More thoughts on female characters in superhero movies

SPOILERS AHOY.

Dear Captain America,

THIS IS HOW IT'S DONE. You know how back in my Green Lantern review I was like "Carol is an awesome character when she's first introduced but sometime during act two/act three she gets turned into someone completely useless" ? Well, I see your supposedly-competent romantic interest and I raise you one badass british science officer. Peggy Carter is what all superhero movie love interests hope they can be. The people at the Bechdel Test can argue all they want about the dancing girls and their upskirt shots (which I honestly saw as an homage to the time period), but my primary focus on this blog when I get to ranting is love interests who are or are not fully developed characters in their own right. The Nostalgia chick has a term for it with a witty acronym and it's something like Love Interest Superfluous to Plot (LISP?) but here, I'm just going to go down the list and think of all the reasons why Peggy is such a cool character (or at least I thought so).

1. She's smart.
2. She's a woman in a male-dominated profession... and still gets shit done. Even in the military during world war II. Like, it's one thing to tell us your female character is an officer. It's another to actually have her go toe-to-toe with a superior and get what she wants because of sheer pluck and determination and not because she flashed him her tits.
3. She is more than capable of Punching You In The Face.
4. She knows how to handle a firearm, and rather than sitting back at base moping manages to help storm the Big Bad's base as part of a fucking assault team.
5. Her and Steve/Captain America's love story is really sweet. Someone got their ratios right, because it doesn't feel like a romantic plot tumor. This was actually something I really thought was kind of refreshing, was the total lack of emphasis on sex in this movie. It's been pointed out that nowhere between 98-lb weaking Steve and (SPOILERS) Down With the Plane Captain America does the hero find time to bed his love interest - and that's okay, because they spend most of the movie playing on this awesome romantic tension where he's still this awkward kid from Brooklyn at heart and she's too classy a dame to throw herself at him, which goes a long way to show that just because he's got the body of a hunk he's still the same person deep down. I really enjoyed that Captain America really has these "Greatest Generation" values and not this modern idea of oversexed masculinity, because that would have probably just turned him into another super-powered douchebag (CoughGreenLanternCough)
6. The way she's written, there's a lot of things she does that could just as easily been filled by some kind of male supporting character, even with very little changes made to the overall script (Well, at the expense of the love story, which would be a pity to lose). However, I don't think the movie would work as well if she were just another soldier - there's the Men In Uniform Maximum, and once you go over that line all of your characters get kind of muddled. Probably why all of the Captain's strike team have such distinct appearances - they get ethnicities instead of names because if he had a platoon of white guys, we'd never learn their names AND we wouldn't be able to tell them apart. Stock the hero's team full of tokens, and they're still tokens but at least we can have a favorite character and get attached to them because we can TELL THEM APART.  The fact alone that Peggy is the only woman in this male-dominated environment... and she's there as a capable member of the team, whose capableness is never for a second diminished... is a huge part of her character.
7. The actress is listed next to a picture of Rosie the Riveter in the credits. Which given they were using old War Propaganda posters for their credit design in general was a nice touch. I'm sure someone out there is rolling their eyes, but seriously.

Basically, it's not enough to present a female character in a male occupation to make the audience buy her competence - it's all about what you do with the character, and really it seems like there are two directions to go with this: turn her into a screaming damsel, or continue to prove her competence. She is in that position because she earned it, and she probably had to work harder to get there than the men she's working with. Your female lead is not just a pair of tits, and if you're writing her as such it's probably indicative of a much bigger problem.

There's also the matter of emotional investment in a love story. What I think makes the romantic subplot in Captain America work so well is that it's always there, but at the same time it's seamless. In the final action sequence, who is the captain talking to? Peggy. And it makes the emotional stakes of the scene so much higher than if he were just talking to one of his commanding officers. Why? Because we're invested in this relationship, and we want them to get their dance. If we weren't invested in it, the movie's last line wouldn't have any emotional resonance at all. But then you realize... Peggy is probably dead of old age, and you're like, "Holy fucking shit, this is tragic" and want to hug Captain America.

