{"id":36654,"date":"2016-12-21T23:09:40","date_gmt":"2016-12-22T07:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/?p=36654"},"modified":"2016-12-21T23:10:41","modified_gmt":"2016-12-22T07:10:41","slug":"challenge-week-50-some-kind-of-wonderful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2016\/12\/challenge-week-50-some-kind-of-wonderful\/","title":{"rendered":"Challenge Week 50: Some Kind of Wonderful"},"content":{"rendered":"

Teen\/coming-of-age\/1980s movies are often a hard sell for me, but John Hughes-penned ones have a bit of heart and tenderness that hit me in the right place, so I was hoping Some Kind of Wonderful<\/em>, one of the few I’d missed up to this point, would fit the bill as well, and it pretty much did. I’m also one of the people who think Pretty in Pink<\/em> would’ve been better if she’d ended up with Duckie, so if you’ve seen both films, you may guess how I felt about this one on that front.<\/p>\n

Keith (Eric Stoltz) is a high school kid who cares more about art than college, and is kind of on the lower rung of the ladder at school in terms of social class – his family is working class, and he envies the more well-off kids from white-collar families. He’s best friends with a tomboyish girl, Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson), but has eyes for Amanda (Lea Thompson), who runs with the posh crowd. Yes, this is turning into a love triangle.<\/p>\n

\"tf-date\"<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This movie is almost aggressively ’80s in terms of fashion and music, which is great if you like the ’80s. I’m not a HUGE fan, but after the credit sequence (possibly the worst part) I got more into the groove and ended up enjoying the soundtrack quite a bit, and the music at the end is pretty perfect. I didn’t totally buy his realization of who he really loved (the little flashbacks seemed placed as much to convince him as us), but it’s the ending I wanted, so I went with it.<\/p>\n

Stoltz is fine but a little flat in the lead role – I found myself drifting away occasionally whenever Watts wasn’t on screen, because Mary Stuart Masterson is the real magnetic one here. Thompson, who’s supposed to be the center of attention for the whole school, basically, pales in comparison. I also wished a little more nuance had been paid to the college\/no-college quandry, if they were going to bring it up at all – as it is, it feels like a throwaway plot point.<\/p>\n

\"tf-practice-kiss\"<\/p>\n

Stats and stuff…<\/h3>\n

1987, USA<\/em>
\ndirected by Howard Deutch, written by John Hughes<\/em>
\nstarring Eric Stoltz, Mary Stuart Masterson, Lea Thompson<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m ranking all my Challenge films on Flickchart (as I do all the films I see), a movie-ranking website that asks you to choose your favorite between two movies until it builds a ranked list of your favorites. Just for fun, I will average out the rankings and keep a running tally of whose recommendations rank the highest. When you add a film to Flickchart, it pits it against films already on your chart to see where it should fall. Here’s how Some Kind of Wonderful<\/em> entered my chart:<\/p>\n

Some Kind of Wonderful<\/b> > The Good Shepherd
\nSome Kind of Wonderful < The Machinist<\/b>
\nSome Kind of Wonderful<\/b> > The Three Caballeros
\nSome Kind of Wonderful < The Thief of Bagdad<\/b>
\nSome Kind of Wonderful < Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor<\/b>
\nSome Kind of Wonderful<\/b> > Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)
\nSome Kind of Wonderful<\/b> > Umberto D
\nSome Kind of Wonderful < Junior Bonner<\/b>
\nSome Kind of Wonderful<\/b> > On the Waterfront
\nSome Kind of Wonderful<\/b> > Design for Living
\nSome Kind of Wonderful<\/b> > Splice<\/p>\n

Final #1300 out of 3738 (65%)<\/p>\n

It is now my #1 Howard Deutch film, my #3 Eric Stoltz film, my #1 Mary Stuart Masterson film, my #16 Teen Movie, my #52 Coming-of-Age Movie, and my #9 film of 1987.<\/p>\n

