey Awards themselves are late once more - and all because of me this time out (oops). As you may know, this is the annual awards ceremony to recognize a year of films that I saw for the first time in their entirety in the calendar year. All films featured - with the exception of those in the Worst Picture category - are worth seeing.

The full list of every single film I saw as part of the 2020 Movie Odyssey can be seen in this link.

Best Pictures (I name ten winners, none of which are distinguished above the other nine)

The African Queen (1951)

The Haunting (1963)

The Irishman (2019)

A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

Mädchen in Uniform (1931, Germany)

Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

Ordet (1955, Denmark)

Parasite (2019, South Korea)

The Shop on Main Street (1965, Czechoslovakia)

The Trial (1962)

Seven of these films received 10/10 ratings. The others received 9.5/10 ratings. This Best Picture lineup were the ten best films I saw in all of 2020. The African Queen is a rollicking adventure film with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn that took me by surprise (I was long put off from the film because of its reputation). It displays some of the most charming moments that only Golden Age Hollywood can offer. Golden Age Hollywood horror may not be scary to viewers; but what it lacks in elicited screams, it makes up in goosebumps. The Haunting is one of the great haunted house movies of all time with its thick atmosphere, fantastic production design, and spectral ambiguity. Watch it in the dark, if you dare.

Two gangster epics with a mournful disposition are also here in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America. The former sees Robert De Niro seeking absolution despite personally not being fully regretful; the latter sees a regretful Robert De Niro seeking not absolution, but peace.

Made in Weimar Germany in the years just before the Nazi takeover is a classic of queer cinema, Mädchen in Uniform. Beyond its LGBTQ themes, it is a tale of young women finding friendship amongst each other. On the other side of Europe after its Nazi takeover is The Shop on Main Street - which switches gears between drama to lighthearted comedy to tragedy so nimbly. Another film exemplifying mastery in tonal shifts was the headline-grabber Parasite - an explosive, justly historic movie.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s A Letter to Three Wives is a suburban feminist ensemble piece, reflecting on the martial anxieties of women questioning their spousal bliss. The ending there, though not quite storybook, is poignant. Questions of faith, too, are asked in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet - not in others, but in God. The film, one of the greatest films ever made about religious faith, ends impossibly, provocatively.

Best Comedy

The Battle of the Century (1927 short)

Best in Show (2000)

Elmer, the Great (1933)

It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947)

Klaus (2019)

One Hour with You (1932)

The Princess and the Pirate (1944)

Road to Utopia (1945)

Soul (2020)

Three Little Girls in Blue (1946)

Now I typically give this category to the film that elicits the most belly laughs from me. None of these comedies did that for me this year. So I went with Ernst Lubitsch’s One Hour with You - starring Lubitsch regular Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald. It is what some folks might call a sophisticated comedy. But if you read between the lines, this pre-Code romantic comedy was probably one of the raunchiest things I saw all year.

For example:

POLICE OFFICER: Come on, come on. Where do you think you are? What are you doing? What’s going on here? ANDRE BERTIER: The French Revolution! [resumes kissing Colette] POLICE OFFICER: Hey, you can’t make love in public. ANDRE BERTIER: I can make love anywhere! POLICE OFFICER: No, you can’t! COLETTE BERTIER: Oh, but officer, he can! ANDRE BERTIER (joyously): Darling!

Otherwise, runners-up included It Happened on Fifth Avenue and Best in Show.

Best Musical

Blue Hawaii (1961)

Flower Drum Song (1961)

Hamilton (2020)

The Magic Flute (1975, Sweden)

My Dream Is Yours (1949)

New Orleans (1947)

New York, New York (1977)

One Hour with You

The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947)

Three Little Girls in Blue (1946)

You know, if Hamilton was an original musical and not a filmed version of the original Broadway run, it would certainly threaten in this category. Instead, it rounds things out. Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York - as a deconstruction of the mid-century MGM musical - wins out not only its strong soundtrack, but glossy aesthetic that one would not associate with Scorsese. Runners-up are Flower Drum Song (the last movie with at least a majority Asian-American cast until The Joy Luck Club thirty years later and Crazy Rich Asians after that) and Bergman’s adaptation of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute.

Best Animated Feature

I Lost My Body (2019, France)

Klaus (2019)

The Last Unicorn (1982)

Mad Monster Party? (1967)

Marona’s Fantastic Tale (2019, France)

Melody Time (1948)

Saludos Amigos (1942)

Soul

Weathering with You (2019, Japan)

Wolfwalkers (2020)

Perhaps the least known animated feature of these nominees takes the prize. Anca Damian’s Marona’s Fantastic Tale is gorgeously animated, attempting to tell its story through the point of view of its small canine protagonist. The film appears as a dog might understand the confusing mess that is humanity. Close behind is Cartoon Saloon’s Wolfwalkers and Pixar’s Soul.

Best Documentary

Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (1963)

Diego Maradona (2019, United Kingdom)

Elvis: That’s the Way It Is (1970)

The Eyes of Orson Welles (2018)

The Great Buster: A Celebration (2018)

I Am Not Your Negro (2016)

I Am Somebody (1970 short)

The River (1938 short)

The T.A.M.I. Show (1964)

Tokyo Olympiad (1965, Japan)

This was the best year for documentaries in a year’s Movie Odyssey for a long, long while. As a part of the tradition of Olympic films, Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad is a chronicle of the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The film resembled nothing like the Olympic documentaries before it - choosing not to concentrate on just gold medalists and reportage, but a story of Japan’s reintroduction to the Western world and the pains of the many also-rans in any Olympics. I also considered Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (a JFK/RFK real-time documentary on the racial integration of the University of Alabama system), Elvis: That’s the Way It Is, The River (a New Deal-funded documentary short about the importance of the Mississippi River - narrated in free verse!), and The T.A.M.I. Show as potential winners, but nothing could eclipse Ichikawa’s monumental effort.

Best Non-English Language Film

The Cave of the Yellow Dog (2005), Mongolia

Emitaï (1971), Senegal

Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959), India

Olivia (1951), France

Ordet, Denmark

Parasite, South Korea

Persona, Sweden

The Shop on Main Street, Czechoslovakia

Sleepwalking Land (2008), Mozambique

Tokyo Olympiad, Japan

My god, this is always a stacked category. So why do I even bother? Because non-English language films - though they shouldn’t be ghettoized and considered a specialty - are nevertheless ghettoized and considered a specialty in America. This sort of category also gives some attention to a few films that don’t make much of an impression in other categories (namely the wondrous Sleepwalking Land and stunning The Cave of the Yellow Dog). But it is Ordet the reigns supreme here, edging out The Shop on Main Street, Parasite, and Kaagaz Ke Phool for this prize.

Best Silent Film

The Battle of the Century

Body and Soul (1925)

Bumping into Broadway (1919 short)

The Dragon Painter (1919)

I Do (1921 short)

Next Aisle Over (1919 short)

Ramona (1928)

The Scar of Shame (1927)

Shoes (1916)

Young Mr. Jazz (1919 short)

Lois Weber was as instrumental to shaping early American cinema as D.W. Griffith or Cecil B. DeMille. And in Shoes, she brings her sense of social righteousness and cinematic innovation to the fore. It is one of her best feature films, and its release came at the height of America’s Progressive Era - a time of greater awareness of industrialization and unregulated capitalism’s ill effects. Distant runners-up are new National Film Registry inductee The Battle of the Century (a Laurel and Hardy film with one of the best pie fights you will see) and Body and Soul (Paul Robeson’s theatrical debut).

Personal Favorite Film

The African Queen

The Cave of the Yellow Dog

The Haunting

A Letter to Three Wives

Marona’s Fantastic Tale

McFarland, USA (2015)

Murder Most Foul (1964)

Stars in My Crown (1950)

Three Little Girls in Blue

The Trial

An understated but nevertheless eloquent screenplay, light humor, and careful attention to all three of its lead actresses roles define A Letter to Three Wives. It is one of the best exercises of empathy I saw all year, amid its tremulous and anxious narrative backdrop. We like to deride post-WWII American film as depicting an idyllic suburbia that never existed... but not here. Byambasuren Davaa’s The Cave of the Yellow Dog captured my heart, too. The film, from Mongolia, was one of the gentlest movies I’ve had the pleasure to see in the longest time. McFarland, USA revived memories in me of high school cross country days; Murder Most Foul was a Ms. Marple whodunit that cements Margaret Rutherford as one of my favorite actresses; the homespun Stars in My Crown is Americana at its finest.

Best Director

Ingmar Bergman, Persona (1961, Sweden)

Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ordet

Guru Dutt, Kaagaz Ke Phool

John Huston, The African Queen

Kon Ichikawa, Tokyo Oympiad

Sergio Leone, Once Upon a Time in America

Joseph L. Mankiewicz, A Letter to Three Wives

Leontine Sagan, Mädchen in Uniform

Ousmane Sembène, Emitaï

Orson Welles, The Trial

Dreyer is in command of the film’s mise en scene from the beginning - culminating in breathtaking scene set-ups for conversations spoken in hushed tones. The style is never oppressive, never showy, and just right for a deeply introspective movie of tried and troubled faith.

Best Acting Ensemble

Edge of the City (1957)

Gosford Park (2001)

The Irishman

A Letter to Three Wives

Little Women (2019)

Marriage Story (2019)

Once Upon a Time in America

Ordet

Parasite

Stars in My Crown

Subtract any one actor from Parasite and the film cannot work as well as it does. Perhaps Song Kang-ho has the best performance in the movie, but that isn’t possible without his fellow cast members putting out the incredible turns that they offer. Ordet is a close second. Behind by a country mile are Gosford Park, A Letter to Three WIves, and Little Women.

Best Actor

Humphrey Bogart, The African Queen

Maurice Chevalier, One Hour with You

Guru Dutt, Kaagaz Ke Phool

Jozef Kroner, The Shop on Main Street

Alan Ladd, This Gun for Hire (1942)

Joel McCrea, Stars in My Crown

Paul Robeson, Body and Soul

Howard Vernon, Le Silence de la mer (1949, France)

Jon Voight, Deliverance (1972)

Denzel Washington, Malcolm X (1992)

Arguably Denzel’s finest. He inhabits Malcolm X - the bravura, the attitude, the pastor-like (and occasionally incendiary) rhetorical devices, the early rage, the standoffishness. It is a magnificent performance. Just behind is Bogart and the irresistible Chevalier.

Best Actress

Bibi Andersson, Persona

Edwige Feuillère, Olivia

Helen Hayes, The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931)

Katharine Hepburn, The African Queen

Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story

Ida Kamińska, The Shop on Main Street

Liza Minnelli, New York, New York

Lucia Lynn Moses, The Scar of Shame

Madhabi Mukherjee, The Big City (1963, India)

Waheeda Rehman, Kaagaz Ke Phool

As Ms. Lautmannová, Kamińska - in the autumn of her career - gives us a portrait of devout religiosity, elderly naivete, and otherworldly trust. She and co-star Jozef Kroner play off the other’s performance, one benefitting from the other. It is a delicate, heartbreaking performance. Some ways away are our two Indian actresses, Madhabi Mukherjee and Waheeda Rehman, as well as Bibi Andersson in the dizzying Persona.

Best Supporting Actor

Stephen Boyd, The Man Who Never Was (1956)

Haren Chatterjee, The Big City

James Edwards, The Steel Helmet (1951)

Moses Gunn, Aaron Loves Angela (1975)

Victor McLaglen, The Princess and the Pirate (1944)

Victor Moore, It Happened on Fifth Avenue

Sidney Poitier, Edge of the City

Song Kang-ho, Parasite

Richard Widmark, Kiss of Death (1947)

James Woods, Once Upon a Time in America

For the sixth straight year, Best Supporting Actor - a category almost always filled to the brim with villains - goes to an actor playing a menacing villain. That smirk, that creepy laugh. Holy crap. Widmark knocks it out of the park as the psychopathic Tommy Udo in his debut role. The role, taken by some the wrong way, inspired Tommy Udo frats in American colleges and universities (their central premise: male chauvinism and anti-feminist beliefs). Who else did I consider for a win here? Victor Moore, Sidney Poitier, Song Kang-ho, and James Woods (before he became a twitter conspiracy theorist).

Best Supporting Actress

Tsuru Aoki, The Dragon Painter

Ethel Barrymore, Pinky (1949)

Ruby Dee, Edge of the City

Laura Dern, Marriage Story

Nancy Kwan, Flower Drum Song

Maggie Smith, Gosford Park

Genevieve Tobin, One Hour with You

Emilia Unda, Mädchen in Uniform

Ethel Waters, Pinky

Dorothea Wieck, Mädchen in Uniform

Emilia Unda beats out fellow co-star Dorothea Wieck as the headmistress of the boarding school featured in Mädchen in Uniform. As the strict, uptight disciplinarian, one can see hints behind the facade she displays in front of the girls at the school. Nevertheless, yet another antagonist takes home this award. Also contending are Nancy Kwan and Ethel Waters.

