Power Linkers
Thursday, March 30, 2017 at 3:00PM Mashable the 8 main excuses Hollywood uses for whitewashing, and why they're all bunk in this day and age
Film Doctor 5 amusing notes on "Evil Disney Hegemony" and Emma Watson as Belle
The Muse Rich Juzwiak on the recent LGBT scraps thrown in mainstream Hollywood movies. Frankly I've been insulted, rather than thankful, by both of them. I just saw Power Rangers and I cannot believe people are crediting this movie with being LGBT inclusive. The Yellow Ranger never even admits she's queer. She just stays literally silent (and you know what silence equals) when someone asks if she has a girlfriend.
David Poland distributors are considering shrinking the theatrical release window again. Is this just suicide? (I hate to be an alarmist but I totally agree with David Poland's thinking here
Women in Hollywood interviews The Zookeeper's Wife author Diane Ackerman
Time lists the 50 best podcasts right now. I almost never listen to podcasts. Probably because I have no commute. I should get on that.
Pajiba on the costs of running independent film sites - ugh this hurts to read. It's so hard and we dont even do half as well as they do!
IndieWire Paul Thomas Anderson's fashion drama gets a Christmas day release
World of Reel the early reactions to the new Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales are actually positive
Awards Daily talks to composer Trevor Morris (as much as I hated Iron Fist, I liked his work on it!)
Broadway Blog Bette Midler's super gracious moment with an understudy on Hello Dolly!
Finally, Two Directing Offers of Note
Joss Whedon might write & direct a Batgirl movie. The deal is supposedly close to happening but he had such a terrible experience with Warner Bros on his Wonder Woman screenplay (and such a difficult time with Marvel on Avengers: Age of Ultron) that this is quite a surprise. The money must be really good but we keep hoping he'll create an original television series again soon rather than reshaping other people's brands.
Jordan Peele is being considered to direct both Akira and The Flash at Warner Bros thanks to the huge success of his directorial debut Get Out. But both those projects seem so troubled. The first because every iteration Hollywood has dreamt up for Akira includes removing its very Asianness (goddamnit Hollywood, just stop. Asia is an enormous enormous market for movies. You make no sense!) and the second from DC's habitual superhero and filmmaker interference problems. Wouldn't it be better if Peele follows his own muse? That worked pretty damn well for him the first time.
Reader Comments (29)
Hollywood: "The only color we see is green. Oh, and white."
I would love to see Jordan Peele tackle an Octavia Butler novel like Kindred.
Thanks for the link, Nathaniel. I've been enjoying your Michelle Pfeiffer Retrospective.
Queer moments have a way of finding their audiences and often make films praised in hindsight for having intended or not-intended in-jokes. Suddenly filmmakers/marketers have recognized the value of these moments and praised themselves for them in advance. They fail to realize that 1) you can't force an inside joke or a meaningful audience moment and 2) celebrating yourself for minor contributions, rather than trying to further the art form and conversation with more meaningful contributions, makes things worse not better.
So, is Joss Whedon's Batgirl movie ACTUALLY a DCXU production or a third attempt at kick-starting a DC movie Universe. Which one it is probably determines which Batgirl it'll be. If the former, it's probably (and definitely SHOULD be) Cassandra Cain or Stephanie Brown. (The death of Jason Todd (an event that happens basically right before Barbara Gordon's crippling by Joker) is confirmed to have happened, and I'm definitely of the mind that, if we've pretty much starting a DC Universe past the point where Barbara Gordon is Oracle, she should STAY Oracle.) If the latter, it's DEFINITELY going to be Barbara Gordon.
Regardless, I'm guessing the reason he might be doing this one is he specifically told them that something anywhere close to the $200+ million tentpole stuff he was managing with The Avengers 1&2 is off the table. So, the studio throws Batgirl out as an idea.
The whole "gay moment" nonsense for Beauty And The Beast made me want fo vomit. A two second dancing scene? That's your groundbreaking gay moment? Also, after thinking about Power Rangers and its depiction of Trini, I wouldn't call it a massive step forward. While her sexuality is hinted at during a cathartic moment, they still didn't delve into it much. When I saw the film, I wanted to believe that the character of Trini was a leap forward because I want to see myself being represented. But honestly, it's just more pandering. Same with Star Trek Beyond with that "blink and you'll miss it" scene of Sulu reuniting with his husband. More pandering and it really pisses me off.
I've got mixed feelings about Whedon. Yes, he's a fine writer and filmmaker, as Buffy, Serenity, and the first Avengers demonstrate. But if anyone has seen his tweets, he's not quite the feminist he likes to proclaim he is. Bodyshaming Nicole Kidman by comparing her face to a Thunderbirds puppet simply because she refrained from saying nasty about President Trump during an off-the-cuff interview, is not feminism, whatever your political stripe. I'm a liberal who detests Trump; not that it should matter when it comes to pointing out that sexist discourse is unacceptable under any circumstances, even if the target in question is a conservative woman, not that Kidman is a conservative (simply someone who didn't, on this occasion, want to get bogged down in a political discussion about a vile man who already dominates our lives and conversation far too much).
Speaking of Whedon, did you see the Buffy 20 year photos in EW yesterday? Literal tears.
Some thing like Death Becomes her somehow become a gay film many years after the fact.
