#laura staab

[nofatclips]

Andrea Arnold: Birds of Her Feather, a video essay by Beyza Meşe and Laura Staab

[diivdeep]

Call and Response: The 2024 Berlin International Film Festival

When we expect the Berlinale to be political, what indeed do we expect?

[diivdeep]

The Art of Losing: Joanna Hogg's Haunted Houses

The muted chills of "The Eternal Daughter" suggest that Hogg's characters are not blind to what lies outside their moneyed interiors.

[diivdeep]

The End of Joachim Trier’s "Oslo Trilogy"; The End of Art and Community - Another Gaze: A Feminist Film Journal

Joachim Trier’s “Oslo Trilogy” – Reprise (2006), Oslo, 31 August (2011) and The Worst Person in the World (2021) – wants...

[cubmagazine]

5 Reasons to Surrender to Hannibal

I was resistant to NBC's Hannibal for a fair while. I always asked myself what a show of television's new 'Dark Age' was doing on Sky Living in the UK, alongside reruns of America's Next Top Model (the more I thought about it, the more I realised the similarities: the unusually hungry and psychologically tortured characters, the embarrassingly/entertainingly camp scripts...). This summer, I succumbed to the thriller-horror and finished its two series in as many weeks – it is painfully addictive, and (I have to admit) sort of brilliant, in its own way.

  1. Visuals – The standard of cinematography on the small screen today is so exciting, and crime apparently makes for the most striking of images. Along with True Detective, the hyper-cinematic shots of Hannibal ask viewers to find far wider screens than those of their laptops – a triumph for television in the time of Netflix.  I have never seen a television show so drenched in its own darkness, and there is a sick kind of sparkle in the steel-like quality of the colour palette – not to mention the fantastical hue of blood, saturated to within an inch of its life.

Certainly, it is easier to turn from certain inconceivably horrific scenes when watching Hannibal on a fifteen-inch screen. But to do so is to avoid the creativity of these atrocities. While audiences are never desensitised to the homicides, victims become instant myth at the hands of inventive psychopaths, and the murders become mesmerising, magnetic – eerily beautiful, even.

  2. 'Food Porn' – Mads Mikklesen's Hannibal Lecter is a refined portrayal, in an era of food fetishisation. He is at once self-sufficient, outside-of-the-system (growing even vegetables from massacred corpses, brewing even his own beer using their remains) and an at-home chef of haute-cuisine. If not for the winks to viewers in dreadfully obvious puns, it would be easy to momentarily dismiss the cannibalism and wish Mads-as-Hannibal was coming for dinner tonight – and not just because he is so *dishy* himself (I couldn't resist, I can't really blame the writers).

  3. Mads – This actor's excellence is the reason I caved to the series, and while there are some admirable performances elsewhere in the show, it aches for his presence whenever he is off-screen. Where the script stumbles, his quietly ominous delivery – in which each word is so precise – masks these faults. In a nod to Hopkins, there is a lisp to his speech in place of the toothy, jittery inhalations, which works incredibly well in terms of the small vulnerabilities attributed to this Hannibal. While I am skeptical about the validity of third season, Mads has me hypnotised – I will be watching for him, if nothing else.

  4. 'Bromance' – I am not the only one with a crush, here. I find the 'traditional' love affair in Hannibal bland and dull, but the blatant homoerotic tension between Doctor Lecter and his analysand, independent detective Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) is gripping – if only as another example of the eponymous character's marvellous powers of manipulation. The fact that their deep and complex intimacy never reaches physicality or romance (not in the show's 'reality', in any case) titillates just as much as each hunt, in its own cat-and-mouse manner.

  5. Gillian Anderson – Because Gillian Anderson.

I haven't mentioned the surprising strengths of some motifs, nor the irresistibility of the campness (Will Graham's 'catchphrase' that I so love to hate), or the laughable boldness of a few of the show's twists – I wouldn't do it justice, or I would spoil the plot. It isn't the best television series by any means, but perhaps because it differs from the seriousness of other popular shows (because this isn't so heavily centred on a fifty-year-old man in a mid-life-crisis), for its individuality, it is worth a watch.

