Linkenstein

What follows is a strange amalgam of old and new links. It's a frankenstein roundup, stitched together over the past four days from aborted link posts that were accidentally unposted... until now. "IT'S ALIVE!"


/Film Jon Hamm as Superman?
Movie|Line's failed/jokey photoshop attempt at the same thing utterly delights me (pictured left)
I Just Want to Be Perfect Black Swan website devoted to Nina's (Natalie Portman) psyche.
Cinema Blend a look at the newly announced cast of The Hobbit. With pics. Why do I feel that this movie is going to be such a disaster when I love the LotR trilogy? I guess I've lost faith in Peter Jackson given that the beauty of King Kong was smothered by a lack of self-editing and then we got the disastrous The Lovely Bones.

ONTD Rachel McAdams and Michael Sheen. I must have slept through this pairing. This is news to me.
Cinematical Pixar gives its first female director the book (Brenda Chapman was to helm The Brave previously due out in 2012...but you know, I assume this could delay the movie). Boo.
Montages (in Norwegian) a look at what's coming up very soon in Norwegian film. The writer is most excited for The King of  Bastøy starring Stellan Skarsgard, Kristoffer Joner and Benjamin Helstad. The film takes place in 1915 and is based on a true story about a youth prison. Hmmm. Could it be next year's Oscar submission? It's never too early to start thinking about that given that the Oscar eligibility calendar is already in the 2011 film year now when it comes to Best Foreign Language Film.

(Partially) Off Cinema
Tiger Beatdown "No One is Ever On Your Side" excellent, excellent article on Mad Men's Betty Draper Francis. A must read for fans of the show in case you missed it.
Benefit of the Doubt on Metroid, feminism and the Aliens franchise (if you're curious as to why that's suddenly in the air again, it's due to the box set's release Alien Anthology.)
Moby Lives on literature's problems in reflecting our internet ruled new world: timeliness or timelessness?
The Faster Times a list of all the new shows coming to Broadway in the spring.
The Oatmeal How to Pet a Cat. Hee

Something That's Really Bothering Me
Did you read the NY Times piece about the shortage of memorable lines in the movies these days? I suppose it's only helping them that everyone has been talking about the piece and linking to it (like me) for a couple of days but I do not understand the response. I've only read a couple of "in response" articles but they seemed to join in the lament. The article cites 90s films like Terminator 2, Forrest Gump and Jerry Maguire as among the last mammoth 'quotables.' Some response articles are saying things like "yeah, it's sad that movies aren't literate anymore..." I'm sorry but Forrest F'in Gump and Jerry Maguire are not literate movies. They just had fun simple catchphrases. Why are people equating catchphrase-making with great screenwriting and extrapolating that into a lament for the state of modern cinema? Does that mean that Arnold Schwarzenegger movies deserved Best Screenplay Oscars?  A lack of catchphrases does not a poor screenplay make. The article makes a vague statement indicating that these things can take time,  citing "Plastics" from The Graduate as a line that percolated before boiling. But then it blames The Social Network for not having a great lines (um, excuse me? It has hundreds of great lines... it'll just take awhile for a few  of them to rise to the top) Meanwhile The Big Lebowski is praised for "The Dude abides." Listen. The Coen Bros write great dialogue. But I was around in 1998 when The Big Lebowski premiered. It was received with pockets of enthusiasm (as their pictures usually are) but mostly a shrug, and some considered it a small setback after Fargo (which had been nearly as popular as Raising Arizona, their first mainstream breakthrough. Lebowski wasn't.) It was only years later after obsessive fandom had successfully added several fresh coats of "classic" paint on Lebowski that people were incessantly quoting its dialogue and acting like it was this huge hit and of the best films of the 90s.

The article does suddenly remember that "I drink your milkshake" (There Will Be Blood) permeated pop culture but completely forgets about "I wish I knew how to quit you" (Brokeback Mountain) which was quoted just about as often as movie lines ever get quoted. And then there are any number of lines from Mean Girls (Best Shot subject this week!) as reader Dom pointed out a few days ago. You or someone you know quotes that movie every day. I know, right. 

