entertainment

entertainment movies

Who decided that giving “Alita: Battle Angel” real anime eyes was a good idea? (Plus other gripes)

By on Monday, December 11, 2017

I already knew Alita: Battle Angel was going to be a contentious film. It’s a live-action version of a cult anime classic. That alone was going to open it up to criticism. Also: Robert Rodriguez cast Rosa Salazar in the title role (more on this later). But the movie decided not to help itself by giving us possibly the worst version of an on-screen android I’ve seen in some time.

WHY, ROBERT RODRIGUEZ!? WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS? WHY THE BIG ANIME EYES?

Certainly, people had opinions. Very funny opinions.

The only good things to come from this trailer is 1) seeing Mahershala Ali stunt in bada$$ shades-and-suit combo:

And 2) learning that Haikus for Hotties model and Pretty Dudes star Yoshi Sudarso has a part in this movie.

I must agree with Sudarso, these are some bold choices. And when you make bold choices, you’re bound to divide people. However, I’m definitely on the side that does not get these eyes.

Now, one argument that can be made, I suppose, is that the film is really trying to impress upon you how fake Alita is. To put it another way, other films have people playing androids; in this film, the actor is just a body for the special effects to play on so the film can loudly exclaim how androids exist in an uncanny valley. I get it. But do I like it? No.

The main reason is because anime eyes are strange when they’re taken literally. I get Rodriguez wants to be different with his film and make a more creative mark (maybe to separate himself from the many bad American live-action anime films there are), but he might just have shot himself in the foot with this stylistic choice.

Anime eyes are the Japanese interpretation of American cartoons, which of course feature big eyes. As Carli Velocci wrote for Waypoint:

[T]he distinct anime style as we know it today can be traced back largely to one person. Osamu Tezuka, widely considered to be the “godfather of manga,” was heavily influenced by Walt Disney and Max Fleischer, the creator of Betty Boop. He was said to have been particularly obsessed with Bambi, which he watched over 80 times. If you even just glance at Betty or early Disney characters like Bambi, you can see the resemblance with anime. Both feature characters with oversized heads and large, expressive eyes.

Tezuka went on to create the precursor for modern-day anime: Astro Boy, the story of an android that fights crime. The main character is the epitome of this art style, with large, expressive eyes that carried over to his multiple incarnations. It debuted in 1963 in Japan and has been recreated multiple times since.

I feel like Rodriguez understands this and that influenced his decision to have Alita’s remain huge–he wants to remain true to the character. But is this the way to do it? When anime eyes mesh with the real world, the result is what we’ve got here–something that looks really off-putting and, strangely enough, more cartoonish than the original intention. Like, looking at Alita interact with her human counterparts, it’s only too easy to see where the computer ends and the physical begins.

Also, if Rodriguez really wants to be true to the character, wouldn’t it have made more sense to cast a Japanese actress instead of a Latina one?

Hear me–I am all for Rodriguez’s M.O. of casting Latinx actors and making their stories front and center. That aspect of Rodriguez’s filmmaking has been why I’ve seen it for his films as a whole. I also respect that he’s bringing Latinx acting talent to Alita: Battle Angel. But this also seems like another case in which good intentions miss the point. Similar to how The Martian had black and white actors playing Asian characters, Alita: Battle Angel has the main character–a Japanese android–played by a non-Asian actor. Granted, this remake is more of a “retelling” as it were, since multiple minorities are represented in various roles and minorities are still the driving forces of this film, both in front and behind the screen. However, this could have been an opportunity to truly pay homage to the film’s Japanese roots and cast an actress of Japanese descent in the role. Just my feeling about it.

As it stands, I’m still heavily interested to see where this film will go and how it’ll be treated the closer we get to its July 20, 2018 release date.

What do you think about this film? Give your opinions in the comments section below!

Loved this article? Follow JUST ADD COLOR at @COLORwebmag and on Facebook!

Continue Reading
0
entertainment movies

Is “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” literally the most beautiful Marvel movie ever?

By on Monday, December 11, 2017

Marvel’s rehabilitation of Spider-Man took off like a rocket with the reintroduction of young Peter Parker into the MCU, followed by the astoundingly good Spider-Man: Homecoming. Now, the next phase of the rehabilitation is shooting into the stratosphere with the Sony Pictures Animation film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

I love animation, and frankly, I haven’t seen animation look this good in a long time. It’s an odd combination of 3D and traditional that makes Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore) jump off the screen. The style really does make the character and the city of New York larger than life. Every scene is practically electric.

