Mastering the Art of French Blogging: Julie & Julia

Alongside mon amie Rachel (frequent commenter, trusted grammmarian, and bosom buddy) I indulged in the gourmand’s movie: Julie & Julia.  Don’t go to the theaters hungry kiddos.

Poster courtesy of: http://www.impawards.com/2009/posters/julie_and_julia.jpg

The best way to describe this film was a movie for the Food Network lover and the wayward blogger.  While watching the growth of the Julie/Julia blog and Julia Child’s development of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, we are ingulfed in exquisite food porn.

I loved Meryl Streep as Julia: Absolutely stunning as a happy, exuberant student (then teacher) of French cuisine.  But while fun to watch her shop the food markets of Paris and charm the French, I felt more interested in Julie Powell (Amy
Adams) as she struggled with her job, her marriage, and her blog.  It came from that blogging sympathy– watching as she gets her first comment (albeit, from her mother) then struggling to kill lobsters for her 30th birthday party, eventually celebrating the comments from her readers.

They re-created 1950s Europe and post-9/11 New York so beautifully.  I wouldn’t have thought that I would care so much about the subtle differences between 2009 and 2002, but I adored the attention to detail.  And well, cringed a little when I saw the ugly decor of 1960s households (sorry Julia… sorry 1960s housewives).

It’s a movie of hero-worship really.  Julie creates this grandiose idea of Julia Child while writing her blog, working through  burning beouf bourginon and missing her chance at meeting Child’s editor, then never giving up on this idea.  She wears the pearls and learns the craft of cooking, going through her ups and downs and fear of boning an entire duck.  It’s fun to watch her successes, and hard to watch her failures.

The movie made me want to write on here and eat at a French cafe all at once.  Sad to say, I don’t have the plane tickets to do both.  I will, however, wear pearls to work tonight.  And with that, bon appetit!

Ghost World

One of the few, I-Like-It-Better-Than-The-Book Movies.

Of course, the book is one of those angst-ridden realism graphic novels.  They also change a lot of the plot around with the movie, while leaving the characters and setting almost freakishly similar to the drawings in the book.

The plot is the life of Enid and Rebecca after high school, neither with any big plans besides hanging around their hometown and eventually getting an apartment together.

In fact, it’s almost entirely different.  What a perfect comparison, when Lifetime was marketing this movie as “Starring Scarlett Johansson” before she really became Scarlett Johansson and her character is strictly a sideline best friend.  It’s a very “Uh, duh” role really, while there is a milieu of other characters are more interesting.

But that’s something else too– the graphic novel was about the relationship between Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), while the film creates this relationship between Enid and Seymour (Steve Buscemi) and the friendship aspect hits a back burner.

Again, it’s not really depressing for the film to be so different from the graphic novel.    The film has more power to it, whether from the addition of music to the strengthening of characters and relationships, a better development of plotlines.  Instead of hyper-realism, we are presented with a sad world saturated with fake colors.

I can understand it well enough.  The graphic novel wouldn’t work as movie, might as well change it to work.  The same themes are hit, but with considerably different effects.  I recommend watching it if you happen to hold too much hope for current society.

The Musketeer

What’s this? Why I do believe it is a stupid action movie that has wormed its way into my heart.

“The Musketeer” (2001)
Directed by Peter Hyams
Starring: Justin Chambers, Catherine Deneuve, Mena Suvari, Stephen Rea, Tim Roth

My dang DVD-buying addiction struck up again the other day after Second Job (I’m a hostess at an Asian restaurant two nights out of the week) when I went to drop off the car at my brother’s work.

What can I say about “The Musketeer” and not sound horribly snarky about it?
…
Ah well. Long live the snark. It really is a stupid action movie and should be taken as such. It was not designed to be the next Cannes winner, but I still feel like they could have worked a little harder producing a decent script.

Or have different actors deliver the lines– this criticism is directed mainly at Justin Chambers (Our D’Artagnan, messieurs and mesdames) and Mena Suvari (the Love Interest. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that her performance wasn’t her fault, but rather the poorly written quality of her character).

