Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
There used to be a time when Hollywood films were just ahead of the culture. Part of what's fascinating about a '30s film like Gone with the Wind, for instance, is its ambivalent attitude towards its heroine, which reflects certain ideological tensions within the United States during the Depression: the modern woman who flaunts social norms is simultaneously a cause for anxiety (and therefore must be punished) and an object of fascination. In other words, classical cinema provided a space in which the contradictions of modernity could be negotiated for a mass audience. In attempting to be timeless and mythic, Jackson's trilogy doesn't speak to the early 21st century in the way that Gone with the Wind spoke to the 1930s.
Sure it did; the role of women in combat continued to be a growing trend worldwide during the era of third wave feminism, after all, and just looking specifically at the years that the LOTR trilogy was being released ('01-'03), that period alone saw German women being allowed to serve in that country's combat units, the promotion of the first female general in South Korea's military, and the first Australian woman to achieve a two-star rank in their Defence Force (heck, the year Fellowship came out was the same year that New Zealand itself authorized women to serve in all defense units in their military). So, taking all that into account, elements like the change to have Arwen single-handedly rescue Frodo's life from the Black Riders, and bring him to Rivendell (as opposed to Elrond & Glorfindel in the book) takes on a new relevance to contemporary society, and ignoring that is selling the trilogy short, IMO.
Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
Beautiful City, Before Sunset, The Big Red One: The Reconstruction, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Howl's Moving Castle, I ♥︎ Huckabees, Kung Fu Hustle, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Moolaadé, Mysterious Skin, La niña santa, Notre musique, Le Pont des Arts, Primer, Triple Agent, Tropical Malady, 2046, Vera Drake, The World, Yes. Maybe not the best year ever but far from the worst.
Don't forget The Incredibles!