Monthly Archives: May 2020

The pandemic has been a perfect opportunity to catch up with backlogs of unwatched films or binge-watch new series. Its been a tough time for local cinemas, but some arthouse film distributors helped The Broad Theater and Zeitgeist Theater & Lounge by splitting $12 ticket fees with them if viewers used links from the theaters websites.

Both The Broad Theater and Zeitgeist air a special screening of Up from the Streets, a documentary about New Orleans music, and a portion of viewing fees goes to a fund set up by the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation for musicians affected by the pandemic. The film is available May 15. The films executive producer is trumpeter Terence Blanchard, who will participate in a Q&A via Zoom on Saturday, May 16.

Also recently introduced by the New Orleans Film Society is a channel to view 40 films screened at the New Orleans Film Festival. Below are details about film screenings that benefit local theaters and cultural organizations.

"Bacurau." When townspeople in a remote area of Brazil notice their village has disappeared from the internet, it sets up a modern Western as the town sits on the lawless frontier of global forces. The Broad and Zeitgeist.

Here are some cyber activities and events you can do while social distancing.

"Corpus Christi." Nominated for a Best International Feature Oscar in 2020, this thriller from Poland follows a young man from prison to the pulpit, as he is mistaken for a priest sent to help a town in need. Zeitgeist.

"Crescendo." A famous director tries to build a youth orchestra of Israeli and Palestinian children. Zeitgeist.

"Extra Ordinary." In this paranormal comedy, Will Forte plays a washed-up rock star who needs to find a virgin to make a deal with the devil for another hit. The Broad andZeitgeist.

"From NOLA with Love." The New Orleans Film Festival offers online screenings of 40 feature and short films by local filmmakers from its 2019 event via its website. Visit https://nolalove.eventive.org for details and a film guide.

"LInnocente." Director Luchino Viscontis 1976 Italian film about libertine 19th-century aristocrats was restored and rereleased in 2020.Zeitgeist.

Some help to get you through the waning days of lockdown

"The Hottest August." This person-on-the-street documentary encounters New Yorkers talking about their daily lives and hopes and fears about the future. See page 25.Zeitgeist.

"Mossville When Great Trees Fall." The documentary follows the struggle for survival of a Louisiana community created by formerly enslaved people and free people of color that found itself surrounded by petrochemical plants. The Broad.

"New York International Childrens Film Festival." There are two slates of short animated and live action films, one for children ages 3 to 7 and one for ages 8 and older. Zeitgeist.

"Once Were Brothers." The documentary follows the rise and fall of Robbie Robertson and The Band. The Broad.

"Roar." Anyone who binge-watched Tiger King may be interested in this 1981 feature starring Tippi Hedron and Melanie Griffith about people living among lions, tigers and elephants. The Broad.

"Saint Maud." A nurse who recently converted to Catholicism fears that she is possessed in this British psychological horror film. The Broad.

"Satantango." A seven-hour work in the slow cinema movement, Bela Tarrs film follows the lives of former members of an agricultural collective after the fall of communism in Hungary. Zeitgeist.

"Up from the Streets." Director Michael Murphys exploration of New Orleans musical traditions includes interviews with Terence Blanchard, Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Robert Plant, Sting and others. The Broad and Zeitgeist.

"Vitalina Varela." A sort of visual poem of shadows and framing, director Pedro Costas film is about a woman from Cape Verde traveling to Portugal, where her long separated husband has just died. Zeitgeist.

"Wild Goose Lake." In this film noir-esque crime thriller, small-time mobster Zhou Zenong tries to mitigate the damage to his wife and friends after he kills a cop while battling a rival gang. Zeitgeist.

Originally posted here:

One last chance to binge-watch movies you've meant to watch - NOLA.com

So much of our national politics looks like bread and circuses that one can miss important shifts in the political zeitgeist. Joe Bidens descent to the second circle of #MeToo hell may be one of them.

Yes, we are learning again the high price of double standards and hypocrisy, which are always with us. But while the Democrats bucket brigades throw water on the Biden-Reade wildfire, look over there at something else thats in flames. It is liberal progressivisms nearly hundred-year-old strategy of using moral condescension as a crude weapon against its enemies.

A distinction is necessary. Morality is about right and wrong. Moralitys insincere cousin is moralism, which grabs virtue off the shelf as needed. About every 20 or 30 years, the progressives come up with another moralized argument to delegitimize their opponents.

