And the photo comes courtesy of the web site Jezebel.
Why is it my favorite? Because children will be children even when they're standing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace while the future king of England is kissing his brand new bride and hundreds of thousands of people on the ground below -- millions on TV -- are watching.
I blogged about my experience watching the Royal Wedding early this morning, after waking and then dragging my 12-year-old daughter down to the family room to watch with me. It didn't go as I planned. Much like the flower girl who covered her ears.
This makes me simultaneously excited for this film and disappointed because after this, there will be no more. Also, given the fabulous quality of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, my hopes for the last installment are high. I hope it doesn't let me and my fellow Potter fans down.
Normally, when I hear about a TV show or movie that features a woman in peril who winds up dead, I tend not to be all that interested. (The drama Medium was one exception to that rule because I was a huge fan of the depiction of the central DuBois family.) When I saw the promos for AMC’s new drama The Killing which asked, “Who Killed Rosie Larsen?” I didn’t lift a finger to set my DVR.
But then I read all of these reviews. Glowing reviews. Heard people raving. Read praise on Twitter feeds. So I decided to take a peek at the pilot.
And the pilot was all it took. I was hooked on this dark, intellectually stimulating conundrum of a mystery that contains layer upon layer of intricacy and intrigue. I wanted more.
But Linden couldn’t bring herself to leave Seattle, the pull of the Larsen case was too strong.
Complicating factors: Larsen was found in a car that belonged to the mayoral campaign of Seattle City Councilor Darren Richmond, played by Billy Campbell whom I loved when he was a downtrodden divorced dad in Once and Again. It’s not clear right now whether Richmond, whose wife was killed in a violent crime years ago, was involved in the case or whether someone from the campaign had something to do with it.
Michelle Forbes, who has appeared in In Treatment and Homicide: Life on the Street, is heart-rending as Mitch Larsen, Rosie’s mother who’s collapsing, disintegrating is a shadow of her former self, whose grief is currently blinding her to the needs of her two young sons.
If you like a Rubik’s Cube of a TV show that doesn’t talk down to you and whose cast is low-keyed but intense, I highly recommend you take a chance on The Killing.
Want to see what the fuss is about? AMC is streaming episodes online for a limited time. Image credit: Carole Segal/AMC.
The Jezebel headline was a hand-wringer: "Women Have Fewer Speaking Roles But Show More Skin In Movies."
Oy.
The Jezebel post went on to quote a recent University of Southern California study of the top 100 movies of 2008. So I zipped on over to the study’s web site to see what they had to say about the state of women in film.
What the researchers had done was to analyze the 4,370 speaking characters in those 100 movies and the 1,227 “above-the-line personnel.”
And what they found was damned depressing:
-- Nearly 33 percent of the speaking parts in movies were female. “Put differently, a ratio of roughly two males to every one female was observed across the 100 top-grossing films.”
-- Only 8 percent of the directors were female. “Films with female directors, writers and producers were associated with a higher number of girls and women on screen than were films with only males in these gate-keeping positions.”
-- Almost 14 percent of the writers were female. “. . . [T]he percentage of female characters jumps to 14.3 percent when one or more female screenwriters were involved in penning the script.”
-- Nineteen percent were female producers. “Behind-the-scenes, the ratio of male to female employment is 4.9 to one,” the authors said. “. . . These findings are surprising given that females comprise over half the U.S. population.”
But wait . . . it gets worse.
“Females continue to be hypersexualized in film, particularly 13- to 20-year-old girls,” the report found.
More females were in various states of undress than males:
-- Nearly 40 percent of young females versus 6.7 percent of males were “wearing sexually revealing attire.”
-- Some 30 percent of females versus some 10 percent of males were partially naked.
-- About 30 percent of the females versus 11 percent of males were “physically attractive.”
“Our findings reveal that motion picture content is sending two consistent and troubling messages to viewers,” the researchers concluded. “The first is that females are of lesser value than are males . . . The second is that females are more likely than males to be valued for their appearance.”
Keep this in mind the next time you’re making the decision about what movie for which you’re going to buy tickets in the theaters. The more films starring women, written and directed by women that succeed, the better.
