Month: February 2016

Categories
TV & Movies

Sundance 2016: “The Lovers and the Despot”

Thumb_lovers

Editor’s note: Sophia Nguyen is one of three recipients of
the Sundance Institute’s Roger Ebert Fellowship for Film Criticism
for 2016. The scholarship meant she participated in the Indiewire | Sundance
Institute Fellowship for Film Criticism, a workshop at the Sundance Film
Festival for aspiring film critics started by Eric Kohn, the chief film critic
and senior editor of Indiewire.

The director Shin Sang-ok once declared that his life was
too unbelievable for a movie plot. Called the Orson Welles of South Korea, he’d
made more than 60 movies in 20 years before the government shut his studio down
in 1978; by the ‘90s, he wound up in America and at Disney, where he created
the “3 Ninjas” series under the name Simon Sheen. There was also the matter of
Shin’s glittery celebrity marriage to his leading lady Choi Eun-hee, and the
scandalous affair that ended it. But most outlandish of all were the
circumstances of their reconciliation: getting abducted by North Korean agents
to make films for Kim Jong-Il.

Such a stranger-than-fiction story seemed destined for
documentary—not least because Shin and Choi had a habit of viewing life events as
film scenes. Yet none materialized until “The Lovers and the Despot,”
premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Co-director Robert Cannan said in an interview with Realscreen that though the subjects “were
actually in conversations with a number of different production companies” over the years, they were protective of their story, and especially of its evidence: the
audiotape, photos, and film smuggled out of North Korea when they escaped to
the American embassy in Vienna. They collected this material not just so they
could apply for political asylum, claimed Cannan: “they did it for a possible
future film.”

The pitch writes itself: a thriller and a love story; a
portrait of political and artistic megalomania; a movie about the magic of
movies. But Cannan and co-director Ross Adam never make a grab for the high
concept. A long interview with Choi forms the spine of the script, supplemented
by conversations with their children, former collaborators, and less
explicably, retired American officials. These testimonies are illustrated by
excerpts from Shin’s extensive filmography, and strangely soporific
reenactments of action scenes like her kidnapping by boat, his fruitless search
in Hong Kong, and a climactic car chase.

A talking heads documentary can play a bit staid, especially
to a Sundance crowd. But the straightforward approach keeps the directors out
of the way as the tale goes from tragic melodrama to something more bizarre. On
tape, Kim lays out his ambitions to elevate North Korean cinema, complaining
about predictable crying scenes. “We don’t have any films that get into film
festivals,” he frets to his pet artists. The threateningly affectionate
executive producer put everyone in a paradoxical situation. They
weren’t exactly told to break the ideological mold, but they were invited to
make a new one. (Later, Shin and Choi said that they introduced the first
screen kiss to the country.) Unlike in South Korea, they never had to worry
about money. They received unlimited resources, and later, permission to travel
to Eastern Europe. Shin and Choi put out 17 films in little more than two
years.

The missed opportunities show up elsewhere. Cannan and Adam
show how Choi treasures the memory of her work’s rapturous reception in Moscow,
prestige and praise to a degree she’d never received. They neglect to mention
that Shin made what he considered the best film of his career, “Runaway,” in
North Korea (to say nothing of the cult favorite “Pulgasari”). Readily
accepting Choi’s account of living in fear and biding their time, they don’t
probe the psychology of this hostage situation, or the complexities of such
creative coercion. Their interview with another artist, the nation’s former
Poet Laureate, which at first seems merely out-of-place, turns out to be a
wasted opportunity. They get a good quote about the “emotional dictatorship” of
the country, and then just leave it there. The movie’s myopic fix on the
thriller plot—fast-forwarding to the logistics of escape—does a disservice to
their subjects’ artistry and agency.

The documentary does find the running time for an abrupt
detour into the bizarre upbringing of Kim Jong-Il. It’s a perfunctory attempt
to humanize the villain, who was reportedly isolated from other children and
groomed for power since birth. He lacked the physical presence, charisma, and
political ambition of his father. As one expert explains, he was shy and loved
the cinema, and “thought of himself as an artiste.” It adds up to little more
than the “frustrated creative” theory of dictators. Forget killing baby Hitler:
if only someone had encouraged his painting! This tepid compassion misses the
mark: what’s needed isn’t remote analysis of his psyche, but the operation of
his power.

The epilogue wants to give us goosebumps and the giggles,
and in doing so, shows its hand. One scene shows the mourning at Kim Jong-Il’s
funeral, and explains the ominous consequences for inadequate grief. It’s
followed by a clip from North Korea’s 2001 attempt to make an international
blockbuster in the vein of “Titanic”—“Souls Protest,” which failed to launch
beyond the country’s orbit, is shown as pathetic and hubristic; it’s also
framed as funny. But the condescension is unearned. The regime’s huge public
rallies and parades display a more imaginative eye, and a deeper comprehension
of image and spectacle, than Cannan and Adam have: the synchronized
flag-twirling and banner displays are something out of a Busby Berkeley
nightmare, in living color. The shots from “Souls Protest” are mesmerizing.
These flashes of footage illuminate the questions these filmmakers never
bothered to ask: about the ideology underlying the desire to export art as a
form of soft power; about how a government attempts to control the imagination
of its people. “The Lovers and the Despot” wants to dismiss these ambitions as
the delusions of a dead man, without grasping how they connect to his dynastic
power.

