We met and she told me that she wanted to make a sort of paean to the awkward ones, the “uncool” kids that are actually cooler than the “cool” kids. She said she wanted to shoot all these styles of dance and then be the individualist dork in the midst of these established genres. And that she somehow wanted her fans involved. I loved that idea, so over the following week or so, we narrowed down our choices for styles of dance. I think she imagined it in more natural settings and I suggested giving it a starker, more minimalist look. And I suggested the idea of incorporating her fans as a climax, for the ending as a kind of surprise.
Did you know that Fincher directed Madonna’s “Vogue?” It is a lot of fun to see directors freed from the structure of narrative arcs, having fun with the visuals and the music.
“Love is Strange,” a tender, beautifully written and performed love story about a three decade relationship, stars John Lithgow and Alfred Molina. The MPAA has given the movie an R rating even though there is nothing in the film that normally triggers an R in the categories of language, violence, nudity, or sexuality. The only possible explanation is that the gay characters at the center of the story somehow put the film into the R category.
In the Star-Ledger, Stephen Whitty compared the film to the other two R-rated movies opening this week, which feature extreme violence and explicit nudity and sexual situations.
It’s a simple human story. And it is very hard to imagine that — if it starred, say, Robert Duvall and Jane Fonda as a similar long-time couple suddenly facing homelessness — it would be lumped in with movies crammed full of queasily stylish sexism and sickening torture porn.
(Oh, and by the way, that last “Transformers” movie — which memorably featured a man burnt to a crisp — was rated PG-13. So was “The Expendables 3,” a film whose body count would require a calculator.)
Let’s hope parents are smarter than this. There is nothing “adult” or at all worrisome about a movie that quietly and gently portrays a gay couple and their struggles. To think otherwise is to participate in an insidious sort of homophobia that uses child-sized human shields to disguise basic prejudice. And the worst part is that Love Is Strange is exactly the kind of “gay film” that younger teenagers, both gay and straight, would benefit from seeing. For the former group it offers a vision of a gay romantic future that, while beset with a specific struggle, is also full of love, as well as a sense of community and history—older, happy gay people exist! And for the straight kids, the film can reinforce the dignity of gays and their relationships in a way that abstract lectures never could.
More Cliches for the Never Put This in a Movie Again List
Posted on August 16, 2014 at 8:00 am
Mentorless has a great list of movie dialog clichés that should be banned from all future films. I really miss the old Rotten Tomatoes show that had great compilations for lines like “That wasn’t part of the plan.” Here are a few from Mentorless:
1. Try me
2. This is your destiny.
3. Donde esta por favor?
4. I was born ready.
5. Are you sitting down?
6. – Is that all you got?
– I’m just getting started.
7. Cover me. I’m going in.
8. No, no, no, no, NO! I’m not going.
9. No. Come in. ____ was just leaving.
10. We’ve got to stop meeting like this.
And there are lots more great choices in the comments. I would like to add a category that was unfortunately prevalent in two of this week’s releases, “Expendables 3” and “Let’s Be Cops,” the casually sexist bro-banter demeaning someone’s manhood. Enough of coaches and other team leaders referring to the guys as “ladies,” and especially enough of insulting men’s courage by referring to them as p****ies. Please.
Yes, the new movie is truly awful, but the gender politics, at least, have improved.
When Megan Fox was cast as April, Laird complained that there were “hundreds of better choices for the role.” But Fox—the actress Bay previously hired to play an animated wet dream in his Transformers movies, then fired for being too sassy—is actually perfectly cast as a woman who’s long been dismissed as just a pretty face, and is itching to step into a more challenging role. In this iteration, April still ultimately chooses to team up with the ninja turtles instead of exposing them to make her name as a serious journalist. But this time, the movie actually writes April her own superheroine backstory (as a little girl, April bravely saved the mutant baby turtles that later grew into ninja teens) and gives her a real motivation for compromising her career (she does it, naturally, to avenge her father’s death). Along the way, she’s allowed to push some big buttons, flip some important levers, and drop-kick some evil villains as she fights alongside the turtles to defeat a corporate terrorist hell-bent on chemically attacking New York City in order to secure some government grants. It’s all incredibly stupid. But at least it’s equally stupid for girls and boys.
Although the character of April was attractive in earlier “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” iterations, it’s disappointing (if predictable) that she’s overly sexualized in this installment. Mikey (Noel Fisher), he of the aroused carapace, is supposed to be smitten, but must he talk only about her hotness? Meanwhile, April’s loyal cameraman, Vern (Will Arnett), is perpetually ogling her body — even in moments of extreme peril. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by such fare from producer Michael Bay, but the character — not to mention young viewers of this Nickelodeon co-production — deserve better…Unfortunately, even during crowd-pleasing thrills, the comic relief once again circles back to the script’s favorite topic: April’s sex appeal. “Yes, that’s good,” Vern says, leering as she attempts a daredevil pose in a moving car.
“We took the archetype of April O’Neil,” says Liebesman, “the damsel in distress, and really molded it specifically to Megan… April is a character with a lot to prove. She’s beautiful but everyone doubts her, so we needed an actress who could literally give that sense that there’s far more there than meets the eye.” His latter claim fails in this film, as there’s not a single scene where there’s not a big deal made out of Fox’s hotness. Hotness is the butt of every April joke, including a couple, well, on her butt.
The most feminist (as in, most believable as a human) April was Judith Hoag in the 1990, first live-action Ninja Turtle film. HOAG’S APRIL was smart, determined, and permed like an Adrian Lyne working woman; sometimes sexy, but not always. Predictably, Hoag was replaced by a more bubbly actress in the sequel (Paige Turco). “That was New Line’s call,” Hoag recently commented.
Looking at all the Aprils, we time travel through, not a history of American women or feminism, but of American entertainment media, including Hollywood’s move to fantastical franchises. April O’Neil is a damsel in distress now that she’s bound to Banal-lywood, which is distressing (Fox is a far cry from the independent arguably woman of color O’Neil started as), but what else is new?
They’re all right. I was glad to see April showing some spirit in this film, but sorry to see that one of the many disappointments of the film was the way that Liebesman and producer Michael Bay tried to have it both ways, with April asking for respect but the men making the film not willing to give Megan Fox any.
