Rio Bravo and My Picks

Well, I was responding to your list. But I could be a pro-active listy person, too.

I did enjoy Rio Bravo, which apart from the Angie Dickensoniness is an odd little movie in which nothing much happens, and yet it remains fairly interesting throughout.

I see why you like Feathers. She is tough and she manages to dominate Wayne's character without resorting to being either a battle-axe or a slut. The moment when she just walks up and kisses him is pretty special-- it's very frank and forward without being slutty, and the fact that Wayne just kind of stands there stunned and non-plussed makes it funny gender-switch on the classic Big Strong Man Sweeps Woman Off Her Feet film trope (can I say "trope"? it's such a fun word).

I also like that Feathers manages to be strong and vulnerable simultaneously. Openness about feelings is so often portrayed as typical female weakness or whininess or bitchiness. Feathers does all of her emotional processing unfiltered and straight out her mouth, and yet it somehow ends up making her stronger as a character rather than weaker. It's a neat trick.

Okay, my good woman characters in film and tv.

1. Aliens. James Cameron loves him some strong women. His entry in the Alien ouevre (can I say "ouvre"? I feel smarter just typing it) is a great strong woman film. Sigourney Weaver's Ripley is absolute bad ass, and yet is still a woman. Part of the subtext of the film is her working out mother issues (while she was in interstellar suspended animation, her own daughter got old and died) with a the sole survivor of Bad Stuff on Alien World, who is a little girl. We get a re-imagined nuclear family (Weaver plays opposite Michael Beihn, who also plays opposite Linda Hamilton in the Terminator, another Cameron strong woman flick), and I feel certain this is the only movie out there in which the climactic battle is between not just two women, but two mothers.

2. Gilmore Girls. Lorelei is awesome. She's well-written, funny, imperfect (but not expected to suffer endelessly for her sins). You understand of course that I am not referring to anything that happened after the show's writers overdosed on stupid pills in the last few seasons. Rory is awful. Stupid man choices and repeated insistence by everyone else that she is perfect (a perfection that I found impossible to perceive in what I was shown). Actually, my favorite woman on the show might be Paris.

3. Should I just stir up trouble by praising the Goddess-like package that is Andee McvDowell? Can I at least count her work in Groundhog Day? Why you canbnot see her awesomeness is beyond me.

4. Wall-E. Okay, I'm just curious about how it can be so obvious that Wall-E is a boy-bhot and Eve is a woman when they are clearly both pieces of plastic and metal. Okay, maybe Wall-E's doofiness marks him as male, but Eve is totally focused on the job, generally uses force to deal with problems, and is emotionally costipated-- and yet there's no doubt that she's female. What, other than her voice, tells us that?

5. Priscilla Presley in the Naked Gun movies. Rather than simply act like pretty window dressing while the boys get to do all the fun stuff, she's allowed to be just as ridiculous as the rest of the cast. From Margaret Dumont to any woman in a Judd Apatow comedy, it's relatively rare that women are allowed to be as funny as men in a movie. I'm sure other examples will come to me after I click "publish post"

That's my five to start. I'll hope on and add stuff if anything occurs to me.