cuttlefish are for lovers

why in the hell is the spears clan so damn ignorant when it comes to birth control? someone needs to explain this to me.

ETA - my favorite quote from jezebel posters - "i understood knocked up as a cautionary tale, not a life plan."

there are a couple of new things over at filmsnack - los angeles plays itself and the devil wears prada.

i'm re-posting a press release written by one of sarcasm_queen's law professors regarding the SD abortion case.

( an insightful essay on abortion activism and how the supreme court may deal with the law )

breakfast on pluto - despite the fact that this film is based on a novel, it made me think of nothing so much as the crying game as told from del's point of view. that being said, patrick "kitten" braden is a much more fully realized character than del was, and murphy's performance is amazing - i literally would forget that i was watching him as an actor, he fell so deeply into the role. there were some fun turns by jordan regulars (liam neeson as a catholic priest, and stephen rea as a magician, as well as brendan gleeson in a hilarious 5-minute bit that's impossible to explain properly), but murphy absolutely holds the movie. it's a good thing, too, as the structure of the film seems trapped between showing the audience a rather gritty, ugly side of kitten's real life, and presenting it as a sort of fairy tale, which seemed more in keeping with kitten's own point of view. it's a bit muddled between the two, though jordan does manage to make some very nice points on either side. there's no denying that it's a fun film, though - the play of fantasy and pure free spirit, along with murphy's incredible performance, make it very enjoyable.

one of my big issues with the film, though, is in keeping with problems i've had with past jordan films, including crying game and mona lisa. jordan is fascinated by transgendered characters (there's even a supporting one in the good thief, who serves little narrative purpose), but he doesn't seem ready to fully deal with their sexuality. kitten's sexuality is never really looked at - despite a couple of boyfriends and a few stints as a sex worker, we never even see him kiss. similarly, i felt that jordan played del's sexuality for shock value, and the subject of lesbianism was even more problematic in mona lisa (that those films were further complicated by the fact that the "divergent" characters were black is not a problem that breakfast has). i feel that there are certain things that jordan did very well with this story, but that his views of alternative sexualities are problematic, and this leaves me somewhat dissatisfied with a trio of otherwise very interesting and, generally, quite good films.

sort of off-topic, but as i was walking out of the theater, i thought of how much fun it would be to teach a transgender cinema class.

we saw a late show of batman begins last night.

( i'll spoiler this for those who haven't seen it, but i hated it )

brit-brit's reality show.

the kicker? it doesn't sound much different from newlyweds, but IT'S ON THE UPN!

hahahahahaha!!!!!

perhaps this is a silly question, but can i reinflate my bike tires using the air pump at a gas station, or is the pressure too high?

so, aside from watching waaay too many episodes of the wire, the boy and i also saw where's the party, yaar? this weekend. it's somewhat disconcerting that the DVD release title has been changed to dude, where's the party?, but i know they're trying to capitalize on kal penn's recent success. this was a really low-budget movie about "ABCD's" (american-born confused desis) and newly-arrived indian immigrants. it's not a good movie - it was written by at least four people, and the direction is startlingly bad (some scenes make absolutely no sense, and look more like they just had some extra film to waste, rather than some actual connection to the plot), but it's certainly entertaining, and the jokes run from hopelessly insider, to side-splitting, to really, really lame. the cast is really enjoyable, even when they're not acting particularly well (the female leads are pretty obviously non-actors), and it's nice that a film like this was actually made, in which a relatively insular community can poke fun at its own stereotypes and identity issues.

what is it about friday? last week, ossie davis, this week, arthur miller.

sad.