Review: Confirmation

Kieran, here. Politics, even at their most abstract are ultimately personal. At its best moments, HBO's Confirmation directed by Rick Famuyiwa’s (Dope) and written by Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich) understands this. Anita Hill’s (Kerry Washington) 1991 allegations of sexual harassment against Justice Clarence Thomas (Wendell Pierce) on the eve of his confirmation to the US Supreme court is a subject about which few who can remember are indifferent. Who was lying and about what? What did the Anita Hill’s testimony say about the positions of gender, race and political alignment in this country? These are the kinds of questions that evoke vociferous, often angry opinions and the film doesn’t offer up easy answers.

The truth of whether Clarence Thomas sexually harassed Anita Hill is secondary. Thomas, as rendered by Pierce in what is actually a small role with few spoken lines, is a beleaguered public figure, forced to defend himself and deal with the consequences these allegations had on his personal and professional life. I say this not to imply that Thomas is innocent (I’ve always thought he was guilty). But, as is often the disgusting and sad truth about men who commit these crimes, they’re not always technically lying when they maintain their innocence under oath. In order for it to truly be a lie, these men would have to believe that they did anything wrong in the first place. Whatever mental gymnastics Clarence Thomas had to go through in order to get to this place, his own words and Pierce’s subtle but precise performance clearly illustrate that Thomas does not believe he was guilty of any wrongdoing. When the film is examining the implications of a culture that allows men to make these leaps and how it turns victims into villains, it shines and Pierce is a key component of what makes this element works. He opts not to turn Thomas into a monster for it’s not the “monsters” who violate women and irrevocably damage lives. They are simply people, a much truer and scarier fact to fathom.

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Stage Door: The Color Purple

The Color Purple (1985), Steven Spielberg's hit adaptation of the 1982 bestseller by Alice Walker lives in Oscar infamy as one of its two greatest losers with 11 nominations that produced zero wins. Here's a lesser known piece of trivia: The Color Purple, the stage musical adaptation of the same novel, narrowly avoided repeating that exact same trick at the Tony Awards in 2006. It was nominated for  11 Tony Awards but LaChanze won the Best Actress prize that eluded Whoopi Goldberg in the 80s for interpreting the mousy but resilient Celie.

Despite the original production closing only 8 years ago, The Color Purple is back on Broadway in a revival that's been winning raves; it's aiming for a bigger trophy haul this time. [More...]

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15 Tweets: Wes, Thor, Shearer, Dietrich, Bond Girls

It's that time again. An incredibly random collection of the week's best showbiz themed tweets. Or at least the best ones that we happened to see on our timeline at incredibly random times of the day. Herewith a dozen byte-sized amusements curated just for the TFE crowd for those with similarly truncated attention spans that made us laugh or think or nod this week. 

Please note that we already shared the Julianne-centric tweet from our friend Ali Arikan that wins the week all weeks which is why you don't see it here.

Anyway, proceed...  

If I had only one picture to explain what "glamour" means, this might be it: pic.twitter.com/oDPWkEF4uO

— The Nitrate Diva (@NitrateDiva) March 11, 2015

 more enjoyables follow. You know you wanna see them all. It's just a little click and you have the time.

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Musical Oscars: JHud, Kendrick, Jack Black & More to Perform

Anna Kendrick singing her ass off all month on screen and stageManuel here bringing more news about the Oscar telecast. While some continue to ponder whether we’ll really be asked to be Team BOYhood or Team birdMAN (and how’s that for a an apt metaphor for contemporary Hollywood!), we’ll be focusing more on what Craig Zadan and Neil Meron have in store for us during the sure-to-be-endless ceremony that shortchanges winning speeches for needless montages and musical performances.

Speaking of these, it looks like we’re getting a full Best Original Song performance roster, with Adam Levine ("Lost Stars"), Tegan and Sara with The Lonely Island ("Everything is Awesome!!!"), Common & John Legend ("Glory"), Tim McGraw ("I'm Not Gonna Miss You") and Rita Ora ("Grateful") slated to sing their respective numbers on the big night.

