Once again I'm sitting here, going into Jonas withdrawal. Not even LG15 withdrawal, but straight up missing Jonas. At the rate EQAL's going, Jackson Davis will be a big movie star by the time they get back to the Resistance...okay, and I would have no objection to that whatsoever. The guy can act. Hollywood needs him. But so does LG15. Aside from Jackson's acting skills that leave me kind of speechless and his lovely blue eyes, I also have a whole lot of love for the character of Jonas himself. And goddammit, guys, I miss him. I miss him as if he were actually a friend of mine I haven't talked to in months - only if he were really a friend of mine, I'd be more appropriately terrified right about now, since he's, you know, being held by the Order. But no, Jonas is a fictional character, and I am not on any kind of astral plane with him. I just miss him. So here are some of the all-time Jonas highlights of LG15, in my humble opinion, to get myself and other Jonas fangirls through this time of uncertainty. (I'd yell "LOOK AT WHAT YOU'RE DOING TO ME, EQAL!" but that'd be taking it a little too far. I know we're in a recession. Honestly, no, I have nothing better to do. Which should be a compliment, because it means I'm taking LG15 really seriously. Your art is being appreciated, EQAL! I-I'll donate to you. I have a PayPal account. I'll pay Jackson's salary...okay, eating my words now.)
In particular, I seem to have a bit of a weakness for angry, angsting, or emo Jonas. For one thing, his acting skills are at their finest tuned during some of his more angry, badass scenes. I'm not quite sure why I enjoy the emoing so much. I usually shy away from very sad storylines and scenes, but there's something about those scenes in Lg15 that pulls me in. It's the one canon where watching something sad actually makes me feel good. Cathartic, probably.
I'm Done
I can't even bring myself to make a drunken Jonas or angsting Jonas joke about this one, because it's too sad. The "I love you Bree!" was used in one of those "the story so far" videos, or some such thing, and it left such an impact on me that it's one of the quintessential Jonas moments for me. He loved that girl. He did everything he could to save her. And in the end, he lost her. This is grieving. He cries watching videos of them together, goes to the water where she once swam and sinks himself into it, tries to feel her. The person who's moved into the house she lived in has no idea; the world is moving on, but Jonas knows. And here he grieves.
Bullet to the Head
This video is a perfect example of Jonas's badassedry.
Daniel: ...but we're not murderers, right?
Jonas: We'll see.
And then he tells Carl that he's going to kill him.
He wields a gun and he's hardcore about it. Then Carl pwns him with the mention of P. Monkey living in a box under Jonas's bed, and all of the hurt that made Jonas what he is at this point comes flooding back into our consciousness - and his. Jonas has experienced loss. He has no reason to be afraid to fight, anymore, like an assassin whose wife and baby have been murdered and who now kills with no remorse. In other words: you cannot fuck with Jonas Wharton.
But it's the way he delivers the very last line of the video that really gives me shivers. Quiet, but determined. Ready to kill.
(I also have to point out the excellent Youtube description for this video: "Jonas went INSANE!" You sing it, Danielbeast! *laughs*)
Last Words
Here we have one of those quintessential angsty Jonas videos - the beer bottles alone fit the description.
"You don't know about what it is to-to fight; to really, truly fight. And to lose. You don't know me, okay, and you don't know what I've lost."
If I had to pick one quote to represent everything involving Jonas in the LG15 canon, it would be that. By this point, Jonas is a man broken, and he has lost virtually everything, and everyone he loves. Bree and Gina are both dead, and he couldn't save them. His parents still have no memory of their life with him, and he's separated from everybody else he cares about. He lives in hiding. He has nothing left, but no longer does this leave him willing to throw his own life away and fight. Now that his loved ones are safe, to the best of his knowledge, he's given up this fight. He's obviously in denial, because he knows deep down that he can't just let these girls die and that he has to take down the Order; it almost seems like it's destiny that either Jonas will take down the Order, or the Order will take down Jonas. But as Maggie makes her first attempts at convincing Jonas to join the Resistance, he wants none of it. And his pain is palpable.
HOLY SH%T!!!
This one is gratuitous. I just wanted some hot Jonas makeout action. But more seriously, I'm a real romance and relationship addict in my fiction, and this video gets to me - not only because it took a long time for something like this to happen in LG15, but because it was the only time it got to happen for Jonas and Bree. Jonas had no idea how short-lived it would be. It's heartbreaking.
Ah, here's one more while I'm on the topic of Jonas and Bree.
She's Missing
I can't think of a good enough word to describe the moment that they share in this one.
He loved her.
And the way he kisses her on the forehead...I love moments like that. *incoherent babbles of a hopeless romantic*
I know there's more, but those are the ones that come to me right away (the first three in particular). Maybe next time I'll post some Reed highlights, though there is less of him to go around, given he only showed up last fall. For now, I pose a question to my fellow Jonas fans: what are your favourite Jonas moments?
(All quotes in this article are copied from the transcripts posted on LGPedia. Thank you to the hardworking lonelycrackers who transcribed and posted them!
Bonus: Props to whoever can recognize the original and significance of this entry's title!)
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Edgefest 2009
I've never really blogged about music here beyond that entry about A.F.I. album poetry. Wings of My Heart is my primary music blog, but I feel that entries about English language music would fit in better here than on an Asian music blog, so they'll be going here. Enjoy!
I went to Edgefest to see A.F.I. and Billy Talent. I caught a bit of Alexisonfire as well, but that was it. My Edgefest experience was short compared to other people's, but I knew exactly who I was going for and saw them, so it was worth it for me.
Absolute highlights of the night:
1. During A.F.I.'s set, they were about to play Totalimmortal.
Davey: I don't know when the last time we played this song was.
Jade: We played it in rehearsal yesterday.
PWNED! XDD I DIED.
2. Someone threw a rubber chicken onto the stage during Billy Talent's set. Ben just couldn't let go of the fact that someone had thrown a rubber chicken of all things. At one point he starts going, "You want your chicken back now?" etc. Then they start playing Pins and Needles, an emotional song...
Ben: This song is about chickens.
HE KILLED HIS OWN SONG BUT LOL. I was getting into the mood for the song and then he said that and I died laughing, omg.
3. People were throwing around muddy things and a mud-soaked shirt landed directly on top of my head. So I came home caked in mud. XD That was special.
And now for the details!
As the bus I was on was pulling up to the show, I could hear Alexisonfire playing Young Cardinals. I was definitely happy that the bus went right to the show and I didn't have to do any walking around, though there were other kids en route to the show on my bus anyway. There was no lineup to get in, and there was an area filled with outhouses that had no real lineup, so I really didn't have to deal with lineups at all, thank goodness. Convenience, how I love thee!
I only half paid attention to Alexisonfire, and mostly just tried to get a feel for the place so I'd know where everything was for future reference. It was muddy as hell because of the on-and-off rain (which never came down too hard, fortunately), so people were rolling around and sliding in the mud as they do at these shows. It was impossible not to at least get your feet and pant legs covered, so I felt bad for Hiro (my best friend who also came, but who got there later than I did) who I knew would be wearing his nice shoes - and he was. A white pair, no less. D: I did, however, manage not to slip and fall into the mud at any point, which is at least one thing I can be grateful for, even though I did wind up dirty soon enough.
I was pretty restless waiting for A.F.I. by myself, but finally they started, about ten minutes earlier than they'd been scheduled to play. I had a decent enough spot; at first I was far enough back that I had a good view of the entire stage, but then I decided to move closer because even though it was harder to see over people there, I wanted a closer view of the band, having never seen them before. Hiro got there and we found each other a few songs in, during Days of the Phoenix, which was the only song from The Art of Drowning, but I can't complain. They seem to go a lot farther back in their repertoire than Dir en grey do, as they played Totalimmortal from the All Hallow's EP, A Single Second from Shut Your Mouth and Open Your Eyes, and one of the first songs they ever wrote that was on some compilation (Love is a Many Splendored Thing). Davey said "If you know the words sing along, because you'll be one of the five people who know it," or some such thing. I was disappointed that it's not a song I'm too familiar with, so I couldn't prove myself to be a hardcore fan. XD
Aside from the Jade pwning Davey highlight, also notable was the technical fail that occurred a few times. During Summer Shudder fairly early on in the set, Jade's guitar died, and he wandered back out onto the stage shrugging and just went to his mic and did the harmonies for that chorus, oh my god. What a sight, the guitarist standing empty-handed at his mic doing the harmonies. XD Then before the second verse as Hunter and Adam went on playing, Davey was like "We've played this song without a guitar before, it's okay." XDD The guitar came back soon enough though. Later on Hunter's bass went out between songs, he got it back, and then Jade's guitar went out again, but none of that happened in the middle of a song again. Good times. This was actually their first show in six months, and their first show of any real length in like two years, apparently. It felt really great to be there for that. <3 href="http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/36441179.html">here at ohnotheydidnt; I never remember these things myself. They did a David Bowie cover, but I didn't even know the song. Davie was like "Do you guys remember the 70's?" and I was like "No, you're old compared to us." XD
I'll also mention Davey mentioning that a member of Fucked Up saved him from getting mugged once. He said to ask the Fucked Up member about it sometime. XD I would like to hear that story.
