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Two different movies--two very, very different movies, one old and one newish, both viewed this week and both so awesome.
Persepolis: I've read and loved the comics, so it was pretty much a no-brainer that I'd love the movie too. The animation is dead-on perfect, and the textured gray-scale backgrounds only help to highlight the black-and-white characters, who move so fluidly it makes me ache for the days when traditional animation still existed. (Oh, Pixar, I do love you, but the trend you started...) In fact, the black-and-white animation is used to make some truly beautiful and creepy images; a mob as a black mass with arms and legs sticking out; a row of rebels dressed in black, shot one by one and melting down into the black floor as they fall. The books are nicely compressed, and the story's just as engaging and fascinating and emotionally effective as it was in comic form. The characters still pop with reality, the events still horrify you and make you laugh and make you cry, and by god, it should be made required viewing for anyone who still thinks the people of a country should be judged by their government. You want a war with Iran? These are the people you'll be fighting. And this is what happens when you let the original creator have some control over the adaptation; you get something just as good, but in some ways better, and in no ways worse.
Beetlejuice: I saw this when I was much younger, and, to be honest, all I remembered were the monsters. Big stripy sandworms! Elongated toothy faces with eyes in their mouths! And also the model houses, for some reason. I didn't actually remember anything about the characters, because, y'know, clearly those weren't the important bits. But now that I've seen it properly, I am in love with this movie. It's silly, it's shameless, it's got a funky style, the music's awesome, and you do really get to like the characters. Well, the three that are meant to be likable, anyway. My god, Alec Baldwin looks so young! The last thing I saw him in was 30 Rock, and, well. Apparently he developed a fondness for bacon and Twinkies. Seeing him looking young and skinny and wearing big dorky glasses and plaid shirts and really nice hair and, you know, he really looks like early Daniel Jackson. It's probably the glasses. Michael Keaton and Catherine O'Hara must have been having a ball; those are the kinds of characters an actor really loves to be let loose with and just go to town. Geena Davis does great wide-eyed determination and not only does she have great adorable chemistry with Alec Baldwin, they've both got it with Winona Ryder, who rocks the costume department. I've been around goth kids, and none of them ever looked that cool. Possibly I would have hung with them more if they had. Anyway, I like stories that don't take themselves too seriously, I like movies that look cool (prosthetics and stop-motion animation for the win!), I like stories that play around with the supernatural in more than just an "ooooooh, scary ghosts" way, I like dark humor, I like stories about weird, adorable families, and basically this movie was made for me. (The ending, in particular, with Adam and Barbara and Lydia, made that last gen-kink of mine flutter.) And the music! Danny Elfman, man, you just can't beat him. My dad calls this an almost perfect movie, and I'm inclined to agree.
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Hey, Terrible US Life on Mars has apparently cast a Ray--so Annoying Older Mustached Guy isn't a replacement for him and Chris? Does that mean they're kicking him out? Please, let that mean they're kicking him out. On the other hand, I haven't heard anything about a Chris, and you really need a Chris to balance out Ray, and I'm kind of terrified of what this show would do with Ray anyway, so...it is quite possible that this is in no way good news. Still, y'know, it implies some kind of Change, and that is what I am desperately hoping this show will get.
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So I guess there's a girlcrush meme going around? And I figured, hey, why not. (This appears to be my response to all memes.) So, in no particularly save for the last one who really kcomes first:
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Thoughts on having seen (as well as the episodes that came between them) Castrovalva, Time-Flight, and The King's Demons: if Delgado!Master's trademark is allying himself with/controlling devious alien species who inevitably betray him, is Ainley!Master's trademark Pretending To Be Someone Else? Because, goddammit, he's actually really good at it, even if he is helped by makeup or a convenient change in facial hair. The only reason I caught it in The King's Demons was because of the first two times, both of which blew my mind. I may still prefer Delgado, but, y'know, Ainley's got some skills too. Now if he would just stop using that damn laugh so much...
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DAD: So, what's up today?
ME: Not much.
DAD: You always say that.
ME: Mm...no, really, not much.
DAD: That always means there was stuff and you just don't want to tell me about it.
ME: Weeelllll...I don't think you want to hear about it...
DAD: Oh, try me. What was there?
ME: ...Doctor Who porn?
DAD: *pause* Right. Not much.
ME: It's not like I told you which characters were involved. You haven't even met them! ...technically.
I love having a family aware of my inclinations.
