Tag Archives: Film

PARADIGM-SHIFTING NEW FILM ON MOTHERHOOD, CHILDFREE WOMEN AND REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE, ‘MY SO-CALLED SELFISH LIFE’, TO BE STREAMED WORLDWIDE THIS MAY

Posted on by

Trixie Films is delighted to announce that its paradigm-shifting new documentary feature film about childfree women, My So-Called Selfish Life, will be released worldwide for the first time and streamed from 6 – 16May.

 Child free,

Directed by the award-winning feminist writer/directorTherese Shechter, the film is a journey through one of our society’s greatest social taboos: choosing not to become a mother, and is the third in a trilogy of documentaries by Shechter dismantling our most sacred ideas about womanhood: from power and 21st century feminism, to sex and virginity, and now motherhood. The film premiered at the Woodstock Film Festival in 2021 to critical acclaim.

 

My So-Called Selfish Life is unique in the childfree conversation for its intersectional approach to its subject matter, as well as the ways it ties women’s personal stories of choosing not to have children to the deeper cultural and political forces that tell us that a woman’s greatest value lies in her ability to reproduce. It also incorporates a lot of humour – weaving together everything from Grey’s Anatomy clips to speeches from Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

 

Film Threat said: “My So-Called Selfish Life is a timely documentary on an issue as pressing as ever. Women’s bodies and fertility are continuing areas of concern for those in power — again, usually men,” andMs Magazine described it as a “striking and imaginative documentary, which addresses [an] oft-overlooked facet of reproductive justice.”

 

Director Therese Shechter said: “Humour is a huge part of my work, creating an engaging documentary style that makes room for some very thorny conversations. I’m excited to take on my most controversial subject yet: the assumption that motherhood is a biological imperative and the defining measure of womanhood. There’s no one right way to be a woman, and a woman’s value in society should never lie in her ability to reproduce.”

 

My So-Called Selfish Life, will stream worldwide for the first time from 6 – 16 May

via the Show & Tell platform:

https://watch.showandtell.film/watch/my-so-called-selfish-life

 

For more info visit:

myselfishlife.com

trixiefilms.com

Mother!

Posted on by

If you are the kind of person that gets twitchy when a hot cup of tea is plonked beside, instead of on top of, a perfectly good coaster then Mother! is not the film for you.  It is the tale of a frustrated poet (credited as Him) and his house-proud wife (credited as mother) living in an idyllic country house.  He spends his time not writing while she noodles about sploshing muted Farrow and Ball tones on various walls of their chic wooden dwelling.  Her domestic goddessing routine is upset when strangers start arriving and, crucially, not leaving however many times she screams “Get out.”

An unknown couple stay over at the behest of the poet followed by their bickering sons.  What follows is rather like watching an episode of Grand Designs in reverse.  Strangers begin to arrive at the house in greater numbers as the film initially plays out as a home invasion horror.  The mother’s show home is steadily ruined as hordes of the poet’s acolytes descend on them, literally tearing the house down.  The film unfolds like the kind of nightmare where you are entirely impotent to events going on around you.  mother dashes from room to room straightening rugs and emptying ashtrays only to find a new group of hell raisers have arrived.

Critical chatter around this film has been mixed, with a good deal of words devoted to the allegory that the film purports to represent.  The sharp-eyed among you will have noticed that the poet’s credit is Him with an upper case h while mother and everyone else including ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are all lower case.  Yes, we are in God territory here.  Javier Bardem is God, Jennifer Lawrence is Mother Nature., the house the Garden of Eden.  The first two strangers to arrive, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer are Adam and Eve, the sons Cain and Abel etc.  The destruction of the house is the pollution of the world and so goes the allegory.

If Mother! feels burdened by a need for interpretation it succeeds in being a nasty and very difficult film to watch – which is a good thing.  Director Daren Aronofsky is tapping into his previous work with the bristly paranoia of Black Swan and the way the camera is often stationed just behind Lawrence’s shoulder as it did behind Mickey Rourke’s in The Wrestler.  The choreography and escalation of the violence and horror make for a deeply uncomfortable second hour as Aronofsky tightens the umbilical cord he has wrapped around your neck.  That Mother! chases its own tail will come as no surprise for some.  However, you may well share the sentiments of four unlikely geysers sat to my left.  As the credits rolled one of them queried, “What was the f****** point of all that?”  What indeed?

