Well it finally happened. Dreamworks Animation finally nailed it. Kung Fu Panda set the bar for the studio as far as I'm concerned, and How to Train Your Dragon raised it.
I feel I should preface this by saying that I had no idea what to expect going into this movie. I hadn't seen many ads or any trailers for it, and barely knew it existed until just a few months ago. I knew nothing of the plot aside from the fact that there were vikings and dragons, and everything I'd seen looked pretty fun and silly. I didn't know Chris Sanders and Dean DeBloise (whose work you might know from Lilo and Stitch-- which I will coincidentally be writing about in my feminism in animation series) were the co-writers and directors, I didn't know anything about the voice casting (surprisingly and refreshingly skimpy on the celebrity names), and I sure didn't expect it to be so moving. Directors like Sanders and Dean, and Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille) keep treating their audiences like they actually have brains and emotional intellect, and have studios capable of producing animation quality that backs those things up, hopefully more animation directors will follow suit.
So, having gone into the movie with very little in the way of expectations other than maybe some silly comedy and lots of wisecracks-- it's Dreamworks, after all, that's usually what they base their movies around-- I was not prepared for the movie I actually saw. It had its funny moments, certainly, with nary a fart joke or pop culture reference to be found, but it wasn't a wacky comedy like what I'd been expecting. The story itself is really basic, and yeah there are loads of predictable tropes like 'the coming of age story', 'the geeky guy likes the popular girl', 'a boy and his dog', 'teenager emotionally estranged from parent/s who don't understand him', 'the dork who doesn't fit in because he's too different', and so on. And yeah, one of the big underlying messages of the movie is the typical 'just be true to yourself', but it's actually really underplayed in favor of something that usually gets less focus: 'learning to understand something differently'.
The main character, Hiccup, is from a tribe of Vikings (who speak with Scottish accents for some reason) who raise sheep, build houses, and kill dragons. Mostly the latter, although the house building is tied in with that as well. Their village is constantly raided by dragons who carry off their sheep, and the Vikings are experienced enough with killing them that they have some classifications and techniques for each species, and even have a right of passage tradition that involves training to fight and eventually kill them. Hiccup, a small, skinny teenager who isn't understood or respected by anyone, especially his father, the village leader and big brawny tough guy, wants more than anything to kill a dragon and earn some respect and affection. He isn't strong enough to wield his own weapon, but he's clever enough to design a catapult to do it for him, and manages to down a member of the most mysterious and enigmatic of the dragon species, the Night Fury. When he finally finds the injured dragon, he finds he can't bring himself to kill it, and instead starts observing and eventually befriending it. What he learns about dragon behavior is often at direct odds with what he's being taught in dragon training, but through his understanding of dragon behavior, he's able to rise to the top his class despite his complete lack of warrior prowess.
Meanwhile, he's also figured out how to repair the injury to the dragon-- now named Toothless-- which is able to properly fly again with teamwork. The flight scenes are amazingly well-done, not only because they're beautiful in and of themselves, but because they drive home the beauty of the relationship between Hiccup and Toothless. We get to experience the exhilaration they both feel at getting to fly right along with them, and the fear they both feel when they fall. Hiccup's actions have made him responsible for Toothless, and Toothless in turn helps validate Hiccup's unconventional ways and gives him a kind of freedom and perspective he couldn't have achieved on his own. Neither one can reach their full potential without the other, and the flight scenes drive that home beautifully without a word.
I also really liked that they didn't shy away from the potential consequences of Hiccup's actions, and there are some surprises toward the end. In retrospect, they probably shouldn't have been as surprising as they were, but at the same time, it happens so rarely in movies for younger audiences-- or even older ones for that matter-- that it took me off guard. There's a more mature sensibility at the heart of the movie that is refreshing in general, and most certainly so for Dreamworks animation. It's a fun movie, but it's not afraid to get into some more serious issues for the sake of more emotional integrity. I highly recommend seeing it, and especially in 3D, which isn't something I typically recommend. I've never seen a movie in 3D in the theater, and I usually don't feel like I'm missing out on that much, but I do regret not seeing this one in it. I actually forgot it was supposed to be in 3D until I was leaving the theater and saw the sign on the poster that said it was in 2D only. No gratuitous things flying toward the camera for the sake of a gimmick, I get the impression this 3D was used intelligently, to heighten the experiences of the characters onscreen for the audience.
So in summary, this movie will likely be compared to a lot of other movies out there. Some of the comparisons will be fair, some will not, but to take the film only on the basis of its tropes (of which there are many) leaves out how those tropes are presented. All movies and stories work with tropes, either by employing them or defying them. It's in the execution that makes the difference as to how an audience will respond to it-- whether attention was paid to the characters and an investment in having the audience care about them is paramount for me. It's clear the filmmakers here cared about Hiccup and Toothless and their bond is the biggest focus in the film. That's why it works as well as it does, and that's why any of it means anything. For me, the execution here was good. They cared about the characters, they cared about what they were trying to say, and they cared about whether or not the audience cared about the same things.
(Not officially a part of my series on feminism in animation, although it certainly applies. Just a quick rant.)
So, as most people who might care probably already know, Disney's changed the title of its upcoming movie Rapunzel to the more gender-neutral Tangled. In and of itself, I guess not that big a deal, it's got a certain catch to it, slightly more engaging to a modern audience since it's an adjective, not a noun. Whatever. But then why did they decide to change the content of the movie too? According to the interviews I've read, they're beefing up the role of the heroic prince guy and giving him lots more action scenes. Okay, I'm all for equal character development (which is not what "swashbuckling action" means, btw), but why are they changing so much so suddenly, and especially less than a year before the movie opens?
"We didn't want to be put in a box," according to Ed Catmull, president of Disney and Pixar's animation department (via the LA Times). "Some people might assume it's a fairy tale for girls when it's not. We make movies to be appreciated and loved by everybody."
Translation: "The Princess and the Frog underperformed (ie: only made ~$220 million worldwide) and like we always do, we're blaming something totally arbitrary on the failure instead of our story department and our marketing strategy."
Remember back when they announced they were closing their traditional animation studios in favor of switching to digital animation? Their reasoning there was that everyone else's CG-animated movies were making money and their traditional ones weren't, therefore it must be that traditional animation as a medium is dead and not that the movies themselves had issues. Only now, instead of blaming traditional animation for the "failure" of their blockbuster movie, they're blaming it on the fact that boys won't go see a movie with the word "princess" in the title.
