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.
The Olivier Hamlet is the worst one. If you don't like pretention and overacting, that is not the movie for you. Of the Hamlets, I hate to say it, but go for Gibson. Or a better Shakespeare film is The Merchent of Venice with Al Pacino, or Much Ado About Nothing for lighter fare.
Posted by: David D | Monday, February 05, 2007 at 10:54 AM
Oh David D. you misread me. I *live* for pretention. I mean, I was an English major. It's just that I hate dull.
Posted by: LL | Monday, February 05, 2007 at 11:48 AM
Does that explain why we broke up?...in a way ?
Posted by: Tristan | Monday, February 05, 2007 at 12:37 PM