The most durable political weapon the progressives ever created was the notion that capitalism is immoral. This interpretation of private economic interests was popularized as far back as the 1930s with Matthew Josephsons The Robber Barons, a tendentious history of late-19th-century American entrepreneurs, whose title stuck as shorthand for capitalism.

The progressives positioned capitalism not merely as flawed but irredeemably immoral and requiring controlby them. President Franklin Roosevelt recognized what a potent and repeatable weapon this was, coining the campaign phrase the Ishmaels and the Insulls, whose hand is against everymans.

Moralism became a progressive go-to tactic in American political life because it constantly forced conservatives to issue denials of moral failure.

By now the appeal is virtually robotic. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer this week outputted his thoughts that Republican plans to give companies wrestling with coronavirus liability protection are going to help big CEOs, but not the workers.

Next came the great moral event of the centurys second halfthe civil rights movement. Once past the landmark laws of the mid-1960s, Democratic politicians quickly transformed even that into a moralistic weapon, routinely asserting that Republican policies would roll back the moral victories of that era.

Leave it to Joe Biden, looking more than ever like an innocent abroad, to resurrect his partys legacy of protecting Jim Crow when at a fundraiser he cited his good Senate relationship with Old-South Democrats Herman Talmadge of Georgia and James Eastland of Mississippi.

During Barack Obamas first high-minded presidential term, he gave speech after mocking speech about the wealthiest and the 1%. They came in like moralistic mortar rounds. In 2011, a liberal group ran a TV ad against Paul Ryan, then House Budget Committee chairman, depicting him throwing Grandma off the cliff with his proposed Medicare reforms.

Then, no longer content with isolating its opposition as its moral inferiors, the American left began to overreach. It targeted basic beliefs that had bipartisan support, such as the consensus about First Amendment free-speech protections. The campus speech codes arrived first but then came the mobs that shut down talks by conservative speakers, claiming they had moral justification for suppressing these speakers views on race, women and ... pretty much anything.

This was an important turning point. Previously progressive condescension at least operated inside traditional moral categories. In recent years, it has decided it could get away with displacing even agreed-on norms of right and wrong with entirely novel claims, such as demoting centuries of due process for the accused with believe the woman.

Standard measures of credibility devolved into credulousnessbut again, primarily in the interests of deploying the new rules as a political weapon. The ideas, or sentiments, were secondary.

The weaponizing of sexual-abuse accusations for the Brett Kavanaugh nomination was so over the top and evidence-free that many people eventually went numb on the subject.

Has the time finally come to agree the American system has waded into deep water by using cheap moralism as a political weapon? It wont change, not unless people in positions of leadership speak up.

Just because Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is reinstating due process in campus sexual misconduct proceedings doesnt mean liberals have to remain passive and silent. Former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman used to talk in clear terms about defending moral traditions, but the Democratic left drove him out of the party.

The Biden episode suggests that political moralism is losing its punch. Progressives will keep trying to intimidate their opponents this way because thats what they do. But nonstop media eventually sucks the energy out of everything these days, even its allies.

Other than the Democrats downloading pro forma support for Mr. Biden in hope of getting the vice presidential nomination, hardly anyone cares one way or the other about his guilt or innocence, or his accuser. The publics normal instincts of concern have been worn down into a cynical callousness. Can anyone count how many times Bernie Sanders called some part of American life a moral outrage?

What lies on the other side of the Biden double standard is no standard at all. We are getting close.

Write henninger@wsj.com.

Read this article:

Joe Biden and the Moralizers - The Wall Street Journal

CBR has become the latest outlet to take a tired swing at the wildly popular The Rising of the Shield Hero, as a recently published article questions the series socially contentious undertones and labels its fanbase as incels.

On May 5th, the comic book and pop culture outlet published an article declaring that The Rising of the Shield Hero Is Absurdly Popular for NO Good Reason, in which freelance article writer Timothy Donohoo purports to be baffled by the series continued popularity, opening his article by claiming that the recipe for a potentially terrible anime was cooked to perfection with The Rising of the Shield Hero and that the constant attacks on the series socially contentious undertones were well deserved before proceeding to examine how one of todays worst anime has become one of its most popular.

Isekai is easily the most ubiquitous genre in todays anime and manga. While this means the genre has a huge audience of avid fans, it also means that it has plenty of detractors, as well. Often seen as incredibly cliche, if not boring, the faraway fantasy worlds that isekai transports its heroes and viewers to all seem to blend together at this point. Add in a host of social faux pas, and you have the recipe for a potentially terrible anime.

