redbeanbun couch movies: pitch perfect

Not even kidding: I have watched this movie at least four five times in the last two weeks. I couldn't even not watch it in between writing this blog post and finishing this blog post. This movie is nearly perfect.

Issues:

• There are two female Asian characters, and neither of them speaks hardly at all. This is stupid.
• Many a joke is made about Fat Amy's size (including the continual referring to her as Fat Amy). 
• Beca is really whiny in the beginning and spells her name with one C and doesn't like movies (?!!??!??).
• The lesbian character is in no way related to the obvious lesbian sexual tension in the movie. What?

Wonderful things:

• Fat Amy gets more play than pretty much everyone else and is hilarious and awesome.
• It was kind of like they took a bunch of plotlines from Degrassi but instead of correcting them, they were just kind of like, dude, whatever, they're adults, they can make mistakes (see: gambling (Alli Bhandari v. Cynthia Rose), promiscuity (Emma (UGHGHGHGHGHHGGHHGHGHGHGH) v. Stacie), angry teen rebels against parent(s) in an attempt to start a career in the arts (Manny (or Craig, except for the coke thing) v. Beca)). 
• Bumper and Donald. Gettin' it. 
• ELIZABETH BANKS. Oh my god. Elizabeth Banks. She is so amazing in this. She is so amazing all of the time. Elizabeth Banks, I love you. Never stop.

The best part about this movie is obviously the soundtrack, because, like, good god, my friends, some of these songs, like, I wanted to punch myself in the face because it was just WAY TOO AWESOME. Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

Anyway, pulling a close second to all of this awesomeness is (and I'm about to get a little mushy, but DEAL WITH IT) the close female friendships and the ability to resolve conflicts between people who don't necessarily see eye-to-eye, resulting in closer friendship bonds. It's really rare to see a movie with this many female characters, period, and to have so much of their action revolve around each other and conflicts that have nothing to do with sexual partners is pretty fantastic. I don't know about the rest of you, but my friends and I do other things than sit around talking about people we like and creating drama because we all like the same narratively-convenient boy (well, also, the majority of my friends don't like boys, so there's that).

This felt like a much more earnest exploration of female relationships than we've seen in a long time, outside of maybe Bridesmaids (which I also loved, but which had its own set of weird issues) or Mean Girls (ditto). Also, seeing it set with younger women is just kind of a thing of majesty.

As one of my friends recently remarked, Pitch Perfect is to the upcoming young folk what 10 Things I Hate About You, She's All That or Can't Hardly Wait was to my generation when we were teenagers (pre-teens? I have no context of time). It perfectly encapsulates this time period and creates this sort of cultural touchstone that is incredibly relatable. And while my young self identified strongly but quietly with Kat Stratford and her desire to go to an all-women's college, I didn't realize at the time that there are hardly any interactions between any of the female characters. I didn't know about the Bechdel test when I was fifteen, nor did I understand the importance of real representations of relationships on screen. When things like relationship violence and backstabbing bitches are normalized from childhood, we don't remember to question the situations we end up in as we get older and life and relationships get more and more complicated. We're so used to the third-act conflict that we seek it out and often can't feel comfortable until it hits, because we know that something has to go wrong in order for everything to come out right.

Basically, what I'm saying is that you need to watch this movie, and I love it, and you should also read the article I linked to above about Beauty and the Beast and relationship violence. It's really good.

new girl, i am having feelings about you, and they are complicated

fun fact: this is what you get if you google image search "menzies"

In last week's episode, Menzies, New Girl went on the offensive. By which I mean, the offensive offensive. By which I mean, there was a silent old Asian man who helped Nick reach "zen" and Jess had the most intense PMS of all time.

click gif to go to gif-maker's site

On the one hand, the whole PMS thing was so intensely overblown that it was funny in its absurdity - it seemed more like "this is seriously what people think PMS is for all women, hyuck hyuck hyuck" than "this is seriously what PMS is! Dudes! Am I right! Your girlfriend has totally done this!" So I could get on board with that, especially since there were a few things that happened where I was like, okay, yes, that is hilarious because it is factual to my life, but I will not specify which things because I like to keep things confusing.

click gifs for link to gif-maker's tumblr

On the same side of that hand, one could interpret the whole Nick-old-Asian-guy thing as being a severely over-the-top to the point of satire thing - but I'm not sure that most people would view it that way. I feel like most people in my demographic (i.e., white, raised suburban and middle class) would group this guy, who I'm pretty sure remains nameless throughout the episode, since he only speaks like five words, into a Mr. Miyagi-type category - oh, look, a quietly mystical ethnically Asian man is using his mysterious, Eastern knowledge to help a young white person! Rad!

