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Artistic, musical, creative, and entertaining topics of art about all things geek.
Cruella: 'There's something hollow at the film's centre'
There's a lot of Cruella-splaining, much of it from her own mouth, in Disney's origin story about the puppy-napper we think we know. As a young woman, the pre-Cruella is a talented, aspiring fashion designer named Estella, who lives in a 1970s London full of punk style and pop music. Emma Stone brings a winning charm to Estella and a languorous glamour to the unscrupulous Cruella she morphs into, who tries to take over the fashion world while avenging her mother's death. Revenge has rarely looked so stylish.
By Copperchaleu3 years ago in Geeks
False Positive and the chilling dramas exploring infertility
If birth is the most elemental aspect of life, what happens when fertility and motherhood are threatened? In the new psychological horror film False Positive, Lucy, a woman who has struggled to become pregnant, suspects she is being gaslit by her controlling husband and their charming fertility doctor. Ilana Glazer, its star and co-writer, described it in a perfectly distilled phrase. "It's about the patriarchy as expressed through medicine," she said.
By Mao Jiao Li3 years ago in Geeks
Film review: Five stars for the 'timely' Summer of Soul
n one astonishing performance after another, Stevie Wonder does a ferocious drum solo, Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples sing gospel together, Gladys Knight and the Pips do Motown, and BB King plays the Blues. All the while, thousands of people dance in the park, a few spectators sit in trees and the Black Panthers provide security. It was 1969 – the same summer as Woodstock – and for six consecutive Sundays, an outdoor celebration of black music and culture took place in the New York City neighbourhood of Harlem. More than 40 hours of performances from dozens of artists were recorded, then languished in a basement for nearly 50 years.
By Many A-Sun3 years ago in Geeks
Annette review: Adam Driver shines in a bizarre rock opera
The opening-night film at this year's Cannes Festival is an embarrassing folly that is almost impossible to sit through. It's also a daring, unique passion project that has you gasping with delight. I tipped back and forth between these two assessments so often during the 140 minutes of Annette that I gave myself a dose of seasickness.
By Cindy Dory3 years ago in Geeks
Dwayne Johnson and why wrestlers make ideal Hollywood stars
he movie star is dead. That's at least what box-office trends would have you believe. In a shift from the star-driven days of old, the past decade has seen the Hollywood movie studios instead defer to the power of brand-name recognition as their films' main selling point.
By Sue Torres3 years ago in Geeks
11 of the best films to watch this October
1. All That Breathes A prize-winner at this year's Cannes and Sundance festivals, Shaunak Sen's poetic eco-documentary, All That Breathes, focusses on two brothers, Nadeem Shehzad and Mohammed Saud, who live and work in New Delhi. The smog in the city is so bad that dozens of kites (the birds of prey, not the toys) fall from the sky every day, but the brothers rescue as many of the birds as they can, nursing them back to health in their cramped, over-heated basement. "Shaunak weaves the many threads together with meditative rhythms, restraint and deep compassion," says Anupama Chopra at Film Companion. "At the end of the film… I cried for the incredible grace of these brothers and for the myopic cruelty of the world they live in. And for ourselves, because each one of us has contributed to making it."
By Copperchaleu3 years ago in Geeks
How masterly horror Deliverance set a controversial trend
ased on James Dickey's best-selling novel, Deliverance (1972) marked a highpoint in the work of British director Sir John Boorman. Having made the successful jump to Hollywood several years before, Boorman directed some of the strongest films of the period. In particular, Point Blank (1967) and Hell in the Pacific (1968) confirmed him as a director of note in the 1960s. Boorman went on to have a highly successful career, his films littered with prizes, while he received a Bafta fellowship in 2004 and, earlier this year, a knighthood. Yet Deliverance, released in the US 50 years ago this weekend, is the work that stands out in his varied and accomplished catalogue of work, not simply for its qualities but as one of the most controversial and unnerving films of the 1970s.
By Many A-Sun3 years ago in Geeks
The Power of the Dog: A five-star 'brooding melodrama'
It's been 28 years since the release of Jane Campion's Palme d'Or- and Oscar-winning masterpiece, The Piano, but you can hear its echoes ringing through her new film, The Power of the Dog. Again, Campion has made an atmospheric period drama shot in the wilds of New Zealand. Again, it features a cruel man, a sensitive man, and a single mother who marries one of them. You can probably guess which instrument the single mother plays. But for all its similarities to Campion's best-known work, The Power of the Dog is darker, stranger, and horribly gripping in its own right. Unless you've read the novel by Thomas Savage from which it's adapted, it's impossible to guess where it's going. It also boasts one of Benedict Cumberbatch's most remarkable transformations. Perhaps he told his agent that he was sick and tired of playing socially awkward scientists, and that he wanted to try the most different role imaginable – preferably while wearing a ten-gallon hat.
By Sue Torres3 years ago in Geeks