It was during A.F.I.'s set that the muddy shirt landed on my head. Hiro ducked and it missed him, and he and I were both kind of in shock that out of everybody in the audience, it hit me. I was kind of stunned and marvelling at the crazy bad luck I have sometimes, but I didn't get too worked up about it - it's Edgefest, who cares? People took a picture of me, lmao. I'd been making fun of the mud-covered people in my head before that, but then I had to stop because I'd become one of them. Lawl.
A.F.I. were finished a full hour before Billy Talent were scheduled to come on, so I got a chocolate-dipped ice cream cone and just chilled with Hiro. I think Billy Talent came on a little earlier than they were supposed to as well. Hiro and I stood a lot farther back for this because we'd both seen Billy Talent before anyway, and we didn't want to get near the mud again. By standing farther back we had a full view of the stage, anyway. But since the band members were so small from far away anyway, I didn't try to watch them that much, and only made any real effort to watch Ben. Because I love Ben. <3
Here's a setlist. I virtually didn't headbang at all to A.F.I., but for Billy Talent I let loose despite being waaaay in the back, and got particularly energetic during Try Honesty, because I can't not jump around and headbang during that song. <3 I love Billy Talent to death, so naturally any setlist of theirs is enjoyable for me, and I headbanged and sang along and enjoyed myself. Hiro and I kept hoping for them to segue into Standing in the Rain (as did someone whose account of the show I took a look at online just now, heh), since it was raining all day and all, but they never did wind up playing it. Ahh well. (The one time they did so during that Intimate & Interactive on Much Music when it was raining was awesome, but sadly I was at home watching that on TV.) I was happy to hear The Navy Song because it isn't usually a favourite of mine, but if I can get in the right mood to listen to a slower, sad song such as that, I can get very into it. It's quite emotional, and it gave me shivers live, helped by the fact that it was getting darker as they played it and everything looked really dusky and pretty. There was, of course, the wonderful rubber chicken moment in which Ben ruined the beginning of the emotional Pins and Needles with "This song is about chickens," but I adore that quote and will never forget it. I died. Also, pretty sure that I hadn't heard Pins and Needles live before, and I love that song!
I also enjoyed pointing out the moments where they like to drag out certain parts of songs. Considering I'd only seen one Billy Talent show before, I'm not sure how I knew about those habits as well as I did, haha. I don't usually like watching bands' performances on DVDs or whatever, but I guess I've somehow seen enough Billy Talent performances regardless. They draw out the intro to This Is How It Goes quite a bit, and then they play that part before the last chorus of Try Honesty for a long time while Ben talks. It's all part of the Billy Talent experience, so I was jokingly complaining about it. XD
One major highlight was that they played a couple of new songs that I wasn't really familiar with. I already know Turn Your Back quite well (and love it), and obviously everyone's familiar with Rusted from the Rain by now, but they also did Saint Veronika and Devil On My Shoulder, both of which I enjoyed. I think I'd heard a bit of a fan recording of the latter on Youtube at one point, because the first line sounded familiar to me, and I really liked that song. I'm definitely looking forward to the new album even more after this show.
The show ended and everyone began to leave, but I wondered if they'd do an encore, so we walked slowly. Sure enough, they came back out literally a couple of minutes later, and did Nothing to Lose. <3 And then it was over. No Standing in the Rain, but still awesome regardless.
One thing Hiro mentioned to me was that when Ben was listing all the bands he was honoured to share the stage with again, he never said anything about A.F.I. Alas, I like to uphold at the very least the illusion that the members of my favourite bands appreciate each other, so that is what it is. A.F.I. never mentioned Billy Talent either, for the record. For whatever it's worth, it did seem that Ben was mentioning Canadian bands. He also said something at one point about the audience loving Canada because it isn't America or something awesome (to me) like that, and though I have to say I love that sentiment (no offense to my American friends though, I mean it), I felt kind of bad for A.F.I, who'd just played before them and are from California. But...hey, this is Canada. You've got to expect that, particularly from the ever-political Billy Talent. Whom I love dearly.
After the show my parents picked us up, because we didn't want to deal with the insane crowds getting onto the buses. We managed to get home pretty quickly. And that, my friends, was my Edgefest experience! I washed the mud out of my hair, ate, went online for a bit, took a Tylenol and headed to bed. And I didn't rise until after 1 this afternoon. I'm still in my pajamas now. =)
I have now officially seen Billy Talent twice and A.F.I. once. And Dir en grey three times, for the favourite bands tally. Life is good, and I'm looking forward to both bands' upcoming new albums, and future shows. I believe it was Billy Talent who said they'll be playing again in the winter, so I will definitely be making time to see that. =D
I am now waiting for the Much Music Video Awards to start; I don't really want to watch the entire show, but I want to see Billy Talent's performance. Perhaps the rest of the show will be enjoyable, anyway.
I went to Edgefest to see A.F.I. and Billy Talent. I caught a bit of Alexisonfire as well, but that was it. My Edgefest experience was short compared to other people's, but I knew exactly who I was going for and saw them, so it was worth it for me.
Absolute highlights of the night:
1. During A.F.I.'s set, they were about to play Totalimmortal.
Davey: I don't know when the last time we played this song was.
Jade: We played it in rehearsal yesterday.
PWNED! XDD I DIED.
2. Someone threw a rubber chicken onto the stage during Billy Talent's set. Ben just couldn't let go of the fact that someone had thrown a rubber chicken of all things. At one point he starts going, "You want your chicken back now?" etc. Then they start playing Pins and Needles, an emotional song...
Ben: This song is about chickens.
HE KILLED HIS OWN SONG BUT LOL. I was getting into the mood for the song and then he said that and I died laughing, omg.
3. People were throwing around muddy things and a mud-soaked shirt landed directly on top of my head. So I came home caked in mud. XD That was special.
And now for the details!
As the bus I was on was pulling up to the show, I could hear Alexisonfire playing Young Cardinals. I was definitely happy that the bus went right to the show and I didn't have to do any walking around, though there were other kids en route to the show on my bus anyway. There was no lineup to get in, and there was an area filled with outhouses that had no real lineup, so I really didn't have to deal with lineups at all, thank goodness. Convenience, how I love thee!
I only half paid attention to Alexisonfire, and mostly just tried to get a feel for the place so I'd know where everything was for future reference. It was muddy as hell because of the on-and-off rain (which never came down too hard, fortunately), so people were rolling around and sliding in the mud as they do at these shows. It was impossible not to at least get your feet and pant legs covered, so I felt bad for Hiro (my best friend who also came, but who got there later than I did) who I knew would be wearing his nice shoes - and he was. A white pair, no less. D: I did, however, manage not to slip and fall into the mud at any point, which is at least one thing I can be grateful for, even though I did wind up dirty soon enough.
I was pretty restless waiting for A.F.I. by myself, but finally they started, about ten minutes earlier than they'd been scheduled to play. I had a decent enough spot; at first I was far enough back that I had a good view of the entire stage, but then I decided to move closer because even though it was harder to see over people there, I wanted a closer view of the band, having never seen them before. Hiro got there and we found each other a few songs in, during Days of the Phoenix, which was the only song from The Art of Drowning, but I can't complain. They seem to go a lot farther back in their repertoire than Dir en grey do, as they played Totalimmortal from the All Hallow's EP, A Single Second from Shut Your Mouth and Open Your Eyes, and one of the first songs they ever wrote that was on some compilation (Love is a Many Splendored Thing). Davey said "If you know the words sing along, because you'll be one of the five people who know it," or some such thing. I was disappointed that it's not a song I'm too familiar with, so I couldn't prove myself to be a hardcore fan. XD
Aside from the Jade pwning Davey highlight, also notable was the technical fail that occurred a few times. During Summer Shudder fairly early on in the set, Jade's guitar died, and he wandered back out onto the stage shrugging and just went to his mic and did the harmonies for that chorus, oh my god. What a sight, the guitarist standing empty-handed at his mic doing the harmonies. XD Then before the second verse as Hunter and Adam went on playing, Davey was like "We've played this song without a guitar before, it's okay." XDD The guitar came back soon enough though. Later on Hunter's bass went out between songs, he got it back, and then Jade's guitar went out again, but none of that happened in the middle of a song again. Good times. This was actually their first show in six months, and their first show of any real length in like two years, apparently. It felt really great to be there for that. <3 href="http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/36441179.html">here at ohnotheydidnt; I never remember these things myself. They did a David Bowie cover, but I didn't even know the song. Davie was like "Do you guys remember the 70's?" and I was like "No, you're old compared to us." XD
I'll also mention Davey mentioning that a member of Fucked Up saved him from getting mugged once. He said to ask the Fucked Up member about it sometime. XD I would like to hear that story.
It was during A.F.I.'s set that the muddy shirt landed on my head. Hiro ducked and it missed him, and he and I were both kind of in shock that out of everybody in the audience, it hit me. I was kind of stunned and marvelling at the crazy bad luck I have sometimes, but I didn't get too worked up about it - it's Edgefest, who cares? People took a picture of me, lmao. I'd been making fun of the mud-covered people in my head before that, but then I had to stop because I'd become one of them. Lawl.
