Diversity and Representation in Media

Calling it now, the Oscar's going to Hidden Figures, Fences or Moonlight.

Probably the first one.

Also no nod for Adams ? Boo.

Shame about Arrival. My money's on La La Land, though. It's off-beat enough to garner attention, but it's still the story of two white people falling in love and we all know how much the Academy loves movies about themselves and La La Land is basically one big love letter to Los Angeles to the point that it could be a Red Hot Chili Peppers song.

Actually with such an easy pick, them going with something else would really be pretty significant, in my opinion. So here's hoping.

Not seeing Hidden Figures getting it, though. From what I've heard is that as a film it's definitely good, but not really exceptional in terms of storytelling other than the fact the source material is so fascinating. Fences and Moonlight, however, I've heard nothing but hilarious amounts of praise for.

... that said, I bet there's going to be a lot of "Hidden Fences" jokes.

edited 24th Jan '17 10:49:00 AM by Larkmarn

I'm so mad that Amy Adams and Janelle Monae got snubbed. If I have to take someone out, I'd take Meryl Streep and replace with either actress.

Not seeing Hidden Figures getting it, though. From what I've heard is that as a film it's definitely good, but not really exceptional in terms of storytelling other than the fact the source material is so fascinating.

That's why it'll win. Progressive enough to punch the 'Not a bigot' card the Academy's eyeing, not so much that it'll actually ruffle feathers.

Shame, I think Moonlight is way more deserving when it comes to technical merit. La La Land definitely is masturbatory enough as award bait.

edited 24th Jan '17 1:16:07 PM by AlleyOop

It's rare (albeit not unheard of) for a movie to win best picture without at least having a nomination for Best Director. It's also common for the Best Picture winner to have a Best Film Editing nomination. Hidden Figures has neither, so it has very little chance. I'd bet on La La Land getting Best Picture, given how much the Academy seems to love it (it's tied the all-time record for most nominations), and especially given that it has Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Film Editing, and Best Directing nominees.

I'm pleased with how well Arrival has done - it's got Best Director and Best Film Editing nominations as well as various ones for cinematography etc., although it deserved one for Best Actress and didn't get one (ditto for Taraji Henson in Hidden Figures).

The Oscars are a lot less white this year than the last couple years - four of the ten Best Picture nominees have leads of colour, there are three women of colour in the Supporting Actress category, and two men of colour in the Supporting Actor category (though only one person of colour each in the Lead Actor and Lead Actress categories).

edited 24th Jan '17 5:25:39 PM by Galadriel

La La Land seems definitely overrated to me, and Ryan Gosling's character is literally a white savior to jazz music.

*English major pedantry to define "literally" arises*

Context to the "La La Land" controversy.

I recall critic Todd in the Shadows arguing that it's not so bad in that in the end Sebastian's victory in opening his own classic jazz club is very small and out of the way, while Keith and his electronic jazz is never really villified; it's just treated as something Sebastian isn't happy doing. But it still does give the near-broke white guy in an empty apartment way more say about jazz's purpose over the professional black musicians.

edited 24th Jan '17 6:10:26 PM by Tuckerscreator

I honestly never bought the argument. His story is about opening a club. The whole "white man saving jazz" thing is all based on basically one line of dialogue in a scene where he's trying to get Emma Stone's character to understand why he loves jazz. Also, you ever gone to a college jazz department? There are shitloads of white people in there.

I can't help but be reminded of a video by an alt-right moron rambling on and on about Zootopia, who spent an inordinate amount of time on a scene where Judy encourages a disguised Finnick as illustrating something about entitlement or whatever, even though that scene was an incredibly minor point in the movie and didn't even mean what he thought it meant.

I haven't watched Zootopia in its entirety, but I will say that the movie is a pretty obvious critique of/allegory for modern real-life racism.

Oh, yes. I'm just saying that this alt-right moron was incredibly fixated on a very small scene that didn't mean what he thought it meant (the scene in question is actually about how Judy, despite being well-meaning, is incredibly patronizing).

Ah, gotcha.

I'm actually quite happy Ruth Negga was nominated for Best Actress. I haven't seen Loving yet (I really need to fix that), but she had a recurring role on Agents of SHIELD. She was one of the most memorable parts of the first couple of seasons, at that.

Oddly enough I first discovered who Ruth Negga was through Dark Souls 2. She's the Emerald Herald.

I will have to check out Loving when I can.

Ruth Negga was in Dark Souls? Huh, that's kind of awesome for some reason.

I think I first saw her in Agents of Shield, but I think Preacher is probably the main thing I know her from. I'm looking forward to seeing Loving when I can - I saw the documentary, and the topic is of interest to me.

She was also in the Warcraft film. Cool to see more Hollywood folks doing low-key work in games, like Rosario Dawson and Sam Rockwell in Dishonored 2.

