I saw Perfect Pitch. No shame in it... ok a little but hey I'm comfortable in my sexuality or something like that. The idea that a movie whose main characters are predominantly female cannot appeal to a male audience is not only stupid but offensive, I like good movies regardless of whether I bear any resemblance to the protagonists. The reason I cannot stand Tyler Perry movies is not because the characters are black and I am white, it is because the movies, to the extent that I have seen them are horrible. Not only that but they are racist, I'm sure toward white people, but in my experience mostly toward African Americans. This is well trod ground and seeing as I have seen a sum total of 20 minutes of all of his movies I will not continue along it, I being it up merely to contrast it to the much better movies starring other people who do not resemble me which I enjoy. In the nineties there was a whole series of "Gangsta" movies which I quite enjoyed and still do even if I am now more aware of how they did not show the African American community in the best light, but they were well made and told compelling stories about characters they managed to get the audience to care about. The two best were of course Boyz N the Hood, and Menace II Society. These were particularly dark films which carried a strong social message much like the "Gangsta Rap" music which provided their soundtrack, informed their sensibility, and provided a significant part of their cast. There of course was also Friday which was a great movie and carried no important social message, though it also starred Ice Cube... "It's Friday you ain't got a job you ain't got shit to do..." Friday of course was a great stoner movie, which at the time was something I had in common with the characters... It does however point to two other great stoner movies Cheech and Chong which I first enjoyed before my discovery of the wonders of Marijuana and Harold and Kumar which I watched after I had ceased to be a regular smoker... All of these movies star characters of different races than me but with whom I shared other more important connections. I have gotten a little off track, as I was speaking originally of good female centered films. The three most recent which spring to mind are all comedies, and all include Rebel Wilson in the cast interestingly enough. Firstly there is Bridesmaids, which everyone and their mother has seen and talked about ad nauseum, I know this because I recently managed, with the help of two female friends, to get my male room mate who refused to watch it on the basis of it being a chick movie to sit down and watch it and then admit to having enjoyed it... The third movie is the one I have already mentioned which kicked off this whole rant, Pitch Perfect. This was actually a really good movie, I mean don't get me wrong it was not a tour de force of cinematography or anything, but then who really wanted it to be. On the most shallow level it had 5 really attractive actresses in it, which might seem counter to my point to bring up but I'm not going to lie, my attraction to the women on screen is an important part of my experience. Sometimes I am identifying with the character as an aspect of myself, which I am capable of doing with both male and female characters, and sometimes a am identifying with them as a person I would like to have some form of relationship with, whether as a friend or in a romantic context or both. The two odd choices made in the movie were the weirdly rapey depiction of the one lesbian character who took every opportunity to grope the overtly sexual Stacie, any male character who did the same would have been the obvious villain of the film leading to charges being filed and intense bonding over the evils of sexual assault. The other of course is the afore mentioned vomit, not so much the first time which worked well but the recurrence which I won't spoil but it was over the top and out of place tonally as the only true gross out moment, perhaps a nod to the dress shop scene in Bridesmaids, but that did somehow fit with much of the rest of the movie.
Ok so I said three movies and then mentioned a first and a third. What happened to second, and why call what was obviously the first movie mentioned the third etc. Well the second was probably the best and certainly the least well known, Bachelorette. Perhaps it is most telling, and perhaps reflects badly on myself and my associations, that this movie rang most true to me. I highly recommend it. In fact as much as I think you should pay to see this movie in order to encourage people to make more like it I will tell you that if you just go here: http://www.sockshare.com/file/55A827DA0EE001AE you can see it right now. Aside from having a great performance by Kirsten Dunst, whose mere presence on the side of 7th street in Manhattan once caused me to almost crash my bike and most surely die, and the always amazing on screen chemistry of Lizzie Caplin and Adam Scott the loss of whom in the guise of Party Down has greatly lowered the value of owning a television... the film is quite simply funny as shit. The three main characters could have come off as complete train wrecks, which in some ways they are, but they are also subtly imbued with the humanity to make their flaws endearing, and again Kirsten Dunst, Lizzie Caplin and Isla Fisher are all gorgeous women. Ultimately the point of all of this is that you can have any number of relationships to the characters in a movie, as with any work of fiction or art for that matter. You can identify with them as a representation of yourself, or as a person you would enjoy knowing, or as a person you are glad not to know, as a representation of someone you actually do know... And involved in all of these complex relations are innumerable other factors such as the fact that of all the representations of Elizabeth Bennett I have encountered from the Original, to PBS, to the BBC, to film adaptations both faithful and loose to the point of Bollywood, I have identified with all of them but none as much as Kiera Knightly the one I would most like to have sex with, but that might just be my own narcissism... or not.
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