Still in the game with a unique pop culture perspective
Just in case you wanted to go see the movie Veronica Mars and don’t know the TV series that spawned this lady detective tale of female empowerment, here is the whole story. It will be the first two minutes of the new Veronica Mars movie.
Now you know the rest of the story, you are free to attend the movie.
I’ve seen all sorts of snarky comments about how the star-studded selfie tweeted by Ellen during the Oscar show was about product placement or self-indulgence. Or how it was a waste of time and only made the Oscars longer and more boring.
But the fact is, it worked. People responded. There were more retweets of that moment than of anything that has ever happened on Twitter before.
If it was such a bad idea, such a waste of time, why did it work?
All the snarky pundits are missing a key point about social media. It’s social. It’s community. It’s shared experience. When Ellen asked the audience to retweet her selfie to set a new record on Twitter, it was something that everyone watching the Oscars could participate in together. An audience, a socially engaged audience, could make something happen together. It was a moment of community engagement and action.
It was the most brilliantly successful thing ever accomplished with social media. Could it be reproduced in other ways, at other times, by other people?
There were some built in advantages for this particular selfie.
If you didn’t start off with those advantages would you be able to pull off a successful social media event? Maybe someone else couldn’t set a new record like Ellen can, but someone else could come up with a creative idea and get a large response. Stuff goes viral all the time. This event was viral times infinity.
Can we learn lessons from this selfie phenomenon that could be applied to more serious situations? Hurricane relief, citizen uprisings, floods, crimes, causes?
Who will the next social media genius to mimic an effect like this be? Are you thinking about how to do it?
Generally speaking, I don’t like Seth Rogan movies. I know he’s supposed to be funny, but I think he’s mainly funny to 20 something guys, and not to elder women. On the other hand, I love Barbra Streisand. I’ve been a devoted Streisand fan since the 1960’s when those 3 one hour specials she did on TV just blew my mind completely. Streisand and I have grown old together and my love for her talent has never wavered.
Along comes The Guilt Trip, starring exactly two people: Seth Rogan and Barbra Streisand. Obviously, I watched it, or I wouldn’t be typing about it right now. It was excellent. It didn’t make me a big Seth Rogan fan, but it does force me to admit that he’s good at what he does. Rogan and Streisand are fabulous together as a mother and son – a Jewish mother and her long-suffering son – which is a good thing because the two of them are pretty much the whole movie.
They drive in a small car, share hotel rooms, talk, argue, kvetch, reminisce, reach some understanding with each other, and find a way to be a new version of mother and son. It’s lovely. That’s my final judgement: lovely. A lovely movie. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.
Here’s one of the trailers for the film.
One other thing I learned from watching this film: Barbra Streisand remains fabulous!
And While We Were Here is set on the Italian island of Ischia. It’s full of picture postcard views and gorgeous scenery. The film stars Kate Bosworth as Jane, Iddo Goldberg as her viola playing husband, and Jamie Blackley as a young American slacker Jane meets while in Italy.
Overall, And While We Were Here is subdued and reflective. Even the “fun” escapades Jane has with her young American are muted. The story, seemingly about a love affair, is really about loss and the letting go of loss.
The young American lover is merely a way for Jane to accept the inevitable consequences of her losses and move on with her life. He’s a way to unlock from the past and move toward the future.
As the film ended, I decided I would give the film a rating of 3 out of 5 stars, meaning it was worth watching but not fabulous. Then the credits rolled and Jennifer Warnes starting singing “Famous Blue Raincoat” and the whole story suddenly made sense. It was a movie version of “Famous Blue Raincoat.” I looked the film up and, indeed, the writer and director Kat Coiro was quoted as saying that she was inspired by the Leonard Cohen song. This knowledge doesn’t make we want to improve my rating, but it certainly puts the film into context and deepens my understanding.
If you enjoy introspective films that unfold slowly and deal with human efforts to “go clear,” you will enjoy this film.
Here’s the trailer.
The film was released in 2012. I found it on Netflix, so I’m sure it’s available on other streaming services as well.