Women & Hollywood -- the cool web site focused on, cleverly enough, women in Hollywood – has a good list of films that are currently playing and coming to theaters soon, which are female-centric and which had women as writers, producers or directors.
Weeds returns for its seventh season on June 27 and Showtime has put out a trailer featuring Nancy Botwin sitting in a police interrogation room listening to a detective recite all the illegal and ethically hazy things she’s done over the course of the past six seasons, including drug dealing, drug producing, arson and murder.
Of course she’s sipping her ubiquitous iced coffee from a straw and wearing a wry smile on her face. Apparently being in police custody is preferable to being in her drug dealing husband Esteban’s hands.
What do you get when you combine 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), when he's jonesing for a frozen yogurt, with Brian Williams who has taken the last of the frozen treat? Well if you give Donaghy Superman-like powers, you’d get the snarky video above.
I love the fact that Williams – who's the reason why I watch the NBC Nightly News, along with all the senior citizens who need the denture cream that’s always advertised during the broadcast – is willing to put himself out there to look like a buffoon so often, like on late night shows and on Saturday Night Live.
Bossypants
As soon as I got my hands on the award-winning and overall awesome Tina Fey’s new memoir, Bossypants, I whipped through that book in short order, adoring her just a wee bit more with each new self-deprecating comment. I particularly loved how she included delightfully awkward photos of herself as a child because I too have awkward elementary and middle school photos lurking in my past that come close to being as embarrassing as the ones Fey included in her book.
The result of my jaunt through all things Bossypants? This column on the seven things I learned while reading Fey's book.
Parenthood Finale
After a really strong, tear-jerker of a season, Parenthood capped its sophomore year with a so-so finale that seemed as though it was earnestly trying too hard to pull together loose ends in the off chance the show didn’t get renewed for a third season.
In my review of the finale, I said I wasn't fond of the apparent quick resolution to Amber’s downward spiral (just because Zeek offered her a tough love tale for about five minutes wouldn’t, in my opinion, just snap her out of her deeply troubled funk), nor did I buy how quickly Sarah went from having her play accepted to be read/acted to being performed on stage. It was what, less than 24 or 48 hours from the first read to the show?
But I did adore the Adam storyline and Peter Krause, who kicked some serious behind as Six Feet Under’s Nate, continued to be wonderful as the stressed out, good guy father of two who works really hard, tries to the do the right thing and yet oftentimes winds up getting kicked in the behind and reacting to situations with genuine human angst and anger. To watch Adam get fired on the same day he learned that his wife is pregnant with baby number three – on top of his 16-year-old daughter who he recently found out is having sex and his son with Asperger’s – was a perfect example of what this show does well. Despite all his flaws, which the writers bravely allow viewers to see, you still root for him.
My fingers are crossed for a Parenthood third season and given that the ratings were strong for the finale, I hope that means we’ll hear from the NBC suits soon.
I didn’t realize how much I’d missed Modern Family until I watched the new episode last night. Ever since, I’ve periodically chuckled aloud to myself whenever these two sentences crossed my mind:
“I can’t be satisfied.”
“We love the word.”
I marveled at how the disturbed creative genius(es) got from the notion of Phil promoting his real estate business by shrink-wrapping the Dunphy family minivan (which Claire drives) with an image of the family . . . to Phil appearing as though he was a pimping out Claire and Haley. Phil’s confused conversation with the sicko who called his cell phone number – the number listed on the side of the minivan – who asked for “both of them,” and Phil replying by saying he’d scrub them both up was just classic Dunphy.
And while the over-the-top school play/musical has been done countless times on TV, Modern Family put its own unique twist on it with Luke hovering over the stage and feeling his heartbeat in his eyeballs and the unfortunate “We love the F word” meta-statement on the stage.
*Warning: Spoilers from the recent episodes of Parenthood and The Good Wife.*
Both Parenthood and The Good Wife broke my heart last night . . . but in a good way, not like the Lost series finale did.
Parenthood – I reviewed the episode here – took me on a very uncomfortable set of journeys with parents of teens in varying stages of angst. On the one hand, Adam and Kristina Braverman (Peter Krause and Monica Potter) had to process the idea that their 16-year-old daughter is having sex with her boyfriend. On the other hand, Sarah Braverman (Lauren Graham) was dealing with a teenage daughter Amber who is spiraling out of control with drugs and reckless behavior after being rejected from the two colleges to which she applied.
