Oh, Reminder: Blogging Game Of Thrones...

...is happening over at Zachary Little dot com. I'm working on another Skins recap for this blog, too, don't worry. Dot com is my shiny new toy, but this blog is my faithful old friend. With much, much higher traffic. Hence, these links!

• Episode 1: O Brother Why Art Thou?
• Episode 2: Six Hundred Pounds Of Sin
• Episode 3: Escape From No Future
• Episode 4: Talkin' 'Bout Generation

Various Updates For June

Oh, so there's a trailer for Breaking Dawn pt. 2! Did you kind of forget about this movie? Me too, it's OK. But holy shit, this thing is almost over FOR REAL. Last week I read that Summit issued a denial to reports that they were rebooting the series already (everyone's afraid of getting Spider-Man's rep, I guess (and that movie isn't even out yet! Uh-oh!)) and then basically said they won't touch Twilight again until Stephenie Meyer writes something else. Which seems less like a promise and more like a nudge. 


As for the trailer itself, uh, it is mostly fade outs? Like I can barely register each image before the fade starts. That is my least favorite editing technique, by the way. It makes me feel like they're embarrassed about the shots or something. Like how when girls flash people in high school they always pull their shirt back down really fast. Edit a trailer the way an adult shows her boobs, people! 

Elsewhere, Ashley Greene is apparently going to play the daughter of the founder of CBGB? Well, at least this movie will probably come out soon, since it seems like it already should have come out in 2008 or something. Were they waiting for someone associated with the Kristal family to die? That's a serious question.

Meanwhile, there has been a lot of Hunger Games casting news since Catching Fire introduces Johanna, Finnick, and Plutarch--very big characters in the book who will surely be drastically reduced in the films. Word is mostly unknowns and Jena Malone, and probably none of them will get the part. Somewhere, Jesse Williams smiles serenely at a wall, which promptly crumbles. I did freak out over a passage from an article on Slashfilm a few days ago which noted that Romeo Miller was a "possibility" for Finnick, "since his race is never explicitly stated in the books." WHO CARES EVEN IF IT WAS? You're really going to act like we have to preserve the RACIAL INTEGRITY of Suzanne Collins's original work? WHAT THE FUCK? I also read somewhere that producers met with wrestler Kevin Nash, and that Nash told reporters that he hopes he gets to play a character that doesn't die. Hahaha, seriously? I mean I know the guy is a wrestler but is he that dumb?

Here's a nice piece from The Hairpin that only sort of has to do with The Hunger Games. I like it though!

And Cat Marnell has another journey into the heart of darkness posted on VICE.

Finally, and I know I am burying the lede here, but here's some blurry video of Kristen Stewart's boobs. You are welcome, America.

EXCLUSIVE: Cat Marnell's Age REVEALED

Readers of this blog doubtless follow the exploits of Cat "King Cobra" Marnell—noted functioning addict, cause célèbre causing celeb, and former XOJane staffer. This week we learned that she'd been picked up, quite appropriately, by VICE. (If ever there were a marriage at which Satan himself would show up to officiate, right? I mean if you're not familiar with VICE, know that two of the headlines on their home page right now are "How To Sell Drugs" and a hard-hitting photo essay on "Visible Panty Lines." They're a god damned national treasure.) Anyway, Marnell's first piece for them has already been posted, so give it a read (and please, check your urge to judge at the e-door. There's LITERALLY nothing worse on this earth than a righteous comment posted via fucking Facebook Connect).

Anyway, in my monthly patrol of the search terms that bring people to this blog, I noticed a curious trend. Sure, the normal stuff was there—"Kristen Stewart ass," "Jennifer Lawrence ass," "Jackson Rathbone ass"—but also an abundance of searches related to the age of Cat Marnell. I reached out to Marnell herself, and it turned out this is a trend she's familiar with; persistent rumors that she is 31 and not 29 have dogged her at every turn. Fucking birthers, am I right?

This blog has been and forever will be a bulwark against such rumor and innuendo (well, okay, maybe a bulwark FOR innuendo), and thus we've been granted the EXCLUSIVE privilege of displaying the birth certificate and ID of Caitlin Elizabeth Marnell for your inspection. SUCK IT, JOE ARPAIO!

Whoa, Cat, are you not an organ donor? 

I asked Marnell if she had an "official statement" to accompany these documents, and she did. Here's the full text of an email I got last night at 4:18am.

