Just because Lost is over doesn’t mean it’s over over. I mean, it does, but it doesn’t mean the Bonus Content has to end. Welcome to Lost: Bonus Summer, where we check out what the Lost ppl are up to now that they’re off the island (/in heaven).
This week: The Purifiers starring Dominic Monaghan.
Except for, “Okay, thanks, bye!”
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Just because Lost is over doesn’t mean it’s over over. I mean, it does, but it doesn’t mean the Bonus Content has to end. Welcome to Lost: Bonus Summer, where we check out what the Lost ppl are up to now that they’re off the island (/in heaven).
This week: The Linda McCartney Story, starring Elizabeth Mitchell.
Just because Lost is over doesn’t mean it’s over over. I mean, it does, but it doesn’t mean the Bonus Content has to end. Welcome to Lost: Bonus Summer, where we check out what the Lost ppl are up to now that they’re off the island (/in heaven).
This week: Animals, starring Naveen Andrews.
Just because Lost is over doesn’t mean it’s over over. I mean, it does, but it doesn’t mean the Bonus Content has to end. Welcome to Lost: Bonus Summer, where we check out what the Lost ppl are up to now that they’re off the island (/in heaven).
First up: The Stepfather.
So, you know how, like, you’re always wondering what happens to all the characters in movies you like after the movie’s over? I mean, if you’re not a commenter on the imdb.com message boards, where they’re constantly trying to answer this question (and also, what Zac Efron would play that whatever in the whatever remake of whatever), you probably haven’t. But, wonder no more, if you’ve been wondering, because this is the sequel to Pretty in Pink:
So, like, Andie and Blaine stay together through the summer, and Duckie’s dating Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Steph and Blaine still aren’t talking. But then they go off to college. Well, Blaine goes to Northwestern or whatever the most expensive college is out there and Andie has a scholarship to, like, a good school but not a great school somewhere nearby and Duckie gets a job cleaning carpets somewhere around Shermer. And he and Buffy eventually break up when she goes off to college in California. And Steph doesn’t go to college, but he becomes a drug dealer on the Northwestern campus, so he and Blaine start talking again. Anyway, Andie gets pregnant and Blaine starts drinking a lot and tells Steph one night and Steph is like, “Well! You’ve certainly gone out and impregnated… the most… interesting girl of our mumble mumble,” and Blaine is like, “Wah,” and Steph is like, “Take care of it,” in that way that rich people always do in movies, where they’re like, “Take care of it,” instead of, “Tell her to get an abortion,” you know?
So, then Blaine wires her some money to get the abortion and she makes the appointment and he’s like, “I’ll be down there this weekend to go to the appointment with you,” but he stands her up! He backs out on her! Again! Anyway, so she calls Duckie, and Duckie’s there right away, but she doesn’t go through with the abortion and she has the kid. But, like, she can’t finish school because it’s the 80s and women’s lib hadn’t happened yet or whatever? So, she moves back to Shermer and Duckie and she get married and it’s sort of just a marriage of convenience. I mean, at least for her. Duckie obviously wanted to marry her, but she’s just sort of like, “Well, WHAT ELSE am I gonna do??” in that shrieky voice.
So, anyway, they’re raising the kid and she’s all bitter and dissatisfied with her life all the time, but Duckie’s a really good father, it turns out, and then a few years later, Blaine shows back up. He’s an alcoholic at this point, btw. So, Blaine shows up and he’s like, “I want to get back together with you,” and Andie’s like, “You had your chance, Blaine,” but then they end up having an affair anyway. Blaine is a real deadbeat dad. Like, he shows up at birthday parties drunk and with really inappropriate gifts and he misses little league games and everything, and their son (Martin, that’s their son’s name) likes Duckie better anyway. And Duckie knows that something is up, and he’s like, “Can we not invite Blaine, since Martin doesn’t even like him?” and Andie’s like, “We have to invite him! He’s Martin’s real father!” and then Duckie just looks at her. Like, he just looks at her and then walks out of the room. And Andie feels bad that she hurt him, so she goes to a motel and sleeps with Blaine, because that’s how depressed people in movies who are having affairs deal with their guilt: they go and do something that makes them more guilty.
