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If you’ve become infatuated with Paris after the 2024 Olympic games and miss HBO’s Succession, you will fall in love with AppleTV+’s La Maison. The series is set in Paris and is in French with English subtitles. La Maison is a behind-the-scenes look at Maison LEDU, the one-hundred-year-old haute couture brand created by the Ledu family.
The series opens with Maison LEDU’s star designer, Vincent Ledu (Lambert Wilson, The Matrix Reloaded), unknowingly being recorded throwing a racist hissy fit that goes viral. The adverse ripple effect creates a crisis that may jeopardize the family legacy. Vincent’s former muse, ex-model Pearle Foster (Amira Casar, Call Me By My Name), is the driving force behind LEDU, but she is kept in Vincent’s shadow. Pearle comes up with a clever plan to save the company, which includes partnering with a talented young up-and-coming visionary designer, Paloma Castel (Zita Hanrot, Love, Death, and Robots).
Pearle and Paloma are visionaries ready to revitalize, rebuild, and save this century-old brand. Both women have roots in this company that have been overlooked and are determined to shine. As Maison LEDU deals with its internal drama, Vincent’s cunning rival, Diane Rovel (Carole Bouquet, For Your Eyes Only), CEO of the influential Rovel Luxury group, uses Vincent’s downfall to make moves to acquire Maison LEDU by any means necessary.
I love Paris, and this series transports the audience to the city of light in all the best ways. The locations are just stunning. One of my favorites is the location of the Rovel headquarters is the new headquarters of Renault, the French car company, located on an island in the Seine. Two characters have apartments with balconies with the Eiffel Tower in the background. I loved that the directors chose to shoot several scenes with the Eiffel Tower at night, just as the sparkling lights dazzle.
As a fashion novice, seeing what goes into designing and building garments from scratch deepened the viewing experience and connected me to the story. The show educates as it entertains, giving nuanced perspectives on fast fashion, sustainability, and unintended consequences. The writers and directors do a fantastic job showcasing diverse haute couture elements. The opening sequence of the pilot shows how lace is constructed, and I could watch all day.
Later in the series, we are taught how centuries-old lace patterns are designed, which blew my mind. La Maison gives viewers a look at all of the seamstresses who work tirelessly on these stunning garments, which are indeed art pieces. The heads of fashion houses are men, but the workforce, the patternmakers, seamstresses, beaders, and most of the workers are women. Paloma, Pearle, and Diane represent three generations, and through these characters, the audience witnesses how the feminist movement impacted these women in all of its iterations.
Diane is a second-wave feminist coming of age in the ’80s when being a feminist was wearing a business suit and being a female version of the movie Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko. She is focused on individual financial freedom and preserving her legacy by any means necessary. Pearle is a third-stage feminist who was Vincent’s muse as a model in the 1990s. She found fame and power through her beauty first; then, as she aged out of the modeling world, she used soft power, being the woman behind Vincent, the male star designer. Pearle’s stalwart loyalty and magnificent ability to see situations with a bird’s eye view, making calculations before taking action, but she’s just a tad shady. She is willing to bend the rules for her benefit.
Then there’s Paloma, a Gen Z social justice warrior. Her mixed ethnicity gives her a unique perspective that Diane and Pearle don’t have. A social media savant, Paloma and her team of fashion renegades know how to take risks, call out oppression, and create viral moments using fashion as their bullhorn. Still, she’s never quite ready to deal with the unintended consequences of her activism. Paloma has a global view of oppression, is the unique talent of her generation, and is ready to challenge the establishment. At the same time, she is a designer with an ego and a desire to create her own legacy, as well as all of the wealth and power that comes with running a legacy fashion house like LEDU.
The series is well-balanced and gives authentic portrayals of racial dynamics in Paris. Paloma is mixed race, but her mother is Black and is an unseen character. It would have been more interesting to have seen how Paloma interacted with her mother to show that side of the narrative. I’d love to see Paloma’s mom if there is a second season; in La Maison, there are several diverse Queer characters, and their queerness is not the central conflict. I love a series where there are sibling dynamics that are not sugar-coated. The three Ledu siblings’ relationship is messy and has decades-old baggage they are holding onto and acting on, making the drama super juicy. I love a nighttime soap opera where a family is cutthroat, fighting for power over the family business with some electric drama. Place all that juicy chaos in the high-stakes Paris fashion world, and everybody’s fighting in French? Yes, please!
La Maison is based on an original idea by Alex Berger, who is also an executive producer on the show. Showrunners José Caltagirone and Valentine Millville created it, and Fabrice Gobert (The Returned) and Daniel Grou (Lupin) directed it. La Maison premieres on AppleTV+ on Thursday, September 20, 2024.
