Juno - I was overenthusiastic, clearly

Below is an old review I did of Juno, when I had a single blog and linking under the same account wasn't done, or I refused to branch out.

I don't think Juno's as good as what I said. So I'll say it then maybe parenthetically {-} correct myself as I go...

"I think Diablo Cody kept her stripper name, and it is a great nom-de-plume, mind you now I'm going to find out it IS her real name, she IS really that cool and this blog is NEVER going to make me famous. {She's not that cool, and her views on Disassociative Identity Disorder sucks, okay you got research done but the disorder was still fairly unknown and is still disputed by some doctors}.

By the by, Juno is a great movie {it's not, it's flawed and probably well outside deserving of any major awards} . Debutante Diablo's script does have that certain screenwriting 101 feel to it {remove "certain", replace with "definite"}, so the transitions are predictable, but the story isn't {Okay I didn't see most of it coming, but some people probably should}. Ellen Page {they weren't out at the time, so I had no prior knowledge of their desire to transition, and you could say neither did they - Elliot Page is a wonderful human being and is living their best life, I hope} does rock Juno quite hard, Jason Bateman, enough said, Jennifer Garner, to me, a little forced, and Michael Cera, Mr. Reprise but it all gels nicely {It's been argued this man can do nothing but be Michael Cera and sadly it's mostly true. His Marlon Brando impersonation on Twin Peaks will just forever confuse the fuck out of me}. Alison Janey still kicks a mighty amount of ass. (The only reason I remember her name now is Peter called his pet giraffe Alison Janey on Family Guy), JK Simmons, adorably gruff dad, is equally great but he has that "I've seen in him other shit I can't remember where" face. {Man's made a name for himself, as did Janey, so it's been nice to see them both finally win Oscars} I was so horribly disappointed Rainn Wilson was a mere cameo, I was waiting for him to contribute further and felt he was underused. {Could also be argued he couldn't be anyone but Rainn Wilson, and apparently he also has weird religious beliefs now}. And I was well chuffed to see another Degrassi alumni, Daniel Clark, aka bad boy Shawn, make an appearance, (again STUPIDLY underused), I hope this is a launching pad.  {Newsflash, it wasn't}.

Will the one-liner queen become a one-hit-wonder or can she do a repeat? Who knows? {She did a repeat, and I do like Young Adult, it's more interesting and better written than Juno, but United States of Tara is kind of a joke - people with DID don't usually have enough costumes to transform into their alters at will, plus you have to wonder if by the time they were done transforming, another alter hadn't decided to come in and change their mind. I can totally imagine them going out to buy clothes that suit one personality then wondering why their wardrobe is eclectic, this more felt like character acting in the dedication to the appearance of each alter. Some reason I thought Toni Collette wore a face mustache/beard combo but no, it was more superficial in terms of transformation}.

Am I a hipster now I use Juno-lingo? Am I a hipster because I'm emotionally deranged, horribly cynical, scathingly witty and wear long sleeve shirts under band t-shirts? I don't know. Has Juno reworked our general interweb speech? Possibly. {Newsflash 2, it really didn't, it was terribly twee, likened to terrible Dr. Seuss comparisons}

I love there wasn't a preachy feel to the movie. It tried to cover the pro-life/choice issue but definitely not with the same affect as Palindromes. I want to ask Cody if she is pro-choice, as the felt after Juno bolts from Women Now (who help Women, now) was darkly waving the pro-life banner. Or was Cody just trying to cover all bases with her cavalcade of one-off characters, (the clinic clerk, the cashier, the ultra-sound tech, the single protester)? The facts and opinions inter-woven in the dialogue gave it that Weeds kinda feel, educational and entertaining, but obvious in its intent. {And in this sense, it felt like it was being more educational than really dissecting the issues to make rounded characters we could sympathise with more - I think she wanted to look at accepting parents who were still a bit disappointed, someone who was pro-life who wasn't a dick, when you know it's rare for them to picket those clinics to work on their own.}

