There were two things I knew coming out of the movie “Kick-Ass”: that I loved it, and that it was going to be one of those movies that really divides people. Do not see it if ultra-violence pisses you off. Do not see this movie if little girls with foul mouths piss you off. I’d say don’t see this movie if Nicholas Cage pisses you off, except he usually pisses me off, but he was perfect in this movie.
But if all these things merely make you uncomfortable, but you can see why they’re entertaining, see this movie. It’s perfect for you. It treads the line between entertaining the fuck out of you with the off-the-hook violence, and making you question how fucked up it is to enjoy these things.
Hand-wringing over Chloë Grace Moretz, who looks not a minute over 11 years old in this movie, cursing and slicing motherfuckers up has a tendency to miss the point of this movie. Are we supposed to root for this little girl and her deadly march through a drug kingpin’s organization, or drop our jaws in horror at the idea of turning a child in to an unstoppable killing machine? The answer I got, and it seemed most of the audience got, was this: Both. (As he stood in the hallway as the movie let out, Marc heard many variations from fellow audience members of this: “That was awesome, but fucked up.”) Most superhero movies cannot handle complexity in the slightest, but this movie deftly managed to convey that it was fucked up to make this little girl a killing machine, but now that she is what she is, it’s hard not to root for her victory. This movie both relished the opportunity to engage in some ultraviolence, and portray vigilantism in a negative light.
Above all, the movie satirized the long-standing superheroes trope of minimizing the violence. Superheroes are supposed to be vigilantes, but in order to take the edge off the darker implications of that and to remain “family friendly”, the stories have always kept the actual murdering to a minimum. And the character of Kick-Ass stands in for that—-even though he doesn’t have any super powers (in this universe, no one does), he decides to fight crime while carrying non-lethal weapons. And in contrast to Hit Girl (the real star of the show) and Big Daddy, he’s an inept loser. But while effective, they are morally depraved individuals who enjoy killing people. In comic books, the superhero who loses a parental figure and goes on to fight crime is a romantic figure. In this movie, you’re reminded that this is unrealistic, and that someone who reacts to a trauma by turning him or herself into a violent vigilante would be a fucked up person.
This is nothing new, of course. Interrogating the romantic tropes of superhero stories started with “Watchmen” and has, according to people who read a lot more comics than I ever have, gone on since then. But it’s never translated well to the big screen. It’s legitimate at this point to suggest that most people’s knowledge of superheroes and all their tropes comes from the movies and not comic books, and so this lack puts the superhero movie watcher decades behind the comic book reader on this curve. The movie of “Watchmen” failed to really deliver—-it had promise for the first half, and then completely lost it in the second. This movie manages to walk the line between entertaining as hell and disturbing throughout. Chloë Grace Moretz actually does a great job of being a combination of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Rorschach from “Watchmen”. If that sort of thing appeals to you, I think you’ll love this movie.
Irin at Jezebel has a post up making fun of Hollywood, because there are two movies and one television show in production called “Friends With Benefits”, demonstrating the perennial problem of trend-chasing and lack of imagination in the entertainment industry. Why oh why is this suddenly the hot topic in Hollywood? Irin has some ideas:
) Sounds like studios have read too many trend stories about the demise of dating and the rise of hookup culture.
There’s no doubt about it. But there’s another reason that is much older, but no less troubling for it. I’d say even more troubling, in fact, in no small part because the source of the problem tends to go without much criticism or push back from grouchy feminist pop culture critics. The source of this particular evil?
I was shocked and appalled earlier this week when I read Irin’s post about how most romantic comedies are sexist drivel. No, it wasn’t because Irin was wrong—-she’s quite right, in fact—-but because rose-tinted glasses exploded all over the comments, as commenters routinely cited “When Harry Met Sally” as an example of a good romantic comedy, the sort of thing Hollywood needs to make again.
Call me daft, but isn’t that exactly what they’re doing? These fuck buddy movies, for instance, sound like yet another attempt to retread the basic idea of “When Harry Met Sally”, just with more sex.
“When Harry Met Sally” is an inexcusable piece of sexist trash. It fits right into the formula of most sexist romantic comedies, where a woman doesn’t know what she really wants and has to be schooled by a man who knows better than her. That Harry is a piece of work only makes this premise more insulting. The movie toys with your affections, too. Throughout much of it, we’re led to believe that Sally has the upper hand in their disagreement over whether or not men and women can be friends, but in the end, of course, Harry’s viewpoint (that they can’t) prevails. Along the way, we get some of the most tired stereotypes of men and women ever put on screen—-Harry is a smug asshole, Sally is an uptight princess. It’s never explained why we should give a shit if these two fall in love or drive off a bridge together. Feminist beliefs, such as believing that men and women can indeed be friends, are dismissed as childish fantasies. And you can’t help but think Harry and Sally’s marriage is doomed.
And yet, it’s held up uncritically as an excellent example of the genre and something all other romantic comedies should aspire to. But when Hollywood remakes “When Harry Met Sally” over and over again, complete with the stereotypes, the humiliation of the female lead, and the happy ending that doesn’t seem so happy, we’re not happy. Perhaps it’s time for people who remember “When Harry Met Sally” fondly to sit down and watch it again, without the glint of nostalgia making you more generous than you should be.
Happy President’s Day/Susan B. Anthony Day! In the spirit of holiday fun, I figured it was a good time to talk about movies. I’m inspired by this hilarious article at the Onion AV Club, where they surveyed their critics about what artistic work—-music, movie, whatever—-they used to love but have come to dislike or even hate. The answers are varied and interesting, but there’s basically no way that the conversation wouldn’t be dominated by “American Beauty”, an intellectually bankrupt film that managed to hoodwink a nation for about two years with its floating bag and, according to the stalwart dudely fans in the comments at the AV Club, Thora Birch’s breasts. “American Beauty” was a stupid movie, but it taught me a lot about myself, lessons I’ve tried to retain going forward.
Basically, my experience with the movie was this: I enjoyed how it was beautifully shot and acted, but I had nagging doubts. Unfortunately, due to audience reaction and critical acclaim, I squished down those nagging doubts in a bout of second guessing myself, no doubt a typical reaction in a young woman in her early 20s who hasn’t yet realized that just because some dude with an imperious air about his disagrees with you doesn’t mean you’re wrong. At that age, you may not be great at much, but you are good at pre-emptively second-guessing yourself in order to avoid this humiliation. So, these are the nagging doubts that I recall from the first time I watched the movie, reinforced subsequent times:
*The classical music at dinner was way anvilicious, and anyway, if they were that level of pretentious fuck yuppies, they’d listen to jazz at dinner.
