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I wasn’t expecting a lot when I Netflix’d Baby Mama. The movie seemed to come and go when it was released and the lack of buzz took it off my radar pretty quickly. However, I love funny women so I gave it a shot, and I’m glad I did.

About a month ago I watched Bride Wars with my friends. I feel like that movie and Baby Mama could be categorized together, in that they’re both movies about women with stereotypical feminine desires, and both have over the top happy resolutions. They’re the kind of movie you’d watch on a lazy Friday night with a few friends and a bottle of wine (or beer). The difference between the two is one of them made me weep for humanity and the other just made me wish for a slight change of ending.

[Spoilers Ahead] Read the rest of this entry »

Diablo Cody has done it again, folks.  The United States of Tara is complex, smart, progressive, and entertaining, and well worth your time.  The show is about a suburban family coping with the typical stresses of work, school, and relationships with a twist: Mom’s got four personalities.

Tara’s persona’s aren’t the most accurate representation of mental illness, although they do manage to use accurate terms: Dissociative Identity Disorder rather than Multiple Personality Disorder – something that Tara regularly has to correct others on.  Instead, her persona’s illustrate the various stereotyped roles women navigate – T, the wild, rebellious, and promiscuous teenager; Alice, the overly-sweet but passive-aggressive 50’s housewife; Buck, the grungy, rough and tough masculine side; and Tara herself who is trying to live a “normal” modern life with her husband and two children while coping with a buried childhood trauma that led to the development of these personas.  As Tara gets closer to that lost memory a fourth alter arises: Gimme, the animalistic child.

But the show isn’t just about Tara.  It’s about family.  Read the rest of this entry »

In the interest of full disclosure, let me begin by admitting that I have never liked Adam Sandler.  I think he’s offensive, crude, annoying, stupid, and irritating.  But, as I’m a bit under the weather and laid up on the sofa, I decided to give Sandler’s Disney kids flick Bedtime Stories a shot.  And despite my low expectations, I was disappointed.

Supposedly we’re supposed to empathize with Skeeter, the screw-up poor kid who lost his family’s hotel and has a chance to win it back.  We’re supposed to root for his success and watch the Average Joe beat the wealthy snobs at their own game.  But true to his track record, Bedtime Stories is filled with sexism, racism, and toilet humor.

Read the rest of this entry »

As a whole, I was let down by last night’s Saturday Night Live.  I had missed the episode last week hosted by Taylor Swift, and was impressed with the clips I caught online afterwords.  I had also caught sassy January Jones giving Jimmy Fallon a hard time on his show, and hoped that she would be given some decent material to work with.  If you were watching, you know that “decent material” is not what we got.

January’s monologue was redeemed by Fred Armisen’s quip about preferring Mad Men’s Peggy (his newlywed wife in real life) to Betty.  The monologue pretty much drove me crazy with anticipation, as I plan to start watching Mad Men (Season 1) this week.  Aside from the monologue, January Jones was primarily a prop in most of the skits, but she shone in the following short, which was my favorite skit all night.

Favorite lines include:

• “Avoid looking at the newspaper, as it may give you ideas.”
• “Greet women by her husband’s name, or not at all.”
• “Greet a divorced woman by her attorney’s name.  Be sure to make note of the flaws in her figure and bust that brought about the divorce, so that you may learn from them.”
• “Address cats by their full name, and dogs by ‘Mister’ and then their dog name, because cats are girls and dogs are boys.
• “If a black person arrives…  Just kidding.” – (SNL usually follows this recommendation)

All around, I can’t really understand SNL like I used to.  I came of age during the Cheri Oteri, Molly Shannon, Anna Gasteyer era and since then have often missed the jokes in SNL.  The regular theme of gay skits (this week’s Kristen Wiig as a creepy newscaster coming on to a teen hero, the Dr. Jeckyl/Mr. Hyde skit) always seem a little off, kind of in the same way that 30 Rock’s handling of gay men always comes off as stereotypical and offensive to me.

Did you like the episode last night (or the season so far)?  How do you understand SNL’s new common themes?

