Saturday, April 20, 2019

Ekaj (2015) Offers An Intimate Portrayal of Love and Hardship Among LGBTQ Youth

How do you find a sense of belonging when you’re not accepted by your own family, let alone society? Veteran fashion photographer turned writer and director Cati Gonzalez puts homeless LGBTQ youth under the microscope in a vivid portrayal of a too-often overlooked community.

After being kicked out by his homophobic father, a young teenager Ekaj (Jake Mestre) drifts on the hustling streets of New York City struggling to get by. When he befriends Mecca (Badd Idea), a thief and artist diagnosed with AIDS, the naïve Ekaj learns about the hardships of love, loss, and survival.


Saturday, April 13, 2019

Top 11 Favorite Game of Thrones Characters

favorite game of thrones characters
So many characters on Game of Thrones, so little time to rank all of them. While watching the series for the first time, I wasn't quite sure if I was going to be able to keep track of everyone. For a show of this size with at least a hundred characters, coming up with eleven (with honorable mentions) was difficult.  Throughout its eight seasons, certain heroes and even villains always caught my attention and made me root for them.

Like most adaptations, the storylines for a show or movie is immeasurably changed from the books. That said, I haven’t read George R. R. Martin’s series yet, so my choices are entirely based on the television show. The challenge of picking my faves and ranking them in some kind of specific order was hard, but here they are. Who do you love or love-to-hate? How would you rank your own list if you could? Let me know in the comments below!

This post mentions plot and character development from season 1 through seven, and may be considered spoilers. Read at your own risk!

Friday, April 12, 2019

15 Favorite Reactions of Epic Return in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

LucasFilm / Disney
This weekend the 2019 Star Wars Celebration in Chicago wasted zero time getting fans pumped up for the next long-awaited installment. Opening the weekend ceremony with the title reveal of Star Wars: Episode IX and a teaser with the cast in person, our anticipation and hype was already on edge. While news of the latest actors to join the LucasFilm family was well-established for the better part of 2018, one surprise blew up the internet like the Death Stars being blasted into a million pieces.

In case you're avoiding spoilers for the next Star Wars film set for release in December 2019, this post contains info about one legendary character's epic return. Read at your risk!


Monday, April 8, 2019

Avengers: Endgame Trailers Breakdown

Avengers: Endgame Trailer Breakdown
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
We're in the endgame now. After a year of waiting, we're only a few weeks away from finally discovering the fallout from Avengers: Infinity War. Can The Avengers make a comeback from the devastating loss after Thanos snapped half the universe away? Since December 2018, Marvel Studios has been steadily releasing more footage. We've all been expecting our favorite characters to retrieve the ones they loved, but it's hard to tell if expectations will match reality. Let's take a look at the trailers so far and talk about what is going on. Once we go through the easter eggs, I don't know if we're going to be able to handle it.

Are you ready for Avengers: Endgame? Let me know in the comments!


Meeting Brown (2019) Personalizes the Divide between Love, Race and Racism

What do you do when the one you love turns out to be the opposite of what you thought? Great relationships can feel like they’re built on honesty and trust, but one brief meeting with her fiance’s best man Richard (Andrew J. Cornelius) changes everything for Alex (Diana Gonzalez-Morett) – a hopeful Latinx bride who sees her white partner’s true colors about their cultural differences.

Meeting Brown draws attention to the complex lines drawn between love, race, and racism. Director and writer Ana Lydia Monaco, a rising Latina filmmaker, tackles diversity by bringing representation to women of color to the screen with experiences from her own community. Realizing how often she didn’t see herself and fellow people of color onscreen, Monaco’s transformed her observations with bicultural couples to create a distinct narrative about life as a woman of color.

Nervous yet excited for her doubtful maid-of-honor to meet her fiancé John (Sean Dube) and his best man, Alex believes John is exactly the man she wakes up to every morning. Life is seemingly smooth between the two of them until that fateful evening when the four of them spend time together – or rather, Alex and Rocio (Sonia Diaz) try to navigate Richard’s ignorant remarks about their heritage and identity while John goes along with the "jokes". His continual dismissal of his future wife's feelings and invites an alarming realization to Alex about his own excuses about Richard’s behavior. Monaco’s script paces well between the dreamy state of bliss Alex thought her life was and the slow realization of John's beliefs aren't what she ever imagined.

