REPOST: If Critics Chose the Oscars: 2015 Edition

The Oscars (Academy Awards) is an annual American awards ceremony celebrating and recognizing the various cinematic milestones of the year. As The Oscars draws near, critics make their own list of nominees and winners for each major award enumerated in this TIME article below.

Image Source: time.com

They're not members of the Academy, and they don't vote as Oscar handicappers. But the consensus selection of critics groups indicates wins for Boyhood, The LEGO Movie, J.K. Simmons and Patricia

So, for the sixth consecutive year, TIME has tabulated the votes of awards-giving movie societies — 34 this time, listed at the bottom*. Canvassing Kristopher Tapley’s In Contention awards blog, I assign one point to the winner in each category from each group; ties get a half-point. No points for runners-up or for subsidiary actor categories such as Breakout, Ensemble or Youth in Film.

We won’t know whether the Academy agrees with the critics until Oscar night, Feb. 22. For now, check out all the winners and contenders in 10 categories, plus my speculation on how the members of the Academy might vote.

Best Actor: Michael Keaton, Birdman, 16½; Jake Gyllenhaal,Nightcrawler, 7; David Oyelowo, Selma, 3; Tom Hardy, Locke, 2; Timothy Spall, Mr. Turner, 2; Ralph Fiennes, The Grand Budapest Hotel, 1; Brendan Gleeson, Calvary, 1; Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything, 1; Oscar Isaac, A Most Violent Year, ½.

Keaton, the critics’ consensus fave, should get a lot of love from the Academy for his gutsy performance as a worn-out actor at career crisis. Gyllenhaal finished strong as a creepy cameraman and is assured an Oscar nomination. In the battle of actors playing real-life Cambridge math geniuses with disabilities, Redmayne’s Stephen Hawking is a flashier and, oddly, cuddlier turn than Benedict Cumberbatch’s Alan Turing in The Imitation Game. The Screen Actors Guild, which has many members among Academy voters, nominated Cumberbatch, Gyllenhaal, Keaton, Redmayne and, for Foxcatcher, Steve Carell. Fingers crossed that fifth place goes to Fiennes’ grandly mannered performance in the most substantial box-office hit on this list.

Best Actress: Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl, 11; Marion Cotillard,Two Days, One Night and/or The Immigrant, 8; Julianne Moore, Still Alice, 5; Reese Witherspoon, Wild, 4; Essie Davis,The Babadook, 2; Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Belle, 2; Patricia Arquette,Boyhood, 1; Tilda Swinton, Only Lovers Left Alive, 1.

The Oscar shortlist should be Moore (a four-time nominee), Witherspoon (winner for Walk the Line in 2006) and the English back-bencher Pike, promoted to Cabinet status as Amy the Gone Girl, plus Felicity Jones as Hawking’s wife Jane in The Theory of Everything and maybe Jennifer Aniston in Cake; those are also the five SAG finalists. Cotillard, a 2008 Oscar winner for playing Edith Piaf in La vie en rose, has little chance of getting the Oscar benediction for either of her 2014 roles. Plaudits to the Central Ohio and North Carolina critics for fêting Davis as the beset mom in The Babadook. The L.A. critics named Arquette in this category, which you can slide into Supporting Actress to pad Arquette’s enormous lead.

Best Supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette, Boyhood, 20½; Tilda Swinton, Snowpiercer, 4; Jessica Chastain, A Most Violent Year, 3½; Carmen Ejogo, Selma, 1; Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game, 1; Agata Kulesca, Ida, 1; Rene Russo,Nightcrawler, 1; Octavia Spencer, Black or White, 1; Emma Stone, Birdman, 1.

The Oscar is already Arquette’s. She has a signature role in a movie the Academy will want to honor several times, and her competition is slim-to-none. Chastain has a shot at an Academy nomination for a late-screening film, though she didn’t make the SAG shortlist. The final five there: Arquette, Knightley, Stone, Meryl Streep in Into the Woods and Naomi Watts in St. Vincent.

