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  • ALMT-WW: Sigourney Weaver thinks James Cameron didn’t win because “He didn’t have breasts.”

    April 14th, 2010

    On ALMT-Women’s Wednesday I talk about women in media.

    Yesterday it was reported that Sigourney Weaver (of whom I am a huge fan), is bitter about her director not taking home the big prize this February.  Weaver told Brazilian news site Folha Online:

    Jim didn’t have breasts, and I think that was the reason…he should have taken home that Oscar.

    She also thinks that the Best Picture Oscar should have gone to, can you guess…yes, Avatar. She goes on to say that, compared to the old days when big productions like Ben Hur won the awards, it is now “fashionable to give the Oscar to a small movie that nobody saw.”

    Various blogs are stating that Weaver is accusing the Oscars of sexism and in return, the blogs are ripping her a new one. Heckler Spray, as you can guess, hasn’t been very kind:

    We’re right behind you on this issue, Sigourney, and we’ll do anything we can to spread this message. Give equality to women by never letting them win anything! Remove the female vote! Down with girls! Down with girls!

    The Village Voice is comparing Weaver’s “crazy talk” to Obama’s Presidential campaign with “pundits like Geraldine Ferraro…saying “He only got this far because he’s black!” Should this at all be about race, gender, or other inconsequential details? When it comes to art, is it possible to look past these details?

    One of my favorite writers, Melissa Silverstein over at Women & Hollywood, asked an important question in “Sigourney Weaver Shits on Kathryn Bigelow”:

    Would anyone be talking about this if Tarantino or one of the other guys had won over Cameron?

    In fact The Times Online claims Bigelow’s win wasn’t a feminist one, since she’s now joined The Boy’s Club (although the article has more to do with identifying the traits of a great director that few women harbor: “insanity, brutality and selfishness”).

    As a female director, I was very excited when Kathyryn Bigelow was the first woman in the history of the Academy Awards to win Best Director.  I was rooting for her out of principle, as I had yet to see the film. And I was very relieved when I watched The Hurt Locker several days later, because it was a damn fine film. As for Avatar, I’m sure it was quite a challenge to make, but the story was recycled and, well,  you can read Tim Hayes’ review to get the details.

    I think the media was surprised that Bigelow didn’t make a big speech about how she shattered the glass ceiling and how women can make films too. She shooed it away, saying:

    I’m not a woman, I’m a director.

    And in the end, isn’t it possible that the best director won?

    April 14th,2010 Blogging, Women's Wednesdays | Sections: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

  • “10 Things I Learnt Watching the 2010 Oscars While Medicated” by Tim Hayes

    March 11th, 2010

    It’s Thursday, which means it’s…

    Tim Hayes on Theatrical Thursdays

    Mr. Hayes is not only the ALMT publicist and lead editor,
    but also contributes film journalism and reviews to     Critic’s Notebook and Cinemattraction.

    Ten things I learnt watching the 2010 Oscars while medicated:

    1. Whatever you think of the E! red carpet coverage, thank your god of choice if you avoided the annual spectacle on foreign television, where the presenters are never sure who all these people are but wonder if they might be able to swing a green card in return for a quickie.

    2. In the year that the channels for getting independent films in front of audiences collapsed almost completely, independent films gathered up just about all the prizes they were up for.

    3. Carey Mulligan made a novice’s mistake by wearing a strapless Prada number covered with little keys and scissors, and looked like an employee at Wonderland’s hardware store. At this rate she’ll be the one wearing a swan next year. In contrast, Hilary Swank is an experienced old hand, and knows that the approved response to the failure of a worthy film like “Amelia” is to go on live TV with her breasts presented for public inspection.
    They passed.

    4. Mauro Fiore winning the cinematography Oscar for “Avatar” is a watershed for sure, since it’s the first winning film to be shot entirely digitally and the visuals in the film are stunning. But as the digital revolution rolls on, the idea that one individual controls the look of a film gets harder to take at face value. “Inglourious Basterds” was not perfect, but Robert Richardson gave the film a vibrant, colorful identity that never felt like it was the work of a committee or born in a server room.

