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altcomics · 5 years

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THE MOVIE BLACK PANTHER was released in February of this year. The same month, Herman Bell—formerly of the Black Liberation Army, an underground Black Power group composed of members of the Black Panthers—was up for parole after forty-five years in prison. Black Panther grossed $241.9 million in its opening weekend, netting a handsome profit for Walt Disney Studios. Bell’s hearing was delayed and culminated in an unusually long deliberation period, but he was eventually paroled in mid-March. Fifteen other former Black Panthers remain in prison; some have died while doing time, and all have experienced abuse and torture, including solitary confinement and beatings. At the time of writing, New York’s police union, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, was fiercely contesting the decision on Bell’s case, hoping to have it revoked.

The grotesque spectacle of police and politicians scrambling to deprive a seventy-year-old man of freedom because of their abstract fear of Black violence looks more vivid in the light of the movie’s release. The accidental convergence of the two events shakes up old ghosts, or it would if the air right now weren’t already so thick with them. Black Panther director Ryan Coogler’s first movie, Fruitvale Station (2013), concerned the murder by police of Oscar Grant in Oakland, California, and happened to open the same week George Zimmerman heard the news that he would face no legal consequences for the murder of Trayvon Martin. Five years later, a political turn that we can at least partly credit to the organization and concept Black Lives Matter—inaugurated by a popular hashtag shortly after Zimmerman’s predictable lucky break—has opened so much new discursive ground in US political and cultural life that Black Panther felt not only possible but inevitable. Of course, it was not. The movie, rooted in Black history and reaching confidently and unironically for mass-market appeal, is extraordinary. To lift an aphorism from the first lines of Thomas Pynchon’s 1973 novel Gravity’s Rainbow: “It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.”

Ryan Coogler, Fruitvale Station, 2013, Super 16, color, sound, 85 minutes. Second from left: Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan).

Frank B. Wilderson III writes in Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonism (2010) that he is “interested in Black filmmakers of the 1970s . . . not as auteurs, or brilliant individuals, but as cinematic prisms.” Coogler is a great filmmaker, using in Black Panther the same gifts for the kinetic and emotional that gave Creed (2015), his contribution to the “Rocky” franchise, such unexpected depth and swagger. But we will have to follow Wilderson’s example and take him as a prism, especially because the films Wilderson spoke of also coincided with a profound political turn:

I propose that the specter of the Black Liberation Army—and by specter, I mean the zeitgeist rather than the actual historical record of the BLA— provides us with both a point of condensation for thinking Black people on the move and a structure of articulation between the unflinching movement of Blacks, politically, and the unflinching fantasies of Blacks, cinematically.

Cover of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s Fantastic Four, no. 52(Marvel, July 1966).

This is because these filmmakers lived at a special time in history: “special because it culminated in an embrace of Black violence which had not been seen before.” The novelty of the BLA, or at least of its spectral presence in the zeitgeist, was its use of violence. The incomparable Black Panther, which is based on a fiction first dreamed up by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for the July 1966 issue of Fantastic Four, is still marked by its origins today, long after a backlash against the Black and communist revolutionary violence of the ’70s left the would-be revolutionaries of today hyper-surveilled, facing highly militarized police forces, and subject to psychological difficulties wrought by the state’s attempts to persecute the revolution by wrecking communities and spirits.

But chance moves the world, as does the stricter machinery of value and fate. The movie’s marketing exploited the title’s ostensible reference to the Black Panthers, but the connection is mostly accidental: Bobby Seale and Huey Newton founded the political organization in October of the same year the character first appeared in Fantastic Four, borrowing the name from a panther logo used by the Alabama-based Lowndes County Freedom Organization. The ambient availability of the phrase black panther as a symbol for groups of Black people is illustrated by the 761st Tank Battalion, a World War II unit of African American soldiers who fought a “continuous 183 days at the front,” collectively received some three hundred Purple Hearts, and were later described by their general in the following terms: “Individually they were good soldiers, but . . . a colored soldier cannot think fast enough to fight in armor.” They too were nicknamed the Black Panthers. As the writer Derica Shields notes in an upcoming book, black panther is not a species of cat; it is a designation for a black cat of any type. “The melanistic color variant of any big cat species” is how Wikipedia puts it. The word pantheralso means “black cat,” so black panther is a tautology, a black black thing. Blackness pushes the animal out of its category, perhaps even out of the category of the animal. Blackness cleaves—as in joins and splits—the human and the animal. What a magic property!

Black Panther Party poster featuring cofounder Huey P. Newton, 1968. Photo: Blair Stapp/Library of Congress.

I HAVE NOTICED many times in public and private life that people often hesitate for a beat before enunciating the word black, as if the simple syllable were too hard to pronounce, too much to say. As if they wanted to prove Wilderson—who is often accused of being too emo or dramatic in his Afro-pessimism—right. Black Panther comes trailing this too-muchness as a birthright, crowned by a single now-famous line of dialogue: “Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors that jumped from ships, because they knew death was better than bondage.” It’s spoken to the first Black Panther, King T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), by the second, Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), an American-born challenger to the Wakandan throne, who is the blackest thing in the movie. The line echoes—with a certain amount of noise and distortion imbued by more than forty years of political disappointment—the spectral presence of the BLA in the output of ’70s Black filmmakers. The idea that death is preferable to bondage, and, relatedly,that those held in bondage are in a sense already dead, animates the political violence that Wilderson (following Sylvia Wynter) sees as emerging from the fact that white society positions Black people outside of the Human, in the ontological position of the Slave. Wilderson writes, “The question of political agency began to go something like this: What kind of imaginative labor is required to squash the political capacity of the Human being so that we might catalyze the political capacity of the Black?” Blackness opposes humanity insofar as humanity, as it’s politically constructed today—a partial allocation, easily forgotten at the border or in a wrong neighborhood—opposes life. For Wilderson, Black death-in-life opposes white-capitalist life-as-death, whose poison seeps into the tiniest particles of the world.

