Thelma Adams: Novelist, Critic, Oscar Expert

Thelma Adams, Oscars, Playdate, Marie Claire, Movie Reviews, Interviews, New Releases, New York Film Critics, Celebrities, Personal Essays, Parenting, Commentary, Women, Women\'s Issues, Motherhood

MENUMENU
  • HOME
  • BOOKS
    • The Last Woman Standing
    • Playdate
    • Bittersweet Brooklyn
  • WRITINGS
  • MEDIA
  • EVENTS
  • BLOG
  • ABOUT
  • CONTACT

We Are the Champions (of Women’s Films) – Hollywood’s Female Critic Drought

May 21, 2015 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Maya of 'Zero Dark Thirty' Takes no Prisoners (& Bigelow & Chastain)

Maya of ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Takes no Prisoners (& Bigelow & Chastain)

Colorado College Senior Rebecca Celli has my back — and I’m sharing her New York Times Letter to the Editor below. Thank you, Rebecca Celli — and let’s do lunch soon. Gender inequality among the gatekeepers of film criticism has been high on my professional agenda for years. I have been screaming this to the rooftops for years. The shocker is that, while some women of my generation broke through and had a good run, many, many senior influential women critics have fallen by the wayside and not been picked up. And as for solidarity from our male colleagues, it has been anemic. Recently, when I went to post a review of Mad Max: Fury Road on RottenTomatoes, I was overwhelmingly surrounded by male voices. Can we change this? I have twice launched Adams on Reel Women columns on mainstream (not women’s) sites: AMC Filmcritic.com and then Yahoo Movies, and both time seen the column eradicated despite its success and influence. Yes, I’m part of the fight for more women directors — but when I interview Julia Louis-Dreyfus or Jessica Chastain or Melissa Leo or Charlize Theron or Emily Blunt or Rachel Weisz, I alw . She begins her well-reasoned letter in response to the article “A.C.L.U Pushes for Inquiry into Bias Against Female Directors:”

The American Civil Liberties Union’s recent complaint makes clear what everyone in Hollywood (and many of us outside Hollywood) know: Social networks and implicit discriminatory processes privilege men over women and threaten equal opportunity for women in the film industry.

But the issue is not limited to who gets to direct the movies; it extends to how those movies are seen.

I’ve just completed a yearlong quantitative and qualitative study of professional film criticism. I analyzed 131 reviews of 46 films that won audience awards at major film festivals to evaluate how a director’s gender affects reviews of films by critics.

And Ms. Celli continues from there, concluding:

It is a positive first step for the A.C.L.U. to examine how stereotyping influences how films are made and by whom. The next step, a necessary one, is to understand how such thinking affects how films are consumed and understood.

We female critics are often the champions of women’s films, and the gatekeepers in a field, I cannot say community, that is frequently disrespectful or dismissive of our voices. This is a call to arms, sisters (and brothers, too).

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: Female Critics, Gender Bias, Gender Gap, Hollywood, Jessica Chastain, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, New York Times, Rachel Weisz, Rebecca Celli, Sex Equity

NY Times Newly Released Books

January 23, 2011 By Thelma Leave a Comment

New York Times Book Review, Playdate, Thelma Adams, Tom Perotta, Little Children, Susannah Meadows

January 19, 2011 

By SUSANNAH MEADOWS

PLAYDATE
By Thelma Adams
291 pages. Thomas Dunne Books. $23.99.
 

Like a chick-lit version of Tom Perrotta’s “Little Children,” Ms. Adams’s debut novel chronicles the action among stay-at-home types. Lance is an unemployed weatherman who readies the cookies and milk for his 10-year-old daughter; after his wife awakens him one morning in an effort to get pregnant again, he feels like “an avocado molested by a budget shopper.” The poor guy finds comfort soon enough in the contorted tantric pose of his daughter’s friend’s mom, Wren. Although Ms. Adams — the film critic for Us magazine — ribs her characters and their Aveda Shampure-using, nacho-soy-chip-eating ways, she’s not without love for them. In the end, she even saves them from their bored, lame selves.

Filed Under: Books, Playdate Tagged With: Book Review, Little Children, Must Read, New York Times, New York Times Book Review, Playdate, Susannah Meadows, Thelma Adams, Tom Perotta

Copyright © 2023 · Dynamik-Gen On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in