[cubmagazine]

Scarlett Johansson is Beyond

I thank the heavens for Scarlett Johansson. I thought I glimpsed her while walking in the sunshine this Spring, but it was too bright to see – like an angel. In the time of 'Stars – They're Just Like Us!', she is one in a small number of actors who keep a distance from 'celebrity' as it is widely known today (absent from social media, they are 'so fucking classy'). 

Johansson stands apart from this minority still; as a Monroe sex symbol for the twenty-first century, the trifecta of a blonde halo, red lips and pin-up curves propels her into a sublime reserved for the silver screen sirens of yesteryear. And yet, she seems to possess some *power*, which separates her even further from this elite.

  While a Woody Allen muse and a Marvel superhero, in a coruscating filmography, her otherness is most inventively epitomised in Spike Jonze's Her and Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin (both pictures, 2013). Where Johansson's nascent role in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation ten years prior revealed a level of ethereality (her character's displacement in Tokyo echoes an uneasiness with existence itself), her 'other-worldly' nature reaches new extremes in these two recent pictures.

  Both utilise her indisputable allure, and while it is key to the characters (that in Under the Skin she is named 'Laura' is an undeniable reference to Petrarch), it need not be commented on much more – it has been exhaustively discussed. The important parallel between Her and Under the Skin is found in Johansson's technical lack of humanity, that 'other-worldly-ness'. And in both instances, this is beyond overcome. As an intelligent operating system in the former, once activated in the first act, she surpasses normal expectations in a literal matter of seconds. As an alien in the latter, we witness her character's birth into humanity at the very start (a truly hypnotic, 2001-esque sequence), yet she is immediately incredibly intuitive.

  Her newest project, Lucy,is not released until this Friday 22 August in the UK, but the tagline has garnered much attention (some ridicule) from critics: 'The average person uses 10% of their brain capacity. Imagine what she could do with 100%.' I very much like Monika Bartyzel's comments on the director's tendency to play with his stars' personas –

Over and over, Besson deliberately reminds us of the actors playing the characters, blending the real world into his new creation. [… Johansson] is the American in an Asian country, sprawling on a bed in her underwear as in Lost in Translation. She manipulates a thug with her sexuality, only to kick his ass like Natasha Romanov in The Avengers. And when her powers become massive, black goo overtakes the surroundings she hopes to absorb, like her seductive alien in Under the Skin.

– Bartyzel has noted the new movie's references to Johansson's remarkable onscreen past, and it is interesting that the central concept in Lucy additionally reiterates the innate intelligence emphasised in Her and Under the Skin.

Beyond what I and many others have already elucidated, what is it about her that evokes such *optimum brilliance*? Perhaps it is the impressive variety of emotions constantly at play in her voice (the only perceptible element of Johansson in Her, it is equally important – although more measured – in Under the Skin); she is quiet, hushed, shy and breathy, husky, seductive; and then she is curious, humble, sweet and loud, laughing, confident. Some summarise these contradictions as coquettishness, but does she not simply accurately portray the complexities of a living, breathing woman? I cannot but think it is this amplification of nuance in a female – such an infrequent occurrence, such an infrequent allowance – that makes Scarlett Johansson appear so aware, and her presence so inordinately unique.

[cubmagazine]

50 Seconds of the Trailer: Fifty Shades of Grey

- Is this The Devil Wears Prada? There is a supposedly frumpy twenty-something girl with a fringe interviewing for a 'newspaper' and 'GREY' in reception could just as well read 'VOGUE' in that font. Currently wishing this theme continues and Meryl Streep is playing Anna Wintour is playing 'Mr. Grey'.

- Is this office like, really grey though – or is it just me?

- OMG is part of their marketing campaign that the trailer makes women COLOURBLIND?

- OMFG a brown door !!!

- Doesn't look like Meryl... but I am a fan of the window-gazing shot in film. Currently wishing this trailer abandons itself and shows us Scarlett Johansson looking wistfully at the city skyline in Lost in Translation instead. (O-kay so I am *that* girl, but at least I am not this girl...)

