16 minute read
In Defence of Nicolas Cage
When the opportunity to write this article came up, I was quick to jump on it. You see, every week, my housemates and I would hold Nicolas Cage marathons and marvel over his greatness. Please don’t ask us how many times we’ve watched The Wicker Man. I’m ashamed to answer. Nicolas Cage has to be one of the most enthusiastic actors of our generation. The first film I can remember seeing him in was the 2009 film, Knowing. With an impressive portfolio of 97 films and 6 currently in the works, Cage clearly has a raw talent that you don’t find in many actors today. But at the same time, Cage is often dubbed as eccentric and over-the-top for his performances. But, is it bad acting or simply him creating art?
Cage comes from a family of acclaimed actors and creatives. At just 15 years old, Cage tried to convince his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, to give him a screen test and told him, “I’ll show you acting.” Cage didn’t want to be compared to the legacy of Coppola and his impressive reputation, so he adapted the screen name of Nicolas Cage to distract from his birth name, Nicolas Kim Coppola. As well as this, Cage was once married to award-winning actress Patricia Arquette before their divorce in 2001, and after married the daughter of rock and roll legend Elvis Presley - Lisa Marie Presley.
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Having won an Academy Award and Screen Actors Guild Award for his 1995 performance in Leaving Las Vegas, there’s no doubt that there was once a time that Cage’s acting was considered profound, but since then he seems to have become somewhat of a parody. Some of his earlier films such as Face/Off, City of Angels and Con Air have been held in high regard but then we have films such as Mandy and Trespass in which his acting is heavily over dramatised.
In a 2018 interview with IndieWire, Cage addressed the internet sensation that is ‘Cage Rage’ and said, “I’m sure it’s frustrating for Panos [director of Mandy], who has made what I consider a very lyrical, internal, and poetic work of art, to have this ‘cage rage’ thing slammed all over his movie… the internet has kind of done the movie a disservice.” It isn’t just critics who perceive Cage as slightly over the top. His own uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, attempted to fire him for the exaggerated voice he insisted on using in Peggy Sue Got Married. In 1987 Norman Jewison, had told him that his representation of Ronny in Moonstruck, wasn’t what they were going for. Film critics have even accurately described Cage’s unique style of acting as the look of excruciating bafflement that speaks to the panic of being alive. In a 2013 interview with The Guardian, he said, “the internet has developed this thing about me – and I’m not even a computer guy, you know? I don’t know why it is happening. I’m trying not to… lemme say this: I’m now of the mind-set that, when in Rome, if you can’t beat em’, join ‘em.”
It was reported in CNBC’s, ‘The Filthy Rich Guide’ that Cage had blown through his $150 million fortune and was currently in financial crisis. Could that be the reason the actor has chosen some more than questionable roles over the last decade? The actor currently owes $6.3 million in property taxes to the IRS with many of his properties facing foreclosure. It was recently announced that Cage had landed the role of a lifetime, playing himself in the film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. According to the plot description, the actor will play a ‘version of some of his most iconic and beloved characters in order to extricate himself from an increasingly dangerous situation.’ Perhaps another questionable film choice or an easy way to earn a quick $1 million.
Either way, we can’t deny that Cage has a method of acting that is unseen in the film industry and probably never will be. Maybe he’s doing it on purpose or maybe he genuinely believes his eccentric talent is appealing to others. I mean, if that’s the case, he’s not necessarily wrong? It does provide for some quality entertainment for us all. I for one hope Cage never changes his methods or it just wouldn’t be the same.
words by: SARAH HARRIS design by: CYNTHIA VERA
C Y N I C A L
Pariah By Cynthia Vera It Must Be: Love,
Love, Love
The lights are muted and hazy on a stage lit by a single spotlight focusing on a twisting body around a pole – sexual, but full of agency and in control of the gazes locked upon it. The teasing and provocative lyrics get louder and louder in a club packed with black queer women: “All you ladies pop your pussy like this/ Shake your body, don’t stop, don’t miss.” I almost thought I had walked into a black feminist fever-dream, but this was just the opening scene of Dee Rees’ 2011 semi emotional autobiography, Pariah.
Pariah was once described as a “hysterical, exploitative, ghetto soap opera porno” on an IndieWire article, a harsh critic for a film that integrates both the coming-of-age and coming out stories and pitches it against an African American family trying to adapt and accept Alike, in regards to ones sexuality.
Closing on a bittersweet note one that sees Alike transformed, slowly but surely establishing herself in a community of those not just bound by sexual identity, but by collective pain. In a startlingly sincere, yet heartbreaking way, the film conveys a universal sensitivity that relates the misery and joys of first love; the aching journey of adolescent sexuality, and the sense of wanting to belong.
