“Beyoncé the Creator: ‘Homecoming’ Review - The New York Times” plus 1 more

Beyoncé the Creator: ‘Homecoming’ Review - The New York Times

Posted: 17 Apr 2019 12:00 AM PDT

About midway through Beyoncé's performance at Coachella last year, the booming, disembodied voice of the motivational ad-libber DJ Khaled proclaimed that, henceforth, the music festival would be known as "Beychella."

Unlike almost everything else Khaled pronounces in his music and on social media, the statement hardly felt hyperbolic: This was a career-defining performance for Beyoncé, who became the first black woman to headline the festival since its debut in 1999. For nearly two hours, she and an astounding cast of dancers, singers and musicians wove together a beloved, unparalleled collection of hits and deep cuts, interpolated with music from the "Dirty South" and civil rights activists like Nina Simone — served against the visuals and iconography of historically black colleges and universities.

A year later, as the second weekend of Coachella approaches, the memory of Beychella looms large; no accumulation of star-studded guest appearances or secret movie reveals in the desert from this year's lineup can gin up the same excitement. Which is what makes the Wednesday release of the Netflix documentary "Homecoming" — accompanied by the surprise release of a corresponding live album — even more of a coup. She may not be headlining this year, but we're all going to pay attention and bow down anyway.

At almost 140 minutes, the majority of "Homecoming" is what many viewers have already seen (and, perhaps, seen again and again) this time through a greater variety of angles and Instagram-like filters. The performances from the first and second weekends (denoted by the differing color schemes and costume choices) are seamlessly intercut; this technique is particularly effective early on, when the performer's outfits shift from all-yellow (Weekend 1) to all-pink (Weekend 2), just as "Crazy in Love" drops an infectious sample of Juvenile's "Back That Thang Up."

The "intimate" and "candid" moments touted by Netflix are brief in comparison, appearing between long, uninterrupted musical segments from the show. Those moments will be enough to satisfy the overzealous Beyhive (though what Beyoncé-related content doesn't satisfy the Beyhive?) and probably more casual fans and admirers, too. Montages reveal footage of the rehearsal process; performers practice, smile, make funny faces at the camera, gush about the experience of working on such a momentous event with perhaps the biggest star in the world. There are cameos from Jay-Z and their eldest daughter, Blue Ivy, who sings "Lift Every Voice and Sing."

[Read the 5 things we learned from "Homecoming" about Beyoncé's Coachella triumph.]

There's Beyoncé, in voice-over (which is mostly how we hear her voice in these segments), talking about trying to balance family and getting in shape after the birth of her twins. (Her diet, which she describes as no bread, carbs, dairy, sugar, meat, fish or alcohol … sounds extreme and not at all fun.)

As with the film "Lemonade," which included a Malcolm X audio clip, the singer puts herself directly in conversation with voices from black American history. The sage words of Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, W.E.B. DuBois, Toni Morrison and others sprinkle "Homecoming" with inspiration. The overarching theme here is ostensibly education: Beyoncé schools her audience on the beauty of black culture, yes, but also on the importance of preserving and encouraging the legacy of historically black colleges and universities, which she stresses throughout the film.

Above all, "Homecoming" is about Beyoncé, who served as the writer, director and an executive producer, asserting, yet again, her power and control. In part because of preconceived notions about what it means to be a pop star and a black woman, questions around her claims to authorship of her own music and image have always lingered closely behind. It doesn't help that she has usually chosen to let the work speak for itself, avoiding interviews that rise above surface-level promotion — not a bad thing for an artist to do, to be sure, though it allows plenty of room for doubters to deny her credit.

[Read about Beyoncé's surprise live album here.]

"Homecoming" reinforces the idea that Beyoncé the performer is also Beyoncé the creator. In voice-over, she speaks of the weeks spent in preparation. In footage, she oversees the music and dance rehearsals and advises on the visuals. At one point, she politely but forcefully communicates to her team that she's not getting what she wants — it's "janky" and "not translating," she says, bluntly.

It's Beyoncé exactly as she wants us to see her and has always wanted us to see her: as a perfectionist, and as the hardest-working person in show business. "I definitely pushed myself further than I knew I could," she says, as we watch footage of her sweating it out profusely.

"I will never, never push myself that far again," she adds, with a chuckle: a chuckle that suggests Beyoncé — who, two decades in, keeps finding new ways to set the bar higher — can't convince even herself that such a thing could possibly be true.

How Much Beyoncé Does ‘The Lion King’ Have? - The New York Times

Posted: 19 Jul 2019 12:00 AM PDT

To hear Beyoncé speak is such a rare occurrence that any new instance of it, no matter how fleeting, feels special, like catching a glimpse of a shooting star. So naturally, her involvement with Disney's remake of "The Lion King"— she voices the adult Nala and created a companion album featuring new music inspired by the movie — has dominated the film's promotional tour, complete with a meeting between Queen Bey and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, at the British premiere.

But how much (non-singing) Queen Bey should audiences expect to hear in this re-envisioning of Pride Rock, due in theaters Friday?

Only a bit.

Though the new film is 30 minutes longer than its predecessor (118 minutes in 2019 vs. 88 minutes in 1994) and features additional scenes for the adult Nala, Beyoncé's screen time is fairly comparable to Moira Kelly's in the original.

At my screening of the remake, I tallied 35 lines spoken by her character — interpreting a "line" as being any dialogue a character speaks before another character follows up, whether it's one word or multiple sentences. Some of those lines are simply the exclamation "Simba!" I tallied 46 lines for Kelly, several of which are also "Simba!"

Beyoncé's musical contributions to the remake vastly outweigh that of Kelly, who did not sing in the original. (The singer-songwriter Sally Dworsky performed Nala's part in the first "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?") Besides her duet with Donald Glover (who plays the adult Simba), Beyoncé gets an additional musical moment — her own "Gonna Fly Now" sequence in the form of the chorus of the new song "Spirit," which plays over Simba's triumphant gallop across the desert. Both songs feature Beyoncé's signature riffing.

For some, the ratio of promotion to actual screen time may disappoint. But hey, it's still Beyoncé, playing a Lion Queen — to her most zealous of worshipers, none of us are worthy.