Monthly Archive for September, 2009

It seems that I am now officially obsessed with the Roman Polanski insanity.  As I’ve gone further down this rabbit hole I find my compatriots on the internet to be with me in force but others who I expected to hear from are just silent.

The silence is deafening.  Where are my feminist leaders on this issue?  Leaders are supposed to lead.  They are supposed to be out in front on issues, especially one as big as this.   I guess this could be another funeral marker for mainstream organizational feminism which for some reasons has been mostly silent. The only person I could find yesterday was Katie Buckland (and I heard Susan Estrich on NPR) who runs the CA Women’s Law Center who said this to the LA Times.

Most troubling to me is that people just don’t understand the impact a crime like this has on a 13-year-old girl, and the fact that he has made some fabulous films is utterly irrelevant…It sends a message that the rich and powerful can get away with crimes that no one else can get away with.

Other feminists and organizations are starting to get on the band wagon, but in my humble opinion they are really late.

The Women’s Media Center folks released a statement: “The rape of a child is at the heart of the case. That is not disputed, and should not be represented as subjective.”

Robin Morgan said this: “Simple. Child abuse is child abuse. Rape is rape. One justice for all. And Woody Allen defending Polanski would be hilarious if it weren’t so sick.”

Gloria Steinem is sadly out of the country and I really believe she would be kicking ass on this, but hers is not the only voice we need.

NOW is working on a statement and their president is talking to the media.  Whoopee.

But no one in Hollywood, — especially the women — is talking, so here am I little niche blogger going on the record big time about this.  You know what’s scary to me?  That conservatives are agreeing with me.  Do you know how much it pains me to say that?  Why the fuck aren’t the progressive people standing up to this, and more importantly why the fuck are progressive people standing behind him?

The growing petition list makes me want to wretch.  I’m thinking the issue touches close to home for many a director who has probably employed the “casting couch” and may have committed an action similar to Polanski’s sometime in his career.  Plus, I’m sure there is pressure being applied to people to get on board and support the artist.  (wink, wink)  The good news to me is that I can’t find a single American actress or director (I am not counting Debra Winger’s rant at the Zurich Film Festival) on the list.  But there are European actresses and American male directors on the list.

I know that Hollywood is a scary place to speak out about things, especially about women.  This fear has allowed a culture of misogyny to take root and to spread its tentacles all over.  The thing about the Polanski case and why it is resonating across the country and the world is that lots of people don’t like the double standard that Hollywood is showing here.  Hollywood is liberal when it feels like it like with the environment, but not when it comes to women.  It’s safe to drive a hybrid but not safe to hire a female director.

In my gut, I believe that the women of Hollywood are appalled by what is happening.  The fact that they are silent is a reminder of how little clout they have.  I know there are feminists in the business and I believe deep down that if they would do something they could.  But that is the exact reason why they should speak out because one day someone they know, or someone’s daughter will be in a situation that is harmful and no one is there for her.

We can use this moment for something bigger than just throwing in jail a 76 year old man who was a coward all those years ago.  We can actually start a conversation about how women are treated in Hollywood and in the world. Girls are trafficked, and are raped, and are denied schooling all because they have two x chromosomes.

Here’s the deal.  The world is watching Hollywood and what they are seeing is not pretty.  Maybe when this becomes about money and not art then someone will stand up and say something.

I needed a pick me up yesterday after way too much depressing reading on the Roman Polanski situation and as soon as I arrived at the theatre to see a bunch of awesome women on roller blades with names like Fisty Cuffs and Beatrix Strange skating around outside the theatre I knew that my day had improved.

And the better news is that the film totally rocked.  Whip It is exactly the perfect movie for our time.  It doesn’t hit you over the head with the feminism but it is there in every breath and every beat.  Ellen Page is adorable as Bliss Cavendar a Texas girl who just doesn’t fit in with all the pageant obsessed folks in her town which includes her mom played by Marcia Gay Harden.  She wants to to wear Doc Maartens instead of heels and really hates doing all the pageant crap but does it to please her mom.  Mom is desperate for her daughter to do something, to amount to something, but the only thing she knows is pageants so she points her in that direction. I love the class issues in the film.  Mom was pretty, not gorgeous, and she is now a mail carrier who channels everything into her 2 daughters.  I totally loved Daniel Stern as Bliss’ dad who just wants his daughter to be happy and could care less that she is in roller derby.  Actually, he does care.  He loves it.  He loves that his daughter is an athlete.  The most touching scene was when he proudly hammers her number sign into his yard as so many Texas dads of football players do.

