This is not an angry letter. It is especially not an angry letter about Up, which I adored. I could have sat in the theater and watched it two more times in a row. I cried, but I also laughed so hard in places that it wore me out.
So I'm not complaining; I'm asking. I'm asking because I think so highly of you.
Please make a movie about a girl who is not a princess.
Of the ten movies you've released so far, ten of them have central characters who are boys or men, or who are anthropomorphized animals or robots or bugs who are voiced by and imagined as boys or men. These movies feature women and girls to varying degrees -- The Incredibles, in particular -- but the story is never "a girl and the things that happen to her," the way it's "a boy and what happens to him."
"On Wednesday, HBO will air the Academy Award-winning short documentary Smile Pinky, the story of two Indian children whose cleft lips are repaired by the charity Smile Train. Director Megan Mylan says such exposure can translate into aid for thousands of children.
Smile Pinky is about five-year-old Pinky and 11-year-old Ghutaru, who live in rural India and are ostracized and ridiculed because of their cleft lips. Nearly 4 millions children around the world have cleft palates, which can be repaired in an hour-long procedure that costs about $250. In the U.S. the condition is usually repaired before children are three months old, while in poor countries children usually deal with the condition for the rest of their lives, according to The Non-Profit Times."
"The sister of Rubina Ali, the nine-year-old Slumdog Millionaire actress, says
that the success of the film has destroyed her family.
Her comments came hours after her father, Rafiq Qureshi, was questioned by
police for a second time for allegedly offering the child actress for sale
in an illegal £200,000 adoption deal that caused a fight between her mother
and stepmother on Sunday.
Sana Ali, 13, said that Mr Qureshi had driven her from the home they shared
with her siblings and stepmother in a Mumbai slum to live with her mother.
"My father said I was unwanted and Rubina was more precious," she said. "Abba
[father] cared for us well before Slumdog," Sana added. "The Oscar has
destroyed my family."
"A spectacular catfight between the mother and stepmother of Slumdog Millionaire star Rubina Ali has been caught on camera.
Tearing
at each other's hair and slapping each other across the face, the two
women traded blows - watched by Rubina - in the middle of Mumbai's
Garib Nagar slums as neighbours watched yesterday.
The bitter
fight over custody of Rubina - who was abandoned as a baby by her
mother and raised by father Rafiq Qureshi and stepmother Munni -
started after reports that Qureshi tried to 'sell' his daughter.
The fight was the second between the two women, who first came to blows after Rubina returned from the Oscars."
"The makers of the hit movie '"Slumdog Millionaire" have donated
$747,500 to a charity devoted to improving the lives of street children
in Mumbai, the filmmakers said Thursday.
The money will be given to Plan, an international children's charity that has been working in India since 1979.
The aim is to help educate 5,000 slum kids over the next five years.
'"The
bottom line is that some of the beneficiaries of the film's success
have got together to make a donation which will be channeled into
relatively small communities where it can hopefully have a tangible and
lasting impact," producer Christian Colson told The Associated Press
by e-mail.
'"Slumdog Millionaire,"' a rags-to-riches tale of a
slum kid who makes it big, won eight Oscars and has grossed more than
$300 million worldwide."
"THE little red envelope just sat there. Night after night. Mocking.
You would think it was filled with anthrax, the way no one wanted to touch it. But inside the envelope was a DVD, rented from Netflix by Louis Marino and his wife, Trente Miller, in Brooklyn.
" 'The
English Patient,' " said Mr. Marino, 39, the creative director for an
ad agency. "I never got a chance to see it in the theater. My wife was
like, 'Yeah, I'll definitely watch that with you. Put it on the list.'
It goes on the list."
And so began their siege in this new trench on the front lines of American marriage: the shared Netflix queue.
With
a nation in recession and households cutting back on nights out at the
movies, and even canceling cable services, Netflix has thrived, with a
growing number of subscribers looking for cheap escapist relief. The
company announced in February that it had surpassed 10 million
subscribers. The slim red envelopes are everywhere these days, each
packed with a single DVD, pumping like platelets through the nation's
mail system."
"The common belief that one dog year is equal to seven human years
could just as easily be applied to female actors as Alsatians. It must
be down to the Californian water, but something seems to happen to the
women in LA so that they speed through the years at a far swifter rate
than that of their male contemporaries. According to film casting
agents, anyway.
It is all too easy for a female actor to find
herself cast as the mother of someone who once played her boyfriend as
soon as she blows out the candles on her 35th birthday cake. This has
long been an accepted fact of Hollywood life, and one that most women
keep schtum about as they know they should be grateful to get any roles
at all in their decrepit post-30s.
But last weekend, Hope Davis
finally broke ranks to admit she was somewhat "peeved" when she was
recently offered a role playing the mother of Johnny Depp, a concept
that would have tested the skills of the most talented special effects
department, seeing as Davis was actually born the year after Depp."
Us Weekly reports in its newest issue that Sarah Jessica Parker, 43, Kim Cattrall, 52, Cynthia Nixon, 42, and Kristin Davis, 43, have agreed to appear in the sequel to Sex and the City: The Movie.
"Not all the contracts are signed, but everyone is on board," a source tells Us. "It just happened."
Another insider notes that all the leads are getting hefty raises
this time around. (Cattrall reportedly held out from doing the first
movie for years because of Parker's higher paycheck.)
The news is hardly a shocker: The 2008 comedy grossed $150 million -- immediately prompting follow-up talk."
NPR