Best Adapted Screenplay

John Huston, James Agee, Peter Viertel, and John Collier, The African Queen

Ladislav Grosman, Ján Kadár, and Elmar Klos, The Shop on Main Street

Steven Zaillian, The Irishman

Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Vera Caspary, A Letter to Three Wives

Christa Winsloe and Friedrich Dammann, Mädchen in Uniform

Leonardo Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi, Enrico Medioli, Franco Arcalli, Franco Ferrini, and Sergio Leone, Once Upon a Time in America

Samson Raphaelson, One Hour with You

Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ordet

Teresa Prata, Sleepwalking Land

Orson Welles, The Trial

And unlike the mistake the Academy made in just giving the Oscar to Mankiewicz back in the day, the award also goes to his co-screenwriter, Vera Caspary.

Best Original Screenplay

Juan Antonio Bardem, Death of a Cyclist (1955, Spain)

Ousmane Sembène, Emitaï

Julian Fellowes, Gosford Park

Jérémy Clapin and Guillaume Laurant, I Lost My Body

Everett Freeman, Vick Knight, and Ben Markson, It Happened on Fifth Avenue

Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won, Parasite

Ingmar Bergman, Persona

Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, Road to Utopia

David Starkman, The Scar of Shame

Delphine Girard, A Sister (2018 short, Belgium)

This is Sembène’s first Movie Odyssey Award, and I think he was probably one of the most overdue. As one of the fathers of African cinema, Sembène’s movies are colored by politics, specifically anti-colonialism, racism, tribal relations, and the destruction of traditional Senegalese life. His biting work to Emitaï is an excoriating piece, and essential to anyone seriously wanting to learn more about movies. No real challengers, in my mind, but the next ones up would have been Bergman and Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won.

Best Cinematography

David Schoenauer, The Cave of the Yellow Dog

Michel Remaudeau, Emitaï

Davis Boulton, The Haunting

Rodrigo Prieto, The Irishman

V.K. Murthy, Kaagaz Ke Phool

Norbert Brodine, Kiss of Death

László Kovács, New York, New York

Tonino Delli Colli, Once Upon a Time in America

Kazuo Miyagawa, Shigeo Murata, Shigeichi Nagano, Kenji Nakamura, and Tadashi Tanaka, Tokyo Olympiad

Edmond Richard, The Trial

The Trial unfolds and is shot as if it was a nightmare, albeit a nightmare without any dreamlike elements. With Dutch angles and unconventional use of focus, it is a remarkable film to look at. Having the soon-to-be Orsay Museum as an interior certainly helps. The Cave of the Yellow Dog, The Haunting, Kaagaz Ke Phool, Once Upon a Time in America, and even Tokyo Olympiad would have been worthy winners too.

Best Film Editing

Don Deacon, Born Free (1966)

De Nosworthy and Nicholas T. Proferes, Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment

Tom Priestly, Deliverance

Ernest Waller, The Haunting

Barry Alexander Brown, Malcolm X

Nino Baragli, Once Upon a Time in America

Yang Jin-mo, Parasite

Ulla Ryghe, Persona

Tatsuji Nakashizu, Tokyo Olympiad

Yvonne Martin and Frederic Muller, The Trial

Best Adaptation or Musical Score

S.D. Burman, Kaagaz Ke Phool

José Feliciano and Janna Merlyn Feliciano, Aaron Loves Angela

Nat W. Finston, Woody Herman, Louis Alter, and Edgar De Lange, New Orleans

W. Franke Harling, Oscar Straus, Rudolph G. Kopp, and John Leipold, One Hour with You

Maury Laws and Jules Bass, Mad Monster Party?

Joseph J. Lilley, Don Robertson, Hal Blair, George David Weiss, Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, Sid Tepper, and Roy C. Bennett, Blue Hawaii

Alfred Newman, Flower Drum Song

Edward H. Plumb, Paul J. Smith, and Charles Wolcott, Saludos Amigos

David Raksin, George Gershwin, and Ira Gershwin, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim

Harry Warren, Ralph Blane, and Howard Jackson, My Dream Is Yours

Oh geez what a line-up. But this category favors original musicals above all. And though some might hesitate to call it a musical, Kaagaz Ke Phool’s soundtrack - in its melding of dramatics and music - is as cinematic as they come. As opposed to the let’s-just-put-a-song-here-to-kill-free time attitude of some of these musicals, Kaagaz Ke Phool uses its songs purposefully. In other words, with feeling. Alfred Newman’s adaptation of Flower Drum Song was probably up next.

Best Original Score

John Barry, Born Free

Elmer Bernstein, The Comancheros (1961)

Akira Ifukube, Destroy All Monsters (1968, Japan)

Zdeněk Liška, The Shop on Main Street

Toshiro Mayuzumi, Tokyo Olympiad

Ennio Morricone, Once Upon a Time in America

Alfred Newman, The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)

Leonard Rosenman, Edge of the City

Virgil Thomson, The River

John Williams, Empire of the Sun (1987)

This is not a sympathy prize for the recently-departed Italian composer. The key cue is the second one featured, "Deborah's Theme" and, when you listen to it, I think it tells you all you need to know about this movie. It's deeply expressive. And in the movie, it's allowed to be prominent. I've seen people say the late Morricone considered this his best score, but I can't find any official word of that anywhere. It is tremendous work, with Bernstein, Newman, and Thomson just behind.

Best Original Song

“Angela”, music and lyrics by José Feliciano and Janna Merlyn Feliciano, Aaron Loves Angela

“Can’t Help Falling in Love”, music and lyrics by Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore, and George David Weiss, Blue Hawaii (1961)

“Dekhi Zamaane Ki Yaari / Bichhde Sabhi Baari Baari”, music by S.D. Burman, lyrics by Kaifi Azmi, Kaagaz Ke Phool

“(Do You Know What It Means to Miss) New Orleans”, music by Louis Alter, lyrics by Edgar De Lange, New Orleans

“Farewell to Storyville", music by Louis Alter, lyrics by Edgar De Lange, New Orleans

“Happy Endings", music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, New York, New York

“Here They Come (From All Over the World)", music and lyrics by P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri, The T.A.M.I. Show

“Is There Still Anything That Love Can Do?", music and lyrics by Yôjirô Noda, Weathering with You

“Theme from New York, New York”, music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, New York, New York

“Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam”, music and lyrics by S.D. Burman, Kaagaz Ke Phool

Thank you to all of those who participated in the 2020 Movie Odyssey Award for Best Original Song!

Best Costume Design

Uncredited, The Duke Is Tops (1938)

Irene Sharaff, Flower Drum Song

Jenny Beavan, Gosford Park

Jacqueline Durran, Little Women

Henry Noremark and Karin Erskine, The Magic Flute

Ruth E. Carter, Malcolm X

Marcelles Desvignes and Mireille Leydet, Olivia

Gabriella Pescucci, Once Upon a Time in America

Travis Banton, One Hour with You

Bonnie Cashin, Three Little Girls in Blue

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Daniel C. Striepeke, John Chambers, Verne Langdon, Jack Barron, Mary Babcock, and Jan Van Uchelen, Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)

Sallie Jaye and Jan Archibald, Gosford Park

Judy Chin and Fríða Aradóttir. Little Women

Uncredited, Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (1972)

Uncredited, The Magic Flute

Marietta Carter-Narcisse and John James, Malcolm X

Michael Westmore, Christina Smith, Mary Keats, June Miggins, and Sydney Guilaroff, New York, New York

Carmen Brel, Simone Knapp, Jean Lalaurette, and Maguy Vernadet, Olivia

Ben Nye, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim

Ben Nye, Three Little Girls in Blue

Best Production Design

Norman Reynolds and Harry Cordwell, Empire of the Sun

Alexander Golitzen, Joseph C. Wright, and Howard Bristol, Flower Drum Song

Stephen Altman and Anna Pinnock, Gosford Park

Elliot Scott and John Jarvis, The Haunting

Bob Shaw and Regina Graves, The Irishman

M.R. Achrekar, Kaagaz Ke Phool

Henny Noremark, Anna-Lena Hansen, and Emilio Moliner, The Magic Flute

Harry Kemm, Robert De Vestel, and Ruby R. Levitt, New York, New York

Dennis Gassner and Lee Sandales, 1917 (2019)

Carlo Simi, Once Upon a Time in America

The production design, or the haunted house, was a character. Nothing else in this category could compare.

Achievement in Visual Effects (all are winners because it would be unfair to compare the visuals of 1917 against When Worlds Collide)

Babe: Pig in the City (1998)

Destroy All Monsters

The Irishman

1917

Red Dawn (1984)

Plymouth Adventure (1952)

War of the Worlds (2005)

When Worlds Collide (1951)

Worst Picture

Age 13 (1955 short)

Fireman, Save My Child! (1932)

Frankie and Johnny (1966)

The Greatest Story Ever Told

Red Dawn

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Fuck Fallen Kingdom.

Honorary Awards:

Colored Players Film Corporation, for its thematically courageous race films, tackling issues neglected by Hollywood

Harold Michelson, for his contributions as an illustrator and storyboard artist (posthumous)

Lillian Michelson, for her dedication as a film researcher and archivist

Tadahito Mochinaga, for achievements in stop-motion animation with Rankin/Bass

Floyd Norman, for his pioneering career in cinematic animation

FILMS WITH MULTIPLE NOMINATIONS (excluding Worst Picture... 57)

Ten: Once Upon a Time in America Nine: Kaagaz Ke Phool Seven: New York, New York; One Hour with You Six: The African Queen; Gosford Park; The Irishman; Parasite; The Shop on Main Street; The Trial Five: Flower Drum Song; The Haunting; A Letter to Three Wives; Mädchen in Uniform; Ordet; Persona; Three Little Girls in Blue; Tokyo Olympiad Four: Edge of the City; Emitaï; The Magic Flute; Malcolm X; New Orleans; Olivia Three: Aaron Loves Angela; Blue Hawaii; The Cave of the Yellow Dog; It Happened on Fifth Avenue; Marriage Story; The Scar of Shame; The Shocking Miss Pilgrim; Stars in My Crown Two: The Battle of the Century; The Big City; Body and Soul; Born Free; Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment; Deliverance; Destroy All Monsters; The Dragon Painter; The Greatest Story Ever Told; I Lost My Body; Kiss of Death; Klaus; Mad Monster Party?; Marona’s Fantastic Tale; My Dream is Yours; 1917; Pinky; The Princess and the Pirate; The River; Road to Utopia; Saludos Amigos; Sleepwalking Land; Soul; The T.A.M.I. Show; Weathering with You

WINNERS (excluding honorary awards and Worst Picture; 28) 3 wins: A Letter to Three Wives; Ordet 2 wins: The Haunting; Mädchen in Uniform; Once Upon a Time in America; Parasite; The Shop on Main Street; The Trial 1 win: The African Queen; Babe: Pig in the City; Blue Hawaii; Destroy All Monsters; Emitaï; Gosford Park; The Irishman; Kaagaz Ke Phool; Kiss of Death; Malcolm X; Marona’s Fantastic Tale; New York, New York; 1917; One Hour with You; Red Dawn; Persona; Plymouth Adventure; The Shocking Miss Pilgrim; Shoes; Tokyo Olympiad; War of the Worlds; When Worlds Collide

92 films were nominated in 26 categories.

#2020 Movie Odyssey Awards #My Movie Odyssey

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solacekames · 5 years

Photo

What Caused The Mass Panic At Newark Airport? Racism.

Buzzfeed - Amber Jamieson - Posted on September 6, 2019, at 4:29 p.m. ET

When an Alaska Airlines employee yelled "evacuate" at a major New York–area airport on Labor Day, one of the busiest travel days of the year, it sent 200 panicked people fleeing amid fears of a mass shooting attack.

Dozens of Port Authority police responded to Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey on Monday night around 8.30 p.m. after the female airline employee yelled for people to evacuate before setting off an emergency alarm. Initial reports said she believed two male passengers were acting suspiciously, and when she approached them they started running.

But the two Chinese-born men at the center of the incident told BuzzFeed News it all began as a case of racial profiling. In their first media interview, the men said they did not know each other, did not run away, and that it was the airline employee who had been acting erratically.

"It was a very shocking experience," said Han Han Xue.

Xue, 29, had spent the holiday weekend visiting friends in New York City and was waiting at Gate 30 to board his delayed Alaska Airlines flight home to San Francisco. As he stood "minding [his] own business," he said the Alaska Airlines employee in uniform walked into him from behind, pushing past. He brushed it off but moments later she returned, circling around where he was standing.

