{"id":67673,"date":"2021-08-16T00:28:21","date_gmt":"2021-08-16T07:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=67673"},"modified":"2021-08-16T00:28:21","modified_gmt":"2021-08-16T07:28:21","slug":"battle-of-arethas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2021\/08\/16\/battle-of-arethas\/","title":{"rendered":"Battle of Arethas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The biopic about <strong>Aretha Franklin<\/strong>, <strong><em>Respect<\/em><\/strong>, was just released \u2013 four months after <strong><em>Genius: Aretha<\/em><\/strong> with <strong>Cynthia Erivo <\/strong>(which was also four times longer).&nbsp; What this film has going for it is <strong>Jennifer Hudson<\/strong>, who is a remarkable singer \u2013 a skill which is on display with full-length performances of most of Franklin\u2019s hits.&nbsp; Those numbers are impeccably staged and performed.&nbsp; Alas, all of those songs leave little room for much of a script.&nbsp; I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s the writing, directing, or acting, but whenever there isn\u2019t singing, the film is lacking.&nbsp; That said, it doesn\u2019t shy away from some of the more controversial aspects of Aretha\u2019s life \u2013 which makes me wonder if this \u201cauthorized biopic\u201d would have pleased <em>The Queen <\/em>(by the way, the <strong>Dinah Washington <\/strong>incident happened to <strong>Etta James<\/strong>, not Aretha).&nbsp; The narrative ends in 1972 with the recording of <strong><em>Amazing Grace<\/em><\/strong>.&nbsp; Perhaps in a decade or two, Hudson will revisit the role in a sequel \u2013 kinda like <strong><em>Funny Lady<\/em><\/strong> picking up where <strong><em>Funny Girl<\/em><\/strong> left off.&nbsp; While <em>Respect<\/em> is the <em>Cliffs Notes <\/em>version of Aretha\u2019s life, I enjoyed it as a companion to the more thorough <em>NatGeo <\/em>effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The biopic about Aretha Franklin, Respect, was just released \u2013 four months after Genius: Aretha with Cynthia Erivo (which was also four times longer).&nbsp; What this film has going for it is Jennifer Hudson, who is a remarkable singer \u2013 a skill which is on display with full-length performances of most of Franklin\u2019s hits.&nbsp; Those<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67673"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67674,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67673\/revisions\/67674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}