That recipe was cooked to perfection with The Rising of the Shield Hero. With an overpowered protagonist whos seemingly never wrong, topped with socially contentious undertones, the series has gotten its fair share of well deserved flak. Despite this, it continues to find a fanbase, as evidenced by its consistently high ranking on sites like Crunchyroll. Heres a look at how one of todays worst anime has become one of its most popular.

The attack on the series continues as Donohoo boasts that the shows own reputation and critical reception are lower than dirt, and for good reason, taking issue with the rape accusation leveled against Naofumi Iwatani at the onset of the series for being at odds with the zeitgeist of the #MeToo movement.

Related: The Rising of the Shield Heros Raphtalia Wins Crunchyrolls Best Girl Award

Hilariously, after recalling how this plot point led to many Western fans in particular criticizing the series for its casual misogyny, Donohoo is forced to acknowledge that sentiment was significantly less felt in Japan.

Fittingly, the shows own reputation and critical reception are lower than dirt, and for good reason. The story kicking off with the hero being falsely accused of rape was especially controversial, with many seeing it as being at odds with the zeitgeist of the #MeToo movement, if not wholly opposing it. This led to many Western fans in particular criticizing the series for its casual misogyny, though the sentiment was significantly less felt in Japan. Regardless, though this plot point is played for laughs, many felt that the confines of a fantasy isekai might not be the best place to handle such a serious topic.

Turning to the accusations that the series promotes slavery, Donohoo dismisses Naofumis confession that he only enslaved Raphtalia due to his belief that his best bet for survival in a world in which his reputation is torn asunder is an ally who is literally magic-bound to follow him, and pointing to the overall concept of Raphtalias enslavement as supportive evidence for the characters real life reputation as an incel self-insert:

The show has also been accused of supporting slavery. Early on, the protagonist actually buys a slave girl and, instead of immediately freeing her or even feeling conflicted over the fact that shes a slave, Naofumi keeps her enslaved to him. Some have excused the plot element through the shows medieval setting, as well as the fact that the hero doesnt treat his slave in a degrading or dehumanizing way. Within the show, Naofumi justifies his needing a slave by saying that no one else would willingly work with him due to his fractured reputation. This hasnt helped the characters real life reputation as an incel self-insert' who feels put upon by the world.

Related: Cosplay: The Rising of the Shield Heros Raphtalia By Katyushacos

Finally, Donohoo argues that the show itself is just another generic isekai show, taking issue with Naofumis characterization and his displays of unreasonable skill, despite these moments being played primarily for their comedic value:

Even without these unsavory elements, the show itself is just another generic isekai show, and a poorly done one at that. This is exacerbated further by Naofumi constantly winning in some form or fashion, despite him supposedly being the worlds victim. He wins fights with relative ease despite his inexperience with the fantasy game world. Far more experienced gamers and fighters pale in comparison to the awesomeness of Naofumifor some reason. Other characters also constantly come off as incredibly dumb, either blindly worshiping Naofumi or simply acting stupid for the sake of the plot.

After putting forth these legitimate issues, a disingenuously baffled Donohoo questions the series widespread popularity.

Related: Rising of the Shield Hero to Get 2nd and 3rd Seasons

Asserting that the isekai genre is currently plaguing anime as a whole, much as the harem genre had in years before, Donohoo argues that the fact that some viewers may relate to Naofumi as justification for the shows label as an incel fantasy and concludes that the series has more notoriety than it deserves.

Despite all of these legitimate issues, the show continues to develop an audience. Crunchyroll revealed that it was in their Top 20 list of the currently most popular series, in the same ranking as much more acclaimed shows like My Hero Academia, Naruto and One Piece. One justification for the questionable series popularity is the current wave of other generic, poorly constructed isekai shows that seem to somehow find a loyal audience. The genre is currently plaguing anime as a whole, much as the harem genre had in years before.

The controversial elements might actually be a boon for the shows popularity. Some viewers may seek out Shield Hero because of its taboo, almost risque reputation, while others might even sympathize with the protagonist. This would justify the shows label as an incel fantasy, but it would also explain why rampant criticism has failed to break the shows viewership. Another interesting explanation for why the show is so widely watched may be its cult status in the West. The source material was one of the first web light novels to be translated into English, opening a new world of potential readers, and eventually viewers, to an underdog, no-name web novel author. This Western cult status is ironic, given that the West is where the series has seen the majority of its criticism. Nevertheless, the shows popularity, much like its eponymous hero, continues to rise, and it certainly wont be the last generic isekai to get more notoriety than it deserves.

