on Hunger Games Barbie, The Artist, and Hugo Cabret
Rumour has it that Mattel is looking to release a Hunger Games Barbie doll. Part of me hopes it's just a rumour, while another part hopes it's true, because laughing this hard MUST be good for my health. (The Hunger Games nail polish line seems to be genuine. Oh world. *g*)
Following links in the article, I came upon people arguing that it was a good thing to have a badass Barbie, that Barbie had been badass before, and that it was a collector's doll, not a toy, and so it wouldn't matter that kids are too young for The Hunger Games. All of which would be good points if it had been a Princess Leia Barbie or Buffy Barbie or River Song Barbie. But Katniss Everdeen doesn't live in an adventure story. She lives in a totalitarian dystopia where violent social oppression is dyed up as entertainment, and where she's forced to smile and look pretty as she goes to her supposed death.
Selling a Katniss Barbie is like selling a Sansa Stark Dream Castle, or 1984 TV sets...
Actually, in a world that already has Big Brother, and where people were calling in to censor South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut because they felt the crude language was bad for children, Katniss Barbie makes perfect sense.
Irony is dead. But I still can't stop laughing.
***
In other news, I went to the cinema yesterday and saw two movies in a row: The Artist and Hugo. It became quite the trip down film history lane. :-) I liked both films, would probably give them both 4 out of 5, but I was ultimately more fond of The Artist. Although, it should be noted that Hugo was good enough to almost make me forget how much I hate 3D. (At least it wasn't dubbed. I still haven't seen Puss in Boots, since they only showed it here dubbed and in 3D. WTF people? What makes you think Antonio Banderas isn't important to the movie-going experience?)
The Artist was a very sweet, old-fashioned film that would appeal to anyone who likes old Hollywood films to begin with, as I do. While it obviously had some meta nods (and more than just a nod towards Singing in the Rain), it also worked very well as a straightforward romantic melodrama, and they don't do a whole lot of those anymore, just romcoms. (Then again, romcoms are rarely funny, so I guess it amounts to the same thing, except this was better.)
There weren't really many surprises, but that's not necessarily the point, either. The lady sitting next to me said "I can't look!" when George put the gun in his mouth, while I thought, "Pfft, he won't kill himself, it's not that kind of movie." Though I shouldn't say anything, because I had been worried that the dog would die earlier, and it's not that kind of movie either.
I was surprised at how touched I was by this film. Half the time I was tearing up, and by the end I was crying properly. And yet George was such a smarmy dick. (Who has a huge portrait of themselves in the house?) Somehow, I still felt for him and Peppy, despite that, and despite the meta-ness of the film. I think it helped to have unknown faces in the leads, it maintained the illusion - whenever someone I recognized showed up, it threw me out of the story. Except James Cromwell, he was perfect, but then, he's always perfect. (And I suppose thinking "James Cromwell is perfect" is breaking illusion too. I couldn't remember his name, either, I kept thinking of him as Dudley Smith.)
As for Hugo, I really liked it too, even if it inevitably lost a little in the adaptation - one of the most awesome things about the book is how cinematical it is, with the way text and illustration is framed, and it's really hard to get the sense of "Wow, this is like a movie!" while you're actually watching a movie. I suppose that's what the 3D is for, except that 3D, as we know, is annoying instead of awe-inspiring.
Still, it was a good film, and it expanded on the story in ways I hadn't expected; usually it's the other way around. I was more uncomfortably aware that it's basically RPF than I had been while I read the book; I don't know why the effect was different, but it was. Judging by Wikipedia, it was fairly accurate to Georges Melies' life, which is a relief, at least. :-)
I read a review that complained that the film focused too much on Melies and not enough on Hugo, which made me wonder if I'd felt similarly if I hadn't read the book first. As I said, it's hard to get the cinematic nature of the story through on film, so it's not so obvious that the climax is going to be movie-centered. That said, for me, I loved the Melies parts best, especially the flashbacks to his studio, seeing film magic get made (though it felt weird watching Melies clips remade into 3D). The rest felt more like an average children's film, to me. Pleasant, but it's the film history bits that elevate it.
So there you have it. Two very good films, especially for the movie buff, neither perfect, but with an edge to The Artist for making me care more, and for resembling the old-style movies I like particularly well.
ETA: Oh! I forgot. I hate the statement that the audience panicked when they saw L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat because they thought they were about to be hit by a train. Come on. People in the late 1800s weren't any more stupid than we are now.If they screamed, they screamed for the same reason we scream when the killer in a slasher movie shows up with a knife. They were startled. If someone had stopped the film and asked, "Now, if the film keeps rolling, will you be hit by the train?" they would have said, "What are you, daft?"