The post Review: Apple TV+’s ‘La Maison’ Is Giving Old School Nighttime Soap Opera Vibes appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.
If you’ve become infatuated with Paris after the 2024 Olympic games and miss HBO’s Succession, you will fall in love with AppleTV+’s La Maison. The series is set in Paris and is in French with English subtitles. La Maison is a behind-the-scenes look at Maison LEDU, the one-hundred-year-old haute couture brand created by the Ledu family.
The series opens with Maison LEDU’s star designer, Vincent Ledu (Lambert Wilson, The Matrix Reloaded), unknowingly being recorded throwing a racist hissy fit that goes viral. The adverse ripple effect creates a crisis that may jeopardize the family legacy. Vincent’s former muse, ex-model Pearle Foster (Amira Casar, Call Me By My Name), is the driving force behind LEDU, but she is kept in Vincent’s shadow. Pearle comes up with a clever plan to save the company, which includes partnering with a talented young up-and-coming visionary designer, Paloma Castel (Zita Hanrot, Love, Death, and Robots).
Pearle and Paloma are visionaries ready to revitalize, rebuild, and save this century-old brand. Both women have roots in this company that have been overlooked and are determined to shine. As Maison LEDU deals with its internal drama, Vincent’s cunning rival, Diane Rovel (Carole Bouquet, For Your Eyes Only), CEO of the influential Rovel Luxury group, uses Vincent’s downfall to make moves to acquire Maison LEDU by any means necessary.
I love Paris, and this series transports the audience to the city of light in all the best ways. The locations are just stunning. One of my favorites is the location of the Rovel headquarters is the new headquarters of Renault, the French car company, located on an island in the Seine. Two characters have apartments with balconies with the Eiffel Tower in the background. I loved that the directors chose to shoot several scenes with the Eiffel Tower at night, just as the sparkling lights dazzle.
As a fashion novice, seeing what goes into designing and building garments from scratch deepened the viewing experience and connected me to the story. The show educates as it entertains, giving nuanced perspectives on fast fashion, sustainability, and unintended consequences. The writers and directors do a fantastic job showcasing diverse haute couture elements. The opening sequence of the pilot shows how lace is constructed, and I could watch all day.
Later in the series, we are taught how centuries-old lace patterns are designed, which blew my mind. La Maison gives viewers a look at all of the seamstresses who work tirelessly on these stunning garments, which are indeed art pieces. The heads of fashion houses are men, but the workforce, the patternmakers, seamstresses, beaders, and most of the workers are women. Paloma, Pearle, and Diane represent three generations, and through these characters, the audience witnesses how the feminist movement impacted these women in all of its iterations.
Diane is a second-wave feminist coming of age in the ’80s when being a feminist was wearing a business suit and being a female version of the movie Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko. She is focused on individual financial freedom and preserving her legacy by any means necessary. Pearle is a third-stage feminist who was Vincent’s muse as a model in the 1990s. She found fame and power through her beauty first; then, as she aged out of the modeling world, she used soft power, being the woman behind Vincent, the male star designer. Pearle’s stalwart loyalty and magnificent ability to see situations with a bird’s eye view, making calculations before taking action, but she’s just a tad shady. She is willing to bend the rules for her benefit.
Then there’s Paloma, a Gen Z social justice warrior. Her mixed ethnicity gives her a unique perspective that Diane and Pearle don’t have. A social media savant, Paloma and her team of fashion renegades know how to take risks, call out oppression, and create viral moments using fashion as their bullhorn. Still, she’s never quite ready to deal with the unintended consequences of her activism. Paloma has a global view of oppression, is the unique talent of her generation, and is ready to challenge the establishment. At the same time, she is a designer with an ego and a desire to create her own legacy, as well as all of the wealth and power that comes with running a legacy fashion house like LEDU.
The series is well-balanced and gives authentic portrayals of racial dynamics in Paris. Paloma is mixed race, but her mother is Black and is an unseen character. It would have been more interesting to have seen how Paloma interacted with her mother to show that side of the narrative. I’d love to see Paloma’s mom if there is a second season; in La Maison, there are several diverse Queer characters, and their queerness is not the central conflict. I love a series where there are sibling dynamics that are not sugar-coated. The three Ledu siblings’ relationship is messy and has decades-old baggage they are holding onto and acting on, making the drama super juicy. I love a nighttime soap opera where a family is cutthroat, fighting for power over the family business with some electric drama. Place all that juicy chaos in the high-stakes Paris fashion world, and everybody’s fighting in French? Yes, please!
La Maison is based on an original idea by Alex Berger, who is also an executive producer on the show. Showrunners José Caltagirone and Valentine Millville created it, and Fabrice Gobert (The Returned) and Daniel Grou (Lupin) directed it. La Maison premieres on AppleTV+ on Thursday, September 20, 2024.
