Being a Feminist is Hard, and Other Thoughts from a Filmic Female Dreamer

Prepare for a post full of paradoxes. About time I gave meaning to the shitty, nonsensical title I gave this blog when I was 14 and impaired by my Inception obsession.

I swore I would never write a big post on the state of feminism/females in the film industry. But after Ryan, who will forever be the rabbit I chase (not insinuating you are a rabbit, Ryan, but you get the metaphor I'm heading for here), posted a piece on Lena Dunham not pushing her case for females being given opportunities in the whole entertainment industry hard enough, I chimed in on the comments section. And hey, in the two hours of lectures that came after that comment, I decided I want to make a post on this ongoing saga.

I've never seen anything Lena Dunham has done apart from This is 40. Girls has been on my watchlist but considering I still haven't seen Game of Thrones season three, I don't think I'll be getting around to it any time soon. So really, I can't judge her standings on anything, but she did raise some valid points at SXSW where she noted that Adam Driver is getting some great role offers, yet the central female cast are not. Ryan said that Lena should aspire to write about more females rather than the ones she knows of. Fair points all round.

This is where I stand on feminism. You probably know by now that I want to be a filmmaker. It's leaning more towards writing screenplays because I want to write about females. The reason that I want to be a filmmaker stems back to the literal moment that Kathryn Bigelow won an Oscar for Best Director in 2010 (though she did win for a largely "male" film, which critics are quick to point out, but AT LEAST IT HAPPENED). Late last year, likely due to procrastination, I found myself reading Indiewire religiously, especially the Women in Hollywood/other pieces on women. Anything else I could find on the internet about this topic, I would read. I still do it. However, as this is inspiring and fuels my aspirations more, it's also poisonous.

Super Late 2012 Retrospective: Top 10 Directors

So ever since Stage Challenge finished, I've been getting very nostalgic and retrospective and stuff, but mainly only about things that have happened this year. Mind you, the other day I was reading some of my reviews of films like We Need to Talk About Kevin and Shame - which I now saw over a year ago, where the hell did time go?! - and through that little nostalgic blog trip I stumbled across my 2011 retrospective. Which I did in July 2012. Because...yeah, I'm not up with the times. At the moment, I'm having a very chill holidays (which I hate - I would probably go and build a set or something just for fun), so I thought I may as well do a 2012 retrospective. However, I do have to say one thing: 2012 was such a shit year for movies. Like, I remember 2011 a hell of a lot better than I do 2012. Alas, I did my best to whittle everything down into some lists, so over the next week or two (depends on what crops up), I'll explore my favourite directors, performances and films from last year.

As for the directors - well, I can say that there weren't many huge standouts this year for me, unlike McQueen, Alfredson, Refn and Ramsay who took out my top spots last year. And yes, I decided to take Christopher Nolan out of the running for this one because I would literally give him all the awards for being wonderful and perfect and everything I need in my life etc etc etc. It is really only fair. But yeah, he's number one in my eyes.

Honourable mentions: Andrew Dominik - Killing Them Softly, Ang Lee - Life of Pi, David O. Russell - Silver Linings Playbook, Sam Mendes - Skyfall, David Ayer - End of Watch, Steven Soderbergh - Magic Mike, Joss Whedon - The Avengers, Michael Haneke - Amour, Richard Linklater - Bernie, Kristin Marcon - The Most Fun You Can Have Dying

10. Paul Thomas Anderson - The Master
Five years after There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson turned up with his much anticipated The Master. The one thing that I admire most about PTA's work is that they feel like they exist in another planet, away from the 'normal' films that we're getting nowadays. There Will Be Blood is a film that you can't easily put away in a big box with hundreds of other films. Same with The Master. While most of the film ended up confusing me a little bit, there's no denying that what PTA did with this film was extremely different, complex and daring. Plus, the guy has one of the most thrilling filmographies of any director in Hollywood - and he's only 42.

9. Ben Affleck - Argo
While he wasn't my favourite director of 2012, Affleck deserved to win that Oscar. To this day, it confuses me as to why he wasn't even nominated, because the directors who were nominated weren't exactly the most stunning crop. Affleck is one of the most stunningly talented directors in Hollywood right now, with a filmography that just keeps getting better and better with each film. While I can't say that Argo is the absolute pinnacle of what Affleck is capable of, the way he made this movie was just stunning - from the immaculate production design to what he did to produce the graininess of the film (I don't know why, I just find that extremely fascinating). Plus, Argo is a super intense film without even really trying to be.

8. Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, Tom Twyker - Cloud Atlas
This movie pretty much only has a placement on here because it is the biggest showing of ambition that I've ever seen. And if there's one thing I absolutely hold onto more than anything else in this world, it is ambition. Yes, Cloud Atlas has a little more ambition than it needs to make a truly great film, but there's just so much to admire about the efforts of these three directors. Cloud Atlas is such a complex beast to even think about attacking, and it is amazing that these guys could translate some of it onto film. It may not have all been completely successful, but I can guarantee you that this is more of a contribution to the world of film than 80% of the films that came out last year.

7. William Friedkin - Killer Joe
I'm a self confessed theatre-on-film fan - any play that gets adapted to the screen is usually a hit with me. Killer Joe is one of the most confusing films to enter that fray, as I could barely even begin to imagine how any of Tracy Letts' play could play out on a stage. This film is kinda like a huge "fuck you" to censorship and morals and everything else, which after all the controversy that Shame got in 2011, was kind of interesting and thrilling to watch. It is difficult material - especially being the darkest of comedies - but William Friedkin handles it all with this weird blend of satirical and noirish panache. And then there's that scene with the chicken. Yeah.

6. J.A. Bayona - The Impossible
While it can be accused of a few of Hollywood's biggest problems: white-washing and the good old "let's make you cry, a lot" kind of thing, The Impossible is a very well made movie. Maybe I'm just very close minded, but I couldn't even imagine how you'd possibly make a tsunami happen on screen. It is in those large scale moments when the film is at its best, especially with all of the underwater sequences, but it doesn't skimp on the human element when it isn't doused in melodrama. One of my favourite things about this film, however, is that final shot where the plane is flying over that beautiful, calm, blue Indian Ocean. That gave me a few nightmares.

5. Quentin Tarantino - Django Unchained
Even though this film is a little on the long and self-indulgent (cough QT trying to be Australian for no obvious reason) side, it is still awesome. And it is strangely beautiful, for a Tarantino movie. Yeah, that's pretty much all I have to say about this one without going into full fangirl mode.

4. Gareth Evans - The Raid: Redemption
For some reason, whenever I think about 2012 movies, I always forget that The Raid: Redemption was one of them. But once I remember it, I remember what a totally thrilling adrenaline-rush it was: and unlike most action films, it was a thrilling adrenaline-rush for the entire film. In my review (probably why I keep forgetting about it - it feels like I was reviewing films an age ago), I called it a "ballet of violence", and said that "while cinema should be predominantly used to tell a story, it is always nice to see a story so well shown on screen." And that's exactly what Gareth Evans did best with this film: he showed his story instead of telling it.

3. Rian Johnson - Looper
Rian Johnson is a filmmaker I admire a lot - not just because his films seem like they exist in a different planet (much like PTA's, but to a differing degree), but because he's a man with true ambition. Looper is another ambitious piece from him. Yes, it is a complex time-travelling film with it's fair share of action sequences, but the one thing that strikes me the most about Looper is that it plays out like a realistic vision of the future, and not a dream. Also, with all the action-genre trappings and the futuristic gadgets, it remains pretty much like an independent film with a tiny budget. It is such a bizarre mix, but it works so damn well.

2. Kathryn Bigelow - Zero Dark Thirty
Maybe it is a little unfair of me to put Kathryn Bigelow in contention for this list as well, since with her being my absolute idol at the moment it's obvious that she'd be so high up. However, I just watched Zero Dark Thirty again last week, and in between being freaked out by how similar I am to Maya and loving it even more the second time around, I realised that no one else could have made this film better than Bigelow. In all honesty, I find her directorial work here a lot better than it was in The Hurt Locker - mainly because she's not so obsessed with her hand-held camera movements - because she has such a knack for making films that don't feel like films. This is stuck somewhere in the middle-ground between being a documentary and being a film, but it can't be accused of being either. Just excuse me while I'm over here worshipping Kathryn, but damn, Zero Dark Thirty is still one of the most inspiring films I've ever seen because of her.

1. Joe Wright - Anna Karenina
Okay, I'm going to cop a lot of flack for this one. While Anna Karenina wasn't perfect, or even all that great, I fell completely and utterly in love with the way it was made. It was just so...achingly beautiful and perfectly choreographed. I think when I was explaining this film to a teacher a while back I said it was "like a musical without people singing". Because some of the pieces just acted like they were a musical waiting to happen, and I adored that. The stage setting was beautiful. Every single thing about the production design was beautiful. I just have a lot of love for the beauty of this movie. Please someone tell me that I'm not the only one.

If you can remember that far back, who were your favourite directors of 2012?

