Weekend Movies: Cinderella (2015) – REVIEW

Weekend Movies: Cinderella (2015) – REVIEW

  Cinder-fairygodmother
I know Helena. I was surprised, too. The new Cinderella is pretty great

BY NATHANIEL ROGERS 

PH8E8oRvg6KMbf_2_mThe Game of Thrones Stark family was fond of the imminent warning “Winter is Coming” but their King of North, actor Richard Madden, doesn’t need to worry this time. He’s due a much happier Royal ending as the latest charming Prince to hit the movie screens. Winter is most definitely never coming to Kenneth Branagh’s luxe adaptation of the most beloved of fairy tales, Cinderella. From its opening vista of a well-to-do country estate, filled with warm yellows and verdant greens and one very happy family, a pleasant merchant and his sunny wife (Ben Chaplin & Hayley Atwell) and their kind daughter Ella (Downton Abbey’s Lily James), this CINDERELLA screams springtime and summer.

It’s timing couldn’t be better after this particularly long winter.

Spoilers if you’re freshly arrived from another universe: Ella’s loving parents are not long for this world and after imparting their wisdom and reinforcing her enchanted goodness (yes, she talks to animals), they take turns dying. Lady Tremaine, the stepmother, is introduced inbetween those deaths in clever multi-tasking voiceover (courtesy of Fairy Godmother Helena Bonham Carter).

Continue reading, AFTER THE JUMP

Cinderevil

 

She had known grief but she wore it well.”

We know only that Tremaine is a widow who’s just married a widower as clotheshorse double Oscar winner Cate Blanchett turns to the camera in editorial pose and technicolor-ready Sandy Powell couture. WERQ! (Expect that Oscar-beloved costume designer to pick up her 11th nomination for the riches here). Lady Tremaine is instantly widowed again and Blanchett rocks one of the film’s few colorless dresses with equally wicked elegance. So Ella is left lonely and unloved and working for, rather than living happily with, her cruel step-family, including spoiled brats Drisella (Downton Abbey‘s “Daisy” Sophie McSheara) and Anastasia (Holliday Grainger), who heap on the humiliations. 

Cinder-confrontation

The story beats are excessively familiar but who cares when a movie is this skillfully mounted and well acted? Director Kenneth Branagh, who has always been talented at marrying rich images, dramatic gravitas, and real levity (see Much Ado About Nothing or Dead Again or even Thor if you’re feeling generous) brings his A game. His sense of staging, combined with the inspired production design and costuming really make the setpieces pop. The ball is otherwordly beautiful in every instance where you fear it’ll become gaudy. Rarely do this many colors collide on screen without creating something muddy and gross like Tim Burton’s Eyesore in Wonderland. Powell continually risks faintly ridiculous gowns — all the colors of the rainbow all over the place, sometimes on the same dress– but they only serve to make Cinderella’s fairy-dusted blue beauty glow with comparatively minimalist beauty. Frankly the movie could have done without the ubiquitous CGI mice (sigh) and the comic excesses of the Fairy Godmother / Pumpkin sequences but it’s a small price to pay for the magic elsewhere.

While screenwriter Chris Weitz (About a Boy) doesn’t seek to upend or “explain” the usual story (the need for back-story and prequels has been killing fantasy and imagination!), he renovates successfully. His greatest redecorating triumph is the suble way he shifts the power / emotional dynamic between Cinderella and her Prince, and even Cinderella and her step-family. There’s also a slight makeover for the Bachelor Prince. If he’s still not a three-dimensional human he’s a far more attractive Ken Doll, complete with anatomically smooth but super flattering bulge pants. (Can we just give Sandy Powell the costume Oscar now?).

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None of these efforts are distractingly “twisty” but they go a long way in eradicating much of the fairy tale’s most retrograde gender politics while also making its gold-digging aspirational fantasy more palatable. In fact, Lily James may be the first Cinderella to feel like a complete character with agency and thoughts and morality all her own who also still reads exactly like the passive “Cinderella” you know and maybe love sheepishly. All due respect to Drew Barrymore’s instantly dated if delightful 1990s ‘GIRLPOWER!’ rendition in Ever After (1998) but this movie owns the myth while managing to inhabit it.

Color the new Disney blockbuster a major surprise. This pleasantly old-fashioned Cinderella is a surprising antidote to Hollywood’s current often anachronistic and faux-“dark” twists on fairy tales — most of them aren’t dark at all; have you ever read the originals? They’re grim(m). It’s gorgeous. It’s relatively smart. It’s got heart. Given how oft-produced this particular story is though (let’s call it the Hamlet of fairy tales and have a moratorium for awhile after this one, mmmkay?), if you don’t have a sweet tooth for eye candy, you might want to sit this one out. The rest of us will be happy to hum along with Cinderella’s beautiful daydream-singing and soak up all of its rich color and welcome humanity. “Be brave and kind” sure beats “Be rescued by a Prince & marry up!” as aspirational fantasies of happily ever-afters go.

    Spin

Nathaniel Rogers would live in the movie theater but for the poor internet reception. He blogs daily at the Film Experience. Follow him on Twitter @nathanielr.