*The murder at the end is meaningless and clearly tacked on to make the whole thing seem profound when it’s not.
*Anyone who thinks working at McDonald’s must be a laid-back, easy job because it doesn’t require any skills or education has never worked a service job and discovered what a pit of hell it really is.
*The nagging feeling we’re supposed to share the main character’s joy when he buys that stupid fucking car, even if we’re also laughing at him.
*I fail to see why a man masturbating in the shower is supposed to be pathetic and heart-breaking. From the get-go, one of the underlying themes of this movie was, “Poor guy has to touch his own cock. The tragedy.” I think a sexless marriage is a sad thing, sure, but I hate the use of a character masturbating to represent that, since it implies that sex with your spouse is basically just fancy masturbation, that masturbation is pathetic, and scenes like that are really just done for pointless shock value anyway.
“Valentine’s Day” is being marketed as a Date Movie. I think it’s more of a First-Date Movie. If your date likes it, do not date that person again. And if you like it, there may not be a second date.
Speaking of both Garry Marshall* and alleged “date movies” whose only possible value could be providing valuable information about whether your date’s taste in movies is bad enough to like the crap you’re watching, it would be pretty depressing if Jessica Grose is right about Pretty Woman and Jerry Maguire—not merely flat-out dogs but two of the most annoying movies ever made—topping lists of good date movies. If providing negative information is the goal, I guess I’d go with the former, which would also indicate whether your date finds creepy misogyny moving.
Jessica’s piece explores the mindfield of picking a date movie to watch on a Valentine’s Day spent with someone you’re kind of new with. (For this reason, start all new relationships in late February/early March. Or be a Grumpy McCynicpants like me, and just boycott the whole mean-spirited holiday.) I have to admit, I don’t get the idea of watching romantic comedies as a thing you do on dates. I mean, I get watching them. Or even going on a date to watch them, but only if that just happens to be what’s playing. But specifically setting out to watch a romantic comedy because it’s a date? I don’t get it. Are you supposed to be picking up ideas? Are romantic comedies supposed to work like porn, to get you in the mood to replicate the behavior on screen? If you’re kind of new with someone—-too new to be doing something romantic—-wouldn’t all this Hollywood-induced pressure to couple up make you feel even more awkward? I don’t understand, folks. I think I’ve lived a relatively full life, but I don’t think I’ve ever gone on a date to romantic comedy with some dude I was in the new-ish stage with. Mostly because I don’t like the vast majority of them. But if I found myself sitting on a first or second date with someone and Jerry Maguire was bleating about how he feels all completed now, I’d probably die right there from social awkwardness. What if your date thinks you dig that sort of thing? Do you make fun of it, and risk upsetting them because they liked it?
This practice of going to a “date movie” on a date is the sort of thing that people who think John Mayer is deep think is a good idea, I’m forced to conclude.
I was never a big fan of going to the movies when you’re first dating someone. Movies is something I tend to do with friends or with my actual boyfriend—-people you already know, and who you can sit in silence with easily. Getting to know you dates were always dinner, drinks, outings to a museum or park, something like that. But should someone be interested in going to movies during this stage of a relationship, what would you recommend? If you’re lucky, there will be a really good superhero action flick (like “Iron Man”), a genuinely funny non-romantic comedy ( “The Ballad of Ricky Bobby”), perhaps something a little artful without being overwrought, like a Quentin Tarantino movie, or an increasingly likely choice, campy horror comedy (“Jennifer’s Body”, “Zombieland). I’d imagine the aim is to come out of the theater in a good mood and pumped up, with something to talk about that isn’t button-pushing or upsetting. But I’m interested in what you guys think. What movies make better date movies than the ones advertised as date movies?
I finally got around to watching this movie over the weekend, after watching it basically sink at the box office and wondering if that meant that Diablo Cody had failed to write in a genre that begs for her goofy willingness to overwrite any script or any character. Well, I can assure you that the box office doesn’t reflect what’s in this movie. It’s really a fun, inventive spin on the trashy horror flick. Now, if you’re not generally a fan of horror films, you’re probably not going to like this movie. It does flout some horror movie conventions, but probably not the ones that horror movie haters would need done away with in order to see it. It’s still filled with gore and over-the-top evil and tasteless jokes. But if you were staying away because you didn’t want to watch Megan Fox suck as an actress, rest assured that she is not the one who has to carry this movie. That honor belongs to Amanda Seyfried, who really can act, and who plays Jennifer’s best friend, who has the anvilicious name Needy. If you were worried that the much-ballyhooed girls kissing scene was nothing but exploitation, I can actually say that it works really well with the plot and feels natural for the characters.
The question on a lot of minds is, “Did Diablo Cody write a feminist horror film?” And the answer is, “Depends.” There’s no overt political agenda, but there is exploration of parts of young women’s lives that are usually ignored in horror movies to advance the “OMG SEXY GIRLS DIE” plots. It even tries, in a light-handed way, to subvert the horror movie trope where sexually active women get killed—-we see a teenager lose her virginity, and she doesn’t end up dead, but ends up the hero. So, the Final Girl who survives in most horror movies is clearly marked as virginal, and in this movie, she’s not only not virginal, but her attachment to a sexual relationship is what moves her to act against the monster. That’s a straightforward subversion of the trope, but arguably, Jennifer’s character isn’t subversive at all—-she becomes a demon because she wasn’t a virgin when she is kidnapped and used as a sacrifice in a Satanic ritual, and she works by seducing her victims. The movie even hits you over the head with this stereotype, flashing the word “succubus” on the screen during the inevitable research period. That’s a straight up vagina monster, right there—-the nightmare of the sexually desiring woman turned monster.
