galax-arena

Daniel Dae Kim has gotten 3 shows into development on CBS, ABC, and TV Land. Reinforces how important it is to have diversity behind the scenes, not just on screen. Hope that at least one of the shows gets picked up!

It kind of reminds me of how the health and pharmaceuticals industry is so flawed because so much of their testing is (was) done only on men. Researchers apparently didn't account for the possibility that men and women could react to drugs and treatments differently. It's why what we think of as stereotypical heart attack symptoms is only true for men and not women. I think it's gotten slightly better as we've become more aware, but that's still a long history of medicine to unpack. I mean, this is obviously a much more serious issue compared to lighting, but still, just goes to show you how much of society is based upon taking the dominant/privileged members of society as the default and not even thinking about anyone else.

There is some speculation that Disney might have purchased the spec script to keep another studio from getting their hands on it and producing their own live-action version of Mulan. I suppose I could understand that, but it still annoys me that two (presumably white) women wrote that script at all. ETA: There are two people who have been brought in to write a new script - I know one of them worked on Jurassic World - so it's likely that there will be drastic changes at least. I'll cross my fingers that this really is just a placeholder script and isn't meant as even a base guideline of what the live-action version will be about. We're forgetting the biggest crime of all: a white love interest presumably means that there'll be no Shang, which means no iconic "I'll Make a Man Out of You." (Although I guess they could have the white guy be the one to whip the army into shape.) And there is just no point to a Disney live-action version of Mulan if you're not going to have "I'll Make a Man Out of You."

I know that the original script/concept for the animated Mulan was pretty horribly racist, so there's always hope that we could see a dramatic turnaround. But honestly it annoys me that this spec script exists at all and that that's what Disney was going off of when they purchased it.

What the fuck, Disney: An open letter to the creators of Disney's live-action feature film 'The Legend of Mulan'

I know someone who went to a focus group screening for the movie a mere two months before its release. Her guess was that the studio was in "oh shit" damage control mode; they had some sort of specialist in tow. She went because she was interested in seeing the movie but didn't want to pay for it after everything, which I get. Anyway, according to my friend, the studio wanted to know how they could get butts in the theater and the focus group concluded that the best way to divert attention from the controversy was to have Nate just shut the hell up and let the movie speak for itself. ...Obviously Nate did not heed anyone's advice. (As a side note, the rep was also apparently shocked that everyone at the screening was aware of the victim's rape and subsequent suicide.)

If Bruce freakin' Lee can't be given a fair shake in Hollywood - because if there's one Asian that white people can rally around, it's Bruce Lee - then other Asians really have no hope.

God, I feel so bad for Gabrielle Union. She deserves better. And yeah, the idea of watching a movie featuring a gratuitous ahistorical rape thrown in by two rapists turns my stomach. I wasn't going to watch the movie anyway after hearing about Parker, but this just cements that I won't even download it illegally. ETA: Also, as a preemptive strike - Nate and his defenders bring up the fact that he was "proven innocent" (no, he was acquitted) in a court of law and that that should be enough, so we shouldn't call him a rapist. Yeah, and George Zimmerman was "proven innocent" too. Don't say that the legal system is fucked up in one breath and then say that it should be taken as gospel in the next. And in any case, what does that say about his friend and co-writer, who was convicted? (Even if it was later overturned.) If you read the transcripts, it's evident that they did have sex with an unconscious woman; "reasonable doubt" in this case amounted to Nate and the victim having had consensual sex the day before. Because, you know, if you consent once, it means you consent all the time. Well, I guess I can't expect much from a country where spousal rape only officially became a thing in all 50 states in 1993 (and even so, some states still require that there be aggravated force/violence or a weapon used in order to consider it rape).

Yeah, and another thing to consider is that Gina's on a CW show. I got the impression that CW shows don't pay much in general because they're kind of a struggling network. And Jane the Virgin in particular suffers from really low ratings, so as much as the CW wants to keep the show around now because it's a critical darling, I don't know if they can justify paying her a huge salary. I'm not discounting that racism exists within the Hollywood payscale (even if indirectly; we say that JLD's better pay is warranted because she has more accolades, but that leads into the idea that white actors are more rewarded than POC actors), but IA that this article was sloppy. It'd have been better to compare Gina to a white actress on a similarly low-rated show on the CW. Maybe someone from Reign? Or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend? Not sure about the ratings for the last one, but it'd still be a good comparison because Rachel Bloom won a Golden Globe, too. I think Supergirl has higher ratings - the CW's superhero shows in general (plus Supernatural) seem to be saving the network, which is something I'm not happy about, but that's neither here nor there - but it'd still be interesting to see how Melissa Benoist's pay compares to Gina's. ETA: I like to joke that the surest sign that racism is a huge problem in Hollywood is that [insert horrible white A-list actor of your choice] has a better career than John Cho.

