3.19 – BIRDMAN and Renown

Posted on by The Prestige

Our last Iñárritu film is 2014’s BIRDMAN, OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) (don’t worry: that’s the last time we’ll use the subtitle). We offer fairly similar reviews, before talking about style over substance and the director’s views on the superhero genre — and we end with some concluding thoughts on Iñárritu’s oeuvre.

Next Week
Our next mini-season is all about Spike Lee — we start with his 1986 breakout SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT, available here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/SHES-GOTTA-HAVE-Spike-Lee/dp/B01BETILK6.
This Week’s Media
ANTFARM DICKHOLE (2011): Bill Zebub, Mike Nastri, Jessica Mazo
STAR TREK: DISCOVERY (2017–): Akiva Goldsman, Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones
MCMAFIA (2018–): James Watkins, James Norton, David Strathairn
Recommendations
ROUNDERS (1998): John Dahl, Matt Damon, Edward Norton
THE REVENANT (2015): Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy
THE TREE OF LIFE (2011): Terrence Malick, Brad Pitt, Sean Penn
VICTORIA (2015): Sebastian Schipper, Laia Costa, Frederick Lau
Footnotes
There’s an intro to the basics of magic(/al) realism here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_realism. Here’s our standard link to something on the subject of Chekov’s Gun, a concept that gets another airing this week: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChekhovsGun. There are some interesting thoughts on social media notoriety here: https://rankexecutives.com/social-media-is-it-important and here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-journey-into-the-new-online-reality/2015/04/09/534041b4-c98f-11e4-a199-6cb5e63819d2_story.html?utm_term=.d613001dfea9. Finally, the IMDB page for Emmanuel Lubezki is worth a read, if only to marvel at the extent of his body of work, particularly as cinematographer:http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0523881/
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