There’s also just the fact that we’re finally seeing more treatment given to Morales, who is the comic book canon Spider-Man nowadays. There’s been a bit of a turf war between fans over who should be the canonical film Spider-Man. Fans of Miles have also been concerned that Marvel’s only concerned about diversity in the back of the house, as it were, instead of the front–while Marvel consistently boasts about it’s diversity within its pages, it’s been hard to get that same type of diversity on screen. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse finally gives Marvel a way to showcase all facets of their canon and give all fans the Spider-Man they want to see, whether that’s Peter or Miles. The next step: getting Miles into the live-action movies.

Okay, now to the moodboards (and what beautiful moodboards they are).

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is coming to theaters Christmas 2018.

Loved this article? Follow JUST ADD COLOR at @COLORwebmag and on Facebook!

Continue Reading
0
entertainment LGBT TV web series

Review: New webseries “Giving Me Life: In the Land of the Deadass” will give you proper “Living Single” feels (SPOILERS)

By on Friday, December 8, 2017

I love Living Single. I’ve watched every episode, and I know the characters inside out. Even though we might get a reboot soon, I’ve longed for another show to give me that same comfortable vibe of friends who have each other’s backs while calling each other out on their mistakes. If you’re like me, wishing and hoping for a show to follow Living Single‘s leave, give Dafina Roberts’ Giving Me Life a watch.

Giving Me Life, a Kickstarter Creator-in-Residence project and a 2017 New York Television Festival Official Selection, focuses on a core group of friends–Nala (Lori Liang), an artivist who has to reconcile her idealism with the stark realities of making money; Leah (Natalie Jacobs), a career-driven Type A investment banker whose studying for the GMATs and only dates up; Travis (Marshall star Mark St. Cyr), a highly spiritual, charismatic guy who thought he’d found the right spiritual partner; Cam (Sly Maldonado), a lovable party boy who is actually looking for the right woman to settle down with; Jess (Nathaly Lopez), a middle school counselor who uses her counseling skills to be the listening ear for all of her friends–even though she has problems making room for a girlfriend in her life; and Gil (Jarvis Tomdio), Nala’s crush, a people pleaser and “the epitome of geek-chic.”

These friends are trying their best to make it in New York and achieve their dreams while not losing their minds in the process. Thankfully, these guys have each other, and regardless of whatever problems they have, they all have each other’s back. The camaraderie is what makes the show so easy and enjoyable to watch. So far there are only four episodes, but once you finish, you’ll wish there were more.

Honestly, the show has left me wondering why this hasn’t been snapped up for TV pilot season. I think this show is good enough to rival series like Insecure, Dear White People and Master of None. It definitely gives viewers everything they’re asking for in these representation-focused times. We have tons of diversity, but more than that, we have inclusion; we’re told stories that reflect the lives of real people from the perspectives of people of color. The characters are never cookie-cutter; they are dynamic, fresh, well-rounded and behave like people we’ve come in contact with before (for some of us, we might be those characters). Their different socio-economic, ethnic, and sexual spaces these characters reside drive the storylines in an organic way, and there’s never an episode that feels like it’s a “very special episode.”

Natalie Jacobs as Leah. (Giving Me Life/Facebook)

What might be the most refreshing thing about Giving Me Life is that it gives its LGBT characters room to be imperfect people. I think one failing some shows on TV have when it comes to representing LGBT characters is that there’s a tendency to make the characters the poster children for the LGBT community. There’s a compulsion to try to make them perfect or edgy in some way. The characters in Giving Me Life, however, aren’t treated like stereotypes. Their needs and wants are just as fleshed out as their straight counterparts, and they are allowed to make mistakes.

For instance, Travis believes he’s found his soulmate with his boyfriend, but realizes that his boyfriend might want more than Travis can give him. After a bad experience with swinging (something the deeply religious Travis didn’t want to do in the first place), Travis breaks up with his boyfriend, but later wonders if he made a wrong choice. Leah, on the other hand, meets and falls in love with a man who also seems like the perfect match–they’re both climbing the ladder to financial success, they enjoy a certain level of luxury, they’re both bisexual, and they both feel the strain from stereotypes placed on bisexual people. But the catch is that Leah doesn’t even know her guy’s name. Not knowing his name makes her feel thotish, and one thing Leah won’t let herself be is a thot.

