Posts tagged hollywood.

— The closing line of Roger Ebert’s review of Celeste and Jesse Forever. (via glossylalia)

youcrashstanding:

“But the decision to alter the storyline with Peeta’s leg really troubles me because of what it symbolises. Peeta becomes a prominently disabled character in the series, and his disability becomes part of his experiences. At the same time though, he’s not defined by the disability, consumed by it, and placed in the narrative for the sole purpose of constantly reminding everyone that he’s disabled. Peeta, like other characters, is scarred by the world he lives in, and he bears a visible mark of the cruelty and brutality of Panem, but more importantly, he’s another person trying to survive and build a better world. By neatly cutting that entire plotline away, the filmmakers avoided some tangled and thorny issues. Like the fact that Peeta is supposed to be a love interest. I can’t help but feel one of the reasons the amputation storyline was taken out was because the filmmakers don’t think amputees can be love interests, or think that the reality of the amputation might be offputting to audiences who wouldn’t be able to identify with the characters if Katniss fell in love with a disabled Peeta, because that sort of thing Isn’t Done. Furthermore, obviously no amputees engage with media and pop culture and certainly don’t want to see versions of themselves on screen, so that angle didn’t need to be considered when preparing the film adaptation. They probably also feared the idea of a character who happens to be disabled; they couldn’t let him get fitted for a prosthesis and get on with his life. They would have felt compelled to wrap up some kind of special story in it, even though that’s not necessary. Riding right over that storyline can be justified by saying they don’t have time to do it, with all the other things that need to be included. Just like they didn’t have time to view actresses of colour and nonwhite actresses while they were making decisions about the casting of Katniss. Making movies is very busy work, people. And, of course, Peeta doesn’t comply with narratives above disability. His withdrawal and depression at the beginning of the second book are more about his emotional state over Katniss, rather than his leg. As a character, he’s physically active as well as politically defiant, once he begins to grow into himself. This isn’t what amputees are ‘supposed’ to do in pop culture, and thus it’s a narrative that makes people uncomfortable, and one that the filmmakers evidently simply didn’t want to deal with. I could be wrong; perhaps in the next film we will learn that infection set in and they took the leg. But I doubt it, highly, because this doesn’t seem to be in character with way Hollywood works, where disability is erased when it doesn’t serve a greater narrative or actively defies tropes. Peeta cannot be allowed to be disabled.”

— s.e. smith at Tiger Beatdown, So How About Those Hunger Games? (via squintyoureyes)

— Michigan high school student Eva Hattie L. Schueler on The Hunger Games film adaptation was published by the Huffington Post. ‘Hunger Games’ Casting: Why Jennifer Lawrence Shouldn’t Play Katniss
(via racebending)

newwavefeminism:

lawsonry:

fuckyeahlatinamericanhistory:

Venezuela is to give the American actor Danny Glover almost $18m (£9m) to make a film about a slave uprising in Haiti, with President Hugo Chávez hoping the historical epic will sprinkle Hollywood stardust on his effort to mobilise world public opinion against imperialism and western oppression.

The Venezuelan congress said it would use the proceeds from a recent bond sale with Argentina to finance Glover’s biopic of Toussaint Louverture, an iconic figure in the Caribbean who led an 18th-century revolt in Haiti.

It will also give seed money for a film version of The General in His Labyrinth, Gabriel García Márquez’s novel about the last days of Simón Bolívar, who liberated much of South America from Spanish colonialism.

Glover, 60, who starred with Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon series, and more recently with Eddie Murphy in the film Dream Girls, is a civil rights activist and supporter of Mr Chávez’s radical leftwing policies.

It will be interesting to watch public opinion as this plays out.

I am DEFINITELY keeping tabs on this as it develops

When I became an actress I quickly realize that the world liked their latinos to look Italian. Not like me. So I wasn’t going up for Latina parts. I was going up for African American parts. […] Regardless of the fact that I spoke the language better and understood the culture better, those weren’t the parts that…I could take seriously. Suddenly you have to explain why I look how I look. And then it gets complicated. And nobody wants complicated.

Gina Torres | Black & Latino

In his book Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun, Paul Barrett traces how the sleek, high-capacity Austrian weapon found its way into Hollywood films and rap lyrics, not to mention two-thirds of all U.S. police departments.

also see: Casting and Caste-Ing: Reconciling Artistic Freedom and Antidiscrimination Norms

Arthur - The Agent of Change

WATCH THISS.

Can we talk about how Arthur is the best thing ever? This just made me so happy :]