Best Supporting Actor: J.K. Simmons, Whiplash, 25½; Edward Norton, Birdman, 7; Mark Ruffalo, Foxcatcher, 1; Tyler Perry, Gone Girl, ½.

The lopsided lead for career utilityman Simmons accurately reflects his status as prohibitive favorite in this year’s Oscars. If he had any serious competition, and he doesn’t, it would be Norton, who does the gaudiest, most enjoyable work in Birdman. SAG filled out its card with Ruffalo, Robert Duvall in The Judge(arguably a leading performance) and Ethan Hawke as the dad inBoyhood.

Original Screenplay: The Grand Budapest Hotel, 13;Birdman, 7½; Nightcrawler, 3; Selma, 2; Boyhood, 1½; Beyond the Lights, 1; Calvary, 1; The LEGO Movie, 1.

The first five titles here could be the Academy quintet of nominees — unless the members blame the Paul Webb script forSelma‘s treatment of Lyndon Johnson as the challenger, not the champion, of Martin Luther King Jr. in the push for voting rights. The Writers Guild of America, whose stringent rules excluded both Selma and Birdman (a sure Oscar screenplay nominee) from eligibility, chose these five finalists: Boyhood,Foxcatcher, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Nightcrawler andWhiplash.

Best Adapted Screenplay: Gone Girl, 12; Inherent Vice, 2½;Guardians of the Galaxy, 1; The Imitation Game, 1; Obvious Child, 1; Whiplash, 1; Snowpiercer, ½.

Not much competition for Gillian Flynn, who wrote the Gone Girl novel and screenplay. The WGA nominees were American Sniper, Gone Girl, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Imitation Game and Wild. The script for The Theory of Everything, which the WGA deemed ineligible, is a likely Oscar finalist. And if you’re wondering why Whiplash got an Original Screenplay nomination from the WGA and an Adapted award from the Indiana critics group, it’s because director Damien Chazelle made a short version of his movie to raise money for the feature.

Best Documentary: CITIZENFOUR, 16; Life Itself, 12; The Overnighters, 2; Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me, 1; Keep On Keepin’ On, 1.

It’s a battle between two dominant personalities: one in the world of film (critic Roger Ebert for Life Itself), the other in the whole world (whistleblower Edward Snowden forCITIZENFOUR). Both films made the preliminary round of 15 features chosen by the Academy, which also includes The Overnighters and Keep On Keepin’ On.

Best Animated Feature: The LEGO Movie, 20; The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, 3; The Boxtrolls, 2; Big Hero 6, 1; How to Train Your Dragon 2, 1.

Again, the critics’ majority favorite will snag an Academy Award. With a $257-million score at the domestic box office (fourth best for 2014), The LEGO Movie is also the year’s only blockbuster likely to win an Oscar.

Best Director: Richard Linklater, Boyhood, 22; Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Birdman, 6; Ava Du Vernay, Selma, 3; Dan Gilroy,Nightcrawler, 2; Clint Eastwood, American Sniper, 1.

Linklater, shooting his movie over 12 consecutive summers, and Iñárritu, pretzeling his cast and crew into executing labyrinthine shots lasting 10 mins. or more, would get Oscar-nominated just for pulling off impossible stunts. But what about the other three? I’d say Eastwood stands the best chance of earning a place in the Academy’s fave five — and that, in several categories, American Sniper will register more impressively with the Academy than it did with the reviewers. James Marsh (The Theory of Everything) and Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game) might fight for a slot or each get one. But Linklater, as his overwhelming victory with the critics’ groups indicates, will be the one giving a speech on Oscar night.

Best Film: Boyhood, 17; Birdman, 6; The Grand Budapest Hotel, 3; Selma, 3; Gone Girl, 1; Goodbye to Language, 1; A Most Violent Year, 1; Nightcrawler, 1; Snowpiercer, 1.

