UniLang

Osias wrote: - A reviewer of Feminist Frequency said the movie has no female extras, and very few women. She is wrong, I noticed several.

I'm pretty sure there are way more male characters than female characters in the film, though.

In the ravagers ships there were only males, sure, but they are pirates.

And? Is there a reason pirates have to be limited to men only? It's fiction. In historical fiction there'd be more of a case for making the pirates all-male, even though there have been a number of female pirates throughout history. But this film is science fiction, it's not pretending to be in any way historically accurate, so why only men? They could have any combination of sex and gender among the pirate crew, why choose the most common and unoriginal one and make them all men?

Aurinĭa wrote:

Osias wrote: - A reviewer of Feminist Frequency said the movie has no female extras, and very few women. She is wrong, I noticed several.

I'm pretty sure there are way more male characters than female characters in the film, though.

There are. But she exaggerated.

In the ravagers ships there were only males, sure, but they are pirates.

And? Is there a reason pirates have to be limited to men only? It's fiction.

I wouldn't say a 'reason'. There's no need, no obligation. It's just something we can say 'ok, ok, then they imagined pirates - in space! - and imagined only males, that makes sense somehow'.

Osias wrote:

Aurinĭa wrote:

Osias wrote: - A reviewer of Feminist Frequency said the movie has no female extras, and very few women. She is wrong, I noticed several.

I'm pretty sure there are way more male characters than female characters in the film, though.

There are. But she exaggerated.

And...? How important is it to the point she's making that there are only very few female extras rather than literally none at all?

Also I just searched the Feminist Frequency website and couldn't find the review you're talking about.

Osias wrote:

In the ravagers ships there were only males, sure, but they are pirates.

And? Is there a reason pirates have to be limited to men only? It's fiction.

I wouldn't say a 'reason'. There's no need, no obligation. It's just something we can say 'ok, ok, then they imagined pirates - in space! - and imagined only males, that makes sense somehow'.

And how does it make sense? Because people are used to seeing all-male groups, in whatever context. If it had been an all-female pirate crew, I bet you there would've been A Reason for it. As someone who is not a man, I could tell you how tiring that it, but it's hard to fully understand the feeling if you're not part of an under-represented group yourself. It's bad enough there's still sexism and gender discrimination in our reality, but on top of that we also have to accept it in works of fiction in other realities. Men are treated as the 'default' gender. A group consisting exclusively of men—be they pirates or anything else—is completely normal and 'makes sense somehow'. No explanation needed or given about the absence of women. A group consisting exclusively of women needs A Reason for existing, An Explanation about the absence of men. Perhaps it's an all-female species, or for some reason the women hate all men, or the men all went off to war and the women were left to fend for themselves, or some other Reason.

How many mainstream films that weren't marketed mostly to women can you name that have more female than male characters? Both among the main characters and extras? There's been research about the proportion of female versus male speaking roles, and how much they each speak. It's not very equally divided. At all.

Last but not least: there's no more an obligation to include women than there is an obligation to include men, but you don't need a reason or an obligation not to have an all-male, all-white, all-straight, all-cis, all-whatever cast. Even if the diversity isn't explicitly touched upon in the plot, I like to think a diverse cast enriches your story.

I'd apologise for ranting about a film you enjoyed a lot (and you have every right to enjoy it), but it's so. tiring. that the absence of women is taken so much for granted that it doesn't even need to be justified with the slightest handwave, while the absence of men is both rare, noteworthy (both in-universe and among the real-life public), and almost always justified with A Reason.

Aurinĭa wrote:I'm pretty sure there are way more male characters than female characters in the film, though.

As it so happens, I believe this is also true of Veer-Zaara. However, I also think it's fair to characterize all the female characters in Veer-Zaara as strong. I don't think I can say the same of almost any of the male characters (except the hero, and even he didn't have nearly as much at stake as the heroine did).

linguoboy wrote:And...? How important is it to the point she's making that there are only very few female extras rather than literally none at all?

It's not important.

Also I just searched the Feminist Frequency website and couldn't find the review you're talking about.

It's not on the the Feminist Frequency website, it's the second google result, for me, when I type 'feminist frequency guardians galaxy', so forgive my mistake:

https://www.dailydot.com/via/guardians- ... ils-women/

Avatar (yeah, for some reason I had never watched it before). The visuals are extremely pleasing, the plot is overly simple and the end is outright not credible. I mean, we're expected to believe that humans will leave Pandora alone and won't try to come back more armed than the first time to take unobtainum.

Ready Player One. I loved it. Still shocked with the Holy Hand Grenade.

IpseDixit wrote:Avatar (yeah, for some reason I had never watched it before). The visuals are extremely pleasing, the plot is overly simple and the end is outright not credible.

And ripped off from Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets anyway.

linguoboy wrote:

IpseDixit wrote:Avatar (yeah, for some reason I had never watched it before). The visuals are extremely pleasing, the plot is overly simple and the end is outright not credible.

And ripped off from Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets anyway.

Yeah. I've only watched the movie though, I don't know if this becomes even more blatantly obvious once you read the graphic novel.

TBH, it also reminded me of Disney's Pocahontas.

Also Dance With Wolves.

Osias wrote:Also Dance With Wolves.

That crack about Valerian wasn't meant in earnest. It's a hackneyed plot, one that was two centuries old before Avatar came around. (The last of the Mohicans was first published in 1826.)

I understood that. I was even going to make a similar joke, involving Ready Player One. But then Ipse seemed to take your comment literally and I wasn't sure anymore.

Well, at least I learned "meant in earnest".

linguoboy wrote:

Osias wrote:Also Dance With Wolves.

That crack about Valerian wasn't meant in earnest. It's a hackneyed plot, one that was two centuries old before Avatar came around. (The last of the Mohicans was first published in 1826.)

If the graphic novel has blue shiny aliens like in the movie, you could make the case that Avatar really ripped something off from it.

(Honestly I didn't pick up on the irony of the comment.)

Das schweigende Klassenzimmer
(The silent revolution)
Very nice movie, in German (with French subtitles) and talking about Hungary
I always love all what's about Eastern Germany and this one didn't disappoint me

france-eesti wrote:Das schweigende Klassenzimmer
(The silent revolution)

Hmm, that would be an English translation of the French title. The German title means 'the silent classroom'.

Tully.

Theron was really good, I've grown to admire this actress. The movie was mostly quite good in its depiction of the negative side effects of having children. Some bittersweet arrows hit close to home and made it both a delight and a struggle to watch. A couple of times I felt the plot kind of faltered and the comedic element lost me, but mostly, good movie.


The death of Stalin.

I enjoyed it, and appreciated its comedic, ridiculing efforts, but I also just felt so tired and sad that that whole regime happened and still happens elsewhere. The victims will never get their lives back, justice never really happens, and again and again the wrong people take power and ruin the lives and potential of whole generations. And the following generations, even if the times have gotten better, struggle with their relationship with truth and facts for even longer.

Watched Solo.
Cast is good. Great score, great puppet work. Some elements of the ending feel a bit predictable/rushed.

Watched Crazy Rich Asians. Great movie within the confines of its genre.

Rewatched Inside Out with my wife. It's called Divertidamente here. She finally saw the part she lost because of sleeping in the movie theater. She hated Bing Boing and the part she lost was mostly with him.

She kept complaining about movies where 'everything is going fine' then 'everything starts to go wrong', she hates the parts where things are going wrong. I kept trying to explain to her that no movie would work without that kind of structure, the hero journey, etc.