Only steers and queers come from Texas, Private Cowboy. And you don't look much like a steer to me so that kinda narrows it down.
As I was paging through the ranking I wondered if Santa Fe was going to show up, and sure enough, #2.
Not that good, but a Daily Show segment on the rankings.
I offer to your attention a film about six priorities of the generalized instruments of management by countries and people of Earth.
Six Principles of Global Manipulation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fF3TQ0lJnU
and:
Anti-Qur'an Strategy of the Bible Project Wheeler-Dealers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1wXgXwj3MI
Is the spammer in 5 trying to suggest that he is not of earthly origin, or that we are?
chris y!!!
http://dotu.ru/category/in-english/
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Conception_of_social_security
I was going to check the rankings, but this is one of those things that make you click through every stage so the mag gets more clicks and you have to wait each time until the ads load. Grr. Anyway, I assume my city is in there, but we take pride in not being number one in basically anything. Minneapolis even stole "best bike city" from us.
8: No you are not. But "your" Vancouver is #6. Ha!
1. Minneapolis, MN
2. Santa Fe, NM
3. Las Vegas, NV
4. Orlando, FL
5. Pittsburgh, PA
6. Vancouver, WA
7. Atlanta, GA
8. Washington, DC
9. Seattle, WA
10. St. Louis, MO
11. San Francisco, CA
12. Cleveland, OH
13. Denver, CO
14. Oakland, CA
15. Miami, FL
I assume this is a different methodology, but not long back they had Atlanta as #1. According to The Advocate magazine, Atlanta rates as the nation's gayest city, followed by Burlington, Vt., Iowa City, Bloomington and Madison, Wis.
The 'Couve? You've got to be fucking kidding me. I see cute lesbians walking around holding hands, like, every day. Also, Cleveland gayer than Portland? That shit is messed up.
11: There's a weird old leatherdude around here who constantly talks about how awesome Cleveland's gay scene is and we all wish he'd go back there and stay, but that's about all I can say to that.
If it had more than 60 residents, Gay, Michigan would be hard to top.
If Emerson were here, he would confirm that ranking Vancouver above Portland in the gayness stakes is preposterous. I call bullshit on the methodology.
13 I think Gay Head, MA tops that in the naming category.
I was amazed to see how far down the ranking San Francisco is in 9. I've never been there, but come on, stereotypes are always true, right? Especially considering that Washington, DC is ahead of it. This city never seemed particularly gay to me. But then, I'm comparing it to Vermont...
The first page of that article explains their methodology: it's based on a whole bunch of esoteric things like listed officiants for gay weddings within a 50-mile radius and "Tegan and Sara performances over the past five years". The most important factor in that ranking seems to be gay.com profiles.
what the straightest city might be
The longer I look at the word "straightest", the less it looks like a real word.
11: Read it and weep bloated elites of the pseudo-urban sophisticatariat.
Portland doesn't appear on the list, but the magazine notes that gay Portlanders might be "mellowing out" and settling down across the river.
The travel piece also notes Vancouver's six gay-friendly congregations and Skyview High School's Gay Straight Alliance.
West Hollywood isn't on the list at all. That's crazy, our 1.6 square miles are among the non-squarest of them all.
10. St. Louis, MO
Uh, really? St. Louis certainly has a decent sized gay community and all, but I think the ranking forgot to consider factors like "how much a gay couple would be stared at if they walked around holding hands outside of certain specific neighborhoods."
A lot of towns in the midwest claim to be "The San Francisco of the Midwest." Bloomington, Minneapolis, I forget where all else, but every time someone has said to me "oh, [De-fucking-moine or whatever] is the San Francisco of the Midwest" I'd just think "could it be there is some other characteristic of San Francisco we are talking about here?"
Argh, giant spelling fail. Somebody release the spelling Kraken, by which I mean nosflow. My only excuse is interference from the last name of a college boyfriend.
21: I'm thinking Columbus has claimed that title at some point. I recall hearing that Columbus was named the most-gay friendly city by some confused magazine or organization.
Yes, the methods in this ranking are questionable. Also, I believe that the Advocate and gay.com are collectively owned. So, I think 16 gets it right, which might mean that those with the largest number of gay.com profiles (controlling for total GLBT population) may actually be the least gay (i.e., less non-internet options).
