Saturday, August 4, 2012

The Muppets (Film #17)



I love the muppets. And I'm glad to see they still haven't lost their touch.

I watched this one about a month ago and I've got two kids under four so I really only remember the following:

1. Amy Adams has just the right amount of crazy eyes.
2. Everybody and their cousin had a cameo in this film.
3. Jason Segel can actually be likable when he's not in Bad Teacher.
4. Chris Cooper can really bust a move.
5.Kidnapping Jack Black is a great plot device.
6. I would totally, totally watch "Punch Teacher"
7. Emily Blunt should totally just make a career out of playing that character from The Devil Wears Prada.
8.Walter wasn't my favorite muppet, but he also wasn't my least favorite.
9. I'm pretty sure the movie accidentally promotes the notion that "like should stay would like"
10. I still liked it, regardless.

Bad Teacher (Film #16)



Remember when Cameron Diaz was a Charlie's angel and people thought she was fun loving and swell, even if she laughed like a horse, because she had a rockin' body?

yeah, this isn't THAT Cameron Diaz.

Which, I guess, means she has "range" - if you consider "superficial bitch" a stretch (and for the record, I really don't here). Whatever.

Here's the premise: Elizabeth Halsey (Diaz) loves money. Money, money, money. And hates teaching, a career she is partaking in until her fiance marries her and she can retire to a world of wealth that she never had to earn. Sufficed to say that plan doesn't work (or, you know, as the muppets would say, this movie would have been a lot shorter). It's back to work for dear Elizabeth who spends her nights binge-drinking and getting high with her creepy Craigslist roommate and her days showing movies to her middle-school aged students who are content to do no work and let their teacher sleep.

Right. Because that's not a damning depiction of the American educational system from all levels.

It does, naturally, get worse (for America's teachers) and a bit better for Miss Halsey. A new substitute teacher is an heir to some made-up clock fortune who is apparently biding his time in education until he finds something else to tickle his fortune. He is played by Diaz's real-life ex Justin Timberlake and that possible tension is the only thing compelling about the film.

Unfortunately, JT only likes girls with big hearts. And boobs.

Fortunately, Elizabeth is willing to have surgery.

Unfortunately, she lives with the Craigslist moocher and has no money for new tits.

Fortunately, she has the wealth of her students to exploit - from fundraisers to "tutoring".

Unfortunately, it's still not enough.

Fortunately, there's a bonus for the teacher who gets the best scores on the state's standardized test and that should be enough to cover the rest of the costs.

Unfortunately, that's where the film totally lost me.

Look, I get it. Elizabeth is a superficial girl who has to learn her real priorities and strengths in life in order to grow and succeed and get a boyfriend who doesn't awkwardly dry hump her while yelling "No talking!" (Timberlake's BEST scene in the movie, BTW). But damn.

A female protagonist who is a greedy, money-hungry golddigger, a school filled with highly incompetent admin and teachers who are either over-the-top nutso enthusiasts or dispassionate drug addicts who could care less, a romantic triangle with the most unlikable three characters in the planet, and THEN they promote teaching to the test!

FOR SHAME!

Actually, I'm pretty sure this film is a subversive examination of the dangers of stifling teacher freedom and creativity in the classroom by mandating that we limit ourselves to the standardized tests that get used to evaluate our success in the classroom.

But convince other people of that!

I don't know, the whole movie felt shamefully hollow to me and the end - which I will spoil for you right now - where Elizabeth becomes a GUIDANCE COUNSELOR because she had some small degree of success helping a nerdy boy score major points with his peers (BY GIVING HIM HER BRA!!!) and no degree of success as a teacher is perhaps the most upsetting chestnut of them all.

Sorry, just didn't get the point of this one!


21 Jump Street (Film #15)

When I started living with a boy, I had to learn a valuable lesson in cinematic compromise. I like movies like this:


And he likes ones like this:



And so we have learned to split the difference and watch movies like this:



Oh, wait, nevermind. 21 Jump Street is nothing like Steel Magnolias.

Sigh.

Look, this movie isn't Hitchcock. It's not Truffaut. It's barely "cinema." But it is funny. And even prissy bitches like me can appreciate that.

Even if you never watched a single episode of the original, you probably remember the premise (if you're over the age of 22 and you care about pop culture, like, at all). Youngish looking cops get put in an undercover squad where they can infiltrate high school crimes like drugs and gangs and bad Eminem hair.

I rarely if ever like either of the two male leads in anything - with the exception of Jonah Hill in Moneyball and Channing Tatum in a shirt. Oddly, I like them both here.

Like a lot.

And not in a "they're sooooo dreamy" kind of way. Because for most of the opening bits they look like this:


I mean more so for their chemistry - uneasy brothers who love each other, even when they sort of hate each other. Better, they're both believable as complete and utter screw ups, so there's that.

Plot-wise, there isn't so much to say - kids in high school taking crazy new drug and Tweedledee and Tweedledum need to figure out the source while psychologically reversing the damage accrued during their own high school experiences (For Tatum, not being able to go to prom; for Hill, well, look at the poor boy and just guess).

I laughed a lot at the stupidity and the tongue-in-cheek snarkiness of the film. And any movie with Johnny Depp (in the best cameo EVER that he shares poetically with Peter Deluise) is okay in my book. For me, it was all about bike cops, James Franco's little brother, the best tripped out Peter Pan audition ever, and a pretty impressive nerd makeover.

Good times were had by all.

But still mostly by Tim.

Friday, June 29, 2012

One for the Money (Film #14)

A more honest title I never knew.



This is my second Katherine Heigl movie for the fifty-fifty challenge, and, much like when I go see a Tom Cruise movie, I have to wonder: what's all that about, then???

I mean, I haven't "liked" Katherine Heigl in much - My Father, The Hero and 27 Dresses pretty much constitute the highlights of her career for me.

And, as I said in my review of Life as We Know It, she pretty much has one character.



Look, I'll admit it, way before Stephanie Plum was a twinkle in Heigl's agent's eye, I was picturing the lovable loser as a more rugged version of the actress. But Heigl, the real one, not my mind's eye one, is way too...manicured to be Jersey trash.

You can dye her hair brown and perm it all you want but you can't make her Jersey, you know?

The sad reality is that no one else in the movie even remotely looks how I pictured them in the book. Ranger doesn't look dangerous; he looks like a vaguely ethnic underwear model. Joe Morelli doesn't project "oversexed cop" just "cop over his head." Grandma Mazur isn't the spry, scrawny firecracker from the books; she's Debbie fucking Reynolds who looks about as comfortable chewing the campy scenery whilst wielding a gun as Heigl does holding a cupcake.

Or a gun.

Or being in close proximity to a hamster.

Or meatball.


(Caption: Can you believe they're paying us for this shit???)

It was all just a little too...perfect. And I felt bad for Janet Evanovich who created a character that they could have done so much more with but who becomes a flat cardboard cutout of a human being here.

But the good news is: I see a long shelf-life of made-for-television gold here in the future.

Just leave the Heigl at home.




Sunday, June 24, 2012

Return to the Blue Lagoon:The Awakening (A Tutorial)

It's been a week since I reviewed The Blue Lagoon: The Awakening, and my blog is STILL blowing up because of it.

Five hundred hits on one review. 

(insert gratuitous joke about Dean "hitting that" here)

Seriously, people.

That's like half a high school's worth of bored teenager right there. 

Which got me thinking...why are you going to my blog? So, I tracked the searches and stared in awe at the myriad ways your individual quests for information had brought us so repeatedly together. Then, my sister had an idea. Why not reward all you dedicated Lagoonies out there by creating an article that seeks to answer your burning questions regarding this installment of The Blue Lagoon saga? 

(Dean thinks with his pecs)

It's the least I can do for all y'all after you've been so kind to read my rant...er...review.

Obviously, to get to my site, most of you are just Googling "blue lagoon the awakening" and finding yourself here. To all of you who lack the creativity to get into the meatier issues of the text, I'm sorry. I have nothing more to offer than basic plot rehashing and some minor psychological deductions of the main characters' neuroses based on their inexplicable actions throughout the course of the movie. Go read a book or something. You're boring. You're on the side of the angels.

The rest of you, now, you're something special.

In the immortal (and completely made up by me) words of one Dean Whateverhislastnamewas: let's do this thing, baby.

Query #1: Is Blue Lagoon: The Awakening based on a book?


Aren't you all so cute? First you see the movie, then you read the book. I'm so proud.

Fun fact: The Blue Lagoon (the ORIGINAL version - which, in case you've really been googling is NOT the one with Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins but another one starring Jean Simmons and Donald Houston) was, in fact, based on a trilogy of books written by Henry De Vere Stacpoole. And, before you go off and Google "trilogy" that means, like Star Wars, there were three of them, but the first was probably the best. 

