(no subject)

[skygiants]

In the last month I have seen FIVE (5) movies in theaters, which is well above my standard average, I don't understand what's happening this spring. But I don't regret my choices!

Black Panther: This was amazing and I have pretty much zero critical thoughts about it except that I loved basically everything that was happening, especially whenever Okoye, Shuri, Nakia, or M'Batu were on the screen which fortunately for me was almost all of the time. Also, Michael B. Jordan basically exudes charisma out of his pores and it's extremely unfair. I did sort of wonder, Watsonianly, why CIA Agent Ross there at all during most of his scenes (Doylistically I am sure every Marvel executive cluched ALL their pearls at the thought of having an entire! movie! without ANY sympathetic white men) but also someone suggested to me that CIA Agent Ross might turn out to be a long-game villain, which is a very nice thought and one I wish I could believe. I expect I will see it again sometime before it goes out of theaters and enjoy it even more the second time around.

My favorite audience reactions were a.) the shouts of glee from all around when Okoye threw her wig, and b.) the girl in the middle row who gasped "Sebastian Stan?! What are YOU doing here?" during the post-credits scene.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle: Jumanji Original Flavor is a movie that I saw approximately 20 times growing up, so even though I never ended up having time to throw the Jumanji Double Feature party that I wanted to, it was very important to me to see New Jumanji before it left theaters. And it was, for the most part, cute! The video game conceit worked pretty well, the Rock and Karen Gillan were both extremely charming, and Jack Black was surprisingly endearing as a teenage girl.

I have some qualms about the racial politics of a plot in which Spencer the nerdy Jewish kid, in video-game-land, gets to be the game's Designated Hero, while his estranged best friend Fridge the black football player becomes tiny Kevin Hart, the Designated Comic Sidekick. I think they were going for parallel arcs in which Spencer learns that his Inner Heroism was in him all the time while Fridge learns that Heroism Is About What's On The Inside, but unfortunately Spencer's is the only one that really comes through -- so what you get is a film where the hero is a Jewish kid in brownface while the black kid is trapped as comic relief, all of which does nobody any favors, but I think COULD have worked with a better script. I'll be here all week anybody wants to hear more of my thoughts on How I Would Have Script Doctored Jumanji, but I have three more movies to write about in this post so we'll move on.

A Wrinkle In Time: I didn't love this like I wanted to, but the cast was great, it was visually gorgeous, and the costume designers had SO MUCH FUN -- like, some of the costumes were weird as heck, but you could tell the designers just had license to throw all the rules out the window and go for broke and I was super into it.

I didn't reread the book before going into the film, and so the bits that I remembered were all the parts that made the strongest impression on me as a child: the end sequence with the children bouncing balls in perfect rhythm (and the one that didn't), Meg and Calvin reciting so as not to fall into rhythm, IT as a brain in a jar, Meg saving the day with the combined force of her anger and her love for Charles Wallace. The film moves away from IT as a being of absolute imposed order and towards IT as a more nebulous force of evil, which made me a little bit wistful, and for me didn't tie in as well to the theme of Meg's faults of sullenness, anger, and resistance to authority becoming her strength. Also, I wanted a much creepier sound design while the kids were on Camazotz ... and a creepier Charles Wallace throughout .... more creepiness all around, really, although, uh, I get the level of creepiness that I might have wanted also might not be super appropriate to a kid's film.

However, my roommate attractivegeekery is reading the book for the first time now, and having mixed feelings about it, and more than once she's complained to me about a plot point that I totally didn't remember and I've gone 'huh, they fixed that in the movie -- oh, that was better in the movie, I liked the way they did that!' So apparently the film fixed a whole bunch of things in the book that I had forgotten because I didn't like them, and the takeaway here is that I need to reread the book to appreciate the choices the movie made, but I'm also curious if anyone saw it who hadn't ever read the book and how they felt/what they thought was going on.

