Here are three super-concise reviews from Mr. M:

On Steve McQueen's "Hunger":
"Jews don't do hunger strikes."
(He liked it, I could tell especially the part about Sands' participation in cross-country running as a boy. Mr. M had entered university on a track scholarship).

On Kevin Power's "Bad Day in Blackrock":
"All the two page chapters are a sign it's written for the short-attention span generation."

And Andrew Nugent's "Murder in the Four Courts":
"He offered too many implausibles in the end to wrap up the plot."

"Why is every movie a meditation on revenge? Is it a matter of pandering to our baser instincts or am I overthinking it and he's just out to entertain?"

"They're all the same movie," the husband opined over breakfast. "Samuel Jackson quotes the bible; Brad Pitt talks about the perils of them taking off the Nazi uniform."

"Oh, the speech before the violence/punishment."

"Exactly."

I wouldn't argue each film is identical, but the dude obviously has his preferred themes and narrative patterns clearly distinguished by this point in his career. "Inglorious Basterds" was enjoyable, helmed by strong performances (I even liked Brad Pitt), humour, gore and a fine score. The David Bowie song was an inspired touch. Tarantino took a cue from Spielberg in recognizing that audiences love to see Nazis get shitcanned. He does a masterful job of slowing down the pace and dialogue in order to create tension and build suspense in a manner that shows his maturation as a writer and director.

The search for a tasty veggie burger (and I mean one you seek out, not one you begrudgingly order because it's the only thing you can eat on the menu) can be as elusive as trying to find a functional moral compass in shrub's administration. Seriously, most restaurants serve a soy abomination such as the Boca style hockey -puck, or else it's dripping with artificial flavors designed to fool you into thinking that it's real meat. The worst ever was on the menu at Whelan's Gate in Toronto, across from the doggie day care place. Within ten minutes of finishing we were both overcome with an enormous amount of phlegm. Not attractive.

But lo! Jo' Burger has two varieties of meatless patties that are lip-smackingly delicious.
I went for the chickpea/red pepper/coriander topped with emmenthal, their tomato relish, sliced tomato, red onion and lettuce. Mr. M had the sweet potato/onion/mushroom topped with rocket pesto and something else. His resembled a latke, only thicker. I have to think if they can make a gourmet veggie burger then the traditional moo-cow type has to be pretty damn good as well. The chips were good although I think you really need black pepper available in every restaurant and they should come with ketchup. Mr. M went for the sweet potato chips but they looked a bit on the dry side so I skipped them.
The service was spot-on, friendly and the prices are completely reasonable.
We'll go back for sure.

Eggs has this affectless demeanor and has no charisma or passion in his sexy-time scenes with Tara in "TrueBlood," but he crossed the line when he insulted Lafayette's resplendent eyelashes in episode 9.
A bitch will get cut for that.

Tara's howling for Maryanne as her cousin carried her away made my hair stand on end.
Fabulous!

"Pavee Lackeen" ranks as one of the worst films I've seen.

There's no reconciling all the critical praise or awards it garnered.

It's the cinematic equivalent of a Punch cartoon from the 19th century, in terms of how many stereotypes about the Irish it transmits. The documentary-style camera work presents the Traveller girl and her family as verisimilitude rather than fiction. The 43 year-old mother who looks 60, has "10 childer" who live in caravans outside Dublin city centre. She has social workers, housing officials and activists scurrying about for services and aid while she sits on her ass braying at kids to make tea. Facing eviction to make way for housing development, she goes out and buys a new caravan for the spot instead of taking the 4 bedroom house she's offered.

The folks who like this sort of base characterization have to be choked on racist assumptions about how shiftless and willfully ignorant they are. In sum, it's an offensive piece of shit.

Next time Mr. M goes to get his #3 haircut I may join him.

This eldery gentleman pounced on me in the local.

"You have the fullest head of hair I've seen since Maureen O'Hara! You don't know who she is, do you?"
Then he leans in just about on top of me at the table and pulls my hair, convinced I'm wearing a wig.
He pulled it again.

