3 posts tagged “emily perkins”
Last night I watched the first part of the new Shirley Henderson comedy May Contain Nuts. To get her underachieving daughter into a fancy new school, Henderson decides to substitute for her at the vital entrance exam. Realising that the 30-something woman will never pass for a “pretty” eleven year-old girl, no matter how tiny and wee she may be, her husband hits upon the notion that if they make her sufficiently hideous, then no-one will look twice and everything will be fine! And how, you may ask, is this ugly-over achieved? Well, they grease down her hair, cover her face with spots, then slap some glasses and braces on her. Eureka! Because, as we all know, glasses and braces are the stigmata (or “ugmata”, if you will) of the “unattractive and unpopular” in mainstream media. Jan Brady and Betty Suarez are classic examples, but glasses and braces also feature prominently when Emily Perkins appears in girly teen comedies such as Another Cinderella Story and She’s The Man. In the latter, they even go so far as to lumber her with headgear and asthma, in a desperate attempt to stop her stealing the spotlight from the starlet lead... but she still manages to look super pretty once she gets all gussied up for the ever-so-slightly-sapphic “double date” scene.
I guess I’m a little biased on the glasses front, but I never understood the supposed ugliness of braces either. A girl I went to university with had braces, and it certainly didn't stop me getting a serious crush on her... and it didn't stop William H. Macy in Magnolia either! Earrings are considered a perfectly acceptable part of The Beauty Process, even though they’re basically just studs/rings of metal forced through the skin... but wearing metal on the teeth is somehow freakish and wrong? That’s illogical, Captain. I’m not a big fan of piercings of any kind, because they just make me think of needles and blood and such... and at least glasses and braces serve a practical function. But I guess that’s where geeks like me always go wrong, respecting practicality over arbitrary social conventions, as regards fashion and beauty. Sigh.
When I first rented Ginger Snaps, many years ago, I was unlucky enough to get a disc that was scratched to buggery. I was drawn in by the characters, but once the story kicked in, weird coloured blocks began to dance across my screen, the player threw up its tiny digital hands, and the final showdown was little more than a frustrating flicker of stop-eject-play confusion. Gah! Ever since then I’ve been wary of buying any second-hand copies locally, for fear that I’ll end up with the same accursed disc... but annoyingly the flick, and its sequels, have long since gone “out of print”, so buying a new copy was out of the question. Regardless of my less than auspicious introduction to the series, at the back of my mind there was always the nagging desire to spend more time with the Fitzgerald sisters. Finally that desire has been sated, thanks to eBay and my recently purchased trilogy boxset!
Interestingly, the first film’s disc is the most “well worn” of the set, while the third is near mint. Although I’d agree that the original is by far the best and the smartest of the trilogy, with its brilliant lycanthropy-as-a-metaphor-for-puberty theme, and “suburban-gothic” backdrop... but the sequels are still a lot of fun... and you have to give the various writers credit for making each film so distinct and self-contained, while staying “true” to the sisters’ mythology. Rather like the Aliens quadrilogy (and unlike several other horror franchises), you never feel like you’re watching the same story over again, even though the central characters remain fairly consistent. I thought they handled Brigitte’s deterioration very well in Unleashed, and ended her story on a very bizarre, if slightly unlikely, high. Where to go from there? Well, taking us back in time to meet their identical 19th Century counterparts could have been a terrible misstep, but somehow it works... probably because they play it relatively straight, as a period horror piece in the classic “small band of survivors holding the fort, but not very well” vein.
Generally speaking sequels are looked down upon as evidence of a lack of intelligence and creativity, but personally I’d love to see the series continue. Perkins and Isabelle make a great double-act, and I’m still itching to see more of their work... plus I’d really like to see the sisters redeem themselves somehow. There’s the rather Moorcockian suggestion in Back that the sisters are doomed to relive their fates over and over again, and that the choices they make effect the overall cosmic standing of Good vs. Evil. They are like Eternal Champions... sort of... except that they haven’t quite grasped the “Champion” part yet. It would be interesting to find out what other previous incarnations got up to... or even follow the adventures of their future incarnations! Hmmm...
I know it's wrong to carry around too many regrets about the past... and it's even worse when those regrets are about missed purchasing opportunities. But I do have one, and it gnaws at me from time to time. A few years ago a new DVD rental shop opened up a short walk away from me, and they had a much better selection of titles than our Blockbuster did... but they were saddled with a terrible out-of-town location, and tiny parking lot. They folded and sold off all their stock, and one of the items they had on offer was a brand new Ginger Snaps trilogy box-set, for the ridiculous price of fifteen English pounds. They also had the Harsh Realm boxset, and I was on a major Terry O'Quinn kick at the time, and picked that up instead. Gah! Of course, Harsh Realm was utter, utter tosh, and now the Ginger Snaps boxset is out of print. Only this afternoon on the internets, I saw one rather merciless basterd selling theirs for almost two hundred pounds! Sigh. To be honest, I'm not that fussed about werewolf films in general, but I loved the two lead characters, and Perkins in particular. I was so desperate to see more of them in fact, that yesterday I watched Another Cinderella Story, the Direct-to-DVD teen rom-com in which they appear as the not-at-all-ugly sisters, Bree and Britt Blatt. Perkins puts in another inspiring turn, looking something like Molly Shannon playing Jan Brady's evil twin.... if you can imagine such a thing. The rest of the film may fade from my memory, but I doubt I'll be able to shake out the vision of her crazy dance moves in the finale. Sadly, aside from this entry, the last two film roles on her resume are "Goth Chick" in something called Blood: A Butcher's Tale, and "Punk Receptionist" in the multi-award magnet Juno. She should really be booking more headlining roles by now... but part of the reason why I like her so much is that she has such an intense, off-kilter "energy", and that's not exactly what they look for in the female leads for big mainstream movies. Because they are idiots who are more interested in making money than putting engaging, quirky performers on the screen for me to enjoy... damn it!