Contrast this to Green Lantern where Blake Lively just disappears for the whole final act of the movie and you can probably understand why no one had any kind of emotional reaction to Green Lantern besides "I spent my money to see this shit?"

Having female characters does not make you a feminist.

Watch out, I'm about to make another misguided post about feminism and Hollywood gender standards. Also, we might start talking about superheroes and race, because, you know what? When I was a little kid, The Green Lantern was a black dude. I know that the Hal Jordan is the "original" character to hold the title, but John Stewart is the guy I watched on Justice League when I was a wee little nerdling.

SO, LET'S TALK ABOUT SUPERHERO MOVIES.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT, LEEZ?

LET'S TALK ABOUT X-MEN: FIRST CLASS.

So, in general, X-Men as a franchise is pretty good about providing interesting, strong female characters. I mean, this is the series that brought us Rogue and Jean Grey and Storm and Kitty Pryde. Which is nothing to laugh at, because they're badass, but they're not in this movie. First Class has four main female characters, which is already more than most superhero films which will typically just have a love interest (we'll talk about that when we talk about Green Lantern. We're getting there.) And it passes the Bechdel Test, which is something not many superhero movies do.

So, is it feminist?

Let's look at the four female characters we get:

Angel: stripper.
Emma Frost: High-end stripper, like for governors and stuff.
Moira: FBI agent (masquerades as a stripper).
Raven/Mystique: Hero's sister, ends up naked by the end of the movie, may or may not sleep with Magneto, who may or may not grow up to be Sir Ian McKellen, who may or may not have played the character as militantly, metaphorically homosexual. (But probably did.)

So Angel is a stripper who defects to the bad guys at the soonest sign of a fight. She's not a very deep character and that's okay because she's mostly around to wear skimpy outfits and provide a bit of color to our otherwise pretty damn anglo-looking cast.

Emma Frost is a villainess, who runs around in her underwear, who gets chained to a bed, whose main power is turning herself into an incredibly cheesy diamond effect. Frankly I think January Jones is a really boring actress and the character was really flat beyond just hanging out and being eye candy for Kevin Bacon.

Moira... is in her underwear within five minutes of her first appearance. She is reasonably useful in a fight, but she shoots Charles in the spine and she winds up the butt of a joke that seems like it's trying to emulate Mad Men but the rest of the movie is so unapologetically modern that the 1960s setting feels like an afterthought, like they needed a reason to point nukes at each other.

Raven/Mystique is probably the most interesting female character, but she gets reduced as the plot goes on until she is A) naked and B) sleeps with Erik C) to distract from the fact that he and Charles are basically having the most epic bromance since Kirk and Spock. Or something. Actually, why the fuck did she sleep with him? Because he thinks its sexy that she's blue and Hank just rejected her, so her standards are lowered? I mean, not that Erik isn't good looking or anything, but there's something weird going on in the character motivations there and it seems to cheapen the character.

So what have we got here?

• A token.
• Fan service.
• A woman in a man's job, ultimately proven inferior and susceptible to emotions.
• A teenaged girl who isn't making rational decisions because the boy she liked called her ugly.

Bechdel test passing or not, this isn't actually looking all that good. We've basically got a bunch of stereotypes, and they're not really doing anyone any favors except maybe the fanboys. But at the same time, most stories don't work if you just switch the genders, because then they become all about the gender. Like, a story about a prince who goes on a quest during which he learns all kinds of things about himself and at the end rescues a princess can be about all the things he learns along the way. But if you switch it and make it about a princess who rescues a prince, all anyone is going to focus on is that it's now about a girl.

But moving on to Green Lantern.

I am not going to call this a great movie, but it's a fun movie and it was raining today.