Look, I'm extremely tolerant of tipsy gents who want a word, but give me a fucking break, dude.
His reasoning was that I'm "too petite" to have this hair.
Instead of telling him to fuck off, I replied that I got it from my father (the only good thing I received from him, I might have added, yet didn't). I selected an example from his generation, that John Kennedy had so much hair that he refrained from wearing hats and hence the fashion for men with fedoras went out of style.
It deflected his attention anyway.
That's it.
I'm getting shorn like a sheep and changing the colour to brunette.

With a glance, I could see from across the room that he was heading over to our table and knew he'd be a pain in the tits.
I shudder to think Irish folks may peg me as sharing anything in common with this dude.
You know who I mean: the average Irish American visitor.
He's the dude you see in front of the shop on Nassau Street scanning the map in the window to find the heraldic coat of arms for his family's name so that he can lay claim to some hoary glory about his ancestors. Yeah, dude, you're totally the product of royalty. Your people were important once, if that helps get you into the car every morning.
They think that by the accident of birth they have been imprinted with a cultural identity and knowledge which instantly confers community membership. Blood is knowledge to these folks, despite the fact that they could not answer the first question outside of random guidebook Oirish. Heritage means fuck-all if you're an ignorant asshole with Great Expectations.
This over-entitled prick returned again and again to the table Gimme had chosen in his favourite pub. Dude demanded answers, attention, cigarettes.
How dense do you have to be to overlook the stony silence which greets you?

I'm always explaining that it's not about family for me; I've never been interested in playing the American cousin or knocking on anyone's door. Name and lineage has little to do with why I'm here. My connection to Ireland is forged upon the long hours of application, of research, reading and study. My name could be Tina Smith and I'd still be here with the belief that if you do the work and educate yourself you have the right to speak or take part in a conversation in order to grow and learn more. You don't earn the right to join a group through the dumb luck of what name they put on your birth certificate.
It's obnoxious, arrogant behaviour which makes me cringe.

Quick Bits:

A Tall Lady with Big Hair came for this Short Lady with Big Hair for a luncheon tour of Dublin's wine bars.  Glug.  And bearing a copy of episode #9 of this season's TrueBlood. Huzzah.

I'm 300 pages into "Little Dorrit" and have concluded that Dickens' titular protagonist is a simpering fool.  His gorgeous prose and piercing wit make up for the limp heroine.

Stuart Neville's "The Twelve" is required reading.  You have to go through amazon.uk if you're in North America, however. 

Why do baristas pour that powdered chocolate on my cappuccino?

Without asking?

I realize that they're assuming all women just love chocolate and think they're being nice or giving me a treat, but some of us like the slightly bitter delivery of unsweetened espresso and milk.  If chocolate suddenly disappeared from the planet I wouldn't shed a tear.

Encounters with immigration officials are always a sharp reminder that we live in patriarchy.

When we emigrated to Canada, the dude at the border in B.C. not only failed to issue the work permit that I was due to receive, he filled in my official papers with Mr. M's last name and listed my own as an alias. I shit you not; on my papers it had AKA and then my last name. Hence my national health card and all had me represented as Mrs. M. Bitches are property don't you know.

Here in the Dublin office, the dude took three times longer to process my papers than it took for Mr. M at another window. He wanted to see my marriage certificate and showed disdain, disbelief in my legal status. I told the dude that on the hosting papers I was listed as spouse. Then he repeatedly referred to me as Mr. M's dependent, to which I politely corrected more than once. A dependent signals a parent-child relationship, not a fucking marriage of equals, you douche bag. After all the hemming, hawing, chiding me for not assuming my husband's name, his final decree was that I'm not allowed to work or study here (even though Mr. M's employers said I could) unless I secure some papers saying otherwise and go through the process again.
Certain dudes behind the counter love to remind you that women are less than fully human subjects.

