Saw X-Men: First Class on Sunday. There’s a scene that goes a little something like this (no big spoilers):

Shaw & co. (the bad guys) raid the CIA building, where some young mutants are being kept. These young mutants are currently the good guys. He tries to recruit them to his cause (mutants are superior, so we need to wipe out “normal” humans) by saying something to the effect of, “…if you don’t join me, you may end up enslaved to humans,” and then the camera just so coincidentally pans to the minority mutant.

…who happens to be African-American. Who then dies a few minutes later.

Hmmmmmmmm.

So I’m channel surfing my entire weekend away when I stumble across a show on E! showcasing brides trying on wedding dresses — and I admit that I’m a total stereotypical girl when it comes to dreaming about a wedding and my wedding dress and the ring, etc. etc. — so naturally I stop flipping channels. I’d been aching for a good wedding show to watch since I haven’t been able to catch my guilty pleasure Platinum Weddings for almost a year now, but I soon became disgusted at what I was seeing.

No, really. The premise of this show? A group of engaged women compete with each other in random wedding related contests for plastic surgery procedures. I shit you not. PLASTIC SURGERY PROCEDURES. PLURAL. AS IN MORE THAN ONE. AS IN THE GRAND PRIZE IS NOT YOUR PROCEDURE OF CHOICE, BUT THE PRIZE FOR WINNING ANY OF THE MULTIPLE COMPETITIONS IS THE PROCEDURE OF THE WEEK. NO, REALLY, I SHIT YOU NOT.

Now I just have to wonder exactly how ethical this is, what it’s doing to the already presumably insecure women’s self-esteem, and how exactly this show got greenlighted in the first place. What kind of messages is this show promoting?? Case and point: these words came out of one of the competitors –

“I just want to be the top bride so that I can be on my way and get my boob job!”

…what? And –

“I cannot believe I just got [rated] a 4 [out of a 10 on my wedding look]; I thought I was beautiful.”

Oh really, producers? This is what you want to show the world? If you don’t think you’re beautiful on your wedding day, you should just get unnecessary plastic surgery? Why couldn’t this show focus on making these women realize that they’re all beautiful and don’t need plastic surgery to feel that way? It’s like they’re downplaying the serious risks of getting such unneeded surgery — because that’s what it is — surgery. You’re still under anesthesia, under a knife with your body cavity exposed to potential infections, and you still risk death.

To think popular culture has degraded so much to allow this kind of garbage on television is shocking to me. Where are all the good shows?!

Yes, I actually watched both. Yes, I wasted 4 hours.

And I feel I should also provide this little disclaimer: I abhor the Twilight series, and I absolutely love the original Airbender cartoon series from Nickolodeon.

Like any other fan of any source material, I’m generally pretty excited when there’s an announcement that a movie adaptation is going to be made. I wasn’t really expecting much — I always seem to prefer the source material to its movie adaptation, and the backlash M. Night Shyamalan has gotten for “racebending” resulted in low expectations — but I couldn’t believe that mother freaking Eclipse, the third installment of the IQ-lowering Twilight series, had gotten a substantially higher rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

I tend to regard Twilight movies as comedies — they’re always good for a laugh. The acting is stale, the plot is horrible, and the fight scenes are, at best, mediocre. Yesterday, I set out to find the truth behind the ratings — could Rotten Tomatoes be true??? (Surely, not!)

On Eclipse (a.k.a. I bet RPattz is regretting his decision to take on the role of Edward right about now)

I watched Eclipse first. My logic was this: any following movie that I watch afterwards surely couldn’t be worse. It’s a pretty well known fact that Twilight has more or less become a cultural phenomenon, and it’s one that I particularly don’t understand. I have read all four books in the installment trying to figure out what teenage girls and their mothers find enthralling about it. (Off note: my mother recently watched Twilight on TV and thought it was “romantic” and “cute.” The biggest bashing fest ensued in my household, with my sister and I trying to make my mom see the light — and not the light Edward gives off when he sparkles. What kind of self-respecting vampire SPARKLES??) My biggest regret is the money wasted buying the books and the fact that I have to hide the books in my bookshelf to save myself from embarrassment if anyone happens to see that I actually own them.

It’s pretty much a given that I go in watching these movies with absurdly low expectations. The stiff acting of RPattz, KStew, and Taylor Lautner (TLaut?) are almost unbearable to watch, but they never fail to elict laughter from me — which is pretty much the only reason I’d voluntarily waste time watching them. That being said, I laughed considerably less in Eclipse than when watching its predecessors, which may or may not be because 1) there was an improvement in acting?, 2) random chance, or 3) I just tuned everything out. Things taken from the movie:

1. Our dear Bella is a horny teenager. So is Edward, but he’s more concerned about her ~virtue~, even though he likes to sneak into her room in the middle of the night to watch her sleep like a creeper.
2. Werewolves never wear shirts.
3. Bella is still useless.
4. Edward is still useless.
5. And the best message of all: it’s okay to give up everything in life and abandon your family for a guy because nothing can fight the power of love.

Read more →