Having a shrivelled brain apparently means an increased tolerance for drivel. So much so that I have begun to enjoy utter cack and judge thing inversely on their rubbishness.
Example: I caught a few minutes last night of a thing called "Material Girl". My mind simultaneously thought "that looks truly awful" and "I must look that up on iplayer".
I have spent a number of hours watching my husband play Call of Duty (MW2 and then WaW if you're interested. No?) which is remarkably watchable in the way it's presented but the more I watch, the more I feel myself slipping into a catatonic state.
So, figuring that one person can't actually watch Friends all the time (despite what E4 may think), I purchased a suitably dim looking DVD set entitled "Couture Collection". This comprises 3 films: 27 Dresses, In Her Shoes and The Devil Wears Prada.
27 Dresses I liked, it was cute and ditzy and enjoyable.
In Her Shoes I have both seen and read the book of. I didn't rate the book much, although I did finish it as it must have been pre children. I saw the film by chance on TV (post children, naturally) and enjoyed it quite a lot.
The Devil Wears Prada I failed to "get" at all as a book. It was raved about by all, but even in the glorious concentration of the prechildren era, I didn't get very far with it. This was typical of all the raved about books of the time: Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Memoirs of a Geisha etc. Everyone except me loved them, and I did occasionally manage something with content.
So I figured I'd give the - also raved about - film a shot.
Yawn. Tedium. Ugly Betty: the film, except Ugly Betty is enjoyable.
A couple of tangents.
First of all, the Ugly Betty thing. The Devil Wears Prada book predates Ugly Betty. Very similar premise, ordinary girl out of place in world of fashion takes job at fashion magazine to further dreams of journalism. Ugly Betty however is enjoyable. I found this out much to my surprise by mistake, it was one before/after something else I watched and I got kind of hooked. I really like it and have managed to watch it post children, which is not true of most things.
Anyway, my tangent has taken a tangent. Ugly Betty is supposedly taken from Mexican (???) series Betty la Fey (???) (or some words that are a bit similar to those I just wrote) which predates the book of The Devil Wears Prada. Which is meant to be based on the author's experience of working for Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue. I don't really care, Anna Wintour is the singularly least interesting person of all overrated people, and as far as I can tell is a thoroughly obnoxious person that other obnoxious people decide to follow as true disciples.
Which leads me to my second tangent, fashion.
I do understand that it is desirable to wear gorgeous fabrics, in flattering designs and have truly gorgeous clothing. Also, it must be nice to have unique clothes. The latter can be achieved by making your own, or by employing a seamstress, which I am quite positive can be done for considerably less than it costs to buy designer. But assuming you like your clothes preassembled, then yes, good fabrics and well cut lines are worth paying for.
What I do not get, and will never understand, is any person who wears something because it is a) expensive or b) fashionable with no regard to whether it is c) nice.
The expensive part especially, the coveting of things that one doesn't actually like purely because they cost a lot and you want to be seen to have paid for it makes me want to weep. How much better life would be if things were allocated to people who would appreciate them rather than those who could afford them.
As to fashion, I appreciate that a lot of people have no style whatsoever and so need outfits assembled by others and told what to wear. I may be so off the fashion map it hurts, but I have pretty much worn the same colours and styles for 20 years; the only difference fashion makes is that sometimes the things I like are easier to source. And yes, I do make my own clothes these days. Some of them, I doubt I'll ever make jeans.
So. The film. I think it safe to say that The Devil Wears Prada is awful. Tedious. I watched an hour of it, did a double take when I realised it had only been the one hour, and turned it off. Not "In a word: BRILLIANT" (Heat) or "Comedy doesn't get much blacker - or brilliant - than this" (Daily Mirror).
I missed that it was meant to be a comedy. That's probably the first time I've learned anything from the Mirror. Heh.
Meh.
Friday, 15 January 2010
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1 comment:
Someone should do a study on programmes people liked when they saw them not on purpose that they liked they would never have checked out on purpose. For me it was Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, first seen at the girlfriend's parents' house.
I put the apostrophe in "girlfriend's" one character too late at first, suggesting that I had more than one girlfriend and that either they shared the same parents or all their parents lived together. That would have been misleading, but fortunately I spotted the error.
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