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The Academy Museum Explores The Past, Present, And Future Of Cinema

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Kerry Brougher, Director of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, today announced the details of the inaugural exhibitions that will be on view when the Museum opens in late 2019.

The first institution of its scope and scale devoted to the past, present, and future of cinema, the Academy Museum will open with a long-term exhibition that explores the evolution of film from its beginnings to its possible futures. Where Dreams Are Made: A Journey Inside the Movies (working title) will occupy two floors of the Museum’s iconic Saban Building—formerly known as the May Company building—and looks at the development of the art and science of motion pictures. Brougher also announced the institution’s first temporary exhibitions. The Museum will open with Hayao Miyazaki (working title), presented in collaboration with the filmmaker’s Studio Ghibli—the first major exhibition of his work presented in the United States.

This exhibition will be followed by Regeneration: Black Cinema 1900–1970 (Fall 2020), a groundbreaking exhibition that reveals the important and under-recognized history of African-American filmmakers in the development of American cinema. It will explore African-American representation in the motion picture from its advent to just beyond the Civil Rights era. The Museum’s 34-foot-high project space will open with a major work by the Tokyo-based interdisciplinary art collective teamLab. Additional exhibitions will include Making of: The Wizard of Oz, featuring elements that contributed to the creation of this iconic film, a history of the Academy Awards, and an Oscars experience.

Kerry Brougher said, “We want the Academy Museum to add to the public’s understanding of the evolution of the art and science of filmmaking around the world—to increase appreciation for this great art form and encourage people to examine the role of movies in society. At the same time, we want to bring to life the most important reason of all for caring about the movies—because they’re magic. That’s why we intend to transport our visitors into a world that exists somewhere between reality and illusion. Like the experience of watching a movie, a trip to the Museum will be a kind of waking dream in which visitors feel as if they’ve slipped through the screen to see how the magic is created.”

Ron Meyer, Chairman of the Board of the Academy Museum and Vice Chairman of NBCUniversal, said, “The Trustees and I are tremendously proud to see how the exhibitions of the Academy Museum are coming together. Thanks to the extraordinary creative team that Kerry has assembled, these experiences are going to be beautiful and engaging, thoughtful and surprising. The art of film, and our new Academy Museum, deserve nothing less.”

Dawn Hudson, CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said, “It’s been 90 years since the founders of the Academy proposed creating a museum of film in Los Angeles. How thrilling to be able to deliver on that dream. The Museum’s exhibitions are as expansive and imaginative as the movies we love. With its piazza and open spaces, the Museum will be a gathering place for film lovers and will invite people from all over the world to re-experience and deepen our collective love of this art form, accessible to all.”

John Bailey, President of the Academy’s Board of Governors, said, “The Academy Museum is the realization of a long-held Academy dream to preserve movie history and to bring it into the lives of filmmakers, scholars, young people, and the worldwide public. The great resources and dedicated work of the Margaret Herrick Library and the Academy Film Archive provide a foundation for the Museum’s extraordinary installations and changing exhibitions. This Museum, created and supported by working filmmakers, will present the story of the movies in ways beyond what a traditional historical film museum can offer.”

WHERE DREAMS ARE MADE: A JOURNEY INSIDE THE MOVIES

The Museum has set several interpretative goals for its exhibitions and programs: to convey the emotional and imaginative power of film, to offer visitors a look behind the screen into how movies evolved and are made, to explore the impact of cinema on our society and the culture at large, and to ensure film’s legacy as the great art form of our time.

Where Dreams Are Made will unfold over 30,000 square feet on two floors of the Museum. It brings together evocative settings, key objects from the Academy’s unparalleled collections and the growing collection of the Museum itself, and an array of film installations.

