Fifty Shades of Choad: 9er and Baraka do chick lit crit

Speed_Gibson · Feb 27, 2013

Plan9 said: ↑

Haha, I'm old enough to know who Dave Foley is.
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Watched most of the Kids in the Hall shows when they first aired, and watched Brain Candy when it first hit the theatres. It was better than SNL in the 90's; no comparison to the utter crap that is SNL now. That was prime viewing on late night along with Forever Knight. Silk Stalkings and Dark Justice were good as well in their right.
edit: in related news - They now wrap the 50 Shades of Poorly Written Literature in plastic at walmart to prevent you from reading them before buying them. I glanced through one of them briefly before they did that and I had to put it down quickly. Plan9 is "taking one for the team" by reading these; there is a genuine risk of IQ points dropping progressively the more you read them.

Plan9 · Feb 28, 2013

Aaah, Silk Stockings... what a slutty yet delicious '90s cop-solves-murder romp.

grumpyolddude · Feb 28, 2013

The author is married to Dave Foley? No wonder she has no concept of actual heterosexual relations.

Cayvmann · Feb 28, 2013

Kids in the Hall, baby

Dura · Mar 2, 2013

Plan9 said: ↑

Again, Ana is talking about how she wants to lick his jaw, rub her crotch on it, etc. Are women really into faces like this? Talk about a shot to the old self-esteem. I might be able to pack on the muscle in the gym, but no amount of bench or squats is going to fix my goofy-ass face. Or penis. Oh well, we all can’t be superheroes. In the end, I should be glad that I have all my hair, can touch my toes and that my name isn’t Fremen. Still, I'll work on my Blue Steel, see if I can't make my girl orgasm by using solely my chin. I've got a weak jaw; this might be a lot of work.
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I don't know if you are serious about the face-crotch thing but I know it goes on out there and it is one of the few things I don't like in bed. I have met some hot dudes with great faces. I have had really great sexy sex with guys that would do whatever.. I have even had sexy sex with someone who's face I found unbelievably gorgeous, chiseled, classically great looking, and he was in great shape. I was even a virgin once who desperately wanted to have sex, with hot celebrities and whatnot. And I am currently in love with a face for the ages. And I never have nor do I want to want to rub my crotch on any of these guys faces. I aim for the penis. That does the job. The face is for looking. I had a guy lower me to just above his mouth before and it just felt stupid. Sitting all the way down would just make me feeling like, well, an alien facehugger.

Dura · Mar 2, 2013

So sad for the guy who has had bad bathroom sex!
Sex in the shower and tub have been some of my favorite things.
Tips for the shower, fromthe female perspective: it helps to be able to touch your nose to your knees so you can grab his ankles.
Tips for the male: if he's bent over holding your ankles, you hold the wall with one hand and all times and her with the other.
Everything should work out fine.
In the tub: have only done this once because tubs kind of bother me but he sat still while I rode, either direction. Very nice.
Good luck!

Fremen · Mar 2, 2013

*holds his forefinger and thumb an inch apart, while viewing your head in the distance through the gap*

Dura · Mar 2, 2013

"Wetness level of the female audience’s panties: Savannah, Georgia"

choking. choking!

Plan9 · Mar 2, 2013

Wow, Dura... you REALLY like my 50 Shades crap.

30 likes in 10 minutes?

Craziness.

Dura · Mar 5, 2013

Plan9 said: ↑

Wow, Dura... you REALLY like my 50 Shades crap.

30 likes in 10 minutes?

Craziness.
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I am a fast reader. Dude I needed a good laugh and I got a hundred of em. I am a big fan of sarcasm...Cracked.com...you should write for them.

Lirpa · Jul 24, 2013

You've somehow managed to make this plot compelling, 9er. I'll do some literary criticism of the next chapter--with all of my one semester of college literary criticism training, if you post another review. I might even try my hand at the deconstructionist perspective, though I think feminist perspective or maybe even marxist would be easiest given the subject matter. Or, I could go for broke and do a deconstructionist feminist-marxist perspective.

Baraka_Guru · Jul 24, 2013

Lirpa said: ↑

Or, I could go for broke and do a deconstructionist feminist-marxist perspective.
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Please do.

Lirpa · Jul 24, 2013

Baraka_Guru said: ↑

Please do.
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I'll see what I can whip up. Or whom.

ZombieSquirrel · Jan 23, 2015

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo....

The movie is out (or coming out)

Since you guys didn't make it through the book, you should do what every school child has done...watch the movie and report on that.

I would love if the two of you could go to the theatre together, but understand I that's not feasible. I don't think I could wait until it's out on DVD and you guys watch and review together via chat. That would be hilarious though.