Here's how to save 500 Euro at Ikea:

Forget to bring your fucking wallet.

Took the bus out yesterday to Ballymun (just under 50 minutes). Loaded up a cart full of bedding and kitchenware and then started sweating and gasping at checkout as I realized it was still in the desk.
Fuckity, fuck-fuck.

Went back today walking out with only what I could carry.
Then the bus broke down in Ballymun across from the shopping centre.
Surprisingly, I didn't get mugged.
But you know, I'm so happy to be here that the shit just rolled out of my psyche.

The pooches are mighty popular as well as delirious after swimming in the sea everyday.
Mr. M needs to clear his desk before he can log some decent rides.

Who knows when I'll get around to posting again?

See you across the water.

Don't believe the hype for this UK product "Pack Mate" which claims to create 4 times more storage space by either removing the air in the bag with a vacuum or by rolling it out. It slowly re-inflates to almost the original size. The results look nothing like what they promise.

And here I was hoping to get my closet into one suitcase.

*Major Spoilers*

Look, I usually do my best to avoid giving away plot points for a film, except that otherwise, I'd have no review for this one.

"Thirst" ("Bakjwi") translates a picturesque and novel interpretation of the vampire lore by positioning a priest as an unlikely candidate for the living dead. As Fr. Hyun, Kang-ho Song ballasts the production as a strong leading man who's able to convey a range of emotive impressions throughout the film, beginning with his experience as volunteer subject in tests designed to cure a raging infection, of which he is the only one from 500 to survive. Covered in boils, revered as a saint, he realizes he was spared the virus, yet transforms into a vampire as a result of the experiment. There are no fangs in this monastic setting, but there is plenty of blood. Director Chan-wook Park draws a clear parallel between an aridity of corporeal needs for both the life-sustaining plasma juice as well as long repressed carnal desire. Once his appetite for the red stuff consumes him, other matters of the flesh take precedence.

In hospital visiting the sick, he's asked to attend to a young man dying of cancer (Kang-woo played by Ha-Kyun Shin) by his overbearing mother Lady Ra (Hae-Sook Kim). Turns out that the priest knew the family while growing up when he was housed in an orphanage. Lady Ra's "puppy" Tae-ju (Ok-Vin Kim) still lives with the family from when she was taken in as a child, now she lives as Kang-woo's wife.

My problem rests with the inconsistent moral economy presented in the film.

In an early scene (before he leaves for the clinical experiment) he hears the confession of a young nurse who admits that she entertains thoughts of suicide. Hyun responds in a manner relating absolute moral certainty that she cannot consider suicide, the worst of sins, even worse than first-degree murder, because when you take your own life, you become a martyr for satan. He insists that she get some anti-depressants and get over the bastard who broke her heart. Got it? Killing yourself is far worse than killing someone else.

After an invitation to play mah-jong with Lady Ra's household and other guests, Fr. Hyun develops a lusty attraction to the unhappy bride Tae-ju. Their mutual passion grows, as do the frequency of their trysts. It takes too long to happen, but eventually he shares his blood and "turns" Tae-ju. The conflict between the lovers then stems from how they choose to answer the sanguinary call. Hyun initially feeds from a coma patient, an elder priest or else steals blood from the hospital. Tae-ju prefers the old-fashioned hunt for random strangers. Hyun claims hold to the moral high ground when he explains that his new source for blood is contacting parishoners he knew from confessional who were suicidal, and when that source runs dry, he can find them online. It's surely a less violent way to extract blood, except his method carries no ethical legs to stand on. Hyun may argue that they meet their deaths more peacefully in thinking they were receiving a priest's blessing. The first to go is the depressed nurse at her home. She thanks him for his service as he reclines on her floor sucking her life through an intravenous line. Hyun simply makes the killing easier for himself; however, the salient moral contradictions persist. By its own moral framework, the priest condemns all these folks to hell everlasting, and yet still the point of view lends him the unreproachable stance against Tae-ju, a woman depicted as preternaturally cruel and insatiable when really, her actions seem far more honest and transparent with less questionable baggage, along with the fact that she had no choice in joining the ranks of the undead. Despite his own acts of murder, exploitative encouragement of suicide, and raping a young girl, the priest gets to wear the mantle of the just, the man of conscience and probity. I have to cry foul; you can't change the rules you set down so conveniently.

