Liz Tells Frank What Happened In Lena Dunham’s “Tiny Furniture”
Dear Frank,
Today, as I usually do while writing, I am listening to music: Specifically, I am taking advantage of my Spotify Premium free trial to listen to Kelly Clarkson songs about being strong and independent and whatnot. I listen to music like this on repeat as a sort of hypnosis technique — the bulk of my work has been accompanied by the collected works of Britney Spears, P!nk and Jennifer Lopez. My iTunes listening history is a deeply embarrassing thing.
But Kelly Clarkson is a conscious choice today, because Kelly (I feel like I can call her Kelly), represents a very specific sort of girl whose public image is deliberately honest and natural, almost to a fault. I remember listening to an interview Kelly did with NPR after she Tweeted out her support for Ron Paul — the way she explained it, she was watching Leno with her brother, decided she liked Ron Paul, and said so on the internet.
Politically, she and I couldn’t disagree more, but I liked the image of it, Kelly couch-surfing with her brother, jeans and thick socks, sending out a quick tweet before seeing if there was a Simpsons rerun on anywhere.
Frank, this comes up because these days, the idea of a lady living her life unapologetically is becoming less and less a radical act. Ashley Judd makes headlines by ranting about the media attention paid to her face, Jennifer Lawrence charms late night hosts and red carpets with her mesmerizing goofiness… and Lena Dunham makes movies and TV shows. Read the rest of this entry
“Farscape”: The Complete Skip It/Watch It Guide
[I’ve wanted to do a SI/WI for this show for ages, but it’s been a while since I really dug into the Henson Company’s insane combination of puppets, sci-fi and attractive people in leather pants. Fortunately, I happen to know a bonafide “Farscape” expert, and she was willing to step in and perform this valuable public service! Andreanna Ditton, take it away… –Liz]
Farscape is, as one character says, “Disneyland on Acid.” It’s a roller-coaster of sci-fi and bad decisions when the human is always wrong, but that doesn’t stop him from having a plan. Our protagonists are all escaped criminals, from the big blue priest (Zhaan), who orgasms in the light, to the tentacled warrior masquerading as a Klingon rip-off (D’Argo), who turns out to be funny, young, romantic and ragey. There’s a soldier (Aeryn Sun), raised by a fascist military race that look human, who accidentally goes against her training and gets exiled for it. And then there’s the deposed dictator with the worst case of swamp gas in history (Rygel). Couple all that with a living ship (Moya), her snarktastic Pilot (Pilot), and John Crichton, All-American boy wonder who got shot through a wormhole into the ass-end of a universe that considers him expendable, problematic, and eventually marked for death — and you have a television show.
This is science fiction for people who like their comedy in turns black and snot-filled, their love stories fraught and full of sex, their action-sequences big, the consequences bigger, and the actual science…best left unexplored. It’s space opera on an epic scale.
Farscape tackles all the traditional tropes, then turns them on their collective heads. Continuity matters. Story matters. This is the Odyssey — a man lost in the universe, trying to get home. In the meantime, home changes. Decisions don’t get undone in Farscape, for any of the characters — heroes or villains. It helps that the cast is uniformly stellar, that crazy is not pretty but terrifying, that space is vast, and villains cruel but multi-faceted, and that everyone is capable of doing bad all by themselves.
And yes, there are puppets. If those puppets don’t make you cry at some point, you have no heart. Read the rest of this entry
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In (Parts of) “Touch”
Dear Frank,
So things have been kinda busy lately, but I am taking a break from the chaos for a short update because FRANK, IT IS SUPER-IMPORTANT THAT YOU KNOW ABOUT SOMETHING STUPID THAT HAPPENED ON TELEVISION.
In case you’re not aware, Kiefer Sutherland is back on Fox as the star of Touch, which was created by Heroes creator Tim Kring and BOY HOWDY can you tell that that is the case. Because BOY HOWDY is this show terrible in all the ways that Heroes was terrible, but sans superpowers and with the added bonus of having a terrible pilot, so you don’t suffer under any illusions that the show might actually be functional down the line.
