sink like a stone
Oct. 20th, 2005 01:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluelovesorangeobviously spoilers for Etown abound, so read at your own risk
Man. Those posts of worth - they're never a'coming, are they?
So - I went into the movie with suitably lowered expectations, with all of my FL's mixed reactions firmly in hand. I had enjoyed the trailer, but the trailers are never the movie, so I wasn't sure what I could expect that Cameron Crowe could deliver impeccably, except 1)Orlando's prettiness, 2)a v. good soundtrack.
I haven't actaully seen anything of Cameron's outside of Say Anything, Jerry Mcguire (before Tom the Cultist reared his insane smiley head, I actually quite liked that movie), and half of Almost Famous. But for me, his reputation was made in Say Anything. And I think that in Drew Baylor, not only was he mining another autographical representation ala Patrick Fugit, but another Lloyd Dobler.
Drew has Lloyd's earnestness, his focus on whatever it is - life, love (once Drew comes out of his fugue state anyway)and he's a very appealing loner type. That kind of clear eyed naivete - the line about the scholarship really clicked for me about his character - he's very much a company man - that shoe corporation took place of a Father/Guiding force in his life, as it appears from the movie, Drew's relationship with his father...while not strained, it simply was undefined, awkward - I got the feeling that they were friendly strangers. Drew's much closer with the female side of the family. Which explains why he falls for Claire so fast and so hard after his initial annoyed avoidance of her - Drew is a follower. He needs guidelines, someone to tell him what to do - despite being the oldest (? I was surprised, I thought more of well...'he's the man of the family now, but I thought Judy Greer's character was the elder sibling), he's more comfortable with given a set of directions and following them rather than just flailing around blindly. With the shoe creation storyline, I think the freedom to just create - well he got burned deeply with that - he poured everything he had into it and it was soundly rejected. Success, failure, catastrophe - all those voice overs at the beginning. Drew thinks he's a failure because of the money loss, but because he's never really lived a life without that box.
Enter Claire - see, I understand the story concept, and it would have made a beautiful little short story, maybe something an Oates or a Proulx would have written, or my hopes of hopes, an Anne Lamotte, because she makes the best kind of fragile screwed up characters who are so funny, blackly so - not these half-there, timidly funny in an awkward way shadows - and so I get why you need to have a Claire type. The free spirited, wacky eccentric gypsy Stevie Nicks wanderer soul to free the numb Drew character...except I've seen this character before, and acted better and written better in other movies, other mediums. Kirsten Dunst's Claire has her moments, but mostly she grates, and I never just warm up to her or believe the chemistry she has with Orlando's Drew. Drew and Claire may be substitute people (and this is one of the saddest and possibly truest and favorite parts of the movie for me, because I know what it's like to be that type of person), but I felt their inevitable romantic pull toward each other too pat and too contrived. You know, amidst all the other suspensions of belief out there. When Claire pulls away from Drew at the parking lot and says that their relationship isn't meant to be that way, I almost cheered. I hoped that Cameron would get that and use that tension - for once, the girl and boy don't get together, but you don't say it's a tragedy because sometimes that's what just happens. But the fantasy of Etown I guess just doesn't let that happen, and thus Claire and Drew have to get together, because Drew needs someone so desperately, and Claire is just not happy with Ben, the imaginary boyfriend.
Note: for a supremely awesome free wheeling chick saving the numb grief laden boy romance that works, check out Angelina Jolie and Ryan Phillippe in "Playing By Heart" (good soundtrack, patchy movie, with some really good performances) and Angelina completely sells it as a pushing (charmingly) gregarious girl who just drops everything to go after Ryan's blue haired, blue hearted Keenan (another stroke of genius - I actually believed that they could be playing a couple named Keenan and Joan respectively.). It is a case of love at first sight for Joan, and then Keenan coming around (or maybe just crumbling in the face of Joan's attentions)...and when he admits he loves her, god, I still get all teary eyed about it.
Drew and Claire? half there, and I don't know what to do about the Kirsten Dunst problem. I'm trying to think of all the actresses who would have been a better Claire, and I'm thinking mainly about their smiles, because Claire is a character that you would just completely stop everything to see her smile. Where Drew is all man-child (and I read that K Dunst called him the man-boy, and I don't think it's a slur, because it's not like she's the first costar who's called Orlando on his resolute puppiness, Keira also said the 'so girls won't find him threatening' line) and Claire is maternal map maker, I think the compass is in this Claire's smile. Of course, Kirsten Dunst's smile makes me want to stab an orthodontist, so soothing..not so much - and here is a shortlist of who should/could have been Claire: (IMO)
(though I think an unknown would probably have been best)
Kristen Bell. Dude, the superior Kristen - she has that bubbly, charming, cute, maternal aspect to her, and noted chemistry thing happenin. Plus, excellent smile. And if you need to go down that little girl lost thing, dude, DUh she can play that.