Please @baraka_guru and @plan9 PLEASE!!!!

rogue49 · Jan 23, 2015

ZombieSquirrel said: ↑

Since you guys didn't make it through the book, you should do what every school child has done...watch the movie and report on that.
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They should use the Cliff Notes for Fifty Shades of Grey

redravin · Jan 23, 2015

Actually that should be amended to say they had 'badly written sex' or 'pretty boring sex'.

rogue49 · Jan 23, 2015

Well, as long as people learn...

We want to encourage extra-curricular activities.

Baraka_Guru · Jan 24, 2015

ZombieSquirrel said: ↑

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo....

The movie is out (or coming out)

Since you guys didn't make it through the book, you should do what every school child has done...watch the movie and report on that.

I would love if the two of you could go to the theatre together, but understand I that's not feasible. I don't think I could wait until it's out on DVD and you guys watch and review together via chat. That would be hilarious though.

Please @baraka_guru and @plan9 PLEASE!!!!
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Let me think about it.

redravin · Jan 24, 2015

This is relevant to the movie.

Fifty Shades‘ Jamie Dornan Visited a Sex Dungeon and Was a Total Butt About It | The Mary Sue

Basically Jamie Dornan went to visit a S&M dungeon and made rude comments afterwards.

The gif that they used with the article is completely worth checking it out.

snowy · Feb 14, 2015

This review from The New Yorker is pure gold.

If the figures are correct, “Fifty Shades of Grey,” by E. L. James, has been bought by more than a hundred million people, of whom only twenty million were under the impression that it was a paint catalogue. That leaves a solid eighty million or so who, upon reading sentences such as “He strokes his chin thoughtfully with his long, skilled fingers,” had to lie down for a while and let the creamy waves of ecstasy subside. Now, after an enticing buildup, which took to extreme lengths the art of the peekaboo, the film of the book is here.

Nothing has exercised the novel’s devotees—the Jamesians, as we must think of them—quite as much as the proper occupants of the central roles. Who could conceivably play Christian Grey, the awkward young billionaire with the extensive neckwear collection, let alone Anastasia Steele, the English-lit major who is also, as we gasp to learn, one of the leading virgins of Vancouver, Washington? Many combinations were suggested, my own preference being Nick Nolte and Barbra Streisand, who made such a lovely couple in “The Prince of Tides,” but in the end the lucky winners were Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson. Good choices, I reckon, especially Johnson, who, as the granddaughter of Tippi Hedren, knows everything about predators who stare and swoop.

Ana, as she is usually called, first meets Christian Grey at Grey House, which is home to Grey Enterprises, in Seattle. (Don’t you adore rich men who hide themselves away?) She is there in lieu of her roommate, who was meant to interview Grey for the college newspaper but has fallen sick. Ana, ushered into his presence, stumbles first over the threshold and then over her words, but begins to melt as he expounds on his bountiful gifts. “I’ve always been good at people,” he says, as though people were Scrabble or squash. He is interested in “what motivates them—what incentivizes them.” Any woman should run a mile from a man who uses the verb “incentivize,” but things could have been worse, I guess. He could have said “monetize.” He also lends her a pencil, bearing the word “Grey,” the tip of which she rubs against her lip. Either she has a cold sore or these folks are getting ready to rumble.

Their next encounter comes at a hardware store, where Christian is stocking up on masking tape, cable ties, and rope. “You’re the complete serial killer,” Ana says. Now, there’s a thought. We know Ana reads Jane Austen, and here, for a second, she sounds like the heroine of “Northanger Abbey,” who is mocked for always assuming the worst, or, at any rate, the most gothically arousing. Also, Dornan is no stranger to wickedness; in “The Fall,” a BBC drama that shows on Netflix, he is a serial killer, armed with a rasping beard, his native Belfast accent, and roughly ten times the sexual allure that he projects in “Fifty Shades.” Could Ana’s fears be well founded? Is Christian a terminator? No. He is many things—a pianist, a pilot, a pervert, and a tremendous bore—but evil is not in his wardrobe. Ana asks casually if he is a “do-it-yourselfer.” That would explain a lot.

Christian, it transpires, has a private passion, the cause of what James calls “his odd I’ve-got-a-whopping-big-secret smile.” Down a corridor of his apartment, behind a locked door, lurks his Red Room. Lavishly stuffed with the tools of domestic torture, it is supposed to radiate a breathless lust, although the result looks more like a spread from House Beautiful. Here, within these crimson walls, our hero is free to express himself as a “dominant,” meaning not that he is the fifth tone of the diatonic scale, which really would be hot, but, rather, that he constrains and chastises women who wish to be treated thus. At least, that’s what he tells himself. Mostly, he sounds like your basic stalker: “I’m incapable of leaving you alone,” he informs Ana—a notion that appears to stimulate her, although it would easily warrant a call to 911. She succumbs, up to a point, but her recurring doubts lead Christian to dish up one of those crusty old no-means-yes propositions which feminism has battled for decades: “You want to leave? Your body tells me something different.” Pass the butt plug.

