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cherubcow · 3 years

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“Invincible”, Season 1 (2021) Review

Somehow both very cool and very fucking stupid :D

About Created and written primarily by Robert Kirkman (principle writer for The Walking Dead comic and TV show), this Young Adult cartoon basically synthesizes a number of comic book characters (e.g., Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Hellboy, Wonder Woman, Gambit) and tries to balance their heroism with cynical twists and dark realities. It's an exercise like Brightburn (2019) in that it mirrors existing comic writing all too closely in order to make violent twists. The cool stuff arrives pretty much immediately. You can tell right away that the physics have some level of realism, and it quickly gets serious because of this. The easy comparison would be to The Boys (also by Amazon, also about violent heroes, and also very well-produced). So, if you like The Boys (2019–), you'll probably like Invincible only a little less.

(( Some spoilers but nothing too specific ))

Wrong Focus But, the stupid stuff comes from the same error that the Kick-Ass movie (2010) made: it focuses on the wrong person(s). In Kick-Ass, the error was focusing on.. well.. "Kick-Ass", an irredeemable loser and waste of screen time. Invincible makes the same mistake, focusing on.. well.. "Invincible", a (so far) irredeemable loser and waste of screen time. So, despite its virtues, this show cannot escape that it made the decision to go for the Young Adult viewing demographic. It reminds me of Alita: Battle Angel (2019) in that way too: some very cool adult concepts ruined by the dramatic devices of unrepentant teenage stupidity and irrelevance. I didn't even like that stuff when I was a teenager, though Jordan Catalano gets a pass.

Main Cast and Characters The supporting characters were also very stupid. The most annoying was definitely Amber Bennett (voiced by the otherwise cool Zazie Beetz from Deadpool 2 (2018) and Joker (2019)),

who is supposed to be attractive somehow to Mark Grayson ("Invincible", voiced by Steven Yeun, who played Glenn on The Walking Dead)

despite the fact that she constantly judges him, fails to understand him, often fails to give him any kind of benefit of the doubt, and continues to scowl at him and be hurtful towards him even when she has information that should change her outlook towards him. And because she is part of the love triangle shared between herself, Invincible/Mark, and "Atom Eve"/Samantha (voiced by the awesome Gillian Jacobs from Community (2009–2014)),

audiences simply have to bear with it that Amber's annoying character will be present and wasting time until Mark can realize that Amber is in fact toxic and that Eve actually understands him and can improve him in more positive directions. That love triangle should have been a 20-minute distraction, but I'm guessing that it will eat up a season or two more, especially if the writers become cowardly and fail to change things for fear of messing up a perceived "winning" formula. In my ideal story line, they would skip ahead 10 years, drop the teen drama, the love triangle, and the stupid jokes and have Invincible and Eve paired in defense of Earth, with the main tension being from their worry that the other would be horribly gored in front of them during lethal fights against cosmic enemies ;)

Aside, I am aware of Amber’s motivation for being a bad person, I just think her justification is not based in understanding, empathy, and a regard for the gravity of Invincible’s situation. In a strict political sense, Invincible should not commit a lie of omission by keeping her in the dark about his identity — even if for the “noble lie” reason of protecting her — but in a real sense, he is a fucking teenager who just developed his super powers. For her to pretend that he should reveal his entire identity to her — a potentially transformative and even dangerous decision — after a few months of teenage romance paints an absurd portrait of her mind. It does, however, align her with Omni-Man, because where Omni-Man forces Invincible to become an adult in the fighting sense (pushing with full force early on), Amber forces Invincible to become an emotional adult by getting him to understand that toxic people such as herself need to be given boundaries — and he needs to learn to clearly delineate and communicate his real desires. By knowing that he does not want Amber, people who regiment his free time, or people who do not suit him, for instance, he can realize why Eve was an obvious decision: Eve understands, can make time when they have time, and will let him find his decisions. Part of a coming-of-age story tends to be realizing what one actually wants, and Invincible’s hesitation in telling Amber his identity shows that he does not truly want her. This separates Invincible from, say, Spider-Man, who avoided telling Mary Jane his identity not because he did not want her but because he wanted at all costs to protect her.

The next most annoying character has to be Debbie Grayson (voiced by TV-cancer Sandra Oh and who luckily was not animated to look like the real Sandra Oh and who should have been voiced instead by Bobby Lee due to Lee's successful MadTV parody of Sandra Oh).

Debbie basically fills the role of Skyler in Breaking Bad, except that Debbie's character tends to be slightly more understanding before her inevitable and toxic Skyler-resentment and undermining behavior. Despite having an 8-episode arc of change, Debbie's character flips too quickly and lacks the empathy and Omni-Man motive-justifying that would make her interesting (the comic's development may vary). For instance, if she refused to believe that Omni-Man meant his own words, that would make her empathetic and perhaps virtuous even if misled, but instead she dropped their "20 years" of understanding after viewing Omni-Man in action, which makes her appear shallow, easily manipulated, and unsympathetic. That was a definite "Young Adult" genre move because it shows immaturity by the writers to break apart a bond of 20 years so quickly. Mediocre teens might accept such a fissure because their lives have not yet seen or may not comprehend that level of time, but adults know that even long-standing and problematic relationships (which, beyond the lie, Omni-Man's and Debbie's was not shown to be) take a lot of time to break — even with lies exposed.

Omni-Man The biggest show strength for me was of course Omni-Man, who in a success of casting was voiced by J.K. Simmons in a kind of reprisal of Simmons' role as Fletcher from Whiplash (2014).

The Fletcher/Omni-Man parallel shows through their being incredibly harsh but extremely disciplined and principled, forcing people to become beyond even their own ideal selves (this via Omni-Man's tough-love teaching of Invincible — comically, Omni-Man was actually psychologically easier on Invincible than Fletcher was on Whiplash's Andrew character). Despite the show's attempts to villainize Omni-Man, he, like Fletcher and also like Breaking Bad's Walter White, becomes progressively more awesome, eventually representing a Spartan will, an unconquerable drive, and a realistic and martial understanding of a hero's role.

To the show's credit, while it wrote Omni-Man to be outright genocidal and from a culture of eugenicists (again, Spartan), they could not help but admire him and his "violence" and "naked force" (for a Starship Troopers reference), giving him a path to redemption. That redemption comes in part because — despite the show's attempt to be often realistic and violent — its decision to be directed at young adults via dumb jokes, petty relationship drama, the characters’ reckless lack of anonymity and security in their neighborhood (loudly taking off and landing right at the doorstep), and light indy music also made the portrayed violence far less literal. With a less literal violence, the real statement becomes not that Omni-Man really did kill so many people (though he certainly did kill those people within the show's plot) but that he was symbolically capable of terrible violence but could be reformed for good. That's the shortcoming with putting violence under demographic limitations. If it's a PG-13 Godzilla knocking down cities, the deaths in the many fallen skyscrapers don't matter so much (the audience will even forgive Godzilla for mass death if it happens mostly in removed spectacle), whereas if it's Cormac McCarthy envisioning a very realistic fiction, every death rides the edge of true trauma.

By showing light between the real and the symbolic, it is much easier to identify and agree with Omni-Man. For instance, when Robot (voiced by Zachary Quinto of Heroes and the newer Star Trek movies)

shows too much empathy for the revealed weakness of "Monster Girl" (voiced by Grey Griffin), the audience may have thought, "Pathetic," even before Omni-Man himself said it. And this because Omni-Man knows that true and powerful enemies (including himself) will not hesitate to use ultra-violence against these avenues of weakness. "Invincible" can make his Spider-Man quips while in lethal battles, but he does so while riding the edge of death — something that Omni-Man has to teach Invincible by riding him to the brink of his own.

Other Cast/Characters and Amazon's Hidden Budget It was impressive how many big-name actors were thrown into this — a true hemorrhage of producer funding. Amazon has so far hidden the budget numbers, perhaps because they don't want people to know that the show (like many of its shows) represents a kind of loss-leader to jump-start its entertainment brand.

Aside from those already mentioned, the show borrows a number of actors from The Walking Dead (WD), including.. • Chad L. Coleman ("Martian Man"; "Tyreese" on WD),

• Khary Payton ("Black Samson"; "Ezekiel" on WD),

• Ross Marquand (several characters; "Aaron" on WD)

• Lauren Cohan ("War Woman"; "Maggie" on WD)

• Michael Cudlitz ("Red Rush"; "Abraham" on WD)

• Lennie James ("Darkwing"; "Morgan" on WD)

• Sonequa Martin-Green ("Green Ghost"; "Sasha" on WD)

There were also connections to Rick and Morty and Community, not just with Gillian Jacobs but also with... • Justin Roiland ("Doug Cheston"), who voices both Rick and Morty in Rick and Morty,

• Jason Mantzoukas ("Rex"),

• Walton Goggins ("Cecil"),

• Chris Diamantopoulos (several characters),

• Clancy Brown ("Damien Darkblood"),

• Kevin Michael Richardson ("Mauler Twins"), and

• Ryan Ridley (writing)

That's a lot of overlap. They even had Michael Dorn from Star Trek: TNG (1987–1994) (there he played Worf) and Reginald VelJohnson from Family Matters (1989–1998) and Die Hard (1988), and even Mark Hamill. Pretty much everyone in the voice cast was significant and known. Maybe Amazon got a discount for COVID since the actors could all do voice-work from home? ;)

Overall Bad that it was for the Young Adult target demo but good for the infrequent adult themes and ultra-violence. Very high production value and a good watch for those who like dark superhero stories. I have heard that the comic gets progressively darker, which fits for Robert Kirkman, so it will likely be worth keeping up with this show.

#invincible #tv review #robert kirkman #invincible tv series #invincible tv show

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popculturebuffet · 4 years

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Ducktales Reviews: The Phantom and the Sorceress

Ducktales returns! The Phantom Blot returns to animation after too damn long with a neat backstory, an infnity guantlet and a hate boner for anything magic related. And since Lena is magic related she’s forced to go to her worst enemy and local close up magician Magica De Spell for help. Also Gladstone is here because we missed him and for no other reason. But we missed him so it’s okay. Friendship Is Magic, under the cut.

Woo-ooo! We’re back! Months later and in a new room, with new things to be depressed about because this year is groundhog day and everyone is bill murray, which isn’t as fun as it should be, Ducktales is finally back on screens and in my heart. And my galbladder.. he really likes ducktales. But yeah with the recent cancelation of the venture bros, it’s nice to get it’s spirtual littlte brother back just a few weeks later to help fill the void, and while a comparison to it now I know frank’s a fan and noticed the simlarties between rusty and gyro thanks to a tumblr post, the same post for both things inf act, I might just do that one day. But tha’ts not what your here, for , iv’e had to rewrite this intro enough times, Pitter Patter, let’s get at er.

This episodes opens with Scrooge sitting down for his morning tea when the kids pop out of the tv and hte bored way he figures it out is really hilarious. David Tennat is really good at selling just how Scrooge has both seen it all and has the deductive skills of Barbra Gordon. What eveyrone syaing “Of batman” gets old after a while and she’s just as smart as he is, especially as oracle. Point is it’s a good bit. As he correclty guesses the kids were playing Legends of Nerverquest or whatever that game Huey and Della played last season is called, one of them wished it was real, presumibly Dewey, and Lena’s magic accidently made it happen. And since it’s her first spotlight episode of the season, and possibly only one since this season is kind of packed, it’s time to talk about Lena! Admitely I PLANNED to do at least her first episode and her two season 2 episodes before this, but life got in the way so here we are. Lena.. is easily one of my faviortes, the number of weblena chats have made that clear. She’sd got a compelling arc, the show tackles abuse well in her narrative, and she and webby have really sweet chemstiry. Plus she brought us Violet and i’ll always be greatful for that and she’s voiced by Kimiko Glenn in her first major voice acting role so that helps too. SHe’s a great addition to the cast and the canon. Same, as the previous comment made obvious, goes for Violet, and the three togther have a great dynamic and i’ts nice to finally see an episode with JUST the three of them post “Friendship Hates Magic.”.

But yeah Lena’s magic’s been going haywire and I do feel the setups abit rushed.. hilarious but rushed. While Night on Kilmotor hill did establish her magic can run wild, it was also vauge if it was because of her, or it was because magica was messing with her head. IT’s still a plausable setup since we haven’t really SEEN her use her magic or have any intrest and doing so and she’s only done so either while working for magica, to undo something magica did, or to give her sister a mace so she could literally go midevil on some alien ass, it just feels a bit abrubt. And while Night on Kilmotor hill also set up a problem we hadn’t seen on screen, it felt like it gave us more time to ease into it and Lena’s issues, and made it clear SOMETHING was up instead of just telling us that. The rest of hte episode is still good i’ve just seen the show be way better at setup than this.