Lying about your age is glam and all good but I just don't ! Yah shut these freakshows up; thanks. I have a 31 year old sister if you want more proof. And a zillion other things! God.  I mean honestly . ...I'm writing this from the Borgata casino floor at 413 am so I gotta go get my Ginger on and make Boss type men play blackjack w my money and win -- it's the best.  So im gonna go. Hope you're well and as the late extraordinarily overrated singer (/fucking-for-tracks extraordinaire;swag!) Aaliyah once said , "age ain't nothin but a number" anyway. Tell my creepy fanemies to get off my dick. Everyone else keep reading my new VICE column Amphetamine Logic. Thank YOU babe for your fab blogs about me, I am always honored!!!! Xo cat

So there. Roll up these facts and smoke 'em, fanemies! To console the (certifiably young!) Marnell I informed her that I've had, in fact, several searches for "Cat Marnell ass" as well. So she threatened to send a picture of her "emaciated ass in a bikini." Be careful what you wish for, searchers! Or not.

Thanks to Cat Marnell for her cooperation with this admittedly bizarre post. Get the word out! About Cat's new VICE column and about her age! What rumor should we debunk next?

Good Luck, Cat Marnell!

Cat Marnell got fired today. People are saying things! Slightly condescending things? I'm not sure I have a coherent comment to make, but I will say that if you are a literary agent willing to step on a girl's neck all summer long, you could probably do well to make her follow through on her promise to write a book! DO IT, CAT!

Snow White And The Seven Dworkins

Snow White and The Huntsman, while certainly not a particularly interesting movie,* has sparked a lot of interesting discussion. The whole dark retelling of a fairy tale deal caused a lot of people to point out that, you know, it was ever thus; the rosy Disney version is actually the aberration on the long, dark arc of the tale. See the comments here [Videogum] for a lot of interesting historical tidbits. I can't really vouch for whether any of it is true or not, but I want to believe it is!

(*My professional opinion, a week out? If you haven't seen it, skip it and save your money for Prometheus. AHHHHHHH.)

Elsewhere, the debate about whether or not it was a feminist film pushes back and forth and onward. In the comments of my review, Kim summarized the issue thusly:

I'd say it's more like someone who doesn't understand feminism cut up the textbook. The queen is set up as a feminist in a way, but she's psycho and evil. The part you mentioned about playing up Snow White's androgyny could be evidence of a pretty naive view of feminism - that of women wanting to gain power by being more like men. Plus, the story vilifies female aging and sex appeal while it glorifies youth and purity. I will give it credit for not ending with a wedding, though.

Yeah. Either the film was meant to be feminist and and misunderstood feminism, or the film was meant to be antifeminist and failed to sufficiently drive the point in to the hilt, so to speak. Andrew Sullivan has a few pretty juicy quotes from various perspectives. And the always-entertaining Vince Mancini (who I conflate with the protagonist of Chuck Palahniuk's Choke, which actually works) at FilmDrunk has an epic, mostly on-point takedown of a Time writer's assertion that SWATH was a "triumph of feminist storytelling." (Which was written by three dudes.)

All that considered, I think the truth is that everyone is wrong. SWATH is neither feminist nor antifeminist, and I don't think it tried to be either. To suggest that it did would be to suggest that the themes were at least somewhat considered, and like, they weren't. (It remains really pretty to look at, but again, so is Prometheus. PRO-ME-THE-USSSSSS.)

Related posts:

• Snow White Of The Ring: The Fellowship Of Snow White
• Kristen Stewart And Kellan Lutz Pwn Some N00bs
• What's New With Kristen Stewart?
• Snow White And The Huntsman Pretends It Isn't Doomed
• Who Is The Fairest Of Them All?
• Studying The Effects Of A Wet Kristen Stewart On Twilight Media Coverage

SKINS S2E4: On The Beach

OK, enough with these endings. Fool me once by dangling the fate of Sid and Cassie over my head, shame on me. Fool me twice by dangling the fate of Sid and Cassie over my head, well, when that happens it becomes clear that their relationship is more important to the audience than it is to the showrunners.  So… shame on them! (This episode ends with Sid hooking up with Michelle in his room  ("FINALLY"-No one) unaware, for a while, that Cassie is sitting there in the corner watching. Ugh, right?)