The post Review: Apple TV+’s ‘La Maison’ Is Giving Old School Nighttime Soap Opera Vibes appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.
From Riot Games, ARCANE returns this November on Netflix. The animated series, based on the League of Legends game and one of Netflix’s most successful animated series ever, is created by Christian Linke and Alex Yee. Executive producers include Linke, Marc Merrill and Brandon Beck. The Animation Studio is Fortiche Animation. Voices include Hailee Steinfeld (Vi), Annie Award winner Ella Purnell (Jinx) and Katie Leung (Caitlyn), Reed Shannon (Ekko), Amirah Vann (Sevika), Mick Wingert (Heimerdinger), Ellen Thomas (Ambessa), and Brett Tucker (Singed) among others to be announced.
Season One of ARCANE solidified Netflix’s position as a leader in adapting game franchises into animated cultural phenomena. Globally praised as one of the Best TV Shows of 2021, the adult animated series also earned four PRIMETIME EMMY AWARDS (2022) including Outstanding Animated Program – the first streaming series to win Outstanding Animated Program.
The series swept the 2022 Annie Awards with wins in Nine categories including Best TV/Media, Best Writing, Best Voice Acting (Ella Purnell), Best Direction, Best Production Design, Best Character Animation, Best Storyboarding, Best Character Design and Best FX. The series was also recognized by the gaming community winning Best Adaptation at The Game Awards (2022). In addition, the Arcane album was nominated for a 2022 Billboard Music Award for Top Soundtrack.
The post New Trailer and Images for ‘Arcane’ Season 2 appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.
Don’t trust the hype.
I had three different people text me on July 7th saying WE GOTTA SEE LONGLEGS THIS WEEK! I had read the early reviews, watched the trailers, and as a lifelong Nicolas Cage fan, especially the more recent “I’m a truffle farmer, I invade your dreams, I spoof myself” Nicolas Cage. I was freaking hype!
Even beyond that, I am a fan of director Oz Perkins’ work (please watch The Blackcoat’s Daughter) and his ability to intertwine his historical influences with his own sensory palette of dread, as well as Neon’s consistent investment in indie horror films for the past decade. Add Maika Monroe (please watch It Follows) and Blair Underwood (who has consistently played strong voiced authoritarian figures for the better part of my moviegoing life, put respect on his name), and honestly this felt like a recipe for a box office hit. And it was, doing fantastic numbers and receiving rave reviews, but it was the damn Silence of the Lambs comparisons that made me do a double take.
I wouldn’t be writing this article if so many critics and moviegoers didn’t make LOUD, UNENDING, INCESSENT statements like, “Longlegs is a menacing masterpiece” (Wicked Horror), “stunning, a modern Silence of the Lambs” (Dread Central), or “the best serial killer horror film since the Silence of the Lambs” (Awards Radar). This is the kind of hype that gets in your head, that makes viral marketing campaigns, THAT GETS PEOPLE LIKE ME MAD TIGHT WHEN A MOVIE DOESN’T DELIVER!
Yet, to be fair to the public, Perkins himself stated many times that Longlegs was a homage to Silence of the Lambs. In an interview with Deadline, he said “I was like, ‘I’ll lay [Silence of the Lambs] in.’ And if I lay that in, then I know certain other things, or I can start to make guesses, ‘Oh, it’s a female protagonist. She’s in the FBI. Oh, she’s got a boss. Oh, there’s kind of a wall of evidence. Oh, they’re hunting somebody.’”
To Perkins’ credit, all these structural pieces exist in Longlegs. Yet, when put side by side with Silence of the Lambs, Longlegs not only doesn’t hold up, but the ways it fails its female protagonist are exposed. You see, I was strapped in for a dangerous and intellectual cat and mouse game between the FBI and two serial killers, but what I got was a one-sided story of a villain with ungodly brilliance and an FBI agent robbed of her smarts, agency, and ability.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, first we gotta recap Silence of the Lambs. First and foremost, the 1991 film established one of the most iconic horror villains of all time with the cannibal Hannibal Lecter, not only because of his sinister and intellectual charm but because of his intriguing narrative set up. Lecter is already imprisoned when Clarice Starling, a strong-willed and smart, albeit wet behind the ears, FBI trainee is told by her boss Jack Crawford to ask him for help in catching the serial killer, Buffalo Bill. (While I won’t get into this here, it’s important to name the horrible transphobia Buffalo Bill’s character contributed to). Throughout the film, Lecter is pulling the strings even from behind bars, leading our various characters on different paths as they collide, all in an effort for him to escape prison by any means necessary.
