Tuesday 30 April 2013

Nudity and characterisation on Game of Thrones

It has been an article overload this week hasn't it?

This piece from Bitch Flicks by Lady T is a good read even if you don't watch GoT. The same logic can be applied to other shows with similar levels of nudity who maybe don't approach the characterisation of their female characters in the same way. It's doubly good as the author has also read the books so there's a double perspective their.

Game of Thrones is not like Lord of the Rings or other popular fantasy series that forget that women exist. Women are prominent in the society of Westeros, whether behind the scenes or fighting on the fields...Considering the presence of so many complex women in Game of Thrones, it seems like critics might save their nudity-related complaints for other programs that populate their shows with mere ciphers (if they cast any women at all). So why are we still talking about nudity on THIS show?
A case could be made to draw parallels between the way audiences respond to the depiction of violence  and the way they respond to gratuitous nudity and sexual scenes. Both raises the issue (in very different ways however, context is key in sexual scenes) of whether showing something condoning it, e.g. the furore that surrounded the release of Zero Dark Thirty.

Where they differ however is that sexuality isn't bad in any respect, the concerns are over how much should an audience see. As Lady T writes, many shows with GoT's levels of nudity are "praised for grim dark realism" but GoT is the one that gets called out on it. Whatever your opinions on how nudity (and let's face it the issue is always with female nudity specifically) no one can deny that GoT is filled with a huge variety of female characters who embody a range of different character types

Monday 29 April 2013

Following on from yesterday...

This Hello Giggles article carries on the discussion of age gaps between leading men and their lover interests:

Will Smith, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington and Robert Downey, are all either in their fifties, or rapidly approaching the big five-oh (except Denzel – he’s almost 60!) and these A-List actors seem to always be set up with actresses much younger than they are in almost every single film.

Sunday 28 April 2013

Leading Men Age, But Their Love Interests Don’t

Kyle Buchanan has written a great piece over at Vulture.com about the age gaps between Hollywood leading men and their love interests. Plus it is jam packed with awesome graphs to look at.

Article here

With the exception of Tom Hanks, all the other actors profiled are significantly older than their love interests. It is borderline dangerous in Hollywood to be an "older" woman but the same can't be said for their male counterparts. Is the industry under the impression that we don't want to see older women on our screens? That we are somehow offended by this notion but seeing an actor doing a love scene with an actress twenty or so years younger is completely fine? I don't have anything against age gaps but they are disproportionately represented in Hollywood, to the extent that the "older woman" seems to be an endangered species.

Saturday 27 April 2013

Women and Hollywood Infographic

If you read my Women in Film series over at Yellow Bunting then you'll remember how a recurring theme was how prevalent women were as creators in various eras of movie history. Fandor (a movie streaming site) has created an interesting info graphic to demonstrate this, I found it on Indie Wire:

From here

Friday 26 April 2013

Game of Thrones Parody on You Tube

Starring Lydia Bennet(Mary Kate Wiles) and "Did somebody say" Ron Weasley:



Funny without being snarky, this is both a tribute and a mickey take of GoT. Watch all three in one go! My favourite bit? The last scene of episode three. 

Wednesday 24 April 2013

100 posts and a Culturefly article

Sorry for the lack of posts lately! So this is the 100th blog post, cupcakes and balloons all round. What better way to mark this than a article published by Culturefly!

Reading this online you’re probably already aware of how much you rely on electricity and power. No power means no cars or planes, no TV or radio, no phone system, no medical equipment, no freezers and no food storage systems. Things would get pretty difficult pretty quickly.

Sky One’s Revolution is a new US drama that shows pretty much exactly that. Set fifteen years after the entire world’s power supply just cut out with no warning or explanation. Things devolve quickly and the US is now run by ruthless militia groups that monopolise food and weapons while most people live in small villages scraping by on what they can grow or hunt. Needless to say, it isn’t the cheeriest of places.

I have done a series review that you can read here and Culturefly are looking for writers if you are interested. Head over to the site and it has all the details. 

Monday 15 April 2013

Veronica Mars Kickstarter Ended

...and they made $5,702,153 which is waaaaay more than the $2m they were aiming for.