Look, New Girl, I'm not convinced that you're not smart enough to be doing this in a satirical manner - you've done some really wonderful stereotypes-way-past-the-edge-of-absurdity thing in the past, and I don't doubt that you can do that in the future - I just am also not convinced that this episode was meant to be funny in the pushing-back-at-tropes way, and not in the racist-stereotypes-as-humor way.

I will give you another chance, New Girl, because you have Schmidt, and that is all I really need right now (seriously, Schmidt and Jean-Ralphio and I'm done. DONE, I tell you). Also, you're one of very few shows to have at least two minority characters in your main cast (I'm counting Cece in the main cast, which TVEquals did not, but I think she definitely is a main cast member). I think that, for the most part, you're doing positive things. It's just, when I like a show, I don't want to have to admit to any flaws about it (unless it's Secret Life, in which the entire point is that it is nothing but flaws). I expect more from you, New Girl, and I really think you're capable of it.

mad men episodes 3 and 4, or why i really hate shows that aren't available online

I was at my parents' this weekend and as such had access to lovely, on-demand cable for four solid days. This is the sort of thing that a young 20-something living in New York doesn't really normally have access to, unless they live in an apartment with five roommates who are willing to split the cable (and even then, she's living in Brooklyn, so her rent's less than it would otherwise be) or have a very high income job, like finance or something (what I'm saying is, of all of my friends under the age of 28, living with other people under the age of 28, I know maybe three people who have cable, and I know a lot of people).

Anyway, the point is that for NO APPARENT REASON, AMC has decided that they don't want people to be able to legally stream their shows in a timely basis. AMC, I'm trying to be a good guy right now. This is what's happening. Except I haven't turned to the little devil on my shoulder yet, because I'm trying to keep things legit, AMC. I'm really trying. I haven't yet spent extra money on a season pass from Amazon, but that sort of seems like my option, to which I say, you're going to get pirated. Amazon's online streaming interface is wack at best, and completely WTF at worst, and people my age, we want things when we want them.

ANYWAY. The real point is that, thanks to my parents' awesome cable, I was able to catch up on Mad Men, and I have to say, I'm excited.

SPOILERS?

a little kiss; OR, how mad men being back is the best thing that ever happened

I don't know if you've noticed, but lately everyone seems to be completely and horribly racist. There's a lot of people saying really awful things... I guess in more consolidated streams, because if you're all up in the internet like me, you see a lot of horrible things getting posted in different places all the time, but some recent events are pulling far more than their fair share of the horrible tweets from the dank depths of humanity's worst bile.

That's why A Little Kiss felt like the best present Matthew Weiner could have ever given me.

Follow me to the spoilers under the cut, my loves.

sh*t ___ say _____

Okay, so this has to be my favorite meme of all time.

A random sampling of these videos (now behind the jump, because I got a TIIIINY bit carried away), just in case you managed to miss the internet for the last week or two:

shameless plug

Just started reading Yo, Is This Racist? and man, people are racist. The guy who runs the tumblr is pretty funny.


Then after like a straight day of reading that tumblr, I see this pop up on my fb feed:

You better believe I submitted that ish.

Read, submit, do what you will, it's a free country!

things you should be reading, end of the year edition

I actually have a Google docs spreadsheet that lists all the movies I need to get around to seeing, which is not as detailed as this list of movies you should've seen in 2011, but does include several of these. BAM. I win at pop culture. Because... well, because I just said I did. If it's on the internet, it's true.

I don't think this actually happened, but it would be amazing if it had.

Yes, it is super twee, but that doesn't stop it from being adorable: Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel being TOTAL BESTIES LOL and making music together.

Do you need a new job? Are you the biggest nerd ever? Well then, you should know that Stephen Hawking is looking for an assistant. Are you listening, fictional kid from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close? Dream job ahoy!

I love Overheard in New York, and especially the ones that include kids. I'm not sure if it's that people talk about weirder things in New York, or if it's just that we all feel like the entire city is our apartment, or if we're all just used to the near-anonymity of living on a relatively small island with a few million people - but the quotes on that site are very often hilarious.

Everyone is loving Doctor Who right now! Even the Bloggess! I am not sure if I'm just obsessed with her (I am) or what, but this totally makes my day.

"Pro-tip: Any bit of advice that starts off with “I hope this advice doesn’t sound rapey” is advice you SHOULD NOT FOLLOW." - ManBoobz, excellent, always.

