Linkovers
Thursday, August 6, 2015 at 1:00PM must read
"Want to work in Hollywood? Only straight, white men need apply?" this new study from USC is getting a lot of attention and it is pretty damning evidence all told. (How did diversity issues get so much worse instead of better? - It boggles the mind.) That study is just for films but TV is doing a lot better. On that note it looks like we lost Lee Daniels to TV for good (*sniffle... no more Paperboy or Precious). In addition to "Empire" Season 2 he's developing a girl-band series called "Star". NYT also looked at the diversity gap on the bigscreen from that study and Dana Delany tweeted in response underlining why she doesn't do film anymore.
The migration of actors (particularly female) and creatives to television has been well documented. I can only blame moviegoers at this point. They just only seem willing to look at "adult" and female stuff on television and save their ticket dollars for fx films
links
Variety Todd Haynes to get a tribute at this year's Gotham Awards
Empire remember when Lasse Hallström was a big deal? His breakthrough was My Life as a Dog (not a literal title) and now he'll be directing a movie called A Dog's Purpose which is actually about a dog, a reincarnated dog who helps various owners in his lives
imgur a native of Florida photographs Edward Scissorhands locations 25 years later. The foilage sure grew and the colors sure are drabber now
Interview republishes an archival interview with Warren Beatty from 1972 as we await anything on his long-gestating Howard Hughes biopic
MSZ "Unloved" series looks at Peyton Reed's Down With Love and The Break-Up
Filmmaker Magazine talks to Randal Kleiser about Summer Lovers, an 80s guilty pleasure starring Daryl Hannah and Peter Gallagher.
Indie Outlook compares American Sniper and Selma to find the structure of "Oscar Bait". It's interesting but I wholly disagree on the notion that Selma's focus on the mechanicas of civil disobedience makes it dry and unsatisfying. I think that's exactly what makes it so good and so much more worthwhile than a simple "great man" biopic would have been. Love that movie.
This Is Not Porn Jessica Lange on the set of King Kong (1976). Hee
spandex city
CW Seed This is actually cool. CW, which had a major hit with their fun and well-crafted Flash series is now streaming the original Flash television series from 1990 - I had forgotten that existed even!
Comic Alliance "why I'm boycotting Marvel Comics" more on Marvel's very real diversity problem
Htxt.Africa talks Star Wars and The Jungle Book from a Disney Africa presentation. Also says Doctor Strange looks "horror-movie-dark"
for London readers
Facebook Desperately Seeking Susan is getting a 30th anniversary screening at the Prince Charles Cinema
the Leftovers
Oooh, here's the Season 2 trailer to HBO's "The Leftovers" which had so many good parts for ladies last season. This new season shakes things up a lot so we don't know quite what to expect.
free the bacon
Kevin Bacon demands more male nudity in Hollywood
Reader Comments (13)
Bacon demands more male nudity, Lenny Kravitz conforms
That study presents information in a confusing way. Why are they focusing on 2014 so much in particular and leaving out the rest of the years?
I guess Kevin hasn't seen Outlander.
You know, it’s kind of amazing to me how all I hear from comic aficionados are how comics are unfairly looked down upon and how they should be seen as a real narrative art form while *also* hearing from them complaints about the huge problems in diversity, maturity, and myopia that the medium is plagued with. How in the world am I supposed to treat comics as respectable literature when minority characters are still extremely rare, puerile depictions of macho posturing substitutes for character depth, and women are almost always depicted as scantily-clad sex objects?
I loved the interview with Randall Kleiser. For me, as a kid, he was right up there next to Coppola or Woody Allen.
"The migration of actors (particularly female) and creatives to television has been well documented. I can only blame moviegoers at this point. They just only seem willing to look at "adult" and female stuff on television and save their ticket dollars for fx films." Nathaniel R
Let's think about this comment for one second.
A movie can bring us The Avengers, the Planet of the Apes, Mission Impossible, Fast and Furious, in ways that television could never afford to do.
Television can give us characters like Walter White, Crazy Eyes, Alicia Florrick, Don Draper, Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, and a wealth of others, complicated characters that grow over years, not a two-hour span.
I think what's happened is a natural evolution. Television has learned how to take its time telling rich, nuanced stories about people that are more than just a collection of stereotypes or a means to an end. Movies have the budgets to bring us worlds and action that we could barely even imagine before.
I would definitely like to see more women and diversity in movies; I mean seriously, that's easily the biggest flaw of the modern blockbuster. But I love that so many ridiculously talented actors and writers and directors have flocked to television, recognizing that a novel will almost always be more enjoyable than a short story.
I want to see spectacle on the big screen, like Guardians of the Galaxy, for instance. But when it comes to wondrous actors, I'd rather see five seasons of Glenn Close than two hours every six months. I'm greedy. I love getting to see the actors I love and admire on an ongoing basis playing characters that grow and change and make me laugh and break my heart.
