feed it to my goldfish

In defense of: Chasing Amy

2012-02-14T13:00:00.000-05:00

I don't often take it upon myself to defend Kevin Smith. He doesn't excite me as a filmmaker, and I've long since tired of his tic-filled writing style. (See also: Aaron Sorkin, Quentin Tarantino, and to an extent David Mamet.) I can't deny that he made a big impression on the independent film scene, but I just don't care for or about his movies. Except one: Chasing Amy.

Besides An Evening with Kevin Smith, Chasing Amy is Smith's best rated film, clocking in at 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's by far his most mature, original, and coherent work. It's also one of his most divisive and controversial, especially within the LGBT community.

To sum up: Comic book artist Holden meets fellow comic book artist Alyssa Jones at some Comic-Con Lite panel, and Holden is instantly smitten. He and his writing partner/best friend Banky are stunned to realize that Alyssa is a lesbian; Holden pursues a friendship and subsequently a romantic relationship with Alyssa; Banky voices his homophobic disapproval throughout. [Here there be spoilers.] When Holden discovers that he is far from the first man Alyssa has slept with, he goes into a conservative douchebag tailspin and the two break up.

(Cards on the table: I have a definite bias towards this movie, largely due to Ben Affleck's Holden. Holden is the mascot for The Guys I Loved In High School - witty, staunchly homosocial, and geekily into comics.)

Jersey pompadour optional. Goatee not recommended.

This is awkward, because I know that Joey Lauren Adams is the titular Amy and everything, but queer women couldn't ask for a worse representative. Alyssa is abrasive, flighty, self-serious, and selfish. Her sexual orientation is presented as almost whim-based, driven more by curiosity and sexual appetite than anything; and she knowingly and aggressively baits the innocently by-standing Holden, without particularly caring about the emotional turmoil she's causing him. In short, she displays just about every stereotype there is about bisexuals.

She's also a super-obnoxious karaoke-er.

Still, at no point does Alyssa abandon her queer identity, whether she's dating a woman or a man. And she doesn't give off the impression of someone who's fooling around with women while she waits for The Right Man - after she and Holden break up, we see her with a woman again. She dates whoever she wants, she is who she is, and stays fiercely unapologetic about it in the face of Holden's disdain. A woman who refuses to compromise herself for her romantic partner is a lamentably rare sight in movies.

Where my squeamishness comes in is that the characters and their various stereotypes are written by and filtered through a straight man's perspective. That perspective, just because it's an outsider's, feels clumsy at best and sometimes downright offensive. If only because of an in-group-out-group bias, a straight man trafficking in stereotypes about bisexual women is qualitatively different from a bisexual woman doing the same.

But even that is complicated, because Kevin Smith knows that his perspective is limited, and he tries to address it in various ways. One of them is a direct appeal from Silent Bob, who lectures Holden on the dangers of clinging to his narrow views on sexuality. One of them is actually one of my favourite scenes in any movie - Alyssa and Banky trading sex scar stories in a sweetly raunchy spin on the Indianapolis scene in Jaws. You basically just watch two people gleefully connect over past awkwardness, and for maybe two minutes they see each other as comrades instead of rivals. Unfortunately, Holden's innate and truly insidious conservatism jolts Banky back into his bro-y posturing, and he can't feel comfortable without throwing in one last offensive faux-question. What I'm trying to say is, Smith is very conscious of his limitations, and those limitations are kind of the point of the movie.

As I've probably mentioned before, effort makes a huge difference for me. Kevin Smith was clearly trying to step out of his comfort zone, exorcise some personal demons, and foster some good honest dialogue. That's more than you can say for most romantic comedies, which are content to regurgitate the same tropes about "the battle of the sexes" that were getting old when Jackie Gleason was trotting them out. As far as I'm concerned, Chasing Amy a thoughtful, funny, romantic, and complicated movie. It delights and discomfits me in roughly equal measure. And damnit, I love it for that.

Things that only look awesome in a montage

2012-01-22T15:57:00.000-05:00

training for a fight/race/game
studying for the LSAT
preparing for a court case that nobody expects you to win
learning a new language
building literally anything
turning your failing business around
painting a room
payola schemes
barricading a mall against zombies
living in a mall during a zombie apocalypse
losing weight
trying on multiple outfits for an audience of friends
benders
going shopping
giving someone a makeover
going from zero to hero
cooking a large meal for your restaurant's last business night
going on a series of comically inappropriate dates
getting a makeover
war

The Artist is exactly as adorable as you've heard

2012-01-18T17:47:00.000-05:00

I was seriously so ready to be disappointed by The Artist. I have an innate distrust of any movie that shows up with ready-made "Oscar buzz," and the whole silent movie idea seemed simultaneously pretentious and gimmicky. And in the interest of full disclosure, I've never seen a silent movie. No, not even Nosferatu or anything starring Buster Keaton. Still, the trailer intrigued me, and I've had a crush on lead Jean Dujardin since his adorable star-making turn in OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies.

Phwoar.

So on New Year's Day I squeezed into a predictably packed theatre at E Street, rolling my eyes at my fellow elitists who were here instead of watching M-I:IV at the multiplex.

The Artist follows silent movie star George Valentin and dancing extra Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) as they meet, fall in love, and encounter the invention of movies with sound, or "talkies." Since it is itself a silent movie, all of the emoting and movement must be much broader than I'm used to. Broadness doesn't always correlate with shallowness, though, and both Dujardin and Bejo excel at deft character-defining strokes that truly sell the movie. One scene in particular, when we see George doing what he considers to be "getting into character," tells us exactly what kind of a performer he is and exactly why he's about to be made obsolete. It's marvelous. And director Michel Hazanavicius takes the opportunity to make the very most of the visual medium, staging beautiful shots and letting the camera glide about with the actors.

For the first 10 minutes or so, my cynicism remained firmly in place, and I appreciated but didn't necessarily enjoy what was going on. But something happened as the movie twinkled merrily along. It might have been the sheer conviction of everyone in front of and behind the camera. It may have been all the tap dancing. Either way, I surrendered to its charms. As predictable as the arc was - no matter how it's dressed up, The Artist is a romantic comedy in the best sense - I found myself desperate to see George and Peppy get what they wanted. I cried at the tearjerker scene before registering it as The Tearjerker Scene, which you can imagine is quite a rare occurrence for me.

There's something about good redemption stories, in which the hero/heroine either fails or succeeds at transcending, that always moves me. It was as true for Jerry Maguire as it was for Drive, and now for The Artist. George's journey from King Of The World to Pariah to Hopeful Comeback Kid stayed with me in a way that Peppy's untrammeled ascension didn't. In fact, if I have any complaints about the movie it's that Peppy didn't have much to do besides effervesce. But I feel like a grinch, complaining about someone effervescing when she does it so beautifully.

"I can't help it that I'm popular!"

I don't think this movie's critical success signifies some kind of silent movie throwback trend. This was a terrific homage, but it was a one-off unlikely to be replicated. I also doubt very much that The Artist will win any Oscars besides perhaps Cinematography and Sound Editing. After all, if the Oscars hate anything more than Spike Lee, it's comedy. But hopefully the Dujardin-Bejo-Hazanavicius trio will keep on collaborating, because they make some real magic together.

If the Republican presidential candidates were Mad Men

2012-01-09T21:12:00.000-05:00

In the interest of full disclosure, I've been avoiding the Republican debates because I have enough blood pressure problems to deal with, thank you. But one can't help but absorb information and opinions about the bedraggled GOP presidential candidates through osmosis. With that in mind...The Republican presidential candidates and their Mad Men counterparts.

Inspired by this tweet from Conan O'Brien - https://twitter.com/#!/ConanOBrien/status/156533011976953857

Mitt Romney - Duck Phillips

Shut up, Duck.

Conan is absolutely right. The practiced-yet-awkward pitchman patter. The disgust he incurs with every attempt to be funny and loose. The casual homophobia. It's all there, and it's all Duck.

Newt Gingrich - Roger Sterling

Witty, philandering "idea man" who is busy shilling a book instead of doing a real job. I'm also not saying that Newt has ever done blackface, but the image is out there now.

Ron Paul - Bert Cooper

If you don't really pay attention to him, you think he's just an irrelevant, eccentric old codger. But if you get him on a rant - about race relations, for instance - a nasty, insidious streak is revealed.

John Huntsman - Guy Mackendrick

Handsome, intelligent, and experienced man who has fallen victim to very bad timing. In any other election year, this man would be the front runner and probable nominee. But this year...

He'll never golf again.

Rick Perry - Lee Garner, Jr

A Texas-sized doofus content to ride his Good Ol' Boy persona straight into the ground. Persistent rumours about his sexual orientation fly.

Rick Santorum - Salvatore Romano

That's a sweater vest, bitches.

Seriously though.

Anatomy of a break-up: My year with Barack Obama's email subject lines

2011-12-01T11:40:00.001-05:00

2011 was a rough year for President Obama for many reasons, not least of which was his dramatic rollercoaster ride of a relationship with my email inbox. Brought to you by the Obama communications team, I present Anatomy of a break-up: My year with Barack Obama's email subject lines.

January - The Break-Up
Sad but not surprising
No other way to put this
Promises Kept

In what seems like a purgative move, Obama and my inbox started the new year apart. Things had clearly been bad for a while, and it was clearly time to move on. Near the end of January, though, he made a snide remark about how few promises had been kept, and his passive-aggression started to show. This would be a recurring theme throughout the year.

May - Rethinking Things
Fixing what's broken
Something happened

We spent several months with almost no contact at all. Our correspondence was professional and perfunctory, and for a while he seemed content to focus on budget negotiations and starting his 2012 campaign. In May, however, Obama began to miss what he had with my email inbox, and sought some sort of reconciliation.

When I was young, I never needed anyone...

June - A Big Step
Dinner?
This is for real

My email inbox decided to play it cool and ignore his tentative pleas during the previous month. He became slightly more insistent, asking to see my inbox in person and demanding that I take this seriously.

July - Shifting Moods
Thank you for your commitment

Nothing in July but stinging sarcasm. My inbox remained unresponsive.

August - Ultimatum
Here's the deal

Obama tried to reestablish his terms, hoping that taking a more dominant approach would woo my inbox back. This attempt failed miserably, leading to one of the most emotional months of the year.

September - Stormy Weather
Marion, can we meet for dinner?
How this dinner thing works
It's officially over
Serious deadline
Decisions are riding on this
If I don't call you
Don't be shy
This has something to do with you
Last chance at dinner
What's stopping you, Marion?

Obama moves from pleading to threatening to wheedling, all to no avail. His desperation became obvious even to outsiders, who noted that he was totally losing control. The cool he had won us all over with was nowhere to be found. My inbox had driven him mad.

Staring into the abyss.

October - Taking a Stand
"I will not take no for an answer"
It doesn't need to be this way
We can't wait

October saw a return to straight aggression, which was somewhat undercut by his complete breakdown in September. My inbox just couldn't take him seriously anymore.

November - Big Things
Three years ago right now
Something special happened in Colorado
I'm bringing Michelle

Obama kicked November off with a drunken email from where we had our first date. His loneliness and nostalgia hit an all-time high in Colorado, where he started dating "Michelle." His next step was trying to make my inbox jealous. (It wouldn't work.)

December - Taking Stock
[from Michelle]- Marion, I want to meet you
I won't lie to you
This is not a game
What I wrote
Here's what I need you to know

Michelle tried and failed to get my inbox to take the bait, and by mid-December Obama finally began to realize his mistakes. He finally apologized for what he had written over the past year, and he resolved to start 2012 with a clean slate.

Happy New Year?

Why Community got benched

2011-11-16T08:31:00.001-05:00

One of the first posts I (co-)wrote for this blog was a review of Community's pilot. At the time, I said "The show felt a bit twitchy and self-satisfied, and the pacing is a little off -- but it makes quite a few rather witty observations, and the dynamic between the characters is great. I seem to remember a certain little show called 30 Rock which, at the beginning, had this same jittery feel...Community will be eminently watchable once it hits its stride." I've watched every episode since then at least twice, and now that I finally have a TV again I get to watch it live on Thursday nights. Basically, I got in at the ground floor and have only loved it more as its grown over the past few years. Which is why I was gutted, but not at all surprised, to hear that Community got suspended from NBC's mid-season lineup. Bloggers and TV people have been predicting its cancellation since season 3 began, in light of the simple and unfortunate fact that nobody is watching this show.

This may or may not have been my initial reaction.

From the beginning, Community had been weird, exclusive, and (at first glance) kind of caustic. While people inexplicably and constantly compared Modern Family to Arrested Development when it first came out, I'd say Community is the more similar of the sitcoms. And it takes a certain kind of person to want to watch that type of show every week. Frankly, it takes a certain kind of person to watch the pilot of any show and say, "I didn't love that, but I'll stick around to see if it gets better." I sure as hell didn't do that with Up All Night, nor did I even try to move out of my comfort zone to watch The New Girl. So that's one hurdle.

Community also rewards people who have been watching every episode since the beginning. Pick any episode from the second season, especially the latter half. Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design, for instance. Unless you're reasonably familiar with conspiracy movies, the relationships between Jeff, Annie, and the Dean, and the role that Troy and Abed play in their study group and on campus, that episode makes little sense and probably gives a minimal level of enjoyment. Put another way - here's a screencap of creator Dan Harmon and stars Alison Brie, Joel McHale, and Donald Glover reacting to the news:

I liked Horsebot 3000...

That is COMPLETELY incoherent to anyone who hasn't seen every episode of season 3 so far, as well as one random episode from season 2; and nobody who doesn't follow these guys on Twitter or read The Daily What on a daily basis would have even seen this. That's a lot of effort to put in for a television show, which is supposed to be fun and easy.

Contrast that with any episode of Modern Family. They all have the exact same plot - the grizzled patriarch is worried about being too old for his hot wife; the uptight mom drives everyone crazy with her anal-retentive ways, but they love her for it; the gay couple has a completely unimportant tiff that gets resolved with 2 lines of dialogue in the finale. Nobody's buzzing about it on The AV Club or Splitsider the next day, but they bring in the ratings like nobody's business.

At the end of the day, Community was tailor-made for a niche demographic. Recent college graduates who use pop culture references as a way to relate to each other, have enough energy to keep plot threads in their minds over the course of several seasons, and are willing to spend time searching for visual Easter eggs (like Amy Poehler's hilarious stock photo showing up in a hospital break room) are the show's bread and butter.

COME ON!

When those are the only people you talk to, or the only blogs you read, you're tricked into thinking there are a lot of you out there. But there aren't. You could say that this is the Nielsen rating system's fault (even though they factor in online and DVR views, and NBC is especially mindful of things like that), but seriously - how many people do you think are really watching Community? 3.5 million sounds about right to me.

This isn't a screed against Middle America's intellectual laziness, or about why we can't have nice things. If anything, it's my attempt to rationalize something before it ends up breaking my heart. Community is by far the most ambitious, unusual, warm-hearted, and intelligent show on TV, and it will leave a big hole in my heart when it goes. But the fact that it's existed as long as it has is encouraging, and the fact that there are at least 3.5 million people up in arms about its impending death is even more so, even if six seasons and a movie isn't in the cards.

Still...

Teenager Vault: Center Stage

2011-11-07T17:16:00.000-05:00

Like I've said numerous times on this blog, being a pre-teen and teen girl the late '90s/early '00s meant that I got to experience a deluge of music and movies that were made specifically for my age demographic. Teenage girls had pop culture in a bit of a stranglehold. Movies like 10 Things I Hate About You, She's All That, Whatever It Takes, Never Been Kissed, Save the Last Dance, Can't Hardly Wait, Bring it On, and Drive Me Crazy all came out within a three-year span, and all of them - with the possible exception of Can't Hardly Wait - were made with teenage girls in mind. Today I'm opening the teenager vault to talk about one of my favourite guilty pleasures, Center Stage.

I don't know about anyone else, but Center Stage was kind of an event for me. I know every beat of the story - roughly half a dozen bright-eyed young things dance, laugh, cry, and learn together as they compete for a few coveted spots during their year at the American Ballet Academy - by heart. A while ago, a friend of mine said "I miss Cooper," and even though she was talking about Bert Cooper of Mad Men, my first thought was "COOPER NIELSON! From Center Stage!" I also learned the choreography for the final dance number, set to Jamiroquai's "Canned Heat," and could still do it if asked. So, yes, Center Stage is a pretty substantial part of my life.

For those of you who don't know, the main protagonist of this movie is blonde, beautiful, and awkward Jody Sawyer. On paper, Jody is a reasonably strong woman. She isn't a perfect dancer, but what she lacks in technique she makes up for in hard work and (alleged) charisma. She successfully and charmingly courts two handsome and skilled ballet dancers, and after an initial tantrum takes Cooper Nielson's romantic brush-off in stride. But in practice, Jody Sawyer only distinguishes herself as a professional drip. It's especially hard to sympathize with her when she's next to someone as magnetic, talented, and generally badass as Ms. Eva Rodriguez.

I normally hate the role of the sassy black-or-Latina friend, but I cannot argue with Zoe Saldana's performance. From her first frame, she seizes your attention and is positively fizzling with energy and real personality. It's almost unfair how successfully she eclipses her so-called lead.

Almost.

(This, astonishingly, was Saldana's first movie. While it took a long time for her to reach the stardom that she deserves, those of us in the know were tuned into her back in the year 2000. She's another one of those people whose careers just makes me smile.)

Despite the charisma disparity, the female friendships in this movie are unusually supportive and positive for a teen movie. While there is the requisite bitch (who went to a special bitch academy, amirite Eva??), Jodie continues to reach out to her. Even though all of the students are explicitly competing with each other, we rarely see the women belittle or envy each other. There's much less "I'm not here to make friends!" than you'd expect, really.

There are, of course, several elements about this film that I can't defend. Mandy Moore's double appearance on the soundtrack, for instance. The idea of Peter Gallagher ever being a ballet dancer. Susan May Pratt's wildly uneven performance as Maureen - she stars in probably the worst scene of the entire movie, when her pre-med dish of a boyfriend finally confronts her on her bulimia.

I'd listen to him if I were you, Maureen.

And there's the incredible facility of the ending, where everyone gets the outcome they want, even "headcases and cripples." But my biggest problem is with Jody's Big Speech, which she gives to her head instructors before they can tell her whether she's been accepted into the American Ballet Company or not. See here. Skip to the end: Jody tells them that she'd rather not hear whether she's been accepted, because if she does go to ABC she'll spend her best dancing years waving a rose back and forth in a chorus, and she's better than that. (I seriously just typed that from memory. I didn't even watch that clip that I linked to just now.) Instead, she's going to be the principal at Cooper Nielson's new studio. She then drops the mic and walks out.

