Carrie Fischer and her stunt double on the set of Return of the Jedi
I’ve only seen one of the films he mentions (Bill Cunningham: New York) and wholeheartedly recommend it. The rest look fascinating.
As we roll into 2012, let’s try to remember that women existed before Bridesmaids and that calling 2011 the year of the funny woman is like me calling the act of finally watching My So Called Life on Netflix Instant its series premiere.
(via cracked)
"Forget White Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Life and all the other hackneyed trash. Go for the classics: Silent Night, Bloody Night, Black Christmas or the best seasonal film of all time, Christmas Evil. I wish I had kids. I’d make them watch it every year and if they didn’t like it they’d be punished."
— John Waters (1985)
(Source: geeksquadgangbang, via bbook)
[I]n his movie Red Beard, Kurosawa had the hospital set fully stocked with medical supplies — even the drawers and cupboards, which, despite never being opened on camera or even mentioned by the characters, were nonetheless expensively, thoroughly, authentically stocked with pills. Kurosawa once dyed an entire town’s water supply black just so the rain would look better on camera. If you were featured in one of Kurosawa’s movies, you could expect to shoot inside the real, period-appropriate houses he’d have built, wear the real, period-appropriate clothing (that you were expected to live in even while not actively filming) and memorize the complete dossier on your character’s back story, even if you only had a couple of lines. Oh, and you should also be prepared to get shot at with real arrows.
(Source: nortonn)
Waif-fu, sneaky sexism, and faux empowerment
Once again, Cracked surprises me by publishing a thoughtful cultural critique. I thought they were a humor site?
Michelle Rodriguez (pictured above in Girlfight) on being typecast as the strong chick who keeps getting killed:
“… people can call it typecast, but I pigeonholed myself … Saying no to the girlfriend, saying no to the girl that gets captured, no to this, no to that, and eventually I just got left with the strong chick who’s always being killed, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
You read that right: She’s limited her roles to interesting, strong characters. For a male actor, that means “action hero.” For a woman, it means she has to die — over and over and over again, each time making way for the petite model to take down the villain with her Waif-Fu instead. That’s the phrase TV Tropes coined to describe the martial art that allows a woman to thrash trained soldiers twice her size while having no musculature on her frame at all. It’s considered empowering when Joss Whedon includes ass-kicking females in everything he writes, but when he needs a badass kung fu killing machine, he casts the pretty, wispy Summer Glau.
The women who develop careers as action stars are not just pretty, but are pretty in the most feminine way possible: Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Uma Thurman, Milla Jovovich, Michelle Yeoh and Halle Berry.[…]Joss Whedon can pretend like the ass-kicking supermodels were created as a reaction to the helpless victims, but he’s just substituting one weird male fantasy with another. It’s as if there’s nothing in between “beautiful victimized woman crying while splattered in blood” and “beautiful invincible woman kicking people while wearing skintight fetish gear.”
Now seriously—who looks like she’s more capable of kicking your ass? Michelle Rodriguez or any of the following women?
Hell, I think Michelle could kick ALL of their tiny asses in one go. Yet we’re supposed to believe that waifish women without visible muscles can credibly play invincible badasses?
I love Joss Whedon’s work, but the point the article makes is undeniable. He did challenge action/horror convention by creating female protagonists who don’t rely on male characters to save them. But he also cast conventionally beautiful, femme, delicate-looking women to play those butt-kicking, strong female characters. One step forward, two steps back.
I do believe Joss is sincere about his feminism, but sincerity only gets you so far. The situation reminds me of those ‘enlightened’ liberal guys who say they prefer pretty brunettes over pretty blondes.
