Today, two great tastes that taste great together: Olympic Pairs skating, and the greatest sports movie ever made, The Cutting Edge.

Here’s the thing about The Cutting Edge: it’s a seriously early-90s movie, as evidenced by D. B. Sweeney and Moira Kelly. It is super-predictable. It also tries to tackle What Ambitious Women Are Up Against, and ends up saying, “Ambitious women are up against an awful lot! Poor thing; let’s give her a boyfriend to help her with that.”

On the other hand, it is a movie that tells you pretty much everything you need to know about pairs skating, so at least it’s useful! It will be especially useful when applied to the Pairs event that just wrapped at the Vancouver Olympics.

“It’s a bounce spin into a throw twist?”
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Today at Tor.com, I talk about SyFy’s new reimagined-fairy-tale movies of the week. First up will be Beauty and the Beast (naturally), starring Estella Warren (naturally).

Do I think this will be awesome? Yes. But it has some serious work to do if it’s ever going to compare to the most amazing version of this story ever broadcast, and I think you know which I mean.

This one. (Immortalized here on Greendale Elementary’s picture day.)

Now, this show is not amazing for its overall storyline (which was three ounces of story in a two-gallon jug). Nor is it memorable for its individual episodes, which tended to be like the 90s remake of The Tomorrow People, in that almost every episode featured someone new learning about the underground society that has existed in secrecy for decades, except that judging by the discovery rate on the show, by now everyone in New York probably knows about it and just doesn’t realize it’s common knowledge because it doesn’t come up in conversation. The Underground Renaissance Faire: New York’s best-kept secret.

But neither one of those is the element that makes the show truly timeless. That would be the wardrobe.

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Today at Tor.com I talk about some awfulsome Christian horror movies.

Two things about this article:

1) I am not joking about The Prophecy. Simon is a wounded angel hiding in the abandoned wing of a school, and when he realizes Gabriel is coming for him, he coaxes little Mary close enough that he can spit the soul he’s carrying into her body so Gabriel doesn’t find it.

This is not weird in terms of heavenly amorality, ends justifying the means, etc. It’s unsettling, but the whole idea is that the heavenly agenda can’t be understood by mortal men, so that’s all fine. But what this means in real life is that Eric Stoltz looked at the script and went, “Okay, I fight an angel, sure, I talk to the agnostic, okay, I make out with a twelve-year-old, sure, and then Gabriel kills me. I don’t see any problems here! Sign me up!”

And seriously, Eric Stoltz is creepy enough without watching him French kiss a child, okay? You can’t un-ring that bell.

2) I kid about Stigmata, but no joke, I think that movie is awesome, and here’s why.

“Lift a stone, and you will find me.”
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So, The Young Victoria comes out today! I had the honor of seeing it early on a plane coming back from France. (I also had the honor of seeing it three times, because we sat for two hours on the tarmac and a bunch of other weird things happened. Maybe you guys want to have more than one watchable movie per flight, Air France? Cool.)

Anyway, after seeing it three times in a row, and realizing I always felt like I had dozed off for parts in the middle even though I hadn’t, I had some problems. Then I realized if I watched it three times in a row and enjoyed it, then I had some OTHER problems, but we’ll get to those some other time.

The point is, review and picspam below! Be warned, there’s vague spoilery talk, though nothing that happens in the movie should come as a surprise, since it happened a hundred years ago and we’ve all had plenty of time to catch up.

“In which there are more puffed sleeves than you can handle.”
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As part of my Strange Horizons bribe post, requested Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

I hadn’t thought much about the movie in years, except to think, “Maxine of Arc, Dave Beeth Oven,” whenever people make awkward introductions. So I rewatched it.

Man, this movie is HILARIOUS.

“You are dealing with the oddity of time travel with the greatest of ease.”
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