Ida Lupino’s film noir debut, available free thanks to the Open Culture site. If you don’t know about them — well, there goes your productivity for the day. Books, audio and films galore. The RADA-trained English daughter of a stage comedian became best known for her increasingly dark films, no less than when she turned…
Category: gender
The How To Issue
[One of many responses to the How To Issue] How To Guide: World Domination Some people use the holidays to give gifts, bond with families and eat too much. These people will never control the globe. Lots of people have a good string of days off this time of year when they are free of…
The Magic Pencil
I’m a guest over at Women Writers, Women Books this week: Casting the Writer’s Spell In my creative writing courses, I wave my magic pencil over my students and declare them to be writers—at least for the duration of the semester. After that, I say, it’s up to them to take over the spell. They…
Tuesday’s Overlooked Films: The Long Kiss Goodnight
I got into a discussion on Twitter with Anne Billson about Finnish music and films, and we both lamented the lack of love in Hollywood for Renny Harlin when people like Ridley Scott continue to be trumpeted. I suppose I have a weakness for a Finnish director who always manages a little nod to his…
RIP: Joanna Russ
I can’t add too much to the fine encomium that Todd wrote; I’ll just say that bringing The Female Man to a bunch of students at UHD, while definitely a challenge, offered a real eye-opening (and mind-expanding) experience to them as well. I’ve been talking about Russ a lot lately with folks in the romance…
BitchBuzz: The Anti-Chick Flick
My latest column: Winter’s Bone: The Anti Chick Flick Debra Granik’s film of the novel by Daniel Woodrell offers a bleak world and an engaging 17-year-old heroine, Ree Dolly. She’s not fighting (or kissing) vampires, she’s not wondering what boys think of her and she’s not shopping. Ree (played with finesse and grace by the…
I’m So Very Sorry (Maybe)
My latest column for BitchBuzz examines the gendering of apology, based on a couple of events you may or may not have heard about unless, like me, you monitor all media like a Bond villain (yes, Kipper helps): Here’s a study in contrasts: As our own Rebecca Thomson reported, there was a brouhaha about laddish…
BitchBuzz: Blogging by Gender
My latest BitchBuzz column is up. It was sparked by the revelation this week that the uber-macho blogger James Chartrand is really a woman and the reasons she gave for that mask: Blogger James Chartrand revealed this week that “he” is actually a she and deliberately took up the name after finding it impossible to…
BitchBuzz: It Makes You Gay!
My column this week chuckles a bit at a Republican senator’s Chief of staff, who told an audience that “pornography makes you gay” and was not kidding. Whatever your thoughts about pornography, surely you’ll agree that it’s a kind of goofy thing to suggest. But it’s just one more strange piece of the puzzle that…
K. A. Laity 