Annihilation: Speaking of films where I hadn't read the book, I asked varadia if I should read the book before seeing the film, and she said no, see the movie first, so I did and I think this was correct because I had no preconceptions and I enjoyed it very much. It was beautiful in the creepiest possible way, like someone took all the best things about 2001: A Space Odyssey (the cinematography, the sound design, the weird science and sense of overwhelming dread) and combined it with all the best things about that Terry Brooks book in which a plucky heroine leads a band of sad elves through mutated jungle to get picked off one by one (female-dominated cast, cool mutant rainforest visuals, a different kind of sense of overwhelming dread that unlike the sense of overwhelming dread in 2001: A Space Odyssey is not overwhelmingly boring) and got something much better than either of them.

(At the end of the film I turned to aamcnamara and said 'see, THIS is the sound design I wanted in Wrinkle in Time! -- but probably ... should not have gotten .... in a kid's movie ......")

Love, Simon: This is another movie where I had not read the book first and was probably the better for it, because I had no expectations but that it would be cute and lo and behold, it delivered! Everyone in the cast was so charming! There were a couple scenes I had to watch through my fingers because TEENAGERS WHY, but that's the price of admission to the genre and I'm a lot more willing to pay it when I know the adorable gay children are going to get a happy ending.

We got advance tickets through the Somerville library and the screening was packed full of enthusiastic queer teenagers, which enhanced the viewing experience tremendously. Favorite audience reactions: the theater-wide gasp at The Reveal of who Blue is at the end, and the girl in the row next to me who sat up during the scene where Simon's dad awkwardly but endearingly expresses how much he loves and supports him and whispered, "that's MY dad!" My heart, which had already grown three sizes, grew three sizes more.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

ah, interesting--another friend felt that the changes from the book were for the worse. I have only distant memories of the book (A Swiftly Tilting Planet was my jam, however, and despite its faults contributed significantly to my studying medieval lit much later), and since Reason is almost old enough to understand/care, I'm trying not to revisit Wrinkle yet.... (Spoilers are fine or I wouldn't be trawling for friends' reactions, heh.)

[skygiants]

I didn't like at all the changes from the book that were changes from the things I remembered and that made an impact on me ... but all the changes from the book from things I didn't remember struck me, in description of what the book did, as fine and probably improvements! I don't remember all of them but one thing attractivegeekery was complaining about was the kids being essentially used as weapons and dumped on Camazotz by the Mrs. Ws; in the film, the Mrs. Ws want to take them back to regroup after finding out that Dad Murray is on Camazotz, and it's Meg who forges ahead against their advice, which I narratively appreciate as A Concerned Adult.

(The book I actually remember best is Many Waters and there is a part of me that's quite sad the film edited out Sandy and Dennys, because I would have LOVED to see how Disney would attempt to make a family-friendly film out of THAT bonkers book.)

[shati]

One of the things I do like about the book is that the Mrses weren't totally safe -- it was definitely intentional, they almost killed the kids at one point in the book by bringing them to a 2D planet accidentally. I took Reese Witherspoon constantly criticizing Meg to be the replacement for that in the movie.

(AND I WOULD KNOW HOW TO PRONOUNCE DENNYS)

[skygiants]

I like the Mrs as not safe nor necessarily helpful (the 2D planet is one of the very few things from the middle of the book I actually remember! and liked in a horrible way!) but I also like Meg making an active choice against advice to do a stupidly dangerous thing rather than being dumped helpfully on a planet to do a stupidly dangerous thing by other people. Meg doesn't have to do what anyone says! They're not her dad!

(I would also have liked to have more of pointlessly contrary Meg other places in the film too, but I'll take what I can get.)

[shati]

Oh, fair. That was also good!

(I think I was expecting pointlessly contrary Meg so much I missed that they were going for more Meg's problems in the beginning coming from defending her dad and her brother and less from contrariness, which did actually lead into the movie's version of IT. I forget what the list of her flaws was though, so I don't know!! I just remember slow to trust or something similar.)