A.F.I. were finished a full hour before Billy Talent were scheduled to come on, so I got a chocolate-dipped ice cream cone and just chilled with Hiro. I think Billy Talent came on a little earlier than they were supposed to as well. Hiro and I stood a lot farther back for this because we'd both seen Billy Talent before anyway, and we didn't want to get near the mud again. By standing farther back we had a full view of the stage, anyway. But since the band members were so small from far away anyway, I didn't try to watch them that much, and only made any real effort to watch Ben. Because I love Ben. <3
Here's a setlist. I virtually didn't headbang at all to A.F.I., but for Billy Talent I let loose despite being waaaay in the back, and got particularly energetic during Try Honesty, because I can't not jump around and headbang during that song. <3 I love Billy Talent to death, so naturally any setlist of theirs is enjoyable for me, and I headbanged and sang along and enjoyed myself. Hiro and I kept hoping for them to segue into Standing in the Rain (as did someone whose account of the show I took a look at online just now, heh), since it was raining all day and all, but they never did wind up playing it. Ahh well. (The one time they did so during that Intimate & Interactive on Much Music when it was raining was awesome, but sadly I was at home watching that on TV.) I was happy to hear The Navy Song because it isn't usually a favourite of mine, but if I can get in the right mood to listen to a slower, sad song such as that, I can get very into it. It's quite emotional, and it gave me shivers live, helped by the fact that it was getting darker as they played it and everything looked really dusky and pretty. There was, of course, the wonderful rubber chicken moment in which Ben ruined the beginning of the emotional Pins and Needles with "This song is about chickens," but I adore that quote and will never forget it. I died. Also, pretty sure that I hadn't heard Pins and Needles live before, and I love that song!
I also enjoyed pointing out the moments where they like to drag out certain parts of songs. Considering I'd only seen one Billy Talent show before, I'm not sure how I knew about those habits as well as I did, haha. I don't usually like watching bands' performances on DVDs or whatever, but I guess I've somehow seen enough Billy Talent performances regardless. They draw out the intro to This Is How It Goes quite a bit, and then they play that part before the last chorus of Try Honesty for a long time while Ben talks. It's all part of the Billy Talent experience, so I was jokingly complaining about it. XD
One major highlight was that they played a couple of new songs that I wasn't really familiar with. I already know Turn Your Back quite well (and love it), and obviously everyone's familiar with Rusted from the Rain by now, but they also did Saint Veronika and Devil On My Shoulder, both of which I enjoyed. I think I'd heard a bit of a fan recording of the latter on Youtube at one point, because the first line sounded familiar to me, and I really liked that song. I'm definitely looking forward to the new album even more after this show.
The show ended and everyone began to leave, but I wondered if they'd do an encore, so we walked slowly. Sure enough, they came back out literally a couple of minutes later, and did Nothing to Lose. <3 And then it was over. No Standing in the Rain, but still awesome regardless.
One thing Hiro mentioned to me was that when Ben was listing all the bands he was honoured to share the stage with again, he never said anything about A.F.I. Alas, I like to uphold at the very least the illusion that the members of my favourite bands appreciate each other, so that is what it is. A.F.I. never mentioned Billy Talent either, for the record. For whatever it's worth, it did seem that Ben was mentioning Canadian bands. He also said something at one point about the audience loving Canada because it isn't America or something awesome (to me) like that, and though I have to say I love that sentiment (no offense to my American friends though, I mean it), I felt kind of bad for A.F.I, who'd just played before them and are from California. But...hey, this is Canada. You've got to expect that, particularly from the ever-political Billy Talent. Whom I love dearly.
After the show my parents picked us up, because we didn't want to deal with the insane crowds getting onto the buses. We managed to get home pretty quickly. And that, my friends, was my Edgefest experience! I washed the mud out of my hair, ate, went online for a bit, took a Tylenol and headed to bed. And I didn't rise until after 1 this afternoon. I'm still in my pajamas now. =)
I have now officially seen Billy Talent twice and A.F.I. once. And Dir en grey three times, for the favourite bands tally. Life is good, and I'm looking forward to both bands' upcoming new albums, and future shows. I believe it was Billy Talent who said they'll be playing again in the winter, so I will definitely be making time to see that. =D
I am now waiting for the Much Music Video Awards to start; I don't really want to watch the entire show, but I want to see Billy Talent's performance. Perhaps the rest of the show will be enjoyable, anyway.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
While I've loved Mr. Poe's works since the eighth grade, it should be known that when I begin quoting The Bells, I can only be talking about one thing: Lemony Snicket. And while I do have a far longer history with the tales of the Baudelaire orphans, I discovered my love for A Series of Unfortunate Events right around the same time that I fell in love with A Telltale Heart, as a matter of fact.
It certainly took me a long time to really fall for the series. I don't remember my reaction to The Bad Beginning being read aloud to my class in the third grade; I was intrigued by similar class readings of The Wide Window in the fifth; being quite pleased by the warnings on the back covers of the books not to buy them, I bought a copy of The Ersatz Elevator and began reading it in the sixth, but never finished it; still more amused by the title of Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography, I bought and read all of that the next summer, and was thrilled by the mysteries it presented but frustrated by the lack of answers it provided.
It wasn't until I saw a couple of promotional pictures for the movie version in Girls' Life magazine, at the age of thirteen, that I decided to borrow a copy of The Hostile Hospital from my school library one day, and read the whole thing. The spark had suddenly been lit; I continued reading chronologically through to the latest book at the time, The Grim Grotto, and then started from the beginning of the series and worked my way back up to the one before THH, The Vile Village. I'd knock off most of the books in a day or two each, sometimes even reading while walking between my middle school and home, too eager to finish to even put the book down for those fifteen minutes. I paid more attention to TBB and TWW, I finally finished my copy of TEE, and I read the Unauthorized Autobiography again, with a whole new appreciation for its secrets. And I read it again. And again.
And then I saw the movie, the day it came out, skipping the afternoon of the last day of school before the Christmas break, wearing a long, flowing black skirt from the Salvation Army in honour of Violet's gorgeous black dress in the movie. And I bought the DVD and the soundtrack as soon as they came out. Somewhere along the line I also wound up in possession of a copy of every book in the series - and two copies of The Bad Beginning. But one of them came with the movie and doesn't have the same awesome cover or pages, so it mostly gathers dust on my bookshelf.
Have I mentioned that I love the deckle edges of the pages? The overall presentation of the books is such a huge part of their appeal, without a doubt. It was one of the factors that encouraged me to reread The Bad Beginning before the first Harry Potter book on Monday, honestly.
As it happens, over time we sometimes grow apart from our previous fandoms, though we harbour no dislike for them, just like with friends who we stop hanging out with or talking to even though we haven't had a fight or anything. Often your friend is too busy with cheerleading and band, and you're too busy with drama and choir and finding things to do while putting off your homework, and all of this prevents you from spending a few hours together. Likewise, when the final ASoUE book came out in the tenth grade, I was so busy with and distracted by failing math and science, singing in the choir, and performing in the school production of West Side Story that I never wound up getting further than three chapters in. To this day I have not finished the thirteenth book, aptly titled The End. I have now gotten myself to a point where I've forgotten so many details of the books that if I want to fully appreciate the last book, I would have to reread the entire series. But this summer I intend to spend a lot of time reading, and since I finally have both the motivation and the time, I can actually do it.
What inspired my plunging back into the world of Snicket this week, however, was an article I stumbled upon, announcing that there are talks of a new ASoUE movie being produced, in stop motion animation. I'm feeling a little skeptical about the whole idea; while the 2004 movie, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, was in no way perfect, I became pretty attached to Liam and Emily's portrayals of Klaus and Violet, and I had my heart so set on a sequel with them that I can't imagine a different kind of sequel now. The bit about Liam Aiken's voice now being "deeper than God" still makes the whole article worth it for me, but I'm not sure what to think about a stop motion Lemony Snicket movie, let alone a sequel now, five years later. Too little too late, or something like that. Why couldn't they just have made a sequel then...and cast me as Isadora? Was that so much to ask?
Anyway. I hadn't actually seen the movie in about four years - thanks to my copy of the DVD having been stolen by a certain "friend" I had back in the eighth grade - but on Sunday, motivated by this strange suggestion of a new movie, I walked myself over to Blockbuster and rented the movie that I was so excited to see back in December '04, popped it into my DVD player, and watched it once again.
The movie certainly has its flaws. While the individual ASoUE books are much shorter than say, the Harry Potter books, which are each made into separate movies, three whole books being packed into one movie does seem a little bit crazy, and it left them with the problem of giving the movie a truly viable climax. It was for the sake of structure that they moved the climax of the first book to the end of the movie, after the events of the second and third books, and wrote an entirely new seen to take place before the switch to the second book. It makes for a lot of rather convoluted elements to this movie, for readers of the books. Klaus asking himself, "What would Violet do?" and making the grappling hook and climbing up the tower himself instead of Violet doing it the night before the play is only one example of the bizarre changes made in the movie, and I don't even really understand why they had Klaus burn the marriage certificate instead of Violet using her left hand to sign it; did they just want to make a flashier climax for the cinema? Gag me with a spoon. The books are more subtle and intelligent than that, and they treat their audience as informed, intelligent adults, even though they are supposedly "children's books." And you can be sure that none of them have a happy ending. The last line of The Bad Beginning sees the children feeling a great sense of hopelessness, despair, and fear, while the ending of the movie has them riding off into soft, warm light with their impostor of a narrator calling them "fortunate" and uplifting music playing in the background! It's a travesty!