And yet, Cody actually does take a stab at subverting the type. One, she gives Jennifer a real relationship to her friend Needy, making her seem a little more human, even if most of what you get from her is her post-human phase. She uses Needy and treats her like shit, but they really do feel for each other in ways that are hard for outsiders to understand. Because of this, you really start to feel bad that the real Jennifer is gone and replaced by a demon. In that anvilicious horror movie way, they make the underlying theme of watching a beloved friend drift away and become someone you don’t know work onscreen. And so the actions Needy takes to kill demon Jennifer are muddled and loving towards the long-gone Jennifer, and the real bad guys in the movie end up being the rock band that sacrificed Jennifer to Satan in order to make it as a rock band.
Mostly, I just dug the character played by Seyfried, who is cast perfectly. The blood spattering and weird sexual stuff that characterizes a horror movie is attention-grabbing, and you don’t realize how quietly this character of the nerdy wallflower comes into her own as a grown woman with confidence until the end of the movie. And that’s probably the biggest subversion—-nerdy girls coming into their own is usually a story about how they learned to be attractive to guys, as if that’s the only power a woman can have. But from the beginning, Needy has a boyfriend and isn’t particularly worried about that kind of power. The power she gains is to act in the world, to learn to trust her own instincts and not let her friend Jennifer keep telling her what to do and how to be. But lest you think all that girl power stuff is going to get sentimental, it comes at you on a sea of blood and gore and Cody-style wisecracks. And a story about a woman learning to act with confidence probably suits Cody’s style more than Juno’s story, which is about a girl learning to lower the emotional walls in a rather dramatic fashion, by having a baby.
Thanks to Roy Edroso for his hard work in recording the atrocities, specifically the atrocities against good taste committed by conservatives ideologically committed to promoting entertainment perceived as being on “their side”, no matter how ridiculously stupid and insipid. From Roy, I learn that the message has moved from “as long as we can claim that a movie has conservative ‘values’, this matters more than quality” to arguing that quality itself is an affront to their values system. Or, that appears to be Brent Bozell’s argument anyway. You see, the sniffing snobs who probably wouldn’t drink Tang either might claim that the Oscars are a trainwreck of bad taste that puts box office receipts, artistic cowardice, and Hollywood politics in front of quality (I’m one of those snobs, naturally). But Bozell argues that the Oscars are slipping in ratings because they don’t chase the mediocre middle hard enough. But that they’re improving by including more schlock than they usually do in their nominations.
The 2010 Oscar nominations clearly signal that Hollywood is trying to return to a broader vision of the Oscars, as something more than an insular critics’ circle that likes only the self-consciously arty and obscure. That signal came most obviously with the announcement that there would be 10 nominees for Best Picture. That list hadn’t seen 10 nominations since 1943, when the winner was “Casablanca.”
Arty films that almost nobody has seen are still there—like “An Education.” But arty blockbusters are there as well, like “Avatar”—current box office gross: $601 million—and the animated film “Up,” with $293 million.
Those of us who have memories (or at least access to Google) are impressed by the contention that the Oscars don’t work hard enough to reward filmmakers for making mindless crap that sells well because everyone in the household can tolerate it well enough to go see it and get out of the house, and/or is seen by millions because they’re curious about the special effects. Remember, James Cameron won before for “Titanic”, just one of many examples of a movie that’s low on quality but high on WTF factors enough to be entertaining and fill seats. What impresses me is that Bozell has basically taken this faux right wing populism to its logical level, arguing in effect that intelligence and subtlety are in themselves crimes against Real Americans. Probably because thoughtfulness so often leads to the patriotically incorrect conclusions, like all human beings deserve respect or the world doesn’t end if we act like adults about sex.
Bozell’s main goal in this piece is to applaud the Academy for nominating “The Blind Side” for Best Picture. It seems that Bozell would prefer to get rid of the Best Picture award altogether, and replacing it with an award called Strongest Pandering.
But “The Blind Side” is about self-discovery. It’s about a large black teenager who discovers he can be a football star. What in the world is wrong with that?
It’s because this too-quiet black character was loved and housed by white Christian people—and critics hated that.
Well, they probably hated it for what’s obvious from the previews, which is that you’ll get a cavity from watching about 5 minutes of the over-the-top sentimentality. But in order to score tribal points elevating white Christians above everyone else, Bozell plays a little loose with the basics of the story, or at least as I understand them. This movie is about Michael Oher, who plays for the Baltimore Ravens, and how he was adopted by said white Christian family after he demonstrated talent as a football player as a freshman in high school. I don’t want to suggest that his adopted family aren’t nice, generous people by any stretch. Itt seems like Oher was going to school with their kids and bonded with the Tuohys before they brought him in and gave him the help he needed to make it in college, which is a nice story, but this story isn’t being told in a politically neutral zone. Stories about gallant white parents versus bad black parents are alarming enough in our atmosphere, but then you have to ask yourself questions like, “What if other people are inspired by this story to adopt kids because they think they have athletic skills, and it turns out they don’t?” There’s a lot of places on the road between high school freshman player and the NFL where someone’s career might just go off the rails. I’m an elitist, so I guess I get caught up in the nuance and complexity, but the audience that Bozell’s writing for fully intends to pat themselves on the back for being part of a morally superior white Christian culture that just so happens to love football.
Of course, it occurs to me that Bozell’s incessant aesthetic Stalinism has drawn me into arguing about this movie on political merits, which wasn’t my intention. Maybe the movie is good, and actually tackles what is a story that brings up a lot of questions with honesty, nuance, and a real heart. Contrary to Bozell’s claim, the movie got mixed reviews, not across-the-board damning ones. But reading through them, they also suggest that the filmmakers decide to dodge any kind of artistic inquiry into the truly interesting themes, and stick to the feel-good sports stuff, and that perhaps it got mixed reviews because the critics are basically saying, “If you’re bored, this won’t kill you.” In other words, classic mediocrity in mainstream film-making. I bugged Marc a little about this, because he knows so much about football, and he answered some of my questions about Oher and also pointed out that a movie like this is pitched perfectly to sweep the box office by being aggressively non-offensive and having a little something for everyone, particularly in conservative families dedicated to strict gender role-playing: Sandra Bullock in a football movie says, “This is a chick flick that’s not a chick flick, and plus there’s some kids in it.” Which is what it is, but not the sort of stuff that should win awards that are earmarked for artistic integrity.
