Maiden USA

The Athena Festival Kicks Off....

2011-02-12T09:15:00.000-08:00

The Athena Film Festival kicked off last night at Barnard College with an awards ceremony honoring the breakthrough achievements of thirteen extraordinary film world mavericks, hosted by Lynn Sherr, Author and former ABC News Correspondent.

Ten women stepped up to the podium to receive awards for their achievements as directors, producers, distributors, film reporters, screenwriters, cinematographers: Delia Ephron, Chris Hegedus, Debra Martin Chase, Anne Thompson, Debra Zimmerman, Nancy Schreiber, Tanya Hamilton, Leslie Bennetts, Abigail Disney and Gini Reticker. An additional trio of awards for directing, screenwriting and acting will be presented throughout the Festival weekend to Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini and Greta Gerwig.

In an interesting spin, award recipients were asked to name their film world inspirations. With responses as unique and diverse as the women being honored, all underscored an Athena-esque theme of determination against the odds, adaptability and a vigorous nod to the importance of sisterhood networks in media biz survival.

Delia Ephron, celebrated with an Athena screenwriting award, cited her best friends as a resource throughout her career, and ended by encouraging aspiring writers to “locate the personal in storytelling.” Chris Hegedus, who received an Athena award for directing, acknowledged Hillary Clinton, featured in her celebrated 1994 documentary “The War Room,” as a revelation of unflinching determination and dedication to public service.

Debra Martin Chase, who accepted an Athena Award for “exceptional success as a motion picture and television producer”, has played a pivotal role in Academy-Award- and Emmy-Nominated films and television productions including The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and The Princess Diaries. Chase evoked Dorothy Dandridge as a role model for her industry breakthroughs in the 1950s, and her own determination to open doors wider for those who follow.

Tanya Hamilton, 2010 Grand Jury Prize winner at Sundance for debut feature Night Catches All, also earned an Athena directing award. She mentioned the news reporter Gwen Ifill as an industry role model and highlighted the pivotal mentorship of Michelle Satter, Director of the Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program.

Leslie Bennetts, Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair, was awarded along with Anne Thompson, for “distinguished reporting and commentary about women and film.” Bennetts noted the fearlessness and Internet re-inventiveness of Arianna Huffington as an inspiration, then quickly added, “even though I don’t agree with her non-payment of writers.”

Echoing their collaboration on the startling documentary “Pray the Devil Back to Hell” about the successful Liberian Revolution which resulted in its first democratically elected female head of state, Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, Abigail Disney and Gini Reticker, took to the podium as a team. Awarded for “their extraordinary use of film for social change” Disney spotlit Reticker as her muse, while Reticker named Asmaa Mahfouz, the young Egyptian woman credited with launching the recent revolution through her online video call to action. Reticker concluded with a Susan B. Anthony quote: “Failure is not an option.”

On Friday night, Debra Granik, Director and co-writer of the Academy Award-nominated film “Winter’s Bone” received a directing award and her co-writer, Anne Rosellini, a screenwriting award. Both were present after the screening for a fascinating Q&A.

Late Night Women Laughing

2010-05-25T14:30:00.000-07:00

Women and Late Night Television

Thursday, May 13, 2010 6:30 pm ET
The Paley Center for Media, New York

Co-sponsored with the Writers Guild of America, East

In Person

Ann Cohen, Best Week Ever
Jill Goodwin, The Late Show with David Letterman
Hallie Haglund, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Morgan Murphy, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
Meredith Scardino, The Colbert Report
Moderator: Allison Silverman, The Colbert Report, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Late Night With Conan O'Brien

Late Night Women Laughing

What is the sound of Late Night Women laughing? If the recent panel discussion at The Paley Center for Media in New York is any indication, it’s rather raucous.

Moderated by big talent Allison Silverman, former Executive Producer and writer for The Colbert Report (2005-2009). Stephen Colbert describes her this way: “She’s got the cheekbones of Faye Dunaway, the hair of Bathsheba, and the mind of Jonathan Swift had he mated with the Cookie Monster.”

Hi-larious doesn’t begin to describe these behind-the-scenes big laughs originators, who have won majors awards for their wit (including Emmys) and written for some big boys of comedy: Michael Moore, David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart.

Full disclosure: given the topic of the event: the dearth of female writers in late night television, I expected the night to be a bit of a bummer. Yet every time the conversation swung around to the down-low, one of the women on the panel cracked a joke, showed a clip, displayed some dazzling chutzpah about navigating their career. Depressing? Hardly. Upbeat is way more accurate.

Sure, the evening was inspired in part by a challenging numbers game in an industry dominated by the guys. This spotlit by recent pieces in the New York Times by Bill Carter and Nell Scovell in Vanity Fair, which chattered across the blogosphere and Twitterverse last fall. Despite the assumptions about the hostilities of the boys’ comedy locker room, these panelists radiated a love of what they do and in their day-to-day writers' rooms, were largely undeterred by their minority status as females.

The best part of the event was the screened collection of clips penned from The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and The Jimmy Fallon Show, among others. Wow factor alert that I’d viewed many without knowing “a woman” had written them, especially Stephen Colbert’s “Crisis Garden” segment,
scripted by Meredith Scardino, a recent classic. Hallie Haglund’s piece on Chatroulette for The Daily Show created a lot of buzz when Stewart unbuckled his pants… to the tune of over 600,000 online views!

So what gives? If all of these ladies are so funny and the world has given way to some big girl powerhouses in the world of comedy, why so few female writers in the late night scene? According to Jill Goodwin and Hallie Haglund who first served as writers assistants, it’s again in the numbers, but with a twist. The truth is, four times as many packets and pitches from the aspiring writers’ pool come from men. So, yes, the late night shows are hosted by men and yes, we need to break that ceiling at some point, but if you want to write for David Letterman, or Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart, send your jokes in. Don’t just think about it. Do it.

Here are some tips from the pros:

1. 1. Target the Show you want to write for and memorize it inside and out. (Several of the panelists admitted to having every season of their target shows archived.) So gear up the DVR.

2. 2. Create a streamlined packet with your best material. “Pretend like you write for the show and give it to everyone you can think of…” (Meredith Scardino)

3. 3. Some shows don’t require an agent to represent you. (Including The Late Show with David Letterman, The Colbert Report and The Daily Show). Assistants read the slush pile and do recommend great material when they find it. (Jennifer Goodwin)

4. 4. Do Stand Up comedy. Open mics, whatever. It may lead to writing for a big comedian. Plus it’s a great way to network. (Morgan Murphy)

5. 5. Post funny clips on YouTube and canvas your friends to view them. Repeatedly.

6. 6. Publish comedic pieces in magazines or on blogs. You never know who might be reading, or where it may lead. (Hallie Haglund)

7. 7. Take entry level jobs at Comedy Shows. Internships, Receptions, Pages. Three of the panelists got in this way.

8. 8. Envision yourself as the head writer of a late night show. It never hurts to dream big. Plus it’s funny. Read Hallie Haglund’s piece on finally meeting Conan O’Brien.

While none of the writers from Saturday Night Live were unable to attend the panel due to deadlines, I couldn’t help thinking about Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Molly Shannon and the whole “Betty While to Host SNL please?” Facebook fan page of over 500,000 that led to the recent hilarity on May 8. Talk about social media comedy consumer power!

Bottomline, some other numbers are in. Women are culture mavens. They buy more books, and they watch more TV than men. Women engage in social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter more than men do. And they blog more. So what’s stopping the funny ladies from stepping forward to find audiences? If the Paley Center response is any indicator, the laugh track is there to guide them.

After the panel, I switched on a freshly DVR’d episode of 30 Rock. Another hilarious round of my own version of Late Night.

Additional Reading//Viewing:

Here’s a YouTube clip of Morgan Murphy (The Jimmy Fallon Show) doing stand up.

Letterman Show Hires Female Writer, Jill Goodwin

Stephen Colbert Interviews Allison Silverman for Elle

Hit Girl: a Kali-esque Vixen

2010-04-19T06:14:00.000-07:00

We've certainly never seen a character like Hit Girl before. She's a Kali-esque vixen, a vigilante warrior machine in fast mo, who still manages to be cute and smiley when she takes off her purple wig and eye mask. With Hit Girl's appearance in "Kick Ass," pop culture just added another icon of girlhood. And this one, at eleven years old (the actress who plays her, Chloe Grace Moretz, is just thirteen)...has upped the ante on what's possible for the bubblegum years in a storyline.

With a head's up about some serious "Kill Bill" style violence ahead, I knew I'd have some eye covering scenes (my daughter says: wimp), but I am just not inured to blood, to killing, to bone-crunching. Not in this lifetime, anyway. And yet, despite the flinches, seeing this able-bodied girl take down the bad guys single-handedly provided some intense fantasy satisfaction reminiscent of 1991's "Thelma and Louise." Could it be the petition I'd signed earlier in the day to end trafficking of girls and women in Hawaii? Is the emergence of an archetype like Hit Girl part of a global sea change for girl power?

There were a lot of girls at the screening on Saturday night, at the late show, even. Some as young as eight or nine years old were recapping scenes in the Ladies' Room afterwards...(not the last time I wished for my Flip camera)...They loved the movie, though agreed: it was WAY violent and they were still a bit shaken by it....

Once again we cross into the terrain of "real" violence versus "fantasy" violence. Is it a pure cartoon or does it link to the real world? Compare these bloody scenes to the dust clouds produced by Buffy the Vampire Slayer's well-placed stakes into Undead hearts and we've got a very different kind of drama going on, at least in terms of blood-letting. And even though Hit Girl does back flips and flies through the air, the scenes lacked the martial artful zen explored by Jen Yu, the teenage warrior girl of Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (2000).

A lot of people were laughing in the movie theatre, partially because the character of Kick Ass himself is so awkward and unable to pull off the superhero get-up. But nobody laughed when Hit Girl whirled the guns and knives like a dervish. They held their breath.

A couple of troubling issues remain: in this motherless universe of "Kick Ass", demented or clueless fathers rule the world. And, faithfulness to Mark Millar's graphic novel aside, did Hit Girl have to be so young to pull the impact? Did she have to don a jail-baity plaid skirt and knee socks of Catholic girl porn to gain entry to the villain's lair?

What kind of girls are we really looking for in pop culture, that dreamscape of collective symbology? Do we really want girls who can wield guns, knives, spears and tasers? Truth is, many are looking for continued change in the real world of girls so they can acquire the power to manifest as activists, artists, advocates and innovators--without being silenced, starved or abused. How do the worlds of cinema and everyday life interweave and overlay? I look forward to all the continued conversations. Having broken a new set of taboos, Hit Girl will be on rewind for a long while, and her saucy language is the least of it.

