Van Gogh as an Indie Filmmaker

Jameela Khan over at Raindance has written an excellent piece on the Dutch artist Van Gogh, giving ten reasons why he would make a successful indie filmmaker:

 But regardless of his upbringing being different, what would he have done if he was 29 in our time? I’m sure he would have taken advantage of the film-making tools to recreate moods like never before.

I’m just unable to imagine what he could have done if he was working in our time. Have we seen it yet? Is there more to come? Would he have still chosen painting? Would he have gone into photography or film or would he have pursued something else?

Read the whole thing here 

The BAFTAs

Obviously, this post was written much closer to the award ceremony but published on Yellow Bunting on Saturday.

The BAFTA television awards have just passed and while there were a few givens (Olivia Coleman won both awards she was nominated for and currently holds the title of Number One Person you want to sit and have a cup of tea with) the rest of the bunch was varied to say the least.

But how much of what was shown accurately reflects what we as viewers are tuning into week in week out? The BAFTAs are decided by critics rather than voted for by the public like ITV’s National television awards and therefore has that air of gravitas. This is high culture right here, the stuff we should be watching. But is it?

There was one single audience award comprised of Homeland, Game of Thrones, Call the Midwife, Strictly Come Dancing, The Great British Bake Off and the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony. Surprisingly for some Game of Thrones took the prize (and delivered a very stilted acceptance speech) but some of those nominated were not recognised in any other category or they were in limited categories that don’t received as much attention or are not perceived of as important.

The one thing apart from that that all those shows have in common is they are labelled as ‘populist’, usually by those who use the word in a derogatory way. They draw in huge audience numbers (Sky Atalantic saw a 1700% increase in viewers for the Monday night slot when GoT series three debuted) and generate a load of interest from viewers but are not always critically acclaimed or if they are praised then there is an exception to them receiving wider acclaim and more nominations.

For example no one doubts the high quality and production values of GoT but it is often analysed within the parameters of genre since it is a fantasy show. Call the Midwife is Sunday Night Fluff, (Good Lord I hate the word “Fluff”) Bake Off is quaint Britishness, indicative of the twee WI wannabees sub-culture, Strictly is a guilty pleasure and Homeland is foreign so despite a British lead actor we can’t take credit for it and use it as a way to bemoan the lack of “slickness” on British TV.

In a way that can only be described as Hispster-esque, the word populist has negative connotation because of the idea that if something has mass appeal then it is automatically less deserving of our praise and conversely something is only praiseworthy is it has been seen by less than thirty people. 

Merits of other Disney Princesses

I love the Disney Princesses, my favourite was always Ariel and I wrote a short while back about the controversy that erupted when Disney did a frankly horrible redesign of Merida from Brave.

However I do want to make it clear that, as I mentioned with Belle from Beauty and the Beast, some of the later Disney Princesses do go beyond the "Princess Classic" character type. My, and others', issue is how these three dimensional characters are reduced to their looks alone in the name of merchandising.

The F Word featured an awesome article by Beth Startin that articulates this way better than I ever could. Go read!

Star Trek 2: Damon Lindelof responds to controversy

I am seeing the new Star Trek film tonight so I get to see the scene for myself. For those of you who haven't caught it there has been controversy over the allegedly sexist representation of Alice Eve's character been stared at as she gets changed into bomb disposal gear.

More here

To be fair to Lindelof he hasn't brush off the criticism and has made the effort to address concerns via twitter however like I said I haven't seen the scene so I can't comment yet but at any rate it is good to see misogyny in movies being discussed.

Nerdy Nummies on You Tube

I like TV and I like Cake what better way to waste my time than to bring those two things together:




Nerdy Nummies is Rosanna Pasino's weekly You Tube show where she bakes cakes and is genreally funny. Watch more videos here.

Guardian Interview with Col Needham

You've probably never heard of Col Needham but you have definitely seen his work.  He is without a doubt one of the most important Brits in the film industry at the moment and his invention was a turning point in how we talk about films because he is a the creator of IMDB, the biggest film directory in the world.

He also comes across as a genuinely nice guy in this piece by Catherine Shoard, found here.

My secret plan … well, my broadly public plan" – he pauses for a happy laugh – "is to make everyone love film and TV as much as I do. Growing up, we went to the cinema quite a lot. But it wasn't until I got online that I started being able to discuss films with other people."

My kind of guy

Disney do it again

And by "It" I mean hyper sexualise one of its female characters and send a bad message to young girls watching.

Disney have sexed up Merida, the protagonist of Pixar's Brave in an attempt to sell more merchandise:

Picture from here

Yeah, it is in no way creepy at all. Let's not forget the character is only about sixteen to boot. Disney have a long standing tradition of vamping up its leading ladies in a perverse attempt to appeal to an audience of young girls. A petition has been launched to change the character design back to it's original form stating:

"The redesign of Merida in advance of her official induction to the Disney Princess collection does a tremendous disservice to the millions of children for whom Merida is an empowering role model who speaks to girls' capacity to be change agents in the world rather than just trophies to be admired. Moreover, by making her skinnier, sexier and more mature in appearance, you are sending a message to girls that the original, realistic, teenage-appearing version of Merida is inferior; that for girls and women to have value – to be recognised as true princesses – they must conform to a narrow definition of beauty."

While Brenda Chapman who designed the character said:

When little girls say they like it because it's more sparkly, that's all fine and good but, subconsciously, they are soaking in the sexy 'come-hither' look and the skinny aspect of the new version. It's horrible!

From here 

The redesign takes away everything that was endearing about the character in the first place. It was refreshing to see a female character who could hold her own and had skills beyond being able to charm animals into doing household chores for her with her singing voice (not that that doesn't have it's uses). In the same way Belle from Beauty and the Beast was refreshing because she was more interested in reading and learning than finding a husband, Merida had a totally different set of priorities and the entire point of the film was her fighting for the right to her independence and the right to marry whoever she chooses or to not mary at all.

Read this article over at Hello Giggles for more!

Top TV Opening Titles Part Two

Cross posted from Yellow Bunting

As soon as I’d finished last week’s article I immediately remembered a whole host of other opening sequences that I felt should have gone in so here are ones I missed last time…

Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011-Present)

An epic title sequence for an epic show, the music and the visuals are rich in detail and echo the effort that goes into the series as a whole.

Psycho Review on Culturefly

Culturefly has just launched its new web page! It looks pretty snazzy in my opinion.

One of the articles on today's homepage is my own review of Hitchcock's 1960 masterpiece Psycho:

I think we can all safely say that even if we’ve never seen the filmPsycho we’re all aware that Norman Bates is the murderer, dressing up as his dead mother. If you were one of the two people in the known universe that wasn’t aware of that fact then my apologies but everyone knew that. It can be hard for us as modern audiences, to relate to how an audience at the time would have reacted to the twist, even the basic plot of the film is crystal clear in our minds.

Read the rest of the article here and take a look around the new site!

Top TV Opening Titles

Cross posted from Yellow Bunting

I’m going to be honest here; I usually fast forward through the credits (and the adverts and if I’m watching Glee, the musical numbers) however I do have my fair share of favourite TV show theme tunes that I’m going to share with you today:

LOST (ABC, 2004-2010)

An exercise in simplicity that also comes off as disconcerting. If only the finale had measured up. It’s also nice and short.