She then approached Chunyi Luo, a 20-year-old student standing near him. "Are you scared? Are you nervous?" Luo said she asked him.

Luo, who moved from Shanghai two years ago to study finance at a San Francisco college, said he told her he was feeling nervous because the flight was late. He said she told him that flights in the US were often delayed, but she stood "too close" to him so he stepped a few feet away.

Then she began asking Xue questions. She asked if he knew Luo (the two were strangers) and what his itinerary was. She then asked, "Why are you acting suspiciously?"

Xue said he struggled to know how to respond as the questions from the employee became more bizarre. "How much are they paying you?" he said she asked him, not clarifying who "they" were. "Did they give you a visa? Did they give your family a visa? Do you make a lot of money? Do you work on Wall Street? Are you on an American visa?" Xue said she asked him.

Born in China, Xue grew up in Canada, where he is a citizen, and works as a product designer at Lyft in California.

Luo said he could hear the woman asking Xue why he was acting suspiciously and heard her say the word "Asian."

Xue said at this point he felt like he was being racially targeted and harassed, so he walked about 6 feet away to join the passengers boarding the flight, hoping she'd bother someone else.

But she followed him, saying, "I'm onto you guys. The cops are already called."

"I couldn’t believe this was happening," said Xue.

He then watched the employee walk into the jet bridge at Gate 30, before emerging and starting to speak with gate agents. A gate agent then announced that boarding would be paused as there was an issue. Immediately afterward, the Alaska Airlines employee suddenly yelled, "Evacuate, evacuate!" and pressed an emergency alarm, said Xue.

"The moment it happened is really hard to describe," he said. "Everybody started running. It was the most insane scene I've ever been in or ever seen."

He said hundreds of people were tripping over each other, crying and screaming as they tried to flee. One man screamed at his female partner to drop her luggage so they could run faster. Xue ran with the crowd to another gate and escaped onto the tarmac.

Video posted on social media shows the chaos.

Michael Wolfmuller, 38, was walking toward the gate to board his flight home to San Francisco when he heard "evacuate" and saw people screaming and running in his direction.

"I heard the word 'shooter' when we were running," said Wolfmuller. He said he even heard glass breaking.

After the recent mass shootings in West Texas, in El Paso, and in Dayton, Ohio, Wolfmuller assumed he was next. "I thought I was going to get shot in the back," he told BuzzFeed News. "With everything that's been happening the last few months, that's pretty much what I was waiting for."

Luo didn't realize he had anything to do with the situation, and also believed there was a shooter. "I thought somebody had a gun," he told BuzzFeed News. "Everyone is running. I just followed them and escaped."

But once police arrived within a minute and started scanning the crowd, Xue said he felt compelled to come forward and identify himself. "I'm like, So, 90% chance I have something to do with this and it's escalated way too fast," said Xue.

"Intellectually, I know I didn't do anything wrong and that I can explain my way out of the situation," said Xue. "But the only time I was really anxious was when the cops first showed up."

He approached an officer and said that an Alaska Airlines employee told him she was calling police. Xue said the officer looked him up and down and then said "OK, we got the guy," into his two-way radio.

He said officers quickly surrounded him, and took him away from the crowd, asking him questions. One asked, "Where is your friend?" and Xue explained that he was traveling alone, but that the airline employee seemed to think he knew the young man standing next to him.

Police found Luo in the crowd and also started questioning him. Both Luo and Xue said police were calm and courteous to them. "Why do you think she thought you were suspicious?" asked one officer.

Xue replied that he didn't know "other than the fact we are both East Asian."

At one point, the Alaska Airlines employee came out of the jetway bridge and looked down below, where both men were speaking to police. "We got them motherfuckers,�� she yelled, according to Xue.

Wolfmuller, who was busy helping a mother find her daughters on the tarmac, said he saw the employee return. "I heard the F-word and some screaming directed definitely at them," he said.

Once it was clear no one was in immediate danger and it seemed to be a misunderstanding, police let Luo and Xue go. All affected passengers had to be rescreened through security.

After several more hours waiting for their flight to San Francisco to take off, it was canceled and rescheduled for the following day, with passengers put up in a nearby hotel. Xue and Luo met for the first time at the hotel and shared their stories with each other and other passengers (the group even took a photo together).

An Alaska Airlines spokesperson told BuzzFeed News in an emailed statement they were investigating what had happened. "We understand the Newark issue was alarming and distressing for our guests and other flyers, and for that we are deeply sorry," said Oriana Branon. "We are conducting a thorough investigation of the incident and gathering witness statements to understand what exactly took place and why this happened."

No one from Alaska Airlines directly contacted Luo or Xue until after BuzzFeed News reached out to the airline on Thursday. Within hours, the airline emailed Xue. "I just found out who you are today," wrote the director of customer advocacy, which was seen by BuzzFeed News. "Mainly I wanted to check in with you and see what I can [do] to help." (Xue noted that he had left his name and contact information with an Alaska Airlines manager at the gate after the incident when he asked for an explanation.)

Alaska Airlines did not answer any questions about the employee who caused the commotion, saying it does not comment on personnel. CBS 2 reported that a source told them the woman has bipolar disorder and had missed her medication.

Lenis Rodrigues from Port Authority said the employee was questioned and released by Port Authority police, but would not comment on health issues. The Union County Prosecutor's Office said their office is aware of the incident and is in touch with authorities but that no decision had been made yet if any charges will be filed.

Xue said any health problems do not excuse the racism he experienced. "If she does have issues, it's on Alaska to make sure she's not placed in a position where she is responsible for the safety of others," he said.

He noted that East Asians aren't usually profiled in shooting or terror situations, but said he feared that "maybe there is a shift in Trump's America and all this [Chinese] trade war situation."

For both Xue and Luo, the situation was a horrible and stressful incident, compounded by Alaska Airlines refusing to even explain to them what had happened as media reports spread saying they'd been acting suspiciously and had run away.

"I'm so angry about that," said Luo. "I'm just so scared... it's horrible, it's awful."

"It's very uncharacteristic of me to go public like this about anything and it's causing me anxiety," said Xue.

But Xue's frustration at Alaska Airlines made him feel like he had no option. "At this point for all I know she still works at Alaska in the same position, and that alone is worrying," he said. "I don't want to perpetuate this idea that you can just throw this under the rug and that’s it."

#newark #antiasian racism

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thesinglesjukebox · 5 years

Video

youtube

JAMILA WOODS - BALDWIN

[8.20]

Her legacy is secure on our sidebar, but she clearly has more lofty ambitions...

Alfred Soto: Absorbing James Baldwin's incantatory power into musical history that encompasses soul horns and a unforced communitarian spirit, Jamila Woods remains skeptical of his legacy anyway. She understands how an influence is a menace too. [8]

Nellie Gayle: How do you live a legacy, honor a history, that's equally heartbreaking and triumphant? Jamila Woods brings brightness and joy to her reflections on African American history in the United States, without ignoring the trauma implicit in its story. "Your crown has been bought and paid for. All you have to do is put in on your head" the video quotes from Baldwin. Much like the author she named the track after, Woods will not gloss over the daily suffering and indignities of white supremacy in the US. But also like Baldwin, she's an optimist who derives happiness and hardwon joy from a history of resistance. So long as there is a vibrant culture and community whose stories deserve to be celebrated (not just told), Woods will literally sing its praises with melodies reminiscent of Bill Withers - upbeat, sunny, and heartfelt. Another Baldwin quote for Woods, one that deserves to be framed & hung up on bedroom walls in times like these: "To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter, so I'm forced to be an optimist. I'm forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive." [9]

Nortey Dowuona: A warm, dreamlike roll of piano chords swirl with the wind as a loping bass limps alongside dribbling drums as warm bursts of horns drift past Jamila, who gently stirs the cauldron, which bubbles warmly as the kids gather around in cautious excitement. [9]

Kylo Nocom: "BALDWIN" is a perfect explanation of how the idea of (argh!) optimistic and loving resistance can (often justifiably) feel like a pointless endeavour, especially when applied to the struggles of black Americans. Poetic descriptions of gentrification, police brutality, and non-black inaction are painfully outlined, betraying a central exhaustion that lies in Jamila's doubts of her friends' and icons' messages of hope. Jamila's croon also reads as tired, perhaps unintentionally, but with the help of some tasteful vocal accompaniment the sincerity beneath her uneasiness is allowed to flourish. Despite the underlying hesitance, "BALDWIN" is ultimately inspired by a real desire to see love as a means towards building community. As for Nico Segal, it seems he was just invited to aim at my weakness towards percussive horn blasts, punctuating the lines that seem to resonate the most powerfully: "we don't go out, can't wish us away." [9]

Joshua Lu: Utterly sublime and warm, like the aural equivalent of a hazy summertime sunset, which is startling for a song with this subject matter. "BALDWIN" touches on the different ways racism manifests, bringing up not just images of black fathers dead on the streets and white women clutching their purses, but also referencing the "casual violence" in white speech and white silence. It's subtly damning, and Jamila sounds too weary to accept the solution she's been offered, to extend love to the people who will never reciprocate it. The song ends uncertainly, hanging on a cryptic line and an unsatisfying melody, as if daring the listener to provide their own resolution. [8]

Joshua Copperman: "BALDWIN" struggles with its namesake's theory that "you must accept them with love" - 'them' referring to white people - "for these innocent people have no other hope." How is love even possible, even in Woods' definition of love, with the aggressions both macro (police brutality) and micro (purse-clutching) addressed in the lyrics? Obviously, there aren't easy answers, but Woods' educated guess on surviving is not just resilience, but community. That chorus starts with "all my friends" for a reason. It's not quite as anarchic as "You can tell your deity I'm alright/Wake up in the bed, call me Jesus Christ," but it's the same eventual conclusion. Instead of defying religion, Woods defies the expectation of being respectable. That's the interesting thing about this beat too, from Slot-A, mixing more traditional R&B instrumentation like Rhodes piano and canned synth pads with trap snares and horn stabs. He takes advantage of Woods' thin voice, not only contrasting it with those heavier textures but also giving it space to breathe. Another hook of this song - there are several - is "You don't know a thing about our story/you tell it wrong all the time," suggesting that if love alone won't overcome, telling your own tale will be more than sufficient. [9]

Will Adams: So many (usually white) musicians handle the topic of racism as deftly as if it were a hot potato slathered in grease. Jamila Woods cuts to the core in a single verse, addressing police brutality, gentrification and purse-clutching casual racism. The arc of the song is balancing that anger with weariness of those who preach civility in the face of hate. If that all sounds a bit too down, Nico Segal's punctuation in the form of bright horn stabs are there to keep the message alive and resonant. [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Not the most transcendent piece on LEGACY! LEGACY! (see "BASQUIAT"), but a close competitor. The jazzy production sets the groove well, and the stabs of Nico Segal's horns and Gospel-adjacent choirs fill the space beautifully. But it's Jamila herself who takes "Baldwin" from something pleasant to something glorious. She bridges romance, protest, and memory like no one else can, melding them with her sweet, pointed voice into the album's best demonstration of its thesis. [9]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: "BALDWIN" is a song that finds Jamila Woods detailing the outright, inescapable racism that occurs against Blacks every day. In referencing James Baldwin, she makes clear how such fear and hatred-fueled actions have persisted to the present day. But what makes this so fascinating a song is that Woods muddies the waters; she spends a bit of time wrestling with the positivity that Baldwin espoused throughout his lifetime, finding herself conflicted by the effectiveness of such praxis. In a way, listening to this feels like a legitimate Sermon on the Mount moment, where "lov[ing] your enemy and pray[ing] for those who persecute you" comes as a shocking command instead of a spoonfed Sunday School lesson. Miraculously, "BALDWIN" doesn't end up feeling knotty and tense, but overwhelmingly triumphant. You can sense it in the gospel choir and Nico Segal's horns, but it's Woods's own silk-smooth vocals and circuitous melodies that announce her impossible serenity. Has she found truth in such ostensible cognitive dissonance, or is she too elated to be bothered by this disagreement? That internal struggle finds no conclusion here, but Woods transcends it all by being an inspiration herself. She embodies something that Baldwin had written to his nephew in 1962--a specific instruction that feels ever necessary today: "You don't be afraid." [7]

Iris Xie: With such a clear, gentle series of asks here, you would have to have an adherence to bigotry, or at least avoiding the discomfort of examining your own internalized anti-Black biases, in order to avoid considering what Woods is saying here. I think about this a lot as a queer Asian American, what my responsibility is to the project of helping not contribute and help demolish the project of anti-Blackness as enacted by white supremacist institutions and those who are complicit and facilitate them, especially when I see the amount of pain in both the news and what my friends experience. The line of "All my friends / Been readin' the books / readin' the books you ain't read" cuts deep for me especially, because I have an Bachelor's degree in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, which is an enormous amount of privilege in itself to receive and is due to countless activist histories that made that possible. It also made me think of the sheer amount of books about queer Black feminism that I genuinely feel I've barely scratched the surface of understanding, but am always in awe of the brilliance exuding forth. All of it is already written here for anyone to read, with new scholarship and articles and media produced all the time to help digest and made accessible for the rest of us. The loveliness of this song is that in its quiet neo-soul tempos, with the subtle snares, synths, and horns, results in a vibe she is secure in itself and asks the listener to move towards Woods. Black activists have put together the work and articulated these for decades, for any of us to read. The least we can do is listen and pay attention, as a complete bare minimum. [7]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

#Jamila Woods #soul #music #music review #writing

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kublog83 · 3 years

Text

The Color Of Fear

The Color Of Fear Fact Sheet

Produced by: Stir Fry Productions 470 3rd St. Oakland, CA 94607 (800.370.STIR)

Directed by: Lee Mun Wah

VHS & DVD; TRT: 90 minutes

“The Color of Fear” is a film about the pain and anguish that racism has caused in the lives of 8 North American men of Asian, European, Latino, and African descent. Out of their confrontations and struggles to understand and trust each other emerges an emotional and insightful portrayal into the type of dialogue MOST of US fear, but hope. The Color of Fear. During the filming, he surprised me by his moving stories and insights. He was an important contrast to Victor and, to me, equally.

