While certainly entertaining in an overtime Super Bowl, “Holy crap” sort of way, this ultimately serves to take away from Moonlight‘s stunning victory. Sadly, it is entirely plausible to think that this whole controversy will be better remembered than the film itself. Taking away how it won though, the victory is nothing short of the largest Oscar upset in memory.

La La Land was set up in every way possible: it is a film about Hollywood, it is a fairly easy watch (which means the Oscar voters are far more likely to open their screener and watch it), and it actually made money. In short, it is popular.

Moonlight is a million dollar budget movie that is a hard watch for some. A coming-of-age journey about a gay black man in Miami would have seemed out of place as recently as last year’s Oscars. Remember #OscarsSoWhite? Moonlight‘s victory marks a David vs. Goliath strike against heavy Oscar favorites, and is a huge step forward for film awards on the whole, as Moonlight is the first Best Picture winner with an all black cast.

Best Picture controversy aside, 2017’s Oscars were fair in terms of the distribution of awards. La La Land did not really deserve a clean sweep in thirteen categories, but it did have great musical numbers, a very Hollywood look, and fantastic direction. So it won in the music categories, cinamatography and production design, and in direction (Emma Stone also took best actress). Moonlight had great performances, was well written in its elegance and simplicity, and was an overall important film. It won its awards accordingly.

Seemingly every major film nominated won in an appropriate category. Fences and Manchester by the Sea were propelled by profound acting, and won Best Supporting Actress and Best Actor respectively. Arrival and Hacksaw Ridge even won some well deserved praise in various technical categories. The major awards on the whole were not too surprising.

Of course everyone has their own picks and predictions that may have been upended by the Academy. I for one would have liked to see some love for Lion and Hell or High Water, two movies that went overlooked by most Academy voters as well as movie watchers on the whole. And as much as I enjoyed Zootopia, I will fight anyone who tries to convince me it was a better movie than the morally deep and visually stunning Kubo and the Two Strings.

The drama and the disappointments are part of what make the Oscars enjoyable. Could you imagine what would have happened if the Best Picture mixup had happened the other way around? No doubt, Twitter would have imploded from all the Hollywood haters coming out to bash La La Land. But you can’t deny it would have been something to see.

Either way, it is another Oscars in the books. Good movies were fairly awarded. Jimmy Kimmel did a serviceable hosting job. No one will ever forget Moonlight winning Best Picture. Hopefully this will draw more viewers to Moonlight and the other nominated films, as the stories they seek to tell are far more important than the media stories surrounding them.

The Movie Dude reviews limited release movies, independent films, and smaller theatrical releases.

The post The Movie Dude: Oscars Recap appeared first on KRUI Radio.

The story revolves around self-help author Michael Stone, who is incredibly lonely, and to whom everyone’s voice sounds the exact same. While never explicitly stated, this clearly an allusion to the Fregoli delusion, which affects its victims with similar symptoms (Kaufman wrote the original play under the name Francis Fregoli, and the hotel that serves as the setting is called The Fregoli). While he is traveling to Cincinnati on business, he meets Lisa, the one person who has a unique voice. The film tracks their relationship, and Stone’s increasingly loose grip on reality.

One of Anomalisa‘s biggest talking points has been its animation style; the film uses stop-motion to capture photos of 3-D printed models. Click here to see an article explaining the process. Stop-motion is a form of animation that largely fell out of style decades ago, but every so often a director resurrects the form for a major motion picture (like Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox). The 3-D printed models make push the medium to a new level of realism that hasn’t really been seen on a large scale before. However, this newfound realism has the film precariously perched on the sharp descent of the uncanny valley. The film is in an uncomfortable no-man’s-land between overtly stylized and creepily realistic.

Luckily, directors Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufman are smart filmmakers, and use this facet of the animation to their advantage. There are numerous visual gags throughout the film that call attention to the artificiality of the models. It also stylistically emphasizes the unreal-ness of Stone’s increasingly powerful delusions.

However, the models also serve some more subtle purposes. In particular, they allow for a visually unique take on sex and bodies. By making the bodies un-real, the film is actually able to have a more frank and honest depiction of real human sexuality. Gone are the “perfect” bodies of Hollywood actors/actresses; instead, they are replaced with more “normal” looking bodies, especially for the characters’ ages. Although it is true in most every scene, the sex scenes in particular highlight just how artificial the bodies are. However, this artificiality is so highly contrasted with their intensely human characters and interactions, that it strongly emphasis just how relatable the characters are.