[castiron]

Though if they ever decide to do the later books, since Charles Wallace is adopted in this version, Sandy and Dennys could always be adopted as older kids.

[sovay]

I did sort of wonder, Watsonianly, why CIA Agent Ross there at all during most of his scenes (Doylistically I am sure every Marvel executive cluched ALL their pearls at the thought of having an entire! movie! without ANY sympathetic white men) but also someone suggested to me that CIA Agent Ross might turn out to be a long-game villain, which is a very nice thought and one I wish I could believe.

I was surprised by but actually fine with Ross' arc for reasons detailed here and here; he's contingently sympathetic and he's not the point.

a.) the shouts of glee from all around when Okoye threw her wig

That was fantastic. I loved it both as politics, physical comedy, and the dude on the receiving end being so surprised.

I'll be here all week anybody wants to hear more of my thoughts on How I Would Have Script Doctored Jumanji

Totally. I'm never going to see it and I'm curious.

It was beautiful in the creepiest possible way

So I want to write about Annihilation because I loved it, but one of the aspects I really loved was the way its beauty is not booby-trapped. Those mitotic white deer with their antlers of soft pink fungi or flowers do not suddenly split open into sharp teeth; they bound away into the undergrowth, as easily spooked as the white-tailed deer that served as their template. The leafy, human-Hox-gened silhouettes in the abandoned neighborhood are not full of bones. The glassy trees that spike like fulgurites or neurons from the beach-sand never do anything but stand there. The film never made the common horror mistake of thinking that the audience needs to be jump-scared into recognizing strangeness. It's just full of things that are beautiful and not right. It pulled off numinous.

Favorite audience reactions: the theater-wide gasp at The Reveal of who Blue is at the end, and the girl in the row next to me who sat up during the scene where Simon's dad awkwardly but endearingly expresses how much he loves and supports him and whispered, "that's MY dad!"

Aw!

[rachelmanija]

Does Annihilation have any jump-scares? It sounds like the sort of movie best seen in theaters but I'm weighing that against the possibility of being freaked out every time I close my eyes at night for the next three months.

[sovay]

Does Annihilation have any jump-scares?

It has one jump scare, relatively early in the characters' journey into the Shimmer; in hindsight I think it's a kind of fakeout, because everything truly weird that happens in this movie then proceeds to happen in ways where you can get a perfectly good look at it. For what it's worth, I am much more sensitive to certain kinds of horrific imagery when rendered visually than when read off a page, and Annihilation did not leave me with problems in that department.

[rachelmanija]

Approximately when does it happen?

I'm also way more sensitive to visual imagery, but the way people are describing the visuals makes me want to see it on the big screen.

[sovay]

Approximately when does it happen?

I don't think I can estimate a timestamp. (In addition to the normal issue of subjective narrative time vs. objective movie runtime, this film plays actively with both character and audience sense of time.) The group is exploring a derelict house that has partly sunken into standing water. One character is standing in the doorframe to speak to the others when something happens. The eventual result is strange, but not splattery.

I'm also way more sensitive to visual imagery, but the way people are describing the visuals makes me want to see it on the big screen.

I found it very beautiful in a way that a lot of movies try for and very few successfully realize, Rilke's beauty that is just the beginning of terror. Usually that falls flat, goes accidentally funny, or resorts to shorthand and therefore communicates the idea but not the emotion. Annihilation does it almost tranquilly and that really turned out to work.

[kore]

I feel that way, but also the way people are describing the visuals makes me think I'd have nightmares for a week afterwards.

[rachelmanija]

That's also my worry. I guess I'll have to decide whether I want to live dangerously. I could always close my eyes.