But yeah Lena’s magic keeps runing their fun and she feels bad about it, while Scrooge ends up putting his foot and spats in his mouth by voicing his hatred of magic, with all his nephews giving him a “Grandpa no look” and Webby glaring at him.. and whiel I didn’t realize it while watching it.. whiel sh’es given him a disaporving look, the equilvent of shooting bambi in the face emtoinally, she’s only been THIS angry with him one other time.. and it was the time he said “Your not family”. Thankfully this time he’s not in defnstive arrogant bastard mode, so he meekly walks it back to exclude her and she shrugs it off: She hates magic too. And really.. it’s not hard to see WHY given that most times it’s enterted her life, it’s nearly got everyone she loves killed, and that the only spellcaster she knows personally is the absuive aunt whose gaslighted her on multiple occasions, most recently to try and renslave her. Thankfully before Webby can make an old man bleed for his insesntivity, Della reveals some magical creature is there and Scrooge, while annoyed it’s more magic, is happy for another adventure and invites everyone along. And I jsut love that he dosen’t even show the slightest hesitation bringing Violet and Lena along. As far as he’s concerned probably their family too, maybe not as much as Webby but their still welcome. I mean granted i’m sure della and donald had an awkard conversation with Ty and Indy over all this to make sure it was cool, but still, it’s a nice gesture on his part and show’s his personality: He really dosen’t care who comes along as long as they can pull their weight and share his love for adventure, their welcome. It’s also nice ot see him and Lena interact since the two really haven’t since the shadow war: Sure he’s been in the same room with her twice, btu they haven’t really spoken. Though my honest guess is they could’ve genuinely meant for Scrooge to adopt her into the family.. but when coming up with Violet found her family adopting her and them becoming sisters to be a better idea and went with that. And to be fair it is, and not just for shipping purposes, I just wish we got some closure on that line, but i’m also aware the show has a LOT of ground to cover each season, so I understand it probably got squeezed out by all the other stuff going on and don’t really sweat it since we got something better anyway, her getting two gay dads and a sister, it just felt worth talking about. And in universe.. I feel he didn’t simply because he didn’t either know she was back or have a chance to, though i’m also damn certain, at least in my own headcanon, he helped those men formally adopt her. I mean he owns most of the city, and they probably also had to make Lena legally exist in the first place since I doubt Magica bothered to put her on any offical records that weren’t signed in blood and written on paper made of avian flesh, which given SCrooge’s experince is probably not the first time he had to get a person into official records who came into being by way of magic or some other weirdness.

Anyways, Lena opts out of the adventure because she’s worried about it going haywire and Webby opts out out of sympathy and while Violet is clearly keen to go, she gladly does so for her sister.. though this just makes Lena feel worse since now her girlfriend and her sister are missing out on stuff because of her, and suggests just going to sleep before she whoopsie daisy magics them to death. The girls end up woken from their sleep however by a bang at the door. It’s Gladstone!

Yup it’s time to talk about another character I haven’t talked about yet. Gladstone is easily one of the show’s best overhauls. See in the comics while Gladstone is just as lucky and lazy.. he’s also just..

Okay i’m amazed it’s taken this long for me to refrence jean ralphio in one of these reviews but i’m glad it was for this. Back on topic, while I know Gladstone in the comics has his fans, and is softend a bit in european comics, but in most stories i’ve read with him he’s an insufferably arrogant dick. Even BEFORE getting his luck, his first apperance, which I own in trade and read earlier this year, has him trying to take Donald’s house and kick him and the nephews out on the street over a drunken wager to take a polar dive, which Donald fials because life hates him and he’s a coward. Thankfully Daisy rushed in and saved the day because she’s great sometimes ,and turned things on him wiht his own drunken crap, but still, it says something when your first apperance is trying to force three ten year olds and your own cousin out into the cold.

He .. did not get any better once his super luck came into play. Instead he just flautned it all the time and tried to constnatly win Daisy over from donald.. which had varying sucess based on how much of a shallow dick she was being that story, and in general was just unplesant. He really only works for me in comic in those aformetioned softer times: when a writer makes his luck ruin his love life or add actual depth instead of him just being the raincloud on donal’ds parade. The original ducktales and the going quackers game are the only places I can think of he showed up otherwise, prototype in the old disney shorts nonwithstanding, and Ducktales Classic made him a nice guy from what i’ve heard. Thankfully frank and crew knew exactly what to do to adapt him perfectly: He still retains some aspects from the comics: Donald and Scrooge still hate him, Donald for Gladstone always winning and always having it easy while Donald.. is donald and thus utterly miserable half the time and on fire the other half, and Scrooge because he’s a lazy asshole who gets whatever he wants with the least effort, which didn’t change. What did change was his attitude. While he still is proud of getting whatever he wants in life with no effort and being “the best at getting something for nothing” he dosen’t lord it over everyone else. Sure he’s proud of it but he dosen’t rub Donald’s nose in how much better off he is on purpose, and genuinely loves his family, something I really coudln’t say about most versions of comic Gladstone. While he’s self serving he’s perfectly happy to share his luck with whoever else: He can always get more money whenever he needs it because of course he will. The other factor helping is , as with this entire reboot, the voice acting, in this case the marvelous Paul F Thompkins of Bojack and so much other stuff fame, who really sells the “Sleazy vegas layabout” vibe this series gives him, updating his old aristocratic asshole vibe to something more fun to watch and really being a treat anytime gladstone comes up. Gladstone singing in season 2 was entirely something Paul Improvised during his first apperance they made sure to use eventually. He’s a delight any time he shows up and a total 180 from his utterly agrviating original version.

As for why he’s here.. said luck. is gone. After being hit by some weird energy, Gladstone suddenly, since he didn’t see it hit him, finds himself living normally: going to a restraunt offers no free meal for being 100th custmoer or anything, his wallet dosen’t magically have 20 dollars in it, and the atm gives him 20 dollars.. which would seem normal except it’s actually usually a sack of rubys. Naturally Gladstone having coasted his entire life on his magical luck, has no idea how to function as a normal human being and is utterly hilarious as he breaks down. Admitely he’s not the biggest part of the plot, he’s mostly here for comic relief and COULD have been eaisly cut.. but he’s so hilarious and seeing him utterly fail at being a normal person and whine about things as simple as walking or going up stairs is just groovy. As for what weird magical bolt took it, Violet being violet figures it out quick: The Phantom Blot! For those unfamiliar, he’s a charcter from the mickey mouse comics, though I know him from one episode of house and mouse that adapted those comics that I need to read more of, a master schemer and old school villian par excellence and Mickey’s greatest foe. I was ecastic to see him come here and in the capable hands of Giancarlo Espisto. While I haven’t watched brekaing bad i’ve heard nothing but good thigns and he does his best with what little he’s given. But here instead of a master schemer he’s an infamous magic theif and is obviously the one who drained gladstone.. and unforutntely for scrooge the boys and presumibly everyone else... we see him in action using his fancy infnity guantlet esque magic draining gauntlet to drain the portal they took. Ruh Roh. It gets worse when he mistakes Lena for magica, and charges after her, though Webby is able to hold him off with the axe she grabbed on the way to the door earlier, and damages his gauntlet. he retreats.. but it’s obvious he’ll be back and both Webby and Violet come to the conclusion Lena needs to grasp her magic in order to survive.. and both have the same unfortunate relization: They only know one person who can do it and Lena, once she realizes what hteir thinking, wnats nothing to do with her, and neither do they. But they have no options: they have to go to magica. So they journey to her house on Dagobah, with Gladstone tagging along because they need a wacky comedic sidekick to help lighten the mood what with the serious, grim hunter wanting to murder a teenage girl inf nront of her tweenage girlfriend and kid sister, and their only resort being going back to her abuser for help. Magica however isn’t all that helpful at first. Being Magica her first move is to make a grab for the Amulet to get her power back, which her running crew thwart quickly but naturally Lena still wants nothing to do with her and Magica just insults her for not using magic and because she’s a terrible person. SHe does however end up changing her tune when she hears the blot’s involved. She whisks them inside while we get a cutaway to FOWL headquarters where blot is working on his guantlet more on him in a minute. We soon get the Blot’s backstory which is actually really inttresting and invovled even if it’s not a lot like who he is in the comcis or house of mouse: A long ass time ago before meddling kids got in her way, Magica took over a small vililage with the threat of destroying it and eveyrone in it outright unless they gave her tributes.. and when those got boring she just did it anyway. Problem was, as happens a lot when evil sorecerers calously destroy hometowns, one of them survivied. It’s even lampshaded by Magica as she points out Blot wasn’t the first. The problem was.. he was persitant. The blot never gave up, coming up with better tech to fight her magic each time and coming back stronger and likely more determined. I like this verson: While he’s not the bwahahah mastermindk, he’s still an utter threat, a force with an unyielding hatred and a burning mission to take out the target of his hate and anything like her. He reminds me a lot of toffee from star vs but if htey actually gave his backstory on screen. A meancing, somehwat quite, or mostly silent in the blot’s case, immortal menace who’s deterimiend to wipe out those who wronged him and anything related to them and has warped from what was once probably a decen tperson into a human engine of destruction with one goal and one goal only. He’s a good enoguh villian for the episode, I just hope if he comes back they give him better lines. his dialouge is really what dosen’t work for me as whiel his backstory and aura of meance work, Giancarlo is given nothing to work with line wise. He dosen’t need to be a chatty cathy or anything, just give him one or too really cool lines. Sometimes tha’ts all you need. Watch how the pros do it.

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I do like this verison, I jsut think they could do more, but given the show has a good track record for only getting better with their villians with every use, I have no worries about that and he’s still a cool enough threat. I also wish we got more of fowl or why he’s working with them. just a small scene with one of them was all I asked, because we’ve barely gotten fowl this season. It’s really one of the season’s only real problems so far: 8 episodes in and while FOWL agents have shown up twice, adn one of the episodes did advance that plot by showing off heron and steelbeak, we really haven’t seen any progress on their plans to both take the missing mysteries or kill the Clan McDuck. HOpefully this changes as we go and again, it dosen’t ditract from the episode itself, jsut the season as a whole. Anyways, Lena is still relucntant because Magica is terrible and keeps slipping in how much she wants to take the amulet every five minutes. I love the show and catherine tate’s take on magica: just as hammy and nuts as before but when she does have magic, she’s the utter threat she was before too times ten. But yeah while Lena’s relunctant.. neither of htem really has a choice> Magica needs her amulet secure to get her magic back, and Lena needs to not die. So they relucntantly agree to work together among more hilarous sniping. Cue a training montage set to a hell of an 80′s tune. The show really has a good habit of making good incdental music to use in bits like this. Lena trains, uses gladstone as the training dummy, and it’s funny as it is creative and we even get some karate kids bit and the obvious star wars refrences. Meanwhile the blot approaches ever closer.. We also find out something important from Magica as she chastises Lena for having fun with her friends while training after Lena uses blue magic instead of purple: Turns out much like spellcasters in say owl house or my little pony each caster has a specific color to their magic, a Colur of magic if you will. Magica’s, and lena using hers is purple while the blue magic we’ve seen from her is her own powered by friendship and love. It’s a nice advancement of what we’ve seen so far: We’ve seen her magic powered by webby is stronger than her other stuff, and we’ve seen it come out during times their bond, or in the case of kilmotor hill her bond with everyone, is strongest. We knew something was diffrent with the magics and it’s now given a though and clearly well thought out explination why: Magica’s magic is hers and Lena was just borrowing it.. the blue stuff is hers and hers alone. Magica does try to get her to master it by having one of her friends shoot her.. Webby of course strongly objects so Violet takes it up since it is for study after all and her sister can take a hit. Lena also wonders how she can even do magic without the amulet, but as Magica makes clear, and as I outlined above, the amulet is just help. The blue magic is her. Lena fails to use it though to deflect in time.. and to make matters worse the blot shows up after plopping gladstone down and wants to kill them both. We then get easily the best laugh of the episode.. as Magica tries stage magic and the blot wonders what the hell he’s looknig at. I mean this is his mortal enemy, the monster who killed everyone he’d ever known or loved... pulling out a bunch of colored rags and asking him to pick a card. It’s amazing. Lena attacks from the side and Webby and Violet quickly asist, with Magica joining in to use the rope to bind him and Lena’s magic kicking in, turning the rope into chain and summoning a snake.. but in a show of badassery the blot easily shrugs it off: he absorbs the magic, escapes and knocks them around while Webby asks the snake for help.. can she speak snake? She hopes so.

Then things get dire as The Blot starts absorbing the magic.. and killing lena as she starts to fade away. Magica of course can’t even feign dispaointment in anything but loosing her magic. And that’s also something I really love here: The show makes no attempt to make magica better or turn around because it just isn’t who she is and even if she did after all the abuse she did, Lena would have zero reason to forgive her. It’s nice that they DON’T try redemeing her or shoing a brighter side: she’s a bad person, a worse caregiver and they only came to her because they had no choice.

