essrose: Thanks For Happy #1: JUNO

essrose (

essrose) wrote,
@ 2008-04-22 02:46:00

Thanks For Happy #1: JUNO
(Cross-posted from the site.)

BLAWWWWGGGG! Enough of this crap, time to get down to some bloggin'! Blog it out, folks! BLAWG!

One of the very few and - as far as I can tell - totally unique creative downsides to being a comic book writer/artist is that the ratios are all wrong. On average, it takes about ten times as long to pencil, ink and tone a page as it takes to write it, which means only 10% of my time goes to develop my skills with the ol' "written word." This is frankly unacceptable. I could write some stream-of-consciousness short stories or compose haiku beneath the sakuranbo tree, but instead I'm going to blog. (BLAAAWWWWG!)

Unfortunately, it is a matter of public record that I often have trouble getting blog entries started. I just don't know what to write about most of the time. (It feels oddly like trying to strike up a conversation with a total stranger.)

So I'm just going to go ahead and start listing the things that make me happy.

Thanks For Happy #1: JUNO (the movie)

I just saw this thing a couple days ago. I meant to go out and see it at the theater, but uh... didn't! I did read lots of glowing reviews, though, which really got my hopes up, and then a lot of horrible backlash reviews, which really got my hopes down, so by the time that little red DVD envelope arrived, my hopes were just all out of whack. All I could be sure of was that the movie won two Oscars and the writer has a bikini girl tattoo. A bikini girl in bondage, even.

Now, I have to be honest, the first 10 minutes or so of this movie kinda worried me a little. "Honest to blog?" Really? All the forced quirk and made-up slangtalk in the dialogue just made my blood run... well, not cold. But tepid. Definitely tepid. ("Could that Something Awful spoof be right on the nose?" I tepidly wondered.) And look, I love Rainn Wilson. I love him like candy. But his whole character just seemed like it came staggering in from the darkest recesses of Napoleon Dynamite.

It was tough going, friends. "FUCK YOU, MOVIE!" shouted my couch-buddy over her math homework.

But then... it got better. It got LOTS better. I'm not sure if I just got used to the peculiar rhythms of the dialogue or if that first little chunk was an aberration (I'll have to watch it again), but by the end I really loved this little movie. It really is one of the best bits of 2007.

A tremendous lot of the movie's charm has to do with the way Diablo Cody's script consistently turns left when you expect it to turn right. Very few things play out the way you expect them to, but that's not just some stupid gimmick; it's all completely believable, totally real, and very, very... human. I read a lot of websnark that said Juno was a ridiculous screenwriter's fantasy version of a teenager, way too smart, way too cool, way too mature for someone so young, but I didn't feel that way at all. She seemed totally real to me. I've MET teenage girls like Juno. I've gotten MAIL from teenage girls like Juno. Teenage girls like Juno have left COMMENTS ON MY BLOG POSTS. They definitely exist, Mr. Smartypants Internet Movie Reviewer Guy. In fact, I bet you could find at least two or three Junos in the little clique of artsy honor students behind that group of cheerleaders you've been ogling.

What I found most interesting about the character of Juno, though, was that she most definitely was not "mature beyond her years." Far from it. Just look at the scene where she first meets Mark and Vanessa. She keeps up this running patter of sarcastic little jokes and comments throughout the whole meeting, and yeah, it's meant to be funny (the "t-shirt gun" is maybe the best line in the movie), but there's much more to it than that. Juno is nervous. She's out of her element. She's flailing around blasting witticisms shotgun-style every whichaway to make the Lorings think she's cool and to cope with her own nerves. She's not really even thinking about what she's saying. At one point Juno tells the slightly desperate, infertile but "born to be a mom" Vanessa she ought to be "glad it isn't you" who has to deal with being pregnant. It's just a throwaway comment, not intended to hurt, just part of the patter, and the screenplay is smart enough not to dwell on the moment... but it speaks loads about Juno. No one "mature beyond her years" would've said something like that. It was brilliant.

But as great as the script is, I'm not sure the movie would be half as good without Ellen Page as Juno. It's funny, when I first saw her in Hard Candy a couple years ago, I thought, "That girl would be a great Serenity... if, y'know, someone were mean enough to do Serenity Rose live action instead of with Balinese shadow puppets like I want." I have to say, seeing Juno paired up with a loud, obnoxious red-haired best pal was... sort of surreal...

