Salon.com > Amelia

Strong women, weak box office

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:27:00 +0000

In this weekend's Washington Post, Ann Hornaday questions whether Hollywood is through with “strong women.” She notes both the reluctance of movie executives to invest in movies with empowering female leads and women's apparent unwillingness to pay for movies that are meant to empower them -- the "Whip Its" and "Jennifer's Bodies" of the cineplex -- and cites "Amelia," the just-released Earhart biopic, as an example of the dilemma facing the strong-heroine genre: "If 'Amelia' earns respectable receipts, chances are it will be dismissed as a lucky break. If it fails, it will be cited as yet more proof that strong female protagonists are box office poison."

“Amelia”: What becomes a legend most?

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:23:00 +0000

Mira Nair's "Amelia" purports to tell the story of a grand American legend, that of Amelia Earhart, whose plane disappeared in the Pacific in 1937 as she attempted to finish a record-breaking 'round-the-world journey. It's a big story, and a rich one, particularly when you factor in the complexities of Earhart's relationship with her publicist husband, George Putnam, and her extramarital affair with Gene Vidal (father of Gore), the director of the Bureau of Air Commerce under FDR. Then there's the fact that "Amelia" has perfect casting in its favor: There's no current actress better suited, in terms of appearance or temperament, to play Earhart than Hilary Swank.