Or, apparently, "Rapunzel". (Which the semantic in me must point out is a kind of leafy green plant people use in salads, not a fancy word for "princess".)
So now, instead of the method of animation at fault, it's the fact that it's about a girl. I keep forgetting that girls aren't regular people who can be easily identified with by people of either gender, like boys can. See, when you make a movie with a girl in the lead part, and it's about "girl" stuff like romance and magic (as 99% of lead-women movies are), it means it's a "chick flick" and the only acceptable guy audience members are the ones dragged there by their girlfriends and who spend every second of its run-time in sheer emotional anguish. Because everyone knows that girl things are silly and emasculating and real men only tolerate it for the sake of sex.
But when a movie comes out with a guy in the lead and it's about "guy" stuff like adventure and action, it's totally cool for girls to like that, too, because when we say "guy", we really mean "everybody". Because guy stuff is the default, "non-gendered" stuff, and "girl" stuff is for sissy, fluffies who like glitter and shoes. And in case you're confused by that, "glitter" and "shoes" and everything else associated with being feminine are less important, interesting, relevant, and acceptable to enjoy because they are silly and beneath all the relevant "boy" stuff like explosions and car chases.
Thank you, Disney, for reminding me that girls are silly and nobody wants to watch movies about them. It's a really good thing you remembered, too, before releasing another movie that will only make a few hundred million dollars because there wasn't enough boy-time and we all know that the only way to relate to a girl character is to be a girl yourself. I mean it's not like they're real people or anything.
(Just for the sake of clarification: I do not assume this of all males, and in fact I think it's pretty demeaning to assume they're all this shallow, but there's a lot of cultural pressure and influence out there that supports the "girls are silly and you shouldn't like anything aimed at them" mentality. I don't know which I find more insulting, the idea that all guys must think this way, or the fact that there are evidently so many who do. And they're not the only ones! There are loads of girls out there who feel the exact same way due to the same social stigma. I was one of them for a very long time. Hence the bitter.)
(Another clarification: I have big issues with the so-called "chick flicks", too, and the predominance of princesses in animated movies. Not because I think femininity in and of itself is demeaning, but because of how "appropriate" femininity is showcased in them, and the almost complete lack of anything else for female consumers. I'm of the opinion that people who genuinely like the glittery princess thing, rock on. But limiting the idea of "girl" to just that is... limiting. Girls can be foofy princesses, and they can be other things, too! We have LOADS of princesses already, maybe we can explore, I don't know, something else for a change?)
This series really never got the recognition it deserved when it was on back in 1998, and I'm really doubtful that it'll ever make it to DVD despite a fan following and a ton of celebrity voice talent. I found it to be a pretty clever series, especially since I'm a huge fan of Greek mythology and I love that the writers clearly studied it and involved it heavily in the plots of the series. It's not always accurate, of course, since it's Disney and an animated daytime show aimed at children, but they actually got away with a fair amount, and you can tell they went to the myths first. It's actually pretty cool, since the original myths were largely pretty woman-phobic, anyway. Don't believe me? Take a look at all the female monsters those strapping demigod heroes had to go defeat, like gorgons, sirens, harpies, dracaenae, scylla, maenades, sphinx, Amazons, and the list goes on. (Note: I'm not saying all the monsters were female, but there were a lot of them, and there's a lot of symbolism involved in terms of taming/conquering female power, especially sexuality, which actually lines up with the role and treatment of women in ancient Greek society, too.)
The basic premise, as with most Disney TV adaptations of their movies, is setting Hercules (Tate Donovan) in high school during his awkward adolescent phase. Despite being a demi-god and the son of Zeus, he's pretty much a social outcast and his only steady friends are Icarus (French Stewart), the boy who flew too close to the sun on wax wings and who now seems to be permanently fried physically and mentally, and Cassandra (Sandra Bernhard), a pessimistic, sarcastic, and downright acidic young woman who's cursed to have unerring visions of future catastrophe, but who will never be believed if she tries to warn anyone about them. Cassandra alone's a great feminist character because, as might be surmised by the casting choice, she's a smart, outspoken, independent woman with a lot more on her mind than just dating and shopping. In fact she only dates one character in the entire show and that was only for two episodes-- this is in spite of Icarus's conviction that they're a couple and his stalking and obsessive behavior towards her, while not portrayed as anything other than annoying and basically harmless, isn't touted as building up to a true love match for them, either. She rejects him constantly and never capitulates to dating him or seems interested in him in that respect at all, which is nice. In fact, the character she winds up dating is very similar to him in a lot of ways, but importantly, he's not obsessive or clingy or possessive. Of course it's played for laughs and Bernhard goes completely over the top with her syrupy lovesick voice, but I think it's interesting that it seems to be Icarus's stalker-like behavior that's his biggest obstacle with her.
Icarus, for his part, is also pretty cool when not latched onto Cassandra, since he doesn't seem to pay much heed to constructed gender roles at all-- he's often shown to be more creative, nurturing, and domestically-minded, and never self-conscious about it. Of course he's also delusional and often has very bad ideas that get him into trouble, but it's still cool that he's totally at peace with his masculine and feminine sides.
There are several specific episodes that deal directly with feminist issues, especially anytime the Amazon Tempest (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is featured. One episode, The Girdle of Hyppolyte, dealt with Hercules having issues with his “Home Grecinomics” class (ha ha, puns) because he didn't feel like he should have to do “women's work” like cooking. He winds up following Tempest back to her home because he thinks she's in danger and winds up at odds with the Amazonian ruler, Hyppolyte (Jane Curtain). Banished to the kitchen to do “men's work”, he meets Tempest's father, King Darius (Emeril Lagasse) and learns that cooking and homemaking aren't gender-specific, nor are they inherently demeaning. They stay clear of more prickly topics like reinforcing the gender binary and its inherent struggle for dominance, and the idea that homemaking as a full-time job isn't regarded any more highly in the matriarchy than in the patriarchy, but the ideas are in there if anyone stops to read between the lines. Pretty subversive for a daytime animated kid's show.
