JUNO revisited revisited
Jan. 11th, 2008 04:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thehefnerOkay, this is my last JUNO entry, I promise.
I'm just feeling super-validated because CHUD.com beautifully voiced my mixed love-hate (but ultimately love) in this essay on the inevitable Diablo Cody backlash. Among the great points about overhype and gender politics, the writer also observes:
I wonder, here, if the first couple minutes of Juno – which feature a painful (in my eyes) cameo by Rainn Wilson - are intentionally misleading. It, and the moving of the furniture set, suggest the sort of forced whimsy that followed in the footsteps of Wes Anderson’s RUSHMORE (read: NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, GARDEN STATE), and the sort of forced quirkiness that has become the bane/comfort food of the twee set. It should be noted that really only Juno and her BFF talk like “that” and everyone else in the film has a different voice - a voice that suggests screenwriter Diablo Cody is not the femme-equiv of Kevin Smith. It also has an honest-to-goodness heart, and though Juno may appear the ironic hipster qua 16-year-old, the film really does earn its pulling on your heartstrings.
THANK you. I feel a little less like a weirdo for seriously disliking the film at first.
And I'm willing to grant some of that dislike also stems from my general distaste for real teenagers, so of course I'd hate "realistic" teenagers (although Juno herself still sounds like she's been written as a streetwise twenty-something, not a real sixteen-year-old, but Ellen Page does her damnedest with what she's given.)
But yes. Yes that sums up my personal problems absolutely beautifully, as well as why I ultimately love it.
Right. I swear, that's the last JUNO entry.
...
Reason # 362 I love THERE WILL BE BLOOD:
"If you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake and I have a straw and my straw reaches across the room and starts to drink your milkshake. I. DRINK. YOUR. MILKSHAKE! *SLUUUUUUURP!!!!* I DRINK IT UP!!!"
I'm just feeling super-validated because CHUD.com beautifully voiced my mixed love-hate (but ultimately love) in this essay on the inevitable Diablo Cody backlash. Among the great points about overhype and gender politics, the writer also observes:
I wonder, here, if the first couple minutes of Juno – which feature a painful (in my eyes) cameo by Rainn Wilson - are intentionally misleading. It, and the moving of the furniture set, suggest the sort of forced whimsy that followed in the footsteps of Wes Anderson’s RUSHMORE (read: NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, GARDEN STATE), and the sort of forced quirkiness that has become the bane/comfort food of the twee set. It should be noted that really only Juno and her BFF talk like “that” and everyone else in the film has a different voice - a voice that suggests screenwriter Diablo Cody is not the femme-equiv of Kevin Smith. It also has an honest-to-goodness heart, and though Juno may appear the ironic hipster qua 16-year-old, the film really does earn its pulling on your heartstrings.
THANK you. I feel a little less like a weirdo for seriously disliking the film at first.
And I'm willing to grant some of that dislike also stems from my general distaste for real teenagers, so of course I'd hate "realistic" teenagers (although Juno herself still sounds like she's been written as a streetwise twenty-something, not a real sixteen-year-old, but Ellen Page does her damnedest with what she's given.)
But yes. Yes that sums up my personal problems absolutely beautifully, as well as why I ultimately love it.
Right. I swear, that's the last JUNO entry.
...
Reason # 362 I love THERE WILL BE BLOOD:
"If you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake and I have a straw and my straw reaches across the room and starts to drink your milkshake. I. DRINK. YOUR. MILKSHAKE! *SLUUUUUUURP!!!!* I DRINK IT UP!!!"
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A request...
Date: 2008-01-11 11:06 pm (UTC)I need you to slap it on a black LOLcatz background, captioned as follows:
"I got good news and bad news, ladies.
The good news is, your comics are here.
The bad news is, they're dead."
Re: A request...
Date: 2008-01-11 11:12 pm (UTC)What kind of face/pose?
Re: A request...
Date: 2008-01-12 12:03 am (UTC)Re: A request...
Date: 2008-01-12 12:11 am (UTC)Shit, I still need to do my "Not My Slave" music video before I quit...
no subject
Date: 2008-01-12 07:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-12 04:39 pm (UTC)You've seen GANGS OF NEW YORK, right? Remember the scene with the "poor little rabbit?" The ending was just like a full, bigger, louder, more insane version of that scene. Any other actor could have seriously hammed it up. Lord knows I'd have, much as I tried not to. Somehow, he makes it WORK.
DRAIIIIIIIINAGE! DRAIIIIIIIIINAGE!!!
no subject
Date: 2008-01-13 10:36 pm (UTC)http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2239726,00.html
no subject
Date: 2008-01-13 11:19 pm (UTC)This quote really stood out for me as a storyteller, one I'll need to remember: The parallels that can be drawn from Plainview's story must, I suggest, have given the script added pulling power. 'Paul's not unaware of what is going on in the world but our focus had to be a much narrower and more selfish one,' Day-Lewis replies. 'If you enter into the realm of trying to create a parable or cautionary tale, you've already strayed so far off course that you might as well stay in bed. So no, it was utterly and specifically that man in that story in that place at that time in America's social history.'
Of course, then we get What then of the two days and nights in a prison cell without food or water that he endured to prepare to play the role of Gerry Conlon in In the Name of the Father (for which he earned the second of three Oscar nominations to date)? 'You have to learn,' he answers simply. 'You need to understand what it is like to be interrogated by three two-man teams over a period of two days. If an innocent man signs a confession, which pisses away his life, it is part of your responsibility to touch on why a human being would do that. So my curiosity leads me into those places. But I don't want to make too much of the details. They are just that - details. When you don't know from experience, or you can't explore through the imagination, you better do some sort of practical work that is at least going to stimulate the imagination, because finally the whole thing is just an act of imagination.'
To which I want to reply, "Why don't you try acting, dear boy?" but he's Daniel Day-fucking-Lewis, so I'm in absolutely no position to do so. Still, I kinda think that method doesn't work for everyone, or at least, there needs to be a line. I mean, god help us if DDL ever gets cast as a baby-raping eater of spleens or something.
Also, I have no comments on this one yet, but I'll be thinking about it: Nevertheless, his feelings about theatre are mixed. He has been quoted in the past as being dismissive of the stage 'That's just me gobbing off again,' he laughs. There is, though, he admits, a problem that arises from his particular approach with the process of preparing for a role in the theatre compared with films. 'Theatre invites a nuts and bolts process to rehearsing in which all the actors are transparent to each other. For me, even if the truth I am looking for might be a specious one, I still need to believe in a kernel of truth. And I find it hard to do in a rehearsal situation where everyone is saying, "Are you going to do it like that?" It is distracting and deadly in the end to any discovery you might make. I'm never far away from a sense of potential absurdity of what I am doing, and maybe as I get older I have to work harder and harder to obliterate it. That's maybe why I seem to take it far too seriously.'
And I absolutely agree with the accessibility of film to theatre. I was thinking about going to see a play last night for the first time in a long while, but was deeply hesitant. Getting stuck in a bad movie is one thing, but getting stuck in a bad play is torture. A million times worse!
I also love how, in THE CRUCIBLE section, they just offhandedly mention that he built Proctor's house. Just as an aside. Hilarious!
Note to self: train circus performers to teach me how to throw knives.
Thank you!!!