A new Zooey Deschanel movie came out last weekend. But is it the one where she plays a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” opposite Paul Dano or the one where she plays a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt? It’s the former, and it’s called Gigantic, which is also not to be confused with this coming week’s new DVD release, Yes Man, in which she plays a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” opposite Jim Carrey.
Sure, Deschanel has range and talent (see this fan-made montage of some of her more varied performances), but she also has a certain repetitive nature to her characters. And this “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” nature became all the more confusing recently when trailers for Gigantic and (500) Days of Summer (the Gordon-Levitt one, which is actually her second romantic pairing with the actor) appeared online around the same time. Maybe instead of worrying about people confusing her for Katy Perry, the actress should worry more about people confusing her characters and films for each other.
Or, maybe not. Plenty of us can’t get enough of Deschanel’s quirky, free-spirited performances. In his Yes Man review, Roger Ebert noted that two critics proposed marriage to the character at the end of the film. We wouldn’t go that far, but we have crushed on the actress since All the Real Girls and haven’t yet gotten sick of her or her similar, typecast roles. In fact, to us, the problem is not that indie films too often employ the MPDG character; it’s that they don’t cast Deschanel for every such part. So, instead of wishing she’d broaden her career to include other types of characters (it didn’t work well for her with The Happening, after all), we’ve selected ten MPDG characters that she should have additionally played.
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It’s strange to watch the transition of an actor from a bit part to burgeoning indie darling and whirling media-dervish. But it’s oddly appropriate for Paul Dano, the 24-year old who is well on his way to awkwardly smiling and shyly introducing himself into your life before brutally attacking your conceptions of what it means to be an unassuming actor.
Praised for his calculating and spastic performance(s) as Eli/Paul Sunday in P.T. Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, Dano is a peculiar character. Not that anything he does is strange—it’s just the opposite. He’s on the verge of continuing a leap into mainstream audiences that started with Little Miss Sunshine and continues to grow with supporting roles in Where The Wild Things Are and Taking Woodstock. He sticks out in all his roles, whether it’s his flopish look that seamlessly translates from troubled teen to angry asshole such as in Weapons, or his voice that manages to make the same radical emotional turns.
In Gigantic, opening today in New York and Los Angeles, he’s transitioned into a leading man role with Zooey Deschanel as his love interest/”Magical Manic Pixie Girl.” But when appropriately brought against Dano’s quiet style, that “quirky romance” staple is torn away to reveal two people who are utterly afraid of what they’re turning into and unsure about where they’re going in life. There’s also a homeless guy trying to kill him–maybe.
We spoke with Dano over the phone, in-between radio interviews and filming The Extra Man, and had previously profiled him back when it was just as easy to walk into a diner on Avenue A to talk.
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