With wins in fully half of the critics’ groups, Boyhood is also the leader in the Oscars’ Best Picture race. Birdman, Gone Girl, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Nightcrawler and Selma, plus American Sniper, The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything, could fill eight other slots in this bounteous Academy category. The Producers Guild of America, another industry group that overlaps significantly in Academy membership, chose eight of those nine — minus Selma, and adding Foxcatcher and Whiplash— as its 10 nominees. SAG, which choses five films to compete for its Outstanding Performance by a Cast award, boiled the list down to Birdman, Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything. Again, Selmawas excluded; it’s said that Paramount didn’t get screeners of this Christmas Day release to the guilds on time. So don’t expect the critics’ year-end favorite to provide an insurmountable obstacle to Linklater’s patient story of the boy who grew up.

*The 34 organizations surveyed: local or regional critics’ groups from Austin, Boston, Boston Online, Central Ohio, Chicago, Dallas–Fort Worth, Detroit, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Nevada, New York, New York Online, North Carolina, North Texas, Oklahoma, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Southeastern, St. Louis, Toronto, Utah, Vancouver and Washington, D.C.; plus the African American Film Critics Association, the Black Film Critics Circle, the National Board of Review, the National Society of Film Critics and the Online Film Critics Society.

Hello! My name is Louis A. Habash and I enjoy watching a good film. Follow me on Twitter for the latest news and reviews from the movie scene.

Back to the basics: Writing a film review

Image Source: theguardian.com

There are a lot of things that I look to when reading movie reviews online and I tend to get nitpicky about it since I write my own. However, I don't read other people's reviews so that I could belittle other critics but because I know that I can learn a lot of things from them. The following are just some of the things that I've picked up when writing and reading film reviews:

Watch the movie (preferably more than once)

To review a film without watching it is blasphemy. Watch the movie either in the cinema or in the comfort of your own home or anywhere you feel comfortable. As an added tip, I find that watching the movie once is not enough to capture its essence and I recommend watching a second (or a third) time, since it is easy to miss key elements and important details on a single viewing.

Give your honest opinion

Share what you think about the movie but avoid bias. Remember that a review is not meant to bash an actor, director, writer, or any person involved with the production. Always provide an explanation or a valid reason for your opinions even if you think it's obvious.

Know your audience

It is important to take note of who your readers are. A review on the latest action film will likely attract male readers so you should write about what you think they would want to know about the movie.

Image Source: wikihow.com

Talk about the movie but avoid spoilers

It is hard to enjoy movie when you already know what will happen, no thanks to spoilers. People want to know if a movie is good or not but they don't want to know all the details. Keep in mind that there will be readers who have not seen the film you're reviewing so stick to the obligatory information (the title, director, main cast, etc.) and a simple outline of the story. Avoid writing about key plot twists and big revelations.

Write about the different aspects of the movie as well. For example, you can discuss how the actors played their parts and if they are suited for the role. Another important aspect that can be discusses is the plot. Was the story intriguing, funny, or did it bore you to sleep? Was it complicated or easy to understand? These are just some of the things you can include in your review.

Evaluate the technical elements

Cinematography, lighting, and special effects are just some of the aspects we look forward to in movies especially in fantasy or superhero films. These are some of the things that make or break a movie so it is important to include them in your review.

Aside from the abovementioned, you should also make proofreading and editing a part of your routine. It would be embarrassing to find bad grammar or misspelled key terms in your review and it may affect your reputation as well.

Image Source: nautical11.wordpress.com

Hi, I'm Louis A. Habash, a film critic and movie enthusiast. Follow me on Twitter for the latest news about recent films and upcoming movies.

REPOST: Coming to the screen, ‘Gone Girl’ doesn’t go anywhere

Ben Affleck is back in the Oscar discussion with Gone Girl. Read this article below:

Image Source: bostonglobe.com

The Dunnes would seem to have it all. Nick has a chiseled, dimpled chin that’s so attractive his wife, Amy, describes it as “villainous.” He also has the chiseled upper body of a super hero. If you didn’t know that Ben Affleck, who plays Nick, has Batman for his next role, you could guess it from his distracting buffness. Amy (Rosamund Pike) is tall and blond with the kind of icy good looks that consistently drew the directorial attention of Alfred Hitchcock (hmm). She’s even a celebrity, albeit of an odd sort, having been the model for the heroine of a series of “Amazing Amy” children’s books.

