tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-118005642024-03-06T23:43:18.661-06:00Mistress Of All EvilA Cold Dead Heart,Yet Easily Distracted By Shiny ThingsAmy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.comBlogger1146125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-66063758721075613122024-03-06T20:22:00.003-06:002024-03-06T20:22:31.492-06:00Talking Back To Culture--Amadeus Edition(I'm experimenting with a new series in which I talk back to cultural objects in something less formal than an actual review. We'll see how this goes.)<br />
<br />
Dear Antonio Salieri,<br />
<br />
I have just rewatched the 1986 movie <i>Amadeus</i>, the film that re-introduced you to currency after more than a century and a half of obscurity. Sure, there are things about this story that you probably aren't excited to have attached to your name, including the implication that you actually murdered Mozart, the musical genius we still idolize. You might be happy to learn that the movie is built around that story, but also undermines it--it is obvious that Mozart was quite ill even before you entered the scene to commission the Requiem. If you bear any culpability for Mozart's death, is it shared equally by the man himself, who drove himself to exhaustion with his frenzy of composition.<br />
<br />
But that is really just the sauce on the meal--or perhaps, given your character's love of sweets, the icing on the cake. The real center of the story is you, Antonio Salieri, and your jealousy of Mozart and the way it affected your belief in God.<br />
<br />
"All I wanted was to sing to God," F. Murray Abraham says, wearing frankly atrocious old age make-up. <span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17.030001px;"> "</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.030001px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He gave me that longing... and then made me mute. Why? Tell me that. If He didn't want me to praise him with music, why implant the desire? Like a lust in my body! And then deny me the talent?"</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">Let's step back into your childhood a </span></span><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">moment</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">, shall we? When you struck your bargain with God. The bargain you offered went like this: "</span></span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 17.030001px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">While my father prayed earnestly to God to protect commerce, I would offer up secretly the proudest prayer a boy could think of: Lord, make me a great composer. Let me celebrate Your glory through music and be celebrated myself. Make me famous through the world, dear God. Make me immortal. After I die, let people speak my name forever with love for what I wrote. In return, I will give You my chastity, my industry, my deepest humility, every hour of my life, Amen."</span></span><br />
<br style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17.030001px;" /><div>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">The problem is, Tony (may I call you "Tony?") that you are too close to the situation to see what was going on. </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">You thought you struck a deal--your chastity for talent. You didn't listen for the counter offer. Apparently, God haggles. </span></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Like this:</span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">AS: Lord, make me a great composer.</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">God: Well, "great" is a relative term. I can make you a composer, which you are not right now. And let's be honest, given your situation, that's not a very likely career path. Not at a "Arts and Performance" charter school, are you? . </span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">AS: And, by "great," I mean immortal! I want to be famous throughout the world, and I want my name to be remembered for what I wrote. </span></span><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">That</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;"> people will love me for my music.</span></span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">God: That's quite a big order. What are you going to offer me in return?</span></span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">AS: My chastity.</span></span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">God: What?? Chastity--oh, I've got plenty of chastity. I've got more chastity than I know what to do with.</span></span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">AS: But--I'm a young teen aged boy! Chastity is about the most expensive thing I can even think of to offer you!</span></span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">God: Chastity is not worth a lot in this marketplace, Tony. Can I call you Tony?</span></span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">AS: Fine. Call me Tony. But--I thought chastity was important to you?</span></span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">God: Where did you get that idea? I mean, sure, I said not to covet your neighbor's wife, but I also am pretty sure I put a lot of emphasis on the whole "going forth and multiplying." Pretty sure I was clear in the narrative that children and marriage were good things. Look, somehow you've gotten an outsized impression of my interest in making people lonely and miserable. </span></span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">AS: But isn't there something about "better to marry than to burn?" That it is better for man not to touch a woman?</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>God (sotto voce, apparently not listening): It's like nobody even reads the Song of Solomon anymore. I mean, there's a guy with <i>so many wives and concubines</i> and somehow people just don't put two and two together.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>AS: Can we get back to me being a composer? Don't you want me to be a composer?</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>God: Oh, NOW he asks me what I want. Look, kid, I am an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent being. Let's just assume that I can handle getting the things I want without making teenagers making rash vows of lifelong chastity, okay?</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>AS: So you can do this? Grant me my greatest wish?</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>God: Who do you think you are talking to? What part of "eternal, omniscient, omnipotent" did you not understand? But it's not just "wave my hands and make you a composer." There's a lot of moving parts, and <span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">I have to do a bunch of preliminary planning. I've got to get you out of this small town; I've got to get you some proper musical training; I've got to get you some place where people </span></span><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 17.030001px;">want</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;"> to listen to new music; and I've got to get you in </span></span><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 17.030001px;">front of people who will pay you to write it. I can do it, but takes some effort to just make all this stuff happen, and maybe I want to know that it's worth my while.</span> </p></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">Have you thought about talking to your father?</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">AS: My father wouldn't know good music if it bit him on the nose! Besides, that all costs money, and father isn't going to spend money on something like music.</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">God: You could offer him your chastity.</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">AS: You are making fun of me!</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">God: Well of course I am! You want something that costs money, and you are offering your chastity. I mean! What use is chastity to me?</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 17.030001px;">AS: Okay, my chastity <i style="font-weight: bold;">and</i> my humility.</span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">God: Oh ho ho! You want to be a world famous composer whose music lives on so as to be immortal. It looks to me like you've already lost your humility. I don't think you have any left to be bargaining with.</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">AS: Okay, chastity, humility and my industry. I will work every single day to write music to praise you.</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">God: (counting small coins in his palm) If I add industry to chastity, but subtract humility--does that even buy me a Starbucks? Sorry, boy, that's not enough to purchase all you want. </span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">AS: Well, what <i>can </i>I get for that?</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">God: Look, composer I can get for you. I've got a good deal on being a composer. Composer is actually pretty do-able. Have you tried singing in the shower? Ba da bing, you're a composer! Is that enough for you?</span></span></span></blockquote></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><p style="text-align: left;">Okay, I can tell by your face that's not enough. Y<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">ou want to be a composer who actually gets to have his music played, am I right?</span></p></div></blockquote><div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">AS: Of course. What is the point of being a composer if nobody ever plays your music?</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">God: You might be surprised. Okay, so you want to write music, and you want to have that music played by actual musicians. And then, you want an audience, I suspect.</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">AS: Yes! Yes I want an audience!</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">God: Okay, and you think you can get all of that for chastity, no humility, and a promise of industry? In this economy?</span></span></span> </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">Well, for some reason I like you, kid. I think you've got moxie. So let's add up all the parts of your wish. You want to be a composer, who has musicians to play his music--I'm guessing you want professional ones? Not just a middle school band class? Okay, and you want an audience, during your lifetime, so you get to hear your music and you get to see the audience as well.</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">AS: Well, I thought that was included.</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">God: Not always! There are some really great artists that are never going to have their art appreciated, or even seen, during their lifetimes. Wait until you see what Sotheby's does for art prices, and the actual artists don't see a nickel!</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">AS: Well, that's not fair. What's a "nickel?"</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">God: Who says it's supposed to be fair? Some people get to be famous and wealthy, but are forgotten. Some people are poor and unknown until after they die. Variations on the theme, dontcha know.</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">AS: I definitely asked to be famous in my lifetime.</span></span></span></blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;">God: (writing in his notebook) "Famous during lifetime." How long of a lifetime? And how long do you want to be famous for? No guarantee on how long Life and Fame are going to last....</span></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 17.030001px;"><br /></span></span></span><br /></div>
Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-5642280809692411602021-01-21T00:13:00.002-06:002021-01-21T00:13:21.537-06:00Promising Young Woman and the Case of the Unsuccessful Plot Twist<p>Just watched Promising Young Woman, starring Carey Mulligan, a movie I have been aware of for about half a year, waiting for it to become available without having to risk my life to see it in a theater. It finally released on VOD this weekend.</p><p>The visual appeal of the movie is obvious--Carey Mulligan as "Halloween costume sexy nurse," and Carey Mulligan as "Lolita, but definitely of age" pairs a bright and attractive production design to tell the story of a bright and attractive woman...whose life went off the rails. It's not unlike the design of Sofia Coppola's <i>Marie Antoinette, </i>which also tells the tragic story of a doomed young woman.</p><p>Mulligan is excellent, her Cassie Thomas a is bitter, hard edged, and uncompromising. She disarms the people around her with her bright wardrobe and soft styling (her blonde hair is glorious!) She is compliant, non-confrontational, a stereotypical "good little girl" right up to the moment when she isn't. </p><p>Yet this is not the kind of revenge fantasy we have seen before. Writer-director Emerald Fennell has an assured way with the camera, but the script pulls some punches that for me undermine what could have been a truly powerful drama.</p><p><b><u>The Plot</u></b></p><p>In brief--Cassie Thomas was a "promising young woman" several years ago, one of about three women in an unmemorable medical school. Now, some seven years later, she does the bare minimum as a barista at a coffee shop, lives with her parents, and spends her nights pretending to be blackout drunk in order to trap "nice guys" into taking her to their homes, where they reveal their willingness to have sex with what is apparently only a warm body.</p><p>She is not drunk, she is not incapacitated, and she is doing this for revenge. She has apparently been doing this for about seven years, as a form of grief management for the loss of her best friend Nina. Because (we eventually learn) Nina was very drunk at a party and gang raped in front of many of her classmates. She dropped out of med school and eventually committed suicide. Cassie dropped out of med school to take care of her, and has not recovered from the experience. </p><p>Then a former classmate--Ryan Cooper--walks into her coffee shop, recognizes her, and asks her out. He also reveals that some of their classmates are hitting life milestones and finding success--classmates that Cassie blames for forcing her out of medical school.</p><p>At this point, she pursues two diverging paths. She continues to seek revenge, but also specifically targets people from her past. At the same time, she starts to date Ryan.</p><p>At first, of course, Ryan is just another mark--another "nice guy" who is going to try to get her drunk and take advantage, and she will add him to her little book of marks. Instead, he doesn't take her up to his apartment on their first date, causing Cassie to feel the ground shift beneath her feet a bit. Maybe #NotAllMen?</p><p>He breaks through her defenses with the kind of metaphorical "floppy-haired charm" that previously had been the sole province of Hugh Grant. Bo Burnham does not actually have floppy hair, but the kind of "aw-shucks, I ain't all that" persona he projects would be entirely at home in a movie like Notting Hill.</p><p>Cassie starts to see a future for herself, starts to ween herself from her need for revenge. Until a video from the night of Nina's rape shows up, and Ryan was there. We don't know if Ryan participated, but he did not intervene either. And Cassie cannot forgive that.</p><p>She gets Ryan to tell her where Al's bachelor party is taking place, then she goes and pretends to be a stripper. None of these former classmates recognize her, which is it's own kind of telling detail (it's also metaphorical!). She gets them drunk with spiked vodka, then takes Al to a bedroom where she uses pink fluffy handcuff to secure him to the bed. </p><p>She then reveals herself, and her plan is to carve Nina's name into his skin. He manages to break one hand free of the cuffs, and the two struggle. In a long shot, Al holds a pillow to Cassie's face, sobbing wildly, until she stops moving. He is crying for what he sees as the loss of his future, of his wedding to a bikini model, and Cassie (not his own actions) is the cause. </p><p>The next morning, the best man finds him still locked to the bed, next to Cassie's body. The best man repeats "it was an accident, you didn't do anything wrong." We know this is a lie, and so do they, because they decide to hide the crime and dispose of the body.</p><p>But Cassie gets her revenge. She has left notes and copies of the video to be distributed in the event of her death. She has scheduled messages to be delivered to Ryan. Police show up at the wedding and arrest Al for her death.</p><p><b><u>The Strengths</u></b></p><p>Ryan's (and Al's) immediate, reflexive defensiveness. Not a millisecond of compassion for what others suffered, but immediate and visceral defensive crouch. Deflect the accusation. Very telling that makes it clear they understand that what they did was indefensible, was cosmically wrong, but also so afraid of consequences that they immediately lash out. Al makes things much worse, so intent on making Cassie shut up that he smothers her to death. (This is not just "real" it is also metaphorical.)</p><p>Ryan goes immediately to demanding that Cassie feel sorry for him, that she has to soothe and placate him and forgive him. Not once does either man consider the pain they have caused, as they are too busy trying to protect themselves.</p><p>It is this selfishness of the privileged that suffuses this movie. These men--when confronted--are clearly aware that what they are doing is wrong. But they are also unwilling/unable/unused to ever facing consequences, and so their only reaction is to do whatever it takes to escape any consequences. It is unutterably selfish, it is the sign of adult aged men who are still coddled children, who have been protected from every experiencing any consequences of their own bad acts. It doesn't stop them from behaving badly: they aren't willing to be sorry for what they did, only for getting caught. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><u>The Weaknesses</u></b></p><p>And here is where the screenplay pulls its punches. Going into the movie, based on the trailers, I assumed that Cassie was herself raped (or "date-raped" or "roofie-raped"--the common denominator of all of that is "raped") while in medical school. Her years of seeking revenge on "nice guys" was obviously driven by her rage at what had happened to her.</p><p>But--that's not what happened. It was Cassie's friend Nina who was raped. Which displaces the motive from Cassie's pain to a reflected pain. Why is Cassie so fixated on this revenge.</p><p>Also--Cassie dropped out of med school to "take care of Nina." But--Nina has a mother. Nina didn't require Cassie to be her caretaker. </p><p>Obviously, Cassie dropped out she didn't want what med school was offering. Was that because of what happened to Nina, and she couldn't face her classmates after that, having lost all respect and sense of safety? Did she have any regrets about giving up that career track? Was Nina's rape the straw that broke the camel's back?</p><p>Then--Cassie doesn't actually enact revenge on men, she just forces them to confront their bad behavior. But what good does that do? The men don't actually learn from it--one guy she is allowing to take her home finds out about her ruse and lashes out. "You're that crazy chick that Jerry took home!" No evidence that Jerry learned from the experience, just evidence that he's spreading the news of a "crazy chick" to watch out for.</p><p>What does Cassie get out of this futile exercise? She doesn't actually seem to get any catharsis. She gets confirmation that men suck. She doesn't get any therapy to help her deal with her grief, and she doesn't actually protect other women from the same fate. She doesn't actually seem to feel like she's making any sort of permanent change in the men she confronts. And there is a stunning lack of other young women in the story that she could be saving. So it's not like she's the person walking the beach after a storm, throwing starfish back into the ocean, because while she can't save them all, she can save one.</p><p>It's a pointless, futile, throwing of herself against the implacable walls of male privilege. </p><p><br /></p><p><b><u>A Few Days Later</u></b></p><p>This movie continues to haunt my thoughts, and I believe I have come around to a different position on it. This is--just maybe--not a rape revenge movie. Although it does wear those clothes. Perhaps, just as Cassie wears the costume of a drunken, vulnerable woman, to lure men closer so she can confront them, so this movie wears the costume of a rape revenge movie, luring me into what I think is a version of "girls seizing power" flick, when it is really something different.</p><p>Just maybe, it is a movie about the intractability of grief and guilt. It is a character study of a doomed young woman who's fate is sealed by her character. She is who she is, and her inability to move on is her tragic flaw.</p><p>Because when you strip away the cleverness of the screenplay construction, and reveal the plain chronology of events, what happened? Nina and Cassie had been friends for their lives. They both went to medical school, and one night there was a party. (According to Madison, played by Alison Brie, there were these kind of parties regularly. Every few nights, with blackout drinking. Pretty unhealthy culture if you ask me.) Nina went, Cassie didn't.</p><p>Cassie's guilt was already oversized--when Nina dropped out of medical school, Cassie did too "to take care of her." Eventually, Nina killed herself. Cassie has apparently fashioned her life for the intervening years in response to Nina's tragedy. The movie starts its story some 7 or so years after that fateful party.</p><p>And--isn't that weird? Hasn't Cassie really over-invested in this project of hers? Because what she is doing is also entirely nuts. She repeatedly throws herself into potentially dangerous situations, over and over again, with no weapon, no back-up, only her wits and her righteous fury. She goes home with strangers, men who all she actually knows about them is that they are willing to force themselves on a nearly unconscious woman. And what does she do? She scares them by sobering up and forcing them to acknowledge the reality of what they are doing. Of who they are. That they are predators--wolves in sheep's clothing, really. </p><p>The could be a superhero origin story--you could imagine a Jessica Jones taking her pain and using it to clean out criminals. But that would require that the hero actually make a difference. Cassie's M.O. scares these guys in the moment, but does it change their behavior? Does it make a difference?</p><p>Arguably, it doesn't. When her plan is prematurely thwarted as she is leaving with one guy and they encounter Ryan on the way--the mark reveals that he has heard about her. "You're that chick Jerry told me about! You are crazy!" Which is depressingly predictable. There is a crazy woman you need to watch out for--not that Jerry's behavior needs to change.</p><p>The ineffectiveness is brought home with Ryan--nice Ryan, kind Ryan, the Ryan who let's Cassie set the pace of their relationship. Ryan who comes home to meet the parents, is deprecating about his accomplishments, who seems to be awed by his good luck in being in a relationship with Cassie. But when it comes to evidence of his complicity in Nina's rape? He immediately stonewalls, he denies, he demands forgiveness, he lashes out. Even later, when a cop comes around to ask about Cassie's disappearance, he denies having any involvement at all.</p><p>Women don't matter to these men. Cassie isn't making a difference at all.</p><p>And she has to know it. It's not making her feel any better, it's not actually avenging Nina's rape or death. People around her try to talk her out of this vendetta--her parents, Nina's mother, her boss at the coffee shop. Cassie has gone missing in her own life.</p><p>This is not revenge. This is not justice. This is self-flagellation. This is Cassie throwing herself in harms way again and again, because she doesn't believe that she can move beyond this event.</p><p>And it isn't even her event, is it? It's Nina's rape, and Nina's exile from the med school community. Cassie obviously has her own trauma, which might even be similar to Nina's. I would much more readily believe that she had shaped her life around this quixotic hobby if she too had been raped, and if she was trying to extirpate her own failure to believe Nina.</p><p>But the movie doesn't tell us that. We don't actually understand why Cassie seems to need to put herself in danger so often, for so long, while giving up her own life to live in atonement to Nina.</p><p>Of course, there is a lovely section when it seems it might be possible. That she is falling in love with Ryan, that she might give up this quest for vengeance in favor of living her own life. It's perhaps in part because she meets the lawyer who defended Nina's rapist and is genuinely miserable about it. Perhaps Cassie sees #NotAllMen means that #NotRyan.</p><p>Until Madison gives her the video that incriminates Ryan, and he fails that test.</p><p>Apparently there is an interview with Emerald Fennell where she describes Cassie's pursuit of quasi-justice as "an addiction." That the moment of righteous vindication gives her an endorphin high that gradually wears off and she has to go chase it again.</p><p>Which is sort of an inverted version of how I read the work. It's not that Cassie is chasing the high so much as it allows her some relief from her sense of guilt. It releases her from the low.</p><p>In the end, this is a movie that is living with me, forcing me to consider what it is doing, what is Cassie doing. What is my complicity in this story--that I was disappointed that she wasn't killing these men? I'm not generally in favor of vigilantism, so why does dressing it up in cotton candy pastels make me cheer for it. And what do I do with the recognition that I am disappointed that she isn't more violent?</p><p><b><u>Shall We Talk About The Ending?</u></b></p><p>Sure, it's viscerally satisfying that Cassie gets the rapists at the end. But to feel that "victory" you have to overlook that <i>Cassie was murdered</i>. That Cassie went to that bachelor party with evidence already in the mail to the lawyer, with the posthumous text messages already programmed to Ryan. She went, knowing that things could go bad--or even that they <i style="font-weight: bold;">would</i> go that bad. She went planning to die.</p><p>That's some dark stuff. </p><p>That's a story about a woman carrying so much pain that she basically commits suicide by frat boy. So you have to wonder--did she deliberately make the handcuffs flimsy enough to let him escape? She was sufficiently prepared that she already an elaborate plan in process for her disappearance--do you think that a woman with that level of foresight wouldn't have had some kind of plan for not getting killed?</p><p>You start to think--she wanted to die. She could totally have drugged Al so that he was unconscious before she started carving Nina's name in his skin. That would have been safer for her--but she preferred to do it with him conscious. Why? Possibly for the thrill of the risk--with the stakes as high as her death.</p><p>I have seen objections to the ultimearsate image--a pink winky emoji of a text message delivered to Ryan's phone as the police are arresting the wedding party for Cassie's murder. The messages, as far as I can remember them, are </p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">It's not over. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Now. </p><p style="text-align: left;">;)</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p>In the headlong rush of the finale, it felt kind of empowering--Cassie managed to engineer consequences on some douchebros who had ruined and ended two lives--Nina's and Cassie's. It also felt vaguely threatening to Ryan, as though Cassie had more plans in motion that were going to ensnare him in the same way the bachelor party boys were caught. Which is a false victory, because, as we have to remember, <i>Cassie is dead</i>.</p><p>She is not empowered. She is not actually gloating. She has not actually won anything at all, because she has sacrificed her life--figuratively for years, and literally at the end.</p><p>I am also jaded enough to spin out the subsequent criminal proceedings, and I am sorry to say that I don't think there is going to be a lot of consequences for those boys. They are obviously wealthy enough to get excellent legal representation. There will be evidence that Cassie wasn't a hired stripper, but is basically a stalker. That she sought out this party, inserted herself onto the premises, assaulted the groomsmen by drugging them into unconsciousness. That she restrained Al in order to assault him with a knife, and he reacted in self-defense.</p><p>What are the penalties for burning the body, trying to cover up the evidence? Less severe than a murder rap. Probably a hefty fine. Sure, it's going to be a terribly couple of years for him, and may destroy his marriage to the bikini model. It might affect his career trajectory. But there is too much evidence that serial sexual predation doesn't disqualify a man from being President. Why should we think that Al is going to actually pay for this crime?</p><p>And that's the bleakest read of all. Because Cassie went down fighting, but it was never a fight she was ever going to win. And perhaps she knew it all along. Eventually, even she couldn't keep fighting. So she went out with as much of a blaze of vengeance as it was possible to get. Ephemeral and transitory. All those men will live on for decades, wiping their memories of what happened, using their privilege to escape consequences, using their entitlement to avoid feeling bad about it.</p><p>So much tragedy, damage, and despair, wrapped up in some gorgeous candy colored, Insta-worthy production design. Like eating a poisoned macaron that you don't realize is going to kill you. </p><p>Well done, Emerald Fennell!</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-71140157239865025462015-01-08T03:50:00.000-06:002015-01-08T03:50:23.795-06:00The Imitation Game, A Movie ReviewJust back from seeing the Alan Turing bio-pic/Weinstein Company Oscar bid <i>The Imitation Game</i>. With Benedict Cumberbatch in the starring role, and chronicling the birth of the computer age, this should be a better movie than it is.<br />