Only time will tell what they do with the extra cash, what the movie with be like and if it may have just changed how we fund film and TV projects forever!

Friday 12 April 2013

Writersroom on writing good female characters

When Joss Whedon was asked why he kept writing strong female characters, he (supposedly) replied "Because you keep asking that question"

Over at the BBC Writersroom blog they have an ace article on writing good female characters. It's worth a read.

Thursday 11 April 2013

Review: Cloud Atlas

I was super excited to see this film but felt the need to wait a while before I wrote about it as it struck me as a piece of work that benefits from a good deal of reflection.

Wednesday 10 April 2013

The Sole Defining Feature

Cross posted from Yellow Bunting:


If you haven’t been watching channel four’s new show Gogglebox, it basically follows a cross section of people sitting and watching television. That’s right, it’s you sitting and watching people watching TV.
It is fairly funny but I have noticed something that has been bugging me, particularly in the most recent episode. It showed the people featured watching two shows, one with Dr Margaret Mountford (formerly of the apprentice)exploring the ruins of Pompeii and the other with Dr Joann Fletcher showing us how everyday people lived in Ancient Egypt. Both were shows presented by highly intelligent, passionate presenters that aimed to make the information accessible and interesting for the audience.
So why was it that all the people featured in Gogglebox could focus on was their physical appearance? Not only that but most of their comments were negative, rude and of no direct intelligence to what they were watching.
While I suspect that one of the primary motivations behind Gogglebox is for us to be able to laugh at the viewers featured (the posh alcoholic couple, the woman with the obnoxious children etc.) it does highlight a problem for women who work on that side of the media.
A while back I wrote a post on Anita Sarkessian, a media commentator and presenter of her own web-based show, Feminist Frequency. Sarkessian is all kinds of awesome but was the target of vile, sexist abuse when she tried to crowd fund her latest project.
Similarly, last year when Mary Beard was subjected to similar abuse (and threats of violence) after appearing on Question Time, she remarked that it was enough to put any women off of appearing on TV.
I’m sure I don’t need to go into why that’s bad.
By virtue of making up more than half the population of the earth, we are entitled to have smart, passionate women on television communicating their ideas but when they are reduced to the sole function of being a thing to look at, devoid of any personality or worth beyond the aesthetic, why on earth would anyone want to subject themselves to that?
It’s not clear whether most of these detractors are men or women in fairness (before I’m being accused of being a man hater) and plenty of the viewers onGogglebox were women, so as a general audience we need to readjust our viewing habits and expectations for the media and perhaps we can take these programmes for what they are: entertaining, informative and presented by smart, charismatic women to make us want to learn more.



Tips from Raindance on writing shorts

Loving Stéphanie Joalland's article over at the Raindance website where she lays out the 7 rules for witing a good short film:
"A short film script can be a great calling card for a writer. Short films aren’t a lesser form of cinematic storytelling. In fact writing them requires the exact same skills as writing a feature length script – though on a smaller scale. Although TV broadcast opportunities may be limited, there are more and more outlets for these opportunities."
It's an ace read, check it out!

Tuesday 9 April 2013

Why the Veronica Mars Kickstarter may just change the film industry and the universe, as we know it


Cross posted from Yellow Bunting.

That may be a slight exaggeration but hear me out.

I wanted to be Veronica Mars. I wanted to be the cool, sassy outcast who everyone secretly wants to be, who solves crimes that the incompetent police cannot, who wears improbably expensive clothes for someone from the poor side of town, who has a high number of guys chat her up and smoulder at her, who has witty remark for every occasion and a cool Phillip Marlowe-esque internal monologue describing her every action. I really loved that show. 



Monday 1 April 2013

Amanda Palmer at TED


Amanda Palmer's talk at TED about crowd funding and asking fans for help. While she talks mostly about music, in light of the Veronica Mars Kickstarter it seems relevant for all areas of the arts.

Review: The Sapphires

Much, much more of a feel good film than Oranges and Sunshine (Jim Loach, 2010), which deals with similar themes, The Sapphires nonetheless delivers grit with its glitter.

Poster from here