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

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Showing posts with label Devon Aoki. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Devon Aoki. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

D.E.B.S. (Angela Robinson, 2004)

Devon Aoki, Meagan Good, Michael Clarke Duncan, Sara Foster, and Jill Ritchie in D.E.B.S.

Cast: Sara Foster, Jordana Brewster, Meagan Good, Devon Aoki, Jill Ritchie, Geoff Stults, Jimmi Simpson, Michael Clarke Duncan, Holland Taylor, Jessica Caulfield. Screenplay: Angela Robinson. Cinematography: M. David Mullen. Production design: Chris Anthony Miller. Film editing: Angela Robinson. Music: Steven M. Stern.

When is a silly movie not just a silly movie? When it's a cult film that some consider a landmark in the representation of queer people on screen, like Angela Robinson's D.E.B.S. Or are we past that now?  Is it possible that there have been enough movies about queer people that don't treat them as victims or objects of scorn, and we can just start judging films about them by the criteria we use on all movies? Could we say that it was a mistake to turn Robinson's 11-minute short film, a spoof on the spy movie subgenre epitomized by the Charlie's Angels TV series and movies, into a 91-minute feature, stretching its gags out to the point of tedium? Could we say that some of the acting is sub-par and that there's no chemistry between the two actresses, Sara Foster and Jordana Brewster, who play the superspy and supervillain who fall for each other? Or is being a landmark enough? Just asking.