Happy Hunger Games! Do you have your ticket to see a midnight showing of the movie tonight? A bunch of us at Bitch do, and I for one am beyond psyched. (Check back tomorrow for our review!) I've watched the trailers, listened to the soundtrack, and even have my outfit planned—based on the Ironing Board Collective's End of Days style predictions, of course. I have to wonder though, is it wrong to want so badly to see the Games?
Considering that the book series—and presumably the film—is about a not-so-distant dystopian future where the government controls its citizens and makes mandatory the watching of a game where kids battle one another to the death, at what point does this must-see movie mania get just a little too ironic?
Turns out, my man Dinklage is far from the weirdest part of this trailer, which was recut and re-released today. From a tone that makes no sense to top billing for an actor who doesn't even appear until the final five seconds, I'm having a hard time making sense of this project. Let's take a look, shall we?
The Portland Oregon Women's Film Festival, aka POWFest, begins today and goes until March 11th at the Hollywood Theater. From animated, experimental, or "mature themed" (my favorite!) shorts, a local and international showcase, and more than a few powerful documentaries, you'll find a wealth of independent and underrated female filmmakers (I hope you're paying attention, Academy!).
Plus, Guest of Honor Amy Heckerling (writer/director of Clueless!!) will be in attendance for a special screening of her breakout classic, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. (For folks jonesin' for a more '90s nostalgia kick, you can catch the March 11 screening of Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle). Check out the full schedule here.
Click through for some films to watch for, including a documentary on a horrific Army cover-up, a meditation on solitude, and an intimate look at binge-drinking among young women.
Welcome back to Pop Pedestal, the series where we pay homage to our favorite characters in pop culture. This week I'd like to take it back to 1996 with Dawn Wiener, the 7th grade martyr from Todd Solondz' Welcome to the Dollhouse.
Pedestal Profile: In Welcome to the Dollhouse we follow Dawn Wiener, an endearing loner, as she navigates the minefields of life in junior high. Nicknamed "Wienerdog" by her classmates, Dawn spends much of the movie being made fun of mercilessly by her classmates. Besides suffering the miseries of school, at home Dawn is also the black sheep, stuck between a nerdy, driven older brother and a beautiful, charming, ballerina for a little sister. Over the course of the film Dawn experiences an overwhelming crush on her older brother's hunky friend, the tearing down of her clubhouse for The Special People's Club, the kidnapping and comic recovery of her little sister, and the aggressive and threatening affections of her first boyfriend.
Here's three films you can watch (or in one case, cover your eyes during) this week at the Portland International Film Festival! Whore's Glory—a documentary on sex workers in the Global South, Water at the End of the World—an Argetntine film about two sisters' final journey, and Snowtown—a scarily realistic film on Australia's most infamous serial killings.
I originally intended for this to be a companion piece to my previous post about the 2009 film Adam. Mozart and the Whale is a 2006 romantic "dramedy" about a man and a woman with Asperger syndrome and, in many ways, it makes a very neat thematic companion to the other film. In Adam, the protagonists' relationship ultimately fails because the title character's autism prevents him from fulfulling an appropriate "masculine" role. In Mozart and the Whale, the relationship succeeds because both characters are autistic; neither of them can successfully maintain a relationship with a "normal" person but, as the tagline says, "They don't fit in. Except together." The troubling implication is that if autistic people are going to pursue romantic relationships, it's best if we stick with "our own kind."
This year at the Portland International Film Festival, there's a wealth of documentary films directed by women! Check out some of them below (or put them on your Netflix queue for later)!
There are many movies about a young person awkwardly stumbling into adulthood—but they're not usually about young women. Attenberg (screening this week at the Portland International Film Festival) follows Marina, a 23-year-old woman living in a coastal Greek city who's smart, but still doesn't have all the answers. Click through for more on the film, and other flicks to catch this week at PIFF!
We bring the Bechdel Test Canon to a close today with Dee Rees' Pariah, a coming-of-age film about a black lesbian nerd hopefully playing at a theater near you.
Save a few outlying exceptions, I watched most of these films on Netflix and streamed a number of them. This is how I saw Argentinean writer-director Lucía Puenzo’s 2007 feature debut XXY. It’s a touching coming-of-age film about Alex Kraken (an excellent Inés Efron), a 15-year-old intersex girl who decides to stop taking medication to suppress her masculine features. She recently relocated to a seaside village in Uruguay with marine biologist father Néstor (Ricardo Darín) and mother Suli (Valeria Bertuccelli) to avoid social stigma. Her mother invites family friends from Argentina to their new home with the intent to discuss a sex change operation, which Alex doesn’t want.
The Portland Oregon Women's Film Festival, aka 
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