Paper Towns

I didn't have a particular expectation as I got deeper and deeper into John Green's Paper Towns, but somehow I still found myself surprised at the end.  It's the kind of story that moves so slowly that you can practically hear it dragging its feet along the ground.  Yet all that time you're chafing for the plot to get a move on already, something else is forming underneath you.  By the time you reach the conclusion, you tear the paper-thin skin off and finally see the rich meat of the matter.  That, my friends, is what it's like to read Paper Towns.

To be frank, I didn't love Paper Towns as much as I loved Green's The Fault in Our Stars, but it had a theme that struck a particular chord with me.  All semester I've been thinking about subjectivity and how it's seemingly impossible to actually become another person or enter that person's perspective.  That tension becomes very present in the relationship between the novel's main character Quentin Jacobsen (AKA "Q") and Margo Roth Spiegelman, the object of his love from afar since childhood.  When Margo disappears and Q tries to piece together the clues she left behind, Q realizes how little he knew her, how little her friends knew her, and how little any of us know each other.  The "mirrors" metaphor I found especially illustrative of this point; I would explain it to you, but I think you'd have to read the book to understand it (hint, hint).

We also meet Q's friends Ben and Radar, both of whom are amusing in unique ways.  I believe I laughed the most and the hardest during scenes with Radar.  Whenever Q isn't off on his own to solve the Margo mystery, they are there to help him out and to banter the way friends do.  Y'all know how much I love me some witty banter, although there was not a whole lot in this book.  The characters overall were quirky and complex and lovable, which helped me through the story's slowness of pace.  Q's journey may not have been especially romantic or exciting or adventurous, but it did uncover the limitations of our own perspective (it's fitting that the book is in first-person) as we try to find out the book's most basic question: Who is Margo Roth Spiegelman?

Perhaps Paper Towns isn't your kind of book, but if you have time to think on an important question, then think on this: Is it really, truly possible to "walk in another person's shoes"?  Can you inhabit another person's consciousness and understand where they're coming from?  I'd be interested to see your answers in the comments below.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

When you have consistently snappy dialogue, actors with great chemistry, awe-striking special effects, and all the wonderful fantasy elements of the superhero film genre, it's hard to go wrong.  Especially when you're Marvel.  The sequel to the wildly popular The Avengers that premiered in 2012 has its faults, but moviegoers are still guaranteed a good time.  Perhaps as a diehard Marvel fan I was biased to love it from the get-go, but Avengers: Age of Ultron got a lot of things right for me.  Mild spoilers ahead.

After seeing the dynamic duo of Captain America and Black Widow competing for the championship in the Sassiest of the Sassy Competition--AKA Captain America: The Winter Soldier--I was prepared for plenty of witty dialogue from the whole ensemble.  I was not disappointed.  My favorite running joke was--well, I shouldn't spoil it, so I'll just say it has to do with Cap being the ole goody two shoes I know and love. I really liked all the interactions between the Avengers, sarcastic and otherwise, because I really got a sense of familiarity and camaraderie that the team didn't have in the first film.  The action scenes, of course, were mostly spot-on right from the beginning of the film, as the Avengers take down yet another evil HYDRA base.  There's a point where Captain America flips a motorcycle in the air and lands a perfect somersault.  One of my favorite moves.

I also enjoyed seeing two new characters: Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.  Scarlet Witch has the power to make others hallucinate into seeing their biggest fears and uses this on most of the Avengers.  Some of the visions fell through--I didn't understand what fear was behind Thor and Steve's visions--but others--like the Black Widow's--helped with character development.  Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch don't have a whole lot of scenes in the movie, but they make the most of what they have to show a tender sibling relationship between the two of them.  I love their ambiguous role as they initially team up with Ultron so they can exact revenge against Tony Stark (everyone seems to hate this guy, honestly).

