13 Going On 30 (The Female Peter Pan)

(Josie and the Pussycats, however, that was an "ouchie! I'm laughing at myself!" laugh.)

The music was slightly wrong - it was supposed to be taking place in 1987, but most of the tracks were from 83 or 85 - but hey, maybe that's how long it took those songs to filter down to middle school.

Dunno about the Petra Pan thing - did you find the same thing with Freaky Friday (The original, haven't seen the remake yet)? I guess the message is more about inter-generational bonding, which 13 going on 30 cleverly avoids - on the whole.

but i don't think that's a bad thing, either. i'm 'grown up' enough to be responsible about things i must do, can hold down a job and all that. even so, i still am basically living the student life (going out every night, staying up way too late, living in rented flat, not in a 'career oriented' job, etc) and don't mind it at all. i get depressed hanging out with friends that suddenly feel 10-15 years older than me, just because they've 'settled down' (not only related to marriage, BTW, but often the two go hand in hand...)

i don't imagine i'll settle down for a good long while.

I have suddenly been confronted with the idea of growing up. Like I said, I was joking with Joe a few months ago, that I spent a decade being 22, and suddenly woke up and found myself 33, with no idea how to settle down. Having to be a grown up, with no idea how to do it, or indeed now, person to marry/settle down with any more.

The film upset me, because the girl in question didn't just renounce her shallowness and get back in touch with roots, family, etc. It seemed like she had to renounce her entire life/dreams/ambitions. Not to get into spoilers for those who haven't seen it (and Colette, you, especially should see this film!) but it didn't get into the other aspects of her life post-decision time - did she get to have a fabulous career in the alternate reality of the ending?

I guess in my own life, it was the other way around - the fabulous career (as rock star, though, not as editor of Edgy Style Magazine) collapsed, forcing me to decide to grow up and settle down. What if it had been a choice I had made, rather than a decision forced upon me?

You know, I didn't even think about how she has to give up her job. Why can't she be a good person (good daughter, friend, partnet, etc) without giving up her dream? hmm... The whole movie is so escapist. She is in hell as a teen and suddenly she gets to leave that scenario. Then she's in hell again with these coworkers and she gets to just leave and not deal with that any more either.

All of the women I work with in their 30s say they still feel like they're in their 20s and they often forget their age. Even the women in their late 40s say they don't feel old.

so i saw this the other day largely because of max's stanning. i salute the filmmakers for resisting the temptation to 1) make ruffalo's fiancee an evil bitch and 2) having "hilarious" drunk jokes about a 13-year-old trying to handle five pina coladas in a row

however i loathed the ending

sorry i should be clearer: they DID resist the temptation to show jennifer garner being obviously drunk on the pina coladas

ultimately i think that if everyone could go back in time and marry their 13-year-old crush the world would probably be a much worse place

yeah but isnt the point sort of that she DIDNT marry her crush, instead she married, the guy, who actually care for her?

i tht the point was that she couldn't realize that she actually had a crush on ruffalo until she became 30, at which point tha roof was all she could think about

why he cared, in turn, for such a massive suck-up is beyond me

don't get me wrong, i liked a lot of things about this movie, but jennifer garner just doesn't push my sympathy buttons.

and dude, the supposedly inspiring "vision" she had for the new-look magazine?? if i was the obligatory gay/british editor in chief i would have been like, you're fired! you're all fucking fired!

all i will say is--any movie with the message "your nerdy best friend who is really into gay bands would make a good boyfriend and will grow up to be totally hot" is a movie i can get behind 100%, and a movie i wish had been made earlier, and that, maybe, a lot of girls at my high school, would have seen it

hahaha yeup

Awwwww Max.

Most of my nerdy male American (high school) friends who liked the Pet Shop Boys et al did in fact turn out to be gay, but none of their British contemporaries into the same things (including camp films and art eg john waters/gilbert and george) were anything other than straight.

I don't know what that says about me, or Minnesota, or both.

I'd look on youtube for a compilation of actresses in these movies suddenly grabbing their boobs in character, but I'm at work.

haha yes max totally true.. and i wondered how she would have felt about mattie if he had wound up as richard belzer

you mean if instead of being 30 some reverse magic to hers made him 130?

btw that is my understanding of the love story in benjamin button

this movie is on tv now i love it so much mark ruffalo is such a dreamboat

six chicks? six little douchettes morelike.

"i don't wanna be beautiful in my own way"

watching this with my sister btw. I feel like we are *connecting*

actual q.: is wishing dust something that was actually commercially available? bc wtf.

you have to find the right kind of mushrooms in the lost woods but once u do any ole witch can grind some up for you

I need to watch this film again. I barely remember anything about it at all.

Kinda ironic how many of the ladies in the first part of the thread are now married and at least two of them have babbies now.

I think it would just irritate the shit out of me now, mind you. (But that could just be because I skipped straight to bitter old age.)

ugh, in the film they came prepackaged.xp

i feel like as someone who has never been there, the depiction of new york in this city is worth a million vampire weekend alb. reviews in terms of explaining the narrative of "gentrification" or w/e also lol why is andy serkis in this?

In my mind this movie has just merged with The Devil Wears Prada which is kinda the less fairy-tale version of the same thing yes/no?

no bc mark ruffalo is more hottt than stanley tucci

if you mean that this movie is abt ~becoming~ then yeah i guess but there are loads of movies that are like that. the devil wears prada is almost exactly like working girl minus class struggle

God, you're more boy crazy than I am. :-P

x-p

And no, I mean very specifically the whole "smart but misunderstood girl moves to NYC starts writing for edgy style magazines because she wants to be AN WRITER thing" - but like I said, I have forgotten whole chunks of 12 Going On 30 so the writing part of her career might have been more incidental than the woman in TDWP.

And no, I just can't do it. I can't imagine a world where Mark Ruffalo is "would objectify" status. Nonononono.

shes an editor, tdwp is closer to working girl on that front bc in 13go30 her aspirations seem to be entirely based on some abstract notion of *glamour* and she is disillusioned and finds out that what is important is a man and a family. working girl and tdwp are about maintaining ur integrity when faced w/ the compromising situations that *making it* as a woman in a *tough business* entail.

wait so have u like outed urself as karen tregaskin then idgi

I haven't seen Working Girl so I guess I can't comment on that. I suppose you're right about the whole editor-of-magazine job just being code for some kind of "glamour" rather than an inherent aspiration to do with Being A Writer - maybe I've got that wrong in my memory.

