LOS ANGELES: In a year of devastating hurricanes, ubiquitous sex assault scandals and a strikingly candid presidential Twitter account, it is little wonder that cinemagoers are turning to escapist fantasy.
With fairytale romance “The Shape of Water” leading the nominations for the Golden Globes, the dark farce “Get Out” topping critics’ lists and horror movies making $1 billion at the box office, 2017 may come to be seen as the year of the genre movie.
Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” which satirizes suburban white guilt over racial inequality in the US, is emblematic of the rise of genre films in this year’s awards season.
It has been almost a year since its release, and most movies brought out that far ahead of Hollywood’s various prize-giving ceremonies are long forgotten by the time the trophies are being polished.
Yet “Get Out” is up for two Globes on Sunday and entertainment website Eonline.com has been extolling its virtues as a genuine contender.
Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” a hot favorite among the movies vying for the best dramatic film Globe, has seven nominations in total.
The Cold War-era piece tells the story of a young, mute woman (Sally Hawkins) who works at night in a government laboratory and falls in love with a captive merman-like amphibian creature.
Alexander Payne’s sci-fi satire “Downsizing” and Edgar Wright’s heist thriller “Baby Driver” are also seen as genre movies that would not normally get a second glance on awards nights, yet both are vying for Globes on Sunday.
In recent years, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which runs the Globes, has rewarded movies celebrating Tinseltown (“La La Land,” “The Artist,” “Birdman”) or heartfelt rites-of-passage flicks (“Boyhood,” “Moonlight”).
Historical or journalistic stories like “The King’s Speech” and “Spotlight” are also firm favorites — usually at the expense of more fantastical, escapist movies.
At the genre end of the market, only westerns like “The Revenant” and “Hell or High Water” have been pulling their weight.
The last decade or so have been unkind to genre movies but they are on their way back, with frightening films, in particular, regaining their mojo.
The New York Times magazine recently ran a cover story describing 2017 as “The Year of Horror,” dedicating several of its inside pages to the best actors in recent examples of the genre.
The cover featured Australian Oscar winner Nicole Kidman, one of the most popular actresses of her generation, who diversified this year with a starring part in the gory creep-fest “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.”
Noting that horror films have made more than $1 billion in ticket sales over 12 months, the magazine attributed the public’s new bloodlust to the torment of the daily news cycle.
“Horror movies probably don’t need the world to be horrifying to be good,” it speculated.
“But when things are bad, the genre has a way of telling you they could be worse.”
Golden Globes celebrate the year of the genre movie
Golden Globes celebrate the year of the genre movie
Arts festival’s decision to exclude Palestinian author spurs boycott
- A Macquarie University academic who researches Islamophobia and Palestine, Abdel-Fattah responded saying it was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship,” with her lawyers issuing a letter to the festival
SYDENY: A top Australian arts festival has seen the withdrawal of dozens of writers in a backlash against its decision to bar an Australian Palestinian author after the Bondi Beach mass shooting, as moves to curb antisemitism spur free speech concerns.
The shooting which killed 15 people at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Dec. 14 sparked nationwide calls to tackle antisemitism. Police say the alleged gunmen were inspired by Daesh.
The Adelaide Festival board said last Thursday it would disinvite Randa Abdel-Fattah from February’s Writers Week in the state of South Australia because “it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi.”
FASTFACTS
• Abdel-Fattah responded, saying it was ‘a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship.’
• Around 50 authors have since withdrawn from the festival in protest, leaving it in doubt, local media reported.
A Macquarie University academic who researches Islamophobia and Palestine, Abdel-Fattah responded saying it was “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship,” with her lawyers issuing a letter to the festival.
Around 50 authors have since withdrawn from the festival in protest, leaving it in doubt, local media reported.
Among the boycotting authors, Kathy Lette wrote on social media the decision to bar Abdel-Fattah “sends a divisive and plainly discriminatory message that platforming Australian Palestinians is ‘culturally insensitive.'”
The Adelaide Festival said in a statement on Monday that three board members and the chairperson had resigned. The festival’s executive director, Julian Hobba, said the arts body was “navigating a complex moment.”
a complex and unprecedented moment” after the “significant community response” to the board decision.
In the days after the Bondi Beach attack, Jewish community groups and the Israeli government criticized Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for failing to act on a rise in antisemitic attacks and criticized protest marches against Israel’s war in Gaza held since 2023.
Albanese said last week a Royal Commission will consider the events of the shooting as well as antisemitism and social cohesion in Australia. Albanese said on Monday he would recall parliament next week to pass tougher hate speech laws.
On Monday, New South Wales state premier Chris Minns announced new rules that would allow local councils to cut off power and water to illegally operating prayer halls.
Minns said the new rules were prompted by the difficulty in closing a prayer hall in Sydney linked to a cleric found by a court to have made statements intimidating Jewish Australians.
The mayor of the western Sydney suburb of Fairfield said the rules were ill-considered and councils should not be responsible for determining hate speech.
“Freedom of speech is something that should always be allowed, as long as it is done in a peaceful way,” Mayor Frank Carbone told Reuters.
