CATCHING FIRE

Earlier in the year, I had the pleasure of interviewing a group of high school students competing for college scholarships. One of the questions on their applications asked about five influential books they had read, and students were to indicate whether the books they listed were assigned for class or read purely for pleasure.

Every female student except for one listed The Hunger Games on her list, and most of them had the book/series near the top of the list.

I have read the first of the three books and seen both of the first two movies. Mostly, I’m just glad that young girls and women have a character like Katniss available in popular culture.

Yes, I know she kills people when she has to, but this would not be an issue if she were male. See what I mean?

Katniss is strong, smart, resilient, nurturing, and a leader. How many times in blockbusters do we see women succeed on their strength and their smarts instead of their sexuality?

Yes, I know that the “romance” with Peeta figures into the storyline, but even this device breaks with convention when it comes to Katniss.

Read this:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/11/25/247146164/what-really-makes-katniss-stand-out-peeta-her-movie-girlfriend

Clever and compelling analysis, isn’t it? I like it when pop culture icons help us break down boundaries, challenge our preconceptions, and complicate gender roles.

The movie? Catching Fire is entertaining. Katniss rocks. Jennifer Lawrence rocks.

Of course, more than once when watching the film earlier this week, I thought, “Wow, wish I could see Winter’s Bone again for the first time.” It would be awfully hard to top that film or that role, the first time I saw Lawrence on film.

I wish some of the scholarship applicants I interview next year would bring up the strong, Ozark Mountain girl in Debra Granik’s 2010 film played by Lawrence. That’s a conversation I would relish.

Catching Fire

PHILOMENA

Stephen Frears doesn’t always make conventional movies, but he does make interesting films, including his latest – based on a true story – Philomena.

Some of my favorites among Frears’ films are My Beautiful Laundrette, Prick Up Your Ears, Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters, High Fidelity, Dirty Pretty Things, Chéri, and now Philomena. This is quite a list, and it includes an impressive range of subjects and styles.

After seeing the harrowing 2002 film The Magdalene Sisters (written and directed by Peter Mullan) the oppression of “fallen” Irish girls was not surprising to me.

But, having an awareness of the history makes it is no less difficult to watch Pilomena’s pain as she recollects the past and searches for the son she was forced by the nuns to give up fifty years earlier, a son she has never acknowledged to her family and friends.

Judi Dench is thoroughly convincing as Philomena, a retired nurse of simple tastes and enduring faith. It is a joy to watch her inhabit the role with nuance and grace. She teams up with journalist Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan, who is Dench’s equal in his role) to try to locate her son. The interplay between the two very different people unfolds in believable and moving ways along their journey.

Sometimes a movie is not surprising and not innovative but still so beautifully crafted that it serves as a reminder of the endurance of classical storytelling when it is rendered at such a high level.

How refreshing it is to see a film this polished on every level – the script, the performances, the direction – to the point that there are no visible flaws, not even the slightest misstep.

Philomena

LAST VEGAS

I’m not sure I would have gone to see Last Vegas if my mother hadn’t wanted to see it. Probably not. She did, so we went this afternoon.

Yes, it’s predictable but also a bit funnier than the preview trailer suggests. The real entertainment comes from watching Robert De Niro, Kevin Kline, Morgan Freeman, Michael Douglas, and Mary Steenburgen work together.

It’s fun.

Last Vegas

Check Out Our Huffington Post Op-Ed

Laura R. Linder and I wrote an op-ed piece about the decline of the sitcom Mike & Molly with plenty of feminism and a critique of the stereotyping of teacher characters.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-dalton/a-pratfall-too-far_b_4350354.html

Laura and I are co-authors of the book Teacher TV: Sixty Years of Teachers on Television and co-editors of the anthology The Sitcom Reader: America Viewed and Skewed.

Mike & Molly

DALLAS BUYERS CLUB

The life story of Ron Woodroof is rich with dramatic potential, and Jean-Marc Vallée’s biographical film comes close to reaching it.

