Richard Armitage tangentially related, mammoth edition, part 2
So, here’s the rest. Wow. Finally I feel like I know what’s going on again. Obviously for some some of this will be ICYMI.
Brain on Fire (out on Netflix a few days ago):
- How they recreated the New York Post newsroom.
- Newer reviews: it was hard to tell what the film wanted to accomplish; “portraying a distraught father” isn’t Armitage’s forte although the reviewer liked him in The Hobbit (I confess it’s hard for me to take seriously any review that praises Moretz’s performance in this film, though, as her mimickry of mental illness verges on disrespectful to schizophrenics); thinks the best performance was Carrie-Anne Moss’; ok, here’s one that suggests Armitage is playing Tom Cahalan as calmly passive (DID YOU SEE THE FILM? WHICH HE SPENDS A THIRD OF SHOUTING?).
- Armitage and Moss improve the film when the script allows them. Similar to this German review which says of them that they don’t get enough material of substance.
Ocean’s 8:
- The Sun calls Armitage “hugely exposed” (and sorry, Mr. Armitage — this is one major reason why you never, ever admit publicly that you weren’t someone’s first choice).
- Arkansas Times calls Claude Becker “weaselly.”
- Mature Times says a good lawyer would have gotten Claude off. This is a weird review; it objects to films about stealing from arts organizations. OK?
- This review hits a lot of what I thought the film was about from a woman’s standpoint, i.e., leaving the whole “is it feminist” or “can we do a genderswap” problems out of it.
- One paragraph compares O8 to Solo (which is a really weird comparison, IMO — one reason that Solo’s reviews were so horrible was because the fans were not on board).
- Much of the Indian / Pakistani press has been mildly negative on the film, but here‘s an exception.
- Speaking of South Asia, in advance of the premieres 08 was often compared to a Bollywood film, Veere di Wedding. This reviewer prefers 08.
- And at least one Indian reviewer is frustrated that Kaling was forced to speak Hindi.
- Warner Bros. studio tour includes the film’s costumes (for a limited time).
- Die Zeit really likes it (and I admit to a certain amount of surprise over that, but perhaps I shouldn’t; most of my German friends have really loved heist films). Most of the German reviews I’ve seen, however, rate the film as average / middling.
- Here’s a weird review in which the reviewer claims the female cast failed to gel. Huh.
- Third weekend box office: As expected, Jurassic World came in first, with Incredibles coming in second (but falling drastically over against the first week). Ocean’s 8 will hold at 3rd and top $100M domestically. Some discussion about whether it was hurt by last week’s release of Tag (another film that is completely unappealing to me). In India, O8 opened directly against Incredibles and was expected to do about 2/3 of its business (in a week when no new Hindi film was opening).
- MoviePass (a controversial new subscription in the US that initially offered a movie a day for its low monthly price) is running out of cash reserves and has changed its terms, inter alia to prohibit multiple viewings of the same film. I’ve seen a few articles now that suggest that this is only okay if you don’t see movies twice, and cited 08 as an example of one you might want to see again. Here’s one.
- I have no idea who Josh Duhamel is, but the Mail reports he saw 08 with his current love.
- Nice point in this review that critics who feel genderswaps miss the subtleties of women’s lives are ignoring the fact that often the originals were unrealistic as well.
- The film and Sandra Bullock get nominations in the Teen Choice Awards. Guess it wasn’t just a film for the upwardly mobile middle agers? (I may be sensitive as I recently read a comment in my FB TL that “older people” like Melania Trump shouldn’t wear clothing with words on it.)
- Analysis of the 08 marketing campaign argues it was all wrong.
- Armitage plays “the only male character with any real presence.“
- Zurich website describes Armitage as “negligible, speaking kindly” in a paragraph about the film’s men as afterthoughts.
- Here: “Its [!] good to know that Thorin Oakenshield is not a dwarf in real life and is quite handsome.”
Castlevania 2:
- Forbes calls the choice of Armitage “inspired”.
The Bloody Chamber:
- Nice comment on a blog.
Collateral attractions:
- Tom Holland (Pilgrimage) reveals the title of the next Spiderman film.