Travis (Mark St. Cyr, left), with his boyfriend Clarence (Mijon Zulu) before they break up. (Giving Me Life/Twitter)

Overall, Giving Me Life will, in fact, give you life. You’ll feel like you’ve found a new set of friends, and it’ll leave you with the hope that more episodes come very soon.

Follow Giving Me Life via its website as well as on social media–Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, and Instagram.

Loved this article? Follow JUST ADD COLOR at @COLORwebmag and on Facebook!

Continue Reading
0
issues entertainment movies TV

What’s with Catherine Zeta-Jones playing Columbian drug lord Griselda Blanco?

By on Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, you might have seen the high-budget trailer for Lifetime’s Griselda Blanco biopic, Cocaine Godmother. If not, here you go:

If you’re astute to representation issues, you probably know what I’m going to point out as the problem. Catherine Zeta-Jones, a Welsh woman, is playing Blanco, a Colombian woman. Why is she, though?

There are plenty Latina actresses who could have played this role, and in fact, there is one who has been lobbying for this role for a very long time–Jennifer Lopez. Lopez has been jonesing to play Blanco for years, and has created a deal with HBO to bring her TV movie to life (as to when that movie is coming remains to be seen).

Surprisingly, it’s also not the first time Zeta-Jones has been tapped to play Blanco; she was initially supposed to play the Queen of Cocaine in a biopic called The Godmother. According to W Magazine, Zeta-Jones won the role over…Jennifer Lopez. According to a source to The Sunday Times in 2016, despite Lopez’s hard lobbying for the role, she didn’t win out because “she doesn’t have the acting quality to pull it off.”

Today, neither woman are in the role–it now belongs to Oscar-nominated actress Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace). But both women are gunning to have the last word on Blanco’s life. Right now, we’re seeing Zeta-Jones’ vanity project in the lead.

This gets back to the main point of this article–why is a non-Latina actress playing a Latina figure? From where I’m sitting, it seems like another case of Hollywood (and maybe even Zeta-Jones herself) believing in casting white actors in non-white roles because they have an ethnic “look.” It’s another, subtler kind of whitewashing.

There’s a reason Zeta-Jones has been able to play Latina on more than one occasion–she played a Latina character in The Mask of Zorro opposite Antonio Banderas–and that’s because she’s a white woman who has ethnically-ambiguous looks. Casting-wise, Zeta-Jones fits the model Hollywood looks for when casting a stereotypical non-black “Latina” role; she’s, as Hollywood would describe her, “exotic” thanks to her olive skin and curvy features. But casting her also comes with the added bonus of whiteness, which adds “credibility,” and “name recognition” to the role. In this way, Zeta-Jones can play both sides, having her cake and eating it, too.

But in the stills and trailer for Cocaine Godmother, you can still see Zeta-Jones exaggerating her already ethnically-ambiguous features to the point where it starts becoming character makeup. Her naturally olive skin is bronzed even further to get it closer to Blanco’s, making her skin look like it has an unnatural tan. Her nose is somehow contoured and highlighted to look even more bulbous in an effort to match Blanco’s nose in real life. The overall look is meant to make her look less like a Welsh-English woman and more like a woman of color–the makeup treatment doesn’t want you to equate Zeta-Jones’ performance with brownface, but let’s face it; it’s brownface.

This is also not the first time a white actress has used ethnic ambiguity to their advantage. Shirley Maclaine, who has naturally hooded eyes, was able to do it in the 1962 film that’s basically posits a white woman stealing a role from a Japanese woman as a comedy, My Geisha, and in 1966’s Gambit, in which she plays opposite Michael Caine as “exotic Eurasian showgirl” Nicole Chang. Most recently, Floriana Lima, an Italian-American actress, was able to use her looks to play Latina Supergirl character Maggie Sawyer. Many more examples exist beyond these two.

Zeta-Jones is looking to have her cake and eat it too again with Cocaine Godmother. But this time, there’s a little bit of pushback.

The noise around this film is only going to grow the closer we get to the film’s 2018 TV premiere. We’ll see how the film handles the impending whitewashing discussion it’ll inevitably come up against.

Continue Reading
0
celebrity entertainment movies

Liu Yifei stuns in new “Mulan” promo shots

By on Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Disney’s Mulan is headed in the right direction finally, at least with casting its main star. Say hello to our Mulan–Liu Yifei, star of international films The Forbidden Kingdom, Outcast, and The Chinese Widow.