But Bliss wants more for her life than pageants and working in a dead end job.  When she discovers roller derby she finds her tribe.  These women get her.  They get each other.  They kick the shit out of each other on the track and have a ton of fun at it.

Drew Barrymore not only directs, she produces the film and co-stars as Smashley Simpson one of the skaters who constantly gets thrown out of the matches for kicking the shit out of the other women.  It’s hysterical.  And the best news to me is the confidence and comfort that Barrymore shows as a director.  It’s just that good.  Barrymore has had a great year onscreen in Grey Gardens and now on and off screen in Whip It. I want her and her production company to keep making films like this instead of crap like He’s Just Not That Into Me.

Kristen Wiig is fantastic as Maggie Mayhem a doting mom who just loves skating.  But to me the revelation was Juliette Lewis as Iron Maven, a woman who took a long time to find out where she belonged and is going to hold onto it with every fiber of her being.

The script is terrifically written by Shauna Cross and is based on her novel of the same name which is based on her own experiences as part of the LA Derby Dolls.  This is a seriously talented woman and the film gave me a sense of hope because it was able to get the tone of girl power/feminism and realism just right.

Here’s what Barrymore says about the film:

This film is really personal and important to me because it’s about a girl finding out who she is, going after what she believes in and bringing out the best in herself  It’s set agains tthe world of roller derby, which is about grit and toughness, but there’s also this great winnk and celebration and fun to it.  It’s feminine on its own terms, it’s about power without anger and it’s exhibitionism that entertains.  It’s a world where you get to be your own hero and find your own tribe.

Whip It proves that films can be feminist and fun.  That in itself is worthy the price of admission.

Sally Potter is a filmmaking icon.  She is an outspoken, visionary, feminist director who has been on the cutting edge of the indie world since she started making films.  That being said, Potter’s work is an acquired taste, and her new film Rage she is again pushing all the boundaries in form and in the method of distribution.  The movies stars high profile people (Jude Law, Judi Dench among others) in a series of intimate interviews at a fashion show.  As the film progresses you get to know more and more about what makes these people who they are.  The film is being released on DVD and on mobile phones.  The first episode is now available here.

I spoke with Sally Potter last week about her new film and making movies.

Women & Hollywood: To me Rage is such an intimate movie.  First, do you think it’s intimate and second where did you get your inspiration from?

Sally Potter: I do think it is intimate.  It is a word I use a lot.  It is in part my direct experience from being on the internet and doing a blog and making myself accessible to people in a very intimate way  and finding that for the first time in all my working life I was having a one on one global relationship with strangers who I would otherwise never meet who in my imagination I was working for. So as I began to understand the nature of the internet which is this peculiar combination of global reach and intimate relationships and that began to give me a clue how to make a different kind of film that would incorporate some of this language of the internet.

W&H: So I guess we can call this one of the first web 2.0 inspired movies?

SP: Certainly and of course the first film ever released on a cell phone.

W&H: There seems to be such a crisis in independent film making with people really freaked out about the future.

SP: It’s not just the independents, it’s the studios too.

W&H: How are you going to monetize this film if people can download it for free on their cell phone?

SP: First of all I’ve always had an evolutionary approach to survival as a filmmaker.  Indeed like the principle of evolution those who adapt survive, those who don’t become dinosaurs.  So I figure that in this age of the terror of theft on the internet the cleverest thing to do is give it away.  When you remove that terror you free you imagination to start to think about how to get your money back in more imaginative ways.  There seems to be some early experience and statistics to suggest that downloads in music for example do not stop people from buying cds, but it builds awareness and creates a larger audience which will in turn stimulate more people paradoxically to buy.  Similarly, there is even the beginning of statistics that (film) piracy stimulates a larger audience which in turn stimulates more buying.  So that means income through DVDs.  In the case of our film we sold it — albeit for not a massive sum– to Babelgum who are putting it out so there is some cash flow back in the beginning.  This is an extremely low budget film which was deliberately kept low.  I call it barefoot filmmaking.  It’s a way of filmmaking for survival.

W&H: The word rage is such a loaded word and I wanted to get a sense of why you picked that for the title.

