A Fine Romance, My Friend, This Is
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A genre once known for high quality is now a source of lazy commercial fodder.
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âThe Jane Austen Book Clubâ is such a well-acted, literate adaptation of the 2004 best seller that your impulse is to forgive it for being the formulaic chick flick that it is.
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Reader Reshmi Menon sends us a picture.
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In some ways, one might regard the literary couples whose intimate relationships inspired Katie Roipheâs âUncommon Arrangementsâ as performance artists.
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âThe Rules of Engagementâ is not a groundbreaking new series by any means, but it has some redeeming virtues.
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A well-made absorbing tale of two brothers in a small town.
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This Valentine's Day, one publisher wants you to be the one doing the bodice-ripping. Book By You says it sells thousands of personalized romance novels each year with titles such as "ER Fever" and "Pirates of Desire," where the reader is the star. It's not Bronte, but customers are going crazy for the novels that make them the main characters.
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For men seeking true romance there is now a new mating game with an unusual twist -- it is virtual and mobile. A fantasy world in which lovesick men can wine and dine a virtual girlfriend
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Red the color is a fine metaphoric mate for the complexity and contrariness of love.
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It's nice to have a sugar daddy.
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âLongingâ intrigues because it presents an outwardly decent man falling equally in love with two women but eschews simplistic judgments.
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A moment of pure glee, which happens before everything changes.
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âDan in Real Lifeâ is neither wildly farcical nor mockingly cruel, but rather, for the most part, winningly gentle and observant.
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Sixteen years ago I sent my wife a love note in the lead of a column. It went like this:
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The couple want it an unconventional and fun affair.
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Without resorting too much to any modern cosmetic frills, Srikant Deva's Sila Nerangalil offers a really enjoyable musical fare. Vairamuthu's meaningful and poetic lyrics also have contributed in a big way to the allure of the tracks.
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I met an old friend for coffee in San Francisco yesterday afternoon, and had a few hours to kill before stopping in at the Wired reunion party. I didn't want to drive back to Berkeley because the weather was so crummy, and I was just across teh street from a movie theater and was just in time for the start of a movie that lots of people had been telling me to see. So I went. The movie -- The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, I had no idea what it was about until the movie started, then I remembered hearing a Fresh Air show about it and finding it too painful to listen to. Now here I was in the theater, not just being asked to listen to it, but being asked to live it. Through some very wonderful film-making, you feel as if what is happening to the main character is happening to you. Or more accurately, probably, you get the slightest hint of what it's like to be this person. My immediate impulse, one which I gave serious consideration to, was to pack up my things and leave. Anything would be better than spending three hours living this guy's life.  Two things happen over time: 1. You get over it. 2. They change perspective, and instead of being inside his body, you move outside it.  I think those two things are the story we all live as we mature and learn to live inside our own bodies, with their limits. You learn to step outside and see the humor in your predicament. The main character says he lives in a diving bell because it's as hard for him to communicate with other people as it would be at the bottom of the ocean inside a diving bell. The movie teaches that it's not much easier for the rest of us, even though we can manipulate symbols better. On the other hand, of course it is. The film develops a relationship between the hero and his father, between the hero and his own children, his ex-wife, his lover.  We strive for deeper understanding of ourselves and each other. But it may be ridiculously easy to find the only meaning that exists, without language, without intellect, by just being. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly should probably be the picture of the year for 2007, it's that good. But like all great art it shows you something truthful about yourself, and you may or may not want to see it.