English Version | The [Un]Popular Issue: Roteiro

18 Jul 2023
By Vogue Portugal

Books, movies, and series not to be missed.

Books, movies, and series not to be missed.

The Battle of the Colossi

No bestseller list is complete without a few books whose popularity can be... excessive and controversial. These are some of those books.

 

The War of the Titans

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets. We're looking at the cinematic event of the year: Barbie vs Oppenheimer. By Pedro Vasconcelos.

These days, captivating the attention of the general population, especially when it comes to movies, is difficult. The various streaming services, which seem to multiply every day, have made the experience of going to see a movie at the cinema almost redundant. Why spend money when you can wait weeks and watch the same movie in the comfort of your own home? But as this convenience grew, the "magic" of Hollywood diminished considerably. All seemed lost until, about a year ago, the impossible happened. Not one, but two films created a wave of enthusiasm unseen since the lonely days of the pandemic. Barbie (2023) and Oppenheimer (2023) were both announced in early 2022 and, almost immediately, the frenzy in public opinion set in.

The peculiarity of the widespread euphoria is only accentuated when you consider the films in question. While the first is a journey into the pink world of one of the most recognizable dolls ever, directed by Greta Gerwig, the other is a dramatized account of the man who invented the nuclear bomb, orchestrated by Christopher Nolan. The similarity between the hype caused by the former and the curiosity provoked by the latter, not to mention the fact that they are two opposite concepts, was the perfect storm to catalyze an avalanche of memes. Immediately the images of Barbie (2023), whose production caused a shortage of pink paint, to the gloomy atmosphere of a story involving a weapon of mass destruction. From photographs of houses to ridiculously elaborate situation analogies, Barbie vs Oppenheimer has become one of the internet's favorite topics.

It is not only in aesthetics and narrative that the films differ, the marketing strategy adopted by each of them is absurdly different. Barbie (2023) has, since the beginning of this year, bet on a relentless approach. Starting with the promotion of "this Barbie is" memes, which accompanied the first posters of the film, to the construction of a real Barbie house in Malibu (already available to rent on Airbnb), Margot Robbie even had the right to a cover of American Vogue. The movie's marketing is aggressive in a way that hasn't been seen in years. By contrast, Oppenheimer (2023) seems to adopt a different philosophy. There are barely any posters or ads for Nolan's opus, and the actors normally responsible for giving interviews to promote the film have been dispensed with - except for one, given by lead actor Cillian Murphy via a murky Zoom call. Promoting a movie about the atomic bomb has its challenges, whereas promoting the image of a happy, consensual product seems almost simple. But Nolan, we assume, isn't even trying to compete, which is still an assertive power move.

The British director may be correct. Even taking into account the magnanimous differences in terms of marketing, the predictions for the films' box-office debut are neck and neck, with a slight advantage for Barbie (2023). But the rivalry, however serious it may be for the studios of each of the films, is part of the anticipation of this whole gigantic cinematic event. That's surely that's the best way to describe it: an event. Regardless of which team we are on, we are facing an event in the history of the seventh art. The two most anticipated films of the last decade come out on the same day: July 21. Some have already made plans to see them both, consecutively. It is even theorized which order is correct. The general opinion is that Oppenheimer (2023) should be seen first and Barbie (2023) next, to (re)boost spirits. Regardless of theories, rivalries, or memes, one thing is clear: the movies are back!

 

 

 

 

Where have I seen this before?

The new season of Black Mirror has arrived, and some are not happy with the result after so long a wait.

It seems that after our shared experience of a global pandemic, the creators of the most popular sci-fi anthology of recent years have avoided imagining futuristic apocalypse possibilities and instead delved into the past. From the retro-futuristic 1960s aesthetic of Beyond the Sea to the recreation of the distant past of the distant year 2006 in Mazey Day (yes, we're getting old), this sixth season takes refuge in more familiar situations from our shared cultural consciousness. If you're one of the people who was disappointed, fear not, this batch of episodes reminded us of other stories with similar enough themes and ideas to make us say, "Where have I seen this before?"