I figure all of those are implicitly graded against the "How bad you'd guess it was for gays in Cleveland if you didn't know firsthand." So, NY and SF are perfectly fine places to be gay, but everyone knows that, so they get no credit. Bloomington is a vaguely depressing place to be gay (I'm guessing. I know nothing about Bloomington that I didn't get from Breaking Away), but it's not nearly as awful as you might have thought it was, which makes it more gay-friendly than San Francisco.
This is how GWB got nearly half the votes in 2000, by not wetting himself during debates.
Of all the great attributes of Pittsburgh that I'm aware of, "exceptionally gay-friendly" never occurred to me. Does it have more than two gay bars?
I can't believe anyone is taking this seriously enough to to even try to argue against it for fuck's sake. I'm liking the Comedy Central bit better now.
but the magazine notes that gay Portlanders might be "mellowing out" and settling down across the river
This is purest pulled-out-of-the-ass horseshit. It might as well read "the magazine notes that gay Portlanders might be losing all of their self-respect, as well as their interest in fixing up houses in a liveable city, and settling down across the river." Maybe gay.com profiles appear disproportionately to be originating in Vancouver for the same reason that the fake chicks who show up in internet ads asking if I want to get together/party/fuck seem to think I'm in Vancouver.
28: You're not trying to make a list of all the gay bars in Pittsburgh to rebut Ned?
LB Bloomington is, in my somewhat limited experience, like any other college town surrounded by not the world's most progressive territory. As long as you're around campus it feels like not at all the most depressing place to be gay but there's one sad little bar (or was in the 90s anyway) and...well, it's the only place I've ever had someone yell "faggot!" at me out of the back of a pickup, though unless the people of Indiana have gaydar that works at a great distance, I'm not sure that actually had anything to do with me, just a generalized homophobia that makes yelling "faggot!' out of your truckbed a fun sport. Anyway it's generally a lovely place.
Bloomington is a vaguely depressing place to be gay (I'm guessing. I know nothing about Bloomington that I didn't get from Breaking Away)
A close grad school friend is teaching in Bloomington, and has really struggled with living there. It didn't help that she had just gotten to know Don Belton when he was murdered.
I think a more accurate metric would have been "where are you least likely to die in a hate crime," but I can see where that's not the mood they're going for.
Ok, I didnt see 32 before posting, and I dont read the news or pay attention to things anymore, but I'm going to feel really bad if Don Belton really did die in a hate crime.
31: That dude probably has not only yelled "faggot" at straight people from his truck, but also yelled it at deer, street signs, and person-sized rocks.
In the real world, West Hollywood should rank number one for both "gayest" and "most likely to meet an angry, slightly creepy Russian (outside of Russia category)."
Also, San Francisco and West Hollywood (and, by extension, much of LA) are the only places I know of where it's not just "vibrant gay bars" level tolerance but "openly gay people control much of the political/economic power establishment.". The latter seems more important.
12: Yes, of course it's a creepy old leatherdude who loves Cleveland's gay scene! When I lived there, the only bars worth going to were gay bars, and about half of those were incredibly misogynist leather bars that a friend of mine dragged me to. In NYC a misogynist leather bar will have a sign saying "Cowboys welcome--heifers by invitation only"; in Cleveland, there's a sign that says "Women's Restroom" over the exit door. There must be a lesbian-friendly scene somewhere in Cleveland, but I never saw it.
Instead, I got taken to the kinds of gay bars that do most of their business on Sunday afternoons. 9/10 of the crowd look like nervous, excited Baptist youth ministers and the other 1/10 are in leather straps or G-strings. The friend who took me used to be a prostitute when he was a teenager, and he would talk about picking up these guys. Most of them are married and consider themselves very straight, but will pay top dollar to give a kid a bj.
I kept going with this friend in a sort of anthropological sense--certainly no one but him wanted me there--until I realized that spending so much time in this kind of environment was making me hate myself, and hate pretty much everyone else too. Maybe the gay scene has improved in the past eight years, but it used to be a fucking mess.
39: I think the surest sign that there just aren't that many lesbians is the fact that this sort of thing is still true all over the place, and that there is very much a lesbian ghetto wrt media. Like, the standards are...not high. Did anyone actually watch The L Word? Do you remember how unforgivably horrible it was? It made money for SIX YEARS.
40, further: Compare / contrast with Party Down, dead after 2 seasons.
33: Yes, this would be News One Can Use. And I think it might track with less-obvious places. So much public harassment and violence goes unreported that it's hard to monitor. It's also something most people don't really have an accurate idea about in their own town, I think.
40: To be fair, all those sad little softcorish "indie" films about gayboys learning to open up to one another on Logo? They are the worst fucking movies I've ever seen. (I am also addicted to them.)
