Much Ado About Joss Whedon

review of Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing (2013). Bellwether Pictures.
{NOTE: this review contains spoilers and also assumes the reader has a working knowledge of the play itself. Sorry if you're not in those categories...}

Cast of Characters: Amy Acker as Beatrice, Alexis Denisof as Benedick, Nathan Fillion as Dogberry, Clark Gregg as Leonato, Reed Diamond as Don Pedro, Fran Kranz as Claudio, Jillian Morgese as Hero, Sean Maher as Don John, Spencer Treat Clark as Borachio, Riki Lindhome as Conrade, Ashley Johnson as Margaret, Tom Lenk as Verges, Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher as the watchmen, and Romy Rosemont as the Sexton.

My fangirly instagram of the movie poster when I went to see the film.

I am an unabashed Joss Whedon fan. I love Buffy and Dollhouse and Firefly and Cabin in the Woods and Fray and Doctor Horrible and his zombie Republican video and his work with BriTANicK. . . the list could go on. My writing desk is peppered with his quotes traced lovingly onto lined paper in forceful black ink, where I can see them and be inspired by his nerd brain whenever I am at a loss for words or direction. Needless to say, I was beyond pumped when I heard my dear Joss was filming a version of my favorite Shakespeare play to be out this year, and the fact that he filmed it in his own house in 12 days with a bunch of his actor friends whose work I also know and love made me love him even more.

As soon as the first scene opened, my smile stretched wide--I could feel that I was going to enjoy this, and I was giddy with excitement. The not-quite-black-and-white color scheme gave the film a somber feel at first, but it worked wonders as the film paced itself out and got down with its screwball self. It was almost like it increased the focus on the faces because they were so stark and defined, and it helped bridge the gap between the modern dress and the archaic language. I could tell from the first canted high angle and off-center focus of Benedick silently getting dressed that the cinematography was going to be brilliant, framing just what needed to be framed in order for the scene to pack its full emotional punch. The film jumps back and forth from somber with undernotes of betrayal to giddy with suggestions of gleeful romping as fast as it takes for the viewer to decide if the black of Clark Gregg's suit jacket is really black or more of an emerald-tinted darkness in a single scene. The poles of angst and comedy are almost brutally encapsulated in certain characters, Don John being representative of the former and the good Constable Dogberry being gleefully indicative of the latter, and yet even the darkest scene where Hero is senselessly called out by her so-called true love (yeah, I'm a little bitter) still garnered laughs from some of the folks in my audience.

That's another thing I love about Joss Whedon. His ability to find the laughter. He has this quote that goes like this: "Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke." And with Joss at the helm of Much Ado, I knew one of my absolute favorite comedic characters in the entire history of all literature ever would get his day in the sun: Dogberry. The bumbling constable of Messina, king of malapropisms and misunderstandings, one of the most seemingly-incompetent characters in the film who actually saves the day and makes everyone happy again. His lines are some of the funniest in the play when delivered with such gusto as the god Nathan Fillion so does, and I love him for it. Dogberry and his co-constable, Verges (played by Tom Lenk, the eternal child/wannabe-bad guy Andrew Wells of Buffy fame), and the two night watchmen (brought to hilarious life by the BriTANicK comedy duo) were possibly the kings of the facial expression, raising eyebrows at Dogberry's every misused word ("This is your charge: you shall comprehend all vagrom men") but still trying their best to do their jobs. Some critics say that these characters were meant to criticize the contemporary police force when Shakespeare wrote the play, but I've always felt them to be a beacon of hope, a sort of reassurance that no matter how smart you think you are, you can always save the day. Because even supporting characters have that power.

Joss is the master director of clever facial expressions, and he is perfect for this play that is all about undertones and suggestion and hilarity ensuing. For those not in the know, Much Ado About Nothing is a Shakespeare play from circa 1588 having to do with the matchmaking antics of a few friends to set up two of their gang who are eternally enmeshed in a merry war of wits, never realizing their obvious connection to one another. The casting was brilliant, employing a bunch of Joss's previous actors whose versatility is tried and true, and Joss's direction of their interactions truly cement Much Ado's place in the screwball comedy tradition that it deserves, linking modern apparati with Shakespearean language and reveling in the interplay of the two--for example, when John the Bastard is captured and brought back to Messina, a messenger says "My lord, your brother John is ta'en in flight,/ And brought with armed men back to Messina," and a cameraphone is employed to give witness to this event, showcasing a Cops-style overhead video feed of the arrest.

A sort of set piece in itself, the house used as a home base--Joss's own home, which his wife designed--was beautiful. Its expansive California grandeur lent itself to the partying lifestyle of Shakespeare's Messina, but by centering an entire town's movements on a single location, the house also allowed the film to focus in on the people themselves, ever overlapping and slipping past each other: perfect for a story that is basically 98% about eavesdropping. Think about it--every major plot point involves someone listening in on someone else's conversations: Benedick falling for Beatrice, Beatrice falling for Benedick, Don John's set-up to make Hero look defiled, the revelation of said plot by the watchmen--it's all pure hearsay. Wonderfully plotted hearsay, but still indirect and subject to interpretation, a quality every single character in this play is counting on. At its core, Much Ado is a meditation on the meaning and quality of human interaction, and Joss Whedon, with his masterful combination of Shakespeare's fine words and his own knowledge of the human body's ability to showcase and shape those words with nothing more than a raised eyebrow, has terrifically succeeded in translating a phenomenal play into a phenomenal piece of film.

JUNE - Suck It, Wonder Woman

June review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: Suck It, Wonder Woman!: The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek by Olivia Munn (with Mac Montandon), 2010. [Memoir category]

(Fuck you, Olivia Munn, you do NOT have thick thighs.)

Okay, now that I got that out of the way. I can attempt to talk about this book in a civilized manner. Sort of. Apologies if this review becomes somewhat more of a tangential examination than a straight book review. I have a lot of feelings. Also if it folds back and forth on itself--I'm really just trying to figure out said feelings about the book.Overall, I had middling feelings toward it, but the things that made me angry are pretty big eyesores in my opinion and I wanted to give them their due, push against the things that made me uncomfortable coming from a woman I so admired. Here we go.

The gist of Olivia Munn's 2010 memoir-slash-funny-stories-about-her-life-collection Suck It, Wonder Woman!: The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek seems to be a brash declaration of Munn's status as a Geek Sex Symbol, mostly stemming from her run as a host on G4's Attack Of The Show. When I first picked up the book at Motor City Comic Con a few months ago, drawn by the intriguing title and funny cover posing, I was excited. I like Olivia Munn, especially on HBO's summer blockbuster The Newsroom (returning for its second season in a few days!!!). I admire her disregard for stereotypes and her brazen ownership of a traditionally under-the-rug epithet. I was looking forward to loving every word of her sardonic take on the ridiculously sex-crazed society that has become our Mount Olympus of sorts, excited to take it almost as a gospel for a geek girl like myself, but I felt myself getting a little more angry, a little more annoyed, as the book went on. the sex-positive geek girl is a concept that seems to come under much contention lately. As another reviewer on GoodReads said, I decided at the end that I still like Olivia Munn, but I did not like this book.

It makes me unspeakably sad to not like a book by someone who seems to be trying in earnest to cast a positive image for women in comedy and film, and this was no exception. I didn't enjoy reading Suck It, Wonder Woman! as much as I thought I was going to: Munn contradicts herself (as I have been doing for days trying to write this review and figure out how I feel about it), she uses the same jokes over and over again, her candor is illuminating at times but abrasive most of of the time--the flickers of actual personality sprinkled throughout the book are what kept me holding on. I mentioned before that the book seems to be proclaiming Olivia's Geek status although there exist within the text few substantial examples of such. I really want to believe that she is the geek she says she is, and not trying to capitalize on the sexy geek girl facade, to which she is dangerously close. She seems to have some connection to geeky stuff and mentions a lot of videogames that she played as an army brat outcast growing up being bounced from school to school, but there doesn't seem to be anything substantive to the claim other than running Attack Of The Show! Now, I'm not saying that Geekdom is a club for which you need to have references and a resume and a look-what-I've-done-to-prove-myself compendium, but I was disheartened by her continual use of pejorative language and suggestions for guys to "Totally Help You Score!" (title of chapter 17), adding the qualifier that geeky girls are somehow special and take certain XP to get with, maybe? Her language is almost intentionally abrasive--the opening anecdote about her first boyfriend ends with a revelation that he had Tourette's, and her response was that it was some kind of shitty karma, an almost "why me?" feeling. Not cool. Plus, incorrect use of the concept of “karma,” as I was informed by my Buddhist coworker. Double not cool.

