The New York Times continues to think that the trend towards dressing up is their hot new over the last couple of years. The New York Times is increasingly the last to know about anything, but I'll take what I can get. This one is very much an outgrowth of the Mad Men phenomenon, but it pretty high on my "mmmm, yes, but no" list.
Get ready for the sound of me screaming. I haven't read it yet, but nothing titled, "Can Anybody Make a Movie for Women?" is gong to result in anything but my fury.
I feel like a bit of an asshole linking this one as it's unavoidably full of "look at those wacky Japanese" and "geeks are losers" tropes, but Tokyo man weds video game character.
Jude Law 'in love' with 'Sherlock Holmes' co-star Robert Downey Jr. That's the headline exactly as CNN gives it to you, and I'm interested in it both as marketing strategy in terms of sound-bites on Sherlock Holmes and also because of the whole implied giggly/awkwardness of the headline in the rest of the article. I find this shit amusing on the surface and then quaint and irritating when I think about it, to be frank. Because CNN would _never_ use that headline in reference to men who were, you know, actually romantically/sexually in love with each other. That's the problem.
Speaking of Holmes: originally the two bits of Holmes hilarity coming out in the next couple of months (the one mentioned above and the sucktacular thing GDL is in) were just going to be odd campy amusements to me. But now I'm having to read all the Holmes stuff for my Bristol paper, so hey... I might be informed on the OMGWTFBBQ factor of these projects.
An origami crane folded by Sadako Sasaki is part of 9/11 memorial. My fellow children of the 80s, were you traumatized by 1,001 Cranes along with me? I can't believe that there used to be a whole genre of children's books, both fiction and non-, about nuclear war. Ah, the Regan years.
Patty has been keeping me up to date on the epically weird demise of the Washington Times, DC's bizarreo-land Moonie-run paper. If you haven't been following it, you can catch up here.
The odds of my book being in-stock again from a major e-tailer before the deadline for Christmas shipping delivery is pretty low. I'm making a post office run on Saturday. If you want one $14 to me via paypal and I'll get it out then. Books will be in stock again soon, just not in time for Christmas delivery.
Yeah, the article on Meyers is pretty sucktacular, IMO. The first section is all about how the director is so humble and down to earth and underappreciated (my take: stereotypical female socialized) that she's quite willing to have her table bumped at a well known (I assume) restaurant when in the company of a reporter. The first line of description of the director includes 'blonde woman' like bad fanfic and there's several lines dedicated to what she wears and her jewelry (and how tasteful and humble it is).
The reporter seems fairly ... uninformed IMO; she discusses a scene in an upcoming movie where the female lead asks the male lead to 'look away' while she gets out of bed and races to a robe because she's clearly ashamed of how she looks and the camera lingers on '[male actor's] paunch'. The reporter seems to see that as a turn around or exposure of men to the 'female gaze' but I read that same scene (admittedly just as a description) as enforcing female shame of their normal body (which is obviously imperfect by virtue of not looking like a 20 year old porn starlet) while men are not expected to feel shame for their bodies, no matter their imperfections. As far as I can tell from the article, there is no matching sense of shame from the man regarding his own imperfect body, yet the female actor has at least two lines that reference her imperfections and her discomfort - to me that's not "shifting the burden of living up to impossible, media-derived body ideals from women to men." but reinforcing the same old, same old.
The whole article has the dancing bear feel about it - while it's clear the reporter feels the movies are quality (and that the studios agree), there's an awful lot of male/female comparison - clearly to the reporter the most important thing about Myer is that she's a woman. Except of course she's not like a woman re: "[Meyer's] said in her authoritative yet undivalike manner."
The section on her attention to detail is rife with comparisons to male directors not being singled out for the same behavior (yet it's the reporter who's constantly reiterating this) before getting quotes from multiple actors that they don't see her behavior as particularly gendered. However, with the reporter's constant presentation of Meyer's gender, it's impossible for the reader to do so. A fair amount of time is spent on the interior décor of her house (then again, this may reference the director's attention to a particular physical look to her sets).
There's one of the most mealy mouthed excuses I've seen in quite some time for the director's lack of ethnic diversity in her work – "That world is also almost pre-ethnic — with the exception of the Asian actor B. D. Wong, who appears in “Father of the Bride” and its sequel, few non-Caucasian faces appear in Meyers’s movies." WTF is 'pre-ethnic'?!?
I can't speak much to the movies themselves since they're totally uninteresting to me and completely not aimed at me - so the discussion about her movies as designed for white, middle-aged and older, heterosexual, rich women who want men and romance isn't something I can comment much on. They sound simplistic to me, and without the spark of the older Hepburn style movies as well as very, very whitewashed in pretty much every sense of the word. However, I can say that her movies do seem to be giving great older actors – both male and female - opportunities for work and, I guess, older white, rich, women something to fantasize about.
