SNOW WHITE
Added 2023-07-22 19:45:02 +0000 UTCI dunno if you guys have followed the trajectory of this Disney Snow White film but...it really is a snake eating its tail sort of situation. Where the attempt to not offend becomes so self-aware that you begin unknowingly...offending and alienating many. Feels like we've reached a new low with this one. I felt sad that Peter Dinklage made the comments that he did regarding the project, especially since I've heard him say many wise things in the past. But it seems as a result, the seven dwarfs are now the seven "magical creatures"....and they look about as magical as Portland natives coming home from a local festival.
Comments
I became aware of the wiemar period after watching cabaret. I am fascinated by creativity and depravity that existed in this era . If anyone else is interested I would recommend the German films Fabian and Babylon Berlin
anthony scully
2023-07-27 02:32:38 +0000 UTCThank you! Your reviews actually inspired me to check out Altman and Buñuel, so I did and now I love both of their work. Belle De Jour is one of my all time favorite movies.
Shane Palamara
2023-07-25 03:34:02 +0000 UTCoh yeah. The composer Hurwitz doesnt have a lot of creative range as a musician, so sadly the music for La La Land and Babylon, are far too similar. To an annoying degree. It's almost cheating lol. I just gravitate a lot more to the Babylon soundtrack because of how ambitious it is. How many unique styles and ideas are going on in it. Even if I wish it would've set it self apart much more from La La Land. But I agree with you on the character focus thing. I really liked the track Damascus Thump, during the black face scene where Adepo plays the Trumpet. Great sense of tension with that minor key. Just wish the actual jazz itself had some more grit and raunch to it. But Chazelle is doesnt really get the danger of jazz sadly, in any of his films so far. But I suppose he came closest to achieving that in Whiplash, in my opinion.
Deepfocuslens
2023-07-25 02:52:57 +0000 UTCyou have amazing taste
Deepfocuslens
2023-07-25 02:45:31 +0000 UTCThat was one of the few things I liked about the film. The Jovan Adepo character was my favorite and I wished he had more focus. Also, that song he played on trumpet late in the film was beautiful even though it sounded very similar to Someone In The Crowd from La La Land which was no surprise being the same composer.
Wolfman Brandon
2023-07-24 22:20:12 +0000 UTClol...it's why I found the black face usage in Babylon interesting. As it used a method of racism, to reveal the fetishization of ethnicities that we experience now in the current day, far more than a movie like Barbie or any Disney film is capable of understanding. It was a very clever little thing. And it totally could have done something where the whites wear black face to re-iterate the basic idea of racism for the millionth time. But now it feels as though we experience a reverse racism in culture as evident here by Disney a lot of the time. And Babylon really chose to explore those ideas through historical context. It had its finger on the pulse of something, despite its flaws of execution
Deepfocuslens
2023-07-24 21:54:18 +0000 UTCThis is a very chilling thing to read. No, I was not aware of this. But...this is something I've been fearing for a long time. And I worry that all the classics are going to slowly be watered down without the ability to point fingers at the proper people. That really makes me angry.
Deepfocuslens
2023-07-24 21:50:43 +0000 UTCExactly. I am all about doing what you want but...it gets condescending real quick, and concerning real quick. And I like what you say about it having no bearing on reality for normal Americans. And this is a huge problem. Disney films are underperforming. It should be a sign for them to look at things differently perhaps
Deepfocuslens
2023-07-24 21:49:08 +0000 UTCMy take on the whole “lazy woke” Disney stuff is that the basic idea of a live action remake of an animated classic is so horribly misjudged that nothing else to do with the project (positive or negative) matters. Is it possible to do a reinterpretation of a classic that solves for the evils of past artists? Possibly. Could current Disney do it even if they chose to do it in an animated format? Probably not. They’re too evil anyway lol. But the live action format itself has deterred me from seeing any of them in theaters. I did check out the Pinocchio one on streaming and that was enough to say “never again”
Jackson Littlewood
2023-07-23 14:37:33 +0000 UTCYes it’s sad the direction Hollywood has taken. I only find solace in the few great filmmakers left and of course those of the past whose movies I can rewatch on blu-ray or whatever else. Kubrick, Hitchcock, Altman & Buñuel are my top directors.
Shane Palamara
2023-07-22 21:20:39 +0000 UTCWhat is context? Something that these people are incapable of understanding. I hope they don't watch To Kill a Mockingbird.
Wolfman Brandon
2023-07-22 21:11:06 +0000 UTCYes, their ears are everywhere. But the thing I wonder is, are there other films that they’ve quietly made cuts to that no one has noticed yet, or no news outlet has picked up on? And are they going to continue doing this in the future? They’ve issued no statement on the French Connection controversy, and given that it hasn’t been enough of a story for them to suffer any backlash, I doubt they ever will.