On his side, the Black insurrectionist has Nothing—the embodiment of nothing, the nothingness of the world.

The grinding reality of the death cult under which we are living is why people cry at the scene where Wakandan planes bust through the force field separating Wakanda from the rest of the world, revealing the country’s bustling cityscape untouched by the horrors of history. Not me, though; there’s just something in my eye. “This never gets old,” says the new king of Wakanda, as the vista of a world without pain opens up before him.

Ryan Coogler, Black Panther, 2018, 4K video, color, sound, 134 minutes. Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan).

WHAT IS TO be done for the rest of the world, the pained world? The struggle between the two Black Panthers, Killmonger and T’Challa, allegorizes a tension between insurrectionist and reformist politics. The reformer has reason, pragmatism, and a chance of a career—he has the world and worldliness. On his side, the Black insurrectionist has Nothing—the embodiment of nothing, the nothingness of the world. T’Challa seems to halfway recognize the truth in Killmonger, who arrives in the fantastical Black kingdom of Wakanda with the full force of reality. But no sooner has T’Challa regretted murdering his revolutionary shadow side than he is off to the United Nations to announce a Wakandan education and outreach program. In the Marvel Universe, the United Nations works perfectly, exactly as it set out to in 1945, but everything in this world is like that: Killmonger as a Black insurrectionist has at his disposal not only the metaphorical and spiritual material of blackness, but also a weaponizable manifestation of it in the form of the Wakandan metal, vibranium, which he has forcibly repatriated from a British museum. Magic and technology are indivisible. No sooner has a true hero conceived of his quest than its materials spring into his hands. The apoliticality of the superhero movie is in the inevitability of success. The supposed apoliticality of Afro-pessimism, according to its critics, is in the inevitability of failure.

Soldiers from Dog Company of the 761st Tank Battalion check equipment before leaving England for combat in France, 1944.

T’Challa is emphatically not in the position of the dead, but, like those already dead, he is invulnerable to violence. His sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), presents him with one of her inventions, a new outfit for his superheroic activities that absorbs and channels the energy of blows and bullets. Wearing this suit, he is almost completely immune to physical attack. I didn’t think of ’70s Black cinema when I first saw Black Panther, but I did think about the specter of Black political violence. In C. L. R. James’s visionary 1938 history of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, he describes early attempts at mass uprising, some of which invoked spiritual assistance. During an attack on Port-au-Prince, the twenty-one-year-old slave leader Hyacinth “ran from rank to rank crying that his talisman would chase death away. He charged at their head, passing unscathed through the bullets and grape-shot.” His followers were predisposed to be brave, and fought “without fear or care” of the bullets fired at them: “If they were killed they would wake again in Africa.”

We give

Black Panther

this intensity of attention not because anyone necessarily sympathizes with its aims, but because it’s

so good

In another passage, James describes an extraordinary scene from late in the revolutionary war. A division of the Black army, led by an officer named Capois Death—“so-called on account of his bravery”—attacks one of the failing French army’s few remaining strongholds:

Capois led the assault . . . shouting “Forward, forward!” The French . . . drove off the blacks again and again only to see them return to the attack with undiminished ardor. A bullet knocked over Capois’ horse. Boiling with rage he scrambled up and, making a gesture of contempt with his sword, he continued to advance. “Forward, forward!”

The French, who had fought on so many fields, had never seen fighting like this. From all sides came a storm of shouts. “Bravo! Bravo!” There was a roll of drums. The French ceased fire. A French horseman rode out and advanced to the bridge. He brought a message. . . . “The Captain-General sends his admiring compliments to the officer who has just covered himself with so much glory.” Without a shot fired from the blacks, the horseman turned and rode back to the blockhouse and the battle began again. The struggle had been such a nightmare that by now all in San Domingo were a little mad, both white and black.

Ryan Coogler, Black Panther, 2018, 4K video, color, sound, 134 minutes.

The Haitian Revolution, which took place between 1791 and 1804, was the complicated heart of an era of intense political and social upheaval that inaugurated what we understand as modernity. If the French and American revolutions are more celebrated for what they supposedly tell us about freedom, that’s partly because what they tell us about freedom is more palatable, and partly for the usual reasons: Eurocentrism and plain racism. The image of French troops applauding the bravery of the Black army while prosecuting a war founded on their subhumanity felt consonant with Black Panther, not the movie exactly, but the event. Black panther has, through “the unflinching movement of Blacks, politically,” become a thrilling phrase, while those who moved unflinchingly remain in prison, and the object of their movement—liberation, not of the bourgeois bearers of race like me, but of the ghetto and the slum—feels distant. But all revolutions were nearly inconceivable before they happened.

Kant thought that enthusiasm for the French Revolution among people whom it affected only indirectly was proof of a “moral disposition within the human race.” Does enthusiasm for a fictional Black Panther in a country that jails real ones prove anything? A long time after the beginning of the revolution in 1791, we are all still “a little mad.” In an era of white-supremacist panic, as the police and their allies work to deny Herman Bell his freedom, visions of Black power are capable of moving audiences to wonder.

Page from Le Petit Parisien, December 20, 1908, depicting the Haitian revolution. Illustration: Paul Dufresne.

IN A FAINT ECHO—farce this time, not tragedy—of the war anecdote above, we give Black Panther this intensity of attention not because anyone necessarily sympathizes with its aims, but because it’s so good. The movie is a faultless example of the fantasy blockbuster, from script to shots to costumes and set design. Reeling from my first viewing, I wondered if this was how people felt in 1977 after they first saw Star Wars.