I don't know why you're so obsessed with "outing" KT. This is clearly a sock. Named after another ILX sock, which was named after an IRL famous person's sock. It's like, 3 layers of meta. Which I find really really funny. But no one ever gets my jokes.

But whatever, this thread isn't about that. It's about film depictions of women's aging (or choosing not to age) and the whole career/marriage track dilemma and how it is posed to females in hollywood films. Or, erm, something.

dnr i wanna dance w/ somebody was in this movie <3 singalong <3

Have they done the Thriller dance sequence yet?

they're about to!

also this is on rte1 so i guess darraghmac is the only poster that could join in but i dont really see that happening.

my sister cannot bear "cringey" moments in film. the ice ice baby striptease is killing her.

OK, I don't remember that and I don't really want to.

yeah its probably better deleted from ur memory.

omg srsly mark ruffalo is so dreamy

wish i were watching this movie right now

apparently mark ruffalo was really embarrassed about having to dance in the thriller scene but i'm sure i don't know why since he is adorable in it

That just moves him from "would not objectify" to "complete tit: HATE"

nah, his embarrassment makes him all the cuter

btw horseshoe i was hoping u would weigh in on this.

?? iirc (it was from some dvd on tv showing of the movie) he was all like, jennifer garner is a great dancer but i suck so that scene was hard for me. i mean, i guess lol conventional masculinity but he wasn't a "tit" about it. (he doesn't suck though he is great.)

xps

Ugh. I guess he did work in this movie because he was supposed to be kind of a dork. But still. Just no. You think about the kind of bloke I "would objectify" and then think Mark Ruffalo and they're on complete polar opposites.

do you know who mark ruffalo is?

hes like a scruffy lil badger

btw it is totally creepy when all the teen girls are at her house. I knew a woman like that when i was a teenager. she was totally gross.

btw i like mark ruffalo cleaned up, but i wouldnt if he was only ever cleaned up. when he's neat he seems like he should be ruffalled

that was a pun 4 u max

well of course i would not presume to tell anyone who to objectify but i must protest calling him a "tit" bc i am p sure you meant it in a bad way. >:[

xp haha yeah this is not an uncreepy movie

also it would have been better if they hadn't made mark ruffalos gf such a transparently disposable db.

yeah

everyone in this movie is kind of a db except mark ruffalo, including jennifer garner's character

I know who Mark Ruffalo is, Plax. I have seen this movie after all. He's like a Hollywood version of scruffy indie dude, all cleaned up and not right at all. Ugh.

I like calling the standard Dudes Indie Chicks Are Supposed To Fancy tittish because I feel like I'm getting back for the horrible things that most people say about the boys that I go gooey over. ;-)

this is the 2nd time today ive been confused w/ max. we dont even look alike.

i look like a hollywood version of scruffy indie dude

plax looks like a majestic stallion

Sorry boys! Dammit. But MAX and PLAX I mean, no, those users names don't look the slightest bit alike at all.

Especially when you're hepped up on beta blockers.

i look like a hollywood version of scruffy indie dude

You kind of do...?

max just looks like hollywood

i did basically go to hollywood university

for ref:

max
http://www.lizjohnsonbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/mark-ruffalo.jpg

plax
http://i386.photobucket.com/albums/oo305/lejospopo/plax.jpg

I have no idea what any of you look like, TBH. You are just one faceless mass to me. Like the children in Inception or a Boards of Canada album cover or something.

Anyway, what's happening in the movie now, Plax? Or is it over, seeing as it's just gone 11.

oh now she's watching mark ruffalo get married and crying

also looking at the dollhouse that symbolises *the future they could have had together*

srsly no way does that kid grow into pseudo-alternative superhunk mark ruffalo.

okay now its over.

its been real

srsly no way does that kid grow into pseudo-alternative superhunk mark ruffalo.

― plax (ico), Wednesday, August 18, 2010 6:13 PM (15 seconds ago) Bookmark

ahem according to the dvd on tv version that i once caught, mark ruffalo claims he was very much like the kid in the movie when he was young. though i don't know if he meant like him as a person or looked like the actor who played him. i am coming off like a creepy stalker in this thread, huh?

I had completely forgotten the ending to that film, had to rush over and read it on Wiki.

if you are thinking of *actually* stalking mark ruffalo, give me a heads up and we can plot strategies.

p.s. u mad, Mark Ruffalo is in no way a super hunk.

plax, you've seen you can count on me, right? imo, that is the movie that makes best use of mark ruffalo's voice, which is one of the v dreamiest things about him.

no i have never heard of that movie. hmmm, maybe i should find it streaming somewhere. i spent a lot of that wishing mR was on screen more.

and yes you are right about his voice.

i love that movie a lot.

This is why radical feminism is always doomed. It's like... "Let's talk about the troubling gender roles as depicted in women's fantasies in late capitalist chick flicks" suddenly turns to "ooh, Mark Ruffalo, he so dreamy!" and we are TRAPPED, TRAPPED, I TELL YOU.

...

(The correct response to that would have been "look, here is a link to a picture of Richard D James" and I become so distracted I leave the thread entirely. Think laterally. Always think laterally.)

is that what this thread is orig. about? sorry.

;-)

(Yes, I know. My sense of humour is funny to no one but me. Flashlight, tighty whities, off I go...)

i am interested in the thing you started the thread about, Kate, though i frame it slightly differently in my head. and 13 going on 30 is not a movie that makes me think about it that much, tbh. but a while ago i was kind of irritated by the frequency of the woman-who-has-her-shit-together + dude-who-is-immature setup of a lot of romantic comedies (i guess knocked up would be the privileged example for me). but i never watch movies anymore, because of tv, so i don't have many up-to-date thoughts about it.

yeah that does sound like something id be interested in, i just assumed this was a standard movie thread and revived it bc i wanted to liveblog watching it. for future generations.

