deerstalker

When Variety critic Dennis Harvey used his review of Promising Young Woman to question the casting of Carey Mulligan, he was rightly called out far and wide for his blatantly sexist writing.

“Mulligan, a fine actress, seems a bit of an odd choice as this admittedly many-layered apparent femme fatale,” Harvey wrote of the character, who spends her weekends pretending to be fall-down drunk to see if men will prey on her. “Margot Robbie is a producer here, and one can (perhaps too easily) imagine the role might once have been intended for her. Whereas with this star, Cassie wears her pickup-bait gear like bad drag; even her long blond hair feels like a put-on.”

The implication seemed clear, and Mulligan herself mentioned it in an interview with the New York Times. “It felt like it was basically saying that I wasn’t hot enough to pull off this kind of ruse,” she told the outlet. Mulligan said that her issue with the review “wasn’t some sort of ego-wounding thing,” but that a film review in this day and age would still even include criticisms of a woman’s appearance in that way.

Harvey has finally responded to the criticism after initially avoiding “the social media discourse,” as he told The Guardian. His response is, essentially, that his words were misconstrued by people who didn’t actually read his review. Moreover, he implies that Mulligan and the film’s creative team might not actually have found the review offensive at all, but used it to generate attention.

“He also queried the timing of the controversy, noting that his review had apparently been found unobjectionable enough to escape complaint for 11 months, ‘until the film was finally being released, promoted and Oscar-campaigned,’ writes The Guardian. “Only then was his review ‘belatedly labeled ‘insensitive’ and flagged with an official ‘apology.’’

What Harvey doesn’t mention is that it’s totally normal for reviews written about festival movies to not gain traction until the film is actually released to the public. Mulligan also wouldn’t have been asked about the review in her initial round of press for the Sundance premiere, but she has been now that she’s doing another round of interviews. Harvey is now managing to add film snobbery to his initial sexist review, as if anyone who didn’t immediately read the initial piece about a movie they wouldn’t be able to see for close to a year doesn’t later get to have an opinion on his writing.

As for the accusation that the people who took issue with the review didn’t actually read it, that’s a really juvenile, defensive deflection—and I say that as someone who did read it, as I think many did.

“I assumed that film-makers who created such a complex, layered movie wouldn’t interpret what I wrote as some kind of simpleminded sexism,” Harvey says. “And while Carey Mulligan is certainly entitled to interpret the review however she likes, her projection of it suggesting she’s ‘not hot enough’ is, to me, just bizarre. I’m sorry she feels that way. But I’m also sorry that’s a conclusion she would jump to, because it’s quite a leap.”

Let’s be totally clear: That is not an apology! It is an insult and an accusation that happens to include the word “sorry.”

Here are some more of Harvey’s own terrible words defending his other terrible words:

“What I was attempting to write about was the emphasis in the film and [Mulligan’s] performance on disguise, role-playing and deliberate narrative misdirection. Nor was bringing up Margot Robbie meant to be any comparison in ‘personal appearance’.

“Robbie is a producer on the film, and I mentioned her just to underline how casting contributes to the film’s subversive content – a star associated with a character like Harley Quinn [Robbie’s Suicide Squad character] might raise very specific expectations, but Mulligan is a chameleon and her very stylised performance keeps the viewer uncertain where the story is heading.”

Does that mean he thought it would better if we knew Mulligan’s character Cassie had villain (or more anti-hero) potential? And does he think she actually is a villain? In his review, he called the character “admittedly many-layered.” Does he want fewer layers? I genuinely don’t understand but it doesn’t matter because I don’t want to veer off into differences of opinion on the movie or its (admittedly perfect) casting. I want to focus on what Harvey said in his review and how it was garbage and how now he’s trying to spin it as a different form of lesser garbage.

If Harvey did, in fact, think he was criticizing Mulligan’s casting, calling her outfits “bad drag” and her hair “a put-on” is not appropriate, nor is it good criticism.

If he did not mean to compare the appearance of Mulligan and Margot Robbie (“I’m a 60-year-old gay man. I don’t actually go around dwelling on the comparative hotnesses of young actresses, let alone writing about that,” he says now), then he shouldn’t have made comparisons about them in the same paragraph that he made those derisive comments about Mulligan’s appearance. That’s just bad, clumsy writing.