As the many readers of Gillian Flynn’s best-selling thriller know, Amy is the title character of “Gone Girl.” As they also know, gone-ness can take many forms.

Nick and Amy live in a McMansion in the happy quietude of North Carthage, Mo., his hometown. They moved there from New York — where else could such a golden couple have met and married? — when Nick’s mother got sick. Now he owns a bar, called The Bar (clever fellow, Nick), which he runs with his twin sister, Margo (Carrie Coon). Amy paid for it with the last bit of her trust fund. What does Amy do? Well, nothing much, really. And when we first meet Nick, it’s at The Bar, it’s before noon, and he’s drinking. Today is his and Amy’s fifth wedding anniversary, but he’s not exactly drinking to celebrate. Oh, and when he gets home, Amy has disappeared. So maybe the quietude isn’t so happy, after all.

“Gone Girl” has been much anticipated: a big-ticket property filmed by an even bigger-ticket director, David Fincher. Fincher has shown a title for bringing to the screen complicated plots (“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”), complicated, beleaguered women (ditto, “Panic Room”), and bringing to life emotionally unattractive overachievers (“The Social Network”). “Gone Girl” would seem a good match for his smoothly efficient, if slightly inhuman, talents.

Except that it’s not. Flynn’s piling up of yuppie-pulp implausibilities — don’t worry, no further plot description will occur — leave Fincher at a loss. “Zodiac” (his best movie?) is a brilliantly unsettling exercise in nothing ever quite coming together. It’s the intersection of procedure and irresolution. “Gone Girl” is quite otherwise: a cloverleaf of some procedure (Affleck actually hums the “Law & Order” theme at one point) and, ultimately, a lot of explaining (voice-overs come in handy). The movie glories in the sound of very large pieces of plot snapping together very loudly, though admittedly the snapping takes its own sweet time. “Gone Girl” is a loooong 149 minutes. Perhaps Flynn, who did the adaptation, has been a little too faithful to her novel. The faux-punchiness of her dialogue doesn’t help matters. The characters sound like people trying to sound like people in the movies and not quite pulling it off.

Fincher does keep the Volvo SUVs moving — he’s nothing if not proficient — but he seems disengaged. Or he does until a scene of Grand Guignol mayhem toward the end of the movie. The screen erupts not just with blood but also an intensity the movie otherwise lacks.

It’s never a good sign when the supporting cast is the best thing in a big, splashy movie. Coon’s Margo is smart and personable and lively as Affleck’s Nick never is. (Just because his character’s meant to be unsympathetic doesn’t mean his performance should be inert.) Kim Dickens’s police detective nicely combines sourness and staying power. Playing a high-powered defense attorney, Tyler Perry is smooth, funny, and unflappable. “Gone Girl” would be a lot more entertaining, and probably a lot better, if he and Affleck had exchanged roles.

An egregiously miscast Neil Patrick Harris, as an old beau of Amy’s, at least has a vividness neither principal does. Affleck looks even more uncomfortable than Nick ought to be, and that’s saying a lot. As for Pike, she looks like an elongated Renée Zellweger on nasty pills. (What has Renée Zellweger been up to?)

Misogyny has a long and unattractive history in the movies. Despite Flynn’s being a woman, “Gone Girl” adds to that history. Amy is amazing, all right, and in ways unimaginable to her parents — or viewers. Maybe readers could imagine them, but things on the page can get by a phoniness detector in a way that things on the screen can’t. Seeing is believing, yes. It can be disbelieving, too.

Hi there! I am Louis A. Habash, a writer and film critic. Please visit my Facebook page for the latest news in the film industry.