But as the magic’s absorbed magica does tell her to find the source of the power and we get a great scene: She first thinks of all the abuse magica’s done to her and it’s a harrowing montage to watch. But webby, breaks through that, since that obviouslyf ails and reminds her of where HER magic comes from: Her and webby. and we get an adorable,a nd shiptastic montage as we see more clips from past episodes.. but this time we see their adorable fistbump from “Beagle BOy Birthday Massacre”, their hug from “Jaw$!” and Lena’s return to the world and hug with her lady and future sister from “Friendship hates magic”. IT’s her friends, her sister and the love of her life who are her real source of power, and her magic connects to htem as lena ccccchanges. And I mean entirely, her outfit changes and she gets these.. weird bright blue eyes. Like I like the rest of her outfits, a white and blue attire to show her change with a badass cape, looks like a superhero so naturally I love it.. her eyes just look really off. Like when Milo Muprhy’s law tried to give characters colored irses. Because no one else in ducktales has them it just loosk.. weird.. Otherwise though I like it. We then get a beam struggle, but with adde dhelp from her friends and her new power, Lena eventually beats the blot, as her sheer power overloads the guantlet and sends him running. However in the confusion the amulet was lost.. and Magica gets it back. Lena whollops her easily, pointing out her magic’s purpose is to protect the world from people like her. It’s a nice development too: Lena realizes MAGIC isn’t inherently evil... it’s how it’s used. Star Vs could’ve maybe taken this lesson, but regardless, it’s a nice bit of character development realizing that magic is a part of her IS Her, and she shoudln’t have to give up something in her nature because of her abuser. Magica, while repowered, is force dto lookf or her staff while Lena gladly floats team magic home. Also with the guantlet broken gladstone is back, as a rain of 20 dolalr bills he uses as tissues confims, and the portal returns, and with Lena you know, havin ga whole superhero outfit, glowing blue eyes and her hair streak now blue, they know something clearly happend and the episode just kind of ends. Still a good one. Final Thoughts: This was a good one as I just said. While I had my nitpicks here and there as I also said, Lena’s strong character, and the game performances of Espisito, Thompkins, and Tate really add to our usual trlo, and as I mentioned before it’s nice ot see team magic get their own episode now their a full team. IT’s just a good romp and a good way back. I”ve made my complaints clear but their drowned out by good jokes, good character stuff, and good worldbuilding that makes this an utter thrill and a great one to come back to and i’tll also be intresting to see where Lena goes from here. But wherever she goes she’ll have webby. They can be whot hey are, independent together, if theyt ry. And yes that’s my shiping song for htem and yes I have one.

Quick bit before I go I dind’t get to, Gladstone flirts with magica when she lands in his arms, a little something for the shippers and a nice gesture on frakn’s part. Whle she rejects him and he dumps her in the sludge with a shrug. I mean.. their probably going to bang at some point. Gladstone’s powers mean he’ll likely find her when sh’es super horny and more than willing, and he’ll be like “eh why not boobs”. I mean I thought about this: I figure his powers allow him to find a willing partner, any gender or none at all I see him as pansexual, who happens to probablyb e loaded and diseased free, whenever he happens to be into it who naturallyw orks out perfectly because if he gets money whenever he wants it, why not sex? It’s not even a concious thing as we’ve seen things just work out for him so of course he probably gets laid, and as we see here it’s only if the other person consets. Good for him. Hope to see him again sooner. I want to see more of him and della interacting and see what she thinks of him. Freshe eys andall that.

But yeah this was great to come back to. If you liked this i’ve reviewed the rest of the season up to this point and will be reviewing each episdoe every monday till they stop again, so keep an eye out for that. You can check the tabs on my blogs for more reviews, come back this weekend for regular loud house coverag,e follow for more reviews or shoot me a pm if you’d like to comission me to do an episode. For just 5 bucks i’ll review any episode of any animated show of your choosing, and as i’ve only covered one season 2 episode of ducktales, there’s over 40 left ot choose from if you have any you want to hear my thoughts on. Until then stay safe, quack hard, and Go Team Venture! Play us out Steg .. and Co.

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#ducktales #the phantom and the sorceress #weblena #lena saberwing #webby vanderquack #violet sabrewing #scrooge mcduck #gladstone gander #magica despell #the phantom blot #giancarlo esposito #reviews #animation #disney #disney channel

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Walking Dead: What “Here’s Negan” Changes from the Comic

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This article contains spoilers for The Walking Dead season 10 episode 22.

Negan (no last name given…or needed) is one of the most unexpectedly beloved characters on The Walking Dead. Loquacious, charismatic, and unfailingly vulgar, Negan practically jumps off the page of Robert Kirkman’s comic series, and makes a big impact through Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s performance of the AMC series.

Over 193 issues of Kirkman’s comic, it became clear that the writer was just as enthralled with the brutish villain as the fans were. It would have been easy to kill Negan off at the end of the extended All Out War arc. Rick even slashed the man’s throat! But Kirkman made sure the jerk lived to fight another day and he soon became an integral part of the Whisperer War before finally retiring to a life of quiet contemplation in the woods.

Prior to Negan gracefully exiting the pages of The Walking Dead, however, Kirkman and longtime illustrator Charlie Adlard presented his origin story in a miniseries called “Here’s Negan.” Told over 16 short chapters and published in its entirety in 2017, “Here’s Negan” tells the story of how a lowly gym teacher came to be a bat-wielding, leather jacketed badass in the post-apocalypse.

Not that readers needed a reason to love the antagonist more, but the miniseries added a new sympathetic layer to the character and revealed how he broke bad. Now, in the finale of its six extra season 10 episodes, The Walking Dead TV series will be doing the same thing.

The Walking Dead season 10 episode 22 “Here’s Negan” serves as a fitting conclusion to a super-sized year for the show, while also filling in some of the blanks on Negan’s story. Here is how it does so along with what it borrows and what it changes from its comic miniseries inspiration.

Lucille’s Introduction

The characterization of Negan’s wife Lucille and her failing health going into the zombie apocalypse represents the biggest similarities between “Here’s Negan” on the page and on the screen. In fact, there’s really only one key difference between the comic and the TV adaptation. In the comic, Lucille dies right as the zombie apocalypse breaks out. In the show, Lucille makes it to at least seven months into the end of the world.

Aside from the time and setting difference, much of Negan and Lucille’s arc remains the same. The “Here’s Negan” comic reveals that Negan was every bit the charming asshole pre-zombies that he is now. The story opens with Negan, a gym teacher, mercilessly schooling three kids in a game of ping pong in his garage. Because he’s Negan, he can’t quite help but cuss them out upon his victory (just as he does while pwning some n00bs in a game of Gears of War in the episode). Lucille overhears Negan behaving inappropriately in front of the children and begins to tell him off. Unfortunately, shortly into her admonishment, she passes out.

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The story then cuts to the hospital where Lucille’s diagnosis is revealed. Shortly thereafter Negan sleeps with the woman who he has been cheating on Lucille with (yes, even after hearing about her cancer). Thankfully, after that tryst, Negan finally breaks the affair off and returns to Lucille’s bed side where he apologizes and tells her he’s all in now. We get a fun little example of Lucille’s sense of humor (and maybe her current state of mind) when she tells him “What’s wrong with you? Why would you pick the sick one?”

Shortly thereafter, Negan is present with Lucille at the hospital when the world ends. Doctors rush into Lucille’s room to tell Negan to run as some seriously messed up stuff is underway outside and within the halls of the hospital. Negan refuses to leave Lucille’s side naturally, but she passes away suddenly and becomes Negan’s first introduction to the walking dead.

The TV series does an admirable job in picking out what works about the beginning of “Here’s Negan” while finding ways to improve everything else. Getting to see what Lucille is like after the fall is a great way for the audience to warm up to her. Even when suffering through another round of chemo, Lucille musters the energy to take down a walker when Negan can’t.

This change also allows for Negan to mourn her loss more acutely when the time comes. Having to put down a zombified Lucille long after he’s acclimated to the world’s deadly new rules has a greater emotional impact than having to do so right at the beginning.

On the Road

The TV version of “Here’s Negan” begins to deviate from the comic quite a bit after the Lucille origin story is out of the way. The middle portion of the comic miniseries finds Negan doing what pretty much every other character has had to do: wandering out on the post-apocalyptic streets, looking for company, community, and safety.

While the TV Negan struggles to put down a single walker, the comic Negan is preternaturally gifted at both zombie-killing and survival. He encounters one group while promising he can hotwire a car (he cannot). Later on that night, Negan and the group face their first real test of the apocalypse when a horde of walkers attacks their campfire gathering. All of his new friends die, but Negan survives and loots the baseball bat that will one day become the new “Lucille” off of one of their corpses.

Negan surviving while his new partners die becomes something of a recurring theme. We see a montage of Negan making new acquaintance after new acquaintance, only for them to prove incapable of making it in this harsh new world. When his latest partner reveals she sustains a zombie bite on her neck, Negan reacts in pure rage.

“I’m sick of you people. You’re all fucking WEAK. ALL YOU EVER DO IS DIE.”

Negan wants to find someone strong, someone who can survive like him and who won’t break his heart by dying. He eventually finds just that in a group led by Dwight (hey, remember him?) and Sherry.

Negan’s origin story in the TV series, of course, differs a great deal. Since Lucille is still alive in the apocalypse, Negan’s inciting moment to get him on the road and moving is the need to secure more medicine for her.

What’s interesting about this alteration for the show is how it potentially changes Negan’s motivation for society-building. In the comic, Negan comes to view strength as its own virtue – because in the new world strength is the only way to avoid pain. But the people that Negan comes across in the episode are anything but strong.

Franklin and Laura (who fulfills Dwight and Sherry’s role as the “hey, I’ve seen that person before!” character) are unfailingly kind and compassionate. That only makes them an easy target for the Valaks Vipers MCs of the world. The comic version of Negan might be disgusted by Franklin and Laura’s charity and therefore weakness. In the show, however, it’s their selfless act that encourages him to take up the mantle of being the badass who can “save the world.”

Negan Becomes Negan

Speaking of being a badass, both the comic and TV versions of “Here’s Negan” feature a moment in which the character self-actualizes into the Savior leader we come to know later on. In the comic that moment comes when Negan gets a chance to display one of his only truly decent qualities: his hatred for sexual violence.

Soon after Negan joins Dwight’s group, he becomes their de facto leader. He’s simply too strong and his survival instincts are too good to be ignored. The others start to follow him, not Dwight, because they seem to instinctively understand that he’s their best bet for survival. Eventually the burgeoning Saviors encounter another group and invite them in to join forces because strength can be found in numbers.

Unfortunately that group’s leader soon implies to Negan that the women with them are sex slaves. Negan acts quickly and instinctively, beating the man to death with his beloved bat. After the deed is done, Negan begins to ominously adorn the bat with barbed wire while telling the rest of the group that they’re free to stay. He articulates his new modus operandi in the verbose way that a newly-born supervillain can. It was Lucille who made Negan stronger and gave him the armor to survive when all the people around him couldn’t. Now with this new barbed wire Lucille, Negan will finally be able to protect those around him, shielding them from the evils to come.

It’s a typically overwrought Negan speech, blunted by the Glenn-murdering version of Negan we know is yet to come. But if you squint a bit, you can kind of see how Negan’s mission of protection could become one of subjugation and domination. Negan really thought he was saving the world, one swing of Lucille at a time, because he was the only one strong enough to do so. It wasn’t until he came up against the power of Rick Grimes’s egalitarian group that he realized he was mistaken.

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Negan comes to a similar conclusion in this episode, he just takes a different route to getting there. After Lucille mercy kills herself and Negan is forced to put her zombified form down, he returns to confront the Valaks Vipers. Once the goons are dispatched outside, Negan can’t help but opt for theatrics once again. He puts the Viper leader on his knees for his very first “lineup,” though this time it’s a lineup of one.

He tells the Viper the story of how he got into a bar fight one night that jeopardized his gym teacher career. All he wanted to do was to listen to “You Are So Beautiful” with Lucille at a bar. But one particular loud mouth had other ideas. So Negan beat him up. Now that the world has ended it seems like only the loudmouths and douchebags are left. Truly decent, selfless people like Franklin and Laura at a premium. And when you find them among the zombies you must do whatever it takes to protect them. Who better to project the weak and the meek from the monsters than the ultimate monster – Negan, himself.

At that, my friends, is how you get a Negan.

The episodic “Here’s Negan” ends with a touching little coda where Negan lays his shattered bat to rest and finally, verbally says goodbye to the flesh and blood Lucille. His full eulogy is as follows.

“I’m sorry that I named a stupid baseball bat after you. I hope you found someone in the afterlife and you are screwing your brains out. Well, not really. But fair is fair. I miss you. I love the shit out of you. And I am gonna do your fighting for you.”

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Here, The Walking Dead is borrowing directly from the comics once again, but not from “Here’s Negan.” Issue 162 of the comic series opens with Negan burying Lucille, which was destroyed in The Whisperer War. His parting words are nearly identical right down to “I’m sorry that I named a stupid baseball bat after you” and the colorful passage about brains being screwed out in heaven. This is a particularly important passage for The Walking Dead season 10 to go out on. For while the comic version and Jeffrey Dean Morgan version of Negan have their differences, their stories start and end in the same place: Lucille.

The post The Walking Dead: What “Here’s Negan” Changes from the Comic appeared first on Den of Geek.

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learningrendezvous · 4 years

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Media Studies

FATTITUDE

By Lindsey Averill, Viridiana Lieberman

An eye-opening look at how popular media perpetuates fat hatred that results in cultural bias and discrimination.

FATTITUDE is an eye-opening look at how popular media perpetuates fat hatred that results in a cultural bias and a civil rights issue for people living in fat bodies.

