MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: TURNING RED (2022)

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Like just about everyone with an interest in the movies, I'm watching more films on DVD and going out to movie houses a lot less. Convenience trumps the better experience.
Of course, you lose audience interaction and the poor film now has to compete with all the comforts of home.
It's a bit like seeing Rembrandts & Titians in a book reproduction, or from posters with iffy color values, no texture or weight to the surface and the wrong dimensions . . . all while snacking on chips & soda. (Oops! You get that at your local cinema,too.)
The ease of instant movie gratification risks turning an art form (well, sometimes) into little more than low-grade eye-candy & mindfodder. So, maybe it's worthwhile to write a bit down on what we're all viewing, just to keep fully engaged.

DVDs: the latest opiate of the people meets the internet, where everyone's a critic.
God help us.

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Saturday, March 12, 2022

TURNING RED (2022)

Pixar’s latest animation aims at its narrowest demographic yet: pubescent Asian-American tweens coping with adolescent separation issues from ‘Tiger Moms’ and anxiety overload from emerging dynastic family genes. No wonder they bypassed theatrical release for Disney+ streaming to help hide this disappointment. UPDATE: Ha! A big hit for Disney+. (And after Pixar & Disney each recaptured their groove last year on LUCA and ENCANTO. -- LINK: https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/07/luca-2021.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/12/encanto-2021.html) Set for no apparent reason in 2002 (tapping autobiographical resonance from writer/director Domee Shi?), its familiar coming-of-age tropes maladroitly disguised (a la INCREDIBLE HULK or TEEN WOLF) as a big Red Panda who takes over the bodily form of previously perfect 8th grade princess Meilin whenever she gets uncontrollably mad. A dicey visual metaphor when the topic being so strenuously avoided is a girl’s first menstruation cycle. Acknowledged when helicopter mom Ming rushes in with an assortment of feminine hygiene pads. (Just imagine the story development notes!) Naturally, Shi tries to broaden appeal with mix-and-match ethnicity in friends & classmates (not unlike a ‘60s menu from an old school Chinese restaurant her pals are One from Column A; One from Column B, etc.). Then pumping up a suspenseful finale with ‘will she/won’t she’ get to the boy-band arena concert on time. Not that she’d miss much if she didn’t make it. Same for you.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Why is Meilin, our troubled form-shifting teen drawn in a manner that ‘reads’ less Asian than the rest of her family? Especially compared to her mother & grandmother?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: A far too brief sequence in what looks like hand-drawn animation explains the complicated family history in a pastiche style based on Chinese landscape painting with its mysterious moving infinity focal points. Lovely.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Comedians with elaborate set ups for modest pay-offs call such jokes ‘long walks.’ And TURNING RED sure feels like one long walk. Instead, see Shi get a lot of these ideas and gags across in an eight-minute directing debut, BAO, her compellingly weird & wonderful 2018 animated short-subject Oscar-winner.

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ERNST LUBITSCH

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Saturday, March 12, 2022

TURNING RED (2022)

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