The journey begins in the Spielberg Family Gallery, located in the Grand Lobby, with the installation Making of: The Wizard of Oz. This classic 1939 film is notable for its engaging story, groundbreaking effects, glorious Technicolor world, original musical score—in particular the exquisite voice of Judy Garland—and a cast of unforgettable characters. Visitors will experience the magic of the movie and explore the process of its creation, from the script to production design drawings and sketches, costumes, and hair and makeup tests to the final versions of the characters themselves. It is here that Dorothy’s famed ruby slippers from the Museum’s collection will be found. Finally, evidence of this film’s everlasting impact illustrates the impressive legacy of The Wizard of Oz in popular culture.

Visitors will then ascend to the Wanda Gallery on the second floor, where they will enter a corridor that acts as a transition from the real world into the dream-space of cinema. They will emerge into the dramatic Magic and Motion gallery, which evokes the age of innovation and wonder in the 19th century during which inventors created optical illusions and animations with devices that delighted audiences by making still images move and light up, bringing scenes and tales to life.

The Lumière and Méliès gallery introduces a central theme of the exhibition—the interplay in cinema between realism and fantasy—as seen in the work of the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière on one hand, and Georges Méliès on the other. Visitors will experience some of the earliest films ever projected, brief glimpses of daily life that were the forerunners of today’s documentaries and travelogues with which the Lumière brothers astonished audiences all over the world. The delightful “trick” films and dazzling moving image fantasies of stage-magician-turned-filmmaker Méliès prefigured the limitless potential of cinematic imagination even as the medium was still in its infancy.

The Story Films gallery inside the restored iconic golden cylinder of the Saban Building will demonstrate how filmmakers around the world quickly developed camera and editing techniques that unleashed this new medium’s potential to tell stories. Visitors will see examples of the first dramas, comedies, adventures, and other genres created for the screen, as well as the first animated short films. Women played significant roles both in front of and behind the camera during this period, and this gallery’s focus on early pioneers such as Alice Guy-Blaché and Lois Weber will not only explore their stories but also survey an industry in the process of being born.

Visitors will then enter a maze of monumental screens in the Light and Shadow gallery, which features sequences from the heyday of international silent film, revealing how inventive production design, acting styles, cinematographic effects, and lighting techniques brought mood, atmosphere, and emotion to cinema, elevating it to an art form and entrancing audiences around the world.

In the Modern Times section, visitors will encounter three simultaneous moments in cinema history that demonstrate moviemakers’ ability to respond to and impact society. The first was the rise of Hollywood and powerful stars like Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, larger-than-life figures who often created identifiable, sympathetic representations of the “everyman.” The second was the artistic and political eruption of Soviet cinema, particularly advances in editing and montage pioneered by Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov, who used innovative approaches to capture the drama of daily life. The third was the development of independent filmmaking in America, which sought to counter the stereotypes often created by Hollywood, including films starring all-Black casts, predominantly distributed to Black audiences—otherwise known as “race films”—and production companies formed by notable filmmakers like Oscar Micheaux, Sessue Hayakawa, and Beatriz Michelena.

Modern Times leads visitors to the largest of the second-floor galleries, The Studio System, which follows the bustle of the Hollywood assembly line from the advent of synchronized talking pictures in 1927 to the decline of the studio system in the 1960s. This gallery explores the fascinating dichotomy of the era: the “dream” of Hollywood spectacle and the “factory” that made it possible. Here, objects from the Academy’s collection, such as a backdrop from Singin’ in the Rain (1952), the doors to Rick’s Café Américain from Casablanca (1942), and the typewriter used to write Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), as well as familiar faces and scenes from the movies themselves will bring to life the myriad people and departments that came together to create studio movies of the time. Visitors will journey through the studio to explore the artistry and also the challenges of Hollywood during its “golden age.” This gallery also highlights many of the era’s most unforgettable stars, from the dancing talents of Fred Astaire, the Nicholas Brothers, and Rita Moreno to the dramatic presence of Humphrey Bogart, Gregory Peck, and Sidney Poitier, and icons of the screen like Greta Garbo, Dolores del Rio, and Marilyn Monroe.

