The Great Hack

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We love the internet so much, we sold our souls to keep it growing. There is literally no such thing as privacy online, but we like Facebook and Youtube and Instagram so much, we just kind of shrug our shoulders as we tick those ‘I’ve read the terms & conditions’ boxes without so much as scrolling through. But even if we read all that fine print, and knew exactly how invasively these companies were mining your personal information, we’d still grant that permission because we’re so dependent on social media platforms and apps that walking away at this point feels hardly plausible.

The Great Hack is a documentary that looks specifically at Cambridge Analytica, which is a company that makes its money by gathering and weaponizing your Facebook likes. Data is the most valuable asset on Earth – more valuable than oil. YOU are the commodity and Big Data is doing everything it can to know you, intimately, without you even realizing.

Cambridge Analytica has 5000 data points on every American voter. Think about that. Could you even say 5000 different things about yourself? This company can. It has scanned your private messages, your profiles, your preferences. They know what you watch, what you turn off halfway through, what you share, what you save, what you click on, what you scroll by. We all know that this data has been used for several years to make ads tailored to us. If I’ve been looking into dehumidifiers, suddenly my feed is suspiciously full of ads for dehumidifiers. But Big Data is doing something much more sinister than that. It is using your information to subvert democracy. During Trump’s run for president, his campaign spent one million dollars per day PER DAY on Facebook ads. They knew what you needed to hear in order to consider Trump. They also knew how to turn you against Hilary. They targeted you. They made videos just for you. They made sure you only saw what they wanted you to see. Cambridge Analytica is a full-service propaganda machine, and you don’t get a choice in the matter because they find you wherever you are – in your emails, your online shopping, your dating profile, your mother’s Facebook account.

Facebook Facebook Facebook. You’ve heard that a lot already, and for good reason. Much of this deviousness is happening on Facebook. All these personality quizzes? Data mining. Questionnaires? Data mining. I left Facebook a while ago because I knew I just couldn’t trust it. I try to be smart about my online consumption, but the truth is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If a friend of yours does all those personality tests, you’re fucked. Because they give the app permission not just to look into their own profiles, but those of all their friends. And often we know who these people are. I’ll give you a hint: it’s my mother. Just 3 days ago, she shared yet another, one in which she shared answers to questions like # of marriage, of divorces, of children, of pets, of vacations, etc etc etc. Thanks Mom! Facebook OWNS our data, our pictures, every single bit of info we’ve ever shared on there. They own the quizzes you take and the videos you watch. They own my mother’s travel iternaries, and the pictures she posts of her grandkids. They know where she works, where she went to school, who her classmates were, who her neighbours are, where she eats dinner on a Friday night. Because she tells them. She volunteers the information and Facebook allows companies like Cambridge Analytica, which refers to ITSELF as a behaviour change agency, to come in and scrape every last little valuable detail from people’s profiles. And they’re using that information for GLOBAL POLITICAL MANIPULATION. Facebook is DESIGNED to get you to give up your info, it CREATED tools to help companies target you, it made BILLIONS of dollars selling your data to the highest bidder – nay – to every bidder – without your true, informed consent.

Your data is being used against you. It’s being used to shape world politics. It’s being used to stoke fear. And it’s happening in the same place where you share recipes and baby news and dog pictures.

Cambridge Analytica was partly owned by the family of Robert Mercer, an American hedge fund manager who supports conservative causes. STEVE BANNON was their VP. They did work for Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Brexit. Through paid advertising on Facebook, it received clicks from 270 000 users. But those 270 000 Facebook users gave the app permission to also mine the data of everyone in their Friends network. From those 270K users, Cambridge Analytica then had access to 87 MILLION people. Are you confident you aren’t one of them? Or do you maybe have a mom like mine, or an aunt who overshares, or a friend who always tags you? Chances are, someone you know loves to do quizzes: What % Billie Eilish are you? Can we guess your age based on your Disney movie preferences? Are you more Miley Cyrus or Hannah Montana?

