Month: March 2014
Three sentence movie reviews: Veronica Mars (again!)
Let’s face it, sometimes the glee at seeing something very anticipated means you miss stuff the first time around. So seeing this movie again was a reward for doing an odious task and a very good reward at that. It was as fun and funny and fresh as the first time around.
Cost: $5.00
Where watched: Living Room Theater
Spidey checking his cell phone.
45RPM: Both Hands Ani DiFranco
It was perhaps inevitable that I would come across Ani DiFranco’s music in college. It was the 90s, it was a women’s college, there were a bunch of girls from everywhere in the states, so DiFranco and I were fated to meet. In this case, she showed up on a soundtrack of a play my friend had written. Our college was small and fostered the belief that we could do anything. So when two women said, “Let’s each write and produce a one-act and then direct it” that’s exactly what happened. Well, nearly. The other women didn’t write her own one-act, but she directed an already written one. My friend wrote and directed, because that’s the kind of woman she was.
I was enchanted by this friend: she was from Canada and had a father in the Air Force, so she had lived many different places. She was intelligent and a strong feminist, and with a long-time boyfriend. Strangely, she seemed just as interested in me. Her play was the first time I saw the words of a person I knew come to life, and realized with a jolt how much of their own lives writers use in their work. This song always reminds me of her, not only because it was used in the one-act, but also because after we left school, she disappeared, not answering the letters I wrote to her. It turned out she had, without telling me, applied for the same full-ride scholarship to a transfer college and got it, leaving me high and dry. I heard about her coup from a friend. We never spoke after college.
Three sentence movie reviews: Divergent
I found this movie to be more successful than the book, mostly due to the fact it was more fun to watch the Dauntless faction run through the streets and jump on and off trains than it was to read about it. The story is thin, but it was well acted and the futuristic Chicago was fun to look at. They did the Hollywood usual tamping back of the awesomeness of females, but not to the degree I’ve seen in other movies.*
Cost: $5.00
Where watched: St. Johns Cinema
*Still looking at you, Gone Baby Gone.
But let’s discuss for a moment what they did, because I found it pretty egregious. Not once did they show Triss winning a fight, which she does a few times in the book.** Also, in the book, she was ranked first in the Dauntless initiates. FIRST! It was a big deal, because ranking first is important, but also because her male counterpart, Four, had also ranked first when he went through training. This was not mentioned at all in the movie, which I found particularly telling. Furthermore, in the book, one of the fears that Triss must overcome in her thought landscape, is having sex with Four, knowing he only wants her for her body. In the movie, they turned this into a quasi-rape scene which is not at all the same thing. But why show some nuance in the female psyche, when you can head right back over to that reliable rape thing? It makes me want to spit.
**This is annoying because she spends the second book in the traditional female role of having the men take care of her, which means that we never got to see her kick ass on screen.
ps. Oh hell, let’s just add in the poster of Mr. Pamuk, while we are at it.
Three sentence movie reviews: Her
I was surprised to find this movie incredibly underwhelming, both in plot and visually. Several times I found my eyes closing because it was interesting to listen to, though perhaps I just wanted a nap? I want to blame the costumes–the men wore 40s-style wool baggy pants with 80s-style polo shirts tucked in and I found that very distracting,* but I’m guessing I wouldn’t have had that reaction if the plot was more interesting.
Cost: $7.00
Where watched: Living Room Theaters.
*I also found Joaquin Phoenix’s mustache distracting.