Glee (Don't all high school car washes look like this? Santana, Mercedes, and Brittney perform "Bust Ya Windows" spontaneously.) 2/4 I'm not in Glee Club because my school doesn't have one. All after-school singing related events are attached to chorus, meaning that you actually have to be in the class to audition for them. The closest thing to Glee Club is probably Show Choir. High school in general doesn't look anything like Glee. For one thing, we don't wander the halls, our voices echoing as we belt out Jordin Sparks with our hair blowing in the non-existent wind. For another, we don't say things like, "You know, you can kiss me if you want." We definitely don't have a chastity club, and cheerleaders don't wear their cheer uniform every day of the week. But let's just go into the biggest problems. 1. Glee Club looks nothing like Show Choir. Show Choir's uniforms are much snazzier, their songs aren't taken straight off the radio, and I'm about 98% sure that they actually practice. 2. Glee Club's students are nothing like actual high school students. It isn't just the wimpy dialog and the overly-desperate nerd following the lead character, Rachel, around, it's also in the fact that Rachel, her crush Finn, and his girlfriend, Quinn, are incredibly boring people. Actually, all members of the Glee Club - with the exception of the moody Puck, the feisty Mercedes, and that one kid who might be gay - are quite boring. Can I also mention that the lip synching is really bad? Like we're going to believe that any of those kids sound like that naturally. Glee is like a cross between High School Musical and The Office, except I can't really say that because I haven't actually watched High School Musical. The Plotline: Nerdy girl who looks, talks, and acts nothing like a nerd Rachel either is the President of Glee Club or would be if there were a President. She has a huge and, considering that she is in high school, unlikely crush on Finn, the Quarterback of the football team. Finn, as to be expected, is dating the captain of the "Cheerios", named Quinn. Rachel likes Finn so much that sometimes all she wants to do is cry. Emma, who has some sort of administrative job at the school, denies having the same problem with Will, the Spanish teacher and teacher supervisor of the Glee Club. Will is married to a woman who is pretending to be pregnant, so Emma agrees to marry a coach she is only vaguely dating. Joining the pregnancy drama is Quinn, who's pregnant with Puck's baby. Finn is a real idiot. He and Quinn haven't gotten that far, but he still thinks that Quinn is having his baby. As if. So what's to keep one watching despite the bad lip syncing, the ridiculous plot, the bad dialog, and the somewhat dull characters? I'm not really sure. Perhaps it's Jane Lynch, who plays the obnoxious cheer leading coach. Perhaps it's that really cute guy who plays Will. Perhaps it's the hope that Emma and Will, or Finn and Rachel, or Puck and Quinn, or even Puck and Rachel, will get (back) together. Or maybe it's those dang cheesy musical numbers. They're so catchy.
Spirited Away, dir. Hayao Miyazaki
Rated PG, 4/4
English dub: Daveigh Chase, Suzanne Pleshette, Jason Marsden, Susan Egans, David Ogden Stiers
Spirited Away is one of those few films - animated or otherwise - I would call breathtaking. It presents a vibrantly colourful world in which there is never a dull moment. The amazing part? It's completely hand drawn. Frame. By. Frame. Now it's not just eye candy, it's eye candy you can truly savour for all it's worth (yeah, okay, bad pun/metaphor/whatever you like).
Now, let me chastise anyone who is turned off from the movie because of the word 'anime'. Don't go into this movie thinking 'anime = Pokemon'. This is a far cry - in a good way - from the silly, spastic animes like Pokemon and Sailor Moon. Spirited Away is not sloppy, slapstick or cliched. It is mature, and, at points, suspenseful and dark. Everything in Chihiro's life at this point are at a great and actual risk. Just because it's animated does not mean it is a child's movie. Spirited Away is everyone's movie - even if you aren't a fan of the genre.