Was it too fucking clever? {For its own good, yes} It had the right amount of emotion, I felt the heartstrings tug at the appropriate moments, but did it blow the quirk-o-metre? {Yes, it wasn't necessary, the heart is there but I feel like this would irritate me now}. Benny and Joon still managed to rein in the quirk more effectively. Jason Bateman does embody the true essence of a generation lost in its own arrested development, one of the many strays left behind in the wake of the Cobain suicide. {On reflection, he's a douche but it's so hard to bat for Garner's desperate mother routine too. You run a risk of pining mother characters looking one dimensional, obsessed and myopic. Juno being into all the same shit he is makes her a kind of "old soul" in the way her having a fucking out of date hamburger phone makes her one.... Depicting kids being into Gen X shit at that time, it's not that endearing, you have to have a line about how they're aficionados of the same music, not just casual listeners, avid fans of the same movies etc}.

I do like the movie. {I really don't think I do now I've heard the legitimate criticisms} The music did grate {I had one song from it and and I don't listen to it anymore}. I'm not really sure what else to say. The dialogue was too cool for school. I've wanted to do scripts with the same kinda hep-cat beat poet vibe, but now, I'll be seen as a hack. Kudos to you, Cody, for getting a real job. Don't spend the fat pay cheques too quickly. {Quick Wikipedia scan confirms she's done very little but it was critically well received. What I saw of United States, I think that was when I started to get annoyed with her style, especially when she was using phrases like "bitchcakes" like, okay honey, you were a fan of Beth from News Radio, we get it. Bobcat Goldwaith made a point of calling her out for her dialogue in God Bless America, which I consider superior even if other people thought it was trash and problematic, I'm fond of it}.

Okay, so I didn't have much else to add since this wasn't a positive review so much it was, "I think I liked it??"

As an additional point, I looked at a clip of United States of Tara and this would've been Twitter cancelled before the end of the first season, it never would have survived until a third season cancellation. The alters are obvious excuses for the character to be completely irresponsible. I believe the Buck character does visit other women, and even if Tara''s shaming her son as this character for being too feminine, when she's Tara, she sees her daughter being pushed around by a guy with "pigtails" and has a go at her for being pushed around by him. Plus she makes slut shaming statements of her daughter getting a morning after pill. (I don't know if the joke was Tara was the one doing this as her teen persona but I don't think so). So, Tara's just a garbage person period, you're introduced to her having an ego on her already. What's to root for with this bitch? 

Brie Larson was in this and I think she may have been genuinely okay, I loved John Corbet in Northern Exposure but he's been used terribly since and his character in this show basically has to condone and endure Tara's decision to cease her medication because she doesn't want to be "stifled creatively etc" (bitch, we all have to suffer for stability with medication, your needs when you're off it shouldn't take precedence over your fucking family if you know full well you cannot function normally off medication) The husband has to put up with the alters making crass sexualised statements about his children, and be more or less molested by an alter and put boundaries on his sex life with them because that alter "just wants a baby". And the teen apparently abuses access to his credit cards. If you want to start saying DID sufferers go on massive spending sprees as their alters, that's bullshit, it happens more in a manic episode not a disassociative one. It's been highlighted sufferers of DID hurt themselves more than other and they easily have less criminal traits than sufferers of schizophrenia. (I read an article about a guy who murdered his wife's boyfriend while being a diagnosed schizophrenic and was told "there was no hope for them" back in the 70s, because yeah, every mental case was a total waste of space and families were advised to commit suffers and just forget about them, same with autistic kids).