Usually, I am the last person to forgo an opportunity to boost Minneapolis, but come on. There is a pretty vibrant and connected gay scene here, and there are a great many neighborhoods where the stereotypical upwardly-mobile white gay couple is going to be welcomed with open arms. And, I'd even venture to say, there are only a couple of areas in town where you're going to see any sustained public deprecation of homosexuality. But that hardly makes us the gayest city.
The main thing helping the perception that we're so gay (leaving aside the Advocate's obviously flawed methodology) is that most of the homophobes are repelled outward to deepest exurbia where all their megachurches are, so the core cities are mostly queers, bohemians, liberals and people of color.
All that said, my State Representative is the longest serving openly lesbian elected official in the country. She's really about as far left as you can get and still be in the DFL.
***
Re: Bloomington
As I've said before, the main surprise about Bloomington is that they continue to have an incredibly awesome anarchist scene there, way larger and more active than you would expect, even given that it's a college town.
An anecdote about how gay Minneapolis is:
A few weeks ago the Subhumans and MDC played at the local punk rock bar. Many of my friends attended. All were irritated that there seemed to be lots of homophobic jock-punk assholes in the crowd. One friend, walking home, got yelled at by some suburban punks driving home in their mom's car. Though he was by himself, and they were riding four, he ran at them with his U-lock raised, yelling "I'm going to smash your windows" and "Go home and tell your mom that a faggot smashed up her car", which caused the jock punks to freak out and run the red light they were at.
When I related this story to the bartender at that bar a couple of weeks later, he was genuinely hurt and offended that other punks had behaved that way.
jock-punk assholes
"junk"
Ironic given the old-fashioned meaning of "punk".
Did anyone actually watch The L Word?
I watched every last excruciatingly horrible episode. Therapy cannot undo having heard that theme song howevermany times.
47: Mr. Smearcase, why do you punish yourself so?
It's hard to explain. By the end I hated every last character and, can I say again, THE THEME SONG AUGH THE THEME SONG, but I like to know I have another disc of something coming. There's something comforting about an ongoing narrative (discussed this a little with AWB last night w/r/t daytime soaps). I imagine it's like if you had this bunch of friends that you had known a while but they were boring and badly written and had an embarrasing theme song full of gerunds, you might occasionally hang out with them anyway when you were feeling blah. Wait that was totally not worth breaking the analogy ban for.
BBC tried to make a similar British show. Lives and loves of young hip lesbians, in Glasgow. "Lip Service"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CI8tOqq4dw
I watched one episode, to spot bars and do the usual, 'but that pub isn't anywhere near that other place they just walked out of'. But the writing and acting was woeful.
re: 50
That last line does sound very, 'I read Playboy for the articles'.
49: sometimes the analogy is all around you.
Sir K and I have a friend who made a by all accounts hilarious board game based on The L-Word. It included cards for all the characters with a description of each one's special powers (for example, Eva's special power was "Spicy"). She made it as a joke for a Final Episode viewing party but was surprised that it actually ended up being a workable and fun game.
Aw, that makes me want to make an All My Children RPG. I will miss you forever AMC!
I will miss you forever AMC!
THIS EXACTLY, surpisingly enough. It was so tedious, and often so improbable, that at times it was like doing chores to watch it, but I still did, god damn it. I can't imagine a world in which it is gone.
I had a straight friend who, upon being made to watch that awful show with us, turned in horror after the theme song: "Wait, do you have to do that? Drag in moustaches?"
We also called Ilene Chaiken "The Chaiken" in reference to her evil, tentacled influence on lesbian culture.
Some friend of mine, I can't even remember who, invented lyrics to the theme song that went something like "Talking, laughing, loving, breathing, STABBING BETTY STABBING BETTY" because Betty is the worst thing that ever happened.
Of course, the real measure of a city's gayness comes down to availability of BLTs.
I was just thinking the other day that I might actually like to watch all of The L-Word just because it hardly seemed awful enough to have binged on the first season or two while sick and then read recaps of the rest. I'm also reading my way through all the gay YA I can find. Maybe if I lived in a gay mecca like Pittsburgh I would be able to enjoy more normal entertainment.
I'd never heard the L-Word theme song before so I just looked it up. I find it very difficult to believe that someone heard that and approved it for other ears to listen to. Were there no people available to do the music for this show that had heard music before?
I'm giving out free hugs until 5:00 EST! Who's first?