Just saying.
Nathaniel's point fascinates me, but I think it's bigger, broader and more complicated than that, Tommy.
a) James Joyce is widely considered one of the greatest writers of all time, and I'd assert he never wrote anything finer than "The Dead"
b) Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln or There Will Be Blood >>> Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad. Easily.
c) The best spectacle/action sequence isn't always in the biggest budget filmmaking. "Hardhome" from Game of Thrones is a great example of sheer fuckstonishing mythmaking, Children of Men is cheaper than any Marvel movie and is bracingly kinetic action filmmaking.
MTV had a contest with the movie "Summer Lovers" in 1982 (?) They advertised that contest and that movie every 5 seconds. I think it was to win a trip to Greece. And the soundtrack / commercial was "Hard to Say I'm Sorry" by Chicago. Every. 5. Seconds.
And the movie seemed to be just an excuse for everyone but Peter Gallagher to take their clothes off.
Tommy, I understand your point, and trust me, I am thankful that television has recently offered some of the most compelling characters we've seen in a long time. I love watching Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, Carrie Mathison, Selena Meyer, Walter White, etc etc develop over many years and that we get to see a creative side to actors that may not have been possible in film (seriously, who knew Keri Russell had this talent in her? She's killing it on The Americans).
But honestly, this influx and oversaturated market of comic book and franchise films is just killing the creative and artistic merits of film. I don't care if it's Captain America or Guardians of the Galaxy or Ant Man or whatever but these concepts are virtually indistinguishable. Couple that with the fact that studios REFUSE to let a franchise die, even if the audiences unabashedly send signals that support is waning (I'm looking at you Fantastic Four and Spider-Man). I'm also highly dubious about the transition to VOD/Netflix/Amazon and other streaming platforms for films that are seen as too "niche" or "unmarketable" or simply unable to compete with the huge tentpoles that hog up the screens. On one hand I'm glad the film will hopefully find some kind of audience but why can't films like Snowpiercer or Macbeth have the chance to find an audience cinematically like, say, freaking San Andreas?
Listen, I had a blast seeing Mad Max Fury Road in the cinema and I'm glad it exists in this world. But the collective audience experience of hearing an entire theatre take a huge sigh of relief after the emotional intensity of that final act in Little Children was incredible. Or the sheer wonder and amazement I experienced watching Pan's Labyrinth. Or the sense of discomfort and unease you could feel inside the theatre during Notes on a Scandal. Television definitely has an advantage of having the time to develop character and story, but cinema definitely still has the power to work just as well...when the films in question have the chance to compete and not be relegated to arthouse and streaming ghettos (and even my arthouse theatre can't support all these independent films...most play for a week, two at best).
On the topic of what movies can do vs. what TV can do: Something I really love about movies is that they are repeatable pleasures. Do people watch episodes of Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad more than once? That's not a rhetorical question - it's genuine curiosity; I'm not into much current TV and so I can't use myself as an example. What I'm getting at is that the best films reveal new layers of meaning, as well as delivering repeated pleasure in terms of the cohesivenes of their storytelling, the creativeness of their filming styles, the effectiveness of their impact. TV can develop characters over many years - I get that; when I was a kid I was glued to Dallas and Dynasty, both of which were great fun and absorbing storytelling for years. And of the current crop of TV drama series, one thing they seem to have in common is that they unfold across their seasons with great effectiveness. But I've seen The Godfather - to take just one example - perhaps fifteen times and I never tire of it. As an art form, the feature film affords its makers and audiences the opportunity to do a story in such a way that we come back to it, we watch it again, we have a life-long relationship with it.
Edward, the answer is yes, I watch my favourite episodes repeatedly. I've seen episodes of Game of Thrones, The Americans, Orphan Black, etc more than once. Right now, I'm just revelling in Sense8 and it's amazing empathy and intimacy.
I am offended that you would blame moviegoers for crappy movies. We aren't the one making them, period. I refuse to be blamed for not buying tickets to movies. I live in Houston and I have to drive across town to see a decent movie, and most of them only play here for a week. What used to just be a movie is now a specialty item. And they are released here after I have read about them on sites like this for over a year, so they are hardly exciting anymore when they do come. (I still haven't gotten around to seeing Still Alice, because it was already old news when it was released here--after the Oscars.) Might as well just buy them on blu-ray, where I can own them for half the price of a ticket, popcorn, soda, and gasoline. I spend a lot of time on sites like this because literally not one person in my circle of friends has ever heard of any of the movies that interest me, since they don't advertise them or show them very long. It's the only way to have a conversation. (Not that anyone ever responds to my comments!)
Thanks, Arkaan.