Tag: controversial

A closer look at the realities of an awards bait movie

We’re only two months from the start of awards season, which means all the high-profile Oscar contenders about serious, relevant social issues are hitting theaters. Or, as someone more cynical might put it, all the Oscar bait has finally been released into the waters. Filmmakers want to tell meaningful, engaging movies, but to be frank, … Continue reading “A closer look at the realities of an awards bait movie”

We’re only two months from the start of awards season, which means all the high-profile Oscar contenders about serious, relevant social issues are hitting theaters. Or, as someone more cynical might put it, all the Oscar bait has finally been released into the waters.

Filmmakers want to tell meaningful, engaging movies, but to be frank, studios back those films because they want to capitalize on popular topics and snag awards attention. The Los Angeles Times went into this tension in a recent article; they interviewed directors and writers of current Oscar contenders and found their interests divided between the creative and social dimension and the realities of the movie business.

Take Jeff Nichols, director of the upcoming interracial marriage drama Loving, who found the film’s true story important to tell. He also recognized that his film was checking a lot of boxes for distributor Focus Features, adding that fitting into a targeted, award-friendly slot in a studio’s schedule is “a big part of the business of this particular film and this model – and to deny that would be kind of silly.”

Movies can’t exist without support or some plan for revenue, no matter how heartfelt or timely. You might understandably be skeptical that all the serious movies come out right before Oscar nominations begin, but that’s a reality that allows them to get made.

How the West was whitened

The Western genre is having something of a mini-comeback between Westworld and The Magnificent Seven. (Or, maybe we all just love Yul Brynner?) This year’s trips to the Old West look a little different than in the past, specifically the actors. Our collective imagined memory of the Western looks white, middle-aged, and male. But if … Continue reading “How the West was whitened”

The Western genre is having something of a mini-comeback between Westworld and The Magnificent Seven. (Or, maybe we all just love Yul Brynner?) This year’s trips to the Old West look a little different than in the past, specifically the actors. Our collective imagined memory of the Western looks white, middle-aged, and male. But if anything, Denzel Washington showing up in The Magnificent Seven is closer to the reality of the western than film has us believe.

Leah Williams wrote a great piece for The Atlantic about how classic Western films do a disservice to the historical truth of race in the West. The Searchers was inspired by the stories of a black cowboy named Britton Johnson, but the lead role was played by John Wayne, a notorious white supremacist. Casting non-white actors in a Western is often seen as an act of subversion, but if anything, that’s closer to reality.

Sadly, that all-white image is so ingrained in pop culture that it won’t be erased anytime soon. In another 50 years, maybe Denzel will be the new John Wayne?

What does Netflix’s shrinking library mean for film history literacy?

Even with our collection of 14,000 DVDs, we’ll all admit to watching things on Netflix and Hulu all the time. Streaming subscriptions are convenient, and we’re realizing that it’s their primary way that many incoming students watch movies and television now. But we’re concerned about how that narrows what movies and television people can watch. … Continue reading “What does Netflix’s shrinking library mean for film history literacy?”

Even with our collection of 14,000 DVDs, we’ll all admit to watching things on Netflix and Hulu all the time. Streaming subscriptions are convenient, and we’re realizing that it’s their primary way that many incoming students watch movies and television now. But we’re concerned about how that narrows what movies and television people can watch.

According to a report by Exstreamist, Netflix’s library has shrunk by 50% in the last four years. As Netflix has pursued its own original shows and movies, the company has started cutting back on titles by other studios. Today, by Exstreamist’s estimates, Netflix has lost over 5000 titles since 2012, and the ones that are left aren’t exactly the greatest.

This could have a serious chilling effect on what people watch. Consider the Indiana Jones movies. None are available on any American streaming service unless you pay for a rental. If media consumption habits become more and more reliant of what’s available to stream immediately, that cuts off a massive amount of film and television history. And what about independent films that can’t break onto a streaming platform?

We hope there’s a change in viewing patterns soon. But the library’s collection will always have physical copies that won’t be removed at the end of the month.

Every Frame a Painting looks at the surprisingly unmemorable state of modern film soundtracks

Every Frame a Painting continues to be one of the best online film criticism video series. Usually the channel looks at editing and composition, but this time, creator Tony Zhou turned his sights to a very difficult film question: why are modern film soundtracks so uninspiring? Zhou puts forward a cohesive argument, with the Marvel … Continue reading “Every Frame a Painting looks at the surprisingly unmemorable state of modern film soundtracks”

Every Frame a Painting continues to be one of the best online film criticism video series. Usually the channel looks at editing and composition, but this time, creator Tony Zhou turned his sights to a very difficult film question: why are modern film soundtracks so uninspiring?