Harvey said that he was “appalled to be tarred as misogynist, which is something very alien to my personal beliefs or politics. This whole thing could not be more horrifying to me than if someone had claimed I was a gung-ho Trump supporter.”

But the thing is, even people who don’t think they are misogynistic (or racist, or homophobic, or transphobic, or anything else) can engage in misogynistic and otherwise bigoted behaviors. He wasn’t “tarred as misogynist,” he wrote misogyny into his own review.

We all have invisible biases, which is one of the reasons why people like Mulligan and so many others in this industry have been pushing to diversify all aspects of it, including reviewing press. That Harvey would be so incredibly defensive, going so far as to insult his readers (by suggesting they didn’t read his review) and the star of the movie (by implying she was faking an opinion to stir up some Oscar buzz) is only further evidence of how necessary that diversity is.

(via The Guardian, image: Focus Features)

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By Nandi Howard ·February 2, 2021February 2, 2021

In the spirit of fashion brands collaborating, Coach x Champion is the latest team to release a joint collection. The partnership brings together two iconic American brands combining Coach’s legacy of craftsmanship and Champion’s hold on the athletic market. Launching today, the collection is spearheaded by model Paloma Elsesser and TikTok stars Wisdom Kaye, Maha Gondal and Jeffrey Tung.

Coach x Champion features leather bags, leather jogger pants, sweaters and shearling jackets printed with new branding that unites Coach’s story patch, one of its house symbols, with Champion’s C-logo. The collection intends to reimagine the shared heritage of both brands with a mod lens. “I was inspired by the idea of elevating sportswear silhouettes in an unmistakably Coach way using leather, shearling and by combining our iconic symbols in a way that feels fresh, youthful and immediate,” said CoachCreative Director Stuart Vevers.

To celebrate the new link-up, Coach released a series of campaign images and “How to Coach a Champion”  TikTok challenges. The new wave on influencers invites Coach and Champion fans to participate in a series of fun challenges inspired by the new collection.

The Coach x Champion collection ranges in price from $225 -$2,300. Shop here.

The post Coach Partners With Champion For Exclusive Collection appeared first on Essence.

At first sight, Theo Anthony’s new artsy documentary film could be a conception on the history of the camera or homage to the human image; but go deeper and Anthony is saying something about the many ways pictures, images, video, or anything that can be framed, can tell a story. 

He is also asking whose story, from what point of view, and what happens outside that frame. 

However, in doing so, the filmmaker creates a complicated and sometimes confusing presentation that is in danger of limiting itself to camera buffs and surveillance aficionados. Instead of the wider audience of people who want to understand how much video has helped and hindered criminal investigations.

Anthony, a  Baltimore and New York-based director, photographer, and Sundance Film Festival fellowship recipient juxtaposes historical narrative on early camera inventions, a focus group monitoring attention span while watching videos,  with shots of footage from the 21st-century body cam, a visit to Axon headquarters, makers of body cams, drones, and tasers often used by police departments, to people staring at the 2017 Eclipse to the attaching of cameras on pigeons to make the case that all images are subjective. All perceptions are subjective. 

He turns to famed 19th Century French scientist and photographic inventor, Etienne  Marey whose multiple camera plates contributed to what later became motion pictures, and policeman Alphonse Bertillion who first used specially-angled pictures to thoroughly photograph a crime scene, as evidence that the eye is fickle and only sees “that of which it already has an idea.”

It shouldn’t be lost on any viewer of this documentary that Anthony, a white man,  is aware of the barely controlled frustrations between the Baltimore Police Department and the Black community after the 2016 death of Freddie Gray led to citywide rioting. 

And who can forget the 2018 headline-grabbing news of Dallas resident Botham Jean, an accountant, eating ice cream on his couch when he was fatally shot by a just off patrol, police officer Amber Guyger. 

Released video footage showed outside the apartment and the aftermath of Guyger making no attempt to help the victim and police arriving on the scene but none of the actual incident. 