Reduced to its bare bones, the superhero genre usually features an extraordinary individual or small group of extraordinary individuals who are faced with some kind of dilemma. (The dilemma, in which character faces off with fate, is the screenwriter’s primary means of evoking the ambivalences and contradictions of real life; of course, in the movies, as sometimes in life, character often becomes fate.) Circumstances call the extraordinary individual out of retirement or seek him out in obscurity; perhaps, in a weird militaristic fantasy that even the recent mechanization and long-standing misery of war has not ended, he is just so good at fighting that the struggle can’t be won without him. Through guile and force, he triumphs against his enemies and receives love and admiration, though he remains essentially alone.

Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, Captain America: Civil War, 2016, 2K video, color, sound, 147 minutes. From left: Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Vision (Paul Bettany), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and War Machine (Don Cheadle).

In the kickoff to this latest phase of Marvel movies, Captain America: Civil War (2016), infighting breaks out between the superheroes when the United Nations demands oversight and control of their activities. In one of many plot twists, a bomb goes off at the UN and kills T’Challa’s father, making T’Challa the new Black Panther. Amid the background of the heroes’ paranoia and aggression, the simplicity of T’Challa’s quest—to apprehend the person responsible for his father’s death—cuts through. The script is self-conscious and thoughtful about its genre: We see superheroes confronted by the mothers of people they killed as they went about killing the bad guys; we hear about cities left in ruins by their heroic actions. The movie’s critique of the nationalism and machismo of the classic superhero tradition is so evident, it’s like watching something collapse into itself.

Following the tradition of undoing tradition, Killmonger’s presence in Black Panther ruptures the superhero conceit and multiplies the meaning of the movie’s title; his intervention produces two Black Panthers in the same movie, making sense of the title’s lack of definite article: Black Panther, not The Black Panther. The camera articulates the disruption to the natural order of things, so that as Killmonger approaches the Panther’s throne, we see him upside-down and rotating upright. Even the movie’s premise is askance from the superhero model of individuated power: The Black Panther is an ancestral title, not a happy accident. Killmonger doesn’t care; he is here, full of revolutionary fervor, to burn the bad world to the ground.

Contemporary reproduction of the United States Army 761st Tank Battalion’s military patch.

If the presence of the Black Panther T’Challa in Civil War renders bankrupt or irrelevant the political strivings of the white superheroes, then the presence of the Black Panther Killmonger in Black Panther is what renders bankrupt or irrelevant the strivings of the Black Panther. Although the Black revolution has been deprived of means, it is kept alive as an image. For what purpose, the future will find out, and in the meantime the present lives by its light.

Hannah Black is an artist and writer based in New York.

#Hannah Black #2018 #Black Panther

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chrismaverickdotcom · 6 years

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Mav’s Big Fucking Oscar Predictions List – 2018 (Why can't my favorite movie win?)

Who wants to do an Oscar pool? I love the Oscars. Everyone knows that. Oh, you didn’t know that? Well, then you haven’t been paying attention… how the hell are you even reading this? To me the Oscars are almost as exciting as the Super Bowl (come on, last year’s last minute buzzer beater by Moonlight was amazing).. I watch them every year and I make Stephanie watch with me so we can fill out ballots and baton the winners. In 2015 and 2016, I posted my “Big Fucking Oscars Prediciton List” for the awards so that people could try to beat me. For some reason I seem to have forgotten to have done a predictions list online last year; I was probably too busy working on a conference paper or something. I’m busy working on papers right now, but you know what… fuck it.

I love the Oscars!

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So I’ve written at various points about what it means to be an Oscar movie and why something like Wonder Woman, as much as I loved it, doesn’t deserve to be there. It just isn’t “good” enough in an objective sense… at least not in the any of the ways that the Oscars are meant to measure. The Oscars often take criticism for being “out of touch with the fans”and just being “the Hollywood industry just taking a chance to blow itself.” And well, YES! It is! It is totally Hollywood taking the chance to blow itself. That’s why I use the silly sex metaphor in my predictions. It is what it is, and that’s ok. The Oscars are the movie industry looking at the their peers and celebrating their technical and artistic merit. They’re about the artistic statement that the Academy wants to present. The Oscars aren’t about what people like. They’re not about connecting with the fans. That’s the People’s Choice awards and the Billboards. Wonder Woman was hugely inspiring to a great many people who needed that inspiration and will carry it with them for the rest of their lives. Black Panther is doing much the same this year. But you don’t get an Oscar for that. You get a different award. It’s called a billion dollars. And when you compare that billion dollars to a little golden statue that something like Moonlight takes home, well… it’s not that bad a trade.

Movies are a funny art form. Pop culture entertainment is in general, but especially movies. Pop culture fandom often develops such a sense of ownership over the media that it consumes that it feels entitled to demand that others see it the same way as they do. No one ever writes think pieces complaining that Pulitzer Prize should have considered Twilight or The Hunger Games or even Harry Potter series. And when’s the last time you read a hot take on someone being snubbed by the Dentistry Awards? To argue that the popular choice film should get the award because the Academy is out of touch for wanting to celebrate their values rather than the public’s is much the same thing.

That said, I don’t always think the Academy gets it right. Sometimes I disagree with their choices, even within their own metric. Lots of critics do. Famously Shakespeare in Love beating out Saving Private Ryan back in 1999 and the Artist arguably should have lost to literally ANY of the other nominees back in 2012. So this year I figured maybe I’d offer two sets of picks when applicable: The pick I think will win and the pick I want to win when I disagree. It will be interesting to see if any of my wishes for will actually pull an upset.

Steph and I will be watching the show Sunday night and probably drinking a bunch (yay, I don’t have to work on Monday!!!!) so if anyone is up for Oscarsing and Chilling as the kids say (well, the cool kids say… ok… well they should say… whatever… fuck you!) let me know. And one way or the other, I’d love to see your Oscar Picks as well. Post them here, it’ll be fun to see if anyone can beat me. You can get a ballot here: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/02/printable-2018-oscar-ballot. For extra super awesome points, feel free to comment with your guesses before you read mine. That makes it more fun to compare.