SP: There is an element of punning in it about “all the rage”, a phrase that is hardly used anymore, but I think there is a deeper feel of rage, a kind of quiet rage on a mass scale and not knowing where to focus this rage which is the negative end of globalization.  The positive end is the internet in my view, but the negative end which is about greater and greater ownership by anonymous corporate entities and less and less about freedom for the individual.  Now of course what has happened is the banking crisis has brought a lot to the fore and now people do have a target for their anger against an amoral profiteering system, a genuinely purely amoral money in the pocket and who cares about anybody else way of thinking.  And I think that the fashion industry like every other industry links into that globalized anonymous ownership and that end of it is a bit nasty so the rage could be the rage of the outworkers who are underpaid, it could be the stereotyping of beauty that lead to this terrible mass anorexia that so many young women suffer from, and all the other ways that world interfaces with the big difficult thing that most people don’t have a language for. Continue reading ‘Interview with Sally Potter, Director of Rage’

So much has been written about the Roman Polanski saga of late.  The lingering questions of why after 30 years did the prosecutors decide now was the time to arrest him.  The fact that the victim wants to move on.  The amount of resources being spent on a way old case when more pressing things are clearly on the agenda of the broke state of California and so on.  But when I saw Debra Winger get up in front of a microphone and defend him on top of the petition that artists and actors have signed  calling for his release I got pissed.

It made me pissed for victims who have never gotten their day in court and for victims who have to fight the system to be heard and believed. The thing that people who are standing up for him don’t want to remember IS THAT HE IS A RAPIST.  It’s not even a story of miscommunication or a he said/she said date rape (not that those aren’t rape either).  It was the statutory rape of a 13-year-old.

The last time this story became a big deal was in 2003 when his film The Pianist (a great movie) was nominated and won several Oscars, including an Oscar for Polanski for best director.  Of course, he couldn’t attend the ceremony because he would have been  jailed for the rape.  Here’s what his victim (her name is Samantha Geimer) said at that time to ABC:

“I would love to see him resolve it,” Geimer said. “And I think we’ve always had the position of, you know, the sooner the better. For the whole last 20 years, if we could just put this to rest that would be great.”

“We did photos with me drinking champagne,” Geimer said. “He was friendly and then right toward the end it got a little scary, and I realized, you know, he had some other intentions and then I knew I was not where I should be. I just didn’t quite know how to get myself out of there.”

And whether or not it was consensual:

“Just by saying no, you know, several times, and then I just kind of gave up on that,” Geimer said.

Why does Roman Polanski get a different set of rules?  He is a convicted rapist who lured his victim a 13-year old girl (now in her 40s with three children) under the guise of taking pictures to help her career and then gave her champagne and quaaludes before raping her.   He also denied the rape at first by saying it was consensual and then he dismissed it by saying it just happened.  Geimer and her mother were also called liars by the media believing that she was going after Polanski to further her career.

I’m not doubting his talents as a director.  He could have put this thing behind him decades ago.  His lack of understanding and caring about how his actions effect his victim is so self-centered.  The thing about this story is that while the perpetrator is a world renowned director the crime is sadly familiar and common.

Roman Polanski Rep Says Justice Has Already Been Served (ABC News)

Polanski Child Sex Victim Speaks Out (ABC News)

Photo Credit: Kevin Mazur

In my mind the only thing better than Barbra Streisand releasing an album would be Barbra Streisand releasing a movie.  Her new album of Jazz standards, Love is the Answer, produced by the awesome Diana Krall is out today.  She performed for one night this past weekend at the Village Vanguard.

The album sounds like a return to the says before people’s voices were botoxed for perfection.

At Ms. Streisand’s request the engineers used hardly any electronic juicing or reverberation. Her singing is uncommonly intimate and exposed.

Here are some video clips from the show.  Album is available everywhere.

Can’t wait.

Streisand’s Fine Instrument and Classic Instinct (NY Times)

Barbra Streisand Official Site

I am facinated by Catherine Deneuve.  She recently spoke with the Times of London on the release of her new film Je Veux Voir (I Want to See) in which she plays Catherine Deneuve, an actress touring war torn Lebanon in a partially ad-libbed docudrama. The film played at Cannes.

For one of the most beautiful women in the world (who has stated she has not had work done on her face) she sounds quite uninterested in being the center of attention:

To be the centre of attraction is something I have a lot of problems with. The idea of being on a stage with people looking only at me terrifies me. On a film set it is very different. Everyone there, perhaps 25 or 30 people, they are all working, all involved in whatever they are doing. Whereas in the theatre you rehearse and rehearse and rehearse and then you present this thing which is completely finished, and in front of you.