I don’t really want to go into detail about the whole Kiefer-and-his-autistic-son-who-Kiefer-is-raising-alone-because-of-9/11-wife thing, or the whole autism-gives-you-magic-powers thing because, c’mon, heavy sigh. Really, Frank, I just want to tell you about this thing with the cell phone. Read the rest of this entry
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In “Deliverance”
Dear Frank,
This movie is one that has been on my to-do list for you for over a year now — I suspect, in fact, that Deliverance is the perfect example of the type of film for which this blog was created: Classic, yet not necessarily a classic that would be considered essential viewing.
And it’s a classic for one very specific reason — I admit up front that my foreknowledge of this movie is limited to the fact that a dude gets raped in it. I mean, technically, that’s not the whole truth — I totally listened to that APM interview with the daughter of the writer once. But really all I have in my mind right now is “squeal piggy squeal!” And that isn’t helped by the fact that during the opening credits, we’re watching nature being demolished by bulldozers while this bit of voice-over plays: “We’re gonna rape this whole goddamn landscape. We’re gonna rape it.” My irony detector just went DING DING DING.
This movie moves pretty fast when it wants to — we’re quickly introduced to four bros heading out to a river in the Appalachians for a good ol’ fashioned bro trip. (Technically, these men pre-date the actual “bro” movement, but the concept remains the same.) The river they’re about to canoe down is about to disappear due to the construction of a dam (“YOU CAN’T FIGHT PROGRESS!”) and I’m beginning to suspect that maybe, JUST MAYBE, this movie is about the corruption of innocence. Read the rest of this entry
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In “Terra Nova”
Dear Frank,
All last fall, as I watched Terra Nova, YET ANOTHER family-from-the-not-too-distant-future-travels-to-the-past-and-gets-to-hang-out-with-dinosaurs drama, I knew it would be something I should tell you about at some point.
Frank, I thought we’d have more time. Alas, last night the word went out that Terra Nova was no more — at least for Fox, though the show’s going to be shopped around to other networks HAHAHAHAHAHAHA GOOD LUCK WITH THAT GUYS. I mean, I sure did watch it. But that doesn’t mean I think the odds of it returning are anything less than EXTINCT (HAHAHAHAHAH I AM FUNNY TODAY’S LIZ TELLS FRANK IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY COFFEEEEEEE).
With odds of pick-up low, let us memorialize the show the best way I know how — by snarking about it! It’s been a while since the show’s season finale last December, Frank, so I’m just going to tell you the stuff I remember, but that’ll probably all you ever need to know, anyway.
Liz Tells Frank Stuff She Forgot About Mulder and Scully and “The X-Files”
Dear Frank,
As you know because we are friends, there was nothing more formative for me as a lass than The X-Files. It indulged and deepened my love of science fiction, taught me the difference between procedural and serialized storytelling, and (most importantly) created a teenage ideal for future relationships that still lingers, ever so slightly (I have a thing for trenchcoats).
But I had forgotten until recently, Frank, how COMPLETELY EFFED UP The X-Files was as a comprehensive narrative. Especially (SO VERY ESPECIALLY) when it came to the core relationship between Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.
No one would deny that the partnership, friendship and eventual romance between Mulder and Scully was the closest thing The X-Files had to an emotional center, especially myself. But when you look at the sequence of events that occurred over the show’s later seasons, it made NO SENSE, on a storytelling level or a human level.
Here is why I mention it. A few weeks ago, a friend of mine IMed me with a simple question that she had a valid professional reason for needing an answer to: “When do Mulder and Scully first kiss?” (Frank, it should not surprise you that I was the person she thought to ask that question.) Because Aimee signed off before I could respond, I was forced to send her the following email:
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In... 