Screenshots identified and connections explained, after the jump. Spoilers for many movies are found below. I don’t want to give away the titles yet, because the reveal is part of the fun… just proceed with caution, all right?

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This started as a comment in a thread, but now it’s a FULL-BLOWN CONTEST.

There are not enough good roles out there for women.

Women who get shit done and are good characters to boot — more than just lycra-clad eye candy with a miscellaneous set of super-assassin skills or whatever.

So, we can talk about it (which is sometimes a good read), or we can DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

Here’s the challenge — to everyone — women and men alike. Write an action movie with good female parts in it.

If you win, we will MAKE IT.

Continue reading for rules and more information…

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The title here is taken from a recent post by mlawski on the difference between [Strong Female] Characters and [Strong Characters], Female.  The image is a painting by the French artist Louis-Leopold Boilly, which (according to the exhibit guide at the museum I saw it in) is a symbolic representation of “the phallic mother.”

More chicks with…you know…after the jump. more »

Opening Arguments

Last night I finally saw the 2007 Transformers movie.  It was OK, in a Michael Bay sort of way, but it was very clear that it was made for a very specific audience: young white nerdy men who wish they could bone models after watching them sexily fight robots so sweat cascades down their luscious tanned bodies.  All right, fine.  If you must, Michael Bay.  I’d prefer if you objectified some hot men every once in a while, but I also understand that you think that would make you gay, and you don’t want that, Michael Bay.  I understand.

But then I see this quote from Megan Fox, the actress/model playing main hottie of the film:

“Both of the female characters in the movie were very strong characters. Rachel [Taylor]’s character is very intelligent. I thought that they were representing women very well.”

That’s the last straw.  It’s bad enough that they make movies that objectify women, but then to call those women Strong Female Characters?  I do not think that phrase means what you think it means, Megan Fox.

So you know what I say?  I say screw Strong Female Characters.  What we need now are some Weak Female Characters.  My arguments below the fold…

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… so that I can tell you that there’s a red band trailer circulating the net for the Coen brothers’ upcoming film Burn After Reading.  You can watch it here.

I find it funny that the trailer says “From the makers of No Country For Old Men and The Big Lebowski,” because this one seems to be pretty clearly from the makers of The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty.

Still, a new film from the Coens is always something to get excited about.  And Kee-rist, what a cast!

I present to you as a special peek into my other projects (most of which revolve around a very cool theatre in Greater Boston), an entry into the Providence, Rhode Island 48 hour film project, Monday the 13th, by Nature’s Credit Card Productions (a new team we put together earlier this year). You can watch other 48 hour films at www.48.tv.

Our movie was selected for Best of Providence and won the Audience Award at the Best of Providence showing as well as the “Best Rhose Island movie” for its references and jokes about Providence and the area, which they like to encourage.

To keep you honest, every team in the city gets the same prop, character and line of dialog, and each team picks a genre out of a hat. For us, it was:

Character — A hairdresser named Monty Chaney

Line — “If you see him again, tell me.”

Prop — A pear

Our genre — Horror

Enjoy!

Don’t know what the 48 hour film project is and want to find out? Already know what it is and want to talk about it? Just want to bash my movie? DO SO . . . after the jump –

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Not to step on Matt’s toes, but this has been bothering me.

The Indiana Jones franchise has always been about searching for an artifact that is tied into a major world religion.

1)  Ark of the Covenant : Judaism.

2) Weird glowy rocks : Hinduism.  Kiiind of.  While none of the Indiana Jones movies are going to win any cultural sensitivity awards, I suppose I really should pause to mention that Temple of Doom’s depiction of Hinduism is ludicrous and offensive, even if the bad guys were supposed to be a nutty fringe cult.  Still, narratively speaking, the rocks get the job done.

3) The Holy Grail : Christianity.

But then we get to the latest film… more »

Or: Holy plaisire du texte, Barthes-Man!

The plot of The Dark Knight, like that of Batman Begins, is honestly kind of shapeless and waffle-y. And yet, as Memento proves, Nolan is capable of writing narratives that are drum-taught and mongoose-agile. Why is he churning out these behemoths? Why, despite the wafflage, are they so dang good?

To answer this, I’d like to take a minute to consider Batman as a piece of storytelling, to consider the properties of the tale as it’s told. You’re probably taking it as given that there are spoilers for The Dark Knight ahead. But I should warn you that there are also spoilers for Batman Begins, Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Forrest Gump, the Superman comic books, and The Hunt For Red October. Be warned.

In his famous - for a certain value of “fame” - book S/Z, Roland Barthes strip-mines Balzac’s Sarrasine, wringing every scrap of meaning out of the text and classifying his findings into five narrative codes: Hermeneutic, Semic, Proairetic, Symbolic, and Cultural. The wikipedia definitions of these codes are pretty solid as of this writing (I mean, they could be “Taco! Taco! Taco!” by tomorrow), but they’re easier to understand when you see them in action. Like after the jump! Convenience! more »

If the greatest trick that the devil ever pulled was convinving the world that he didn’t exist, the greatest trick that Pixar has ever pulled was convincing America that this guy is adorable. Last year’s Ratatouille, which managed to get the people to fall in love with a typhus-infested sewer rat, was only a warm up for the seething cauldron of weirdnesss that is WALL·E.

WALL·E is cute, of course, and he’s also a robot, so that scores him some points.  But he’s also clearly insane.  Let’s look at the facts.  He spends his days going through people’s trash, and don’t say that it’s just his job, because no one is paying him.  He does this because he wants to, or rather, because his “programming” (the voices in his head) tells him he has to. Every now and then, he’ll fixate on a valueless object - a slinky, say - and take it back to his “house” (an abandoned storage unit) where he either A) incorporates it into a giant trash sculpture, or B) carefully files it in a drawer with dozens of identical slinkies.  (It’s this hoarding aspect of his behavior that really pushes his hobby past “charming outsider art” and into “crippling obsessive compulsive personality disorder.”)  Need more proof?  Every night - every night! - he watches the same movie, which doesn’t exactly scream “sane.”   And the first time he meets a woman, he immediately starts stalking her, harassing her at work and even following her back to her house.  Uh, what else?  Oh yeah, his best friend is a cockroach.

But this is all small potatoes compared to one early scene in the film, where WALL·E passes the rusted-out carcass of another Waste Allocation Lifter Loader, Earth-Class.  He looks at the shattered robot.  He looks at his own severly damaged tank treads.  He looks at the other robot’s shiny, perfectly preserved treads.  In the next scene, we see WALL·E happily zooming along on his new legs, without a care in the world.  What does this mean?  Well, it means that WALL·E is, at best, a graverobber.  And at worst? more »

This week, the United States Coast Guard turns 218. To celebrate, we will be posting quotes from Master Chief Ben Randall (Kevin Costner’s character in The Guardian).

“22 is the number of people I lost, Jake.

The only number I kept track of.”