Since I’m a hopeless romantic and I know that most of you are, too, I chose a very romantic theme this time: Kisses.

There are all sorts of kisses, and we’ve probably seen them all: From a couple’s first kiss that marks the beginning of a love story, to a goodbye kiss before lovers have to go their separate ways, from kisses that openly celebrate a love, to secret kisses exchanged by two people who have to hide their love.

But which one is your favourite? Which one do you think was the most romantic, passionate, sexy, gentle, or maybe just the most unexpected? Here’s your chance to let us know.

You can vote for any kiss that ever happened on-screen – i.e. in a movie, on TV or on a web series – between two women, two men or a man and a woman. You can either name the characters or the actresses/actors. Apart from the movie/TV show/web series the kiss was on, please also include a brief description of the relevant scene, especially if the characters had more than one kissing scene. In case of a TV show or web series, it’d be great if you could also name the episode or at least the season.

Make sure to submit your vote before midnight on Sunday, July 11 (CET), and please only vote once.

If you don’t have any ideas, here are some suggestions:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “The Body” (Season 5, Episode 16):
After Buffy’s mother Joyce died unexpectedly, Tara kissed Willow to comfort her

Ellen, “Roommates” (Season5, Episode 3):
After Ellen came out, her best friend Paige had problems accepting it.
When she finally came around, Ellen took revenge in her own sweet way.

Stargate SG-1: THIS kiss actually never made it to the screen,
but  Sam Carter and Jack O’Neill did kiss on screen several times.
(And yes, I am a Sam & Jack shipper!)

Alles wird gut: During a boat trip, Nabou loses her patience with Kim and jumps over board.
Kim is forced to make a decision, and eventually follows Nabou.

Update:

Okay, okay, I give in and admit that it was probably a bit mean of me to ask you to only pick one scene. Okay, maybe even very mean. So, instead of having to fill out a form and send it just post your THREE favourite scenes (with the names of the couple involved, the title of the movie/TV show/web series, and a brief description of the scene) in the comments section.

According to media reports, it was a chance meeting with the Academy Award winning musician at a Los Angeles restaurant a few days before the 2008 Academy Awards ceremony that lead to musician Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard’s surprise win in the Best Original song category for a beautiful ballad they had written for said movie. How’s that for a lucky charm, eh?

Academy Award winners Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova in “Once”

Not that the two musicians would have needed that kind of help. Their success, and the success of the movie “Once” for which they wrote not only the award-winning “Falling Slowly”, but all of the songs besides also playing the leading roles, are well-deserved. Shot with a small budget of only € 130.000, the movie focuses on the two main characters, how they connect through their mutual love for music and thereby get to know, like and eventually love each other.

Even if they never act out their feelings, by the end of the movie, both of their lives have changed significantly, and – most likely – for the better. It’s a movie about how meeting the right person can make you look at your life and its options differently and eventually make you start to act. And it’s a movie about taking chances.

Because, like the movie poster says: “How often do you find the right person?”

A few years ago, if somebody had told me that one day, Meryl Streep and Sandra Bullock would both win Golden Globe Awards, I would have believed it. What I would most certainly not have believed is that Sandra Bullock would win for Drama and Meryl Streep for Comedy.

It’s just too bad that the two actresses didn’t get to be on the same stage again, like at VH1’s Critics’ Choice Awards on Saturday. Maybe there would have been an encore kiss.

Won for the comedy “Julie & Julia”: Meryl Streep

Won for “The Blind Side”: Sandra Bullock

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Even though it weren’t Meryl and Sandra (again), there actually were two women kissing: After her show “Glee” won “Best Television Series – Comedy Or Musical”, out actress Jane Lynch kissed the woman next to her, who turned out to be her girlfriend.

Won as part of the cast of “Glee”: Jane Lynch

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Do we have to worry about our well-loved Hollywood stereotypes? Like, for example, that there’s always a stream of upcoming, young and talented actors and actresses? This year, there were as many as 3 actresses and 1 actor who were nominated twice – Sandra Bullock, Meryl Streep, Anna Paquin and Matt Damon – all of them established and well-known.

And even if there were some “newcomers” among the nominees, like Gabourey Sidibe from “Precious” or Anna Kendrick from “Up in the Air”, with the noticeable exception of Mo’nique and Christoph Waltz the winners were household names as well, most of whom had even been nominated before: Meryl Streep, Sandra Bullock, Toni Collette, Julianna Margulies, Drew Barrymore, Chloe Sevigny, Jeff Bridges, Robert Downey Jr., Kevin Bacon, Michael C. Hall, Alec Baldwin and John Lithgow.

