Hi, and welcome to Summer Movie Season! No, not this year, silly. That's canceled. Instead, I'd like to travel back to my first encounter with a summer blockbuster - Tim Burton's 1989 Batman, starring Michael Keaton, Kim Basinger, and Jack Nicholson. And, in a weird bit of personal serendipity, this summer, the summer of 2020, is also the summer where I'm consuming more Batman content than ever before. Over the next few weeks I'll be posting about the 1960s Batman series, Batman: The Animated Series, the Arkham video games, and some comics (including the Batman Manga from Jiro Kuwata). Before I get to that, though, let's start at the beginning. It all started for me with the trailer. I was,
My current binge television show during month four of being mostly quarantined is Star Trek: Discovery. I’ve been more of a casual Star Wars fan than a Star Trek fan up to this point. I do have vague memories of watching episodes with Kirk and Picard in the late 80s/early 90s as a kid, at the persuasion of my male friends, but I never got super invested in the franchise. However, that changed after a NCTE gathering on Tuesday, June 9. NCTE has been hosting virtual lunchtime Zoom talks from 1-2 on most Tuesdays. On this date, Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas was the invited guest speaker and read a section of her book The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Game
With so many people seeking out Black films right now, it seemed as good a time as any to do a Black Film edition of the 30 Day Movie Challenge. Day 7 (A film that you never get tired of) Title: Widows Year: 2018 Director: Steve McQueen McQueen gives us a visually stunning answer to the question—what would it take for a group of marginalized women to plan a heist? As a Chicago native, I never get tired of such an accurate depiction of the city’s tensions regarding race, class, and politics. Viola Davis and Cynthia Erivo serving us melanated femme realness with the best scenes involving them sharing only a look. David Kaluuya is surprisingly convincing as a pretty boy henchman that’s more bru
You've seen it on Facebook! You've seen it on Twitter! Heck, you might have even seen it on Instagram! Now you can join along with us as Kino Club 313 shares our own choices and thoughts each week in June(ish?). Check out our picks for week 1 (days 1-7) HERE, week 2 (days 8-14) HERE, and week 3 (days 15-21) HERE. Day 22: a film that made you angry Shelby Cadwell Title: 13th Year: 2016 Director: Ava DuVernay Blurb: I thought I knew about the problems of racist policing and the prison industrial complex before I watched this documentary, but I wasn’t at all prepared for what I saw. DuVernay makes a clear, cogent argument about the unbreakable ties between slavery and the modern-day “justice” s