I really liked this Michael Cera guy as the boyfriend, too. I haven't seen Superbad or Arrested Development, so this was pretty much my introduction to the future Scott Pilgrim. He's not exactly how I pictured Scott Pilgrim in live action, but then... I'm not exactly sure what I was picturing anyway (BALINESE SHADOWN PUPPETS). He's a funny actor, though, and about the right age, so it'll work. And with Edgar Wright directing it should be... um...

Yeah, I should probably save all that for another post.

Anyway, if you haven't seen Juno yet, you should. Just please don't flee in terror when you hear the phrase "Honest to BLOG!"

BLAWWWWGGGG!

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	mooncalfe 2008-04-22 03:09 pm UTC (link)
	so you're the reason netflix keeps listing Juno as "very long wait." mmm... cheerleaders... (Reply to this)(Thread)

	essrose 2008-04-22 08:46 pm UTC (link)
	I'm blaming you for the "very long wait" on AVP 2. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	videodrone5000 2008-04-22 11:55 pm UTC (link)
	From what I understand about AVP2, you might want to thank him. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	mooncalfe 2008-04-23 12:03 am UTC (link)
	HARSH. haha, is that out on video yet?? i'm not sure i want to see it.. how come you edited your entry from "things i like" to "thanks for happy"? ...thanks for happy....? ;) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	essrose 2008-04-23 03:01 am UTC (link)
	Dunno! Just liked the sound of it better, I guess. I'm not sure I want to see AVP 2 either, but I almost feel obligated to, y'know? C'mon, man! Aliens and Predators and crazy gore effects and such! It can't be worse than that Day of the Dead remake I forced myself to watch last week. ...Can it? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

mooncalfe
2008-04-23 07:16 pm UTC (link)

the first AVP was a travesty, definitely one of the top 5 worst movies i've ever seen, haha. it never could have pleased me, though; i just don't get this crossover/versus fetish everybody seems to have. plus i hate the whole James Cameron Aliens stuff, but that's another story. ;)

i guess the Day remake was pretty bad, huh? is that the one with Mena Suvari and Ving Rhames?

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essrose
2008-04-23 08:38 pm UTC (link)

Yeah, that's the one. Ving Rhames is only in it for about 5 minutes, though. The poor guy just looks embarrassed. But he does get to eat his own eyeball at one point (SPOILER), so maybe it was worth the two days of work.

YOU DON'T LIKE ALIENS??? YOU SUNNUVABITCH! WHAT KIND OF A... ehhhh, I can't get too worked up about that, actually. I think Aliens is pretty close to a perfect movie, but, y'know, it doesn't really bother me if people disagree. I used to get really worked up about movie stuff, but it just seems kind of silly to me these days. I mean, I don't want to end up like the people who leave comments at CHUD.com...

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mooncalfe
2008-04-24 08:23 pm UTC (link)

man, those CHUD commenters are brutal! haha.

i guess i'm in the minority on the Aliens thing. i could go on forever about this; the first one is my favorite movie ever, and i hate everything Cameron did with the creature in the sequel, and Aliens was way too sentimental for me given the material. in the first movie there was so much mystery and the Alien toyed with its prey and moved in all these strange ways that could suggest some kind of unknowable intelligence or motivation for what it was doing; it was almost like a man, a being, rather than just a killer animal. but in Aliens Cameron gave us a killer ant colony. not that i don't like ants, but i think that direction was the most conventional, uninspired direction you could've taken the creature. Cameron turned them into drones driven by reproduction like any animal, and worst of all he gave them a motivation which took away all the mystery. they weren't "alien" anymore, they were too defined, and too easily slain. yadda yadda yadda like i said i could go on forever, haha.

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	atomicpanda 2008-04-22 05:37 pm UTC (link)
	For what it's worth, I've never read your comics and thought, "This guy needs to spend more than 10% of his time working on his writing." (Reply to this)(Thread)

	essrose 2008-04-22 09:15 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks! I still feel I need to raise it to at least 11%, though. And find another percentage or two for kickboxing classes. (Reply to this)(Parent)

tiredfairy
2008-04-22 06:43 pm UTC (link)

Loved this movie. Yeah, Rainn Wilson's character is a bit...old for the lines he's delivering, and Honest To Blog is a bit off. But then I've rewatched some of my favorite old 80's movies and thought...wow, 16 Candles is great but...Long Duck Dong is WAY more racist than I thought...