I guarantee you that "milkshake" and "quit you"will never disappear. And that 5 years from now, some line from The Social Network will still be in the public vernacular. One day people might not even remember where they first heard the line they end up using from The Social Network it may dig so deep down into the bone marrow of everyday conversation. You think everyone who has ever said "fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night" was thinking of All About Eve (or had even seen All About Eve) when they first said it?

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Mean Girls

Next Wednesday night is the Season 1 Finale of 'Best Shot". Together we'll look at the 1955 classic Night of the Hunter which --- well, if you've never seen it, you're in for a major film event. It's appropriately creepy for late October, too. Today, something lighter and flirtier.

MEAN GIRLS (2004)

God, she can be SO annoying.

Few movies from the Aughts have proved as delightfully durable as Mean Girls, the Tina Fey scripted Mark Waters directed comedy that introduced us to Queen Bee Regina George (a total "rock star" performance from Rachel McAdams) and her army of skanks, Gretchen (Lacey Chabert), Karen (Amanda Seyfried) and new girl Cady (Lindsay Lohan) -- "I love her. She's like a Martian" -- transferred in from Africa and experiencing the jungles of public education for the first time. On first viewing back in 2004, its debt to Heathers (1988), another comedy about evil life-ruiner hotties, seemed insurmountable in terms of New Classic! reaction. But Mean Girls has, in the past six years, more than proved its own worth and its own identity. In retrospect the two films feel very different in tone and aesthetic personality, with only the subject matter, mean girls, and über quotability to unite them.  In future years, the next great mean girl classic will be compared unfavorably to both of them.

The best filmmaking choice in the movie, aside from the inspired casting, might be the staging of every character intros. The entire principle cast gets fun intros with the best being reserved for the Queen Bee herself who is literally carried into the picture in slo-motion by her male admirers while a Greek chorus of students fills us in on who she is and why we should be in awe of her. It kicks off with the double conscience of the film Janis Ian (Lizzy Caplan) and Damian (Daniel Franzese)

"And evil takes a human form in Regina George. Don't be fooled. She may seem like your typical selfish back-stabbing slut-faced ho-bag but in reality she is so much more than that. She's the Queen Bee. The star. Those other two are just her little workers... "

. To underline her power, Missy Elliott is on the soundtrack also introducing her...

 "hey hey hey ♫ I'm what's happening."

And Rachel McAdams is indeed what's happening in Mean Girls (especially now that we've had to let our love for LiLo's brief sparkliness go).  Every time you watch it, her performance gets better. A lot of actresses can and have done deliciously bitchy but her deliciously bitchy has so many shadings from stickily sweet (is she for real? why do i want to believe this one moment) to casual bored privilege to tossed off power plays to embarrassment at any hint of runner up status to machiavellian rage spiked with tiny flashes of self-loathing (that Burn Book sabotage moment!). She's damn near unimproveable in the picture.

For best shot, I choose a two-part Regina moment...



I love how the camera tracks Regina through the hallway after she's hatched her brilliant revenge plan. She's regained control of her screaming rage we saw in the prior scene and she's just gliding through the hallways, with a neat hint of actressy athleticism. Gone is the sex kitten and in her place is the marathon runner.

The shot functions like a reverse Hansel & Gretel; the witch is leaving a bread crumb trail. In the bookend shot that follows (also pictured) the camera is still moving but the witch isn't. Witness her hungry self-satisfaction while she watches the children gobble up the crumbs. They're already baking in her oven!

*
*
Finally, I have to end with a gymnasium moment because Amanda Seyfried just slays me as Karen Smith "one of the dumbest girls you'll ever meet".



This scene where Gretchen "apologizes" to her classmates -- 'I can't help it that I'm popular' -- always makes me cackle. Particularly because the punchline is so funny. Karen is watching Gretchen blankfaced and just opens up her arms to receive her friend while everyone else steps away. The funny thing about Karen is actually how innocent she seems, like a mean girl by accident of proximity and stupidity.


