Posts Tagged ‘Ellen Page’

If you haven’t already, read Part 1 here to see our interpretation of the film’s ending.

Part 2 – Taking a Leap of Faith

Being able to visit dreams is no doubt a concept that is difficult to grasp, especially once you try to consider all of the philosophical possibilities attached to such an idea. That this concept forces us to adapt the foundations of our methods of critical thinking, and indeed logic itself, because we are no longer dealing with the “real” but unbridled cognitive enterprise, we must resort to a manner of thinking that requires pure conjectural reasoning and rationality. By this I am suggesting that it would behoove our intentions to successfully explore this movie by thinking more abstractly about it (theoretically, conceptually, etc.), in addition to relying on concrete cues provided by the film’s text* (details observable in some form or fashion that lead to confirmed or implied conclusions). By doing this it may be possible to discover the film’s main goal and purpose. Read the rest of this entry »

Short Take: An absolutely mind-blowing experience - One of the most creative films in years

Director: Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Memento, The Prestige)

Screenwriter: Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Memento, The Prestige)

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (Shutter Island), Ken Watanabe (Letters from Iwo Jima), Marion Cotillard (Nine), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (500 Days of Summer), Ellen Page (Whip It), Cillian Murphy (Sunshine), Tom Berenger (Sinners and Saints), Tom Hardy (RocknRolla), Michael Caine (Harry Brown), Dileep Rao (Drag Me to Hell)

Length: 2h 28m

Synopsis: Neuroscientists Cobb (DiCaprio) and Arthur (Gordon-Levitt) have a unique job, which is to enter the dreams of others and navigate them in order to find out important information – mainly secrets (this is called Extraction). The invention that they use to perform such a task allows for several people to share another person’s dream, which they can more or less construct to their liking. While working within dreams may sound (pardon me) like a dream, the procedure can in fact be very dangerous. Many things can go wrong that can leave the individuals inside a dream with severe psychological problems, not the least of which is the inability to ever be sure if you’re dreaming or not. Cobb and Arthur’s newest assignment asks them to not just steal information from someone’s brain, but plant an idea in it as well (this is called Inception). The mission demands that they recruit a team and delve deeper into someone’s mind than they’ve ever gone before, and the deeper they go the less chance they have of ever waking back up. Read the rest of this entry »

Are rebellious teenage girls like Jenny (Carey Mulligan) part of an on-screen trend? If so, what's behind that trend?

Between last October and now there have been several high-profile movies released that touch upon the subject of teenage girls trying to fight to avoid their planned futures – or to be more accurate, their futures which others have planned for them. Some examples of these movies are An Education, Whip It, and the recently released Alice in Wonderland.

Jenny (Carey Mulligan), the lead girl in An Education, sees herself as different from the other girls in her high school class, perhaps in terms of maturity, worldliness, intelligence, or simply personal goals. Unlike the other girls in her class she, like so many teenagers, begins to show contempt for the scholastic system within which she sits. Told to be ladylike and that her education is of the utmost importance, Jenny tires of hearing how the only way to success is through the strictly mapped pathway that the education system provides. As a result she rebels against structure and experiments with uncertainty. Likewise, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is trying to avoid a marriage that both her mother and society have set up for her, either ignorant or indifferent to the fact that she has no romantic feelings for her suitor. The sole rationale behind the union is that she is both young and attractive and her fiancé-to-be is financially comfortable. But worse, Alice is expected to bear the young man’s children so as to fulfill her social role as a woman. Naturally, when she finds herself falling down the rabbit hole and trapped again within the world of Wonderland, she’s not very eager to get home.

Both of these films touch on the same subject occurring at different time periods (Jenny the 1960s, Alice the Victorian era – both in England), which is the illumination of the social role of young women and their rebellion against that role. The question becomes: why do these movies – released within months of each other – ask for our interest in this matter? Is it that the issue is so inescapably attributed to our conception of the average teenager? Moreover, is the issue so inescapably attributed to our conception of the average teenage girl? Bliss (Ellen Page), the main protagonist in Drew Barrymore’s Whip It, is forced to deal with wanting a different future than what her mother has planned for her (roller derby vs. beauty pageants). It would appear that the society within which Bliss resides is not pressuring her to fulfill any kind of specific social role, but she nevertheless feels naturally compelled to resist being led on any path that she herself has not devised. If these representations of teenage girls, depicted across three different time periods, are indeed intended to be considered authentic and representative of the archetype they illustrate, then one must ask what the relevancy is in bringing these characters to our attention at this point in time. Read the rest of this entry »

Short Take: A very solid tale of self discovery

Director: Drew Barrymore (debut)

Screenwriter: Shauna Cross (screenplay and novel)

Cast: Ellen Page (Juno), Drew Barrymore (He’s Just Not That Into You), Marcia Gay Harden (The Mist, Mystic River), Juliette Lewis (Starsky and Hutch), Kristen Wiig (Extract, Adventureland), Daniel Stern (Bushwhacked)

Length: 1h 51m

Synopsis: Bliss (Page), a 17 year old high school girl living in rural Texas, is just trying to get through life as uneventfully as possible, enduring the normal adolescent growing pains that everyone old enough to have had them knows stink. While normally trying to please her mother (Harden) and her obsession with beauty pageants, she one day becomes intrigued by the sport of roller derby. Supported by her ever-faithful best friend Pash (Alia Shawkat) she secretly earns a spot on a derby team in Austin, sneaking away at night to practice with 30 year old tough girls called Maggie Mayhem (Wiig), Smashley Simpson (Barrymore), and Iron Maven (Lewis). Her only obstacle becomes keeping these two lives separate, which proves more difficult than she had anticipated. Read the rest of this entry »

Drew Barrymore, Ellen Page, and Kristen Wiig in "Whip It"

Comingsoon.net has posted a short interview with director of Whip It Drew Barrymore and the film’s stars Ellen Page and Juliette Lewis. Although the article is only a few questions long, they’re interesting because they seem to accurately reveal the tone of the roller derby film. The sport is full of some pretty tough women, and these stars express their admiration for that toughness, along with some other notable characteristics of the “world” of roller derby.

Being that not much is being written about the independent Whip It even though it releases this Friday, this short interview is worth a look if you’re considering seeing the film.

Fun Fact: Whip It is Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut.