Shattering the Celluloid Ceiling
To celebrate the last decade 2010-2019 we are counting down the best actresses and discussing some of their most notable and memorable performances of the last decade. With the help of Film Twitter, the ITOL team have selected 30 actresses. Entry No. 15 is Carey Mulligan, and writer Tom Moore discusses Mulligan’s career over the last decade.
To celebrate the last decade 2010-2019 we are counting down the best actresses and discussing some of their most notable and memorable performances of the last decade. With the help of Film Twitter, the ITOL team have selected 30 actresses. Entry No. 20 is Rooney Mara, and writer Kristy Strouse discusses her favourite performances by Mara over the last decade.
Every year, we are introduced to a handful of young actresses between the ages of about twenty and twenty-five. Brie Larson. Jennifer Lawrence. Emma Stone. Kristen Stewart. The list goes on and on. Each of the women mentioned above have impressive resumes. Their work rightfully has solidified them for further career success.
A creative force to be reckoned with. This woman graduated as a dancer, choreographed dance shows, made music, directed plays and wrote and directed world-class movies. And all this output can be traced back to when she was the tender age of 14 and made her first 8mm films. Her name: Sally Potter. If you have seen one or two Potter films, you may think that she broke or rejected the conventions of mainstream film making, but that isn’t quite right. What Potter does with her films is let them speak. The ideas within them come out in ways that are free forming and she follows the flow of them until they are completed films. They are not without structure or form; they are parts of the human condition that have been given freedom of expression.
What do Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman have in common besides creative genius and widespread popularity? They were either mentored or collaborated with an overlooked heroine of female representation in film, composer Shirley Walker. She is perhaps best known for creating the theme for the horror film series, “Final Destination” but achieved so much more. She truly deserves greater appreciation and recognition for her leadership as a woman in a field dominated by men as well as for her prolific body of work. Walker was so gifted as a pianist that she played with the San Francisco Symphony while still a teenager. Not content to be just an accompanist, she branched out into conducting and composing. It cannot be stressed enough how radical and trailblazing her ambition was for a woman in the 1960’s. Even today, women conductors are rare and women composers equally, if not more so. Her first screen credit came when her skills with a keyboard landed her a job playing with Carmine Coppola in “Apocalypse Now” (1979).
As hard as it is to believe, Jodie Foster allegedly once said, "Acting, for me, is exhausting. I’m more energized by directing. It’s more intense to direct. I can pop in and express myself, then pop out again. It’s a huge passion for me." So why hasn’t she directed as much as she might have?
Regardless of whether you're a fan or not of Todd Phillips' "Joker", I think we can all agree that Hildur Guðnadóttir's score is phenomenal. A classically trained cellist from Iceland, she has played and recorded with various bands such as Pan Sonic, Throbbing Gristle, Múm, and Stórsveit Nix Noltes. She experiments with sound and musical instruments, using cello, warped samples, and nuclear reactor metal as her tools to compose her music. And, the end result is stunning. Her music has a way of invading your mind, the score for "Joker" has a rawness to it, full of menace and a foreboding sense of dread. The score for "Joker" is so far from the epic orchestral scores we usually associate with comic book adaptations, and as she explained in an interview with Film Music Mag this was a deliberate decision, "we went as far in the other direction with this score as possible.
Film is comprised of two elements; image and sound. For generations, filmmakers from all walks of life have utilized these two elements to create tapestries for audiences to get immersed in. But only a select few directors in film history have utilized these elements in tandem. There was Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, and now there’s Lynne Ramsay.
Christine is drawn to the mask covering the face of the strange man playing the organ in front of her. What is behind it? She must know. She reaches and pulls it away……. One of the most famous scenes in film history is the reveal of Lon Chaney’s face in “The Phantom of the Opera” (1925) It single-handedly created film make up as an art form and recognized Chaney as its master. Since then, a handful of others have shown the inventiveness of Chaney, but they have been mostly men. That is until Ve Neill arrived in Hollywood and proceeded to make her own creations by her own rules. Here is an overview of her amazing career.