    5. Neil Patrick Harris was funny. It happened in ’97 and involved telepathic contact with a ferret. Since then, not so much.

    6. Sandra Bullock gets a bad rap, but she meets the definition of a movie star: a) her name is enough to get people out of their houses, and b) she makes it look easy. The first of those has only arrived lately, but the second has been obvious ever since she cast a withering look at Sylvester Stallone’s knitting in “Demolition Man” back in 1993. Plus she produced “Gun Shy”, an all-time underrated black comedy which revolves around Liam Neeson’s irritable bowel syndrome.

    7. “Precious” and Mo’Nique deserved to win recognition because the film touched a nerve and got people talking, and because of its fiercely independent mindset. The weird friction going on as the E! machine attempts to process the people who made the film was amusing at first, then uncomfortable, and now just needs to stop. It’s becoming hard to tell who’s patronising who.

    8. Hell will consist of people interpreting Hans Zimmer’s film music through the medium of dance.

    9. “The Hurt Locker” is likely to be the lowest earning and least seen Best Picture winner Oscar has ever produced. So tentative was the film’s release pattern that it was nominated in the Independent Spirit Awards a year ago, rather than the ones held last week. But who cares. Kathryn Bigelow is a great film maker, spiritual heir to Howard Hawks, greatly gifted in several other arts as well as film making, and inadvertently brought about my introduction to ALM Talkies. May she never be tempted to make tire commercials again.

    10. The two winners of the Best Documentary Short got into an argument onstage. The 87-year old mother of one of them tried to trip the other one with her cane on their way to the stage. I want all three of those nutters to host next year.

    (The video is below, in case you missed it.)

    Here are Tim Hayes Oscar-nominated reviews:

    The Hurt Locker: Nominated for 9 Oscars, won 6
    Avatar: Nominated for 8 Oscars, won 3
    Precious: Nominated for 6 Oscars, won 2
    Nine: Nominated for 4 Oscars
    Invictus: Nominated for 2 Oscars
    The Lovely Bones: Nominated for 1 Oscar

    March 11th,2010 Uncategorized | Sections: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments

  • Strange Days & The Hurt Locker review by Tim Hayes on Theatrical Thursdays

    January 21st, 2010

    It’s Thursday, which means it’s…

    Tim Hayes on Theatrical Thursdays

    Mr. Hayes is not only the ALMT publicist and lead editor,
    but also contributes film journalism and reviews to     Critic’s Notebook and Cinemattraction.

    Tim Hayes on Theatrical Thursdays

    Strange Days 1996
    The Hurt Locker 2009
    dir. Kathryn Bigelow

    Fourteen years ago, a James Cameron script included a man in a wheelchair who gets his legs back in virtual reality. Sound familiar? It’s a very different film. “Avatar” is a decent sci-fi comicbook, but it can’t hold a candle to “Strange Days”, 1996′s unsung masterpiece directed by Cameron’s then-partner Kathryn Bigelow, which looks sharper by the year.

    Like all Bigelow films, “Strange Days” is stuffed with good ideas. Ralph Fiennes, never better, is Lenny Nero, a dealer in virtual reality clips of other people’s good times. Lenny is a great creation: unreliable but loyal, shady but honorable, smooth but sick at heart.

    His ally is ‘Mace’ Mason, one of the finest warrior-women in movies, played by Angela Bassett as a stubborn slab of muscle and charisma.  As the world goes end-of-the-century crazy, Mace mothers Nero, lets him cry on her shoulder, and deals with the great many people who want to kill him.