And to top it all off, each alter is literally just a cliche - Susie Homemaker from the 50s, (so you can have a scene where she makes a perfect cake for a bake sale) 16 year old bad mouth Valley Girl (so you can have a scene of Tara being a reckless teen with her teen daughter who "loves this alter", yeah that's a totally healthy response, just encourage the mental patient), ex NamVet trucker asshole womaniser (so you can have scenes of Tara being sexist and flirting with women), five year old child, and hippy therapist. I understand this is a test of a marriage and someone's devotion and I hate people who bail on significant others over their mental health issues, same time, man has a fucking case here when it's about a conscious decision, stupidly agreed upon by a therapist, for a mentally ill woman to cease taking medication. Maybe if the alters had taken over gradually and less perceptively, and she was accidentally under medicated, it would make her a thousand times more sympathetic. But this is a conscious choice, and makes anyone with a mental illness look irresponsible for not taking their meds. It's insulting as fuck when you're on medication and in the middle of a relapse for your loved ones to just assume you've skipped your meds, like that's the only explanation. Please stop using this as a narrative hook. "Are you off your meds?" is a fucking insult.

Which brings me back to shitty depictions of therapists in movies. This is Silver Lining Playbook levels of irresponsible therapy shit that NEVER WOULD HAPPEN. And to make a joke of Tara finding a new therapist in a convenient alter persona, I'm sure a judge would grant a divorce and full custody to the dad upon being presented with this evidence in a custody trial. The mentally ill need proper support if they want to continue being a parent, and there's woeful assistance out there for women who have to come off meds to have kids, or were never afflicted with a mental illness until they even had a child. You don't depict mothers this way. I'd say they went with her having teenage kids because it would look horrifying to have her behave like this around an ignorant child who couldn't possibly fathom what was wrong with her.

No. This show sucks. It would not pass a single test you put it through now, it was created in a time it was totally convenient to throw mental illness under the bus for the purpose of entertainment. It had to take an episode of Modern Family, which I'm sure is equally offensive without this, of the family going as mental patients for Halloween for audiences to finally go, please stop. And I wasn't that offended initially by these depicitions, but Tara is offensive. Toni Collette is incredibly talented, it would take a lot of energy to do this, but shit, James McAvoy dare I say, did it more justice in Split, and that still didn't get a good response. In all honestly, I dislike so many of Collette's American woman depictions with her accent, she's not awful, but for a comparison, Rachel Griffiths does a better job in Six Feet Under. Australians are better with American accents because we're exposed to so much US content from birth, compared to the US, our movies and TV shows just don't get the love, kids don't know how to pronounce anything properly now.

You can say you did all the research you want, that you consulted all the right bodies for your accurate depiction, but guess who else said they did that? Sia. And look what happened to her. I've gotten used to looking for reactions from affected communities over these representations since it shouldn't take a person unfamiliar with their issues to know the depiction is wrong. And working with like one expert is not enough, you're using them a shield against criticism whilst saying, oh, well it's not about the illness, it's about how hard life is in general and how we all compartmentalise parts of ourselves anyway, so this is just taking that to a comedic extreme. Go fuck yourself. This may have started as a review of Juno but now it's just a rant against ableism.

Okay, so now this is just an I hate Diablo Cody post. She participated in the new live action PowerPuff Girls live action show and the script had some "choice" language (can't say if it's hers specifically) that fans disagreed with, so the pilot did what a pilot should do which is point out the flaws before the series goes ahead. Only, does anyone want it in the first place? I thought a bad pilot just meant you gave up and went back to the drawing board, not persist with the bad idea. But maybe she's out of touch with girls today when she was coming up as the voice of a generation. No, I think she's the voice of third wavers who can't get on board with sex positive language despite being an ex stripper.

She-Ra And the Power of Good Reboots

I'm sure the new(ish - it's kind of old really considering how long it's taken me to bother) She-Ra was the result of one imaginative person looking at the original unfinished series thinking, there's something here buried under this joke of a toy commercial, some kernel of awe-inspiring feminist punk rock/princess fantasy that'll appeal to kids now while satisfying fans and casual watchers, like me. 

