Arts

Mr. Rostan at the Movies: “In the Shadow of Women” and “Youth”

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Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every week, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

Caine Dano

I have spent more time than I could add up at the movies in Chicago, but shamefully I did not go to the Chicago International Film Festival until its 51st program this year. (And as befits our home base’s culture, it is so terrifically run I will never make the mistake of skipping it again.) My two screenings were of new films not yet generally released in America. One is a small art-house picture, the other is expected to be an Oscar contender, and both are far from perfect…yet are both worth seeing for different reasons.

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Paved With Good Intentions: Beasts of No Nation

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Image of Beasts of No Nation Poster

Last week, Alex wrote an enlightening article about the traditional portrayal of Africa in Western Cinema here. The impetus of the piece was the arrival of the film Beasts of No Nation, adapted and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga from the novel of the same name by Uzodinma Iweala. It’d be a lie to say that many of Alex’s thoughts and observations about the Africa of Western cinema didn’t color my reading of the film, but as with all good writing, it helped me to take notice of several things that might have been missed.

What was unmistakable to me, however, is the fact that Beasts of No Nation, in spite of its ambitions, fails to succeed on several different fronts. It is not without merit – but there’s a great deal missing that could have made this a great movie instead of another mediocre portrayal of an often-overlooked region of the world.

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Mr. Rostan at the Movies: A Well-Made Play

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Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every week, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

Steve Jobs

During high school English, I learned the meaning of the term “well-made play:” an updating of Aristotle’s classical principles of drama that mostly came from the mind of French playwright Eugene Scribe. The well-made play is based around tight structure, plenty of off-screen action, a unity in time and place, key information that only certain characters know, and a fall-and-rise plot leading to a triumphant climax.

It may be about an innovator who helped build the world as we know it, but Steve Jobs is at its heart a filmed version of a well-made play, and this unusual choice makes it transcend the multitude of controversies concerning its journey to the screen, for the result is an unforgettable picture.

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J&STAC: Talking Cap (and Other New #1s)

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-J. Michael Bestul is a writer for the Addison Recorder. Stephanie Ruehl is an artist who works in a comic book shop. They’re married and have a lot of discussions about comic books and graphic novels. Combine all that into a biweekly feature and you get “J. & Steph Talk About Comics.”

It’s a very Marvel J&STAC this week, with a special appearance by Image. We normally don’t do back-to-back new #1 reviews, but there are a lot of them, one of which got a lot of media attention. You can probably guess which one based on this tweet from Kurt Busiek:

Let’s start with Cap, shall we? [Read more…]

Beasts of No Nation and How Western Cinema Sees Africa

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Screen Shot 2015-10-20 at 3.25.32 PM

Editor’s Notes: Beasts of No Nation is currently available to watch on Netflix. 

Netflix’s first foray into the feature film market, Beasts of No Nation, has attracted a sizable amount of acclaim and anticipation this Fall. Directed by Cary Joji Fukungawa, who lent True Detective‘s first season its visual panache, and head-lined by rising international star Idris Elba, its recent release will be a test run for how much popular and awards attention Netflix can attract as a nascent movie distributor.

Beasts of No Nation is also being released in the midst of an on-going social and political maelstorm about identity politics. I’m not here to bury or praise the film as a part of that on-going discussion, that’s the purview of our reviewer. But I did think it was worth noting that Beasts fits into the long-standing Western perspective that Africa and its inhabitants as being unusually uncivilized and barbaric. [Read more…]

Mr. Rostan at the Movies: Remember When I Found Out I Had a Daughter?

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Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every week, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

 Moore Page

Carrie Nelson warned me about Freeheld.

Carrie and I have been friends since we attended Emerson College together, and among many things she is a terrific documentary filmmaker who is steeped in the language and lore of cinema. I say “among many things” because she is also a regular contributor to The Daily Dot and an outspoken voice on LGBTQ and feminist issues. She has taught me a great deal, and thus when she revealed she had seen Freeheld I eagerly asked her opinion on this early Oscar contender.

