Well, I was going to post this on Tom's Diner, but I still don't know how to make an entry there, so I'll write it here. I have been humming over Eyes Wide Shut, and whether or not I really liked it. I really liked the dillema it presented, i.e. infidelity and jealousy in a marriage relationship. (Really, any long term 'monogomous' relationship). However, as I commented in my previous entry on this movie, a lot of it could be construed as soft porn. Why is it that in Hollywood films it is perfectly acceptable to make women parade around naked next to the fully clothed men? Not only do we get to see much more of Nicole Kidman than we do of Tom Cruise, the entire sequence with Dr. Bill wandering around in the secret sex society was horribly sexist. I think there was one male 'prostitute' visiblly naked, and he was only dancing with, not being fucked by his companion. The women walked around completely naked except for a mask, while the men were fully dressed, caped, and masked, unveiling only as much as 'necessary'. Perhaps I am unusual in my typical choice of movies, but I seemed to run into more films, unintentionally, that were biased the other way. However, male nudity in most of the films I am thinking of was not used in the same voyeuristic, sexual way that the female nudity is so often used. Films like Room With a View, and Mrs. Brown each have scenes of men going for a swim in the nude. The women in each movie remain completely dressed and dignified. One film that is a bit more balanced in its' exposure of both male and female bodies is Angels and Insects. The only real exception to this trend, as far as I have discovered, are the films of Peter Greenaway, or Penis Greenaway, as I have heard him called. I only discovered this director in university, and lucky for me that I did. I would have had a lot of explaining to do should my mother have interupted me watching any of those. (I had enough trouble explaining Angels and Insects). I have yet to see a Greenaway film that didn't have a penis in it. The men are exposed as much or more than the women. Belly of an Architect was remarkable to me in its' representation of a pregnant woman as highly sexy and desirable. Still, films like 8 1/2 Women are at best ambiguous in their representation of women's power in comparison to men's. (Yes, I would really like to see many more rah rah hairy armpit women movies, with lots of naked objectified men, and fully dressed, fantasizing women. At least until the balance is corrected. Then we can better deal with whether or not this is a good idea at all.) But, my roommates, (and I) were happy to finaly have a chance to watch our favourite Hollywood men take it all off, for a change. Sumaarsita signing off until next time...

O.K., more movie comments. What can I say? I watch far too many movies. This time another Tom Cruise movie, but better than that it was a Kubrick film, if you haven't already guessed, Eyes Wide Shut. This was not what I had been expecting, but then this was afterall the first Kubrick film I have watched all the way through. I can easily see how this movie could have been a catalyst to the Kidman/Cruise divorce. Soft porn, yes, but also a movie about infidelity in marriage, real and fantasized. Here is a telling question. Who, if anyone, commited an act of infidelity in the marriage? To me, they both did, in different degrees. While I think that in some ways Kidman's character's infidelity is worse, Cruise's character's apparently jealous reaction to what was really just an idea seems excessive.
On a different note, M showed me a really cool page with Winamp stuff on it. I liked the Poison Tree and Blue Violin.
TTFN