Sara Churchwell

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In 1928, at the first Academy Awards, there were 15 categories. Men won in 14 of them, but Janet Gaynor managed to sneak away with the award for best actress. Given that it was only eight years since women had won the right to vote, one could argue that liberal Hollywood was being progressive in its recognition that women were occasionally appearing in movies, too.

After 80 years, we have naturally advanced since the days when women won only 6% of Hollywood's most coveted awards. Today, they direct only 6% of all Hollywood films. Of the 24 "regular categories" of Oscars, women have also been eligible to win best supporting actress since 1936.…  Seguir leyendo »

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They're already calling him the next James Dean. They said the same about River Phoenix, when he collapsed from a drug overdose in 1993, even though Dean died in a car race. The cumulative glamour of beauty and self-destruction was overpowering and transformative. It turned them into tragic heroes. Almost as soon as the first reports of Heath Ledger's untimely death emerged on Tuesday night, that process was under way, a collective outpouring of grief for another golden boy, talented, handsome - and gone.

The lure of cliche is intense, partly because we develop formulas and rituals precisely so that they can do our thinking for us in moments of shock or grief.…  Seguir leyendo »

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I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum intending to write a piece comparing the three films and the books by Robert Ludlum that inspired them. Ludlum's Bourne is a Vietnam veteran whose adversarial relationship with government turns into an ultimately idealised collaboration with a CIA manned by upright true-blue Americans. The films, by contrast, register a profound suspicion of government - in this latest instalment, the CIA is the only enemy - that seems to be about America's doubts regarding Iraq.

I haven't changed my mind, but the film left me with a far more pressing question: why can't women in action movies ever do anything useful?…  Seguir leyendo »