Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 06/30/19

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sunday, June 30, 2019

Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M. Chu, 2018)

Constance Wu and Awkwafina in Crazy Rich Asians

Cast: Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan, Lisa Lu, Awkwafina, Ken Jeong, Sonoya Mizuno, Chris Pang, Jimmy O. Yang. Screenplay: Peter Chiarelli, Adele Lim, based on a novel by Kevin Kwan. Cinematography: Vanja Cernjul. Production design: Nelson Coates. Film editing: Myron Kerstein. Music: Brian Tyler.

Bright performances and a sumptuous production enhance Crazy Rich Asians, but it's really the novelty of an almost all-Asian cast that brought this otherwise likable but conventionally plotted romantic comedy to widespread notice.