Porn: Emma Stone wins 'Poor Things' Oscar

The Take, 1/30/24; Karsten Runquist; Oscar Watching Party Reviewers, Wisdom Quarterly

Emma Stone wins best actress over Lily Gladstone in Oscars’ biggest surprise (msn.com)

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Poor Things: empowering or exploitative?

(The Take) Poor Things, the new Yorgos Lanthimos film starring Emma Stone, has been racking up nominations and wins on this year’s award circuit.

But it also sparked quite a bit of controversy thanks to one major feature of its plot. So what is the film actually about, what world is it supposed to be, and is it empowerment or exploitation?

Here’s what the world needs to know about Poor Things, those offensive sex scenes, and the message the film is trying to convey between sheety sheet scenes.

CHAPTERS

• 00:00 Poor Things
• 00:37 How Bella takes control
• 01:37 Poor Things = Weird Barbie?
• 03:20 Expanding her mind in more ways than one
• 04:30 Sponsor Zocdoc plug
• 06:13 Story through cinematography and costume
• 07:18 The truth about those scenes
• 10:29 Wild, but still has a relatable side

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WQ Review

I'm a producer, like Barb's Barbie

While one may be deceived into thinking this is a gorgeous film with bright colors, it is really, dark, dingy, and uber steam punk for a lot of the beginning. When colors enter, one realizes this is not even this world unless it represents Tartaria (mudflood Tartary), which would make a lot of sense. But it's supposed to be same old same late 1800s Mary Poppins' London.

What a ride 14+ years since Easy A

We went to see Poor Things because Mr. Skin said Emma Stone was naked in it, a first for an A-listed Hollywood starlet in her prime or even at the tail end of it. We wanted to see action. We were not expecting grotesque gore, so many close ups of Willem Dafoe's disfigured face.

He's ugly enough, but here he is unsightly (nearly impossible to look at for very long), although his voice is warm, Irish, and inviting. He's cuddly, which is a feat for the character of Dr. Frankenstein. What is bothersome about the film is Frankenstein's monster ("Bella Baxter" played by Emma Stone), unlike the nice Herman Munster character Hollywood has always given us even in the original adaptation of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's short story competition winner that became a book about the Jewish menace.

• Oppenheimer crowned best picture, with best actor and best director, at 2024 Oscars

Optioned books are just starting points for films.

Shelley almost certainly never imagined Oppenheimer, the winner of this year's Best Picture Oscar from the Academy, when she combined the common Jewish surnames Franken and Stein overtaking Europe in her youthful estimation.

Emma Stone is a stonehearted brute, a callous child pursuing her hedonistic pleasure without knowing what it is or that other people are being hurt. That should have been a good story, but she's too naive and self-centered with a physical age far exceeding her infantile mental age.

It's really the story of the sexual exploitation of a child's brain but made "okay" because that brain has been transferred into her dead mother's body. Which is odd.

The film might have crossed the line at some point, when incest and child rape loom large as the original husband returns to claim his wife/daughter, have sex with her, and imprison her in his castle. He's an imperial European warrior, "the General," after all. Those sex scenes must have been left on the cutting room floor when previewers objected; one would have to check the text.

Tartaria explains missing antecedents tochievements seen in the World

Fair, old photos, advanced technology and architecture, China's Great Wall...

Willem Dafoe in Planet of the Apes Poor Things

This general is not the first man to try to control Bella or imprison her. The audience is supposed to applaud that she's so willful and not mind that she's so childish. But does anyone applaud her suicide, utilitarian choice to undertake prostitution, or how she breaks the hearts of her "God" (not the tribal god of the Bible but "Dr. Godwin 'God' Baxter," her creator, Willem Dafoe's role as the Dr. Frankenstein) and her betrothed, just about the only two men in the movie she doesn't have sexual relations with, though it's not for lack of trying, her lesbian experimentation, philosophical dabbling, her stealing one man's fortune for a good cause then squandering it so that it doesn't even fulfill that good function... monster, demoness, dummy, child.

• Frankenstein author Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in London in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin (eerily the character of Willem's Godwin). Mary Wollstonecraft died (just like in Poor Things) around the time of her famous daughter's birth. Godwin was left to bring up Mary, just as Dr. Godwin raises Bella like a doting father and caring creator god, in spite of character which is to be scientifically distant and professionally detached just as his medical doctor father was with him.

Great actors age badly: Mark Ruffalo

One then realizes how well Mark Ruffalo is playing his role. His character is interesting, almost making him the real protagonist of the movie, which probably explains why they have to disappear him and leave him unexplained. What happened to him? When he shows up by surprise to present the great volta at another very pivotal moment for her betrothed, he doesn't look at her, calls her a demon (and it's hard to disagree), exacts his revenge, and bam, that's it for him. The most enjoyable performance in the whole movie, and he's gone. Was he eliciting too much sympathy and approval from the test audiences? Did Ruffalo win an Oscar best supporting actor?

C'est la vie. You can't win them all any.

That Emma [Sad]Stone beat Lily Gladstone, the first Native American to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar -- by the way, why does Hollywood insist we say "actor" for both males and females everywhere except at the Academy Awards? -- is understandable.

Hollywood loves Stone (remembering her charming Academy Award-winning performance in Lalaland with Ryan "Ken" Gosling), and the role was a supporting role that should have been in that category up against The Holdovers' Black winner. Either way, it was up to Scorsese to accentuate her and downplay bad guy Leonardo DiCaprio, who makes atrocious killers of flower moons seem sympathetic with his acting.

See for yourself: Poor Things promises sex but delivers grotesque

Poor Things is insane (review)

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