The "Best Shot" clique is so fetch

• Dean A believes in kissing cousins.
• Sorta That Guy maps it out for you.
• Okinawa Assault wonders what table you sit at?
• Serious Film thinks Daniel is too gay to function
• Pussy Goes Grrr had never seen the movie before!!!
• Antagony & Ecstasy goes to the mall and notices the gap. Not the Gap.
• Movies Kick Ass Whoa. great minds think alike. Jose and I both got caught up in the Wicked Witch of the North (Shore).
• Awkward is What We Aim For survives a three-way call.
• Andrew R appreciates a "cool mom"

 Previously on "Hit Me With Your Best Shot"

• Angels in America (2003), X-Men (2000), Showgirls (1995), Bring It On (2000), Black Narcissus (1946), A Face in the Crowd (1957), Pandora's Box (1929), Se7en (1995), Requiem for a Dream (2000) and La Dolce Vita (1960)

Related Reading

•  "Let me tell you something about Lindsay Lohan"

Boo You Whore

So... Blogger's image upload function happens to be getting some sort of reboot on the very night we were doing Hit Me With Your Best Shot!



Image uploading being the #1 requirement for celebrating our favorite screenshots, we're postponing til tomorrow night at 10:00 PM. You're invited so be here. Maybe we should just move to Thursdays

Yes, every Thursday he thinks she's doing SAT prep but really she's hooking up with Shane Oman in the projection room above the auditorium! I never told anybody that because I am *such* a good friend!

"Let me tell you something about Lindsay Lohan"

We were best friends in 2004. I know, right? It's so embarrassing. I don't even... Whatever. So then, I started going out with my first boyfriend Ryan who was totally gorgeous but then he moved back to Canada, and Lindsay was like, weirdly jealous of him. Like, if I would blow her off to hang out with Ryan, she'd be like, "Why didn't you call me back?" And I'd be like, "Why are you so obsessed with me?"

So then, for my birthday party, which was an all-girls pool party, I was like, "Lindsay, I can't invite you, because I think you're a lesbian." I mean I couldn't have a lesbian at my party. There were gonna be girls there in their bathing suits. I mean, right? She was a LESBIAN.


So then her mom called my mom and started yelling at her, it was so retarded.

And then she dropped out of Hollywood because no one would work with her, and she came back in, all of her hair was still badly dyed and she was totally weird, and now I guess she's off crack.

Luv ya! *mwah*

___~Regina George
*



P.S. Nathaniel, stop trying to make "film experience" happen!

What's Your Poison, Lindsay Lohan?

With Lindsay Lohan partying again and Georgia Rule surfacing (the movie on which she was famously reprimanded for her unprofessional behavior, i.e. too much partying / not enough acting) I thought it was time to look at the liquid evidence in Lindsay's movies. Does she drink? Does she drive others to drink? Let's take a brief illustrated journey through the filmic evidence...

The Parent Trap
Nine whole years ago in Lindsay's very first movie, director Nancy Meyers underscores one of Linds' first scenes with "Bad to the Bone" --I'm not making this up. In the scene Lindsay plays a sneaky game of cards at summer camp and the music is used for comic effect...though maybe Ms. Meyers was trying to tell us something. Turns out back home in California, miss thing's dad owns a winery.


Uh oh... I regret to inform that cute young Linds spends that entire movie surrounded by alcohol! This can't be good. In the still above she downs her morning mimosa. No, I kid ...it's orange juice. I realize it's a terrible thing to joke about... but the movie DOES joke about it. Check out this scene below. Her mom has given her a glass of wine. She comically passes out after one sip, staggering back up to her feet asking to be excused

It's actually but a sneaky ploy to leave the dinner table. And thats all the drinking that she does in The Parent Trap aside from one water bottle at camp, a sip of that orange juice. (For solids: one single bite of toast in the whole film) The bulk of the drinking is from the adults around her.

Here Lindsay reacts to screen mom Natasha Richardson who has definitely had one too many.


I'm not saying Lindsay rehearsed this scene with Dina Lohan ... but I'm not saying she didn't either.

Freaky Friday
La Lohan's second film was also a surprisingly good remake of an earlier hit. In this movie she switches bodies with an award-worthy Jamie Lee Curtis as her mom. Lindsay has even less of an appetite in this one. The only solid she consumes in the whole movie is a fortune cookie (the magical one that makes mom & daughter switch bodies --don't you hate when that happens?)