Fat people are paid $1.25 less an hour than their thin counterparts and can still legally lose jobs just because they're fat. Additionally, 1 in 3 doctors associates fat bodies with hostility, dishonesty and poor hygiene. FATTITUDE looks at how this systemic cultural prejudice results in fat discrimination. Informed by a post-modern, post-colonial, feminist perspective, FATTITUDE also examines how fat-shaming crosses the lines of race, class, sexuality and gender. It features a diverse variety of voices such as academic scholars, activists, filmmakers, actors and psychologists, including Lindy West, Sonya Renee Taylor, Virgie Tovar, Ricki Lake, and more.

A body positive documentary intent on inspiring change, FATTITUDE offers alternative ideas that embrace body acceptance at all sizes, explores examples of fat positive representations being produced today by activists and the media, and focuses on real life solutions for moving forward and changing the national conversation about body image.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2019 / 88 minutes

TVTV: VIDEO REVOLUTIONARIES

Director: Paul Goldsmith

Featuring Bill Murray, Hunter Thompson, Steven Spielberg, Lynn Swan, Goldie Hawn, Abbie Hoffman, Lily Tomlin and more, "TVTV: Video Revolutionaries" is a documentary about Top Value Television (TVTV), a band of merry video makers who, from 1972 to 1977, took the then brand-new portable video camera and went out to document the world. In those days, there were only three TV networks, using giant studio cameras, and no one had ever seen a portable camera stuck in their face, let alone one held by what Newsweek called "braless, blue-jeaned video freaks." Because the technology was so new, there were no rules about how to use it or what to make. So the "freaks" used it to make format-bending satirical shows about whatever interested them - from the 1972 Republican Convention to an award-winning expose of a 15-year-old jet-set guru named Guru Maharaj Ji, called "Lord of the Universe" to capturing the Steelers and Cowboys partying hard the night before Super Bowl X.

Directed by TVTV alum Paul Goldsmith, the film is like opening a treasure chest into the 1970s, filled with cultural and political events hosted by now-famous characters who were then just beginning their climb to iconic.

DVD / 2018 / 82 minutes

ACORN AND THE FIRESTORM

Director: Reuben Atlas, Sam Pollard

If you were impoverished and politically voiceless, ACORN hoped to change your mind. For 40 years, the community-organizing group sought to empower marginalized communities. Its critics, though, believed ACORN exemplified everything wrong with liberal ideals.

Fueled by a YouTube video made by two young conservatives who posed as pimp and prostitute in a sting, ACORN's very existence would be challenged. ACORN and the Firestorm goes beyond the 24-hour news cycle and cuts to the heart of the great political divide.

DVD / 2017 / 84 minutes

GRAY STATE, A

Director: Erik Nelson

In 2010 David Crowley, an Iraq veteran, aspiring filmmaker and charismatic up-and-coming voice in fringe politics, began production on his film Gray State. Set in a dystopian near-future where civil liberties are trampled by an unrestrained federal government, the film's crowd-funded trailer was enthusiastically received by the burgeoning online community of libertarians, Tea Party activists and members of the nascent alt-right.

In January 2015, Crowley was found dead with his family in their suburban Minnesota home. Their shocking deaths quickly become a cause celebre for conspiracy theorists who speculate that Crowley was assassinated by a shadowy government concerned about a film and filmmaker that was getting too close to the truth about their aims.

A Gray State combs through Crowley's archive of 13,000 photographs, hundreds of hours of home video, and exhaustive behind-the-scenes footage of Crowley's work in progress to reveal what happens when a paranoid view of the government turns inward - blurring the lines of what is real and what people want to believe.

DVD / 2017 / 93 minutes

OBIT.

Directed by Vanessa Gould

At a time when the free press is under threat, OBIT. takes a rare look inside one of the United States' foremost journalistic institutions, The New York Times. The steadfast writers of the paper's Obituaries section approach their work with journalistic rigor and narrative flair, each day depositing the details of a handful of extraordinary lives into the cultural memory. Going beyond the byline and into the minds of those chronicling the recently deceased, OBIT. is ultimately a celebration of life that conveys the central role journalism plays in capturing and reporting vital pieces of our history.

DVD (Region 1, Color, Closed Captioned) / 2017 / 95 minutes

TRUMP: THE ART OF THE INSULT

By Joel Gilbert

Donald Trump used his special brand of the Art of the Insult to attack opponents and bash the media all the way to the White House in 2016. He continues to master the art with ongoing fine-tuning from the podium, his office and of course on Twitter.

While critics insisted "The Donald" was merely a chaotic sideshow, Trump continues to dominate the 24-hour news cycle with a master plan of political incorrectness. Hurling insults like Low-Energy Jeb, Lyin' Ted, Crooked Hillary, Little Marco, Pocahontas, and Fake News, Trump has emerged as an unstoppable political phenomenon who has transformed the Presidential voice into the greatest show on earth.

Trump: The Art of the Insult tells the story of Donald Trump's improbable journey from Trump Tower to rallies across America to the debate stage, where he reveled in mocking and taunting rivals with targeted insults and nicknames, leaving them gasping for air. As President of the US, he continues the trend.

In Trump: The Art of the Insult, the President is often sophomoric and sometimes brutal, yet America seems to always find him entertaining. Love or hate Donald Trump, you'll find yourself laughing along with the leader of the free world, and marveling at Trump.

Is "the Real Donald Trump" a marketing genius and accomplished performance artist or....?

DVD / 2017 / 95 minutes

ALL GOVERNMENTS LIE: TRUTH, DECEPTION, AND THE SPIRIT OF I.F. STONE

Director: Fred Peabody

Independent journalists like Amy Goodman, Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Matt Taibbi are changing the face of journalism, providing investigative, adversarial alternatives to mainstream, corporate news outlets. Our cameras follow as they expose government and corporate deception - just as the ground-breaking independent journalist I.F. Stone did decades ago.

DVD / 2016 / 91 minutes

DEMOCRACY ROAD

By Turid Rogne

After more than 20 years in exile in Norway, the Burmese journalists of DVB are returning to their homeland to establish their independent news station there. Editor-in-chief Aye Chan Naing and reporter Than Win Htut have dreamt about this for years, but their struggle for freedom and democracy is not over yet.

DEMOCRACY ROAD is a road movie documentary following the journalists of DVB in Myanmar in a critical phase of the establishment of the newborn democracy. With their existence as an independent news channel and Myanmar's future as a democracy at stake, senior reporter Than Win Htut and his colleagues hit the road with their groundbreaking show "Our Nation, Our Land." Their goal is to investigate the living conditions of ordinary people off the beaten path in Myanmar, but the machinery of the old dictatorship is still running. Simultaneously, editor-in-chief, Aye Chan Naing, has to negotiate with DVB's former enemies in the infamous Ministry of Information. The road towards democracy has only just begun...

Director Turid Rogne has followed the journalists of DVB for more than 10 years. With both boldness and sensitivity, she tells the story of life in a former dictatorship through the people who try to influence history.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 60 minutes

KINGS OF THE PAGES: THE GOLDEN AGE OF COMIC STRIPS

Directed by Robert Lemieux

At the turn of the 20th century, two of the most powerful men in America were newspaper magnates William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Noted mostly for their contentious rivalry and sensationalist news coverage, they were also responsible for cultivating some of the era's most recognizable celebrities-Nemo, Krazy, Happy Hooligan, George McManus, Ignatz, Mutt, Buster Brown, Hans and Fritz, and Offissa Pup, to name a few.

In their ongoing battle to attract newspaper readers, both Hearst and Pulitzer had discovered that comic strips were a strategic addition. Often raiding each other's staffs to acquire the best talent, both men recognized the potential. It wasn't until Hearst unveiled the first full color, 8-page comic supplement in 1896, that the potential was fully realized, prompting Hearst's now famous quote motto... "Eight Pages of Iridescent Polychromous Effulgence That Makes The Rainbow Look Like A Lead Pipe!"

Over the next fifty years, that polychromatic effulgence would usher in the Golden Age of the American comic strip. During that time span, more than 150 different strips made their way into America's living rooms. Every week the characters and their creators provided humorous entertainment and tickled many a funny bone. Reading the comics became a cultural phenomenon.

Only available in North America.

DVD / 2016 / 24 minutes

WHAT HAPPENED TO HER

By Kristy Guevara-Flanagan

WHAT HAPPENED TO HER is a forensic exploration of our cultural obsession with images of the dead woman on screen. Interspersing found footage from films and police procedural television shows and one actor's experience of playing the part of a corpse, the film offers a meditative critique on the trope of the dead female body.

The visual narrative of the genre, one reinforced through its intense and pervasive repetition, is revealed as a highly structured pageant. The experience of physical invasion and exploitation voiced by the actor pierce the fabric of the screened fantasy. The result is recurring and magnetic film cliche laid bare. Essential viewing for Pop Culture, Women's and Cinema Studies classes.

DVD (Color) / 2016 / 15 minutes

1971

Director: Johanna Hamilton

On March 8, 1971, a group of citizens broke into an FBI office in Media, PA, took every file, and shared them with the public. Their actions exposed the FBI's illegal surveillance program of law-abiding Americans. Now, these previously anonymous Americans publicly share their story for the first time.

The FBI, established in 1908, was for 60 years held unaccountable and untouchable until 1971, when The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, as they called themselves, sent the stolen files to journalists at the Washington Post, which published them and shed light on the FBI's widespread abuse of power. These actions exposed COINTELPRO, the FBI's illegal surveillance program that involved the intimidation of law-abiding Americans, and helped lead to the country's first congressional investigation of U.S. intelligence agencies.

The activist-burglars then disappeared into anonymity for forty years. Until now. Never caught, these previously anonymous Americans parents, teachers and citizens publicly reveal themselves for the first time and share their story in the documentary 1971. Using a mix of dramatic re-enactments and candid interviews with all involved, the film vividly brings to life one of the more important, yet relatively unexplored, chapters in modern American history.

DVD / 2015 / 79 minutes

BAPTISM OF FIRE, A

By Jerome Clement-Wilz

"As it gets harder to sell pictures, we take greater and greater risks," explains Corentin Fohlen. A war correspondent still in his twenties, Fohlen is part of a new generation of freelance journalists who fly to war zones from Libya to Afghanistan on their own dime in the hope of selling images to news media outlets.

But the carefree attitude of youth can change when confronted with the harsh reality of life in wartime. When a colleague is killed in Syria, Fohlen's thirst for adventure turns into a deeper reflection on the meaning of work and life. Director Clement-Wilz followed Fohlen through shells and bullets for four years in order to create this riveting portrait of the life of a contemporary war correspondent.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2015 / 52 minutes

DREAMS REWIRED

Narrated by Tilda Swinton By Manu Luksch, Martin Reinhart & Thomas Tode

Tilda Swinton's hypnotic voiceover and a treasure trove of rare archival footage culled from hundreds of films from the 1880s through the 1930s—much of it previously unseen—combine to trace the anxieties of today's hyper-connected world back a hundred years. Then, too, electric media sparked idealism in the public imagination—hailed as the beginning of an era of total communication, annihilation of distance and the end of war. But then, too, fears over the erosion of privacy, security, morality proved to be well-founded.

DREAMS REWIRED traces contemporary appetites and anxieties back to the birth of the telephone, television and cinema. At the time, early electric media were as revolutionary as social media are now. The technologies were expected to serve everyone, not just the elite classes. Human relationships would become stronger, efficiency would increase and the society would be revolutionized... But these initial promises were very different from what new media eventually brought to daily life.

Using excerpts from early dramatic films, slapstick comedies, political newsreels, advertisements and recordings of scientific experiments culled during years of research in film archives around the world, co-directors Manu Luksch, Martin Reinhart and Thomas Tode unearth material that is by turns hilarious, revelatory, beautiful and prescient. The archival footage, combined with poetic narration and a virtuosic score by Siegfried Friedrich forges a cross-generational connection between contemporary viewers and their idealistic forbearers of a century ago.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2015 / 85 minutes

HOT TYPE: 150 YEARS OF THE NATION

Director: Barbara Kopple

Hot Type: 150 Years of The Nation is a vivid, inside look at America's oldest continuously published weekly magazine. Shot over three years in intimate, cinema verite style, the film captures the day-to-day pressures and challenges of publishing the progressive magazine as it follows reporters out into the field, the editors who shape their work, and the editor-in chief who tries to keep all of the plates spinning.

Writers are the heart and soul of the magazine, and the film follows them extensively. Sasha Abramsky travels to West Texas to report on the years-long drought that has gripped the region and the devastating economic impact on farmers and residents. John Nichols unpacks what's going on behind the effort to recall Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. Amy Wilentz visits the "temporary" tent camps of Haiti, three years after the earthquake, to shed light on the dire conditions and lackluster international response. And Dani McClain reports on the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina, and its dynamic leader Rev. William Barber, as they push back against an extreme right-wing takeover of the state legislature.

In all of the current-day reported stories, The Nation's incredible trove of archival articles - and roster of writers - acts as an historical touchstone and illuminates how the past continuously ripples through and shapes current events.