There are a literal shitload of movies out there based on “The Three Musketeers” by Alexandre Dumas, so what makes this one special? Kick ass fight scenes. They were choreographed by Xin-Xin Xiong of the Wire Fu style, which is damn entertaining to watch in 17th century costumes. Other than that, it’s a loose interpretation of the novel. Very loose. So loose that I could suggest that Dumas-pere was rolling in his grave while they were filming it, but that seems rude.

Let’s say, for a second, that this movie is like a new boyfriend. I’ve just been introduced to this movie, we’ve only just made it through the first date. Now, while I feel like he’s a fun guy, he’s a little dim around the edges, but still manages to get to my heart in a clumsy-cute sort of way.

You know, women out there, what kind of guy I’m talking about.

That’s what this movie was like. While there were scenes that made me cringe or laugh, I felt like the movie was almost laughing at itself. It knew it wasn’t the grandest of historical pieces or the most accurate of film adaptations. It was just fun, enjoying the ride while it could.
…
(Oh this is kind of lulzy, I just realized that all of the blurbs they used on the DVD case are about the action sequences. Well, they are the highlight of the movie).

I just want to say: Catherine Deneuve and Tim Roth. YOU COULD HAVE TRIED HARDER! I get the sinking suspicion that Mr. Roth was having fun being a cartoon crazy villain in this role, but Ms. Deneuve, you were the frickin’ Queen of France. You could have DONE something with that!

For a good bitch whine moan, just focus on the script.  Oh Lord, that script.  I don’t think there was any once of logic inserted into that thing.  For example, D’Artagnan and Love Interest decide to do the Sex about an hour after they narrowly avoided Supervillain Le Febre (Roth).  There’s… really no reason for it plotwise, other than for Le Febre to find them unarmed.  Just clumsy scenes like that take me out of the story.  It wouldn’t be that big of a problem if it was the one scene, but half of “The Musketeer” feels like that.  Everything is roughly shod together, from the tenous relationship between D’Artagnan and the musketeers to the scenes that are supposed to drive the plot.

Clumsy, Lazy, but dammit, it was fun.  A cheer goes up for crazy fight scenes everywhere.

Prick Up Your Ears (and the Question of Biopics)

Y’all, I think I have a problem: I’ve become a Biopic addict.

I’ve watched Prick Up Your Ears for the second time this afternoon, which was on the nice HD TV downstairs, as opposed to in bits and pieces on youtube.  While viewing it in the episodic manner many moons ago, a lot hit me more dramatically or became very forgettable.  The internet is giving me a terrible short-term memory, I’m afraid.  Watching full length movies online is almost impossible.

Now, in case you weren’t familiar, Prick Up Your Ears is a biopic on Joe Orton, English playwright, played by the wonderful Gary Oldman.  Joe was homosexual in an age when homosexuality in Great Britain meant prison, which hit me over the head the first time I viewed the film.  It was like, “Yeah, okay I can understand it,” but also “No, shit!  Really?  They made it illegal?”

Now, that same point hits me, but more because it’s a central point to the film.  Joe’s gay, and he doesn’t care.  In fact, I get the feeling that he wants to get caught in the bathrooms sometimes.  Which is, well, a bit awkward to watch, considering his histrionic boyfriend Kenneth Halliwell (Alfred Molina) knows what’s going on.

So I got distracted by Molina during this viewing.  I kept thinking “Now, is he over acting?  Well, I suppose that’s how Halliwell was, if he was that damaged.  Is he overacting?” etc etc, I do believe you get the point. 

It also feels like an old British movie, if someone took British cinema and laid it out from end to end.  Which works with the 1960s setting of Orton’s life, but also makes the movie feel very sad, almost waiting for something to happen.  Then something happens, and it’s terrible, but it’s true: How Orton died.  I remember crying when I first saw that, in a sad pathetic little way in front of the computer screen.  Because I really didn’t expect it, and I had gotten attached to Joe, but felt like he hadn’t lived much.  Anonymous sex, a boyfriend he wasn’t in love with (maybe never had been), and just the beginning of success.

