On my movie ratings scale I would label it 'diverting.' That is, watchable.
Unfortunately, like Keanu Reeves, Lindsay Lohan can't act her way out of a paper bag. But also like Keanu, she possesses the charming ability to bring her real self to film. Lindsay was pretty, in a damaged, used-up way, but with a vulnerability that shone through. And though I felt for her in reality, I was unconvinced by her performance.
After a weak start, co-star James Deen delivered a believable but unremarkable
performance.
The nudity content was nothing to write home about; a few long eyefuls of breasts, with a couple unerect penises thrown in for good measure. The four-way sex
scene showed little, but was central to the movie, and fairly well done.
Although the plot was mediocre, it had enough oomph to leave the viewer, however momentarily, thoughtful.
39 comments:
Sounds like I'll need a cigarette afterward, but left unlit, one sitting half out of the pack and at attention, but unused.
I suggest an e-cig.
I suggest an e-cig.
then you can take video of yourself with it and post it here.
just like momma used to make.
Yo' Mama?
You've forgotten the video Lem's heroine posted over at TOP where she was swanning about with an e-cig, looking like a really puffy, drunken twelve year old with a candy cigarette?
Momma. Since you guys are increasingly using an "althouse" tag and since Lem is making posts about what's being posted over there.
Well, yes, I did miss that...please link.
It's the Cialis of movies. You have to take it, but it gives you 36 hours to decide if your up for it.
Lohan is continually dismissed by film mavens as a big nothing but she keeps hanging on so she must have something, that elusive "it" that belongs to a tiny few for no discernible reason and yet...one thing's for sure, she's more than your run of the mill starlet. I think the secret is that she projects doom, or being doomed, or something. Unless she kills herself soon she should survive and even prosper because the camera loves her.
That woman is on fire.
(smoke coming from her mouth, and her whole bottom turned red)
she keeps hanging on so she must have something
Name recognition.
She's going to be the new Iron Man in 2025.
The "it" that they have is described in part by the obvious "it" that people find impossible when they try. Example. The reality shows like the one in Las Vegas Pawn Shop. There will be an incident they want staged, whenever the 'actors' have actual lines to read it is so on the nose and stilted you know right off it is not spontaneous.
They're in the way of themselves. They cannot pretend hard enough, loose themselves behind all that far enough, they cannot lie convincingly. Insufficiently schizophrenic.
The "it" in part, is an ability to lose themselves so that they're not in the way of pretending.
Just as you know in part what you intend to say, you know already how you intend to handle yourself in any given situation, you are not rigidly adhering to script in any given daily situation so your spontaneity shines through each moment and if you were unaware of a film crew around you, and you cannot be that unaware, the camera would love you too.
That's what she can do, the mess, lose herself in a moment, with everyone right there watching, she's tucked away behind all that, and another part is acting out the partially scripted so comfortably spontaneous moment actually unconcerned with everything else all around and still hanging around the edges, that led to that surreal movie-making moment in real life.
Have to disagree somewhat about LiLo's acting ability.
She has some, but her parents were so busy milking the Golden Goose to develop it.
deborah said...
I suggest an e-cig.
It glows in the dark.
If I want to see limp dicks I'll just look in the mirror.
Please Don't Pull the Butterfly Wings Off of Lohan: it is All That She Has Left.
D.U.F.
I know nothing about Lindsay Lohan but that photo reminds me of the chick in the Kubrick film Lolita (1962) which I barely remember because I was intoxicated.
Child stars often go overboard in trying to be "adult" when they are out of the control of their parents or handlers. Young stars as diverse as Elizabeth Taylor, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Jodie Foster and Raven Simone have all done one of two things.
They either marry a gay Jewish guy to be their manager/husband or they become lesbians.
Lindsay has already went through her Lesbian phase so we can expect her to marry David Geffen or something.
Trooper York said...
Lindsay has already went through her Lesbian phase so we can expect her to marry David Geffen or something.
Or Liza Minelli. Oh wait...
Dilbert covers film.
Nude scenes don't work, as far as I know, ever.
Maybe I'll watch Get Smart (2008) again. I know all the lines, though.
Best line:
(99 kicks a pistol in the air past Max, who grabs and fires it in the air into the bad guy's heart.)
99: Not bad for a rookie
Max: Not bad for an old lady
The promos for the movie stress gags but it's a better movie than that.
The end wasn't tidied up right. I would have done it slightly differently, less pat and more feminist with a guy. Somebody who know what he was doing lost an argument there.
Some plot points are a little obscure and not always sensible, places where 99 knows enough to know better but it gets the remarriage half going.
There was some comment that Hathaway did some of her own stunts, perhaps not seriously said.
The point of having stunt guys do the stunts is that they don't hurt the guy they're fighting with, not so much hurting the principal, in fight scenes.
Iowahawk
Twerking is so 5 minutes ago. The new dance craze is Dog-Carpet-Scooting.
I saw that picture of her passed out drunk in a car. She looked good. The camera really is fond of her. Very few people on earth can look good while passed out drunk.......Her last act is not predestined. This can be an inspiring story of redemption or a tragic tale of wasted youth. Both narratives sell well. I look forward to seeing Suri Cruise star in the biopic.
Twerking is so 5 minutes ago. The new dance craze is Dog-Carpet-Scooting.
I.e. Taylor Swifting.
But that's so March 2012.
but it gets the remarriage half going.
