The Best (and Worst) Posters of 2007

It's the end of the year and that means everybody's favourite thing in the world - LISTS!!

I'm having a look at the best and the worst posters that we saw in the year 2007. There were some very amazing ones. Some very not so amazing ones, too. Some of these won't come as much of a surprise to long-time readers as I am highlighest them in in "When Bad Posters Strike" and "Well Played Poster" features, but there are some that I haven't even mentioned, let alone praised. So, let's get started, shall we?


(All posters can be clicked for larger views)
(All posters accumulated from IMP)

THE TEN BEST POSTERS OF 2007

10. El Cantante

I've liked this poster since I first saw it. I think it's just so distinctive and the colours pop. Love the colour of Jennifer Lopez's lips and eyelids. It all looks so suitably retro (i love curved corners on posters) and they have somehow made Marc Antony look like he has a pulse!

9. Vacancy

Reminded me of the equally fantastic poster for Rob Zombie's (I imagine) far superior The Devil's Rejects. Love the dank grungy vibe that the poster has. A poster for a scary flick that's actually kind of scary? UNHEARD OF! Plus, the lack of floating heads is a nice change.

8. Black Snake Moan

I had liked this poster from the moment I saw it, but then I saw it at a tram stop in Melbourne and just thought it was so audatiously brilliant. Plus, that tag line - "Everything is hotter down south" - overflows with amazing.

7. Redacted

An unabashedly political film gets a poster that is equally as politcal, yet doesn't get bogged out in it all. Just look at the posters for other Iraq-themed films like In the Valley of Elah and Redacted and you'll see what I mean (hopefully).

6. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters

Yes, I know very well that Richard Corben's original design has been mocked, propped and imitated to nigh on absurd levels (Posterwire has a great piece about it, actually), but I think there's an altogether new quality to it this time, when applied to the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie idea. Plus, take a look at the credits block at the bottom of the poster - GENIUS! How they got away with it, I'm not quite sure though...

5. Love in the Time of Cholera

This foreign design for Love in the Time of Cholera is my favourite - hell, it's the only good one - because of, you guessed it, the colours. So rich and vibrant, I can't recall seeing a poster with all these yellows, lime greens and orange-reds on it before. I wish I could expect more to come, but I don't see it happening, unfortunately.

4. 3:10 to Yuma

Yes, it looks like it's advertising a Bob Fosse western, but I think that's what makes it so brilliant bonkers. What the hell is going on with this poster. I wish more mainstream movies were this inventive and kooky with their marketing. I mean, you have flamboyant gun toters, text running in all sorts of directions, random objects and one of the best sight gags on a poster all year. I choo choo choose this poster as one of the year's best!

3. Bug

Previously discussed here. This poster freaks me the fuck out!!

2. Michael Clayton

"Oh my god! Michael Clayton is fading before my very eyes!" No, not really, but I imagine that's what the smart cookie who designed this poster (someone at Pulse) was trying to get across to the casual person walking through the megaplex lobby on their way to a fascinating screening of Good Luck Chuck. No? Whether people "get" it or not (I guess you do sort of need to see the film to actually understand that angle of it all) it's still a fascinating and beguiling poster. The big orange text "THE TRUTH CAN BE ADJUSTED" speaks volumes and the look on Clooney's face (albeit, his blurred face) shows so much that you can't help but wonder what he's up to. I have a feeling that this design is going to be replicated a few times over the coming year.

1. American Gangster

Previously discussed here. You can click on the link to the left to read why American Gangster is the best poster of the year - and I'll be doing it all again very soon nudgenudgewinkwink - but, needless to say, they are exceptionally designed, superbly executed and altogether brilliant posters. In my mind I had purchased my tickets the moment I saw them.

Now Just For Fun...
(excluding previously mentioned posters)

Classiest Poster
Away from Her

A beautiful image for a beautiful film. You may not even notice the fact that Julie Christie (and the title itself) are fading away.
Runner Up: There Will Be Blood

Best Rip-Off
30 Days of Night

For ripping off the posters of 300 and actually improving on them! Way to go!

