Hazel Cills

I’m reblogging this because I need it lately.

Wed, 06 Jun 2018 17:15:55 -0400

I’m reblogging this because I need it lately.

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

Thu, 24 May 2018 12:54:34 -0400

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...

Thu, 24 May 2018 10:59:20 -0400

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...

Wed, 09 May 2018 13:55:23 -0400

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 DeservesWhat’s...

Fri, 04 May 2018 08:28:42 -0400

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...

Thu, 03 May 2018 07:58:40 -0400

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...

Tue, 01 May 2018 07:49:27 -0400

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 FilmThe biggest...

Thu, 26 Apr 2018 07:59:08 -0400

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...

Wed, 11 Apr 2018 08:32:50 -0400

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 WorldSOPHIE takes...

Thu, 05 Apr 2018 09:24:39 -0400

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.

We Shouldn’t Ask Art to Be Emblematic of the #MeToo...

Tue, 20 Mar 2018 08:04:45 -0400

We Shouldn’t Ask Art to Be Emblematic of the #MeToo Movement

To suggest that art that involves rape or sexual abuse is relevant, all of a sudden, seems to fundamentally misunderstand the weight and power of a movement like #MeToo, which is largely concerned with excavating and revealing hidden abuses of the past that were rarely talked about or valued out loud. The tendency toward classifying art as newly pertinent—whether in promotions of the movies or in reviews that fall for the marketing bait—makes clear that people haven’t been paying attention to the reality of women’s lives.

Thoughts on deeming art “perfect for #MeToo,” fetishizing trauma in women’s work, and flattening women’s experiences.

"One technique that Roiphe used in Harper’s is the signature of many anti-#MeToo op-eds that have..."

Thu, 15 Mar 2018 11:10:53 -0400

“

One technique that Roiphe used in Harper’s is the signature of many anti-#MeToo op-eds that have appeared in other legacy publications. I call it The Straw Girl. This technique posits the existence of a hypothetical observer who is conflating things that should not be conflated. It discredits the testimony of real women by implying that other, imaginary, women are too stupid to know the difference between getting raped and having a guy be “creepy in the DMs.”

Let us set aside the irony that the very pundits who accuse the Straw Girls of confounding things seem to think that having people in your office gossip about you is tantamount to getting fired and jailed. It does not seem unreasonable to ask whether these acts of sexualized aggression exist on a spectrum. I have never heard any woman say that the harms they cause are the same.

”

- “The Internet of Women” by Moira Weigel

Shattering the Myth That Women Rappers Are More Expensive to...

Wed, 14 Mar 2018 20:25:39 -0400

Shattering the Myth That Women Rappers Are More Expensive to Sign Than Men

The idea that women rappers “cost” more than their male counterparts starts to feel suspect when you consider the fact that Young Thug appears on album covers in personally selected custom couture, Migos was recently sued for $1 million by a stylist who says the rappers failed to return $20,000 worth of designer clothes they wore in a music video, and Wiz Khalifa says you can always catch him, with a little help from his stylist, in Saint Laurent jeans (which run around $800 a pair). So how true is the myth that women rappers supposedly cost more money than men, thus leading to labels backing away from signing them?

The best part of my job is answering annoying questions I’ve had for years by talking to people who know what the fuck they’re talking about. Here’s a piece on why the idea that female artists, rappers but also artists of any genre, cost more $$$ than men is bullshit.

As Drag Becomes More Popular Than Ever, Drag Kings Refuse to Be...

Fri, 09 Mar 2018 08:39:38 -0500

As Drag Becomes More Popular Than Ever, Drag Kings Refuse to Be Ignored

When it comes to mainstream conceptions of drag, most undoubtedly think of larger-than-life performances of femininity. There are the legacies of drag queens and artists like Divine, Lady Bunny, and RuPaul, to name just a few. Queens perform at large venues and on world tours, if they have the following to do so. And in recent years, largely due to the commercial success of RuPaul’s Logo-turned-Vh1 reality competition show RuPaul’s Drag Race, drag has become perhaps more mainstream and visible than ever.
But while articles on the subject tend to float the idea that performers are living in a golden age for drag, kings still perform on the fringes of mainstream pop culture. Even though the medium has existed, in different forms, for decades, performances of masculinity aren’t privileged the same way performances of femininity are. While it’s common to find all-queen showcases in cities across the country, all-king showcases are still a rarity.

Spent the past few months talking to performers about what it means to be a drag king in 2018. This is a story about kings, but it’s also a story about how drag is so much more than what people see on Drag Race (and why people are so comfortable with a masculine person performing femininity vs. a feminine person performing masculinity.)

#1 contender for my favorite old album of the year (that I just...

Sat, 03 Feb 2018 17:42:19 -0500

#1 contender for my favorite old album of the year (that I just got into.)

The Rise and Fall of the Pop Star Purity Ring“Disney was...

Fri, 26 Jan 2018 08:40:27 -0500

The Rise and Fall of the Pop Star Purity Ring

“Disney was identifying this important demographic, developing a music format that really worked for them, and then making that so big that it was unavoidable in the rest of the music industry,” says Tyler Bickford, author of Schooling New Media: Music, Language, and Technology in Children’s Culture and University of Pittsburgh professor. “But then if you’re going to have Radio Disney be the basis of what you’re producing, then you have to really double down on things like sexual immaturity, right? And you do that with these explicit markers like purity rings and professions of chastity.”

I wrote about that weird moment in the 2000s when all these young, white pop stars were preaching chastity and the government-funded Evangelical forces behind the trend.

Mosaic Is a Complicated Murder Mystery That Wants You to...

Tue, 23 Jan 2018 22:02:42 -0500

Mosaic Is a Complicated Murder Mystery That Wants You to Question Everything

But moreso than the fact that it was conceived as an “interactive” TV experiment, Mosaic is not a traditional murder mystery in the sense that we don’t get a strong, reliable lead to guide us through the investigation. Everyone plays a part in finding pieces of this increasingly engrossing puzzle: Eric’s dry, wannabe detective sister Petra Neill (Jennifer Ferrin), the small town cop Nate Henry (Devin Ratray), and the equally suspicious Joel and Eric. None of them are competent entirely on their own, paling in comparison to the sort of flawed but heroic detectives you might associate with similar dramas.

Reviewed Steven Soderbergh’s new HBO show (yes, which was also an app.) I found it messy but loved that about it.

In The Assassination of Gianni Versace, a Star (Killer) Is...

Thu, 18 Jan 2018 10:18:54 -0500

In The Assassination of Gianni Versace, a Star (Killer) Is Born

But if there’s one thing this season of American Crime Story does depressingly well is award a specificity and humanity to Cunanan’s victims. Because while pop culture may be obsessed with murder, it’s not always concerned with portraying victims as real people with full lives that precede their deaths.

My review of the new season of ACS.

Video

Mon, 15 Jan 2018 15:04:12 -0500

Keeping my eye on this South London singer who was apparently...

Sun, 14 Jan 2018 17:39:07 -0500

Keeping my eye on this South London singer who was apparently part of Tricky’s touring band last year.