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Another Hollywood cliché used to be that your career as an actress ends or might not even take off when you are older than 40 or have a “full figure”. The list of Sunday night’s winners seems to prove that wrong, with a 60-year-old Meryl Streep and a full-figured Mo’nique leading the way. So take that, you skinny youngsters!

Won for “Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire”: Mo’nique

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Speaking of skinny, could somebody please feed Jennifer Garner and Suzy Amis? They looked like they were in desperate need of something to eat.

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If – two paragraphs later – you are still trying to figure out why you should know Anna Paquin, let me remind you that this young woman calls an Academy Award her own, which she won at the tender age of 11 for her role in Jane Campion’s “The Piano”. Other former child actors who were present at the Golden Globes (and in one case even won an award) were Jodie Foster, Drew Barrymore, Leonardo DiCaprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

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The Hollywood Foreign Press Association lived up to its name once again, which includes not only “Hollywood”, but also “Foreign”. There were nominees from all over the world, especially the UK (like Helen Mirren, Kenneth Branagh, Colin Firth and many more), but also Spain (Penelope Cruz), France (Marion Cotillard) and New Zealand (Anna Paquin). But it were the Austrians who ruled – both Michael Haneke, the director of “Best Foreign Language Film” winner “The White Ribbon”, and Christoph Waltz, who won for his role in Quentin Tarrantino’s “Inglorious Basterds”, are from Austria.

Won for “Inglorious Basterds”: Christoph Waltz

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Also from Austria is the “Gouvernator”, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Add to that Sandra Bullock, who greeted her family in German, and there were at least 4 German-speaking people on the stage of the Golden Globes, and none of them was actually German. At least Germany could take the the credit for “Best Foreign Language Film”, but that was because we paid for it. Which means that even if you might not be able to actually buy a Golden Globe, you can at least buy the credit for it.

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By the way, in case you are still wondering what Sandra Bullock said in German: She told her family that they could go to bed now, but not without brushing their teeth. I wonder whether this sounded somehow familiar to Leo DiCaprio, who happened to have a German grandmother.

Sandra Bullock sends her German family to bed

Did you watch the Golden Globe Awards? If so, what were your favourite or least favourite moments? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

“Victor Victoria” ist one of my favorite movies, and just looking at this pic of Julie Andrews as Victoria Grant aka Victor makes me swoon over her all over again:

“Oh how I love this crazy world…”

A very romantic movie that’s perfect for Valentine’s Day is Moonstruck. When I was a teenager, I adored Cher, so of course, I went to see the movie for which she won an Oscar. Admittedly, I was too young to really relate to the story, but I loved the atmosphere, loved the setting in the streets of New York (back then, one of my biggest dreams was to one day be able to visit New York – I’ve been there four times now and still love it) and I of course loved Cher. When we left the movie theater, I asked the usher whether they had a poster of the movie I could buy, and luckily, they did. So for a couple years, a huge poster of Cher graced the wall of my bedroom, and I didn’t get tired of it for a long time.

I still think it’s a great picture:

The only downer for me regarding that movie was and still is Nicolas Cage. Don’t like him, never did. So obviously, my favorite scene of the movie is this one:

If you’ve now decided that you MUST see this movie – good choice. It’s a classic, and I love to watch it from time to time. Like today, for example.

When we think of lesbian storylines in movies, on TV or in books, we don’t usually think of lesbian teenagers. Or, if we do, we expect some serious coming-of-age, coming-out drama. Luckily, the lesbian storyline of “Die wilden Hühner und die Liebe” (“The Wild Chicken and Love”) is nothing like that, which makes it so interesting and unique.

“Die wilden Hühner” is a series of books written by well-known German author Cornelia Funke (“Inkheart”, “The Thief Lord”). It tells the story of Sprotte, Trude, Frieda, Melanie and Wilma, five girls who form a gang – die “wilden Hühner” – to defend themselves against a group of boys who call themselves “Pygmäen” (“Pygmies”). Eventually, of course, the boys and the girls become friends.

