Hollywood is quite often called out for its frequent disinterest in presenting anything other than whiteness, but some recent movies are especially egregious: rather than let it slide or even merely Tweet about it, actor Dylan Marron decided to expose just how blanketed in white these films are by compiling every rare moment a person of color speaks in each of them and letting the brevity of these clips speak for itself; for films like Into the Woods and Noah, there’s actually just nothing (the blank image above depicts what the credit sequence would look like if it were listing the non-white actors in the film), whereas 500 Days of Summer clocks in with a whopping 30 seconds of lines delivered by actors of color (and eight seconds are devoted, here, to an intro). For anyone who still thinks this isn’t an issue, behold:
Elsewhere in film news, this morning saw the posting of a disheartening message on beloved film website The Dissolve, announcing that today would be the site’s last. Editorial director Keith Phipps wrote:
Sadly, because of the various challenges inherent in launching a freestanding website in a crowded publishing environment, financial and otherwise, today is the last day we will be doing that.
The Dissolve (which was owned by Pitchfork Media) was relatively new, and had already become one of the best and most daring — and daringly averse to clickbait — film criticism sites around. It’s been eulogized today in the Washington Post and on rogerebert.com.
To end on an exciting rather than melancholy note, the first clips from the next season of FX’s Fargo anthology series have been released, and show glimpses (and they’re really nothing but glimpses) of Kirsten Dunst’s beautician character, Peggy Blomquist, and Patrick Wilson’s younger version of the Season 1 character, Lou Solverson — originally played by Keith Carradine. Watch them on Indiewire.