Woodruff was a renegade electrician/rodeo rider in Dallas, Texas whose drinking, drugging, and womanizing came to a screeching halt after he was diagnosed as HIV positive (and accepted the diagnosis) in 1985.

The homophobic cowboy, who was shunned by his friends and colleagues, eventually found a new community among others with the virus, mostly gay men, whom he helped by making available unapproved drugs and supplements that improved the health of many of them.

The title, Dallas Buyers Club, refers to the business Woodroof establishes to circumvent the law by giving drugs to members for free once they have paid the $400 monthly membership fee.

Much has been said about the strong performances (and weight loss) of Matthew McConaughey as Woodruff and Jared Leto as Rayon, an AIDS patient who eventually becomes Woodruff’s business partner.

While some have criticized Rayon’s character as a stereotypical, tragic, drag queen figure, I think her counterbalance to Woodruff’s Texas-sized homophobia and machismo works.

What doesn’t work quite so well for me as the film unfolds are pacing issues and some degree of repetitiveness. There are times when the film feels a little slow and predictable. This may reflect an effort to track the actual sequence of events, but some nips and tucks to help the film a little faster would improve the movie.

The interplay between Woodruff and doctor Eve Saks (Jennifer Garner) is also a little problematic, partly because she feels under-developed as a character, which makes her motivation opaque to viewers at times.

That may not matter so much in the end, however, because the film clearly belongs to McConaughey and Leto.

Dallas Buyers Club

BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR

I will not do justice to Blue Is The Warmest Color with this post because rather than reflect and carefully craft a response, I want to write about it quickly enough to urge you to see it.

Wow.

To be fair, the film is frank – sexually and emotionally – and that means it is not for everyone.

But, the film is also a remarkable merger of director and actors, so much so that the top prize at Cannes was awarded (for the first time) to director Abdellatif Kechiche and to actors Adèle Exarchopoulos (Adèle) and Léa Seydoux (Emma).

Over the course of six or seven years, we watch Adèle transform from a French high school student who likes to read and wants to be a teacher into a young woman who has grappled with her sexuality, fallen in love, and suffered a heartbreak that marks her transition into independent adulthood.

With a running time of three hours, the film covers a lot of ground without ever striking a false note. Despite one particularly graphic (and protracted) sex scene, the film is extraordinarily nuanced and mostly focuses on small moments, authentic moments that don’t require words.

I don’t remember so many closeups – and such revelatory ones – since Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc. I’m not joking. There were several times when I recollected mental images of the earlier French film (1928) while watching this film.

It would require watching the Dreyer film again to be sure, but I believe some similarity in facial shape between Maria Falconetti (Joan) and Léa Seydoux (Adèle’s lover Emma) along with the effective and loving use of closeups sparks the comparison.

At any rate, my favorite sequence (or at least the one I keep thinking about the most) in Blue Is The Warmest Color is a dinner party where Adèle makes the food, serves the food, and meets Emma’s friends, all better educated, wealthier, and more ambitious than Adèle.

This is an amazing sequence for its poignancy, including a scene with Adèle cleaning up dishes then talking with Emma in bed about her own ambitions, a sequence that says everything that needs to be revealed about the fault lines in their relationship.

The film is a visual and emotional triumph. Like I said: wow.

Blue Is The Warmest Color

TREME Back For Five Episodes

Episode for episode, I believe The Wire is the best television series ever produced. David Simon sets the series in Baltimore and adds terrific characters and engaging storylines alongside a sophisticated analysis of the major institutions that influence daily life in the city.

It’s not hard for me to convince people that The Wire is a brilliant series, but I find that fewer people feel the same way about Treme, a series co-created by David Simon and Eric Overmyer and set in New Orleans post-Katrina.

As fans of The Wire know, stories from this creative team are complex, intermingled, and rich with promise. The same is true of of Treme, which is about to launch an abbreviated, final season on HBO next month.

Listen to what I had to say about the series today on Triad Arts Weekend (scroll down for a link to the segment):

http://wfdd.org/post/uncsa-fall-dance-concert-behind-scenes-mary-dalton-typography-and-she-loves-me

Watch the series. Maybe you’ll love Treme as much as I do!

