Fangirls Fall Guide to 2016: Movies Edition

Welcome back Fangirls! I hope you had a chance to check out the first entry to this joint series with Julie from TV Recappers Anonymous (where we are cross-posted) and if not, then take a look to see what we had to say about TV and then come on back because it’s time to talk movies!

Amy’s Picks

Movie you should see:  Earlier this year I saw the trailer for Sing Street in theaters a few times. Each time I would think, “This movie looks made for me! 80s music! Ireland! Cute boys in bands wearing eyeliner!” But for some reason I wasn’t interested and I couldn’t figure out why. Thankfully I ignored myself and watched it on DVD recently and let me tell you, it is delightful. Written and directed by John Carney who did Once (a favorite of mine) it hits all the right nostalgia buttons: teenage crushes and heartbreaks, discovering yourself and defining who you are, losing yourself in music and the connections you make through songs. I flat out loved it and the soundtrack is something that I would have owned in the 80s and will keep you humming the tunes long after the movie is over. Available: iTunes, Amazon, DVD

Movie I’m excited for: Allied. My Girl Crush Marion Cotillard? I’m in. Brad Pitt being dashing? SOLD! But then the trailer came out and it was the first time in a long time that I watched a trailer and got swept away. I watched it several more times. Maybe it was the epicness of it – love and war, intrigue and danger all set in WWII and the post-war era, two movie eras that I adore. It looks pretty grand and it has actual capital M, capital S Movie Stars and there are no damn superheroes to be seen. Pretty people + Gorgeous costumes + War time dangers + Romance + Hot car make-outs in sandstorms = my butt in the theater on opening night! Opening: November 23.

Julie’s Picks

Movie you should see: The Lobster. I’m just going to come right out and say it. This movie is weird. And it’s definitely not for everybody. But it’s the one “new” movie that really stood out for me in 2016, and it’s the one that’s sparked the most conversation amongst my friends and family after viewing. As a terminally single person who just plain sucks at relationships, you could bet that I would long ago have been turned into an animal in the fictional world that embodies this film. (I’d choose a cat naturally. I know it’s not the most creative answer, but I happen to think I have a lot of cat-like tendencies.)

The Lobster has a lot of interesting things to say about the way that society pressures us to couple, and looks down upon and/or often vilifies single people. That episode of Sex and the City, Bay of Married Pigs, comes immediately to mind. But it’s not all one sided. “The Loners” in this story don’t come off so hot either. Though, to be honest, I’m less certain about what the writers are trying to say about me. Hence, the endless discussions about the film with family and friends.

Apart from being an interesting social commentary, The Lobster is funny, quirky, and just flat out different than anything I’ve ever seen before. And in a world that turns out cookie-cutter films like the assembly line at Chips Ahoy, that’s saying something. Available: iTunes, Amazon, DVD

Movie I’m excited for: The Edge of Seventeen. I’ve always been a sucker for a good coming-of-age tale, probably because my level of maturity is irrevocably about on par with most sixteen year olds. Not that there’s anything entirely new or different on the surface, about the story of an awkward, wise-cracking, but intensely intelligent girl on the outer fringes of the high school social order trying to survive the sometimes unforgiving, and often ridiculous, world of adolescence. But this trailer made my smile, and reminded me of my own best friend from high school, who remains one of my favorite people in the world. Plus Hailee Steinfeld just seems so darn likeable here. How can you not root for her? Opening: November 18th

We hope you have your iPod ready because next up — Music!

For more check out Amy’s book The Fangirl Files: True Tales and Tips from the Fandom Frontlines and Julie’s novels on Amazon.

I’ve written a book!

So it is clear that my attention to this blog has fallen by the wayside the last few years. There are many reasons for that including, but not limited to: a real, non-imaginary-man boyfriend, a house and a dog.

There is another reason that will be far more interesting to you which is that I have been writing a book! If you’ve liked what goes on here (when things were, you know, actually going on) then I guarantee you will like

The Fangirl Files

True Tales and Tips from the Fandom Frontlines!

Click to connect to my new book-centric website!

The book is an expansion of this blog so if you enjoyed my tales of chasing Brandon Flowers on his Flamingo Tour, unapologetic love for Boy Bands, devotion to Pacey Witter and all things that celebrate being a Fangirl then get your copy and join the Fangirling Revolution!

May I interest in you a fabulous book trailer?

Buy now in Paperback or Kindle!

And follow along with #fangirlfilesbook on my social media (just look over there to the right, and up, and there you are!)

Female gazing at the boys of “Magic Mike XXL”

The PR campaign for Magic Mike XXL has been really entertaining so far.

There have been suggestive posters:

From Hollywire

Appearances at Pride Parades:

 

Viral videos… (bonus points to the lady who point blank answered “NO” to the question, “would you say you care about the story?”!)

And a whole lot of abs-tastic eye-candy being put out there:

From Entertainment Weekly

What has been the most interesting thing about all this is not even the sculpted pretty-boys flexing their oiled pecs for the camera but the fact that all the publicity is being aimed squarely at straight women and gay men, traditionally two audiences Hollywood doesn’t really give a sh*t about because they are not straight guys. This has been SO REFRESHING for a few reasons:

• Straight men aren’t the only people who like movies OR are titillated by sexy body parts
• The actors in the movies seem to be game for just about anything and don’t seem to care about how cheesy it may look so as a result everything about the movie and the press tour looks FUN!
• They are totally on board with flipping the standard “male gaze”  (women as objects in film that exist for the pleasure of the male eye) which just about every other movie in creation is geared to – over to a “female gaze” in which the men in the movie become the objects

Look, I’m totally going to see this movie. I saw the first one and I’m a straight lady with eyes, I like a strong set of shoulders when I see them and male strippers are basically Boy Bands minus the nudity and singing. But honestly a major part of why I want to see it is because I want to support a press campaign that is actively courting at an audience who is usually ignored when a studio is trying to sell something.

Well done Magic Mike and your band of Merry Strippers, thanks for letting us objectify you as if you were actresses!

“This is the story of four vampires who live in a flat and have their eternal lives taped…”

Last night I saw What We Do in the Shadows which is a HYSTERICAL “vampire reality TV documentary” (should such a thing actually exist!)

Here, just watch this:

I haven’t laughed so much at a movie in ages. It is so funny, so clever, so ridiculous that afterwards as I was trying to fall asleep I literally burst out laughing remembering one of the scenes. Just the idea of vampires having “chore charts” when one roommate isn’t pulling his weight or tricking people into thinking their spaghetti is worms because they learned it from The Lost Boys (!!!) is so brilliantly demented.

If my gushing hasn’t sold you – how about the fact that it’s by the same lunatics behind Flight of the Conchords? Or that Jemaine Clement stars and Rhys Darby has a supporting role as the alpha of a rival gang of werewolves (not “swearwolves” because they watch their language, OK?) Why don’t you watch this and remember how on-the-nose these guys are at parody and then go see the movie?

Movies I Will Never Get Sick of

You know when you are flipping channels and you see a movie from the 80’s or 90’s and no matter how many times you’ve seen it you have to watch it again — or when you’re home sick and you want something silly and familiar to distract you — or just have that one movie that you can’t. stop. quoting? Well here’s a rundown of mine:

Parenthood: Steve Martin has a lot of siblings and a lot of kids. Wackiness ensues

Favorite quote: “I’m too young to be a grandmother. Grandmothers are old. They bake, and they sew, and they tell you stories about the Depression. I was at Woodstock, for Christ’s sake! I peed in a field! I hung on to The Who’s helicopter as it flew away!”

 

I Love You to Death: Kevin Kline cheats on his wife and she plots (badly) to kill him for it

Favorite quote: “If we keep shooting Joey, don’t you think he might get suspicious?”

 

Postcards from the Edge: Meryl Streep is an actress in recovery with a challenging mother

Favorite quote: “Well, maybe I was an alcoholic when you were a teenager. But I had a nervous breakdown when my marriage failed and I lost all my money…Well, I got over it! And now I just drink like an Irish person.”