On the subject of “relate-ability” of the characters, there’s a problem that needs to be addressed. With the #OscarsSoWhite discussion brewing up so much controversy, and possibly even resulting in some changes to the Academy’s system, Anomalisa is a particularly un-diverse film. In the whole of the movie, I counted one single person who was not speaking English. This individual walked past Michael in the hallway for a split second, so the audience only viewed them from behind. With the possible exception of this individual, every single other character I remember in the film was white. There were a few women who were prominent characters in the film, but their importance was tied directly to their (usually sexual) relationship to Michael.

Of course, this is totally understandable in a film that closely follows only one character. Of course other characters in the story will only be important due to their relationship to the protagonist. But do we really need another story about the personal issues of old rich white guys?

Now, perhaps the film is also an in-depth look at mental illness, and thus breaks it away from the typical glut of whiteguyprobs movie. I didn’t really get that vibe, but maybe that’s just me. I’ve also heard some say that it is a sort of commentary on male (and white) privilege, which I can maybe begin to see. But again, if we want a film that discusses the effects of white privilege, do we really need to first and foremost focus on the effects of privilege on the privileged? This is definitely an issue that needs further discussion, but it’s a discussion far too large for a small weekly column to tackle. Nonetheless, it’s something important to consider.

Click here to see if Anomalisa is playing in a theater near you. Check out the trailer for the film below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT6QJaS2a-U

The post Cinema Spotlight: Anomalisa appeared first on KRUI Radio.

For a little while, I felt surprised after reading the (very pale) list of Oscar nominees.

I had watched Straight Outta Compton and heard great things about colored actors in Creed. I read about Idris Elba in Beasts of No Nation, and loved watching Oscar Isaac in Ex Machina. So many actors of color had great performances this year, and none of them received any recognition from the Academy.

Straight Outta Compton was nominated for one award: Best Screenplay. Two white people write the screenplay of a movie about gangster rap and they’re the only ones who are acknowledged for their work. Sylvester Stallone, one of the only white main characters was nominated for his role in Creed despite incredible performances by Michael B. Jordan and Tessa Thompson.

This is not a new problem.

The Academy has an insidious history of only praising movies cast, produced, directed, written, adapted, and performed by white people. Each year they face criticism for their homogeneous population of nominees when numerous actors of color deserved recognition for their performances, and each year we hear the same story.

In 2014, 12 Years a Slave received three Oscars, and seemingly, the Academy feels that is enough.

The 94% white, 76% male group of people seems to have decided that their decisions in 2014 will carry them for a few years until they’ll be obligated to award nonwhite actors, producers, directors, and writers for their work again.

I couldn’t find a picture of the Academy, but here’s a picture of a rally for Donald Trump. I’m sure the images are basically the same.

The whiteness… it’s almost blinding…

Many celebrities of color have spoken out about the pattern of exclusion and reacted differently. Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith both plan to skip attending and watching the event. Chris Rock, the host of the 2016 Oscars, dubbed the night “The White BET Awards.” Idris Elba posed critical questions in an interview, asking viewers to analyze the casting of women, actors of color, LGBT+ people and disabled people.

These responses are all valid and important, and encourage us to consider how we consume media and what we choose to watch, listen to, read, experience. Many people choose to watch movies based on the Academy’s recommendation, but the overwhelmingly white and male board may enjoy different media than a queer woman of color, or a trans man with a disability. If the Academy isn’t willing to acknowledge underrepresented artists in film-making, we cannot rely on the Oscars to provide an exhaustive list of movies worth watching.

So what if we just stopped acknowledging them?

What if we sought out other movies to watch that include all kinds of people?

Various Internet sources have compiled lengthy lists of LGBT+ films, movies by and about women, movies directed by non-western women, films about disabilities, and so many more. A quick Google search will yield innumerable results of little-known movies that address all sorts of issues.

I’ve recently began this habit and I have already watched incredible movies. I’ve seen Mississippi Masala, which tackles anti-black attitudes among South Asian culture and more, Pariah, which portrays a young queer woman of color navigating her sexuality and tradition, and The Black Power Mixtape, which documents the evolution of the Black Power Movement.

Queen, SLC Punk!, Dear White People, and Gulaab Gang portray beautiful stories of non-heteronormative people, too.

Assume an active role in your media consumption. Take every opportunity to decolonize your mind by valuing nonwhite, non-heterosexual, non-western art.

The idea of “decolonizing our minds” comes from writings of the author, feminist and social activist bell hooks. She encourages us to critically examine every thought and action, free ourselves from the coercive ideologies, and overcome the impacts of structural oppression. This bimonthly column will analyze spaces and times where and when we can pause and make strides in this arduous process, and also highlight figures who are helping us to decolonize ourselves.

The post Decolonize Your Mind: #Oscarssowhite appeared first on KRUI Radio.