Perhaps the best parts of the documentary are the look on Baltimore policemen and women’s faces as they are lectured on the new body cams they will wear in an effort to stop or control future tragedies or insurrections. The bemused, bored, both knowing and quizzical looks on the faces of the officers speak volumes, perhaps more than Anthony and crew realize. It’s very apparent that some do not think they need to be there and from the looks of it, not too happy to be on camera.  

One thing Anthony’s crew does seem to relish is the time spent at Axon headquarters, where a company spokesperson goes overboard trying to explain how high-tech the offices are and how amazing their products are. The big get is that in talking about surveillance equipment, the spokesperson seemingly, unknowingly gives away intel about the company’s in-house surveillance. 

There are no obvious segues in this documentary, only jumps to the next thing. In this case, it’s to a Baltimore public meeting where a police officer tries to sell the idea of body cam use in the community. 

Unlike the officers, the audience doesn’t sit quietly but argues why they are for or against, and in the end, there seems no real collective solution. Then there is another switch, to children in a Baltimore inner-city public school shooting a movie using all the latest technology.  The scene is a confusing array of shots, angles, and kids using their most adult selves to act, direct and produce. It goes on for some time before abruptly shutting off.

According to information received by Blackgirlnerds.com, Anthony spent months shooting this footage but eventually decided that all that he saw during this time did not go with the general theme. 

Anthony concludes with a quote from 19th-century abolitionist Frederick Douglass on images that sums up what he tried but failed to clearly convey: “We all feel that there is something more. That the curtain has not yet been lifted. There is a prophet with us forever whispering that behind the seen lies the immeasurable unseen.”

Credit given to composer Dan Deacon and sound designer Udit Duseja for giving the film suitably haunting music, especially during lead-ins to the historical narration.

All Light, Everywhere premiered at Sundance on Jan. 31. 

Writers: Vita Ayala / Artist: Rod Reis / Marvel Comics

Issue #16 of New Mutants is filled with heartache, mistrust, deception and intrigue. We start off with Shadow King working with this rag tag group of C-List mutants; Rain Boy, Cosmar, No-Girl and Anole. It’s all written pretty plainly on the wall. Shadow King stay schemin’, and this time he’s got his shadowy claws pointed at one of the newest and unpredictable mutants; Cosmar.

I really enjoyed the angle they took with welcoming in Cosmar and building up the complications that she comes with. Being a mutant who has had their body deformed, eye enlarged, face disfigured, and body purplized because of their initial lack of control of their powers would make someone want to be their old self again. Being denied this venture would lead the most level-headed down a path of resent and malice, which is why Hurricane Cosmar is a brewing, and Shadow King is sitting pretty in the eye of the storm.

Scout has been a cool character for me to learn about and appreciate. She’s also been the mutant I’ve felt for the most lately, cuz clone girl been goin through it. Last issue she was going hard on the perceived stance on a certain kind of mutant being brought back and received some soft reassurance then kind of got dismissed.

Now she’s being told to learn to think beyond what the humans who indoctrinated her allowed her to know about herself. There are two big takeaways for me here. The use of the word indoctrinate is so perfect and does a really good job of explaining why a teacher like Warpath would want her to learn about herself before trying to support as an instructor. The other thing is these doubtful recurring Scout responses of “For now” and “I guess.”

Alsoooo, if she keeps getting deaded by Daken for makeout sessions, something will be going down real soon.

Last but not least, Wolfsbane is going through it. She’s finally at the point in her life where the child she lost is weighing on her more heavily than she can bare. Eventually, her and Moonstar hit the Lagoon for Doug’s wedding reception, which led to one of the more incredible conversations that have gone down in all of the X-Books lately. I hope all the children reading this book take something away from this scene. Dani explains to Rahne that it’s ok to be conflicted at a function or gathering of friends when something like that is on your mind. You’re allowed to feel sad and to hurt, and it doesn’t take away from the love you have for someone else.

Beautifully written issue by Vita Ayala. Rod Reis does his dope watercolor like artistic thing, as expected. I’m a particularly big fan of the nearly devoid of color white that Reis bestows on Shadow King and can’t wait to see more of this potential threat. This was another good go with the New Mutants, and I’m intrigued where all of these threads are leading.

8 Cheers to “Our great future” out of 10

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