[kore]

Yeah, unfortunately I can handle gore and creepiness and whatever much, much better on the printed page, but if I see anything that freaks me out large and in colour on a movie screen, I am guaranteed to have nightmares about it. It's just how my brain is wired and typically why I avoid horror movies, even if they're well-done or classics or whatever. "You want to see Hannibal, it's beautiful and creepy and Goth and the murder scenes look like the food scenes and the food scenes look like the murder scenes!" and I was all....I believe you, which is why I have to say no.

[skygiants]

For the record, I'm not much of a horror person and I didn't think it was very jump-scare-y at all; I went with a friend, because neither of us had wanted to go alone, and after we walked out we were like "this was great but probably we were more nervous about going alone than we needed to be." There's some extremely creepy imagery, but the pacing is almost meditative -- and it doesn't do the audio stings that for me are the worst part about jump scares.

[julian]

As a contrasting view: It felt to me like the first two thirds of the movie were more horror-tinged, and there was one particularly creepy scene that involves music, voices, and a fuck of a lot of tension. (And gore.)

The last third is way less horror-as-genre. But even the first 2/3rds are very... surreally beautiful at times.

[graycardinal]

I'd read the Jumanji commentary; I saw this one in the theater having never actually seen the original, and I thought that for the most part it worked pretty well...except that yes, there were absolutely going to be arguments about the degree to which the stunt-double premise and casting choices did or didn't work. FWIW, I thought all the adult actors did a fantastic job of playing the parts of their counterpart kid identities -- which suggests in particular that Dwayne Johnson may be a better actor than his career has given him the chance to demonstrate.)

I have not yet seen Wrinkle in Time -- would have yesterday, but was struck down by Martian Not-Quite-Death Flu -- so have skipped over that set of notes till later.

[skygiants]

(Yeah, for the most part I thought the acting was great! Apparently they're talking sequel with the same cast, which .... I'm not sure how they would pull that off? Would they be playing the same kids, or different kids? But I'd see it.)

I did some commentary above to sovay's comment, but I will add that the other script doctoring I would have done is either DELETE all scenes in which we see The Villain doing The Villain thing, OR make them explicit cut scenes that the protagonists have to sit through and react to. You can't try to make us care about what the villain is doing when we KNOW he's a video game character! We are not the audience, the kids are! Stick to your conceit, Jumanji 2.0!

[skygiants]

I mostly just didn't believe in Ross' personal redemption, because I never really saw him fully acknowledging and rejecting the role the CIA generally plays. In which case, his actions only really make sense if they're framed as American and Wakandan interests aligning at this particular moment -- which sort of inevitably leads to a future storyline in which American and Wakandan interests no longer align and the CIA's back in there attempting to destabilize a country that has now become a threat. I would be OK with Ross as the villain in that story.

You should write about Annihilation! It absolutely did pull of numinous and I would like to see you talk about it more.

How I Would Have Script Doctored Jumanji: with a little bit of editorial control, I would have altered Fridge's arc so that he has to take advantage of his strategic intelligence to compensate for the game mechanics that don't allow him to do anything cool, and becomes the team tactician. (There's a scene where they need to retreive a MacGuffin from a dangerous situation, and Spencer calculates that Fridge has enough lives left that he can afford to lose one and shoves him out a balloon so he can grab the thing and regenerate while holding it -- this should have been Fridge's choice and heroic moment! ANYWAY.)

Given a little more editorial control, I would have swapped the shy girl and the nerdy boy, so that instead of the nerdy boy becoming the Rock and the shy girl becoming Action Hero Karen Gillan, the nerdy boy becomes Action Hero Karen Gillan and the shy girl becomes the Rock.

[littlerhymes]

and the girl in the row next to me who sat up during the scene where Simon's dad awkwardly but endearingly expresses how much he loves and supports him and whispered, "that's MY dad!"

That's so endearing I wanna cry! I too have not read the book and feel like that was probably the better choice, though I might track it down now. It was such a sweet movie to see with an enthusiastic audience.