Full disclosure - I really don't know/remember much of the show. I think I saw some episodes but I can't tell you much outside who She-Ra is in relation to He-Man and what her horse was called when it was a flying unicorn I wanted as a toy so fucking badly. I never wanted the dolls, I wanted their goddamn horses. I wanted Barbie's horse, Rainbow Bright's horse, and She-Ra's fucking unicorn Pegasus. Because Christ that's the epitome of every six-year-old horse lover's toy, especially one like me who couldn't sit on a real horse (pony) unaided without falling off. I feel like I could try riding a horse again, maybe just walking not sprinting, because I remember what I did wrong. But then I'd probably show up and go, no. They're good therapy though.

Anyway, getting a toy horse that looked like an actual horse was my goal, but I'd have loved a Swift Wind toy. I had a cardboard cut-out of Spirit I could put paper hook-on accessories on to make it Swift Wind. It just wasn't the same.

Anyway, the new She-Ra turned out to be rad. I've run out of stuff on Netflix etc to watch so I thought screw it (and I was inspired by some DeviantArt, finding out I have a thing for certain "reimagined" cartoon characters has been illuminating) I'll check this out. I really like the aesthetic even if it's borrowed a lot from Last Airbender, probably leaning more into the anime tropes at the same time. I'm in danger of getting sick of this amalgamated style the way I got sick to death of Pixar/Dreamworks style movies. Like, I'm fucking sorry, but you can tell they reuse assets for characters, that under Disney Pixar lost so much creative freedom as it was forced into multiple sequels they swore not to make. So, if this art style is really becoming the norm I'm not going to love it. I was underwhelmed with the cartoon style of Invincible until YMS pointed out it was in the style of Saturday morning cartoons, the deliberate lack of detail and sort of bad lip-sync gives it a certain charm in that regard, plus it ended up being a trauma ride not for kids, had interesting bad guys and flawed good guys and a decent enough hook with a frustrating love triangle, the kind you get from Saturday morning cartoons.

She-Ra, for some reason, has the best baddies, the kind you love to hate. Rather than stick with one dimensional Hordak as our main antagonist, we get a very nuanced, well-structured Catra, who was relegated to henchman in the original. We get a female based rivalry based on betrayal, Catra a better foil for She-Ra, with Hordak kinda hanging out in the background making more tension for Catra overall. Also, we've avoided the villain of the week and they've managed to develop a relatively engaging story with good twists and turns. And the gay kids finally get the ships and reasonable representation they deserve (to be fair, their only NB character's probably a little too camp/sexualised in the way you can oversexualise an androgynous character, but Double Trouble is still an entertaining far cry from the original as well, and they've gone to the trouble (boom-tish) of casting appropriately as well).

We have princesses but they've all been revamped into gutsy teens with various teen traits that don't make them uninteresting in any way, and they all have their awesome powers and realistic flaws. Entrapta has an obvious neuro- divergent slant, Frosta's now a spunky little 13 year old, Perfuma's more of a neurotic mess disguised as a hippy, I guess Scorpia's more sympathetic comparatively even if she's sappy and a little too clingy. Mermista's the Daria of the gang. Netossa and Spinarella were put in the background as lesbian wives (Bow also has gay dads, one of which looked a lot like a Dream Daddy character, also you get a short king out of King Micah, who's like half a foot shorter than Angella, they really wanted to cater to all the marginlised groups*). They've made a deliberate move to really keep with the higher ratio of female characters, Bow, Seahawk and Swift Wing are the bois of the crew, and they're not forced into relationships right away, Bow and Glimmer are good childhood friends, there's not a huge amount of underlying romantic stories between them. Also, Swifty is stuck as Swifty permanently, there's no reverting back to "horsie" mode, and instead of making him a pretentious asshole he's just campy, sarcastic, sassy-ass fun, meanwhile he still gives a shit about everyone and I'm sure he didn't in the original.

