This solo work, written and performed by Dael Orlandersmith, provides an unrelenting encounter with the pains of abuse and the (surprisingly) redemptive power of rock n roll, especially the punk variety. This power is surprising because Orlandersmith is an African-American women raised in Harlem where Jim Morrison and Patti Smith are white kids without the street cred of the neighborhood's soul brethren. The narrative, however, revolves primarily around her relationship with her mother whose years of physically and verbally taunting her daughter culminate in her self-centered response to Dael's rape.
Recommend with caveats (because of graphic depictions of abuse and rape)
Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Monday, January 5, 2015
The Imitation Game (Morten Tyldum)
Our first film to see in 2015, The Imitation Game, was Morton Tyldum's highly fictionalized account of Alan Turing's contributions to deciphering Nazi code machine, Enigma. Perhaps we were in the mood to view a somewhat sentimentalized account of misunderstood genius and were swept along with tripartite narrative, enough so that we didn't mind (too much) the obvious (even to us, the somewhat uninformed) historical inaccuracies (such as using correction fluid to change a typewritten document in 1951) or (even worse) Keira Knightley's presence in the film. For useful accounts of the historical inaccuracies, see http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/dec/19/poor-imitation-alan-turing/ and www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/20/the-imitation-game-invents-new-slander-to-insult-alan-turing-reel-history.
Recommend with caveats.
Recommend with caveats.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