REPOST: There’s more to film criticism than a superficial flick of the thumb

 Tom Ryan of The Australian talks about what it really takes to be a serious film critic.

Roger Ebert, left, and Gene Siskel offered sketch plot outlines and strong opinions on US TV show ‘At the Movies’.  |  Image Source: theaustralian.com

FILM criticism, like film critics, comes in all shapes and sizes. An unhelpful slogan for the Melbourne International Film Festival a few years ago — “Everyone’s a critic” — went so far as to suggest that all anyone had to do was have an opinion and — hey presto! — they were critics.

MIFF seems to have qualified such a notion this year with a mentoring program for eight aspiring critics that pointed to a new appreciation of the expertise that might be required. (Disclaimer: along with a handful of writers, I was one of the mentors.)

But what exactly is this thing called film criticism? What forms might it take? What should filmgoers expect from it? Should it function simply as a consumer guide, or should it provide something more than that? Whose interests does it serve?

Pauline Kael, film critic for The New Yorker from 1968 to 1991, regarded it as a noble calling, placing herself in the tradition of others offering commentary about the arts.

“The critic is the only independent source of information,” she wrote. “All the rest is advertising.”

David Denby, one of her successors at The New Yorker, has long worried that serious reviewing has been undergoing a slow death at the hands of “hack critics” content to write publicity blurbs for distributors “like free candy”.

That view was in harmony with the one voiced earlier in the 1990s by Time critic Richard Corliss: “Movie criticism of the elevated sort is an endangered species. Once it flourished; soon it may perish, to be replaced by a consumer service that is no brains and all thumbs.”

In their sights was the tendency evident in the popular Chicago-based television show At the Movies, hosted at the time by Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, who both also wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times. The frequently duelling duo would offer sketchy plot outlines and strong opinions about new film releases, delivering verdicts via thumbs. It began in 1986, about the same time Australia gave birth to The Movie Show (later At the Movies), hosted by David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz.

Siskel died in 1999, Ebert last year. The latter’s career as a film critic and his struggle with a thyroid cancer is the subject of Steve James’s moving documentary,Life Itself . It includes gentler commentary by Corliss about At the Movies, maintaining his criticism but remembering it more affectionately as “a sitcom about two guys who lived in a movie theatre”.

In James’s film, a curmudgeonly Jonathan Rosenbaum, the longtime, well-respected former film critic for the Chicago Reader, vents his spleen against At the Movies and other critics working for the popular media. “Consumer advice is not the same thing as criticism ... Invariably a show like Gene and Roger’s becomes part of the mainstream system and, by and large, the purpose of mainstream reviewing is not just to valorise films that get multi-million-dollar ad campaigns but to eliminate everything else.”

Several filmmakers appear in Life Itself to refute Rosenbaum’s accusations. Independent American filmmaker Gregory Nava (Selena) testifies that Ebert and Siskel “looked for people like me”. Documentary director Errol Morris says, “I really believe that I would not have a career if not for those guys.” Werner Herzog and Martin Scorsese also deliver passionate cases for the defence.

Still, Rosenbaum’s commentary about the way film critics find themselves working hand in hand with the film-marketing industry, even if inadvertently, makes sense.

Furthermore, this doesn’t happen only in relation to productions with big advertising bucks at their disposal: it’s always the case. No review of a film, or feature material about it, will appear anywhere without a degree of co-operation between those writing or presenting it and those pitching the film to them. The transaction includes the arrangement of previews, the delivery of press kits and sometimes the organising of interstate or overseas junkets to connect those making the films with those reviewing them.

It’s not that critics are selling their souls here: there are no guarantees of how they’re going to respond. But it is the way the system works. And, as the old PR adage puts it, as far as the marketing business is concerned, a bad review is better than no review at all. Those involved in the creative side of filmmaking, of course, may disagree. For them, it’s almost always much more personal.

