Linkovers
Friday, November 24, 2017 at 2:05PM • New York Times "The artists have been rebuked. Now what about their art?"
• Gr8ter Days which years were the worst for celebrity deaths? A morbid obsessive list that's kind of eye opening. I mean 1977... ouch.
• Los Angeles Times Carol Burnett on the 50th anniversary of her classic show
• The Guardian Guy Lodge wonders about the relative sexlessness of Call Me By Your Name and Moonlight before it and whether that timidity is what it takes for an LGBT film to become a big Oscar player?
Much more after the jump including Justice League credits, Daniel Dae Kim, Michael Apted, Aquaman, an honor for Detroit and the first round of PGA nominations...
• i09 the end credits scene of Justice League and why it's so flat
• /Film "no air bubbles" for dialogue scenes in James Wan's Aquaman like the kind we saw in Justice League. Both of these stories are yet more reminders that the DCEU is f***ed up, failing to show any consistency from film to film or planning any through lines between solo and group outings that make sense or inform the whole as well as the parts
• AV Club Merrit Wever, so wonderful on Nurse Jackie for all those years, talks about her new western show Godless
• Playbill Broadway show performances from the Thanksgiving Day Parade
• Deadline Jane Campion calls this "a fairytale time for women" and seems to be viewing the sexual assault story avalanche from an optimistic standpoint. Silver linings do seem compelling. But I hope we can see them come to fruition.
• Gurus of Gold "nominations I'd be thankful for"... it's weird that my votes aren't listed here but obviously my #1 was Michelle Pfeiffer for mother!
• Awards Daily The Actors fund will honor the casts of Detroit (Movie) and This Is Us (TV) at their "Looking Ahead" Awards on December 5th
• Variety good interview with director, cinematographer, and documentarian Michael Apted about working with actors, documentaries, the slowly closing gap between movies and TV, and the current sexual harrassment client
• Times Daniel Dae Kim's journey from actor to executive producer yielded an unexpected hit for ABC with The Good Doctor (and it's also a happy if unintentional rebuke to CBS who didn't realize what they had in the Asian-American star)
• Instagram True Blood and Queen Sugar star Rutina Wesley revealed (somewhat coyly) that she's queer and engaged to a woman in a new gallery of photos
Finally...
The Producers Guild of America have announced the documentary feature portion of their nominations. The seven films nominated are:
- Chasing Coral
- City of Ghosts
- Cries from Syria
- Earth: One Amazing Day
- Jane
- Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower
- The Newspaperman: The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee
Only The Newspaperman is not included in Oscar's 170 eligible documentary features. So far the early precursors and sneak peak lists (like Doc NYC's 15 Oscar hopefuls) have not necessarily coalesced around many of the same titles with the exceptions being possibly Chasing Coral, City of Ghosts, and Jane. Here is The Film Experience's current Oscar chart.
Reader Comments (16)
Call me by your name is not timid about sex!
OT. Did you see Uma Thurman's thanksgiving instagram post? I was hoping you'd link to it.
I"ve always defended that art should be separated from despicable artists. But as this cascade of sexual harassment, abuse and rape keeps escalating, I just can't keep the nausea down my throat. To me, when somebody's work can be reread in the light of whatever allegations, I just can't. It' s just impossible to unsee what you now see in their movies, shows, etc. Time will tell if the cases we know now will be forgiven in the future. But when Kevin Spacey plays a despicable human being, how can you not not see him?
I wonder if it might be time to have a new conversation surrounding all these "rebuked artists". Why do we live in a society where artists are also expected to be celebrities (besides the fact that these forms of art make a lot of money)? This is not a new problem, artists have always been celebrated (and it's that celebration that makes their art lasting), but I feel the expectations we put on artists are opposite to the ones we put on celebrities, which is why I think it's ludicrous that we expect all of these people to be both. Artists are expected to reflect the truths of human existence through a new point of view, therefore they are expected to be flawed, somewhat tortured, people who understand human suffering and joy and portray it honestly through their art. Celebrities are expected to be role models, the people we look up to, the people we want to expose our children to. Artists are allowed to be flawed, celebrities are not. Then, why do we expect all artists to be celebrities? Why do we celebrate them for being flawed and reflecting human existence, only to hold them up to something greater and then be disappointed because they do something (or find out theu've done something) that exposes their demons. This is amplified now because we have more ways of finding out about people's private lives,
My point is, I think we need to negotiate what we expect these people to be. Are they artists first, or celebrities first? If they are artists, should we put them in a position of so much power that they might be able to abuse others (I don't know if I'd call Harvey Weinstein an artist and I think the conversation around businessmen is more cut and dry, since businesses are supposed to have a stricter code of conduct, same with people in public office whose job is to "serve" us)? Should we celebrate art that clearly comes from a dark place, no matter how thoroughly necessary it feels as an examination of humanity (this is why the Louis CK story didn't surprise me, I find his material brilliant, but clearly from a very troubled place)? Is the answer simply to expect more from them as artists? I'm not expecting answers right now, but I think this is a conversation worth having in order to move forward with this necessary shift in society.
Cris -- i figured Uma deserved her own post but didnt want to go there on an holiday.