How Zero Dark Thirty was the Most Oddly Inspiring Movie of the Year

Zero Dark Thirty (2012) / US / Out in cinemas now / Directed by Kathryn Bigelow / Written by Mark Boal / Starring Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Jennifer Ehle, Mark Strong, Kyle Chandler, Joel Edgerton, Mark Duplass, Chris Pratt, James Gandolfini, Edgar Ramirez / 157 mins.

Zero Dark Thirty is not a movie I went into expecting to feel uplifted. But uplifted was exactly how I felt as I made my way out of the cinema, slightly shaken by what I had just seen. It may sound silly to the Oscar haters or Avatar lovers, but when Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman in history to win an Oscar for Best Director, my life pretty much changed right there and then. I decided I wanted to become a director too, but that aspiration has had some fine tuning over the years and now I realise that it was because of that moment I have learned two very valuable things about myself: I always have wanted to be a leader and do things that not everyone else can do (in this case, Kathryn is a female director who makes 'male films'). In a way, I guess you could say that a very large reason behind the fact that I'm Head Girl at my school comes down to Kathryn Bigelow being a badass woman. While I didn't absolutely love The Hurt Locker (but I sure as hell love it more than most) - but I do quite love her 1995 cult hit Strange Days - Zero Dark Thirty presented something that was rather inspiring to me. It tracks the biggest manhunt of the century, and there was a woman at the centre of it all.

AAN: What We've Learned From the Past Week's Awards

This past week has been extremely busy. Critics group after critics group has been announcing their favourites, providing the building blocks for what we can expect come the Golden Globes/SAG nominations later on in this week. Instead of going through all of the awards one by one, I'll link them all here (by now you're probably sick to death of hearing about them) and then show how the categories are changing. (NOTE: sorry for the lack of pictures - Blogger is being a MASSIVE asshole and I'm about to smash my computer so I'll give up trying to upload them)

New York Film Critics Online / Boston Society of Film Critics / Los Angeles Film Critics Association / Boston Online Film Critics Association / New York Film Critics Circle / National Board of Review

What we've learned about the Best Picture race:
Zero Dark Thirty topped everything apart from the LA Film Critics awards, so I think it is safe to say that this is pretty much a lock for a nomination, and perhaps a certainty for the win. We'll just wait to see how everything pans out in its wide release and for the Golden Globes to be sure. However, let's not rule out the possibility that either Argo, Les Miserables or Lincoln could win. The LAFCA chose Amour as their winner and The Master as their runner up. They gave The Master a huge boost, which means that it could be a lot more prominent in awards season than originally thought. Amour was also given a boost, so I wouldn't be surprised if it gets given a spot in the Best Picture race.
Other than that, the NBR did give us some alternative picks in their top ten with The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Promised Land making the cut. I'm not entirely sure about the latter since practically nothing has been said about it and I doubt it'll have any traction. Django Unchained was also included, meaning that it could figure into the race, but I'm doubting it will be a major player. And I was definitely surprised and happy to see Looper included!

My Movie Biography: 2010 - The Year of Christopher Nolan

(2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) 2010 was such a messed up year. I'm not sure why, but I'm pretty sure I changed my personality about 5000 times, and everyone else changed 5000 times, too. After that year, I kinda swore not to let much bother me, and just take everything a little less seriously. It seems to be working out so far. Anyway, 2010 as it was in movies:

• I went on my first actual plane ride! I went down to Christchurch, which as you know, was left devastated by two earthquakes which occurred late in 2010 and early in 2011. It was my absolute favourite place in New Zealand, mainly because of this DVD store they had there called "Alice in Videoland". Seriously, that place was magical. There were like, all of these themed room for the DVDs. Like, the horror/sci-fi room was all dark and scary. They had so many classic DVDs. The whole place was seriously like another world...kinda like how I imagine heaven. Plus, I'm pretty sure they had every DVD known to man. Yes, there's a huge difference between that DVD store and our DVD store. Unfortunately, it was damaged during the earthquake, but earlier this year it relocated and opened with an arthouse cinema. I'm definitely going down there as soon as I can afford it.
• I saw Avatar. I'm sure that was supposed to be one of those life-changing things, but it really wasn't. I'm no Avatar hater, but I'm pretty sure I was more excited over this special Avatar cup I got at the cinemas. Sadly, that cup has disappeared. 
• Say what you want about The Hurt Locker, but Kathryn Bigelow winning that Oscar for Best Director actually changed my life. Up until that moment, I had always wanted to be an actress. But when Kathryn Bigelow won that award, I realised how few female directors there were. And I thought, "why do something everyone else is doing? Let's be a director!" I still hold on to that stupid dream now, but don't expect me to be the next Bigelow.
• I did happen to win an Oscar that year. Okay, not a real one. I was a part of our school production and I won an "Oscar" for being the best performer in our group. Is this foreshadowing? 

