What it takes to make it as a modern female pop star

"At first glance, I didn't realize the most notable thing about the video, as I was totally distracted by McKee's very bright candy-colored hair: it's that she actually wrote every song she was performing. "Hold It Against Me." "Teenage Dream." "Dynamite." "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F)." "Part Of Me." "C'Mon." "California Girls." "Wide Awake.""
                                                - Jezebel

It's a Man's Man's Man's World- METRO

Nikki Baughan, editor of MovieScope magazine, said Pacific Rim was in bad company at the box office this summer, with films such as Man Of Steel, The Great Gatsby and World War Z all incapable of meeting the three Bechdel criteria.
‘Yes, they have female characters in them – indeed, striking characters like Daisy Buchanan, Mako Mori and Lois Lane – but they all fail the test for one reason or another,’ she told Metro.
‘Unfortunately, these women are not independent characters in their own right, but designed to interact with and support the males around them...’

‘If girls grow up without seeing strong female characters on screen – leaders, engineers, scientists – it has a very real impact on how they see their place in the world,’ she said. ‘It’s a vicious circle and the Bechdel test is an important tool for highlighting this problem. The Bechdel test acts as a magnifying glass; by breaking down a film in these simple terms, it draws attention to the shocking gender disparity that exists in the majority of cinematic narratives. The Bechdel test isn’t intended as a mark of quality, rather of gender diversity within a narrative.’

The problem lies on the other side of the camera. According to research carried out by the University of Southern California, just one in six of the directors, writers and producers behind the 100 top-grossing movies at the US box office last year were female.

‘Women are under-represented in English language films, but it’s not surprising when you look at the dominance of men behind the camera,’ said film writer Stuart Barr, a contributor for movie websites Screenjabber and Chris And Phil Present.

Baughan added: ‘Male screenwriters write from their own perspective and experiences and that usually – though not always – results in female characters that are either absent or entirely unsatisfactory. It’s a sad fact that, for various reasons historical and financial, the mainstream film industry remains the enclave of the straight, white, middle-class male.’

Read the rest of the Metro article at The Bechdel Test and why Hollywood is a Man's, Man's, Man's World

"I Was a Manic Pixie Dream Girl" - New Statesman

"I’m fascinated by this character and what she means to people, because the experience of being her - of playing her - is so wildly different than it seems to appear from the outside. In recent weeks I’ve filled in the gaps of classic Manic Pixie Dream Girl films I hadn’t already sat through, and I’m struck by how many of them claim to be ironic re-imaginings of a character trope that they fail to actually interrogate in any way. Irony is, of course, the last vestige of modern crypto-misogyny: all those lazy stereotypes and hurtful put-downs are definitely a joke, right up until they aren’t, and clearly you need a man to tell you when and if you’re supposed to take sexism seriously. "

Read this article, and if you REALLY want to be disturbed watch Ruby Sparks.

Tiger Eyes Premieres this Weekend

The first Judy Blume book to ever see the silver screen opens this weekend, are you going to see Tiger Eyes?

Tiger Eyes - Trailer

from Tashmoo Productions on Vimeo.

Women didn't Abandon Rom-Coms, Rom-Coms abandoned Women

The Jezebel takes on the question of "What happened to the Rom-Com?

"1986 to 1988, the dawn of a Golden Age for Rom-Coms. Moonstruck and Working Girl were both major hits, and the genre sold $1.6 billion in tickets over three years (adjusted to 2012 dollars, as are all figures in this article). This was followed by When Harry Met Sally... (1989), Pretty Woman (1990), and Sleepless in Seattle (1993), all of which topped $170 million. In two of these films, the sole protagonist is a woman. Two more were written and directed by Nora Ephron. That leaves Pretty Woman, where Julia Roberts stole the fucking show. Plenty of men saw these movies–you can't win the box office by excluding an entire gender–but these films were undeniably aimed at a female audience."

 -Jezebel

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and the Power of Transmedia

"The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a modernized transmedia adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, told in the form of a video blog kept by 24 year-old grad student Lizzie Bennet. Lizzie’s vlog sets out to document the ups and downs of a young woman struggling to figure out where she fits in the world, along with her best friend Charlotte Lu and her two sisters, excessively nice Jane and wild child Lydia. And shortly after the videos begin, a young handsome medical student named Bing Lee moves to town. The show began in April of 2012 with two videos a week posted at Lizzie’s YouTube channel. The characters also had their own Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr accounts where they would talk to each other, and the fans."

Link: Why It's Time to Retire the Manic Pixie Dream Girl

"As long as men have written female characters, entertainment has been packed with girls whose individuality is just a means for some tiresome hero to work out his own ennui. From William Shakespeare's Juliet Capulet to Truman Capote's Holly Golightly, the characters' uniqueness was like an ideological rib-eye that the down-on-his-luck hero could feast on to thrive and prosper in his own life. These idiosyncratic muses were finally given a common name in 2007: The "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" — and now, in 2013, it's time to put the term to rest."