![]() Photo-Illustration: Vulture Photos by MGM and UniversalĪnother signature move of the Haywood phenomenon is cyclones of swirling dust that suck up everyone and everything in their path before belching out the indigestible metal and plastic bits hours, or even days, later. They’re also a popular buzzword in the conspiracy-theory and doomsday-prepper communities, the latter of whom stock up on battery-operated everything to prepare for a world where every electrical grid and digital archive has been wiped out by a weaponized EMP deployed by sinister forces - the Russians, the Chinese, aliens, Antifa, the sun, whatever. More scientific minds than these can explain how EMPs actually work (something to do with gamma radiation?), but they can either be organic - think solar flares and geomagnetic storms - or manmade. The being over the Haywood ranch announces its presence by emitting a signal that shorts out all electronic devices within a several-hundred-yard radius, an extraterrestrial version of the phenomenon known as electromagnetic pulses (EMPs). ( Thomasine & Bushrod, directed by Shaft’s Gordon Parks Jr., is another standout.) In a bit of serendipitous timing, a 4k restoration of the film hits Blu-ray via the Criterion Collection in August. ![]() The success of Lil Nas X has sparked a renaissance of pride in Black cowboy culture, but this is hardly the first surge of interest in the phenomenon: The confluence of Black Power and Blaxploitation led to a wave of Black westerns in the early- to mid-’70s, of which Buck and the Preacher is a prime example. One of the many movie posters hanging in the Haywood family home is for the 1972 western Buck and the Preacher, directed by Sidney Poitier and starring Poitier and Harry Belafonte in the title roles. We also know that horse racing was one of a scant few paths to upward mobility for Black men in the late 19th century, although the racist condescension lobbed at jockeys made their success a mixed proposition. And the man in the clip is indeed anonymous: We know the name of the horse (Annie G) but not the jockey, a troubling reflection of the erasure of Black horsemanship in history. But it’s definitely part of the first batch of moving pictures. Pedants can quibble over whether the three-second clip in question is actually the first moving picture - photographer Edward Muybridge shot multiple series of photographs capturing a galloping horse’s gait in 1878, and it’s unclear which of them was executed first. The Haywoods’ assertion that the first motion picture featured a Black man on a horse, and that the jockey in the film remains unidentified to this day, is mostly correct. Nash revealed her disfigured face on The Oprah Winfrey Show in November of that year, in a hat and veil very similar to the one an adult Mary Jo Elliott wears to Jupiter’s Claim in the film. (It’s unclear why Travis attacked Nash, whom he knew well possible triggers include Nash’s new haircut, the Xanax in Travis’s system, and Nash holding one of the ape’s favorite toys.) Nash underwent facial reconstructive surgery after the incident, but doctors were unable to restore her eyes. A chimp can straight-up rip your face off if properly provoked - take the case of Travis, a chimpanzee with a robust commercial résumé who made international headlines after he grotesquely mauled Charla Nash, a longtime friend of his owner, in 2009. Gordy’s Home is obviously not a real sitcom, but the idea of an otherwise friendly chimpanzee randomly attacking his human co-stars is not out of the realm of possibility. And although Nope is a less cryptic work than Peele’s last film, 2019’s Us, it still leaves a bread-crumb trail of influences and Easter eggs to enrich the experience for observant viewers. (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald Haywood (Keke Palmer) and their attempts to save the family business, Haywood’s Hollywood Horses, by capturing and selling photographic proof of alien life. The film evolves as well, shifting from comedy to horror to blockbuster spectacle as it follows siblings O.J. Over the course of this 135-minute sci-fi adventure, the extraterrestrial force terrorizing the remote valley of Agua Dulce gradually reveals more of itself, going from a subtle shadow to a fully unfurled intergalactic flower-squid. (Maybe a little of both?) Early teasers for the film hinted that UFOs would be a key element of the story, and Nope more than delivers on that promise. For his third feature film, the writer-director spins a tale of high strangeness in inland California that doubles as a deconstruction of the summer blockbuster and triples as a parable - either about Hollywood or about humanity’s relationship with nature, depending on who you ask. Jordan Peele is in Twilight Zone mode on Nope.
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