So, great for Jody. But we just saw Eva get accepted to ABC, and we were supposed to be happy for her. Are we to assume that she'll escape the rose-waving fate that Jody just described, or not? Or does Jody just believe that ABC wouldn't recognize and reward her own unique talents? Is Cooper Nielson really the right person to pin her hopes on, in that case? He wasn't even the one who taught her how to dance through her emotions! That was Charlie!

I'm getting caught up in something that could not matter less. I am very aware. At the risk of losing everyone's respect, I have to admit that I whole-heartedly love Center Stage. I saw it in theatres when I was 12 and thought all of the protagonists were beautiful and lovable. I identified with Jody Sawyer struggling with people telling her she had the wrong body type. I wanted Eva Rodriguez to find a mentor who believed in her. I wanted Maureen to eat something without immediately throwing it up. In short, I responded to it in the exact way the movie wanted me to, because I was 12 and had no standards.

I'm not a typically nostalgic person. Movies geared to trigger an affectionate wistfulness for my childhood or adolescence rarely work - nostalgia just seems pointless to me. (Sorry, Toy Story 3.) Still, my continued affection for Center Stage, and some other similarly mediocre movies, must be tied to some sort of nostalgia. I saw them at exactly the right time, and was exactly vulnerable enough for them to work their otherwise limited magic. I cannot and will not apologize for that. And to all the haters, I have this to say:

Childish Gambino, the consummate rapper-slash-actor

2011-11-05T00:18:00.000-04:00

The list of rapper-slash-actors isn't, all in all, too impressive. Ice-T and Ice Cube have long since buried their glimmers of talent to mug it up on Law & Order: SVU and tacky children's movies, respectively. Will Smith largely abandoned his inexplicably popular rap career in favour of his film career, and to his credit he's done a good job of picking reasonably challenging roles in between the endless stream of MIB sequels. (By the way, I'm fully aware that I have Will2K of all things on my iPod, and frankly I don't feel the need to apologize for that.) Mos Def/Yaasin Bey is a performer of unusual subtlety in both areas, but really doesn't do enough of either rapping or acting to make me happy. So, you know, the field isn't terribly encouraging.

And the less we say about this situation, the better.

All of this is a long way of saying that when I got a Facebook message with a Childish Gambino song and the sentence "I know you enjoy Donald Glover," I was very, very skeptical. At the time (June '10) I did enjoy Donald Glover, but I only knew him as one half of Community's adorable and hilarious Troy and Abed. It would still be a while before I learned about his role at the 30 Rock writing table, and watched his recklessly silly work with Derrick Comedy, but I still thought, "Oh great, another rapping actor. Should be fun..."

In the interest of full disclosure, I wasn't initially blown away by what I heard ("I Be On That"). I don't think it was until the sick "Rolling in the Deep" remix that I really started taking the idea of Childish Gambino seriously. Still, the more of Glover's work I found, the more convinced I was that he should just focus on his acting and writing, and give up on the music. But after having seen him in two live performances, and as his music has matured and improved considerably, I think I'm revising my opinion.

The reason I call him a consummate rapper-slash actor is that he actually uses his training as an actor and comedian to inform his musical performances. Rather than taking on one persona - smug jokester, aloof materialist, faux bad-ass - you can see him acting through all of his lines for maximum impact.

He winces while recalling an awkward memory, scoffs at his own attempts to make himself sound cooler, and gets angry at hypothetical haters. He controls and displays his vulnerability with just marvelous skill. In some cases it doesn't entirely work, e.g. when he claims that nobody wants to admit they like him (??). But he fucking nails the roles of a bitter ex and a boastful upstart in a way that more than makes up for his shaky Drake impression.

As his acting skills have strengthened and developed, so have his musical and performance skills. It's actually been a delight to watch that happen over the past year, similar to how it's been to see Ryan Gosling and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's careers develop after having fallen in love with them at the age of 7. And I'm pretty excited to see what he does next, whether it's as Donald Glover the actor or Childish Gambino the rapper.

A proper remake of The Thing

2011-10-26T17:28:00.003-04:00

I am a big supporter of remakes that have a point. A point beyond "reaching a new audience" (which is pretty transparent code for "more dollars"), at least. I think that if one can improve on a story, or tell it in a new and interesting way, then by all means - remake the sucker. So when I started hearing about the remake of John Carpenter's The Thing, already itself a remake, I was equal parts curious and apprehensive. The inclusion of female characters especially piqued my interest - the 1982 film had an all-male cast, unless you count the computer Kurt Russell used to play chess. I tried to overlook the fact that one of these women was Mary Elizabeth Winstead, the charisma vacuum at the center of Final Destination 3 and that horrible Scott Pilgrim movie.

How is this picture so boring? IT HAS A FLAMETHROWER IN IT.

I tried to ignore the nagging suspicion that this new iteration would go overboard on the CGI, robbing us of the sweaty, fleshly, and goopy charms of the "original." (Seriously, Rob Bottin's work in 1982, done completely without the aid of computers, is an absolute marvel. Even better than his work on The Howling, if you ask me.)

But as soon as the PR team started throwing the word "prequel" around, I surrendered to my misgivings. Anyone who saw and loved Carpenter's film would know exactly how redundant a prequel would be here. All we needed was the tragic and creepy hints of that story - an axe lodged in a door, two Norwegians' frantic determination to kill a dog - to understand how we got here. Choosing to stuff a prequel in where there was no need could only prove that these people had no interest in or respect for the story being told.

Well, you better believe that I have a borderline-rabid interest in and respect for The Thing, and since this 2011 remake/prequel - premake? - was such a bomb, it's safe to assume that my ideas are better. (My logic, it is sound.) To be honest, it's only one main idea, but still a good one: I would love to see The Thing with an all-female cast. At the core of the 1982 version is an examination of what happens when a very isolated group of men who are already going stir-crazy is put in an extremely dangerous and stressful situation. Wouldn't you want to see what happens when it's a very isolated group of women? To see how deep loneliness, distrust, and fear affect women who know and like or dislike each other to varying degrees? The jumping off point, before the group realizes they've been infiltrated by an alien, probably wouldn't feel too far off from a women's college during winter finals.*

Plus, for the most part, horror movies with a primarily female cast tend to just sexualize and trivialize the so-called characters so that they're all just interchangeable bimbos. I think remaking The Thing with women would be a step towards reversing that trend, not unlike Hausu or The Descent.

Not pictured: characters.

In that spirit, I put together my dream cast list. If you haven't seen the '82 version (which you SHOULD! It's on Netflix Instant!) this list will mean little to you, which is fine. This is more for me than for you anyway.

*It is pretty bleak.

The Dream Cast

Mac, the helicopter pilot and de facto leader - Sanaa Lathan

Childs, the hot-headed chief mechanic - Michelle Rodriguez

Windows, the whiny and weak-willed radio operator - Judy Greer

Fuchs, the mild-mannered biologist - Rashida Jones

Cooper, the highly competent physician - Gillian Anderson

Blair, the fatalistic chief biologist - Sigourney Weaver

Clark, the morose dog handler - Aubrey Plaza

Norris, geologist with a weak heart - Melissa McCarthy

Gary, veteran and outpost commander - Sandra Oh

Bennings, prissy pain in the ass whose function I cannot divine - Angela Bassett

Nauls, the cheerful and laidback cook - Jewel Staite

Palmer, assistant mechanic, resident pothead and space cadet - Gillian Jacobs

I love the 80s - Ryan Gosling's Drive defends the decade

2011-10-06T11:09:00.000-04:00

A lot of the reviews of Ryan Gosling's Drive, an excellent and heartbreaking film, call it an "80s throwback" - and surprisingly, they don't mean it as an insult. For the most part, critics and cinephiles malign the 1980s as being the worst decade for movies. When 2010's The Expendables lurched onto the scene, these same people were moaning "the 80s are back!" Why do the 80s always get such a bad rap?

Even outside the world of movies, the 80s have become shorthand for all the worst elements of American society. We deride the music, fashion, politics, and perceived sentiments of the whole time period. The hit VH1 series "I Love The..." started out with the 80s, with a menagerie of talking heads ragging on pop culture items of the time. It was a weird but irresistible exercise in brutalizing nostalgia that helped shape the image 20-somethings like me have of the decade. So now when we hear "80s," we see aviators, acid-wash jeans, and Top Gun.

The first result if you Google "80s." I'll wait for your seizure to end.

Part of it also has to be that the 80s directly follow the 70s, which we've all been trained to say is the golden age. But if a quintessentially 70s movie like Taxi Driver kicked off the cinematic exploration of urban alienation, there were a dozen excellent movies in the 80s that both broadened and deepened that. Movies like Blade Runner, The Thing, and The Shining were dark, misanthropic, and almost oppressive in their depiction of loneliness. Aliens, probably the best sequel of all time (which improved upon its 70s predecessor, by the way), wore its subversive nature on its sleeve - the gung-ho militarism that we remember the decade for was thwarted and destroyed, and the bond between a grieving mother and an orphaned girl was celebrated. And Drive continues that lonely, alienated tradition beautifully.

The cosmetic links are obvious - we've got a synth-pop soundtrack, aviators, a bewildering satin bomber.

Seriously, though. Bewildering.

We've got Ryan Gosling's The Driver, a direct descendant of both Travis Bickle and Rick Deckard. Like Bickle, he is off-kilter and unsettling in a way that is initially attractive to the two-dimensional blonde angel he falls for. He ferries people around while making a point of keeping his distance from them. And like Deckard, he is so quiet and removed from humanity that his own humanity is suspect - Deckard because he may be a replicant, the Driver because he probably falls somewhere between "moderate" and "severe" on the autism spectrum.