What’s cool is that she has always been political and supportive of women’s issues including being a part of Voix de Femmes pour la Démocratie (Voice of Women for Democracy) and as one of the signers of the 1971 Manifeste des 343 Salopes (Manifesto of the 343 Sluts), in favour of the legalisation of abortion. (OK- has anyone ever heard of the Manifesto of the 343 Sluts? I gotta read this.)

When I signed that [1971] petition, I was not officially a feminist. Yet I have always been one. I was from a family of four sisters…But I am not political in the same way as Marguerite Duras [the writer] or Simone Signoret [the actress] were. I refused to belong to a political group. But it [the abortion issue] did become political because people were going on trial, and what they had been doing was pursuing love.”

She was recently one of 8,000 signers of a petition of the sexist treatment of Segolene Royal when she ran for president:

I think many found it difficult to accept the fact that a woman woman wanted to be elected president…But then they still have difficulty admitting that a woman could direct a company, or a group of men.

Catherine Deneuve: politics, plastic surgery and her new film Je Veux Voir (The Times of London)

Yesterday while I was taking editor in chief Peter Bart to the woodshed for his sexist comments about Jane Campion and Kathryn Bigelow the paper that he runs, Variety, was about to honor a plethora of women (including both Campion and Bigelow) for their contributions as women working in the business in its annual “Women’s Impact Report” which this year included a luncheon.

A bunch of high profile women were honored for their charitable work including:

Maria Bello- women’s rights and genocide

Christina Aguilera- world hunger

Christina Applegate- breast cancer

Anne Hathaway- volunteerism

January Jones- protecting the oceans

Sigourney Weaver- non-profit theatre

Sherry Lansing & Laura Ziskin- cancer

Check out the full impact report for profiles of leading actors, directors, executives, creatives, agents, lawyers and many others.

Peter Bart, the editor of Variety, has never been known as being ahead of the curve on gender issues, so it’s not too surprising that his was the first column to begin pitting Jane Campion and Kathryn Bigelow in a girl-on-girl competition for year end awards for their films Bright Star and The Hurt Locker.

Instead of talking about the films, Bart decides to talk about the women, their looks and how they come off as the main person selling their film to the world and more importantly to Bart and Academy type folks.

Here’s how Bart describes the women:

Jane Campion, 55, made a quintessentially romantic picture in “Bright Star,” but in person she is cerebral, somewhat severe, leans toward post-hippie attire and seems perplexed by the rigors of the award circuit.  Kathryn Bigelow, 57, is tall, model thin, a one-time art student whose gracious manner belies her proclivity for tense, even violent films – “The Hurt Locker” is her contender.

Would anyone EVER think to write this about a male director?

These are experienced women of stature, one American, one Australian and their work should be what is discussed not their looks.

Let’s nip this one in the bud right now.

Unlikely Rivals on the Oscar Circuit (Variety)

Let’s start with the good news.

Women dominate the long list for the Canadian award the Scotiabank Giller Prize.  (The prize is named for former reporter Doris Giller.) On the list of 12, women make up 10 of the nominees.

The list includes:

Margaret Atwood – The Year of the Flood; Anne Michaels – The Winter Vault; Jeanette Lynes – The Factory Voice; Annabel Lyon- The Golden Mean; Martha Baillie – The Incident Report; Kim Echlin – The Disappeared; Claire Holden Rothman – The Heart Specialist; Paulette Jiles – The Colour of Lightning; Kate Pullinger -  The Mistress of Nothing; Shani Mootoo  Valmiki’s Daughter

Here’s what the organization said when addressing the issue of how they got so many women nominees:

“The only instruction the jurors get is to pick good books,” she said. “[One of the jurors] Russell Banks told me that he was startled to see that most of their picks were female and only two male. He said they hadn’t given any thought to gender while reading the books at all.”

Winners receive $50,000.

And now for the bad news.

A new collection of interviews of horror writers done by the British Fantasy Society failed to include a single female author and women are pissed accusing the guys of sexism.  Surprisingly, the guys admit that the women are right.  Writer Maura McHugh got mad and posted this on her blog Splinster:

There are no excuses for this omission. That it happens, and it was allowed to happen, speaks to the deeply cultured disregard for women’s opinion in the world. I see it every day. We are marginalised, silenced, side-lined, forgotten, conveniently dropped, patronised, under-represented, dismissed, subtly intimidated and ignored.
I never want to see an all-male anthology or collection or essays/interviews in the speculative field again. Enough. It’s the 21st century. Women exist, we work in this field, and we deserve recognition. It’s that simple.