All that said (loudly), I do not hate the ASoUE movie; there's a reason why I was so desperate for a sequel, and it's not that the thirteen-year-old me wanted to play Isadora so I could pat Liam Aiken's hand a lot. (That was just a factor. I would've settled for Carmelita, too.) Even as I watched this movie for the first time in years on Sunday night, I found myself tearing up again and again (four times, to be exact), because the heart-wrenching story of the Baudelaires still moves me, even when it's dilluted by a movie like this. I did, however, feel myself invigorated with new motivation to reread The Bad Beginning and refresh myself on the correct details of the story (I could recognize parts that were changed in the movie, but couldn't actually remember how they happened in the book), and since it is an incredibly short book (compared to the Philosopher's Stone, at least), I was able to read it front to back on Monday - and it wasn't even three o'clock yet by the time I was finished!
It made me happy to be reading an ASoUE book again, kind of like it's a part of me that it feels nice to go back to. I feel bad that I've forgotten so many details about the books, and all of the old theories I would have had about who was related to who and what would happen in the end (or The End). I can't even revisit the old forum I used to post all of those theories on, since it's been through upgrades and server crashes and the whole thing is gone now. I still have an essay on my computer that I wrote outlining and explaining my theory about Beatrice's identity, but even reading it two years after I first wrote it, I couldn't understand my previous logic anymore. Perhaps I'll take another crack at it once I've finished rereading the series, though.
Pasta putanesca, Sunny's babbling, Lemony's context-appropriate definitions of words - it all takes me right back, and makes me want more. I don't know if there will be another ASoUE movie, or even another book in the Snicket universe, for all I know. (I still need to read that potato latke book that was written under the Lemony Snicket penname after the ASoUE series was finished, but I'm sure that it had to have been written under that penname for a reason. R-right?) What I do know is that after two and a half years of being too stressed out and busy to make time for the book series that I once called my religion (you do these things when you're fifteen and would rather make up your own religion than subscribe to an existing one - hey, I'd still be willing to re-accept Daniel Handler as my god), I am finally going to finish The End, no matter how long it takes me to reread the rest of the series first. I look forward to getting to my favourite books (The Slippery Slope was always my number one - I slept with it under my pillow for awhile, paperback of course - but The Grim Grotto is also up there), dread getting to the desert of books seven to nine (the desert makes me nervous), and I have no idea what to expect from the ending. My friends have told me that [possible spoiler] The End doesn't really give us any answers [end possible spoiler], but I'm holding out hope that I will at least be satisfied by it - and if not, that there will be more to come. But hey, not going to be greedy. For now, I will dilligently work my way back through the series, as I should have done long ago.
Next up: The Reptile Room, with the wonderful Uncle Monty and the Zombies in the Snow references. There's a quote I loved from that movie that was in the Unauthorized Autobiography, but I can't even remember it now. I certainly have some catching up to do. Kind of like catching up with an old friend.
It certainly took me a long time to really fall for the series. I don't remember my reaction to The Bad Beginning being read aloud to my class in the third grade; I was intrigued by similar class readings of The Wide Window in the fifth; being quite pleased by the warnings on the back covers of the books not to buy them, I bought a copy of The Ersatz Elevator and began reading it in the sixth, but never finished it; still more amused by the title of Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography, I bought and read all of that the next summer, and was thrilled by the mysteries it presented but frustrated by the lack of answers it provided.
It wasn't until I saw a couple of promotional pictures for the movie version in Girls' Life magazine, at the age of thirteen, that I decided to borrow a copy of The Hostile Hospital from my school library one day, and read the whole thing. The spark had suddenly been lit; I continued reading chronologically through to the latest book at the time, The Grim Grotto, and then started from the beginning of the series and worked my way back up to the one before THH, The Vile Village. I'd knock off most of the books in a day or two each, sometimes even reading while walking between my middle school and home, too eager to finish to even put the book down for those fifteen minutes. I paid more attention to TBB and TWW, I finally finished my copy of TEE, and I read the Unauthorized Autobiography again, with a whole new appreciation for its secrets. And I read it again. And again.
And then I saw the movie, the day it came out, skipping the afternoon of the last day of school before the Christmas break, wearing a long, flowing black skirt from the Salvation Army in honour of Violet's gorgeous black dress in the movie. And I bought the DVD and the soundtrack as soon as they came out. Somewhere along the line I also wound up in possession of a copy of every book in the series - and two copies of The Bad Beginning. But one of them came with the movie and doesn't have the same awesome cover or pages, so it mostly gathers dust on my bookshelf.
Have I mentioned that I love the deckle edges of the pages? The overall presentation of the books is such a huge part of their appeal, without a doubt. It was one of the factors that encouraged me to reread The Bad Beginning before the first Harry Potter book on Monday, honestly.
As it happens, over time we sometimes grow apart from our previous fandoms, though we harbour no dislike for them, just like with friends who we stop hanging out with or talking to even though we haven't had a fight or anything. Often your friend is too busy with cheerleading and band, and you're too busy with drama and choir and finding things to do while putting off your homework, and all of this prevents you from spending a few hours together. Likewise, when the final ASoUE book came out in the tenth grade, I was so busy with and distracted by failing math and science, singing in the choir, and performing in the school production of West Side Story that I never wound up getting further than three chapters in. To this day I have not finished the thirteenth book, aptly titled The End. I have now gotten myself to a point where I've forgotten so many details of the books that if I want to fully appreciate the last book, I would have to reread the entire series. But this summer I intend to spend a lot of time reading, and since I finally have both the motivation and the time, I can actually do it.
What inspired my plunging back into the world of Snicket this week, however, was an article I stumbled upon, announcing that there are talks of a new ASoUE movie being produced, in stop motion animation. I'm feeling a little skeptical about the whole idea; while the 2004 movie, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, was in no way perfect, I became pretty attached to Liam and Emily's portrayals of Klaus and Violet, and I had my heart so set on a sequel with them that I can't imagine a different kind of sequel now. The bit about Liam Aiken's voice now being "deeper than God" still makes the whole article worth it for me, but I'm not sure what to think about a stop motion Lemony Snicket movie, let alone a sequel now, five years later. Too little too late, or something like that. Why couldn't they just have made a sequel then...and cast me as Isadora? Was that so much to ask?
Anyway. I hadn't actually seen the movie in about four years - thanks to my copy of the DVD having been stolen by a certain "friend" I had back in the eighth grade - but on Sunday, motivated by this strange suggestion of a new movie, I walked myself over to Blockbuster and rented the movie that I was so excited to see back in December '04, popped it into my DVD player, and watched it once again.
The movie certainly has its flaws. While the individual ASoUE books are much shorter than say, the Harry Potter books, which are each made into separate movies, three whole books being packed into one movie does seem a little bit crazy, and it left them with the problem of giving the movie a truly viable climax. It was for the sake of structure that they moved the climax of the first book to the end of the movie, after the events of the second and third books, and wrote an entirely new seen to take place before the switch to the second book. It makes for a lot of rather convoluted elements to this movie, for readers of the books. Klaus asking himself, "What would Violet do?" and making the grappling hook and climbing up the tower himself instead of Violet doing it the night before the play is only one example of the bizarre changes made in the movie, and I don't even really understand why they had Klaus burn the marriage certificate instead of Violet using her left hand to sign it; did they just want to make a flashier climax for the cinema? Gag me with a spoon. The books are more subtle and intelligent than that, and they treat their audience as informed, intelligent adults, even though they are supposedly "children's books." And you can be sure that none of them have a happy ending. The last line of The Bad Beginning sees the children feeling a great sense of hopelessness, despair, and fear, while the ending of the movie has them riding off into soft, warm light with their impostor of a narrator calling them "fortunate" and uplifting music playing in the background! It's a travesty!
All that said (loudly), I do not hate the ASoUE movie; there's a reason why I was so desperate for a sequel, and it's not that the thirteen-year-old me wanted to play Isadora so I could pat Liam Aiken's hand a lot. (That was just a factor. I would've settled for Carmelita, too.) Even as I watched this movie for the first time in years on Sunday night, I found myself tearing up again and again (four times, to be exact), because the heart-wrenching story of the Baudelaires still moves me, even when it's dilluted by a movie like this. I did, however, feel myself invigorated with new motivation to reread The Bad Beginning and refresh myself on the correct details of the story (I could recognize parts that were changed in the movie, but couldn't actually remember how they happened in the book), and since it is an incredibly short book (compared to the Philosopher's Stone, at least), I was able to read it front to back on Monday - and it wasn't even three o'clock yet by the time I was finished!
It made me happy to be reading an ASoUE book again, kind of like it's a part of me that it feels nice to go back to. I feel bad that I've forgotten so many details about the books, and all of the old theories I would have had about who was related to who and what would happen in the end (or The End). I can't even revisit the old forum I used to post all of those theories on, since it's been through upgrades and server crashes and the whole thing is gone now. I still have an essay on my computer that I wrote outlining and explaining my theory about Beatrice's identity, but even reading it two years after I first wrote it, I couldn't understand my previous logic anymore. Perhaps I'll take another crack at it once I've finished rereading the series, though.