And we've got a plot straight from a neo-noir tragedy, with seedy mobsters, feeble friends, and a pervasive sense of dread that hits you even before the bloodied bodies start to stack up (and do they ever).

Creations like I Love the 80s would have you believe that the only working actors between 1981 and 1990 were testosterone lumps like Stallone and Schwarzzenegger, and brash young hellraisers like Cruise. But ignore those for a second. The protagonists who really last, the ones who really stick in your mind like a little burr, are one just like the Driver - trying and usually failing to transcend their demons and the demons who surround them. Their movies are about evil and hostility, the futility of redemption, and the emptiness of the American dream. The 80s gave us some of the darkest and most beautiful films of all time, and I like to think that Drive, being a brutal little gem of a movie, goes a ways in defending the decade's honour.

The Playboy Club and stiletto feminism

2011-09-09T00:23:00.001-04:00

This new show, The Playboy Club, is really beginning to invade my space. Anytime I try to watch something online, an ad for either this show or that new Zooey Deschanel monstrosity plays for what feels like eternity. Since I have some personal issues with Ms. Deschanel that prevent me from watching her in almost anything besides (500) Days of Summer, I felt more inclined to research the Amber Heard/Eddie Cibrian vehicle instead. (I still don't know why I'm compelled to investigate things I strongly suspect I won't like, but here we are.)

Now, I hate to accuse anyone of a lack of originality (I don't), but there are a lot of similarities between this Playboy Club show and a certain critically acclaimed drama series on AMC. There's the 1960s setting, the lead characters with dark secrets that bind them together, and an aggressively appealing male lead with a shellacked head suit and skinny tie.

I'm not complaining about that last thing.

And in case you thought that wasn't enough banality, we also have the sassiest black friend who ever sassed, the listing of aesthetic criticisms, and the leering adulation of the camera. But what I find most irritating about this show - or at least, its marketing - is its portrayal of and conversations about women.

It is utterly disheartening to hear these women talk about the Playboy Bunnies of yore, saying "these were really feminists" and, even more stupefying, "these are powerful women that were able to change the world." How were they powerful? How did they change the world? As far as I can tell, they dragged the explicit objectification of women into the mainstream and put a crude feminist wig on it. Amber Heard has already defended her show's position, saying that women shouldn't be denied their sexuality(more on that here), which deftly boxes detractors in as Puritans. But I'm not talking about denying sexuality. I'm talking about demanding that women be appreciated for and expected to have more in their arsenal than their sexuality. And about hearing these actresses talk about empowerment and living life on their own terms, then in the next breath giggle about the time and effort it takes to zip into their costumes. Costumes specifically designed to appeal to men.

Liberated from the need to breathe!

This may sound like an overreaction, but I think it's impossible to separate the rampant glamorization of Playboy Bunnies (and their costumes) from the growing wave of anti-feminism in America. TV shows like The Playboy Club and books like The Power of Erotic Capital may seem innocuous, but when you look at them in conjunction with the rollbacks of abortion rights happening all over the country, or the ever-current "are women funny?" conversations, or the inclusion of 1 (one!) woman on a twelve-person Congressional committee about debt reduction...it's hard not to see a narrative there. A narrative that seeks to reduce women's real power and influence and supplant it with sexual power and influence.

Maybe The Playboy Club will turn out to be a better show than it seems. After all, Mad Men was guilty of lingering camera shots on various women, especially Christine Hendricks, before revealing itself as one of the most feminist shows on television. But somehow I doubt that this show, with its cheerful collaboration with Hugh Hefner and determination to treat sexual objectification as a fun and liberating choice, will exceed my expectations.

West Side Story - remake?

2011-08-09T16:36:00.000-04:00

Last week, I finally got to see West Side Story on the big screen. West Side Story happens to be tied with Guys and Dolls for the title of My Favourite Musical, so you can imagine my delight at this opportunity. And, just like every other time I've watched it, I was in tears by the time the lights came on. As I've gotten older, the tears-trigger has appeared later and later in the film - through college, I would start sobbing as soon as Bernardo gets it in the stomach; more recently, I would last at least until Maria runs down her apartment stairwell, screaming after Chino. This time around, I really thought I'd beaten the movie. I was cracking wise the entire time about Natalie Wood's brownface and Richard Beymer's simply insane cheesiness, and by the time Maria, Chino, and Tony all converge on the basketball court I thought I was home free. Yet somehow the final line - "Te adoro, Anton" - just felled me, and I dissolved into tears.

After my infantile sobbing subsided, my date and I got to thinking - what if they remade West Side Story? The idea doesn't seem completely outlandish - a remake of Footloose will soon grace our screens; gory creature feature The Thing (another of my favourites) is getting re-remade; and James Cameron has the ballsy cynicism to straight up re-release Titanic in 3D. So, you know, it could happen. And would that necessarily be a bad thing? My initial instinct was to cry sacrilege, but in thinking about it, a West Side Story remake might not be a bad idea at all. There are plenty of elements that could do with some improvements.

It would be great, for instance, to hire actual Puerto Ricans to play Maria and her extremely dapper and handsome brother Bernardo.

Ugh, smolder central.

Natalie Wood's accent and half-hearted brownface were downright offensive (and honestly, don't get me started on her dull-as-dishwater performance). And I love George Chakiris, I really, really do. I'm not alone in thinking he gives one of the best performances of the film. But...had he ever heard a Puerto Rican speak? I have sincere doubts.

The 1961 film is also strangely, distractingly clean. Gang members say things like "ever-lovin'" and "Krup you," and the lyrics to "America" feel consciously restrained. A remake wouldn't have to contend with the draconian Hays Code, which required clean-ups like "birth to earth" from "sperm to worm," and "you came with your mouth open" from "you came with your legs open." Using more vulgar dialogue, some of which could easily be found in the original stage script, would go a long way towards making the movie as realistic and relatable as a musical can be.

Is this not what gang violence is?

These are largely cosmetic changes, but I have some substantive problems with the movie as well. We see the Jets trying to absorb the death of their gymnast leader Riff, and how they re-form as a group after it. We also see internal conflicts in their gang - their near-constant rebuffing of possibly genderqueer Anybody's; Iceman's rise from foxy lieutenant to foxy leader; and Baby John's reluctance to even be a gangster. We don't see any such complexity from the Sharks: After Bernardo dies, most of the gang doesn't appear again until the final scene, and then they don't say anything. We don't see Pepe or Indio take Bernardo's place as leader of the pack. The community that "America" displays completely disappears. I'd want a remake to beef up the Sharks' role here - if I know that A-rab's dad is a drug addict and Action's mother is a sex worker, I should know similar details about Pepe and Indio. And by that token, give the Jet women something more to do than be irritating and foolish sex objects. The Shark women have opinions about things, like immigration and how cute Tony is; Graziella and Velma just like speaking actual gibberish and dancing with their boyfriends. As it stands, I hate their guts, but I don't have to.

I know it's in the movie geek rule book to hate even the idea of remakes, especially of something that's held up as a classic, like West Side Story. And I do hate cynical remakes, whose sole reason for existence is money. Still, if there's a better way to tell a story, then I'm all for it; and as much as I love West Side Story as is, a better version could be out there somewhere. (Some day. Some way.)

Harry Potter characters in a non-magical world?

2011-07-19T17:05:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about this for a bit - what would our beloved Hogwarts students be like if Hogwarts were just a regular prep school in the real, non-magical world? What roles would they fill after graduation? My ideas are below, but I'm happy to hear your suggestions in the comments - especially for Ginny Weasley, who just doesn't do anything for my imagination.

Harry Potter - Harry is a pretty standard talented-but-immature jock with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. I think he'd be most at home as a maverick fighter pilot, with a homoerotic rivalry that must be put aside to fight the greater evil (probably a shady east Asian conglomerate, or something).

Hermione Granger - I know she's English, but I can only see her as a U.S. Secretary of State. The equivalent in England seems to be the Secretary of State for Justice in the Ministry of Justice, which sounds appropriately intellectual and badass.

Ron Weasley - Desk jockey at the FBI. Ron's courage and loyalty outstrip his intellectual abilities, which makes him a perfect fit for the Bureau.

Neville Longbottom - That awkward but randomly hot professor who can usually be found holed up in a lab (and that's how he likes it).

A bazillion points to Gryffindor, hot stuff.

Draco Malfoy - I figure he would be the evil equivalent of Bruce Wayne - a rich, jobless dandy who hosts fundraisers for pet politicians and buys extravagant things.

Luna Lovegood - Vintage clothing/furniture store owner, and an avid pastafarian blogger.

Fred/George Weasley - Second City Toronto improv teachers. Though they'd probably fit in better with the 1973-1974 crowd than anyone in more recent memory.

From the Archives: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - A review

2011-07-16T08:15:00.001-04:00

I'll be honest with you - I really do not care about this last Harry Potter movie. I stopped caring about the movies a long time ago, and neither the books nor the movies carry the sort of cultural resonance that makes me sad that the saga is ending. Yes, my friends and I still have conversations about which of us would be sorted into which House (and which of us is an evil Squib), but my feelings about The End Of It All don't even begin to approach my feelings about the end of Party Down, for instance. But, since everyone is talking about it everywhere, I was reminded of an article I wrote for my college magazine in 2007, reviewing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I've reposted it here, and would like you all to appreciate how much of a pariah this article made me for at least 2 weeks. My alma mater is collectively in LOVE with all things Hogwarts. Anyway -- enjoy!

