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Urban Myths returns to Sky Arts this April, and it’ll be shining a light on yet more unlikely and unusual tall tales from the past – including everyone from Princess Margaret and Diana to Donald Trump. Continue reading Princess Diana, Princess Margaret and President Trump played in Urban Myths Season 3
Lee’s vibrant docudrama BlacKkKlansman, which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes film festival earlier this year, is one of the director’s stronger films and—perhaps not coincidentally—one of his most focused. The narrative sticks to a just a couple of plotlines (a police investigation, a romance), and Lee manages to unify his various thematic concerns (subterfuge and sabotage, representations of blackness and whiteness in media, the political victory of Donald Trump), something he’s rarely done since Do the Right Thing (1989).
Like that earlier film, BlacKkKlansman is organized around feelings of anger. The dialogue abounds with bigoted sentiments, both heroes and villains are defined by what they hate, and the story crescendoes with an act of violence. And then there’s Lee’s rage at America’s political situation following Trump’s election, which influences the film’s conversations on race relations and prejudice. Even though the action takes place in the early 1970s, the director makes it clear that his characters are talking about the present when these sensitive subjects come up; he also concludes the film with news footage of white supremacists marching on Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, and violently attacking counterdemonstrators. Yet BlacKkKlansman never feels overwhelmed by its anger—it’s exciting, astute, and even funny at times. Continue reading Spike Lee On The Buzz Surrounding ‘BlacKkKlansman’
Zimbabwe granted Oliver Mtukudzi national hero status, granting him a status following his death that has been a preserve for ruling party elites and independence veterans. Continue reading ZIMBABWE MUSIC LEGEND Oliver Mtukudzi laid to rest in his home village of Madziva Sunday
ale as Dick Cheney, left, and Sam Rockwell as George W Bush in Vice. Photograph: Matt Kennedy/AP
While the critical consensus has been building around A Star Is Born, Roma and The Favourite, the Golden Globes nomination list has launched a surprise new frontrunner. Leading the field with six nods, including actor and director, is Adam McKay’s enjoyable, if flashily self-aware political comedy Vice, with its glowering portrayal of former vice-president, big oil nabob and war-on-terror enthusiast Dick Cheney, who the film shows effectively leading America throughout the presidency of George W Bush.
Christian Bale has put on considerable amounts of weight and latex for the role and the result is undoubtedly entertaining, although I wonder if the surge of enthusiasm for this movie represents a guilty rush of liberal nostalgia for the good old days when the Republican bad guys, however horrible, were smart and rational people who had the good taste to keep a relatively low profile, and you kind of knew where you stood with them. The movie actually finishes with a post-credits sting which makes the director’s attitude to the new Trumpian zeitgeist and its standard of political debate pretty clear. Amy Adams is also up for best supporting actress for her performance as Cheney’s formidable wife Lynne, and Sam Rockwell for his amiable, undemanding and more subtly latexed turn as Dubya himself. Continue reading Golden Globes 2019: it’s Dick Cheney v Lady Gaga in a surreal title fight; Peter Bradshaw
American Girl Promotes Mealtime Togetherness as a Healthy Alternative to Today’s Digital Distractions — Continue reading AMERICAN GIRL’S 2019 “GIRL OF THE YEAR” HAS A SCREEN-TIME PROBLEM