The Ada Lovelace Engine

2010-03-31T19:10:00.000-07:00

This year on Ada Lovelace Day, March 24th, I participated with thousands of techies, geek girls and virtual revellers in celebrating the woman credited with being the world's first computer programmer. My participation was of course, computer based: a sign-on to the Finding Ada web site, followed by multiple tweets and a Facebook post. A virtual shout-out to Ada "in the cloud."

Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), a visionary math whiz, was the daughter of the Romantic poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabella Milbank, an abolitionist. Her breakthrough piece of the computer puzzle? In side notes to a translation of Luigi Manabrea's article on the work of Charles Babbage, a Cambridge professor who designed and wrote about The Difference Engine and The Analytic Engine, Ada composed an algorithm encoded for machine processing. Though Babbage dubbed her "The Enchantress of Numbers," her contribution to the development of computers was unacknowledged until the 1970s.

Here is what she had to say: We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.

Fractals, anyone? The daughter of a poet, you might say?

That Ada mused about this long before IBM was a scratchpad concept or Steve Jobs invented the Apple of his eye is quite extraordinary. She's a heroine of zeroes and ones, and the great grandmother of geeks everywhere...

Click on the link to view some clips from Lynn Hershman Leeson's 1997 film, "Conceiving Ada," with Tilda Swinton as Ada Lovelace.

Watch Me: Alice in 3D

2010-03-20T08:51:00.000-07:00

Full disclosure: I have vintage copies of Alice in Wonderland, The Annotated Alice, and a set of Alice Christmas ornaments. You get the drift. In 9th grade, I played Alice in an experimental version based on improv, which is where Alice Central began. No doubt, Alice is a key icon of the Anglo-American lexicon. The book was first published in 1865, just as photography invented captured illusion on paper. The original Alice has remained so brillig, she even exists in cyber-form. See Inanimate Alice for an example.

Up till now, "falling down the rabbit hole" had all kinds of connotations. Go ask Alice. Add to that the 3D experience of Burton's version, which clearly drives the entertainment quotient. After a momentary "say what about the Jabberwocky?", I suspended Carroll fidelity expectations, reveling in Tim Burton's wild dialogue with the classic. In addition to the Mad Hatter's glowing green eyes, and dormouse weapon-brandishing, Alice morphs into a heroine with a Joan of Arc streak. All the "Eat Me" and "Drink Me" sequences provide a blue silk fluency of dresses and fabrics reapplied to Alice's ever-changing size.

Tim Burton's take on the classic tale is very much a new spin. How much he let Alice Liddell in on his storyline (written by Disney veteran Linda Woolverton) is up for grabs. That he produced it under the aegis of Disney holds some irony, since Mia Wasikowska's Alice bears no resemblance to the treacle-y cartoon produced by Walt back in 1951, anymore than that Alice resembled Lewis Carroll's friend. For starters, this 19-year-old Alice is a bit older than 10-year-old Alice Liddell, a clear segue into the coming of-age story.

Helena Bonham Carter, special effected into an extreme "off with their head" Red Queen, manages to steal scenes from that otherwise larger-than-lifer, Johnny Depp, as the Mad Hatter. Visual effects rule the ride with more Wonderland awe than the lackluster 50s cartoon conveyed. A surprise voice visit by Alan Rickman adds some smoke to the landscape, and the Cheshire Cat's twisting disappearing acts startle throughout.

While the black lipstick and nail polish give Anne Hathaway's White Queen a bit of quirky goth, her sisterhood of the opposition with the Red Queen yawned me a bit, especially compared to the feisty expansion of possibilities for Wasikowska's Alice, who bucks Victorian gender rules, pressure for royal marriage and dons a sword for a climactic moment. This Alice is good news for girl icons everywhere even if the humdrum bipolar battle-of-the-queens returns as the old Disney trope that women just can't get along....

The nonsense quotient in Burton's world is oddly less non-sensical than Carroll's original. Yet this Alice more than braves the riddles and outsmarts the Red Queen, resulting in a net value to the pantheon of girl possibilities. Mia Wasikowska's feisty Alice battles the dragon herself; she doesn't stand by waiting for a rescue from St. George or The White Rabbit.

Bigelow's Big Time

2010-03-17T17:04:00.000-07:00

Like millions worldwide, I applauded with large scale tweet fire when Kathryn Bigelow won the Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for The Hurt Locker. What a pivotal moment for those who have tracked statistics about women behind the scenes in Hollywood, like Martha M. Lauzen and Melissa Silverstein. In case you've been hiding out in a cave, Bigelow is the fourth woman ever nominated for a Best Director Oscar and The Hurt Locker brought her to this historic home run. And, like many of those who yahoo-ed big time on March 7th, I, er...hadn’t seen it yet.

Say what?

Don’t get me wrong. I had planned to see it. Many times. I checked the listings all summer. But war movies in general are not my chosen realm of entertainment. I find them nail-biting, and I don't bite my nails. To whit: I never saw Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's List. And from everything I read about The Hurt Locker, I knew it would be an emotional, intense adrenaline shift. Every time I considered it, I just wasn't ready for the ride into Iraq.

As a huge cinephile, especially the girls’ rite of passage variety, I reveled this Fall in Jane Campion’s Bright Star and Lone Sherfig’s An Education and many other films, indie and blockbuster. Sci-fi battles, okay. Star Trek? Check. Avatar? Check. Intense, yes, but not going for "reality." See, my experience of movies is to become, shall we say, emotionally, visually and intellectually invested--a full-bodied, 3-D experience, with or without the glasses. (My daughter rolls her eyes. “Mom, are you crying again? The movie barely started.”) And yes, I must add Precious to the list but that's another kind of war zone to traverse. Soon.

I broke the spell this week by watching The Hurt Locker on pay-per-view. Grueling, emotional, intense, desert gritty—the movie brought you there, into the Hummer, into the streets of Baghdad, into the soldier’s crash pads. Fists clenched? Tears? All the fireworks in my own living room. Without the benefits of surround-sound, thank you very much.

Within the first few scenes, I knew Bigelow’s win was not based on politics, gendered or otherwise, so much as well-honed, stellar storytelling skill. At times, she created documentary-esque illusion with a visceral, you-are-there immediacy. The film is a masterwork of tight editing, character build and yes, stress. This sheer war-driven stress is fed by intimate, close-up sound, hand-held camerawork and some astounding acting. Bigelow deserved her Oscars. Big time. And it's some of the best use of HD that I've seen so far.

The Hurt Locker does not raise a glory flag to war, not by any stretch. But it does provide us with unsung heroes of a war industry--career soldiers who arrive in an alien terrain of chaos, misunderstanding and inhumanity that numbs them and often kills them. (The bomb suit’s resemblance to astronaut gear, enhanced by smoke and dust effects did not go unnoticed.) The Hurt Locker combines elements of science fiction and cinema verité. And, when the actors dismantle bombs, you can hear them breathe inside their protective helmets, as if you are nearby, tension-bound as the search extends to car innards and rubble piles.

Like Kimberly Peirce’s under-recognized 2008 film Stop Loss, The Hurt Locker shows how searingly difficult it is for soldiers not only to return to civilian life but to head back into the desert where there is no dessert, especially after a glimpse of dinnertime.

In one heartbreaking scene Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), at home briefly after months in the Middle East, is too numb to immerse himself in his infant son’s burbling happiness. As he clears leaves from the wintry gutters, the pull back to a modest house underscores how paltry the military's financial reward is, even for those who risk their lives dismantling bombs on a daily basis.

That Bigelow won the Best Director award for a film dealing with a “male” subject, a “male” action genre, and a war movie at that, will no doubt be dissected for years to come. That James Cameron was nominated for Best Director in the same year for Avatar, a film that proved his “feminine” empathetic ability alongside his destructo-gaming visuals, has already been covered in print and in the blogosphere.

Will this be the decade of an end to glass ceilings, to leadership gender divides in an industry that produces one of America’s biggest global exports? One can only continue to dream in celluloid. Big dreams. Like Bigelow’s.

To PIerce or Not to Pierce: That is the Question

2010-02-22T20:54:00.000-08:00

To pierce or not to pierce: that question echoed around my house for the past year and half. My daughter Finn started asking for a nose-piercing around the age of 14 and then eventually I said, ok, for your 15th birthday, which (oops), came and went without any action. I'll admit: I kept stalling. Nose-piercing is a fairly permanent decision that I didn't want her to regret. Or me!

Finn kept reminding me in her inimitable gentle yet persistent way. Um, Mom, my 15th birthday present? Truthfully, I was hoping the idea would fade to fad. Testing her level of commitment, we talked about pros and cons, the long healing process, the sports issue (by regulation, piercings have to be covered up during softball games...league rules...). Despite all of the caveats she still didn't waver. So I got the message: she was serious.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against piercing per se. While some looks are more extreme than others (go ahead: Google Images), a tiny glint on the nose looks fabulous on millions of women (especially when paired with a sari...). It's just that I personally have never even pierced my ears, so the whole process seemed daunting....

I tasked Finn with finding THE BEST piercing place by polling her friends, asking around. She located Venus by Maria Tash in the West Village NYC, highly recommended by her friend Caroline. Finally the event took place just before Christmas 2009.

These days, I'm the first to point out Finn's elegant fleck of bling, and in her circles she's had many rounds of thumbs up. Plus, she's been religious about taking care of it. Her choice to pierce? A bona fide rite of passage without an apparent downside. Style transcends the hesitations. And wins.

(If you're thinking about it or have a daughter exploring the idea, you can always contact Penelope Silverstein at Haven Body Arts in Northampton, MA. She's been featured in print, blogs and on the news....a real pro. http://havenbodyarts.com/)

Next Gen Culture Critter

2010-02-05T07:31:00.000-08:00

My fifteen year old daughter turned me on to Meekakitty. She is so unabashedly geeky cool, she recently won a huge prize on YouTube. And not surprising. The girl is entertaining. She's an explorer, vid maven and awfully verbose. She sometimes splits herself in two, enters into outloud debate with her own opinions and observations and doesn't mind taking screen risks. Look out Tina, Ellen, this is Next Generation in action.

"In Treatment": Sophie Means Wisdom

2010-02-01T15:48:00.000-08:00

When it comes to watching HBO, I don't catch everything on the first go-around.