Sulu was barely gay in "Star Trek: Beyond" there was not specific reference to his "husband" either when we first meet him or later at a party scene which would have been the natural way to it 'By the way Captain Kirk have you met my husband? "... the whitewashing article makes some interesting point
As someone who until very recently lived in an area that got very few movies other than the biggest studio releases, I totally support getting rid of the theatrical release window. All it ever did for me was prevent me from watching movies that everyone who lived in major metropolitan areas were talking about. Distribution for arthouse and foreign films is so poor outside of a handful of U.S. cities; as it stands right now, most websites will review films that don't come to the rest of the country for months, if at all. I understand the alarm of a lot of the film blogosphere, but I think the argument for the theatrical window only holds if you live in a big enough city to get a theatrical release of every movie in the first place.
Hollywood... So liberal and progressive... isn't it ?
A few thoughts:
- The fact that big corporations like Disney and Lionsgate think they're being progressive by pandering to marginalized groups with these minor, superfluous scenes in otherwise safe blockbuster movies makes me want to vomit. I can just picture a bunch of suits in a boardroom patting themselves on the back for being so "inclusive."
- "The release will most likely be a limited awards qualifying run, before the film opens nationwide in January. Warner Brothers used a similar strategy for “Inherent Vice” back in 2014, opening the film in select theaters in early December before a nationwide rollout January 9."
Do the people in charge here not remember that Inherent Vice died on its ass? A Christmas release with a slow rollout afterwards won't be doing this movie any favours especially when PTA's movies are getting more and more esoteric, and unlikely to find a wide audience. Plus I think the general public will be going out to watch the new Jumanji and The Greatest Showman on Christmas Day.
- For a couple more entertainment-related podcasts not listed in that link: "Playback with Kris Tapley (Variety entertainment journalist interviewing actors/writers/directors) and "Here's the Thing" (Alec Baldwin interviewing an assortment of people in the arts).
Jordan Peele should heed his own advice and GET OUT if the Akira remake is what he's being offered. Make more low-budget genre stuff. We need his POV on that sort of stuff more than we need him leading a studio production that will erase all of his personality.
Re: Batgirl ... I'm thinking Emma Stone would be perfect.
The only podcast anyone needs to listen to is Ronna & Beverly. Oh and The Film Experience Podcast, of course.
@Chris H
The majors are attempting to change the model not the specialty houses. Who says a foreign language title will become immediately available because the latest blockbuster from a major only lasted a month theatrically?
Even though David Polland is a terrible writer, I echo his points. If studios don't want to bother with a Florence or a Captain Fantastic, then traditional movie audiences lose. These are movies made in the craftsmanship school of filmmaking, which is in danger of extinction.
I get cynical sometimes and feel like Hollywood isn't making any progress at all. They're still making the same old white, heteronormative films and whitewashing Asian roles. Even if an Asian American did become a star, they would just be tokenized.
Anyone else here been reading the excerpts from the upcoming Sherry Lansing book at THR? I am looooooving them. Cannot wait for that book to go on sale
The Power Rangers "we have a gay ranger" promo train was super obnoxious. Key moment my ass. The silence to "girlfriends" could be read as a continuation of her outward hostility towards every other ranger for the entirety of the film. And as we learned from Josh Gad asking "where and when" to interview questions about LeFou being gay, Becky G probably had no idea she was playing a gay ranger.
Joe: Depends what you're talking about. If we're talking about a "Barbara Gordon, out of the chair" movie (That's always a possibility, but PLEASE, Warner Bros, don't be THAT stupid), then absolutely. But if we're talking about doing the modern origin story for Barbara or a Stephanie Brown or Cassandra Cain Batgirl movie? Probably need to go with a young unknown. (Yeah, the modern comics (as in, anything published 1986 onward) pretty much go with the "Everyone who uses the Batgirl mantle did so because they started crime fighting when they were a minor" idea.) Now, though that's nothing but an advantage on the page (It pretty much eliminates the sexism question AND, major upshot, it also means all the Batgirls are much closer in age to the Robins they're bouncing off of, so the back and forth can't become kind of creepy), there's definitely disadvantages to that in terms of adaptation. (Probably can't use a star, which lessens the chance of a great director coming on or the chance of the studio biting the bullet on pricey VFX or production design.)
MDA, "died on its ass" is my new favorite phrase!
Highly recommended podcast: You Must Remember This, which is focused on tales of classic Hollywood. Each episode is excellently researched and presented by Karina Longworth. Some episodes are stand-alones about a particular star or incident; she did a very well-researched series on the Blacklist, a 6-episode series on Joan Crawford's career; right now, she's in the middle of a series on dead blondes (Jayne Mansfield this week!). So addictive.
No way is "Missing Richard Simmons" one of the 50 best podcasts.
Aw, I love Bette. She, along with Whoopi, was my first actressexual crush. I've always been rooting for her.
That Christmas release for the PTA movie is a terrible idea. They tried to do the same with Silence and The Hateful Eight and it went terribly. Both got swallowed by Star Wars and critics were no help because they basically had already made up their minds on the best films of the year by then and couldn't be bothered to consider yet another film.
MJS: But Scorsese's Silence wasn't actually good? It's admirable in a "Scorsese vented out a passion project" way (and it IS better than any prior movie with Jay Cocks on any sort of writing duty), but, for me, it's just a B-. And a movie that glorifies one of the big US "Problems" of 2016. That, pretty much, old-school white Christian stubbornness is the right path.
@Volvagia. I would argue that the larger theme of Silence is a condemnation of isolationism and the notion of keeping one's country "pure," which would seem to be the bigger 2016 U.S. concern.
Either way I feel like the movie never really got its day in court because of the late release date.