At 12:01 AM, July 14, I was not among the throngs of frothing fans crowding up bookstores in anticipo of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Instead, I was fast asleep, almost aggressively ignoring the frenzy surrounding the release of J.K. Rowling’s ﬁnal book in what must be one of literary history’s most-anticipated series: no parties, Harry and the Potters concerts, or dressing up like a wizard for me. I snobbishly avoided the hype and leisurely picked up the book about eleven hours later on my way to the post office. Sure, I’ve read all the books, but I have managed not to get too emotionally involved. I say this just to warn you that you are not dealing with an overly enthused fan letter here. As a loyal but not necessarily adoring reader, I did look forward to the last book, and was unfortunately disappointed.

So ﬁnally those of us involved with this behemoth of a series can get some closure. Prophecies are fulﬁlled. Climactic battles are fought. Beloved characters snuff it (I cannot be the only person who felt Rowling went on, to use her favourite word, an immoderately enthusiastic killing spree in the last two hundred pages). Maybe some are just glad for it to be over, and so accept any kind of conclusion without questioning it. I, however,do have one question: does the story really make sense? Granted, we are dealing with a magical world, so obviously that requires quite a suspension of disbelief. If magic has rules, though, Rowling should stick to them.

For the ﬁrst few chapters, Rowling leans too heavily on Hermione’s knowledge of every single thing ever known to the magical world, and that knowledge seemed impossibly broader than usual. I understand that Hermione went on a studying rampage to prepare for the goal to destroy the Horcruxes, but this was a little too much. Any time they ﬁnd themselves in a jam, our intrepid band of heroes escape with the help of Hermione’s magically expanding brain and handbag. My point is, Rowling wrote herself into too many corners early on and repeatedly fell back upon a Hermione ex machina to escape.

I always thought that the development of the disturbing mental connection between Harry and Voldemort was masterfully done – Harry can speak Parseltongue too, their wands are cousins, and so forth. However, that plot point never successfully resolves itself for me. The danger Hermione keeps shrieking about (and then suddenly abandons) never comes through; somehow Voldemort either lost or forgot about his ability to see into and use Harry’s mind. At several points in the book Voldemort does not even register Harry’s extreme proximity like he used to. Why is this? How could such a brilliant and single-minded villain forget his most useful tool in ﬁnding and destroying his foe? He couldn’t have lost this power, either, since he was assuming so much control in the wizarding and human worlds at this point. I cannot blame this gaping plot hole on anything but blatant narrative laziness on Rowling’s part; a great disappointment among many others.

My biggest problem with the book, however, arrives with the explanation and fulﬁllment of the Prophecy, which has been driving the series since the end of book ﬁve. I have here the most relevant part:

Either must die at the hand of the other,
For neither can live while the other survives.

As everyone and their blind cat knows, Voldemort used Avada Kedavra on Harry Potter again, propelling him into an eerie interlude with Dumbledore’s spirit. Why didn’t Harry die this time? Apparently, he lives because 1) Lily Potter’s protective love spell had accidentally transferred itself to Voldemort - either when he unwittingly turned Harry into a Horcrux, or when he took some of Harry’s blood to make himself stronger, or both; and 2) Harry, in a ﬁt of Christ-like behavior, willingly sacriﬁced his life to save all of humanity--and wizardry. (Only The Boy Who Lived could one-up Jesus.)

There is absolutely no reason for the second reason to exist except to hammer the idea of Harry’s heroism well and truly home. Nobody can tell me it even makes sense in context. It just sounds splendid. The ﬁrst reason would succeed if it were just tidied up more – pick the exact point at which Lily’s love spell started protecting Voldemort, and do not confuse me so.

But the biggest question regarding the Prophecy is, for me, who killed Voldemort? Harry only tried to Disarm him, and I don’t care how powerful his stupid somehow-Elder wand is - Disarming ≠ Murder. If Voldemort’s Avada Kedavra curse backﬁred on him, then it was Voldemort who killed himself. That clearly does not go along with the aforementioned prophecy. I desperately cannot stand inconsistencies, whether in characters or in plots, and this plot point had become so important that it should have received more attention.

All of this is not to say that I hated the book. I loved the ﬁnal developments of Ron’s character, and I adored all the ﬂashbacks to young, effortlessly handsome Sirius Black. I just didn’t love it as unconditionally as some would have me do. The more I think about it, the more drawbacks I remember. I don’t think my standards are all that high, either; I merely ask for an author to pay attention to her work and adhere to the rules that she herself established, magical or no. Rowling is just killing me here, and I cannot say that I have recovered.
--2007

John Cusack: Anatomy of a crush

2011-06-30T10:45:00.001-04:00

As far back as I can remember, I've always been way in love with John Cusack.

Well, maybe not that far back. When I was two I went through a huge Yul Brynner phase, which came to a painful resolution when I discovered he died two years before I was born. But at least since I was old enough to have a serious adolescent love for a movie star, that movie star has been John Cusack. The only person who appears more in my DVD collection is Martin Scorsese, and I had at least one Say Anything picture or poster on my wall every year of college. (Actually, the loss of the poster was one of the saddest moments of my young adult life.)

Chuck Klosterman has his own theories about what makes John Cusack such an irresistible object of affection - and he is absolutely the guy we all want to get a milkshake with, and retroactively lose our virginity to. But he's also a likable and attractive version of us in romantic situations. JC, be it as Lloyd Dobler or Rob Gordon or Lane Meyer, is the patron saint of unrequited love. We simultaneously want to date and be the person whose willingness to put himself out there is charming, not off-putting; we want to either land the dream girl or have a convenient rainstorm express our anguish at losing her.

And the dream girl is probably all foreign and arty and cool.

So that's the common access point to John Cusack. But is that enough to have kept me hooked for this long? I mean, name a great movie of his that came out recently. I'll wait.

You're probably thinking of High Fidelity, and that movie came out over 10 years ago. 10 years, man! 10! Since then we've (or just I) suffered through ignominious schlock like Must Love Dogs and Serendipity, and watched indignities like Con Air and 2012 happen from afar. Anytime I read reviews of his less-than-awesome movies, I can feel myself go into a full-body cringe of embarrassment. I grasp at his decidedly average movies like Identity and 1408 and convince myself that they are "smart explorations of the genre" or someshit. And I don't know why JC is the only actor I'll do that for. I don't rush to the defense of Alec Baldwin's 200-odd straight-to-DVD movies. I completely gave up on Gerard Butler's career somewhere around The Ugly Truth (though honestly? Things were looking rough circa 300). I haven't watched a Jason Statham movie all the way through since 2004.

Maybe this is just life as a fangirl. Even though logic and probability dictate that I'll be disappointed more than rewarded for believing in him, I really can't help it. John Cusack appeared on my radar at the exact right moment in my life, and I'll never be able to shake him.

But seriously, he falls the fuck off in 2001.

My personal favourite LGBT characters

2011-06-10T18:02:00.002-04:00

In celebration of National LGBT Pride Month, I thought I'd pull together a list of my favourite LGBT characters from movies and TV shows. This is by no means a comprehensive list of the best of all time, and for once I didn't include a list of things that I dislike. These are just the characters that, for various reasons and in no particular order, are important to me. Happy Pride!

Elin and Agnes, Show Me Love (Fucking Amal)
Show Me Love perfectly represents the relationship between someone who's been out of the closet for a while and someone who's just coming out, as well as that between a popular kid and a dorky loner. In this movie, as in real life, it's really fucking awkward - priorities, experiences, and expectations are all in conflict, and more often than not someone gets burned. Agnes, the out lesbian and dork, suffers a great deal at the hands of her classmates and sometimes-girlfriend Elin. Meanwhile, Elin has to decide whether to come to terms with being a lesbian (or bisexual; the movie didn't make it clear, which is fine) or take the easier way out and ignore it. Watching these two girls come to terms with their relationship and what it means in a small, conservative town is simultaneously frustrating and refreshing, especially for anyone who's ever been in either position. The movie also ends on a more positive and generally normal note than most lesbian movies, which usually end in at least one death.

Blaine, Glee
I have a lot of issues with Glee, which some people say makes me a horrible person, but I say makes me a person with taste. That show is disorganized, inconsistent, off-putting, cliché...everything I hate. But I'm absolutely one of the 22.5 million YouTube views of Glee's cover of the otherwise wretched song "Teenage Dream," the performance that kick-started America's most famous gay teen romance.

Better bloggers than I have already gone into how important this moment was in LGBT history. While slope-nosed little Kurt fulfills and celebrates every stereotype of a young and flamboyant gay man, which doesn't exactly break down any barriers; Blaine fulfills every stereotype of the Jake Ryan teenage stud, and is gay. Young gays everywhere finally have a mainstream portrayal of a young couple to imprint on, the way straight teenagers have in every other movie and tv show ever made.

Ludo, Ma vie en rose
Ma vie en rose comes to us from Belgium, and tells the story of young Ludo, who was born male but tries - with varying levels of success - to live as a girl. He tries to rationalize the mistake of being born in a boy's body, concluding that his second X-chromosome must have gotten accidentally tossed in the garbage; voices his plans to marry his friend and neighbor Jerome when he's finally not a boy; and loves dresses, makeup, and the not-Barbie-not-even-a-little-bit doll Pam.

Ludo can also rock the fuck out of a bowl cut. Top THAT.

Ludo's father is an excellent character as well, whose gradual transition from disbelieving intolerance to celebration of Ludo's identity feels totally honest and real. Honestly, the only moment that this movie doesn't feel honest is when Ludo's mother swings from amused tolerance to straight up violence and back again in the space of, like, 3 minutes.

