The Burlesque Saga: Part 2

-Kirsten Bell, playing the bitchy head dancer who sabotages Christina Aguilera's dazzling young ingenue (isn't Xtina a bit old to play that role? I mean, she's been around since the 90s, right?) (and as if her sabotage wouldn't be immediately detected and punished, since the movie makes a point of how moral Cher is), gets called a slut. By wise old Stanley Tucci at that. How feminist, chick flick. And no, there isn't any indication that she has sex with loads of men.

-In fact, Aguilera is the one who has sex with a guy the same night he breaks up with his fiance. Isn't there a rule against that? I mean, she snapped her legs shut on him like a beartrap!

-The movie also makes a point of Bell being an alcoholic. At the end, she gets a bit of a redemption arc (she apologizes and Cher says "Okay." Her villainy is so half-assed that this feels about right) and yet, the alcoholism is never addressed. I guess they were saving that for the sequel? Maybe about a second, ee-vil burlesque club owned by Madonna with Pink as its star dancer?

-Speaking of Stanley Tucci, of course he plays a gay man. That guy is so good at playing sensitive gay men that I'm worried it will turn out that in real life he's cheating on his wife with porn star twins or something. He ends up having sex with another man, with neither of them knowing the other's name. Oh, those promiscuous gays!

-Alan Cumming is in this movie. I don't think they hired him, I think he just shows up whenever a movie is this fab-ulous! He gets a... vaudeville strip routine?... where he's having a threesome, but it's funny because...? I don't know, maybe that's the next big thing in porn. Some guy will be getting a blowjob, then he'll turn to the camera and say "What's the deal with these cock-hungry redhead sluts?"

-You know how I know this movie is gay? With the plot involving Kirsten Bell being a stripper, Cam Gigandet gets naked more than Veronica Mars.

-Speaking of the plot, it involves Cher trying to save her club from getting foreclosed on (thus reducing the job market for Modern Dance majors by 100%). Now, I'm not known for my financial savvy, but perhaps if they spent less money on elaborate backdrops, fancy costumes, and props and more on dancers who will--how to put this delicately--take off their clothes, they'd be in the black.

-If this were made in the days where B-movies were retitled often to be played to new audiences, this could safely assume the monkier of Fag Hag: The Motion Picture. It even turns out that not only is Stanley Tucci a father figure to the dancers and Cher's best friend, but he had drunken sex with Cher at one point. Now I don't know how drunk a gay man would have to be to have sex with, say, Jaime Murray, but with Cher? They must've been pumping absinthe into his veins.

-Another good name would be Showgirls 2: The Next Generation, since both movies seem to take place in a world where exotic dancers are A-list celebrities. Of course, in our world, Kelsey Grammar's wife is a celebrity, so can I move to that one?

Got repair costs back from the computer shop

Looks like it won't be a green Christmas.

So, Lisa Gardner's Hide, a TV movie mostly notable for starring Bridget Regan, who God created to practice making heaven. Only this time, she's a redhead.



And that is all we shall say on the subject of natural hair color. Carla Gugino also stars in the adaptation, but weirdly isn't given much to do. Most of the interaction with Regan is done by one of her love interests. Not to say that every investigator needs to have a gimmick, but the character is really bog-standard. She's in a love triangle with two dreamy hunks (does every female-demographic story have a male-male-female love triangle? It seems like either that or an out-and-out harem. Remember how True Blood had the love triangle between the chick, the vampire, and the self-loathing vampire, then the vampire became self-loathing too and the chick had sex with him? Goddamn, I can't believe that shit gets more seasons than Deadwood.)

Gugino's D.D. Warren (stop me if you've heard this one before) is married to her job, with a fuckbuddies relationship with one of the beaus (and I think the other was an ex-boyfriend with Something Still There. I don't know, I had a hard time telling them apart). And the guy thinks she's emotionally unavailable and wants to get closer to her, waa-waa-waa. I think this "subverted cliche" actually shows up more often than the original-recipe cliche these days. Maybe there's a bit of a power trip to that (hey, they can't all be spandex bodysuits). Like women go "Oh, how would guys like it if a woman just wanted them for sex and then shut them down on the relationship front?" And the truth is, if Carla Gugino wanted a no-strings-attached sexlationship with a guy, that man's arm would be broken from all the hi-fives he'd be getting.

As for the mystery, there's a pretty lame conclusion where it turns out there are two serial killers who both want Bridget Regan (hey, if Neve Campbell can five serial killers after her, Kahlan certainly rates two). And they have nothing to do with each other. You could cut the second one out with no impact on the plot. Although he does give the program its greatest entertainment value. In a "creepy" Seven-style flashback, we get his backstory about being molested by his nanny as a child. Of course, they can't show that on TV, so they just show the nanny "creepily" bouncing into her room on the way to molest him. And she is just so psyched about child molestation. Big smile, skipping as she walks--you can just tell she woke up in the morning thinking "This is a great day for some pedophilia!" Yeah, I'm a horrible person, but it's impossible to take seriously.

On the relationship front, Warren's sex friend ends up leaving her for Bridget Regan, who he was protecting, then she tries Male Love Interest 2 of 2, and he shoots her down because he doesn't like being runner-up. Yes, we're meant to believe Carla Gugino strikes out twice in one night. I'm pretty sure Carla Gugino couldn't strike out twice in one minute. I'm sorry, I just feel this might discourage women from looking like Carla Gugino, so let me be clear. No one, except maybe Batman, has that much self-respect. If you're Carla Gugino, you can go up to a guy and say "I just did the Chicago Bulls and the Vienna Boys Choir," he will still watch Love Actually with you just to make-out during the credits.

Yes, with cuddling.