It was kind of both TBH. Like here is a dumb film & this is why I liked it but this is why I was troubled by it.

Horseshoe I get that kind of film that you're talking about (tho I deeply avoid Knocked Up & that genre) but I guess because this career fantasy was one that was common to so many of my friends, I saw it more as that "Women you can NOT succeed in a career unless you become superbitch & give up everything you care about" type propaganda. I could entirely be wrong tho.

Guys always get to be the immature won't grow up one in films but when was the last time you saw a woman get to live that role in a film?

http://www.meonews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Smiley-Face.jpg

I suppose also SATC television era touched on that as well but I just think that got so derailed. But I do think that's prob part of why it was so hated.

I saw it more as that "Women you can NOT succeed in a career unless you become superbitch & give up everything you care about" type propaganda.

yeah, i think that strand is definitely present in this movie and many others.

i like knocked up and the other "manchild" movies that came out around that time, but. part of it is just my narcissm why-are-there-never-movies-about-women-who-are-fuckups-i.e.-women-like-ME. part of it is feeling like in movies like that women are there to be a maturing influence on hapless men, which is just unappealing and kind of seems unfair to both men and women. also in movies like that i always end up identifying with the dudes; they just seem more like people. to be fair, in knocked up, there was one woman in seth rogen's stoner crew, but it seemed to me that she was represented as sort of monstrous, as though that kind of behavior is fine and kind of endearing though mockable in young men but so wrong as to be gross in young women. in nabisco's anna faris thread, there's a link to an interview where she says: "But we’ve seen so many ambitious women in the last ten years of comedy, and their comedy comes from trying to balance guys and jobs and fashion. I want to play the girl that has zero ambition, the girl who’s stoned, playing video games, wearing the same things for weeks in a row. I want to see what she’s up to: the girl who just says ‘Fuck it.’" which kind of gets at the thing i'm circling around.

mark ruffalo male buffalo

is what's he known as in my house

Horseshoe: There is a historical example of the female fuckup in art, literature, and media: the ditz. It's such a toxic stereotype that it's poisoned a lot of attempts to create less-than-competent women.

yeah, i guess it's a tricky thing. anyway, it's just a pet peeve of mine.

http://images.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/Reality-Bites-winona-ryder-432427_320_240.jpg

watching this with my sister btw. I feel like we are *connecting*

Oh, there's so much I could spout about this topic but I have a shedload of annoying queries I have to run this morning.

I think that it's very much down to who makes the majority of movies, and what those people see as the role of women in them. I mean, come on. A woman who sits around all day smoking pot and playing videogames? She must be fat or something. And has no ambition and never changes her clothes? Oh my god, that is so NOT HOT. And who the hell is gonna watch a chick in a film who is NOT HOT?

If they're not going to have the decency to be HOT and all, women in films should at least have the decency to realise that they are nothing more than handmaids and midwives to the character development of the real, male protagonists. Women only have dialogue and action to provide background or sooth-ment for MANPAIN.

Unless you're talking about a totally gross and yucky CHICK FLICK but who wants to see them? They're all about shoes and dresses and ew, shoes are like some weird super Freudian vulva substitute, ugh, you'll never get backing for that film.

etc. etc. repeat to fade. But I really need to go and run those reports.

well, it partly has to do with hotness and also with making for an "exciting plot" - how can an exciting plot be contstructed with this theoretical protagonist who just sits around and smokes weed and plays videogames?

Admittedly not a lot of people have tried to option my life for a film yet.

I wish they did, though, with that money I could do nothing but smoke pot & play vid games for at least months.

<3 u r the movie protagonist of my dreams, abbott!!!

But how many stoner *dude* films have been made over the past few years? It's practically an entire genre thanks to Apatow and that sort, apathetic loser dude films.

I've just seen so many adverts (because honestly, fuck seeing these films) for films (thinking of crap like "Failure To Launch" which was on the side of busses and telephone booths) that were about hot, together, alpha woman inspiring useless stoner dude to get off his ass and do something. Can you imagine if that film were the other way around? Can you imagine a hot, together alpha male going with a stoner girl geek who sits around on the sofa being a stoner?

If I were a man, I'd find all those kinds of films insulting as heck. But, you know, feminism is just a giant plot to turn men into Homer Simpson or something.

I would eat tons of MANPAIN, too, which I am assuming is some kind of French bread.

http://kaidenyeung.com/images/anpanman-stand.jpg

Made of men.

haha manpain au chocolat

Guys always get to be the immature won't grow up one in films but when was the last time you saw a woman get to live that role in a film?

Along Came Polly (actually pretty much any movie with Janiston in it, Good Girl excepted)
that roller derby film that Drew Barrymore directed

Abbott, you can't have manpain.

1) you are not a man
2) you have had actual, like *real* problems in your own life so you can't have the lazy bad option of having MANPAIN over someone else's suffering.

I would watch no-ambition girl tron. in fact i think i'd rather watch that than actual tron2.
her girlpain could be mounting debt from MFA tuition, so she escapes into tronworld to avoid eviction.
inside tronworld, she invents digital weed using semiotic sensimilla and breaks the internet somehow.

that ensemble movie with Toni Collette and Shirley Maclaine and some other actress I'm blanking on (this was not a good movie - In Her Shoes? or something like that?)

xp

Along Came Polly (actually pretty much any movie with Janiston in it, Good Girl excepted)
that roller derby film that Drew Barrymore directed

― glitter hands! glitter hands! razzle! dazzle! (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, August 19, 2010 4:02 PM (18 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haven't seen along came polly but i should add i want these movies about fuck-up women to be good. friends with money would count, though

i loved whip it!!!!

in her shoes is kind of complicated as a case of this but i reservedly like it, too.

whip it and friends with money both made by women, worth noting

But how many stoner *dude* films have been made over the past few years

4? 5?

her girlpain could be mounting debt from MFA tuition, so she escapes into tronworld to avoid eviction.
inside tronworld, she invents digital weed using semiotic sensimilla and breaks the internet somehow.

― Philip Nunez

Phillip you are a genius, this is the perfect way to not worry about my future student loan (the thought of which makes me ache): I just gotta get the Master Control Program to laser me away to some computer bongland. You are a genius.

Can you imagine a hot, together alpha male going with a stoner girl geek who sits around on the sofa being a stoner?

lol you mean like Jackie Brown

(Jackie Brown is an amazing movie btw just wanna be sure everyone's aware of that)

jackie brown is hardly a movie about the bridget fonda character

The problem with the female protagonist in 13 going on 30 isn't that she's successful, it's that she was a bitch. I don't think movies depicting girls having their shit together and being independent is bad at all. It's when they are made to look like emotionless ball busters that bothers me. Girl in Knocked Up seemed like a pretty decent lady so let her have her E! job. That she is living on a pull out couch in her sister's guest house and the unemployed dude has a huge house is a little weird.

does the Runaways biopic count? there's lots of female stoner-ing in it

jackie brown is hardly a movie about the bridget fonda character

yeah I know it was just the first lolsome example that sprang to mind. also stoner chick gets unceremoniously murdered in a parking lot, so there's that drawback too...

I really love buying shoes just as much as I love weed too so maybe I am the right person to adapt for this. Any Hollywood ppls wanna pass the Bechdel test in a really dopey way, ring me up!

i just can't watch movies like these - they're just too irritating and manipulative, and i don't think they are funny, though i am supposed to think they are funny, which irritates me.

I don't think movies depicting girls having their shit together and being independent is bad at all.

i didn't mean to say this was bad. to the extent that it gets caricatured and the women in question no longer seem like people but rather prompts that elicit important reactions in men's lives it irritates me. i realize the line i'm taking is kind of risky; i'm not saying i want all prominent female characters to be unsuccessful or something.

In Her Shoes was a weird film, there were may layers of complication so it wasn't just about fuck up sister.

Wasn't there another one about two actual rock star-ish girls that I'm blanking on? (Or was that a docudrama?)

This has now cross posted so much it won't even make sense any more. :-(

they just don't seem like real people to me - they seem like constructs and devices - whereas the male characters are more humanized

how do you ladies feel abut that Anne Hathaway vs. Meryl Streep fashion movie, the Devil Wears Prada...?

i love that movie

i wouldn't call it a great movie, exactly, but i have watched it approximately one million times

that ensemble movie with Toni Collette and Shirley Maclaine and some other actress I'm blanking on (this was not a good movie - In Her Shoes? or something like that?)

This made me think of Muriel's Wedding, which is EXCELLENT and one of my favorite movies ever.

they just don't seem like real people to me - they seem like constructs and devices - whereas the male characters are more humanized

I dunno about this - pretty much every male I see on-screen is a blatantly obvious construct and device. I don't see Seth Rogen and go OMG THAT IS (was?) ME! maybe just a little bit for purposes of identification but come on, these are all caricatures we're talking about. this is Hollywood after all.

The problem with Alias pretending to be 13 in this movie is I think Tom Hanks modeled his Big performance after his young actor counterpart's performing the same scenes, and Alias seemed to model her performance on Keanu Reeves.

this movie is a lot less creepy than big imo, so i'm okay with it. i like jennifer garner's performance tbh

Oh, and in Muriel's Wedding Muriel is kind of a fuckup but she is also awesome and I think she gets an awesome hot olympic swimmer dude to fall in love with her just by being herself.

they just don't seem like real people to me - they seem like constructs and devices - whereas the male characters are more humanized

Yeah, exactly. That the men get to be full, rounded-out characters with development and negative sides as well as positive ones, and yet the women are just there as these props to provide emotional development for the men.

And as to the Bedchel test, it just FLOORS me the lengths to which so many of the movies I watch will deliberately go to to avoid passing it. But then I was reading this blog by a woman who was studying to be a scriptwriter and she said that film school actually *teaches* people to write like that - like, all conversations *have* to develop the plot. And the plot has to revolve around your male protagonists. So it would be TOTALLY distracting to have two women characters actually TALK about something not related to the plot (i.e. the man)

It was just so bizarre and weird and nonsensical.

But this is why I always say that I'm film deaf. It's not that I don't understand films - it's just that the films that get made simply don't make sense to me. The way they are constructed doesn't make sense to me.

i just don't really want to see movies ostensibly about "real human problems" enacted by caricatures. if it's a thriller or a horror movie or sci-fi, then it doesn't matter. But if the movie is about human interactions, then i just prefer characters that are written like real people. These movies just make me feel like i'm watching cartoons.

maybe this is why I prefer genre films in general

Can you imagine a hot, together alpha male going with a stoner girl geek who sits around on the sofa being a stoner?

lol Annie Hall, if you can consider Woody an "alpha male" in any way

uhhhh

actually a bunch of Woody films feature alpha male protagonists falling for "irresponsible" women (prostitutes, teenagers, etc.)

No. Woody Allen is emphatically NOT an alpha male. On so many levels. Dude has made a career of being like a neurotic zeta male or something.

1. LIVING ROOM. INT - DAY
A YOUNG WOMAN lays sprawled on a faded plum-colored couch.  She is dressed in pinstriped men's boxer shorts & a minor threat t-shirt riddled with holes.  She is intently playing DRAGON QUEST IX on her Nintendo DS.  A stereo in the corner plays strange, repetitive music.  
The LIVING ROOM is littered with record sleeves and empty cans of cream soda faygo.  As she is intent on the videogame she does not notice that a YOUNG MAN , dressed in a three piece suit and carrying an expensive-looking leather briefcase has entered the room.   He steps gingerly around a half-empty chinese takeout counter and clears his throat.
YOUNG MAN:  Have you unlocked the Armamentalist class yet?
YOUNG WOMAN [startled]:  Huh!?!?!  When did you get home?  [considers]  No I think I may need to finish one of the special quests to unlock that map.
YOUNG MAN:   Yeah I haven't managed it yet either.   What do you want to do for dinner?  
YOUNG WOMAN:  PIZZA!!!!!!
YOUNG MAN:  Okay, just let me get changed.   By the way, we won our case today.   One of the senior partners mentioned the brief I wrote on land usage precedent specifically.
YOUNG WOMAN:  Great... [brightens]  did you know that if you're wearing the frog suit you can enter a secret pipe in level 3-5?   There's a giant question brick filled with 1-UPs. 
YOUNG MAN [sighs]:   Let's get that pizza

i guess the whole alpha male concept is kind of pseud, but no one in a woody allen movie is an alpha male. well, i guess chaz palmentieri in bullets over broadway...

