Rating: A-

What’s it about? 22-year old slacker Scott Pilgrim meets the girl of his dreams, but must defeat her seven evil exes in battle before he can date her.

What’s its Bechdel Test Score?

2/3 – the girls only talk to each other about Scott, which is a step back from the books where they sometimes talked about other things too. There is a “small talk” conversation or two but it’s just tense, coded talk about boys.

What About Minorities?

B for effort? I guess? Knives is still Chinese (if she wasn’t I would be raging so hard), and she is actually more awesome than in the books, BUT the Japanese twins don’t even get any lines? Which was weird? A lot more attention was paid to Matthew Patel’s Indian-ness than in the comics which… I don’t think was necessary. But other than that it was pretty faithful.

So…

I was pretty into the Scott Pilgrim comic books, so I was apprehensive about the movie version. I had my doubts going in, but I ended up enjoying it a lot. On its own its fun, and funny, and cute, and as an adaptation it’s decent, though they made a few choices that I thought were a bit strange.

Michael Cera was the part I was most apprehensive about. I still think he was miscast, but he surprised me. Scott is a rather unlikeable character in the books, being a young man who is selfish and a bad boyfriend, and Michael Cera does little to make him more likeable, but I wasn’t super put off by his performance. I was hoping he’d be showing us a different side of him, but he is sort of doing his same old thing, and I think Scott should’ve been played by someone else. I was also pretty disappointed at the girls who played Ramona, Envy Adams, and Kim, those three being such strong personalities in the books that were sort of reduced to one or two traits. So there was a combination of writing, directing and acting gone wrong for those three.

However, newcomer Ellen Wong, who plays jilted 17-year-old Knives Chau, knocked it out of the park. She kind of made this movie for me (her and the running joke about Wallace’s growing collection of boyfriends). Knives was a bit annoying in the books, so I was afraid she’d be super annoying in the movies, but Wong brought something to her that just made me want to cuddle her constantly, and I appreciate the character in a whole new light now.

Visually, this movie is a gem. It’s fun to watch, the cinematography is awesome and the graphics and fights are really cool.

I can see why they made some of the changes they did, and it doesn’t wreck the story. However, given the time constraints, it missed out on a lot of the emotional depth of both Scott and Ramona, and all the little touches that made the books so good – namely Knives growing up and getting over Scott halfway through the series, the friendship between Ramona and Kim, all of Kim’s backstory, and the recurrence of Envy Adams. The movie also kind of missed the point about the lesson Scott needed to learn.

The movie also really reduced Ramona to not one iota as cool as she was in the books, and took away her big moments of self discovery. (Also her wardrobe and hair were not NEARLY as cool as they should’ve been.)

I don’t think it was a right move to streamline the story into a month instead of one year. I had trouble believing somebody would go through all this trouble for someone they only knew a week or two. I don’t think it would’ve made a big difference to the production or the film length to have it spread out over several months.

All these problems came from making the film too dang early. The final book of the series came out a scant two or three weeks before the movie did. While the movie was completely loyal to the first book, it diverged more and more and compressed more and more with each subsequent book, which I think was weird – I would’ve compressed the first book since the emotional stuff that comes later is more important. I almost think it would’ve been better as two films, but I can see why that would’ve been a hard sell. In either case, I think they should have let the books just come out and sit around for a while before making a movie version. The script would probably have been better if it wasn’t so rushed.

I mean, they did a decent job of cutting it down to two hours and giving it one or two major themes to carry it, but I did miss a lot of the other stuff that made the books so rich. And when you’re telling a story about an ultimately unlikeable young person, you need all that richness to carry it. I can see people being put off by Scott in the movie and just not caring about him at all.

Also, I’m really disappointed that the Japanese twins didn’t get any lines! What the hell. And making Matthew Patel’s song into a Bollywood song was stupid. Come on Edgar Wright, I expect better of you.

Despite all that, I did have a lot of fun at the movie, was pleasantly surprised at how good all the music was, and how funny it was, and I would probably watch it again. It’s a movie I ended up talking about a lot, which is great. But, not to sound like a snob, the books are about a billion times better. So I would recommend the movie (if you are kind of a dork and like video games, at least), and if you liked it, I would certainly recommend the books. If you hate video games you will probably find this movie pretty annoying.

Grade: B-

What’s it About? In a world where trained operatives can infiltrate dreams, Don Cobb takes a job to implant ideas so he can finally go home and see his children.

What’s Its Bechdel Test Score? 2/3, briefly.

What About Minorities? There are minorities in the main cast, but neither are American, and they are far outnumbered by white people. The movie does go to a lot of interesting international locations though.

So…

I liked this movie a lot when I first watched it, but it’s one of those things that I like less and less the more I think about it. At first I thought it was so original and interesting, but then it just dragged on and on and got boring.

One thing I really really like about it was the special effects – I usually don’t give a crap about special effects because they’re so gratuitous. But here they’re not just there for their own sake, they’re not just there to dazzle you with what special effects people can do, but rather, the talents of special effects people were put to good use to enhance the story. There was only one small moment when the effects looked fake to me, but they were always necessary and always played a role instead of just being a bunch of flashy crap. The zero-g fight scenes were amazing and my favourite parts of the movie, and it seems like they were the favourites of many other people as well.

However, none of the characters were remotely interesting. This movie wants you to ask what’s really going on and have these big debates about it, but it’s really hard to care. It could have been just a bunch of random things happening for how little I was invested in these characters. As a result, many of the “tense” action scenes ended up feeling very boring. It was a very navel-gazing type of movie. Will they succeed? Who cares? Was it all a dream? Who cares?