Winner of the National Educational Media Award Golden Apple.

The Color of Fear Part One is an insightful, groundbreaking film about the state of race relations in America as seen through the eyes of eight North American men of Asian, European, Latino and African descent. Alice madness returns free online. In a series of intelligent, emotional and dramatic confrontations the men reveal the pain and scars that racism has caused them.

Characters in the Film:

Roberto (Mexican American)

Lee Mun Wah (Facilitator & Chinese)

David Christensen (Euro American)

Yutaka (Japanese American)

Hugh (Latino American)

David Lee (Chinese American)

Gordon (Euro American)

Victor (African American)

Loren (African American)

Hello brother tamil full movie free. download full. “The Color of Fear” is a film about the pain and anguish that racism has caused in the lives of 8 North American men of Asian, European, Latino, and African descent. Out of their confrontations and struggles to understand and trust each other emerges an emotional and insightful portrayal into the type of dialogue MOST of US fear, but hope will happen sometime in out lifetime.

This film was the first in a 3 part series that engages the issues of racism, intercultural competence, and intercultural communication in a real and intense environment.

Study Guide:

Take a moment to think about your own experience with race and ethnicity. What has it been like to be your ethnicity? What are the challenges? What are the positives?

Think about each of the responses from each of the men in the film. How might they compare with your own life story in regards to race? If you cannot make any comparisons, howcome?

Why do you think Lee Mun Wah, as the facilitator, did not “talk” very much or stop any of the conversations?

If you are male, how does it make you feel to see grown men cry? How does it make you feel to see grown men hold hands and embrace? Is that something you are accustomed to seeing? Break your answer down.

If you are a woman, where do you find yourself within the film given that these are all men? Does it bother you that some of the men cry? Explain what you mean.

Spend some time talking with someone from a different ethnicity and ask them what their experience has been like. Might there be any comparisons with your life? If so, where are they at? If not, howcome?

So what about David Christensen? What do you make of him? Do you feel sorry for him? Explain what you mean. In the film, David C is obviously dealing with deep seeded race issues. Issues that trace all the way back to his childhood. How might your own developmental process been shaped in regards to race and ethnicity? How have you been racialized?

Where do you think we are at as a nation now that president Obama has been elected? Is racism declining? Over? A dead issue? Worse now than it ever was? Discuss this among a variety of different ethnicities to get a well-rounded perspective.

How might class factor into the race issue? Do you think classism is worse than racism today? How so? And, what is your own definition of class? Share that with several friends and see what they come up with too.

What are some realistic solutions you could offer the men if they were standing in front of you today? For your friends? List out a set of racialized problems you think are issues and see what solutions might realistically work.

The Color Of Fear Youtube

Things to take notice of:

The level of detail is mind boggling. If you are a Beatles fan then this book completes the series of five essential books: Recording The Beatles, Beatles Gear, Beatles Anthology, The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, The Complete Beatles Chronicle. But back to this book. Recording the beatles book.

Notice the copyright date. What is the significance of that? Why am I making you watch such an “old” film? How relevant can it be? Right?

What are the major/ minor issues within the film?

What points does each person make? Is it valid? How so?

Where do you find yourself within the film?

How important is ethnic ID in this film?

What are the themes that arise in the film?

Deeper probing Questions to ask / be discussed in class:

What point does Victor have when he confronts David C?

What was so important about Gordon’s direct talk about White privilege to David C? What was that all about?

What was the point of stating their ethnicity?

What did Roberto mean that the “Cure for the pain is in the pain itself?”

What did Loren mean by saying “Walk through some halls with some pride, your gonna scare somebody!”

What was so important about Lee Mun Wah playing the “Devils Advocate” with David C concerning his daughters and getting into college?

David C. stated that he would hire the right person for the job, but how does his past knowledge about minorities and “Coloreds” affect his hiring process?

Does interethnic racism put minorities down while lifting Whites up?

Does everyone have “equal footing” in society today?

How does our own personal ETHOS play a role in this film? Life?

Where are you at in the film? Which character could you be?

Why do you think they announced their ethnic background first?

How much does your past social construction of identity play a part in your own ETHOS, worldview, and stereotypes?

What about internalized racism? What is that all about? Did David Lee have a point?

When have you not intervened in the face of racism?

Connection to the Literature

How does David C represent and connect with what George Lipsitz asserts in his chapter?

What elements of White Supremacy are present in the film as laid out by Herbert Blumer?

How does a sense of group position shape how we see other racial and ethnic groups? What illustrations of that are seen in the film?

How is categorization language (Them, they, us, you people) used at different variances by David C in the film? How does that affect race and ethnicity talks?

Describe how Aguirre & Turner’s concept of colonialism, Puritan values, and the concepts/ issues of cultural and institutional legacy of early colonization connect with both the entire film and David C’s initial posture on racism? How might religion also play a role in racism?

What part does spiritual and theological understanding have as it relates to racism?

Explain what Aguirre & Turner mean by Anglo-Saxon hegemony and the dynamics of ethnicity? How is that seen through the film? Inter-ethnic discrimination? Break that down a bit.

What elements of racism is Victor talking about as he reflects to David C the problems of racism?

What roles does Gordon play in relation to Aguirre & Turner’s chapter on White ethnics?

Last Updated 4/7/2019

The Color Of Fear Lee Mun Wah

Daniel White Hodge PhD Xbmc hub wizard.

The Color Of Fear Movie

CSULA

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gapimnydiaries · 7 years

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Diary Entry #21: White Gays are better Filmmakers: What I learned about inclusivity from being a Gaysian filmmaker

Dear Diary,

“The Less I know the Better” by Tame Impala was playing on Apple Music as a good friend consoled me. I was in a space no larger than a handicapped single-stalled restroom. There was just one tiny single bed, a small TV and what you’d call a closet (but wasn’t really). There weren’t any windows and the only source of light I had was a mood lamp I bought at Ace Hardware™ in a mall called Grand Indonesia in Jakarta. I remembered I was trying to play it cool when, in truth, I was crumbling on the inside.

Earlier in the day, I had a Skype call with television development executives from Los Angeles who initially hired us to write a “diverse and progressive” series. But after a series of drafts, we found out that, like most people in a place of privilege, they weren’t as woke as they thought they were. After whitewashing and slashing the storylines that explored the complexities of being a person of color in America, they wanted us to reduce the women characters to serve the interests of the straight, male protagonist. “It’s a post-racial Millennial world” they explained. To make matters worse, the entire call was filled with attempts to other-ize me, from asking what it’s like to live in a rural village in Singapore to pointing out that my iPhone text-tone -- “ding!” -- was some kind of Asian praying bell.

Afterwards, I really wanted to email them and write: this type of behavior is ignorant and unacceptable. But, considering that I really needed the job and I had a writing partner who told me to let it go because we didn’t want to be rude, I remained silent. The silence of course, was really painful because obviously, this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. In fact, it happens all the time. When people like me speak up about micro-aggressions or feeling left out, the people in power get angry and then I have to take care of their fragile feelings instead of validating my own. I’m always left feeling silenced, powerless and usually attacked for being “oversensitive.” The only thing I could do at the time was to call my friend and be temporarily consoled while listening to Tame Impala (Yes, I should’ve picked a better band for the occasion).

By this time, I had been alone in Indonesia (not Singapore) for 5 months. I was deep in pre-production on a short film called, Pria. During this time, I’d traveled across Java for months and interviewed countless gay Indonesians who either lived or had lived in rural areas. The film ended up being an amalgamation of their experiences told from their perspective, the perspective of the minority. So, within this context, the experience of that not-so-woke-ignorant phone call felt like such a step backwards, especially after being in Indonesia and realizing how ignorance of minority experiences can have such negative consequences. With these LA Execs, I met privileged people who wanted to promote and capitalize on the “global and diverse” world that “we live in right now,” but were so out of touch with the reality of what diversity really means that they ended up, perhaps unknowingly, becoming part of the problem.

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The author directs a scene on the set of Pria

Curious villagers watching the playback monitor during filming

The author and crew filming a scene in the morning

The author and producers stroll through the village “set”

◆◆◆

Out of all my intersectional identities, my “Asian-American-ness” has always been the hardest to fully embrace. I was born in Indonesia and moved to the US in elementary school. In Indonesia, I’m a minority because I don’t look Indonesian and I’m not Muslim. I’m mostly ethnically Chinese but none of my family members know any Chinese or anything about China. When I returned to Indonesia to do Pria, the locals there thought that I was from anywhere BUT Indonesia. When I came to the US for the first time, people were confused AF. They’d mock my accent and would always yell out “Ni Hau!” I’d try to correct them and tell them that I’m not Chinese, but that only confused the shit out of them. They would counter with the only two other Asian countries they’d heard of: Japan and Thailand (I mean really, if you wanna mock someone, get educated, people). There were definitely other FOB children at school, but most, if not all of them, were actually Chinese or Korean so they’d form their own communities out of their shared culture and language. Plus, the word FOB never felt like it applied to me; I came here on a plane, not a boat.

◆◆◆

(Far Right) The author with his siblings at a mall in 1996

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While I had such a confusing time trying to fit within the definition of Asian American, Gay was something that was always clear. That’s not to say that I didn’t have a hard time; like most queers, it was a process. But I always knew that I was gay and there was no question where I fit within that definition. So, when I started making “professional” short, queer films in 2011, I felt like I finally found a community that embraced me for me, for my work, and not the way I looked, or sounded, or how I presented myself. The LGBTQ film community has always supported me. Since I started, my shorts have been accepted to most LGBTQ film festivals domestically and internationally. But a troubling pattern began to emerge as I attended these festivals year after year. The majority of the films I saw were not diverse and mostly affirmed and celebrated the str8 white male ideal. There was always a lack of diversity, not only in the films, but also the filmmakers and organizers. I would always be one of the few (if not the only) minority filmmakers on the Q & A stage.

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The author attends a photocall at Frameline39: San Francisco LGBT Film Festival in 2015

The author at the Q&A for his short film, “Pipe Dream” at the Castro Theater, San Francisco (June 2015)

◆◆◆

This didn’t bother me at first, but after continually facing micro-aggressions at these LGBTQ festivals, in clubs, apps, and other Queer spaces, it started to really impact the way I saw myself and how I fit within the community. It already sucked enough having to deal with ignorant str8 people, but it’s much more hurtful when it comes from the community that you thought you were a part of. A community that promotes itself as being inclusive, a community that knows what invalidation feels like, and a community of film festivals run by, well, mostly people who identify as LGBTQ.

When I arrived at the centerpiece party for the 2017 Frameline: San Francisco LGBT Film Festival, the majority of the attendees were Gay White Men. I felt like I had just stumbled into an exclusive Mean Girls clique. It honestly felt like I was in a Gay club trying to scan for anyone with an interest in talking to an Asian. The way that everyone looked at me, just looking right through me, made me feel like I didn’t exist. When I told them about my short film from Indonesia, I was met with all sorts of assumptions. One sleazy, white producer from New York (who was trying to fuck an Australian actor all night) told me, “I’ve always wanted to go to Indonesia, it’s so exotic!” He then patted me on the back, “It must be so tough for the ladyboys there.” I guess even in a creative, inclusive, “safe” space like a Queer festival party, it’s as hierarchical as it would be in any other social Gay space, with whites taking the top spot. I wanted to think that this was an isolated incident because I’d been to this same exact party twice before and had a fantastic time. But, I slowly remembered, those other two times, I went with my white friends. There were, in fact, other incidents that occurred throughout the week including (but not limited to): being mistaken for another Asian on 3 different occasions and being grabbed in the ass by someone as I was leaving my Q & A (the latter could just be straight up sexual harassment and has nothing to do with race… but, in my experience, just looking like an “Asian Twink” in a Gay space usually gives other men the permission to violate our bodies...plus the Australians and Norwegian there didn’t get their asses grabbed).

