SAG announced its nominees for this year's awards and the fact that all their presenters and a host of the show are women. How else will Hollywood awards shows amplify women's voices in this #metoo ear?; Trans actress Daniela Vega stars in the Chilean film "A Fantastic Woman" and says she hopes it teaches audiences empathy; watching Pixar's "Coco" in Mexico is a singular experience.
'Coco': An authentic experience on both sides of the border
Pixar’s smash hit, “Coco,” has passed the $400 million mark at the global box office, and it hasn’t even opened in several large foreign markets.
In Mexico, where the film is set — and centered on the Day of the Dead holiday — “Coco” has become one of that country’s biggest-ever successes at the multiplex.
Los Angeles-based journalist Daniel Hernandez has strong ties to Mexico. He spent several years there as a correspondent for the Vice network. And he was recently in Mexico City, where he saw “Coco” to get a grasp on the film’s popularity.
I saw “Coco” in Mexico before it premiered in the United States. I knew I was in for something special when the Uber driver taking us to the theater said she had already seen it five times. Her children were fascinated by the film, and she said she felt a connection to Mexican customs, even though she herself didn’t really practice them.
It’s an amazing film. The inherently magical place that is Mexico comes alive in spectacular animation that is overflowing with Mexican iconography.
Pixar appears to take every effort to not trivialize or misrepresent any aspect of Día de los Muertos.
The film makes absolute sense in Spanish, and I was actually worried about what it would sound and feel like seeing it in English back here in L.A. But, in a testament to that commitment to authenticity by Pixar, the film easily rolled into my ear in English. The sprinkling of Spanish phrases was artfully smart, funny and supportive to the narrative.
“Coco”, in any language, is a remarkable fable — a lesson in family, mortality, and memory.
It is also a politically subversive work, thanks to a storyline that reads like an analogy for the U.S.-Mexico border. In “Coco,” the bridge from our world to the Land of the Dead is divided by a checkpoint, where those who have died must pass a facial screening to ensure someone still remembers them on the other side.
The scene mimics the Immigration and Customs Enforcement entry checkpoint at the Tijuana border of today. The similarity is that the bridge to the living and the border to the United States can divide families and, frequently, it has done so unfairly.
Now, taking the analogy to a politically logical conclusion may be asking too much from an animated film geared to children. By the end of the movie, everyone still passes through the checkpoint to leave the Land of the Dead, accepting the overall structure of the boundary.
However, there’s a greater idea at play when we realize that the bridge is crossable at all.
The line between living and dead, in the world of “Coco,” is not a place to be feared, but a pathway of marigold petals to cross once a year — happily — with your friends and family.
That’s a powerful message for small children who might be confronting the concept of death for the first time. And maybe it is also an analogy, in reverse, for the kind of happier border we’d want over here in the land of the living.
What do the SAG nominations mean for Oscars and the #MeToo movement?
The Screen Actors Guild announced its nominations for the best work in TV and film today and it appears that women are going to have their voices amplified.
Olivia Munn and Niecy Nash, presented the nominations by video stream and at the SAG Awards ceremony on January 21, Kristen Bell will serve as the show's first ever host. Plus and all of the awards presenters will be women. This all adds up to what seems like a deliberate statement from the 84-year-old actors union. That is: women have a voice and they’re going to use it.
This year’s awards season is happening at a time when the #MeToo movement is unearthing near daily accounts of women being harassed or abused in all walks of life, including Hollywood. And the industry is being scrutinized for its overall treatment of women. Just today, writing in The New York Times, Salma Hayek revealed a harrowing account of working with producer Harvey Weinstein on her 2002 film “Frida.”
Kyle Buchanan, senior editor at New York Magazine's Vulture.com, joined The Frame host John Horn to talk about the SAG awards nominations and how the current conversation about sexual harassment and abuse in Hollywood is coloring this awards season so far.
Interview highlights:
On how the #MeToo movement is affecting who gets nominated this awards season, including for SAG awards:
Hollywood is looking for ways, with their votes this awards season, to say something about their current moment. If picking "Moonlight" for Best Picture this past Oscar year was saying something about the moment that we're living in, well that moment has only become more heightened and more fraught. It was interesting to look at what was nominated for SAG today, some of the frontrunners were "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," "Get Out," and "Lady Bird." And those are three movies that in some fashion– whether it's talking about gender, race or police brutality– have a lot to say about our current year. I think the reason why they are resonating, above and beyond the quality of the movies, is because they feel like movies of today. Because right now we want movies that tell us something about ourselves and our current moment.
On how the current conversation about sexual abuse and harassment is changing the tone of awards season, when Hollywood is usually celebrating itself:
Hollywood is remaking itself right now and accounting for appalling behavior that has been allowed to flourish for so long. So it'll be very interesting this awards season because that's the time usually where Hollywood can celebrate itself, can pat itself on the back, and I'm not sure it has the latitude to do that this year. But I do think that awards season is useful as a snapshot of where the industry is in that year, for good or for ill. And I really do think that this year, considering the movies that have come to the forefront of that conversation, is telling us a lot about where Hollywood is, where it lags and where it could go.