The regime’s atrocities are so local, and its
public figures so apparently weird, that no one knows whether to treat North
Korea as broadly dangerous or merely doomed and demented. Only last year,
threats of uncertain credibility to the United States (and to Sony), leant a
ring of moral purpose to the obnoxious adolescent comedy “The Interview.” “The
Lovers and the Despot” is a symptom of a continued Western bewilderment, which
will only intensify amid recent speculation about possible missile tests. Given
the recent examples of Adam Johnson’s novel The
Orphan Master’s Son and Suki Kim’s memoir Without You, There Is No Us, we seem content to leave the serious
stuff to literature. It’s Hollywood’s prerogative to render generations of Dear
Leaders as 2D cartoons and literal puppets. This British documentary has no
obligation to pay reparations.
But it should’ve paid more attention.

Source:: http://www.rogerebert.com/sundance/sundance-2016-the-lovers-and-the-despot

      

Categories
TV & Movies

Sundance 2016: “The Lovers and the Despot”

Thumb_lovers

Editor’s note: Sophia Nguyen is one of three recipients of
the Sundance Institute’s Roger Ebert Fellowship for Film Criticism
for 2016. The scholarship meant she participated in the Indiewire | Sundance
Institute Fellowship for Film Criticism, a workshop at the Sundance Film
Festival for aspiring film critics started by Eric Kohn, the chief film critic
and senior editor of Indiewire.

The director Shin Sang-ok once declared that his life was
too unbelievable for a movie plot. Called the Orson Welles of South Korea, he’d
made more than 60 movies in 20 years before the government shut his studio down
in 1978; by the ‘90s, he wound up in America and at Disney, where he created
the “3 Ninjas” series under the name Simon Sheen. There was also the matter of
Shin’s glittery celebrity marriage to his leading lady Choi Eun-hee, and the
scandalous affair that ended it. But most outlandish of all were the
circumstances of their reconciliation: getting abducted by North Korean agents
to make films for Kim Jong-Il.

Such a stranger-than-fiction story seemed destined for
documentary—not least because Shin and Choi had a habit of viewing life events as
film scenes. Yet none materialized until “The Lovers and the Despot,”
premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Co-director Robert Cannan said in an interview with Realscreen that though the subjects “were
actually in conversations with a number of different production companies” over the years, they were protective of their story, and especially of its evidence: the
audiotape, photos, and film smuggled out of North Korea when they escaped to
the American embassy in Vienna. They collected this material not just so they
could apply for political asylum, claimed Cannan: “they did it for a possible
future film.”

The pitch writes itself: a thriller and a love story; a
portrait of political and artistic megalomania; a movie about the magic of
movies. But Cannan and co-director Ross Adam never make a grab for the high
concept. A long interview with Choi forms the spine of the script, supplemented
by conversations with their children, former collaborators, and less
explicably, retired American officials. These testimonies are illustrated by
excerpts from Shin’s extensive filmography, and strangely soporific
reenactments of action scenes like her kidnapping by boat, his fruitless search
in Hong Kong, and a climactic car chase.

A talking heads documentary can play a bit staid, especially
to a Sundance crowd. But the straightforward approach keeps the directors out
of the way as the tale goes from tragic melodrama to something more bizarre. On
tape, Kim lays out his ambitions to elevate North Korean cinema, complaining
about predictable crying scenes. “We don’t have any films that get into film
festivals,” he frets to his pet artists. The threateningly affectionate
executive producer put everyone in a paradoxical situation. They
weren’t exactly told to break the ideological mold, but they were invited to
make a new one. (Later, Shin and Choi said that they introduced the first
screen kiss to the country.) Unlike in South Korea, they never had to worry
about money. They received unlimited resources, and later, permission to travel
to Eastern Europe. Shin and Choi put out 17 films in little more than two
years.

The missed opportunities show up elsewhere. Cannan and Adam
show how Choi treasures the memory of her work’s rapturous reception in Moscow,
prestige and praise to a degree she’d never received. They neglect to mention
that Shin made what he considered the best film of his career, “Runaway,” in
North Korea (to say nothing of the cult favorite “Pulgasari”). Readily
accepting Choi’s account of living in fear and biding their time, they don’t
probe the psychology of this hostage situation, or the complexities of such
creative coercion. Their interview with another artist, the nation’s former
Poet Laureate, which at first seems merely out-of-place, turns out to be a
wasted opportunity. They get a good quote about the “emotional dictatorship” of
the country, and then just leave it there. The movie’s myopic fix on the
thriller plot—fast-forwarding to the logistics of escape—does a disservice to
their subjects’ artistry and agency.

The documentary does find the running time for an abrupt
detour into the bizarre upbringing of Kim Jong-Il. It’s a perfunctory attempt
to humanize the villain, who was reportedly isolated from other children and
groomed for power since birth. He lacked the physical presence, charisma, and
political ambition of his father. As one expert explains, he was shy and loved
the cinema, and “thought of himself as an artiste.” It adds up to little more
than the “frustrated creative” theory of dictators. Forget killing baby Hitler:
if only someone had encouraged his painting! This tepid compassion misses the
mark: what’s needed isn’t remote analysis of his psyche, but the operation of
his power.

The epilogue wants to give us goosebumps and the giggles,
and in doing so, shows its hand. One scene shows the mourning at Kim Jong-Il’s
funeral, and explains the ominous consequences for inadequate grief. It’s
followed by a clip from North Korea’s 2001 attempt to make an international
blockbuster in the vein of “Titanic”—“Souls Protest,” which failed to launch
beyond the country’s orbit, is shown as pathetic and hubristic; it’s also
framed as funny. But the condescension is unearned. The regime’s huge public
rallies and parades display a more imaginative eye, and a deeper comprehension
of image and spectacle, than Cannan and Adam have: the synchronized
flag-twirling and banner displays are something out of a Busby Berkeley
nightmare, in living color. The shots from “Souls Protest” are mesmerizing.
These flashes of footage illuminate the questions these filmmakers never
bothered to ask: about the ideology underlying the desire to export art as a
form of soft power; about how a government attempts to control the imagination
of its people. “The Lovers and the Despot” wants to dismiss these ambitions as
the delusions of a dead man, without grasping how they connect to his dynastic
power.

The regime’s atrocities are so local, and its
public figures so apparently weird, that no one knows whether to treat North
Korea as broadly dangerous or merely doomed and demented. Only last year,
threats of uncertain credibility to the United States (and to Sony), leant a
ring of moral purpose to the obnoxious adolescent comedy “The Interview.” “The
Lovers and the Despot” is a symptom of a continued Western bewilderment, which
will only intensify amid recent speculation about possible missile tests. Given
the recent examples of Adam Johnson’s novel The
Orphan Master’s Son and Suki Kim’s memoir Without You, There Is No Us, we seem content to leave the serious
stuff to literature. It’s Hollywood’s prerogative to render generations of Dear
Leaders as 2D cartoons and literal puppets. This British documentary has no
obligation to pay reparations.
But it should’ve paid more attention.

Source:: http://www.rogerebert.com/sundance/sundance-2016-the-lovers-and-the-despot

      

Categories
TV & Movies

Sundance 2016: “The Lovers and the Despot”

Thumb_lovers

Editor’s note: Sophia Nguyen is one of three recipients of
the Sundance Institute’s Roger Ebert Fellowship for Film Criticism
for 2016. The scholarship meant she participated in the Indiewire | Sundance
Institute Fellowship for Film Criticism, a workshop at the Sundance Film
Festival for aspiring film critics started by Eric Kohn, the chief film critic
and senior editor of Indiewire.

The director Shin Sang-ok once declared that his life was
too unbelievable for a movie plot. Called the Orson Welles of South Korea, he’d
made more than 60 movies in 20 years before the government shut his studio down
in 1978; by the ‘90s, he wound up in America and at Disney, where he created
the “3 Ninjas” series under the name Simon Sheen. There was also the matter of
Shin’s glittery celebrity marriage to his leading lady Choi Eun-hee, and the
scandalous affair that ended it. But most outlandish of all were the
circumstances of their reconciliation: getting abducted by North Korean agents
to make films for Kim Jong-Il.

Such a stranger-than-fiction story seemed destined for
documentary—not least because Shin and Choi had a habit of viewing life events as
film scenes. Yet none materialized until “The Lovers and the Despot,”
premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Co-director Robert Cannan said in an interview with Realscreen that though the subjects “were
actually in conversations with a number of different production companies” over the years, they were protective of their story, and especially of its evidence: the
audiotape, photos, and film smuggled out of North Korea when they escaped to
the American embassy in Vienna. They collected this material not just so they
could apply for political asylum, claimed Cannan: “they did it for a possible
future film.”

The pitch writes itself: a thriller and a love story; a
portrait of political and artistic megalomania; a movie about the magic of
movies. But Cannan and co-director Ross Adam never make a grab for the high
concept. A long interview with Choi forms the spine of the script, supplemented
by conversations with their children, former collaborators, and less
explicably, retired American officials. These testimonies are illustrated by
excerpts from Shin’s extensive filmography, and strangely soporific
reenactments of action scenes like her kidnapping by boat, his fruitless search
in Hong Kong, and a climactic car chase.

A talking heads documentary can play a bit staid, especially
to a Sundance crowd. But the straightforward approach keeps the directors out
of the way as the tale goes from tragic melodrama to something more bizarre. On
tape, Kim lays out his ambitions to elevate North Korean cinema, complaining
about predictable crying scenes. “We don’t have any films that get into film
festivals,” he frets to his pet artists. The threateningly affectionate
executive producer put everyone in a paradoxical situation. They
weren’t exactly told to break the ideological mold, but they were invited to
make a new one. (Later, Shin and Choi said that they introduced the first
screen kiss to the country.) Unlike in South Korea, they never had to worry
about money. They received unlimited resources, and later, permission to travel
to Eastern Europe. Shin and Choi put out 17 films in little more than two
years.

The missed opportunities show up elsewhere. Cannan and Adam
show how Choi treasures the memory of her work’s rapturous reception in Moscow,
prestige and praise to a degree she’d never received. They neglect to mention
that Shin made what he considered the best film of his career, “Runaway,” in
North Korea (to say nothing of the cult favorite “Pulgasari”). Readily
accepting Choi’s account of living in fear and biding their time, they don’t
probe the psychology of this hostage situation, or the complexities of such
creative coercion. Their interview with another artist, the nation’s former
Poet Laureate, which at first seems merely out-of-place, turns out to be a
wasted opportunity. They get a good quote about the “emotional dictatorship” of
the country, and then just leave it there. The movie’s myopic fix on the
thriller plot—fast-forwarding to the logistics of escape—does a disservice to
their subjects’ artistry and agency.

The documentary does find the running time for an abrupt
detour into the bizarre upbringing of Kim Jong-Il. It’s a perfunctory attempt
to humanize the villain, who was reportedly isolated from other children and
groomed for power since birth. He lacked the physical presence, charisma, and
political ambition of his father. As one expert explains, he was shy and loved
the cinema, and “thought of himself as an artiste.” It adds up to little more
than the “frustrated creative” theory of dictators. Forget killing baby Hitler:
if only someone had encouraged his painting! This tepid compassion misses the
mark: what’s needed isn’t remote analysis of his psyche, but the operation of
his power.

The epilogue wants to give us goosebumps and the giggles,
and in doing so, shows its hand. One scene shows the mourning at Kim Jong-Il’s
funeral, and explains the ominous consequences for inadequate grief. It’s
followed by a clip from North Korea’s 2001 attempt to make an international
blockbuster in the vein of “Titanic”—“Souls Protest,” which failed to launch
beyond the country’s orbit, is shown as pathetic and hubristic; it’s also
framed as funny. But the condescension is unearned. The regime’s huge public
rallies and parades display a more imaginative eye, and a deeper comprehension
of image and spectacle, than Cannan and Adam have: the synchronized
flag-twirling and banner displays are something out of a Busby Berkeley
nightmare, in living color. The shots from “Souls Protest” are mesmerizing.
These flashes of footage illuminate the questions these filmmakers never
bothered to ask: about the ideology underlying the desire to export art as a
form of soft power; about how a government attempts to control the imagination
of its people. “The Lovers and the Despot” wants to dismiss these ambitions as
the delusions of a dead man, without grasping how they connect to his dynastic
power.

The regime’s atrocities are so local, and its
public figures so apparently weird, that no one knows whether to treat North
Korea as broadly dangerous or merely doomed and demented. Only last year,
threats of uncertain credibility to the United States (and to Sony), leant a
ring of moral purpose to the obnoxious adolescent comedy “The Interview.” “The
Lovers and the Despot” is a symptom of a continued Western bewilderment, which
will only intensify amid recent speculation about possible missile tests. Given
the recent examples of Adam Johnson’s novel The
Orphan Master’s Son and Suki Kim’s memoir Without You, There Is No Us, we seem content to leave the serious
stuff to literature. It’s Hollywood’s prerogative to render generations of Dear
Leaders as 2D cartoons and literal puppets. This British documentary has no
obligation to pay reparations.
But it should’ve paid more attention.

Source:: http://www.rogerebert.com/sundance/sundance-2016-the-lovers-and-the-despot

      

Categories
Entertainment

Why Ronda Rousey Is the Type of Celebrity We So Desperately Need More Of

Ronda Rousey

Theo Wargo/NBC/Getty Images for ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’

Who needs a superhero on a screen when we have Ronda Rousey in real life?

The athlete-model-actress, who celebrates her 29th birthday today, was already a super-star among the mixed martial arts set when she was offered a role in Furious 7 back in 2013 and joined reality series The Ultimate Fighter (final result: victory). But it took another year or so for the tastemakers to really get with the program and make Rousey the crossover celebrity we didn’t even know we were waiting for.

It may have been her success in the UFC ring—and, yes, her pretty face—that opened the door, but it’s been her candor, humor, seeming fearlessness and overall magnetism that’s keeping her in the building.

And she couldn’t have joined the party too soon, because Rousey has provided a refreshing counterpunch to the toxic, judgmental social media culture that manages to wedge its way into seemingly every conversation about powerful women.

Not to mention, poll the office of media types who cover her or ask PR staffers who’ve worked with her, and all have nothing but the nicest things to say (and that’s saying a lot).

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“I like to be part of the change I want to see in the world,” Rousey told E! News back in November. “Not being afraid of criticism is actually a big advantage. I feel like I tried to be agreeable and failed—it failed me. And so I just did not give a s–t and ended up succeeding a lot more because of it…Now I have all these people saying the most terrible things you can think of about me, but I could comfortably retire right now if I wanted to. It just put into perspective how little other people’s opinions are actually worth.”

To put it mildly.

During that interview—which took place about a month before she suffered her first-ever UFC loss—she accidentally espoused some prescient wisdom when she said, “On paper, this actually looks like a terrible fight for me. But I’m going to show everybody why what you see on paper isn’t what you’re going to see in person. She’s going to have a lot of changed stats the day that I beat her.”

Ronda Rousey, Holly Holm Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

A “1” may have replaced the “0” in her loss column after UFC 193, but in hindsight Rousey really did prove that what you see on paper—which in her case turned out to be a defeat—isn’t what you’re going to get in person. She needed time to recover physically and mentally from the punishing bout against Holly Holm, but the star officially returned to the spotlight Jan. 23 as host of Saturday Night Live, humbly acknowledging her loss and giving every indication that she still had that fighting spirit.

But you don’t even have to watch MMA to respect and appreciate the type of person “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey is: a tough, resilient woman with a killer work ethic who promotes a healthy body image, has been open about past trauma, and shows that power and vulnerability can coexist in one fierce package.

“I need to come back. I need to beat this chick,” Rousey told ESPN The Magazine in December, reflecting on her haunting loss to Holm while still in a relatively reclusive state for her. “Who knows if I’m going to pop my teeth out or break my jaw or rip my lip open. I have to f–king do it.”

About that mouth of hers…

While all sports have their critics, professional fighting has more than its fair share of detractors who decry everything from the violence (pro MMA is actually banned in New York) to the trash-talking—and Rousey has been known throughout her career for talking her share of trash.

Ronda Rousey, Sports IllustratedSports Illustrated

“I don’t think any girl can grasp what I’m trying to do,” she told MMAjunkie.com in 2012 about her penchant for going after her opponents in pre-fight interviews.

“It’s not personal to me at all,” she explained. “I’m sure it’s personal to Miesha [Tate, whom she’d go on to beat]. I really think they should be grateful to me because they’ve gotten more press, more interviews, more exposure than they ever have before in their entire careers. I don’t want to pat myself on the back too much, but a lot of it is the result of me purposefully trying to get on everybody’s nerves. So they take it personally, but I don’t. I’ve had so many girl fighters come up to me and tell me they appreciate me and thank me.”

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Even Holm said about Rousey, after her victory, “I have a lot of respect for her. I wouldn’t be here and had this opportunity if it wasn’t for what she has done. There are a lot of female fighters before her who paved the way, and all of that has built up to this. But she was definitely the biggest to really make a splash.”

And while everything said at the weigh-in, in the ring, etc. makes headlines nowadays, was Rousey actually saying shocking things or did her comments draw extra attention because she’s a woman?

To those who accuse the whole enterprise of being misogynist, because it entails women hitting and kicking each other (as men have done to each other for sport for centuries), Rousey said on Good Morning America last year: “There are so many ridiculous arguments that MMA is somehow anti-woman. Fighting is not a man’s thing, it is a human thing. To say that it is anti-woman is an anti-feminist statement.”

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Ronda Rousey, Men's FitnessMen’s Fitness

The uproar over women doing their thing in the ring does somehow imply that women can’t handle hand-to-hand combat the way men can. Too many feelings, perhaps!

But what happens in the ring is business. It’s everything outside of it that’s life.

“People can say I am a terrible role model because I swear all the time or that I fight people,” Rousey told ESPN in 2013. “Look, I don’t want little girls to have the same ambitions as me. I want them to know that it is OK to be ambitious… I want them to know that it is OK to say whatever it is that is on their mind.”

But while Rousey has talked about growing up in a family with powerful women who weren’t afraid to speak her minds, she hasn’t always had the level of confidence and determination that now not only propels her in the ring but also prompted her to pose nude for the cover of ESPN The Magazine‘s Body Issue in 2012, a major beyond-the-ring breakout moment for her.

Ronda Rousey, ESPN Body Issue 2012ESPN The Magazine

“When I was struggling with anorexia, I felt so weak and powerless, and feel so strong after recovery,” she opened up in a Reddit AMA last August. “How does it feel to conquer something so daunting? I feel like it makes you invincible!”

“I grew up thinking that because my body type was uncommon [i.e., athletic], it was a bad thing,” Rousey also told Cosmopolitan.com last year. “Now that I’m older, I’ve really begun to realize that I’m really proud that my body has developed for a purpose and not just to be looked at.” She added, “It took a lot of time to develop a healthier relationship with food and with my weight.”

And at 5-foot-7, Rousey’s fighting weight of 135 pounds is not ideal in her eyes. Instead, at 135 “I felt like I was much too small for a magazine that is supposed to be celebrating the epitome of a woman. At 150 pounds, I feel like I’m at my healthiest and my strongest and my most beautiful.”

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Ronda RouseyRonda Rousey/Instagram

Rousey also took a stand when she called out Floyd Mayweather Jr. on the 2015 ESPYs red carpet after topping him in the race for Best Fighter of the Year, referring to his history of domestic abuse (he served jail time), when she looked at the camera and said, “I wonder how Floyd feels being beat by a woman for once.”

Even what could be considered a controversial bullet point on her CV—her admission in her 2015 memoir My Fight/Your Fight that she roughed up an ex-boyfriend after she found out he had been taking nude pictures of her without her knowledge—is actually rather go-girl awe-inspiring. We’re not condoning getting violent, of course, but how many movie heroines have we cheered who put the hurt on a jerk after he treated her badly? Except Rousey was able to do it in real life (and she stated publicly afterward that it was an act of self-defense) because she’s that friggin’ strong!

Ronda Rousey, Travis BrowneSharky / Splash News

She’s now with MMA fighter Travis Browne (“There’s no dating. We’re together,” Browne says) and, while she’s expressed the desire to maintain more of a shield around her private life lately, Rousey has talked about finding a level of support from him that she’s never experienced from a partner before.

“At the end of the day, I can’t curl up with people’s opinions,” she also told ESPN The Magazine in her post-loss interview. “Even when everyone thinks the world of me, I still go to bed anxious and freaking out because I’m afraid of everything. The only time I’ve gotten a reprieve from that [feeling] in my life is since I’ve been with him.”

Rousey has also admitted to being “the biggest crier,” especially during the week leading up to a fight and she’s devoted to her beloved dog, Mochi.

Ronda RouseyPacificCoastNews

Good grief, she’s so…normal! And yet obviously not.

Interestingly, seemingly every ferocious bump in the road that Rousey has hit since becoming internationally famous has only served to endear her more to her supporters—because who can’t relate to struggling with body image, or being betrayed, or hitting a wall at work, or not knowing what to do, all while feeling pressured to appear as if you’ve got it all under control?

Next up, Rousey’s going to have to decide when she wants to get back in the UFC game, having postponed her already anticipated comeback because of all the other stuff she has coming up: her second consecutive appearance in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue; a remake of Road House featuring her in the skintight-jeans-wearing Patrick Swayze role; and Do Nothing Bitches, a big-screen comedy she’s co-starring in with Tina Fey.

Asked if she will, indeed, fight again, she told ESPN, “Of course? What else am I going to f–king do?”

Ronda Rousey may have actual superpowers, but she never let’s us forget that she’s human. And we just can’t get enough of that.

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Entertainment

Why Ronda Rousey Is the Type of Celebrity We So Desperately Need More Of

Ronda Rousey

Theo Wargo/NBC/Getty Images for ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’

Who needs a superhero on a screen when we have Ronda Rousey in real life?

The athlete-model-actress, who celebrates her 29th birthday today, was already a super-star among the mixed martial arts set when she was offered a role in Furious 7 back in 2013 and joined reality series The Ultimate Fighter (final result: victory). But it took another year or so for the tastemakers to really get with the program and make Rousey the crossover celebrity we didn’t even know we were waiting for.

It may have been her success in the UFC ring—and, yes, her pretty face—that opened the door, but it’s been her candor, humor, seeming fearlessness and overall magnetism that’s keeping her in the building.

And she couldn’t have joined the party too soon, because Rousey has provided a refreshing counterpunch to the toxic, judgmental social media culture that manages to wedge its way into seemingly every conversation about powerful women.

Not to mention, poll the office of media types who cover her or ask PR staffers who’ve worked with her, and all have nothing but the nicest things to say (and that’s saying a lot).

PHOTOS: Highest paid athletes in 2015

“I like to be part of the change I want to see in the world,” Rousey told E! News back in November. “Not being afraid of criticism is actually a big advantage. I feel like I tried to be agreeable and failed—it failed me. And so I just did not give a s–t and ended up succeeding a lot more because of it…Now I have all these people saying the most terrible things you can think of about me, but I could comfortably retire right now if I wanted to. It just put into perspective how little other people’s opinions are actually worth.”

To put it mildly.

During that interview—which took place about a month before she suffered her first-ever UFC loss—she accidentally espoused some prescient wisdom when she said, “On paper, this actually looks like a terrible fight for me. But I’m going to show everybody why what you see on paper isn’t what you’re going to see in person. She’s going to have a lot of changed stats the day that I beat her.”

Ronda Rousey, Holly Holm Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

A “1” may have replaced the “0” in her loss column after UFC 193, but in hindsight Rousey really did prove that what you see on paper—which in her case turned out to be a defeat—isn’t what you’re going to get in person. She needed time to recover physically and mentally from the punishing bout against Holly Holm, but the star officially returned to the spotlight Jan. 23 as host of Saturday Night Live, humbly acknowledging her loss and giving every indication that she still had that fighting spirit.

But you don’t even have to watch MMA to respect and appreciate the type of person “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey is: a tough, resilient woman with a killer work ethic who promotes a healthy body image, has been open about past trauma, and shows that power and vulnerability can coexist in one fierce package.

“I need to come back. I need to beat this chick,” Rousey told ESPN The Magazine in December, reflecting on her haunting loss to Holm while still in a relatively reclusive state for her. “Who knows if I’m going to pop my teeth out or break my jaw or rip my lip open. I have to f–king do it.”

About that mouth of hers…

While all sports have their critics, professional fighting has more than its fair share of detractors who decry everything from the violence (pro MMA is actually banned in New York) to the trash-talking—and Rousey has been known throughout her career for talking her share of trash.

Ronda Rousey, Sports IllustratedSports Illustrated

“I don’t think any girl can grasp what I’m trying to do,” she told MMAjunkie.com in 2012 about her penchant for going after her opponents in pre-fight interviews.

“It’s not personal to me at all,” she explained. “I’m sure it’s personal to Miesha [Tate, whom she’d go on to beat]. I really think they should be grateful to me because they’ve gotten more press, more interviews, more exposure than they ever have before in their entire careers. I don’t want to pat myself on the back too much, but a lot of it is the result of me purposefully trying to get on everybody’s nerves. So they take it personally, but I don’t. I’ve had so many girl fighters come up to me and tell me they appreciate me and thank me.”

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Even Holm said about Rousey, after her victory, “I have a lot of respect for her. I wouldn’t be here and had this opportunity if it wasn’t for what she has done. There are a lot of female fighters before her who paved the way, and all of that has built up to this. But she was definitely the biggest to really make a splash.”

And while everything said at the weigh-in, in the ring, etc. makes headlines nowadays, was Rousey actually saying shocking things or did her comments draw extra attention because she’s a woman?

To those who accuse the whole enterprise of being misogynist, because it entails women hitting and kicking each other (as men have done to each other for sport for centuries), Rousey said on Good Morning America last year: “There are so many ridiculous arguments that MMA is somehow anti-woman. Fighting is not a man’s thing, it is a human thing. To say that it is anti-woman is an anti-feminist statement.”

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Ronda Rousey, Men's FitnessMen’s Fitness

The uproar over women doing their thing in the ring does somehow imply that women can’t handle hand-to-hand combat the way men can. Too many feelings, perhaps!

But what happens in the ring is business. It’s everything outside of it that’s life.

“People can say I am a terrible role model because I swear all the time or that I fight people,” Rousey told ESPN in 2013. “Look, I don’t want little girls to have the same ambitions as me. I want them to know that it is OK to be ambitious… I want them to know that it is OK to say whatever it is that is on their mind.”

But while Rousey has talked about growing up in a family with powerful women who weren’t afraid to speak her minds, she hasn’t always had the level of confidence and determination that now not only propels her in the ring but also prompted her to pose nude for the cover of ESPN The Magazine‘s Body Issue in 2012, a major beyond-the-ring breakout moment for her.

Ronda Rousey, ESPN Body Issue 2012ESPN The Magazine

“When I was struggling with anorexia, I felt so weak and powerless, and feel so strong after recovery,” she opened up in a Reddit AMA last August. “How does it feel to conquer something so daunting? I feel like it makes you invincible!”

“I grew up thinking that because my body type was uncommon [i.e., athletic], it was a bad thing,” Rousey also told Cosmopolitan.com last year. “Now that I’m older, I’ve really begun to realize that I’m really proud that my body has developed for a purpose and not just to be looked at.” She added, “It took a lot of time to develop a healthier relationship with food and with my weight.”

And at 5-foot-7, Rousey’s fighting weight of 135 pounds is not ideal in her eyes. Instead, at 135 “I felt like I was much too small for a magazine that is supposed to be celebrating the epitome of a woman. At 150 pounds, I feel like I’m at my healthiest and my strongest and my most beautiful.”

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Ronda RouseyRonda Rousey/Instagram

Rousey also took a stand when she called out Floyd Mayweather Jr. on the 2015 ESPYs red carpet after topping him in the race for Best Fighter of the Year, referring to his history of domestic abuse (he served jail time), when she looked at the camera and said, “I wonder how Floyd feels being beat by a woman for once.”

Even what could be considered a controversial bullet point on her CV—her admission in her 2015 memoir My Fight/Your Fight that she roughed up an ex-boyfriend after she found out he had been taking nude pictures of her without her knowledge—is actually rather go-girl awe-inspiring. We’re not condoning getting violent, of course, but how many movie heroines have we cheered who put the hurt on a jerk after he treated her badly? Except Rousey was able to do it in real life (and she stated publicly afterward that it was an act of self-defense) because she’s that friggin’ strong!

Ronda Rousey, Travis BrowneSharky / Splash News

She’s now with MMA fighter Travis Browne (“There’s no dating. We’re together,” Browne says) and, while she’s expressed the desire to maintain more of a shield around her private life lately, Rousey has talked about finding a level of support from him that she’s never experienced from a partner before.

“At the end of the day, I can’t curl up with people’s opinions,” she also told ESPN The Magazine in her post-loss interview. “Even when everyone thinks the world of me, I still go to bed anxious and freaking out because I’m afraid of everything. The only time I’ve gotten a reprieve from that [feeling] in my life is since I’ve been with him.”

Rousey has also admitted to being “the biggest crier,” especially during the week leading up to a fight and she’s devoted to her beloved dog, Mochi.

Ronda RouseyPacificCoastNews

Good grief, she’s so…normal! And yet obviously not.

Interestingly, seemingly every ferocious bump in the road that Rousey has hit since becoming internationally famous has only served to endear her more to her supporters—because who can’t relate to struggling with body image, or being betrayed, or hitting a wall at work, or not knowing what to do, all while feeling pressured to appear as if you’ve got it all under control?

Next up, Rousey’s going to have to decide when she wants to get back in the UFC game, having postponed her already anticipated comeback because of all the other stuff she has coming up: her second consecutive appearance in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue; a remake of Road House featuring her in the skintight-jeans-wearing Patrick Swayze role; and Do Nothing Bitches, a big-screen comedy she’s co-starring in with Tina Fey.

Asked if she will, indeed, fight again, she told ESPN, “Of course? What else am I going to f–king do?”

Ronda Rousey may have actual superpowers, but she never let’s us forget that she’s human. And we just can’t get enough of that.

PHOTOS: Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue 50th Anniversary Party

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Source:: http://ca.eonline.com/news/735153/why-ronda-rousey-is-the-type-of-celebrity-we-so-desperately-need-more-of?cmpid=rss-000000-rssfeed-365-topstories&utm_source=eonline&utm_medium=rssfeeds&utm_campaign=rss_topstories

      

Categories
Entertainment

Why Ronda Rousey Is the Type of Celebrity We So Desperately Need More Of

Ronda Rousey

Theo Wargo/NBC/Getty Images for ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’

Who needs a superhero on a screen when we have Ronda Rousey in real life?

The athlete-model-actress, who celebrates her 29th birthday today, was already a super-star among the mixed martial arts set when she was offered a role in Furious 7 back in 2013 and joined reality series The Ultimate Fighter (final result: victory). But it took another year or so for the tastemakers to really get with the program and make Rousey the crossover celebrity we didn’t even know we were waiting for.

It may have been her success in the UFC ring—and, yes, her pretty face—that opened the door, but it’s been her candor, humor, seeming fearlessness and overall magnetism that’s keeping her in the building.

And she couldn’t have joined the party too soon, because Rousey has provided a refreshing counterpunch to the toxic, judgmental social media culture that manages to wedge its way into seemingly every conversation about powerful women.

Not to mention, poll the office of media types who cover her or ask PR staffers who’ve worked with her, and all have nothing but the nicest things to say (and that’s saying a lot).

PHOTOS: Highest paid athletes in 2015

“I like to be part of the change I want to see in the world,” Rousey told E! News back in November. “Not being afraid of criticism is actually a big advantage. I feel like I tried to be agreeable and failed—it failed me. And so I just did not give a s–t and ended up succeeding a lot more because of it…Now I have all these people saying the most terrible things you can think of about me, but I could comfortably retire right now if I wanted to. It just put into perspective how little other people’s opinions are actually worth.”

To put it mildly.

During that interview—which took place about a month before she suffered her first-ever UFC loss—she accidentally espoused some prescient wisdom when she said, “On paper, this actually looks like a terrible fight for me. But I’m going to show everybody why what you see on paper isn’t what you’re going to see in person. She’s going to have a lot of changed stats the day that I beat her.”

Ronda Rousey, Holly Holm Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

A “1” may have replaced the “0” in her loss column after UFC 193, but in hindsight Rousey really did prove that what you see on paper—which in her case turned out to be a defeat—isn’t what you’re going to get in person. She needed time to recover physically and mentally from the punishing bout against Holly Holm, but the star officially returned to the spotlight Jan. 23 as host of Saturday Night Live, humbly acknowledging her loss and giving every indication that she still had that fighting spirit.

But you don’t even have to watch MMA to respect and appreciate the type of person “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey is: a tough, resilient woman with a killer work ethic who promotes a healthy body image, has been open about past trauma, and shows that power and vulnerability can coexist in one fierce package.

“I need to come back. I need to beat this chick,” Rousey told ESPN The Magazine in December, reflecting on her haunting loss to Holm while still in a relatively reclusive state for her. “Who knows if I’m going to pop my teeth out or break my jaw or rip my lip open. I have to f–king do it.”

About that mouth of hers…

While all sports have their critics, professional fighting has more than its fair share of detractors who decry everything from the violence (pro MMA is actually banned in New York) to the trash-talking—and Rousey has been known throughout her career for talking her share of trash.

Ronda Rousey, Sports IllustratedSports Illustrated

“I don’t think any girl can grasp what I’m trying to do,” she told MMAjunkie.com in 2012 about her penchant for going after her opponents in pre-fight interviews.

“It’s not personal to me at all,” she explained. “I’m sure it’s personal to Miesha [Tate, whom she’d go on to beat]. I really think they should be grateful to me because they’ve gotten more press, more interviews, more exposure than they ever have before in their entire careers. I don’t want to pat myself on the back too much, but a lot of it is the result of me purposefully trying to get on everybody’s nerves. So they take it personally, but I don’t. I’ve had so many girl fighters come up to me and tell me they appreciate me and thank me.”

PHOTOS: Hottest Abs in Hollywood

Even Holm said about Rousey, after her victory, “I have a lot of respect for her. I wouldn’t be here and had this opportunity if it wasn’t for what she has done. There are a lot of female fighters before her who paved the way, and all of that has built up to this. But she was definitely the biggest to really make a splash.”

And while everything said at the weigh-in, in the ring, etc. makes headlines nowadays, was Rousey actually saying shocking things or did her comments draw extra attention because she’s a woman?

To those who accuse the whole enterprise of being misogynist, because it entails women hitting and kicking each other (as men have done to each other for sport for centuries), Rousey said on Good Morning America last year: “There are so many ridiculous arguments that MMA is somehow anti-woman. Fighting is not a man’s thing, it is a human thing. To say that it is anti-woman is an anti-feminist statement.”

PHOTOS: Sports Nuts: Famous Fans

Ronda Rousey, Men's FitnessMen’s Fitness

The uproar over women doing their thing in the ring does somehow imply that women can’t handle hand-to-hand combat the way men can. Too many feelings, perhaps!

But what happens in the ring is business. It’s everything outside of it that’s life.

“People can say I am a terrible role model because I swear all the time or that I fight people,” Rousey told ESPN in 2013. “Look, I don’t want little girls to have the same ambitions as me. I want them to know that it is OK to be ambitious… I want them to know that it is OK to say whatever it is that is on their mind.”

But while Rousey has talked about growing up in a family with powerful women who weren’t afraid to speak her minds, she hasn’t always had the level of confidence and determination that now not only propels her in the ring but also prompted her to pose nude for the cover of ESPN The Magazine‘s Body Issue in 2012, a major beyond-the-ring breakout moment for her.

Ronda Rousey, ESPN Body Issue 2012ESPN The Magazine

“When I was struggling with anorexia, I felt so weak and powerless, and feel so strong after recovery,” she opened up in a Reddit AMA last August. “How does it feel to conquer something so daunting? I feel like it makes you invincible!”

“I grew up thinking that because my body type was uncommon [i.e., athletic], it was a bad thing,” Rousey also told Cosmopolitan.com last year. “Now that I’m older, I’ve really begun to realize that I’m really proud that my body has developed for a purpose and not just to be looked at.” She added, “It took a lot of time to develop a healthier relationship with food and with my weight.”

And at 5-foot-7, Rousey’s fighting weight of 135 pounds is not ideal in her eyes. Instead, at 135 “I felt like I was much too small for a magazine that is supposed to be celebrating the epitome of a woman. At 150 pounds, I feel like I’m at my healthiest and my strongest and my most beautiful.”

PHOTOS: Best Body Diversity & Plus-Size Model Campaigns

Ronda RouseyRonda Rousey/Instagram

Rousey also took a stand when she called out Floyd Mayweather Jr. on the 2015 ESPYs red carpet after topping him in the race for Best Fighter of the Year, referring to his history of domestic abuse (he served jail time), when she looked at the camera and said, “I wonder how Floyd feels being beat by a woman for once.”

Even what could be considered a controversial bullet point on her CV—her admission in her 2015 memoir My Fight/Your Fight that she roughed up an ex-boyfriend after she found out he had been taking nude pictures of her without her knowledge—is actually rather go-girl awe-inspiring. We’re not condoning getting violent, of course, but how many movie heroines have we cheered who put the hurt on a jerk after he treated her badly? Except Rousey was able to do it in real life (and she stated publicly afterward that it was an act of self-defense) because she’s that friggin’ strong!

Ronda Rousey, Travis BrowneSharky / Splash News

She’s now with MMA fighter Travis Browne (“There’s no dating. We’re together,” Browne says) and, while she’s expressed the desire to maintain more of a shield around her private life lately, Rousey has talked about finding a level of support from him that she’s never experienced from a partner before.

“At the end of the day, I can’t curl up with people’s opinions,” she also told ESPN The Magazine in her post-loss interview. “Even when everyone thinks the world of me, I still go to bed anxious and freaking out because I’m afraid of everything. The only time I’ve gotten a reprieve from that [feeling] in my life is since I’ve been with him.”

Rousey has also admitted to being “the biggest crier,” especially during the week leading up to a fight and she’s devoted to her beloved dog, Mochi.

Ronda RouseyPacificCoastNews

Good grief, she’s so…normal! And yet obviously not.

Interestingly, seemingly every ferocious bump in the road that Rousey has hit since becoming internationally famous has only served to endear her more to her supporters—because who can’t relate to struggling with body image, or being betrayed, or hitting a wall at work, or not knowing what to do, all while feeling pressured to appear as if you’ve got it all under control?

Next up, Rousey’s going to have to decide when she wants to get back in the UFC game, having postponed her already anticipated comeback because of all the other stuff she has coming up: her second consecutive appearance in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue; a remake of Road House featuring her in the skintight-jeans-wearing Patrick Swayze role; and Do Nothing Bitches, a big-screen comedy she’s co-starring in with Tina Fey.

Asked if she will, indeed, fight again, she told ESPN, “Of course? What else am I going to f–king do?”

Ronda Rousey may have actual superpowers, but she never let’s us forget that she’s human. And we just can’t get enough of that.

PHOTOS: Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue 50th Anniversary Party

RELATED VIDEOS:

Source:: http://ca.eonline.com/news/735153/why-ronda-rousey-is-the-type-of-celebrity-we-so-desperately-need-more-of?cmpid=rss-000000-rssfeed-365-topstories&utm_source=eonline&utm_medium=rssfeeds&utm_campaign=rss_topstories