With the Academy Awards rapidly approaching, we have become collectively obsessed with Viola versus Meryl -- not to mention Michelle, Glenn, and Rooney. But there are actresses whose impressive performances should have been -- but aren't -- part of this conversation. The most talked-about of these is certainly Tilda Swinton's in We Need to Talk About Kevin. But a few others warranted consideration by the Academy -- and by more viewers. For example ...
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Strong women were everywhere at Sundance last week -- and they flourished in three of the festival's standouts: Smashed, The Surrogate, and Middle of Nowhere. What's perhaps most interesting is that these women are in more traditional "caretaker" roles, not "I-am-woman-hear-me-roar" ones -- and yet they manage to prevail, to care not only for the men around them but also, ultimately, for themselves and their own narratives.
When I saw the first Paranormal Activity in 2007, I loved the haunted-condo horror. I grew up in Southern California watching The Addams Family and believing the supernatural, like the Salem Witch trials, happened to other people, in older places. We had sunshine even when the rest of the world had cloudy days.
Paranormal Activity turned that sense of suburban safety on its head.
Following a summer where Bridesmaids and The Help book-ended the mainstream box office, Hollywood execs and mainstream critics have to wake up and smell the nonfat latte: Women's movies are here to stay.
One would think those awful-yet-profitable Sex and the City movies should have already made this point, not to mention the movies of Sandra Bullock, Angelina Jolie and Emma Watson, to name a few. Still, with Bridesmaids having made $268 million worldwide without bankable stars, what's the takeaway?
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