What we get in "Thirst" closely resembles the dynamic playing out in the current season of "TrueBlood" among Bill and his maker Lorena, one which occurs in so many other films.

It's the old refrain: "the female of her species is more deadly than the male" from Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Female of the Species" (1911). This sentiment has imbued culture with a marked persistence. The line made it's way into "Blonde Ice" (see review sidebar--->), and into several film productions, including the Bond rip-off "Deadlier than the Male." Such a myth deeply imprinted into our collective history holds that when women transgress moral codes, they are always far more dangerous than men and to society in general, and who must be controlled, contained or condemned at all costs. The sticking point is that this supposition doesn't match up to history or reality; it's just a cheap trope designed to slap a coat of varnished authenticity over the hoary notion of intractable gender binarisms, as a measure to further marginalize women as subhuman. The idea that the female is "deadlier than the male" belongs to the same fictional realm as vampires and unicorns.

Each episode of this season, I covet Pam's hairstyle.

Normally I've found that when Woody Allen produces a movie focused on a woman, it's really more about the dude in her life. His best film "Annie Hall" (1977) stays in the documentary like command of Allen's voice overs as his alter-ego Alvy Singer. Annie's just one romantic sub-plot in an otherwise uninterrupted libidinal trajectory for him. "The Purple Rose of Cairo" (1985) sets out with a frame around Cecilia's (Mia Farrow) impoverished and loveless need for escape at the cinema, except the struggle between Tom Baxter/Gil Shepherd (Jeff Daniels) concerning characters with a life independent of the actor who plays them takes over and turns Cecilia into a mere cipher. Even with the triangulation of female perspective in "Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986), he's still grounding the drama's point of view with Michael Caine's character Eliot and his own role as Mickey Sachs. All 3 great films, yet also willfully shrinking away from leaving his comfortable gendered context.

"Another Woman" (1988) was a revelation to me last night, something I chose from the cable channel's description alone and then was wholly surprised when Allen's signature credit font in white turned up onscreen. This is a type of film that we rarely get to see from an American director anymore, a film concerned with adult relationships among smart and accomplished people. Too often we're served fare such as "Closer," a hateful film with loathsome characters, the same goes for "We Don't Live Here Anymore," "Your Friends and Neighbors" or anything else by that toad Neil LaBute.

In Allen's film, Gena Rowlands plays Marion Post, a director of undergraduate studies in Philosophy at a women's college. She's successful, respected, well-coiffed and happily married to Ken (Ian Holm), who's another professor. In perhaps the most unrealistic development, Marion rents a flat downtown to work on a book she's taken an absence to write. Professors have offices on campus for this purpose, few folk could afford such a big apartment in Manhattan just for a workspace, but okay, then he wouldn't have a plot. Marion discovers that she can hear what's going on in the psychiatrist's office next door through the vents when she hears a dude talking about his masturbatory fantasies. She stuffs some couch cushions over the grates to muffle the secrets, only later, she wakes up from a nap to a woman's voice sobbing about how she fears a looming void in her life. Marion is touched by the anguish in the voice.

At a party, Marion and Ken discuss what happened with friends lamenting the lack of privacy in the city. The other couple shared a story about how they were having sex on the living room floor when the super suddently burst in complaining about pipe trouble. The dude finishes the story with a punch line about his own plumbing. Ken and Marion blanche at the bawdy story which hints at the state of their own marriage. She asks him in the kitchen (still at the party) if he'd ever think about having sex with her on the floor. He hesitates and inquires if she'd like him to, then follows up with the observation that he doesn't think she's the type to have sex on the floor. Not much passion on evidence. Talk about repressed.