In the case of "In Treatment," the HBO series starring Gabriel Byrne, I originally resisted the concept. I mean, if you're someone who has done time here and there "on the couch" analyzing dreams and Catholic overlay, then the idea of a series devoted to analysis might not seem particularly, well, entertaining.

In fact, this series is utterly engrossing. And not because it's laden with Jungian symbols. Byrne's Paul is a therapist on a quest to name his patients' truth shadows and trade verbal acumen in the process. The spare writing style reveals a remarkably complex amount about self deception, struggle and desire on both sides of the couch. But the most startling first season character is Sophie, a teenage gymnast and Olympic hopeful, played with otherworldly intelligence by Mia Wasikowska. She arrives in therapy with two broken arms after a motorcycle accident, and many secrets which unravel onscreen.

Sophie resembles girls we all know, who might not say much but their presence exudes brilliance and an underlayer of painful mystery. And since a session lasts long enough for just a tease of information, I guess I'm in for several more treatments.

Jezebel on Squinting and Girl Pageants

2010-01-29T07:50:00.000-08:00

http://jezebel.com/5458781/toddlers--tiaras-getting-smize-completely-wrong/gallery/2

Watching this link on Jezebel will drive you nuts....The pageant industry rolls on and on..."fixing" little girls so they can "win".....which is why movies like Little Miss Sunshine and Whip It! are so fabulous...they blast the pageant world out into the stratosphere!

2009 Fave Girl Movie #2: An Education

2010-01-16T18:37:00.000-08:00

Fulfilling his indie legacy, Peter Sarsgaard delivers rogue intelligence as the suave 30-ish seducer David in Lone Scherfig's 2009 ensemble gem, An Education. Unexpected is Carey Muliigan's acute and subtle performance as Jenny, a star student at a staid English girls school who unwittingly falls for his smooth moves. Mulligan first appeared as the giggly younger sister Kitty in Joe Wright's 2005 version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, a role that barely hinted at her depth. She shines in An Education as a bright, soon-to-be 17-year-old with a cigarette poised over a map of Paris.

Set in a stodgy suburb near the swinging London of 1961, Jenny's aspirations clearly transcend that of her conservative parents, Jack and Marjorie, played with expert social climber naiveté by Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour. To Jenny's surprise, David's wit, cultivation and French sports car quickly charm them, and they grant her permission to enter a sophisticated late-night world. The ensemble cast is enhanced by Dominic Cooper as David's art-worldy business partner Danny, and Rosamond Pike, as Helen, a wide-eyed party girl with a fabulous up-do. Despite the make-overs and weekend getaways, the film takes an unexpected girl-friendly turn sans Lolita-esque ruination. A smoky jazz soundtrack provides an added layer of seduction.

An Indian Educator's Spin on Yes We Can!

2010-01-12T10:31:00.000-08:00

This is a new take on contagious ideas! A step by step how-to from "I Can" to "we can..." It ends with a reference to Gandhi....Absolutely wonderful!

2009 Girl Movie Fave #1: Whip It!

2010-01-08T08:30:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'll admit it. From the first trailer peek onward, I knew Whip It would provide a crack-up fun night at the movies. Despite the E.T. origins of my soft spot for Drew Barrymore, crazy phases and all, Ms. Barrymore transcended my expectations. The lady can direct. And act at the same time--on roller skates, no less! Add to this behind-the-scenes finesse a cast that includes SNL chameleon Kristen Wiig, Juliette Lewis with eyeliner toughness, a sleazy Jimmy Fallon and you've got a basic dust-up at the roller rink. Post-Juno, Ellen Page plays Bliss Cavendar, a 17-year-old stuck in the outback of Bodeen, Texas. Her postal worker/former beauty queen mother played by Marcia Gay Harden, who, let's face it, can bring complexity to a drag on a cigarette, has her eyes on a pageant crown for Bliss. But Bliss falls in love with another plan: scissoring through the line-up as Babe Ruthless at the Austin roller derby. Aided and abetted by Arrested Development's Alia Shawkat as Pash, Bliss/Babe's after school waitress friend with her eye on the Ivies, the wit factor heads off the charts. Along the way, rite-of-passage twists include a rocker boyfriend crush, a lesson in lying karma, a test to girl friendship and the inevitable packed suitcase to adulthood.

00s Trends Transcending the Gender Divide

2010-01-04T16:22:00.000-08:00

Inspired by an on-line discussion group, I gave some thought to promising trends from the past decade that I believe may help to transcend the gender divide as we head into this new decade....!

Trends/events of the decade to acknowledge:

1.Young women are outstripping men in college attendance, GPA, college
honors/awards and degree completion...what will this mean for the next
decade as more and more highly qualified women continue to enter the
work force? http://www.nber.org/digest/jan07/w12139.html

2. Millennial girls are gaming, engaging in multimedia multi-tasking,
gaining technological fluency in ways that are eclipsing the
traditional gender divide in these areas, especially in the terms of
content creation: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2007/Teens-and-Social-Media.aspx

3. As someone who works in New York City, I must say I have seen more
men in the past several years struggling with strollers in subways,
Bjorn-carrying babies on the street...so while the housework issues
may still be a struggle, is there any research being done on men and
child care/bonding practices? I for one find it heartening to
witness...and hopeful...

4. While we often hear that women have yet to win the Best Director
Academy Award for narrative films, in fact several women have won for
Best Documentary since the 1970s, including Barbara Kopple, Maria
Florio/Victoria Mudd, Aviva Slesin, Allie Light, Barbara Trent, Susan
Raymond, Freida Lee Mock. Since 2000, 3 women have won as co-
directors: "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport"
(Deborah Oppenheimer, 2000), "Born into Brothels" (Zana Birski, 2004)
and "Taxi to the Dark Side" (Eva Orner, 2007), with countless others
being nominated. In the Documentary Shorts category, even more women
have won the award. What does this say about women and their
dedication to uses of media for social change/raised awareness/
education? What happens culturally as more and more women produce
media content directly for the web?

5. Thelma Schoonmaker won 2 of her 3 lifetime Academy Awards in the
2000s for Editing: 2004 ("The Aviator") and 2007 ("The Departed")...

6. Tina Fey--1st female head writer Saturday Night Live, 1999-2006
"30 Rock," Series Creator, Emmy, Actress, Golden Globe, 2008
SNL--Portrayal of Sarah Palin, Emmy, 2009

7. Greg Mortensen--Author, Three Cups of Tea--spent 00s decade working tirelessly building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, advocating the education of girls as well as boys.

8. Elinor Ostrom: the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics,
2009...for research on collective action, trust, cooperation and by
demonstrating how people can responsibly share and pool resources
without government or corporate intervention, challenging conventional
wisdom.... Imagine that....

Elinor Ostrom, Winner Nobel Prize for Economics, 2009

Most Uncanny Archival Film Clip Discovery of 2009: Anne Frank...

2010-01-04T05:46:00.000-08:00

Viewing this 21 second clip in October 2009 stirred the ineffable in me. What's the deeper story? Why was this haunting image kept hidden from the public eye for almost 70 years? In the clip, Anne Frank, smiling brightly, looks from her window on a newly married couple descending into the street. For a few seconds, she directly eyes the camera. Talk about the power of The Gaze. Chills, to be sure. Despite the impact her diary had on so many of us, this film clip manages to momentarily transcend the horrors of the Holocaust. A young creative writer, living in an Amsterdam attic, peeks at a scene of marriage, itself a spark of resistance to war. Resurfacing now in the era of YouTube--a medium designed for the replay and cut-and-paste relay--is nothing short of uncanny. Anne Frank watches from the window ledge, bemused and hopeful, unaware of terrors ahead, an emissary from another era. As of January 2010, the clip has received over 2,525,ooo views.

Charlyne Yi in Paper Heart

2009-12-08T18:39:00.001-08:00

You know you're in quirky terrain from the outset when a diminutive twenty-something Asian-American woman stands in artificial Vegas hotel lights, proffering a microphone to random strangers, asking, "Have you ever been in love?" Yi plays a bit naive-girl, a bit giggly Amelie and a bit docu-maven as she chance-encounters American Joes, Janes and foreign tourists in the land of gambling and the quickie wedding chapel. That's how the 2009 mockumentary Paper Heart, (directed by Nicholas Jasenovec, co-written and co-produced by Charlyne Yi) begins.

We dial back into Charlyne Yi's life, complete with childhood home videos sound-tracked by her own "Here Comes the Bride" humming and crazy pajama-dancing with her sister. We find out that she's now a stand-up comedian with interviewable friends like Seth Rogen and Demitri Martin, all willing to aid and abet her in her quest for defining love.

Charlyne Yi and the director (who we find out in the credits is played by Jake M. Johnson posing as Jasenovec) take a trip across the country to interview a middle America cast of subjects ranging from an Elvis-impersonator preacher from Vegas; kids on a playground in Atlanta; bikers in a bar; and a number of elderly marrieds waxing nostalgic over the key to their coupled longevity. Yi's own handmade puppets arrive to animate some of these stories, adding another level of wacky silliness, which is clearly key to Yi's comedic persona. She's a little girl playing around just like in the home movies, and this is fun, goofy and highly charming. For a film otherwise shot in the neon or fluourescent glow of fast food restaurants, bars, basements, zoos, trailers, these are also the most aesthetically evolved sequences.

Enter Michael Cera, the lovably inept star of Juno and Arrested Development and the story takes a turn for the insincere. Now, before the visible eye of the camera crew, we watch as the "genuine romance" between Cera and Yi unfolds. Clearly it's the involvement of Cera that got the indie ball rolling and the arch approach to a faked authenticity goes south from here. In the midst of the "wink, wink-- we're just kidding, no we're not, wait are we kidding?" involutions, Charlyne Yi loses her drive and becomes a chess piece in the indie film game.

Visual Dark Chocolate for the Holi-Daze!

2009-11-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

We all have a collection of DVDs like this. They may not all make it into your cultural elite catalogue, but they possess that special kind of fave rave. They are some of your best friends, cinematically speaking. They provide a comfort zone worthy of revisitation, a welcome back universe. The list may vary from year to year, but some of them stay on. Heading into the holi-daze of deja vu, here's a mix tape of 30 films to fill the comfort food category of Visual Dark Chocolate....

