Is “Action Violence” Okay for Kids?

Posted on July 11, 2016 at 3:55 pm

What is the difference between a PG-13 movie and an R movie? Usually it has to do with language but very often it has to do with violence — not the amount of violence but the amount of gore. A battle scene can be just as long and have as many fatalities, but if we don’t see much blood or any graphic wounds, it will get a PG-13 rating.

Some people believe that what is called “action violence” (little blood) is worse for kids than R-rate violence because it perpetuates an unrealistic notion of the real-life effect of shootouts and car crashes.

A recent New York Times piece collected four essays on the subject under the title: PG-13 Blockbusters and the Sugarcoating of Violence. Betsy Bozdech of Common Sense Media writes:

dventures that are light on blood and guts may seem more palatable. But showing violence with minimized consequences might be damaging in a different way. If you don’t bat an eye when, in a movie, thousands of innocent civilians are caught in an alien-fighting crossfire, or a national landmark explodes, you may be becoming desensitized.

More important, when movie characters are walking away from firefights with barely a scratch or slaughtering hordes of bad guys, it sends an iffy message when their actions don’t have repercussions. Research shows that if kids don’t see negative behavior punished, they’re more likely to imitate it — especially when it is performed by an appealing character or if it seems to be justified by the outcome (both of which are fairly typical of superhero movies).

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Commentary Understanding Media and Pop Culture

Indie Movies Reach Older Audiences

Posted on July 10, 2016 at 3:55 pm

Summer is the season for sequels, superheroes, special effects, chases, and explosions, with some slob comedies and animated family films added to the mix. But The Guardian points out that while Hollywood has been ignoring older audiences, indie films have showcased more mature performers and more mature storylines. While Glenn Close was barely recognizable in a brief, highly CGI’d performance in the video-game inspired sword and sorcery film “Warcraft,” her contemporaries Susan Sarandon, Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren, Sally Field, and Meryl Streep have had starring roles in first-rate independent films this year.

Faced with such few worthwhile options in the multiplex, older moviegoers have opted to flock to the arthouse theaters instead, making their presence known in a big way. Of the top 10 most profitable independent films to play in cinemas in 2016 so far, seven are aimed strictly at adults, many of them centered on characters age 60 and over.

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Independent Movies for Grown-Ups

Hidden Figures Will Tell The Story of Three Black Women at NASA

Posted on July 10, 2016 at 8:00 am

Three of my favorite performers will star in a new film called “Hidden Figures,” the true story three African- American women who worked for NASA during the 1960s space race.  of Janelle Monae, Octavia Spencer and Taraji P. Henson will star as Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who are a crucial part of NASA’s history.

Here’s Katherine Johnson.

And the cast congratulates her.

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Based on a true story Behind the Scenes Gender and Diversity Race and Diversity

Jen Yamato on Three Awful Articles About Actresses

Posted on July 9, 2016 at 3:22 pm

There have been a lot of complaints about the Vanity Fair cover story on Margot Robbie by Rich Cohen (“Vinyl”), which reads like a parody of skeezily raphsodic profiles of beautiful women. I particularly like the takedown from Rebecca Shaw, who is, like Robbie, Australian, and so addresses Cohen’s idiotic comments about her country as well as his idiotic comments about Robbie.

Australia is America 50 years ago, sunny and slow, a throwback, which is why you go there for throwback people.

Bloody hell, calm your farm Richo. We’re America 50 years ago, so what – increasing our troops into Vietnam?…

That was the middle of a search that finally led to Alexander Skarsgård as Tarzan and Robbie as Jane. Jerry spoke of the actress in a tone he reserved for the big stars, the sure things, the Clooneys and Pitts, those whose magnitude seems old-fashioned. “When I think of Margot Robbie, a single word comes to mind,” Jerry said. “Audrey Hepburn.”

A single word: these two words. Earlier in the piece Richo said that Wolf of Wall Street defined Robbie. It “put her up with Sharon Stone in Casino and Cathy Moriarty in Raging Bull – one of Scorcese’s women.

I know I am 50 years behind all of this being one of the throwback people and all, but did you know that women don’t have to be defined by 1. being compared to other women and 2. belonging to some man or another? Astonishing stuff from here, downunder.

The Fug’s Heather has some thoughts as well.

The piece reads like an interview in which subject and questioner had zero chemistry. But it’s an interviewer’s job to find that, or fix it, rather than go home and throw Google searches at the problem. Frankly, when I read that conclusion and it so strongly created the image of her just casually standing up and leaving, I wanted to shake her hand. Australia has a right to be offended by the finished article (and it is, from what I’ve read). So too does Margot Robbie, though I suspect she will calmly say nothing. She’s already won, honestly. She, somehow, still comes across as normal and cool even though she’s not given as much voice as she deserves.

At The Daily Beast, Jen Yamato insightfuly brings together the Rich Cohen profile of Margot Robbie with two other articles about actresses that have provoked complaints. Variety’s critic Owen Gleiberman wrote that the trailer for the new “Bridget Jones” movie made him think that Renee Zellweger “no longer looks like herself,” and thus he might not be able to enjoy the movie.  (See Thelma Adams’ response, too.)

And the usually-better Wesley Morris wrote a piece titled “How I Learned to Tolerate Blake Lively.” He spends most of the article explaining that he was expecting to see Kate Hudson starring in “The Shallows,” but no, it was another lithe blonde actress from California instead.  Yamato has some good advice: “One glaring (and fixable!) factor in this trend of vaguely lecherous, sketchy filmbro culture: Hire more women writers and editors to represent a more accurate diversity of opinions, analysis, context.”

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Commentary Critics Gender and Diversity Understanding Media and Pop Culture

Tiffany Vazquez Joins TCM

Posted on July 9, 2016 at 12:13 pm

Turner Classic Movies has brought in a new host to join Robert Osborne and Ben Mankiewicz. The first woman host is Tiffany Vazquez, and she first came to the attention of the classic-movie network as the grand prize winner of its Ultimate Fan Contest.

In an interview with Jezebel, she talked about some of her favorite TCM movies (some of my favorites, too).

I particularly like when I just find a movie really funny. People think humor changes so much. I mean, you might watch a standup special from ten years ago and not really laugh anymore—sometimes jokes just don’t work anymore. But for some reason, so many comedies that are some of my favorite classic films are just, I think, always going to be funny. The Man Who Came to Dinner—I think that is a movie that is wildly impressive, probably influential to something like Veep now, because they both have the best insults I’ve ever heard in my life. So eloquent of an insult that you really can’t come back from it—you just really have to walk away.

And then there are so many women that I gravitate towards. I love Katherine Hepburn, I love Bette Davis. I love commentary on Hollywood, so Sunset Boulevard is one of my favorite movies. I love adolescence in films—Rebel Without a Cause is one of my favorites. And people who’ve had to struggle and should have had way bigger careers than they had also interest me. So I really love the Nicholas Brothers, and I think that their scene in Stormy Weather is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen in my life.

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