The picture shows a woman, seated, back arched and head thrown back as if laughing - although her head above the chin is cut off, as if to say that who she is doesn’t matter; her near leg is raised …

There’s a scene from Shallow Hal (before the place where I walked out of a friend’s home because I found the movie so appalling I couldn’t sit through it) where Hal goes into a restaurant with an absurdly fat girl whom he …

I was amazed, astounded, and utterly delighted by this movie. I had to let it sit for a few days for my rapture to subside so I could think coherently and make sure I could write effectively about it…and …

It was less than discriminating. But, in my defense, I’ve been sick. And I just wanted to rent something easy to take my mind off of it.

So one of the movies I got was The Wedding Crashers. …

On the ‘TV to Big Screen’ shelves at Blockbuster, I found a DVD claiming to be erotica written and directed by women, for women.  That’s a big claim, so I rented it to see how it lived up to its …

It’s a tableau familiar from pioneer midwifing scenes in old Westerns - the men congregate in the hallway or outside and listen with concerned faces until the baby comes and then pound each other on the back as if they …

Okay, so it’s a teen movie. Set entirely in high school. You know the type. But it looked like it might be funny, and it was supposed to be about 3 girls who’ve been done dirty by …

I have a confession to make. I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End for Johnny Depp. Or maybe for Captain Jack Sparrow. Let’s face it, the man is a hunk and a phenomenal actor. (Warning: this post contains spoilers below the “more” link.)

Ever since the credits rolled, though, I’ve been conflicted, thinking about the movie from the side of the portrayal of women. Like most movies with an historical setting, there are far more male than female characters, arguably, of necessity because women were wives and daughters and whores, not pirates or businessmen or governors or soldiers. Naturally. And I’ll concede that it is most likely true that there were more men in the riggings of the sailing ships of the era, and only men in the English army and certainly not any women running the East India Trading Company.

Although it occurs to me that most of my information about the division of labor between the genders in all eras before the present comes from the suspect sources of dramatic fiction and fanatical religious instruction, and is therefore suspect…do I really know that women did not sail ships or run businesses or govern provinces?

**SPOILER WARNING***

Have you seen the most recent King of Queens ad? Doug is apparently worried that he might be (gasp!) a woman!

If you haven’t seen the show, here’s a link to the SonyPictures website for it: http://www.sonypictures.com/tv/shows/kingofqueens/index.php.

Are you …

One afternoon last week I went to my mother’s house to pick something up. I had a little extra time and I was really tired, so I stretched out on the couch with a book of mine that is still …