Green Lantern has, like, two female characters. Maybe three because they made one of the masters of the universe a woman. I'm going to zero in on the love interest because, let's face it - here is a compelling character setup... who is of absolutely no relevance to the plot past the midpoint.

The character Carroll is a test pilot. The first time we see her, she's chewing out Hal for being late, and she's already suited up and ready to go. Awesome. She puts in some good moves out in the planes, but she doesn't win the day. But that's because this is character setup - Carroll plays by the rules, Hal showboats. Fair enough. And then she's a business genius - awesome! Good for her!

And then she nearly gets crushed by a bandstand, kidnapped by the villain, and is just totally absent from the final conflict. Wow. Did the writers just forget she existed? At least Mary Jane got to dangle over the Hudson. So, basically, this is a character who just kind of became useless and went away. And she had a promising setup, too.

There's kind of this line between "extraneous love interest" and "female character who happens to love," and Caroll hits the "extraneous" side hard. She serves no purpose to the plot. Her role at the beginning could just as well have been played by another male fighter pilot and it wouldn't have made a difference.

At the same time, though, it's stupid to take two characters who for the duration of the film have had little to no chemistry and throw them together for some misdirected moment of character development. Erik and Mystique? I mean I understood why she would go to him, but their conversation felt rushed and didn't come to any kind of character-appropriate conclusion. First he tells her she's too young, then he tells her he prefers her blue, and then he has sex with her. MAGNETO, TAKING ADVANTAGE OF EMOTIONALLY DISTRESSED YOUNG WOMEN SINCE 1962. Congratulations, you're a lech. The logical end to this scene would actually be him talking her out of his bed, instead of her talking him into it, but apparently when a girl sneaks into your bedroom and she's naked and she's blue and she wants someone to tell her she's pretty, the appropriate response is to have sex with her. Yes. Of course. And even though she's had interactions with Erik prior to this and they do have some sexual tension, he's never really built up as a viable romantic rival to Hank and asdfghjk this just really bugs me.

Superheroes and race will have to wait for another day because I wound up having a three-hour discussion about it with Lydia while I was typing up this post and it really does not fit here, but we basically figured out why making Peter Parker in to Peter Park doesn't work but rebuilding Spider-Man from scratch does.

A post about anime

I got really excited when I saw this trailer:

Whenever conversation turns to who inspires me as a filmmaker, the first person who comes to mind is Makoto Shinkai. He's an up-and-coming anime director who has been called, in various circles, "The Next Miyazaki." I think this title is well deserved, because he's brilliant, but also faintly bullshit, because Miyazaki-sensei is still alive and released a movie as recently as two years ago and is still heading up Ghibli so it would be kind of premature to start labeling people as "the next _____." Like what, do you want him to hurry up and die? He's only 70, and the life expectancy in Japan is up to like 89 or some ridiculous number, so I'd hazard to say he'll probably be with us a while yet.

Granted, they do have some things in common. Both are very conscious of animation as a medium for storytelling, rather than as a genre of filmmaking. Both create very human characters with very human mannerisms. Both are fascinated with flight. (Miyazaki is noted for his obsession with aircraft. Shinkai is more interested in space travel, but The Place Promised in our Early Days had an awesome plane.)

Shinkai tends to veer more science fiction, where Miyazaki's interests are more fantasy. That said, there's a lot in Hoshi o Kodomo (I have no idea where he's getting his word salad english title "Children who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below - Hoshi o Kodomo is roughly "Children who Chase Stars") that looks very Ghibli-esque, there's a scene that I'm pretty sure is invoking Castle in the Sky, and checking the website reveals a supporting character who is clearly designed after Teto from Nausicaa. So way to undermine my argument, Shinkai-sensei. But if one of the main critiques of your work is that all three of your movies are really similar, then I guess this is a branching out for you.

