Rebellions are built on hope

My sister is a big Star Wars fan, so I grew up surrounded by the original trilogy. I don't particularly remember sitting down to watch the movies that often, but watching them now, I sure can recite an awful lot of the dialogue. Which came in handy, because my husband is also a big Star Wars fan. We haven't watched all of the various Star Wars properties, but we've watched quite a few.

After the first season of Andor came out, everyone raved about it, saying it was one of the best Star Wars-related properties in years. So naturally we watched it; we just finished the second season (and naturally had to finish off Cassian's story with Rogue One.) 

After watching the first season, I remember thinking that I liked it well enough--I mean, Diego Luno is fantastic--but wasn't as over the moon about it as some people. And that remains true after the second season, which I did like quite a bit. There were some plotlines that I wasn't particularly interested in (i.e., pretty much anything with Mon Mothma, though I did like the wedding; Saw, who I honestly had forgotten about being in Rogue One; that weird bit with Cassian in the group of random rebels early in season two, which I assume is Making a Statement about the looseness of the rebellion) and it felt like bits could be tightened up.

I spent a lot of time watching the second season and thinking about when this must've been written--ages ago, given the amount of time it takes to revise, film, do post-production, etc.--and how incredibly resonant it is for today's world. And I got frustrated thinking about the number of people watching this series who voted for Trump who can reconcile that (or, honestly, just not even think about it) while rooting for Cassian and Mon. It felt like the show was ripped from today's headlines, with the news that Syril's mother watches and the protests on Ghorman and how they were framed by the government and the reaction to the massacre there and the checking of papers on whatever planet that was where Bix was hiding out. It honestly felt too on-the-nose at times for me, to the point that I was distracted from the actual show.

Hopefully there are people who watched it and thought about it and thought about what the creators of Andor were trying to say about our own current political situation, and how tenuous a time it is we live in. Sadly, I wound up mostly thinking about sure, Cassian helped to bring down the Death Star. But they built another. And even after that was destroyed, the Empire rose again (much as people want to not think about Episodes 7 through 9) (OK, not think about Episodes 8 and 9; The Force Awakens was dope).

Rebellions are built on hope. Sometimes it's hard to find some. It does help knowing that there are people like Cassian and Mon and even Luthen out there. 

Cosette hits the big screen

Christmas night--Les Mis!

The sad thing is, I'm sure I have more thoughts than these. I just can't think of them at the moment.

The Good

• I loved the incorporation of elements from the book that aren't in the stage version. Marius lives in an apartment next to Eponine! He has a rich grandfather, but lives on his own! Valjean and Cosette are taken in by Fauchelevent in Paris! The use of the cafe in the barricade scenes!
• Colm Wilkinson as the Bishop. I may have spent a good chunk of his scenes getting choked up just at the idea of him playing this role. Also, he's good.
• The improved clarity of the story. I noticed a good number of cuts of songs in the beginning, but it was fine--just actually being able to see the story in a way you can't on stage told the story. Also, everything about Lamarque and the cause of the student rebellion (and the fact that it wasn't the French Revolution) was so much easier to understand. And there's follow-up to Valjean taking Cosette from the Thenardiers. It always seemed odd that Javert just...disappeared.
• The acting, pretty much across the board. I wasn't completely enamored with everyone's singing all the time, but the acting was good enough to elevate the singing. I bought the soundtrack (it was only a few bucks, so why not?), but I doubt I'll listen to it a ton.
• Grantaire. Grantaire (i.e., the drunk student) is my favorite. They took out his verse of "Drink With Me" and "What's the difference--die a schoolboy, die a policeman, die a spy?" (BOO), but Hooper had enough reaction shots of him and Enjolras in "Red and Black" to make me happy. Also! Including the death scene from the book. Seriously, the rest of this movie could've sucked and as long as they left this scene in, I'd still buy the DVD. They downplayed the Grantaire/Gavroche relationship...I think. Grantaire looked a bit like another of the students, so I couldn't quite make out who it was who had the breakdown at Gavroche's death.
• Hadley Fraser. He was Grantaire in the 25th anniversary concert and Raoul in the Phantom 25th anniversary concert and played the officer who led the charge against the barricade. I adore him. I had thought his role would be a minor role, but he actually got a bit of screen time. And some interesting acting choices. He seemed conflicted about what was going on, which is not something you normally hear from the officer's offstage voice in the show.
• I kind of fell in love with Aaron Tveit as Enjolras.
• The scene with the Thenardiers and Javert. I could've watched that FOREVER.
• Russell Crowe. I was concerned about his voice going in, and he certainly didn't blow me away, but he sounded fine and he acted the hell out of the part.
• "Do You Hear the People Sing?" became much, much more powerful than it is in the stage version. Loved how it was done.
• The ending. I was practically sobbing. (In a good way!)
• Little Cosette. I instinctively roll my eyes at "Castle on a Cloud," but I enjoyed her for the rest of her time on screen. Great with Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter.

