sexism
Breathless, ITVFriday, 11 October 2013![]() Period dramas are all the rage, and you can imagine Breathless being plucked with forceps from a steaming cauldron in which bubbled Call the Midwife, The Hour, Mad Men, Heartbeat and inevitably a sprig of Downton, which couldn't hurt. It's 1961, the... Read more... |
The Fall, Series Finale, BBC TwoTuesday, 11 June 2013![]() In the end, it was always going to come down to the last episode whether The Fall was powerful female-driven drama or, to quote another writer for theartsdesk, “misogynistic torture porn”. That conclusion, however, was as elusive as the ending of... Read more... |
Martha Marcy May MarleneTuesday, 31 January 2012![]() Drawing us deep into the coercive, immersive world of a sinister sect, in its audacity and provocatively luscious aesthetic Martha Marcy May Marlene announces its first-time writer / director Sean Durkin as a major new talent. Durkin ingeniously... Read more... |
Cedar RapidsThursday, 28 April 2011![]() The protagonist in a coming-of-age movie is usually an adolescent, but in Cedar Rapids it's a fully-grown adult. The hapless ingénu in question is goofy and naive Tim Lippe (Ed Helms), dedicated 34-year-old salesman for the Brown Star Insurance... Read more... |
Hall PassWednesday, 09 March 2011![]() It is regularly cited as quite the grossest moment in the Top 1000 gross moments in gross-out comedy. Flooping out of Ben Stiller, dangling off his earlobe, whence Cameron Diaz takes a pinch to stiffen her hair flick: the world-famously icky spunk-... Read more... |
How To Live With Women, BBC ThreeMonday, 28 February 2011![]() Meet Tom. He’s an Essex geezer with all the charm of a used toothpick, whose idea of romance is a cheeseburger on a bench in the Sainsbury’s car park. He can’t hold down a job, spends all girlfriend Cherelle’s money down the bookies, and expects her... Read more... |
Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, Channel 4Tuesday, 15 February 2011![]() News reaches us of discontent within the so-called "travelling community", where not everyone appreciates the portrait of Romany life which has been emerging from Channel 4's hit series. Perhaps they didn't like all that stuff about hairy-... Read more... |
Subs, Cock Tavern TheatreThursday, 06 January 2011![]() The world of the media offers plenty of opportunities for satire, but the idea of a comedy about sub-editors at first glance seems odd. After all, the sub-editors, or subs, are hardly journalism’s most glamorous beings: these office-bound nerds... Read more... |
Blasted, Lyric HammersmithThursday, 28 October 2010![]() If any play of the past two decades deserves the label legendary it must be Sarah Kane’s debut, which was condemned as “this disgusting feast of filth” on its arrival in 1995, but is now firmly ensconced in the canon of contemporary playwriting.... Read more... |
Made in DagenhamTuesday, 28 September 2010![]() Nigel Cole’s bright and breezy film opens with news footage and advertising reels about the American car giant Ford, which in 1968 had 24,000 men working at its Dagenham plant in Essex and only 187 women. It may have been the decade of the Beatles,... Read more... |
The Curse of Cruise: When Co-Stars VanishTuesday, 24 August 2010![]() You’ve heard of the Curse of Frankenstein. You know all about the Curse of Hello! But you may not be aware of the deadliest hex of them all. It goes by the name of the Curse of Cruise and, you just never know, it may be about to strike again. Film-... Read more... |
Women, BBC Four / Dispatches - Cameron Uncovered, C4Tuesday, 09 March 2010![]() You don't have to be female to wonder where the feminist revolution went. You only have to look at the not-very-private lives of footballers and the gaggles of wannabe WAGs flinging themselves in their path, or the way female pop stars seem to... Read more... |
