The Boys are Back

Normally I don’t review movies, but this past weekend I watched a really good movie that I hadn’t really heard of before. I heard about it for the first time poking around iTunes a few weeks ago, and I wrote the name down, and this weekend when my little brother was gone with school my mom and I rented it.

The Boys are Back is a movie about Joe, a man who rather suddenly finds himself a single father. Up until when his wife is diagnosed with advanced stage cancer he has travelled a lot for work and he’s never spent a ton of time with his six year old son, Artie. Now he finds himself raising a boy he doesn’t really know, who’s mourning the death of his mother. On top of this his other son, Harry, a fourteen year old boy he knows almost less, comes to live with him, adding to the chaos.

It’s a beautiful movie about fathers and sons and loss and recovery. Clive Owen stars in a film that is a far cry from his usual action flick, but he shines as the hurting and confused Joe. Nicholas McAnulty, in his debut role, as Artie is an adorable portrayal of the little boy in mourning. George MacKay is up to the task of playing the complex role of Harry, a teenager whose life has been thrown up in the air and he doesn’t know where to turn.

This film was inspired by the true story of Simon Carr, a writer and columnist for The Independent. Read about his story here.

The Time Traveler's Wife

My book recommendation for this week is Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife. This is the story of Henry and Clare, lovers whose lives are constantly thrown into chaos because Henry is a time traveler.

This book is beautifully told from the first person perspective of both Clare and Henry, and skips around a little in their lives. In each section you are informed of the date, as well as the ages of both Henry and Clare in the scene, which helps keep the timeline a little clearer.

Both of the narrators are wonderful. They are distinct from one another and their narrational styles fit their character, as they change over time, as the character’s age and mature. One scene I thought demonstrated this wonderfully was when Clare (age 6) is preparing to meet Henry (age 35) for the second time. He has asked her to bring him clothes and this is what happens as she is doing as he has asked:

I put the clothes in a bag and put the bag in the mudroom closet. When I was coming out of the mud room [my brother] saw me and he said What are you doing, a**hole? And I said, Nothing, a**hole and he pulled my hair and I stepped on his foot really hard and then he started to cry and went to tell. So I went up to my room and played Television with Mr. Bear and Jane where Jane is the movie star and Mr. Bear asks her about how it is being a movie star and she says she really wants to be a veterinarian but she is so incredibly pretty she has to be a movie star and Mr. Bear says maybe she could be a veterinarian when she is old. And Etta knocked and said Why are you stepping on Mark? and I said Because Mark pulled my hair for no reason and Etta said You two are getting on my nerves and went away so it was okay. (43)

The cadence and the storytelling in this passage is so appropriate for a 6-year-old and I thought lent a lot to the story.

One thing I was curious about was whose timeline it would follow. Would it follow Henry’s timeline (would you meet Clare out of order all the time) or would it follow Clare’s timeline (and you would meet Henry out of order). As it turned out it was neither. It tended to follow Henry’s timeline more, but there were times it would hop out of order and scenes would be grouped in various ways. It felt far more organic and natural than it might have and I thought it worked quite well.

I realize I’m hopping on this bandwagon a little late. My roommate gave me The Time Traveler’s Wife as a birthday gift and it’s only nine months later that I’m finally reading it, and I have to admit part of what pulled me to read it right now was the previews for the film.

But the previews are misleading (at least they were to me). Do not be mistaken. If you are looking for a 21^st Century Mr. Darcy you’ve come to the wrong book. Henry is a crude, alcoholic, philandering, thief when he and Clare meet (when she’s an adult, not when she’s six) and really the only thing to change afterward is the philandering with other women. He drinks, swears and does drugs from time to time (and not just for the sake of science), but somehow you find yourself getting attached to him. Maybe it’s because Clare is so in love with him and maybe it’s something else, but whatever the reason you find yourself not wanting to put the book down.

