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(03/04/18 2:00pm)
“It was an honor just to be nominated.” Usually, we assume this is a lie intended to make actors sound grateful, but in the case of many young Best Actor and Best Actress nominees, the honor truly does lie in the nomination rather than the win. While it may come as a shock to some readers, winning an Oscar can actually be a career curse to many actors.
(03/14/18 1:00pm)
Last spring, I had a conversation with my father about Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why. This is a rare thing for us—my dad typically only cares about television if a football game or an OJ Simpson documentary is on. He doesn’t care about most shows, but he does care about his job as a middle school principal and the students that he works with. When he became concerned about a new show that they were talking about at school, he asked me if I had seen it. I did—first, a few episodes with mild disinterest, then the rest of the show in one outrage–fueled sitting—and by the end, I came to understand why teachers and administrators, as well as TV critics, had issues with it: it’s a reductive and glorified account of what it’s like to struggle with mental illness, aimed at an impressionable audience.
(03/14/18 1:00pm)
Walking around Penn’s largely pre–professional campus, the chances of seeing a movie camera that doesn’t belong to a news network are minimal. But Penn does have its fair share of aspiring filmmakers who pursue this art both on and off campus. Street had the opportunity to talk to three of them about how they discovered their passion, how they used it to put their thoughts on screen, and what they plan to do with it in the future.
(02/27/18 2:00pm)
These days, seeing a movie can be expensive. The average price of movie theater tickets in the U.S. hit an all time high last year, and the costs of DVDs, subscription services, and on–demand movies on platforms like YouTube can add up. Even for the film lovers who avoid costs using less legal means, in today’s busy world, there’s still the time commitment of sitting down to watch.
(02/28/18 7:16pm)
It should come as no surprise that history is a great storyteller. Bringing historical moments to life on screen can illuminate the triumphs and pitfalls of people across space and time. Revisiting stories with contemporary significance through film ensures that the lessons of the past remain within the public psyche. Black History Month serves as a moment for the celebration of Black excellence, a reflection on the experiences of African Americans (both today and through history), and a deepening consideration for the people and events that will forever shape the political, social, and cultural landscape of the United States.
(02/26/18 2:00pm)
The Great British Bake Off, a BAFTA Award–winning television series, exemplifies the best of what reality television has to offer: sweets, critiques, and layers of British humor. The UK show has propelled 24 different international spin–offs, along with similarly structured series such as The Great Pottery Throw Down and The Great British Sewing Bee.
(02/26/18 2:00pm)
When the 2018 Oscar nominations were announced at the end of January, Greta Gerwig made history by becoming the fifth woman to ever be nominated for Best Director. She received the nomination for her 2017 coming–of–age film Ladybird, which is nominated for four other Oscars, including Best Screenplay (also written by Gerwig).
(02/23/18 2:00pm)
New York City is known for many things—great pizza, glittering skyscrapers, sidewalks crowded with fast–talking business people—but the warmth and friendliness of its residents rarely make the cut. To outsiders, it seems that everyone is always in a rush in New York. They are notoriously pushy, adhering to a code of necessary rudeness to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. Out–of–towners tend to remark that New York may be a wonderful place to visit, but a difficult place to call home. Movies and television shows that are filmed in New York often do a good job contrasting the pace of the city with the lives of those who inhabit it. New York serves as a backdrop in HBO’s series High Maintenance, which tells the stories of its ordinary people and the way they interact with each other, as well as with the city that they share.
(02/25/18 2:00pm)
The 2018 Winter Olympics are almost over, and it's been a hell of a ride.
(03/01/18 2:00pm)
When Hattie McDaniel became the first black performer to win an Oscar in 1939, it was a historic and groundbreaking moment. In the ceremony, when McDaniel won the Supporting Actress award for her role in Gone With the Wind, presenter Fay Bainter commented that the award was “opening the doors of [the Academy] and moving back the walls."
(03/01/18 2:00pm)
For a vast majority of moviegoers, Hollywood blockbusters and arthouse films encompass most—if not all—of the movies they have had access to. Hollywood, the bastion of First Cinema, produces escapist, individualistic narrative films that buttress bourgeois values. On the contrary, Second Cinema subverts Hollywood conventions but concerns itself with the expression of its director. Many politically radical film theorists and critics consistently critique such movies for their failure to challenge a spectator in a meaningful way. In their 1969 film manifesto Toward a Third Cinema, filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino put forth a radical vision of the future of anti–imperialist, anti–capitalist cinema. Understanding how mainstream Hollywood Cinema came to dictate theory, practice, and markets for film, the duo delineates a cinema that actively works against a system that reduces movies to mere commodities.
(03/16/18 1:00pm)
The term "black comedy" gets thrown around quite a bit. It’s one of those easy–to–grab labels that anyone can stick on a film or television show that made them laugh more than they believe it should have. At the core of any black comedy is the exploration of traditionally taboo subjects through the lens of humor or satire, often of the dead–pan, misanthropic variety. Dark humor is a tool people have used for hundreds—if not thousands—of years in theatrical arts; making light of life’s inevitable darkness is, after all, a natural coping mechanism.
(02/20/18 10:38pm)
What is darkly interesting about diverse casts onscreen is that they very rarely get to have diverse stories. It’s true that Hollywood has made incremental steps to address racial type–casting, white–washing and underrepresentation in film, all while growing ever–cognizant of the box office strength of diversely casted movies. But industry efforts at rectifying its glaring imbalance seem paltry in the face of the record–smashing arrival of Marvel’s latest stand–alone superhero blockbuster, Black Panther.
(02/20/18 6:22am)
Black Panther was everything I ever needed. Aside from simply being a beautiful movie with dynamic characters, a perfect soundtrack, and an accompanying Kendrick album, it’s a cultural watershed for the black community. Even now, as I embark on writing this piece, I’m struggling to calm the flood of emotion rising up in my chest. Thinking about it and how it was such a monumental achievement for black people, especially black people in America, is a wave of awareness I’m unfamiliar with. I worry I may never be able to fully express the experience of being black while watching Black Panther. This movie felt like it was for me. The people on the screen looked like me, and they each represented the strength and beauty of blackness in ways I’ve never seen portrayed on the big screen.
(02/21/18 2:00pm)
The ease of online communication in our increasingly digital world is generally presented as a curse just as often as it is as a blessing. There is a sense that diving too deep into an online presence detaches us from reality and dulls our ability to communicate face to face. This is certainly a product of the convenience of expression that the internet offers, where the screen serves as a buffer between an individual and the world. On the other hand, social media has proven to be a platform for a kind of emotional honesty, serving to communicate condensed, snappy versions of everyday struggles for the world to like and retweet. Empathizing with these bite–sized pieces of the human condition is comforting—it’s nice to know that you are understood. However, the effect of these glimmers of connection are short lived, and their content is often shallow. There are far more meaningful ways of connecting to universal emotional experiences—and one of those is film.
(02/21/18 2:51am)
In Netflix’s reboot of Queer Eye, Tan France, the new fashion expert, announces the revival’s mission at the very beginning: “The original show was fighting for tolerance. Our fight is for acceptance.” I have to confess I was initially a little suspicious of this claim. I didn’t believe a formulaic makeover show could do anything to make a meaningful statement on LGBTQ or American culture in 2018. The good news is, I was wrong.
(02/22/18 2:00pm)
For many Penn students, Reading is just the name of the farmers’ market on the opposite side of the Schuylkill. (Note: It’s pronounced Redding. It’s the fifth–largest city in Pennsylvania. The more you know). But one Penn alum holds Reading dear to his heart, so much so that he’s making a TV pilot based around the city.
(02/19/18 1:48pm)
With two feet planted firmly in 2018 and awards season nearing its mythic end, it’s already been a great year for cinema sound. Though there arguably isn’t enough buzz swirling around the looming Oscar categories for Best Original Song and Film Score, I have a feeling that’s about to change. With the advance release of the soundtrack to Marvel’s highly anticipated Black Panther drumming up unbridled excitement and redirecting public attention to movie sound, I am struck by the truth of a common thought: for movies, what looks like a masterpiece often sounds like a hit. Before the Oscar envelopes are opened, take a look at movie moments where the music stole the show.
(02/22/18 2:00pm)
Musicals are having a moment right now at the box office. La La Land was a hit in 2016, and this year The Greatest Showman is popular not only in theaters, but also on streaming charts (with its original song “This is Me” racking up millions of plays on airwaves and services like Spotify). The success of these movie musicals is not unprecedented. Once upon a time, original movie musicals were popular and commonplace. After a dry spell that lasted decades, the industry is finally back at it—and if you’re loving it like we are, it’s worth going back to some of the old standards that inspired these films and came before them.
(02/21/18 2:47am)
It’s not uncommon to feel a small pang of anxiety upon hearing that one of your favorite novels is soon to be adapted for the big screen. On one hand, the immortalization of your favorite stories is obviously very exciting. On the other, the movie could be a total flop, or worse, it could deconstruct and reinterpret the book in a way that strips it of its most effecting literary devices. Some books just aren’t meant for film adaptation, no matter how good they are; others have potential, but aren’t translated with the proper care and artistry, and then, on occasion, a movie will transcend the book from which it was inspired, using the medium of film to enhance the book’s best qualities.