◆◆◆

The author attends a photocall for the shorts program, “Worldly Affairs” at Frameline41: San Francisco LGBT Film Festival

The author during the Q&A session for “Pria” at the Castro Theater, San Francisco (June 2017)

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Of course, how can these white people understand wtf is going on with us “ethnic folk” if most of the films in these programs just affirm their str8-white privileged personhood ideal? There’s already a lack of Gaysians in the mainstream media and when we are ~lucky~ enough to make it on screen, we are only reduced to exotic stereotypical objects of desire or sexless, unattractive background players. If these are the only images shoved down everyone’s throat, it’s no wonder we’re always considered an Other…

Because these LGBTQ film festivals promote themselves as an inclusive safe space, this time, I decided to speak up. Surely, they would somehow understand. These organizers would know what it's like to grow up and not see (LGBTQ) characters like themselves on screen, or at least ones who weren’t child molesters, rapists, villains, creepy psychopathic old men or “sissies” serving as the butt of the joke that reduces their personhood to a minstrel show. They would understand what it would feel like to be erased, othered and/or misrepresented.

I sent out a mass email, Bcc-ing every LGBTQ festival that I’d been accepted to this year (and ones I was rejected from). In the email, I detailed how, when attending these Western festivals, I was always seen and treated as “other” because of my race. I told them how much their programming affects how LGBTQ POC are seen and treated within the general community. I tried to explain that by not including films like Pria, films from the other half of the world, in their LGBTQ Film Festivals, they are effectively erasing our stories and shutting us out. If there are minority films, we’re almost always grouped by race or by issue (why do white people only like us when we’re a cause to fight for? Even then, they want us to be a cause with hope). Are we not good enough to be part of the regular gay white programming? In times like these, programmers, the gatekeepers and privileged people in power have the responsibility to really examine what diversity means to them. Honest and complex representations of minorities are important (as well as minorities behind the scenes). This also means being strategic in programming these types of films. Not only do they determine how other people in the majority see and treat us, but they also shape the way we think and feel about ourselves.

The responses to the email were varied. “Seriously. Well-put,” said one LGBTQ festival. The rest refused to consider my point of view and instead resorted to belittling me and accusing me of being bitter for not having gained a spot in their program (like, honey, please. I sent the email to festivals that I DID get into too). But, to be honest, I am fucking bitter. These invalidating responses automatically reminded me of what happened in Indonesia a year before: that Skype call with the executives, and the many other times where I was either whitesplained and/or mansplained.

So yes. I’m absolutely bitter and I’m fucking angry.

How can I not be when I see these LGBTQ programmers complain about Donald Trump or say that they’re promoting diversity when their actions (or inaction) speak otherwise? Diversity isn’t just literally black and white, it’s something more complex; it occupies the gray area in the middle. Many people seem to think that just because you put a handful of Black people on screen (there are OTHER races too, you know?) and showcase minority “issue” films (on Gay refugees, Gays in the Middle-East, etc.), they can solve racism and inequality.

In truth, however, the work is far from being done. It doesn’t matter how many POCs are on screen if we are only reduced to stereotypes or, in the opposite case, neutered to the point where our complex experiences are distilled to white-people-cause-of-the-moment or worse, erased altogether. I just want to see my goddamn experiences represented accurately and truthfully.

I know that the work is hard. We have to dismantle a system of oppression that has been in place for hundreds of years that’s still an ongoing problem not just within the LGBTQ community but society at large. But, still, I expected better from our own community. How can a community that is fighting for equality perpetuate a system that promotes the invalidation of members within their own community?

It’s a system that allows for my bosses in LA to ignorantly make insensitive comments about my race via Skype.

It’s a system that enables a white, friend-of-a-friend at a Thanksgiving party to confidently assume, because of where I met the host, my appearance, and my non-English name, that it was my first Thanksgiving.

It’s a system that excuses gays when they put “No Asians” on their Grindr profiles and justify it as just “preference.”

It’s a system that allows an African American drag queen in New York to call me up on stage and mock my race and question my Americanness, while excusing such behavior as jest.

It’s a system where, when I was 17, a white, visiting professor took me to his home and raped me, assuming that I wanted it because I’m a “submissive Asian Bottom” who should’ve “relaxed more so that it would’ve felt better.”

It’s a system where, if I do speak up against the people in power who are supposedly on my side, I’d be dismissed and made to feel that I was the problem, that I was the one who was being overly sensitive and needed to check my feelings.

But, the thing is, I’ve been checking my feelings. I’ve been checking my damn feelings every day of my life. And you know what? I’m tired. I’m tired of them saying, “I can’t be racist or ignorant, I have black friends...” or “You obviously haven’t seen our program, we have an eye for colored people!” or whatever dumb-fuck excuse they use to deflect from the actual problem and validate their inaction/behavior/ignorance. It’s time for them to check their own damn feelings and realize that for real change to happen, they need to shut the hell up and listen. I’m sure they’re all well-meaning, but in the end, good intentions won’t matter much when the results are tone-deaf and continue to facilitate segregation and inequality.

I think that as we gain more acceptance within the mainstream, those who are now in a place of privilege tend to forget what it felt like to be in the minority. They forget those in the past who helped fight for our rights, they forget other members of their own communities who are still suffering, they forget what it felt like to be degraded for who they truly are, they forget what the real MO of the LGBTQ community is: Equality. There isn’t just one answer that will fix this Racism problem. The work needs to be highly personal and it starts with examining our own selves. It starts with listening to other members of the community without preconceived judgments and really examining the whys and hows of this system (of privilege) operating within our own lives. And look, I really get it. It’s hard to ask yourself why you’re not attracted to Asians, or why you’re still repulsed by femininity, or why this minority still feels left out when you went out of your way to create a safe space for them. We all want to believe that we’re fighting and living for the right things. And I think it’s now time to stop believing and start doing the real work.

As the Tame Impala song came to a close, I stared intently at my Ace Hardware™ Lamp. It was my only source of (literal and somewhat figurative) light, so after being in this dark room holding in my feelings, the warm glow of the light was oddly comforting. I started sobbing and my friend said, “Don’t worry they’re just hypocritical wannabe-liberal white execs… What else can you do?”

“But..,” I responded. “One of them is black.”

With much love, forever and always, Yudho Vanderhof Aditya

Yudho is a recipient of the 2016 Director’s Guild of America Best Asian American Student Director Award. He’s working on a feature film about gaysian Americans, if you’d like to share your experiences with him (which he will repay via coffee or tea at most NYC cafés), contact him: 📧: [email protected] IG: youdough

#gay #gaysian #gay asian #racism #diversity #queer #gaysiandiaries #gapimny

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fayewonglibrary · 4 years

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Hong Kong stars steal show (1999)

by special correspondent Monty DiPietro

* excerpts *

Chinese box-office hit elevates Hong Kong’s cultural image

Perhaps, it should not have been a surprise at all. For years, Japanese have shown a keen interest in Asian languages as, in many ways, the image Japanese had of the rest of Asia continued its ever-quickening evolution - from boring to exotic and from backward to chic. Japan had begun to really look at its neighbours and liked what it saw. If enlightenment has an adversary it is the stereotype. For a long time, Hong Kong was regarded as little more than a cheap place to buy nice things.

Culturally, Hong Kong was widely considered a producer of low-budget kung fu films. But such impressions are now like old story lines, rejected and forgotten. It is difficult to determine exactly when or why the old stereotype died out.

The movie, Chungking Express, certainly helped elevate Hong Kong to the new cultural level of respect that it now enjoys in Japan. With its 1996 release under the Japanese title, Koi Suru Wakusei, or World in Love, the Wong Kar Wai film put a new face on Hong Kong pop culture. These days the film’s singer-actress Faye Wong is on the Japanese hit parade and plays sold-out concerts at the prestigious Budokan.

Tokyo film distribution company Prenom H is so confident of Wong Kar Wai’s appeal in the Japanese market that it pre-bought his most recent release, Happy Together. Retitled Buenos Aires in Japan, this gay love story set in Argentina was a massive silver-screen and video hit.

Meanwhile, the enthusiasm has enveloped other Hong Kong cultural exports. Fruit Chan’s Made in Hong Kong is one of this year’s most anticipated film releases.

In May, Japan’s biggest listings magazine, Pia, ran a seven-page spread that featured photos and biographies of the likes of Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung, Jordan Chan and 11 other new-generation Asian superstars. As far as the youth-driven Japanese consumer market is concerned, Hong Kong has definitely been discovered, and it is very cool. Japan is a country where trends catch on fast, and right now at least, it appears that anything Hong Kong creates a stir. The only losers in the game are those players who have not kept up with the changes in consumer preferences.

“Kung fu movies are basically dead in Japan, ” says film critic Sozo Teruoka. “Nowadays, kung fu movie fans make up a very small section of the market. Instead of patronising a cinema, they prefer to watch a kung fu video.”

Local characters on silver screen attract movie-goers

Even as interest in serious Hong Kong cinema is growing in the Japanese market, there remain some actors so popular as to be exempt from trends. The premier example is Hong Kong’s best-known cultural export - martial arts master, stuntman extraordinaire, and just-plain-loveable Jackie Chan. All of Jackie Chan’s releases are well received in Japan. There is a full-colour magazine to keep more than 3,000 dedicated Japanese members of his international fan club informed of the superstar’s activities. Fans are already awaiting Chan’s new film, Gorgeous, with great anticipation. One reason is that Tony Leung, the handsome star of Happy Together is appearing together with Chan. Although Chan is far and away the bigger draw, there will be more than a few young people buying tickets to see Leung, who is incredibly popular with Japanese audiences. His inclusion in the cast of Gorgeous ensures that the film will have the widest possible appeal in Japan.

A lesson learned from African-American actor Chris Tucker’s welcome appearance in Chan’s Rush Hour, which grossed more than US$100 million at the box office, is that a little local colour can go a long way towards attracting audiences to a new movie. Japanese actresses Takako Tokiwa and Hikari Ishida are co-starring in new Hong Kong films, and their roles will certainly increase interest among Japanese movie-goers.

Another Hong Kong artiste whose popularity in Japan is skyrocketing is Faye Wong. Like Leung, Wong also got much of her initial Japanese exposure from the film Chungking Express. Toshiba EMI reports sales of more than 100,000 units for the Beijing-born singer’s new album, Chang You, which features the hit, Eyes on Me.“ As far as Tokyo radio station J-Wave can recall, Wong is the only Canto-pop singer to have made it onto its playlist. And like her contemporaries in Hong Kong cinema, she owes much of her popularity to a mature, sophisticated image. "I was attending the launch of a record company’s new album a while back, and after this J-Pop girl did her thing, Faye Wong was brought into the room,” recalls Billboard magazine’s Tokyo bureau chief Steve McClure. “She didn’t smile insipidly like all the other female idol-types do. She had real charisma. And that is what makes Faye Wong different and interesting.” Not to mention a great voice and a beautiful face.

Wong got a big break early this year when she was chosen to sing the theme song for Final Fantasy VIII, the latest release in a series that is one of Japan’s most popular role-playing video games. Naturally, the game was hyped on Japanese television, and Faye Wong became a familiar face. A promotional tie-in that places an artiste’s material in a TV commercial results in nation-wide exposure. This is one of the best ways to establish a musical act in Japan.

Foreign chains import CDs to cater to urban customers The Eyes on Me single also benefited from cross-marketing - it was sold in computer game stores as well as record shops. EMI Hong Kong should be doing rather nicely selling copies of Chang You in Japan, but it is not. The reason?

Eyes on Me appears on the made-in-Japan version of the album but not on the Hong Kong import.

The Japanese CD market is uniquely Japanese. There is a funny little thing called the Retail Price Maintenance System that covers sound recordings, books, and newspapers. It enjoys a special exemption from the government’s anti-monopoly act, and ensures that a Japanese-made CD priced at 3,059 (HK$190) in Hokkaido will also sell for the same price in Tokyo and everywhere else in the country.

