Bravo’s Billion-Dollar Housewife?

By Govindini Murty. Housewife shows are apparently bigger business than ever before, with one ‘housewife’ formerly of Bravo’s Real Housewives of New York City even recently signing a major merchandising deal for $100 million. I commented on this trend a year ago and said that it represented a move toward traditionalism  – posing a wry counterpoint to the apparent ‘progressiveness’ of modern popular culture. After all, the ‘housewife’ shows glamorize women who seem to do nothing but shop, gossip, have lunch, dress up and attend parties – and who have only acquired their lifestyles by marrying wealthy men. These tendencies reached their zenith in the deliciously campy and over-the-top recent episodes of The Real Housewives of NYC‘s lavish trip to Morocco (read hilarious recaps here, here and here), an obvious homage to the notorious trip to the Middle East from last year’s Sex and the City 2 – a film that earned over $288 million at the worldwide box office.

When these housewives have careers, they often appear to be pursued for vanity reasons, rather than for serious purposes of building long-term professional achievements or for supporting their families.  And yet, in the very fact that these housewife shows are highly popular on TV (and seem to be the major money-makers for the cable network Bravo, which has launched six of the Real Housewives shows), they appear to be one of the few ways in which shows featuring a majority of women characters can even get on the airwaves.

I’ve written previously about the highly un-progressive nature of Hollywood casting. Despite the fact that women make up over 50% of the population (and according to the MPAA’s 2010 box office report, purchase 50% of the movie tickets), according to SAG statistics they’re only cast in one out of three lead roles in film and TV, and only earn two-thirds of the pay of male actors. Watch most network TV shows, TV ads, or movies in theaters and you will see two or three men cast for every woman. It’s completely deplorable.

From TV housewife to ambitious businesswoman.

This disparity poses a telling contrast to the era of classic Hollywood, when it seemed that leading women got as many roles as the leading men -and were often the most highly-paid performers at their studios. When Greta Garbo made films with Clark Gable at MGM, she got top billing. When Marlene Dietrich was at the height of her fame in the ’30s at Paramount, she was the highest-paid performer at the studio. Mary Pickford was so powerful in the 1910s and ’20s that she co-founded and ran her own movie studio, United Artists, after being the top-paid performer at Paramount. Even Shirley Temple was the top money-earner at Twentieth-Century Fox in the depths of the Depression, single-handedly keeping the studio afloat and earning the paychecks to match. Is there any female actress today with the clout to co-found a movie studio? No. Is there any female actress today who earns more than the top male stars at any studio? No. Is there any top female actress who will get top billing over a top male star? No. And yet in reality TV – which may more accurately reflect the tastes of average Americans, due to the fluid, highly-adaptable nature  of the programming – women get the majority of the roles and significantly out-earn male reality TV stars. Continue reading Bravo’s Billion-Dollar Housewife?

LFM Review: Midnight in Paris

By Patricia Ducey. Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen’s latest film, is a frothy romantic comedy topped with a healthy soupcon of wisdom, a welcome turn from the now 75-year-old filmmaker.

Screenwriter Gil (Owen Wilson) and his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) accompany her well-heeled parents to Paris for a little pre-wedding vacation/shopping trip. Gil adores Paris and longs to leave L.A. behind to write novels there, a la Hemingway and Fitzgerald, in the heady Paris of his imagination; Inez, however, is quite content with the good life in a Malibu manse, financed by Gil’s steady income from what he derides as his B-movie success. (Mon dieu, what present day scribe would complain of steady sales of any scripts?!)

But Gil is an incurable romantic, and his longings create a pebble in the shoe of their relationship. He stalks off one night after a squabble to ponder his future, both literary and romantic. As the bell tower chimes midnight, an antique auto pulls up and the revelers inside drag him inside. As the night and the champagne flow, Gil comes to believe his hosts really are Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, as they insist, and that he has landed somewhere inside his most cherished dream. And so his adventure ensues, with Gil concocting ever greater ruses to escape Inez to return to the ‘20s, where all his literary and artistic idols—and one particularly lovely woman—await him. But I will not spoil the fun by explaining; the story is very clever and surprising.

