FHC’s resurrected blog

Why We Like Bad Movies

This morning we read an article titled "Why Smart Women Love Dumb Diane Keaton Films."  (This was next to an article called "Is Jasper Johns Overrated"; perhaps we need to start frequenting less pretentious media outlets.) 

The article started with a "confession," so we'll start with one of our own: we only read the headline and the first paragraph, and then we saw we had a friendster message and got distracted.  But we're pretty sure we would have felt that the review of the movie described us -- there is nothing more we enjoy than terrible, trashy movies.  We just returned to Netflix 6 episodes of Nip/Tuck and the Devil Wears Prada.  Coming next in our queue are The Slums of Beverly Hills and the Rules of Attraction.  About a Boy and Love Actually are also on our queue.  If Sack Lunch were a real movie, we'd add that one, too.

Movies that aren't on our queue include any academy award winners (though we have some nominees like Transamerica), and especially not The English Patient, Lawrence of Arabia, or anything with Ben Kingsley.  Too serious.  Too depressing.  Too looooong.  We like to think of ourselves as well-educated, and yet we found even Little Miss Sunshine a tad too sophisticated for our taste.  Give us House of Yes or Zoolander any day; but please keep Howards End and The Wings of the Dove for yourself.

FHC says we like bad movies because we're disconnected from our emotions and lack depth.  That's probably true in part.  But that can't be entirely true because we also like serious movies that are also garbarge, like Titanic, which we saw 4 times in the theatre with our childhood friend Joey.  This also suggests that our attention span is not the problem, since 4 viewings of Titanic roughly equals 593942 hours. 

Dating FHC changed our habits only slightly; we were forced to watch movies staring Catherine Deneuve and all of his other grim favorites like The House of Sand and Fog.  And another confession: our Netflix queue is newly starting to reflect some of this so-called maturity - we have one foreign film (L'Avventura), an Oscar winner (Mystic River), Shakespeare (Laurence Olivier's Hamlet, also Best Picture in 1948), and a few cultural commentaries (Citizen Ruth, Idiocracy).  Perhaps we'll never understand why we like dumb movies better than serious, "legitimate" ones.  And we recognize that part of growing older is giving up Are We There Yet and Step Up.  But Even if we're forced to watch "intelligent" movies, it doesn't mean we have to like them. 

In which FHC experiences some benzodiazepine side effects

While I was painfully running today at lunchtime (ref. previous entry), a small jogger in his forties bearing a moustache started chatting with me. I looked closely at him to see if he was some acquaintance or colleague of mine but he was not. I concluded that he was some crazy person and as I was not really in the mood for crazy people, I kept my headphones on and started running a little faster. I probably still had in mind the story Ari told me about Supreme Court Justice David Souter being attacked while jogging and the fact that nothing indicated that the attackers were not small jewish men with moustaches. He ran next to me for a little still talking vehemently. I just kept on glancing at him panicked that he may have a weapon hidden in his shorts or something. Eventually he stopped and went the other way, nodding to me with a smile. A few miles later, I deduced that the unidentified man must actually have been my primary physician. It is the second time we meet on a jogg path and that I do not recognize him. He mentioned a first similar occurrence last time I had him on the phone. He must now think I am mentally retarded, snobbish and contemptuous of the medical profession (and if I was why would I spend so much time with doctors?). That also probably explains why there was not any follow-up to my check-up.

But after all, isn’t it the same guy who slipped me some benzos prescription acting as if they were innocent sleeping pills?. Side effects clearly list forgetfulness and confusion particularly for patients with a chronic alcoholism history. Even more anterograde amnesia is also apparently a somewhat common side effect, which might explains why I still cannot build a sentence in Portuguese after several weeks of lessons or in English after years of residence in the states.