First and foremost! This movie has strong triggers dealing with alcoholism, suicide and possible parental abuse so please keep that in mind.
Went to see A Star is Born after hearing amazing reviews about it, and definitely worth it. The story is intense and passionate and downright weird at times, and has an amazing soundtrack to boot. I don’t really love bluegrass music, but this movie has definitely made me a fan. And I loved seeing this side of Lady Gaga, she is so beautiful and was an amazing actress. After a tumultuous ride, the ending was almost cathartic if also heartbreaking and as you can all tell from my title, I think it’s going to be a strong Oscar contender.
Highlights:
Bradley Cooper produced and directed this movie and he’s an evil evil man for making me feel so hard
He’s also fan-fucking-tastic in this role. He’s gruff but sweet and sensitive and vulnerable and aggressive and stubborn he just wowed me
Lady Gaga is! so! gorgeous! And with a powerhouse of a voice. I loved her music in this movie, mostly the songs where she really lets her talent shine
Bradley’s brother in the movie is a very underrated character but I adored him and his relationship with Jackson.
Their puppy! I’m sobbing!
Anthony Ramos! My not so curly haired angel on the big screen for all to admire! He was so excited this whole movie, just bouncing around and smiling his whole face off. God I love him.
Soundtrack is amazing. I didn’t love the more pop-esque music that Ally did, but the bluegrass stuff was awesome and I downloaded the soundtrack the second I got home
The cinematography was very unique and I liked how they cut scenes together. They didn’t utilize a lot of standard use transitions, instead just leaping into the next scene. It adds to the overall feel of the movie
The relationship between Jackson and Ally is really odd at first and kinda made me uncomfortable with how forward Jackson was, but it evolves into something more tender as the movie progresses
I do think they’re some very harmful elements to their relationship though.I think the way Ally takes care of him and the way Jackson idealizes her is borderline toxic, but I can also admit that they have a very strong love for each other.
The circumstances they end up in are really just tragic at the end of the day, but they do love each other and to them that was all the really mattered. Which is very romantic and heartwarming to think about.
The final song kinda drives that home and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house
My overall rating is a 8/10. A Star is Born is real and tragic and heartwarming and I think it’s a must watch. It’s a remake and while I haven’t seen the previous version, I do think this one stands apart simply because of the way the events are planned. So I’m going to listen to Shallow another 15 times and not cry, so please grab your tissues and head to the theater!
Also I want to touch on something in the movie that isn’t spoiler free so I’ll include it below. Please don’t continue if you don’t want to be spoiled. TW: Suicide
So one of the most important parts of the movie, at least to me, was at the very end when Ally and Jackson’s brother (Bobby) are talking and Ally is crying and overthinking about what she last said to Jackson before he died and Bobby looks at her and tells her it’s not her fault that he died, it’s Jackson’s fault. This really meant a lot to me and I’m glad they included that in the movie, because at the end of the day when someone commits suicide it is their fault. And I don’t mean to say that in a negative, victim blaming way like people just do this for no reason– there’s always a reason and it’s always important. The reason isn’t their fault, but the action is. I just remember when I was depressed and suicidal in my teenage years and how I would blame my parents and my friends and society and my circumstances for why I was feeling suicidal and my current therapist told me that if I killed myself, I couldn’t blame anyone but myself. Because at the end of the day, no one is forcing you to die and there has to be some option out there that’s better than dying. That was really a turning point in my life and I’m really glad the movie touched on this.
And I don’t intend to speak on behalf of anyone who has felt or is depressed because my opinions and situations are not universal and I totally understand if people disagree with me.
Happy New Year! On this episode of Two Brown Girls we discuss Joseph Gordon Levitt’s basicness, the importance of Lena Dunham, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave (thanks to a great question from backyardgoldmine), Samuel L. Jackson and his N Word Interview, the possible dangers of criticizing POC cinema, and lessons learned from Dave Chapelle - amongst other things.
If you have any comments, suggestions, or questions, feel free to leave them in our ask box or send us a tweet at our official Twitter Page - we might address them in our next episode!
