“Crazy Rich Asians’ Michelle Yeoh Has Kicked Ass for Three Decades”

“I have two moves” says Michelle Yeoh. She puts her glass of wine down to demonstrate the stunts that have become her trademark over the last three decades she’s spent kicking ass. The actress, who first carved out her career as the reigning heroine of ‘80s Hong Kong martial arts movies, is a rarity in Hollywood: a female action movie star known not just for her looks, but for her stunning physical prowess.

Watching Yeoh move is like falling prey to a beautiful, deadly beast — you marvel at her tiger-like grace as she flies through the air, then you’re dead before you realize you’ve actually been slain by a goddamn dragon. (She’ll explain that distinction later.)

“One move goes like this… across their head — boom!”  Her hand slices past my neck like a knife before I can blink.  “The other one…” she continues, leaning forward as her perfectly blown-out hair spools over the shoulder of her tuxedo blazer.  “I hold him, bring him down, and hit him over the head with my leg.”  Flicking her arm, she mimics how her foot would pinwheel from behind with Chinese acrobat-level flexibility.

“The scorpion kick,” she adds, reaching for her glass to take another sip, eyes twinkling…”

https://www.gq.com/story/michelle-yeoh-has-kicked-ass-for-three-decades

“Spike Lee Is at His Searing Best With BlacKkKlansman”

“SPIKE LEE’S WHITE-HOT genre mash-up BlacKkKlansman initiates its course in the early 1970s. It’s a time “marked by the spread of integration and miscegenation,” according to an unnamed race theorist in the opening sequence (he’s played with palpable animosity by Alec Baldwin). In Colorado Springs, he continues, a sect of “true, white Americans” sense a movement brewing among black “radicals” and Jews who they feel have “pressured their great way of life.” The proto-MAGA sentiment is but a backdrop, one of many ways Lee’s latest joint teases out the resonances between then and now. The parallels aren’t simply the work of a fabulist, though; the playfully urgent film is inspired by real events — as Lee styles it, “some fo’ real, fo’ real shit”.

Elsewhere in Colorado Springs, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) is at a crossroads. The first black officer on the Colorado Springs Police Force, he’s overcome the department’s internal racism to attain the rank of a detective, but an assignment has left him with mixed allegiances, torn between his work and the world. It’s not until he comes across an ad in the paper from the Ku Klux Klan that it all clicks — call them, and pretend to be white…”

https://www.wired.com/story/blackkklansman-review-spike-lee/

 

“Female Director Scorecard: Warner Bros Lining Up Its Superheroes”

“It was a female director who gave the industry and Warner Bros the highest overall summer film last year with $412.5 million at the domestic box office and provided the studio the wind to sail past Disney as the first to win the $2 billion domestic box office race. Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman made the industry sit up and take notice when the Superhero origin film opened to $103.2M domestically and $228M internationally. It was one of only three films last year the studio released from female directors. The others were Denise Di Novi’s Unforgettable and Stella Meghie’s Everything, Everything (an MGM co-production). New Line had zero, but these numbers are changing, and for the better…

It wasn’t long ago that Warner Bros was shamed for its lack of films with female leads. But after Wonder Woman, the studio has been very vocal about wanting to employ another female director for yet, another strong female superhero — Supergirl. The studio is also developing female superhero characters including Batgirl and another film based on Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn, the scene-stealing character from Suicide Squad.

It seems the studio is looking for the women of the DC universe to help boost their superhero stable as the industry itself is finally realizing that audiences are screaming for diversity of all kinds…”

https://deadline.com/2018/08/female-director-scorecard-warner-bros-superhero-wonder-woman-1202441259/

“Warner Bros. Is Finally Realizing Supergirl Should Be the Center of the DC Universe”

“Supergirl was a joke. Until about 15 years ago she was memorable mainly for her campy ‘80s movie and that time she died in that comics, possibly because her campy ‘80s movie was so bad. Yet as the Supergirl series continues to be popular on the CW, the DC movieverse’s Superman is in limbo, and a new Supergirl film is beginning to take shape, it seems like Warner Bros. is finally picking up on the fact that Supergirl, not Superman, best embodies the 80-plus years of Super mythos.

And it’s about damn time.

