Mostly movies, also a note about news in the world
I've seen so many movies these past few days that I thought I'd talk a little about them.
Most recent was Tangled, which I tried to rent online, but the connection messed up (I really must learn to stop trying these methods, they may be legal but they SUCK) so I had to pick it up elsewhere.
I liked Rapunzel as a character quite a lot and watched her reaction to being let out into the sun about three times in a row. Mother Gothel was a fantastic villainess, more like a Diana Wynne Jones-type manipulative mother than a traditional Disney stepmother. Though I was a bit bothered by the fact that, well, she's not exactly wrong about the outside world. She may be selfish in wanting to keep the healing power for herself, but what do the "good" characters do? a) Boil tea on the flower so it can't be used ever again and b) cut off Rapunzel's hair so that can't be used ever again. Yeeeeeah, I'm not 100% utilitarianist or anything, but I'm pretty sure that's unforgiveably shortsighted. And Pascal downright commits murder, tripping her like that. Sure, kidnapping is a serious crime (as is emotional abuse, though harder to prove), but vigilantism isn't the answer - and without the healing power, she'd die soon enough anyway. I'm not sure I like the moral system.
Oh, wait. They were going to hang Eugene for stealing - condoned by the "good" king and queen. Yeah, I definitely don't like the moral system.
Beyond that, it seemed so very by-the-books. Maybe because Flynn/Eugene is basically Aladdin, and Rapunzel not too far from Jasmine (or indeed any other recent Disney princess, what with the "I want" song and all). I liked them both regardless, but found Pascal rather second-rate as animal sidekicks go. The music was rather uninspired too. I like the concept, as far from the original fairy tale as it might be, but I feel like they could have done more with it. At least there's some fanfic around.
And this Tangled/Supernatural crossover fanart, which is so fantastic I put it outside the cut. :-)
***
Yesterday, like I said in my previous post, I saw Super 8. It was less thrilling than I thought it would be, and I never quite got submerged in it, which might explain why I felt so nitpicky. It wasn't a bad film, I wouldn't advice anyone against seeing it, but I wouldn't recommend it either. I sat there thinking things like "Kyle Chandler is being very Kyle Chandlery," "That train crash is ridiculously overblown, but as Charles said, production values," "Wow, this kid's nose is so fleshy," and "Is that Simon from Seventh Heaven? It is! Hee!" (I get a kick out of Seventh Heaven stars doing unsavoury things on screen.)
Also, I have a very short patience these days for movies that are about boys, boys, boys, boys, and The Girl. Not that Alice wasn't a well-played, interesting character, because she was, but she was so very clearly The Girl. As in "Hm, this movie should have a Girl." So she gets very little in the way of personal character motivation, while before we even meet her she's signalled as Important to the Backstory (because of her name) and Romantic Interest (because of Joe's reaction to her). Put her in the amateur movie and give her a damsel ending, and hey, we have a character who's in lots of scenes without ever wanting so much as Vonnegut's famous glass of water!
Actually, I'm being a bit unfair to Alice. The problem isn't so much her, as that she's the only girl who gets to do anything important at all. Charles's sister and mom (hi, Gillian!) get some brief moments each, and then of course there's the Dead Mom, who is very important, but, y'know, dead. And to me, that kind of movie itches almost worse than an all-male one, because it so clearly indicates that there's plot stuff, which is done by men, and then there's stuff happening outside the plot, which can be done by women, and then there's The Girl, because you need a girl, right? I just... Why am I supposed to pretend that such a movie is made for me? It's so very clearly not.
Oh, and the first time we see a black man he's been hit by a train. (On that note, and along with the "Hi, Gillian", you're trying to tell me that Bruce is a bad guy? Bruce can't be a bad guy, it's Bruce!)
I did like the monster, though. I'd read reviews saying what a letdown it was after the buildup, but I felt the opposite. The buildup was Smoke Monster all over again, but the actual alien was a pretty good balance between multilegged horror from hell and kind of cute. Also, you could do worse than a statement that it's not okay to exploit even a multilegged horror from hell, even if Joe's actual line was so corny I snickered in my seat.