At a fascinating moment in American history - politically, socially and culturally - the media landscape is changing at breathtaking speed. The film charts the journey of The Nation - and the nation - evolving into the future, as it is guided by its remarkable past.

DVD / 2015 / 92 minutes

HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD

Director: Jerry Rothwell

How to Change the World chronicles the adventures of an eclectic group of young pioneers - Canadian hippie journalists, photographers, musicians, scientists, and American draft dodgers - who set out to stop Richard Nixon's atomic bomb tests in Amchitka, Alaska, and end up creating the worldwide green movement.

Greenpeace was founded on tight knit, passionate friendships forged in Vancouver in the early 1970s. Together they pioneered a template for environmental activism which mixed daring iconic feats and worldwide media: placing small rubber inflatables between harpooners and whales, blocking ice-breaking sealing ships with their bodies, spraying the pelts of baby seals with dye to make them valueless in the fur market. The group had a prescient understanding of the power of media, knowing that the advent of global mass communications meant that the image had become a more effective tool for change than the strike or the demonstration.

DVD (Region 1, Color) / 2015 / 109 minutes

SEX, LIES AND TABLOIDS!

By Jean-Baptiste Peretie

They're lurid, obnoxious, disdainful and explicit. And we love them - and love to hate them.

SEX, LIES AND TABLOIDS! charts the rise and fall of tabloid papers in the UK and US, including the New York Post, The Sun, and notorious supermarket tabloids like the National Enquirer and The Star.

In the beginning, they were upstarts. Papers that shamelessly pandered with stories about sex scandals, and celebrities - often skirting ethical lines, and sometimes outright making things up ("Run it through the typewriter again," was one editor's mantra.) But by the 1980s and '90s they had become the media heavyweights. Left behind by the tabloids' coverage of Bill Clinton's sex life, Princess Diana and the OJ Simpson trial, the mainstream media started to adopt their techniques.

SEX, LIES AND TABLOIDS! Features extensive interviews with key tabloid players such as notorious editor Kelvin MacKenzie ("If you have no news... you get a picture of Diana and make it as big as possible"), journalist Paul McMullan ("People need to understand that privacy is an evil, bad concept"), and the late Vincent Musetto (famed for the headline "Headless body in topless bar"). The film provides an insider's account of the no-holds-barred mentality driving tabloid journalism while also using fun and campy footage mimicking the style of the tabloids themselves.

Eventually, the tabs would go too far. Briefly chastened by the death of Diana and shunned after the British phone hacking scandal, the papers would go into a downward spiral, with The News of the World even shutting down. But culture they spawned is stronger than ever. Sites like TMZ and The Smoking Gun and an omni-present gotcha culture have brought the spirit of the tabloids to the Internet. At the same time, the ubiquity of sharing means photos that would once have been prized by paparazzi (hello Kim Kardashian in a bikini) are posted by celebrities and would-be-celebs themselves. The tabloids may be gone, but the tabloid spirit is everywhere.

DVD (Closed Captioned) / 2015 / 52 minutes

WORLD ACCORDING TO RUSSIA TODAY, THE

By Misja Pekel

In 2014, Malaysian Airlines passenger flight 17 was shot down with a rocket intended for the private plane of Russian president Vladimir Putin... If, that is, a viewer is relying on the satellite TV network Russia Today as their source for news.

These claims were not the first time Russia Today drew attention for counter-factual reporting: during the 2008 war in Georgia, the network reported that South Ossetians were the victims of genocide at the hands of Georgians. In 2014, the channel was warned by the British TV agency for its biased and inaccurate reporting on the uprising on Maidan Square in Kiev. The list goes on and on.

Russia Today (now renamed just RT) was launched in 2005 to bring a Russian-centric perspective on current political events to a global audience. After a decade of generous Kremlin funding, 2015 found the 24-hour news channel the biggest media organization on YouTube with 2 billion viewers: more than CNN and the BBC combined.

The network claims only to offer an alternative perspective to the monolithic view presented by mainstream Western media. But what kind of "reporting" is Russia Today actually doing? What is it like to work for the channel? How much influence does the Kremlin really have there? Is it possible to differentiate between fact and opinion on a Russian channel when the Russian interests are at stake?

In Misja Pekel's disturbing documentary THE WORLD ACCORDING TO RUSSIA TODAY, former and current news anchors, editors and correspondents for the network-including William Dunbar, Sara Firth, Marc de Jersey, Afshin Rattansi and Liz Wahl-join journalists and media professionals Alexander Nekrassov, Peter Pomerantsev, Richard Sambrook, Daniel Sandford, Derk Sauer and more in a detailed dissection of the channel's modus operandi and the challenges and dangers of reporting and consuming news in a globalized world.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2015 / 40 minutes

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING IN THE DIGITAL ERA

In the new world of tweets, blogs, and citizen journalism, what is the outlook for true investigative reporting? This program highlights the ways investigative journalism is changing, particularly in the context of digital and online media. Social media and globalization have changed the ways reporters connect with their readers. What are the advantages and disadvantages of nearly instantaneous access to news as it unfolds? A panel of heavy hitters from the world of journalism weighs in on these and other issues, such as emerging financial models for (costly) investigative reporting as traditional news budgets shrink. Young reporters entering the field will be particularly encouraged by many of the exciting technologies and resources available for developing stories that are more in-depth, media-rich, and engaging. Investigative journalism is a fast-evolving field, and this program helps entry-level reporters as well as veterans to bear witness more effectively in the Internet era.

DVD / 2014 / 17 minutes

ADJUST YOUR TRACKING: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE VHS COLLECTOR

It revolutionized the film business. The birth and life of VHS as a format brought films into the homes of millions around the world. And, it brought genre films to the forefront. Now, if you think VHS is dead, you're wrong!

Over 100 collectors, filmmakers, producers, and video store owners express how VHS changed their lives. Some see VHS as worthless plastic, but Adjust Your Tracking shows a vibrant world of collectors and movie fans who are keeping the format, and the movies, alive. Travel back to the days of video rental stores with those who still buy, sell, rent and trade the format that will not die-VHS.

DVD / 2013 / 84 minutes

CAPTIVATED: FINDING FREEDOM IN A MEDIA CAPTIVE CULTURE

This feature-length documentary is not anti-media or anti-technology, but it raises critical concerns about our culture's seemingly unchecked enthusiasm for media consumption. It highlights the overwhelming evidence of growing problems on multiple fronts, including the potential physical, psychological, moral, and spiritual impacts of media technology when used or consumed without discretion.

Features outstanding interviews with Ray Comfort, Bob Waliszewsi, Dr. Ted Baehr, Dr. Jeff Myers, Kerby Anderson, Kevin Swanson, Dr. David Walsh, Al Menconi, Dr. Dimitri Christakis, Dick Rolfe, Phil Chalmers, Professor Mark Bauerlein, Maggie Jackson, and more. .

DVD / 2013 / 107 minutes

INREALLIFE

Director: Beeban Kidron InRealLife asks what exactly is the internet and what is it doing to our children? Taking us on a journey from the bedrooms of teenagers to Silicon Valley, filmmaker Beeban Kidron suggests that rather than the promise of free and open connectivity, young people are increasingly ensnared in a commercial world. Beguiling and glittering on the outside, it can be alienating and addictive. Quietly building its case, Kidron's film asks if we can afford to stand by while our children, trapped in their 24/7 connectivity, are being outsourced to the net?

While newspapers alternately praise and panic about the glittering world of the Internet, there is a generation of children who have grown up with a smart phone in their hand, connected to the world 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Public discourse seems to revolve around privacy, an issue that embodies the fears and concerns of adults. What is less discussed is what it really means to always be online, never alone and increasingly bombarded by a world that has something to sell you and appears to know you better than yourself. A world that is so ubiquitous that it is the first thing you see as you wake up in the morning and the last thing you see before you go to sleep at night.

For adults there was a 'before' the net. But for the current generation, at the time of their most rapid development they have no other experience and few tools with which to negotiate the overwhelming parade of opportunity and cost that the internet delivers directly into their hands.

From the bedrooms of five disparate teenagers and then into the companies that profit from the internet, InRealLifetakes a closer look at some of the behavioral outcomes that come from living in a commercially driven, 'interruption' culture.

Following the physical journey of the internet, from fiber optic cables through sewers and under oceans, from London to NYC and finally to Silicon Valley, the film reveals that what is often thought of as an 'open, democratic and free' world is in fact dominated by a small group of powerful players. Meanwhile our kids - merely pawns in the game - are adapting to this new world - along with their expectation of friendship, their cognition and their sexuality.

DVD / 2013 / 90 minutes

SMILING THROUGH THE APOCALYPSE

Director: Tom Hayes

Esquire magazine was a galvanizing force in American culture from the early 1960s through the early '70s. Forging its pop-cultural capital on the basis of provocative cover art, intellectual audacity and riveting articles by the preeminent and cutting edge writers of the time, the magazine captured the zeitgeist of America in the crucible of the '60s.

The chief architect of this print revolution was Harold Hayes, a brilliant and tenacious editor who granted Esquire's contributors unprecedented journalistic freedom. Hayes' fearless instincts provided a haven for writers like Gore Vidal, Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Nora Ephron, William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer, and nurtured the iconoclastic talents of art director George Lois. By making it possible for writers and artists to bring novelistic techniques into reportage Hayes fostered what became known as "New Journalism".

The indelible cultural contributions captured in this enthralling documentary by his son, Tom Hayes, provide a vivid context for nothing less than the rebirth of American aesthetics. Featuring interviews with Robert Benton, Candice Bergen, Peter Bogdanovich, Brock Brower, Graydon Carter, Lee Eisenberg, Harlan Ellison, Nora Ephron, Robert Frank, Hugh Hefner, Tom Meehan, Frank Rich, Bob Rifkind, Gay Talese, Gore Vidal, Ed Wilson, Tom Wolfe and many others.

DVD / 2013 / 99 minutes

BATTLE FOR THE ARAB VIEWER, THE

By Nordin Lasfar

In early 2011, people around the world tuned into Al Jazeera to watch the Egyptian revolution in real time. Meanwhile, rival broadcaster Al Arabiya was also offering near continuous coverage, with cameras on a balcony overlooking the 6th October Bridge, where protesters and police clashed.

How was the content of those broadcasts - and the networks' subsequent coverage - influenced by their political allegiances?

Featuring interviews with current and former journalists from both networks, and analysis from independent pundits, The Battle for the Arab Viewer highlights the philosophical differences between the two pan-Arab networks.

Al Jazeera was created by the Emir of Qatar after he deposed his father in a coup. The station typically champions the poor and social movements - such as the Muslim Brotherhood - that are hostile to the Saudi regime. The station has grown highly influential. In the film, a passerby stops Al Jazeera's chief Cairo correspondent on the street to thank him and the government of Qatar for supporting the anti-Mubarak forces, saying the network is "90%" responsible for the revolution.

With Al Jazeera supporting elements hostile to Saudi Arabia, the Saudis set up their own network as a counterpoint: the more conservative Al Arabiya, owned by a close friend of the royal family.

While The Battle for the Arab Viewer offers insight and analysis, it also shows how the battle between the two networks plays out on the ground in Cairo. We go behind the scenes with Al Arabiya journalist Randa Abul Azm and Al Jazeera's Abdelfattah Fayed as they follow stories, break news, and cover events such as Hosni Mubarak's trial. (Azm is allowed into the courtroom, but Fayed is not.)

Azm and Fayed each mirror their networks' respective demographics. Al Arabiya appeals to well-off, middle-class viewers who value security and stability. Enter Amz, who lives in a building built by her engineer father, on a street named for her grandfather. Fayed, representing the network that purports to stand for the downtrodden, shows us a photo of his father, who worked in agriculture.

Both deny that their work is influenced by the political agendas of their networks' owners. But former employees of both networks tell a different story. Particularly striking is the case of Hafez al Mirazi, who was taken off Al Arabiya's airwaves after promising to put Saudi Arabia under the microscope on his show.

Media bias is nothing new - as Mirazi says, viewers of Fox News and MSNBC each know what they are going to get. What is different in the Arab world is that the networks are directly owned by states. He says, "They keep shifting according to the countries they are sponsored by, and that affects the stories their citizens get on a daily basis."

Ultimately, the problem may resolve itself. As democracy spreads through the region, will truly independent media follow?

DVD (Color) / 2011 / 48 minutes

WAR PHOTOGRAPHER

Director: Christian Frei

"If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough." - Robert Capa

War photographer James Nachtwey has been close enough for twenty years. Over this time he hasn't missed a single war. And he probably has seen more suffering and dying than anyone else alive. For War Photographer, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Christian Frei followed Nachtwey for two years into the wars in Indonesia, Kosovo, and Palestine, as well as to other troubled areas around the world.

If we believe Hollywood pictures, war photographers are all hard-boiled and cynical old troopers. How can they think about 'exposure time' at the very moment of dread? But James Nachtwey is no rumbling swaggerer. He is an unobtrusive man, with grey hair and the deliberation of a professor of philosophy. A thoughtful, rather shy person - who many think of as the bravest and best war photographer ever.

