rihanna
If I Had My Way: 2016 Awards
I’m also reminded of the time I was once invited to play fantasy football. It was with some friends, including Kevin Ketchum and Bryan King, and someone had tweeted that it was going to be “film critics vs film fans”. In my naiveté, I thought that suggested that we would be picking actual film critics and film people to play football against one another. I was imagining Richard Roeper and Peter Travers being pummeled and thinking it would be “warm and likeable” to experience. Signing up to begin playing was kind of how I imagine the shoot for The Revenant to be, if I am to believe the press tour. Arduous, stressful, dirty, and bloody. (I gave myself a papercut.) But, in the spirit of making fantasy picks for things that are as foreign to me as heterosexuality, and also an awards show I just suffered through, here are my ideal picks for awards things. Read the rest of this entry »
The Unbearable Brightness of “Diamonds”: Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood
Rather than a necessarily conventional review, I’ve decided to slightly eschew that format for Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood, and instead opt for a specific scene. In this case, it’s arguably the most memorable part of the entire film, and yet encompasses much of the film’s beauty, ideas, and strengths. In a hotel, a band of black girls (as the original French title, Bande de filles, nods to), mess around with pot, eat pizza, hang around. It cuts to the room illuminated in blue, one girl looking straight into the camera, mouthing the words to the song bleeding into the air. Soon, the entire group finds itself dancing, singing, experiencing the song together. Except one. She lays on the bed, watching the proceedings, at first sequestering herself as the newbie, the uninitiated. Marieme (Karidja Touré), or as she is to be known in the gang Vic, looks in awe. And then she joins them. Read the rest of this entry »
I Like Things That Look Like Mistakes 