The pastimes of the rarely sick...
Jan. 25th, 2014 03:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearI went home sick from work at lunchtime yesterday, which is practically unheard of. I've only had a total of about eight days off sick in over 12 years, and the last one was in October 2009. I very much appreciate my iron constitution and consider myself very lucky not to be ill more often - but it does mean I'm really bad at it when it does happen! Foxfire:
Teenage girls misbehaving in the 1950s - it kept me watching throughout, and I was impressed by how ordinary most of the girls looked (one of them was particularly pretty but she was the exception and was commented on because of it) but it didn't seem to have much of real interest to say, and did seem to end up anywhere conclusive. I preferred the other film I've seen by the same director - The Class - it had a lot more power.
Silver Linings Playbook:
Finally got around to seeing this, and mostly enjoyed it, though I didn't think it was as good as some reviews have made out. I loved the dance competition and particularly the reaction to the main characters' score, but what the film mostly demonstrated is that Jennifer Lawrence is *awesome*. She looked fully ten years older than Katniss Everdeen and effortlessly portrayed a complex and not altogether likeable character with finesse and empathy.
American Hustle:
I've spent a lot of time recently watching feministfrequency.com videos and reading books about female representation and writing strong female characters, which is definitely improving my burgeoning novel, but also making it more difficult to just enjoy movies. Once you start thinking about this stuff, it's almost impossible to switch if off again, and it definitely affected my enjoyment of American Hustle. On a purely shallow level, I think making Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper and Jeremy Renner into less than attractive 70s characters is an absolute crime. On a less shallow level, it also demonstrated a continuing discrepancy between how male and female characters are portrayed in Hollywood movies. Right at the start of the film, Amy Adams' character does a voice-over about how she can't help but be attracted to Christian Bale's character, despite the paunch and comb-over. However, I notice that Amy Adams herself, and equally Jennifer Lawrence, still have to be drop dead gorgeous to get a look-in. A somewhat less attractive female character is introduced part-way through, and she is, of course, lonely, easily manipulated and spends most of her one scene talking about her three cats. Sigh. Still, another showcase of Jennifer Lawrence's amazing talents with yet another completely different character flawlessly portrayed. And the film itself is quite fun overall.
Delivery Man:
I was hoping this Vince Vaughan comedy wouldn't be a typical Vince Vaughan comedy, and it wasn't. It was actually quite sweet, though not especially mind-blowing in any way. It also fell foul of my newfound analysis of films from a representation point of view - and it seemed to me as if the writers had some kind of list they were checking off as they went. The main character discovers he has fathered 533 children through anonymous sperm donations 20 years previously, and starts going to visit them one by one. Lo and behold - one of them is black(!), one of them is a girl(!), one of them is gay (and promiscuous!), one of them is fat (!), one of them is disabled(!). It all smacked rather of tokenism to me, though I guess you could equally argue for inclusivity if you were feeling generous. Still, it was mildly entertaining.
I also finished another audiobook - Divergent by Veronica Roth - which is being made into a movie this year and is being hailed as "the heir to The Hunger Games". The premise was even harder to suspend disbelief for, and I found various aspects of it quite dangerous. At one point, the love interest pins the teenage female protagonist up against a wall and tells her his first instinct is to push her until she breaks because he likes her when she's frightened. Way to promote healthy relationships in teenagers! Plus, there's an awful lot of violence on a more personal level than The Hunger Games and with a great deal less in the way of emotional consequences for those who suffer it. During the space of a few hours at the end, the heroine gets shot, nearly drowned, watches both her parents die and kills her best friend's boyfriend - and then spends the subsequent train journey kissing her boyfriend, rather than curling into a ball and being unable to function or breaking down (as Katniss does on multiple occasions in the Hunger Games trilogy). I will probably go and see the film, as I'm intrigued to see how it's adapted, but it's not a book I would recommend.
Now I'm off back to my folding chair and my knitting to see what other movie delights I've been saving up!
