Pin Cushion is a riveting debut from Deborah Heywood that sets diversity at the heart of the film by showing an altogether unsettling and disturbing, co-dependent mother and daughter tale in this coming of age film.
Pin Cushion tells the story of Lyn (Joanna Scanlan), the mother who moves with her daughter Iona (Lily Newark) to a new town in the hope of a fresh start.
The central performances especially that of Lily Newark are what keeps the viewer glued to this film. It does echoes of Carrie not least because the character, Iona, has red hair too. Whereas the seminal scene in Carrie is her drenched in blood, the updated version is of Iona stripping off, her so called friends taking photos of her and sharing them by text to shame her. I am not sure that this makes this a film horror and in truth, too many films are being described as a horror or comic horror etc.
This film is at times darkly comic, rare times, but it is disturbing. What sets it apart is the cleverly observed nature of a co-dependent parent child relationship, and how deeply disturbing these can be. Clearly for dramatic purposes, this is exaggerated but hopefully, it will start a conversation. Pin Cushion also deals with the themes of depression and bullying It is refreshing to see a film that doesn’t take the easy route but holds its nerve right until the very end.
Three years of investigation have resulted in Whitney – the untold story. Kevin Macdonald, the man who brought us Searching for Sugarman and Last King of Scotland both of which took a different, refreshing angle on demystifying icons. However, with Whitney, it is mostly off key but in a few places, it does hit the high notes through what is unsaid.
The opening sequence of Whitney reveals the woman rather than the icon in her own words. Whitney Houston is retelling a recurring dream/nightmare where she is running and wakes up exhausted. Her mother tells her she is running from the devil, but as we watch the film and read between the lines we start to question if this devil is more familiar than anyone wants to say – her family. At the tender age of 21 Whitney was exhausted and when she went too soon at 48 she was still exhausted.
Kevin Macdonald scores interviews with her brothers Michael and Gary Garland Houston, one of whom introduced her to drugs long before Bobby Brown, the sacrificial lamb and street boy appeared on the scene. Cissy Houston, Whitney’s mother features prominently and it is she who helped Whitney harness and control her gift and together with Clive Davis, who packaged Whitney, gave the world this indelible legacy. Whitney Houston like Prince, Amy and George Michael, these talents only appear once in a lifetime and are often damaged by the very ones who are supposed to protect. In Whitney’s case, it was her mother’s sister Dee Dee Warwick who was the alleged paedophile who molested both Whitney and her brother Gary. In Gary’s words, they stayed a lot with family whilst their mother was trying to reach the dizzy heights of fame. It was Whitney, and in some respects, her mother was and is still living through that fame, that achieved and excelled those heights.
The glaring omission from the documentary is Robyn Crawford, deemed as evil by the family no doubt because she never hid her sexuality. She is a lesbian. Also, the jealousy that she was the one who Whitney truly confided in and loved in the purest sense of the word.
As a black woman, I watched Whitney and felt something that many others won’t have. Black women are not allowed to fail by society or their family. The failure which is truly subjective is viewed negatively by the very ones who are supposed to love you, the family. It is this that is the most interesting aspect of Whitney the role her family played in her fame, demise and psyche. When she failed and let the drugs envelop her, she didn’t just fail herself but them as well and that was unforgivable.
Whitney was the soundtrack to my Tweens, teens, twenties and beyond. She has a song for my every mood: heartbreak, joy, sadness, drunk dancing and was the first black superstar I identified with.This is the Whitney I know and loved and there are glimmers of it in this documentary especially when she sings the national anthem, the raw footage of a young Whitney and never forget she’s one of the biggest female singers of all time. We needed more songs, a deeper investigation and less family interference not least because one of the executive producers is Patricia Houston. Ultimately the final product is still family controlled.
Whitney is on general release in cinemas nationwide.
Here at BRWC we mostly watch the action on both the big and little screen, but ever so often we leave the screens behind and get immersed in the drama ourselves. The folks over at Zed Events have just released the cinematic trailer for the Wasteland experience. It looks incredible. So much so that yours truly is going to try and survive two hours in the wasteland on 21 July. Yes, I will be joining over 40,000 victims since their launch 6 years ago lay on ‘full immersion’ survival events in an 250,000 Sqft abandoned shopping mall for the holiday season. Each event in their Reading facility is an adrenalin and blood soaked survival horror event like no other. From arrival, the thrill seeker will be part of an unfolding story that will play out in real time.
WHAT IS WASTELAND?
It is a 2+ hour fully immersive experience where you must fight for your survival across a 25,000 sqft post-nuclear shopping mall.
THE WORLD OF WASTELAND
With the cities of the UK obliterated by nuclear explosions, the world as we know it ended. 6 years later, the few survivors either banded together to form tribes in order to survive or went insane. Conflict and horror are a way of life. You will join a tribe and together fight for survival across our massive abandoned shopping mall, clashing with other tribes and unknown enemies. Part combat game, part horror attraction, all the insanity of the Wasteland!
FILM QUALITY COSTUMES, PROPS AND SPECIAL EFFECTS
The Wasteland Experience was put together by using our years of running scare attractions and working in film/TV production. The world you will enter was created by the likes of Mark Cordory Creations, Dust Monkey (who are both amongst the worlds premier post apocalypse costume makers) and the Oscar winning Coulier Creatures. Everything you will experience will be utterly insane and very real!
