Scott Pilgrim vs. The Girls

So, while I am a newcomer to the world of comic books / graphic novels, it is a medium that I have really enjoyed getting to know a little bit about, and that I am eager to spend more time acquainting myself with. I have never read an issue of Bryan Lee O'Malley's Canadian nerd saga, so I went into the Edgar Wright film adaptation with no expectations. I cannot really review the movie in the context of whether or not it was a good adaptation, but watching the movie definitely raised some questions about the series.

I'd like to first say that I really liked the casting choices - for all of the supporting characters. Mary Elizabeth Winstead was completely believable as the gorgeous and supercool mystery girl Ramona that guys fall in love with after just seeing her across the room. Kieran Culkin, Alsion Pill, Anna Kendrick, and Aubrey Plaza made a great team as Scott's long-suffering friends, and were entertaining whenever onscreen. Ellen Wong was adorable, annoying, and impossible to hate as Scott's scorned teenage girlfriend Knives Chau. And finally, all of Ramona's seven evil exes (well, the ones who had lines, anyway) fleshed out their caricatures well - Brandon Routh was a particularly nice surprise.

Arturo R. García wrote about the film's portrayal of Asian-descent characters on Racialicious, and I will quote the following as it pertains to Ramona's other evil exes:

"...other characters fare a lot worse ... the first of Ramona’s League of Evil Exes, Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha) gets turned into a Bollywood joke during his fight sequence ... and the Katayanagi Twins (Shora and Keita Saito) go from being tech-savvy villains in the comic (they lure Scott into battle by kidnapping yet another ex of his) to their own QAS Daft Punk pastiche, complete with (ugh) dragons shooting out of their turntables."

Anyway, Jason Schwartzman will always have a place in my heart (did I tell you that I totally shook his hand once? It was awesome), Chris Evans was a well-played parody, and it was awesome to see Mae Whitman battle her former flame from Arrested Development.

Which brings me to Michael Cera. I guess he was well-cast? I don't know, you tell me. My friends who've read the comics did say that so much had to be condensed into the film, but I'd like to know if Scott Pilgrim is as devoid of personality in the source material as he is in the movie. Yes yes, Cera plays the same role in every movie. We loved it about him in AD and Superbad, and then immediately got tired of it. Wasn't he quitting acting or something? Whatever. I miss George Michael (not the singer-songwriter).

I guess if you strip away the flashy and cool fight sequences and just look at the story presented in the movie, it makes more sense. Boring unemployed 22-year-old in a band who lives across the street from his parents is believably edgy enough to impress a 17-year-old overprotected schoolgirl. And rightfully should incur the derision that it does from all of his friends. And while it's difficult to imagine that Ramona would want anything to do with this loser, I guess given the high drama of her past relationships, someone with absolutely nothing going on in their life might appeal. I'm just over the trope of an average-looking dude with very little to offer being the main obsession of multiple women who have a lot of promise.

Anyway, the fight scenes were exciting to watch, even for my parents and I who have extremely limited experience with video games and comics, where most of the stylized inspiration seemed to come from. I felt engaged throughout the movie with its frills that were surely culled from the pages of the comics. That said, Winstead and Wong were on a "Girls Who Kick Ass" panel at Comic Con, and given that they basically learned a limited amount of fight choreography for one movie, I do not think that title should necessarily be applied to those actresses.

So, the movie was just...fun enough. I would like to read the comics to see if there is more material there to be entertained by. Also I want Brandon Routh and Chris Evans to have a douchey buddy comedy, please.

JUNO

I'm sorry it's been so long since I last posted, but after I finished my thesis, I chose to escape into a cocoon of down comforters and TV on DVD (particularly Veronica Mars, which is awesome). I have since reemerged to work on my heavy amounts of final paper-writing this week, figure out the details of getting an entertainment internship next semester, and prepare my final video project for the end-of-semester media studies screening.

On Tuesday, November 27th, I went to a free screening of Juno, which I had been looking forward to for months and months, and it took me quite a few days to sort out my thoughts about it. The film was truly everything I could have hoped for. Every element was finely crafted, and the excellent story and performances were augmented by a particularly impressive set design and soundtrack. I have still yet to see Hard Candy, so this was my first experience with Ellen Page in a starring role (though I'm sure she was cute as Kitty Pryde), and she blew me out of the water. Going in to this movie as an avid Michael Cera fan, I was surprised to see him take more of a background role, but incredibly glad that Page was always in the spotlight.

