No one else will write about Carrie Fisher as well as she wrote about herself The best pop culture moments of 2016
Carrie Fisher was a writer and performer who found worldwide stardom as Princess Leia in Star Wars (1977), released when she was just 19. It was her first leading role, after a striking cameo in Shampoo (1975), and she reprised the part in two sequels in the 1980s, and a further two made this decade.
Fisher would later say that Star Wars had inadvertently “tricked” her into celebrity; that she had been a bookish teenager, more interested in writing than performing, and had she known how famous the film would make her, she would have turned it down.
Yet stardom was the family business. Fisher’s mother, Debbie Reynolds, had also achieved international fame aged 19, for her first leading role (in 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain ), and her daughter was surrounded by almost impossibly famous people since birth.
To create a single iconic screen characterisation – as Fisher did with Princess Leia – is more than most performers hope to achieve. It does not denigrate Fisher’s work in other fields to acknowledge the scale of Star Wars ’ cultural impact, given that she made a significant contribution to its popularity.
It is also not true to imply, as some have, that she achieved little else as a performer after the original Star Wars trilogy. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), The ‘Burbs, and When Harry Met Sally… (both 1989) are fine films, great examples of their respective genres, and Fisher is extremely good in all three of them. She might never have played the female lead in a film as successful as Star Wars again – but for decades after she did, neither did anyone else.
In 1987, Fisher published Postcards from the Edge , a novel that drew on her own life as second generation Hollywood Royalty. When her book became a film, Fisher wrote the screenplay, and many expected her to also play the lead, Suzanne. The role instead went to Meryl Streep, who was nominated for an Oscar. When asked why she didn’t take the part herself, Fisher was clear that she didn’t want to, insisting: “I’ve already played Suzanne.”
From then on, Fisher’s acting work, such as playing a therapist in the first Austin Powers (1997) or her Emmy-nominated turn in 30 Rock (2007), took its cues from her own writing. It played on her fame, public persona and known interests and passions, including her work with mental health organisations – an intertwining of her life and art that continued for the rest of her life.
In parallel to performing, and a continuing career as a novelist, the success of the Postcards film made Fisher an in-demand Hollywood screenwriter. This was largely “polishing” – for payment but without credit – scripts attributed to other hands. A comprehensive list of these screenplays is inherently difficult to compile, but her uncredited work is acknowledged to be seen in Hook (1991), Sister Act (1992), The Wedding Singer (1998) and several Star Wars films in which she did not appear.
She did receive credit for her episode of Star Wars creator George Lucas’ Young Indiana Jones television series. (It depicted the teenage Indiana’s affair with Mata Hari, was directed by Nicolas Roeg, and is as odd as that description makes it sound.)
In 2001, she wrote and received credit for the screenplay for These Old Broads , a celebration of women in Hollywood in the generation above her. It starred Shirley MacLaine (who had played Suzanne’s mother in Postcards from the Edge ) and Elizabeth Taylor, the woman for whom her father, Eddie Fisher, left her mother in 1959.
Her most recent book, The Princess Diarist , published in November this year, was a volume based on diaries she had kept while making Star Wars. Witty and emotionally complex, it provoked headlines by confirming longstanding rumours about her on-set affair with Harrison Ford, and was accompanied by an international signing tour, from which she was returning when she was taken ill.
On the London leg of her tour, a friend of mine found himself roughly in the middle of the long, long queue of people wanting a few moments with her. As his turn approached, she shot him a wicked look: “I’ll do you before my break,” she said. “And then during my break, I’ll do you. A girl has to relax somehow.” My friend – not easily embarrassed and far from a blushing novitiate – turned crimson and was reduced to monosyllables, to Fisher’s great, cackling delight. She then posed with him for a picture in which both are beaming. Like a Colette or even an Anaïs Nin, her public life had become as much her art form as her performances and writing.
It is her writing that should be a lasting memorial. Others could perhaps have played Princess Leia nearly as well, but only Carrie Fisher could have written Postcards from the Edge or her one-woman show and subsequent memoir Wishful Drinking. The next few days will be filled with tributes to her, including this one, but all will be insufficient. No one else will ever write about Carrie Fisher as well as she wrote about herself.
The best entrance
Beyonc é , Lemonade
Just ten months after its release, it’s hard to imagine a cultural landscape without Lemonade. Beyoncé’s second visual album, which dropped in February, set the bar high early in the year. By turns blistering, bitter, and blissful, listening to Lemonade for the first time can feel like a kind of baptism, cleansing through its catharsis. So it’s only appropriate that one of the film’s most lasting visuals plays with similar ideas, as Beyoncé begins “Hold Up” with waves breaking through heavy doors. That’s one way to make an entrance.
The best use of social media
Kim Kardashian West, Snapchat
It would take a much higher wordcount to explain the tension that had been building between Taylor Swift and Kanye West for years , but their relationship was more tense than ever when West released a rap mentioning her: “I think me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? / I made that bitch famous. ” West claimed he had her approval for the lines, but Swift hinted at her horror at the Grammy’s. Contentious comments in interviews followed, until Kim Kardashian West came to her husband’s support with a delicious serving of revenge: posting video footage of Taylor’s approval on her Snapchat. A truly electrifying use of personal social media channels that showed Kardashian West’s dominance of the form. It’s bittersweet to remember her triumph after a traumatic assault has seen her move away from her former social media persona.