Anyway. The Great Hack is streaming on Netflix right now, which also knows an unsettling amount about you, if we’re being honest. So it’s important that we start thinking about ways to protect ourselves, personally, collectively, nationally, globally. By the time my mom’s grandkids are adults, they’ll have 70 THOUSAND data points about themselves, and if things continue as they are, absolutely NO rights to them. We can try to stop our data leaks, limit the info we share, but as citizens of the 21st century, there is no way to live completely outside the matrix. So our information continues to be sold, and we continue to be manipulated. What are we going to do about it?

The Art of Self-Defense

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Casey (Jesse Eisenberg) is a meek man. He gets bullied at work by the very clique he wishes most to belong to. He photocopies their favourite tittie magazine in black and white xerox to study it, and by doing so, completely misses the point.

One night, coming home with dog food, he is attacked by a motorcycle gang and beaten within an inch of his life. He survives and decides to make some changes. He signs up for karate lessons at a dojo where we encounter toxic masculinity at its most pungent. He learns punches and kicks, but more importantly, how to be a MAN, a manly MAN: to listen to metal, to learn German rather than French, to replace his beloved wiener dog with a more aggressive variety. He’s also encouraged to beat people as severely as he was beaten. These changes do in fact make him more confident. And also a dick.

Nothing in this film is played for laughs. In fact, it’s delivered largely in deadpan monotone, a stylistic choice applied fairly evenly throughout the cast. It takes a minute to get used to this, or get over it maybe, but it’s also an important clue that we’re investing in satire and critique, and if the film seems a little outrageous, a little over the top, well, that’s the point.

Casey is quickly swept up by the dojo’s charismatic instructor, Sensei (Alessandro Nivola), and hardcore brown belt but second class citizen Anna (Imogen Poots). If it sounds like a cult, good. It is not not a cult. But it’s also kind of karate, a homoerotic, needlessly violent, testament to testosterone. But when Casey gets promoted to Sensei’s mysterious night classes, it’s a whole new world of brotherhood, brutality and a special brand of hyper-masculinity that requires constant proving.

The humour is dry and dark as hell; in this script, a well-chosen word can wound as much as hand or foot. Or gun, though guns are for the weak. Eisenberg is well-suited for the role; he channels nascent neuroses as well as the yearning to be more. Writer-director Riley Stearns is perhaps a little inconsistent, but is brave in his stinging skewering of American masculinity, economic with words but generous with derision. It’s a little hard to take at times, but patience will be rewarded.

Astronaut

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Becoming an astronaut was always a dream of mine.  As early as I can remember, I was fascinated by the idea that there were other planets and stars surrounding us, and the idea that I could float around in outer space and jump so much higher and further on the moon than on Earth.  At the time I lived in Kentucky and learned at school that I could write to NASA and they would send back random photos of space shuttles, planets, satellites, and so much more.  So write I did.  I wrote almost as many letters then as Jay does now (she is singlehandedly keeping Canada Post’s lettercarriers employed), and ended up with stacks of photos that I treasured throughout my childhood.

AstronautObviously, I am not the only one who dreamed of becoming an astronaut.  Space travel is clearly on a lot of people’s bucket lists, as shown by the proposed reality show cataloguing a one-way mission to Mars (which went belly-up earlier this year), the numerous space flights available for purchase (Virgin Galactic has collected $80 million in deposits for 90 minute voyages costing $250,000 each), and NSYNC’s Lance Bass attempting to buy his way onto a Russian rocket (he couldn’t afford it after Justin Timberlake left the band), among other examples.

In Astronaut, Angus (Richard Dreyfuss) definitely has space travel on his bucket list.  He’s always looking to the stars and, as a retired civil engineer, possesses the type of scientific knowledge that might grant a seat on a NASA mission.  Unfortunately, he never secured a NASA spot during his career and his dreams of space travel seem more and more distant as his health begins to fail.   But the stars align when a billionaire (Colm Feore) announces a contest that will give the winner a seat on the first commercial flight to space, which otherwise would be too expensive for Angus (and the rest of the 99%) to afford.  You can probably guess who becomes one of the twelve finalists in that lottery, but even with that stroke of luck things don’t come easy to Angus, not only because of the health issues I mentioned, but also because he’s trying to settle his wife’s estate and he’s struggling with an impending move to a retirement home.

