first girl i loved
to anyone who remembers his or her first heartbreak, first girl i loved will ring true .
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first girl i loved
( feat. ashly perez & kirsten king )
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the other audience award of the night in the next section, went to karem sanga’s coming - of - age tale first girl i loved .
intelligent, empathetic, and well - acted, first girl i loved explores teen romance from a refreshing - and emotionally resonant - perspective .
life in the pages: “i read scripts constantly, and i don’t know if i’ve read a script since [ first girl i loved ] that i similarly didn’t want to put down. i wanted to know what happens between all these characters so badly. i just felt like anne was already alive as i read it. it was so vivid, vulnerable, and emotional. ”
“first girl i loved” first premiered at the sundance film festival before traveling to seattle, toronto lgbt film festival and others on the circuit. it is now available to purchase on itunes, amazon, vod and other digital platforms .
sanga: i didn’t feel like i ever had to compromise on a location .
i loved some of the new characters. i loved the jedha guardian duo - - - the heavily armed baze malbus and his blind partner and badass warrior - monk chirrut îmwe. both were characters i would have loved to see more of in other films, but of course both die, since pretty much all the new characters in the film die .
learn more about first girl i loved by visiting the film’s imdb page or website. to learn more about the film la grant as well as film la’s other filmmaker grant programs, including application dates and deadlines, click here .
being in sundance ’s “next” section (read: structurally experimental and not likely to see broad circulation), first girl i loved touts a nontraditional narrative structure—which is just one reason why you should see it. the events that take place in the plot aren’t uncommon nor particularly noteworthy by themselves. the sensations that first girl i love generates through the fugue storytelling device, however, communicates their urgency and gravity .
“i got way too big off views / back to the basics, i won’t lose. ”
about the film: i gravitate towards stories of youth in crisis. “the young kieslowski as about someone who didn’t want to be a parent but pretended like he did. “first girl i loved” tells the opposite story. anne’s ready to be herself even if she is not ready to admit it .
first girl i loved is one of the only romantic movies that doesn’t have a meet - cute scene. it features the longest texting sequence i can recall where the only words coming across are through narration, close - ups of cell phones, or texts appearing beside the characters. there is so much to be admired about first girl from a technical point and in how it deals with coming out. the young leads get a lot of support from established performers pamela adlon (louie), heidecker, and even comedian cameron esposito. however, i found it difficult to forgive anne in a way writer / director sanga wants us to. if you can find your way around this issue, there may be a lot to love about first girl i loved .
one film that benefited greatly from the film la grant is kerem sanga’s first girl i loved —a refreshingly honest coming - out and coming - of - age tale set in the dusty northern la suburb of chatsworth, which premiered to rave reviews at this year’s sundance film festival .
what’s next: first girl i loved, co - starring brianna hildebrand. the independent film follows two teenage girls wrestling with their sexuality at a los angeles high school, and gelula plays anne, who runs into trouble with her best friend when she tries to come out to him .
# wonderwoman is hands down the best dceu film to date! film is so good. i absolutely loved it! bravo @ pattyjenks @ galgadot @ geoffjohns 👏🏽⚔️
i' m now allowed to reveal i enjoyed wonder woman! it' s really good. has the heart & humanity dceu needed. i' m not reviewing it fyi urltoken
varsity blues: “i went to a regular, suburban high school in philadelphia until i dropped out and moved to hollywood. i’m happy i did, because i had to form a personality. i was a troubled teen, and i had a difficult time socially in school, for my own reasons. i was very lonely, but very comfortable being alone, which i saw in anne quite a bit. i think i was just trying to survive the shittiest time in teenage life, when they never tell you you’re going to be a cool adult. that’s very much anne. high school is not for her, and anne is not for high school. ”
initially a somewhat bland, under - detailed tale of burgeoning attraction between two female high schoolers, “first girl i loved” gets more interesting as their tentative relationship crashes against the usual private uncertainties and social anxieties of that age. those conflicts aren’t particularly well developed either, however, compromised by uneven character writing and an awkward flashback structure. [ … ]
on a recent evening, as i weaved my way through a crowded manhattan sidewalk, i phoned my boyfriend to tell him i' d be home late. just before we hung up, i looked around nervously to make sure no one was overhearing our conversation, then lowered my voice to make a humiliating request :
could you dvr gossip girl ?
suffice to say, i' m the type to watch star wars movies over and over and over again (though not so much the prequels .) i' ve watched the original trilogy countless times and went to the force awakens three times in theaters. i' m not sure i feel the need to see rogue one a second time, though i probably will anyways just to catch all the stuff i missed .
