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Miss Universe 2011

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missuniverseromania
Miss Universe! Yes, it’s that time again, when hopeful young ladies gather from all around the world to grin their beautiful hostage grins into the camera, and to be dressed like fools in “National Dress” by horrible pageant planners secretly trying to test what young ladies are willing to wear on camera. That answer came back: Practically anything. I have tried to look at this and understand what happened. In the past, this category has been spectacularly awesome (Thailand!) or hilariously fun (the national costume of Iceland is dignity!). This year is what I can only term a Hot Mess, with Intermittent Laughter. This year also seems to be the year that the always-fantastical undercurrent of this whole glittery mess went from subtext to text: Tanzania, auditioning for a role in the inevitable Metropolis remake, and/or putting mortal fear into her enemy contestants. Either way, SUCCESS. However, she had some serious competition in the Science Fiction and Fantasy category. Under this cut, a bajillion pictures.… Read more »

The Catherine Cookson Experience: “The Wingless Bird”

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I fell off the wagon about these in a major way, didn’t I? And in the home stretch! Shame on me. For those who are new since my last one (welcome!), a bit about the Catherine Cookson Experience. Catherine Cookson, author of historical potboilers, enjoyed a magnificent heyday between about 1995 and 1997, in which the BBC went NUTS for her and filmed approximately eight hundred of her books in an attempt to employ every actor from Great Britain, Scotland, and Ireland it could get its hands on, and also to use up a lot of sawed-off basketballs they needed to use to simulate pregnancy. More than a year ago, in a fit of good judgment, I embarked on a quest to watch every Catherine Cookson movie ever filmed. As it turns out, that is very difficult, partly because there are so many of them, and partly because some of them are just the worst ever and involve a lot of asshole dads and/or men getting romantically interested in a girl he met when she… Read more »

SAG 2011 Red Carpet Rundown

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JUliaOrmond
The SAG awards were last night! For those who get confused this time of year (it’s understandable, they really pack them in during Stylist Season), the Oscars are the ones people really want, the Golden Globes are the ones where everyone gets drunk, and this is the one where actors can finally stop pretending they care about any of the categories except the acting ones. The red carpet presence for this affair was a little unexpected, both in terms of who showed, and how they looked. For some of these actors, they’ll regret not wearing their outfits to the Golden Globes instead; for some of these actors, they’ll just regret. (Sad fact: right now the West Coast is suffering a crippling body-scrub shortage, and it’s all these peoples’ fault.)… Read more »

What to Expect When You’re Expecting Catherine Cookson

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So, before we begin dissecting individual episodes, there are some things we need to talk about. They are not spoilers, per se; that would imply that knowing about them spoils how the plot will go, which implies that there is any plot to begin with, which is very sweet of you to think but not really so much what Catherine Cookson was good at. So these aren’t so much spoilers as they are ingredients; combining them in different ways produces different kinds of cookies in an unsurprising but delicious process. Please be warned; some of Catherine’s favorite tropes are totally skeevy. I’ll label the episodes that have nasty goings-on, so those who would rather not deal can just skip. On to the tropes! Class Issues: Universal theme that more or less singlehandedly pilots the plot of every single one of these suckers. I have not seen a Cookson miniseries with fewer than three social classes in the mix. If she had a primary obsession, it would be this. Illegitimate Bairns: If she had a secondary… Read more »

Golden Globes: Totally Random Red-Carpet Rundown

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emmathompson
So, the Golden Globes happened, and people declared undying love for their costars and their pets, but let’s face it, it’s all about the red carpet. I seriously hated 90% of the dresses this time, so I am not even doing a worst-of (well, with one exception, but she’s hateful and deserves it), so this is a random collection of looks I really liked. Best Color: Rumer Willis, which shows how bad this red carpet was; I mean, Rumer Willis is not really a bastion of good taste under normal circumstances, but you gotta give the girl credit for being the only one on the red carpet in this color, which could not be said of electric blue or runny-egg yellow, which were just EVERYWHERE, which – people, you pay your stylists to make you look GOOD. Don’t let them just mess with you! Ahem. Clearly this ranty dress collection is not for the bandwidth-thrifty.… Read more »
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