Although Tina Fey has let me down with 30 Rock, I am continually impressed with Amy Poehler.  Her straight-to-dvd film Spring Breakdown is much better than The Man wants you to think, although it does sort of feel like it’s more along the lines of A Night at the Roxbury or Superstar than anything in theaters today.

Amy and her friends go to Spring Break to keep an eye on the daughter of a political hotshot and protect her (mom, that is) from the press.  In the midst of the excitement, Amy and Rachel Dratch get pulled into the crazy partying, only to later realize the importance of true friendship and self-respect.

It’s kind of refreshing to see Spring Break mocked for its ridiculousness instead of paraded as soft-core porn, not to mention the beauty of a film about women that is about more than chasing a dude (although that is how they end up there in the first place…).  Either way, I recommend Spring Breakdown if you liked the SNL Feature Films of the 90s, or if you like your women short, sassy, and spunky.

So you have probably come across this video before, but I have an ever expanding love of Fred Armisen and a continued case of writer’s block, so enjoy.

You may or may not have known that there is also a part two…

Sorry for the extra late post today, it was one of those days where everything happened later than it was supposed to (my alarm didn’t go off and I didn’t wake up until five minutes before I was supposed to give a presentation – fantastic)!  However, I don’t want to disappoint, so here are links to some of the things I’ve been reading over the past few days.

Three awesome recaps at Jezebel:

• Rihanna and Chris Brown speak out about what happened last spring and the aftermath;
• Taylor Swift hosted SNL, and from the looks of it helped the show actually produce a decent skit or two for the first time in a long time; and
• Ellen and Portia speak about the importance of gay marriage.

Elsewhere…

• In competition with SNL, Wanda Sykes‘ new show premiered Saturday night [Bitch Media].
• Nancy Grace objectifies a missing woman by referring to her as a “Co-ed Beauty” rather than by her actual name, over and over again [Sociological Images].

Sorry again for the super late and lazy post – I hope to return to productivity in the near future!

I’ve been under the impression that I ought to give 30 Rock a chance for a while now.  Typically (or at least in theory) I like Tina Fey, so it had that going for it.  On the other hand, Alec Baldwin and Tracy Morgan usually make me want to barf, so it was kind of a toss up.  Now that I’ve made it through season 1, I have mixed feelings.  There is a lot of problematic material here.  I think that we’re supposed to interpret this as “ironic” or “tongue-in-cheek” a lot of the time, but mostly the running gags come off as distasteful.  Stick with me through some clips and concerns, and I promise to try to look on the bright side at the end.

First there is the idea that Liz Lemon is an unattractive, pathetic spinster despite the fact that Tina Fey is gorgeous, intelligent, and successful (all of which seem to translate into Liz as well). Take the following clip from “The Baby Show” where crazy Liz can’t control her baby cravings and steals a baby instinctively.

And this is only the tip of the iceberg.  Cerie the sexy secretary,  Jenna the ditz, Jack the misogynist, and running jokes about how gross sex workers/persons with disabilities/gay men are, as well as my attempt to look for the silver lining after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever notice that the realm of folk parody duos seems to be relatively male-dominant?  You know what I’m talking about.  Both the field of comedy and the world of music are essentially male oriented.  Women typically aren’t allowed to be funny, or if they are it must be at the expense of their looks.  And women musicians are either pop-princesses or “vagina rock”ers.  Either way, all people are expected to appreciate the comedy and music of male performers, while women performers are for women only.

Well, if you like Flight of the Conchords, you have no excuse not to give a listen to Garfunkel & Oates.  Riki Lindhome (Garfunkel) and Kate Micucci (Oates) are to L.A.-based actors who developed a friendship after frequently running into each other at various auditions and admiring each others talents.  It must have been fated for the two to make some beautiful music together…  The duos songs tackle issues including third wheels, one-night stands, unwanted gifts, and the sensitive topic of pregnancy:

The band’s website has a wide collection of their other songs and videos, which I highly recommend.  I found myself wondering as I watched their work what it would take for a network like HBO to offer a musical sitcom to such a duo, making the female characters front and center rather than sidelined as obsessive stalker fans, and allowing them to be powerful, central, and relateable characters despite their vaginas.  I’ll keep my fingers crossed for Garfunkel & Oates to find the success they deserve.