 

 

Shocking New Study Reveals Overwhelming Sexism in TV & Film Ads

Posted on by

Patricia Arquette , speech, feminism, oscar speech, equal pay, Winner of Best Actress In A Supporting Role Oscar 2015Women may be fighting for equality but there is still a long way to go. TV, cinema and online adverts are overwhelmingly biased against women, with men appearing on screen FOUR times more than women, and men speaking SEVEN times more than women, according to groundbreaking new research.

The study by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media – founded by the Thelma and Louise star – and ad agency JWT New York, looked at more than 2,000 ads from over the last 10 years to get the results.

The report, released at the 2017 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity – the biggest global event in the advertising world  –  also found:

·       Women are twice more likely than men to be shown partially or fully nude.

·       There are twice as many male characters in ads than female characters.

·       25% of ads feature men only, while only 5% of ads feature women only.

·      18% of ads feature only male voices, while less than 3% of ads featuring female voices only.

·        Women in ads are mostly in their 20s while men are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.

·        Men are almost twice as likely to be funny than women.

·        One in 10 female characters are shown in sexually revealing clothing – six times the number of male characters.

·        Men are 62% more likely to be shown as intelligent.

·        Women are 48% more likely to be shown in the kitchen while men are 50% more likely to be shown at a sporting event.

·        One in three men are shown to have a job compared to one in four women.

 

The researchers concluded that female presence and portrayal in ads has not changed or improved for more than a decade, from 2006 to this day.

The report, called Unpacking Gender Bias in Advertising, examined a decade’s worth of winners and entries to the Cannes Lions Awards – the Oscars of the ad industry – using automation to analyse the split between men and women.

It aims at raising awareness of explicit and implicit gender bias in advertising, and its powerful ripple effects in the world.

Madeline Di Nonno, CEO of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, said: “By changing the narrative, the images we use, the stories we tell about women, we can dramatically change the way the world values women and how women and girls see themselves. It’s not enough to portray more women. We need a more progressive and inclusive representation of women.”

Brent Choi, Chief Creative Officer, J. Walter Thompson New York: “What this research shows is that our industry has tent-pole moments, amazing actions or campaigns when we all rally around women, but when it comes to creating our ‘regular’ ads for our ‘regular’ clients, we forget about them.”
The research from The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media at Mount Saint Mary’s University and J. Walter Thompson New York, in collaboration with University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering, analysed more than 2,000 films from the Cannes Lions archive (English language only).

Debra Messing ‘Pressured’ to Go Nude in A Walk in the Clouds

Posted on by

Debra_Messing_at_the_2009_Tribeca_Film_FestivalDebra Messing has revealed she was “pressured” to shoot a nude scene in 1995 film A Walk in the Clouds by the director Alfonso Arau and the film’s producers.

The Will & Grace star starred opposite Keanu Reeves in the film, it was her first major film and was not a pleasant experience. She also said that she contacted her agent about the directors request and was then informed she would likely be fired if she said no.

She went on to say that she was berated after approaching Arau about the scene. “Your job is to get naked and to say the lines. That’s it,” he reportedly said. When the time came to film the scene the filmmaker made her feel uncomfortable “He lifts (the sheet up), scans my naked body, then drops the sheet on top of me like a used Kleenex,” she said at the MAKERS conference in California, “He walks away without a word…The whole thing was a power play, a game. And the goal, to demean me, to strip me of my power and make me feel on a cellular level his dominance over me.”

 

In the end only her back was exposed in the film. The 48-year-old actress also reportedly had issues with Alfonso after he berated her for how she looked.

“How quickly can we get a plastic surgeon in here’, ‘Her nose is ruining my movie! I can’t do this! Look at this!”‘ Alfonso reportedly said.

Messing was “frozen, horrified, mortified” and “felt deep shame” about her Jewish heritage after his comments.

Ruth Wilson Called Meeting Over Raunchy The Affair Sex Scenes

Posted on by

Ruth Wilson Called Meeting Over Raunchy The Affair Sex Scenes, the affair, ruth wilson, boyfriend, sex scenesRuth Wilson got so upset by the amount of sex scenes in The Affair that she called a meeting to discuss it with the makers of the show. She says she found it “unnecessary and I felt uncomfortable”, adding: “Personally, I didn’t want to keep doing sex scenes and blow jobs.”

What followed was a chat with the directors and the show runner. Everything is now fine, she says.

“You have to listen to yourself in those situations. There’s still sex in it but it wasn’t expected that I would be nude.”

Ruth took the part in The Affair after getting annoyed with the lack of opportunities for women in Hollywood.

