Until recently, Michael Calleri was a movie reviewer for the Niagara Falls Reporter. Indeed, he’d been reviewing movies for the weekly paper for more than 20 years. But then the paper got sold to a new owner, and Calleri found that many of the reviews he sent in weren’t making their way into print. He contacted the new publisher, who was also the new editor, and after several surreal conversations and a number of emails, he received this explanation from his new boss:
i have a deep moral objection to publishing reviews of films that offend me. snow white and the huntsman is such a film. when my boys were young i would never have allowed them to go to such a film for i believe it would injure their developing manhood. if i would not let my own sons see it, why would i want to publish anything about it?
Yeah, I think we can all see where this is going.
snow white and the huntsman is trash. moral garbage. a lot of fuzzy feminist thinking and pandering to creepy hollywood mores produced by metrosexual imbeciles.
I don’t want to publish reviews of films where women are alpha and men are beta.
where women are heroes and villains and men are just lesser versions or shadows of females.
i believe in manliness.
not even on the web would i want to attach my name to snow white and the huntsman except to deconstruct its moral rot and its appeal to unmanly perfidious creeps.
i’m not sure what headhunter has to offer either but of what I read about it it sounds kind of creepy and morally repugnant.
with all the publications in the world who glorify what i find offensive, it should not be hard for you to publish your reviews with any number of these.
they seem to like critiques from an artistic standpoint without a word about the moral turpitude seeping into the consciousness of young people who go to watch such things as snow white and get indoctrinated to the hollywood agenda of glorifying degenerate power women and promoting as natural the weakling, hyena -like men, cum eunuchs.
Dude,”eunuch” is not the preferred nomanclature. Mangina-American, please.
Oh, but the new boss made clear that he was open to some sorts of reviews from Calleri:
If you care to write reviews where men act like good strong men and have a heroic inspiring influence on young people to build up their character (if there are such movies being made) i will be glad to publish these.
i am not interested in supporting the reversing of traditional gender roles.
i don’t want to associate the Niagara Falls Reporter with the trash of Hollywood and their ilk.
it is my opinion that hollywood has robbed america of its manliness and made us a nation of eunuchs who lacking all manliness welcome in the coming police state. …
In short i don’t care to publish reviews of films that offend me.
if you care to condemn the filmmakers as the pandering weasels that they are…. true hyenas.
i would be interested in that….
So, yeah, apparently the Niagara Falls Reporter is now being edited by a barely literate misogynist who seems like he just stepped out of the comments section of The Spearhead.
You can read the rest of Calleri’s story over at the Chicago Sun-Times.
(Thanks to several alert Man Boobz readers for pointing me to this story.)
I get a fright just seeing a pic of one in a magazine or book!
Arachnophobia 2 – Down Under. Coming soon to a theater near you in 3D with special waterproof seats.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
“I know journalism’s meant to be a dying art and all, but I didn’t realize it was already on its deathbed. I hope his resume at least was better written than that.”
lauralot89- as Malcolm Tucker once said: “These are tough times for print journalists- I read that on the internet” 😉
No mention of The Bechdel Test yet? Has anyone ever tried to quantify the ratio of films which pass the test to those which don’t? I bet it’s still tiny even in 2012:
http://bechdeltest.com/
@The Stepford
Skyfall wouldn’t pass the Bechdel test.
Now, to tangent. I grew up around a bunch of child actors. Here in L.A. it isn’t unusual for people to have parents in the business, or parents pushing them into the business. One thing I noticed was that the girls invariably wanted to become actresses, but boys would sometimes want to be actors, and other times would want to be writers, or directors.
Looking up people in my yearbook confirms this. A few people went on to act, but more were able to become executive producers, and writers.
So, why aren’t there more female writers?
Diogenes, you’re begging the question.
You present anecdata about child actors that you know, and then ask a question as though a dearth of female writers in hollywood is somehow connected to the preferences of children in your life.
I know a shitload of female writers, and the only screenwriters I know are women. It’s not statistically significant.
But! That said, I am inclined to agree that women are generally encouraged to act, sing, or dance, but writing and production are usually portrayed as “boys’ club” jobs and I’ve heard nightmare stories from prolific women trying to get a leg up in comedy or writing.
So my personal opinion is that the status is quo-ing the shit out of women early in life.
I’ve been to LA, and I can’t say that I’m surprised that to hear that the social environment there might be set up in such a way that girls feel like acting is more in line with what’s expected of them than writing, much less directing.