 

Soapdish: Sally Field is a soap diva whose life on and off her show is one big melodrama

Favorite quote: “That’s depressing and it’s expensive, two words I hate. You know the words I like? I like the word ‘peppy’ and the word ‘cheap’. Peppy and cheap.”

Overboard: Goldie Hawn is a rich diva who gets amnesia and is led to believe she’s a housewife

Favorite quote: HOW CAN I CHOOSE!?!? As my mom puts it, “there’s an ‘Overboard’ quote for everything!”

“A falsetto child?”

“I’m a short, fat, slut”

“You shot a chicken?”

“It’s not us dad it’s Roy”

“But darling, if you have a baby, you won’t be the baby anymore.”

“Eat your checkers!”

“Oysters in a cold ocean at night? That doesn’t sound like me!”

Ahhh so many laughs — so many terrible trailers 🙂

James Dean is Still Cooler Than You

Today is the 59th anniversary of James Dean’s death. The man would be 83 years old now and who knows what he would have done with his life and career had he survived a car crash. He may have gotten fat or bald, made terrible movies or been hawking products in TV commercials. Instead he is frozen in time just like this:

Eternally young, handsome and cool. Recently my boyfriend and I watched East of Eden because we were going to the central California coast where the movie is set. I watched Dean’s movies a lot when I was a teenager and spent most of that time alternately swooning and grieving that he was so stunningly beautiful and so tragically dead. Watching it now with an adult perspective I really appreciated how incredibly talented he was and how he certainly was one of the first true archetypes of the Wounded Misunderstood Man Child Who Just Wants to be Loved that so many of us are drawn to (paging Dr. Doug Ross, looking at you Tim Riggins.)

On our trip we drove out to Cholame where Dean died and is memorialized around a shady tree next to a diner right out of a movie set. The first time I saw it in the early 90’s there had been small sort of cameos of his face as part of the memorial that had been filled over with plastic to keep them preserved. But over the years fans had chipped away at the plastic attempting to get to the image underneath. Those were no longer there and I figured that this long gone, not many people stop there to see the memorial anymore.

Inside the Jack Ranch Cafe next door with its walls covered in Dean memorabilia, country music playing in the kitchen and warm cherry cobbler topped with vanilla ice cream we learned from our waitress that every single day people still come in there because of James Dean. EVERY. DAY. That’s some pretty amazing longevity for someone who is probably more well-known by Kids Today for merchandise with his face on it rather than his film work or cult of celebrity.

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So rest in peace James Dean – nearly six decades gone and we’re still watching you, talking about you and looking for you.

Working Class Foo Fighter

Rick Springfield + Dave Grohl = AWESOMENESS!!!

I never would have guessed Rick’s catchy songs (that I’ve been singing along with since I was 9!!!) run through the Dave/Foo Fighters machine of Magnificent Loudness would work so f’ing well – but damned if it does!:

Magic Mike: A Girl’s Guide

This movie is made for women. Period. Ok and gay guys. But it is not made for straight guys at all and YET what do we see the first five minutes of the movie? BOOBS! On behalf of the straight female population I ask Mr. Steven Soderbergh and all the obviously male movie execs behind Magic Mike:

WHAT IN THE FUCK??

Of course some boyfriends and husbands were gonna get dragged to see “the male stripper movie” and you don’t want them to be bored and embarrassed so sure, throw in some boobs to hook them in right away. But you know what? I go see lots of movies aimed at male audiences and never once see a shirtless guy thrown in to appease the female audience members. Or they are shirtless but for 5 damn seconds!! Or even worse – we are promised shirtlessness in the trailers and then DENIED for 2 hours of our lives we can’t have back!!

And don’t tell me that it needs to immediately be established that Magic Mike is a straight dude into threesomes with chicks. We know Mike is totally hetero because:

1. He knows to wear proper work boots to a construction site
2. He drives a big ass pick-up truck that screams “I put my penis in girls”
3. The ease with which Mike and all the other Cock Rocking Kings of Tampa stand around half-naked with each other gossiping backstage demonstrates how perfectly fine they are with their manliness

OK rant over because it is hard to stay annoyed when the “Channing Tatum Charm School” is in session. Damn is that guy charming! He looks like one of those underwear models you’d see in old catalogs (probably not entirely SFW) and his moves are pretty bad ass.