The Adam and Kristina story seemed to me to be a cautionary tale: Be careful what you ask for. If you ask your teenager if he or she is having sex, like Kristina did, be prepared in the event that you receive an affirmative answer. What do you do with that information once you have it? In Kristina's case, she became speechless and bumbled a lot, even lied to her daughter Haddie about how old she was during her first time. As for Adam, he was utterly unable to look at Haddie, his little girl, and treated her as though she had the plague. His disappointment was palpable and real. This storyline concluded with Kristina telling Haddie the truth about her first sexual experience and Adam realizing that Haddie was still Haddie. And, though it made me squirm in my seat – particularly the cell phone call scene – I loved it.
Not so great, the Amber storyline. Not that it wasn’t written well -- it was -- but it was truly heartbreaking. I honestly don't know what I'd do in Sarah's situation if my kid were acting out in this way. Although I will say that I’ve grown a wee bit tired of episode-ending car crashes featuring major characters. (*cough Grey's Anatomy cough*)
Over on The Good Wife -- which I DVRed and watched after Parenthood – I loved the clever way in which the writers chose to reveal to Alicia Florrick that her husband Peter had slept with a former colleague and now-current colleague of Alicia’s back during Peter’s philandering days when Alicia thought his only dalliances were with a prostitute.
This big reveal, sharing with a main character information viewers have known for several episodes, could’ve been done in a number of showy, melodramatic ways. But by having the private investigator casually mention the name "Leela," with Alicia having recently given a TV interview saying she’d forgiven her husband which people were crediting with putting Peter over the top, vote-wise, and with Peter just being declared the winner was particularly devastating.
Couple that with the fact that Alicia had been looking at a pricey house in her former leafy suburb – much like the home she had to sell after Peter went to jail – and started imagining rebuilding her life with Peter now that she’s stronger and sits on what she sees as an even playing field with her husband, and the ghosts of the past just just won't leave Alicia alone.
How the writers handle the next episode, I think, will be important in setting the tone for the series from this point on. And I’m hoping it’ll be as well executed as this episode was.
Chloe O’Brian may be patching Jack Bauer through yet again, according to news reports. Entertainment Weekly says that there’ll be a Jack Attack on the silver screen in 2012.
Sutherland – who recently started tweeting under @RealKiefer -- has said publicly that he’s game to jump back into scowling Jack "Dammit!" mode.
Mary Lynn Rajskub who plays Chloe, tweeted on April 10, under the handle @rajskub, “I have not heard anything about the 24 movie.”
Then that was followed up with this tweet:
":) xoxoxo RT @CarlosBernard_P: @RealBrianGrazer That's very good news. Hope you call Carlos Bernard and @rajskub also for the 24 movie."
I’ve watched the first three of the five parts of the Kate Winslet mini-series Mildred Pierce on HBO (the other two parts are sitting on my DVR), but that trio of episodes gave me plenty of material for my latest pop culture column about how the mini-series was turning out differently than I anticipated, particularly when the lead character put up with wretched treatment from her spoiled brat of an odiously haughty daughter and even rewarded the kid for acting like a selfish twit:
“I went into this Depression era dramatic series with the expectation that I’d be watching and rooting for a plucky mother of two who’d been left by her cheating husband, scratch her way to make a living to support her family in a time when there weren’t many jobs for anyone, never mind for soon-to-be-divorced thirtysomething women with children.
. . . [I]t’s almost as if Mildred Pierce is a kind of stealth, perhaps unintended allegory that’s relevant to today’s generation of helicopter parents, those who are hovering and doting on their offspring, getting their children whatever the little darlings want . . . even when the children’s behavior doesn’t warrant a reward.”
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1: DVD Out Friday
When part one of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out in theaters last year, I fully intended to see it in the movie theaters. Then a whole bunch of things conspired to get in my way and prevent me from doing so. Therefore, I’ve been unreasonably excited for the DVD release of the film on April 15.