I liked the amateur movie, too. It was like a kiddy version of the stuff we got sent to FFF last year. So cute. :-)
***
More movies: Cairo Time, because when I follow the veryveryprettyeyes and find that Patricia Clarkson has starred in a love story with Alexander Siddig, of course I'm going to see it. I don't really need a spoiler cut for this one, because nothing much happened. But it was very beautiful, well-played and atmospheric, and it only ran for an hour and a half, which I think is maximum for how long nothing can happen before it gets downright boring. I didn't pay 100% attention to this one, but I did love it the way you love a beautiful piece of music (which you don't necessarily pay 100% attention to, either). There was less exoticism than you'd expect from the description, too (abandoned wife in Cairo falls in love with her guide), though some still remains.
***
A while ago, Therrae recommended the Billy Wilder film One, Two, Three in one of her author's notes. This is what she wrote:
One of my favorite films is One, Two, Three, a Cold War comedy staring James Cagney as an important businessman whose entire career rests on his ability to control the sexuality of a 17 year old girl (his boss's daughter). And the point is that he can't, of course. It doesn't matter that the social system hinges on men controlling access to women's wombs (patrilineal inheritance doesn't work if you aren't sure your wives' children are also yours), because women are not things. Unlike things, women make choices and can be very clever. They can (for example) run off and get secretly married to a Communist.
So, anyway, it is a very funny movie. And it says something useful: the old rules that said women were powerless and passive and meek must always get tangled in the actions and desires of real people.
Or, wait, maybe that's the tragedy...
By the time I watched the film, I'd forgotten the exact wording of the author's note, but I enjoyed the movie tremendously. Which is hardly surprising, since it's a Billy Wilder film. One pleasant surprise for me was finding out that Arlene Francis played the wife in the film. She's my favourite What's My Line panelist, and she was deliciously snarky in this one while keeping that darling amused smile on her face.
The dialogue and events were of course very, very funny, with some nice little touches like how "Yankee go home" has a whole different meaning in Berlin than it has in Atlanta. :-) For a Cold War movie, I thought the treatment of Communist Otto was quite interesting - the film pokes fun at his ideology, and his personal sullenness, but has no problem giving him all the success the Cagney character has wished for. All the more ironic, of course, since Otto hasn't wished for it; as far as he's concerned, it's a terrible sacrifice that he has done for his beloved Scarlett.
I was a little surprised that the Coca-Cola company is allowed to be the Coca-Cola company and not some made-up company. Maybe the real life Coca-Cola high-ups saw it as product placement, though I don't know how happy they could be with a film that showed their owner as a strict but clueless father and his daughter as a hypersexualized teen rebel. It did work in favour of the film, though - few trademarks could be so thoroughly American.
***
Finally, I've started on some old Hitchcock films and finished one of them, Secret Agent. Hitchcock films are usually both exciting and funny, and this was no exception. I found it quite endearingly un-twisty for an agent film, though. Brodie/Ashenden immediately accepts Elsa as his companion, and is right in doing so. In modern films, her character, as well as that of the General, would not have been so easily trusted. We're used to everyone being a bad guy... Of course, the man they originally suspect to be the German spy isn't actually one, but that was rather painfully obvious, based on the flimsy evidence: "He has a German wife and has lost a button, and he's leaving the day after tomorrow! WE MUST KILL HIM AT ONCE!" The buildup and aftermath of that murder, with the rising sense of doom and regret, the frantic dog (aw!) and Elsa's loss of taste for the whole business, is the best part of the movie, IMO, and the most painful to watch.
The low point of the film is The General, an ethnic steretype who's mainly there to make sexual harrassment look funny, but I'll give leeway for the time it was written and leave it at that. Altogether, it may be one of Hitchcock's lesser films, but that still makes it better than most films made.
***
That about that. In ficcing news, I've written about 7000 words of Ezri/Julian so far, though not much of it today, and have at least one tab open on MemoryAlpha practically all day long. We'll see what happens when I start work on Tuesday; I hope to be able to finish it anyway. The Pippi fic is still in the beta process, and all my other fics have taken the backseat, again.
***
And in actual news, the events in Norway just become more horrifying the more I read about it. (Reading blog posts about it is horrifying in another way - how come so many blogs linking to major news events are by nutsos?) I don't know about you, but I feel so helpless reading about it, because the urge of course is to DO something, and there doesn't seem to be anything TO do.
But before this happened, the #1 news item was the famine in East Africa, and that we can do something about. UN is asking for $1.6 billion over the next two months, and major charities such as ICRC and Doctors Without Borders have catastrophe aid going. Some parts of Somalia are hard to get to, but much can be done in other places.
Please, everyone who feels that too many lives are taken at the moment, donate to your favourite charity and help those you have the power to help.