Let’s start with this infographic from Where’s the Diversity, Hollywood? 85 Years of the Academy Awards from Lee and Low Books. This information is from a study of 85 years of awards and reveals the lack of diversity in the Oscar Awards.
We, as consumers, can do something about this lack of diversity. I’ll get to how in a minute.
The article containing this infographic talks how independent films and filmmakers can bring about change in what we see in movies. Four independent filmmakers are interviewed in the article. They talk about what they are doing and how they use crowd sourced fundraising tools like Kickstarter to get films made.
The filmmakers interviewed also talk about watching films from other countries in languages other than English. Several people talked about rejecting attempts from directors and writers to create stereotypes rather than more realistic characters.
IndieWire picked up the infographic, as I did, and wrote about it The Diversity Gap in the Academy Awards in Infographic Form. This article emphasized that the box office drives which films get made.
The situation right now is that when a film with a female lead such as The Hunger Games or Bridesmaids takes the box office the Hollywood power structure is as surprised as Fox News was when President Obama was reelected in 2012. It shouldn’t be a surprise, it should be expected.
We, as consumers, are the ones spending the dollars at the box office. We, as consumers, are the ones choosing the channel on the TV or setting the DVR to record. What can we do to increase diversity?
Here are a few ideas.
Lee and Low Books have done similar studies of The Tony Awards, The Emmy Awards, the children’s book industry, The New York Times Top 10 Bestseller List, and US politics. Thanks to them for organizing this information and making accessible visuals to help us understand the stats.
The Representation Blog published The Representation Test on 2/28/2014. This is a downloadable test that,
. . . gives films points for representations of people which avoid harmful and limiting stereotypes, as well as for having diversity behind-the-camera. There are 27 possible points in the test, but any film scoring 11 or above receives an “A” for representation.
Downloading and using this test, and talking about your scores in public places such as your blog and Twitter is another good way that you as a consumer can help change the status quo. You may want to to check back for new versions of the test from time to time, because the creators say it will evolve over time.
Image credit: Diversity Quilt via Flickr.
Melissa McCarthy is coming our way again in July in Tammy. The teaser trailer is here now. Not only is McCarthy the star, she’s the writer.
Also starring in this extravaganza of funny are Susan Sarandon, Toni Collette, Allison Janney, Dan Aykroyd and Kathy Bates. What a cast!
Ben Falcone directs. He’s Melissa McCarthy’s husband.
What do you think? I think it looks fabulous!
Frankie & Alice stars Halle Berry, Phylicia Rashad, and Stellan Skarsgard. It’s been finished since 2011 and is just now being released in the U.S. It will appear in theaters on April 4.
The film is based on a true story. Halle Berry plays a woman with multiple personality disorder. One of her personalities is racist.
The performance we see in this brief preview looks masterful and worthy of award nominations. This film looks like an exciting showcase for Halle Berry to show once again what a powerful actress she is. I’m not sure why it took so long to be released in the U.S., but it’s coming soon and it looks good.
Image credit of Halle Berry in Frankie & Alice © 2010 – Freestyle Releasing
Unbroken, directed by Angelina Jolie, is based on the true story of Olympic runner Louis Zamperini. The movie isn’t due out until December, but this preview emphasizes Zamperini’s Olympic career and was released during the Olympics.
I read the book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
I often have a problem with films when the faces are unfamiliar. This applies to an awful lot of indie films I see. The problem is that I have trouble keeping track of who the characters are and what their contribution to the story is because I don’t recognize the faces. It makes it hard for me to keep everyone organized in my head.
I don’t blame this on the filmmakers or on the stories they are telling. It’s probably some brain glitch on my part that takes me a while to learn to distinguish faces. Slow synapses or some such.
Last night I watched a movie that had a whole lot of female characters. (How unusual for me!) Only the main character was an actress I’d seen and heard of before. And her face only looked identifiable from certain angles, because I hadn’t seen a lot of her. I couldn’t keep her interactions with all the other characters sorted because I had trouble remembering who everyone was. It’s not like watching August: Osage County, where every person on the screen is someone I’d seen dozens of times before.