I certainly don’t see the need to see it again.

And it’s such a shame because I know this cast is really good. Ken Watanabe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cillian Murphy, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt – all among the top of my list of favourite actors. Fantastic, brilliant actors just wasted on super boring, undeveloped characters. They just walked around saying stuff, and sometimes got in cool fights. But I just didn’t care. The dreams were also super mundane. Why weren’t wacky things happening in the dreams? I’ve never seen more boring dreams in my life. The worst thing is when you dream about your normal life, going to work or whatever, so watching a movie about boring dreams is even worse.

I’m beginning to think Christopher Nolan is better off making movies adapted from other stories, as perhaps that’s where the depth of character in his other films come from. This is my least favourite movie of his to date, with the possible exception of the Dark Knight which was an incredible snooze fest. Of course this movie wasn’t Memento, and no movie ever could be, but it doesn’t even hold a candle to the Prestige, which was itself a mere shadow to Memento.

I guess I can see why people liked it, but it’s way over-hyped, and it’s not even really that smart. It’s not hard to figure out. It doesn’t require multiple viewings to “get it”. Are people just so used to incredibly dumb movies that when they’re asked to actually remember something that happened on screen twenty minutes ago, their minds are blown? Seems like it.

Anyway, if you liked the themes of collective dreams and the shenanigans one can pull therein, here are some books you might like:

Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith

One of Us by Michael Marshall Smith (not much collective dreaming, but the whole idea of implanting ideas and memories is used a lot)

Vurt by Jeff Noon. (This one is really fucked up, but a very good book.)

Rating: C+ 

What’s it About? When a famous super villain is overshadowed by a young upstart, he adopts three little girls to use in his master plot to steal the moon.

What’s its Bechdel Test Score?

3/3 – the three little girls in it have their own agenda of getting a new family, but at the end of the day they have little character growth and are just there for Gru to learn a lesson.

I was pretty disappointed by this movie. I wasn’t too enticed by the trailers when I saw them, but I let myself be swayed by word of mouth, and since I like most kids movies anyway I figured I’d go see it. However, it’s not that funny, the 3D is a crutch that is exploited more than any other aspect of the movie and doesn’t really help the story, and the story drags a lot in the first half.

I did end up having an emotional connection, and I got a little teary in the moments when Gru was reading the girls a bedtime story, but I wish we had had more time to spend with the girls than we did. Too much time was spent on the other villains and the world of villainy, it could have been streamlined a lot, or at least weaved into the family story a bit better so it wasn’t a suuuper long and boring first half.

I suppose kids will like this film, but there was potential for it to be a lot smarter than it was, and that’s a bummer.

MPAA Rating: PG

What’s it About?
Twelve-year-old Dre moves to China with his mother, where he is bullied relentlessly by local kung fu students. The building maintenance man Mr Hahn agrees to teach him kung fu, and an important lesson about himself.

What’s its Bechdel Test Score?
Technically this movie is a pass, but I am sick of these “technical” passes. I think the Bechdel Test needs to be amended so that the women characters are actually part of the plot and speak to each other, instead of being separate from each other and speaking to other minor female characters. Also, I really want to see more surrogate mother/daughter relationships. You see tons of surrogate father/sons, (and sometimes mother/son or father/daughter),and I really like them, so I don’t see why we can’t have that with the ladies.

What about Minorities?
Minority protagonist, A+! I really really liked that an African-American child represented the All-American child, even if Jaden Smith is the son of Hollywood royalty and this movie wouldn’t have been made with an unknown black child actor. It’s a step in the right direction in any case.

So…

The Karate Kid is a reboot of the 1980s movie, with the exact same story structure and beats, with even some of the same lines and actions intact. The tweaks made to modernize it, however, were very successful and definitely improved on the original movie.

Jaden Smith is just fantastic here. I have been reading a lot of negative reviews towards his performance, and I just don’t get it. He is a little bit awkward and bumbly, but what twelve year old isn’t? The awkwardness rang very true to me, and his performance mostly felt genuine. I can understand people getting annoyed at the children of famous actors getting big breaks, but, uh, it’s not like Jaden Smith was the first.

The kung fu also looked very real, and it felt real when people got hit. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen really real looking martial arts, and it was very refreshing. It was even better that it’s a bunch of super talented and cute kids and looks amazing.

The other actors are very good as well. The girlfriend character is cute, but I think she also made the American boy who befriends Dre in the beginning kind of redundant. The friendship between the two boys is not very well developed, and I didn’t even care when he showed up at the kung fu championship. They just needed someone for Dre to speak English to, and since the girl speaks English fluently, she could have just approached him. But I supposed since she’s a girl she has to sit around and wait to be courted, ugh. The friendship between them is far more important than the romance, so Dre didn’t really need a friend and a girlfriend.

Anyways, Jackie Chan is as fantastic as always. There are moments of humour but his character is mostly quite dark, which is a good move for him. He had a chance to really act and he’s pretty good! The bits of humour made it more believable. The small tweaks and updates to his character are among the main reasons I think this movie is better than the original. Mr Miyagi, in the original, fought for the US Army in the second world war, while his wife and child were in an internment camp. There is an obnoxious emphasis on how truly American Mr Miyagi is, while obviously that does not factor into the remake at all. Mr Miyagi doesn’t really have any flaws besides being sad about his family. He just exists to teach the boy magical mystical karate. He is essentially a kind of Magical Negro in that movie.