Spirited Away tells the story of 10-year-old Chihiro (Chase), who is en route to a new house with her parents when her father decides to stop and explore what appears to be an abandoned theme park. While her parents gorge themselves on food that just happens to be sitting there (not a very bright idea, right?) and literally turn into pigs, Chihiro wanders around and discovers that the 'theme park' is actually a town of and for the spirits, the hub of which is a bathhouse. The bathhouse is run by the evil witch Yubaba (Pleshette), who unwillingly gives Chihiro a job - though in exchange for Chihiro's identity. Chihiro is helped by the enigmatic Haku (Marsden), who may or may not be Yubaba's minion, the somewhat grumpy Lin (Egan), and the 8-legged boiler man Kamajii (Stiers), perhaps the most interesting character to watch.
Not only is Spirited Away beautifully animated (it doesn't need to be said again, but I will say it anyway), but it's story and characters are also interesting pieces of work...not the way I felt about Ponyo, one of Miyazaki's other works (he also did Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivery Service, and My Neighbor Totoro, just to name a few). At first I couldn't really figure why I did not care so much for Ponyo (besides it's song); but after watching Spirited Away, it became clear to me: First, it is much easier to concentrate on a movie when not comparing it to another version of the same story; Spirited Away has similarities with Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, but Ponyo is based on Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid", so guess what other Disney movie I had in mind while viewing it? Second, Ponyo was all light; there was no real villain, no real threat, no real darkness. There was one storm and a little bit of darkness, but there was no darkness in any of the characters or any of the surroundings. Spirited Away had dark and light, good and bad, greed and love, risk and reward. It is more human than Ponyo, and is, in truth, much more human than many other movies - especially live action ones - today.
To anyone reading this, I'm still going to be making posts...I've just been really busy. Don't delete me!
Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier
, David Niven
2/4
I enjoy watching movies made 70 years ago for several reasons. The only one I can actually articulate at the present is that I'm unfamiliar with most of the actors, and therefore don't feel laboured at knowing who is playing whom, or to make excuses for their bad behaviour, or in some cases, their bad acting. Of course, I still have my preferences for actors (Gene Kelly and Jimmy Stewart), but I'm more aware of the character than the actor, which really, is what it should be.
Wuthering Heights is some pretty good use of some recurring scenery. I enjoyed watching the actors, I thought they did a marvelous job. I even enjoyed some of the costumes, everyone looked dignified, as I assume they're all supposed to. Unfortunately, this was my first Laurence Olivier movie. I say unfortunately because this plot either didn't translate well into screenplay or wasn't very good to begin with.
Wuthering Heights is, of course, based on the 1847 Emily Bronte novel that several people seem to find romantic. I'm not really sure what they find romantic about it - is it Cathy (Oberon)'s materialism? The part where Heathcliff (Olivier) finally smacks Cathy? Or is it the part where he marries another woman to make Cathy jealous, then ignores the poor thing (his wife, not Cathy) despite the fact that she truly loves him and wants him to be happy? Most people spend the movie worrying about poor Cathy. No one seems to care about poor Heathcliff and then poor Isabella (Geraldine Fitzgerald). They let Cathy's jerk of a brother do whatever he wants - gambling and drinking.
And here be spoilers:
The movie starts out with Mr. Earnshaw bringing home Heathcliff, an orphan. Heathcliff and Cathy are in love from the very start. Heathcliff is bullied by Cathy's brother from the begining. They grow up a little. Cathy has become a materialistic girl obsessed with society, Heathcliff still has her love and loves her as well. Cathy's brother is still a bully. Cathy and Heathcliff spy on a dance, are chased by dogs, and Cathy is taken care of while Heathcliff is kicked out because he is a dirty stable boy. He vows to come back with a vengence, but that doesn't happen any time soon. The next time he arrives, Cathy has become a girl of status and rejects Heathcliff for a rich boy, then decides she loves Heathcliff again. She does this a second time, but is too late to catch Heathcliff from his downfall. She marries the rich guy, Heathcliff goes to America, gets rich, comes back, is still bullied by Cathy's brother, Cathy refuses to acknowledge any love for Heathcliff, Heathcliff marries Isabella - Edgar (Niven) the rich guy's sister - out of spite. Cathy tries to warn Isabella against marrying Heathcliff, but she insists that he loves her and that she can make him happy. The great piece of acting here is that you know that's what Isabella's thinking and saying, but you also know she's not believing any of it. Heathcliff is a jerk to his wife Isabella. Cathy is dying, but no one wants Heathcliff to know. Heathcliff goes off to see her. Cathy decides to confess her love to him. They kiss. She dies. People mourn poor Cathy.