Now, sometimes a kind of adversarial relationship between creator and consumer can be fun and interesting (see Sopranos, The), and sometimes going too far to please your fans is a bad idea (see Harmon, Dan). So it’s not like there’s a hard and fast rule for this kind of thing. But this particular ending is just cheap and grabby. I thought I could hold Skins to higher standards.

(And what’s funny is that a move that was meant to cash in on my enthusiasm for Sid/Cassie instead neutralized it. I was irritated and bored and realized I didn’t really care what happened to them. So, good going, Skins! You’ve ruined something beautiful.)

Another reason ending the episode on another Sid/Cassie cliffhanger is lame is that the only thing this one really has going for it is a sustained mellow tone. It follows Michelle as she moves, with her mother, into a house with her new step-father. Michelle hates the house and hates the step-father. Then the guy’s (eerily affectionate) daughter shows up, and (surprise!) Michelle hates her too.

Her birthday is coming, and she wants to go camping. Nobody else really does, but they go anyway. Except Tony, who can’t pitch a tent. HEYYOOOOOOOO. But seriously folks: he can’t achieve an erection anymore! And suddenly the deep and abiding love Michelle feels for him is neither deep nor abiding. The Skins gang sets up shop on the beach, and then we’re mostly dealing with a lot of sun-drenched footage of sand, and water, and tides coming in.

Michelle’s problems aren’t very serious, and they particularly pale in comparison to what Sid is going though. It becomes clear almost immediately that Michelle’s new step-sister isn’t so bad, but it takes our heroine a long time to come around. The scale and scope of her problems aren’t much of an issue, however, as they seem commensurate with the scale and scope of the episode. This is supposed to be light and airy. A sorbet episode after the bottle episode. 

Anyway, Sketch turns up and seems sort of normal now. Then step-sister makes a play for Sid which only seems to depress him, and he wanders off. Michelle follows, and they end up having sex on a dune. How much do you know about sand dunes? I took a coastal morphology class in college (my friend Jill told me it would be easy and that there was a trip to Cape Cod at the end. She was right about the second part) and I feel like, for a while, I was kind of an expert. Now I couldn’t even tell you how they’re formed. I mean, wind, yeah, I know, but what else? Can you tell how much I don’t want to think about Sid and Michelle having sex?

 

Everybody goes home, and Sid and Michelle prepare to hook up again. And then the tense music starts playing, totally harshing our mellow. BOOM: Cassie. (“Whatever.”-Me) Sorbet doesn't work if you add a dramatic twist at the end, just like how metaphors don't work when you mix them. 

N.B. Yesterday I posted a little notice explaining the transition from this blog to zacharylittle.com. Skins is going to finish here, but Blogging Game Of Thrones will be over there. So bookmark up!

Transition Update

Hey y'all. Today I set up ZacharyLittle dot com, my own official site. BOOM! That'll will be the new home of any one-off, long-form blog posts that I write, as well as my next series: BLOGGING GAME OF THRONES. I'll also be posting my new videos there, as they happen. It'll be kind of a one stop shop (the old zaclittle tumblr will still be the home of my short-form day-to-day bullshit)! SKINS recaps will remain here, at least through the end of season 2, which will probably be it for the series anyway. Is there life after Cassie, I ask you? NO THERE IS NOT.

(What are we going to do with Looking For Alaska? I don't know. I tried. Not a lot of you seem very interested, but I feel bad because SOME of you were. I don't know!)

Commenting on Tumblr isn't perfect, but my plan for compensating for that will hopefully put the discussion more front and center anyway. Y'all are a great group of commenters (when you want to be, hahaha) after all. What I'll do with BGOT and other stuff on the new site is that people will reblog the post and add their comments, or write into my ask box, or email me, or actually use Tumblr's reply feature (you have to have been following me for two weeks and you have to catch the post when it goes by on your dashboard. Easier said than done, but some people manage, somehow!) and I will aggregate all of those responses into a follow-up post and respond. And so on into infinity!

So yeah, that's what's going to happen, I think!

Snow White Of The Ring: The Fellowship Of Snow White: A Review

I saw Snow White And The Huntsman last night, and today our esteemed colleagues at KStewartNews reported that the movie has already grossed $100 million worldwide, putting it on track to surpass Mirror Mirror's total in short order. So OK, I guess Kristen Stewart and her team won the War Of The Snow Whites. But at what cost? 