Shadow Weaver has a developed arc as a conflicted villain you're still unable to trust in terms of motivations. The Horde is still a problem but they seem more formidable, plus they're humanising the bad guys in terms of "who deserves to live or die in a war". You have moral quandaries over constant good versus evil fights, I'm into the story, there are stakes and tension you didn't get from a lot of older cartoons. What you do get is that hatred for the villain whenever it looks like they're winning, which was such a driving factor of those shows. When you weren't bugging your parents for the toys you were thinking about how evil the bad guys were. Well, these guys are genuine assholes with more than half a dimension. Admittedly, you're not always on She-Ra's side either. She's entertainingly flawed, she's not always winning, much like Buffy, she's the chosen one who is only truly strong alongside her friends. The reveal on her purpose is paced really well, the conflicts later on between the good guys aren't too contrived either.

I honestly have no idea what role the princesses served in the original series, either. I remember Glimmer but honestly she didn't look familiar until the episode they spoofed the original, which was fun. My biggest issue was random rock songs that take up two to three minutes of the episode. Use these sparingly, I beg you. (PS they did). I quit Bob's Burgers from there being a musical number every episode after they did their own "full musical" episode. Honestly, I don't find that shit funny. Simpsons was better at pulling that shit off sporadically, like the Monorail number or the Who Needs the Kwik-E-Mart, or See My Vest, or the Flaming Moe's song, or anything off the B-Sharps episode. I don't know what it's like now but they knew when to use a musical number. I don't really understand other cartoons doing this on a regular basis. Like if you have actors who can sing, that's swell and all, but do we need this interlude or were you struggling to fill the time?

So, I guess this show just has to quit it with the musical numbers and keep entertaining me, and I'll stick around until the end. I've kinda spoiled a particular arc because my dumb ass thought the still was someone's DeviantArt ship fantasy and was an actual scene in the show, but I'm looking forward to how we get there based on where we're at now. Some smarts have gone into this, as well as a good dose of charm.

Okay, that actually paid off really well. Semi-spoilers from here, and this is even after I spoiled shit for myself. I feel like this ending was the one She-Ra deserved from the very start, and I mean the VERY start. I doubt this was canon, that it was intended, I don't think they had a plan for the original show, most of those shows probably weren't ever designed for storytelling on this level since they were always cut short by the lack of toy sales (even Avatar suffered for this). But the new version was genuinely great, it was sincerely heartfelt and emotional without being hackneyed or schmaltzy. I was invested in the way I've not really been with other shows. What I assumed would happen didn't, expectations were subverted. There's a redemption for some and the final boss takedown is really special, it's not a drawn out battle, I like that about it. There's a lot of rainbows but it's nice, you feel good and not kinda overloaded with sappiness. 

Whoever planned this, (I'll say Noelle Stevenson carried this as its her creation) I take my hat off to you for actually giving She-Ra the ending she was worthy of 30 fucking years ago. I take it all back, she was done dirty and this makes up for everything. I wouldn't even bother with the original since it would be painful to watch with how little they did with She-Ra. You didn't marry her off or ship her with any particular male character. You didn't sacrifice her but made us think she would lose, for all her OPness, there was still a solid character there we were at least invested in and wanted to see succeed. Her "I'm the only one" shit wasn't played out to death like with Buffy, they saved that for the end. There were a lot of dark scenes I think (hope) people wouldn't be upset by, like I get the point of trigger warnings but I don't think there was inherent intention of causing harm, in some ways it refused to pull those punches other shows do.

And if you're a Korra fan, guess what, you got your damn kiss at last. So that's two for the price of one. I think this show is lacking the recognition it deserved for bothering to be diverse enough and turn shit on its head. You can say it was pandering but I'll give it so many passes for how well it did it, I don't think it was condescending in its approach. It played it subtly until there was a sign they could finally wave those flags. This actually would've made me cry in the way Wonder Woman never can or will. I mean, this deserves its Rotten Tomato rating. It deserves its fan base. And I did not feel that way about Wonder Woman in the slightest, or even the Harley Quinn sequel. (I'm not kidding, throw them both in the trash and watch the new Harley Quinn animation, it's really good). They both had an opportunity to do more with what they had, whereas She-Ra really feels like its heart was carried through to the end, left intact. I enjoyed this about as much as I did Avatar. I don't know if I'd ever watch it again, it'd be interesting since I've never felt a huge urge to go back to Avatar or Legend of Korra, I haven't been sucked into other animated shows. For all the anime out there that this borrowed from, it didn't suffer from pacing issues or just being compelled to continue an existing manga until the end of days, because the manga had no end. 

