Heartstopper Forever review – sanitized sex scenes won’t let the Netflix lovebirds grow up

The film-length finale to the teen LGBTQ+ show has poignant moments but feels like fan service by numbers If it were up to Kit Connor , Heartstopper would have ended quite differently. “If I’d had my way, I would have had Nick and Charlie cheating on each other and doing all those stupid things,” he recently told the Guardian. “Because young people do that and don’t necessarily need to be villainized for it.” Midway through Heartstopper Forever , the film-length finale of Netflix’s series, I started to see his point. The central star-crossed lovebirds of Alice Oceman’s megahit are now 18 and 17, and like most teenagers they have sex, get drunk and fight with their annoying siblings. Unlike most people their age, they don’t vape, don’t use sex apps and they definitely don’t cheat. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/7iRZGVx via IFTTT

‘It has become a sort of silver bullet’: why are rap lyrics being put on trial?

In compelling documentary As We Speak, a controversial legal practice that uses rap lyrics to secure convictions is explored

In September 2001, McKinley Phipps Jr, also known as the rapper Mac, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for manslaughter. It had been a year and a half since gunfire erupted outside a club where he was slated to perform in Slidell, Louisiana, resulting in the death of 19-year-old Barron Victor Jr. Phipps, then 22, maintained his innocence, and the case against him was weak – there was no gun linking him to the crime, several witnesses recanted their testimony and another person confessed to pulling the trigger. And yet, prosecutors had their trump card: Mac, a former New Orleans rap prodigy who began releasing music at the age of 13, had rapped about murder.

“Murder, murder, kill, kill”, Phipps recites in As We Speak: Rap Music on Trial, a new documentary on the criminalization of rap lyrics. Prosecutors spliced that line with one from a different song – “Pull the trigger, put a bullet in your head” – to create the portrait of a killer; Mac’s art was the evidence that DNA, solid confessions, or a missing weapon couldn’t provide. An all-white jury bought it. Phipps served over 21 years in prison before being granted clemency in 2021.

Continue reading...

from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/gqiNoyp
via IFTTT

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Miracle Club review – Maggie Smith can’t save this rocky road trip to Lourdes

‘I lost a friend of almost 40 years’: Nancy Meyers pays tribute to Diane Keaton

Malaika Arora scolds 16-year-old dancer for inappropriate gestures: “He is winking, giving flying kisses”