Conversely, according to original The Rising of the Shield Hero light novel printing company Kadokawa Producer Junichiro Tamura, there have been no controversies regarding the series in Japan as Japanese viewers do not see these anime as controversial.

Related: Despite Detractors, The Rising of the Shield Hero Becomes Wild Success With Over 6.2 Million Copies Printed

Ironically, despite multiple admissions that the West is where the series has seen the majority of its criticism, Donohoo fails to consider that this criticism is largely unfounded and put forth by critics in bad-faith.

After the premiere of The Rising of the Shield Heros first episode, many proponents of social justice theory took issue with the use of a false rape allegation as a major plot point, accusing the series of promoting misogyny and calling for the series cancellation.

In their 2019 retrospective, Anime News Network ranked the series as the Worst Anime of 2019, claiming that the adventures of Naofumi were a rallying point for the worst impulses of some of the worst people.

This is further seen in the fact that the purported morally justified and rampant criticism leveled against the series has not prevented CBR from promoting the series in a positive light in order to draw traffic to their website.

Related: Crunchyrolls The Rising Of The Shield Hero Anime Attacked by Feminists and Social Justice Warriors!

Earlier this year, the outlet published an article speculating on the Dungeons & Dragons alignments of the series cast, which makes no reference to misogyny, slavery promotion, or incels.

In an article titled 10 Things You Need To Know About Rising Of The Shield Hero, Naofumis anger and distrust of the world around him is optimistically described as a part of his character development, without which hes identical to every other isekai protagonist.

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CBR Takes Issue With The Rising of the Shield Hero's Socially Contentious Undertones and "Incel" Fanbase - Bounding Into Comics

The opening track of Petals for Armor, the debut solo record from Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams, feels like a deep sigh. Rage is a quiet thing, she sings, over a tapestry of breaths and hums. Rage... is it in our veins?

The album is a release in multiple senses of the word for Williams. Its her first record without the band that made her famous when she was still a teenager (though her bandmates, Taylor York and Joey Howard, worked with her on the writing and recording of the album, this project stands apart from their work as a unit). Emotionally and lyrically explicit, Petals for Armor touches on raw nerve after raw nerve: the breakdown of her marriage, her grandmothers declining health, and the inherited trauma that has been passed down through the women in her family. Every woman in my family on my moms side... theyve all been abused in almost every sense of the word, she told The New York Times. She began writing the album after entering intensive therapy for the first time, and being diagnosed with depression and PTSD. Trauma echoes through the lyrics, which often speak specifically to women. I think of all the wilted women/ Who crane their necks to reach a window, she sings on Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris.

The albums opening note of rage feels, coincidentally, in conversation with another album released this month. Torontonian synth-pop artist Katie Stelmanis, better known under her band name Austra, opens her fourth album HiRUDiN with the words: You make me so angry. Her previous record, Future Politics, written pre-Brexit and pre-Trump, was a contemplation of power structures in the outside world, but on HiRUDiN, she turns the lens back on herself, writing about the breakdown and aftermath of toxic relationships, and internalised queer shame. HiRUDiN came out of a lot of feelings of disappointment that I was able to channel into new forms of optimism, she tells me. Namely, the importance of healing the self, and how that can actually be a powerful tool in terms of broader activism and politics.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

Petals for Armor and HiRUDiN both exist in a lineage of albums by women reckoning with their pain; Stelmanis nods to Bjorks Vulnicura and FKA twigss MAGDALENE as recent examples of break-up albums that rocked her, and Williams made a playlist of inspirations for her album that included the very vulnerable work of Solange, Beyonce, and SZA. But Petals for Armor and HiRUDiN also share a lightness and an optimism that envisions not only a way out of that pain, but a meaningfulness to it. As Williams said in Rolling Stone last month, I dont think you can get to the good s*** without digging through the bad first. Its like you are trying to find the centre of the Earth how can you find that without cracking through limestone and heavy, hard things?

Ever since the #MeToo movement began in 2017, there has been the question of what its musical legacy will be. There have been angry songs, vengeful songs, satirical songs that have seized on the cultural mood. But a more satisfactory result could be more women, and victims of toxicity and abuse of any gender, feeling able to write honestly about their trauma without making it the focal point of their identity.

The music industry has never had its full-blown #MeToo moment, but Kesha came closest to sparking one when she sued her former producer and manager Dr Luke for alleged sexual and physical abuse in 2014, in a legal battle that is ongoing (he denies her claims). In 2017, Kesha released Rainbow, a cathartic purge of an album; but it was with High Road, released in January, that she reclaimed her party girl identity while celebrating her survival. Though miles away in sound, theres echoes of the liberatory urging of Fiona Apples Fetch the Bolt Cutters an album title that is also becoming a kind of zeitgeist-capturing mantra, encouraging women to cut themselves out of their cages and shout about their realities.

