...of charm and strange: the blog

I hate it when directors or writers or stars do DVD commentaries for their movies and don't acknowledge the public and critical reception of their film after the fact, especially when the movie is terrible. If you couldn't entertain me with your shitty movie, couldn't you at least entertain me by taking the time to record a commentary track talking about why your movie sucked and what you would have done differently? Or how much it stung to see the film fail? Don't you at least owe me those laughs?

I rented Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood last year because I had just read the book and out of curiosity was willing to watch whatever adaptation Hollywood had come up with. And of course the movie was a mess, but I occasionally saw tiny glimmers of greatness buried in there. Like if a dog ate a pile of diamonds and pooped them out, except that now the diamonds are all hidden in the poop and you have to dig through it to find them. I think you know what I mean.

My point, I think, is that Ashley Judd's commentary illuminated absolutely nothing about the production due to the fact that she lives in a parallel universe in which Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is a good movie. She remarks in wonder, "People are always coming up to me on the street and thanking me for making this movie," a statement I imagine can only be true if by "thanking me" she means "throwing hot coffee in my face."