Hello there! It’s the last Wednesday in February. Are you ready for March yet? I know I am, if only for a chance at some warmer weather. We all hope you’ve been having a great week. If not, that’s okay because the weekend is almost here!
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There’s a romance anthology needing some funding on Kickstarter! It has 8 days left and features and “under the sea” theme. The anthology will feature eleven romances with mermaids, selkies, and more. Let’s make this happen!
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The Washington Post has a great deep dive on whether romantic comedies still hold up, especially in the wake of the Me Too and Time’s Up movements:
Two years ago, film critic Sara Stewart sat down to re-watch “Sixteen Candles,” one of her favorite 1980s John Hughes comedies. She was mortified. One scene, played for laughs — the ostensible hero gifting his drunk girlfriend to another boy — seemed like a manual for rape. Stewart wrote a column about the offensive aspects of the movie, and was met with vitriol. Readers accused her of being humorless, of ruining something beloved.
“But if I wrote that column now,” she speculates, “I feel like people might be in agreement with me.”
I still really miss romantic comedies, but I’m okay with waiting if it means we get a great one for a modern audience.
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And speaking of great rom coms, Gina Rodriguez is slated to star in and produce one for Netflix! The movie is also going to focus on female friendships. No news yet on when we can expect this to launch.
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Enjoying A Princess in Theory yet? Avon has a peek behind the scenes of the cover’s photo shoot! The cover models are really cute together and I wish more publishers did behind the scenes cover stuff, since I find it to be fascinating.
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And, if you need a laugh, “If Literature’s ‘Complicated Men’ Were On Tinder.”
Name: Heathcliff
Age: Literally no idea.
Occupation: Mergers (with my enemies’ families) and acquisitions (of their wealth and happiness).
About Heathcliff: Spent a long time cultivating that #RevengeBody and also #RevengeWealth, but now I’m looking for a nice, gullible girl to settle down with, preferably one who just happens to be related to my enemy, who also just happens to be married to my childhood friend. You know, for normal, totally not nefarious reasons.
Which one is your favorite and who else could use the Tinder treatment?
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Don’t forget to share what super cool things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
Those Tinder profiles are hilarious – my favorite is Mr. Rochester! How about Wickham from Pride and Prejudice?
The cover shoot is delightful and, look, I think she’s wearing Doc Martens before slipping on her pretty shoes. That would have been a great picture, too.
Lucifer’s Tinder profile says it all.
Thanks for the RomCom article, it’s a relief to know I am not alone on the “Whyever did I find this cute?” Not so much with movies (I first watched a Hughes films five years ago, well into my twenties), but with books. Particularly with Judith McNaught’s “Once and Always”, where I find one more thing to be angry with every rereading. (First: the hero rapes the heroine. Twice. Second: narrative never calls hero out on rape. Third: manipulative relative takes away agency. And so on).
And yet I still like the damn thing.
Thank you for the link to behind the scenes for A Princess in Theory (I’m #4 on the library wait list!), but is her left arm missing once it goes behind his head? It’s still a beautiful cover, but now that’s really bugging me!
The New York Post had an article on an upcoming book called Bachelor Nation, which is claiming to be behind-the-scenes info about that terrible show that yields such wonderful recaps:
https://nypost.com/2018/02/27/the-std-that-keeps-most-contestants-from-competing-on-the-bachelor/
Regarding rom-coms- I finally got around to watching The Big Sick and it’s the best feel-good romance I’ve seen in a long time. Genuinely funny and touching, Kumail Nanjiani is terrific and Holly Hunter is fabulous and funny (not surprisingly!). I highly recommended it for a 2018-approved rom-com.
Here’s an interesting article about how department stores contributed tot he liberation of women from the home: https://www.racked.com/2018/2/9/16951116/department-stores-women-independence
Ilona Andrews shared a short video on her blog this week of the photoshoot for her next book (it’s being self-pubbed). It’s kind of fun to watch the models’ expressions.
http://www.ilona-andrews.com/the-horde-has-spoken/
Seconding the recommendation of The Big Sick for a modern romcom! It’s a beautifully told story and the entire cast is so charming.
Hmm I have been holding off on watching The BIg Sick because I am sick of how POC romances have to have a white person in them to make them palatable. And even more sick of how South Asian women always seem to get thrown under the bus in favour of the Indian hero “finding true love” against the “tyranny of an arranged marriage”. It just seems like putting cultures in a hierarchy to me. Have any other South Asian ladies seen the movie? What did you think about it?
@Shash- with all respect to your valid concerns, this particular film is based on their true life relationship and personal history. The family dynamics are thoughtfully handled and coming from Kumail and Emily’s personal experience.
I also have first-generation friends from Southeast Asia, married to someone who is white and they were so excited to see a realistic portrayal of their life on screen that they had not seen done in such a sensitive way.
Just a perspective for you
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@Shash, I’m not South Asian, but there were still some things about the movie that bothered me, along the lines you mention.
Overall it was an enjoyable film, but definitely made for a “mainstream” audience. I know it’s a real-life story, and I actually do really like Kumail Nanjiani, but the heroine spends most of the movie functionally “fridged” by being in a coma while the hero works out his issues: sounds classic Hollywood to me.
But there’s a string of scenes where the main character’s family is introducing him to eligible South Asian women, and it left me wishing someone would just make a movie about each of them. Particularly there’s one actress I keep seeing just *killing it* in bit parts on tv, and she absolutely nails her paltry 4 minutes in this movie. She should honestly be starring in basically everything, and yet for the life of me I can’t even figure out what her name is.