Movies – A Series of Very Bad Decisions

That’s disturbing!

First of all, please welcome me back to the land of the living. I was in California for a work conference and basically had no free blogging time.

Anyhoodle.

I saw something VERY disturbing on BuzzFeed earlier today – the ages of all our favorite Disney Princesses!

Let me share with you their very handy little graphic:

Assuming the legal age of consent is 18 (in NH it is 16 but I’m not going down that road – let’s say 18 for simplicity’s sake) – only FOUR of these bitches are even legal!!

Snow White was only 14??? No WONDER she let seven tiny midgets push her around.

Jasmine was only 15?? No WONDER she had such a bad attitude!!

Arial & Aurora were only 16? Well, they got the hottest dudes, but how rude is that? Greedy bitches couldn’t leave the hot guys to marry women who could legally HAVE SEX WITH THEM.

Poor Cinderella was the over-the-hill spinster at 19. I mean…what a message to send. Your life is not complete until a man rescues you! Before you’re 20! After you’ve been poisoned! Or pricked! Or almost drowned! Or kidnapped! Although, I guess Belle wasn’t TECHNICALLY kidnapped, but still being held captive.

I still love Disney movies – I have watched the Little Mermaid recently. And it’s not like I think those messages still resonate. When Snow White was made in the 30’s, it was perfectly normal to get married young and be rescued, so to speak.

Looking at all those ages though is depressing as hell.

In Defense of Love Actually (and I can’t believe I have to write this)

My brother-in-law, Shane, who has had to suffer through my sister and I’s obsession with Love Actually, sent me a link to this article on Salon.com, in which one Mary Elizabeth Williams proclaims that it is the worst Christmas movie ever.

Her arguments are so poor, however, that I could not just read the article, stew in anger, silently curse her and move on. Oh no. So I now present to you point-counter point, or as I like to call it, “Bitch, please!”

Point: With the exception of Bill Nighy’s witty plotline about an aging pop star’s attempt to secure the coveted Christmas No. 1 hit, every one of the 85 other stories in the movie involves some horrible lesson out of the battle of the sexes playbook. If you were an alien watching “Love, Actually,” you would come to the conclusion that what human British men really, really want are hot chicks who fetch them tea, put up with their dalliances, and don’t speak English.

Bitch, Please: FIRST of all, that is ludicrous. Mark does not love Juliette because she ever brought him tea. And your only mention of THAT story line is a fleeting insult, when to me that is the saddest and truest and not at all the “demoralizing, misogynistic holiday twaddle” you call it. Furthermore, Prime Minister what’s his name is instantly attracted to the British Monica Lewinsky before she ever brings him tea. It’s also part of her fucking job, lady, she’s not doing it to win him over. In fact, it’s part of Aurelia’s job as well. She was HIRED to be Jamie’s housekeeper. And she doesn’t speak English because she fucking lives in Portugal.

Point: Which of the many story lines is most likely to make a reasonable human want to get drunk on lighter fluid? There’s Colin Firth’s – the one about a man who, betrayed by his cheating girlfriend, flees the country and immediately falls for his mug-brandishing Portuguese housekeeper. So pretty! So uncommunicative! And she has hot beverages! See also: the Hugh Grant story line, in which the prime minister falls for the assistant who brings him tea. Seriously, what is with you dudes? Do you not know how to boil water?

Bitch, Please: Were YOU too busy getting drunk on lighter fluid to notice that they WERE trying to communicate? And they only fucking learned each other’s language just in cases. The Hugh Grant story line does not revolve around tea. What’s with this tea argument? It does not hold water. (See what I did there?)

Point: There’s also the Alan Rickman story line, about the married man tempted by the unbelievably predatory secretary, and the heartbroken wife (Emma Thompson) faced with the choice to “stay, knowing life would always be a little bit worse.” There’s the Laura Linney one, about the noble woman who can’t be with the man she loves because she has to care for her mentally ill brother. And doesn’t that make an interesting contrast to the Liam Neeson plot, in which a very recent widower is rewarded for his emotional pain by hooking up with Claudia Schiffer. Claudia Schiffer!! There’s also Kris Marshall’s, in which a lonely, goofy-looking Brit flies to America to dazzle the ladies solely on the basis of his Britishness – and immediately scores a pile of insanely hot babes. And yet they call crap like this a “chick flick.” I’ve seen less depressing Michael Haneke movies.

Bitch, Please: I’ll start with Alan Rickman. Mia throws herself at him, legs open, like the predator that you call her. So I do agree with you there. However, I believe the point of that whole plot is that she is, in fact, an aggressive hoe, and he would have just continued on with his dull marriage had she not flung herself at him. It was never about love, and affairs happen and sometimes women instigate them. I don’t know what to tell you. Sometimes people are shitty.

Next – Laura Linney. She actively chooses to not be with Hottie McHot. She could if she wanted to, and she chooses to care for her brother. It was a hard decision, but she made it, and it sucks, and has nothing to do with Liam Neeson and Claudia Schiffer. That was just a joke. Were you not paying attention during his eulogy? Geez, lady, not everything is about the guys coming out on top here. Mark doesn’t. Alan Rickman doesn’t. Hottie McHot doesn’t. And sometimes in life you have to choose family over love, which is why Laura Linney doesn’t, either.