Astronaut asks us to suspend our disbelief on more than one occasion, and in exchange rewards us with a sweet and engaging fairy tale.  The pieces fit together so neatly and conveniently that there is never any real tension or possibility of failure, but the movie works even with relatively low stakes because of Dreyfuss’ stellar performance.  Angus is a great combination of gruff and personable, and Astronaut is elevated by Dreyfuss’ wonderful chemistry with Angus’ family and friends, particularly his daughter (Krista Bridges), his son-in-law (Lyriq Bent), and his grandson (Richie Lawrence).

Writer-director Shelagh McLeod wisely focuses on Angus’ personal relationships rather than the space flight itself and Astronaut is better for it, because the fantastical (and potentially unbelievable) elements of the film are just minor details.  What matters is watching Angus reach for the stars, and I happily cheered him on from start to finish.

How Do They Cry On Command?

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I am one of four sisters, with only 5.5 years, 2 bedrooms, and 1 bathroom between us. Safe to say that we were forcibly very close growing up, andnot just in proximity. We hardly needed friends since we had each other. Of course, we did have friends, and shared friends, and thanks to our mother’s generosity, our house was often overflowing with kids. But when it was just us, it was more than enough. Our dinner table was absolutely raucous with stories and opinions and debate. Bedtime was filled with whispers and toys and smuggled books. During Dr. Quinn we’d be crowded on one sofa, eating out of the same bowl of popcorn. But this ain’t no Louisa May Alcott shit; when we fought, and we did fight, we FOUGHT. Sometimes physically, though we were far more vicious verbally. And then it was a race to get to mom first. Telling on each other is a time-honoured tradition in families with multiple siblings. But one sister had a distinct advantage: she could cry on command. And my mother, smart though she was, was always duped by the tears.

I cry all the time. I’m a super emotional person. I can’t help it – and believe me, if I could, I certainly would. I cry involuntarily all the time. Just the other day we were watching a triggering show, and I could feel Sean’s eyes on me. I snapped at him (sorry babe). I hate this weakness in myself, and resent its predictability, and the fact that I routinely make public displays of myself. As much as I wish I could turn off the waterworks, I still to this day marvel at people who can turn it on. I’ve never had the choice in either direction. Actors, of course, are often called on to do so.

Memory-driven tears are when an actor calls on their own personal sad past memories in order to conjure up tears during a demanding scene. It would be distracting to do this on the spot, so they connect those memories with their lines repeatedly in rehearsal, so they can call on the readily during the all important take. Others may imagine a tragic event that hasn’t actually happened but that would be personally devastating if it did. But what if the usual tricks aren’t working?

Well, you can try the low-tech staring method, in which you close your eyes, give them a rub, and then open them and stare without blinking – 30 seconds without blinking is usually enough to make your eyes water. But if you need major waterworks, you might need something a little more aggressive.

Menthol is an actor’s best friend, and usually found in the makeup artist’s toolkit. A menthol stick looks like chapstick but smells like cough drops; it is swiped under the eyes and acts as an irritant, producing tears. A tear blower works basically the same way: the makeup artist has a glass tube packed with menthol crystals. He or she blows into the tube about 10cm away from the actor’s face, sending a gust of mentholated air toward the eyes, and bingo bango you’ve got tears!! Glycerin occasionally comes in handy too: a drop in the corner of the eye can be blinked down and look convincingly like a real tear.

Sean and I recently saw Dear Evan Hansen, and the dude playing Evan Hansen has to call up tears each and every night, and sometimes twice on Saturdays, if there’s a matinee. I’m certain he wasn’t relying on fake turns because our seats were so good we could tell he wasn’t just crying tears, but snot as well, which is an unfortunate side effect of loads of crying. He cried so much Sean as concerned he might be creating a slip-n-fall hazard for the other actors on stage. Everyone survived, but I did walk away feeling a little sorry for the guy, whose job entails tapping into some major trauma night after night.

Can you cry on demand? Would you want to? Would you use your power for good or evil?