these moments are emblematic of how the film’s lead – anne – perceives these memories: the first a terrible betrayal from someone she thought she could trust and the latter, the time she fell in love. first girl i loved is a coming - out story where memory dictates our own emotional resolve, these two moments clarifying just how anne feels about men and women. the film isn’t just about anne though – it’s also about how clifton and sasha view these exact same memories and how their perception skews from anne’s. first girl i loved isn’t rashomon. it’s not interested in the uneasy nature of memory and how people shape their own past. instead memory here is the constant – unchanging and inflexible. it’s how we choose to interpret them and how these memories inform who we become that changes from person to person .
putnam: we’re doing a lot for our production, and we have to find a lot: a bar, two different softball fields, a school that would let us shoot forever, a bunch of different houses, streets, you name it. you start to add it all up and it’s like, well, i hope we can meet these budget numbers! on first girl i loved we weren’t really compromising on locations, thanks to dave’s ongoing and super - diligent work finding places .
in short, “new girl” is schmidt’s show, and everyone needs to stop pretending it belongs to jess .
one of the things i loved about the film was that it had such a great sense of place, even though the setting isn’t 100% integral to the plot. why did you decide to set the film in chatsworth ?
sanga doesn’t always clear the best path for his protagonist’s self - discovery, particularly in he film’s plot - heavy second half, but it’s still a thrill to watch anne get where she’s going. between “first girl i loved” and “ the edge of seventeen, ” it’s starting to seem like we just might be riding a new (and long overdue) wave a of smart, vibrant, essential new high school movies. here’s hoping .
with kerem as a writer / director and ross & dave as producers, they founded psh collective, a production company focused on bringing unique points of view, fresh voices, and young talents to the screen. “first girl i loved” is their follow - up film, though they are also producing the punk - rock rom com “dinner in america” and the female - driven comedy “eskimo sisters”, with danny leiner (“harold and kumar”) directing .
gelula, best known as the spoiled xanthippe in “unbreakable kimmy schmidt, ” is absolutely sensational, and only gets better as her character’s burgeoning confidence begins to clash with the erosion of the world around her. “i don’t know you, i don’t know what you’re about, ” sasha tells anne after their first kiss, and we immediately understand the thunderstruck expression those words cut across galula’s face: here is someone who — for the first time in her life — knows exactly what she’s about, and you better believe she’s not going to hide it from herself or from the first girl she loves .
director kerem sanga successfully employs a “fugue - like” screenplay to narrate first girl i loved, wherein each character accesses their memory of events—which transpire partially, at first—to then complete a scene retroactively via a subsequent scene. for example, clifton confesses to his guidance counselor that he had sex with anne without her clear consent, which leads up to anne’s disclosure that she is attracted to a girl. this completed scene occurs after clifton has harassed anne to the point where she attacks him with the very wire cutters he used to cut her u - lock to steal her bike. the emotional resonance of the entire scene that clifton accesses later on exponentiates as it fully unfolds .
sanga: my mother recently moved here [ to la ] like eight or nine years ago. but i grew up in dallas and austin. i actually lived here as a child, maybe three or four years old, but i haven’t really lived here since .
a small, sympathetic story of a teenage girl’s rough coming out is smothered by a pile of far - fetched melodrama, a loathsomely obnoxious male lead character and far too much unsteadicam visual randomness in first girl i loved. had writer - director kerem sanga kept things simple, intimate and unmannered in his third feature, he might have created a nice and affecting little picture of a suburban 17 - year - old’s sexual proclivities coming into focus. but he’s placed too many barriers in the way, resulting in a film that won’t travel beyond a small niche audience .
first girl i loved features some great performances from a talented young cast. dylan gelula and brianna hildebrand are very believable as two infatuated teens, and dylan especially shines as our heroine. the film doesn’t shy away from the uncomfortable, like some may find teenage masturbation, or the unpopular, like that divisive scene. so while it’s unlikely to become a queer classic, if it serves as a conversation starter it may very well have fulfilled its purpose .
what writer and director kerem sanga captures so well in first girl i loved is high school. what he captures even better is falling in love, or the naïve idea of what it means to be in love as a teenager. anne’s love for sasha (brianna hildebrand) is pure but burdened with what it would mean not only for her relationship with cliff, but for her life in general. sanga conveys this to us with such a deft touch that it’s a shame he fumbles the other issues that arise in first girl. if the film is trying to display the trials and tribulations with coming out, then it can’t dismiss the unforgivable acts of its heroes .
callbacks to ivan reitman’s two original ghostbusters films pop up like jump scares in this femme - first reboot .
a collage of a time half - remembered, first girl i loved is the ‘high - school yearbook’ of teen romances, skipping around (sometimes haphazardly) through events, replaying scenes, moments, memories – revealing new details with each replay. it’s telling that the scenes the film chooses to repeat are either the most traumatic or the most pleasurable, mirroring the tendency to fixate on the binaries of life. at times the elliptical, repeating nature of the film confounds rather than enlightens. it takes awhile to get on first girl’s particular wavelength but once you give yourself to its rhythmic, hazy aesthetic, the film reveals itself to be an earnest and sweet look at burgeoning love .
i was wondering if it was a friends - and - families situation, or what .
i hear a lot of people saying this is the best star wars film since the original trilogy. i' d say it' s the second best, after the force awakens, largely because it doesn' t capture what i think makes this franchise great and worthwhile .
writer - director kerem sanga' s third film tells the story of a teenage girl' s tumultuous coming out .
loved wonder woman. she reminds me of christopher reeve' s superman: true north superhero w / no angst or cynicism, which is needed right now .
hunter: it’s not old, but i thought tangerine was a great use of la. ‘cause nobody’s ever been like, “okay, let’s hang out on santa monica. ” it’s like, ugh—i drive up and down this all the time! i really liked that one a lot .
cried a few times – specifically when a young girl in my screening emphatically declared yes seeing diana represent fortitude. # wonderwoman
first girl i loved repeatedly returns to two key moments – an early drunken conversation between high - school best friends anne (dylan gelula) & clifton (mateo arias), in which anne confesses her feelings for another girl, and then later when anne and the object - of - her - affection, sasha (brianna hildebrand), have a sleepover. these two moments become the backbone of the film, informing every action that occurs before and after. the ramifications of clifton & anne’s conversation at first appear to be your standard ‘boy - upset - girl - likes - someone - else’, but the moment becomes far nastier and more unpleasant with each repeated viewing; whereas the sleepover takes on an almost mythical status – shot in bright reds & greens, the morning light peering through half - closed shades, the camera lingering on the two girls’ entwining hands .
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often teen sexuality (especially female) can feel exploitative coming from a male filmmaker (see blue is the warmest color for proof); but filmmaker karem sanga wisely leans towards the more conservative side. anne and sasha’s relationship is handled very gently, all wistful looks and smiles and touching feet and closed kisses. for a film that tackles such weighty subjects as consent & homophobia, first girl i loved never gets bogged down in melodrama. it’s a kind film – heartfelt and empathetic – a memory more than earned .
it' s not the first teen romance to explore how the phone makes it easier to make mistakes, but it' s one of the first to show us how it works as cupid' s arrow - and that offers some balance .
putnam: david and i are from the east coast, but kerem has family out here in california .
confidence conflicts: “i think anne’s very confident in her sexuality, but maybe not so confident in other people’s ability to deal with it. the reasons why she hasn’t come out are very realistic. it’s not from a place of fear — it’s from a place of, ‘ i don’t want to be a curiosity; i don’t want to deal with being the gay girl at school. ’ even though i’m sure no one would be outwardly hateful in 2016, all the micro - aggressions she’d have to encounter each day would force her into the closet anyway. ”
and yet... something was missing, both as a film on its own merits and as a star wars movie. the more i went over the movie in my mind, the more problems i uncovered .
part of the reason i love this movie is because i relate to it so much. but if i am trying to look at it in a more unbiased state of mind i still feel that as far as lesbian moves go this one is one of the good ones. the acting is great, the writing is real, and the directing is moving. there are few lines that are somewhat cringy but as far as the writing goes, these lines fit into the general awkwardness and inexperience that comes along with teenage - hood. these actors are great in their roles. i really believe that they have a connection and really care about them. the screenplay, i believe, is very well done. and the directing helps create this emotional energy that i cannot explain. i, in my own experience as a lesbian, relate to this movie so much. there are some scenes in the movie that i can just feel the emotion that the actors are trying to get across. it is so eloquently portrayed that i cannot help but feel a connection to it. in short, this movie is good, maybe great. i liked it quite a bit and encourage you to watch it .
i don’t think sasha saw it that way, though, because it doesn’t take long for gay panic to set in and for her to swear anne to secrecy. also, suddenly it makes sense to accept clif’s request of a date. oh, did i forget to mention that? the jerk asked out the girl he knew his best friend was crushing on .
