Kevin Maher in the UK Times wonders if it is time to kill the chick flick?"Hollywood thinks that all women care about is weddings and shopping. Can anything stop the inane decline of the chick flick?
Simone de Beauvoir famously announced that “One is not born a woman, but becomes one,” in her 1949 treatise The Second Sex. She might have added: “But it takes Hollywood to turn one into an hysterical fashion-mongering man-craving anorexic caricature.” For, increasingly, the modern Hollywood women's picture or so-called chick flick has become home to the worst kind of regressive pre-feminist stereotype and misogynistic cliché.
Movies such as the recent Anne Hathaway/Kate Hudson catfight Bride Wars or the forthcoming Confessions of a Shopaholic are aimed exclusively at women, and yet feature female characters who are variously neurotic, idiotic, label-obsessed, weight-obsessed, man-obsessed or weddingobsessed, and often all at the same time. In Confessions of a Shopaholic, for instance, the gifted comedic actress Isla Fisher plays Rebecca Bloomwood, a wannabe Manhattan fashionista who lives only for designer clothes and will happily fight to the death for a pair of sale-price Gucci boots...
The reason for all this sinister discord is ultimately, of course, men. “Fewer than 10 per cent of Hollywood films are written by women, and fewer than 6 per cent directed by women,” explains Melissa Silverstein, a movie marketing consultant and founder of the company Women & Hollywood. “So really what you are seeing is a white male version of women. And that is just unacceptable.”
It is nonetheless a version of womanhood that appeals to an enormous amount of female moviegoers, argues Archie Thomas, foreign correspondent for Variety magazine. “Chick flicks such as Sex and the City get repeat business from female audiences,” Thomas says. “Which means that women go to see it together the first time then they go back with their mothers, sisters or daughters to experience it again.” ... More here.
Adop t a book for Valentine's Day
To celebrate Valentine’s Day, the British Library is offering bibliophiles the rare chance to find a unique present "that speaks volumes".
BL recommendations:
For some romantic inspiration: Saint Valentine’s Pocket Book is a lovely and curious collection of love letters and sonnets.
Shakespeare lovers: look no further than the beautifully bound and illustrated copy of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream, or Emma Marshall’s Shakespeare and his Birthplace, a stunning illustrated guide to Stratford upon Avon as Shakespeare would have known it.
Learn from the master of love himself: Casanova Di Seingault’s, Giacomo Girolamo: The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. This wonderful memoir is now fully annotated for the first time in English.
A recipe for love: Shirley and Michael Scott’s A little book of Valentine recipes (c 1981). This booklet contains such recipes to warm the heart as: Mushroom A L'amour, Ceufs a la Coquette, Lamb chops en chemise, Hunters Delight, Melting Moments, True Lovers Knots, and Adam and Eves pudding.
It's a kind of Magic: Oscar Wilde’s classic collection of fairy tales House of Pomegranates is available for those who want to bring a bit of magic into their romantic lives.
Either the Library can choose a book to suit your taste, or you can select from a range of titles here.
Stephen King's Office
Stephen King now allows you to take an interactive tour of his workspace.
Charing Cross - the fading world of books in London
Helen Hanff made Charing Cross bookshops famous through her stories of the bookshop at number 84. The UK Guardian, however, provides a sobering interactive update with bookseller video clips as to the "fading world of books" in that area.
Ian McEwan's superb tribute to John Updike
Ian McEwan mourns John Updike and the end of the golden age of the American novel in the UK Guardian.
"A "big-bellied Lutheran God" within the young Updike looked on in contempt as he struggled to give up cigarettes. Many years later the older Updike, now giving up alcohol, coffee and salt, put into the mouth of that God the words of Frederick the Great excoriating his battle-shy soldiers - "Dogs, would you live for ever?" But all the life-enhancing substances were set aside, and writing became Updike's "sole remaining vice. It is an addiction, an illusory release, a presumptuous taming of reality." In the mornings, he could write "breezily" of what he could not contemplate in the dark without "turning in panic to God". The plain facts of life were "unbearably heavy, weighted as they are with our personal death. Writing, in making the world light - in codifying, distorting, prettifying, verbalizing it - approaches blasphemy."
