Everybody’s Doing It April 27, 2011
Posted by Kate in 20-24.Tags: abstinence, armpit sex, box lunch, everybody's doing it, library sex, lizzy caplan, sex
7 comments
If you like being angry at your government and your television at the same time, you should totally watch Everybody’s Doing It. Like all reasonable people, I love Lizzy Caplan and hate abstinence-only sex “education,” but cute girls and left wing ideals can’t save this didactic mess.
The movie starts by showing Angela (Lizzy Caplan) and Travis (some dude) falling in love throughout their sophomore year, then cuts to them loud slurpy kissing in a car after the spring semiformal. Angela unbuckles Travis’ belt, then decides she’s not ready to have sex and breaks up with him. Angela leaves to go build houses with Habitat for Humanity for the summer, but she and Travis decide to have sex if they still want to in September. The summer apart will prove that their love is real or something; I don’t know, teenagers are the worst.
Angela comes back to school ready to bone Travis, but she can’t because there’s a big assembly about how premarital sex is bad and the library’s been torn down and Caroline, the poor man’s Tracy Flick and the president of the school’s abstinence club, is pressuring everyone to sign virginity pledge cards.
The importance of remaining chaste until marriage is demonstrated with some kind of pizza metaphor.
which pizza would YOU want to fuck? huh?
There’s even a bunch of dancing STDs.
I, for one, never want to have sex again after seeing this.
Angela is the only student who thinks this whole thing is ridiculous, and Travis gets totally pissed that she seems to know more about sex than the health teacher. He signs a pledge card without talking to Angela first.
Oh, and it gets worse: there’s a huge whiteboard with the names of all the students who signed a virginity pledge.
Students who break the pledge get their names crossed off.
SLUTZ
You’re probably wondering how the school evens finds out who’s been screwing. Well, there’s a scholarship reserved for any students whose names are still on the board at graduation. The fewer students left over, the more money the virgins get. Students are encouraged to spy on one another, and to tell the school whenever somebody has sex.
Angela freaks out when she sees her name on the list, since she was outspoken in her refusal to sign the virginity pledge. She asks the librarian to remove her name from the board, but the librarian refuses to unless Angela admits to losing her virginity. Angela continues to insist that her sex life is none of the school’s business, and storms out. It’s never explained why the empty library needs a librarian. I guess she’s just there to watch teenagers have sex up against the bookless shelves.
well, these two are off the list
Travis becomes super suspicious of any boy that Angela talks to, including her gay best friend and some dude she met through Habitat for Humanity. Poor Angela. She tries to talk to her sister, but her sister’s busy.
Angela continues to be the lone voice of reason in the school as the teachers allow Caroline to create a weird sex court in the library where she bangs a gavel and yells at students for hooking up, then crosses their name off the board while muttering “slut” under her breath. At one point, she draws a line through an entire column, which makes me think that we were cheated out of an orgy scene.
Finally, some other students grow a spine when they realize that oral and anal sex will get them crossed off the list. As confused and horny teenagers bombard Caroline with questions about what exactly they are allowed to do (someone actually uses the phrase “box lunch” in this scene), she yells that no penetration is allowed, not through “the front door, back door, or side door!” I’m confused about the side door thing. Rusty thinks it’s a reference to armpit sex.
Even more confusing than the concept of “side door” is the way Caroline, a crazy bitch with a display rack of eyeglasses in her locker, is allowed to spend the entire school day playing sex police. Everyone at Bonerkiller High must also be abstaining from going to class.
these are my sex-yelling specs
Angela must face Caroline in sex court, where she is accused of sleeping with the guy she met at Habitat for Humanity over the summer. Once again, she insists that her sex life is none of the school’s business, but Travis is pissed that she doesn’t deny it. Angela realizes that Travis must be the one who accused her. When she confronts him, he admits to signing her pledge card, too. Angela has no choice but to take off the promise ring he gave her and leave it in his locker. I guess they’re abstaining from locks at the school, too.
After a rash of students come down with sex rashes, the school reconsiders the effectiveness of the abstinence program. Caroline comes up with some bizarre idea that forces all students to sign up for the virginity pledge again. If all students sign it, they all get the scholarship money, but if less than 100 percent of students sign, nobody gets the money.
Because this movie is such an accurate portrayal of teenage behavior, everyone but Angela signs the pledge again. A meeting is called so that parents, teachers, and students can slutshame Angela into signing, but she tearily holds her ground. Just when you think that she’s going to get beaten to death by the angry, sex-starved mob, Travis walks to the front of the room and crosses his name off the pledge board. A bunch of other kids do the same thing.
I AM SLUTACUS
Inspired by Angela’s speech and her peers’ support, the school decides to have two separate health classes: a comprehensive one, and an abstinence only one. Victory! Sort of.
Angela gets back with her possessive, controlling boyfriend, and they decide not to have sex. The end.
AWESOMENESS: 5
I’ll give this movie a point for saying “box lunch,” but this movie was billed as a comedy yet was rarely funny, intentionally or otherwise. It wasn’t bad enough to be so-bad-it’s-good, but it certainly wasn’t good, either.
HEY! IT’S THAT GUY!: 10
I love Lizzy Caplan, and she did about as good a job with this shitty movie as anyone could possibly hope.
LIFETIMENESS: 6
I’m torn on this one. On the one hand, you’ve got moral panic and a woman who stands up for what she believes. On the other hand, you have a protagonist who ends up back together with her lame boyfriend.
GRAND TOTAL: 21
For a movie that tries so hard to teach a lesson, Everybody’s Doing It is shockingly bad at making its message clear. The moral of the story seems to be, “abstinence only sex ed is bad, sort of, but I guess it’s not that bad, and teenagers should have sex or not have sex or whatever and girls with glasses are nuts.”
Confessions of an American Bride April 19, 2011
Posted by H$ in 0-12, confessions of an american bride, H$.10 comments
See how dumb she looks here? This is only a prelude.
Whatup! I did not expect that I would have much time to work on this blog once I moved to Baltimore, and for a while that was true. It took a week to get my cable switched on, for fucks sake. But now that I am settled and as comfortable as one can be thousands of miles away from all they know and love, I am getting bored. Most nights I sit in my quiet one-bedroom apartment and watch the hookers and the rats edge around the security lights in my alley. I drink a midnight mimosa, which is a can of diet Pepsi that I have drank enough of to pour in about an ounce of citrus vodka. I listen to the same Mountain Goats album over and over again (All Hail West Texas, if you’re curious) and wonder if I have irrevocably ruined my life in pursuit of my dreams.
