How Were Women Portrayed in the Movies of 2012?
Posted on January 6, 2013 at 8:00 am
The terrific Vitamin W website has a video reminding us that we can and must do better than the way women were portrayed on screen in 2012.
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The Best Deleted Scenes: Total Film
Posted on December 29, 2012 at 3:27 pm
Total Film has a great list of the 50 best deleted scenes, and what kind of impact they would have on the storyline. It’s a lot of fun to look at deleted scenes on DVDs, but it is usually easy to tell why the scene was left out. One exception is a favorite of mine, “That Thing You Do.” There is actually an alternate version available
There are extended versions of some films like “The Godfather” and “Lord of the Rings.” And scenes deleted in order to get a particular rating from the MPAA are sometimes added back in so that the DVD can be issued “un-rated.” Even if only a few seconds are added and it is almost impossible to notice the difference, some consumers will be attracted by the chance to see something that had to be cut.
I don’t really like the idea of many different versions of the same film unless, as was the case with “A Star is Born,” some lost footage was recovered and re-edited to let us see the film as the director originally intended. If I could see any film re-cut to restore the director’s vision, I’d pick Orson Welles’ “The Magnificent Ambersons.”
The Face They Deserve: Actresses Who Let Themselves Age Naturally
Posted on November 26, 2012 at 3:54 pm
The Globe and Mail has a great tribute to Dame Judi Dench, who appears as M in “Skyfall.” 
There was Judi Dench in her seventh outing as M, James Bond’s boss, the head of MI6, looking like a woman who has spent nearly eight decades on the planet, drinking a bit of scotch and worrying about saving her country from giggly blond megalomaniacs. You may be offended by my use of the word “old,” but only if you equate age with unsightliness, which I don’t. I’m not sure Dame Judi has ever been more beautiful, and that may be because she does not look like a peeled, hardboiled egg or a waxed chipmunk, as so many older actresses do these days. There are pouches at her eyes and her jowls, a fine web of lines near her mouth. She is 77, and we have forgotten what 77 should look like. She looks old, and she looks gorgeous. These two things are not incompatible. In her memoir, And Furthermore, Ms. Dench keeps a diary of her trip to the Oscars in 1998, when she had a best-actress nomination for playing Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown. The diary is titled “Countdown to the Oscars, Or Will I Be the Only Unlifted Face in Hollywood?”
Bravo to Dame Judi and those very, very few brave souls who forego Botox and plastic surgery to show us the beauty of faces that reflect the full lives lived by those behind them –and the full range of expressions of the characters they play. She looks more beautiful every year.
The Real Problem With Movie Bad Guys — Soviet to Chinese to Korean in “Red Dawn”
Posted on November 21, 2012 at 1:54 pm
The 1984 version of “Red Dawn,” starring Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, had a high school football team defending their town from Communist invading forces. The bad guys were a reflection of the Reagan era: the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Nicaragua.
But times have changed. The people behind the remake of “Red Dawn” were faced with the same problem as the producers of the 1940’s radio program “The Green Hornet” who switched the sidekick Kato from Japanese to Korean to Filipino depending on geopolitical events and shifting alliances. Kato was Chinese in the most recent movie version.
The Soviet Union ended in 1991. So, who should be the invaders in the remake? China seemed like a good bet when they shot the film, three years ago (before Chris Hemsworth was Thor and Josh Hutcherson was Peeta). But then the movie’s release was held up because MGM went into bankruptcy. The new distributors realized that China is a very big market for movies — at least for movies that don’t make the Chinese the bad guys. So, they redubbed the dialog and digitally altered the uniforms and insignias of the invading forces to make them North Korean.
Free “Lincoln” Book for iPad
Posted on November 17, 2012 at 3:59 pm
A beautiful new behind-the-scenes ebook about the movie Lincoln is available free for iPads. This exclusive interactive book is called “Lincoln: Discover the Story.” It shows how a crucial time in America’s history was recreated and brought to the screen and features beautiful photos, art, interviews, music, and more.