Christiane Amanpour of CNN, Hans-Hermann Klare of Stern Magazine and many other friends and colleagues of Nachtwey talk about his photos, his relationship to his work, and the impact it has on his personal life. And many of his most powerful images are shown in the film.

Finally, and most amazingly, in War Photographer special video micro-cameras are attached to Nachtwey's still camera. We hear every breath of the photographer. We participate in the act of shooting war photos. And for the first time in the history of movies about photographers, this technique allows us the most intimate insight into the work of a concerned photojournalist.

DVD (English and German) / 2001 / 96 minutes

http://www.learningemall.com/News/Media_1911.html

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ryanmeft · 5 years

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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Movie Review

Spider-Man 2 set the standard for the wall-crawler’s celluloid escapes, and the movies have been trying to catch up to that ever since. Thanks in large part to poor decisions by Sony, it never came close until Marvel got a hand on the property again. The last thing I ever expected from Sony’s own spin-off movies was that they’d be any good, especially after surviving Venom. As it turns out, the soul of the character just needed animation to set it free. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is not only a great entry in the webslinger’s mostly forgettable filmography, it’s in the top tier of superhero films, period.

Miles Morales (Shamiek Moore) is a black teen being sent to a private school after winning a scholarship; his father (Brian Tyree Henry) is a by-the-books cop who struggles to understand his growing son but loves him anyway, which sounds cliche but works because the character is so well-written. His mother (Luna Lauren Velez) is unfortunately sidelined, and spending more time on her in the sequel would be welcome. He looks up to his uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali), who shares Miles’s love of graffiti art but who is also some sort of a criminal. I mention Miles’s race because it’s important: the movie elects for a happily stable family and a smart kid with a bright future, a rare focus for African American characters in cinema. The movie is not political in the slightest, and treats this as if it’s not uncommon, because it isn’t. It’s a deliberate contrast to Peter Parker, whose life is a constant mess. Miles gets his powers with a similar spider bite and without much fanfare.

Speaking of Peter Parker, he shows up, voiced by Chris Pine, and gets in a big fight involving the Green Goblin (Jorma Taccone) and the Kingpin (Liev Schreiber), classic Spider-Man villains somewhat re-imagined for the setting. When things go wrong trying to stop a dimension-combining device, Miles lands the gig of stopping the machine from firing again, but can barely use his own powers. Another Parker (Jake Johnson), an older and out-of-shape one who has given up on life, shows up and doesn’t make a very adequate mentor. He’s eventually joined by numerous other versions. Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), who is clearly here to launch her own spin-off, is cynical and calculating. Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn) is an anime take on the character whose powers are actually invested in a machine that I think is piloted by a spider itself. I’ll be honest, I lost the details in the rush, but she works because she’s more homage to the form than parody. Spider-Ham/Peter Porker (John Mulaney) is sadly underutilized and didn’t really add as much as he could; there’s too many other Spider-guys for him to stand out. By far my favorite was Spider-Man Noir, a version who is almost all shadow, wears a fedora and trench-coat, and is voiced brilliantly by Nicolas Cage, who channels Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney. Indeed, the voice cast is so stuffed that Lily Tomlin and Zoe Kravitz end up in tertiary roles. Each of these alternate heroes got sucked into Miles’s universe and will see their molecules fracture like a bad radio signal if they don’t get back. For this, they seek the help of a batty-but-brilliant scientist (Kathryn Hahn), who provokes one of Parker’s best lines. Each is accompanied by a quick and humorous rundown of their respective origins, which both serves as a nice send-up of the now-tedious origin story and fills in whatever small amount of info the audience might need.

A disclaimer for those who are understandably confused about Spidey’s cinematic history: none of these Spider-People are the same one from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that interconnected place of Guardians and Avengers. The Parker here appears to be some version of the one from Sam Raimi’s first trilogy, and considering the divided reception of that line, it’s an interesting choice (it still contains the best Spider-Man movie, and a couple lackluster ones). It matters far less than it does in the MCU, because this movie feeds more on energy, humor and heart than on continuity. To my recollection (it’s been a while), all of these characters exist in some way in the comics, but you don’t have to care. On screen, they play off each other wonderfully. The jaded Parker is like those wizened mentors from every movie ever made about a plucky kid finding his way, except this guy, while having the skills, doesn’t care. That’s a decidedly different look for Spider-Man, one that only an animated film, specifically only an animated film this unique, could pull off; an apathetic hero is just not something audiences would accept if he were the main character. The Noir version has the most potential for his own movie, as his universe is the most different from what we’ve seen before. Like Rey in Star Wars, Spider-Gwen is unfortunately given the least interesting character, but there’s room for development later. For some reason, the same people that decided we need more female heroes (which we do) also decided they always have to be---pardon the expression---the straight man. Will we maybe have a female take on Tony Stark at some point? I won’t hold my breath; the culture just isn’t there yet.

The heroes are of course opposed by the afore-mentioned villains, joined by many others: Prowler, a Batman-esque fighter, Scorpion (Joaquin Cosio), Tombstone (Marvin “Krondon” Jones III) and a surprise bonus pick who I will not mention because you should discover it for yourself, except to say this person really works while, in a way, bringing back a long-absent, long in demand foe. When machines are activated and villains are fighting, the movie does occasionally veer somewhat close to confusion, but it always recovers, with the exception of some of the villains being rather generic. Animation has unshackled the agility, speed and wit Spider-Man has always evoked in the minds of people flipping through comic panels. There’s a litheness to the movements of the characters that no amount of CG could ever replicate, and a boundless energy that the unique animation style---designed to look like comic panels in motion and, to my eternal shock, actually successful in this---works perfectly with.

Still, the most surprising thing is how the emotions carry through. Each Spider-Dude-or-Dudette has their own tragedy and loss, and the sense that no matter what universe he exists in, he’ll always have to deal with that is sadly poignant, especially for anyone who grew up on the Spider-Man mythos. There are actual stakes here; even the motivations of the Kingpin have real heft. The movie has been handled by Lego Movie producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, with a small army of co-writers joining along the way, and the surprise is that for once, so many cooks have managed to concoct something that feels so sincere.

If you aren’t a comic person, don’t worry. There’s enough heart here to sweep you up even if you don’t know your spiders from your bats. Stan Lee’s posthumous cameo feels fitting, in a movie that does right by his (and Steve Ditko’s) best creation. Nerds tend to declare amazing absolutely every comic movie that comes out. And every once in a while, they’re right.

Verdict: Highly Recommended (3 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

You can follow Ryan's reviews on Facebook here:

https://www.facebook.com/ryanmeftmovies/

Or his tweets here:

https://twitter.com/RyanmEft

All images are property of the people what own the movie.

#spider-man #marvel #Nicolas Cage #the lego movie #mahershala ali #hailee steinfeld #movies #shamiek moore #brian tyree henry #luna lauren velez #chris pine #jake johnson #zoe kravitz #lily tomlin #kimiko glenn #john mulaney #joaquin cosio #superheroes #comics

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jspark3000 · 7 years

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Ugly Asian Male: On Being the Least Attractive Guy in the Room

Statistically, I’m the least attractive person in the dating scene. Alongside black women, the Asian-American male is considered the most ugly and undesirable person in the room.

Take it from Steve Harvey, who won’t eat what he can’t pronounce:

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Eddie Huang, creator of the groundbreaking Asian-American sitcom Fresh Off the Boat, responded to Steve Harvey in The New York Times:

“[Every] Asian-American man knows what the dominant culture has to say about us. We count good, we bow well, we are technologically proficient, we’re naturally subordinate, our male anatomy is the size of a thumb drive and we could never in a thousand millenniums be a threat to steal your girl.”

Asian-American men, like me, know the score. That is, we don’t count at all.

Hollywood won’t bank on me. Think: When was the last time you saw an Asian male kiss a non-Asian female in a movie or TV show? Or when was the last time an Asian-American male was the desired person in a romantic comedy? And more specifically, when where they not Kung Fu practitioners or computer geniuses? I can only think of two examples: Steven Yeun as Glenn from The Walking Dead and John Cho as Harold from Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. So it takes either a zombie apocalypse or the munchies to see a fully breathing Asian male lead, or a Photoshop campaign #StarringJohnCho for an Asian protagonist with actual thoughts in his head.

It’s so rare to see a three-dimensional Asian male character, with actual hopes and dreams, that Steven Yeun remarks in GQ Magazine:

GQ Magazine: When you look back on your long tenure on The Walking Dead, what makes you proudest?

Steven Yeun: Honestly, the privilege that I had to play an Asian-American character that didn’t have to apologize at all for being Asian, or even acknowledge that he was Asian. Obviously, you’re going to address it. It’s real. It’s a thing. I am Asian, and Glenn is Asian. But I was very honored to be able to play somebody that showed multiple sides, and showed depth, and showed a way to relate to everyone. It was quite an honor, in that regard. This didn’t exist when I was a kid. I didn’t get to see Glenn. I didn’t get to see a fully formed Asian-American person on my television, where you could say, “That dude just belongs here.” Kids, growing up now, can see this show and see a face that they recognize. And go, “Oh my god. That’s my face too.”

Growing up, I never had that, either. I can’t help but think of this scene from the biopic, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, in which Bruce Lee watches the controversial Asian stereotype played by Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s to a theater filled with derisive laughter. This moment with Bruce Lee is most likely fictional, but the weight of it is not lost on us:

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This was a powerful moment for me as a kid, because I grew up with the same sort of mocking laughter, whether it was watching Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with my white neighbors, or being assailed by the Bruce Lee wail in the local grocery store. I knew they were laughing at me, and not with.

“But hey wait!”—I’m told, with fervent knowing, “I know some Asian guys who are hot!” and I’m pointed to an infamous Buzzfeed list that shows “the hottest Asian men who will prove you wrong about Asian men,” with zero irony. Yes, I’ve seen the list. And yes, they’re like I expected: hard-rock glistening abs that are impossible for the working Asian dad, with classically European, chiseled faces and surgically-lifted eyes. More than that, it plays into the same creepy objectification of Asians as sexual play-toys.

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Perhaps even worse than the portrayal of Asian men is how they’re not. More often, an acting role becomes “whitewashed” to suit a global audience, or an Anglo-American is the audience-avatar as a safety net for box office returns (remember, the last samurai in The Last Samurai was white).

I know this is a shrill, ill-discussed subject with all kinds of variables, but from the prosthetic slanted eyes in Cloud Atlas to race-bleaching in Ghost in the Shell to the the “Yellow Peril” demonizing of Asian males as evil ninjas and drug dealers in Daredevil and Iron Fist, Asian-Americans—especially males, as females can still literally serve as co-stars—are vastly both mis- and under-represented. We’re used for a footnote joke at the Academy Awards (the same year that there was a campaign called #OscarsSoWhite), an overly loud insane person in raunchy comedies like The Hangover or Saving Silverman, or a “funny foreigners” punchline in the falsely interpreted romantic comedy, 500 Days of Summer.

One of the obvious reasons that Asian-Americans are sidelined in the mainstream is because there’s no money in it. It’s that simple. Freddie Wong, in his parody video of Ghost in the Shell casting Scarlett Johansson, says it best:

“Because, as a studio executive, the immorality of whitewashing a beloved work of Japanese culture is outweighed by my fear that audiences won’t want to watch a movie starring an Asian woman. And I don’t have the balls to take that risk. Besides, whatever political outrage this decision evokes doesn’t materially effect how much money I make.”

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In other words, we’re stuck in a Catch-22. There can be no roles for an Asian-American unless it guarantees a profit, but since we’re not portrayed regularly in most media, there’s never a chance for Asian-American leads to draw a profit in the first place. I get the bottom line here, and I’m not so oblivious to consider that investors are all idealistic innovators. The creative risk is too daring. From an executive’s point of view, I can almost painfully understand.

So besides whitewashing an entirely Asian property, the next best thing is to throw in a scrap of representation by using the whole stereotype. Make the Asian guy the smartest or the martial artist, and there’s your token diversity. It’s why major Hollywood blockbusters have now made shoehorned references to China: because they’re a huge source of box office revenue, and a pandering shout-out to China, no matter how forced or unoriginal, will mean more ticket sales. (It’s even going the other way, with Chinese movies like The Great Wall casting a white role to get more sales in America.)

Yet these roles have little nuance and only serve to further someone else’s plot. I’m the Manic Pixie Dream Girl and the Magical Negro, rolled into a non-threatening sidekick or the meditative Zen master. I will never be the action star or the romantic lead. God forbid that an Asian-American male would ever win against a non-Asian.

In some cases, Asians have capitalized on their own mockery by making fun of themselves in minstrel-like deprecation. I was surprised to find that the first winner of Last Comic Standing was a Vietnamese-American named Dat Phan, until I saw his routine, which went for the lowest hanging fruit possible. If you can’t beat the laughter, why not become the jester? Even other Asians want in on their own sabotage.

Representation for the Asian-American only seems to happens when it aims for the least common denominator. The cheapest move, of course, is to completely hijack the “exotic quaintness” of Asian culture without going “fully Asian,” in order to boost a pseudo-masculinity. It’s easy: throw in Chinese tattoos or an Asian-type mysticism, and the non-Asian character instantly gains credibility. You can make up an Asian-sounding name, like “David Wong,” actual name Jason Pargin, a white author at Cracked.com, or Michael Derrick Hudson, a white poet who uses pen name “Yi-Fen Chou,” and watch the doors open. All the benefits, none of the fuss. Use my name without the actual struggle.