This has been making its way around the internet (or at least, the feminist-genderqueer internet that I personally inhabit, but, tomato tomato, you know what I mean?) but just in case you haven't read it yet, it is a really excellent post about how to deal with talking to kids about gender. Man, gender! Why you gotta be all full of constructs, ruining everything for everybody? Sheeeesh.

A good friend of mine recently started a blog, which is sort of a reboot of an earlier blog, except not? I don't know, it's mildly confusing to describe but anyway it's basically her whole coming-out story. Sometimes NSFW content, but a very interesting perspective, as she was married to a man and near/at 30 when she finally realized that she wasn't really into male-identified persons. Also, it is pretty juicy, and feels like you're finding out all the good gossip, which I personally love.

There is plenty of stigma surrounding mental/behavioral health issues for most people anyway, but those problems are more pronounced in the black community. This (this meaning "the Siwe Project") is a really important step in the mental health world, and you should keep an eye on it.

Oh, also, if you're into music and queer-ity, this podcast/mixtape site dedicated to queer music may be the place for you! Semantics question: is it still a mixtape if it's a podcast?

Yayyyyyyy reading things! I'm hoping to get my first TV thing put up by the end of the day, so, you know, WATCH OUT FOR THAT.

things for you to read: extended edition

First, in totally depressing things that are depressing, there's this article that makes it super obvious why more survivors of rape and sexual assault don't come forward. I strongly urge you to read it and pass it around, especially because of the part where juries in sexual assault cases are generally not open to persons who have been personally affected by sexual assault (which I assume includes close friends or family members of survivors). People need to talk about this! People need to stop victim-blaming! Juries need to convict actual sex offenders instead of putting fifteen-year-olds who had emotionally-but-not-legally-consensual-sex (in many states in the US, the legal age of consent is 16) on registered sex offender lists for life. In that vein, there's also this amazing article from Salon about how the well-meaning advice on how to avoid getting raped is, well, completely stupid and useless. During the entire course of my abusive relationship, I had zero alcohol (I didn't even try sips of my parents' wine at dinner until I was in college), I wore lots of layers in a weird proto-hipster style, I had a curfew, and none of that stopped my abuser from being an abuser. I had nothing to do with what he did.

Okay, angry survivor rant over.

Next on the list: a young Joan Rivers doing stand-up on some sort of bizarre variety show thing.

I don't know if you read the "If I Were a Poor Black Kid" article - I got about halfway through before I quit reading in disgust - but even if you didn't, the responses outlined in this article are an interesting and worthwhile read.

Ryan North jumps on the holiday bandwagon, albeit in a very cynical (and enjoyable) way.

I can't remember if I've linked to ManBoobz before, but it's great for when you need a little ragercise in your day. This old Maxim article, in particular, was a great workout for my anger-glutes.

One of my good friends linked me to The Bloggess, who is hilarious and awesome and whose other blogs I haven't gotten to yet because there is already a lot to read just on this one - anyway, if this story of taxidermy doesn't make you want to read the whole thing, I don't understand you.

Businessweek's awesome correlation =/= causation graphs will hopefully make you laugh, if you are a nerd like me, or if you just appreciate how ridiculous things are sometimes.

I always love MentalFloss, and this Real or Onion? quiz was crazy difficult, and sort of hilarious.

This video will probably make you dizzy.

Whitewashing! Yayyyy (and by "yayyyy" I mean "uuuughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh") !!!

Finally, the best gift for any holiday, that just keeps on giving.

(But actually, if you're looking for a holiday gift for someone who really doesn't need anything, maybe consider sponsoring something in their name for someone who does need something?)

nearing 1,000, hooray!

I am in a mild fugue state at the moment, as my best friend just informed me that she is moving across the country a full month before she said she was, but I wanted to say thanks to people who are reading this, from all over the world, apparently (Google Analytics says I'm big in Russia) and also remind everyone to click on an ad today, on some fledgling blogger's blog (mine works as much as anyone's! :D).

Also, just a side note - I just started watching Lie to Me and am in LOVE. If you like Castle or Psych or Bones or anything else that I would call an irreverent crime procedural, you will probably like Lie to Me. Also, if you like weird sciences and always want to jump into a career of something because of watching a TV show about it (i.e., forensics because of Bones, fake psychicing because of Psych, crime writing and/or ass-kickery because of Castle), you will probably enjoy its look into the science of lies. I especially like when they use pictures of famous lies or famous examples of emotion to show you, yup, this really is a universal facial reaction, and if you are like me, you will catch yourself doing microexpressions of various things and probably look like a lunatic as you laugh at yourself for tinily shrugging or biting your lip unconsciously.