What I like about Shinkai's films is that he presents a world that is somehow removed from our own, but not so far removed that it's hard to grasp, and then within these gorgeous science fiction settings, he boils his story down to tight human dramas about isolation and struggling to connect. Voices of a Distant Star is beautiful, and I've embedded a segment of Five Centimeters Per Second, which is a collection of three short films using all kinds of travel metaphors for growing up, not knowing where you're going but going anyways, even if it seems like you're getting there incredibly slowly. (This section uses rockets, and it's beautiful.)

*There's some bad science in this dub. When he says "center of the solar system," he means "center of the galaxy."

Rewarding myself with movies...

So yesterday, after biting two pages out of my anthropology midterm paper (finished it today, thank you very much), and reconstructing most of my screenplay after the file corrupted itself (for really expensive software, Final Draft suicides surprisingly often), I decided I deserved a break. Now, when I'm writing I tend to be on Wikipedia and TVTropes researching facts and pop-culture, because I'm the kind of person who aspires to show her research and do it in a brilliant way. I'm not quite there, but who's counting?

Anyways, there are a bunch of tropes relating to cavemen/neanderthals and while skimming the pages, I became aware of a movie called The Man from Earth. It looked really interesting, so I looked it up on Netflix, and lo and behold, it was there and it was interesting! So I made a note to go back to it later and kept working on my paper.

Later came, I watched the movie, it was relevant to ALL of my interests.

Some things:

• In terms of film-style storytelling, this isn't really a film sort of film? To me it felt like a novel or a play that had been shot in order to reach the widest possible audience.
• ACTUALLY I think this would be an amazing play and I wonder if the screenwriter is aware of the fact?
• The trailer spoils one of the big twists, but it's such a part of the premise that it doesn't even matter. Like, I don't think the twist is so much that he's a caveman so much as what he's been doing for 14,000 years.
• IT GETS WEIRD.

I don't think that subtlety is really this movie's strong point, but that's not the point - it's good because it's a thought experiment and an exploration of a high-concept piece of Sci-Fi without any special effects, taking place entirely in more or less one location. And that's what's so interesting to me - it's a huge, epic science fiction story boiled down to like eight people in a room, reacting. And the story is as much about their reactions as it is to the story being told, so I don't even mind that you could say this is a major breach of "Show, don't tell." In fact, if there were flashbacks in John's story, I daresay they would have ruined the movie.

(Huge, epic science fiction stories boiled down to tight human dramas are one of my favorite things. It's part of what appeals to me so much about Makoto Shinkai's work.)

Anyways, have a trailer, and check this movie out, because it's really, really interesting.

Oh, and I made a tumblr.

I have terrible taste in movies.

So, the universe seems to agree that the 2010 Jude Law/Forest Whitaker vehicle Repo Men is terrible. I disagree. I think that it was more fun than a barrel of monkeys, had this hilarious/amazing dark humor to it, and doesn't try to take itself too seriously. It is a bit over-long, but it's so much fun that I don't care.

The scene with the nine-year-old in the frilly dress performing invasive surgery, and the bizarre/beautiful violence-as-sex scene at the film's climax make the whole thing worth it. I know that the trope is interplay of sex and violence, but this was basically the most amazing idea ever. Kind of difficult to watch, but an amazing metaphor, basically about sex as a deconstruction/exploration of the self by the partner. I mean I guess it's not really sex, but it's things going into things and there was blood and guts and it was filmed really suggestively and at one point I turned to my friend and was like, "I can't tell if they're actually having sex or not right now, in addition to all that other stuff," but we decided they probably weren't because that... wouldn't really make sense. I guess other people don't think that much about this kind of stuff? It takes a dramatic writing major.

ANYWAY I'm kind of glad this movie got NO press coverage because it made watching it all that much better. SO I WILL NOT SPOIL YOU. :)

I THOUGHT IT WAS REALLY GOOD, I DON'T CARE THAT IT'S GOT LIKE A 14% OR WHATEVER ON ROTTEN TOMATOES. SOME MOVIES ARE JUST FUN, AND THIS IS A FUN MOVIE.