When Snow White And The Huntsman rocked Comic-Con's world last year, producers only had concept art and a cast on hand. Later, word was that the script was being re-written and revised even as production began. And guess what? It shows! ("'Only fools rush in' -wise men" -UB40) SWATH is somehow both over- and under-written, like they spent so much time on the outline they never got around to the script. When characters actually say things (which is rare!) their lines are too concise, too thematically self-evident. Like this movie was written in the way you'd compose a particularly artful tweet (Sample dialogue: "Have I not given you all?" "Have I not given all to you?").

Here's the story: Snow White is born, and so named because her mother was out walking in the snow one day and thought: "I'd like to get some dick." Also she cut herself on a rose, which is vaguely important. Then the mother dies, leaving Snow White's dad, the Burger King mascot, miserable. Then a dark army appears on the edge of town. If the battle scene that follows doesn't strike you as unnecessary, maybe you didn't hear Chris Hemsworth's voice over, which is something like "And then an army came or whatever, so they fought them for some reason." And so begins one of too many action scenes which basically consist of close, shaky-shots of stuff crashing into other stuff. (This a rare bird: an action movie where the quiet parts between action scenes are far more compelling than the fights.) The dark army (who are like, made out of shale) is keeping Charlize Theron "prisoner," and the Burger King "rescues" her, but actually it was all a ruse, which we know because again Chris Hemsworth says (essentially) "but it was a ruse!" The Burger King dies, Snow White gets locked in a tower, and Queen Charlize rules all, taking weird milk baths in front of her brother, Aryan McNulty, and otherwise sucking the beauty from everything around her (which is SORT OF a metaphor about female beauty when you think about it, or rather when you don't think about it too much--we'll get to that). "Anyway," narrator Chris Hemsworth says, "I'm going to bail on this voice-over part now, for the rest of the movie." Don't you LOVE when that happens?

One day, Queen Charlize's power starts to wane, and she finds out it's because Snow White just turned street legal and so the normal soul-sucking routine (you saw it in the trailer) won't keep her shit tight anymore (except it does, at intervals throughout the rest of the movie, but whatever, magic is complicated). And then we finally see K. Stew, imprisoned in the tower, mumbling prayers to herself and making weird dolls out of garbage. Interesting! Too bad none of that ever really comes up again!

Snow White manages to escape, Queen Charlize sends her brother out to find her with Irish Thor (Hemsworth) as a guide. Then Irish Thor (one of my favorite kinds of soap, obviously) goes rogue, and so begins he and Snow White's journey through about 90 minutes of really beautiful-looking nonsense. Shout out to the visuals in this movie: all of it is wonderful to look at, especially when it gets really trippy, which is not often enough! I include Kristen Stewart under this positive visual category: the movie luxuriates in her pale skin and (admittedly Smeagolesque) eyes.

(And if you were worried: her accent is fine. She mostly whispers, and her too-modern laugh and a few other non-affectations are problematic, but when she's speaking clearly there's nothing distracting about it. Except, of course, that the words out of her mouth are so silly; she has a rallying battle speech that literally sounds like free-associative poetry: "Fire will melt iron! But iron will first writhe around inside itself!" Are actual lines. "And so fire...is good! And also rocks! Which are mighty!")

But it's a problem when the visuals (excepting, again, most of the action) are the only thing you can really hang your (elfin) hat on, and even they become difficult to appreciate as the movie drags on and on and on and on. Snow and Hunt (new detective show on TNT this fall, obviously) hook up with the Seven Dwarves, because of course, and later she eats an apple, because of course, but those things are just there because they are, nothing really leading to them or coming from them. When you realize that everything is moving toward a final battle with the Queen you're not excited, you're exhausted. "Get it over with already!" you say. And then they do, and you're like, "Fine."

And then there's the way it seems like someone cut up a feminist textbook and scattered it all over this movie like fairy dust. Queen Charlize has an early speech about being put-upon by the men of this world. In a flashback, we learn that Charlize's mother cast a spell to make her youth and beauty into a weapon. Snow White (too briefly) visits a village of outcast women who have scarred themselves to make sure they won't be a threat to the Queen's beauty and power. Snow White frets about her ability to lead men. Later, when she suits up and goes to battle, The Huntsman tells her she looks good "in mail" (as in chainmail) which is a play on words (male/mail) Kanye West would find enthralling. Certain shots during the battle seem intended to maximize Stewart's androgyny. As short on thematic substance as this movie is, it's dense with feminist shrapnel. But I'd be hard pressed to make much sense of it all. Anybody got an interesting take?