1. Waitress (2007, Adrienne Shelley)
A pregnant waitress finds liberation from a bad southern marriage. Nathan Fillion as the good-guy Ob/Gyn...and lots of delectable pies! Hilarious supporting roles by Cheryl Hines and Adrienne Shelley...
2. Romeo and Juliet (Baz Luhrman, 1996)
A swimming pool reinterpretation of the "star crossed" lovers, with Leonardo DiCaprio, John Leguizmo, Claire Danes, and pummeling music tracks...
3. His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940)
The opening scene spitfire banter between Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant is screenwriting brilliance....makes you want to smoke cigarettes and wear vintage.
4. The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
Kate Winslet as the eccentric Clementine and Jim Carrey in his best role ever...with Gondry's dreamstate running the show....
5. Run Lola Run (Tom Twyker, 1999)
Three different endings to a punk princess story....
6. Walk the Line (James Mangold, 2005)
Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix channel June Carter and Johnny Cash...
7. Bull Durham (Ron Shelton, 1988)
Susan Sarandon as a Southern free spirit during minor league baseball season....
8. Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997)
Breathtaking visuals in a Shinto fairy tale about saving the environment...an anime classic...
9. Howl's Moving Castle (Hayao Miyazaki, 2005, based on novel by Diane Wynn Jones)
How to save the world and find your voice while travelling in a magic castle on legs...
10. Across the Universe (Julie Taymor, 2007)
One of the most innovative non-linear narratives ever. Reinterpretations of Beatles' classics and a walk through the 60s...."I Want to Hold Your Hand" against midwest football field clouds, "I Want You" as army recruitment factory..."Mr. Kite" with giant puppets and Eddie Izzard...!
11. The Royal Tennenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001)
Your favorite NYC dysfunctional family.
12. The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001)
Must be Viggo as Strider, and Cate Blanchett as Galadriel...just fast forward through the orcs... or you'll be up all night.
13. Walk on the Moon (Tony Goldwyn, 1999)
Viggo Mortenson and Liev Schrieber in one movie...what's Diane Lane to do? With Woodstock, a Jewish family camp and the moon walk as 1969 backdrops...
14. Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda, 1962)
Why this movie isn't on every French New Wave Classics list is nothing short of a mystery...a b&w masterpiece about the aesthetics of "the moment"!
15. The Matrix (The Wachowski Brothers, 1999)
The opening sequence with Trinity (Carrie Anne Moss) in neoprene still blows my mind....a gender bending millennial breakthrough!
16. Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola, 2006)
The costumes, Versailles, a masked ball, gambling, glamour, and love affairs with Bow Wow Wow and Gang of Four on the soundtrack!
17. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003)
Bill Murray at his subtle best. A visit to a Tokyo hotel without hopping on a plane....
18. X-Men
Rogue, Wolverine, Storm, Mystique and the Statue of Liberty...Say no more!
19. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Joss Whedon, 1997-2004)
It's the reason I started watching TV again...the Buffyverse!
20. Firefly (Joss Whedon, 2002)
Only nine episodes aired, but the crew of the renegade spaceship Serenity lives on!
21. Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair, 2001)
The saris, the cell phones, the flower petals, the upstairs/downstairs of Bolly-land!
22. My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985)
Daniel Day Lewis as Johnny, a gay London punk rocker who helps turn the laudromat owned by his Pakistani lover (Gordon Warnecke) into the coolest place to hang out....
23. Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1985)
Jack Lemmon steals the show.
24. Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001)
Paris? Audrey Tautou as the do-gooder matchmaker who finally finds her mec? Fate strands, train stations, photo booths, cafes and a garden gnome....
25. Pride and Prejudice (Joe Wright, 2005, Screenplay Deborah Moggach)
The cast is fabulous (Dame Judy Dench, Brenda Blethyn, Rosamund Pike, Donald Sutherland), but it all boils down to one scene: Daybreak. POV Elizabeth Bennet as Mr. Darcy strides across the meadow toward her, his superhero tailcoat flutters behind him....
26. Once (John Carney, 2006)
Playing a baby grand piano in a music store in Dublin, then pulling an all-nighter to produce a fabulous set of ballads? Love match and harmonies deluxe...
27. Talk to Her (Pedro Amaldovar, 2002)
A comatose female toreador and young dancer, a journalist and a male nurse, explores loneliness, devotion and loss, with unexpected silent movie twists.
28. Bridget Jones Diary (Sharon McGuire, 2001)
It's Colin Firth. You know it is.
29. Bend it Like Beckham (Gurinder Chada, 2002)
Keira Knightley and Parminder Nagra as teenage girl-thletes in London...following your dreams to the goal! With Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the hottie coach...
30. Moonstruck (Norman Jewison, 1987)
"You're a wolf." That's all you need to know....

Caprica: The Galactica Prequel

2009-11-23T09:40:00.000-08:00

Caprica film festival poster and DVD cover

Caprica's Syfy Promo poster

The film/series pilot for Caprica (2009, Remi Aubuchon) made the festival circuit this year and is slated to broadcast on Syfy in January 2010. This version posits an interesting twist to the saga: that the virtual intelligence of a brainiac teenage girl may be the origin of the race of humanoid cyborgs, the Cylons. As the continuum point for the Battlestar Gallactica series, this core story thread explores a new age group altogether. Teenagers were non-existent on the original show. Youth-wise, only one or two babies found their way into the storyline, most noticeably those with mixed Cylon/Human parentage. As a survivalist outer space narrative about humans on the run after their planet's destruction, the show was populated mostly with adult female babes and grizzled men. So now, in this prequel series, the spotlight lands on adolescent brainiac girls for a definitive representational shift. Or wait. Maybe we're back to the most familiar terrain of all....

While the pilot emphasizes the computer whiz-ardry of Zoe Graystone (Alessandra Torresani), the promotional poster for the upcoming series is as old as the Bible. Yup, you guessed it. Eve and the apple resurfaces, this time as a dark-haired Lolita. Ah, big yawn to marketing. Ever the same tropes. While the virtual reality universe that Zoe and her friends visit using trans-Wii gadget headsets takes them into violent club of sex-cess, it serves as a backdrop for a morality shift: the teenagers want to use technology to change the world at its moral core. Zoe is a visionary, a renegade. But the bad seed has been programmed into the icon's DNA. And it probably won't go away.

With the mother, Amanda Graystone (Paula Malcomson) an ice queen physician immediately at odds with Zoe, father/daughter loyalty is writ large. Eric Stoltz plays Daniel Graystone, a wealthy inventor who wants to solve the mystery of his daughter's activities. He joins forces with Joseph Adama (Esai Morales), the eventual patriach-captain of Battlestar Gallactica in his pre-piloting days. As a student at the Athena Academy, Zoe is designed to be born from her father's head. But will she emerge as a warrior goddess? Or the apple-biting Eve?

Guess it's a wait and see until January.

Coco Before Chanel

2009-11-01T14:56:00.000-08:00

Ever since Amélie became my magical realism fix for the decade, Audrey Tautou has cast a spell on me. (One of my friends even named her daughter Amelie in homage...) So when I first caught the trailer for Coco Before Chanel, starring none other than Mlle Tautou, I was in for a view. Director Anne Fontaine's 2009 vision of La Coco Chanel, an orphan girl turned fashion legend and icon, provides an expansive view of chateau-expanses and Tautou's doe-eyes. While the film limns the edges of Coco's development as a young designer of new hemlines and endless re-inventor of personal storylines, the film leaves the viewer wanting more. What about her quirks, her strengths, and her long-lasting influence as a trendsetter and thoroughly Modern Woman? Not everyone goes from seamstress to world renowned designer in a lifetime. So what made Coco so influential, garnering the attention not only of wealthy men, but the patronage of the elite women who supported her ascent? Coco Before Chanel doesn't answer these questions, although it does provide teasing hints of man-tailored suits, riding gear and the flapper look, along with some exquisite close-ups of Audrey Tautou gazing, pouting, smoking cigarettes.

Coco's early intrigues with rich boys Etienne Balsan (Benoit Poelvoorde) and Arthur "Boy" Chapel (Alessandro Nivola) do visually amuse, especially a batter-the-ribcage backseat sex scene between Tatou and Nivola, an American actor who speaks French remarkably well. (He apparently learned it for the film...) Her relationship with her sister Adrienne Chanel (Marie Billain), who took up with a Baron, and the actress Emilienne d'Alencon (Emmanuelle Devos) provide some clues to her access to a cadre of wealthy women, but the spark of her trendsetting influence isn't made visible enough.

Coco Chanel was known for self-assured quips: "I gave women a sense of freedom; I gave them back their bodies: bodies that were drenched in sweat, due to fashion's finery, lace, corsets, underclothes, padding" and "simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance." While her witty verbal acumen is alluded to in the film, the onscreen banter doesn't quite deliver the "ah-ha" sighting of an Original. The evolution of a maverick who created a look so singular, so definitive, so deceptively simple it continues to influence designers today, could have been explored more fully. What made Coco's senses wake up? What made her want to transcend the role of mistress to the wealthy to become a bona fide businesswoman at a time when finding a rich man could have been enough? And, even though Chanel was the first designer to create perfume bearing her name, no reference is made to the origin of this then-breakthrough idea...So where did Chanel #5 come from?

Another film will have to reveal these tantalizing details. For a personality so dominant in fashion, whose suits remain a staple of many wardrobes, vintage or otherwise, many more bio-pics may be required to adequately reflect on Coco Bonheur Chanel. Until then, Coco Before Chanel provides some essential scintillating pearls, but not the entire strand.

Real Girls/Reel Change

2009-10-24T09:54:00.000-07:00

Reel Grrls @Sundance, 2009

Yesterday I attended Real Girls/Reel Change, sponsored by Working Films, The Fledgling Fund and Chicken & Egg Productions, a collaborative workshop linking documentaries about girls with girls service organizations, girls filmmaking initiatives, non-profits, foundations and filmmakers held at the Tribeca Y. Quite the interactive think tank. Basically, the model of the program stems from a collaborative pulse that is coursing through the non-profit world--building power for social change through internetworked collectives. Wearing my Advisory Board hat for Reel Grrls, a Seattle-based organization, where I've been an artist-in-residence four times over the past eight years, I saw clips of six recent documentaries and met some inspiring producers and advocates for girls' empowerment. The big question was how to get these documentaries seen by girls, and how to involve more girls in creative production of all kinds: filmic, web-wise, word-wise and otherwise.

