Friday, October 5, 2007 at 2:02am
Who wants to be a movie star?
Column: Outing the Goddess Within
Brace yourself for the bad news. According to an AP-Ipsos poll released in August, one in four Americans hasn't read a single book in the last year. If the recent performance by Miss South Carolina at the Miss Teen USA competition counts for anything, they haven't been looking at world maps either ... such as.
So what's left if books and maps are dropping out of the concours de popularité of "U.S. Americans"?
Well, there's always the movies. Despite the news that Hoyts, a 55-cinema chain in Australia. was sold at a loss of AUD$23.5 million, apparently it's still worth $440 million, which is a lot of celluloid last time I checked. A good sign that the movie industry is alive and actioning.
There's also a flurry of online movie activity going on. At one end of the scale, Internet video community giant YouTube has announced its first international film promotion, Project Direct, which aims to capitalize on sponsors' willingness to shell out for parties, sushi and ink cartridges. Oh, and to discover top filmmakers within its community who are willing to comply with some silly — err, I mean, simple — guidelines. No problem.
At the other end of the scale, the ingenious crew at International Museum of Women cast their nets beyond their online community and outreached to the 221 countries represented by their tens of thousands of members.
Their hard work has paid off with a fabulous film festival, "A Film a Day," being launched this week. The festival features the work of 31 of the world's outstanding female directors — that's one new original animation, feature film, documentary, short, music video and/or experimental film each day throughout October.
Just now, I popped into the gallery and had a quick look at today's offering: an animation by Croatian director Helena Bulaja. Helena introduces her 24-minute film by saying: "The story of 'Regoch and Kosjenka' has meant a lot to me ever since I first read it as a little girl. It is an incredibly beautiful allegory about female strength, character, intuition and love. It reveals the exceptional and unspoken way we women look at the world."
Helena's not alone. Most directors so far have presented stories that portray the feminine emotion of "universal love and intuitive peacefulness." Kind of reminds me of Sally Fields' Emmy Award speech (" ... and, let's face it, if the mothers ruled the (world), there would be no (expletive) wars in the first place"), but without the censorship.
This is such a refreshing new way to view the movie industry. As much as I love a good piece of screen fluff, how did we allow "celebrity" to take over all common sense, our sense of healthy body image and how we approach self-love? How did size zero, frivolous wealth and rehab stints become the benchmark for success?
This a view shared by Australian journalist and author Shelley Gare in her book :The Triumph of the Airheads and the Retreat from Commonsense." As defined by Shelley, airheadism includes, but is far from confined to, "the most obvious manifestations of shallowness and stupidity in our midst: 'Big Brother,' Paris Hilton, the cult of Bridget Jones."
If you find yourself nodding to any of the following seven symptoms, see your shrink immediately — chances are, you're suffering from the condition of contemporary airheadism.
selfishness,
short-term thinking,
insatiable consumerism,
obsession with statistics,
an aversion to reading books,
love of theory and jargon and
a tendency to bully.
Other telltale traits are pride in ignorance, dislike of the serious and the absence of contrition if things go wrong. Errrr. Sorry if you didn't like this week's column, but I didn't know, um, that errrr, oh shoot. Perhaps I should just read a book.
— — —
Anita Ryan-Revel is the creatrix of Goddess.com.au, a content-rich website aimed at helping you connect with your beautiful, sassy, intuitive, lovable, sacred and authentic self. You can read more of her columns here. © Copyright 2007 by Anita Ryan-Revel.
So what's left if books and maps are dropping out of the concours de popularité of "U.S. Americans"?
Well, there's always the movies. Despite the news that Hoyts, a 55-cinema chain in Australia. was sold at a loss of AUD$23.5 million, apparently it's still worth $440 million, which is a lot of celluloid last time I checked. A good sign that the movie industry is alive and actioning.
There's also a flurry of online movie activity going on. At one end of the scale, Internet video community giant YouTube has announced its first international film promotion, Project Direct, which aims to capitalize on sponsors' willingness to shell out for parties, sushi and ink cartridges. Oh, and to discover top filmmakers within its community who are willing to comply with some silly — err, I mean, simple — guidelines. No problem.
At the other end of the scale, the ingenious crew at International Museum of Women cast their nets beyond their online community and outreached to the 221 countries represented by their tens of thousands of members.
Their hard work has paid off with a fabulous film festival, "A Film a Day," being launched this week. The festival features the work of 31 of the world's outstanding female directors — that's one new original animation, feature film, documentary, short, music video and/or experimental film each day throughout October.
Just now, I popped into the gallery and had a quick look at today's offering: an animation by Croatian director Helena Bulaja. Helena introduces her 24-minute film by saying: "The story of 'Regoch and Kosjenka' has meant a lot to me ever since I first read it as a little girl. It is an incredibly beautiful allegory about female strength, character, intuition and love. It reveals the exceptional and unspoken way we women look at the world."
Helena's not alone. Most directors so far have presented stories that portray the feminine emotion of "universal love and intuitive peacefulness." Kind of reminds me of Sally Fields' Emmy Award speech (" ... and, let's face it, if the mothers ruled the (world), there would be no (expletive) wars in the first place"), but without the censorship.
This is such a refreshing new way to view the movie industry. As much as I love a good piece of screen fluff, how did we allow "celebrity" to take over all common sense, our sense of healthy body image and how we approach self-love? How did size zero, frivolous wealth and rehab stints become the benchmark for success?
This a view shared by Australian journalist and author Shelley Gare in her book :The Triumph of the Airheads and the Retreat from Commonsense." As defined by Shelley, airheadism includes, but is far from confined to, "the most obvious manifestations of shallowness and stupidity in our midst: 'Big Brother,' Paris Hilton, the cult of Bridget Jones."
If you find yourself nodding to any of the following seven symptoms, see your shrink immediately — chances are, you're suffering from the condition of contemporary airheadism.
selfishness,
short-term thinking,
insatiable consumerism,
obsession with statistics,
an aversion to reading books,
love of theory and jargon and
a tendency to bully.
Other telltale traits are pride in ignorance, dislike of the serious and the absence of contrition if things go wrong. Errrr. Sorry if you didn't like this week's column, but I didn't know, um, that errrr, oh shoot. Perhaps I should just read a book.
— — —
Anita Ryan-Revel is the creatrix of Goddess.com.au, a content-rich website aimed at helping you connect with your beautiful, sassy, intuitive, lovable, sacred and authentic self. You can read more of her columns here. © Copyright 2007 by Anita Ryan-Revel.