Who I saw last night!

J-Lo at the Apollo! She is amazingly beautiful in person, and that golden dress was radiant. :) She hid in the VIP section the whole night but I did get a brief glance when we crossed paths en route to the bathroom. Not the most glamorous way to see such a celeb, but I will take what I can get! 

And Aretha was there too! Also dressed in gold. Nice night!

What I'm watching

Season 1 of True Blood in preparation for Season 2 being released on Netflix this week. I've read most of the books so it is quite pleasurable to watch the show and enjoy this fluff in another medium. True Blood is popcorn and enjoyment, pure escapism

I struggled to make it through the first few episodes of The Bachelorette. I just couldn't do it. The heroine of this season, Ali, is so disgustingly all American. She quit her job to be on the show and when asked what she wants out of life responded that all she wanted was a family and love to fill the holes in her life. Ack! I cannot watch her search so obviously for a "husband" to complete her, to give her life meaning.

Rewatched Kill Bill again and found it much more fun the second time round when you know what to expect. Then you can just relax and enjoy Tarantino's masterful touches and awesome female characters.

Still watching Party Down, and the characters just keep growing on me. Witty writing and excellent acting make this Starz comedy a critic's darling. With the stars being stolen away for other projects, who knows if it will last.

and Big Brother is coming in July! talk about summer flings :)

at the ballet!

tutus! en pointe! prima donnas! Last night I made my way to the Met to watch the American Ballet perform Don Quixote. Sometimes when you live in New York, you forget there are amazing opportunities right around every corner. $20 for nosebleed tickets to watch some of the most bendy dancers (splits in mid air, wowza) cavort around on stage in shiny tights. It was great :)

Prince of Persia, or the movie that had entirely too much shirt

So do you buy Jake Gyllenhaal as the nest Johnny Depp? Disney is certainly trying its best to groom Jakey into a money making action machine still imbued with some artistic integrity. And although they might want Jake to be their new Captain Jack Sparrow, complete with hotness, camp and appeal to all ages, this movie turns out more like The Mummy than Pirates. 

Which is not necessarily bad- both The Mummy and Prince are great summer action films. They rely on well known cliches that comfort and amuse, have eye candy for all genders, don't take plot or character development too seriously, and deliver 2 hours of solid fun. Prince even had great video game moments where the characters leap and fight in such unbelievably awesome ways. Although, as noted in the title, Jake had his shirt on for way too much of the movie. What a tease!

But does Jake really work as an action hero? After Donnie Darko and Brokeback Mountain? The answer is maybe sometime in the future, but not yet. Prince of Persia was rich in good looking people, comic relief and quick action. It just lacked that special spark that makes a movie irresistible. Jake is not yet Johhny. Maybe one day...

So...lost

I watched the much hyped Lost finale last night. In one sense it was satisfying. All the relationships that I loved about season one were revived and resolved (except for Juliet and Sawyer, which happened after I started watching).

But of course the show failed to truly wrap up its loose ends. But was I expecting it to? Lost has always been chaotic- that was one of the reasons I stopped watching after season three. Most questions were left unanswered and fanboys everywhere can go crazy trying to connect the dots.

But the finale truly drew from Lost's strengths: the relationships between thoroughly developed characters as well as a sense of "otherness," otherwordly and liminal displaced sense of time and space. Ultimately the show cannot return to the beginning, but there is no where for it go except back into mystery.

Film Festival Time

One of the best benefits of living in New York is the ability to see independent films. Many of these interesting indies simply can't find a distributor and sometimes can only be seen at special screenings in NYC or LA. I thought I should take advantage of this fact, so last night I went to see Timer at the Tribeca Film Festival. Timer actually premiered last year at TFF, but a year later it still hasn't found a distributor. According to what the director told us in the Q&A after the film (yay for directors showing up to screenings!), they had a few offers but none were what they were looking for.

Timer takes place in a society where once you hit puberty you can get a digital timer implanted on your wrist that will count down the days until you meet your soul mate (and there is a 98% success rate for those couples!). It all sounds great and happy until you realize the complications that could arise. What if your timer remains blank like the protagonists- does that mean you don't have a soul mate? What if your timer says the soul mate is 50 years away? What are you supposed to do about relationships in the meantime? What if your match dies? What if you are matched with someone too young, or too old, or you don't like them? The movie seems to say that you can't force things like love, and you can't live your life waiting for something to happen to you.

I really liked this film. I thought it was well written and well acted. I mean, it had Anya from Buffy in it, so how could I not?

Timer also had some very non-Hollywood relationships that were great. Una, the main protagonist, lives with her stepsister Steph. When the timer and men threaten to come between them, Una tells Steph that their relationship is the most important in her life and she will not let anything come between them. It is so refreshing to see this non-romantic and non-familial bond between two women be so reinforced. The ending was bittersweet but authentic and made me respect the writing even more. Plus, it is very much a romantic comedy and made me laugh out loud several times. Honestly one of the best films I have seen in a long, long time. The DVD comes out in June or July and I hope people go rent it. 

Party Down

If you are not watching this hilarious catering comedy on Starz, you should be. The writing is quick and witty, the cast is pitch perfect (including Megan Mullally as a cloying divorce), and they capture the catering/acting community with comedic accuracy.

The show might not last that long because so many of the stars have been stolen away- including Jane Lynch who moved to Glee. They are streaming the current season on Netflix as it airs. Which is awesome. 

Word of the Day

Shipping, from Wikipedia

Shipping, derived from the word "relationship", is a general term for fans' emotional and/or intellectual involvement with the ongoing development of romance in a work of fiction. Though technically applicable to any such involvement, it refers chiefly to various related social dynamics observable on the Internet, and is seldom used outside of that context.

Shipping can involve virtually any kind of relationship — from the well-known and established, to the ambiguous or those undergoing development, and even to the highly improbable and the blatantly impossible. People involved in shipping (or shippers) assert that the relationship does exist, will exist, or simply that they would like it to exist.

Examples inclue LoVe (Logan and Veronica from Veronica Mars), shippers for Hermione+Harry, etc