F I L M S
Blue Valentine By Cynthia Vera
Told in two time-frames – the past and the present, Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine follows a volatile and broken marriage as it blooms in the past and shrivels in the present, aimlessly looking for clues as to what went wrong.
Lacking in understanding and motivation and blinded by frustration and dissatisfaction, Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy’s (Michelle Williams) love story is like watching the cruellest sort of dissection; like pulling a little bird apart by its feathers. To revive and save their marriage, the couple take a weekend gateway trip to a space-themed hotel room with hopes of relighting an incandescent fame that had long been extinguished. Cianfrance’s 2011 film is harsh and realistic, the grainy, washed-out colours of the present, which contrast with the brighter and softer palette of the past makes for an emotional experience of agony and fleeting joy.
A painful and heart-breaking but honest account of how even the best, most loving marriages can crumble Blue Valentine feels like a slow-motion punch to the stomach over and over.
design by: LUISA DE LA CONCHA MONTES Love By Luisa De la Concha Montes
Do not watch this movie with your parents, but please watch it with your partner!
Visually, this movie is a very explicit celebration of sexual exploration. Narratively, it is a critical essay on modern love, and the attachment it still has to monogamy. The story follows Murphy, an American cinema student who lives in Paris. Through flashbacks, we see how his relationship with his exgirlfriend, Electra reached a tumultuous ending after asking their neighbour to have a threesome with them.
In this movie, Gaspar Noé uses the neon lights that made him famous back in 2009 with Enter the Void, however, this time there is no LSD-induced explosions of colours: the transitions are slow-paced. Even though the movie is filmed in Paris, it feels like it could have been filmed in any big modern-day metropolis, as what it proposes – a frantic search for love in all the wrong places – can be applied to the discrepancy between the abstract nature of love, and our accelerated rate of life.
Estocolmo By Luisa De la Concha Montes At first instance, the premise of this movie might seem pretty self-explanatory and predictable: boy meets girl, girl plays hard to get, and boy convinces girl that he is worth her time. However, the interactions of the main characters, who are vaguely named “Her” (Aura Garrido) and “Him” (Javier Pereira), are all but predictable. At times, the movie stops feeling like a romantic film, and it openly adopts the tropes of mystery crimes, slowly building up the tension between both characters in a cat-and-mouse manner. Swiftly, and without being too on the nose, this movie is entirely about power, and the normalization of sexist behaviours in ‘romantic’ interactions. Yet, Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s film is not only worth your time for the idea it proposes, but also because of its aesthetic. The breathtaking shots of Madrid at night that we see when the characters move from the party where they met to his apartment, have left a cinematic mark in my mind for a long time.
“How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!” –Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard Here, Pope’s words from Eloisa to Abelard demonstrate the sentiment that ignorance is bliss; these lines being the inspiration behind Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). The Oscar winning sci-fi romance being set in a world where one has the ability to erase all memory of a person from their mind. Ex-lovers Clementine (Kate Winslet) and Joel (Jim Carey) decide to go through with the procedure, but it does not entirely go to plan. Gondry paints love in a cyclical nature exemplifying how over and over again, we willingly make the same mistakes in our relationships. The human predicament being that memory is fickle and finite, but precious. The romance is embellished with realist cynicism, but has a hopeful ending. This is a more serious film for the Valentine’s period, which examines how we paradoxically desire to dissociate from our pasts, yet inextricably cannot let go.
R O M A N T I C
F I L M S
If you could go back in time, what would be on your bucket list? Would you meet Cleopatra? See what dinosaurs really looked like? Or perhaps, you would just pursue true love? Richard Curtis explores the more mundane side of time travel in his 2013 film About Time. Following the life of lovable, slightly awkward, Tim (Domhnall Gleeson), we grow to love his perfectly imperfect life that bursts with diverse and threedimensional personalities who help him to learn how to love in many different ways. Yet, what makes About Time one of my most cherished films is the poetically-lasting sentiment that Curtis instils in me at the end; even though Tim could live every day one hundred times if he wanted to, he discovers that his ability has given him a gift greater than any amount of time travel could. A lesson to “live life as if there were no second chances”. And as the credits roll, I vow to myself to take pleasure in the ordinary, to seek adventure in life’s every day.
Your Name By Laura Dazon
Want to watch a romantic film for Valentine’s day but tired of the cheesy classics? Let’s switch things up a little with an animated movie this time, Your Name.
Your Name is the story of Mitsuha, a dreamy high school girl from the countryside of Japan who’s not happy with her life, and Taki, a Tokyoite teenager. They have nothing in common, and yet, they will embark in an adventure both of them are not ready for, when, one morning, they wake up in the other person’s body. Trying to understand what is happening to them and finding ways to communicate, their adventure will lead them to something bigger than what any of them could imagine. It is a perfect introduction to Japanese animation if you are not already familiar with it, or an occasion to revisit Makoto Shinkai’s work who just released Weathering With You this January.