In the reboot, Mr Hahn’s sad history is actually a mistake he made. When he tells Dre about the ethics of kung fu, about how it lives in what you do and how you treat people, he is clearly recalling his own mistakes. He learns from Dre and gains just as much as he gives. This makes him a much more flawed, complete, and genuine human being. Such a small change to the story can bring such a human touch to the characters! However, the rivalry between Mr Hahn and the evil kung fu sifu is never really explained.

I also happen to think kung fu is more fun to watch than karate. I really think they should’ve changed the title to the Kung Fu Kid, which apparently was supposed to be the plan for a while. I thought there would be clever writing to explain it away – I had heard beforehand that the bullies would call Dre “Karate Kid” as an insult, but I didn’t catch it. I think the title The Karate Kid alienates kung fu fans who probably would’ve really liked this, and fans of the original movie who wanted to see karate.

It’s also a bit too long, and I’m surprised so many kids are sitting through the whole thing. Some of the bullying scenes got repetitious and a little gratuitous. It might have been good to have seen a more realistic portrayal of race relations in China – I have heard conflicting anecdotes about how the Chinese see black people, but I have a feeling that being American would trump being black. Although, Will Smith (Jaden’s father) has famously said America is not racist (despite all those brilliant Fresh Prince episodes dealing with racism!) so I don’t suppose he would research the situation in China either. (This movie was, of course, produced by Will Smith.) However, the inclusion of a racism theme might have just made everything sad. Like I said earlier, Dre is the All-American child in this story, and kid’s movies don’t have to include every single real life lesson possible. And there were certainly tinges of racism in the fact that he was being bullied, and when his girlfriend’s parents disapproved of him. It didn’t need to really be said out loud. He would’ve been bullied if he was white, sure, but it still would’ve been for being an outsider, and I think the girlfriend’s parents would have been a bit more welcoming if that was the case, too.

At the end of the day though, it’s a really touching and uplifting movie, with funny moments and awesome, fun kung fu scenes and beautiful scenery of both Beijing and the Chinese countryside. There’s something for everybody, and I’d recommend it to anyone!

Yeah, I’m saying it. “The Last Airbender” is racist. I have been attacked in another forum, when discussing Avatar, for having the gall to say that racism is a legitimate reason to not like a film. But I’d say a given film being racist is in the top three non-fannish reasons to not support said film. The other two reasons being 1) a given film is sexist and 2) the director of a given film is a convicted child rapist still somehow walking free.

There are numerous wonderful and articulate posts floating around on the internet that lay out the case for not paying to see this film better than I can. And given the growing number of incredibly negative reviews from many different parties, it’s not really necessary at this point for me to contribute to the white noise.

What I’d like to do is share a little fancast. A lot of the talk about the race issues in this movie has focused on the source material’s Asian inspirations, with mention of the First Nations/Inuit influence, but usually only a mention. Racebending has tried to keep this issue part of the focus, but in the wider discussion it tends to get lost. It seems like a lot of people are convinced that there aren’t any Native/First Nation/Inuit actors to choose from.

That is ridiculous.

Here are my choices for Katara and Sokka, two of the main heroes of the series Avatar: The Last Airbender (one of the best TV shows of all time), and their family. They belong to the Southern Water Tribe, one of two tribes in the ATLA world based on an awesome mashup of indigenous cultures, mostly various Inuit/Yupik and Pacific Northwest aboriginal cultures. This is mostly indicated by their skin tents, their igloos, their parkas, Katara’s “authentic Inuit hairstyle” (direct quote from the commentary on the series pilot), their canoes, and yes, their colouring. Some other indigenous cultures are referenced as well, in their catamarans and Sokka’s boomerang. The evidence is overwhelmingly in support of Native American/Inuit Water Tribes.

All of my fantasy actors are First Nations people.

So, under the cut, here’s the fancast!

SOKKA

Bronson Pelletier

Sokka is 15/16 years old in the series, a cynical non-bender (non-magic) guy, who was left in charge of the Southern Water Tribe when his father went to war. He is sarcastic, hilarious, whiny, and gosh dang sexist at the beginning of the series. He is also incredibly smart (being an uneducated, pre-industrial kid who goes on to invent submarines), charming, a ladies’ man, and very big hearted. He has the most amazing character growth in a male character I’ve seen over the three years, going from arrogant and sexist to really compassionate and understanding – and in love with a girl who can (and regularly does) kick his ass.

The biggest thing people usually take away from Sokka is his charm and humour.

I want Sokka to be real so badly, so I can make out with him constantly.

Bronson Pelletier has been on television for a few years now. He had a starring role in the Canadian series Renegade Press.com, a Degrassi-type show about some kids that ran a news blog. It was very hard hitting. He was also on Dinosapien? Which I guess is about dinosaurs? Anyways you can’t hold my ignorance of the dinosaur show against him. I saw him numerous times on RP.com and he can act. He has experience.

Bronson joined the Twilight cast for New Moon, giving him a lot more experience, a lot of exposure, and a lot of fans. He is certainly rising in the heart-throb charts.

Bronson is a few years younger than Jackson Rathbone, making him closer to Sokka’s 15/16. He’s also, in my opinion, about ten times hotter than Rathbone.

Ayup

KATARA

14 year old Katara, Sokka’s little sister, is the last water bender among her people. She has a deep connection to her culture, and is fiercely protective of Aang (the last airbender). She wants to bring water bending back, and to help it flourish. By the time she is 14, water bending is more or less a lost art, to the point that Sokka even scoffs at it. To me, this is reminiscent of real life First Nations languages and other cultural practices that suffered a blow in recent history when the colonizers of Canada the United States tried to stamp them out, but are experiencing a kind of revival.

