GIRLS talk (the Lena Dunham thread)

So it seemed like a few people on ILX did not like Tiny Furniture, but I did, I like Lena and I am really anticipating GIRLS. No doubt we'll talk about all this here as we anticipate the show and all try to look smart (I'm smart, btw).
http://www.tvequals.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Girls-HBO.jpg

I guess we can talk about this too: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/lena-dunham-weight_n_1321414.html

Obviously that story itself is not interesting or special (jn fact it is idiotic), but it does raise some larger questions worth considering although goodness knows we should be more evolved than this by now

Wanna be appalled? go to the criterion forum and read the Tiny Furniture thread. Total fanboy meltdown.

ok i just read a few pages of this^ and suddenly i want to become her biggest champion

(i haven't seen anything she's done tho)

still haven't seen tiny furniture; need to get on that. read two paragraphs of that story about the complaint about her weight. couldn't read any further.

criterion fandorks who complain about WHY ARE THEY RELEASING X FILM AND NOT Y?!?! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE = shut up shut up shut up you are the fucking worst

I didn't really care for Tiny Furniture on the whole. Lena Dunham seemed like someone who's talented but (unsurprisingly) a little too solipsistic to adequately wield her talent. I'll give her show a shot in the hope that she's matured a bit.

Tiny furniture is one of those movies with about zero sympathetic characters. And I really couldn't figure out if I was actually supposed to think that or not.

I liked Tiny Furniture and am looking forward to this show.

I agree completely, chinavision. And I think Dunham was at least canny enough for that to have been intentional. I just don't think she was canny enough to make the overall experience appealing or thought-provoking enough for me to like the film.

I do want to give her props on a number of fronts. I just can't give her props for cohering those fronts into a particularly good movie.

totally dug tiny furniture

i sympathized with most of the characters in tiny furniture? i mean they did a lot of stupid shit but no one was really hateful, besides i guess the two guys.

guardian interview - http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/mar/23/lena-dunham-tiny-furniture-emma-brockes

http://nymag.com/print/?/arts/tv/features/girls-lena-dunham-2012-4/

I'm seriously hyped about this; she's way funnier and more clever than she has any right to be.

i also got a little crush on her y cuz she's smart

Watched Tiny Furniture on the weekend. It's the kind of thing i normally hate but she won me over by the end.

tiny furniture is pretty interesting. i thought it would be funny but kinda frothy, and instead i thought it said some pretty interesting things, way more than it was an amusing film. like (SPOILERS, I GUESS) the more it committed to refusing the sweet narrative arc you'd expect to unkink & take over - her remembering how lovely Frankie was, or arriving at some kind of agreeable romantic situation - the more it seemed like good, lacerating, self-loathing criticism of dumb, shortsighted early life blundering.

the nyer profile from a while back is good reading also

just watched 'tiny furniture' and was surprised by how much i (and especially my gf) enjoyed it.

the pipe scene was the clincher

yeah, agreed.
the pat on the thigh from spent dude was just painfully real.

i channel surfed through Tiny Furniture for a few minutes recently and could barely stand it, the direction/acting was like kevin smith-level bad

"In the street?"
"No, worse than that"

Dunham is curating a mini-fest where i work called Hey, girlfriend. bummed i missed mulholland drive last night (one of her picks)

at least i have seen it on the big screen b4 tho

twice actually!

haven't seen any of her stuff, she's doing several days of film 'presenting' at BAM, tonight w/ Whit Stillman.

i sympathized with most of the characters in tiny furniture?

haha me too

i saw one of the episodes on the weekend it was... idk, im p excited to watch them properly but it was a bit of a mess. theres a lot of ambivalence in general i guess

Tiny Furniture was horrific but she might do okay in a TV format. As long as she's not directing.

oops hey i missed surm's posts, sorry.

some dude OTM about Tiny Furniture's filmmaking, but I also can't find it in myself to give a shit about the problems of an educated rich kid in this hard hard world of moving back into the 'rents multimillion dollar loft.

still going to give Girls a shot, maybe there will be characters who aren't hateable