Wait, Thorn, there's gay YA? List please!
There's a webseries called In Between Men that you should all go watch because my cousin is in it. It's got a similar feel to Queer As Folk.
20 - My friend Brad, who died last year, was a flaming queen who lived in St. Louis, and he always talked up the gay scene there. (Fred Phelps apparently once called Brad "the most dangerous sodomite in Missouri", so I figure he knew what he was talking about.)
62: I think, as with a lot of things related to this show and lesbian media in general, the most important requirement was gayness. Then came "actual merit based on metrics normally applied t this sort of thing." Or maybe the Chaiken was just trying to sleep with whoever she paid (PAID) to write and record that awful thing. Either / or.
62 gets it right. That song is discordant and disturbing. Couldn't they just use "Sex on Wheels"?
61: I think this technically qualifies as "slightly less horrible news."
Or one of the songs from "Satisfaction"?
64: OMG, tons. This is a decent list, though it's missing a lot and I should probably check my goodreads lists and send them suggestions. Malinda Lo's books are fun and I really, really like Sara Ryan.
Someone in Betty was the girlfriend of someone involved with the show I thought. By the way, if your mind shut down from the horror of the song, you may not have noticed that it is the lamest imaginable riff on "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music.
72: GIRLS IN WHITE DRESSES WHO DRAG WITH MUSTACHES and then everyone's head explodes in fury, as I recall. Plus, what the fuck?
72: GIRLS IN WHITE DRESSES WHO DRAG WITH MUSTACHES and then everyone's head explodes in fury, as I recall. Plus, what the fuck?
Okay, unfogged, if you're going to tell me you're not posting my comment because I'm commenting too much, don't then post it twice. Should I what-the-fuck that, too? Sorry.
67: Are you suggesting there is a conspiracy to lower the bar on lesbian excellence in the arts? I have wondered the same thing about these gayboy movies on Logo. When we think of lesbian and gay artists of merit, they might even be said to be overrepresented in the mainstream film and music industries, right? Looking at the best songwriters, playwrights, actors, painters, singers, poets, whatever, of all time, it seems to me that there is a genuine abundance of queer people there. So why does gay-made gay drama suck SO bad?
77: I had a category of things I thought of as BGA (Bad Gay Art) in college, and tried to avoid it when possible. It seemed to encompass most recent gay art. Is it possible oppression made us interesting? God knows Will & Grace (though it's something of a whipping boy and did have some funny writing) is a benchmark in both mainstream acceptance and Bad Gay Culture. We're just like everybody else, it seemed to say: grating and tedious!
I've pondered the same thing. So many talented queers, why is queer-focused art so terrible? My guess is a lack on money... the market is small, and so funding will be small.
78: OTOH, there has always been terrible gay art that just didn't make the canon. I could show you some super-stupid 18c buttsecks poems, or a little novella from the 1890's about two boyz in
That was supposed to be a heart but it won't let me. Ahem:
two boyz in luv at a boarding school that is dying to become a Logo softcore.
A woman artist of my acquaintance has made a point to call her work "feminist" no matter how abstract or not-about-gender the piece seems to be, in part to counteract this idea that women might make art, but it's only "feminist" if it's someone painting with used tampons or something.
82: I never can remember that. I will try to from now on.
I have a long answer to this question, but 79 is the right short answer. It's roughly the same reason why, even though France has an overabundance of cinematic tradition and skill and culture and produces some unbelievable work, the median French movie (i.e., the ones that don't get exported) is dreadful. People often underestimate the amount of industrial might you need to create consistent products of a culture industry.
I have a long answer to this question, but 79 is the right short answer. It's roughly the same reason why, even though France has an overabundance of cinematic tradition and skill and culture and produces some unbelievable work, the median French movie (i.e., the ones that don't get exported) is dreadful. People often underestimate the amount of industrial might you need to create consistent products of a culture industry.
Oh God, for real, not-excellent French movies are so bad they make me never want to see a movie again.
82: Was that really something you want to explain where everybody can see it?
87: Worse than the ones you mentioned in 43? Or just so bad that you never want to see a movie again, but not bad enough to make you want to watch them over and over?
Aw jeez, that's where exaggeration will get a person. The ones in 43 are terrible in the sense that I will watch all of them. The ones in 87 are terrible in the sense that I will walk out of the theater with a sickness.
90: The distinction between guilty pleasures and guilt-free pains?
Wrt lack of funding: I dunno about that. Bc there's so few lesbian targeted things out there, lesbians are RABID fans. You can make a living off them even if you're terrible. Presumably non-terrible stuff would make even more money.