This is just a symptom of a worse problem: the two-hundred-year old expectation that women have to be substitute mothers to their romantic partners.

anyway, i love woody allen movies; they've got their gender issues obvs, but this is not a woody allen movie phenomenon

And puh-LEASE can we not bring up Woody Allen in a thread where we are talking about progressive depictions of women. Just no.

oh there's alpha males in Woody films (usually not played by Woody)

i would dispute that but eh also it's mad offtopic

sex and the city 2

eat pray love

where have you been

can i just be clear that even though satc2 and eat pray love may meet my criteria as spelled out here i will never see those movies so they are no good to me

I just saw gus van sants last days and it was hilarious

I didn't know that stoner chicks were progressive depictions of women.

this is america god damn it

is it possible to find stoner comedies funny if you don't smoke pot?

yes

that question was like designed for me to answer!!!!!

yes

I just saw gus van sants last days and it was hilarious

lool

i loved lamps movie

Well, at this point, I'd tend to think of any depiction of women that are less cartoon like or less prop-to-male-ego as being progressive. But hey what do I know?

they should make a gus van sants last days movie for lady gaga where its just a camera following her around grunting

she can smoke pot if that'll make american women happy or something

did she die or something?

i don't think i understand this thread, actually

gus vant should make a movie thats 3/4 beautifully lit shots of teenage girls playing super mario galaxy 2 in their messy bedrooms

but lamp where are the bongs in this idea

what about 25 y/o girls?

i'm up for gus van sant and lars von trier taking over G4 TV.

Yeah, I don't know about making a movie about teenage girls or 20-somethings to fulfill a thread about female Peter Pan syndrome anyway, seeing as how you have to actually be old in order to refuse to grow up ha ha ha.

"YOUNG WOMAN: PIZZA!!!!!!"

Ha I just pictured this slovenly lady as a ninja turtle for a moment.
please continue.

is it possible to find stoner comedies funny if you don't smoke pot?

Many of the late Seventies stoner movies were made under the assumption that showing people using drugs automatically = hilarity. Cheech and Chong was a major and welcome exception, since their humor was as much based on being Latino/multicultural hippies in LA as it was based on drugs.

http://publish.uwo.ca/~dmann/GW%20girls.jpg

See, I'm a person like this. I play video games and watch cartoons and sit around on the couch and refuse to grow up and still wear band tshirts and etc etc

And you know who has the biggest problem with this? Other damn women. Thank you very much good nite.

(men love it, for some reason)

I think we found our lead:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_eLZccgjR5n0/SF_IrNLvKGI/AAAAAAAAA60/YKflcLLnkWY/s320/Frances+High+Times.jpg

would absolutely watch a movie about frances mcdormand + weed

And we have a title: In Search of Major Nuggs.

somebody make this happen

yah ghost world is a really excellent eg. of girls whose relationship w/ *self actualisation* is only tenuously via work and men, and in the end both are rejected as the means to that partic. end. Or like High Art where the initial "rationality" of the main male character gradually seems more and more ridiculous and then kindof mysoginistic and the interesting and pretty awesome characters are middle heroin addicts. I guess the problem your setting up is that you still want that narrative where the female characters self discovery is via men or work but tbh both are pretty insulting. I know that the flipside of this, when female characters are just cogwheels in the main story is insulting to women, but its also insulting to men in a way that kindof doesn't matter so much(?) but becomes more obvious if you reverse it and also if you're looking out for that kind of thing.

high art is a good one! i haven't seen that in a while.

its also insulting to men

i agree; think i said so in one of my incomprehensible posts upthread but i refuse to check.

i havent watched it in awhile but i think lovely & amazing kinda fits what youre talking about hs? im sure youve seen it but catherine keener's character is kinda aimless/uncertain but still interesting? idk im not really sure what you guyz are talking about, really

yeah, every nicole holofcener movie fits tbh; i think my "complaint" inasmuch as it's real is that there aren't more "women's movies" like holofcener's. it's not a real complaint tbh, just me probably needing a creative outlet of some kind. keener's character in walking and talking fits the bill, too.

i think it was nina power that was writing about how women are never allowed have scenes together in movies that do not revolve around a male character (or children? i wish i could remember better). that's a pretty good litmus test for how realistic the attempt at least is probably.

it's the bechdel test; i think kate referenced it upthread

did she mention where i was reading it lately bc thats annoying.

oh lol it was feministing i think oops. i knew i read it when we were posting on the feminist blog thread so thats prolly y

haha was it here?

xp nm!

wait it WAS nina power

http://infinitethought.cinestatic.com/index.php/site/index/her_masters_voice/

lol pointless...

yeah, every nicole holofcener movie fits tbh; i think my "complaint" inasmuch as it's real is that there aren't more "women's movies" like holofcener's

i think its a legit complaint - i watch a lot of movies & cant really think of v many that have particularly 'realistic' female protagonists.

i do feel like cría cuervos wld be a good double feature with the title movie (this has nothing to do with anything but me thinking it)

the fact that the bechdel test even exists and that most films probably fail dismally especially films made for women is shocking to me.

also Volver I think is a good example maybe. though wrt *realistic* ymmv

i really liked Volver!

yeah its a great movie! but its an almodovar movie and i dont think hes really going for "realistic" so much as something kindof mythic or abstract, its kindof depressing then that those abstractions are much more realistic and human than most movie characters.

wow that was a really dumb post

Yeah, there's a website that tests (almost every) movie as it comes out (and a lot of older ones, too) as to whether they pass Bechdel or not. It's really really depressing how many films - including some of my favourites! - just utterly fail it.

But then again, that apology for Slash that I posted on my blog a few weeks ago went into that whole thing, how so much of the universe of Slash is a way of making sense how we, as women, deal with and relate to a whole realm of pop culture from which females are pretty much excluded. But it's probably too early in the morning to get into that whole phenomenon and I'm still o_0 at the Lady In The Water trailer that someone just posted on the Inception thread because, honestly, I thought that was a pisstake until I googled it.