Actor-writer Harry Shearer, the voice of 21 characters in The Simpsons and a member of Christopher Guest’s wonderful comic ensemble, confessed in a recent interview with me: “People can say nice stuff about you or praise you and it goes in one ear and out the other. But I think if they say something nasty about you, there’s this part of your brain that plays it over and over again.” The late actor Eli Wallach once noted that “having the critics praise you is like having the hangman say you’ve got a pretty neck”.

In Life Itself, Rosenbaum makes an important point about the current state of film criticism. Critics of any kind should never regard themselves as answerable to those with vested interests in the films under review. And serious criticism should never have consumer advice as its major priority, even if readers, viewers or listeners can choose to use it that way.

Film reviews may come with stars attached, but what they should be doing is offering a different kind of illumination. AO Scott, chief film critic for The New York Times, eloquently outlines the mindset required to produce it: “Criticism is a habit of mind,” he writes, “a discipline of writing, a way of life — a commitment to the independent, open-ended exploration of works of art in relation to one another and the world around them.” To which I’d only want to add the word “informed”.

The film critic’s task, then, like the ones faced by their peers in dealing with the other arts, is to explain as clearly as possible what it is that makes a particular film tick.

There are any number of ways of doing this, but all require an ability to make the pieces of the jigsaw fit together, sometimes in ways that were never intended.

One aspect of this may be a concern with how well a film’s plot works, if indeed it has one. But criticism that stops there, as it too often does, isn’t really doing its job. It’s equally important to pay attention to how all the other elements at the filmmaker’s disposal have been deployed: the composition of the shots, the cutting together of the images, the use of colour, music and sound, the evocation of character. In short, how the film works — its shape and its tone, its poetics and its politics.

An illustration of this is Richard Misek’s Rohmer in Paris . A documentary analysis of the work of Eric Rohmer, it’s almost entirely made up of footage from the French new wave writer-director’s films, from his first feature, Le Signe du Lion (1962) to his last, The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (2007), with Misek’s commentary attached. Misek traces the way Rohmer connects his characters to each other via networks of exchanged glances and crossed paths as they make their way around Paris and beyond. Sometimes these intersections change the course of the characters’ lives; sometimes they lead nowhere. But, as Misek shows, they’re fundamental to the notion of the “Rohmerian coincidence” that allows a sense of destiny to emerge from the characters’ everyday routines. In cataloguing the details of the films, Misek explains, “I was simply repeating all of Rohmer’s repetitions.”

Both a cinephile’s love letter to a filmmaker and an insightful commentary about his preoccupations and working methods, Rohmer in Paris is only a little more than an hour long, but it’s the result of an enormous amount of research and a knowing engagement with its subject. Which is what is required for any serious film criticism.

For more cinema tidbits and the like, follow Louis A. Habash on Twitter.

REPOST: Universal could reanimate old-school movie monsters, from Frankenstein to the Invisible Man

Imagine a universe where all classic horror movie monsters exist.  An article by Ben Beaumont-Thomas of The Guardian talks about Universal's plans to revive the horror classics on the big screen.
 

Image Source: theguardian.com

From Spider-Man to Transformers, franchises have become Hollywood's most reliable cash cow, allowing them to create the epic narratives allowed on TV's canvas, and building characters that millions of people worldwide become attached to. Now Universal is gearing up a new set of franchises based around its library of classic horror characters, some last seen decades ago.

The studio's monsters include Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Mummy, all of which have had frequent movie outings, but also the Invisible Man, the Wolfman, and that 1950s favourite, the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Deadline reports that a new strategy is cooking at Universal, where they're building an "interconnected slate" of monster films. This is a strategy similar to that of Marvel, whose universe of comic book characters, including Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk and Captain America, interact with each other across various film and TV franchises.

Previously, Universal's horror characters have existed in their own standalone universes: the likes of the Mummy franchise starring Brendan Fraser, the misfiring 2010 reboot of the Wolfman with Benicio del Toro, or the upcoming Dracula Untold, an origins story about the vampire starring Welsh actor Luke Evans. But now the way could be paved for Avengers-like films in which the characters' universes are blended into one, and they interact with one another.

