(#15) Whip it good!

So I saw Whip It with a couple of my friends tonight, and fell in love with it, for several reasons. (I'm pretty much spoiling this all over the place, so if you haven't seen it and plan to, beware.)



1. It made me want to move to Texas.



2. It also made me want to strap on some skates and beat the heck out of someone (by this I mean participate in roller derby, not just roll out there and start punching random passerby).



3. It had the always lovely Alia Shawkat (Maeby from Arrested Development) in a great supporting role.



4. Come to think of it, all roles, both supporting and main, were amazing.
Kristen Wiig in particular shocked me. I'm so used to watching her act ridiculous (albeit hilarious) on Saturday Night Live every week that her performance as a mom/derby doll/real-life-woman impressed me to no end.



5. Bliss didn't end up with the guy.
This was actually my favorite part about the whole movie. Yeah, there was a cute boyfriend-girlfriend part to the movie, but the boyfriend turned out to be a jerk (as all 19-year-old boys are capable of from time to time). And instead of going the teary forgiveness route and throwing herself upon him, Bliss kissed him, then slapped him a good one and that was that. I have so much respect for the screenwriter's decision to represent the part of the teenage girl population that doesn't feel the need to have a boyfriend to validate their self-worth. (Not that there is anything wrong with having a boyfriend; it's just nice to see a girl onscreen who's able to detect the worthy from the worthless. Also, he had gross hair.)



6. Girl power, baby. A hundred and eleven minutes of it.



7. The whole darn movie was great.
I liked the pageant-princess-turned-derby-darling twist on the coming-of-age tradition. Bliss and Pash were super-close best friends, and Ellen Page and Alia Shawkat really nailed that kind of relationship. The whole mother-daughter element to the story felt real and honest. Marcia Gay Harden can act, y'all. She's always compelling to watch, and just felt so believable in this frustrated but loving mother role. Daniel Stern was great too, as the slightly confused but supporting father Also, I will make sure to pay attention to any more Barrymore-directed films, because she's got a great style. The setting was perfect, the soundtrack was spot-on, and you know, I could go through every name involved in this production and talk about how much I loved them, but how about you get on down to the movie theater and support them yourselves?






7. I almost forgot -- it was truly hilarious. This is a must in my entertainment choices. If there's no humor and joy in something, what's the point of wasting my time? This film was funny, but intelligently so - the best kind.



This has nothing to do with the movie, but we were talking about rockabilly in my rock 'n' roll class on Monday, and the professor put up this picture of Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks and asked if anyone had ever heard of The Band.


Can you believe that I was the only person out of an auditorium at least 250 that raised their hand? He said, "well, then you know about The Hawks, right?" and I agreed and that was that. But that just made me sad for the kids I go to school with. Their loss.


ALSO:
I am going as a mod for Halloween and am in the process of perfecting that ridiculous amount of makeup that goes along with it. It's actually a lot of fun. What are you going to be this 31st?



I don't own any of these pictures, obviously.