Here’s the apology from Guy Adams of the The British Fantasy Society

It was disgustingly simple for a man not to notice these things, a blindness to the importance of correct gender representation that I feel embarrassed to have fallen into. I can only apologise and hope that the discussion has made other editors and publishers realise that this kind of lazy sexism is unacceptable and to watch their own lists in future.

And from the editor of the book James Cooper

I’d like to stress that it was by no means intended, though I appreciate that this is perhaps the weakest kind of excuse one could offer.

It’s quite awesome that these guys accepted responsibility and admitted their sexism quickly but the biggest lesson for me here is the fact that Mr Cooper was able to pick out authors “who had influenced him over the last 25 years” and not a single woman came to his mind.  That’s the problem.

Women dominate 2009 Giller long list (Globe and Mail)

British Fantasy Society admits ‘lazy sexism’ over male-only horror book (The Guardian)

President Barbie

Angela Merkel barbie

Just when I was feeling some kind of optimism and hope we get this news.

Barbie is coming to the big screen.

Ugh.

Universal finally got Mattel to make a deal.  Mattel has held onto the brand for a long time (50 years), and now that there are so many high concept movies being made out of characters they probably felt that the time was right to get in the game.

Wonder who will write the script?  Hope they update her enough so that she doesn’t lead with her boobs, and that she can actually bend her knees and lower her heels.

I am very mixed about Barbie.  I hate that Barbie is the concept we are all pitted against.  I was one of the girls who destroyed her Barbies, but they have created some aspirational Barbies which can help girls dream.  Here’s to hoping that we see films with Barbie characters like Angela Merkel and President Barbie and not princess Barbie.

Barbie leaves her dream house to star in movie (Reuters via Hollywood Reporter)

I know I’ve been posting a lot about Jennifer’s Body but I’ve been holding onto these links from interviews with Karyn Kusama and they are too good to not share.

Seems that she even knew (didn’t everyone besides Fox?) that selling the film to boys would flop as she says to Jenni Miller over at MTV.com.  I also love how she stands up for creating a film that reflects women and not men’s images of how women should be and act.

I don’t know if selling the film as a straight horror film and selling it primarily to boys is really going to do any of us any favors, frankly,” Kusama said. “But we’ll see. I’m really crossing my fingers that I am completely wrong and I really hope I am, you know. I really do.

I think boys will really enjoy it, but it makes me extremely, extremely frustrated to imagine that I have been working on this movie for nearly two years now and have committed this much time and energy because, precisely because I felt like if I were nineteen again, I would know someone was speaking to me and gave a s–t about my existence in the pop cultural landscape.

On how things still are the same after 20 years:

It’s a little tough sometimes to feel like things haven’t changed all that much in over 20 years, speaking for my nineteen-year-old self, and 20 years later, things seem as barren… for smart, complicated entertainment [made] for females that boys will also enjoy, you know? It gets under my skin, as you can see!

For those who have followed Kusama’s career she has had her challenges in Hollywood as a female director who directs out of the box.  She started with the amazing Girlfight and also directed Aeon Flux. Here she talks about the challenges facing women directors:

I definitely think it’s a conversation that needs to keep happening,” she said. “As much as I am tired of it, I’m tired more by the fact that it’s a conversation that needs to keep happening. We are not out of the woods, by any means, and I just think we have to sort of accept that information and then try to do something about it, you know? Try to examine it and try to really consider how we’ve gotten here and why we can’t seem to move past it, you know? That’s sort of where I’m at, just sort of trying to understand better the slow march toward change.

It’s hard to get a woman director in Hollywood to say this out loud.  Yes, we are tired of needing to have this same conversation for the past two decades, but if we stop asking the questions and figuring out the answers we will never make change for women directors.

ST VanAirsdale also gets some good nuggets in his excellent interview at Movieline:

About what she was drawn to the Jennifer’s Body script and her passion for horror film:

For me, one of the most interesting ideas in the movie is that the monster is female, but the villain is male. It’s her victimization that creates a monster. And that says a lot to me about femininity.

