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Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Movie Review: In Andrea Arnold's 'Bird,' a gritty fairy tale doesn't take flight

Repost Ent dalamlima.blogspot.com

“Is it too real for ya?” blares in the background of Andrea Arnold’s latest film, “Bird,” a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.

The song’s question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for “Bird.” Arnold’s films ( “American Honey,” “Fish Tank”) are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, “Cow,” documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.

Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In “American Honey,” peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.

In “Bird,” though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn’t otherwise exist in Bailey’s hardscrabble and chaotic life.

She’s skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he’s watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.

The introduction of surrealism has the ironic effect of breaking the spell that has marked Arnold’s best films. “Bird,” which opens in theaters Friday, is, like the writer-director’s vivid previous work, a movie only she could make. Arnold has described it as the hardest thing she’s ever created, and it’s easy to applaud her for grasping at something in “Bird” that ultimately is just out of reach. A resolutely realistic filmmaker turning to magical realism has the uncomfortable effect of making the whole movie, not just the Rogowski bits, feel inauthentic. Instead of being “too real for ya,” “Bird,” with its in-your-face poverty and narrative extremes, never feels particularly real at all.

The most incongruous parts of “Bird,” though, might not be the mysterious avian friend. (Rogowski, a compelling performer, only ever feels half in the movie, as if “Bird” can’t quite commit to him being there, either.) Keoghan is a reliably arresting actor who here feels out of place. He doesn’t seem even vaguely fatherly, and while that might be part of the point, too many other things about Bug feel more performative than genuine. There’s his scheme to use hallucinogenic slime from a toad to pay for his wedding, for starters. Add in some karaoke scenes and the sensation creeps in that “Bird” is being less compelled by its own story than it is by a pursuit of Arnold’s previous style.

“Bird” may go down as a rare miss for Arnold but you can still see the keenness of her eye and the nimbleness of her camera, with her regular cinematographer Robbie Ryan. And that’s true never so much as when the camera is on Adams, a talent, whose melancholy eyes say more than all the theatrics around her.

“Bird,” a Mubi release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “language throughout, some violent content and drug material.” Running time: 118 minutes. Two stars out of four.

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Movie Review: In Andrea Arnold's 'Bird,' a gritty fairy tale doesn't take flight
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November 07, 2024 at 04:11AM

Musician Tyka Nelson, Prince's sister and only full sibling, dies at 64

Repost Ent dalamlima.blogspot.com

NEW YORK -- Minneapolis musician Tyka Nelson, Prince's only full sibling, died Monday at North Memorial Health in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, her son President Nelson confirmed to The Associated Press. She was 64.

A cause of death was not immediately available, and President Nelson said he doesn't expect to know “for a couple of days.”

Born to jazz musician John L. Nelson and Mattie Della Shaw in 1960, two years after Prince, Nelson was a singer-songwriter, releasing four albums across her career, starting with 1988's “Royal Blue." That album produced her biggest hits, “Marc Anthony’s Tune,” which spent 11 weeks on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, peaking at No. 33, and “L.O.V.E.," which spent seven weeks on the chart and topped at No. 52.

At the time, she told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, “The album is basically about love relationships between a man and a woman. I’m royal blue because I can’t find him,” she said.

It's an alternative to her brother's chosen color of purple. Of their relationship, she said: “The funniest thing is people say, ‘How does it feel to be Prince’s sister?’ They don’t actually realize what they’re saying. I’ve been Prince’s sister ever since I got here on Earth.”

The Associated Press described her “Royal Blue” album as "mostly adult-contemporary or easy-listening" material, “far removed from Prince and the so-called Minneapolis sound. Hers is a mature, romantic sound aimed at 25- to 45-year-olds.”

Then came 1992's “Yellow Moon, Red Sky,” 2008's “A Brand New Me,” and finally, 2011's “Hustler.”

Nelson is survived by two sons, President and Sir, and five grandchildren.

“Born 1960, the daughter of Mattie and John Nelson, she was best known as Prince’s sister and worked to keep his legacy alive with his fans attending fan and industry events,” President Nelson shared in a statement. “Services will be private, and in lieu of flowers, the family has asked that you take care of one another.”

According to the Star Tribune, Nelson was scheduled to retire and perform a farewell concert at the Dakota in downtown Minneapolis in June. Illness caused her not to take the stage. A few days before the concert, she said she had a mixtape on the way and was working on a memoir.

Prince died of an accidental fentanyl overdose in 2016 at his home in Minneapolis. He was 57. He had no will, and his six siblings inherited equal interests in the estate: Tyka Nelson and five half-siblings — Sharon Nelson, Norrine Nelson, John R. Nelson, Omarr Baker and Alfred Jackson.

Tyka Nelson, Baker and Jackson, the three youngest, sold their stake to a music publishing company called Primary Wave Music, LLC, which later assigned its interests to an affiliate, Prince OAT Holdings LLC. Jackson has since died.

Representatives for Paisley Park, Prince’s private estate which is also a museum, studio, and concert venue in Chanhassen, Minnesota, did not immediately respond to The Associated Press' request for comment.

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Musician Tyka Nelson, Prince's sister and only full sibling, dies at 64
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November 06, 2024 at 04:17PM