of course, being 17 often means not knowing what type of person you are quite yet, and one of the most compelling things about karem sanga ’s raw and emotionally radiant “ first girl i loved ” is how well it captures the heart - pounding terror of becoming someone, the one - way nausea of committing to yourself. from the instant that anne locks eyes with sasha at one of her games — and even during some of the clunkier moments that crowd out the movie’s needlessly complicated middle section — this is a fresh and exciting film that remembers what it feels like to fall in love with the first time, and leverages the nascent queerness of its characters in order to amplify that sense of being ambushed by your own emotions .
tender is the best way to describe their relationship. awkward gestures that start off with the french pronunciation of “cigarette” after kissing goodbye on either cheek. sneaking out to go to a nearby bar. sanga’s use of slow - motion in these scenes isn’t manipulative; it’s meant to show how impactful the moments are for both anne and sasha. they affect them just as much as the audience, and that’s the whole point of the movie, really. there are some events we can never capture as adults that we can when we’re younger, and that’s where first girl i loved is at its best .
, or what have you, the best of the best first - person shooter games are often defined by their ability to bring people together .
“thank you lord, thank you sundance, ” parker said onstage at the basin recreation field house in park city. “i’ve seen first - hand that people are open to the idea of change, and the fact that this is happening means everything to me. ”
director hugh gibson’s first full - length feature takes an intimate look into the lives of three people on the margins of society and struggling with addiction .
it was fun to see how the death star came to be, and how the alliance didn' t even believe it was possible at first, and i loved how the end of rogue one leads so directly to the beginning of a new hope, but yet another plot focused on the death star felt uninspiring, especially when there' s a whole galaxy of other stuff to be explored. why isn' t disney exploring all that other stuff in its
star wars stories
spin - offs ?
“i want to tell the truth. that’s where my storytelling comes from. my feminism comes from somewhere else: acute dissatisfaction. ”
i can still hear the word echoing from schmidt’s mouth, spat out like a vigorous, full - bodied exorcism to the absolute joy of “ new girl ” fans everywhere. we know that when schmidt exclaims, “terrible! ”, it creates the exact opposite feeling. what’s terrible is suddenly brilliant .
gelula is agreeably naturalistic as anne, while the other notable performance comes from pamela adlon as the girl’s put - to - the - test mother. production values are minimal .
the long wait for wonder woman and female superheroes to get the spotlight is almost over, and if the first reactions are any indication, patience has been rewarded .
roger ebert was born on this day in 1942, and died a little over five years ago. i owe a good part of my success…
the different ways in which we communicate — and don’t — get a real workout in the high - school - lesbian romance first girl i loved. its central couple is a classic coming - of - age mismatch: anne (dylan gelula, excellent), is a nerdy, gawky (but of course actually quite pretty) yearbook editor, and sasha (brianna hildebrand, similarly excellent) is a softball star. neither of them quite understands what’s going on: anne is clearly romantically drawn to her more popular, beautiful classmate, and sasha finds herself reciprocating, though the question of whether they’re an actual thing is one they themselves dance around. and the way they speak — or, rather, all the ways they “speak” — reflects that .
anne just fell in love with sasha, the most popular girl at her school, but when she tells her best friend clifton, he does his best to get in the way .
this is far from breaking news. discussions about the series’ focus have been setting flames across the internet since the beginning (and i hate taking the side that can be accurately condensed to, “hey, we should focus on the straight, white man on this tv show instead of the quirky woman”). but what makes reexamining this debate pertinent now is that the writers’ devotion to jess ruined the episode we’ve all been waiting for since schmidt and cece first held hands in the sixth episode of the first season. to make matters worse, we were teased with perfection in the first half - hour, making what followed immediately after all the more painful to behold .
in rogue one we bounce around so much that by the time we reach jedha we barely remember where we' ve been... and then jedha (the city) is destroyed. i loved scariff also but all we get of it is a battle - - - one reminiscent to the battle of endor in return of the jedi but without the slower, establishing scenes and human drama .
gadot and pine have great, funny banter together. the backdrop of wwi is bleak, but the characters never are. i rooted for them .
i was inspired to write this film after reflecting on my sister’s coming out experience. being gay is no longer “a difference to tolerate, ” it simply is. it’s not about acceptance or rejection. it’s about love. and, as anne will discover, before you love someone else, first you have to love yourself .
