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China watches Jon Stewart, Robin Sloan likes libraries, and NPR tackles race: Bookishness for Apr. 15, 2013
Blog alert “Remember when folks used to talk about being ‘post-racial’? Well, we’re definitely not that. We’re a team of journalists fascinated by the overlapping themes of race, ethnicity and culture, how they play out in our lives and communities, and how all of this is shifting.” NPR’s new blog, Code Switch. Strolling through human…
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Slavery, cinema, and sensitivity: Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained
Reviewed in this essay: Django Unchained. Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Running time 165 minutes. Now playing in Toronto theaters. In recent weeks, moviegoers have been treated to two radically different films about American slavery, each of them trying to unpack the burden of that violent…
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Racism or condescension: The Wachowskis’ Cloud Atlas problem
Race has been at the centre of some debate surrounding the Wachowski Starship’s latest cinematic offering, Cloud Atlas. Assigning their ensemble cast to a variety of characters each, across six different storylines, Lana and Andy Wachowski use facial prosthetics and post-production touch ups to transform the racial and sexual orientations of their actors. The result…