Some of Allen’s arch improv-style patter falls flat, but more of it produces smiles or laughter. And Paris is a character here, too; Allen and his cinematographer, Darius Khondji, weave a Paris of amber glowing streetlamps, sumptuous five-star restaurants and earthy flea markets for our delight. The city (at least the part in frame) looks perfectly lovely. He sets the action against a soundtrack of lively Cole Porter and many of his other jazz favorites perfect for the time. If you can’t afford a plane ticket, Midnight in Paris will do. Continue reading LFM Review: Midnight in Paris

Photos from the Moscow Transformers: Dark of the Moon Premiere

Director Michael Bay with star Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in Moscow.
Rocking out in Red Square.

By Jason Apuzzo. This really looks like fun. (Check out the gawking Russian dude on the right above, getting his first good look at a supermodel from the decadent West.) Apparently Linkin Park played in Red Square for the premiere. I would’ve preferred Daft Punk, but that’s just me.

It seems so much cooler to premiere a film in Moscow instead of West LA, doesn’t it? Especially since the politics are roughly the same.

Anyway, for more images of the Transformers: Dark of the Moon Moscow premiere, head over to Michael Bay’s site. Can’t wait to see this film …

UPDATE: More good photos and a recap video from the Moscow premiere are now available here.

Posted on June 23rd, 2011 at 4:57pm.

Sex Slavery in the Islamic World: LFM Reviews The Price of Sex

By Joe Bendel. Istanbul might be a beautiful city, but the women living in the Aksaray neighborhood would not know. That is because it is a red light district and most of the prostitutes there are slaves, confined to seedy sex clubs and prison-like quarters. Crusading photojournalist Mimi Chakarova tells the stories of the voiceless women trafficked into sexual slavery in The Price of Sex, which screens during the 2011 Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

There is no question, sex trafficking is a problem in Western Europe and the Americas. However, when Chakarova wanted to investigate ground zero for sex slavery, she took her hidden cameras to Istanbul’s Aksaray and Dubai – two cities which obviously have absolutely nothing in common, right?

Chakarova briefly acknowledges the hypocrisy of Muslim communities rather openly indulging in the fruits of sex slavery. Evidently in Turkey, pre-marital sex is illegal but prostitution is not. There would seem to be an inherent contradiction there, but the crooked cops doggedly look the other way. While conditions might be slightly better in go-go Dubai, the fundamental realities remain the same. Demand for Eastern European women is also quite high in both “markets,” reflecting a “Natasha” fetish amongst the clientele. Indeed, the frequency with which Eastern European women are targeted by trafficking rings hit close to home for the naturalized Bulgarian-American Chakarova.

The personal toll of the global slave trade.

Continue reading Sex Slavery in the Islamic World: LFM Reviews The Price of Sex

The BBC’s Desperate Romantics

Amy Manson and Aidan Turner from "Desperate Romantics" (2009).

By David Ross. In my comments from last year on the Keats biopic Bright Star I opined that “film has no idea how to approach lives that are largely interior, with driving purposes that are inconveniently invisible and inscrutable. In consequence, film tends to emphasize the gossipy and scandalous, dwelling on the externals of sexual deviancy, alcoholism, and nervous breakdown.” This certainly describes the BBC’s Desperate Romantics (2009), but such a zesty and funny travesty is hard to resist, especially if, like me, you tend to think the twentieth century was rather a mistake.

The six-hour miniseries tells the story of John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and William Holman Hunt – the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood” – as they scheme and bumble in pursuit of eternal art and sub-eternal flesh. Rounding out the dramatis personae are John Ruskin, the sexually neurotic titan of Victorian art criticism and incidentally one of the greatest prose stylists in the history of English; Effie Ruskin, the great man’s warm-blooded young wife, disconsolately intacta after five years in the marriage bed; the flame-haired milliner-cum-muse Lizzie Siddal, the “original supermodel”; and the milksoppy hanger-on Fred Walters, a fictional contrivance who narrates the whole business from a perspective of exasperation and vicarious titillation. Rossetti and Fred competitively love Siddal (what’s not to love!), while Ruskin is disgusted by his wife’s post-pubescent nether parts and schemes to fob her off on the virginal Millais. Meanwhile, the prostitute-model Annie Miller – a buxom, lusty lass – places the inconsistently evangelical Hunt in a series of difficult, shall we say, positions.