Exploring themes like longing for love, separation, destiny and fate, Your Name is not your typical rom-com. It is an experience in itself. Prepare to tear up while spectacular graphics unleash in front of your eyes and imprint in your mind.
Notting Hill By Becki Tyler
Written by Richard Curtis, Notting Hill was the highest grossing film of 1999 and is the epitome of a romantic comedy. While critics may call-out the film for its sanitised, posh portrayal of London, its whimsical plot and predictably happy ending; Notting Hill is the unabashedly romantic and genuinely funny film that is needed in today’s current climate of cynically realistic movies. Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant are memorable in their roles, playing awkward travel-bookshop owner William Thacker and internationally famous actress Anna Scott respectively; the relationship between them is as endearing as it may be unrealistic. The supporting cast including Welshman Rhys Ifans, and the late Emma Chambers further contribute to the unadulterated warmth that encompasses Notting Hill. Who can forget the iconic, often quoted (and sometimes mocked) moment where Roberts’ Anna stands in front of William declaring that she is “just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her”? As Peter Bradshaw summarised in The Guardian, “Notting Hill is not a guilty pleasure, but an entirely innocent one.”
Life Without Social Media: A Brief Experiment
It’s no secret that social media is a ruling factor over the lives of every modern day teen and adult. The digital realm now provides services that were entirely inconceivable this time fifty years ago. Through platforms like Twitter we’re given accessible gateways into breaking news stories, live action updates and other important information, all at our fingertips with the simple press of a screen. The rapid development of this technology has opened up new career paths, with opportunities in content creation and social media management for graduates all over the country, across disciplines like English Literature and Media and Communications.
But social media has a dark side. Whilst its availability, both at home and on the move, grants it peak convenience in the grab-and-go era of the twenty first century, it also lends itself to overexposure and addiction. According to the website Oberlo, social media generates approximately 3.2 billion daily users - that’s 42% of the population. Next time you’re on a bus, or a train, take a quick look around you. How many people are fixed to their phones? I am, for one. Growing up, I saw the rise of social media from MySpace and Bebo to all the well used platforms we know now: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. To make matters worse, I am an aspiring digital copy editor, so a lot of the work that I’ve undertaken revolves around social media and online content. It is an inseparable part of my life. So why am I writing this article, you ask? I’m challenging myself to take a break from it all for a few days to see what sort of difference it really makes.
Day 1 I thought I’d start off easy. My first day without social media fell on a Wednesday, and lucky for me I was set to be at work from 10am to 9pm. Easy enough, right? Work provided a good distraction as I wasn’t able to reach for my phone as often as usual. That being said, I began to notice truly how often I do so. From the moment I woke up I was pining for Twitter, reaching to check any notifications I’d received since the previous evening. Even though my shift kept me mostly busy, I still insisted on keeping my phone in my pocket, just in case it were to buzz or ring. What does that say about the rule that technology has over me? I decided to put my phone in my bag and leave it there till the end of my shift. When the time came to pack up and leave, I retrieved it and plugged myself in for music to walk home to, then got home, put it on to charge and turned it off.
Day 2 My second day on a social media hiatus was a lot harder than the first, as I’d guessed that it would be. Thursdays are a busy one at uni for me (I’m in from 9am and my last class finishes at 4pm), but it’s difficult to stay focused over so many hours, especially with breaks in between. I tried to keep my phone in my bag as often as I could, using my computer for work and listening to music. The most difficult times came when I was with others, seeing them on Instagram or Facebook. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to check them, but the feeling of being left out is what got to me the most. It struck me how often people spend time on their phones when they could be talking to those around them. As I was now the only one in my group who wasn’t on my phone, I found myself sitting in silence, watching other people on theirs.
Day 3 The third day of my experiment was simultaneously the hardest and the easiest of all three. The knowledge that this was the final day made getting through it a lot easier. I’d done two days already and was now familiar with my triggers and what I could do to avoid them. In theory it should have been the easiest day of the three, but my empty Friday itinerary said otherwise. I realised that social media acts as an escape from boredom; the mindless scrolling and double-tapping fills time otherwise spent listening and observing the world around us. Have we, the social media generation, forgotten what our world looks like without technology?
I do admit to picking my phone up once or twice, to refreshing my feed and checking my notifications out of habit. But, in my three days without social media, I had now learned to put my phone down when I noticed myself doing so. I was able to resist the temptation to scroll, something I hadn’t previously been able to do. My eyes felt less tired at the end of each day, I was able to hold conversations and really listen to people, without anticipating a buzz in my pocket. It began to rub off on those around me, too. Perhaps all it took to break the habit was a new awareness of my surroundings and of the power of technology to erase our presence within them.