In the mix in addition to Reel Grrls were staff from Girls Inc, Alameda CA; Girl Scouts USA; The Global Fund for Women; Lower East Side Girls Club; Ms. Foundation for Women; Ma'yan; New Moon Girl Media; New York Women's Foundation; Power Writers; Queens Community House; Inwood House; AAUW; Third Wave Foundation; Boys and Girls Clubs of America; Center for Young Women's Development and Families with Children from China, NYC. We watched clips from the following documentaries: Body Typed by Jesse Epstein; Going on 13 by Dawn Valadez and Kristy Guevara-Flanagan; Seneca Falls by Louise Vance; It's Not About Sex by Jessica Cele of EVC, NY; Saving Jackie by Selena Burks; and Wo Ai Ni Mommy by Stephanie Wang-Breal. Quite a roundup.

The producers, funders and service organization reps in attendance explored the social media possibilites for getting word out beyond the festival screenings circuit, and ways to up the volume on girl voices and issues. Ahead of the pack in social media use is the Lower East Side Girls Club, which has an extremely interactive web site with Geo Girl uploading clips from "sister sites" around the world, girl blog/vlogging and filmmaking. We also witnessed live poetics by some amazing and powerful girls from the Power Writers program in the Bronx.

Collaboration nation between these organization is underway through dialogues ranging from screenings feature works by teenage girl and women filmmakers on related themes; streaming videos on-line for expanded audiences; a Girlflix on-line gallery of films by membership (along the Netflix model); Skype-style mentorship conversations between adult and girl filmmakers across the country and ways to make the dialogue interactive through study guides interwoven into organizational and the documentaries' own websites.

Overall a rousing experience of mega-buzz and possibility. Go Girls!

Here's a clip from Body Typed:

Good News About NYC Galleries and Women Artists

2009-10-12T06:29:00.000-07:00

Seven Gender Bending Women Artists are profiled in this recent New Yorker piece, complete with a brief slide show of the artists' work. Guerrilla Girls would be proud.....

Despite the recession, New York galleries continue to feature provocative art..Time to hit the galleries!

Jung's Red Book: Icons and the Collective Unconscious

2009-10-07T09:44:00.000-07:00

It is almost impossible to speak of icons without referencing C.G. Jung's mapping of the collective unconscious. The impact of Jung's work as a root system to much of modern creative practice, including writings on inspiration, randomness, gender codes and the hero's journey, leads back to his symbolic studies of dreams, folklore and art. In conjunction with the publication of his Red Book, (W.W. Norton & Co.), a fascsimile of Jung's visionary handbound leather journal of artwork and reflections held for decades in a private vault by the Jung family, The Rubin Museum will host the first public exhibition of this extraordinary work of art, "The Red Book: Creation of a New Cosmology,". The book will be on display at the museum October 7, 2009- January 25, 2010.

Public programs in New York City include the following:
Friday, October 9 - 7:30 p.m.
The first public lecture on C. G. Jung's Red Book, Sonu Shamdasani, editor of the Red Book
New York Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street.
Tickets $20 to be purchased at the door.

Saturday, October 10 - 8:00 p.m.
C.G. Jung’s Dream Houses:The Architecture of the Human Psyche
Andreas Jung, architect, and a grandson of C.G., (and the current occupant of the Jung family residence) will present a talk on Jung's dreams, drawings, and Construction of his houses. This is the third Philip T. Zabriskie Memorial Lecture in Analytical Psychology
Rosenthal Pavilion, Kimmel Center, New York University, 60 Washington Square South, New York. Free - no tickets or reservations required.

Through January, The Rubin Museum will host The Red Book Dialogues:

"In the spirit of RMA's exhibition The Red Book of C.G. Jung, personalities from many different walks of life will be paired on stage with a psychoanalyst and invited to respond to and interpret a folio from Jung's Red Book as a starting point for a wide ranging conversation. The guests include composer John Adams, performance artist Marina Abramovic, director John Boorman, musician/artist David Byrne, actress Kathleen Chalfant, Zipcar entrepreneur Robin Chase, Smashing Pumpkins lead Billy Corgan, director Andre Gregory, New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, author Andrew Harvey, screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, documentarian Albert Maysles, graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister, Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist of Doubt, John Patrick Shanley; poets Linda Gregg and Tracy K. Smith, painter Philip Taaffe, novelists Gloria Vanderbilt and Alice Walker, and philosopher Cornel West."

Some of Jung's reflections on life and death:

Women in Art Morphing Beauty

2009-10-05T06:11:00.000-07:00

At over 9,600,000 YouTube views and climbing, this video by Philip Scott Johnson employs morphing software to traverse 500 years of Western art history, telling much about our cultural notions of beauty, aesthetics, power and race.

Jane Campion Shines a Bright Star

2009-09-20T13:39:00.000-07:00

When I read "Ode to a Grecian Urn" by John Keats in Intro to English Lit at NYU, it hardly rattled the windows. Yet Jane Campion's recent foray into the early 19th century English countryside of John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his "bright star" muse Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) stuns the curtains on poetry from that era, or any era, blowing off the dusty residue.

Jane Campion is a master of filmic art with an uncanny ability for grazing the boundary that sets apart those who limn the edges of intimacy. Against the odds of cynicism, she time travels the Romantic era with close-up plume scratches across parchment and sweeping passes through fields of violets. In one scene, intricate branches provide a scrim of lace as Fanny and her siblings traverse a path; in another, Keats lies on a treetop bower in bloom. The glances, clever letter-writing and bedside conversation between Fanny Brawne and John Keats provide an enticing trans-era representation of sexual banter. Without the sex. Yet the viewer is just as emotionally spent and intertwined. We've been taken, without an engagement ring, as metamorphosed butterflies flit about the room.

From the very first scenes between the two impassioned artists, one an innovative clothing designer, the other a sensitive wordsmith, "Bright Star" approaches the mastery of "The Piano" (1993). With a delicate eye, Campion brings palpable electricity to the first touch between Fanny Brawne and John Keats. Likewise, their first kiss evokes a pulse more powerful than most full-on scenes of eroticism.

Campion elicits unique performances not just from Cornish and Whishaw but from a supporting cast of poet comrades and Brawne family members. Kerry Fox, who starred in Campion's 1990 film "An Angel at My Table," delivers subtlety as a cultivated widow of limited means mindful of her older daughter's penniless love match, yet awed by her conviction. Remarkable as well are the siblings who chaperone Brawne and Keats in their forest walks: the ethereal younger sister Margaret (Edie Martin), nicknamed "Toots" and a watchful brother, Sam (Thomas Sangster). Paul Schneider does a witty turn as John Keats' bear-like benefactor and fellow writer Charles Brown, who competes with Fanny for the poet's attention.

Had Jane Campion read Keats to our class at NYU, I am certain I would have heard a different version of "Ode to a Nightingale." "Bright Star" sings well into the daylight, breaking through windows of poetic possibility.

Ponyo: Enviro-a-gogo

2009-08-24T05:51:00.000-07:00

In many of Hayao Miyazaki's anime masterpieces, water waves, ripples and eddies provide a fascinating back-canvas to his hand-drawn cel animation. It stands to reason then, that he'd eventually create a film about the ocean. In his recent animated feature, "Ponyo," breath-taking visuals of undulating jellyfish and prehistoric undersea creatures accompany an eco-friendly story about a goldfish who wants to become a walking, talking, real live girl.

While touted by distributor Disney as a cousin of "The Little Mermaid," spunky Ponyo uses her own power to evolve from membership in the gill club into a four-limbed human. Unlike Ariel, she transcends the loss-of-voice genre altogether. While not the most complex film by the anime master, who often weaves Shinto nature mythology to produce coming-of-age stories with fantastic visual twists like "Spirited Away" (2001) or "Princess Mononoke" (1997), "Ponyo" approaches "My Neighbor Totoro" (1998) in spirit. And, given the hackneyed approach to gendered characterization and smart-alecky kid fare produced by Disney and others, "Ponyo" transcends G-rated offerings on current screens.

Without an evil undersea queen like Ursula, the big bad in "Ponyo" takes form as human-made below-the-sea sludge and garbage. Yet humans provide plenty of big good as well, underscoring Miyazaki's beyond black-and-white world view. The film centers on the friendship between Ponyo and her friend, Sosuke, a five-year-old boy who vows to look after her on land. In contrast to Disney's orphan universe, Sosuke's mother Lisa (voiced with mettle by Tina Fey) is an active multi-tasker with a full-time job working for the wheelchair set. Cameo voices for the elderly ladies include Lily Tomlin, Betty White and Cloris Leachman.

Miyazki's films universally feature strong female characters, caring male ones (including Ponyo's father, voiced by Liam Neeson) and a magical realism drawn from the mysterious forces of nature. In innovative tsunami scenes, waves appear as powerful cascading blue fish, and at times the ocean has eyes like a sea monster. Marine life is out of balance, and Ponyo's friendship with Sosuke holds the key to its restoration.

As in all of Miyazaki's films, selflessness and inter-connectivity contribute to resolving chaos and discord. Yet, while Sosuke's willingness to care for the fish/girl proves affirming, it does not default to boy-rescues-girl. Ponyo has the power to transform herself as well as inanimate objects by sheer force of will, and her fierce link to the boy proves equally pivotal.

Lisa, indomitable in her drive to care for others as well, instills in Sosuke a refreshing level of independence unfamiliar to American parents plugged into the safety hyper drive. He plays on the beach solo, walks across the garden to his day care and stays home with Ponyo while Lisa braves the storm to rescue others.

The voice of Cate Blanchett performs a Galadriel-esque turn as Ponyo's ocean goddess mother, even if her Disney-Princess aesthetic lacks visual innovation. And, while the story's resolution about unconditional love restoring balance to the oceans may be too sweet for the jaded, it marks a respite from wisecracking consumerist fare with fast-food tie-ins. For enviro-friendly entertainment and overall artistry, it's a go-see.

Julie and Julia!

2009-08-14T12:06:00.000-07:00

Watching movies during vacation no doubt influences the sensory ooh la la. But Nora Ephron's "Julie and Julia," (2009), based on Julie Powell's blog/book and Julia Child's posthumous memoir My Life in France (2006), radiates exuberance beyond the air-conditioned ah-ha escape of the velvet seats.

Ephron's script deftly intersperses the wannabe chef/blogger narrative of Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a frustrated writer with a cubicle day job who becomes a food blogger, with the retro timeline of Julia Child (Meryl Streep) as she discovers her passion for French cooking in late 50s Paris. Julie Powell is fitful, obsessive and career-driven in her quest to complete the entire suite of recipes from The Art of French Cooking, Julia Child's passionately generous culinary gift to the linoleum and appliance set. While some food movies, like "Babette's Feast" (1987), manage to miraculously access viewer taste buds with mouth-watering onscreen feasting, "Julie and Julia" explores inspired food preparation, cookery and presentation more than the actual sense of taste. The focus here is on the enduring influence of the foie gras foremother for the blogger generation.

