Cinema's women and music problem - Revisited

I think what, ultimately, inspired me to write a piece about how cinema has, over the years, depicted women musicians in fictional narratives was the number of films I watched as part of my research into women and punk. 

There are some good ones, both from the punk era and beyond, but there's also some absolute shockers and - ultimately - I have yet to encounter one that feels both accurate and positive enough to serve as a celluloid inspiration for would be female musicians. 

What followed were a series of slightly untidy musings on the topic, which became this piece. I've never been entirely happy with the resulting piece, although I know it was the best I could make it at the time. It hasn't had a lot of love so if you do fancy taking a look at it, I'd be very happy. 

Photo by Jeremy Yap on Unsplash

In which I write a love letter to a film I have yet to see

 I have yet to see Michael Caton-Jones' 2020 film Our Ladies, but I already suspect that it's going to be fantastic. 

It is an adaptation of Alan Warner's third novel, 1998's The Sopranos, which has nothing to do with US crime families and everything to do with five schoolgirls from Oban going on a sesh in Edinburgh when they're meant to be preparing to compete in an inter schools choir competition.

I have long been a fan of the book, and the 2015 theatre adaptation Our Ladies Of Perpetual Succour, which was created by Lee Hall. Some of you might remember me mentioning the shows infamous disclaimer in 2017...

With this in mind, I was really looking forward to the cinema release of Our Ladies in April 2020 but, alas, the pandemic had other plans and the film has now fallen off the UK release schedules.

Hence the love letter, in which I argue that to let this film die on the shelf in some vault at Sony would be an absolute tragedy. You can read my piece here.