ULTRA REALISTIC WEAPONS
The ‘Wasteland Experience’ is powered by the iCombat tactical training system, the most realistic weapon simulation in the world and is used by Police and Military around the globe. This is a combat system that uses ultra realistic guns with recoil, noise, muzzle flash and hit detection with no projectiles being fired.
I just hope I will survive, I mean most of the cast of the Walking Dead are now properly dead. If you want to join in on the fun, then tickets are £99 and you can find out more information here: https://www.zedevents.co.uk/booking/themall/
Boys Who Like Girls is a documentary that offers a fresh perspective on what men in India are doing to stop the ongoing violence and abuse of women in Indian society. This documentary was filmed against the horrific backdrop that shocked not only Indian society but the world of the gang rape of Jyoti Singh in 2012.
Female filmmaker and director Inka Achte follows three men in different stages of their lives, Harish who founded the charity Men Against Violence and Abuse who is in his 50s, Aspar a young social worker and Ved, a teenager trying to escape the violent clutches of his father and whos views of women up until he meets Harish are not wholesome.
The documentary is also partly a coming of age story focusing on Ved’s journey. We follow his hopes of escaping his father’s clutches and doing well academically otherwise he will be sent to work on a rural farm. Achte’s documentary style is that of a quiet observer who doesn’t have any preconceived ideas but just wants to show what society is like but also widen the discussion. There are good men out there taking a stand and they too need society’s support. One frustrating section of the documentary is where we follow Harish on a fundraising trip overseas who is basically told that because he is not a woman lots of charities will not help him. The documentary raises so many questions but does not answer them, in some respects that is frustrating but also positive – it is a call to arms of the viewer to engage and voice their opinion.
Boys Who Like Girls asks poses one simple question, which remains to be answered, will Ved’s generation be the first generation of boys that actually like girls? That is to say not abuse them. In watching this documentary, you hope that the work of Harish will continue to find funding and help provide the positive masculine role models that Indian society so clearly needs.
Hopefully, this documentary will be picked up and shown to a wider audience, there are not only men but boys who like girls and the subject matters touched upon are prevalent in all societies not just in India.
Boys Who Like Girls will receive its world premiere on Saturday 9 June at the Sheffield Documentary Festival.
“Genius is made, not born” according to Einstein, in the case of Lee Alexander McQueen it is a mixture of both. The documentary of his life using footage shot by him, of him and interviews with those who knew him well including family members. It is a bold, vivacious, very funny and utterly enthralling view of a man, icon and fashion genius – McQueen.
The documentary is shot in a linear fashion, so tape 1 starts with Lee, as those who knew him called him as a shy sixteen year old with this raw talent. In his own words who wasn’t very academic only leaving school with one O level as he mostly sketched clothes during lessons. Tape 2 follows him to Saville Row and those who saw the raw, pulsating talent and helped to nurture it. It also provides rare footage of his graduate show at which, his mentor, Isabella Blow first saw her protege.
Tape 3 is when he has arrived in Paris and working at Givenchy and still keeping his eponymous label afloat. He did 14 shows a year – cutting, designing all was him. He was a workhorse.
The sadness that surrounded him is evident from how he tried so hard to fit in. With money, he was able to afford liposuction and then to fill the void he turned to drugs. His friendship and the betrayal of Isabella Blow is not sugar-coated either, it too suffered as he became more successful and in some ways resentful of how people would say she made him. No one can make anyone but without Blow, it would be hard to see if Alexander McQueen would have become the icon he is today. It was she who said he should use his middle name, Alexander rather than Lee.
Tape 4 shows the Voss show and also, the iconic no 13 show in 1999 ‘man vs machine’ where Shalom Harlow wore that strapless white dress that in actual fact was just an underskirt held up by a belt and was sprayed by two robotic guns.
Tape 5 is the final tape where we see how the darkness engulfed Lee as well as the drugs and paranoia.
In the words of Alexander McQueen himself: “if you want to know me just look at my work”, and when we do we weep for what might have been but are grateful for what remains.
This is one of the most sensitive biopics yet revealing of an icon since Amy in 2015. Co-directors Ian Bonhote and Peter Ettedgui manage to show the man and what it took to become this almost mythical figure and how the view from the top is a lonely one. What sets this documentary apart is how meticulously it was researched and the number of people willing to contribute and their honesty. It is often easy to forget just the amount of passion it takes to produce such items of beauty – in the case of McQueen it wasn’t just blood, sweat and tears but also his very being. What the directors do not shy away from is focusing on McQueen’s mental health issues which were only exacerbated first with the suicide of Isabella Blow and then his mother’s death. He then took his own life at the age of 40 on 11 February 2010.
“I don’t want you to walk out feeling you’ve just had Sunday lunch. I want you to leave feeling repulsed, or exhilarated. As long as it’s an emotion.” There is no doubt in my mind that you will not be full of emotion. Singular, visceral and unforgettable – McQueen is a documentary to be seen with plenty of tissues. This documentary is not just for lovers of fashion but for anyone interested in what it takes to make it creatively and for an honest, non sugar coated portrait of an icon.
McQueen is released across cinemas in the UK on Friday, 8 June.