It also takes on the Pygmalion myth, which has become popularized these days in movies like My Fair Lady and Annie Hall (which is a great movie, by the way). The basic story of the original myth is that the sculptor Pygmalion found every woman he saw to be inadequate next to his idea of what they should be, so sculpts himself his perfect woman. During his sculpting, he becomes so besotted with his creation, Aphrodite takes pity on him and brings the statue Galatea to life. The episode The Dream Date plays on this, even having Pygmalion be the school's art teacher with the improbably attractive wife (who is never named), but instead of a dissatisfaction with women in general, Hercules's problem is his inability to get a date for a school dance. Inspired by the art teacher's story, he sneaks into the art room and sculpts a woman out of clay, hoping to invoke Aphrodite (Lisa Kudrow) to bring her to life so he can have a date. As exacting and specific about what he wants her to be like physically, he is equally as uninterested in her personality, and just asks that she be “crazy about [him]”. Naturally, things go awry when Galatea (Jennifer Aniston) is clingy, obsessive, possessive to the point of violence with any other girl who so much as says boo to him, and even winds up rigging the election for the king and queen of the dance. When Herc tries to break up with her (by restraining her and dropping her on a remote island), she's completely undeterred and makes her way back to the dance. Long story short, the dance is ruined, the building catches on fire, and because she's made of clay, she winds up hardened into a statue. Realizing his mistake with the helpful prodding of his friends (Cassandra even gets to say the word “sexist” in a Disney cartoon), he asks Aphrodite to give Galatea the ability to be her own person, which is granted; however instead of getting the real date he's hoping for, Herc instead gets the very same break-up speech he'd given her earlier in the episode right before she runs off to find “that hunky Ajax”. All in all, the message there is pretty clear, and I think the episode presents it in a fun and not-too preachy way: women are their own people, not soulless dolls for men to use to satisfy their lust with and project their fantasies onto-- and yes, that means that they might choose to date someone else, no matter how nice a guy you might be. Seems simple, right? Sadly, in the words of Aphrodite, “not everyone gets the lesson.”(may be nsfw)
Other notable examples from the show include:
Hecate (Perri Gilpin), a disgruntled Underworld employee who's sick of getting very little recognition for her work and is trying to unseat Hades much the same way Hades is trying to unseat Zeus-- frankly in some ways she may actually be more qualified to run the Underworld than he is, not the least of which because she actually wants the job. She creates the unique situation of putting Hades in a vulnerable and even sympathetic position at times, while at the same time, the viewer can also sympathize with Hecate's frustration at her lack of respect and power. I wish she'd been around more, she was interesting. Episode to try: The Underworld Takeover
Athena (Jane Leeves), as the patron goddess of Athens shows up more than once, and is always amusing since she's usually smarter than anyone in the room, and usually in a competitive relationship with her twin brother Ares (Jay Thomas). I like her because she can compete with him in physical areas (they were both patrons of war and combat), but not at the expense of knowledge, wisdom, and reason. I also like that she seems to love irritating everyone by being a smarty pants a lot. Episode to try: The Big Games
Artemis (Reba Macentire), as the goddess of the hunt, is only in two episodes or so, but is knee-slappingly funny most of the time. Interestingly, the writers dug out this old myth about Orion, the legendary hunter of constellation fame, and she having an affair of some sort, in contrast to her more typical virgin status. But in typical Reba fashion, Artemis is straight-shootin', down-home wisdom, and prone to raising her voice when someone isn't listening to her. Episode to try: The Boar Hunt
Elektra (Jennifer Tilly), interestingly having nothing to do with her mythical counterpart, this Elektra is a goth/beatnik girl that Herc's interested in. The problem is, she hates guys like him and wants nothing to do with him until he starts trying to adopt her counter-culture lifestyle. Oh yeah, and she summons “furies” (bird-like monsters) when she gets angry for some reason. What's interesting about this is that the episode doesn't seem to come down firmly on one side or the other here; she isn't really vilified for her viewpoints, and Herc doesn't seem to learn much of a lesson beyond 'don't pretend to be someone you're not to fit in'. They butt heads constantly about their life views but neither one wins the other over, and they part still not seeing eye to eye, but it's actually a more realistic ending than everyone magically getting along after seeing the error of their ways. Episode to try: The Complex Elektra
Medusa (Jennifer Love Hewett), in a big nod to The Little Mermaid, is a lonely soul who longs for a connection with someone without turning them to stone. When given the choice between a human makeover that lasts from sunup to sundown in exchange for doing work for Hades, or a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses that keep her look from turning things to stone from Aphrodite, she takes what really does seem like the better deal and goes with Hades. She fits in when she goes to school, has friends, gets the start of a romance with Hercules, but after a serious anxiety attack when she hears Herc talk callously about learning to kill gorgons in his training, she decides to tell him who she is. It's an interesting episode and the only one I can recall offhand that focuses more on the emotional journey of a one-shot character than the protagonists. I remember that one being somewhat controversial in the fanbase when it first aired, since some people found Aphrodite's solution to be too optimistic in the face of overwhelming cultural bias against 'monsters', but there is also something to be said for the basic lesson of not trying to pretend to be someone you aren't just to gain acceptance. It's too bad she was only in one episode, since by the end of it, only Hercules was shown to be accepting of her, and it never says what happened after that. Episode to try: The Gorgon
As noted before, this series isn't available on DVD, nor is it likely to be for at least a very long time, if ever. Fortunately, some episodes are available on at least one popular movie sharing online community, and to the best of my knowledge, it's in reruns on one of the Disney channels, although I think some of the episodes have been edited since their initial airing. It's not a perfect show; the animation's pretty hit or miss, and some episodes are definitely better than others, but I thought overall it was pretty clever, especially if you're familiar with Greek mythology and history already. If not, it's a fun introduction, and it's a great way to play 'spot the celebrity guest voice', too.