The main antagonist Ultron, created by Tony with the help of Bruce Banner, is an AI who, like many other robots too smart for their maker, saw all the violence in the world and figured human extinction was the best way to peace.  A tad cliché, but Ultron managed to make it seem fresh.  I had expected him to remain the stoic and menacing villain from the previews for the whole movie.  He was that most of the time, and he had some great lines, but there were also moments where he sounded downright childish (as the "child" of Tony Stark, I suppose that makes sense).  I think those moments were supposed to be humorous and indicative of Ultron's inexperience with the world, but they didn't always work for me.  I've seen reviews about how this movie was supposed to be a Frankenstein metaphor, which I hadn't realized.  I feel ashamed of myself because I just read Frankenstein this semester and I really should have caught the similarity.

Overall, Ultron was a formidable (and badass) foe who did well in keeping me on the edge… y'know, when he wasn't singing a Disney song (There are no strings on meeeee!).

In other news, Bruce and Natasha have a fling.  I found their scenes quite adorable (I am, after all, a romantic).  When we first enter the sequel, Natasha calms the Hulk down with a lullaby, as she's apparently done many times now.  Throughout the film everybody talks about how it's SO OBVIOUS that they have a thing and it's been going on for a while.  Apparently I missed the memo, because when we last left off in the first Avengers, Natasha was simply dealing with a (not unjustified) fear towards the Hulk.   By Avengers 2, she's already moved into full-blown crush-mode and everyone but Bruce is on board with it.  I accepted it, but I also wished I could have seen their uneasy acquaintanceship from the last movie grow to friendship/romance.  You know what would have been a great place to put that?  A solo Black Widow movie.  Ugh, I'm so bitter that the only female Avenger up to this point hasn't gotten her own film.

Anyway, I could geek about this movie for hours, but I have to cut this review off at some point.  If you like Marvel movies, you'll find Avengers: Age of Ultron an exciting and entertaining addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  It's full to the brim with great dialogue, cool fights, and awesome heroes new and old--which can make it feel overstuffed at times, but personally I'm not complaining.  Now, it's time to start the countdown to the next Avengers movie.

WARNING: This Post is Not Twihard Friendly

Ah, Satire, my good friend.  We hadn't spoken in a while, but I was glad when my public writing course reunited us a few weeks ago.  You returned to my life at an opportune time, because I was in the middle of the hype of Fifty Shades of Grey, an erotic novel/movie based on a Twilight FanFiction.  Such unholy offspring between a terrible writer and an even more terrible writer should never have been birthed, but alas, it was.  I hope that our efforts shall help moviegoers go on the upright path and avoid any showing of Fifty Shades of Grey.  For those who have already fallen, I hope that my satire will offer you at least minor relief from your sufferings.

Message to Christian Grey: No One Knows How to Win Middle-Aged Women’s Hearts Except Me

By Edward Cullen

Mr. Grey, you have disgraced cold and controlling boyfriend-stalkers everywhere.  I’m disgusted with your rookie tactics to woo not only your clueless brunette virgin, but also the millions of other females who made my franchise a success.  Your appeal, which I admit has been enough to produce your own feeble franchise, cannot compare to mine.

I might not have built a giant corporation from the ground up, but I know how to properly coerce a woman into loving me despite even greater obstacles than yours.  I’m a vampire.  I wanted to kill my girlfriend every second, but she latched onto me like I was her prey.  How did I reel her in?  Aloofness, my friend.

When you first meet your lady friend, you offer her an internship in your company almost immediately.  Real subtle.  I ran out of the room when I met Bella, and you can bet she felt hella confused and hella interested.  Meanwhile, you cancel your meeting so you can continue talking Ana into feeling more and more awkward until she stumbles into believing she’s fallen in love with you.  I could do everything you do with a brooding stare.  Ana is too easy to embarrass.  Let me tell you, no one can trump my significant other’s calm and cool demeanor.

Look at that.  I hadn’t even turned her into a vampire yet, and she already had the unperturbed, emotionless face of the undead.  You make me proud, sweetie!

Speaking of faces, let’s talk about yours.

Seriously, what kind of face is that?  Did you lose your favorite flogging belt?  Sorry, Bella wanted to try it out.  Our kid’s kinda killed our sex life.  I figured you wouldn’t need it anyway since at the end of your most recent film your girlfriend dumps you (for the record, I did all the dumping when I dated my wife).

Now this is a face that sells!  Eighty percent constipated, fifteen percent stoned, and five percent sparkly.  This is the face that can make pedophilia seem sexy.