it marks the fourth consecutive year a film has swept the fest’s marquee awards, joining me and earl and the dying girl (2015), whiplash (2014) and fruitvale (2013) .
how’d he know that? because during that aforementioned fragmented scene, anne explains that her crush is on a girl. but that only came after one of hardest to watch straight sex scenes i’ve ever seen. all you need to know is anne was a virgin and clif ran through the paces like a formula one pit crew member. i’m still not sure how things progressed so fast, especially since anne was so clearly not into it. she says as much right after, consequently setting clif’s revenge plan into motion .
a high - school love triangle develops when anne falls for a girl on the softball team, inadvertently dashing the hopes of her friend cliff. kerem sanga directed this coming - of - age drama .
clifton is proof of that. he feels useless. his initial response is bad (“i can’t believe how much fucking time i wasted on you! ”) and his subsequent replies are even worse, so much so that it becomes distractingly difficult to imagine how he and anne became friends in the first place. wounded but ultimately well - intentioned, clifton becomes the villain in a film that doesn’t need one, forcing plot onto a love story that otherwise unfolds with the awkwardness and anxiety of real life .
they just get closer from there. a lot more texting follows, in case you’d forgotten this is a movie about teenagers, but fortunately, they also interact in person. like the time sasha dropped her good girl image to sneak into a club with anne. she wasn’t too happy to see a guy hit on anne there, but i’m pretty sure she forgot all about that when she and anne kissed at length in the middle of the dance floor. i have to say, it was quite beautiful in its innocence .
indeed, as a result, first - person shooters have persisted as some of the top - selling titles in the gaming, year after year. though not every first - person shooter is a guaranteed cash cow, there have been a number of notable instances where the genre has struck gold. the commercially - successful franchises that have sprung up in this fashion are now household names :
all quiet on the western front is, as most american high school students know, the story of a company of volunteer german soldiers stationed behind the front lines in the last weeks of world war i. based on remarque’s time as an infantryman, it’s the first - person account of paul baumer, who joins the cause with a group of his classmates .
wonder woman is the dc movie i' ve been waiting for. it' s exciting, inspiring, funny, and has some truly awe - inspiring action scenes .
sanga: the funny thing is that heat is like the exact opposite of that. that’s the cleanest los angeles i’ve ever seen. it’s all like glass and brushed metal .
sanga: i would say setting is bigger than all of the characters. characters are one thing and space is another. space—it takes up what your eyes are looking at !
to that end, it’s no surprise that first - person shooters have become a choice genre for esports competitors around the world. these titles have enough entertainment value to be watched and followed with the same intensity as
sanga: a few years ago, my sister came out to me. that got me started thinking about the story. i started writing the script and it just captured my attention a lot more than any of the other scripts i was working on, so i gave it to these two guys [ putman and hunter ]. they gave me a round of very smart notes and by the time that was done, the young kieslowski had premiered and we started thinking about the realities of production. it just sort of went from there .
to get into the movie’s demerits would spoil much of the movie, and this review isn’t designed to do that. just know that a question is posed in the second half by the school’s guidance counselor (played by a miraculously - not - distracting tim heidecker) to cliff that needs to be resolved, but never is. an irresponsible act of getting back at somebody is left off in a way that suggests it shouldn’t be taken that seriously. alas, i’m speaking in riddles. first girl covers heavy issues, but doesn’t see all of them through. it’s a frustrating element that takes away from the movie’s strengths .
i’m not sold on chris hemsworth as the hunky and hammy office receptionist, taking over from the considerably funnier annie potts. he’s ironic eye candy in a movie that doesn’t need it .
i' m less bothered by this than i was by the force awakens, which introduced the third and largest of the death stars, but perhaps because there have been so many star wars films focused on these giant planet - destroying weapons, it all felt a little stale by the time we got around to rogue one. it' s hard to be shocked and awed by the death star when you know that it' s just the first of three that gets blown up by the rebels. and the second two got blown up without the help of gelan erso' s secret trap .
eager to escape life with her depressive single father, 16 - year - old athlete cyd loughlin visits her novelist aunt in chicago over the summer. while there, she falls for a girl in the... see full summary »
i' d love it if you followed me on twitter and facebook and subscribed to my channel on youtube. also feel free to subscribe to my posts by email. thanks for reading .
so where does anne go from here? accept that sasha is a lost cause? do something equally as hurtful? well, i can tell you everything she does is fitting of an adolescent .
