“Tough yet feminine”

The new movie Whip It, about female roller derby, is set to release, and I’ve noticed that the phrase “tough yet feminine” tends to turn up a lot. Not as often, thankfully, as “Juno joins the derby” but still often enough that it made me wonder about the phrase. In case you haven’t heard about [...]

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Precious and Few

Hollywood loves to make a fuss when an actress known for her beauty deigns to take on a role that shows all of her imperfections.  Remember the gallons of ink spilled over Charlize Theron’s turn in Monster (nevermind that she was heavily made up in order to look “ugly” in that film)?  The angle for [...]

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The Cliched, the Bad, and the Ugly: Take Two

Yesterday, Professor Moss vented her ire at the atrocious new film, The Ugly Truth.  Since I barely endured the entire 90 minute movie without reenacting the final scene of Oedipus Rex, I’d like to add a bit more insult to injury here:

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The Cliched, the Bad, and the Ugly

Professor Bean and I actually went and sat through The Ugly Truth (check out the website, where you can post your own ugly truth!) and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more horrible movie. If you took When Harry Met Sally and Cyrano de Bergerac, stripped them of any intelligence, humor or subtly, and [...]

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Weekly Recap July 11-17

We love(d)… Obama’s choice for Surgeon General–Dr. Regina Benjamin is a doctor who makes housecalls and ran a nonprofit clinic in New Orleans before and after Katrina. But she’s also the first black woman to head a state medical society and the first doctor under 40 to be elected to the AMA’s board of trustees. [...]

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Tainted Love

It’s tempting to dismiss movies like I Love You, Beth Cooper as harmless.  After all, it’s getting mixed reviews from critics, and though it grossed $5 million in its first weekend, that only earned it 7th place, barely ahead of Pixar’s Up, which has been out for seven weeks (by comparison, Bruno earned $30 million [...]

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Weekly Recap

Each Friday, we look at the week that’s passed (or, since this is our first recap, perhaps the week before that) and try to garner a bit of anticipation for the week to come. And as is fitting for a co-authored blog, our goal is to put the “we” in weekly (and, occasionally, to pun [...]

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The Vamp that Loved Me

As far as I’m concerned, this video mash up is the best thing on the web right now: And this post by creator Jonathan McIntosh beautifully lays out why Buffy is a better role model than Bella and Buffy the Vampire Slayer a much more feminist and empowering universe than Twlight. But it’s more complex [...]

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Some Things Never Change

I recently rented Taken (2008), a generally serviceable thriller starring Liam Neeson as a retired CIA agent who goes to Paris to rescue his daughter, Kim, after she’s been snatched by white slavers. While the film itself isn’t bad, the gender politics are so reactionary they made me cringe.

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