However, when a Japanese record label licenses a product from an overseas company, it cannot buy exclusive Japanese distribution rights and block all imports because that would violate international trade agreements. So, most Japanese record companies have established divisions to handle parallel importing. Imported CDs are not affected by the retail price-fixing system; they can be sold for at least 30% less than the price tag of a Japanese release. One might guess that the moment imported CDs hit the stores, customers would scoop them up and leave the pricey Japanese versions sitting in the racks. Wrong!

“Japanese like to have things explained to them,” says Toshiba EMI’s Hiroto Hizume, “but imported CDs do not include Japanese-language liner notes or translations of the lyrics.” Another reason Japanese pay a premium for locally-manufactured CDs is that most of Japan’s 7,000 CD shops do not bother to give their customers any choice - they simply do not stock imported versions. In recent years, foreign chains such as Tower Records and Virgin Megastore have broken the protectionist compact by offering imports in major urban centres.

Songs in English appeal to large Japanese following

The Japanese Retail Price Maintenance System is currently being phased out, and should be gone, officially at least, by 2002. But the fact that a domestic CD manufacturing industry survived for so long even when the prices of imports were lower underscores the difficulties foreign companies often have in penetrating the Japanese market. Kelly Chen and Shirley Kwan do not benefit from commercial tie-ins that put their music all over Japanese television and radio. Instead, their CDs languish in the “World” music sections of those stores that do carry imports. And despite the steadily increasing interest in Asian pop culture, the general international section of a CD shop is still the first stop for Japanese music fans searching for new releases from overseas. The only CDs that are placed in the general international section are those which feature English numbers. Hong Kong pop releases share shelf space with Turkish folk songs in the “World” section.

Although she has the voice of an angel, Faye Wong had to render English-language songs before her Japanese fans would listen. Toshiba’s Hizume explains that Japanese consumers are simply more accustomed to hearing English than Cantonese. Wong is expected to record another English track for her next album, which Toshiba EMI says is due out sometime later this year.

An approach that has helped several Asian artistes make their foray into Japan is to sing in Japanese. Maybe, the time has come for another Teresa Teng, the late Taiwanese singer who charmed her way into Japanese hearts during the 1970s. Radio, cable and satellite music video programmes are another avenue for foreign singers and bands to get exposure in Japan, but there is a Catch-22. Artistes will not get on radio or TV unless they are popular, and cannot become popular until they get on radio or TV. Booking a promotional tour is an expensive option unless a record company is underwriting the act. This only happens if it has a fan base and when its product is available in stores. By comparison, bringing a film to Japan is fairly straightforward. Like almost everyone in the industry, Cine City Hong Kong’s Yuko Yoshinaga says producers should approach the film festivals first. Established in 1991, Cine City Hong Kong is located in an airy, two-storey building in Tokyo’s very fashionable Aoyama district. Along with a wide selection of movie books and posters, the company also sells video tapes, DVDs and other cinema-related products. Cine City Hong Kong is affiliated with Prenom H, the distribution company that funded the Japanese rights to Wong Kar Wai’s Happy Together. Yoshinaga says major Japanese film festivals, most of which are held annually, are invaluable vehicles for introducing new Hong Kong films and establishing contacts with the dozens of distribution companies that can put a movie in cinemas, video shops or on television.

------------------------------------------------------------------

SOURCE: THE JAPAN TIMES

#1999

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bronsonthurman · 7 years

Text

Review: Netflix’s Death Note

Recently Netflix released its version of Death Note, one of several anime adaptations in the works by major American studio. While it credits the Weekly Shonen Jump manga series as its source, it likely benefits far more from awareness of the 2006 anime adaptation. American viewers of that series surely featured prominently in the calculus of producing this movie, providing a ready made market. Unfortunately this movie is a vapid attempt to exploit the premise as American teen horror and just looks that much worse for its comparison to the unique psychological thriller that was the anime.

Aside from the requisite spoiler alert, I would advise readers who haven’t seen either of these productions to immediately watch the anime. The Netflix adaptation will spoil its surprises without delivering any rewards. The anime is only 37 episodes in self-contained entirely and though it occasionally detours into the ridiculous and convoluted, as anime is wont to do, its characters and plot are fresh, engaging, and thought provoking..

If it were not for the superior source material the movie might have seemed like just more mediocre teen targeted commercialism instead of an outright dumpster fire. Protagonist Light Turner (Nat Wolff) is a troubled, brilliant teen making extra cash by selling homework and creepily staring--oops, I mean longing for--beautiful cheerleader Mia Sutton (Margaret Qualley). We are supposed to believe he is good at heart because he tries to defend her against a generic male bully, but the audience can’t help but notice he only gets involved after she has the courage to intervene; Light butts in with an outburst of machismo he tries to back up by being a ineffectual smart ass. All in all the introduction brings to mind school shooting tragedies in a manner that only adds ick, not substance. It preps the viewer to feel wary of what they’ve gotten into, and rightfully so.

Into the hands of this unfortunate protagonist falls the titular premise, the Death Note, really a Death Notebook wherein owners can write names, dates, and manners of death for people they wish to kill. Hot on its heels Light is visited by the prickly, hunched demon Ryuk, who is served well by darkly lit computer animation and proves that Willem Dafoe is enjoyable even when he’s taking it easy, if not exactly just phoning it in. Ryuk serves as an unpersuasive argument that the devil made Light do it. Luckily for the viewer there is only one bully ready to be a target of Light’s wrath, who is decapitated gruesomely. The two-dimensional cruelty presented as justification does nothing to avoid the disturbing appearance of a shitty person in desperate need of psychological help getting bloodily murdered instead.

In better hands Death Note could have been a shocking and significant co-option of the property to explore a decent-at-heart kid pushed to the edge of good and evil by youthful callousness and falling into an abyss of high school violence. Director Adam Windgard, perhaps recognizing his own limitations, giving us instead exactly what we should expect from a director of mediocre horror like the Blair Witch reboot, V/H/S, and You’re Next: more flimsy, forgettable horror. Windgard tries to make Death Note into Final Destination with a few improbable and modestly gory set pieces, strung together with music videos with terrible soundtracks, in between trying to establish conflict between mysterious FBI consultant L and a cringe inducing loser-gets-the-girl teen romance. Sad to say this sub-plot’s only redeeming quality is being perfunctory and it only gets worse when Mia’s motives take a sinister turn.

There is a meaningful discussion overdue on female capacity for vengeful judgmentalness, violence by proxy, and vileness typically relegated to men. These subjects are hinted at, but this film is no place for something so nuanced, so the betrayals and come uppance we are subjected to feel like the cinematic equivalent of a basic bro screaming “that’s what you get bitch!” Whether coming from the screenplay by Charley and Vlas Parlapanides or from director Wingard one of them should have realized how it would reflect on the men behind the film. It just feels gross.

Efforts to weave plots around the endless rules included in the Death Note may appeal to some devoted hobbyist geeks, but even a casual hobbyist geek like me was underwhelmed. The only respite comes from the fact that Dafoe has a great voice and Lakeith Stanfield gives a competent performance as L that seems aware of what made the anime equivalent of his character interesting. Mentioning the acting in this movie feels spiteful--the actors are hardly to blame, going through motions as they were surely expected and giving basically the appropriate emotional cues to support the dialog, such as it is. That Qualley’s flat performance as Mia seemed fitting is not so much a complement to her, but rather another strike for the subtle stink of chauvinism exuded by her role and plots.

Eventually there are confrontations, a chase action sequence that doesn’t contribute anything or know when to quit, something like a climax, and an attempt at a twist ending. Attempts to redeem Light Turner ring hollow and false. None of it matters or convinces, none of it draws the viewer in. Even the guilty pleasure of really tearing apart something awful wouldn’t have kept the movie on for its full running time if I weren’t penning an article--I walked away only minutes in before deciding I couldn’t suitably insult it if I hadn’t sat through it all.

The degree of animosity here is not entirely due to the film in isolation. Alone it wouldn’t merit a full viewing and I would have left feeling mildly resentful that I had wasted 15 minutes on a teen horror movie that really was intended for teens. It speaks to its target audience in a cynical, exploitative way, not in a Buffy-the-Vampire-Slayer-will-appeal-to-your-inner-adolescent way. Sometimes that’s still passable, pressing the intended viewer’s buttons just how they want them to be pressed by a particular genre. But this movie takes deeply interesting source material and uses it to compel me and countless others to sit through it for 101 minutes. That it was free with my subscription makes it worse, not better, because if I had to pay for a theater ticket to see it, I wouldn’t have, just as I didn’t see Ghost in the Shell, an adaptation of a franchise I am much more personally attached to. This pops up on Netflix as if to say “you liked Death Note, right? We have more Death Note for you,” only to insult me by abusing its source so badly.

This is the cause of angry reddits, comment section tirades, bad user reviews, and poor returns. Hollywood doesn’t understand the genre. Whitewashing it a big part of it; stories are products of cultures, infused with those experiences and values. Its not just the race of the actor that matters, though racism under the guise as marketability is truly an ugly reality that deprives many fine actors of work and us of their performances. In the case of anime adaptations the whole story is being whitewashed to force it to fit Hollywood’s limited realm of cinematic experience. This robs of us of fine stories that are highly original, at least from our cultural norm.

This adaptation robs us of Light Yagami, a model Japanese youth with a bright future ahead of him, diligent, conscientious of his responsibilities in a distinctly Asian way. When this fine young man becomes convinced that he should use the Death Note to make the world better by eliminating criminals, we believe him, at least at first. He matches wits against his opposite, the misanthropic but just L, sacrificing his rationales of justness bit by bit along the way. The audience takes a gripping psychological trip to the realization that our protagonist is the villain. His crazy girlfriend isn’t just a bitch, she’s an outright obsessive who is perversely the subject of obsession herself as a teen idol. The police are bastions of mundanity, trying to bring sanity back to a world split by public knowledge that this grim god of vengeance exists. The chase alternates between methodical procedure and inspired drama. The series is anything but a formulaic rehash of a genre which American audiences already have in excess.

Ultimately that’s all Netflix’s Death Note is. It adds nothing, and it sacrifices much. It wastes the viewers time and insults fans drawn in by the licensed property. It subjects the viewer to some of the tackiest songs I’ve ever heard in a soundtrack. It’s sure to disappear from Netflix suggestions soon, in line with their strategy of producing as many things as possible by scatter shot and just being quiet about the failures. Don’t bother searching for it.

#film review #netflix #anime #critique

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elizas-writing · 7 years

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Netflix’s Death Note: A Trailer Analysis

So Netflix released a trailer for their Americanized (aka whitewashed) movie based on the beloved Japanese manga/anime series Death Note and, what a shock, everyone and their mother hates it. I’ll be honest, I knew about the casting months before, and it’s still pretty shitty, but given what happened with Ghost in the Shell, should we be surprised at this point? And that one’s getting a theatrical release. But the problems with this Death Note adaptation go beyond just whitewashing two characters; that’s just scratching the surface of the confusing mess and even more problematic implications we might expect from this movie. Also it should go without saying that I will be going into spoilers of the original series, so if you’re one of the five people unfamiliar with Death Note until now, you have been warned.

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DISCLAIMER FOR ANYONE WHO THINKS I’M BEING TOO HARSH ON A ONE MINUTE TRAILER

Okay, I know there are gonna be a few people going “Just give it a chance! Maybe there will be something good! It’s unfair to judge before it’s even released!” And with all due respect, that kind of mentality completely disregards the entire point of marketing. Trailers are supposed to draw in an audience and give them a reason why they should spend their time and money to see a movie, TV show or any piece of media ever to exist. How many of you saw the trailer for The Force Awakens and almost shit your pants out of nostalgia when Han Solo came on screen and said “Chewie, we’re home”? How many of you got chills listening to Lin-Manuel Miranda sing for Moana? How many of you got pumped to see Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman together on the big screen? That is the power of trailers when done successfully, even if the movie itself doesn’t turn out well; if film makers want to make money, they need to show that their product is worth something.

If all you have to show is shit, then people will think it’s shit. This is increased exponentially when doing an adaptation of a pre-existing work because there’s already an audience with their own visions on what everything is supposed to look like down to the smallest of details. Most everyone I’ve seen who’s into Death Note now has low expectations for this movie. It’s fine to give the benefit of the doubt and hope some good will come out of it, hell, I always want to hope I’m wrong in some cases. But there is a fine line between (sorry live-action Beauty and the Beast, I just have to) going “Okay, maybe this will be a good Disney remake and they’ll do something new” and “Oh my fucking God, Emma Watson can’t sing. Please fire someone.”

So yeah, I’m still judging the trailer. I’m a Taurus, I’m stubborn, and I got some grievances.