Anyway, at this point, Steph’s been hanging around again after he did a short stint in jail for dealing, and Blaine invites him to Martin’s, like, 10th birthday and he shows up with this giant scar on his face from a knife fight he got into in prison? And Andie’s like, “What are you doing here, Steph?” and Steph is like, “This is Martin’s party, Andie, you can’t tell me what to do,” and Andie’s like, “Well, where’s Blaine anyway?” and Steph’s like, “Shrug,” and Andie’s like, “That filthy fucking no good liar! He didn’t even have the decency to tell me the truth!” Because it turns out that Blaine was going to come to the party and talk to Duckie for her about how she wanted a divorce. But, anyway, Blaine’s not there and Duckie tries to comfort her, but of course Andie doesn’t let him, and Martin tells her he hates her and then Steph tries to say something to make her feel better but she gets all self-righteous that he’s hitting on her, but then she ends up sleeping with him anyway, because she’s sad. Also, everyone’s wearing flannel because it’s the mid-90s.
So, anyway, she’s been having this sort of affair with Steph, but also still carrying on her affair with Blaine, and neither of them knows about it. And then one day, she’s at her house with Steph while Duckie’s cleaning carpets and Blaine stumbles in with some flowers he, like, stepped on accidentally on the way over, and Steph and Blaine discover what was going on and they’re all mad at her and they both leave. But then a year later or something Blaine gets into a drunk driving accident and Steph calls her up and tells her to come to the hospital and Blaine is, like, in a coma and they don’t know if he’ll ever wake up and Steph tries to hold her hand but she gets up and is all, “I choose me,” and Steph’s like, “It’s not like there was much of a choice since Blaine is probably gonna die mumble mumble.” But then when Andie gets home she sees all of Duckie’s bags packed and it turns out that Buffy the Vampire Slayer came back from California a year ago and they’ve fallen in love and he wants to finally go off and have the life he’s always deserved whatever whatever. And at first Andie’s all mad, but then she tells him to go, but it’s this obnoxious scene where she’s acting like she’s the generous one but you’re like, “But you had two affairs for years!” and then Duckie leaves and they give each other a hug goodbye, and he’s like, “Play Try a Little Tenderness sometimes and remember me,” or whatever. And then Martin, who’s 16 now, comes out of the house and he’s like, “Dad!” and it’s really poignant because he’s always called him Duckie, and Duckie’s like, “Son, I have to tell you something,” but before he can finish, Martin’s like, “Dad, take me with you!” and then Duckie looks at Andie and Andie looks up at the sky or whatever and then she’s like, “It’s okay. You can go,” because she chose herself again.
So, Duckie and Martin leave and Andie sits out on a lawn chair in the front yard of her crappy house alone and she’s got bags under her eyes and her hair isn’t as red as it used to be and she’s wearing all black because she’s a boring sad adult now, and a single tear falls down her face, and then she reaches into her bag and takes out a pair of pink sunglasses and puts them on and smiles or something and that’s when the movie’s over.
You know, it’s one of those boring movies that adults like.
Persuasion was the last book Jane Austen wrote before she died. It’s about losing love and finding it again and defying your awful family, etc, like some classic literature shit. Anne’s delusional family told her to reject the marriage proposal of the sailor she was in love with because he was poor and they weren’t. Ten years later, when she’s almost 30 and pretty much an old maid, her family’s still delusional but now not as rich, Anne has lead a very sad lonely life, the sailor is now a captain and has tons of money, and Anne has to watch him rub it in her face about what she missed out on as her sister’s in-laws fall all over themselves trying to get him to marry one of them. He realizes, of course, that revenge is pointless because he still loves her, and she still loves him, and omg her family is essentially abusive so no wonder she’s so effed, and he asks her to marry him, the end.
Persuasion, the tv-movie adaptation from 2007 is about the woman from Happy-Go-Lucky
attempting to look sad
- probably due to her extremely painful hairdo -
and running a whole lot
after her former almost fiancee
who’s stopped over from his frat house to invite Anne’s awful sister
Mary’s sister-in-law Conan O’Brien
and her suicidal sister Louisa
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to help him rub it in that Anne is a loser
before finally deciding to get back together with her after she goes blind.