86 They're not any worse than standard issue Hollywood products. That is they suck, but if you can survive a bunch of random multiplex/plane flicks, you can survive the French equivalents.
93 sounds scary. RABID LESBIANS! Run for your life!
93: I knew a bunch of lesbians who were so excited when the movie Go Fish came out, because it was the first lesbian movie they'd ever seen that didn't suck. They hoped it would launch a new era of non-sucky lesbian movies -- I presume that hope was not realized.
Though once upon a time all lesbian singer-songwriters were supposed to be terrible (I remember people bitching about they had to listen to stupid songs like Alix Dobkin's "Every Woman Can Be a Lesbian"), but of course since then there have been several good ones.
In a certain sense, badness allows the community to keep its boundaries. Once there start being reasonably good movies about lesbians, like The Kids are All Right (not my thing, but obviously well made), then you start having to have conversations about them with people outside the community. Shitty gay movies have the property that they keep out non-queer viewers by being far too unappealing.
I think Gay Head, MA tops that in the naming category
I just discovered, completely unrelatedly, that there's an Onancock, Virginia.
They hoped it would launch a new era of non-sucky lesbian movies -- I presume that hope was not realized.
In a world more just, Onancock would annex Manassas.
...and they'd be connected by an underground rail system known as the Chubway.
101 Apparently it does, in Minneapolis.
As I've said before, the main surprise about Bloomington is that they continue to have an incredibly awesome anarchist scene there
And a big poly scene, the members of which are always trying to recruit new people, if my friend's experience is anything to go by.
104: Huh. I have poly friends there who are not thrilled with the scene.
97: Tying everything together, I'm pretty sure that song is actually called "The View from Gay Head."
You know, I was only supposed to work a couple of hours today, then go home and do house projects. And now it's already dinnertime for Unfogged. Sigh. You can't win for losin'.
I'm not sure what counts as a "lesbian" movie, Boys Don't Cry? I thought it very good, but I suspect not considered being in the genre. Desert Hearts, not as good but still decent and I assume more in line with folks are discussing (or maybe not).
Badness to beef up the boundaries explains a lot of nerd culture, too.
This:
Is the spammer in 5 trying to suggest that he is not of earthly origin, or that we are?
Made me read 5 as mentioning the Anti Ur-Quan Strategy of the Bible Project Wheeler-Dealers.
And Lord knows we need an anti Ur-Quan strategy (though I, for one, welcome our you got the point).
60: That's bizarre. BLT (if it's the same TLA) is an absolutely bogstandard office lunchtime sandwich.
We've replaced Alex's coworkers with Folgers Gay. Let's see if he notices.
Each little social group has its own weird rules about what makes you secretly gay. I have a (guy) friend who once went out to dinner with his college roommate, who was an ex-Marine. The Marine ordered something, and my friend said "That sounds good, I'll have that too." The Marine was pissed off and changed his order, because two guys ordering the same thing was gay. My friend and I have never heard this idea anywhere else in our entire lives, so it's just some random idea this guy picked somewhere.
A BLT sounds a little old-fashioned, like something your parents used to eat back in the day, but not gay. Probably older male teenagers just like to call random shit totally gay to impressionable young male teenagers.
What we need to do is an experiment: pay older male teenagers to tell young male teenagers that the gayest thing you can possibly do is have sex with a woman. This would establish which impulse is stronger: the desire for heterosexual sex, or the desire not have other men think you are gay. My money is on number two.
re: 114.last
But there are already vast swathes of the western world in which liking women codes as gay. It's one of those mysterious things, but widely true, no?
My money is on number two.
If that means breasts, you're probably right.
I'm pretty sure #2 means poop, Moby.
97: They hoped it would launch a new era of non-sucky lesbian movies -- I presume that hope was not realized.
What, you didn't like Chasing Amy?
It's the fact that you think of faggy things like a woman's naked body that made Pittsburgh the fifth gayest city in America, Moby. A straight man would have made a joke about the two-point conversion. Apo made a joke about poop because he's polymorphously perverse.
You know, in a just world, "two-point conversion" would be a euphemism for anal sex.
You know, in a just world, "two-point conversion" would be a euphemism for anal sexthe "Eiffel Tower."