And now my picks… Mav’s Big Fucking Oscar Predictions 2018:

Best Picture:

The biggest award of the night is probably the most obvious place where I’ll disagree, and it’s the place where the common viewer probably has the most problem with the Oscars. It’s where people think Wonder Woman got snubbed. But when you look at the other films there… films, which granted only 5-10% of the Wonder Woman audience saw, and you objectively judge them it doesn’t fit. If anything, the snub here for me was The Big Sick, which really probably should have snuck in here. It is worth noting that the Oscars allow up to ten nominations for Best Picture (instead of the five for most categories). This year they only chose nine, and so there was an open spot which has actually been pretty debated. In some respect, I guess everyone can just assume their favorite film should have been inserted there and was snubbed for political reasons. Or maybe it’s like saving a seat for Elijah? I dunno. Anyway Conventional wisdom is that this is a two dog race between The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. I personally actually liked the latter film more, but for Best Picture, I think the visual artistry of former film is going outweigh the storytelling mastery of the latter. Especially since Three Billboards isn’t really “enjoyable” so much as it is “good.” The social issues being so unresolved and so present in Three Billboards is going to leave some voters uncomfortable for this category. Of course, if it were up to me, I’d go with Lady Bird. I do think it was the best film of the year in terms of storytelling and theatrical craft, plus it fit the social message of the time period and it was hella enjoyable. Lady Bird was like the first time you have sex. It was true love or what felt like it. Maybe you don’t totally know what you’re doing yet, but it was sweet innocent and beautiful. You’ll never forget it. But that just won’t compare to the mastery of what is Shape of Water, this year. After all, who doesn’t love the beautiful touching story of a woman fucking a fish. Everyone wants to see that, right? You know you do!

Mav’s wishful thinking: Lady Bird

Mav’s prediction: The Shape of Water

Best Directing:

Much of what I said under Best Picture applies here as well. This is the place where a lot of people thought Patty Jenkins should have been nominated for directing Wonder Woman (she shouldn’t have been). And it’s a place where I personally would love to see Greta Gerwig win for Lady Bird. She won’t. A lot of people are probably also probably pulling for Jordan Peele to get the Oscar for Get Out. He won’t. Hopefully Gerwig and Peele will have future opportunities. But as far as how this year is going to shake down, this is all about Guillermo del Toro. And this is for the same reasons that I think his film is going to take Best Picture. This is a movie that honestly isn’t all that innovative from a storytelling point of view. It was a cute little fairytale, that I’ve seen before (specifically it’s Splash… but if you want to take out specific plot details, it’s just a lot of star-crossed lovers romances), but what made it special was the exceptional craft of presentation and that was all del Toro. Who else could make such a beautiful visual statement out of woman fucking a fish? Exactly!

Mav’s wishful thinking: Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird

Mav’s prediction: Guillermo del Toro for The Shape of Water

Best Actor in a Leading Role:

I try to see most of the movies that I think have Oscar potential. Partly because I want to make informed guesses here. Partly because I’m like the pop culture weenie guy so understanding the current zeitgeist is sort of my job. And partly because I just really like movies. I’m going to admit that I never got around to seeing Darkest Hour. I wanted to, it was just never the right time. So I’m kind of judging it based on trailers and clips. But I think I have the basic plot down. The story goes like this: Let’s dress up Gary Oldman in a fat suit and win him an Oscar. And something about Churchill too, maybe, but really what can we do to get Oldman and Oscar? That’s the story, and I think it’s going to work. The only thing could possibly fuck it up is that we know Daniel Day-Lewis is giving up acting after his latest movie (Phantom Thread), presumedly to continue to pursue his lifelong dream of being a cobbler (no, really!). And it’s possible that the Academy just wants a chance to blow Day-Lewis last time… you know how it is… sometimes the love of your life is leaving you… you know there’s nothing you can do to make them stay, but if this is going to the last night together, then you’re going to make it memorable and you’re going to fuck the shit out of them! Really work it this time. Suck harder than ever. No orifice is off limts. Maybe call in a friend as well. The Academy wants Daniel to know what he’s giving up. They want him to remember their name. But let it go, Academy. He’s already moved on. I mean, it’s not that he doesn’t care about you. He does. And if you beg hard enough… then sure… he’ll finish on your face one last time. But honestly, he’s doing that for you, not for himself. The magic is gone for Daniel. It’s over. If you love him let him go. But Gary… look at Gary over there in his fat suit. He’s doing that for YOU! Gary loves you. He just wants a little recognition. He just wants to know you love him. You don’t need to do too much. Maybe just a little hand stuff. He deserves it. Don’t make him beg. He will. And you know what that’s like. Besides, Oldman is totally ok with you having a side piece.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Gary Oldman for The Darkest Hour

Best Actor in a Supporting Role:

And speaking of being a side piece. Sam Rockwell wants this bad and will do ANYTHING for you and I mean ANYTHING. All the stuff you’re willing to do for DDL plus stuff you’ve never even heard of and wouldn’t know to google. Filthy stuff. Sam’s going reach down your — Ok, I just want to break away from the sexual metaphor gimmick for a second. Same Rockwell, fucking owned his role in Three Billboards. No one else matters here. Not even a little bit. And yeah, there’s a little bit of controversy about “should we be celebrating someone in this day cultural moment for playing such a racist?” And the answer is yes. Rockwell embodied that character perfectly. That was the definition of acting and he did it in a way that made a character that was completely over the top seem very real and tangible. So much so that he caused the controversy. That’s craft and there’s just no question that he deserves this. Ok back to the sexual metaphor gimmick already in progress. — and you’ll both be walking funny for weeks afterwards.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Actress in a Leading Role:

So there’s this problem in Hollywood. They favor the young, particularly among women. And really… I get it. Because given the chance I totally would totally fuck both Margot Robbie and Saoirse Ronan. And if you don’t want to… well, something is wrong with you. But they’re both in their 20s. They’re skinny, white, blonde and pretty. Frankly, even if they weren’t talented (and they both are) Hollywood find something for them to do. Sally Hawkins is 41 and brunette, so she had to do a little something extra and fuck a fish on camera to get noticed (and again, I don’t want downplay the cinematic achievement there… it was beautiful… like, I mean, I’m questioning stuff about myself). But you know who’s willing to really work for it? A sixty year old France McDormand, who like her co-star Sam Rockwell (see above) was good enough that my whole stupid Hollywood orgy metaphor just kind of falls apart. She was just that good. It doesn’t matter who else was nominated. What? There are five spots and we only nominate four women? I don’t know, someone throw Meryl Streep in there for whatever she’s done most recently… because it doesn’t fucking matter. This is McDormund’s year.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Frances McDormand for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Actress in a Supporting Role:

So this is a weird one. Here’s the one place that I feel like there was a serious snub this year. Holly Hunter really deserved a nomination here for The Big Sick. It didn’t happen. Probably just because the movie came out too long ago and no one really expected much to come of it. I’d argue it’s probably the biggest omission in this year’s nominations. She was amazing in it. The only things that come close are Allison Williams not getting nominated for lead actress in her role in Get Out (and she’s young, white and pretty… even without being blonde she’ll get another shot… especially given how talented she is) and Patrick Stewart not getting a nomination for supporting actor in Logan (but that’s a comic book movie… so probably a lot of Academy voters didn’t take it seriously even though he was very good). However, in each of these cases, including Hunter, it wouldn’t have mattered. Rockwell is taking the category that Stewart would have been nominated for. McDrormund is taking the category that Williams would been in. And supporting actress is coming down to one of two people. Laurie Metcalf for Lady Bird and Allison Janney for I, Tonya. This one is kind of a steal. Janney is going to take it. And Janney totally deserves an Oscar. But even at 58, she’s going to get another shot. This is a body of work award. She’s paid her dues and she was good in this and she’s going to take it. I personally think Metcalf was better. And she’s 62 and doesn’t do as many movies (she’s a TV actress) so this is probably her last shot. But it’s not going to happen. This is Janney’s year. Everyone else should just be happy to be there. But this is the one place where I would have replaced a nominee. I like Octavia Spencer a lot and she has an Oscar win and another nomination for a reason. Shape of Water was not her best work. Hunter was better. So since they’re all going to lose to Janney anyway, I would have liked to have seen Hunter get a nod here.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Laurie Metcalf for Lady Bird

Mav’s prediction: Allison Janney for I, Tonya

Best Animated Feature:

Animated Feature is probably the one category in all the Oscars where being the super popular movie is actually the best way to guarantee a win. Sometimes this is deserved. Sometimes it’s not. This time it is. The answer here is Coco. Arguably, Coco deserves that 10th spot in the Best Picture race. There shouldn’t even be a contest here really. To continue the Hollywood orgy metaphor that I’ve been doing one last time (it doesn’t really matter for the awards after this) and be quite inappropriate for a film that is aimed very much at children, Coco is like deep sensual lovemaking while everyone else is still waiting for their first kiss. I mean, really… we’re comparing this to fucking Boss Baby. Are you fucking kidding me?

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Coco

Best Animated Short Film:

And now we’re getting down to the films and awards that most people don’t understand even a little bit. That’s why the orgy metaphor is hard to continue If you’ve got an Oscar pool going, this is where you win it. Animated short films are actually really hard to judge. Partly because it’s sort of like Best Picture in that there are a lot of different ways to win it. Sometimes it’s technical achievement. But it’s just as often to be awarded on grounds of making a really touching story or a beautiful piece of artwork. And sometimes you just give it to whatever random thing Disney or Pixar tossed out there just to win the award (this year, that thing is Lou). This was tricky this year, because I actually would kind of like to see Revolting Rhymes win in any given year. But not this one. Usually, this isn’t the kind of award that anyone that you’ve ever heard of matters at all. Best Animated Short Film is not about star fucking. But not this year. This year, I think it goes to Kobe Bryant’s Dear Basketball. Oh yeah, did you know Kobe Bryant was a film maker now? Well he is. And his short is a gorgeous and touching love letter to… well, himself… but it’s really good.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Dear Basketball

Best Cinematography:

If there is a fucking god, then this belongs to Blade Runner 2049. I loved that movie, and while I acknowledge it isn’t for everyone (and predicted that no one would see it when I reviewed it), if Blade Runner is about nothing else, it is about the beauty of the film medium. This category basically exists for Blade Runner 2049. I would argue that ninety years of fucking Oscars were all leading up to this moment when Blade Runner 2049 wins an Oscar for cinematography. But there is no god… so there’s a good chance that Dunkirk takes this instead. But I’m going against my gut… this is the one place where I’m going to put my wishes in instead and make my official prediction what I want it to be instead of what I expect the Academy to do. It’s the one award I’ll be least surprised to lose.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Blade Runner 2049

Best Costume Design:

Remember how I said that The Darkest Hour only exists to give Gary Oldman an award for best actor? Well, Phantom Thread only exists in order to win the award for Costume Design. No joking… it’s literally a movie about designing costumes. That’s it. I actually haven’t watched it yet (I should) but I mean, this is the most Oscar pandering concept ever. And by all accounts, they did a great job.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Phantom Thread

Best Documentary Feature:

This one is always hard. Generally I never get to see any of these until after the Oscars (if ever) and that’s true this year. A lot of the industry buzz is that this is going to go to either Icarus or Faces Places. But, I’m going with Last Men in Aleppo. The Documentary category is one where traditionally the Academy likes to show just how socially conscious they are. This is not not just culturally and socially relevant in this exact historic moment as a film, but it is notable because it is not only the first film ever nominated out of Syria, and the subject matter of the film itself, but because if it were to win, no one will be there to accept the award because Trump’s travel ban is keeping the filmmakers out of our country. And yeah, maybe you didn’t know that… but the people who vote for documentaries probably do.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Last Men in Aleppo

