Sex and The City Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Dear Sex and the City 2,

I am writing this letter to you as a defeated fan. I might not have entered the Sex and the City universe until 2001, when a random e-mail buddy convinced me to watch and ignore my disinterest in fashion-centric fare, but I was converted quickly. Intermingled with the Manolo monologues and ridiculous fashion was a show with smarts. In all its ridiculousness and sometimes over-the-top fervor, were strong and defiant women.

The show offered professional, successful women who weren't one dimensional fiends salivating over husbands and baby making (even Charlotte had her depth), who had strong friendships free of catty, hair-pulling behavior, an openness to diversity and spanky, alternative lifestyles, and refreshing attitudes and conversations about sexuality and sex.

And then came the movie.

Now that we've entered the final month of the year, look for our site (and several others) to spend some time looking back at 2008. We here at Cinematical will kick off our year-end festivities real soon, but in the meantime Yahoo Movies was first out of the gate with a list of the most popular movie trailers of 2008. Keep in mind this is only according to Yahoo's numbers and represents the most watched, not necessarily the best (we'll have that list later this month).

As expected, a good majority of this list is made up of big summer blockbuster-type stuff, and guess which flick leads the pack? Yup, the one with that damn bat. The top two (Dark Knight and Indiana Jones) don't surprise me in the least, but the next two are ... Twilight (3) and The Incredible Hulk (4)? Really? Those vampires even beat everyone's favorite boy wizard, Harry Potter, who came in at a disappointing sixth on the list, behind Iron Man. Check out the titles below -- anything surprise you? Did you expect Twilight to take the third spot behind whoppers like Dark Knight and Indy? Sound off ...

1. The Dark Knight
2. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
3. Twilight
4. The Incredible Hulk
5. Iron Man
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
7. Wanted
8. Hancock
9. Sex and the City
10. Kung Fu Panda

Do you ever feel like you just don't fit in? Of course you do, we all do. But it's never more obvious to me then when I sit down to watch a so-called chick flick. Whether it was the 'woman's picture' from the Golden Age of Hollywood, or He's Just Not That Into You's new message of faux-empowerment, it has been a long time since a movie has more to offer my gender than shopping montages and romantic self-pity. Just to keep it all straight in our minds, what exactly makes a chick flick a chick flick? According to popular definition, a chick flick is "a film, usually about relationships, which is popular with females and comparatively unpopular with males". In other words, anything you have to drag your boyfriend to.

It's time for us gals to unite and start demanding a little more from our entertainment. With plenty of room for stories of love, loss, and marriage, Labels or Love cannot be the sum total of the 'female experience'. So, here's my call to arms with a list of the worst crimes perpetrated by 'chick flicks'. You can't change what you don't acknowledge, so let's begin.

1. Two Kinds of Stories -- married or dead?
According to conventional Hollywood wisdom, women are only interested in trying to get married, getting married, getting divorced and then eventually dying of a horrible disease. It doesn't exactly take a Women's Studies degree to see the pattern in most feature films marketed to women -- they are centered solely on personal relationships. I'm not saying that these stories don't have value, but it can't be the only game in town, and I refuse to believe my entire life revolves around making a family, losing a family, and then keeling over after coming to terms with something.

See: Terms of Endearment
Stepmom
One True Thing
...and just about any film starring a woman that has been released in the last 100 years.

Not long ago we told you how Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall had signed on to star in a new film called Miss January. In the original article over at Variety, they described her character as a "1980s cinema siren who is now a 50-year-old single mother in the middle of a child custody battle." Now, what they don't tell you -- and what a little birdie just whispered to Cinematical -- was that Cattrall's "1980s cinema siren" is actually a 1980s porn star named Monica Velour. Our tipster adds that "she has no gag reflex." Well okay then.

Miss January is currently in production, and also stars Brian Dennehy, Dustin Ingram and Keith David. Unfortunately for all you Cattrall stalkers out there, the film takes place years after the character was a porn star, and so chances are the sex in this city will be rather tame (featuring no more than one partner) and not recorded on cheap, sleazy video. Sorry dudes. The film was written and is being directed by Keith Bearden, and there's currently no release date scheduled.

What do you Sex and the City fans think -- can Cattrall pass as a 1980s porn star?

Here's a round-up of some stuff (and things) currently causing waves online:

-- Word has it the first full length trailer for J.J. Abrams' Star Trek will debut in front of [insert popular film here] this November. TrekMovie claims it will be a "real trailer" with actual "footage from the film." Imagine that! If it does indeed premiere in November, the most likely place for it will be before Quantum of Solace on November 14th. In a related piece, Abrams has confirmed the running time to be about two hours.

-- Principal photography on Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (new spelling) has begun in Germany (see initial poster to the right), and what appears to be the full, final cast has been announced (and it includes some familiar Tarantino regulars). Joining Brad Pitt will be Diane Kruger, Mélanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Daniel Brühl, Eli Roth, Samm Levine, B.J. Novak, Til Schweiger, Gedeon Burkhard, Paul Rust, Michael Bacall, Omar Doom, Sylvester Groth, Julie Dreyfus, Jacky Ido, August Diehl, Martin Wuttke, Richard Sammel, Christian Berkel, Sönke Möhring, Michael Fassbender, Mike Myers, Rod Taylor, Denis Menochet and Cloris Leachman. Yeah, you like that last one, right?

