Tag Archives: Anne Hathaway

The Dark Knight Rises Gets Selina Kyle and Bane

Posted on by Arleigh

January 19, 2011 is the first day of the new year when the internet exploded with reactions concerning Warner Brothers’ announcement about two key characters in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming and final film in his Batman trilogy.

According to a Warner Brothers press release Anne Hathaway will take on the iconic role of Selina Kyle. For those who don’t recognize the name it’s the public face of the female foil for Batman. I’m talking about none other than Catwoman herself. While the press release doesn’t mention the name Catwoman anywhere it would be only logical that Hathaway as Selina Kyle will end up as Catwoman before the film ends.

The other character announcement was about who Tom Hardy was going to portray in the film. Speculation since Hardy was cast mostly had him taking on the role of the villain Hugo Strange, but in a curve out of left field it looks like Hardy will be playing villain Bane.

While reaction on Hathaway as Selina Kyle has mostly been positive the one concerning Hardy as Bane has been met with a combination of guarded optimism (much faith and trust has been earned by Nolan from fans) to outright fanboy rage. Both from film bloggers who should know better and just people who want to grab onto anything that they see as the downfall of the Nolan take on the Batman franchise.

Some still remember the catastrophic Bane from Schumacher’s deservedly-panned Batman & Robin thus think this Nolan take on Bane will be just the same. Others just never bought into the ‘roided-out criminal villain when he was first introduced in the “Knightfall” crossover during the 90’s. If Nolan hadn’t earned my trust as a film and comic book fan from his previous Batman films I would react the same way but I won’t.

While the comic book version of Bane did look like a muscle-bound luchador who used a super-soldier serum called “Venom” to roid-out people fail to remember that bane was very close to Batman’s equal when it came to the intellect department. This was the one villain who deduced Batman’s true identity and found a way to mentally and physically break the Bat down before finally breaking his back.

I believe that Nolan will probably dump the luchador mask and outfit and concentrate on Bane as a criminal kingpin who doesn’t just have the physicality to match Batman punch for punch but also the mental acuity equal to the task of breaking Batman. Does this mean that rumors of the character Hugo Strange has been nixed from the film?

I happen to think that either Hugo Strange will be merged with the character of Bane or may actually appear as the true mastermind who turns Bane loose on the Batman. Either way I’m quite interested in finding out how Christopher Nolan plans to adapt the Bane character to his realistic take on the Batman universe. I’d be very surprised if the wrestling mask and outfit remains. The venom injections could easily be adapted to become more believable and as Tom Hardy has shown in the film Bronson he can physically bulk up and look believable as a muscle-bound heavy.

Source: Slash Film

The Worst Female Images In A Movie

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Did you know that there’s a group known as The Women Film Critics Circle and, much like the DFW Film Critics, I am not a member despite being 1) a woman, 2) a film critic, and 3) a feminist?  I swear, I am feeling so rejected right about now…

Then again, looking over their 2010 movie awards, I’m not sure I would want to be a member.  Check out their selections and then see if you can guess which one has got me all annoyed and profane.

BEST MOVIE ABOUT WOMEN
Mother And Child

BEST MOVIE BY A WOMAN
Winter’s Bone

BEST WOMAN STORYTELLER [Screenwriting Award]
The Kids Are All Right: Lisa Cholodenko

BEST ACTRESS
Annette Bening/The Kids Are All Right

BEST ACTOR
Colin Firth/The King’s Speech

BEST YOUNG ACTRESS
Jennifer Lawrence/Winter’s Bone

BEST COMEDIC ACTRESS
Annette Bening/The Kids Are All Right
BEST FOREIGN FILM BY OR ABOUT WOMEN: *TIE*
Mother
Women Without Men

BEST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Conviction

WORST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Black Swan

BEST MALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE: *TIE*
Another Year
The King’s Speech

WORST MALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Jackass 3D

BEST THEATRICALLY UNRELEASED MOVIE BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
Temple Grandin

BEST EQUALITY OF THE SEXES: *TIE
Another Year
Fair Game

BEST ANIMATED FEMALES
Despicable Me

BEST FAMILY FILM
Toy Story 3

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Helen Mirren

ACTING AND ACTIVISM
Lena Horne [posthumous]

*ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: For a film that most passionately opposes violence against women:
Winter’s Bone

*JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: For best expressing the woman of color experience in America
For Colored Girls

*KAREN MORLEY AWARD: For best exemplifying a woman’s place in history or society, and a courageous search for identity
Fair Game

COURAGE IN ACTING [Taking on unconventional roles that radically redefine the images of women on screen]
Helen Mirren/The Tempest

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN AWARD [Performance by a woman whose exceptional impact on the film dramatically, socially or historically, has been ignored]
Q’Orianka Kilcher/Princess Kaiulani

BEST DOCUMENTARY BY A WOMAN
A Film Unfinished

WOMEN’S WORK: BEST ENSEMBLE
Mother And Child

BEST SCREEN COUPLE
Another Year: Jim Broadbent/Ruth Sheen as Tom and Gerri

Did you catch it?  Yes, that’s right.  With all of the demeaning, insulting, sexist crap that both the mainstream and the independent film industries have released this year, Black Swan wins the award for “Worst Female Images In A Film.”

Uhmm, really?

Yes, Natalie Portman dealing with a society that forces an unrealistic expectation of perfection on young women — this is a far more negative image than every female  character in The Social Network turning out to either be a bitch, a whore, or an idiot.  Natalie Portman suffering from bulimia because she knows the consequences if she doesn’t maintain the right body type — this is a far more insulting image than Anne Hathaway being charmed by Jack Gyllenhaal pretending to be a doctor while leering at her exposed breast in Love and Other Drugs.  This was the year that Rebecca Hall fell in love with a man who kidnapped her in The Town while The Killer Inside Me lingered lovingly on scenes of Casey Affleck beating both Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson to death.  But no, out of all this, Black Swan featured the worst images of women on screen.

What utter and total bullshit.

I am a feminist and I am proud to be fiercely pro-woman (though never blindly anti-male).  I have always been very aware of the fact that, regardless of intent, most movies are basically sexist fantasies.  And, like a lot of women, I’ve come to accept that as the price I pay for loving movies.  It’s something that I’m more likely to laugh at than to get outraged over.  But that doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes get tired of it, that I don’t sometimes wish that just for once, I could see a movie where the female lead didn’t need to be rescued by a man or where she wasn’t expected to epitomize some sort of stereotype.

To be honest, male filmmakers are not solely to blame.  Some of the most demeaning images of women have come from films that were directed by women and which were advertised as being “feminist” films.  Sometimes it seems like movies are either so busy trying to either keep women down or to build women up that they forget that most of us just want to be seen as human beings.

So no, Natalie Portman is not some sort of “feminist ideal” in Black Swan.  She cuts herself, she’s bulimic, she fears her own sexual desires, she’s too hard on herself, and she’s manipulated by the men around her.  And you know what?  That’s not a sexist fantasy.  For far too many women, present and past, that’s the life that has been forced upon them by an inherently sexist society.  If anything, that’s the type of life that feminism was supposed to provide an escape from. 

Instead, the stridency and judgmental attitudes of far too many so-called “feminists” has simply turned into another way to trap us into that life of guilt and shame and idealized demands of perfection.

The female images in Black Swan are not negative.  They’re honest and that’s why Black Swan meant more to me, as a woman, than every single self-conscious, strident “feminist” film ever made. 

As for the worst female image in a movie — give that award to Eat Pray Love for being yet another movie that basically gives us a spoiled, immature, rich, elitist lead character and then insults women everywhere by trying to present her as some sort of practical model for liberation. 

Julia Roberts traveling across the world without once waking up with dark circles under her eyes might be the ideal but Natalie Portman being leered at by an old pervert on the subway is the reality.

For once, this has been a good year for strong women on American film screens.  Whether it was Noomi Rapace as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo or Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone, Katie Jarvis in Fish Tank, or even Angelina Jolie as Salt, this has been a year of strong female images.  This has been a year of films that left me feeling empowered — not in the wishy-washy way that so many insultingly condescending films claim to empower but in an honest way that made me feel, for once, that I didn’t have to accept the idea of any limitations on my own dreams or desires. 

It wasn’t just a good year to be a girl who loves movies.  It was a great year.

And Black Swan was the best part of a great year.