it wasn' t always this way. gossip girl, which will air its series finale monday, was never meant to be quality television, but for a while it occupied the same cultural space as abc' s revenge, one of those so - called guilty pleasures you didn' t actually have to feel guilty about enjoying. it was a teen drama whose sophisticated setting and elevated references seemed equally appropriate for an adult audience. gossip girl even charmed most critics. in an initial review, mary mcnamara of the la times swooned over
the leggy glamour of it, the pretty rich girls at cocktail parties, the rumpled sexiness of those school uniforms, the gothic romance of stone - mansioned new york ,
comparing the show to both the catcher in the rye and a separate peace. midway through the first season, new york magazine ran a cover story titled
the genius of gossip girl ,
naming it
the greatest teen drama of all time .
and it makes sense that gossip girl' s cast members have come to express embarrassment about their involvement in the show. a few weeks into season 4, chace crawford was poking fun at his character nate archibald' s stupidity and penn badgley was summing up his feelings about gossip girl with the cliché ,
it is what it is .
a year later, badgley implicitly yet radically distanced himself from the show' s sparkly economic elitism by visiting and speaking out in support of occupy wall street .
as billie holiday later told the story, a single gesture by a patron at a new york nightclub called café society changed the history of american music that night in early 1939, the night that she first sang
strange fruit .
that scene put the issue of consent front and center, which the movie later addresses directly. it’s one of those moments that will play very differently for different viewers. queer audiences, for instance, may be split between the camp that feels the idea of a gay girl having consensual sex with a guy is impossible, and the camp that thinks teenagers simply do stupid things for stupid reasons. i’m sure there’s going to be a lot of overlap too .
the next morning, however, clouds obscure the sunshine of first love — notably sasha’s internal “am i a lesbian? ! ” and “what will people think? ? ” freakout, exacerbated by anne’s need for affirmation and a suddenly - chilled - out clifton’s assumption that they’re already an item. when there’s rancor all around, anne makes an impulsive decision that necessitates a leap forward some weeks, and triggers an emergency parent / teacher / counselor summit .
so, given their rabid followings, cultural impact, and plain playability, it only seems to right to rank the best games that this genre has to offer. here are the 10 best first - person shooters that you should start playing today .
in first girl, the myopic nature of memory becomes a rally cry for self - identification. if a memory can mean a thousand different things to any number of people, than its specificity to an individual defines them. which is to say if you remember an event as being happy, that doesn’t necessarily mean the event was happy, but that you were happy in it. it’s in this specificity that anne finds solace, clifton finds despair and sasha finds confusion, each character defining themselves through their own recall .
seventeen - year - old anne just fell in love with sasha, the most popular girl at her la public high school. but when anne tells her best friend clifton - who has always harbored a secret crush - he does his best to get in the way .
i saw the film on friday afternoon, and came away feeling mostly happy about it. the movie was action - packed, had some great characters, and ended with a bang. it was funny and visually striking .
this movie is directed by morten tyldum, who made 2014’s prestige picture “ the imitation game, ” and its direction is even more dutiful and personality - free than that of the alan turing biopic. the movie has a remarkably lumbering pace. the cliché - laden script—during one conversation with aurora, jim says “can’t slogans be true? ” which i reckon must be something screenwriter jon spaihts has asked in his own actual life—demands, of course, that aurora learn of jim’s deception. she does, and this was the point in the film when i felt compelled to look at my watch, and i was shocked to see we were only an hour into this 116 - minute opus .
for a show that won such effusive early praise, gossip girl' s decline was precipitous, its consignment to the realm of the embarrassingly passé sudden. most fans view season 3, the first season after the majority of the characters graduated from high school, as the beginning of the end for the program. in fact, the trouble started even earlier than that, and can be traced to an event entirely beyond the writers' control: the financial crisis. the show' s fall serves as a clear example of how economic realities and cultural tastes are unavoidably linked .
gossip girl tried to sell escapism, and until the recession hit, it succeeded. but when the real world encroached upon its high - society fantasy, the show faced an impossible dilemma: would it dispel what was left of its glamorous illusion by changing with the times or continue as though conspicuous consumption had never gone out of style? already hemorrhaging viewers, gossip girl did a bit of both, keeping the posh costumes and lavish parties while dropping any pretense of making its characters likable. the series that was outmoded the moment the dow jones dropped below 9000 hung on for far longer than it had any right to, all the while diluting its glamour with heavier and heavier doses of contempt. when gossip girl ends on monday, it will go out like the waning aristocracy it is—dripping with jewels, mired in scandal, and with the stubborn tenacity of a dying breed that once ruled the world .