- I keep meaning to mention that Bryan Fuller has left the staff of Anne Rice’s vampire project.
Fan art:
- I thought this was supercute.
Industry issues:
- (via She-RA): Audiobooks more emotionally engaging than film. (You couldn’t prove it by me. Now, if their research had shown that regular books are more engaging than film I’d have nodded emphatically right away.)
Me + Richard Armitage 
ugh. I watched Brain on Fire this weekend, and saw Ocean’s 8 last weekend. Were they the best films I ever saw? No, but they weren’t the worst either. Are critics just looking for things to criticize? (I know, that sounds redundant). Can’t we just appreciate a film as entertainment without looking for anything more? (I’m particularly hacked off by the whole “are Bullock’s and Blanchett’s characters meant to be gay?” Who cares?) Sorry to rant, Serv! Hope all is well with you and your dad
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I do think there is a role for thinking critically or pedagogically about things that are “just entertainment.” However, I think part of the current problem is that there used to be this field or genre of writing, “film criticism.” It was relatively disciplined and it had rules. The internet has had the effect democratizing reviews, but also introducing a lot of people as both authors and readers of film criticism who either don’t do it very well or don’t know what it is they are reading. Too many professional critics have gone over just to listing factors why one should see or not see a film, but not thinking about what the purpose of criticism is, which is to tell us what is interesting and successful about the film (and what is not, for the sake of improvement). Another prime task of criticism is to tell the reader who should see the film. In the age of these blockbusters there seems to be an audience demand that every film meet the needs of every audience member, and that is just not possible.
IMO, Brain on Fire was pretty not good. Ocean’s 8 was excellent for what it was, which was light entertainment. That said, Ocean’s 8 profited from the whole current wave of discussion about women’s situation in Hollywood, so it’s not surprising that it would get a lot of snarky reviews on that level.
re: who cares about whether the characters are gay? I think if you’re a member of a minority that isn’t often seen on mainstream screens in positive ways, you might be eager to see that theme discussed openly rather than in a hidden way. Does it matter to me if they were lovers? Not really, but I don’t see myself (speaking as a straight white middle class female) underrepresented in those senses in the films I see.
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Stimme dir absolut zu, ganz besonders in Bezug auf den letzten Abschnitt. Es ist leicht zu sagen, dass das doch alles völlig unerheblich ist, wenn man zu denen gehört, die in den Medien ganz selbstverständlich (auch) positiv repräsentiert werden. Heterosexuelle Gefühlsanwandlungen werden gezeigt, ob sie für den Handlungsverlauf von Bedeutung sind oder nicht. Alle anderen Liebesvarianten werden allerhöchstens angedeutet, weil sie (für die Handlung) angeblich unerheblich sind oder sie enden tragisch. Ich finde es nicht schwer, die Frustration über die fehlende Repräsentation zu verstehen und wundere/ärgere mich über die Haltung der Medienschaffenden in der “freien Welt”.
Hoffentlich geht es mit deinem Vater weiterhin aufwärts.
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Stimme Dir voll zu.
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Good points on the use of criticism. I totally agree.
And my point about gay characters in the movie isn’t so much about them being gay, it was more about critics (and others) searching for meaning or themes in film when the creators didn’t intend that meaning to be in there. If Ocean’s 8 wanted to present a gay relationship, that would be awesome. As you say, it would have represented a minority in a positive way and would in no way have impacted my enjoyment of the film. If that were the intent of the filmmakers then i wish they would have been more overt about it instead of leaving viewers to speculate.
I’m sounding very cranky this weekend. I think it’s because I did some research yesterday on the 2018 and 2020 elections here in the US and I just got depressed. Maybe RA will do a new photo shoot or something and cheer us all up!