As creativity does not exist in a void, one might even suspect that some of the upcoming films might have served as a reference, or inspiration, for these episodes. The reader might even interpret this list as an alternative season of Black Mirror with slightly more satisfying story arcs. So, here is a small selection of obscure movies (some more, some less) with similar concepts to what we saw in Black Mirror.

Beyond the Sea talks about isolation, particularly male isolation when it is accentuated by extreme crisis situations. While the sci-fi elements are strange and interesting (in particular the concept of the body outside the body), these become confusing as they bring up more and more plot holes that make one ask, "So what if instead of doing this, they did that?" too many times. In The Lighthouse (2019), probably the most mainstream work on this list, director Robert Eggers (The Witch, Northman) films two hyper-popular actors (Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe) in black and white, as lighthouse keepers covered in dirt and chaotic, questionable facial hair, somewhere in the late 19th century, and lets them go wild in a movie that's more a sensory exploration of long-term isolation than a plot with a beginning, middle and end. 

Mazey Day is an episode with an identity crisis. It seems to be a little lost, not knowing very well if it is portraying the themes of guilt and trauma of the paparazzo Bo, or the parasitic relationship between the media and celebrities, through the character Mazey Day. Infinity Pool (2023) is almost impossible to describe without revealing the secret behind its plot, but it is a movie that seems to know how to better portray the dichotomy between high society and the less fortunate through the implementation of its sci-fi elements as a representation of privilege and what its excess can lead to.

Joan is Awful is a story of paranoia, about what happens when you can no longer trust those around you, and the very concept of privacy. With a little sci-fi twist and meta humor, where Netflix is making fun of itself (or showing us its secret plan for the near future), this first episode seems to be the favorite of the season for many. All my Friends Hate Me (2021) manages to take the concept of paranoia and squeeze it down to its most concentrated essence. The main character, Pete, thinks he's going to spend a quiet weekend in the countryside with friends he hasn't seen in a while, but what he finds is a strange lingering feeling that something is against him. This unease is heightened by the presence of the only new face in the group, who seems to know more about Pete's past than it’s supposed to. The result is a tightrope of anxiety that can go very well... or very badly. If you felt awkward watching Joan is Awful, you'll have a much more unpleasant experience waiting for you in All my Friends Hate Me.

In Loch Henry a young couple of film students discover what it means to preserve and face the past. They eventually discover the consequences of doing so, in a story that integrates the found footage style (e.g., The Blair Witch Project) within a more conventional horror package in a classic context of modern youth facing the dangers of "the little village". The end result seems to be a bit confused about what it wants to get across, especially in the (chaotic) last minutes of the episode. The Borderlands (2013) uses the same elements to take us much further into the fear and uncertainty of what the past might hide. Here, Gray, a technology expert inexperienced in the occult, and Deacon, a disbelieving priest, are sent by the Vatican to a village in rural England to investigate the veracity of an alleged haunting in a local church. Through the various cameras used by Gray in an attempt to prove the haunting, the film manages to support all its history and conflicts through the literal perspective of those cameras, offering us an aggressive journey through the dangers of "the little village". One could say that the ending gives a new and unexpected meaning to the expression "in the belly of the beast".

The idea behind the episode Demon 79 seems to be to build a horror tragicomedy based on modern ideas of social justice mixed with pop culture references from the late 70s by implementing an aesthetic copied from horror movies of the same era, from the art direction, and the costume design, to the exaggerated grain texture on the image. The result is a simple story whose ending fails to live up to expectations and falls down on the apocalyptic premise it commits to from the start. Censor (2021) is the first film by Welsh director Prano Bailey-Bond and, unlike Demon 79, it keeps its premise much more ordinary without sacrificing elegance. The use of aesthetic motifs (here referring to 1985) such as digital grain and the texture of VHS tapes is intertwined with the narrative itself, which tells the story of a low-budget horror film censor during the "video nasties" era in the UK. Its attitude seems to be not so much one of copying as of paying homage to the theme and imagery that it references, wanting, in some way, to integrate itself there.

Translated from the original on The [Un]Popular Issue, published July 2023.Full stories and credits on the print issue.

Vogue Portugal By Vogue Portugal

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