The best British export
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag
Hilarious, depressing, filthy and always surprising – Fleabag was undoubtedly the best of British comedy in 2016. Constantly leaving its audience on a knife-edge between laughter and tears, Phoebe Waller-Bridge – who wrote and starred in the sitcom – offered an irresistible exploration of a woman struggling to entertain those around her while dealing with grief, shame, and insecurities financial and personal. It was extra sweet to see her success translate Stateside when Amazon Prime Video distributed the series. Extra points, too, must go to a show that manages to make a scene starring Hugh Dennis talking about orgasms and his dishwasher moving.
The best revenge
Every woman on Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones has been rightly criticised for its voyeuristic and degrading treatment of women across its six seasons. We’ve seen Arya, Sansa, Cersei, Daenerys, Ellaria and Yara beaten, raped, humiliated and tortured at length. So when this season saw several disparate plotlines culminate with the triumph of the women at their centres, it was hard not to celebrate for them. Particularly sweet was Sansa’s revenge, as she finally sat at the head of her house and murdered her husband using his own preferred method of torture: death by dogs. Let’s hope they don’t fuck up her character (there have been hints of a “the power goes to her head” storyline) in season seven!
The best non-stop monologue
Aoife Duffin, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
I loved two female-driven monologue performances in 2016: Fleabag at the Soho Theatre was one, and the other was A Girl is a Half-formed Thing at the Young Vic. Following on from runs in Dublin, Edinburgh and Manchester in 2014 and 2015, this production finally came to London this year, and it was transcendent. This uninterrupted 90-minute show is relentlessly traumatic and terribly bleak, but the sheer force of it reminds us of the depths simmering beneath the faces of every passing person you meet.
The best nostalgic romance
Barry Jenkins, Moonlight
2016 has been a year thick with nostalgia: from Stranger Things to La Land and beyond. Moonlight , a coming-of-age film set in Eighties Miami by director Barry Jenkins – described by one critic as ” Carol meets Frank Ocean” – is the most nuanced and stylish of the lot. Following the troubled youngster Chiron as he grows up, discovers his sexuality, and even falls in love, Moonlight seduces you from its very first frame. An honourable mention, too, must go to the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero”, which managed to transcend all the melodramtic, po-faced elements of your typical Black Mirror episode by choosing to look at the potential positive aspects of future technology.
The best exit
Damien Chazelle, La Land
It’s not out in the UK until 12 January, but La Land has dominated the cinematic conversation in 2016. A lush, sweeping musical centring on two LA romantics (Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone), it spends its two-hour run time hovering between fantasy and reality. It’s irresistible throughout, but it’s the final scene – a dreamy musical montage with a gorgeous score – that knocks the wind out of its audience. I’ve seen this film three times, and so far I haven’t managed to not bawl my eyes out throughout. Just go and see it, okay?
© Source: http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/film/2016/12/no-one-else-will-write-about-carrie-fisher-well-she-wrote-about-herself
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The New Year started on a high note in Los Angeles after someone changed the famous Hollywood sign to read “Hollyweed.” Police say surveillance video shows a lone male suspect dressed all in black. The person could face misdemeanor charges if caught. 
КИЕВ, 2 янв – РИА Новости Украина. Опубликованы новые фото вероятного подозреваемого в совершении теракта в Стамбуле, сообщает CNN Turk. 
После того, как сразу после террористического акта в сеть попали фото из окровавленного клуба в результате стрельбы, следователи опубликовали фотографии подозреваемого. 
В пгт Донское Волновахского района Донецкой области в ночь на 2 января произошла драка между военнослужащими и гражданскими, которая привела к гибели бойца-контрактника Вооруженных Сил Украины и ранению мирного жителя. Об этом сообщает пресс-служба Министерства обороны. 
Террористическая группировка “Исламское государство” взяло на себя ответственность за стрельбу в ночном клубе в Стамбуле, сообщил ” Корреспондент ” со ссылкой на Reuters. 
Владелец машины, из-за которой начался инцидент в лесу, дал показания и пролил свет на случившееся, сказал нардеп 
It has been called one of a biggest inventions of a 20th Century, and though it roughly half a world’s race would not be alive today. 
The recurring trope of almost every cable television series these days is extreme violence, frequently involving the capture, rape and slaughter of young women. Even Henning Mankell’s relatively cosy Wallander series, in its numerous manifestations – Wallander has been played by at least three actors – and the semi-comic Inspector Montalbano serve up frequent, grisly helpings of sex and violence. The Sopranos , the first and still the best of the lot, did not flinch from the rawer aspects of the criminal life, but the bloodshed was always secondary to the drama. In its successors, however, the makers have been steadily ratcheting up the horrors, and seemingly there is no limit they will not breach. 
