Hazel Cills

I’m reblogging this because I need it lately. 

The New Picnic at Hanging Rock Is Weirder, Wilder, and Way Hornier

There is an entire episode dedicated to Marion and Miss McCraw (who’s much younger in this version, in case you were wondering) lounging around the empty property on holiday, smoking cigarettes and reading The Turn of the Screw,and the sexual tension is aggressive. “Fuck already!” I want to scream. “You’re both going to disappear into a haunted rock!!!”

My review of the new Picnic at Hanging Rock, which doesn’t retain the minimalist magic of the former adaptation. 

Revenge Director Coralie Fargeat on Playing With Film Clichés and the Artistic Power of Blood

I like when violence and blood and gore is a way to create something of your own, some kind of craziness, as an artistic expression of the madness of the character. That’s what I like in movies, from South Korean directors to Tarantino movies, there’s so much in the excess that it becomes kind of absurd and brings some kind of poesy in the blood.

Loved talking to French director Coralie Fargeat about her fantastically gory horror movie Revenge and about inverting the male gaze in horror, how to film rape scenes, and more.

Asia Argento on Her Film Scarlet Diva and Why It’s Okay for Women to Be Enraged Right Now

“I sort of stay alive. Having to relearn to live a life where there’s this elephant in the room that I decided not to look at for all my life and now it’s there; it’s in every room. The women I’ve met, the activism that came after this necessary change for women in every industry, it has changed my life. It’s not something that is so light, you know? It’s not like I’m deciding to do gardening.”

Interviewed Asia Argento.

McQueen Is the Funny, Intimate Tribute His Legacy Deserves

What’s most striking then about McQueen is how absolutely funny it is, even though we know its heartbreaking ending. VHS scenes of McQueen breakdancing in his cluttered Paris apartment after being hired as the chief designer for Givenchy or footage of him smashing his hand into a birthday cake screaming, “I always wanted to do that!” seem like they’d appear in an installment of Jackass rather than a fashion documentary.

Reviewed the upcoming Alexander McQueen documentary, which is great, but most importantly it’s very funny, just like he was. 

Yellow Is Forbidden Takes You Inside Designer Guo Pei’s Dazzling, Golden World

“I never do films where I make anybody sit down and do an interview. I hate that kind of storytelling. I find it one step away from news. I’m making a film and there has to be a different approach to that. I’m also expecting the audience to want an experience and to not know exactly everything that’s going on. I also don’t like things to be tied up too neatly in a bow at the end because life’s not like that either.”

There’s a great new documentary coming out on Guo Pei, the Chinese designer who designed Rihanna’s famous golden Met Gala cape, and I talked to its director Pietra Brettkelly. 

A Conversation With Liz Phair on Guyville, Growing Up, and Getting a Woman’s Life Into History

I only knew the neighborhood that I was in and the guys were all making these radical records and I thought I too can do that from a female point of view. And I was playing with sexuality, so it’s fair game for press to pick that up because I was asking you to look at what a female thinks about sexually. I was asking you to accept that I had sexual agency, that I had lust and desire. But at the same time, I was teasing you by saying I am obviously going overboard to prove a point. But that was just lost and everyone assumed they had just found a sort of person who was raised by wolves.

Talked 2 Liz Phair about the Guyville and Girly-Sound reissues 

Mary Shelley Is a Tragically Flat Coming-of-Age Film

The biggest problem facing Mary Shelley is that it turns the titular character’s literary interests and her masterpiece Frankenstein, which we wait nearly the entire movie to see the quick creation of, into an afterthought.

I’ve been catching some things at Tribeca, including this Mary Shelley biopic(ish) which I wasn’t crazy about. 

For a Horror Movie, A Quiet Place Is a Surprisingly Cozy Survivalist Fantasy

The movie takes place not even a year after the supposed invasion on a sprawling, Rockwellian farm, complete with plentiful corn fields, a lily-white farmhouse, and a shabby-chic, dried-flower filled barn. Food is not a problem; it looks like they keep hundreds of mason jars filled with canned vegetables in the basement, and one night, dinner is a meal of freshly cooked fish, caught by Lee in a nearby stream. And given the intimacy of the house (the photos on the walls, the perfectly made-up bedrooms), it appears viewers have come across a family who has maybe always lived this way, aliens or not. But with Evelyn twirling around in floral dresses and spotless overalls, it can feel as if you’re watching a horror movie that takes place in an Anthropologie catalogue.

Some thoughts on the weirdly pristine vibe of A Quiet Place over at Jez.

SOPHIE Is an Immaterial Girl in a Material World

SOPHIE takes issue with this idea of celebrated so-called authenticity. “[With] things like body augmentation, you can find something that’s actually more real, which was my experience with electronic music and synthetic materials,” SOPHIE says. “That’s something I always want to try and communicate, deconstructing this idea of authenticity which you see so much in music industry especially. An acoustic or electric guitar is meant to signify authenticity, but it’s like, what’s the real relationship? It’s a symbol more than anything.”

I have a little profile of SOPHIE up at Jez.