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Under discussion:

The Incredible Shrinking Woman  (1981)

Mr. Mom  (1983)

De Stilte Rond Christine M  (1982)

Nine to Five  (1980)

While I’m on the subject of film studies classes I’m taking this semester, here’s another story inspired by a film I watched at school yesterday. In Women in Film, which, in case you can’t tell, is a class on feminist film theory, we screened Marleen Gorris’ mind-numbing debut A Question of Silence (original Dutch title: De Stilte rond Christine M.). While bored from the obviousness of the film, which tells the story of three women on trial for the random murder of a boutique salesman, I thought about how much it reminded me of 9 to 5, a movie I would have much preferred to be watching (and not just because the music is soooo much better).

Then, as my mind kept wandering, I realized that three popular movies I loved as a small child were 9 to 5, The Incredible Shrinking Woman and Mr. Mom, all silly comedies made and set in the early ’80s (as was Gorris’ film), all obviously informed by the women’s movement of that time, which could each be given a serious reading from a feminist film theory approach. But since none of the films are really given enough credit, I’ll avoid attempting to write a scholarly paper on any of them. Instead I’ll use this as my outlet to expose what ran through my head, as I wished for the “real” feminist film to end.

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YouTube handed out awards this week, voted on by users of the site, to the best videos of the past year in twelve categories. I watched the short film winner, My Name is Lisa, when it was a finalist in that Juno promotional contest a couple of months back, where it took third place. I thought it was pretty terrible––unbearably mawkish, in fact. But what do I know? It apparently managed to draw tears from at least one person who makes a living telling us why culture is stupid, and that’s no small feat. Watch it for yourself above, and see the rest of the winners here.

Under discussion:

Funny Games  (2007)

Films by well-regarded international auteurs such as Michael Haneke rarely receive the critical drubbing afforded to Funny Games. Haneke’s scene-for-scene remake of his own film did actually earn high praise from a few major critics (Owen Gleiberman and Scott Tobias among them), but most critics concurred with J. Hoberman: “Haneke is pretty much a humorless pedant,” the Village Voice critic wrote. And then, the antithetical poster quote: “Professional obligations required that I endure it, but there’s no reason why you should.”

So you know things are bad when the one story that makes an effort to rehab your film’s rep from “atrocious” to “polarizing” is itself something of a trainwreck, boasting quizzically misread facts and apparently rushed to publication before its time.

I’m particularly troubled by the effort within this Variety story to make excuses for Games‘ disappointing opening weekend performance. Diane Garrett writes: “The pic did resonate with a certain aud, generating $520,000 at 289 theaters for a $1,799 per-screen average in its opening weekend.” How many screenings do you get from Friday-Sunday––say, 15? So $1,799 divided by 15 is about $120. Assuming the average ticket price is $8, that means 15 tickets were purchased for each screening. Is that the kind of number that passes for “resonance” these days? We know it’s Variety’s job to tell the studio’s side of the story (at least, apparently), but isn’t this a little extreme, even for them?

But it’s also pretty clear that this version of the story was not meant for our eyes. I screen capped the story at 1pm EST (see below the jump), after waiting five hours for a glaring editorial note to be removed from the online version. As of this writing, it hasn’t been. See my screencap, with the gaffe marked in red, after the jump.

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