Witch Christmas Is Full of Demons, Seances, and Motherhood in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: “A Midwinter’s Tale”

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On the Solstice, after finally becoming an official member of the Church of Night, Sabrina decides to continue to flaunt her lack of respect for authority by seeking to summon the spirit of her mother. Diana was established to be stuck in mortal limbo last season.

A Midwinter’s Tale does the work of a Christmas special in the sense that the storyline is not too heavy, but it does carry on some important plot elements and works as a bridge for the upcoming season two of the series. Mostly through exploring what the status quo for all of Sabrina’s relationships shall be.

Read More – Witch Christmas Is Full of Demons, Seances, and Motherhood in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: “A Midwinter’s Tale” – The Mary Sue

What I Married a Witch, Bewitched and Bell, Book and Candle say about women having it all

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In The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Sabrina Spellman (Kiernan Shipka) is torn between the witch and the mortal world, as certain expectations have been placed on her teen shoulders. Dating a human is not the done thing, but this is 2018 and Sabrina wants to have a choice in the way she lives her life. First love is intoxicating, particularly if there is also a forbidden factor. This is far from the first complicated romance between a person in possession of magical abilities and someone that has none.

Witch stories are often tied to teenage girls like Sabrina as a metaphor for puberty — but the movies and television show discussed below center on women in adulthood experiencing another kind of transition. Instead of learning how to use their powers, marriage and settling down threaten the abilities they possess. A commitment to a mortal comes with some major sacrifices in mid-20th-century rom-coms I Married a Witch and Bell, Book and Candle, which mirror the expectations placed on married women at this time.

Read more – What I Married a Witch, Bewitched and Bell, Book and Candle say about women having it all – SYFY

Movies Starring Women Earn More Than Male-Led Films, Study Finds

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“Trolls.” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” “Moana.” “Inside Out.” “Wonder Woman.” All were global box-office hits that had women in leading roles.

They were also part of a broader trend. According to findings from the Creative Artists Agency andt shift7, a company started by the former United States chief technology officer Megan Smith, the top movies from 2014 to 2017 starring women earned more than male-led films, whether they were made for less than $10 million or for $100 million or more.

The research also found that films that passed the Bechdel test — which measures whether two female characters have a conversation about something other than a man — outperformed those that flunked it.

“The perception that it’s not good business to have female leads is not true,” said Christy Haubegger, a C.A.A. agent who was part of the research team. “They’re a marketing asset.”

Read More – Movies Starring Women Earn More Than Male-Led Films, Study Finds – NYTimes

Female Blockbuster Scribes Team Up to Launch Production Company to “Open Doors”

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There are finally a handful of films by and about women in the superhero pipeline, and a team of writers are working to ensure that more are on the way. Lindsey Beer (“Chaos Walking”), Geneva Robertson-Dworet (“Tomb Raider”) and Nicole Perlman (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) have launched Known Universe, a production company that aims to “open doors to genre work,” The Hollywood Reporter confirms.

Beer and Robertson-Dworet first met when they were up for the same studio writing gig. “We found out it was down to the two of us, so we said, ‘Why don’t we just write it together?’” Robertson-Dworet recalls. The studio agreed. “People may think that we have a standing competition with each other but the reality is that, no, we have always been very collaborative,” she emphasizes. To encourage more collaboration, the pair, along with Perlman, decided to go into business together.

Read More – Female Blockbuster Scribes Team Up to Launch Production Company to “Open Doors” – Women and Hollywood

Interview With Up-and-Coming Genre Writer/Director Melody Cooper

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Meet Melody Cooper, multiple ScreenCraft Finalist. She placed in the 2018 ScreenCraft Screenwriting Fellowship, the 2017 Fall ScreenCraft Film Fund and 2016 ScreenCraft Horror Screenplay Competition.

She recently won the 2018 Urbanworld Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for Best Screenplay for her thriller screenplay Northern Cross. She was one of 10 Women Horror Directors listed in a 2018 A.V. Club article on who producer Jason Blum should consider. In March 2018, she was selected for a month-long writer’s residency in the south of France by La Napoule Arts Foundation to develop her horror TV pilot Sundown, which is set in LA in 1938 and features folklore monsters. Sundown was also a semi-finalist for 2018 Sundance Episodic Lab and Showtime’s Tony Cox Television Pilot Competition at the Nantucket Film Festival.

Her supernatural thriller The Sound of Darkness is a 2018 Athena List Finalist and was also selected for AMC Networks Shudder Labs, NY Stage & Film Filmmaking Workshop (mentored by It Follows producer Joshua Astrachan), the Writer’s Lab, and the Tangerine Entertainment Fellowship at Stowe Story Lab.

Beyond being a finalist in multiple ScreenCraft competitions, Melody’s work has placed in top 10% of the Nicholl competition, won the Woods Hole Film Festival, and has been a Finalist for Creative World Awards, Shriekfest and the International Sci-fi and Horror Film Festival. Her screenplay Monstrous was Winner of the Women in Cinema International Screenplay Competition, and took Third Place at Slamdance.

With a grant from AMC Shudder Labs, Melody directed a short based on The Sound of Darkness. She also directed a short documentary Detained, that won a 2018 Award of Excellence at Docs without Borders. Born in NY, Melody is also a produced playwright who won the Jane Chambers Award and was nominated for an Off Broadway Alliance Award. Her play Sweet Mercy was developed by NY Stage & Film (starring Danai Gurira). Currently, she’s writing a horror film with director Sebastian Silva, and developing a genre film project with producer Adi Shankar.

We had a chance to sit down with Melody and discuss the craft of genre screenwriting and what it’s like to be an up-and-coming writer/director.

Read More –Interview With Up-and-Coming Genre Writer/Director Melody Cooper – ScreenCraft

Who is Dead?

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The February 5, 2018 New Yorker carried a story of Jahi McMath and her family. In 2013, McMath went into Oakland’s Children’s Hospital for a routine surgery for tonsil removal. After the surgery, she experienced extreme blood loss and her heart stopped beating. Two days later, a doctor declared her brain dead. Her family battled to keep her hooked up to a ventilator and eventually removed her to St. Peter’s Hospital in New Jersey, where a physician can overrule the diagnosis of brain death if “such a declaration would violate the personal religious beliefs of the individual.”1 However, in August 2014, that hospital also discharged her, declaring her brain dead.

Despite all of this, and with support from Dr. Alan Shewmon, the family continued to believe McMath was alive. McMath’s mother, Nailah Winkfield, constantly talked to her and believed that she responded. Her brain scans showed “large areas” of McMath’s cerebrum “structurally intact.”2 Winkfield, her husband Marvin, and McMath’s sister Jordyn continued to provide care in their home until her final hospitalization this summer. McMath died on June 22, 2018 of liver failure, according to the death certificate.

The question of who is alive and who is dead is not new, but the answer is one that has changed historically. In the US, one of the biggest shifts came in August 1968, when a committee consisting mostly of doctors, but also a lawyer, a historian, and a theologian, published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, acknowledging that the question of who is dead is problematic.3 “More than medical problems are present. There are moral, ethical, religious, and legal issues.”

Read More – Who is Dead? – Nursing CLIO