The radical notion that women like good movies
Making a DVD is fairly easy! I’ve done this loads of times before! All you need is a menu, a ProRes file, and DVD Studio Pro. Then you burn to your heart’s desire. Shouldn’t take me more than a few weeks to get these all finished, right? Wrong. I was so wrong! But now I’m a pro, and I’m going to tell you how to be one too.
Two things that make Leyla Bouzid’s new film ‘As I Open My Eyes’ distinct from these other [portrait of the artist, coming-of-age films] are: the lead who resists family pressure by joining a band is a young woman and her parents have more to be concerned about than what the neighbors think. The action takes place in Tunis, Tunisia, in 2010, before the Revolution, so any kind of rebellion, even artistic, can draw the attention of the police and lead to arrest — or worse.
They’re moved to realize that, after everyone talked shit about them for weeks or months on end, someone actually appreciated what they did. It’s a moment of art imitating life that mirrored my experience with ‘Ghostbusters’… I also vastly underestimated how powerful it would be, and how great it would feel, to watch an action-comedy with only women in the leading roles.
In 1985, television audiences were reminded that women of a certain age are just as vibrant, sexual, and as full of life as women half their age. They may also share a few life lessons along the way. The TV series ‘The Golden Girls’ — which aired for seven seasons — reminded audiences of all ages that life does not end at fifty for women.
Even with her powers, Kara is the underdog who has to evolve to overcome insurmountable odds, thus making her relatable to viewers. With the series being entitled ‘Supergirl,’ it shouldn’t be a surprise that feminism is a prevalent theme. What is a pleasant surprise is how well the series tackles it.
‘Spotlight’ isn’t the kind of film that just changes some facts (though I never understand “based-on-a-true-story” films that do so: if you’re going to fictionalize their lives why not fictionalize their names too?), it’s one where the most basic plot summary contradicts what happened.
Two of the greatest love stories in anime are interracial relationships. … While the industry as a whole generally eschews characters of color, that hasn’t stopped some series from featuring prominent people of color characters in narratively significant stories. This has led to interracial couples being featured in two of the greatest anime series of all time: ‘The Super Dimension Force Macross’ and ‘Revolutionary Girl Utena.’
There were never any shows that centered happy, single, child-free Black women that prioritized good sex as part of successful living. That is until two television shows came on the scene, ‘Living Single’ (1993-1998, created by Yvette Lee Bowser) and ‘Girlfriends’ (2000-2007, created by Mara Brock Akil).
I mean, she doesn’t wrap her arms around some guy’s waist to hold on for the ride of her life or even jump onto a Vespa or something weak. Nope, she’s a zombie-fightin’ shoulder-padded biker who escapes danger on her own and looks just as feathery-haired good when she gets to her destination as when she put down her attacker in the alley (although this was the early 80s while CFCs were being phased out, so big hair treated with a half-bottle of AquaNet always had some hold).
Don’t judge me.
I am a fan of the ‘Sharknado’ franchise put out by the SyFy Channel.
The melding of feminism and marketing means that certain crappy, mainstream films try to convince us our duty is to shell out money for them just because they’re directed by women, written by women or star women. This marketing, of course, is the best way to kill movies directed by, written by or starring women once and for all, by force- feeding us films that are supposed to be “good” for women but which give us no pleasure when pleasure, or something like it, is why we go to movies in the first place.
Helen represents a new kind of fantasy woman, popular in the late ’80s and ’90s – one who’s ballsy and opinionated, but can absolutely, 100 percent, still be controlled. In fact, the only reason Helen’s “safe” for mainstream audiences in 1995 is that Kevin Costner’s total dominance over her is constantly reinforced.