From the get-go, the most glaring issue we can tell is that it is not going to follow remotely close to the original story at all. When is Light running from the police in his early days as Kira? And what even is up with the Ferris wheel bullshit? At that point, they might as well have created original characters; it would have saved themselves a lot of criticism of whitewashing and turning Light and Misa into absolute edgelords even when it’s so out of character, and topping it all off by giving them 4Kids dub names as a way to rub the salt in the whitewashed wound. At least Ghost in the Shell had some decency left to leave Motoko’s name alone. But thanks for getting rid of Light’s literal juxtaposing name of light and darkness to emphasize the moral ambiguity of his actions.

It’s only made worse when in fact an Asian American actor, Edward Zo, did audition for Light and was rejected for “being too Asian.” TOO ASIAN FOR LIGHT YAGAMI, A JAPANESE CHARACTER. What the fuck does that mean “too Asian??” So these filmmakers went out of their way to NOT cast any Asian American actors since apparently people still think American equates to whiteness (spoiler, no it doesn’t) and instead get that kid from the Naked Brother’s Band and some obscure HBO actress.

Not only are Light and Misa unrecognizable because of the whitewashing, they don’t even match on the same damn personalities. Yes, Light becomes a sociopath, but he doesn’t start off as some misunderstood loner or whatever vibe I’m getting from Natt Wolf (by the way, wash your damn hair, it looks greasy). Light was actually a very popular student with good grades, good manners and could easily get dates with any girl he wanted. And he’s very clever to hide his true intentions and manipulate. He’s your average, unsuspecting young adult which works well for the series to show how no one is above this kind of descent into madness. This white kid looks like fucking Dylann Roof, it’s so unsettling and ruins any subtlety to Light’s character. Even this whitewashed Mi(s)a suffered the edgelord syndrome with the image of her against grey colors smoking a cigarette. “Look at me, I’m so fucking dark and edgy.” You’re not making Heathers, give me back the hyperactive idol.

But what about Keith Sutherland, a black actor, as L? On one hand, I’m not too bothered with this change since L is canonically only a fourth Japanese so casting him as a black person isn’t too much of a stretch even though it takes away the iconic image. But at the same time, it lends itself to a lot of problematic territory when setting up a black character as the antagonist to the white character. L is killed in the original series, he loses, and his fight is picked up by his successors. So now we’ll potentially have a case of a white male serial killer with a god complex killing a black man who we’ve only seen so far in shadow and in a hood. Because that is not familiar to cases of racially motivated crimes of black people being killed because they looked “suspicious.” Classy, real motherfucking classy. I can only hope that they change up L’s fate like the Japanese live-action movies did, but this is already looking like a slippery slope to racist tropes as old as time.

And what the series chose to Americanize and to leave alone is just a set up for confusion as they left some of the original Japanese elements. For starters, the hell is Ryuk still doing here? Yeah, I want to see Willem Dafoe as Ryuk, it fits perfectly, but what is a JAPANESE god of death doing in SEATTLE, WASHINGTON IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA? Like how will you explain yourself out of this one, because I doubt your typical white American teenager will be familiar with Japanese spiritual beliefs. There’s also some graffiti briefly seen that says “Justice of Kira,” but in the original series, Kira comes from the Japanese pronunciation of the English word “killer.” So where do these Americans get Kira from? Explain, movie! Explain!

The themes will also not carry over well in this adaptation because of the differences in justice systems between America and Japan (this one I borrowed from @tadasgay‘s critiques, and it really puts into perspective the problems of Americanizing a Japanese story; giving credit where credit is due). A major driving force of Light’s motivations in the original series are because of criminal cases that don’t even make it to court. Therefore, criminals who are obviously guilty get away with their crimes despite the evidence against them. With the Death Note, Light acts as the prosecutor to "properly” deliver justice because of the facts he can obtain from police records. We don’t know if they will follow through with this, or if this Light will just kill whoever because they are bad. To top it all off, the American crime narratives tend to be biased on race, especially given the disproportionate amount of people of color in the for-profit prison systems. Japan doesn’t have that because it’s a mostly racially and culturally homogeneous country. Just a reminder that our protagonist is now a WHITE guy with a god complex and a black man as his antagonist. This is a slippery slope to twist the original narrative into something horrible and potentially racist. I’m sure I’m not alone when I hope I’m wrong on those aspects, but the fact is that we don’t know, and we won’t know for certain for another few months. These thoughts will be lingering over our heads until then.

At this point, we can only hope that the filmmakers will come out and explain themselves, and more trailers can be released to see more of the story and characters. At best, it will probably just be mediocre, but at worst, it could probably be another shitty American adaptation of an already great Japanese manga/anime. We won’t know for a while, but for now, we still have the original and I think we can all agree nothing will ever top it.

#death note #trailer analysis #netflix #review #anime #light yagami #misa amane #l (death note)#ryuk

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mrmichaelchadler · 5 years

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Roma, Vice, Black Panther Win Big at 24th Critics' Choice Awards

The energetic host Taye Diggs kicked off the evening at the 24th Critics Choice Awards in Santa Monica, CA, with a song and dance number that honored inclusivity in this year's acclaimed films: “Crazy Rich Asians,” “BlacKkKlansman,” “If Beale Street Could Talk,” “Roma,” “Green Street” and “Black Panther,” all to the tune of Cardi B's "I Like It"—a perfect crowd-pleaser.

Credit: Sarah Knight Adamson

A rare occurrence also happened Sunday evening in two of the women’s categories: Best Actress in Film, and Best Actress in a Movie Made for Television or a Limited Series—both garnered ties. Glenn Close, for “The Wife” and Lady Gaga, for "A Star is Born." Earlier in the evening, it was Amy Adams, for “Sharp Objects,” and Patricia Arquette, for “Escape at Dannemora.” They shared Best Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for Television trophies.

The Best Actress Oscar race is now the most capricious, as Lady Gaga is back in the running after being shut out of the Golden Globes. Close’s riveting performance in “The Wife” showcased her career talents as one of the great actors of our time. For Lady Gaga, a relative newcomer to acting, she stunned all in her soul-baring, passionate and natural performance.

Glenn Close’s warm acceptance speech was directed to all women as she embraced the notion of celebrating together with another female, instead of continually being pitted against each other. Close thanked her daughter Annie Starke, for helping her create her part in “The Wife.” A tearful and gracious Lady Gaga praised her director Bradley Cooper for his cinematic guidance. After leaving the backstage press room upon the conclusion of the show, while following the exiting crowd, I found myself directly behind the “A Star is Born” dinner table and witnessed a supportive Sam Elliot and a misty-eyed Gaga sharing a tender moment.

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In the Best Picture race, “Roma” director Alfonso Cuarón’s personal black and white foreign language film won both Best Foreign Language Film and Best Film. "Roma" received four awards in total, the most of the night, including Best Director and Best Cinematography. “Black Panther” and “Vice” followed close behind, each winning in three categories.

Christian Bale, as Dick Cheney in “Vice,” won the Best Actor and the Best Actor in a Comedy awards for his conspirator performance. “Bohemian Rhapsody'"s Rami Malek and “Green Book”s Viggo Mortensen are also main runners for the Best Actor Oscar.

In the Best Supporting roles, Regina King, “If Beale Street Could Talk” won over co-frontrunner “Vice's” Amy Adams, who has been Oscar-nominated five times, but has yet to win. King paid homage to author James Baldwin, writer of the 1974 novel the movie is based on by saying, “Thank you for being the voice for the voiceless—for educating a country even when they didn’t want to learn a lesson. For still educating us posthumously.” Concluding, “I’ll leave you with this: in the words of James Baldwin, ‘we can make America what America must become.’”

Mahershala Ali’s Dr. Don Shirley’s performance in “Green Book” won critics over frontrunner Richard E. Grant’s performance in “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” Ali sidestepped the recent "Green Book" controversies by speaking directly to the film's composer and pianist, Kris Bowers, saying, "This gentleman I owe so much. This is my other co-star, he doubles for me, and he did the composition for the film. He was my piano teacher and my friend."

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Upon the announcement of Best Comedy, “Crazy Rich Asians” the excitement was apparent as the cast leaped to their feet and rushed to the stage while high-fiving and cheering. Best Sci-fi or Horror Movie winner John Krasinski for “A Quiet Place” gave a tribute to his wife, Emily Blunt and their kids by saying, "I got to make a movie about a love story and a love letter to my kids. I got to do it with the love of my life by my side, so I'm pretty sure it doesn't get much better than that. Thank you so much."

This year’s #SeeHer Award recipient, Claire Foy, was presented by former #SeeHer Award recipient Viola Davis. The award recognizes a woman who embodies the values set forth by the #SeeHer movement—to push boundaries on changing stereotypes and recognize the importance of authentic portrayals of women across the entertainment landscape. The mission of #SeeHer is to accurately portray all women and girls in media so that by 2020, the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote, they see themselves reflected as they truly are.

Credit: Sarah Knight Adamson

In conclusion, the evening is a celebration honoring talent and a chance for critics to meet talent face to face. Each year has a different tone, as last year’s #MeToo movement had just kicked off. ‘Inclusion’ now appears to be front and center.

FILM

BEST PICTURE

“Black Panther” “BlacKkKlansman” “The Favourite” “First Man” “Green Book” “If Beale Street Could Talk” “Mary Poppins Returns” “Roma” “A Star Is Born” “Vice”

BEST ACTOR

Christian Bale – “Vice” Bradley Cooper – “A Star Is Born” Willem Dafoe – “At Eternity’s Gate” Ryan Gosling – “First Man” Ethan Hawke – “First Reformed” Rami Malek – “Bohemian Rhapsody” Viggo Mortensen – “Green Book”

BEST ACTRESS

Yalitza Aparicio – “Roma” Emily Blunt – “Mary Poppins Returns” WINNER (tie): Glenn Close – “The Wife” Toni Collette – “Hereditary” Olivia Colman – “The Favourite” WINNER (tie): Lady Gaga – “A Star Is Born” Melissa McCarthy – “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Mahershala Ali – “Green Book” Timothée Chalamet – “Beautiful Boy” Adam Driver – “BlacKkKlansman” Sam Elliott – “A Star Is Born” Richard E. Grant – “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” Michael B. Jordan – “Black Panther”

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Amy Adams – “Vice” Claire Foy - "First Man" Nicole Kidman – “Boy Erased” Regina King – “If Beale Street Could Talk” Emma Stone – “The Favourite” Rachel Weisz – “The Favourite”

BEST YOUNG ACTOR/ACTRESS

Elsie Fisher – “Eighth Grade” Thomasin McKenzie – “Leave No Trace” Ed Oxenbould – “Wildlife” Millicent Simmonds – “A Quiet Place” Amandla Stenberg – “The Hate U Give” Sunny Suljic – “Mid90s”

BEST ACTING ENSEMBLE

“Black Panther” “Crazy Rich Asians” “The Favourite” “Vice” “Widows”

BEST DIRECTOR

Damien Chazelle – “First Man” Bradley Cooper – “A Star Is Born” Alfonso Cuaron – “Roma” Peter Farrelly – “Green Book” Yorgos Lanthimos – “The Favourite” Spike Lee – “BlacKkKlansman” Adam McKay – “Vice”

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Bo Burnham – “Eighth Grade” Alfonso Cuarón – “Roma” Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara – “The Favourite” Adam McKay – “Vice” Paul Schrader – “First Reformed” Nick Vallelonga, Brian Hayes Currie, Peter Farrelly – “Green Book” Bryan Woods, Scott Beck, John Krasinski – “A Quiet Place”

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Ryan Coogler, Joe Robert Cole – “Black Panther” Nicole Holofcener, Jeff Whitty – “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” Barry Jenkins – “If Beale Street Could Talk” Eric Roth and Bradley Cooper & Will Fetters – “A Star Is Born” Josh Singer – “First Man” Charlie Wachtel & David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott & Spike Lee – “BlacKkKlansman”

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Alfonso Cuaron – “Roma” James Laxton – “If Beale Street Could Talk” Matthew Libatique – “A Star Is Born” Rachel Morrison – “Black Panther” Robbie Ryan – “The Favourite” Linus Sandgren – “First Man”

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

Hannah Beachler, Jay Hart – “Black Panther” Eugenio Caballero, Barbara Enriquez – “Roma” Nelson Coates, Andrew Baseman – “Crazy Rich Asians” Fiona Crombie, Alice Felton – “The Favourite” Nathan Crowley, Kathy Lucas – “First Man” John Myhre, Gordon Sim – “Mary Poppins Returns”

BEST EDITING

Jay Cassidy – “A Star Is Born” Hank Corwin – “Vice” Tom Cross – “First Man” Alfonso Cuarón, Adam Gough – “Roma” Yorgos Mavropsaridis – “The Favourite” Joe Walker – “Widows”

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Alexandra Byrne – “Mary Queen of Scots” Ruth Carter – “Black Panther” Julian Day – “Bohemian Rhapsody” Sandy Powell – “The Favourite” Sandy Powell – “Mary Poppins Returns”