I'm sorry, does any of that sound romantic to you? Perhaps Heathcliff's determination to win Cathy's heart is romantic, but his insistant ugliness when she doesn't accept him and her insistant materialism when she apparently actually loves Heathcliff is a sad - even if true - version of love. Not everything has to have a Jane Austen ending, but can't someone wind up happy? Can't something turn out right? Is there no sense of justice? Does Cathy, with all her snobbery and stubbornness, really deserve to be loved by someone as caring as Heathcliff? When was it ever her right to turn a sweet man into a careless monster? Why does Isabella marry Heathcliff when she knows he is a hopeless case? For that matter, why does her brother Edgar allow it? Is he afraid that Heathcliff is competition despite that Cathy is so determined to have no feelings for him? Why does Ellen (Flora Robson), Cathy's companion, allow all of this to go on when she knows perfectly well how all parties involved feel? And - I cannot press this enough - why on earth should we feel bad for Cathy?
4/4
dir. Alfred Hitchcock
I don't think you can really judge something like Psycho. Obviously it's a classic. It's something that's kind of pointless to explain, you just have to see it. Explaining it at all would take away part of what makes it so creepy; the opening scenes about the stolen money have next to no significance to the rest of the movie. Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) is the most important factor to the movie. The movie could be run without any dialogue whatsoever, and it would still be just as creepy. From the way the movie is shot, you could probably get a good idea of the plot without any clues, though the musical score adds even more to the creepy factor. By the way, we all know Psycho's most famous scene - accompanied by it's most famous music. Personally, I agree with David Gilmour (The Film Club; it's a good memoir, you should check it out); the scenes leading up to the notorious one, the stalker shots, are much more terrifying.
What I think makes Psycho special is that it's even creepier the second time that you watch it. Most horror movies are so predictable that watching them at all is kind of pointless. A few horror movies have things left unsaid and unexplained that keep you wondering, and encourage you to watch them a couple of times. Donnie Darko, for example, is so creepy and confusing that it takes a couple of viewings before you're sure as to what's really going on.
After you've already seen Psycho once and know perfectly well what's going on, you will start noticing things you didn't know to look for the first time you watched it. Hearing everything that Norman says and connecting it to the movie's conclusion turn your view of Norman and his mother into something else entirely.
3/4
Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Geoffrey Arend, Matthew Gray Gubler
(500) Days of Summer is not a love story. We hear this at the beginning. It was in the original commercials. But this movie has been marketed incorrectly. Critics saw this movie as being hysterical. I saw it as being rather sad. As opposed to other relationship movies like He's Just Not That Into You that analyze relationships all the way through. (500) Days of Summer is, I guess, supposed to show why this relationship failed. All I saw was why this relationship never worked in the first place.
Summer (Deschanel) tells Tom (Levitt) that she's not interested in a serious relationship. Yet Tom is so convinced that Summer is "the one" that he convinces himself that he is in love with her, and is devastated when she wants to end it. He spends most of the movie trying to figure out ways to get Summer back, much to the disappointment of his friends (Arend and Gubler), who just want him to move on.
Tom meets Summer at his job, where he works as a greeting card writer. What Tom actually wants to do is be an architect. It's what he went to school for. Summer is just there as an assistant. What she really wants to do is unclear, because we see the story entirely through Tom's eyes. He holds Summer on a pedestal, the way that romantic poets did their ladies. Tom is insistent that they are a couple and wants to stay together. His break up with Summer leads him to be depressed, then desperate, then angry. It takes him forever to gain closure.
My own thoughts on their relationship are that Tom was never really in love with Summer, but Summer was close to being in love with him. There are points in time in which Summer seems almost scared, but Tom is so into his own infatuation that he seems to miss everything; if he really loved her, he probably would have played a lot more attention to her. This movie has only one definite problem in that it jumps around too often. They do not leave the numbers on the screen for long enough to tell which day they are actually on.
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