Anyway, faith restored for now. Something Netflix got right for once. This was a show for people who really thought those toy commercials were meant to inspire them, for the writers who believed in those stupid characters and wanted to be creative. And for those little girls (and boys - I discovered the other day drag star Courtney Act wanted a She-Ra doll so badly for Christmas, but hilariously, she got a Swift Wind, and I got the She-Ra doll. If we'd been friends, I'd have begged her to swap) who deserved a strong female character who was a princess who kicked ass and still had a heart, it was for you.

She's the hero we all deserved, then and now.

*Speaking of catering I have to say I think some of the cast were like meh they could be about character's alignments. Saying you "do think they are..." doesn't mean they are any more than Lando's pan. It's of no massive consequence now to drop those hints. I really do hope people have gotten what they wanted from this, that it's a normal thing in the show, that people don't feel pandered to.

Albums are dead. I don't do albums.

I have too much music on my hard drive. I've amassed so many tracks from various sources, failed to archive CDs because I was freeing up hard drive space and thought I'd never listen to them again, bought digital copies and own the CDs, again, never touched. I'm leaning more and more toward pure digital even being smart to the temporary nature of legal copies are, that I don't "own" this shit. I've gone to bandcamp which does let me own shit. I should probably use it more, but I'm a slave to my Apple account, which in fairness has delivered some surprises I thought impossible to find. I know what needs to be done to preserve this shit but I've gotten horribly lazy about it. I've even repurchased albums that were locked to limited devices on a previous account and some now miraculously saved my only copy of Miracle, one of the bonus tracks from American Doll Posse that isn't as easy to get now. So I used to value my music. I used to treasure my burnt CDs, I'm even going to find them to make playlists if I can, because I'm in a weird place and that often generates misguided nostalgia.

What I did dig out I wound up having to go through one by one since they weren't how I remembered. There wasn't a particular playlist I just carried around burnt CDs and used a walkman until I could afford an iPod. I had a list on our home computer when I was looking for songs, I think when I was unemployed my only happiness came from music and searching for songs, I made trips to the CD rental store and wound up selling original CDs once I'd burnt everything on blanks. Curating everything was therapeutic, my CDs got me through long trips around town or down to Fremantle. The walks I had to go on for Mutual Obs were unreasonable but I always took my dealings seriously, and making me walk miles to wherever my placement office was then assigning me to someone miles from there, I needed my walkman, as I needed my ipod as I need my phone and earphones, like I'll inconvenience myself to get them back. I think that was the last day I was in the office, if I'd not gone back for them I'd have been screwed.

But the tragedy of this is really the fact I'm so not pumped for Tori's new CD and I've just pre-ordered the physical copy out of habit. I've listened to Halsey's new album on an almost religious level, way more than I dedicated to the new Garbage CD, which I don't have a physical copy of. I really didn't bother with anything after Version 2.0, I have Not Your Kind of People and ended up downloading the one song I liked anyway, because I cannot justify the cost of an external CD drive to make use of it for an hour for four or five CDs I didn't think I'd ever listen to. I got a bonus track from Heather Nova's Oyster from this lack of foresight. Plus a lot of stuff's been remastered so you're sometimes better off getting a digital download. I at least made some kind of an effort to buy most of the tracks I got from Napster/Limewire. I mean it costs more than it sounds like but I felt like I "made up" for it once I finally did. The plan's since fallen in a hole realising I didn't listen to a lot of those tracks anymore anyway. I'll get through it all one day, maybe. Trawling for B-sides and rarities just isn't worth the hassle now.