By Kyle Buchanan via NYT Movies https://ift.tt/2QqBzAf
Today news: These Are the Best Fantasy TV Show Adaptations to Watch Now
Netflix’s Shadow and Bone, which dropped on April 23, marks yet another hit fantasy book series getting inducted into the TV adaptation circuit—or rather, two series in one, as the new show creates one cohesive narrative out of storylines from Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone trilogy and the first book in her Six of Crows duology. The series, starring newcomers Jessie Mei Li, Archie Renaux and Freddy Carter, flies by over the course of eight episodes of magic, espionage, violence and romance—in other words, all of the necessary ingredients to satisfy a fantasy fan.
The good news for fans is that TV adaptations of fantasy series have become essential television in recent years, with more en route. (Look out for Amazon’s future Lord of the Rings show.) While we wait for season two of Shadow and Bone, however, here are the best fantasy TV show adaptations you can watch right now.
Game of Thrones
It’s been 10 whole years since Game of Thrones premiered on HBO, setting a widely-accepted gold standard for what a fantasy television adaptation can be (despite its more controversial elements). With its shocking plot twists, dark themes and giant budget, Thrones became a phenomenon and a cultural touchpoint. And while the scripts stumbled in later seasons—especially after they veered past George R. R. Martin’s published A Song of Ice and Fire works—the early seasons remain worthy of a rewatch, or first watch, for all fantasy book and TV buffs. (And there is, naturally, more Thrones in the works: HBO announced that a spinoff series set 300 years before Thrones, The House of the Dragon, began production in late April and is slated for a 2022 release.)
His Dark Materials
Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass) may be young adult fantasy, but its topics of exploration—the concepts of original sin, parallel universes, fate and free choice, corruption of power—are not light. Nor do they exist on the usual binary of good vs. evil. First adapted as a 2007 movie starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, the new HBO TV version—renewed for a third and final upcoming season—stars Ruth Wilson, James McAvoy and Lin-Manuel Miranda. The show does not break new ground, but fans of the original story—or anyone who is curious about worlds where souls exist in animal form outside of the body—will find a layered story with tender performances.
The Witcher
An obscure, dense Polish fantasy novel adapted to a hit video game—and then adapted again to an eight-episode Netflix series starring Henry Cavill in a long platinum wig: sure, why not? Cavill plays the titular Witcher, a non-human born to fight monsters in a magical, medieval world that draws heavily from European folklore of all origins. The show jumps between his gruesome exploits and the story of a powerful sorceress and a lost princess, the timelines coming together as the season progresses. More lighthearted than Game of Thrones—there’s a singing troubadour as comic sidekick in many scenes—The Witcher got mixed reviews, but each episode gets stronger as the season progresses, and ultimately satisfies the fantasy itch.
The Magicians
Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, a popular release when it came out in 2009, is often likened to a dark Harry Potter: misfit teens attend a mysterious magical school called the Brakebills University for Magical Pedagogy. But as both a book and a TV show, The Magicians is less interested in neat tales of good triumphing over evil, and much more interested in the dangers of greed, power and ambition. The SYFY show, which ran for five seasons before concluding in 2020, mixes teen drama, zingy humor and magical exploits—provided you’re OK with a storyline that also includes depictions of traumatic events.
Outlander
Outlander is a romance first and foremost, Diana Gabaldon’s hefty books weaving the tale of World War II nurse Claire Randall and her love story with 18th century Scottish warrior Jamie Fraser. But time travel and some magically-inclined moments place it in the fantasy genre. The accompanying TV show, which has released five seasons and been renewed for two more to come, tracks the books closely. Claire’s adventures as part of the Jacobite revolution see her traveling from Scotland to France to the Americas; the mix of lush historical settings, supernatural elements, and that central love story have made it a cult favorite.
The Shannara Chronicles
Canceled this year after two seasons, The Shannara Chronicles adapts Terry Brooks’s epic Sword of Shannara trilogy, a young adult classic. What you’ll find: elves, druids, humans and the occasional dwarf joined in a Lord of the Rings-style quest to save the world, or their slice of it, as a powerful living tree called the Ellcrys begins to die. Filmed in New Zealand, the landscapes are half the appeal; the comforting quest tropes and predictable, teen-friendly narrative make it a kind of comfort food for fantasy show connoisseurs.
The Vampire Diaries
The Vampire Diaries ran for eight seasons before concluding in 2017, but before it was a hit CW show starring Nina Dobrev and Ian Somerhalder, it was a book series from L.J. James that predated Twilight—and pop culture’s ensuing vampire obsession—by well over a decade. (The first book was published in 1991.) Taking place in the fictional town of Mystic Falls, VA, The Vampire Diaries explores the supernatural with a good dose of small-town Americana.
