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| I REALLY LIKED IT |
I’m
not sure when I first rented and saw Ginger Snaps. It was a new release at the
time, so sometime around 2000 or 2001 probably. Either way it was one of those
movies that I’d heard a little bit about so that when it came to video I knew that
I’d probably like it. A young girl is bitten by a werewolf and struggles with
it alongside her non-werewolf sister, nothing too special, but for an independent
movie it looked decent enough, and though I haven’t checked it out since then I
remember really liking it. The movie was one of those lesser known movies that
spawned sequels that managed to keep the original actresses and even managed to
keep the original entertainment, even the third one which if memory serves was
set in the past – a plot point whose purpose is lost to me now but going off of
memory was just as good as the first movie.
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| IN MY HIGH SCHOOL EVEN THESE TWO WOULD HAVE BEEN MORE POPULAR THAN ME |
The two girls who were playing the
sisters had a chemistry that made the story believable – and not the werewolf
part but the whole thing about two sisters – both outcasts – having to deal
with one sister suddenly becoming popular while leaving the other sister
behind. A tale as old as time I’m sure but one that was interesting because of
the actresses and the sort of emotional punch portrayed by the younger sister
of watching her older sister change. It’s not a subtle movie by any means, but
a good one certainly.
The younger sister, played by Emily
Perkins hasn’t any anything streaming on Netflix – according to Netflix. I did
a quick IMDB search (the first time I’ve done any major research for one of
these things – so you should feel especially special Mrs. Perkins) and found
that she’s in the new movie Extraterrestrial which I recall seeing the preview
for and it looked . . . okay; I mean, if it’s streaming I’d definitely check it
out, but that’s about as far as I’d go to see just about any movie now-a-days.
She was also in the movie Prozac Nation, which is streaming, but I don’t know
the extent of her part in that movie, and she was also in an episode of
Supernatural, which I’d really like to watch but Jesus there’s a lot of
steaming TV shows to watch (I’m on the second to last season of House and
burning through it at almost an episode a day, I’m also watching Attack on
Titan which was hard for me to get into but now with roughly 10 episodes left
it’s getting good, and don’t get me started on the season of shows I haven’t
started yet; third season of Continuum, the recent season of Hell on Wheels and
the second season of Longmire, and that’s just the tip of the TV iceberg that
Netflix is floating towards me).
So in school I was the loner kid,
and not in a cool way – or, it wasn’t cool to be like that all those years ago
at least. I read books and watched movies and in between I went to school, and
for all I know most of the other kids I went to school with were into all the
same things I was but I was just too shy to find out so I was on my own.
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| AN AMAZING ACTRESS WHO HAS A SUBTLE STRENGTH THAT MAKES HER VERY ATTRACTIVE AS WELL AS AN AMAZING ACTRESS |
I related to Emily Perkins in Ginger
Snaps, and wished I was like her older sister – and by that I mean popular and
cool and good looking, not female. Although the movie Ginger Snaps does a great
job of making Katharine Isabelle desirable because she is beautiful and
confident, it’s her sister who – to me – was the main character of that movie –
and every Ginger Snaps movie that followed.
Now I don’t know any of these people
in real life, so all that I have to build my perception of them on is through
their movies, and unfortunately I’m not stalker enough to go and hunt down
their movies like I am for Steve Buscemi or Adrienne Shelly, so if I stumble
across a movie and they appear in it’s a cool “Martin Donovan Moment” that
makes me think of their previous work and wonder why they’re not in more things
and then wish that they were.
I honestly didn’t even know the two
actresses’ names until I saw the movie Torment. I put it on because my wife
didn’t want to see it and she went to bed early. I was surprised to see Ginger
herself, Katharine Isabelle, and holy cow how many years have gone by and she
is still as freaking beautiful as she was in 2000. It’s rare that for over a
decade later and a person looks almost exactly the same, and maybe she just has
a face that is memorable, and of course for a boy in high school who has seen
Ginger Snaps, that shot of Katharine walking down the school hall in slo-mo – I
had to stop there because upon going to Youtube and watching the clip I felt
like a terrible old perv; plus the scene now looks like a spoof of a shampoo
commercial or something like that so maybe the movie doesn’t hold up well
today, but still it should be seen.
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| TRUST ME, IF EMILY PERKINS HAD ANY PICTURES LIKE THIS I'D HAVE USED THEM FOR HER TOO. I'M ONLY WORKING WITH WHAT I'VE GOT, PEOPLE |
Katharine Isabelle seems to favor
the independent movies, which is cool, but at the same time I wish others could
see her and see what an amazing actress she is. She’s kind of like that cool
indie band (we’ll call them Benedict Cumberbatch) you listen to on Spotify that
you dig and try to get others to listen to but they won’t, and then one day you
hear one of their songs on the radio and they’re being interviewed and kids too
young to know any better are into them and suddenly you hate that band now.
That’s probably how it would play out, and the opposite would be for Emily
Perkins (her band would be Ewan McGregor), when she makes it big you would
enjoy being able to talk about Ginger Snaps and have someone who was a fan of
her but hadn’t seen it yet to check it out. Of course they’d also ask about the
girl who played her sister in that movie and you don’t know of anything else
she’s been in because some people are cooler when there’s less people that know
about them (see: Martin Donovan, or Eddie Redmayne).
Torment was a good movie, but then
you bring in Katharine and it turns into a really good movie – mostly because I’m
a fan, but it honestly doesn’t change the movie much. To the genre, the movie
wasn’t anything new, it was pretty basic with a few interesting points (I
hesitate in calling them twists, though one is presented as such). The movie
struggles with the child of the family who isn’t the best actor and comes
across not so much as disliking his new mom as being just kind of creepy; when
the boy disappears and things get going it has everything that these movies
need and it doesn’t do any of it in a bad way at all, just nothing new.
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| SEE THIS MOVIE! THAT IS ALL I WILL SAY ABOUT IT |
I know all of these movies can’t be
Funny Games – a movie that is at the top of the home invasion sub-genre
pyramid, and is so awesome that I refuse to say anything other than it is
awesome and if you love these kinds of movies and haven’t seen it you’re an
idiot. The pacing of that movie is slow and steady but tense like non-other.
This one isn’t about the tension (even though it tries to be), but more about
the fighting, which again isn’t really bad, just nothing new.
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