<br />
Part of the reason it is such a mess is because it is trying to do so many things at once, and manages to do none of them very well. The movie establishes a few salient points of Turing's life, while simultaneously attempting to cover a host of other issues, including but not limited to:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Turing's theories about computing,</li>
<li>how to break codes, </li>
<li>why breaking the Enigma code was important to the British war effort, </li>
<li>how the code was broken, </li>
<li>what the modern world owes to Turing's eccentric mind, </li>
<li>how that mind worked, </li>
<li>the emotional stakes involved in war work, </li>
<li>the strain of being a lonely genius, </li>
<li>the homophobia that forced him to live his life in hiding and that ultimately killed him, </li>
<li>the seeds of the Cold War planted during World War II, </li>
<li>the sexism rife in the 1940s, </li>
<li>the evolving nature of WWII intelligence work, </li>
<li>the role of M6, </li>
<li>the conflict between logic and emotion, </li>
<li>the nature of human social relations, </li>
<li>bullying in boy's schools of the 1920s, </li>
<li>the nature of violence, </li>
<li>the effect of the Battle of Britain on civilians. . .</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
All with a running time of under two hours. You can see the problem. Furthermore, the movie skips around in three different time periods, which was maybe not such a useful structure. Shall we dive in?<br />
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(By this point, I have lost track of exactly how the movie skips through time, and in what order. For clarity's sake, I am going to just summarize each time period. Let's finish out 1951, even if that does take us to the end of the movie before we even get to the middle.)<br />
<br />
The movie opens in 1951, when some cops arrive at Alan Turing's home in Manchester in response to a neighbor's report of a burglary. Turing is bent over amid the mess, sweeping up a fine powder which he identifies as cyanide. Somehow, the police know that nothing has been stolen, but they want Turing to file a report anyway, which he declines to do. Apparently the crime rate in Manchester in 1951 was sufficiently low that the police didn't have enough to do: Detective Nock decides that "Professor Turing is hiding something" and he decides to pry into the professor's war records.<br />
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Now all of this is rather telling, if you are already familiar with the broad outlines of Turing's life. In that case, you realize that his war record is stellar, but he's hiding his homosexuality. The "burglary" was committed by a young male prostitute who Turing knew. The cyanide is a foreshadowing of Turing's eventual suicide by cyanide, widely presumed to have been staged to look like an accident to spare his mother's feelings. If you don't already know these things, well, too bad, because the movie isn't really going to explain most of them.<br />
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(There is also a very James Bond looking moment where a shadowy official-looking figure is handed a note that says "Alan Turing's home was burgled." It looks ominous, but might not be? No--we aren't ever going to have this explained either. )<br />
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Detective Nock is using correction fluid to alter some document. Remember correction fluid? Oh, those Olde Tymes! Apparently, this clumsy forgery fools the staff of an unidentified depository, where he is asking to look at Turing's classified war records. What he gets--eventually--is an empty envelope. Which he takes to mean that Turing is a Soviet spy.<br />
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Okay, let's just stop here for a moment, because I have some questions that the movie neither asks nor answers. First of all--if the War Secrets Act forbids Turing from ever talking about his work at Bletchley Park (and that information was classified for some 50 years after the war), don't you think somebody would have looked at a letter with a big glob of Wite-Out on it and maybe. . .raised some questions? Confronted the guy with trying to illicitly obtain War Secrets? Maybe had him arrested? Or, are we supposed to think that this is an Especially Clever Detective who has <i>fooled</i> the British Military establishment?<br />
<br />
Alternatively, are we to think that the military was <i>not</i> fooled by the "Wite-Out Stratagem" and rather than confronting the guy, simply gave him an empty envelope? And he wasn't smart enough to figure that out either? I don't know. And as the movie progresses, we don't get any answers to that either.<br />
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What does happen is that while Nock is apparently dreaming that he's about to bring down a Soviet spy ring, the constables find Turing's burglar, who discloses that Turing is "a pouf." Homosexuality is illegal, so they issue a warrant and arrest him. Nock is appalled, and says so. "That's not the investigation I was running!" But a crime is a crime, so Nock asks to be the one who interrogates Turing.<br />
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So now this Detective Nock is the audience surrogate? He talks to Turing, and elicits the story we see on screen? I mean, the movie actually does start with a voice over, and there is some confusing dialogue where Turing invites the detective to "play" the imitation game, by asking questions.* So it seems that in some version of this movie, Detective Nock was the framing device, but that more or less got revised and muddled, because significant swaths of the story don't seem like they would be at all relevant to either the investigation into his homosexuality, the burglary, spying, or the Turing Test. Why would he go into detail about his 1928 school days to a cop? (Why are we watching those scenes either?)<br />
_____<br />
*I assume this is what might be better known as the "Turing Test"--a thought experiment where a person poses questions to unseen participants. A computer can be said to beat the Turing test if the questioner can't tell the computer's answers from a human's. Not sure how the detective can play this game when face to face with Turing, but that's yet another thing the movie fails to address.<br />
_____<br />
<br />
Anyway, the framing device doesn't really make sense, and the detective fails to create any sense of audience identification. He's a mook, who starts poking around in Turing's life for no clear reason, violates War Secrets acts, gets the <i>whole</i> story of Turing's (classified, remember?) war service <i>that he doesn't have clearance to hear.</i><br />
<br />
I wonder if somebody realized this? But maybe only in, like, post-production? "Hey--the way we set this up, both Turing and Nock should be hanged as traitors. Can we maybe do something about that?" "Well, we can't get Cumberbatch back for reshoots, so we'll just mess up the timeline and maybe nobody will notice?"<br />
<br />
So, let's skip to the meatiest part of the film, the Bletchley Park years.<br />
<br />
Turing applies to work at Bletchley Park. He tells us he's currently 27, although he looks basically the same as he did in 1951, plus he's still got the same (stupid) haircut. He's being interviewed by a high ranking military officer who is played by Charles Dance. If you primarily know Charles Dance as Tywin Lannister from <i>Game of Thrones</i>, you might be surprised at how funny he can be. The scene starts out as nearly a cross-talk vaudeville routine, riffing on Turing's inability to recognize a joke or sarcasm. In an exposition dump that is pretty well disguised by the humor, we learn that Turing is a math prodigy, he solves puzzles, he wants to break the Enigma code because it is the worlds hardest puzzle, and he doesn't do well with authority. There is a reference to "Mother says I'm off-putting." Again, if you know about his "accidental suicide" the reference to his mother is telling. Otherwise, it merely makes him seem extraordinarily odd and a-social. So, mission accomplished I guess.<br />
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Weirdly, the Big Initiative to Break the German Codes has. . .a total of 6 guys? There seems to be a lot of activity in the area, and lots of secretaries and transcriptionists, but only six guys who are trying to actually break the codes? And their equipment seems to be pencils? We know they have an actual Enigma machine, because that's the first thing they see. Why not just put the intercepted messages through the machine, one of them asks. You need to have the password, and there are "159 million million million" possible combinations. "That's 159 with eighteen zeroes behind it." We are also told that the Germans change their password at midnight every day, and the first messages go out at 6 a.m. They do have one decoded message (from where? Oh, silly audience, why would the movie answer that?) and it's a weather report.<br />
<br />
So five of the guys sit around, write things on a black board and go out for sandwiches. It is not clear what strategy--if any--they have for breaking codes. Meanwhile, Turing invents a machine with 108 rotating dials that he intends to use to churn through all the possible combinations mechanically. (This is the first computer ever built. Turing names it "Christopher".) There are some power politics, and once the machine is built, for some reason, Tywin Lannister decides it's not working and so he's going to have it destroyed. The other five guys make a show of solidarity--if you fire Turing, you will have to fire us as well.<br />
<br />
Okay--but it's been two years, there's been no code broken as far as we know, and no progress on any front. Tywin hates Turing, we are told, but not why. Not sure why turning off the machine would help more than--oh just off the top of my head--hiring more cryptographers? No--five guys seems to be all Britain wants to use.<br />
<br />
Turing hires two additional people--Keira Knightley, and some Random Guy with Glasses. There are a couple of scenes where Keira gets marginalized, because she's female, and Turing goes to bat for her. He illegally smuggles messages out of Bletchley to her, because she is also a math wizard who solves crossword puzzles very quickly. So she never does any code breaking, but teaches Turing to tell jokes and try to be more socially gracious. They get engaged, even though he's homosexual, she doesn't care because she can stay at Bletchley if she's married, otherwise her parents want her to come back home and live like a decent unmarried 25 year old spinster. Which is all--what? Why is this even in this movie?<br />
<br />
At the engagement party, Turing confesses his homosexuality to one of the other code (non)breakers, John Cairncross, played by Allan Leech, better known as Tom Branson from Downtown Abbey. Branson already figured out Turing is homosexual, but advises him not to tell Keira Knightley because women aren't keen on marrying known homosexuals. Branson turns out to be passing information to the Soviets, and claims they are on the same side, so it's okay, and anyway, Turing can't tell because then Branson will tell his secret. Then it turns out that Mark Strong (acting with hair this time!) planted Branson in order to control what does get passed to Stalin, and poor Turing can't keep up with the double-double crosses.<br />
<br />
Eventually, the break the code. Do you know how they break the code? They bother to look at messages that have been decoded (where? How? why did it take them years to think of doing that?) and they discover that the Germans end every message with "Heil Hitler." Also, the 6 a.m. weather reports always have the time (6 a.m.) and weather words.<br />
<br />
Now, I'm sorry, but knowing that <i>every</i> message ends with "Heil Hitler" means that you have a whole lot fewer codes you need to worry about, doesn't it? Shouldn't they have figured that out a whole lot earlier in the war? Why do they even need Turing's machine if they know that?<br />
<br />
There's no time for that! The movie must speed ahead! We have broken the code! We have read the dispatches! We have a map with all the Uboats placed--and it looks like they are about to attack a civilian convoy--that has soldiers on it too. One of the code breakers has a brother serving on one of the ships. We have to notify the army and save the civilians!<br />
<br />
But Turing knows--we can't! Then the Germans will know Britain has broken Enigma, and they will simply switch up the machine, and we will have to start all over again! So the Littlest Code Breaker (the one with the brother that was only mentioned in passing once before) stands there in tears and keeps repeating "my brother, my brother" while the rest of the cryptologists unilaterally decide the strategy for handling military intelligence. Because that's how the military works.<br />
<br />
Also, they stay on and use "statistics" and "data" to determine how much intelligence they can release without the Germans realizing that Enigma has been compromised. They can't explain how they do that, because it is far too technical, but it's a huge emotional burden. Except for Turing, who doesn't understand emotions. And then the war is won hurrah! And they have to dismantle and burn all their papers because of Reasons.<br />
<br />
Interleaved throughout are some <i>Alan Turing's School Days</i> scenes, set in 1928, when he makes a friend who teaches him about codes. They pass coded messages back and forth during math class (which is too easy for them) and Young Turing falls in love, but Christopher dies over break of "bovine tuberculosis" and Turing denies that they knew each other very well at all. So the big emotional scene is played by some kid pretending to be the young Cumberbatch, while not looking like him at all. The culmination of the 1928 scenes is this kid trying to hold his face steady, while his heart is breaking, and while he lies to his headmaster about "I scarcely knew him at all." Why? What does this have to do with adult Turing? Not clear, other than explaining why he named his computer "Christopher."<br />
<br />
Then there is a coda, that wraps up Turing's conviction for "gross indecency" and his election to take "chemical castration" to "cure" him of his homosexual predilections instead of two years of prison time. Keira Knightley comes to visit him, and he's a shaky mess, can't do a crossword puzzle (what is causing his mental incapacity, and how bad is it). He ends up breaking down into tears over the idea of being separated from "Christopher." Keira tells him that she is glad he isn't "normal" because there are people alive and towns that exist that wouldn't if he hadn't cracked the Enigma code.<br />
<br />
Text on screen tells us that Turing committed suicide in 1954 at the age of 41. Turing's work is estimated to have shortened the war by 2 years, saving millions of lives. "Turing machines" are now called "computers." The End. Annnnnnd--credits.<br />
<br />
Honestly? This is such a mess that it's hard to sort out just where it went wrong. Maybe it just tried to do too many things at one. American's aren't really up to scratch with Bletchley Park and the role of the Enigma code break and how it affected the war, so U.S. audiences have to be filled in on the essentials. There are attempts to impose the "ticking clock"--we have to crack this code before time runs out!--that just don't connect. There are scenes of British civilians during air raids and evacuating children that fail to connect dramatically, because those scenes are all populated by extras with no connection to anybody we know form the rest of the film. Stock film of bombing of London reminds us that there is a war on, but again--doesn't really affect anybody individually. The risk that Keira might have to move home and live with her parents has more impact than grainy black-and-white film of German planes.<br />
<br />
The cost to Turing and to the world of the homophobia is gestured towards, but not really explored. He was a genius and a hero, and it certainly seems unfair NOW to hound him for his sexual preferences. . .but would we feel differently (even now) if he was a pederast? Arguably, in 1951, homosexuality was considered the same way. So if you are really going to try to challenge homophobia, maybe you need to actually challenge it? Nobody but the Manchester bobbies of 1951 seemed to have any real problem with Turing's obvious preferences. Not even Keira cared--she was willing to marry him even after he confessed to her.<br />
<br />
It appears that the Weinstein Company is pitching their Oscar campaign on this issue. Too bad the movie itself muddles it so badly.<br />
<br />
There are a couple of through lines that should have landed better. The recurrent motif of "is Turing a Soviet Spy" should have felt more ominous--either that he was and we had misjudged him, or that there were serious consequences to him looming. The fact that M6 not only knew who the spy was, but had planted him there from the beginning defanged all threat, both during the war, and afterwards.<br />
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"Sometimes, it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine." This gets repeated throughout the film, without ever adding up to much. Christopher says it to Turing in 1928. Turing says it to Keira Knightley in order to get her to Bletchley in 1942. Keira says it back to Turing in 1952-ish. It's really the message of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, isn't it? "You are weird, Alan Turing, but that weirdness can be useful."<br />
<br />
Should have been better.<br />
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<br />Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-85762387698546064802014-09-15T10:55:00.001-05:002014-09-15T10:55:27.857-05:00The Way Way Back, A Movie ReviewI am packing to move to California, and one of my "tasks" is to finally watch things that have been on my DVR before I lose them. This movie is one of them.<br />
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I had heard good things when it came out, but didn't manage to see it in the theaters. Then it showed up on cable, and I recorded it, but didn't manage to watch it then either. Last night, as I was building moving boxes, I turned it on to keep me company. Does this context affect how I felt about it? Possibly. To create a summery metaphor--it's possible that this movie is like a box of graham crackers, opened for a campfire night of s'mores, then left forgotten on a shelf for to long. When I finally did watch this, it felt stale and soggy, with some of the sweetness still discernible, but not really enjoyable to consume. Possibly not worth the effort.<br />
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<i>The Way Way Back</i> also suffers because it has many of the same themes and character interactions as <i>Boyhood</i>, Richard Linklater's movie about the transition from boyhood through adolescence. In many ways, I had just seen this story, and watching it a second time in as many weeks did neither movie any favors.<br />
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Quick synopsis: <i>The Way Way Back</i> follows fourteen year old Duncan through part of a summer at a beach house with his mother, her boyfriend, and his daughter. This is a test run of the possibility of becoming a family. There is a gorgeous, slightly older girl who lives next door, and her strange little brother. And there is a water park, where Duncan escapes the stifling (if privileged) life and meets the men who will be his true parental figures for the season.<br />
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Written by Jim Rash and Nat Faxon (who also wrote the Oscar-winning <i>The Descendants</i>), the movie has a great cast: Toni Collette as Duncan's mom, Steve Carell as her boyfriend. Alison Janney is the single mom next door; Rob Corddry and Amanda Peet are other summer regulars. At the water park, Sam Rockwell, Maya Rudolph, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash are the ostensible adults. The movie is so slight, that there is little characterization--what is there is provided by the actors bringing versions of themselves they have played before. So to limit confusion, I'm not even going to bother with their character names.<br />
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The movie starts in the car on the way to the beach house. Carell is driving this tank of a wood-sided station wagon that looks like something from 1973. Collette is sleeping in the passenger seat, Carell's daughter is also asleep, spread across the entirety of the back seat. I used to do that, back in the days before mandatory seat belt laws. (At this point, I have tentatively concluded that this is a period piece movie. More on this later.)<br />
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Duncan is sitting in what we used to call "The way way back"--the rear-facing jump seat of the station wagon. With the women sleeping, Carell starts a conversation with Duncan--a conversation that is ill-advised and awkward, made worse by the difficult acoustics of talking the length of a car.<br />
<br />
"On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you see yourself, Duncan?" So we know Carell is basically a dick. Maybe he means well, maybe he thinks he's orienting the kid to be socially successful in the new environment, but any such kindness is lost inside his belittling and hectoring tone. Duncan reluctantly offers "I don't know, a 6?" Carell brutally rejects that kind of grade inflation: "To me, you are a 3. Because I don't see you putting yourself out there, buddy." Anybody think this relationship is going to last? Duncan eventually manages to escape this humiliation by putting in ear buds and listening to his own music, thus hopelessly confusing the time line. The cars, the cavalier approach to vehicle safety, the swinging middle-aged singles vibe of the beach community--all speak to the mid-1970s. The ear buds say "current day." There is even an attempt to lampshade the visual confusion--Carell's first conversation with Janney is about how much it costs to keep a car like this, but worth it "because it's an exact copy of the car my dad used to drive." It's like Faxon and Rash started writing a valentine to their own teen aged summers, but due to budget constraints or something, half-assedly updated it, perhaps convinced that the result would be "timeless" rather than "half-assed." Which it is.<br />
<br />
As the movie progressed, it hit just about every cliche and stereotype that I had feared, a grindingly depressing experience for women watching movies. The girl next door (played by AnnaSophia Robb, asked mostly to just look good in shorts and bikini cover-ups) is gorgeous, blond, and inexplicably interested in the odd-looking Duncan, and who persists in trying to make friends with him even in the face of multiple rejections. Sure, if you are watching this movie worrying about <i>Duncan</i>, then you presumably want him to have more chances to learn to be more socially adept. But if you are a girl, identifying with AnnaSophia's experience, then you see someone working <i>really hard</i> to be a friend in the <i>complete absence</i> of any encouragement, the <i>utter lack</i> of any visible point. Duncan is not just awkward, he is actively anti-charming, anti-friendly. I'm not sure what possible indication he gives of being anything but more work than he is worth. All of which is to say, if I am anyone other than his actual mom, I throw this one back as too small to keep.<br />
<br />
AnnaSophia has what passes for a backstory, sketched with the fewest possible lines and filled in with a heavy wash of misogynistic cliche. There is a pack of teen girls she is impressed into, lead by a Queen Bee who brooks no individualism. When she wants to swim, all the girls must get into the water. She gossips nastily about other girls, she attempts to wrest attention from her ab-tastic dude-bro boyfriend, and all the girls chatter in the lilting Valley Speak that is shorthand for nasty vapidity. But not AnnaSophia! No--she would prefer to read while she is on the beach! See--she's different! Not like all this other girls! (Which is itself a deeply problematic trope that I'm just not going to get into here.)<br />
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Then there is her little brother, Peter. Kid has a lazy eye and refuses to wear the eye patch, causing (allegedly) comic frustration in his mom (Allison Janney). He's got a huge collection of Star Wars action figures, hangs out underneath the deck, and is the designated Weird Kid. Of course, Allison Janney is working really hard to foist him off on Duncan, because they are both boys and are in physical proximity, so that's all it takes, right?<br />
<br />
There is a subtle calculus of cruelty that weird kids perform in self-defense. Duncan knows he's considered a loser--that "you're a 3" discussion made that obvious. He knows that AnnaSophia is out of his league--she's older, she's integrated into the community, she's so much better looking than he is. Realistically, he's got no chance with her and he knows it. He also intuits that he's going to look even worse if he's seen as a peer to her Weird Little Brother. So he tries to ditch Peter whenever possible, perpetrating the social ostracism that he himself is a victim of.<br />
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And yet, AnnaSophia keeps pursuing friendship with Duncan. Why? Because that's part of a Coming-of-age movie, so it's gotta happen. In real life, she'd be off with her snotty friends, who at least insist on her presence, unlike Duncan who keeps running away from her and her brother too.<br />
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There are middle-aged people melodrama set pieces too. Carell apparently has an affair every summer with Amanda Peet, and so she comes onto him. He doesn't shut it down entirely, but the actual indiscretion is kept off-screen. Nevertheless, Duncan and Collette see the telltale signs. To her credit, Colette underplays the emotional pain of this, which is possibly the best part of the movie, and is unlikely to actually exist on the page. This is a compliment to Collette and her craft.<br />
<br />
There is a confrontation between Carell and Duncan, and Duncan yells, and tries to stand up for his mother, and says he wants to go live with his dad. Carell (of course, because he is a dick) lets him know that his dad doesn't want him--he's got a new, young girlfriend, a life in San Diego, and doesn't want his teen aged son around.<br />
<br />
Off screen, Collette and Carell hash out their differences, erect a fragile truce under which they will try to salvage the relationship, and agree that they need to leave the beach house. Summer isn't over, but the vacation is.<br />
<br />
Simultaneously, Duncan finds his own life at the "Water Wizz" park, a time locked attraction built in 1983 and never updated. The movie tell us this twice, in case you were still wondering in what year this movie is set. This does not actually clear up the confusion. Sam Rockwell runs the place, living in an apartment over the concession stand and generally being a charming screw-up, deploying his patented Sam Rockwell manic charm to keep the place open while not actually performing any work. That gets "delegated" to a visibly pregnant Maya Rudolph, as the Nagging Wife-figure who objects to having to do everything for the Man-Child, but not yet immune to his charms.<br />
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Also inexplicably, he takes Duncan under his wing, despite Duncan being unable to even understand the Rockwell Charm (TM). All his jokes crash and burn in the face of Duncan's literal way of thinking and his obvious misery. So of course he offers this kid a summer job. Because there are no rules governing a safety hazard like an outdated water park, or child labor laws for 14 year olds. Jim Rash plays the Jim Rash-iest of awkward equipment attendants, and Nat Faxon is a bro-tastic lifeguard, who literally teaches Duncan how to abuse his position as a life guard in order to leer at underaged girls in bikinis. This is presented as a "man skill" that helps Duncan fin chis groove and become socially adept. It is gross.<br />
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But the biggest enigma is Sam Rockwell's character, because he exists purely to demonstrate how to not-grow-up-at-all, which makes him the role model for how Duncan should be a man. And from the perspective of an awkward 14 year old, Rockwell does offer an appealing view of adult hood. One doesn't have to be a dick, or boring, or embarrassing like all the other adults in the movie. He's like one of the kids, but he gets to drink beer and have a girlfriend too, and he's got a gaggle of adoring kids who follow him around and drink him up like so much soda.<br />
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His manic charm is reminiscent of the dad from the <i>Calvin and Hobbes</i> comic--a desperate internal monolog to distract himself from the bone deep boredom of his life. He blows off work because he fundamentally doesn't care. Maya Rudolph calls attention o work that needs to be done, maintenance that should be addressed, and safety issues that could close the whole place down--and Rockwell doesn't do any of it. Its the behavior pattern of someone so stuck that they can't extricate themselves voluntarily--it would take the actions of an outside agent--the state shutting down the water park as a safety hazard--for him to ever leave. And he should leave, but it's easier just to not do anything. By taking no action, he is leaving it to the fates whether he stays of goes.<br />
