Every day, Opening Acts highlights the best pieces of writing on film, television, and literature published around the Internet. Please share if you like what you see.
For your reading enjoyment …
Selma is a Horror Movie by Alyssa Rosenberg. Ms. Rosenberg examines how Ava DuVernay uses horror movie tropes to amplify the danger in Selma.
Over and over again in the Bloody Sunday sequence, DuVernay creates striking images of monstrous things emerging from the blankness. But the most impressive thing about the violence she stages is that DuVernay is not putting us in the position of passive observers to the brutalization of others. Often, she’s staging shots to give us the experience of being bashed in the face.
Dialogues, GONE GIRL and The Maybe-Art Of Post-Feminist Pulp by Film Crit Hulk. The mean, grean, analyzing machine argues that Gone Girl is about the conversations surrounding it.
BUT AS CERTAIN AS HULK CAN BE THAT CONVICTION AND EMPATHY ARE AT THE HEART OF FEMINISM, IT DOES NOT CHANGE THE FACT THAT FEMINISM IS STILL ULTIMATELY RELIANT ON BEING A DIALOGUE. BUT AT ITS BEST, IT’S A DIALOGUE OF GREAT PURPOSE. A DIALOGUE OF HUMANE CARE AND LOVE. AND THE VERY DEXTERITY OF THAT DIALOGUE CAN BE WHAT MAKES FEMINISM AMAZING; A BEAUTIFUL, ORGANIC DEVELOPMENT THAT CAN MOVE AND EVOLVE AT THE SPEED OF OUR MINDS AND EVER-CHANGING SOCIAL LANDSCAPE. AND YES,ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THINGS, THE FACT THAT FEMINISM IS A DIALOGUE CAN MAKE IT REALLY, REALLY DIFFICULT TOO.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro star in fake film for James Packer’s casino by Jenna Clarke. Jenna reports upon this bizarrely expensive advertisement.
The casino tycoon, and aspiring Harvey Weinstein figure, has reportedly paid prominent environmentalist and The Wolf of Wall Street star Leonardo DiCaprio and actor-slash-restaurateur Robert De Niro more than $15 million each to endorse his gambling mecca in Manila.
‘Gone Girl’s Ben Affleck, David Fincher, Gillian Flynn Plot ‘Strangers On A Train’ Redo At Warner Bros by Mike Fleming Jr. Mike reports upon the filmmaking heavy-weights’ contemporary-reimagining of the Hitchcock story.
Affleck will play a movie star in the middle of a campaign for an Oscar during awards season whose private plane breaks down and is given a ride to LA on another plane by a wealthy stranger. In Fincher’s hands, who knows how that goes, but it sure does seem like fertile ground.
Codes, Chaos, and the World of Heat by Scott Tobias. Over at The Dissolve, Scott Tobias looks at the machinations of the crime world of Michael Mann, and how Heat is a perfect encapsulation of it.
But the view from above and the reality on the ground aren’t the same. As Brad Pitt tells Michael Fassbender’s character in The Counselor, an existential crime movie of a more recent vintage, “If you think you can live in this world and not be part of it, you’re wrong.” Men like Neil and Vincent are experienced enough to know that, but they might be arrogant enough to believe they can manage situations that will inevitably spin out of their control.