A Discovery of Witches
Like His Dark Materials, A Discovery of Witches makes its home on British soil: it starts out with a manuscript discovery at Oxford’s Bodleian Library, launching an unsuspecting witch on her quest to keep the balance between various supernatural beings—as one does. Based on the All Souls trilogy from Deborah Harkness, it recently aired its second season, with another on order. And there are vampires here too, specifically Matthew Goode as an erudite professor of biochemistry who just happens to have a penchant for blood and a soft spot for a witch. The forbidden love story is the selling point, but the mysteries around witches, vampires and demons give it a highbrow veneer.
Watch it on Amazon Prime Video
American Gods
Neil Gaiman’s American Gods got the TV treatment in 2017 with this Starz adaptation of the 2001 bestseller. As the title suggests, the book (and show) mix an American setting with the battle between Old and New Gods: an ex-convict named Shadow discovers the more-than-human identity of his new employer, Mr. Wednesday, as they travel the country hobnobbing with mysterious characters. There’s another layer of social critique embedded in the text, too; the so-called New Gods are physical manifestations of modern society. (Gillian Anderson, for instance, appears as Media, the New Goddess of pop culture and television.) The show lasted three seasons, most recently airing in January 2021, before getting the ax.
Today news: Here’s Why Chloé Zhao’s Oscars Win Was Censored in China
Nomadland director Chloé Zhao made history at the 2021 Oscars Sunday evening, becoming the first woman of color to win Best Director in the institution’s 93-year history. She is only the second woman ever to pick up the accolade, after Kathryn Bigelow’s win for The Hurt Locker in 2010.
In her acceptance speech, Zhao spoke of her memories growing up in China and recited part of a poem called the Three Character Classic in Mandarin. The excerpt translates as “people at birth are inherently good.”
The Oscars win, which preceded Nomadland’s wins for Best Picture and Best Actress (for Frances McDormand), follows a similar scoop at the Golden Globes for Zhao, who was born in Beijing, and became the first Asian woman to collect that award too. On the same night, Yuh-Jung Youn became the first Korean actor to win an Academy Award for her role in Minari. Both of these firsts are milestones, especially given Hollywood’s long history of fetishizing, stereotyping or excluding Asian women in front of the camera—in more than nine decades, the Academy Awards has recognized fewer than two dozen Asian performers in acting categories, and when it has done so, has rewarded roles that trade on harmful tropes or stereotypes.
While Zhao’s success has been praised as a major step forward in representation behind the camera this awards season, efforts to celebrate these firsts appear to have been dampened in China, where reports of censorship and media silence emerged Monday.
Why China is censoring Chloé Zhao and Nomadland
Chinese state media had initially referred to Zhao as “the pride of China” after her Best Director win at the Golden Globes last month. But an unearthed 2013 interview with the American publication Filmmaker Magazine, in which Zhao talked about growing up as a teenager in China and referred to it as “a place where there are lies everywhere,” soon sparked backlash and reports of censorship on social media sites, as well as critiques of Zhao from social media users, reported the New York Times.
Since its initial publication, the 2013 article has been “edited and condensed,” according to a note on Filmmaker Magazine’s website, with the widely-quoted portion referring to Zhao’s upbringing in China now omitted.
China’s two biggest state-run media outlets, CCTV and Xinhua, did not carry reports of Zhao’s win as of Monday afternoon, although the state-run paper Global Times and its editor Hu Xijin did tweet their congratulations to the director. “Chloe Zhao wins Best Director,” a hashtag on the popular microblogging site Weibo, was censored and inaccessible for users, the Associated Press reported Monday. The AP also reported that searches for “Nomadland” and “Zhao Ting” (Zhao’s name in Chinese) were banned on film app Douban, while a news article about Zhao’s win on the hugely popular Chinese networking app WeChat was deleted. According to Reuters, organizers of a live-stream event in Shanghai were unable to watch the ceremony as planned Monday morning, as the organizer said access to his Virtual Private Network was blocked for nearly two hours.
What has Chloé Zhao said about China?
As a 14-year-old in the 1990s, Zhao moved to the U.K. to study at boarding school.
“A lot of info I received when I was younger was not true, and I became very rebellious toward my family and my background. I went to England suddenly and relearned my history,” said Zhao in the original version of the 2013 Filmmaker Magazine article, according to an archived version still available online. “Studying political science in a liberal arts college was a way for me to figure out what is real. Arm yourself with information, and then challenge that too.”
In conversation with Moonlight director Barry Jenkins for Variety, Zhao spoke of growing up in China with a love of manga, saying that “we didn’t have movies when I was growing up, not the same way that you guys had access to films, but I did have just cabinets and cabinets of Japanese manga. I just devoured them.”