The series is comprised of five books, two of which ­have been made into movies, and it follows the girls and boys on their way from childhood to puberty until finally, in “Die wilden Hühner und die Liebe“, it’s all about falling in love. Sprotte is in love with Fred, the leader of the Pygmies. Melanie is heart-broken because her boyfriend Willi left her for an older girl. Frieda only sees her boyfriend every other weekend, because he lives in another city. Trude has a crush on a boy who only has eyes for Wilma, but Wilma doesn’t seem very interested in boys at all and prefers to spend time with her new friend, Leonie, who she met in the school’s drama group. When the “Hühner” find out that Wilma and Leonie are in love, things get complicated and the gang is on the verge of breaking up. But when some boys threaten to out Wilma and Leonie during the performance of their play, the “Hühner” and the “Pygmäen” stand by their side and protect them.

The “Hühner” – Melanie, Trude, Sprotte, Wilma, Frieda

Given the fact that I’m not the target audience of this series, I only heard about the storyline when the movie was released in 2006. (You can watch a trailer of the movie here.) After seeing the movie, I flipped through the book to find out how close the movie is to the book, and found both to be similar, though a little different as the storylines had to be adjusted for the movie. Luckily, the producers of the movie still give the lesbian storyline a lot of space and seem to have put a lot of thought into it. Both the character of Wilma and what she has to go through as well as the reactions of her friends are worked out thoroughly and carefully, making the storyline very realistic and true.

When Wilma tells her friends how hard it is not to be able to talk about those feelings, about the peer pressure to have a crush on someone, but that she’s just not into Leonardo DiCaprio, it feels very familiar and close to home, as do the different reactions of her friends, which most of us have probably gotten at times. Sprotte is uncertain at first but tries to be open about it after Fred tells her that it’s not a “contagious disease”. Frieda is wondering whether Wilma has ever been in love with one of them, and Trude tries to tell Wilma that the one boy she kissed maybe wasn’t the right one. But unlike Melanie, who freaks out and doesn’t want anything to do with Wilma because she’s scared of what other people might think of her if they knew that Wilma was a lesbian, the other girls as well as the boys stick by Wilma, which – in a nice twist – suddenly makes Melanie the outsider and not Wilma.

Wilma and Leonie

Both the book and the movie teach their young readers and audience a valuable lesson on tolerance and respect. When asked about the lesbian storyline, Cornelia Funke said that she wanted to write about love in many different forms, and that it was important to her not to forget about the girls who have this best of all feelings for another girl. Besides, she said, it would have been boring to have Wilma fall in love with a boy as well.

Thank you, Cornelia Funke, for not wanting to be boring.

“Die wilden Hühner und die Liebe” is available both as a book and as a DVD on Amazon.de. Today, another “Hühner” movie called “Die wilden Hühner und das Leben” (“The Wild Chicken And Life”) started in German movie theaters. It’s only loosely based on the series, and there’s no information about a new love interest for Wilma or whether or not her homosexuality will be a topic again in the movie. But given the fact that Cornelia Funke was involved in the making of the movie, there’s reason for optimism. Now if only I can get myself to go see a movie in a movie theatre with a bunch of teenage girls…

Pictures: Constantin Film, München

Posted on eurOut on January 29th, 2009
]]> http://www.melsblog.de/2009/01/cornelia-funke-and-the-lesbian-chicken/feed/ 0 http://www.melsblog.de/2008/10/smoking-women-drinking-women-beautiful-women/ http://www.melsblog.de/2008/10/smoking-women-drinking-women-beautiful-women/#comments Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:49:00 +0000 MeL http://www.meikesblog.com/2008/10/smoking-women-drinking-women-beautiful-women/ There are some films that are so inspiring you feel compelled to watch them again straight away. And again. And again. Until you reach a point at which you realise you can reel off the dialogues in your sleep. One film that had and still has that effect on me is ‘Schöne Frauen’, which translates as ‘Beautiful women’.

The film, as the title already hints at, deals with beautiful women. Or, to be more precise, with the actors Barbara (Floriane Daniel), Dana (Julia Jäger), Geno (Clelia Sarto), Kandis (Carolina Peters) and Karin (Ulrike C. Tscharre), who all happen to be attending the same casting for a TV detective film. The time spent waiting drags on and after an initial period of eyeing up the competition and exchanging small insults (‘Have you put on weight?’), collective frustration results in the conclusion that the film is simply a crappy ‘serial killer-erotic thriller’ which none of the actors actually wish to be cast in.

Without further ado they abandon the casting session (all but one, who they later meet up with again) and decide, after a quick stop-off at a chippy, to embark on a search for a mountain from whose vantage point everything suddenly seems miniscule, including one’s own problems. It’s a pity, therefore, that they happen to find themselves in North Germany’s lowlands, which, at most, offer up a few hills but lack anything resembling a large mountain. So instead they eventually end up at the ocean and, in seeking a place to spend the night, at a tiny hotel which is used as a rehearsal space by two musicians (‘Queen Bee’ Ina Müller and Edda Schnittgard) during the winter break.

