art
Artistic, musical, creative, and entertaining topics of art about all things geek.
Lois Weber: the trailblazing director who shocked the world
A nude scene! Abortion; birth control; prostitution! In the silent-movie era, Lois Weber’s films were shockingly ahead of their time – and also immensely popular. She wrote, directed, produced and sometimes starred in her films, and in 1916 was the highest paid studio director in the US, man or woman. She pioneered techniques including split screen and double exposure, for a time ran her own studio, and along with Alice Guy-Blaché was one of the two women who contributed the most to cinema at its start. But she died alone, broke and nearly forgotten in 1939. What happened?
By Cindy Dory3 years ago in Geeks
Hollywood’s new kind of love story
A quiet revolution took place in cinemas earlier this year with the release of Captain Marvel. As the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise’s first female-fronted superhero movie, it wasn’t just what the film had that made it different, but also what it was lacking – a traditional romantic storyline.
By Sue Torres3 years ago in Geeks
Film review: Us
he underclass is coming to destroy us, and we will deserve it. That is the simple, overarching message of Jordan Peele’s witty meta-horror film, Us. The ‘us’ he aligns viewers with is a middle-class American family of four, the Wilsons, and ‘they’ are their doppelgangers. The disenfranchised doubles have been living somewhere mysterious, cut off from the comforts of society. This other mother, father and two children appear one night in the Wilsons’ driveway wearing blood-red jumpsuits and wielding large golden scissors, the better to slice up their counterparts. Class warfare has rarely broken out with such frightening panache.
By Alessandro Algardi3 years ago in Geeks
Film review: Dumbo
Some of us are counting the days until Disney stops churning out live-action / CGI remakes of its cartoons – Aladdin and The Lion King are next – but the live-action Dumbo promised to be something special. For one thing, the original 1941 cartoon was only an hour long, so there was plenty of scope for it to be expanded and developed. For another thing, the person in charge of expanding and developing it was Tim Burton, who loves classic animation almost as much as he loves magical tales of persecuted outsiders. With its retro circus setting and with a roll call of fine actors including Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito and Eva Green, Dumbo might well have been one of Disney’s best films – and one of Burton’s best films as well.
By Mao Jiao Li3 years ago in Geeks
Film review: Long Shot
Romantic comedies have an endless array of clichés to choose from. There are the mismatched lovers who are unaccountably perfect for each other, their respective wise-cracking best friends, the inevitable breakup and then the last-minute mad dash through the rain by one of them to win the other back. With Seth Rogen as a shambling, muckraking journalist and Charlize Theron as the glamorous US Secretary of State, Long Shot embraces every one of those tropes except for the downpour. Yet it is so cheerful and charming that it works as gleefully unambitious escapism.
By Many A-Sun3 years ago in Geeks
Film review: Pokémon Detective Pikachu
Pokémon may be one of the biggest multi-media franchises ever, having featured in video games, card games, comics and cartoons by the lorryload since 1996. But if you haven’t consumed any of those, the whole enterprise is pretty much unfathomable. After all, you don’t have to have read a Batman comic to follow the concept of a masked-man beating up bank robbers. Pokémon, on the other hand... well, it’s set in an alternate reality in which people go around stalking big-eyed, super-powered monsters, trapping them inside metal orbs like high-tech genies and then releasing these monsters so that they can have gladiatorial battles with each other. It isn’t clear what the monsters get out of this violent slavery, and the first live-action Pokémon film, Pokémon Detective Pikachu, doesn’t make things much clearer. If anything, viewers who aren’t already familiar with the franchise will stumble out of the cinema even more puzzled than when they went in.
By Alessandro Algardi3 years ago in Geeks
Film review: Booksmart
Booksmart is actress Olivia Wilde’s first film as director, and it’s no surprise that she gets vibrant performances from her cast. Plenty of actors-turned-film-makers do that. Unlike most of them, she does a lot more, breathing hilarious new life into two tired genres. A female buddy film in the guise of a high-school partying movie, Booksmart is endlessly funny and outrageous, yet always grounded by its realistic central relationship.
By Mao Jiao Li3 years ago in Geeks
Film review: Toy Story 4
There are those of us (myself included) who would argue that the first three Toy Story episodes stand as the finest trilogy in Hollywood history, and for us Toy Story 4 was a nerve-wracking prospect. Nine years ago, Toy Story 3 seemed to be the perfect farewell to a perfect series, so another instalment was about as welcome as a moustache and sunglasses painted on the Mona Lisa. We needn’t have worried. It’s clear within minutes that the new cartoon, directed by Josh Cooley, will be as gorgeously animated and as generously sprinkled with jokes as Pixar’s best work, and any lingering misgivings melt away in the warm glow of seeing Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and the rest of the loveable, misfit gang back together.
By Many A-Sun3 years ago in Geeks
Film review: Yesterday
Richard Curtis writes romantic comedies – Four Weddings and a Funeral and Love Actually are the best – so enticing that we wish they were real. His films are believable enough emotionally to be both joyful and heartbreaking, while their characters and situations are more colourful and exciting than everyday life. And they flow with the effortless charm of, say, early Hugh Grant.
By Alessandro Algardi3 years ago in Geeks
Film review: The Lion King
With its mythic story of life and death, not to mention a cast of lions and hyenas, The Lion King was an unlikely candidate for a photo-realistic treatment. But the new film leaps into naturalism, with dazzling authenticity as computer-generated herds of zebras, elephants and antelope stride across the screen against a wide African vista, toward Pride Rock, where King Mufasa stands waiting to hold up his cub, Simba. With The Circle of Life soaring in the background, this majestic scene draws us into the film’s enthralling world before a word is spoken. It may all be CGI, but The Lion King feels more life-like than Disney’s many recent live-action remakes of its animated classics.
By Mao Jiao Li3 years ago in Geeks