I mean, approximately.
Actually, they did totally eff up the story in the following three ways.
1. The Casting
Happy-Go-Lucky was a great movie. Sally Hawkins was great in Happy-Go-Lucky. I don’t think actors should be pigeon-holed into roles, but SH is so much better suited to someone who sees the joy in life as opposed to someone who’s been lonely and sad and treated like crap by her entire awful family for the past ten years, whose only glimmer of hope came and went quickly, and came back again only to taunt her.
Plus, Capt. Wentworth up there is supposed to be bitter, hardened, angry, out for a little bit of revenge, and has been on a boat for the past ten years. What kind of sunscreen did this guy have? He looks great.
But, Mary. Oh, Mary. Mary, Anne’s younger and only married sister, is conceited and constantly disappointed with her life. Her in-laws don’t like her because she’s annoying, but she thinks they owe her a lot more respect, and her husband ignores her because she’s a shrew. She pretends to be ill in order to get attention and is conniving when it comes to who her young sisters-in-law should marry, though it’s really none of her business since both their parents are alive.
Once upon a time, I got a BS in special education. This is true. So I spent a lot of this movie trying to figure out what special needs Mary has.
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My conclusion is that she’s just generally deranged. There is no help I can give her.
2. The Letter
At the end of the story, Capt. Wentworth overhears a conversation between Anne and a mutual friend where she’s all, “I’m still obvs in love with someone from my past,” and Wentworth writes a letter that’s all, “Serious? ‘Cause if I heard you right, you’re in love with me, and I’m in love with you AWESOME,” and then he makes sure she gets the letter before he leaves and she reads it and goes down to tell her brother-in-law to find Wentworth and tell him that she wants him to come back to her house later for a party, “make sure you wink at him a lot, dude, it’ll get the point I’m trying to make across,” but her brother-in-law is, like, “I have errands to run, and Wentworth has been hanging around outside the front door of your house for the past ten minutes, so why don’t you just tell him yourself?” and then they get married.
In this movie, Anne has the conversation (which is the only solid indication that Wentworth has that Anne really didn’t want to give him up ten years ago, and still wants him back) but Wentworth isn’t there to hear it. And Anne gets the letter (which contains the phrasing from the book, including the part about how he overheard her, but he didn’t overhear anything) while she’s already on some weird jog through the town to find him, but without ever having read the letter, she never would have known that he wanted her back. I’m not one of those people who thinks that movie adaptations can’t take artistic license, but it’s kind of the climax. Which is kind of the important part of the story. Kind of.
3. The Kiss
There are some truly bad movie kisses. This might be the worst. Anne runs through Bath searching for Capt. Wentworth, running into about thirty people on the way who keep sending her in different directions like she’s playing some kind of poorly designed board game. When she finally finds him, it takes them about three hours to just kiss each other already, because I guess the person who directed this movie reeeeally liked Dawson’s Creek.
The description on YouTube says that the actor playing Wentworth thought it was the steamiest kiss he ever did on screen. Ew. Even with the spittle?
But what do I know? There are currently fan videos for Persuasion on YouTube set to I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing, Moonlight Sonata (?), Right Here Waiting, Wait for You, Back for Good, Chasing Cars, When You Say Nothing At All, I’ll Never Get Over You (Getting Over Me), Light Up My Life, What About Love, How to Save a Life, It’s All Coming Back to Me Now, My Immortal, What About Now, Because You Loved Me, and I Will Remember You, so I’m obviously missing something.
I’m almost convinced, but not quite. When a fan vid is made using the Heart song All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You, then I’ll concede: best period piece ever.
I unfortunately missed the last viewing of the movie A Town Without Christmas today, so I was unable to get any screen caps. And apparently, the only thing about this movie that pictorially exists on the internets is this tiny picture of the two stars:
And also, the cover of the DVD, which is available in the Netherlands, in case you’re looking for a last minute xmas gift.