This entry was originally posted at http://katta.dreamwidth.org/551108.html and has
comments there.
Most recent was Tangled, which I tried to rent online, but the connection messed up (I really must learn to stop trying these methods, they may be legal but they SUCK) so I had to pick it up elsewhere.
I liked Rapunzel as a character quite a lot and watched her reaction to being let out into the sun about three times in a row. Mother Gothel was a fantastic villainess, more like a Diana Wynne Jones-type manipulative mother than a traditional Disney stepmother. Though I was a bit bothered by the fact that, well, she's not exactly wrong about the outside world. She may be selfish in wanting to keep the healing power for herself, but what do the "good" characters do? a) Boil tea on the flower so it can't be used ever again and b) cut off Rapunzel's hair so that can't be used ever again. Yeeeeeah, I'm not 100% utilitarianist or anything, but I'm pretty sure that's unforgiveably shortsighted. And Pascal downright commits murder, tripping her like that. Sure, kidnapping is a serious crime (as is emotional abuse, though harder to prove), but vigilantism isn't the answer - and without the healing power, she'd die soon enough anyway. I'm not sure I like the moral system.
Oh, wait. They were going to hang Eugene for stealing - condoned by the "good" king and queen. Yeah, I definitely don't like the moral system.
Beyond that, it seemed so very by-the-books. Maybe because Flynn/Eugene is basically Aladdin, and Rapunzel not too far from Jasmine (or indeed any other recent Disney princess, what with the "I want" song and all). I liked them both regardless, but found Pascal rather second-rate as animal sidekicks go. The music was rather uninspired too. I like the concept, as far from the original fairy tale as it might be, but I feel like they could have done more with it. At least there's some fanfic around.
And this Tangled/Supernatural crossover fanart, which is so fantastic I put it outside the cut. :-)
***
Yesterday, like I said in my previous post, I saw Super 8. It was less thrilling than I thought it would be, and I never quite got submerged in it, which might explain why I felt so nitpicky. It wasn't a bad film, I wouldn't advice anyone against seeing it, but I wouldn't recommend it either. I sat there thinking things like "Kyle Chandler is being very Kyle Chandlery," "That train crash is ridiculously overblown, but as Charles said, production values," "Wow, this kid's nose is so fleshy," and "Is that Simon from Seventh Heaven? It is! Hee!" (I get a kick out of Seventh Heaven stars doing unsavoury things on screen.)
Also, I have a very short patience these days for movies that are about boys, boys, boys, boys, and The Girl. Not that Alice wasn't a well-played, interesting character, because she was, but she was so very clearly The Girl. As in "Hm, this movie should have a Girl." So she gets very little in the way of personal character motivation, while before we even meet her she's signalled as Important to the Backstory (because of her name) and Romantic Interest (because of Joe's reaction to her). Put her in the amateur movie and give her a damsel ending, and hey, we have a character who's in lots of scenes without ever wanting so much as Vonnegut's famous glass of water!
Actually, I'm being a bit unfair to Alice. The problem isn't so much her, as that she's the only girl who gets to do anything important at all. Charles's sister and mom (hi, Gillian!) get some brief moments each, and then of course there's the Dead Mom, who is very important, but, y'know, dead. And to me, that kind of movie itches almost worse than an all-male one, because it so clearly indicates that there's plot stuff, which is done by men, and then there's stuff happening outside the plot, which can be done by women, and then there's The Girl, because you need a girl, right? I just... Why am I supposed to pretend that such a movie is made for me? It's so very clearly not.
Oh, and the first time we see a black man he's been hit by a train. (On that note, and along with the "Hi, Gillian", you're trying to tell me that Bruce is a bad guy? Bruce can't be a bad guy, it's Bruce!)
I did like the monster, though. I'd read reviews saying what a letdown it was after the buildup, but I felt the opposite. The buildup was Smoke Monster all over again, but the actual alien was a pretty good balance between multilegged horror from hell and kind of cute. Also, you could do worse than a statement that it's not okay to exploit even a multilegged horror from hell, even if Joe's actual line was so corny I snickered in my seat.
I liked the amateur movie, too. It was like a kiddy version of the stuff we got sent to FFF last year. So cute. :-)
***
More movies: Cairo Time, because when I follow the veryveryprettyeyes and find that Patricia Clarkson has starred in a love story with Alexander Siddig, of course I'm going to see it. I don't really need a spoiler cut for this one, because nothing much happened. But it was very beautiful, well-played and atmospheric, and it only ran for an hour and a half, which I think is maximum for how long nothing can happen before it gets downright boring. I didn't pay 100% attention to this one, but I did love it the way you love a beautiful piece of music (which you don't necessarily pay 100% attention to, either). There was less exoticism than you'd expect from the description, too (abandoned wife in Cairo falls in love with her guide), though some still remains.