If you like what you hear, subscribe to us on iTunes - and don’t forget to rate and leave a comment!
If no one ever told you to be yourself, this man was the very image of that and was the best that ever did it. Thank you for what you contributed to the music industry. May your legacy live on forever! Rest In Peace.
* The people who got upset by it, I guess they didn’t listen all the way until the end. Because I didn’t have a problem with trans people. I really didn’t.
* But I do now!! (Cue uproarious laughter)
* And there was such a backlash. I mean, an uproar. And now I can’t tell jokes about transgender people ever again. And I won’t…ON TV
* If I were to tell my producers “hey, I identify as Chinese”
* And then I came in [offensive Ching Chong impression] and the one Chinese guy there was like, this isn’t right.
* Or what if I were sent to prison. And I’d say, no, man. I’m a woman. I identify as a woman. Im going to woman’s prison. And guess the first thing I’d do when I got in there??
* “Yeah, you bitches better do my laundry or I’m gonna…”
* To a disabled girl in the front row:
* So does that dog actually help with anything or just keep you company?
* Do you think if you put a little peanut butter down there he’d…yeah, I bet he would. He’d help you out. You ever put a little peanut butter down there? You ever done that?
* Can he pick stuff up? Like, can he up pick beer bottles? He can? I’ll give you 700 dollars for that dog. Right now.
* Later, to 2 girls in the audience: hey, you girls? Boys? Does it even matter anymore?
This transcript does not include jokes comparing Ukraine to Vietnam, jokes about Russia’s ineffectiveness (like he wants them to succeed??) or John Mulaney’s post-set comments about Dave being one of his best friends.
Tl;dr: I was forced to see Dave Chapelle. His jokes included comparing transgender people to racists and rapists. He also encouraged a disabled person in the audience to force her service dog to perform oral sex on her.
Please reblog this if you can, for evidence of his continued transphobia. I’d really hate my Chapelle nightmare to be for nothing.
openly supporting dave chapelle, and then bringing him out as a surprise guest at your show, thus subjecting any trans people in the audience to hate speech, is a reprehensible thing to do, and my sympathies are very much with any trans people in the audience. however, i will say that as someone who started listening to john mulaney’s stand up in 2013, there have always been bigoted aspects of his work, especially ableist and racist jokes, that went unchallenged by fans for far too long. if you, as a white, able bodied trans person, supported john mulaney through his blaccent, his bit about being mistaken for asian, and his use of ableist slurs, but now transphobia is the last straw, ask yourself why.
Please don’t ignore that the basis of his comedy has been antisemitism and sexism. Leaving those bigoted aspects out when they make up the bulk of his comedy is very bad!
I hate using the language of “canceled/canceling” because it feels delegitimizing but this thing with John Mulaney and Dave Chappelle is a situation where canceling can be something positive and meaningful. On the one hand, people have overblown canceling as this rabid force attacking everyone and everything. On the other, it’s become a glib “oh no, don’t let the libs cancel you” joke for ultimately pretty harmless shit. But this is someone immensely popular with a platform and a large audience inviting an infamously transphobic comedian to deliver a surprise transphobic, homophobic, and weirdly ableist opening on their tour and then calling that person their best friend.
The first tweet hits particularly hard because it’s a reminder that being the butt of a joke that 12,000 people laugh at isn’t very far from being the victim of a hate crime. It’s not just offensive, it’s fucking dangerous. It’s demonstrably unsafe.
Transphobia isn’t “brave” or “unsanitized comedy”, it’s a crucial tool for maintaining the status quo of interpersonal and legislative violence.
So yeah, cancel John Mulaney. Hold public figures accountable for targeting us, over and over again.
* The people who got upset by it, I guess they didn’t listen all the way until the end. Because I didn’t have a problem with trans people. I really didn’t.
