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As Oscar host, Jon Stewart let the woman talk! He deserves an award of his own—a plate of brownies, maybe?—for bringing the silenced Markéta Irglová, who won for best original song but got the hook before she could open her mouth, back onstage to have her say. I wasn't sure how well Stewart's Hillary joke went over; he said the Julie Christie movie Away From Her, about a woman with Alzheimer's, "is about a woman who forgets her husband. Hillary Clinton called it the feel-good movie of the year.'' But everyone from Miley Cyrus to Helen Mirren seemed to have been shopping at that red dress store Hillary and Cindy and Michelle like so much. And since I've already blown Lent anyway, isn't Nicole Kidman too young to be looking so waxy?
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Dahlia's right: Female fun in the movies is a dangerous thing. There's a 1994 movie by that title,
Fun, in which two teenage girls meet, form an instant, high-spirited and giggly bond, and then decide to murder an old woman together just for kicks. The obsessive bond between two wildly imaginative girls in
Heavenly Creatures ends in a similarly gruesome joint undertaking. For all the diverting comedies about guy high jinks (guyjinks?), it's tough to come up with female equivalents in which somebody doesn't end up pregnant or dead. Thelma and Louise have a blast together, but then they have to crash their car into the Grand Canyon. (
Thelma and Louise II: Two mangled bodies in a ditch.) There are some brilliant movies about female friendship—
Heavenly Creatures is one, this year's Cannes winner,
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 4 Days, is another—but they tend to focus on women helping each other through crises rather than goofing off together as a creative act. I'm racking my brain to think of exceptions; will post if I think of any.
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I thought of one Emily. Little Children -- smart woman cuts loose without regard for her responsibilities. Allows her child to gallivant with pedophiles as a result.
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Good question, Emily. The best example of a driven yet playful female character I can think of is Nikita in La Femme Nikita. She's a spy/assassin who's just as tough as the toughest guys, but what she really wants to do is put her gun away and goof off with her boyfriend. Also one example from TV: Starbuck from Battlestar Gallactica. She's a great pilot and also plays a mean game of poker (or whatever card game it is they play in space).
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Meghan's great lament about the humorless fate of the women in Knocked Up has me thinking: In what movies has Hollywood come through for us and provided what we might indeed want more of--women who are smart and also know how to play and cut loose? It's easier for me to come up with examples from the past--Katherine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Audrey Hepburn--than from the present. Drew Barrymore? The Sex and the City gals? I feel like I should be able to do better than that. Hey Dana, or anyone else, help me out here.
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