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What does he do in the winter months, one wonders. How much can a decrepit water park actually pay a guy like him, enough to afford cheap beer through the off season? If he lives on site?<br />
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It's like the three of them--Rockwell, Faxon and Rash--got jobs here out of high school and never moved on. None of them are happy or fulfilled, but none of them can actually bring themselves to do anything about it--including doing their jobs properly. Somehow, they aged into being in charge, without ever really maturing. And these are the mentors, this is Duncan's "happy place."<br />
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He never tells anybody at the beach where he goes every day--and the park is far away from the beach world, both geographically and socio-economically. But AnnaSophia is curious (why? because she is the Summer Movie Dream Girl, and the plot requires it), so she follows him on her bike. There is a montage of the two of them spending the day at the park together as he shows her around and they bond over missing their fathers, and their mothers' fear of losing them to those fathers. There is an awkward attempt at a kiss, which doesn't happen, so Duncan runs away. Awkwardly.<br />
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Then the blow up at home happens, and as they are headed out of town, Carell has to stop to put gas in his land yacht, across the street from the Water Wizz. Duncan jumps out of the car and runs over to say goodbye to his "friends." There is the mandatory Epic Summer Stunt--he manages to pass Rockwell in the water slide tube, and the kids all cheer. Mom sees his achievement and is proud. Carell is a dick, and says "are we done yet?" There are fond goodbyes from his "real" family of under-achieving park employees. In the car, Mom climbs over the seats and joins Duncan in the way way back, thus signaling her abandonment of Carell and that relationship in favor of the proper parental relationship with her son. ("Proper" here meaning one without any of it's own drama or narrative arc.)<br />
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Disappointing. Not enough Rockwell Charm (TM), which is really the only thing that keeps this dead weight of a movie afloat. Collette nicely underplays the emotional hits she takes from an untrustworthy boyfriend, but that story line is buried under the much less interesting one of the 14 year old. AnnaSophia Robb looks age appropriate, and she gives Duncan a kiss on the cheek at the end, because of course that's what the movie requires of her. Carell is believable as an attractive enough shell of a man plastered over a very unpleasant center, but he doesn't ultimately rise about the Bad Step Dad cliche. Maya Rudolph manages to be a nag without becoming unattractive or spoiling the "fun," which is a tribute to her delightful screen persona, but is seriously retrograde as a character arc. The movie does capture the kind of disorientation that is a summer vacation at the beach--the pace of beach community life in the summer is convincing. The idea that Steve Carell could afford to take the entire summer off of work to hang around the beach is not convincingly presented. Who are these people? Do they have jobs or lives away from the beach for the other 9 months of the year?<br />
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It's a movie that makes some bare, emotional sense if you fully commit to only watching it through the eyes of the 14 year old Duncan. He doesn't seek to understand the hows and the whys of other people. Things just happen, and he reacts to them. His "growth" is that his reactions become slightly less passive and awkward over the course of the movie. He doesn't understand his mother or the hard choices she is making--he doesn't even see them. He doesn't exhibit any awareness that AnnaSophia is making uncharacteristically sustained efforts to be his friend--because this is a Teen Summer Beach Movie, and so there has to be A Girl for him to Achieve. Which he sort of does. He never sees past Peter's weirdness and physical deformity to the socially savvy person inside--a kid who enters an employee farewell party for Jim Rash, confronting a room full of mostly adults he has never even seen before, and who manages to match Rockwell in a mock charm-off. Duncan could have learned a lot from this kid, but the movie doesn't actually care about that. It's all about Duncan--and Duncan may be the least interesting character in the entire movie. Including Peter's Star Wars action figures.<br />
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Too bad. The cast did what they could, but there wasn't enough there there to make this the movie it could have been. Like Duncan, it needs to grow up a bit more before it's really worth spending much time with it.<br />
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(Written, directed, and produced by Rash and Faxon--might have benefitted from adding some more skilled participants to elevate this out of it's near miss status.)Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-36520405904184007332014-09-08T20:12:00.002-05:002014-09-08T20:12:58.362-05:00Some Thoughts On The Twelfth Doctor--A Review of Season 8 So FarLet it be herewith known that I am <i>perfectly capable</i> of accepting new Doctors. I am not one of those people who have gotten hung up on "My Doctor" and cannot roll with a new face on an old friend. In fact, "my Doctor" was originally Tom Baker, from back in the day when episodes aired on the local public television station and I watched on a garage sale purchased black-and-white TV in my dorm room. Since the reboot, I was impressed by Christopher Eccleston's barely contained rage, enjoyed David Tennant's practice of wearing his heart on his sleeve, and found Matt Smith to be a manic but ancient alien in a body that only looked young.<br />
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I made the transition from Russell T. Davies to Stephen Moffatt without feeling that there was some sort of side I had to pick as to which one was better. They both had great strengths, and also great weaknesses as show runners, but the beauty of a show that has run as <i>ridiculously</i> long as this one is that the highs and lows smooth out when placed in perspective with fifty years of episodes.<br />
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And yet--it is not entirely possible to always take the long view. This <i>is</i> episodic television, and if you look forward to your Saturday night does of the Doctor, each episode <i>matters</i> in a way that it wouldn't if you were binging on entire seasons, Doctor tenures, or even decades of stories. When you only have one episode a week (instead of watching Tennant's entire run via Netflix in about two weeks--like "a friend" of mine did), your love of the new incarnation can rise and fall on the strength of that week's episode.<br />
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So, with that lengthy prelude, let us examine Season 8.<br />
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As of yesterday, we are one quarter of the way through Peter Capaldi's inaugural season. Three episodes of a twelve episode run down, and the newest incarnation has not yet come into focus for me, and I can't tell why.<br />
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Looking back at the New Who Doctors, there has been a moment with each of them, early on, where I felt that I was in good hands. Nine gave us "Basically, run!" and we were clearly bringing the past with us into the future. Ten woke up from his lengthy regeneration nap with "Is that the sort of man I am now? Am I rude? Rude and not ginger." Eleven gave us "You're Scottish--fry something!" Basically, each of them had a <i>joie de vivre</i> even in the face of chaos that told us that even as the <i>very existence of the universe</i> was at stake, it was going to be an adventure to travel with this man.<br />
<br />
I'm not sure what to think about Twelve yet.*<br />
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* Pedantic footnote: Not sure there is an established convention yet about how to number the incarnations, since the "War Doctor" got inserted late last year. I'm going to stick with the numbers I got used to before John Hurt broke all our hearts, and he gets to be "The War Doctor" for now. So Peter Capaldi is Twelve. Thus it shall be.<br />
________<br />
<br />
Thus far, we have been treated with a couple of episodes that ask "Am I a good man?" The question was explicitly asked in the first episode, "Deep Breath," and the answer that was finally given at the end of that episode was Clara's summations "I think you try to be, and I think that's what matters." (Paraphrased, based on my best recollection.) The question is ineluctably bound up in the subject of the second episode "Into the Dalek"--is a "good Dalek" possible? What does it mean when Rusty the Dalek tells the Doctor "You would be a good Dalek"? In "Robot of Sherwood," the Doctor and Robin Hood have a Very Important conversation about what makes a hero, and whether the man and the myth can co-exist.<br />
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These are fine, and they are important questions for a philosopher to ask, and they are certainly within the broad portfolio of <i>Doctor Who</i>. I'm just not sure <i>why</i> we are asking these questions now.<br />
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I mean--in the last couple of episodes of Eleven's tenure, he was <i>beyond</i> heroic. He spent over 300 years on Trenzalore as a sort of human shield (okay, Time Lord shield, but that doesn't make any sense) to keep the people of the town of Christmas safe. And in the penultimate episode, he joined up with several incarnations to rewrite history--he reversed the Time War, managed to <i>not</i> commit genocide of his own species, and relieved the burden on his own War Doctor incarnation's soul.<br />
<br />
Why question his goodness now?<br />
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As Twelve, he's been preemptory and a bit harsh--calling Clara a control freak, for example, was a bit nastier than we've seen recent Doctors being. But calling humanity "Pudding heads" is hardly the sort of thing that should make one question his own character. It certainly doesn't make me (as audience) question him. He still protects humans against the Half-Face Man with the same kind of speech about his love for humans that Eleven made in "The Eleventh Hour" and that Ten made all the time. So despite his superficial distaste for humanity, when confronted with an actual threat, he choses to believe that we are worth saving.<br />
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I'm not sure that the answer to this question is even in doubt, frankly. Not diagetically, within the context of the particular 12th Doctor episodes, nor in the history of the television show. The Doctor is our hero, and free-floating existential angst about the nature of goodness feels forced and unnecessary.<br />
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In the three episodes aired so far, Twelve hasn't really got a personality, yet. He complains, sure, he's manic (all the weird quasi-medical testing he did on Robin Hood's Merry Men is out of character. And where did he pull that syringe from?), he's rude, he's arrogant, and he's childishly competitive with Robin Hood--all of which we've seen before, but without a sort of thematic personality to tie the disparate parts together. Eccleston had weary gravitas, Tennant flirted with the world until he had to be "so so sorry" at people, Smith thought blindingly fast and jumped around the myriad ideas until he struck the right one. Capaldi--is grumpy and skeptical? Rude and not ginger?<br />
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I have great affection for Capaldi--not just his Malcolm Tucker, who is gorgeously, baroquely filthy, but his turn as the tragically soft hearted John Frobisher in <i>Torchwood's</i> third series "Children of Earth." He has range. He has a fascinating face to watch--those eyebrows!--and a great accent to listen to. He just hasn't got much to do.<br />
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Perhaps that's the point. This is Clara's season, where she gets to be competent, where she gets her own arc, rather than being a puzzle for the Doctor to solve. Which relegates the Doctor to the role of companion--he's at a loss, she's the one who has experience at this "all of time and space" thing?<br />
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I hope we'll get a couple of seasons for Capaldi to tailor the role around him. It's jut not happening yet.Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-30976813884082934752014-06-21T12:00:00.000-05:002014-06-21T12:00:10.307-05:00Maleficent, the First Draft Review<i>[I tried several times to crystalize my thinking about this movie, and while I think I got some traction on it, I left a bunch of stuff out of the other review. So I'm preserving this for what it has that the final one does not.]</i><br />
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Of course I went to see this. Have you <i>seen</i> my avatar?<br />
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Yesterday, I posted a sort-of review/deconstruction of this movie, which goes to the heart of my ambivalence about it. It is hard to review, because it's hard to slot it appropriately. It's too dark to be a kids movie, it's too generic to be a world-building fantasy, it's too obligated to it's source material to be a coherent story in its own right. It might primarily be a star vehicle for Angelina Jolie, who carries the film on the strength of her facial angles. It's a feminist <i>cri de coeur</i>, but it's punches are pulled because it's a Disney move.<br />
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Here's the trouble--it's a revisionist retelling of the original Disney <i>Sleeping Beauty</i>, which rehabilitates the villain by giving her a back story to "explain" why she places a fatal curse on a newborn. Generally, I like these kind of stories, the way they shift the perspective that forces you to re-examine the assumptions of the earlier work. This one doesn't really do that. In the 1959 movie, Maleficent was simply evil, and her evilness explained why she was excluded from the baby's baptism and why she reacted by leveling a curse on the child. Over on <a href="http://io9.com/how-could-disney-do-this-to-maleficent-1585013187/+Jessica" target="_blank">io9, Meredith Woerner</a> does a great job articulating why the protagonist of <i>Maleficent</i> (the movie) isn't really the same character as Maleficent from <i>Sleeping Beauty</i>, and the changes ultimately diminish someone who was originally a strong and powerful character.<br />
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When you decide to do an "origin" story, isn't the point to explain the how and why of the character <i>as already depicted</i>? This is Woerner's point--the Maleficent we see in the new movie just isn't the same character.<br />
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Furthermore, I believe that in the new movie, Maleficent is herself the victim of unexplained evil--the nature of evil hasn't changed, it's locus has just shifted to the Evil King Henry.<br />
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At the beginning of the movie, we are told about two kingdoms--the evil and greedy human one, and the improbably beautiful and resource rich fairy one. Evil King Henry decides to attack fairyland, gets his ass handed to him by Maleficent, so makes killing her the condition for being his heir.<br />
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Sure, I've been reading a lot of feminist web writing, and in the days after the Isla Vista shooting, it's an environment of sensitivity to sexism, but I don't think I'm over-reacting. Evil, greedy, monarchist humans attack the peaceful matriarchal realm, then wounded male pride (King Henry gets defeated personally by Maleficient) leads to further lashing out. This is a textbook indictment of patriarchy.<br />
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Then there is the rape. The "rape"--the symbolic act of physical violation. Maleficent met Stefan when they were children, they had a connection that apparently culminated in "true love's kiss" when they were sixteen. But as a 30 something adult, Stefan sees the chance of becoming king, so he returns to fairyland, lures Maleficent into trusting him, feeds her a drugged drink, and cuts off her wings. I guess we are supposed to feel like he's not horrible, because he did intend to kill her but couldn't.<br />
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(Not sure where this one goes--perhaps it's to keep Stefan from being too scary for the presumptive kid audience. Perhaps it's to give us some hope that Stefan might be redeemable. Perhaps it's simply required to keep the story as close to the original as necessary. Uncharitably, it's a diminution of the rape allegory--it could have been worse, she wasn't <i>killed</i>.)<br />
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I saw it as a set up for Maleficent's righteous anger--she was roofied and raped by someone she trusted. No wonder she was angry. Furthermore, the double violation was done so Stefan could prove his manliness to other males, to demonstrate his own worth in a violent hierarchy. The woman was simply an instrument for his own advancement among other men.<br />
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Read this way, this is a timely echo of the experiences shared on #yesallwomen in response to the Isla Vista shooting: women can be abused and damaged by those they trust, and until they violate that trust, there really isn't any way to predict who will be the violator. Maleficent thought she could trust Stefan right up until she learned she couldn't.<br />
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The trouble with putting this into the context of a fairy tale with a rigid structure is that it risks the opposite reading--that the symbolic rape, represented by the removal of her wings, sends the message that rape is either necessarily disfiguring (the logic behind honor killings and the "chewing gum" abstinence sex education), or that it's only rape when it's visibly violent and there are maiming injuries involved.<br />
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The other problem with the fairy tale trope is that it traffics in tropes of "true love" and "one-itis"--Maleficent moons around her fairy land, missing Stefon after their one kiss (and before he returns to steal her wings), despite the fact that he goes missing for some two decades (based on the actor's apparent ages at least). Why wouldn't she move on? Why wouldn't she have enough to do without obsessing over him for all those years? The structure of the pre-story gives the actual story a gloss that "wimmins be crazy, emirate"--after pining and obsessing over him for two decades, she gets jealous that he has dumped her --oh yeah, and taken her wings--and so she invades his live afterwards because she just can't let it go.<br />
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Lindy West, over at Jezebel, sees the patriarchal elements, and to her, they overwhelm whatever feminist message the movie might contain. Which I get--one can easily see that, as contextualized in our culture, Maleficent has been loved and abandoned by Stefan, and she never gets over it. We see her sitting alone, lonely, and we are told she often wondered about him and if he would ever return. We don't see her getting on with her life, filling her hours productively, doing the kind of things that would tell us that sure, she thinks about her first boyfriend once in a while. Instead, we seem to be told "she went on to live her life in regret about the end of that relationship, and she always loved him and missed him."<br />
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Now, sometimes I wonder about my first boyfriend, and what he is up to. Also my second and third boyfriends, etc. Some of them I run into now and again, some of them have disappeared off my radar entirely. I also think fondly about my first grade teacher (who I <i>loved</i>), the guy who taught my driver's training course, my first dentist, people who show up on my Facebook feed that I have forgotten about. What I am saying is that there is a range of emotional investments in people who have touched our lives, and while it is denotatively true that Maleficent probably thinks about Stefan under any circumstances (he <i>was</i> her first boyfriend after all), there is something deeply disturbing in presenting her as someone who never loves anyone else, who spends the intervening years existing as the "scorned and spurned woman."<br />
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<br />Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-19066888404001069192014-06-21T11:57:00.001-05:002014-06-21T11:57:11.068-05:00Maleficent, a Review[I have been trying to write this review for an incredibly long time. After multiple attempts, I am just starting again and hoping that a blank page and fresh start will make this happen.]<br />
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This movie should have been great, or at least hitting all my pleasure centers. When I was very little, <i>Sleeping Beauty</i> was my favorite fairy tale, and the Disney version had some stickiness in my life. Perhaps we had a record that tied into that version? In any event, it was <i>my</i> movie.<br />
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Later, after growing up and having kids, I transitioned to adopting Maleficent as my alter ego. My kids accepted limits and parental "no" when it came from "The Mistress of All Evil"--it gave us a way to negotiate disappointment without getting all wrapped up in each others' self-worth. I mean, you have looked over there to the right and seen my avatar, right?<br />
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Add to that the way that an alternate take on a familiar story gives fresh insights. I love the way my brain feels bigger when I realize that there is another perspective on something that I hadn't considered before. Alternative fairy tales can be really enjoyable.<br />
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Plus--Angelina Jolie. She <i>looks</i> like the cartoon version. Seeing a living actress embody something so stylized creates such an opening for humanizing the character. Centering Maleficent herself into the narrative offers the hope of a movie really coming to grips with the nature of evil. In the original movie of <i>Sleeping Beauty</i>, Maleficient is elemental in her evil. She's never explained, no one seeks to understand her, in some ways her malice is like weather--it's not personal, it's just that you got in the way. Telling her story using a live action actress promises to humanize her, and to explain the nature of evil.<br />
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Which the movie does--kind of? Except in telling her story, it drains some of the real magic out of the character. At the same time, it does open up the story to more nuanced elements. In the end, it ping-pongs between enhancing and diminishing the original, which is not really a winning combination. This may explain why it is hovering around 50% on Rotten Tomatoes--it gets some parts very right, gets some parts terribly wrong, and satisfies as many people as is disappoints.<br />
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Quick synopsis: Two kingdoms abut each other--the human one and a fairy one. A human boy, Stefan enters fairyland and befriends the child Maleficent. They grow up, eventually share "true love's kiss" Years later, the human king decides to annex the fairy land, and Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) leads the magical creatures against the invading humans and personally mortally wounds the king.<br />
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On his deathbed, the king promises his crown and daughter to any man who can kill Maleficent. So adult Stefan (Sharlton Copley) returns, plays on their former relationship, drugs Maleficent and saws off her wings. (Yes, this is a barely veiled date rape. In a <i>Disney</i> movie.)<br />
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Mutilated and pissed, Maleficent bides her time until Stefan's daughter is born. She shows up at the christening and enacts the familiar revenge. Before the sun sets on her 16th birthday, she will prick her finger on a spindle and [not die! This Maleficent doesn't curse her to die] fall into a deep sleep that can only be broken by true love's kiss.<br />
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Spinning wheels are banned and stored in the castle dungeons. Aurora is sent to live in a cottage in the woods with three incompetent fairy guardians. All as you know. But Maleficent lurks and spies on the child as she grows, victim of the child's charms and falls in love. She even tries to withdraw the curse, but it was cast too firmly. Helplessly, she watches the girls doom arrive, and tries to avert it by delivering a handsome prince to the sleeping princess's bedside.<br />
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But--ha ha! Plot twist! (Which you saw coming if you saw <i>Frozen.</i>) Aurora and Philip barely know each other--it's not True Love! Maleficent, resigned to having lost the girl to her own curse, kisses her farewell on the forehead, and she opens her eyes!<br />
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There are some boring fight sequences against King Stefan, Maleficent turns her minion into a dragon (but not herself! Boo!) Stefan falls to his death, and Aurora is crowned ruler of both the human and the fairy lands. Happily ever after!<br />
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Let's look at the ups and downs, shall we?<br />
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<b>Angelina Jolie as Maleficent</b><br />
She's tiny, but strong--apparently a diet of scenery chewing gives you super powers. With the prosthetic cheekbones and the slash of blood red lipstick, she carries off the role, despite being about three feet too short. Which is to say--Jolie is <i>fierce</i>. Like Dirty Harry fierce. She takes justice into her own hands, and you believe that the threat of her is enough to drive Stefan mad over the 16 years he's just waiting for her to show up again. It's a star vehicle, and she owns the screen whenever she is on it.<br />
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Which means that all the rest of the scenes are kind of bland and flat in comparison. The "magical wonders" of fairyland are less interesting than watching Jolie act circles around everybody else on screen. So the casting is excellent for Maleficent, but she is so good she makes the rest of the film feel lackluster.<br />
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<b>That date rape scene</b><br />
Honestly, I am of two minds on this one. Jolie plays it straight and tragically--her howls of pain and anguish when she wakes up and discovers what he has done to her are compelling. He has mutilated her, left her bloody and mutilated, then run back to the man's world to show off his conquest. It's obviously deeply traumatic, and it certainly makes her vicious revenge feel proportionate to the crime. Also, have a mentioned--date rape in a Disney movie?<br />
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At the same time--did we really have to go there? It's kind of a cliche, or at least it veers horrifyingly close to one. How many cultural products use rape as a plot engine? Too many, that's how many.<br />
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I mean, I appreciate how the scene tracks what current research shows about sexual assault--it's predatory, perpetrated largely by men the victims already know, in which alcohol is used as a weapon. It's disorienting, it's violent, it leaves the victim vulnerable and without recourse. There is no justice system Maleficent can invoke, no retribution other than what she makes herself. In some ways, it's refreshing to see a "rape" scene not used for titillation, not used to be "edgy," not reinforcing old tropes about stranger danger or "what was she wearing that caused it?" In that way, it's a deeply feminist deployment of folklore as lesson and warning--the world is effed up, and this is how it happens.<br />
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On the other hand--she's a flying, magical being! She isn't human, and having her be subject to precisely this female human situation is kind of disheartening. It risks reducing her from a powerful and alien being to--a scorned female dumped by a boy? It doesn't help that after they kissed, he disappeared for years (decades?) and the movie tells us she would sit around and wonder what happened to him. Pined, even. She's got all the magic in the world, all the power, wings to fly, and we see her mooning over a boy. Why reduce her to something so cliched, so powerless? And then reinforce it with her getting roofed by the same boy and getting dumped. Again.<br />
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The movie makes this narrative too easy. I don't agree with it, but the elements are all there, and rather than adding sophistication to the plot, it simply makes the story too easily reduced to "girl without agency over-reacts and goes psycho over bad sexual encounter." The power and the majesty of the original 1959 Maleficent gets siphoned off into a depressingly common story of a girl getting revenge on the boy who dumped her.<br />
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I don't want this narrative to have any support in the story. I deeply wish the script hadn't tried to make the betrayal a personal one. I mean, if <i>anybody</i> had come into the fairy land, drugged the most powerful fairy and sawed off her wings, she would have been <i>pissed</i>. It doesn't add anything to her anger that it was someone she had kissed once, a very long time ago. In fact, the whole Stefan-Maleficent paring doesn't really work, so it doesn't add anything to the mix of fury and injury she experiences just because she knew him when they were kids. At least, I don't think so.<br />