Zhao later moved to the U.S. and studied political science before enrolling in New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts’ graduate film program in 2010, where Spike Lee was her professor. Her first feature film, Songs My Brother Taught Me, was shot on a Native American reservation in South Dakota and released in 2015, and her follow-up The Rider, a contemporary Western drama, was released in 2017.
She has not forgotten her roots, however. In a recent profile in New York Magazine, Zhao spoke of her travels around the world and her Chinese heritage, describing northern Chinese people as “my own people” and of being “from China.” She has also spoken before about feeling like an outsider and how that interacts with her filmmaking, telling the Telegraph that “wherever I’ve gone in life, I’ve always felt like an outsider. So I’m naturally drawn towards other people who live on the periphery, or don’t live mainstream lifestyles.”
Zhao was praised on Twitter for speaking Mandarin in her acceptance speech. “If this win helps more people like me get to live their dreams, I’m so grateful,” Zhao told reporters backstage Sunday night, adding that her parents had always told her “who you are is enough, and who you are is your art.”
China’s history of Hollywood censorship
Sunday night’s awards ceremony wasn’t screened in China.
The Hong Kong station TVB, which has broadcast the Oscars every year since 1969, said it would not do so this year for commercial reasons. The decision fueled speculation that it was politically motivated and raised concerns around freedom of expression, exacerbated by the nomination of Do Not Split, a 35-minute film by Norweigan director Anders Hammery about the Hong Kong protests shortlisted for the Best Short Subject Documentary. The filmmakers of the winning documentary short Colette nodded to Hammer in their acceptance speech, saying that “the protesters in Hong Kong are not forgotten.”
China’s economic power and middle class have grown exponentially over the past two decades, and so has Beijing’s ability to dictate to foreign filmmakers eager to reach Chinese audiences. This year’s Oscars ceremony is not the first Hollywood cultural export that the Chinese government has censored or sought to control. As TIME reported in 2017, “pleasing Chinese audiences—and a Chinese central government hyperallergic to criticism—is now part of the Hollywood formula.”
A report last year by PEN America suggests that control has only increased, saying that filmmakers around the world are having to make difficult decisions about the “content, casting, plot, dialogue, and settings” of their movies to appease Chinese investors and gatekeepers. The report suggested that the 2016 Marvel film Dr. Strange whitewashed the Tibetan character The Ancient One (ultimately played by Tilda Swinton) “for fear of jeopardizing the film’s chances in China,” and that the Taiwanese flag was removed from the trailer for the Top Gun sequel, originally due in 2019 but postponed to 2021. The report also refers to Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which was pulled from China’s movie release schedule a week before release in 2019, reportedly due to the film’s unflattering depiction of Bruce Lee.
It’s unlikely that Nomadland, an independent film following modern-day nomads in America’s Midwest, would have found wide audiences in mainland China. But Zhao’s next feature, the Marvel blockbuster The Eternals, might pose more questions upon its release in November.
The Best and Worst Moments of the 2021 Oscars
Monday, April 26, 2021
By The New York Times via NYT Movies https://ift.tt/2QZxSBr
Anthony Hopkins Accepts Oscar, Paying Tribute to Chadwick Boseman
By Julia Jacobs via NYT Movies https://ift.tt/3vhMDOM
‘Nomadland’ Makes History, and Chadwick Boseman Is Upset at the Oscars
By Brooks Barnes and Nicole Sperling via NYT Movies https://ift.tt/32KwViU
Today news: The Pandemic Oscars Were Surprisingly Decent. But Will the Academy Learn Anything From Its Break With Tradition?
Sunday, April 25, 2021
We knew the 93rd Academy Awards telecast was going to be different even before the maverick filmmaker Steven Soderbergh signed on to produce it. Our 13-month-old pandemic, on the wane but still very much a limiting factor for large public gatherings, would make sure of that. The question was, would it be a good sort of different or a bad sort of different?
The ceremony turned out to be a bit of both—and yet, on balance, still more entertaining than the average pre-COVID Oscars. It started out especially strong. Bright, multicolored opening credits rolled as cameras in motion followed Regina King through the main, makeshift venue, Los Angeles’ Union Station, in a shot that could have come straight out of Soderbergh’s own Ocean’s 11. It was a dazzling sequence, and one that actually delivered on all the advance hype that promised the awards show would play like a slickly executed Hollywood blockbuster.
Soderbergh, who produced the telecast in collaboration with Stacey Sher and Jesse Collins, had spent weeks talking up this approach. “It’s going to feel like a movie in that there’s an overarching theme that’s articulated in different ways throughout the show,” he told an AP reporter. “We want you to feel like it wasn’t a show made by an institution. We want you to feel like you’re watching a show that was made by a small group of people that really attacked everything that feels generic or unnecessary or insincere.”