Next – Colin. Um, it’s in the movie because it’s true. We American ladies are suckers for British/Scottish/Australian accents. I’ve always said that part of the movie would be insulting if it were not 1000% true.

Point: You’d be hard-pressed to find another movie – holiday or otherwise – that makes the case so convincingly for how miserable the lives of women truly are, and how all fired up awesome it is to be a man.

Bitch, Please: First of all – Keira Knightly is loved by two hot men. Laura Linney was always miserable. Natalie ends up with the fucking Prime Minster. Second of all: Snow White? Sleeping Beauty? Cinderella? Seven Brides for Seven Brothers? Taming of the Shrew? All of those movies are way more convincing in your quest to find a movie that makes the case that women’s lives are miserable.

You, ma’am, do not know what you are talking about and the foundation of your argument is based on TEA. And that, actually, is ludicrous. Good day to you.

Movie Review: Playing for Keeps

I saw Playing for Keeps the weekend before last with Katie and Sarah. I had seen an ad for it and was originally sold because it is roughly two hours of listening to Gerard Butler’s Scottish accent.

Unfortunately, my friends, that is pretty much all the movie has going for it. It throws cliché after cliché at you and expects you to buy it as realistic.

For example: Butler is a washed up former soccer champion who can barely pay his bills (okay that IS realistic, but still).

He retreats to some no name town in Virginia to be near his son and ex, Jessica Biel, who of COURSE is now engaged to someone else.

Butler winds up coaching his son’s soccer team and that’s when you start cringing. He has soccer mom’s flinging themselves at him left and right – neglected, bored, and horny, they feel he is a perfect escape from their otherwise boring lives.

I mean, are you kidding me with this? There is not one ounce of authenticity in this movie, from the dysfunctional relationship he was with his son to falling back in love with Jessica Biel and having everything tie up at the end into one neat, lovely, unrealistic and eye-roll inducing bow.

Save the money you would have spent in the theater and use it to buy whipped cream flavored vodka, hot chocolate and a movie from Red Box.

A League of Their Own – Did She Lose on Purpose?

Yesterday, Brandon and I, while waiting for the Cubs game to start, got into a debate about the ending of A League of Their Own (and if you haven’t seen it and/or don’t know what I’m talking about, drop everything you’re doing RIGHT NOW and get that shit on Netflix instant or whatever ASAP). Brandon claims that Geena Davis’ character, Dottie, drops the ball on purpose so Kit (Lori Petty) can be the hero and win the World Series for her team.

I wholeheartedly disagree. If Dottie was going to blow the game on purpose, why did she then call a time out to tell Ellen Sue to throw high, fast balls, which she knows Kit cannot hit or lay off?

Also, maybe it’s because I’m the little sister, but I want to believe that Kit could beat her big sister at something. (Side note: it’s not my sister’s fault that my mom had to write a letter to our elementary school specifically requesting they NOT assign me a certain teacher for my 6th grade year. Not only did the woman take makeup tips from Tammy Faye Baker, but every time she saw me in the hallway she would squeal, “You’re Miriam’s sistah!” To which I always wanted to respond, “Bitch, I have a name!” But you can’t say that when you’re ten.)

Apparently, there is an eternal debate going on about this scene. By the way, what did we do before the internet? I’m able to share this clip below, but if we were debating this in 1992, I’d have to reenact the scene by drawing stick figures. (Side note – I saw this reenacted in real life this year on July 4 when A.J. Pierzynski barreled into Mike Napoli, who subsequently dropped the ball). Anywho. Here’s the scene (and it’s SUCH a great scene):

I actually googled something along the lines of “ending to a league of their own” and found some old message board full of back and forth on this very debate.

Now, ignoring the fact that these were posted 12 years ago and some sexist jerks are talking about how girls can’t play sports in general, someone named Miller, posted the following:

I don’t think she dropped the ball on purpose. For one thing, it would be an absolute rat-bastard thing to do to the rest of her team mates. For another, it would communicate that her relationship with her sister was fundamentally unchanged: she’s still patronizing her little sister. “Letting” her win is the sort of thing you do with a five year old, not another grown woman. It’s almost as much of a shit move as backstabbing your team by throwing the game. I think Kit legitimately came out on top in that play. The message I take from it is that, at the end, it was Kit who was the “real” ball player – Dottie had more raw talent, but Kit had the heart for it. Dottie was just killing time until her husband came home. Kit loved the game.

I wholeheartedly agree with this – why would she quit the team only to come back to the World Series and throw it on purpose? No, she didn’t. She just dropped the ball because Kit knocked her over – she had enough built up rage to hit her hard enough to make her drop the ball.

So that’s my argument – Dottie would not have bothered to come back for the series in addition to trying to get her sister to strike out to lose the game if she had every intention of setting Kit up to “win” so to speak – she tried the opposite, and Kit came out on top. No way did she drop the ball on purpose. No way.