I’ve been asked countless times, “Why are you drawn to horror films? Why do you think women are drawn to horror films?” And it’s because in a way, it’s one of the few genres that tells it like it is. A lot of times, women do feel like they’re running for their lives somehow.

Lastly, her honesty in the next quote in talking about making mistakes and the difficulties on directing a studio film:

With Aeon Flux, I was so green to the politics of studio egos and agendas that I had no idea I was in trouble — even when I was. This was a different situation. I had people who were equipped and willing to protect me in a completely different way.

I got really lucky with this movie. There were some big disagreements between me and the studio, but ultimately we found our common ground. I don’t know how you make movies — and try to protect the meaning of your work that you know need to still be there — without those disagreements. When you make a studio movie, do you decide to be compliant or resign yourself to it? I don’t, and it might kill me. The system breaks you. It does. In some ways it can really make you a leaner, meaner machine. Maybe I’ll be that. Or maybe as time goes on, the harsher it’s going to be for me. But I think it’s worth fighting for your work. At the end of the life you live, that’s all there is. That’s why I do this.

She has totally impressed me.

‘Jennifer’s Body’ Is Strong Enough For A Man, But Made For A Woman (MTV.com)

Director Karyn Kusama on Jennifer’s Body, Megan Fox and the ‘Crisis of Being Looked At‘ (Movieline)

‘Jennifer’s Body’ Director Karyn Kusama On Women In Hollywood, Diablo Cody And Outsiders (MTV.com)

I am a big, big fan of Sela Ward.  Loved her in Sisters.  (how about someone remake that show now except without Julianne Phillips?)  Double loved Once and Again which is where we first met Evan Rachel Wood.

Last time I saw Sela Ward she was doing a several episode guest arc on House.  So now in the era of Glenn Close, Sally Field and Holly Hunter I ask myself, why isn’t she on a TV show?  Well none of those women did a show before and Ward has.  Turns out she doesn’t want to deal with the 14 hour days in her life right now — she has an 11 year old and a 15 year old — and who can blame her.  But it doesn’t make it any easier for the folks out here who still miss her.

Ward’s back in the remake of the thriller The Stepfather and she would be really up for making more movies, but as is the case today, there are very few roles for women her age.

Here’s some of what she said to More Magazine in October’s cover story:

“If I could, I’d do a film a year for the rest of my life,” she says. “But opportunities are few and far between in today’s market because of the audience being so young. That makes me sad. I feel I’m so ready. I’ve lived enough life now to give an amazing performance if I had the material.

I was happy The Stepfather came up, because I thought it would be fun and different enough. But I really need to do some gritty thing. I keep playing these moms who are so nice. I’d like to misbehave a little. I have a wonderful underbelly that I’d love to share.”

Check out the story here.

Seems that Diablo Cody is continuing to beat the odds.  Even though the Jennifer’s Body box office was weak she seems to have gotten her next gig.  Let’s also keep in mind that Toni Collette won a surprise best actress Emmy on Sunday night for the United States of Tara which Cody created.

She is adapting and producing a film based on the Sweet Valley High books for Universal which outbid Fox for the project.  Story is about identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth with opposite personalities. One gets into trouble, the other gets her out of trouble.

What was awesome to me is that I first heard about this through a breaking news email from the Hollywood Reporter.  You gotta be big to warrant a breaking news email.

This could be very interesting.    Lots of girls (I am a bit too old) read Sweet Valley High.  Dang there are over 150 books and it was a TV series for several years.  Could be another potential franchise in the making.

Don’t think Sweet Valley High will be quite as sweet after Cody gets hold of it.

Diablo Cody Takes on Sweet Valley (Variety)

So Jennifer’s Body tanked at the box office.  From what I can tell the word of mouth among women is way better than the word of mouth among men.  Vic Holtreman at Screen Rant took a unscientific look at the breakdown of the what reviewer thought and found that women liked the film much better than men.

There were many more reviews by men (77) than women (26). The majority of these were culled from the Rotten Tomatoes site, and I included a few (from both sides) from reviewers I know who are not part of the R/T scoring system.

Here’s the breakdown:

Male
movie reviewers: 39% liked it, 61% disliked it.

Female
movie reviewers: 54% liked it, 46% disliked it.

Maybe women — especially young women — will find this film in the coming weeks but most probably it will become one of those movies that becomes a hit when everyone has it at home.