The Bad

• Tiny nitpick: I actually thought the stage version did a better job of showing time passing in Fantine's descent as a prostitute. In the movie, it seemed like it took her about a week to catch Prostitute Death. 
• Taking out Grantaire's verse of "Drink With Me." Never forgive, never forget.
• Amanda Seyfried. Nobody likes Cosette to begin with, and her voice wasn't that impressive. Meh.
• It couldn't be helped, really, but "One Day More" was much less effective on screen than on stage. There isn't an act break, and that kind of number just doesn't work as well on screen. Also, the end of it was screaming for a pull-away shot. And we didn't get it.
• Though the action was easier to understand in general, I found the battle scenes at the barricade hard to follow (which is fine--you could tell that the students weren't having a good time of it, which is really all that you need). However, with the action all over the place, it lost some of its power to move me. The death of the students is one my tear-triggers in the show, and it just didn't happen. Despite the awesome Enjolras/Grantaire death scene.
• Gavroche. I know. Maybe I'm dead inside. I just don't really care about him, and he has a bigger role in the movie than on stage.
• Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe should've been aged more. At the end, it was like they realized that Valjean has to (spoiler?) die at the end of the movie and so had him be all, "Ooh, my back hurts!" Adding gray or white to the guy's hair wouldn't have been too difficult. This is what Colm Wilkinson looked like by "Bring Him Home" in the original production.
• "Suddenly." Don't care. Look, I get that they want to be eligible for Best Song categories. Still don't care.

The Direction
All of the criticism about Tom Hooper's direction is warranted. He got some fantastic performances from his actors, and did a great job with the casting. But...really, the criticism of all the close-ups is completely justified. I'm fine with tight shots during the soliloquies, but when two people are conversing, it's OK for them both to be on the screen at the same time. I wanted to see what else was going on. I want to see how the other characters are reacting--and there are moments in the movie where the reaction shot is more important than the shot of whoever's talking. I almost became nauseated at times. This is a major problem, because it greatly affected my enjoyment of the movie.

How I didn't change the Twilight trailer

A while back I went to see Contagion in the theater. My friend and I got to the theater super early, so were just sort of hanging around. We got pulled over by Nielsen to provide input on a trailer. Because I am a total dork, this made me incredibly happy. Yay! I want to affect others' entertainment lives!

On the negative side, the trailer was for the new Twilight movie. I'm now seeing the commercials on tv. I don't think I had much of an effect, in the end. It's probable that I wouldn't have, seeing how I kept answering that I wouldn't go see the movie, no matter what. And that my suggestion for improvement was to have more Michael Sheen in it, because I was pretty sure he was in the movie.

On the positive side, the guy interviewing me said that I had given the best summary of the movie he had heard all day. I'm going to go ahead and take that as a compliment.

Snape, Snape, Severus Snape

Anglophenia, a BBC America blog, did a tournament of favorite British actors. The worst stage for me was when David Tennant went head-to-head with Colin Firth. Just mean. Anyway, the final was between Colin Firth and Alan Rickman. Alan Rickman won.