As visitors move to the Museum’s third floor Rolex Gallery, they will enter into the Real World. This space will reveal how filmmakers responded to the tensions and challenges of a world changed by World War II. As filmmaking techniques became more and more adaptable, with lighter-weight and more widely available equipment, filmmakers everywhere took to the streets to capture their version of reality and share slices of life on screen. Whether creating fiction films or documentaries, they helped record and shape our history. Visitors will also encounter the rapid growth of independent cinema and the individual expression that characterized movements from Italian Neorealism and French New Wave to Indian Parallel Cinema and Brazilian Cinema Novo. But this is not only a story of the past: such approaches continue to impact and influence filmmaking to the present day.

An homage to the Stargate Corridor sequence from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)—a sequence that brought together experimental film techniques and mainstream cinema—creates a mind-bending passageway to the final section of the exhibition: Imaginary World. With the advent of new tools and technologies, cinematic visions are now limited only by the filmmaker’s imagination. Visitors will be transported to unfamiliar worlds of the past, present, and future to encounter many of the most memorable and beloved movie characters, creatures, and destinations and to hear from the filmmakers themselves how they have pushed the boundaries of filmmaking to make the impossible possible. These films, despite their imagined lands and inhabitants, often provide a mirror that urges us look at ourselves and our own world in new ways.

An endeavor of this scope requires a multi-disciplinary creative team, such as the one assembled under the curatorial leadership of Kerry Brougher and Deborah Horowitz, Deputy Director of Creative Content and Programming. Intrinsic to the development of the vision for Where Dreams Are Made is Rick Carter, Oscar-winning production designer for Avatar (2009) and Lincoln (2012). The creative team for the exhibition includes the Museum’s curatorial staff—Doris Berger, Acting Head of Curatorial Affairs; Jessica Niebel, Exhibitions Curator; Bernardo Rondeau, Associate Curator and Head of Film Programs; J. Raul Guzman, Assistant Curator; Dara Jaffe, Assistant Curator; Robert Reneau, Film Program Coordinator; and Ana Santiago, Assistant Curator—as well as producer Brooke Breton, Avatar; sound designer Ben Burtt, Star Wars: Episode IV (1977), E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982); staff from the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library and Academy Film Archive, Academy governors and members, the Museum’s advisory committee on inclusion, and a range of film scholars and filmmakers. Gallagher & Associates, specialists in interpretive and experience design, are bringing their expertise to the project in order to realize the design and installations.

ACADEMY AWARDS HISTORY AND OSCARS EXPERIENCE
Since 1929, the Academy Awards have been the ultimate recognition of moviemaking excellence. Originally a dinner for industry insiders only, the ceremony has gradually become a global phenomenon watched by millions around the world. Visitors can trace the rich history of the Academy Awards and the story of the Oscar in an exhibition that includes favorite highlights, memorable winners’ speeches, private backstage moments, and rarely seen materials from the Academy’s collection. The exhibition will look back at the show, its glamour as well as its controversies, and the ways in which the Academy Awards ceremony has evolved and been a mirror of our culture. Visitors will then enter a gallery offering an Oscars experience only the Academy can provide, allowing visitors their own photo opportunity and Oscar moment.

TEMPORARY EXHIBITIONS

The Academy Museum will also feature a robust schedule of rotating temporary exhibitions in the fourth floor’s Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg Gallery. These exhibitions will include retrospectives of major filmmakers, focused studies on aspects of filmmaking, artists’ projects, and explorations of the way movies reflect and influence society.

The Academy Museum’s opening temporary exhibition will be an unprecedented U.S. retrospective of famed Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, curated by Jessica Niebel in collaboration with Studio Ghibli. Celebrated and admired around the world for his imagination, authorial vision, craftsmanship, and deeply humanistic values, Miyazaki continues to influence generations of filmmakers and film lovers. The exhibition will take visitors on a thematic journey through his cinematic worlds using original production materials from Studio Ghibli’s archives and features such films as My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and Spirited Away (2001). The exhibition will present more than 200 concept sketches, character designs, storyboards, layouts, cels, backgrounds, film clips, and immersive environments. A catalogue, film series, and public events will accompany the presentation, and unique Studio Ghibli merchandise will be sold at the Museum’s shop.