When Katara travels to the Northern Water Tribe she finds out that women are forbidden to learn water bending, and she stands up to this injustice, even though it’s really hard for her. She is courageous, loving, kind hearted, dorky and hilarious in her own right, but will also be assertive and get the job done when she needs to.

Rachel Colwell will water-whip you

Rachel Colwell, in an interesting twist, actually played Broson Pelletier’s little sister in RP.com. It ran for five seasons, so Rachel got a lot of television and acting experience. There aren’t many pics of her on the internet, so here’s a short clip – remember, RP.com is a lot like Degrassi in tone, maybe a bit darker. It’s a little hammy. But I think this clip shows that she would be a good Katara.

HAKODA

Hakoda is Sokka and Katara’s father, the widowed leader of the Southern Water Tribe who has been away at war for years. He is wise, kind, dorky, and ~*totally dreamy*~.

Adam Beach is a Dreamboat

Adam Beach is also all of these things. He has been acting for yeeaaaarrs. You’ve seen him in Mystery, Alaska, Windtalkers, Flags of our Fathers, and numerous episodes of Law and Order: SVU and Big Love, among other things. He is a brilliant actor, and fairly well known, with a strong fanbase. He is also considered a heart throb, at least among the ladies of Jezebel, if the Big Love open threads were anything to go by.

At about 38 years of age, he is arguably pretty young to play Hakoda. The world ATLA is set in, however, seems to be one where kids grow up fast and people marry young. 16-year-old Sokka is heard, at one point, musing about marriage as a fact of like, something that will certainly happen to him sooner or later, probably sooner, and it’s a very different feeling from a modern teenager talking about it. One of Sokka’s love interests, 16-year-old Yue, is already engaged. It is not a stretch for me to think in this world that a just-barely-40 year old man has teenaged children.

Which brings me to GranGran.

GRANGRAN KANNA

GranGran is the kids’ grandmother – presumably Hakoda’s mother. She starts off being fairly simply the kind, elderly figure they love and want to protect. But she’s also no-nonsense, and incredibly smart and perceptive. When the kids travel north they find out that when she was a young woman, she ran away from an arranged marriage in the Northern Water Tribe and travelled the world by herself, before coming to the South. (After spending a whole television season in this universe, you’d know why this was no small feat.) If she had any say in how awesome Katara and Sokka turned out, she must be pretty awesome herself.

Tantoo Cardinal is friggin awesome.

Tantoo Cardinal has been acting on film since the 1970s. You’ve seen her in Dances With Wolves, Legends of the Fall and episodes of Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman and North of 60.

Tantoo holds the prestigious Order of Canada for her work in helping to develop aboriginal performing arts, and founding the Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company.

EVERYBODY ELSE

Bato? Yue? Hahn? Chief Arnook? Everybody else at both Water Tribes?

I have only listed Canadian actors here, and as you might know, Canada has a small population. I’m sure there are dozens more, just as qualified indigenous actors all over the United States. Canada has a thriving indigenous theatre scene, and I’d be shocked to learn that the United States doesn’t have one as well. There are First Nations theatre and filmmaking groups all over Canada, as well as things like the Centre for Indigenous Theatre. Some of the best plays I’ve seen in the last few years were put on by First Nations theatre groups.

In fact, just last week I was at a graduation screening for the Indigenous Independent Digital Film Making program at Capilano University, and some of those kids are incredibly talented – we’re talking about directors, in this case, but the talent pool is certainly there!

This is all just basically off the top of my head, as a non-native casual observer of the arts here in Canada. There has to be countless more talented actors across both Canada and the United States. I see no reason to believe First Nations/Native/Inuit people should not be cast in any adaption of ATLA. (Especially the HBO series reboot I want to do one day.)

Who would you cast?

ETA:

Awesome suggestions! In the comments Jordan suggests Q’orianka Kilcher (from The New World) as Yue.

Over at racebending, smillaraaq@livejournal says:

A few more ideas, from both Canada and the U.S.: Eric Schweig would be great for a slightly older Hakoda, or Bato; Michael Greyeyes and Moses Brings Plenty are in that same early-40s range that would work well for Bato or the other adult Water Tribe warriors; Irene Bedard could do flashbacks of Kya or young Hama; Wes Studi would be a great Chief Arnook, and Rick Mora or Solomon Trimble could be Hahn… For Pakku, hmmm, maybe Russell Means? He’s in the right age range to be an elder if Hakoda, Arnook, Bato, etc. are being played by actors in their forties and fifties, and he’s even got a slight receding hairline.

Irene Bedard for Kya, Sokka and Katara's mother

Eric Schweig for Hakoda

Michael Greyeyes for Bato

Moses Brings Plenty for Bato

Wes Studi for Chief Arnook

Q'orianka Kilcher for Princess Yue

Rick Mora for Hahn

Solomon Trimble for Hahn

Russell Means for Master Pakku

Rating: G

What’s It About?
Andy’s going to college, and Woody and the gang try to find a way to stay relevant.

What’s Its Bechdel Test Score?
3/3, very surprisingly! But also just briefly.

What About Minorities?
Everybody is a toy. The human-based toys are all white, but, that tends to be how it is in real life, so. There is a shy little girl that Woody befriends who is, I believe, Hispanic, and Pixar is usually pretty good about fleshing out their world with a diversity that doesn’t feel tokenistic.

So…

I was originally going to give this movie a lower rating, because I felt it wasn’t as exciting or dynamic as the first two and didn’t hold my attention as well. But after thinking about it, I really do like it as much as the other two. It’s certainly worth checking out. I saw it in 2D so I can’t speak for the 3D of it, and if it will actually add anything to the story, but I’m sure it looks great – animations are about the only times I think 3D should be used at all, really.