Also, Repo the Genetic Opera is one of my least favorite movies ever and I don't understand everyone's obsession with it, it is quite honestly overhyped and bad. Like, not even Rocky Horror So Bad It's Good. Just bad.

Also Jude Law might be one of the most gorgeous men on the planet. Even if his hairline is receding. That accent! I melt.

The Oscars, Anti-feminism, and singing in the key of Awkward

Disclaimers first, I'm not a very good feminist. I'm part of this weird nineties generation of girls that has been brought up to think we can be whatever we can be without having to fight for it. Because when I was a little girl, Barbie could be a doctor, a teacher, an airline stewardess, and an astronaut. (Never mind that she was subliminally telling me that math was hard.) Because I was born post-Tereshkova, post-Sally Ride, post-Thatcher, pre-Palin. Because Lisa Simpson told me that the glass ceiling wasn't just invisible, it was imaginary. Because I was promised a post-gender world as a child, one where women wore shoulder pads to make themselves masculine and imposing, where they ran business meetings and answered clunky cell phones phones and wore leg warmers when they exercised and had feathered hair. (This is what I remember of my formative years in the 90s. I might have them mixed up with the 80s.) So I'm not a very good feminist. But I still know it when I see it.

So let's talk about the Oscars. First of all, I feel betrayed by Natalie Portman. Natalie Portman, YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE SMARTER THAN THIS. You went to Harvard! You understand math that just looks like squiggles and lines to me! You are "one of the brightest stars of the generation" and I don't know who I'm quoting on that but I'm sure I'm quoting someone. Indie darling, blockbuster queen, gracefully transitioning from child phenom into leading lady. So you've just won an Oscar! How does it feel?

Great? Good. What are you going to do next?

Make a speech? Well, sure, everyone does. A really long, rambly speech? Again, everyone does. You're going to thank everyone who has helped you, ever, in advancing your career to this point? Great, good for you, I love a gracious winner!

You're going to thank your boyfriend for giving you "the most important role" of your life?

WHAT.

WHAT.

WHAT.

You are going to thank the dude for knocking you up, on national television, and belittle EVERYTHING you have done in your entire life in the process?

WHAT.

WHAT.

WHAT.

This is not me "hating on breeders." I have no problem with people who have kids. In fact, I think kids are great. I want kids someday! However I don't think that anyone should be defined, or allow themselves to be defined, or define themselves, by their ability to spawn. "Oh, yeah, I cured cancer, developed an interplanetary rocket that runs on cow pies, and published a novel. But I guess that's all peanuts now that I'm pregnant." Or this:

I don't think I would have cared if she'd said "my next great role" or something of the ilk. It was the phrase "most important role" that bothered me. We tend to criminalize women who put their careers ahead of their kids and put women who put their kids ahead of their careers up on pedestals. There doesn't seem to be any sort of happy medium between the two, at least not in society's general view of things, but I know from my own personal experience that there must be, because my mother managed to raise three intelligent, responsible members of society from birth to adulthood while still becoming a successful and influential member of her field. And while I'm sure she's proud of my siblings and I, and proud of herself for raising us, I don't think that the fact of us totally belittles every single thing that she's ever done professionally.

But moving on, because this isn't actually meant to be a blog post entirely about Natalie Portman and whether she did or did not totally invalidate every professional move she has ever made in one little Oscar speech. Let's talk about hosting! So this year's Oscar hosts were Anne Hathaway and James Franco... except, it was pretty clear that James Franco was blazed out of his mind and Anne Hathaway was carrying the show. In fact, it was almost less co-hosts and more Anne Hathaway, Oscar Host, and James Franco, her chaperone, requisite male body.