She looked at me with a grimace.

“It is such a bad film. I wanted to like it so much…but all the dialogue is pretty awful. Very literal and expository.”

I have now seen Freeheld…and it is even worse than that.

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A Single Girl’s Restaurant Review: Anteprima

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I’ve been a resident of Chicago for two years, and after spending my childhood in the ‘burbs and nearly a decade in New England I took immense pride in having a city zip code attached to my address.  I’ve been single for as long as I’ve lived in the city, but my romance with patisseries, pubs, and GrubHub has been constant. The thrill hopping on the El to explore a new neighborhood, the smells of curry, garlic, and something fishy as I walk down Sheridan Rd.- these exciting revelations haven’t diminished over time. Perhaps this is what happens when one has spent the past several years in a small town..

Whenever I go out on dates, my friends want to know how the company was, but it seems like a good chunk of the experience can be shaped by the atmosphere. Where we meet- whether it’s a hipster coffee bar, a Kosher-style deli, or my favorite brewpub- can influence the date almost as much as the conversation and chemistry (or, more often than not, lack thereof). With this in mind, I decided to explore writing about an evening’s juicy culinary details with my company in the background- instead of the other way around. [Read more…]

A Mr. Rostan at the Movies Special: Olive Kitteridge

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Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every two weeks, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

Olive-Kitteridge

During the Emmys this year, a significant part of the conversation focused on both the wins of Jon Hamm and Viola Davis and the record-breaking haul for Game of Thrones. These were reasonable expectations. What surprised me and, I think, many others, were the eight awards given to another HBO program, the miniseries Olive Kitteridge. This was a show that received a great deal of advertising; but, as with CBS’s unrelenting line-up of procedurals, I didn’t know anyone who actually had watched it. Made curious by the Emmys, I fired up HBO GO and spent this past weekend viewing all four hours, and by the final shot I was a broken, sobbing heap who needed to call his parents to regain emotional equilibrium.

Olive Kitteridge joins John Adams, The Wire, and Deadwood as one of HBO’s greatest gifts to us.

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Mr. Rostan at the Movies: This Column is Called “Electric Boogaloo.”

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Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every two weeks, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.

Australian filmmaker Mark Hartley shot to notice with Not Quite Hollywood, his 2008 doc about his country’s run of over-the-top exploitation movies in their film industry’s nascent stage. Now, working with Warner Bros. and producer Brett Ratner, Hartley has created a hilarious, natural follow-up on an even greater scale about one of the biggest rises and falls in movie history with Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films.

Golan and Globus

With the 80s in Mind, Indeed

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J&STAC: Daydreaming

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-J. Michael Bestul is a writer for the Addison Recorder. Stephanie Ruehl is an artist who works in a comic book shop. They’re married and have a lot of discussions about comic books and graphic novels. Combine all that into a biweekly feature and you get “J. & Steph Talk About Comics.”

What impossible combination would you like to see on your favorite series?

There were two events that inspired us to daydream and discuss this. The first was the latest One Shot podcast episode, wherein Rat Queens author Kurtis J. Wiebe played a session of 13th Age. As J&STAC readers know, Rat Queens is probably our favorite ongoing title, and they may have guessed that 13th Age is one of -J.’s favorite RPG systems. Hearing the two combined on a Chicago-based podcast of unrivaled quality only made it sweeter.

But wait — Tuesday would not be outdone by its predecessor in the week. That’s because Marvel announced yesterday that Ta-Nehisi Coates would be writing a new Black Panter series.

We repeat: TA-NEHISI COATES WILL BE WRITING A BLACK PANTHER SERIES. That’s one of those perfect mash-ups that you dream up excitedly after a few drinks, but figure it’s too awesome an idea to actually happen.

In that vein, we’ve each come up with a “too-crazy-to-actually-happen” list of writers and artists we’d love to see on some of our favorite titles. [Read more…]