It's the character evolutions and the way she sets up people as very specific character "types" on purpose...so you think you know what they'll do...and then completely doesn't do it. Vanessa and Mark are perfect in that way, because the audience misjudges them both just like Juno does.

You should definitely check out Superbad AND Arrested Development. Cera is a very subtly funny actor, and he absolutely shines in both.

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essrose
2008-04-22 09:04 pm UTC (link)

I think what bothered me about those first couple scenes is that Juno, her friend, and the store clerk all seemed to be speaking the same quirky slangy language. They all had the same voice, in other words. You know how in Quentin Tarantino's movies, most of the characters wind up sounding kind of like Quentin Tarantino? At first I was a bit worried Diablo Cody had the same disease. But then, y'know, Bleecker and the parents and the Lorings showed up, all with their own distinct non-Juno voices, and everything was cool.

I forgot about Long Duck Dong... Jesus, the 80's are starting to age pretty badly...

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tiredfairy
2008-04-22 10:38 pm UTC (link)

That, actually, is what seriously ticked me off from the super-hating internet trolls who disliked this movie. Most films that have a very particular "voice" do this...it doesn't always work, and I'm certainly not suggesting anyone has to like it...but I felt like most of the criticism were aimed at it hadn't even bothered to take that into consideration.

No movie dialog is completely realistic...if it was, there'd be all kinds of weird pauses and fuck ups. The point of movie dialog is to move the narrative along, so the characters are always wittier and quicker and quirkier than people in real life. And it also serves to define character, which was the intent in Juno. We need to understand her and one of the ways to do that is through the language she uses.

The other thing is, teenagers use slang. Weird, in-joke slang no one else understands. That's one of the things I liked, the way they used culturally relevant isms in the film. I know when I talk to my friends to this day we have weird words and phrases no one else gets because it's unique to us and our experiences.

Also, and I hate to be all Teh Internets Are Misogynistic...but a hell of a lot of criticisms of the movie and the character (and the writer) come from the fact that a GIRL is saying and doing these things. That she's a HUMAN character, developed for herself and her own journey, not as eye candy or "the girl" for the guy to obsess over. It's kind of sad.

Again, I really do love this movie and it only improves for me on subsequent viewings. That a girl character loves punk music, horror movies, has Tara McPherson posters in her room, and falls in love with the quiet nerdy guy...yeah. It's refreshing. Hasn't been a character I could relate to that strongly since Enid from Ghost World.

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essrose
2008-04-23 08:22 pm UTC (link)

I think it's important to make a distinction between the movie's "authorial voice," which I loved, and the unique "voices" of the individual characters, which had me a little worried for the first few minutes there. Everyone just seemed to be speaking the same weird Junesque language. But like I said, there was really nothing to worry about. There ended up being plenty of fantastic un-Juno characters in the movie.

Thinking back to those first scenes again, I guess it really does makes sense that Juno and her best friend would share their own bizarre little way of speaking. Maybe starting the movie out with those two just wasn't the best way to go. It sort of lessens Juno's unique-ness a bit, y'know? (And Rainn Wilson's character is just hopeless.)

But I don't want to dwell on this one little bit of negativity. I really loved the movie and think Diablo Cody is a gee-nee-uss.

About the "girls as eye candy" thing... Have you seen Michael Cera's other big movie from last year? I've heard Superbad (and all the rest of Judd Apatow's stuff, for that matter) has some unfortunate problems of the "presenting women as interesting humans" variety. I dunno if it's true, but I'd be curious what you think!

