Back to the 90's - 10 Things I Hate About You and some more recent recomendations

Ok, let's start with rereading that famed Kat Stratford sonnet that made all of our young hearts ache :

I hate the way you talk to me,
And the way you cut your hair.
I hate the way you drive my car.
I hate it when you stare.
I hate your big dumb combat boots,
And the way you read my mind.
I hate you so much it makes me sick.
(It even makes me rhyme.)
I hate the way you’re always right.
I hate it when you lie.
I hate it when you make me laugh—
Even worse when you make me cry.
I hate it when you’re not around, and the fact that you didn’t call.
But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you—not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.

And a re-watching for those who need it:

10 Things I Hate About You is a contemporary overhaul of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, not being a big fan of the bard I've never read any of his plays outside of what high school forced me to read, therefore I'm not familiar with this one.  I do love the movie though.

I probably adore a larger number of romantic dramas and romcoms than I care to admit, but unlike a the bulk of them, I'm not ashamed to admit my love for this one.  Maybe it's got something to do with how no one conforms to gain love, or that every character is blatantly flawed but it makes them more endearing rather annoying. Also it might have something to do with being told that I look a bit like (an Asian) Julia Stiles and that my high school personality reminded people of Kat Stratford and Stiles herself. I realize 10 Things isn't free of cliches, but it's better than most.

Watching 10 Things set me off on a bit of a romcom kick.  Sure, the two romcoms I followed up with were actually films I had to review for Toronto Film Scene, but my editor did give me a list to pick from and I blatantly chose the romanaces.

One of them was Two Seater Rocket, which screened this past weekend at the European Union Film Festival, Austria's answer to Amelie-esque whimsy.  It was a galant effort, but didn't quite do it for me. It was a bit more reality-based and less forcefully delightful than Michel Gondry's Mood Indigo (a huge disappointment for me earlier this year), but still some ways from winning me over.

What I do recommend is EUFF's opening film Fasten Your Seatbelts, which actually has 2 screenings, so there's still a chance to catch it on Nov 30th. I mention in my review that "Writer and director Ferzan Ozpetek presents us with some familiar characters, but even in this charted territory, the film is still wholly engaging." - examples being mismatched lovers, a wild amorous friend, the flighty aunt, and even a token gay character.  The thing I like best about the latter is that while the character of Fabio is gay and acts like a cliche gay man sometimes, he's not in the film to serve as comic relief, he has a rather sad and endearing back story which I love.

What's also interesting about Fasten Your Seatbelts is the non-linear fashion in which the story is told - events unfold, jump, and loop back.  There are unanswered questions, and we don't always find how certain situations turn out, but Ozpetek has spun these events together in a way so that our not knowing actually gives us hope.  It's the feelings that he invokes through the journey that stay with you, the scenes and dialogue that are treated with a delicacy that makes these otherwise ordinary occurrences memorable.

After completing my reviews, I continued to indulge my girly self with a re-watching of The F Word (aka What If for our friends in the US... what a lackluster alternate title).  I guess the good thing is the film itself is not lackluster, and no matter how many times I watch it, I can always appreciate an ode to the city of Toronto.  The way I feel about The F Word is similar to 10 Things and Fasten Your Seatbelts, the flawed characters that I can love inspite of everything.

I don't recall if I've mentioned on this blog my flip-flopping feelings towards Director Michael Dowse, who also made another film that I love:  It's All Gone Pete Tong.  However his Q&A following the screening of that particular film left me with some feelings of negativity.  The first time I saw The F Word was at Canada's Top 10, it was also followed by a Q&A with Dowse and that was fine (though I didn't ask him a question this time).  So I guess, in short, it's fine.

Watch the film(s), it's always best to focus on the films.

Back to the 90's - The Craft & Pump Up The Volume

In the interest of getting caught up, I'm going to double up on this blog post.  There are some obvious similarities between the two films - both of which feature outcasts who find their voice and find their power... perhaps a little too much power.

For Halloween, TIFF appropriately programmed The Craft, the 1996 film that rocketed goth culture to mainstream popularity (much to the dismay of the true goths perhaps).  There's so much about goth culture that I agree and disagree with to this day, but what interested me most about The Craft wasn't the fashion and eye make-up (tho I am to this day a fan of box purses, heavy mascara, and Urban Decay makeup), it was their take on paganism as both positive and negative, targeting it to a teenage audience.  It wasn't a completely accurate representation of the Wiccan faith, but it blended many elements of real rituals that impressionable young minds may have found it hard to distinguish.

Having been interested in horror, magic, and supernatural things since an early age meant I'd read up on witchcraft long before I saw this movie.  Both the medieval persecutions and the Salem witch trials were familiar territory, I even knew a little bit about modern witchcraft including Gerald Gardner and Aleister Crowley's names (if you're not a Crowley fan, don't get uppity that I mention him in conjunction with Wicca, I'm just referencing what's widely out there, true or not).  Still The Craft was really the first time I'd seen paganism and witchcraft detailed on screen in such a manner, I had grown up more accustomed to stuff like The Witches of Eastwick.