I think she's more self-aware than people who offer that criticism realize

I think she is sorta cute and seems fun and smart

"WKIW", as I believe you say

Like the scene where she has the big argument with her mother and she's all "I'm 22 and i just graduated and i got my first job". I have to believe that was somewhat tongue in cheek

I don't think it was, or that the entire movie was one big self-aware joke at the expense of overprivileged twentysomethings... but I'm not sure that it would improve things had that been her intention.

i like how the friend from ohio felt like a protagonist that wandered in from some other (slightly more conventional) movie

That's another thing. She tells her friend a day before she moves to New York that she's not going to move in with her, avoids all her calls, blows her off at the art thing cos that dude turns up etc. It has to be a joke, right?

idk it's all part & parcel of being an actual horrible, spoiled 20-something

the character, not lena i mean

I think there was a degree of self-awareness on display in Tiny Furniture, but probably not the degree of self-awareness that she might've had if she'd waited a couple more years to make it.

Which is a lot of why I'm open to Girls being more "my thing".

its not a "joke" but it is "self-aware"

Yeah but she didn't. She made it when she was like 23/24 and it's pretty much ABOUT being that age.

xxp

I mean, she was self-aware enough to not portray her character as a completely sympathetic protagonist (see: the treatment of her friend from Ohio) but I don't know that she was as aware of her character's/her own level of privilege as I would've liked.

It's certainly no less self-aware than you might hope/expect given the age and status of the filmmaker.

Why does she have to apologize to you for being rich

I don't watch the US Office, but I kind of don't think of those characters as "protagonists."

But even the shows where you "laugh at" the assholes wear on me after a while. I guess I liked David Brent because he had a tragic quality. But I'm sort of tired of the "everyone's a self-involved asshole" formula for shows that seems to descend from Seinfeld through Arrested Development (even though that show was at times very funny) to Transparent, and maybe also It's Always Sunny from what I've heard (haven't watched).

it's always sunny is very much like the next level after seinfeld

it's also better than Seinfeld

Curb >>>

There's probably a better thread for this but has anyone been watching the Julia Davis show "Sally4ever" on HBO? Last episode was something else

the poo one? that's where I stopped while binging this last night. I didn't think it was possible for me to still be shocked by something

Yep that's the one

I haven't read the thread yet but I just finished the Girls. Started around Xmas. I watched the first season when it aired in 2012 but never saw anything else - not out of disinterest just circumstance, but also Lena Dunham's public persona and infinite controversies were so overwhelming and a comparable body of work in their own right that I felt too distracted to watch the show on its own terms. I'm so glad I waited two years after it ended to come back and go through the whole show. I didn't watch any of the making of segments or commentary or read along in here.

A few things - it's the show of the decade, a key millennial text that will endure for decades, and Hannah Horvath is among the most deftly written characters I've ever encountered (and deeply sympathetic while often objectively despicable - this is a great achievement). I started noticing the direction about halfway through the show, and one shot in particular, from I think the first episode of season four, where Hannah and Marnie embrace on the floor, the way Dunham cut and framed them was straight out of Bergman. A few weeks later I saw her Criterion Top 10 and sure enough Through a Glass Darkly was on there, with a typically inexplicable and unintentionally hilarious comment: "Like for many Americans, incest is a rough area for me. I just have a natural aversion to it."

I prefer not to think of her public persona, her rich kid ignorance and blinding narcissism, because I don't think she's succeeded as a provocateur in that realm. Almost everything she's done or said or been embroiled in has hurt her work and made more people turn away and even more people - including myself - not even bother because it was all too much to take. But now the dust has settled and she's kept a relatively low profile since the show ended and I could watch it with an even head. And I loved it. The writing, the direction, the performances - all consistently stellar. And what an accomplishment in Hannah and her characterization. She's the only one who "figured it out" and grew up, and it happened as soon as she decided to keep the baby. How awful the rest of them seemed in comparison, still so feckless and desperate and caught up in petty dramas - Hannah is the one that grows up. Marnie is a fucking psychopath and I don't like that she was in the last episode, "I'm your best friend - I WON!" - I'm surprised Hannah didn't kick her out then. Shoshana found her people and she's right, these women have nothing in common any more. I assumed Jessa would end up lost, but Adam's devolution was surprising I suppose, and that last episode with them was heartbreaking and masterfully done (of course she made the right decision - and that this could all be expressed without a single word - oh my god!).