Best TV Poster
Damages

Better than most film posters, if you ask me.
Runner Up: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Funniest Poster
Sicko

"MAN LANDS ON MOON" is effectively funnier than twenty thousand posters with Will Ferrell pulling a goofy pose or showing off silly hair. But that's just me.
Runner Up: Teeth

Best Grindhouse Renaissence
Machete

I've seen a few posters for "grindhouse movies" in my internet travels and this one for the fake Machete is not only the best from 2007, but better and more authentic than any for Death Proof or Planet Terror.
Runner Up: The Strangers

Dreamiest Use of Colour
My Blueberry Nights

...sigh...
Runner Up: Tears of the Black Tiger

Best Use of a Gas Mask
28 Weeks Later

Runner Up: Right at Your Door

Worst "Empty Space" Poster
Margot at the Wedding

Previously discussed here. It's just so... empty!
Runner Up: Alpha Dog

Worst Backtracking
The Invasion

They went from the intriguing classy teaser poster to... that... thing... whatever it is. The top half is good, the bottom half is like some twilight zone poster. Very strange.
Runner Up: There Will Be Blood

Worst Starfucking
Premonition

I just have to laugh everytime I think of the original design of Sandra Bullock's face being made up by twigs and birds (itself quite comical) being turned into the biggest giant floating head poster of the year.

Worst False Advertising
Bridge to Terabithia

I was shocked to find out Bridge to Terabithia wasn't actually animated and was, much to my surprise, live action. Coulda fooled me judging from the poster. And then if you've seen the trailer and the movie you can point to another "false advertising" angle. They just did not know how to market this swell little movie did they?
Runner Up: I Know Who Killed Me (what movie is that advertising?!)

Worst Make-Up
The Ex

Zach Braff looks like an oompa loompa. Who allowed this to go to print?
Runner Up: Good Luck Chuck

Most Overrated
The Savages

So, what? Because the guy at the New Yorker does your poster you're instantly one of the best of all time? Puh-lease.
Runner Up: Saw IV

The "This Movie Deserves Better" Award
There Will Be Blood

What a disappointment compared to the teaser.
Runner Up: Ratatouille

Worst Tag Line
The Reaping

I still can't quite put my finger on why this tagline is so... "off".
Runner Up(s): September Dawn and Fracture

Best Tag Line
Knocked Up (runner up)
"WHAT IF THIS GUY GOT YOU PREGNENT?"


Michael Clayton
"THE TRUTH CAN BE ADJUSTED"


Razzle Dazzle: A Journey Into Dance
"WHO SAID SAVING THE WORLD CAN'T BE ENTERTAINING?"


The Simpsons Movie
"SEE OUR FAMILY, AND FEEL BETTER ABOUT YOURS" (winner)


Southland Tales
"THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS"


FOUR AMAZING POSTERS FOR 2008
August, Funny Games


Harold & Kumar 2, Storm Warning

THE TEN WORST POSTERS OF 2007

10. Behind the Mask

I just find this poster really ugly and unappealing. Not ugly in a "this grotesqeness makes it scary" way, but in a "I don't wanna watch this movie because I might get an infection from it" way.

9. Licence to Wed

The look on Mandy Moore's face speaks volumes.

8. The Bucket List

I can't type much for this because I am actually falling asleep just from looking at it. Morgan Freeman is wise, doncha know!

7. Charlie Wilson's War

Ditto. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is so chameleonic, doncha know!

6. Fracture

Previously discussed here. Looking like a low-rent direct-to-DVD title, this poster for Fracture is just so by-the-numbers and with that ridiculous tagline ("I killed my wife... prove it" - aagh!) just makes me want to never see this movie.

5. The Ex

Previously discussed here. Zach Braff's orange face. The abundance of empty white space. The unexplained shortness of Jason Batemen. The listing of every single cast member of any remote "name value". All adds up to zero. I prefered it when it was called Fast Track - at least that poster had something going for it.

4. I Know Who Killed Me

I'm sure blue flowers play some part in I Know Who Killed Me, but it's lost on me and - I'm quite sure - everyone else whos aw this poster in the cinema lobby. With more work on it and a better idea of what it represented and this design could've been something unique, but as it is it's just... well, I don't know. What are they even trying to market there?

