Black Swan by accident and The Blind Assassin on purpose

Yesterday I decided to go to a movie, because I'd been in the house for three days running and desperately wanted to get out. Hoping to catch  The King's Speech at 2:20 pm, I showed up at the theater at two o'clock, only to find that it had started at 1:45.

"Are there any other movies that start right now?" I asked the teenager at the desk. "'Black Swan' starts in one minute," she said. I nodded and pushed my debit card toward her. Black Swan was nominated for several awards and its star, Natalie Portman, won best actress at the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild awards.(I follow all these award shows religiously, until they begin to blend together in my mind. By the time the Oscars are over, I can't remember who won which award.)

Natalie Portman

I got my popcorn and soda, and sat down in the mostly empty theater. A few other middle-aged people like myself were there on a weekday afternoon, probably to see what all the commotion was about.  Portman plays a young ballerina, Nina, who wins the coveted role of the Swan Queen in Swan Lake even though the artistic director, who makes a pass at her, says she is right for the White Swan but that she is too controlled for the Black Swan role. She lives with her mother

Barbara Hershey

(a very scary Barbara Hershey) who treats her like a little girl complete with an all-pink bedroom and ballerina jewelry box. The other significant person in the picture is another young ballerina, Lily, played by Mila Kunis, who is Nina's antithesis -- into crazy sex, drugs etc. 

Mila Kunis

The girls become friends and Nina begins to spin out of control, sprouting black feathers from open open wounds on her back and fingertips. It's pretty mind-boggling and by the end of the movie you're really not sure what is reality and what is not. There is also a very graphic girl-on-girl sex scene, which only contributes to the general strangeness. When I came out of the theater, the boy sweeping up popcorn asked me how I liked the show. I paused and then said, "That was a really weird movie." "I don't plan to see it," he said.  I wonder if the other theatre-goers had the same reaction.

I have a much more favorable review of the book The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. My book group is meeting here to discuss the book, which I recommended. The novel covers three separate, yet related plot lines: the lives (and deaths) two sisters, a tale of two unnamed lovers, and a science-fiction fantasy that one lover tells the other during their trysts. I have not read any of Atwood's other books, even though they are well-regarded, because I felt (probably wrongly) that they were feminist tracks, but Atwood is a fantastic writer and the book, enthralling.

 One negative review, one positive one.  I guess I should have waited for the next showing of The King's Speech.