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| The Guardian - Culture: Film | | | | 'You've got to try and worry about something bigger than yourself': Riz Ahmed on rap, racism and standing up to Hollywood | | by Tim Lewis Dec 12, 2021 | | Riz Ahmed has never been afraid of a challenge – he famously learned drumming and sign language for his role in Sound of Metal. But his most fearless performance? Taking on Hollywood… This summer, Riz Ahmed took aim at Hollywood and the wider film industry. In a speech that was somehow both measured and searingly furious, the British actor called out the “toxic portrayals” of Muslim characters in TV and movies. Using research that he was directly involved in commissioning, Ahmed showed how Muslims, who make up almost a quarter of the world’s population, are either “invisible or villains” in our screen entertainment. He said that this omission resulted not just in “lost audiences” but “lost lives” because of the “dehumanising and demonising” ways that Muslims were often depicted. In fact, Ahmed noted, some of the most prestigious and awards-laden releases of recent years were “frankly racist”: specifically The Hurt Locker and Argo, both of which won best picture at the Oscars, and Marvel’s Black Panther, which earned more than $1bn at the box office. The speech in June, which launched an initiative called the Blueprint for Muslim Inclusion, was many things: timely, vital and, for some, eye-opening. But mainly, on Ahmed’s part, it felt brave, even risky. Actors typically don’t take potshots at their paymasters, the studios. They almost never single out specific, very successful films for criticism. Continue reading... | | | | | West Side Story review – Spielberg's remake takes off when it dances to its own tune | | by Mark Kermode, Observer film critic Dec 12, 2021 | | Rachel Zegler’s Maria alone justifies this handsome update of the classic Broadway musical hits – though not everyone is a perfect fit Do we really need a remake of West Side Story? Having won 10 Oscars (a record for a musical), including best picture, Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’s 1961 screen incarnation of the 1957 Broadway musical hit remains a much-loved and much-watched “classic”; a self-consciously streetwise affair with weapons-grade earworm tunes and choreography that kids would try to mimic in school playgrounds for decades. Yet even the most ardent fan of the original would have to admit that time has not been kind to the sight of Natalie Wood playing a Latina. Hooray, then, for screen newcomer Rachel Zegler, who landed the lead role of Maria from an open casting call, and whose vibrantly natural performance almost singlehandedly justifies this “reimagining” from director Steven Spielberg. The story, which transposes the star-crossed lovers of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet from Renaissance-era Verona to postwar New York, hardly needs rehearsing. Suffice to say that Spielberg’s version opens with what could be an outtake from the later stages of Saving Private Ryan – an aerial view of what looks like a bomb site, over which a wrecking ball ominously hangs. This is the stamping ground of the Jets, the white gang fighting a turf war with their sworn Puerto Rican enemies, the Sharks. Continue reading... | | | | | |
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