Posted on July 10, 2018 at 2:34 pm
How many times have women characters in movies been called “clever girls?” Well, here’s a remarkable compilation.
It’s an interesting compliment, because it’s praising and kind of diminishing at the same time, though in some of these cases there seem to be meta quote marks around it. I wonder why it is so prevalent, though.
Posted on July 10, 2018 at 8:00 am
I really enjoyed A. Martine’s essay in Medium, In Defense of Passion Over Talent, B Movies, and the So-Bad-It’s-Good Work of Art. An excerpt:
Although I am incredibly critical with films when it comes to quality, I also acknowledge that the issue is much more complicated than that. I have hated films that, objectively speaking, were well-made, and I have loved films that, on an intellectual level, I knew were terrible.
I am at peace with making that distinction because I’ve always had two tiers of judgment when it comes to appreciation, two definitions for “good movies”:
– the legitimately great ones that have made of me a lifelong film fanatic and aspiring screenwriter;
– the ones which, by all arguments, are not. They are incredibly tacky, downright nonsensical, challenge all credibility — and I love them.
I responded:
I think films need to be evaluated on two axes. The y-axis is the aesthetic merits of the film — it is “good?” The x-axis is a different standard: watchability. Many films are unquestionably superb, brilliantly written, filmed, and performed. And yet how often do we pull them off of the Criterion Edition shelve and watch them? The x-axis films just go down easy. They’re films to watch when you need pleasant company or have the flu. Or films to on a summer night after a day at the beach. There’s nothing wrong with movies people like, and nothing wrong with movies you like just because you like them.
I call the films in that second category “flu movies,” and those are the only ones I will buy. I don’t buy movies because they’re great; I buy them because I will watch them a lot. Of course some films are at the top of both axes, like “The Sound of Music” and “The Wizard of Oz.” And I don’t like the term “guilty pleasure.” If a movie makes you happy, you should never feel guilty about it.
Posted on July 9, 2018 at 9:51 am
Please check out You Sang My Song on Facebook. Glamour asked top recording artists like Maria Carey, Pink, Christina Aguilera, Shawn Mendes, and Meghan Trainor to watch YouTube covers of their songs. The only thing more touching than seeing these platinum singer-songwriters appreciate their fans (many of them say, “She sang it better than I do!”) is seeing the reaction of the YouTube singers to the comments from their favorite performers. It’s a remarkable moment because they stop being superstar to fan and become singer/musician to singer/musician, a deep and intimate connection. It’s wonderful.
Posted on July 9, 2018 at 8:00 am
I was delighted to have a chance to interview Byron Mann for The Credits about this week’s release “Skyscraper,” co-starring with Dwayne Johnson. He is deliciously arrogant in one of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite films, as the “synthetic CDO” guy eating sushi as Steve Carell fumes in “The Big Short.”
An excerpt:
I have to begin by asking you about one of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite movies, The Big Short. It’s compliment to say that in a very brief appearance you created a very complete and utterly loathsome character. Tell me about the audition for that role and what you and the director discussed.
I ate potato chips in the audition. I’m serious. The director, Adam McKay, midway through the audition, asked me, “Hey, would you like to have some potato chips?” I said, “What?” He said, “Yeah, would you like to have some potato chips while you’re doing the scene.” His intention, I found out, was to do it exactly as the scene happened in real life: my character and Steve Carell’s character were having sushi in real life, so Adam McKay wanted to see what that felt like in the audition. Apparently, I’m pretty good at eating potato chips.
What was the toughest part of the training for Altered Carbon? What’s your favorite training tip?
I had a personal trainer who was helping me gain muscle mass, and “shred” at the same time. So I was lifting crazy weights, as well as doing a gazillion aerobic exercises at the same time: doing a hundred revolutions skipping rope – three sets, a hundred burpees, a hundred mountain climbers, a hundred jackknives…thinking about it now makes me tired already. My favorite training tip: hire a kick-ass (no pun intended) personal trainer and watch what you eat. My second favorite training tip: burpees. If you don’t know what that means, google it. It’s an instant fat burner and wakes you up like no other exercise.
You live in four cities on two continents. How do you remember where your toothbrush is?
I have four different toothbrushes in all four cities. You should have asked me how I keep my currencies straight: I have four Muji pouches, all with a sticker on them that denotes the four cities: Los Angeles, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Beijing. Everything — SIM cards, bills, coins, keys — goes in these pouches.
What is your technique for maintaining focus when you’re working on green screen?
Honestly, that’s the hardest part. Looking at a yellow tennis ball is a lot different than looking at a building on fire and ready to collapse. That’s why they pay me the big bucks.
Posted on July 8, 2018 at 3:14 pm
One of the best essays about film I’ve read this year is Roxana Hadadi’s “Amid the Latest Western Genre Resurgence, ‘Lean on Pete’ and ‘The Rider’ Challenge Cowboy Masculinity in the American West” in Pajiba. She discusses several recent movies, including “Logan,” HBO’s “Westworld,” and “Hell or High Water,” but focuses on “Lean on Pete” and “The Rider.” The Western has always been the quintessential representation of the American spirit of independence, isolation, adventure, arrogance, as well as a way to explore our nation’s deepest conflicts and history of brutality and racism. And, as with most movie stories over the past century, the stories have almost always been about men and from their point of view. Hadadi writes:
The American experience has long been linked to the masculinity of the solitary cowboy, pushing the limits of the frontier. But what happens when there is nowhere left to go?
…Which brings us to Lean on Pete and The Rider, two films that also fit into the Western genre but are less about what the New West represents and more about what it actually is….These are stories about boys on the cusp of being men, each of whom is attempting to navigate selfhood in situations of poverty and desolation, in places where the cowboy code was once enough but isn’t anymore. Where so many Westerns focus on exploring (and romanticizing) the destructive ways that masculinity manifests, Lean on Pete and The Rider are concerned with what happens when those stereotypical markers—violence, sex, and lawlessness—are not only stripped away but are never the right choice at all. If you reject what it is to be a cowboy but you exist in the shadow of that figure, who are you?
You won’t read a better, wiser, or more goregously written essay on film this year.