Tig

8 Replies

Tig Notaro is one of my favourite comedians. Although always an amazing, deadpan comedian, she hit the popularity rocket when she did a ground-breaking set the day after she was diagnosed with cancer. She just stood on the stage and bravely free-associated her new reality, and people were floored. Floored.

I mean, if you know her story at all, cancer was just the cherry on top. Weeks before, she’d been in the hospital in crazy pain with a life-threatening diagnosis of C-Diff. She got out of the hospital just in time to make her mother’s funeral, who’d died suddenly after a freak accident, falling in her own living room and hitting her head, a seemingly benign incident that killed her 24 hours later. Then Tig went through a break up, though moments before they’d been considering starting a family. And then: breast cancer. So it was a tumultuous few weeks, and you can only imagine her frame of mind when she wandered on stage that famous night. Although, technically you don’t have to: Louis C.K. was in the audience that night, and helped her put out an album of that set, which for obvious reasons could never be recreated.

So in the wake of her having a double mastectomy, she was suddenly very famous and a very sought-after comedian, one who now had no material since she could never re-perform the cancer bit. Crazy. Tig (the documentary) is a clever reflection upon that crazy time in her life, with the help of similarly funny, famous friends like Bill Burr and Sarah Silverman.

I love stand-up comedy. Like, LOVE love. I love how accessible comedy has become thanks in part to Netflix, but also satellite radio and Spotify – I listen to lots of podcasts in my car these days. Tig is among my favourites, and Sean and I meant to see her at Just For Laughs last year, only she cancelled her set at the last minute, but we saw other favourites of mine, like Maria Bamford, Fortune Feimster, and Carmen Esposito. This year we’re seeing Marc Maron and Fred Armisen. But as much fun as it is to see a live set, it’s such an exciting time to be able to supplement those with bonuses, of which I’d say that this documentary is most definitely one. It’s an incredible story either way, but she’s also a comedian that you just need to get into. She has a very watchable, very bingeable show as well, called One Mississippi. Maria Bamford had one called Lady Dynamite. Jim Gaffigan had one less inventively titled The Jim Gaffigan Show (do you suppose men just reflexively have to slap their names all over things?). Anyway, it tickles me to no end when comedians pop up in things, and I will continue to seek them out, because to my mind, comedy is the absolute hardest thing to get right. Comedies are largely underappreciated and downright ignored by critics and award-givers, but that’s absurd. When humour works, it unites us all in such a base, instinctual way. It’s glorious. But as you know, a lot of humour comes from pain. It takes a special talent to extract the funniness from a horrible situation.

And maybe that’s what makes Tig so special. That she was willing to use her own personal hell, her own heartbreak, not only to entertain us, but to make us whole. Comedy is healing. Laughing is medicinal. Give yourself a Tig injection; it keeps the doctor away.

The Lion King (2019)

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I’m still unconvinced by all these Disney remakes, and I’m particularly skeptical about “live action” remakes that aren’t actually live action at all, but just fancier animation. That said, I didn’t hate The Lion King (2019), and that’s head and shoulders (or can I say mane and tails) ahead of where I thought we’d be. I was fully prepared to hate this but instead the CGI animation’s beauty and realism swept me away. But while that sounds like a strength, it’s also the movie’s weakness.

The thing about traditional animation, like the original The Lion King (1994), is that literally ANYTHING can happen in a cartoon. They’re not constrained by any limitations. Your heart can awooooooga out of your chest when you’re in love, your feet can pedal a car, you can literally levitate off the ground in sheer happiness. And yes, a cross section of jungle animals can come together in perfect harmony.

The problem with this gorgeous, accurate, and photo-real animation is that these lions, who look exactly like the ones you see on National Geographic (minus the buttholes and genitals, Sean wants you to know), are still being made to talk. And sing. But not dance. That would be crazy. So director Jon Favreau and company are asking you to embrace the realism of Scar, who has none of his cartoony presence, but suspend your disbelief enough to invests in his sibling rivalry and Hamlet-style ambition, but then not be too disappointed when they drastically cut his big musical number.