As the first celebrity TV chef, Meryl Streep waxes euphoric searching for franglo-americanisms to encompass her French cuisine bliss. Amy Adams as a Julie Powell in thrall to the passion of La Julia Child, gives a frantically emotional performance as almost 30-something would-be epicure inspired by the master.

At this point in her career Streep seems to be enjoying herself...deliciously, embodying her sequential cast of characters with aplomb. Once nicknamed "Meryl Weep" for turns in sequential tragic dramas where she mastered foreign accents with miraculous precision, Streep now demonstrates a sublime exploration of body language. While her Miranda Priestly told volumes with a cool glance-up in "The Devil Wears Prada," her Julia swoons with outward delight.

Meryl Streep's Child-like joie de vivre more than explains Julie Powell's worship and admiration. Hell, I wanted to hang out with Julia Child after this movie, and wondered how I had missed acknowledging her impact on American Wonderbread cooking.

In addition to a funny lobster sequence played to the tune of "Psycho Killer" by the Talking Heads, a SNL parody with Dan Akyroyd as the knife-wielding kitchen queen makes its way into a channel surf while Julie and her husband wait for the Boeuf Bourguignon to simmer.

The film also makes a non-cloying play for the supportive husbands rooting for their foodie wives, with Stanley Tucci as Paul Child and Chris Messina as Eric Powell.

Looks like I'll be adding another cookbook to my cabinet, thanks to the spoons up performances of two butter-loving ladies.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee's Thank You Message

2009-08-12T16:10:00.000-07:00

Euna Lee and Laura Ling are home! Their thank you message posted on August 12th, 2009, emphasizes the role played by citizen journalist activism. Social media networks, electronic petitions, vigils, phone calls and letter writing not only helped secure their release, but provided uplift during their incarceration and trial.

Home Birth Comix

2009-07-17T11:49:00.000-07:00

A Home Birth in a comic book? Holy Goddess of Fertility, Batgirl! Christen Clifford's collaboration with illustrator David Heatley is nothing short of funny, visceral and spunky! Having given birth at home to my second daughter (in Berkeley, California, no less) this comic book was a revelation of the real deal. While certainly nothing like my own birth (pro-dromal labor, no problem, let's hike in the Berkeley Hills to bring it on...cue coyote laughter).....finding a gritty story in a culture that deals ONLY with bring-on-the-epidural hospital births...is indeed a welcome spill! (sorry, couldn't help myself...)

Wendy & Lucy

2009-06-03T06:24:00.000-07:00

Kelly Reichardt's "Wendy and Lucy" (2008) plays like a spare, lyrical short story with its own train track epiphanies about loneliness and the shortcomings of open road freedom. Michelle Williams is unassumingly subtle as the petite, dark-haired and androgynous Wendy, a drifter traveling in a beat-up Honda that serves as her streetside motel.

This stopped-time road movie lands on the thrift store side of Portland, Oregon, where Wendy glances upon conversations with street people, a parking lot guard and a dog shelter manager. Keeping with the fork-in-the-path metaphor of consequences along the way, this story reveals the fragility inherent in a young woman's solitary travels through an indifferent anonymous city, which contrasts with the hummingly lush woodland where she and Lucy chase sticks.

The narrative explores the way choices turn south: Wendy's car won't start. Caught shoplifting cans of dog food, she spends an anxious day in jail while Lucy goes missing. Counting her dollars and coins, Wendy calculates how to make it to the jobs-in-Alaska dream scape by choosing what to carry.

Patti Smith: Dream of Life

2009-05-02T09:23:00.001-07:00

I bought my first Patti Smith album in high school. It was this album, Easter, that imprinted an audacious punkish power into my lexicon. I saw Patti Smith on West Broadway recently walking tete a tete with her daughter...one of those celebrity sightings that flavors the street life of New York with a strange familiarity and normalcy. It almost inspired me to say hi, as if I knew her. Not in the autograph seeking mode, but because she was so familiar to my definition of eclectic chance city existence. As an icon, Patti goes way back to the roots for me. Seeing her reminded me I'd missed the Film Forum run of the documentary "Patti Smith: Dream of Life." I added it to my Netflix list, and last night took a view spin through the oneiric landscape that is Patti Smith the legend. Despite the tough chick persona I imprinted from the cover of Easter, the documentary captures a thoughtful, intellectual, spiritual passionista who has even woven motherhood into her art forms. The film is mindscape-y and meandery at times, but ultimately emerges as a testament to a uniquely creative heroine in the pantheon of originality. "Dream of Life" windows in to the guitar-strewn living rooms, limousines and backstage spaces of a unique art world player, poet and maverick.

The Last Mermaids

2009-04-29T14:27:00.000-07:00

Liz Chae's 19-minute documentary "The Last Mermaids" takes an underwater camera into the world of Korean Haenyos, women sea divers who have passed on the tradition to their daughters for over 2,000 years. Aware that this culture of is on the wane and most of the wetsuited divers are now in their 60s, 70s and 80s, Chae captured the aqua-ladies on camera preparing their wetsuits for dives, recounting their histories among the waves and singing lusty sea songs.

The film had its North American premiere at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival in a series of shorts entitled "Time Will Tell."

Vamps in the Damp: Twilight, the Movie

2009-04-02T12:31:00.000-07:00

Yes, I read the book. But it took awhile for me to actually bring on the movie. As an ardent Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, I had my doubts about this girl "rescue me" flick. Girls who dust vampires and wear leather pants are more my speed. "Twilight"'s Bella has a spunkiness and intelligence more pronounced in the book than the movie, but in both she fails to defend herself from the bad guys. The smoulder/seduction of Stephanie Meyers' prose inspired a rapid page turn that drew me in to the alluring character of Edward. Somehow, onscreen, that pull of desire didn't smoke as languidly. Granted, Robert Pattinson has the good looks and wolf-ish star quality requisite to the role, but I found it hard to believe that Kristen Stewart was truly magnetized by the teen vamp-boy. The Northwest forest scenes proved misty and lush and the baseball game a lightning bolt, but much of the movie meanders and rolls its eyes in exasperation. Given the tie-in fan base to the books, the box office is guaranteed, so yay to Catherine Hardwicke for landing the gig that will secure her access to more directorial helm-time. Meanwhile, the buzz machinery has Pattinson on every screen mag and tabloid in the country, grooming the franchise.

Representing Women/Women Representing

2009-03-16T18:16:00.000-07:00

Just back from a fabulous collaborative experience at Tulane University in New Orleans! Representing Women, Women Representing: Experimental Film and New Media Colloquium March 9-13 was curated/organized and magic-wanded by Professor Betsy Weiss of the Media Studies Department at the university. Words and images and inspirations along with live jazz, crawfish etoufee and lots of conversation about the celluloid passion that is film/videomaking. Still downloading the Mississippi waves.....

Imagine Peace

2009-03-02T18:31:00.001-08:00

This past November fulfilled a check-it-off-the-list travel dream to Iceland during the dark season. Aside from seeing the elusive aurora borealis, I had a notion that candle-lit friends would prevail against the extended nighttime. Many votives, baroque dresses, wine glasses, a turkey, legs of lamb and thunderous glacier waterfalls later, I remain stunned by a place so vast yet familiar. Full of stories. And yes, I saw Bjork's house.

Linger-wise, I hadn't counted on Yoko Ono's Imagine Peace Tower of light on the black sky of wintry Reykjavik. Installed in 2007 to commemorate John Lennon's birthday and his death, the blue vertical laser recalled the Towers of Light sculpture now emanating every year from Manhattan's south in memory of 9/11. Something hypnotic and multi-directionally glimpsable in both. Aside from twin versus singleton light sources, the major difference between them is that Ono/Iceland's tower of light runs on geothermal and hydro-electric power. A barely traceable carbon footprint, which, in the land of troll and giant lore, looms large.

I did see the aurora borealis. It proved diaphonous veil-like and ephemeral, not green or purple or anything psychedelic. Just hold-your-breath amazing.

The Nano Song

2009-03-01T17:56:00.000-08:00

Must be the leotard, but the geek factor is quite balletoperatic! (hello, scrabble...) Yes, it's Sesame Street for the MIT set!

Desperately Seeking Buffy in the Dollhouse

2009-02-14T15:22:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I'll admit it. I am a Buffy-head. I am rounding the corner on my second pass through all seven seasons of the Slayer scene. And thanks to an elf this holiday season, I now own Firefly as well. So yes, Joss Whedon is the man. DVR settings confirmed that last night Dollhouse would be programmed. Little did I know that our good friend Eliza Dushku of Faith-from-Buffyland fame would turn out to be not a kickass warrior chick breaking gender stereotypes faster than a speeding bullet, but a school marmy type in glasses and a business suit. In Dollhouse, Echo (Dushku) is more highly programmed than my DVR by a cadre of ultra crime-fighters for hire who have warehoused this hottie to wear whatever costume they choose as a weapon against the dark side. Unlike the Buffster, Echo doesn't have a clue what she's doing most of the time or why. Every night she shacks up in a high-tech laboratory coffin with a hydraulic slider rooftop and goes to sleep only to wake somewhat stunned, erased but rejuvenated. Ok, I get it. Fox TV canned Firefly after 9 episodes aired. To those of us forever enamored of Malcolm Reynolds, Zoe, Wash, Kayley, River and the crew, this seemed sacrilege if not impossible. Something clearly to do with corporate media types just not "getting it." So why the obvious pandering in this first episode of Dollhouse to the hook-you-in cliches of same old, same old cop shows? How many abducted girls in danger of sexual violation has mainstream TV hit us up with over the years? That Joss used that play button as well in the first plot-line of Dollhouse disappointed. Just check out the first episodes of Buffy and Firefly and you'll see innovation city from the get-go. I do have the season lined up to record. But I'm still looking for Faith the Slayer to animate in Echo's eyes. Warrior girls with witticism at their finger tips. I promise to have Faith....

Happy Go Lucky

2009-01-10T10:17:00.000-08:00

Mike Leigh's new film "Happy Go Lucky" features a loveable goofball schoolteacher named Poppy (Sally Hawkins) who likes to party with her friends, make paper bag masks, do flamenco and her specialty, getting people to like her through endless optimism. This quality makes her seem naive at times, especially when taking driving lessons with her nut job instructor, Scott (Eddie Marsan) who seems poised to do her harm. Poppy takes risks briefly befriending a homeless man and yet in the end lands on her own happy trampoline-vaulting feet with a loyal flatmate Zoe and even a new boyfriend. My jaded perspective honed from years of violence in movies kept expecting a turn for the worse, yet Poppy floats her happiness boat through to the end.