Despite that demon Marnie leeching off Hannah and "winning" in the end, I'm happy where it ended up. Hannah is the only one that gets it and succeeded- Marnie is clearly out of her mind, Shosh and Jessa sort of get it but seemed doomed to repeat their mistakes (Shosh met her fiancé what, a month ago?).

Hannah singing "Fast Car" to her child alone - I wept, because I believe it, I believe they'll make it, it'll be really hard but I believe they'll make it. Few could've written a character as complex, frustrating, impulsive, narcissistic, and irresponsible as Hannah Horvath and move her to a place where you trust her with a child on her own. What a show. Thank You Lena

I think it depends on who you are relative to the main protagonist(s). I watched up until the the surf lessons/sex instructor episode and I was done in by laziness. You see brilliance, I saw the last of my upper most inner eyelids.

It was indeed fresher when it was releases in the moment.

felt like the second to last episode would have been a better ending

I know there was a baby plotline near the end and I really was terribly, completely over it by hearing that,. So lazy, so self indulgent.

felt like the second to last episode would have been a better ending

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

I feel like it's crucial for Hannah to end up alone with her baby though - even though Marnie and her mom are downstairs, but it ends with Hannah and her son upstairs, singing Fast Car. I watched the whole show in 4 months instead of 5 years, and it absolutely benefitted from that, like most shows would. I thought the scope of the show would be bigger than it was, and the situations basically become entrenched in season 4. the more I think about it the more disappointed I am that Marnie was given any quarter after sneaking into Hannah's house in Poughkeepsie and sleeping in her bed and going on her bone-chilling "I won" rant. I have to know Dunham & Konner & Apatow take on Marnie but I'm not ready. How can anyone see this person as anything but a monster, and by far the worst of the bunch?

I mean, that "I won" monologue makes it pretty clear where the filmmakers stand

I haven't finished the series (and wonder if I ever will?) but I appreciate your commentary flappy bird, I've always thought Lena Dunham "in the press" belied the work itself, which at the very least, made me laugh, a lot, which is an achievement

The first three seasons still resonate with me as being extremely deft portrayals of NYC 20-somethings (at least, the ones I encountered) and the bizarre mindset that that city creates in young creatives

I mean to me this is the transformation of great white hope to death to hipsters to basicbitch but we suffer them in parts of ourselves.

I don't know what specifically happened on the show about this but I know know too many smart women still caught up in it ( an I Won thing) and I get really sad that it's even a thing.

Well, I read the wiki synopses and jumped ahead to the last episode and I thought it was great

I don't really know how to type this properly but it is kind of amazing how Lena/Hannah has normalized quotidian onscreen nudebody in a way that is really uplifting. The dovetail of Mom berating Hannah into Hannah berating runaway was perfect. I liked how all the other characters who I essentially don't care about (please save me from ever having to think about an Adam/Desi/Ray/Gay Dad/Mormon Dude ever again) were just not present, that was nice

Marnie was always a total monster and it's only because Desi is an even bigger monster that we entertain the thought that she's not a monster.

I really enjoy Girls but 'child as redemption' is such bullshit

what happened with jessa/adam at the end, again?

Oh I didn't think there was a "child as redemption" thing. Hannah storms out of the house screaming "thanks mom for choosing to raise me with a homosexual father and deny me any semblance of a nuclear family", then she shows compassion for a teenage girl in trouble only to find out she's just trying to get out of her homework, and she gets mad and asks for her pants back and the girl calls her a psycho. So she goes home and Grover and crying. A running theme in this show seems to be that there is a complicated relationship between children and parents. There's a lot of "Jessa is a monster" "Marnie is a monster" about this show but I think the show very aggressively wants you to understand there are no good or bad people in the show, the characters are too complicated for that reduction.