Best Documentary Short Subject:

Same issue with Documentary Short Subject. Here socially conscious and relevant matters. The two short subject categories (this and animated) are the only ones where all of the voters are required to see all of the films (since it doesn’t take long) and with documentary, this is a place where making a statement matters. I’m going with Heroin(e) purely because people are going to want to address opioid crisis.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Heroin(e)

Best Film Editing:

Remember what I said about there not being a god? If there were a god, then Baby Driver might have a shot here. Baby Driver is a movie that is all about craft. The magic of that movie is the way in which sound and visuals are expertly crafted together. The challenge was not only editing it together in a brilliant way that made for an engaging visual experience, but the technical expertise to make it work with the music and sound mixing. The film is a master class in craft. It is a singular achievement in film editing that absolutely deserves this almost as much as Blade Runner 2049 deserves the cinematography award. But I said I was only going to play that card and go against my gut once and I am sticking to it. So I think Baby Driver gets beat here just because it’s too genre and high concept and voters might never have given it a chance. So this award is going to go to the second best edited film this year, Dunkirk.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Baby Driver

Mav’s prediction: Dunkirk

Best Foreign Language Film:

Like I said, these categories are really hard. I’m going to go with A Fantastic Woman, because it’s the one I am most interested in seeing (I haven’t seen any of the nominees this year). There are a couple others that sound interesting (The Insult is getting some good buzz) but I feel like this one. And much like the documentary categories being a socially relevant can really help in this category. Not as much, but some. And this is a story focusing very heavily on transgender rights. This is something that can also tank it because… well, the Academy is a lot of very very old white men. So it might just be “icky.” But, I expect Foreign Language Film is one of the categories where a lot of the people who would be squicked out by it just don’t bother to vote, so I’m going with it.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: A Fantastic Woman

Best Live Action Short Film:

This is another one of my hard sections because I haven’t seen them. So on this one I’m judging purely on industry buzz and social relevance. I’m going with Dekalb Elementary. Honestly, a big part of this is because it will create a moment for the filmmaker to stand up and give an inspiring speech about gun control and how we have to do something to end the crisis of school shootings. And everyone will applaud and feel great… well, until he gets played off for giving a speech longer than ten seconds, because we have to make sure we have enough time left for the big names to give speeches at the end of the show. We care about school shootings… but only so much.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: DeKalb Elementary

Best Makeup and Hairstyling:

This is usually a hard one. It’s not this time. Remember how I said that Darkest Hour was a movie about getting Gary Oldman his Oscar? Well, in order to that they had to transform him. And that took a massive technical achievement in makeup and hairstyling.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Darkest Hour

Best Original Score:

Original Score is a weird category this year. For obvious reasons, the industry sort of privileges the “Original” part of Original Score. And, so in a lot of ways it sort of makes sense to exclude Baby Driver from the category because the music is from preexisting sources. BUT, in the same way that Phantom Thread is a movie about costuming. Baby Driver is a movie about scoring a movie. That’s the whole gimmick of the film. And to exclude it is sort of the same thing as arguing a DJ isn’t a musician and well… that’s an argument. But in this specific case, I feel like Baby Driver at least needed to be on the conversation. Certainly more than Star Wars: The Last Jedi which I think is just sort of there because legally, Star Wars has to be nominated in this category. But Baby Driver is not there. And so I am forced to pick something else, and while I personally liked the Dunkirk score a lot, I think for what the Academy is going for, we go to Shape of Water again here. If nothing else, because it has momentum.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Dunkirk

Mav’s prediction: Shape of Water

Best Original Song:

The music categories are hard at the Oscars. You have to sort of forget that you’re at movie awards and then apply the logic that you would use for making a Grammy pick. But then you have to remember that you’re picking an award for a movie and you are at the Oscars and it’s just a whole big thing. And also, it’s music so it kinda needs to sound nice. Anyway, for some reason, 21st century Hollywood loves a musical and The Greatest Showman was one.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: “This is Me” from The Greatest Showman

Best Production Design:

Like I said, there is no god, but there is momentum.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Blade Runner 2049

Mav’s prediction: Shape of Water

Best Sound Mixing:

As I say every year, no one in the world really understands the difference between Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. Not even the people who do it for a living. I think I understand… and if I do, then this is the one place where Baby Driver has a very real shot at winning an Oscar. And it deserves it. But again, remember, there is no god… and you’re not required to watch all of the movies to vote in this category. I can totally see old Oscar voters looking at the cover for their Baby Driver screener DVD and saying “oh fuck no” and moving on without knowing how much that movie needs this. It is a celebration of the art of film sound. But no… they’ll probably just pick Dunkirk.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Baby Driver

Mav’s prediction: Dunkirk

Best Sound Editing:

Baby Driver was more about the sound mixing than the sound editing… you know… unless I got those backwards… because again, no one really remembers which is which. If I’m right, then Blade Runner 2049 had better sound editing. But it doesn’t matter, because the same deal as with Sound Mixing and the Academy will just pick Dunkirk and move on with their lives.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Blade Runner 2049

Mav’s prediction: Dunkirk

Best Visual Effects:

Do you know why this category exists? This category exists to give trophies to Star Wars. Any year that there is no Star War is just a year that we’re standing around and waiting for a Star War to happen. And I am including the fifty years that the ward existed before the first Star War. And now that we have a Star War every year, you should be able to sort of pencil in the Star War to win this award. Only it hasn’t happened. See, the last time we brought back the Star Wars we were busy giving this award to Matrixes and Lords of Rings. And this time, now that we have a yearly Star War, we keep saying “oh, well, there will be another chance for the Star Wars, so let’s recognize an Ex Machina or a Jungle Book because we’ll totally get to the recognizing the Star War next year.” Well, this is not that year. Because this is the year of Blade Runner 2049. And frankly, there’s probably not going to be another one. In 1982, the original Blade Runner got bumped for this award by E.T. which for all intents and purposes (in this category at least) might as well have been a Star War. Well, this franchise didn’t wait thirty-five years for that to happen again. So you know… lets see how Solo: A Star Wars Story does next year (BWAHAHAHAHAH!!!!)