Now, it would be easy to only remember Lecter’s role but even though he is a formidable opponent in almost every way, Starling still has some tricks up her sleeve as she proves why she was selected by Crawford to be on this case. Starling clocks that Crawford is using her to bait Lecter from the get go, she profiles Buffalo Bill accurately before ever encountering him, and she solves Lecter’s anagram when he gives false information on Buffalo Bill. Most importantly, in the third act, she reviews her case files, uncovers Buffalo Bill’s true identity, goes door knocking in his hometown, identifies and then kills him using context clues and her FBI training. SHE WAS A DAMN PRODIGY AND STOOD ON BUSINESS!
Let us never forget that Silence of the Lambs is a magnificent movie not only because of Anthony Hopkin’s delicate balance of Lecter’s ruthless evil and intelligent charm but also because of Jodie Foster’s ability to portray an FBI trainee who is both doggedly eager to impress those around her and trusting of her instincts. The movie is told through her perspective and in this way, the audience is meant to feel both her “fish out of water” energy and eventual graduation from the academy because she earned that ish.
Longlegs initially treads similar ground by introducing us to a strong, smart, freshly trained FBI agent in Monroe’s Lee Harker as she is recruited by her boss, Underwood’s Agent Carter, to hunt Cage’s Longlegs, a serial killer who has been murdering families from afar for almost 30 years. The reason she’s recruited? SHE’S FREAKING PSYCHIC! What is she given to start? Longlegs‘ Zodiac Killer style symbology that no one has been able to decipher for decades. I’m sorry, a psychic FBI agent?!?! Cyphers that need to be decoded in libraries?!?! Good ‘ole detective work?!?! I am READY to go!
And yet, nada. We get a quick montage of Harker “working” the case until she falls asleep, to then be woken up by Agent Carter to tell him she couldn’t crack the cypher, to then go home……where Longlegs stops by for a creepy visit to GIVE HER THE KEY TO DECODING HIS ENTIRE SYMBOLOGY! Hmm, ok strange to give that away for free, but sure moving right along.
But, no! From there we just get coincidental plot device after goddamn coincidental plot device. Not only does Harker speed decode all 30 years of this symbology, she just gives Agent Carter the damn SparkNotes: “Longlegs references satanism and this farmhouse a lot.” Where is the detective work? Where is reason for me to invest in Harker’s character?? And most blatantly, WHERE ARE THE PSYCHIC POWERS?!
Harker is the protagonist of this story and yet at every turn, she is robbed of any agency. We come to find out not only did Longlegs meet Harker as a child, he indoctrinated her mother into his devil worshipping schemes and that is why she has psychic powers. The devil and Longlegs have been controlling her life from the very beginning, with the only choice that surprised them being that she joined the FBI. Even in the third act when Harker is supposed to save the day, she enters a room with all the main characters, with the ONLY loaded gun, and decides to……not kill the Satan worshippers until after they’ve done their evil work.
Don’t get me wrong. The Satanism angle is a strong twist, as Perkins subs the devil in for Lecter as a puppeteering force behind the scenes, and Cage as Longlegs is absolutely terrifying and has the makings of an instant classic horror villain. Yet, these pieces alone don’t make for an engaging enough story. It feels as if Perkins took the most surface level aspects of Silence of the Lambs but didn’t integrate the intellectual cat and mouse game at its heart. While many of us remember the movie for Hannibal Lecter, it’s the engaging yarn that Starling untangles that keeps us coming back.
Longlegs had an opportunity to showcase a woman FBI agent who, while still new to the job, could do the leg (couldn’t resist) work, a nuanced character who had been unknowingly indoctrinated by the devil but at least showed some kind of common sense and initiative. Yet, everything that happens to and around Harker happens because Longlegs and the devil made it so. At no point does Harker even accomplish anything on her own merits. Her psychic powers are not hers, her decoding of the symbology is not hers, and she consistently fails to save multiple other characters when it matters most. Even the person she does save in the end comes at the cost of Harker having to kill her own mother, an egregious decision that feels unnecessary for a character that has already had so much stolen from her.
In researching for this article, I learned that the FBI advised during the making of Silence of the Lambs and actually did so because they thought the movie would encourage more women to apply to the FBI. Now, I don’t support the police industrial complex and I don’t want anybody applying to the FBI, but nuanced and engaging representation does matter and Starling’s character had such a huge effect on women in the media that we still feel her reverberations to this day. Underneath the allusions to Silence of the Lambs, Harker is simply a plot device to show just how insidiously powerful the devil is. And when one character has all the power and the other doesn’t, that makes for a pretty lazy script, especially when it consistently comes at the expense of women in horror.
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The post ‘Longlegs’ is NOT a Modern ‘Silence of the Lambs’: Why Lee Harker is No Clarice Starling appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.