Tag Archive for 'Ellen Page'

Yesterday, I was so happy to read that Ellen Page is going to write and produce a comedy for HBO with her buddies Alia Shawkat and Sean Tillmann. It’s called Stitch N’ Bitch and it

“follows two painfully cool hipster girls as they relocate from Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood to Los Angeles’ Silver Lake enclave in hopes of becoming artists — of any kind.”

Knowing the type of films that attract Page this announcement is giving me the warm and fuzzies and after the depressing numbers on Whip It from last weekend (hey people, don’t forget there is time to see it, it’s still playing in theatres across the country this weekend), I needed some good news.

My buzz lasted about 2.5 seconds until I read this in the Hollywood Reporter: “Pussycat fight!”  Kristen Bell has been cast opposite Christina Aguilera in Burlesque about two rival dancers set of course, in a burlesque club.

Here’s the description:

Burlesque centers on the journey of an ambitious small-town girl (Aguilera) with a big-town voice who finds love and success in a Los Angeles neo-burlesque club, reminiscent of the nightclub in Bob Fosse’s Cabaret. (Aguilera has guested in cabarets for the Pussycat Dolls.)  Bell will play Nikki, the loose-cannon lead dancer and main attraction at the club who spirals out of control when Aguilera’s character suddenly gets the spotlight.

Veronica Mars how could you?  The old girl hates other girl because she wants to get a job and of course there is only space for one successful girl in any movie or story about women.  Why the hell are they calling it burlesque?  Why don’t they just cut to the chase and call it Strip Club?

These movies that pit women against each other make me want to scream.  Do they think we are that stupid?  Enough already.

At least Ellen Page gave me some good news.

In another note Cher will play the club’s owner.  Burlesque starts filming next month.

Ellen Page to pen comedy at HBO (Hollywood Reporter)

Kristen Bell cast in ‘Burlesque’ (Hollywood Reporter)

Tags: Cher, Ellen Page, Kristen Bell

I am seriously sad.

Whip-It didn’t do well at the box office this weekend.  The chatter has started about how the future of young women’s movies.

Here’s what Cinetic Media’s Matt Dentler asks on Twitter: “After the very poor starts for Whip It, Jennifer’s Body, and Bright Star, what does that mean for the future of young women’s movies?” (h/t Thompson on Hollywood)

So now we won’t have movies about older women and we won’t have movies about younger women.  Great.

But let’s be real.  While I might put Whip-It and Jennifer’s Body in the same category, I wouldn’t put Bright Star in there.  First, because it’s a smaller movie not released by a big studio and secondly, because even though Fanny drives the story at times, this film is an artistic triumph and draws a very different type of audience than both Whip-It and Jennifer’s Body.   I really don’t want these trend stories to start happening especially when we have An Education opening this weekend and Precious coming soon.  Both those films (as well as Bright Star) are Oscar contenders and need to get some sort of box office traction is order to have legs for awards season.

The bigger story to me, which I find disturbing, is that all three of this so-called underperforming films (and keep in mind their budgets were very low so they will probably make money) are directed by women.

I hear from people that they want to see Bright Star.  I hear from people that they are going to see Whip-It.  Maybe because we are out of summer they will have time to develop some word of mouth.  One can only hope.  BTW, Julie & Julia has quietly amassed almost $100 million at the box office, it is still playing in places and has been open since August 7th.

Here’s some more box office info:

Box Office Mojo: According to distributor 20th Century Fox, the audience was 70 percent female and 52 percent 25 years and older.

From Thompson on Hollywood: “Women aren’t showing up,” said one studio marketing exec. “Girls don’t get into roller derby.” Searchlight downplayed that aspect in favor of the movie’s girl power theme.

More thoughts: What I find interesting about the numbers is not the 70% women, it is the 52% over 25.  (I really wish they broke down those numbers better for us in the public)  What this says to me is that they didn’t figure out how to get the young girls who live the “girl power” lives.  Maybe they couldn’t get their guy friends/boy friends to go, so they just acquiesced and went to see Zombieland.  Maybe the girl power message is a turn off to guys?  Maybe some of it is about how women’s sports is treated in the culture?