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Think about how this might have been done differently. Instead of a pre-existing "relationship," Stefan had been shown to be a sly courtier, perhaps mocked and disliked by the knights and generals. He is not brave, but cunning, a characteristic not valued by the vaguely medieval/chivalric humans. When the king tasks his generals to kill Maleficent, the others are shown to be drawing up invasion plans, or building siege weapons, while weaselly Stefan uses his distasteful skills of manipulation and deceit to get the job done.<br />
<br />
One can imagine that he might have feigned injury, hobbled into the fairy kingdom and drawn Maleficent's attention by seeming weak and helpless. A Maleficent who hadn't ever encountered human perfidy (one who was as trusting as the child Maleficent the movie did show us) would likely have fallen for the ruse and the movie could have continued as plotted. Stefan would have been just as despicable, his death just as satisfying, without the "jilted and jealous ex-girlfriend" meta-narrative.<br />
<br />
I'm just saying. Make her terrible and awesome through the <i>whole</i> movie, and drop the "faithful spaniel awaiting her master's return" elements.<br />
<br />
<b>The nature of evil</b><br />
Face it--1959 Maleficent was <i>evil</i>. She wasn't invited to a christening, so she goes full metal postal on a baby's behind. Disproportionate use of deadly force, really. And there was no appeasing her, no reason to think that inviting her would have made the situation any better, really. So you just left her off the guest list and hoped she didn't hear about it. Because there was no telling what kind of sadistic mischief she might decide to enact, given any excuse at all.<br />
<br />
Her plan for the drawn out emasculation of Prince Philip in the original movie, for example, was a loooong game played for her own satisfaction. She was going to keep him in her dungeon for the hundred years that Aurora slept, releasing him when he was too old and decrepit to be the hero any longer. That was a stone cold beyotch-y move, that was.<br />
<br />
The movie tries to explain why she was that way, what led her to her vindictive cursing of the baby. By offering a backstory of personal trauma, the implicit contract of storytelling is "See! She's not evil, she is injured and misunderstood." Evil is only the lack of explaining the circumstances, and once you know the backstory, you can't see her as evil any longer.<br />
<br />
But this doesn't explain the nature of "evil," it merely moves the locus. Instead of residing in Maleficent, Evil lurks in the heart of the first king--the one who attacked the fairy lands to start the plot. He's got no explanation for his attack, there's no indication that he had any reason to grab for the land other than "it was there." There might be some gender politics in this--the human land was a kingdom, ruled by hierarchy and male power, while the fairy land was a kind of anarchy-syndicalist commune, overseen (but not <i>ruled</i>) by female power personified by Maleficent. The king's military assault is a coded sexual assault perhaps?<br />
<br />
But that again just makes that king Bad, the same kind of fiat evil that Maleficent had in the first movie. It doesn't illuminate anything other than--bad people do bad things because they are bad. I was hoping for something more complicated than that.<br />
<br />
Which, face it, isn't that what <i>Game of Thrones</i> is doing on a weekly basis for four seasons now? We see how people's actions have unintended consequences, that the "bad guys" have their own reasons for doing what turn out to be Bad Things (although Joffrey Baratheon and Ramsey Snow might be major exceptions), and even the Good Guys' actions sometimes have bad consequences. Danerys freed slaves, but then her dragons killed and ate some of the people, so Not All Good to be rescued by her perhaps. For example.<br />
<br />
In <i>Maleficent</i>, the titular character is no longer Simply Evil, but the king now is. Which is unsatisfying, and has ripple effects. Why do humans hate the fairy kingdom? The voice-over narration claims because humans are jealous of the beauty of The Moors. Srsly? "U R so jeeluz" is the explanation? Humans attacked because "Reasons?" Not good enough, Movie.<br />
<br />
<b>Gender Roles</b><br />
This is an issue that runs all over this movie, from the contrast between the stereotypical male hierarchy of the human kingdom contrasted with the horizontal arrangement in fairyland, to the way Stefan seems to have no emotional attachment to the women in his life (his queen, Maleficent and Aurora) compared to how they frequently seek his attention and approval. The big one is of course the rape, but even before that, there is a powerful scene of how a man won't respect a woman. Again, Maleficent is the victim.<br />
<br />
The perpetrator this time is the king--the one before Stefan, the one who decided for no apparent reason to invade and annex The Moors. He assembles his army, he attacks the border, and he gets his ass handed to him by Maleficent. Personally. She actually delivers the injury that ends up eventually killing him.<br />
<br />
You might think that this would be enough to change his mind about the wisdom of his plan--but you would be wrong. In fact, he doubles down, requiring all his generals to swear to continue to try to conquer The Moors. Since there's never been any season given for his imperialist drive, we just have to accept it as his nature. But it gets gendered when he singles out Maleficent for assassination.<br />
<br />
Sure, annex and colonize The Moors for the glory of the fatherland, but make <i>a personal point</i> of bringing in the head of the woman who dared to defeat the king. Because a Real Man doesn't take something like that as a final disposition. No way. The woman's "no" is just the starting point, and escalation and deceit and murder are all appropriate responses to being (temporarily) thwarted by a woman who won't just roll over and give a man what he wants. Which for this king is land and power. It's really just another form of rape, one that foreshadows Stefan's violation.<br />
<br />
This is also something that might go toward explaining the 50% rating this movie has on RT--if I were a man watching this film, I would feel really uncomfortable. I mean, there is <i>nothing</i> any man does in this movie that isn't violent and disgusting. (I'm excepting Diavlo, the raven sidekick, because he may not technically be a man. Also, I haven't really thought this through about him.) Even Philip is a laughing stock. There aren't any male figures to identify with--welcome to women's general movie-going experience, dudes!--which might be why as many as 50% of the RT critics didn't enjoy the movie and can't recommend it.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>It's Not Maternal Feelings That Save Maleficent</b><br />
I have read at least one disappointed review that reads Maleficent's arc as one of maternity--that she loses her anger by embracing her role as mother(-substitute) to Aurora. And if you read it that way, sure, it feels dismissive and reductive--that a pissed off woman just needs to find her true calling as a mother to get over whatever has happened to her. I get it--again, the movie is a bit too sloppy and so it makes this reading too easy to slip into.<br />
<br />
Which is disappointing for several reasons, a big one is that Maleficent hasn't been intriguing for over 50 years because she's <i>motherly</i>. She's a badass woman with power, and there are just too few of those in our lives. It's a fundamental betrayal of women's power to make <i>Maleficent</i> a story about how women just need to have babies. Second--I don't want Maleficent to get over Stefan's betrayal. As long as she is wingless, she has every reason to hate him and plot to destroy him as he destroyed her. His act has irretrievably damaged her <i>entire life</i>, and there is no question but that she is forcibly reminded of it every minute of every day, and "giving" her a baby to care for is <i>not</i> any kind of compensation.<br />
<br />
Yet the movie kind of makes that claim, doesn't it? Her righteous fury gets tamped down and ultimately becomes less important to her than watching Aurora grow up. (Don't even get started on the passive life Maleficent spends most of the movie living--she just watches and stalks Aurora for years, with no other activity shown for most of 16 years!) (After all the time she spent mooning after Stefan, now she moons over his daughter, which is <i>not</i> the behavior of the fairy who turns into a 70 foot tall fire breathing dragon when she's pissed.) I fully understand why plenty of people are pissed at this movie--it's so easily experienced as the systematic dismantling of female power and agency. Instead of a commanding and powerful fairy, she's turned into a hippie who wanders around the fields, unfulfilled without the man and child to "complete" her.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, there is another way to read this movie that is more in line with the feminist line I think Jolie and Woolverton were aiming for. Part of it is classic fairy tale irony--Maleficent falls victim to her own curse. By imbuing the baby with the "gift" of causing all who see her to fall in love with her (not something that will make it easy for her to walk down streets or past construction sites, for example), Maleficent finds herself falling in love as well, powerless to escape Aurora's charms, which Maleficent herself gave her.<br />
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But more empowering, and honestly, the way I experienced this movie as I watched it in the theater, is that Maleficent realized that her revenge on Stefan was damaging an innocent young woman, and that was simply unfair. Sure, in her rage, Maleficent struck at the thing more precious to Stefan than anything else, which at the moment of the christening <i>was</i> the baby. As a baby, Aurora had no real existence of her own, independent from her relationship with her parents. She was--as an infant--an object that existed in relation to Stefan and his queen. As she grew up, however, she became a person with her own agency, her own autonomy, a young woman who deserved respect for her self. To continue to use her as a vehicle for revenge would be to treat Aurora as Stefan had treated Maleficent: merely as means to an end, not as an end in herself.<br />
<br />
[Because fairy tale movies need a little Kantian philosophy now and then.]<br />
<br />
Secondarily, by this point, Aurora doesn't seem like a good vehicle for revenge anyway, since Stefan seemed perfectly capable of sending her away and never trying to see her for 16 years--not sure that a curse placed on her would have any real effect on Stefan anyway. (In fact, his spiraling paranoia and madness seem caused by his belief that Maleficent was going to return and attack him directly, <i>not</i> because he was worried about what was going to happen to Aurora. Arguably, his dismay at seeing her back a day early was strictly about self-protection--he wanted her far away from him when the curse struck.)<br />
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Which is rather cold hearted but practical--go ahead and take the curse off of Aurora, since it's not actually affecting Stefan in any real way, but <i>do it because</i> Aurora doesn't deserve to be cursed, and Maleficent is not willing to erase another woman's personhood the way Stefan did to her.<br />
<br />
I like this explanation, but I fully understand that it's not really presented <i>by the movie</i> in a very strong manner. It's certainly not clear enough to overpower the narrative that "maternal feelings make her better" that others have seen and properly object to.<br />
<br />
<b>The Geopolitics</b><br />
At the start of the movie, we see a hierarchical human kingdom, and are told it contrasts with the co-operative, jointly run fairy world. I was seeing this as a kind of "male versus female" set up, and I don't think that was a mistake. Much of this movie can be read as working out fundamentally feminist concepts about gender difference, gender violence, and the consequences.<br />
<br />
So what are we to make of the ending of the movie? Where Maleficent places some kind of crown on Aurora's head and presents her to the magical creatures as "your new ruler." I mean, I guess Maleficent assumed some kind of role as ruler, seeing as how she led the fairy army against the humans? We don't really see her as somebody who has any enforceable authority, so if she does have it, where did it come from? It's not like she spends a lot of time doing anything like "ruling" after all. She's mostly hovering over Aurora, hiding in the brush. If she did get some sort of authority over The Moors by her military leadership, then that makes fairyland a military dictatorship, which also isn't either supported by the movie or very feminist.<br />
<br />
This question only matters because of the "reconciliation" the movie tries to achieve in the last few moments, when Aurora "unites" the two kingdoms by ruling over both of them. We don't see any mingling of the two worlds--are we to believe that magic crosses over the border into the human world? Do we really think that opening The Moors to human colonization is going to look anything like a wholesale land grab that will make the settling of Oklahoma look like a child's party game? I just don't believe that the hierarchy of the human kingdom will accept its own dismantling on the orders of an underaged teenage girl who technically is the "ruler," but has no military experience or any allies in the human world.<br />
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What would really happen is that Aurora would be swiftly married off to the son of the most powerful general, and that general would rule as "regent" while allowing Aurora to be no more than a figurehead and mascot. Her "real" job would be to produce a male heir and to give legitimacy to the male dominated shadow ruler. Her people would "love" her, but there is no reason to believe that a "good" girl is necessarily a "good" ruler.<br />
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The genocide of the fairy would certainly start small, with settlers grabbing land and resources and then forcing the fairy into smaller and smaller reservations. Any sympathy Aurora showed toward the magical beings would swiftly be cast as "evil bewitchment of our Queen" or "blood treason" for failing to side with her own species. Obviously, she would be found unfit to rule, and further marginalized and/or imprisoned for her own good.<br />
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I mean, look what happened when magical creatures came into the human world--a giant dragon was turned loose in the castle, burned the place down, and King Stefan was brutally murdered in his own home. You can't trust those magicals, and certainly you can't trust Maleficent, who caused all of it. No, obviously, The Moors have to be dominated and magic suppressed.<br />
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I don't see why Maleficent would think "uniting the two kingdoms" would be a good idea at all. I mean, by crowning Aurora as ruler of The Moors, she has just completed the invasion the evil first king attempted, just as a bloodless coup rather than a military action. This is not going to end well for The Moors. Just saying.<br />
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<b>Maleficent as Angelina Jolie</b><br />
It is incredibly tempting to read this movie as a recap of the career of its star. Angelina Jolie burst into fame as the young and talented star of <i>Gia</i> and <i>Girl, Interrupted</i>. She was odd, beautiful, powerful, and distinctly witchy. She made out with her brother, was estranged from her father, tattooed and wore a vial of Billy Bob Thornton's blood around her neck. Her extended tabloid role as "Jennifer Aniston's nemesis" was kind of the apotheosis of her eerie and unsettling phase.<br />
<br />
(Personally, I took issue with this--why was Angelina at "fault" and not Brad Pitt, who was the <i>actual person in a marriage with another woman. </i>Thank you, patriarchy.)<br />
<br />
After divorcing Thornton, though, Jolie entered a maternal phase, ending up with six children, and a more "normal" life as a mother. She has apparently indicated that <i>Maleficent</i> might be her last acting role, as she steps aside (as Maleficent does for Aurora) for her UN good will ambassador work and directing and producing.<br />
<br />
<b>A Final Word About <i>Sleeping Beauty</i></b><br />
On the Slate Culture Gabfest podcast, one of the gabsters expressed disgust at the essential inertness of the Sleeping Beauty myth. "She has no agency, because she's asleep" sums up her position, and she opined that there was no need to ever make another movie about this particular fairy tale.<br />
<br />
And I get it, but again, I think it misses the real story of the fairy tale--which is easy to do, because the story itself misdirects us. After all, it's called "Sleeping Beauty," so you might very well think that's who it is about. From that perspective, it is pervasively passive. I mean, Aurora has no achievements of her own--her beauty, her kindness, her lovability are all bestowed on her by fairies, and require no effort on her part. Then she falls asleep, and she simply waits to be picked by a prince who at least has to take the action of seeking her out. But even he just falls passively "in love"--again, through no effort on Aurora's part.<br />
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It's the same part of the culture that gives us Miss America pageants, or <i>The Bachelor</i>, where women display themselves in the hopes that their inherent characteristics will cause others (the ones who do have agency) will pick them out of the line up and make their dreams come true.<br />
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That's if you think it's her story, or even the story of her generation. I submit that the real reason this story exists is for the older generation--her parents.<br />
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Think about it. The story starts with the abbreviated acknowledgement that the king and queen long wished for a child, and Aurora was finally born. This is a story about dynastic succession, expectations of performance and national stability (how can you not think about Henry VIII's life-long quest for a male heir), as well as personal heartbreak, fear of personal inadequacy and failure, as well as relationship stress. Infertility might be understood as a sign of divine displeasure, a failure as a "true" man or woman, a threat to the continuation of the particular nation-state, as well as the loss of a dream of family. In the quasi-feudal state, childlessness may be a sentence of death once the parents are too old to care for themselves as well--there is no Social Security or Medicare, only your children to care for you in your dotage. This is a rocky road the king and queen have been on, one only temporarily alleviated by the birth of their daughter.<br />
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Their only child. They aren't likely to have another one as well, as this one was so difficult to achieve. All their hopes have to be pinned on her.<br />
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Whatever fragile stability her birth might have granted, it is immediately threatened by Maleficent's curse--the child will die.<br />
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Now imagine the rest of the story as experienced by the parents, shorn of the "by attempting to evade the destiny, you only cause it" fairy tale trappings, and it's pretty obviously a comforting tale with Christian overtones.<br />
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You daughter died young. But she's not really dead, she's only asleep. She will never age, or fade, but will lie peacefully until her resurrections, when the Prince (of Peace, a/k/a Jesus) will come and awaken her with True (godly) Love's kiss. Then you will be reunited with her, to live Happily Ever After (in heaven)! Sure, time will pass (a hundred years), and your castle will be overgrown and forgotten (you too will die, everyone you know will die, no one will remember you in the future) except the prince, who will come, and will awaken all of you, and you will live again.<br />
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Seems pretty obvious to me, once I thought of it.Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-75763069753185583072014-06-04T09:41:00.000-05:002014-06-04T09:41:25.439-05:00A Screenplay Thought ExperimentIf you were going to write an explicitly feminist* movie, what would it look like? Especially in the immediate aftermath of the Isla Vista shootings, how could you present female experience in a visual form, one which might even show a strong woman in adverse circumstances responding in a manner that could be empowering?<br />
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You might decide to present gendered experiences broadly, using archetypes rather than specific, individuated characters, so you might decide to draw on fairy tales and myths. That way, you could concentrate on broad patterns rather than specific details.<br />
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You might start with adjoining territories to represent the different genders. Men would be represented by a kingdom, ruled by a warrior king in shining armor, surrounded by his generals and army--an image of privilege, hierarchy, and power, with the traditions of oath-taking and honor associated with it. There would be a castle, there would be armaments, there would be the harnessing of resources to forge the weapons that support the power of the king: forges, smelting ovens, the sweaty and dirty work of provisioning the army.<br />
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In contrast, the female realm might be entirely the opposite--in order to highlight the different ways of being. So, lots of nature, beings living in nests in trees rather than stone castles, for example. There would be interactions with nature, maybe (to pursue the mythic themes) represented by magical creatures: water creatures, things that live in the air, sentient plants, things like that. Maybe even a land that had no fixed governmental system? Cooperative co-existence even.<br />
<br />
Then you would have to bring the two into conflict, right? Because there is no story if there is no conflict, and "the battle of the sexes" is a handy metaphor.** So you might send the king and his army to conquer the adjoining kingdom, which has the advantage of being an exciting visual that will help get your movie green lit. It deepens the dichotomy--the men invade, the women defend.<br />
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[This part of the screenplay says "war, war, war; stabbity stab stab; fairies defend, king gets defeated and mortally wounded." Next scene, king's death bed.]<br />
<br />
<a href="http://whenwomenrefuse.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">When women refuse, men escalate.</a> Although he is dying, the king passes the battle down to the next generation, offering his crown and his daughter to the man who kills the fairy who defeated him. But you don't want a repeat of this particular battle set-piece, plus, there are more strategies possible, so you make the next guy more subtle, yet creepier. So why not a roofie and a rape.<br />
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Well, not exactly "a roofie and a rape," because who's going to make that movie? Fortunately, fairy tales have a vocabulary, so you can make it a "magical potion" and "bringing back an identifiable body part." Then, when the fairy wakes up, she can get mad and avenge herself, setting up another battle set piece.<br />
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But, a single woman who complains of her treatment at the hands of a man isn't going to be supported. The bros will close ranks and she's going to be told it was her fault. So she has to do something sneaky to get her revenge--and since she's a fairy she can use magic against him, or against someone close to him so he has to watch and suffer.<br />
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But it's going to turn out that this doesn't make the fairy feel better at all, as an time passes and her revenge grinds on, she has a change of heart, and finds her ability to forgive --for her own happiness. Because forgiving is something you do for yourself, not for the person you forgive. You do it because it's tiring to carry around all that anger and fury. <a href="http://goto.bilkent.edu.tr/gunes/ZEN/zenstories1.htm" target="_blank">Like the monk who carried a girl across a river</a>: he set her down at the other side of the river, but you are still carrying her miles later. So, for the fairy's own peace of mind, she has to outgrow the need for revenge.<br />
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So let's write the scenes that show the fairy as she calms herself, and does indeed outgrow the need for revenge. [The first draft of this screenplay says "How does she do this? What does she do? Fill this part in later."] These are intercut with scenes of the kingdom falling into chaos in response. In the end, the women's mode of being--forgiveness, moving on. The family members used as weapons to get to the man--see them as people in their own right, not stop using them as if they are mere accessories to the man who raped you.<br />
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Of course, there will have to be a couple more fight sequences, this is a Hollywood screenplay after all, but then have the man cause his own destruction from his paranoid response, and let fairyland return to it's organic balance.<br />
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But who is going to want to see this movie? It needs a hook, right? So the screenwriter looks around for a property that already has cultural capital, has a built in audience, can be positioned as a sequel or a franchise.<br />
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Ladies and gentlemen, I give you <i>Maleficent.</i><br />
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*For a given value of "feminist."<br />
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**And also, because you are angry perhaps. About what? <a href="http://time.com/114043/yesallwomen-hashtag-santa-barbara-shooting/" target="_blank">Just pick one.</a><br />
<br />Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-67225325084352196922014-05-22T19:51:00.002-05:002014-05-22T19:51:37.167-05:00Once On This Island--Death Wins, You Guys! Open Your Eyes!Saw my younger daughter's production of <i>Once On This Island</i> over the weekend, and guys--how does storytelling get this bad? It's a gloss on Hans Christian Andersen's <i>Little Mermaid</i>, but set on land with added Haitian/vodoun flavor. The music is catchy, the lyrics less so, the plot--uff da!<br />
<br />
Shall we? First, I think we can all assume we know the basic plot of <i>Little Mermaid</i>, so now just make it on an island. Instead of living in the sea and looking up onto land, Our Heroine Ti Moune is a lowly peasant looking up the socio-economic ladder to a wealthy boy-man. Instead of a boat, she sees him in a car. As when the boat sinks, the car crashes in a storm and she saves the wealthy son of the island, Daniel. She goes to him, only to find that while he's happy to keep her in his room (where she makes him "rise like yeast" and she "heals" him), he's going to marry the socially appropriate woman he has been betrothed to since childhood. When offered her former life back if she kills the boy, she can't bring herself to plunge the dagger and dies instead. She gains an afterlife of sorts, as a tree.<br />
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When Andersen did it, it was a romance deeply enmeshed with questions of soul and salvation. The mermaids had no immortal soul, and turned into foam on the shore when they died. By becoming human, The Mermaid (did she even have a name?) could earn a soul, but she died before then. Instead, she became a spirit of the air, living in a sort of purgatory of good works, with the promise of earning her way to salvation. This is complicated stuff.<br />
<br />
Ti Moune sees a boy in a fast car and falls in "love."<br />
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Oh, but wait! He's unconscious for days, and she watches over him, never eating or sleeping. So again, what about him is lovable? Is it the drool seeping from the corner of his mouth? The way he has to be cleaned up after, since he's unconscious and can't use a bedpan? Because that doesn't sound all that attractive to me. Unless she likes the power differential, where he's essential a baby or a doll, with no agency of his own? The more I try to figure out what there is that makes this "love" the more disturbing the story becomes.<br />
<br />
Oh, but there is a Broadway Explanation! See, there are gods who rule this island, and Erzulie, the Goddess of Love, has intervened. She has (arguably) caused Ti Moune to fall in love, and then she makes Daniel fall in love--for a given value of "love." Because Ti Moune knows nothing about Daniel and doesn't get a chance to, because "unconscious" and Daniel doesn't love her enough to marry her. Okay.<br />
<br />
Also, the gods have a bet that Love can conquer Death. So the whole car accident thing is a set up so the two meet and they can test which is stronger. It's like a Immortal version of arm wrestling?<br />
<br />
So "love" here is "seeing a guy in a car" then "cleaning his butt"? To be fair, there is a short duet they sing before he goes back to his big mansion. She decides she needs to go with him, saying "he is in my blood and I am in his." Not sure why she's so sure of this, as most of the time, he's been UNCONSCIOUS<i>. </i> Maybe she's invented blood transfusions?<br />