(You can read my original review of Black Swan here.)

20 Cinematic Moments That Will Define 2010 For Me

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Every year, there’s a handful of film scenes that come to define the entire year for us.  At their best, these scenes can leave such an impression that they become a part of our shared history.  For some people (though not me), 2009 will always be the year of Avatar.  Meanwhile, for me (but not others), 2010 will always be the year I realized it was okay to admit how much I love to dance.  Listed below are 20 of the many film moments that I will remember whenever I look back on this current year.

20) Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield discover what really happened to all of their childhood artwork in Never Let Me Go.

Permeated with an atmosphere of nonstop melancholy, Never Let Me Go never quite found the audience is deserved but I think it’s one of the best films of 2010 and the scene mentioned above is one of the reasons why.

19) Scott Pilgrim says, “Oh cool, coins!” in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.

And Lisa Marie suddenly realizes that she has fallen in love with a movie.

18) Keifer Sutherland says, “Tap that ass” in Twelve.

Truth be told, I don’t even remember what was happening on-screen.  I just remember Keifer, as the film’s narrator, saying “Tap that ass” in that sexy, nicotine-fueld growl of his and thinking to myself, “Well, okay…”

17) Jake Gyllenhaal chases down a bus full of dying old people in Love and Other Drugs.

Yes, the old people desperately need to get up to Canada so they can get their prescriptions filled but unfortunately for them, Anne Hathaway happens to be on the bus as well and Jake — apparently realizing that he’ll never get to see her breasts again if they break up — chases the bus down in his Porsche so he can reconcile with her.  And, of course, the old people are just so adorably excited at the idea of a 15-minute delay while these two deeply damaged characters stand outside and talk about their relationship.  I mean, fuck it — who cares about getting these people their medicine when there’s a disposable pop tune playing in the background and Jake wants to talk to his ex-girlfriend?  In so many ways, this scene represents everything I hate about mainstream filmmaking.

16) Joseph Gordon-Levitt flies through the corridors of a dream hotel in Inception.

Inception was a film full of amazing images but my personal favorite was perhaps the simplest — Joseph Gordon-Levitt (looking rather adorable in his dark suit) floating down those Argentoesque hallways while trying to figure out how to wake everyone up.

15) Jacki Weaver delivers the line of the year in Animal Kingdom.

“And you’ve done some bad things, sweetie.”

14)  John Hawkes “talks” his way out of a traffic stop in Winter’s Bone.

While Winter’s Bone should rightfully make Jennifer Lawrence a star, John Hawkes also contributed some of the film’s best moments.

13) Patrick Fabian slips a recipe into his sermon in The Last Exorcism.

Cast as a modern-day Marjoe Gortner in this underappreciated film, Fabian gives one of the best performances of the year, if not the best.

12) Chloe Grace Moretz saves Kick-Ass from the mafia in Kick-Ass.

As far as women kicking ass was concerned, 2010 was a good year.  Sure, the majority of cinematic female portraits were — as always — sexist to the extreme but there were a few rays of hope.  Angelina Jolie in Salt, Noomi Rapace in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo films, Mila Jovovich in Resident Evil — all were among the women who got to do something more than just look pretty while the boys saved the day.  Seeing as how I’m honoring Rapace further down the list, I’m going to allow Chloe Grace Moretz (in the role of Hit Girl) to serve as a stand-in here for every single woman who was allowed to kick a little ass in 2010.

11) Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg walks down the streets of Lowell at the beginning of The Fighter.

Seriously, this entire sequence — set to Heavy’s How You Like Me Now? (or “The Sock Monkey Song” as I call it) — could be a short film in itself.  Call it: “Men and why we love them.”

10) Colin Firth fearfully waits to give a speech at the start of The King’s Speech.

One look at Firth’s terrified eyes and I was in tears.  From that minute on, this unexpected gem of a film had me.

9) Jennifer Lawrence fishes for her dad’s hand in Winter’s Bone.

Southern gothic at its best!

8) James Franco is rescued by a purifying storm in 127 Hours.

Helpless and hopeless, Franco is suddenly freed by a sudden storm.  Both Franco and director Danny Boyle handle this scene with such skill that the audience finds itself just as saddened as Franco when it all turns out to be a hallucination.

