There are excellent movies whose stories are too depressing for me to watch. I haven’t and never will question their award-worthiness, but I will never sit through them. (Warning: Secondhand spoilers straight ahead.)
1. Boys Don’t Cry
Hilary Swank plays a girl who’s really a boy at heart and he/she gets brutalized by a bunch of crazed alpha males for (among many things) being different and having a girlfriend. Hilary looks great as a guy and this 1999 movie gave her a Best Actress Oscar. I can picture the Oscar people saying, “Just give her the damn award and let’s be done with this flood of sadness.”
(more…)
Over the weekend, I caught a program on the Lifestyle Network called How to Look Good Naked. I loved the premise of the show—it’s “the fashion series that shows you how to look fantastic with your clothes on or off no matter what your body shape—and all without a surgeon’s scalpel in sight.”
Each week, they take one woman who is incredibly insecure about her body, and in a span of four weeks, they get her to change not just the way she dresses, but the way she views herself. Think of it as the anti-Swan. It’s all about coming to terms with your body, and lovin’ and workin’ what you’ve got. And if you think it’s just a wardrobe makeover, think again–the last thing on the list is a nude photo shoot! By then, the ladies have to be comfortable in their own skin, instead of simply hiding behind clothes that play up their assets.
(more…)
Spoiler alert!
For a movie with so much promise, for one that was supposed to be an awe-inspiring adventure, 10,000 BC was, to be honest, kind of dragging. (I was tempted to name this post “10,000 B-Zzzz” but it wasn’t that bad.)
(more…)
It was DVD night with my friends Sab and Kraken over a few cold beers and a ginormous bot of Asti (enough to put a little giggly-bubbly to an Ehtiopian village to help put their hunger woes on temporary leave). Flick du jour was Juno, charming little indie with a big voice and a smart yarn. Set in some backwater town, it’s about a stoic 16-year-old girl who gets preggo after sex with the besty one boring afternoon.
(more…)
I don’t have the patience to download TV shows from the Net (heck, I’ve never even downloaded a song), so my eyes glaze over whenever friends talk about Gossip Girl or season 2 of Heroes. I don’t have a lot of time to watch TV, and normally I’d rather read or hang out with friends than veg in front of the boob tube. But lately, I’ve had a bit of down time and have been watching the following shows:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Monday to Friday, 9:00 pm, AXN Beyond)
I discovered Buffy too late, you see. I used to find it weird when my friends would tell me that they were so into it. I mean, a teenager who’s out to rid the world of vampires? How brainless is that? I couldn’t even imagine what kind of flimsy plots each episode had. But I turned into a true-blue Buffy fan when I started watching regularly…on its fifth season! Hence, I missed seeing Cordelia, the whole Angel romance, a sister-less Buffy…I even missed Buffy in high school! Now’s my chance to catch up on this well-loved series. (Yes, I do understand now why it has a cult following.)
(more…)