Look, I love Alan Rickman, but to me, Mr. Darcy > Colonel Brandon. And I can't help but feel that Rickman won with an assist from his turn as Severus Snape. There are a lot of women who are in love with Alan Rickman as Snape. Look, I love Rickman. I think Snape is a fascinating character. And Rickman does a FABULOUS job with Snape. But I just don't understand people who think he's sexy as Snape. Snape, the character, is not sexy. Rickman as Snape is not sexy. I guess the argument is that he's all tortured? Or something? I mean, we don't find out anything sympathetic about him until Prisoner of Azkaban, and that's only that the Marauders were mean to him.

Of course, there are some guys I find sexy that people probably don't. So I shouldn't judge. And he was EXCELLENT in Sense and Sensibility.

Brings a tear to the eye

I was chatting with another usher last night at Side by Side by Sondheim, discussing various shows. He mentioned seeing Signature's Les Mis and being surprised at the people crying. He was all, "But I guess I remember seeing it for the first time and crying." I told him that even though the number of times I've seen it has reached double digits, I still cry. I didn't mention that sometimes I tear up just listening to a recording of it. Or how I bawled numerous times when watching the 25th anniversary concert.

Some things just have that effect on me. For example, Apollo 13. I watch it every time I run across it on tv. And pretty much every single time, I wind up at least tearing up. It's always the moment when they're waiting for them to emerge after reentry. It's the moment with Lovell's kids, when they think the module burned up. The daughter has tears in her eyes, and looks down a bit, clearly thinking, "My dad is dead--it's real." The son, at school, looks up at the clock, to remember the time it happened. And me? I cry. It's like a switch.

And I can't resist it.

I love when my interests collide

Of course I saw The Conspirator. A movie about the Lincoln assassination starring James McAvoy? Yes, please! I quite enjoyed it. I thought it did a great job portraying the events of the night of the assassination accurately. (Except for one major piece: For some reason, they had Booth shoot Lincoln during Harry Hawk's line. This makes no sense; many people know that he shot during the laughs that ensued. The confusion created by this was an important part of the plan.) I learned after seeing it that the American Film Company, who produced it, is all about historical accuracy. I know less about Frederick Aiken, the lawyer who represented Mary Surratt in her trial, and I spent chunks of the movie wondering how much of the script was actually taken from the transcripts of the Surratt trial.

The thing that's gotten me in the reviews of the movie are the comments of its overt politicalness. The choice of the movie--the desire to tell this story at this moment in time--is definitely political. The decision to try the conspirators in a military tribunal, not a civilian court; the use of the war to take away civil liberties--yes, Robert Redford and the AFC knew what they were doing. The subject matter speaks for itself.

But I've read numerous reviews that mention certain details in the movie as being political, like showing the fact that the conspirators were held in jail while wearing hoods makes the movie political. No, it makes the movie accurate. If anything, the movie didn't include enough of how rough the prisoners had it. They wore those hoods almost 24 hours a day. They were only allowed outside when Lewis Powell (I think--it maybe was someone else) tried to kill himself and a doctor basically said, "Hey, you need to let these people out a little." So the prisoners got an hour a day in the yard. Yay?

The movie certainly did its job in making me think. It never takes a firm stand on whether Surratt is guilty or not; the theme of the movie is really, "They should've gotten civilian trials." I will say that it's pretty sympathetic toward her. Now, volunteering at Ford's Theatre, there are certain questions you get a lot, and the relative guilt of Mary Surratt is one of them. My general thought has always been, "Well, she took those guns out to the tavern the day of the assassination; she probably knew about it, and therefore should've said something." (Would she deserve to die for that? Even if we knew 100% that she knew? Another debate.)

But now...I don't know. The arguments about the testimony in the trial resonated with me. I don't know how good those arguments actually are; Aiken, the guy making the arguments, is the movie's hero, so obviously they come off well. Naturally, I need to read more about this to clarify my thoughts.

Overall, the movie is definitely worth your time, even if it's just to stare at dreamy James McAvoy for 2 hours.

Related, I actually attended the premiere for this movie. It was at Ford's and I was lucky enough to asked to usher. So yes, I came into close contact with James McAvoy and Robert Redford and Robin Wright. AND I managed to avoid looking like an idiot. Triumph! I only wish I could've gotten closer to Kevin Kline. Ah well.

