yonmei

The Long Kiss Goodnight has Geena Davis as... well, an anti-heroic type who does save her daughter's life. And there's sort of Kill Bill, and Panic Room, but these are not very good examples because neither are family movies to take children to see.

I want more buddy adventure stories between women who are friends. Not women who end up turning on each other as their group of friends disintegrates under horrific circumstances, as in The Descent, or films where women just turn to each other to endure life's -- ie men and relationships and family -- hardships by offering each other shoulders to cry on and gossip, but who have each other's back while kicking the ass of enemy armies or roving villains, or pulling off heists that aren't all about living more comfortably in their separate heterosexual nuclear families but more about outwitting elaborate security systems, or setting out to save a comrade who is being held prisoner by someone other than an abusive husband.

More women working together. Have you seen Sunshine Cleaning? That was a good little film about two sisters starting a crime scene clean-up business. I wished it had been the pilot for a whole TV series. Who you gonna call when the CSIs and the Ghostbusters and the detectives are gone? Amy Adams and Emily Blunt! That would have rocked. (Wishful thinking re: ghosts -- the film didn't have a supernatural angle.)

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I still haven't seen District 9. It's getting good reviews, but it's also appalingly racist, which a lot of critics will overlook but which people of colour have remarked upon.

I am pondering seeing Jennifer's Body, a horror/comedy film made by women, though it looks exploitative and less feminist than Ginger Snaps, but I want to support Karyn Kusama. I would *really* like to see Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker again. There are no female roles to speak of in it, but it's amazing. (Women defusing bombs in a war zone -- another thing not shown much in movies.)

And I know you don't watch Lost, but when Mary Mara had a small role in it as one of Benjamin Linus's contacts, it made me wish for an alternate version of the show where she played his part. (Mara and Michael Emerson both have a kind of mousy apearance.) A female master manipulator, who *wouldn't* use sexuality for her ends, who would be in a position where others would be willing to die under her leadership rather than betray their cause, who would be easy to underestimate by seeming innocuously middle-aged (rather than young and innocent), but have a will of steel and always have a plan. And a baton in her pocket in case talking doesn't work.

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I still haven't seen District 9. It's getting good reviews, but it's also appalingly racist

Oh.

Yeah, the person who recommended it to me is not the kind of person who notices racism in films. (No one warned me about the Pirates of the Carribean II racist hour of fun, either.)

Oh well, at least I know.

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The government of Nigeria has asked for an apology regarding District 9.

ION: Jennifer's Body is a curious failure, or an interesting mess, with some offensive stuff in it that might be meant as a reflection on the characters rather than the movie, but isn't told well enough to make the distinction clear.

And The Hurt Locker is just as good the second time around; knowing how things turn out meant I didn't feel the suspense as much, but that didn't undo the quality of tension in the filmmaking. Slightly less of a rush to rewatch, but that allowed me to appreciate the details with more clarity. (If Bigelow doesn't win the Oscar for best director for this then I think I'll be boycotting the awards from then on, because seriously, it'll be a fucking disgrace.)

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(I forgot: insert my obligatory defense of Alien3. It sucks for everyone who got invested in Ripley's new family in Aliens, but I absolutely love it for the grim determination Ripley has in it -- from ordering Newt's autopsy to leading the disorganised, dangerous convicts to take on the monster in the dark, based only on her authority as a veteran of battling the aliens. It has, I know, no other women. In a film that would not have been made, it could have met the rule within pretty much the same dynamics if they'd made the doctor female.)

Oh: btw, have you seen Silent Hill? The movie's almost entire cast of speaking characters is female -- except for the husband sideplot that Hollywood execs made them add when they noticed that. It's, again, not a kid-friendly movie at all, but it's about a woman trying to find her adopted daughter in a haunted abandonned town.

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I have not seen Silent Hill.

I thought Aliens III was a terrific movie for all the reasons you outline plus. It really was.

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A timely post - our local theatre is currently hosting a production of THE ODD COUPLE (FEMALE VERSION). I was thinking of seeing it, if I do I'll let you know what I thought.

I'd like to see a gritty detective series where a female inspector is paired with a female sergeant. Try as I may, I cannot think of a single realistic film or series that shows this dynamic: when you get the female/female dynamic, it tends towards the whimsical (ROSEMARY & THYME, NO 1. LADIES DETECTIVE AGENCY). Does it exist somewhere? Is there a great female police-procedural out there that I've missed?