[skygiants]

It really was! After the movie I sat on the bench waiting for aamcnamara to get out of the bathroom and got to watch the whole queer audience enthusing to each other as they left the theater, and that was also delightful. I definitely plan to read the book now.

[kore]

BLACK PANTHERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

was so awesome I didn't even mind Mouldy Jam Watson in it. I just sort of smiled even through all his scenes. Everyone was so fantastic.

Annihilation sounds neat! and....like something I should not see in a theatre. sigh.

I read Wrinkle in Time really early and imprinted on it and could probably still recite large passages of it, so I'm not sure how much I would enjoy it as a movie. This adaptation does sound like it has aspects that should be appreciated in the theatre, though.

[skygiants]

He provided the opportunity for Shuri and M'Baku to have some great lines, and you know what, that's fine! I can live with that.

Annihilation is definitely very creepy, but more in a ... Here We Pan Slowly Over A Very Unnerving Visual With A Very Unnerving Implication, less in a OH NO WHERE'S THE THING OH NO IT'S THERE!!! sort of way. Which is still very creepy!

The visuals in Wrinkle in Time are pretty spectacular! Uriel, in particular -- the camera panning over The World's Most Beautiful Planet is pretty amazing. But I went with a large group of people who mostly loved the book, and all of us did spend about 15 minutes standing around talking wistfully about things from the book we wish they'd put in after we got out.

[ceitfianna]

Ooh, you've been seeing so many films and makes me excited to see them. I haven't but want to.

The book that Love Simon is based on is lovely. I read it in one day while also being a substitute librarian, its just lovely and the author clearly knows teens.

[skygiants]

I basically spent all of last week at the movie theater. FOUR FILMS IN EIGHT DAYS. That is a lot of films. (And no good trailers. :( )

I am definitely going to read the book now!

[ceitfianna]

That's a lot of movies. I haven't done that since going to the local film festival where my parents live. I look forward to your thoughts on the book as I really liked it.

Thinking of teen gays, have you read Gentlemen's Guide to Vice and Virtue? Its not the book I expected it to be but a good read.

[skygiants]

I have not read it! I have heard .... okay things about it?

[ceitfianna]

I somehow missed the okay things and heard a lot of really good so was surprised by the book. I like historical romances and it read to me more like an adult romance that got mixed up with a YA adventure. I think you would find interesting things in it and its a fast paced book.

[evewithanapple]

I read it and found it . . . ehhhhhh. The main character's arc was very much Privileged White Boy Grows Up And Recognizes His Privilege, and there's a place for that kind of story . . . I guess . . . but the amount of significance given to his feelings (to be fair, it's a first-person narration) put me off a bit. Also I understood where the author was going with the disability politics, but I still found it patently ridiculous that someone would refuse a magic epilepsy cure, IN THE 1700S.

[ceitfianna]

I think it would have helped a lot to have the other character's viewpoints instead of just Monty's. It felt like that's what the plot needed but then the author wanted to go all in on Monty.

Also to me some of the privilege part didn't even need to be historical, some of the ways it was written felt more like a contemporary YA with the plot stuff being historical. It needed more editing though the author can write. I think they just were writing too much and fell in love with too many ideas.

[evewithanapple]

Oh man, I tried to read the book Love, Simon is based on and had to peave out halfway through because the secondhand embarrassment was TOO STRONG. Which is, as you say, the price of admission when it comes to books/movies about teens; it's also why I don't read a ton of contemporary YA.

I did read A Wrinkle In Time, though! For the first time ever, a few weeks ago. It struck me as a book I would have very much enjoyed as a kid, as I enjoyed anything that told me non-conformity was the way to go. Later, I saw a post referencing AWIT's anti-Communism, and belatedly realized that most of my beloved non-conformist childhood favourites were probably also written to warn me away from the Red Peril.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I was braced for secondhand embarrassment but sometimes it was A LOT. Why, children! Why do you do the things you do!