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Of course, Asian-Americans are accused of allowing such undercover racism in the mainstream because we’re silent, passive, and obedient. We’re easy targets. We don’t typically march or cause disruption. We’re not socially involved. It’s why a huge clothing company like Abercrombie & Fitch can make shirts with Asian stereotypes like “Two Wongs Can Make It White.” It’s why Stephen Colbert (whom I love, by the way), can get away with non-apologies when he cracks yet another Asian joke. It’s why Ryo Oyamada, a 24 year old Japanese college student, can get run over by a police car in New York, and the officer goes free and no one chants in the streets.

If you replaced the race with any other, the response would be louder, with solidarity on every side. Asian? No one cares. Literally and statistically, no one cares. Worst of all, it appears that Asians don’t care, either. It’s always a surprise when we speak up. You can drag an Asian-American off an airplane, and the most noise you’ll hear from other Asians is that they just don’t want to be seen as noisy and displeasing.

The thing is, there are no shortage of Asian-American men who are physically and intellectually desirable, who could portray themselves as fully living beings with compelling stories and relatable conflicts. Is it possible that the mainstream, for all its talk about diversity, is afraid of encountering a man who is both Asian-American and attractive? Is it simply intolerable to witness an Asian-American switch lanes between the sidekick and the star? Has the Asian-American male been permanently imprinted as comic relief or Karate expert? Is it too culturally explosive to pair an Asian-American male with a non-Asian female? Can we really handle an Asian alpha male who gets the girl at the end? (Much less a non-Asian female lead get an Asian guy at the end?)

I have to admit that some of this is on us. No, I don’t mean that we brought it on ourselves. I would never, ever perpetuate blaming the victim. I mean that we can still fight against the pervasive, seemingly impermeable walls around the identity of the Asian male, by reaching and demanding for more challenging roles in every sphere of media. The shift in perception of the Asian-American male coincides with a shift in self-perception.

Is it also possible to take a creative risk without guarantees? I know today’s market is less likely to pave new ground, with its risk-averse eye on sequels and reboots and recycling the same tale, but I wonder how we can tell new tales without resorting to the cheapest, easiest cliches, without exploiting Asian culture for “mystical credibility” but celebrating its uniqueness with a thoughtful exploration of both its treasures and its trials.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Lewis Tan, the half-Asian-American actor who was rejected for the role of Iron Fist. In a recent interview, he says:

“I’ve turned down a couple roles. My agents will tell you when I first signed with them, I turned down the first three or four things that came up. I’ve just turned down roles that were super-stereotypically Asian that I didn’t feel represented me and I didn’t want to do. Not to necessarily say they’re bad roles, but it just wasn’t me. I’m not going to do this dorky Asian accent and just play someone in the background. That’s not why I’m here to act. I’m here to represent and to make stories that I believe in and to achieve new things in the industry.”

#Asian-American #race #culture #art #media #representation #POC #Steven Yeun #Iron Fist #racism #whitewashing #Orientalism #yellow peril #mysticism #appropriation #North Korea #China #social commentary

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pendesvoyage · 5 years

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Here’s What You Missed From The CDG Awards 2019: Ceremony

The Costume Designer’s Guild held its 2019 awards show on Tuesday February 19th at the Beverly Hilton. A star-studded cast attended the ceremony to celebrate the never-ending hard work of the costume designers and costuming departments of big blockbuster flicks. Among the nominees and winners were Black Panther, The Favourite, and Marvelous Ms. Maisel. The awards were given for both film and TV in a multitude of categories.

Hosted by Kate Walsh of Grey’s Anatomy and 13 Reasons Why, the CDGA’s was filled with characters with costumes to match. Walsh began the night by appearing on stage in a Glenda the Good Witch replica outfit, sparkles and all.

@CostumeAwards on Twitter

Presenting the first award of the night for Excellence in Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV was Happy actress Lili Mirojnick and GLOW actor Chris Lowell.

The award goes to:

@CostumeAwards on Twitter

Presenting the award for Excellence in Contemporary TV was I Feed Bad actress Sarayu Rao and Man in the High Castle actor Jason O’Mara.

The award goes to:

@CostumeAwards on Twitter

Lou sported a turban while Allison donned a hoodie.

@CostumeAwards on Twitter

Cate Adair, VP of CDGA, noted on stage that there a difference in pay between the CDGA and other guilds. She suggested it was because the CDGA is made up of mostly women. Adair announced, “I don’t know about you, but my watch says, time’s up!”, according to Deadline.

International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees’ Mike Miller presented Betty Pecha Madden the Distinguished Service Award.

Madden is best known for works like Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker and the ‘88 Jouney to the Center of the Earth.

American Horror Story vets Leslie Grossman and Billie Lourd presented the award for Excellence in Period TV.

The awards goes to:

@CostumeAwards on Twitter

Sonequa Marin-Green and Wilson Cruz from CBS’s Star Trek: Discovery presented the award for Excellence in Variety, Reality-Competition, Live TV.

The award goes to:

@CostumeAwards on Twitter

Sarah Paulson presented Ryan Murphy with the Distinguished Collaborator Award.

Murphy has worked with Paulson on American Horror Story. He has also produced, created or directed shows like Glee, Pose, and 9-1-1.

Kate Walsh spoofed Ryan Murphy’s show The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story by putting on a long blonde wig and big sunglasses.

(Penelope Cruz as Donatella Versace.)

A slew of cast members from Gracie & Frankie including June Diane Raphael, Ethan Embry, Lindsey Kraft, and Baron Vaughn presented the award for Excellence in Short Form Costume Design.

The award goes to:

@CostumeAwards on Twitter

Presenting the award for Excellence in Sci-Fi/Fantasy Film was Transparent actress Judith Light.

The award goes to:

@CostumeAwards on Twitter

Carter had this to say, according to Deadline: “The Black Panther is a phenomenon, it’s more than a comic book, it’s about women in leading and empowering roles.”

Earlier in the day Ruth E. Carter and Danai Gurira spoke on a panel about the costuming process for Black Panther at the Westfield in Century City.

@cdglocal892 on Instagram

Michael Chiklis, from Gotham, presented the Spotlight Award to Glenn Close.

@CostumeAwards on Twitter

Close has donated some of her favorite costumes to Indiana University. “You make what I do possible,” she had to say to the room of talent, according to CDGA’s twitter.

Excellence in Contemporary Film was presented by Good Girls’s Christina Hendricks.

The award goes to:

@CostumeAwards on Twitter

Spriderman: Homecoming’s Marisa Tomei presented the award for Excellence in Period Film.

The award goes to:

@CostumeAwards on Twitter

Ruth E. Carter received the Career Achievement Award! She shared, “This is an incredible feeling to be celebrated this way!”

@CostumeAwards on Twitter

Congratulations to all of the night’s winners!

To see other parts of this series search my blog for #CDGA2019.

Lost in dictation,

Jess

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thegloober · 6 years

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Galveston

“Galveston” is the film equivalent of familiar, not too special song that’s been brilliantly re-arranged and performed.

It’s about a middle aged, possibly terminally ill enforcer for a New Orleans gangster who foils his boss’ attempt to have him killed, then goes on the road with a 19-year-old call girl who was being held hostage by his would-be assassins. The story doesn’t always move as you expect: for instance, there’s not even a possibility of a sexual relationship between the two leads, because he’s just not interested in her that way. But the bulk of the tale, which was drawn from a novel by “True Detective” creator-writer Nic Pizzolatto, is so familiar that it sometimes suggests a Mad Libs approach to pulp crime writing: fill in the blanks with one of a set number of character types, then embellish them through performance and direction so that everyone seems plausibly human.

That the story is the film’s least interesting feature wouldn’t matter if the storytellers had pretty much dispensed with it and gone for a pure mood piece, marinated in atmosphere and style; as-is, there’s just enough attention paid to the particulars that you can’t help noticing they’re a bit half-assed. Still, despite its limitations, this is a consistently engrossing, sometimes powerful crime drama that feels rich despite its brief running time.

Ben Foster, who plays the enforcer Roy Cady, has become one of those reliably great yet somehow always unrewarded character actor-stars, in the vein of Van Heflin or Glenn Ford. He’s in rare form here as an inarticulate thug whose buried decency is finally activated by his fear of death, as well as by his sudden feelings of responsibility for another person. Elle Fanning plays the call girl Rocky, who convinces Roy to take a detour to her old home and tells him to wait in the car. She emerges after a gunshot sound and takes her baby sister Tiffany (played by twins Tinsley and Anniston Price) with them on the road to Galveston, where things settle in at a motel near the beach.

The best section is the middle, where Roy, Rocky and Tiffany form a situational nuclear family (another familiar trope in stories like this, but done with sensitivity and intelligence). Roy insists on having a separate motel room from Rocky and Tiffany, but all share Roy’s bed one night because Rocky had a nightmare. Foster’s expression when Roy wakes up with a child’s small hand covering one of his eyes is a crystallizing moment, an epiphany that the character doesn’t recognize as such. When Roy and Rocky inevitably share stories of trauma with each other, and us, the actors go for it with a gusto rarely seen in hardboiled crime pictures, which tend to be cooler in tone and rely on repression and inference. Some of the scenes of emotional disclosure are so raw that they’re hard to watch, with the actors nearly choking on their own tears.

Beau Bridges, who plays the crime boss, only has a few short scenes, and the character is a small-timer with delusions of grandeur; but he’s still scary and repugnant, and his final line is chilling. Robert Aramayo of “Nocturnal Animals” briefly steals the movie as an oily yet charismatic young crook who tries to draw the hero into an ill-advised scheme to knock off a nearby drug lab (any character who brags that he’s “a thief, and a real good one” is probably a fool). C.K. McFarland’s turn as the manager of the Galveston motel is great example of how to make a minor character feel like a fully rounded person who has a complex value system and has lived a full life.

The novel was told in first-person from Roy’s perspective, in a flowery style that (in this reader’s mind, anyway) didn’t quite suit its violent and emotionally brutalized hero. Screenwriter James Hammett has reconfigured it as a more distanced and observant piece with no voice-over but lots of scenes where we get to hang back and watch people talk and behave.

Cinematographer Arnaud Poiter’s wide compositions are elegantly lit and framed but rarely feel fussy or slick. They go a long way towards bringing a sense of physical realism to a story whose basics would have fit right into an R-rated comic book film like “Sucker Punch” or “Sin City.” With its dialogue-free lyrical interludes and frequent lens flares and nature panoramas, the film occasionally suggests a chaste and bummed-out cousin of “Badlands” or “True Romance.”

Director Melanie Laurent, a gifted French actress and filmmaker making her English-language directorial debut, treats the story mainly as an excuse to let the actors build out detailed performances, within carefully framed shots that give them room to move and breathe and make viewers decide where to look. One sign of confident direction is when a film doesn’t feel obligated to cut to a closeup of an actor every time they say a line, and instead allows the camera to stay on on them as they’re listening or thinking. “Galveston” does that a lot.

It also puts you in Roy’s shoes during violent moments, letting some of the most sickening brutality occur off-camera or out-of-focus, or in shots that are held just long enough to tell you what happened. Paradoxically, this approach to violence is more disturbing than a wild and expressionistic or coldly clinical approach, perhaps because the film itself seems to be flinching. The aftermath of a climactic act of savagery is depicted with as much restraint as possible, short of not showing it at all, yet it’s still one of the most sickening things I’ve seen in the decades I’ve been writing about movies. It casts a long shadow over the film’s final sequence, which seems meant to be redemptive yet melancholy, but mostly comes across as very French.

“Galveston” is worth seeing if you’re into nasty yet sorrowful crime films about small-time losers, if you want to see Elle Fanning in another breakout adult role, if you’re a Ben Foster completist (as everyone should be by now), and if you want an especially vivid illustration of Roger Ebert’s maxim that it’s not what a film is about, but how it’s about it.

Source: https://bloghyped.com/galveston/

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viralhottopics · 7 years

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Geena Davis: Thelma & Louise changed everything for me

It was the moment she realised how few inspiring women there are on screen. Now the actor is on a mission to fix that

Somewhere in a parallel universe, Geena Davis is having the time of her life. Yes! Enjoying this new era in American history! As one of the few women to have played a US president on screen, in her parallel universe Davis is having a lovely conversation with me about how fabulous it feels to see a woman finally make it to the White House.

This isnt the first time the actor has found her presidential fantasies preferable to reality. Eleven years ago, she was President Mackenzie Allen on the TV show Commander In Chief. It had been the number one new show, and it was going to run for eight years. I was going to do two terms, Davis grins ruefully. She won a Golden Globe for the role. Then internal studio politics intervened and the show was cancelled after a single season. For a long time after, I felt like, in an alternate universe, I was still on that show. In my mind, she says, laughing, I wanted to set up the Oval Office in my garage and pretend I was still the president.

