Infinite Icon: A Visual Memoir review – Paris Hilton’s act of self-love shows there’s nothing behind the mask

A look behind the scenes of the star’s second album turns out to reveal exactly what you’d expect, at arduous length Paris Hilton here presents us with an unbearable act of docu-self-love, avowedly a behind-the-scenes study of her second studio album, Infinite Icon, and where she’s at as a musician, survivor and mom. But maybe there is, in fact, nothing behind the scenes; judging by this, the scenes are all there is: Insta-exhibitionism, empty phrases and show. Hilton’s second album no doubt has its admirers and detractors, and her fans are perfectly happy with it. But this film, for which she is executive producer, is an indiscriminate non-curation of narcissism and torpid self-importance that seems to go on and on and on for ever; the longest two hours of anyone’s life, finally signing off with a splodge of uninteresting and unedited concert footage. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/BNvDRxa via IFTTT

Wish review – Disney’s throwback animation is missing some magic

Oscar winner Ariana DeBose voices an all-singing heroine in an overstuffed yet underpowered attempt to replicate the success of Frozen

A decade ago, at a time when both Disney and Pixar’s animation output was not exactly unsuccessful but entirely unmemorable, Frozen became a sticky $1.2bn game-changer, a box office hit that turned into an all-consuming phenomenon. It won Oscars, produced earworms that burrowed (a little too) deep, spawned a $1.45bn sequel, led to a hit Broadway musical and showed Disney how to dust off the contemporarily critiqued princess narrative rather than throw it away completely.

Opening in the same Thanksgiving slot 10 years later, with a script co-written by Frozen’s Jennifer Lee, Wish is a bullishly positioned successor, another self-aware, formula-tweaking Disney Princess narrative with as many radio-friendly power ballads as there are Christmas-timed merchandising opportunities. But Wish feels less like Disney’s new Frozen and more like an off-brand rip-off, aesthetically inferior, hampered by a mostly uninspired and underpowered plot and, most deadeningly, lacking in magic. As grotesque as Disney might still be as one of the most effectively illustrative go-tos for the horrors of mass-market capitalism, it’s impossible not to feel that swell of wonder when the studio logo kicks in. While that feeling might have been more absent in recent films that follow, a lifetime of examples have taught us to naively hope for more of it and despite Wish serving us all of the old-fashioned trimmings, from storybook opener to soaring finale, there remains an absence.

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