In the Museum’s Hurd Gallery—a 34-foot-high project space dedicated to the work of contemporary artists and filmmakers pushing the boundaries of moving image media—will be a dramatic interactive installation by teamLab, curated by Kerry Brougher and Deborah Horowitz. teamLab is an interdisciplinary art collective based in Tokyo comprising more than 500 artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians, and architects. Transcending Boundaries presents a site-specific, real-time, ever-changing environment that allows the viewer to engage directly with the artwork itself. teamLab’s work looks toward the expanded possibilities of moving image and digital technology.

Following Hayao Miyazaki, the Academy Museum will present Regeneration: Black Cinema 1900-1970 in Fall 2020. Regeneration will explore the visual culture of Black cinema in its manifold expressions from its early days to just beyond the Civil Rights movement. Co-curated by Doris Berger and Rhea Combs, Supervisory Curator of Photography and Film at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), it will be the first exhibition of its kind—a research-driven, in-depth look at Black participation in American filmmaking.

In addition to offering a critical exploration of Hollywood productions, Regeneration will highlight the work of independent African-American filmmakers and create dialogues with visual artists. The exhibition’s goal is to redefine American film history as it elevates this under-represented aspect of artistic production and presents a more inclusive story. Regeneration is the proud recipient of the Sotheby’s Prize. The Sotheby’s Prize is an annual award that supports and encourages museums to break new ground. The grant aims to recognize curatorial excellence, and to facilitate exhibitions that explore overlooked or under-represented areas of art history. The Sotheby’s Prize is awarded by a jury comprising Sir Nicholas Serota, Donna De Salvo, Okwui Enwezor, Connie Butler, Emilie Gordenker, and chaired by Allan Schwartzman.

Regeneration’s curatorial team is collaborating with an advisory panel throughout the development of the exhibition. The panel brings expertise and experience deeply rooted in scholarship and filmmaking and includes Charles Burnett, filmmaker, Academy member; Ava DuVernay, filmmaker, Academy member; Michael B. Gillespie, Associate Professor, The City College of New York, Department Media Communication Arts; Shola Lynch, Curator, New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, filmmaker, Academy member; Ron Magliozzi, Curator of Film, The Museum of Modern Art; Ellen C. Scott, Associate Professor and Head of Cinema and Media Studies, UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television; and Jacqueline N. Stewart, Professor, The University of Chicago, Department of Cinema and Media Studies.

To encourage visitors to explore, dive deeper, and directly interact with exhibitions, collections, filmmakers, and fellow film lovers, the Museum’s public programs will include panel discussions, symposia, gallery talks, and other public events. The 288-seat Ted Mann Theater will offer daily thematic and exhibition-related screenings, and special showings and events will be held at the 1,000-seat David Geffen Theater. Film programming is overseen by Bernardo Rondeau. In addition, the Museum will offer an innovative range of digital engagement platforms and interactives, including a groundbreaking app.

Additional information about Hayao Miyazaki, Transcending Boundaries, Regeneration, and the Museum’s public programs and film screenings will be announced at a later date.

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Joy Ride Is An Extremely Raunchy And Hilarious Comedy

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Joy Ride is an extremely raunchy and hilarious comedy that takes the mantle of ensemble risky
comedies that at times, leave your mouth on the floor. Joy Ride focuses on two best friends
Audrey and Lolo (Ashley Sullivan and Sherry Cola) end up getting roped up into a trip to Asia,
they end up on gals pal cross-continent trek to find Audrey’s long lost birth mother so she
doesn’t lose a huge business deal.