The Star Trek shows did not have any explicitly/unabashedly major LGBTQ characters afaik, which is why there was such a fuss made over a) the blink-and-you'll-miss-it revelation in the recent movie that Sulu has a husband and b) the news that the upcoming Star Trek show will have LGBTQ characters. IIRC, Gene Roddenberry would have liked to put gay characters on the show, but wasn't able to get away with it in the 60s. I suppose he was already pushing the envelope with a black woman and an Asian guy in the core ensemble. As far as the most recent shows go... yeah, Star Trek makes a big deal about its progressive future where that sort of thing shouldn't be a big deal, but it was still being written by people with a 90s mindset. (And I guess early 00s mindset, if we're taking the poor forgotten Star Trek: Enterprise into account lmao.) I say "unabashedly" because yeah I guess there was Jadzia but as Trini points out, a lot of that could be chalked up to "alien sexuality." It'll be nice if the new show has LGBTQ humans.

Regardless of whatever clashes they had on set, at least those two were professional to not let it affect what happened on screen. Julianna should have taken notes. Because I don't care who was responsible for the initial feud BTS of The Good Wife; I just blame Julianna for letting it get to the point where she couldn't even share scenes with Archie and insisted on doing that ridiculous split screen. Honorable mention goes to the Kings for being spineless wimps who refused to put their foot down with her. ETA: Honestly, Julianna just doesn't seem a pleasant person in general. I remember one roundtable with other actresses where Kirsten Dunst talked about how hard she worked during Fargo s02, and Julianna said something snarky/dismissive about it (because Kirsten only filmed 10 eps so what would she know about how hard filming is?). And then there's how they cut back on the courtroom scenes per Julianna's request, which was ridiculous because it was a freakin' legal drama.

From Jeremy's latest Beating 50 Percent post: Okay, I normally don't pick on someone's spelling and/or grammar. But I've noticed that B50P's posts are riddled with errors. This isn't someone's personal blog or a comment on a message board. Jeremy and Audrey obviously have delusions of grandeur when it comes to making B50P a ~thing, but they can't bother to proofread their shit? Maybe get a beta? Do they even run their posts by each other before publishing? I don't think Audrey's some great brain trust, but I want to think that she'd catch a mistake as groan-worthy as "weather." Actually, even aside from the obvious typos, their writing just isn't good. Rambling and all over the place. And I think they've been taking lessons from J.K. Rowling on how to commit ellipses abuse. I abuse ellipses too (not to mention parentheses, hehe) but a comment on a message board is not synonymous with purportedly professional writing.

I read a few of Jackie Clarke's blog posts before she made it private, and the woman has some serious pathological issues with Asian women. So I have my doubts that Mail Order Family would have been anything except horrifically racist. This is a line from her blog: "An Asian woman is as close as you can get to a boy without a weiner."

Tim Burton Explains Why 'Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children' Features A Predominantly White Cast Yeah, no.

Because Zig KNEW that he wasn't into Grace. Grace otoh was clearly (IMO) confused/ambivalent about her feelings for Zoe at the time. It took actually having sex with Zoe for her feelings to crystallize; it's not like she led Zoe on after that. The two situations are not the same to me.

Considering that the show takes place in the future, you'd think it'd make more sense for all of the cast members to be some varying shade of brown and not lily white, anyway. Or at least that the family would be multiracial. So much SF doesn't take into account the prospect of racial mixing in the future. It was a pleasant surprise when I read some children's/middle grade novel about life on a space station and the author went out of his way to mention how most of the people on the space station were either mixed or in multiracial families.

Orson Scott Card. Dude has issues.

I'm watching "the Principal's Office" on youtube, where the cast members give their thoughts on the eps. Stefan Brogren is saying that as much as he loves Ricardo, he doesn't ship Grace and Zig because "Grace is better than Zig." Preach!

So will the other girls actually be allowed to talk this time?

Right, Brazil has real problems, and the last thing they needed was yet another privileged rich famous white boy to exploit those problems to feed into a racist/xenophobic narrative on an international scale. It's reductive to dismiss the incident as just four silly Americans being dumb.

Speak for yourself, Celia! This has added some much-needed hilarity to my day.

I'm sure I've occasionally been guilty about that sort of pushback (or at least disagreement)! It's not that I think disagreeing with someone's opinion in this thread is inherently bad - sometimes it can lead to interesting discussions - it's just that this particular subject (i.e. dating creepiness and Terry Richardson) wasn't something I wanted to get into, haha. It's such a polarizing topic.

I should remember that not everyone follows celebrity gossip as obsessively as I do...

Okay, okay, fine, only because I get how irritating it can be when people vaguepost about shit lmao. Basically I have an issue with the fact that he dated a 16-year-old when he was 24. For the record, I'm aware that this might not have been illegal depending on the age of consent, but I still find it creepy regardless, because what the fuck is a grown ass man dating a 16-year-old for? His friendship and praise for Terry Richardson also creeps me out, because Terry Richardson himself is a creep. "Childlike genuineness"? Shut up, MGG.

I mean it's not like he's killed anyone or has deep dark secrets (that I know of). I think he's a creep because of [A, B, and C]; most people who are familiar with MGG* are already aware of [A, B, and C], it's just that one's mileage varies considerably on whether [A, B, and C] are creepy or not, and considering how intense his fanbase can be and how polarizing [A, B, and C] in general are, I don't feel like getting into a potential back-and-forth about it and having to defend my opinion lmao. * And if you're not familiar with him... well, it's not like you're missing out on much. Even aside from my admittedly frustratingly vague remarks about MGG's creepiness, I think the guy's a twerp.