Davis hoots at her own absurdity, but for the record she did receive a fairly presidential greeting on arrival at the restaurant where we meet. The Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills hotel is a fantastically kitsch extravaganza of salmon-pink table linen and bad taste, but a Hollywood institution nonetheless. While I waited, the lunch tables filled with industry types, and my requests for a quieter corner were defeated by the expert indifference of waiters who understand the rules of Hollywood hierarchy better than I do. But the instant Davis arrived, the matre d descended into an obsequious froth Miss Davis! Welcome back! and whisked us off to a coveted booth.

So good to see you again! he purrs, before blanching in horror. Davis has a white napkin on her lap, but her trousers are black. Quelle horreur! The offending item is whipped away and replaced with a black one, while Davis tries not to giggle.

With Susan Sarandon in 1991s Thelma & Louise. Photograph: Allstar

Davis has no publicist in tow, and nothing about her outfit would suggest celebrity: she is wearing a loose white T-shirt and the sort of plain and comfortable black jacket and trousers one might put on for Sunday lunch in a nice pub. Were she not so tall (6ft), I might easily have missed her when she arrived, full of apologies for being all of 10 minutes late. I take the matre ds instantaneous excitement to mean she must be a regular, but as soon as hes gone, she whispers, No! I cant even remember the last time I was here. Its this very weird phenomenon. If I go to hotels, they always say, Welcome back, even when Ive never been there before. That must be rather disorienting. Yes, weird! She nods cheerfully. You have all these people saying nice things to you, and it can really be like, Wow, Im very fortunate, arent I? Im very, very grateful for it, you know?

When lunch arrives, she gets the giggles again: her salad is a strangely regimented platter that looks like someones idea of gastro-sophistication circa 1974. Its so kitschy! I was going to show your tape recorder my salad, but that wont work, will it? When her phone rings, the mother of three murmurs the universal prayer of working parents everywhere: Please dont be the nanny, please dont be the nanny, please dont be the nanny. It feels like lunching with a gloriously irreverent and relaxed old friend.

Davis has been a Hollywood star for 35 years, but at 61 her status now is a curious hybrid of insider and outsider, a bit like cinemas Ofsted inspector. When starting out, shed have been astonished to know shed devote the later years of her career to exposing her industrys flaws. Back then, she admits, she couldnt see anything to worry about.

With William Hurt in 1988s The Accidental Tourist, for which Davis won an Oscar. Photograph: Ronald Grant

When I was first starting out was also when I first started really paying attention to the Oscars and stuff like that. And I remember thinking, wow, everything is great for women in Hollywood, because Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Jessica Lange, Sally Field: theyre all doing incredible work. Every year, fantastic movies were coming out: The French Lieutenants Woman, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Sophies Choice. I think I did hear that, for women, when you get older it can be a problem, but these actors were already in their 30s, which seemed ancient to me then. So I thought, whats the problem? I started getting really cool parts left and right and centre, and I was like, well, even if it turns out theres a problem, its not going to impact on me.

After making her debut in 1982s classic comedy Tootsie, Davis averaged a movie a year, and could easily have made more had she not been fussy. She did sci-fi horror in The Fly, comic fantasy in Beetlejuice and literary drama in The Accidental Tourist, for which she won a best supporting actress Oscar. She played a baseball star in the sports comedy A League Of Their Own, a bank robber in the crime drama Quick Change and, most memorably, a housewife turned outlaw in the feminist road trip Thelma & Louise. Then she turned 40 and in the entire decade that followed, we saw her face only in Stuart Little.

By the time she turned 50, she was fed up. The neglect of women in film and TV was definitely happening she knew that but to prove it the Mensa member realised she would have to measure it: Because people just make assumptions, dont they? Even when the reality might be completely different. I remember talking to a woman editor of a magazine about all this a while ago, and she said, Oh no, no, no, thats just not a problem any more. I told her it still was. She said, and Davis begins to laugh again, But it cant be. Look at Meryl Streep, she works all the time! I was like, Er, Meryls schedule is the exception.

So, 10 years ago, the actor founded the Geena Davis Institute On Gender In Media. I am completely obsessed with numbers and data. I have become a scientist in later life. The institute conducts exhaustive research to establish the facts of gender representation in family entertainment, and they are grimly arresting.

Male characters outnumber female in family films by a ratio of three to one, a figure that has remained startlingly consistent since 1946. From 2007 to 2014, women made up less than a third of speaking or named characters in the 100 top-grossing films distributed in the US, of which less than 7% were directed by women. Of the female characters that did make it on to screen, fewer than one in five were aged 40-64. Last autumn, the institute partnered with Google to launch the Geena Davis Inclusion Quotient (the GD-IQ), a software program that measures the amount of screen and speaking time given to male and female characters. The results were even more confronting: in the top 200 grossing films of 2014 and 2015, males, Davis discovered, enjoyed literally twice the screen time of females, and spoke twice as often.

Its easy to see why this would matter to Davis, or any other female actor, but why should the rest of us care? This gender bias is so ingrained in us, and stuffed into our DNA from when were little, from our first exposure to popular culture. If kids movies and TV shows have profoundly fewer female characters than male characters, and theres nobody saying, By the way, honey, this isnt real. Thats not how the real world is. From 2006 to 2009, not one female character was depicted in a G-rated family film working in the field of medical science, as a business leader, in law or in politics. Our motto is: if they can see it, they can be it. Completely unconsciously, boys and girls are getting the message that girls are less important and less valuable to our society, because theyre not there. And if they are there, theyre not talking.

Playing the first female president in the TV series Commander In Chief. Photograph: ABC

Another way of looking at it, I suggest, would be that what we see on screen is, in fact, uncannily accurate. In a typical crowd scene, female extras account for just 17% of the faces we see a figure close to this crops up across all sorts of sectors in real life in America. Fortune 500 boards are around 20% female, as is Congress. Fewer then 20% of US legal partners, the military and cardiac surgeons are female.

Yes, Davis agrees, but I think the impact of media images is so profound that we actually could make life imitate art. You know, you see a dog or something and you say, Oh, hes cute? The default is always male, and its because weve had such a male-centred culture. And its because its what we see and hear from the very beginning.

I remember I was once with my boys [she has 12-year-old twins, and a 14-year-old daughter] in a park and they saw a squirrel. I consciously decided to say, Look, shes so cute and they both turned to me with surprised expressions and said, How do you know its a girl? I was like, wow, Ive already failed. They were four years old.

Davis takes all the data to Hollywoods decision-makers and creators: heads of studios, production companies, guilds. Does she come in for a bit of oh-no-here-comes-the-feminist eye-rolling? Oh no. No! If I was going in just saying, Youre making fewer movies starring a female character than male characters, theyd say, Yes, we know that. Were fully aware of that. We hope we can do better. We wish we could do better. And they would probably turn to this myth in Hollywood that women will watch men, but men dont want to watch women, so were forced to make all the stories about men.

Instead, Davis shows them the GD-IQs findings on profitability. Films featuring female leads make on average 15% more than those with male leads, while films featuring male and female co-leads earn almost 24% more than those with either a solo male or female lead. Their jaws are on the ground. She grins. Everywhere we go, its the exact same reaction. They are floored.

***

Had anyone told Davis in her youth that she would one day be an activist and advocate, she would have been equally floored. She grew up in a small town in Massachusetts, a bookish child and church organist, and was constantly shy. Just totally shy, especially about men. I had one date in high school, that was it, and he didnt ask me out again, she laughs, because I was taller than everybody. I was very gangly and awkward, and I wore weird clothes that I made. I think my fondest wish as a kid was to take up less space.

My fondest wish as a kid was to take up less space. Photograph: Amanda Friedman for the Guardian

Most peoples childhood self-image can seem surprising by the time theyre in their 60s, but in Daviss case the discrepancy feels comical. She is 6ft and appropriately proportioned, so occupies as much space as you would expect someone with the dimensions of an imposing man to fill. Her voice is gutsy, soaring from throaty depths to gales of laughter, and her beauty is unlike anything Ive observed in an actor. Beautiful women who have lived their life in the public gaze tend to convey an awareness of others admiration that can sometimes seem self-conscious, and sometimes almost pointedly detached. Davis, on the other hand, reminds me more of my cat, a ludicrously gorgeous creature who seems to take as much pleasure from its beauty as any admirer ever could. If I picture Davis looking at herself in the mirror, she isnt frowning anxiously but smiling back at her famous dimples.

And yet she goes on, I think I really wanted to take up less space. It seemed like every time I was exuberant or free, I would get pointed at. Things that really stand out from my childhood were incidents where people told me to tone it down. Like my beloved aunt Gloria, who was a role model and just everything to me, and who adored me, and would say things like, Youre really going to have to learn to laugh more quietly, because boys arent going to like a loud lady.

She knew from the age of three that she wanted to act, and studied drama at Boston University. But the most important thing was that people like me and think Im no trouble. It was as if I lived in some bubble of extreme femininity where you must never say your feelings. I had people who wouldnt date me because I couldnt even decide what restaurant I wanted to go to, literally. I never said my opinion about anything. I was afraid to.

Everything changed in 1990 when she made Thelma & Louise. Davis played Thelma, an unhappy wife who takes off with her friend Louise, played by Susan Sarandon, for a two-day road trip in an old Thunderbird convertible. When a man they meet in a bar tries to rape Thelma, Louise shoots him dead. Convinced the police will never believe their account of events, because Thelma had been drinking and seen dancing with the man before he attacked her, the pair take off. Liberated from the constraints of social convention and the law, they embark on a raucously anarchic adventure from which they will never return.

With then husband Jeff Goldblum in 1989. Photograph: Getty

Davis had her agent call Ridley Scott, the films director, every single week for a year in a concerted campaign to land the part. So it was really, really a passion project for me. And I was aware of womens position in Hollywood by then. But then, when the movie came out and I saw the reaction women had, it was night and day: completely different from anything that had ever happened before, you know? Women wanted to really talk about how it impacted on them. Theyd tell me, This is what I thought, this is who I saw it with, this is how many times Ive seen it, this is how it really changed my marriage. Sometimes Id even hear, My friend and I took a road trip and acted out your trip. Her eyes widen as she laughs. Im like, I hope the good parts? But that really struck me, and it made me realise how few opportunities there are to feel inspired by the female characters we watch. That changed everything for me.

Working with Sarandon changed everything, too. Every day on set, I was just learning how to be more myself, you know? Just because she was such a role model to me. Davis would arrive each morning with her notes tentatively framed in the apologetic, would-you-mind-awfully register of regulation feminine decorum. Sarandon would bustle in, open her mouth and speak her mind. Davis still beams at the memory, and credits it with revolutionising the way she operated.

Her institute is now in its 10th year, but has yet to generate any measurable change in onscreen representation. I feel very confident thats going to happen in the next five to 10 years, though. I know it will. Theres one childrens network that tells us, every time someone pitches a new idea, someone asks, What would Geena say? She roars with laughter. Which is exactly what I want! The parallel between her work and recent increasingly successful campaigns for greater ethnic onscreen diversity in Hollywood speak for themselves, she says. Its exactly the same problem, with exactly the same solution. When a sector of society is left out of the popular culture, its cultural annihilation.

Davis does still act; in recent years, she starred in the TV shows Greys Anatomy and The Exorcist, and appears in the forthcoming sci-fi thriller Marjorie Prime. Shes also in Dont Talk To Irene, an indie film about an overweight cheerleader, which premiered recently in Canada. But its very clear that acting is no longer her driving ambition. She gets much more excited talking about the film festival she co-founded in 2015, the only one in the world to offer its winners the prize of guaranteed distribution, both theatrical and through DVD. The Bentonville festival explicitly exists to champion and promote female and other minority film-makers, and last year became the eighth biggest film festival in the world; this year, it will open in early May in Arkansas and more than 100,000 people are expected to attend.

With husband, Reza Jarrahy, in 2013. Photograph: Getty

The most conventionally starlet thing about Davis these days is probably her marital history: she is now on her fourth marriage. The first, in 1982, lasted less than a year; her second, to the actor and her sometime co-star Jeff Goldblum in 1987, lasted only slightly longer, and was over by 1990. In 1993, she wed the director Renny Harlin, but divorced again in 1998. She has been married to her fourth husband, Reza Jarrahy, the father of her three children, and an Iranian-American plastic surgeon, for 16 years now. Giving birth for the first time at 46, followed by twins at 48, is not an entirely advisable maternal strategy, she laughs. I dont know how I assumed I could wait that long, and I wouldnt recommend it. Id always known I wanted to have kids, but somehow, before then, there wasnt any time I was planning it.

When we part, she gives me a great bear hug and her phone number, and it strikes me that she must be one of the happiest movie stars I can remember meeting. The parallel universe she inhabits appears to have much to recommend it. I had assumed she would put Hillary Clintons defeat down to her motto If she can see it, she can be it so ask if she thinks America would have voted a different way last September had the notion of a woman in charge of the country looked more familiar.

You know, she surprises me, I dont know. I like to just think that she won the popular vote by an enormous amount. She was not this horrifically flawed candidate everyone wants to paint. I mean, OK, she didnt win the electoral college vote. But, in another way, she did win. In Daviss parallel universe, the popular vote determined who would move into the White House, and all is well with the world.