Pasta putanesca, Sunny's babbling, Lemony's context-appropriate definitions of words - it all takes me right back, and makes me want more. I don't know if there will be another ASoUE movie, or even another book in the Snicket universe, for all I know. (I still need to read that potato latke book that was written under the Lemony Snicket penname after the ASoUE series was finished, but I'm sure that it had to have been written under that penname for a reason. R-right?) What I do know is that after two and a half years of being too stressed out and busy to make time for the book series that I once called my religion (you do these things when you're fifteen and would rather make up your own religion than subscribe to an existing one - hey, I'd still be willing to re-accept Daniel Handler as my god), I am finally going to finish The End, no matter how long it takes me to reread the rest of the series first. I look forward to getting to my favourite books (The Slippery Slope was always my number one - I slept with it under my pillow for awhile, paperback of course - but The Grim Grotto is also up there), dread getting to the desert of books seven to nine (the desert makes me nervous), and I have no idea what to expect from the ending. My friends have told me that [possible spoiler] The End doesn't really give us any answers [end possible spoiler], but I'm holding out hope that I will at least be satisfied by it - and if not, that there will be more to come. But hey, not going to be greedy. For now, I will dilligently work my way back through the series, as I should have done long ago.
Next up: The Reptile Room, with the wonderful Uncle Monty and the Zombies in the Snow references. There's a quote I loved from that movie that was in the Unauthorized Autobiography, but I can't even remember it now. I certainly have some catching up to do. Kind of like catching up with an old friend.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Canada's Next Top Model, Cycle 3
It should be known that I am pretty much an MTV Canada junkie. I make that specification because MTV Canada is different from your average MTV; it doesn't pretend to be a music channel at all, because it's actually licensed as a talk channel. It airs American MTV programming plus a few original shows, namely MTV Live, The Aftershow, and The Hills Aftershow (formerly the Laguna Beach Aftershow). It's no secret to my friends that I adore the Aftershow, the first show to make me actually care about North American celebrities in a long time. But I did first start watching MTV for The Hills after seeing it while on vacation in the U.S., and since I have MTV on pretty well 24/7 these days, I tend to see every episode of any new MTV reality show - at least three times over.
Earlier this school year (yes, I still measure my life that way), MTV began airing the first two cycles of Canada's Next Top Model in their entirety. Seeing as I watch almost nothing but MTV, I wound up seeing every episode of both cycles a number of times, and this was my first real exposure to the world of Top Model. I'd never watched America's Next Top Model before, and I actually just saw it for the first time recently, when Star aired a marathon of cycle 12. (I hereby declare myself an Allison Harvard fan. But more on her another day.) I wasn't particularly scintillated, but I took it all in, occasionally finding some entertainment in the girls and their drama. Let me tell you, though, I was really getting sick of that show by the time I was seeing episodes for the fifth time.
Over the last couple of months they began re-airing these two cycles again, leading up to the premiere of cycle 3. Seeing all of the episodes again, plus the bits I caught of ANTM C12, sparked my curiosity enough that I found myself wanting to watch the new cycle from the beginning, as it aired. I think it helped that throughout this school year, I've been watching Fashion Television on Star with my breakfast every school morning. I've become more interested in and into the fashion industry - though I would never want a career in it - so I now enjoy analyzing the girls' photos and what I like and don't like about them, and appreciating the different looks and photoshoot settings. And the judges seem to give so many different kinds of advice and criticism that it sounds downright impossible to get it right when it comes to modelling, but it's damn fun to listen to anyway. Plus I now love judge Jeanne Beker, from watching so much Fashion Television, and I think Jay Manuel is quite the cool guy. (Particularly after he said on the second episode of this cycle that he hates the word "fierce." Sing it, Jay! They've banned that word from the MTV Aftershow, you know.)
So, the third cycle of CNTM has finally begun, and we're now two episodes in. Beware of spoilers right now if you haven't seen them yet but want to! They started off with eleven girls in episode one, and immediately jumped into the first photoshoot (with the very cool Nigel Barker), and right after the photoshoot one of the girls announced that she was leaving, due to pain in her hip from a recent car accident. She was barely on the show for twenty minutes before she left, so it's kind of funny how they went with eleven contestants instead of the usual ten...and then it went back to the normal number anyway. But we know that they didn't intend for that to happen, since there was an extra bed when the girls got into the house (or super hotel suite or whatever it is).
One thing that I don't get is how they got Alexandra, the girl who left, to pose for all of the promotional stuff despite her pain. There are a number of promotional photos that were taken of the eleven contestants together. When were they taken? I wish the actual show would go over that, because I'm a Top Model newb who doesn't know these things.
The first challenge winner of the cycle was Heather, who chose Jill and Nikita to go with her on her prize trip to the ice floes off P.E.I. to have Nigel take pictures of them with baby seals. They also did a fashion shoot up there, but BABY SEALS! Naturally, the other seven girls were jealous of the amazing prize, but beyond that, they formed a bond with each other in the house while the other three formed their own bond. The producers just kept throwing oil on the fire, by having the girls on the trip make a video message for the other girls basically intended to make them even more jealous - which at least one or two of the three seemed to totally play into - and then the three were given their own separate room in the house, plus even better free stuff than the other girls got. Two of those girls had taken some of the judges' least favourite photos of the week, and they got all that stuff just for having been picked by the winner, who'd just met them. The producers' blatant desire to split the house into factions from the get-go is a little malicious, but hey, they're trying to create quality reality television. The drama is essential to this show's success.
The funny thing is that they didn't actually capitalize on that potential for drama during the second week. Sure, there was a bit of clashing between the two groups, but even that wasn't particularly played up in the editing room. Of the three living in the separate room, Heather is so quiet and nice that no one really has any valid reason to dislike her (they don't like her high-pitched, girlish voice, whatever), and Nikita would've stirred things up regardless of the factions by the looks of her personality (at the very least, she curses a blue streak). As for Jill, some of the other girls weren't sure what to make of her, and neither were the judges; she was eliminated week two.
The first girl to go via elimination in week one was Tiffany, a new mother with an eight month old baby at home. Uh, eight months? Why aren't you WITH HIM? (Also, she said she knew her son would be proud of her, but uh, he's eight months old. I don't think he understands the concept of Top Model yet.) I didn't like her very much in general and the judges weren't too impressed by her, so they sent her home. Good riddance, in my opinion. Jill was in the bottom two both weeks and left the second. She did deserve to go in terms of her modelling ability, but I liked her up until she was eliminated, at which point I was quite put-off by her saying how she wouldn't give up everything else to become a model. Isn't that the point of going into Top Model, that you want to live that lifestyle? But I guess some people do go to auditions for TV competitions without really thinking about much more than "Yay fun!" - I mean, look at American Idol - so I guess it's understandable that she wanted to live it up for awhile once she made it into the top eleven.
I've had two favourites since the first episode, who remain my favourites as of now: Maryam and Rebeccah. Maryam grew up in Iran but came to Canada a couple of years ago, and so far she's talked a bit about how she always dreamed of becoming a model while growing up in Iran, even though it wasn't a possibility for her there, and how she's so thrilled to be a finalist on Canada's Next Top Model now and actually have the chance. All this, in addition to her very humble and generally appealing personality, makes her very endearing, to me at least. And she seems to be a pretty good model, too! Week one she was the first to be called out, but she was in the bottom three week two. Still, she seemed to do a pretty god job and try very hard in the actual week two photoshoot - she climbed all over the ladders they were using and contorted into all these nifty poses - and I believe that she can step it up and improve next week.
Rebeccah was pointed out as being the quirky personality of the house, "like a cartoon character," by one of the other girls during week one. Having recently become a Creepy-chan fan, I was instantly drawn to Rebeccah by this. While she isn't quite that cool, I definitely like her a lot, and the judges were into her first photo. She also had this whole backstory for the photo worked out in her head when the judges asked her during elimination, and I was quite impressed by that. During the makeovers they traded her short, brown curly hair for the super-short, bleached blonde look, inspired by Agyness Deyn. It looks AWESOME, and she's totally in love with it too, which is always great to see. She was also the week two challenge winner, when they ran around the H&M that I shop in on a regular basis in their underwear putting together outfits for themselves (which was kind of crazy and hilarious for me to see, having stood in those very spots before). She went for the androgynous look and pulled off something really cool. Unfortunately, the judges didn't like her week two photo, feeling that it was too much of a Twiggy impression, and she was in the bottom two. I was not amused seeing my two favouries in the bottom three, let me tell you! Jill was the one who truly deserved to go, though, so everything worked out in the end.
I like most of the other girls, though some of them are a bit bitchy for my taste. Nikita was the one to bring the drama during the makeovers, bitching about the short bangs for literally hours on end, and her constant swearing doesn't impress some of the other girls in the house. (I swear a TON, myself, but I try to only do it around friends who already know and accept me, and not to do it around people I don't know well who I might accidentally offend.) Short bangs are a weird look I've never been particularly fond of, myself, but they're very high fashion and the judges are loving Nikita as of week two, so suck it up, princess. I'm also unimpressed by Nikita's modelling past, which she talked about in week one: she signed a contract in New York when she finished high school, but she chickened out. She explicitly said that she wants to hide the fact that she's travelled outside of Canada to model from the other girls. If you already have the capability of getting yourself into this business, why do you need a reality show? It reminds me of the previously-signed recording artists who audition for American Idol, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I like Linsay, because she's actually the one who seems most like a model to me, especially with the makeover they gave her. I think both of her pictures so far have been pretty strong, and she's got a good, grounded personality too, by the looks of it, so I think she has a lot of potential to go far in this competition. The best quote of this cycle so far was also spoken about her first picture: "Kudos to her for dislocating her pelvis." The way Mike Ruiz said it was so great, you just have to hear it. I REALLY like Meaghan's new hair, but I don't really think she's going to go that far. It's not because of the braces, but just the potential I'm seeing in her right now. I do wonder what they'll do about those braces if she's around later on in the competition, though.