Meanwhile, I get to read someone’s comment on IMDb who says that it’s the biopic that finally worked for her because of it’s strong narrative arc.  Which I can see.  The narrative being the relationship between Orton and Halliwell. 

It just brings me back to another point: I’ve become addicted to biopics.  The question is “Why?” and is that even a genre?  It’s the Costume Drama that’s real, it’s the soap opera that actually happened, if the viewer is lucky.  As much as I like them (or seem to like them– they’re the genre that takes up considerable space on my shelf  at least) I can’t figure out why.  Why like biopics?  They usually end up lying to you about a person’s life.  Immortal Beloved can show you Beethoven, but it still feeds you fiction in order to produce a narrative at all.  Lust for Life shows you Van Gogh, but leaves out the whores, syphillis, close relationship with Gaugin, just because of the time it was made.

And yet, I’m addicted.  I know they’re wrong, but I keep coming back to them.  The question of biopics. Prick Up Your Ears, as it stands, is the most soap operatic of them all, as far as I’ve seen, in an underworld kind of way. London in a different age, experienced by people I can only understand depending on my mood.

Three for Three: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

Read the book.  See the Play.  Watch the Movie.

Pic from Rachel.

I really love this play, and attached to that, the movie.

I saw the movie first, sometime last year: In the middle of my discovery of the works of Gary Oldman, I found the IMDb page for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.  Now remember, dear readers: I do not have netflix.  The one time that my family did have netflix, I was too young to really comprehend the point of blogging, besides ranting about stuff that you want to keep private, that society wants you to keep private, but you rant about it on a public space anyway.

So, I went to Blockbuster.  Blockbuster has never really been high on my list of good feelings places until recently (because, y’know, cheap DVDs…).  When I walked in, I couldn’t find it so I went up to the cashier and asked “Do you have R+GaD?”

And he said, “No, but it’s a great movie!”

Sadface.  Now, I put it out of my mind for awhile, but the youtube clips were really good and my friend Lucy is all excited about it from when she saw it in her Philosophy class. 

On a shopping trip, we arrrive at Suncoast and I get the idea “Hey, what about…”

So I ask the cashier, “Do you have R+GaD?”

And he said, “No, but it’s a great movie!”

I’m just about to leave in utter defeat when he says, “Wait, I can order it for you!”

This would be the first time I would buy a movie without seeing it first.  And although I was a little worried, I did not really care.  I wanted to see this movie that much.  The thing of it is, it was a really good purchase and the Suncoast guys are really nice, so ordering was a piece of cake.

I get home, pop the DVD in, and just sit on the corner of the couch cushion for awhile.

The first twenty minutes, maybe less, are not all that impressive, since it’s just Tim Roth and Gary Oldman wandering through some woods hypothesizing on God knows what.  And just as I was suspecting that I had made a bad purchase, Plot descends!

I really love this movie right now.  I went out and read the play and lent the movie out to friends or we watched it together on movie days and nights.  It’s so much fun to see someone really like the movie all at once, actually get it straight off the bat.  Or even if they don’t, at least being able to see them piece the bits together.

I loved the play while reading it– couldn’t stop talking about it for ages.  Bought it when I had the money.  Used the text for art projects or random quotes.

Then this past summer, I finally saw it performed by an amateur group.  And I couldn’t help but think, “Y’know, this is really the way to watch the play as a play.  If you want the cut and dry, absolutely perfect version, watch the movie.”  As the play that it was, with much more expression and random arrangements, hyper Rosencrantz and Guildenstern played by women, a Player who looked and acted a lot like Heath Ledger’s Joker, it was a fresh view.

So, here’s Three for Three, read and reviewed.

Distopic America: Soylent Green and Fight Club

I’m saying this right now: Watching these movies is not a good way for ending a year. But watch them I did. Soylent Green was on Turner Classic Movies December 28th, and I fell asleep afterwards. I woke up just in time to catch Fight Club on G4.

And then I was in A Mood.

