Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987)
Directed by Todd Haynes
The final 17 years of American singer and musician Karen Carpenter, performed almost entirely by modified Barbie dolls.
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What critics compared Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story to
That dead end leads them to a buttoned-up performance party by the class’ two theater queens, where an accidental drug trip unfolds as an impressive stop-motion animated sequence that may as well be an homage to Todd Haynes’ “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.”
The camp sensibility, however, is fully self-aware, not unlike certain Todd Haynes' movies: the Barbie-doll biopic "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," or the black-and-white venereal horror/sci-fi segment of "Poison."
Since his early days with “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story” and “Safe,” Haynes has developed sophisticated narratives out of existing cultural reference points.
It has been exciting to watch Haynes mature as a filmmaker, starting with his super 8 film "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story" and progressing through films like "Poison," "Safe," and "Far From Heaven."
In many respects, Carol is the culmination of Haynes’s career, one that dates back to the still-suppressed late-1980s examination of anorexia, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story , and now comes full circle with this very different tale of a woman out of time.
Haynes’ own ur-text, or “skeleton key” film, as identified by critic Dennis Lim, is his debut: 1987’s thesis film Superstar: the Karen Carpenter Story, which recast Carpenter’s tragic life story using Barbie dolls; the kind of signifiers of idealised femininity that played a role in her own downfall.
Ambos intereses se reunieron en su cortometraje Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987).
Several of Haynes' films, such as "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story" (made largely with Barbie dolls) and "I'm Not There" (where six actors played Bob Dylan), confound with their nontraditional narrative techniques.
While both men are utterly competent and conventionally attractive, Napoleon and Illya could have just as easily been played, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story-style, by U.N.C.L.E.
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In such films as Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, Velvet Goldmine and I’m Not There, filmmaker Todd Haynes has taken the stories of famous people and utilized what we know—or think we know—about them to explore ideas about celebrity and our all-consuming need to render their often-complex stories into straightforward narratives.
There is almost an invisible link here to one of Haynes' most infamous films, his 1988 short “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story,” which portrays singer Karen Carpenter's battle with anorexia with Barbie dolls.
Director Todd Haynes, who first unsettled audiences seven years ago by using Barbie-like dolls to make Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, tells this horror tale that's what it is slowly, almost dreamily.
The director of "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," a 45-minute work of genius featuring Barbie dolls portraying the torment of America's anorexic pop siren, Haynes has an insider's view of modern distress, emotional sickness and irony.
In his 1988 short, "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," he blew a wickedly ironic blues for the '70s pop star and anorexia victim.
It's a topic that intrigues Haynes, who explored the subtext of anorexia in his first film, 1988's brilliant "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," which he made with Barbie-like dolls.
Haynes has a strange reputation, first made on "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," a film documentary of the life and death of Karen Carpenter, as played by a Barbie doll.