If Rooney Mara ‘s fearless turn as Stieg Larsson’s goth-punk hacker heroine Lisbeth Salander teaches us anything, it’s that you should never, ever cross a woman with fire in her heart and vengeance on her mind. But the titular Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is just the latest in a long history of utterly human movie heroines who remind us how ferocious and unrelenting a woman wronged can be. Celebrate the fictional ladies who have helped teach society not to fuck with the so-called “fairer” sex, and let their righteous fury be a lesson to us all during this warm and fuzzy holiday season.
Sex, crime and drugs were the primary ingredients to a perfect Blaxploitation film. If you were lucky, having Pam Grier play your groovy bombshell would get you the blockbuster film of the year. Grier’s roles may have always appeared to be the same (crime-fighting sex machine), but each plot was different. TAKE TV ONE’S POLL: What’s your favorite Pam Grier film? Coffy, 1973 Your 11-year-old sister is hospitalized with brain damage thanks to tainted “stuff,” and your close friend is beaten unconscious because he’s a cop that plays by the rules. Saddened and fed up, you take matters into your own hands by tricking drug dealers into bed and killing them one-by-one. Foxy Brown , 1974 After your government agent-boyfriend is murdered, you get a call-girl position with a Model agency that may have links to your lover’s death. Using your enchanting wit, you manage to have all of the kingpins caught with their paints down, sometimes literally. Sheba Baby, 1975 You drop everything and return to your hometown of Louisville, Kentucky to save your father’s loan company from street bullies. When people find out what daddy’s little girl is up to, your life is suddenly in danger.
For the last four decades, Pam Grier has been a legendary bad b*tch inspiring young bangers and wannabe bangers like Beyonce and Foxy Brown to copy her sex-kitten steez. Pam Grier is looking average than a mu’f*cka these days. Wow.
That was fast ! Barely three hours after it began circulating that Queen Elizabeth II saw — and apparently loved — The King’s Speech , The Weinstein Company released a press release trumpeting her royal approval. But will the quick response wind up backfiring?
Even though Richard Pryor gave her a coke-encrusted vagina once, Mars Attacks! seventeenth-lead Pam Grier claims she taught the comic legend to read while they were dating. In her new memoir, Grier recalls, “He would learn his lines phonetically and people would help him learn his lines, but he’d say, ‘Baby, I wanna learn how to read, and I wanna read War & Peace .” I thought I sensed some Napoleonic angst in Brewster’s Millions . [ Cinema Blend ]
Look, I’m going to put as little distance between that headline and the actual anecdote as possible. In Pam Grier’s new memoir Foxy: My Life in Three Acts (which is now a must-buy ), she recounts how a conversation with her doctor led to her breakup with Richard Pryor. Stars, they are not just like us:
