OPINION - These films glorifying female screen stars could not be more demeaning

Dead girls made great films: that’s the line. Blonde, an art (and snuff) movie about Marilyn Monroe, was up for an Academy Award for Best Actress (Ana de Armas) yesterday: fittingly, she lost to Michelle Yeoh. In 2019 Renée Zellweger won an Academy Award for playing Judy Garland in Judy. (Neither Monroe nor Garland were so honoured in life. They were beaten, in so many ways, by their myths). A new film about Amy Winehouse — named Back to Black, of course — starring Marisa Abela, is being shot in Camden Town, on the streets where she walked barefoot before she died at 27 of her addiction, the condition that killed them all. It’s the same awful story: if it bleeds, it leads.