For those of you who have somehow managed to stumble onto my blog and yet do not know the premise of Juno, it takes us through the trials of accidentally pregnant high school junior Juno MacGuff as she prepares to give her baby to adoptive parents Mark and Vanessa Loring. At the same time, she is trying to reconcile her feelings for her best friend and babydaddy Paulie Bleeker, whom she is constantly awed by.

J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney, playing Juno's dad and stepmom, were very impressive. Janney played an alternate-universe version of her character Ms. Perky from 10 Things I Hate About You, but more realistic in her concern for the well-being of a teenager. Simmons, though, really stuck with me. Whenever he and Page were on screen together, I felt very emotionally connected to the scene, because it can be difficult to portray a loving father-daughter relationship realistically in movies sometimes.

Jennifer Garner as Vanessa was almost too simple, which really worked, especially in contrast to the complicated psyche of Mark. For the first time, I found myself annoyed by a Jason Bateman character - what can I say; I really liked Teen Wolf Too. I wasn't entirely sure to what extent Mark and Juno's relationship was supposed to be unsettling, but without giving away the end of the movie, I will say that it added a very unexpected wrench to the possibly overdone premise of the film.

Juno's friends Olive and Paulie give an interesting view of who Juno is, even though she says (in the trailer, even), "I'm not really sure what kind of girl I am." They're the sort of people I would have enjoyed spending time with if I were in high school, and they're really good people dealing with huge emotions...the basic emotional make-up of a high school student, I think. The romance between Juno and Paulie was incredibly heartfelt in its tempered anguish, and I felt fulfilled by it whenever Juno and Paulie were alone on screen together.

The final third of the film was surprisingly sweet and lofty, considering the sardonic, dry tone that the rest of the film uses. After watching the movie, I read Diablo Cody's screenplay, which was just a hair better than the resulting film. Just enough clever lines were cut to make the film PG13, but since I saw the movie first, I have to remember it as excellent as it was when I was trying to reign in my joy at watching it in the theater two weeks ago. I have since ordered a hamburger phone on eBay, and I can't wait to see the movie again.

recent movies

I must, once more, apologize for my latency with this blog. I am currently going through what I think must be the busiest semester of my life, and I wish I hadn't sacrificed the frequency of my posts so soon! So instead of dedicating a full blog to each of the movies that I saw towards the end of summer, I'm going to try to sum them up here!

A few weeks ago, I saw Stardust with my dad, after looking forward to it since seeing how radiant (*chortle*) Claire Danes looked in the trailer. It was a very nice father-daughter sort of movie, because it is really no more complicated or heavy than your typical fairy tale. The advertisements did a good job of pointing out that this is a movie about flying pirates, evil witches, and a fallen star, so I was very pleased with what the filmmakers gave us. Though the story is simple and easy enough to understand, it still has enough cute surprises to keep it from being too formulaic. I've heard it referred to as "the next Princess Bride, and I actually think that is a pretty fair assessment. We'll see what kind of a following it gets once it's released on DVD.

At Comic Con I missed the opportunity to see Shoot 'Em Up, but I did get to see Clive Owen and the writer-director discussing it and presenting some clips from the movie. I saw it right after it came out, and quite exceeded my expectations. At times, it was so ridiculous that it almost veered into XXX territory (I'm talking about the movie with Vin Diesel and Asia Argento), but in the end, I was very glad that I had chosen to see it in theaters. Now, there was some sort of story that made me wonder what was going on for about 5 seconds, but once I realized I should just ignore any plot and pay attention to the gunfights and sex, I really started getting the most out of it that I could.

I'm very glad that a new Laemmle theatre opened up just a few blocks away from my school, because I have some really great movies right at my fingertips. I saw Death at a Funeral there, and though I very much enjoyed it, it ended up being a bit different than the American-audience-geared trailer made it seem like it would be. Much more British in its bumbling and quiet than I was expecting, I really felt that there were a lot of heartfelt interactions between the characters. Alan Tudyk is always a pleasure to watch, and didn't overplay the "accidentally high" character, despite the nudity and paranoia. The most impressive part of the film was definitely Peter Dinklage's character. I have often championed blind casting, and I am especially pleased to see LP actors treated with respect in film and television.