Of course, it does fall into certain crime procedural tropes, including one that irritates me to no end - the all-Muslims-aren't-suicide-bombers!-but-one-in-this-episode-is-let's-find-out-who-oh-wait-everyone's-just-racist thing, which... like, no, the vast majority of Muslims are not extremists, but why do all crime procedurals feel the need to do at least one episode in which they point it out, and all of them feel very much like the people writing the episode were like, "oh my gosh, this is going to be so OUT THERE and AVANT-GARDE and make people UNCOMFORTABLE," and it's like, really? Showing Muslims as normal humans is avant-garde?

/SIIIIIIIIIGH. That got very tangent-y very quickly. I just watched the one with the seeming-suicide-bombers plot last night, which is probably why I'm stuck on it. Also I think I recently watched an episode of something else with that same plot. It's just that you don't see a lot of Muslim characters on shows for anything except the episodes about/seemingly about religious extremism, which is just stupid.

Oh, well, there was that character arc on Bones with Arastoo Vaziri, (spoiler warning on the season from 2009, highlight for text) where he fakes an accent so that the team won't be jerks about his prayer schedule, which was very surprising to me, when it came out that he was faking it.


And of course, there's Abed on Community, who is one of my single-most favorite characters of all time, of any medium. 


Annnnnnyway. I was hoping to find an article on Racialicious or something about the whole Muslims on TV issue, but "All-American Muslim" is skewing my search results. An article from last year on KoldCast names 14 American films (and TV) from 1980 on that have nuanced portrayals of Muslims - but that also includes Antonio Banderas playing an Arab Muslim, and several movies and shows that, to be perfectly honest, I had never heard of before. But, seriously, if you take pretty much any group that is a minority in the US and try to think of 14 positive or nuanced depictions of them in pop culture in the last 30 years, you're going to have to include some little-known documentaries and low-budget movies too. Sometimes I just want to slap Hollywood across the face and say, "Seriously, Hollywood. I'm really not afraid of seeing people of color (or queer spectrum, for that matter) on my TV or movie screen." 


I usually avoid writing/talking/commenting about this kind of thing, because I don't want to say the wrong thing and sound like a gross racist, but making members of minority groups hold the obligation for bringing up that group's issues is massively unfair and ridiculous.


So there you go, Hollywood. I consume pop culture like it's my job. I'm white and middle-class. And I want diversity in my TV and movies. SURPRISE!

on that recent note, more things to read

Racialicious is a great blog that posts essays from all over the interwebs (they get a lot of guest posts/cross posts/etc.) about all things related to race. They tend to be thought-provoking. My favorites are the posts about pop culture and race, because, let's face it, my pop culture nerdom is probably the biggest segment of my brain.

Fig. 1. Brain structure of redbeanbun. Section defined in pink: pop culture knowledge.  Section in green: ability to walk/talk/eat/wham/bam/thank you, ma'am.  Section in yellow: anger ball.  Section in blue:  rational thought.  Section in gray: remembering offsides rules for various sports (e.g., American football, soccer football, hockey, lacrosse, tennis).  Small white bean section: all other functions.

This New York Times article, about a political party I think we can all get behind.

I'm just gonna let you read this one.

Kate Beaton is finally, FINALLY posting again!!! And Goreys! Goreys are so great. They're one of my favorite things that she does. I just bought two of her books because there was a deal on Topatoco that was two-for-one books, or maybe it was buy two books, get a free T-shirt. I don't know. The point is I now own two very delightful Kate Beaton books, and a new Dinosaur Comics shirt in anticipation of FFTTTMIIWADCSD!

A family in Hawai'i who appear to grow all their own food have undertaken the greatest project of all time. That's right, people. Directions on how to make the Everdeen family dinner on the day of the reaping. GET ON  IT.

And finally, because I can't resist the allure of Ryan North, a recent Dinosaur Comic that investigates the tricky question of non-gendered English pronouns and comes up with an excellent solution.



That's all for now! As a friend once said of me, "She knows everything that happens on the internet." I'm on vacation next week, but I'm trying to keep my updates more consistent, and I'll try to post another "READ THIS, DAMN YOU" digest sometime next week.

things to read, if you are bored

Study things: Women tend to take their jobs more seriously than men

Completely true things: Why it's dumb to be in your 20s

Real things: A man talks about his life as an undocumented immigrant

Fun things: Crying baby around Obama? I THINK NOT.

Weird things: Babies poop everywhere (and from my time as a nanny, I know people actually do this, a lot, and it is weird)

Annoying things: Make up your mind, scientists, I like stretching

Friendly things: A girl I know draws comics sometimes, and this one is real funny