
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
The Jenny Archetype: Greasy Hair, Broken Dreams

Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Seal of Approval: Michelle Rodriguez


I'm always happy when Michelle Rodriguez shows up in a movie, even though she usually gets killed off because she's not the main heroine- she is, after all, too butch to be the main heroine. Mouthy, surly, and tough, as she herself says, Michelle doesn't play the delicate, easily-offended girlfriend. It's kind of like she can't, because her own personality always seems to come through. Sure, she doesn't have a lot of range, but the character she always plays is a great one.
"Well, could you really imagine me playing the girlfriend that needs rescuing? Or the girlfriend?"
"I don't want people thinking of me sexually. I don't want people to be like, 'She's hot-looking,' you know? I want them to listen to me for what I am saying. And I think the best way to do that is to sniff my armpits, and like, sit and burp every now and then. It just completely throws people off.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Mary's Musings: Ten-year old Steve Martin fans, RomComs are for Losers, etc.




As a kid, I loved comedy. My main favorites were Bill Murray and Steve Martin, whose dry wit I both related to and adored. I was also a fan of John Candy, another comedian I felt I grew up with. I loved The Three Amigos (something tells me this movie would be significantly less watchable as an adult) Ghostbusters, Wayne's World, the non-corny parts of Father of the Bride 1 & 2 and L.A. Story, Twins starring Danny Devito and Arnold Scwarzenagger (I also have my doubts about that one holding up) and the work of Leslie Nielsen. Many of these movie were copied for me from video-store tapes to VHS tapes, and when the FBI warning would flash on the screen I would be terrified, anticipating a team of FBI agents breaking into my home and seizing my copy of Joe Vs. The Volcano as I watched it for the twenty-second time.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Mary's Non-Zombie Movie Review Korner




Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story, 2000
This documentary is about Brigid Berlin, AKA Brigid Polk, who tends to fall under the umbrella term of "Warhol superstar" though they were in fact peers and he stole ideas from her. Unlike many documentaries about women with connections to famous men, Pie in the Sky is truly about its subject, not her relationship with Andy Warhol. She has had a fascinating life, from her rebellion from the wealthy WASP society she was born into, to her self portraits, Polaroids, and other artwork, to her relationship to food and her body and her family. She is definitely one of the last holdouts of the old, truly artsy weirdo New York. Though she came from a monied background like Edie Sedgewick, Brigid was the anti-Edie in so many ways, and she will never be played by Sienna Miller or be canonized by fashion magazines because she was no muse- which I mean in the best way possible.



Paris is Burning, 1990


(This is a dude, man.)When this movie started, I was like, "Oh no, another movie glorifying rapey dudes", since glorifying rapey dudes is a big part of many movies. Hair metal, after all, (though rife with the contradiction of men essentially dressed as women, who also hate women) shares a lot with modern gangster rap, in that money, hos, and flashy lifestyles reign supreme. But as it progressed, director Penelope Spheeris (Wayne's World, man) probed more deeply and the results are amazing.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
YA Books to Movies: A Lifetime of Disappointment
Seeing the glossy promotional posters for the new Ramona and Beezus movie starring Selena Gomez as Beezus has renewed the anger I felt as a tween when my beloved young adult books were turned into shiny, boppy movies that totally ruined everything about the books themselves. Wednesday, March 17, 2010
I Am Sick of Looking at this Bitch

Not that it really matters, but I am sick of looking at the face of Gerard Butler. Everyone keeps talking about how handsome and manly he is, but are they seeing the same face that I am? He looks like he got punched in the face one too many times. I hate how it's fine for male actors to have squashed noses and faces because it looks like they got in lots of sexy, masculine fights, but women can't even have a bump on their nose.Saturday, August 29, 2009
Photos of Inspiration