Why did the movie do poorly?  Who knows?  Everyone is speculating and you can read the wrap up from Spout Blog here.   I think that the studio was afraid that if they played up the feminist/girl power angle they would turn off all the first weekend boys who they were trying to get into the theatre to see Megan Fox because they were titillated with a same sex kiss.  I guess that the fan boys were not interested in Megan Fox.  Do we really believe they went to see Transformers for her?  They really don’t seem interested in movies that are women centric at all.  I remember before Twilight opened it was the women who were excited, the guys indifferent.

The press on Diablo Cody, Karyn Kusama and especially Megan Fox has been pretty negative even from some feminists.  I’m not saying feminists all need to march to the same drummer, and I know Fox flaunts her looks and has created a persona that can be a big turn off to feminists, but they need to be appreciated by feminists because they are all outspoken women in Hollywood and that rankles feathers.

When women tank at the box office they suffer way more than men.  Fox is already being written off, people are happy that Diablo got put in her place (even though Toni Colette won a best actress Emmy for her show The United States of Tara) and Kusama one of the only women who directs action films will have a harder time getting her next gig made.

Yet Brandon Camp who co-wrote and directed Love Happens which also tanked last weekend is not receiving the same post-mortem as Jennifer’s Body.  (According to imdb we has both writing and directing projects in the pipeline.)  I have seen both films and Love Happens was one of the worst films I’ve seen in a while.  The bottom line to me is that studios that are making movies about women and girls need to figure out a way to step up and market to them and get them into the theatres. We buy tickets and if we are excited and engaged we will go and see it.  If you are afraid and mix the message then you turn off the men and the women.

Here is one of the best takes I have read on the film from ScarletScribe aka Genevieve:

And why don’t they understand the film? Because it’s one of the very few honest-to-goodness feminist films out there — and more so then being feminist, it’s one of the few films that views things from a female lens…For once we have a story with female main characters who aren’t obsessing about, fighting over, or bitching about boys every five minutes. Jennifer’s Body is about women and how they relate to each other, the horror moments are there for style and allegory, but at its heart the movie is about two girls whose own toxic friendship is eating them both alive.

In recounting this tale, Jennifer’s Body is packed with humor, one-liners, great moments of cheesy horror, and some poignant moments between Needy and Jennifer that will resonate with the female audience more than males. And that’s the problem.

Actually, no, that’s not the problem. That’s what makes the movie so great. The problem is that many audience members refuse to try to understand Jennifer’s Body and are subsequently calling it a failure because of that. For decades women have lived in a male-dominated world of cinema and have had to take things at face value but, thankfully, have found their understanding of men the better for it. How many male-bonding movies and buddy-comedies haven’t we watched with silent nods of “Oh, so that’s how guys interact when we’re not around. Good to know and I’m happy for that peek into something I normally wouldn’t see.”

Here are some other worthy links on the topic:

Rallying the Troops for ‘Jennifer’s Body‘ (Cinematical)

Jennifer’s Body and the Feminists who Hate It (Girl Drive)

The 13th annual Emerging Cinematographers Awards was held recently and not surprisingly only one out of the eight winners was a woman.  The winners were chosen from 60 submissions by guild members.  Since women account for only 4% of cinematographers, it’s tough for a woman to rise up and be noticed.

Things need to change.

Congrats to Julie Kirkwood for the honor.  Here’s a an interview with her (from Facebook no less) on how she got into the business and you can check out her work here.

Emerging Cinematographers honored (Variety)

The MacArthur Foundation has anointed its list of “geniuses” for 2009 and happily its split 50/50.

Here are the women recipients (captions from AP):

Lynsey Addario, 35, photojournalist, Istanbul, Turkey. Creating a visual record of major conflicts and humanitarian crisis of the 21st century.

Edwidge Danticat, 40, Miami. Novelist whose depictions of lives of Haitian immigrants chronicle the power of human resistance and endurance.

Esther Duflo, 36, Cambridge, Mass. Economist who analyzes poverty in South Asia and Africa and improving policies aid efforts designed to improve lives.

Deborah Eisenberg, 63, New York. Short story writer whose work depicts people coming to terms with personal relationships and struggling with the changing social context in which the relationships occur.

Lin He, 35, Berkeley, Calif. Molecular biologist advancing understanding of the role of microRNAs in the development of cancer.

Heather McHugh, 61, Seattle. Poet who uses such wordplay as puns and rhymes in intricately patterned compositions.