The reporter includes a quote from a critic of Meyer's work: "Richard Schickel condemns Meyers with faint praise, hinting that she and the studios have struck a devil’s pact of sorts. “Clearly there is an audience for sweet little middle-class romances of the kind she makes, and it pleases the studios to indulge a woman, whom they would not trust with more vigorous projects. It’s as if they’re trying to say: ‘Hey, we’re not sexists. We make Nancy Meyers movies.’ ”
This is the last line in the article and if I were the director, it wouldn't be one I was particularly happy with: "“It’s Complicated” may not be entirely believable — nor “Something’s Gotta Give” particularly persuasive — but they offer their creator and all the women who relate to her stand-in self, in the form of Keaton or Streep, a good deal of laughter to help get them through the night. And that’s no small piece of magic."
The section on her attention to detail is rife with comparisons to male directors not being singled out for the same behavior (yet it's the reporter who's constantly reiterating this)
I can't wait to pull this apart since several of my favorite male directors are often written about for their highly compulsive behavior on set, both as related directly to the film and just because of their own sense of propriety (Baz Luhrmann, for example, will not eat in front of his actors EVER because he believes they must know they always have his full attention). Making this about gender is so fail-ly on the part of the writer.
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Date: 2009-12-17 06:28 pm (UTC)The reporter seems fairly ... uninformed IMO; she discusses a scene in an upcoming movie where the female lead asks the male lead to 'look away' while she gets out of bed and races to a robe because she's clearly ashamed of how she looks and the camera lingers on '[male actor's] paunch'. The reporter seems to see that as a turn around or exposure of men to the 'female gaze' but I read that same scene (admittedly just as a description) as enforcing female shame of their normal body (which is obviously imperfect by virtue of not looking like a 20 year old porn starlet) while men are not expected to feel shame for their bodies, no matter their imperfections. As far as I can tell from the article, there is no matching sense of shame from the man regarding his own imperfect body, yet the female actor has at least two lines that reference her imperfections and her discomfort - to me that's not "shifting the burden of living up to impossible, media-derived body ideals from women to men." but reinforcing the same old, same old.
The whole article has the dancing bear feel about it - while it's clear the reporter feels the movies are quality (and that the studios agree), there's an awful lot of male/female comparison - clearly to the reporter the most important thing about Myer is that she's a woman. Except of course she's not like a woman re: "[Meyer's] said in her authoritative yet undivalike manner."
The section on her attention to detail is rife with comparisons to male directors not being singled out for the same behavior (yet it's the reporter who's constantly reiterating this) before getting quotes from multiple actors that they don't see her behavior as particularly gendered. However, with the reporter's constant presentation of Meyer's gender, it's impossible for the reader to do so. A fair amount of time is spent on the interior décor of her house (then again, this may reference the director's attention to a particular physical look to her sets).
There's one of the most mealy mouthed excuses I've seen in quite some time for the director's lack of ethnic diversity in her work – "That world is also almost pre-ethnic — with the exception of the Asian actor B. D. Wong, who appears in “Father of the Bride” and its sequel, few non-Caucasian faces appear in Meyers’s movies." WTF is 'pre-ethnic'?!?
(TBC because I'm teel deer)
no subject
Date: 2009-12-17 06:28 pm (UTC)The reporter includes a quote from a critic of Meyer's work: "Richard Schickel condemns Meyers with faint praise, hinting that she and the studios have struck a devil’s pact of sorts. “Clearly there is an audience for sweet little middle-class romances of the kind she makes, and it pleases the studios to indulge a woman, whom they would not trust with more vigorous projects. It’s as if they’re trying to say: ‘Hey, we’re not sexists. We make Nancy Meyers movies.’ ”
This is the last line in the article and if I were the director, it wouldn't be one I was particularly happy with: "“It’s Complicated” may not be entirely believable — nor “Something’s Gotta Give” particularly persuasive — but they offer their creator and all the women who relate to her stand-in self, in the form of Keaton or Streep, a good deal of laughter to help get them through the night. And that’s no small piece of magic."
End
no subject
Date: 2009-12-17 06:31 pm (UTC)I can't wait to pull this apart since several of my favorite male directors are often written about for their highly compulsive behavior on set, both as related directly to the film and just because of their own sense of propriety (Baz Luhrmann, for example, will not eat in front of his actors EVER because he believes they must know they always have his full attention). Making this about gender is so fail-ly on the part of the writer.
I boggle with you at "pre-ethnic."