Film Friday :: 2012 in film (2 opinions, 4 predictable favorites, 4 awesome people)

Opinions
2. I don’t care, I’m going to actively promote evil queen Charlize Theron to everyone.
I mean, I liked Snow White and the Hunstman pretty decently well overall, as you may remember.  It’s that kind of ridiculous dark thing I generally appreciate.  But the more I think about it, the more I go: wow, wow, but evil queen Charlize Theron is actually the best thing ever.  I haven’t seen a lot of Charlize Theron movies, or I’ve only halfway seen them, or I wasn’t really paying attention, but wow, maybe it’s just that I sort of dig on evil queens, but I enjoyed the hell out of this particular performance.

1. There were a lot of movies this year that I objectively recognize were good but just… didn’t really care about overall.
The Dark Knight Rises.  Skyfall.  Looper.  Friends With Kids even.  For different reasons each time, but also largely for one overarching reason: I have such a hard time caring about the movie when I don’t care about the characters and/or don’t necessarily appreciate how they were being used.  It’s not that I didn’t like these movies.  To whatever extent, I did. But I wasn’t thinking about them too much afterward, I wasn’t analyzing everything about them happily, I didn’t feel compelled to jump into discussions about them.  I actually kind of fear being asked to join discussions about The Dark Knight Rises, because there really isn’t anything insightful I can say about it.

Predictable favorites
4. Brave
I just rewatched this movie the other night.  And ugh it makes me so happy.  I don’t really need to repeat myself, but it did so many things right and I adored it for that.

3. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
See but this would also have been a predictable disappointment, because I do not recall the last time I was this nervous about a movie.  The Perks of Being a Wallflower is such a big part of my adolescence that the film had some monumentally-sized shoes to fill in my eyes.  But not only did it fill those shoes, it was actually a really really good movie that did a lot of the things that I thank Brave (and actually the next two movies I’m about to discuss) for.  Yes, Charlie (Logan Lerman) has a crush on Sam (Emma Watson).  But that is not the point of the movie, the point of the movie is friendship.  It’s a love story, but it’s a platonic love story about these young people who care so deeply for each other, and that makes me so absolutely happy.

2. The Avengers
You can see where this is going, no?  I talked about how this movie was almost immediate fulfillment of a wish I expressed: a movie about platonic relationships.  Because aside from Tony (Robert Downey Jr.) and Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow), there is absolutely no romance in this movie.  (I mean, if you’re too desperate for Avengers romance, you can basically look… anywhere on tumblr or the rest of the internet and find every possible permutation of romantic relationships between every character who has ever appeared for half a scene in the MCU.)  This is a movie about a bunch of people, extraordinary people for whatever reason, who by all rights should not get along, but still manage to forge a beautiful team and do some world-saving.  And this is a movie where the good guys never ever go “oh yeah, and here’s our token lady team member,” they just appreciate her skills like they appreciate (or sometimes don’t appreciate) anyone else’s skills and go about their day.  This is a movie where things felt high-risk and where things felt real even if it was about superheroes and space aliens and where characters were interesting to me.  This is a movie where I actually got invested in really just about everyone.

1. The Cabin in the Woods
This is the height of predictable.  This is also not the only list (or sublist I guess) that this movie will be heading up in the near future.  This movie, though.  This movie has romantic relationships and makeouts and whatnot, Curt (Chris Hemsworth) and Jules (Anna Hutchinson), Dana (Kristen Connolly) and Holden (Jesse Williams), and this is largely because it’s integral to the genre critique and the extreme meta factor.  But you know what I love?  I love the handling of the “Marty and I were sweeties in our freshman hall” bit, insofar as it’s refuted with a “we made out once” and not turned into some source of tension (one of the pieces of Cabin meta I’ve found online talks about this; I don’t remember which one, but one of them, all of which are in my Cabin in the Woods tag so go find it if you’re curious I guess) I love that even while Dana and Marty (Fran Kranz) were running around destroying everything, even while they were clinging to each other and being sweet to each other as the world combusted, they didn’t actually have romantic subplottiness.  It’s so easy to pull that “last boy last girl shove ‘em together” stuff, and that has definitely happened in the genre before.  And mind you, I actually do kind of ship Dana and Marty.  But I like that it didn’t have to be made canon.