This is basically the sum of a bunch of different thoughts I've had bouncing around in my brain for a while. For a while I've been wanting to highlight some media products from Asian cultures, most specifically Japan since it's the one I'm most familiar with, that feature strong feminist themes, and since it's International Women's Day, what better time to kick it off? There's this prevailing idea floating around that Eastern cultures are more “backwards” and oppressive toward women than we are in the West, and while there are certainly problems in Asian countries in regards to gender equality, I really can't say the West is any better in many ways. It's an unfair viewpoint, and I've been wanting to challenge it for a while now, but I also want to talk about some feminist viewpoints from Western media products, specifically in terms of animation. For the purposes of this list, I'm looking specifically at Disney products, since Disney is very often viewed as being un-feminist, which is fair, but that's ignoring the feminist ideas that do exist there as well. So this is my list. It leaves out a bunch, I'm sure, but these are the TV shows, movies, and comics that I'm most familiar with and have the strongest ideas on. My goal here isn't to compare these shows with each other and try to rate how each culture is doing, my goal is simply to examine them in their own rights and maybe provide a different viewpoint or raise awareness of a product that might be less known.
Slayers The first anime I ever saw that I actually liked, and to this day I still enjoy it, even the dated parts. Originally based on a series of novels by Kanzaka Hajime with illustrations by Araizumi Rui, Slayers is an epic fantasy adventure story that in part spoofs epic fantasy stories, while at the same time creating its own story with messages all its own. It's a great adventure saga, full of humor, action, at times suspense, and loads of great characters. Kanzaka really created his own world, with its own history, culture, and mythology, and even an intricate and fascinating system of magic, with sub-groups and spells that clearly do their own different things, and that interact with each other in different ways. And at fifteen original novels, and over thirty spin-off novels, not to mention the comics and anime series that spun off from those, there's plenty that gets explored. I especially love that this series is proof that the idea that 'guys don't identify with female protagonists' is bunk because not only is the lead character in this series a female, but the novels are written in first-person perspective. So not only did Kanzaka, a man, write a lead female character convincingly and uncondescendingly, but it became one of the biggest hits of the '90s in Japan, with four TV seasons (to date), countless manga spinoffs, a string of direct-to-DVD releases, successful movies, radio dramas, and hit songs, to say nothing of the merchandise that must have been produced. To this day it has an enduring fanbase, enough to warrant a fourth TV season years after the previous one aired. Lina Inverse is an anime icon because she's a fantastic character, and the series is full of many more.
In the novels Lina describes herself as a petite, brown-haired, brown-eyed girl of fifteen or sixteen who's been traveling for years already-- gradually her hair and eyes were both lightened to a dramatic red, which admittedly does suit her personality more. She's not on some grand quest to save the world-- although she does usually wind up doing it anyway-- she's doing it because she loves adventure, kicking the butts of roving tribes of bandits (and making herself money in the process) and building up her reputation as a sorceress. By the time she's in her mid-teens, her name is already feared far and wide and she's almost a living legend-- although not quite in the way she'd wanted, since her nickname Dra-Mata (“dragon spooker”) is less flattering than her own title of “beautiful sorcery genius”, and she's very often regarded as a public menace. She has an ego the size of a small state, but the thing is, she really is a genius. She is a force of nature to be reckoned with, both in terms of her magical power (which is portrayed literally as an atomic explosion in the anime), but in terms of her personality. She's loud, brash, egotistical, angry, opinionated, educated, fearless, ambitious, greedy, hardworking, adventurous, confident, funny, and totally relentless. And yet, as much as she brags about how gorgeous she is, it overlays this insecurity about her figure, since she's willowy and petite and seems to be surrounded by women far more well-endowed than she is. She's awkward and shy when it comes to things like romance and tries to avoid thinking or talking about it at all, let alone pursuing it. Her temper is legendarily short, and she's been known to blow up entire villages just to let off steam when she gets riled up, which only contributes to her reputation as a menace to society in general. She's very well-versed in magical theory as well as folklore and legends, and will often explain things to less-educated people. She also loves food and has been known to put away as much as twenty helpings in one sitting, which I believe was once attributed to the amount of magic energy she channels on a regular basis. Her abilities with magic, especially black (destructive) magic are astonishing for someone of her age; her signature spell is incredibly powerful, and one only a handful of people in the world know, but there's one even more powerful that she herself managed to figure out on her own that taps into energy so powerful it can destroy the planet if miscast. She's also tactically very savvy and will use creative and unorthodox methods of solving problems and getting out of trouble.
I could go on and on about how much I love her and all her foibles and shortcomings and amazing humanness, but she's also far from the only worthy female character in this series. In Lina's earlier wandering days, she had a sometime traveling companion/rival in Naga the Serpent, another powerful sorceress looking to establish a name for herself-- the fact that the name she establishes is "goldfish poop", after the way she follows Lina around, doesn't seem to slow her down much. Naga is a largely comedic character, with many moments of supreme idiocy (poking her own cheeks with her spiked shoulder pads while casting a spell springing immediately to mind), and an outfit that defies nearly every rule of practicality and common sense, but there's a lot more to her than that. She does come off like an idiot a lot of the time, but I don't think she really is-- she's shown frequently to also be pretty canny and proves a good foil for Lina a lot of the time. She's a skilled magician, especially with nature-related magic, and her blistering confidence and complete lack of self-doubt about anything is really pretty cool when you step back and look at her. The signature laugh that drives sane people mad at the sound is the manifestation of that confidence, and it's what drives her tenacity, her ability to wear that ridiculous outfit without shame, her ambition, and her ability to drive Lina absolutely crazy. It's never directly stated anywhere, but there are big hints dropped that she's actually the older sister of another main character, Amelia, and the crown princess of a very powerful kingdom. She left home after witnessing the murder of her mother, which is why she faints at the sight of blood, and seems to prefer the life of a wandering adventurer to that of being royalty, although she's hardly lost the viewpoint of the upper echelon of society. She is also a woman who loves her alcohol, and delights in stealing Lina's food when the opportunity presents itself.
Amelia Wil Tesla Seillune is the next most prominent female character in the story, especially in the anime. Back when I was first into the series, she was widely despised by the fanbase, and I'm glad to see that's died out now because she's a great character. Amelia is a princess of the kingdom of Seillune, a large and powerful country that specializes in white (protective/healing) magic. The kingdom even has a series of walls built through and around it in the shape of a protective charm. Amelia is a very powerful white magic priestess, but she also has a great deal of proficiency in shaman (nature) magic, which gives her a greater diversity of spells to draw on than Lina in some ways. She's also an accomplished physical fighter, but has an inexplicable need to climb on the top of something tall and give righteous lectures to villains about justice before entering the fight-- also she will frequently fall off the tall things and land on her head, which often ruins much of her credibility as a threat. A year or two younger than Lina, she's a bit shorter than her, but with much more curve in her figure, which a thorn in Lina's side from time to time. Like her other family members, Amelia has a love of adventure and travel, but she also feels a great sense of responsibility to her kingdom, and so frequently returns home to take up her political and diplomatic duties instead. Raised by her father after her mother was murdered when she was small, she has a very strong sense of filial duty, and takes after her father in many ways, not the least of which are exuberance and an iron-clad belief in justice. Once stated that she didn't want to be the princess who gets rescued, but rather the prince who saves the damsel in distress, and very often refers to herself as a warrior of justice. Is probably the most naive character in the entire series, but grows considerably during its course into someone with a lot of sense and diplomacy, an even temper, and a really formidable opponent in both court politics and battle.
