I just never quite “got” the hoopla over Bohemian Rhapsody, yet I am eager for the release of Rocketman on May 31.

What’s the difference for me between these musical biopics?

I never felt the former had nearly enough context to satisfy me, especially regarding Freddie Mercury’s early life. Was he a prodigy in the school chorus? Did he even have music lessons as a kid? Give me some hints at least.

At a matinee screening of the cute (but not terribly memorable) romcom Long Shot last week, I saw the preview trailer for Rocketman again and thought (not for the first time) that there is more backstory in this trailer than in the entirely of Bohemian Rhapsody.

Overstatement?

Maybe…but not by much…

May I say that the third season of Queer Eye is perfect for binge watching while book indexing!

I cry a little during most episodes in the happiest way — thank you, Netflix — and am enjoying the larger budgets the series seems to have this season because it allows our consultants to make bigger changes for the participants in the episodes.

Continue reading “QUEER EYE and Indexing!”

BLUE CAR

The Transgressive Teachers series resumes Saturday at 9:30 a.m. at aperture cinema in downtown Winston-Salem with Karen Moncrief’s film Blue Car (2002).

Representations of educators in popular culture is one of my research areas, and without a doubt, this story about a high school teacher (David Strathairn) who preys on a talented but troubled student (Agnes Bruckner) is one of the most remarkable and troubling teacher movies I have ever seen.

Continue reading “Transgressive Teachers”

So, here’s the deal.

I don’t know much about superhero movies and even less about comic books.

Origin stories tend to grab me more than the ensemble-save-the-universe narratives because there is more backstory in those films. I usually like to hear people talk more than to watch them fight, and a three-hour runtime built around a lot of CGI is a tough sell for me.

Avengers Endgame must be a pretty good picture. I liked it a lot and felt the pacing was pretty good. It didn’t feel like three hours, and I enjoyed watching the characters and learning about them.

No wonder the box office is staggering. It even appeals to me.

My student Wubetu Shimelash is screening his new documentary, The Power of Ethiopian Coffee, and Emma Young and I are premiering our documentary short, Connecting Ethiopia to the World, at the same event.

Join us next Thursday, April 25, at 7 p.m. at Wake Forest University in Carswell Hall!

This event is free and open to the public. Hope to see you there.

Looking at Art Cinema Series

Hope to see you at a series I’m curating for aperture cinema the last Saturday in April and the first two in May; there we can watch and discuss teachers who “cross the line” in different ways.

These films are challenging and should lead to great discussion, which means we will learn a lot together.

Continue reading “Transgressive Teachers”

This new series on Hulu moved me more than I expected. Much more…

Based on a memoir by Lindy West, Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman, the series stars Aidy Bryant as a woman who, as the logline puts it, “seeks out ways to change her life without changing her body.”

Continue reading “SHRILL”

See Buddies Saturday, March 23 at Wake Forest University at 7 p.m. in the Byrum Welcome Center.

At first, this watershed film — representing a genre now known as queer cinema — seems simplistic, or even slight, but very quickly it becomes engrossing and deeply moving.

Buddies, released in 1985, was the first film released about HIV/AIDS and recounts the story of a friendship that emerges between a gay man who signs up to become a “buddy” with an AIDS patient by visiting him in the hospital at a time when people had many questions and fears about the disease but little information.

Continue reading “Free Screening of BUDDIES”

Movies change for us over time because we change.

The first time I saw Gone with the Wind was at the age of six. Back then, before video technology (let alone DVDs and streaming video), the only way to see some classic movies was when they would go into theatrical re-release every few years.

Gone with the Wind has shaped me as a critic, scholar, teacher, and filmmaker. This is one of a handful of films seen in my childhood that had an outsized and lasting effect on me.

From the beginning (and more than I like to admit now), the movie also affected my sense of myself as a Southern woman and, later, seeing it was a mirror for my growing consciousness about social class, race, and intimate relationships between women and men. I’m going to talk more about the first two of those categories below.

Now that the iconic epic is coming back into cinemas for a limited number of screenings celebrating the 80th anniversary of its release, I need to find a nearby screen and take it in to reflect once more about my complex responses to this film.

Continue reading “GONE WITH THE WIND”

For several months I’ve been meaning to watch Sara Colangelo’s second feature. (I was quite impressed with her first from 2014, Little Accidents.)

Perhaps I delayed watching The Kindergarten Teacher because, more than most movies, I knew this one would require my focus; after all, examining depictions of educators in popular culture is one of my major research areas.

What I discovered–not unexpectedly–is that this is a particularly complex film.

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