So the people were adult women, ones who are comfortable saying I want to see women onscreen.  This shouldn’t be news.  We know that women over 25 go to see movies starring women, it’s just that not enough of them come out on opening weekends to make a dent in the box office except on the rare occasion.

Tags: Bright Star, Drew Barrymore, Ellen Page, Jennifer's Body, Whip-It

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.

Tags: Drew Barrymore, Ellen Page, Juliette Lewis, Kristen Wiig, Marcia Gay Harden

The Festival just keeps getting more and more loaded.  (Descriptions are by the festival)

I’m sure I’m missing a bunch but here are some highlights of films by women and some not by women but about women.  Hopefully we will be able to see most of them in the near future.  Some already have releases scheduled.

Midnight Madness

Jennifer’s Body written by Diablo Cody, directed by Karyn Kusama

According to Jennifer’s Body, high school isn’t the best time of one’s life. It’s actually hell on earth, awash with teenage angst, hormones and fountains of blood. Penned by Juno scribe Diablo Cody and directed by Karyn Kusama (responsible for the acclaimed Girlfight), Jennifer’s Body is the shocking flipside to Cody’s slacker teen romance.

Contemporary World Cinema

Lourdes directed by Jessica Hausner

In order to escape her isolation, wheelchair-bound Christine makes a life-changing journey to Lourdes, the iconic site of pilgrimage in the Pyrenees Mountains.

My Year With Sex directed by Sarah Watt

A tender story from Australia highlights the realistic ups and downs of an Australian family in the year following a parent’s emergency medical procedure.

Discovery

The Angel directed by Margareth Olin

A young mother (played brilliantly by Maria Bonnevie) struggles with a history of drug abuse in this exquisitely rendered and deeply compassionate piece, the first fiction film from one of Norway’s most respected documentary filmmakers.

Applause directed by Martin Pieter Zandvliet

Paprika Steen delivers a tour-de-force performance in this devastating drama about an alcoholic actress trying to put her life back together.

Beautiful Kate directed by Rachel Ward

In order to make peace with his combative, dying father, a writer must return to his childhood home and confront long suppressed memories of the mysterious deaths of his brother and twin sister.

The Day Will Come directed by Susanne Schneider

Thirty years after giving her daughter up for adoption to join the terrorist underground in Germany, Judith is tracked down by her nowadult daughter Alice to a vineyard in the Alsace where she is living with a new family and a new identity.

A Brand New Life directed by Ounie Lecomte

Impressive debut by French-Korean filmmaker Ounie Lecomte who, inspired by her childhood, recounts the emotional journey of a little girl abandoned by her father in an orphanage.

Eamon directed by Margaret Corkery

A family holiday brings to a head the destructive love triangle between Eamon, a little boy with behavioural problems, his selfish mother Grace and his sexually frustrated father Daniel.

The Happiest Girl in the World directed by Radu Jude

Family conflict produces comedy in this story of a young girl who wins a car in a lottery and her scheming parents who insist on selling it.

My Dog Tulip directed by Paul Fierlinger | Sandra Fierlinger

Christopher Plummer and Isabella Rossellini voice this vividly animated, touching tale of friendship between an elderly bachelor and his German shepherd.

La Pivellina directed by Tizza Covi | Rainer Frimme

A small abandoned girl is sheltered by a circus woman in this tale of courage, loss and togetherness.

Shirley Adams directed by Oliver Hermanus

Intimate, precise portrait of a “coloured” mother in Cape Town, South Africa whose son is disabled in a neighborhood shooting.

The Unloved directed by Samantha Morton

Morton shifts from actor to director in this stark, intimate portrait of a young British girl thrown from an abusive family into the hands of government care.

Special Presentations

Bright Star- Jane Campion

A drama based on the secret love affair between 23-year-old English poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and the girl next door, Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), an outspoken student of fashion. Intensely and helplessly absorbed in each other, they rode a wave of romantic obsession that deepened as their troubles mounted. Only Keats’s illness and untimely death proved insurmountable.

An Education- Lone Scherfig

A coming-of-age story about a teenaged girl in 1960s suburban London and how her life changes with the arrival of a playboy nearly twice her age. Torn between her parents’ dream of going to Oxford University and a more tempting kind of life, she must decide if the new path is one that will trap her or set her free.