...ahahaha I didn't even think about The Dangers Of Conformity And Communism but you know what, you are absolutely not wrong. I also loved it as a kid as I loved anything with angry, unlovable preteen girls as heroines! See also: Diana Wynne Jones' Entire Oeuvre.

[genarti]

Ugh, I still really need to see A Wrinkle In Time! I expect I will love parts but not all of it, from what I've heard -- I've been avoiding specific spoilers, but reading friends' general-reaction kinds of posts -- but I want to see it, anyway, and to give one more ticket to the general box office take of This And More Future Movies Like It.

I kind of want to see Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, too, but as you know I haven't actually seen the original movie. Would it still be fun, do you think? (I'm assuming yes, given the number of years in between and the fact that it's aimed at kids, but I'm curious as to your thoughts.)

[skygiants]

This is partly a placeholder comment to remind you to come back and tell me what you think of A Wrinkle In Time, if you do see it tonight!

I do think Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle would probably be fun but I ALSO think we should see Jumanji Original Flavor AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, I can't believe I haven't rectified this yet!

[genarti]

I did see it tonight! And I very much liked it. (SPOILERS BELOW, which I know you're fine with but I mention it in case anyone else reads this.)







They definitely condensed a lot from the book, which on the whole I think was a good call even as I was wistful for the bell-flowers of Uriel and for Aunt Beast. (But I think it was the right call to not half-escape from IT, heal on a different planet with different creatures, go back to Camazotz again, and properly escape that time, all the while leaning into the complications of Mr. Murry's feelings about the baby son he doesn't really know and has only met as cruel and IT-possessed and Meg's feelings about her dad not being able to magically swoop in and fix everything once she'd found him.) Anyway, I realized during the WAKE UP, MEG!! bit of the confrontation that they were probably going to just meld all that into one big confrontation, which I am fine with.

IT was oversimplified into less authority, more nebulous evil, but they still tied it to very L'Engle ideas of the Shadow and the evil of the world and so forth, so I was fine with that too; it seemed like a reasonable way to work in L'Engle metaphysics without getting into "there's the Shadow and the Ecthroi, oh and Camazotz is a Shadowed planet but IT is different from the Ecthroi, but anyway--" complications. I agree with you that it made Meg's end triumph more divorced from the flaws she was supposed to be using, though. I think a couple of lines could have fixed that, though. (I also felt that that fight came down a little too hard on... I'm trying to figure out how to say this, because the triumph of love despite all and Meg's love for Charles Wallace specifically is hugely important, but in the book we have Meg's interiority. In the movie, we didn't, and the external lines were a little too close to LOVE THEM EVEN IF THEY HURT YOU for my taste for a kid's movie, at least when Meg was being flung around by evil fire-shadow(-ganglion??) tendrils.

However it was definitely a correct call to go for some vaguely neuron-y structures instead of making IT be a literal giant brain. I feel.

I liked the change to the Happy Medium a lot! It did make me think about how very many women are in the original book, though. I think the only male characters are Calvin, Charles Wallace, Mr. Murry (basically a not-damsel in distress, though slightly less so in the book), Mr. Jenkins, and various evil Camazotz guys. Granted, two of those are main characters, but then against them we have Meg, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which and Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Murry, the Happy Medium, Aunt Beast...