To Start, Soylent Green frightens me, because I can easily see it occuring. “Make Room, Make Room” on an already overpopulated planet. Or we’re getting to overpopulation or we are already sweltering underneath the strain. In my film class last year, we talked about this film, but never watched it. The majority of my class decided that it wasn’t immoral to eat dead bodies in such a situation, and I stand by that. When life is a battle to survive, we end up doing anything that is within our power to go on.

It would have been better to know, though. The ignorance of the future scared me, such as with the Furniture when they are dehumanized or this grabbing for Soylent Green, a product with no past, but a strong future in the arms of many. How we died, too, is a frightening experience, with its strong regimentation, although I get the feeling that if I ever approach death I would much rather die in a room like that than in some cold hospital bed.

Ah me… it frightened me, because the ghosts of the present haunted the shadows of this film.

FIGHT CLUB

Hello Edward Norton. What can I do for you today?

I think his character needs a hug, and a really well made dinner. Then sent to a great psychiatrist. I’m glad that the ending wasn’t predictable, with a fantastic shot of these two silhouettes against the destruction of office buildings.

There’s also, and I love it, the house where most of the action takes place. It’s such an old and grimy house, but inside it’s still a mansion. A dirty, disgusting mansion, but there are charms.  It reflects the entire movie well, anyway.  What creeped me out was this break away from the average that turned into a complete, faceless organiztion.  There’s that cyclic event that we face in life, especially with the new Outliers of society, when they finally become the norm.  It’s scary, to wake up and have no face.

(Ho hum, ignore that if it doesn’t make sense.  I think I’ve just rambled my way, trying to explain what the theme is of Fight Club, when I can’t.  Not right now, anyway). 

Basically, I love and hate this movie on an even keel. It moves me to the emotions and thoughts that the film draws out, but then I have to live with them. These views on the waste of modern life and hateful office jobs.

Two really fabulous, well done movies, that tell and keep secrets and have the wonderful ability of motion.

A Twilight Story

Crap, I think I’ve regressed to a thirteen year old girl.

11:55am My parents are about to go out and do some Thanksgiving grocery shopping.  Mom is going over my day with me, just so she doesn’t freak out if they get home and I’m not there.  I’ve just taken a break from my NaNo (35K and counting…)

Mom: Are you working today?

Me: No.  There’s Printz-

Mom: Right, and then the movie, okay.

Dad: Harrumph.  What movie?  Twilight?!

Me: Yeah.

Dad: I expected better from you.

Mom: I didn’t.

Me: *rolls eyes*

Mom: It was written by that woman who wrote Eclipse, right?  (note, fair readers, that I was in fact wearing my token Eclipse t-shirt today… not for any other reason than I might as well when I’m going to see Twilight.

1:18pm I just finished up a chapter of my NaNo story only to realize that I’ll be late for book club.  Dash out the door with Cow Bag, Morpheus (my Sansa MP3 player, best thing ever), wallet, keys, books, etc.

2:15pm Picked up by Rachel and her mom.  We head to the theater and get there remarkably early.  I’m thankful that there are still tickets for the 3 o’clock showing we’ve got.  As we walk into the lobby, on the wall to our right is, like, five horror movie posters, all set to come out in January, including The Unborn.

2:25pm We decide against getting food or popcorn.  The theater we’re at is close to the bathrooms, so I make a quick pit stop.  Not a lot of people are wandering around, except for one kid and some person who looks to be my age.  A screening of Quantum of Solace is showing across the hallway from us.  I consider ducking in, but decide against it.

2:34pm  We are the only people in the theater.  I’m not joking.  And here I thought it’d be packed from left to right and backwards and sideways!  But no… three lone people watch the cheesy pre-previews commercials.  Some theater workers shuffle in to start clean up.

2:45pm Just when I get excited about the idea of us doing MST3K in the theater, more people show up.  Rachel and I have running commentary on the subject:

Me: Obligatory tweens.

Rachel: Whoa, boys!

Me: Twimom.

Etc etc, I think you get what follows.  The theater fills up somewhat, mostly by girls ages 12-15.  A whole string of them take the row behind us.  It’s going to be a loooong two hours…

3:00pm Actual trailers start.  The only one I really remember is The Unborn, but that’s because… well…

Me: By the way, I’m dragging you to see this.