Nathaniel_R

www.towleroad.com/2015/03/movie-review-cinderella-2015.html

Andy Bell Remembers When He Was “A Greedy Pig For Drugs”

Andy Bell Remembers When He Was “A Greedy Pig For Drugs”

Andy_Bell_(Erasure)_2Sometimes I think I was a greedy pig for all the drugs I took. I don’t regret it, though, because I was just being me. I was a mess and I did try therapy, but I can’t imagine I’m ever going to live my life in a way where if I’m out and I’m having a good time, I’m going to say no.”

The much loved and now sober Erasure vocalist Andy Bell in a very revealing interview with The Guardian

Jeremy Kinser

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Gay Iconography: Does 'Sex and the City' Stand the Test of Time?

Gay Iconography: Does 'Sex and the City' Stand the Test of Time?

Sex-and-the-City-2-Photo

Earlier this week, I joined a group of gay journalists in a roundtable interview of Madonna. While awaiting our time with the Queen of Pop, we chatted over wine and snacks about a variety of topics, including our thoughts on the album, HBO’s Looking and RuPaul’s Drag Race. The conversation picked up though when a certain television show came up.

Perhaps we need a corollary to Godwin’s Law (which posits that any online debate that goes on long enough will eventually invoke Hitler or Nazis). Maybe any conversation between pop-culturally savvy gay men will invariably reference Sex and the City at some point. Once the topic was broached among our group, references flew across the table, including episode numbers, titles, guest stars and storylines.

It’s the kind of show that feels embedded in the DNA of a large swath of the gay community. In its seemingly perpetual airings in syndication, the show certainly shows its age, but the impact of its six seasons (and maybe one of the movies) is still worth discussing today. Driven largely by gay creative forces Darren Starr and Michael Patrick King, the show not only brought openly gay characters to a mainstream series, but it embodied a sort of fabulous, urban lifestyle that spoke to the independent, creative spirit that permeates a wide, cross section of the gay community. Even its central protagonists — with their frank sexuality, over-the-top styles and witty retorts — feel like they’re ripped straight from Drag Race.

Still, the show’s portrayal of actual gay characters was far from revolutionary. The mostly sexless sidekicks, Stanford Blatch (Willie Garson) and Anthony Marentino (Mario Cantone), are quintessentially shallow representations. The show also clumsily tackled topics of bisexuality and trans characters. (And that’s nothing to say about the lack of racial diversity, rampant consumerism and class privilege that made the show feel continuously more out-of-touch the longer it went on.)

Flaws and all, the series still holds a special place in many hearts, so let’s revisit some classic clips, AFTER THE JUMP

 

In addition to being one of the most ‘90s things to ever happen on television (Carrie Bradshaw kissing Alanis Morissette) the fourth episode of season three featured a befuddled Carrie exploring the fluid sexuality of the young bisexual man she was dating. While she spends most of the episode fairly rattled by the the whole concept, she eventually becomes slightly more comfortable with it. She deserts him at a party and never sees him again, sure, but at least she’s accepted that the problem is hers, not his. (Watch a longer clip here.)

 

It’s been suggested that Starr and King used the four female leads to project the gay experience onto more palatable, heterosexual female characters. (The drag queen comparisons go beyond just the outfits.) If that is the case, it adds another layer to the scene above, wherein Samantha (Kim Cattrall) gets an HIV test. It brings to life the sort of anxiety that once felt exclusive to the gay community.

 

By 2015 standards, the clip above is difficult to get through. After RuPaul faced criticism for his use of words like “tranny” and puns of “she-male,” it’s unsettling to see the four white, straight, cisgender, upperclass women of Sex and the City toss around those terms while discussing three trans women of color. (As an aside, yes, this was a TV comedy, not a sociology thesis paper. But at the same time, such a beloved pop culture institution still airing in heavy reruns deserves some scrutiny.)

 

When folks ask in retrospect why we ever rooted for Carrie even though she was such a selfish, self-absorbed character, it’s easy to point to the clip above from “The Real Me” as evidence as to why many viewers wanted to think of themselves as the Carrie of their circles. In one of the series’ most memorable moments, Carrie agrees to appear as a fashion model, confronting her own insecurities about her appearance. She hits the runway, only to see her fears realized: she trips, falls and could be totally made a fool. Instead, she picks herself up, carries on with a smile and even gets a high-five from Heidi Klum. We may not all traipse down a runway in our underwear, but who can’t relate to that?

 

Sex and the City could almost be forgiven for its neutered portrayal of gay BFFs Stanford and Anthony, but its most egregious offense occurred in the second movie. (OK, one of many offenses.) The two characters, having shown mostly animosity toward one another throughout the six-season run, are hastily married off in a ceremony that’s like what “Gay: The Ride” would be like if it ever came to Disneyland. (Not that I didn’t enjoy seeing Liza Minnelli make an appearance, it just felt a little on the nose, don’t you think?) What’s more baffling is that in “The Real Me” Anthony criticizes Charlotte for setting him up with Stanford just because they both happen to be gay guys she knows.

As Carrie might ponder, awash in the glow of her laptop screen: Does the series’ humor, heart and bold sexuality keep it timeless as a Chanel suit, or does its uneven treatment of LGBT characters make it feel as hopelessly dated as Cosmos and cupcakes? 

Share your thoughts in the comments.


Bobby Hankinson

www.towleroad.com/2015/03/gay-iconography-does-sex-and-the-city-stand-the-test-of-time.html