Sylphiel Nels Radha is the least like any of the other major female characters in the series. She's the epitome of the “ideal” woman and everything Lina isn't; kind, gentle, nurturing, domestic, beautiful, graceful, soft-spoken, shy, obedient, dutiful, sweet, and friendly. Lina hates her instantly, but that's likely due in large part to Sylphiel's very overt designs on Lina's traveling companion and romantic interest, Gourry, and Lina's own buried insecurities. A very powerful white magic priestess, Sylphiel lives in a legendary city that once saw the destruction of a major demon and is renowned for its holy tree that played a large part in that battle. Though she starts out as the obligatory rival character, she soon starts taking on her own life, after enduring an unimaginable tragedy and playing a very important role in the defeat of a major demon. Little tidbits of her past and hidden parts of her personality are revealed slowly, and they add a nice dimension to her, even though she's still not one of the more well-developed characters in the series. But she serves her purpose well and even offers a number of surprises toward the end of the second anime season that showcase just how far she's willing to push herself for the sake of her own dreams. A character that, similar to her namesake Radha from the Hindu tradition, is completely devoted to the object of her love, but is doomed to a life of loneliness, waiting for the love of a man she'll never get. Even though she knows this, she still doesn't back away, and even then never bears Lina any ill will or overt resentment about it. She brings out the insecurities in Lina as she would in anyone, since she is too good to be real, and yet you can't help but feel badly for her since she's lost everything she cherished and deserves much better than the lot she's been given. She is the character who seems most fragile, and yet is able to endure the unendurable and keep moving forward without losing her kindness.
There are more supporting characters that are worth discussing, as the series ran for a long time and had a huge supporting cast, but these are the major female ones. I love the cast for its diversity, and for the sense of human-ness that abounds in each one of them. Some characters are tragic, some comic, some both, some tomboys, some feminine girls, but none are invalidated or made lesser because of their traits. There was clearly thought put into each of them, and while they might seem on the surface like the embodiment of long-standing tropes, each has qualities that defy their categorizations and raise them up into something more thoughtful and interesting. It's also just a great overall series, full of cosmic battles between Good and Evil, silly side-quests, giant slugs, lots of magic, a little romance here and there, complicated family ties, loads of silly gags, lots of food, and plenty of concussions. I still have fun with it even ten years after the fact.
So it's Valentine's Day, a holiday I used to hold in the highest contempt for all the trendy reasons-- 'I don't need a special day to remind me about love', 'it's just a commercialized holiday designed to get people to spend money they don't need to', 'conventional romance is stupid and I'm so much better than that', yadda yadda. While I don't really celebrate it, I have gotten over my contempt for it and don't see anything wrong with people wanting to appreciate their significant others any day they choose. (And really, it's not like it's hard to find commercialized holidays of any sort these days, not just this one.)
However, having said all that, I do still hold most romantic comedies in pretty high disdain. Not because I think it makes me cool or smart, but because I find them to be insulting to my intelligence (and often even my gender) and I simply don't enjoy watching them. I especially hate the version of "romance" they present as anything even remotely approaching healthy or charming, and would run screaming in terror from most of the lead characters should I ever manage to meet one in reality. These people are not healthy, and I resent the idea that I'm supposed to root for them to get together with the other screwed up person and make sociopathic babies. Very often this gets me branded as a non-romantic, and if the examples in movies like How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days or The Proposal are considered real romance, then that's fine with me. But that's not to say that I've never enjoyed an onscreen couple, there are many that I find charming for a number of reasons. So if anyone's looking for something maybe a little off the beaten track to snuggle up with their special someone with, you might give one of these a glance.
Stranger Than Fiction This charming, genre-defying movie is one that works on just about every level for me, from the tone to the performances, to the quirky plot and its trust in the audience to get the jokes without flashing neon signs. One of my favorite aspects of it is the relationship between mildly OCD IRS agent Harold Crick (Will Ferrel in a surprisingly restrained and nuanced performance) and Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), the sleeve-tattooed "anarchist" baker whom he's auditing. On paper they might be your standard romantic couple trope of the people who start out hating each other but then inexplicably fall in love, but on screen, something much more interesting happens. They're charming people. Ana is understandably upset with Harold when he shows up to audit her and makes no effort to hide her anger, and Harold promptly sticks his foot very far down his mouth, and then stares at her breasts in the process. Instead of being played for big laughs, it's a humiliating awkward scene that feels more true than if it were trying to be funny. I have to say that I love the casting choices, too-- neither Ferrell nor Gyllenhaal are what would be considered conventionally attractive on the scale that most romantic comedy stars are, and that's part of what makes them so endearing. In her first appearance, Anna is less than ingratiating since she's yelling at Harold, and yet you can tell he's completely taken with her anyway. If this were Kate Hudson, not only would she be less intimidating but Harold's attraction would feel more shallow and superficial. Gyllenhaal not only isn't afraid to be abrasive, sardonic, and even unpleasant at times, she still manages to be likable, understandable, and very much a person who knows who she is and what she wants and who isn't required to change that for the movie to work. She and Harold don't spend the whole movie hating each other, or trying to trick the other one into dating them, or avoiding their feelings, and it's really refreshing to watch their relationship take its natural course.
A tip: Mix up some chocolate chip cookie dough and keep it in the fridge until after the movie. You will want a warm, gooey cookie straight from the oven like crazy by the end of this.
