You Belong on the Radio - UK Music Charts (2)

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You Belong on the Radio - UK Music Charts (2)

I haven’t discussed new music since November and I’ve only looked at the British music charts once, all the way back in August 2014, so it’s time to do both again as these songs seem ripe to be analyzed. Let’s listen to some fresh tunes then, shall we?

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Trailing Tropes: When Angela Bassett Cries

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Trailing Tropes: When Angela Bassett Cries

I’ve been wanting to write about trailers a while now, but when I was sitting in the cinema recently, it again occurred to me how strongly trailers rely on certain tropes. It doesn’t mean that the movies they are advertising do things wrong because a trailer is never really as representative as we are supposed to believe. But what fascinates me is how trailers use certain images to promote their movies, how the reduction to a couple of images leads to images that have clear connotations audiences should respond to. I don’t know if this will become a recurring feature, but for now, let’s take a look at some trailers and the tropes they market besides their actual product.

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Behind These Castle Walls, Part III: Fantasia (1940)

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Behind These Castle Walls, Part III: Fantasia (1940)

It’s been clearly too long since the last installment and I blame today’s movie for it. Fantasia is a difficult movie to approach because it has no larger story and is also not as well known today as all the other movies. Yet again, it is clearly a technological achievement with astonishing visuals and an unusual concept for its time, mixing animation, classical music and live action footage for what must have been really confusing to audiences in 1940. I had never seen it before but only the Fantasia 2000 sequel. I thought about talking about the original version that includes the racist scenes that have been removed since 1960 and while this is interesting, I decided not to because a) this problem is obvious and has been dealt with by Disney (with only a 20 year-delay) and b) I’m doing this to discuss the effects these movies still have today, so I might as well go with the current version. There are still enough issues to look at in this one and I can’t wait to move on to get to the next ones (of which there are still officially 53 left).

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Do You Want to Dress Up As a Unisex Snowman?

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Do You Want to Dress Up As a Unisex Snowman?

It’s that time of the year again. That time where many people can’t wait to dress up and have fun, while others (including myself) want to escape and hide for a weekend until it’s all over. I wrote about it last year and not much has changed from that article. But this year it is harder for me to escape the claws of Fasching.

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Sleepaway Camp (1983)

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Sleepaway Camp (1983)

(spoilers ahead)

Sleepaway Camp is a perfect bad movie. It’s so ridiculous in anything it is doing that it is a constant joy to watch (if you enjoy bad movies of course). The acting is over the top or non-existent, every aspect of filmmaking is weird and the story doesn’t make any sense. But it’s fun! It’s a classic slasher movie with silly death scenes and the most logic-free plot you can imagine. On top of it all, the movie is incredibly sexist (in many ways) all the way to the insane ending. It is really incredible that this movie was a success and seemingly is still remembered fondly by people who saw it in the 80s. But there is nothing better for listening to funny people talk about it.

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Poster of a Girl: The Joy of Jen

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Poster of a Girl: The Joy of Jen

Wow, I haven’t taken a current look at movie posters since March (outside of theme weeks that is). Considering that this is one of the simplest articles to write for me, this is kind of surprising. Anyway, here we go again.

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Behind These Castle Walls, Part II: Pinocchio (1940)

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Behind These Castle Walls, Part II: Pinocchio (1940)

For the second movie in my Disney series we get to the second animated full-length feature which is Pinocchio, released in 1940. I’d say as a movie it’s not as well known as some of the other Disney movies, while still pretty popular. Just as Snow White it is a well-made movie with great animation and interesting, creative set pieces. The story, based on a novel, was changed significantly and is at least as problematic as Snow White’s, in my opinion. While many themes are similar, some new ones are also introduced. But let’s get to the analytical details of this one, it won't be short.

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Modern Problems at the Zombie Lake: The Movies of 1981, Part 1 [1981 Week]

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Modern Problems at the Zombie Lake: The Movies of 1981, Part 1 [1981 Week]

So, I watched 15 movies for this theme week and write about two of them separately. What about the 13 others? Will they just vanish and be forgotten? I decided to write one article about all of them instead and focus on different aspects. After I was done, it was too much for one article, so I decided to split it in two articles.

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Poster of a Girl: 1981 Edition [1981 Week]

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Poster of a Girl: 1981 Edition [1981 Week]

I just love movie poster analysis too much to not do it in a theme week. I know things often repeat themselves, but to me, instead of getting boring, drives the points just home even more. So here we go again, 1981 style!

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Straight Outta Compton (2015)

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Straight Outta Compton (2015)

Straight Outta Compton is an effective musical biopic that is rare for centering on a group that made highly controversial music. N.W.A. basically invented (or at least popularized) gangsta rap and the movie does a fine job of showing their journey from the beginning to the end in great detail. I’ll discuss the value of those details in a second. The performances by Corey Hawkins and Jason Mitchell are great, and so is Paul Giamatti as the ambiguous manager. The music keeps us going through the rather long 147 minutes and the movie does a great job at evoking the racial tensions and police brutality at the time, effectively drawing conclusions for today. It’s a powerful movie that worked for me, but its problems kept nagging at me anyway, which makes it difficult to evaluate as a whole. It's also hard for me to say how well the movie works without nostalgia, which played a big part for me, which just goes to show how subjective we view movies.

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Did I Like This? (Niggaz4Life)

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Did I Like This? (Niggaz4Life)

Because N.W.A. is as popular again as ever before thanks to Straight Outta Compton, I thought it’s a good time to go back to my own feelings about their music. I was somewhat surprised to see I had written about their first album already (which I had forgotten, which happens after 250+ posts), so today I look at the far more problematic 2nd (or 3rd, depending on what you consider 100 Miles and Runnin’ to be) album Niggaz4Life (or technically Efil4zaggin), released in 1991. It is also their last album and, as more or less shown in the movie, was not as much of a team effort as their debut.

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Southpaw (2015)

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Southpaw (2015)

Southpaw is an utterly conventional and manipulative movie that is only saved one of Jake Gyllenhaal’s most unique (and best) performances as the boxer Billy Hope. Gyllenhaal is not just good, he creates a character unlike anything we’ve seen before. Hope is so different and ambiguous. We cannot entirely figure him out, but that is part of his appeal. If you have seen the trailer, you basically know everything about the movie’s standard plot. There are no surprises and the emotions asked of you are a high form of manipulation. Sure, on some level it still works (daddy-daughter dramas always get me), but I can still criticize the movie’s laziness. The script by Kurt Sutter is a mess, leaving many plotlines unresolved and instead relying on us knowing how these stories go. Aside from some questionable shots, Antoine Fuqua’s direction is well done, especially the boxing scenes. I would recommend the movie only for Gyllenhaal’s performance, although it is strangely effective if you turn off your brain.

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Poster of a Girl - 2004 Edition: Hidden in Plain Sight

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Poster of a Girl - 2004 Edition: Hidden in Plain Sight

You’re probably saying: “I know what’s coming now. Posters in 2004 were sexist, just like in 2012, 2015, 1988, 1980, 1973 and 1940, always the same.” Well, yes, that’s true but I wanted to try something slightly different this time. Slightly, because instead of focusing on sexism in general, I want to focus on one particular way of posters being sexist: by naming all of the actors on the posters except some female ones. Strangely, I found a lot of examples from 2004 posters for this, so here we go.

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