***
A while ago, Therrae recommended the Billy Wilder film One, Two, Three in one of her author's notes. This is what she wrote:
One of my favorite films is One, Two, Three, a Cold War comedy staring James Cagney as an important businessman whose entire career rests on his ability to control the sexuality of a 17 year old girl (his boss's daughter). And the point is that he can't, of course. It doesn't matter that the social system hinges on men controlling access to women's wombs (patrilineal inheritance doesn't work if you aren't sure your wives' children are also yours), because women are not things. Unlike things, women make choices and can be very clever. They can (for example) run off and get secretly married to a Communist.
So, anyway, it is a very funny movie. And it says something useful: the old rules that said women were powerless and passive and meek must always get tangled in the actions and desires of real people.
Or, wait, maybe that's the tragedy...
By the time I watched the film, I'd forgotten the exact wording of the author's note, but I enjoyed the movie tremendously. Which is hardly surprising, since it's a Billy Wilder film. One pleasant surprise for me was finding out that Arlene Francis played the wife in the film. She's my favourite What's My Line panelist, and she was deliciously snarky in this one while keeping that darling amused smile on her face.
The dialogue and events were of course very, very funny, with some nice little touches like how "Yankee go home" has a whole different meaning in Berlin than it has in Atlanta. :-) For a Cold War movie, I thought the treatment of Communist Otto was quite interesting - the film pokes fun at his ideology, and his personal sullenness, but has no problem giving him all the success the Cagney character has wished for. All the more ironic, of course, since Otto hasn't wished for it; as far as he's concerned, it's a terrible sacrifice that he has done for his beloved Scarlett.
I was a little surprised that the Coca-Cola company is allowed to be the Coca-Cola company and not some made-up company. Maybe the real life Coca-Cola high-ups saw it as product placement, though I don't know how happy they could be with a film that showed their owner as a strict but clueless father and his daughter as a hypersexualized teen rebel. It did work in favour of the film, though - few trademarks could be so thoroughly American.
***
Finally, I've started on some old Hitchcock films and finished one of them, Secret Agent. Hitchcock films are usually both exciting and funny, and this was no exception. I found it quite endearingly un-twisty for an agent film, though. Brodie/Ashenden immediately accepts Elsa as his companion, and is right in doing so. In modern films, her character, as well as that of the General, would not have been so easily trusted. We're used to everyone being a bad guy... Of course, the man they originally suspect to be the German spy isn't actually one, but that was rather painfully obvious, based on the flimsy evidence: "He has a German wife and has lost a button, and he's leaving the day after tomorrow! WE MUST KILL HIM AT ONCE!" The buildup and aftermath of that murder, with the rising sense of doom and regret, the frantic dog (aw!) and Elsa's loss of taste for the whole business, is the best part of the movie, IMO, and the most painful to watch.
The low point of the film is The General, an ethnic steretype who's mainly there to make sexual harrassment look funny, but I'll give leeway for the time it was written and leave it at that. Altogether, it may be one of Hitchcock's lesser films, but that still makes it better than most films made.
***
That about that. In ficcing news, I've written about 7000 words of Ezri/Julian so far, though not much of it today, and have at least one tab open on MemoryAlpha practically all day long. We'll see what happens when I start work on Tuesday; I hope to be able to finish it anyway. The Pippi fic is still in the beta process, and all my other fics have taken the backseat, again.
***
And in actual news, the events in Norway just become more horrifying the more I read about it. (Reading blog posts about it is horrifying in another way - how come so many blogs linking to major news events are by nutsos?) I don't know about you, but I feel so helpless reading about it, because the urge of course is to DO something, and there doesn't seem to be anything TO do.
But before this happened, the #1 news item was the famine in East Africa, and that we can do something about. UN is asking for $1.6 billion over the next two months, and major charities such as ICRC and Doctors Without Borders have catastrophe aid going. Some parts of Somalia are hard to get to, but much can be done in other places.
Please, everyone who feels that too many lives are taken at the moment, donate to your favourite charity and help those you have the power to help.
This entry was originally posted at http://katta.dreamwidth.org/551108.html and has
comments there.