(Like, this is why I have spent so much of my life uninterested in Film as an art form because it's perhaps even more gender imbalanced than the music industry if that's even *possible* and then I start screaming and I just can't stop.)

i havent seen this but i feel like maybe it ticks a lot of my boxes as listed so far itt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgwjTy_cohg

esp as we mentioned cholodenko already and I srsly love High Art but it doesnt really seem like she ever tried to make that movie again?

I'm sure it's probably a perfectly good film but that preview just ticks so many of my ARGH HAET boxes instantly. I mean, maybe it subverts the expectations it sets up but I've got a pretty negative emotional response already. (Yeah, OK, I very clearly have "irresponsible dad issues")

High Art looks interesting, though, I might have to check that out.

idk its got mark ruffalo in it for a start

That's a "do not watch this film" tick for me, right off the bat. ;-)

but also, like "nontraditionalfamilies" and I think it looks kindof blase about a lot of things like lesbian having affair w/ guy doesn't mean she's not *really* a lesbian.

i think you really need the accent in blasé for it to scan

But then again, that apology for Slash

Sorry for the hijack, but the one good thing about the teenybopper crowd that came in to slash with fanfiction.com is that they didn't feel the need to write so many Apologies, Justifications, and Explainations for it. They didn't have the guilt feelings that much of the old guard had. (No, I'm not talking about you, Kate.)

No, this explanation of it was actually requested by someone who was trying to to frame it into a talk about queer sexuality.

So it wasn't an "OMG, Slash, it's so awful but we love it anyway" but trying to explain why it wasn't actually queer (or if it was, it wasn't for the reasons that he thought it was queer).

Not a question of guilt or justification at all, more a "please don't try to call this something that it isn't."

Anyway, I'm not so sure what's wrong with justifications and explanations anyway. It doesn't necessarily have to do with guilt, more a kind of amazement when for half your life, you think you are THE ONLY PERSON doing this, to suddenly meet other people who are JUST LIKE YOU, then you kind of want to talk about it, what you're doing and why.

(In that way, perhaps it does have parallels with queerness.)

(But, this is not a slash thread and I have no wish to make it into one.)

I'd see "the kids are alright." Plax what do you mean by it looks kindof blase about a lot of things like lesbian having affair w/ guy doesn't mean she's not *really* a lesbian. Are you saying the movie is able to look past the affair in defining what lesbian means or that the affair means she's not *really* a lesbian in the movie to make her character more "normal"? Or something different? To me it seemed like a pretty natural exploration of human relationships. I don't really think "straight" or "gay" are always mutually exclusive terms and I haven't seen the movie but I like that its a story about working through a marriage. I have my own shit with marriages and the capability for ltr's to last so I like it when movies show people getting through things.

i'm not exactly sure how slash isn't queer -- that's just my initial reaction, tho. do you mind posting a link to your post on that?

It's not queer because it's written by and written *for* an audience of (mostly straight) females. In most cases, it's about as queer as the standard "lesbian scene" in mainstream hetero porn. It is the sexuality of the producers and consumers (who are, indeed, sometimes queer, especially when writing for one another) which counts, not the acts depicted.

But otherwise, no thanks, I really don't want to post a link to my blog on as public a forum as ILX.

queer does not mean gay btw

I do know that.

But unless you are expanding the definition to queer to mean *everything* that specifically not heteronormative straight cis male (which would make it so wide as to be a meaningless term) - no, slash is still not queer.

also peacocks, i meant it the way you meant it. I think a lot of the time if a character in a movie has an affair w/ a character of the same sex if they are gay or vice versa, it almost gets played as an unmasking(?) like revealing their true sexuality. It seems like this movie isn't really trapped in that kind of strict definition of sexuality, so yeah she can be attracted to the mark ruffalo character and i really cant blame her tbh w/o having it making her *really* straight. Like, i think the movie would still "treat" her character like a lesbian character and not like "oh so you're bi" or w/e bs you usually get stuck w/.

yeah but queer i think is more like *strategies* for *subverting* normative codes, esp. wrt sexuality. and there is an extent to which slash attempts to idk *female* the gaze (and also tends to end up w/ a lot of guy on guy action) that kindof has a lot to do with what "queer" is. I havent read your post yet, that's just an initial reaction idk.

anecdotal evidence but the only slash authors I have any personal knowledge of are a lesbian couple who write m/m Buffy fics

slash authors i know are all lesbians, too (maybe some of the same as elmo)

(xp)

that is a good read, plax. and – for the purpose of analogue – it would be a hard argument to make that 'XXX LESBIAN ACTION' porn by/for men is not 'queer' in at least a notional sense.

K i understand if you don't want to post a public link but i would like to read it, if u want to webmail me the link, w/e

yeah me too!

I dunno, I'm kind of uncomfortable with this idea of automatically taking *everything* that is the huge, over half the human experience that is *female* and dumping it into the catch-all otherising bucket that is "Queer" - because kind of implicit in the idea of "Queer" to me is the idea of something being "odd or unusual" and something that is 51% of the world is, you know, not implicitly odd or unusual.

The idea of "femaling" the gaze is absolutely implicit in slash, and that was half of my argument. That this dude said that slash was painting straight faces queer and I said "oh no it's not, it's painting male faces female".

Yeah, I think that female and queer have a lot in common and a lot of overlap and can stand to learn a lot from one another. But to automatically assign everything that is "female" straight into the "queer" category is really missing the point and giving the StraightCisMale a kind of authority and implicit normativity that I don't think that the numbers can really claim.

But we've had this argument before, and I don't think we're ever going to see eye to eye on it.

p.s. I tried webmailing the link (at least to Elmo) but it didn't go through so argh.

Anyway, I got a meeting now so I gotta get offline. I'll try re-mailing the web link when I get out if ILX is behaving.

But to automatically assign everything that is "female" straight into the "queer" category is really missing the point and giving the StraightCisMale a kind of authority and implicit normativity that I don't think that the numbers can really claim.

I toally agree.