Alicia Witt - who says Claire has to be blonde? She'd be a more spiky Claire, I think.
Anne Hathaway - okay, I just have a big old crush on Annie, who is just a kind of beautiful that I don't see lauded as much as the other types of Hollywood Beauty that gets played out there, and she has this kind of really classic old filmstar look that is perfect for Claire's out of step sensibility. Plus, she plays giddy really well.
Romola Garai - two brits pretending to be american may be against the law of averages (or only work in bloody war films), but I've always liked her work, from scheming in Middlemarch to all sexy and dorky in havana nights (YES STILL LOVE THAT MOVIE, SO SHUT UP), and then all Irrrrriiish in Inside I'm Dancing, and she has fantastic posture and she'd look better as a airline stewardess (She'd totally fit in as a Virgin Atlantic stewardess), but she'd probably make a really good bossy but sweet Claire.
Romola and Anne are more darkhorses, I think - though I tossed around the idea of Anna Faris, who from all the stuff I've seen of hers (admittedly not that much) is great at comedy and impersonating annoying people like Cameron Diaz and Britney Spears...but ....
Rachel McAdams. She's like the go to girl now, I think.
Alright, with that off my chest, on the question of Orlando's Drew Baylor. I definitely could not imagine Ashton Kutcher as Drew Baylor now, though he'd probably spark off with Jessica Biel better, but Orlando channeling that sense of lost numb grief/whatever....it worked for me really well in the last half of the movie. The first half it was kind of like watching Legolas when he thinks one of the Fellowship (that wasn't Aragorn, hee) going into the dark, that sort of wistful..."pudding cup" expression, but when he's on the road trip, and talking to the urn that contains the mortal remains of his dad (and the rather hilarious running to the undertaker's scene that precedes it), and then the BREAKDOWN...that's an Orlando, and the Drew I want to see, that I suspected that was there, and not just under a haze of wishful fangirl thinking (you know what I mean - the bizarre justification of eyecandy, to make yourself feel a little better about your shallowness, by saying things like - well, he helps out at animal shelters, or talks french, he used to recite Italian poetry, or 'he's not an idiot-savant, or an idiot....he can complete sentences.' Unless I am just strange and cannot have meaningless crushes anymore like other people.), bless him, Orlando acts, but I felt i was there with him in the car, and I believed it, and that's why I want to believe in Drew Baylor, because that last hour or so...man, Cameron needed more road trip. And better editing. And a more coherent focus - yes, death and the aftermath of death is a weird, disconnected, odd head space that has little rhyme and reason, and yes some people are more holy and dignified about it, and yes, sometimes your sense of humor goes into a really really dark place and you just don't know how to deal with it and you feel like a bad person for not crying....and
well, I've been there. Again, I get it. But in a film sense, that's not good enough - so the mishmashing of all the various story threads (Drew's life crisis, botched suicide attempt, disconnection from life, and then his father's death, estrangement from the Southern branch of his family, a family culture of strangers and biscuits in Elizabethtown, his cousin Jesse's aimlessness...Claire's freewheeling' boring in the USA sensibility.....)
so. much. stuff.
Among the really pretty images I remember - Drew's hand coming out of the window while driving and just letting go of his father's ashes, the dancing in the woods alone, the scrapbook ( my favorite claire moments are when they're talking on the phone, the non-kiss in the parking lot, and when she gives him that map. everything else is just pointless generic romance filler.) Susan Sarandon gently and solemnly tapdancing to Moon River - her speech I could have done without, but the tapdance? I would have kept that, yes. My huckleberry friend!
Just the sight of the south, and Elvis and all those postcards/stereotypes/public broadcasting images we have or think about what the South consists of..if nothing else, this movie should rightly inspire people to go on road trips and to explore their own state, or country...or elsewhere.
So - yeah. The good: Orlando's Drew, his family, Jesse, the road trip
The not so good: the romance, Claire, jesse's Ruckus performing, and Freebird catching on fire...was that supposed to be funny? It was just awkward, Jesse's kid screaming. I thought that was just annoying, if true to kid logic.
