The Kids Are All Right — A Summer Movie I’m Excited About for all the Right Reasons
Summer movies. Every year we are greeted with essentially the same rundown of events. We see the titles of upcoming movies grabbing headlines from every media outlet around, including blogs, newspapers, magazines and 30-second teaser trailers that pop up on television, blogs, Facebook and other social media sites. We’re told that if we are not super excited and brought down to the level of a hysterical and screaming Twi-hard, we must be missing an essential chromosome in our makeup. We are privy to the secret lives of celebrities as they appear on the covers of magazines with the promise that they will be spilling about their oh so normal lives on the inside. We get lengthier teasers that grow up to be full-length promotional trailers and before we know it, we’re seeing the smiling faces of the celebrities we just learned essentially nothing about in all of the countless magazine covers, stories and interviews they appeared in, only this time the celebrities we love so much and simply cannot get enough of are attached to designer labels, as they glide down the red carpet at their premieres. And finally, the big day arrives and you’re standing in line at your local movie theater and you’re excited to finally see this movie you’ve been hearing about for months on end. And sadly, a lot of times it sucks and you’re walking out of the movie theater an hour and a half to two hours later wondering where that precious time just went and what else you could have been doing that would have been better than watching that movie; like maybe washing the dishes or getting a Pap test.
We know the runaround and this summer is, of course, no different. Summer 2010 holds many little gems we have been told, are currently being told, and will be told we must go see or we will positively die! But when you get right down to it, summer blockbusters are generally a dime a dozen; there are a few chick flicks, a few movies for the kids, a few action-packed thrillers, and in essence, they all have pretty much the same ingredients that go into a summer blockbuster–and yes, most of them suck. But I recently came across a movie that is due out July 9th that looks like it won’t suck; in fact, I’m pretty excited about it.
Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right was a major success at Sundance and looks so promising that of course, I knew right away that it would not receive the amount of recognition that it most likely profoundly deserves. And what initially made me think it was a promising piece of work? It got the thumbs up from Women & Hollywood, the same blog that pumped me up and proved to be exactly right when it came to the film Sunshine Cleaning, and it also garnered a rundown of promising qualities from Jezebel.
The Kids Are All Right is a film that took seven years to finish, although its timing could not be better with the topic of same-sex marriage still very much on the minds of politicians and their critics across the country. The film stars Julianne Moore and Annette Bening in a refreshingly real, undeniably human (and yes, lesbian) marriage as they parent their two teenage children.
From the trailer alone, because I am not special and do not get to see it before it is released, there are a great deal of obvious warm and fuzzy moments that are a real treat to see being put in a film that could be for the masses–if only Hollywood would let it.
First of all, Julianne Moore and Annette Bening are amazing actors. They are both phenomenal women with impressive bodies of work who seem to jive and play off of each other very well. There is humor and quirkiness and real obstacles that long-time married folk find themselves in at some point or another.
In this case, their family is thrown through a loop when the eldest of the children, played by Mia Wasikowska from Tim Burton’s recent Alice in Wonderland, has just turned 18 and now as a legal adult, possesses the power to find out more about the sperm donor who helped to create her and her younger brother Laser; no I am not kidding. So she calls the sperm bank to find out more about this guy, played by Mark Ruffalo, and then after the kids meet him, they want to spend time with him, get to know him and, from what I have gathered, propel him into the role of ‘father’. And that is where the conflict comes in–Annette Bening’s character, Nic, feels like she and her partner aren’t enough for their children.
There are, of course, parts of the trailer that kind of make my stomach lurch in terms of ‘Yes, we know this is a story about a lesbian marriage and we know that they are lesbians, and oh yeah, lesbians‘ but that doesn’t take anything away from what looks to be a great journey in this coming-of-age story.
So hello summer movie that I am actually excited about. Of course, this movie is only being released in select theaters and seeing as how I live in the Middle of Nowhere, it will most likely not make it to a theater near me, leaving me very eager for the day it is released on DVD so I can go pick it up. I’ll let you know how the movie as a whole pans out for me and hopefully it’s worth the hype we’re seeing across the woman-written blogosphere.
Don’t Bring Your Sex Positivity to Your Blog — If You Want a Few Bucks for Your Hard Work
Menstrual Poetry, as you see it now, has been active since December 12th, 2007. Before then, it served primarily as a collective of random, angsty teenage poetry that I had accumulated over the years and wanted to stick somewhere because hey, all the cool kids were doing it. Menstrual Poetry started out as yet another domain I bought yet didn’t know exactly what I was going to do with. I have had several domains over the years, because that’s just what happens when you’ve been part of the “blogosphere” for ten years, but this is the one that I ultimately stuck with and through the years, I turned it into what it is now.