I also went to a free screening of In a Day at the Laemmle, and am very glad that I didn't pay money to see it. I could overlook the shortcomings of the actors or the low budget, but there were too many screenwriting and directorial flaws for me to not feel cheated out of my time. I didn't understand any of the character's motivations throughout the entire film, and had trouble sympathizing with anyone onscreen. Also, the continuity editing would sometimes be improperly framed, so there'd be a conversation filmed in shot/reverse-shot, where there were no eyeline matches and incorrect amounts of negative space on both sides of the characters. Just too obviously amateur, I guess. And I wish I weren't so critical of people getting started in the business, but it was not an enjoyable movie to watch.

After much, much waiting, I finally saw Superbad! Now, my good friend and collaborator Esther has decided that it was her favorite movie. I cannot give it nearly that high of a recommendation, but I did enjoy it. Jonah Hill was a bit disappointing, just overacting a little too much, and sometimes seeming like he was reading off cue-cards, but I think it was unfortunate for him that he was acting opposite the impeccable Michael Cera. Michael's subdued performance was very engaging considering the subject matter of the movie, and made me fall in love with him all over again. Christopher Mintz-Plasse as McLovin was much more than the one-note joke that I expected him to be, and I even felt that the cop subplot was funny if taken with a grain of salt.

once more, with feeling...

Final day of my long-overdue recap of Comic Con 2007!


SATURDAY, JULY 28

This morning has been ridiculous. Esther and I got to the convention center at about 9:30 this morning - though it wasn't supposed to open until 10am, they opened up the main floor about 45 minutes early. We found our friend Brian and managed to get the freebies we wanted the most - the giant WB tote bad, the "Vote Petrelli" buttons (I wish I'd gotten more), and the 300 shield. We also got a ton of stickers and other trinkets - and Tshirts! Now we're in the longest line I've ever seen, trying to get in to see the entire cast of Heroes. It's at 12:45, we got in line at 11... and it was all the way around the building! Dear god.

*****

So, we didn't make it into the Heroes panel. I'm super bummed. We go to Hall H where we intend to camp out until the Superbad panel at the end of the day. We caught the tail end of the Rogue panel, where Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman were talking about The Strangers. Then Neil Marshall (The Descent) talked about the new movie he wrote/directed called Doomsday, which looked like a pretty cool post-apocalyptic thrilla starring Malcolm McDowell.

*****

The Disney/Pixar panel was kind of interesting... first there was a preview of some of the upcoming footage from The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, including a live video feed of the director and title character from where they were filming. Then they showed a long clip from WALL-E and character bios. The sound designer (who was the "voice" of R2D2) gave a presentation of how and why the characters sound the way they do. The main brain behind Pixar was there, to great applause.

Then, there was a Marvel panel, where they showed Liv Tyler and Ed Norton from The Incredible Hulk, followed by a panel for Iron Man with debut footage and trailer. Jon Favreau, Gwyneth Paltrow, Terence Howard, and Robert Downey, Jr. were all there, and then STAN LEE came onstage! I know I'm not the target audience for a lot of comic book movies, because I'm often not that familiar with the source material, but this movie looks like it is going to be so much damn fun.

The Columbia / Screen Gems panel was the highlight. Ali Larter and Milla Jovovich were onstage with debut footage from the new Resident Evil movie. AND BOB STENCIL WAS THERE AGAIN. Then, Josh Hartnett, Ben Foster, Sam Raimi, the director, and the graphic novel creators of 30 Days of Night came and showed an extended clip of a gruesome scene from the movie. Esther worked for Mandate pictures this summer, which worked on 30 Days of Night, and she said that the graphic novel and the screenplay were some of the scariest things she'd ever seen. I'm generally not really going to seek out non-zombie horror films, but this one looks great.

Then, of course, there was the highlight of my entire trip to San Diego. Esther and I staked out the best seats we could grab in Hall H, and we were SOOOOCLOOOOOOSE to Michael Cera that we thought we might puke. When he finally came onstage I stood up to scream, and my knees gave out. That's why all my pictures of Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and Mr. George Michael Bluth are all so blurry! Esther even had the cojones to go ask a question...I almost died.

Apatow also showed clips from Walk Hard, his new musician-biopic-satire starring John C. Reilly and Jenna Fischer. It looks very funny, and I'm always happy to see Reilly given a lot of screen time. That man is a gem; he's like, second-in-line after Philip Seymour Hoffman in terms of ugly men who are super hot because of their talent.