Salvatore Romano, Mad Men
Part of the reason Sal is on this list is that I desperately covet his wardrobe. That man defines middle-aged fierceness in a way that I can't even deal with.

Except for Sal (far right), everyone in this picture looks like a damn chump.

In an office full of funny but willfully superficial people, Sal stands out as a true wit and aesthete. He usually has the sharpest put-downs, but can also be kind, indulgent, and quite thoughtful. It's also constantly amazing to see this man, who anyone in the 21st century would assume to be gay, totally pass for straight in the 1960s. There's a sharp contrast between the societal stereotypes from 50 years ago and those of today, which I find alternately hilarious and generally interesting. Unfortunately, Sal's no longer on the show, but I'm holding out hope that Don Douchebag Draper will need an excellent and delightful art director in the near future.

McKinley and Ben, Wet Hot American Summer
I mostly love this couple for the Crate and Barrel scene, which is not available on YouTube so you'll just have to watch the whole damn movie. You're welcome.

Kima/Omar, The Wire
I almost don't want to include Omar in this list, because he's such a larger-than-life character that he almost doesn't feel real (you know what I mean); but I just love him so much. Omar is the most feared man on the mean streets of this version of Baltimore, mostly because of his facility with a shotgun and his general devil-may-care attitude. But when drug kingpin Avon finds out that he's gay, he immediately increases the bounty he already put on Omar's head; and eventually Omar's boyfriend is caught, brutally tortured, and murdered to bring Omar out of hiding. As of season 3 Omar is still on a crusade to avenge his beautiful boyfriend's death, and The Wire treats this crusade with a certain reverence and understanding usually reserved for those to avenge a female love interest.

Detective Kima Greggs gets her sexual orientation constantly thrown in her face by resentful thugs (somehow everyone in the whole city knows that she's a lesbian), but is also well-liked and respected by her colleagues for being such a good cop. From what I can tell, she's beginning to serve as the female counterpart to de facto star Jimmy McNulty - for both, the job that they're excellent at comes first; and for both, personal/domestic interactions are uncomfortable and difficult. In other words, she's an imperfect but deeply relatable character in a cast full of them. Also, she is a stone fox. Which doesn't hurt.

Waging a war on drugs with her cheekbones of justice.

Gareth and Matthew, Four Weddings and a Funeral

As far as I'm concerned, these two set the gold standard for relationships in general. Their personalities and friendships are what drive their characterization, not their orientation; and Matthew's grief at losing Gareth is the most emotionally stirring point in the whole film. I dare you to watch this scene without crying. (But seriously, if you don't cry, we are not friends.)

The 6 people you'll have in your movie theater

2011-05-30T12:12:00.000-04:00

It's Memorial Day, which means that as far as I'm concerned, summer has started. (And according to Fast Five, summer began like a month ago, so I'm not really jumping the gun that much.) Summer means a lot of things to a lot of people, but for most of us it means going to the movies much more frequently. Maybe it's because the heat lowers our standards. Maybe we're more susceptible to movies whose trailers have tons of context-free action shots to a thrilling strings-and-drums soundtrack. Either way, you'll be spending a lot of time over the next few months crammed into movie theaters with strangers, and you need to be prepared. Here are the 6 people you will undoubtedly have in your movie theater:

The horrible parent
It doesn't matter what this movie is rated or why. It could be rated R for some strong sexuality or disturbing violent content; it could be PG-13 for sequences of intense peril; it could be rated G for super-cuddly robots. Regardless, there will be one horrible parent in the audience who brought their way-too-young-for-a-big-screen-movie-event baby along for the fun.

Not even remotely ready for this.

Except, how could that possibly be fun for anyone? The baby has to spend the whole time having her tender little ears barraged with obscenely loud sounds, the parent has to tend to his shrieking and traumatized infant, and the rest of the audience has to suffer the weird mix of embarrassment and tension that comes with hating a baby for crying. I know it's hard to balance raising a child with having a life of one's own, but does your child really deserve the conflicted wrath of complete strangers? And should your child really be exposed to Shutter Island anyway?

The interactive viewer
This person will almost always be a woman, and will most definitely be sitting behind your left shoulder. She deems everything that occurs on-screen worthy of a loud comment or response. This can be fun, if you're watching something like Scream 4 and you're all there to equally not take the movie seriously. Unfortunately, it's usually really fucking annoying, especially if the woman is not particularly witty and therefore brings nothing to the table. Just as an example off the top of my head, I recently saw Kung Fu Panda 2, which stars Jack Black as the voice of an overweight panda who overcomes his fatness to become a chubby kung fu legend. I mention this panda's weight so frequently because 1) it comes up pretty often in the movie, and 2) if the movie didn't bring it up, the interactive viewer behind me was sure to. This panda's fatness, which would have been completely insignificant to me, became inescapable.

I was just trying to focus on the plot, lady.

The lone wolf
Believe me, I am not putting the knock on people who go to movies on their own. I've done it, and for some movies it's just the right thing to do. It can be nice to go to a movie and not feel any pressure to whisper something witty to your friend. The lone wolf, however, seems to be conflicted about whether he wants to be alone; he sits in a row all by himself, but whenever something funny happens he laughs loudly and looks around at any audience members he can pick out. As the film continues, he either quiets down in shame or grows even louder, desperate for some kind of human contact.

The ironic bastards
I fully admit that I am often in this group of people - people who, for whatever reason, are willing to spend money to watch a movie they know in advance will be horrible. Like that time I saw Burlesque, or that time I saw Stealth. These people are the absolute worst - either they assume that everyone else in the theater thinks the movie is shitty too, or they think their loud "hilarity" will win the audience over. (This rarely works.)

The douchebag historian
This person is almost always a dude, and you usually encounter him while stuck in the slow-moving throng of people trying to exit the theater. No matter what movie, this gentleman came prepared: War movie? He knows every kind of weapon that was and was not available during the film's time period. Drama based on a true story? He read every Wikipedia article about every biography related to that story, and can tell you exactly where the movie starts to take liberties. Romantic comedy? He read all the TMZ posts about the off-screen drama that has nothing to do with what's going on in the actual movie.

The one who just doesn't belong
White guy at my screening of Good Hair, I'm looking at you.

Boy Band Battle Royale: You Got Served

2011-05-24T22:56:00.001-04:00

Out of all the boy bands on this list, B2K is the only group that starred in a movie together. (They're also the only group on this list that I've actually seen in concert. I have never experienced the mania of mob mentality like I did at that concert, let me tell you.) Other groups, like NYSNC and (briefly) NKOTB, spun off some actors who appear at various points of the wanna-be--actual actor scale, but never all in the same movie. So I think, instead of the usual Boy Band Battle Royale format, I'd like to talk a little about the cinematic event of You Got Served.

But first, let us pause and admire some art.

Boy Band: B2K

Members: (from left) Dreux Pierre Frederic (Lil Fizz), Jarell Damonte Houston (J-Boog), Omari Ishmael Grandberry (Omarion), and De'Mario Monte Thorton (Raz-B)

Reign of Terror: 2001-2004

Movie: You Got Served - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkBe80SajCg

At its excessively hip heart, You Got Served is a "put on a show" deal, like those Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney numbers from the '40s. Our ragtag team of heroes have a need - in this case, money - and it just so happens that there is a show coming up! Winning this show would fill that need in a perfectly efficient way - in fact, it would be "just enough money to change our lives!" You Got Served also features the sort of dastardly villains that frequent these movies, some "white boys from Orange County" who claim that they never practice their intricately choreographed dance routines. Here's what it looks like, by the way, when you don't practice. (Don't be afraid to just jump in here without any context. The events will be described as they happen at least 300 times.) And finally, there is a completely lackluster romance between David (Omarion) and Elgin (Marques Houston)'s sister, Leah.

He's dressed in bright colours so the audience doesn't fall asleep.

But, since You Got Served is after the (rarely coveted) young black male demographic, there are some distinctly "urban" shadings. For one thing, there is a half-hearted subplot involving a shady "merchandise" kingpin (the word "drugs" is NEVER used, so maybe our guys are secret deliverymen or something) named Emerald. When he feels like it, Emerald makes vague threats and is usually accompanied with loud cello music. Emerald is so inconsequential that Steve Harvey's equally inconsequential character resolves the plot off-screen.

Secondly, there is a wayward youth who our most handsome hero (J-Boog, obviously) mentors in order to save him from a life of crime. In typical "urban movie" fashion, little dude falls victim to that very life of crime in an off-screen hail of gunfire. How do you think our heroes deal with the news?
A) Punching a hole in the hospital wall
B) Rush-ordering a dozen spray-paint memorial shirts
C) Praying for little dude while bouncing to Joe Budden's "Pump It Up"
D) All of the above.

There is also a character named Beautifull, with two L's, and she is played by Meagan Good.

Consider the young black male demographic courted.

In case I hadn't successfully made this point, this movie is completely ridiculous. Watching it, it becomes painfully clear that all the focus was put on the choreography, at the expense of the script and the actors (such that they are). Plot points are sort of lobbed at the screen, and just fall whenever and wherever they fall. Also, there is a weird reification of shoes going on here, whereby if someone touches your shoes, you're allowed to try to punch him in the face? The movie treats women as either expendable window-dressing or coveted prizes, as opposed to, you know, women. And yet...the dancing is pretty wicked. And the eye candy is tremendous.