the show' s season 2 ratings reflect this abrupt shift. less than two months after gossip girl soared to a september 15, 2008 series high of 3. 73 million viewers, its audience began to drop below three million. the attrition continued into the winter and spring of 2009, when not one of the season' s final 10 episodes drew more than 2. 5 million viewers. bravo' s clearly gossip girl - inspired reality show nyc prep, which followed real - life manhattan prep schoolers, debuted in june of 2009 and fared so poorly its low ratings prompted an incredulous analysis by the new york observer. although it outlived nyc prep, which only lasted eight episodes, gossip girl never regained the ground it lost that year. viewership dropped off gradually over the four seasons that followed. earlier this fall, its sixth and final season premiered to an audience of just 780, 000 .
while audiences will have to wait until june 2 to see gal gadot unleash her lasso in the iconic character’s first solo film, some critics and members of the press have already had the chance, and with the social media embargo finally lifted thursday, the reactions came in fast and furious .
goebbels, a tiny man with a clubfoot, had been unfit to fight in world war i and his physical rejection consumed him. his hatred of all quiet on the western front was both a personal vendetta and one of the first major public displays of nazi thuggery. the main goal was simply to create chaos, to terrorize moviegoers, to rally support against the film. “within ten minutes, the cinema was a madhouse, ” goebbels gloated in his diary that night. “the police are powerless. the embittered masses are violently against the jews. ”
an
historic document ,
the famed songwriter e. y .
yip
harburg called
strange fruit .
the late jazz writer leonard feather once called
strange fruit
the first significant protest in words and music, the first unmuted cry against racism .
to bobby short, the song was
very, very pivotal ,
a way of moving the tragedy of lynching out of the black press and into the white consciousness .
when you think of the south and jim crow, you naturally think of the song, not of 'we shall overcome, & apos ;
said studs terkel. ahmet ertegun, the legendary record producer, called
strange fruit ,
which holiday first sang sixteen years before rosa parks refused to yield her seat on a montgomery, alabama bus ,
a declaration of war... the beginning of the civil rights movement .
the girls’ relationship giddily and credibly accelerates, with anne’s intentions becoming increasingly clear while sasha’s remain ambiguous. the film’s best scene has the two of them texting from their respective beds as, at first tentatively, then more explicitly, they express their simultaneous arousal and push matters between them into hitherto unexplored erotic territory .
“one of the great legacies of world war i is that as soon as the armistice is signed, the enemy is war itself, not the germans, russians, or french. the book captures it and becomes the definitive anti - war statement of the great war, ” says dr. thomas doherty, professor of american studies at brandeis and the author of hollywood and hitler, 1933 - 39. “the movie has the same depressing tone, the hero doesn’t achieve battlefield glory. he dies in the famous scene reaching for the butterfly. it’s an extraordinary film, the first must - see of the early sound era not starring al jolson. unfortunately, the premiere was an animating moment in the history of nazism, reclaiming the world war i memory not as meaningless slaughter, as remarque says, but as a glorious noble german enterprise. ”
café society was new york & apos; s only truly integrated nightclub, a place catering to progressive types with open minds. but holiday was to recall that even there, she was afraid to sing this new song, a song that tackled racial hatred head - on at a time when protest music was all but unknown, and regretted it—at least momentarily—when she first did .
there wasn & apos; t even a patter of applause when i finished ,
she later wrote in her autobiography .
then a lone person began to clap nervously. then suddenly everybody was clapping .
first serialized in 1928 in the german newspaper vossische zeitung he, the book was published on january 31, 1929, and instantly became a literary juggernaut. in germany, the initial print run sold out on release day, and some 20, 000 copies moved off the shelves in the first few weeks on its way to more than a million books sold by year’s end. abroad, all quiet on the western front was a big hit as well, selling 600, 000 copies in both britain and france, and 200, 000 in america. the film rights were snatched up by universal pictures for a record $ 40, 000 and the motion picture went into production immediately .
in an effort to accentuate the positives, let’s start there. the relationship between the romantic leads is perfectly played out in the beginning. gelula, best known as the spoiled stepdaughter on the unbreakable kimmy schmidt, is the pillar in a movie that revolves around her character, anne. she’s funny and dismissive when the moment calls for it, but can turn on a dime during a sincere moment of affection or longing. if anne is the girl on the wrong side of the tracks, hildebrand’s sasha is in the top 15% of her class — a go - getter and a top athlete. she’s oblivious when it comes to anne’s feelings at first, but slowly begins to feel something for her in return. much of this is done through expression and without a word being uttered, and hildebrand pulls this off with a subtle touch. she has more to lose as far as her social standing is concerned, but there aren’t any “oh, sheesh, what should i do? ” moments .