3. Hostel Part II
Take your pick of any number of Hostel Part II posters. They're all as revolting as the last. I still refuse to put them on my blog. They're disgusting - and, obviously, not in the scary/intriguing/mysterious way. They're just vile.

2. A Mighty Heart

Previously discussed here. I thought this hopelessly DIY poster couldn't be beat for worst of the year honours, until I saw the #1 poster. Still doesn't stop this poster for A Mighty Heart being ridiculously simplistic made-on-the-cheap disaster.

1. Mama's Boy

I'm speechless. I mean, it looks like it was made in Microsoft Paint for crying out loud! The eye-searing colour, the ridiculous pose by Jon Heder (go away forever plz) and just nothing about it makes you want to see the movie (right?) The boring font, Anna Faris' annoying dress/denim ensemble, the names "Diane Keaton", "Jeff Daniels" and "Anna Faris", the rudimentary waste of space... everything. It's just terrible. Quite possibly the worst poster ever made.

Well that was a lot of fun (and a lot of hard work). Hope you all enjoyed it. I'm sure I've missed something, but I can't help that. Did y'all have a favourite/least favourite poster of the year?

The Women Who Live Amongst Mulholland Drive

Tomorrow, November the 15th, sees the release of David Lynch's most recent dreamscape Inland Empire into Australian cinemas - that's roughly 50 weeks since it was first released upon American screens last December. I was lucky enough to see it at MIFF a couple of months ago, but I intend on seeing it again at the cinema.

This last weekend I woke up with a distinct urge to rewatch Lynch's Mulholland Drive, which is very odd in itself because while I constantly wake up with music in my head, I never have it with movies. And then when I was reading the paper 30 minutes letter there was an article about Naomi Watts with the obligatory "Then along came David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. And then Nat at the Film Experience does a completely random entry about the movie. I believe it was all a big cosmic sign telling me to watch it again for the millionth time. And by millionth I mean some number over 30. That's still a lot.

But, then, I was thinking about David Lynch and Inland Empire and then back to Mulholland Drive and then throughout his entire film repertoire and I was amazed at how well he directs women. I'd put him behind perhaps only Pedro Almodovar as a male director who seems to be able to direct them best.

This entry, however, isn't fawning over Naomi Watts or Laura Dern or any of his other leading ladies such as Isabella Rossellini or Sheryl Lee or whoever, it's about the ladies on the fringes of Mulholland Drive. There are a whole swag of them who aren't Watts or Laura Elena Harring. And because not enough people give them love, here they are. **contains some spoilers if you somehow haven't seen this yet**


Jeanne Bates as Irene - As the mysterious Canadian woman with the chesire grin. She quite clearly represents Betty/Diane's innocent past. A sort of destillation of her hometown (Deep River, Ontario) into one woman. "We'll be watching for you on the silver screen!"


Ann Miller as Coco Lenoix - The largest of the supporting characters, screen legend Miller is a hoot as the pitying abortion-metaphor using apartment manager (and, er, Adam Kescher's mother apparently).


Lee Grant as Louise Bonner - My favourite of these small miracles is Oscar-winner Lee Grant (where did Lynch find her at?) as the... mystic neighbour Louise Bonner. "Something bad is happening" indeed. She gives me the willies.


Lori Heuring as Lorraine Kescher - As a woman who turns her infidelity into a criticism about her husband - "what are you doing here?" she asks as he walks in on her having sex with Gene the Pool Man - is deranged, but a hoot.


Rena Riffel as Laney - This is Rena Riffel, folks. RENA freakin' RIFFEL! If you don't know who Rena Riffel is then you'll get no perverse enjoyment out of her being there. But, boy, Rena Riffel! I was so psyched when I found out that was her.


Rita Taggart and Michele Hicks as Linney James and Nicky - The high-priced casting agent and her blase assistant are two of my favourite characters in Mulholland Drive. I'm not sure why Taggart isn't a Patricia Clarkson or the like, it's very unfortunate because I like her in everything I've seen.