Recently, while reviewing the earlier Toy Story movies, I noted, with some wonder, that Woody has 229 animation points of movement in his face. But while The Lion King’s animation WILL astonish you down to the dew drops in a spider’s web, the animals’ faces remain nearly blank. Their mouths move minimally, to indicate that they are speaking, but there’s not a lot of expression going on there, and I can’t help but feel that this gets in the way of my investing in them emotionally. The original Simba cried when his father died. He was a mere cartoon character, but I felt for him. When I re-screened the movie recently, that scene nearly broke me, reminding me of my nephew and his relationship with his dad. The new movie just couldn’t move me in the same ways.

And it’s not just the emotion that’s lacking, it’s the joy. I Just Can’t Wait To Be King is one of my all-time favourite Disney songs, but it’s not quite the same because in “real life,” ostriches don’t allow lions to ride them. So I’ve heard. And it’s hard to get zebras and giraffes and hippos to agree on choreography. So the song still sounds great, but there’s a little less pizzazz to the musical number.

Speaking of songs: you may have heard Beyonce is on board, voicing the grown-up Nala, and contributing an Oscar-eligible brand new song to the film’s soundtrack. I sort of thought I might miss some the iconic voice work from the original film: Matthew Broderick, Nathan Lane, Jeremy Irons. But in fact, the 2019 film does an excellent job of filling those roles. It’s different, but it works. Donald Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor, John Oliver, Alfre Woodard, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner: it’s a tall list, packed with talent, and everyone’s working at peak capacity. But I will say: it’s actually really great to have James Earl Jones return in his role as Mufasa. First, it seems impossible to replace him, and harder still to find someone with balls enough to try those step into those paws. But mostly it feels like he is passing the baton; he’s a link from the old to the new (it’s been 25 years!) and it is comforting as heck to hear that voice again.

Most of The Lion King 2019 edition is a toned-down recreation of the original, but there are a few new scenes, expanded roles for Timon & Pumbaa, and especially for some of the female members of the pride, drawing inspiration from the Broadway musical where Nala and Sarabi are featured more prominently. I mean, if you get Beyonce, you use her, ya know?

I suppose if you’ve never known another Lion King, this one has a lot to recommend it. For fans of the original, this one won’t really compare. But if you’ve got room in your heart for two Lion Kings, you might just feel the love (tonight).

Point Blank

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Brothers Abe and Mateo are criminals accused of some very serious cop-killery stuff. Abe (Frank Grillo) is in the hospital, unconscious with gunshot wounds and under police surveillance. Mateo (Christian Cooke) is determined to bust him out, so he’s hiding in the shadows of the hospital room when unsuspecting nurse Paul (Anthony Mackie) arrives to care for the patient. Mateo steals Paul’s security pass and flees, but Paul’s subsequent police report, to Lieutenant Lewis (Marcia Gay Harden) sets off a series of unfortunate events.

Mateo kidnaps Paul’s pregnant wife Taryn (Teyonah Parris) and holds her hostage to secure Paul’s help. Paul is going to a) revive Abe, b) bust him out of the hospital, c) help him escape/ evade police/ find a flash drive the brothers believe is filled with enough evidence to take down the dirty cops they claim have set them up.

Paul is just a regular good guy who of course wants less than nothing to do with this but his wife and their unborn child are on the line, which turns out to be sufficiently motivating to turn him into a mini Rambo. It’s an incredibly difficult situation to be in though, since it’s hard to distinguish between good guys and bad guys when they’re all holding guns.

This brand new action flick recently released on Netflix is directed by Joe Lynch, who some of you will remember from Mayhem, though Point Blank is obviously a very different animal. It’s also not the shitty remake of Point BREAK, just in case any of you are as lazy readers as Sean is, although apparently it IS a shitty remake of a 2010 french film, À bout portant. I mean, there are shittier movies, and Netflix is home to most of them, if that’s your thing. This one is definitely watchable, so if all you crave is a mindless action sequence and don’t mind some questionable momentum and a flimsy stab at buddy comedy in the middle of cops and robbers, she’s all yours – unless you might be offended by Falcon’s blatant betrayal of Captain America, what with all the hooking up with his nemesis, Brock Rumlow.