The chemistry in this movie is superb. Every character has their moment to shine and there’s
rarely a scene where you don’t get a belly laugh. I was shocked at how crazy and bold this
movie got, continually pushing the line to get a laugh. The movie does a good job of getting to
the point and getting to the scenes that really make you chuckle. There are some editing choices where the story flies by some stuff, and it feels a little incomplete, but never at the expense of really enjoying being around for the journey.

I thought that this was a sleeper for this year and certainly a movie worth watching with your
friends some weekend. It’s great to throw on if you want a laugh and really just enjoy some
great actors riffing off each other. The focus on culture was a nice touch and really elevated the movie to another level. While I would say if you’re easily offended, this movie is not for you – if you’re looking for a no holds barred comedy, Joy Ride is a trip worth taking.

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Who Doesn’t Want To Wear The Ninja Suit Of Snake-Eyes Or Dress Like The Mandalorian?

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Hasbro has had their pulse app out for a while now. It allows for access to items to buy, preorder, and a look into future projects and releases. It also allows for a very cool thing most nerds (a group of which I am a proud card-carrying member) have always wanted, the ability to make yourself into an action figure. I’ve contemplated making one for a time but, I finally got my chance to get my hands on one at Comic-Con this year. Now, of course, I had to wait in line as it was a pretty sought-after item. Who doesn’t want to have themselves wear the ninja suit of Snake-Eyes or dressed like a Mandalorian? I was approached by one of the booth staff as I was showing my nephew all the cool ways we could get him his own MIles Morales action figure with his face (as he’s a massive fan) and invited to take a seat and scan our faces into the Hasbro Pulse app with the help of their awesome team and make this dream a reality. My wife was with us, so of course she got in on the fun too. We scanned our faces in and it was very simple and quick. Then we all selected our figures to add our heads to. We all chose Power Rangers(Me as the Black Ranger, my wife chose the pink ranger and the nephew got the red ranger). Then we were told that we needed to wait about 4-6 weeks and we’d have our custom action figure team in our hands. This was a major part of our Comic-Con adventure and definitely, a memory my wife and nephew won’t forget (as it was both of their first Con ever). Thank you to Hasbro for being so generous(also getting me brownie points that home) and I highly suggest checking out Hasbro Pulse and all the cool stuff it has to offer.

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter: Double-knock on wood!  

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Adapted and written largely from the Captain’s Log chapter of Bram Stoker’s magnum opus Dracula, The Last Voyage of the Demeter tells the story of Dracula’s journey by ship from Carpathia to London, and what happened to her crew in the interim.

So here we are in Bulgaria, middle of 1897, and Captain Eliot (Liam Cunningham) of the Russian schooner Demeter is here to take on some strange cargo from some unknown client and transport it to Carfax Abbey in London. In need of some extra hands, the Captain sends out his capable Second Wojchek (David Dastmalchian) to scout for some, and initially the roving black doctor and aspiring philosopher Clemens (Corey Hawkins) is passed over in favor of more work-roughened men. The adorable cabin boy of the Demeter, Toby (Woody Norman), narrowly misses being crushed by the mysterious dragon-marked crates being loaded onto the ship, saved by Clemens himself and switched out with the superstitious sailors running from the Demeter like they had been poisoned by the sign of Dracul. And now, armed with some nine or so crewmen, Doc Clemens, and Captain Eliot himself, the twenty-four strange what looks like coffins adorned with dragon signs brought mostly safely aboard, the Demeter can make for open water and the Hell that awaits them there.

The duty of showing Clemens around the ship falls to a cheerful Toby, who proudly shows him the living areas, the Captain’s quarters, the very-large cargo hold, the galley and kitchen where the overly-devout Joseph (Jon Jon Briones) cooks the crews meals, the various above decks, even the sails, and the rigging are all at least touched on, and the livestock pens that Toby himself is in charge of, including the handsome good-boy doggy Huckleberry, or just Huck. We the audience get a very clear feeling of what it’s like to actually be aboard the Demeter, just how large she really is, and what living on a ship for months at sea is really like, the reality and practicality and the dangers of it.