Ah, so you see it as a remarriage comedy. That's a great genre (and love Cavell on that genre).
Will get around to watching it at some point.
Lindsay Lohan, the horror movie.
Actually, I wish her well; hope she evades the doom she's headed toward. Anyone with parents like that deserves some pity. May she find some happiness in acting (or anything else) rather than (just) alcohol, drugs, and prostitution.
It doesn't rise Cavell's remarriage genre, I don't think.
It's more about feminism working things out, extended with a plot device into having to sort of work it out again.
Max liked her as a feminist.
Like Thurber liked his difficult bitchy women.
Cavell's remarriage genre...esoteric. Will one of you give a recap, please?
Heh, love Thurber.
Cavell's remarriage genre...esoteric. Will one of you give a recap, please?
Here's the bare-boned Wikipedia entry (which doesn't tell you much of anything about Cavell, but you can get a sense of the genre from the films listed).
Basically, it's a sub-genre of romantic comedy, where the point of the plot isn't to get the hero and heroine together, but to get them back together, together again, after divorce/ separation.
Here's Cavell's book on it. (You can read some excerpts there.)
I'll see if I can find a good synopsis somewhere, or may try to give my own take on his take, later, when I have more time. Right now, I'm chickening out. It's been ages since I read it, find it so hard to recap-- he's one of those philosophers that are pretty much impossible to recap, especially since it's a book of readings rather than "theory."
I think the term/ concept can have interesting applications beyond the narrow, strictly understood category... Actually, Cavell himself applied it beyond the strictly understood category (considering movies that don't involve divorce/ remarriage, like It Happened One Night and Bringing Up Baby).
So I was interested in rhhardin's invocation of it, in reference to a "straight" romantic comedy (which I gather doesn't involve divorce/ remarriage). Maybe one of the strands of resemblance is that there's something Shakespearian about it? (The Shakespearian aspects are a big part of Cavell's understanding of the genre.)
rrhardin's quotes & descriptions of the movie do remind me a little e.g. of Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado about Nothing.
I am one of those who can't read Shakespeare without an interpreter. Cavell and Empson are the greatest.
Thanks, yashu, I will read that entry. rh's idea, if I understand him, of feminism as a sort of remarriage is intriguing.
Well, they got together and then she doubted him and then he demonstrated himself more deeply worthy, so maybe it's a remarriage in a way.
I wouldn't say feminism figures into it except as the first obstacle.
What makes the film a pleasure to rewatch is deadpan flirtation and 99s legible reactions, if you read her little movements. Good acting by Hathaway.
There's no hint of that in the promos, as if it didn't exist at all.
Yes,
It's more about feminism working things out, extended with a plot device into having to sort of work it out again.
Max liked her as a feminist.
That does sound like remarriage comedy-- having to work it out again. Tracy/ Hepburn (with a twist).
Cavell is the greatest, indeed. I adore the guy (was blessed to learn to read Wittgenstein from him).
Need to read more Empson. Only read some of his essays on Donne; just now pulled 7 Types of Ambiguity (unread) from my bookshelf. Too long neglected, that one's been calling me for a while. Will dig in.
and then she doubted him
Overcoming skepticism is a big part of the remarriage dynamic.
I'm intrigued. Hard pressed to think of modern movies who do that battle/ banter well.
So, on a societal scale could the development of feminism be a form of remarriage?
So, on a societal scale could the development of feminism be a form of remarriage?
I do think some form of feminism or proto-feminism is necessary for the comedy of remarriage (in Cavell's sense) to be possible.
For the plot to work, there has to be autonomy-- but also confusions & delusions about autonomy-- on both sides.
Max is pretty much unchanged, the solid guy throughout, except for picking up that 99 is a great partner in his new field and perhaps another.
Empson's Structure of Complex Words is my favorite, meaning the most useful.
Pastoral and Ambiguity are good.
Horses display courage by a continual display of timidity, somewhere in 7 Types of Ambiguity.
In fact
The trumpet's loud clangour
Invites us to arms
With shrill notes of anger
And mortal alarms.
The double double double beat
Of the thundering drum
Cries, heark the Foes come ;
Charge, charge, 'tis too late to retreat.
(Song for St. Cecilia's Day.)
It is curious on the face of it that one should represent, in a mood of such heroic simplicity, a reckless excitement, a feverish and exalted eagerness for battle, by saying (in the most prominent part of the stanza from the point of view of the final effect) that we can't get out of the battle now and must go through with it as best we can. Yet that is what has happened, and it is not a cynical by-blow on the part of Dryden ; the last line is entirely rousing and single-hearted. Evidently the thought that it is no good running away is an important ingredient of military enthusiasm ; at any rate in the form of consciousness of unity with comrades, who ought to be encouraged not to retreat (even if they are not going to, they cannot not have thought of it, so that this encouragement is a sort of recognition of their merits), and of consciousness of the terror one should be exciting in the foe ; so that all elements of the affair, including terror, must be part of the judgment of the most normally heroic mind, and that, since it is too late for _him_ to retreat, the Lord has delivered him into your hands. Horses, in a way very like this, display mettle by a continual expression of timidity.
p.198
I have Pastoral too (unread as well except for the chapter on Marvell), but not Structure of Complex Words. Thanks for the tip.
Knee-deep in Ambiguity now-- so great! genius reader, best prose I've read in a long time, and LOL witty too. Likely to go on an Empson jag now; thanks for the inspiration.
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