USA Today Goes Pro-Pedophile, Bob Saget's "Real" Funeral, Female Led Action Movies' Problem, Pro Sports League Returns (3rd Time), The (Very Dramatic) Return of Fresh Prince (The Five for 01/14/22)
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Let’s dive into Culture & Commentary.
[one]
It takes a lot for me to lose interest in an action/spy/thriller movie… especially one that includes Jessica Chastain (Lawless, Molly’s Game), Diane Krueger (Inglorious Basterds, Troy) and Sebastian Stan (Captain America, The Martian), a who’s-who of some of my favorite actors and movies of the last 15 years.
But after seeing the 26% score on Rotten Tomatoes, including harsh reviews from every major critic, I bailed on the idea of catching this one in the theater.
So what happened? Well, it was just a bad movie…and a bad movie, unfortunately, in a strong of female led action/sci-fi movies bombing with critics and audience alike.
From Evie Magazine:
When recently asked if the James Bond franchise should get an all-female reboot, Daniel Craig was adamant about the fact that a woman should not play James Bond.
"Why should a woman play James Bond when there should be a part just as good as James Bond, but for a woman?” Craig said.
He’s not alone in this sentiment, as recent all-female reboots of historically popular films such as Ghostbusters, Charlie’s Angels, Terminator, and Ocean’s Eleven have not been received well, to put it lightly. Why have audiences rejected these female remakes of classic stories? Is it because of misogynistic audiences, like many of the creators of these films point to as the reason for their project’s failure, or is it the fault of lazy writing, unoriginality, and an ultimate lack of respect for the complexity of women?
Truth be told, the answer is simple – they’re just not good films. They rely on representation over story, and when they bomb at the box office, blame audiences for refusing to support women. When Elizabeth Banks’ recent iteration of Charlie's Angels tanked at the box office, Banks literally blamed men for the commercial failure of her film. This, of course, is in reference to a film that’s a reboot of an already all-female film. A film that was incredibly successful in 2000, generating $264 million at the box office. Paul Feig also attributed the flop of the all-female Ghostbusters reboot to “racists and sexist” trolls.
Writer/Actress Brit Marling (best known for the Netflix original The OA) recently pushed back on the “strong female lead” trope for being…not very female.
“It would be hard to deny that there is nutrition to be drawn from any narrative that gives women agency and voice in a world where they are most often without both. But the more I acted the Strong Female Lead, the more I became aware of the narrow specificity of the characters’ strengths — physical prowess, linear ambition, focused rationality. Masculine modalities of power,” she writes. “What we really mean when we say we want strong female leads is: ‘Give me a man but in the body of a woman I still want to see naked.'”
Marling also points out a common thread in classic films that tackle gender roles, such as “Thelma and Louise,” where the women, in the end and despite acts of heroism you could even call masculine, must die. Marling doesn’t want to play that dying woman either, or just the male hero’s wife. “I don’t want to be the dead girl, or Dave’s wife,” she writes. “But I don’t want to be a strong female lead either, if my power is defined largely by violence and domination, conquest and colonization.”
It’s been said that “Hollywood follows the money,” but I don’t think that’s quite right. If the movie industry was pure capitalism at work…we would get better female-led films.
Rather, my experience as a former entertainment writer and critic is that Studio Execs greenlight projects that make them look and feel good and superior…and when those poorly-written scripts turn into box office bombs, those same execs, writers and directors blame the audience for not forking over their dollars for a bad movie.
Which is a shame. Because the cast of The 355 brings a lot of talent to the screen…but great acting can’t cover a bad story.
The lesson Hollywood needs to learn is not that audiences reject female-led films, but that audiences won’t turn up for terrible movies.
[two]
In one of the most unique (and heartfelt) tributes I’ve ever witnessed, musician John Mayer and comedian Jeff Ross went live on Instagram for nearly a half hour…while picking up the late Bob Saget’s Toyota Prius from the airport parking lot.
“You know how effusive you have to be in your love for everyone in your life, for each and every person he loved to be told by another, ‘He loved you so much’? Everyone is held into place by Bob’s insistence on telling everyone how much he loved everyone,” Mayer said.
“I’ve never known a human being on this Earth who could give that much love, individually and completely, to that many people in a way that made each person feel like he was a main character in their life and they were a main character in his life.”
Mayer talked about Saget’s commitment to family, which was cemented by the death of his sister, Gay, in 1994. Saget thereafter was committed to finding a cure for the disease that killed her.
“He had every excuse under the sun to be cynical, to be upset, to be distrusting,” Mayer said. “He had every reason to be the guy in the back of the bar, bitter. [Instead] he laughed and he spread joy, and his protest against the cruelty of these things was that he was going to smile and spread love and be childlike and be innocent and be loving.”
What Mayer and Ross just accomplished could be Saget’s “real” memorial, as opposed to the more formal services that will be held…and that’s not a bad thing.
When my friend Annika in her 20’s (in her sleep, with no warning), a group of college friends gathered from several states for her funeral.
After the official services, about 25 of us went to Denny’s (not because anyone wanted to eat there, but…nostalgia) and took turns standing up and telling story after story about Annika’s wonderful life.