While some of those suggestions were good and thought-provoking (like WHAT), many of them still seemed to fall under the typical "pretend to listen to girls because thats how you get what you want" heading. And I was angry. It appeared to me like Olivia was trying to be funny and appealing to all, but in a sort of angry way. Almost condescending?. She tells countless grotesque stories about other people in the industry--only one of whom actually has a name, almost like she's hiding behind her hilarity to ignore the fact that she's still relatively small-time and maybe isn’t Hollywood enough to be saying these steamy tell-all tales she’s telling. The one nameless story I actually enjoyed was chapter 9, "My Dinner with Harvard's Finest" (p76). It is one of the only times Olivia comes out as actively almost-feminist (though at one point in the books she denies the title), staring down a Hollywood bigwig's date and asking her why she lets him talk to her like that, calling her a whore and asking the others if they thought she was a whore. Although, at the end of the chapter, Munn does jump to conclusions and judge the girl as she pulls away with a community college bumper sticker on her car. Less than stellar.

On that note, I'd like to examine the sexuality and body-image aspects of the text. In the bottom corner of the book there is a teensy flip-book of Olivia in a long shirt/short dress type outfit waving and doing sexy things. Inside the cover is a poster of her in a frilly bikini and sailor hat kissing up at the camera. A whole chapter is devoted to her in revealing costumes of "Great Women" who inspired her--without any such meditations as to why or how they can inspire other girls. (Granted, they are each famous for certain things and no doubt those famous things contribute to their inspiration, but still.) While talking about her Playboy cover shoot--which she specifically got contracted to do sans nudity, which is impressive--she perpetuates the image of obsessive dieting and nigh-on-unhealthy eating habits that girls are force-fed every day. EVEN THOUGH later she says "I think it's great for young women to see a real woman, with real breasts and thick thighs considered sexy. I hope that changes the insanely narrow definition of sexy we generally see in the press and on television. Young girls should be proud of their imperfections and curves" (216). These two parts of her image were the most upsetting to me as a less-fit-than-most-twenty-something-girl who has lived with those pressures. I found myself being sucked into the stories, being like “yeah okay I can see why she wouldn’t want to eat if she has to pose--wait WHAT AM I SAYING.”

I found myself pondering the difference between her and say, Felicia Day. Do I respect Felicia a lot more? Why? Felicia still has sexy poses and a healthy knowledge of her body, but most of her time on Twitter is spent geeking out about the new Borderlands 2 patches and who’s going to stay up for the Persona release. Is it because Olivia seems to be selling some sort of sexualized version of the geek girl and because I don't look like her I automatically become angry and distanced from her? That isn’t a feeling I want to internalize. Both of these ladies are funny in their own way, and while both are skinnier than me (which I’m totally ok with, most of the time) I admire their devotion to being real, even if sometimes one or the other falls short. I guess the question I most asked myself is if there’s a world where two such geek girl personalities can exist without completely erasing each other's merits? How do we get there?

Ok, I know i’ve spent a lot of time arguing, against myself and this book and society. But like I said in the first paragraph, I do still like Olivia Munn. Actual glimpses of her personality shone through, and those moments were the ones that tried to hook their not-quite fully-formed fingers into the Memoir category while the rest of the book goes off on a stream-of-consciousness jaunt of its own with little regard for intent, and those moments were the quietest for me, the ones where I really felt connected to this woman, rather than sort of appalled (masturbating with shrimp in one hand story, anyone?). All in all, I admire Olivia for her attempt. This book came out in 2010, before she did Newsroom or her stint on New Girl, two characters that I really felt helped cement her into someone I’d like to get to know. I wonder what she’d have to say now.

Things I actually really enjoyed:

Chapter 3: The sweetest moments in geek history! of all time!

the phrase "license to douchify" on page 164

story about her on Fallon--she actually names people and reveals her raw side. (notably, this is the last chapter in the book...redemption?)

pictures of her past and her family.

5 everyday things you’d never think to do or see in a foreign country like Israel, but definitely should

{This is a blog post about my recent trip to Israel I wrote as a sample for a friend's sister's travel blog, might get published, might make some money. I'll keep ya posted!

1. Rent an apartment. My mom is a new-experience fanatic. Whenever we go anywhere, she always does her research and seeks out the most interesting things to be done in a country. One such discovery that we took advantage of was renting an apartment in downtown Tel Aviv from a single woman named Adva. It was a beautiful little loft apartment, two bedrooms and a bath, 10 minutes walk from the beach. We put down a security deposit, like you would do in the states, and at the end of our stay we paid Adva for the utilities we’d used as well as the apartment itself. Many people throughout Israel that we talked to have a setup like this, an extra addition to their house or even a separate apartment entirely that is kept up for the sole purpose of bringing in travelers (not really even tourists--some of my Israeli friends have told me they’ve taken advantage of this phenomenon as well!) and revenue.
The thing about staying in an apartment versus a hotel or a hostel or even a bed-and-breakfast is that your trip begins to feel much more real-life, much more everyday, and that is a little exciting. Living in a foreign country on a micro-timeline is like a taste of an authentic world without the commitment, and just as it is fun to play house when you’re young, sometimes it is fun to play I-live-in-a-foreign-country for a few days.