Final Tally:

Sex appeal/charisma: 10000/10 (see top of post)
Cheesiness: 10000/10 (see sex appeal/charisma)
Dance moves: 10000/10 (see here)
Music: 4/10
Post-band success: The only member who has gone on to make a name for himself is Omarion, who is still singing, "acting," and sitting as a judge on America's Next Top Dance Crew. J-Boog and Lil Fizz have started a record label together, which is very nice, I suppose. Raz-B plans to release his autobiography, though god knows what the hell will be in it.

Teenager Vault: Save the Last Dance

2011-05-04T13:29:00.002-04:00

Like I said in the Boy Band Battle Royale introduction, being a pre-teen and teen girl the late '90s/early '00s meant that I got to experience a deluge of music and movies that were made specifically for my age demographic. Teenage girls had pop culture in a bit of a stranglehold. Movies like 10 Things I Hate About You, She's All That, Whatever It Takes, Never Been Kissed, Save the Last Dance, Can't Hardly Wait, Bring it On, and Drive Me Crazy all came out within a three-year span, and all of them - with the possible exception of Can't Hardly Wait - were made with teenage girls in mind. Also, almost all of them were pretty awful on a number of levels. For instance, almost all of them follow excruciatingly predictable patterns that climax at the prom. Almost all of them actively demolish the idea that female friendships are positive, supportive, and nourishing - in these movies, either the female lead has no female friends, or her one female friend is untrustworthy, especially when it comes to boys. And almost all of them turn on the female lead trading in her already harmless rough edges and interests to get the cute boy. There are two exceptions to these rules in the above list - Bring it On, a delightfully mean-spirited little sleeper hit that plays sexual harassment and gay panic for laughs; and Save the Last Dance, a surprisingly serious number that had a little more to say than the average teen movie.

I got the opportunity to watch Save the Last Dance with a fresh pair of eyes over the weekend. Previously, I had assumed that everyone who spent 2001 as a teenage girl could quote huge chunks of the movie by heart.

I mean, for instance.

But, as it turns out, our intrepid contributor V had never EVER seen Save the Last Dance in her life. Not one to ever turn down an opportunity to educate on the cinematic front, I jumped at the chance to re-watch a movie that my 13-year-old self deemed a classic. And I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of what I saw.

I mean, yes, this movie is shamelessly self-indulgent and borderline melodramatic. It has completely unnecessary and sometimes incorrect break-downs of black/hip-hop culture in 2001 - apparently black people never said "cool" back then, but "slammin'"; also, apparently there's an emotional background to every possible dance step in a black man's arsenal. It wraps things up in the same facile way as every teen movie does.

With a daaaaaance!

But it also has a surprisingly strong female lead in Sara, played by Julia "Dour" Stiles. We see that Sara had a strong relationship with her mother before her (the mother's) untimely death, which opens the movie. She had a close female friend in her old school, before she moved to Chicago; and quickly gains another close female friend at her new school. She meets the cutest boy in school (really the cutest boy in any school; that Sean Patrick Thomas is razor fine) and approaches the relationship with an endearing confidence that is pretty rare in movies like this. She tells Derek exactly how she feels about his no-good Tupac-wannabe friend, initiates their first romantic physical encounter, and takes a lot of pleasure in boasting about her alleged dance skills. And she never really changes her personality in order to win him over - the transition she makes during the movie is more about coming to terms with her mother's death and letting herself realize her own potential than it is about changing how she dresses or lowering her romantic standards.

Sara's friend Chenille - CHENILLE - is an interesting female character as well. At first she seems to be the typical Old Hand Who Takes The Protagonist Under Her Wing, a la Mean Girls's Janis Ian, but she ends up having a surprising degree of nuance. She has an ugly baby son with Kenny, and their entire dynamic is the sort you would expect from a real-life teen couple with a son - clumsy, angry, horny, and confused. And she gets the best monologue of the whole movie, when she drops some truth bombs on Sara about the realities of a white woman coming into a black woman's world. (She later retracts the entire thing, which is unfortunate, but she was trippin' off Kenny.)

So no, Save the Last Dance is not perfect. But it tries very hard to be about something more than most teen movies, and that's worth a lot in my book.

I do frown on its promotion of women dancing alone in alleys, though.

Boy Band Battle Royale: 98 Degrees

2011-04-14T12:39:00.001-04:00

The third installment in the Boy Band Battle Royale is one that I find just infinitely puzzling - 98 Degrees. I always thought of them as being a second-tier boy band, since none of my friends really talked about them as much as they did about BSB or NSYNC. Their music videos were always on the Disney Channel, including their contribution to the Mulan soundtrack (do yourself a favour. Just do it), which I assumed meant nobody cool was watching them. But it turns out they went multi-platinum three times, and had 4 Top 5 hit songs, during their relatively short run. So why weren't teenage girls talking about them?

To be fair, they look a little fucking moody.

Boy Band: 98 Degrees (98°)
Members: (from left) Drew Lachey, Nick Lachey, Jeff Timmons, Justin Jeffre
Reign of Terror: 1998-2002

For the most part, 98 Degrees was always different from most boy bands. Other groups went for a less masculine look, hiring a pretty lead singer and filming adorably chaste videos. From the looks of it, 98 Degrees recruited three high school quarterbacks and one high school Percocet dealer. After Mulan's True To Your Heart, their videos were a little more grown-up, with Vegas showgirls and lots of cleavage. They traded boyish baggy pants and bright red sweatshirts for ribbed sweaters and khakis. In their first hit video, Because of You, they walk around looking like a goddamn Calvin Klein cologne ad.

Jeff's loafers have a heel, by the way.

What I'm trying to say is, 98 Degrees wasn't catering to teenage girls - they were catering to women. Teenagers weren't interested in songs about marital infidelity or weddings, but women aged 28-45 definitely were. And those women apparently ate random references to Dr Zhivago up ("like Dr Zhivago, all my love I'll be sending/ And you will never know, 'cause there can be no happy ending"). They weren't a 'pop boy band' so much as an 'adult contemporary group of young men'. This also explains why they eschewed choreographed dance moves, opting instead to use their hands a lot and perfect the White Boy Head Nod*.

Their music videos are still puzzling to me, though. I understand that music videos aren't supposed to be an exact record of the song's lyrics - not every video can be Down Under - but 98 Degrees always had video plots that were slightly askew. Take their 1999 masterpiece The Hardest Thing:

The song lyrics' plot: A man is breaking off his extra-marital affair, even though he loves this woman, because his wife doesn't deserve to be treated this way

The music video plot: A boxer is dating a Vegas showgirl, and they get in a fight, I guess

It's just sort of weird. The same goes for a song I remember as being a much bigger hit than it apparently was, I Do (Cherish You). The song is basically just a man singing his wedding vows, which is very sweet; but the video is about four men proposing separately to the same woman, who ends up marrying Screech from Saved By The Bell. That is very, very strange.

Unlike most of the other boy bands on our list, 98 Degrees decided to go out on top rather than fade away. They released a compilation album in 2002 that sold over 2 million copies, and went on a temporary hiatus that continues to this day.

Final Tally:

Sex appeal/charisma: I'm giving them a 7, just because of their brawn. Also, Nick Lachey's lips and Jeff Timmons's face.
Cheesiness: 6/10 - they were very grown up.
Dance moves: Even though they didn't really have any, I want to deduct points for Jeff Timmons. He's the worst hand-dancer ever. Also, I hate the White Boy Head Nod. So, -1.
Music: 7 - I feel no shame in listening to them to this day.
Post-band success: I'm so glad I forced you to ask. Nick Lachey will probably always be best known for marrying Jessica Simpson, a mistake which was documented by their insufferable reality show The Newlyweds. His solo career has been moderately successful as well. Drew Lachey...is his brother. Justin Jeffre is apparently a Green Party would-be politician. And Jeff Timmons has made the best career move of all.

*The White Boy Head Nod: nod your head back and forth to the beat. If you're feeling extra soulful, simultaneously pat your chest.

The value of ignorance

2011-04-06T16:39:00.000-04:00

When it comes to movies, I typically prefer over-informing myself. If a movie piques my interest, I consume a lot of tidbits to prepare myself - trailers; clips; reviews; and, if it's a horror movie, spoilers. I'm not sure why this is, though it's a trend that extends to many other aspects of my life; I suppose I just enjoy going into a movie knowing what to expect. Combine that trait with the fact that I've seen a lot of movies, and the result is that I am very rarely surprised by a film.

My situation does make movie surprises that much sweeter. Last night, for instant, I picked a movie out of my Netflix Instant queue that I knew very little about, Les Diaboliques, by Henri-James Clouzot. The Netflix synopsis - The ailing spouse and manhandled mistress of a sadistic boarding school headmasterplan and execute the man's murder -- but their plan goes haywire when the corpse vanishes - led me to expect a sort of dark comedy of errors, à la Dial M for Murder. Fortunately for me, the synopsis left a goatload of the actual plot out, so I had the pleasure of experiencing real tension, discomfort, curiosity, and fear as the movie progressed. It also helped that I was alone in my house, which makes weird possibly-ghost-but-probably-squirrel-related noises.

It felt something like this.

The movie's last 3 minutes contain a lovely series of twists that would have yielded little pleasure if I'd already read about them. So many "classic" horror movies have become part of our vernacular, so that even people who haven't seen them know that Norman Bates is his mother, or Carrie gets a bucket of blood dumped on her head, or the call is coming from inside the house. It was truly lovely to be introduced to something "new" like this.

Obviously I'm not usually one to argue in favour of ignorance. One great movie doesn't change the fact that I like knowing things ahead of time, and it's terribly easy to do so. But it can be very refreshing to learn things at the director's intended pace, and to be utterly surprised.