The best memorials aren’t always held in funeral homes.
[three]
USA Today ran a shocking article titled “What the Public Gets Wrong About Pedophilia.”
Thankfully, the story was met with appropriate shock and outrage online.
One of the main reasons I started this publication was to stay away from conspiracy theory rabbit holes and and knee-jerk over-reactions.
But this article running within 30 days of one CNN producer being fired for child porn, and another arrested for allegedly sexually abusing a nine year old girl.
At some point, the evidence mounts to move a topic from “conspiracy theory” to “possibility.”
I’m not sure we're there yet, but USA Today and CNN have provided reasons to be concerned about the mainstream media’s casual attitude towards child sex abuse.
[four]
The U.S. is a sports-crazed nation…but like everything else, more content and streaming options mean more competition for attention. These days, there aren’t just games and sports talk radio to keep up with, but a nearly unlimited number of podcasts, YouTube “reaction” videos, blogs following trade rumors, and even regular documentaries (ESPN and the UFC regularly crank out full-lengths docs).
So it feels like an uphill battle to launch a new sports league. Perhaps even more difficult to launch a league that’s already failed…twice.
The XFL (think the NFL hyped up on energy drinks with a PG-13 rating) debuted in 2001, only to fold after a single season.
Then, the league returned in 2019, only to be shut down in a matter of weeks by COVID, and declare bankruptcy a second time.
Now, the league is hoping the third time is a charm…with new ownership that includes A-list movie star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:
The XFL is coming back, its new leaders insist, and now there are some details that support that claim.
The spring football league’s new owners have made a series of executive hires. Training camp is scheduled for January 2023.
Kickoff is set for that February.
News on a broadcast deal is said to be percolating.
“New teams, new cities,” new XFL co-owner Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson said during a recent appearance on CNBC.
In case you lost track of this stuff, and no blame here if you did, the professional wrestler turned cross-platform superstar is the face of the new ownership group that took the league off Vince McMahon’s hands following his pandemic-prompted shuttering of the league in April 2020.
So, D.J., how about some good news for the old city that hosted the XFL’s most successful team in terms of, well, just about everything?
BattleHawks fans — yes, they are still out there — would like to smell what The Rock has cooking.
For now, the company line is wait and see.
You may not love football…or sports in general.
But it’s tough not to admire the audacity to re-launch a league for a third time.
Football is a uniquely American sport…and the courage to give it “one more go” for a league that’s already tanked in two different decades…is apparently a uniquely American optimism.
[five]
As always, let’s head into the weekend with a pop culture roundup:
A TV series based on the popular video game series Fallout, which features a retro futuristic 1950’s aesthetic set in a post-apocalypse wasteland, heads to production for Amazon Prime Video this year, although we may not see season 1 until 2023. Jonathan Nolan, who frequently collaborates with his uber-famous older brother Christopher Nolan (the siblings partnered on on Interstellar and The Dark Knight) is serving as showrunner. Amazon is certainly doubling down on Sci-Fi and Fantasy, with Fallout joining a line-up of big-budget shows which include The Wheel of Time and the upcoming Lord of the Rings TV prequel. According to Deadline, Amazon is also in talks to produce a live action adaptation of the popular Mass Effect game series.
A man with an ego the size of Kanye West’s…could never fit in a single documentary. Netflix announced a “documentary trilogy” on the famous actor/rapper/designer/guy-who really-should-be-on-meds, the first installment drops February 16th. First trailer here.
Woah, who knew Ben Stiller had this in him? The first trailer for Severance dropped, a new show directed by Stiller and starring Adam Scott (Parks & Rec, Big Little Lies) as an office worker who joins a program to have his memories permanently altered. At work, he won’t be able to remember his personal life, and outside the office, he won’t be able to remember work.
I still haven’t jumped on the Apple TV+ bandwagon (I mean seriously, how many streaming networks can one person keep up with), but this one looks like it could pull me in. First trailer here.
The first official trailer dropped for Bel-Air, the dramatic reboot of the iconic 90’s comedy The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, starring Will Smith (now a producer on the reboot. The original show was carried along by a goofy tone, but got deadly serious from time to time (linking again to one of the best TV scenes of the 90’s, filmed in a single take).
There are a lot of nostalgia plays right now in TV and many quickly lose steam after running out of ideas. Bel-Air appears to flip the formula on the original, this time 80% drama with 20% humor sprinkled in, tackling social and racial inequality issues from a narrative (rather than scolding) perspective.
I’ve got high hopes for this one. We’ll find out when the first episode drops on Feb. 13th on Peacock.
MUSIC NEWS: One of the best surprises in music last year was the rise of Morgan Wade, a hybrid of the best the Roots/Americana scene has to offer mixed with the distinct sounds of 90’s alt rock, a la Alanis Morrisette. Wade’s debut, Reckless, is getting the re-release treatment January 28th, with six additional songs.
The album was produced by Americana legend Jason Isbell and his guitarist, Sandler Vaden. You can check out of the first track off the expanded edition now.
Until the next one,
-sth