Veronica Mars: Sassy Teen Detective

[ophy]

Oh, good. I'm glad *somebody* remembers that there was a Duncan long before there was a Piz.

His wiki page says he was in law school? Eh?

Yeah, that's the last we heard of him. I know he gave up acting. I thought maybe they would still invite him to the premieres like they did other former characters. Harry Hamlin and Lisa Rinna were there, so why not Teddy?

[isadora]

Harry and Lisa are attention whores?

[ophy]

So the pdf script definitely does imply CRAZY HOT WALL SEX. I didn't read those gifs wrong after all.


There's also some weird Parker mention, that gets promptly forgotten by the rest of the script. Who knows what they were planning on doing with that.

My master playlist is already 32 songs long (send help).

[ophy]

Super cute vid with Josh Horowitz. The boys play the "how well do you know KBell" game: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/172...=share_twitter

Kristen's rationale (when they asked who *should* win) was that Chris was the smartest . . . but Ryan knows her the best . . . but Jason is the best listener of all. (Ryan won, duh).

[gloopdygleep]

I did not realize that from the movie, and I think it's wonderful, yet odd. What was Mac's real motivation there?

I think the fact that Mac said she's rather tell them that she was clubbing baby seals than working at Kane Software is a big clue. Like she feels dirty for working there but the money lured her in. But when Veronica comes back and is ready to throw over her big high paying successful future to jump back into the mud she's all IN because she didn't really want to work at Kane Software anyway.

That's how I picture it anyway.

[SW1237]

Ahhh can't wait to get to a computer and read all the spoiler tags!
Made my husband watch the movie with me tonight and he said he didn't like it. I pretty much wanted to rip his head off. I was personally offended ha ha. He didn't see the third season though. He also reminded me that I used to work with KBs aunt. I remember her talking about KB but at the time I hadnt watched the show and I didn't care. I just thought it was some dumb nancy drew ripoff. How wrong I was!

[Laura]

Downloaded it yesterday after catching up a bit on youtube and wiki since I'd not seen the series. Loved it. Amazing chemistry between KB and JD. Thanks for the recommendation everyone!

[ophy]

Yay! That's proof of concept that you don't *have* to have seen all the eps to enjoy the movie, just as long as you are open to magic of the wildly inappropriate real life crush JDoh has on KB.

He also reminded me that I used to work with KBs aunt.

Ha! Was this in GA?

I get mortally offended when someone doesn't love this movie, but I forgive the non-fans for it. It was really made for us, nobody else. Also, I think some people expected a MOVIE, and it's really more small-screen-ish than Big Screen-ish. Which given the budget and time frame, is totes understandable and fine. I feel like it's important to adjust the expectations of non-fans or semi-fans before they watch, and remind them of the teeny tiny amount of money and time involved.

side note: Did y'all notice that Veronica was driving Logan's BMW M6 convertible at the end? SQUEEE. <so married> That's a $120k car, just saying.

[namaste]

I'm so glad I bought it and not rent it. Have to watch it again and again.

[isadora]

I love the idea of Mac and V both throwing over high-paying gigs to follow their dreams (and fulfilling their burning desires to overthrow the power structure that caused them such pain as kids). I mean, given Mac's backstory with Madison and Beaver? Man, she's prolly got some Veronica and Logan level issues.

[ophy]

Jason, Ryan, Krysten, and Rob take a personality quiz: http://popwatch.ew.com/2014/03/14/ve...er-rob-thomas/


This is interesting:

http://www.boxofficeprophets.com/col...columnID=16618

Veronica Mars, the little Kickstarter that could, was such an X-factor this weekend that most people refused to hazard a guess about its box office. I was on record as saying the movie would struggle to earn $1 million this weekend, and I say that as a passionate fan of the series. To my pleasant surprise, the day and date release attained $1 million on Friday from only 291 locations, a number that is small in terms of our ordinary box office discussions. In terms of ramifications on the movie industry, especially for exhibitors, it is a stunning turn of events. With a per-location average of $3,450, a movie that most people (myself included) watched at home still managed to perform better than Need for Speed ($2,132) or The Single Moms Club ($1,688).