Which is why Bozell’s question at the heart of this is a fundamentally dishonest one:
Why would anyone suggest, by default or design, that crowd-pleasing is the opposite of artistic? Why would the critics suggest that a movie that’s inspirational is clearly inferior to a movie that “dares” to be demoralizing and grotesque? Why would Hollywood only want to be known as a nightmare factory?
Great questions, if anyone said that. There are in fact movies that genuinely stand out as great films that are fun, heart-warming, whatever. But in general, this tendency towards “crowd-pleasing” does result in mediocrity. To put it in sports terms, the movies are playing not to lose, not playing to win—-they’re built around making sure to have a soft hand, to say very little and to put not offending anyone well before actually bothering to say anything meaningful. When you’re trying to avoid the wrath of philistines like Bozell, you’re not going to make great art. You’re too busy thinking about what you’re not saying to bother actually considering what you are trying to say.
It’s telling to me that Bozell got behind “The Blind Side” as an example of what the Oscars should reward, and not a movie like “Up”, which was genuinely a great film and I think by and large something for the whole family. Part of it no doubt is his wallowing in identity politics, trying to suggest that white Christians are the most oppressed people on the planet. But I think it’s also because he genuinely finds mediocrity itself to be valuable, moral even. “Up” actually struggled genuinely with themes of love and loss, and the battle between choosing to live your life or live in the shadows. All I could tell that Bozell got out of it, though, is that someone was married in it, so it hit his non-offensive checklist and he could sign off on it. He missed the point of the rest of the movie! When you’re that dumb, no wonder you think being smart is some crime of “elitism”.
To make it clear, I haven’t seen all the movies nominated for Best Picture Oscar, so it’s entirely possible that one is better than “Inglourious Basterds”. But I’ll admit I’m skeptical, if only because “Basterds” one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. So I’m going to make a list of the reasons I think “Basterds” should win, which are non coincidentally the reasons it won’t. Believe me, there are spoilers. And why haven’t you seen it yet?
It’s arguably the best movie made by an edgy young film director while he’s still edgy and before he’s really old. The Academy Awards love edgy young filmmakers many decades after they stopped making innovative movies. And I say this as someone who really liked “The Departed”. But everyone knows Scorsese was winning for his first tier classics made years ago. This is a chance for the Academy to break the vicious cycle. Instead of recognizing Tarantino’s genius 20 years from now, when he makes a movie that has his imprint but no innovative feel to it, why not give him the award when he still has the ability to blow an audience away with his genius? Tarantino’s no spring chicken at 47, so it’s not like Hollywood would be wandering off into the scarily youthful woods by giving him this award. And for people who’ve seen it, you can firmly say he won it for this year, not for “Pulp Fiction”. Because it’s probably the better picture.
“Basterds” takes a piss all over tired Hollywood conventions about WWII. Making movies about Nazis is Oscar bait, and they end up taking themselves more seriously as movies than they do the war itself. “Basterds” lashes out at this tendency by writing an alternative history, and in doing so subverts movies like “Saving Private Ryan” or even “Schindler’s List”, that present themselves as definitive pieces on an event that was too huge and too horrible for anyone to say anything definitively about it. By skirting the need for a WWII movie to Say Something, Tarantino reminds us that Saying Something can sometimes interrupt the humility it takes to even begin to understand something. Tarantino also asks hard questions about stereotyping Jews as passive victims in WWII movies, by making his Jewish characters run against the stereotype—-their horror at the genocide translates into murderous rage, something rarely allowed in WWII movies that are more interested in exploring Allied reactions than those of the people most oppressed by the Nazis.
“Basterds” falls into Tarantino’s ongoing project of centering female characters in his films. I’ve written before about how interesting it is to me that Tarantino has decided to use the power to make any movie he wants to make movies about women that assume that women are strong and capable (but still have normal human flaws), and that if you’re shocked by that, then it says more about you than women as a group. I wouldn’t say that’s the definitive feminist statement, but it’s certainly a feminist statement, one that’s struggling more against Hollywood representations of women than trying to suggest that all women are strong by virtue of being women. Tarantino’s female characters also run against Hollywood’s lame attempts to provide characters that are “strong women”. Quoting Overthinking It:
I think the major problem here is that women were clamoring for “strong female characters,” and male writers misunderstood. They thought the feminists meant [Strong Female] Characters. The feminists meant [Strong Characters], Female.
Tarantino’s sadly radical project over his last few movies is to write female characters the way that you write male characters. But Mélanie Laurent didn’t even get a nomination for her widely praised portrayal of the character Shoshanna, probably because she never speaks in English and because she doesn’t fit into a heart-warming Hollywood stereotype. Instead, Sandra Bullock got a nod.
My prediction is that Christoph Waltz wins Best Supporting Actor, and the movie maybe wins a couple of technical awards, and that’s it. I suspect it only got nominated for Best Picture because they expanded the field to 10 nominations. It was just too hot for Hollywood.
This article and especially this video left me with a strong sense of unease. I couldn’t tell how much of this was an authentic story and how much of it was just (mostly like unpaid) P.R. for “Avatar”—-look, this movie is so awesome it’s making people sad they can’t live in it! I felt dirty just watching it for this reason. I was also furious at the therapists they had on the show; if they’re legitimately concerned about people’s well-being, they need to address them and tell them they a) need to get out of the house more and b) need some help in general.
Still, I couldn’t help but think there was something to this story. I remember, when I was watching the movie, thinking about how it really felt like porn for sedentary people. Cameron went out of his way to contrast the Na’vi and the humans in terms of physical movement and freedom. The humans live in cramped interiors and move sedately, whereas the Na’vi are constantly on the move, feeling the wind in their hair and adrenaline in their veins. In case you don’t get the point, the main character is wheelchair-bound, whereas his avatar is a badass.
In fact, going into the avatar takes the experience of watching an action movie or playing a video game, and grotesquely exaggerates it. In a movie or video game, you sit quietly and the people on the screen run around and provide a simulation of moving your body around. In “Avatar”, your human body does more than sits there—-you go into a kind of coma, and your avatar runs and jumps and has physical experiences. As I’ve repeatedly noted before, I think that’s a fine way to spend some time and have some fun. But of course, only if it’s mixed in with other experiences, including the kind that compel you to get outside and move your real world body, to experience that flush of activity and that surge of adrenaline for yourself and not just vicariously. Unfortunately, so much of our culture is geared towards making sure that you rarely have the opportunity or even desire to really move your body, that a lot of people can and do go for months and even years only experiencing physical activity secondhand, as an activity on a screen.