Now, before you start getting excited that the fictional love between Dean and Emma will carry you through three whole books this summer, it bears mentioning that Henry De Vere Stacpoole wrote these books in the late 19th-early 20th century (if you couldn't glean that bit from his name or anything). In case you had any lingering doubts, thinking maybe it is like Victorian porn or something, the main characters, Richard and Emmeline, are cousins. And, yeah, they have chastely unbridled sexy times which yields a son. That they name Hannah.

I shit you not.

There's also a whole subplot with a galley cook named "Paddy" - which this updated version replaced with a teacher of no discernible subject area or skill set who doesn't actually get stranded with the kids, just, you know, sucks at his job. There's another story line that involves Richard and a pursuant shark. that I'm pretty sure is a giant metaphor for the latent dangers of attempting to strike a spear into the cavernous mouth of female genitalia. 

But the sex is mostly understated and euphemistic. And the tone isn't really "romance" but "adventure".

The whole series is really more "postcolonial" than "pornographic."

Consider yourselves warned.

If it's any consolation, I'm currently writing some nice fan fiction in which Emma actually gets deservedly knocked up. 

And cankles.

Get excited.

Query #2: Blue Lagoon the awakening sex scene

Scarecrows, I think I like you most of all. No BS, you just cut right to the chase. You're in this thing for the naughty bits.


But this was a made-for-Lifetime-television movie, folks. The naughty bits weren't really that...well...naughty. There was a lot of sexual metaphor (i.e. the symbolic "deflowering" of Emma pictured above or that whole nasty business with Dean's bloody trouser knife).  But sex? Um...it was pretty tame.

I mean, did you read my review?

First, they're strategically covered with palm fronds and lagoon water so you're not going to see anything. Second, despite the fact that they share the island with only a few roguish monkeys and one lonely panther, Emma and Dean decide to have safe, boring, quiet sex. If they weren't doing it on the sand by a tastefully well-kept fire, I'd consider it entirely puritanical.

Don't you all have cable you could be watching?

Please don't learn about sex from this movie. 

And, if you're old enough to know about sex already, consider the fact that they're supposed to be in high school a little bit longer before you start typing things into Google.

Query #3: blue lagoon the awakening emma's hair

FINALLY. The world will know.

Watching Blue Lagoon: The Awakening will not impact my ability to do good hair.


This could have gone so horribly wrong...but, thankfully, of all the parts of Emma to google, you chose hair.

And it makes perfect sense.

If you master Emma's hair, you, too, will get to have politely untamed sex with a semi-hot, uber-buff Australian pretending to be American on some random beach. 

Here are a few easy tips to mimic Emma's 'do:

1. Part your hair into six sections, braid each section, and douse with texturizer.
2. Go to sleep and wake up. Or blow dry each section. Wait until dry.
3. Unravel braids GENTLY. Not like some crazy coke fiend on meth. Comb your fingers through your waves. Spray a little more texturizer on. Or hair powder. Or, I suppose, if you're desperate, some hairspray. Something that'll give it that salty "I just swam in the ocean/lagoon/Dean pool"  look.
4. Massage your scalp for a few minutes.
5. Get out the old curling iron you haven't used since you watched all those episodes of Little House on the Prairie and REALLY wanted to be Nellie Oleson. Wind and twist hair around the iron, but leave an inch or so of hair unwound. Curl, baby, curl.
6. Use your fingers as a comb again. Admire your handiwork.
7. You're welcome.

Here's the rub, kids. You're still not going to get stranded on an island and lose your virginity to a grown man-child named Dean. Dean is played by an actor. That actor, based on my limited anecdotal evidence from my high school drama club, is probably gay. And, if he's not gay, he's probably not going to be found in your bathroom while you're doing your hair.

Go outside. Pick flowers. Kill a panther. Stop fretting about sexy beach hair.

Query #4: Blue Lagoon The Awakening Trinidad

You know who the unsung hero of this film was?


Trinidad. 

Blue water, blue sky, Habitat-for-Humanity-esque need, laid-back police force, relaxed drinking age. Trinidad has all the necessary requirements for abandonment in tropical paradise.

But I'm not sure why you're googling it. Do you want to find the island? Because I'm pretty sure "Trinidad" was really "Hawaii". 

You'll have to give me something more specific to go on, sorry.

Query #5: blue lagoon awakening virginity


I totally get this one. You, like me, can't possibly imagine that sociopath Dean, with his severe mommy issues and proclivity for unleashing his pocket knife at inappropriate time is the more sexually experienced of the two. 

I mean, have you seen Emma???

The only time she actually projects "virgin" in the movie (aside from the awkward conversation where she tells Dean he was her superspecial virginity thief) is here:


And that's only because they dress her like the White Swan.

Which is, I think, ironic, because she and the Deanster had all that sex leading up to this moment, so it ain't like she's pure anymore.

Whatever. 

And Dean is kind of a dork. I mean, think about all those slow-motion scenes where he dances in the rain like Ben Stiller as Happy Jack...the guy isn't really a chick magnet here.

Still...one of them had to be innocent, right?

Maybe the writers tossed a coin for it?

I guess I feel like this google search is an extension of "blue lagoon awakening sex scene" - we're morbidly curious about the secret life of virgins.

But sleep easy, wee innocent ones.


Virgins never say die.

Or "I'm late."

Query #6: blue lagoon the awakening "sand in weird places"

You know who gets sand in weird places???


Sluts.

Okay, freaks, why are we Googling this? Not once do they ever show you how or where sand gets into anyone on the island. They ALLUDE to it, sure. But show? Never.

And would you really want to see that anyways???

Don't answer that.


Look, the simple fact of the matter is this: kids who wear this much clothing in the tropics deserve to get a little sand in their crevices.

Also, the sex.

But if you're looking for cutesy status updates for Facebook or some way to pinpoint your emotions in under 140 characters, letting the world know that you have sand in weird places is probably not the way to go.

JUST SAY NO.

Or, do as I do, and blame the movie for putting it there.

(May prom night ironically wash your dirtiness clean)


If we have learned nothing else from Emma and Dean, it's this: life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

No, wait, that was the Beatles.

Emma and Dean teach us that a 4.0 and some mommy-issues can seem much less important when you're on a deserted island with an attractive member of the opposite gender who just wants to bone you and then write about it in a college essay for Princeton.

And what a powerful lesson that truly is.


Thursday, June 21, 2012

Life As We Know It - Film #14

So...apparently, the key to blogging success is to somehow incorporate the words "blue lagoon," "awakening," "pregnant," "sex scene" and "sand" into any blog post from here on out.


See what I did there?

I'll get more creative about that.

Maybe not palm frond and rustic tree branch creative, but definitely less overt.

In other news...today sort of sucked. By which I mean I learned exactly what noise a dragged muffler makes two small children in the backseat of your car make. 

Like a fisher cat on a rollercoaster. That's broken.

Anyways, I wasn't in the mood to be cheered. I was in the mood to feel condescended and pandered to by a female protagonist who wants us to think she's strong and independent but who really just needs a man to love her.

That's right, I worshiped at the altar of Katherine Heigl. 


In case you missed it, Katherine Heigl has one character. That character is:

1. always female
2. always a little too pretty to be the girl next door (but she tries hard to be anyways)
3. entitled, but in a down-to-earth, relatable sort of way. if you're in a high-powered, wealthy lifestyle.
4. part-bitch, part-emotional wreck
5. kind of an insufferable know-it-all
6. a bad drunk

Heigl is at her most convincing when she taps into her character's OCD. She is less convincing as a baker and homemaker.


I'm pretty sure her idea of "baker" was "Martha Stewart" here.

Pre-prison, more uptight Martha Stewart.

Then, there's Josh Duhamel, aka Fergie's husband. 

He looks like the love-child of Bill Hader and Timothy Olyphant.

Only with faker looking hair.

He is the yin to her yang, the acid to her base, the oil to her vinegar...

the penis to her vagina.

and what a penis he is.

First, I'm pretty sure he has an undiagnosed sex-disorder in this film. Second, he says wonderful things like "Hey, baby, at your age, you're not single, you're 'complicated!'"

It's almost like the filmmakers were unaware of the age and gender demographics of their target audience...

I mean, I don't know many under 25 year olds who clamor for the new Katherine Heigl flick.

You know?

The plot from here is pretty much the plot of Baby Boom, except they don't buy a money pit and learn to make organic applesauce (Heigl's character already knows how to do that!), and, instead of falling in love with the cute doctor, she ends up realizing her loins burn for the philandering television sports director guy. 


And Heigl is no Diane Keaton, although she certainly is trying!

Don't get me wrong, it had some cute moments here and there, but overall it was sort of a mixed bag over cliched whining as the two leads figure out how to change a poopy diaper and fall in love at the same time.

Duhamel's shit-eating grin is the best part of this scene which involves Heigl's uptight lady protag getting feces on her too-well-kempt to really "not be sleeping" face.

I did love Melissa McCarthy as one of the neighbors. And whoever the lady playing the caseworker was. She's got a gift.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie flounders hopelessly around the forced chemistry of its two leads. By the very end, I was sort of rooting for the hot doctor.

But even he gives up on Heigl in the end.

Not my favorite film to date and certainly no Blue Lagoon: The Awakening, but not a bad way to pass an afternoon if the earlier part of the day was spending listening to the dulcet tones of 150 dollars worth of automobile grinding along the 99 degree highway.

Plus the baby was wicked cute. 

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Blue Lagoon: The Awakening - "Film" #13

You know what this world needs more of???



The Blue Lagoon!!!

Thank GOD! I had just healed my retinas from the last sequel starring Mila Jovovich; they were in need of some permanent re-scarring!



I mean, did anyone else forget her sweet virgin diaper???

Blue Lagoon: The Awakening is the touching story of Dean (aka "Holden Caulfield") and Emma (aka Molly Ringwald/The Prom Queen).

Dean is a rebel without a cause. But with a knife. That he carries in school. Because that's so cool.

And phallic.

And Lord of the Flies.

And illegal.

None of which the movie concerns itself with.

Emma is an overachiever who hates to be off-schedule. Her friends think she needs to sleep with the quarterback.

And you know what???

She really does.

But she won't, because there's a price on virginity in these things.

Long story short, they go to Trinidad on a school trip of spirit and giving. And alcohol. Somehow, they both end up on a boat raver that gets busted by the cops. As the cops yell the VERY fitting and slightly portentous "you're about to be boarded", Emma falls out of the boat, gets into a dinghy with Sk8r Boi, and the two drift off into the deep blue sea.

I'm pretty sure Thomas C. Foster would have a lot to say about this movie's use of water.

Regardless, somehow, the dinghy with two hungover kids on it makes it to an island while their teacher, played by the aged first generation Blue Lagoon "Adam" figure Christopher Atkins, finally realizes he is missing two of his students in what can only be described as the worst teachable moment ever.



I hope I never have to explain to a parent that I let her daughter get on a dinghy with Danger Boy on my watch.

"Don't be sorry. Just help us find our children."

Gah.

I'm pretty sure they don't rehire you after something like this.

That shit just would not fly.

I also hope I never need money so badly that I'll revisit a movie chain that has long since played to death the whole "return to innocence" bull that this smut purports to.



Tangent: I wonder when loin cloths are going to come back in style???

Dean and Emma, meanwhile, take to island life like two kids in a candy store.

If the candy store sold palm fronds, playful monkeys, and rogue panthers instead of candy, of course.

Here are my main ruminations/concerns upon watching this "film":

1.There is a serious dearth of loin cloth-age going on here. Even Mila got the aforementioned diaper. This version's Adam and Eve are practically clothed. What the heck, Lifetime! How are we supposed to know they're pre-fallen if they are too ashamed to be naked??? She wears either a blue bikini or blue tank top and cut offs. He is usually shirtless, which is, I think, his main function in the film. See photo:


I'm pretty sure the blue is supposed to highlight her virginity/parallel to Virgin Mary/etc. I'm also pretty sure his abs are supposed to highlight the fact that most men do not work out nearly enough to compete with the Australians.

Seriously, what do they feed them down there???

2. 

Don't worry, that's not virgin blood. Or even menstrual blood (who could forget THAT scene from Return to the Blue Lagoon!). Nay, good folks, that's motherfucking PANTHER blood.

Now, here's a good rule of thumb for all y'all: if you hear growling in a jungle, don't hunt it. Particularly if you have nothing to hunt with. Dean hears growling, then chases it down, until he catches up with a panther. Who then proceeds to chase him. Now, I don't know much about animals, but I do know this general tidbit: I don't care how cut Dean is. He cannot outrun a panther. But he almost does! until he trips on a rogue log and the panther pounces on Dean who somehow manages to get his illegal pocket knife out and kill him with one mighty stab to the panther heart.

That's right.

Little Dean gets to use his knife.

In case we missed it during all the weirdly quiet, gentile porn on the island...

He's a real man now.

3.  And what about the sex? Because they're Adam and Eve. They get to have sex with no consequences. It's a rule!

(Hey, Lifetime, it's Adam and Eve, not Emma and Dean!)

First, it feels creepily voyeuristic. But yet also masterfully tasteful. This movie may suck plot-wise but it gets an A+++ in strategic palm frond/tree branch placement. At one point, we even get to see through a little makeshift sunroof in their thatched hut of lovemaking joy. At another, a barky limb obscures the naughty bits. It's like Austin Powers without the winking.

I'm not even going to touch the fact that they engage in their premarital sexcapades because they find a crusty skeleton buried in their hut and the thought of their impending mortality creates some sort of psychological downward spiraling that culminates in Emma getting sand in her very special lady crevices. Sure, it's yet another blatant homage to the inexorable link between sex and death, but, damn.



Chester Copperpot should not inspire this much teenaged fornication.

Don't Dean and Emma know...

GOONIES NEVER SAY DIE!

Sigh.

Relax, the sex is not that graphic.

I mean, by Lifetime standards, it's Skin-a-max. But for the average viewer, it's politely untamed.

Beforehand, it's a lot of stolen glances and strutting around in varying degrees of clothed-ness. There's a lot of slow-mo involving Dean jumping and frolicking like a punch-drunk seven-year-old at the desert island gymnastics class.

But the eventual act(s) itself...very...quiet. I mean, pretty much she bites her lip and he puts his head down and we're supposed to just "know" that something magical has happened. And then they talk about how mindblowing the experience was for both of them. Before and after she does that insipid girl thing of asking him to 1. rank her performance among the mighty pantheon of his myriad sex partners and 2. tricks him into telling her all about his uber-sketchy first time with a junior in college (while he was a sophomore - which, if he didn't stay back, makes him at most SIXTEEN at that time and her well-past the age of legal adulthood) and 3. confesses that she gave him her most special chaste treasure.

He is, as all boys are in these things, overjoyed at how fortuitously things worked out for him in the virginity department while she is relieved to have someone pre-trained take care of all that awkward deflowering.

Just how God intended.

4. "Honey, we need to talk..."



After several vanilla sex scenes (and, yeah, Christian Grey, THIS is vanilla), we get a scene where pretty, perfect Emma starts vomiting.

Dean: Do you think it's the fish?
Us: No, Dean. We do not think it's the fish.
Emma: Maybe, it did smell a little funny.
Dean: Do you think you could...you know? Be pregnant?
Us: Yes, Dean. We do think it's a VirginBirthMiracleIslandBaby!
Emma: NOOOOOO. I am NOT pregnant.
Dean: Good. Because I have the emotional maturity of a toddler. Sure I have very handy knowledge about the appropriate berries to eat and not eat, but fatherhood? Man, that some heavy shit!
Us: Couldn't have said it better ourselves, Dean!
Emma: I want kids someday. With you. Maybe.
Dean: Me too, Emma-kins. Me too.
Us: Vomit!

And then she's not pregnant!!!

WTF, people!

The last time two young, good-looking kids had that much sex and DIDN'T get pregnant, this happened:



I guess Jenny was right, Oliver. Love means never having to say you're sorry you didn't know how to fasten a makeshift condom out of jellyfish skin.

Seriously, Lifetime. You of all people should know the importance of having tangible repercussions for this type of behavior! Now every teen who gets stranded on a desert island with her local resident bad boy is going to have non-stop sex for days and find themselves woefully unprepared to give birth in a sandpit! We should be getting ready to watch a very special episode of I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant: Island Edition, not heaving a collective sigh of relief at their blameless (babyless) wild abandonment.

5. What happened to Denise Richards's face?


None of the adults in this film have understood the concept of "growing older gracefully"...Denise's character has clearly had her lips and nose done. Her husband had hair three shades too dark. And you already know how I feel about the Atkins diet.

Sadness.

6. "WHAT ABOUT PROM, BLAINE???"


I hope I'm spoiling this for you: Dean and Emma get rescued. That's why she couldn't get pregnant. Paradise island babies/tangible symbols of hope for an unruined future can only exist ON THE ISLAND. Didn't we learn anything from Lost??? If they're going to get off the island intact, an impending baby turns their story into an episode of Teen Mom and that's a whole other TV movie right there. So, they get rescued and escape the shackles of an 18+ year commitment.

Score.

And, predictably, life off the island is not as idyllic for these two sex fiends. Emma returns to her life of popularity and overscheduling. Dean becomes once more otherwise ignored. Despite his efforts to keep their thang going strong, the two drift apart like two dinghies in the night.

Until prom.

Prom is magical. It's when ugly ducking little sisters who are not named Ducky get to go to prom with the prettiest girl in whole world and then get dragged off to dance by a non-Kristy Swanson "hipster boy" thus leaving the more attractive date unattended and ready for some rekindling.

And the good friends who once thought "Hot Steven" would be the ideal bedroom/prom/life date are all now rooting for the former freaky loser boy and the prom queen to get their romance on.

In the rain.

While her friends watch on (because he still doesn't have any), shit-eating grins plastered to their smarmy little faces.

Yes, sir!

7. The Green Flash/Light


Hey, Dean...Gatsby also believed in the green light...the orgastic future (that's WAY different from your orgasmic one). Stop using played out metaphors for the American Dream and the power of hope and nostalgia in your Lifetime movie, please!

Wait, did we talk about Dean's mother???

The movie attempts to flesh out Dean's character (because, let's face it, a 12 pack set of abs does not a troubled past make!) by giving him a sordid backstory involving his dead mother, that he may or may not have accidentally killed in a poorly timed game of "Warp Speed!".

Or something.

And what, you might ask, does every boy stranded on an island with a half naked hot chick think about constantly?



His mother.

She is the green flash, the guardian angel, the creepy overlord of Dean's emotions, and the catalyst for sexual exploration.

It's so very wrong indeed.

8. "Should we feel guilty?"


Yes.

I mean, that is SORT of the whole point here, right, Genesis fans?

Again...

Sigh.

This movie gave me sand in weird places.

Or crabs. I can't tell which.

Look, if I could leave you with one wish for this movie, it's this: watch this movie for the people in the background who clearly think NO ONE is watching them.

They are the true makers of music, the real dreamers of dreams.

How to Read...Like a Professor (Books #8&9)





Apparently, I really want to learn to read like a professor.

Foster does a decent job delineating the big concepts, motifs, themes, archetypes, and images that permeate literature. Yes, most of us well-trained monkeys know that rain/water/snow/wetness is usually symbolic. We also know that weird scars on a hero should be considered carefully. And we might even be able to figure out that going on a trip means we're probably on some sort of quest. But I like that Foster spells out some of these concepts for an untrained eye, for the layperson who may feel intimidated by literature (the reading of and thinking about).

And for that, I'm truly appreciative of these books.

However, Foster LOVES James Joyce. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Joyce is SOOOOO much smarter than the rest of us. We should bow to him, worship at his altar, make sacrifices of lesser works.

Whatever.

I'm Med-Ren in a po-mo world.

That and the little "Garden Party" test sat a little funny with me. It reminded me of those old exercise tapes with Jane Fonda that would step you through things nice and slow and then it would be time for you to try it all by your lonesome.

Safely, with the helpful guidance of someone not really there.

It's a little patronizing - especially when he pats on the head people who recognize "birds" or "loss of innocence" and then proceeds to give us a very complex reading involving Persephone.

Dude, slllooowww down! I went Biblical, not Classical. I saw the Four Horsemen, the Garden of Eden, and God as the Gardener. You saw the Rape of Persephone. But I'm guessing the average layperson lost us both at "birds."

You know???

Still, overall an enjoyable glimpse at how profs do their things.

Monday, June 11, 2012

Thor - Film #12



Remember when Natalie Portman won an Oscar???



Yeah, it wasn't for this movie.

In fact, I spent the better part of the movie wondering exactly what Natalie Portman did with her Oscar during principle filming...you know, because of the shame and phoning-it-in. But then I figured she probably filmed it before she won the Oscar and I felt much better.

Also, Chris Hemsworth's abs helped ease any lingering anxiety I felt over Portman's dearth of talent manifesting itself so blatantly in the role of an..ahem...astrophysicist.

Thor_Shirtless.jpg

There, don't we all feel better now?

I figure that Kenneth Branagh's Thor (yeah, I just typed that) is a Faustian attempt to reconcile human understanding through science to its dirty skank mistress mythology. Of course, in that reading, Branagh is Faust, which makes TOTAL sense because of the ego and necromancy and the cheating on Emma Thompson, which I still haven't forgiven him for even if she did totally marry up but then lose major points for naming her child "Gaia" or "MoonGoddess" or something.

Wait, what was I talking about?

Oh, right...Thor.

