Posted: September 9, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alexander Skarsgard, Bel Powley, Blame it on Rio, Christopher Meloni, Diary of a Teenage Girl, Dirty Dancing, Elizabeth Pena, Grandma, Ingmar Bergman, John Cho, Judy Greer, Julia Garner, Kristin Wiig, Lily Tomlin, Lolita, Manhattan, Marcia Gay Harden, Marielle Heller, Paul Weitz, Phoebe Gloeckner, Roman Polanski, Sam Elliot, Wild Strawberries | 619 Comments »
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Warning: SPOILERS
I remember back in 1987 when Dirty Dancing came out, I was a little surprised that in all the positive reaction to the film, no one was mentioning the fact that a teenage girl was having an affair with a much older man. In fact, women loved this movie about first love and sexual awaking.
When Lolita was released in 1962, the movie was not so much seen as a dramatization of the horrors of pedophilia, but a tragi-comic character study of a man obsessed with his step-daughter, a step-daughter who did as much of the seducing as did the aging roué.
In 1984’s Blame it on Rio, Michael Caine has sex with his best friend’s daughter and the whole thing is played as a farce. It was even called incest by proxy by some and many found the move tres amusement.
Woody Allen’s films like Manhattan (1979) were probably the main ones the drew some hesitation, but even in his black and white paean to a city filled with morally questionable neurotics, his relationship with the high school nymphet was seen as the most pure and Mariel Hemingway got an Oscar nom.
Even Roman Polanski got the brunt of the sympathy as he fled the country to try and restart his film career in Europe.
But this was an earlier time when sex between older men and teenage girls wasn’t quite held in the same low esteem as it is today.
And oh, my, the times they have been a changing. Back then we had the new morality. Today, we have the new, new morality where sex between an adult and someone below the age of consent is no longer seen as acceptable and even considered damaging to the teen. Legally it’s always been called statutory rape, but until more recently, that term was not used much in terms of these relationships in movies.
The new movie Diary of a Teenage Girl, written and directed by the actor Marielle Heller (she can be seen in such films as A Walk Among the Tombstones and MacGruber), based on the autobiographical novel by Phoebe Gloeckner, falls somewhere in between today and yesterday. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: July 25, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Adam McKay, Ant-Man, Bobby Cannavale, Corey Stoll, David Dastmalchian, Edgar Wright, Evangeline Lilly, Joe Cornish, John Slattery, Judy Greer, Martin Donovan, Marvel, Michael Douglas, Michael Pena, Paul Rudd, Peyton Reed, T.I. | 2 Comments »
First, a word from our sponsors. Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r
and check out my Script Consultation Services: http://ow.ly/HPxKE
Warning: SPOILERS
When word came down that they (and we all know who “they” are even if we don’t know who “they” are) were making a movie based on the Marvel character of Ant-Man, well, let us say that there was a bunch of groaning and/or unintentional laughter followed by, “Oh, you’re serious”.
Among my comic book geek friends, Ant-Man, a superhero who could miniaturize to the size of the referred to hard working insect, as well as control them, had never been taken that seriously.
With the name not really helping much.
And when I first saw the previews, I didn’t see any additional reason for optimism. They seemed fairly, well, lame.
So now I’ve seen the movie itself and I have to say…it’s not bad and actually has some worthy virtues to speak of.
Who’d have thought it?
The basic premise is that an ex-con (but don’t worry, one of those heroic ones, a computer hacker robin hood, so that way we can cheer him on) gets lured into a life of superherodom by a retired scientist trying to stop an-ex intern, now owner of the scientist’s former company, from exploiting the scientist’s technology of shrinking objects and people and selling them to the highest bidder for world domination purposes (with that neo-Nazi group HYDRA somehow managing to have the most moolah to do it after being so soundly defeated by Captain America and Co. a year or so ago—where do they get their funds? The Koch brothers?). Read the rest of this entry »
