There is a strange phenomenon that occurs in films where something can seem both drawn out and rushed at the same time. This usually happens when filmmakers try to do too much at once. For example: when one is attempting to tell a long, epic story in a normal cinematic run-time. Or when one is trying to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to the theistic, supernatural, or miraculous aspects of a particular story. Continue reading
Forgetting for a second whether I’m personally offended as a person of color over the casting choices in Exodus: Gods and Kings; I find the casting of an almost entirely white cast to play Ancient Egyptians to be flatly absurd by any metric. Casting like this is historically, geographically, and demographically inaccurate, in addition to being quite simply boring. I can think of no better example of defaulting to whiteness than a casting decision such as this one: “we have a story and a setting that fall outside of our modern racial parameters so why not just cast a bunch of white people, right?” I won’t pretend to know exactly what ancient Egyptians or ancient Hebrews looked like and by what, if any, modern racial or ethnic classifications they would likely fall under, but I am confident in saying that they did not look like Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Aaron Paul, or Sigourney Weaver. Continue reading
Mixed American Film Buff 