This entry was originally posted at http://katta.dreamwidth.org/573078.html and has
comments there.
Following links in the article, I came upon people arguing that it was a good thing to have a badass Barbie, that Barbie had been badass before, and that it was a collector's doll, not a toy, and so it wouldn't matter that kids are too young for The Hunger Games. All of which would be good points if it had been a Princess Leia Barbie or Buffy Barbie or River Song Barbie. But Katniss Everdeen doesn't live in an adventure story. She lives in a totalitarian dystopia where violent social oppression is dyed up as entertainment, and where she's forced to smile and look pretty as she goes to her supposed death.
Selling a Katniss Barbie is like selling a Sansa Stark Dream Castle, or 1984 TV sets...
Actually, in a world that already has Big Brother, and where people were calling in to censor South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut because they felt the crude language was bad for children, Katniss Barbie makes perfect sense.
Irony is dead. But I still can't stop laughing.
***
In other news, I went to the cinema yesterday and saw two movies in a row: The Artist and Hugo. It became quite the trip down film history lane. :-) I liked both films, would probably give them both 4 out of 5, but I was ultimately more fond of The Artist. Although, it should be noted that Hugo was good enough to almost make me forget how much I hate 3D. (At least it wasn't dubbed. I still haven't seen Puss in Boots, since they only showed it here dubbed and in 3D. WTF people? What makes you think Antonio Banderas isn't important to the movie-going experience?)
The Artist was a very sweet, old-fashioned film that would appeal to anyone who likes old Hollywood films to begin with, as I do. While it obviously had some meta nods (and more than just a nod towards Singing in the Rain), it also worked very well as a straightforward romantic melodrama, and they don't do a whole lot of those anymore, just romcoms. (Then again, romcoms are rarely funny, so I guess it amounts to the same thing, except this was better.)
There weren't really many surprises, but that's not necessarily the point, either. The lady sitting next to me said "I can't look!" when George put the gun in his mouth, while I thought, "Pfft, he won't kill himself, it's not that kind of movie." Though I shouldn't say anything, because I had been worried that the dog would die earlier, and it's not that kind of movie either.
I was surprised at how touched I was by this film. Half the time I was tearing up, and by the end I was crying properly. And yet George was such a smarmy dick. (Who has a huge portrait of themselves in the house?) Somehow, I still felt for him and Peppy, despite that, and despite the meta-ness of the film. I think it helped to have unknown faces in the leads, it maintained the illusion - whenever someone I recognized showed up, it threw me out of the story. Except James Cromwell, he was perfect, but then, he's always perfect. (And I suppose thinking "James Cromwell is perfect" is breaking illusion too. I couldn't remember his name, either, I kept thinking of him as Dudley Smith.)
As for Hugo, I really liked it too, even if it inevitably lost a little in the adaptation - one of the most awesome things about the book is how cinematical it is, with the way text and illustration is framed, and it's really hard to get the sense of "Wow, this is like a movie!" while you're actually watching a movie. I suppose that's what the 3D is for, except that 3D, as we know, is annoying instead of awe-inspiring.
Still, it was a good film, and it expanded on the story in ways I hadn't expected; usually it's the other way around. I was more uncomfortably aware that it's basically RPF than I had been while I read the book; I don't know why the effect was different, but it was. Judging by Wikipedia, it was fairly accurate to Georges Melies' life, which is a relief, at least. :-)
I read a review that complained that the film focused too much on Melies and not enough on Hugo, which made me wonder if I'd felt similarly if I hadn't read the book first. As I said, it's hard to get the cinematic nature of the story through on film, so it's not so obvious that the climax is going to be movie-centered. That said, for me, I loved the Melies parts best, especially the flashbacks to his studio, seeing film magic get made (though it felt weird watching Melies clips remade into 3D). The rest felt more like an average children's film, to me. Pleasant, but it's the film history bits that elevate it.
So there you have it. Two very good films, especially for the movie buff, neither perfect, but with an edge to The Artist for making me care more, and for resembling the old-style movies I like particularly well.
ETA: Oh! I forgot. I hate the statement that the audience panicked when they saw L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat because they thought they were about to be hit by a train. Come on. People in the late 1800s weren't any more stupid than we are now.If they screamed, they screamed for the same reason we scream when the killer in a slasher movie shows up with a knife. They were startled. If someone had stopped the film and asked, "Now, if the film keeps rolling, will you be hit by the train?" they would have said, "What are you, daft?"
This entry was originally posted at http://katta.dreamwidth.org/573078.html and has
comments there.