Awesome people
4. Rooney Mara(The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo)
It almost seems like this movie came out last year, since it was so close to the year’s beginning.  But nope, this was a 2012 movie indeed.  And I just.  I love her.  Between this movie (because while I adore Noomi Rapace’s Lisbeth, I am not in love with her) and the fact that this was the year I finally finished the book trilogy, 2012 was the year I actually fell in love with Lisbeth Salander.  I think she’s great, and I think she’s fascinating.  She’s a badass, she’s a techie savant, she’s unapologetically bisexual, she’s unapologetically everything actually.  She’s just great.

3. Zoe Kazan (Ruby Sparks)
I really loved this movie.  Probably because of all of its meta.  But I love Zoe Kazan because she’s adorable and I found the evolution of Ruby in the story to be pretty interesting, and I love her because this was her movie.  She came up with it, she wrote it, she made happen what she needed to make happen.  And that’s super-super-cool.

2. Fran Kranz (The Cabin in the Woods)
We’re into the predictable again.  As I’m sure I’ve mentioned, I get inordinately proud when watching this movie with other people and they express fondness for him, be it the couple sitting in front of me  the third time I saw it in theaters talking about how he was the most awesome one in the movie or be it my friend proclaiming that not only was he awesome, he was pretty cute.  I am bordering-on-creepy-proud of my Fran and how well people reacted to him in this movie.  I am so happy that he was the star of everyone’s hearts.

1. Scarlett Johansson (The Avengers)
I definitely mentioned before that I’ve actually always kind of had a Scarlett Johansson thing.  This used to be for reasons that I couldn’t quite articulate, because it wasn’t because of a particular movie or because I’d read something cool with her or anything.  It just sort of was.  But after The Avengers (and her growing real-life fantastic reactions to people talking to her about it) I feel completely justified in this for the first time.  Because I’m sorry, Entertainment Weekly, but Loki being the one character from this movie that you pulled out specially to mention in your end-of-the-year whatnot?  Noooope.  I am ambivalent toward Loki, actually; I don’t hate him, but neither do I fall all over him going “aw poor baby.”  However, Black Widow has become at least to some of my friends one of my real life things, like British accents or cupcakes or dragons.  Because Black Widow is fantastic and wonderful, and I and the world needed a character like her in this (and really any) movie so much.  She is my rational, kickass, imperfect, literal-minded, well-developed darling, and I am so glad she exists.

–your fangirl heroine.

Things in Print Thursday :: casting or lack thereof for the Heartsick television series

In the spring, it was announced that they were going to be making Chelsea Cain’s Heartsick series into a television series on FX.  Home of Justified and Sons of Anarchy and American Horror Story and other such good things that I trust.  I, of course, went YES YAY.  I’ve been a fan of Chelsea Cain since she wrote that Nancy Drew parody, Confessions of a Teen Sleuth, and I saw her read part of it out loud up at Wordstock and briefly met her.  She’s awesome.  And I love the Heartsick series for a lot of reasons.  I’ve skimmed around a few online articles announcing the series, and most of them have fairly decent commentary; nothing insightful, which is valid, since the adaptation hasn’t been aired yet, but nothing like zombies, really.

I’ve also been searching for casting notices.  And… nothing has been announced yet.  Nothing at all.  Which is a bummer: I love theoretically casting, but it’s hard with television.  So many of my favorite television performers are people I wouldn’t have heard of in the slightest before the show they’re on, and yet they’re perfect.  And there’s always the issue of some actors being film actors and some being television actors and some but not all crossing over, too.

I did find one theoretical casting poll from 2008.  Presumably they were aiming for it to be a film, but it’s the closest I can get and therefore I’m analyzing the bejesus out of it.

So.

They suggested Matthew Fox or Dermot Mulroney for Archie Sheridan.  No and no.  I don’t know any of Matthew Fox’s work, and I really only know Dermot Mulroney from his stints on New Girl and Friends, i.e., also I just can’t see it.  I don’t know who’s right, but not them.

They suggested Charlize Theron or Uma Therman for Gretchen Lowell.  I love Uma Thurman, but I can’t really see her as Gretchen.  I actually really love the Charlize Theron idea, I mean, Gretchen is seductive craycray queen levels of evil and I’d be into it.  But somehow I don’t think that’s even remotely going to happen.

