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https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2020/06/15/hard-noc-life-lynn-chen-will-make-you-mine/
This week on Hard NOC Life, Dominic and Keith are joined by the writer, director, producer, and star of I Will Make You Mine, Lynn Chen! http://traffic.libsyn.com/thenerdsofcolor/HNL197.mp3 After eight years, the Surrogate Valentine trilogy is complete thanks to Lynn’s determination, and the backing of dozens of Kickstarters. Now available to stream on every digital platform, […]
The Empire Strikes Back recently hit a big milestone, as the first ever Star Wars sequel celebrated its first four decades last month. And in honor of arguably the most iconic movie sequel of all time, the good folks at Bottleneck Gallery are releasing a special series of prints celebrating this classic film by artist Matt Ferguson. This is the same artist who did a special series of prints celebrating Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse for Bottleneck last year.
Matt Ferguson / Bottleneck Gallery / Lucasfilm
Several high quality versions of The Empire Strikes Back 40th anniversary poster have now gone on sale, including a black and white variant edition, and a Japanese language variant as well. The artwork is released in conjunction with Acme Archives, the official Star Wars licensee. You can check out the various versions of the prints below.
Matt Ferguson / Bottleneck Gallery / Lucasfilm
The regular The Empire Strikes Back print has a cool, icy blue tint to it. Perfectly evoking the ice planet of Hoth. There are some splashes of red, of course. This honors the depths of Cloud City where Luke and Darth Vader fought their first epic battle. There’s also bright green representing the laser fire of the Imperial TIE fighters. This poster print comes in at 24 x 36 inches, and will set you back $65, or $125 for the set. The hand-numbered variant edition of 475 comes at a price tag of $85.
Matt Ferguson / Bottleneck Gallery / Lucasfilm
Both the English and Japanese versions of this print will be available for sale starting Wednesday, June 17 at 12:00 P.M. ET at the official Bottleneck Gallery site. These poster prints will remain on sale through Sunday, June 21 at 11:59 P.M. ET. However many of the posters are ordered, that’s exactly how many will be printed. Hanging these on your wall is the perfect way to always celebrate. After all, this is the film that began Star Wars as a film franchise in earnest.
Matt Ferguson / Bottleneck Gallery / Lucasfilm
Featured Image: Matt Ferguson / Bottleneck Gallery / Lucasfilm
The post EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Anniversary Prints Are as Cool as Hoth appeared first on Nerdist.
To honor our ancestors and to lay a path to freedom for future generations, we are calling for the SIX NINETEEN mobilization on Juneteenth weekend, June 19–21, 2020, at home, in your community, or in Washington, D.C.
In response to the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and countless other Black people who have been killed at the hands of vigilantes or law enforcement, millions have taken to the streets with a clear and distinct call to end police violence and to defund police.
Hashtags to Use#SixNineteen | #DefendBlackLives | #BlackLivesMatter | #DefundPolice
Call to ActionJoin the #SixNineteen weekend of action in front of the White House or in your communities: www.sixnineteen.com
GraphicsInstagram and Twitter Feed Graphic
Tweets & Posts• Juneteenth is a day that honors Black freedom & Black resistance.
• This Juneteenth is a rare moment for our communities to proclaim in one voice that Black Lives Matter. #SixNineteen www.sixnineteen.com
• DEFEND. BLACK. LIVES.
• Join in on Juneteenth weekend in front of the White House, in your homes, or in your communities to show our power and shout our demands. #SixNineteen sign-up: www.sixnineteen.com
• Together, we’re bigger than monied interests—including police unions and right-wing think tanks. And we demand:
Defunding of policeInvestment in Black communitiesResignation of Donald Trump#SixNineteen www.sixnineteen.com
• It’s time. We must lay thearia-label="www.sixnineteen.com (opens in a new tab)" href="http://www.sixnineteen.com" target="_blank">www.sixnineteen.com
• ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
• Defund the police. Invest in Black communities. Tell Donald Trump to resign.
• Join the Weekend of Action: #SixNineteen in Washington, D.C., in your community, or in your home. #DefendBlackLives www.sixnineteen.com
Instagram & Facebook Posts• On June 19, 1865, Black communities in Texas finally received the news that they were free.
• Juneteenth (June 19th) is a day that honors Black freedom and Black resistance, and centers Black people’s unique contribution to the struggle for justice in the U.S. This Juneteenth is a rare moment for our communities to proclaim in one voice that Black Lives Matter, and that we won’t tolerate anythingless than justice for all our people.
• Join us on the #SixNineteen mobilization on Juneteenth weekend, June 19–21, 2020. Take action in front of the White House, in your community, or at home.www.sixnineteen.com
• Right now, uprisings are taking place in all 50 states, and more than two-thirds of Americans agree that police violence is systemic. The Movement for Black Lives is alive and vibrant. And combined with COVID-19 and four years of Trumpism, Black communities are demanding: justice; accountability; a divestment from policing; and an investment in healthy, sustainable communities.
• Join us on the #SixNineteen mobilization on Juneteenth weekend, June 19–21, 2020. Take action in front of the White House, in your community, or at home. www.sixnineteen.com
Developed by Kairos Fellowship in Defense of Black LivesFor more information, contact press@M4BL.org
The post #SIXNINETEEN: Movement For Black Lives Calls For Juneteenth Actions appeared first on Essence.
