what may or may not be hard reality

Just came home from ( Avatar - lots of spoilers under here )

So lore_85 made a really inspiring list with her favourite lesbian couples, and I just had to make one of my own.

( List under here, complete with graphics and comments! )

This is how I will always remember her. Not necessarily my singular favourite scene (I have so many!) from The Parent Trap, but definitely the most touching one. I upgraded last year from my old VHS to the DVD with all the extras, and it was so worth it. I love this movie. I watch it a couple of times a year. Natasha Richardson and Lisa Ann Walter and Lindsay Lohan being young and adorable, and it has sunshine and happiness and lots of fun. I've seen the original, and it was good, but it just didn't have that same *warmth* as the re-make. There aren't many movies I've ever seen that have that kind of warmth. Mamma Mia! has it. Finding Nemo has it to some extent. Good family films are supposed to have it, but only a select few manage. I love this movie.

Hallie: "I hope you're not mad, because I love you so much, and I just hope that one day you can love me as me, and not as Annie."

Cold Vengeance: and believe me, it *pains* me to say this, because Christina is in it (top-billing and all), but I'm sorry, Christina, I really totally didn't like this at all...

( So naturally I wrote 1688 words on it... )

Random movie commentary. A few spoilers, but nothing much.

( Mamma Mia! )

( An Unexpected Love )

So last Friday (a week ago, that is, I just kept not finishing the write-up) I finally got to see The X-Files: I Want to Believe. It's not that long ago, but it feels longer. I'm still tired. 25 just doesn't bounce back the same way 18 did. Erg. Anyway. I loved it. I guess I'm pretty easy to please, though, I went 'OMG GILLIAN IS SO PRETTY!!!' the first time Scully showed up on the screen, and after that I didn't much care what happened as long as Scully was awesome.

( A few spoilers and lots of rambling under here... )

Although I gotta admit I'm on the side of 'debatable', apparently the world has decided that Jodie Foster is out these days. Which of course makes me very very happy! Either way, I've adored Jodie in movies for years and years and years, and some I've loved, some I've liked, and some I've endured only because it's Jodie. However, considering my favourite genre of all is adventure comedies (although not necessarily the ones geared specifically towards children, but it's Jodie, so I don't care) I'm so very much looking forward to Nim's Island, and the trailer (supposedly) just showed up! (It's not like I've been looking for it actively, but I've kept my eyes open.) And it looks just perfect for me. Jodie is hilarious, the island is cool, and it looks all good. April 4th, here I come!!

( Watch the trailer under here!! )

In preparation for January 6th I've also been watching some old L Word episodes, and found myself *squeeing* very very happily. Oooooh, Bette/Jodi, I'm sorry Tina, but after seeing Bette and Jodi together I'm quite far away from your camp on this issue. And Helena, god she's gorgeous. *swoon* And Alice is adorable, and even the Shane/Shay storyline had me giggling happily... Clearly it's been way too long since last year's season finale...

I just wanna give a shout-out to CutThroat Island, that I watched tonight. I'd seen it years ago, and remembered liking it (tho not really remembering plot, or anything like that), and then I saw it again tonight. I've been a fan of Geena Davis for a long time, Long Kiss Goodnight has always been a favourite, and while Madam President paled a little next to The West Wing, it was still awesome, whatwith Geena, and the female president thing!

Anyway, having listened to the extras on my new DVD, apparently CutThroat was the biggest pirate movie there ever had been back in '95 when it came out. And not only is the main hero!pirate a woman, the woman in question happens to be one of the most awesome female characters I've ever come across in film.

This movie has *every* opportunity to fall into the classic annoying male/female pattern that so many other movies with female leads succumb to, but it never does. Even with female action leads she's never really allowed to be cooler than her male love interest. When they're alone together she always has to display some weakness that the outer world isn't allowed to see, but that still proves that the love interest is the *man* in the relationship.

Not so with Morgan Adams. She sets out to avenge her father's death, and find the Treasure while she's at it, and in the process acquires a slave/love interest. And she's constantly one step ahead of him, never gives in to his demands, never appears fazed by whatever little tricks he's got up his sleeve.

Not once in the entire movie is he needed to console her, or save her, or reassure her, or whatever, because she's perfectly able to take care of herself. It's not that whimpy 'she can take care of herself because she has to, but it's so much better to have a man to do it for her', no, Morgan likes being on her own, trusting no-one but herself, but she also likes William, and is willing to have him in her life, provided he knows his place (something that annoying Mr First Lady had great troubles with). And William does know his place, even has the decency to need her to rescue him a few times, which is awesome.

And she wins all the staring contests. Now that's my kinda action heroine!

So with fyca having cruelly abandoned me, I suppose I'll move my commentary over here...

