I like superhero movies. I really do. They’re fun and fast and the costumes are faaaa-bulous. Straight men in stretchy fabric and capes – this is better than figure skating! This summer’s heroic roster includes Iron Man, Batman and The Incredible Hulk. And as great as those crime fighters are, they’re also a reminder that when it comes to superhero movies, no women need apply – this is man country.

New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis recently opined on the lack of women heroes and women— period — in today’s big budget blockbusters. Could this be the realization of Warner Brothers exec Jeff Robinov’s decree that the studio would not make any more movies with female leads? Dargis thinks so:

“Nobody likes to admit the worst, even when it’s right up there on the screen, particularly women in the industry who clutch at every pitiful short straw, insisting that there are, for instance, more female executives in Hollywood than ever before. As if it’s done the rest of us any good. All you have to do is look at the movies themselves — at the decorative blondes and brunettes smiling and simpering at the edge of the frame — to see just how irrelevant we have become.”

Ouch, but true. … continue reading

In this week's video blog, Lori and I discuss the cinematic women who've saved the world from impending doom — because nothing's hotter than a woman who chases tornadoes, electrocutes evil sharks, or creates a lot of complicated mathematical charts and graphs!

Since not everyone's as big of a disaster movie nut as Lori is, we're giving you a video cheat-sheat on the disaster movies with the best female leads: Saffron Burrows creates the perfect killing machine and then tries to undo it in Deep Blue Sea, Hilary Swank goes on a mission to jump-start the earth's motor in The Core, Vivica Fox rescues the First Lady from an alien attack in Independence Day, Shelley Winters does some deep-sea diving in Poseidon Adventure, Kim Delaney saves California from falling into the ocean in 10.5 and 10.5 Apocalypse, Kate Winslet floats in Titanic, and Anne Heche and Linda Hamilton duck lava bombs in Volcano and Dante's Peak.

All while slinging witty one-liners and sporting just the right kind of sexy mussy hairdo! (Um, them, not us - although we do make sarcastic comments in our vlog, and Lori does occasionally have a whisp of hair out of place.)

Because we've upgraded our software, we now have nifty new theme music! You'll also be happy to know the snarky captions are back; unfortunately, the new video editing software doesn't come with a spell-checker, so you'll notice a few typos. But life's too short to do it all over just because Hilary Swank insists on spelling her name with only one "l". (Although I don't have an excuse for leaving the "i" out of "premiere", except I had that old saying "there's no 'I' in "team" stuck in my head. You can blame my basketball coach for that.)

Besides commentary on the movies, you'll also learn about how I narrowly escaped a tornado in Fargo, North Dakota; why Lori believes mentoring is important even in the face of world annihilation; and why we're both hoping we're in New York when Mt. Rainier finally blows.

Watch the vlog here now! … continue reading

I hate it when I rave about a movie and then someone calls it a "chick flick." I have fond memories of defending Beaches when it first hit theaters — although, in retrospect, I may have been a little too adamant about that one. It hasn't exactly held up over the years.

But other estrofests, like Terms of Endearment, still get my vote as quality films, period, not just quality "chick flicks." Why does the presence of female characters mean a movie is for women, anyway, rather than just about them? Does that mean Ocean's Thirteen is for men and I shouldn't bother to see it? (Well, I wasn't about to line up for that one anyway, but that's not the point.)

Gloria Steinem recently asked some similar questions — in a much more eloquent and hilarious way — in an article titled "In Defense of the 'Chick Flick'." She helpfully proposes the term "prick flick" as a guide for moviegoers who might accidentally wander into Evening and come out scarred and emasculated.

Rather than try to improve on her rhetoric (I'm neither that cheeky nor that stupid), I'll just quote in pertinent part:

"If the 'chick flick' label helps you to avoid the movies you don't like, why is there no label to guide you to the ones you do like? … continue reading

Looking for a handy guide to LGBT film festivals? Look no further. Here is our guide to the feature films about lesbians and bisexual women that will be screening at several of the fests this year, as well as the 2007 festivals listed chronologically (by the time you read this, some of them may have already wrapped). If we've missed a festival or a feature, please drop us a line at comments@afterellen.com, and we'll add them when we have the opportunity.

Remember when I said Rose McGowan needed a sandwich? Uh, well, could also do with some pants. And possibly a shirt. Rose and Grindhouse co-star Rosario Dawson model the latest in National Rifle Association chic on the April cover of Rolling Stone. Not since Rambo have bullets made such a indelible fashion statement.

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This weekend, the special effects-laden war epic 300 raked in over $70 million in its opening weekend, making it the third biggest R-rated opening ever (behind The Matrix Reloaded and The Passion of the Christ) — and despite the film's bloody subject (a battle between 300 Spartans vs. the 60,000-member Persian army in 480 B.C.), the viewing audience was reportedly evenly split between men and women. Warner Bros., the company behind the picture, claims that they have finally reached the difficult-to-reach 15-to-24-year-old video game-playing public.

According to AfterElton.com, 300 plays to numerous homophobic stereotypes, which doesn't exactly make me want to see the movie (even though I admit that I do enjoy a bloody war epic), but apparently that hasn't kept viewers away from the theaters. Maybe they all went there to see a scantily clad Lena Headey (Imagine Me & You).

But 300 isn't the only testosterone-heavy movie to make big bucks recently. The No. 2 spot over the weekend belonged to Wild Hogs, another abysmally reviewed film, this time starring Tim Allen and John Travolta as middle-aged suburbanites who take to the road on a bunch of motorcycles to do whatever middle-aged men in mid-life crises do.

Thankfully, not all the films in the top five rely on tired gay jokes or macho bonding: The No. 3 spot belongs to Bridge to Terabithia, the film adaptation of the classic children's novel. Unfortunately the reprieve is short-lived. Rounding out the top five are Ghost Rider (Nicholas Cage as a motorcycle-riding comic book hero, Johnny Blaze) and Zodiac (about the hunt for the Zodiac killer, starring Jake Gyllenhaal).

OK, Zodiac sounds like an interesting film, but do four out of the top five-grossing films really have to be about men, men, men and men? … continue reading