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But the entire movie is practically stolen by Matthew McConaughey who for my money was born to play sleazy strip club owner Dallas. I mean – he should get an Oscar just for his no-holds-barred striptease (definitely not SFW!) near the end of the movie which is completely, fearlessly ridiculous. You go with your drawling, black leather chaps wearing, better-body-at-42-than-guys-half-your-age self boy!!

I appreciated that the male dancers seem to know that us ladies like a little storytelling with our bump and grind. So men are satisfied with a woman dressed like a schoolgirl writhing on a pole. BORING! The stripper boys understand we need a little plot with our objectifying of their abs and asses. Give us some Tarzan saving Jane or a young cowpoke out on the range for the first time (speaking of that cowpoke, it’s English pretty boy Alex Pettyfer):

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Personally I was a big fan of “The Army Dance” because the entire military drill + sexy white tank tops + Boy Band-esque ripping off of tank tops = Hot Sexy Fun!

I mean, they are literally using their penises as weapons on a room full of women who have paid to objectify them! How can you not love that?!?

In the parking lot after the movie my girlfriend and I ran into a male friend who was there to see Ted. Yup. That says it all right there about the difference between us girls and them boys!

He’s real and he’s spectacular!

So the last few years I’ve had all this trouble with Stupid Real Life Boys. And of course I have a lot of Imaginary Boyfriends. But something funny happened recently – I got myself a Real Live Not At All Douchey and in Fact Totally Amazing Real Life Boyfriend!! I KNOW!! RIGHT?!??

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Just how amazing is he? Well he walked into my 16 Year Old Girl Bedroom home office which contains (among other things): an enormous Brandon Flowers poster, Backstreet Boys nesting dolls, Vampire Diaries paraphenalia, and a Wall of Men 3.0 – and instead of turning on his heels and running he exclaimed with utter enthusiasm:

This is awesome!

Did you hear that? It was my heart having joyful palpitations 😉

And he doesn’t bat an eye at my crazy shenanigans of chasing bands and obsessing on TV shows! He even offered to see Magic Mike with me! AND he said with absolutely no prompting whatsoever – that if a Backstreet Boys museum existed “I would go with you.” Did you get that part? How I didn’t even ask that?!? (and for the record – why doesn’t that exist goddamnit?!? I already have a date for it!)

I feel like anytime I talk about him I turn into a total gushing girlie. He’s a bit of a fanboy himself about movies and directors – breathlessly calling the night he got to meet one of his directing idols, “the best night of my life” which I took as one of the signs we were on the same wavelength about the stuff we love. He’s so great and he’s CUTE! Let me just say that his celebrity doppelganger is someone we like to call Jake Gyllenhaal:

Laugh it up Jake – you’ve been replaced!

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A friend of mine said, “you’ve obsessed so much on imaginary men that it’s almost like you dreamed him up!” And if it weren’t for the fact that she and other people have also seen/heard/observed that he is indeed a real guy and not one in my head – it makes this exchange from last week all the sweeter:

Setting: Save a Prayer by Duran Duran is on TV

Me: That’s my husband John Taylor

Him: Hi John Taylor!

Me: I mean, you don’t have to worry because I’ve been waiting for him to marry me since I was 13 – but if he WERE to show up – I would have to leave you

Him: OK. You should tweet him and tell him he’s your husband

Me: DON’T THINK I HAVEN’T TRIED!!!!

Even better – one found me that thinks I’m perfect the way I am – in all my Crazy Fangirl Glory and really, what more can one ask for?

Summer of Shirtless Men

Channing Tatum

Yes I DID see Magic Mike and yes I WILL be posting about it shortly!

Ryan Lochte

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Mmmm…Olympic Swimmers and Divers and gymnasts OH MY!

Vampire Eric

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I’m so behind on True Blood but I appreciated the season premiere featuring lotsa nearly naked Jason Stackhouse.

Italian Football Team

Thanks to my English girl Lisa who sported me these pics of sexy, shiny Italian hotties!

Isn’t objectifying men with the female gaze fun?!