I wonder about the actors and producers who've come under severe scrutiny for sexual misconduct. How far will their "punishment" go? I agree that their careers should come to an abrupt end if the allegations are true. But what will happen with their previous work? Shall we never see American Beauty or The Usual Suspects on TV or cable ever again? Is that fair to all the other people involved? I wouldn't agree with retroactive measures, because -as the article notes- if that were to be the case: why has Hollywood gone easy on Woody Allen, Polansky and Hitchcock?
Call me a prude...
Studio audience: YOU PRUDE!
...But I would not consider Moonlight "sexless", nor did I need an explicit sex scene to improve the movie for me. Repression and unreciprocation are major themes of the story! Sometimes wonder if the authors of these thinkpieces forget that porn is free.
I also get that Guy Lodge's article was a lot more nuanced and was talking about a more complex issue -- it was a visceral and sleep-deprived reaction 😉
Bullshit on Call Me by Your Name being sexless. The straight sex scènes take up what? There minutes of the movie?
There is plenty of crotch grabbing, BJ scènes etc to go around. Ppl who complain about it ignoring gay sex have a narrow mins about what constitutes "gay sex".
CMBYN is a beautiful adaptation, though I remain astonished that it seems to be the "Pan's Labyrinth" of queer cinema... I'm not even sure Brokeback Mountain has been lauded as much as this. Don't get me wrong, it IS wonderful... But, it's hardly the second coming (and more than once and twice does the director take it into unnecessarily pretentious territory). God's Own Country, I'd reckon, is a much more palpably slice of exciting queer/non-queer cinema. Beach Rats as well.
What a coup it would have been, their gorgeous performances aside (though, again, I find both leads overestimated, and Timothee Chalamet's take on Elio, in particular, irks me in more than one instance), to have the content from the book translated minus coyness.
Reading it it never felt like porn. Should we dilute it, then, because the visual of it would make it so?
Beach Rats has full frontal nudity and does not shy from showing gay sex as what it is. Call Me by Your Name was NEVER just a book about hypotheticals and romantic passion... It never shied from the fact that Elio, for one, REALLY yearns for Oliver and desires him in a way that demands carnality and even obsessive sexual fetishes.
95% on Metacritic or not, CMBYN is very shy about that aspect of the novel. Hey, politics and money-making aside, being straight and open-minded doesn't necessarily lead to wanting to show/perform gay sex scenes out there for all to see. Full-frontal nudity no-no clauses are also there because actors are humans first and have a right to privacy on all levels.
Had they cast two other actors, though... Guess we'll never know...
There is not doubt that gay sex is treated differently than gay sex specially if it's a European film which tend to be a lot more explicit or comfortable with gay sexuality. Does a movie need to be sexually explicit when it comes to gay love stories- yes if you want the audience to see the two men to be more than just close friends.
Call Me By Your Name is not shy. Armie Hammer gets on his knees and fellates Timothee twice. They both wipe semen off of themselves on screen. To think that this constitutes "shy" or "coy" shows more about the person designating it as such than it does the movie. I just find this whole conversation so desperate and depressing in reference to a movie this stunning and moving.
Oh, apologies, I hadn't realized I and anyone else with my thoughts was making a blanket statement that needed to be appreciated and assimilated by everyone else.
I was simply stating my opinion and agreement with the article.
Call Me by Your Name is what it is for anyone who wants it to be whatever they want/need/see it to be.
They can wipe all the semen they want, it doesn't change my perspective.
Don't be so hasty to judge others when they don't share your opinion. It's okay to be passionate... But the film isn't unloved, and it's certainly not going to go gentle into that good night. You don't need to defend it against the mighty contrarian word...
Just love it, and disagree.
Surely that's not such a desperate thing to do?
Way to set up a straw man. Have whatever opinion you want to have on something this pointless - this conversation about how much dick is enough dick remains the same world’s lamest possible conversation possible.
Haha!
Surely not the lamest...
But it is a relatively frivolous one. No one said anything to the contrary?
I teach young children with autism how to read and write on the weekdays. I'm allowed to indulge in pointlessness on the weekends. I'm sure your job allows you the same indulgence.
Well, this was fun. Time to stare at the abyss a little longer...
Maybe less long if CMBYN actually manages as many Oscar nods as most see it receiving.
But that'll be a pointless conversation for another lame time...
Richter Scale- I think I understand what you are trying to get at, but conflating human foibles and imperfections with assualt and predation is a pretty big misunderstanding about what this moment is about. I certainly, for example, would not hold an actor's addiction problems, or infidelities (assuming consensual), etc against them. I do not think they have to be a perfect person or role model. But in these cases, the "artists" have engaged in behavior that actively harms other people. The have inflicted trauma on women and men, made people lose their jobs, leave the industry, feel unsafe, feel violated. Too often these men are labeled "troubled artists", but all it is is a cover for allowing them to continue their predation. You say Louis CK's art comes "from a dark place". Well his assualt of women also came from that dark place. And because people labeled him brilliant, and decided his voice was more important, because of the "art", that he was allowed to harass women for over a decade. I am tired of placing the worth of the artistic output of "difficult" (re. Abusive) men above the safety and voices of their victims. It has nothing to do with needing them to be role models.