Fifty Shades of Suck: Benefits of a Childhood Bedroom

Talk about a missed opportunity!

In this week's long-awaited chapter of Fifty Shades Darker, we pick up right where we left off. Ana just bid 24Gs of Christian's money on his own cabin in Aspen. Yup, that's the kind of writer EL James is--the most literary tension this tiresome tome can muster is when Ana wonders if her beau will be mad that she spent his money. 

Christian takes Ana to his childhood bedroom, and I was hoping that he'd bread into a male version of the SNL hit "(Doing It in My) Twin Bed." Alas, I've learned that I never get what I want out of this wretched book. You can almost hear how annoyed I am while I read it in this week's podcast. 

James also spend a lot of time describing a fireworks display. I've honestly never heard fireworks described in such detail, because, you know, authors would normally just write, "there were fireworks." Make sure Ana doesn't get hold of any Disney movie made in the last 20 years, because she will pee her pants in glee watching the grandeur above Cinderella's castle. What a boob.  

Oh, and then there is some semblance of a plot later. It comes at literally the last 2 pages of the chapter, and it might perk up our narcoleptic listeners. Probably not, but still.  

If you are new to Fifty Shades of Suck, my best gal pal Megan and I meet up every week to read a chapter from the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, but we provide our own snarky commentary.  Last year, we subjected ourselves to the first book, and now we are chugging right along through the first sequel, Fifty Shades Darker.  If you would like to play catch up, the first set of podcasts are available here, and Fifty Shades Darker chapters are available below.  We hope you enjoy, and share them with your friends!!!

Chapter 6

Chapter 5

Chapter 4

Chapter 3

Chapter 2

Chapter 1 

That's 'Life.'

 

Life Partners looks absolutely adorable.

Leighton Meester and Gillian Jacobs play Sasha and Paige, a pair of besties who seem to grow apart after they each find a life partner. Sasha is a lesbian and Paige is straight. Everyone has had that issue, right? Best friends always have to transition when the other begins giving their time to someone else, but Partners looks very sweet and funny.  

How is this not a real fundraiser? 

Has there been a movie recently where the sexuality of a gay character has been blazed across the screen like this? I can't think of one, but, of course, people will say "straight people don't need to do that..." blah blah blah.  

I've always been a fan of Meester (spotted...), so I am glad she gets to do a lighter comedy-drama instead of schlock like The Roommate. I only recently became aware of who Jacobs is (thank you RuPaul's Drag Race), and she's utterly delightful. Partners co-stars Adam Brody and Gabourey Sidibe. 

Happy Birthday Matt Damon!

Matt Damon (formerly of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) is one of our most dependable and versatile actors. To me, he always delivers--whether he's trying to save the world in Elysium or make chalk appear on a chalkboard in Good Will Hunting. Okay, maybe I just have a giant crush on him. Damon always seemed like a genuine nice guy, so I don't accept anyone's alleged dislike for him. He turns 44 today.  

If I had to pick a favorite Damon performance I would probably have to go with his turn as slippery serial killer Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley. It's probably a cliched choice, but not very many actors would have played Ripley at that point in their careers. Damon just won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Hunting, and 2 years later he starred in Anthony Minghella's sophisticated thriller. It might have been the first time I saw a gay person portrayed on the big screen--even though he, you know, killed people. 

And then there was the neon green bathing suit on the beach early in the film...

Aaaaaand the bathtub scene between him and Jude Law...

Yeah, yeah, it's in French...still sexy...

Now that I think about it, Damon is in bathing suits a lot...

 

So, Happy Birthday, Matt Damon! Hope you are in your birthday suit today as much as you were in bathing suits in your movies!

A Calculated Marriage--One Diary Entry at a Time

If you are one of the people who hasn't read Gillian Flynn's insanely readable novel, Gone Girl, I suggest you don't read this review. 

Let's just get one thing out of the way. Flynn has adapted her own novel with surgery-like precision. It should definitely satisfy rabid readers, and the things she left out are merely the collateral damage that comes when adapting a novel. Get over it, people. It's a very confident screenplay, and the first lines come directly from her novel. 

Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) is wondering about his wife's head. In the opening shot, his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), is resting her head on Nick's chest, and she looks at him (at us) with a curious expression--her eyes wide. Nick says he wants to know what Amy is thinking, and we, the audience, are right there with him (especially if we've read the novel). Nick wants "to crack her head open...unspool her brain..." These are horrifying images that will not help Nick in the upcoming weeks. 

Nick arrives home on his fifth wedding anniversary, and his wife is missing. The living room suggests a struggle, but Amy is nowhere to be found. When the police arrive, it becomes apparent that Nick doesn't know what his wife does all day. They moved to Missouri to look after Nick's dying mother after both losing their writing jobs in the recession, and the film jumps back and forth from their courtship and relationship drama detailed in Amy's diary to the growing media frenzy that leads everyone to think that Nick is responsible for Amy's disappearance. 

Gone Girl is a meticulously crafted film. While the novel is an absolute page-turner, David Fincher has created a crime drama that is suspenseful, funny, and a sprawling tale of marriage gone sour. It is one of the best ensembles I've seen all year, and every actor brings their A-game to this highly-anticipated adaptation. 

The film drops Nick's narration, and Fincher sets us up to be a viewer to the violence that is about to take place. We watch his every move, and we almost want to dial that AMY TIPS hotline every time Affleck raises his voices or gets angry in frustration. The film is a marital battleground. It will look like a standard man vs. woman, psycho bitch vs. selfish jerk standoff, but it really is about how we communicate with each other in relationships. If these two were more upfront and honest with each other, would any of the events in Gone Girl have happened? Does that even matter? This is a marriage bloodbath, and we have front row seats to the carnage. "Marriage is hard work," Amy writes in her diary. 

The film's ugly sleekness is captured by Fincher's trademark dark aesthetic. As soon as Fincher was announced as Gone's director, I knew it was in deft hands. Fincher and Flynn are a sort of nightmarish dream team, so it's no wonder that they are teaming up again for HBO's Utopia. While reading the book is sort of a thrilling he said/she said, the film feels open yet intimate at the same time. Behind closed doors, Nick confides in his sister Margot while the assault of the media lies waiting outside to devour him. It's alive and scary. 

I was most looking forward to see Pike's portrayal of Amy Dunne. Isn't everyone? Every person has an opinion about how this character should be portrayed (the same way how everyone had their "own vision" of another Fincher leading lady, Lisbeth Salander), but Pike knocks it out of the park. Initially, I thought that her voice would give away her calculated intentions through her diary voice overs, but Pike's calmness is soothing. Readers will be wary of every syllable she speaks. Affleck is perfectly cast. He's simultaneously cocky and earnest--he treats his lack of knowledge over Amy's daily activities with a shrug as if he's accepted that Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. 

Is this one of the most extreme battle of the sexes ever committed to film? Maybe. The audience I saw Gone Girl with was obviously a mixture of fans of Flynn's novel and newbies. I suspect that a lot of men in my sold out audience were brought by women who read the book, because they had the most vocal and extreme reactions. Nick and Amy's reunion had my theater in stitches: a mixture of shock, laughter, and light applause uniting them. The theatergoers seemed divided on the ending, and one guy in the restroom loudly proclaimed, "I was going to propose to my girlfriend, but now...I'm not so sure."  

Gone Girl is easily one of the best films of the year. It's deliberate and calculating and fierce. It's a conversation starter about gender and marriage. Surely, husbands and wives will be talking about it on their drives home, and it will linger with them for days. It's a deadly good time. 

'Desperate Housewives' Tenth Anniversary: An Appreciation

Before there was Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder, ABC debuted Marc Cherry's Desperate Housewives, a sudsy tribute to women that forced everyone to ask: how much do we want to know about our neighbors? I remember opening my Entertainment Weekly, and a two page ad featuring all of the women welcomed me on the inside cover. I knew I had to watch this show, and I didn't even know what it was about. Desperate Housewives celebrates its 10th anniversary today.  

At the time of its debut, there was nothing really like it on television. Nighttime soap operas like Dynasty and Dallas hadn't been around since the late 1980's, and Housewives tapped into a genre that was prime for a resurgence. Cherry originally stated that his inspiration for the show was combination of "American Beauty and Knots Landing," and the four women at the center made it instantly watchable.  