The particular indie I saw last night was a good movie about a marriage gone stale, and I wanted to get more out of it.
I found a solution. I watched the film twice. The second time through I had better luck keeping track of who was who and what their particular part of the story meant in the overall scheme of things.
Now that I’ve discovered this trick, I will used it again on indie films with cast members I might not know so well (yet) and on foreign films with unfamiliar actors, too.
Do you have a trick for keeping the characters organized in your head when the faces are all unfamiliar to you?
Photo credit: The Kheel Center via Flickr
Beauty in Truth, a film by Pratibha Parmar, is a documentary about American writer and activist Alice Walker.
Predisposed to love it would be a good description of my attitude toward the film. I’m a lifelong admirer of Alice Walker. I have a tendency to finish her books and turn back to page 1 and start reading again. She’s an extraordinary soul – a beautiful soul – who has given so much to the planet. I respect her, I value her brilliance, I see so much wisdom and spiritual guidance in work. Her life is an inspiration.
Everyone should see Beauty in Truth. Everyone who is cares about American history. Everyone who cares about justice anywhere on the planet. Everyone with an interest in writing and storytelling.
Indeed, my recommendation of the film is enthusiastic and heartfelt.
Pratibha Parmar wrote, directed and produced the film. She first worked with Alice Walker after the release of Possessing the Secret of Joy, Walker’s novel about female genital mutilation. The Beauty in Truth website explains,
1993 Pratibha released her most challenging film Warrior Marks, which documented female genital mutilation at a time when the subject was taboo globally. This award-winning documentary was made in collaboration with the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alice Walker. Parmar and Walker collaborated on the book Warrior Marks – Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women, which documented the making of the film.
Beauty in Truth documents Alice Walker’s life from her upbringing in rural Georgia to the present day. It uses interviews, conversations with Alice, quotations from her poems and books, historical video footage, news reports and video and personal images supplied by Alice Walker to create the story of a writer and activist who is known worldwide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alice_Walker.jpg
The particularities and struggles of Alice Walker’s life reflect with universal truth on the Civil Rights Movement, on the women’s movement, on the gay rights movement, and movements for justice all around the globe. Her struggles and the reaction of the American people to them are not just a story about her but a story about the American character. Her writing and her activism create change that affects us all.
Alice Walker has been honored as a writer with a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for The Color Purple as well as numerous other awards and honors for her writing and humanitarianism. This film honors the life she’s lived as a human being with an ability to understand and speak for truth and justice.
The film is available for streaming on PBS if you act soon. A screening schedule is available on the film website, and the film can be booked for showing in schools. (PBS LearningMedia provides four video-based educational components are available for teachers of grades 9-12 to download for free. University level instructors can sign up to be notified when materials for their level are available. Instructions are on the website.)
I saw quite a few tweets about the film when it first aired on PBS last week. I thought you might be interested in the reactions of a few other people as well.
It was such a wonderful and deeply touching film #Beautyintruth #Alicewalker
— Mahlet (@Mahlet_S) February 8, 2014
The Color Purple is one of the first books ppl accepted as “universal” despite not being White or hegemonic. Matters. #BeautyInTruth
— Trudy (@thetrudz) February 8, 2014
Imagine I say something here which inspires you to click this link and let her in…#AliceWalker: #BeautyinTruth http://t.co/s5ZmEO9LPX
— Ben (@BenReadsALot) February 8, 2014
#alicewalker #beautyintruth just saved my life. this is not an exaggeration.
— C.L.M. (@onceuponapoet) February 8, 2014
Activism is the rent I pay for living in America. #AliceWalker #beautyintruth
— Ericka (@designsofzuri) February 8, 2014
@kalifilms Stunning, as always! Some people make documentaries, you love them into being. @alicewalkerfilm #beautyintruth
— W.L. Lewis (@ArtMusicLife) February 8, 2014
Really glad I switched over to #BeautyInTruth b/c this was an amazing doc. #AliceWalker is truly a magnificent person.
— Arnesa (@_arnesa_) February 8, 2014