But hey, my place has a washer/dryer in it, so that’s something.
Anyway, there is nothing that ameliorates loneliness more then a movie that makes you hate humanity in general, so I decided to watch a Lifetime movie in the romantic comedy genre. And hey, it worked! I had to watch “Confessions of an American Bride”, and it’s your fault, so fuck you.
OK, it isn’t your fault, but man what a shitty movie. Sam is a perky lady who wants to get married more then anything in the world. As a child, she’s so into the idea of getting married someday that she’s a bride for every trick-or-treat. This allows her to draw a fun word-picture about how “life is like trick-or-treating, and sometimes you have to take a stupid apple instead of candy, but your wedding is the day that you get everything in the world you really want!” This is a stupid metaphor for life, but a great metaphor for Sam. She cruises through life in a hypothetical princess dress, a beggar and a chooser, whining and obsessing over a hypothetical wedding that will never live up to her expectations but still fuels her self-centered idiocy. I’d love to say this all comes back to bite her in the ass, but it’s a Lifetime movie, so no.
She’s also the most self-conscious, irritating Bridget Jones clone ever. She is utterly incapable of interacting with the world in any way that doesn’t smack of appletinis and snaps for her girlfriends. She’s constantly dropping science like “Dudes have porno, and ladies have wedding websites!” She works for some kind of consulting firm where they make up cereals, and her contribution is low-carb chocolatey cereal for ladies like her. Cause you know, ladies be eatin’ chocolate at breakfast, but ladies also be watchin’ their carb intake. Everything she does is a cry for attention or a cutesy acknowledgment to her low self-esteem. There’s even a scene where Sam is eating some potato chips, stops, and apologizes to the camera for pigging out.
GODDAMNIT SAM. THIS IS YOUR MOVIE. EAT THE FUCKING CHIPS, WATCH A FUCKING PORNO WHERE SOMEONE GETS MARRIED OR SOMETHING, AND RELAX.
Sam finds a perfect punching bag in Ben Rosen, a dude she meets at a bar and is instantly smitten with. Ben is like the generic best friend of a better dude protagonist in a better movie. He’s affable and charming, but he lacks the charisma and character to be a protagonist in his own right. Since the movie can’t be arsed to give him much to do, he overcompensates with showy dramatic gestures of affection that are kind of unsettling. When he and Sam start dating,
Speaking of love themes: greatest love theme from any movie ever. Recognize.
she tells this lame pity party story about how nobody asked her to a dance. In response to that, he rents out a high school gym and plays a romantic love theme while they slow-dance. He also decorates the place with crepe paper and balloons and even handmade a banner for the whole affair. I guess the movie wants us to think this is cute, and it is to a point, but if you think about it for too long it gets seriously creepy. Why would you want to date someone who is so obsessed with you that he lavishly re-stages your most disappointing memories? And what the hell is wrong with someone who, in their thirties, is STILL obsessing about shit that happened to them in high school? Ben indulges Sam’s worst qualities with no restraint. So, of course, he asks her to marry him.
By the way, he does this be renting out a hotel room and luring her to it by saying he’s her boss and he wants to meet about a client. She shows up and he pops the question. Then he gets out the ‘cham and they presumably bang all day, or at least until late check-out. Sam complains about her job throughout the movie, but if I worked somewhere that was flexible enough to let me take the afternoon off with no warning to nasty up a hotel room, I’d shut up about it.
Later, we find Sam sitting at a desk, scrambling over her laptop and wedding magazines. Ben asks her to come to bed, and she basically calls him an idiot for not immediately beginning work on their wedding plans. Ladies and dudes sure have different priorities, right? It’s like they’re from different planets or something!
So, since this movie apparently takes place in 19th century goddamn Britannia, the kids don’t live together before they get engaged. Cue some wacky misunderstandings! Oh man, she wants an ANTIQUE CHEST, but he wants A MANLY FISHTANK! He wants A BIGSCREEN TV TO WATCH THE GAME, and she wants A GIANT-ASS PORTRAIT OF PRETTY FLOWERS! Golly, these gender collisions tap a rich, deep vein of hilarity.
Another rich vein of hilarity: racism! There is no more time-honored tradition in lazy entertainment than jokes at
Woody Allen: right about anti-semitism, wrong about so many other things.
another culture’s expense. Happily Ben is Jewish, or this movie would have really missed out on a golden opportunity to exploit come cultural stereotypes for cheap laughs. Ben’s mom is an overbearing, whiny monster who flips out because her son is willing to wed in a church and serve shellfish at the reception. You get the feeling that it’s supposed to be funny, but there’s an unsettling implication that maybe the screenwriter really thinks that all Jewish people are bundles of neurosis and spite. Mrs. Rosen would kill if she was the warm-up act before Springtime for Hitler, but she’s kind of out of place here. Anyway, Mrs. Rosen and Sam’s WASP-y excuse for a negligent mom butt heads at every turn, further compounding their stress and misery.
So their families hate each other and her tampons are all up on his jock strap. What could the possible resolution to this be? Perhaps the reappearance of a college crush, who is put in the movie specifically to lead Sam astray. Fancypants Luke apparently needs some consulting from Sam’s firm, and admits he has a crush on her way back when. She’s all “oh goodness me” about it, and confides to her bridesmaid/girlfriends that she’s into him too. They’re all horrified, but seriously? If having a crush on someone that isn’t your significant other is so lifeshaking that you consider calling off your wedding over it, then your ass doesn’t need to be getting married. To anyone. Ever. Sam “accidently” kisses Luke and lies to her fiance about it, because hell, why not just make things worse.
The hideous mechanism of the movie lurches forward. Sam says Luke’s name during sex, which she plays off OK until he actually shows up at her house to ask about something or something. Ben is suspicious, and they go to pre-marital counseling. They are counseled not to get married, so good call there, counseling guys. They decide to part on amicable terms, and Sam is free to pursue Captain Hotstuff. Ben’s going to, I dunno, see the world or something.
You know where this is going, right? Sam goes on a date with Luke, and he turns out to be kind of a jerk. She also finds a video of Ben learning to waltz for their wedding, proof positive that he does care about all of her stupid girly bullshit. They have a dramatic meetup and re-fall in love. Then they get married. Some more stuff happens but oh my god I am not talking about this movie any more. I am done. DONE.