As awful a movie as “Avatar” was, the scenes of the Na’vi running and climbing and flying felt really quite real, and invoked in me a longing to stretch my legs and run around a bit, or do something physical with my body. Like I said, it had that kind of visceral pornographic quality to it. But for me, the feeling was fleeting, because I’d worked out that day and just have a lot of opportunities in my life to really move my body around—-I like going dancing, I walk a lot, and when it gets warm, I’m guessing the bike will be coming out more. But for people who don’t have those outlets, I can’t even imagine how that visceral longing would feel. I can totally believe it would feel downright depressing. Maybe even more so because it’s fantastical, since it provokes an urge but doesn’t define it for you, which could make you think what you’re longing for is the world onscreen itself, instead of just an opportunity to feel the emotions depicted onscreen. Getting that longing watching ordinary people participating in imaginable movements would be different, because it might be a little easier to say what it is that you want, but this might just add some confusion to the mix. The comments they get certainly sound like that to me—-people filled with a longing they project on to the movie.
I’m not usually one to panic about the state of modern society in this sense, but I do think one of the biggest drawbacks to our lifestyle in this country is the sheer lack of exercise and even fresh air that people get, and this little segment really drove home to me how that problem has many facets. There’s a lot of focus on how lack of exercise contributes to weight gain and to bad physical outcomes like heart disease and diabetes, but I rarely hear much talk about how lack of exercise has big drawbacks for mental well-being. Doctors and therapists know it, of course, but it usually only comes up in individual consultation with a person who already has problems. But in terms of a larger social problem? You don’t really hear much about it, about how a lack of exercise could be creating this kind of cultural malaise and exacerbating depression. And how making it easier and more appealing for people to get out of the house and move their bodies might do a lot to improve people’s mental well-being, which of course has all sorts of implications for productivity, energy, and just being able to get along with other people.
Perhaps the most pernicious myth you come across about Joy Division is the one overshadowed by Ian Curtis’ suicide in 1980—-which is the band was night to New Order’s day. That Joy Division was dark and morose whereas New Order was sunny dance music. This myth not only distracts from the darkness in New Order’s music, but also eclipses how much Joy Division was fundamentally about rocking out. Actually putting a Joy Division album on and listening to it without thinking about Curtis’ unfortunate end reveals music influenced by the punk scene and by glam and art rock, music that’s incredibly danceable—-sort of a less overtly intelligent (and less funky, more punky) kind of Talking Heads in some points. To n00bs, it’s inconceivable that Joy Division could have morphed into New Order with Curtis; to big fans, it’s evident that they already were. “Love Will Tear Us Apart” has deeply sad lyrics, but a punchy, cheerful melody. The fascination I have with music of both bands is the way they exploit these tensions.
I say this, because I finally sat down and watched “Control”, a film made by Anton Corbijn (who did some famous photographs of the band during their rise to fame), with Tony Wilson (label manager, and the focus of the movie “24 Hour Party People”) and Deborah Curtis (Ian’s widow) as co-producers. I’ve been wanting to see it for a long time, but always procrastinated because I thought it would be so depressing. Well, it was just as the critics said—-a revelatory film, and one that can be, unlike “24 Hour Party People”, enjoyed by people who aren’t as interested in the culture and industry of rock music, or the lives of musicians. You don’t even really have to know Joy Division’s music to find this movie fascinating. It’s because this movie is an honestly drawn portrayal of a young man eaten up by his mental illness as it is a rock biography; it’s one of the most complex, interesting portrayals of this that I’ve ever seen. Plus, it’s one of the coolest movies to look at in forever. It’s hard not to continually marvel at how Corbijn translates his photographic skills to the screen, and the breathtaking black and white cinematography.
It’s also interesting from a feminist perspective, believe it or not. The movie is based on Deborah Curtis’ memoir of her marriage, titled Touching from a Distance. Deborah, played by Samantha Morton in this film, was in the unfortunate position of being, at the time of Ian’s death, both in the periphery of his life and central in his suicide—-she was the last person to see him alive, and she was the one who found him dead. He’d come over to the house to pick a fight with her after she kicked him out and demanded a divorce, and the fight got ugly and (according to her), he ran her off. When she returned in the morning, she found he’d hung himself and Iggy Pop’s Idiot was on the turntable. It’s all the events leading up to this that really lend themselves to a feminist understanding. Despite being on the cutting edge of fashion and pop music, Ian was still stuck in the past when it came to how he treated his wife. They married excruciatingly young (19 and 18), and by the time Debbie was pregnant, Ian was already shoving her out of sight into the kitchen, trying to create completely separate spheres between his super-cool rock star life and his domestic life. There’s a painful scene in the film where Debbie shows up hugely pregnant at a show, and all Ian’s bandmates are surprised to see that she’s pregnant; he hadn’t found time in the past 9 months to mention it to his closest friends.
Unlike other rock biographies, which painfully exaggerate their heroes’ misbehavior, in a misplaced attempt to make things interesting, “Control” manages to get its point across with subtlety and complexity. Lesser films would have tried to drive the point across about how dreadfully Ian treated Debbie through shouting matches or overt abuse, but this movie portrays a man more willing to lean on passive aggressive behavior and self-pity. Ian tries to justify his own cheating by telling Debbie she can sleep with other men; when she laughs it off like crazy talk, he quietly says he doesn’t think he loves her anymore. She doesn’t know what to do; the discovery of the cheating ends up being a relief, because now it can all come out. It feels more like real life, including the subtle ways the movie shows how Ian’s bandmates were complicit in his betrayal, due to a combination of minding their own business and male privilege. (Peter Hook has been insistent that this movie is accurate.)
I will admit it: I’m addicted to terrible romantic comedies.
I watched Made of Honor voluntarily. All of it. I saw The Proposal, and marveled at how two people who hated each other could break themselves down and rebuild themselves back up in the space of three days (however, Betty White was involved, so it all made sense in context). I even did the inexplicably terrible back-to-back of 27 Dresses and P.S., I Love You, the latter of which was a goddamn comedy no matter how they branded it.