This could easily mean a sequel, you guys. Like, one that we don't have to pay for.

I'd rather have a Netflix series, of course, but I'll take anything. It's hard to imagine KBell being able to do a full series, unless House of Lies gets cancelled, but she could do a couple more movies without trouble, I assume.

I'm not blackbarring anything anymore, fair warning! But I'm holding off on posting spoilery gifs one more day.

I want to talk about how much Logan has grown up to be Jason Dohring. Right? Quiet, controlled, and an excellent listener. Funny, but funny in a very subtle and quiet way.

The way old Logan and new Logan are most alike is in their chivalric/protector impulses (and the snark!), but new Logan has channeled it differently. Like, he trusts himself and his own reactions so much more, and there is no longer that explosiveness that makes you think, "this kid is either going to kill or die, at any moment". He can direct his anger properly without going too far, he no longer feels the need to poke every single bear. The rage is no longer unleashed. His body movements are smaller and more contained. All of that makes so much sense, given his life experiences in the past nine years, but it was still a bit of a surprise to see how far he has really come in that time.

No doubt that Logan changed the most of any character, which was kind of a risk that Rob was taking. Everyone loves Logan, and they loved younger him damaged and angry, with a death wish. He's still damaged and angry, but he's lost most of the self-loathing. Something about flying jets and being in the military that has taught him he is worth something, that the world is better with him alive in it.

I've seen a lot of criticism directed at the career choice for Logan, but I think it was a brilliant decision on Rob's part. Rob had specific ideas about where Logan needed to be in his life's journey to make Logan/Veronica seemed earned (and seem like it will actually work out for the best this time) and making Logan a naval officer was an excellent short-cut as a way to tell that story without wasting time actually telling it on screen.

We didn't have to wonder how Logan got to this new place of acceptance with himself, we can imagine the backstory for ourselves. All the times young and angry Logan pissed off a superior office during training, all the times he got beaten down by his naval fellows, how eventually he discovered a kind of freedom and peace in the sky that made everything, even all of the discipline, worth embracing. The military was a place where his past and all of it's weight could be forgotten and left behind. It didn't matter who his dad was, or how his mom had killed herself, all that mattered was his own merit and good he was at carrying out missions and accomplishing goals. Logan is an officer, a lieutenant, by the time Veronica re-enters his life. You know he earned that, he didn't buy it with his murderer dad's money. It belongs to him, and only him, on a a very deep level.

We can picture him working through his demons in that kind of structure, and finally arriving at a place where he and Veronica can have a real future together, without the audience worrying that they will eventually destroy each other and themselves.

"You should only wear that. Like, ever."

[ophy]

Okay, so Jason did do an interview that addressed exactly what I was just posted: http://tvline.com/2014/03/15/veronic...-whites-photo/

TVLINE | What was your initial reaction when you read the movie script?
I thought it was so cool that [creator] Rob [Thomas] put me in the [dress whites], made me in the Navy. It was cool that [Logan] actually got more discipline in his life and was kind of a badass. That sort of stuff is obviously fun to play. It gives him somewhere to go in the future other than just depression from losing his parents and the relationships that he’s been in. And Rob made me look really heroic, which is really awesome. I’m still paying him off for that.

TVLINE | Logan has a very respectable career now. He’s cleaned up his act. What do you think was the turning point for him?
He had to put his life in order or he would have gone down to the point where nobody could have helped him. He took charge of his life and had to make something of it because there’s just too much to deal with, man. Like all the s–t he had to go through, especially with nobody by your side, no girlfriend or anything like that. It just would have been too much. So he goes off and does something that’s ballsy… He could have a purpose in life, helping out. Those are the parts that resonated with me.

TVLINE | Did you and Rob talk about what happened to Logan in those nine years?
Yeah, a little bit. It was mostly the discipline [and] the couple tours [in the Navy], that general idea. That was [Logan's] driving force to keep him sane. That was what I played.

TVLINE | Were you happy with how Veronica and Logan’s story ended?
Yeah, you couldn’t ask for more. To be in the dress whites, going away like Richard Gere, that’s the best. Rob couldn’t have written it better. He’s just always made me look like a hero. He’s just very kind to actors and how they’re going to look. He’s a good dude.

