Search Results for: Jessica Chastain

The ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Controversy: What Does Jessica Chastain’s Beauty Have to Do With It?

The beautiful Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty This was originally posted at The Funny Feminist. David Clennon does not want you to vote for Zero Dark Thirty for any single Academy Award. Who is David Clennon, you might ask? An actor and activist who is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture … Continue reading “The ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Controversy: What Does Jessica Chastain’s Beauty Have to Do With It?”

The ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Controversy: What Does Jessica Chastain’s Beauty Have to Do With It?

The beautiful Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty This was originally posted at The Funny Feminist. David Clennon does not want you to vote for Zero Dark Thirty for any single Academy Award. Who is David Clennon, you might ask? An actor and activist who is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture … Continue reading “The ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Controversy: What Does Jessica Chastain’s Beauty Have to Do With It?”

2013 Golden Globes Week: Jessica Chastain’s Performance Propels the Exquisitely Sharp But Aloof ‘Zero Dark Thirty’

This is a guest review by Candice Frederick and is cross-posted with permission from her blog Reel Talk. Zero Dark Thirty teaser With her latest film Zero Dark Thirty, filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow continues her charge of completely eliminating any doubt that she’s going to be to that type of female director. You know the kind, … Continue reading “2013 Golden Globes Week: Jessica Chastain’s Performance Propels the Exquisitely Sharp But Aloof ‘Zero Dark Thirty’”

The Scary Truth About Sisters in Horror Films

So what makes sisters such fascinating subject matter for horror films? What makes them both scary and powerful, yet the most vulnerable, both to outside forces as well as to each other when they are threatened? … Sisters can behave as a single entity and fight for the same things, but there are two bodies — two physical forces — to reckon with.

Rise of the Women?: Screening Women in Science Since 2000

I am interested in thinking about how women have been represented in recent Hollywood/American science-based fiction cinema and whether we have really moved beyond relying on stereotypes, sex, and spectacle. Female scientists are increasing in frequency in Hollywood, but they are not being given adequate representation – they are often secondary to their male partners.

Mining the Feminist Messages of ‘Crimson Peak’

In fact, she genuinely began to feel “depressed” from playing Lucille. However, when she confided this in on-screen brother Tom Hiddleston, who has famously played characters such as Marvel villain Loki, he shared that “you only have fun when your character is having fun,” and, as Chastain explains, “Lucille hasn’t had a fun day in her life.” As the victim of intense patriarchal oppression, it’s no wonder.

‘Crimson Peak’: Guillermo del Toro’s Gothic Romance Offers a Gorgeous Chill

‘Crimson Peak’s connection to the “women’s pictures” of the ’40s and ’50s, and particularly Hitchcock’s ‘Rebecca,’ is instructive in reading it as a feminist film. Del Toro takes the tropes of a goodhearted, innocent protagonist, an oily older suitor, and a dangerous female rival whose hostility to the heroine is in part motivated by an “inappropriate” sexual desire, and recontextualizes them.

‘Miss Julie’ Is My Very Worst Date, Nineteenth Century Style

It’s hard to avoid the sense that this is a story about how the rich are in decline – how complacency has made them helpless and weak enough for the poor to pull them down. It’s hard to know if we’re supposed to think that John has the right idea by using Julie as a stepping stone to move toward his goals – if we’re supposed to think she deserves what she gets because she was stupid and drunk and coming onto him. The play seems to think so – Chastain and Ullmann seem to disagree – the movie itself seems to be a confused mixture of the two viewpoints.

Five Amazing Movies I Just Made Up to Repeat the Same Magic as ‘Spy’

I would pay real money to watch any of these movies. The larger point though, is that I bet, if we actually tried, we could come up with amazing projects for lots of women in Hollywood that aren’t based on assuming that the only thing we want to watch them do is act sexy (or crazy). There’s no shortage of talent in the film industry, so, maybe rather than waiting for screenwriters to craft great starring roles for women at large, Hollywood could also take a closer look at the stars who are already there and custom build some awesome ‘Spy’-like films for them.

How To Write A Wife: ‘Neighbors’ and ‘A Most Violent Year’

In real life, of course, women are wives and girlfriends and to deny the importance of the relationship many of us share with men, would be inaccurate and farcical. Yet, with a media landscape overwhelmingly dominated by films about men being men made by men for men, wife roles are often dim shadows of real women. But it’s hard to list well-written wife characters in male dominated movies; Jessica Chastain’s character, Anna Morales in ‘A Most Violent Year’ and Rose Byrne as Kelly Radner in ‘Neighbors’ are two successes I’ve come across recently.

The Women of ‘Interstellar’

I very much enjoyed ‘Interstellar’; It depicts a realistic species-threatening crisis with the dwindling success of food cultivation. It has an expansive vision of our future as human beings, and it has super cool science that it manages to make accessible to the layperson. But… (I wish there didn’t always have to be a “but”) the film’s depiction of its female characters was lacking to say the least.