(And it's true, he hasn't--having not seen much of the old series, he's no idea what Five even looks like, and I only just got him to watch Utopia tonight. Long story. I'm looking forward to his reaction to The Phone Call.)
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Sweet Jesus on a stick, why is there so much good TV now? The Middleman, which started two weeks ago and thus at least isn't hard to catch up on, is:
1) The kind of show where the male lead uses the word, with no irony whatsoever, "ri-gosh-darn-diculous"
2)The kind of show where the female lead admits to reading The Spirit
3) The kind of show that hella passes the Bechdel Test (although I'm not sure that's as big a deal in most TV shows)
4) Sort of like Chuck, Reaper, and Pushing Daisies combined, which makes it
5) pretty much exactly my kind of crack.
Like Chuck, it's ordinary-person-pushed-into-extraordinary-job-with-hot-partner-and-cool-gadgets; like Reaper, it's wacky-monster-of-the-week; like Pushing Daisies, it's extraordinarily quirky and also likes to hide behind a squeaky-clean exterior until it jumps out at you with a joke about skin being the largest and most sensitive organ of the body. (This show is on ABC Family. While watching, one of those ad-bars on the bottom popped up and declared that the channel was "a new kind of family". Oh, I'll bet.)
The leads are cute and, unlike Chuck, have chemistry that isn't actually forced; also like Reaper, the female lead looks uncannily like Missy Peregrym (minus the epic shoulders, admittedly), and one of the first things she does is stab a genetic monstrosity with a letter opener. How can you not possibly love that? And she paints abstract expressionism! Apparently the show is based on a comic book--actually, the creator of the comic is not only an executive producer of the show but also wrote the first episode, which is just kind of awesome all around. There do not seem to be any easily-locatable promo pictures of the show, so here is a picture from the comic instead; it gives the same general impression, really. Look at that. I mean, look at that. There is a commie bear on a motorcycle in that picture. That is what this show is like.
Thus--in conclusion--gosh darn it all to heck, at least it's in the summer so I don't have to worry about it stacking up with ten million other shows. (I am a little frightened of what will happen in the fall, when the schedule aligns and I'm watching eight shows at once.) Also it's probably going to get canceled in three weeks, but hey, that's what I said about Pushing Daisies, right? Who knows--it's been a good year for new shows; maybe the trend will continue.
(...seriously, why aren't there any promo pics? It makes me sad to say all this stuff without a proper visual reference.)
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Hey, you know who the next Doctor should be if Rusty/Moffat wants to keep the vague trend of hiring a Scotsman and the definite trend of making the show gaytastic? Alan Cumming.
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My Beautiful Laundrette: you know, it's oddly refreshing to see a gay story that really has nothing to do with the fact that the main characters are sleeping together. The drama would have been just the same if they weren't. Granted, it would have been slashy as sin, but still. Also: when not being dramatic, was v. cute. Points!
(In my head I am compiling a list of all the famous actors who've played gay in some movie or another. It is surprisingly long, and Hugo Weaving is on it three times. Jude Law is on it twice! This surprised me.)
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YOU KNOW, WHAT I REALLY NEED IS AN ICON THAT SAYS "HOLY FUCKING SHIT", BUT I'M KIND OF TOO FLAILY TO MAKE ONE RIGHT NOW
...and it's almost done.
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So, uh, they're not going to kill her, right? I mean, they only killed Astrid because she was a one-shot character anyway, they needed an excuse to get her out of the picture, and they only killed Adric because he was unpopular, and admittedly I've no idea why they killed Katarina and Sara but they were basically only one- or two-shot characters anyway, and Donna is not a one-shot character and decidedly not unpopular so clearly they have no reason to kill her, right?
...you know, over the past couple months, I've started to grow very apprehensive of weekends. Gee. Wonder why. But there's only two more to worry about, and then, gah. Gah.
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Avenue Q: hysterical, gorgeous set (if you like buildings, and I do), cute actors even if you're not really supposed to look at them, excellent singing and impressively squeaky voices, grand use of drop-down TV screens, the kind of horribly dirty jokes I can cackle at and be surrounded by other people who are also cackling, marvelous puppetry, and a significant, sympathetic gay male character who doesn't die in the end? MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF STARS.
The guy who did Princeton and Rod was really cute, actually. Very short. Same with the adorable, tiny Asian chick who rocked the hell out of Kate Monster and Lucy. Seriously, how do tiny Asian chicks get voices that big? Or smoky?