-- With the Sex and the City movie slowly becoming the new Citizen Kane for women, a whole slew of ladies are looking to "get in" on the sequel in some capacity. The latest appears to be Jennifer Lopez (or J-Lo) who, sources say, is itching to sign up. They note, "Jennifer has got her heart set on joining Carrie and the girls. The bosses are trying to think of a way of fitting her in without it being cheesy." [via Hollyscoop]

MAIN PICKS AND MISSES

Sex and the City (Pick)
Leatherheads (Miss)
Run Fat Boy Run (Miss)
Deception (Miss)
Pathology (Miss)

INDIES ON DVD
Foot Fist Way, Mother of Tears

BLU-RAY
Sex and the City, Leatherheads, Deception, The Godfather, LA Confidential, Blow, Madagascar, Shrek the Third

COLLECTOR'S CORNER
The Godfather collection, High School Musical 2: Collector's Edition, LA Confidential Special Edition

If you pay attention, you can learn a lot from movies, even ones you haven't seen. For example: No one dragged me to see Sex and the City and I wasn't inclined to spend money on a dialogue-heavy show that played just fine on TV. Oh, boy, did I miss out! The movie sparked raging debates, both pro and con, and became a rallying cry for neglected female audiences. What I learned: It can be enlightening to expand the range of movies you watch.

Determined not to avoid the next chick flick phenomenon, I hustled out to see Mamma Mia! The audience was overwhelmingly female and mostly as old or older than (middle-aged) me, and it was great to see almost everyone enjoying themselves. Too bad the movie itself was shrill and poorly-directed; even Meryl Streep floundered at times. What I learned: Abba's songs are incredibly catchy; it's OK to have sex with multiple partners within a few weeks time, as long as you can retreat to your own hotel on a gorgeous Greek island to raise your child on your own.

The audience for The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 was younger but more racially diverse, though I didn't understand the message of sisterhood that was supposed to be underlying everything. What I learned: You can neglect your friends' obvious emotional needs for weeks at a time as long as you have access to millions of frequent flyer miles and can retreat to a gorgeous Greek island to reconnect.

What have you learned from the movies lately?

Following the success of the Sex and the City movie, I was really, really hopeful (noted in passing here) for a Golden Girls movie featuring the four stars of the ever-popular TV series. Unfortunately, my dream can no longer be fulfilled, because one of the ladies has passed on. Early this morning, at her home in Los Angeles, Estelle Getty (aka "Sophia") died, three days shy of turning 85.

Though the cause of death was not specified, Getty had been suffering from Lewy Body Dementia since at least 2000, when she stopped making public appearances. She was not even able to appear in a Golden Girls reunion that aired on Lifetime in 2003. Obviously, she wouldn't have been able to star in a theatrical film, either.

Getty was best known for her role on The Golden Girls, but movie fans will forever remember her also as the titular matriarch teamed up with Sylvester Stallone in the dreadful action comedy Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. She also appears in Stuart Little, Mask and, in a pre-famous minor role, Tootsie. My favorite, though, is her feisty department store owner in Mannequin. Or, maybe her appearance in the surreal clip above, which comes from her awesome 1993 workout video.

But wait! Before visions of Vanity Fair and Miley Cyrus in the shower overwhelm you, she doesn't want a racy Sex and the City. No, that doesn't make sense, but read on.

Just Jared posted an interview that TV Guide conducted with the Hannah Montana star, who is about to get her own 3-D movie, and when she was asked what she'd like to work on in the future, she said: "I'd love to do a younger, cleaner version of Sex and the City." I'm suddenly having flashbacks to "Twenty-Something Girls vs. Thirty-Something Women." Rachel Miner had a gig as Laurel, a young woman who considered Carrie Bradshaw her hero and mentor, although she was a virgin who was saving herself for marriage.

Dear Miley, while yes, it would be fun for you to get a gig where you chat with your friends and work in the big city, the show is called SEX and the City. To make it "cleaner," would mean taking out the whole twist on the show. But who knows? The stars were much more reserved in the movie version (save Cynthia Nixon), so maybe one day we'll see Smoochin' and the City -- starring Miley Cyrus!

I remember, during an advance screening of The Promotion, I was standing in the movie theater and there were women everywhere. This was about a week or so after Sex and the City came out -- and it was right smack in the middle of the week -- but there were still tons of women, all done up and what not. I joked to my friend that this "tons of nice looking women standing in a movie theater lobby in the middle of a random weekday without any men" was kinda similar to a lunar eclipse, in that it rarely happens. If I were a dating councelor, I'd have recommended my male clients to get the hell over to a Sex and the City screening pronto.

Luckily, single men will most likely have another opportunity to mingle with the SATC crowd over a tub of popcorn and a sexy Dr. Pepper as Entertainment Weekly reports a sequel to Sex and the City is already in development and is apparently being fast-tracked by Warner Brothers (New Line put out the first flick). Michael Lombardo, president of HBO's programming group, told folks during a press tour that "there's a lot of energy behind doing another SATC movie." However, one inside source claims Sarah Jessica Parker and her lady friends are a little hesitant because they don't want to rush into things and disappoint fans. Assuming they add another villain to the mix so that it's not just Spacey's Lex Luthor, I'm sure everything will be fine. Oh wait, wrong franchise.

So who wants another Sex and the City movie?