TVLINE | If you had to write the future for Veronica and Logan, what would it be?
It’s cool to watch as an audience when there are ups and downs, there’s trouble and then they work it out. The underlying love story, exactly as it’s been playing out, is [what] I would hope for the future. Obviously, you’d like them to live happily ever after and that sort of thing. But they both have their explosive characteristics… As long as the underlying love stays there, I’m cool with anything going down. That will, hopefully, bring them back together.

TVLINE | Have you talked to Rob about what a potential sequel would hold for the characters?
I know that there’s a lot of Skype involved in the military overseas. So there’s conversations with Veronica and that sort of thing. Maybe it’ll be like Top Gun Part 2 or something. You can only dream.

Logan seen only via Skype? Um, no. UNACCEPTABLE.

I don't think Rob would do that to us. In my head canon, this is Logan's last tour in Afghanistan, and when he comes back he is a flight instructor on base or something. Then Veronica can get involved in solving some kind of military mystery right on base where he works. I can see that bringing the characters into conflict nicely.

Another review:http://www.tv.com/shows/veronica-mar...-139473046959/

It makes sense that the person to pull Veronica back to Neptune and the private eye world was Logan. He'd been part of the reason she'd left town and their self-proclaimed epic love story was left unfinished. If I take issue with anything in the film, however, it would be the way in which it portrayed her relationship with both Logan and the job of being a private investigator as a drug. Over the course of the series, it was clear her relationship with Logan was toxic, but Logan has grown up and matured considerably in the nine years since we last saw him. Yes, he was quick to resort to violence when Veronica's sex tape played at the reunion, but that doesn't change the fact that Logan has come very far since his self-destructive days. He joined the navy and became a pilot. He became a stabilizing force for his girlfriend, Carrie Bishop, whose murder was the central mystery of the movie. Veronica might not have been able to quit Logan and her first taste of working a case in years might have been intoxicating, but I don't know that the addiction voiceovers helped sell the story, because it implies there's something wrong with it.
Some might argue that that's true, that Veronica should have chosen the nice guy and the secure, high-paying job of being a lawyer, but Veronica was never meant for that world. She said it herself that she's an adrenaline-junkie, which plays into the addiction idea, but I don't think it's an addiction. I just think Veronica isn't content with the safe world provided by Piz and the world of law. Considering Veronica's own rap sheet and the fact that she was arrested for breaking and entering within a few days of returning to Neptune, it's obvious she'd never have been happy as a lawyer; She craves the excitement of the chase, she craves the excitement and passion of her relationship with Logan.

I get this as a complaint, because I also thought the addiction metaphor was played a bit heavy. But! Veronica is the narrator here. Veronica has never been a reliable narrator. It makes sense to me that she is not seeing this clearly, that she would use this kind of metaphor to try a clarify her own confusion at why she would blow up the life she was building to return to the one she left behind. The truth of it was that Neptune needs Veronica. She's a hero for the underdog. I saw a Tumblr quote that compared Veronica to Batman, saying that it made sense that Neptune would be in as big a mess without Veronica as Gotham is without Batman. That's who she is, with her gadgets and sense of justice. But Veronica can't see herself like that. Seeing herself as a 'junkie needing a fix' is the way she is more likely to look at things, given her family history. And of course, the guilt she feels for letting down her dad and Piz.

Thomas Wolfe was wrong when he said you can't go home again, because Veronica returned to the world of Neptune and it felt right. And everything about the Veronica Mars film felt right. It wasn't without its flaws, but in this instance, those flaws, much like the flaws of Neptune itself, are what makes it so entertaining. Whether or not Warner Bros. decides to revisit Veronica's story, either in movie or television form (there are already plans for a book series, and a short web series spin-off on The CW Seed) doesn't really matter, because the movie tied up the dangling threads left by the series' unfortunate cancellation, but also left the door open for a future return. A long time ago, we used to be friends, but it's obvious now that those friendships are for a lifetime.