A Knight’s Tale

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We were perusing the New Rentals section and not feeling very inspired. True, we’ve already seen all of the good ones and most of the bad ones, leaving mostly the stuff no one’s ever heard of. But we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to select any of it: not the chilly Liam Neeson flick, and not the Stallone one, and definitely not the one based on the impossible true story. It’s probably a bad sign for movies that we preferred to jump back to Amazon Prime and watch a known entity.

William (Heath Ledger) is a young squire, dutifully serving his master as he makes the rounds of jousting tournaments. But when the master dies suddenly, in between rounds, William convinces his cohorts Wat (Alan Tudyk) and Roland (Mark Addy) to suit him up in armour that makes one man nearly indistinguishable from another and send him out on the horse to finish the job. He does. He wins the game and earns the trio a little gold, which is necessary as they haven’t eaten in days. Bellies fed they can go their separate ways, but William’s always hid a little ambition in his heart, and now he sees the opportunity to improve his peasant’s lot in life and pose as a knight, making money by winning more tournaments. On the road to the next one, they bump into a florid writer, Chaucer (Paul Bettany), and he helps sell their case by forging genealogy papers and basically being his hype man. But then Williams meets two of the most inconvenient people: Count Adhemar (Rufus Sewell), who will stop at nothing to see him lose, and Lady Jocelyn (Shannyn Sossamon), with whom he immediately falls in love, but she’s so far out of his league that his lies can only increase in order to keep her.

You may remember that director Brian Helgeland married this period piece with (sort of) modern rock, making the stadium jousting tournaments feel much more like hockey and basketball games of the modern era, except with cat meat and hot wine instead of hot dogs and cold beer, which is hardly an improvement. Purposefully anachronistic, it rattled some people’s cages back in 2001, but successfully interested younger audiences in historical films. A Knight’s Tale is a work of fiction, but based very loosely on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and including several of the known nobility of the time. Once you get past that, it’s a rather predicable entry into the sports movies genre. But it’s got Heath Ledger on horseback, which goes a long way. It’s still not a great movie, but it’s fun and it’s rousing and it’s only a little sad to see Heath Ledger in his prime. He was still relatively unknown before he landed this lead role; although 10 Things I Hate About You came out in 1999, Helgeland hadn’t seen him, and cast Ledger based on rushes he saw of him while filming The Patriot. The movie filmed in Prague (which is why a lot of the extras do not seem to readily respond to Chaucer’s prompts), on a soundstage next to the one where From Hell was filming; it’s how Heath and Heather Graham first hooked up. Ledger proved to be an excellent gamble, as did leading lady Shannyn Sossamon, who was briefly Hollywood’s IT girl. She was a complete unknown, having been discovered by Helgeland when she accompanied her friend, a DJ, on a job which turned out to be Gwyneth Paltrow’s birthday party. Her hair and costumes are wildly period-inaccurate, but they give her character a punk aesthetic that’s backed up by a feminist bent.

A Knight’s Tale is slightly edgy, slightly pandering, and perhaps just slight in general, but it’s interesting to watch, and was fun to revisit after so much time has passed.

Everything’s Gone Green

13 Replies

When Ryan wakes up, his girlfriend is moving him out. He’s just not motivated enough. He gets suspended from work because of the morbid poetry he writes. But the day can only go uphill from here right? Well you are right! His mother calls with news: they’ve won the lottery! $4.3 million! Tiny catch though: dad can’t find the ticket. The lottery people are pretty understanding, and in the meantime, they offer Ryan a job. 

The script is by Douglas Coupland, so you know that’s not all there is to it. I have a perpetual love-hate relationship with Douglas Coupland (author of Generation X, Shampoo Planet, Hey Nostradamus! and more), and I do mean that literally. Well, semi-literally, because I assure you this is a very one-sided relationship in which I have thoughts about Mr. Coupland and I do not exist for him. But the gist is: I’ve found no middle ground between love and hate. But he’s an ideas guy, and this is an ideas movie. Like: capital-c Capitalism. Ryan tangles with middle class contentment. Swindles and scams are all around – even his parents aren’t settling for the status quo. So he’s corruptible. Ripe for corruption. God I wish someone would offer to corrupt me. I’m super for sale. I’d definitely do shady stuff for money. It’s just that I’m not worth anything. Politicians really hog corruptions. We should work on making that a little more equal-opportunity.

