Guilty Pleasures: Gossip Girl

One of the reasons posting had been slower here of late, is that the writer’s strike has been resolved. And apparently, all those writers came back hungry for work, and eager to show off. As a result, I’ve often been neglecting movies in favor of scripted television. It’s partly because television is lighter, requiring the investment of a mere 45 minutes. It’s partly that television is easier, not requiring as much thought and analysis - I like to be challenged, but prepackaged entertainment is nice when you’ve been challenged by #$(*$@) integrals all day. And mostly: a lot of television series have been very, very good lately, and grabbing me like they haven’t in a while.

Only last week, for instance, I watched an episode of Bones, followed by House M.D, followed by an older one of Gossip Girl. Bones had a lighthearted episode, but it ended in a totally unexpected way, leaving me with my mouth open, vaguely articulating “wha?”. House had one of the craziest episodes ever, akin to Three Stories and the season 2 finale No Reason. It was called House’s Head, and it indeed took place largely in the head of a House who was trying to remember the 4 hours he’d forgotten before a bus crash. And what’s in House’s head? Bickering with Wilson, beautiful girls with soulful gazes, his superior Dr. Lisa Cuddy doing a striptease while rattling off medical terms… He almost killed himself in the process of course, leading to a last 5 minutes with a) a death scare and b)the revelation that another major character could be dying. I love House mostly because of it’s rigid procedural structure with all its fixed elements, and the quips in between, but when they stray from the template they sometimes produce amazing episodes.

But if I thought that was it for the night…. Gossip Girl had one of its wildest episodes yet - and that’s saying something. Not only was there plenty of bitchiness going on between Blair and Jenny, but two guys were outed, and in the end, Serena confessed she killed someone! OMG!

Ok. So, if you don’t watch GG, you’re bored right now, and wondering what prompts a usually fairly rational and feminist girl like me to dissolve into a puddle of OMFG!s. Wondering whether, perhaps, all those integrals might have made me go off the deep end. Worry not, and I’ll explain my fascination below the fold.

Blogging Buffy: 2.01 - 2.05

Let’s dive right in!

2.01 When She Was Bad

You’re a vampire. Oh, I’m sorry, was that an offensive term? Should I say “undead American”? Buffy

Weekend Double Feature: Food & Sex

I’m one of those people who doesn’t eat to live, and who lives to eat. Food really engages all the senses: how it tastes most obviously, of course, but how it smells is almost as important, how it looks, how the texture feels. Even sound comes into it: the sizzling of butter in a pan, the bubbles popping in a pot of something simmering slowly. Food can be something very luscious, and very sensual. Something closely related to desire, to sex. And there have been plenty of movies that exploit this.

Somehow, many of them have a Latin setting. Is it because people enjoy food more in Latin settings, because they pay more attention to it, or just because they seem to have more of a sensual outlook on life in general? I don’t know, but the weather’s been gorgeous for a week now already, and latin food movies are what I crave.

The Casting Couch: Mr. Rochester

In an attempt to revive the blog: new feature! I don’t like posting all the inane casting news here, but sometimes it does spark my imagination. So in this feature, I’ll try to cast roles that haven’t been announced yet. These aren’t people I think will get the role, but people who I think would be an interesting choice. And I’ll try not to pick too similar options.

To start with, it was announced last week that Ellen Page is going to play Jane Eyre in the nth film version of that great example of gothic literature. A Mr. Rochester, however, hasn’t been found that. While I don’t really see the need for yet another version (I think the Joan Fontaine/Orson Welles one is pretty good, to no-one’s surprise, and I rather liked the miniseries the BBC made two years ago), Mr. Rochester is a great character, and as Ellen Page will probably give a more modern interpretation of mousy Jane, who will be the dark broody master she falls for.

