|
Walked into my local Barnes & Noble recently to get my half-caf grande nonfat soy latte fix and I tripped over a table full of books. Note to myself: Focus!
The in-the-way books were about all the movies recently nominated for Best Picture Oscars, and I can't believe people can write something that fast.
Put my latte down to look at Seabiscuit: An American Legend, (pictured) but it's just a long story about horses winning long races a long time ago. Average girls like myself only care about two things in Seabiscuit: Toby McGuire and his cute butt. That's it. But there's not one photo of Tobey's cute butt in Laura Hillenbrand's novel. I also don't like Toby's red hair in the Seabiscuit movie. He's way cuter as a Spiderman brunette.
If these Seabiscuit fans really want to honor a film about an underdog, they need to watch Legally Blonde 2.
Am I the only one who understands how hard it was for sorority queen Elle (Reese Witherspoon) to play political lobbyist and conquer Capital Hill?
Back at the Barnes & Noble table, I'm blown away by the fact that somebody wrote four books based on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. My man Tad insisted The Return of the King was the "epic of our time" when he dragged me to watch it instead of Julia Roberts and the girls in Mona Lisa Smile.
All I saw in The Return of the King were gross creatures with snot and saliva, which means that Tad was grossly unlucky that weekend.
Heroic hunk Viggo Mortensen salvaged Return of the King for me, but hobbit No. 1 Elijah Wood freaked me out because I'm convinced he will be 12 forever. The whole hobbit mania thing makes me say, "Attention, geek boys, doesn't anyone remember Willow?"
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World earned my faux Oscar vote because Russell Crowe is Australian and hot as the 19th-century ship captain, although he's married now. Film critic nerds praised the movie because of the naval battles and the friendship between Jack Aubrey (Crowe) and Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), but everyone I know kept asking, "Can we have a girl in this, please?"
Failed to find one ounce of romance in Master and Commander, something even Miss Midwest Average understands every good movie must have. By the 10th cannonball shot, I was desperate for any kind of love affair on this ship of men — boy-on-boy, boy-on-parrot.
Master and Commander could have been classic — like Titanic — if they put a pirate princess on the boat with Crowe. Plug Meg Ryan in there and rekindle some of the Hollywood controversy from their Proof of Life love affair.
The geek-manufactured Oscar ballots have been mailed, and nothing can be done about them but fight back: Don't buy the spin-off, stealing-off-someone-else's popularity books. It's like when Led Zepplin covered a P. Diddy song. That wasn't right.
Miss Midwest Average is a former reporter for Teen Midwest Living.