Glorious 39- Stephen Poliakoff

This tense conspiracy thriller set on the eve of World War II and based on disturbing real events, focuses on a young woman who stumbles across evidence of a sinister Nazi appeasement plot. As her close friends begin to die in suspicious circumstances, she finds her own life in danger from an increasingly menacing and powerful enemy.

London River- Rachid Bouchareb

This intimate drama tells the story of two people, a Muslim man and a Christian woman, who are immediately affected by the July 2005 London bombings. Both of them are drawn to the British capital when their children go missing on the day of the attacks. Putting aside their cultural differences, they will give each other the strength to continue the search for their children and maintain their faith.

Mother- Bong Joon-ho

A unique noir thriller that digs into the secrecy surrounding a terrible murder and the mystery of a mother’s primal love for her son. The films of director Bong Joon-ho regularly, and brilliantly, break with convention, thanks to an imagination that is not confined to the accepted parameters of humour, suspense or horror – Mother is no exception.

Partir- Catherine Corsini

Suzanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a well-to-do married woman and mother in the south of France. Her idle bourgeois lifestyle gets her down and she decides to go back to work as a physiotherapist. Her husband agrees to fix-up a consulting room for her in their backyard. When Suzanne and the man (Sergi López) hired to do the building meet, the mutual attraction is sudden and violent. Suzanne decides to give up everything and live this all-engulfing passion to the fullest.

The Vintner’s Luck- Niki Caro

Set in early 19th century France The Vintner’s Luck tells the compelling tale of Sobran Jodeau, an ambitious young peasant winemaker and the three loves of his life—his beautiful and passionate wife Celeste, the proudly intellectual baroness Aurora de Valday and Xas, an angel who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Sobran. A fantastical creature with wings that smell of snow, Xas turns out to be an unconventional mentor. Under his guidance Sobran is forced to fathom the nature of love and belief and in the process, grapples with the sensual, the sacred and the profane—all in pursuit of the perfect vintage.

Whip-It- Drew Barrymore

Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut stars Ellen Page (Juno) as Bliss, a rebellious Texas teen who throws in her small-town beauty pageant crown for the rowdy world of roller-derby. Marcia Gay Harden (Mystic River, Pollock) plays Bliss’s disapproving mother, while Drew Barrymore, Kristen Wiig (Saturday Night Live) and Juliette Lewis (Old School) play roller-derby stars. Whip It also stars Eve, Jimmy Fallon, Daniel Stern, Alia Shawkat, Ari Graynor, Andrew Wilson, Zoe Bell and singer-songwriter Landon Pigg.

Women Without Men- Shirin Neshat

Shirin Neshat’s first feature-length film is based on a magic-realist novel written by Iranian author Sharnush Parsipur. The narrative interweaves the lives of four Iranian women during the summer of 1953, a pivotal moment in Iranian history when an American led coup d’état brought down the democratically elected prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh and reinstalled the Shah to power. The film chronicles each woman’s quest for change and their mysterious encounter in a magical orchard.

Vanguard

Fish Tank- Andrea Arnold

Andrea Arnold’s assured follow-up to Red Road is a taboo-breaking love story about a violent teenaged girl transformed by desire for her mother’s new boyfriend.

My Queen Karo- Dorothée van den Berghe

A young girl witnesses the moral dilemmas of free love when her parents join a squatter community in 1970s Amsterdam.

Tags: Diablo Cody, Drew Barrymore, Ellen Page, Karyn Kusama

Here are a bunch of films that I am excited about: Whip-It, Fame, An Education and The Countess. Enjoy.

Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut Whip-It starring Ellen Page looks awesome. It opens October 9. Think Juno on skates and without the pregnancy.

Fame was one of those movies I loved when I was a teen. it’s being remade and will be released this fall. I AM THERE.

An Education

I am excited for this one directed by Lone Scherfig starring Carey Mulligan that will open on October 2.

h/t Awards Daily

Coco Before Chanel directed by Anne Fontaine opens in the US on September 25

The Countess directed by Julie Delpy- doesn’t have a release date here yet in the US

Tags: Anne Fontaine, Audrey Tatou, Coco Before Chanel, Drew Barrymore, Ellen Page, Fame, July Delpy, Whip-It