Rachel: Uh… okay?  Why?

Me: *is silent*

Gary Oldman: *is on screen*

Rachel: *still doesn’t get it*

The random Names-Card comes up and she sees his.

Rachel: Oh!  Gary’s in this! (…) OH! that’s why.

Me: Yeah.

And the other trailers were… uhm… I remember a microwave in one (?).  Cadillac Records, Some Psychi-Super hero movie Push, and I think that was it before the movie started.

3: something pm  The movie begins. 

Christ, they’re having Bella’ monologue the movie?!

And let’s just… ignore the times for the rest of this, shall we?  Bella is sad, boo hoo, Charlie is lovable (but distant!) father, Jacob and Billy Black are… football fans (at least I think it’s football…).  Kids at school are laughably YA teenagers.

(As much as I love Young Adult writing, I’m so sick of the stereotypes that get resorted to in YA fiction.  There are the cheerleaders and the stupid vapid friend, and the friend who understands you but you’re not that close and the Token Asian, Token Black, Annoying Jock-type who likes Main Character, etc.  All of that is seen in Twilight.)

Also, for a crappy high school, Forks High looks well funded.

Anywho, the Vamps: Rosalie was played well (bitchy), Emmett was Emmett (there is really no other way to describe his character), I like who they got to play Alice and every time I saw Jasper I felt really bad for him and wanted to give him a hug.

And then… there’s Edward.  1)What the hell is with the hair? and 2) Did Robert Pattinson purposely watch old 1950s movies to get his American accent?  Because… he reminds me of James Dean.  As soon as he came on the girls behind us erupted into excited squees.  This morphed into giggles everytime Edward opened his mouth. 

It’s really just the novel blah di blah the entire time after that, but it’s been about four years since I’ve read the thing, so everything for me was like “Okay, which Bad Vamp do they kill again?  How does Bella get away from Jasper and Alice at the hotel?  Why are they breezing through the Bella-Edward pillowtalk?”

At the first Biology Class scene with Edward, Rachel tells me that he looks like a Drug Addict (true).  Then she complains that his face is concave (also… true, but still).  Somewhere near the end when it was just some scene with Edward and Bella being gooey at Prom we have an indepth conversation about the soundtrack and whether that was Iron and Wine they were playing (it was).

And Stephanie Meyer pulls a Hitchcock and puts in a brief appearance, thus sealing the deal as the Author I want to be for 15 minutes (Neil Gaiman is who I want to grow up to be, but I think it would be fun to be Meyer for a short period of time.  Her fans are really devoted).

I didn’t like the direction and editing that much.  There were too many close ups strung together combined with this piece-meal montage effect everytime Bella is dreaming or they’re running through the woods.  The sparkling was almost exactly how I imagined it would be, which is kind of nice, although I still got a little freaked out.

Wanted someone to rip James’s head off too… and I know that doesn’t happen in the book, but Alice breaks his neck.  She could have just as easily ripped his head off too.

Anyway, it was during the prom scene when I officially regressed and decided that I like Robert Pattinson after all, to my shame.  Edward is just so… Edward at the prom scene.  That’s the very second when his entire character gets stripped away into this namby-pamby protect-Bella outlook that lasts for the next three books.  Ah well, it’s better than Stalker Edward from the first hour.

Kamikaze Girls

It’s a lot like reading a shojo manga, but live action.  And mildly insane.

 (Yeah I… I really don’t care that I’m using the same image twice in this case).

Kamikaze Girls also known as Shimotsuma monogatari (or Shimostuma Story) is the hyper-tale of Momoko, the antisocial Lolita who is forced to leave her city when her father is exiled by the yakuza.  In the country she meets Ichigo, the tough (but stupid) yanki, and wackiness ensues, etc.

If you have no idea what “Lolita” or “yanki” mean, here’s a brief recap:

Lolita:  Japanese fashion style popular among teenagers to early twenty-somethings, Lolita is typified by lots of lace and frills and usually emmulates a period of history in style, though with shorter skirts and platform shoes.  In the case of Momoko, she is reliving the Rococo period of Europe, which results in a hilarious explanation of what thos 18th century crazy, Mozart-loving Europeans were doing: Embroidery, sex, elegant conversations, more sex, and then a walk through the countryside.