Awesomeness: 0
That’s right, 0. I dropped the goose egg on this sucker. There was nothing awesome about this movie on any scale. No objective awesome, no ironic awesome, no awesome whatsoever.
Star Power: 1
Shannon Elizabeth probably deserves a point because I knew her name before I watched the movie. Eddie McClintock is apparently NOT the name of a streetwise 20’s pool hustler, but is instead an actor who was in this film. The more you know.
Lifetimeliness: 10
And here’s the sweep. By simultaneously reinforcing every negative stereotype about women and weddings, and throwing in some xenophobia for good measure, this thing is a Roman orgy of Lifetime themes and plot points. But it isn’t the fun kind of orgy. More like one where everyone vomits and somebody dies.
11. I wouldn’t bother. I hated this so much that instead of linking to it, I am linking to the last episode of Parks and Rec. It restores the faith in love that this movie destroys. Cross your fingers that Hulu gets some better movies up soon.
Dying to Belong April 4, 2011
Posted by Rusty in 25-29, dying to belong.3 comments
So know that we have this Lifetime, Wow Facebook page, I can put faces and names to people who might read our humble website. We get a lot of collegians and former collegians. Any Greeks out there? Because I am going to make fun of sororities now. Please do not be offended.
Dying to Belong opens with a bunch of ladies in robes waking up a lady and dragging her out of her dorm room. Sorority hazing! The pledge isn’t taking this very light form of hazing very well. To be fair, she didn’t get to bring along her asthma medication and is having trouble breathing. Haha, what a nerd sorority. Asthmatics are nerds!
This movie is a bit ridiculous
The pledge freaks out enough to get kicked out of the sorority van and she is hit by a truck while walking back to campus.
One year later! Lisa Connors pulls into a college parking lot in her mom’s vintage Mercedes convertible. Oh, great. Rich people problems are always so compelling! Lisa’s mom was in some fancy shmancy sorority and really wants Lisa to pledge.
Oh, freshman year of college. A wonderful time to meet new people from different backgrounds. Horizons are broadened and we develop relationships with people from outside our comfort zones. Unless you drove up to school in a Mercedes convertible. Then eff that noise. Lisa is horrified to find out that her college-assigned roommate listens to punk music. And – AND! – she has BLUE HAIR! Oh my stars!
While in line at registration, Lisa meets Shelby. Shelby’s hair is flat, but it isn’t blue. Therefore she would make the perfect roommate! Lisa kicks Blue Hair out of their room and Shelby moves in.
Hey, a gratuitous shot of Shelby changing. Neat! But, oh man, 90s jeans. Shame on you 90s people. Why do people’s jeans go up to their bellybuttons? Who made that decision?
Lisa isn’t just a sorority type though. She also has a brain! She was editor of her high school newspaper and the college paper beckons her. Her persistence lands her a job. Her student editor is a muckraking junior who despises Greek life and is convinced that a sorority killed a girl hazing last year and that the university was complicit in a cover-up. He is also very handsome.
So the first time we see this editor, Steven Tyler (SERIOUSLY!?), the movie has “Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover” by Sophie B. Hawkins playing in the background. And that’s fine. I truly love that song. But then the second time we see Steven, guess what song is playing in the background? And a third time? You know it!
Steven and Lisa go on a date to see Carl Bernstein speak. In a line that I found truly funny, Steven complains that Bernstein “hardly even mentions Woodward anymore.” And then there is some ice cream and making out.
So Shelby and Lisa are rushing Pi Beta and with Lisa as a legacy and Shelby connected to Lisa at the hip, the two of ‘em are pretty much shoo-ins. During one kegger outside, Lisa gets to challenged to some rope-tow drinking contest. The rules: Pull yourself up the mountain, drink a shot, then get back down the mountain. And it’s a race. And “anything goes.”
Lisa wins! She and a sister literally get into a brawl halfway down the mountain, but Lisa rolls down first. The losing competitor is given the nemesis treatment but we really don’t see her for the rest of the movie except in the background. So, that was a fun ten minutes we all just wasted together.
So now Lisa and Shelby are pledges and that means Hell Week. Oh noes! Shelby and Lisa have to clean the kitchen floor with toothbrushes. And then they have to prance around in their hilariously high waisted underwear while the sisters circle all the flaws on their body. Shelby, who has proven to be very stoic about Hell Week, totally cracks. She remains standing in place as everyone draws circles on her and starts shaking and bawling. It was so funny that I could feel tingling in my extremities.
There are Six reasons why I love this picture
This is too much for Lisa. Her grades are slipping. She got kicked off of the newspaper staff for shoddy work, and now her friend’s humiliation is the last straw. Who cares if she pierced her finger and bled on a white rose while vowing to fight for her new family? She is OUT!
Next haze is the old hang a banner from some clock tower. Shelby falls to her death and has a bunch of blood and brain goo coming out of her ears.
The sorority’s official story is that Shelby went up to the tower by herself all drunk and whatnot. We know that she wasn’t really drinking and we also know that a bunch of the older sisters were with her on the tower. The sorority learns a valuable lesson about lies that are very easy to disprove. When there’s no alcohol in Shelby’s blood/brain goo, attention turns to the sisters.
Meanwhile, Steven finds the girl who was “hit by a truck” at the very beginning. Showing exceptional journalism skills, Steven finds a student with – wait for it – an UNLISTED NUMBER! Clearly this person was hazed and assaulted!
Steven and Lisa visit the girl who it turns out was only almost hit by a car. But she got PTSD or something and had to drop out of college? And the school dean (a woman with an all-time mullet) cut her a check to buy her silence?
Steven tries writing a story about this but for his trouble the school has him fired from the paper. Steven goes on some First Amendment rant, but for such a smart guy you’d think he’d be more aware of the Hazlewood case. Oh, and some frat boys beat him up. That happens too.
Lisa goes back to the sorority house to plead her case and she runs into some obstacles. The frat boys threaten her with sexual violence and the girls plant weed in her car. Because she is wealthy, Lisa gets by with only a warning. But Lisa’s mom is really on the warpath going as far as to accuse Lisa of making up her sorority hazing accusations and demanding she go into rehab for her marijuana addiction (haha).
Eventually Lisa is straight up kidnapped and thrown into a frozen river. Steven finds her by – I shit you not – driving around randomly honking his horn. Thankfully that works and Lisa is found unmurdered. Also, the soundtrack is no playing a country song written for the movie called “Dying to Belong.” I miss Ms. Hawkins.
You’ll never believe this, but this movie’s ending makes no sense. Lisa confronts the sorority with proof of the asthmatic cover-up and the girls admit they were with Shelby when she fell. Shelby wasn’t pushed or anything like that. And peer pressure isn’t really a crime so the sorority is guilty of some minor hazing and maybe trespassing? Anyways the sorority president and vice-president acknowledge that things got out of control.
Flash forward to a press conference where the dean admits two sisters came forward and the sorority was being shut down. The End. So, the bad guys turned themselves in? That seems unlikely.
AWESOMENESS: 12
The first half of the movie was a lot better than the second half. once Shelby bit it, the rest of the movie devolved into really shitty things happening to sort of unsympathetic characters. Threatened rape, assault, drug arrests, kidnapping, ATTEMPTED MURDER… That stuff got old. And it wasn’t really that fun or enjoyable.
Not like Shelby crying on a table in her ugly underwear. I could watch that on loop for hours.
HEY! IT’S THAT GUY!: 1,000,000
Ok, a movie can only earn ten points in this category, but if this were on a million point scale, it would earn the million.
Lisa was played by two time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank. Steven was played by Zach from Saved by the Bell. The most villainous sorority sister was played by Sarah Chalke from Scrubs and Roseanne. The perfect-10 was a shoo-in. But, my goodness gracious, is that a Jenna von Oy sighting? It is! Shelby was played by Six from Blossom! Perfect!
I kind of hate how it’s like a thing where people debate whether Hilary Swank is attractive or not. The Office (one of the few shows to get booted from my DVR…and I DVR Perfect Couples) devoted an entire B-plot to whether Ms. Swank was attractive. Well, she is a famous actress so she is obviously a knockout. They rarely let people star in movies if they are not gorgeous.
Basically, what I am saying is, she can come inside my jungle book anytime.
LIFETIMENESS: 6
It was melodramatic enough. But, the bad guys: sorority sisters, mom, female dean. Allies: boyfriend. That isn’t right. There are no sympathetic female characters besides the protagonist!
GRAND TOTAL: 28
Isn’t it insane that Hilary Swank has two Oscars? Her career had peaked by the time this movie came out. She wasn’t some up-and-comer when this movie came out. She was reduced to this! And then, one indie movie later, BAM. So keep your chin up, Hayden Panettiere!
The Secret of Hidden Lake March 29, 2011
Posted by Rusty in 17-20, the secret of hidden lake, Uncategorized.5 comments
This is my second straight review that begins with the words “the secret.” This movie is not as good as the last.
Last year I wrote a review of the series finale of Lost, aka the day I lost faith in serial television. A major complaint I had during that trail of tears through the Hawaiian rain forest was that I had no idea what was going on. I watched every episode intently but I still had no clue what each character wanted. The money quote: “I swear to God I am a smart person and I couldn’t figure out what was happening.”
Maybe I was wildly overestimating my intelligence because I couldn’t figure out The Secret of Hidden Lake either. Or it didn’t make sense. One of those.
The film opens in sepia tones which means FLASHBACK. I love Lifetime expository flashbacks because it means a kid is going to be in some danger. Here we have a father and a daughter on a hunting trip. The daughter wanders off and is assaulted by a mystery man who tells the girl to never tell anyone that he was out there or he would find her and kill her. How the dad missed all this I have no idea.
Love
We then move to present day and that girl, Maggie, is now a community activist in Chicago. She is basically Barack Obama except she has gone hunting before and is therefore a real, red-blooded American. She is also played by Rena Sofer, who can sleep on my sofa-r anytime. (Get it?) (Sex.) But something is wrong…WHO CUT RENA SOFER’S HAIR. He/She must be given a show trial and be summarily shot dead for that crime against humanity.
Anyways, Maggie’s dad was shot and she needs to go back home to rural Colorado. At first the authorities think it was an accident because he was shot with his own gun but that really doesn’t make any sense. Someone tried to murder him. And when you’re sheriff for 23 years, apparently you make some enemies?
Maggie has been out of town for a while and everyone is real quick to remind her that she is a bad person for daring to move to Chicago post-college. Good people stay in their hometowns. Bad people leave! I love that this movie is explicitly claiming that your three humble authors of this blog are in fact monsters. Shots fired!
Because it’s a Lifetime movie and Maggie is a woman, she decides to run her own investigation of what happened to her father. Her first clue is the nosy journalist running an expose on accusations of prisoner abuse being levied against Daddy Dearest. She asks the local diner owner, Sam, about the allegations and oh god is this movie really going to be about corporate espionage?
So The Herald is owned by some shady group called Lorango Corp. Lorango has been buying up land in town and building condos, skiing resorts, and other speculation type dealies. At first the people in town were psyched about the extra jobs and the tourism dollars. But – and boy oh boy as a Cape Codder have I experienced this first hand – the good down-to-earth people of Colorado start bristling at all the outsiders and their newfound dependence on tourism. When they find out Lorango started building new condos without permits, the town and the sheriff freak out and slap them with injunctions. Since then, the Lorango owned paper has been going all Fox News on the sheriff’s ass.
Lifetime is really playing this one by the numbers because Sam isn’t just the local diner owner, he is also Maggie’s high school love. And they haven’t spoken since she permanently moved away. But they still like each other? Seriously, how sad is this for the key Lifetime demographics? Maybe life didn’t work out the way you’d hoped but you can always fantasize about that high school boy you loved before the first kid and the subsequent weight gain. Those were the days.
So Maggie immediately concludes that a corporation tried killing her dad even though he wasn’t sheriff anymore. Her arguments fall on deaf ears. She doesn’t know who she can trust! Sam admits that he wanted to invest in Lorango but didn’t have the liquid capital. Her dad’s best friend, the local judge, remains a huge Lorango investor and was losing his personal fortune because of the sheriff’s stance on the matter. The new sheriff refuses to act on all of Maggie’s whims and is therefore presented as an incompetent. And what’s with the creepy mechanic who is always in the shadows being all creepy?
At some point during a storm, Maggie comes home to find the power is out. She also finds a dude in her house. This leads to a hilarious reaction shot and Maggie falling and hitting her head. She wakes up almost immediately to find Sam looking after her. He claims he was driving by and saw the door open and went in to check on her. Really, Lifetime? Are we really doing this?
The police don’t believe that anyone was really in her house, by the way. You know how hysterical women can get when it’s dark.