The initiative will reportedly be headed up by Alex Kurtzman, who has had a variety of producer roles across hits like Spider-Man and Star Trek franchises (as well as the flop Ender's Game), alongside Chris Morgan, who has written much of the Fast and Furious franchise, a huge success for Universal in recent years. Deadline report that the first film will be a reboot of the Mummy, coming April 2016.

The plan was hinted at by Kurtzman's former producing partner Robert Orci last year, who said: "There's an interesting thing that could happen at Universal where they have this amazing library of their old monsters and these kinds of heroes, and the idea of trying to create a universe [with] Van Helsing, and we're also producing the Mummy for them. We're kind of imagining updating these kinds of things."

In 2012, Kurtzman and Orci announced their intention to make a Dark Knight-style reboot of the vampire hunter Van Helsing that would be "really grounded in reality... without sacrificing the fantasy element," but little has been heard since.

Frankenstein meanwhile is being frequently brought back to life – first in this year's flop I, Frankenstein, and next in a forthcoming film starring Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy.  

Louis A. Habash is a film historian who enjoys critiquing old films. Follow this blog for more articles like this one.

A critical analysis of Disney princesses in film

Image Source: stuffpoint.com

Animated films starring Disney princesses have gone through an evolution. From classic beauties like Snow White to new royalties such as Elsa, Disney princesses have remained a relevant cultural obsession over the past decades, even in the age of the internet.

A research published in the Journal for the Human Sciences found that the roles of Disney princesses, especially in classic films, are very “gender specific.” According to critics, such roles have created stereotypes on how a princess should look and act in terms of gender, race, and social class. 

The study also noted that culture and identity in majority of Disney princess movies were not fully embraced—in some cases they were even dispelled. Because of this, girls get an inaccurate depiction of the roles expected of them in society, and boys are also misled about how girls look and behave.

Image Source: nydailynews.com

Today, however, it seems Disney is learning its lesson. Significant progress can be seen in its recent animated releases like Tangled, The Princess and the Frog, and Frozen.

Image Source: wallsave.com

 Tangled, for example, showed that self-actualization precedes romantic fulfillment; while Frozen showcased a sense of female empowerment by portraying two strong women with opposing personalities.

Time has clearly shown us how Disney princesses can be good role models depending on how they are portrayed in films. Disney must explore alternative destinies for proverbial princesses that can inspire the younger generation to look beyond royal depictions.  

I am Louis A. Habash, writing for the love of film and history. See this Pinterest page for more of my passions.

REPOST: Garden Buys Stake in Indie Film Bastion

Tribeca Enterprise already made a deal with Madison Square Garden Company. Read more from this NYTimes.com article.

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LOS ANGELES — Tribeca Enterprises, the Manhattan-based independent film concern co-founded by Robert De Niro, has agreed to sell a 50 percent stake to the Madison Square Garden Company in a deal that values Tribeca at $45 million.

Image Source: thefilmchair.com

The deal, which the partners announced on Saturday, brings together two of New York’s highest-profile show business brands, one wrestling with ambitions that it has never quite been able to achieve on its own — Tribeca — and the other a deep-pocketed sports and live entertainment company that is also looking to expand.

 “You do get to a point when you’re a start-up, in essence, when you can’t do it alone,” said Jane Rosenthal, Tribeca’s chief executive. Ms. Rosenthal, an experienced producer of movies like “Meet the Parents,” founded the Tribeca Film Festival in 2002 with Mr. De Niro and Craig Hatkoff.

Tribeca Enterprises has grown into much more than a downtown festival, the annual installment of which begins on April 16 and will include 89 feature films and 58 shorts culled from more than 6,100 submissions. Among other ventures, Tribeca also runs international film events, a two-screen theater, a digital studio and a fledgling division that releases specialty movies both digitally and in theaters.