With CTV airing the new episodes each week, MTV airing them two days later, and Star beginning to air them sometime in between, with reruns being shown repeatedly on at least two out of those three, I've already seen both episodes of this cycle so far a number of times, so it won't be hard to keep following this cycle. Next week they're going to the Bahamas, and they've never done a major trip like that on CNTM before, so it looks kind of amazing. I'm really looking forward to the next episode, and also to the next cycle of America's Next Top Model; I'm into this, all of a sudden. Who would've guessed Top Model would become my newest fandom?
You'll be hearing more from me on this topic very soon.
Earlier this school year (yes, I still measure my life that way), MTV began airing the first two cycles of Canada's Next Top Model in their entirety. Seeing as I watch almost nothing but MTV, I wound up seeing every episode of both cycles a number of times, and this was my first real exposure to the world of Top Model. I'd never watched America's Next Top Model before, and I actually just saw it for the first time recently, when Star aired a marathon of cycle 12. (I hereby declare myself an Allison Harvard fan. But more on her another day.) I wasn't particularly scintillated, but I took it all in, occasionally finding some entertainment in the girls and their drama. Let me tell you, though, I was really getting sick of that show by the time I was seeing episodes for the fifth time.
Over the last couple of months they began re-airing these two cycles again, leading up to the premiere of cycle 3. Seeing all of the episodes again, plus the bits I caught of ANTM C12, sparked my curiosity enough that I found myself wanting to watch the new cycle from the beginning, as it aired. I think it helped that throughout this school year, I've been watching Fashion Television on Star with my breakfast every school morning. I've become more interested in and into the fashion industry - though I would never want a career in it - so I now enjoy analyzing the girls' photos and what I like and don't like about them, and appreciating the different looks and photoshoot settings. And the judges seem to give so many different kinds of advice and criticism that it sounds downright impossible to get it right when it comes to modelling, but it's damn fun to listen to anyway. Plus I now love judge Jeanne Beker, from watching so much Fashion Television, and I think Jay Manuel is quite the cool guy. (Particularly after he said on the second episode of this cycle that he hates the word "fierce." Sing it, Jay! They've banned that word from the MTV Aftershow, you know.)
So, the third cycle of CNTM has finally begun, and we're now two episodes in. Beware of spoilers right now if you haven't seen them yet but want to! They started off with eleven girls in episode one, and immediately jumped into the first photoshoot (with the very cool Nigel Barker), and right after the photoshoot one of the girls announced that she was leaving, due to pain in her hip from a recent car accident. She was barely on the show for twenty minutes before she left, so it's kind of funny how they went with eleven contestants instead of the usual ten...and then it went back to the normal number anyway. But we know that they didn't intend for that to happen, since there was an extra bed when the girls got into the house (or super hotel suite or whatever it is).
One thing that I don't get is how they got Alexandra, the girl who left, to pose for all of the promotional stuff despite her pain. There are a number of promotional photos that were taken of the eleven contestants together. When were they taken? I wish the actual show would go over that, because I'm a Top Model newb who doesn't know these things.
The first challenge winner of the cycle was Heather, who chose Jill and Nikita to go with her on her prize trip to the ice floes off P.E.I. to have Nigel take pictures of them with baby seals. They also did a fashion shoot up there, but BABY SEALS! Naturally, the other seven girls were jealous of the amazing prize, but beyond that, they formed a bond with each other in the house while the other three formed their own bond. The producers just kept throwing oil on the fire, by having the girls on the trip make a video message for the other girls basically intended to make them even more jealous - which at least one or two of the three seemed to totally play into - and then the three were given their own separate room in the house, plus even better free stuff than the other girls got. Two of those girls had taken some of the judges' least favourite photos of the week, and they got all that stuff just for having been picked by the winner, who'd just met them. The producers' blatant desire to split the house into factions from the get-go is a little malicious, but hey, they're trying to create quality reality television. The drama is essential to this show's success.
The funny thing is that they didn't actually capitalize on that potential for drama during the second week. Sure, there was a bit of clashing between the two groups, but even that wasn't particularly played up in the editing room. Of the three living in the separate room, Heather is so quiet and nice that no one really has any valid reason to dislike her (they don't like her high-pitched, girlish voice, whatever), and Nikita would've stirred things up regardless of the factions by the looks of her personality (at the very least, she curses a blue streak). As for Jill, some of the other girls weren't sure what to make of her, and neither were the judges; she was eliminated week two.
The first girl to go via elimination in week one was Tiffany, a new mother with an eight month old baby at home. Uh, eight months? Why aren't you WITH HIM? (Also, she said she knew her son would be proud of her, but uh, he's eight months old. I don't think he understands the concept of Top Model yet.) I didn't like her very much in general and the judges weren't too impressed by her, so they sent her home. Good riddance, in my opinion. Jill was in the bottom two both weeks and left the second. She did deserve to go in terms of her modelling ability, but I liked her up until she was eliminated, at which point I was quite put-off by her saying how she wouldn't give up everything else to become a model. Isn't that the point of going into Top Model, that you want to live that lifestyle? But I guess some people do go to auditions for TV competitions without really thinking about much more than "Yay fun!" - I mean, look at American Idol - so I guess it's understandable that she wanted to live it up for awhile once she made it into the top eleven.
I've had two favourites since the first episode, who remain my favourites as of now: Maryam and Rebeccah. Maryam grew up in Iran but came to Canada a couple of years ago, and so far she's talked a bit about how she always dreamed of becoming a model while growing up in Iran, even though it wasn't a possibility for her there, and how she's so thrilled to be a finalist on Canada's Next Top Model now and actually have the chance. All this, in addition to her very humble and generally appealing personality, makes her very endearing, to me at least. And she seems to be a pretty good model, too! Week one she was the first to be called out, but she was in the bottom three week two. Still, she seemed to do a pretty god job and try very hard in the actual week two photoshoot - she climbed all over the ladders they were using and contorted into all these nifty poses - and I believe that she can step it up and improve next week.
Rebeccah was pointed out as being the quirky personality of the house, "like a cartoon character," by one of the other girls during week one. Having recently become a Creepy-chan fan, I was instantly drawn to Rebeccah by this. While she isn't quite that cool, I definitely like her a lot, and the judges were into her first photo. She also had this whole backstory for the photo worked out in her head when the judges asked her during elimination, and I was quite impressed by that. During the makeovers they traded her short, brown curly hair for the super-short, bleached blonde look, inspired by Agyness Deyn. It looks AWESOME, and she's totally in love with it too, which is always great to see. She was also the week two challenge winner, when they ran around the H&M that I shop in on a regular basis in their underwear putting together outfits for themselves (which was kind of crazy and hilarious for me to see, having stood in those very spots before). She went for the androgynous look and pulled off something really cool. Unfortunately, the judges didn't like her week two photo, feeling that it was too much of a Twiggy impression, and she was in the bottom two. I was not amused seeing my two favouries in the bottom three, let me tell you! Jill was the one who truly deserved to go, though, so everything worked out in the end.
I like most of the other girls, though some of them are a bit bitchy for my taste. Nikita was the one to bring the drama during the makeovers, bitching about the short bangs for literally hours on end, and her constant swearing doesn't impress some of the other girls in the house. (I swear a TON, myself, but I try to only do it around friends who already know and accept me, and not to do it around people I don't know well who I might accidentally offend.) Short bangs are a weird look I've never been particularly fond of, myself, but they're very high fashion and the judges are loving Nikita as of week two, so suck it up, princess. I'm also unimpressed by Nikita's modelling past, which she talked about in week one: she signed a contract in New York when she finished high school, but she chickened out. She explicitly said that she wants to hide the fact that she's travelled outside of Canada to model from the other girls. If you already have the capability of getting yourself into this business, why do you need a reality show? It reminds me of the previously-signed recording artists who audition for American Idol, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I like Linsay, because she's actually the one who seems most like a model to me, especially with the makeover they gave her. I think both of her pictures so far have been pretty strong, and she's got a good, grounded personality too, by the looks of it, so I think she has a lot of potential to go far in this competition. The best quote of this cycle so far was also spoken about her first picture: "Kudos to her for dislocating her pelvis." The way Mike Ruiz said it was so great, you just have to hear it. I REALLY like Meaghan's new hair, but I don't really think she's going to go that far. It's not because of the braces, but just the potential I'm seeing in her right now. I do wonder what they'll do about those braces if she's around later on in the competition, though.
With CTV airing the new episodes each week, MTV airing them two days later, and Star beginning to air them sometime in between, with reruns being shown repeatedly on at least two out of those three, I've already seen both episodes of this cycle so far a number of times, so it won't be hard to keep following this cycle. Next week they're going to the Bahamas, and they've never done a major trip like that on CNTM before, so it looks kind of amazing. I'm really looking forward to the next episode, and also to the next cycle of America's Next Top Model; I'm into this, all of a sudden. Who would've guessed Top Model would become my newest fandom?
You'll be hearing more from me on this topic very soon.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
A Tale of One Butchered Character
Two weeks ago, I finally saw The Uninvited. I'd rewatched the wonderful original A Tale of Two Sisters a few weeks before, and went into the movie fully intending to make fun of it throughout and get a good laugh for my money, if nothing else. The last remake of an Asian horror film I saw in theatres (at the same theatre, actually) was Shutter, a remake of a Thai film of the same name I have not seen, and that was definitely a laugh fest for me. An American remake of one of my all time favourite movies? I had no doubt in my mind that I would hate it, but be entertained by its crappiness at the very least.