7) Katie Jarvis dances in an abandoned apartment and finds a momentary glimmer of hope in Fish Tank.

Between this movie and Black Swan, 2010 was the year that reminded me of just how much I love to dance and why.  2010 is the year that I realized it was okay for me to love to dance again.

6) Andy gives away his toys at the end of Toy Story 3.

And Lisa Marie cries and cries.

5) Lisbeth Salander (played by Noomi Rapace) gives her abusive guardian a tattoo in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

For any and every girl who has ever been used, abused, hurt, spoken down to, insulted, manipulated, or betrayed by someone who claimed to only be looking after her best interests, this scene was truly cathartic.  When I say that Noomi Rapace’s Lisbeth will be iconic, it’s largely because of scenes like this.  In that one scene, Lisbeth is established as a woman who will never be victimized and it gives hope any for those of us who don’t have dragon tattoos. 

4) Footage from Theirry’s completed “documentary” is revealed in Exit Through The Gift Shop.

And the audience is  suddenly forced to question just how much of anything they’ve seen is the truth.

3) The spinning top wobbles at the end of Inception.

Or does it?

2) Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win the Oscar for best director while her ex-husband glowers in silence.

I wasn’t a huge fan of The Hurt Locker but I still squealed with delight as Kathryn Bigelow accepted the award that should have gone to Sofia Coppola back in 2004.  Not only did Bigelow make history but she did it by beating her soulless jerk of an ex-husband, James Cameron.  And then she gave one of the best acceptance speeches in Oscar history, all the while looking about 20 years younger than she actually is.  In short, Kathryn Bigelow showed every Oscar winner — past, present, and future — exactly how it’s done.

1) The final fifteen minutes of Black Swan

In 15 minutes, Darren Aronofsky reminded me of how much I love ballet and audiences of why we love movies in the first place.

2010 Oscars: The Search For A Host Or Two

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, I guess this the type of silly, gossipy stuff that I — and I alone — am a sucker for but anyway … the hosts of the next Academy Awards ceremony have been announced and the winners are Anne Hathaway and James Franco!

Huh?

Don’t get me wrong, I love them both.  James Franco was great in 127 Hours and Anne Hathaway starred in the story of my life, Rachel Getting Married.  But what exactly about either one of them screams “Oscar host?”

To be honest, Oscar Host has always seemed like a thankless job.  Jon Stewart did a pretty good job a few years ago (and it was really cool how he brought Marketa Irglova back out on stage so she could give her speech after winning the award for best original song) but otherwise, is it really a job that anyone wants? 

(And, even if Stewart was a great Oscar host, he’s been getting progressively more and more smug, annoying, and self-important ever since.)

Remember when Hugh Jackman hosted and he sang that song that just went on and on and then we all realized that we didn’t really like Hugh Jackman that much in the first place?

And I guess last year it was Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin and … yeah, that was really memorable.

Ellen DeGeneres hosted the Oscars and suddenly, she was a judge on American Idol and did that do anyone any good?

Actually, I think the ideal host would be someone like Jeff Probst, someone who would just smirk after the winner’s announced and ask the other nominees what it felt like to be losers.

Seriously, I’m worried for Franco and Hathaway.  I think that perhaps in the future, the role of Oscar host should be reserved for people who are already generally acknowledged as being annoying.  That way, at least, nobody will shed any tears when the Oscar Host Curse kicks in. 

Kara DioGuardi needs the work.

Film Review: Love and Other Drugs (dir. by Ed Zwick)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

There is exactly one genuinely effective and emotionally (and intellectually) honest scene in the new film Love and Other Drugs.  It’s a scene that features people who actually have Parkinson’s talking about living life with this disease.  As they speak, they are watched by Anne Hathaway who is playing a character who has Stage 1 Parkinson’s.  Their words brought tears to my eyes but, at the same time, it also reminded me that, unlike them, Hathaway (who smiles throughout the entire scene like a Miss America runner-up) was merely playing someone with Parkinson’s.  It was hard not to think about the fact that while the people speaking are still dealing with the disease today, Hathaway is off shooting her next film.

That’s the type of film that Love and Other Drugs is.  It’s the type of film where the slightest amount of reality only serves to remind the viewer of how fake the rest of the movie is.

The movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal, who I will always love because he will always be Donnie Darko.  That’s why it pains me to say that Gyllenhaal’s over-the-top performance in this film is just a little bit awful.  He’s playing a compulsive womanizer who becomes a salesman for Pfizer in the 1990s.  The first fourth of the film is pretty much made up of him fucking every girl he meets and then abandoning her afterward.  However, the film suggests we shouldn’t hold this against him since apparently, every woman in America is presented as being a giggling, simple-minded whore.  Except, of course, for Anne Hathaway who is presented as being a depressed, angry, and sick.  Gyllenhaal falls in love with her and the subtext here, I guess, is that Gyllenhaal is redeemed because he’s willing to love a girl with a terrible disease.  So, in a way, Anne Hathaway’s character having a terrible disease is the best thing that could have ever happened to our protagonist.

At the same time this is going on, Gyllenhaal is trying to sell a new drug called Viagra which, once again, gives director Ed Zwick an excuse to show a bunch of frumpy women going nuts over a drug for men who can’ t get it up.  Interestingly enough, we don’t see any of the men with limp dicks obsessively taking the pills until all the blood stops flowing to their brains.  Gyllenhaal does have a scene where he can’t get it up but Hathaway (who doesn’t even get upset — now, that is confidence!) still manages to get him off after listening to him talk about how difficult it is to be a rich, white boy.  Later on, Gyllenhaal is tricked into taking Viagra (by a woman, naturally) and he ends up having to go to the ER with an erection that everyone tells us is very impressive.  They have to tell us because we don’t actually get to see it or any other cocks in this film though Anne Hathaway’s boobs are listed in the end credits.

Love and Other Drugs is one of those films that it so overwhelmingly bad that I’m sure it’ll have some passionate defenders who will probably bitch and moan about this review.  So, allow me to say a few things to them now so I won’t have to waste my time replying — when a movie introduces a bunch of senior citizens getting on a bus to go to Canada to get affordable medication just so that Jake Gyllenhaal can later chase the bus down in his Porsche and shout about how much he loves Anne Hathaway, the movie has got some issues.  When a movie features Anne Hathaway responding to getting a breast exam from a fake doctor by then agreeing to fuck the fake doctor, the movie has obviously been made by men who have never given one thought to the reality of breast cancer.  When a movie insists that Hathaway’s promiscuity is due to her being emotionally damaged but Gyllenhaal’s identical behavior is presented as being cute and funny then that essentially makes this movie a sexist fantasy.

As I said earlier, Jake Gyllenhaal gives a performance here that is just bad.  He’s miscast here.  The off-centered vibe that made him the perfect Donnie Darko doesn’t work here and he reacts by smiling during the comedic scenes and screwing up his face all weird-like during the dramatic ones. 

Anne Hathaway — who was so brilliant playing me in Rachel Getting Married — actually gives a pretty good performance but she’s constantly betrayed by the movie’s script and direction.  I was first diagnosed as being bipolar nine years ago and I can say that Hathaway perfectly captures both the shame and the defiance that comes from having a socially unacceptable disease.

The rest of the cast is made up of character actors playing thinly-drawn stereotypes.  Hank Azaria, however, has a few good scenes as a hedonistic doctor but then you have to deal with Gabriel Macht who plays a rival salesman who just happens to be Hathaway’s ex and a psycho.  Why do filmmakers never realize that giving their fantasy figures psychotic ex-boyfriends does nothing more than trivialize the entire plot?  For the entire film, I sat there and wondered, “But why would anyone go out with someone that evil in the first place?  Other than the fact that it’s convenient for the plot?”

I saw this movie with my very good friend Jeff and my sister Erin.  Since Erin is a pharmaceutical sales rep, I asked her how accurate this film was.  Erin smiled and replied, “Well, there is a company called Pfizer.”  I also asked Jeff if this movie was a realistic portrayal of how men see the world.  He declined to answer. 

Love and Other Drugs attempts, all at the same time, to be a romantic drama, an over-the-top comedy, a recreation of history, a political/social satire, and a well-intentioned piece of social advocacy.  Taken individually, each of those genres is difficult to pull off successfully.  Toss them all together and it’s nearly impossible.  Yes, it could be done but not by director Ed Zwick.