Also, I realized that this is the one time that it makes sense to applaud at the end of a movie. The credits rolled, we clapped...and the actors were there! They heard! It made sense to clap! Huzzah!

Behind the times

I consider myself fairly up on pop culture. I do pretty well in general conversation; if someone mentions a book or a movie or an Internet meme or celebrity scandal, I usually have heard of it and am familiar with the general situation/plot/whatever.

I run into problems with music, though. I don't think I've been really up on music since I was in elementary school (and buying Madonna's True Blue on record). I frequently have heard of a song--which, when it comes to a movie or tv show, is good enough. I can cough up actors or the latest evictee from a reality show. But with music? It's harder. I can see people referring to songs, but rarely have I actually heard the song.

For example, watching Glee, a lot of the time, I'm all, "I don't know this song at all," and my friend Dave will be all, "Really???" I heard of Cee Lo Green's "F--k You" AGES ago, but only just heard the song itself a couple of days ago (when I finally watched the video on YouTube) (totally worth it, by the way) (and, OK, I did it because I know it's going to be on Glee next week). Katy Perry's "California Gurls"? Heard of it in, like, June. Heard the song? August or so.

This is the problem with getting so much your pop culture knowledge from the Internet instead of actually experiencing it for myself.

A is for awesome

I saw Easy A yesterday. If you've managed to avoid the trailer (which is apparently possible; when I suggested it, Steve had to pull up the trailer online), it's about a girl, Olive, who pretends to have sex with guys after a rumor spreads around school that she had sex with a college boy. She becomes ostracized and basically says "Screw it!" and wears a red A on sexy corsets.

I'd put it up there with Bring It On and 10 Things I Hate About You in the category of teen movies. It references 80s teen movies and the need for random musical numbers (Yesss!!!), which I totally appreciate. And though I like (as in, compulsively watch every time I see it on tv) She's All That, Easy A has a lot more intelligence in it. The writing's great, the main characters are relatable, and the acting is fab. Amanda Bynes's character, the uptight Christian chick, is a total stereotype, but she's the exception to the rule.

Olive's parents are a lot of fun--the whole quirky, caring type. It could've gotten old if they were in more of the movie than they were. I kind of wished they took a bit more of an interest in what was going on with their daughter. In that way, I compare them to Mr. Bennett from Pride & Prejudice. (And you know who appreciates that analogy? Boys.)

What I really appreciated was how realistic Olive's journey was. I didn't feel like any of her actions felt wrong. The only thing that felt particularly off to me was how the rumor of Olive's devirginization spread. Do kids really care that much? Particularly about someone who's on the edges of the crowd?

I was suprised to find that it was only rated PG-13--there was a lot of swearing. But I don't remember any F-bombs, which probably explains that. I only hope that this means it'll do well. It's a lot of fun and a very well-made movie.

We're all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that's all.

I love living near the AFI Silver. They always have great independent films and rotate through classics. And by that, I mean that they're having an 80s fest. On Saturday, they showed The Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, and Weird Science. I can't resist that much John Hughes, so I went to The Breakfast Club. It was actually really impressive. There's something different about seeing a movie in the theater versus catching it on tv. You pay a lot more attention. Even knowing so much of it by heart, I still found new things.

For one thing, the acting is really impressive. Judd Nelson, particularly, is great, but all of the actors have moments where they shine. Their facial expressions are just dead on. And there are times when you look at these guys, and it's like...They're so young. Which, duh, but it really struck me at times.

There was a fair bit of "Oh, you are such teenagers," which is to be expected. If that weren't there, we wouldn't have related to it back then. (Obviously, as a 6-year-old when it was released, I totally got where they were coming from.) But really, that is how John Hughes related. But, "I think when we grow up, our hearts die"? Please.

What I really noticed was the focus on the characters' virginity. They talk about it a LOT. And though sex was important in high school, I don't think it was that huge a deal to be a virgin. At least, not among people I was friends with. It didn't ring false, really--I could see there being curiousity about Claire, and Brian lying about it also makes sense. But it really stood out to me.