Flashback to Ken and Marion's engagement party, she's giving a goodbye kiss to a man with whom she shared a secret spark-crush thing (played by Gene Hackman). She's made her choice and picked Ken over the man who displayed more ardor. Amid the toasts and tinkling glasses, the door bursts open to announce Kathy (Betty Buckley), Ken's first wife has dropped by, bearing a box of leftovers from their marriage. The scene builds tension and an emotional peak around the scorned woman and the frozen guests. Ken ushers her out with the bloodless farewell "I accept your condemnation." Does this dude have a pulse?

Listening to Hope's (Mia Farrow) therapy sessions, Marion starts to have her own awakening where she recognizes a moment of clarity where she grasps herself as others see her. It's not pretty. Her brother hates her, Ken's daughter thinks she's judgmental, an old friend (played by the fantastic Sandy Dennis) accuses her of having charmed away the man she cared for most. In pursuing a life of the mind, Marion has subsumed her emotional connections or inner life. It's not like she's utterly bereft, however. At dinner a woman reaches over to say that she was her student years ago and gushes that her lectures changed her life. That exhange is exactly the reason why idealistic people become professors in the first place. Marion calmy takes stock of her life.

Everyone in the cast pulls their weight for this tight, well-shot meditation on a woman's mid-life crisis. This is an overlooked gem.

Don't miss FatMammyCat's post on the most recent case of Femicide.

James Lever's marvellously clever "Me, Cheeta" satirizes Hollywood and the memoirs produced by its dream factory denizens. Retired in Palm Springs, the 76 year-old simian and former star of the screen from the Tarzan franchise with Johnny Weismuller, he recounts his kidnap--oops--I mean "rehabilitation" from the African jungle to the MGM soundstage. Cheeta was just one of the more than 1.5 million African monkeys that Henry Trefflich and his father really imported into New York in the 30s. The forests and jungles were full of poachers for Hollywood and rich collectors. In L.A., Cheeta hangs out with the stars, sniffs "star powder" from cleavage of starlets, watches the frequent casual couplings among the A-listers and takes great pride in the acting craft. There's a seriously touching treatment of his devotion to Johnny over the years, a man who he notes looks him square in the eye from the beginning, acknowledging that Cheeta was more than a prop on set.

The real reason you should pick up a copy is for the poison pen assessments of the stars, which are often painfully accurate and also funny as hell. Lever's deft use of litotes or understatement serves as the linchpin for his satire. Cheeta's recollections and estimations of the leading actors seem more believable that the official story, at any rate.

The first chapter harkens back to the filming of Cheeta's last picture, "Doctor Doolittle," with an off-set scene at a country home where Rex Harrison and his wife Rachel wager that Cheeta wouldn't be able to climb down a tall tree after being deposited in one by ladder. Cheeta manages to climb down making Harrison lose the bet while Cheeta recalls

"He looked like a guy who'd just lost two thousand 'quid', to utilize a little Limey-speak. But he was only a weakling and a bully and a near-murderer, scumbag, self-pitier, miser, liar, ass and oaf on the outside--who isn't? Somewhere on the inside there was a decent human being. Oh, all right: Rex Harrison was an absolutely irredeemable cunt who tried to murder me--but still, you have to try to forgive people, no matter what. Otherwise we'd be back in the jungle."

Regarding his treatment by animal trainers he notes "How could I know that the starving and beating all formed part of Louis Mayer's painstaking grooming process--almost exactly the same process as MGM put Ava Gardner through?"

Of working with Maureen O'Sullivan: "There were really only two notes in her voice, nagging and cooing, and it could get on your nerves even though you wanted to like her. She wasn't really talking to you but to the children she could already feel lining up inside her."

Explaining studio politics Cheeta deadpans "It was all win-win: you needed to keep your profile high with pictures; they would give you seven in a row and, if necessary, a personally tailored nutritional support regime to help you optimize your performance. Judy Garland wouldn't be the force she is today if she had not been assisted with a bespoke programme of therapy and wellness supplements to help her complete the masterpieces that made her immortal."