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	rasphigi 2008-04-22 07:51 pm UTC (link)
	My main issue with Juno is why such a clever kid wouldn't have put a damn condom on the boy..... and I found the music kind of obnoxious. But those are minor quibbles. Much, much, much love to Ellen Page, and also Diablo Cody. Also: Shadow puppets = complete ♥ (Reply to this)(Thread)

	essrose 2008-04-22 08:53 pm UTC (link)
	They actually discuss the condom thing in one of the interviews on the disc. Diablo Cody says they did in fact use one, but it broke. Maybe Jason Reitman can digitally insert a few shots of torn condoms when he does JUNO: SPECIAL EDITION 20 years from now. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	rasphigi 2008-04-23 07:05 am UTC (link)
	See, and it would have been so easy to toss that into the dialogue somewhere. "If only that condom hadn't broken! Honest to blog!" Oh well. (Reply to this)(Parent)

imaginetending
2008-04-22 08:35 pm UTC (link)

I watched Juno too a few days ago.

I liked it, but didn't love it. It wasn't something that I haven't seen before, but it was entertaining and I liked the characters. Juno's really cool. She's kind of nerdy and bitchy at the same thing.

I liked the beginning dialog actually. I didn't like the way they did the introduction sequence where they tell who did what. I thought that was kind of long and weird. That and I thought how she got mad at the husband of Vanessa was kind of odd. Personally I didn't beleive that it was built up enough for her to be crying out the door. Except for feeling her sadness, I kind of got confused. It seemed very out of place for me.

Otherwise, yeah cool artsy kind of movie.

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	rasphigi 2008-04-22 10:23 pm UTC (link)
	Re: crying -- pregnant and hormonal. shrug I was hella mad at the husband too though, so maybe I'm cutting extra slack. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

imaginetending
2008-04-22 10:53 pm UTC (link)

Well I wasn't too terribly mad at the husband at all since he honestly didn't care for Vanessa anymore.

But I wasn't really talking about the personal feeling against or for the husband...I meant the actual plot build up. It was just kind of weird. Eh I dunno, thought there should be more explanation here and there. Juno seemed like the kind of person who could shrug things off a bit. I mean the only time she talked about her real mother was when she talked about how she sent her cacti. There were no scenes where Juno thought to her self about the divorce or maybe her looking back at her life (okay maybe not so cliche...but you kind of get it).

I'm being a bit harsh though. The scene didn't bother me too much. =)

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	silver_rabbit 2008-04-22 09:36 pm UTC (link)
	Haven't seen the movie, but I always thought Michael Cera would make a good Kelton. (Reply to this)

	imaginetending 2008-04-22 11:00 pm UTC (link)
	Oh and it totally slipped my mind... I drew that Harley piccie with her holding that hammer you drew. For some reason I find it kind of odd to post pictures that aren't fan art of the author, but oh well. It's Harley. Everyone loves Harley! http://imaginetheending.deviantart.com/art/Damsel-in-Distress-82180505 (Reply to this)

	timmydoomsqueak 2008-04-22 11:47 pm UTC (link)
	I felt the exact same way when I saw Juno. The forced dialog really irked me, but the soundtrack and the characters were really enjoyable. More than that, they were believable. Juno was just a teenager in a bad situation, scared shitless and running blind until she found something that happened to work. (Reply to this)

madcap_shiny
2008-04-23 12:26 am UTC (link)

Quirky slang is a disease I try to stay as far away from as possible, but then the movie started going "wait! The witty and endearing part starts...now! Off with the horses!" And then it's all good straight to the end.

She's flailing around blasting witticisms shotgun-style every whichaway to make the Lorings think she's cool and to cope with her own nerves.

You know, I never thought about this scene that way, but it totally makes sense. Neat.

I have to say, seeing Juno paired up with a loud, obnoxious red-haired best pal was... sort of surreal...

I knew I couldn't be the only one thinking this. It got increasingly odder when I read that in their next movie together they'd be dating and Ellen Page's character would also be a werewolf. (I always kinda thought Sera and Tess certainly bickered like they were married, but that could just be my inner slasher I pretend doesn't exist.)

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shipchan
2008-04-24 09:04 pm UTC (link)

I love Juno because it has smart teenagers in it, unlike most movies in which they seem to have had frontal lobe surgery to make them more bouncy. As a teenager it was nice to see characters that didn't make me cringe out of shame and want to tell everyone I'm 45 and 'just look young'. I hated reviewers who said that Juno was unrealistic because it was 'too smart' because it was obvious these people didn't know any teenagers to begin with! I think it was probably my favorite movie of the year, which I totally didn't expect.
Your haikus would be awesome.

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