Doc Corner: Ava DuVernay's '13th' is Essential

by Glenn Dunks

Sometimes to be a film-lover is to question why we indulge in certain films. It’s a question we have no doubt all asked ourselves at one point or another after a particularly gruelling film. It would have been so much easier to just let it slip passed us and be content within our bubble. It would be easy to see 13th, for instance, the new documentary from Selma and Middle of Nowhere director Ava DuVernay, on our Netflix screens and think that it is not for us – that because we already see the world through a lens of equality without racism that it is not necessary viewing, that it is just preaching to the converted. Why spend 100 minutes feeling as if the weight of misery is bearing down on us?

But 13th is an essential viewing for everybody. It is essential for you and for myself. Essential for Americans and those outside its borders. Essential most of all for white people and black people and everybody else. That its subject and themes still bear immediate relevance make it so. But DuVernay’s best achievement with the thorough and the soulfully searching 13th isn’t that it is just a wake-up call for race relations in America right at this very moment, but that her film will no doubt prove to be invaluable in the understanding of America’s history of racism for years to come.

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A Conversation About "Westworld" - Part 2

A conversation between Lynn Lee and Kieran Scarlett. At the end of Part 1 of the discussion, Lynn left us to wonder just how long "Westworld" can keep this story going. We pick up where we left off.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

Kieran:  That’s an excellent point about Marsden and Wood’s performances that I hadn’t considered. I did think Wood was much more compelling in the second episode than she was in the pilot. I found myself adjusting to the tonal rhythms of her performance, which are quite specific. I appreciate that there isn’t a rigid uniformity to how the actors portray AIs. Each has their own texture and we’re not just watching actors play mindless automatons, which would have been so boring. That we get insight into their creators and programmers based on how each AI behaves is also an intriguing facet to the performances that I suspect will be explored more fully as the series progresses.

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Six notes on the first season of "Luke Cage"

Y'all remember that I wasn't too excited about Netflix's new Marvel show Luke Cage. As previously noted, I had the same trouble getting into it that I have always had getting into Superman movies -- invulnerability is antithetical to conflict and therefore dull in action franchises. But, that obstacle aside, I gradually finished the season -- the arrival of Claire Temple helped. Rosario Dawson was wonderful as always... and with Sonia Braga in tow this time, though the show didn't give the latter much to do. The increasingly complicated and cross-purpose agendas of the characters and plot helped, too. Well, that and the the fact that the show sparked interesting online discourse. That's always a plus.

After the jump five favorite things about Season 1 (spoilers obviously) and a response to the articles on "racial empathy gaps"...

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Power Link and Iron Fist

Vanity Fair interviews reclusive legend Warren Beatty. He talks Annette, his trans son Stephen and
i09 Forest Whitaker is joining the ever-expanding cast of Marvel's Black Panther movie
Vulture Daniel Craig, newly platinum blonde, is warming up to returning to the 007 gig. Money money money. Money money money. ♫ Money money money. If you happen to be rich - .......Ooooh -- and you feel like a Night's entertainment, you can pay for a gay escapade.

 

Antagony & Ecstacy catches up with The Neon Demon and loves it more than he knows he should
MNPP it looks like Nicolas Hoult will be playing Nikola Tesla in the costume drama Current War about the fight over monetizing electricity co-starring those actors of endless ubiquity: Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Shannon.
The Playlist Guy Ritchie will direct Disney's live action Aladdin. Weird.
/Film Boyd Holbrook will play the cyborg villain Donald Pierce in the third Wolverine movie, now titled Logan
AV Club Ron Perlman has finally given up his dream of Hellboy 3 

Power Man and Iron Fist
I don't know how many people who are into Marvel's modern universe of TV and movies knows this but Luke Cage was always paired with Iron Fist in the comicbooks. That's hard to imagine now because Luke Cage has been portrayed as such a loner in both Jessica Jones and on his own show.

I know this because I was kind of addicted to that duo as a kid. When I heard they were adapting it for television I wanted Marvel to quit whitewashing the Iron Fist character. Yes Danny was always white but since he grew up in Tibet and is a master of martial arts it would make sense that he were Asian. What's more the common narrative of the white man being better than all the Asians at the super powerful stuff they picked up over in Asia (see also Dr Strange's sorcery) is inherently a racist trope. We were not alone in this thinking. Apparently the handsome actor Lewis Tan, who will play one of the villains in the show, actually wanted to play Iron Fist but Marvel was adamant that he be white (sigh). So we get Finn Jones in the lead role who is most famous for playing Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers in Game of Thrones.

In happier casting news, after Iron Fist premieres we'll eventually get the team up series The Defenders (which will feature Sigourney Weaver as their big bad (yes!))  Here's the new Comic Con teaser for Iron Fist in case you missed it.

Issa Rae: A Star is Born

by Kieran Scarlett

It’s an incredibly exciting thing to watch the emergence of new on-screen talent whose charisma and star quality cannot be denied.  It’s difficult to describe clearly, but it’s clear to a watchful viewer when it happens.  Such is the case with Issa Rae, star and co-creator of the new HBO comedy “Insecure” set to debut next month (the pilot episode is already available online via HBO Now). The series, which is co-created by Larry Wilmore (formerly of “The Daily Show”) announces Rae as a force to be reckoned with, both in front of and behind the camera.

The show is, in some ways, an extension of Rae’s 2011 web series “The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl”...

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