In the end, SWATH was an OK movie. There's about an hour in the middle, where nobody's talking much and we seem to be tumbling through different fairy tale tropes, that is pretty interesting. But then it lands on aping Lord Of The Rings and sticks there. Oh well. I'm not upset I saw it, but in terms of movies I've seen in the theater this year it really only ranks above Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance. It's also, if you count repeat viewings, the fifth consecutive Chris Hemsworth movie I have seen in theaters (The Cabin In The Woods, The Cabin In The Woods, The Avengers, The Avengers, this). He's having a good year. I'm starting to feel like my prognostications for Kristen Stewart are off, though. The release of this movie has sparked a wave of K. Stew hatred the likes of which we haven't seen in years. And it's coming from semi-contrarian blogs like Videogum and Jezebel. If On The Road garners her any good will later this summer (fingers crossed), it will likely be dashed by Breaking Dawn pt. 2: Waiting For Aro in the fall. At least one person has Kristen Stewart's back, though: James Franco. "Kristen is a warrior queen," he says in his thoughtful, weirdly formal review for the Huffington Post. "Give her the crown." And when James Franco is on your side... uh, well, that could mean almost anything.

And Make Sure The Camera Moves Correspond To The Record Scratches

So in the end it's maybe not super surprising that Americana didn't get picked up by ABC?

PS. AG fansites have gone to DEFCON 4 over this leak, as evidenced by this page of screencaps. Hahahaha. 

Can You Believe Breaking Dawn Did Or Did Not Win Last Night!?

Good morning! OK so I did not watch the MTV Movie Awards, even though I feel a certain amount of possibly misguided loyalty to them. Instead, I watched episodes of How I Met Your Mother on Netflix. It's a great show, did you know? Consequently, I don't know if Breaking Dawn won BEST MOVIE or MOST YOLO MOVIE or whatever they call that award. I also don't know if they won best kiss/most yolo kiss, and if they did, who or what Robert Pattinson molested in celebration. I simply know none of it! But I would like to know, so tell me all about it in the comments. (True, I could just look this stuff up, but I will be at work by the time you read this, and as I write this, the MTV Movie Awards HAVE NOT EVEN HAPPENED. Amazing, right? I haven't even watched How I Met Your Mother yet! I'm taking a real gamble here, assuming that is what I am going to do. I might have lied to you. No I didn't, I'm definitely going to watch it, that show is killer.)

Here's Some Weird Fifty Shades Of Grey Bullshit For You God Damned Degenerates

Is anybody else having trouble loading this page? Blogger seems to be having some issues this week.

• So, uh, this "trailer" is interesting.
• Also "interesting" is EL James's use of the word "argh," which is discussed at length at The Awl.
• The worst synonyms in 50 Shades Of Grey (Remember that episode of Friends where Joey used a thesaurus hotkey on every word in a letter he was writing, to sound smarter?) with some suggested fixes. Actually a super fun read, from an editing standpoint. 

And here's some other stuff from this week:

• Choire Sicha wants you all to know that you are not "curators," you are just bloggers and Tumblrers. That seems fair.
• Similarly, but less fairly, Jonah Goldberg and a few other conservative trolls decided to pick on millennials this week. Andrew Sullivan and his readers came interestingly to their (our? ugh) defense.
• Did you know that "gadzooks" is actually really vulgar? Cool!
• Do you guys know about Comedy Bang Bang? It was/is a comedy show in LA, but is also a pretty funny podcast that has recently been turned into a VERY funny show. I can't speak to the funniness of the live show, but it would be kind of perfect if it was only sorta funny, right? ANYWAY, right now you can watch the second episode, which is weird because the first episode hasn't even premiered yet. But it has Amy Poehler in it, and it is funny, and yeah. Here.
• AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE WIRE! Sweet! I haven't read this! But I will soon, like, right after I read the oral histories of Friends and The Sopranos and Party Down, all of which are bookmarked on one of my computers.
• How do you guys keep track of things now that you, like me (I'm sure), use like twenty different computers and computer-ish devices? I used to star things on Twitter, but after I accumulated like 2,000 links I "needed to follow up on," I gave the fuck up! (I've been trying to get my Twitter and Tumblr under control recently, because I follow too many people, but I'm not sure it can be done. It might just be too late!) Now I use Google Reader and, um, links on my blog. 
• You guys saw the live lip dub proposal, right? I can't hate on it at all, I'm sorry. I think it is wonderful. End of story!