What I got wasn't quite what I'd expected, but it was even more maddening.
The thing is, I was expecting to hate this movie all the way through. Instead, I found that it actually wasn't so bad once it got going, and after awhile I stopped comparing it to the original in my head and started just watching it for the movie it is, not the movie it's based on. But because I began to almost enjoy it, I became at least a little invested in the characters - and the movie itself - and as a result, I was royally pissed off when the movie took a turn for the worse at the ending.
SPOILERS AHEAD, BEWARE! My main problem with The Uninvited is that they completely butchered Su-mi's character, portrayed here by Emily Browning as Anna. In the original, Su-mi's assumed guilt stems from the fact that she stormed out of the house, angry with her stepmother, while Su-yeon, her younger sister, was dying, trapped underneath the fallen closet containing their mother's newly dead body; she was unable to save Su-yeon. The initial death of the other sister in The Uninvited, Alex, wouldn't be so bad on its own: she and their mother were both killed by an accident caused by Anna, while Anna had not meant to kill either of them.
While it can be assumed that both characters harbour guilt for their sisters' deaths, the implications of these deaths (and the respective stepmothers' involvements in them) are very different. Su-mi stormed out of the house after having an argument with the stepmother character, who knew that Su-yeon was dying at that exact moment and didn't do a thing to help her, or tell anybody. Anna's hatred of her stepmother character caused her sister's death in a far different way. Upon discovering her father and the stepmother character - who is the sick mother's nurse in both movies - about to have sex while the mother is bedridden in the boathouse, Anna goes down to the boathouse and fills a watering can with gas, and begins to carry it towards the house. It is dripping gas from the tap reaching a lamp that Anna accidentally knocks over on her way out that causes the boathouse to explode, killing both Alex and their mother. So while Su-mi's only intention at that moment was to get out of the house and away from her stepmother character for awhile, Anna's intention was far different: it would appear that she intended to set fire to her own house with the gas, killing her father and, more importantly, her stepmother character.
This means that while Su-mi was perfectly innocent, a girl who couldn't save her sister simply because she didn't know that she was dying, Anna was far from innocent, inadvertently causing her sister's and mother's deaths while on her way to kill her father and stepmother-to-be! And it gets worse. While Su-mi remains innocent throughout all of the events of A Tale of Two Sisters, not once causing harm to anybody but herself, Anna goes on to kill both her boyfriend, who saw what happened on the night of the fire, and her stepmother character Rachel - who in this movie, is completely innocent!
And that's another problem I have with the changes in the characters - the stepmother being innocent. In the original, Eun-joo allows Su-yeon to die, effectively killing her though she did not initiate the closet's falling on top of her. This makes her far from innocent. In The Uninvited, the only less than savoury thing Rachel has done is hook up with the dad while the mother is still alive. Not a great thing to do, but these things happen. She's hardly the evil stepmother based on that alone, because she hasn't maliciously hurt anyone. Both girls hate the stepmothers for infiltrating their families, a very common occurence in family drama, but while Su-mi simply angsts at her and paints her as a murderer in her head once she's gone crazy, Anna takes it to the point of murder. For an affair when the mother is already dying anyway? That's just fucked up. Both stepmothers are punished in the end - Rachel is stabbed and killed by Anna, while Eun-joo gets owned by a ghost - Eun-joo is the only one who actually deserved it.
Obviously, I'm very mad about these changes. Su-mi's story is tragic because none of it was her fault, but still she lost her beloved mother and sister, and she lost her mind. Anna accidentally kills her mother and sister while aiming to kill her father and stepmother - unless she's getting that gas while damn angry at the two of them for some other reason, in which case, do enlighten me - and then kills two more innocent people, and she too has gone crazy. The entire story of The Uninvited can be explained by the fact that Anna's crazy, and enough so to kill people for crazy reasons. The way she acts completely changes at the end of the movie, and she suddenly begins to act like an evil crazy girl instead of the innocent victim she was for the rest of the movie. That's not so much tragic as just...a psychotic kinda-thriller. A psychotic thriller sounds good in theory, but not this one. Compared to a psychological horror tragedy? No. We can't even get too upset about the death of the innocent Rachel, because she was portrayed as evil for the entire movie, and while we understand that the majority of Eun-joo's screentime in AToTS was invented in Su-mi's head, we have no idea what was real and what wasn't in The Uninvited, so it turns out that we never really knew Rachel's character at all. Even when it comes to the people we do feel bad for, the tragic effect just isn't strong enough, where as it was played out beautifully in AToTS.
Now for the other problems I had with this movie. For one, instead of taking the initial ending twist - the sister actually being dead and the main character playing out all of these events in her mind - and making it as brilliant as it was in the original, they used that twist, didn't even explain it well enough for everything to make sense (ie. how Rachel was really acting this whole time), and then threw in another, pointless twist: the person Anna had been saying she suspected Rachel to really be actually being the person who Anna had spoken to during her time in the mental hospital, who we saw briefly at the beginning of the movie. The creepy dead children? They were murdered by that woman in the mental hospital, and have absolutely nothing to do with what actually happened to Anna's family. They only served to be a part of Anna's pseudo-justifications of her actions towards the stepmother, ideas that had stuck in her head after hearing about them from her fellow patient. They are completely irrelevant to the entire storyline. A Tale of Two Sisters didn't need such a contrived plot device to make its premise work; but of course, its main character was a tragic figure, not a crazy murderer. They didn't need any pseudo-justifications there.
And of course, the supernatural elements. The events of the original movie were a combination of fabrications in Su-mi's head and actual supernatural elements. While we don't know if Su-mi really saw her mother's ghost climb onto her bed, Eun-joo got owned by a ghost at the end of the movie, and she wasn't crazy (just evil). The aunt having a seizure and seeing a girl in a green dress under the sink? Inferring that the dinner scene really happened as we saw it, but Eun-joo was actually Su-mi, hence the other family members' reactions to her story, and having seen the family picture in which Su-yeon is wearing the same green dress, we can infer that Su-yeon's ghost was, indeed, there. There are many different conclusions we can come to, but I choose to believe that both the mother's and Su-yeon's ghosts were, indeed, haunting the house. I think it's plausible that it was the mother's ghost that attacked Eun-joo in the end, avenging her daughter's death. Now, where were the supernatural elements in The Uninvited? The creepy scene with the boyfriend in Anna's bedroom obviously didn't really happen, since Anna killed him at the lake, and the creepy children had nothing to do with Anna's situation and thus wouldn't have tried to reach her, so all we have to go on is her seeing her mother's ghost in the boathouse, which may or may not have really happened. But with the way everything gets explained at the end, it would seem that we are to assume that everything in the movie is explained by Anna's craziness, so it probably didn't happen. The Uninvited really isn't a horror movie at all in the sense that AToTS was, but more of a thriller, which makes sense given its producers having also done Disturbia...but still. The fact that there were still actual supernatural elements there was part of what made AToTS awesome.
Another change made in this movie was the ages of the sisters. Anna played the Su-mi character, though Su-mi was the older sister in AToTS and Anna was the younger sister in this. But Anna took on aspects of both Su-mi's and Su-yeon's characters, to some extent - she was the younger sister who wanted her older sister to stay in bed with her at night, and she had the scene where she lay in bed watching the door to her room open, terrified - and so, Alex was a whole new character, not like either Su-mi or Su-yeon from the original, but a drinking, teenage partying, but decent enough person who just happened to be the sister; really, a throwaway character. What a disappointment, compared to how much we care for both of the sisters in the original film.
Speaking of the dead sister, something cool you're supposed to notice once you find out that she's dead is that while the stepmother addressed her directly several times - because she was just a figment of Su-mi's imagination, too - the father never spoke to her, and in scenes when he was with both daughters, he would only talk to Su-mi. This is because Su-yeon was never really there. But in The Uninvited, we see Alex talking to the dad! While I don't remember him really acknowledging her in that scene - it was just briefly viewed from outside a window by Anna - that still ruined the effect for me. Just as the dad never spoke to Su-yeon in the original, Su-yeon was never seen speaking to him, either.
Now, I could complain about The Uninvited only showing Anna returning home from the mental hospital while both sisters stepped out of that car at the beginning of the original, but I don't actually believe that that's a very important detail. Either way makes sense; in the original, Su-mi simply believes that she's been with her sister this whole time, while in The Uninvited, Anna's solitary stay at the mental hospital is portrayed as is, but she believes that her sister is there when she gets home. It doesn't make much of a difference.
The one thing I do have left to complain about is the way in which the mother died. In both movies, the mothers were sick, the stepmothers being their nurses, and the sisters' deaths were accidents (though Su-yeon could have been saved by the stepmother). But in A Tale of Two Sisters, the mother killed herself, and right there in her daughter's closet while Su-yeon was sleeping mere feet away, no less. Su-yeon's accident was caused by her by mistake upon discovering her mother's hanging body. One could go so far as to say that this makes the mother slightly less than innocent, for killing herself in a way that would be so traumatizing to her daughter and for that suicide indirectly causing her daughter's death; at the very least, it makes the entire situation more tragic. Anna's mother simply dies in an accident caused by Anna, with Alex also present in the boathouse when it explodes. It just doesn't come across as tragically as the events of AToTS, and it's far more simple. It's a perfect example of the original movie's complexity being simplified and dumbed down for American audiences (and if we're never challenged with intelligent, confusing movies in North America, then what good is our film industry?).
