All hail the great Glenda Jackson!

by Cláudio Alves 

50 years ago, Ken Russell's Women in Love was released in US theaters after having already opened in the UK the year before. Accusations of obscenity and licentiousness followed the picture across the Atlantic and, as it usually happens, polemic was a good catalyst for popularity. Nowadays, such arthouse offerings rarely get mainstream attention but the America of 1970 was a different place as far as moviegoing was concerned. In a time of radical change in society and tastes, Women in Love's tale of bohemian affairs, sexual candor and class hierarchies in 20s England was warmly received by critics and audiences alike. The performance of Glenda Jackson was of particular fame and catapulted the actress to the pantheon of celebrity.

So much so that, by April of 1971, she won the Oscar for Best Actress. To this day, it's one of the weirdest victories in the category's history…

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Review: Little Fires Everywhere

by Murtada Elfadl

This review only covers the first three episodes of Little Fires Everywhere.

In the second episode of the new Hulu miniseries Little Fires Everywhere rich privileged white woman Elena Richardson (Reeese Witherspoon) asks the nomad artist Mia (Kerry Washington), who is her new tenant, to be her maid. You see she means well. She saw Mia and her teenage daughter asleep in their car and of course as any upstanding citizen would do, called the police on them for trespassing. Out of guilt she leased them her open apartment when by coincidence she recognized them later in the day. Now Mia has told her that she needs to juggle more than one job to make ends meet. The offer comes out naturally out of Elena's mouth. Only after she finishes saying the words does she realize what she has said and how it can be misconstrued. She back tracks by changing the job to “house manager.”

That scene is fraught with racial, class and socio-economic tension. It made me excited for the series and for watching Witherspoon and Washington tackle these issues...

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On the mend. And an Oscar thought.

by Nathaniel R

Just wanted to quickly check in to let you all know that I am on the mend and doing a lot better now, self-recovering from a flu or covid-19 or whatever it is/was that I was relaying on the podcast. The fever has been gone for a couple of days and I have more energy daily.  It's hard to get tested which is such a ridiculous problem. Our country was so severely ill prepared for a pandemic since the CDC was gutted by T**** two years ago (why does the media stay so silent on the awful decisions of the government and spend so much time on his tweets or just replaying his self-congratulatory speeches?). And even if the GOP hadn't already ravaged greatly needed government programs, our healthcare system was already in disarray. People being laid off right and left in the face of business closings will also mean the loss of medical insurance for a lot of people. Losing insurance during a pandemic is (unneccessary) tragedy on top of tragedy. It only highlights the absurdity of connecting your ability to see a doctor with working for a corporation. The two should have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

It's been beyond clear for years that our country needs universal healthcare. 

But on a more familiar topic for this blog so as not too get bogged down in political anger -- movies and Oscars...

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"Emma." and the matter of adaptation

by Cláudio Alves

The COVID-19 pandemic has confined us to our homes, making social distancing the rule and going to the movies an impossibility. Faced with such a threat, some studios have made their most recent movies available for rental and streaming online. Universal, for instance, has made it possible to watch Autumn De Wilde and Eleanor Catton's Emma. within the safety of our homes. After watching it, you might even like to read some reviews on the subject. As it often happens with challenging works of Art, many contrasting opinions can be found if you care to look. More interesting is the manner of these contrasts -- different people seem to have watched completely different movies…

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SXSW didn't have a festival. But they do have winners.

Shithouse (2020) was the big winner at the phantom SXSW festivalA not so secret secret about film festivals: many juries are watching their category on screeners before the festival due to tight schedules, scads of programming, and the general chaos of actual festivals. So, though SXSW didn't actually happen this year, their juries DID give out prizes. Yes, it feels like new movies are but figments of our imagination but that's always the case to some extent with festivals, isn't it? Like Saint Frances which won big at SXSW a year ago only to finally emerge just in time for the Coronavirus to strike it down in theaters, a couple of weeks ago. So maybe in a year's time we'll see these movies!

Their winners and what the juries said about them....

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