Zombie Jamboree
Dear Charlie St. Cloud,
I did not expect you to be good, and you certainly did not disappoint in that regard. In fact, you were embarrassing and ham-handed and rather putrid in parts. Also, Ray Liotta continues to look like a deranged axe murderer even when he is playing a Kindly Catholic Paramedic; ergo, I suspect he was miscast.
Having said that, Charlie St. Cloud, I must admit that you succeeded verily in scratching all kinds of anti-feminist emotional itches I’d like to pretend I don’t have (I went to a snotty liberal arts college! I use phrases like “ambitious, but problematic”! I’ve read Laura Mulvey!). Frankly, the experience of watching you was like having all the stupidest, most humiliating parts of my id reflected back at me in some kind of horrifying and delightful funhouse mirror. To my chagrin, I especially enjoyed the PG-13 frolicking in the graveyard (complete with artful cutaway shot) and the scene in which Zac Ephron (spoiler alert) revives a hypothermic girl WITH THE SHEER MOLTEN POWER OF HIS HOTNESS.
Apparently the theme of this week’s media consumption is “sex with the vaguely undead,” since yesterday I finished reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2005 and has recently been made into the kind of dullish art-house fare not even Kiera Knightley will be able to convince Tom to come and see with me. The book (the story of three British kids at a weird, creepy boarding school where Something is Clearly Amiss), while haunting and smartly written, left me feeling cold and annoyed at the end, like as much as I wanted to I could never quite get to caring about any of these people. Furthermore, it did absolutely nothing for my lady bits: ambitious but problematic, indeed.
So, Charlie St. Cloud, before you sail off into the sunset of your happy ending, tell me this: what is a girl to do, if she likes her romance and her handsome men just as much as she likes not feeling like an insipid moron? Is the world at large really incapable of producing a piece of entertainment that can serve both God and mammon? Didn’t we almost have it all?
Best of luck with your future endeavors. I look forward to hearing from you.
August 6, 2010 @ 3:56 pm
Okay I have NEVER commented on your blog before, so if I do this all wrong well . . . then I do it all wrong, but Zac Ephron hot really? We are talking about the dude in HS Musical, yeah? And he moved your lady bits? Hmmm. I am seriously skeptical.
But we all know that I agree with you about the unmoving of the lady bits in ‘Never Let Me Go,’ (yes, I know that’s supposed to be italicized, but I don’t know how to do so here. HTML? Yeah? No?) so huh.
August 6, 2010 @ 5:42 pm
Hate ghosts or anything that hints of ghosty-ness. This sounds like it does.
But really, I’m commenting on Zac Efron. I know he is supposed to be hot, but I remain unconvinced. There is a massive billboard of his face near our apartment and the first time we drove past it D asked “Is he supposed to look like that?” at the same second I said “Is it me or is he very cross eyed here?”. Perfect features, definitely. But somehow they add up to something that makes me feel creeped out instead of entranced.