The Uninvited showed potential at first, but the ending absolutely killed it, and I was so thoroughly dissatisfied after it finished that I grew more and more angry about it on the way home from the theatre, until I got to the point where I just had to forget about the movie for a few days because it pissed me off too much. As a fan of the original, I would have been less disappointed if the movie had been crap throughout, because at least then I wouldn't have been led to believe that it was a decent movie and then been disappointed by the ending. Instead of getting to laugh at a crap remake, I was let down by a crap remake that held a small promise of potential that was never followed through on. I didn't get to laugh; I just got mad.
The moral of the story: if an Asian horror remake looks like crap in the trailers, it probably is crap, even if it starts to seem okay for awhile while you're watching it. I'll try to remember that and actually get that good laugh for my money the next time a movie like this rolls around.
The Uninvited...to my DVD collection.
Missing LG15
The final straw that led to me starting this blog was getting into the LG15 fandom, and wanting a place to blog about that. I suppose my timing was pretty crappy; while I got a good couple of months of the fandom with the Resistance going on (and Jonas as my cell phone wallpaper for most of that time), the season finale of the Resistance brought with it uncertainty; none of us know when (or even if?) the second season of the Resistance will come. In the meantime, The Show Is Yours has been going on, and the winner, LG15: The Last, will be premiering tomorrow. I haven't watched the pilot or the preview for The Last, and I just may give it a chance, but what can I say? I'm aching to see season two of the Resistance, and everything else - The Last, the Polish LG15 universe show N1ckola, and anything else going on in the world of EQAL right now - seems insignificant.
The hardest part of it is that I've fallen completely in love with these characters, and now, for the first time ever since lonelygirl15 started in 2006, they're in limbo. Upon every season finale in LG15's past - including the series finale of the original lonelygirl15 - there has only been a short break (maybe two weeks tops during lonelygirl15, and a month or so between LG15 and the Resistance) between seasons. Season one of the Resistance ended in December, and now it's March. Where did they leave off? Jonas and Maggie being held by the Order, expected to provide them with a supply of trait positive babies; Daniel unexpectedly returning for the first time in months; and Reed meeting Daniel for the first time, with the promise of Daniel's help in fighting the Order and retrieving Jonas and Maggie lingering ahead. And that's it. Limbo. LG15 has always been in real time, meaning that, unless they suddenly want to change that, we have to believe that the characters have been living and things have been happening since December, but we haven't seen any of it. It's like they just haven't been vlogging for months, and that is so unlike them. I know these circumstances are probably beyond EQAL's control, but I do not like this!
So, what can I do with the anxiety this brings me as a fan? Try to justify it in canon, of course. Jonas and Maggie obviously can't vlog right now, because they're being held by the Order. Sarah, being the evil Order member that she is, probably feels no need to vlog since she vlogged as a character she was playing, lying to everyone, and she no longer needs anybody to believe that she's innocent. (And what was that about an ascension, anyway? Did Sarah really become one of the elders?) Daniel came back into the world of vlogging and the Order only to provide more evidence as to Sarah's loyalties once her final betrayal had been revealed, and was only brought back into the fight by Maggie tracking him down and Reed knocking on his door, things he didn't decide on his own. Reed is the only mystery here; he's so new to the world of vlogging and enthusiastic about helping to fight the Order that one wouldn't think he'd give up vlogging so quickly. However, I think it's feasible that if Reed is working with Daniel, who likely wouldn't be so keen on the idea of vlogging right now, then Daniel probably encouraged him to stop vlogging (for now, anyway) as well.
It's entirely possible that Daniel and Reed don't have anything they really need to vlog about at this point, anyway, particularly if they're drawing up a big plan and mostly working in secret, planning more than actually taking action. But too many months have passed now for them to still be in the planning phase; lord only knows what might've happened to Jonas and Maggie by now. If Daniel and Reed haven't taken action yet, they'd better do so soon. On the other hand, they may have made many attempts to find them already, but without the added stress of filming it all and uploading it to Youtube. In either case, it may take the two of them realizing that they need the community's help to come back, asking for help with cracking a code or some such thing. But in order for that to happen, EQAL needs the money to continue funding production of the Resistance. As of right now, real life is deterring canon, and that is not cool. Not cool at all.
I'm impatient. I want Jonas and his expressive blue eyes back. Jonas, a man broken by the loss of too many of his loved ones, who needs to end this battle once and for all, one day.* Reed as he grows into a seasoned pro at fighting the Order and becomes a stronger man than ever before. Daniel, dealt blow after blow by the Order and as hurt by it all as Jonas, who'd been trying to cope with life until December, working to save Jonas once again. Reed and Daniel working together for the first time. Even Maggie, who I still don't know that well yet, but who shouldn't have to deal with this again after escaping once already, and who I don't want to see get hurt anymore. I want all of it, and I don't want them to stay in limbo forever. I don't want to sound like a stubborn child who refuses to accept reality, but EQAL, PLEASE, no matter what it takes, bring these characters back to me! I fell hard for this fandom in October and I've barely had any time with it as it goes on, because of that. I need more!
*(I'd love to see the Order not be defeated for years if it meant years of my favourite parts of the LG15 canon going on, but I wouldn't like to see it go on for too much longer if it meant that funding problems would be run into again, and the series would have to end without Jonas and Daniel seeing the Order defeated. Ultimately, I need them to have a happy ending and not be defeated or killed by the Order themselves. If that means this series can only go on for awhile longer, then so be it, but we at least need one more season. One more is enough. Anything but where it's left off right now!)
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
"A Tale of Two Sisters" Becomes "The Uninvited"
Okay, so I've now seen the trailer for the American remake of A Tale of Two Sisters, a 2003 Korean horror movie, and I've seen two different ads for it on TV a bunch of times. They're calling it The Uninvited, which really only has so much to do with the story, unless they've rewritten a bunch of it. I don't know whaaaaaaat they're doing with it, also because I thought that Emily Browning was playing the younger sister, and she's practically the only one I can see in the ads, when the older sister is supposed to be the main character. That said, I COMPLETELY prefer Emily Browning - who played Violet in the Lemony Snicket movie and who I think is great - over the other actress, Arielle Kebel, who was just annoying in "The Grudge 2". I don't have much hope that she won't be annoying in this one. Emily Browning did "Ghost Ship" when she was younger, though, and it was pretty freaky, and she was really good in that. I have faith in her.
The movie itself, I'm not so sure about. Everything is being spelled out for me in the ad, and this movie is supposed to be a LOT more subtle than that. You can't fully understand "A Tale of Two Sisters" after only watching it once; you have to at least read a lot about it on the internet, and then see it one more time to pick up on all the things you missed the first time. But they always dumb down Asian movies for American audiences. I'm hearing things being said in the ad that weren't found out until the very end of the Korean movie. And the trailer is advertising a major plot point that just plain didn't exist in the original. "The Ring" was a great remake, in my opinion, that had a different story from the original but took the source material and reinterpreted it in an awesome way. I fear that the people behind "The Uninvited" weren't able to do the same; I'm afraid of what they've done to one of my favourite movies of all time. Still, I screamed a little when I first saw the ad on TV and realized what it was. There's some excitement there, because like I said, it's one of my favourite movies of all time. I've never experienced the full process of watching an Asian movie, finding out it'd be remade, seeing preview stills for the remake, and finally seeing it come to release before, so it'll be interesting for me, if nothing else.
"A Tale of Two Sisters" is a truly intense movie; there's no better word for it. I'm always left staring at my television gaping when I watch it, and even just watching the trailer for it has a similar effect on me. For the purpose of making a fair comparison, I present to you the trailers for each movie, so any of you who have not seen the original can see for yourself the difference between the two trailers, at least.
The movie itself, I'm not so sure about. Everything is being spelled out for me in the ad, and this movie is supposed to be a LOT more subtle than that. You can't fully understand "A Tale of Two Sisters" after only watching it once; you have to at least read a lot about it on the internet, and then see it one more time to pick up on all the things you missed the first time. But they always dumb down Asian movies for American audiences. I'm hearing things being said in the ad that weren't found out until the very end of the Korean movie. And the trailer is advertising a major plot point that just plain didn't exist in the original. "The Ring" was a great remake, in my opinion, that had a different story from the original but took the source material and reinterpreted it in an awesome way. I fear that the people behind "The Uninvited" weren't able to do the same; I'm afraid of what they've done to one of my favourite movies of all time. Still, I screamed a little when I first saw the ad on TV and realized what it was. There's some excitement there, because like I said, it's one of my favourite movies of all time. I've never experienced the full process of watching an Asian movie, finding out it'd be remade, seeing preview stills for the remake, and finally seeing it come to release before, so it'll be interesting for me, if nothing else.
"A Tale of Two Sisters" is a truly intense movie; there's no better word for it. I'm always left staring at my television gaping when I watch it, and even just watching the trailer for it has a similar effect on me. For the purpose of making a fair comparison, I present to you the trailers for each movie, so any of you who have not seen the original can see for yourself the difference between the two trailers, at least.
A Tale of Two Sisters:
The Uninvited:
I'll be watching "The Uninvited", and hoping that it won't turn out to be a total disaster, because the gorgeous original film doesn't deserve that kind of treatment. But I'm not going to get my hopes up too high.
The Uninvited:
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