Reclaiming the ‘wife beater’ as feminist symbol of empowerment
Fashion: Unzipping the history of female undergarments
Though typically seen as a sign of muscular machismo thanks to Marlon Brando’s Streetcar and Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, the working-class white tank top was the product of the female emancipation movement and a quest for less restricted movement.
The Ex-Press Oscar Predictions 2016
Movies: Oscars 2016
Our expert guide -- and some good guesses -- about who will win the little man with the gold complexion come curtain time
By Katherine Monk
Chris Rock is in a hard place. Hosting this year’s Oscars isn’t a task for amateurs who get by on dimples, he’ll need to do an entirely different song and dance and address, and hopefully undress, the diversity issue that continues to ripple through every corner of the industry, putting legendary stars in embarrassing situations.
Poor Meryl Streep. You know she’s going to get some zinger about about how “we all come from Africa.” And poor Sylvester Stallone, having to represent Creed as the white guy, and poor Bryan Cranston and Michael Fassbender who handed in spectacular performances as two different brands of genius in Trumbo and Steve Jobs but will not take home the big prize.
It was a year of great performances in so-so movies, or at least movies that never fully connected with audiences in the ...
Top Ten 2015: Women land box-office blows for a surprise win
Movies: Top Ten 2015
Women stormed the box-office with raw power and profound emotional insight, overcoming Hollywood's institutional misogyny
By Katherine Monk
Let’s hear it for the girls. Though the year started slowly with just a handful of bright moments on what seemed to be a rather bleak horizon — from a pruny soak in a Hot Tub Time Machine and a disappointing date with The Avengers — 2015 ended up celebrating the fair sex in surprise fashion, starting with Mad Max’s furious females lead by Charlize Theron. The movie was kicked from the ticket wicket by Elizabeth Banks’s Pitch Perfect chorus, but there was still plenty of room for revision as Melissa McCarthy took on the spy genre and Amy Poehler and Phyllis Smith deconstructed the adolescent female psyche in Inside Out. James Bond lost a bit of box-office mojo with Spectre – pulling in $196 million domestically, compared to Skyfall’s $304 million – but while Hollywood expressed concern over a grim ...
Box Office Analysis: Female demographic gets big push
Early spring is typically a season dominated by testosterone-laced action tentpoles, but with Pitch Perfect 2 blowing the tires off Mad Max: Fury Road, the boys of summer may get benched by funny girls
By Katherine Monk
Mad Max may have defeated a villainous clan of wasteland warlords in order to survive a two-hour hell ride, but he couldn’t beat the ladies of Pitch Perfect 2 in the box office demolition derby called opening weekend, raising some doubt as to who rules the box-office in the era of digital, videogames, bit-torrent downloading and studio movie ennui.
As this weekend’s tally proved: Women are starting to outspend men at the wicket.
Mad Max revved up a respectable $44 million in receipts, but Elizabeth Banks’s gleeful girl movie about snarky singing competitors hollered to the tune of $70 million, proving the long-vaunted 14-year-old boy demographic does not rule
the box-office after all. According to the Motion Picture Association of America’s ...