So how does the movie, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, stack up against the book? And what’s in it for non-Jamesians? Well, we lose Ana’s introduction to fellatio, set precariously in a bathtub; in a similar vein, we skip the breakfast that she shares with Christian at an International House of Pancakes. Above all, we are denied James’s personifications, which are so much livelier than her characters: “My sleepy subconscious has a final swipe at me.” “YES! My inner goddess is thrilled.” “NO! my psyche screams.” Couldn’t someone have got Sarah Silverman to play the psyche?

On the other hand, the film, by dint of its simple competence—being largely well acted, not too long, and sombrely photographed, by Seamus McGarvey—has to be better than the novel. It could hardly be worse. No new reader, however charitable, could open “Fifty Shades of Grey,” browse a few paragraphs, and reasonably conclude that the author was writing in her first language, or even her fourth. There are poignant moments when the plainest of physical actions is left dangling beyond the reach of her prose: “I slice another piece of venison, holding it against my mouth.” The global appeal of the novel has led some fans to hallow it as a classic, but, with all due respect, it is not to be confused with “Madame Bovary.” Rather, “Fifty Shades of Grey” is the kind of book that Madame Bovary would read. Yet we should not begrudge E. L. James her triumph, for she has, in her lumbering fashion, tapped into a truth that often eludes more elegant writers—that eternal disappointment, deep in the human heart, at the failure of our loved ones to acquire their own helipad.

Much of the novel’s fixation with style, or with the barrage of stuff that a sense of style can buy, is carried onto the screen. Where the money shots should be, we get shots of what money can provide. The subtle silk ties that adorned the paperback covers, and which somehow made it O.K., by a dazzling sleight of the publisher’s hand, to read soft pornography in public, are arrayed in the opening scene. Ana can barely move for Audis. Christian wows her with rides, first in his thunderous chopper and then in his smooth white glider, presumably praying that she won’t have seen Pierce Brosnan do the same in “The Thomas Crown Affair.” The only viewer, in fact, who may feel shortchanged by “Fifty Shades of Grey” is Liam Helmer, who is listed in the credits as “BDSM Technical Consultant.” Check out the Red Room: rack upon rack of cutting-edge bullwhips, a variety of high-end ass paddles, and more restraining cuffs than you can shake a stick at. And how much of this kit gets used? A mere fraction, and even then Christian, supposedly the maestro of pain, can do little more than brush his cat-o’-nine-tails over Ana’s flesh with a feathery backhand. He looks like Roger Federer, practicing gentle cross-court lobs at the net.

And there you have the problem with this film. It is gray with good taste—shade upon shade of muted naughtiness, daubed within the limits of the R rating. Think of it as the “Downton Abbey” of bondage, designed neither to menace nor to offend but purely to cosset the fatigued imagination. You get dirtier talk in most action movies, and more genitalia in a TED talk on Renaissance sculpture. True, Dakota Johnson does her best, and her semi-stifled giggles suggest that, unlike James, she can see the funny side of all this nonsense. When Christian, alarmed by Ana’s maidenhood, considers “rectifying the situation,” she replies, “I’m a situation?”—a sharp rejoinder, although if I were her I’d be much more worried about the rectifying. Even Johnson’s valiant performance, however, cannot pierce the gloom, or persuade her co-star to lighten up. He brings color to her cheeks, courtesy of mild slaps, but she brings no light to his spirit in return. He spends half the time badgering her about a contract that has been drawn up, in which she—“the Submissive”—must consent to his supremacy. Clauses and subsections are haggled over in such detail that one feels bound to ask: How much of a sex film can this be, given that the people most likely to be turned on by it are lawyers?
“Fifty Shades of Grey” is being released in time for Valentine’s Day. That’s a bold move, since the film is not just unromantic but specifically anti-romantic; take your valentine along, by all means, but, be warned, it’ll be like watching “Rosemary’s Baby” at Christmas. Try holding hands as the hero taunts the rituals of sentiment, such as going out for dinner and a movie: “That’s not really my thing.” What his thing actually is, Lord knows, although, to judge by the importance that he attaches to grooming, regular feeding, and nicely buffed leather goods, my suspicion is that he doesn’t want a girlfriend at all. I know Mr. Grey’s whopping-big secret. He wants a pony. ♦
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Fifty Shades of Choad: 9er and Baraka do chick lit crit

Speed_Gibson Hacking the Gibson

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Fremen Allright, who stole my mustache?

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Fifty Shades of Choad: 9er and Baraka do chick lit crit

Speed_Gibson Hacking the Gibson

Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

grumpyolddude Very Tilted

Cayvmann Very Tilted

Dura New Member

Dura New Member

Fremen Allright, who stole my mustache?

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Plan9 Rock 'n Roll

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Baraka_Guru Möderätor Staff Member

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