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Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 18:19:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: maillist@moviejuice.com
Subject: [MV] MovieJuice! ADVANCE - PLEASANTVILLE - All Swell that Ends Swell
This week MovieJuice! received another two awards: The Editor's Choice award from Snap.com and a Best of the Net award from Techmall.com (which sounds like a very large place where the average person can spend only so much time). As for the hard lobbying for the "Paul Allen, won't you buy us?" awardàwell, that continues.
For homework, kids, you have the following assignment (that is, besides the Fox News Channel's Entertainment show every day with Dana and Bill):
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PLEASANTVILLE - ALL SWELL THAT ENDS SWELL
by Mark Ramsey
http://www.moviejuice.com
October 20, 1998
So movie critic Gene Siskel says Beloved author Toni Morrison had to see Oprah's movie three times to fully appreciate it, but Gene did it in two. Uh, excuse me? Three? Two?
Personally, I believe a movie should be like sex: The first time you experience it it's so fucking awesome, you have to immediately move on to different movies, one after the other, again and again and again until you risk fucking blindness, so you go every day - sometimes all by yourself - but eventually the theater expects that you'll buy lots of expensive meals and commits you to only one screen at a time and you realize you've seen the opening reel over and over and once a month the movies get very hormonal and eventually you wait for video and your job is to program the VCR and soon commercials are an acceptable interruption because you've got your remote and a bag of chips and you look out your window waiting for the kids to visit and they never do and you wonder why you're writing like Bret Easton Ellis.
What the Hell am I talking about?
Stand up and cheer, dear: Pleasantville is the "feel keen" movie of the year!
Gee whiz, this movie is swell! In fact, it's one of the very swellest of 1998! If you miss this flick, you go to your room without supper, mister!
Gosh, while the folks in the Beloved theater are crawling slowly into Act III, you'll be heading home with an ear-to-ear smile and a song in your heart - even if it is Fiona Apple's characteristically morose and funereal Beatles cover. Yes, Fiona, life sucks for young, rich, good-lookin', video-naked chicks like you. Check out Fiona's new double-disc Motown tribute: "My Shrink Heard it on the Grapevine."
Gee, it's Apple Dumpling time on the Silver Screen! Watch for the over-the-top but long overdue cameo from TV Land fave and Mayberry shaky gun icon Don Knotts, whose strangely ill-fitting teeth earned a higher salary than the rest of Don and their own trailer too! All no doubt thanks to dental fixtures superagent O. R. Thadontia over at ICM. O. R., who kept Barbara Stanwyck's choppers in the pink for years, negotiated copious amounts of bottled water and Polident, a trainer, retainer, and dental masseuse, floss flown in daily from France, and - most importantly - a No Oregano clause.
Welcome to Pleasantville, where it's always 1958, life is black and white, and all Hispanics are still living somewhere in the far off land of Hispania. Our millennial modern times, you see, are going to Hell in a linoleum-covered handbasket. So when geeky Tobey Maguire and super-hottie Reese Witherspoon (who's very "spoonable," if you know what I'm saying, in a statutory kind of way) zap into their TV set a la Poltergeist, the "Honey, I'm home" Pleasantvillians are in for world-rocking that makes the Fonz seem like the Beav.
Tobey and Reese's Ozzie and Harriet parents are George and Betty. I swear to you, George is my dad - even down to the name. George wanders into the house utterly discombobulated because the workday's done, Betty's away self-actualizing and/or getting laid, it's 6pm, and dinner's nowhere in sight. He looks as though he might literally starve to death in this strange foreign land of mystery gadgets and secret, hidden places called a "kitchen." Boy oh boy I've seen that scene in real life!
So Reese and Tobey pollute the town, corrupting the safe, predictable, deadly sameness with passion, heart, spontaneity, risk, courage, a bold dash of color, and an unforgettable torpedo bra. Suddenly, nobody knows what's going to happen next. Although everyone wishes it would happen with an R rating, for gosh sakes!
Here we have a movie that will do for reading and library-going what Winona Ryder did for smoking and what New Line's own Mike DeLuca did for exhibitionistic fellationics. Books, you see, are blank in Pleasantville. At least until Tobey and Reese describe the story and the pages magically materialize. Before you can say Gee Willikers, all the kids are doing it - and they're all reading too! Hey girls, if watching Titanic made you want to run out and fall in love only to watch your loved one drown, Pleasantville says why not read about stuff instead? The death toll is so much lighter!
In a town where all the bowlers are named Jack, Jay, John, Jim, and Jeff, the pleasant, unchanging monochrome vibe is turning Technicolor, one person at a time. Heck No! Far worse than a Red Scare, these "coloreds" are threatening a way of life. In a town meeting to protect the status quo, arch-conservative B&W town fathers and mothers are eerily reminiscent of the Republican Congress. Is it just my TV or is morality czar William Bennett actually Black and White in real life? Jeepers!
Pleasantville is the most subversive and viral popular masterpiece of the year. It's a sly flick packed with humanity on a canvas overflowing with Technicolor awakenings. Never heavy-handed, it's about the blissful joy and the terrifying fear of being who you are - of reaching deep down to find the truth inside and letting it blossom in a colorful canopy of rainbow hues. It's what makes us different that makes us human.
As mom Betty learns, you can cover up what you are, but you can never hide it. Everything is in you if you have the guts to look for it, and the way to be anything you want is to be everything you are. If this sounds like Chicken Soup for the Soul, it is. And it sure tastes warm going down.
Finally, a movie where the special effects actually serve the story! Kudos to the great cast, the gang at New Line, and Director/Writer/Producer Gary Ross (who's a triple-threat and a half). This is the best flick since Saving Private Ryan.
Whatever you do, don't miss Pleasantville. Forward march, mister!
Golly, color has never looked so good!
Copyright 1998 Mark Ramsey. All rights reserved. NO PORTION MAY BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR. If you fucking rip me off, I WILL come after you.
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Hey, kids, don't forget to visit the MovieJuice! Site at http://www.moviejuice.com. The pictures are half the fun (and sometimes more than half the laughs)!
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Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 08:23:24 +1000
From: Lillian <lepinatl@topaz.cqu.edu.au>
Subject: [MV] Stephen King continued...
Does anyone remember a King flick called Sleepwalkers? The movie about a
'long-lived' mother and son team (sort of vampiric) who cannot stand cats -
mortally afraid of them you could say. I haven't seen it for awhile, so I
can't tell you any actors (or character's names for that matter), but keep
an eye out for it.
I have been disappointed by many King flicks, one especially was The
Tommyknockers - it did not live up to my expectations at all - but that's
the problem when you get carried away by the book.
BTW the next time you're watching one of the bad King movies, keep an eye
out for the Master himself. Stephen has made cameos in Sleepwalkers, The
Stand (tv mini-series) to name two.... sorry can't think of any more at the
moment.
Just thought I'd pass on that little piece of useless information.
Peace - Teck.
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Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 17:27:57 -0600 (MDT)
From: Scott Renshaw <renshaw@inconnect.com>
Subject: [MV] REVIEW: PLEASANTVILLE
PLEASANTVILLE
(New Line)
Starring: Tobey Maguire, Reese Witherspoon, Joan Allen, William H. Macy,
Jeff Daniels, J. T. Walsh, Don Knotts.
Screenplay: Gary Ross.
Producers: Gary Ross, Jon Kilik, Robert J. Degus and Steven Soderbergh.
