I’m reading John Strasbaugh’s history of blackface performance in America, Black Like You, and finding it fascinating, though I suspect that some of his arguments have angered a lot of people. (Even I feel vaguely uncomfortable with some of them, though others seem less objectionable that they are probably thought to be.) In any case, he mentioned a couple of blackface-styled cartoons that had been banned during the course of discussing blackface in films more generally. I thought I’d linkdump it, partly so I can find these links again. All This and Rabbit Stew (1941) Coal Black and de Sebben …
Tag: FILMS & TV
Perfume (the movie)
I finally saw Perfume today, and feel inspired to reread the book, and to start writing an essay about it. I actually read the book, on the recommendation of my friend Young Ja, a few years ago, but I can’t remember it all that clearly, and if I am to write on the subject, I’ll have to review it. In fact, I feel inspired to write a whole book of criticism of the kind I’d like to see, because I haven’t seen anything of the kind before. You see, I want to read a book of literary criticism which starts …
300
This is about the movie 300, which I saw at a local cinema today. I have to say, my review would be somewhat different if this had been an all-out fantasy, and not a disturbing depiction of a telling of a tale about a battle between Xerxes’ Persian army and a small group of Spartans. Here’s why. These days, I often find myself wondering, “Why are you telling me this story at this moment?” I think it of the topics students choose to talk about in class — some of them brought up simply because they’re big in the news, …
Watched and Read
Finally been able to use the holiday as I’d hoped — lots of writing, lots of reading, some movies. What have I read? Well, I finally finished Nalo Hopkinson‘s Midnight Robber. The book was a bit of an excursion for me, rather different from the bulk of SF I read. Not the futuristic, melded Caribbean patois — that didn’t faze me at all, and in fact I very much enjoyed that element, even when there were words I couldn’t pronounce mentally — but what was a departure for me was the fact that (a) this is a kind of domestic …
Movies and Reading of Late
I’ve been watching a lot of movies, and reading a little too. First, movies: Death of a President is just weird. Weird, and interesting, and basically all about race post-9-11. Race as in skin color, and race as in hurrying to find someone to punish. I am surprised the film has been released in the US. I am unsurprised to find a lot of Americans angry about it without knowing what it’s even about. I betcha the Bush family is very weirded out by this, though. IT was sad, though perhaps on purpose, that the White House speech writer got …
Tsotsi
This film was recommended by the other foreign professor in my department, who used in a course segment dealing with South Africa. My brief review, as usual crossposted to AllConsuming, is as follows: What happens when a petty thug performs a carjacking and discovers that there was a baby left in the car by the woman he shot? Great movie. I worried for about five seconds that this might turn out to be the South African version of Three Men and a Baby but in fact it turned out to be a brilliant and well-made film about the strange ways …
Europa (1991)
Last night I tried to watch my DVD of Europa, which is a Korean-released DVD. Weirdly, it has no English subtitles, only Korean, and the “Languages” marking on the back cover lists it as an “English” movie. In fact, a lot of the dialogue is in German. I tried to watch it anyway, guessing at what was discussed in German, but finally, after about forty minutes, I gave up. What an annoyance!
Oliver Stone’s Alexander
I do wish Oliver Stone would do things like Natural Born Killers, Platoon… things that he can do. I’m saddened by the fact that nobody told him a film like Alexander was beyond his reach. It turns out to have been, unquestionably so. Oh, wait… the grandiosity, the betrayal by silence of those surrounding him… I get it, dude. Alexander is a kind of mirror reflection of Stone himself. This movie is a self-portrait. Trying to conquer the world with his unique vision. Perhaps he believes the kind of rhetoric he puts in Alexander’s mouth about making an empire to …
청연 (Blue Swallow)
I just saw the best Korean movie I’ve seen in years, a biopic about Park Kyung Won — the first civilian female Korean aviator — but before I talk about that, I want to tell a story which might help explain why I think so highly of the film. I have many excellent students. By excellent, I mean intelligent, thoughtful, sensitive, and compassionate. I mean hardworking and relatively critical-minded. One of my moist outstanding students — someone who’s been abroad, who’s got an excellent handle on English, who gets Western culture just that little bit better than her classmates, in …
British TV Documentaries
Lately I’ve been watching a few downloaded documentaries from British TV. Most of the ones I’ve seen so far have been quite good. I will probably comment on Dawkins’ documentary on religion, bearing the provocative title Root of All Evil?, in a few days, but for now, I’m too busy to post about that at the length it deserves. However, I just watched Thomas Balmès’ documentary on Nokia’s ethical appraisal issues, titled Made in China, and posted the following review at AllConsuming. As much as I think it’s important to discuss the plight of exploited workers in factories in places …