- Just paused stupid stupid trailer to find the name of 'this girl' in the description below. Maybe that will tell me more about 'this girl'... Ohh no. I just won't believe someone is called Anastasia Steele. I can't even-

- But I will.

- On 'Anastasia', part 1: She has no evident Russian royalty about her (currently wishing I didn't think that even that animated film would be a better watch at this point, etc. etc.). Part 2: In the absence of Russian descent, this name must mean that her parents wanted her to end up as a sex slave. Whoa, this film is going to be f*cking disgusting.

- On 'Steele', part 1: Is she already married to Mr. Grey? Because 'Steele' and 'Grey' may as well just be the same word, let's face it. Part 2: She doesn't look of a particularly steely disposition in that floral blouse and cosy cardi... unless it is to indicate she is thick-skinned or hardcore or something and this is some sort of EROTIC S&M MOVIE!?

- If this trailer's YouTube synopsis is a 'complete the story' kind of puzzle, I nailed it.

- Ugh I made a sex pun.

- Not even a good one.

- What is the big avant-garde Terry's Chocolate Orange thing in the corner of the room? Is that a SEX TOY!? (I could go for a super-sized special-edition sexed-up version of the classic Christmas stocking filler right now – extreme comfort food for this overwrought nightmare of a trailer, am I right?)

- Like I am not all that artsy but is all this stuff coming out of the floor meant to be phallic? I sure do feel kinda overwhelmed by a certain sort of dick-ish-ness...

- 'There's really not much to know about me... I mean, look at me.' And with that, I don't need/want to watch any more of the trailer. From fifty seconds, I know that this is an attractive female who writes for a newspaper. So this line doesn't even make SENSE. Where is her confidence and intelligence? What happened to feminism, Anastasia Steele? :( :( :(

Watch the full trailer here.

Screenshots produced by Laura Staab, text embedded. 50 Shades of Grey, Universal Studios.

[cubmagazine]

Robin Williams

This morning, the world woke to news of the devastating death of Robin Williams. A victim of substance abuse and bipolar disorder, his apparent suicide is horribly sad. It is a sombre reminder of the unbounded nature of depression, and the seriousness of this disease. The impact of his passing is felt by many, who come together now to celebrate the significant, singular comedian and actor.

A child of the nineties, it was as the Genie in Aladdin that I first knew Williams well. Entertained infinitely by his improvisation and his voices, I wore out that VHS until his magical matter had an added dimension of going diagonal at the top of the screen. Then Mrs. Doubtfire, Jumanji... I am almost certain I made my dad take me to the cinema for Flubber. At five, I associated Williams with guaranteed laughter, and these movies surely would not have survived without his stand-out comedy.

In recent years, I have mostly come across him in bit parts – what an unstoppable scene-stealer he is. In Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry, Williams is one of a few who could play a literally out-of-focus character and still be so unmistakably himself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KZ6mIsbDc4

Friends had a plethora of notable stars in its run, but none eclipsed the six-some (even they abandon their banal anecdotes for a couple of minutes) like Billy Crystal and Robin Williams in this cold open:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni6VPBIiFRY

Williams' abilities as a more subtle comedian were evident in a 2012 episode of Louie, in which he plays himself opposite CK. It is unfortunate that there is no decent video of this online. It starts with the two at a funeral which only they have attended; the scene – in black-and-white – is awkward, only the persona of the actors lifts the darkness of this ubiquitous fear realised before them. In the course of the episode, the pair alleviate the peculiar pain of this death and end with a promise: whoever dies first, the other will come to the funeral. Between friends, it doesn't need to be said – but it is a sentiment that is sweet when verbalised, nonetheless.

As someone who is yet to see Dead Poets Society and Good Will Hunting, unanimously seen as some of his finest work, I feel a little fraudulent in these attempts to speak of his spectacular career as an actor. Across social media, we will all contend today – as is inherent to Twitter and so on – to be the one who can encapsulate his life most tenderly. In a way, I am sure we will all succeed. With Robin Williams there was almost always a tenderness at heart. For this reason, audiences revisited and revisited his work, and as we continue to visit it for comfort, for smiles, and for his flair, he will remain a most memorable talent.

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