Even though the film’s primary focus of the cracks deepening in a romantic relationship, there’s a genuine relevance, especially in our current political climate, of how much we might be expected to accept other people’s behaviors as they are. It might be out of fear of losing or creating a rift between a family member, friend, or acquaintance, there's a personal responsibility of recognize what individuals of other communities withstand and persevere. How we treat someone’s culture in our own lives speaks to how society treats minorities on a whole – women, people of color, LGBTQ, people with disabilities. Meeting Brown is succinct and to the point of how what most consider microaggressions, small acts of ignorance, start to add up whether we are bystanders or in the direct line of dangerous judgement and attacks.

As a ten minute short film, Meeting Brown presents a thorough examination of what Latina women encounter. Her cast carries the story well with performances by Gonzalez-Morett, Sean Dube, Sonia Diaz, and Andrew J. Cornelius. Even though there is an increasing divide between the film's leads, the actors share a palpable chemistry together as their idyllic relationship starts to present true issues. Monaco’s attention to detail and the experiences she has witnessed in her own life creates a refreshing defiance of the typical roles women of color are presented with on-screen and shines a light on the daily conflicts they encounter in real life.

Please Note: I was provided with a screener of this movie in exchange for an honest review. Meeting Brown is currently making the rounds at film festivals this year. Check out more of Ana Lydia Monaco past and current work at her official website.

Rating: ★★☆

Monday, April 1, 2019

It Was Only A Matter of Time for WWE and #TimesUp to Smackdown

As a once fervently loyal WWE fan, who struggles with her love of wrestling versus its controversial state of affairs, I never thought I'd wake up to see John Oliver deliver a 23-minute hot-take about WWE’s abhorrent work conditions for its wrestlers. Even at the dawn of the #TimesUp movement, I often said to myself it was only a matter to time before someone put WWE owner's Vince McMahon's ego (or head) up on the chopping block. But this is where we are, it was only a matter of time before attention turned its spotlight on WWE.

For those not in the know, on a recent episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the tv host and self-proclaimed wrestling fan revealed that the independent clauses wrestlers “sign up for” to work for WWE is nothing but unconscionable. Performing 200+ nights a year away from their families and traveling the world, their wrestlers work so tirelessly they barely have a life to save up for when they're not in the ring. Contracted as practically self-employed, wrestlers perform exclusively for WWE facing no annual leave, no pension plan, responsibility for their own expenses for company-initiated appearances, and possible termination if an injury prevents them from working for more than six weeks. In 2016, fifty-three lawsuit former wrestlers who sustained life-threatening injuries filed that WWE wrongly mishired them as independent contractors instead of employees, leaving them to miss the benefits of important employment laws. On an equally a heavily substantial note, Oliver connected the dots between McMahon's monopoly of the industry to wrestlers heightened death rate in comparison to the general population as well as other sports industries including NFL.

As briskly in-depth as Oliver’s editorial was for a half-hour show, he missed key details about WWE's other practices to help wrestlers. From booking to payment, their contracts for talent are much more in-depth than a few highlights to cherrypick and read. In terms of working with talent, their WWE Sponsored Rehab Program assists wrestlers into facilities, provides coverage for in-ring injuries, and the company reimburses talent for educational purposes. Despite Oliver's call for stronger healthcare within wrestling, there's controversy over how the insurance would work for wrestlers and if the talent wants a collective union (as obvious as it may sound).

Additionally, Oliver also misconstrues reporting deaths caused outside of an organization's control versus the result of a wrestling injury. As recent as June 2018, wrestlerdeaths.com recorded that deaths stemming heart-related issues and cancer was 27.9% and 19.06%, respectively, while in-ring related injuries leading to death was 8.52%. Despite the statistics, medical experts still believe professional wrestlers suffer a higher mortality rate via cardiovascular disease due to non-stop physical activity and lifestyle habits such as substance abuse.

Saturday, March 23, 2019

Trailer Talk: Stranger Things, Toy Story 4, Lucy In The Sky and More

Ready? Get set! Mark your calendars! Go! sums up how I'm feeling over the past week as several trailers dropped for movies coming up throughout 2019. Instead of doing a usual Trailer Reactions post to all of them (Avengers: Endgame will get its own post soon), I thought about just talking about the movies and tv series that are definitely getting some hype this summer.

What do you guys think about these movies? Are there any other trailers I should check out? Let me know if you're excited or disappointed in the comments below!