Yanki: The punks of Japan, without a musical affiliation!  They form biker gangs that roam the country and cause fights.  Usually typified by dyed hair (before it became popular, blond hair was a sure sign of being a yanki) and long coats with Chinese calligraphy on them.  In Ichigo’s case, this is a scooter (she couldn’t pass the test for a real motorcycle) and calligraphy spelled wrong in her bike gang, the Ponytails.

Momoko likes being antisocial: According to her, it was always in her nature.  Her father was a low-ranked yakuza (Japanese mafia) member and her mother was a whore, but between them Momoko was born (and her mother had an affair/second marriage with the OB-GYN).  Momoko, in the divorce, decided to stay with her father, because it was more fun and tells her mother to go out, get plastic surgery, and compete in beauty competitions because that’s all she’ll ever have. 

And Momoko grows up, only to fall in love on a class trip with BABY THE STARS SHINE BRIGHT, a frilly Lolita brand.  She spends the next year or two conning her father out of cash to buy these expensive outfits, but once in the countryside, her fuel has dried up.

So she puts an ad out and Ichigo, the yanki rebel idiot, winds up at her door.  And continues to do so, because she… she’s an idiot, let’s just say.  Or likes Momoko’s twisted personality.  Putting that aside, Ichigo tells the reluctant Momoko, who doesn’t want any friends (she finds her ideal death eighty years in the future in a “BABY” dress, found by a robot) her life story and the story of the infamous Yanki leader who wanted to join up all the girl gangs in the province and fight the yakuza.

This could be subtitled as “Modern Japanese Culture in a Box” but there are some subtle plot structures and character development.  Also, more of the Japanese culture could probably be explained better in the book, like how Ichigo wants to live the life of a yanki character in a manga, “Momoko”, which isn’t explained as well in the movie, most likely due to time constraints.

This is my favorite girl-friendship movie because both characters develop according to their reactions to each other.  Ichigo finds acceptance instead of expectations because of Momoko and Momoko learns to trust in other people and do something with her life besides just lazing about and taking strolls.

All of the characters are clowns and over the top, but the hyperactivity of the movie makes it so much fun.  Everything is in day-glow colors and the cinematography is a lot of cuts and short comedic moments to change from scene to scene or to see into the mind of Momoko.  It is a sugary-sweet guilty pleasure at one moment while also managing to convey a deeper meaning just five minutes later.  And it’s endlessly quotable, like “Humans are cowards in the face of happiness.”

There is, of course, the vivid contrast between prim Momoko and vulgar Ichigo, but they each reveal their own faults and gifts, so it comes off as a bit of a cliche, but it works magnificently.

Clan of the Cave Bear

… what?

This wasn’t really my reaction while watching the film.  I was actually really interested in it, it’s just the conversation we would have afterwards always strayed to the strangeness of it.

Clan of the Cave Bear recreates that time when both Neanderthals and Homo Sapien Sapiens walked the earth and fought and competed, and even though the Neanderthals had, supposedly, a more sophisticated culture than early humans did, we basically forced them out of existence. 

But this story is about a Cro Magnon child, Ayla, who’s mother is dead from earth quake and who has recently survived a good mauling from a lion, is adopted by the only smart people the holy man and medicine woman of the CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR!!! (oooh, I see what you did thar).  Ayla never feels like she truly belongs in the Clan, because she is ugly (the one time a leggy blonde will ever be called that) and smarter than everyone else (because she can, like, count?  Or something?).  In her clan, she is really only disrespected by Broud, the son of the leader, who resents her for her awesomeness (which he is surely lacking).

Pretty much, it’s a feminist movie disguised by a cave people plot line.  Although that is interesting too– and thank God there’s subtitles in this movie, and a narrator who is able to explain that Ayla “wants to stay away from Broud”, because that isn’t obvious.  Not to the American movie-going public of the 1980s, it would seem.

