Dialogic Cinephilia - May 3, 2019

Cuarón, Alfonso and Kent Jones. "Roma." The Close-Up #215 (February 20, 2019) 

Dueñas, Jessica and Kelly Holstine. "We Can’t Back People Who Hate Our Kids: Kentucky & Minnesota Teachers of Year Boycott Trump Meeting." Democracy Now (May 3, 2019) ["We speak with two award-winning teachers who are trying to teach Trump a lesson. On Monday, Jessica Dueñas, the 2019 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, and Kelly Holstine, the 2018 Minnesota Teacher of the Year, boycotted a White House ceremony honoring them and other state winners of the award in protest of the Trump administration’s education policies. But Dueñas and Holstine skipped the event to register their opposition to Trump’s policies on immigration, education and LGBTQ rights, saying many of the White House policies directly impact their immigrant and refugee students."]

Indigenous Cultures and Issues Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Jhally, Sut and Rachel Weber. "Mass. Judge Refuses to Halt Pro-Palestinian Event at UMass Featuring Roger Waters & Linda Sarsour." Democracy Now (May 3, 2019) ["“Not Backing Down: Israel, Free Speech, and the Battle for Palestinian Human Rights.” That’s the title of an event set to take place Saturday at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. After three anonymous UMass students filed a lawsuit to stop the event, a judge ruled Thursday the event can proceed, saying, “There’s nothing that comes even close to a threat of harm or incitement to violence or lawlessness.” Part Two: "Roger Waters on Palestine: “You Have to Stand Up for People’s Human Rights All Over the World."" ]

Koski, Genevieve, et al. "Ready Player One / Tron (Part 1)." The Next Picture Show #122 (April 3, 2018) ["Steven Spielberg’s new READY PLAYER ONE turns videogaming into both a fantasy adventure and a meta-narrative about adventure fantasies, a premise that feels directly inspired — and given Ernest Cline’s source novel, almost certainly is — by Steven Lisberger’s 1982 Disney oddity TRON. Before digging into what connects the two films, we dive into TRON’s glow-y, rudimentarily CGI-ed mainframe to consider the bits and bytes that drive this fascinatingly flawed film, from its confusing religious undertones (overtones?) to its strange real world/virtual world disconnect."]

---. "Ready Player One / Tron (Part 2)." The Next Picture Show #123 (April 5, 2018) ["Steven Lisberger’s groundbreaking live-action Disney film TRON is one of the few 1980s properties that doesn’t get explicitly referenced in Steven Spielberg’s new adaptation of Ernest Cline’s novel READY PLAYER ONE, but the earlier film makes up a significant portion of RP1’s source code. After discussing our reactions to READY PLAYER ONE, and hashing out what made Cline’s novel become so strangely controversial, we look at what connects and distinguishes these two films about life inside a video game, from their attitudes about human/computer relationships to how they approach the idea of corporate control."]

Lee, Spike and Lawrence O'Donnell. "On Blackkklansman." Film Comment Podcast (February 22, 2019) [" ... an extended conversation between Lee and Emmy Award–winning writer and television host Lawrence O’Donnell (The West Wing, MSNBC), followed by a screening of BlacKkKlansman, presented by Film Comment. In the course of the conversation, Lee discusses the genesis of BlacKkKlansman, how he chooses collaborators, and what it would mean to him to win an Oscar for the film. Nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Director, BlacKkKlansman tells the story of Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), the first African-American detective to serve in the Colorado Springs Police Department, who bravely sets out on a dangerous mission to infiltrate and expose the Ku Klux Klan. In a feature on the film in the July-August 2018 issue of Film Comment, Teo Bugbee writes that, “BlacKkKlansman is no straight biopic. Instead, it follows the beats of a traditional cop movie, where a man of the law is torn between allegiances in his efforts to solve a case. In this regard, the film represents the latest chapter in the underrated career of Spike Lee, genre filmmaker.”"]