Bennett Oliver
2023-07-22 21:10:33 +0000 UTCI am for creative freedom and everyone should be able to interpret and create their own works in a way they see pleased. It's just a bit sad when you gain a feeling they do it not for artistic or creative reasons but they do these things to seemingly please the political and cultural agenda of a clearly radical minority that takes the public hostage with extreme virtue signaling and cancel culture treatment. I get it when you invest a $100m into a movie and want it to be PG rated and thus reduce the profantity and so on. It's a relatively low sacrifice in art for something that has such a financial backing. But then if you succumb to these ridiculous demands of a relatively faceless movement that mostly hides anonymously behind the internet and somehow garnered the backing from powerful and famous Hollywood stars, you know it's basically based on fantasy - it has no bearing in reality of the normal American life or even the rest of the world.
Tom Rufer
2023-07-22 21:05:33 +0000 UTCThat’s the thing, though. I have no idea how Friedkin feels about it, because he has yet to issue any public statement. If past interviews of him are any indication though…yes, I would imagine he’s furious.
Bennett Oliver
2023-07-22 21:03:56 +0000 UTCDamn, what a disrespectful move to the cinema art. Next thing they'll remove whole Jessica Rabbit music number from "Who frames Roger Rabbit?", because her band members were The Crows. But maybe let's keep it quiet, as Mouse ears listen everywhere.
Mateusz
2023-07-22 21:03:50 +0000 UTCWilliam Friedkin must be pleased. Damn.
Tom Rufer
2023-07-22 20:55:55 +0000 UTCHave you heard what happened with The French Connection? Back in June, the Criterion Channel acquired the film for streaming as part of their series on Method acting. But people noticed that there was an edit made about nine minutes into the movie. And it wasn’t any kind of subtle edit either; it was a glaring, awkward jump cut. The scene in particular was a small exchange between Gene Hackman’s Popeye and his partner played by Roy Scheider where he makes snide remarks about Black people, referring to them as the n-word. It should be noted that this is far from the only act of bigotry perpetrated by Popeye throughout the movie. There was no disclaimer before the movie saying that the film was edited for content. There was no public announcement made that that scene would be cut. They just went ahead and did it and didn’t tell anyone. The same edited version of the film can also be found on Amazon and Apple+. There is no original theatrical version of The French Connection available for streaming, at least in America. If you wish to view it, you would need to buy the Blu-Ray, whose price has supposedly gone up since this controversy. Can you guess which corporation is behind this censorship? It’s the very same one that bought out 20th Century Fox, the studio that originally produced the film, and now owns their library. If Disney wants to take their past animated hits and ruin them with wokeified live-action remakes, that’s their business. At least we still have the original classics available should we desire to watch them. But this action they’ve taken with French Connection is on a whole different level. It’s straight-up censorship—of a ‘70s classic and Best Picture winner no less—and it pisses me off. It also pisses me off that there’s been so little noise made about it, and that William Friedkin or any film preservationist of any prominence hasn’t spoken out against it. And it scares and disappoints me that Disney is the biggest studio in the world (or at least seems like it), with the largest ownership of content and past films, and are the biggest cheerleaders and progenitors of this PC bullshit. It’s one thing to not wish to offend; it’s another thing entirely to wish to censor. It’s a disgusting, reprehensible affront to art and it should be fought against with every ounce of our will.
Bennett Oliver
2023-07-22 20:50:57 +0000 UTCI swear if you didn't tell me that the revealed image of the dwarfs was for a multi-million dollar blockbuster, I would've thought it was some backyard cosplay or something. That's an insult to actual talented cosplayers. Hell, the Thanksgiving festivals I went to as a kid with pilgrim outfits and hay rides were more convincing than this. Disney is literal hell walking on Earth right now. They're the modern day equivalent of those old minstrel shows and this is coming from someone with African American heritage.
Wolfman Brandon
2023-07-22 20:08:02 +0000 UTCThe Critical Drinker covered this very well. He said this whole project disrespects the original source material in many ways. Its also detached from the story’s roots as well, creating this convoluted scenario where the traditional details of the source are now clashing with modern woke tokenism that makes no sense within that world.
Ken
2023-07-22 19:56:50 +0000 UTCyeah it's sad that the people who used to be the pioneers for expression and stirring the pot...are now the people desperately fighting to tear that down.
Deepfocuslens
2023-07-22 19:53:03 +0000 UTCThere's a similar conversion going on in the hyperpop world with Troye Sivan for failing to cast fat people in his music video. Luckily over there we have Charli XCX as the voice of reason saying "i feel like we live in a world where audiences feel like expression or art isn’t worth their time unless it appeases every single unspoken requirement. IT IS SO BORING." I think movies should replicate video games and not say a single thing about an ongoing project until it's a few months away from release. News cycles about the production have made everything a living hell.
Arthur Augustyn
2023-07-22 19:50:26 +0000 UTC