* But I do now!! (Cue uproarious laughter)
* And there was such a backlash. I mean, an uproar. And now I can’t tell jokes about transgender people ever again. And I won’t…ON TV
* If I were to tell my producers “hey, I identify as Chinese”
* And then I came in [offensive Ching Chong impression] and the one Chinese guy there was like, this isn’t right.
* Or what if I were sent to prison. And I’d say, no, man. I’m a woman. I identify as a woman. Im going to woman’s prison. And guess the first thing I’d do when I got in there??
* “Yeah, you bitches better do my laundry or I’m gonna…”
* To a disabled girl in the front row:
* So does that dog actually help with anything or just keep you company?
* Do you think if you put a little peanut butter down there he’d…yeah, I bet he would. He’d help you out. You ever put a little peanut butter down there? You ever done that?
* Can he pick stuff up? Like, can he up pick beer bottles? He can? I’ll give you 700 dollars for that dog. Right now.
* Later, to 2 girls in the audience: hey, you girls? Boys? Does it even matter anymore?
This transcript does not include jokes comparing Ukraine to Vietnam, jokes about Russia’s ineffectiveness (like he wants them to succeed??) or John Mulaney’s post-set comments about Dave being one of his best friends.
Tl;dr: I was forced to see Dave Chapelle. His jokes included comparing transgender people to racists and rapists. He also encouraged a disabled person in the audience to force her service dog to perform oral sex on her.
Please reblog this if you can, for evidence of his continued transphobia. I’d really hate my Chapelle nightmare to be for nothing.
What the entire FUCK?
Let’s unpack this a little, though, specifically the ableist shit. Because I can already hear the apologists screaming, “he was just joking! He didn’t REALLY mean she should force her service dog to perform oral sex!”
And hey, that may be true, that probably wasn’t his intention, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t problematic. So, I mean, the baseline here is that he’s punching down, which is bad enough without being a starting point. Then you think about it for three more seconds and it’s clear that he just can’t look at a woman without sexualizing her. There’s the ableism of trivializing both her disability and her mobility aid. And the throwaway comment about buying the dog because it can pick up beer bottles is the icing on the cake – flaunting his wealth and joking about using it to take away accessibility tools from disabled people in order to be lazy, which low-key feeds into biases that disabled people face regularly about how if they just tried harder and weren’t so lazy, they wouldn’t be disabled. Obviously this woman had a service dog because she needed one. That’s how service dogs work. And, ngl, I’m also judging him for looking at this intelligent, loyal fuzzy friend that has been trained to support the needs of someone who struggles with certain tasks, and seeing it primarily as a tool he can exploit for his own whims.
This whole set sounds like a hot mess, and there’s a whole essay worth of a post about the transphobic shit in it, but targeting a disabled person just hit a nerve for me. Especially because the front row is often where some of the disabled seating is in a lot of venues, which doesn’t mean that the people who need those seats are willing to open themselves up as targets for comedians – especially when they didn’t sign up to see an opener who wasn’t on the bill.
[Image id: a thread of tweets by Zinna Jones posted on May 21st, 2022. The tweets read as follows:
“John Mulaney is dangerous to us for the same reason as Dave Chappelle, he’s offered the public a choice between the funny guy they know who makes them laugh, or disposing of trans people as valid beings with an interest in our own humanity
Putting people in that position is an invitation to allies to peel off because John Mulaney and Dave Chappelle and laughter are more real to them than trans people, that’s basically it.
Every time a well-liked person does this, they run the ally-peel-off process again. It’s a process of normalizing this attitude toward us and making the general public comfortable with treating us this way. It just models poor behavior toward us.
So whether or not his intentions were in the right configuration isn’t really relevant to this happening to our community as we try to continue existing in the world being built by these well-liked public figures.
It’s a completely flagrant and unnecessary way that cis society raises the stakes for liking trans people. It’s awful.
People want to like John Mulaney more than they want to like us.”
John Mulaney had Dave Chappelle open for him in his latest show without telling his audience. Chappelle gave 10 minutes of transphobic and homophobic dog shit after which John Mulaney hugged him. If I ever see any one of you defending Mulaney again I’m blocking you on sight.