Just from the opening skit, it was really clear that this was Anne's show and everyone else just sort of lived there. She sings! She dances! She bitches at Hugh Jackman! She puts on a series of successively shinier dresses! Her enthusiasm introducing people is adorable! And James Franco just kind of squints at the lights like he's not sure what he's doing here because he's stoned out of his fucking mind. The only thing I got out of it was that the academy didn't trust a woman alone on stage to be able to keep the show moving, so they needed a guy to stand there and look manly.

My non-American friend who had never seen an Oscar telecast before pointed out, "But didn't Ellen [DeGeneres] host?"

The answer to this being that Ellen DeGeneres hosted the Oscars wearing a tux and sensible shoes, not a sparkly gown and heels. She's funny and manic and kind of butch. It's unthinkable to put Ellen DeGeneres in a sparkly dress and make her co-host with a man in a tux, but at the same time, if Anne Hathaway had put on a tux and sensible shoes and tried to host the Oscars by herself, it would have just been strange. She has to be in a sparkly dress, but I'm not sure that James Franco needs to stand beside her looking (very, very) confused and (very, very) pretty for the exercise to work. You'd think that a smart and self-assured woman could do the same job at a black tie event, regardless of whether she's wearing sequins or pants.

But what I get out of it is a statement that you cannot be both conventionally feminine and somehow emcee to a room of Hollywood's best and brightest, by yourself. The woman in the dress, with her coiffed hair and pretty necklaces, is weak. And this sort of goes back to the suit jackets with the shoulder pads from earlier - if you want power, you have to masculinize yourself.

Last point of the rant, Kathryn Bigelow. Kathryn Bigelow, you are a classy lady. Last year, all my friends and I cheered for you when you won Best Director. You were an inspiration. You had one of the prettiest dresses of the night. Everything I said earlier, about having to butch yourself up to gain influence? You defied it. You are a classy lady. So what was that fashion disaster you were wearing tonight ?

I know that my (and the rest of the country's, apparently) favorite pastime of snarking red carpet fashion is, on some level, fundamentally wrong, but you're so high profile, and it's because you're smart, and talented, and not because you're a pretty face who can look convincingly miserable. But if you're presenting an award to a bunch of middle-aged frat boys, in a category you took an upset win in last year, you'd better look amazing. And you didn't. And I was disappointed.

Okay, rant over.

We made a movie

A few weeks I participated with some friends in the Tisch 48 Hour Film Festival. There was very little sleep, a lot of hilarity, and a ridiculous amount of talking like Sean Connery involved in making this movie.

Enjoy!

This is why I go to college, right?

The Shakespeare for Writers lecture tonight consisted of spending the second half of the class proving that Mercutio is homosexual beyond any shadow of a doubt, through use of Queen Mab, subtext, and likely intended staging, and then using this revelation to show character motivation in the fight with Tybalt.

Ie, why does Mercutio attack Tybalt? Because he thinks Romeo is making passes at him.

This is why I go to college, right?

Did Tisch 48 this weekend, which was crazy. I haven't got a copy of our completed film yet, but here's a copy of our promo poster that my friend/teammate sent me. I'll post a link to our movie as soon as I get it. :)

So today was really, really long.

But I did cobble together some kind of clumsy narrative using a bunch of random clips we shot last week for Fundamentals of Film. I screwed up the end credits though.

I think this is pretty decent considering it was my first time using Final Cut and we didn't actually have a story in mind when we shot the clips. Also the sound isn't synced but that's a problem for another project.

Blue Valentine

SPOILERS AHOY.

I loved this movie. Even though the ending is in the pitch ("It's about a couple breaking up,") I was still clinging to the possibility that they might stay together. That's how in love with it I was - usually if I know the plot I just watch the movie to say I've watched it, but this one I was actually emotionally invested in.