I was pretty drunk last night and was wondering what thread I had posted on. Ha!

earlier post was about how Hannah figured it out and grew up after deciding to have a baby

holy shit this lunatic narcissism

As I planned my summer in Wales, my head filled with visions of romance, I supposed I’d do what the heroines of novels did when they crossed the pond for a new life: go to the shore to take the healing air. Meet a man and move into his stunning manor, possibly watched over by a sinister housemaid. Scurry through cobblestoned streets and into dusty bookshops, furtively pulling up the hood of my cloak. Go to a banquet and dance to piano music in a great hall. Taste gamey meats on a date with a count, then become a countess. Shoot a bow and arrow. Develop a slight accent. Images of everything from Brighton Rock to Emma, The Woman In White to Notting Hill, filled my head. There was even a little 24 Hour Party People in there. But as it would happen, my days were long, and much more Wernham Hogg than Wuthering Heights.

Spoiler: It's about Love Island

we must protect lena dunham at all costs

why would anyone print this inane article

^ probably to quietly point out how she has spent five months in the country without ever noticing that it is a different country to the one she thought she was going to

Emma is set in Surrey, England
Wuthering Heights is set in Yorkshire, England
Wernham Hogg is situated in Slough, England
24 Hour Party People is set in and very specifically about Manchester, England
Brighton Rock is set, and there may have been some clue to this, in Brighton, England
Notting Hill also drops some subtle titular hints as to its setting in Notting Hill, a district in London, England
The Woman In White is set in Cumberland, England and Hampshire, England, and London, England

also Wales has neither counts nor countesses. you can become a countess by marriage in England, but not by marrying a count, because England also does not have counts.

Has she done this before (getting things terribly wrong about the U.K)? Otherwise I'm just experiencing deja-vu and nevermind.

she's just in "britain" and is eliding - just due to ignorance, i would assume - the particularity of the member nations

just due to ignorance, i would assume

yes

this is the point

she literally can't be bothered to look out of her own head for 0.5 seconds to realise that she is thinking about a different country, even when she is writing 9,000 words about how ignorant she is due to making unthinking assumptions

the particularity of the member nations

she's eliding a bunch of European nations too

sounds like you find her annoying sic

It’s dumb spacefiller but would be hard-pushed to find it annoying or lunatic or... anything, really

common or garden yank ignorance wrt these islands is hardly in the top 1000 of lena dunham's crimes of discourse

sounds like you find her annoying sic

I watched and mostly liked the first four or so seasons of Girls

I love Lena and everything she's ever done and said

:D

She is a flawless human being and an inspiration to everyone

idk im tired at work it's slow as shit this is pure unfiltered sleep deprived flappy bird hours

New feature film (Sharp Stick) debuts at Sundance (online) this weekend.

Enjoyed this more in retrospect than while watching it. If the strengths of Girls made that show worth watching for you (great casting, honest moments, good dialogue, complicated sex), this one has those as well – as well as (as with Solondz et al) the feeling of an individual rather than a studio deciding how to provoke in ways that match her personal truths.

What’s different is that this protagonist feels much, much younger than the Girls women. Not just sheltered. And only a throwaway line of dialogue establishing her as 26 keeps this from feeling like it’s about someone mid-teens.

I love Girls. An amazing show all the way through.

Great post:

Emma is set in Surrey, England
Wuthering Heights is set in Yorkshire, England
Wernham Hogg is situated in Slough, England
24 Hour Party People is set in and very specifically about Manchester, England
Brighton Rock is set, and there may have been some clue to this, in Brighton, England
Notting Hill also drops some subtle titular hints as to its setting in Notting Hill, a district in London, England
The Woman In White is set in Cumberland, England and Hampshire, England, and London, England

also Wales has neither counts nor countesses. you can become a countess by marriage in England, but not by marrying a count, because England also does not have counts.

― quelle sprocket damage (sic), Wednesday, July 31, 2019

finally watching season 5 and finding it frequently funny tbh

rewatching this series for the first time since it originally ran and shocked at how good it is, but also how it seems to be from another century entirely, despite only being 12 years old.

funny to look back at the reactions people had toward these characters, who are simply human.

I loved this show from start to finish.

Even with the passage of time and eating ass becoming a meme, the kitchen butt motorboat still seems pretty out there for a non-Cinemax show.

Empire had the blowjob bib but American TV is regressing when it comes to lol wtf sex scenes.