How Mulan got the Rey Palpatine Treatment

by Ginny O'Keefe

After I watched Mulan (2020), the lackluster live-action remake of the beloved 1998 animated movie, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the bitterness and anger I felt after watching The Rise of Skywalker back in December. The feelings of disappointment and resentment were incredibly familiar, all stemming from the fact that both Mulan (2020) and The Rise of Skywalker (2019) refute the idea that a hero can be anyone and come from anywhere. This is where both films ultimately fail their two female leads. 

In the original animated film, Mulan is an ordinary girl who feels incredibly out of place and cannot seem to do right by her family or the deeply ingrained misogynistic society that surrounds her. She has no fighting skills, no hunger for war, no royal heritage, no outstanding measure of beauty. She has nothing that could suggest she is “special” besides her brave and kind heart...

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Gong Li: Goddess of the Silver Screen

by Cláudio Alves

Earlier this month, Sean Donovan wrote a beautiful piece about Tilda Swinton's 2005 Hollywood adventure. The movies mentioned in that text mean a great deal to me since they represent the first time I ever came across the alien allure of that British thespian. Even as an eleven-year-old, I was hooked on this beguiling creature of the screen. Surprisingly enough, Swinton wasn't the only performer whose 2005 forays into mainstream American movies served as a gateway for my love of auteur cinema and über-glamourous deities of the big screen. 

For that was also the year when Chinese superstar Gong Li blessed Rob Marshall's unfortunate Memoirs of a Geisha with her electrifying presence…

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Mulan for $29.99

by Nathaniel R

The Mouse House is tired of waiting for movie theaters to open. They've announced that Mulan will be going direct to Disney+ for Labor Day Weekend. It will also be in movie theaters that weekend in some regions. The catch is that it won't be free on the streaming service that you already pay for. It will cost $29.99 to watch (for an undisclosed length of time). This is bad news for those of us who love to go to movies and watch epic things on big screens in dark cavernous rooms with strangers and hate the motion smoothing on modern televisions. It's good news for parents (at least at this shut-in moment in history) who would likely spend more than $30 to take their kids out to this movie in a normal year. 

Given that Mulan cost hundreds of millions to make and Disney's "event" movies normally make $1 billion plus at the theatrical box office globally they'll need a lot of $29.99 purchases to reach that number. What do you make of this news? End times (as some exhibitors think) or just a minor shifting of the sands?

Coronavirus Disrupting the Movie Biz

by Nathaniel R

With MULAN moving there are no wide-releases left for March due to the spread of the coronavirus

As you've undoubtedly heard the coronavirus pandemic has many governments as well as companies shutting down or postponing various services, products, and events, particularly where crowds are involved, and leaving lots and lots of people without income and given the sorry state of the US without universal healthcare we suspect things will be getting much worse. (It's also kept your host here interminably busy / depressed at his other job outside of TFE which is a matter for the therapist couch rather than this blog). But, as ever, we exist to discuss the movies here.

Though Cannes in France is still trying to keep their own May dream alive, here in NYC, the Tribeca Film Festival, which was scheduled to begin on April 15th has been indefinitely postponed, while Broadway theaters have all been shuttered through April 12th. So far movie theaters in the US are still open (though thousands are closed in China) but what movies will there be left to show?

A lot of films have begun indefinitely delaying their release dates...

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The Linkman

• New York Times Ben Affleck on leaving The Batman and drinking away the pain and his ongoing recovery
• IndieWire Missing Jennifer Lawrence? The superstar of the mid 2010s will be back in force soon with a new Adam McKay sci-fi comedy Don't Look Up and a PTSD soldier drama that's as yet untitled co-starring Brian Tyree Henry

After the jump Byronic heroes, Mulan, Parasite's win (again), Alamo Drafthouse subscriptions, gay stuff, and two exciting restorations...

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