Treme

SCANDAL, Fire Drills, and Processing

Getting ready to watch this week’s episode of Scandal with a group of college students in a residence hall media room. Now, that’s a trip in and of itself, but could it really be crazier than the episode last week?

It’s guilty pleasure viewing for me on the one hand with melodrama to spare, but on the other hand it is more than that because it is so exciting to see a woman of color in the lead role on a successful, network television show. It’s been a long time since Julia.

But, then something happened that made me think about the show again and more deeply than guilty pleasure viewing vs. diversity and inclusion.

One of the students who watches with us most weeks in the Luter Hall media room at Wake Forest University is also a student in the Women’s and Gender Studies course I am team teaching this semester. She wants to write her final paper on Scandal.

Her general thesis involves ways the series seems cutting edge and even progressive but actually limits women in uncomfortable and damaging ways. Can’t wait to read her final paper…can’t wait to watch Scandal with these students and talk about what happened last week.

Right before the first big revelation last week (about Mellie’s past), we had a fire drill and had to vacate the building. What timing! Fortunately, I was DVRing at home and could catch up quickly when I got home even if it meant staying up very late.

Lots to process. Thoughts on Scandal, anyone?

Scandal.jpb

From THE ACCUSED To FRUITVALE STATION

A couple of days ago, I was watching The Accused to prepare for a class session of the introductory course in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies that I am team-teaching this semester.

If you’ve never seen the 1988 film, based on a true story, about a woman who is gang-raped in a bar, then it is worth seeing and not just for Jodie Foster’s Oscar-winning performance.

This is an important film that deals directly with rape and makes the case that it doesn’t matter what a woman is wearing, whether or not she is flirtatious, or whether or not she has been drinking and/or smoking pot; without her consent to sexual activity, sexual acts are rape. Every “blame the victim” argument you’ve ever heard is presented in this film and systematically refuted. Case closed.

The film holds up well and, unfortunately, is still instructive.

Watching, I couldn’t help but think about how some of the same strategies work well in challenging preconceptions in another film based on actual events, Fruitvale Station.

While The Accused is loosely based on the rape of Cheryl Araujo in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Fruitvale Station more directly relates facts leading up the murder of Oscar Grant, III by a police officer in the Fuitvale Station of the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) during New Year’s Eve festivities as 2008 transitioned into 2009.

What links the films together for me is that Oscar Grant (played by Michael B. Jordan), like Foster’s character, Sarah, has not led an unblemished life. He has cheated on his partner, has served time on a drug charge, has a problem with anger management, and has recently lost his job.

In other words, he’s human.

He’s also trying to get his life back on track and to provide for his family. Certainly, he does not ask to be murdered. Imperfect people – all of us – have rights, and blaming the victim is not a strategy we should accept as an excuse for crimes committed.

Two fine films.

I believe Fruitvale Station will hold up over time, too, just like The Accused.

The Accused

“The New” MIKE & MOLLY

How could a sitcom start off with promise, settle into the moderately entertaining mode, then take such a steep demise in its fourth season?

When Molly took a dive out of her elementary school classroom window, it was a pratfall too far. It appears that the showrunner replacing creator Mark Roberts this season decided to capitalize on Melissa McCarthy’s success with physical comedy and gross (often unlikeable) characters in feature motion pictures to retool her character on the show.

What a mistake. She’s a rare talent, no doubt about that, but what was appealing about the series from the outset was the chemistry between McCarthy and Billy Gardell and the freshness of featuring two large actors (unusual on television, especially for women) in roles where they are ordinary people with quirks and weird friends and family members, but now Molly is a madcap character who seems nothing like her original incarnation.

The “old” Mike & Molly was comfortable if not cutting edge; the “new” Mike & Molly is terrible. Let Melissa McCarthy save her zany, gross, nimble, uninhibited, crass characters and broad comedic talents for the big screen where she is balanced by more likable co-stars.

Oh, and I hate the new series opening, too.

Mike & Molly