In David Fincher’s neo-noir horror Seven, William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is a veteran detective in an unspecified urban police department who is just seven days away from retirement when a disturbing serial killing case falls in his lap. Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt) is a new transfer who gets assigned to be point on the case, even as Somerset and the rest of the supervisors can already see it’s way above his pay grade. As Mills’s brash and compulsive persona clashes with Somerset’s staid introspection and careful considerations, they discover their serial killer is murdering based off the seven deadly sins. The race to catch him before the seven days are up becomes a fight for the detectives’ survival and ultimate humanity.
When Seven first came out in 1995 the content was beyond shocking. The grisly murder tableaus were unlike anything we’d seen on screen at that point, and Fincher’s stylish filmmaking elevated each scene in such a way that the movie never felt exploitative in spite of the horrific plotlines. The bulk of the violence takes place off-screen, and we as the viewers are left to process the aftermath of each horrendously escalating crime scene along with the detectives who also were seeing this level of emotional and physical carnage for the first time.
Watching Seven today is as stunning as it was back then, maybe even more so now that the gritty camera work has been remastered in high definition for new TVs. I normally leave the room during the Lust murder investigation — that sword dildo remains visually way too much for me to handle. But this time around the Sloth scene — the victim that John Doe (Kevin Spacey) had been torturing for a year in his own bed — also had me legitimately dry heaving as I fled to my home library safe space thanks to the crisp digitization of the original grainy film stock. The intricacy of Seven’s story and Fincher’s delicate touch with the subject matter remains a singular feat of filmmaking that I wish more directors, horror directors in particular, would return to more often.
What ended up surprising me the most in revisiting Seven after several years away is how the movie absolutely shatters white devilry tropes, in particular within law enforcement narratives. First, the serial killer John Doe reveals his belief that he is doing God’s work in torturing and murdering his chosen victims based on their violation of one of the seven deadly sins. White devils are often framed as anti-heroes, but in Seven he is only a hero in his own estimation, not in ours — a different kind of white devil entirely.
Second, John Doe’s victims are all white folks, which is a far cry from many other white devil narratives like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Death Wish, and others where the violence is predominantly acted out on Black and Brown bodies. In spite of the uber-urban setting that would stereotypically feature gang violence and the like, the only crime we see in Seven is by a white man against other white people. Going deeper, this violent criminal also happens to be independently wealthy and highly educated, contrasting other portrayals of white crime in cop movies that are blamed on drug addiction, poverty, or a lack of education. Somerset notes that John Doe has anonymized himself by choice, and whiteness is what gives him this privilege.
The third, and arguably the most forward-thinking aspect of the movie, is that virtually every single Black person in Seven is in protector roles. The only Black lawbreaker on screen was in fact paid to lie by Detective Mills himself in order to cover his mishandling of a crime scene. Unlike most cop movies that rely on racial stereotypes of criminality or presumed pathology in which a white anti-hero goes after minorities often with impunity, the white devilry inherent in Seven is enacted solely on other white people, and it is a Black narrator who witnesses and testifies to it.
At the end of Seven, bad cop Mills, who murdered a suspect in cold blood, is arrested immediately, unlike what tends to happen in real life. Could this be because Det. Mills’s victim, for once, is white? It’s possible. But given Fincher’s other choices in the movie, from casting to narrative arc, Mills’s arrest is yet another white devil trope deconstructed. After all, Mills himself was a more traditional white devil in Seven, an anti-hero cop who did what needed to be done to see his kind of justice served, even if he didn’t follow the rules he was supposed to.
Before the movie’s explosive ending that has become so iconic over the past two and half decades, many people continue to hear Brad Pitt’s voice screaming, “What’s in the box?!” Every time we see a sealed package, Somerset makes an observation about John Doe’s victims and “forced attrition.” He notes that John Doe has selected his victims for violating a deadly sin, but instead of giving them an opportunity to atone over the long term, he makes them choose right now. The Pride murder chose to overdose rather than call the police after John Doe mutilated her face; Greed was required to cut seven pounds of flesh for penance.
But forced attrition is nothing new to white devils, especially in today’s world of cell phone cameras and instant uploads to the cloud for mass consumption. How many stories have we heard recently about folks being openly racist, homophobic, xenophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, and all of the above — until they get caught, and all of a sudden they are crying and sorry. Were any of John Doe’s victims requiring penitence actually repenting, or did they just want to survive? Were any of these real-life folks caught out in the bigotry actually sorry, or just sorry they got caught?
What’s particularly wild about Seven is that back in the days before online booksellers, certain books used to be flagged by the FBI and CIA if they were checked out of a library. Books like Mein Kampf and other evil-disseminating texts were on the list because of limited copies. But now, anyone can buy these books from sellers who have no obligation of disclosure, and publishers can now discreetly continue to print and sell copies of Mein Kampf without oversight.
For the closing line of the film, Somerset says: “Ernest Hemingway once wrote, ‘The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.’ I believe in the second part.” It’s the only brief moment of hope in Seven, one of the bleakest stories ever put to screen, and Somerset’s annotation has only grown more relevant to real-life as the years have gone by. That said, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by police and the incredible outpouring of support for the Black Lives Matter movement that has begun inspiring structural changes to American law enforcement, I think Somerset might finally have been encouraged to concede — just a little bit — to the first part of Hemingway’s statement, too.
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