Lisa Lackey as Carol - Perhaps the most unaffected and modern performance by any woman in the film. Despite lipsyncing to Connie Stevenes, Carol speaks like a normal person and doesn't seem to be channeling anyone or any time period.


Melissa George as Camilla Rhodes/Unknown Mysterious Lesbian - I made up that slash name for her, but it's true! George doesn't say a word - she does lipsync to Linda Scott and whisper into Harring's ear - but she gives off this amazing mysterious vibe that you can totally understand why Diane would think she is a part of a big conspiracy.


Joanna Stein as Woman in #12 - As, I think, a disgruntled lover of Diane, "Woman in #12" is quietly intense.


Rebekah Del Rio as Herself - Del Rio performs a spanish-language version of "Crying" and it is one of the most powerful musical moments you'll ever see either in a musical or on stage or anywhere.


Cori Glazer as Blue-Haired Lady - As Club Silencio's resident balcony occupant, Glazer says one word to break her stoic viewing face. "Silencio". It ends the movie on a haunting and perplexing note, although if you think about it it's really just one big massive joke on David Lynch's part. "It's all an illusion" indeed.

Gosh, that movie is amazing.

Review: Taxidermia

Taxidermia
Dir. György Pálfi
Year: 2006
Aus Rating: R18+
Running Time: 91mins

I watched the humourously revolting Taxidermia last night. You may know that title as one of the official selections of 2006's Cannes Film Festival and as Hungary's entry into the 2007 foreign language film category at the Academy Awards. I had heard plenty about it, about how it was not for a faint of heart and how it's one of the sickest movies ever made.

Well, I gotta ask - is it really that sick? Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of disgusting images in this film and the themes it explores are positively nauseating, but is watching a man fuck a pig really more vile than any of the images we get served yearly in horror films? Isn't it more sick to watch someone be stripped and murdered (and perhaps be asked to enjoy it) than it is to watch a man stuff an obese man's corpse with grass?

...okay, perhaps it is.
But I was still surprised how little I was revolted by György Pálfi's film. Taxidermia has three stories, all - I assume - adapted from the Lajos Parti Nagy short stories - that revolve around three generations of men. The first is an errand boy who is addicted to swallowing fire and eventually grows a flame-throwing penis. The next story is about his son who has a pig tail and grows up to become a competitive speed eater vying for the affection of an Olympic gold medalist speed eating woman. The third and final story is about his son who is a taxidermist who cares for his 600 pound father and his fat lard-eating cats.

Notice how casually I said all that? It's because the film takes itself so casually that it stops being revolting and shocking after a while and the disgusting acts it is showing become merely part of the scenery. It doesn't show you these people degrading themselves because it can, it does it because that's simply what they do. Make sense? Probably not.

The only parts where I actually felt quite sick was during the speed eating scenes of the second story. And even then it was only the copious amounts of CGI vomit that was irksome. The film's "centrepiece" - I guess you could call it that - is a scene in the final moments of the taxidermist son enacting his profession with deeply disturbing skill before the scene ends with one of the more genuinely shocking revelations I've seen in a long time. I can barely watch anything that involves medical work yet I was strangely transfixed.


Taxidermia is bloody and brutal, it doesn't shy away from showing the audience images that it knows will find sickening, but as I've said, it doesn't show these things merely to gross an audience out (well, maybe a little). I really think it is showing a story of these three people. Stories that just happen to involve bestiality, self-mutilation, murderous felines, embryo modelling, children with curly pig tails and a scene involving caviar that will make someone with the most seasoned food palate squirm in their seat at the sight of it.

That Palfi makes the film so watchable at all is, I think, a testiment to this surprisingly young director (he's 33, and this is only his second feature-length film). He has amassed a great technical team alongside him. The photography by Gergely Pohárnok somehow mananges to find a grimey beauty in the images. The editing by Réka Lemhényi is probably some of the very best of the year and Lemhényi should be snapped up quick smart by a director with more, how shall I put this? With more commercial possibilities. In fact the work by the cinematographer and editor work incredibly well together (surprisingly rare) and there is one sequence that involves a revolving bathtub that is fascinating to watch as the two medium merge into one. Adrienn Asztalos's art direction is also kookily fascinating, filling rooms with stripped paint, dead animals and all sorts of various fetishist images. There's no denying that Taxidermia looks like a Hollywood film gone down the Midnight Movie path. Discussing the performances however is generally on the pointless side, but of team of grotesques I thought Marc Birschoff was a standout and one worthy of future thought.

