Which one of you bitches is my father?

Girl Who Doesn't Wear Glasses of the Day/Week/Month (I haven't decided that yet)

This will be a new feature, in which each time I post (if I have time and can think of one), I come up with a smart girl or woman who embodies some of the characteristics of the brainy girls I discuss in my dissertation-cum-hopefully-to-be-a-book-someday. Everybody needs a gimmick, right?

Anyhow today's Girl is Rita, whose real name is Susan, from the movie Educating Rita, played by Julie Walters. I had ER, which I've seen about 10 times, on in the background while I read my Sunday New York Times and did the crossword, of course, in ink, and then later watched Mamma Mia, which I hadn't even realized co-starred Walters. I actually watched that twice, as I had to watch with the director's commentary. I always learn something from doing that.

Rita--a lower class hairdresser-- starts off simply wanting to learn, but is very unlike the "smart girl." By the end she has left her husband, turns down romantic offers from both her don and a good looking fellow students, and ends up passing her Oxford exams with high distinction. Evidently she analyzes works of literature very well, although I haven't read most of what she talks about, except for Rubyfruit Jungle, which is a pretty terrible book. It never occured to me in previous viewings (unless it did, and I forgot, which is likely) that her going back to the name Susan was because she realized, after reading everything else, that RJ is a terrible book. It's also a book about lesbianism, though, and it's interesting that that is not a theme at all in the movie.

In the end, she walks down an airport concourse alone, much as Jill Clayburgh walks alone in An Unmarried Woman and Goldie Hawn walks alone in Private Benjamin. I once wrote a paper in undergrad about those two films and how they were both stories of "JAPS" who became emancipated. Rita isn't Jewish, though, or princessy at all, so if I did write a paper about the three, it would have to be quite different. But I don't plan to. Hail Rita!

Desperate Housewives never seems to provide me with much to say. It's just sort of there, occasionally intriguing, but mostly comforting. There isn't a single girl without glasses on it now that Julie is gone, but I'll keep watching. It does mean I taped Tess of the D'urbervilles on Masterpiece Classic again, so I have both episodes on TiVo, but won't get to it for a while as it's Oscar season. Every year at this time I try to see most of the movies that will probably get nominated for an Oscar, but since I didn't see any on the holiday, it might be hard as I now have just over 2 months and most of them are only playing in Albany and won't be on DVD until after the ceremony.

Colin Ferrell won a Golden Globe for In Bruges last night (I only saw the last 30 minutes of the show so I didn't see his speech), and I did see that, but that was "musical or comedy" which Oscar tends to ignore. I didn't much like that movie, but he was very good in it. I hope I don't have to see The Wrestler. Mickey Rourke won Best Actor in a Drama for that. The Globes are weird and fake, though. I'm seeing Synechdoche, NY on Friday, I'll get The Dark Knight from Netflix this week, and obviously Slumdog Millionaire is the one to see if I can only see a few.

I did see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button this weekend. Mostly it was long. Long and slow. I'm sure it will deservedly win a lot of technical awards, but I wasn't blown away by Brad Pitt's acting, even if he did play all the face roles (except at the end as a little kid) while CGI took care of the bodies. Frankly I was more impressed with Cate Blanchett's ability to make me believe she was 20.

Mamma Mia--well they could have saved themselves a lot of trouble and a lot of singing if Sophie had just asked "OK, which one of you bitches is my father." It was OK, but I've never cared much for ABBA and clearly no one could do any math at all when they wrote or cast this, as Meryl is way too old to be Amanda Seyfried's mom, especially if she was supposed to be young and naive when she got pregnant. It's one thing to sleep with three men when you're 20, another when you're around 40 as she, and most of the men would have been. I just looked it up. Meryl will be 60, Pierce Brosnan 56, Colin Firth 49, and Stellan Saarsgard 58 this year. Ah, fantasy. Anyhow Walters is an author in it, so she carries on the Girls Who Don't Wear Glasses tradition, except she actually wears them.