Rafe Spall and Jennie Jacques.

Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris make a late appearance as nerdy idolaters of Rossetti, the former vaguely epicene, the latter fat, manic, and socially incompetent. This ignores Morris’ polymath command, the hard will of the inveterate and consummate creator, but it serves a dramatic purpose, I suppose, providing Rossetti with a foil and the show with a cuckold-ready goof.

Unlike the BBC’s reverent and impeccable interpretation of Pride and Prejudice (see my comments here), Desperate Romantics is a cheese fondue of pros and cons. It takes liberties with the biographical record (Wikipedia totals up the damage); it has no interest whatsoever in the substance of the Pre-Raphaelites’ art or ideas; it depicts Rossetti – an artistic and poetic giant – as a charming but shiftless skirt chaser, which is at best a partial truth; it takes a particularly sunless view of Ruskin, depicting him as coldly repressed rather than as gloriously nuts; and its theme song, a thumping folk-rock jig, is the most annoying piece of TV music since the Seinfeld bass segue. On the other hand, the series is full of impish humor and salacious shenanigans, and the brotherhood’s banter abounds in dry British wit. Especially delicious are the episodes in which the Ruskins and Millais bumble toward what we’ll delicately call a physical outcome. We might ask: “How many Victorian geniuses does it take to screw in a -.”  Apparently it takes quite a few. Continue reading The BBC’s Desperate Romantics

LFM Review: Love Crimes of Kabul

By Joe Bendel. Witness Islamic Sharia Law in practice. It is impossible to consider it anything less than institutionalized misogyny after observing the prosecution of “moral crimes” in Afghanistan. With remarkable frankness, Iranian-American filmmaker Tanaz Eshaghian takes viewers inside the Badam Bagh women’s prison, where half the inmates are incarcerated on dubious morals charges in Love Crimes of Kabul, one of the laudable selections of the 2011 Human Rights Watch Film Festival that actually addresses human rights abuses.

All three of Kabul’s primary POV figures are bright and attractive young women. All three stand accused of the heinous crime of premarital sex, but only one of them actually engaged in what would be perfectly legal behavior in a rational society. Not to be spoilery, but care to guess which one gets the most lenient sentence? Indeed, it quickly becomes apparent that justice has no place whatsoever in Islamic Law.

Easily the most shocking case is that of seventeen year old Sabereh, who simply had the misfortune to be caught eating a meal alone with a boy. Suspiciously, when a medical examination confirms her virginity, the prosecution switches gears, charging her with sodomy – the equivalent of going nuclear. Of course, Eshaghian’s cameras were banned from Sabereh’s trial, lest the railroading be exposed to sunlight, but the fix was obviously in.

At first, Kabul makes the audience’s blood boil, but as the full implications of the injustices perpetrated in Badam Bagh become clear, viewers’ stomachs will turn to ice. Eschewing talking heads and voiceovers, Eshaghian captures a visceral sense of life for the accused. She also records some brutally honest conversations as the women struggle with their Kafkaesque situations. Despite the relatively short running time, Eshaghian patiently lets scenes play out so viewers can appreciate their full import. Though her overall access is quite impressive, when her cameras are banned (as during Sabereh’s “trial”), the significance is similarly inescapable.

While Eshaghian’s unfiltered approach is undeniably bold and bracing, she leaves one rather obvious question largely unexplored. In fact, one of the most striking aspects of Kabul is the considerable presence of toddlers in Badam Bagh, who were either delivered while their mothers were serving their time or were essentially abandoned by their fathers. Strangely though, Kabul never tackles the issue of these true innocents growing up behind bars.

The injustices (ostensibly post-Taliban) faced by the women of Badam Bagh in general and young Sabereh in particular demand official American intervention. No doubt our current administration will get right on that, sometime after the U.S. Open. A shocking indictment, Kabul is a worthy companion film to The Green Wave, both of which are highly recommended at this HRWFF.  It screens today (6/22) at the Walter Reade Theater.  Part of HBO’s Documentary Films Summer Series, Kabul also airs on several of the network’s arms through July 27th.

Posted on June 22nd. 2011 at 1:13pm.