I liked the soundtrack a lot. It wasn't exactly subtle, but I really enjoyed it. And the visuals! Very little looked like what I imagined from the book, but I really loved nearly all of it anyway. (Exceptions: I could never really reconcile Mindy Kaling with Mrs. Who -- I wanted her to be older and with more gravitas -- which is not a fault of the casting, just something where I couldn't set my mental impression aside for the movie's. And also, the book is so very anchored in upstate NY for me that that high overhead shot of the suburban blocks with their towering palm trees was intensely disorienting.) Also, having Mrs. Whatsit change on Uriel into a smiling Fantasia plant-nudibranch-magic-carpet thing instead of a centaur was a hilarious choice which I am all in favor of. (Edit: also hilarious but totally reasonable: adding in that giant storm thing on Camazotz for ACTION!!! and Meg to get to have some more physics badassery; the running-through-the-forest bit went on a little too long and I would've liked SOME explanation of how the heck Charles Wallace missed all that, but I liked the character beats it gave us.) And in general, I thought the updating for 2018 was very very well done! The Parental Presentation About Tesseracts was hilariously Kids' Movie Scientist, but this is a kids' movie, so fair enough. And I loved how they changed the focus from Meg's glasses to Meg's hair -- it worked perfectly, I thought.

I didn't want a creepier Charles Wallace, but I know we disagree on that. :p I love Charles Wallace, and a creepier one would have felt seriously OOC to me. I did want a warmer one, though? I think this is mostly an issue of the inherent difficulties of having a very young child actor, but it felt like he shrugged off a lot of stuff too easily -- like, "Oh, hi, Meg! Anyway here's a plot point." I loved Meg so much, though, and Calvin was great too. (His family stuff was watered down a lot, which I'm kind of :/ about, but I get having to streamline, and them wanting to end on a hopeful note of "now I have the courage to talk to him about this" instead of two alcoholics of whom IIRC at least one is also abusive, which is sort of hard to tie up in a pat bow.)

Anyway yeah! I loved it a lot, and I approved of nearly all the changes from the book, and now part of me wants to reread and I definitely want an icon once people start making them. >.>

[skygiants]

lol, Mindy Kaling was my favorite Mrs.! I thought she did a stellar job playing against type, and her vague benevolence worked the best for me as a transition from the serene inhumanity of those characters in the books.

(Re: Meg's interiority -- one thing I was thinking afterwards was that this was a movie that might actually have benefited from some narrative voice-over from Meg; I don't think that about many movies, but I think it could have helped do some neat stuff with her flaws and her contrariness and return some of the stuff I missed from the end, with an emphasis on Meg clinging to her individuality and her love in the face of overwhelming mental pressure to abandon them both.)

I MISSED THE GIANT BRAIN but uh I get why they chose not to do that. >.>

I forget who it was who defined Mrs. Whatsit's Uriel form as 'flying kale' -- maybe Alissa? -- but I LAUGHED, although I missed the genderweirdness of having Mrs. Whatsit turn into a non-female centaur (but I only missed it after the fact when I remembered that was what happened in the book.)

You are the first person I've talked to who liked the soundtrack! I'm glad it worked for someone. :P I don't have anything against the songs individually, but it was definitely way too pop for me in places where I wanted it to be weird and numinous.

I'M SORRY BUT BOOK CHARLES WALLACE IS A MIDWICH CUCKOO [she says, not having read the book in 20 years, but that's my FIRM IMPRESSION]

[sapote]

I came back to find this post because we finally saw it last night (in the smallest theater in the complex with a bunch of other grownup couples clearly there on date night) and I um did not like it much, partially because of the Flying Kale. It was just so much "child actors are told to make reaction faces of Wonder, cut to CGI image of a bucolic land, cut back to child actor who has clearly just been re-told to make reaction faces of wonder". I think part of that is that I'm really, really jaded to CGI images of wonder, so it would probably help if I were an actual child who hadn't seen quite so many of them.

But I guess I did feel like there was a sort of texture and specificity to the other planets in the book that the CGI couldn't capture; they just felt like generic Wondrous Lands? I felt like the most genuinely eerie and interesting shot was the one of the Three Mrs. in the wheatfield. The costumes were the most meaningfully rich and alien thing, I feel like, and that was partially because they actually existed and responded to conventional physics.

I was not into the Charles Wallace casting (get a kid who can ENUNCIATE, I whispered, crankily) until he turned evil, and then I found his acting choices and direction much more believable.

