- 2:11 pm - Sun, Oct 23, 2011
On Pie Lette’s
Pie-lette (2007)
Directed by Barry Sonnenfield
Written for the Screen by Bryan Fuller
“Caveats”
As present and future critics of film, why not broaden our horizons by branching out to television? I mean that’s film too! This is the only episode of Pushing Daisies I’ve seen, and so far, I’m real impressed. I would like to continue! But I don’t think it’s safe to start watching a television series…even though there’s sadly only 2 seasons…due to my relationship with Aerospace. (I want to break it off, but I’m giving her two more years. She’s so high maintenance. I roll my eyes.) But maybe Christmas time! :D
I don’t know why it got cancelled. I mean, I googled it, and it revealed that it had low ratings for the second season. I thought it was real clever though, a fairy tale-ish murder mystery party. And in keeping loyal with the fairy tale element, of course there was romance with intense caveats that just make you sigh. It’s like the feeling you get when you see Marlin’s wife dying in the beginning of Finding Nemo or Carl living his whole life with Ellie who dies without ever reaching South America!
In this case you have Ned, short for I don’t know his name’s just Ned haha, who can bring dead things back to life by touching them, but if he touches them again, then they’d die. But if he keeps them alive for over a minute I think, then someone else dies. Then he resurrects the love of his life, Chuck, short for Charlotte Charles, after she was murdered by well…well that’s what it’s about haha. But wait, they can’t touch each ever again because then she’d die! So it puts a strain on your heart! If you have one. Caveats!
But back to the basics. If I taught film class on cinematography, (and I barely know the art of cinematography, but I’d imagine if I were a professor who was an expert. I just know cinematography is like photography except with motion pictures.) this would be one of the things I show my students. Being a fairy tale, the scenes you see remind of well, I don’t know, to me the sharp, contrasting colors had a fantasy feel to it. And yellow. There was a lot of yellow! Of course because of the name of the show haha. So many colors, so I guess, it wouldn’t so much be a morbid show, but more of an upbeat, quirky, I kinda got sexy out of it, romantic, fantasy thing goin on, you know? Very juxtaposey. I don’t know, a setting can have a lot of impact, on me at least! Then you got the narration by vocal artist Jim Dale. This was just a very clever show that seemed to have it all, but unfortunately ended too soon.
But that’s American Broadcasting Company. They seem to always come up with shows they just end in a year or so. So much money that could have gone to rain forest alliances. Not saying Pushing Daisies was a waste of money! I’m saying, many recurrent television shows afterwards were. I mean…what’s Mr. Sunshine? I don’t know, but it got cancelled haha. And Charlie’s Angels is cancelled too! I mean, it’s not that I watched them, it’s just proving my point. That money coulda gone into rain forest alliances or two more seasons of this show. Sigh. Shakin my head. I’m sure there are millions of more people who complain about show cancellations too haha. But this blog won’t be about that.
This show also has a lot of pie. This blog can be about pies too haha. Likes’ pie rage probs started before me, but I’d say my most recent pie rage started around the beginning of the school year, when When Harry Met Sally and the US Open events just seemed to collide and increase my pie cravings. Then I got a mystery fun box that contained perishable goods, one of which were a few pies! Tasting them made me tear up in the inside! What does pie really have to do with the show? I don’t know, I haven’t gotten that far into it, but I’m sure the pie motif is very important! Because everyone likes pie! Which is why a pie will be made for Aerospace for our break up. Fourish to fiveish long, long years.
Overall by Christmas time, I’m sure to have a higher rating than this but this show’s pilot has 4/5 stars in my book.
- 1:24 pm
- 5 notes
On Pushing Daisies, Ep. 1 “Pie-Lette”
I’d kiss you if it wouldn’t kill me.
Oh, hey. Sorry, I haven’t properly introduced myself. Hi, my name is Leika. I’m obsessed with animal prints (as in animals themselves are the print), dresses, cardigans, literature, and pie. If you haven’t heard, Pushing Daisies, although short lived, is my favorite television series of all time, but like my favorite romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally, I will try my hardest not to hype it up.