Read more: The Best, Worst and Strangest Moments of the 2021 Oscars
The team came in at an advantage, after the Golden Globes set the bar for socially distanced movie awards so low, with a deeply boring ceremony that aired amid a still-escalating upheaval over racism within the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. And it’s hard to imagine a better team to remake a tradition that was languishing well before COVID. While Collins is a veteran producer of live telecasts—including last month’s surprisingly decent pandemic Grammys—Erin Brockovich and Django Unchained are among Sher’s career highlights. For his part, Soderbergh might be Hollywood’s most versatile living director, always up for a creative challenge.
It would be an exaggeration to say that the Oscars maintained their cinematic sheen and pace throughout the night. But if it was no Casablanca, at least the show managed to avoid an easy worst-case scenario comparison to Titanic—a maudlin, meaningless, decadently expensive folly that spent well over three excruciating hours on a sinking ship. Soderbergh and Co. chose their presenters well; opening an awards ceremony with King and Laura Dern is like opening an elementary schooler’s birthday party with pizza and ice cream cake. Many aspects of the show that sounded dicey in theory, from the train-station venue to the relegation of original song performances to the pre-show, turned out just fine in practice. The producers struck a smart balance between glamour and safety, preventing a superspreader event while also sparing viewers the now-depressing sight of stars in sweats accepting trophies from their couches.
Every part of this year’s ceremony felt more intimate and less stuffy than just about any awards show I can remember. For once, the art and community of film seemed to take precedence over the business of film. Presenters got personal. Dern recalled the formative experience of encountering a Fellini masterpiece for the first time. Bryan Cranston presented a Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to the Motion Picture & Television Fund, explaining that the organization had provided assistance to his late mother, also an actor, after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. In place of the usual context-free movie clips, we often got genuinely illuminating glimpses of the nominees’ backgrounds or insight into their approaches to the work they were nominated for. (Some on social media seemed to miss the clips. Someone should tell those people about YouTube.) Addressing the audience remotely, through a translator, Parasite director Bong Joon-ho shared with us each of the Best Director hopefuls’ thoughts on the meaning of filmmaking.
The acceptance speeches were uncommonly witty, intimate and engaging as well—perhaps in part because the winners weren’t worried about getting played off the stage mid-sentence. Another Round director Thomas Vinterberg opened his international feature victory speech with the kind of dry humor Danes do so well, before transitioning, poignantly, to a remembrance of his daughter. Yuh-Jung Youn, a fixture in the Korean entertainment industry who found crossover fame in Minari, flirted with Brad Pitt and scoffed at the idea that she deserved to beat Glenn Close. Frances McDormand let out an epic howl because, well, Frances McDormand has earned the right to do whatever she wants.
Read more: The Crucial History Behind Yuh-Jung Youn’s Oscar Win
Equally remarkable were how many entrenched awards-show clichés the telecast avoided. It was mostly free of gimmicky audience-participation interludes of the Ellen selfie variety (which, it must be said, made the inane music bit in the last half-hour extra dispiriting). There were no random pairings of celebrity presenters, and thus no awkward banter. Gone was the generic interstitial music; it’s nice to have a live orchestra, but what a waste to use them mostly as a way of rushing tearful winners offstage. The choice to have Questlove DJ the event, with classic pop tracks like Blondie’s “Call Me” bringing viewers as well as the in-person audience back from commercial breaks, upped the energy in the room considerably. Instead of packing King’s monologue with groan-worthy quips about pop culture, politics and the nominees, the writers allowed her to express heartfelt sentiments on the Derek Chauvin verdict, the pandemic and the way movies help us through tough times.
Not every divergence from tradition turned out to be a great idea. This year’s short, fast, upbeat In Memoriam montage bordered on disrespectful. Despite the absence of musical numbers, the ceremony still overflowed its time slot. Worst of all was the seemingly inexplicable decision to close with the two top acting awards rather than Best Picture. The final winner of the evening, The Father star Anthony Hopkins, wasn’t even in attendance, which made for a mighty awkward grand finale.
But it says something that the telecast felt fairly fresh and mostly satisfying in spite of how baffling many of the wins were. (My Octopus Teacher over Collective and Time in the documentary category? Sure, whatever you say Academy voters. Promising Young Woman over Sound of Metal and Judas and the Black Messiah for original screenplay? OK, then.) “All of us this year have taken advantage of the opportunity that’s been presented to us to really challenge all the assumptions that go into an award show,” Soderbergh told the AP. The Academy may have embraced change out of necessity, at a precarious moment, but it would do well to maintain that attitude regardless of who they hire to produce subsequent shows and what the new normal looks like. We may well have put the current public health crisis behind us by this time in 2022. It will take more than one decent year, however, for the Oscars to achieve the same optimistic prognosis.
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