The reason I love them is not because of the movies themselves - the romantic comedy genre is rotting from within, a shambling, misshapen narrative hulk bumbling down a well-worn path, every movie trying to be Sleepless in Seattle...again. Upper middle class white people with love issues meet each other, there are hijinks, one of the principals either turns out to be insanely rich or in competition with someone who is, wacky parents are somehow intertwined, there’s a misunderstanding, everyone wanders off hating each other, someone realizes that they actually love the other person and they run to stop that person from marrying the well-meaning but doomed other love interest who stumbled into this insanely fucked up situation.
Hopefully, Craig T. Nelson is involved somewhere.
There’s also its offshoot, the romantic dramedy. In this case, the protagonists are usually poorer - think middle class or the newly graduated aspiring to be upper middle class. The infamous Manic Pixie Dream Girl usually makes an appearance and flounces around while our depressed yet witty hero dicks around in his oh-so-hard life of whiteness until he is inspired by her. She runs away, he chases, she’s got some problem that makes the romance problematic. If the film is uplifting, they overcome it together; if it tries to be realistic, something takes our MPDG off into the sunset and our depressed hero is slightly less depressed for having met her.
What Up in the Air does (and does an excellent job of) is take the ungrounded, magical reality of romantic comedies, where work, bills, other relationships, everything falls understandingly to the wayside in the face of True Love, and grounds it.
The allure of the number “3” and the letter “D” drew Marc and me to see “Avatar” on Christmas Eve. (It sucked.) Marc got into the longest concessions line of all time while I held out seats in the theater, which he thought sucked for him, but was actually a blessed relief from the torture that I had to suffer, a preview of an upcoming Garry Marshall movie called “Valentine’s Day”. Just the act of putting the words “Garry Marshall” next to “Valentine’s Day” is enough to cause screaming nightmares, but believe me, this trailer makes it so much worse.
Garry Marshall clearly hates humanity. That’s the only reasonable explanation for this. I was happy to see that I wasn’t the only person who saw this and wanted to commit an act of violent retribution; Jessica Grose beat me to making fun of this.
With jokes like, “I’m checking in for two… I mean, one and a dog.” [SADFACE], Valentine’s Day doesn’t look like it will be any better.
But I tell you that this doesn’t even come close to expressing how fucking stupid this trailer is. For those who can’t bear to watch it, there are many other “jokes” along those lines. Some woman who surely will get her comeuppance for being a slut asks her married parents Hector Elizondo and Shirley MacLaine what kind of crazy people have sex with one person for the rest of their lives, and they exchange a Meaningful Look and pretend to be embarrassed that they’re those crazy people. Jessica Biel cries about how her fucked-up-ness drives the dudes away while stuffing her face full of chocolates. I did a face plant in the theater. When Marc got back, I announced that I had to break up with him in defense of single people. He talked me down off the ledge, of course. Good thing he didn’t also see the trailer, or he might have been more sympathetic to my feelings at that moment.
The question isn’t, “Why did Garry Marshall make this piece of dreck?” Marshall’s oeuvre, especially “Pretty Woman”, makes is clear that he hates humanity. No other explanation is needed. The question is, “Who pays good money to see this shit?” The answer appears to be “the same people who leave dumb ass YouTube comments”.
See, I went to YouTube to get this trailer so you could share my pain, and discovered that this video had a 5 star rating from 2,808 viewers, indicating that most raters aren’t, like I was, watching this video through their fingers with two fingers of Maker’s nearby for reinforcements. This video has been viewed over a million times. I don’t know if the million-ish people who didn’t leave ratings were running like hell from this like I was, but those deeply invested enough to leave comments are staining their shorts with pleasure at the idea of watching two hours of stories about how people who aren’t in monogamous relationships should hate themselves, but people in monogamous relationships have a lot of Hard Work ahead of them. The commenters are so very excited.
I WANNA WATCH THIS!!!?
This looks? so good.
I? can’t wait to see this movie!
fuckkk i cant wait till this comes outt.
Not that there aren’t dissenters, though their motivations are suspect.
LOVE ONLY FOR LOSERS?
Yesterday, I argued that atheists should feel free to celebrate Christmas, if only because it pisses off Garrison Keillor. But I don’t think there’s any hope for Valentine’s Day, which is a holiday that clearly exists to make everyone feel inadequate, because you’re either not in a relationship, or your relationship isn’t all fulfilling. What I don’t understand is people’s enthusiasm for crap like this. You’d think that since most people have intimate knowledge of what it’s like to be single or coupled (and most of us have knowledge of both), they would be able to see right through this dishonest drivel. But no. Some people appear to be willing to eat up these insults to their dignity with a spoon. I’ll bet some people even go on dates to this movie, sitting there absorbing misanthropic, poisonous messages about romance while attempting to conduct one. No wonder self-help books sell so well.
Coincidentally, I have over the past couple of months been watching DVDs of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a show I missed completely in its run of 1987 to 1994; and I confess myself amazed that so many conservatives are fond of it. Its messages are unabashedly liberal ones of the early post-Cold War era – peace, tolerance, due process, progress (as opposed to skepticism about human perfectibility). I asked an NR colleague about it, and he speculated that the show’s appeal for conservatives lay largely in the toughness of the main character: Jean-Luc Picard was a moral hardass where the Captain Kirk of the earlier show was more of an easygoing, cheerful swashbuckler. I think there’s something to that: Patrick Stewart did indeed create, in that character, a believable and compelling portrait of ethical uprightness.
Picard’s ethical uprightness came in the context of the very ideals that conservatives hated. Picard’s strength was that he deeply and passionately believed in multicultural tolerance and all that other frou-frou shit that made Star Trek so conservatively insufferable, someone who was unbreakable and wholly dedicated even in the most desperate of situations. Of course, that requires connecting the moral lessons of seven seasons of a television show to the main fucking character, which is apparently far more difficult than previously believed.
In Star Trek, law enforcement is armed with phasers. Officers stun people, then lock them up, then subject them to intensive psychiatry until they are “cured” of their criminal impulses. In Star Wars, law enforcement under the Galactic Republic appears to be the job of Jedi Knights who try to avoid violence but, if pressed, will cut you in half with a light saber.