Anyways, Thor is your average, overblown superhero movie, except instead of a wimpy, anemic vegan in a spidey-suit, we get, you know, Abs Hemsworth who actually looks like he actually could be a superhero.

I mean, I thought Vincent D'Onofrio did a pretty good impression in Adventures in Babysitting, but that barely holds a candle to this effort.

See:



Vs.



I mean, come on! In comparison, poor D'Onofrio comes across like a butch trucker named Barbie who pumps steroids and eats sixteen eggs a day for breakfast so she can't taste the hormone supplements.

And that's with Hemworth's shirt on!

Look, I'm a sucker for Norse mythology, I really am, but this film misses the boat on several accounts.

First, Loki, who is reduced to a sniveling second child here (and, yeah, I can say that because I too am a sniveling second child, and someday, I too want to ruin the best day of my sister's life by inviting frosty blue gatecrashers to her big girl hammer party).

Loki was one of my favorites in the myths...you know, the oft-tortured demi-god jotunn halfbreed trickster of fun, but, here, well, he's like the obnoxious genetics experiment of Nicholas Cage, Alan Cumming, and Robert Smith.

Gone horribly, horribly wrong.




He should be off menacing Baldar with some mistletoe, not scheming to exile his brother so that he can save his father's life from the more sinister Frost Giants while Daddy-Odin catches some supernaturally-induced Z's in his Rainbow Brite-star-sprinkled-generated hyperbaric chamber sanctioned solely for the exclusive use of Norse Gods during their inconvenient nap cycles.

And he certainly shouldn't be off writing quasi-erotic elegiac poems of mourning to some pretty little Goth jotunn, which is what he looks like he's doing through 79% of the film.

GAH!

And what about the other Big Bad, the not-so-elusive Frost Giants, who emerge like a creepy combination of Jack Frost and any random Na'vi Avatar. I can't believe at no point in the film did ANYONE, not even pre-Portman-love-spelled Thor, yell, "Stay Frosty!" to anyone about anything at any point!

Oh, the injustice!




Oh, and then, there's the Rainbow Bridge. Now, I've already thrown in my gratuitous Rainbow Brite reference, but, damn. I know the Rainbow Bridge is actually authentic to the mythology, but, whenever anyone mentioned having to traverse it, all I could think of was this:



And that does not inspire world-ending fear.

Or, maybe more accurately, it does, but not in the desired way.

I took it as a bad sign when, within moments of Abs Hemsworth's Asgardian entrance, I could safely predict the entire plot of the film (which, in case you missed it, is basically "Hubris-addled Muscle-Man needs to learn a lesson in humility by being banished to Earth where he can learn how to order coffee effectively AND the true value of love, friendship, and honor, sometimes while shirtless") - and, as my sister warned, if you don't pay attention to the first segment in Asgard, you might as well go home and reread 50 Shades of Grey or something because it's probably not going to happen for you.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a BAD film (it wasn't a GOOD film, either, I'm not saying that, but it could have been so much worse than it was and I actually kind of liked that cute Thor fella). I just didn't see anything particularly new or interesting therein.

You feel me?

And what's up with the cast?

I mean, aside from Portman, because you already know my feelings about that one. We also have Sir Anthony "One-Eye" Hopkins as Odin, Rene Russo as Frigga, and Stellan Skarsgard as "The Beave."

What's up with that???

I mean, don't get me wrong, if I were Rene Russo, I'd love to get paid to wear gold lame and have Chris Hemsworth shoot me dirty winks for an afternoon, but what's Hopkins's excuse? Was it the pirate patch?



Because you know when the director yelled "Cut!" that Sir Anthony was bitching his little British mouth off about the hunk of spray-painted gold metal lodged in his eye hole.

And don't even get me started on Skarsgard, whose greatest contributions here are three-fold:

1. The drinking scene (which is the funniest bit in the movie)

2. To lend a sense of Nordic authenticity to a Marvel Comic hero whose backstory is so deeply entrenched in the myths of his people

and, of course...

3. Alexander Skarsgard, who, in case you don't read my reviews often, looks like this:


Of course, he's not in this movie, so there is that.

I'll be honest, I didn't pay what I would call particularly close attention to this film. In fact, I couldn't tell you any of these characters' names:


As far as I'm concerned, their names are Gimli, Xena, Tiny Thor Beard Jr., and Jet Li.

But, hey, you don't read my reviews for their accuracy.

And, look, I didn't even make one crude phallic joke about the Hammer...because it goes totally without saying...



the hammer is his penis.