I did really like Meg - I just did wish she was crankier instead of just genuinely oppressed by exterior factors. My absolute favorite part of the book as a child was when Charles Wallace and Calvin are really getting into the whole "warriors for light" bit, and are like Einstein! Jesus Christ! Marie Curie! and Meg is genuinely disinterested in the whole question and does not feel like participating at all.

[sapote]

"I'M SORRY BUT BOOK CHARLES WALLACE IS A MIDWICH CUCKOO"

That does form one of the most interesting parts of his character, doesn't it! Like, whatever the hell is going on here, it's a big deal on an interplanetary scale, it's a point of real vulnerability for the entire planet Earth, he's attracting the attention of forces that want to do battle for him on other planets and inside his mitochondria - and Meg's love for him is comprised of "no, that's MY WEIRD BROTHER, back the fuck off". It's very Tiffany Aching of her.

[genarti]

ALSO random details from the French dub:

-- I'm not actually sure, for starters, if this was the French dub or the Quebecois dub? The accents were not noticeably Quebecois, to my ears, which I would have thought I would notice at this point. But I know films are often dubbed in a pretty standardized accent unless they're making a point of really localizing it, and the theater didn't specify "version française" as they often do. So, uh, I'll let you know if I figure that one out. >.>

-- Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which = Mme Quiproquo, Mme Qui, et Mme Quidam

-- a tesseract = a contraction, which is more clearly descriptive but less distinctively cool-and-sci-fi-sounding, IMO. Tesseract is a term in French, as in English, for a four-dimensional "cube" -- I know this because I looked on wikipedia, not because I know this off the top of my head -- so this may have been a movie-only adaptation for clarity for kids. What did they call it in the English version?

-- IT, in this as as in the Stephen King, is ÇA.

...uh, I'm not sure what else. Any other questions about how stuff got translated?

(And also also, I am up for watching Jumanji sometime! I think you haven't rectified this yet because you were holding out for the double Jumanji all the way across the sky party. :p)

[skygiants]

They called it a tesseract! But also it felt like it only got brought up really briefly? Several of us were complaining afterwards that Meg didn't get to explain it, and I'm like "I'm SURE I remember her explaining it in a trailer!" which indeed she did; I'm not sure why they cut that out of the film, as I'd rather have gotten it from Meg than from Chris Pine, as charming as he was.

(I WAS. I would still like to do it at some point! But now it will have to wait until Jumanji 2 is out for rental.)

[pseudo_tsuga]

I've only discussed Annihilation with other people who have read the books so it's refreshing to get an outside view! The movie definitly suffered from the comparison for me but I did leave actually getting to see all of the strange nature happening.

[skygiants]

I have been on hold for the book at the library FOREVER. I'll probably read it eventually! But as it turned out, I am grateful that things played out as I did, because I get the impression that the film would have suffered by comparison for me, too, and as it was I could enjoy it pretty much wholeheartedly and immersively without trying to analyze the comparison. The visuals! The sound design!

[obopolsk]

and the girl in the row next to me who sat up during the scene where Simon's dad awkwardly but endearingly expresses how much he loves and supports him and whispered, "that's MY dad!" My heart, which had already grown three sizes, grew three sizes more.

I think my heart grew three sizes just reading this!

(I haven't seen the movie yet but really enjoyed the book.)

[skygiants]

IT WAS SO CUTE. The entire audience was adorable. I sat on a bench afterwards waiting for my friend to get out of the bathroom and watched all the tiny queers walking by expressing how happy they were with the film, and it was the best waiting-for-a-friend-to-get-out-of-the-bathroom experience I can honestly remember having.

[genarti]

oh man, ADORABLE *_____*

I'm pretty sure Love, Simon would trip my embarrassment squick way too much, but I WANT to want to see it just for the audiences of young queers.

[skygiants]

yes, it's a shame you would die a thousand deaths watching it