Category: A&E

As another season of film comes to an end, the industry prepares to celebrate and honor recent movies released between March 1 and December 31, 2021. The 94th Academy Awards ceremony (also known as the Oscars) will be taking place at 8:00PM on Sunday, March 22 this year. Among the numerous awards given at the annual ceremony, the most prestigious three are Best Lead Actress, Best Lead Actor and Best Picture. Between these three awards there are 17 different films featured by nominations. 

The films contending for Best Picture this year are: “Belfast,” “Coda,” “Don’t Look Up.” “Drive my Car,” “Dune,” “King Richard,” “Licorice Pizza,” “Nightmare Alley,” “The Power of the Dog” and “West Side Story.” The actors contending for Best Lead Actor are: Javier Bardem (“Being the Ricardos”), Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Power of the Dog”), Andrew Garfield (“tick, tick…BOOM!”), Will Smith (“King Richard”) and Denzel Washington (“The Tragedy of Macbeth”). The actresses contending for Best Lead Actress are: Jessica Chastin (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”), Olivia Coleman (“The Lost Daughter”), Penelope Cruz (“Parallel Mothers”), Nicole Kidman (“Being the Ricardos”) and Kristen Stewart (“Spencer”). 

The film with the most nominations is “The Power of the Dog” with a whopping 12 nominations: Best Picture, Best Lead Actor, Best Supporting Actor (x2), Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Directing, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Sound Design and Best Adapted Screenplay. “Dune” comes in second with their number of nominations reaching 10: Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Sound Design, Best Visual Effects and Best Adapted Screenplay. 

Composer Hans Zimmer has been given his 12th Academy Awards nomination after composing the original score to “Dune” and producer/director Steven Spielberg has been given his 11th Academy Awards nomination after producing and directing the musical “West Side Story.” Meanwhile, Kristen Stewart makes history as the first openly LGBT+ actress nominated for Best Lead Actress. 

The Oscars are an excellent opportunity to discover new movies that hold merit as good films and to celebrate the continuation of film as art and culture. Though the Oscars are not without controversy. Often the majority of movie-goers don’t have interest in the awards ceremony due to the nomination selections. Regularly, the movies that are popular in most crowds are not even featured at the Oscars. For example, the widely popular movies produced by Marvel have only had 13 out of their 27 movies nominated for the awards ceremony, with “Black Panther” being the only one to win any award. “Black Panther” won Best Original Score and Best Production Design in 2019. However, fans of the comic book-based films will be glad to see that both “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home” have been nominated for Best Visual Effects this year! 

For those who enjoy animated films, there are five films nominated for Best Animated Film this year: “Encanto”, “Flee”, “Luca”, “The Mitchells VS. The Machines” and “Raya and the Last Dragon.” And for those who enjoy personable hosts, the 94th Academy Awards will be hosted by Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes. The Oscars have not had a host since 2018 but are making up for it by featuring three.

Whether you are someone who enjoys looking at different elements of film or someone who simply enjoys watching movies, the Oscars are the perfect way to either branch out and try a new kind of movie or to find a movie that might fit into what you usually enjoy. The 94th Academy Awards show will air at 8:00PM, March 22, on NBC.

This semester, Eastern’s spring musical is going to look a little differently due to COVID restrictions. I interviewed the director, Dr. Ardencie Hall-Karambe, to get some insight into what students should be expecting.

Dr. Ardencie Hall-Karambe is a theatre professor and the owner of a professional theatre company called Kaleidoscope Cultural Arts Collective. She said that ““I love working with college students, so when the opportunity came my way, I was really excited.” Originally, she’d planned to use an already-written script, but because COVID and other unplanned events, she ended up writing the book herself. “It was interesting writing the book for this. I took this on whole-heartedly, but it was a quick turnaround,” Dr. Ardencie Hall-Karambe said. 

The musical is titled “Still Here,” which comes from one of the songs that two of the characters sing together. It’s compiled from songs taken from different Broadway shows that have a similar theme: how people renew as we’re coming out of this COVID state. The musical questions, “How have we changed, having been in this bubble of COVID, and how do people still retain their humaness, especially when it comes to love and loss?” Most of the songs are Steven Sondheim songs or those written by people who were inspired by him, and the scenes were written around the songs. According to Dr. Ardencie Hall-Karambe, several shows in the past few years have done this, by taking favorite songs and tying them together.

“I’m excited to really do my part to help Professor A. and the students build up the musical theatre program here,” Dr. Ardencie Hall-Karambe said. “We learn about being human through theatre.” She discussed how theatre has been a staple of human interaction across time, whether it was called storytelling or something else. She also called theatre “a great learning tool” and emphasized how it can teach us how to live our lives and avoid making the mistakes of the characters. For that reason, she really enjoys helping colleges build up theatre programs.