Two hundred horses died on the set of "Charge of the Light Brigade" starring Errol Flynn, who Cheeta quips used to be "debonair, before drink and drugs anda pathological sex-addiction founded on misogyny turned him into a pathetic shell of a man he later became, too palsied even to be able to hold without spilling the drinks that were killing him."

Cheeta admires Maureen O'Hara because "Anyone who can bounce back from the news of her ex-husband's suicide with a peppy 'This is the happiest day of my life!' has got to be saluted for her positivity."

He reserves extra bile for Mickey Rooney, Charlie Chaplin and Marlene Dietrich.

"Me, Cheeta" made the long-list for the Booker Prize and thus far has my vote.

Marlene Dietrich gives the most jarring Jekyll and Hyde performance in the 1942 production "The Lady is Willing." She plays Liza Madden, a broadway star who finds an abandoned baby and decides to keep him. In Hollywood, remember, if a woman isn't preoccupied with landing a man, then she'll get her penis replacement the way Freud imagined, by getting a baby.

For at least the first half hour, she's desperately clutching and slobbering on the child as if it were a talisman. I half expected her to eat him in Kali fashion.

Then instantly, when she's not holding or in proximity to the boy, she's the familiar smouldering, heavy-lidded, whiskey-throated femme fatale she usually plays.

This picture seems like it belongs in the 50s rather than at the beginning of the original noir cycle, what with all the pink and blue gender mythology and valorization of maternal instincts.

I guess Hollywood needed to issue Rosie the Riveter a role prompter.

Fred MacMurray walks in as a stony pediatrician who declares that he detests children, especially infants. Why would you trust him? He comes off as super creepy with lines such as "medical science figured out a much better way to segregate boys and girls besides the color of their clothing."

Dietrich's character asks him to marry her so that she can keep the true object of her affections.

Single women having children is just crazy talk, afterall.

There's probably not a house in Toronto free from a fruit fly menace since we've all been storing organic waste in the house for the last six weeks due to the strike.

Yesterday the task of cleaning out the refrigerator had my gag reflex working overtime.

Why did I put my hand into the tupperware container with month-old burrito filling?

Nothing kills the appetite like collecting putrescence.

Sometimes when I compare my own reactions to a film with critics, I'm flabbergasted by what they missed or what they so easily accepted. I often feel like I inhabit an alternate reality.
That's surely the case with the award winning 2002 production "Respiro."

Set in a tiny Italian fishing village, most folks saw this film as a sweet turn of magic realism wherein Grazia (Valeria Golino), the town eccentric is deemed too unstable to keep in residence, and who should instead be sent to a psychiatric hospital in Milan.
At once, critics see the village as quaint or dreamy. It's paradise to many viewers, despoiled only by the crazy lady and her hazardous antics.


This dude thinks she should have been institutionalized:

"Grazia actually has some sort of mental illness, a fact demonstrated when she is held down by her husband Pietro (Vincenzo Amato) so she can be injected with medication after having an outburst. This has obviously taken place before, but Grazia gives little indication that her internal clockwork is askew -- at first."

Even Lisa Schwarzbaum thinks Grazia's mentally ill.

If Grazia really suffers from a psychological disorder, it's only the same condition experienced by every woman with a firing synapse living in patriarchy.
She's the only sane adult onscreen.
The film opens with a scene of boys hunting birds to roast when ten boys beset another three from a rival gang. The outsiders are forced to strip naked, and one boy is quickly targeted by a slingshot to the eye. Cruelty is commonplace in the fishing village.
After Grazia nuzzles with her children, of which Pasquale (Francesco Casisa), the slingshot owner is one, she later refuses to leave her bed. She's just suffering from a bout of the housewife flu.

