Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie

the "and do what?" piece is a little jarring in that minutes later, upon being catcalled in California, she immediately states she doesn't have a vagina and Ken doesn't have a penis.

I agree it's an inconsistency, but both moments made me laugh and in a comedy that trumps all.

Critiques of Barbie in terms of body image issues get lip service at best. Very disappointingly there is exactly one non-skinny Barbie, who is basically not a character. (A tangent to this: "Weird Barbie" is also barely weird at all - did Gerwig and McKinnon have funkier visions that got quashed?)

It's very focused on the binary, which tbf the toys are also all about the binary but...the furthest you get from it as a man is to be a little mild mannered like Michael Cera, the furthest you get as a woman is to have an eccentric haircut. Queerness doesn't really exist. Yes the one token fat Barbie wasn't great, though unsurprisingly still an improvement over the toys - I googled it and apparently there is one "curvy barbie", image search for sad lols.

I actually thought it was the mother-daughter material that felt grafted on --- as if someone at Mattel insisted there needed to be a kid-friendly aspect of the story, and Gerwig did her best to shave it down to a minimum. The result is that those characters kind of get lost for long stretches, and feel like they're missing the setups to their own climaxes, for me anyway.

It's not seamlessly handled from a structural pov by any means but I found the revelation that Barbie is getting depressed not because she's owned by a sad kid but because of a mother's doodling, and how what served as escapism for her at first seems to means nothing to her daughter very moving.

xposts to Ned

Matchbox20 dedicated “Push” to Ryan Gosling at another show so they’re definitely aware and seem to be good sports about it

Rob Thomas dedicates a performance of “Push” to Ryan Gosling pic.twitter.com/sjxs2lpmTB

— William Goodman (@goodmanw) July 24, 2023

Hahah excellent.

Do we have too many people in the UK or too few..I am confused 😂https://t.co/cg7txKKA8Q

— Rupak (@ghose77) July 28, 2023

We could use one less...

i wanna take you for grahantahad

i thought this was fucking hilarious and pretty fantastic though i do dislike it when movies solve their problems through inspiring speeches (sort of the opposite of pearl where a long monologue only deepens the movie's derangement; here ferrera stopped the film dead for me)

imo allan is trans coded

the ken dance was magnificent, anytime the movie worked itself into a liminal space (e.g. rhea perlman's office) i got sooo happy. the ending seems divisive—even i'm torn on it, because the dialogue between barbie and her creator is just... kinda obvious and less smart than the rest of the movie is. but i'm just thrilled anytime two characters walk out of the movie they belong to into a blank soundstage with gradient lighting. just a visual delight from beginning to end

ken trying to be a Man and instate his very childlike interpretation of the patriarchy in barbieland kinda vibrated at the same frequency as an i think you should leave sketch

Gosling's dancing restored my faith in wanting to have sex with him.

Is it because he was actually the worst dancer of the entire crew of Kens?

i thought Gosling was a dancer IRL

Gosling letting his Mickey Mouse Club bonafides shine

All I saw was Simu Liu ad others eating his lunch

He can dance on my face.

Just make sure he doesn't mark his moves

See guys, this is exactly the kind of behaviour that lead the Kens to fail, pitting men against each other like this.

Alfred and I share a mission of putting men against each other

It won't play.

Everything but the Kens snapping at her rear end

this was…ok. happy greta’s getting her bag. I think I finally think of her as gen x now however

Just saw this and liked it a lot. The trio of Everything Everywhere, M3gan, and Barbie - movies that are willing to just go there and be bonkers - restores my faith in humanity a bit.

"happy greta’s getting her bag. I think I finally think of her as gen x now however"

???? she is 39 years old.

BTW I did not like Frances Ha. It was good at doing what it does, but that is not something I want done to me. Barbie is a romp though.

I make my students watch Lady Bird every semester -- the most contemporary film on my syllabus.

I thought this was good, not great, and that's fine.

"happy greta’s getting her bag. I think I finally think of her as gen x now however"

???? she is 39 years old.

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Saturday, July 29, 2023 12:39 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh ok I guess she’s technically a geriatric milennial. I absolutely love her but I guess most of the attempts at subversion reminded me of like, barbs (no pun intended) you’d see in a buzzfeed article or something. it’s a tough line to walk and I’m glad she’s gonna be richer than shit

buzzfeed ofc also a millenial thing, but if you want to quietly pass that off onto gen x you have my support

That Vanity Fair review more or less captures my feelings. Def. a movie I want to think more about, including whether or not it's really worth thinking more about.

Like, I haven't seen Oppenheimer yet, but I can't imagine that movie will really give me much to think about at all.

I guess we all still think about nuclear annihilation quite often.

re-Gen X, this was co-written by Noah Baumbach fwiw.

also re: Francis Ha, that was directed by Baumbach. she cowrote it though, but if you want to attribute any unlikability to it, you can get away with blaming him (I think it is good).

I can watch Francis Ha any time or place.

I wouldn't watch Barbie again (I liked it).

my gf called barbie a “good slumber party movie” which I think is a good take

preferring it to frances ha though…

I’ll settle for it being the least offensively insultingly bad blockbuster in … what, the last 10 years? 20?

This Barbie has a Nobel Prize 💖 He’s just Ken pic.twitter.com/Ljbqdfpgfd

— Malala Yousafzai (@Malala) July 30, 2023

Nice leftpod crossover discussion between shows Pod Damn America and Everybody Loves Communism after they all saw the film. They loved most of it. https://m.soundcloud.com/poddamnamerica/everybody-loves-barbie-w-everybody-loves-communism

Funnier than I had even heard it was. Michael Cera’s natural off putting weirdness was also put to good use.

I really enjoyed this but I don't think I have anything to add to the conversation.

From Variety:

After two weeks on the big screen, “Barbie” has generated $351.4 million in North America to stand as the fourth-biggest domestic release of the year. Globally, the Warner Bros. film has grossed more than $750 million and ranks as the third-largest film of the year.

The three ahead of it in the US are the Mario Bros film, Guardians of the Galaxy and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse; looks like at some point this week it'll surpass Guardians and Spider-Man.

That's pretty wild. I've gotta assume that like other phenomenon, from Titanic to that Qanon movie, it's being boosted at least a little bit by repeat business; one of my kids has seen Barbie three times already, the other twice. Positive word of mouth has got to be a big boon as well. I've heard plenty of people talking about Barbie (and Oppenheimer, though weirdly, not a word from anyone I know about Mission Impossible).

Tom Cruise is tanking this summer

MI was great as usual, though not as good as the previous two.

there's a kind of john henry aspect to tom cruise today that i find compelling

there's a certain kind of film fan that will never not stan for Cruise and the MI films, I'm confident they can keep pumping those out forever, or until he eventually dies doing some stunt at least

but tom can't told off time forever is what i meant, like the physical toll

I kind of wanted to see this one but I haven't seen an MI movie since...the third one? I don't even know. This sounded as though it were a direct sequel to the preceding one so I figured I'd just eventually check these all out streaming

you've been some amazing action sequences

I watched em all out of order, you'll be fine.

I saw them

I
IV
V
VI
VII

then

II
III