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Blade Runner 2049

Best Adapted Screenplay:

Sometimes it’s an honor to be nominated. Two of my own personal favorite films are in this category this year. Logan and The Disaster Artist. A movie about the X-man Wolverine and a movie about arguably one of the worst movies of all time. Neither of these things have any business being anywhere near the Academy Awards… and yet, in these two specific cases… they totally do belong. They’re just not going to win. In the past we’ve had a lot of Oscar controversy about things being too white. Too male. Too heteronormative. The Academy is trying to fix that… Moonlight last year was a big part of that. But they’re not going to burn the Best Picture spot on diversity every year. And a good place to do that is the screenwriting awards. So this is going to be the Academy saying “you want diversity? Fine, we’re so woke we’re going to give an award to a gay film that you’ve never even fucking heard of. That’s right, we’re going with Call Me By Your Name. You don’t know it! Not so woke after all, are you! Fuck you!”

Mav’s wishful thinking: Logan (though to be fair, this is partly me being a comic book weenie and I haven’t seen the film that is going to win yet either… though I want to)

Mav’s prediction: Call Me By Your Name

Best Original Screenplay:

And they can consider demonstrating their wokeness with the other screenwriting award. And this is kind of a problem. Because as I said on my very first pick, Lady Bird was probably the best pure film of the year. And it really deserves and Oscar. But it’s not going to get one. It’s going to get shut out, and that sucks. Because it wasn’t the best written film. The Big Sick was actually better, and this is the only places it’s even nominated. And I really would have liked to see that get more recognition. And really, again, if there was a god, it would probably be a shoe-in here. But there is no god… and in the mind of the Academy voter, diversifying means tossing a vote towards a woman, a gay, or a black. But then when the voter looks at Kumail Nanjiani they say “what the fuck is that dude?!?!? Pakistani? Uhhh…. no… no no no… that’s just not going to happen here.” Wokeness only goes so far. But on a good note, it goes far enough that I think you can pencil in Jordan Peele to get recognized for Get Out. Oddly enough, of the three things I’ve mentioned here, Get Out is probably the LEAST well written. But it’s the one that I feel like can really get traction and win here. Of course, this is a tough category… and I wouldn’t be shocked if Three Billboards gets another nod here (and that would be reasonable) or Shape of Water because of its momentum (and this would NOT be reasonable. It’s not as well WRITTEN as the others). But I think this is one where the more diverse pick really can pull it out. Not just because he’s black, but because it’s such a different film than anything else that Academy has ever seen. And yet they liked it enough to nominate it anyway.

Mav’s wishful thinking: The Big Sick

Mav’s prediction: Get Out

So those are my picks… What are yours? And if you’re interested in watching with me an Steph, let me know (we may even say yes 😀).

Here’s how out of touch with audiences the Oscars are: None of the top 5 most-tweeted nominees are favorites to win

#OscarsSoDull: Despite the pomp and ceremony, the 2018 awards are less relevant than ever

The director of last year’s infamous Oscars telecast looks back on the ‘La La Land’-‘Moonlight’ mix-up that ended up winning him an Emmy

The 17 best movies of all time that weren’t nominated for a best-picture Oscar, according to critics

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Mav’s Big Fucking Oscar Predictions List – 2018 (Why can’t my favorite movie win?) was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

#90th Academy Awards #Academy Awards #Baby Driver #Blade Runner 2049 #Coco #Dunkirk #get out #greatest showman #I tonya #movie reviews #oscars #shape of water #Three Billboards Outside Ebbing

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bestmovies0 · 6 years

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The return of blaxploitation: why the time is right to bring back Shaft and Foxy Brown

The 70 s genre is set to dominate big screens again with a slew of remakes and reboots. But where will these cinemas fit in contemporary America?

If it’s true that the past is prologue, then it’s also fair to say that we live now in an age of remix, remakes and reboots. Everything old is new again in this world of popular culture and social media, where the lines between past and existing are constantly blurred if not altogether invisible. On Instagram, we celebrate Throwback Thursdays while the daily drama that comes out of the White House often attains it seem as though we are literally being thrown backwards into a past that many naively thought was long gone or perhaps never existed.

Over the past time there have been several bulletins about new cinema and television services and facilities projects in the works that come from the age in the 1970 s known as blaxploitation. Remakes or reboots have been announced for Shaft at New Line, Super Fly at Sony, Cleopatra Jones at Warners, and Foxy Brown on Hulu, while new Taraji P Henson activity thriller Proud Mary appears to have been influenced by the genre as well.

Why so much contemporary interest in a motion from so long ago? The answers lie in several unexpected similarities that have emerged between this previous period and our present moment.

If we rewind to the late 60 s and early 70 s, we find traditional Hollywood studios were is difficult to connect. With black activists, Vietnam, campus protests and the counterculture predominating the conversation in Richard Nixon’s ” law and order ” America, watching the nightly news often seemed more compelling than attaches great importance to anything that might have been playing at the local movie theatre.

Hollywood, like nature, abhors a vacuum, so this is where blaxploitation discovered its lane. The emergence of cinemas such as Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Shaft, Super Fly, Cleopatra Jones, The Mack, Blacula, The Legend of Nigger Charley, Trouble Man and Coffy, all liberated between 1971 and 1973, offered black audiences characters, topics, music and style that was now consistent with the cultural moment off-screen. The chill, sexual, powerful, awareness, irreverent , nonchalant, quick-witted demeanor of these new ultra-hip films spoke to these audiences in a language that they both understood and enjoyed. At the same time, these low-budget productions produced high profit margins for the struggling studios and for a hour urban audiences of colouring and studio suits were pleased with the results.