I wouldn't recommend Taxidermia to many people, but if the idea of watching a man have sex with a morbidly obese woman who then partway through turns into a dead pig carcus sounds like something that doesn't make you want to heave at the mere thought, then seek it out. You may just find outself being surprised, and in more ways than one I imagine. B

Cinema of the Absurd: Glitter

GLITTER (2001, dir. Vondie Curtis-Hall)



[WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS]

Plot: It's A Star Is Born meets Dreamgirls, folks! Upon receiving a very harsh lesson from her boozy drug-addicted lounge-singing black mother about the realities of falling asleep with a lit cigarette in her hand (their house burns down!) young impressionable mixed-race Billie Frank gets shipped off to a really fancy New York City orphanage (along with her pet cat, Whiskers - keep a note of that folks!) and instantly becomes friends with a Puerto Rican and a sassy African American chick. "I'm mixed!" she proclaims. Many years later, working as a dancer at a nightclub, she is discovered by a DJ named Dice who quickly turns her from a poor down on her luck hoochie mama to a world-famous singer with a performance at Madison Square Garden. In between there are fights, telepathy, shootings, weight issues and, PG-rated epiphanies.

Ray, Johnny, Bob, Mariah: Ray Charles and Johnny Cash both got biopics made about them in recent years 2004 and 2005 respectively, while a biopic about Bob Dylan comes out this year as well. But, really, Glitter is a biopic about Mariah Carey and it was released in 2001 so it was ahead of it's time. Let's not pretend here, if this isn't a slightly falsified biopic on the glass-breaking pop star then I don't know what is. From the main character of Billie Frank (Mariah Carey) being half black and half white (which according to a music video director makes her "exotic!" to the meltdown Billie has with her record company. Except in Billie's case it all happens within the span of about 3 weeks in the 1980s, whereas Carey's career has been going since 1990's debut album Mariah Carey.


Irony? Why never!: Oh, Billie! One of the greatest scenes in Glitter is on the set of her first music video. It is Carey's finest acting moment. She, hilariously and without the slightest hint of irony, makes her character of Billie incredible shy when she's asked to writhe around in a bikini on the set. Carey's range of emotions go from 'Looking at my feet, nervously' to 'why are these greased up muscle men groping me'. It's an amazing moment of film. So powerful! So raw! But, the main reason this scene is the greatest filming-scene-within-a-film is because of the following quote from the video's director:

Is she black? Is she white? We don't care - She's EXOTIC! I want to see more of her breasts.

Woody Allen, Tennessee Williams and Ernest Lehman couldn't come up with dialogue that amazing if they tried!

Wise Wisdom: Glitter is full of wise words of wordy wisdom. It portrays the 1980s music world so realistically (no drugs or sex or people wearing shoulder pads!) that I feel like it's just bursting out from the screen. Take for instance the concert at the end of the film. The character of Billie Frank has somehow managed to sell out a concert at New York's Madison Square Garden on the back of one single. We are told that Frank's song "Didn't Mean To Turn You On" (aka, Mariah Carey's song "Didn't Mean To Turn You On", clip below) was #1 for ten weeks (yet she still needs a track that will "cross over"?) yet an entire plot strand revolves around how the record company doesn't like the album DJ Dice (her lover and producer) has made so they get her to make a new one. So, yes, apparently in 1980s dance artists could sell out entire stadiums on the back of one song.

I believe it, don't you?



Milli Vanilli, #1 With a Bullet: The character of DJ Dice (played with hilarious ineptitude by Max Beesley, sort of an even skeevier version of Stephen Dorff) is one of many contrasting facets. On one hand he loves Mariah Billie, yet on the other hand he's a jealous overbearing man with anger management problems. Not a cliche at all!


He and Billie share a unique connection though: The connection of telepathy. In what is, quite frankly, the most genius movie scene of all time Dice and Billie - on opposite sides of the city - write a song together. He writes the melody, she writes the lyrics. Only later when she breaks into his house and finds the sheet music does she realise that they are meant to be together.

*sniff* There's a moment in the ultimate absurdity Showgirls where actress Elizabeth Berkley registers her emense sadness by a single solid *sniff*. It's the funniest moment in cinema history. Carey herself has an equally emotion-wringing moment in the film. Upon a visit to family services to see if they know where her long lost drug-addled boozy chanteuse. She is told that, shockingly, they don't follow the every step of people who lose custody of their kids. This scene gives Carey her greatest challange and the results are funny. The blank stare that tears through the screen and chokes the tears out of you. Tearjerkers don't come any better than this. Billie's eyes are dead. DEAD!


Another moment of immense tragedy that registers with Billie to the result of dead eyes is the word that, omigod, Dice has been shot and killed on the night of her (totally believable) performance at Madison Square Garden. Like the trooper that she is still goes out on stage and performs her heart out of "Never to Far". Think Barbara Streisand singing "People" in Funny Girl. Liza Minnelli singing "Life is a Cabaret" at the end of of Cabaret. Think Jennifer Hudson's rendition of "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" from Dreamgirls. Think Kelly Clarkson singing "That's The Way I Like It" in From Justin to Kelly.

Stars Cats and Stripes: Two of the oddest most perplexing (and thus, hilarious) aspects of Glitter are her cat Whiskers and the weird silver striping that appears all over her body. First of all, we see Whiskers twice throughout the film. Once at the start when Billie is just a little kid and then years later when Billie is 18 24 30 whatever age she is after she's hit the big time. Whiskers is such a well-behaved cat that Billie can seemingly walk all across town (New York City remember) holding Whiskers and he doesn't even move! Talk about commitment to your craft. That cat deserved an Oscar.

Even the biggest of Glitter's fans though can't explain the mysterious silver stripes all over her body. They first appear on her face early in the movie like some camp Bootcamp makeup. Then throughout the series of events we see the silver stripes appear on her arms and her lower back. The picture to your left is from a scene around the middle of the movie at the American Music Awards (where "Lional Ritchie won two!") The Mystery of the Silver Stripe ranks right up there with the ghost behind the curtain in Three Men and a Baby and the case of the suicidal munshkin in The Wizard of Oz. It will, most likely, never be solved.

Conclusion: Now, don't get me wrong, I am not saying that Glitter is anything other than ridiculous tosh. It doesn't transcend it's pure badness to become a masterpiece like, say, Showgirls. And it's not merely a perfectly adaquate movie with ridiculous aspects (such as other Cinema of the Absurd entries like How to Deal). No, but I think nearly six years after the fact (it was released the week after September 11) with Mariah Carey's looney breakdown and subsequent comeback in our minds, it is able to be looked upon as something other than "Mariah's Follies".

Every single decision that could have been made has been made poorly, which is why it's hilarious. For me, to give a movie a truly terrible grade, it must make me angry. Anger at the subject matter, angry at it being boring or something else like so much talent going to waste. Thing is - I can't tell whether there was any talent here in the first place, and so I prefer to view it as a bunch of absurd things happening for no reason as made by a bunch of people who don't actually know how to make a movie. It's everyone's fault that this movie is as incredibly ridiculous as it is. Glitter may be 100% stupid, but in my eyes it's never boring

Just sit back and forget about critiquing the acting (which is bad, obviously) or the directing (which is bad, obviously) and just laugh at Mariah Carey's scary facial expressions or the silly clothes or the weird stripes that appear all over her body or the incredibly realistic depiction of the 1980s music scene. It's a hoot!

PS; And I haven't even gone into why this is like some psuedo-Dreamgirls, just slightly "less black" (remember, Billie is mixed! Demonstrated during the scene where her black crack-addict mother needs money so she goes to visit the white well-to-do family man who impregnated her (See! This shit funn-ny! I can't make it up))


On the absurdity Scale of 1-5 I rate Glitter a 4.75. It's utterly unbelievable and almost inconceivable that so many untalented people were allowed in the same room long enough to actually make it. The thought of these clowns on set is almost as entertaining as the movie itself.