Vampires like me have been seducing women since the 1720s, and now you think you know how to do it better with a piece of rope and a mask?  Please.  You have made the BDSM community ashamed of you, but I have made all vampires fall to their knees with my hot-damn, diamond-encrusted body.  When Dracula saw the first Twilight movie, he staked himself in the heart.  What hope did he have of winning another maiden, when I started stealing the hearts of not only tweens, but also their mothers and grandmothers?

You know you’re just a rip-off of me, so don’t pretend to be doing anything original besides bringing porn to the big screen.  I refused to have sex with Bella until she agreed to marry me, like a true gentleman.  You have to tease her until she binds herself to you forever, not give in to your own lust.  Honestly, I’m a bloodthirsty vampire and I have more restraint than you.  I managed to stay away from Bella for almost a whole movie.  You wouldn’t last five minutes before you had to hump one of your fancy footstools.  In case you still doubt my expertise, I’ll ask you this: have you ever broken a bed during sex?  I didn’t think so.  Try to out-kink that.

In this age of feminism, where women have strived to make their own choices, we as men must work hard keep ourselves on top. (I know what you’re thinking, Grey.  Well, get your mind out of the gutter.)  I give you credit for Ana’s obvious infatuation with you, and I don’t doubt that in the end you’ll have all the power.  If you stay true to your roots in me, you’ll probably do just fine – assuming you don’t blow it.

Marvel's Agent Carter

If you know me, you've probably already heard me gush about Marvel's Agent Carter, a miniseries that recently finished premiering on ABC.  Well, be prepared for me to gush some more.  Given that there are only eight episodes to keep track of, I figured Agent Carter would be the perfect opportunity to segue way into reviewing TV shows on my blog.  Here's a list of reasons I have to demand that ABC give us a second season:

1.  Peggy Carter.  Duh.  If you've seen Captain America: The First Avenger, you've already met her, but even if not you'll find she is a praiseworthy character all on her own.  Not only does she throw a killer punch, she has oodles of sass and class to go with it.  If there is anyone who can crush sexism and get the bad guys with literally just a tube of lipstick, it's this woman.

2.  The banter.  My favorite relationship on the show is easily Peggy's friendship with Edwin Jarvis, who is the butler of Tony Stark's father Howard and the likely inspiration for the AI J.A.R.V.I.S. who assists Iron Man in the future.  I love Peggy and Jarvis' friendship primarily due to their excellent exchange of wit as they team up on missions together - with Peggy, of course, doing most of the butt-kicking.  Peggy can dish out her sass to just about everyone, but she plays off of Jarvis the best.  Underneath all their banter, however, they have genuine respect and care for each other, and that's why they have such an awesome dynamic in my opinion.

3.  The exciting espionage.  The premise of this mini-series is that Peggy, who works at the Scientific Strategic Reserve (SSR), becomes a double agent when Howard Stark is accused of selling his inventions to the bad guys and he secretly comes to Peggy to clear his name.  So while the SSR is trying to nail Stark, Peggy is trying to recover the stolen inventions and help Stark prove his innocence.  She finds success thanks in large part to her partnership with Jarvis, her quick thinking, and the rampant sexism that causes the male SSR agents to overlook her.  Speaking of which…

4.  Those dumb SSR agents!  Okay, that's not strictly accurate considering these guys are great at their job, but I have to express my frustration with their attitude somehow.  In the beginning, these agents (with the possible exception of Daniel Sousa) just seemed like annoying douche-bags who deserved a sucker punch.  What pleasantly surprised me was that halfway through the season I began seeing new aspects of their character that made them much more interesting than one-dimensional antagonists.  I really would like to see agents like Jack Thompson *mild shudder* be fleshed out in future seasons (assuming we get any).  Also, with the disclaimer that I'm no expert on this subject, Daniel Sousa seems to be one of the better representations in media of a person with a disability.  After losing his leg to an injury during WWII (oh, in case you didn't realize, this show takes place in the 1940s), Agent Sousa has used a crutch to help him walk.  But guess what?  HE ALSO USES IT AS A WEAPON DURING FIGHTS, AND IT'S PRETTY SICK!

5. Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) tie-ins.  I'll admit that this is probably only a bonus for Marvel geeks like me, but I love how the writers added so many links to the MCU (besides the obvious connection to Captain America).  There are five Easter eggs in the first episode alone, and a bunch more besides in the rest of the season.

Honestly, I could go on, but I would rather you go check out the show for yourself than continue reading my loving rant for Agent Carter.  Episodes 4-8 are available online for free, and you can find the first three on other sites as well (you'd have to pay money, but believe me it's worth it).  Please, don't let Agent Carter suffer the same tragic fate as Selfie when it was canceled prematurely due to low ratings.  FIGHT FOR STRONG MARVEL WOMEN LIKE PEGGY CARTER!  THEY'RE AMAZING!

Announcement

It seems that there have been consistent technical difficulties for people I've invited to read my private blog, so I have switched it back to a public blog to avoid the hassle.  Hopefully no stalker uses this blog to track me down and kidnap me.

The Woods Are Where All the Fun's At… and the singing, too.

For those of you who are not familiar with Into the Woods, here's my sum-up: Happily ever after?  LOL watch this!  Also, singing.  Lots and lots of singing.  You might remember from my last post that Annie (2014) didn't feel much like the musical it should have been thanks to several of the songs being skipped/cut short.  I did not get that feeling with Disney's version of Into the Woods, I'm happy to say.  95% of the time people were singing, so no one can argue that this was not a musical.  I watched a video of a production of this musical in my Core II Fairy Tale class last year, and after dissecting the original fairy tales to pieces, my classmates and I enjoyed seeing their traditional set-up get obliterated in the musical's second act.  Since I loved the original musical, and since it was Disney making it, you can imagine my anxiety regarding how it would be handled when turned into a movie.  I wasn't thrilled to see a poster of Johnny Depp as the wolf (more like a kitty cat with a snazzy tie, if you ask me) when I first heard about the movie.  However, I saw Chris Pine was cast as Prince Charming and figured I'd give it a shot. :)

The movie was surprisingly faithful to the story, even showing things that I didn't think Disney would portray due to their more, ahem, adult themes.  I won't spoil what I mean, but for those of you familiar with the musical you can probably guess what I'm talking about.  In the first half of the film, the childless baker and his wife have to get a hold of the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, and the slipper as pure as gold for the witch in order to lift the curse that has left them barren.  Their search in the woods incorporates Jack & the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Cinderella, whose stories play out in the way that you are already familiar with.  The baker and his wife succeed, but as soon as you think everyone is getting their happily ever after, everything goes wrong and the characters must return to the forest.  That's where the real fun begins.

(For the record I don't know why they're showing Rapunzel lying asleep.  She's not Sleeping Beauty, ya know!)

In terms of singing performance, everyone was good (no one was exceptional, in my opinion, but no one was mediocre either).  I forgot how funny the "Agony" song was until I saw Chris Pine and Bill Magnussen do it.  The actors got really into it, and I almost wish I could have seen a reprise of it like in the original musical.  You can watch the clip here (the part at 2:22 makes me crack up every time).  Meryl Streep's version of "Witch's Lament" was very powerful, both in terms of visuals and drama.  I was sorry not to see even more of her.

As good as a rendition I thought this movie was overall, there were a few things I missed from the original musical - nit-picky stuff, really.  The first is the part where the witch feeds the narrator to the vengeful giant in an attempt to fend her off, leaving the characters on their own to figure out how their tale will turn out.  I can see why they cut it out from the movie, because it's not like the narrator ever steps into the screen like he steps onto the stage in the play, but still.  It would have been cool to have a more striking end to the narration rather than it getting cutting off in the midpoint of the film and never being heard again.  My second complaint is the wolf.  I don't know why his face is always so big in the movie posters, because he does not play a large role.  In the original musical, the same actor plays the Wolf and the Prince (hinting that they're both predators), but obviously that didn't happen in the movie.  I liked the symbolism that it had though.  It's like the same actor playing Mr. Darling and Hook in Peter Pan.

