In Which Manic Pixie Meryl Streep Can Do Whatever She Feels Like

Be That Girl

by QICHEN ZHANG

Meryl, listen. You've got to stop doing things like this. It's enough that you basically doom any other nominee come Hollywood awards season in any year you make a movie, but I draw the line at being nominated twice in one category and then beating yourself for the trophy, shoving it down the real Julia's mouth. Come on. Now you're just being crass.

Neener neener neener!On a serious note, Meryl Streep is probably severely hated in Tinseltown, but not for the obvious Oscar-hogging reasons she's been known for. Although the camera always manages to pan to the losers' faces at the exact moment when they purse their lips in sour jealousy while golf clapping, everyone usually has too much champagne at the afterparty to stay disappointed for long. It's another kind of envy altogether, something less artificial and perhaps more threatening at the same time and stirred by a rare quality. In L.A., it's known as plastic surgery, but most people refer to it as perpetuity.

M-Dawg here does not fool around when it comes to embodying the kind of quirky woman with that certain effusive charm and those specific idiosyncrasies that are somehow not irritating enough to prevent a man from falling in love with her.

Take her role in Out of Africa, for example. A stretch on the definition of manic pixie, perhaps. But below the face value of her portrayal of Karen Blixen, the qualities of the enchanting ingénue are slyly yet clearly embedded. First, Karen leaves a privileged life in Denmark to milk cows in the middle of the Nairobi desert. Then, in a spontaneous fit of pixiedom, she decides to open a school to educate the native people and surround herself with the Maasai. Not to mention some casual sex with a burly, hunting Robert Redford. Adventure, open-minded initiative, and sexual liberation. Did I mention casual sex with Robert Redford, none other than the Horse Whisperer himself? THE HORSE WHISPERER, PEOPLE.

A girl's got mad skills when she can convince a straight man to double as her stylist.Not only does Meryl hold the title of the original manic pixie dream girl, but she does so at an age three times that of one of our generation's most well-known imp Kirsten Dunst (four, if you want to count starting with Dunst's role in The Virgin Suicides as her ultimate pixie performance). Women clearly start counting backwards after a certain age, but Meryl seems to transcend all of time's impositions and triumphs as the quirky maverick in a place where most actresses her age have already resorted to supporting roles as overbearing, shrill mothers who drink to escape the suffocating boredom of marriage.

The subtle and disarming features that she injects into her characters is something few have succeeded at doing (see: Diane Keaton). As a roving reporter on a mission to find the truth about flowers in Adaptation, Meryl flawlessly portrays Susan as a wildly intrepid thrillseeker and manages to perform a sex scene with a very bald Nicholas Cage. Props, girlfriend!

The original indie pixie, complete with romantic sensitivity. Um. Yeah.One caveat: can a character still be a manic pixie dream girl if she's been divorced? After all, in It's Complicated, no matter how easy it was for her to literally charm the pants off of Alec Baldwin, girl's still got too much game to evoke that certain charismatic innocence that loosely defines the woman who can exude that je ne sais quoi allure. But in this age of self-righteous feminism, I am probably obligated to say yes. But as a fan of evidence, I simultaneously offer everyone an example and Diane a redemption for being in a movie with Mandy Moore: Erica Barry in Something's Gotta Give.

You feel me? Alec does.So Meryl. Here's the thing. It's too bad you work the pixie dream girl thing like it's your job. (Oh, wait.) You've got to tone it down. Every woman in Hollywood over the age of 40 hates you. Don't be that girl.

Qichen Zhang is a contributor to This Recording. This is her first appearance in these pages. She is a student at Harvard University. She tumbls here.

"Geology" - The Knife (mp3)

"Tomorrow in a Year" - The Knife (mp3)

"The Height of Summer" - The Knife (mp3)

"Colouring of Pigeons" - The Knife (mp3)

In Which Everything Thinks That It Goes Away With Age

You Are Such A Charming Older Person

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Nancy Meyers' new film It's Complicated begins with the most remarkable of conceits - a woman meets Alec Baldwin at an orgy. Known for her extraordinary skill at deflecting attention from the aging necks of Hollywood's finest, Meyers' second film, What Women Want, reimagined a decrepit oldster as a sex symbol who for some reason wished to press his wrinkles up against Helen Hunt's forehead.

I reminded someone recently about how much money Grumpy Old Men made, just before reflecting on how much I'd like to bathe in that money. Well, What Women Want is the most lucrative film ever made by a woman before Twilight.

Like Rob Schneider's classic The Stapler (seen below) the wacky uninspired Freaky Friday-esque premise of What Women Want explained part of its success. The magnificent Marisa Tomei's Italian sexuality was a key peripheral component, but the gimmick certainly helped.

Yet just as crucial a reason for What Women Want's success was glorifying the essentially horrifying presences of Mssrs Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt. These two partially mutated ad executives were truly the most unappealing people in film until Andrew Bulgaski movies. And yet Meyers was able to resurrect them as likeable fops that got ruined by that week's dry cleaning.

Much hay has been made about how men age more lucratively than women do on the screen, but thankfully technology has leveled the field. Everyone except for Keira Knightley and Morgan Freeman looks absolutely horrible up close in Blu-Ray. Haven't you wondered why Brittany Murphy's been laying low lately? Our secretary of state looks like she spent the last two months in the Sudan.

Meryl Streep is the charming protagonist of It's Complicated. In other roles she's rarely permitted to depict what she actually is - a woman with an earthy sexuality and flirtatious demeanor. In contrast, Steve Martin, Alec Baldwin, and Jim Krasinski are only able to portray themselves or characters perilously close to themselves. Even though Krasinski was playing a character other than Jim Halpert, he still looked at the camera at the conclusion of every scene.

The key to Meyers' success is that she is better than anyone else at creating characters very close to how we imagine famous movie stars would act if they had slightly different occupations and personalities. (Otherwise instead of a debonair, Diane-Keaton loving Jack Nicholson, we'd see the Roman-Polanski enabling, abusive alcoholic Jack Nicholson). This is a particularly difficult straddling act in the case of the repulsive Alec Baldwin. In It's Complicated he plays a former minister with a passion for blondes who charms Streep's character into committing a deadly murder. Martin plays his Rain-Man autistic savant brother.

Wouldn't this actually be an amazing plot for a film with the title It's Complicated? Although I have watched the preview for It's Complicated over seventeen times, I can make no actual sense of the plot. In this way it resembles the most misogynistic film of the '00s, Meyers' Something's Gotta Give. The previous record holder for most generic film title prominently featured the crumbling carapace of Jack Nicholson lurched his body on top of Diane Keaton's torso. This is the same Keaton character who says no thanks to Keanu Reeves' face and penis in her life and fancies herself a famous playwright named Erica. Somehow this is more believable than Rain Man meets Before the Devil Knows You're Dead?

Casting directors go through slumps just like baseball hitters. Nobody has the balls to tell someone to dye their hair or insert Botox. Sometimes wrinkles have a good day. Other times, they add to the savagery of the intercourse. Usually they just gross me out.

clint's last scene alive, R.I.P.Maybe we will learn to appreciate age the way we have death. I'm proud of the way America has honored the filmmaking efforts of Clint Eastwood, who passed away at some point during Unforgiven. His movies about how other white people are racist both move and disturb my childlike sense of wonder.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He tumbls here and twitters here.

is it true you're the grim reaper and that's why you made 'bridges of madison county'?"Tweeter and the Monkey Man" - The Traveling Wilburys (mp3)

"End of the Line" - The Traveling Wilburys (mp3)

"Margarita" - The Traveling Wilburys (mp3)