Mt top suggestion is without a question Richard Armitage. He plays Guy of Gisborne, henchmen to the Sheriff of Nottingham in the new BBC Robin Hood series, and he’s great: glowering, broody, conflicted, hopelessly in love with Maid Marian and making every female viewer eager to redeem him, despite his evil deeds. If that weren’t enough, I recently saw the miniseries North and South, where he plays a Darcy-esque character to the hilt: he’s haughty, superior, but it doesn’t take that much to breach his armor and making him wholly dependent on the woman who managed to do it.

But I also have some less predictable choices…see for yourself, after the jump.

Iron Man & Gender Politics

I haven’t written a review of Iron Man here yet. It’s partly because I already wrote one, partly because everyone else already seemed to have said their bit (and gotten responses), but mostly because I didn’t really think I could add anything different to the discourse.

Good thing there’s such a thing as commenters.

Happy Birthday Orson

Not too long ago, Jonathan Lapper over at Cinema Styles started a discussion about pseudonyms. I blog under my own name, though some think it’s a pen-name as it’s quite unusual, and linked both to Harry Potter and a certain transsexual rocker with an angry inch. I like writing from a personal standpoint, and as in the beginning the only people who read me were people I knew, it never made much sense to hide my identity.

I stand by it. And I’m not ashamed of anything you might find when googling my name (no, not even that). But there are times when I wonder what image the results might give of me to a potential future employer or date (come on, you’ve all done it). What they might think, for example, of a confession like this one: I have a huge crush on Orson Welles, who was born 93 years ago today (thanks to Daniel for pointing that out)

Weekend Quintuple Feature - it’s all been done before

So, I’ve finally been watching movies again. And since I’m not the type to do things half-heartedly, I actually watched 5 in a day, or to be precise, one 90-minute television pilot and 4 movies. The day was an initiative of my friend Joost, and well… it ruled.

The theme? Previous incarnations of recent movies

The program?

- Miami Vice (the pilot) - 1984
- Rocky IV - 1985
- Transformers: the Movie (the animated version) - 1986
- The Punisher (the Dolph Lundgren version) - 1989
- Beowulf (the Christopher Lambert version) - 1999

As you can tell, quality wasn’t the primary selection criterion (though in a way, it was). But that doesn’t mean we didn’t have tons of fun.

Road Trippin’

Usually, with my Weekend Double Features, I try to find two movies that have a theme in common, or a central story, or, you know, something. Last weekend I couldn’t think of any movies related in a meaningful way to any of the four movies I watched. But two of them had a tenuous connection: they were pretty much as disparate as two movies that arguably belong to the same genre can be. So, this is not a “Weekend Double Feature” in the strictest sense of the word (not least because it’s already Thursday), but rather a study in contrasts.

The Genre? The road movie.

The movies? Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle and … My Blueberry Nights.

Schlubs

Jeff Wells is on a crusade. A holy enterprise of grand importance. He’s spotted something wrong with the world (of film), and he’s not going to stand for it. The phenomenon he’s discovered is to him a sign of the impending apocalypse, and he sees himself as the last defense.

The big threat? Schlubby guys getting beautiful girls in movies.

The Librarian

The battle over who’s going to get to review the new Indiana Jones sequel for filmtotaal is already raging, even if no press screening dates have been announced yet. I’m keeping out of it. I don’t want to see Indiana Jones at a press screening by myself, even if it’s bound to be full of illegally brought guests. I want to see with Indy 4 with a group of friends, of specific friends, in a crowded theatre on opening night, where we’ll hopefully get to mock it and thrill at it in equal measures.

The thing is, Indiana Jones was always a throwback with a wink, inviting you to laugh at it a little, winking at you, while at the same time offering a bigger, better version of the action scenes and heroic acts seen in old adventure serials. The enormous boulder rolling towards the hero, the macho posing: it’s not just a cliché because of Indy, it was a cliché BEFORE Indy. Indiana Jones is a mockery cum homage of the serials George Lucas and Steven Spielberg loved when they were little boys, and that’s part of what makes those movies so enjoyable.

So what happens if you double that, and pay a slighting mocking homage to Indiana Jones, without the budget, the filmmaking skills of Spielberg and, well, Harrison Ford?