Just some instant hits on Oz:
James Franco was predictably awesome and perfectly cast - the fact that he can't quite escape that wink-and-nod with the audience that lets us know he's in on the joke of all this fakery that acting/celebrity/media cultism is...well, since Richard Pryor is dead, then there's nobody better to play the lost anti-hero.
Mr. Fuzzykins felt - rightly, I think - that Oz as a horny scoundrel (with the vim and vigor to at least metaphorically frak all the females on-screen) took it a little over the top...I mean, this is no deep-character-development kind of a film, but still. He's already a narcissistic child, no need to make him a dog, too.
Really, though? Three powerful, politically intelligent women fall for the same dude-who-just-happens-to-be-there?
We all take the one who shows up, I guess.
And one thing I really liked about Franco/Oscar/TGAPOz was that once he found himself at a moment of choice, he decided to show up. In a way, it doesn't matter that his motivations are selfish, because everyone prays to a false god, whether it's gold or beauty or love or whatever. It's actions that matter to others.
At least Rachel Weisz/Evanora/Wicked Witch of the East knew what was really going on: why waste your time mourning for/waiting for a king, when the throne is right there? Take it!
But what does it say that women have to get evil to get the throne? Because wanting power is more corrupting to women than to men? What's even funnier is that, minus this whole argument about a king, these three women have been capably running Oz since the king died...why not just divide Oz into three states and have a three-witch ruling council?!
I kind of love Mila Kunis...she over-enunciates certain consonants in a way I find utterly endearing. But, Mila/Theodora/Wicked Witch of the West, what's with this whole "I turned green and evil because the man I wanted was into somebody else"? Can I get one woman onscreen to represent the thousands of us who - when we get dumped, especially for someone else - get mad, and then get the frak over it! Move on! Don't waste your life on hatred, girl!
At least in Wicked she's born that way. Which actually makes me love that book even more in retrospect...too bad McGuire just spun it out into a stupid gimmick.
One last thing: all three women in this movie have really round, childlike faces. Even the mature-and-stern Weisz is cast from the same plump-cheeks-and-wide-eyes mold. And Franco looks puffy and bloated from too many munchies. What with the peculiarities of CGI acting and enhancement, these cartoony faces make for an oddly anime take on a stereotypically Western myth.
I might go see this again - 3D IMAX is better from the back of the theater. I left feeling like the moisture had been sucked from my brain...thanks third row.
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