Unlike many book/film adaptations, I have found that I still want to see the film even after reading such a wonderful book. I’m not really concerned about them ruining it for me. Maybe I just want to see it to see what is included and what is not (because there are definitely portions that would have to be removed to get a PG-13 rating). Maybe it’s just to see how everything is done with his disappearing and reappearing, and to see how they work with the timeline.

One thing is for sure. I’m going to take some tissues in my pocket when I go because this one’s definitely a tear-jerker. I very rarely cry at books or movies, but I was sitting in an airplane (even more embarrassing) with my eyes filled with tears as I finished this story.

It’s a puzzle, and I tip my hat at Ms. Niffenegger for putting it together so beautifully. I’m looking forward to her next novel.

The Ugly Truth

**Sorry this is so late and that postings have been sporadic. I’m at a convention this week and am without internet quite often.**

The film The Ugly Truth is a film about Abby and Mike. Mike is a loud mouth cable-TV talk show host (he would probably fall under the category of “Shock Jock” though the term is never actually used in the movie) and Abby is the producer for the local TV morning talk show that needs a ratings boost, and so they pick up Mike, and his attitudes. Abby, played by Katherine Heigl, has control issues, mainly that she has to be in control, and it, along with her ridiculous romantic fantasies about what the perfect man should be, is ruining her dating life. Mike, played by Gerard Butler, decides that he’s just what Abby needs to get the man of her dreams when Prince Charming moves in next door. As they continue to work together, both personally and professionally, they discover that they get along better than anyone would have ever thought, and maybe it’s more than just getting along. And maybe just maybe getting Prince Charming isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

One thing that I liked about this was that Mike’s issues were not derived from any one woman who broke his heart once upon a time ruining him for the rest of his life. Instead, he talks about how he dated tons of women in his twenties, and he got tired of giving his heart away on women who didn’t stick so he realized that they weren’t going to stick. While this is not in and of itself a completely unique situation in film and literature, it does stray from the expected.

As with any movie or book, I felt as though there were issues that could have been delved into more deeply, such as why Abby’s such a psychopathic control freak and why Mike is his nephew’s only adult male role model. The former might have given us a better idea as to what makes Abby crazy (because normal women aren’t like that) and the latter could have provided further insight into why Mike is so anti-relationship.

It doesn’t qualify as a Movie That Should Have Been Workshopped, but these are details a workshop could have brought out and maybe the original screenplay did bring them out, but they ended up on the editing room floor instead of in the film release.

This is not a movie for children or those who dislike graphic language or sexuality. It is rated R for a reason. There is a lot of language, and there are a few scenes that are just uncomfortable. There is only one actual sex scene, at the very end, and that is shrouded in darkness most of the time, but not enough it wasn’t obvious what was going on. There are also other sensual and seduction scenes, not to mention one very cute bare butt.

Movies that Should have been Workshopped: Bride Wars

Movies that Should Have Been Work-shopped:

Work-shopping is when a piece of creative material is brought before a group of peers. In regards to fiction workshops, these groups read through each other’s stories to identify strengths and weaknesses in plot and character, and to make sure everything makes sense and make sure everything jives throughout the piece. It’s very easy as a writer to read right past things that are lacking, because you know them in your head and you forget that your audience is not, in fact, in your head, and they do not know what you know. The workshop process allows you to see what the reader doesn’t know. I’ve discovered, however, that not all creative pieces, be they works of fiction, or films, and to make sure everything is being used to its potential.

Bride Wars:

One film that I think really had aspects that were not used to their advantage is the recent film Bride Wars. In this film, Liv (played by Kate Hudson) and Emma (played by Anne Hathaway) play best friends who share a dream of getting married at the Plaza Hotel in June. Their plans go awry when their weddings are accidentally scheduled on the same day.

Their mothers are very influential in their futures plans because they are with their mothers that they see a wedding at the plaza, which sparked their dreams. They spend their girlhood planning their weddings based on this event. Then, at some point between this first wedding, and their own engagements, Liv’s parents die.