3-Iron (Bin Jip) This movie took me really off-guard the first time I saw it. Based on the title, I was expecting some sort of golf movie, and while the sport does play a part in the film, it's not at all what I was expecting. The story is about a young man who breaks into people's houses while they're away, but instead of stealing their things, he repairs broken appliances and does their laundry in exchange for eating their food and using their homes. There's not explanation as to why he does this, he's a college graduate who rides a nice motorcycle and seems by all other accounts to be pretty normal. One day he breaks into a really upscale place, not knowing that the wife of the man who owns it is still inside. Clearly abused and battered, she watches him go about his normal routine of doing laundry, cooking, and repairing her bathroom scale, and never calls the cops or tries to escape. When her husband comes home, they fight again and she leaves with the younger man to accompany him on his routine of living in other people's homes while they're away. What follows is probably one of the sweetest, most tender and mutually respectful relationships I've ever seen on screen. It's all done without a word exchanged between the two, leaving one wondering how necessary words really are in understanding who someone is. For anyone not familiar with Buddhism, it might be a bit confusing at the end, but the whole movie is basically a Buddhist parable. It's a gentle, loving look at how people are capable of relating to each other in ways we don't often consider, and a reminder of how our actions influence the lives of those around us. "Haunting" is probably the best word I've heard to describe it.
When Harry Met Sally I saw Norah Ephron in an interview once stating that she thought the ending to this movie (which she wrote, in case you didn't know) was unrealistic, and I'd agree, but there's something that's still so much fun about watching these two idiosyncratic people go through different phases of their lives, become friends, and eventually lovers. He's neurotic, cynical, and reads the endings of books before everything else in case he dies before finishing the book, whereas she is optimistic, confident, and likes to order food in very specific, exacting terms. They're both flawed and quirky but not unpleasant and you don't feel guilty rooting for them to them to get over themselves enough to get together. Even though it was made in the late 1980s it still holds up and I found it to be a genuinely entertaining movie when I watched it with my mom a few months back.
Amelie Movies don't get much quirkier than this, or more evocative of the little pleasures in life that we often don't notice, like the feeling of sticking your hand in a basket of dried beans, or eating fresh raspberries off your fingers. The title character is odd, to say the least, and she lives a somewhat reclusive life in her little Paris apartment. There is a romance of sorts with a man she sees in the train station one day, but really, this movie is more of a romance with life and its oddities, tiny pleasures, and unnoticed opportunities.
The Band's Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret) Not a romance as much as a sweet moment between two people who cannot be together due to life circumstances just as much as who they each are. It doesn't focus on the idea of 'what might have been' or lament the missing of an opportunity, but instead quietly revels in the beauty of the connection that was briefly made. It's a wonderfully sweet movie, full of hope and idealism for two cultures that despise each other so fiercely in reality. It's not a realistic movie in that sense, but it is an optimistic one. Sasson Gabai and Ronit Elkabetz give wonderful performances as two lonely people who happen to share one evening in each other's company, then each go on their way to wherever they were going.
Chungking Express The first time I saw this, I described it as the Chinese version of Amelie, and there are some similarities, but really, they are their own unique movies. This one actually has two stories, both involving lovelorn policemen meeting someone new. The first cop meets a woman who, unbeknownst to him, happens to be involved in a drug smuggling syndicate and is on the run after a job goes bad. The second cop just got dumped by a flight attendant and catches the attention of a young woman working at the fast food place he frequents. This is the story that's Amelie-esque (even though this movie came out before Amelie), in that this young woman takes it upon herself to interfere with the cop's life in unusual ways, doing little things to break him out of his routine and help him move on from his past relationship. It's also really interesting in how it plays with time and makes you aware of the timing of things, and how sometimes when a moment passes us by, it's not always a bad thing or a good thing. Sometimes things just are what they are and it doesn't mean they have more or less value in life. Moonstruck Yeah, yeah, I know, but I can't help it, I love watching this movie. I love the overblown emotion and the goofy characters and the food, food, food, and the sheer operatic nature of it all. It's just fun, and the cynical view of life, death, and love is so funny because they managed to not overdo it. Everyone's theatrical and overblown, but somehow it all works. Cher's classic "snap out of it!" line still kills me every time.
I'm not a huge horror movie person, admittedly, but I've been interested in seeing this one since I saw a short trailer for it last month. I'll freely admit that the idea of Martin Scorsese tackling a psychological thriller/haunted asylum story is intriguing, and I'm a sucker for period pieces, so sign me up, I'll give it a whirl. Then today when I was perusing my usual blogs on my lunch break, I happened across a piece of trivia I wasn't aware of: the screenwriter for it is a woman, Laeta Kalogridis. Okay, vaguely interesting, but I've never heard of her so I have no opinion one way or the other, really. Except that I am familiar with some of her work without even realizing it. It turns out that she worked with James Cameron for something like eight years on the script for Avatar, only she doesn't have a credit for it in the movie. Okay, I still haven't seen it, but from everything I've heard, even from people who liked it, that the script itself is no great shakes, it's the visuals and experience that make the movie worth watching. So hmm, not sure how I feel about that, but it's just one movie, and I don't know how much she had to do with the end result, right?
Turns out she also wrote Oliver Stone's epic, Alexander, too. I didn't see all of it, but I did catch part of it on TV when I visited Greece a few years back and despite it being the only thing on in English, I kept changing the channel because watching talk shows in Greek was more entertaining. But hey, maybe I didn't give it a fair shot, and it's not like the script is the be-all end-all of the end result of a movie, right?
So she also executively produced the TV shows Birds of Prey and the reboot of The Bionic Woman. I didn't watch the second, but I have yet to come across someone who did and liked it, and I tried so hard to like Birds of Prey when it was on, I really did. It just... wasn't good. Not even so bad it was entertaining, it was poorly handled on just about every level save for a few of the casting decisions. But hey, maybe she's a better writer than a producer.
She also worked on the Tomb Raider movie and Scream 3 in some unspecified capacity. Now, I will admit that I do own a copy of the Tomb Raider movie, but I also freely admit it's not a good movie. It's one of those guilty pleasure movies that everyone has where you love it against all better judgment and you're not able to explain why. Scream 3 I saw and I remember being bitterly disappointed in nearly all the way through.
