03.19.08
Posted in best of, opinion, industry news, lists at 12:47 pm by FilmFemme
and I can’t decide how to feel about that:
(1) Elation? Michael Cera in a movie directed by Edgar Wright in which “a young slacker […]meets the woman of his dreams but finds that he can only win her heart by battling and defeating her seven evil ex-boyfriends. ” Oh yes, tell me more, Hollywood Reporter!
(2) Confusion? Anton Yelchin in the new Terminator movie opposite Christian Bale? Why put so much sexy oppposite so much mediocre? Why why why?
(3) Trepidation? Michael Cera is also slated to be in Youth in Revolt, directed by Chuck & Buck/The Good Girl’s Miguel Arteta, but written by the awfully untalented Gustin Nash who wrote the truly horrible Charlie Bartlett starring the way overhyped Anton Yelchin! Will it be good? Can Mikey save it? Why isn’t it written by Mike White so I can be truly excited about it??
This is why I don’t read the trades anymore…I’m just not cut out for these kinds of emotional rollercoasters.
03.12.08
Posted in film festivals, opinion, industry news, lists at 10:10 am by FilmFemme
Don’t get too excited, I didn’t go there. Maybe next year. But I was just reading about it in this LA Times article, with the oh-so-clever headline “Like its well-fed folks, the Austin, Texas, gathering is swelling” (aren’t there too many commas in there?).
I wanted to go to SXSW (I don’t get a lot of pleasure out of that acronym - I think because it’s purely visual. No one says “Ess Ex Ess Double U”) last year, but because of Bob Dylan, not because of the burgeoning film festival*. And now I learn that Knocked Up premiered there last year and this year Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay did.
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03.10.08
Posted in off topic, opinion, comedy, animated at 2:47 pm by FilmFemme
from the LA Times:
Sen. Barack Obama accused rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton today of attempting to “hoodwink” and “bamboozle” voters into thinking she was the front-runner by offering him the second slot on her ticket.
from yours truly:
Hoodwinked?
Bamboozled?
What are you trying to say? That supporting Hilary is akin to supporting bad CGI and implications of racism? Oh, actually, that makes sense.
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01.26.08
Posted in obituaries, opinion, industry news at 8:27 pm by FilmFemme
When I was 15, I thought it would be cool to be a film snob. It’s hard to be a 15 year old girl and be a snob about anything - if you want to have any friends, which I did want. Actually, I needed friends, because I couldn’t drive yet and didn’t want to hang out with my parents basically ever. So, when I couldn’t convince my dad to drive me to the Egyptian theatre in Denver, I would go to the movies with my 15 year old friends. This is how I saw gems like Bounce and Forces of Nature (hmm…Ben Affleck doesn’t have a drug problem, does he? Too bad.) However. This is also how I saw 10 Things I Hate About You and how I fell in love with Heath Ledger. Everyone mentions the swoon-worthy moment of Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You on the bleachers while Julia Stiles‘ Kat plays soccer, but that’s not the moment I replay. Kat and Heath find themselves at one of those wild high school parties that seem to only happen in movies. She drinks too much, dances on a table and eventually barfs. But even though up until this point, Heath was only seducing her because he was getting paid, he takes care of her. And he is so fucking charming and beautiful. I still want that.
I was too young and unhip to really be affected by the deaths of other young luminaries like River Phoenix or Kurt Cobain. I am old enough now and I feel affected. What makes me so sad is the knowledge that he will never be in another movie (who is going to take his roles? Josh Hartnett? Please!). His resume is so short when I know that he would have kept getting better and better (not to mention hotter and hotter). It’s my understanding he was even going to venture into directing. It’s so tragic, it really is. So let’s just watch one of his movies, weep and say no to drugs. Well, at least two of those things.
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12.13.07
Posted in misogyny, opinion, drama, reviews at 2:30 pm by FilmFemme
I was not a cool kid. My parents didn’t turn me on to The Beatles or The Who or, more relevantly, Bob Dylan, when I was 8 or anything like that. After talking to or seeing my parents, a lot of times I’m left wondering how I ended up with any kind of good taste at all. The point being that, I’ve only liked Bob Dylan for a couple of years and didn’t truly fall in love with him until I saw Don’t Look Back in college and love love loved it. In that documentary, D.A. Pennebaker created this whole compelling character out of Dylan’s tour around England in 1960-something and I absolutely love it.
And I loved I’m Not There.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t even the Cate Blanchett parts, that parallel Don’t Look Back that I found the most compelling. The character that I really liked (in a totally self-loathing way) was Heath Ledger’s ultra-misogynistic but oh-so-sexy Jack Rollins (or whatever, I can’t keep all the character names straight [His character is named Robbie Clark but he plays Jack Rollins in a movie which is the name of Christian Bale’s character {also, can we talk about how much HOTNESS is in this movie! Jesus!}]) and his romance with/divorce from the beautiful French artist Claire (Charlotte Gainsborough). I think it was how I identified with/was compelled by this story and specifically by Claire, that made me go home last night and write the rant that you’ll find after the jump. I’m hiding it with a click-through because, honestly, it’s pretty ‘bloggy’ and possibly even a little ‘LiveJournal-y’ (does that still exist?) but hopefully a little interesting and a tiny bit insightful. Hopefully.