    It’s the rarest kind of action film, one made for grown-ups. Back then Cameron’s ideas sometimes had grit in them, and “Strange Days” hinges on a nasty use of virtual reality to relive rape and murder. But in 1996 Bigelow had already proved she was one of the greatest directors around, so the film is also slick, witty, and terrific to look at. If you’ve not seen it, treat yourself.

    Right now, Bigelow is finally receiving her due. “The Hurt Locker”, her current film about a Baghdad bomb disposal team, also puts real human beings in the foreground of some staggeringly tense action and is hoovering up awards by the boxful. It has shown that films can deal seriously with Iraq without losing an audience, and put Bigelow squarely back on the radar. And it’s brought back the old crazy talk about her gender being an issue for an action director, which deserves a re-introduction to Mace Mason for a history lesson and a punch-up.


    READ TIM HAYES’ FULL REVIEW OF “THE HURT LOCKER” over at CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK

    January 21st,2010 Blogging, Film Reviews by Tim Hayes, Theatrical Thursdays, Video | Sections: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

  • ALMT-Theatrical Thursdays: Avatar Na’vi Make-up Tutorial

    January 14th, 2010

    To complement today’s review of Avatar by Tim Hayes, I thought I would include this cool make-up tutorial by Petrilude, in case you had some free time and a Sci-Fi party to go to this weekend.

    Enjoy!

    January 14th,2010 Theatrical Thursdays, Video | Sections: , , , , , | No Comments

  • Avatar review by Tim Hayes on Theatrical Thursdays

    January 14th, 2010

    It’s Thursday, which means it’s…

    Tim Hayes on Theatrical Thursdays

    Mr. Hayes is not only the ALMT publicist and lead editor,
    but also contributes film journalism and reviews to     Critic’s Notebook and Cinemattraction.

    Tim Hayes on Theatrical Thursdays

    Avatar  dir. James Cameron 2009

    Release Date: December  18, 2009 (USA)
    Studio: 20th Century Fox
    Director: James Cameron
    Screenwriter: James Cameron
    Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Peter Mensah, Laz Alonso, Wes Studi, Stephen Lang, Matt Gerald
    Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
    MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking)
    Official Website:     Avatarmovie.com

    If you haven’t seen “Avatar” yet, you really should. And see it in 3D – because I’ve only seen the 2D version and I want to hear what it’s like.

    This much I can tell anyway: “Avatar” is a gorgeous spectacle. $300 million or so in the hands of James Cameron, who knows at least as much about electrical engineering as he does about films, buys a ton of pin-sharp deep focus CGI, a whole zoo of fantastic creatures and plenty of stuff exploding.

    And it buys a big step up in the way animated figures move. Apart from the old problem of fast gymnastics and hand to hand combat, which still looks jerky, the critters are animated beautifully with every sweat bead and hair braid rendered to perfection.


    One figure is particularly fantastic: Zoe Saldana makes Neytiri’s growls and snarls come across perfectly, not hindered one bit by the engineering rig that Cameron strapped the actress into. She makes all the other Na’vi seem half asleep.

    Shame that she’s stuck playing Pocahontas in the FernGully fighting the Battle of Endor, thanks to a plot that comes straight from Cameron’s teenage notebook. More bad news on the soundtrack too, with a drippy final song calculated to make people remember “Titanic”. Thanks, I’d rather not.

    “Avatar” looks awesome, sounds terrible, and might change the face of theatrical movie presentation by cracking the floodgates for 3D. Not a bad $300 million’s worth, maybe. But it also proves that nothing yet beats flesh and blood performers. I wouldn’t want to lose the real Michelle Rodriguez, an actress born to just rock up and hit people in the face. I definitely want to see Stephen Lang, terrific as bad guy Colonel Quaritch, bringing stuff to the screen that no computer will ever be able to process. I don’t want “Avatar” to just wake George Lucas up so he can fiddle with “Star Wars” again – ah. Too late.

    January 14th,2010 Film Reviews by Tim Hayes, Theatrical Thursdays, Video | Sections: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments