by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent
With the recent Buzzfeed headline that last night's Golden Globes winner Jennifer Lawrence stars in "the First Film with a Female Lead to Top the Box Office in 40 Years," it still stuns many in Hollywood that Hunger Games 2 actually beat up Iron Man 3 in the money race.
Catching Fire is the top-grosser of 2013, but, this movie also officially ushers in a new genre.
We've gone from Chick Flicks to Chicks with Sticks, and the Louisville-born slugger is the reason.
She takes on all storylines: Comedy, Drama, Dramedy, Black Comedy, Action/Adventure, Fantasy.
As for star power, audience members of all genders are sold: Jennifer Lawrence can be (shall we say) Banked & Spanked. As in her award-winning performance in David O. Russell's American Hustle. Few female leads can crawl around on their hands and knees in a tacky white Lyrca get-up and still be taken seriously.
At age 23, Lawrence has clocked in big-bang BO turns as a weapon wielder in The Hunger Games, X-Men, and Catching Fire.
In pan-Asian movies, Kung Fu has a long tradition of female warriors from Michelle Yeoh to Pei Pei Cheng to Ziyi Zhang of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame.
In Hollywood Blockbuster lore the few include early adapters Pam Grier (Foxy Brown, Big Dollhouse) and Geena Davis (Cutthroat Island, Long Kiss Goodnight), to Angelina Jolie (Tomb Raider, WANTED), Uma Thurman (Kill Bill series), and Zoe Bell, the Aussie stuntwoman discovered by Quentin Tarantino.
But with JenLaw's BO numbers, a genre is definitely born. And these gals are no Pretty Women, they are lovely and amazing fighting machines.
Not since Joan of Arc, Zenobia Queen of Palmyra, England's Boudicca, Tamar The Great of Georgia, has news been made like this in the mythology of women in combat.
All you can say is "Fight the Powder... And the Paint." And, thank you BO Dynamo Jennifer Lawrence. For making movies matter to women, who also buy a lot of tickets these days, ps.
(Check out the www.geenadavisinstitute.org - Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.)
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