As a piece of storytelling, it's an interesting experiment in flashbacks. If it's been in vogue the last few years to tell a love story by juxtaposing the beginning and end of the relationship, then Blue Valentine is the most triumphant example of it that I've seen. We've seen this gimmick before - it was in 500 Days of Summer, which I honestly hated - but here it feels more honest. It's a difference in tone. 500 Days was too metatheatrical, too willing to utilize film cliches and irony. Blue Valentine doesn't use title cards or fancy effects. There's something about the soft focus and color saturation that feels old-fashioned. The awkward angles feel intimate, not avant-garde.

It's like watching someone's home movies. How it began, how it ended, piecing it together. The main action of the film is set over the course of the fourth of July weekend, and there's something just so quintessentially American about the story. Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy and girl get married, have a kid, buy a house, get a dog - the American dream. And then it falls apart. The dog gets hit by a car. You try to have a romantic getaway but you're both just too pre-occupied. The American dream crumbles around you, and then your wife demands a divorce on Independence day.

They could be anyone's parents. And I think that's why I got so emotionally invested - because it feels true. Most of Blue Valentine's press comes from its original NC-17 rating (successfully overturned), and I think I agree with the interviews that the MPAA wasn't offended by the oral sex so much as they were by the honesty. Like I mentioned in my American Idiot rant, Americans like their sex and violence covered in a sheen of unreality. When you wipe that sheen off, we recoil.

There's a lot that isn't said in this movie. For every inch we learn about Cindy and Dean's backstories, there's a lot more we don't learn. Little clues to their personalities that might explain why these people are the way they are, that aren't explained - not that the movie needs to. We get enough. We don't need to know it all. Our minds fill it in. Whether it makes them more or less sympathetic is left up to the viewer.

Anyway I loved it. It's such a charming and honest little movie and the characters are likeable without feeling cutesy. If you get a chance, you should definitely check it out. I hate to use words like "adorable" for movies with sex and violence, but it really is. It's adorable, but it's also raw and emotional and painful.

:)

Giga Puddi

Is there much I love more than Weird Japanese Stuff? (Oh. Wait. Rockets, Neil Gaiman, dogs, and chai lattes. )But I do love strange Japanese confectionaries a whole lot. Mochi ice cream? Daifuku? Pocky? Bring that shit on, son. Delicious! And, fortunately, yours truly lives near one of two M2M Asian Grocery Stores in all of New York City. So if this stuff exists anywhere in Manhattan, it should not be too hard to find.

I propose we make this stuff, and do a reaction video. It'll be fun!

ALSO, Christoph Waltz as an angry Austrian Jew in the Water for Elephants movie? Be still, my fangirl heart! Oh Hollywood, you have redeemed yourself from the curse of Robert Pattinson in this truly wise casting choice. Christoph Waltz is a perfect August, all suave and debonair. I am now officially excited to see it!

You are fair game if:

• You know I blog.
• You read my blog.
• You are related to me.
• I have known you for an exceedingly long amount of time.
• You are famous.
• There is a noteworthy event involving you.
• You are involved in amusing anecdotes I feel comfortable letting my mother read.

I will not blog about you if:

• You don't know I blog.
• You don't read my blog.
• I just met you and you are not famous.
• You don't read my blog yet but might in the future.
• I think you would be kind of weirded out if you knew I was blogging about you.
• You asked me not to.
• Anecdotes involving you are not mother-appropriate. (Like, if we got drunk together... I wouldn't blog about it.)

So, basically, by reading this post you are FAIR GAME.

Also Jesus Christ on a cracker, the roomies and I watched this tonight and it is amazing. I want to make movies like this.

So today was interesting.

Today, I:

1) Went to an AUSA (Anthropology Undergraduate Student Association) movie night and watched a documentary about the Amish.

2) Made new friends.

3) Played old school Super Smash Brothers

4) Went to a fucking awesome poetry smash.

5) Finally saw my amazing friend Chris perform (he's a hip-hop/rap artist and poetry slammer)

6) Was told by a random person in an elevator that they loved me.

7) Came home and finally watched the movie Moon.

8) Which is a fucking amazing movie. HERE'S A TRAILER, ADD IT TO YOUR NETFLIX QUEUE, IT IS AWESOME. Seriously, I think it's the only movie I've seen that actually manages to match the mood and style of 2001: A Space Odyssey and do a good job of it. I'm easily fascinated by speculative/realistic Sci Fi, but this was seriously amazing. Also I really like the theme music and I need it for my writing playlist.

Just saying.

For me, the scariest part of the shining is when Wendy realizes Jack's just been writing the same phrase over and over again where he thought he was writing his magnum opus. I am scared of waking up one day and realizing everything I've ever thought I accomplished was actually complete shit.

Just saying.

Something about dinosaurs.

For a movie that was made ten years ago, this certainly looks just as nice as anything you might find today. (It helps that they used CG dinosaurs on a live-action background, so this opening scene is basically just a special effects reel.) Also, no flow in CGI... so considering that basically they cheated their way past technical limitations, it looks pretty good. The other thing I'd like to point out is that Dinosaur has a pretty great score, even if no one remembers what it was about, or that it existed.

Let's just not talk about the rest of the movie and its Land Before Time ripoff plot.

I do seem to recall seeing this in theaters as a kid and thinking it was pretty cool. But then again, I also thought Rocketman was a good movie as a kid. So, yeah.

Then again, James Cameron does manage to make this look like child's play... (I think this is actually a fan made trailer.)

WELL IT LOOKED GOOD FOR THE YEAR 2000.

A cocktail brewed of equal parts win and what the fuck.

This would appear to be a 50-something Christopher Lee singing a villain song production number in a 1980s movie called The Return of Captain Invincible. From the looks of it, it is the spiritual precursor to such great works as Doctor Horrible's Sing Along Blog.

Or maybe not.

Either way, I really want to find the whole thing and watch it.

/Get Excited/

THIS!!!! :D

The Tempest is easily my favorite Shakespeare play. Scholars call it "A problem play" - it's not a history, and it's not clearly a comedy or a tragedy. It also isn't, as it is commonly remembered, his "final play" - That would be Two Noble Kinsmen, written in collaboration with John Fletcher. However, it was the last play Shakespeare wrote on his own and I won't contest the trailer's claim that it is his "final masterpiece." I haven't actually read Henry VIII or Two Noble Kinsmen, but I would presume it's better than both of them. So sure. Why not. Final masterpiece it is.

At first I was worried about the casting - Hellen Mirren as Prospero? (Sorry, Prospera in this version.) Djimon Honsou as Caliban? (He's a terrific actor whose primary strengths are roaring in a most manly fashion and being shirtless, but isn't that a bit racist? Granted he's been painted gray, so I guess you can't say Caliban is black so much as he's played by a black actor.) Russel Brand? Alfred Molina? But I think the trailer's almost won me over. Julie Taymore, I was hoping you'd bring the same wacky sense of magical realism to this as you did Across the Universe, and this has my hopes up!

Also, is that Sigur Ros at the end of the trailer?

Oh, apparently it's Saeglopur. (I love Sigur Ros.) :)

The Tempest hits theaters December 10th, 2010. I can't wait!

Excited about movies again,

Leez.

The fact that....

Roger Ebert 'ships Jacob/Edward totally just made my night. Also just kind of furthers all previous arguments that Twilight is the most unintentionally hilarious series ever when it comes to sexual tension. Like, there's these, and then there's Twilight, which isn't the result of any actual purposeful subtext, just the fact that the author is absolutely clueless. (Also Mormon. Can we talk about how Twilight is pretty much just an excuse for SMeyer to push a mormon agenda? Actually, let's not.)

Anyway, that's all I've got for tonight.

Also I spent my four-day weekend working my way through this and I have to say it is one awesome piece of work. Crazy random gems like this make me happy I watch anime.

Who do they think I am?

Wait a second!

YOU ARE TEARING ME APART, LISA.