Everyone more or less settles in for a hopefully uneventful voyage, taking mess around the common table and exchanging ideas or aspirations for when they arrive in London early thanks to the fair winds, and receive a handsome bonus for their troubles. But that involves being alive and making it to London to spend said bonus and pay, and the coffin crates spilling dark soil from the motherland and disgorging all sorts of other nasty secrets, have some serious plans to the contrary.

First, it’s the livestock, innocent and shrieking in their locked pens as a monster takes great furious bites out of their necks, and of course, the creature just straight up ruins poor doggy Huck. Then there’s the fully grown girl that gets dislodged from an open coffin-crate, covered in bite scars and as pale as death, she eventually starts interacting and talking after several blood transfusions from Doc Clemens, Toby learns her name is Anna (Aisling Franciosi). And then, as the weather turns foul and the winds begin to be a serious problem, the attacks turn toward the remaining humans onboard the Demeter.

Most people these days are familiar with Dracula, that gorgeous cunning vampire Elder who can supposedly transform into a bat or a wolf, seducing women to voluntarily offer up their veins like an unholy sacrament, a being at once beautiful and powerful, but also horrific and murderous if given half a heartbeat to smell your blood. This is not Dracula.

Instead, the creature that hunts the humans occupying the Demeter is an absolute monster, not a single human feature left to it, barely even recognizable as humanoid-shaped, instead boasting not just full-length bat wings but an entire exo-skin of bat membranes that can be used for feeding, a mouth full of needle-like teeth akin to a predator of the deepest darkest parts of the ocean, those yellowed Nosferatu eyes that will not tolerate light in any way, and of course giant pointy bat-ears. This is a thing, a grotesque straight from the depths of Hell, and no amount of glamor magic can make this Dracula (Javier Botet) seem like anything other than what he, is – a parasitic demon who only wants your blood. There is no reasoning with it, no trapping it, not even really any talking to it (kinda hard to talk when your throat has been ripped out), and, like the much more frightening Dracula stories of old, no amount of pure faith behind a symbol does anything other than give false hope.

Coming face to face with an actual abomination does different things to different people. The formerly delightfully foul-mouthed Abrams (Chris Walley) dissolves into a blubbering mess; poor Larsen (Martin Furulund) didn’t even get to see his own death coming; and it turns out Olgaren (Stefan Kapicic) wants to live so badly, he’ll suffer becoming a blank-eyed Renfield if that’s what it takes. All of Cook Joseph’s purported pure faith didn’t stop him from trying to take the coward’s way out and didn’t save him anyway when the sound of unnatural bat wings descended on him. I find that kind of irony delicious. Dear Anna, resigned to her fate to be eternal food for the horror that terrorized her village, nevertheless wants to try and save whoever is left of the Demeter with her own sacrifice, and there aren’t many. Wojchek of course wants to kill Dracula, but for all his logic and solid practical nature, has no experience whatsoever with this sort of thing, and sure doesn’t want to sacrifice the Demeter, the beloved ship he called home that was promised to him by Captain Eliot himself, in order to destroy that demon. Even poor sweet Toby isn’t safe from the creature’s clutches, and what happens to the cabin boy of the Demeter is what finally sends Captain Eliot over the blooming edge. And who could blame him? For this sort of thing to happen during the last voyage of such a proud, solid ship as the Demeter, is some serious bullsh*t.

To leave such a film open for a potential sequel, especially when called the last voyage of something, was a pretty hefty ask, and somehow the filmmakers managed it. I personally think a different version of Van Helsing, the infamous vampire hunter, teaming up with a certain black doctor who nurses a serious grudge against Dracula, could be a kickass sequel. Until then, experience the doomed final journey of the Demeter and her poor crew in all it’s bloodstained glory, in theaters now!

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