( As-I'm-watching commentary on 'In Her Line of Fire' - spoilers )

Well, lacking energy and content for a real post, here's Congratulations to Ellen for winning all those Emmys!! Ellen has The Cutest Thank You Message Ever on her website, go listen to it! And there was kissing, and adorable stuff left and right. To celebrate, here is the wallpaper for the occasion! (with an Oscar wallpaper as bonus, and an additional Alexandra Hedison wallpaper as extra bonus because I adore her.)



In other news, yay! Vacation! Which is awesome, only I don't quite know what to do with myself. Finally saw Pirates 2 last week, so I could then go see Pirates 3, but really, all it did for me was leave me with a distinct desire to see Lord of the Rings, because that's the way Legolas is *supposed* to look. ( Some spoilers here, though. )

Started out the day nice and quietly with some Ellen (which doesn't differ from most other days, which shows this is not necessarily a recipe for wasting a day, but rather a good guide to starting out your day in a nice and healthy fashion, providing you assume I generally lead relatively productive and happy days). Puppy Episode commentary from my new pretty Season 4 box! Yay! Three of the writers, I think it were, and basically they talked about Ellen, what a wonderful actress she is, and other aspects of the Great One, which I whole-heartedly approve of. Compare with Fireflycommentary by Mal and Wash where they spend the entire hour raving about the beauty of Gina Torres (yay!) vs. Bats commentary by Lou Diamond-Phillips (did you know he was married to Melissa Etheridge's ex? I think I have known, at some point, but was reminded again just the other day) and some other dude, and they mentioned Dina Meyer once (nay!).

Continued the day with more Ellen, but this time in movie format, which is slightly different from most days. Goodbye Lover, starring Patricia Arquette, whom I found surprisingly pretty, having written her off completely after seeing those Medium previews. Erotic thriller comedy, I believe it was billed as when I saw it late one night many many years ago, (I was littler then) because it had Sound of Music in the tv guide summary. And even if the Sound of Music had relatively little to do with it, I still remembered liking it. However, I had not seeing it again until today, but it was still good. I rather liked it a whole lot, actually. Ellen was, of course, fabulous. She curses, and glares, and insults, and SHOOTS A GUN and ( spoiler )!!!! Wooo. And is pretty darn great at all of it. My mother didn't even realize it was her, did a double-take, and went I had no idea Ellen could actually look evil. Good movie. Fun movie. Even if ( spoiler ) It's a silly movie, but gosh, I adore it. Go watch it, people.

Quote of the Movie:
Ellen: "We wanna separate potential suspects from your average scumbag citizen."
Naïve Rookie Partner: "Ma'am, you know, we're sworn to serve and protect. If you hate everybody so much, why are you doing this job?"
Ellen: "'Cause every once in a while, I get to shoot somebody."
~Goodbye Lover

Finished off with some Remington Steele episodes and commentary from my new shiny boxes. *proud owner of all five seasons!!* Again, commentators I approved of. Creator and producer/director. They spent most of their time either talking about how much fun they had setting up various scenes and shots, which I enjoyed listening too, but still left a whole lot of time to talk about how beautiful Stephanie Zimbalist is, and what a great actress she is, and how good she and Pierce Brosnan are together, and basically fan!squeeing, which I whole-heartedly approve of. She is gorgeous, young Stephanie, (and if you don't know who she is, then shame on you! you need look no further than my icon here, isn't she lovely?) and the nostalgia over all the love my innocent little baby dyke heart felt for her way back when is sweet and strong and I still love her, and the show, and mmm... Gosh. How could I not *know*?

Which managed to get me through most of the hours of daylight.

Ended the evening with some more Remington Steele, and some behind the scenes thing it was billed as with "revealing character profiles". It was mostly present-day interviews with various people involved, and by the gods they'd managed to dig a lot of people out of the woodwork. No Stephanie, though. Which I'm simultaneously saddened and secretly relieved at. Little 10-year-old me worshipped her so intensely there's still a part of me that might be disappointed were she to turn out to be just a regular human being.

Reasons the evening is so nice:

1 - Pleasantly fuzzy around the edges from wine with dinner and over-tiredness and the knowledge of having absolutely nothing but ice cream and Ellen on my schedule tomorrow.

2 - Watching Prime on DVD, Meryl Streep and Uma Thurman are fantastic. ( A few ending spoilers for the movie. )

3 - Greeting me at the top of my flist is a gorgeous picture of Tina Fey and Stephanie March, from AfterEllen's Best. Lesbian-ish. Day. Ever. blog, along with the news that 30 Rock has been renewed for the rest of the season! Yay!

4 - A bit further down, also from the Lesbian-ish. Day. there's a Moomin (Mumin! It's spelled Mumin!) reference, and the comments inform me that Tove Jansson was a lesbian. How did I not know that??