Zhou puts forward a cohesive argument, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe as its focus. Over the last twenty years, movie soundtracks have become background music that matches rather than sets the mood of what’s happening on-screen. That’s not inherently good or bad, but it’s less memorable than the fanfares and character themes from older blockbusters.

The video spends much of its time addressing a bigger concern, the use of “temp music” in editing. During production, films are often scored with placeholder music from other composers, frequently soundtracks from other movies. Increasingly, rather than starting from scratch, filmmakers ask composers to match the placeholder music, resulting in a soundtracks gradually sounding identical and borrowing the same generic structure and composition.

Speaking unobjectively, we hope that turns around. We understand why tone-setting scores have become popular, but Alan Silvestri’s Back to the Future music is far more lovable than his work on The Avengers.

Do some TV shows work better un-binged?

So today, a contentious issue came up in Media Services: one of our staff members gave up watching HBO’s Deadwood. One reason it didn’t click, they thought, was that episodes might not play as well when watched one after another. Unlike some shows with slowburn stories that make sense to watch in extended sessions, maybe … Continue reading “Do some TV shows work better un-binged?”

So today, a contentious issue came up in Media Services: one of our staff members gave up watching HBO’s Deadwood. One reason it didn’t click, they thought, was that episodes might not play as well when watched one after another. Unlike some shows with slowburn stories that make sense to watch in extended sessions, maybe Deadwood flowed better with a week between episodes.

We tried to figure out if there was some consensus or scholarly thoughts on this subject, and of course, opinion is split. On the one hand, Grantland once made the strong argument that binge-watching “allows you to completely ‘immerse’ yourself in the world of your new favorite show.” “By binge-watching,” they say, “you are spending quality time with the characters, forming a deep emotional connection with them.”

On the other hand, NPR‘s Fresh Air points to The Jinx as an example of how rationing out a show through serialization gives the story more time to breathe. “Embracing new technology doesn’t mean abandoning old storytelling forms that work,” David Bianculli says.

Screenrant has similarly mixed thoughts. Some binge-watched shows benefit from a compressed narrative, but that sacrifices the opportunity to let those shows percolate between episodes.

Obviously, watching a show on DVD with a week between episodes is an artificial constraint, but changing the time dimensions in how you watch something does seem to have an effect on how it’s received. And kudos to you if you have the power to hold back that long.

When happens when film crews lack diversity, too?

We know that the film industry has visible diversity problems, from directing to acting. We can point to the lack of racial diversity among the Oscar acting nominees as a glaring problem, but less obviously, behind-the-camera craft roles like sound and editing suffer from both subtle and overt racism. Variety recently ran a cover story … Continue reading “When happens when film crews lack diversity, too?”

We know that the film industry has visible diversity problems, from directing to acting. We can point to the lack of racial diversity among the Oscar acting nominees as a glaring problem, but less obviously, behind-the-camera craft roles like sound and editing suffer from both subtle and overt racism.

Variety recently ran a cover story about what they’ve termed #ArtisansSoWhite, the white male dominance of the technical side of the film industry. Their article includes a number of troubling anecdotes, not just of racial imbalance but outright hostility. One visual effects supervisor even recounted having his skills questioned by someone who asserted he was a diversity hire.

This has implications for mentoring opportunities and the type of work available to non-white artisans; one interviewee noticed that she had worked overwhelmingly on films about African-Americans, exclusively slotted into those films by producers.

Variety‘s exposé is long, disconcerting, and worth a read for those interested in where the industry needs to improve.

Matt Damon in The Great Wall sadly isn’t unprecedented

Boris Karloff in The Mask of Fu Manchu Last week, a trailer debuted for Matt Damon’s new film, The Great Wall, set during the Song dynasty in China. Matt Damon basically has no business being in that movie, and the fact that he’s the star at all sadly capitalizes on how international audiences associate white … Continue reading “Matt Damon in The Great Wall sadly isn’t unprecedented”

Boris Karloff in The Mask of Fu Manchu

Last week, a trailer debuted for Matt Damon’s new film, The Great Wall, set during the Song dynasty in China. Matt Damon basically has no business being in that movie, and the fact that he’s the star at all sadly capitalizes on how international audiences associate white male action heroes with high production value.

It’s also yet another example of whitewashing in film. For as long as Hollywood has existed, white actors have been cast in non-white parts, usually to horrifying or embarrassing results. A few months back, IndieWire rounded up the twenty most egregious examples, in case you’ve forgotten the extent of this lousy tradition. It affects movies good and bad, past and present. We can look at Katharine Hepburn’s horrifyingly offensive portrayal of Jade Tan in 1944’s Dragon Seed and shake our heads in hindsight, but it’s less easy to dismiss the white casting of a real, living Indian-American man in The Social Network.