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TERRIBLE US LIFE ON MARS PILOT IS TERRIBLE.
...unfortunately, it's not terrible enough to get immediately canceled, unless the US television-viewing public displays a sudden and astonishing burst of scruples. I wouldn't say it's good--oh, lord would I not say that--but it's not quite OH DAVID E KELLEY NO material, and people who haven't seen the original would probably think it was okay. Admittedly, that would be because the okay bits were directly copied from the original. And because they wouldn't have been spoiled by the glory of John Simm and Phillip Glenister. There is at least one bit of good news--the new Annie ain't half bad, even if she is conventionally attractive, and she appears to be inexplicably redheaded rather than inexplicably blond, which I consider to be acceptable for some reason. Aside from that? It's meh. I had only a couple of genuine "wait, what?" moments; the rest of it was just a general field of annoyance.
There is a moment in here that, I think, perfectly encapsulates why this pilot irritates me. In the original, when Sam first hears the TV talking to him, he's still dressed--he's unbuttoned his shirt, but there's an undershirt underneath that. In this, he's completely shirtless. To show off his manly, manly muscles. And that, in a nutshell, is why I didn't like it.
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So, uh, There Will Be Blood. Was it...supposed to be kinda gay? I mean, probably not, movies like that usually aren't meant to have that particular brand of subtext, but Daniel and Eli did seem kinda obsessed with each other and then there was the ending with Eli sobbing about all those horrible non-specific sins he'd committed and, you know, the idea of Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano, while admittedly a little disturbing, is certainly an interesting one. And Eli could totally go on about how the infinite forgiveness of God made it okay if they just repented afterwards, except Daniel would just be like "fuck no" and then they'd just have more angry, manipulative sex and that kind of fucked-up relationship would make quite a logical lead-up to the ending of the movie. It would. You know it would.
If you go by the actors' ages, which are presumably about the same as the characters', you get a 29-year difference, which would be the largest age difference I've ever shipped, not counting anything to do with Doctor Who because that would be like cheating.
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OH AND.The best thing about my graduation ceremony? The valedictorian, in his speech, used the Mac/PC commercials as a metaphor for post-high school life.
You see, Macs are stylish and pretty, but they live in little virus-free bubbles and they only come in slightly transparent white, whereas PCs have to learn to adapt to the problems thrown at them and come in ten bazillion different designs--
--but mostly I was too busy trying not to crack up to pay attention to what he was actually saying.
God, I love my high school. And they call us ghetto.
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So--because it's the last school week for seniors (oh god oh god oh god), in history class, we've pretty much just been eating ridiculous amounts of food and doing random stuff. (One girl brought fried rice. Home-made fried rice, y'all. And another brought home-made cake, and the teacher got us a whole ton of donuts, and there's all these chips, and I got brownies, and one girl brought like three different kinds of Oreos and it has been a good past couple days.) Yesterday, it was leaked out that I've never seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off; today, we started to watch it. And...
1) Gosh darnit, Matthew Broderick was cute. I have all these hang-ups about the guy (don't ask), so why is he cute.
2) Regarding Ferris and Cameron: ...I'm a horrible person.
is there nothing that I can look at any more? Nothing?
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...apparently gossip says that David Tennant is dating Georgia Moffet?
...BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
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Adventures in Watching Almost Every Damn Episode of Doctor Who That is Possible to Find, part ten, special "Exits and Intros" edition:
I'm going to put Three away for a while, I think, until I finally decide to watch Inferno (and probably one of the other Liz episodes, too); I've been sidetracked long enough, and shall now head back to Four, Romana, and the Key to Time, until I go back and watch The Seeds of Doom because I haven't seen nearly enough Four-Sarah Jane and that was the last regular appearance of UNIT anyway. Allons-y!
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CRYPTIC TIME
Apropos of nothing, now that I've finally discovered what Season 6B is, I can only express massive levels of approval for it.
(Also, has anyone written a story concerning what Jo got up to during the Year That Wasn't? I'm...just wondering, is all.)
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The things you find when you wander around IMDB! (I swear, I can't even remember what I was looking up in the first place...) Apparently, That One Character from Doctor Who 4x06 isn't just Peter Davison's daughter--you see, he's married to Sandra Dickinson, who...played Trillian in the original HHGttG miniseries. Good god, man, that girl's got pedigree.
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