So here’s where the movie starts to lose me. Maggie finds out the Sheriff took out a second mortgage worth $25,000 and no one knows why. She also finds out that he retired because the entire town thinks he murdered some scumbag that beat the crap out of his son and got away with it. Maggie finds the medical reports and videotaped interrogation of the suspect and FOR NO REASON AT ALL it turns out the child abuser is also the person that grabbed Maggie 20 years ago.
Maggie does some more investigating and finds a series of calls made to an abandoned hotel in the outskirts of town. She shows up there and gets a phone call from a cobwebby pay phone. It’s the voice of the child abusin’ Maggie grabber! When she sprints out of there the large van that’s been trailing her almost hits her.
Seriously, what? Why!?
After a while I guess people figure out that The Sheriff never killed the child abuser, he just paid him $25,000 to leave town and never come back. And the guy in the van is actually his son/victim looking to protect Maggie. And Sam is following her too, also for protection?
The bad guy attacks Maggie and gets shot dead by The Sheriff’s judge friend shoots him dead but with his dying breath he tells Maggie that The Judge is the one who shot The Sheriff. Maggie gets rescued by Sam and The Son.
It’s left unanswered how The Judge managed to do this. The movie makes a point that whoever shot The Sheriff must have been trusted since he was shot with his own gun. But then the movie makes a point that The Sheriff didn’t trust whoever he was meeting so he brought the gun for protection. Well, which is it? It can’t be both!
The Sheriff wakes up and Maggie tells him she’s home. Haha, suck it, poor people of Chicago. Maggie only cares about white people problems now.
AWESOMENESS: 6
Some terrible, terrible acting here. Sam needs to win whatever the opposite of an Emmy is. (I think the opposite of an Emmy is an actual Emmy.) And poor Rena Sofer. Your reaction faces are hilarious.
Acting aside, it’s clear this movie made no sense, right?
HEY IT’S THAT GUY!: 3
Rena Sofer was the paralyzed wife in Heroes and is a long standing celebrity crush of mine until some asshole cut her hair. The Judge was played by The Cigarette Smoking Man from The X-Files.
LIFETIMENESS: 8
I joked earlier that this one really played it by the numbers. The one minority in the the town was the lone police officer (granted, American Indian, not black). There is a high school love left behind for a better tomorrow. Women’s intuition. Even conversations with Ghost Coma Dad!
GRAND TOTAL: 17
WOOF.
H$: A Tribute March 18, 2011
Posted by Rusty in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Right now H$ is in a car or U-Haul headed from Columbus to Baltimore and that blows. Doesn’t blow for her. She’s got a great new job and great new opportunities but it blows for me because I am losing out on one of my favorite television companions (less important) and losing out on a friend (more important).
I moved to Columbus from DC with my girlfriend. I had never been to Ohio before. Friends were hard to come by. Eventually this girlfriend, “Terri,” introduced me to H$ (the first and only person I have ever met to have read Lifetime, Wow without knowing me first). It didn’t take long for me to invite her to write for this site and she repaid the favor infinityfold by helping me find a full-time job at a non-profit that has given my life a purpose that I just didn’t have in DC. And when Terri and I split, my friendship with H$ stayed. That made me very happy.
It’s been pointed out to me that Baltimore has the Internet and therefore Baltimore has The Hulu. We’re not losing a writer or anything like that. And H$ will be making monthly trips back to Cowtown so it’s not like I will never see her again. But, damn it, Columbus is losing a good person and we need to make tribute.
I will miss her very much.
The Secret March 14, 2011
Posted by Rusty in 36-40, the secret.5 comments
Break out your Drudge sirens, ya’ll! The Secret is off the hook. This is mandatory viewing for the Lifetime connoisseur. It’s on my DVR permanently. IT IS IMPORTANT! The Secret wasn’t made for Lifetime. It was an indie film that (correctly) failed to find distribution and never got a theatrical release. Lifetime (correctly) bought the television rights and the rest is history. Sweet, sweet history.
LOOK AT THIS!
The Marrises (Hannah and Benjamin, played by Lili Taylor and Fox Mulder) have a wonderful marriage. They’ve been together for 20 years and still have time to whisper sweet nothings to each other and have face-to-face intercourse. Hannah is a full-time mom and part-time terrible amateur photographer. Benjamin is a successful optometrist who looks at dozens of eyes every day. But his day doesn’t really begin until he looks into Hannah’s. This shit goes on for 15 minutes and the only interruption to the domestic bliss is their obnoxious teenage daughter, Samantha.
To Samantha’s credit, Hannah is a real piece of work. Making your 16-year-old daughter kiss you when you’re dropping her off at her friend’s house is weird. Taking candid pictures of her without her permission is also weird. Samantha might be right when she tells her mom that she will never understand why that shit is so annoying.
(Wanna bet?)
All this boring is broken up when mother and daughter get into a serious car accident.
Both ladies are in a coma. Hannah wakes up first. Then Samantha goes Code Blue. Hannah grabs on to Samantha’s hand. When the doctors make her let go, Samantha gets better but Hannah dies. That’s right, folks! Soul transference! Just like that episode of The X-Files that one time!
As soon as Hamantha wakes up, she goes right to the “I’m really your wife, not your daughter!” spiel. She tells Benjamin about their first date at a Cure concert (haha, Rbert Smith is old as balls) and about how he mentions the day starting with her eyes and how they recently fucked on the stairs. I was really worried that Ben would be in denial about this for the next 60 minutes, but, no. He basically buys this immediately. Awesomely, Fox Mulder insists that “there must be some scientific explanation for this.”
So after Benjamin does some research (Google and talking to a gothy librarian), the Marrises decide that Samantha will come back after Hannah’s soul is ready or some other gobbely gook. So they need to continue Samantha’s life for when she returns. That means playing it cool, making good grades, and maintaining friendships.
Well Samantha’s friends are real pieces of work. The thing is, I buy that they would try to smoke Samantha up at her mom’s funeral. I have friends that would do that. But I do not buy telling a girl at her mom’s funeral that “at least she got her wish” when her mom died. Jesus Christ, dudes.
School is a little better. Somehow this pot-addled, sexually active with two dudes, tattoo of a guy’s name on her butt, total head case is also on the fast track to the Ivy League? Of course, Hannah was more “photo-smart” than “book-smart,” so maintaining Samantha’s grades might get tricky. The solution? Extracurricular activities! Samannah joins the yearbook committee and is immediately wowing everyone with her amazing camera skills.
Unfortunately, handling the social aspects of high school proves more difficult. “Everyone is so young, but they act so old!” is an honest-to-God piece of dialogue in this movie. And of course there’s a scary teen party where everyone is drinking grain alcohol. Hamantha gets fall down drunk LITERALLY the second alcohol touches her lips. Which is nuts because she spends the rest of the movie drinking like a fish with no ill side effects.
Here’s where things get icky. Daughter body, wife soul. And the soul is horny. Reminds me of the old expression: The vagina is the window to the soul. Just like that. It’s clear that Samantha/Hannah (not a girl, not quite a woman) still considers herself married, but her hormones are very much into fucking one of Samantha’s boyfriends (douche drug dealer or older, creepy, maybe abusive dude) or, even better, her yearbook faculty advisor. Thankfully, Samannah takes a step back, reflects on her situation, and decides to seduce her husband/father.
This is so gross. Ben is super drunk so he can forget he wants to fuck his daughter while Hamantha is posing in a white nightie and playing smooth jazz. “A 40-year-old wife in a perfect 16-year-old body…isn’t that every man’s fantasy?” That has to be a rhetorical question, right? She can not be serious. Benjamin manages to have the willpower not to fuck his daughter. Hurray.
This would be the time to mention that The Secret is based on a Japanese novel and film. Of course.
Samannah and Ben continue to pull apart. It turns out life as a high schooler is kind of tough. And what would make it better? Ketamine, obviously. She does ketamine. And you know what happens when someone does ketamine in a Lifetime movie.
FREAK OUT!
Have any of you guys been around a bunch of people snorting ketamine? Jesus, it’s the worst. Like, when people are on coke, you can understand the appeal immediately. Those people look like they’re having a good time and you would also like to have a good time. But ketamine? Ugh. Being around a bunch of teenagers in a K-hole is not fun. There’s no place you’d rather not be. Samantha’s friends use lame drugs.
STOP THAT!
So Ben rescues Hanantha in the middle of her K-hole bad trip (she imagines herself in Hannah’s body covered in blood) and wakes up as Samantha proper. Drugs fix everything! But it doesn’t last. She reverts to Hannah-soul after a night of spooning with Benjamin. But…if Samantha was back, why the spooning? Ew.
Eventually Samantha does come back full time. Samannah prepares for this “inevitability” (I love how they know exactly how this possession is going to play out) by making a videotape telling her daughter/self that she loves her. Great. The End.
AWESOMENESS: 18
Maybe my review comes off as a little bored with the movie. That’s not fair. Yes, shit gets boring at the very end. But only at the very, very end. Before that we have daughter-father seduction and inappropriate intimacy, drugs, angst, sex, and scary teen parties. And it’s well acted and poorly directed! But poorly directed in the way where the filmmaker realllly wants you to know he is directing the shit out of this movie. And that is almost always hilarious.
HEY! IT’S THAT GUY! 10
I gave David Duchovny some crap earlier by calling him Fox Mulder, but it is remarkable how likable he can be despite the fact he is always playing a low-intensity know-it-all. And who doesn’t love Lili Taylor? Always a pleasure.
The daughter was played by Olivia Thirlby from Juno. So that makes three actors who are recognizably famous. That there’s a ten.
LIFETIMENESS: 10
We would have had to deduct points fast if this movie found a way to excuse incest. Thankfully (?) that didn’t happen. Instead we get all of the stuff I mentioned a few paragraphs earlier. Teen panic, drugs, alcohol, mother-daughter troubles, finding yourself, paranormal shit, and, of course, intercourse by natural light. Although the sex here is by candles instead of fireplace. I thought about making that a one point deduction but that’s a bit pedantic, no?
GRAND TOTAL: 38
I believe this is the third highest rated movie in our system. It’s a worthy addition to anyone’s Blu-Ray collection. You really need the HD to get the spooning to pop.
Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy March 1, 2011
Posted by Rusty in 25-29, amanda knox.7 comments
I used to date someone who worked in new media and she always insisted that I never open a blog post with an apology for not posting in a while. Never do that. It’s very amateur hour.
(She also said to always post at 11am or 2pm to maximize page views but in a slutty rush for immediate attention, that goes out the window. Please note that this review is being posted at, like, 9pm. At least it’s not a weekend! [Hint, hint, Kate.])
But, I mean, I am very sorry that eight days after the premiere of Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy, we haven’t posted a review. Part of it was Amanda Knox burn out. The other thing is that after H$ and I watched the movie and when we started working on a review, we realized that we didn’t remember a god damned thing about the movie. We were so busy making snide remarks on the Twitter and the Facebook that we missed the Amanda Knox Forest for the Amanda Knox Trees.
Whatever. Enough is enough. I am churning this bad boy out.
Amanda Knox is from Seattle. She is a Huskie. She likes foreign languages. So off to Italy with her.
GET IT!?
We get to Knox’s beautiful villa (I don’t know if it’s a villa or not but it’s Italian, so whatever) and things are awfully suspicious. Did someone break in? Best to call the police. They find blood, shattered glass, and a dead English poli sci student lady. It takes the police a hot second to realize that the glass was broken from the inside and that the Brit, Meredith Kercher, was killed by someone who didn’t break in. Cheerio, mate!
Now we are in Flashback Italy. Amanda meets Raffaele, a Harry Potter lookalike whose name is not spelled like the Ninja Turtle. Thanks, asshole. Now I have to look it up.
Anyways, Raffaele is clearly the typical Lifetime Evil Dude. He likes manga which is such an obvious sign of trouble. On the plus ledger, Amanda points out that his dad has a lot of money and he is not a geek (FALSE!), so obviously they must date and have a shit ton of intercourse. This intercourse is presumably so hot and awesome that it will make you want to have a three way with an African dude and then stab a lady in the neck parts. Spoiler?
When the police are investigating Meredith’s death, Raffaele and Amanda have the good sense to make out in the waiting room. Later, Amanda practices cartwheels. Hey, jerkwad, Turin hosted the Winter Games. Save that cartwheel shit for Barcelona. Anyways, her ambivalence and detachment raises enough red flags to get the police involved.
Oh, Amanda’s mom, Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden, begs Amanda to come home. Amanda doesn’t listen. This is what the casual observer would refer to as a “whoopsie.”