The Super mythos is pretty succinct at its core — a refugee comes to Earth from another planet, integrates, falls in love (with the planet and the people), and becomes Earth’s most stalwart citizen. For decades, the premiere Super has been Superman. The fable of a child cast away to avoid destruction and growing up to defend his adopted homeland was fine Americana and usually resulted in some great yarns.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating—the best Superman stories are the ones that acknowledge and expand upon his experience as an immigrant. The U.S. is a country made of immigrants (political attempts at historical revisionism aside), and one of the reasons Superman has frequently felt like such an American character is because he has that experience…”

https://io9.gizmodo.com/warner-bros-is-finally-realizing-supergirl-should-be-t-1828180796

“Star Dove Cameron Promises, Marvel Rising Animated Series ‘Is For Everybody’”

“Marvel Animation’s upcoming Marvel Rising series will have a little something for everyone. At Comic-Con International in San Diego, stars Dove Cameron, Chloe Bennet, Milana Vayntrub, Kathreen Kavari and Kamil McFadden sat down with CBR to preview the project and described what sets it apart from everything that has come before it.

“It’s a show about a bunch of different people who maybe feel like they don’t fit into one place or another from various backgrounds who have come together to genuinely try to make the world a better place,” Vayntrub explained. “They’re all — or some more than others — are battling their personal demons, while making connections with people who they are unlikely friends with.

“It’s a predominantly female cast. It’s got a female empowerment heartbeat, as I’ve been saying, because it’s not just for young girls. It’s for everybody, and everybody can find something to relate to…”

https://www.cbr.com/marvel-rising-dove-cameron-chloe-bennet-interview/

“Marvel Teams with Australian Director Cate Shortland for Stand-Alone Black Widow Movie”

“News on the Black Widow film has been quiet since January, when screenwriter Jac Schaeffer signed onto the awaited project. But now it looks like Marvel has found its director.

Cate Shortland (Berlin Syndrome) is officially attached to the project, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Though finding a female filmmaker was a top priority, the long search for the perfect director stalled at one point and the studio did consider bringing on a male director instead.

Amma Asante (Belle), Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry) and Maggie Betts (Novitiate) were also being heavily considered. Asante, Betts, and Shortland reportedly met with Marvel President Kevin Feige and star Scarlett Johansson, before Shortland was officially brought on.

Fans have been asking for a Black Widow movie ever since the character’s debut in Iron Man2, and particularly since her starring roles in the Avengers films. But in 2013, Feige said that Marvel was not currently planning to include a solo film for a female superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though it was possible…”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/black-widow-movie-be-directed-by-cate-shortland-1126708

“The Stakes Are High for ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ — And That’s the Point”

“Kevin Kwan’s heart was pounding. It was a Friday evening in October 2016, and the author of the breakout 2013 novel Crazy Rich Asians was in his Manhattan home, on a conference call with the producers of the planned film adaptation — Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson and John Penotti — and its director, Jon M. Chu, along with their respective legal teams, about 22 people in all. They had a massive decision to make.

Behind one door: Warner Bros., which had outbid other traditional studios with a distribution offer for Crazy Rich Asians a week earlier. Behind the other: Netflix, the great disrupter, which had come in hot the following Monday, dangling complete artistic freedom, a greenlighted trilogy and huge, seven-figure-minimum paydays for each stakeholder, upfront. Now Warners had come back with not so much a counteroffer as an ultimatum, giving the filmmakers just 15 minutes to pick an option. Jacobson spoke up: “We’re going to go with whatever Kevin and Jon want to do.”

Kwan’s lawyer, Peter Nichols, was pulled over on the shoulder of Pacific Coast Highway texting his client furiously. Kwan and Chu had already tried to rationalize the cash grab: “Maybe we donate a percentage of our extra income to great causes,” Chu recalls the two having discussed the night before. “But where does that money go? Right back to trying to get to this position of getting us [Asians] on the big screen….”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/crazy-rich-asians-story-behind-rom-com-1130965

“‘Black Panther’ Success Amplifies Findings of UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report”

With its glowing reviews and box office success, “Black Panther” is a revelatory moment for the entertainment industry.

The Marvel Studios film, with a script by African-American writers Joe Robert Cole and Ryan Coogler, directed by Coogler and featuring a gender-balanced cast of predominantly black actors, earned more than $260 million in the U.S. alone by five days after its release — and by then had earned more than $260 million more overseas.

Those results underscore what UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report has been telling us about the appetites of film audiences in the U.S. and overseas, and suggests that the industry at large should invest in hiring that is reflective of the U.S. population, which is nearly 40 percent minority and at least 50 percent female. The fifth annual report was published today.

“We’re committed to examining diversity and gender disparity in Hollywood films and television shows and relating these findings to the bottom line of box office and ratings,” said Darnell Hunt, dean of Division of Social Sciences in the UCLA College and co-lead author of the report. “In part, we hope this serves as tool for artists, producers, writers, directors and actors who are seeking funding and support for future projects that appropriately and creatively reflect the gender and ethnic diversity of the United States….”

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/hollywood-diversity-report-2018-ucla