*sniff*

[emmaleigh]

I hear y'all on the fanservice thing because I don't have hard and fast rules about that and sometimes I really love inside baseball conceits eg; I was totally fine with the Franco meta. On the one hand, RT made it for the backers and considering its origins, that makes total sense. On the other hand, it made the film small and insular which from a filmmaking perspective, w/ that budget, is weird to me. It was not a teeny amount of money and it was not a super abbreviated shoot for an indie film.

I've just accepted that I'm going to be very conflicted about this movie because I was such a fan of the series. Were I not a fan, it'd be easy to throw all my ire at it and deconstruct all the ways it's an affront to independent film, but I do love the characters and narrative and faithfully watched all three seasons (and own them on DVD) and obsessed about LoVe etc so SO. MANY. CONFLICTING. FEELINGS.

The movie itself was very likable. I think what I've missed more than anything is RT's wit; I miss super witty characters on TV and I loved how smart the world of Neptune still is, he and the actors nailed that. I liked the noir and the VO and the return to all things that made Veronica Veronica in the first place.
I was also totally fine with Chris Lowell reprising his role and seeing Piz again (rather than a brand new actor like, say, Jeremy Sisto ha). That surprised me because I hated Piz on the show but it became quickly apparent, it was just because RT and the cast really like Chris Lowell. Glad we didn't get Parker though.

Aside from Party Down, Martin Starr and KBell were also in The Lifeguard together as high school BFFs so I liked seeing their brief interaction here in a different dynamic.

The film did feel like a springboard so it'll be curious to see how WB moves forward.

[isadora]

But! Veronica is the narrator here. Veronica has never been a reliable narrator.

OMG. THIS. SO MUCH THIS. Veronica thinks she's moved onto this straight life that she should love more than she does. SHE sees her love of danger as a bad thing (and in some ways it *is*).

I find that a shocking number of people do not understand first-person narration (possibly because it's often poorly employed when what the story or author intends is a third-person omniscient) and the fact that what the narrator tells you is NOT the objective truth of the situation.

I've had several conversations with people about the Hunger Games and the fact that Katniss is a horribly unreliable narrator because she's a myopic person. She misses so much. And I love that she misses so much. It's one of my favorite things about the books.

In my writing group last week my work was up for review and the novel employs first person narration and some of the feedback was like, "Well, I don't understand why she judges X so harshly in that moment. He was really nice." And the other said, "I figured she didn't like him for some other reason..." And I didn't say anything but in my head I was like: "Um, because she's an asshole...her thoughts say more about her than the person she is talking to." Weirdly, not a single person noted how unlikable the narrator is sometimes. They took all of her perceptions as facts! I sorta couldn't believe it! But then I see professional reviewers not understanding that basic English class concept so...eh, we're just smarter than everybody else (obviously)! Hee!

[ophy]

On the other hand, it made the film small and insular which from a filmmaking perspective, w/ that budget, is weird to me. It was not a teeny amount of money and it was not a super abbreviated shoot for an indie film.

Yeah, I didn't get the feeling that they were going for 'indie movie' feel, it felt more like the objective was 'TV movie/and or special'. Seeing a lot of critics say that this was like an expanded episode of the show, and that it is okay that was an expanded episode of the show, because that was the goal.

I wouldn't even put it into traditional 'film' category at all. It was the delivery method for getting the story to the fans, that's all. Rob is not a movie guy, he's a tv guy. He's never written or directed a movie, he doesn't come from that tradition.

The film did feel like a springboard so it'll be curious to see how WB moves forward.

Yes, definitely a springboard! I have also seen complaints about 'dangling plot threads' and no duh. I think the people who thought that leaving the Weevil/Celeste Kane/Police corruption story open was an error don't know about the book series, or about Rob's hope for a sequel. He needed to give us closure on ONE IMPORTANT THING, but not on everything entirely.

Weirdly, not a single person noted how unlikable the narrator is sometimes. They took all of her perceptions as facts!

You should make your whole group read Jellicoe Road, for real.


ETA Oops, just remembered that Rob did work on two movie scripts, back in the late '90s.

But over 90% of all his work has been in tv, so the statement that he is a 'tv guy' still stands.