Rebecca Onie, 32, Boston. Health services innovator who helped build a program links college volunteers with medical professionals to improve health care for low-income patients.

Elyn Saks, 43, Los Angeles. A law school professor whose writings and her own struggles with schizophrenia challenges popular notions about severe mental illness.

Jill Seaman, 57, Old Fangak, Sudan. Physician devoted to delivering and improving treatment for infectious diseases in the remote, impoverished area of southern Sudan.

Beth Shapiro, 33, University Park, Pa. Evolutionary biologist whose research focuses on tracing the population history of recently extinct or threatened species.

Mary Tinetti, 58, New Haven, Conn. Geriatric physician focusing on accidents involving the elderly and identifying risk factors that contribute to morbidity due to falls.

Camille Utterback, 39, San Francisco. Artist who uses digital technologies to create works that redefine how viewers experience and interact with art.

Dearbhla Walsh

Here’s a list of the women (and shows about women) that won at the Emmys.

Comedy Series: “30 Rock,” NBC.

Actress, Drama Series: Glenn Close, “Damages,” FX Networks.

Actress, Comedy Series: Toni Collette, “United States of Tara,” Showtime.

Supporting Actress, Drama Series: Cherry Jones, “24,” Fox.

Supporting Actress, Comedy Series: Kristin Chenoweth, “Pushing Daisies,” ABC.

Miniseries: “Little Dorrit” PBS – Anne Pivcevic, Executive Producer; Rebecca Eaton, Executive Producer; Lisa Osborne, Producer

Made-for-TV Movie: “Grey Gardens,” HBO. Lucy Barzun Donnelly, Executive Producer; Rachael Horovitz, Executive Producer; Michael Sucsy, Executive Producer; David Coatsworth, Produced by

Actress, Miniseries or Movie: Jessica Lange, “Grey Gardens,” HBO.

Supporting Actress, Miniseries or Movie: Shohreh Aghdashloo, “House of Saddam,” HBO.

Directing for a Miniseries, Movie, or Dramatic Special: “Little Dorrit: Part 1,” Dearbhla Walsh, PBS.

Writing for a Drama Series: “Mad Men: Meditations in an Emergency,” Kater Gordon and Matthew Weiner, AMC.

Guest Actress in a Drama Series: Ellen Burstyn, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Swing,” NBC.

Guest Actress in a Comedy Series: Tina Fey, “Saturday Night Live: Presidential Bash 2008,” NBC.

Governors Award: Sheila Nevins, HBO Documentary Films president.

Last year Slumdog Millionaire took the audience award — the top award — at Toronto and we all know what happened to the film.  It blew up big and went on to win best picture.  And that movie didn’t even have Oprah shilling for it.

Precious — the film based on the novel Push by Sapphire won the top award at Toronto making it the first film in history to win the audience awards at both Sundance and Toronto.

Director Lee Daniels was already off at the next festival but sent a message:

I made this film for every person out there who ever looked in the mirror, and felt unsure about the person looking back at them. This is not an art film for a select few. This is a movie for everyone that can relate to. This film is for all precious girls, and for everyone who has a little precious on the inside.

Does this now make it the top contender for best picture?

Leanne Pooley’s doc The Topp Twins about a lesbian New Zealand country and western singing group beat out Michael Moore for top honors.  The film has yet to find a US distributor.

This is so special. I’ve been making documentaries for like twenty years. And usually they’re dark, and that is often the world that a documentary filmmaker moves in. But this is a film about joy and laughter and love. It’s just so special to be able to bring a film like that to audiences like yours.

Ruba Nadda’s Cairo Time starring Patricia Clarkson won best Canadian feature.

Precious Tops Toronto Winner (IndieWire)

It seems that the fact that Abbie Cornish keeps her clothes on in Bright Star has so upset the NY Post so they had to remind readers that she has played other roles where she shows more skin.

If you just have to see the 27-year-old farmer’s daughter in the altogether, you’ll have to turn to her 2004 screen debut, Cate Shortland’s Somersault, which is available on DVD and the Sundance Channel.

Ugh.

Is it that it’s too hard to believe that there is a movie made today where a woman keeps her clothes on?  They did not remind us of any roles where Ben Whishaw showed more skin.  Bright Star is so sensual that clothes on or off is way besides the point.  BTW Somersault is a really interesting movie and Cornish is great in it.

h/t Julia Jordan