Below is the trailer for Glitter. The opening seconds sort of look like Mariah Carey's head is exloding.

Cinema of the Absurd: How to Deal

HOW TO DEAL (2003, dir. Clare Kilner)


[WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS]

How to Deal really is absurd. Hilariously so. I could nitpick for hours about this movie's absurdity. Even down to the silly belt that Mandy Moore wears on the poster (isn't it weird?) The very first thing you hear when you pop in the DVD (which I own, thank you very much) is Mandy Moore saying "Things happen and you just have to deal." That's really stupid, right?

Plot: Halley Martin's life is totally going down the shitter. Everything in her life is a disaster. Her family is a wreck, her friends are a) pregant, b) dead, c) bad news and she's constantly walking through sprinkler systems. It's just not fair. She has to learn... how to deal. And fast!

Family: So, her mother's (Alison Janney) a trainwreck since her divorce, but get this... she starts dating DYLAN BAKER!!! Wouldn't that creep you the hell out! I mean, gross. The dude from Happiness playing a romantic, ahem, drink can dispenser re-filler... man. Is that right? So, yeah, her mother's been bitter for ages because her ex-husband (Peter Gallagher and his eyebrows and really bad facial hair) is dating some half his age (isn't it always the case) and getting married. Tough break for her mother.

Her older sister is never around anymore because (ugh, so frustrating!) she's organising her WEDDING. Damn her. Damn her and stupid stupid face! When her sister tells her Halley randomly storms out of the house is a huff. She runs funny too.

Halley though has enough sanity in her to do yoga and make wonderful Sex & the City-esque narrational quips like "Some people fall in love. I had to crash into it." Ouch?! She doesn't have enough sanity to make her change out of those awful denim cut-off short shorts though! My favourite moment of wisdom is the one that opens the film. The words are really profound!

"You have to learn how to walk. You have to learn to talk. You have to wear that totally ridiculous hat your Grandmother bought you. You have no say in the matter. And when you're a little older, even though you get to choose your hats, you don't get to choose what they put in those meatballs at the cafeteria... or when to fall in love."

Man. She's so poetic, right? THANK GOD SHE GETS TO CHOOSE HER HATS!!! What world would be living in if people couldn't choose what hat to wear? Seriously. I'd like to know. She calls the day her parents finally get divorced as "Big Ugly Hat Day". Doesn't that just roll off the tongue?

Oh. And then there's Grandma! She likes to "smoke the cannibal". When she shows Halley a pine tree that would make a wonderful textile (apparently), Halley does the natural thing and tasts the pine tree. Doesn't that just make so much sense.

Rain & Sprinkler Systems: Oy. Is there a bigger problem in Halley's life right now than water?! Specifically sprinkler systems. For reasons unknown to me, in order to get to her best friend's (Alexandra Holden) house she has to run through someone else's backyard and, get this, they always have their sprinkler on. Even when Halley is going to a funeral she decides to walk through the sprinkler. You'd think she'd realise after a while.


After the funeral (see below) she stands outside the church in the pouring rain. Don't you love it how in movies it can go from perfect blue skies to instant rain, as if the makers have no idea how clouds actually work.

Death: Death haunts Halley at every corner. First the death of her parent's marriage. Then she nearly dies of embarassment when she walks into her best friend's bedroom, omg, WHILE SHE'S HAVING SEX!!!!!omgsoembarassing. (more pearls of wisdom from Halley: "You can't expect to do anything great in life if you buckle the first time some guy bats his eyes you!" Preach it sister!)


And then one day on the soccer field at school in a game between two bad soccer teams that celebrate way too much when they score a point. Anyway, so on the soccer field Halley and her best friend (her name's Scarlett) witness Scarlett's new boyfriend (Sherwood, if you can believe it, is his name) die right there. "I thought my parent's divorce was the end of the world. That was before Michael died of a heart defect." So blunt.

More wisdom: "Dying is definitely not one of the better concepts." ZING!

