Vanity Fair’s Whites Only Hollywood Cover

Posted on February 17, 2010 at 9:33 am

I look forward to Vanity Fair’s annual Hollywood issue every year. It always has fabulous photos of today’s top talent, often in salutes to some of the classic movie stars of the past. And it always has a selection of articles that are surprising and inventive, going way past the usual profiles of the usual subjects.
This year’s issue has some great material, including the article on the women behind the early Disney animation classics, as I have already reported. But I was terribly disappointed with its selection of the most promising newcomers to feature on the cover. It isn’t that any one of them is not impressive. Each of the young women has shown extraordinary talent and star quality. But how, in 2010, is it possible to have a collection of today’s top young female stars and have every one of them be white? How is it possible to overlook some of the most stunning, accomplished, and mesmerizingly watchable actresses on screen?
A young woman no one had ever heard of a year ago has been nominated for an Oscar for best actress for her very first film. We do see Gabourey Sidibe inside the magazine, with her co-star and director. But why isn’t she on the cover? In my opinion, the most dazzling breakthrough performance of last year was Nicole Beharie in “American Violet.” Why isn’t she on the cover? Where is Kerry Washington? Taraji P. Henson? Paula Patton? Meagan Goode? Sanaa Lathan? Keke Palmer? Gabrielle Union? Nia Long? Sophie Okonedo? Anika Noni Rose, star of “The Princess and the Frog” and “Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency?”
What 2009 movie became the biggest box office movie of all time? “Avatar.” And who was the female lead? Zoe Saldana. She was in another enormous box office and critical hit in 2009: “Star Trek.” Why isn’t she on the cover?
And why aren’t they starring in more studio films?

Rom-Com Don’t List from EW

Posted on February 15, 2010 at 3:58 pm

Entertainment Weekly has a list of romantic comedy cliches it wants to ban forever from the wisecracking best friend to the adorably uncontrollable dog, the trying-on-clothes montage, the makeover, the chase through the airport (have they ever heard of cell phones?) and the lip-synching. I’m already on record as being opposed to the last two. But I think most people who buy tickets to romantic comedies expect and want those conventions to be there, don’t you?

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Understanding Media and Pop Culture

What Makes a Movie Romantic?

Posted on February 14, 2010 at 8:36 am

Many thanks once again to Cheryl Anderson of the Appleton Post-Crescent for interviewing me, this time about what makes movie romantic.

“There are so many movies about love for the same reason there are so many movies about lost treasure and secret formulas and war battles and historical accomplishments, because love really is life’s great adventure,” says film critic Nell Minow, who has been reviewing movies as The Movie Mom since 1995.

“And we like to see movies about love for the same reason we like to see other movies about adventures — to experience the vicarious thrill, the challenge, the uncertainty and the happy ending. Long before there were movies, there were fairy tales, which ended with happily ever after….”

A great love story for Minow makes viewers believe the characters “get” each other. They won’t be happy every day but they ultimately will live happily ever after. Two of her favorite true-to-life romances are 1987’s “Moonstruck” starring Cher and Nicolas Cage, and 2004’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” with Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet.

The Women At Disney Studios

Posted on February 13, 2010 at 8:00 am

Vanity Fair’s annual Hollywood issue has an article by Patricia Zohn about the “ink and paint” women who worked on Disney’s classic animated films.

Much has been written about the prodigiously talented men who brought Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi, and Dumbo to the screen. But if behind every good man stands a good woman, behind Walt Disney and his “boys”–the all-male assembly line–once stood 100. Walt was the impresario of a troop of young women, most under 25–a casting director’s dream of all-American acolytes–who made the screen light up, not with feathered swan dives or the perfect tip-tap of a patent-leather heel, but by making water shimmer or a tail wag just so. It was a job complicated by his unrelenting perfectionism–Jiminy Cricket required 27 different colors–but reducible to a simple imperative of the time: ever nimble but never showy, their job was to make what the men did look good.

She tells a related story in a great Huffington Post piece about another woman who worked behind the scenes — and later went on to appear in movie musicals.

I could not resist the opportunity to interview one other treasured behind-the-scenes woman, Marge Belcher Champion, famous as half of the dancing Champions of screen and stage, but known to Disney aficionados world wide as the real-live model for Snow White.

Champion was only 14 and still in school when she received $10 a day to act the part of Snow White for the Disney animators to use as their model. She later went on to partner with her husband Gower Champion in films like “Show Boat” and “Jupiter’s Darling.” But here she is helping the first Disney feature film come to life.

Ghost Daughters in Three New Movies

Posted on January 31, 2010 at 2:15 pm

Three recent movies in different genres have had one thing in common — fathers who interact with the ghosts of their dead daughters. In the historical drama “Creation,” Charles Darwin sees the ghost of his daughter as his struggle to deal with her loss reflects in part his struggle over whether to publish his controversial theory of evolution. In the literary adaptation “The Lovely Bones,” the spirit of a murdered girl is stuck in the “in between” as she tries to help her devastated family and expose the killer. And in the thriller “Edge of Darkness,” Mel Gibson plays a cop whose 24-year-old daughter is murdered. As he seeks to understand what she was involved in, he sees her ghost as both a child and an adult, with an especially sweet scene with her at about age five helping him shave.
I always wonder, when something like this happens, whether it is some sort of harmonic convergence or just a coincidence.

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Understanding Media and Pop Culture