To what extent have the strong female leads in the film industry...
Lots of very strong, admirable women in film from the past:
The Thin Man - woman and man team 1934 Myrna Loy was equal and extremely clever
Katharine Hepburn - African Queen good example always very strong and in control
Bette Davis - powerful role model
Older role models excellent actresses - Meryl Streep, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren , Glenn Close, Sigourney Weaver - all very strong of a similar generation but older and these types don't seem to be around anymore.
Jodie Foster, Julianne Moore, Annette Bening, Catherine Zeta Jones(middle aged) Angelina Jolie, Emma Stone, (have recently had strong roles ) some with a catch - violence, men, sexuality, set in the past etc
Rachel McAdams in Morning Glory is worth a watch. (strong with no catch)
Talking about Jolie in Haywire - “Don’t think of her as being a woman,” advises Ewan McGregor, who registers strongly as a slippery agent. “That would be a mistake.”
This is from an Empire review
of Haywire (action film with a ridiculously strong female lead)
"So, the story goes that
Steven Soderbergh hit on the idea for Haywire while he was loafing in front of
some Saturday night telly. Starting up on CBS was a female-only ultimate
fighting gala. Up stepped the formidable Gina Carano. It was, for Soderbergh,
love at first strike, but the question he asked was this: “How come Angelina
Jolie’s the only woman allowed to run around with a gun and beat people up?”
Haywire is his answer, and Jolie better renew her gym membership."
Recent strong women with a catch:
Angelina Jolie - Changeling 2008 - set in past
Merida in Brave - strong and fiery but was later given the Princess treatment
Hairspray and Sally Hawkins in Made in Dagenham - 60s
Bridesmaids vs Hangover? - women look more foolish and man hungry in the Hangover the men are cool
Here are some great facts!!!
How many of the top roles are from recent times???? Hardly any!
The Bechdel test Mr Amato was talking about
Can women be strong without having to need a man, be a lesbian, or murder?
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/08/19/gender-flipping-in-hollywood./ excellent article!!!!
Here are some great facts!!!
How many of the top roles are from recent times???? Hardly any!
The Bechdel test Mr Amato was talking about
Can women be strong without having to need a man, be a lesbian,or murderer?
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/08/19/gender-flipping-in-hollywood./ excellent article!!!!
Women & film
By Ann Hornaday,October 25, 2009
To earn her two Oscars, Hilary
Swank went mano a mano with Clint Eastwood in a boxing ring and sucked face
with Chloë Sevigny. But her toughest test yet might be this weekend, when box
office numbers for "Amelia" come in. The historical drama, about the
pioneering aviatrix Amelia Earhart, represents a major risk in
Hollywood, where studio executives have been increasingly chary of making
movies about strong women. If "Amelia" earns respectable receipts,
chances are it will be dismissed as a lucky break. If it fails, it will be
cited as yet more proof that strong female protagonists are box office poison.
Reached by telephone last week, Swank -- who also executive produced
"Amelia" -- was optimistic. "I think things ebb and flow, and
someone out there who crunches numbers probably affects that," she said
regarding studios' reluctance to make films about strong women
("Amelia" was produced and distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures, a
subsidiary of Twentieth Century Fox). "Then I think art has to override
it, and the numbers people say, 'Oh right, that works.' It comes in and
out."
Strong women, for now anyway, are out. Two years ago, when the Jodie
Foster vigilante thriller "The Brave One" failed at the box office,
industry blogger Nikki Finke reported that a Warner Brothers production
executive announced to staffers that the studio would no longer produce movies
featuring female leads. This past summer, actress and writer Nia Vardalos blogged on the Huffington Post that when she was
pitching a project to a studio executive, he asked that she change the female
lead to a man. Why? Because "women don't go to movies," he told her.
"When I pointed out the box office successes of 'Sex and The City,' 'Mamma
Mia!,' and 'Obsessed,' he called them 'flukes,' " she wrote.
On paper, at least, "Amelia" should be a surefire hit. The
high-gloss portrait of 1930s pilot Earhart recalls such audience favorites as
"Out of Africa" and "The English Patient" in its sense of
epic romance and period glamour. Swank gets to flirt with two dashing leading
men, Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor. And she plays an enduringly fascinating
icon, a free spirit who vanished mysteriously in 1937, leaving behind a
tantalizing myth that combined speed, adventure, proto-feminist brio and
American optimism.
The only problem? No Manolo Blahniks! No Abba! No
vampires!
Consider: It's been nine years since Julia Roberts starred in "Erin
Brockovich," about a nervy legal assistant who wound up taking on
corporate America. Nine years before that, Jodie Foster starred in "The
Silence of the Lambs," in which she played a quietly courageous FBI agent.
Of the top 10 movies of 2009 so far, only one features a woman in a leading
role: the romantic comedy "The Proposal," starring Sandra Bullock.
"Julie & Julia," which is close to breaking the $100 million barrier,
is the only hit film that features a "serious" female protagonist -- Julia
Child, played by Meryl Streep.
In an era when women in movies fall along a spectrum defined by Hannah
Montana and "Twilight" on one end and "Sex and the
City" and "Mamma Mia!" on the other, where are the screen
heroines of yesteryear, who could be strong, serious and sexy?
"Dramas are dead," says producer Lynda Obst
("Contact," "The Invention of Lying"). "Some of the
greatest parts for women -- the Academy Award parts for women -- are often in
dramas, and this is the worst time for dramas since I've been in the business
for the last 10,000 years." More than ever, Obst adds, the movie business
is geared toward the young men who go to movies most frequently. "And by
and large that's a comedy audience and an action audience. To get a project
greenlit now, studios are requiring more and more what we call 'unaided
awareness,' which is where you get this addiction to toys and comics and old
titles. And dramas don't live there."
To understand the situation of women in Hollywood right now, one need
look no further than Drew Barrymore, whose career over the past year
perfectly crystallizes the good-news/bad-news dichotomy. The ensemble romantic
comedy she produced and starred in, "He's Just Not That Into You,"
was a hit. "Whip It," the girl-centric action comedy that marked her
feature directorial debut, was not -- even though it put Barrymore in the
company of a remarkable crop of female directors with movies out this year:
Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion, Nora Ephron, Karyn Kusama, Lynn Shelton and Lone
Scherfig (whose effervescent coming-of-age film, "An Education,"
opens Friday), to name just a few.
But Barrymore also delivered a stunning dramatic screen performance in
2009. Not in a major motion picture, but on HBO, in "Grey Gardens"
opposite Jessica Lange. "Dramas are still alive in television," says
Obst, "which is why we see some of our greatest actresses emigrating to
TV, everyone from Mary-Louise Parker to Glenn Close to Holly Hunter."