Long story short: Ned the pie-maker inexplicably has the power to re-animate the dead. Touch a dead thing once: life. Touch a dead thing again: dead forever. Keep a dead thing alive for longer than a minute: another living thing of equal value dies in his/her stead. Through a series of pretty unfortunate events, a young Ned and his childhood sweetheart Chuck part ways, only to be reunited after Chuck’s murder on the high seas. The now grown Ned uses his power to assist Emerson Cod, private detective, in solving murder cases (in the case of “Pie-Lette”, it is Chuck’s murder) in order to collect the reward money so that he can continue running his pie shop The Pie Hole. “As in shut your. Or in this case ‘Open your’ because it’s real good.”
The show is centered around Ned and Chuck’s somewhat complicated relationship as a once-dead Chuck and a certain pie-maker/dead-waker can never touch lest she dies permanently. However, the physical problem of the two never being able to touch is just that: physical. It’s a physical manefestation of the even more complex problems in their relationship. For example, Ned inadvertently killing Chucks father after keeping his mother “alive-again” for longer than a minute. Or the fact that Ned, in re-animating Chuck, is forced to confront the ghosts of his past that he’s buried in pie for all these years. Or the fact that Chuck now has to create a new life, a new existence, for herself while still wanting to keep a connection to her past. This rift between these two personalities, Ned being very closed off and overly cautious and Chuck being very adventurous, reflects their physical disconnection, and their willingness to overcome that obstacle shows their willingness to work on their differences in personalities in order to finally be together after all these years/after Chuck’s death.
The show poses the question of what it means to live and how one’s past shapes the present (“The child is father to the man”-William Wordsworth). The show presents a sort of duality, intertwining the stories of Ned and Chuck’s pasts with their presents. In a sense, the show brings up the question of the ‘self’: if a person is always the same person with accumulating experiences or if one is a different ‘self’ with each experience, but that’s all philosophy and I realize that philosophy often bores or annoys people hahah.
Although the show covers some pretty heavy topics like murder, death, childhood trauma, and unrequieted love, it’s very lively and light. From the bright colors and fast paced conversations there’s little to no dark, brooding scenes although some of these subjects definitely call for some brooding. That’s the beauty of the show: it acknowledges and reveals that life is difficult and often unpleasant, and yet life is pictured as something so precious, vibrant, and beautiful that Chuck is not only willing, but also excited about a second chance.
Another beautiful thing about this show is how relatable the characters are. Whether you are shy about your gifts and wary of your past like Ned, excited to start new adventures and become the person you’ve always wanted to be like Chuck, out to find answers like Emerson, pining for someone who loves someone else like Olive, or suffering from grief along with social phobias like aunts Lilly and Vivian, there’s someone to whom any person can relate (I know I’m a good combo of most of these characters haha).
Obviously unlike Leo, I’ve actually watched the entire series through…and multiple times. I can tell you that it definitely was cancelled too early. <gripe>Unlike Lost, Pushing Daisies created mysteries that were and could, in later seasons, have been explained. With such smart writing all the loose ends had potential of being tied up in at least one more season and not leave us wondering about nonsensical elements like polar bears and smoke monsters that no one ever explains, aka Bryan Fuller didn’t throw in random details that would keep people hooked just for the ratings *coughj.j.abramsandcompanycough* </End gripe>. I suppose art and beauty just for art’s sake is lost to the modern American population, but the point of art isn’t to please the masses, and that’s precisely what Pushing Daisies is: art.
If you enjoy wit, humor, mystery, romance, drama, the macabre, vibrant colors, or handsome pie-makers then Pushing Daisies is definitely one to watch. With brilliant writing, beautiful images, relatable characters, and a pinch of philosophy, this show definitely earns my five star approval rating!