This website isn’t merely a hub of information; there are websites out there dedicated to merely being information hubs–and a lot of them make a damn good living doing it. Menstrual Poetry however, is personal and it always has been. Instead of merely posting about whatever the “breaking news” in the world is with a one-sentence description of what I’m quoting so I can feel like I wrote something meaningful for the day, I have always chosen to make this more of a personal space. That’s probably also the reason why I haven’t had the same amount of time I once had to dedicate to it. Sure, you can find a lot of information here, but you won’t find it without somewhere around 500 words at the very least about what I think about the topic at hand. I choose not to post about something unless I feel as if I have something meaningful to say about it or something of substance to add to the already on-going conversation. What can I say, I like to rant and I like to have a space where I can be myself and share just a small part of myself with anyone who chooses to read this website.
One topic I feel very strongly about, on a social issues level, as well as on a deeply personal level is sex-positivity. I have brought up the topic of sexuality as a whole, most frequently about church groups counseling women in porn and sex addiction only to come up with the conclusion that these groups are brainwashing women into believing that their sexuality in its entirety is shameful. I have posted information as well as a video review for Babeland’s not-so-recently-published but still very awesome book, Moregasm: Babeland’s Guide to Mind-Blowing Sex. I spread the word about Babeland donating 20% of their revenue throughout the month of April to Grist to celebrate Earth Day. Each of these three posts went over well and I felt that they were not only really informative and important, but I felt that they were also very much necessary.
Earlier this month, also known as the last time I blogged here, I wrote a review for Courtney Trouble’s Seven Minutes in Heaven 2: Tender Hearted. This post also went over well, which made me a happy little feminist blogger. Like I briefly stated in the beginning of the review, feminists have long been very much divided when it comes to porn and the sex industry as a whole. I don’t personally feel as if those who identify as feminist should be oppressing the very same people they claim to want to help. It feels very much like the pro-life debate when someone who identifies as pro-life states that bombing abortion clinics, killing doctors who perform abortions, nurses who help that doctor and the women who are there to see that doctor is what it takes to “help women” or “help fetuses.” To quote myself because I put it perfectly the first time–I don’t like that kind of negativity in my movement and I don’t like it being used to oppress my people.
Obviously, writing about Courtney Trouble’s Seven Minutes in Heaven 2 was something I felt very strongly about and I took it under careful consideration before posting it. I know that I have a pretty fabulous group of sexual assault survivors who frequent this website and because I’m considerate and know what it’s like to click over to a website only to become triggered by the content, I hid the entire review from the main page. Not only that, but I also hid the image accompanying the article and I included an adult/trigger warning in bold at the very top of the entire post because that’s just what it means to be considerate of the people who happen to stumble upon your space not knowing what, exactly, to expect. Everything above the fold was completely safe to read and you had to click over the jump in order to see the content. I figured that would be the best unspoken compromise I could have, considering that Courtney Trouble’s film is very much a woman-friendly, body-loving, feminist piece of work that I loved and felt compelled to share.
Luckily, I did not receive a comment, an email, Tweet, Facebook message, instant message, or anything else people use to communicate with me telling me that what I wrote was in any way inappropriate, misguided, offensive, or triggering. That is, until I received an email from my ad network.
Hell Yeah, Feminist Porn! Seven Minutes in Heaven 2: Tender Hearted
Warning: This post is all about porn. Please do not proceed reading if you are not completely comfortable or become triggered when seeing, reading about and/or discussing porn and other stuff sexually explicit in content.
I am by no means an expert when it comes to feminist porn directors. Tristan Taormino has long been one of very few who came to mind just because of her film Rough Sex, so when I heard that Courtney Trouble had made quite the name for herself in the world of feminist porn, garnering recognition large and vast, I needed to see what was so impressive. I have long been lusting after seeing what she was capable of, and when Babeland presented me with the opportunity to see for myself, I jumped at the chance.
First of all, let’s make something clear, shall we? Feminists have long been divided when it comes to porn. I happen to love porn. I have always loved porn; ever since I knew I was a sexual being and was first introduced to it as a naive teenager. (Hey internet, you listening? Yeah, thanks for that!) As I grew older and started reading anything and everything I could get my hands on in the realm of women’s studies and gender studies and started to identify as a feminist, one of the biggest things that has disappointed me within the feminist movement is the radical hatred a lot of feminists have when it comes to porn. I don’t like that kind of negativity in my movement and I don’t like it being used to oppress my people.
So with that out of the way, back to Courtney Trouble!
Courtney Trouble has won awards for the most diverse cast for Roulette, she was a 2009 Feminist Porn Award recipient, a 2010 AVN nominee for best soundtrack in both Roulette and Speakeasy, and she has also won an award for best queer porn site with NoFauxxx.com by the SF Bay Guardian. Yeah, she is crazy impressive.
Sex-Positivity
I'm passionate about sex-positivity and believe every sexual being should have the freedom to explore their sexuality safely and without condemnation. I even lost my ad network after my refusal to censor myself after reviewing feminist porn.So if you're in the market for sex toys, porn, books, etc. take a look at the retailers below, all of which are feminist-friendly.
Out Campaign
The OUT Campaign allows individuals to let others know they are not alone. It can also be a nice way of opening a conversation and help to demolish the negative stereotypes of atheists. Let the world know that we are not about to go away and that we are not going to allow those that would condemn us to push us into the shadows.
