Ava DuVernay
15 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
Set during the segregation days of 1962, Green Book is the story of an unlikely interracial friendship that solved America’s racism problem and, to quote Tina Fey’s Golden Globes opening monologue reference to Selma, “now everything’s fine.”
Even when the stories are more thoughtful about race than “Green Book,” in the films that are rapturously lauded with black protagonists in this century (“Selma”, “Ray,” “Hotel Rwanda” even this year’s “Blackkklansman”) we notice at the centre a black man who is not a (mere) common man of the people but a man who stands apart from his peers.
The second reason that the comparison between DuVernay’s Wrinkle and a film like My Neighbor Totoro holds water is that to fully appreciate this movie, you must accept it on its own terms.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
Directed by Andrew Adamson
influenced A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
What is clearly intended as the start of a five-film series may well fizzle out in the manner of "The Chronicles of Narnia."
We know now that the prison industrial complex runs on free labor, informed by books like The New Jim Crow and Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th. But there’s something especially insidious about taking young Black boys during the Civil Rights Movement and killing their hopes and dreams before they’re even old enough to pursue them. The tragedy of Elwood’s situation is a systemic one, affecting boys like him and Turner all over America––even now.
Needless to say, this is an exceedingly strange conceit for a movie, especially one with a massive budget aimed largely at the family trade, and for a little while, I found myself holding out hope that it would prove to be one of those once-in-a-blue-moon oddities that defy all typical expectations for a family film and are all the better as a result—films along the lines of “The 5000 Finger of Dr. T,” “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” “Bugsy Malone,” “Popeye” and “Return to Oz” that could plausibly play as kiddie matinees and as midnight shows.
Working from a screenplay by Jennifer Lee (“Frozen”) and Jeff Stockwell (“The Ottoman Lieutenant”), fast-rising director Ava DuVernay (“Selma”) delivers a film with plenty to look at but little to care about.
(The screenplay is by Jennifer Lee, of “Frozen,” and Jeff Stockwell.)
Directed by Ava DuVernay (Selma) from a screenplay by Disney regular Jennifer Lee (Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen), A Wrinkle in Time feels like a random series of fantastical and often beautiful but still very random events.
If you were to make a smoothie out of equal parts “The Wizard of Oz” and “Alice Through the Looking Glass” with costumes from “The Wiz,” a shot of C.S. Lewis and a villain out of Stephen King, all that Ava DuVernay’s “A Wrinkle in Time,” which was co-written by Jennifer Lee (“Frozen”), would be missing is Michael Jackson’s Scarecrow and a few songs.
And Ava DuVernay's film, from a screenplay by Frozen-scribe Jennifer Lee, is not an unmitigated disaster.
Director Ava DuVernay ("Selma," "13th") has built her career firmly rooted in reality and fails to bring any additional dimension to Jennifer Lee ("Frozen") and Jeff Stockwell's ("Bridge to Terabithia") spiritual science fiction fantasy screenplay.
…the other movie this sort of reminded me of is Ava DuVernay's A Wrinkle in Time…
Cinematographer Bradford Young (who worked with Ava DeVernay on both Middle of Nowhere , 2012 and Selma , 2014), editor Joe Walker ( 12 Years a Slave , 2013), production designer Patrice Vermette (his fourth collaboration with the director), and eclectic composer Jóhann Jóhannson ( The Theory of Everything , 2014) blend their collective craftsmanship into a mesmerizing accomplishment.
It’s obvious that Reiner made LBJ in response to Ava DuVernay’s Selma (2014), which demeaned Johnson as a begrudging participant in the civil-rights movement.
Now, she has the keys to Walt’s kingdom as “Mulan” is the most expensive female-directed film ever at $200 million, topping Patty Jenkins’ “Wonder Woman” ($175 million) and crushing Ava DuVernay’s “Selma” ($20 million), Dee Rees’ “Mudbound” ($10 million) and Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-winning “The Hurt Locker” ($11 million).
This includes popular and critical successes like Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station and Creed , Ava DuVernay’s Selma , Denzel Washington’s adaptation of Fences , and 12 Years a Slave , but also the scandalous rise and fall of Nate Parker’s ambitious Birth of a Nation , the restoration of Richard Wright’s Native Son film, the discoveries of Kathleen Collins’s Losing Ground and of the teenage avant-garde filmmaker Edward Owens, and the release of the scholarly, multi-disc box set Pioneers of African American Cinema .
The shots of Winfrey, Witherspoon and Kaling in a wheat field, isolated figures on the horizon, recall some of the better images from Stanley Donen’s 1974 film version (a controversial one) of “The Little Prince.”
“Tomorrowland” and “John Carter” are easy comparisons here.
Or that Selma’s Ava DuVernay recently turned down helming the forthcoming Black Panther?
How about the money-hungry producer, John Woolf (Reece Shearsmith, Shaun of the Dead , The World’s End ), or maybe the film’s pompous, uptight screenwriter Mervyn Cocker Norris (David Oyelowo, Rise of the Planet of the Apes , Selma )? Better yet, the play’s mastermind Petula Spencer (Ruth Wilson, True Things , Saving Mr. Banks ), Petula’s seafood-loving mother (Ania Marson), or Mervyn’s cousin the amateur taxidermist Gio (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, The Last Letter From Your Lover , Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywaler ) could be behind it all.