And for the record- Grease is a great movie. If the internet worked better I would seriously post a youtube clip from Grease Lightning because it is the greatest musical number in all of history and John Travolta was an amazing dancer with a super rockin' bod before he became the fat closet case he is today. Seriously, watch it! It's super campy, the guys in it wear rolled-sleeve t-shirts, tight rolled up jeans and hi-top Converse as all guys should, it has fabulous saturated color and is filmed great, the Pink Ladies are mean and fierce, especially Rizzo, and with the exception of "Hopelessly Devoted to You" and a few others, the songs and dance numbers are amazing. Beauty School Drop-Out? Tell me it's not brilliant. Plus I like the message: There's nothing wrong with being a slut. In every other movie, Rizzo would have totally committed suicide at the end as a lesson to Sandy. I used to watch this movie ten times a week as a child and then of course decided it was uncool later on. How wrong I was.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Take That, Zooey Deschanel
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
What is this 'Mommie Dearest' BS?, Or: Why is Tom Skerritt Not in This Film?
Well, the Golden Compass full trailer is finally out. I realize this isn't really fashion related (though I don't have any huge issues with the costuming...though I do think it looks way too polished/Vogue spread-esque, and this outfit looks like Lyra bought it at Limited Too. She does not wear hot pink, okay? It probably does not even exist.) but I feel the need to discuss it in minutiae as I really like the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman a lot, and am very anxious to see how such a far-reaching, complex, and yes, feminist YA fantasy novel will be adapted (for hundreds of millions of dollars, no less) for a market in which the film The Game Plan is currently number one.(That's right, that movie starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson where he is a tough football player but has to deal with the frilliest and silliest of all things, a little girl! There's a bulldog wearing a tiara! [I actually just randomly thought I would check out which movie was number one right now to point out how retarded everything is, but, like, I never expected to be as perfect a point-maker as this movie. I guess people felt a bit of a whole inside when The Pacifier left theaters.])
Secondly, the CGI daemons are So. Bad. They just seem like regular wacky-talkin', wisecrackin' Disney-esque sidekicks, besides looking hella fake. If I personally had to do it, I would have had real animals and had the dialogue just be heard, not mouthed by the creatures. I mean, it's not like deamons are talking animals, and their connection to their humans is clearly supposed to be mental/psychological. The whole look of the film looks very CGI, and all the scenes look so austere and clean and computerized- I personally always imagined Lyra's world to be jumbled and Medieval looking and filled with old-fashioned looking brass machines. Plus Mrs. Coulter's golden monkey looks so messed up it probably wandered off the set of Gremlins.
In conclusion, I can just imagine this series glossing over all the controversial, anti-religious and even gay undertones in the books, and just making it some typical overblown fantasy. Is Hollywood really going to stay true to a core theme that rejects both original sin and the Garden of Eden myth? Plus, I have and will always imagine Lee Scoresby played by Tom Skerritt and Tom Skerritt only.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Sienna Miller is a Blight Upon Fashion/ Factory Girl Clearly Sucks
The real Edie Sedgwick had a streamlined mod style that, despite its extremity, ultimately looked very sleek and pretty sophisticated, but still fun and young. She knew that wearing a pair of huge earrings was awesome as long as the rest of your look was simple, and that she could pull of lots of thick black eyeliner and wearing long t-shirts as dresses. She looked very 60's, but in a unique, New York-y, Factoryish kind of way. Sure, Edie was of dubious talent (though I highly recommend her biography Edie: An American Life) but she had a lot of style.
Sienna Miller, or whoever costumed her, on the other hand, made this Edie's clothes look like one of those "1960's girl" costumes you can get at the Halloween superstore- I'm surprised they didn't include a pair of white platform vinyl go-go boots to go with her million necklaces, huge earrings, floppy hats, copious amounts of eyeliner that she can't pull off, and, yes, open-toe boots. I have to say this picture probably horrified me the most. Who was responsible for placing that horrible hat and cheesy Halloween-ish looking sunglasses on her head? Have they ever looked at a picture of Edie Sedgwick?
In conclusion, there are lots of things terribly wrong with this movie. Weezer plays The Velvet Underground. Hayden Christensen plays Bob Dylan. Jimmy Fallon is in it. I believe Mary-Kate Olson has a cameo- perhaps as a starving monkey, which is the only role I can see her successfully filling. Basically, there's nothing good. On the plus side, it could be really bad in a good/entertaining way. The clothes, however, are just bad in a bad way.