"Cheer up. The world's about to end in ten minutes anyway."

Movie: Strange Days 
Year: 1995
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Writer: James Cameron and Jay Cocks
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Michael Wincott, Vincent D'Onofrio, William Fichtner.
Running time: 145 min


Despite being alive at the time, I don't really remember the huge event that was the turn of the millennium. Well, yeah, I was four years old at the time and I was probably more worried about reading books (apparently I was good at that). All I actually remember of this 2000 event was this magnet on the fridge explaining everything that we needed just in case 'Y2K' had a devastating effect on our lives. Oh, and this song that we had to sing at school about it in 2004. But it would seem that 2000 was a pretty big deal, so much so that there was a movie made about it in 1995. With Kathryn 'First woman to win Best Director' Bigelow directing and her ex-husband James 'King of the World' Cameron writing, the two managed to make a sci-fi/action movie, pretty much set within the architecture of the mind, against the paranoia surrounding 2000. Oh yeah, it's pretty awesome.

The Hurt Locker vs. Facebook

So, just last week, I decided to rewatch The Hurt Locker to sustain my new obsession with the wonderful Jeremy Renner. I quite like the movie...I find it raw, gritty, well-made, sweaty, well performed (Guy Pearce was amazing in that short scene, and Jeremy Renner and Brian Geraghty are HOT)...blah blah blah, you've heard it before. As I do, I went on Facebook to 'like' it. I found this:

All well and good. 427,641 people like it, which is pretty popular.

I kept scrolling down, trying to find some fun 'likes' to do with the movie, and then I found some pretty negative ones. I couldn't help but add my own smartass comments to these useless pages:

Yes. That's why it won Best Picture.

Yeah, neither. But aren't you glad it did win so you heard of it? And by the way, you didn't spell 'until' right.

Best Picture*

First of all, America is a place name therefore it requires a capital letter to begin the word.

Second of all, the Academy are apparently very elite people, so I doubt they are taking drugs. Unless it is some sort of pain killer, which is justifiable.

Third of all, have you ever spared a thought for all the other nominees? In my opinion, An Education, Inglourious Basterds, Up and Up in the Air were far better than either The Hurt Locker and Avatar.

Fourth of all, a movie with blue people isn't generally the kind that wins Best Picture.

Haha, that is witty. But Kanye should have been there when Crash beat Brokeback Mountain in 2006. That was a much more worthy Kanye cause.

And Avatar didn't give you such 'intense motion sickness' from it's overkill of the colour blue.

Let's just pretend that Pearl Harbor doesn't exist.

THAT IS GREAT. GO EAT SOME TOAST NOW, BECAUSE I'M SURE THAT WOULD BE JUST AS EXCITING AS LIKING THIS PAGE.

So all up, 579 people (give or take) feel such negative emotion towards Kathryn Bigelow's masterpiece that they have taken to Facebook to express their anger in an unhealthy way. And everyone I've ever talked to pretty much hate this movie. Which is a shame, because this is so much better than Avatar. While that blue movie may have had all those ground-breaking achievements with technology, you better not forget that The Hurt Locker scored a Best Director Oscar for a woman. For the first time ever. How's that for ground-breaking?

I guess the point of my rant is this: There are a lot of people who hate The Hurt Locker. But these people obviously haven't seen the movie for what it is: a thrilling tale of a man who can't live without war and how people risk their lives for the greater good of the rest of the world. Oh well, it's not my fault that people would rather watch three hours worth of big blue people running around fairyland.

Just for some research, I searched Avatar. On the top of the page:

16,695,589. I guess that's what happens when you're the highest grossing movie on the planet.

Also an effect of being the highest grossing movie ever.

I tried to search for more negative pages towards the movie, but after going through at least 200 pages entitled "Avatar", "AVATAR!!!!" "!!AVATAR!!" or "AVATAR :)" I gave up.

Here's a piece of statistic:

The amount of people who like The Hurt Locker enough to say so online are only 2.5% of the amount who like Avatar.

Simply put, I believe people only hate The Hurt Locker because it beat Avatar. Or 97.5% of the population haven't seen the movie. I tend to go with that one.

I know this is pretty much old news now, but I was just a little bit interested in what Facebook had to say about this great movie.

Oh well, in the meantime, I think this is the best page I found in my search for The Hurt Locker:

GO BECKHAM! HE SELLS GOOD DVDS!

*I realize this post went nowhere, sorry about that.