“To be honest, I wasn’t really looking at TV for America because I know the contracts and how long they are, but the film scripts weren’t good enough. There’s a very small number of women who get to do the best material that’s around, and there are probably only three movies scripts a year with good female roles in them. So there’s a limited amount of material to do. With television there’s so many shows led by women, it’s amazing.”

Ruth also talked about how hard it was to maintain a relationship when you are an actor. The 34-year-old actress told British Instyle:

“You can’t go on Tinder. You usually tend to find people you’ve known for a long time. It is difficult. Just the nature of the job means it’s difficult. The fame side of it is one aspect. But the fact that you are travelling a lot, or you have to be away a lot. It’s difficult to maintain a relationship even without the fame aspect of it.”

Ruth was asked about her rumoured relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal, she replied, “I don’t know. I don’t give much away and I don’t want to. It’s not anyone’s business.”

 

If you are an actor then check out my book, How To Be a Successful Actor: Becoming an Actorpreneur.  It tells you everything you need to know about how to become a successful actor.

 

 

The Hateful Eight – Film Review

Posted on by

the_hateful_eightRolling in at a mammoth three hours and seven minutes, the aptly titled The Hateful Eight is a film that in many ways will divide audiences. Those that love Quentin Tarantino’s style of film-making; the long build ups, exaggerated sword plays of dialogue and immediate violence, the no expense spared approach to making scenes look and feel authentic will no doubt rejoice here. But for those who were perhaps looking for a quick fix of action seen in examples such as Django Unchained and the Kill Bill series are likely to be disappointed or lack the endurance to see this film through to the end. It follows then that this film can be seen as a blessing and a shame in equal measure.

Shot in Ultra Panavision 70 which is apparently super widescreen, a long, and I mean long intro follows a horse and carriage through what must be a the bleakest snow storm. Yes, it is almost ten minutes before we actually get any dialogue. Only Tarantino could do that and not break a sweat. But when people do start speaking its then that you appreciate the depth and texture that he places within his characters.

John Ruth (Kurt Russell) is a bounty hunter carrying his charge Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to a town called Red Rock. He never fails to bring his quarry in alive rather than dead so that they can be hanged by the state. Before long he is joined by Major Marquis Warren (played by an incredibly on form Samuel L Jackson) who after some convincing is permitted to share the stagecoach to Red Rock. They are soon after joined by Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins); allegedly Red Rock’s new sheriff, who makes it clear that in return for riding on the stage-coach he’ll ensure that justice will be done on arrival.

The worsening storm forces them to break their journey at Minnie’s; an isolated shop that they intend to use as a stop-over point and it’s here that four more faces join the crowd, potentially all eager for a share of the bounty that is on Daisy Domergue’s head. They are Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern), an old Confederate general, Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), a taciturn cattle-hand, Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), a flamboyant hangman, and Bob (Demián Bichir), the shop’s temporary Mexican caretaker. Minnie herself however is nowhere to be seen. This sets the scene for a set-up where no one can be trusted and anything can happen.

It’s here where the dialogue goes into overdrive and Tarantino really goes to work building and creating tension. However, it has to be said that it is a shame that it is such a slow build up; a growing crescendo which perhaps would have fared better if the characters had redeeming qualities. The reality is I found I could find little empathy with any one of the characters, they all had behaviours which I found distasteful, but perhaps that is the whole point. The second act plays out almost like an Agatha Christie novel; largely a quest to find out who is behind it all. The characters try and suss each other out. Flashbacks occur; who was where and when this or that happened and people try to talk their way out of being in the guilty frame.

What embellishes this is the fine cast. Very rarely do you find films where every actor shines. The only one I can think of right now where that occurred recently was in The Wolf of Wall Street and again it was because the director was very credible so the cast gave it their all. Here it is the same. They all implicitly trust Quentin so they hit their roles with vigour, the end result is stunning, at times riveting and in so many ways simply wonderful.

Personally, I am not a fan of long films. My friends were divided in equal measure between loving and hating this film. However, it has to be said from Tarantino this film seems intimate, like a personal project he really deliberated, stressed over, savoured and desired to share with his fans. The end result is something only he could realistically pull off at such quality and regardless of whether you love it or hate it you have to admit it’s a fine piece of work.

