Personal ads, part 2

[Part 1 here]

More on personal ads. This time some delightful ones like this -

"My finger on the pulse of culture, my ear to the ground of philosophy, my hip in the medical waste bin of Glasgow Royal Infirmary. 14% plastic and counting -- geriatric brainiac and compulsive NHS malingering fool (M, 81), looking for richer, older sex-starved woman on the brink of death to exploit and ruin every replacement operation I've had since 1974. Box 7648 (quickly, the clock's ticking, and so is this pacemaker)."

That ad is from this book titled "They call me Naughty Lola: Personal ads from the London Review of Books". Read this Salon.com piece on the book which compares the LRB personal ads with those from the New York Review of Books - such as this

"LITHE, LOVELY. Vivacious, passionate, successful concert singer (Lincoln Center, Carnegie) ... Cool (but not cold) blonde with an enviably high metabolism -- witty, classy, quick to smile -- a mix of Angelica Huston/Cameron Diaz. Argentina-born, Paris (Sorbonne) educated and fluent in six languages (including Catalan -- ¡j'estim Barcelona!). Graceful, athletic, and encouraging. Laughs often and much. Can't live without: Martinique, lobster rolls, squash (the sport), and the miso black cod at Nobu. Habitué of Telluride, Napa, and The Vineyard. Well-fixed financially, looking for same. Inspired by Mozart, Stravinsky, Ray Charles, and gamelan music. Seeks intellectual, nonsmoking, fit, successful, sophisticated, not fully retired, man, 47–67."

Gaah. Now I know why I continue to love British humor.

So, before I leave, sample another ad from the Lola book - this time, woman seeking man.

"This column reads like a list of X-file character rejects. Woman, 34, able to bi-locate and start fires with the power of her pre-menstrual tension. Seeks human/Jovian hybrid with whom to start genetic processing plant (Bicester). Must have own car. Box no. 5258."

Salon.com's movies for the holiday season

(Update - Oops...inputs from fellow bloggers and my own enquiry indicate that these DVDs have not yet reached our shores, so for this post, these are movies to look out for in 2007!)

From Salon.com's “Beyond the Multiplex” comes their recommended movies to watch this holiday season. I browsed through the movies and I think they’re all definitely worth a watch.

1. Pan’s Labyrinth – It's called an "adult fairy tale" and a "true fairy tale". Salon.com also warns parents not to take their kids for this movie for the hols season. Incidentally the movie features a kingdom underneath a gnarled tree with a giant king toad with loads of millipedes. And yes, this is from Guillermo del Toro, whose earlier movies include Hellboy and Blade II. This is the official website of the movie which gets a high 97% rating from Rotten Tomatoes.

2. Curse of the Golden Flower – Chow Yun Fat, Gong Li. And Zhang Yimou. Oh come on now, don’t ask for more (perhaps Michelle Yeoh?). If you liked Hero and House of Flying Daggers, there’s a good chance you will like this. Like those movies, this is also a period piece and like those this will also feature some scintillating cinematography and special effects. However, both those things can also get a bit much, especially if the movie is a bit slow. Elaborate official movie website here, but be warned it gets a low TMR of 55%.

3. Perfume: The Story of a murder – Just the plot is reason enough to watch, but then there’s also the fact that it is directed by Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run). This murder mystery is about a serial killer with an acute sense of smell who kills women to distill and bottle their essence. How do you capture smell in a movie ? Exactly. Movie’s superb website here. TMR Rating of 83%.

4. The Dead Girl – Pair this movie with Perfume above and I think you’ve got an ideal movie weekend for manic depressives. This movie, consists of five shorter mini-films all focused on, well, a dead woman. Bleak and most probably depressing. I couldn’t recognise Toni Collette in the trailer because the happy, fat underdog of Muriel’s Wedding seems to have had a real extreme makeover. Movie’s intriguing website here. TMR Rating of 67%.

5. The Tiger and the Snow – If you didn’t like the above two bleak movies, then here’s something more conventional, something more romantic. And it’s also got the bubbly Roberto Benigni of “Life is Beautiful”, who has now shifted himself from Nazi concentration camps to Iraq. I think I’ll give this a skip. No official website that I could find and no TMR Rating as yet, but they do have a page here.


Do let me know if you've seen any of these movies. I look forward to seeing them whenever they come to my friendly, neighborhood DVD-wallah.