My oldest son and I have plans to watch it this weekend together. (My daughter already saw it in the theaters with The Spouse last year, and my youngest son’s a bit too young for this film, plus we’ve only gotten to the beginning of book six in our Harry Potter Reading Out Loud Project, so I don’t want to spoil the surprises which lie in store for him.)
Fox/Lindelof
Lindelof on House/Should House be Canceled?
While watching a pretty predictable episode of House this week -- I called that Thirteen had been incarcerated for doing something noble and not wantonly violent as soon as we learned she had a brother – I was mildly amused by the scene where Thirteen asked House to stop at a home and remain in the car while she proceeded to kick the guy who answered the door in the groin. As it turns out, that guy was Damon Lindelof, one of the guys who created and ran Lost.
Lindelof had been tweeting on Twitter -- @DamonLindelof -- that he had something in the works. Then he retweeted the photo you see to the right.
Speaking of House, New York Magazine had an intriguing piece suggesting that House has run its course and should be euthanized . . . kind of like Thirteen's brother. Writer Margaret Lyons gave five solid reasons including:
-- The fact that Greg House doesn’t change no matter what happens
-- The show doesn’t “hold onto a good story.” (I’d forgotten all about Kutner’s suicide, as have all the characters it seems.)
-- “House will never meet his match.”
-- Since the actor who plays Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) reportedly doesn’t want to continue beyond this season, and, Lyons said, “[T]here’s no show without Wilson.”
If the Boston Red Sox best the Yankees during this three-game series starting with their home opener today, let's just pretend that the first six games of the Sox season were part of an elongated spring training session, designed to lull other teams into complacency and to remind Red Sox fans of those awful, pre-2004 years.
Then, we can gladly say we took a stand against fascism. (It's from the MLB video above. Gotta watch it for that to make sense.)
The scene above -- in which Callie was supposedly imagining all the Grey's couples gettin' flirty and sexy -- is an example of how this episode, which started out very powerfully (so much so that I was teary-eyed), went horribly awry. While Callie and her unborn baby were in life threatening situations and Meredith was severely depressed about her inability to have her own baby, she would NOT be singing gloriously about "running on sunshine" with a crazy-big smile on her face while kissing Derek I'm sorry. This scene was preposterous.
However my review wasn't all negative:
"Sara Ramirez, who plays Callie, sang the hell out of this episode. She has a lovely voice. She energetically emoted. She underplayed it when the song called for quiet grace. And that opening scene where Callie was having an out-of-body experience and singing as she was brought to Seattle Grace and wheeled into the OR for the first time, that was mighty powerful.
Chyler Leigh (Lexie) and Chandra Wilson (Bailey) also sang exceptionally well throughout."
Otherwise . . . too. Much. Singing.
Media Coverage: Ferraro vs Taylor
Following on the heels of last week’s post about the disparity of the media coverage allotted to the deaths of screen icon Elizabeth Taylor and political trailblazer Geraldine Ferraro, I wrote a column which contains some hard numbers to back up my assertion that Taylor received loads more news coverage than did the first woman vice presidential nominee for a major political party, someone who the likes of Hillary Clinton and Madeline Albright said was a role model for them.
The most dispiriting part of the piece was this quote that I found from a National Journal writer who, after comparing the media attention these two women received after their deaths, surmised, “. . . [A]s the media space afforded Elizabeth Taylor’s and Ferraro’s obituaries attested . . . society still values female sex symbols more than female leaders.”
Paging Mr. Darcy
I have an embarrassing confession to make: I've never read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I know, shocking, isn't it?
But seeing as though I've been on a classics binge lately -- A Tale of Two Cities and Jane Eyre -- I started Pride and Prejudice over the weekend and am bringing with me high hopes that this classic will deeply impress me. I hope I won't be disappointed.
In the meantime, as far as my pet project of reading the entire, seven-book Harry Potter series aloud to my youngest son, I've started writing about the Harry Potter Reading Out Loud Project on my lifestyle/parenting blog. Thus far, between myself and my husband, we've read 2,750 pages to our now-9-year-old son and just concluded Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
To keep tabs on our reading progress, I made a special blog page where I list on what page we left off and what was going on when we closed the book. We've just started the beginning of the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and are still on the part where the U.K. Prime Minister is having a disturbing conversation with the Minister of Magic.