*****

So, there are a few things that for some reason I didn't write down, but I remember happening and I have some pictures of. One is that Michel Gondry's new film with Mos Def and Jack Black, Be Kind, Rewind, looks really fun. The other is that Zack Snyder came to talk about 2009's adaptation of Watchmen. I can't wait to come to Comic Con again, because it was so much fun and I honestly feel like I can reference it every day. Also, I bought the graphic novels V for Vendetta and Watchmen, because I am really interested in learning more about this whole world, which is sure to enhance the experience the next time I go to the 'Con.

TO VIEW MY VIDEO DIARY OF COMIC CON 2007, PLEASE VISIT http://www.youtube.com/katexmachina

oh jeez

Okay, so the first week of senior year of college is behind me, and now I need to get used to the actual schedule of having classes and work and still trying to spend some of my free time to blog instead of just watching TV on DVD all day long. So, okay, let me try to jump back in headfirst. As far as school is concerned, I am taking James Joyce, Film and Literature, Media Sketchbook, and writing my thesis! Looking forward to it all!

Now, first I'm going to transcribe the journal I took during COMIC CON all those weeks ago, and then in the next few days I'm going to try to catch up on all of the movies I've recently seen. Now, get ready for day one of the LONG overdue Comic Con 2007 recap...


THURSDAY, JULY 26

"You don't understand, Michael Cera is my soulmate."
"No. Michael Cera is my soulmate."
"... Michael Cera split his soul into horcruxes so that he could be both of our soulmates."

So began our conversation the night before we left for Comic Con. We had a little bit of a late start leaving from Beverly Hills this morning, so we didn't get to San Diego until about 11:30am. We checked into our hotel, took the shuttle to the Convention Center, and cut in line with a friend in order to claim our badges. Then we cut in line to try to get into the Paramount Pictures panel. Though we had another friend saving us seats inside the hall, apparently we haadn't cut far enough ahead in line because we were about 25 people past the point where we couldn't make it in. But now we're waiting in line to get into the same hall for the Lionsgate panel. We won't be able to stay for the duration of that, because we'll have to leave early to get in line for the LOST panel, which is upstairs in Ballroom 20.

*****

So, the Lionsgate panel was okay...we saw Dane Cook and Jessica Alba talking about Good Luck Chuck. But the most important part was Bob Stencil, who asked a really lame question of Jessica Alba, dressed in a 70s outfit complete with airline pilot's wings and a pornstache. As Esther and I were obsessing over him, we left the hall afterwards and saw him on the escalator! We were like totally geeky fangirls and I took a picture of him doing this great pose, then Lizzie, Esther, and I took a great posed photo with him. Now we're sitting in the LOST season 4 room! He said he was staying at the Ramada Inn, room 3312. Also, Optimus Prime in a Su-Fi t-shirt asked Dane Cook a question.

*****

So, the LOST panel was amazing. A few days ago, it was released that Harold Perrineau will be returning to the cast full-time playing Michael. The creators of the show had intended to release that news today at Comic Con, but its early release did not make it an less thrilling when he walked onstage (!) to join Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof. (Lizzie, Esther, and I were the only ones who stood up and screamed our heads off.) They answered audience questions and then showed a great 2-minute clip of "lost" Dharma Initiative training footage where that Asian guy said "Station 6, the Orchid, is not a botanical station. Sorry you've had to lie to your family," and the he was holding a bunny marked with the number 15 which seemed to have a "smart" clone which knocked a light bulb off the ceiling. "They've learned!" shouted that Asian guy. And there were some split-second images of a tall office building and a frame with some unrecognizable words, one being "Jacob"!

Then, we went to dinner at the Corvette Diner. We split a basket of spicy fried pickles, a peanut-butter-bacon-cheeseburger, and all ordered entrees and milkshakes. The '50s style diner was very kitsch (Bazooka gum instead of after-dinner mints), and the waitresses were too much - doing little birthday girls' hair with plastic straws, dancing, making balloon animals, and having alternate personas named Doris, etc. It felt like that time Brenda Walsh worked at the Peach Pit. I'm so full I feel like dying.

TO VIEW MY VIDEO DIARY OF COMIC CON 2007 PLEASE VISIT http://www.youtube.com/katexmachina