Bourgeois Icon System @ Guggenheim NYC

2008-09-21T09:34:00.000-07:00

I finally made it to see the comprehensive exhibition of the amazing spiderwoman herself, Louise Bourgeois at the Guggenheim. The late night Friday experience packs the museum's spiral with the trans-cocktail set. These art party-ers like to peek through vintage doors on memories embroidered on yellowed linen before ordering their glass of Pinot Noir. Bourgeois is now known primarily for her spiders, thanks to prodigious outdoor plaza commissions from major global art museums and collections. The spiders cannot be denied. They are monolithic, frightening and ultimately web-way fascinating. The exhibition, which closes on September 28th, spans the artist's early years, including totemic "personages" of wood and her early "femme-maison" (woman-house) drawings, which are my favorites.

This photograph from the 1980s by Robert Mapplethorpe quintessentializes Bourgeois' sly approach to the Freudian content in her work. The title of the sculpture she's holding? Fillette (Little girl). Many of the mid-90s enclosure installations explore childhood terrain with surreal evocations in cream-colored dresses hung from the ceiling, dusty glass cylinders, train sets, all glimpsed through the hinges of salvaged vintage doors, or plate glass inserts. Peering, peeking, the viewer enters a terrain of half-told secrets. Red stitching on a bit of bedding reads "Art is the guarantee of sanity." And another: "I need my memories they are my documents."

Film Forum hosted an intriguing documentary this summer about Bourgeois and her work, "The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine" featuring striking interviews with the then-octogenarian (she's now 97) ambling through the studio, carving marble slabs and sometimes challenging the interviewers. Spider-wise, Bourgeois can be ornery and challenging, but also charming and amusing, like her work. The most recent pieces involve dolls nighmarishly ripped and sewn from the fabric of her childhood (her parents restored tapestries). This predomiantly pink gooseflesh-raising exploration of death and decay sped me back down the spiral to the more whimsical work. I nodded at the mother/daughter spiders in the lobby before flipping open an umbrella toward Fifth Avenue.

Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy

2008-07-22T16:01:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am a Catwoman fanatic. And Rogue, and Mystique and Storm and, well, you get the caped crusader wannabe vibe. A recent stroll through the Costume Institute's Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art inspired many inner movie clips complete with dazzling capes, spiderwoman dresses and even the original Wonder Woman outfit from the 70s television serial. Too bad the mannequins didn't actually move. The exhibition left me wanting more, particularly of the flatscreen video clip variety. What happened to the footage of the fashion catwalk featured so prominently in the catalogue stills and on the website? And where are the amazing trailers for Batman, Spiderman, Catwoman and X-Men, wildly referenced in the accompanying wall signage but featured most avidly in our imaginations! Oddly, this exhibition ends before you have time to be overwhelmed....I left wanting more, more, more. Passing through a second time walking backwards using my sensor rays as guides didn't help. The catalogue actually depicts more intergallactic fashions than included in the show, an unusual occurrence. So of course, I bought a book about Wonder Woman's history just to assuage my Superhero(ine) needs for the summer. The show closes on September 1st, so yes Bat fans, there's still time to contemplate that hologram of Clark Kent....

Maiden USA Reviewed in Chronogram!

2008-07-03T10:30:00.000-07:00

I am so honored! Maiden USA has been reviewed in the Hudson Valley Arts and Culture Magazine, Chronogram! Click on the title above to take a look!

Daikon Ashi

2008-06-27T11:02:00.000-07:00

Hey! Check out this fun animation about girls, body image and DNA created by the talented Ru Kuwahata, co-founder of the children's program company Tiny Inventions...."Daikon Ashi" is a Japanese term meaning "white radish legs." This innovative short film explores a girl's questions about maternal heredity, the mirror, and self-acceptance in a highly creative visual landscape of ink brush drawings come to life.

I AM Girls Write Now Video!

2008-06-05T05:53:00.000-07:00

Voila! Here is the video I recently produced in collaboration with the fabulous NYC non-profit organization, GirlsWrite Now! The video will be screened this Sunday, June 8th, 2008, 4-6pm at the new Barnes & Noble in Tribeca! Go to www.girlswritenow.org for more details!
See you there!

Diana the Warrior in Prince Caspian

2008-05-20T09:38:00.000-07:00

Actually, her real name is Queen Susan but the script doctors expanded the Warrior Queen role from book to movie in this recent offering in the Chronicle of Narnia series by Disney/Walden Media (2008). And whoa, can that girl shoot a series of arrows, just like the mythic huntress, giving Legolas from The Lord of the Rings some competition in battle!....This movie, even with a fleeting scene of the alluring and powerful Tilda Swinton as the White Queen, actually steps up in visual quality from the previous film adaptation, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2006). Aslan, the lion savior (voiced by Liam Neeson) has more true roar than the last film, where he sometimes looked like a giant FAO Schwartz cuddle toy.

Susan and Lucy Pevensie play pivotal scenes in these films, so good news for girl land representations in mainstream fare this spring....

Hurt Girls?

2008-05-13T09:50:00.000-07:00

Emblazoned with the headline "Hurt Girls," the cover of the New York Times Magazine on Sunday May 11, 2008, features the bandaged head of a girl (wrapped Bugs Bunny style with a big gauze turban) enduring the cartoonish boing of a ball flying through the air after presumably hitting her. The article, "The Uneven Playing Field," written by Michael Sokolove, challenges the notion that Title IX represents positive advancement for girls. However, his article profiles a select group of uber athletes who have entered adolescent team sports with a level of seriousness and what he sees as a questionable "Warrior" spirit that leads to chronic injury. The micro-surgery champs profiled in this article play sports in leagues year-round in addition to their after-school team sports, giving their bodies little time to rest, let alone grow properly. So why does an article about girls who, encouraged by parents, coaches or others, essentially abuse their bodies, link to challenging Title IX funding for all girls' sports programs?

Title IX mandates equal funding for girls in public school sports--meaning equal numbers of coaches, playing fields, equipment and uniforms. Before Title IX, the only guaranteed team uniforms for girls (outside of prep schools) were cheerleader outfits. Title IX is not designed to encourage overly aggressive, overly competitive sports programming for girls, just equal funding for extracurricular sports. Backlash, anyone? Title IX hurts all girls? I don't think so.

Beware of a spin cycle designed to boost sales of Sokolove's soon-to-be released book, "Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against Injury Epidemic in Women's Sports." Whenever the verbs "Protect" "Save" or "Rescue" appear in the title of a book about girls, get ready for a hype-alert button push designed to promote consumer parenting action. Why do girls need to be rescued from playing sports? And why does Title IX have to be questioned in this context? Title IX does not promote injuries in girls, it promotes gender equality in public funding for sports programming, which means body literacy for everyone who would like to learn the language of endorphins. If overly competitive competition comes into the picture, the blame lies not with Title IX, but with the culture of celebrity sports, which emphasizes singleton stardom on the field, not team spirit.

Chants of Lotus

2008-05-07T07:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I screened "Chants of Lotus" (Perempuan Punya Cerita) a 2007 film, at NYU's Anthropology Department, thanks to a notice posted on the listserve. The unique video/film, produced, written and directed by a collective of four Indonesia women--Fatimah Tobing, Lasja Fauzia, Nia Dinata, and Upi--provides a series of four sensitive, articulate, and painful portraits of marginalized women. Each director provides the grounding for her unique tale, yet stylistically and visually all four weave seamlessly one to the other, as they delve into AIDS, midwifery, rape, sexual trafficking, prostitution, on-line pornography and teen sex. Though none of the directorial quartet appeared in person to introduce or Q&A the film, the uniqueness of the collaboration and the collective vision in bringing these difficult stories to the screen emerged clearly from the unity of the production's overall aesthetic sensibility. The film has met with considerable controversy in Indonesia, where the government imposed censorship of certain scenes. A separate documentary has been produced to cover this piece of the recent history.

Have You Found Her

2008-05-02T11:57:00.000-07:00

Just when "Have You Found Her," Janice Erlbaum's second memoir about attempted rescue at a homeless shelter in New York City moves into hospital tragedy terrain, the story takes a wild curve on the rollercoaster of co-dependency. Erlbaum, known for her Bust Magazine columns and "Girlbomb," her debut memoir about her troubled years as a teenage runaway, returns to the shelter of her wayward days to "give back" to the current crop of homeless girls as the art therapy "bead lady." There she meets the extremely intelligent, spectacularly messed-up Sam who charms her with physics vocabulary and a writing gift. Despite shelter policy that volunteers "not play favorites," Janice soon focuses exclusive attention on Sam. Janice's rescue-the-genius-girl program hits overdrive and before long, she's forking over cash for apartments and promising trips to Disneyworld. With scissoring honesty, Erlbaum lays out the folly of her caped crusader agenda with some harrowing neon truths, and manages to bring a psychological thriller quality to this memoir of a troubled girl who hijacked a willing grown-up for a dangerous ride.

Miley Cyrus and Lolita Vanity

2008-04-29T10:29:00.000-07:00

I received a call yesterday at LAX on my cell from Lenore Skenazy of The New York Sun about a piece she was writing on the leaked Vanity Fair photos of Miley Cyrus. (see quote on page 3) Amazing how quickly the supposedly squeaky clean tween star has had her outing in the adult gaze! Annie Liebovitz (one of my lens-eye heroines, so this incident is a definitive ouch) defends as tasteful the obviously nude bedsheet covered portrait of Cyrus looking over her shoulder at the viewer. But the Disney Cinderella to Pretty Woman machine (look at Christina, Britney and Lindsay)...excells at the sexy outing publicity tour, though usually the timing coincides with the girl teen star's "legal" birthday of 18. Miley Cyrus? She's 15. And the presence of her father at the shoot, in the YouTube/Vanity Fair video and in one of the main photos lends a troubling "Ew" factor to the father/daughter lounging. With Madonna on the cover of the current issue garnering further play on-line from the Miley brouhaha, it's hard to forget that when Britney rocked the pop scene, this pop momma took to wearing a Britney t-shirt. Ew again? (See http://www.vanityfair.com/)

Caramel

2008-04-21T20:04:00.000-07:00

Caramel is burnt sugar turned sensuous, viscous and languid, an apt description for the 2007 Lebanese film of the same name, written and directed by Nadine Labaki, who also stars as one of five women connected to the Si Belle beauty shop in modern day Beirut. Recently released on U.S. art house screens, Caramel takes the viewer through an intimate doorway to the privatized salon where, despite singe-ing circumstances of love and compromise, these elegant grown girls with orchid painted eyelids and sensuous dresses remain poignantly loyal to one another. Through cab rides, affairs with married men, and what-if window glances toward the Cinderella womanhood that eludes them even in their chic high heels, these girlfriends survive disappointments with frequent caramel depilations and occasional ullulations. The Si Belle salon itself, with its lopsided 'B' and its frequent power outages has seen better days, yet this is where the women come to tell their secrets, find sisterhood and wash each other's hair.