You could dismiss Damon’s new role as a byproduct of international film development, but consider how bizarre it is that America’s long, poor diversity track record in film has become the standard even for other countries. We can do better, folks.

Even reviews of media for women are more hostile

Gender-targeted abuse and harassment have long made comment sections on the internet borderline unreadable, but those same nasty attitudes have been poisoning the digital well for years in subtler ways. As a recent exposé from FiveThirtyEight shows, online reviews for television shows geared towards women have been artificially lowered by axe-grinding men. By analyzing a … Continue reading “Even reviews of media for women are more hostile”

Gender-targeted abuse and harassment have long made comment sections on the internet borderline unreadable, but those same nasty attitudes have been poisoning the digital well for years in subtler ways. As a recent exposé from FiveThirtyEight shows, online reviews for television shows geared towards women have been artificially lowered by axe-grinding men.

By analyzing a trove of IMDb data, Walt Hickey discovered that among shows more often rated and watched by women, large shares of reviews by men have been extremely low. This has disproportionately tanked their scores: the average 1-to-10 rating for the top 100 shows aimed towards women trails the average for shows aimed towards men by almost a full point. For shows like America’s Next Top Model – which we can attest has a health fanbase across gender – men rated the show almost three points lower than women did. But this is an issue with the aggregate, not the quality of individual shows.

It would be easy to blame this on loud sexists, but we should be blaming the way gender and media are talked about. Those men giving Tyra Banks a 1 have probably been subtly, tacitly conditioned their whole lives to look down on things made for women as inherently inferior or less engaging. So, you know, just factor in decades of systemic sexism when looking at IMDb scores.

Vanity Fair turns blockbuster movie credits into a budget list

A $200 million movie budget almost seems abstract. We can say that a whole bunch of that money went to the effects, but what does that actually mean? How much does the assistant director figure into it? Does Robert Downey Jr. just get $180 million and everyone else splits it up? Vanity Fair made a … Continue reading “Vanity Fair turns blockbuster movie credits into a budget list”

A $200 million movie budget almost seems abstract. We can say that a whole bunch of that money went to the effects, but what does that actually mean? How much does the assistant director figure into it? Does Robert Downey Jr. just get $180 million and everyone else splits it up?

Vanity Fair made a mock movie credit roll to break down how much money goes to each crew member, and the numbers are sobering. Pay rates vary wildly from position to position; cat cameos get paid more than some stuntpeople. The most unusual are the positions where people earn different amounts for the same jobs. Set production assistants, for instance, have a $5000 range, maybe because some spend longer or only work with the second unit.

Watching a giant wall of credits can become a little numbing, but you start to get the sense of the scale of film production when you see that $229,000 went into matte painters. And if you feel a little anger at the lead actor being paid about as much as the rest of the cast combined, we don’t blame you.

New infographics break down gender in screenplays… and it’s about what you’d expect

Late last week, Hanah Anderson and Matt Daniels released a study on Polygraph breaking down the dialogue of over 2000 major screenplays by the gender and age of the actors. If you’ve followed any of the other news about representation in film for the last few years, the results should come as no surprise: it’s … Continue reading “New infographics break down gender in screenplays… and it’s about what you’d expect”

Late last week, Hanah Anderson and Matt Daniels released a study on Polygraph breaking down the dialogue of over 2000 major screenplays by the gender and age of the actors. If you’ve followed any of the other news about representation in film for the last few years, the results should come as no surprise: it’s men all the way down, and older women are especially absent.

Polygraph bills the study as the largest demographic breakdown of film ever undertaken, and its scope certainly helps make the point. Among the 2000 screenplays dissected, over 75% give a strong majority of their dialogue to men. Only eight screeplays feature all-women speaking roles – a number even that’s more troubling in comparison to the 304 scripts with only men. Age breakdowns are similarly frustrating, with roles increasing for men as they age and decreasing for women.

To make the point, the authors included a separate list of statistics just for Disney movies. Even in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a movie noted for its progressive gender representation, men get 72% of the dialogue.

As with other tests and measurements, this isn’t an indication of whether a movie is a good or morally acceptable. It also isn’t wholly reflective of individual movies: men have a majority of the dialogue in Kill Bill, but the movie has an exceptional cast of women. But it’s statistical confirmation that, on the whole, women (and older women) are still disproportionately out of the spotlight.