Re-ignite your love of Cinema with The IMAX with Laser experience at Empire Leicester Square

Posted on by

imaxlaserishere_aidan_header

Remember the days when going to the Cinema used to be a welcome treat, watching the latest Blockbusters and then discussing them with everyone who managed to book in advance…? Of course, I may be referring to Titanic in particular when I mention this, but long gone are the days when this was the culture. With our tech industry improving and developing every year, it’s no surprise that as consumers we have become impatient and demanding. The advanced speed at which film releases become available to viewers and huge factors such as piracy, have become major contributors to the dip in cinema attendance, so it’s important the movie technology industry do everything they can to improve and enhance our cinema experience.

IMAX028

Enter IMAX with Laser. Dubbed ‘The Future of Movie Technology’ IMAX have set out to maximise your experience of film with brighter images, sharper contrast, more colours and double the sound. Launched at the beginning of this month, IMAX with Laser really does fully immerse you into film. It is designed to fill IMAX’s largest screens and will draw you into the action like never before.

IMAX033

Technically, advances have been made in the following areas;

Brightness has been enhances by a laser light source which provides more brightness than a xenon bulb and allows IMAX with more lifelike images. In short it will allow you to enjoy a film with unparalleled brightness in both 3D and 2D.

Contrast can be altered in post production and for us means that we will see much more detail in the image and a heightened level of realism will make you forget you are watching a movie.

The Colour scale has been expanded offering a much more vivid and realistic palette that has never been explored onscreen and with all IMAX with Laser screens dressed in all black everything, this helps you to fully immerse yourself into the imagery.

The next-generation Sound System features built-in image calibration and audio tuning features. The most amazing thing we heard from the team behind this revolutionary technology is that attention to detail is paramount. Even after release, IMAX with Laser will make sure the film is never compromised over time by including an industrial camera next to every projector screening one of their films, this will monitor thousands of system components ensuring optimum performance for every showing.

IMAX016

Today we can be extremely grateful that we can probably experience most new releases at the drop of a hat from our computer screens but there is nothing quite like that full Cinema Experience. Personally, I can remember every detail of my first experience of an IMAX film about 17 years ago watching an underwater film in IMAX 3D. Today, watching the various trailers in IMAX Laser in both 3D and without, has something of a revolutionary feel about it which would be extremely difficult to replicate outside of an IMAX cinema. No amount of talking about IMAX with Laser will do it justice but what can be assured is that you will not be disappointed. Prepare to be blown away and immersed into the world of film.

IMAX with Laser can be experienced at the Empire Leicester Square IMAX in London, which is the first cinema in Europe to have this system installed. With more cinemas to introduce this in the pipeline, hold on to your seats. Bookings can currently be made for The Walk, Crimson Peak, SPECTRE and Star Wars: The Force Awakens here:

http://www.empirecinemas.co.uk/imax/t5

A Guide To Becoming A Film & TV Extra In The UK (Don’t Be A Grubb) Book Review

Posted on by

A Guide To Becoming A Film & TV Extra In The UK (Don't Be A Grubb)A Guide To Becoming A Film & TV Extra In The UK (Don’t Be A Grubb) is part satire, part comedy and part guide. It is a really good book with great advice on being an SA, but is also funny and original. We loved this book. Grub is really interesting (read it to find out more!) and the book is unique. We love how it is structured and has an original take on its subject. A must read, excellent book.

OUT NOW ON AMAZON KINDLE!!!

Be more than a 9-5.

Once captured on film, you’ll always be alive!

No longer the domain of the select few, this is by far the most brutally honest representation of the the world that exists in front of camera. Satirical, informative and an invaluable guide for a budding extra/supporting artist. As this book illustrates, TV and film land evokes commitment, passion and self-expression in a way that very few industries can.

Approaching film and TV extra/supporting artiste work with the wrong attitude can take you down the road of inflated dreams, unrealistic expectations and unfulfilled ambition. However, if you approach this work with the right mind set, a whole new world that you never thought you could be part of can present itself to you. This book (guide) will give you the tools you need and the rules that must be adhered to. Note that no one will make you a star overnight. You will dictate how bright and long your star will shine, according to your commitment, talent and willingness to play the showbiz game.

If you’re willing to make personal sacrifices (sometimes of dignity) and follow the rules of the Showbiz Jigsaw, you could be immortalised in HD. However, never forget that you are a small cog in a mammoth machine. When you are dead and buried, you can live on forever on celluloid film or on UK TV Gold. Just remember, don’t be a Grubb!

#getontv #comedicsatire #dontbeagrubb

A Guide To Becoming A Film & TV Extra In The UK (Don’t Be A Grubb) is available here.

twitter account: @sexyartistes