So Like Candy

By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 1, 2006 4:19PM

Now that we’ve paid lip service to the artier aspects of film, it’s time to get back to completely trivial bits of entertainment “news.”

With Valentine’s Day only a couple weeks away, we’re seeing a lot of movie and romance tie-ins. For instance: men and women watch movies differently. Or do they?

Richard Miller and Jan Lisa Hutter are a Chicago couple who run the movie review website Films42.com (Films For Two! Get it?). Their press release contains this insightful tidbit from Rich about cinema and gender relations: “I typically value genre conventions, production values, and special effects (read: stuff that blows up real good) whereas Jan almost always focuses first on character development and relationships (read: you know, chick stuff).” If you ask us, that seems like a pretty small sample size from which to draw conclusions but whatever. There’s comfort in clichés.

Then again, when surveys like this one from AskMen.com come out, it’s hard to argue against stereotypes. According to the Daily Southtown, men who voted in this survey most wanted Jessica Alba as a girlfriend. (Perhaps this is because she’s in a lot of movies where stuff blows up).

Yet when we spent several hours researching (ahem) this list, we discovered that it’s actually titled “The Top 99 Most Desirable Women.” What the shit? There’s a world of difference between “desiring” someone and wanting them as your girlfriend. Chicagoist “desires” Jessica Alba as much as the next website, but we prefer Natalie Portman for girlfriend material (she makes the list at #9). This is mainly because we’ve always wanted to date a bald chick.

If we’re looking for models of good relationships (and not just folliclely-challenged kicks) then Hollywood’s good for that too. Sex therapist and Sun-Times columnist Laura Berman “reports” from the Television Critics Association (um, why?) on her top 10 list of celebrity couples. We’re not sure exactly what kind of “reporting” was involved here, but Berman sings the praises of couples like Danny Devito and Rhea Perlman whose “marriage is as old as the beginning of Tony Danza's career in ‘Taxi.’”

No, we have no idea what that means either.