- 4:32 pm - Fri, Oct 7, 2011
- 1 note
On When Harry Met Sally…
When Harry Met Sally (1989)
Directed by Rob Reiner
Written for the Screen by Nora Ephron
“Well, maybe it just means that we should remember that we forgot them or something. Anyway, it’s about old friends.”
First off, I want to give a shout out to Theresa and Samantha for that ice cream run late one night, because if that didn’t happen, I wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to borrow your DVD!
So we start off with the first meeting of polar opposites, and yet the universe didn’t explode. You have Sally Albright (Meg Ryan), all structured, well kept, and organized, giving Harry Burns (Billy Crystal), her best-friend’s boyfriend, a rather laid back, go with the flow guy, a ride to New York. I mean, you’re introduced to the high-maintenance of Sally as she tells Harry she broke down the 18 hour drive into 3 hour shifts with checkpoints marked on her map. Or if you wanted, a breakdown based on mileage! Haha. But Harry doesn’t listen and spits grape seeds out the window, which I occasionally do with sunflower seeds, but it’s very hard if you’re going 70 on the highway. So I just spit in an empty can of Sweet Leaf, and iz all good. Sunflower seeds and sweet tea, well played.
Already by the first scenes, trivial things can be taken for granted by the average moviegoer, but in fact provides a great deal of characterization during the movie! Cuz when a great screenplay writer comes up with simple scenes with effective dialogue, the director and actors just take it away! That’s real movie magic! Moving on…
Agreeing with Likes, (such a rarity, especially in this economy) I disagree with the many single sentence synopses of the film asking the question if two people can stay friends after sleeping together. It’s even written on the movie poster! To me the whole movie is about answering the question to the song that is played in the end when Harry confesses his love to Sally: “Auld Lang Syne.” According to Wikipedia, “Auld Lang Syne” is a bloody Scottish poem written by Robert Burns, that asks a rhetorical question: should we forget the old times or should we remember this old friendship? That’s the question that should been on the movie poster. Clearly not all about sexy time.
Harry: What does this song mean? My whole life, I don’t know what this song means. I mean, ‘Should old acquaintance be forgot?’ Does that mean that we should forget old acquaintances, or does it mean if we happened to forget them, we should remember them, which is not possible because we already forgot?
Sally: Well, maybe it just means that we should remember that we forgot them or something. Anyway it’s about old friends.
This movie is composed of a series of meetings with Sally and Harry that show the gradual growth of their relationship, which to me, really was a friendship…at first. It’s just really hard to tell what a relationship is because of timing, even if it takes 12 years and 3 months! Both undergo a split from a serious relationship (Joe and Helen), and the time it takes for the both of them to get over it, I’d say in my opinion, wasn’t quite in sync. So timing was fawkward! So the answer to “Auld Lang Syne?” I would kinda agree with Sally, but I wouldn’t necessarily forget about old friendships! For me, I don’t want to ever forget anything. I want to remember everything, even my mistakes. No regrets. Non, je ne regrette rien. Inception. Haha. But I would let things go. I think Sally and Harry never intend to forget their stages of friendship in the past, (Anyway it’s about old friends!) but they do finally let go of their friendship status and hop into the relationship bandwagon.
But I don’t know, haha, I’m probably wrong, and I still can’t really pin an official opinion on this film! Theme-wise. But. Films that that keep me thinking no matter how many times I watch it mean they won’t ever die! Film, and execution-wise: the script was well written! I mean, it’s comedic, but if you really listen to what they say, you’d realized that Ephron wittingly intertwined cereals themes. The New York setting may seem cliché, but I think Reiner just made a gesture, to other romantic comedies, particularly Annie Hall (1977) which ironically is about two people who realize they are better off just as friends! Also, if not Katz’s Delicatessen, where else? McDonald’s? McDonald’s has all that yay fo sho though.
Yes, girls and boys will always be different. But this film is more than acceptable! I could talk more about this, but I gotta end this part one for now! Overall: 5 stars!
