| The Guardian - Culture: Film | | | | Don't Go Gentle: A Film About Idles review – fan-friendly portrait of punk's anti-ironists | | by Ben Beaumont-Thomas Jul 2, 2021 | | The polarising Bristol band are followed from their 2009 inception onwards in Mark Archer’s documentary, which honours their earnestness and energy Few British bands are so polarising as Bristol indie-punks Idles. To some (particularly those who spend a lot of time online), their declarative songs about love, Tories, racism and other big topics are glib, even damaging in their blunt sloganeering. To others, they are vitally important broadsides against a hateful world. This documentary by Mark Archer very much panders towards the latter category, as it follows the band from their inception in 2009 to their triumphant, tearful Glastonbury performance in 2019. But it makes a virtue of it, with some of its most emotive footage coming from interviews with members of the band’s AF Gang online fanclub and their “this band saved my life” testimonies. Continue reading... | | | | | Future Lord of the Rings films should acknowledge the book's queer leanings | | by Ben Child Jul 2, 2021 | | Nobody wants to see a horny Gollum or Orcs with raging hard-ons – but why shouldn’t some of Middle-earth’s denizens be gay? The debate over just how gay Lord of the Rings really is will no doubt still be raging in another hundred years – there’s a fascinating essay written from a queer perspective here – given the gilded position JRR Tolkien’s high-fantasy novel holds in English literary history. What’s no longer in doubt is that Peter Jackson’s team for the Oscar-winning trilogy were perfectly well aware of their epic tale’s homoerotic undertones. Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan revealed this week that they almost shot a scene in which cheeky hobbits Merry and Pippin find themselves naked after falling from Treebeard the Ent’s branches and losing all their clothing. According to Philippa Boyens’ script, Merry then turns to Pippin and says: “It’s cold, isn’t it?” Pippin responds: “Hold me, Merry.” That this scene was never filmed doesn’t matter. Viewed through a 21st-century prism (perhaps even a 1930s one) the entirely male-centric events of Lord of the Rings – the bonding, the emotional connections in time of peril, the torment of choosing between heterosexual romance and the company of men – have obvious queer connotations. That does not mean Tolkien wrote them in such a way: it is possible to argue that the author saw the hobbits as childlike innocents, mere sprites who lived long, long ago, in the mists of a sexless, Eden-like, ancient faerie. When the writer describes Tom Bombadil telling the halflings to “run naked on the grass” while he hunts, in a chapter that never made it into the movies, it’s hard to imagine that Tolkien had anything particularly carnal in mind. (The hobbits dutifully obey, by the way.) Continue reading... | | | | | The problem with Zola: can a viral tweet thread become a vital movie? | | by Adrian Horton Jul 2, 2021 | | The buzzy Sundance film, an adaptation of an explosive 2015 tweet thread, demonstrates the trickiness of adapting internet virality for the big screen In October 2015, A’Ziah “Zola” Wells King, then a nineteen-year-old black woman living in Detroit, tweeted four selfies with a blonde white woman and an invitation: “Y’all wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out???????? It’s kind of long but full of suspense.” Her subsequent 148 tweets detailed an impromptu road trip to Florida with a new acquaintance (the blonde woman, Jessica), Jessica’s hapless boyfriend and the man revealed to be her pimp. The excursion quickly devolves from pole-dancing for extra cash into a saga of prostitution, deception and violence. Zola’s tale, relayed in 140-character dispatches with the candor and confidence of someone holding court at a bar, went viral under the hashtag #TheStory. Celebrities such as Ava DuVernay, Jackée Harry and Missy Elliott were publicly riveted; Zola’s swaggering lyricism – Jessica’s boyfriend, despondent over her sex work, was “lost in the sauce & his bitch lost in the game” – became Twitter touchstones. #TheStory is largely credited with hastening Twitter’s decision to link tweets, a consequential move for thought sharing during the Trump era. Continue reading... | | | | | 'I enjoy how sexy she is, as long as she's in control': Black Widow's Cate Shortland on Scarlett Johansson | | by Cath Clarke Jul 2, 2021 | | Marvel’s long-awaited spin-off is the first to be solo-directed by a woman. She discusses male domination of crews, the film’s feminism – and going from indie films to a blockbuster It is September 2019. At Pinewood Studios, just outside London, “action” has been called for the umpteenth take of a scene that opens the third act of Marvel’s Black Widow. A warehouse has been transformed into the office of the movie’s baddie, Dreykov (played by Ray Winstone with a chewy eastern European accent). The decor is Soviet drab meets midcentury modern in shades of tobacco, with wood-panelled walls and a huge desk. Winstone is nowhere to be seen, but a dozen or so badass female assassins in black stand in a circle around his desk; on cue, they jump back. The mood is intense, hear-a-pin-drop silent; then, a disembodied voice pipes up over the sound system, softly spoken, with an Australian accent. It is the director, Cate Shortland. “At the beginning, just make sure you’re all moving in slowly … Thank you!” Continue reading... | | | | | |
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