Reel Entropy

2016 Academy Awards fallout

Posted on March 1, 2016 by reelentropy

Photo courtesy AFP.

#Oscarssowhite dominates the ceremony

The Academy Awards are normally awful, but this year, they traded in the usual tedium for a three-hour apology for #oscarssowhite that managed to cast a pall over the entire ceremony. It’s easy to see why it was such a focus — for the second straight year, all 20 acting nominees were white and prominent black directors were snubbed — but playing “Fight the Power” over the end credits after seeing Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs all but get down on her knees and beg black viewers’ forgiveness was just a touch over the top.

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Posted in White Noise | Tagged #affirmative action, #alejandro inarritu, #annie hall, #argo, #birdman, #chariots of fire, #cheryl boone isaacs, #chris rock, #drive, #eddie murphy, #ex machina, #Fantastic Four, #forsest gump, #fury road, #george miller, #heaven's gate, #it follows, #its on us, #joe biden, #lady gaga, #leonardo dicaprio, #mad max, #michael fassbender, #morgan freeman, #oscars, #oscarssowhite, #pulp fiction, #raiders of the lost arc, #ride along 2, #sam smith, #samuel l jackson, #sicario, #spotlight, #star wars, #suicide squad, #the artist, #the revenant, #tom hardy, Transformers | 1 Comment

If Oscar nominated films were presidential candidates

Posted on February 27, 2016 by reelentropy

Ex Machina — The Ted Cruz campaign

IMDB * Rotten Tomatoes * our review

Nominated for Best Original Screenplay (Alex Garland) and Best Visual Effects

Were not made in America. Aren’t entirely sure women aren’t sadistic, artificially intelligent sex toys waiting with growing impatience to rise up against the male species. One was crafted lovingly in Pinewood Studios in England and the other birthed in Calgary, both well north of the 49th Parallel. Will leave your jaw stapled to the floor after a relatively short amount of time, though for very, very different reasons. Feature Hispanic lead actors that deliver dynamic, bullying performances and weren’t born in the U.S.

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Posted in White Noise | Tagged #ben carson, #bernie sanders, #bobby jindal, #bridge of spies, #brooklyn, #carly fiorina, #carol, #chris christie, #donald trump, #ex machina, #feel the bern, #fury road, #hillary clinton, #house of cards, #inside out, #jeb!, #joe biden, #john kasich, #mad max, #make america great again, #marco rubio, #martin omalley, #rand paul, #rick santorum, #ron paul, #room, #sicario, #spotlight, #star wars, #steve jobs, #ted cruz, #the big short, #the danish girl, #the force awakens, #the hateful eight, #the martian, #the revenant | Leave a comment

Risen proves evangelical movies are here to stay

Posted on February 23, 2016 by reelentropy

Photos courtesy Columbia Pictures.

Isn’t this the movie the Coen brothers pretended to make in Hail, Caesar! two weeks ago?

Risen follows Clavius (Joseph Fiennes, the very spitting image of Michael Jackson), a Roman tribune, through the story of Jesus’ Resurrection. Clavius is charged by Pontius Pilate (Peter Firth) with keeping the peace in Judea for the emperor’s imminent arrival, but the Hebrews are revolting, thinking their messiah has come to deliver them from Roman rule. The purported messiah, called Yeshua (Cliff Curtis) in the movie, is crucified, but tensions mount even further when his corpse disappears from its tomb three days later. To quell the unrest, Clavius is tasked with hunting the body down.

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Posted in Entropy | Tagged #affirm, #coen brothers, #exodus, #fireproof, #hail caesar, #joseph fiennes, #mormons, #pure flix, #ralph fiennes, #ridley scott, #risen, #the witch, #tom felton, #war room, Daniel Radcliffe, Darren Aronofsky, God's not Dead, Harry Potter, Noah | 2 Comments

The Witch trades in thrills to deliver unbelievable chills

Posted on February 21, 2016 by reelentropy

Photos courtesy A24.

No, it’s not the scariest movie ever made. It may, however, be the scariest movie ever made entirely about boobs.

Set in the 1600s a few decades before the Salem Witch Trials, The Witch follows a Puritan family banished from their plantation over William’s (Ralph Ineson) religious disagreements with the local government. William and his family — pregnant wife Katherine (Kate Dickie), daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) and twins Mercy (Ellie Grainger) and Jonas (Lucas Dawson) — move a day’s ride toward the forest and set up a farm. Several months later, Katherine has given birth and farm construction is underway. Tensions are high already as the family’s harvest is succumbing to rot, but things really start to go wrong when the newborn, Samuel, is abducted by the witch who lives in the woods.

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Posted in Entropy | Tagged #anya taylor-joy, #black phillip, #david robert mitchell, #deadpool, #harvey scrimshaw, #it follows, #kate dickie, #ralph ineson, #robert eggers, #Satan, #shameless plug, #stanley kubrick, #the shining, #the witch | Leave a comment

I’m only doing this because of the Oscar noms: The Danish Girl

Posted on February 16, 2016 by reelentropy

Despite being awful, Redmayne is getting and was always going to get a ton of praise for this movie. This inevitable praise comes because playing gay or trans is still seen as a courageous thing for a cisgender actor to do, and that viewpoint exists because, deep down, this is still seen as self-debasement. There’s a lot of different ways this gets dressed up, but the fact is Hollywood hates LGBTs just as much as it hates women and minorities and in just the same ways, and this movie and others like it are born exclusively from this hatred. Photos courtesy Focus Features.

It’s the most cynical thing in the world. Former Oscar winners? Check. Based on a true story set in the early 1900s? Check. Gay* person that dies? Check.

The Danish Girl was set up to be one of the most insufferably pretentious movies ever made, but it is surprisingly tolerable, almost entirely because of Alicia Vikander.

The film tells the story of Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne), who became the first known person to undergo gender correction surgery in 1931 to become Lili Elbe**. Wegener and his wife, Gerda (Vikander), come up with Elbe as a joke when he dresses up as a woman for one of her portraits. From there, Wegener’s latent desire to become a woman takes hold, and the majority of the movie is spent focusing on his suffering through gender dysphoria, a condition that wouldn’t even be recognized until 1980, let alone studied, and the dissolution of his and Gerda’s marriage. Elbe — Lili Ilse Elvenes, her name was in real life — eventually underwent one of the first recorded gender transition surgeries, but died of organ rejection after the final surgery to implant a uterus.

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Posted in Entropy | Tagged #Alicia Vikander, #birdman, #brokeback mountain, #carol, #dallas buyers club, #eddie redmayne, #ex machina, #gay people that die, #homophobia, #jared leto, #jupiter ascending, #lana wachowski, #michael keaton, #milk, #oscar noms, #oscars, #pronouns, #robbed, #sexism, #the academy, #the danish girl, #the wachowskis, #tom hooper, #trans people that die, #would you fuck me, Theory of Everything | 1 Comment

Reel Entropy

2016 Academy Awards fallout

If Oscar nominated films were presidential candidates

Risen proves evangelical movies are here to stay

The Witch trades in thrills to deliver unbelievable chills

I’m only doing this because of the Oscar noms: The Danish Girl

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