According to IMDB, she also wrote the screenplay for Night Watch (the Russian movie, not the Ewan McGregor, Nick Nolte movie from a while back), and Pathfinder (based on a Norwegian movie, this one is about a Viking boy left behind after his clan fights with a Native American tribe and later on becomes their savior in fending off more Vikings-- sounds vaguely familiar...), neither of which I've seen so I can't say anything about them. They might be good, I have no clue, but I have to say, so far I'm not impressed with her resume. I'm still going to see Shutter Island and hope it's better than the other movies she's written have been on average, but still, yikes.
Okay, so the blogosphere is probably alight with people yammering on about the Oscar noms from this morning, and while I certainly have my opinions (as my previous post makes no secret of), the fact is, I've hardly seen any of the movies up for the major awards this year. Some of it is due to a lack of enough interest, some is due to a lack of money, and some is due to a lack of time and/or availability (there's only one movie theater left where I live and their selection can be very skimpy when it comes to independent movies and certain subjects-- let's just say they didn't carry Brokeback Mountain, Milk, and likely will not carry A Single Man). To be fair, I still haven't seen any of the nominees for Best Picture from last year either, despite a Netflix subscription and two movie rental places at my disposal.
Getting back on topic, so while I can run around screaming that I want so-and-so to win such-and-such for whatever reason, the fact is, I've only seen Inglourious Basterds and Up for the Best Picture category, and Julie & Julia for the actresses and actors' awards. I feel a bit underqualified to be talking about these categories as a result. Instead, I'm going to be talking about my favorite category anyway, and the one from which I've seen the most nominees: the Best Animated Feature category.
First off, I have to eat my words from the other day: Up is indeed nominated for Best Picture. I am thrilled to see a second animated film make it to that category finally (the only other one was Beauty and the Beast in 1991), and I think it deserves to be there as much as anything else this year. So a big tip of my hat to the Academy for recognizing that it's not only a good animated movie but a good movie, period. Having said that, it won't win. I'm pretty sure Avatar's going to be taking that prize (why that isn't listed in the Animated Feature category is a little beyond me, but you can't win them all, I guess), and if it doesn't, one of the other live-action ones will. But it's okay, because it's also nominated for Best Animated Feature. (Has that ever happened before? I know the animation category is pretty new, and all, but I'm not sure I've seen even the Golden Globes double-book one movie for two different Best Feature awards like that.) So Up will win Best Animated feature, no real shocker there, and it is deserving. What's both frustrating and gratifying is that there are actually five movies in this category this year, and several of them are very good in their own right and I'd love to see them win, too. It's great to see more worthy contenders here at last, and there's even a diversity of media, too! In fact, I think for the first time ever, Up is the only CGI movie nominated, with two stop-motion films (Coraline and The Fantastic Mister Fox) and two traditional films (The Princess and the Frog and The Secret of Kells), making for a nice display of the variety and diversity that animation can offer as a medium. I will say I'm surprised Miyazaki's Ponyo didn't make the cut. Seems like there could have been room for it somewhere in there.
While I know what movie will likely win, I'd still like to give my impressions of the other nominees, too, because I think they're very deserving of attention as well. Each one is unique and imaginative and skillfully made.
Clearly the frontrunner to take this one, since Pixar nearly always wins and it's also up for Best Feature. It totally deserves every award, ticket sale, and word of praise it's received. It's a lighthearted adventure, a nostalgic story, a tearjerker, a comedy, and a buddy movie all at once, and yet it never feels constrained by any of those categories, either. It literally is all of them at the same time, never moving jerkily from one idea to the next, and it's all wrapped up in this warm-heartedness that permeates every aspect of it. It manages to convey a lifetime in ten minutes and have it mean something to the people watching it, so we understand Carl's attachment to things like a mailbox and a painted wooden bird. The lesson he learns is one that the audience learns with him, instead of watching from a superior vantage point, already knowing the answer and just waiting for him to get there. It's a lesson a lot of us have a hard time accepting, and maybe afterward still don't want to accept. It challenges us there without ever feeling like it's condescending to us. Someone remarked that it felt more like a Miyazaki movie than any other Pixar movie had managed to do so far, and I agree there. That envelopment in a sense of nostalgia and sentiment that never seem cloying, that ability to literally create a world from nothing that still feels like it has life in it, the gentleness and the heartfelt desire to really create something of quality and emotion and meaning is all there, as it is in every Miyazaki film I've seen. I may complain about Pixar winning this category every year, but it's only because I think they deserve either better competition here, or to be competing for Best Picture. They deserve it.
I've blogged about this one before, but time hasn't lessened how much I like this movie. Henry Selick has a way of capturing an atmosphere and almost indefinable charm that I find lacking in a lot of other stop-motion (Wallace and Gromit being a big exception), and he really deserves a lot more recognition than he gets. Most people still think Tim Burton directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, and it gets tiresome correcting them all the time. Of course, I'm also partial to this movie because it's based on a book by Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite authors since I was sixteen. Some things were changed for the film (like the existence of a major supporting character), but it's part of the process of adaptation from one medium to another, and I thought it was very well-handled and done with a lot of respect to the source material. One of the most distinguishing aspects of Selick's design style that I'm very fond of is little physical irregularities, like a mouth being lopsided. It makes the characters more interesting to look at without being distracting, and it adds a quirky charm to everything that I really love. I also love that he wasn't afraid to keep it creepy. My favorite movies when I was a kid were the ones with creepy or even outright scary moments in them, like The Dark Crystal (which I think I've seen in English once, since the only friend of mine who had it in my childhood had it taped off TV from Costa Rica-- I couldn't understand what they were saying, but I loved it anyway), The Neverending Story, and Return to Oz, which also features some of my favorite pieces of claymation animation. (Honorable mention goes to The Adventures of Mark Twain-- even though I didn't see it until I was much older, parts of it unnerved the hell out of me and it probably would have fit right in on that list.) I was personally glad to see a return to the kids movie with some teeth, since it always gave me the impression as a kid that something really was at stake in these stories, and what these characters were doing mattered. It made the triumph at the end mean more because they had something very threateningly real to overcome. That's very much the case with this movie, and I have to give a lot of credit to Terri Hatcher for her performance as both Coraline's mother and the Other Mother-- such subtle things she did with her voice that gave the animators a lot of room to get the acting just right to hit that balance of honey-sweet overlaying something terrible. I also love that all the women in this movie have a witchiness about them-- real witch, not "w-to-rhyme-with-b" witch. There are so many subtle touches in it, and I'm a sucker for detail, and I felt it was a wonderful adaptation of an equally wonderful children's book. Growing up, this one would have been an absolute favorite for me, the adventure/coming of age story I'd always wanted without having to superimpose myself on a boy to get it.