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11.06.07
Posted in opinion, industry news at 3:14 pm by FilmFemme
In case you’re living in a cave or the Midwest (same diff), the WGA went on strike yesterday. Let’s take a moment to collect our thoughts and mourn what might be the last few episodes of Private Practice.
Done? Let’s move on.
This strike is going to have no tangible effect on my life. And you know what, maybe Hollywood could do without a pilot season this year. Because if The Big Bang Theory is the best they can do, it seems like they might need a break. And maybe a few weeks or months trudging around picketing studios will give these writers the perfect kind of self-loathing and existential crises from which they can mine brilliant ideas and scathing dialogue.
If you want to be serious about it, I don’t know the specifics of the strike, but from what I gathered over at Defamer, it seems like the WGA is being pretty reasonable (read: don’t want to be fucked over by studios making money on the internet off of stuff that they created from nothing) and the studios are being dicks (read: acting like studios). I also feel bad for other production-types that are going to be affected. So cheekiness aside, I hope the strike comes to a swift and fair end. But I’m still glad it’s not the grocery stores again.
UPDATE: Apparently I’m not alone in my assesment of the dismal Television landscape (from the L.A. Times)
Dana Gould, a former writer on “The Simpsons,” described the studios’ tactic as a “controlled burn” strategy that would save these giant companies millions of dollars. He said the timing couldn’t be better, amid television’s recent poor ratings.
“It’s a reboot. They want to hit Control-Alt-Delete on the fall season,” Gould said.
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10.22.07
Posted in misogyny, opinion, comedy, drama, reviews at 11:39 am by FilmFemme
So, it might be a tiny bit of a stretch to connect this LA Times article by my new favorite person Carina Chocano to my recent viewing of Shopgirl, since it’s not a comedy and does center around a woman, but the article really forced me to reconsider my feelings about the movie. I watched Shopgirl yesterday and I thought it was so charming. And it made me feel really lonely and almost desperate. You know, in a good way.
Then I read this article, which (READ IT!) articulates in a public forum what I’ve been talking about for a long time (oh yeah, I’m totally OG on the oppression of women and how Hollywood perpetuates it…um, not so much). Chocano’s driving question (thesis? no thanks) is basically: WTF happened to good female comedic characters? Shopgirl isn’t a comedy (though there are some really funny parts [”It’s a mint.”]) but there is still this undercurrent, when I look back on it, of Claire Dane’s Mirabelle (something about that name is so fake - and not in a whimsical way, in a way that it was so clearly invented by a man…) being kind of worthless. She is the titular ’shopgirl’ who literally stands at a counter waiting for life to happen to her. It does, in the form of Jason Schwartzman’s Jeremy who she meets at a laundromat (I’m clearly going to the wrong laundromats, because there are never cute hipster boys when I go - just fat women washing sheets and little kids running around screaming) and later Steve Martin’s Ray. Sure, she’s ‘an artist’ and she’s ‘depressed’ and she ‘has a cat’ and I guess the point is that at the end she *does* do something, but it happens so easily that it’s hard to connect her invisible struggle (her depression manifests itself only in laying in bed for a few days when she goes off her meds) with her ultimate success. It doesn’t feel triumphant, it feels just like her chance encounters with either of the guys that form a tenuous ‘love triangle’ with her - lucky. In retrospect (I will heartily admit that I am still smitten with this movie) it is so obvious that this story was written by a man.
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10.15.07
Posted in opinion, comedy at 1:20 pm by FilmFemme
Slate might claim it’s because I’m a racist.
My hormones would probably claim it’s because I will never get enough of Owen Wilson.
But I think it’s a lot more than that.
His films speak to me and they inspire me. I relate to his characters’ quests for a sense of wholeness and meaning. To the alienation that they feel not only from their intensely quirky and always unknowable relatives, but also from the rest of the world that is somehow always duller, dumber and less interesting than themselves. That last sentence may reek of self-absorption and egotism, but does anyone not feel this way, at least some of the time?
I could mention meticulous art direction, captivating but opaque cinematography, overwhelming colorscapes…but I don’t think anyone’s arguing about those things. The main point seems to be that people think Wes Anderson is style over substance. I can concede that point. But what I don’t think is that he is style instead of substance.
I think that his films speak to a certain demographic that I happen to be a part of. Young. Uncertain. Aesthetically aware. Always seeking something greater.
I don’t think I’ve uncovered any great truths about filmmaking or about Anderson in general, here. But maybe if anyone just *doesn’t understand* what the deal with him is, then I entreat them to be enlightened.
Plus, how cute is he!!
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