From the category archives:

Sister Flicks

My Dinner With Shirley

by paige on April 24, 2009

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SHIRLEY MACLAINE MAY be more famous these days for metaphysical musings than for movie stardom, but I can’t forget her indelible performances in some of my very favorite sister flicks. (Terms of Endearment? Steel Magnolias?) Today, for her 75th birthday, I want to toast Shirley MacLaine in a way I didn’t really have the chutzpah to do properly the one time I met her. Once upon a time, you see, I worked in Hollywood. [click to continue…]

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YouTube Preview ImageA FEW WEEKS BACK, I wrote a post here about my efforts to become part of what I affectionately think of as Crock Pot Nation–all those working sisters (and, to be fair, I’m sure some guys, too) who have embraced the homely slow cooker as a means of serving (healthy, homemade) dinner promptly without blowing a gasket. Apparently, I’m not alone, judging by the number of (excellent) responses I got, ranging from timesaving tips to recipes to rants. The popularity of slow cooking sent me, where else, back to Google, to see if there were any slow-cooker recipes that sisters seemed particularly eager to share, and lo and behold, I found a favorite: tortilla soup. [click to continue…]

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An Entirely Different Sister Act

by paige on February 1, 2009

WRITER AND ARTIST Stephanie Tames has an amazing story about sisterhood on the downslope of life in today’s Washington Post. Humor and disappointment both factor into Sister Act, her remembrance of a shopping expedition with her two older sisters. Read it, laugh, and weep. For more about Stephanie and her artwork, visit her website. According to the Post, she’s working on a book–can’t wait to read it.

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Dark Movies for Dark Days?

by paige on January 30, 2009

A FEW WEEKS BACK, Margaret Roach and I started talking about dark movies–the depressing, emotionally draining, deeply resonant ones that aren’t always what you want to take on, but can be just the ticket for certain moods. Well, with apologies to T.S. Eliot, we’re about to enter the cruelest month, the hard, cold days of February. (Even the radio weatherman today said, “If you can just get through the next month, you’re home free.”) What time could be better for some dark and stormy cinema? [click to continue…]

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Sundance SisFlix–UPDATED

by paige on January 15, 2009

LEGENDARY ACTIVIST LAWYER William Kunstler is now the subject of a documentary, William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe, premiering at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, which opened today in Park City, Utah. This is no ordinary biography, though. The film is directed and produced by two of Kunstler’s four daughters. Sisters Emily and Sarah Kunstler, who were teenagers when their father died, say that “Making this film has been a magical way of bringing him back to life.” [click to continue…]

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Watch This With Your Sisters: Mamma Mia!

by paige on January 9, 2009

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I MAY BE alone in having missed the Mamma Mia! phenomenon. Though I vaguely recall seeing the now-iconic poster in every city I visited over the last few years, and I knew the film came out last year, I guess I didn’t get just how big a deal the show–and the film–were. So when the H (that’s my husband) put it in our Netflix queue, my reaction was a subdued, “Oh yeah, I wanted to see that,” and I moved on to any number of the other myriad things that clutter up my (ever-diminishing) brain space. As it turns out, I was missing out.
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YouTube Preview ImageTHE H (AS I refer to my darling husband) and I have a serious Netflix habit. We’re movie-lovers with limited local theatrical options, not to mention no cable TV, so we are dependent upon the mail to bring us our entertainment. For a few months now, one of the red envelopes we’ve had lurking around the house contained a film that the H rented on the advice of a movie-savvy friend, who swore it was the best movie he saw last year.

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2 New Sisflix (Plus Serendipity)

by paige on December 12, 2008

Elizabeth Peña, John Leguizamo and Debra Messing. (Overture Pictures photo)

I WAS ALL set to write a post alerting my movie-loving virtual sisters to two films opening this weekend, with sisterhood figuring prominently in the storytelling, when an unexpected email arrived. It came from another sisterhood (and brotherhood) of my life: my graduate-school alumni group. A fellow alumna was asking everyone on the alumni mailing list to support a movie she was involved in producing…a movie opening this weekend…a movie I was just sitting down to write about. [click to continue…]

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Sisters, on the Big Screen

by paige on December 1, 2008

IS IT ALWAYS like this? Are there always movies about sisters in the theaters, or is just a fluke of this late-fall, pre-holiday movie season? Whatever the cause, there are three Sisflix to choose from in theaters now. Have you seen any or all?

The first to be released, The Secret Life of Bees, stars Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys and Queen Latifah in the adaptation of the best-selling novel of the same name by Sue Monk Kidd.  I’ll probably get some hate mail for this, but I tend to avoid Dakota Fanning movies.  Preternaturally precocious child stars give me the heebie-jeebies nowadays. (Meaning, now that I’m a grown up. I loved them when I was a kid–just read what I have to say about The Goodbye Girl if you don’t believe me.)  I also loved this book, which makes seeing the movie a scary proposition.  Can anyone convince me that I should go?  I love the other actresses, especially the super-gorgeous, super-talented Sophie Okonedo. [click to continue…]

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