<br />
Anyway, she is convinced that if she goes to him, he will marry her (why?) and she leaves. As a grumpy old soul with a cold dead heart, I look at this and I see "oh! She's young, so she is stupid." But the play doesn't really back this up, and it doesn't ever ask her to stop and see if she is making good choices. In fact, the play barrels on, encouraging her to chase this boy (but--if he was really interested, he could come to her. He knows where she lives!) to the degree that the Earth Goddess actually leads her to him, while the trees and frogs and breezes etc. sing along. Very lovely musically, but seriously messed up. She is making a bad decision for herself, and nothing in the play really acknowledges it.<br />
<br />
Once in the Hotel Beauxhommes, she finds Daniel, and he doesn't remember her. At all. In fact, he threatens to call security on her. "But, I'm the one who made you well," she says. "The gods sent me to you!" Yeah, well, maybe they did, or maybe they didn't, but Daniel has a beautiful young woman throwing herself at him. A peasant, in fact, so not even a "real" person--not someone he has any responsibility to, because of class and/or racial lines. In fact, there is a history of his ancestors who came to the island and took their pleasure from the women who served them, before going back to France, leaving the mixed race offspring trapped on the island. So--we don't think this is marriage plot still, do we? Why does Ti Moune?<br />
<br />
(Because she is young and stupid--even if nobody on stage really knows that.)<br />
<br />
Then comes the slut shaming. "What does he want with a woman like THAT" is a song, in which the gossips make demeaning sexual innuendoes about how she is "healing"him. Daniel's father makes a short cameo, sympathizing that he understands the appeal of a peasant girl, but making clear that Daniel will be expected to do the right things when the time comes--which is not going to be marrying Ti Moune. Obviously.<br />
<br />
Well, so far not so good. We have sexual opportunism, we have slut shaming of Ti Moune (not so much of Daniel, because the Double Standard is alive and well and living On This Island), and we have major social barriers between them that Daniel understands and that Ti Moune apparently does not. But--there might be hope, right? I mean, perhaps they are like Romeo and Juliet, who stand together against the artificial barriers placed against them, and by their example change the social mores. That could happen, and that would be a way for this play to comment on the deeply misogynistic and classist assumptions and critique them.<br />
<br />
Or, there could be this "love" song instead. Daniel wraps his arms around Ti Moune and sings this:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Some girls take hours to paint every perfect nail</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Fragrant as flowers, all powdered and prim and pale.</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">But you are as wild as that wind-blown tree,</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">As dark and as deep as the midnight sea.</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">While they're busy dressing, you lie here, warm and bold.</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Some girls you picture, some you hold.</span></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Some girls take courses at all the best schools in France</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Riding their horses and learning their modern dance.</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">They're clever and cultured and worldly wise.</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">But you see the world through a child's wide eyes.</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Their dreams are grand ones, you want what's just in reach.</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Some girls you learn from, some you teach.</span></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">You are not small talk or shiny cars</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Or mirrors or French cologne.</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">You are the river, the moon, the stars.</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">You're no one else I've known.</span></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Some girls take pleasure in buying a fine trousseau,</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Counting each treasure and tying each tiny bow.</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">They fold up their futures with perfumed hands</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">While you face the future with no demands.</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Some girls expect things others think nothing of.</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Some girls you marry, some you love.</span></span></blockquote>
It's creepy! I mean, it's completely entitled and spells out that Daniel doesn't see Ti Moune as a real person--he likes her for all the demands that she doesn't make, the dreams she doesn't have. This is almost a form of grooming--she's not like those other girls, with their demands to be taken seriously, to be educated and to have their own interests and needs. No! Ti Moune just exists, with none of her own wants, just to fill Daniel's sexual needs!<br />
<br />
This song would be bad enough if it were presented as a dilemma song, where Daniel was really considering the choice between the two women, trying to understand his own mind. But as a song presented as a love song, actually song <i>to</i> Ti Moune, it's a series of red flags that if the girl had even an ounce of critical concern for herself, she would at least catch on. She's not the "some girl" that you marry--that's going to be someone else.<br />
<br />
But no, Ti Moune gets blind-sided when she is finally let out of Daniel's room and introduced to his fiancee. To the play's credit, the fiancee does scold Daniel for leaving the situation unexplained to Ti Moune--she's not a bitch, and she's genuinely sorry for the circumstances, but she is the fiancee, and what Ti Moune is, well there isn't really a word for it, is there. (Mistress. Lover. Concubine. These are choices.)<br />
<br />
What should Ti Moune do now? Well, for a play written in 1990, shouldn't she do something proactive? Expressive of her personhood, her right to be treated with dignity, acknowledging her agency in her own life?<br />
<br />
No, what happens is the demon of death shows up, and tells her that she will have to die unless she kills Daniel. (Yes, this was set up earlier, where Ti Moune offered her soul to the demon in order to spare Daniel, and now he is coming to collect the debt.) This is sort of the moment when love and death are tested--I guess? Death points out that Daniel has betrayed her, so why should she die for him? If she kills the love she had for him--literally, by taking the knife and killing Daniel--she can have her old life back, as if she had never loved at all.<br />
<br />
In the Andersen story, the mermaids sisters come and offer her the chance to return to the sea. Killing the prince will turn her legs back into a fish tail, she will have her 300 year lifespan back, and she won't die when the sun rises. She's got big stakes here.<br />
<br />
By contrast, Ti Moune kills Daniel and--she goes back to being a peasant? This is the offer? Contrary to what the play says, this isn't the choice between love and death--it's the choice between being a murderer and being a martyr. Ti Moune is confronted with a choice between a violent and criminal act, or dying <i>for</i> love. There's not really an opposition of emotional states here. I think Death has mischaracterized the win condition for himself. It's more like he's shooting the moon in hearts--he could win on points, but he's decided not to.<br />
<br />
So, Ti Moune doesn't kill Daniel, but gets thrown out of the Hotel and plants herself by the locked gates for the next two weeks. The point of this is? It's like she's doing the Nice Guy™ thing, where if she's just around long enough, he will reward her. Does the play really expect that he is going to ditch his fiancé? Does the audience expect Ti Moune will get anything but the Madame Butterfly treatment? Now it's just humiliating for the poor girl, a humiliation which is driven home by Daniel and his new bride coming to the gates to pass out coins as for good luck.<br />
<br />
So, Ti Moune dies. Before we tally up the win/loss results for the gods, let's look at the lyrics of the penultimate song:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">And the gods began to cry- tears of compassion for the orphan, </span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Ti Moune, Who proved that love could withstand the storm, cross the earth, </span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">and survive even in the face of death.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Erzulie took her by the hand</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">And led her to the sea</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Where Agwe wrapped her in a wave</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">And laid her to her rest</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">And Papa Ge was gentle</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">As he carried her to shore</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">And Asaka accepted her</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">And held her to her breast.</span></span></blockquote>
Regardless of what is happening on stage, the words tell us that the Goddess of Love basically takes Ti Moune to go drown herself. Love hands her over to Death. Love has her kill herself, because that's a victory for love? No, a victory for love would have been for her to go on living, instead of seeking oblivion from the pain of thwarted love. What the play <i>shows</i> us (as opposed to telling us) is that it is better to die from heartbreak, and by dying, you prove the strength of your love.<br />
<br />
Again--Love and Death are not in opposition--they reinforce each other. Love is so strong that it invites Death, Death is preferable to Love unrequited. I call shenanigans on the lyrics that "Ti Moune proved" anything like what the plays says she proved. In fact, it's just the same tired trope of an exotic girl deemed to be socially inappropriate to marry (but not to sleep with) so she dies.<br />
<br />
But because we are in theory more enlightened than the Victorians, we are going to claim that her death changed things! Not just the "girl who dies for the man she loves" but that her death broke the racial/class divide between the peasants and the Grands Hommes. How does this happen? Well, the dead Ti Moune gets turned into a tree (yeah, I know) that breaks the gates of the Hotel Beauxhommes so it cannot be closed.<br />
<br />
Well, maybe that's a start, but what about the wildly unequal distribution of wealth? The peasants are still going to be the ones laboring in the fields, right? The existence of a tree and a broken gate isn't going to accomplish any wealth redistribution or land reform, doesn't compel the Grands Hommes to give up their cars or champagne <i>necessarily</i>. The capital of the island isn't suddenly held in common as an anarcho-syndicalist commune.<br />
<br />
The lyrics tell us this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">And one day as Daniel's young son sat in the shade of the tree</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">He noticed a beautiful young peasant girl high in the branches</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Looking out at the world</span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">And the spirit of Ti Moune touched their hearts</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">And set them free to love.</span></span></blockquote>
But--but--but--"love" was not the problem. The Grands Hommes were "free" to "love" the peasant women, and had done so for generations. The problem was social conventions, family alliances, religious and cultural isolation, economic disparities, which little boys playing under trees aren't dismantling, no matter how upbeat the music is.<br />
<br />
And really, Haiti remains a desperately poor island, with poverty remaining intractable for generations. Wealth remains concentrated in the hands of the very very few, while the majority of the population remains essentially peasants. Telling the story of Ti Moune doesn't challenge the fundamental causes of economic mismanagement, and seems to actually reinforce the idea that human effort is futile in the face of the whims of uncontrollable supernatural forces. But with a lovely samba beat!<br />
<br />
The moral of the story is not that Love Conquers All--the <i>real</i> moral of the story is that humanity is mere meat puppets to the gods, and we all die anyway. But we are welcome to delude ourselves about that by singing in a major key.<br />
<br />
The End.<br />
<br />
<br />Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-30540693454671310892014-05-04T16:37:00.001-05:002014-05-04T16:37:07.849-05:00Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a reviewDid this movie make sense? Or were the holes really as big as they seemed to me.<br />
<br />
I will admit upfront that I am not versed in the Marvel Comics Universe. Actually, I never really read comics because--as a word person--they only lasted about 6 minutes. I blew through them for the dialog, and the pictures might as well have been white space. So I don't have the background knowledge that might have been obvious if I read the source material.<br />
<br />
That said, I have seen all of the current <i>Avengers</i>-adjacent movies, dating back to the first RDJ <i>Iron Man</i>, so I'm not completely ignorant. I am also a sentient being who lives in 21st Century America, so I do know about superheroes.<br />
<br />
But this one? So much going on, and so much plot, which is never quite explained in a way that makes any sense to me. Some of this is probably going to be nitpicking, but some of these failures go to the whole premise of the movie.<br />
<br />
<b>1. What was the deal with that ship that was attacked by French mercenaries?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Many/most/all action movies start with an action set-piece, establishing relationships between characters and setting the plot into motion. In this case, Captain America and Black Widow are rescuing SHIELD hostages from a SHIELD ship which is cruising around the Malaysian seas. There is one officer, the bald, ethnically ambiguous "Jason Sitwell" (if he's an officer, why doesn't he have a title?) and some number of unnamed people. The French mercenaries stalk around, screaming threats that the killings are going to start in two minutes. None of the SHIELD employees makes any effort to free themselves, distract the mercenaries, scuttle the ship, anything. They all sit quietly--even the alleged "officer" Sitwell--hoping not to get picked as the first hostage to be killed.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, the head mercenary is allegedly trying to contact SHIELD to negotiate a ransom. But the offices are closed for the night? He's getting a busy signal? Perhaps his call has been transferred to the night messaging service, which will take down his number and pass on the information in the morning?<br />
<br />
I guess we are supposed to recognize that "Officer" Sitwell is a shady character, because he doesn't do anything to protect the people he presumably is leading. He does mutter under his breath a lot, though.<br />
<br />
Cap and his team arrive, pick off the mercenaries, rescue the the hostages, and are about to get away when Black Widow fails to make rendezvous. She is busy downloading a bunch of data from the ship, "it's always a good idea to back up your hard drive" which leaves an opening for some more shooting and jumping through windows.<br />
<br />
So--what the hell was that all about? Why does SHIELD even <i>have</i> a ship that cruises around the Malaysian peninsula anyway? What data does it have that doesn't exist elsewhere, and how did it get it? What is this MacGuffin anyway?<br />
<br />
Then, given what we know by the end of the movie, perhaps it was a Hydra run ship? So the Good Guy SHIELD faction thought it was fishy and staged the whole thing as a way to get to the data? That's the only thing that makes any sense to me, and I'm not sure it does make sense. but <i>if</i> the ship had information that was hidden from regular SHIELD access, and Nick Fury figured that out, then HE was the one who hired the mercenaries, AND he is the one who sent in Cap to "rescue" those hostages, BECAUSE the whole thing was an elaborate scheme to get Black Widow onto that ship to make copies of the data--then that should be much more clearly spelled out. Because it goes to the whole premise of the movie: that you don't know who you can trust.<br />
<br />
Even that is heavily retconned, based on the fact that Robert Redford (in a comic book movie? Obviously, he's going to be the Bad Guy!) tells Cap that Fury is the one who hired the mercenaries, thus setting up Cap's dilemma. As such, it had to be true that Fury set up the situation, because otherwise, it just looks like a smooth dude in a suit doing what government officials <i>always</i> do in these kind of stories--try to make achieve their evil ends by making the Good Guys look bad.<br />
<br />
So I think there was supposed to be a double twist there, but because it was so badly explained, it didn't look twisty at all. Robert Redford shows up in a comic book movie, wearing an expensive suit and handling glamorous technology, as the "Secretary" of some unnamed department, and he talks smack about Nick Fury. <i>Nick Fury!</i> The guy who has been behind the entire assemblage of Avengers; who has lost an eye in the service of Goodness; who is Samuel L. Jackson--and this movie thinks we are going to suspect <i>him</i> of doing nefarious Bad Guy Stuff? I don't think so!<br />
<br />
<b>2. Who is in charge here?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Redford's unnamed department raises questions as well. He's part of a "World Security Council"--but who is that? They clearly are not part of a single world government, since they talk about "national waters" and threats to their individual countries. But where does SHIELD get all this money to build all these incredibly huge helicarriers, to train all these quasi-military troops? I could kind of understand it if they were a strictly American operation, but the determinedly international nature of the "Council" makes it seem like it's like a U.N. force? Again--where does all this money for all this equipment come from? And how does this version of SHIELD line up with Tony Stark's ethical refusal to continue to sell arms?<br />
<br />
At the end, when Black Widow is being grilled by blowhards in some kind of committee hearing, it's not a Congressional hearing (which is what it looked like it should be) because there was a huge logo on the wall that said "Department of Defense." But that was not a court martial--it was definitely people posturing in front of cameras. So who is in charge of SHIELD anyway? Given how much money they obviously have for technology and weaponry, somebody is going to have to have oversight to make sure the money is not wasted, at <i>least</i>.<br />
<br />
<b>3. Who ARE these SHIELD employees anyway?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Okay, so HYDRA has infiltrated SHIELD. . .somehow. And turned people who thought they were working for an organization that kept people safe from Bad Guys, into people who would impersonate DC cops, use automatic weapons in the street, against <i>their own boss</i>, without question? Not one of those guys ever even questioned why they were using SWAT tactics against Nick Fury? <i>In the middle of civilian DC???</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Not one guy ever said "hey? Let's not attack him when he's inside his armored SUV on a public throughway. We know where this guy lives. We know where his office is. We know where he buys his suits, eats his lunch, takes his mom out for Mother's Day. Maybe we could be just a <i>little</i> less conspicuous about this?"<br />
<br />
Nobody says "Wait, why are we attacking <i>Captain Freaking America</i> inside our work elevator?" Did anybody--<i>anybody at all</i> ever ask about "if we are the good guys, why are we trying to kill the symbol of our nation?" I can kind of understand why a guy like Robert Redford's character would be interested in preemptively killing identifiable bad guys--the whole Insight program just makes his job a whole lot easier, with a lot less paper work to boot. Sure--he can see that this is a way to clear that pesky in box, permanently. He's removed from the situation. He can sit back and pretend that the people he identified as "problems" (including Fury and Cap) just "go away" on his orders. So clean, so bloodless.<br />
<br />
And then, there are the thugs who actually have to execute the orders. All the people who. . .acquired. . .the fake DC police cars and uniforms, the ones who pulled out the huge guns and the tripod for the battering ram, the ones who shot through city buses to try to hit the fleeing Fury, the ones who conducted the high speed chase through the streets--none of them ever <i>once</i> pulled a punch, thought better of maybe not incurring civilian casualties? Nope. Total ruthlessness.<br />
<br />
So where did these guys come from? These are not people who were recruited after the aliens attacked New York, or thought they could help battle a power mad Loki. Because those people would have Fury's back. Those people would not just accept Pierce's order to murder their own people.<br />
<br />
<b>4. Teaser, or proof HYDRA is still evil?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Once the algorithm is loaded onto the helicarriers, a bunch of targets show up. They flicker by fast, but they are all on the eastern coast of the US. I saw the name of the President (Marvel version) show up as a target, and apparently "Tony Stark" was there as well. So--does this just prove that the "evidence" of future crimes is just wrong? Or are we going to see a criminal President in future movies?<br />
<br />
This matters, because if the algorithm is wrong, or HYDRA is really just plotting to get into power, then the whole ethical question of preemptive strikes goes away. Pierce tries to sell the Council on the idea that Project Insight can prevent obvious evil by doing away with the criminals before the crime happens. If such a thing were possible, it is at least a compelling ethical dilemma. But if the whole system targets innocent people, then there is no dilemma, there is just killing and a huge power grab.<br />
<br />
Which leads me to the next point.<br />
<br />
<b>5. What is all this "data" you think you have?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Natasha Romanoff downloads a bunch of "data" from the ship in the first set piece. What "data" was there? Who collected it, what was it used for, why was it being stored on a ship anyway? Later, in a stand-off with Pierce, he tries to talk her out of publishing the "data" because it will be damaging to her reputation as well. But what is it? Oh, never mind, it's a much a MacGuffin as the "Tesseract" and "Aether" were in other Marvel movies.<br />
<br />
But the big plot hole here is the problem of the "Zola Algorithm." Somehow, this guy seems to have dumped his brain into a bunch of computers which are housed in a secret underground bunker in an abandoned military base. From there--somebody (who?) has patched a USB port and presumably an internet connection (is this even possible? I doubt it) so Zola can data mine the world's digital trails to pick out which 20 million are security threats. (We have to also hand wave the possibility that there may be "threats" by people who are not on social media--hello Afghanistan!)<br />
<br />
Apparently, nobody tested the algorithm? They just uploaded it onto weaponized helicarriers and accepted that whoever was named was worth killing? But. . .but. . .but--surely there were some big money donors (those helicarriers are hella-expensive!) and cronies and HYDRA leaders whose names WOULD have come up. Kind of awkward if the algorithm identifies somebody on the helicarrier itself and shoots into the body of the aircraft! Or reveals somebody's divided loyalties, right there, out in the open.<br />
<br />
There is no way even an Alexander Pierce would authorize the uploading of an untested algorithm. That would require (among other things) absolute trust in Zola. And there is famously no honor among thieves. That program would have been vetted for political reasons, as well as routinely beta tested for bugs. Which again increases the number of people who would have had to be aware of the program, thus increasing the number of places it would have been challenged or leaked.<br />
<br />
<b>6. Winter Soldier, where have you been all my life?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
According to several reviews I have read, the Winter Soldier is "Soviet trained"--presumably this is from the comics canon. But it raises some problems for a movie franchise that is set in the present/near future. Namely--there is no longer a "Soviet" bad guy, which is increasingly problematic the farther away we get from 1991, the date of the formal dissolution of the USSR. Scarlett Johannson --I mean, "Black Widow" would have been 7, far too young to have been KGB.<br />
<br />
But let's assume we can also retcon an underground KGB that simply went underground, and while not <i>officially</i> KGB, was effectively so and that's who trained Natasha Romanoff. And Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier. How did Alexander Pierce get his hands on him? Where has he been being kept, and how did all that mind-wiping equipment get transported to the US, where he could be deployed? I'm absolutely not understanding how this guy gets from where he "died" in 1944 to where he's recognizing Steve Rogers while punching him out on a helicarrier. Is Winter Soldier part of HYDRA? Is he part of top secret SHIELD? Where has he been--physically--for the intervening 70 years? If he was a Soviet answer to Cap, what happened to him after 1991?<br />
<br />
<b>Yeah, I know. Just relax, it's only a movie.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Sure, but it's a movie that aspires to a bit more than just blowing things up. The script does take on questions of drone warfare, domestic surveillance, the costs of war, and the lost values of mid-Century America. I am asking for the mechanics of the plot to be explained, because unless they are explained, this is just a boxing match between two essentially invincible characters, and that's not something I would bother to go see.<b> </b>Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-46547796144962056282014-04-24T10:30:00.001-05:002014-04-24T10:31:47.277-05:00The Grand Budapest Hotel, a Review<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Charming. Delightful. And possibly more than that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Synopsis: a nested series of framing devices move
us from the present day back to the fall and winter of 1932, in a fictional
country of Zubrowka in what appears to be eastern Europe. The eponymous hotel
sits atop a mountain like a giant pink pastry, reached (via stop motion
animation, it appears) by a tram that itself is built like a series of steps to
accommodate the extreme angle of the mountain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The interior of the hotel is gorgeous as well:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In 1932, the hotel is run to exacting standards by
M. Gustave H (Ralph Finnes), a man with fanatical devotion to detail and a
willingness to provide sexual comfort to the wealthy elderly ladies who come to
the hotel precisely for M. Gustave.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Prominently featured is Madame D (Tilda Swinton)
with a bouffant swirl of white hair perched like a Dairy Queen ice cream atop
her head.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Her devotion and reliance on M. Gustave is
quickly sketched, and then suddenly, she is dead. Gustave takes newly hired
Lobby Boy Zero (Tony Revolori, one of the few actors not already hugely famous)
to her estate and arrives at the reading of the will. Madame D has left him a
priceless painting, and her grasping son Dmitri (Adrien Brody) accuses Gustave
of murdering her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Imprisoned and awaiting trial, Gustave continues to
bring his full personality to the job of wheeling a "meal cart" to
the cells, offering the mush as if it were a <i>carte de patisseries</i>. He
endears himself to a group of four men who are plotting their escape. Gustave
manages to obtain "digging tools"--the most delicate and ridiculous
looking tiny items--by having them smuggled inside the pastries made by Zero's
fiancée, Agatha (Saorise Ronan).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">One Great Escape later, Gustave and Zero are
pursued by the ruthlessly murderous Jopling (Willem DeFoe) who leaves a trail
of bodies in his wake. Upon their return to the GBH, they see it is being
converted to military use by the the fictive ZZ, the proto-Nazis of this movie.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> No surprise, Dmitri is apparently a high ranking member. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: center;">(And Owen Wilson cameos as the Quisling concierge.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">After Dmitri and Gustave accuse each other of
murdering Madame D, a second will comes to light (to be executed only in the
event of Madame D's murder) which leaves her enormous fortune to Gustave,
including the Grand Budapest Hotel. Gustave has a few years to enjoy his new
wealth...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;">...before being shot by the military. Agatha dies a
couple of years later of the "Prussian Grippe" with her infant son.