There are several things I like about this movie. First, Paulo Costanzo. Talented guy. Second, the Vancouver setting. Vancouver gives Toronto a run for its money in terms of Canadian cities that always stand in for American cities in movies. Vancouver has a booming film business, and Everything’s Gone Green gives us a nice little behind the scenes look at it. For once, Vancouver gets to just be herself. 

The movie wants to marry high-brow themes with an easy, breezy, quirky, indie romance, which works about as well as a palm tree in a conference room. Good intentions but a little out of place. It sometimes feels a little lectury. Although I often sound pretty lectury, so who am I to judge? I mean, I’m also pretty judgy. Not that that qualifies me. Some would call it a defect of character. I call it an endless potential for comedy.

What were we talking about? Oh yeah. Paulo Costanzo. He should get all the roles Jesse Eisenberg’s considered for, because Jesse Eisenberg is a twat and the world could stand to be a great deal less twatty. Everthing’s Gone Green isn’t going to knock your socks into next Wednesday but it might relocate them 16 minutes into the future. It’s dependably pleasant, little-seen, and a pretty decent flick.

The Muppet Movie (2011)

10 Replies

This weekend, I was babysitting my two adored and adorable little nephews, Brady, who is 7, and Jack, who is 5. We went to the trampoline park and the toy store, and then we came home to bake a cake for their dad, who was celebrating a birthday. We mixed and measured and layered on nearly 5 pounds of candy, which they insisted their dad would love, including banana cannons and a candy fence we dubbed the fortress of bananatude (I know, this cake sounds banana heavy).

Anyway, the kids were discussing The Muppet Babies for some reason, which Jack pronounces ‘Muffin Babies’ and is pretty sure he’s saying the same thing we are. I’m thinking about Jack a lot today because he’s being brave and having a little surgery. Mostly I’m thinking about my sister, Jack’s mom – the surgery will likely be harder on her than on him. But anyway. After we discussed which muppets were our favourites (Kermit for Jack, Fozzy for Brady, who does work in an errant “wocka wocka” into random conversations), and how we’d recently seen them at Disney World, we decided that our pre-bedtime movie would be Lego Batman. Haha, just kidding, they watched that in the car (imagine as a kid having a movie screen in your car!) – we watched The Muppet Movie!!

It’s about two brothers, the human Gary (Jason Segel) and the muppet Walter, who is obsessed with THE Muppets, who they’ve compulsively watched on television since they were kids, but who have sadly been absent from show business in recent years. Gary and his human girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams) are celebrating their tenth anniversary and plan to visit L.A. to celebrate, and Walter is thrilled to be invited along with them (by Gary, and a much more reluctant Mary) as it is the home of the Muppet studios. But once there, he discovers that an evil businessman Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) is about to buy both the studio and the Muppet name right from underneath them. So he enlists Kermit to go on a roadtrip to assemble the old gang in an effort to raise the money to save the day.

Jason Segel showed his puppet fetish in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and went full kink with this script, clearly a loving tribute to a beloved franchise. There’s joy being spewed all over the screen in this film, the movie is dripping with it, and it’s fun just to sit back and get soaked in nostalgia. The script introduces a new character, Walter, with whom we re-experience the magic of the Muppets, and it’s great to see them back in action, recreating a lot of acts that we remember so fondly, in a format that we know and love. They work in plenty of celebrity cameos, both human and Muppet, and the whole thing feels like a love letter – not just to the Muppets, but to a new generation of kids just discovering them, two of whom were cuddled next to me in my bed.

At the end of the movie, when asked how they liked it, Jack exclaimed “I didn’t know Kermit had a car!” Because when you’re 5, even the most mundane things can seem momentous. The Muppets are that elusive thing that can bring out the kid in all of us.