It really stood up to time, I think. It wouldn't have to be changed much if it were made today, I think. I guess a lot of issues really are timeless.

Just think of the stories!

Great story in the Post the other day about George Austin Hay, who balanced working for the federal government and acting in the theater and movies. He sounds fascinating--he knew Gene Kelly, Alfred Hitchcock, Paul Newman, met Marilyn Monroe, and made promo films for the military.

Here's a man you just want to sit down and talk to for a long time.

Tangentially related, here's a fun video of Julie Andrews and Gene Kelly! Man, talk about people you want to hang around with. (If you haven't read Julie Andrews's book, go read it. Fascinating, really.)

It's all over the second we ride up Troy's bucket

Great story in the Washington Post today about the 25th (!) anniversary of The Goonies.

When I was in Oregon for Thanksgiving last year, we drove over to Astoria, and I insisted on doing my own little Goonies tour. I actually saw the owner of the Goonies house (she was taking out the garbage). If I had known she'd be so cool about it, I totally would've asked for a tour!

(I was glad that it was my dad who walked to the house with me. He'd never seen the movie, so didn't know that he should've asked me to do the Truffle Shuffle.)

Anyway, good times. I'm kind of bummed the museum hadn't opened yet when I went out there, but what can you do?

It's really not all about fashion...thankfully

I’m not big into fashion. (If you saw the way I normally dress, this would be readily apparent.) I’m not even that interested in celebrity fashion. Sure, I’ll look at the “Best Dressed” list for the Oscars and whatnot, but I don’t watch all the red carpet stuff.

Yet I am addicted to Go Fug Yourself. Less for the fashion, more for their awesome commentary. And for the fact that they have George Clooney as an intern. (I now exclusively think of him as “Intern George.”) I love the descriptions of soap opera plots and memories of tv plots from the early 90s.

And even though my love for that site was long ago cemented, they post an entry that includes the video of the big dance scene in She’s All That, which I love, to the point that if I see that SAT is on tv, I will make sure I am watching at the right time to see that scene. That scene really does make me happy.

2009 in review

I'm combining my 2009 lists into one ginormous post. Sorry! Following are the books I read, movies I saw, and shows I went to in 2009. The ones I particularly enjoyed are in bold.

Books
* indicates a reread.
Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of FDR (Brands)
The Wordy Shipmates (Vowell)
East of Eden (Steinbeck)
Outliers: The Story of Success (Gladwell)
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (Schwartz)
The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Horror (Moore)
Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street (Davis)
Love the One You're With (Giffin)
Into the Wild (Krakauer)
Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain (Adams)
A Dirty Job (Moore)
Remind Me Again Why I Need a Man (Carroll)
The Tales of Beedle the Bard (Rowling)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home (Whedon & Jeanty)
The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible (Jacobs)
One Hit Wonderland (Hawks)
Everyone Worth Knowing (Weisberger)
Chasing Harry Winston (Weisberger)
Mine Till Midnight (Kleypas)
My Jesus Year: A Rabbi's Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith (Cohen)
As They See 'Em: A Fan's Travels in the Land of Umpires (Weber)
The Good Terrorist (Lessing)
Heyday (Andersen)
Night Train (Amis)
Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (Austen & Grahame-Smith)
Double Play (Parker)
Freakin' Fabulous (Kelly)
Basket Case (Hiassen)
"They Have Killed Papa Dead!": The Road to Ford's Theatre, Abraham Lincoln's Murder, and the Rage for Vengeance (Pitch)
How to Be Popular (Cabot)
Pants on Fire (Cabot)
A Confederacy of Dunces (Toole)
Beyond Band of Brothers (Winters)
*Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Rowling)
*Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
*Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
*Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
*Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
*Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Rowling)
*Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Rowling)
The Poe Shadow (Pearl)
Notes From the Underwire: Adventures From My Awkward & Lovely Life (Cummings)
Cold Comfort Farm (Gibbons)
Atonement (McEwan)
Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound With a Minor League Misfit (McCarthy)
The Left Hand of Darkness (Le Guin)
Best Friends Forever (Weiner)
*Good in Bed (Weiner)
*In Her Shoes (Weiner)
*Every Boy's Got One (Cabot)
Epileptic (David B)
*The Ghost in the Third Row (Coville)
*The Ghost Wore Gray (Coville)
People of the Book (Brooks)
Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America (Gould)
The Dud Avocado (Dundy)
The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History (Ortved)
*Bridget Jones's Diary (Fielding)
Assassins (Sondheim & Weidman)
Beatles: The Biography (Spitz)
American on Purpose: The Improbably Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot (Ferguson)

