Sad Movies...I Need Happy Thoughts

I'm not usually too big on watching very sad and/or disturbing movies. I just watched two in as many days, and I think I overdid it! I finally went to see Brokeback Mountain. Plenty of people were crying in the movie theatre. I wasn't crying but let me say that a movie has rarely made my insides feel all twisted like that. Just so sad and unfair. All the actors were good. Heath Ledger was my particular favourite, maybe because he had the meatier part, drama-wise, although Jake Gyllenhaal was also really good at conveying the love he felt just by his facial expressions. Michelle Williams always conveyed so much emotion on Dawson's Creek in spite of the often craptacular scripts that I'm not surprised she was outstanding here too. (As an aside, how good does she look 2 months after having a baby? Wow.)

Then, tonight, I rented Aurore, which is a very good Quebecois movie, but sooooo disturbing. It is about a little girl who is dispised by her stepmother and gets physically abused and tormented. It takes place in the late 1910s and it would be hard to do justice to the story since it is also rooted in the very religious atmosphere of the time. The priest turns a blind eye to what happens for a long time and prevents other parishioners from acting. What is most disturbing is that it is a true story. It is one of those creepy stories part of our collective consciousness. Anyway, this movie made me cry a lot, and I'm all creeped out. People like those parents shouldn't exist.

To distract myself, I was browsing online, and found this hilarious essay by Tim Carvell, one of TDS writers. It mocks the whole James Frey's fake memoir debacle. Thank you, Tim, for lifting my spirits.