Eliza-thon 2008 (better than expected)
Nov. 9th, 2008 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lodessaMany many moons ago, Jeremy and I added every movie Eliza Dushku was in to our Netflix queue, no matter how dubious. Then we shoved things like Torchwood and Life and various other series in front of them, and forgot about it.
Right now we are having a hard time keeping up with our live shows, so we haven't pulled any more series to the top and were sort of amused when "City by the Sea" showed up (starring Robert De Niro and James Franco; Eliza is druggie James Franco's girlfriend and mother of his child who is trying to keep clean for the baby but cracks under the pressure as the movie goes on). The movie was better than expected, but since it did have reputable cast members it wasn't a huge surprise. (James Franco has very good bone structure for angst.) Indeed, we were more surprised yesterday, when we continued Eliza-thon 2008 with the next three movies on our queue: "Wrong Turn"(horror movie with young sexy college students [including Eliza] getting cashed down to be brutally murdered and possibly eaten by mutant inbreeds in the wilderness of West Virginia), "The New Guy" (a comedy about a total loser who gets himself expelled from his high school in order to create a new bad ass image at a new one and is successful enough to attract the attention of Eliza, who gets to be back in a cheerleading uniform), and "The Kiss" (a sentimental drama about a book editor who finds a great romantic novel manuscript that has been sitting in an office for 20 years and is moved to hunt down the author and through that search to change her own life, Eliza is the fun loving roomate who pushes her to follow her heart).
All of these movies looked like they were going to be terrible... but they were actually pretty good. In, "Wrong Turn", other than some obligatory stupidity that is necessary for a horror movie to take place, the characters (Eliza especially) were resourceful and intelligent and the imagery early in the movie, before we knew exactly what was going on and it was just a straight chase/fight with the villians, was frankly really disturbing and creepy. Now I'm not much of a fan of the genre (we watched this one first, while the sun was shining) but as a movie this one was actually surprisingly well done. "The New Guy" benefited from some good surreal aspects, taking itself less seriously helped us enjoy it more, and the pacing was slightly different than is usual for the formula, without trying too hard to be special and different. Also, Eliza dances around in swimsuits as well as a rather revealing cheerleading outfit. "The Kiss" was sweet and possibly tear jerking if you were in a vulnerable mood, and managed to be quiet without being slow or boring and featured a lot of interesting and good interactions between the main character and Eliza, and I am always in favor of women interacting with each other instead of every scene being ultimately about a man. Jeremy even liked it.
So in conclusion: Watching Eliza's movies is actually turning out way better than expected, in all genres. Of course having said that the next few to come will be atrocious.
Right now we are having a hard time keeping up with our live shows, so we haven't pulled any more series to the top and were sort of amused when "City by the Sea" showed up (starring Robert De Niro and James Franco; Eliza is druggie James Franco's girlfriend and mother of his child who is trying to keep clean for the baby but cracks under the pressure as the movie goes on). The movie was better than expected, but since it did have reputable cast members it wasn't a huge surprise. (James Franco has very good bone structure for angst.) Indeed, we were more surprised yesterday, when we continued Eliza-thon 2008 with the next three movies on our queue: "Wrong Turn"(horror movie with young sexy college students [including Eliza] getting cashed down to be brutally murdered and possibly eaten by mutant inbreeds in the wilderness of West Virginia), "The New Guy" (a comedy about a total loser who gets himself expelled from his high school in order to create a new bad ass image at a new one and is successful enough to attract the attention of Eliza, who gets to be back in a cheerleading uniform), and "The Kiss" (a sentimental drama about a book editor who finds a great romantic novel manuscript that has been sitting in an office for 20 years and is moved to hunt down the author and through that search to change her own life, Eliza is the fun loving roomate who pushes her to follow her heart).
All of these movies looked like they were going to be terrible... but they were actually pretty good. In, "Wrong Turn", other than some obligatory stupidity that is necessary for a horror movie to take place, the characters (Eliza especially) were resourceful and intelligent and the imagery early in the movie, before we knew exactly what was going on and it was just a straight chase/fight with the villians, was frankly really disturbing and creepy. Now I'm not much of a fan of the genre (we watched this one first, while the sun was shining) but as a movie this one was actually surprisingly well done. "The New Guy" benefited from some good surreal aspects, taking itself less seriously helped us enjoy it more, and the pacing was slightly different than is usual for the formula, without trying too hard to be special and different. Also, Eliza dances around in swimsuits as well as a rather revealing cheerleading outfit. "The Kiss" was sweet and possibly tear jerking if you were in a vulnerable mood, and managed to be quiet without being slow or boring and featured a lot of interesting and good interactions between the main character and Eliza, and I am always in favor of women interacting with each other instead of every scene being ultimately about a man. Jeremy even liked it.
So in conclusion: Watching Eliza's movies is actually turning out way better than expected, in all genres. Of course having said that the next few to come will be atrocious.
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