"We're creating several musical sequences for the Oscars and we couldn't be happier that our friend, Jennifer Hudson, will be performing in one of them," say Zadan and Meron.

On top of this, last week came word that Jack Black would be performing, that Anna Kendrick would be part of a "special performance" and just this past weekend, Meron and Zadan confirmed that Jennifer Hudson would also be performing (my guess is she might be doing the In Memoriam number? That is, unless they’ve designed another “tribute to musicals” like they did in 2013, remember that?)

That already looks like quite a stacked schedule, especially once you add NPH’s number, so maybe we’ll be spared the montages that celebrate “Oscar’s history” or some oddly specific genre rather than the year in film and the actual nominated films?

The Best Picture lineup may look quite oppressively manly, but with all these musical numbers (and NPH on hand), it’ll be quite the glittery gay spectacle, no? Fingers crossed! My only hope is that Hudson wears something as cray-tastic as that cape from her Dreamgirls red carpet.

Who you gonna call? Linkbusters

Vanity Fair Melissa McCarthy and other funny ladies in talks for Ghostbusters reboot. I'm rooting for Jillian Bell myself who is mentioned. Yay.
Buzzfeed a definitive ranking of Disney Prince butts - as great as it sounds though I'd place Prince Phillip higher because my imagination works (I love that former Prince BD Wong even replied to his ranking on Twitter)
Vulture let us all worship Charlize Theron who has demanded (and been given) equal pay to her male co-star for The Huntsman. It's not like people went to the first movie for Hemsworth...Insane. Sexism by the numbers.
The Film Grapevine Birdman and the unexpected virtue of Contrivance
A Socialite Life Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone photobomb someone actually trying to take a photo of them

Slate on why Wes Anderson movies have never been popular with the Academy Awards before (presumably) now. Fairly good reasoning
MNPP Wet Hot American Summer will become a Netflix series and the original cast is all returning
RogerEbert.com on the women in Selma: the unsung heroines of the movement
THR Samuel Goldwyn Jr dies 
Theater Mania The Color Purple is coming back to Broadway (already?) with Jennifer Hudson as Shug 

Good Long Reads
IndieWire great piece on the definitions of patriotism and exceedingly pro-gun messaging of American Sniper. Please do not let this film be nominated for Best Picture. It's just not what we need right now...especially given how many people have been killed by guns lately in the States...and still no gun reform.
Grantland Wesley Morris on Selma. Love this sprawling, provocative review / thinkpiece. I've been totally appalled and confused myself at the way the media has latched on to the Lyndon B Johnson depiction but Morris makes a great point here that helps clarify, for me, the anger and nitpicking:

A quick survey of film history suggests that the depiction of racial themes in America has always been the province of white directors, whether it’s something as spectacularly diabolical as D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation or the antebellum revenge of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. These great-man movies tend to reflect the aspirations and identities of the people who make them, which is how so many stories ostensibly about black life wind up with white interpolators. DuVernay understands the fraught, imbalanced legacy a film like this pulls her into, and she’s been as fair as she needs to be. This is not a film that undermines or questions Johnson’s ultimate contributions to the improvement of black life in this country. (It very easily could have mentioned the two decades in Congress he spent opposing civil rights legislation.) Inasmuch as there are villains, they are Wallace, Hoover, and Selma’s sheriff, Jim Clark. But because this isn’t Johnson’s story, those accustomed to seeing the president as hero (or protagonist) ultimately seem dismayed by how little of the president there is here.

The bold is mine, not Morris's. People who are angry about Lyndon B Johnson's depiction really ought to look beyond the myth and think about reality. And once they do, rather than be disappointed, they should be as generous as DuVernay is who depicts him as an imperfect man who makes a great progressive decision which changes history.