Pregnancy: LOL. Shortly after the funeral (the one where Halley walked through the sprinkler system again) Scarlett realises she's preggers to the dead dude! How fortuitous, right? The scene where they find out involves way too many closeups of urine for my liking.

Weddings: Well, her father's wedding is disaster (a near death by wedding veil!), but boy. Halley is negative on weddings, too! "Why do people get married anyway. I mean, we know that they're lying to each other, but are they lying to themselves too?" I suppose she's got a reason to be so down, but still... lighten the fuck up!

Don't even get me started on the vile lavender poofy bridesmaid dresses she's forced to wear. Why do bridesmaid dresses always look disgusting? Are they ever that bad in real life?

Romance: Then she meets a boy with a name as equally bad, ney worse, than "Sherwood": MACON! (Trent Ford) Lol. Ugh, with the change of seasons means trees start to LOSE THEIR LEAVES! They go all in the pool and completely cover the lawn, which would be a bitch to clean out if Macon Bacon didn't show up with a leaf blower (it's how he earns money, you see!) This tender scene of Halley blowing dead leaves into Macon Bacon's face is then followed by a montage of short clips involving the two laughing, accidentally touching one another and doing wacky music video bits like dancing on top of a bus stop and playing with light sabres in the street. All to the sounds of "Why Can't I" by Liz Phair. A song that, I swear, was used in about 50 different movies from 2003-2005.

--I think at this stage I need to mention something very important. By this stage, everything you have read about How to Deal so far has happened within the first 45 minutes!! Yes, so many deaths, disasters, pregnancies, funerals, dog humpings (Oh, I didn't mention that already, sorry), montages, sprinkler passings have all happened within 45 minutes. Crazy. There's still 50 minutes to go!

Unfortunately, the craziness starts to settle down from here as the story really starts to get into the romantic plot between Halley and Macon Bacon. But, oh, the makers still have some tricks up their sleeves.--


Social Issues: A hard-hitting discussion between Halley and Scarlett about abortion isn't funny, actually. But, what follows is! They have a discussion about "friends with benefits" in front of a Christmas Jesus display. LOL. howinappropriate!!

Grounded: Oh, poor Halley! She gets grounded for making it with Macon Bacon in their own house and omg nearly having sex. This all goes down over a soundtrack of some depressed white boy. Of course, this means she'll miss New Years Eve with Macon Bacon so she, naturally sneaks out. She's so badass.

Injuries: At the NYE Halley discovers the awful truth about Macon (he gets drunk at parties!!!) and then gets pissed off and leaves, which ends in, of course, A CAR CRASH!!! Before this though she runs through a field for no reason. And then Macon Bacon is upset because Halley won't have sex with him. "I thought you wanted us to be together." Of course Halley doesn't have a scratch on her after the crash. Can't hurt the precious face of Mandy Moore.

Conclusion: I had never ever seen a film before where so much bad stuff happens to somebody in such a comical fashion. I mean, Halley is meant to be, what? 17? She has death, divorce, pregnancy, she nearly dies, her grandmother is a pot head, she has to wear a poofy bridesmaid dress and she can't stop walking through sprinkler systems! And, I mean, I haven't even mentioned everything! There's pre-wedding breakups, wedding day births, outrageous outfits, bad hair extensions, emergency hospital visits, jedi mind tricks, injured grandparents, "Why does no one trust me to know what I know anymore", Halley's mother having sex with Dylan, on-air radio fights and many many more pearls of wisdom.

I gotta point you in the direction of this hilarious How to Deal drinking game!


Drink Every Time . . .

1. Divorce is mentioned

2. Someone eats a chocolate thing

3. Someone does the Jedi mind trick, or even mentions it

4. Macon is under Halley's window

5. Ashley and Lewis get into a fight

6. Grandma gets stoned

7. The Dad or anyone else howls

You'd be drunk by 20 minutes in!

I'll leave you with one last nugget of wisdom from Halle.

"Maybe being abnormal is what's normal."

On the Absurdity Scale from 1-5 I rate How to Deal a 4.5. It's ridiculously absurd. How can so many things go wrong in anybody's lives outside of a Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu movie?


Click above to watch a delightful montage of scenes from How to Deal. It's precious.