[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Tucker Clarry
—Role Players
This is my non-narrated piece for my multimedia journalism course.
Sleigh Bells | “Rill Rill”
Itzgood
What are the differences between Mark Zuckerberg and me? I give private information on corporations to you for free and I’m a villain.
Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he’s ‘Man of the Year.’
—Julian Assange
This can’t be real. Holy hell this can’t be real.
Review | Black Swan
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Starring Natalie Portman (Nina Sayers), Mila Kunis (Lily), Vincent Cassel (Thomas Leroy), Barbara Hershey (Erica Sayers), Winona Ryder (Beth Macintyre)
The new season for Nina’s ballet company is starting, and her director Thomas wants to breathe some new life into the struggling ensemble, led by diva and clouted Bethany, who is seen as too old by her female counterparts.
Thomas looks for a new lead with his version of Swan Lake, someone to replace his “little princess.” In her audition for the lead (The White and Black Swan twins), Nina is perfect in every process of her routine. Mastering the fundamental choreography and every little motion, Thomas tells her she’d be perfect… for the White Swan.
It’s clear to Thomas and anyone who watches Nina perform that she is too shy, too modest, too nervous to perform as the explosive and fluid Black Swan, the evil twin of the White Swan.
This is the first nip in the slit that makes Portman’s evil pour out, steadily creating her Black counterpart.
Black Swan is a thick character development and revealing, leading all the way to the closing moments, all that successfully is impacted by Nina’s search for perfection.
And Nina is played as close to perfect as imaginable, by a slimmed down and newly molded frame and the manic acting of Portman, who showcases her incessant and grueling routine everyday; practicing nuances that she has already bottled, picking and scratching nervously as she frets how she’s going to pull off her performance. She looks as sick as the visions she sees.
And Aronofsky’s visionary palette is still rich, making a thriller that stretches and contracts, rewarding Nina’s birth as the Black Swan with approval by the people she holds highly. These small trophies push to the corner of her eye the free fall that her original, pure life is going through, pushing everything that she held dearly or was away.
8.5/10