Okay, I have to admit, this is the only one in this category I haven't watched yet. I wasn't sure what to think of it judging from the one or two very short promos I ever saw for it, but I did hear from friends that it was a lot better than they'd been expecting, and was even downright good. It never came anywhere close to me, but it'll be on my Netflix queue as soon as it's available. On a side note, I really wish George Clooney would do more voicework, he's got what they call "a voice with character" in spades, and he has a great range of emotive capabilities to draw from. I think the medium would suit him nicely.
The Princess and the Frog (Pretty long, since I never got around to writing an actual review for it before.)
Disney finally returns to the media that launched the mega-conglomerate in the first place. I could not believe the short-sighted stupidity at play when they closed down their traditional animation studios after 2004's Home on the Range. I was ecstatic when I heard they were (finally!) reopening them after the merger with Pixar and Lasseter finally brought a little common sense back to the creative decisions. (Really, assuming that tepid ticket sales on the traditional animation movies with the booming sales for Pixar movies meant that traditional animation was dead as an art form is asinine-- evidently no one paused to consider that it was the stories that were lackluster, not the medium itself.) The directors in charge for this movie were Ron Clements and John Musker, the directing team behind The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, and Treasure Planet, which I felt was a pretty wise choice, as well as a symbolic one, given that Mermaid kicked off Disney's '90s renaissance and saved it from going under. The end result was pretty fine, a return to the traditional fairy tale stories that the company is known for, with some really beautiful animation (almost show-off beautiful in places) and the sort of charming, plucky, independent heroine that Ron n' John love to showcase. Bonus feature that the prince was also charismatic, charming, and cocky (an actual personality, something lacking in Mermaid's prince-- or most of Disney's classics, for that matter), and they both felt like a lot of work had gone into their development as individual characters, not just their designs. You could tell that they really wanted to get this one right, and in a lot of ways they did. The beginning was wonderful, the villain was incredible, the animation was absolutely lovely (and in places spooky), and it featured Jim Cummings doing his wonderful Cajun accent, which I'd only heard once before in a direct-to-video Scooby-Doo movie.
I loved that the heroine wanted a career, and I love that she didn't have to choose between it and her romance-- even if the romance part was incredibly rushed and sort of came out of nowhere and smacked me upside the head with its randomness 2/3 of the way through the movie. That really was the biggest beef I had with this one, was I did not buy the suddenness of the romance at all. It jerked me completely out of the movie and I found thoughts like "really? you've known her for a day!" to be very distracting for much of this part. I would have been totally fine if they'd implied more of a passing of time at the end, or if they hadn't set up such a constrained time limit for the action to take place in initially, or if there was some attempt to show that they had spent more than a day together before falling in love. But it was literally a day. And this wasn't one of the love at first sight relationships, either, it was one they were clearly supposed to grow into, so that just made it even more jarring.
The middle in general is a problem, since it seems to dissolve into random comedic relief elements for the sake of waking the kids up and filling space until the end. There's also a character here who seems to serve no real point to the story whatsoever (aside from padding things out and giving the leads something to do for the middle part) and while I get that she was supposed to be the representation of the "proper" form of voodoo in contrast to the villain's misuse of it for personal gain, I felt like giving her a gospel song and lots of Christian church imagery sort of undermined that idea. Oh, and there are some issues with astronomy at one or two points (the Evening Star is the planet Venus, not an actual star, for instance, and there's something that happens later on that sort of made my head explode a little) but it wasn't anything so major that I lost any sleep over it.
It does come back together at the end again, and there's a really wonderful dynamic between Tiana and the female supporting character whose name I have forgotten (but who may have been my favorite character next to the villain just because she was hilarious), as well as the prince, once we get past that really awkward phase in the middle and I was able to pretend they'd had more time to get to know each other. And yeah, there are subtle mentions of racism, and a contrast drawn between the means Tiana's family lives in and the means her friend, the rich, white debutante lives in. It's subtle enough to keep any nagging feelings of guilt at bay, and some things may be unrealistic for the time frame this is set in, but it doesn't try to sweep these problems under the rug, either. So, in summary, yeah, the movie has some flaws, but honestly, they didn't keep me from enjoying myself a great deal, and overall I was pretty pleased with it as a return to good ol' hand-drawn animation. It's probably the most flawed of the films in this category, but I think it does still deserve to be in here, and it's worth seeing.
I'm probably one of the very few people on this side of the Atlantic to have been able to see this one yet, and I was both very surprised and very happy to see it nominated. First-off, it's really, really beautiful. Astonishingly beautiful. Very reminiscent of a little-known masterpiece of traditional animation called The Thief and the Cobbler, by animation legend Richard Williams. It's done in that same 2 1/2-dimension style that's reminiscent of medieval art, and it draws inspiration from the Book of Kells and traditional Celtic artwork as well. There's a mix of magic and faeries and the old nature-worshipping religions of the British Isles and the Christian religion that was trying to stake its claim there as well. I never felt like it was disrespectful of either one and seemed to be leaning more towards the idea of mutual cohabitation and respect, which I always appreciate. There are definitely ideas under the surface here, and it never felt like it was pandering exclusively to a young crowd, nor did it feel like it was trying to exclude them. There are also interesting changes in perspective, between the way a young Brendan sees the events happening around him, and the way the adults do, and there's a wonderful sense of trust on the part of the filmmakers to allow audience members of all ages to consider both without pandering to either. There are some tense moments, and a few that I was really shocked to see in a film with such a fun and colorful design. There are more of those creepy/scary moments towards the end that I would have been afraid of but secretly loved as a kid, and again, it serves to add some real weight to the story and create a sense that something important is at stake. It's a stunningly beautiful film that probes some ideas that most kids movies don't like to, and there is a surprising intensity to some of the later scenes that not all kids are going to be comfortable with. But I like that the filmmakers took some risks, and I'm really happy to see it get recognized. I hope that means we get a DVD release soon.
Well, that's it for that category. I have to say, I'm really pleased with the diversity and quality of the selections this year, and I really, really hope it's a trend that continues.