This movie is about this little boy named Chris who writes a pre-suicide note disguised as a letter to Santa describing how he will go into the woods on Christmas Eve and do what needs to be done if Santa doesn’t bring his mom and dad jobs for Christmas. And then some nosy parker at the post office opens his letter and turns it into a national tragedy/hunt for a suicidal nine-year-old.
Patricia Heaton is a reporter living in Seattle who, I guess, works for the equivalent of New York City’s Pix News. It’s cheap ass, is what I’m saying. She’s sent off to the little fishing town Chris lives in to cover the search for him, alive or dead, and ends up meeting this total weirdo in the train station who’s also headed to the fishing town.
This guy is some kind of failed writer who’s been trying unsuccessfully for, like, twenty years to get this memoir about his boyhood supernatural experience in the woods published. He’s like Joey Potter in that he doesn’t get that fiction writers don’t have to write stories entirely based upon real events from their lives. His story includes something about leaving his foster house on a cold Christmas Eve night to go out into the woods and find the door to the netherworld, and then falling asleep on the ground and almost freezing to death, until a magical lumberjack shows up to light a match – A match – which somehow warms him up enough to survive. So… It’s supposed to be a children’s book, btw, so his publisher is like, “PLEASE write a new story that’s not so creepy and mind-effing and depressing,” and the guy is all, “THIS is MY LIFE and it HAPPENED and it’s REAL!” because he just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get it at all.
Anyway, did I mention he writes for a greeting card company? His poems include things along the lines of, “Welcome to middle age. Next stop: death.” So, he gets fired right before the Christmas party. Which he actually can’t believe, because he was just sent an anonymous package filled with Thomas Kincaid-esque paintings, and he would have thought that this find – these slightly depressing scenes of a run-down town at Christmas time – would be the next big thing in Christmas cards. The firing doesn’t bother him in the least, because he becomes obsessed with finding the artist, and ends up on his way to the old fishing town, on the same train as Patricia Heaton.
I mean, the rest of the story doesn’t make any sense, so it’s gonna be hard to explain. Like, PH and Dumb Guy go to the same B&B, which overbooked, and end up having to share this basement room together, and decide they’re into each other, but in this way where they’re sort of grossed out by the thought that they can’t do any better but willing to put up with it. And it turns out that the paintings weren’t just paintings but premonitions and every scene in the paintings eventually comes true, but they’re not freaked out by it AT ALL! And Peter Falk plays this angel, Max, who’s actually a real dick, who keeps popping up and acting like he’s a different person each time, and the Dumb Guy is always, twenty seconds in, all, “Waaaaaaaait a minute, you’re that guy from the motel/bar/painting/general store!!”
Anyway, it turns out that the kid who was gonna commit suicide didn’t exist, and was a creation of this little girl whose parents were planning on getting a divorce. PH and Dumb Guy find her out and tell her that she has to let everyone know so they stop wasting time looking for a dead boy’s body in the woods, and when she goes to tell her parents, her father’s like, “Honey, what are you trying to say?” and her mother screams, “Let me HANDLE THIS!!” Assholes. No wonder this kid is making up suicide notes, you know?
Anyway, the best part of the movie is about the last ten minutes. There was supposed to be a Christmas pageant for the town which the mayor (the little girl’s father) cut from the budget because there wasn’t enough money for all the lights to be lit up. So, his wife tells the townsfolk that they’ll have the Christmas pageant without the lights and then everybody wins. And then they hook up lights anyway, and light them all, like, a million of them, and then the whole town loses power, and the woman goes tearing outside accusing her husband of having deliberately cut off the town’s power on a cold Christmas Eve night because he was annoyed that the Christmas pageant was going on, and I told you this movie is confusing.
But, Dumb Guy? He goes to the general store where he encounters Max who tells him that he over-ordered candles and candle holders, like, thousands of them. Dumb Guy grabs a box – A box – goes to his car, and then drives into the crowd of ppl standing in the dark outside of the defunct Christmas pageant, beeping his horn, and screaming like a maniac, “GET BACK INSIDE! EVERYONE BACK INSIDE! I HAVE CANDLES!!!” The one box turns into fifty and everyone grabs a big taper and places a plastic drinking cup around it, which quickly melts and deforms around the candles. Then a bunch of carolers sing Deck the Halls, but half of the carolers just sing, seriously, just sing, “Don! Gay!”