The hotel remains open, but becomes drearily "updated" with plastic
chairs and wood paneling in 1968.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The story of the hotel, told by "Author"
becomes a classic in the country, and the Author's headstone is a pilgrimage
site, where people hang their hotel keys in homage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The plot, of course, is in some ways an excuse for
the extravagant visuals, which are themselves meticulously planned. Each of the
three time periods (present day, 1968, and 1932) are shot in a different aspect
ratio as one way of conveying the passage of years. And even a non-visually
adept view like I am began to giggle at Anderson's resolute insistence on
framing everything symmetrically. Forget any "rule of
thirds"--everything was placed as close to the exact center of the frame
as possible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">On the surface, then, it's a comedy murder/caper
film, gorgeously staged and highly stylized. In some ways, <i>The Grand
Budapest Hotel</i> nails the tone that <i>Muppets Most Wanted</i> tried
and failed to achieve. Cartoon villains, stylized violence with some real emotional
power (what happens to Jeff Goldblum's character is surprisingly upsetting),
and a stylized visual vocabulary constructed in large part via forced
perspective--all in service to a story with some heart constructed around an
unlikely protagonist: a green felt frog or a sexually ambiguous concierge.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Except--Nazis? Sure, technically, they are
"Zig Zags," their logo two lightning bolts forming the letters, and
they are brutish, violent, but ultimately easily vanquished. Still--it
seems like the presence of even ersatz Nazis would be a serious tonal misfire.*
Can comedy Nazis even exist?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Which brings me to the humanity at the core of this
highly artificial work. M. Gustave is a clown in a circus created by Wes
Anderson, but he is also a man of fundamental values. He embodies hard work,
attention to detail, treating everyone around him with respect and dignity.
Over and over again (and almost always played for laughs) he treats others
weight deep respect, regardless of their situation. Madame D, while incredibly
elderly and ridiculous looking, is mocked as an object of sexual desire by
everyone except M. Gustave. His performance of fine dining that he brings to
the job of passing out prison gruel creates a bond between him and the giant
inmate. The gracious way M. Gustave offers the mush--"it needs a bit of
salt" he says, seasoning the bowl and then handing it over to the
physically intimidating man--embodies the values of hospitality and
graciousness. It is paid back to him when the giant's cellmate spots the jail
break and tries to raise an alarm. The giant silences the man, and allows
Gustave to escape.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Similarly, the mix of high and low is what allows
him to enter into the escape plan. He appears at the visitors' station with his
face beaten up. He reports that "Pinky" got the worst of the fight,
"and actually now we are quite dear friends." Later, he shares his
Mendl's pastry with Pinky and the cell mates, using "the throat
slitter"--a fairly disturbing switchblade--to divide the dessert. He
brings the imperative of running a hotel--welcoming everyone who crosses the
threshold--to prison life, and the respect he grants is repaid to him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And in a world descending into brutality--the
ZZ--it is these small graces that make living possible. Literally, when the
favors M. Gustave does are repaid, but also to save the world from becoming
merely horrific. It is the small pastries, the proper manicure, the spritz of
the signature cologne "L'Air de Panache" that provide the means for
continuing in the face of destruction. These gestures stand for the larger
virtues--loyalty, honesty, humanity. These are not small things.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The trailer does give a taste of what the whole
movie is like. I recommend it!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/1Fg5iWmQjwk?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">____________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">*Speaking of tonal misfires:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In what may be a signature gobsmacking move, <i>Vogue.com</i> offers
<a href="http://www.vogue.com/vogue-daily/article/dress-the-part-the-grand-budapest-hotel/#1"><span style="color: #0000e9;">a slide show of characters</span></a> from the film,
followed with sourcing for a similar look. For M. Gustave, they chose his
prison wear--as if that is a look one would want to emulate--and the total cost
of the purchasable version is in the vicinity of $2000. Because of course! Who
doesn't want to drop two grand to look like a Middle European convict? (Or,
more disturbingly, like <i>The Boy in the Striped Pajamas--</i>a concentration
camp inmate?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk7d6-fuIDUbYjN4CU5drPMNsyu4nsJc0KFTazxgCIjcJu_6iqnkODlCkqP21qG77o11aTg6-hOchj7emEfTnGN45RVGDZKvBWPFA9GoMKUUmRP-Oa6eXkuyN1YVZAHK5MmbRl/s1600/dress-the-part-grand-budapest-hotel-4_10392423217.jpg_gallery_max.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk7d6-fuIDUbYjN4CU5drPMNsyu4nsJc0KFTazxgCIjcJu_6iqnkODlCkqP21qG77o11aTg6-hOchj7emEfTnGN45RVGDZKvBWPFA9GoMKUUmRP-Oa6eXkuyN1YVZAHK5MmbRl/s1600/dress-the-part-grand-budapest-hotel-4_10392423217.jpg_gallery_max.jpg" height="210" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #3d3d3d;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Rochas striped silk trousers,
$1,073<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #3d3d3d;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://rstyle.me/n/fxtiknz56"><u style="text-underline: #0000E9;"><span style="color: #e5001c; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">matchesfashion.com</span></u></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #3d3d3d;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Elder Statesman monster seed
cap, $500<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #3d3d3d;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.farfetch.com/shopping/women/the-elder-statesman-monster-seed-cap-item-10599432.aspx"><u style="text-underline: #0000E9;"><span style="color: #e5001c; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">farfetch.com</span></u></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #3d3d3d;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Row Amautio top, $990<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #3d3d3d;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.lagarconne.com/store/item.htm?itemid=23606"><u style="text-underline: #0000E9;"><span style="color: #e5001c; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">lagarconne.com</span></u></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #3d3d3d;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Escadrille striped seersucker
espadrilles, $125<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #3d3d3d;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://modaoperandi.com/escadrille/resort-2014/accessories-1930/item/striped-seersucker-espadrilles-229385"><u style="text-underline: #0000E9;"><span style="color: #e5001c; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">modaoperandi.com</span></u></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And, to be pedantic--M. Gustave doesn't wear
espadrilles. He very obviously wears wooden sabots. Do your research!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">_________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Some boring context and disclaimers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I have seen several Wes Anderson movies, and I see
some common threads, but I can't say I have any systematic understanding of his
work. <i>Grand Budapest Hotel</i> has what appears to be some stop
motion animation that feels like it grew out of <i>Fantastic Mr. Fox</i>,
but I saw that movie so very many years ago, and at the time watched it as a
movie to see with my kids rather than as a "Wes Anderson film" so I
have certainly missed lots about what was going on there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Similarly, <i>The Royal Tennanbaums</i> was
my introduction to his work; I saw that even longer ago. <i>The Life
Aquatic with Steve Zissou</i> I have only seen parts of, and thought of as
a Bill Murray movie. Probably the closest I have come to watching a Wes
Anderson movie <i>as</i> a Wes Anderson movie was seeing <i>Moonrise
Kingdom</i> when it first came out. This is how I approached <i>GBH.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>
</i>My thoughts here are also
influenced by the conversation lead by Dana Stevens on the Slate Spoiler
Special podcast, which started scratching at the larger meaning behind the
movie. Stevens was disappointed by this film, because she felt that Anderson failed to connect with the emotional content of the subject he was playing with. My understanding of her point is that he failed to acknowledge the import of the killings and brutality. To her mind, the movie failed. I don't agree, although I think I understand why she felt the way she did. I think Anderson is actually saying something, but the message (such as
it is) is embedded in the exquisite production design. Looking for
meaning and emotional power is to kind of miss the point of this movie.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There is a tendency for critics
to address the object under review as if the critical assessment is objective,
and the missed connections and the flaws exist in the movie (or book, or
whatever). The participants in the Spoiler Special make statements like
"the movie failed to connect with the emotion." My experience was
very different--I felt that the emotion was there, but was deliberately
underplayed. Which leads me to believe that the movie and the watcher attempt
to meet somewhere in the middle, between the director's intention and the
watcher's expectations and readiness. When the two fail to connect, it is a
missed communication--what the director was trying to say and what the audience
understood of the message may not line up. It is not the "fault" of
either party, it is the random nature of human attempts at connection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So while I may fall into some habits of "the movie did this"
or "the director did that," what I am trying to do is to communicate
what <i>my</i> experience of the movie was. I may well have gotten it
wrong. I may well be so entirely idiosyncratic that I am not a fair measure of
whether anyone else will enjoy what I saw. I can say that I believe that Wes
Anderson is both seriously playful, and playfully serious, and that there is
more than mere surface decoration to this movie. The surface beauty of the film
might well have been enough for me--but there is more than that to be had.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-10774091306445302882014-04-24T09:35:00.000-05:002014-04-24T09:35:53.293-05:00I Got My 'Batches and CookiesBecause Lizzo predicted this?<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzqzgOo7cU6EZWlZpmmvruKxUFLboCd3cVrKHt3VvNh7KsZuTkxpbUiWn1TwAPYIbFpJclo_DcPmZIkp-02cANzr7xfqInTxS8DZffXcHy1Traw8fLrYNGzTGu2Qq9olRWg3Ym/s1600/sherlock-cookie-cutters-640x469.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzqzgOo7cU6EZWlZpmmvruKxUFLboCd3cVrKHt3VvNh7KsZuTkxpbUiWn1TwAPYIbFpJclo_DcPmZIkp-02cANzr7xfqInTxS8DZffXcHy1Traw8fLrYNGzTGu2Qq9olRWg3Ym/s1600/sherlock-cookie-cutters-640x469.jpg" height="234" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Time to make some Cumberbatches of cookies? Anyone?<br />
<br />
(You can buy them from <a href="http://warpzoneprints.com/all-products/sherlock-and-watson-portrait-cookie-cutter" target="_blank">here</a>.)<br />
<br />
And Lizzo here:<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/nQaRQe86suA" width="560"></iframe>Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-21103349750141649472014-04-10T17:45:00.005-05:002014-04-10T17:45:35.356-05:00Separated At Birth--Make This Happen EditionHello, have you met Your Captain America?<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh1ADepBXGqhP_JztVWoI7MaFDO9JujjWPoyRZpOLRmsdGxvcGcW1J2xfzSzrRhp18ek-8q9uH6Plu7NOQ1EQTQxOtSvA0pCbXlt2wZkfRTaJwZFzgLzE9dIVN3HI9nNjWfYrz/s1600/cace3-thumb-550x319-95244.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh1ADepBXGqhP_JztVWoI7MaFDO9JujjWPoyRZpOLRmsdGxvcGcW1J2xfzSzrRhp18ek-8q9uH6Plu7NOQ1EQTQxOtSvA0pCbXlt2wZkfRTaJwZFzgLzE9dIVN3HI9nNjWfYrz/s1600/cace3-thumb-550x319-95244.jpg" height="369" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Yes, that is Chris Evans. Looking like a younger, but equally soulful Bill Nighy.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNYqlowav2g5mLrWMY5-r-qaAYHAoHaIDq9CjjHTvLEys_6mUnIWLzS-U-_v-JIzVBdTqW9xEjEMqpoWStIV1W6KcpJd2z3jVg8ig-nmp59wrAcfEuZ691fdmiDZTqtvkS4WUo/s1600/bill-nighy_features.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNYqlowav2g5mLrWMY5-r-qaAYHAoHaIDq9CjjHTvLEys_6mUnIWLzS-U-_v-JIzVBdTqW9xEjEMqpoWStIV1W6KcpJd2z3jVg8ig-nmp59wrAcfEuZ691fdmiDZTqtvkS4WUo/s1600/bill-nighy_features.jpg" height="400" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
Now I want a movie in which they play son and father, or perhaps the same character at different ages.<br />
<br />
Somebody make that happen for me, mmmkay? Thankx.<br />
<br />
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<br />Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-88590814872045729682014-03-14T23:28:00.002-05:002014-03-14T23:28:53.439-05:00Things I Am Eating Even Though I Am "Not Hungry."<br />
<ul>
<li>The last 6 1/2 Triscuit crackers. The bottom of the box has come unglued, as if it is recycling itself.</li>
<li>The last two ounces of fat free pretzel twists.</li>
<li>The salt in the bottom of the fat free pretzel twists bag, after I lick my finger so the salt sticks.</li>
<li>Quite a few Tostios Hint of Lime chips, because they were probably getting stale.</li>
<li>Baby carrots because there are no more SnakCarbs (â„¢) around anymore, because I ate them all.</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-70632235050497468682014-03-11T22:17:00.001-05:002014-03-11T22:37:54.744-05:00True Detective--The Internet Response and What I Wanted<span style="font-family: inherit;">I predicted a lot of disappointed reviews of the finale (like my own), and to be honest, I was surprised by how gentle the disappointment was. In those reviews which were of the "disappointed" variety--there were plenty I found early on that were entirely satisfied by the series.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Even the disappointed reviews were surprisingly shouted down in the comments--<a href="http://www.pajiba.com/tv_reviews/how-the-true-detective-finale-demonstrated-that-its-great-smallscreen-cinema-but-lousy-literary-tv.php#.Ux_Qq6W9tg0" target="_blank">Dustin Rowles</a> on Pajiba, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2014/03/10/true-detectives-predictable-simplistic-finale/" target="_blank">Alyssa Rosenberg</a> on the Washington Post and <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2014/03/10/288550099/part-beauty-part-hooey-thats-a-wrap-on-true-detective" target="_blank">Linda Holmes</a> on Monkey See/NPR have a fair number of commenters calling them wrong, misguided, or fundamentally stupid. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So--people liked the series. I guess that shouldn't be surprising, because the series was a stylish serving of comfort entertainment. People like Rowles, Rosenberg (who I find to be extremely insightful and intelligent generally) and Holmes (who I want to have as my new best friend) were disappointed, I think because like me, they saw the series promise to be more than it turned out to be.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here's the thing--there are plenty of entertainment options which revel in the presentation of unspeakable acts perpetrated on women. Naked women, beautiful corpses, exploited children, ritual posing, and sexual objectification are everywhere in our culture. This series did plenty of that--creepy sexual murder scene, nekkid gorgeous females, spooky music, in-bred yokels as the bad guys/monsters that get decisively defeated via gun violence, some buddy repartee and a happy ending where the good guys win. Add in a substantial portion of Rust Cohle intoning pretentious philosophy, and we have a horror-film lite--all the gruesome, none of the gore, with premium cable levels of nudity. It's almost by the numbers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/03/11/hbos_gothic_southern_porn_true_detective_has_a_duck_dynasty_problem/" target="_blank">Becky Banks</a> has a alternative take on this--she posits the Venn Diagram of Southern Gothic cliche: (Too) Close Family Relationships, Weird Sex, and Malicious Rednecks. Check, check, and check!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Which is really too bad, because it could have been so much more, and it kept seeming to gesture to greater ambitions than a stylish retelling of a story we already know. And that's why it was so disappointing. Not because I'm a spoil-sport feminist who can't watch a show without complaining about the lack of substantial female characters, or because I object to nudity, or because I was waiting for the tentacle-faced Cthulu to make an appearance. No, I am disappointed because the show seemed to promise that it was going to really do something new, and then it resolutely refused to.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I offer exhibit Number 1, Your Honor: Marty Hart's video interview.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">While being questioned and taped by the investigating cops Papania and Gilbrough, Marty Hart mentions "The Detective's Curse": the occupational hazard of overlooking what is right under your own nose. He's talking about it in the context of his family--that those kids, that family, that life, was what he was looking for and he couldn't see it in front of him. And that would be poignant enough, right on the surface, especially if we ever saw him understanding what he had done to lose that family, and actually regretting it. (Maybe this is the cause of his sobbing in the finale, when his estranged wife and kids come to visit? I'll entertain the motion.) But by this point, in 2012, while talking to Papania and Gilbrough, he doesn't exhibit much regret at all. Nor do we see any recognition that he had anything to do with the breakup of his family.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Furthermore, the creepy staging of that comment is done in voiceover as the camera pans across the deeply disturbing scenario Audrey has set up with her dolls--a naked barbie doll likes on the rug, surrounded by four standing (and clothed) male dolls, while a fifth one kneels between her legs, his/its hand covering near the belt buckle. It loos like a gang rape at best, the murderous aftermath of gang rape possible. Marty's gaze sweeps across the room, fails to stop at this disturbing scene, and he leaves.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now that is a provocative set up, and we ate it up like dessert: what exactly <i>is</i> Marty looking at and failing to see? Obviously, he looked right at this set up, he looked right at Audrey's drawings of naked people, he looked right at his goth daughter and her sexual adventuring with boys in cars, and all he could see was his own self-righteousness. Thus were born a thousand internet theories: Audrey has been abused; Audrey was a victim of the cult; Audrey is going to be the next victim. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It turned out--that we gave the show <i>too much</i> credit for being smart. We thought it was smarter than it was. Because rather than being a profound comment, or an indication of a subtext, Marty only meant exactly what he said--he didn't see the value of his family when it was right under his nose. This is basically what Dorothy says at the end of <i>The Wizard of Oz:</i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i><span style="background-color: #fcfae7; color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with! Is that right?</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fcfae7; color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Surely we can be excused for thinking this show was doing something more than this, right? The 2012 edition of Marty regrets the family life that 1995 Marty took for granted and threw away with his tomcatting, and that's what he means by "The Detective's Curse?" How very. . .conventional. How predictable even. How disappointing, really.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Let's go back and talk about the Woman Issue. Again, here was the series telling us that it was doing something admirable, and then resolutely failing to do so. Rust specifically challenges his CO about a systemic failure to account for missing women and children. When it comes to the horrific snuff video, Rust tells us he refuses to look away. The series tells us that he "stands witness" to disappearances and violence that others conveniently refuse to see. Rust Cohle, seeking justice for the disempowered and the disappeared!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Except--then he doesn't. Or more to the point, the show doesn't. Rust keeps working to solve Dora Lange's murder, which is pretty darn heroic. The lengths he goes to--including returning to his undercover narcotics persona--are excessive and risky, and seem to be the show making the point that Dora at least will not be forgotten.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But then the show goes on and marginalizes and objectifies and uses women and children for shock value without making them anything more than props to the "enlightenment" of the two male leads. Nic Pizzolatto even gave interviews insisting "I am not interested in serial killers" and the point of the series is the character study of the two men. To which I say--then why make it a serial killer story? Why sexualize the series to such a degree if there isn't any narrative point to it? Why make the mystery such a huge, showy, lurid, naked, sexualized, ritualistic, and degraded murder if that isn't the point? Because we won't watch otherwise? Because we won't care about Rust and Marty unless they are investigating the most lurid murder imaginable?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Obviously, not true--we all watched <i>Broadchurch.</i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I won't go over all the appalling ways women are treated by this story, because I don't think I can do better than <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2014/03/03/140303crte_television_nussbaum?currentPage=all" target="_blank">Emily Nussbaum did </a>for <i>The New Yorker</i>. I will say that, like <i>The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo</i>, you can't have your cake and eat it too--you can't wallow in the objectification of women's bodies and escape criticism for it by proclaiming that your story is "against that!" Because you are using those women's bodies <i>exactly</i> the same way as the objectionable characters do.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Just take a look at the <a href="http://www.inlander.com/Bloglander/archives/2014/03/08/how-true-detective-like-other-great-tv-shows-lays-out-its-themes-in-the-opening-credits" target="_blank">opening credits</a>, for example. Then count how many female <i>characters</i> are represented ("characters" used here to mean "women with names and actual lines of dialogue"). My quick count is--zero. Next, count how many times women's naked body parts are represented, and ask yourself--were those even <i>in</i> this show? The naked buttocks resting lightly against the spiked black high heels? The curve of the naked back and buttocks that visually echoes the slide on the playground it frames? The dark haired topless woman with the neon cross superimposed on her hair? Sure, the woman in the American flag bathing suit does appear in the show, briefly--because she's dancing at a bar where the detectives go to interview someone else entirely.