Plax, yeaaaah, I thought that's what you meant. Thanks for clarifying.

idk we've all kindof expressed dissatisfaction w/ the roles assigned to women in movies and y'know representations of anyone outside of StraightCis(white?)Male characters. Like I think there is an authority there whether we like it or not.

Also its not the same to say that because something is Queer it is not something else. I mean Queerness as a discipline obviously grows out of feminism and lesbian feminism in partic. So yeah I can *sort of* see where your discomfort is coming from, but at the same time I don't think it's fair to say that it's *not* queer either when it seems to share a lot of ground w/ queer methods of subversion/destabilisation/disidentification and esp. with gender as something to be toyed with: "oh no it's not, it's painting male faces female".

but like OBV you know a lot more about this than me so i'm gonna shut up now.

hah, this is really not where i saw this going when i revived this thread. i really thought it was just gonna be me and horseshoe posting cute pictures of mark ruffalo but this works too!

still

http://www.thecinemasource.com/moviesdb/images/Mark_Ruffalo%20-%205%20-%20Collateral.jpg

http://www.manhattanmoviemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/mark-ruffalo-20070915-312120.jpg

haha aw :)
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b74/righteouskate/mark.jpg
<3 his hair in this pic

ps. naming things always gets tricky. The word "queer" does still read negatively although I think it has come a long way in being kind of a liberating term. I think maybe in the case of painting male faces female, queer could be appropriate because it has to do with picturing something differently than what it is and it doesn't have to be a judgement. Maybe I am taking things too much at face-value.

yeah, i think the problem here is basically that Queer as a discipline grants itself a pretty wide remit. It's not that its trying to appropriate female perspectives or to label them as an effect or subheading of queer perspectives. I mean there has been a reaction in lgbt studies as well, where there is a move away from the idea of queerness, which is distinct from lgbt studies, because its focus really is not longer specifically about gay and lesbian issues (and as a consequence, has become too abstract to deal w/ sexuality as a *physical* practice) but specifically *about* this destabilisation of -normativity.

maybe we should have a slash discussion thread?

p.s. RIP transformers slash thread ;__;

We should, yes. (I'd create one, but I'm on Zing.)

i can start if for you so but don't really have that much to say?

i am interested in hearing more of a discussion tho

because its focus really is not longer specifically about gay and lesbian issues (and as a consequence, has become too abstract to deal w/ sexuality as a *physical* practice) but specifically *about* this destabilisation of -normativity.
^
this is interesting and exciting. I am interested in the discussion and learning more although I'm not really familiar with slash or its implications. Until this thread it was more that guy in guns n roses to me than sexy fanfic/gender theory.

SLASH! this is the thread where we talk about fan inspired pornographic fiction. why? bc it raises issues of gender and politics maybe idk

per the discussion about fuckup women in comedy

http://jezebel.com/5632783/judd-apatow-is-finally-feeling-the-ladies

cool; officially anticipating that show

missing plax tbh

glad its official

Plax is where?

month long hiatus, right? I miss him. I would also watch that show.

he's fine - he's gonna visit America soon, iirc

Has anyone here seen TINY FURNITURE?

it tends to be rather small, doesn't it?

i'm just going to substitute links to molly lambert articles for my own thoughts from now on. you're welcome.

wish i didnt have to give grantland traffic to read this

I like the "sidenotes" -- which seem to be part footnotes, part jokey asides a la Colbert's "The Word."

i am going to look for a thisrecording post that says something similar for you, ade!

also it has to be said, re:

if you are thinking of *actually* stalking mark ruffalo, give me a heads up and we can plot strategies.

― plax (ico), Wednesday, August 18, 2010 6:17 PM (11 months ago) Bookmark

<3

Horseshoe I may or may not have composed a short poem about you in my head the other night in which I rhymed Buffalo and Ruffalo. I realize I'm probably not the first person to do this but I was a little to excited when I made that connection.

no weirdo

haha its ok i gave in and read it! i agree with her conclusion, though i dont really buy that cameron diaz is unable to "convincingly play boring"

x-post "too" excited - dammit

haha <3 <3 <3

xp yeah i have to say i don't dig cameron diaz the way she seems to. she is much broader-minded than i.

she's great in There's Something About Mary and acceptable in BJM but I don't think she's capable of carrying a film.

she was the best thing in Vanilla Sky, and up until the plot drives off a cliff at the end of the movie she is the glue holding Knight and Day together

also I thought she was great in The Mask

you couldn't pay me to sit through any of those movies (in the case of the Mask, you couldn't pay me to sit through it again)

Vanilla Sky was terrible, but Knight and Day was enjoyable until the stupid ending

I haven't seen The Mask since it was in theaters but I enjoyed it, although I do wish it had been as bloody as the comic book

Aww I kinda liked Bad Teacher. It was funny. I was entertained.

i like the idea of making a movie about that woman, for sure

i haven't seen bad teacher

now i don't need to because molly lambert has seen it for me

heh i dont think molly lambert saw it

yeah its she just says that is poorly-reviewed (and worries that means the death of female comedies) but... i thought 'bad teacher' actually did p well at the box office and had decent word of mouth?

I used to have an awesome promo t-shirt for this movie

xp - we were gonna see horrible bosses instead, but it was sold out, so we saw bad teacher instead, because the friend i went with said they were kinda the same thing.

The article was posted the day before "Bad Teacher" came out.

The movie had a $20 million dollar budget and made over $151 million dollars.

so, um, there are some assumptions there that weren't actually borne out by reality

it's well-written total rong, tho

the parts that aren't about bad teacher specifically aren't rong! lay off my molly lambert.

the parts that aren't about bad teacher specifically aren't rong!

well sure, but it's an argument against a situation that never actually happened so it ends up coming across as a well-reasoned, convincingly argued viewpoint from someone who doesn't actually know what they're talking about

lay off my molly lambert.

whoops

i don't know, it's just about making movies about women? i can't think of a movie about a party girl as protagonist since sweetest thing actually? maybe i will turn out to be rong because i never even see movies anymore but i vibe with the paranoia about movie industry types deciding that you can't sell that kind of movie, being a movie about a woman who gets to be a person.

i vibe with the paranoia could be my epitaph, really

the point is that molly lambert did not in fact see bad teacher for you so now you have to see it yourself

i can't think of a movie about a party girl as protagonist

House Bunny?

i haven't seen house bunny. i guess i could see both and return to this thread with informed opinions.