When taken as the third part of a story that is all about Woody the Cowboy doll, it’s a really, really great conclusion. It completes his arc perfectly. The other two stories were about him being perpetually anxious about being unloved by Andy, his child – replaced, or outgrown, or whatever. This third movie finally makes him confront the logical end of this fear, in Brave Little Toaster-esque fashion, the threat of really being turned into trash. The climax is an amazing sequence. I was on the edge of my seat.

There is so much to talk about in this film, especially in the context of it being the last of a trilogy. I went and rewatched the other two and wow, if you haven’t seen this movie yet, I would totally recommend giving the other two a quick watch (or skim) before you do. It is so much more enjoyable.

Since I watched this movie, I’ve been thinking a lot about the really simple metaphor that resonates with children and with adults, whether they know it or not. On the one level you have a child’s fear of being unloved by their parents or being replaced by a younger sibling – this is most obvious in the first film, of course, when Woody is terrified by being replaced by Buzz and resents him. Kids, being so helpless and dependent on their parents’ love, are sometimes afraid of losing that love, of being forgotten. It is easy to identify with Woody in the second film, wanting a guarantee of a love that will never forget him.

This third film, I think, is a bit more adult in theme. In this movie I saw Woody, someone who was secure in his worth, and his ability to be loved, surrounded by characters who were hurt and broken and wanted to bring him down to their level. This speaks to me more as an adult than it would, I think, as a child, unless I am just not remembering what it was like. Whether we know it our not, we are often surrounded by people trying to make us conform to their own issues, our friends or significant others or dysfunctional families (unless you are a lucky person who is issue-free and surrounded by similar people). This can manifest itself in various addicts enabling each other (whether the addiction be drugs, or food, or shopping, or sadness, or what have you), or to people simply holding each other back from their full potential.

Woody has the other toys left in Andy’s room as his emotional family. Over the years they have been whittled down to a core group, and the movie does a good job of keeping the focus on them, the speaking and named characters we remember most from the past two movies. Other characters we remember get a mention to explain their absence, and it’s not done in an over expositional or gabby way – it’s emotional and organic. So the other toys – Buzz, Jesse, the Potato Heads etc – are worried about being thrown out when Andy goes to college, while Woody is secure in his belief that this will never happen to them.

After a series of misunderstandings, the toys all end up being donated to a daycare, where they meet a bunch of other toys. Much like in Toy Story 2, they’re not all they seem, and sinister plots are afoot. These sinister toys are those toxic people, determined to bring Woody down no matter how self-secure he is, because their own issues are so huge they cannot let anyone else live without them. I might completely be reading too much into this, but I just love seeing a theme like that in a childrens movie.

It’s all about knowing who you are and never falling for somebody else’s gimmicks. I love the way the movie forced Woody to confront feelings that he had bottled up, and to adopt a new way of looking at his situation and what was really important to him.

Pixar just continually blows me away. There is no line, or look, or event in this movie that isn’t resonant on several levels – developing character, advancing plot, and either foreshadowing or recalling an event in this film or the past two. This is all it takes, really, to write a good movie, but Pixar just does it so elegantly I can’t even get over it.

I was surprised at how many female toys got screen time in this one, in comparison to the other two, which are huge sausage fests. They are still the minority, and Mrs Potato Head is about as annoying as any of the other supporting cast (and really, T-Rex is dang annoying), but it’s definitely an improvement on the last two films. In Toy Story 2, Jesse the Cowgirl mostly just mopes around and then waits to be rescued. In this film, she gets to play a much more active role. However, she still mostly exists to bring out Buzz’s story (he’s still struggling with his spaceman soldier stoicism and resisting having feelings).

Thing is, even in this limited role, Jesse is a very sympathetic character, if you remember Toy Story 2. She’s deeply broken and starving for love, and it’s hard not to identify with her. It’s just a shame that, as one of very few female characters, she’s sort of accidentally representing all girls in this universe. But it’s easy to overlook.

(Also, can we talk about Buzz for a second? I just adore the way all the shots focusing on him really feel like a space adventure, that he still sort of approaches everything with a Captain Kirk mindset. It’s just all those details that make this world so amazing for me.)

The most surprising part of this movie, to me, was how it treated Barbie. It was a huge improvement from the last movie, where various Barbie dolls were the butt of mild sexy-dumb-girl jokes. Barbie here is a multi-faceted, carefully drawn character, who is important and organic to the plot. She cleverly belongs to Andy’s little sister, so while she is friends with the main toys and helps them on their journey, she is not shoehorned in to Woody’s emotional family. She gets to have her own story, and even gets a coda at the end of the film with her happy ending.

Yes, of course her story features falling in love with a Ken doll, but frankly that wouldn’t be so bad if Jesse the Cowgirl wasn’t mostly there to crush on Buzz Lightyear. What else is a Barbie doll supposed to do? What surprised me, in a good way, was how much she did for the plot in addition to this, to advance it, and how complicated her relationship with Ken really was. I’m pretty impressed because, obviously, Pixar had to do some Mattel-pleasing to be able to use her and Ken. This is a good look for Barbie.

Toy Story 3 is, simply put, pretty great. It’s a perfect end to the trilogy and will certainly tug at your heartstrings.

Rating: 18A

What’s It About?
A young girl goes on a quest for sexual experience to win the heart of a boy she loves.

What’s its Bechdel Test Score?
3/3. Sammy has two female allies and encounters other women, and even though the plot revolves around sex and Sammy’s crush on a boy, they all manage to have much deeper conversations, very effectively tying Sammy’s external “problem” to her real, inner issues.