The best: the music. the meaningful silences. I know this movie has been compared a lot to Garden State considering the death subplot, and I liked GS, but I'm not in superlovelovewithit (because..well, I think Sam's an affected character, but ultimately she works for the movie), but I think one thing Zach Braff did really, really well was his use of silences. Cameron's been good with dialogue before, but he could stand to use some more silences to illustrate what's really going on.
and the townspeople/extras. you just know that girl playing a teenage cousin was really that shy in approaching Orlando on scene because OMG, IT'S ORLANDO BLOOM.
Movie's worth a rental. And a good clean editing.
I downloaded Related to see Callum Blue, and damn him, he's so perfectly adorable and sweet and befuddled, and so Sober!Mason it sort of makes me hate Showtime even more.
related needs to get rid of at least two sisters, because, wow, totally overcrowded, that cast.
Man. Those posts of worth - they're never a'coming, are they?
So - I went into the movie with suitably lowered expectations, with all of my FL's mixed reactions firmly in hand. I had enjoyed the trailer, but the trailers are never the movie, so I wasn't sure what I could expect that Cameron Crowe could deliver impeccably, except 1)Orlando's prettiness, 2)a v. good soundtrack.
I haven't actaully seen anything of Cameron's outside of Say Anything, Jerry Mcguire (before Tom the Cultist reared his insane smiley head, I actually quite liked that movie), and half of Almost Famous. But for me, his reputation was made in Say Anything. And I think that in Drew Baylor, not only was he mining another autographical representation ala Patrick Fugit, but another Lloyd Dobler.
Drew has Lloyd's earnestness, his focus on whatever it is - life, love (once Drew comes out of his fugue state anyway)and he's a very appealing loner type. That kind of clear eyed naivete - the line about the scholarship really clicked for me about his character - he's very much a company man - that shoe corporation took place of a Father/Guiding force in his life, as it appears from the movie, Drew's relationship with his father...while not strained, it simply was undefined, awkward - I got the feeling that they were friendly strangers. Drew's much closer with the female side of the family. Which explains why he falls for Claire so fast and so hard after his initial annoyed avoidance of her - Drew is a follower. He needs guidelines, someone to tell him what to do - despite being the oldest (? I was surprised, I thought more of well...'he's the man of the family now, but I thought Judy Greer's character was the elder sibling), he's more comfortable with given a set of directions and following them rather than just flailing around blindly. With the shoe creation storyline, I think the freedom to just create - well he got burned deeply with that - he poured everything he had into it and it was soundly rejected. Success, failure, catastrophe - all those voice overs at the beginning. Drew thinks he's a failure because of the money loss, but because he's never really lived a life without that box.
Enter Claire - see, I understand the story concept, and it would have made a beautiful little short story, maybe something an Oates or a Proulx would have written, or my hopes of hopes, an Anne Lamotte, because she makes the best kind of fragile screwed up characters who are so funny, blackly so - not these half-there, timidly funny in an awkward way shadows - and so I get why you need to have a Claire type. The free spirited, wacky eccentric gypsy Stevie Nicks wanderer soul to free the numb Drew character...except I've seen this character before, and acted better and written better in other movies, other mediums. Kirsten Dunst's Claire has her moments, but mostly she grates, and I never just warm up to her or believe the chemistry she has with Orlando's Drew. Drew and Claire may be substitute people (and this is one of the saddest and possibly truest and favorite parts of the movie for me, because I know what it's like to be that type of person), but I felt their inevitable romantic pull toward each other too pat and too contrived. You know, amidst all the other suspensions of belief out there. When Claire pulls away from Drew at the parking lot and says that their relationship isn't meant to be that way, I almost cheered. I hoped that Cameron would get that and use that tension - for once, the girl and boy don't get together, but you don't say it's a tragedy because sometimes that's what just happens. But the fantasy of Etown I guess just doesn't let that happen, and thus Claire and Drew have to get together, because Drew needs someone so desperately, and Claire is just not happy with Ben, the imaginary boyfriend.
Note: for a supremely awesome free wheeling chick saving the numb grief laden boy romance that works, check out Angelina Jolie and Ryan Phillippe in "Playing By Heart" (good soundtrack, patchy movie, with some really good performances) and Angelina completely sells it as a pushing (charmingly) gregarious girl who just drops everything to go after Ryan's blue haired, blue hearted Keenan (another stroke of genius - I actually believed that they could be playing a couple named Keenan and Joan respectively.). It is a case of love at first sight for Joan, and then Keenan coming around (or maybe just crumbling in the face of Joan's attentions)...and when he admits he loves her, god, I still get all teary eyed about it.
