Judging by the think pieces, blogs and professional reviews of the last few months leading up to award season, 2013 was a good one for women in Hollywood. According to writers Versha Sharma and Hanna Sender of Voctiv, movies featuring ‘strong female roles’ earned more than twice as much than movies that didn’t. They used…
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Readers may recall that in 2013 the Swedish government adopted a measure called the Bechdel test to ensure greater female representation in film. The test analyses a film to see whether there are at least two female characters in a film who talk to each other about something other than a man. The test seems…
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Cinemas in Sweden are introducing a classification system similar to age of audience test to determine gender representation and equality in films. If a movie passes the Bechdel Test, it would get an A grade; similar to if the film had no violence, nudity or coarse language it would get a G rating. The Bechdel…
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Entertainment is action. Action isn’t just explosions and chases on a screen, but what a film can ask of its audience. Your body may not undergo the trauma in front of you, but your brain races to negotiate everything happening. In the action films I like, your brain has to keep up with the projection’s…
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Pixar’s Brave. Blah blah first lady protagonist, blah blah why did it take them so long. I’ve never held Pixar in quite the same regard as my contemporaries. I didn’t get into Toy Story back in the day, probably because cowboys, astronauts… toys in general, weren’t on my priority viewing list. I liked witches and…
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I love Hollywood films. I don’t love Hollywood romances. At some point, the tale of love became subject not only to an inevitable conclusion, but the journey stopped veering away from one strict path. It’s not knowing that you’re going to land in New York, it’s knowing that you’ll stop in Thailand, Abu Dhabi and…
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It’s not that I don’t know how I feel about Charlize Theron’s Mavis in Young Adult, it’s that I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. The cinema-going audience for the film seems to be divided; there are those who loathe the character and applaud Diablo Cody for putting such an abrasive figure on screen,…
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The first time I remember taking the bait was 2001. But I suppose what I really did was eat a bunch of bread, then find out later that fish will also eat that. Moulin Rouge was everything a barely ten-year-old with big dreams and a big stereo could ask for: bright colours, pop music, video…
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Publicly, I state my religion as Stephen Fry. Privately, however, 2011 tipped him into my ‘over-exposed’ bin. I really don’t understand how Christians do it. Their saviour is everywhere, all the time – and I don’t just mean in the spiritual omniscience regard. Even when I can’t buy marked down Cadbury Yule Logs next to…
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Walking down the cinema-separating corridor of the Nova last week I had a Yesva moment. All but two of the posters brightening the space featured women. One of those that didn’t was George Clooney star vehicle The Descendants, which may be my movie of the year. Not in the ‘I’ve seen it and it’s awesome’…
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Until Wednesday, I had never seen Dr Strangelove. As a film student, this is something you reveal only in alcohol-fuelled games of Truth or Dare. The Astor, Melbourne’s deco-era cinema with Depression-esque claims to seat-comfort, gave it a week-long season recently. So, I stuffed a cushion in my back-pack and joined some cohorts to take…
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The Bechdel Test, named for graphic artist Alison Bechdel, asks three simple questions of a movie: Are there at least two female characters? Do they have at least one conversation? About something other than a man? They hardly ensure positive representation of women, but they’re a start—and a talking point. In Bechdel Taser, I’ll ask…
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