in which I make a choice based on Uma.

I was going to make a double bill of Poseidon and M:I III but at the last minute the opportunity came up to see an advance screening of My Super Ex-Girlfriend, so rather than driving to West Seattle and paying $10 for four and a half hours of undoubtedly bad entertainment, I was able to walk to a theatre and see something for free and get home before the light had left the sky. Plus neither of the big action flops had Uma. The movie is an 80s throwback, from the New York skyline title sequence on. Uma is hysterical throughout, but Luke Wilson is curiously charmless, like Griffin Dunne with no comic timing, and Rainn Wilson is certainly no John Candy. (I think I may have been in a play once with Rainn Wilson's wife.) I like him so much on The Office, but I think the problem here is that the character is supposed to be likable in a guy's guy sort of bigtalker way, and, at least for me, that's exactly why I don't like him--Dwight, from The Office, is essentially the same character, but you're not expected to think of him as your best friend and sidekick. I completely don't get the physics of one of the film's most repeated gags: the bed moving during intercourse. Eddie Izzard has some funny moments as the Super Villain, although how that character grows up to be Eddie Izzard is also something of a puzzle. I appreciate that, although I thought for sure the film was moving that way, not only does it not make the characters happy by taking away the woman's superpowers; it actually grants superpowers to another woman, and shows them both with mates happy to carry their purses while they go off to fight crime. I guess this is really just meant to be funny in the manner of If Men Played Cards As Women Do, but it made me sort of pleased. I also liked that Uma was often in heels, and so towered over Luke. Oh, Uma, Uma, Uma... I was sitting next to a very fat couple; near the end of the movie there is a scene at a fashion show, and the camera cuts to a reaction shot from a large woman in a bright red dress and hat--the couple next to me let out an "ewwww" sound. I thought the woman in the movie looked kind of glamorous, in a Divine sort of way. I have no idea why they thought their response was necessary; it was not the response the filmmakers wanted, I'm sure--the woman just mugged well and so they cut to her for a funny shocked reaction. Interesting form of self-loathing.
Final shot: two-shot as two major characters begin to walk offscreen.

Just finished reading Diary of a Married Call Girl by Tracy Quan. I'd read her previous Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl several years ago when there was a glut of sex worker books on the market. This is amusing as kind of a parody of Chick Lit--all the obsessions with designers and products, but with graphic, un-romance-novel-like, and very funny matter-of-fact descriptions of sex acts. The book is almost convincing as a diary, as it pretty much just stops after 250 pages. She does a High Noon thing with her birth control pills, so I guess that would be considered an "ending", but there's a half-dozen unresolved plot elements that don't even get a final wink. I like the picture of marriage as just a succession of lies people tell to each other, and that she doesn't consider that a bad thing. It's also interesting that the book stops several weeks before 9/11. If she writes another, I'm afraid it will have to deal with Serious Issues in a way that I suspect the author is not up to. Doesn't matter to me. I think I've done my time with her.

I also finished The Ticking by Renee French. For French, it's a pretty delicate work--hardly nightmarish at all. About coming to be at home in one's body, and understanding one's family. I'm reading a book about Dr. Johnson, and there's a portrait of his wife who looks very much like Edison's father from this book (except she has ears). I think French is one of the greatest cartoonists working today--I might prefer Chris Ware's sensibility or Ben Katchor's Calvino-like imagination, but I can get lost in French's deceptively simple drawings much easier. In some ways, she reminds me of Claire Denis; there are no unimportant details in her work.