Apples album is unflinching, with lines such as, You raped me in the same bed/ Your daughter was born in. But its also a loose-limbed, defiant dance party, laced with frantic percussion that Apple created by banging on the walls of her house. Its a similar energy, if not sound, to that captured in Song For Our Daughter, the recent album from folk artist Laura Marling. On the albums release, Marling told The Independent: This album represents a triumph over trauma. I found my way through the very complicated reparative process, and it turns out to be quite a cheery album, which is a blessing.

Marling directs her album towards her future child, just as Hayley Williams, on Petals for Armor, also contemplates generational trauma, and how she might feel about her own daughter someday (If my child needed protection from a f***er like that man, Id sooner gut him...). What these albums all share is an envisioning of life after trauma: they are acknowledging but not dwelling on the brutality of the past, and celebrating their complex present, their hopeful future.

Both Petals of Armor and HiRUDiN are albums about healing. They rejoice in the body, and in the bodys place in the natural world. Williams was inspired by a vision of plants growing from under her skin, and the record is underpinned by an extended metaphor that depicts her and other wilted women as blooming flowers fragile, yet persistent. On the funk strut of Watch Me While I Bloom, she strikes a triumphant chord, pulling back her head to truly savour the howl of the line: How lucky I feeeel, to be in my body again. Trauma can make its victims feel robbed of their bodily autonomy, but here Williams wields hers.

Stelmanis, meanwhile, names her record after Hirudin, an anticoagulant peptide found in the saliva of leeches. Its how the predator gets into you, the traces it leaves inside your body when it sucks your blood. But in different contexts, hirudin can also be medicinal. Just as Williams envisions herself as a flower, Austra figures herself part of the natural landscape: on Mountain Baby, backed by the uplifting power of a childrens choir, she likens her relationship to the bittersweet work of climbing to a great height, her love interest the mountain. But amid the pulsating rush of I Am Not Waiting, the very next song,she sings, I am a mountain, before breaking into the delicious refrain, Im over you! Im over you!

There are several of these whiplash moments on the record, which flits between the highs of being in a codependent couple, and the lows of escaping it. Her writing reflects the dizzying feeling of trying to make sense of conflicting memories and emotions, when sifting through the debris of a toxic relationship. I only realised the theme of the record was toxic relationships after Id just about finished writing it, Stelmanis explains. It became clear that there was this linear progression of being in a difficult relationship, getting out of it, and finding safety on the other side. But in terms of track arrangement, that linearity didnt quite work, and instead you get this relatively chaotic back-and-forth. Which I actually think is a more accurate description of real life experience, as nothing is ever actually linear!

Hayley Williams new solo album, Petals for Amor is about healing(Atlantic Records)

The non-linearity will feel familiar to any sufferer of any kind of trauma, a boomerang affliction which can barely affect you at one moment, and leave you debilitated the next. On Petals For Armor, Williams follows a more conventional arc: her three-part release charts a trajectory from darkness to light. But, of course, its not that simple. Shadows cling to the records happiest moments: as she hints on Simmer, with that opening line about rage, you think that youve tamed it, but its lying in wait. By the time she ramps up the motivational surge of Over Yet, after a bright, synth-washed onslaught of positive mantras, she sings mournfully: For all the darkened parts of me... The suggestion of tragedy clings even to her upbeat moments, like the club-facing Sugar On The Rim, where she muses on finding good love after a scarring experience: Maybe we just had to feel it/ So wed know the difference.

Williams and Stelmanis both sound liberated on their new albums, as three-dimensional women carving out winding paths to recovery that encompass anger, vulnerability, grief, and lots of joy, too. For Williams, her video Cinnamon provides an apt visual metaphor for the album as a whole, as she sings about the home in which she lived alone after the breakdown of her marriage. In the video, she sees chameleonic creatures climb down from the walls and furnishings, and stalk her through the house, evoking the paranoia of a PTSD sufferer. She tries to lock herself away inside a room, only to find that the creatures are in there with her. They go wherever she goes. And so, rather than fight any longer, she changes into a bright-coloured costume, and invites her tormentors to dance with her. Her pain becomes part of her performance, and the result is beautiful.

See more here:

Rage is a quiet thing: How Hayley Williams and other female artists are writing their way out of trauma - The Independent