What about Minorities?
There is a wise old Japanese lady I was a bit worried about at first, but she’s really cool, and her mentor role doesn’t diminish her as a full character. Other than that, this was the whitest depiction of Vancouver I’ve ever seen.

So…

I enjoyed this movie, going to see it a whim after a stressful day at work. It was a really lovely way to wind down and exactly what I wanted – a quiet, quirky little film that wasn’t too showy or in your face.

21-year old Sammy Smalls is a newly independent young woman, living in her own apartment in the big city and working as a store detective (a job that apparently requires the donning of several disguises, which was an aspect I liked – what a cool girl!). She has overprotective parents and a very small sense of self worth, despite a huge and kind heart. This comes from being a sickly child (an allusion is made to cancer but I’m not sure if it was a hundred percent serious). As a result of treatments from her child hood, she is very small, and as a “bum leg”, which is barely noticeable, really. However she is deeply insecure about it, wearing two pairs of jeans to hide her smallness, sinking in on herself and hiding inside her own posture.

She is in love with a street musician named Eugene, and they almost hook up, but he can’t handle her self-conscious giggling and tells her they can’t be together until she gets some sexual experience. It’s blunt and painful and he’s such an awful jerk, but I think him saying that to her is an effective metaphor to how lots of young people feel about love and sex – that they can’t be with someone they love until they are really good at sex. But of course, some people are just more sexual than others, some people enjoy casual sex more than others, and some people are naturally “good” at it and some people aren’t, like anything else. The struggle is finding out what really works for you, personally, and whether or not fitting in is worth sacrificing what works for you, personally.

It was prescient, to me as a woman in her twenties, seeing this girl struggle with her sexual identity. The usual stuff was there – not being as flirtatious as other people, not being aware of the ways in which she is attractive, and in particular, having an insecurity about her body that really prevents her from getting close to people. I think many young women can identify with this, and it was really wonderful and heartwarming to see a story where this girl finds her sexuality and identity in pleasing herself.

Sammy gets advice from a girl she works with, who may or may not be a former porn star, who gives very good advice. She simply tells Sammy to please herself, and that she is beautiful no matter what anybody says. She also has my favourite line – “I met my girlfriend on the internet. I see her now and then but I prefer her online.”

Sammy also gets advice from an elderly lady whose dog she sometimes walks, Mrs Nakamura. She also gives her great advice, and Sammy’s issue clearly becomes less about sex and more about just plain self-esteem, living for yourself, for the moment, and doing things that make you happy. The metaphor of skinny dipping is used for this, and at first it’s presented as a sexual thing – Mrs Nakamura skinny dipped with past lovers as a young woman, Sammy sees a couple skinny dipping one night – but in the end, skinny dipping is something Sammy just has to do for herself because she wants to and she can. There is a really beautiful moment where Sammy tries to break into a pool to skinny dip, hurting herself in the process, only to find that it was much easier to get in than she had anticipated.

The Canadian-ness lends itself well to the film in the realness of the characters – Sammy is adorable (and I couldn’t believe this was Cristin Miloti’s big screen debut), the young “hot” characters are definitely “hot”, but I also liked the realness and dumpiness of the other people Sammy encounters/sleeps with. I found the realness of various sex scenes (all avoiding full nudity and being very tasteful and off-camera) hotter than the ones with “hot” young people. The hottest scene of all was when Sammy finally figures out how to masturbate, which for her, has nothing to do with touching herself “down there”, an area she has insecurities about.

It is not without its problems, of course. The biggest problem is that the boy, Eugene, is just awful. I think the film wants us to sympathize with him, after a fashion – he goes on a quest to get sexual experience as well, and lives the life of a party boy hipster, while trying to mourn his mother and reconcile his memories of her and his father’s description of her. He comes around in the end, of course, and becomes a Nice Guy again, but frankly he was just too awful to Sammy and his behaviour with everybody else in the movie is just stupid and unlikeable. I don’t care how much he’s “changed” by the end of the movie – Sammy is still way too good for him.

The ending, thus, was more or less totally wrecked for me. Sammy made this great, huge transformation, but still wanted this shitty guy in the end. She was worth so much more than that, and I wish she had realized it.

It also could’ve been a lot funnier. It just sort of coasted along, giving me a wry smile, but it never really made me laugh out loud. It had the potential too, and you’d think with Will Sasso (from MadTV) in the cast, it could’ve gone all the way. I do feel it suffered a bit from a Canadian inferiority complex, and while it was quite a good effort for a Canadian film, it stopped itself short before going all the way.

I’ve liked Sook-Yin Lee for a long time – perhaps as a person more than an artist – so perhaps I was expecting a bit more. This is her debut feature length screenplay and feature length film, and it’s a good effort. I will definitely be watching her next film, but I just wish this one had been funnier and had less of that stupid boy.

The Year of the Carnivore is a nice bet if you’re looking for something quiet, short, and quirky, but it would benefit from a few more laughs.

What’s Its Bechdel Test Score?
100% but only technically. It squeaked by. The women characters didn’t talk about plot really at all, they made a lot of small talk, and none of them were particularly well developed characters.

What About Minorities?
The main character is Jewish, (like Trotsky himself) but besides him, other minorities are seen and not heard. The only non-white supporting character with any substantive amount of lines or screen time was this kid Dwight, who was the butt of a joke. The joke was that he was kind of a dick and everyone hated him? They yelled at him to shut up a lot, which was funny at first until it became several white people constantly telling the only non-white kid around to shut up. There is a white gay high school boy featured prominently who was refreshingly not a stereotype at all, and among my favourite characters.

So…

The Trotsky is getting a lot of hype and press for a Canadian film, partially due to the rising fame of its star Jay Baruchel (How to Train Your Dragon), and the screenplay’s prize winning status at Praxis. It also features a cameo by Ben Mulroney, son of the former Prime Minister, host of Canadian reality shows and all around laughingstock, making light of himself and being a good sport.

It’s a cute movie! And it has a cute premise. 17-year-old rich kid Leon believes himself to be the reincarnation of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, and thinks he has to live his life exactly as the original Trotsky did, down to who he falls in love with and getting exiled from his home. But this is a different time, of course, and revolutions don’t simply happen in safe, wealthy countries.

It’s refreshing for a Canadian film for the quality of the film production, most of the performances and for its humour, and the fact that it isn’t afraid of its message. This isn’t a film with an inferiority complex. Leon, the hero, actually goes and tries to get stuff done, instead of being mostly reactive and passive, which Canadian heroes sometimes have a problem with. (In my opinion, this mirrors the Canadian public’s general passiveness and timidity when it comes to activism or government, but that is another post for another day.)

Jay Baruchel was very good in this, getting all scrunch-faced and awkward as a teenaged boy. Colm Meany, as the antagonistic school principle, is also pretty awesome. My favourite parts of the story were Leon’s gang of high school allies, particularly Tony and his BFF non-sexual girlfriend. I liked Tony and his friend a lot, although I wish I could finally see a straight boy and girl have an intense platonic friendship, or a straight boy with a gay female best friend (both of these scenarios do actually happen in real life, believe it or not).

There was also a shy kid who had a cute crush on Leon’s little sister. I think the film would have benefited from focusing more on Leon and the high school kids, and the idea of a revolution in high school, than Leon’s obsession with living his life according to a script.

It’s the high school kids that are given the biggest transformation, with the arguable exception of Leon’s love interest Alexandra. The high school kids are the ones who go from being completely apathetic to caring about how their school is run. Tony gets to have the big moment where he gives a speech saying “School sucks, but why should it?” I was digging what the film was getting at when it talked about high school apathy, but it didn’t explore it enough.

And then there was the problem that I had no clue what was wrong with the school to begin with. Basically there was one bitchy teacher who enforced dress code, but, really, it wasn’t that big a deal. There are a lot of real life oppressions happening in high schools all over the place, especially in regards to gay or minority youth, and it would have been waaaaaay more interesting if the film had included some real things instead of just assuming everyone hates high school and that “apathy” is the problem, as opposed to this particular school actually being pretty nice and boring.

(Leon was sent there after going to boarding school, and it was supposed to be all ghetto and grimy in comparison – but it was an extremely nice school!)

Leon is shot through with passion, taking every day as an opportunity to change things for the better, and he is shocked and disheartened by the other teenagers’ apathy. But, they weren’t really being oppressed or up against anything major. I think Leon should have found his real calling, his real revolution waiting for him, instead of basically making one up which is what he did. He did it at the beginning of the film and he continued to do it, he never actually learned anything or found a real cause to champion, even though, there are still lots of causes in modern Canadian society to be championed.

The other major problem with the movie, and the absolute worst part, was Leon’s love interest. Leon finds a distinguished old professor to be his mentor, and the professor has a daughter, Alexandra. The original Leon Trotsky married an Alexandra who was several years older than him, so this Leon decides he has to marry Alexandra. He’s 17, she’s 28.

Alexandra sucks. The actress who plays Alexandra (Emily Hampshire, Snow Cake) sucks. Leon is kind of delusional, and I wasn’t sure if we should’ve been rooting for him to fulfil his dream of being Leon Trotsky or to friggin wake up and fight his own battles. It was okay, I think, for him to be obsessed with Alexandra, but then – she returns his feelings! She straight up falls in love with him! It was totally baffling! As a mid-20s woman, I have a hard time thinking Alexandra would think a 17 year old boy is anything but totally gross, even one as smart as Leon. The love story was just. Awful.

And unfortunately it became the bigger focus of the story, and not the revolution in the high school, which was much more interesting, had more interesting characters, and better performers. I may have liked Alexandra more if Hampshire wasn’t the giving the worst performance in the history of film.

So to sum! The Trotsky is all right, not fantastic. You don’t have to have extensive knowledge about the Russian Revolution or the original Leon Trotsky to enjoy the movie, but I think it got caught in its own premise. A very nice message in there about changing the world around you got lost in – a message about following someone else’s life to a T? Very strange! And pretty disappointing.

Imagine five of Japan’s hottest indie acts all on one stage, in one evening, for the incredibly reasonable price of ten dollars. There is also a food corner, featuring gyoza and other finger foods – a custom I’m told is the norm at Japanese indie nights. People bring food to share like a big potluck. Sounds good to me!

Apologies for the poor quality! This is why I'm only uploading one photo.

The five bands showcased on the Next Music from Tokyo tour are diverse in sound and style, and they are all, to put it simply, fantastic. From Goomi’s twee folk to Andymori’s radio-friendly pop punk to Owarikara’s noise rock, there is something for everybody on offer.

Owarikara were my favourite performers of the night. Enthusiasm on the part of the performer goes a long way, and it was completely infectious. They were a delight to watch, and a must-see for any music lover.

Mothercoat, however, played my favourite songs of the evening, and were the sweetest and loveliest people I’ve ever met. Their one set spanned so many sounds, from sweet and sleepy to face-meltingly awesome.

I have been to a few small gigs this year, not as many as I would like, but New Music from Tokyo was certainly my favourite so far, and I will be on the lookout for Vol. 2 if and when it comes to Canada.

