Last night I went over to Nessa’s house in an attempt to get into work this morning at a reasonable hour (I failed, we stayed up until 1:00 a.m. then went to work at my usual time which is late). We spent the entire evening slumped on her couch yelling at her flatscreen with her apartment-mate. I don’t normally post people’s real names, but Nessa’s apartment-mate has the best name. You ready? Edward Christmas. For real. Wait, it gets better. Upon learning his name, I immediately nicknamed him “Edward Christmas-Hands”, because that’s what you do, it’s so easy. It turns out that I am the first person in his life to call him that, and he’s, like, thirty years old. Why, after thirty years, am I the first person to come up with this? Shame on you, everyone else. But I digress.
So me, Nessa and Edward Christmas-Hands sat on the couch and watched Taken, Man on a Ledge and Pretty In Pink. An eclectic blend, I agree, but that’s how it ended up. Taken was on TV and you can’t turn that movie off once it starts, so we got to watch Liam Neeson kill a plethora of naughty, human-trafficking Albanians. Very satisfying. I came to an appalling realization during the auction scene, the scene where they sell Liam Neeson’s daughter for $350,000. I said, “Yeah, I don’t think I would buy someone for anywhere near that much money, I don’t care if she’s hot, white and a virgin*, that’s too much.” Which means I have a notion of how much I would pay for a person, and that number is about $50,000, tops. And now I know I’m okay with the buying and selling of people. Awesome. Self-discovery is the greatest.
That film was followed by Man on a Ledge. OMG, this movie sucked in all directions, like an exploding star of suckery. I think it was in the theaters for a total of three seconds which, after seeing this, is three seconds too long. It felt like a crappy Syfy channel film, that level of plot development and acting, but without a sharktopus or piranhaconda to make it exciting. Here are two striking examples of badness. One, the lead actor who is from England as was attempting to sound like a New Yorker, swung in and out of a Jersey Shore and Australian accent. And Kyra Sedgwick plays a Latino News reporter. KYRA SEDGWICK. Did no one show up to the audition? The Evas, both Mendes and Longoria, they had stuff to do that day and no one could reschedule? Word to the wise: Watch this only if you are in a foreign land and it’s been dubbed over. And you don’t speak the language. And you have to guess at what’s happening. Then it might be tolerable.
And finally I saw Pretty in Pink. It was okay. Duckie is super-annoying. I decided he’s allowed to be annoying because in one shot they show him in his bedroom, this sweetly irritating high-school student, and he’s sitting on a mattress on the floor with spray paint on the wall behind, it totally looks like a crack den. Does Duckie live in a crack den? Poor little feller.
Anyway, most of the movie follows around Molly Ringwald’s character who’s supposed to be fashion-forward but basically dresses like an artsy Orthodox Jew. Seriously, I’ve seen members of FLDS show more skin than her. Then, to complete the fashion travesty, she takes her co-worker’s cool 1960’s pink dress and a nice pink poofie dress her father buys her, we watch a dressmaking montage, and then there’s the reveal… on this.
What the hell is that home ec. tablecloth potato sack doing there? She had TWO perfectly fine dresses and she managed to combine both into a singular crappy one AND she gets the guy at the end??? Is there no God? John Hughes, if you were still alive I would write you a stern letter stating my disapproval. Indeed I would. Still like Breakfast Club though. Nice work on that.
*Their criteria of valuable attributes, not mine.
Addendum – 3/29/13: Look what just popped up on Buzzfeed today! http://www.buzzfeed.com/jeslyncat/every-outfit-andie-wears-in-pretty-in-pink-82l2
