WALL.E

When asked what I thought of it, all I could say was that it was sad. Good sad/bad sad? Well, just really sad sad. MaryAnn Johanson of The Flick Filosopher articulates this despair better:

“Not only is this not a comedy, it’s not a kids’ movie. They won’t be bored by it, but they’ll miss what’s so special about it. It’s so exquisite — from the near-silent-movie-ness of it during its first half to the brutal but candy-colored satire of its second half — that people will still be watching this movie hundreds of years from now. And if we’re not lucky, and not smart, and not wise, those people will watch Wall-E and they’ll know that we knew that the ruination of the Earth was possible, and that we did nothing to stop it.”

(full review here)

Yes I know. I should end this quoting streak and put up something more original. I’m on it.

Sex & the City: The Movie (II)

So we covered sexual liberation – definitely good. Samantha not considering her 49 years as a factor when deciding to abandon an unfulfilling relationship -excellent. I mean, I am all for wanting and seeking out long term companionship with that perfect someone or whatever but if that isn’t really you or if you haven’t found that person, why settle just for the sake of it? You make compromises in any relationship, no doubt, but that doesn’t necessarily have to mean having to change your preferences or lower your expectations (when reasonable, of course). It simply means being able to navigate through the potential pitfalls of proximity and the normal wear and tear that ensues when two adults live together. Too often people confuse settling for self-centred or immature behaviour or even reconciling with the fundamental lack of compatibility with their partner, with acceptable compromise. It’s called short-changing yourself, and it takes courage and intelligence not to, so much props to Samantha exhibiting generous amounts of both.

**plot spoilers ahead (in case you care)**

And now, for the the things that have been grating on my nerves. I cannot imagine how or why Carrie would go ahead and marry Big at the end of all that. I mean, you expect a little more wisdom than this from allegedly smart people with like 20 plus years of relationship experience under their shiny Prada belts. So let’s dissect this travesty of true love into its fundamental flaws:

FF #1: They’ve been together TEN YEARS. It’s not too much to ask for them to know by this time how they want their relationship to be, i.e. if they want to get married or just simply cruise along happily as they have so far. Instead they have this awkward, tepid discussion about marriage, and almost on a whim, decide in favour of it.

FF #2: If someone could be so unsure of marrying you after supposedly loving you for most of their adult life that they would be swayed by your recently betrayed friend and, heeding their ill-placed advice, metaphorically de-entrail you by standing you up on your wedding day, it is a definite deal breaker. The closest you could ever get to a relationship with them again, if at all, is civil exchange of pleasantries at the occasional awkward run-in at the supermarket.

FF #3: Instead, after almost a year of not speaking to each other at all (I’m just going to go ahead and ignore the lame poem crap Big emailed her), they suddenly decide to take another stab at a stroll down the aisle again when, in what I presume was intended to be a poetic gesture, Big proposes with a (HER!) diamond studded shoe, she gleefully accepts. Because according to Carrie:

FF #4: “Sometimes decisions about relationships cannot be logical”. Like hell they can’t. Sure you might fall for someone because there was like, I dunno, a shooting star in the heavens when you first saw him or something, but how can a decision about loving and spending your entire lifetime with a person be anything but soundly anchored by logic? I mean, this is the kind of flimsy rationalisation that makes me retch at tamil movies and now I get this same crap flung at my face by a supposedly progressive, thinking woman?

FF #5: Carrie holds Miranda (at least) partly responsible for Mr. Big’s lack of decency. There is just so much wrong and sad about this that I don’t even know where to begin. Let’s just make this quick and painless then. Miranda, best friend, in bad place, hasty, angry, bitter when she told Mr. Big they were crazy to marry. Mr. Big, dumbass, dbag extraordinaire, what happened to his judgement, love for Carrie? Carrie, unbelievably retarded.

URGH. There. I’m done.

Sex & the City: The Movie. (I)

I know, I know. At this point it’s like, at the risk of conjuring the nasty mental image, flogging a dead horse. But I’ll add my 2 cents to the cacophony anyway, because I’ve been reading reviews and such on the matter and no one really seems to have mentioned a few things that have gnawed away to the depths of my soul ever since I saw them on the big screen. But let the formalities not go unobserved – I’ll first do the whole stating my stance on the overall series thing and talk a little about the things I did actually like.

I never really saw the TV series. Well, I have watched the occasional episode here and there and also, I have not resided beneath a rock anytime these last 10 years. So I kind of get the general idea – Four different caricatures of women coming together in a flashy, if unrealistic, vision of an inordinately white New York City (a fairly grave sin for a show that purports to be at least 50% City). So as far as I can tell, we have Miranda as the brainy one, Charlotte’s the dopey romantic, Samantha luurves the sexy times and Carrie, oh Carrie – a pseudo intellectual who incorporates all the aforementioned caricatures into her own.

So the good: I do love the premise, even if perhaps only an ostensible one, of sexual liberation for women. I mean come on, it was (quite literally too), about fucking time. Women have always been made to feel awkward about our bodies, what with all the unpleasant connotations attached to female sexuality. Those of us from cultures which place an especially huge premium on something as meaningless as virginity, that supposed holy grail of virtues, will certainly attest to it. We’ve grown up told that it’s wrong to do it, talk about it or even think of it until we’re married and even after that, we know the closest we’re ever going to get to a discussion is hushed whispers and childish giggles at the mention of a penis.

So as a young Indian woman of suffocatingly conservative upbringing, it’s really refreshing, seeing confident, successful women unafraid to want or ask for sex, without necessarily attaching emotional strings to the man in question. I mean honestly, if you think about it, there is really no logical basis for being this averse to solely lust driven or out-of-wedlock sex. As long as it’s safe and consensual, what’s the problem? Why does culture ramble on in nauseating hypocritical fashion about loss of self-respect and dignity associated with promiscuity, when such a huge part of the world does not even have the decency to treat each other with kindness and common sense regardless of race, religious beliefs, social status or sexual orientation? I may be oversimplifying (and being quite cliche) here but the world would seriously be a far happier place if people got laid more. Who thinks of bombing stuff or being mean after a mind numbingly spectacular orgasm?

Ok, so I drifted off a bit there with my live and let live rant and it’s gotten kind of long. So I’m gonna break this up and put up the second part in the next post. Stay tuned.