Some Kind of Wonderful<\/em> was recommended by my cousin Kevin.<\/p>\n

A Few More Screenshots…<\/h3>\n

\"tf-lying-down\"<\/p>\n

\"tf-keith-sister\"<\/p>\n

\"tf-garage\"<\/p>\n

\"tf-jerkface\"<\/p>\n

\"tf-watts-driving\"<\/p>\n

\"tf-painting\"<\/p>\n

\"tf-detention\"<\/p>\n

\"tf-amanda\"<\/p>\n

\"tf-watts\"<\/p>\n

\"tf-keith\"<\/p>\n

\"tf-bowl\"<\/p>\n

\"tf-date\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Teen\/coming-of-age\/1980s movies are often a hard sell for me, but John Hughes-penned ones have a bit of heart and tenderness that hit me in the right place, so I was hoping Some Kind of Wonderful, one of the few I’d missed up to this point, would fit the bill as well, and it pretty much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3027],"tags":[2768,3283],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/tf-feat-somekind.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":235,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/langston-hughes-poem\/","url_meta":{"origin":36654,"position":0},"title":"Langston Hughes poem","author":"Jandy","date":"February 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I spent the afternoon reading Langston Hughes poems (for a paper I have to write in two weeks), and wow. He's apparently pretty Communist. Interesting. But then there's this great anti-academic one (Hughes went to Columbia for a while, but hated it): Ph.D. He never was a silly little boy\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":249,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/wow-i-do-like-poetry\/","url_meta":{"origin":36654,"position":1},"title":"Wow, I DO Like Poetry!","author":"Jandy","date":"March 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"My European Romanticism professor had an interesting anecdote today. This is not an unusual occurrence--he has many, many wonderful anecdotes. There should be a book of just his anecdotes. This isn't even one of his more intriguing anecdotes, actually. But we were talking about how German Romantics theorize about poetry\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":252,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/langston-hughes-paper-and-various-technological-points\/","url_meta":{"origin":36654,"position":2},"title":"Langston Hughes paper and various technological points","author":"Jandy","date":"March 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, I think my presentation of my Langston Hughes paper went pretty well yesterday, so I'm going to go ahead and post it. And also plug a new site that just opened from private beta, called Scribd. It's basically a site for you to upload documents, and it displays them\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":36223,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/challenge-week-33-the-blues-brothers\/","url_meta":{"origin":36654,"position":3},"title":"Challenge Week 33: The Blues Brothers","author":"Jandy","date":"September 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"WHERE HAS THIS MOVIE BEEN ALL MY LIFE. I didn't know which way this one would go, frankly - comedies from the '80s are pretty hit or miss with me. I knew it was a musical of some sort, which is a bonus, but I didn't know really what kind\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2016 Movie Challenge"","block_context":{"text":"2016 Movie Challenge","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/2016-movie-challenge\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/tf-feat-blues2.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":36166,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/challenge-week-29-hobsons-choice\/","url_meta":{"origin":36654,"position":4},"title":"Challenge Week 29: Hobson’s Choice","author":"Jandy","date":"July 28, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I was a little more apprehensive going into this one than I should've been, by a lot - for some reason I thought it would be a \"vegetable movie\". You know, one you're supposed to watch because it's good for you, not because it's actually enjoyable. I run hot and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2016 Movie Challenge"","block_context":{"text":"2016 Movie Challenge","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/2016-movie-challenge\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/tf-feat-hobsons-choice.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":36130,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/challenge-week-28-quiz-show\/","url_meta":{"origin":36654,"position":5},"title":"Challenge Week 28: Quiz Show","author":"Jandy","date":"July 19, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I've known about this movie forever and that it was supposed to be good, but I never really knew that much about it - I think I thought it was some comedy about folks going on quiz shows or something. Well, it is about people on quiz shows, but not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "2016 Movie Challenge"","block_context":{"text":"2016 Movie Challenge","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/2016-movie-challenge\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/tf-feat-quiz-show.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36654"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}