Drew and Claire? half there, and I don't know what to do about the Kirsten Dunst problem. I'm trying to think of all the actresses who would have been a better Claire, and I'm thinking mainly about their smiles, because Claire is a character that you would just completely stop everything to see her smile. Where Drew is all man-child (and I read that K Dunst called him the man-boy, and I don't think it's a slur, because it's not like she's the first costar who's called Orlando on his resolute puppiness, Keira also said the 'so girls won't find him threatening' line) and Claire is maternal map maker, I think the compass is in this Claire's smile. Of course, Kirsten Dunst's smile makes me want to stab an orthodontist, so soothing..not so much - and here is a shortlist of who should/could have been Claire: (IMO)
(though I think an unknown would probably have been best)
Kristen Bell. Dude, the superior Kristen - she has that bubbly, charming, cute, maternal aspect to her, and noted chemistry thing happenin. Plus, excellent smile. And if you need to go down that little girl lost thing, dude, DUh she can play that.
Alicia Witt - who says Claire has to be blonde? She'd be a more spiky Claire, I think.
Anne Hathaway - okay, I just have a big old crush on Annie, who is just a kind of beautiful that I don't see lauded as much as the other types of Hollywood Beauty that gets played out there, and she has this kind of really classic old filmstar look that is perfect for Claire's out of step sensibility. Plus, she plays giddy really well.
Romola Garai - two brits pretending to be american may be against the law of averages (or only work in bloody war films), but I've always liked her work, from scheming in Middlemarch to all sexy and dorky in havana nights (YES STILL LOVE THAT MOVIE, SO SHUT UP), and then all Irrrrriiish in Inside I'm Dancing, and she has fantastic posture and she'd look better as a airline stewardess (She'd totally fit in as a Virgin Atlantic stewardess), but she'd probably make a really good bossy but sweet Claire.
Romola and Anne are more darkhorses, I think - though I tossed around the idea of Anna Faris, who from all the stuff I've seen of hers (admittedly not that much) is great at comedy and impersonating annoying people like Cameron Diaz and Britney Spears...but ....
Rachel McAdams. She's like the go to girl now, I think.
Alright, with that off my chest, on the question of Orlando's Drew Baylor. I definitely could not imagine Ashton Kutcher as Drew Baylor now, though he'd probably spark off with Jessica Biel better, but Orlando channeling that sense of lost numb grief/whatever....it worked for me really well in the last half of the movie. The first half it was kind of like watching Legolas when he thinks one of the Fellowship (that wasn't Aragorn, hee) going into the dark, that sort of wistful..."pudding cup" expression, but when he's on the road trip, and talking to the urn that contains the mortal remains of his dad (and the rather hilarious running to the undertaker's scene that precedes it), and then the BREAKDOWN...that's an Orlando, and the Drew I want to see, that I suspected that was there, and not just under a haze of wishful fangirl thinking (you know what I mean - the bizarre justification of eyecandy, to make yourself feel a little better about your shallowness, by saying things like - well, he helps out at animal shelters, or talks french, he used to recite Italian poetry, or 'he's not an idiot-savant, or an idiot....he can complete sentences.' Unless I am just strange and cannot have meaningless crushes anymore like other people.), bless him, Orlando acts, but I felt i was there with him in the car, and I believed it, and that's why I want to believe in Drew Baylor, because that last hour or so...man, Cameron needed more road trip. And better editing. And a more coherent focus - yes, death and the aftermath of death is a weird, disconnected, odd head space that has little rhyme and reason, and yes some people are more holy and dignified about it, and yes, sometimes your sense of humor goes into a really really dark place and you just don't know how to deal with it and you feel like a bad person for not crying....and
well, I've been there. Again, I get it. But in a film sense, that's not good enough - so the mishmashing of all the various story threads (Drew's life crisis, botched suicide attempt, disconnection from life, and then his father's death, estrangement from the Southern branch of his family, a family culture of strangers and biscuits in Elizabethtown, his cousin Jesse's aimlessness...Claire's freewheeling' boring in the USA sensibility.....)
so. much. stuff.
