It is no coincidence that we have a channel 419 on Austar. It is actually the World Movies channel. And it keeps baiting me into watching these movies which if they were in english, I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole. I

Some weeks ago I was flicking around and found I had to enter in a code to see the world movies channel due to an R rated film, which I have to say was one of the worst pieces of cinema I have ever had the misfortune to sit through. It involved a woman erotically licking peaches. There were four stories, I never made it through the first one, it was such shyte. It seems that you can make a movie about virtually anything as long as you throw a full frontal naked woman into it.

I don’t normally watch this channel at all, but late last night there was very little on tv, I was down in the other half’s room and it was too far to walk to get the next west wing dvd, and the description of the movie sounded interesting.

The movie was actually quite friendly, quirky, I liked it and I was surprised how much of the language I actually knew. Maybe I paid better attention in primary school than I thought. But they really picked the right thing to bait me, because much of the story was about the shoes this woman was wearing. I like shoes. I don’t like wearing them but I like to look at them on other people.

I just flicked past the new version of Pride and Prejudice, and I thought I would watch it, to see if it was as bad as I thought it was. What a true horror it turned out to be. Terrible! I don’t like to be nasty but I have to be honest, what the heck were these people thinking, trying to remake something that was already done perfectly! And who would have chosen these idiotic actors to be in the main roles? Keira Knightley, the apparent darling saviour of British acting who has far too many teeth and there’s something just wrong about her! I cannot express how much I dislike her and the truth of it is, the real reason I cannot stand her is that she had the hide to take this role in the first place and ever since I knew she was playing Elizabeth Bennet I have been disliking her just on principle. There’s only one Elizabeth Bennet! And there’s only one version of it worth watching.

And the rest of the cast were equally silly to think they could pretend to be any of these characters at all. The whole production was a terrible idea. And there’s nobody who can play Mr Darcy as well as Colin Firth did. Even Dame Judi Dench was a disappointment and proof that nobody could play these characters as well as the actors in the mini-series, because her performance was a carbon copy of the original Lady Catherine. And between Lizzy and Mr Darcy there existed not a single spark of chemistry at all.

I managed to catch the end of the sisterhood of the travelling pants today. It’s funny, you know? I never would have sat down to watch this movie at all. We got the movie channels a couple of months ago and one night I was flicking around and I found it, and I got sucked into it, basically. However with 45 minutes to go, the little reminder thing on the paytv box popped up, I had another show I really wanted to watch, and I wasn’t sucked in enough to stick with the movie.

However when I left the movie, things seemed to be going relatively well, and the girls seemed to perhaps be heading towards potentially happy endings. Which when you’re a teenager, you tend to like that kind of thing. At least I know I did.

What movies did I watch when I was a teenager that didn’t have happy endings? I can’t really remember too many. I know Dead Poets Society was one of my favourites with a sad ending. But it was a superbly acted movie with a serious message which was necessary and much needed – and still is today, I think. Let’s watch it again and see, people? ;) But in all my memories, I really cannot think of a movie that came anywhere near as gut wrenchingly depressing as this sisterhood movie turned out to be.

The little girl who had leukaemia died. In my opinion an alternative? They could have left it as a will she/won’t she, do the pants really have magic enough to save her type of situation. At least leave the kid with the *chance*? But no, let’s just kill her off, and make it as depressing as we can, shall we?

Two girls hooked up with tastefully hunky men. Although the movie does not state for sure, it is left fairly obvious that one of them shagged her man and was left empty by the experience instead of it being anything like she had dreamed of. The other one left hers in Greece, without even any hope of a future meeting or a long distance relationship of any sort. The message? Love hurts, it never works out, and sex is NOT in any way something decent or fulfilling. Yeah I think that is a GREAT message to send to the young kids of today.

Another girl whose father (said father played by Bradley Whitford, you’d know him from The West Wing) had left her mother and moved to another town, she goes to visit him and finds he has an entirely new replacement family which he hasn’t told her anything about at all. And they’re getting married. Things don’t work out so well, she leaves, when all the girls get back together they talk the girl into taking a road trip to the wedding, and then get the girl to wear the *jeans* to the wedding. Yeah, good idea. A great fashion look. But apparently it makes all the difference because her father pulls her up onto the podium so they can all get married together. WHAT THE FUCK? The last conversation she had with her father she was all – you abandoned me for this new family – and what, did that all just vanish? She suddenly didn’t care about any of that? They didn’t have issues that needed resolving before dragging her up there?

And the movie ends with all the girls sitting at a table under the wedding gazebo being all girly girl friendly with each other and promising they would be friends forever, or some such bullshit.

What the heck are we offering the kids of today? Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and movies which make you want to grab a razor blade and slit your wrists?

The show that really taught me some serious facts of life was Degrassi – ya’all remember it I’m sure, if you’re from Australia. It was a Canadian show and we all loved it. What we loved about it was, it was *realistic*. The storylines were not some fake thing made up by Hollywood writers, and they did not all have happy endings either, but it was much less depressing – it was more – make good choices, if you make bad choices there will be consequences you might not like.

I don’t know what these people who made this movie were thinking, but if you are a parent, don’t let your kids see this movie. It’s not right at all. Go buy them the box set of Degrassi instead.. :)