...oh and a few french fries, too. But it's really Jamie Lee Curtis eating the french fries since they've already switched places. Otherwise Lohan is not hungry for this whole movie. In detention troublemaker Linds gives up her sandwich and powerade to the supervising teacher. For liquids, she stays hydrated only with water at the House of Chiang (that's all they serve apparently --even to toast with!) and Lindsay never looks particularly happy about it.

'I really don't understand why this restaurant serves only water and fortune cookies.
They're ruining my life!'

Other Films
I'm skipping Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen because life is short. But know this: She spends the entire film trying to meet her idol, a rocker named Stu from her favorite band. He turns out to be a crushing disappointment: a big lush! Lindsay helps him sober up in time for the happily ever after finale. Clearly it's a fantasy film.

I love A Prairie Home Companion but there's not much to her role there aside from writing bad poetry and singing nervously. I haven't seen Bobby. I know you wanted a grand finale where I dissect her partying habits in Herbie Fully Loaded but I think the title covers it, don't you? In Just My Luck --couldn't sit through that again, not that much of a masochist -- she does in fact throw a wild party that gets her into mucho trouble. Art imitating life?

We'll conclude with Lindsay's best film, and the one most responsible for the goodwill that she hangs to now by a precarious thread...

Mean Girls
I thought about investigating all 97 minutes of Lindsay's best film for clues to her real/reel behavior but this one's easy...



A (moving) picture is worth a thousand words.
*
tags: Lindsay Lohan
*

Tues Top Ten: Funny (?) Girls

for the list maker in me and the list lover in you

Today is the birthday of both Barbra Streisand (the Funny Girl herself) and Warren Beatty's Sister (like Babs, expert with the comic timing) so in honor of them and other funny ladies of yore (I'm partial to Carole Lombard, Irene Dunne and Judy Holliday) I thought I'd do a list of female comediennes. The only trouble was that once I started to form it I realized that I don't see a lot of what passes for comedy these days (mostly because it's male driven and those comedy stars aren't always that funny to me and some I'm straight up allergic to: David Spade and Jon Heder for example) so my list would have too many glaring omissions.

So, rather than do a list of the "funniest women", which might include a few SNL or sitcom alums or even Charlies Angels if I'm generous and would include everyone who works with Christopher Guest, I thought I'd do a list of people I wish would yuk it up more often on the big screen

Actresses Who Should Do More Comedies

10 Jamie Lee Curtis. It pains me greatly that her career ended with Christmas with the Kranks and not the one for which she shoulda been Oscar nominated: Freaky Friday. She never got the credit she deserved during her acting career. She was nearly always much better than she had any right to be given the films and the roles. Such a funny and unique talent. sigh. Well we'll always have Halloween, True Lies, A Fish Called Wanda and Freaky Friday

09 Anna Faris Perhaps I should have said "actresses who should do more good comedies" --I think she's quite funny in the bit roles in which I've seen her but it's not like I'm going to sit through most of the dreck she finds herself in to see if she's as funny as she seems. Can't someone who writes intelligent comedy (f.e. the Coen Bros, David O'Russell, Christopher Guest, Woody Allen, or Alexander Payne) get her some better material?

08 Christina Ricci. Now that she has taken a step back towards recovering her screen mojo (Black Snake Moan), I'd love to see her seize a comedic role with the same intensity and enthusiasm that she did back in her Addams Family Values days. That'd be off the chain. Get it? Um... Black Snake Moan plus... oh never mind.

07 Holly Hunter. More on Holly's best work here.

06 Rachel McAdams. I sometimes get the sense that we're all holding our breath for nothing. It's clear that should she want it, huge stardom is hers. But her career is awfully quiet in proportion to the enthusiasm from moviegoers. She proved she could carry films with Red Eye and The Notebook but my favorites in her filmography are in comedic supporting roles: the caustic sister in The Family Stone and that already classic queen bee in Mean Girls ("I know right?")

05 Meryl Streep. Last year's twofer (Prairie Home Companion and The Devil Wears Prada) confirmed what Streep fanatics have known for a longtime: her legend was built from drama but her delicious silliness deserves its own act in her career.