Can I just pop in and say that Ruth Negga is so awesome she went from Warcraft and hamming it up in Ao S to an Oscar nominee in the same year?

La La whatever it's called for the Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actress awards, because as stated earlier it's about pretty white people in Hollywood and AMPAS voters like that stuff. Full disclosure - I haven't seen it, have no interest in seeing it, and only would see it in cinema if I was kidnapped and dragged to one and handcuffed into a chair with my eyes wedged open like what happened to Malcolm Mc Dowell's character in "A Clockwork Orange".

Today in film news:

At the Museum of Modern Art, starting today to February 4th will be a week-long screening of 4K restorations of Bruce Lee's films. A cool thing to check out for folks in the Manhattan area.

This is a pretty neat thing Buzzfeed did.

On Sundance 2017 news, Dee Rees's Mudbound is getting a lot of positive acclaim. Here's a few select quotes from her interview linked:

edited 27th Jan '17 4:46:26 PM by Tuckerscreator

Huh, Mudbound looks pretty interesting. I'm going to have to check that one out sometime.

Not a new piece, but - Rebels, Kanan Jarrus, and the Race Factor. An discussion of the diverse racial representation in Star Wars: Rebels, especially the Shrug of God Pablo Hidalgo initially gave in response to questions about whether or not Kanan is white. (And yes, Hidalgo did later confirm that all three human leads are mixed-race, which is noted at the end of the article.)

The article also notes that when Sabine's character design was revealed, some fans seemed to find it more likely that she was an alien than that she was Asian. Which is somewhat telling.

To be fair to them, the show's stylized art style makes it hard to distinguish her Asian features (almond-shaped eyes) and her dyed hair doesn't help.

edited 28th Jan '17 11:01:39 AM by shatterstar

Also maybe it's just me but Sabine's facial features always seemed more cartoony and exaggerated compared to the other characters. Less so than the very exaggerated Duchess Satine who I did think was an alien at first, but the definitely-alien Hera from the same series has more realistic proportions.

I had the benefit of already being told she was a human beforehand but looking at the earliest renders it's not the most unreasonable conclusion. I attribute that in part to inexperience on the animators' ends though, because it seems less apparent with more recent renders of the character which frame her as having more realistic proportions like the others. Not to mention the her skin does have an unnatural orange hue compared to the earthier tones of Kanan and Ezra. Not a big fan of that particular aspect of her design.

edited 28th Jan '17 1:36:11 PM by AlleyOop

I don't see it, personally. Despite the stylized aesthetic, Sabine's features were always very apparent to me.

Again, I don't see it myself. She certainly has large eyes, but her features never struck me as being noticeably more cartoonish than those of the other characters. And her eyes don't look to me any more exaggerated than Ezra's big wedge of a nose.

Nevertheless the fact is that while you may not see it personally, there's enough ambiguity there even among those of us who would come into it with less bias to allow room for benefit of doubt when it comes to to people making assumptions about her.

If this minority of fans had significant presence anywhere then yeah there's an issue here, maybe they do and the article just isn't good at supporting it, but if the thesis of the point the article was stressing was that such people with these kinds of opinions exist at all, in the way sites like Kotaku do (kinda like the time major news sites ran with the idea that #RepealThe19th was treated as a major push by the Trumpets when it turned out to be a handful of idiots trying to start shit, in the process giving attention to something that should've faded away), then it's not really... newsworthy? There's always going to be idiotic people on the Internet. Unfortunate, also disappointing more than shocking, but not really new or interesting information.

edited 28th Jan '17 1:53:26 PM by AlleyOop

And given the cultural context surrounding the matter, there's also enough room to be irritated when fans automatically associate stylized Asian features with being nonhuman. It's not as if I'm saying that these people are horrible irredeemable racists, if that's what you mean by the "benefit of the doubt." Annoyance is not condemnation.

The entire article wasn't some sort of drawn-out "Breaking News!" excoriation of fans who thought Sabine wasn't human—that part was actually just a comparatively minor note occupying the final few paragraphs of the piece. The majority of time was spent discussing Kanan's Ambiguously Brown status, and the less-than-decisive response it initially drew from Hidalgo. I feel you're somewhat exaggerating the article's content.

I also confess I get annoyed when people complain about these sorts of thinkpieces on the grounds that the topics covered in them aren't sufficiently recent or widespread. No, it's not breaking hot-off-the-press news, and no, it's not a massive coast-to-coast movement (nor does the article ever pretend otherwise), but that doesn't preclude discussing it or what it implies about society as a whole. If we limited ourselves to writing about events that met some arbitrary definition of "newsworthy," we would be cutting ourselves off from huge swathes of discussion. Especially when what you're writing is quite obviously an opinion piece, not a news headline.