...Contrary to what his work might suggest, Updike was in actual life devoted to his large family that sprawled across the generations, so why not let one of his youngest characters take the parting bow on his behalf. When Henry Bech goes up on stage in Stockholm to make his Nobel acceptance speech, he takes with him on his hip his one-year-old daughter. She wriggles impatiently through his lecture and when at last he has finished, she reaches out for the microphone "with the curly, beslobbered fingers of one hand as if to pluck the fat metallic bud". Bech feels the warmth of her skull, he inhales "her scalp's powdery scent ... Then she lifted her right hand, where all could see, and made the gentle clasping and unclasping that signifies bye-bye." More at:
Reading Bridget Jones could improve your love life, new study shows
"It's the news we've all been waiting for: reading a good book prepares you for real life. Scientists have found that, far from being a way to avoid reality, burying yourself in the disastrous romantic adventures of Bridget Jones or following Oliver Twist in his journey from rags to riches could make you better able to cope with similar situations in the real world..."
10 must-see SF, fantasy and horror trailers according to SFX magazine
01. Coraline - From Neil Gaiman and the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas.
02. Star Trek - JJ Abrams's forthcoming look at the origins of Kirk and Spock.
03. Knowing - Nic Cage finds a time capsule revealing details of the apocalypse.
04. Lesbian Vampire Killers - Comedy British horror movie.
05. 2012 - Roland Emmerich's latest apocalyptic vision.
06. Push - Psychic spies have the ability to move objects with their minds.
07. Race to Witch Mountain - The latest adaptation, starring Dwayne Johnson.
08. Friday the 13th - new version, with Jared Padalecki from Supernatural.
09. The Uninvited - Korean ghost movie adaptation starring Elizabeth Banks.
10. Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li - Latest adaptation of the Capcom videogame, starring Smallville's Kristin Kreuk
Ten of the best fictional chess games are listed by John Mullan in the UK Guardian
"The Book of the Duchess by Chaucer
In Chaucer's narrative poem, a melancholy poet falls asleep over a book and dreams of wandering in a forest where he meets a mysterious black knight. The sad knight tells of a game of chess he has played against Fortune and lost. The dreamer realises the chess game is a metaphor for life, and that the knight has lost a real white queen.
A Game at Chess by Thomas Middleton
In this 1620s crowd-pleaser, all the characters are chess pieces. It was an allegorical assault on the Spanish court and its English sympathisers. The behaviour of the characters mimics the moves in a chess game. The most dangerous person is the Black Knight (the scheming Spanish ambassador in London).
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
The earliest evidence that chess might be a sexy affair. The courting lovers, Ferdinand and Miranda, are "discovered" behind a curtain, playing chess. "Sweet lord, you play me false," Miranda accuses Ferdinand (teasingly?), and he reassures her, "No, my dearst love, I would not for the world." They are brainy as well as vivacious." More here.
Overdue Book Borrowed by President Kennedy Will be Returned to Library of Congress
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum said it will display, as part of a weeklong celebration of Presidents' Day, a 1930 biography of Abraham Lincoln that was apparently borrowed by Kennedy, or a member of his staff, when he was serving in the Senate in the 1950s. The Library of Congress book, "A. Lincoln" by Ross F. Lockridge, was found in Kennedy's pre-presidential papers. It has been listed as missing in the Library of Congress online catalog, and will be returned to its collection after the display. "It has just always been assumed to have been one of his books," said library spokesman Tom McNaught, but the library recently learned "it had been checked out since he was a senator and he had just kept it."
The UK Literary Review has some excellent online articles in its February issue.
These include:
THE EARTH EXHALES
John Gray reviews James Lovelock's latest work, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, and hails a biography of this unusually freethinking scientist...
LIGHTING UP THE DARK AGES
The Middle ages were not just an interlude between the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. Christopher Kelly reassesses the received wisdom about the period.
CONSTABLE IN LOVE
Frances Spalding reviews Martin Gayford's new book, an examination of Constable's courtship and marriage of Maria Bicknell, which was impeded throughout by a lack of 'that neccessary article cash'...
Quote of the Week
"Beware of women - they always have a manuscript hidden about their person". Logan Pearsall Smith in a letter to Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper.
Odd Book Title
The Urine Dance of the Zuni Indians of New Mexico. J G Bourke. American Association for the Advancement of Science. 1885
Debbie Campbell of the National Library reports details available here. Originally presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Pun of the Week
Short dresses were called "dogs" in the 1950s because you could peek-on-knees.
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