Re The Punisher: His entrance was the first comic I ever bought… he was the bad guy in a Spider-man. He was, sort of, an anti-hero at the end.
But he was also plainly a rip-off of Mack Bolan and, The Destroyer (two series of “flawed heroes” taking on The Mob.)
“Why are women shunted into the ‘look pretty’ jobs while men are shunted into the ‘thinky’ jobs? Gosh, I can’t imagine…”
Diogenes, you might want to visit The Hathor Legacy – it’s full of industry insiders talking about sexism on both sides of the camera in Hollywood. Here’s their film tag, and here’s their classic post on the Bechdel Test from a screenwriter’s perspective. Have fun!
@inurashii
I don’t see where I used circular logic.
And, yes the people I grew up with present a limited sample size, I’ll agree.
Not as bad a problem in Hollywood as the casting couch is. That’s really done. Its pretty shameful.
@emily
Interesting website. Not something I could see myself reading often though.
My brother and I have an ongoing joke about how long it takes any film to have an interracial relationship without mentioning its interracial. Most films wont even go there, even when they’re recent.
Its almost hilarious except for how sad it is.
http://thehathorlegacy.com/why-discriminate-if-it-doesnt-profit/ This was a great read.
Which begs the question in my mind, how often can we get non-Hollywood films out there with the net having both Kickstarter and websites that are outside the normal distribution web?
I don’t understand how it can beg the question. There isn’t any circular reasoning anywhere that I can see.
Anyways, its doable. The Brothers Mcmullan was made for about 30k, similar to the cost of The Blair Witch Project. Making films isn’t as hard as it used to be because there are companies out there that rent equipment. There are websites that ask for daywork for lighting crews, caterers, gaffers, etc., so it isn’t just the actors searching via the web anymore. Independent companies exist today that can do editing, and special effects. They’re not cheap, but its something you can resort to.
The really hard thing is distribution. Short of making a splash at Cannes, or Sundance, it’ll be difficult to get anybody to want to back distribution, and thats the difference between being in theaters, art house theaters, or going straight to video.
You beg the question because you say that girls want to be actresses, and that women aren’t, predominately producers, directors, etc.
Then you argue, by implication, this shows some fundamental difference between men and women.
You know, Diogynes, on the atheism thread you just said that you never saw the misogyny in Hitchens’ writing. That’s what happening with this situation too – you don’t see misogyny even when it’s right in front of you and glaringly obvious.
You should really go spend some time working on that problem.
Cassandra: It’s what makes him such a Naïf: everything is always new to him; every thread is sui generis.
@comics discussion-
I just found out that they’re going to be running an official MLP:FiM comic series. ZOMG.
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/07/12/idw-announces-my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic-comic-by-kat/
I’m just so happy that we’re finally seeing stories that have conflicts that don’t fall into the “it was the year 3200 and war was beginning” trope. It seems like far too many stories are centered around war and large-scale bloodshed as the main plot (this seems to be a fairly common theme in video games as well). I’d rather see something different. This is why most SRPGs really bug me other than Disgaea, because the story is SO SERIOUS and it’s always about armies killing one another.
One of the reasons I was such a huge fan of Batman: The Animated Series, as well as a lot of alternative anime (such as Mushishi and Big O), is that the stories they tell are complicated, and give a varied window into the psyche of the characters as well as the way they respond and react to one another. Even though they are more targeted towards male audiences, what I’d rather see is a smart, somewhat meta story that explores a world without trivializing massive casualties.
Boo. I kind of like comics and manga, but most of them just keep going and going. I like the idea of limitations before the story jumps the shark. Closed story arcs are great with characters, even established ones like Batman or Superman. Because you know, there’s just so many times that Garfield can complain about Mondays and enjoy a lasagna before you say, “well…I’m done.”
RE: dualityheart
I kind of like comics and manga, but most of them just keep going and going.
A lot of Osamu Tezuka’s work was fixed in length (Phoenix, Buddha, and Dororo), and he was a master of storytelling. I feel pretty at ease recommending him.
@dualityheart: I like the artwork of Rainbow Dash in that pinup by Andy Price, in particular the shading above the lids used to suggest that her eyes have volume.
I am also amused by Rarity’s cat’s pose, although most cats I’ve seen frame their rear leg between their forelegs and stretch it out rather than up, but it’s Rarity’s cat. She is refined, even for a cat.
And the longer I look at Rarity’s needle, the more freaked out I get that they can all manipulate objects without having digits of any kind, let alone thumbs.