New Music from Tokyo continues in Toronto on May 28th and 29th.

If you have the opportunity, do not miss this show.

A much more eloquent review, with some gorgeous photos over at VanMusic.

What’s It About?
In a Viking village plagued by deadly dragons, a small boy captures a dragon using intelligence and compassion instead of brute strength.

What’s Its Bechdel Test Score?
1/3. This movie suffers from egregious girl tokenism and pointless love interest-itis.

What About Minorities?
Everybody is a Viking.

So…

I really, really enjoyed this movie. I haven’t really liked anything Dreamworks has done besides Shrek, maybe, so I was very pleasantly surprised.

Hiccup, the protagonist, is freaking adorable. He’s very sympathetic and I liked him immediately, and really sympathized with his problem. Hiccup wants to prove himself to his father and his village, but his strengths – intelligence, compassion, and creativity – aren’t valued by his society. Jay Baruchel (Tropic Thunder, The Trotsky) was the perfect voice for this character, and he did it with a sort of world-weary innocence that I really like in male protagonists.

I don’t usually like celebrity voices in cartoons, even though that is basically all we get in animated movies these days. I would way prefer to have professional voice actors and more of the budget go to the animation and the story. But I liked basically all the performances in this. It takes place on a small island apparently inspired by the Inner Hebrides in Scotland, and all the adults have Scottish accents. The two main adults are played by actual Scotsmen – Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson – and that was really refreshing. There is nothing worse than a fake Scottish accent, Simon Pegg’s Scotty being an exception in my opinion.

The story in this movie is just charming. The village is preyed upon by these dragons constantly, and Hiccup, the chief’s son, brings one down with a slingshot invention of his – but nobody believes him. He finds the dragon out in the woods, injured, and can’t bring himself to kill it. In the course of helping the dragon fly again he comes to understand why the dragons keep attacking their village, and how to take care of the dragon problem without just killing them all.

The dragon! Is about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen on film. One of my cohorts at the movie described the dragon (and the entire film) as “cuteoverload dot com”. Yes, he used a website as an adjective. I agreed.

The structure of the movie is almost too neat – it feels pretty formulaic and at times predictable. And accordingly, some of the dialogue falls flat when it was too obvious or not really necessary. The stuff about the dad’s disappointment in Hiccup was a bit blatant, but I guess that’s how it feels to kids whose parents aren’t super supportive of them? These things did not affect my enjoyment of the film, however, which I generally loved. I could find very little to criticize about it.

EXCEPT!

For the very poorly designed Token Tough Girl. There were enough adult lady Vikings around that it seems that this society was more or less equal, but the story itself didn’t really reflect that. It seems like the lady Vikings were just sort of shoehorned in when they remembered this society needed women.

There are two girls training to be warriors. The entire group of kids in training rejects Hiccup, and he has a crush on one of the girls, Astrid. She is the most poorly designed character I’ve encountered in a while, and it was really disappointing compared to how vibrant Hiccup felt to me.

She is a Strong Woman Character. The kind that is just trying to prove how Strong she is (physically), and doesn’t have any other character traits. She actually hates Hiccup so much it doesn’t even make sense. At first I thought it was at least nice that it was a given that there were lady Vikings in this village, and girls training, and nobody made a big deal out of it, but then it doesn’t make sense that Astrid was so angry and aloof. If she was the first girl Viking warrior then at least she’d have something to prove? As it was, she was just another girl Viking in a village of girl Vikings, but she still didn’t get to be human and flawed like all the boy Vikings, who also had their Viking-ness assumed. I guess she’s smart? But not smarter than Hiccup. He doesn’t really need her, if you know what I mean.

As soon as the plot requires her to, she switches sides and becomes Hiccup’s ally. Her stance of Anti-Dragon to thinking Dragons are Cool is realistically gradual, but her transformation from Hating Hiccup to Trusting Hiccup literally took two seconds. Also, I am not going to lie about totally wanting to make out with Hiccup at certain points in the movie (don’t judge me) but I don’t see why Astrid would? I just didn’t get her, really. This movie kind of failed her on every level, even though America Ferrera (Ugly Betty) was decent-ish at voicing her.

This movie was based on the series of children’s book by Cressida Cowell, which I did not know until I saw it. I’m interested in checking the books out, even though apparently the movie is radically different from them. Among other things changed, there are apparently even fewer female characters in the books. It’s good that there are now some girl characters, I guess, but it looks like Hiccup had a best friend in the book that was sort of replaced by Astrid.

Except Astrid isn’t his best friend. She’s some bitchy girl he inexplicably has a crush on (because she’s one of two girls in the village and the other one is ugly??), who really has no personality besides being a Strong Woman. If he still has a best friend who just happened to be a girl, her personality would probably be a lot more interesting and she would actually have a point. (And little kids know that boys and girls can be friends. I had boy friends as a little kid, and even if one person only had same-sex friends doesn’t mean that’s always the case. Remember Pinky and Rex?!) This is a Boy and His Dog story, the most important relationship is between Hiccup and the dragon – he doesn’t need a love interest. And girls don’t need to be love interests to be important. What Hiccup needed was a Tough, and Astrid could’ve been that, but she was needlessly antagonistic to him (to prove she was independent?), and totally boring. I think the filmmakers were maybe going for a Toph Bei Fong, but by making her a love interest/object of crush, they failed.

Wow I guess I sure had a lot to say about Astrid! If you can ignore the flagrant Smurfette Syndrome, this movie is really awesome. It also had a fantastic “getting his life together” montage that really made me want such a montage in real life!