It's particularly bad timing this weekend, too, since my new sofa doesn't arrive until Monday afternoon, so I'm stuck with a folding chair at the moment. Plus, I couldn't go to Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake last night - boo! Still, can't complain - I *have* already seen it twice since December.
Anyway, with little in the way of working brains available to me, and a strong desire to sit still and feel sorry for myself, I have watched four movies in 24 hours. Herewith the reviews!
Teenage girls misbehaving in the 1950s - it kept me watching throughout, and I was impressed by how ordinary most of the girls looked (one of them was particularly pretty but she was the exception and was commented on because of it) but it didn't seem to have much of real interest to say, and did seem to end up anywhere conclusive. I preferred the other film I've seen by the same director - The Class - it had a lot more power.
Silver Linings Playbook:
Finally got around to seeing this, and mostly enjoyed it, though I didn't think it was as good as some reviews have made out. I loved the dance competition and particularly the reaction to the main characters' score, but what the film mostly demonstrated is that Jennifer Lawrence is *awesome*. She looked fully ten years older than Katniss Everdeen and effortlessly portrayed a complex and not altogether likeable character with finesse and empathy.
American Hustle:
I've spent a lot of time recently watching feministfrequency.com videos and reading books about female representation and writing strong female characters, which is definitely improving my burgeoning novel, but also making it more difficult to just enjoy movies. Once you start thinking about this stuff, it's almost impossible to switch if off again, and it definitely affected my enjoyment of American Hustle. On a purely shallow level, I think making Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper and Jeremy Renner into less than attractive 70s characters is an absolute crime. On a less shallow level, it also demonstrated a continuing discrepancy between how male and female characters are portrayed in Hollywood movies. Right at the start of the film, Amy Adams' character does a voice-over about how she can't help but be attracted to Christian Bale's character, despite the paunch and comb-over. However, I notice that Amy Adams herself, and equally Jennifer Lawrence, still have to be drop dead gorgeous to get a look-in. A somewhat less attractive female character is introduced part-way through, and she is, of course, lonely, easily manipulated and spends most of her one scene talking about her three cats. Sigh. Still, another showcase of Jennifer Lawrence's amazing talents with yet another completely different character flawlessly portrayed. And the film itself is quite fun overall.
Delivery Man:
I was hoping this Vince Vaughan comedy wouldn't be a typical Vince Vaughan comedy, and it wasn't. It was actually quite sweet, though not especially mind-blowing in any way. It also fell foul of my newfound analysis of films from a representation point of view - and it seemed to me as if the writers had some kind of list they were checking off as they went. The main character discovers he has fathered 533 children through anonymous sperm donations 20 years previously, and starts going to visit them one by one. Lo and behold - one of them is black(!), one of them is a girl(!), one of them is gay (and promiscuous!), one of them is fat (!), one of them is disabled(!). It all smacked rather of tokenism to me, though I guess you could equally argue for inclusivity if you were feeling generous. Still, it was mildly entertaining.
I also finished another audiobook - Divergent by Veronica Roth - which is being made into a movie this year and is being hailed as "the heir to The Hunger Games". The premise was even harder to suspend disbelief for, and I found various aspects of it quite dangerous. At one point, the love interest pins the teenage female protagonist up against a wall and tells her his first instinct is to push her until she breaks because he likes her when she's frightened. Way to promote healthy relationships in teenagers! Plus, there's an awful lot of violence on a more personal level than The Hunger Games and with a great deal less in the way of emotional consequences for those who suffer it. During the space of a few hours at the end, the heroine gets shot, nearly drowned, watches both her parents die and kills her best friend's boyfriend - and then spends the subsequent train journey kissing her boyfriend, rather than curling into a ball and being unable to function or breaking down (as Katniss does on multiple occasions in the Hunger Games trilogy). I will probably go and see the film, as I'm intrigued to see how it's adapted, but it's not a book I would recommend.
Now I'm off back to my folding chair and my knitting to see what other movie delights I've been saving up!