Movies
Milk
Revolutionary Road
The Reader
Last Chance Harvey
Confessions of a Shopaholic
Watchmen
Sunshine Cleaning
Star Trek
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
Up
(500) Days of Summer
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
I Love You, Beth Cooper
The Hangover
Julie & Julia
Inglourious Basterds

Theater
The Heavens Are Hung in Black - Ford's Theatre
The Civil War - Ford's Theatre
Ragtime - Kennedy Center
Arcadia - Folger
Jersey Boys - National Tour
Show Boat - Signature
A Christmas Carol - Ford's Theatre

The portrayal of a grown-up

There are certain movies that I always try to watch around Christmas, like The Muppet Christmas Carol and The Holiday. And Love Actually, which I have adored since Carrie and I saw it in the theater. There's so much to love about that movie--the cast, the reality of some of the storylines, the complete lack of reality of others, and so on. But as I watched it recently, I realized something else that I like about it.

As I get older, one of the things I struggle with is the concept of being a grown-up. I don't feel like a grown-up. I look at my friends and don't feel like they're grown-ups either, despite our discussions of things like taxes and mortgages and getting the best car insurance rates and the fact that an increasing number of them have children.

So I was watching Love Actually and I realized that one of the things that I find really endearing about it is how it illustrates that, as they said on Buffy, love makes you do the wacky. There are moments when so many of the characters make these expressions, like, "What did I just do?" It's one thing for Baby in Dirty Dancing to have her "I carried a watermelon?" moment, but it's another to see Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, and Laura Linney make basically that same face. It's reassuring to see that in some ways, we just never grow up.

(Related: I was watched a documentary about Monty Python this weekend, and one of the members--John Cleese?--made a comment about how he basically never had to grow up. It's just weird to see this older man talk about how he's essentially still a kid. The older I get, the more I think everyone really feels that way. No matter what's on the outside, we all still feel like we're 15 a lot of the time.)

The older "Dancing in the Dark"

I watched The Band Wagon tonight, starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. Holy crow. The plot was, not surprisingly, not the most logical thing--but better than the show within the movie, which purported to be about a writer who writes both children's books (or something) and gory murder mysteries, but included a bunch of totally random songs (e.g., that triplets song, "Louisiana Hayride")--but it had Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse dancing, so I can't complain too much. I want to do this:



(And also, you know, have Cyd Charisse's body. They're about equally attainable.)

Oh, and kudos to the movie for acknowledging the age gap between the leads! Woo!

Mediocre movies happen

I'm a sucker for romantic comedies. I love them. Quality really doesn't matter--I mean, I've seen most of the ABC Family movies, which should tell you something. And if I like one of the actors in it? I'm done. Count me in! I own the second Bridget Jones movie. I will watch The Wedding Date if TBS is playing it...which it frequently is. I saw License to Wed in the theater. I am a target audience.

So naturally I've been seeing the trailer for Love Happens a lot lately.



And...I don't get it. Is there a hook here? I guess it's that he's a self-help guru? This trailer actually gives away a lot more than the one I've seen on tv does, but it in no way makes me think that there is anything new in this movie. I like Aaron Eckhart. I like Jennifer Aniston. I love Martin Sheen and Judy Greer, but I honestly see no reason to see this movie. There's no hook to make me interested in this movie. Which almost makes me think that this might actually be good...you know, that it's more of a good character study, which just doesn't translate well into trailer format.

Or not. I have suspicions that it's just two pretty people who say they're messed up falling in love. Which, honestly, I don't need to see. Again. I think I'll pass.