Eventually, Broud gets the idea to rape Ayla in the most disgusting scene I’ve seen in awhile, and she retreats to the taboo of hunting weapons.  That was rather cool, and still feminist, how she montaged her way into learning how to use a sling shot.  SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE NEANDERTHAL MENZ!!  But unfortunately that is punishable by death, because she is a female.  And females… don’t do that… in cavepeople times?

Ayla gets preggers by Broud, but she still doesn’t have a mate, so everyone is worried about how the baby will survive and then, thanks to a wolf stealing someone else’s kid, it is revealed that Ayla did the unthinkable and can hunt!  And save children from wolves!  And that her baby is just as normal as any other Neanderthalic baby, so there!

And so Ayla became the first feminist hero, and there was much rejoicing.

I still can’t decide if this movie was great or ridiculous.  In some ways the plot and characters came across very real to me, after I sat myself down and said to myself “Remember, they are cavepeople.  They… can do whatever they want, except, perhaps, go against their laws”.   And I liked picking up the proto-feminist spirt that Ayla conveyed in her rock swinging, and her ultimate ass-kicking of Broud at the end of the film (sorry for the spoiler, but you knew it had to happen, right?).  And she was a devoted Mom, proving, in fact, that feminists can both hunt and be excellent mothers.

This reveals that my blog… isn’t exactly post film class yet.  The class I saw this in is “History through Film” which isn’t quite as hard or as awesome as my other film classes “Film Analysis” and “Cinema Ethics” but it is entertaining, and it does give me blog fodder.  Like Turner Classic Movies doesn’t give me enough of that.

So, keep in mind: Clan of the Cave Bear.  HIlarious 80s flick, serious proto-feminisim, or just cavepeople escaped from Geico commercials?  You make the choice.

Ruined by God: Brideshead Revisted Recap

I saw Brideshead Revisted at my favorite theater with my good friend Rachel, Thursday afternoon.  There was much munching of awesome concessions, like giant cookies and kettle popcorn, and hanging out in a theater that plays cool Indie Music as you wait in the dark for the screen to turn silver with the movie.

Brideshead is one of those heartrending movies with heartrending scores and performances.  Costumes are to die for too. 

Charles (Matthew Goode), with the grimmest father in the world, goes off to Oxford and by a chance of drunken projectile vomit becomes friends with Sebastian Flyte, a man who carries a teddy bear, is an alcoholic, and doesn’t take being gay as a phase in 1920s England. Ain’t he impressive? 

This friendship acts mainly as Charles observing Sebastian, then the rest of his oppressed family at the House Charles Falls in Love With: Brideshead.  And okay, maybe he also likes Seb’s sister Julia too.

The important thing is that Charles is an artist, an atheist, and is intrusted with keeping Sebastian’s blood alcohol levels under control.  Oh, and staying away from Julia because his mother (played by the wonderful Emma Thompson) thinks atheists are too middle class to marry her daughter. 

As a film, the story is based on relationships: Between friends, lovers, siblings, parents, and God.  The aspect of Roman Catholicism is used as a means of keeping the Flyte children under heavy control by their mother and later on affects them through their relationships, most notably Julia and Charles.  To Sebastian it stunts his growth, leaving him an impudent child prone to not getting what he wants and in love with attention.

The  Brideshead estate acts like a player in the story, but more as a metaphor for the family as a whole.  It is seen only once as a whole through Charles’s eyes.  To him it is the most majestic place on earth, but every otehr scene with the house in it, it can only be seen in pieces.  As the story progresses it falls into disrepair, with the stone work getting shabbier or with pieces falling out of the stairs or with the statues turing black, the big foutain of Once Upon a Time Male Skinny Dipping stopping it’s streams.

All that remains perfectly in tact inside th house are the religious works, the painting Sebastian admits to loathing and the family chapel, the only connecting pieces Charles has to the family for his appreciation of art and the mother’s love of the religion.

Charles cannot come out of his relationships with any members of the family unchanged, but after years away from those closest to him, he cannot abandon the memories.  The house brings them together, the house let’s them fall.  Another must-see of the summer.