There's a great picture of Clara Bow on Dorothy Arzner's lap that I want as a poster, drat it. It just captures all her charm.
In fact, it's so damned great *because* it feels realistic. It has humor and pain and feels very much like what going to high school in the early '80s felt like.
That's why I couldn't watch it past the first disc.
In fact, I realized while trying to watch and enjoy F&G that I require more magic than realism in my TV viewing. I could appreciate F&G intellectually, but my gut reaction to it was nausea. It made me feel like a peeping Tom in the bad way while at the same time flashing me back to all the worst parts of middle school and high school.
FWIW, Ple, the excruciating recognition factor became more muted and fun became more prominent in F&G as it went on. It never lost its perfect pitch, but the characters begin to move beyond their situations in surprising and interesting ways.
Eh, life is short, and it was so firmly in Not My Beautiful Cake land that I'm not sure I'll ever have the nerve to try beyond that, and what I said about needing more magic in my realism is totally true, and kind of a refreshing epiphany that will totally help me choose what I want to watch in movies and TV.
Basically, I need something where the emotional truth is wrapped in a fairly stylised package, and it will sing for me.
The more I think about it, the more I can apply this to damn near all my preferences in life, from what I watch to what sort of church service I enjoy attending.
I am nothing if not predictable.
Basically, I need something where the emotional truth is wrapped in a fairly stylised package, and it will sing for me.
Oh, I totally get that. Not applying this to you, but I remember much of the debate about BtVS S6 being about the loss of the metaphoric base of the show. Which was a conscious decision on Joss' part, but jarring for a lot of fans. Also it came at cost of much of the humor of the show. With the distancing effect of the metaphor you had more room for humor somehow.
Dude, just like The OC.
So, Ryan is S6 Spike and Seth is Buffy?
And Caleb is...Caleb.
Maybe he could be Rack. Or that would be Ryan's brother?
I totally didn't recognize Ciaran Hinds, the whole movie long (like, I knew I knew him, but had no idea from where)
I kept thinking what an amazing physical transformation Alan Rickman had gone through. And then the credits rolled and I was like Oh, Nevermind.
I may be alone in thinking that Apatow's work has gotten steadily stronger, and that F&G just screams "BEHOLD MY FIRST-TIME WRITER UBERREALISM!!" in a way that completely negates any real realism the show may have had. It's got the seeds of a good writer in it, but he just wasn't there yet.
I watched Mr. & Mrs. Smith over the weekend. I thought it went on too long and the ending was kind of a cop out -- it felt like the writers wrote themselves into a corner at the last minute and then just slapped a tag on to fix it. I hated the all female aspect of Jane's, it seemed way way too much like Charlie's Angels.