Armed with the supplies of the hotel’s mini-bars the five women hole themselves up in one of the rooms and start to drink and talk – about life and love, about men and women, about others’ flaws and their own small and larger shortcomings, about their dreams and fears and, particularly, current concerns that they all carry with them: Barbaba who leaves dozens of answers on her boyfriend’s answer phone without ever receiving a reply; Dana whose unplanned pregnancy leaves her fearing for her career; Geno who can’t leave her girlfriend though she doesn’t love her anymore; Kandis who engages in superficial sexual encounters but secretely harbours the desire for a serious relationship, and Karin who was a child star and finds it impossible to come to terms with adulthood. There is a lot of laughter, tears are shed, arguments had, kisses and slaps are exchanged, and the night concludes for most of the women with an extremely personal vow to the future.

It seems as though author and director Sathyan Ramesh has let himself be inspired by the George Cukor-classic ‘Die Frauen’(‘The women’ ), in which most of the conversations revolve around the topic of men, especially husbands, but who are conspicuous in their absence throughout the entire film. Similarly, ‘Schöne Frauen’ features almost exclusively only the five main characters and the two ladies from Queen Bee; it is not merely a declaration of love to women but also a homage to the love that exists between women, in all its facets. This aspect makes the film particularly noteworthy – it portrays on the one hand the purely amicable tenderness often inherent in female friendships. One such instance is Barbara taking care of Kandis who awakens with a killer hang-over after a night of drunkenness. On the other hand, the film also presents romantic, erotic love between women. And it succeeds in doing this in a superbly unagitated manner. Geno’s problems with her girlfriend are taken as seriously by the others (and bitchily commented upon) as Barbara’a man-troubles.

Somewhere in between lies the growing closeness of Dana and Karin. It’s not made entirely clear at this pojnt what kind of relationship exists, or is developing, between the two women. Some romantically inclined viewers, such as myself, who on principle wishes for a happy end filled with happy lesbian couples, might feel a degree of frustration at this but it corresponds with reality- even in real life not everything can or has to be analysed, especially not when emotions are involved.

Sathyan Ramesh has provided a gift not just to his actors, whose roles are tailor-made for them, but also to the audience. The dialogues are brilliantly written, without affectation and true to life. Punchlines are never flat but accurate and in parts are laugh-out-loud hilarious. The fact that Ramesh also took over as director no doubt contributes to the film’s comprehensibility, which, in light of what can at first glance be construed as a somewhat laboured structure, is not necessarily a given. Ramesh, however, succeeds in carrying the audience along ( from the garish waiting room to the chippy; from the non-mountain to the empty sea-side hotel), without leaving one wondering how the five women ended up there in the first place.

The actors do a great job and, moreover, lack any sense of vanity. The film is topped off by music from Queen Bee, who provide the appropriate backing to suit every mood. One stand-out track is ‘Ich bin noch da’/ ‘I’m still here’, which becomes a stirring hymn for those women who, though waking up after another drunken night with horrible hang-overs, also experience a sense of change and return home with renewed resolve: just look at what we’ve survived so far; we’ll be just fine in future and survive anything coming our way.

After a short run in cinemas in 2005 and the occasional showing of it on TV, the film ‘Schöne Frauen’ is available on DVD since last year (2007). One of the special highlights is an audio commentary by the five leading actors and author and director Sathyan Ramesh.

EurOut-rating: definitely worth watching.

For our non-German-speaking readers: The DVD provides English subtitles as well. It can be ordered from Amazon Germany (amazon.de) and is also available on eBay (ebay.de).

(Posted on eurOut on September 13th, 2008)

Another movie that I like to watch in the holiday season although it’s not a Christmas movie is Peter’s Friends. Great actors (Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson, “Dr. House” Hugh Laurie, Imelda Staunton and Kenneth Branagh), a great story and one of my favorite songs, “The Way You Look Tonight”. But there are also some typical Christmas movies that I like to watch when they’re on TV, like Home Alone, Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase (I think Julia Louis-Dreyfus is hilarious!), Little Lord Fauntleroy with Alec Guinness and Ricky Schroder and some German movies. And of course, on Christmas Eve I usually watch The Muppet Christmas Carol, to finally get into the holiday spirit.

Have a great holiday season, and maybe you feel inspired now to watch some of the movies I mentioned, or maybe some of you favorite Christmas movies. :-)