a few of my favorite things

MIA - Bad Girls

Let’s talk for a minute about MIA’s music video for Bad Girls.

These photos are all stills from the music video and belong to… whoever owns this stuff. Anyways, I watched this music video because my husband, John, had asked me several times if I’d seen it. I was like, first of all, why has HE seen it? And second of all, what in this video made him think of me?

At first things were pretty normal. I was sure I’d seen this in a Beyonce video already.

It’s a desert, there’s a random car in the background. Good to go. Then I was like, okay, why not just wear a discarded Lady Gaga outfit while you’re at it MIA?

Check. We’re good to go.

However it got pretty obvious to me that John didn’t want me to watch this video to see how many pop stars MIA was trying to look like. It was because we both love the Fast & Furious movies. I even enjoyed Tokyo Drift… I won’t speak for John on that one because he thinks drifting is dumb. Which I’m sure he could write a dissertation on that because he has very strong feelings and even some reasoning as to why it’s dumb. 

So when a car hauls ass on two wheels with a woman doing the Titanic on it, I was pretty much sold. What cracked me up was what followed:

Two dudes all nonchalant behind the first person. It’s like if Kate and Leo were doing their King of the World thing and there were some really crabby shuffleboard players behind them who hadn’t had their prune juice yet for the day.

Of course you can’t just have nobodies doing this fancy stunt. You have to put the leading lady on the side of the car and make her look like a badass. A badass who is cleaning her nails with a pocket knife. Which is somehow hitting home the “bad girls” theme. Can you tell how bad she is? I’m sure she can only get badder assed from here.

Nope, she’s already bored and texting.

She won’t stay bored for long though, as long as someone can get her on top of a car so she can air hump while these dudes look as unimpressed as possible.

Did I mention there was a horse? Because there was totally a horse involved. 

I cannot tell you how much this specific scene made me think about Adaptation where Donald is talking about his screenplay, I think it’s called The Three and he’s like:

Donald Kaufman: I’m putting in a chase sequence. So the killer flees on horseback with the girl, the cop’s after them on a motorcycle and it’s like a battle between motors and horses, like technology vs. horse.

Don’t think about it too long because now we’re in some weird car that I like to think is like if the car from Repo Man and Cousin It’s car had a baby that this is what we would get. So:

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Boy George?!!! 

Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.

(I haven’t read anyone else’s opinion on this music video so if I’m saying everything everyone else has already said just let me live in blissful ignorance please.)

My Hunger Games review

Last night I went to the midnight release of The Hunger Games movie and I had a really good time. The movie was pretty true to the book as far as I remember but it has been a while since I read the first book. I was planning on rereading it before the movie but have been terrible about books lately. (I think twitter has fried my brain. Or maybe my brain fried my brain. Saboteur.)

I went in a little wary because I didn’t like a lot of the casting decisions. I was still a little weirded out by Lenny Kravitz. He seemed to rock a more, oh baby I’m in love with you vibe, so he took the character in a different direction than I expected. Another actor that I thought took their character to a different place than I would have expected was Donald Sutherland as President Snow. He was so understated that I didn’t feel a super pressing evilness from him, if that makes any sense. He’ll probably shine through in the next movies— the focus of this one was much more on Jennifer Lawrence.

Jennifer Lawrence did pretty good… Anything I’ll say here will sound like I hate her and I don’t. I just think she’s overhyped. I don’t think she’s a good leading actress. She didn’t do anything for me in Winter’s Bone and I found myself being overly critical of her in this role. I just thought she was a pretty curvaceous hot chick for being from a starving and poor community. I didn’t feel like District 12 was as screwed when her and Gale looked so healthy. It was like, oh yeah, we struggle so hard because we’re showing you edgy shaky cam shots of people looking off camera all sad faced.

That’s my biggest complaint of the whole movie: the shaky hand cam.

At first, I was confused because it wasn’t all Blair Witch - Cloverfield but it was when she was walking around her District and they were trying to make it seem more edgy and real. At least, that’s the impression I got, the shakiness made it seem more like a documentary.

Then later in the movie, when there was a crazy blood bath, the shaky hand cam came into play again. I thought it was kind of a clever way to get a PG-13 rating instead of an R. Although there were some scenes that I thought were pretty messed up and was surprised they got a lower rating. (Good thing they had a budget to buy the MPAA ratings board.) Maybe I’m old fashioned. At the same time, I did see Battle Royale pretty young and we read Lord of the Flies when we were like 13, so it’s not like I’m wailing “won’t someone PLEASE think of the CHILDREN!” I was just a little puzzled at some scenes that I won’t spoil for you. (Whoever is reading this.)

I was surprised that I didn’t cry. I’d heard some buzz over a particularly emotional scene from the book- I had to stop reading because I was crying pretty hard at one part. However, in the movie it didn’t pack as big of a punch for me. I did get choked up- don’t get me wrong. There were people crying in my theater. However, I didn’t feel as much of an attachment to the characters while watching the movie as I did in the book. I agree with one of my friends, Kristie, that because they spent so much time getting to the Games, the actual Games part felt rushed, so we didn’t get as attached to some of the characters as we could have. This is one of those things where I might feel differently if I watched this movie again- not at mignight and fully invested myself in it. (If you’ve read the books, you probably figured out, I’m talking about the scene with Rue and Katniss.)

Another scene that made me weirdly emotional and I can’t quite explain it were the flashbacks to Katniss and Peeta before the Games. I didn’t really care about Peeta in the Games in the movie as much as I did in the book. However the flashbacks to him and her in the rain with the bread really resonated with me. 

Overall, of course I think everyone should see. I’m really glad that I saw it, even if I do pick it apart. That’s kind of what I do with everything. 

The shaky camera was irritating but I felt like I understood why- even if those are just reasons I made up and aren’t the real reasons for it at all. I was more bummed that I didn’t connect with the characters as much but not everyone felt that way. I think Jennifer Lawrence is going to shoot to the top if she doesn’t have some sort of crazy drug addiction. I just think she’s better in a supporting role than as a lead. (I liked her as Mystique! Even though I didn’t really like Mystique.) 

One thing that would have made it better- MORE STANLEY TUCCI. I thought he rocked Caesar Flickman. He honestly stole the show. 

Definitely see it! I’d give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.