The article builds most of its thesis on contrasting two current movies, one successful (Bridesmaids) and one unsuccessful (Bad Teacher), using one to show how a female raunch comedy could work and the other to fear that Hollywood is going to pull another post-The Sweetest Thing embargo on female-led R comedies, leading to situations like people completely misreading/underappreciating women in comedy a la Christina Applegate in Anchorman. The argument doesn't really work if Bad Teacher is successful (which it was!).

but that's still only two movies. the thing she's talking about is still a thing.

i probably should have found a different molly lambert blog post to be fair.

i don't like my theorizing to be bogged down by facts anyway

House Bunny is good/funny and I heart Anna Faris but otoh it is totally about girls trying to get guys to sleep with them. otoh, most of them are nerdy/conventionally unattractive girls (with a glaring exception)

xp

oh anna faris! she knows about this thing! i should totally see that.

it's her best movie imho

tbh when she was talking about a female "Porky's", my first thought was "I wonder if 'The House Bunny' fits that description"

(in the article, I mean)

What would a Porky's for girls look like? Would it make guys uncomfortable to see physically attractive men objectified and treated like nothing but decorative sex objects in a movie about female nerds on a quest to get laid?

^^^a fair amount of the House Bunny meets this criteria

the difference is the nerdy girls are being coached/cheerled by ex-Playboy Bunny airhead Anna Faris

i saw bad teacher and it was a turd.

Aw, I missed that you'd revived this thread, horseshoe. I like when you do that.

There was some interesting commentary in that Molly Lambert article, but mainly more the background hum stuff because I confess I've not seen either Bridesmaids (even though every feminist blog in the universe tried to make out like it was some kind of feminist ~duty~ to see this film) or Bad Teacher because, basically, I don't really like comedies, and maybe the thing I like even less than a comedy is a *raunch* comedy - because I am Britishes and squeamish perhaps - or maybe more because so much raunch is so male oriented and, well, anti-woman - which is the thing that she starts to get at in that article.

I don't know that I want to see a film about nerdy girls treating one-dimensional males as objects, so I guess maybe I'm in agreement with her? But I have, since the start of this thread, wanted to see films about, well, nerdy girls. Ach, even when I start threads like this, I realise I just don't really ~understand~ cinema enough to participate in threads like this.

because I am Britishes and squeamish perhaps

Huh. I've always that you were an American just living in England.

I feel like I've explained my nationality a hundred times on ILX, but I was a Britishes living in the US for many years, who moved back to the UK. I get that that's kinda confusing sometimes. :-)

Oh see yeah I was confused then. Sorry!

Sigh.

So either the Guardian needs to stop stealing op/Ed pieces off ILX or this might be a Thing now?

http://m.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/mar/25/slacker-back-female-lena-dunham?cat=culture&type=article

think it is a thing now. lot of commentary in recent years about liz lemon as a novel female slacker archetype, and similar talk last year about bridesmaids clearing space for women's stories in the slacker-buddy gross-out comedy genre. idea whose time has come, imo.

what a long way we've come since Reality Bites?

My cooperating teacher told me the other day she was glad I grew out of my "slacker lifestyle," and I thought heh heh heh, inside, to myself.

Now that I'm not married it's back stronger than ever.

so much of that article seems like it could have been written in the early-mid 90s, complete with contrasts with the high-heeled go-getter type, which had so many 80s associations. I know the news are about novelty and contemporaneity, but I just wish articles like this would address the fact that we've "been there" or in a very similar place, like, less than 20 years ago.

Yeah now I'm not employed any more I'm slacker than slack... and oddly not that interested in slacker humour any more.

like, I'd be more interested in reading about the perceived differences between now and then, as opposed to what feels like historical ignorance or just solipsism -- but maybe we are supposed to read that into it, that that is an element the reader is supposed to provide?

http://www.movieactors.com/photos-stars/bridget-fonda-jackie7.jpg

her hair looks way too tidy to be slacking

like, I'd be more interested in reading about the perceived differences between now and then, as opposed to what feels like historical ignorance or just solipsism

i think a lot of this recent talk comes in unstated response to the rise of dude slacker comedy (it's always sunny in philadelphia) and the persistence of the "lazy stupid dad" archetype on TV, coupled with the huge cinematic success of judd apatow's "shlubby slacker dude hooks up with gorgeous high achiever" formula (plus stuff like harold and kumar). in recent years, the slacker/buddy formula has been a huge hit, but significant female characters have tended to be objects of reformative desire, or simply nonexistent.

her hair looks way too tidy to be slacking

it's true, plus the steely gaze

xp yeah but there was quite a bit of that in the 80s too! I feel like this is less of a new phenomenon than a stage in a cycle that has already gone around at least once.

"dude slacker comedy (it's always sunny in philadelphia)"

these guys always have some scheme cooking -- sure they don't follow through half the time, but they are way too motivated and full of hustle to be slackers. how is liz lemon a slacker? because she likes sandwiches?? sounds like some slack-shaming going on.

also Dee Reynolds

how is liz lemon a slacker? because she likes sandwiches?? sounds like some slack-shaming going on.

she's this weirdly self-contradictory high-achieving slacker. star wars references, stained sweats, farts, love of sandwiches & pizza on the one hand, den mother to a bunch of loser dudes on the other. re: sunny in philly, i figure that lazy scrubs with a bunch of ridiculous & unworkable schemes still equals slackerz.

Trying to "have it all," buying a second apartment, worrying about waning chances of motherhood – slacky slack city.

yeah, i know, but it's like they tried to find a way to hybridize "aging slacker" and "successful working girl"

plus i'm talking more about how she's occasionally been described than really trying to make the "lemon = slacker" case myself

Liz Lemon is almost the opposite of a slacker: a socially awkward workaholic. Tracy and the writers are the slackers, surely.
3xpost Ha, OK, the point seems to have been made.

(Weird, my page had apparently not been refreshed since yesterday.)

Just saw this on TV. Not bad!