Thursday Already?
Jan. 6th, 2011 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
handful_ofdustAmazing how time flies. At any rate:
My last two films--rented--were Rodriguez's Machete and Case 39, directed by Christian Alvart, the same guy responsible for Antibodies and Pandorum. The former is just as crazy as you expect--I admire it for its completely committed 'sploitation attitude, which allows Eva Mendes to appear utterly buck-ass naked within the first ten minutes and not look ridiculous, even when she's pulling a cellphone out of (one assumes) her chocha. See also: Danny Trejo having offscreen sex with both Michelle Rodriguez and Jessica Alba, who's as un-whitebread here as I've ever seen her. But although it's extremely enjoyable while you're in it it still goes by pretty damn fast, leaving no aftertaste whatsoever behind.
Case 39, OTOH, is a bit of a puzzler. All the performances are surprisingly good, but the film itself has a distinct MoTW aura--maybe the cinematography, pacing, music, or all three? Shot on location in Vancouver, with Jodelle Ferland playing main CanCon duty and Callum Keith Rennie for back-up. It starts out with Renee Zellwegger "rescuing" Ferland from her parents, who seem to be murderously, hyper-religiously insane; they believe Ferland's irredeemably evil, waiting until she's asleep to stuff her in the oven and turn it on high. Zellwegger then petitions the court to let her quasi-adopt Ferland, who she's fallen in maternal love with. Quickly, however, she finds out that the parents may have had a point...
Ferland, as ever, is superb--and so is Zellwegger, though her turnaround seems monumentally abrupt. It's interesting to note that the narrative works just as well (if not better) when you assume that instead of a "demon" in human form, Ferland might "just" be a telepath who's instinctually learned to manipulate the fears of people around her; even her own infernal self-image may be the direct result of cherry-picking her very Roman Catholic parents' brains. But though the film contains many truly disturbing moments, the denouement is vaguely unsatisfying. It needs...space to breathe, more room, a more novelistic approach. Can a person like this be re-trained to heal rather than harm? Does she actually want love? Is this what Professor X would be like, if he hadn't had the right sort of parents? The film doesn't know, or care.
One way or the other, it all stinks of studio interference. I'm not surprised Alvart went back to Austria, especially after the one-two punch of this vs. Pandorum's all-but-burial.
Okay, so: Today I need to take all the rethinking I did yesterday re "Lagan", make those notes, and try o break back into the story proper--plus input the notes for Chapter One of A Tree of Bones, etc. And wait for my rewrite template...
My last two films--rented--were Rodriguez's Machete and Case 39, directed by Christian Alvart, the same guy responsible for Antibodies and Pandorum. The former is just as crazy as you expect--I admire it for its completely committed 'sploitation attitude, which allows Eva Mendes to appear utterly buck-ass naked within the first ten minutes and not look ridiculous, even when she's pulling a cellphone out of (one assumes) her chocha. See also: Danny Trejo having offscreen sex with both Michelle Rodriguez and Jessica Alba, who's as un-whitebread here as I've ever seen her. But although it's extremely enjoyable while you're in it it still goes by pretty damn fast, leaving no aftertaste whatsoever behind.
Case 39, OTOH, is a bit of a puzzler. All the performances are surprisingly good, but the film itself has a distinct MoTW aura--maybe the cinematography, pacing, music, or all three? Shot on location in Vancouver, with Jodelle Ferland playing main CanCon duty and Callum Keith Rennie for back-up. It starts out with Renee Zellwegger "rescuing" Ferland from her parents, who seem to be murderously, hyper-religiously insane; they believe Ferland's irredeemably evil, waiting until she's asleep to stuff her in the oven and turn it on high. Zellwegger then petitions the court to let her quasi-adopt Ferland, who she's fallen in maternal love with. Quickly, however, she finds out that the parents may have had a point...
Ferland, as ever, is superb--and so is Zellwegger, though her turnaround seems monumentally abrupt. It's interesting to note that the narrative works just as well (if not better) when you assume that instead of a "demon" in human form, Ferland might "just" be a telepath who's instinctually learned to manipulate the fears of people around her; even her own infernal self-image may be the direct result of cherry-picking her very Roman Catholic parents' brains. But though the film contains many truly disturbing moments, the denouement is vaguely unsatisfying. It needs...space to breathe, more room, a more novelistic approach. Can a person like this be re-trained to heal rather than harm? Does she actually want love? Is this what Professor X would be like, if he hadn't had the right sort of parents? The film doesn't know, or care.
One way or the other, it all stinks of studio interference. I'm not surprised Alvart went back to Austria, especially after the one-two punch of this vs. Pandorum's all-but-burial.
Okay, so: Today I need to take all the rethinking I did yesterday re "Lagan", make those notes, and try o break back into the story proper--plus input the notes for Chapter One of A Tree of Bones, etc. And wait for my rewrite template...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-01-07 04:02 am (UTC)