Filmwatching…

kelly-yoyoKelly and I have been watching Daria, Daria and more Daria ever since we got the box set, and have been delighted to discover that not only does it hold up nicely, but there was an entire season we missed. Yesterday, though, we broke pattern, watching first the Merlin pilot and then, later, a movie.

We have a long enough list of wanna-see films at Zip that by the time something actually arrives at our house, we’ve often forgotten which of us wanted to see it and who it was recommended it. So it was with Five Across the Eyes, whose production values were so incredibly low that we gave it less time than we spent watching the previews (for Anamorph and Pathology, both of which got added to the queue. If they are appalling, let us know!)

I had been in the mood for some horror, but the other thing we had in hand was Christmas in Connecticut. By chance I do remember when I zipped this: it was in 2007, just before Kelly went to Taos Toolbox, and it was something Connie Willis had recommended in pre-workshop e-mails, or some interview she’d given at around that time.

We threw it in. It’s a 1945 romantic comedy, with Barbara Stanwyck and Dennis Morgan–neither of whom I remember seeing before in anything–and thoroughly delightful. There’s some interesting gender stuff–the male love object is quite passive, almost demure, and Barbara is an independent career woman who’s chasing him, in an adorable way, from the moment he wanders into her field of vision. By the end, of course, Dennis does get to prove he’s got some manly initiative, but it’s not a big reversal, or in any way a diminishing of Barbara’s awesome. The cast has a collective chuckle over her lack of traditional girl skills, she’s in no way crushed, and we end with love.

Definitely a better way to spend the night than watching five badly-shot teenaged girls getting (one assumes) dismembered.

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About Alyx Dellamonica

After twenty-two years in Vancouver, B.C., I've recently moved to Toronto Ontario, where I make my living writing science fiction and fantasy; I also review books and teach writing online at UCLA. I'm a legally married lesbian, a coffee snob, and I wake up at an appallingly early hour.

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