Taking a few threads from this thread and winding them together like some kind of windy thread thing: I was re-watching Le Femme Nikita for about the 20th time the other night, and thinking about how it passes the Bechdel test, and how you wouldn't really imagine that it would. And that got me thinking about how we might deconstruct it from a feminist perspective. One thing to focus on is the denouement, where the boyfriend and the secret agent are alone together talking about Nikita, who has taken it on the lam. On one hand, we get the unusual result, for the vast majority of narrative film, that the nuclear family is NOT recuperated in the final scenes. On the other hand, it's two men, talking about a woman, whom they both wanted to possess, in different and similar ways, but they can't.
Looking at the rest of Besson's oeuvre, I'm inclined to think that Nikita should be read as an conventionally misogynistic action movie which happens to incorporate a soupçon of battle-maiden feminism as a mask for its inherent sexism. Although there's probably also interesting things to be said about the gaze with regard to how Anne Parillaud is shot.
Given that people seem to regard Besson as one of the better directors to come out of France since the New Wave, it does seem likely that most contemporary French film is dreck. I only tend to see the occasional French film nowadays, so I couldn't really say from personal experience. In fact, the last most recent French production I can positively remember seeing was that tedious Audrey Tautou vehicle Un long dimanche de fiançailles. Shudder.
115: I frequently think this is true, but I'm generalizing about the exact kind of men I know least well. It's interesting that you have a similar perception.
OT: I haven't had an ugly breakup in a long time. The experience is enormously unpleasant.
I doubt we heterosexuals have anything to teach non-heterosexuals about healthy relationships.
If that doesn't work, drinking too much while your email is open.
Not yet, but I'm considering the equally time-honored tactic of leaving town for a while.
enormously unpleasant
It sure is. Good luck with that.
What about But I'm a cheerleader?
131: Not really relevant to my situation, but I appreciate the thought.
The best bad breakup advice I got was to read a very very long novel (I ended up reading War and Peace). It was nice to have a sense of purpose and direction (just turn the next page), and it helped me gain some perspective as characters would be quite upset about something and then 200 pages later it wouldn't seem like such a big deal.
Every time I even think about trying to read Infinite Jest again, I feel better about whatever else I was trying to avoid.
123: French action movies are good action movies, cf District 13, The Nest, but aside from that, recent French movies have been crap.
Ginger Snaps seemed a bit queer to me, and that was pretty good.
The adaptation of V for Vendetta was pretty lousy, but the preservation of some of the secondary characters' non-heterosexuality surprised me.
The Pale King is quite good.
Sorry to hear that, Flip. It never gets easy.
Long books to get lost in: Life: A User's Manual (I think this one would be great for a post-breakup losing of one's self), The Sotweed Factor (or even Giles Goat-Boy--although that one is easy not to finish), Smiley's The Greenlanders (Although not the most uplifting ending: And then he saw what he was, an old man, ready to die, pressed against the Greenland earth, as small as an ash berry on the face of the mountain, and he did the only thing that men can do when they know themselves, which was to weep and weep and weep).
I'm not sure what counts as a "lesbian" movie
At the bottom of that page are five more.
The very first thing I ever bought on Amazon was "Better Than Chocolate" as a gift. After that, Amazon recommended solely lesbian-themed works.
140 : Yes, the authoritative voice of Amazon user Iryshkidd.
143:Jesus fuck, you are a useless prick.
Usual practice would be to provide an alternative to gain cred.
I can comment on most of the flicks in 139 and 140 if anyone wants. Seen 'em, and others with peripheral L relationships. Sad that Children's Hour and such stuff is there.
Bound has two of my least favorite actresses in it, but part of its brilliance is that it uses those actresses against type (and the reason I usually don't like them). Gershon is softer and more vulnerable there than I can ever remember her, and Tilly is smarter and stronger than she is usually cast. A great movie.
Yes, so 143 was a bit uncalled for, but I was overreacting to the fact that the mere mention of a random list from an Amazon user which included the two I had already mentioned (at #1 & #11) was utterly unresponsive to the question I posed. But thank you, anyway.
Funny though how as I was reading Bérubé's latest at Crooked Timber it occurred to me how much you'd enjoy it. And turns out you did!
123, I recommend the Agnes Jaoui films.
138: I thought of that, but the reader will have no idea who it is describing. [semi-spoiler] In fact one of the things I like about the book was the gaps in the narrative and how it moved forward in fits and starts with the specific fates of some key characters left unknown and/or undescribed. Plus it is one of my favorite closing lines (actually there is a short Epilogue).
It's a fucking slog, 4/5ths of the people I've recommended it to and I know tried it have hated it.
But they were freaking lightweights.