Notes on Pop Culture: Whitney, Adele, Valentine's, Show Dogs & 'Awake' Peek

Whitney, Whitney, Whitney

This is starting to feel too freakishly familiar, introducing my kids to the soundtrack of my youth by binging on a musician's music and good, old fashioned music videos soon after the musician dies an untimely death.

As I tried to explain to my three kids, via music videos on YouTube, who Whitney Houston was and how I fondly remember her 1980s tunes from my high school years, it felt very deja vu-ish. I'd done the same thing after Michael Jackson died, showing the kids the "Thriller" and "Billie Jean" videos while downloading a bunch of his songs that I hadn't listened to in quite some time.

This weekend, it was the ebullient "I Wanna Dance with Somebody," the soothing "Exhale" and the breath-taking "I Will Always Love You" (which, despite the fact that it was grossly overplayed in the 90s, rarely failed to move me). It was watching The Bodyguard on TV. It was adding some Whitney tunes to my music library. It was also another reminder of what an incredible waste of a wealth of talent this tragedy represents both in her substance abuse, which torpedoed her career, and in her death at age 48.

Adele - Rolling In The Deep - Grammy's 2012 by IdolxMuzic

Adele Sweep

Speaking of a wealth of talent . . . my daughter and I are big fans of Adele, her music, her screw-you attitude toward morons who want to talk about her weight, her fearlessness in wringing her heart dry for her art. We were eminently pleased to see her not only clean up at the Grammy Awards, but belt out "Rolling in the Deep" so powerfully after her recovery from throat surgery.

Now Adele, there's a celeb who's worthy of my daughter's admiration.

The Vow Didn't Wow Me

Over the weekend, some of my gal pals and I decided to indulge ourselves. We loaded up on Twizzlers, popcorn and vats of soda before sitting down to enjoy the confection that is The Vow, starring Rachel McAdams, whom I find thoroughly charming. We wanted to spend some time together watching a romantic weepy that didn't tax the brain too much. We even brought tissues in case we started bawling, like I did both times I saw The Time Traveler's Wife, which also starred McAdams.

Alas, no tissues were required during our screening (which stinks if you've geared yourself up to be emotionally moved -- manipulated, really -- by a film or TV show). Sadly, I found The Vow only mildly interesting, despite the fact that it's loosely based on a true story, and found myself pining for it to grab me by the shirt, shake me and make me care about it.

Still craving some romantic fare by Valentine's evening, after a nice dinner and exchanging gifts with my husband, I was scanning the TV channels trying to find something, anything, resembling either a romantic comedy or a straight-out romance because, well, it was Valentine's Day after all. Finding nothing -- seriously, nothing! -- in the way of that kind of flick playing on television, I instead settled on, of all things, the Westminster Dog Show, which greatly amused me as I sat with my rescue dog Max and told him those pooches had nothin' on him.

Awake Preview Has My Attention

NBC has released the first seven minutes of its new drama Awake, slated to premiere on March 1. Just based on its premise and these few minutes, this show may -- I reiterate, MAY -- be the calamine lotion for the itch left behind by the absence of Lost: The show features police detective Michael Britten who got into a serious car accident with his wife and teenage son. On those points, there is no confusion. There was an accident. The three were in the car.

But here's the catch: Britten is "living" two, parallel lives, one in which his wife died in the crash and one in which his son died. In both lives, he's seeing a therapist and is still a cop who's solving crimes. Both of the lives feel real to him and he can't tell which one is his real life and which one is a dream.

If done intelligently, this show could prove fascinating. If done in a ham-fisted way -- or offers the ultimate answer, "They're all dead" (a la Lost) -- I'll be mighty ticked.

Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: Potter, Entourage, thirtysomething, Time Traveler's Wife

I've been mired in the doldrums of mid-summer amid inclimate, rainy days, bickering kids and having to take one of those kids to multiple appointments intended to rid her left ankle of pain. Amid that, here's what I've been consuming in the pop culture this week:

Films:

-- I took my twin 10-year-olds to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince soon after it opened nationwide. Had we not all read the book, we would've given it an unequivocal thumbs up, enthusiastically so. But given that we did read the book, it was hard not to be irritated by many of the changes made in the film version, including in the pivotal scene at the end where Harry was supposed to be immobilized by a spell, at least he was in the J.K. Rowling version. The way it played out in the film made Harry look wimpy.

That being said, I think that upon a second viewing -- when it comes out on DVD -- the kids and I will be more able to fully embrace the movie as the well done, two-plus hours of stylistic fantasy that it is. The teen actors are believable and many elicited emotions (laughter, tears) from yours truly, as well as from many other members of the audience in the theater.

-- Finally saw Hancock On Demand over the weekend with The Spouse. (Milk, which I got from Netflix about a week-and-a-half ago, is still sitting next to the TV.) It wasn't bad, but I'm a Will Smith fan so I'm predisposed to liking him. However I thought the "romantic" twist was silly and not well thought out. It could've easily played out better as a straight super-hero epic and been perfectly fine as an action hero flick without it.

TV:

-- I had an imaginary question mark lingering over my head after the recent episode of Entourage, where everything seemed to be unfolding re-al-ly, re-al-ly, sl-o-w-ly. Terrain that's already been trod is being revisited, which is growing tedious. Plus, I, frankly, could care less about Ari's business partner's extra-marital fling, though I find it interesting that Ari himself, to the best of my recollection, has not strayed from "Mrs. Ari."

I'm planning to stick with da boys throughout the season, although I'm starting to believe that this slow motion, underwater feeling I get when I watch the HBO show isn't going to go away any time soon.

-- Post-All Star Game Boston Red Sox games have been depressing, y'all. Now the Sox have fallen out of first place in the AL East, replaced by the Evil Empire. It's sad, yes, but I'm of the mind that the Sox fare better when they're underdogs as opposed to the top dogs. It's what kept Sox fans going through an 86 year championship drought.

-- I'm going to write about this subject AT EXTREME LENGTH soon, but I've been spending time traveling back to the year of 1987 with Keds, enormous shoulder pads, cassette tapes, Reagan and in which there was no internet, no cell phones, no e-mail, no BlackBerries, no On Demand. Why? I've been screening the first season of thirtysomething on DVD (goes on sale next month) in preparation for a column or two. I, a long time fan of the show, am in Michael and Hope Steadman heaven.

Books/Magazines:

-- I finished Half-Blood Prince and then polished off Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but couldn't put away my box of tissues (the end of the both of those books make me snivel), because I started re-reading The Time Traveler's Wife. (The film based on this book comes out next month.) It's almost like reading it for the first time because it's been so long since I first cracked it open. After the past season of Lost, which featured mucho time traveling, the whole notion of moving back and forth through time now seems old hat.

-- For some reason I've recently found myself coveting recipes in Martha Stewart Living Magazine which have inspired me to stray from my food rut (a rut inspired by the aforementioned kids, two of whom rarely eat anything I make). I've been gazing at the recipes, the photos of what the food I prepare will never look like and hoping that when I present the food to the picky eaters, they'll be won over by the beauty and delectable aromas. Then I serve a Stewart meal -- shrimp, chorizo and veggies on a skewer over a bed of saffron rice (it was my idea to use saffron rice) -- and at least one kid requested a grilled cheese instead. This is the reason why my trying to cook anything from a lifestyle magazines tends to depress me.

What's your week of pop culture look like?

Image credit: Barnes & Noble.

Three Movie Trailers That Tempt Me

I was in the theater today to see Sam Mendes' Away We Go (I'll post link to my column in this blog once it's published) and saw trailers for two movies that made me say, "I MUST see that." Unless of course the critics uniformly pan the films, in which case I'll be terribly let down but may go ahead and see them anyway.

The first was for the Meryl Streep and Amy Adams movie Julie & Julia which seems similar in concept to The Hours in that it follows the story of two women's lives simultaneously, though the women are living in different time periods and the older woman's book proves as a guide to the younger woman. In the case of this film, we follow Julia Child's humble start in cooking and a cubicle-dweller's quest-- chronicled in a blog -- to follow Child's recipes for a year. My hopes are high that I'll leave the theater feeling inspired. Premieres August 7.



Then I saw the trailer for The Time Traveler's Wife starring Rachel McAdams. I adored this book (and MUST re-read it again before seeing the film) and am really curious how it'll compare to the movie. Total date movie. I've already warned The Spouse that he'll owe me a movie night and I'll be sure to bring plenty of tissues. Premieres August 14.



Then there was this trailer that I spotted on the internet for an upcoming Ricky Gervais comedy -- partly filmed here in Massachusetts -- that used to be called, This Side of the Truth, but has apparently been re-named The Invention of Lying, which takes place in a world where everyone has to tell the truth, but Gervais' character is the only one who has discovered that he can lie and get what he wants. Gervais appears to be tamping down expectations for this movie -- also stars Jennifer Garner, Tina Fey and Rob Lowe -- writing in his blog:

"Dear critics (everyone), when judging the film, please remember that it is a high concept, PG-13 romantic comedy. It's not [Schindler's] List or The Godfather. If you compare it to serious works of genius it will not fair that well."



I think the Gervais film could be a nice bookend to the Time Traveler's film, however it doesn't come out until late September, but, on the plus side for The Spouse, it doesn't appear as though I'll have to bring a box of tissues with me to see it.