u/jackollero

Little Rascals Save the Day was a loose remake of the 1931 Little Rascals short "Helping Grandma". Grandma is $10K short on a payment and about to lose the store. The gang's clubhouse sits on the property; if they lose the bakery, they lose the treehouse too.

On the other hand, the "kids get jobs to help grandma" sequence isn't loosely inspired by the shorts. It's a shot-for-shot recreation of specific gags.

_________

Jenna as Mary Ann

Mary Ann is a legacy character, but they really didn't do anything with it. Her homage is in name only.

Her entire characterization is one bit: Spanky points out she's a girl, and she confirms she's a real girl. That's it.

_________

Fun Fact ✨

Jenna and Drew Justice (Alfalfa) worked together again on Young Love (2014). A silent short directed by Jacob Keller (the Set PA of the Little Rascals). I have the full short so will post it as it's next on the Masterlist.

Originally aired: October 2014

I really wished they went with her family in Insidious sequels but they went to another direction.

Jenna Ortega Everything Masterlist

ENTERTAINMENT PHOTO, Single Image First place: Ash Barhamand, Alison Edmond, Erik Madigan Heck, "Tim Burton + Jenna Ortega"

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Note: Andréa Huelse implied it was the black-and-white one, while some sources claim it's the one with the red background, so I included both.

So the Academy just announced their 2026 class of new members -- 529 invitees, including Jenna alongside Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Josh O'Connor, and the Safdie brothers and many others.

She's listed under the actors branch, cited for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Death of a Unicorn. (No Fallout? Come on!)

Which means she'll now have a literal vote on what gets remembered in cinema history. A person whose Letterboxd four favorites include La Haine and The Passion of Joan of Arc is now an Oscar voter. Based.

Felt like a good excuse to finally post this list I've been building.

______

My own take:

First: Almost everything she picks orbits around performance as the main event. Joan of Arc, Persona, A Woman Under the Influence, In a Lonely Place, these are films where the camera just refuses to look away from a face.

For someone whose image has been managed since she was nine years old, she gravitates hard toward actors in total, undefended exposure.

Second: Women at psychological breaking point. Possession, Persona, A Woman Under the Influence, La Cérémonie, The Witch. The "horror" in her horror picks is almost always internal and based that's mostly unique to a woman's experience.

The third thing: Harry Dean Stanton gravitational pull. Paris, Texas, Cool Hand Luke, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks: FWWM, Repo Man. She mentioned he's her favorite actor in one of the Stories.

The New Wave range is also worth pointing out specifically. Jules and Jim and La Haine are easy entry points.

A Brighter Summer Day is a completely different proposition though. It's a four-hour Edward Yang film about a teenage murder in 1960s Taiwan. That's not something you stumble onto lmao.

The genre picks at the bottom of the list (Child's Play, Insidious, Prom Night, Scream), they're more personal and nostalgic than aspirational so I wouldn't really comment on that.

______

List will update whenever new sources surface. If you've seen her mention something I missed, drop it in the comments with a source and I'll verify + add it.

Letterboxd list

📸 Emma's IG

ememyers <3

📸 Jenna's IG

"Klara & the Sun

@taikawaititi @sonypictures

Based off of the beautiful book of Kazuo Ishiguro. Exclusively in theatres 10.23.26"

I thought she'll never promote the movie

Link to full article

📸 Ben Cope

Found by: @meravigliarosso

Source: Marcus Theaters

The moment we got the first look, I immediately knew which scenes in the book they were, so I pulled the excerpts and put them side by side.

&#x200B;

Now, it's not an exact 1:1 as there are a few minor changes, but that is common for adaptations, even if it does shift the tone to something more whimsical and less melancholic.

Source: Vanity Fair | ✍️ Rebecca Ford 📸 Matt Grace

"She's incredibly advanced and intelligent and mature and quite intimidating when you talk to her. She had sort of made me feel uncomfortable and a little bit out of my depth, and I thought, Oh, that's a good challenge. She's so bright in real life. She's super charming and really fun and funny. I was really keen to see that version of her onscreen."

- Waititi about Jenna

"I don't think it was intentional at the moment, but in hindsight, maybe I did want a break from the angsty teen/young adult category I felt a bit stuck in sometimes."

&#x200B;

- Jenna about Klara

"very spontaneous" and "undeniably himself." She had never worked with a director who asked for so much improvisation, she says, noting that it was "disorienting at first. But it's exciting for me to feel kind of refreshed by a new energy on set.

- Jenna about Waititi

"There were just moments in that book which really hit you and you kind of get this sort of sinking feeling that something's not right," Waititi (on set with Ortega) says of the Ishiguro novel.