BEST HAIR AND MAKEUP

“Black Panther” “Bohemian Rhapsody” “The Favourite” “Mary Queen of Scots” “Suspiria” “Vice”

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

“Avengers: Infinity War” “Black Panther” “First Man” “Mary Poppins Returns” “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” “Ready Player One”

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

“The Grinch” “Incredibles 2” “Isle of Dogs” “Mirai” “Ralph Breaks the Internet” “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”

BEST ACTION MOVIE

“Avengers: Infinity War” “Black Panther” “Deadpool 2” “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” “Ready Player One” “Widows”

BEST COMEDY

“Crazy Rich Asians” “Deadpool 2” “The Death of Stalin” “The Favourite” “Game Night” “Sorry to Bother You”

BEST ACTOR IN A COMEDY

Christian Bale – “Vice” Jason Bateman – “Game Night” Viggo Mortensen – “Green Book” John C. Reilly – “Stan & Ollie” Ryan Reynolds – “Deadpool 2” Lakeith Stanfield – “Sorry to Bother You”

BEST ACTRESS IN A COMEDY

Emily Blunt – “Mary Poppins Returns” Olivia Colman – “The Favourite” Elsie Fisher – “Eighth Grade” Rachel McAdams – “Game Night” Charlize Theron – “Tully” Constance Wu – “Crazy Rich Asians”

BEST SCI-FI OR HORROR MOVIE

“Annihilation” “Halloween” “Hereditary” “A Quiet Place” “Suspiria”

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

“Burning” “Capernaum” “Cold War” “Roma” “Shoplifters”

BEST SONG

“All the Stars” – “Black Panther” “Girl in the Movies” – “Dumplin’” “I’ll Fight” – “RBG” “The Place Where Lost Things Go” – “Mary Poppins Returns” “Shallow” – “A Star Is Born” “Trip a Little Light Fantastic” – “Mary Poppins Returns”

BEST SCORE

Kris Bowers – “Green Book” Nicholas Britell – I”f Beale Street Could Talk” Alexandre Desplat – “Isle of Dogs” Ludwig Göransson – “Black Panther” Justin Hurwitz – “First Man” Marc Shaiman – “Mary Poppins Returns”

BEST DRAMA SERIES

“The Americans” (FX) “Better Call Saul” (AMC) “The Good Fight” (CBS All Access) “Homecoming” (Amazon) “Killing Eve” (BBC America) “My Brilliant Friend” (HBO) “Pose” (FX) “Succession” (HBO)

BEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES

Freddie Highmore – “The Good Doctor” (ABC) Diego Luna – “Narcos: Mexico” (Netflix) Richard Madden – “Bodyguard” (Netflix) Bob Odenkirk – “Better Call Saul” (AMC) Billy Porter – “Pose” (FX) Matthew Rhys – “The Americans” (FX) Milo Ventimiglia – “This Is Us” (NBC)

BEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES

Jodie Comer – “Killing Eve” (BBC America) Maggie Gyllenhaal – “The Deuce” (HBO) Elisabeth Moss – “The Handmaid’s Tale” (Hulu) Sandra Oh – “Killing Eve” (BBC America) Elizabeth Olsen – “Sorry For Your Loss” (Facebook Watch) Julia Roberts – “Homecoming” (Amazon) Keri Russell – “The Americans” (FX)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES

Richard Cabral – “Mayans M.C.” (FX) Asia Kate Dillon – “Billions” (Showtime) Noah Emmerich – “The Americans” (FX) Justin Hartley – “This Is Us” (NBC) Matthew Macfadyen – “Succession” (HBO) Richard Schiff – “The Good Doctor” (ABC) Shea Whigham – “Homecoming” (Amazon)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES

Dina Shihabi – “Jack Ryan” (Amazon) Julia Garner – “Ozark” (Netflix) Thandie Newton – “Westworld” (HBO) Rhea Seehorn – “Better Call Saul” (AMC) Yvonne Strahovski – “The Handmaid’s Tale” (Hulu)Holly Taylor – “The Americans” (FX)

BEST COMEDY SERIES

“Atlanta” (FX) “Barry” (HBO) “The Good Place” (NBC) “The Kominsky Method” (Netflix) “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (Amazon) “The Middle” (ABC) “One Day at a Time” (Netflix) “Schitt’s Creek” (Pop)

BEST ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES

Hank Azaria – “Brockmire” (IFC) Ted Danson – “The Good Place” (NBC) Michael Douglas – “The Kominsky Method” (Netflix) Donald Glover – “Atlanta” (FX) Bill Hader – “Barry” (HBO) Jim Parsons – “The Big Bang Theory” (CBS) Andy Samberg – “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” (Fox)

BEST ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES

Rachel Bloom – “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” (The CW) Rachel Brosnahan – “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (Amazon) Allison Janney – “Mom” (CBS) Justina Machado – “One Day at a Time” (Netflix) Debra Messing – “Will & Grace” (NBC) Issa Rae – “Insecure” (HBO)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES

William Jackson Harper – “The Good Place” (NBC) Sean Hayes – “Will & Grace” (NBC) Brian Tyree Henry – “Atlanta” (FX) Nico Santos – “Superstore” (NBC) Tony Shalhoub – “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (Amazon) Henry Winkler – “Barry” (HBO)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES

Alex Borstein – “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (Amazon) Betty Gilpin – “GLOW” (Netflix) Laurie Metcalf – “The Conners” (ABC) Rita Moreno – “One Day at a Time” (Netflix) Zoe Perry – “Young Sheldon” (CBS)Annie Potts – “Young Sheldon” (CBS) Miriam Shor – “Younger” (TV Land)

BEST LIMITED SERIES

“A Very English Scandal” (Amazon) “American Vandal” (Netflix) “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” (FX) “Escape at Dannemora” (Showtime) “Genius: Picasso” (National Geographic) “Sharp Objects” (HBO)

BEST MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION

“Icebox” (HBO) “Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert” (NBC) “King Lear” (Amazon) “My Dinner with Herve” (HBO) “Notes from the Field” (HBO) “The Tale” (HBO)

BEST ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION

Antonio Banderas – “Genius: Picasso” (National Geographic) Darren Criss – “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” (FX) Paul Dano – “Escape at Dannemora” (Showtime) Benicio Del Toro – “Escape at Dannemora” (Showtime) Hugh Grant – “A Very English Scandal” (Amazon) John Legend – “Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert” (NBC)

BEST ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION

WINNER (tie): Amy Adams – “Sharp Objects” (HBO) WINNER (tie): Patricia Arquette – “Escape at Dannemora” (Showtime) Connie Britton – “Dirty John” (Bravo) Carrie Coon – “The Sinner” (USA Network) Laura Dern – “The Tale” (HBO) Anna Deavere Smith – “Notes From the Field” (HBO)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION

Brandon Victor Dixon – “Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert” (NBC) Eric Lange – “Escape at Dannemora” (Showtime) Alex Rich – “Genius: Picasso” (National Geographic) Peter Sarsgaard – “The Looming Tower” (Hulu) Finn Wittrock – “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” (FX) Ben Whishaw – “A Very English Scandal” (Amazon)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE MADE FOR TELEVISION

Ellen Burstyn – “The Tale” (HBO) Patricia Clarkson – “Sharp Objects” (HBO) Penelope Cruz – “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” (FX) Julia Garner – “Dirty John” (Bravo) Judith Light – “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” (FX) Elizabeth Perkins – “Sharp Objects” (HBO)

BEST ANIMATED SERIES

“Adventure Time” (Cartoon Network) “Archer” (FX) “Bob’s Burgers” (Fox) “BoJack Horseman” (Netflix) “The Simpsons” (Fox) “South Park” (Comedy Central)

“Critics’ Choice Awards” are bestowed annually by the BFCA and BTJA to honor the finest in cinematic and television achievement. The BFCA is the largest film critics organization in the United States and Canada, representing more than 300 television, radio and online critics. BTJA is the collective voice of journalists who regularly cover television for TV viewers, radio listeners, and online audiences.

from All Content http://bit.ly/2RA7uxh

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onglitzhi-blog · 7 years

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The trouble with diversity

2 January 2017

Now, the title might seem to come straight out of a click-bait site like BuzzFeed but trust me when I say this, it is ridiculous for the sheer propensity of netizens (especially the self-proclaimed feminists and black rights activists) to get outraged over issues that will ultimately blow over, but rather they just fueled it further with hatred. This title will represent a few of the news articles that happened on the entertainment industry such as video games, films and TV shows.

I will start off with video games as it is my forte, and it is a niche that I will gladly fill it up for ya. So, back in 2014, the famous video games series Assassin’s Creed had a new installment coming out, which was Assassin’s Creed: Unity, which features all male protagonists, even in non-story/multiplayer mode, all the characters are male. No doubt, this decision to not feature any female characters in the game was met with a massive backlash from Internet activists (almost predictably, really), and the developer, Ubisoft was demanded to rectify this imbalance of female representation in video games. What we ended up with is the next installment in the series, which is Assassin’s Creed:Syndicate, a tired and boring retread of the almost identical story, except it now featured equal amounts of male and female characters, which is taking equality almost to a fault, where the context of the story is pushed down the priority list just to appease the mad crowd. The game was set in Victorian London, and mind you, that the series was famed for its historical accuracy, so the sudden spike in the number of trained female throat-slashers became quite discombobulating. I wouldn’t mind so much if the gameplay was solid, but it really wasn’t, this is the kind of action that a robot such as large corporations like Ubisoft will spat out from their Response Generator 3000.

I would argue that diversity is not that important in a narrative, because what’s most important is the story, the characters, and the emotions attached, and I think that we possess the capacity to sympathize, even though we ourselves did not have the same experience as the others. For example, male audience can still sympathize with women that are victims of domestic abuse even though they do not have the backgrounds necessary to understand fully about women or domestic violence, because we all share the same core experiences: hope, plight, rise and fall. All these are human nature and do not require complex market research to achieve. Yet, big corporations of the entertainment industry (notably Disney) are bought into the delusion that white American male can only relate to other white American male. And it is because of this tiresome market research effort to please as broad and homogenized of an audience as possible, and what we have is a product that pleases none of the audience, apart from unknowing parents and elderlies who didn’t give a crap.

The best example for the diversifying of characters will be the recent Star Wars movies, but I’m gonna focus on Star Wars: The Force Awakens, as it has clear comparison points to be made with the original Star Wars trilogy. Recently I went out of my way and watched the whole series, even the prequels, so as to have an in depth opinion on the subject matter, and to a lesser extent, on the movie industry as a whole. The creator of Star Wars, George Lucas, never really had diversity in mind, and just wanted to tell a story for the first Star Wars movie, so he hired an all white cast because back then there was very little supply of black actors, and it really isn’t the point anyway. But now, the Star Wars franchise was officially sold to Disney and it is officially in that massive congealed corporate entity and now everything has to be tediously market researched to extract every bit that they can out of the Star Wars franchise. So what we had is a Star Wars movie with hugely diverse cast, that does not distract us from the fact that it is just A New Hope all over again, a masked villain, a Force-newbie, a sidekick, a robot comic-relief, as well as returning actors, just to flash their engorged tats in front of the fanboys, just to tick fan service of the checklist. I found it so boring because it was hitting the same beats over and over again. Why bother to make another movie if it is going to be the same drab year after year. And now, you don’t even need to wait 3 years for a new film in the franchise, because Disney have made enough spinoffs and sequels to the Star Wars universe to make enough films to be released each every year for the the next 3 to 4 decades, milking the otherwise still supple teats until it has no more moisture left to harvest.

I always dreamed of becoming a filmmaker or an actor when I was little, because it was seen as an expression through the lens of a camera. But now, the filmmaking industry was basically a conveyer belt system, with enough writers to start a football team with 3 benches of subs to spare. Just compare the end credits of A New Hope with The Force Awakens and you can see what I mean, enough animators to populate a small nation. It’s all just numbers and profits to these big name companies now, the spark from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is long gone for them. To them, filmmaking is about careful targeting of demographics and test studies. The main reason why Star Wars: Rogue One featured two Asian characters is because the last film didn’t do that well in Mainland China. That is the whole reason to include other ethnicity, not even because of a moral obligation, but to gain more dough for this enormous cake.

Addendum: Sorry if it became a little ranty at the end, but I’m just feeling a little sick because of the direction that major corporations are taking. I am fully aware that whatever I advocate for is merely pissing in the wind, after all, what they do best is make money, and who can really blame them.

Sources for the controversy behind AC: Unity

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/06/12/assassins-creed-unity-characters/

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/extra-punctuation/14964-When-Will-Assassins-Creed-End

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