So the police get it in their head that Raffaele and Amanda are behind everything and they don’t have a real good reason, so, sex murder. They interrogate Raffaele who I swear to God looks and is dressed exactly like Velma from Scooby Doo and he folds like…I dunno, like, a folding chair, I guess?
Next up for hours of interrogation is Amanda. Despite being some kind of language savant, she is a-maybe a-not so a-good with the eye-talian. The interrogators also laughably/awesomely ask Amanda to “use her imagination” when it comes to explaining what “might” have happened that night. She pins it on her boss at a local restaurant.
Of course the boss has an airtight alibi so Amanda Knox and Raffaele are arrested for real this time. The cops tell Amanda that she has HIV and ask for a list of all the men she’s slept with. That list gets leakes and now Amanda Knox isn’t just a murderer, she is a slut. (She also shoves the doctor who tells her it was a false positive. Bet that’s the first and last time he gets attacked for telling someone they didn’t have the bug.)
So she goes on trial with Raffy and some African dude. Amanda’s motive was that she hated Meredith for
If you're going to put muddled mint in a cocktail, I expect lots of bourbon.
1. Telling Amanda to clean up after herself in a shared bathroom
2. Impressing Amanda’s boss by making a really good mojito.
So obviously Meredith was the real villain here. Mojitos are gross.
Amanda’s mom travels to Italy and cried a lot and everyone is convicted and whatever.
If you’ve read this far wondering if Lifetime made Amanda Knox to be a criminal or not, the answer is sadly inconclusive. Lifetime takes no stand here. We know that men are suspicious and male authority figures are especially nefarious, but everything else is up in the air. Someone call Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis, this movie is a Cop Out.
AWESOMENESS: 9 (out of 20)
I’ve long complained of Lifetime’s habit of taking Freytag’s Pyramid and turning the falling action into a 75 minute battle of attrition. This movie is one of the worst offenders. As soon as the authorities determine Knox is a suspect, nothing happens until she is finally convicted. It is brutal. But everything else about it is competent, so yay for low standards.
HEY! IT’S THAT GUY!: 6
Is Hayden Panettiere really that famous? Think about it. She was on a show that had one strong season ratings-wise and then sank like a rock because it was a waste of everyone’s time. I know who she is and was surprised that she sank this low, but I don’t think she’s anything above B-list.
As for Amanda Knox’s mom, Marcia Gay Harden, props for being in the all time classic She’s Too Young. And I suppose props for winning an Oscar. Although I bet if you asked 100 people on the street what movie she won an Oscar for, you’d get an equal number of responses for “I don’t know” and “Who’s Marcia Gay Harden?” Don’t get me wrong, I love Mystic River. But when you’re most famous for a role where you’re the fifth listed cast member, that don’t make you too famous either.
LIFETIMENESS: 10
A little girl lost in a culture she doesn’t understand sleeps with the wrong guy and ends up becoming either a sex-crazed homicidal sociopath OR a little girl lost being framed for murder (by men) with a corrupt judicial system (run by men) so happy to see her go down. I mean, JESUS CHRIST! Even if this weren’t based on a true story this would have been on Lifetime eventually.
GRAND TOTAL: 25
Have you noticed that I give way lower scores than my colleagues? Why am I such a grouch? I think I’m harder on the HEY! IT’S THAT GUY! category. So this review follows type. An Oscar winner and an up-and-coming starlet and SIX! NOT GOOD ENOUGH!
I’d feel a lot worse about it if the movie weren’t such a piece of shit.
Murder On Trial Is A Stupid Title For A Movie February 24, 2011
Posted by H$ in Uncategorized.1 comment so far
You are probably curious to know where our review of the Amanda Knox movie is. It’s not done yet, sorry. We’re working on a special double review and it’s taking us a minute. Our jobs are not as satisfying as this blog, but they do pay for the internet access, so sometimes they need to come first.
In the meantime, you can see our frantic liveblogging of the mess as it unfolded on our Facebook fanpage here. Rusty also tweeted some commentary here. If you’re feeling up to a challenge, read it while you watch the movie and guess what we were complaining about! You can also read our last reviews by clicking the “Reviews, Ratings and Etc” dropdown menu. Anything 30 and up is worth your time.
Optimistically, the new review will be up by tomorrow evening. Realistically, it’ll be Friday. Hold fast, true believers!
Big Night February 21, 2011
Posted by Rusty in Uncategorized.2 comments
As you probably know, tonight is the premiere of the confusingly titled Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy. Lifetime has already pulled a scene of Meredith Kercher begging for mercy in her underwear while being pinned down. On one hand, good call, Lifetime. On the other hand, damn.
Anyways, this movie is so big that H$ and I will not be DVRing it. We are watching it live. And going all new media on this bitch.
So if you want to know what we think as it’s happening, there are two ways you can go about getting your instant Lifetime fix.
1. Follow us on Facebook.
2. Follow me (Rusty) on the Twitter.
It’s all going down at 9pm Eastern Standard. Be there.
No Ordinary Baby February 18, 2011
Posted by H$ in 20-24, H$, no ordinary baby.4 comments
Another week, another late review. Why does H$ lie about when the blogs will go up? Is it because she’s a flaky, deceitful shrew?
Well, yes, but that’s not the only reason.
Official programming note: H$ is packing up her shit and moving to Baltimore!
Isn't he the mayor, or something?
Yes, Baltimore, land of crabcakes and crystal meth. Due to a tight timeline with my new job, I have just about a month to relocate to a city I only know from John Waters films. I will post when I can, but please expect delays as I cram my entire life into a UHaul and schlep it to the East Coast.
Anyway, on to the movie. No Ordinary Baby is one of those disappointing Lifetime movies with an awesome premise and a boring execution. I mean, clones! Baby intrigue! Mad science! Should have been amazing. Unfortunately for us, the cloning aspect is pretty straightforward and the focus is more on mommy issues and the oppressive weight of the paparazzi.
The movie starts with Dr. Gordon, a reproductive health specialist who is all about making babies happen through science, or making science happen through babies. She gets do a little of both when she implants a healthy cell from a dead child’s cornea into a zygote, which produces a cute lil’ cloned fetus for the Hytner family. The cloned fetus, who is named “Amy”, has about 9 months to kill in the womb before anyone plans on releasing any information on her existence. Unfortunately for Dr. Gordon and the happy family, a nurse at the Rerproductive Health Center (could the name be anymore generic?!) thinks that Dr. Gordon has cloned a fetus by peeing in the face of God. She decides to release the deets to the media in order to, uh…just be a dick about the whole thing, I guess. Her motives aren’t really explicable besides “BOO CLONES, YAY TV”.