Console-ing Passions Conference

2008-04-17T14:31:00.000-07:00

Hey Film Mavens, Buffy Freaks and Geek Girls! I will be participating on a panel on Saturday, April 26th, 2008 as part of the Console-ing Passions Conference at UC Santa Barbara, which takes place April 24-26th in sunny Cali, my previous home state!
(I was up in Berkeley/San Francisco for some years, not in SoCal--but make no mistake I swear I was born in NY--
Queens to be exact!).

I'm presenting an excerpt from the last chapter of Maiden USA on girls, digital culture and social activism called "Beyond iCelebrities"! The panel, hosted by my Girl Studies colleague Mary Celeste Kearney of University of Texas/Austin proves to be an inspiring brain trust of flicker screen musings and word play!

Bluestockings Event

2008-04-07T06:22:00.000-07:00

Friday night a diverse mix turned out for the Maiden USA book talk, a multimedia improv discussion and reading with a sample screening of work by teenage girls from across the country. While I have given lectures and presentations at many kinds of venues including college lecture halls, media art centers, and film festivals, this was my first bonafide bookstore event! And what a bookstore for a debut in page-land! Bluestockings, a worker owned independent bookstore on the Lower East Side, stacked to the ceiling with an inspired collection of edgy, intellectual, poetic and provocative titles, provides an inviting living room atmosphere for browsing ideas. I left the event inspired by the questions, the response and the enthusiasm for the Maiden USA philosophy: encouraging girls and women to ask "How do I Look? (through the lens)" versus "How do I Look? (in the mirror)...."

The girl power electricity ran so high on Friday night, it may have inspired the resident Bluestockings mascot Snooker, the pug girl-dog, to take to the street for adventure! Along the way, she met two friendly ladies who took her home, gave her a bath and watched "Nights of Cabiria" before responding to her owner's concerned flyers posted throughout the neighborhood in the morning! Snooker might need a Superdog cape for future jaunts!

Deborah Siegel, the sparky author of Sisterhood, Interrupted, who I met at WAM! last weekend, published this amazing post about the event on her blog, Girl With Pen! I am so honored! http://girlwithpen.blogspot.com/search/label/events (click on the title above for a direct link!)

WAM! Women, Action and The Media Conference

2008-03-31T11:08:00.000-07:00

WAM! BAM! What a weekend of kinetic crosspollination and shareware with intergenerational women surfing Second Wave, Third Wave, and rogue waves of progressive feminism on media issues, geekdoms, blogging, youth activism, alternative publications, book worlds, and multi-platform publishing. 600 women from across the country met at MIT's Stata Center March 28-30 for a marathon download of ideas via workshops, break-out sessions, and how-to networking. Yes, virtual networks of women light up electric conversations from the solo glow screen confessional, but face-to-face encounters with media visionaries writing, doing, sparking and creating provide another version of 3D community. Adventures in Girl-pedia wikis of generosity proliferate at WAM, along with sessions on DIY New Media, optimal blogging, book proposal writing and screen-loads galore! Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas, dubbed by Ann Friedman of Feministing.com in her introductory comments as "The Patron Saint of Not Shutting Up," provided the Friday night keynote address with quote-gems that include: "My adrenaline is outrage."

I will be writing a longer article from a girl's-eye overview for the Spring/Summer 2008 issue of Afterimage. (so stay tuned!)

Maiden USA at Bluestockings Books

2008-03-24T13:10:00.000-07:00

Very exciting news!

Bluestockings Books is hosting a Maiden USA book talk on Friday, April 4th at 7pm....Here's their blurb!

Friday, April 4th @ 7PM - Free
Reading: Kathleen Sweeney "Maiden USA"
In "Maiden USA: Girl Icons Come of Age," Sweeney charts the pantheon of new girl icons that have surfaced in the past 20 years. With brainiacs and athletic champions offered as antidotes to mean girls and lolitas, and with the emergence of self-representation venues on the internet, what is the significance of such contradictory imagery for young people? Sweeney will also show animations created by teenage girls from across the country.

Bluestockings Books, NYC
172 Allen Street between Stanton and Rivington :: 212.777.6028

http://www.bluestockings.com/

MUSA in Semana

2008-03-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

The interviewer spoke perfect English in a dynamic 45-minute Q & A about tween culture and viral marketing so it was still an unexpected thrill to see Maiden USA mentioned in Spanish in Semana last week, the Time Magazine of Colombia! The article speaks about the arrival of the viral Miley Cyrus phenomenon in Latin America...the tween queen makes her global mark! For those of you who speak fluent Spanish, the article will no doubt cover some interesting terrain, but for those of us still running to the diccionario, this piece provides another version of meaning altogether! I'll have to find an amiga to translate this for me! (when the French interview me, I'll be ok....) The cool thing is finding out the Spanish translation of my book: Doncellas USA: Las niñas ícono crecen....I love it!

Girls Write Now Benefit at The New School

2008-03-06T09:59:00.000-08:00

Girls Write Now Benefit
at The New School, 66 W. 12th Street, Room 407
Saturday March 8th, 2008
5-7pm

Girls Write Now is hosting a poetry t-shirt fashion show and reading to benefit their program, which pairs promising inner city girl scribes with published authors for a year-long mentorship in the craft of writing. I recently joined the Advisory Board of this stellar organization which provides a network of professional women switched on to wordsmith with teenage girls, helping them produce creative writing portfolios, write college essays and present their work in front of the microphone. The event is co-hosted by the Media Studies Department at The New School and SIC (Smart is Cool), a fashion design group with positive messaging imprinted on their designs for girls. I will be there!

Juno & Ellen Page in Interview magazine

2008-02-21T09:06:00.000-08:00

Well yes I hesitated when I saw Ellen Page (the Juno girl) on the February 2008 cover of Interview magazine. Sometimes the Warhol-esque 15 seconds conversations reduce the most alluring individuals to vapid bling celebrities. But, ah, Ellen Page, wearing a Patti Smith inspired thin tie suit, proved switched on brilliant in tete a tete with Drew Barrymore (another young star launcher who bucked the Lolita image systems). Truffault, anyone? She rattled off plenty of haut culture references for a twenty-year old with links to icons from my own deck of inspirations as well as iTunes music leads to explore, and a finessed avoidance of fluff chick responses. Page turned into a chapter I want to read for a long while in and out of cinema time....

MUSA Events!

2008-02-03T09:29:00.000-08:00

Maiden USA Upcoming Events

Wednesday, February 13, 2008, 6-7pm
Book Talk Marymount Manhattan College
Regina Peruggi Room
221 East 71st Street, NYC
Hosted by the CommArts Department

Thursday, February 21, 2008, 6:30-8pm
"Maiden USA"
Mind and Consciousness Series
Albert Ellis Institute
45 East 65th Street, NYC
Hosted by The New York Society for General Semantics
http://www.nysgs.org/upcoming.php

Friday April 4, 2008, 7pm
Book Talk
Bluestockings Books
172 Allen Street, NYC

Maiden USA online!

2008-01-31T07:18:00.000-08:00

It's true! You can now order Maiden USA on Amazon.com! Hooray!

Miley Mania

2008-01-31T07:16:00.000-08:00

Click above to read about the tween phenom Miley Cyrus and her alter ego Hannah Montana....

Teen M/others and Others

2008-01-22T10:02:00.000-08:00

On Friday, January 25th, "4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 days" the 2007 Palme d'Or-winning film by Romanian director Christian Mungiu opened in New York City. The cinema verite film about a young college student seeking a black market abortion in late 80s totalitarian Romania under Ceasceau, operates in gritty real time, with POV low-lit camera angles bringing the harrowed viewer into a near-direct experience of stress and danger akin to a horror scenario. While several pregnancy comedies ballooned on screens this year, including "Knocked Up," "Waitress" and "Juno," those dealing with the furrowed brow choice not to have the baby elicit cinematic punishment more than laughs. In Hillary Brougher's 2006 "Stephanie Daley", the title's numb teenage girl played by Amber Tamblyn undergoes a grueling cross-examination by forensic psychologist Lydie Crane (Tilda Swinton), endures the drive-by bottle-throwing ridicule of school pranksters as well as her parents' alienated separation. Nothing like Junebug's reception by her working class hipster parents in "Juno"! And yes, I jammed on Ellen Page's deadpan wit as much as anybody, but haven't stopped musing on the mixed-up implications of her Iggy Pop soundtrack of cool to the whale-strom of her comedic belly!

Girls Write Now benefit

2008-01-22T09:42:00.000-08:00

On Friday January 18th, I attended a benefit at the John Street Church in NYC for a fabulous organization, Girls Write Now (www.girlswritenow.org), which pairs professional writers with inner city girls for year-long weekly sessions exploring the written word. The benefit featured these word duos reading excerpts from their work on body image, cookies and cooking, and being young urban witsters. The intergenerational mentorship aspect of the project provided a crackling, kinetic atmosphere of "everybody's welcome" that reminded me of the happening girls mediamaking events sponsored by Reel Grrls, Seattle (www.reelgrrls.org). Something beyond church takes place when generosity and creativity combine with girls, wordsmiths, trust and community scaffolding. It's one thing to read a poem to your girlfriend in your bedroom, and another light bulb entirely when reading to an applauding crowd in a historic church in New York City.....!

Maiden USA: Girl Icons Come of Age

2008-01-12T09:14:00.000-08:00

Hooray! Maiden USA: Girl Icons Come of Age is now a 3D, page-turning reality in print!

The book is published in New York by Peter Lang Publishers (www.peterlang.com) and will be available on Amazon at the end of January 2008. This marks a yowza milestone for me as media artist/writer!

Click on the title above to check out my website for more information: www.video-text.com, and stay tuned for updates!