But its festival, founded as a cultural balm for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, is by far Tribeca’s biggest asset, and the Madison Square Garden Company’s interest says something important about such events: Once largely ad hoc artistic celebrations, some film festivals have, in fact, become promising businesses.

The partnership also cuts to the heart of New York indie-film politics by expanding the reach of James L. Dolan, the executive chairman of the publicly traded Madison Square Garden Company, whose holdings include its namesake arena, Radio City Music Hall, the New York Knicks basketball franchise and the New York Rangers hockey team.

The company’s deal for Tribeca comes amid a recent setback. On Friday, the company’s MSG Productions group announced that “Heart and Lights,” a new dance-oriented show featuring the Rockettes that it was producing at Radio City, was canceled less than a week before its scheduled opening and delayed until at least 2015.

Mr. Dolan, a close friend and occasional business partner of the movie executive Harvey Weinstein, sits on the board of AMC Networks, which owns SundanceTV, the IFC channel and IFC Films, a major art-house distributor. Mr. Dolan, who will join the Tribeca Enterprises board, is also the chief executive of Cablevision Systems, the New York City-area cable provider.

 Speaking by telephone, Ms. Rosenthal and Tad Smith, the Madison Square Garden Company’s new chief executive, offered few details of their plans together but emphasized their lofty aspirations. “You put these two companies together, and the world is our oyster,” Mr. Smith said.

Ms. Rosenthal said Tribeca intends to expand its festival-related programs greatly by taking advantage of the Madison Square Garden Company’s real estate across the country, which includes the Beacon Theater in New York, the Wang Theater in Boston, the Forum in the Los Angeles area and the Chicago Theater.

Opening night at Tribeca’s festival in April, for instance, will be held at the Beacon on the Upper West Side. For the first time, Tribeca will sell tickets to the event, which has historically been an invitation-only screening. This year’s kickoff will include the premiere of “Time Is Illmatic,” a documentary about the rapper Nas, who will also perform.


Image Source: okayplayer.com

Tribeca and the Madison Square Garden Company will also “explore joint sponsorship opportunities,” Mr. Smith said. But he said there are no immediate plans to funnel Tribeca films into MSG Networks, which includes a regional sports television channel, and Fuse, a music channel.

Tribeca’s sale does not give the Madison Square Garden Company majority control — for now. “Over time, we have opportunities to increase our stake, and we are optimistic that will happen,” Mr. Smith said.

Ms. Rosenthal will continue to run Tribeca Enterprises with its current president and chief operating officer, Jon Patricof, a nephew of the co-founder Mr. Hatkoff. Mr. De Niro “remains right where he always has been, which is very involved,” Ms. Rosenthal said. Tribeca employs about 70 people, and no layoffs are planned, according to a spokeswoman.


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Ms. Rosenthal said the decision to sell half of Tribeca was in no way tied to her recent divorce from Mr. Hatkoff, who remains involved with the company. “Church and state,” she said.

Although it still trails the older Sundance Institute, Tribeca has succeeded in creating a strong brand in a very short time, and its festival’s film selections are increasingly respected by Hollywood insiders. Tribeca has also carved out a reputation for aggressively experimenting with new ventures; one of the latest is called Tribeca Innovation Week, which is dedicated to storytelling via new technologies.

But in some ways, the company has struggled. Its distribution division, Tribeca Film, has released about 30 movies in theaters over the past three years and taken in less than $1 million total, according to Box Office Mojo, a ticket sales database.

Asked if she thought Tribeca Film was faring better, worse or about how she expected, Ms. Rosenthal said, “Nothing is ever what I expect, and I suppose I should end that sentence there.” Tribeca Film has found several video-on-demand hits, including “How to Make Money Selling Drugs” and “The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia.” Two of its recently released two foreign films — “War Witch” and “The Broken Circle Breakdown” — received Oscar nominations.

Correction: March 22, 2014 An earlier version of this article misstated the day that this year’s Tribeca Film Festival will begin. It is April 16, not April 13.  

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