The reporter who gets the news is Linda St. Clair, a woman who favors trashy journalism and Hillary Clinton pantsuits over substance and style. When we first meet her, she’s editing footage of rats into her restaurant reporting and bemoaning her inability to find a great story. Good thing Nurse Ex Machina gets her number out of the yellow pages. Linda gets the documents, cutie-pies a hunky doctor into reading them for her (gag), and confront Dr. Gordon with the evidence.
This is the part of the movie where we get to know Dr. Logan, who may be my favorite bit player in any Lifetime movie ever. Dr Logan is a Russian doctor who loves cloning and babies and has no time for your bullshit. When Dr. Gordon runs over to let him know the story is going to leak, he gleefuly asks if they’ll get their Nobel Prizes in the slammer. When a review board member asks why they used their own funding to pay for the research, he asks what kook or cult he should have approached for funding. When Linda chases him into a bathroom looking for a quote, he dries his hands on her jacket and calls her a parasite. This dude is my hero. If him and Petrocelli from The Bad Son starred in a procedural drama, I’d run it’s fan club.
Anyway, in case you couldn’t tell, the story leaks and Drs Gordon and Logan end up in deep shit. They lose their funding and are hounded by Jesus freaks at every turn. The Hytners are able to keep their identities safe for a while, but eventually Linda starts hounding them too. Linda is all about the story, which is soon picked up by Network Dan for his News Hour. In case you were curious, Network Dan is not a pimp, but a thinly-veiled caricature of Dan Rather. Why does this movie insist on having Dan Rather in it? Who knows, but Linda is all up on his jock 24-7 and wants network play, so she’ll get the story…at any price.
Actually, nothing that bad happens. Dr. Gordon and Dr. Logan have a press conference where they call everyone who doesn’t like cloning a big pack of pussies and say they’ll continue their research forever. You go, girls! The press gets a little harsh on Dr. Gordon, who has a sad little scene where her diabetic son asks if she would have bothered keep a kid with diabetes if she could have bred a superchild instead. Dr. Gordon is too polite to say what I would have, which is that if I could custom breed children they’d all have gills and breathe fire and protect my underground fort. So she gives hi a hug and tells him all kids are precious, forever, and he is a special little snowflake of love. Whoo-hoo.
SHUT UP, DUCK. NOBODY CARES.
In the meantime, the press is also getting to the Hytner family. The Hytners are a middle-class, middle-aged couple who chose to clone their previous child because they were too old to conceive and wanted a child that was exactly like the one who died in a car accident. Seems healthy. Tired of being demonized as monsters and egotists to a world that doesn’t know who they are, Mr. Hytner approaches Linda to tell their story. At first Linda is all “ew, cloney” but then she hears the story about the dead kid and softens up because her husband died of cancer and she understands what it is like to want to bring back someone you’ve lost. I can’t really diss this subplot, because can’t fault a Lifetime movie for being emotional and sentimental any more then I can fault a duck for quacking.
The story runs on Network Dan’s Funtime News Variety Hour, and instead of short-circuting the paparazzi it intensifies their focus by revealing where the Hytners are hiding out and what they look like. A bomb threat at the hospital where Mrs. Hytner is staying frightens her into premature labor. Amy is born early that morning, and appears healthy and relatively cute for a newborn. However, she soon develops respiratory problems and goes into an incubator. In the meantime, the press continues to hound the Hytners, haunting the lobby of the hospital and sneaking a hidden camera into a “congratulations” bouquet. In the climax of the film, a tearful Dr. Gordon addresses the paparazzi to inform them that baby Amy died of respiratory failure, it wasn’t because of her cloniness, and everyone should just go the hell home already. A weepy Linda shares this news with the world via camera, and the media circus grinds to a halt.
Or does it? (It doesn’t.) Cut to one year later, and Network Dan Riley is asking Linda to track down the Hytners for an baby death anniversary interview. Man, the press are jackals, huh? Linda women’s-intuitions her way to a cabin in the woods, where she thinks the Hytners may be hiding out to avoid the press. Surprise surprise- a very alive baby Amy is celebrating her 1st birthday. Turns out they faked the crib death scenario to get Linda off their back. Dr. Gordon, who apparently follows this family everywhere they go, confronts Linda and begs her not to tell. Linda replies that Dr. Gordon was kind of a bitch about the whole thing and that she should have trusted her not to spread the news. This would be a more compelling argument if she had not followed a blind tip into the middle of nowhere to ask the Hytners how they felt about their dead clone baby for a national news network. Blah blah blah, Linda keeps their secret, good for her. The end
Awesomeness: 10
The DVD cover is misleadingly awesome.
I actually want to applaud this movie for doing something I didn’t expect: it was pro-science, pro-cloning, and pro-women all the way. Linda is a shitty person, but Dr. Gordon is a science hero who sees cloning technology and gene therapy as a way to help parent have healthy, happy kids. She’s an accomplished doctor that is competent, smart, and dedicated to her patients. When a crackpot on the street approaches her about using her science for eugenics, she shuts him (and critics of the film’s premise) down with logic and tact. OK, she’s kind of a distracted parent, but who the hell isn’t in a Lifetime movie? The thesis of the film seems to be that medical science and reproductive health are A-OK things for ladies to enjoy and pursue, and that people who are scared of science are a bunch of assholes. I agree with both of those ideas, so I appreciate this movie for that. However, it was also boring and treacley. A lot of things happened in this movie that I did not bother to talk about, simply because they were too dull to be funny. So 10 points for message and Dr. Logan’s awesome hand-wiping trick, but 0 points for anything else.
Star Power: 8
Man, remember when Bridget Fonda was famous? That was weird. You’ll also recognize Mary Beth Hurt as Dr. Gordon and Mrs. Hytner as George Costanza’s girlfriend from a season 3 episode of Seinfeld. None of these people are currently famous, so a full 10 points would be unwarranted, but 8 seems fair.
Lifetimeliness: 5
I’m cutting it in half because there were positive female role models and reproductive freedom was tacitly approved of. However, motherhood made cloning OK. That’s gotta be worth 5 points.
23 seems right. Dont waste your time on this one unless you really miss Bridget Fonda. Rusty’s up next with that Amanda Knox thing. Should be worth a read!
Kate
Rusty
H$