A panorama of our little loft apartment in Tel Aviv. Note the stained glass!

2. Take an (un)usual method of transportation. Sure, renting a car or taking a taxi is probably the easiest way to get around for the unfamiliar traveler, returning to you the power lost by your utter unfamiliarity with a foreign culture, but it also takes a lot of the fun out of learning a city. My mom (again, many of my travel tricks come from her) loves to take city buses and learn how the regulars get around. That is why we took public buses, sheruts (like taxis but van-sized), and lime green rent-a-bikes that had kiosks on nearly every major city block. As I mentioned in the previous entry, it’s fun to play I-live-here for a while. And nothing says everyday rat-race citizen like squeezing onto a public bus and praying to god the driver pauses at your stop.

Nice Google-sponsored handles on the local buses

3. Have a business meeting. My whole family are glassblowers, so when we knew we were going to Israel, my mom kicked into high gear trying to find all the connections she could make between her job at the glass studio here at home and anything in Israel, the birthplace of glass. She found exhibits, tours, books, almost anything a person could possibly absorb about the subject, and she began to make calls. There is an organization in Israel called AIDA, the Association of Israel’s Decorative Arts, and my mother instantly made friends with one of the women there, Noa. We arranged to drive up to Akko one day and spend some time learning what their organization does, and shortly the day arrived. We went to three different studios around town—one actually in the middle of nowhere on a kibbutz—and ended at Noa’s favorite restaurant.
Now, the Israelis know how to eat, and they know how to do business, and one thing I love about their country is their ability to efficiently do both at the same time. We spent more time getting to know each other over lunch than we did at all our morning stops combined, trading stories as fast as we traded plates from the mezze of dishes. A mezze is a selection of small dishes served for a meal, sort of like a buffet but you only have to share it with your table. Many restaurants in the Middle East subscribe to this kind of table atmosphere. Wherever you go, try to make a new connection, and for the love of all things holy, do it over lunch.

An example of a mezze: our lunch at Mor Vekinnamon in Akko.

4. Find the hole-in-the-wall. Places that surprise you, or that you wouldn’t have found just by walking down the street. The best places, in my experience, are the ones you have to do a little digging to find. Almost unnoticeable dark alleys lead to the most cozy restaurants, like my favorite place, Tmol Shilshom in Jerusalem. I was immediately drawn to this place because I’d heard it was a bookstore-turned-café that still had all its old trappings, and I for one am a sucker for anything bookish. After three turns down an alley and a somewhat precarious outdoor stair climb up two floors, my parents and I were washed in the glow of this tiny restaurant. We sat down and were given menus printed in the style of books, with famous literature as the cover (in Hebrew, of course, but not all the literature featured was purely Israeli. I got a copy of The Old Man And The Sea!). The small room was brimming with customers, townies and tourists alike, and the waiters seemed to have no problem flitting around, making sure everyone was ok, even bringing coffee if conversation was flagging. It was there that I had some of the best créme brulée I’ve ever tasted: the inside still chilled from the fridge, the sugar on top still hardening from the torch.
Small places like this, frequented by the locals and dedicated visitors, are the heart and soul of any country you visit. Instead of seeing what face the country puts on every day for show, cozy up with its quieter face, the one that doesn’t necessarily want to dance for your money. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

A collage I made of our evening at Tmol Shilshom (shut up, PicStitch haters)

5. Explore with your own two feet. Go to a national park, for instance, Gamla, in the north of Israel. Israel really does have a beautiful dedication to preserving their history. There are hundreds of national parks and hiking trails, all throughout the country. History museums are one thing, and there is no shortage of those in Israel either, but in a country whose stones are older than your own country’s constitution even, there is an advantage to be taken. Being a small country, Israel is peppered with a high concentration of national parks that are easily accessible to the everyday traveler. In fact, from a young age young Israelis are taken on field trips to see their country and learn history from the very stones that were present for it. Something I wish our country would do. There is something so different about feeling a place, rather than just seeing it on a screen or a page. Closing your eyes and allowing layers of time and life and memory slowly seep into your consciousness, unobtrusively and without expectation.

My mom standing atop the hill of the old olive presses at Ancient Gamla

{All photos from my personal trip collection. - CC }