BECHDEL, TESTY: Linda Holmes does the math, and notes with proper anger:
According to Fandango and some back-of-the-envelope math, excluding documentaries and animation, there are 617 movie showings today — that's just today, Friday — within 10 miles of my house.
Of those 617 showings, 561 of them — 90 percent — are stories about men or groups of men, where women play supporting roles or fill out ensembles primarily focused on men....
In many, many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn't a documentary or a cartoon — you can't. You cannot. There are not any. You cannot take yourself to one, take your friend to one, take your daughter to one.
There are not any.
It's a man's, man's, man's, man's world, but it wouldn't be nothin' without a love interest or an ex-girlfriend who harangs him for being a gadabout as she packs her things to leave him right before he goes questing for his true calling.
ReplyDeleteAnd the comments are full of "men don't want to watch dumb movies about weddings" - which, of course, is not what she's calling for.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of many reasons that I expect The Heat is going to be HUGE.
ReplyDeleteI just wish it didn't look so dumb. The lesson Hollywood seems to have taken from Bridesmaids is that women can ONLY headline a film if it's raunchy and gross. I have no problem with raunchy and gross films "for women" but they seem to forget that it also has to be, you know, a good movie.
ReplyDeleteGiven that it was written by the Parks and Rec writer who did the April/Andy wedding episode and the episode where we first meet Jean-Ralphio, I have hope.
ReplyDeleteThat gives me hope as well. And I do have to remember that the people who make the movie are NOT the people who make the trailer.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I'm seeing Fill the Void on Wednesday. Can't wait.
Marsha, you really think it looks dumb? And does profanity necessarily make it raunchy? I'm really excited about this movie, if only to have two proven female comics headlining a typically masculine genre. And I love that the trailer includes the Spanx scene -- which is specifically targeted to a female audience.
ReplyDeleteI will gladly take this film over The Hangover III, Fast and the Furious 6, and Iron Man 3, all of which are, let's be honest, kind of dumb. (Side note: Sequels are out of hand, but they're all so blatantly male-dominant and overblown. Has there been any talk of a Brave or Wreck-It Ralph sequel?)
Unfortunately, she glosses over a critical point, which is how women-oriented blockbusters there are which might make up for the losses involved in the bombs.
ReplyDelete>> "You can apparently make an endless collection of high-priced action flops and everybody says "win some, lose some" and nobody decides that They Are Poison, but it feels like every "surprise success" about women is an anomaly and every failure is an abject lesson about how we really ought to just leave it all to The Rock. Nobody remembers, it seems, how many people said Bridesmaids would fail. And it didn't! But it didn't matter.<<
The thing here is that when they "win some" with big action blockbusters, they win it all back and more. But I'm not sure (or at least I need to be made to understood) that that's the case with women-oriented movies. Sure, there's the occasional Bridesmaids or Thelma and Louise or whatnot, but the ratios of hits to misses seems to me that it might be a lot further apart with the movies she says people wants to see.
It also seems to ignore another question: do women who go to these movies by mounds of crappy food at the concession stands? I'm guessing they sell a lot more popcorn and soda per seat at Iron Man 3 than they did at Bridesmaids -- because you have piles of teenage boys at IM3. Theaters don't make money on tickets, they make money plowing stuffing your face with $9 popcorn. I'd be very surprised if theater owners didn't notice the difference and demand films from Hollywood accordingly.
Not that Hollywood isn't venal and shallow and misogynist. I'm sure all of that's true, but their not stupid. If the money makers made up for the money losers on a consistent, predictable basis, they'd make more of them. But I just don't see that it works out.
Brave, despite the Oscar win, seems have been generally viewed as something of a disappointment commercially, so I think that's unlikely. (And Pixar doesn't seem particularly interested in doing the direct to video sequels that were a staple of Disney in the 90s and early 2000s, Planes notwithstanding.)
ReplyDeleteWreck-It Ralph, there's been noise, but no formal announcement. I'd say there's a better than even chance we'll see a sequel.
Thanks, Matt. I definitely would not mind seeing Vanellope von Schweetz again. I found her to be a much more interesting heroine than Merida (and Wreck-It Ralph was a better movie than Brave).
ReplyDeleteI'll admit that this is my personal taste - raunch isn't my thing unless it is excellent raunch. Kind of like big action movies - I LOVE a really excellent action movie (particularly if it's also really funny) but cannot sit through a mediocre action movie, much less a bad one, whereas I can sit through a mediocre comedy pretty well. So Terminator 2 and True Lies are among my favorite movies, but I have no interest in some random action film. And if Miss COngeniality 2 comes on TBS while I'm doing something else, I'll probably watch it anyway.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed Bridesmaids, so it's not that I can't do raunch at all, but I didn't see what the big deal was with the first Hangover movie, which I found unfunny. So with something like The Heat, I'll wait for the reviews. I have much goodwill for the performers, but unless it's really well done, I probably won't like it. And the trailer is not hitting my sweet spot.
There are actually movies I want to see this summer (6 days to Monsters U!), which has become fairly unusual for me, so we shall see about The Heat. I really hope it's awesome, because Melissa McCarthy is kinda my hero.
Good to hear! That;'s a promising first review!
ReplyDeleteOh, and of course I will take The Heat over those three sequels, but that isn't saying anything.
ReplyDelete*they're
ReplyDeleteI love how once a month or so the comments here addresses Wreck-it Ralph's superiority compared to Brave. It also brings me great joy that this is a thing at Magic Kingdom now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgXSASV8vF0
ReplyDeleteEven if all that's true, it still leaves open the option of making big action films with female leads or balanced ensembles. Hard to know if teenage boys will see them if you don't try.
ReplyDeleteCutthroat Island, Elektra, the upcoming Expendables-with-women movie, and ... ?
ReplyDeleteI am fine with the popcorn-per-seat analysis, but it leaves aside the fact that female-led movies tend to be much cheaper to make than a CGI wonderland. And these movies make money.
Haywire (the Soderbergh action flick starring Gina Carano) tanked.
ReplyDeleteBox Office Mojo helpfully has an "Action Heroine" genre (http://boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=actionheroine.htm). Interestingly, we forget that there are two current active franchises driven by female action heroines--Resident Evil and Underworld.
But how much it costs to make a movie doesn't enter into the economics of the theater. I have no particular knowledge of theater economics, other than that they make money off concessions, not tickets, so I don't know how that would work out. I'd be surprised if theater-owner demand is something that really needs teasing out to understand the problem identified, such as it is.
ReplyDeleteOh, um ... motherfucking HUNGER GAMES. I should not have forgotten that.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I'd describe Hunger Games as an action flick, though. Certainly in the first one, it takes a good hour before we get to the actual arena.
ReplyDeleteHunger Games still falls into the category of genre-themed adventure films, a category that includes nearly every blockbuster ever.
ReplyDeleteSaw Shadow Dancer this weekend - one of the few that Linda noted - and thoroughly enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteLara Croft?
ReplyDeletei'd say an exception to this is "Before Midnight." Okay, it's probably not playing at many theaters in the country as a smaller movie. And it's just as much a movie about the man as the woman. But it's clearly a story about both of them, individually and as a couple. And it's one of the few movies out there which really goes into the complexity of a woman's life - does she give up her career for her husband, does she feel attractive as she ages, how does she feel about sex in a long-term relationship, etc.
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