5 - And again, from the Lesbian-ish. Day. The news of a new sitcom with Allison Janney, along with a casually inserted video of Allison and Ellen on Ellen, competing to high heavens. Wheee!

Moral of the Story:

Getting lesbianishday right into my f-list is so awesome!! Go friend it! That, and Uma Thurman and Meryl Streep are fantastic.

Have a nice weekend, people! I'm off for a two-day orienteering event, and I seriously doubt I'll see any signs of civilization internet while I'm there. I'm even going to be brave and not bring Precious. Shall I survive two days without her? I'm hoping to force myself to finish Affinity, but I'm bringing some Laurie King for comfort. Still, it's gonna be fun, and I'll be back by late Monday. So see you then!

In other news, M and I saw Transamerica the other day, and ( I've got a quick spoilerish debatable question for anyone who has seen it... )

And my Epic (yeah yeah, shut up, I'm a drabble person) Queen Slash Fic just passed 5000 words! Wooot! (I just wish the EP♥AG would flow with the same ease... 2196 words to date, and 228 of those are plot. Ehem.)

The WTF27 isn't quite where I'd hoped it would be, either. I'm gonna do my best to get the ones with requested characters up by Friday, but there's a few with just my own characters that might be a few days delayed. Please don't skin me alive. (Not that you would, you know, considering it's my own challenge, and all that, but still...) I had no idea the traveling I've done would leave so little time for writing. My goodness. But I was never left alone, and the muse tends to walk out on me after a few distractions like this:

( Now, spreading the word is a good thing, but does anyone else just want to strangle the nth person asking about what on earth fanfic is? )

Mmm, the second and final part of Category 7: The End of the World tonight. And dude, it was just as good, if not better, than the first.

Of course, right at the very end, when CreepyCrazyOldGuy was hitting on Prue, I had a wee bit of trouble hearing what they were saying, due to extremities blocking parts of the sound, and a weird humming noise interfering with the rest. I think it went something like this, though:

CreepyCrazyOldGuy: So, lay it on me. I'm tough, I can take it. Do I stand any chance with you?
Prue: No, you don't stand any chance with me at all...
CreepyCrazyOldGuy: *disappointed look*
Prue: ...because my girlfriend would be really pissed off.
CreepyCrazyOldGuy: *disappointed look* becomes *speculative look* Can I watch?
Prue: No.

And then he kissed her goodbye on the mouth, because they'd been through a lot and close to death together, and they went their separate ways. Yes. That's exactly what happened.

So it's been raining the *entire afternoon*, and it's *still raining*!!! Of course it got even colder, but I don't care, because it's RAINING!!! Yay! Oooh, my herb garden is gonna be so happy, and all my little wild strawberry plants scattered throughout the yard, and the willow tree, and maybe now the blueberries and mushrooms will grow (tho they said on the news that most of this years blueberry harvest would already be lost), and the blackcurrants might be a little bigger, too... Rain is good. More rain is better. After that I won't mind a bit of sunshine, again, but I shan't complain. Rain is good.

Finished the evening by watching a very suitable first part of a mini-series: Category 7: The End of the World... which is basically The Day After Tomorrow, only a year later. I mean, good grief, they even have the same damn weather theory. Sort of. Anyway, there was lots of rain on TV, and lots of rain outside the windows. Coincidentally, the day after we'd been to see Day After Tomorrow 2 years ago, in the summer, it started raining. For two weeks straight. Of course we didn't walk around mumbling ominously it's starting... yes, preciouss, starting it is...

Anyway, it's quite insane, my sister and I sat there going 'Oh, look, that's *him/her*!'. Delko from CSI: Miami, Krycek from X-Files, Dinah from Birds of Prey, Claudia from Relic Hunter, Prue from Charmed, a bunch of other actors more famous than the ones from my shows, and, of course, the best thing about the entire bloody film, the lead, Gina Gerson. She even has a very cute assistant, played by Andrea Lui, who hasn't been in any show I've ever watched, but who is, as mentioned, very cute. And spunky. And such. There's a part II tomorrow night, maybe it'll keep my interest long enough to write a drabble. It's even pretty interesting. They've screwed up a bunch of scientific logic stuff already, but they're mostly trying. Even if we've seen it all before. My kind of film, lots of action, hot chick, and some general panic. Mmmm, more tomorrow.

Now, if you haven't seen Imagine Me & You, you absolutely should. It's a lovely and sweet movie about a girl who's about to get married to a lovely guy, but then she meets the girl who's doing the flowers for the wedding, and they immediately connect. If that sounds like something you're even remotely interested in seeing, you should, and that means you shouldn't click the cut below. Not that there's a hell of a lot to spoil, but still, watch the movie first, and read later. You can start by watching the trailer HERE. Lena Headey's so very gorgeous.

( Imgine Me & You - spoilers! )