A cameo is the term given to describe an item of jewellery, typically oval in shape, which is engraved with a profiled portrait. Dating as far back as antiquity, cameos have been a common feature of the art world throughout history; Elizabeth I is known to have given courtiers cameos baring her own personage as a means of reminding the recipient of where their true loyalties lie. In the context of a film blog, however, a cameo is the small appearance of a well known actor within a film. For example, the word ‘however’ made a cameo in the previous sentence. It would seem that binge-watching Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events has left me somewhat obsessed by definitions. For which I apologise.
You could never accuse Martin Scorsese of lacking in diversity when it comes to his body of work. Silence, Scorsese’s latest to hit the screens, follows a fowl-mouthed Wolf of Wall Street which was itself preceded by the charming (and, unusually, child-friendly) Hugo. In a way, however, Silence predates both having been first conceived back in the nineties – not long after Scorsese concluded work on his Last Temptation of Christ, a film of kindred spirit to its later successor. Silence battled much in its pilgrimage to production – appropriately surviving its own ‘hell’, albeit a development one – and must be termed another passion project of willpower for Scorsese. It’s not hard to see why. Adapted from the book of the same name by Shūsaku Endō, Silence tackles themes potent amid Scorsese’s oeuvre. Guilt, faith, Catholicism…all present and correct. I have niggles but wouldn’t hesitate to call the effort worth it.
Ah, Hollywood! The magic, the romance, the city of angels: Los Angeles. Secretly we all know that Hollywood’s not a real place. Hollywood’s a dream and creative ideal combined and it’s a world captured picture-perfectly by Damien Chazelle’s first work since his Oscar-winning Whiplash from 2014. La La Land tells the tale of aspiring starlet Mia (Emma Stone) and jazz wannabe Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) in an all singing, all dancing tribute to those cockle-warming classics of the mid-twentieth century.
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