In Star Trek, evil characters are frequently considered to be the product of a poor environment, a bad childhood, misunderstanding, or miscommunication. It turns out that Captain Kirk and the other original cast members just didn’t understand the Klingons, for example, or the Romulans. The Gorn, a lizard-like race that does a Pearl Harbor on the Federation and kills many innocent people, are later excused from culpability because they say that they saw peaceful Federation colonists as “invaders” in their territory. Killer clouds of space gas or giant space amebas threatening the lives of billions turn out to be lost children or mindless things just trying to survive. Even the Borg, a great source of villainy from The Next Generation, are humanized in subsequent stories.
In Star Wars, evil characters have been seduced by the dark side of the Force. They have given into temptation, and are held accountable for their actions. The Star Wars movies are really morality tales, and have a strong religious component in spite of themselves. No one argues that Sith Lords might have turned out differently if they had just been enrolled in a quality preschool program.
Star Wars (or what became of it) ended up being a rather terrible story about a society run on genetic predeterminism. The police force of the “good old days” were the secretive elite of a crypto-religious sect who fully accepted that at all times, two of their members would be trying to destroy civilization as they knew it. Membership was based on an accident of genetic luck, and those who lacked the access and wherewithal to get screened at the proper time were out of luck, stuck at the whim and mercy of their telekinetic, mind-altering overlords. Government was largely ineffectual, a dysfunctional democracy latched onto a decaying royal system. The entire lesson of Star Wars is that this highly traditional, morally unyielding system fails, and it fails miserably, as the billions of people killed in the Sith insurrection would have testified, had they, well, lived.
No wonder it’s such a conservative series.
The fetish displayed here is for decisive, predictable action, but the presumption is that any such action is inherently conservative, no matter its motivation, and good, no matter its outcome. It must be nice to have a philosophy that thinks Jar-Jar Binks was a good idea.
I think I’ve blogged about this before, but briefly, but fuck it, I’m annoyed. As you probably know by now, a biopic about The Runaways is in the works. on paper, this sounds like a fabulous idea, since The Runaways have a story that’s ripe for exploring the tension between the ideals of rock and roll and the ugly reality of the music business. Like The Sex Pistols, The Runaways were put together by a greedy, exploitative manager who was looking to cash in on this punk trend. Or at least, that was the claim made by their manager Kim Fowley, but the reality is that Sandy West and Joan Jett actually took the initiative to start the band and ask for Fowley’s help. But what is clear is that Fowley would make a great onscreen villain, and this could be an intriguing feminist spin on the theme of the war between The Biz and The Artists. Fowley went out of his way to exploit the youth of the girls in the band, advertising them as jailbait, and some of the members of the band have said that they were expected to have sex with him if they wanted to stay in. Lead singer Cherie Currie often performed in lingerie. Really, it was completely over the top.
There’s a lot of potential in this story. But alas, I have very little hope that it’s going to be anything but shit. It’s heartening that Alia Shawkat is in it, and I think Dakota Fanning is a fine choice to play Cherie Currie. But my big red flag went up when I heard that they tapped Kristen Stewart to play Joan Jett. Natalie at Bitch Blogs doesn’t seem too rattled by this, but I am pissed. It’s not that Stewart plays Bella in the “Twilight” movies that’s got me bent out of shape. It’s because she’s annoying, and I don’t think she can act. She made the already unbearable Adventureland even harder to take as a movie. Slouching your way through scenes doesn’t make you seem daring and cool. It’s stupid. And I’ll bet the director hired her because he thinks that Stewart’s slouching crap will be a reasonable approximation of Joan Jett’s rock-and-roll rebellious attitude, but he is wrong wrong wrong. Joan Jett was not the hair-hanging-in-her-eyes depressive that seems to be Stewart’s one note in acting. She took over as lead singer when Currie quit! See:
Jett is a cool fucking character. This casting choice screams disaster to me. To make things worse, they’re doing the “OMG GIRL ON GIRL ACTION” PR stunt in the press this week. As Natalie at Bitch Blogs says, there’s a minimal chance this could be a good thing in the context of the movie—-glad they’re not hiding Joan Jett’s sexual orientation. But the chance that this will be responsible and not exploitative is pretty low, I suspect.
Of course, music biopics mostly suck. Most biopics suck, true, but music biopics that suck are particularly painful, because you have easy access to excitement by recreating the musician’s live shows. I can’t think of many music biopics I actually like. The best one ever made is “24 Hour Party People”, by far. And that’s because the director broke with the biopic cliches, and actually (gasp!) made the music the center of the story and trusted that the audience was intelligent enough to grapple with themes of art and commodification without being bowled over by melodrama.
Most biopics are a tolerable way to pass the time, like “Walk The Line”. But some are unforgivably stupid. It’s a toss up which biopic angers me the most—-“What’s Love Got To Do With It” or “Great Balls Of Fire”. “Great Balls Of Fire” seems like the easy pick, since Dennis Quaid portrays Jerry Lee Lewis like he’s not really a human being. Granted, Jerry Lee Lewis portrays himself as if he’s not really human, but the daring thing to do would be to take a real stab at showing how farcical this must be. Plus the shoehorning of Jimmy Swaggart in the story felt forced, which is too bad, because there is a real chance there to use the Swaggart character to expose how Lewis really was tortured by his Christian guilt.
But for a long time, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why I don’t like “What’s Love Got To Do With It”. The performances are amazing, and they do a workable job of demonstrating how much power Ike and Tina Turner brought to the stage. I don’t have a problem with exposing Ike Turner as the monster he was, and am grateful that the movie portrayed domestic violence somewhat realistically to an audience who probably had never considered before how much abused wives live in a private hell while giving the world a sunny face. But I finally realized what bothers me about the movie, and I think it’s the dishonesty about the music itself. To watch it, you’d think that Tina Turner’s artistic career really took off after she divorced Ike, and sure, it did commercially. But let’s face it; the post-Ike music blows chunks compared to the heyday of Ike and Tina Turner. It just does. And by eliding that issue, the movie chickened out on grappling with what could have been a fascinating story about the complex way that art and life flow into each other for artists. Instead, the viewer is left walking away thinking of Ike and Tina Turner primarily as abuser and abused, and the music barely registers as important as all. Even though it’s the reason the movie got made.
So I guess that’s what I’m saying: More music biopics that focus on the act of making and selling music, and the contradictions and struggles that creates. People’s lives are interesting, but forefronting tragedy and backgrounding the art is a cheap way out. After all, “24 Hour Party People” was able to handle Ian Curtis’s tragic suicide with the gravitas it deserved without drifting into melodrama, or losing the focus on the themes of art and commerce.