Tamara Dobson as Cleopatra Jones. Photograph: Supplied figcaption > source >

In terms of scoundrels, blaxploitation films often featured resolutely evil racist white parodies, along with comically duplicitous black flatterers eager to sell out the race for their own personal gain. It was the job of the film’s protagonist to disclose and eliminate these figures who sought to destroy the community. Thus, blaxploitation movies had both a moral the objectives and a political mandate. It was in this spirit that audiences espoused these films as opportunities to “talk back”, to “stick it to the man”, while legislating righteous vengeance and speaking truth to power in dialogue that might now sound like a hip-hop diss way. These films were cathartic, funny and uniquely virtuoso at capturing the culture zeitgeist in a period of a newly free appreciation of black identity.

Before long, though, the haters would emerge, to rain criticism, disdain and distrust upon the cinematic parade constructing its behavior through the movie houses of black America. The actual term “blaxploitation” emerged as black critics of the cinemas suggested that these intoxicating images were like a racial sugar high, getting black audiences all hopped up on what the Last Poets referred to simply as” party and bullshit “. Further, even though these cinemas featured black casts and revolved around themes that resonated with black audiences, many of the creative personnel behind these cinemas were overwhelmingly white. In time, the phrase” black exploitation” became one word, “blaxploitation”, and before long this was the commonly accepted route to describe a range of films from a variety of different genres that were being lumped together under a moniker that constructed blackness the central component.

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By the late 70 s though, as the dawn of Ronald Reagan’s original Make America Great Again era loomed on the horizon, blaxploitation was in wane. The studios had attained their money and moved on. There was Richard Pryor, of course, who had become a movie star, and the occasional blaxploitation movie such as Jamaa Fanaka’s Penitentiary in 1979, but in general black images on screen had gone from being abundant to virtually invisible.

Though Blaxploitation has always had its critics, the period still represents one of the most maintained periods of cinema featuring black themes and black performers of any in film history. blaxploitation is like a cultural warehouse, a sample factory, and a repository for reboots all rolled into one.

Yet the 1970 s were a long time ago, so how do these films remain relevant today? Upon closer inspection, one might ask, is this present moment actually that different from the 1970 s? In some styles the answer is yes, but in others it is suggested that what goes around was coming.

Consider the varied images of demonstration and resist that have emerged throughout the culture that were first spotted during the second term of Barack Obama, but have grown substantially since. The contested image of Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players, so-called ” sons of bitches “, taking a knee during the national anthem that remind us of John Carlos and Tommie Smith at the Mexico City Olympics. The clenched black fist once raised by Carlos and Smith and forever associated with the Black Panthers is now to so ubiquitous that it is even available as a dark-skinned emoji on your phone.

Obama’s dignified approach to the US presidency elicits the cinematic image of the iconic Sidney Poitier, the most popular actor in the country before the dawning of the blaxploitation era. Dignity, nonetheless, has been replaced by a kind of cultural barbarism wherein coded political slogans, such as Nixon’s ” silent majority” and “law and order”, have been appropriated and applied to the present as though we were stuck in a time warp from 45 years ago. Further to the point, current investigations conducted by Russian involvement in the 2016 general elections are now compared with Watergate on an almost daily basis.

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But perhaps what is most analogous between the early 70 s and the present is the way in which blaxploitation films then were like the urban precursor to superhero movies today. Though the latter are set in an urban surrounding represents an real, the universe of these films was an especially fictional scenery.

The characters were cool, confident, physically dominant and defiantly anti-establishment, possessing “superpowers” often directly connected to their blackness, which allowed them to see through the bullshit of American life, while simultaneously use everything available to them in waging conflict against the evils of white dominance. Their flashy Eleganza and Flagg Brothers-inspired attires and extravagantly tricked-out autoes could certainly be called futuristic for that time. And the moral battles of good versus evil, with a distinct racial twisting in the first decade in accordance with the civil right movement, dedicated blaxploitation a meaningful purpose beyond “whats being” otherwise an elaborated though enjoyable fiction. Black audiences in the 1970 s awaited the next empowered blaxploitation movie the lane that contemporary audiences now anticipate the freeing of Black Panther. The trailer for this month’s Proud Mary looks as though it is a mash-up of both blaxploitation and superhero films.

Yet despite the deep affection that many have for blaxploitation, these movies were not regarded as” great cinema “. The the limit of what were often low-budget guerrilla-style cinemas were visible to audiences even back in the 1970 s. The appearance of boom mics on screen or people listing their zodiac signs next to their name in the credits were par for such courses. Audiences espoused them not in spite of this, but often because of it.

Part of the pleasure of watching these cinemas lies in the fact that you were watching something raw, unpolished, unsophisticated and, in many cases, unfinished. But that’s what stimulated it cool, this sense that what Hollywood deemed junk, black culture deemed wealth. It was not the power of Hollywood that stimulated blaxploitation significant, it was the power of the audience, the power of the people that transformed the genre into a culture force that continues to influence and inspire.

Contemporary film-makers now have the opportunity to create better movies than those that inspired them. If contemporary audiences respond to these new movies with the same enthusiasm that audiences is a response to blaxploitation back in the 70 s, then this is an indication an especially triumphant return.

Dr Todd Boyd is the Katherine and Frank Price Endowed Chair for the Study of Race and Popular Culture in the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He is the author of numerous, books, articles, and essays, including The Notorious PhD’s Guide to the Super Fly 70 s

Read more: https :// www.theguardian.com/ movie/ 2018/ jan/ 11/ blaxploitation-shaft-foxy-brown-film

from https://bestmovies.fun/2018/01/14/the-return-of-blaxploitation-why-the-time-is-right-to-bring-back-shaft-and-foxy-brown/

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