anne’s relationship with cliff isn’t handled nearly as well, but this isn’t the fault of the actors. arias is convincing as cliff, capturing that character’s frustration, sadness, and anger when dealing with anne’s coming out. in a way, he’s just as confused as she is. the problem is that much of first girl ’s driving force is based around a flashback of this life - changing moment. each time we jump back to this bedroom scene, we get a little more of what went down. something happens here that looks to be a misunderstanding, but is brought up later on as possibly being something else. this is a vague description so as to not spoil the events that occur later on .
putnam: i actually work for film independent on and off as a script reader, and i’ve known [ film independent director of artist development ] jen kushner and her team for a long time, as well as [ former la film festival senior programmer ] maggie mackay, who was our champion on the young kieslowski. she said, “hey, do you have anything set in la, because you qualify for this grant. ” so we sent her the script and jen really helped push it through on her end, because we were la film festival alumni and we’ve all been involved at various levels with film independent .
the show' s creative decline can' t be considered in isolation from the financial crisis, either. it wasn' t just the characters' departure from the confined world of the upper east side that disrupted its storylines; it was also the increasingly amoral trajectories of even the most initially sympathetic characters. earlier rich - kid dramas that aired during more prosperous eras descended into the same kinds of repetitive romances and sensationalized plots that have plagued gossip girl without demonizing their central clique. over the course of beverly hills, 90210' s decade - long' 90s run, haughty kelly taylor and meathead steve sanders actually became more likable and human. even gossip girl co - creator josh schwartz' s mid - 2000s teen soap, the o. c. , managed to navigate dark storylines without turning every character into a villain .
gossip girl premiered on september 19, 2007, only a few weeks before the stock market hit an all - time high. america was already feeling the effects of the subprime crisis, but the economic meltdown wouldn' t penetrate the popular consciousness until a year later. when banks began to fail and the market plummeted in october 2008, a few episodes into gossip girl' s second season, public opinion turned swiftly and dramatically against the very rich. the new york story pointed out that the show' s appeal was in how it
mocks our superficial fantasies while satisfying them, allowing us to partake in the over - the - top pleasures of the irresponsible superrich without anxiety or guilt or moralizing .
but in the throes of the most catastrophic recession in several generations, that kind of magical, aspirational thinking became more difficult with each passing week .
we know that they will because they just did. schmidt and cece are the a - couple of “new girl. ” jess and nick barely make the cut for b - level. no matter what meriwether and her writers do in season 6, that fact won’t change. we’ll still be watching, wanting to know the official ending in spite of our better judgment: that the real ending already happened, and it was…pretty bad .
as for the book and film that started his career and ended his relationship with his native country, they went on to be stunning successes. an estimated 30 to 40 - million copies of all quiet on the western front have been sold since it was first published in 1929, and the film would win that year’s academy awards for best director and best production. it is still regarded as one of the best war movies ever made.
first girl i loved is a 2016 american romantic drama film written and directed by kerem sanga . it stars dylan gelula , brianna hildebrand , tim heidecker and pamela adlon . the film premiered at the 2016 sundance film festival and won the audience award for " best of next " . the film follows two teenage girls , nerdy yearbook editor anne and softball star sasha , wrestling with their sexuality at a los angeles high school . it was released in the united states and canada in select theaters and on demand october 18 , 2016 . 
first girl i loved is a 2016 american romantic drama film written and directed by kerem sanga. it stars dylan gelula, brianna hildebrand, tim heidecker and pamela adlon. the film premiered at the 2016 sundance film festival and won the audience award for " best of next ". the film follows two teenage girls, nerdy yearbook editor anne and softball star sasha, wrestling with their sexuality at a los angeles high school. it was released in the united states and canada in select theaters and on demand october 18, 2016.
first girl i loved is a 2016 american romantic drama film written and directed by kerem sanga. it stars dylan gelula, brianna hildebrand, tim heidecker and pamela adlon. the film premiered at the 2016 sundance film festival and won the audience award for " best of next ". the film follows two teenage girls, nerdy yearbook editor anne and softball star sasha, wrestling with their sexuality at a los angeles high school. it was released in the united states and canada in select theaters and on demand october 18, 2016.