Ah, it’s Halloween. Surely you have a favorite scary film list rattling around in your brains (mmmm…brains)...here are some sites to help you jog your memory.
I’ll share a few…
The Exorcist (1973). I didn’t get to see this film at release (I was 10), so I saw it on video and it met all my expectations regarding nightmares. The scene where the beast rises in a shadow in Regan’s room freaks me out.
Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Day of the Dead (2008). Zombies rule. I saw the original on the big screen for the first time at one of the old revival houses in NYC in the 80s; that it was shot in black and white made it very effective. Dawn and Day are unmercifully doom, gloom and gore, a perfect fit. The Day remake’s ending creeped into my nightmares for days.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974): OK, this low-budget Tobe Hooper film felt so authentically deranged, and the acting borders on laughable to terrifying (jesus, the sounds and affect of Leatherman and those family members make are so gross and horrible) that my brother and I kept repeating their lines after watching it. I think I’ve see this one at least 5 times. I didn’t bother with any of the remakes.
I feel at this point, there’s two camps on the question of female-centered, female-led, female-directed, etc. movies. One camp claims that women don’t make ticket-buying decisions, period, and the other camp points to the successes of movies like “Sex and the City” and “Mamma Mia” to disprove this. Hornaday admirably tries to take a third, more realistic stance, which is that women buy tickets, but they focus most of their money on silly stuff.
The only problem? No Manolo Blahniks! No Abba! No vampires!.....
In an era when women in movies fall along a spectrum defined by Hannah Montana and “Twilight” on one end and “Sex and the City” and “Mamma Mia!” on the other, where are the screen heroines of yesteryear, who could be strong, serious and sexy?.....
To understand the situation of women in Hollywood right now, one need look no further than Drew Barrymore, whose career over the past year perfectly crystallizes the good-news/bad-news dichotomy. The ensemble romantic comedy she produced and starred in, “He’s Just Not That Into You,” was a hit. “Whip It,” the girl-centric action comedy that marked her feature directorial debut, was not…...
The conclusion is that women are buying tickets, but to the wrong movies, ones that are silly or sexist, and don’t have a feminist message. Unfortunately, putting it that way just makes it less likely that women will buy the “right” tickets, as Sady points out—-it seems like we’re being asked to take our medicine by seeing “Whip It”, when the reason you should see “Whip It” is that it’s a lot of fun. Sady suggests that women are shaping the market by looking for escapist fare, and I think that’s right, but again, it’s not like escapist fare is at odds with girl power or feminism at all.
Personally, I think plain old sexism explains the situation quite neatly. Right now, the environment is such that women don’t have a lot of time in their schedules to see female-centric movies, because most people don’t go to the movies alone. That means either getting a partner, a friend, or a relative to go with you. The occasional movie focusing on female friends doing non-controversial things, in the tradition of “Steel Magnolias”, will get big box office because it gives women a reason to get together with female friends and go hang out. But you can’t do that too often, because organizing that sort of thing is like herding cats, particularly since women often have a lot more family obligations than men that make getting together with friends hard. “Whip It” followed the formula, except that it wasn’t non-controversial, since it was about violent sports and punk rock attitudes, so you’re automatically limiting your audience to younger women, instead of dipping into that cross-generational demographic that equals big bucks.
And that’s about it for getting women to see a movie about women being friends with each other, getting female friends to go see it. Sure, it’s true that in very small, enlightened circles, some men will consent to go seeing these movies with female partners, and it’s true that there are some women who partner with other women, but if you’re relying on those groups to really drive the box office, you’re probably not going to do well. It’s a numbers game, after all. If women are going to the movies with men, odds are the men get the final say in what movie will be seen. We don’t have to like this at all, but it’s kind of silly to pretend it’s not true. Men don’t have to use overt bullying to get the final word. The dynamic between men and women is still one where men get to unapologetically express preferences, and women accommodate and only feel right expressing preferences if they don’t step on anyone’s toes. Putting your foot down and saying, “You picked the last 10 movies we saw, and we’re going to go see this movie that centers around female friendship,” just won’t fly with most heterosexual couples. Some, sure—-so please don’t protest in comments that I’m full of shit because you have the rare egalitarian relationship. And sadly, even a lot of women who decide to take this stance have to face the fact that any movie’s watchability can be denied with an eyeroll and the term “chick flick”. I’m sure this is what happened to “Whip It”. Romantic comedies have figured out how to get around this situation by casting actors that seem like manly men and injecting a lot of fart jokes to make sure that it doesn’t seem too prissy, and also by reinforcing retrograde gender roles. Flouting all that still means box office poison.
That’s why I got so annoyed at the idea that it’s women falling down on the job of going to see the right movies. Yeah, sure, but why is it all one gender’s fault? Why can’t we expect men not to be so close-minded about what movies they want to see? If men don’t go out and see female-centric movies that flout sexism—-and from the audience I saw at “Whip It”, I can assure you they don’t—-then this is going to keep happening.
There were two things I knew coming out of the movie “Kick-Ass”: that I loved it, and that it was going to be one of those movies that really divides people. Do not see it if ultra-violence pisses you off. Do not see this movie if little girls with foul mouths piss you off. I’d say don’t see this movie if Nicholas Cage pisses you off, except he usually pisses me off, but he was perfect in this movie. 
Happy President’s Day/
Michael, the inventor of Arbitrary But Fun Friday, 
Warning: spoilers.
To make it clear, I haven’t seen all the movies nominated for Best Picture Oscar, so it’s entirely possible that one is better than “Inglourious Basterds”. But I’ll admit I’m skeptical, if only because “Basterds” one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. So I’m going to make a list of the reasons I think “Basterds” should win, which are non coincidentally the reasons it won’t. Believe me, there are spoilers. And why haven’t you seen it yet?
I will admit it: I’m addicted to terrible romantic comedies. 
Over at the Corner, Mike Potemra has decided to have a debate on 
Ah, it’s Halloween. Surely you have a favorite scary film list rattling around in your brains (mmmm…brains)...
I spend a lot of time thanking Sady Doyle for saying it, but I have to, because she’s so good.