Of the four women, I had always loved Marcia Cross' Bree Van de Kamp. Perhaps it was my burgeoning love of redheads at the time, but I had never seen Cross before. Her clipped way of speaking and her obsessive household precision made me love her. Bree's outward projection of how life should be always felt like what the show was about. She kept a sunny demeanor on the outside, but inside she was grappling to keep control of her husband and her two kids who were slowly distancing themselves from her. Bree represented the manicured lawns and the spotless kitchens, but behind Cross's beautiful porcelain face was fear, desperation, and loneliness.  I wish someone would cast Cross in something, because I miss watching her so much. There is so much about Bree that would make me not like her (she's very religious and a proud card-carrying member of the NRA), but she was always my favorite of the four main housewives.

When the show debuted in 2004, I remember that everyone was talking about it. It was before I ever got a DVR or was versed in watching television, so I never watched Housewives during its original run. I borrowed the first season from my college friend Ryan (also a Bree enthusiast), and I was instantly hooked. Interestingly enough, I didn't tune into the second season on television. I purposely waited until each season was on DVD, and I binged it as soon as I got home. Desperate Housewives was quite literally the first show I binge-watched. Sorry, Netflix. 

The first season centered on the mystery of why their friend Mary Alice shot herself, and it peeled back the curtain of these women's lives. Why everyone continued to live on Wisteria Lane is a mystery, because everything happened on that street. The yearly "disaster episode" was always one of the season's highlights, but it's quite surprising that none of these characters decided to move off the Lane. A tornado touched down...convicts moved in...houses burned to the ground...people were shot, strangled, and run down more on Desperate Housewives than any show on television. It was addicting. 

Subsequent episodes were criticized for not living up to anything in the first season. While the first season remains the best (mainly because it was so fresh and different), other seasons are pretty darn good. The show always worked the best when Susan, Bree, Gabby and Lynette were on a united front, but their own storylines got too much criticism. Did audiences want them solving crimes every season like some soccer mom version of Scooby-Doo? There are people who abandon shows and then all they do is talk badly about them. Everyone does it, but Housewives didn't deserve it. In its fifth season, Cherry turned the show on its head by flash forwarding the action five years. It breathed new life into the show and also gave them five years of back story to work with. It was a genius move. You know, shows do sometimes drop in quality, but no one gives them credit when they have a comeback.  

People might argue that the women aren't likable characters, but I say bring on more unlikable people, male or female. Lynette Scavo was constantly challenging her husband on the roles of men and women in the workplace, but a lot of people viewed her as uncompromising or bitchy. If a man did the same thing, it would be a power play, and the show addresses the roles of men vs. women throughout the entire show. Sometimes people can't see it amid all the scandal or salacious details. Desperate Housewives celebrated women going after what they wanted whether it be a high-powered job or just the hot man down the street. Roles for women are much better in television right now than they are on film, and Housewives was full of women who went after what they wanted. Sex and the City was on around the same time as Housewives, and they are two very different (and very good) representations of women at the forefront of television.

Coincidentally, I re-watched the last season of the show, and when it was over, I re-watched the pilot. It holds up very well, and I love it as much as I did when I first saw it. It's glossy, but is that bad? It's fun to watch these women bounce off of each other while they navigate their lives. 

Suburbia is a dangerous place, and you can call these women desperate if you want to. I would watch them uncover secrets and lies and make fools of themselves over and over. Wisteria Lane had its picket fences and perfect sunny days, but the dark ones and the dangerous secrets were addicting.

It's October 3rd

Another year...another Mean Girls reference.

Remember that moment early in Mean Girls when Cady Heron met her destined love interest, Aaron Samuels? Every girl and gay boy who watched Mean in 2004 wanted Aaron to sit in front of them no matter what math class they were taking at the time. Or was that just me?  

HAPPY OCTOBER 3RD EVERYONE!!! 

'American Sniper' Takes Aim in First Trailer

The trailer for Clint Eastwood's latest just dropped, and it's pretty awesome. 

In American Sniper, we get a scruffy, grizzled Bradley Cooper as U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. He's one of America's best shooters, and his reputation begins growing across enemy lines. The quick tease also hints at Kyle's personal life with his wife (played by Sienna Miller) as they have their first child together.  

Love this shot.

My favorite part of the trailer is how we don't hear a gunshot. The first minute is a mini-scene, and it cuts to other parts of the movie in the second half. It's rather exhilarating. 

Why, hello, Mr. Eastwood...