Among the really pretty images I remember - Drew's hand coming out of the window while driving and just letting go of his father's ashes, the dancing in the woods alone, the scrapbook ( my favorite claire moments are when they're talking on the phone, the non-kiss in the parking lot, and when she gives him that map. everything else is just pointless generic romance filler.) Susan Sarandon gently and solemnly tapdancing to Moon River - her speech I could have done without, but the tapdance? I would have kept that, yes. My huckleberry friend!
Just the sight of the south, and Elvis and all those postcards/stereotypes/public broadcasting images we have or think about what the South consists of..if nothing else, this movie should rightly inspire people to go on road trips and to explore their own state, or country...or elsewhere.
So - yeah. The good: Orlando's Drew, his family, Jesse, the road trip
The not so good: the romance, Claire, jesse's Ruckus performing, and Freebird catching on fire...was that supposed to be funny? It was just awkward, Jesse's kid screaming. I thought that was just annoying, if true to kid logic.
The best: the music. the meaningful silences. I know this movie has been compared a lot to Garden State considering the death subplot, and I liked GS, but I'm not in superlovelovewithit (because..well, I think Sam's an affected character, but ultimately she works for the movie), but I think one thing Zach Braff did really, really well was his use of silences. Cameron's been good with dialogue before, but he could stand to use some more silences to illustrate what's really going on.
and the townspeople/extras. you just know that girl playing a teenage cousin was really that shy in approaching Orlando on scene because OMG, IT'S ORLANDO BLOOM.
Movie's worth a rental. And a good clean editing.
I downloaded Related to see Callum Blue, and damn him, he's so perfectly adorable and sweet and befuddled, and so Sober!Mason it sort of makes me hate Showtime even more.
related needs to get rid of at least two sisters, because, wow, totally overcrowded, that cast.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-10-20 08:49 pm (UTC)yes. he's a regular-
Date: 2005-10-20 09:00 pm (UTC)Take a minute to think about the utter wretchedness of that name played by someone named Daniel james Callum Blue.
Anyway, the ep I downloaded even had a Colin Firth joke, so clearly i had a winner. Didn't see last night's, but the gist of the storyline concerning Callum so far is that Bob and Whatever her name's character is, are having a baby.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-26 07:47 am (UTC)1: I love your comment about how Kirsten Dunst's smile makes you want to stab an orthodontist because ME TOO, OH MY GOD. OW OW OW. Actresses aren't meant to have FANGS.
2. I loved the dancing alone in the woods. I think that (and the laugh-crackup-laugh-sob-cry montage) are my favorite parts of the movie. I almost want to go see it again just to see those little bits. Almost.
3. Yeah, what the hell was the stupid free bird crap about? I guess the point was to get Kirsten Dunst wet? Seriously, that's all I can think of -- she always seems to do that in movies. I wonder if it's part of her contract. "Must try to be cutesy and smile ridiculously, must not wear bra, must be wet." Wtf.
4. MOON RIVER. Oy. My heartstrings, they are PULLED. I love that song. That tap dancing stuff made me cryyy.
5. As for your list of better!Claires, I will definitely agree with you on Kristen Bell and Rachel McAdams but gah, I absolutely cannot stand Anna Faris. Yick. :\
6. ard each other too pat and too contrived. You know, amidst all the other suspensions of belief out there. When Claire pulls away from Drew at the parking lot and says that their relationship isn't meant to be that way, I almost cheered. I hoped that Cameron would get that and use that tension - for once, the girl and boy don't get together, but you don't say it's a tragedy because sometimes that's what just happens. But the fantasy of Etown I guess just doesn't let that happen, and thus Claire and Drew have to get together, because Drew needs someone so desperately, and Claire is just not happy with Ben, the imaginary boyfriend.
Here's where I agree with you like BURNING. I thought the movie would have been GREAT if he had just taken the rest of the map and gone home. If she hadn't stuck that stupid note in that stupid book and been all "no, I changed my mind." I think it would have been a great, great, amazing story of someone coming through a man's life like a whirlwind when he needed her and leaving an indelible mark, but ONLY THAT. I have this same problem with Garden State, actually -- I felt like Large needed to take the time, go back, and stay gone for a bit. I just feel like too often, the directors and writers will fall back on the "happily ever after" thing as sort of the easy way out of a storyline, rather than doing what would probably be more effective. I think if Drew had followed her map and gone home the effect would have been more powerful than the "oh yay we're together now smooch smooch" of the end. I really do.