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At the risk of alienating you: so imagine if for however long, a century, your entire life, you’d always had to either accept that mainstream media were not portraying “your kind” of relationship, or else use that media in your own way in order to get what you needed from it. This is akin to girls who identify with male heroes of children’s books (which is really common) or even something like Bagginshield. It’s pretty clear, I think, that canonical Tolkien would have no room for queer Thorin / Bilbo, and also that the film showed nothing of that. In Tolkin’s own age, men had very close friendships that were not romantic in the way that a gay relationship might be today. But still I read many people saying at the time with regard to the scene with the acorn that the filmmakers and actors had thought very much about Bagginshield and were hinting in that direction. In other words: if you never see those things on the screen and the potential is there, you may read it that way because it’s a way to make the film your own.
To me, Ocean’s 8 is more ambiguous than The Hobbit. There’s a statement when Debbie and Tammy are talking about why they are setting up Claude that suggests a deeper relationship (“Lou and I were going through a rough patch’), whether romantic or not, and this is reinforced in the scene where Lou and Debbie are righting about whether to try to take Claude down. I personally did not notic those things on first view, or on second view take those moments as indicative of lesbian themes (I have issues with equating every kind of very close relationship with a sexual or a romantic one), and Bullock and Blanchett are on record as saying no, that was not intended. But i am a straight white woman. I can totally see why someone else might think that such a relationship was being implied — not least because that is exactly how such relationships have been portrayed on film for decades and decades: as implications and innuendos.
I agree it would have been great / fine with me for any such relationship to be out in the open. The likelihood that that would happen with a broad appeal film like this approached zero, though — again reproducing this situation where people who want to see those films in their media read them into mainstream media because they don’t have any other options.
I agree the 2018 and 2020 prospects are depressing / devastating.
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Ich glaube auch, dass weder Tolkien selbst, noch die Filme Bagginshield nahelegen. Selber bin ich nie auch nur ansatzweise auf die Idee gekommen und habe erst durch Fanvideos und Fanfiction davon erfahren. (Bei “Sherlock” bin ich auch nie auf die Idee gekommen, finde sie aber im Nachhinein sehr plausibel.)
Aber wie du sagst, wenn es Möglichkeiten gäbe, sich selbst variantenreich genug in Filmen wiederzuerkennen, dann müssten Menschen, die nicht “weiß und heterosexuell” sind, sich nicht auf jeden noch so kleinen Hinweis stürzen.
Dass es geht, hat Star Trek “Beyond” gezeigt, wo der Steuermann
Lt. Sulu ganz selbstverständlich und ohne weitere Erklärung von Mann und Tochter abgeholt wird, als die Crew auf Urlaub geht und mit seinem Mann auch eine Party für Capt. Kirk besucht. Dass die Fans gerne Spock und Capt. Kirk zusammen sähen, steht auf einem anderen Blatt… 😉
Bis die männlichen Hauptcharaktere in einem solchen Blockbuster romantisch verwickelt sein können/dürfen, muss ich wohl noch viel älter werden.
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It’s inconceivable to me that the Sherlock authors weren’t signaling in that direction. If in fact they weren’t, then they were queerbaiting, which is really reprehensible. But I am not a huge fan of the show or either of its leads, so my perspective is a different one.
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I watched Brain on Fire and I thought it was good. I also thought chloe did a good performance. Mr. Richard Armitage and Ms. moss were great. I haven’t seen ocean’s 8 yet because the theater in my town was destroyed by a hurricane so I have to wait for Netflix or on demand, but I did see the previews and read the comments about it and it seems like it is going to be a very good movie.
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I’m glad you enjoyed Brain on Fire — and wow, the theater was destroyed. That’s depressing in all kinds of ways.
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No alienation at all! Like I said, I’m just cranky.
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I take Jamie East’s review in The Sun (dreadful rag) with a pinch of salt. He follows Dana Whatshername on Twitter, got involved in the nastiness on the thread and was very uncomplimentary when RA tweeted his reply. His remarks in the review just seemed personal and bitchy to me.
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Yes, he really puts the knife into RA in his podcast, at about 12.40. Not handsome enough? https://www.acast.com/talkfilm/theoceans8castchatridiculousnonsenseplusreviewsofo8-inthefadeandfreakshow
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Exactly. Utter nonsense! 😉
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I think he smelled blood in the water and judging by fans responses, thought he’d get in on it and suck up a little attention.
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