Not everyone agrees...

Boy Band Battle Royale: LFO

2011-03-30T11:29:00.003-04:00

The second entry in our Boy Band Battle Royale is the adorable LFO. I'll admit, I've struggled with this entry, if only because I have a huge soft spot for this group. There's no trace of guilt or shame here, either; their singles were always a lot of fun, and I don't mind admitting that I genuinely like listening to them. Still, for the sake of pop culture science, I will try to analyze them like they're just another group in the list.

D'aww, look how cute!

Boy Band: Lyte Funky Ones, dba LFO
Members: Rich Cronin, Brad Fischetti, and Devin Lima
Reign of Terror: Allegedly they started in 1995, but it really counted from 1999-2002

Cast your minds back to 1999. Back when Gwyneth Paltrow was America's favourite blonde actress, and Reese Witherspoon was still actually acting. Back when we were just hearing about the Napster. Back before LOL and OMG had entered the vernacular, let alone the OED. It was a more innocent time, is my point, and our pop music was carefree and laid-back. It was the perfect time for LFO to make their debut: our guard was down and our standards were low. Enter: "Summer Girls."

This song peaked at number 3 on the U.S. Billboard, people. Reportedly, not even LFO thought this would be as big a hit as it was. Their nonchalance and lack of self-seriousness is apparent from the get-go, since the song is just a string of one vaguely rhyming non sequitur after another, loosely tied together with the theme of "summer love, I guess." Based on some of the lines, I assume the song was written about the late 80s:

The great Larry Bird, jersey 33
Michael J. Fox was Alex P. Keaton
Love New Edition and the Candy Girl
Let you off the hook like my man Mr Limpet [seriously?? - M]
There was a good man named Paul Revere
I like Kevin Bacon, but I hate Footloose [which, unforgivable - M]

Clearly, teenage girls in 1999 didn't need coherent lyrics to love a song. We would even put up with someone who now looks like an extra on the Jersey Shore and turn him into a semi-legitimate pop star.

0% acceptable.

LFO was a 1999 perfect storm - goofy sense of humour, reinforcement of Abercrombie and Fitch as cool apparel, and a non-threateningly catchy melody.

They followed up their sleeper hit "Summer Girls" with the slightly less successful song "Girl on TV," an ode to Rich Cronin's then-girlfriend Jennifer Love Hewitt*. Even though this was a more coherent song, with a solid plot - boy meets famous girl, boy falls in love with famous girl, friends do not believe boy's fanciful claims - there are still some little nuggets of randomness tucked in. For instance - "Shooby doo-wop and Scooby snacks/met a fly girl and I can't relax;" "She's from the City of Angels/like Bette Davis, James Dean, and Gable." The song also includes that most odious of boy band tropes - the completely unnecessary white boy "rap." I have no idea why so many boy bands tried this. With Backstreet Boys, it was AJ. With NSYNC, it was Justin and his determined beatboxing. Rich Cronin was even whiter than those two, and it definitely shows. Especially since he's not "rapping" so much as "talking kind of to a beat."

Alas, by 2000 the American teenage girl was demanding more from her music than just "cute" and "fun." She wasn't demanding anything better, mind you, just more - more coherent, more sexual, and with way more bass. LFO continued to coast for two more years before calling it quits. They flirted with the notion of a comeback in 2009, but must have realized that by then, the moment in the sun for all boy bands had passed.

Final Tally:

Sex appeal/charisma: Neutral - Brad Fischetti cancels everybody out
Cheesiness: 8/10
Dance moves: None!
Music: 5. Yes, 5!
Post-band success: Unfortunately, Rich Cronin is the most famous of the three, and that's because he passed away in 2010. The other two have faded completely from our collective memory.

* Remember when Jennifer Love Hewitt was fucking EVERYWHERE? And dating everyone? Not just starring in Lifetime and Hallmark Original Movies? God, the 90s.

New domain!

2011-03-23T10:36:00.000-04:00

Quick update:

As of this morning, you can now find Feed it to My Goldfish at feedittomygoldfish.com! The old URL, feedittomygoldfish.blogspot.com, will still work, as will all the old links. Please let me know if there are any problems with the RSS feed, so I can try to fix.

Anyway. Woot!

Boy Band Battle Royale: O-Town

2011-03-21T22:07:00.004-04:00

For the first installment of Boy Band Battle Royale, I'd like to get O-Town out of the way. I know that I've set this list up so that I talk about knock-offs and imitators before I get to the real deal - e.g. BSB and *NSYNC - but I think this is the order that makes the most sense. Discussing the boy bands that didn't really stick will hopefully make it easier to understand and explain other bands' successes. Hopefully.

But so much is already inexplicable.

Boy Band: O-Town
Members: (clock-wise from top) Erik-Michael Estrada, Jacob Underwood, Dan Miller, Ashley Parker Angel, Trevor Penick
Reign of Terror: 2000-2003

I hardly know where to start with O-Town. They were one of the first pop culture personalities brewed in MTV's reality show lab, which has gone on to produce monsters like Heidi Montag and those horrible Jersey Shore creatures. Despite lacking anything resembling talent or personalities, in 2001 they garnered two Top Ten Billboard hits - a hopelessly generic ballad called "All or Nothing," and a remarkable piece of work called "Liquid Dreams."

Oh my god, "Liquid Dreams." By itself, the song defies belief; combined with the music video, it is an aural apocalypse.

Just...holy shit. Where do I begin? I mean, the music was clearly performed on two Casio keyboards. The video's budget was $4.27 tops. TOPS. Their dancing is also problematic; one second they're doing an explicit interpretation of male ejaculation, the next they're dropping it like it's hot. And I can't pretend I didn't see the liquid penis at 0:06, or that the existence of said penis was an accident.

I'm not making this up. Liquid. Penis.

Though honestly, I have to give O-Town props for being so explicit. Most other boy bands went for a harmless and neutered approach, making their desires seem sweet, romantic, and completely non-threatening. O-Town was having none of that. They wanted to have sex with hot ladies, and if they couldn't have that, they'd just masturbate to posters of hot ladies and sing about it. Try as I might, I can't even be mad at their honesty.

I can still be mad about their total lack of singing talent, however. Feast your ears on this live performance at Miss America 2000:

The redhead's singing voice is the aural equivalent of getting your ear drums scrubbed with Brillo pads, but he's hardly the only guilty party here. As I understand it, their ear pieces were broken, which is apparently supposed to explain and excuse this musical monstrosity. Still, that doesn't account for every single one of them hitting the wrong notes whenever possible. I'll give them points for their very enthusiastic choreography, especially the redhead - shawty got a duuuunk! But this performance is a declaration of war on good music. Unforgivable.

By 2002, O-Town's profound lack of anything good caught up with them. They released a sweet little ditty called "We Fit Together," a song whose bubbly melody nearly disguised lines like "how many triple-X dreams I've had starring you" but only brought them to #104 on the Billboard charts. The group disbanded in 2003*. Their success, short-lived thought it was, is adequate proof of two things:

1) Teenage girls didn't need to be sweetly romanced in order to buy records.

2) They also didn't need working ears.

Final Tally:

Sex appeal/charisma: 1 - That Ashley Angel character is as pretty as his name
Cheesiness: Solid 10
Dance moves: 5, for sheer enjoyment value
Music: 0.5
Post-band success: Ashley Angel is the only one of the five members with a Wikipedia page, which is pretty damning stuff as far as the other four are concerned. He's put together a solid enough Broadway career, starring in the musical Hairspray; but he also named his son Lyric.

*O-Town did regroup earlier this year, sans their most famous and successful member, Ashley Angel. So far no music has been released, but be on your guard...

Boy Band Battle Royale: Introduction

2011-03-13T18:36:00.003-04:00

I was unfortunate enough not to grow up during the eras of Motown, rock & roll, or disco; instead, I was a pre-teen and teenager during the boy band explosion of the late 90s and early 00s. This is when all of pop culture finally became aware of teenage girls and their buying power, and started marketing almost exclusively to us. Boy bands suddenly became ubiquitous, and while their reign of terror made perfect sense to me as a guileless preteen, the whole thing is baffling to me now. The Boy Band Battle Royale will be my attempt to categorize, organize, and somehow explain how groups of neutered young crooners doing synchronized dance moves briefly conquered the music world.

Boy Band Battle Royale (BBBR) will use the following judging criteria:

Sex appeal/charisma
Cheesiness
Dance moves
Music
Post-band success

With something as objective as this, I think it's important to establish a floor. Every barrel has a bottom, and I'm choosing the bottom of the boy band barrel: Youngstown.

If you're lucky, you have never heard of Youngstown...until now.

Just so we're clear - they're singing the theme song for the live action movie Inspector Gadget, starring Matthew Broderick and Rupert Everett somehow. And that song was their biggest hit. Having grown up on the Disney channel, I was very familiar with Youngstown - they also sang the theme song for The Famous Jett Jackson, and contributed to a Disney Channel Original Movie (TM) soundtrack. So, yes.

Sex Appeal/charisma: Negotiable, but really 0
Cheesiness: 11
Dance moves: Barely register
Music: -3 (for ruining the Inspector Gadget song)
Post-band success: That's not even a thing

Bonus: here is a link to the non-Disney version of "I'll Be Your Everything," which is a lot less playful and a lot more date rape-y.

For the next several weeks, I'll throw up a post about different boy bands and how they relate to each other, until I get to the two titans: Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC. So, stay tuned!
Part 1: O-Town

Part 2: LFO
Part 3: 98 Degrees