When asked how COVID has affected the process of creating theatre, Dr. Ardencie Hall-Karambe exclaimed, “Singing with a mask on is not fun! You’re sucking in a lot of cotton.” She also explained how she wrote the script with COVID in mind, so she limited the number of characters on the stage at one time and tried to keep people spread out “so everyone isn’t just breathing on each other.” The script is also written in the world of COVID; the characters talk about being in a pandemic in the world of the play.

The show will also be filmed in the style of Hamilton, with shots both from the audience and on the stage. There may be a possible opportunity for students to view the show in person on campus, but that hasn’t been determined for sure yet. The show opens March 25 and will run until the 27th. Eastern is also participating in Theatre Week, which is a week-long celebration of theatre with professional and university theatre programs across the city. Dr. Ardencie Hall-Karambe is hoping that this will raise awareness for Eastern’s theatre program.

However, through all of the discouraging arrangements made necessary by COVID, Dr. Ardencie Hall-Karambe was ultimately optimistic about the situation. “Theatre has been around since the beginning of man, and it has survived many a plague, so it should survive this one,” she said. Despite the difficult situation caused by the pandemic, theatre can still survive through it. To help support your university’s theatre department, be sure to check out the spring musical, “Still Here,” when it opens!

The other night I watched the 1953 movie, “Shane.” “Shane” is a western set in—well, the same time that all the 1950s westerns are set in. The main character is a gunslinger named (hold your breath for it) Shane. 

The general plot centers around Shane’s attempts to leave his former life behind and start over again with a family of homesteaders. After watching the movie, my overall opinions of the movie are mixed. Some of the filming is slow and plodding. The location of the film is the Jackson Hole valley, and filming on site adds quite a lot of natural beauty to the film as well as adding a fitting backdrop to the movie’s more serious tone. One of the shots that has stayed in my mind is the town’s saloon and general store dwarfed by a giant mountain range. 

While it is a western, it is much more of a slow brooding drama. Further, it is a surprisingly silent film because silence is Shane’s main characteristic. All the colors used are dull tones, mostly greens, blues, and browns. The movie seems to build steadily on this rather serious mood. Most of the movie is from Joey’s perspective; what he sees in the adults, and what he admires in Shane. Some of the best editing in the film was the way the director cuts back and forth between Shane, and the little boy Joey, to stress the boy’s sense of awe. The movie continues to build slowly through typical western elements, until its climax. 

Unfortunately, I am going to have to spoil the movie’s ending, so if you ever plan on watching it, which I can’t imagine many people do, don’t read any further. In its ending scene, all the emotion and drama that had been slowly boiling under the surface comes to a crescendo. After a typical western shootout scene, Shane gives Joey a few words of encouragement, before riding off into the night. Joey looks after Shane and shouts his name, and the movie ends right there. This moment made me wonder if Shane’s character represents Joey’s boyhood ideals of being a man, and how perhaps those ideals are impossible or unrealistic, or maybe even result in someone being harmed since Shane has just killed three people in a shootout. All throughout the movie, Joey is mesmerized by violence. In the opening scene, he is pretending to shoot a deer, and throughout the movie, he is often playing very loudly with his toy pistol. He begs Shane to teach him to shoot and watches the fistfight and the shootout in the saloon, with a raptured child’s gaze. 

I would not say Shane is a great masterpiece, but I would argue it is a good movie. More importantly, it is an example of how to make a good movie in a traditionally not respected genre. The western genre at that time was known for making cheap films for audience enjoyment. Pick up and watch most 50’s westerns, and you will find a goofy movie, with some mildly interesting action. We have many of these types of movies in modern cinema, and yet “Shane” seems to be proof that it is not the genre that should blame, but the artists themselves. One genre is not superior to another. Each is filled with movies that are garbage. Yet, there are the occasional films that make a name for themselves. They become more than just another western movie or another horror movie. This is what cinema is about, and it is these occasional films that make up cinema.

In 2016, Icelandic musical artist, Ólafur Arnald, undertook a seven-week journey across his home country. Arnald stayed in seven different locations all around the island of Iceland, composing a personal and emotional song tied to the history and culture of each location. Additionally, in each location, Arnald collaborated with another Icelandic artist to give a unique sound to each song.