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It's not "Police inspector paired with police sergeant", but it passes the Bechdel Test with flying colours: Cagney and Lacey.

Most of the first season is available on DVD, but MGM/Fox have showed a bizarre indifference to selling DVDs for the rest of series - you can get bootleg copies, but then of course the actors don't get anything (and the quality is lower).

Sign the petitions!

Yes, we want Cagney and Lacey DVDs!
Cagney and Lacey DVD/Video release

I wrote about this at feminist SF last year.

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I have never seen an ep of CAGNEY & LACEY - what have I been missing?! Those clips look like a lot of fun, I'd love to see an ep in full.

Petitions signed - thank you so much!

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There's a link from my feministsf post to a linked series on Youtube that shows all of "Partners" in Youtube-length clips.

And did I mention you can buy the first series on DVD? Most of it.

Cagney and Lacey is one thing my mum and I were equal fans of: it was such a terrific series.

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I want buddy cop movies and on-the-run, falsely accused, clear their name adventures and odd couple : Tango and Cash, Fast and Furious, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Blazing Saddles. I mean, how hilarious would Lethal Weapon have been with CCH Pounder and Sandra Bullock? Fucking awesome is what. Some Like It Hot with Reese Witherspoon and Anna Paquin and oh, who is the most exceedingly pretty and voluptuous boy movie star at the moment? Milo whatsisface? Can he sing? Whoever he is, he has to be younger than the female leads; like Brad Pitt was in Thelma and Louise.

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I want buddy cop movies and on-the-run, falsely accused, clear their name adventures and odd couple : Tango and Cash, Fast and Furious, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Blazing Saddles.

Oh I like the way you think. Can you imagine the reaction of the good folk of Rock Ridge if the sheriff was both black and female?

Some Like It Hot with Reese Witherspoon and Anna Paquin and oh, who is the most exceedingly pretty and voluptuous boy movie star at the moment? Milo whatsisface? Can he sing? Whoever he is, he has to be younger than the female leads

YES.

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I saw this independent film earlier this year at my First Con Ever about a female private detective who's trying to uncover a secret, competing with her ex-boyfriend who she's alternately refusing to acknowledge and desperately trying to hunt down and talk to in this weird sort of unhealthy codependent relationship, while weird things happen around causality and time. The reason I was thinking of it was that the two characters who spend the most time interacting in the movie are the detective and this female nightclub singer who may or may not really exist, and I remember I was surprised because the creator of the film was a geek guy who didn't really seem to be socially conscious at all. Yesterday Was A Lie, the film's called, and it's finally got a distributor but unfortunately only for the US as far as I know. But it existed! It was cool and slashy, which I don't think was intentional.

I guess I'm not very imaginative, because the other film I thought of was Bend It Like Beckham, the best lesbian film that ever wasn't, which of course also already exists. The trouble is that I like coming-of-age stories mostly, and those work better on the page than on the screen. TV, now, I can think of a number of premises. Get me Claudia Christian as a cop -- in space -- working for, yes, Nichelle Nichols the tough-as-nails police chief, solving interplanetary crimes and chasing down a mixture of human and alien criminals with the help of a motley (fairly gender-balanced, multinational) crew of junior officers, every week for several years. What do you mean, the TV industry won't go for it? Bah, humbug!

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TV, now, I can think of a number of premises. Get me Claudia Christian as a cop -- in space -- working for, yes, Nichelle Nichols the tough-as-nails police chief, solving interplanetary crimes and chasing down a mixture of human and alien criminals with the help of a motley (fairly gender-balanced, multinational) crew of junior officers, every week for several years.

If I was a billionaire that would be so made. Yay.

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Not a movie (and I'm kind of surprised it hasn't been made as a movie yet), Wicked is built around two female leads, a coming-of-age story for both of them. Third pivotal character is the first lead's sister. I was thinking about Labyrinth, with questing teenager Sarah, and wondering if she could meet Titania instead of David Bowie, but Wicked might be better than that just as it is.

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I've never read Wicked. *makes note* I think I vaguely associated it in my mind with Was, and I don't get on with Geoff Ryman's writing. Gregory Maguire. The library will have it, if Transreal doesn't.

Labyrinth with Titania... who would play Titania?

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*speculating around my own question*

Angela Lansbury? Janis Ian? Tanita Tikaram? Depends what the concept of Titania is ... but definitely got to be a singer.

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Or Tracy Chapman.

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Possibly Bette Midler. Other options include Diana Rigg and David Bowie (appropriately costumed).

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Tina Turner?

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