Weekend Round Up; Juno, Dirty Blonde, Supernatural, and misc. magazines
Friday night, we watched Juno. This film goes down so smooth. The dialogue rang a little false for a 16 year old girl and I didn't really see the appeal of Beaker, who seemed a little dim compared to Juno. Still, I fell in love with every one of the characters. They were all so flawed and yet so likable, and the relationships were completely believable. I really appreciate a film that presents teenage pregnancy without any of the hysteria associated with it.
I am the end result of a teenage pregnancy, although nicely, my parents kept me. My parents were 17 when I was born. My mom finished out high school pregnant. I don't think her experience was as smooth as Juno's. But I am glad that my parents decided to keep me. (I'm still pro-choice though. But that's another topic).
Saturday night, we went to see a play called Dirty Blonde which is mostly about Mae West, but has some parallel plot lines going on. I think the play itself has some fundamental pacing mistakes. The play regularly breaks out into song, and most of the time, these songs brought the play to a screeching halt. It's not a musical, where the action of the play advances in the song. They're just old Mae West musical numbers, which don't really show us a side of the woman that we aren't already seeing. I also questioned how much of the quips that they attribute to her. Surely, some of her lines were actually written by, you know, writers? Still, I gained an appreciation for the woman who was a bit ahead of her time. The make-up and costuming were well done, and the lead did a pretty good impression of Mae West.
Throughout the weekend, I read the March issue of F&SF (reactions coming soon), issue #2 of GUD (some not very positive thoughts coming soon), and the latest issue of Weird Tales, which I am enjoying so far, and finally, we get to see Anne VanderMeer's editing at work. I hope to have these three magazines finished this week, and my thoughts posted here. Not that you should care, though--they're strictly posted here for my own benefit.
Sunday night, we capped off with a few more episodes of season 2 of Supernatural. I like this show. I know I shouldn't. It's not very good, a lot of the time. But it's finding itself quite nicely at this point in the series, and I can't help but like characters from my home town of Lawrence, Kansas. (Which is filmed, like everything else in cinema and TV these days, in Vancouver, Canada.)
A good friend of mine from my high school years wrote me out of the blue over the weekend. It was really nice to hear from him. If you're someone from my past, lurking and reading this blog, shoot me an email. I love hearing about what people have done, and what's going on in their lives. I'll try to write back regularly.