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">(I will give props to the writer of the article at that link--Daniel Walters does a very nice job recognizing and articulating how the themes of the series are laid out in the credits. I am particularly fond of the way he describes the images of the detectives: "Most shows could illustrate loneliness with an abandoned landscape containing a solitary man. But here, in these credits, solitary men contain the abandoned landscapes." Well done, sir.) </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Honestly, at this point, I am simply going to take such visuals as warning signs--"This show is not for you." Because Nic Pizzolatto is completely entitled to write what he wants to, and if he wants to write a story that starts off with the sexualized ritual murder of a drugged prostitute and the provocative posing of her naked body, and he wants to further expand on the theme with serial murders and pedophilia snuff porn, he sure can, and I can spare myself and not watch it. It's like how poisonous plants and bugs in the wild are vividly colored, and those colors warn animals not to eat them. Naked female body parts are a good sign I'm not going to want to consume this media.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Shall we talk about the lack of resolution of the mystery here? Sure, technically, it was solved, in that Dora Lange was (probably) murdered by some combination of Errol Childress and his flunkies, Reggie and Dewall LeDoux. Childress was also probably the perpetrator of the 2012 St. Charles murder as well. But those were not ordinary murders. There were elaborate "paraphiliac maps" with signs of "Satanic worship" and "anti-Christian crimes." They were thick with allegorical references--black stars, Carcosa, the King in Yellow. The very reason these murders are interesting is because they invite our curiosity. Why would somebody do this? Why paint those symbols the body? Why build an elaborate altar? What does it all mean? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">These are not the questioning of hyperactive imaginations. These are the questions the show itself asks. The cops in the CID office speculate as to the Satanic nature of the murder. Reggie LeDoux talks about the black stars right before he is killed. Charlie Lang, Dora's ex-husband describes the spiral brand in LeDoux's back. These aren't just details, they are motifs. And then--the script refuses to explain any of it, other than that Childress is one sick mofo. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So, HBO and Nic Childress (and Cary Fukunaga), why put all that in if you aren't interested in it and you aren't going to address it? This is not an idle question. If the series was only ever going to be a character study of Rust and Marty, why make the murder such a big showy piece of razzle dazzle? Why not just make it one more murdered prostitute, whose body is just found somewhere mundane. Rust could be obsessed with it for no other reason than it was his daughter's birthday and he was already vulnerable because of it. There could be some detail, some oddity that would link a 2012 murder, and cause Rust to re-investigate the case, purely because it was a way of staying connected with his daughter. It could really have shown us a Rust Cohle whose nihilism truly <i>was</i> a mask, a form of armor to mask the pain of her death, rather than Rust Cohle the badass philosopher whose atheistic anti-humanism slips only at the end of the 8th hour. <i>That</i> would have been a character study.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.vulture.com/2014/03/true-detective-finale-7-things-it-was-about.html" target="_blank">Matt Zoller Seitz</a> talks about how TD is "about" many different things, including good versus evil. Maybe. But who is "good" in this series? To Pizzolatto's credit, there are no truly "good" characters. However, there are Evil ones. So we get complicated humanity versus Evil--and that robs the Evil of it's believability. Even Erroll Childress had to have some story he told himself about why he killed all those people, and why he was justified in torture, or what he intended to achieve, but we aren't ever privy to it. So that shifts the entire balance of the series--Rust and Marty were men who had a lot of demons, but when it turns out the person they were chasing is himself a demon (in that he has no redeeming qualities) the story flattens out into Good v. Evil.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Rust has a transcendent experience, and finds some hope in a feeling of love from his dead daughter and father. Has he really changed? Doesn't this just show us that all his cynical and nihilistic talk was a serious front he was putting up to avoid feeling the loss of his daughter? Also--spending a decade completely drunk in Alaska--same thing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">How serious was Billy Lee Tuttle's effort to get the Lang murder transferred to his hand-picked task force? We </span>didn't see any real pressure on the 1995 CO to turn it over. In fact, the CO seemed to see it as attractive mainly as a way to save his budget. Do we think that Tuttle took one look at the lead detectives and decided that he didn't need to worry about it. "Eddie's going to be real pleased with these detectives" he says, or something close to that, and if you decide he's being sarcastic, then you can understand why the task force never actually took over--there was no need to.<br />
<br />
Did we actually get verification that the Sheriff Childress who shut down the Marie Fontenot case ("Reported in Error") was actually Errol Childress's father--and thus was also the corpse kept bound on the bed in the family estate outbuilding? Was that official misconduct the act of a father covering up his son's misconduct, or did they have a more attenuated relationship? I actually find the idea that this was a twisted case of family covering up for each other in the hopes that they could protect their monstrous offspring much more interesting and complicated than a "rape cult" or "pedophile ring." (To say nothing about the nearly unbelievable report Charlie Lang gave of "some real good killing down south" as if this were a Louisiana version of "The Most Dangerous Game.")<br />
<br />
If we had even an instance of seeing complicated family relationships among the Tuttle/Childress clan, the whole Audrey mini-plot ("almost plot") would have resonated more powerfully. Children do unfortunate things, are sometimes sexually inappropriate, and not all parents see the situations clearly, nor do they always react appropriately. Marty's overlooking Audrey's creepy doll display--how different is that from "overlooking" Errol's oeuvre? If the show had made the connection that way--Marty is a small-time version of the Tuttle/Childress parents, protecting their children in unhealthy ways--the story would actually have been creepier, because you could see how small the distance is between the psychopaths and the average people.<br />
<br />
I've decided to make it head canon that Maggie got her divorce from Marty, and met a lovely doctor at her work. (We saw Marty accosting her at what appeared to be a hospital after she kicked him out following his affair with the court reporter, so I assume she was at least a nurse.) That big house, the Lillian Bluth wardrobe, and the ostentatious wedding rings she had in 2012 were the signs of how her life improved after Marty. She (and the girls) are better off without him financially, and I have decided that they are also better off emotionally. Dr. Sawyer (head canon!) is maybe an anesthesiologist, who keeps regular hours, makes plenty of money, and has been a terrific stepfather to the girls. So much so that he is the reason they are able to forgive Marty and visit him in the hospital in the last episode.<br />
<br />
Odd choice--from 1995 to 2012, Rust gets haggard and scraggly, growing untidy hair and mustache. In the same period, Marty goes bald and gains a substantial beer gut, as well as gets far more furrowed. But Maggie Sawyer--looks exactly the same. I felt this actually served to undermine her character--she hadn't matured in any way, which made her seem oddly insubstantial in the 2012 scenes.<br />
<br />
Writer's fatigue? Rust's big revelatory soliloquy, in which he finds cosmic meaning in feeling love from his dead daughter and father is the moment toward which the entire series has been driving, according to Nic Pizzolatto. So does that excuse this? "Beneath the darkness, I felt a further darkness, like a substance." Seriously? <i>Like a substance?</i> Umm, sure--like that's a useful description, dude. I'm sure that's exactly the feeling that would cause a hyper-articulate nihilistic synesthete to entirely change his world view. Because, wow--<i>a substance</i>.<br />
<br />
I'm waiting for the YouTube recut, where someone turns all this atmospheric angst into the buddy cop romp that it is at heart. Let me know when that happens.<br />
<br />Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-91071220362178454002014-03-10T01:31:00.002-05:002014-03-10T16:31:17.969-05:00True Detective--How Very Conventional Of YouAtmospheric music, creepy ambiance, masterful acting by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, and non-linear storytelling elevated this serial killer story from the utterly predictable, but it never managed to fully leave the cliches behind.<br />
<br />
One of the things I am expecting to see by tomorrow morning is the <i>True Detective</i> backlash--the internet outrage that the story <i>didn't</i> follow through on it's own promises. I never expected this to take a turn into Lovecraftian horror, and I never expected a cameo from the Elder Gods or Cthulu. But I did hope we were going to get a bit more resolution, a bit more explanation of the tropes that were invoked here. I wanted things to pay off more than they did, even as I cynically expected that they wouldn't.<br />
<br />
Let's just make a list, shall we? We'll start with the things that just got<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>We never got an explanation for the cats that were nailed on the doors of the African American church from episode 1.</li>
<li>What church did Dora start attending, and why did she think she was going to be nun (like she told her friend at the bunny ranch)?</li>
<li>What was "The King in Yellow" anyway? Anybody? Bueller?</li>
<li>What about the black stars? And the devil catchers--why were they found where they were?</li>
<li>The "green ears" on the "Spaghetti Monster" were literally green paint? How green do you suppose those ears actually were? I much prefer the internet conclusion that it was a green noise canceling headset.</li>
<li>Maggie's father wasn't implicated at all? </li>
<li>Audrey's precocious sexuality wasn't related? The creepy rapist doll set up, the dirty pictures she drew, the goth phase and the sexual acting out--were just challenges for Marty to handle, and not clues "right under his nose"? That was sure a missed opportunity.</li>
<li>Who did Maggie marry after leaving Marty?</li>
<li>Who were the five men we saw in the video (and echoed in the photo at Dora Lange's house, and in Audrey's doll diorama, and Rust's tin men cut out of beer cans)? </li>
<li>What caused the scarring on Errol's face anyway? What was the relationship between Errol and everybody else?</li>
<li>Why paint antlered figures on the church wall back in episode 2 (IIRC)? Who did that, and why?</li>
<li>Why did Errol (and the others?) pose Dora in the cane field in the first place? Then why do it again from the bridge in St. Charles? What was the logic behind their practices anyway?</li>
<li>"Death is not the end?" Where did that come from? And why did the old lady domestic servant know about "Carcosa?" What role did she have?</li>
<li>What was the point of the spiral tattoo/brand/paint marking? Did it have some meaning--like at all? Or did it just tie things together so the plot seemed to make some sense?</li>
<li>The pharmacy shooter who killed himself in prison--who arranged for that whole scenario? I gather that there really was a phone call, from the pay phone out in the middle of nowhere, and that the means he used was provided by the police officer who was also named "Childress," but who was involved?</li>
<li>So instead of any kind of explanation of the "paraphiliac map" and the meaning of the murders, we just get some vague handwaving around "Satanic worship" and "voodoo mashup" and unresolved daddy issues? That's just lazy storytelling. </li>
<li>What was the deal with Errol's accents? And why did he keep that woman/half-sister around?</li>
<li>If there is no record of Errol (birth records, newspaper birth announcement, etc.) and no evidence of his existence in the business records--how was he getting paid for mowing the cemetery and abandoned school properties?</li>
<li>Who's corpse was that in the outbuilding that Errol went and talked to and why wasn't that body ever missed?</li>
<li>How did Billy Lee Tuttle--the incredibly successful creepy evangelist with the schools--reconcile all that creepy stuff with his professed religion?</li>
<li>Who was drugging the preschool kids and how? Were the teachers involved? Why?</li>
<li>Why was Dora's abdomen knifed? Was there some significance to that, that it was limited to that and not more general mutilation?</li>
<li>Where did the giant wreath around the hollow in the tree come from? </li>
<li>What the heck did "making flowers" and "can you smell the flowers" even mean--I get that it was a metaphor for sex between Errol and Betty, but why that one?</li>
<li>Who shot the dog at the end? Why?</li>
<li>Whatever happened to the "Anti-Christian task force?" That was quite a McGuffin--showed up once, referred to a second time, and then disappeared entirely. It was never a threat, and it should have been if the Tuttles were trying to cover up their involvement. </li>
<li>Maybe the Tuttles were just trying to keep their creepy cousins from getting into trouble, but weren't themselves actually involved, so they were only willing to go so far? Then who were the other two men?</li>
<li>What was the deal with Rust tasting "aluminum and ash" on the way to Errol's place--he did the same thing in episode 1 (I think). Was this supposed to be synesthesia? The taste of the "psychosphere" he pissed Marty off about early on? Are we supposed to take this seriously as a real thing?</li>
<li><br /></li>
</ul>
<div>
Shall we talk about the cliches?</div>
<ul>
<li>Seriously, Rust has a religious near death experience?</li>
<li>The final manhunt in "Carcosa"--they seriously didn't call for back-up? As soon as Rust said "this is the place" and they had no cell phone reception--they didn't just drive away and get backup? That's fundamentally stupid. </li>
<li>The stupidity is compounded by Rust chasing Errol through the woods and aqueduct (seriously, what the hell was that?) without waiting for Marty to provide back-up? Dumb.</li>
<li>How did the cops know to show up--when, where, and with that much support? Did Rust's bar owner boss send off all the packets to news outlets and police departments? So Marty and Rust were lying there in Carcosa for two days (minimum)? (Twenty four hours before the boss sent the packets, and another 24 hours estimated for mail delivery, reviewing the packets, and mobilizing.) They didn't even have that location confirmed when Rust made up the packets.</li>
<li>Seriously--they shot the perp <i>AGAIN</i>? Seriously? With no blow back, since they aren't even actually cops anymore either?</li>
<li>Also--could we load any more Sooper Speshulness onto poor Rust Cohle? He's got mad detective skillz, knows snipers, can headbutt a guy to submission while impaled on a knife, demonstrates, formidable B&E (breaking and entering) talents, suffers from LSD flashbacks, has synesthesia, and articulates "deep" philosophical insights into the insignificance of humanity in the cosmic scheme. Oh wait--he also looks like Jesus in the hospital and even get a wound in the side, and is apparently immortal.</li>
</ul>
<div>
I'm sure there are more things that will turn up, either I will remember, or they will be hashed over on the internet. In the end, the script was fundamentally the same story we have heard many times before--sadistic and flamboyant serial killer with a taste for naked female corpses. Also, a weird predilection for arts and craft projects--the antlered crown, the devil catcher, the paintings on the walls of abandoned churches and his own outbuildings. A lot of nihilistic bloviating about stark cosmic "truths." A cop with an explosive temper and a bad marriage. Vague handwaving at the killer's motive--what was done to him, mixed with "devil worship" references but no real explanation. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The most interesting thing about the script was the nested time frames. The most watchable part of the series was the acting by Harrelson and McConaughey. The thing that gave it gravitas was the atmospheric music. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The disappointment I felt in the resolution of the plot came from the piling on of specific details (The King in Yellow, the Black Stars, etc) that meant nothing and went nowhere. Possibly, in the context of a novel, those kind of specific details serve to ground the story in a material world, to give it the patina of plausibility. In a visual medium, however, the "real world" is already present--embodied even, in the locations and the actors. So the details that need to be included in a novel to create that illusion of reality, tend to stand out too obviously in the television version. So the internet goes nuts, taking the inclusion of specific details as more meaningful than they end up being.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And there were some very interesting theories that I saw, posited in the last week. "The Yellow King" was a boat, not a person. The missing women were used to breed the line of Tuttles/Childresses, and then murdered when they either failed to conceive the first time ("He only liked them the once") or after they gave birth. The Munchausen by proxy mother was a victim of the cult. Audrey was exposed to the cult. Maggie's father was connected to the cult. The Wellspring schools project was a feeder of victims to the cult.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
None of these ideas were definitively addressed, one way or another, including all the open issues I set out above. I expect we are going to see some very disappointed commenters in the next 24 hours.</div>
Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-42992245245972784752014-03-09T23:46:00.003-05:002014-03-10T01:55:17.007-05:00True Detective--It's All About The Man PainLook. I get it. Nic Pizzolatto wrote a study of two very different men, thrown together involuntarily, who had to work through their antagonism to solve a mystery. This was really only about the two of them, and the murder case was more or less just the mechanism through which to test their characters against each other.<br />
<br />
Knowing that, it's certainly understandable to answer the feminist criticism of the work (so ably articulated by Emily Nussbaum in the New Yorker) with the completely true statement that "other than Rust and Marty, <i>none</i> of the other characters is fleshed out. It's not just the women that are two dimensional."<br />
<br />
And I can't argue with that. Pretty much every body else in this series is about as cliched and two dimensional as you can imagine. The religious folk are hypocrites or disillusioned. The women are mostly prostitutes, except for Marty's wife and daughters, and even they exist primarily to illuminate Marty's (lack of) character. Steve Gerasci is a coward and a bully of a cop. The murderer is a seedy hick in a hoarder house with an unsavory sex life and an elaborate lair that he decorates in "Shabby Creep." Nobody has much of a life agenda or interior life outside of the two headliners.<br />
<br />
Yet, the show is still virulently, rhizomatically, systematically guilty of erasing women except as they accessorize men. Here's the example that encapsulates this.<br />
<br />
In episode seven, Rust shows Marty a horrific video tape of what was done to Marie Fontenot, a girl that had gone missing back in 1990, five years before the start of the <i>True Detective</i> narrative. The audience doesn't see what is on the tape, except for a few seconds of men in masks and a young girl in a white dress and crown made out of antlers (I think?) walking blindfolded through some woods. There is a fractional view down her spread legs as the masked men approach. After that, we only see Marty's face as he watches the rest of the film, and his horrified reaction. And he is horrified, turning and smashing his hands on a table as he howls.<br />
<br />
Then, early in episode eight (the final), Rust forces Steve Gerasci to watch the tape. Marty walks out of the room, unwilling to see it again. The shot cuts away, to show the boat the men are on in the middle distance as Gerasci screams.<br />
<br />
What do these scenes have in common? They have as their focus the pain of the men forced to watch this scene. In both cases, the camera returns to these now traumatized men, as they struggle to make sense of what they have seen and what they are going to do as a result. It is about their emotional distress, their sense of violation. Or, as the internet has dubbed it, their man pain.<br />
<br />
Now, I'm not saying they shouldn't be horrified by what they saw. In fact, I am glad they were. But this is where the storytelling sells women's stories short. No one takes even a second to express their sorrow or pity at what happened to Marie Fontenot. Neither Rust, nor Marty, nor Gerasci express even a cursory regret about what Marie went through. There is no heartfelt "Jesus Christ, that poor girl." The story moves immediately to "what are these men going to do about it?" Marty agrees to help Rust chase down the guilty men. Gerasci immediately shifts blame away from himself. It's a macho display of power--Rust stays in the room, doesn't turn his gaze away. Gerasci abases himself, trying to distance himself from the fall out.<br />
<br />
No one acknowledges Marie--her suffering, her death, her humanity. She is merely a plot device to propel the actions of the men.<br />
<br />
This is the problem with this series, and what fundamentally pisses me off ( and probably Emily Nussbaum as well). It's not that the women are any less thin than most of the men--it's that the women's experiences are given zero empathetic response, while we linger on the man pain.<br />
<br />
There is another example--the boy who disappeared in the bayou, and only his pirogue was found. "They said it was gators" his father says when interviewed by Rust. The father reports that the boy's mother thought she could hear him calling from under the water. Where is this mother? Where is her story? Why did Pizzolatto have this be reported by the man, second hand, rather than first hand by the woman herself? Dramatically, it's not the strongest way to tell the story, but once again, it privileges the man's pain--he lost a son and his wife went mad. Which is more important narratively than the woman who lost her son and herself?<br />
<br />
So now, in the final chapter of this story, we finally enter "Carcosa," the lair of the "Spaghetti Monster" man. There are wrapped corpses--presumably the bodies of the missing women and children. (Remember, back in the early episodes, when the CO told Rust that there could be no murder charges without a body? Here are those bodies.) But they aren't treated as the remains of human beings who here murdered--often horrifically. They are just set dressing, the creepy props of a scene that builds to the bad guy literally jumping out at Rust from a dark corner.<br />
<br />
I'm not really asking for very much--honestly. I'm not asking for the fleshing out of women't characters. Im' not asking for gender equity in the storytelling. I'm not asking that the story be told from the perspective of women instead of Rust and Marty. All I am asking for is for the victims, the prostitutes, the wives and daughters, be treated--just for a second or two--as people who had their own stories, their own hopes and dreams, their own agency and agendas, who lost those lives in the course of this investigation. The small recognition that these women would have liked to live, would have liked to not be tortured and murdered and posed in a sick display. That they had other dreams, other paths, that they were denied, and that loss was sad in its own right--not just because it furthered the plot for some men.Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-19842754790394515222014-03-02T23:05:00.002-06:002014-03-02T23:05:57.440-06:00Oscars--Final Prediction TallyHow did I do? I got these ones right:<br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Best Picture: <i>12 Years a Slave</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Best Actor: Matthew McConaughey for <i>Dallas Buyers Club</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #f7f0e9; color: #4b6320; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, <i>Blue Jasmine</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #f7f0e9; color: #4b6320; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Best Supporting Actor: Jared Leto, <i>Dallas Buyers Club</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #f7f0e9; color: #4b6320; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Best Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong'o, <i>12 Years a Slave</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #f7f0e9; color: #4b6320; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Best Director: Alfonso Cuaron, <i>Gravity</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #f7f0e9; color: #4b6320; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Best Animated Feature: <i>Frozen</i> </span></div>