Liu, otherwise known as Crystal Liu in the States, has gotten the royal treatment from Disney, including a Mulan-themed photo shoot to celebrate the casting news. The photos, which Liu posted to her Instagram page, give a tease as to what Liu might look as a cinematic Mulan–of course, she’s wearing high fashion in these photos, but you can see she definitely knows how to work a camera and pose with a sword (she is a model and ambassador for fashion houses like Dior).

Mulan is expected to come to theaters in 2019. Hopefully we’ll know if we have a bisexual Li Shang by that point, if we even have Shang at all–at last check, the film is planning on totally rewriting the role into a new character, which is not only annoying, but a missed opportunity for some LGBT representation. But for now, let’s bask in the cool photos; I’ll save that axe to grind at a later date.

Loved this article? Follow JUST ADD COLOR at @COLORwebmag and on Facebook!

Continue Reading
2
entertainment LGBT web series

This new webseries celebrates queer black women in love

By on Monday, December 4, 2017

The web series is the new place for inclusive messages and nuanced stories about marginalized people that aren’t always shown in the mainstream. 195 Lewis is one such example of the web series making its mark with an underserved audience.

195 Lewis focuses on a cast of black LGBTQ women of color as they live and love in Brookyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood. The show’s creators, Rae Leone Allen and Yaani Supreme, have created the show from their own experiences–like their characters, they are also black women in the LGBTQ community who hail from Brooklyn. From their experiences, they were able to create a series that finally put love between queer black women–people who are rarely ever shown on TV–on the main internet stage.

Emily J. Smith interviewed Allen for Broadly. Here are three moments from her interview worth noting.

On the inviting feeling of 195 Lewis

“We’ve been able to create this warm and embracing world. We want people to join and feel safe there.

On white male privilege in the media industry:

“The only thing we need to take from white men is their audacity. Women are different kind of creatures, we’re constantly asking questions and interrogating ourselves, we know we’ll be responsible with our art. We just need to get audacious.”

On the groundbreaking nature of 195 Lewis :

“We’re showing beautiful black women on screen loving each other and being themselves. That’s revelatory in and of itself.”

Read the full article and watch the first episode of 195 Lewis at Broadly. Follow 195 Lewis through the show’s website and social media–Facebook, Vimeo, Instagram and Twitter.

Continue Reading
0
beauty celebrity entertainment

Black girls are winning! Aja Naomi King, Issa Rae and Tiffany Haddish are killing the game

By on Monday, December 4, 2017

There’s been a flurry of beauty and movie news that celebrates black beauty and talent! Check it out!

Aja Naomi King as L’Oreal Paris Ambassador

Instagram

Aja Naomi King is the new face of L’Oreal Paris. According to 21Ninety, King, who is best known for her work on ABC’s How to Get Away with Murder, will start her ambassadorship with the True Match Lumi Glow collection.

“Gratitude can’t begin to describe this feeling inside,” she wrote on Twitter. “No words can capture it…but I hope to be one more face looking back at you showing you what IS possible!!!”

Tiffany Haddish becomes an awards frontrunner

Universal Pictures

Girls Trip has put comedian Tiffany Haddish on the map, and the Oscar buzz surrounding her performance isn’t just hot air. Haddish has been named this year’s Best Supporting Actress by the New York Film Critics Circle. According to Vanity Fair, Haddish beat out other awards contenders such as Lady Bird‘s Laurie Metcalf and I, Tonya‘s Allison Janney.

“Though the New York Film Critics Circle is an insular voting body that doesn’t overlap with those who pick contenders for ceremonies like the Golden Globes and the Oscars,” wrote Yohana Desta, “it seems likely that her buzz, newly bolstered by this best-supporting actress award, could reinvigorate voters in other groups to throw their weight behind Haddish.

Issa Rae partners with CoverGirl

CoverGirl

Also from 21Ninety, Insecure star Issa Rae is bringing her Awkward Black Girl magic to CoverGirl with her new lip collection.

Her collection, Melting Pout Metallics, features eight metallic lip shades, and these aren’t your average shades. With colors ranging from blue (“Sunday Blue”) a cool gray  (“Platinum Card”), vibrant purple (“Amped”) to a liquid gold (“Banger”), there are shades for even the most adventurous lipstick wearer.

Hooray, ladies!

Loved this article? Follow JUST ADD COLOR at @COLORwebmag and on Facebook!

Continue Reading
0