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Reviews
Queenmaker: The Making of an It Girl (2023)
I wasn't misled, I was just a little underwhelmed
I guess that I'm one of the few people who WASN'T misled by this documentary.
I didn't see the trailer, but something I read about it did correctly lead me to believe that its focus was on the blogger behind Park Avenue Peerage.
I remember reading about this blogger at the time (perhaps I learned of her through that New York Magazine article, which I read back then), and I had always wondered what became of the blogger afterwards... had they become part of the social world in New York? Were they earning a living as a journalist?
According to the NYM article, Park Avenue Peerage had become such a must-read in the NY social world back then, that absolutely I was interested in reading about its author, in the same way that I find someone like Tavi Gevinson, who basically inserted herself into the NY fashion world purely by her own youthful efforts, interesting.
Some more time spent on the blogger's childhood, and what led to the blogger's obsession with the NY social world, and more on what made the blog so compelling for its readers, would have actually made this MORE interesting. (Yes, I thought the problem wasn't too much of the blogger, but not enough.)
I wasn't sufficiently invested in the blogger's story (beyond my pre-existing interest), as it wasn't presented that well.
And... surely the social world could have been presented in a way that made it seem somewhat glamorous or interesting. The way we saw it here made it hard to understand why anyone would aspire to be a part of it in the first place.
Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest (2011)
A Tribe Called Quest shown as made up of complex, gifted, flawed human beings, not as flawless cardboard characters.
I'm troubled that some reviewers object to the fact that this film doesn't ignore the considerable tensions that existed within A Tribe Called Quest.
This is a documentary, not a propaganda film... the backstage dynamics between the members of ATCQ over the years (both positive and negative) are highly relevant to the film, assuming that it wasn't meant as a puff piece.
If anything, Rapaport held back a bit MORE than he should have, which is part of the reason why I don't give the film an even higher rating, as I would (for example) to the brutally revealing documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.
Also, anyone who watches the film and doesn't get some sense of why the group meant so much to so many of us (in its artistry and in its spirit) just wasn't paying attention.
I do hope that the DVD extras spend more time on the extended Native Tongue Family... while it certainly isn't ignored in the film, the Native Tongue Family deserves at the very least its own mini- documentary.