They suggested Zooey Deschanel or Christina Ricci for Susan Ward.  I love Zooey Deschanel, but I can’t see her as Susan at all, and also she has her own television show already and I think it’s really sweet and good okay.  Christina Ricci is late of Pan Am, which was outstandingly disappointing by the end (so many stylish clothes, such terrible confusing plots and character development that went to crap), and I can’t see her as Susan either.  I don’t know who I could see as Susan.  I’m just sitting here going through my lists of television actresses, and there’s the currently employed ones and I just.  I don’t know.  I really like Susan, so I’m going to be really opinionated about this casting, but I have no idea.

The only other of their theoretical casting choices I have any feelings about would be Eric Balfour as Ian Harper, which just, no for so many reasons, and Carla Gugino or Courteney Cox as Debbie Sheridan.  Courteney Cox has her own television program nowadays, and also I can’t see it; actually, I’d be open to Carla Gugino as Gretchen or Debbie.  Why not, I like her and she’s talented.

–your fangirl heroine.

Spoiler Alert Saturday :: my thoughts on Snow White and the Huntsman

Ah, bullet-pointed for convenience, I suppose?

• Yes, all right.  I’m good with this film.  I have no overarching problems with it that don’t stem from overarching problems with the story of Snow White as a whole or fairy tales as a whole.  In fact, I’d say I enjoyed it.  It was dark, it was weird, it was fantastical, it did many things I generally approve of.
• Addressing the cast.  Kristen Stewart: back when all I’d seen her in was Twilight, I was ugh.  Because Twilight isn’t good.  Circa Adventureland, I was meh, because I saw it too many times and couldn’t really think any non-meh thoughts about it.  Circa The Runaways and now this, I’m coming around to yes, all right, if they give her something to do, she can do it pretty well actually.  She seems like a fun enough person in interviews and yes, the way that the media treats her is gǒ se,and I’m sure that if I saw her in something not crummy first, I would not have had to take this time to be able to appreciate her.  Which is my longwinded way of saying: good on you, Kristen Stewart.  Good job, I very much approve of your performance here.
• Also, I was prepared to judge your British accent, because I judge everyone’s fake British accents.  This is not to say I was prepared to hate on it, but I am critical of British accents, and yours gave me nothing to criticize really, so that’s a plus.
• Charlize Theron was doing a really great craycray.  I tried to explain to one of my people the other day that, at least in my opinion, “crazy” and “craycray” are not strictly synonymous.  That is, all things that are craycray are a little bit crazy, but not all crazy is craycray.  Charlize Theron was craycray here, and delightfully so.  She really is a beautiful woman, and she was doing evil pretty well.
• Also, I have always sort of approved of the name “Ravenna,” so that was nice.
• Chris Hemsworth, yes all right.  I have yet to not approve of him, he does what is given him to do very nicely.  And he was given the task of axe-fighting and stuff, which was pretty fierce.
• Also, the filmmakers inadvertently granted me one of my recent wishes in having his voice over the beginning exposition sequence.  They gave me the gift of Chris Hemsworth reading bedtime stories.  Yes.
• Sam Claflin, yes I suppose you were very all right at being what you were.  Which was, y’know, not much.  It’s not your fault that I have this inherent bias against the Prince Charming role.  But that isn’t your fault.
• Also, you are a very lucky man, getting to work with Ian McShane twice in your young career.
• Ian McShane.  Dear sir.  I would like to give you a “congratulations on being epic” plaque.  Because really, this man is fantastic.  My big problem with what he had to do in Pirates was just that they didn’t know what to do with him.  They just sort of stuck him in and didn’t give him enough to work with.  The role of the presumably head dwarf was smaller and probably less important, but he got a little more dimension in there.  Which was fabulous, because I just love it when he gets to do his thing.
• Creepy brother Sam Spruell.  You were all creepy.
• I am forced to fully admit that I have a problem when I’m sitting there through this entire thing just drawing Game of Thrones parallels.  I have been drawing Game of Thrones parallels with everything lately, yes.  But it is a complete issue.  Creepy brother walks in and addresses his sister the evil blonde queen and my immediate thought is “well oh dear, is this going there?”  It didn’t obviously, but I’m sure the internet has taken it there already.  And yeah, when fake-William was walking in the woods with Snow and giving the whole “the throne is rightfully yours, you are your father’s daughter, blah blah blah” speech, I was convulsing a little inside.  In a good way.
• Finally, one observation I have about this movie, not necessarily a negative but a definite observation, is that this film definitely has Prisoner of Azkaban disease: particularly at the first howeverlong, it is full of as many gratuitous nature shots as can be.

–your fangirl heroine.