Not long after The Craft there was Practical Magic (1998), a more adult take on magic maybe, but also kind of a crappy movie.  I don't recall too many prominent magic (or magick) films since, horror and fantasy genre flicks aside of course.  One needs to look no further than Queen St. West to know that goth culture has gone back underground, along with it the mainstream's fascination with paganism.

On a related note: The Craft star Fairuza Balk has most recently been involved with a documentary film called Beyond Clueless, which has been doing the festival circuit.  It takes a look at teen movies and their impact on contemporary cinema.  My (fellow 90's teen movie enthusiast) BFF and I checked it out at Hot Docs earlier this year, it didn't bowl us over but was a nice trip down memory lane.

Pump Up The Volume hit theatres in 1990, right at the start of the decade, featuring high school students who felt heavily pressured to conform.  This made the film very Gen-X in my eyes.  Having been born at the tail end of Gen X, and sometimes finding myself lumped into the (unrelateable) Millennials category in surveys, I'm part of that age group that in some ways feels the most lost because on top of potentially being a part of a more aimless generation, we're not even sure if we quite belong to it!  That's a whole other discussion though.

It wasn't until many years after Pump Up The Volume was made that I realized what a 90's time capsule the movie really is.  Waves of deja vu hit me watching these kids with boom boxes and cassette tape dubs.  Fine, these are also found in Facebook memes as well, but others went beyond.  Seeing friends on the phone with each other while simultaneously listening to a radio show reminded me of lunch hours with my friend Christopher, when we would race to our respective homes at lunch, call each other, and proceed to chat while listening to 680's Top 12 at 12 (groaning that our favourite rap song only made it to #2 while some bogus R&B track topped that day's countdown).  Then there is one scene in Pump Up the Volume where a girl holds the phone up to the radio so that her friend on the other end can hear.  I had a phase in middle school where my friend Dejana and I were addicted to a teen soap called Swan's Crossing (my first glimpse of Sarah Michelle Gellar being evil btw - more of that to come when TIFF screens Cruel Intentions!) I would program my VCR to record the show which aired at noon, but who could wait until after school?  We would dash to Dejana's whenever possible, but then there was the problem that we had to head back at 12:50 to make it before the bell, causing us to  miss the last 7 mins or so of the episode.  Our solution:  after school I would play back the last 7 mins I had recorded over the phone so that she would hear how the episode ended. 

A more personal connection I have with Pump Up the Volume is that a friend of mine loved Christian Slater and this movie.  Always having been a little insecure herself, coupled with a love of unusual things, Pump Up the Volume probably spoke volumes to Monique. The fact that she adored the film's star Christian Slater didn't hurt either. Monique is no longer with us, so when I see this movie I think of her and the good times we had in high school.

I'm not sure there has been many other movies like Pump Up the Volume since, please point out any glaring omissions.  It's my hopes that (as the end of the movie alludes to) technology has helped to give rise to a diversity of voices and so fewer people are finding it difficult to express themselves.  

Talk hard. Blog hard.

Back to the 90's - Buffy the Vampire Slayer

So I disliked Clueless in the 90's, but I thought the Buffy movie flat out sucked.  In 1992 my idea of monsters were Dr. Giggles and Candyman, not some vampires who got their asses handed to them by a blonde bimbo and Dylan McKay from 90210.  As well, those stakings in Buffy were not gruesome deaths, and the vampires merely bit your neck, showing a complete lack of creativity.  I wanted dismemberment. Then if you were to assess the psychological horror factor, this was definitely no Stephen King.

In conclusion, the Buffy movie was so beneath my snobby 13 year old notice that this was actually only my 2nd time seeing it because I have made zero effort to rewatch it in 22 years. Now, of course, I would later become a fan of the TV series and movie writer - now director/producer/god - Joss Whedon. Without getting into too much dissection, I would say that the TV series was a maturing and development of Whedon's writing skills.  The movie was like a weak pilot, a premise on which he was to expand, flush out, etc. I'm glad the movie was made, otherwise we would've never had the Buffy series, the Angel spin-off, the creed that Whedon needed to create everything that he's done to this day.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer the movie is like Christopher Nolan's The Following! It's what you tolerate and try to make the best of knowing what a genius the maker of that little project became.

Couple of parting thoughts:

I didn't look closely enough during these scene, but that's gotta be a bodysuit Hillary's wearing right? Man I still want those earrings!  Only thing is missing is a hair tie with a matching daisy flower on it.

Luke Perry looked so much better without the James Dean wanna be hair, he's pretty cute here.  David Arquette... ???