Category — Industry Buzz

UPDATE: One size 18/20 reports the clothes don’t fit any better than other lines’ larger sizes: “You can’t just take a shirt designed for a size 2 body and add more fabric. Clothing cut for an average size woman WILL NOT fit a fat girl no matter how much you increase the pattern size. We just don’t have the same kind of body. We need more boob room, larger arm holes, more allowance across the shoulders and a wee bit … READ MORE

Warner Bros. is denying to bloggers that president of production Jeff Rabinov ever said WB would be making no more movies with female leads. TheMovieBlog (thanks for the link, Nialla) makes some excellent points:

It’s funny that one of the examples used was “The Brave One” (with Jodi Foster), which only made about $34 million. Ok, that’s not a good number. HOWEVER, when you look at a MALE lead film with a comparable theme, the Kevin Bacon film “Death Sentence”, … READ MORE

Here’s proof reported by Nikke Finke.

Warner Bros president of production Jeff Robinov has made a new decree that “We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead”.

Because a few recent movies with female leads haven’t done well at the box office. One of the producers who reported this to Finke wondered, ha ha, what would happen when Gloria Allred heard about this (that remark reveals the mentality here all by itself), so Finke called Allred and got the … READ MORE

I saw an interview with the guy who wrote the original story of The Graduate, and the story of Mrs. Robinson’s origins reminded me of some theories we’ve talked about here.

She was based on a friend of his parents - a woman he lusted after. He fantasized about her seducing him because he wanted to be seduced by her, and finally had to write the story just to get it out of his system. By the time he’s … READ MORE

Just a quick shout-out:

Interested in hosting the 12th Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans?   Check the guidelines here. Please email Ragnell if interested.

Found this article on Slate which I thought was interesting - basically looking at Hollywood’s refusal to address the growing number of older women/younger men relationships, despite a long tradition of the reverse, or even to acknowledge that women over forty can be and are intelligent, motivated, fun-loved human beings. To quote the summary:

 Hollywood is still grappling with the fact that American women now outlive their fertility (and often, their men) by 30 years or more. In this shameful … READ MORE

Found this on E!Online, about why quality shows get cancelled while rubbish lives for years:

http://www.eonline.com/gossip/answer/?uuid=61c8e8c5-9ae8-4963-9c49-171a52f10181

My favorite part is this:

The sitcom genre of Tedious Lardass with Inexplicably Hot Wife has a long and illustrious history in this country, and I will not abide your utterly un-American attacks upon it…not when King of Queens just got canceled, dammit.

Overstuffed American men just lost another aid in their pathetic fantasies of bagging a sylphlike babe. Let them mourn in dignity.

(And yes, the writer seems … READ MORE

Just a shoutout here about this link: Playboy promotes poor cultural image.   It’s written by a young white man in a fraternity.   You know, a member of the target audience elite.   I realize Playboy isn’t film or TV (our usual topics on this site), but it’s so tied into the soft porn themes that invade our TV shows nightly that more than a few of his remarks seemed to apply to our general mission.

In the beginning of … READ MORE

UPDATED: Chris Buchanan’s opinion on Firefly’s cancellation.

I’ve talked before about the film/tv industry’s standard rhetoric for why they can’t make shows and movies women want to see: that women are hard to influence through commercials, so why waste your advertising dollar chasing them when young men will buy anything? Sounds sensible, if it’s true. But is it? Let’s look at this alternative view offered by a 1999 article from the Village Voice, on the spending habits of … READ MORE

Yet again, someone’s doing my work for me. Here’s an article from Entertainment Weekly which seconds my opinion that it’s just stupid to ignore half the species when you’re marketing a product anyone could enjoy.

Interesting tidbits include:

Women aren’t a special-interest group or a ”niche” market; they’re half the audience. Making movies that appeal to them (and maybe even to their husbands, fathers, and sons) is what we call good business sense.

Me, too. But that’s not how they teach … READ MORE