There is little discussion of how her parents die (though for some reason I’m thinking car accident) or how long ago it was (according to wikipedia it was when she was a child) or how it really affected her, though based on her reactions to it now it seems to have strongly affected her.

Liv’s character is that of a Type A personality lawyer, and there are certain clues that part of the reason she needs so much control over things is because of losing her parents, but this is never really explored, and a wedding planning setting is the perfect place to explore this aspect of her life because a wedding is such a family centered event and the lack of both parents would deeply impact the way she handles it. It is glossed over. For all that it is discussed, it probably would have been better for them to eliminate the aspect all together, and not complicate things.

I get the feeling a little that there was supposed to be more about this in the film, but that it got cut in the editing process. My thought, however, is that the film was only an hour and a half long, so there wasn’t really any reason to cut that out for time reasons.

One of the aspects of the film that some people might feel should have been done differently, is that there are several times where the action is not en scene, but instead comes to the audience through snapshots with voice over from the narrator. I found this to be a really creative way to cover certain important scenes that go with wedding planning, but that won’t necessarily give the story enough to justify them taking up time en scene. They were all things that could have been cut out entirely, but by including them as snap shots it gave the narrator a little time to speak, and it showed the audience something that they would not have otherwise seen.

Over all I really liked this movie, even though there were things that could have been changed and it didn’t do well with the critics. I thought it did a nice job of storytelling and it wasn’t horrible for a chick flick, which was what it was.

Sequels

Chick flicks never have sequels. The sequels that do exist are rarely worth watching (The Prince & Me 2? Really? And there was only one person from the original in the sequel, so why didn’t they just make a completely different movie?). The question is, why? Why is it that Disney feels that it’s necessary to make sequels for everything, even sequels for sequels, and there have been, what four Die Hard movies and three terminators, and yet you never find sequels worth watching for chick lit movies? The women who watch these movies, and the men who suffer through them with their significant others, would more than likely go to see what happens next, and yet you never find them.

I have a theory. I think it’s because we like to watch the people fall in love, we like to watch the struggles they get into at the time, but we don’t really like to think about what happens next. We don’t want to think about the struggles that they’ll have in their marriage afterward. We don’t want to think about the way their marriages might fall apart. The divorce rate in the United States is around 50% and we have no reason to believe that these relationships in these movies should be any different. Yes, these stories have romantic stories of the couples falling in love, but chances are, so do many of the marriages in the US that end in divorce.

Not only do we not want to see the struggles, but we get tired of seeing them. If we were to have these sequels there couldn’t be a plot, the story just wouldn’t be the same, unless there was some kind of conflict that might possibly separate the lovers in the story. However, after a while we would get tired of seeing the problems over and over again. We’d get tired of watching as Suzy Busybody time and time again does something to alienate Not-Quite-Prince-Charming-But-Pretty-Darn-Close to the point that they break up or almost break up and then in the end she somehow does just the right thing so that he’ll take her back. We’d get tired of watching Jenny Insecure worry that her boyfriend/husband is cheating on her so she goes into all these crazy situations to find out only to discover that he’s planning a surprise party just for her and then she ruins it, almost ruining their relationship. We don’t want to see these things and we certainly don’t want to see them over and over again. But in the sequels that we do have these are the inevitable things that appear.

And the alternative is worse. What happens when Suzy or Jenny don’t get the guy back in the end and they end up with someone new? Can we go back to the original and watch it the same way ever again? No. A bad sequel can totally ruin the original for the reader/watcher. I’ve had it happen to me. I’ve read a book and loved it and then read the sequel and thought, I can never read that again because I know what happens and I don’t like it.

We want to see the possibility in the relationships in movies and books. We want to see what might be. We want to write our own happy ending even if it’s not realistic and even if it wouldn’t be possible to make into a good movie or book. It’s a fantasy, and we want to keep reality as far away from reality as we possibly can.