Among the seven creative songs found on the album “Island Songs,” two stand out as stellar compositions. Arnald’s second week took him to the Northwestern peninsula of Iceland, to a small village called Flateyri. In 1995, an unexpected avalanche struck the village, killing many people. A memorial stone sits next to the village church with the names of the villagers who passed away in the tragedy nearly three decades ago. Arnalds partnered with Dagny, a music teacher from the village, to compose the piece 1995 that remembers this tragedy and seeks to honor the lives lost. The story of this piece alone makes it stand out, however, the composition itself features numerous unique instruments and tones that bring out melancholy and remembrance on a scale that has never been achieved before. The second piece in “Island Songs” takes listeners to Arnald’s sixth week where he traveled to the Southwestern end of Iceland, to the community of Garour. For this piece, Particles, Arnald is joined by the lead singer of Of Monsters and Men, Nanna Hilmarsdóttir, a local of the community. The two artists perform in a small lighthouse on the coast and create the only song in the album with English words featured. While other compositions in “Island Songs” stand out with stronger sound, Particles benefits from the extraordinary voice of Nanna and hits each heartstring throughout the piece.

Fascinatingly, even though all of the pieces in “Island Songs” have stories and history behind them that can be found on Olafur Arnald’s website, one of the most interesting parts of this project is the finale. Arnald traveled to seven different locations, but there are eight songs in the album. The album concludes with “Study for Piano Player (II)”; this piece was wholly composed by Arnalds after his seven-week journey, and exhibits the artist’s remarkable talent and passion on the piano. While this album isn’t one full of excitement, many words, or great study beats, it is truly one of the most beautiful works of art created through the medium of music. Ólafur Arnald is most well-known for composing the music for the widely popular BBC drama, “Broadchurch,” but the majority of his work is independent, classically-trained art. I would recommend this beautiful collection of music and stories to those looking for more peaceful or melancholy music, or those who simply need background music while reading. However, for those truly interested in Arnald’s journey, there is a music video for each song in the album that is simply a visual recording of the artists performing the songs. The tone of the music fits perfectly into the visually inciting background that Iceland provides.

Film directors have their styles, just as actors have their signature moves. For Wes Anderson, symmetrical shots, vintage color schemes and full-circle stories are the keys of his style. “The French Dispatch,” Anderson’s 2021 film, is another example of the most blatantly Wes Anderson-esque movie.

“The French Dispatch” is both the title of this movie and the special last edition of the newspaper, the fictional “Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun.” It is centered around four articles and their writers that contribute to the foreign bureau in the fictional French city of Ennui-sur-Blasé. 

I want to acknowledge that my favorite thing about this movie was not nerding out over Wes Anderson. (Of his films, I have only seen one other than “The French Dispatch.”) Yes, Wes Anderson is a film genius, and he checked off all the boxes he usually attempts in his films (in a good way). My favorite thing about “The French Dispatch” is how relatable it was to my actual life.

As a writer and the Editor in Chief of a newspaper (this one), I was drawn in with the central theme of highlighting journalism’s quirks and idiosyncrasies, from its lengthy feature stories to its archetype editor character. I also caught myself laughing at how the movie poked fun at the aspects of journalism as well. It reminded me not to take myself too seriously and to have fun with the profession I hope to get into.

One of these aspects that Anderson and the film poke fun at is when editor Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray) gives advice to his writers. His only piece of advice is “Just try to make it sound like you wrote it that way on purpose.”

The introduction to the film is ironically the end. It’s the obituary of the magazine’s editor, Arthur Howitzer Jr., who dies and causes the magazine to cease publishing. I found this setup of the plot entertaining and touching. We are introduced to the editor of the magazine, told that he is dead, and see his process of editing the final issue of the magazine through the rest of the movie.

The movie then outlines the final issue of the magazine with five segments: the Obituary, The Cycling Reporter, The Concrete Masterpiece, Revisions to a Manifesto and The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner. The movie ends with the writers and other staff coming together to write the obituary that was introduced at the beginning.

This storytelling is characteristic of Wes Anderson. His style of filmmaking and directing presents the plot of the movie as an authentic story, with elements reminiscent of a novel or play, that often comes full circle, as with this film. Wes Anderson is phenomenal at storytelling, which makes him one of the best stylistic cinema directors.

Another aspect of Anderson’s style is that of his blocking, use of color and symmetry. His color schemes are always especially vintage with pale and quite rustic undertones. But in “The French Dispatch,” Anderson’s use of color with black and white in certain scenes made parts of his film stand out. For example, Moses Rosenthaler’s musings were revealed to us in color, when the rest of the visualization of the feature story was in black and white.

Along with other stylistic and casting choices (for example, Timothee Chalamet as an angsty college student), I suppose this was his purpose: to make sense of a fictional city and fictional magazine while taking certain aspects seriously, or at least to be noteworthy.