<div style="background-color: #f7f0e9; color: #4b6320; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Best Original Song: "Let It Go" from <i>Frozen</i>. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: #f7f0e9; color: #4b6320; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Best Original Screenplay: <i>Her</i></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #f7f0e9; color: #4b6320; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Best Adapted Screenplay: <i>12 Years a Slave</i></span></div>
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Hair and Makeup: <i>Dallas Buyers Club</i></div>
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Visual Effects: <i>Gravity</i></div>
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Cinematography: <i>Gravity</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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What I got wrong:</div>
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<br /></div>
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Costume Design: I predicted <i>12 Years,</i> it went to <i>The Great Gatsby</i></div>
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Production Design: Again, predicted <i>12 Years</i>, it went to <i>The Great Gatsby</i></div>
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So, 13 out of 15 predictions were right? Wow, I've never been that accurate before. Or maybe I have, I don't think I ever had the guts to actually write down my predictions before.</div>
Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-46122938184506776172014-03-02T22:59:00.000-06:002014-03-02T22:59:52.923-06:00Oscars, Part 5Glenn Close--in another really elegant black tailored dress. These ladies of a certain age know how to dress. And now, it's the <i>In Memoriam</i>, which makes the dress really especially appropriate. And they have silenced the applause--good move.<br />
<br />
Bette Midler changed her dress, and I really like this one--elegant and tasteful, and with a subtle use of color so it's not funereal, but it's very appropriate for her role to sing after the <i>In Memoriam</i> segment. "Wind Beneath My Wings" isn't my jam, but I'm sure this is going to get favorable reactions.<br />
<br />
(Okay, I'm not gripped by her performance, so now I'm thinking about all those translucent Oscar statue figurines--what happens to them afterwards. I'm sure they were not cheap to produce, and I don't imagine that they have much of an afterlife. So--do they get auctioned off, donated to the AMPAS museum, presented to winners (if they want them), or just melted down?)<br />
<br />
(Checking in on time--it's been 2 1/2 hours, there are at least 8 more awards to give out--so we have another hour and a half at least?)<br />
<br />
Goldie Hawn is also wearing a dress that shows Julie Delpy how to do it. And she's got to be about 25 years <i>older</i> than Delpy, so maybe the secret is undergarments? And maybe we really would prefer to be French for precisely that reason?<br />
<br />
Excuse me, John Travolta--who is singing this song? It didn't sound like "Idina Menzel" or any combination of syllables that could be close. Maybe it was an anagram?<br />
<br />
And fashionwise--I much prefer the softer hair, and there is kind of thematic snowiness to the gown. And magpie that I am, I adore the curtains of crystals decorating the stage. "The cold never bothered me anyway"--that was a drop the mike moment, and she kind of mimed that without actually doing that.<br />
<br />
Nice acknowledgement of the musicians who are -- offsite I guess?<br />
<br />
Original Score<br />
I did not make a prediction.<br />
Winner: <i>Gravity</i>. Which makes sense, because there was so little dialogue, music did a LOT of work in that film.<br />
<br />
Original Song.<br />
I predict: "Let It Go."<br />
Winner: "Let It Go" The co-writer has just joined the EGOT ranks. Robert Lopez, congratulations.<br />
<br />
That pizza gag just keeps on giving--as does Pharrell's hat.<br />
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Penelope Cruz in a lovely pink dress with a black ribbon belt. Is she pregnant again? There is a slightly suspicious wobble to the line of that belt, and a carefulness to the way she is holding that wrap around her left arm.<br />
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Adapted Screenplay:<br />
I predicted:<i> 12 Years a Slave</i><br />
Winner: <i>12 Years a Slave</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Original Screenplay:<br />
I predicted: <i>Her</i><br />
Winner: <i>Her</i> (Wow, I <i>am</i> on a roll!)<br />
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Angelina Jolie and Sidney Poitier. Interesting mix. Definitely some serious effort to make the Oscars less purely white tonight. She's also wearing one of these silver sequined/skin tone illusion dresses. That is the theme tonight, much more than "Heroes."<br />
<br />
(Interestingly, it appears that the winners get to keep their statues for at least the night. Lupita Nyong'l has hers in her lap. Back in the day, they used to have to leave them backstage to be engraved.)<br />
<br />
Director.<br />
I predict: <i>Gravity</i><br />
The winner: <i>Gravity </i>(In so far as Best Director rewards technical achievement, this was really<i> </i>quite<i> </i>an achievement.)<br />
<br />
I need to go back to and tally up my predictions, and then go find out if Nate Silver had already made the same predictions that I did.<br />
<br />
Best Actress:<br />
I predict: Cate Blanchett<br />
Winner: Cate Blanchett<br />
<br />
Best Actor:<br />
I predict: Matthew McConaughey<br />
Winner: Matthew McConaughey (and glad to see he's put a bit a weight back on)<br />
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Best Picture<br />
I predict: <i>12 Years a Slave</i><br />
Winner: <i>12 Years a Slave</i><br />
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And that's all, folks!<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-77259760188642096432014-03-02T21:49:00.001-06:002014-03-02T21:49:14.780-06:00Oscars, Part 4And we're back, but people aren't in their seats.<br />
<br />
Ellen actually ordered three pizzas, and she's passing them out. At least, she brought them out. Love it. This is so much fun in a generous way!<br />
<br />
"I don't have any money--where is Harvey Weinstein?"<br />
<br />
Ellen is really giving this such a good vibe.<br />
<br />
Bill Murray is being generous and expansive too.<br />
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Cinematography<br />
I predict: <i>Gravity</i><br />
The Winner: <i>Gravity</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
(I did post my predictions yesterday in a different post--this looks suspicious, but I promise that I'm not cheating.)<br />
<br />
(Actually, I'm cheating because I only picked the big awards, and punted on foreign and technical categories. I had entered an Oscar pool, those would be the ones that would separate the winners from the losers, so I'm not actually doing all that well00some of these picks are pretty expected winners.)<br />
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Gabourey Sidibe looks awesome in purple. She and Lupita Nyong'o sure know how to rock color!<br />
<br />
Does Julia Roberts recognize that Whoopie Goldberg is wearing her horrible--was it Golden Globes look? But I think Roberts didn't add striped stockings and ruby slippers.<br />
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Pink singing a tribute to the Wizard of Oz--not a predictable choice, that's for sure. The ruby ball gown, though, is <i>quite</i> on point.<br />
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So of course--Ellen comes out as Glinda. Because, of course.<br />
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Jennifer Garner has a great fringed dress. And Benedict Cumberbatch!<br />
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Production Design:<br />
I Predict: <i>12 Years a Slave</i> (I was predicting more or less a sweep)<br />
The Winner: <i>The Great Gatsby </i>(That was a beautiful movie!)<br />
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Chris Evans introduces the fictions Heroes tribute. Lots of comic books and fantasy movies. Not sure these segments add up to anything in particular, but I guess it's always fun to see a bunch of clips.<br />
<br />
Who is Emma Watson sitting with? Does she have a boyfriend? I hope so!Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-29440807631839723192014-03-02T21:17:00.002-06:002014-03-02T21:17:59.892-06:00Oscars, Part 3Kate Hudson is looking fabulous, with the posture that Julie Delpy needed to pull off her dress. It's a perfect mix of satin, sparkle, plunge and perfect fit. She is maturing into very lovely looks--I didn't quite recognize her.<br />
<br />
Let's order pizzas, Ellen!<br />
<br />
I liked that Ellen called back to the Lotto scratch-off cards she gave to Bradley Cooper (as a consolation prize to losing to Jared Leto) when he comes out to announce documentary awards.<br />
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<i>20 Feet From Stardom</i> just won! And it's not about a heavy subject matter! A movie about back up singers just won over a movie about genocide? What universe have we entered? And now Darlene Love is belting at the mike, so there is no way the orchestra can try to play her off--they couldn't possible be heard.<br />
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Governor's Awards presented separately? Isn't that a change from past years? I seem to remember some Humanitarian or Lifetime Achievement winners getting about 84 minutes of screen time in the middle of the broadcast. I would watch the heck out of a retrospective of Angela Lansbury's career--can we get that online somewhere?<br />
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Viola Davis is here in her great emerald gown, but I hadn't noticed her marcelled hair. Pretty awesome. Ewan MacGregor is looking kind of greasy. And Italy wins for <i>The Great Beauty</i>, which I believe I may need to see.<br />
<br />
And here we go, with U2 performing on the Oscars. These have been really excellent performances tonight. We have come so far from the years of Debbie Allen choreographing awkward interpretive dances to the musical nominees. This is what happens when you let the actual performers--people who actually perform music for their (incredibly remunerative) livings.<br />
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This group selfie is pretty awesome, Ellen. Totally awesome. And generous, sweet, and a complete tonal shift from last year's host Seth MacFarlane. Who thought "We Saw Your Boobs" was a good idea? Looks even worse an idea after something as cute as this group selfie bit.<br />
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"Michael B. Jordan, and Kristin B. Ell. What?"<br />
<br />
I don't like Kristin's dress as a whole, but it makes her décolletage look FABULOUS.<br />
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Perhaps the best part of giving the Sound awards to <i>Gravity</i> is that so much of the sound was limited to what would actually be transmitted through the vacuum.<br />
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Supporting Actress:<br />
I predict: Lupita Nyong'o<br />
The winner: Lupita Nyong'o<br />
<br />
Well, now Yale Drama School will have its pick of applicants. And I wrote that before she called it out!<br />
She's holding it together so much better than Halle Berry did, and she is SO YOUNG!<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-28441225507457095142014-03-02T20:27:00.000-06:002014-03-02T20:27:01.851-06:00Oscars, Part 2Is there something ironic about having Samuel L. Jackson present for hair? Well, he talks about it, but the award is actually costume design, which goes to <i>The Great Gatsby. </i>Did I predict that? Nope--I thought it was going to go to 12 Years.<br />
<br />
Hair and makeup did go to <i>Dallas Buyers Club</i>, which I did predict!<br />
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Wow--we've got an average of one award every 12 minutes. At this rate, the show is going to go nearly FIVE HOURS. Okay, then.<br />
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The "conversation" between Kim Novak and Matthew McConaughey is really awkward. He's trying to be gracious, she seems to be careening off-script, he's trying to follow, and it's really really odd. Short animated film--I only saw the one from Disney, which I'm happy to see not win. It was fine, but felt like the kind of gimmicky show that lives in the "shows" at Disney World. It will have a long and productive life there.<br />
<br />
Best animated feature film:<br />
I predict: <i>Frozen.</i><br />
The winner: <i>Frozen!</i><br />
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Interesting factoid: I heard that the envelope and papers, seals, and back-ups that may also be delivered to winners AFAIK--each one cost over $300. The stationery budget for this show is HUGE!<br />
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Sally Field has a lovely and sparkly jet dress with short sleeves and full skirt. Very attractive and flattering. Another tribute to "Heroes"--this time they are real people who have had stories made into movies. So--more filler. Because these award shows aren't long enough, and we are expected to recognize all these movies. I happen to, but there are a couple that I can't identify. So I guess they are pretty iconic, because I haven't seen badly any of them.<br />
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Emma Watson is wearing the heck out of a modern and fresh classic gown, but I can't sign off on her make-up. She's so lovely, and somebody went heavy-handed on her face, which is really too bad. Visual effects:<br />
<br />
I predict: <i>Gravity.</i><br />
The winner: <i>Gravity.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Karen O performing "The Moon Song" from <i>Her.</i> Nice to have a chance to see how nicely a punk goddess can clean up. Hated the song inside the movie, thought it made the Artificial Intelligence seem cliched and hackneyed as it tried to write a song. I do like the staging of it here, with her shoes off and placed on the stage next to her--that's exactly the kind of moment that song evokes.<br />
<br />Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-61567973219128015742014-03-02T19:55:00.002-06:002014-03-02T19:55:48.721-06:00Oscars 2014After about 15 months of Red Carpet blather and a hopelessly low FPM (fashions per minute) rate, we are going to have the actual event.<br />
<br />
Why yes, I do sound jaded. Perhaps this is the last year I'll bother live-blogging, rather than recapping. And that retirement may very well happen mid-ceremony tonight as well. There are at least 5 blogs that I read regularly that are live tweeting, and I don't read that many. So I can probably find dozens of them without needing to create my own. Ceremony recap is similarly well covered. The internet has come a long way from the olden days when you had to wait a week for People Magazine to come out with its fashion coverage.<br />
<br />
Now, of course, stuff is posted seconds after it happens, is infinitely searchable and findable, and clips go up within 24 hours. My<br />
<br />
So, here we are with the obligatory call out of people who are here tonight routine. But Ellen looks great in her sparkling blue velvet tux, her jokes are gentle but still funny--much kinder than Seth McFarlane. But she still did "The nominees have together made 1400 films, and a total of 6 years of college. Stay in school, kids."<br />
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"I'm not going to say, who's the prettiest tonight, but let's be honest, it's Jared Leto."<br />
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"Lupita Nyong'o is here. She is from Kenya: she is a Kenyan. Barkhad Abdi is from Somalia, he is a Sommalier, so he knows a lot about wine. Who's the wine captain now?"<br />
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Anne Hathaway to present Best Supporting Actor. Her dress is lovely--it's got the vibe that Anna Kendrick's was going for, but does it right. Just the right amount of strap and shape, but massive bling, and looks great on her. Love it. And the Oscar goes to:<br />
<br />
I predict: Jared Leto.<br />
Winner is: Jared Leto.<br />
<br />
There is an entire blog post about the tipping point we are on right now, between the old way of having "daring" men play transsexual roles, and the growing demand for using <i>actual </i>transsexuals playing these roles, like <i>Orange is the New Black.</i> I'm not quite sure where I fall on this dispute, but it's interesting.<br />
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Lovely that Leto is using this time to speak to his mom and brother. He's not putting his foot into his mouth about what it takes to play this role. He's also calling out to the larger world, before he does the list of people he needs to thank. Much the best speech he's given this awards season.<br />
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Jim carey looks dapper in a blue shiny tux with a black shirt and I think a bow tie? Hard to see over the facial contortions. He's introducing animated movies? Yes, after an LSD joke and then putting on his Martin Scorsese glasses. But it's not an actual award, it's a tribute to animated heroes? No wonder these shows go on for donkey's years.<br />
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Great staging of Pharrell's "Happy"with great dancers of all ages--literally--there's a couple of kids who look to be about eightI Also love the reinterpretation of THAT HAT. That is such a great song--it deserves to win, but I don't think it can possibly beat the juggernaut that is "Let It Go." So I guess he'll just have to be happy being the force behind three of the biggest pop hits of the year--"Happy," "Blurred Lines," and "Up All Night." I mean, it's only fair to ask him to share a little bit.<br />
<br />
And we're into a commercial break!<br />
<br />Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-80103793788439096942014-03-02T18:54:00.000-06:002014-03-02T19:27:05.473-06:00Oscars Red Carpet--Repeats and FillerWe still have over an hour to go before the ceremony starts!<br />
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Matthew MeConnaughey in a white jacket over a black waistcoat. White is apparently the trend of the evening for men, and white/skin/blush for women.<br />
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ABC has Jennifer Lawrence, who is wearing a great Neil Lane necklace down the back, with a red strapless Dior with hip peplum? She looks great, but less "major" than last year. It's almost the same color of red as her Calvin Klein swimsuit gown that she wore when nominated for <i>Winter's Bone.</i><br />
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Anne Hathaway spotted in the crowd, wearing something that is a sort of breastplate silver on black dress--much more sophisticated than what she had last year. It works with her dark hair and striking features.<br />
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Charlize Theron in balck Dior--her necklace looks like a match to Blanchett's earrings. It's perfectly tailored, fitted amazingly, with a lovely train.<br />
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Recap--Amy Adams' dress has pocketflaps on the hips--echoing Jennifer Lawrence's hip peplums, but smaller and tailored.<br />
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Kerry Washington in a aubergine sack by Jason Wu--it looks comfortable, but not much to look at. I don't like the hair--it gives her a flat head on top. It's fine, she's pregnant, but she's so much better looking than this.<br />
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I'm break to make dinner, and watching pre-taped filler, so I'm posting this, calling it a wrap, and we'll see you inside the Dolby Theater!Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800564.post-49330456481989636042014-03-02T18:24:00.002-06:002014-03-02T18:24:56.943-06:00Oscar Red Carpet--Before Midnight editionJulie Delpy is wearing something that is highly age inappropriate. She is a beautiful woman, but she's wearing this thing that looks like something Jennifer Lopez probably already wore. It's deeply plunging, and Delpy's boobs look droopy, her shoulders look sloped and rounded, she just looks generally saggy, and the color is doing nothing for her skin tone. It's Jenny Packham--Delpy doesn't have the body that Catherine Cambridge has--it's just sad.<br />
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Lupita Nyong'o with Seacrest. She's carrying the dress in exactly the way Delpy wasn't. This is Lupita's first role out of school--I hadn't actually heard that. Not sure I'm liking the headband and earring combination she's got going on with a complicated hair look--she's doing with her head what Kristin Bell is doing with her dress. The dress is Prada, it's a classic Grecian gown, but she says it reminds her of Nairobi. And they are making her do the ManiCam.<br />
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Anna Kendrick in J Mendel. Don't like it.<br />
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Naomi Watts in white Calvin Klein and she's walking on the hem. The clutch is great and geometric and the necklace too, but I think they fight with the more clumpy beading on the dress. Live Schriber is "home with the kids, has an early call in the morning."<br />
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June Squibb in a lovely age appropriate green Tadashi Shoji, custom for her. It's nicely constructed, with some lines that give her shape and she looks great. And she's 84! Love her emerald earrings too.<br />
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Jared Leto with June Squibb, he's flirting with her and they are playing up as if they are dating. It's very nice. Leto is wearing the white jacket--twins with Seacrest, but a burgundy tie. Then they spend all their time talking about Leto's mom.<br />
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And now--checking out the ABC coverage--which traditionally has the same stars, just <i>after</i> E! does, because they are closer to the entrance.<br />
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Anna Kendrick again--I like her earrings, little fans with tassels, but still very very busy as a whole look. She's got a cool red clutch. The dress is showing some side-boob, still do not like.<br />
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Amy Adams looks better on ABC--the lighting shows her colors better--the blue looks somewhat brighter, but still so seriously understated. She's calling it her "<i>Vertigo </i>homage" as Kim Novak is being honored tonight.<br />
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Benedict Cumberbatch on E!. His hair is too well groomed. I like the ruffled Sherlock curls better. He looks dapper, he's delightful, he's gone and Kevin Spacey is here as a producer for Captain Phillips I think?<br />
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Jessica Biel in Chanel Couture, alone and ManiCam. Her dress is very close to her skin toneIt's understated, it's fine. Nice row of buttons down the back.<br />
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Bette Midler, Rheem Acra in red and white. She looks great.<br />
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Sally Hawkins was hovering behind Bette, in a major dress and I didn't recognize her, but that was a dress I wanted to see more of. Lots of encrusted needing and appliqué, in an over the top Valentino that doesn't look like too much.<br />
<br />
Sarah Paulson also in a glittery skin-colored dress (skin colored because it is almost exactly her skin color.) Elie Saab--this is giving sort of a Britney Spears vibe she and Sally Hawkins are pushing--and also Cate Blanchett seems to have the same thing going. She's just stepped up--is it Britney Spears, or is it Olympic Skater? Netting, scattered sparkles, her version has paillettes and bugle beads and it's kind of mangy looking really.<br />
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Major earrings. I do like those. Giorgio Armani--are the earrings diamond or opals?<br />
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<br />Amy Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00085705321950169094noreply@blogger.com0