04 Lily Tomlin. Never mind those Huckabees videos... what matters is what ends up onscreen and Tomlin always delivers. So why is it that one of the best film comediennes only gets teensy roles once every three years or so? Huckabees, All of Me, Nine to Five and Flirting With Disaster are lonely for company in the great comedies playroom

03 Joan Cusack. She's the only female Saturday Night Live alum to win an acting Oscar nomination, two of them in fact (Working Girl and In & Out), marking one of the rare times that Oscar voters have really been wise to the skill and inspiration a comedic performer has brought to the filmmaking table. I wish she'd make more movies. It was good to see her again in Friends With Money.

02 Laura Dern. She's a subtle hoot in The Year of the Dog as an overprotective suburban mom. Pair that with her brilliant film carrying work in Citizen Ruth (1996) and be forcefully reminded that there's much more to this undervalued actress than playing formidable muse for David Lynch.

01 Reese Witherspoon. She's following up her somewhat divisive Oscar-win for Walk the Line with another teary drama (Rendition) and I get the sense that that's the direction she's headed in in general. But she's a spitfire in a good comedy, elevating both Legally Blonde movies and selling the heck out of her career breakthrough in Election. I had to "Pick Flick" for the top spot.

Who would you like to see in more comedies?

20:07 (Cool Mom)

New Series. Each morning a screenshot from the 20th minute and 7th second of a movie (along with the line o' dialogue being spoken if there is one)

Sooo...you guys, what is the 411? What has everybody been up to? What is the hot gossip? Tell me everything.

More Mean Girls

High School on Film: A Little Bit Dramatic

So, Mean Girls is trashing its competition over in the best high school movie poll. My vote went to Heathers , my generation's spin on the same social truth. In point of fact, I love both films. I figured Mean Girls would do well given that it's both recent and excellent. That's a winning combination for polling. Though the screenplay has been justly lauded, the movie also benefits highly from two killer star turns. First there's the Golden Globe nomination worthy lead work from Lindsay Lohan *sigh.* This will sadly prove to be her peak. I've finally accepted it. Girlfriend just didn't acclimate well to her success. Too young perhaps or maybe fatally lacking in Jodie Foster or Evan Rachel Wood levels of gray matter needed to process it all? I don't know. But shut up and let me grieve in peace.

The second star turn of note comes from the always superb Rachel McAdams (Bronze Medalist in my 2004 Awards for "Best Villain") as the bitchtastic Regina George. I've been giggling lately about her shirt "a little bit dramatic." It's one of many great costuming choices made in the movie and it's also a pretty accurate description of high school movies in general. The good ones are always a little bigger, stylized depictions of what we all went through in real life. Every school has a Regina George. In the 80s she went by the name Heather Chandler. Same girl. But the real ones are never as beautiful, witty, and fabulous as the reel ones. They're just mean. You need the heightening to make the movies and characters enjoyable. Otherwise... well, who wants to relive high school?

The only time realism seems to work for high school stories is on television. My So Called Life will forever be one of my favorite shows. It plays more real but even that show is ever so slightly fantastical. Real life Jordan Catalano's never leaned quite that well. Dye jobs on pretty girls who didn't know they were pretty (like Angela) never looked quite that perfect. Etcetera. But for the most part that show was true.

If asked to name the show that most perfectly captured the high school experience for me --with no airbushing-- it would be Freaks and Geeks. I saw it for the first time a year or two ago when my lifelong friend Christine urged me to watch it. I was shocked...shocked by what I saw unspool. Save for character names and minor details it was like watching my own high school. Where had they been hiding all those cameras. Not only does it take place in the 80s when I went to high school but it took place very close to where I went to high school. They even mention going to places that I went to with my friends. I also had an older sister who ran with a different crowd than me. I was also the youngest looking kid and a geek. Etc... Watching it was both frightening (how did they remember so much?) and unusually cathartic.

Still, I'm willing to bet that even if you didn't go to high school in 1980s era Michigan the show will feel absolutely authentic to you should you ever rent or buy the series (just one season long *sigh* --just like My So Called Life) which I suggest you do. Right now.

Related Posts:
My Favorite TV Dramas (Ever) * To Lindsay on her 20th Birthday * Paris is Only a City in France * Hump Day Hottie: Rachel McAdams

Tags: Rachel McAdams, Lindsay Lohan, celebrities, television, TV, High School, movies, entertainment, cinema