My most significant complaint is what they did with the Rapunzel storyline.  Minor spoiler alert: In the original musical, both princes turn out to be jerks, but in the movie it's only Chris Pine's Prince that's "charming not sincere."  The Other Prince (seriously, that's what he's called in the movie poster) is the more clumsy yet also endearing one.  In the movie, Rapunzel has a fight with her adoptive mother, the witch, and runs off to presumably have a happily ever after with her prince.  At least I think that's what happened, because the two of them don't show up for the rest of the film.  It was an unsatisfying way to rework that storyline, even if I wasn't in love with the original one where the prince dumps Rapunzel after she suffers a mental breakdown (not one of the better portrayals of mental illness).

I think that Chris Pine's character was enough to get the point across that Prince Charming isn't great and is in fact exploitative, so I don't have a problem with the other prince's character being changed.  What I'm not happy about is how anticlimactic Rapunzel's runaway with the prince is.  I didn't feel any emotion or satisfaction about it.  If they had played up the mother-daughter relationship between Rapunzel and the witch more, I could have more easily seen the scene as a portrayal of a child growing up and a parent being forced to learn to let go.  I think that there was potential in the rewrite to make this scene happen in a powerful way, but it didn't.  It doesn't ruin the movie for me, but it's something that will always irk me.

Anyway, if you like to see fairy tales turned on their heads and if you enjoy watching musicals, I would say that Into the Woods is something I would definitely recommend.  As far as movie remakes go it's not totally perfect, but it kept me entertained and that's enough for me.

Annie

*Note on January 6, 2015:  I published this originally on December 28, but then the font got all funky when I published it.  Tried to fix it, but then I just ended up taking it down without ever putting it back up.  Oh well.  I'm re-posting it as originally published so that it's not lost in the bowels of my blog.

Considering how close we are to the end of 2014 (geez, I just got used to not writing 2013 at the end of my dates!), this will probably be my last post of the year.  I'll try to make this one count.  This past Friday I watched Annie, a musical with which most of you are probably already familiar, so I don't feel the need to give you any kind of blurb about the plot.  I've always loved Annie (most preferably the 1999 version in my case) and I was very interested to see how the story would be remade today.  As far as remakes go, the 2014 version doesn't stray too far from what I remembered from other adaptations - with the striking difference in casting, of course.  (I want to briefly applaud the movie for casting African American actors as the ones playing the leads this time around, something that unfortunately we don't always get to see in mainstream movies.  If the 2014 movie doesn't do it for you, you should at least give it credit for that.)

Since it is a musical, the most important thing that should probably be addressed is the singing.  The voice of Quvenzhané Wallis (playing Annie) was beautiful, as it should have been.  I liked her voice best when she sang "Opportunity," which is one of the songs unique to the 2014 movie.  Jamie Foxx pleasantly surprised me with his singing voice, a very rich but also sweet sounding voice that I liked listening to a lot.  Cameron Diaz disappointed me with her rendition of "Little Girls."  I actually wondered if she could carry a tune, because she seemed to talk more than sing in that particular song.  However, she sang pretty well in later songs, so I'm left wondering what was up with that first performance.  I loved hating her character during the "Little Girls" scene in the previous adaptation, as well as the "Easy Street" scene.  Both of those songs kind of flopped for me in the 2014 movie.  The other songs were done decently, but some of them seemed to be cut short or skipped altogether, and for what reason?  I had a hard time figuring that out, since it is supposed to be a musical as far as I can tell.

There were a few interesting twists to the 2014 movie that didn't have to do with the fact that it's a modern-day retelling.  One of them is Cameron Diaz's character, Annie's foster mom, who is presented in a more sympathetic light than I'm used to seeing her in.  Another was the fact that Annie couldn't read, which I thought should have been played with a little more to help build up her relationship with Will Stacks.  Overall I liked the movie because I inherently like the story of Annie and, despite the new setting, this movie was relatively faithful to it.  I had fun seeing actors I'm familiar with playing the characters I already loved, and I also had a few laughs throughout.  It's a cute movie - perhaps not a mind-blowing rewrite, or a perfectly executed remake in terms of singing performance, but still a cute movie.  Annie has the feel-good vibe that can make for a pleasant time if you decide to see it, even if it's not exactly a need-to-see film.  Whether you do watch it is up to you.