Julie, Julia, and Barb

I read Julie & Julia at Christmas last year and quite enjoyed it; it amused me throughout my 24-hour trek to Oregon when I definitely needed the distraction. I was excited for the movie--after all, I liked the source material, and it stars Amy Adams and Meryl Streep! And I did enjoy the movie; more, in fact, than most critics.

The biggest criticism about the movie seems to be that the parts about Julie, the young woman in 2002 who goes through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogs about it, drag. People seem to see her as whiny and find those parts boring; a number would rather just watch a movie with Meryl Streep as Julia Child. Which I might agree with, were the parts in the movie about Julia Child when she worked for the OSS during World War II and not about her learning to cook and attempting to write a cookbook. Meryl Streep was great, of course, and I enjoyed those parts of the movie, but I didn't find them as riveting as I guess a lot of other people.

Maybe it's that I can relate a lot more to Julie than Julia. Whiny? Not particularly. I haven't encountered the scorn of the cubicle that she did and I'm not surrounded by wildly successful friends, but I'm also someone who finds refuge outside of work. It was nice to see a character in a solid relationship, but we also got to see how her drive to get through the cookbook put a strain on that relationship. She came across as eminently human, which isn't necessarily the case with Julia.

One of the biggest contradictions--and one that cannot be explained--is that Julia Child did not appreciate what Julie Powell did. Both the movie and the book include the moment that Julie finds out that Julia didn't think Julie was being "respectful", whatever that means. But the Julia portrayed by Meryl Streep seems to have a sense of humor. True, by that point she was much, much older, and possibly not that familiar with blogs, and she had lost her husband. But the movie doesn't really show Julia as someone with flaws, whereas Julie is definitely flawed.

It's interesting, because in the book Julie & Julia, the Julia parts are weaker by far; Julie does much better writing about herself. But on the other hand, the sections in the book also show Julia and Paul meeting and marrying during the war, so the story (to me) was more interesting than the one in the movie. Obviously, though, Julia learning to cook and writing the book are more pertinent to the movie's story.

In any case, the movie was delightful--all of it. Now, who's up for a cupcake?

Haven't forgotten about him yet

Just a quick post (because I'm tired, yo) to link to this article by a guy who went to school with John Hughes and had some Ferris-like adventures. And since I'm linking, I might as well post one to the op-ed Molly Ringwald wrote about Hughes. Because I remain fascinated by my youth. And when I hit play on a tape that's been in my tape deck for ages, it started playing "Don't You (Forget About Me)".

From "Rainbow Connection" to "Don't You Forget About Me"

One of the first things I thought of after hearing that John Hughes died was, oddly enough, Jim Henson's death. I've been mulling over why this was (other than the obvious connection that they were both J.H.). And I think it's a symbol of teen years being over, where Henson's death was a loss of my childhood. Of course, when Hughes's seminal work came out in the 80s--Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, Pretty in Pink, Weird Science--I wasn't even 10. But those movies speak to all teenagers; those teenagers were the people I looked up to, in a way. They were who I thought teenagers were supposed to be.

The movies are endlessly quotable, but it's true what countless other people are saying--he understood teenagers. Probably the line that sticks with me the most is from 16 Candles: "That's why they're called crushes. If they were easy, they'd be called something else."

RIP, John Hughes.

Of adaptations and awesome talk show appearances

So apparently Michael Gambon, the actor who's played Dumbledore since the third Harry Potter movie, hasn't read any of the books. And neither have Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort) or Alan Rickman (Snape). As actors, they don't want the books to influence them--they want to rely solely on the script. Which is fine, I guess, though it's not like they'd be watching another actor play the part--they can't steal anyone's ideas except the author's, which doesn't really seem like a bad idea. It bothers me in Gambon's case, though, because there's a piece of Dumbledore that seems to be missing; I can't quite put my finger on it, but some of his empathy and whimsy or something isn't there. He does fine, but I feel like the movie version of Dumbledore just isn't as great as the book version. Fiennes and Rickman are both fine in their roles, but neither role is as complex, really, as Dumbledore--or, at least, have as much that's not in the script. I think Gambon's missing out by not reading the books, and I think the audience is missing out because of it.

In other news, I am kind of in love with Daniel Radcliffe now.