Next, she takes her boys to deliver a bag of food to the dogs at the fort. She has Pasquale bring it to the man there saying she can't see them. When the man is asked why the dogs are there, he responds that they're waiting to die. The background cacophony sounds like an aria in canine torment. You can hear the hounds ripping into the garbage bag to confirm their agony.
Yeah, paradise.
In the swim scene which follows, Grazia takes off her dress and bra to enter the sea, while Pasquale and the younger boy Filippo (Filippo Pucillo) are chagrined and order her to put some clothes on. This is supposed to be the first major sign of Grazia's supposed mental illness. A topless swim signals crazy woman. It's also the first scene where we see how readily even small boys and teens have greater authority than women in the town. Filippo walks around gesturing like a mini Mussolini at adult women.
Pasquale gets a smack on the head from a fisherman on the boat that had passed mother and sons at the beach as it docks, for "the show your mother put on." The spectacle of public breasts is a public threat. Titties are for the bedroom and nursery only.

Grazia meets the fisherman's gaze and wraps herself up in one of his nets. Now for me, this scene plays out like Symbolism 101, registering that she's caught in the patriarchal net, especially when she has difficulty extricating herself. Whoa, dude, she's trapped just like the fish. Fisherman dude turns out to be Pietro (Vincenzo Amato), Grazia's husband. Back at the house around the dinner table, everyone's shooting tense, darting glances at the head of the household, because daddy will set the tone and tenor for the evening. A neighbour interrupts with the slingshot victim in tow. We see that the son learned how to bully from his father. Pietro haggles over the offense and damage, agrees to beat Pasquale with a rubber hose, invites the boy who was nearly blinded to join in, and then asks the father if he wants to as well and then in for coffee. His majesty runs the show. In a totally reasonable response to macho thuggery, Grazia rebels by breaking some shit. Pietro calls his mother in an instant to administer an injection for his unruly wife. When bitches object to men's violence and iron-fisted rule, well, just introduce some drugs to knock her unconscious.
In a meeting among townfolk, they all advise Pietro to send Grazia to a mental hospital in Milan for the sake of the greater good. Wild titties and dish breaking threatens public safety in a town where women should be doormats.

Other scenes detail the extent of patriarchal rule, complete with violence and barbarism in which cops demand women comply with authority, and boys can browbeat women into going home when they attempt to engage in any activity that is not considered sufficiently passive and craven. Shit, Grazia cannot even join her husband for a drink while he talks to three men: "you have nothing to do?" Penis-bearers get to socialize; women have endless shitwork.

After Pietro kills one of Grazia's two beloved dogs, I was officially pissed. In response, Grazia goes to the death camp for dogs and opens the door. Her victory gets muted when the men take to the roof and shoot them all dead; afterward, women douse the bloodstains with buckets of water. Now the mob cries "she's a public menace" and "she should be chained" because she's a "raving lunatic." Cue the gut spasms.

Any argument that this film works as a critique of patriarchy falls muted when Grazia's embraced at the end.
The film says: come back to the fold only on our prescribed terms.
Submission remains the key to women's happiness.

I stopped watching "You Belong to Me" (1941) at the end of this because it became clear that the film was little more than a collection of repetitive scenes where Henry Fonda was a blatant fatherfucker (thank you, Stephen Colbert!) who spied on his wife and stewed with jealousy over her accomplishments and profession. Before this he yells at the butler not to refer to Barbara Stanwyk's character as Dr. Kirk, she should be called Mrs. Kirk, proving that some dudes think the letters really add up to mean Mr's. Wives are property to be guarded and policed.
I'd like to shove wads of cotton in his pug nose.

Back when I was a youngster, and went to the pub to meet friends, we all had a signature toast with the first pint.

One was "To the Green Light," a reference to Fitzgerald's lame "The Great Gatsby."

Another friend's was "Death and dishonour to our enemies."

Mine was always "Out of the ash/ I rise with my red hair/And I eat men like air" from Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus."

I know, it's pretentious as hell.
But that's what being young is for.