And then Max shows up in the woods in a tuxedo, Dumb Guy and PH stop making out so Dumb Guy can go talk to him, he discovers that Max was the lumberjack, and Max intimates that he may or may not actually be Santa Claus (?) and then disappears in front of them and Patricia Heaton goes, “Hey, who was that?” Like, HOMEBOY JUST DISAPPEARED! Lunatics.
If someone in the Netherlands has the dvd, please send it to me. Thx and Merry Xmas.
I like Jane Austen. I think her writing was funny, and I think it translates well to modern life (when interpreted, of course). And I think that her writing had a lot of heart to it. I still get anxious butterfly-ish every time I read Emma and get to the part with Emma and Mr. Knightley’s walk around the garden.
The point is, I like Jane Austen.
I did not like Becoming Jane.
There is nothing redeeming about the movie save for the scene in the beginning where James McAvoy’s character goes to a party and has to sit and listen to Jane read a long, boring, pointless story about her sister and fiancee to her sister and fiancee (and acted all, like, I’ll read it because everyone twisted my arm, like she didn’t write the story, come down with the story, and sit with it in her lap all afternoon waiting for someone to tell her to go read it), and he falls asleep. The movie is over-long and turns what historians have decided was basically nothing into the greatest romance ever. Jane is obnoxious and gawky and awk and embarrassing. Tom seems mildly grossed out by her and then mildly amused by her and then mildly interested in her, while she gets mad at the slightest mention of his name, and then suddenly they’re in love, but there seems to be a huge leap from how they felt to how they felt and I don’t like it.
The movie actually is guilty of a much bigger offense, though, and it has to do with James McAvoy. Because, I don’t understand how, in all of his other movies, he went from, like,
Bleached Hair Hot (no, seriously)
to Nerdy Hot
to Kinda Dirty Hot
to 1930s Hot
to Brandishing a Gun Hot
to… Creepy Old Leprechaun?
I mean… what kind of … what??
And I don’t even want to get into the alternate universe where, 20 years later, Jane’s older brother and MUCH older sister-in-law look like this:
but, Jane and Tom manage to look like this:
Were the stylists just effing with everyone? Seriously?
Oh, and one more thing. I promise.
Is that supposed to be hyperbole? Because, way to overstate, writers. Jane Austen wrote two great novels (Pride & Prejudice and Emma), two entertaining novels (Northanger Abbey and Persuasion), and two craptacularly boring novels (Mansfield Park and Sense & Sensibility). Even if you disagree about which novels fit into which of those categories, I think we can all agree: six of the greatest novels of the English language? That’s some bullshit.
Yeah, yeah, I know I’ve written about Pretty in Pink before. That was just about the prom dress, though. Sally and I were watching it last night and discussing how annoying Andie is, so I had to outline it. Btw, as lame as I find the idea of Andie and Blaine even wanting to have gone out in the first place, I’m totally not an Andie and Duckie shipper. I think that the idea of putting them together is kind of ridiculous, seeing how the entire movie was about a burgeoning relationship between two people and, between the other two, an unrequited love on one side and an entitled sense of indifference on the other. Why would you WANT Duckie to end up with Andie? She’s kind of a jerk. She treats him like crap, acts like she’s never seen him do something ridiculous to get a laugh before, and constantly plays like she can’t understand him. After 8 years of a very solid friendship.
The whole movie is so awkward, and it’s almost entirely because of Andie. And not because she’s poor or because she’s picked on or because she’s supposed to be a little awkward because it’s high school and she’s supposedly having some kind of Romeo + Juliet moment and you can relate because you’ve been there and you know how it is to feel like you’re on the outside looking in and everyone is talking about you behind their hands and you don’t know if you can stick it out to be with this person, but because Andie is a creep and a half.
